The Spoils of War

So about those rewards… the whole incentive for Vault Hunting from the first. Using patent-pending new foot-collection technology, you can now pick up ammo, cash, and health drops simply by running over these items. You’ll need to actively pick up weapons, equipment, cash and ammo found in containers, and pieces of Eridium. As in the first Borderlands, you can hold down the “use” button/key on one item to collect everything nearby; when several containers are adjacent to each other, it’s more efficient to open them all, then center yourself among them and use this bulk-collect command than it is to open, collect, open, collect, open, collect, and so on.

Note that if you use the bulk collect command (holding down the “use” command to pick items up en masse) while looking at a weapon, you’ll replace your current weapon-in-hand with the one you’ve just collected.

Weapons and Equipment

You’ll need guns. Lots and lots of guns. That’s okay, though, because you’re sure going to get them. Throughout the adventure, you’ll receive new weapons and equipment constantly. Enemies often drop their equipment upon death. Pistols and shields are sometimes squirreled away in loot piles and smaller containers. Folks who’ve given you a mission often cough up gear as payoff. Vending machines and slot machines offer a changing assortment of all kinds of gear. And finally, larger containers, like gun loot chests, gun lockers, reappropriated car trunks, loot goon Backpacks and LWT Loader torsos, and appropriately named dook huts will always spit out some items. Skag and bullymong piles and other collections of rubbish can also house equipment, though the results are usually partially digested bandit trash. (Monsters are not particularly discerning regarding their item collection. Or their diets.) For much more on items and firearm mechanics, check out the Marcus Munitions Monthly section of this book.

Initially, you’ll have only two slots for equipped weapons, as well as room for a shield and grenade mod. Later on, you’ll acquire class mods, Relics, and up to two extra weapon slots through story progress.

Item Rarity Grades

You’ll find stuff all over the place, and not all of it is good. Some of it is crap, actually. If you pick something up and you know for certain it’s no good for any of your characters, you can flag it as garbage so it’s easy to find in your inventory and sell the next time you visit a vending machine. Selling weapons you don’t want is perhaps the most lucrative source of revenue in Borderlands 2.

Sometimes, grenades and guns you scoop up will be obviously useless beyond their utility as sales bait, too far behind in level or raw damage to be useful. But if an item’s stats are even on the margin of acceptable for your level and your foes, then it’s worth taking any new weapon out for a test spin… if not in actual combat, then at least looking over the gun with the inventory’s Inspect feature and test firing the weapon. There are possible bullet and firearm behaviors that are NOT expressed on the stat card for the weapon/grenade, and you’ll just never know what you’re missing out on if you don’t at least check!

Dolla Dolla Bills, Y’all

Money makes the world go ‘round as surely on Pandora as elsewhere in the six galaxies. You’ll find money everywhere—off things you kill; inside any pile, box, locker, and chest that can be opened; and as a reward for missions.

You’ll chase paper mainly so you can buy doses of Health Now! from Zed’s Meds vending machines, and so you can re-up on ammo and snag choice weapons at Ammo Dump and Gun vendors. It’s very rare, but it’s possible for orange rarity legendary gear to show up for sale in a vending machine, so it’s always worth your while to at least take a gander at the current inventory of the machines you pass! If you feel like rolling the dice for weaponry, you can also roll the bones by playing Moxxi’s slots (the slot machines, perv), or by tipping generously.

You’ll also inevitably spend some money on digital New-U reconstruction when you die. (And you are going to die. Yes, you.) This is automatic, so at least on Pandora, you have essentially the best medical insurance possible. New-U reconstruction is a percentage of your total funds, so don’t worry about not having the scratch. Don’t spend too much time thinking about how your reconstructed self is only an indistinguishable copy of your dead self and not the exact same organism. What is self, anyway?

Finally, you’ll have to spend a little cheese when respecing skill points, but the nominal fee is a small price to pay for the flexibility of redoing your build as needed.

Faces & Skins

At the outset, every character starts with several faces and body skins to mix and match in order to produce your own beautiful Vault Hunting snowflake. Ditto Scooter’s Catch-A-Ride vehicles, once you have access to them. (SPOILER ALERT: there are vehicles in Borderlands 2. Sorry!) But on top of all the other stuff you’ll find, you’ll also uncover new looks for each of these aspects of player characters.

Heads: Character heads are a lot more exclusive than vehicle skins. Three are rewards for optional missions. One is a rare drop from any Badass enemy in the game. One is acquired by completing the fifth and final tier of the Challenge “…to pay the bills,” which is focused on Action Skill use. Finally, several heads are low probability drops from some of the game’s baddest bosses and rarest foes.

Player skins: Like the vehicle skins, there are lots more character skins than additional heads. Eight skins come from completing optional missions. Thirty-three are acquired from completing various Challenges. The eight manufacturer-branded skins are found (rarely) in vending machines. Two skins can only be won from slot machines. And finally, 14 skins are general enemy drops.

Vehicle skins: You’ll snag more looks for vehicles by killing enemies and searching loot piles (the piles you can shoot or punch to open up, not loot chests and loot containers!). Vehicle skins are strictly bandit-scavenged in this way. Pimp your ride!

Unique Items

Unique items are distinguished from the common pool of weapons and equipment that are simply the result of the characteristics of their manufacturer and components. These items are specially crafted to behave differently than just any other item. Weapons may have abnormal bullet behavior or a peculiar reload, and shields and grenades can have their quirks, too.

Unique items have red text on their stat card that references the inspiration of the unique item or hints at its function. Check out unique items in the viewer by pressing in the right stick so you can get a good look at the special decals and designs emblazoned on the rare pieces.

Uniques are obtained in a variety of ways. Although they aren’t randomly generated like the common pool of things, they’ll have some variability, as some of their components are still random. So it’s possible to hunt for a better version of a unique weapon if it comes from something you can perform repeatedly, like hunting one monster. If it comes from a mission, you won’t have the same ease of taking more cracks at the same item, though you’ll have another chance at the same mission and a better version of the same item during True Vault Hunter Mode. You can also join an online host in any mission they’re undergoing, including any you’ve already completed.

Legendary Items

Taking it one step further, the rarest of uniques are colored orange and considered legendary. Legendary items are extremely rare—you might make it through your entire first playthrough scoring only two or three. Within the common pool of drops from any given enemy, chest, or vending machine, legendary items are very scarce. In other words, you’re very unlikely to get an orange item just anywhere, though it is possible. But legendary weapons always have a monster or a particular category of monster from which they’ll drop at a much higher rate, around one in 20.

Rare means rare. You’re not likely to pile on the orange-colored drops, so cherish the ones you do get. Even if it’s not a weapon type you normally like, give legendaries a try; they’ll surprise you. And if you’re not going to use a legendary—whether it really does underwhelm you or you simply level up beyond its window of usefulness, consider tossing it into Claptrap’s secret stash for another one of your characters, or trading it with a friend. Perhaps even duel a friend, with orange items like Pandoran pink slips on the line. Just don’t pawn off orange rarity goodies if you can help it.

The opportunity to re-roll unique weapons and to do runs for legendaries is the main reason most bosses will respawn if you revisit their battleground later on in the story. Sure, you killed them already, but Pandora won’t hold that against them—most of them will be back for the farming. (Well. Not right away after the first time you kill them. But come back later.) Some bosses also drop unique player customization heads and skins in addition to unique and legendary weapons, so there’s additional reason to hunt them down again beyond the promise of a better unique gun, or an orange rarity trinket…or just good XP and a fun fight.

But once you’ve drastically outleveled any boss, it’ll be just like fighting outleveled peons, unless you’re just going for the skins at that point—the overmatched boss will be no real challenge, and the rewards are less likely to be valuable relative to your current level.

There are a lot of unique and legendary weapons—even if the millions of procedurally generated weapon combinations didn’t exist, Borderlands 2 would still have more weapons than any other game like it. And many are covered in the Marcus Munitions Monthly section of this book!

The farming fun doesn’t really start until you’ve completed True Vault Hunter Mode…

XP and Leveling

Experience points are earned from friendly enemy kills (meaning kills you earn, kills your teammates earn, or kills earned by enemies currently under allied control, as with Maya’s Thoughtlock), mission completion, and location discovery. Getting more XP naturally increases your level. Increasing your level is the most direct way to become more powerful. The game’s whole damage calculation starts by asking, “What is the player character’s level relative to the enemy target’s level?” Better weapons and equipment also have minimum level restrictions. And just as important as the raw, innate damage increases based on leveling, getting levels means getting more skill points and consequently more skills. And now, thanks to the Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 1, the level cap extends all the way to level 61!

The rewards you receive are based on level, too. Taking on enemies and missions of a higher level than you garners more XP and better item rewards (provided you actually succeed in the above-average challenge). Taking on weaker, underleveled monsters and missions nets a lot less, to the point of combat and missions becoming not worthwhile if you’re too far ahead.

Experience Points Required per Level

Skills to Pay the Etc.

As you kill enemies and complete missions on Pandora, you’ll earn XP and thus progress toward leveling up. Starting with level 5, you’ll earn a single skill point for each new level. This first skill point at level 5 can only be spent unlocking your character’s Action Skill, so in effect, getting level 5 is more like unlocking your Action Skill to start rather than unlocking your first skill point, which you can’t actually assign as desired. However, it’s difficult to imagine what could be more important than unlocking your Action Skill as soon as possible. This astonishing, unique ability can be used frequently, and it will come to define your approach to combat. After that, though, you can choose how to spend every skill point you earn, all the way to level 50 for a total of 45 freely spendable points.

Each character has three skill trees into which points can be dumped, which gradually unlocks more skills for purchase further down the tree. At first, after acquiring the level 5 Action Skill, you’ll only be able to spend skill points in the very first tier of skills in each tree. The second tier of skills is unlocked once at least five points are spent in tier one; the third tier of skills is unlocked once at least 10 points are spent in tiers one and two; and so on.

Most skills confer statistical buffs under specific parameters, such as for a short period after damaging or killing an enemy, when shields are fully depleted, or when your Action Skill is used. Investing more skill points into a particular skill amplifies this bonus, and these skills can be increased up to five times. These bonuses are passive—that is, they don’t require your attention. They’ll happen when they happen.

Some skills grant unique, game-changing abilities known as gamechangers. Clever, indeed! They can also be called one-point-wonders, as they only require one skill point to make a significant difference in your character’s capabilities, rather than needing five skill points for a gradual, subtle increase. One gamechanger is found midway through each skill tree for each character in the third tier of skills; Axton and Salvador both have additional gamechangers in the fourth tier of two of their skill trees.

The last skill in a tree is the capstone—the culmination of that skill tree’s strengths and bonuses. The capstone is always a very powerful ability that really enhances your power, whether solo or in a group. However, you’ll only be able to afford one at a time.