Items

Borderlands 3 advertises a billion guns, which makes rarity a poor way to choose between them. Every legendary is orange. What actually separates them is what each one takes off you in exchange for what it does, and unlike most things in this game that is written down where you can read it before you equip.

Our legendary weapons list carries full stat blocks for seventy-six guns, and going through them the prices sort into six kinds. Most guns charge nothing. Twenty-one charge ammunition. Fourteen charge a printed penalty. Five charge both. One charges money. And three charge you the gun itself.

The six prices

The guns that charge ammunition

Twenty-one of the seventy-six eat more than one round per pull, and the range runs from two up to five. This is the price that hurts most in a long fight and least in a boss fight, because the ammo economy is generous right up until you are standing still shooting one thing.

Recursion and the Bearcat are the steepest at four rounds a shot, and Kill-o'-the-Wisp is worse still at five, though it fires energy balls that home in and deals shock damage, so it buys something specific for the cost. The Cutsman, Hellwalker, Firestorm, Echo, Laser-Sploder, Storm, Mongol, Ogre, the Boring Gun, the Horizon, Sleeping Giant, Smart-Gun XXL and the Garcia all sit at two, which is close to free in practice.

Set that against the guns with the opposite property. The Infinity carries a magazine size of one and never needs reloading, and the Brainstormer returns bullets to your magazine whenever it damages a shield, which means both of them get cheaper the longer the fight runs.

The guns that charge a stat

Fourteen legendaries carry an outright negative modifier, and reading them as a group tells you what the game thinks a strong effect is worth.

Maggie is the most expensive gun in the game by this measure and it is still one of the guns our Takedown at Maliwan page recommends bringing, which tells you how little the printed number matters against what the effect does. The Lyuda gives up nearly half its accuracy and is still the sniper rifle people farm the Graveward for.

The pattern underneath the table is that the penalty almost always lands on the stat the gun does not need. Sledge's Shotgun and the Face-Puncher are close-range weapons paying in accuracy and damage they were never going to use at range. Headsplosion gives up critical damage and gets explosive rounds and a ricochet in return.

The five that charge twice

Devoted, Firesale Long Musket ++, Linoge, Recursion and Sledge's Shotgun appear on both lists. Every one of them pays a stat penalty and eats extra ammunition on top, and every one of them is worth it for a specific reason: Devoted switches between radiation and shock, Recursion ricochets, Linoge fires three rounds at once, and the Musket trades accuracy for fire rate.

These five are the closest thing the game has to a designed cost curve, and they are the ones to test on a range of enemies rather than to judge from the card.

The gun that charges money, and the three that charge themselves

Bankrolled Predatory Lending is the only weapon in the folder that spends currency instead of ammunition, one dollar per bullet. That sounds punishing early and stops mattering entirely once you have read our money farming guide, which is exactly why our best guns page recommends saving it for the late game where you are rich anyway.

Three guns charge the steepest price of all. The SkekSil, the Killing Word and Embrace the Pain have unlimited magazines, which reads as a gift until you learn that firing them long enough causes them to overheat and break apart. Two of those three are early game weapons, which is a blunt lesson in reading red text delivered at exactly the point you would ignore it.

Where the guns come from

Price is one axis. Source is the other, and our pages split it three ways.

• Early game weapons covers the ten worth detouring for before level 20, and eight of the ten come from a specific enemy rather than a random drop. Mouthpiece gives up the Mind-Killer and the Killing Word, the One Punch boss under Lectra City gives the One Pump Chump, and Ellie hands over The Leech for finishing Taking Flight.
• Unique gear is the quest reward category, sorted by weapon type across Pandora, Promethea, Eden-6 and Nekrotafeyo. These are the guns you cannot farm, only earn.
• Legendary weapons is the main list, and its two DLC children break out separately: Moxxi's Heist and Bounty of Blood.

The Bounty of Blood set is the most predictable loot in the game and worth calling out for it. Most of its sixteen legendaries drop from named Skin to Win targets, one gun per boss, no table roll involved. Beat Minosaur and you get the Flipper. Beat Varducken and you get Satisfaction. The Handsome Jackpot set works differently again, with the Ion Cannon farmed from Fabricator Mark 2 and both Ember's Purge and the Scoville arriving by mail after a collection challenge rather than from any enemy at all.

The gear that is not a gun

Four pages cover everything else you can equip, and they price things the same way.

Shields are the clearest case of a trade written into the item. Front Loader converts your health into shield capacity. Thin Red Line does the same in skill form for Moze. Rough Rider goes the other way and pays you health for less shield. Brawler Ward and Golden Touch both only reach full power once the shield is already down, and the Caffeine Shield actively punishes you for letting that happen, giving reload speed and fire rate while full and taking a severe penalty on both while empty. Six legendary shields and four unique ones in all.

Legendary grenade mods are eighteen effects, each with red text attached, and they are the one category where the effect is the whole item. Quasar hovers and pulls enemies in. Storm Front splits into four and shocks. Tran-Fusion heals you for 120 percent of the health damage it deals. Rubber Cheddar Shredder makes damaged enemies drop cash. One warning our page states plainly: these do not drop in offline mode, so playing offline removes the category entirely.

Artifacts unlock late, after the Vault Monster and the ECHO-6 storyline, and then arrive as random drops with better odds from Golden Chests. They modify melee attacks and slams rather than guns, which makes them the piece most likely to be ignored and the piece our class guides lean on hardest for melee builds.

Weapon trinkets are the exception that proves the rule. They hang off your gun, take no inventory space, can be moved between weapons freely, and cost you nothing at all, because they do nothing at all.

Two currencies that buy gear, and one that buys a room

Eridium is the one you will use most, spent at Crazy Earl in the lower deck of Sanctuary on anointed gear, cosmetics and the deal of the day. Our Eridian Writings page covers the other side of it: alien slabs in The Droughts, Ascension Bluff and Athenas that pay Eridium once you have the Eridian Analyzer, which is also the item that opens the Proving Grounds.

Diamond Keys are the outlier. They need the Director's Cut, they drop rarely from Vault Card crates, and each one opens a whole loot room in Sanctuary 3 rather than a single chest. Inside, a timer runs while you pick one reward from each wall, and anything you fail to choose is picked randomly for you when the clock stops. A final chest is guaranteed legendary, so a Diamond Key is always four items plus one.

Frequently asked questions

Which legendary should I farm first?

One with a named source rather than a random one. The Skin to Win bosses each drop a specific gun with no roll involved, and the farmable campaign bosses are the next most reliable.

Is a negative modifier a reason to skip a gun?

Almost never. The penalty is usually attached to a stat the weapon does not depend on, and two of the most recommended guns in this folder, Maggie and the Lyuda, carry the two largest penalties in the list.

Why is my legendary weaker than the one I found earlier?

Because damage scales to the level you found the gun at and the rest of the stats do not. A legendary picked up twenty levels ago keeps its effect and loses its numbers, which is why farming the same boss again later is normal rather than wasteful.

Do anointed and legendary mean the same thing?

No. Anointment is a bonus keyed to your action skills, and because it is not a rarity at all it can appear on blue and purple gear as easily as on orange. Crazy Earl sells anointed items for Eridium if you would rather not farm for the combination you want.

What is the fastest way to make money for gear?

Safes and lockers first, then selling what the Lost Loot machine near the Sanctuary bridge has been catching for you. Our money farming guide notes that a full thirty slot backpack of decent weapons can be worth six figures at a vendor.