The Best Guns in Borderlands 3: Guns, Love, and Tentacles DLC

Borderlands 3's second DLC, Guns, Love, and Tentacles, adds about two dozen new Legendary items to the game, the vast majority of which are guns. As one may expect, some of these guns are going to be top-tier weapons that can melt bosses in record time, some are middle-of-the-pack tools that are almost good enough to use on just about everything, and some you use for fun.

Unfortunately, since the Guns, Love, and Tentacle's playable area is more spread out than its predecessor's, it may be harder to actually find some of these guns, much less tell what they do. On the bright side, the level cap increase to 57 means that you're going to have to overhaul your entire inventory anyways, so it's a pretty good time to be farming enemies in Borderlands 3. Here are some of the standouts, what they do, and how to find them.

Seventh Sense

Effect: Shooting an enemy spawns a ghost bullet. Reloading causes the ghost bullets to home in on the point of impact.

Dropped by: Finishing Burton Brigg's Cold Case questline.

Putting aside the fact that it's trivially easy to get the Seventh Sense, the gun offers fantastic value for anyone who can land critical hits constantly—or for that matter, anyone who can land consistent shots. This in itself is not that different from a typical Borderlands 3 Jakobs revolver. What sets the Seventh Sense apart is the ghost bullets that it spawns when you shoot an enemy.

These bullets loiter in the air until you reload, after which they fly at whatever you shoot. While the ghost bullets are not 100% accurate per se due to enemy movement and character models, it's pretty close to perfect accuracy. Plus, the ghost bullets can land their own critical hits. As one can expect, this can double or even triple the amount of damage that you do per magazine.

Skullmasher

Effect: Fires five bullets at a once in a tight spread.

Dropped by: Appears to be bugged. Can (currently) only drop from chests in the DLC.

Few guns are going to embody the Jakobs design philosophy better than the Skullmasher. It's a sniper rifle that can do massive amounts of damage, plain and simple. The downside is that it has massive amounts of recoil as well, though it's somewhat manageable. The other, more practical downside is that as of now, the gun can seemingly only drop from DLC chests. 

If you do manage to get the Skullmasher, the gun is going to be one of the best long range options available to you in Borderlands 3. At very long ranges against smaller targets, the five bullets don't quite hit the same point, but in most scenarios, the bullet deviation is irrelevant. At very close ranges, you can also use the gun as an emergency shotgun. In any case, such a gun eviscerates virtually every kind of boss, especially the Graveward, Tom and Xam, and Eista.

Nothingness

Effect: Fires a concentrated cloud of explosive projectiles

Dropped by: Gmork, the hunting target in the Cankerwood

If you liked the Borderlands 3 version of the Flakker, then you'll love the Nothingness. For those who are unaware, the Flakker is a shotgun that basically explodes whatever is on screen with a range of about five feet. The accuracy against individual targets is atrocious, as is the ammo consumption, but this is an acceptable trade. The Nothingness is a more concentrated, precise version of the Flakker. You charge it up, aim at a target, and watch as a cluster of elemental explosions melt the enemy. You're not getting the same raw firepower as the Flakker, but the fact that it's somewhat easy to land critical hits with the Nothingness more than makes up for it.

Of course, being a Maliwan gun, the Nothingness does have some rather pronounced advantages and disadvantages. The charge time is definitely one of the downsides. It may seem quick on paper as you more or less only have to count to three for the gun to be ready to fire. In hectic situations though with many enemies or a boss that is pressuring you, even such a short delay before firing can be lethal. On the other hand, being able to switch between two different elements at will is fantastic for such a weapon. Plus, it is an incredibly ammo-efficient weapon, and surprisingly accurate.

Anarchy

Effect: Getting a kill or auto-reloading adds a 30% damage buff to the gun. The buff stacks up to 10 times. Buffs are lost when dying, manually reloading, or switching weapons. 

Dropped by: DLC world drop.

If you look at the Anarchy and judge it purely on the base stats alone, you might think that it's somewhat unimpressive. In a sense, the Anarchy really is just an upper-tier Tediore shotgun. Once you get its red text effect to activate though, the anarchy turns into a monster of a gun. At max stacks, the gun is doing at least 300% extra damage per pellet (assuming that the buffs are additive). Since some versions of the Anarchy can fire up to 18 pellets at a time, you're going to be able to turn anything that you aim at into Swiss cheese.

The downside to the Anarchy is that it can be horribly inefficient to use. Having to auto-reload the gun to get damage stacks means that if you're not getting kills, you more or less have to expend all of your ammo to get to the max stacks. To tie into this, not all of Borderlands 3's bosses have enough enemies for you to kill to get the buffs. Plus, if you're using the Anarchy, it's basically do or die as you can't switch weapons unless you want to lose the damage stacks. 

The Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge

Effect: Landing hits on enemies grants 1% extra damage up to 15 times. At maximum stacks, add an additional 20% damage. 

Dropped by: Claptrap, during the main questline.

Technically speaking, The Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge is not a gun. In addition, the ease of acquisition and unassuming sounding effect makes the Pearl seem like a fun item to tie into the plot, nothing more. If you test out the Pearl on the practice range though, you might find out that the Artifact is not quite as straightforward as it seems. For starters, the effect's description can be a little misleading. A cursory reading of it makes it seem like the Pearl grants up to 35% extra damage at most, which is good, but certainly not anything worth noting. 

In reality, the extra damage is not additive. Instead, it's multiplicative (or perhaps exponential). The quick and easy way to understand it is that at max stacks, your gun is doing about double the damage that it normally would. The beautiful part is that it appears as though any damage contributes to a stack. Grenades, DOT effects, as long as numbers are popping up, it adds a stack. Plus, you don't have to have 100% perfect accuracy to maintain the stacks. The stacks seemingly only expire if you're not doing damage for roughly one second. It's hard to say whether or not the Artifact's effect is intentional, but if it is, then every DPS build basically got a new must-have item.

What interesting weapons have you found in the Guns, Love, and Tentacles DLC for Borderlands 3?