Loveless is the Hacker class in Borderlands 4, bundled with Story Pack 2 and included in the Super Deluxe Edition and the Vault Hunter Pack DLC. She carries three action skills and three skill trees, and each one wants your points spent in a different order while you level.
Quick answer: By level 30 you will have 31 skill points, which is enough to reach a capstone in one tree. Pour everything into Manifestation for enrag.exe and the Wyrm, into Hack / Slash for accelerat.exe (sniper) or synchroniz.exe (clone generalist), or into Virology for Proliferate. Spreading points across two trees leaves you short of every capstone.
RAM: the resource all three Loveless builds run on
RAM is Loveless’ Vault Hunter Trait, and it sits underneath every build. Critical hits and status effects fill the RAM bar. While the bar has charge, Loveless gains bonus gun damage that scales with how full it is, topping out at 30 percent on a full bar. Filling it also empowers her next melee attack, which deals dramatically increased damage and consumes all stored RAM.
RAM drains if you stop generating it, so the practical rule while leveling is simple. Keep landing crits or keep applying elemental status, and never let a full bar sit unused when an empowered melee is available.
| Skill tree | Action Skill | What it builds around |
|---|---|---|
| Manifestation | Malignant Construct | Wyrm AI pet, Radiation damage, Symbiosis stacks (25 maximum) |
| Hack / Slash | Visual Paradox Nexus | Stealth, clones, critical hit damage, kusarigama melee |
| Virology | Plague Star | Corrosive Shuriken and Contagion stacks that jump between enemies |
Manifestation leveling build (Malignant Construct and the Wyrm)
Malignant Construct summons the Wyrm AI for a duration. It attacks nearby enemies with a Tail Whip for Radiation damage, its Function teleports the Wyrm to your reticle and drops a small Radiation Nova on arrival, and holding the button triggers a Radiation breath attack. Everything in this tree exists to keep the Wyrm out and to keep Symbiosis stacks climbing toward the cap of 25.
Early points go into Drift Compatible, Corrupted Path, and Fusion Friends-y before you touch anything deeper. Drift Compatible is the passive most people inspect first, and it is worth reading its tooltip in the Skills menu before you commit points.
| Stage | Points go into |
|---|---|
| Opening tiers | Drift Compatible, Corrupted Path, Fusion Friends-y |
| Mid tiers | Overclock, IDDQD, Finisher, IDKFA, Optimization |
| Support picks | Pure Fusion, Antivirus, Critically Acclaimed |
| Capstone | enrag.exe |
| Augments | Giga Bite, Solid State Destruction, Dark Web (Hard Crash and barrag.exe as alternates) |
IDDQD is the standout single-point pick. It gives Loveless and the Wyrm damage reduction, and its Symbiosis effect grants a chance to negate incoming damage outright based on your current stack count. When that negation triggers, you gain another Symbiosis stack, so the skill partly refills its own condition. One point in it already changes how survivable the tree feels.
In combat the loop is short. Send the Wyrm in, use the Function teleport to plant a Radiation Nova on a cluster, chip with Radiation weapons to keep RAM topping up, and spend empowered melee on whatever survives. Radiation SMGs carry most of the trash clearing during story missions.
Hack / Slash leveling build (sniper or clone generalist)
Visual Paradox Nexus raises Movement Speed and Critical Hit Damage for a duration. Kill something while it is active and Loveless drops into Stealth for a moment and spawns a Clone where the enemy died, with only one Clone allowed at a time. Pressing the button again swings the kusarigama, sending out a wave of Radiation Melee Damage; from Stealth that swing is a guaranteed critical hit and ends the Stealth. Shooting while cloaked does not break it.
The shared opening is the same no matter which finish you pick. Flurry, Jacked In, and Neutral Special come first, with Death Begets Death, Footwork, and Biathlon filling the gaps as points allow.
Sniper path
Take Methodical, Refactored Damage Formula, and Infinite Murder Hack, then finish on accelerat.exe. sudo kill is the damage multiplier that makes this version worth the setup, adding 150 percent Critical Hit Damage. Because Stealth survives gunfire, you can open from cloak, land a scoped crit, and let the kusarigama clean up.
Generalist clone path
Take Third Party and Merry Bandwidth, supported by The Sweet Science, Siliconventional Warfare, End Process, and Swarm, then cap with synchroniz.exe. This version does not care which weapon type you are holding, which suits leveling when your drops are inconsistent. Keep an eye on the reload prompt during clone fights, since a dry magazine wastes the crit damage window.
Virology leveling build (Plague Star and Contagion)
Plague Star throws a digistructed Shuriken that pierces enemies, deals Corrosive Action Skill Damage, and applies Contagion, a Corrosive damage-over-time effect. When an infected enemy dies, the Contagion jumps to up to three new hosts carrying half the stacks the dead enemy had. Holding the Action Skill button runs the Executable, detonating every active Contagion for Corrosive damage in an area.
Open with Established Gameplay Loop, Heat Sink, and Toxic Chat. Established Gameplay Loop gives Gun Damage and Reload Speed whenever you apply an Elemental Effect or Contagion, Heat Sink turns those same applications into Action Skill Cooldown Rate, and Toxic Chat raises Corrosive damage with a kill skill that adds bonus Corrosive damage to your guns. Central Procing Unit and Cat 5 follow, pushing status chance high enough that the loop rarely stalls.
| Stage | Points go into |
|---|---|
| Opening tiers | Established Gameplay Loop, Heat Sink, Toxic Chat |
| Second tiers | Central Procing Unit, Cat 5, Depletion Load |
| Mid tiers | Conservation of Malice, When it Rains, It Pours, Blackhat, Memory Leak |
| Extras as points allow | Circular Logic, Turbo Button, Malware, Conservation of Volatility, It’s Super Effective, Unsupported Peripheral |
| Finish | Host Compromise into the Proliferate capstone |
Proliferate doubles the Contagion stacks currently on enemies and grants an Overshield, which is why the right side of the tree is the mobbing finish. The alternative capstone, replicat.exe, replaces the Executable with three Shurikens that orbit Loveless, dealing Corrosive damage with a chance to inflict Contagion, and you throw them one at a time with the Action Skill button.
Shuriken augments change the throw itself. d://File swaps the Shuriken to Radiation damage, makes it ricochet off enemies, and leaves Radiation hazards behind. Lag Switch slows the Shuriken as it passes through bodies so it grinds out Corrosive damage with repeated Contagion chances. Recursion restores part of the Executable cooldown each time Contagion lands on a new enemy, and refunds Action Skill cooldown when the Executable gets a kill.
Tip: throw the Shuriken into a pack, then hold to detonate only once several enemies are stacked. Detonating early consumes Contagion before it has spread.
Leveling gear that supports these builds
None of the three builds needs a specific legendary to function at level 30, but a few pieces make the loops noticeably smoother. The Gaming Memory Hoarder class mod is the one to check for in your Equipment screen and keep equipped while you level.
| Piece | Type | Why it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Gaming Memory Hoarder | Class mod | The general-purpose leveling mod across all three trees |
| Barrage Emollient Fireworks | Shield | Reliable defensive slot while you learn each loop |
| Maliwan Radiation weapons | Guns | Constant status application, which feeds RAM and the Wyrm’s damage type |
| Atlas Infinum | Gun | Solid alternative when Maliwan drops are dry |
Other pieces worth holding onto if they drop at your level include the Aspected Synastry, Accelerated Benefix Juliet’s, Accelerated Quinqunx Vertex, Large Kill Spring, Mini Nova Desperate Heavyweight, Nova Chitinous Protein Cell, and Alchemical Quintain.
How to confirm the build is working
Each tree has a visible signal, so you do not have to guess. On Manifestation, watch the Symbiosis counter climb toward 25 and check that the RAM bar is filling from your crits. On Hack / Slash, a kill during Visual Paradox Nexus should immediately cloak you and leave a Clone standing where the enemy fell. On Virology, killing an infected enemy should visibly push Contagion onto up to three nearby targets.
If something is not triggering, the cause is usually one of a short list. RAM decays when you go too long without a crit or a status proc, so the gun damage bonus quietly falls off during slow fights. Contagion only spreads on death, not on damage, so it will look inert against a single boss. Only one Clone can exist at a time, and the kusarigama swing from Stealth always ends that Stealth, even when it crits.
At 31 points the trees do not overlap much, so the fastest way to feel the difference is to run one to its capstone, then respec and try the next. Manifestation gives you a pet doing work while you shoot, Hack / Slash rewards precision and repositioning, and Virology turns crowded rooms into a chain reaction.
