SegmentNextMechanics
Two of the systems in this game take something off you and hand something back, and neither is honest about the exchange rate until you read the small print. The Grinder swallows three items per pull. The wardrobe outside Moxxi's Bar in Concordia fills up from missions, challenges and corpses. What separates them is how much of the result is settled before you commit, and on Elpis you can pay to settle more of it.
The Moonstone is an insurance premium
Ten separate recipes on our Grinder recipes guide carry the same warning in their last sentence: leave the Moonstones out and you may get an item one rarity below the one you were aiming at. That is the whole bargain. The recipe decides what you are shooting for, the Moonstones decide whether you actually get it, and they also open the door to a Luneshine enhancement on top.
| What you want | What goes in | Without Moonstones |
|---|---|---|
| Legendary of a chosen type | Two legendaries plus a purple of that type | May come out purple |
| Purple of a chosen type | Three blues of that type | May come out blue |
| Random purple | Three random blues | May come out blue |
| Blue of a chosen type | Two greens of that type plus one green | May come out green |
| Green of a chosen type | Two whites of that type plus one white | May come out white |
| Shield, Oz kit, class mod or grenade mod | Two of the type you want plus one random of the same rarity | Drops a tier |
Two details in that first row are easy to miss. The purple you feed it is what dictates the base type of the legendary that comes out, and the lowest level item in the tray is what sets the level of the result, so feeding it a level 20 leftover is an expensive way of making something you have already outgrown. That second rule is quoted for the legendary recipe specifically; elsewhere the page says the machine tends to average the levels of what went in. Either way, three guns from one manufacturer tend to come back as something built by a rival.
What Luneshine actually pays
Eight bonuses can land on a Moonstone grind, and two of them exist purely because you are standing on an airless rock. Oxygenator restores oxygen when you damage an enemy and Serenity slows the rate at which the meter drains, which makes them worth more on a long trek than the raw numbers suggest. The rest are the usual suspects: Fast Learner for kill experience, Harden Up for maximum shields, Boominator for grenade damage, Safeguard for a shield refund on every kill, Piercing Rounds for a chance to ignore enemy shields, and Punisher for critical damage.
Recipes that change the weapon class
Sixteen cross class combinations are listed on the same page, and a good half of them need something that is not a gun. All four rocket launcher recipes want a grenade in the third slot, both sniper rifle recipes want a shield, and so does one of the two shotgun recipes and one of the two submachine gun recipes. Two assault rifles plus a shotgun, a laser or a pistol return an assault rifle; a shotgun, a sniper rifle and a shield return a sniper; an assault rifle, a pistol and a shield return a submachine gun. Class mods are the exception that always works: three of the same rarity, and whoever pulls the lever gets the class mod for their own character, which is the cheapest way to fix a build that our Vault Hunter builds guide says needs a particular mod.
Some things are simply refused. Three purple pieces of gear produce nothing at all, and the two blue guns handed to players with old Borderlands save files cannot be fed to it either. Three blue uniques do yield a purple, but the page warns that it arrives with no special grind effects at all, so read the drop notes in our items guide before you sacrifice something with red text on it.
Cosmetics run on the same scale
Skins and heads are handed out four ways, and our skins and heads guide lists all of them in order of how certain they are. Nine named jobs pay a specific cosmetic on completion, seven of them a skin and two a head, which makes them the only part of this system you can plan a route around. Boomshakalaka, Fresh Air, Grinders, Last Requests, The Don and Trouble with Space Hurps sit on that list beside the Dahl Combat Training arena, while Cleanliness Uprising and The Voyage of Captain Chef are the two that pay heads. Every one of those except the arena is a side mission with a walkthrough in our side missions guide, where Grinders and Boomshakalaka both turn up in the level 11 to 12 band.
Challenges are the next rung down. Thirty two of them pay a cosmetic across eighteen categories, and the tier at which they pay is fixed even though the item is not: nineteen hand it over at level three of the challenge and thirteen make you finish the whole thing at level five. Anything on a weapon category, such as Pew Pew and Battlestar under Laser or Boomstick Boogie under Shotgun, is progress you were making anyway. The last two routes are pure chance: badass enemies drop cosmetics more often than ordinary ones, and the rest are scattered in the world as loot that looks like a head or a make up kit.
Vehicle paint works differently again, since the Moon Buggy and the Stingray are re-skinned at a Station rather than at the kiosk. For everything else on Elpis that rewards a detour, our named locations guide and the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel hub are the places to start.