Confused on item cards, color, rarity

[Zaphod54]

New player, never played BL1. I'm confused on how to interpret the color of item cards for determining the quality/rarity of the item.

Do I guess correctly that the higher rarity should be a "better" item (in what respects might be debatable)?

But I'm also confused in how to interpret the colors I'm seeing on the item card to match to rarity.

There is a border color, a text color, and a background color. These colors rarely seem to match, primarily border and text color.

What does the color of the border vs. the color of the text mean? Does background color ever mean anything? (I'm not entirely sure the background color does ever change. I might be wrong on that.)

Thank you.

[kevin.benko]

The color (white, green, blue, purple, gold, and teal) are RELATIVELY important, yes, a blue Jacobs rifle does increased damage , BUT, the fire rate is {crap}. And since every item is made from several "parts" you need to look at each item and each "part" objectively.

My Gunzerker character LOVES the Rough Rider shield, but I had an OP2 Rough Rider which was worse than my OP1 Rough Rider, because of the parts.

In addition, while I am not colorblind, I set the colorblind option which seems to make the money greener, and the item "card" has the color printed on it.

So... I am probably of little help to you, but you need to look at damage done, rate of fire, and other considerations.

Yes, this was the equivalent of a placebo.... sorry.

[Zaphod54]

Thanks. I do look at all the specs. I'm mostly confused on why the border is different color from the text. Which one (text or border) indicates "rarity", and what does the color of the other one indicate?

[z00t]

There are different quality items in the game, from white rarity (common) to orange (legendary)
White -> Green -> Blue -> Purple -> Orange
common, uncommon, rare, very rare, legendary respectively.
Generally, the rarer the better quality an item is, so better damage etc applies.

Then there are the magenta items - e-tech specifically. They are in their own class, but the game treats them as the same rarity as purple.
Additionally there are three levels of items above legendary. These do not appear in all stages of the game, so are sort of separate.
Pearlescent - cyan
Seraph - pink
Effervescent - rainbow

These are two of the different rarities, pearlescent and legendary. Notice the different colours of the title text, images etc. This will change for the other rarities.
The more descriptive text will generally be white. Any red text on a card only happens on legendary and above, as well as unique (named) blue rarity items.

pearlescent
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1955037578

legendary
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1945909698

Background colour can be different. If you find something that is of a higher level than you, it will be red, and means you cannot currently equip or use it.

[Casurin]

Higher rarity in general means stonger weapons. But that depends (as was mentioned) on the parts, your character, the skills and your playstyle.
For example it is not uncommon for a white Jakobs sniper to do more damage than a purple vladof - the Jakobs is just way slower and with a lot of kickback, while the Vladof is automatic.

A general rule-of-thumb is each step of rarity is roughly equal to 1 level. A white lvl 43 is similar to a purple lvl 40.

If you find a weapon look at the manufacturer - you will soon notice that for most weapon-types you very likely prefer certain manufacturers. You can also use the compare-function ingame and it will show you some green/red arrows next to the stats indicating the differences.


And in general - you could even just ignore rarity altogether - just look at the stats directly.

[sarcastic_godot]

The colour signifies rarity - white, green, blue, purple, orange and all that jazz, from common to ultra-rare..

Typically a rarer weapon is more powerfu than a common one, but the core thing still is item _level_. So, as a rule of thumb, not always accurate, yadda yadda:

White lvl x <=> green lvl x-1 <=> blue lvl x-2 <=> purple and above lvl x-3 to x-4

Some orange (and some blue ones, too) items have special attributes that might make it worthwhile to use them longer. E.g. the Rapier and Law (both blue) have a high melee attack bonus - desirable with all melee-specced builds. Or the Slagga has a huge magazine, bullet split, and a high chance to slag, which makes it useful as a salgging weapon even when it's no longer efficient for doing damage. Or that Slag Transfusion Grenade mod with 6 child missiles might still do good when 4 levels lower than you. Several other examples exist, too...

But globally, it's wise to keep your gear up to as high a level as possible. Details regarding the damage output can be found on the weapon card, though you'll have to doe the Dmg/bullet x Rate of Fire math in your head. Also keep an eye on the Accuracy stat...

[dontu_worry]

While rarity correlates roughly with "power", Equipment, player and enemy levels are more important. Also, Many legendary weapons have gimmicks that make them only situationally useful, or even useless.

[Zaphod54]

Thanks everyone! Great tips! I did understand how the various colors correspond to rarity, and I knew the progression of colors of rarity. But there are some great additional tips here, and I thank you all for that.

The question though really more about the literal visual of the item card itself. Though I think I've since figured it out and feel rather stupid now.

Taking these screen shots for example.

In this screen shot, the item on the left had the green border, but Blue text, and the item on the right had a yellow border but green text.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2108083761

In this one, the item card has a blue border at the top and green text, and the bottom of the border is also green matching the text.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2108083829

I couldn't figure out if the border color meant anything in relation to the rarity or anything else.

I believe I've since figured out that the rarity is purely the text color. The border color doesn't mean anything. The yellow and green borders show up when viewing my inventory. It's mostly yellow borders. The green border appears when comparing items and it's the first item selected to compare. The blue border seems to be what you see on item cards outside of your inventory.

So again, I feel rather stupid now, but I did get some great tips in this thread!

[Casurin]

Originally posted by Zaphod54:

I believe I've since figured out that the rarity is purely the text color.

Weapon-name, manufacturer and weapon-type-icon (text at top, name and symbol on bottom) - those have the color of the rarity. (easioly noticeable as you can sort your inventory by rarity.)

Originally posted by Zaphod54:

The border color doesn't mean anything. The yellow and green borders show up when viewing my inventory. It's mostly yellow borders. The green border appears when comparing items and it's the first item selected to compare. The blue border seems to be what you see on item cards outside of your inventory.

Yes, they say nothing about the item it self, green and yellow are imo self explanatory as when you select the items for comparison they are also highlighted in those colors in the inventory/equipmentslots.


And the 2 snipers you have there are a great example of just how much the manufacturer can change a weapon.
lvl 5 green jakobs sniper - Muckamuck
lvl 7 blue dahl sniper - Scout

The Scout has higher stats for nearly everything, due to high firerate and burstfire also way way higher DPS, but for pure 1-shot headshot sniping the Jakobs will deal more damage cause of the inherently higher base-damage(for its level) andCrit-Bonus of jakobs-weapons.