Loveless, the Hacker is the second post-launch Vault Hunter for Borderlands 4, and she is built around two elements the roster has barely touched: corrosive spread and radiation bursts. She is an ex-Anshin hacker turned assassin who shares her head with a digital virus she wrote herself, and that virus can digistruct into a physical body that fights alongside her.
Quick answer: Loveless fills her RAM bar with critical hits and status effects, then spends the full bar on one empowered melee strike. Her three action skills are Plague Star (a corrosive shuriken that spreads Contagion), Visual Paradox Nexus (stealth, a clone, and a Kusarigama slash), and Malignant Construct (a radiation-dealing Wyrm AI pet). She arrives September 10, 2026 with Story Pack 2.
Loveless action skills at a quick reference
Like every Borderlands 4 character, she has three action skills, one sitting at the top of each skill tree, and only one can be equipped at a time. You can swap between them whenever you want.
| Action skill (tree) | Element | Core effect |
|---|---|---|
| Plague Star (Virology) | Corrosive | Piercing shuriken that applies Contagion and jumps to new hosts on death |
| Visual Paradox Nexus (Hack / Slash) | Radiation | Move speed and crit damage buff, stealth and a clone on kills, plus a slash attack |
| Malignant Construct (Manifestation) | Radiation | Summons the Wyrm AI pet with a teleport nova and a breath attack |
Her backstory short shows the transformation that ties the virus to her mind, which is why she keeps referring to herself as “we” in cutscenes.
RAM trait: how the meter charges and what it pays for
RAM is her Vault Hunter Trait, and it works with every action skill she equips. Critical hits or status effects fill the RAM bar. Once it is full, her next melee attack becomes Empowered, dealing dramatically increased damage and consuming all the stored RAM.
The bar does something even while you are saving it. Her gun damage scales up based on how full RAM currently is, so a topped-off meter is a passive damage buff on top of the melee payoff. If you stop generating RAM for a while, the meter drains, which pushes her toward constant crits or constant status application rather than slow, careful play.
Plague Star: corrosive shuriken and Contagion spread
Plague Star sits on the Virology tree. Loveless digistructs a large shuriken into her hand and throws it, piercing through enemies and dealing corrosive Action Skill Damage on the way. Anything it hits picks up Contagion, a corrosive status effect that ticks damage over a set duration.
The spread is the interesting part. When an enemy dies while carrying Contagion, the virus looks for new hosts nearby and passes on a portion of the stacks the dead enemy had. In a packed room, one good throw can keep rolling through the crowd on its own.
It also has an Executable. Press and hold the action skill button to detonate every active Contagion at once, consuming the stacks and dealing corrosive Action Skill Damage in an area. That gives you a choice between letting the damage over time run its course or cashing it in immediately.
Visual Paradox Nexus: stealth, clones, and the Kusarigama slash
This is the assassin skill, and it lives on the Hack / Slash tree. Activating it gives Loveless increased movement speed and critical hit damage for a duration. Kill something while it is running and she slips into stealth for a short window, dropping a clone at the spot where the enemy died. Only one clone can exist at a time.
Pressing the action skill button again sends out a slash with a Kusarigama, creating a wave of radiation melee damage. If she is in stealth when you use it, that attack automatically critically hits and pulls her back out of stealth, which pairs neatly with RAM since crits refill the bar. Her tree also opens up ways to enter stealth without needing a kill first.
Note: action skills in Borderlands 4 always deal Action Skill Damage, even when the description says melee damage, so build your gear and skill points accordingly.
Malignant Construct: the Wyrm AI pet
The Manifestation tree is where the virus gets a body. Malignant Construct summons her Wyrm AI for a duration, and it attacks nearby enemies on its own with a Tail Whip that deals radiation damage.
You get two ways to steer it. A second press of the action skill button teleports the Wyrm to the location you are aiming at, and it creates a small radiation nova on arrival for area damage. Pressing and holding the button instead triggers an Executable breath attack that also deals area radiation damage.
That makes this the micromanagement option of the three. The pet handles chip damage by itself, but repositioning it and firing off the breath at the right moment is where the extra output comes from.
How her skill trees are structured
Loveless follows the same skill tree layout as the rest of the roster. Each of her three trees has a wide trunk of core skills at the top and three narrower branches underneath. Tier 1 is open from the start, and every 5 points you spend unlocks the next tier. Tiers 4, 5, and 6 are split across the branches, and each branch needs its own investment, so points in one branch do not unlock the others.
Each tree carries five augments and three capstones. Augments do not cost skill points and you can only run one at a time, same as capstones. Action skills, augments, and capstones can all be swapped on the fly, but a full skill tree reset has to be done at one of the HUBs on Kairos.
Loveless release date and how to unlock her
Loveless launches on September 10, 2026 alongside Story Pack 2: FL4K and the Last Resort and Bounty Pack 5: Amara and the Vile Shadows, on PC via Borderlands.com and Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
She is included in the Borderlands 4 Super Deluxe Edition and the Vault Hunter Pack DLC. If you own neither, Loveless and her cosmetics can be bought on their own, separate from Story Pack 2’s missions, map zone, and story content. You will know the unlock worked when she appears as a selectable character at the main menu’s character creation screen.
Between the corrosive spread on one tree, the crit-hungry stealth kit on another, and a radiation pet on the third, Loveless covers three very different playstyles without changing characters. The through line is RAM, since crits and status effects both feed it, and every tree gives you a reliable way to generate one or the other.
