Many Must Fall, equipped with the Law gun and Order shield is certainly a fun thing to experience. Of course, when you get stronger Roid shields, the choice truly does become a difficult trade-off. Alas, c'est la vie.

 

Fun game but it really isn't much different than the original. That doesn't bother me personally but I can see how some people would get annoyed about it. I played as bloodshed Zero like Menace and if you combine that with Law and Order the game goes from not terribly hard to holy balls this isnt even fair.

My only two big disappointments personally were Handsome Jack and his fate as well as the Warrior. Jack was so retardedly over the top evil that I started developing a tic in my eye every time I even faintly heard his voice so when he started ranting about "child killer" and all that other shit I nearly puked. You cannot have both, if Jack is such a stone cold fucking psychopath that he thinks making kids watch while he cuts out their parents eyes with a spoon is hilarious then having him rant about you killing his kid doesn't even vaguely make sense to me beyond some fucked up sort of "You destroyed something of mine so die" kind of notion. Either tone down the cartoonish evil or make him stick to the personality you've created for him. His fate was also a total let down thanks in part to the pathetic Warrior fight but mostly because after everything he did and all the effort it took to get to him you just shoot him a couple times and he hits the floor or worse you wait a bit too long and an NPC shoots him for you. Its basically the Fable 2 ending reskinned to be SciFi instead of fantasy.

Last fighting the Warrior was just so disappointing it was absurd. The entire game they make him sound so tough and fearsome and talk about wiping Pandora clean of life and all that fucking nonsense so when I fiiiiinally get to the fight with him Im expecting a really challenging fight where Ill need all of my best guns and to keep on my toes every single second to win. Instead I hopped up on a stack of crates and shot the fuck off massive bullseye on his chest with a piece of shit pistol that I found literally five minutes before I walked into the boss room and killed him inside of five minutes without needing even one Second Wind. On top of all that he didn't even have the decency to give me a decent gun, the only Legendary he and Jack combined dropped was a grenade mod that my current one shit all over. Between my Minecraft shotgun and Minecraft arrow sniper rifle as well as my back up Lyuda rifle which I got off of a damned bounty hunter of all things there wasn't a single drop that was even worth picking up much less using.

Small spoiler for an easter egg in the game.

Spoiler

If you haven't already found it I really recommend going to the Minecraft cave in the Caustic Caverns area its in the very upper left corner of the map hidden just slightly to the right of the top of the bridge. Its easily recognizable when you find it by the Minecraft dirt blocks covering the entrance. You can smash through them with melee attacks very easily and by smashing the various types of Ore blocks you get different things ranging from ammo to money to Eridium bars. Once you smash your way into the main section of the cave there are actual Creepers from Minecraft inside. They look, act and function exactly like Creepers. They make zero noise at all aside from the hiss when they're about to blow but as long as you pay attention it should be a cakewalk killing them all at range before they can get to you, if they do get you though the explosion is an instant kill. I think something on the order of 9 or 10 of the regular ones spawn and then once you kill all of them 1 Super Badass Creeper will spawn who is a complete pushover but has a much larger blast radius. Once he's dead he drops all kinds of awesome shit ranging from custom skins and heads for all the classes that give you the appearance of being a Minecraft version of yourself, piles of Eridium Bars and bunches of various weapons. The two unique weapons though that I really really recommend farming to get no matter what class you are, are a fire element shotgun that shoots a grid of nine cubes of fire that bounce if they hit something other than a target and for some reason even though other shotguns with the same kind of damage wont this thing never once fails to just fucking wreck whatever you hit with it on top of a range so good you can seriously come close to sniping with it. The other is a Legendary Sniper rifle that fires slightly slow projectiles that look like arrows from Minecraft. The lack of a scope and the slower projectile speed can be a hair annoying but it does more damage per hit than any launcher I ever ran across in the game which completely and totally make up for it to me.

 

Alas, I had no idea about the Law and Order combo when I completed that mission in Sanctuary, so I trashed the Law pretty quick and didn't even pick up the Order. I don't suppose there's anyway I can redo those missions?

Oh, also, is there anything besides the Love Thumper that helps with melee? Like a weapon?

And way to go spoiler tagging an easter egg and not the climax of the game.

 

Been playing Borderlands 2 with a friend of mine for some time now, and we think it's quite cool. I really like that the world is so big and there are a lot of quests (even though 99% of the time they are just Seek and Destroy). And one MUST love Tina, the psychopathic little girl.

Last friday when we were playing again we amassed a lot of cash wich we usually spend at Moxxi's Slot Machines. Since we planned to go out to drink some later we decided to turn the Slots into a drinking-Game.
If you get nothing - Drink some beer
If you get money or shit - You don't have to drink
Three Bandids (when the Slots drop a greanade) - 3 Shots of Jaegermeister
Eridium - Empty your bottle and drink a shot

Needless to say, after spending 50k$ each we were both too shit-faced to hit the pubs. I think I'm slowly starting to regain some blood in my alcohol-system.

 

For Law and Order you can only pick them up on those missions either on a new character or higher level versions on True Vault Hunter mode. Kind of annoying, considering that Law is the only +100% melee weapon I've seen, and the synergy of the Order shield(ALL MELEE ATTACKS HEAL :awesome) is so incredible, that the gun is mandatory for Bloodshed Assassin, and the shield is really hard to give up even when you start getting Roid shields in the thousands of damage.

Also, yes, you don't see them much before the Love Thumper, and none with it's obscenely long recharge delay, since it's special for that shield, but Roid shields are as available as any other shield really. Also consider not getting the Bloodshed skill that recharges shields/active ability whenever you kill something as it rather defeats the purpose of equipping a Roid shield for bonus damage in the first place.
Other than that, weapons can have the random +50% melee mod, sadly no +100% besides the Law that I've seen, as I mentioned above.

I know that in a duel test where my friend was at low health to start, and my shields were broken(for as long as I could manage before delay kicked in), and trying to stealth for that time, with my friend shooting me once in stealth to delay shield recharge, I was able to draw a number of around 1,400K damage(yeah, 1.4million) with a stealth execute attack. That was at around level 30.

The sad thing though, sort of, is the one-shot most everything(at full health, so you don't get the MASSIVE bonus) while chain-jumping executions with Many Must Fall tactic is significantly less viable in True Vault Hunter mode. Aside from the less frequent 'mook' enemies, they don't tend to die in one hit at that difficulty, especially with multiple people in the game.
Sadly, I ended up respeccing to Sniping(secondary Bloodshed for that +movespeed/gun damage/melee damage after kill skill, and some shield recharge and health on the side), and just shoot things in the head for hundreds of thousands each time. A bit more reliable than melee, when the enemies can often punch through level-equivalent shields in 3-5 shots. In particular when you don't have an Order shield equipped anymore.

 

Well shit. Looks like it's back to 50%+ melee launchers for me.

In regards to that easter egg, is it worth it to wait until I max out my levels, you think? Or can I just go back and farm later?

 

Well, I don't know what your level is right now, but the rewards are within a particular level range depending on the difficulty you are on.

On a related note for those that are planning on doing the DLC, or at least the Captain Scarlet one. From what I've tested, If you are equal to or above level 31, the enemies on Normal start at 29-31. If you are equal to level 50, then starting enemies on True Vault Hunter are level 49-51. I haven't gone there in normal with a lower level character, but I took a level 37 into True Vault Hunter... somewhat unintentionally, and the first several missions before I stopped playing at the time, were scaled and gave me level appropriate rewards for that character.

So, if you want to get the full benefit from the DLC, I recommend reaching that peak level for the difficulty first 31+/50(+), respectively.

 

If you havent done True Vault Hunter mode Id honestly recomend doing it with Zero if for nothing else than getting that combo again, the things it lets you do as a full Bloodshed Zero are fucking absurd. For some reason I see people whine about fighting Saturn but with Law and Order and full bloodshed spec its so easy its embarrasing. Two seconds max to shoot the turrets off of him and then you can melee the giant bastard to death in a heartbeat while barely taking a scratch.

As for the easter egg Id say go now and then go again later if you want. No matter what level you get them at they're always stupidly good and if you outgrow them then all you have to do is go back and farm up a better one since they scale very very damned well.

 

No love for the Siren, how sad.
All of the combos possible with her makes her my favorite by a landslide (not counting the Mechromancer). Especially a Harmony/Motion hybrid. At level fifty, I'm reasonably certain that she out sustains all classes except maybe the gunzerker (haven't had a fifty to test with). Life Tap is pretty strong, even against Terramorphus (tentacles are good things for once!)

Speaking of the Mechromancer, anyone play her yet? She is worth it, if you haven't. She's like an older Tina, with a giant killer robot. I'm not sure what isn't to love, to be honest.

 

The gun lust tree on the Gunzerker is the most intense thing I have seen yet in Borderlands 2. You get extra crit damage, a damage boost when you swap weapons, an enormous damage boost on the final shot in a clip, and the last skill point in the tree makes it so any overkill damage you deal gets added to your next shot.

Get a nice Jakobs sniper. Line up those headshots for the most damage you've ever seen. If you can add everything up properly, with two snipers on their last shot, I've (at level 40 when I last played) seen 27000k. I very nearly one shot Bloodwing the second time.

 

Well, I mostly ended up leveling an Assassin first because another friend really wanted to play the Siren, and we wanted some extra diversity. Then later, I made a Siren and ran it with two other Sirens which was amusing.(One Harmony, one Motion, one Cataclysm primary focused)

I also technically have a Soldier and Gunzerker, but they haven't been played quite as much. Similarly to the Siren, I started a Mechromancer with two others, also each focused on different trees, with myself going Ordered Chaos. I've only had my Anarchy at 400 for a short period before the end of a play session, but even having half of that +700% damage potential is a staggering amount, mid-to-long accuracy issues be damned.

I'm currently focused on playing the Mechromancer with the other pair, whenever we can actually arrange to be online and not tired together. If nothing else, I derive some amusement from it being the first play through of the game for one of them, and hearing his own amusement at the game's antics over Skype.

Altogether:
lvl 50 Assasin
lvl 38 Siren
lvl 26 Soldier
lvl 24 Mechromancer
lvl 16 Gunzerker

 

For those that are interested, Gearbox is giving out Shift Codes that are valid to be input until Nov. 4th, that will unlock character skins for each character:
The Maya Code, with links to the other characters

[NOTE: Upon redeeming the above SHiFT code, the corresponding item will be added to your inventory the next time you load or create a character. If you have redeemed multiple SHiFT codes and queued up multiple inventory items, one will be added to your inventory each time a character is loaded.]

 

I'm downloading Campagin of Carnage now. I'm really looking forward to this, as the preview videos and information paint it as being a massive multiplayer brawl. This is bigger than Moxxi's Underdome and all of the Circles of Slaughter combined. We're talking Thunderdome crossed with the Roman Coliseum, with a little bit of professional wrestling thrown in for flavor.

Also, Mr. Torgue is, literally, Macho Man Randy Savage. And there is absolutely no way in which that is not awesome.

Massive love for the Siren. Their Destruction line is sick. It's damage dealing and crowd control all in one package. And a healing Siren is a wonder to behold. Health. Health everywhere.

 

There is an E-Tech Moxxi Hyperion shotgun that shoots lightning.

Also, there's some confusion going around as to the main quest and the aftermath. I've heard some people say you can play the tournament over again with Tannis as your sponsor. I'm looking into this now to see if there's anything to it.

[EDIT]

More specifically, it shoots a lighting ball, which we've seen before. However, unlike the splatguns, there's no lob; it travels in a straight line. Also, the splash for it is enormous, and it does massive damage. The only downside is that it moves moderately slowly. You need to lead your shots by a fair amount to hit. And the splash can, naturally, hurt you, so CQC isn't recommended.

[DOUBLE EDIT]

Also, tip: If you're having trouble with the Badassarus, try using rockets. They're the only projectiles I've used or seen used that don't ricochet around and potentially hit you right back.

 

So there's a new DLC. The story is fun, and, at least in my opinion, worth it. Basically, the new area is Darkest Africa. Yes, on a hellworld full of giant monsters and ridiculously hostile environments, there is still a specific place that is significantly shittier than everywhere else.

How shitty?

Giant stilt-legged spiders chasing you through a swamp shitty. Also, the entire continent is in the biggest goddamn cave you've ever seen. No, that is not a joke. The continent is a continent-sized mesa, which is hollow. What little dim light there is comes from the holes in the 'ceiling.'

It's a really good example of the kind of things that a forbidden continent savage land set can bring to the table. It manages to be convincing, and often exceedingly creepy, while also making fun of itself.

But that's all just opinion. So here are some facts.

Fact: Besides some new skins and the new Head, there really aren't any decent quest rewards in this DLC besides the XP.

Fact: This is deliberate, because all of the good guns, including the unique ones, drop from enemies.

Fact: From following the playtesting that's been able to take place so far, and from participating in it myself, it seems as though everything that drops anything respawns. So you can't miss anything in this DLC. Don't worry about that. All of the giant monsters that Hammerlock has you hunt for sport as quests come back after they die, and can be farmed for their good drops indefinitely. If anyone finds any exceptions to this, I'll post about it, but so far, no one has.

Fact: They could have renamed this DLC "Jackobs Master Race," and it would have worked just as well. Seriously. There are more new Jackobs rares and uniques than anything else in this, including a more powerful gold-plated version of the Buffalo, a Dirty Harry style magnum Jackobs pistol, and a shotgun that shoots tornadoes. FUCKING TORNADOES.

Also, there is now a Bandit Assault Rifle minigun that holds YOUR ENTIRE AMMO STOCK. It's clip is literally the size of your maxed out assault rifle capacity. That's how it works. Because reloading is for pussies.

The new best friend of Gunzerkers and Anarchy-killer builds.

Look at how pimp these guns are. Just look at them.

Because real men don't need shields.

Basically, you want this DLC for the gear. Particularly the guns. And that MANshield, right there.


Also, Gearbox has confirmed that they will be bumping the levelcap within their first quarter of the year, which puts the bump in the January-to-March timeframe. So it's coming soon, for those of you who have been wanting it.

[EDIT]

And if you were wondering when they would put something new in to spend Eridium on, they have. Kind of.

The new raid boss, or rather, one of the new raid bosses, costs 96 Eridium to summon.

That is not a typo.

Is he worth it?

We don't know yet. He's only been killed a few times so far. As far as we can tell, he's the only thing that will drop the new Bandit superminigun, and no one has found any new Orange gear yet, so it's a good bet that if anything will drop it, he will.

 

There was an assault rifle in the first game which had a clip size equal to your capacity as well. I may be remembering wrong, but it may also have gone on full automatic after firing, unless you changed weapons(and possibly if you tried to reload, toss a grenade, use your action skill, open your menu).

As a side note, in comment to that last shield. If you have an actual shield equipped, but it's value is "0"... how does that interact, if at all, to skills which function only during broken shields?(Bloodshed tree says "Hello~")

 

You aren't remembering wrong. The Chopper is a returning gun from the first game. It's basically the same gun.

In regards to skills and the Rough Rider, it depends on the skill. The Assassin's Grim would be less effective with it, because Grim offers shield regeneration per kill, and the Rider has no shields to regenerate.

Honestly, looking at it, the Rider just screams 'Gunzerker' to me. It could work well with anyone, depending on how you built them, but that shield seems custom made to take advantage of Sexual Tyrannosaurus. ST gives you health regen, but only when you're taking health damage. So if something damages your shields, you get no regen. It has to break through for you to get the benefit. But the Rough Rider doesn't give you shields. It gives you more health and damage reduction. So a Gunzerker with the Rider and ST is going to regenerate health every time they take damage, and that's in addition to having the damage reduction.

And that's just a skill working together with a single piece of equipment. There's nothing stopping you from adding even more damage reduction in the form of relics, or more health regeneration from the Blood of Terramorphis.

It is currently unconfirmed whether using the Rider will cause abilities that only activate when your shields are broken to remain activated constantly (the Commando's Crisis Management, the Siren's Fleet, ect). I'm only sure Sexual Tyrannosaurus will work because that explicitly states that you get the health regen when you take health damage.

If it does allow that, though, then you could conceivably build a character's skills around the Rider to take advantage of constant benefits from the "only when shields are broken" skills. It would make Fleet actually worth getting, for one.

 

Hmm, maybe I was thinking of a different skill for some reason. Oh, right. I was thinking of bonus damage from Roid shields, not a skill from the Bloodshed tree itself. Whoops.

 

Bad news.

The level cap is going to increase, definitely, but we supposedly aren't going to get any more skill points, because, among other things, that "could literally break the game. Like, crash your Xbox break the game."

Except for the part where that's total horseshit, because there's a glitch that lets you max out all of your skills, and it's easily hacked in on the PC, and having every single skill maxed out completely doesn't even make the game blip. You cannot crash the game like this.

Pitchford is welching on promises. Again. With the way he's going on about how it's "totally unexpected" for fans to want a cap increase, and that "we had never considered that as part of the final design for the game," you'd almost forget that the achievement for reaching level 50 is "Capped. . . For Now."

Jesus Christ, if he was backpedaling any faster, he'd be in the Tour de France.

 

But then... whats the point of a level cap increase if you're not gonna get skill points at the same time?

Getting a +1 on your level is all well and good but what we really want is the skill points.