Borderlands 3 guide: How to unlock class mods

Class mods are a great piece of kit to boost a character’s talents without spending skill points.

As you work your way through Borderlands 3, you’ve likely come across a handful of class mods. These equippable items give each of the four vault hunters an added boost to their skills. By using one of these mods, you’ll be able to increase the level of any of the skills in your character’s three skill trees. Just like weapons, class mods have rarities, and the rarer they are, the better the perks.

Class mods are character specific, so make sure to keep the ones that are related to your character and get rid of the rest. You can tell which class mod belongs to which character based on whose icon appears when highlighted. Each class mod will also upgrade one or more skills per talent tree, which you can differentiate based on the color of each upgraded skill.

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For instance, the class mod above will upgrade the Hive Mind skill one level in FL4K’s Master skill tree while also giving one level toward the Eager to Impress skill in their Stalker set of talents.

However, if you’re just starting the game, you can pick up class mods, but you can’t actually equip them yet. So how do you unlock class mods? Thankfully, you won’t have to progress too far into the game to use them.

How to unlock class mods

You won’t be able to unlock class mods until after you leave Pandora and head to the game’s second planet, Promethea. Once there, you’ll receive the Hostile Takeover story mission.

Once you beat that mission’s boss, Gigamind, you’ll receive your first class mod. At this point, you can equip any other class mods you find through the game. If you end up finding class mods that aren’t for your character, you can always sell them for a profit, which you can use for other important upgrades, like increasing your inventory space.