[Deadstar_MRC]

Welcome to the Borderlands!

So, the second Borderlands game has been out for a little while now, and I'm just keen to know; Who's playing it? Who's enjoying it? Did you play the last one and, if so, how do you think this new version stacks up?

I played through most of the first borderlands (and the expansions!) and although I'm not a huge FPS fan, I enjoyed the game because it was amusing and often plainly ridiculous - too many games take themselves too seriously these days, and while that's fine (and sometimes exactly what I'm after), occasionally you just need to set a midget on fire...

So, what have you seen/done in Borderlands 2 thus far? Please try to avoid spoilers, if possible - I know story isn't a huge part of the game, but its there and is something I think people should discover for themselves!

I've started the game with Maya - I played as Lilith a lot in the first game, and although I was really having a hard time deciding between Maya and Zero, the siren won me over. I guess that shouldn't be surprising given that's kind of what their name implies

Borderlands 2 seems a bit harder then the first one, at least to me. Maybe it's just my low level, the fact I haven't got the greatest of equipment as yet, or that I'm still learning what's effective in what situation... I dunno. I guess I'll just have to see how that plays out.

I have enjoyed what I've done thus far, though. Some genuinely funny moments in this game thus far, even if I've only just reached Sanctuary, and catching up with some of the characters from the original game is kind of neat.

I wonder who else I'll run in to along the way

Also I wanna meet Jack's pony. Diamond Pony, sorry. Maybe once I topple him I can... Liberate it from his clutches. And ride it across Pandora.

I hope he looks after it for me.

 

[Ipshank]

Triple post

 

[Ipshank]

Triple post

 

[Ipshank]

I've never actually played the game (both of them).
Mainly because I don't really know whát it is. Is it an FPS? RPG? MMO? Is it hard to playor just another arcade shooter..
Might delve in more deeper as I'm interested in both games.. of course I need to sto procrastinating then...

 

[Certs]

Yet to play 2, but played all the way through the first one co-op'ing with my gf (she got really into it). We couldn't stand the online multiplayer though, there seemed to be a big problem of a lot of people using modded guns and shields and ruining our games.

Probably buying 2 sometime this week, my car is going into the garage for the weekend, and it should be something fun to play with my gf while waiting at home. She'll probably end up as the siren again and me as the soldier/turret-guy, she runs around recklessly and I bail her out when she gets in trouble.

 

[Deadstar_MRC]

I've never actually played the game (both of them).
Mainly because I don't really know whát it is. Is it an FPS? RPG? MMO? Is it hard to play or just another arcade shooter..
Might delve in more deeper as I'm interested in both games.. of course I need to stop procrastinating then...

It's a First Person Shooter, essentially. You get skill points to spend when you level up, though, and that's where the FPS + RPG analogies come in.
It's not cover based or anything, you just run around, find a whole lot of guns so you can take on the tougher foes which then give you better guns to take on greater foes and so on and so forth... A big focus on looting in this Borderlands (both 1 and 2); you're always looking for a better gun.

The first one I didn't find too difficult; Some hard patches, certainly, a lot of it will depend on whether you've got good enough gear which, as it's randomly generated a lot of the time, can be a bit hit and miss. But not exceedingly difficult, although it did come with expansion packs (via DLC) and the General Knoxx one is regarded as being a bit harder then the rest of the game. I certainly spent a lot of time dying in that one...

Probably buying 2 sometime this week, my car is going into the garage for the weekend, and it should be something fun to play with my gf while waiting at home. She'll probably end up as the siren again and me as the soldier/turret-guy, she runs around recklessly and I bail her out when she gets in trouble.

Sounds like I need someone like you to play with me! I could do with a bail out from time to time

Turret-guy (Axton, in BL2) sounds pretty awesome in this one. Apparently you can attach a mini-nuke to his turret for massive explosions whenever you deploy it. Sounds like the usual level of ludicrousness you come to expect with Borderlands!

 

[Ipshank]

I've bought Borderlands (1) couple of days ago. must say I thoroughly enjoy the sniper dude.
any fun stuff you guys can point me at in the game?

 

[Deadstar_MRC]

There's a stupid Easter Egg I know of that might be a bit of fun if you find yourself bored in the... Treacher's Landing area, I think?

Anyway, you go right to the South East of the map. I think there's a party boat (which incidentally gives you the 'I'm on a Boat!' achievement) there, and there are a bunch of barrels about the place - some hard to spot, you'll probably need a sniper rifle with a good scope.

Anyway, shoot the barrels if you can find them in this order:
1 - Yellow barrel to the right of the dock
2 - Green barrel in a distant trash pile east of the boat
3 - Any of the blue barrels on the boat
4 - The red barrel in the water to the left of the boat

I think it's best to do the last barrel from on the boat, because then you can look out over the water and... Enjoy the show. It's a bit weird, but... Well, Borderlands is a weird place.


Some other useful things, perhaps...

While in New Haven, if you're on the mission 'Another Piece Of The Puzzle' there's a blue hut you can get in to. You'll know it because it's blue, and because you can hear this elevator noise whenever you go past it. I don't know if you can get in to it before accepting 'Another Piece Of The Puzzle', but apparently you can't once said mission is complete.

Anyhow, once you're in and have taken the lift down, and fought off the bunch of Psycho Midgets and Badass Psychos that come at you (Nothing is free, is seems!) there's a whole bunch of lockers and a chest which contains a gun called The Rider. From memory it's a sniper rifle without a scope but with a 20 round magazine or something like that. If I remember rightly it's kind of a clue to what lies at the end of this particular mission, but I might be confusing that with something else...

Also, on the chest front, in the Rust Commons West area, there's a secret 'developer' chest, I think so called because at least during playthrough one it consistently gives you better then average weapons. Rare ones, Eridian stuff, Orange gear... I dunno, your mileage may vary, as they say, but it's there so you may as well give it a shot.

Take a Runner off the North West corner of the map and drop down the cliffs there. Supposedly you can drive back up them if you do it right; alternatively just jump of the cliffs and pay for a respawn or exit and re-enter the game - you get your loot and just come back at the nearest New-U station.

There might be some clearer directions or a few more useful Easter Eggs here: Easter eggs and secrets - Borderlands Wiki - Walkthroughs, Weapons, Classes, Character builds, Enemies, DLC and more!

Enjoy the game!

 

[Ipshank]

Great stuff, thanks!
I'm cruising along in at a leisure pace, only lvl 12 so far. haven't even left Fyrestone (IIRC) yet xD.
being Mordekai is fun and sometimes quite easy (no doubt by the mind bogglingly range from which I can engage targets) But against 'boss' units or levels higher then I am ( even if only a couple of levels) I stand no chance. probably doing something wrong.
favourite character(s) so far in the game are the Claptrap(s).

 

[Deadstar_MRC]

I recall hearing someone who also played as Mordecai in Bordelands 1 say that they spend most of their time in boss fights running away... Most aren't very sniper-friendly, from memory!

I never got very far with my Moredecai character - I sort of lived vicariously through my brother who was playing through using him, except I think he went more for the revolver and bloodwing improvement skilltrees. Sniping is so much fun when you can pull it off, though

 

[Certs]

Played Borderlands 2 for about 2 weeks I suppose. Finally beat it with gf the other day using the Commando and Siren at around 30, though got a 45 Siren of my own for when she's not around. Can't wait for the DLC content, and happy that so far theres been no sign of modded gear... hopefully it stays that way.

Love the commando's turret, and buffs to rifles (<3 explosive) and rocket launchers; they are just rockstars at dealing massive damage in a short period of time (especially if gf slags them for me), makes bosses and getting out of second chance a breeze. For the Siren, the phaselock and res ability are invaluable in group play and make badasses and those shield guys easy to deal with, plus elemental smgs and the buffs they get for them has always been a good combo.

I just can't get into either of the two other characters though. After a decent amount of enjoying sniping while trying to save on ammo with the Siren, I eventually tried an Assassin, but his snipe/melee action and cloak ability are just ...meh, solo'ing as a sniper feels like a pain without Bloodwing to mop up stragglers. He's alright when part of a group, though he has hard time pulling his weight when fighting tough-to-crit enemies/bosses (those that have small crit zones and move a lot). Yet to really look at the Gunzerker, so not sure what's a good way to deal damage with him yet.

 

[Deadstar_MRC]

I need to get faster! Everyone else is finishing the game, I have no idea how far I've got to go until the end.

Has anyone looked into the Mechromancer yet? I'm really looking forward to giving her a run but I told myself I'd at least get close to finishing a playthrough with my siren first before I start a second character.

Zer0 did look interesting and yeah, I've been sniping when I start running low on ammo (which I seem to be doing far too often for my liking!) but don't know if I'd build a character entirely around it. Not when said character also comes with a fancy glowing sword!

Gunzerking... I've never really checked, but unless Salvador somehow regenerates ammo while Gunzerking I don't think it's for me. I run out of ammo fast enough with one gun, let alone two!

And yes, the DLC does look interesting... All I really know is it's going to be pirate themed, I thought there might be some info about it on the borderlands 2 site but their news feed doesn't seem to be working... I'm sure there's stuff out there that's not too difficult to find.

 

[Certs]

Has anyone looked into the Mechromancer yet? I'm really looking forward to giving her a run but I told myself I'd at least get close to finishing a playthrough with my siren first before I start a second character.

Zer0 did look interesting and yeah, I've been sniping when I start running low on ammo (which I seem to be doing far too often for my liking!) but don't know if I'd build a character entirely around it. Not when said character also comes with a fancy glowing sword!

Gunzerking... I've never really checked, but unless Salvador somehow regenerates ammo while Gunzerking I don't think it's for me. I run out of ammo fast enough with one gun, let alone two!

Played a Mechromancer over the weekend... she's really good, feels like a small snowball rolling down a hill that just becomes an unstoppable avalanche once she picks up momentum, just don't die or manually reload (also, this makes her not the most ideal for short gaming sessions).

Pros: Appearance, having Anarchy rocks (recommend Jakobs pistols), badass Robot (spinning claws and extending life), and instant Shield regen.

Cons: When she has no Anarchy and her scream when on fire/electocuted/acid-splashed.

Also... her Anarchy seems bugged when joining multiplayer games as you can lose your Anarchy for no reason, I think it just misreads whenever the host manually reloads instead of if you reload. (ps3)

Lastly, the Gunzerker does regen ammo while in Gunzerk mode. Not sure if he's worth it even then as he doesn't seem to have any actual hard-hitting skill combos, just humorously named skills. Then again, I wasn't a fan of Brick in the first game either.

 

[Deadstar_MRC]

Well, I managed to beat the final story quest yesterday, although I do feel like I somewhat cheated my way there.

The Jack fight wasn't too hard - I got caught out once by an exploding loader that somehow crept up on me, but overall that battle didn't strike me as particularly difficult.

The Warrior, though... Man, I'm still not sure if I could legitimately fight that thing. After a few fairly unsuccessful attempts I ended up standing outside the arena with a corrosive sniper rifle, waiting until it stood in the right spot so I could make use of the critical hit areas. A fairly long, slow process, but I got there eventually.

I guess I did learn a little bit about its behaviour and vulnerabilities while sniping it to death, so they may help me out if I find myself back there

Got some side quests to finish up (I think they made that 'Completionist' achievement with people like me in mind!) and then I might get on with the DLC. Managed to play a bit of that and it's pretty hilarious, so I'm looking forward to more!

 

[Certs]

It was probably due to class spec, I was playing a Sentry Engineer Commando at the time and Jack's constant running around gave me a tougher time than the stationary Warrior, whom the beefed up sentry gun tore through in about a 4 pop-ups. Thinking on it, my Siren had a much tougher time against the Warrior as well, though Mechromancer breezed through both with 150+ Anarchy (+260% gun damage, -260% accuracy; but with target size or range, accuracy doesn't matter).

Vulnerabilities, breaking the chest open is great when not accurate enough to consistantly hit his face (especially if in the middle where he can tower over you with constant head swaying).

Been meaning to get around to the DLC too, got to the first town and supposedly met my new bff and it looks like it'll be a good hoot of a time. Meanwhile, gotten sucked back into playing Mass Effect 3 with some friends as well as minecraft: xbox edition... and the usual tabletop hobby work.

 

[Deadstar_MRC]

Yeah, all the heal-myself-with-phaselocking gimmicks are sort of useless in boss fights, unless there happen to be additional enemies around. I was thinking about re-allocating some points, trying out the elemental damage tree and just relying on the fact I can then hopefully kill things before they get me!

I've been looking in to Mechromancer builds but I'm torn between trying to buff Deathtrap or just going for ludicrous amounts of elemental damage. Anarchy seems weird; I like accuracy, I'll rarely consider using a gun in the game if it has less than 80% accuracy (shotguns and launchers excluded) but all of that kind of goes out the window with Gaige. I guess as long as you also put points in to Close Enough you'll still be hitting enough to be effective.

 

[Certs]

For both characters I ended up going roughly evenly distributed among all three skill trees.

For the Siren, Sweet Release is almost a must to stay topped off during regular fights, and I think most fights do tend to have regular mobs running around (The Vault of the Warrior has birds flying overhead on instant-respawn). Otherwise, elemental is fairly good.

For the Mechromancer, I love Anarchy, and I don't think the accuracy debuff gets too hard to manage until around 200-250ish in comparison to the payout from the damage buff, it's only really noticable if you're a sniper (though the buffed crits for them are insane when they do hit). The real gem of that tree though is the instant shield recharge skill, as the bot's kills also trigger it. Past that, the only other ability that's very handy to have is ...'Discord'(?), one that lets you correct the mistake of accidentally reloading without losing all your anarchy is a nice back-up though and, if nothing else, can help keep your Anarchy stacks in check by lowering them back down to a manageable level without wiping them completely.

Deathtrap is very handy, especially as a distraction/tank. He can usually hold his own in fights, but he'll need those special abilities to really shine at it. The fire lasers are pretty good in the beginning but become somewhat inconvenient towards the end with all the fire-resistant armored robots running around (and makes a comeback with the DLC).

The Elemental tree seems fairly good as, for the most part, there aren't too many things that are electrical resistant, it just seems to translate fairly well to both organic and armored targets.