Borderlands Weapon Guide

Most first-person shooter games have a fairly modest line-up of weaponry. There are standard classes of weapons which you expect to appear in every release and Borderlands is no exception in this regard. Where it breaks with tradition is in the ridiculous amount of variation within each weapon class. Developer Gearbox managed to create a system whereby the weapons are procedurally generated. This in effect means they can be invented on the fly by pulling in a random set of possible permutations. They estimate that there are currently over 17 million variations so I’m not going to list them all here.

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The basic weapon categories are divided up as follows:

• Pistols
• Sub Machine Guns
• Shotguns
• Combat Rifles
• Sniper Rifles
• Rocket Launchers
• Eridian Weapons (alien technology)

Each weapon has the following information attached. Handily, the pertinent info pops up in a window when you hover your view over a weapon, so you can decide what is worth picking up. Each weapon in the game has the following ratings:

• Damage
• Accuracy
• Fire Rate
• Capacity
• Value
• Rarity

They take different types of ammunition and can do a vast array of different types of damage from explosive and corrosive to electric and incendiary. This leads to a high degree of specialization and certain weapons are ideal for a specific job. Many of the weapons have bonus abilities, so the rarer they are, the more likely they do a bunch of extra funky things like ammo regeneration. In addition to the guns, you can also use explosives in the game and there are a number of modifications available for grenades.

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• White
• Green
• Blue
• Purple
• Orange
• Dark Orange
• Red
• Pearlescent

Just as important as your offensive equipment is your defensive equipment and you can buy shield systems in Borderlands. They work like the typical Halo variety in that once depleted they take a few seconds to fully recharge. The difference here is that there is a huge choice of shield systems and they range from cheap to breaking the bank expensive. When attacking opponents with a shield it is worth remembering that electric weapons which do shock damage are especially effective at taking shields down. A good technique is to use a shock weapon to kill the shield and then switch to something solid to waste your now vulnerable enemy.

There are so many guns in Borderlands that you will eventually find the perfect blend of weaponry for you.