Anyone play Borderlands?

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
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Enjoying it; if anyone feels like trying a bit of co-op, or even just transferring item, post away. It doesn't look that friendly for playing different level chars, my char is 19 but I'm fine to start a new one.
 

PajamaParty

Junior Member
Mar 22, 2019
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The original, 2 or The Pre-sequel? Either way, none of them are made to be played with different level characters. Borderlands 3 should fix that once it comes out.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
The original. I got this 'class item' for another class I'd transfer to a new char that class - if not I'll just sell it.
 

PajamaParty

Junior Member
Mar 22, 2019
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2
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You'll be getting those throughout the game all the time so it's safe to sell them. On high levels (66-69) they are more powerful so you'd want to save them then if you want to transfer them to other characters.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
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Well, by level 20 I've only got one - if I got a char to level 66 I'm not sure I'd play them more, wouldn't I be about done?
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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Well, by level 20 I've only got one - if I got a char to level 66 I'm not sure I'd play them more, wouldn't I be about done?

you're only going to get a character to level 66 after the first two playthroughs and some of the DLC content (at least once). Depending on what you like about these games, you may not want to go through the re-play circus, which is kinda what you are "meant" to do, especially if one of your goals is to fully experience a proper character build, gear up with top tier stuff and all of that. It is a loot-heavy game that pretty much pushes you to explore various classes and their builds, and that requires many playthroughs. Of course, you don't have to do that and would probably still get tons of fun out of a single playthrough + DLC, if you like your primary class, anyway.

UVHM (the final difficulty/playthrough) may not be that fun for you anyway, because it's a significant boost in difficulty, but that is basically just about turning everything into bullet sponges, which require you to slag nearly everything you shoot at just to start doing damage. You don't need slag at all for the first two playthroughs.

IIRC, you should finish the first playthrough, main story at ~level 25 or 26? 2nd playthrough gets you to level 45, I think. Could be wrong. That is while doing most of the sidequests, too, as many of them are relevant in BL2, compared to in BL1 where they end up overleveling you way too early, so it's generally recommended to skip most of them on that first playthrough.

oh derp, I just noticed you mentioned the original. Not a whole lot of what I typed applies. at least...with BL1 the playthroughs can be pretty quick, especially if you are massively overleveled early on, which is very easy to do.

If you are finding storage to be a burden (Very easy in these games), you can download the Willow package stuff for BL1 (I forget what it is called), which allows you to modify everything, including giving you "unlimited" storage and even bag space.
 
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Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2007
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BL1 was a masterpiece that I only started playing after sinking 1700 hours into BL2.

BL2 was outstanding until they added UVHM. To me, the game normally stops at 2.5 since UVHM just isn't fun. Sure, there's a ton of great slag weapons, but it defeats the entire purpose of the first two playthroughs when you hit a massive brick wall if you don't have any skills or weapons based around slag. Not to mention, if you prefer sniper rifles, you're basically screwed since you can't pick enemies off anymore.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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yeah UVHM is just a serious design problem. There are ways to deal with it which, of course, depend on your class in the end (I prefer Siren anyway so I don't have problems with it, as slag is easy to trait into her Phaselock and you would be doing it with that skill set anyway), but it definitely requires preferences that you may not have.

...the other way to look at it is that in the high-end content, like digistruct, if you want to solo that stuff you really need to bring all your tools to bear, like transfusion grenades and such. Of course, this is a good way to think about slag in a tool that you need without having to think about it, and kinda necessary for any class, but as you said, it still limits certain playstyles....but I'm not sure if you want to be spending much time with a sniper rifles in digistruct anyway, heh.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
Great, now it's questioning whether I'd even want to play BL 2 at some point. What is digistruct?
 

Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2007
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Digistruct is end-game content for those who got tired of the raid bosses. It allows you to go over the old level cap of 72 with OP levels up to OP level 8. With the new DLC that was free last month (now it's $15), the new level cap is 80 and new OP level is 10. So you can essentially get to level 90, have level 90 equipment, and fight even harder enemies.

Be warned though, Digistruct is proper end-game content. Most people were annoyed with Digistruct Peak because their "jack of all" character couldn't go past OP2 or OP3 and barely made it through those. However, Gearbox did release a patch that drastically increased the drop rate of all legendary gear, so there isn't so much of a slog to get the end-game setups anymore. Before that patch, some enemies had less than a 1% chance to drop their respective legendary and some enemies were rare spawns with rare drops, so it made it even harder since you had to be lucky to even get the enemy to spawn in the first place.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
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Thanks for the info, that is really a turnoff to play BL 2. Though I expect I'll try it at lower levels.
 

Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2007
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Don't take that as a turn off. I dropped an easy 1,000 hours in Borderlands 2 prior to Digistruct being released and even though I've taken all but Sal to OP8, I normally go from Normal - TVHM - 2.5, which can easily take 40+ hours. It's a blast and coming back to it again, I have forgotten about a few hidden things and also surprised to see some new stuff has been added since I played last. Minor things such as Boom actually getting out of the cannon after you "kill" him was a nice surprise and one I wasn't expecting.

Also, I finally decided to bite the bullet and make a Gunzerker. After 2,300 hours, I'm going to finally play Salvadore. He's surprisingly fun to play, but then again, every character is fun to play in the beginning.
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
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So based on some recommendations here at AT as well as my son's I bought that Handsome Jack collection for $5. As mentioned in another thread, I originally ignored Borderlands because the art style just doesn't appeal to me.

I installed BL2 last night, but haven't started. Reading this thread, it sounds like it's easy to go down a bad build path that leads to dead ends. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it?

Regardless, what advice do you all have for a noob whose never played a BL game? I'm about to dive in.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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So based on some recommendations here at AT as well as my son's I bought that Handsome Jack collection for $5. As mentioned in another thread, I originally ignored Borderlands because the art style just doesn't appeal to me.

I installed BL2 last night, but haven't started. Reading this thread, it sounds like it's easy to go down a bad build path that leads to dead ends. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it?

Regardless, what advice do you all have for a noob whose never played a BL game? I'm about to dive in.

you can always respec your toons so there is not deadend when it comes to build paths.

If you're referring to what I mentioned earlier about over-leveling, that's simply an issue with game design where if you do way too many sidequests, you became overleveled too quickly and the game becomes a cake walk for most of it--especially with BL1.

BL1 probably feels a little dated (the AI is bad and the enemy pathing just looks very clunky), but in many ways it's still the best one....of course there are ways that BL2 is better: a better, useable variety of classes, imo, better story, even more content. Loot in BL1 is just better, though, and you get to play Lilith--the best the series has offered so far. :D

If I were you and you actually have time, plow through BL1 and the DLC as it goes pretty quickly. If you want to get the feel of the game or the story, don't worry about overleveling early. ...you can maybe skip the Zed zombie DLC because it's a bit weird, but the Clatrap and especially Knoxx DLC can't be missed. I'd say go with Lilith if you want fun and easy mode. Rule of thumb is that Sirens like SMGs and autopistols, Soldiers like assault rifles, and the hunter/assassin classes like sniper rifles and pistols. For my money, running around with an SMG Siren in the BL games is just the bees knees (TPS doesn't have a siren though, so bummer...).

The story is well-developed in BL2 and it helps to have a feel for the player classes from BL1 before going into that because they play a primary role. The thing about classes, early on, is that most are great at the beginning, and some lag quite a bit longer during the mid leveling phases. For BL2, Sal and Maya are probably the more linear leveling path when it comes to fun/progress. Krieg is great early on, but really takes a long time to get to late level where he's fun again.
 
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rivethead

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Thanks! That my goal for tonight: figure out which of the 4 characters appeal to me and how I will play the game.

Good to know about respecing and the linear leveling paths.
 

Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2007
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So based on some recommendations here at AT as well as my son's I bought that Handsome Jack collection for $5. As mentioned in another thread, I originally ignored Borderlands because the art style just doesn't appeal to me.

I installed BL2 last night, but haven't started. Reading this thread, it sounds like it's easy to go down a bad build path that leads to dead ends. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it?

Regardless, what advice do you all have for a noob whose never played a BL game? I'm about to dive in.
For Normal there really isn't such a thing as a bad build path. In Normal, everything is based around raw damage and can be played pretty much any way you like. In TVHM, you'll need to start focusing on a specific path (usually pick one skill tree and aim for the final skill) or a specific playstyle as some areas will start to get a little challenging.

As for advice, explore EVERYWHERE. Seriously, you're going to eventually find your way to areas you think nobody is ever supposed to be only to get an in-game achievement and find a few hidden treasure chests. Gearbox did an amazing job at hiding chests all around the world, so it's incredibly rewarding when you spend a few minutes trying to reach areas you think you're not supposed to reach.

Also, my personal favorite tip (and it's usually for experienced players but it's good to know) is that you can level up Goliaths for better experience and better loot. When you knock their helmet off, they start attacking everything around them and at certain intervals, they will start leveling up (after one kill, then two, then four, etc.). When they reach GOD-liath, kill them as they won't level up anymore. They drop a guaranteed purple, blue, and green item along with some other stuff and give you about 6,000 experience.

Lastly, visit this site - http://orcz.com/Borderlands_2:_Golden_Key#Latest_SHiFT_Codes and spend some time getting some free keys. Most of them should be expired, but there's quite a few that still work and can easily net you at least 100 golden keys to use if you're not getting the weapon drops you want. You also get free skins, heads, and equipment from these codes along with the golden keys, so it pays off. You can copy/paste them for quicker inputs.
 
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rivethead

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Holy sh*t. I didn't know anything about Shift Codes and keys. Thanks for that tip (and the others)!

I kinda got the impression that this was one of those "take your time and poke around a bit and you'll get rewarded" type of games....which is a big appeal to me. I love exploration.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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For Normal there really isn't such a thing as a bad build path. In Normal, everything is based around raw damage and can be played pretty much any way you like. In TVHM, you'll need to start focusing on a specific path (usually pick one skill tree and aim for the final skill) or a specific playstyle as some areas will start to get a little challenging.

As for advice, explore EVERYWHERE. Seriously, you're going to eventually find your way to areas you think nobody is ever supposed to be only to get an in-game achievement and find a few hidden treasure chests. Gearbox did an amazing job at hiding chests all around the world, so it's incredibly rewarding when you spend a few minutes trying to reach areas you think you're not supposed to reach.

Also, my personal favorite tip (and it's usually for experienced players but it's good to know) is that you can level up Goliaths for better experience and better loot. When you knock their helmet off, they start attacking everything around them and at certain intervals, they will start leveling up (after one kill, then two, then four, etc.). When they reach GOD-liath, kill them as they won't level up anymore. They drop a guaranteed purple, blue, and green item along with some other stuff and give you about 6,000 experience.

Lastly, visit this site - http://orcz.com/Borderlands_2:_Golden_Key#Latest_SHiFT_Codes and spend some time getting some free keys. Most of them should be expired, but there's quite a few that still work and can easily net you at least 100 golden keys to use if you're not getting the weapon drops you want. You also get free skins, heads, and equipment from these codes along with the golden keys, so it pays off. You can copy/paste them for quicker inputs.

Also, it's just fun to make goliath's level while observing the carnage. ...plenty of in-game hours wasted doing that, lol.

A lot of the real appeal of this game is the absolute fun that it provides. I honestly find myself grinning constantly when going through new BL content. The character narration as you go along murdering things, the enemy voices and comments, everything is just great. ...I'd say my favorite characters from a "personality" perspective would be either Sal or Lilith. They're just hilarious. Zero is pretty good, too. ...the murdery-er the character's personality, the more hilarious they get when you get into levels where you can start pumping out damage, especially with classes that do a lot of proc damage (Lilith and all her elemental savagery, for example).


One thing: I would especially suggest avoiding Gaige as a first character. She's difficult to get started with and her class is bonkers and backwards that is painful at the start, OK in the middle, but then when she's really good, it also means that, by default, you can't die in the middle of a map or you're screwed. Her accuracy/damage is completely tied to her kill count, and you have to keep that going. She starts out unable to hit anything, and the character is built on making her terrible accuracy...terribly accurate with ricochet and crazy damage. But it takes many stacks of her skill and rather regular killing. It makes a end-map bossfights very very difficult if you die and have to start on that boss fresh.
 

Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2007
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Holy sh*t. I didn't know anything about Shift Codes and keys. Thanks for that tip (and the others)!

I kinda got the impression that this was one of those "take your time and poke around a bit and you'll get rewarded" type of games....which is a big appeal to me. I love exploration.
Which DLC do you have for the game? You mentioned four characters, but if you have all the DLC (which I think the Handsome Collection provides), you should have six to choose from. If you haven't chosen already, a quick little overview of the characters:

Axton - Extra turret that can draw fire and slag everything. Skills complement Assault Rifles and explosives.
Maya - Can play crowd control very well and slags everything. Skills complement SMGs and elemental weapons.
Salvadore - Pure damage.
Zer0 - His skill lets him phase out of combat for a quick retreat but also can deal ridiculous amounts of single target damage. Skills complement snipers and melee.
Krieg - He does best in the middle of a fight. His skills focuses on melee and fire.
Gaige - Probably my least favorite next to Sal. Like Axton, her skill can draw fire but it's not as efficient as Axton's turret at dealing damage. Her skills revolve around SMGs and stacking damage but as @zinfamous pointed out, if you die mid-fight, you're basically screwed.

I personally love Zer0 for his single target damage and his skills revolving around snipers. Running through a base and killing everything in stealth is actually pretty fun, but he can get in bad situations while waiting for the skill cooldown. As I said above, you can play any of these characters however you want for Normal and TVHM and you'll do just fine and with the ability to respec your skills, it allows you to try different trees to see if you like one style over the other.
 
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rivethead

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Which DLC do you have for the game? You mentioned four characters, but if you have all the DLC (which I think the Handsome Collection provides), you should have six to choose from. If you haven't chosen already, a quick little overview of the characters:

Axton - Extra turret that can draw fire and slag everything. Skills complement Assault Rifles and explosives.
Maya - Can play crowd control very well and slags everything. Skills complement SMGs and elemental weapons.
Salvadore - Pure damage.
Zer0 - His skill lets him phase out of combat for a quick retreat but also can deal ridiculous amounts of single target damage. Skills complement snipers and melee.
Krieg - He does best in the middle of a fight. His skills focuses on melee and fire.
Gaige - Probably my least favorite next to Sal. Like Axton, her skill can draw fire but it's not as efficient as Axton's turret at dealing damage. Her skills revolve around SMGs and stacking damage but as @zinfamous pointed out, if you die mid-fight, you're basically screwed.

I personally love Zer0 for his single target damage and his skills revolving around snipers. Running through a base and killing everything in stealth is actually pretty fun, but he can get in bad situations while waiting for the skill cooldown. As I said above, you can play any of these characters however you want for Normal and TVHM and you'll do just fine and with the ability to respec your skills, it allows you to try different trees to see if you like one style over the other.

I have a ton of DLC that came with the Handsome Jack collection and yes six characters to choose from. I debated between Maya and Salvadore and ended up going with Sal. I only made it as far as beating Knuckle Dragger. I'm not set on Salvadore, so I may start over with Maya. My "problem" is that I didn't understand their bonus skills or skill trees and I think Maya's (now that I've looked at it) might appeal more.

I spent 30 minutes entering shift codes.....so I have 165 golden keys ready to go and bunch of other stuff I probably won't use.

I need to figure out three things:

1) how to stop/reduce this horrible screen tearing I'm experiencing. I turned on VSync but that didn't help enough, so I need to play with the video settings.
2) how to manage inventory. I got a pistol to start the game. I found another pistol. It had a higher monetary value. I dropped the first pistol. I tried to pick up the second pistol but the game is saying my inventory is "full". That logically makes no sense since I dropped an item.......
3) what the hell I'm picking up.....I went around opening cases, and picking up stuff, but I can't figure out what it is (other than money which is clearly indicated by $ signs).

I think I'm really going to enjoy this game for the comedic aspects. Claptrap had me cracking up within minutes of starting......

Out of curiosity, did you play with mouse/keyboard or controller? I'm playing with a wireless xbox controller and it seems to be working really well.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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I have a ton of DLC that came with the Handsome Jack collection and yes six characters to choose from. I debated between Maya and Salvadore and ended up going with Sal. I only made it as far as beating Knuckle Dragger. I'm not set on Salvadore, so I may start over with Maya. My "problem" is that I didn't understand their bonus skills or skill trees and I think Maya's (now that I've looked at it) might appeal more.

I spent 30 minutes entering shift codes.....so I have 165 golden keys ready to go and bunch of other stuff I probably won't use.

I need to figure out three things:

1) how to stop/reduce this horrible screen tearing I'm experiencing. I turned on VSync but that didn't help enough, so I need to play with the video settings.
2) how to manage inventory. I got a pistol to start the game. I found another pistol. It had a higher monetary value. I dropped the first pistol. I tried to pick up the second pistol but the game is saying my inventory is "full". That logically makes no sense since I dropped an item.......
3) what the hell I'm picking up.....I went around opening cases, and picking up stuff, but I can't figure out what it is (other than money which is clearly indicated by $ signs).

I think I'm really going to enjoy this game for the comedic aspects. Claptrap had me cracking up within minutes of starting......

Out of curiosity, did you play with mouse/keyboard or controller? I'm playing with a wireless xbox controller and it seems to be working really well.

It takes a couple of levels to figure out if you will like that character. I forget the threshold in BL2, but is it level 5 when you can unlock your action skill? Maybe earlier. Maya's is probably more useful very early on compared to Sal, but it does take a lot of skill points to bring it into its own, say between level 10-20. Sal, on the other hand, goes heavy damage pretty quickly. Honestly, I think I left my Sal about 5 levels under max at that time, because I had no idea what to do with any extra skill points. ...it got kinda trash at one point because there are some janky builds with some rather easy-to-obtain guns that make him nigh invulnerable near-late game.

Maya is really safe though if you get effective with crowd control and don't mind a bit of kiting early in the game. I think overall, Motion is generally the preferred skill tree for Maya, and Cat class or whatever mods: basically SMG friendly and mass bullet damage to all the things, combined with Phaselock traiting into ricochet. There's an easty-to-obtain guaranteed blue drop, just sitting on the ground, pretty early in the game (Firerock canyon or something, in the spider ant cave on the not-normal pathway on that map--it's near a big fire spiderant boss that is part of a great side mission--which also awards you a great early-game legendary shield). It's a ...falcon something SMG. I forget what it's called, but it's like the BL1 Anarchy SMGs, only not quite as good. This means that while it has piss-poor accuracy at medium distance--bullet spread is like a shotgun, it is devastating at face distance, and is super fun with an SMG-focused Maya. This gun also respawns on every reload, and levels up with you, so it's a cheap, lazy way to keep a rather good, dependable go-to SMG with you throughout Normal mode for sure, and even TVHM if you keep playing. Hell, I know I kept that thing for Digistruct runs as well ("ultra" late game), because I found it to be the most effective way to deal with the stupid flying shield regenerator things--pretty much the bane of all players late in the game.

There is a currency called iridium? that will eventually start dropping, that you use to spend with a special merch dude to improve bullet capacity in all gun types and inventory space. Try to keep your junk weapons until you can sell them. Just sell all of your junk that you don't need and, especially early on in the game, sell something as soon as you find something better. There is the BAR feature that rewards special bonus enhancements for all the little achievements in the game: collect x number of white, green, blue, purple weapons. kill x # whatever type enemy with x type gun, etc...

KB&M only, my friend.
 

Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2007
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2) how to manage inventory. I got a pistol to start the game. I found another pistol. It had a higher monetary value. I dropped the first pistol. I tried to pick up the second pistol but the game is saying my inventory is "full". That logically makes no sense since I dropped an item.......
At the start, I wouldn't bother picking up any white items unless it's a sniper rifle (and even then, you get a decent one from a side-quest shortly after starting). Chests in this game mostly hold ammo which all have different visual representations. You'll quickly learn which ones are which and I believe if you just hover your cursor over them, it tells you which ammo type they are. Also, as far as swapping out items, if your inventory is full and you're given a weapon from a quest, it will go over the inventory limit. There's also the aspect that if you hold E while looking at a weapon, it will automatically swap it out with your current weapon and if your inventory is full when you swap weapons, you cannot pick up the one you just dropped (unless you swap it again).

3) what the hell I'm picking up.....I went around opening cases, and picking up stuff, but I can't figure out what it is (other than money which is clearly indicated by $ signs).
Take the time to check out what you're grabbing. This game will throw literal thousands of weapons at you very quickly and it's just not feasible to pick up everything. You're going to leave a lot of stuff on the ground simply because it's not worth running back and fourth to sell. You'll end up with plenty of money so you shouldn't be worrying about grabbing everything for the sole purpose of selling.

Out of curiosity, did you play with mouse/keyboard or controller? I'm playing with a wireless xbox controller and it seems to be working really well.
Keyboard and mouse. I cannot stand playing FPS games with a controller.
 
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