How do manufacturer traits affect items besides weapons?

Solution 1:

Yes and no. They don't have a distinct, certain feature each item will have like guns will. The most important thing to note is brands do not have unlisted shield/mods/artifact effects, unlike guns. But you will notice certain manufacturer equipment still has certain "traits", however these effects are always explicitly listed on the item card (excluding "red text" effects for unique/legendary weapons).

Non-gun parts are less iconic of the brand, but certain things still hold true:

• Maliwan shields (nova/spike) and grenades will always be Fire, Slag, Shock or Corrosive. Never non-elemental, though I believe Transfusion grenades can rarely be explosive
• Torgue shields and grenades are similarly only explosive
• Jakobs shields and grenades are so non-elemental they don't exist

Additionally certain types of shield/grenade/artifact are only made by certain manufacturers. Technically these attributes are a result of the type of item (MIRV, Nova, Spike) but only certain manufacturers will ever make them. Here's some examples as I can't find a wiki page that explains all of them:

• Maliwan makes Nova and Spike shields (with elemental effects obviously)
• Jakobs does not make shields because shields won't stop a Jakob's gun anyway*
• Torgue makes MIRVS BECAUSE MIRV IS SPELLED WITH ALL CAPITAL LETTERS AND THEY CAUSE S^%&TONS OF EXPLOSIONS
• Bandits make Maylay "roid damage" shields because they are largely incompetent and on steroids
• Vladof produces Absorption shields which recycle enemies bullets which hit the wearer. This makes them the perfect accessory for their guns with their wasteful ammunition use.
• Pangolin makes Turtle shields. Their "brand" is harder to nail down as they don't make guns, they don't have much personality beyond "big shields"
• Anshin shields are Adaptive and always give resistance against the last element you were hit with. Just like Pangolin the Anshin company has much less characterization, but a key feature is that it generally boosts health to a certain degree (more commonly seen on Adaptives)

Artifacts and class mods have different brands, but the brand effect is irrelevant, the effect is purely based on the class mod or relic type. There's some minor connections like Maliwan mods focusing on elemental damage, and you'll note Siren mods are mostly Maliwan while Commando mods are mostly Dahl, as the personality of the character and brand sync up well.

_{*As of DLC3 Jakob's makes a unique shield, the Rough Rider, which gives 0 shield capacity.}