How to trade weapons with friends in Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 combat
Borderlands 3 combat (Image credit: Gearbox)

There's a billion and one guns in Borderlands 3, with countless varieties of shotguns, rifles, handguns, bladed guns and more. If you're playing with a friend or three, you might want to swap guns and try out some different loot. Or maybe you'll get a gun that just doesn't work for your playstyle at all but it's something your friend has been desperately trying to get. Whatever the reason, here's how you go about trading weapons in Borderlands 3.

How to trade weapons with friends in Borderlands 3

Jump into Borderlands 3 with your friend or friends that you'd like to trade with. Make sure you're nearby and extremely close to each other.

  1. Approach each other and press X when the prompt appears on-screen
  2. You'll send an invite to trade and your friend needs to accept the invite.
  3. Pick a gun or guns or other items to trade from your available inventory
  4. Your friend will then also pick a gun
  5. Confirm the trade, you'll have a couple of seconds to back out

Now enjoy your new gun. Or don't. Or trade again.

If someone isn't online but you really want to give them a gun anyway, you can also use the mail system to just gift a gun directly to a friend. It's important to note that you need to be in-game, not at the main menu.

  1. Go under the Social Menu in-game where you can see your friends
  2. Select the Mail tab
  3. Press X to send mail
  4. Choose an item in your inventory and a friend to send it to

Before you even start to think about it though, no, you can't trade guns to get a super-powerful weapon early on to steamroll enemies and bosses. Guns are level-locked, which means that you'll probably need to be around (but not exactly) the same level as your friend who you trade with in order to start using the new gun right away.

Still, even with a vast level disparity, this can still be useful. If a higher-level friend is filling up their inventory with guns they know they won't use, they can offload some to you in order to free up space. Or if they get an incredible, rare roll with great bonus effects but it is for a gun type they'll never use and you will, it's perfect to just securely send it on over to you.

Xbox

Main

Samuel Tolbert
Freelance Writer

Samuel Tolbert is a freelance writer covering gaming news, previews, reviews, interviews and different aspects of the gaming industry, specifically focusing on Xbox and PC gaming on Windows Central. You can find him on Twitter @SamuelTolbert.