User:Michael.jaegerASG/Weapon Mechanics

This artilcle is meant to introduce players in how weapons and other items are constructed in Borderlands and Borderlands 2. This understanding is helpful, if not neccesary for creating modded weapons and gear, be it legit or illegit (however, many players consider the creation and usage as cheating, whether the creatad item could hvae spawned in game or not).

Introduction
In both games every item consists of a set number of parts. Some of them are represented in the game as actual parts (ie. barrel, stock, sight, etc.), others are more to be considered properties.

Borderlands
The "parts" of a weapon in Borderlands are the following: Most parts (except for the very basic ones) have influence on the rarity and the price.
 * Item grade - Together with the Weapon type, this property defines the type of the weapon. Unique and Pearlescent wepaons as well as Eridian Weapons have their own grades.
 * Manufacturer - The manufacturer of the weapon. This has influence on allegiance class mods and the favorite manufacturer shown in the background of the character menu. it is also shown in the top-right corner of the item card.
 * Weapon type - The weapon type (self-explanatory) differenciates between sub types of weapons (ie. assault shotgun vs. combat shotgun). Eridian weapons have distinct but not unique weapon types.
 * various actual weapon parts - together with the Material and the level of the weapon the parts define the states of the weapon, ranging from damage to firerate to recoil
 * to see which parts have which influenceon the gun stats, search the Category Mechanics for the pages /parts
 * usually, the are 5 numbered objects for each part, #1 being the most basic and #5 the best.
 * Legendary weapons are defined by specific parts, for example the Hellfire always has acc5_Maliwan_HellFire (see below). there is exactly one legendary weapon for each manufacturer and weapon type.
 * Material - The material makes the manufacturers impact on the gun stats and also the ingame color of the weapon. There are three regular materials for each manufacturer plus one for each unique or pearlescent weapon (pearlescents can be considered legendary and unique at the same time). The three regular materials feature the manufacturers distinct bonusses (and penalties) to an increasing degree.
 * Prefix - The prefix is the first part of the weapon's name. Every prefix has certain conditions (ie. high fire rate, elemental stats or a certain manufacturer). Of all matching prefixes the game selects the one with the highest priority. Many high quality (and thus high priority) prefixes grant stat bonusses themselves. (Example: The shotgun prefix "Angry" requires a certain reload speed and boosts fire rate and reload speed if chosen)
 * Title - The title is the second part of the weapon's name. It works roughly the same as prefixes.

As mentioned above, unique weapons have their own item grade and material. Many of them have part restrictions. Still, it is possible (but extremely rare), that a unique weapon spawns with a part that defines a legendary weapon (Example: Atlas Ajax's Spear can spawn with the legendary Atlas Ogre accessory). this can result in extremely strong weapons with the unprefixed legendary title (because the legendary title has higher prority, but the only legit prefix for uniques is no prefix). See the Unique article under "mixing with legendaries".
 * Each part has a value multiplier (which can be 1). The product of those values is multiplied with a number depending on the level to result in the weapon's price.
 * Many parts have an integer rarity. The sum of all parts' rarities is the weapon's rarity (a weapon with rarity 5 or higher is green, 10 and above is blue, etc.).
 * The tech level works just as the rarity, although far less parts benefit the tech level. For more information on tech see Elemental Damage.

Example Items
Let's consider the following weapon code (the leading numbers are not part of the code but for better explanation):


 * 1) gd_itemgrades.Weapons.ItemGrade_Weapon_PatrolSMG
 * 2) gd_manufacturers.Manufacturers.Maliwan
 * 3) gd_weap_patrol_smg.A_Weapon.WeaponType_patrol_smg
 * 4) gd_weap_patrol_smg.Body.body5
 * 5) gd_weap_patrol_smg.Grip.grip3
 * 6) gd_weap_patrol_smg.mag.mag5
 * 7) gd_weap_patrol_smg.Barrel.barrel5
 * 8) gd_weap_patrol_smg.Sight.sight1
 * 9) gd_weap_patrol_smg.Stock.stock5
 * 10) None
 * 11) gd_weap_patrol_smg.acc.acc5_Maliwan_HellFire
 * 12) gd_weap_shared_materialparts.ManufacturerMaterials.Material_Maliwan_3
 * 13) gd_weap_names_shared.Prefix_Tech.Prefix_DTIncendiary4_Combustion
 * 14) gd_weap_patrol_smg.Title.TitleM_Maliwan1_HellFire
 * 1
 * 5
 * 0
 * 1) 63

Modding Tools
Every weapon or shield in Borderlands can be simulated with Doncanfog's GearCalc. It precisely predicted all values of the desired item, including visual appearance (except for colors). Both the item code and the Item Card can be exported to various formats.

Gamesaves can be edited with the WillowTree tool. It is compatible with the code created from GearCalc. It features im- and export tools and a personal locker, in which a user can save his favorite weapons independently from gamesaves / characters. It also grants access to various chracter stats, such as money, skill points, visited locations, mission and challenge progress, etc.

Borderlands 2
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