Playing the game is like being a bull in a china shop. No matter what, you're probably going to break something.
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Items and Effects
General
- The status effect Daze. Daze critically slows the enemy's movement speed and lowers their ability to aim by a huge amount. It also, inexplicably, cuts projectile velocity, so their bullets travel slower. Lilith has a skill that can give a 25% chance to inflict Daze on each bullet she hits with. Her main weapon is a submachine gun.
- Masher revolvers, manufactured by Atlas, Dahl, Jakobs and Tediore, which fire multiple bullets per shot and do MASSIVE damage as a result. Curiously, they're actually beloved for their game-breaking power, enough that not only were they among the chosen few that were moved into Borderlands 2, they also would make a return in Borderlands 3.
Atlas
- The Ajax Ogre which is a Ajax's Spear that spawned as an Ogre. This combination becomes a monstrously powerful death-dealer: it boasts great accuracy and a high rate of fire while the Ogre grants it arguably the single best explosive splash effect in the game. It's a cumulation of the Atlas Master of All characteristics in one stupidly strong gun.
Dahl
- The Dove. Despite not consuming ammo and no need to reload, it seems fairly weaksauce compared to other pistols. However, with the right combination of skills and perks—most notably Mordecai's Gunslinger skill—the thing becomes a freaking machine pistol that never needs reloading, meaning you'll never need another gun if you play your cards right. To put this in perspective, players have beat the Rakk Hive with nothing but the Dove and a few health power-ups.
Hyperion
- The Hyperion Nidhogg is one of the best rocket launchers in the game, since it has one of the fastest reload speeds of its class, high damage even by its class' standards, pinpoint accuracy, and the ability to explode into a cluster of rockets at the cost of one ammo, making it very ammo-efficient. Its gimmick is tricky to use, but it's handy at clearing out enemies or hitting Crawmerax's back weak-spot. While most rocket launchers suffer from various flaws, like poor damage, long reload speed, and consuming multiple ammo per shot, the Nidhogg is an excellent exception.
Maliwan
- It may not be as ridiculous as the Hellfire, but the Defiler revolver is definitely the closest thing to a corrosive equivalent. It has a 100% chance to corrode enemies, and on top of that, corroding enemies take more damage from all sources. Any character can use it effectively, but Mordecai deserves a special mention, since he can boost its already preposterous damage output with an Assassin Class Modnote , which increases his corrosive damage by at most 60%, and all of his pistol and critical hit-buffing skills, and you can wreck badass Crimson Lance within mere seconds.
- In solo play, nothing comes close to a Hellfire SMG. Most of these have high rates of fire and decent firepower. All Hellfires come with a 100% chance to ignite the enemy. The fire from a Hellfire can stack, making sure that even shielded and armored enemies (who resist fire damage, especially the former that cuts fire by 50%) will burn to cinders in no time. A quick burst of sustained fire against a group of enemies can leave them dead in seconds with little ammo consumed. Hellfires are extremely effective when playing as either Roland or Lilith, who can both regenerate ammunition with the right Class Mod.
S&S
- The S&S Orion is the perfect Shock weapon, thanks to its high Shock damage, guaranteed elemental proc chance, high accuracy, great raw damage, and a really fast fire rate to boot, especially for a sniper rifle. Like other S&S guns, the Orion also has a large magazine and a high elemental pool, but those aren't the best parts; it's the ricochet effect where shooting at any surface causes the bullet to split into three more bullets that deal the same damage. The ricochet effect is handy at taking out Crawmerax's back weakspot. Shock and Awe and More Dakka indeed.
Tediore
- When it comes to shields, nothing triumphs a Tediore Panacea and Wee Wee's Super Booster and their fast health regeneration (plus health boost in the case of Super Booster). With the right class mod and skill and the Transfusion mod for grenades, big health pickups become Better Off Sold!
Torgue
- While not as famous as the Atlas Ogre, the Torgue Cobra is a Rocket Launcher disguised as a Sniper Rifle. The Cobra can create massive Splash Damage that can turn a couple bandits into Ludicrous Gibs, or at least leave them nearly dying. The Cobra also has a slightly faster fire rate than other sniper rifles, and thanks to its natural explosive damage, the Cobra can make short-work of most bosses, like Mothrakk. Combine that explosive damage with Critical Hits and this thing hurts like Hell.
Vladof
- The Clipper is one of the very first "reward" guns you'll find. It has a large clip, a high rate of fire, extra melee damage, and a chance to do fire damage. Even half a game later, it's surprisingly devastating against most enemies.
- The Vengeance pistol, whose shots can ignore shields. It's basically Mordecai's Trespasser skill applied as a weapon, but it has the added effect of applying its effects to all of the player's weapons in the inventory. In other words, a free Trespasser for anyone who isn't Mordecai with the Trespasser skill.
Characters
Practically any given skill set is game breaking with enough points. Here are some of the most notable examples:
Lilith
- The Eternal Phasewalker build. It focuses on maxing out 5 skills: "Hit and Run"note , "Inner Glow"note , "Phase Strike"note , "Blackout"note and "Silent Resolve"note . Even if you are reduced to almost no health, just hit phasewalk, regenerate your health (whilst moving at super speed, while both invisible and invincible), hit someone (which will almost certainly kill them), reappear, and gun down another enemy. At that point, you can Phasewalk again and you won't have even taken any damage yet. It pretty much makes Lilith unkillable enough that she can solo Crawmerax with ease.
- Her Controller subtree's final skill, "Mind Games", gives all bullets a 5% chance to inflict Daze. As the skill is upgraded, the chance increases up to 25%. Pair this ability with a Maliwan Hellfire SMG, crank up the fire rate with a Class Mod or Shield, and Lilith basically turns into a never-ending string of "Hit someone, melt their buddy's face off, phasewalk, repeat."
Brick
- His Blaster subtree's level 2 skill, "Revenge"note , and the subtree's final skill, "Master Blaster"note are, by far, the biggest DPS-boosting skills in the game, granting him ridiculous damage and fire rate buffs, respectively. Throw in his explosive damage buffs and the Atlas Ogre combat rifle and you've got arguably the highest-damaging combination in the game.
Mordecai
- His Sniper subtree's level 3 skill, "Carrion Call", allows him to reduce Bloodwing's cooldown simply by shooting an enemy with a Sniper Rifle. It starts at 0.8 seconds and its maximum reduction is 4 seconds. The Skullmasher, a legendary Jakobs sniper rifle, shoots 6 bullets at once. Combine those two (or the Skullmasher's lesser cousins, the Masher revolvers) and you'll never have to worry about cooldown again.
- The Sniper subtree's final skill is "Trespass", which allows Mordecai's shots to ignore all shields, initially at 20% chance (the full upgrade reaching 100%). It's horrifyingly effective against the guardians, who sport little health and extremely large shields.
- The Rogue subtree's level 3 ability, "Aerial Impact", makes Bloodwing inflict Daze. Like "Trespass", it starts at 20% and increases up to 100%. She's computer controlled, so she never misses, and the final skill of the tree, "Bird of Prey", lets her increase the amount of enemies it attacks on a single call (up to nine in a row), along with inflicting other status effects. With the right class mod, the cooldown can even be reduced to a mere two seconds. This game also has PvP combat. Take that as you will.
Roland
- He has certain class mods which come with the ability to restore ammo for everybody's active weapon. You will NEVER run out of bullets.
- His Support subtree's final skill, "Supply Drop", has his turret spitting out homing boxes including 10% of every ammo's max capacity at the same time, as well as 1 or 2 grenades. While it doesn't do much in multiplayer, it does mean that in single player, every time you throw out your turret (which may be often), you get at least 30% of every single ammo type and 3-6 grenades, at level one! Never rely on dirty random ammo drops again!
- The Support subtree also has a level 3 skill, "Grenadier", which increases his grenade's damage for 3 seconds (up to 15 seconds) and regenerates 2 grenades per minute, so long as he keeps fighting. If you've got a Transfusion mod, you become very hard to kill.
- Roland's Medic subtree's level 2 skill, "Cauterize", gives him the ability to heal teammates by shooting them. Your entire team will NEVER run out of health.
- The final skill of the Medic subtree, "Stat", grants you a large amount of health regeneration on kill. This means every kill grants you a massive healing over time effect with a decent-sized radius for your friends to benefit from. Considering the countless amounts of small fry in Pandora, you can instantly recover all of your HP within seconds. Coupled with the aforementioned "Cauterize", the effects are devastating.
Exploits
- Go to New Haven. Note that there are five gun crates around town. Open them up. Sell anything that isn't a Double Anarchy, X4 elemental gun, or has unlimited ammo. Exit game. Load game from menu. Repeat. ???? Profit. And if you don't kill the Rakk Hive while "Another Piece of the Puzzle" is active, you can claim an additional two chests, one of which has a Sniper Rifle that only spawns there (the Rider).
- If you own the General Knoxx DLC, you have two exploits:
- Early on, you can, once you're in Fyrestone and long before you've restored the Fast Travel system, Fast Travel to T-Bone Junction. There you can gain several levels just by completing the first step (building the monster truck) due to the fact that the DLC is actually scaled to be played after the first playthrough. Then you can take the truck and run over the assassins, including Vulcana if you catch her while she's on the radio, and level up a few more times.note With or without the Monster Truck you can farm high-level weapons and items from the lockers and a red chest in T-Bone Junction and sell them for what is, for a low-level character, enormous amounts of cash. Then you can use that to buy ammo deck or Underdome Bank upgrades, or just have cash on hand for anything you find in the vending machines.
- The second exploit is located after you defeat Knoxx himself. After entering the code that opens the door, you'll get access to Knoxx's gargantuan armory. At a certain point before the hallway with the lockers and cash boxes, there's a part of the door that's basically non-solid. You can actually enter through it, and you'll get access to every single area of said armory. As long as you don't step into a certain area (as that'll trigger an event and you won't be able to complete the mission) you can loot all you want, blow yourself up, respawn at the start of the level, sell anything you want, return, rinse and repeat. This glitch is so legendary, it's still present in the Remastered version of the game.
- Since game saves are unencrypted, save editors and gear construction toolkits
allow some pretty severe game-breaking twinking (such as adjusting your character's skill slots or creating the rarest/best possible version of any given weapon scaled to a particular level of character).
