Borderlands Weapons

“

You won't last long here, not without help, not without guns... a hell of a lot of guns.

— Helena Pierce, Borderlands debut trailer

”

According to Gearbox, there are over 17,750,000 different variations of weapons, as of release. The game uses a procedural process to generate its various guns in certain classes, such as handguns, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and more, but with many variations of firing speed, reload speed, damage type and more.

Thankfully, there is an easy way to determine the basics of a weapon without having to pick it up and open an inventory screen. When you approach a weapon on the ground, a small holographic window appears above it that displays information such as weapon type (shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, etc.), damage type (static, incendiary, caustic, etc.), monetary value, as well as the weapon's rarity using a color coding system.

If a human enemy is carrying a special weapon that they drop upon their death, they will wield it against the player. Otherwise they use a default weapon for their enemy type.

Weapon Type & Proficiency

The different types of weapons are:

Specific Weapon Proficiencies apply to each and are displayed on your character screen. These boost player skill with the different weapon types and are increased up to a level of 50 whenever a certain number of kills are made with that weapon type, ie. the more you kill with a type of weapon the better you become with it. Apparently this also includes how many bullets you use to kill an enemy, making it harder to upgrade sniper than other classes.

Flavor Text

Found in the stat boxes of guns where it says the guns special upgrades (i.e. magazine size +2) are sometimes cryptic or humorous messages in red text. These lines usually indicate a certain effect on the gun. The text itself often gives a hint of what that special ability does, and is also often a reference to a video game, movie, or any number of things. A list of all known Special Weapon Effects is available on that page.

Rarity

Rarety — Gun colors in descending rarity

Borderlands uses a classification system for gear that follows the standard color-coding system for RPGs. A common (white) gun would be average, an uncommon (green) would be slightly above average, a rare (blue) would be a premium gun, an epic (purple) would be a very strong gun, and legendary (orange) guns are second only to pearlescent. The rarity of each gun is indicated by color as stated on the page of each gun. (See Category:Weapons)

There are 8 confirmed rarity levels. (Do note that weapons listed in the inventory screen might have a darker text color than what is shown in the weapon box when that weapon is selected, so it would help to compare, say, across all your orange rarity weapons to check for differences in color.)

Level 1 = White, rarity = 0-4.
Level 2 = Green, rarity = 5-10.
Level 3 = Blue, rarity = 11-15.
Level 4 = Purple, rarity = 16-49.
Level 5 = Light Orange, rarity = 50-60.
Level 6 = Orange, rarity = 61-65.
Level 7 = Dark Orange, rarity = 66-100.
Level 8 = Pearlescent, rarity = 101+

Further rarity levels are present in-game, but are not assigned to weapons.

Level 9 = Green, rarity = 170. For Backpack SDUs.
Level 10 = Red, rarity = 171. For health pickups, such as Insta-Health Vials and Healing Kits.
Level 11 = Yellow, rarity = 180-181. For cash bundles.
Level 12 = Yellow, rarity = 182-190. For cash bobbleheads.
Level 13 = Cyan, rarity = 500. For supply drops in the Underdome coliseums.

Despite the rarity of a weapon generally summing up how powerful it is, it is also quite possible to find that some guns are exceptions to the color code. This is because the rarity values assigned to a gun's parts do not correspond to how much damage they can do, nor can the weapon generator account for the gun's actual performance or a human player's preferences.

Elemental Effects

Main article: Elemental Damage

The elemental effects include fire, electrical, explosive, and corrosive. The damage of the elemental effect is a multiplier indicated by the elemental plaque and a "xN" in the weapon description, where N is a number from 1 to 4. The chance an elemental effect will occur depends on the difference between the level of the player and the level of the enemy. On all maliwan weapons, a weapon description will include text reading "high elemental effect chance", "higher elemental effect chance" or "very high elemental effect chance", which implies that the gun has a greater than normal chance of causing its elemental effect, depending on the material quality of the weapon. Elemental attacks are added to the base damage of the weapon used and can have secondary benefits.

Each element has a specific benefit to use against differing enemies:

Fire has a benefit against fleshy enemies and causes the enemy to burn for a length of time.

Shock has a benefit against shields. It depletes them more readily but is less effective against flesh and natural armor than a normal weapon of the same type. (Natural armor as in the Armored Skag)

Explosive weapons have a chance for the round to explode in enemies, dealing much more damage and leading to an incredibly messy death on a critical hit.

Corrosive has a benefit against armored enemies, slowly draining health and making them weaker to other attacks as the ongoing damage progresses.

Each element also has its own specific death animation, most of which leave no trace of the target behind:

Fire slowly incinerates the enemy. A fair bit of screaming is involved.

Shock makes lighting arc up and down their body, eventually leading to their head exploding.

Explosive leaves you with a loud bang and giblets. Fun against low level enemies.

Corrosive is similar to fire, only it's acid doing the job.

Manufacturer

Main article: Manufacturers

There are eleven official weapons manufacturers in Borderlands, each of which will usually produce weapons that incorporate specific attributes associated with their respective brands. Probably the easiest way to learn these different attributes is to listen to Marcus when you use a vending machine, as he will comment on the manufacturers and their attributes.

List of Weapon Manufacturers:

Atlas - Above-average balanced attributes
Dahl - Low recoil
Eridians - Energy-based alien weapons
Hyperion - Very high accuracy
Jakobs - High damage, low rate of fire
Maliwan - Elemental damage
S&S Munitions - Large magazine capacity
Tediore - Fast reload speed
Torgue - Balanced attributes
Vladof - High rate of fire
Gearbox - special, most rare by far

See Material Grade for details on the naming schemes of manufacturers

Guaranteed Weapons

See also: :Category:Guaranteed Drops

These weapons and modifications have a 100% chance to drop off a specific enemy or be contained in a specific location.

Weaponry List

Please see the Weapons category page to see all weapons added to the wiki thus far.

Note that due to the sheer amount of guns (Around 17.5 million) it is EXTREMELY unlikely that this Wiki will ever contain pages on every single firearm/firearm variant in the game. Indeed, it's probable that there may even be weapons that nobody in the entire world will ever find. Instead this Wiki lists groups of similar guns by their Title, the last word(s) in the weapon name.

Weaponry Names

Main article: Weapons by prefix

Following the game's random weapon generation AI, a system formulates each weapon's model number and name according to its type, manufacturer and capabilities.

Weapon Components

Main article: Gun Component Charts

Components

This illustration of a combat rifle identifies the different components that go into assembling a single weapon. Each manufacturer has a number of proprietary options for its components (Excluding "Shoulder" and "Trigger").

Stock: Higher quality stocks provide more stability and accuracy. Smaller stocks and stockless weapons achieve faster reloads and equip speed.

Body: Affects the weapon's firing rate and damage rating.

Barrel: The type of Barrel used affects the weapon damage ratings and accuracy.

Magazine: Better magazines yield increases in magazine size, reload speed, and equip speed. The smallest magazines increase damage.

Scope: A scoped weapon offers various degrees of zoom, dependent on the quality of the scope.

Materials: Higher quality materials yield different looks and stronger manufacturer bonuses.

Accessory: Provide a range of benefits from Elemental Effects (acid, fire, electrical) to damage and stability bonuses, and much, much more.

Ammunition

Most weapons in the game require ammunition (or ammo for short), except for Eridian weapons, which rely on an alien power source which will slowly recharge, and certain rare exceptions such as The Dove, a rare pistol rewarded for completing a side quest, and other Dark-Orange rarity-leveled weapons. Ammunition can be acquired in several ways throughout the game; the player can buy ammo at various ammo Vending Machines, killed enemies may drop ammo, lootable objects may contain ammo, or it may be regenerated by a class mod, skill, or special weapon effect.

Types of ammunition:

Combat Rifle Ammo
Repeater Pistol Ammo
Revolver Ammo
Launcher Ammo
Shotgun Shells
SMG Ammo
Sniper Rifle Ammo

The player is able to carry a specific amount of each type of ammunition. At the start of the game, a player is only able to pick up ammunition of a particular type after they have acquired a weapon capable of using it. As the game progress and the player increases in level, the player will be able to purchase ammunition Storage Deck Upgrades from the Ammunition Vending Machines.

Damage Per Second (DPS)

Damage Per Second, or DPS, is a commonly used way to compare the effectiveness between skills, weapons, or other damage-dealing methods in various games. It is also used to refer to how much DPS may be taken constantly without eventual death (mostly non-applicable to Borderlands). Although reload times are not visible to the player, an estimate can be made on the effective DPS provided by weaponry of the same type.

To find the approximate DPS a weapon provides, or at the least a relative scale of effectiveness, the Damage value of a weapon should be multiplied by the Rate of Fire (Damage x Rate of Fire). This gives a basis for comparison, but elemental effects complicate the equation.

For the sake of simplicity, we will assume that all elemental effects deal the same damage, and scale according to the 'x' number given (note: this is likely to be highly inaccurate):

x1 modifier - 1.25 damage multiplier
x2 modifier - 1.50 damage multiplier
x3 modifier - 1.75 damage multiplier
x4 modifier - 2.00 damage multiplier

Lets look at an example.

In the image on the right we have an Assault Rifle that deals 56 Damage with a 8.8 Rate of Fire, plus a x4 Incendiary elemental effect.

Using the method above; 56 x 8.8 = 492.8 DPS.

Add in the elemental effect; 492.8 x 2.00 = 985.6 DPS.

Although likely inaccurate, we now have an idea of the relative effectiveness of the weapon, which can be used to compare it to other weaponry more easily.