Borderlands thread

Claptrap is the real hero of Borderlands. I know people find him really annoying, and he is, but I love him and his little stealth singing at the start of BL3. Always gets a high five from me

Jack's down. Such a bastard. Completed every quest apart from DLC, the last round of the robot arena (died, lost 400 anarchy) and the level 50 boss fight which I doubt I've got any hope of doing on my own. Game is brilliant though, definitely going to carry on with Gaige and try some of the other characters. The problem with Borderlands is that there's too many classes I want to play- they're not just the standard RPG archetypes. I have to force myself to stick to one and not just keep starting new ones. It'd take forever to try them all though!

So I'm nearly level 40 now, would it be better to just move on to Vault Hunter mode and do the DLC then as it'll be available from the start anyway? At the moment I'm breezing through the pirate one, which is fine, but the loot is all level 30. I know quests level with you in NG but is that just when you activate them or do the enemies and bosses keep leveling with you after that when you repeat them (in the same game)?

Also, any opinion on which to play next, Borderlands 1 or Pre-Sequel? There's quite a few references to the first game towards the end of BL2 (I think one of the final areas is the starting location in the first game?) so I'm curious about all that but expect it to have aged more than the others. I love how the game brings previous player characters back in the story though - it really adds a feeling of continuity to it. It dawned on me during my playthrough that Roland, Lillith, Mordecai and Brick were who you play as in the first game, now I want to!

BL1 definitely has aged more. To me, one of the greatest things BL2 introduced was the whole weapon manufacturer thing where they make completely different styles of weapons. In BL1 they're just the same guns with different stats, and they're mostly pretty generic guns in stark contrast to BL2 where they went wild. Another big difference is environment variety, BL1 is dominated by ever the same desert wastelands and rubbish dumps. It feels pretty barren, which is what it's supposed to be I guess but that's how it is.

The game marks kind of a transitional phase between what they aimed for in early development (a more serious Mad Max-inspired looter shooter without the cartoon graphics and all) and BL2 where the franchise really found its identity. BL1 is kind of halfway there. It's still a fun game, mind, and worth playing imo, just don't expect it to be on a level with the later games. And of course many of the characters are introduced here, most importantly Tannis in my opinion.

Pre-Sequel is a bit of a love/hate thing, many thinking that writing, humour, pacing and such were a major step down from BL2, others don't mind it, and I've seen many enthusiast players claiming that gameplay-wise it's actually better than BL2. Notably it got rid of that slag nonsense and replaced it with the far better cryo, so no argument from me on that front.

So, BL1 or TPS next? For lore BL1, for gameplay TPS in my opinion. But if you're going to play both anyway, I'd probably go with BL1 first.

I loved Claptrap right from the start, as a lot of players did. Same for Tina, who was fantastic especially in the original Dragon Keep DLC.

The problem in BL3 imo is that they missed that the characters were great because they had lots of wild and funny dialogue, the writers of BL3 thought Claptrap was funny simply because he's annoying and Tina was funny because she says "shizzle". Or rather, they feel like the devs picked a few random people off the street, showed them BL2 footage and asked them to write BL3.

I don't see the drop in quality in the writing at all. Maybe it's because I played 3 first so I'm biased but I love all the characters and was laughing all the way through. I did find a few of them a bit grating at first (like Vaughn) but they all grew on me in the end

Speaking of BL3, playing BL2 with the HD texture pack, I was thinking this looks basically as good as BL3, then I jumped back in to play around with Zane and Fl4k for a bit and the improvent visually and especially in game feel is incredible. I also go a tonne of legendary items in a couple of hours, including another Hellwalker (my third) and a rocket launcher that fires a rocket that spawns more rockets spiralling around it that break off and home in on enemies (don't know what it's called but it's cool), while I only got 2 in my entire playthrough of BL2 and they don't seem that special. BL3 is crazy with the legendaries

True, Lorelei is pretty good, and yeah they're new in BL3. Good voice acting. But maybe it's just because they speak proper English

Technically I should like TPS because nationalism, but it just never felt as fun as it should have been.

How do weapon proficiences work in BL1? I'm playing as Roland, so does shotgun and rifle proficiency increase more rapidly for him?

So far the most shocking thing about it is you have to read the quests. Visually looks good though, it's such a great art style. The last quest I did was level 10, which I am, and the next one is 12, which is a bugger. Looks like there's going to be some grinding

Finished the main campaign, the ending of which was a little underwhelming, apart from the gnarly eldritch tentacle monster. No going in the vault though or even finding out anything about it, and you don't get to fight Steele who was the game's antagonist. Kind of a weird way to end it. Thought it was great though overall. I guess Tannis was sort of normal before she came to Pandora

The Knoxx DLC was good but the lack of fast travel points hurt it a bit. So much back and forthing across those massive highways definitely dragged the playtime out. And they wait until you're half way across one to tell you there's new missions available back at T-bone or hold them back until later so you have to go allllll the way back again again. The prison/Shank/paedo Claptrap was a bit weird...

The Underdome DLC is cool as - love The Running Man lines. Only done one arena so far as I moved onto the Claptrap one for the story (just started)

There seems to be an exploitable bug (?) where if you fast travel from a DLC area to The Vault after quitting out of the game, it respawns all the chests so you can open them again. It's mostly sub-level loot now but you can keep getting the Gearbox weapons at current level, which are really good

I was also messing around with some of the BL2 classes and Krieg seems wild. Might play him next. Axton is Roland++

That's Terramorphous the Invincible, in BL2, quest is from Tannis. You can solo cheese it behind a rock where you drop down, but it will still take ages unless you have good gear, and you can still get randomly knocked off the map. He does drop nice COMs though. Pyro Pete the Invincible is also pretty easy, and /or cheesable, and there's Master Gee who you can cheese by making a lift drop on him.

I just remembered I lost 400 stacks because Wilhelm knocked me off the cliff, the dickhead. He wasn't even difficult

One of the best Gaige weps is a Fibber, from the end quest of Mal the robot in Eridium Blight. You will want the ricochet variant, so be prepared to force-close the game & restart until you get one. Also if you are struggling, try looking up the 'buck up glitch', iirc it was never fixed.