Nonelemental

Borderlands

Non-elemental (normal) weapon

Normal weapons are weapons that have no elemental effects or damage bonuses, easily identified by a lack of element listed on the item card. Many weapons at the beginning of the first playthrough will have no element until around level 15 or so. grenades are also considered to do normal damage until a grenade mod is applied. Some weapons like Eridian weapons and rocket launchers have no element listed, but they deal elemental damage because of their weapon type (shock for most Eridian weapons, explosive for launchers).

While normal weapons don't have the damage over time perk of shock, corrosive or incendiary weapons, or the area of effect damage bonus of explosive guns, they tend to have higher base damage than their elemental counterparts and strike more consistently.

Notes

• Jakobs guns only have the normal element.
• Special weapons gained from missions usually have the normal element.
• Scythid have increased defense against elemental weapons, thus it is often most efficient to kill them with normal type weapons.

Borderlands 2

Normal damage returns in Borderlands 2, and follows many of the same rules that apply to it followed in Borderlands. One exception is that all white weapons (aside from Maliwan, launchers or Torgue weapons), will only deal normal damage.

Normal damage Is normally effective against shields, health and armored Enemies. It is more common to find on weapons than elemental capacitors and does more base damage than elemental weapons.

Special Variants

On certain normal weapons, there are special effects appearing on the weapon itself, these are mainly aesthetic and have not shown to display abilities out of the ordinary for normal- damage weapons, and are as follows:

• white glow:- some legendary weapons (such as a non-elemental Shredifiers or Emperors) exhibit a white glow on the parts of the gun in place of the glow of an elemental capacitor would be.
• pink glow:- The normal variants of the Madhous! and Badaboom both exhibit a pink glow on the parts of the gun in place of the glow of an elemental capacitor would be.

Notes

• Jakobs still produce non-elemental weapons
• Although Maliwan don't legitimately produce normal weapons, there are programmed prefixes (e.g. Maliwan SMGs have the "Technetronic" prefix)
• Launchers never deal normal damage, instead dealing explosive damage.