New player questions

Borderlands 2 Gameplay Discussion (Spoilers!)
#1

  1. I’m not entirely sure I understand the very restrictive save game system BL2 uses. From what I can tell, a character will load at the nearest fast travel location to where they saved and quit, for example back in Liar’s Berg if they exited partway up Capt. Flynt’s camp, thus having to redo Boom Bewm and quite a lot of trash mobs in that subsequent playing session. What happens if one saves at the beginning of a zone where the fast travel location (if any) hasn’t yet been discovered? For example, I’m working on Axton’s TVHM playthrough, so what would happen if I saved and quit as soon as he reached the Bloodshot Ramparts? Would he appear there at the beginning of the Ramparts when I loaded, or would he appear at the start of Bloodshot Stronghold, forcing me to redo it yet again? Similarly, when I start up a new character, can I safely save them at the start of Three Horns - Divide, or would that result in loading back in Liar’s Berg again on the next playing session? So far I’ve taken care to run new characters all the way from Liar’s Berg to Sanctuary just to be safe, but it would be nice to be able to take a break after Capt. Flynt if that’s practical. I’m very reluctant to experiment since if the game turns out to be more restrictive than expected I’d have to redo an entire zone… And at three playthroughs per character, this game already has more than enough repetition! :smile:

  2. Very specific question here - in the Bloody Harvest Headhunter DLC, how can one deal with the fast mass respawns around the church and mausoleums without dying? I was able to complete the DLC (Axton, TVHM, started at 39 and ended at 40) but came out $300k poorer due to all the deaths from being swarmed in those two areas. Pretty frustrating that by far the hardest part of the DLC was passing through those fast-respawn bottlenecks rather than fighting any of the bosses. Skeletons pop up from every direction but behind, and retreating too far leaves me facing the melee skeletons (including a badass) without turret support. Staying near the turret leads to quick death due to lack of cover. The only time I got through without dying at least once was the first time, when the skeletons pop up in small groups rather than all at once.

  3. Related question - are there good places to quickly and easily regain money? :smiley: I know money is not actually a useful currency in this game, but since I haven’t finished the For the Hoard challenge yet the large financial setback does sting quite a bit…

  4. Sniper elements - the good loot drop from Clark the Combusted Cryptkeeper was a purple quality slag sniper rifle. At what point (if ever) does slag become useful on snipers? The DLCs I’ve played (Tina and Bloody Harvest) seem to buff enemies enough that one-shot kills are impossible, but the main game still seems to have one-shottable trash mobs. So my thinking thus far has been to just use fire or acid snipers matched to the target. Are there any circumstances where a slag or shock sniper would be desirable instead?

Thanks in advance!

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#2

  1. If you save and quit in a new area next to a fast travel station, you’ll always restart at that very same area next to that same fast travel station. The game’s automatic save system is very much area based, so be aware of where you are when you quit. Keep in mind that story missions usually take longer to complete than side quests. If you start one, make sure you finish it before leaving the game. If you stop halfway through you’re gonna have to redo the first half. By the end of the mission (after turning it in), the game usually leaves you where you’re supposed to be in order to continue without having to redo everything. I still make sure that I’ve reached the next area before quitting, though. Just to guarantee it. It feels convoluted at first, but you’ll soon get a grip on it and it’ll become second nature. Pretty soon you won’t even think about it.

  2. Can’t help you on that one. Only played that DLC once, in normal mode. Will be doing it in UVHM soon.

  3. Mercenary Day headhunter pack is where I usually go to get money. Those gift boxes are very generous. Selling stuff you don’t need is another way to get money fast, specially if you spend a lot of time farming for specific legendaries. All the poor parts, underleveled versions of said legendaries are still worth a pretty penny. All in all, you really shouldn’t worry too much about money. Once you reach UVHM you can be broke one day and maxed out the next. Money really comes and goes very easily when you reach endgame. You’ll complete that challenge eventually.

  4. Slag is an element that weakens enemies so non-slag weapons will hurt them more. Generally, it’s not a strong damage dealer by itself. You’re better off matching elements than using a slag weapon to actually kill enemies, specially in TVHM. Shock is best used against shielded enemies. Also, very few enemies in the game can resist shock. So a shock sniper would be more useful than a slag one to actually kill enemies with. In UVHM, slag will become almost a necessity (specially at the beginning), but you should use slag skills, slag grenades or slag weapons with a high slagging chance just to paint the enemies purple and then kill them using matching elements or regular non-elemental weaponry. Think of it as a “tagging” tool. You could practice swapping weapons and slagging enemies now that you’re still in TVHM. It will make your life easier once you reach UVHM.

I hope this was helpful and clear. I’m sure other people here will add stuff that I’ve missed or correct any mistakes I’ve made. Good luck and welcome to the Borderlands! It’s a terrible place, but we call it home.

#3

When I need money, I like heading to Wurmwater to hit the Washburne Fen and The Dish. There are, what, five red chests in that little area without much fighting needed to get them, and sometimes the ammo chests in this DLC squirt out money as well. I also pick up almost everything that drops, and keep an eye out for Torgue-barreled assault rifles, since their prices are often unusually high. If I happen to be loaded with Eridium, I go hang with Buttstallion for a while - maybe I get lucky, but I always get rich.

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#4

One of the best, if not the best, guns for slagging is the Pimpernel. Very high chance to slag combined with it’s bullet spread makes it almost guaranteed to slag.

#5

Interesting, I did not know that. So far I’ve just used shock (smg mostly) as a specialty weapon to carry in zones with stalkers, just to quickly prevent them from cloaking. From what you said though it sounds like if I don’t have a good element matching gun, I should use shock rather than using a no-element gun.

Hmm, and I bet my Lightning Bolt grenade is more useful than I give it credit for (I’ve kept it mostly for the grenade regen ability).

I have been trying to practice slagging in TVHM. Axton’s Double Up slag turret certainly helps! So far slagging with weapons hasn’t worked that well, typically by the time I got the slag on and switched, the turret had turned to that enemy and blew it up before I could fire. Slag grenades seem to work better, from the few times I got to use my new longbow slag transfusion grenade mod.

Sounds like I should try to squeeze in a visit to the Pirate DLC if I can. It’s tricky to not over-level the main story though.

#6

1: You always restart where you entered the level, or at the last fast travel station you saved to.
In your bloodshot example, you would restart right on the door.

A new character would start at Liar’s berg, then on claptrap’s ship (since you changed map), then on the 3 horns divide fast travel (if you’ve visited it), then Sanctuary.

Basically every time you see a loading screen, that’s where you’ll restart unless you then visit a fast travel station.

Little trick related to that: Once you save Roland from the Warden, you can loot the car trunk chest, save and quit then restart. You’ll reappear at the one-way fast travel right beside that area…where you can loot the chest…again. If you do it at another moment in the story, it still works, but there will be enemies.

2: no clue. I don’t remember that part as being particularly hard, sorry.

3: Sell the crap you find. Most AR with a Torgue barrel (so Jakobs Cannons, Dahl grenadiers etc.) will sell for 10x what other guns are worth. Relics, COMs, Snipers, Launchers and Jakobs guns seem to be worth more on average.

4: Depends on how you play, But shock and slag snipers can be useful in certain circumstances. If you try to one-shot something shielded with a Fire or corrosive sniper, you will fail. For that first shot, either slag or shock would be better. Snipers also have very high slag chance, so often one shot is enough.
Overall, it’s about the same as other guns. When is a slag shotgun useful ? well…when you use shotguns and need to slag something.
Detail about that: Zero will lose all CA stacks if you switch to a non-sniper gun, so having a sniper as your slag tool is very useful for him.

#7

That depends on the gun, actually. Most non-unique shock weapons are rather weak in the damage department (unless you wear relics that boost elemental damage or your character has skills that improve shock damage). To answer your question in a different way, if you don’t have a better non-elemental or explosive weapon at hand, you’re better off using a shock gun than one that doesn’t match the enemy elemental weakness (like using corrosive against flesh and fire against armor). Shock weapons can be used against all types of enemies, but the shock element primary function is just to strip shields more quickly so enemies will be more exposed to damage of all kinds. Personally, I very rarely use shock weapons, but they are indeed very useful against stalkers and strong shielded enemies. Playing as Axton, I usually favor either explosive or non-elemental guns, switching to corrosive in robot heavy areas and fire against big flesh targets, but I keep a shock weapon of some kind in my backpack just in case. Still, most of my shock output comes from my grenade slot.

It’s a decent grenade. The Chain Lightning, its legendary upgrade, is better. As far as shock grenades go, I prefer the Storm Front and the Quasar. The Quasar is actually my favorite grenade mod in the game along with the Fastball. The singularity effect is great for crowd control and the shock damage will get rid of shields very quickly.

I also don’t like doing it. If you’re playing as Axton and specced into Double Up and Gemini, the slag turrets should take care of all your slagging needs just fine, even in UVHM. Slag grenades are a good backup. You really don’t need to swap weapons for slagging when playing Axton if you don’t enjoy doing it. The thing is, some of the characters don’t have slagging mechanisms built into their skill trees (like Zer0), so they’re stuck with just grenades and the swapping technique.

Yup. The Pimpernel is one of the absolute best weapons in the game. It really is the best slagging tool you can have. It performs amazingly well in every element and even the slag version still packs a punch in the damage department. However, be aware that it has a learning curve. If you learn how to aim it properly, the damage potential is unparalleled. Other terrific unique guns for slagging that spring to mind are the Slagga (it’s right there in the name) and the Slow Hand.

#8

Actually no, unless the weapon in question is a shotgun.

I’ve run the maths on that and the NE gun will be superior to the shock one as NE guns have more base damage (20% more). Shotguns seem to not get that though, so in the case of shotguns, shock is strictly better than NE.
Shock guns are great in areas with a lot of shielded targets where there is a mix of flesh and armored (like Hero’s pass for example)

#9

Thanks for clarifying! And that’s a good trick. My bags are always full by that point, but it’s worth a few re-loots just to check for more valuable (or maybe even useful) items than low value white pistols etc. Sadly my Axton just did Dam Fine Rescue again last night, but I’ll remember that for Character #3 NVHM, Maya TVHM, or Axton UVHM, whichever comes first. :smile:

That’s what I’ve been doing, bag space permitting; just takes a while. Ah well, I should have recovered from those Bloody Harvest deaths in a few more days. Maybe sooner, with Tina’s train robbery side quest and the run through the Fridge (and all those crystalisks) in the near future.

Another question - how can one tell what the recoil on a gun is? That seems to be a hidden statistic. I got a seemingly nice Bandit fire SMG last night, but when I tried it, it was spraying wider than the Lascaux I had been using and obviously didn’t have the double bullets of the latter. Surprisingly ineffective, despite the high listed accuracy on the card. Is high recoil a Bandit brand trait, analogous to the wacky Hyperion negative recoil gimmick?

That’s the plan, though Gemini is scheduled for level 68. Currently 26-5-5, heading towards Longbow to make the turret more durable. A Super Badass Psycho in a confined space made a rather emphatic point about turret durability recently… :stuck_out_tongue:

#10

It is hidden as it’s more a behavior thing than something you can put a number next to.

Accuracy is that stat to look for when you have something that shoots with a very wide spread. Recoil is more about how fast you get from small to big reticle and how much the gun jumps around when you aim down the sight. Bandit guns have low accuracy (on average), but they don’t have especially bad recoil. If you hold the trigger for a while, you will see the reticle go wider and wider… but not that fast. You can always ADS to correct it.

The Lascaux is a strange example: it has NO recoil whatsoever, but it has a fixed pattern (in the shape of a horse like you can find in the Lascaux caves) Try and shoot it at a wall and you’ll notice 2 things: the reticle doesn’t move at all and if you keep shooting without moving you’ll have made a painting yourself.

Examples of high recoil guns are Jakobs: Shoot a Jakobs pistol just twice and the 3rd shot will go just about anywhere on the screen, and they jump around a lot.

#11

True. I think I had a poor test case for that gun - close range, fast moving enemies, so ADS wasn’t feasible, but it wasn’t so close that it would work without ADS. It’s served me well for a couple levels now, as has another bandit smg that dropped with acid damage.

New problem though: what’s the deal with that Gluttonous Thresher in TVHM? I’m level 42, everything else in the area is 42, so it’s not like I’m underleveled. And neither Axton nor Maya had any trouble with it in NVHM. I’m using a blue level 40 shock Resolute Renegade assault rifle and the aforementioned blue level 39 Fire Fire Acurate SMGG. The AR strips the shield very quickly, the turret does decent damage and some slag before the thresher demolishes it (still 5 levels from Longbow, so I can’t fix durability without losing slag). The AR seems to do essentially nothing to the actual hit points of the GT, so I switch to the SMG which does slowly dent the red hp bar. Unfortunately the thresher can two-shot me and there’s no cover against the tentacle attack. My level 40 green Waka Deee! rocket launcher can’t one-shot a gun loader, has only two shots, and isn’t accurate enough to reliably hit with both, so second winds aren’t happening. Could put the Crudy Barfy acid smg in the last weapon slot, but I don’t think it would help since I always die from thresher attacks, either in cover relative to the loaders or running for the door back to the docks quite far from any enemy.

According to the wiki, [quote]The three-way struggle can be controlled somewhat by using the Hyperion
units as a distraction, while the thresher is targeted frequently in
order to prevent it from regenerating its shield.[/quote]

both of which I believe to be false statements. I have never seen the Hyperion units fire on the thresher in any of the three fights, nor does the thresher attack the loaders. At each respawn, I see four loaders aimlessly marching around the field - the thresher doesn’t pop up until I approach again after picking off the loaders from long range. Is there some trick that will provoke one or both into attacking the other instead of me? That would really help!

The bit about the shield appears to be unambiguously false. The thresher shield goes from zero to full while I’m hitting it with my fire smg nonstop, or even when I’m hitting it with the shock AR! That’s not what my own shield does when I’m the one taking damage… :stuck_out_tongue: Does it only initialize the delay when it hits zero, and will return to full no matter what a few seconds later? Actually being able to keep that shield down for any length of time would also be a great help towards killing this thing, obviously.

I did try the wiki’s suggestion of trying to pull the thresher to the door back to the docks, but I died well before I got there. The next life was able to get it to that door and eventually cheese it to death spending most of my time recovering behind cover it no longer has the ability to tentacle through.

Trying to do the fight legitimately, I pretty consistently got the GT to about 55% health, shield back to full, turret destroyed, me dead.

If the problem is that my gear is all level 39-40 (sniper is 41, but that’s not a useful weapon type against a thresher), how are TVHM characters supposed to get multiple types of upgraded guns, shield, and grenades? I’m used to using what drops, which is what I have now.

Is this just one of those fights where you have to cheese it to get through solo? Analogous to Capt. Flynt even in NVHM, basically? (At least I don’t see how one could beat Flynt solo at level 7 while staying inside the arena - all my characters have had to run off the edge and fight him from beside the vending machine. Sorry, bit of a tangent, just trying to clarify what I mean by “cheesing” a boss fight. :smiley:).

I shudder to think of how Zero and Krieg will fare here when/if I get them to TVHM (Zero is a level 9 mule in Santuary, Krieg is level 6 in Liar’s Berg - not sure which will be my third character to actually play through the story).

#12

My short advice when dealing with Gluttonous Thresher: Get Tesla grenade.
You can get Tesla easily from the Marcus vending machine in The Fridge, Fink arena and The Highland Outwash. Doesn’t matter what rarity, even white can serve you well.

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#13

Teslas work great to keep the shield down. His shield is pretty strong, and charges very fast. Here’s how I used to do it, and how I do it these days. Both work really well.

Old method:
There’s a building to the back of the area. It has like a loading platform on it’s left side, and there are some pallets or containers on it. As soon as the GT appears, you run up on this platform and draw him there. Then you jump down behind the building, and use it for cover. The GT will stay on the platform, and you can duck and shoot. Use Teslas for the shield!

Current method:
As soon as the GT appears, I take his health down all the way. You can’t kill him at this point, but after that it’s basically a matter of throwing a Tesla, and then finish him off. Works really well even in UVHM if you have a good gun.

#14

Thanks, both of you. Haven’t seen a tesla drop in a while now - ironically shock weapon drops have been very scarce for me since that discussion of shock guns in this thread last week. I will absolutely check the vending machines for a tesla when Maya comes through here in TVHM though!

To clarify, the big building in back there is enough to negate the GT’s tentacle attacks? And I would think that if anything would get the thresher and loaders to fight it would be running back there.

Method 2 is exactly how my Maya did it in NVHM. With Cloud Kill as good as it is now I guess she can’t help but get quick kills like that! My Axton in TVHM didn’t have the dps to use that method though - might have gotten around 20% of its health at best in that initial phase.

#15

I really would like a new set of guns in the game. All the guns in BL1, BL2, and TPS are all the same except for a few unique ones.

And yes, get rid of the useless weapons. Who the hell uses the Flakker anyways? Get rid of that junk and add a variety of different weapons to add a fresh feel to the game.

And oh, for gods sake can Gearbox make it to where you get the third weapon slot a little earlier in the game this time around? Being limited to only two weapons sucks.

#16

[quote=“Metal_Mayhem, post:15, topic:1155482”]I really would like a new set of guns in the game. All the guns in BL1, BL2, and TPS are all the same except for a few unique ones.

And yes, get rid of the useless weapons. Who the hell uses the Flakker anyways? Get rid of that junk and add a variety of different weapons to add a fresh feel to the game.
[/quote]This seems a little out of context for this thread, but of all the weapons in the game one might list as useless, the Flakker (especially in light of the recent posts about defeating the Gluttonous Thresher, where the Flakker can really shine)?

#17

The building will give you complete cover, but you’ll have to stick your head out to shoot him, and then he can hurt you. Pop out, drop a Tesla, pop in and out again and empty your mag when the shield is down. Rinse and repeat!

The bots will not go up there normally, unless you are there too, so the GT will focus on you. You may also want to pause for a moment before you go behind the building, just to make sure GT follows you up there.

#18

Wow, I thought I was replying to this thread that was mentioning suggestions for future borderlands games. How did this reply end up here? :neutral_face: My apologies

#19

Perfect, thanks!

Another question: what would be a viable FFYL weapon in TVHM? Rocket launchers apparently don’t do the job anymore, which is a bad combination with damage being so high. Any time enemies spawn by surprise (got the camp clear ECHO from Lilith in Mine, All Mine, move in, three more goliaths spawn right in front of me; or I loot a box while the turret is on cooldown and it happens to have a loot midget; etc.) I drop, nothing I can do about it. Despite the seemingly high damage of 43k (the smgs are about 1000) the RL just doesn’t do much to anything, quite unlike what I saw in NVHM when it became my standard FFYL weapon type.

I’ve read that people actually like finding loot midgets - at what point do they start dropping anything other than ammo? I hate those guys so much! :angry: So tedious having to wait for the turret to come off CD just to start looting boxes (or forgetting after playing Maya for a while and getting killed as a reminder).

#20

[quote=“Worblehat, post:19, topic:1155482”]what would be a viable FFYL weapon in TVHM? Rocket launchers apparently don’t do the job anymore[/quote]I still think Rocket Launchers are your best bet. If the only thing left is a Constructor (for example), you’re probably a goner anyway. If I could pick only one rocket launcher to get out of FFYL, I’d get the Tunguska. It can hit behind cover fairly easily. You do have to watch it in close quarters; if the first explosion brings you out of FFYL, the second will immediately knock you back down.

[quote=“Worblehat, post:19, topic:1155482”]I’ve read that people actually like finding loot midgets - at what point do they start dropping anything other than ammo?[/quote]I love finding them… it adds a little spice to the normal ransacking of a level knowing that I can be caught off guard by an angry midget in my face (who then has a chance to drop something nice). In UVHM, it’s, what, maybe one out of four or five times that they don’t drop anything Orange or better? Maybe less? I do play for the combat more than anything else though, so may be looking at the game through a different lens.