Updated: Jun 17, 2025

Borderlands 3Needle Gun

Not your average needle.

Content
Revenge of the Cartels
Weapon Type
SMG
Rarity
Legendary
Manufacturer
Tediore
Elements

Needle GunAll Details

Max DPS

Copy Needle Gun Code

Needle Gun - About

The Legendary SMG Needle Gun is manufactured by Tediore and comes from the Borderlands 3 Revenge of the Cartels Event.

Needle Gun - Unique Ability

Continuous firing increases the Needle Gun's fire rate.

The Needle Gun fires slow, homing needles that apply a stacking debuff (Max Stacks: 10).
Enemies lose all stacks, if no new stack is applied within 2s.
Applying the 10^th stack to an enemy refills the Needle Gun's Magazine.
Each debuff stack grants its bullets +10% × n(n+1) Conditional Damage.

The Needle Gun Reload Explosion deals up to 500% x Card Damage x leftover Bullets.
Making it the highest damage Tediore Reload Explosion!

Homing Reload
The thrown homing Weapon explodes on enemy contact or surface impact.

Damage-Type:
The Needle Gun's Damage doesn't count as SMG or any other Weapon-Type Damage.
But it still benefits from generic Gun Damage.

Needle Gun - Variants

Elements
Listed Projectiles
1 | 2
Shot Cost
1 | 2
Weapon Parts
variants
fixed parts
Anointment
possible
none
Splash Anoints
possible
none

Needle Gun - SMG Parts

Weapons usually get one part per group, but sometimes multiple or none. Numbers in the top-right indicate the range of parts a group can have.
Parts usually have equal drop chances, or it's indicated nearby.

Scope

Scope_1_{1.5x Zoom}
Scope_2_{3.0x Zoom}
Scope_3_{3.1x Zoom}
Scope_4

Foregrip

Foregrip_1-15% Horizontal Recoil
+10% Mag Size
-10% Accuracy
-5% Damage
Foregrip_3-30% Vertical Recoil
+5% Damage
Foregrip_4+5% Fire Rate
+5% Damage

Stock^0-1

Grip_1-30% Horizontal Recoil
+5% Fire Rate
Grip_2_{Throw Stabilizer}+20% Accuracy
+5% Damage
Grip_3-30% Sway
+10% Mag Size
-10% Accuracy
-5% Damage
Grip_4+1 Projectile
+20% Splash Radius
+1 Shot Cost
-20% Damage
-10% Accuracy
+20% Accuracy Bloom
Grip_5_{Throw Stabilizer}-15% Vertical Recoil
+20% Accuracy

Element^0-1

Fire-20% Damage
Shock-20% Damage
Corrosive-20% Damage
Cryo-15% Damage
Radiation-25% Damage

Needle Gun - Changelog

Patch & Hotfix 06.24.2021:

+200% Weapon Damage

Hotfix 01.21.2021:

Tediore Nerf: -50% Reload-Explosion Damage

Needle GunHow to get it?

Revenge of the Cartels Event
General Farming Guidance

To collect and equip the Legendary Needle Gun, you need to own the BL3 Revenge of the Cartels Event.

Like all of the three Borderlands 3 events, Revenge of the Cartels was added to the base game on June 24, 2021.
You can enable one of the three events at a time in the main menu ▸ Play.

To efficiently farm the exclusive Revenge of the Cartel items, follow these steps:

Accept Maurice's quest near Hammerlock's room on Sanctuary III.
The quickest place to collect 30 Decoder Rings is at Carnivora's entrance.
Proceed to Villa Ultraviolet and defeat two mini-bosses. Those won't reappear in the final fight.
Joey Ultraviolet will spawn with two random mini-bosses.
To reroll them, exit to the main menu and reload the game.
To farm the desired mini-bosses, simply die or fast travel to respawn them.
As long as you don't kill Joey and stay in the game, the same mini-bosses will keep respawning.