need help? a written borderlands 2 guide!

this will be a highly detailed guide on borderlands 2, giving you a guideline to playing borderlands 2! this can be used by newer players so they don't get comepletely screwed, or for slightly less newer players that have yet to reach max level!

using my words and pictures, I shall do my best to guide you through this game! as I will start off with doing this in normal mode from level 1 to level 31, this does not meen that you can't do the same tactics in true vault hunter mode or ultimate vault hunter mode! so, without further delay except a kind of big one, let's get started!

also, I will do my best to keep the spoilers to a minimum until we approached those spoilers incase of newer players here!

NOTE: I gave up on this project. if you got the time and patience to read a written guide, you ought to have the time and patience to simply watch a walkthrough of the game. feel free to read it though, nobody stopping you there.

firstly, how this guide is going to work!

this is simply an explanation of how I plan to do this guide. feel free to skip it if you wish to do so.

I am as detailed as I can get, so my guides are usually very long and very text heavy! in this guide I will be showing how I like to play borderlands 2 in most playthroughs that I find effective and keeping myself up in levels!

keep in mind that your experience will differ depending on what gear you find, how many tougher enemies spawn for you and most importantly, if you're playing single or multi player!

when we enter a new area, I will do 2 things before continuing the guide! firstly, I will write up "things of notice". these things can be like echo log locations for badass ranks, cool easter eggs, loactions of interest, unique weapons I want to mention, vault symbols (if I can find them) and other things like that.

then, underneath "things of notice", I will write detailed information about the legendary items obtainable in the area! however, if there is a main story boss that has one, it will be at the bottom for less spoilers! I will write the name of the legenary, manufacturer, weapon type, what boss you can farm it from, what mission you have to do to get that boss to spawn, showing on the map the general area to find this boss and finally, ranking the legendary of either rank 1, rank 2 or rank 3!

rank 1 legendaries are not worth farming for! these legendaries either have identical or barely above stats of a blue or purple weapon of the same level and manufacturer, or are simply bad! you find it and like it, you can use it, but it looks like a regular white weapon compared to the better legendaries! examples: madhous, flakker, emperor.

rank 2 legendaries are legendaries that are good in normal and perhaps in true vault hunter mode too, but either in the later game or in ultimate vault hunter mode they start to pale in comparison to the rank 3 legendaries, or simply really need to heavy focused gear to work properly. might be worth farming for, but not something you should get too interested in when you go for UVHM! examples are kerblaster, hellfire.

rank 3 legendaries live up to their name! these are truly legendary, being extreamly powerfull and effective, and more often than not (though it depends on your playstyle and character) are worth farming for! examples are unkempt harold, the sham, conference call!

I will also add a + or - to the rank if I feel its needed

I will also rank all the bosses with either 1, 2 or 3. any boss I end up fighting in my playthrough, I will do a guide about it. lenght will vary.

rank 1 bosses are very easy, and are not much more difficult than badasses of the same enemy type. not much to worry about.

rank 2 will put up a fight and can kill you if you dont pay attention or you're rather underleveled with 3-4 levels. still manageable.

rank 3 are extremely annoying and difficult to kill if you are not careful and/or you are equal level or scaling of that boss!

I will also talk briefly about TVHM and UVHM at the end of the guide. this guide can and will probably take a long time to complete due to the amount of detail and info I have to gather. just a heads up!

windshear waste! level 1

legendaries: 1.
name: hornet
boss farmed: knuckle dragger
mission required: blindsided
rank: 1+

you have just started your adventure! watching the intro of marcus telling a story and showing off the vault hunters is optional. skip or watch, your choice. anyway, after getting your train ride blown up, you find yourself nearly dead in the cold snow, with a funny little robot infront of you. upon discovering that you are very much alive, the robot becomes thrilled and happy! he introduces himself as a CL4P-TP stuord bot, but people just call him clap trap!

after introducing himself, clap trap will give you "a class 12 heads up display", which functions as your hud with your minimap, XP bar, health bar and so on. clap trap will then ask you to follow him, which you simply want to do. there are no enemies in this area, so you do not have to worry about that!

you will then be contacted by the character known as "the angel" or just angel. she will promise to explain things to you soon, and urges you to get to safety! clap trap will aventually lead you to his hideout where he lives!



clap trap will then let you inn after passing through the door. upon entering the main room, you can look to the right to see a closed door with a green light next to it. approaching the green light reveals you can interact with it.

inside you will find a vault symbol. approaching and interacting with it will give you a badass rank!


once clap trap is done talking, knuckle dragger will appear, snatch up clap trap and rip his eye out, and then leave!


clap trap wll then urge you to get the gun in the locker he mentioned earlier. this will enable the waypoint crystal on your minimap and big map! go to the locker and interact to get your first gun and start your adventure!

windshear waste! level 1 to 2

after turning in this mission and obtaining the dahl pistol, the angel will tell a short backstory of how handsome jack has defeated the vault hunters from the first borderlands game, and that you will have to be the new hero of pandora! after this, clap trap will raise you from dying nobody to fearsome minion and open the way for you! here you will find your first fast travel station! currently, these have little to no interest for us, but will be very important later!
you shall the proceed to follow clap trap. the angel will tell you this fairly obvious task, so you may aswell do it.

after a short walk, you will be ambushed by 3 monglets!
these things are pretty easy, shouldn't take you more than 3 or so shots to kill. after killing the first 3, 2 more will erupt from the gigantic ice wall just ahead. just kill those too.
now you will arive at frostbite crevasse!
here, you will have to jump down and kill some more bullymongs before you can continue! don't worry, there is no fall damage in this game! after the last of the monglets are killed, a brat bullymong will appear! these are notibly larger, stronger, faster and more rewarding to kill than the monglets. just kill him too!
once you have killed all the bullymongs, return to clap trap and dig him out of the snow!
you will then be contacted by handsome jack. he simply asks you if you would just kill yourself. of course, you don't do that and continue the game!

clap trap will then be so kindly and open the way for us into a field. he will then comment that his eye just switched back on. how it does that, I have no clue. he then cowers in fear as knuckle dragger appears!

knuckle dragger is not a difficult boss at all. he is a rank 1 boss at most. for attacks, he can charge at you, he can throw things at you, he can punch you. just keep your distance and keep firing. aiming for the head deals critical damage! when knuckle draggers health goes low enough, he will retreat for a short amount of time and summon his minions, which is just some bullymongs. he will then return to the fight!

when knuckledragger is defeated, you should reach level 2! when knuckledragger is defeated, he seems to allways drop a jakobs revolver and some money! he will also dro clap traps eye! if you play online, he will drop additional dahl and jakobs pistols for you and your teammates to pick up!

pick up clap traps eye and continue forward! clap trap will lead you to a "hyperion barge", attempt to open it and fail. he then gives up on life and looks sad (or at least, as sad as a robot like clap trap can look).
however, angel unlocks it for you and reveals a chest full of loot! open it to obtain the first available shotgun!
proceed to turn in "blindsided" to clap trap and continue on to liars berg!


legendaries: 1.
name: hornet
manufacturer: dahl
weapon type: pistol
boss: knuckle dragger
mission required: blindsided
rank: 2-

effect: allways corrosive elemental, shoots in a quick 6 round burst, each round having a small explotion. great against armored enemies (whom are not met until 12 levels later)

southern shelf! level 2 to 3

we enter to the southern shelf and near the entrence to liars berg! when coming here, you have to take care of the bullymong camp outside of the gate to liars berg, whouldn't be too much trouble! upon arriving, handsome jack will put a 1 million dollar bounty on your head! captain flynt will then tell his men that he wants the bounty. clap trap will then contact sir hammerlock. hammerlock will then request that you clear liars berg of flynts men! while fighting flynts men, bullymongs will show up and fight you and flynts men. upon having everyone except you, clap trap and hammerlock still breathing, flynt will get a little agitated.
clap trap will then request hammerlock to help him repair clap traps eye. hammerlock reluctantly agrees and promises to shut off the electrical fence so we can meet. he then tells the vault hunter (that's you by the way) to let clap trap go first. right into the electrical fence! hammerlock will then come out and meet you in person!
after repairing clap traps eye, hammerlock will then turn on the power so the town can work again. turn in the mission to hammerlock and now multiple things become available for us! by now you are most likely level 3 and have a shield! great! in liars berg you have: an ammo store, a medical store, a gun store, a quick change station and other things! hammerlock will also have a new sidemission for you whom I highly recommend you do! it is called this town ain't big enough! simply enough, hammerlock wants you to kill the bullymongs still wandering around in liarsberg! here, you will find adult bullymongs. they are notibly more powerful than anything you have met so far. just keep your distance and try and dodge the ice cubes they throw at you.

southern shelf! level 3 to 4

now, after finishin this town ain't big enough, hammerlock will have 2 new side missions, called "shielded favors" and "bad hair day"! take both of them and start with shielded favors!
run on over to the lever that will let you out of liars berg!
after this, head out and a little to the left (the way point should lead you) to the lonely house out on the ice! there will be bandits here, so you probably want to kill them. when you get up to the lever you're supposed to find, you can try and pull it. however, it doesn't work and you have to get a new fuse for the elevator. the waypoint will lead you to the location of it, which is another small bandit camp nearby. kill the bandits first. upon killing the final bandit, I leveled up to level 4. you may or may not be that close to it.

once you have cleared the area for bandits, you can direct your full attention to the electric fence and the fuse box. just shoot the fuse box and the fence will go down. trying to run through it will not work, as it will simply stop you and hurt you. at this point is where you turn on "bad hair day"! here, hammerlock requests of you to get him some bullymong fur! to obtain it, you have to kill a bullymong with a melee attack. this can be a little difficult and dangerous as the bullymongs here are fairly powerful. if you have trouble with this, you can go back to clap traps place using the fast travel station in liars berg and kill some of the weaker bullymongs there. when you kill them with a melee attack, a piece of fur will drop that you have to pick up.


upon collecting 2 pieces, clap trap will request that you give the fur to clap trap instead of hammerlock. as you collect the 3rd and 4th piece, hammerlock will offer you a sniper rifle and clap trap will offer you a shotgun. at this point, giving the fur to hammerlock is probably the best option since it will be a long tim until you can get a sniper rifle after this. also, the next area will have a fairly large amount of shotguns you can loot, so don't worry about it!

after this, grab the fuse you need for shielded favors! then run on over back to the elevator and plug it in! then, you simply pull the lever to get the elevator down. pull the elevators lever again to go back up into the shack, and inside there is a medic store. purchase a shield (doesn't matter which one) and you can now turn this mission in!
nearby of here, there is another small group of bandits you can hunt down and kill! one of these will drop an echo log that contains a quick and easy side mission, telling the tale of what happened to helena pierce! it is called "handsome jack here!". may aswell take it, right? I had allready picked it up before I took the screenshot...

the first audio laug is located inside a red-blue trash can. you have to shoot or melee the lock to open it!
the second audio log is located on top of hammerlocks house inside an ice pile.
the third is inside a bin... thing... just look at the pictures.

proceed to turn in the missions and get lots of rewards!
after this, you can accept the mission symbiosis! this mission tasks you to find and defeat the boss known as "midgemong"! if it is your first time with a character, I highly recommend that you do this missions, as the quest reward is a head skin for your vault hunter to look cool with! even if it isn't, it's pretty good either way. the entrance to the souther shelf is located near where you found the fuse for shielded favors!

southern shelf bay! level 4 to 6 (optional) symbiosis!

this is a more optional quest. by this point you will likely be very close to level 5, and you can continue on your adventure without a huge amount of problem! there are a few reasons why you should take symbiosis!
1 you get a lot of XP for this. not only from the mission reward, but also by killing all the bullymongs and bandits in your way!

2 midgemong, the guy you have to kill, has a chance of dropping a really powerful legendary known as "the kerblaster", and this has a fairly decent drop rate as I have found it 5 times without intention! obtaining this makes the next few areas and levels a lot easier! you can consider farming for it for a short time, it would certainly pay off!

3 the quest reward item is a head customization that you can only obtain from there! some of them look kind of cool, and its just nice for people like me that likes to collect things!

anyway, on with the guide! as you enter southern shelf bay (which will now be refered to as bay), you will see its a larger area to explore! if you decide to take to the right path, you will find plenty of bullymongs and treasure and secrets!
anyway, this area is packed with rakk, bullymongs and bandits! badasses are going to appear, that is very likely! proceed to follow the waypoint into the icy town! warning: the water will hurt you when you go in it! not insta killing you, but you'll likely die in a few seconds if you don't get out! this place is crawling with bandits and some loot chests! plenty of XP to gain. if you're not level 5 yet (which is highly likely), you can just kill these bandits and you should reach level 5 without too much trouble. 3 or 4 floors above us when we enter the town is where midgemong will be, inside of the bar! just follow the path of buildings and walkways until you get closer to midgemongs location! this area is crawling with bandits, and it is not a bad idea to clear the area before fighting midgemong so you have less interference! midgemong is not a joke, and can be a little annoying to fight if you're alone!

approach the doors to make midgemong appear! midgemong is more or less a badass bullymong with a badass midget riding on his back. the bullymong will mostly jump around and move, while delivering punches at you if he gets the chance. the midget however, will dual wield 2 guns and fire at you throughout. both must be killed for the mission to be complete! if you kill midgemong (the bullymong), the midget can and will remain alive yo kill you, so it might be a good idea to kill the midget first. it is the bullymong that counts for the legendary kerblaster drop. maybe you'll get lucky, maybe you won't.

midgemong will continue to jump around and try and keep his distance while letting the midget and other bandits around, kill you. if you have a siren, she can use phaselock on midgemong to hold him in place, making the fight a lot easier. if you play krieg and have buzz axe rampage available, you can go ham and push yourself up against midgemong. if you win or lose the dual may differ from player to player.

after you kill midgemong, you can go back to the bar where he spawned from! here there will be a loot chest behind the counter, and an ammo store, medical store and gun store! there will also (as far as I have experienced) spawn 2 badass mauraders! kill them before continueing, loot the place and leave when you feel like it. by this point, you should be fairly close to level 6, if you haven't allready gained it by the time you killed midgemong or after that. who knows. return to hammerlock and get your reward!

legendaries: 1
name: kerblaster
manufacturer: torgue
weapon type: assault rifle
rank: 2+
boss: midgemong
rank: 2
mission required: symbiosis
effect: drasticly increased damage, shoots small rockets with a larger AOE than regular torgue weapons. when the rocket hits something, it drops a grenade that also explodes after a brief delay. consumes 4 ammo per shot fired. can not criticly strike.

southern shelf! level 4-6 to level 7 "best minion ever!"

depending on if you did symbiosis or not, you will be between level 4 and level 6. by the end of this you should likely be around level 7 or 8! go back to liars berg and turn in symbiosis if you did it. then go ahead and "grab clap trap" if you have yet to do so!
as you follow clap trap out of liar's berg, flynt will threaten you and so forth. standard stuff. follow clap trap through the 2 bandit areas and clear them for him, nothing too difficult. especially if you have followed this guide! also, jack will call you 3 times on the way, telling you about his diamond pony that he ends up calling butt-stalion (greatest pony name ever)! as clap trap lowers the bridge before you meet boom bewm, there will be 2 suicide psychos there. as the name implies, they will commit suicide by grenades in your face, so keep your distance.

jump on down to meet boom and bewm!
as the fight starts, boom (the tall one) will be in his giant turret called big bertha. big bertha deals a lot of damage with a 2 burst shot, that also will push you very far away if you get hit! however, big bertha turns extremely slowly and has a cooldown of a few seconds before it can be fired again! while boom operates the turret, bewm will be going around and fight you on foot. bewm is a midget with a torgue shotgun and a jetpack, which lets him jump very far and very high.

it is adviced that you rush to your left side of the ship behind big bertha to avoid the turrets attacks and makes killing bewm a lot easier as he is likely going to follow you! when killing boom or bewm, you get a lot of XP and they will allways drop a lot of grenade ammo and grenade mods! pick one up to change how your grenades work! after this you can focus your attention more freely on boom and big bertha. also, when you kill one of the boom brothers, psychos will start spawning. you can use the newly found grenade mods to destroy big bertha from cover and then more safely attack boom.

it is adviced not to use fire weapons on boom and bewm, as they count as "armored" enemies with their yellow health bars and take notibly reduced damage from fire elemental damage. if you successfully defeat boom and bewm without you or your teammates taking a single hit from big bertha, you will complete a badass rank challenge!

boom and bewm have a chance to drop the legendary grenade mod "bonus package". at this point of the game, that grenade mod can and will destroy more or less any enemy within its range. at the bottom of this will be the list for the legendary. I will say boom and bewm are rank 2- bosses. they can be difficult if you take multiple hits from big bertha, but after that it becomes fairly easy to defeat them.

after this, clap trap will position himself next to the gate nearby, which is locked. he thinks for a moment and gets a great idea! you go on to big bertha (the turret boom used in the fight) and blast the gate down. even though clap trap urges you NOT to shoot before he moves away, he will never move away, so just blast it. when it is blasted, clap trap will disapear and a large group of bandits will emerge. it is advised that you do not kill them using big bertha because that gives drasticly less XP for the kill.

the game will now tell you to "catch up to clap trap". just follow the waypoint into captain flynts hideout. there will be plenty of bandits here and lots of XP and gear to be looted! follow the path and kill lots of bandits until you reach clap trap again! the scaling seems that a larger amount of the bandits are around level 5 and 6, so it paid off doing all those side missions earlier!
anyway, now you'll find clap trap being beaten up by 3 bandits. kill them and you will rejoin with clap trap!


clap trap will then continue forth and be ambushed by bandits and you have to kill them. by now you're probably used to it.

after you clear the area and clap trap continues, he will come upon his only weakness: stairs! he will tell you to go ahead and find the crane controls so he can continue. proceed alone and through the dozens of bandits in your way!

when you get to the lever controling the crane, you pull it and heist clap trap up! however, this area has a pretty cool and very useful shortcut you can take and I will do my best to show it to you!
firstly, behind one of the containers next to the stairs where clap trap has to wait, there is a dumpster. jump on the dumpster and then jump on top of the container!
then, there will be a sign that can lead to a small ledge and a chain. sprint over the sign and jump at the edge. if you did it right, you will land on the edge!
now, jump on the big chain and walk up! congratulations, you just saved a few minutes of walking!

legendaries: 1
name: bonus package
manufacturer: torgue
weapon type: grenade mod
boss: boom bewm
rank: 3
mission required: best minion ever!

effect: releases several child grenades that then also release child grenades, covering a large area with massive explosive damage!

bos: boom and bewm
rank: 2

take care and keep to cover, either take care of big bertha quickly or get to cover to kill bewm in piece, then kill big bertha and boom!

fighting flynt and finishing "best minion ever!"

I had to split it here because I ran out of space. anyway, proceed by following clap trap to confront flynt! make sure you stock up on ammo and grenades from the ammo store before you continue! when you approach, flynt will make his appearence!
as the fight starts, flynt will be on a ledge above the hangar where you have to go next and will fire his gun at you. several bandits will spawn and it is recommended that you take care of these before killing flynt. after you kill all the bandits or after flynt takes enough damage, he will jump down and fight you himself. when he does this, he will spawn some burning psychos! flynt and the burning psychos are highly resistant to fire, so don't bother using fire weapons on them! during the fight, flynt can and will most likely engulf himself in fire! while he does this, flynt takes drasticly reduced amounts of damage and will reflect bullets. he will also make the vents on the ground spew out fire which will hurt you if you get too close to them! during this time, just take cover and wait for him to stop burning, then go out and attack again! it is advised to keep your distance, as flynt has a strong charge attack that can and will throw you off a good bit. he deals a good bit of damage and has a lot of HP. just keep firing until he dies!

when flynt dies, he seems to allmost allways drop "the tinderbox", which is a unique pistol.

clap trap will then proceed to open the way for you! inside the room he opens for you is a loot chest. may aswell open it and take the loot! you will then find clap traps boat and sail to "three horns divide"!

legendaries: 1
name: thunderball fist
manufacturer: maliwan
weapon type: pistol
boss: captain flynt
rank: 2+
mission required: best minion ever

effect: allways shock elemental. after the bullet hits something, a large ball of shock will rise in the air before exploding, dealing a large amount of damage around it to enemies. very deadly in the hands of a mechromancer!

captain flynt.
rank: 2

take care and keep your distance, do not use fire weapons and take care of bandits before attacking flynt!

[Barkeater]

thanks! your level of detail gave me a hint for 3rd (*worst*) playthrough!

[Banshee]

Terrible

[Maffle]

where can i find sir hammerlock to give him the fur`

[theZeroAlchemist]

fcking bug claptrap doesnt want to open the boats door for me :(

[Jorge]

Can you help me with the quest 'Best Minion Ever'? I'm new to Borderlands 2 and it is a little hard right now.

[finalmoe]

I Didn't Do It Doe! why do you keep coming back? The Man/Women wanted to make a guide, now leave them alone.

[Rey Skywalker stan]

"so cute!" Somebody's obviously mad that their guide stinks :P

[Joe Momma]

Bro point is, this guide is terrible and useless.

[Freedom's friendliest fire]

Brady Bellow and I Didn't Do It Doe! are basicly saying that they can't read some lines and get mad at others for it.

"and what were you thinking when you were making this?"
oh man, I am so sorry that the explanation for that exact question was NOT the first sentence of the guide, or that I had given up on this project a few lines below!

it is quite adorable too, how you keep coming back to comment so many times. so cute!

[▲ Weevils | Al-Muttaqin ▲]