So what am I doing wrong in Borderlands 1?

[GameplayerX]

I chose Lilith after trying out the other avatars. I thought that maybe the phase walk would help out getting around. Nope, it lasts for only a blink of an eye so what the heck is it good for?

Guns are not to bad (at first). I can get mostly enough ammo and cash laying around. But that appears to be of no advantage as the game progresses and for me becomes useless to a certain extent. The problem I run into is that the further I get into the game I keep having to unload almost ALL of my ammo on just a couple of enemies. I managed to get to the mine on the mine key mission. However, after finding out that it appears my weaps are seemingly useless against just about everything I found the only way I could get to the mine is to make a straight sprint past everything and everyone and not stop to shoot it out (because considering on the fact I need to unload every bit of ammo I got on 4 weaps to no avail) I actually managed to get to the mine. Now I got in. So I tried advancing forward but I have run into (not to many) enemy that just will not go down without hitting them with more then copious amounts of ammo Again I run out of all my ammo and they are still shooting the you know what out of my avatar. And this is only in the first hallway and connecting spaces. I have to retreat. Lilith is a lvl 13, shields/health at 172/280 and she is proficient to lvl 2 for pistols and lvl 3 for combat rifle. I even have the rocket launcher but it takes a couple of shots (or more) to take out the enemy. The big joke is the "Duke Nukem" sized characters. I mean, come ON, several direct rocket hits and the dude still does not go down????? It even took 2 rocket hits to take out one of the regular dudes.

I will not discuss my discust with the hords of skags.

So, to keep this short, what advantage does having phase walk for Lilith do and what is a good way to take advantage of it. Also what am I doing wrong in firefights? I have LOTS of FPS and RGP games, many AAA titles, but this is the first time I ran into a game that combat wise seems WAY unbalanced. Anyone have some good suggestions would be much appreciated. I got to say this game is not turning out very enjoyable at this rate. Or is there some way to knock out individual enemy shields so it takes a heck of a lot fewer shots to take them down???

I am liking the game for pretty much eveything else. Now if I could just get through it alive.

Thank you for any help.

[willanaya]

when you choose your character, it tells you what weapons they are good at. Use that as a guide because when the character uses that particular weapon, i.e. Mordecai is handgun and sniper, they receive special attributes when utilizing those weapons. Lilith is SMG's and something else. this does not mean to only focus on those two weapons but your characters proficiency will go up faster for those particular weapons. I am playing as Mordecai and my handgun is at level 25 right now, sniper at 19, smg at 22, shotgun at 14, eridian at 14, launcher at 5. the higher proficiency that greater the damage. I do greater damage with my handgun because that is the preferred weapon of my character, but i like the Hellfire SMG because the elemental mows down enemies in close combat.

As your credentals so state, you FPS skills should be fantastic but I need to say it:

On taking down enemies; humans, aim for the head, skags, aim for the open mouth, others, look for when a "Critical" comes up, that is where the most damage is done with the least amount of ammo spent. I would spend some time near the bounty board in Fyrestone and work on aim if it is a problem because you have access to a few Skags and a few humans to work on aim. I too find it frustrating that a rocket launcher will not down an opponent (refer to my proficiency rating for my launcher above, a 5, i dont use it that often to fell an opponent). Look for elemental weapons to help with that because after you hit someone with an elemental, a good hit will result in continuous health depletion. My pestilent difiler handgun will give me a good 5 seconds of enemy heath depletion, so i can hide to reload then pop back out and continue.

Search all the piles of Skag vomit for ammo and money but work to save money to increase you ammo storage. this will help in not running out of ammo. I think the cost to increase you ammo storage the first time is $660 dollars per ammo storage slot and increases.

For Lilith, and i admit i never played her but seen people on youtube do, if you find yourself outnumbered, you can phase walk to stop the onslaught, tap the most powerful enemy to inflict some crucial damage and procede to fight. i have also seen people use it to speed through a map and avoid fighting. If it is anything like my Bloodwing, you have to assign points to you phasewalk to allow you to do so for a longer period of time.

[Tempus]

Having just finished my first play through of the game myself, I know exactly what you've done wrong as I did it myself. You're over reaching. You need to do every side mission for the experience and loot. The Kill sledge mine mission is for at least level 17 and you're only level 13. So as I said, you need to do every side mission you can that's closer to your level first. If the mission doesn't say it's "Normal" or "Trivial", it's going to be pretty hard so do something else. Once I started doing all side missions, the main ones were never more than "Norrnal".

Headhots. Get good at them. I ended up making sure almost all my weapons, even if they were a bit weaker than something else, had a scope on it.

Lilith has a skill that increases damage on elemental weapons. Find and use those, especially something like Shock. In the last couple maps, there are these enemies that are damn difficult to take down with regular weapons due to their shields. Once their shields were down, I could one shot them. Sadly, the only shock elemental weapon I had on me was a rocket launcher which required me waiting for them to get close and shoot at their feet lol

Shock grenades can be pretty useful although I typically ended up running with the transfusion ones.

Make sure you buy the upgrades to be able to carry more ammo. That's the main use of your money at this point as few of the other items for sale are worth it.

[GameplayerX]

Exellent suggestions. Things I did not take into account. Also, I found I forgot to use the "second wind" technique. I will note all this down and work them into my gameplay.
Tx a lot!

ERRATA:

It was not the mine itself I made it to. I meant to say I made it to the start of Sledge's Hideout during the "Sledge:The Mine Key" mission. Sorry 'bout that. Or maybe I still haven't got that right. Oh-well.

[zverozvero]

Speaking of launchers, most of 'em aint great even for laucher-skilled Brik. Aside from some Legendary samples only helix (3 swirling shots for 1 ammo) make decent damage and wont burn instantly through ammo.

[GameplayerX]

I will keep a lookout for helix.

[Zhele]

Honestly, I find rocket launchers completely useless. Just stick to elemental weapons and get used to going for headshots.

[Velarune]

I just started this game on PC but I played through it a few years ago on PS3. Lilith was my main character. From what I recall, the beginning of this game can be pretty difficult. I struggled as well until I started finding some good elemental weapons that just destroyed everything. In this game, certain weapons are suited to certain characters and Lilith specializes in SMG's. Her skills benefit that weapon and so does her class mods. So yeah, start using them if you're not.

As for her Phasewalk, at first it's a bit useless. Use it more for getting yourself out of trouble then anything else. If you're surrounded, taking damage, about to die, etc., all you need to do is activate that and you can get out of there with no worries. Once you start getting some skills to benefit it and get some mods for it, it becomes a very dangerous ability.

I think I was level 42 when I stopped playing the game and at that point my Lilith was completely unstoppable, and had been probably since around 30. I had my Phasewalk set up so that I would create an elemental explosion every time I would go in and out of it. So if I got surrounded, I activate Phasewalk which set everything on fire in like a 20 foot radius around me and that fire would most likely kill everything, then I move to the next set of enemies and melee one of them, and since I had a boost to my melee power while in Phasewalk it would kill that enemy, then coming out of Phasewalk it would create another fire explosion and kill everyone in that radius. I also had my SMG skill leveled up and had a pretty good gun so a few shots would kill basically anything.

Lilith is incredibly dangerous once you figure her out. There's a reason why over the years that people have said she is game breaking =)

[GameplayerX]

Thanks Fenixx. I will keep building up her skill set. Wonder if there is any advantage to to having 3 SMGs each with a different elemental capability in spite of they all use the same ammo. Also, her phase walking is already getting pretty awesome at LvL 23. She has a couple of elemental sniper rifles that are doing pretty good at long range now also.,

[zverozvero]

Look at stores for Tedior legendary smgs. Tedior legendary guns have built in ammo regeneration.
Not sure if it'll make for endless ammo as it makes for revolvers or shotguns but should push smg-only loadout nicely.

Did you try elemental Revolvers? They have 100% procs chance for elemental minor and it dont consume elemental charge (reserve? dont remember exact name). If those have scope its tecnically second set of sniper rifles.

[GameplayerX]

I will check that out. I have an elemental automatic with scope that burns through shields and is fast firing and a powerful corrosive 6 shot revolver so far. She also has elemental fire weapons that work really well also. I am trying to get good at using a weapon to burn through the shields fast then switch to a powerful second weapon to cut down their health. Seems to work but still fooling around with combinations. Lilith is getting much better at taking down the Bruisers lately with elemental weapons. Elemental SMG and her elemental combat shotgun seem to be really cutting though them pretty good. Which is good since I am in single player and getting hit with hords of enemy which is getting a bit rough. I found that it appears if she is 2 to 3 levels above that of the enemy she does a pretty good job at mowing them down. I find fast take town is a key element here so far.

Thanks for the tip on the legendary smgs, hope I can at least one soon. I hate the insane rate of all the ammo I am going through in this game. Sometimes I say the heck with it and make a mad run through as far as I can get. That works every now and then.

Got to work more on using the phase walking powers to save on ammo with close in fighting. Have not got that quite right yet.

[zverozvero]

Try starting with Corrosive. Corrosion dot makes all subsequent attacks deal bonus damage and has doable against shield multiplyer (*0.8). Most shields are slim and fall fast against any damage type anyway.

[Velarune]

I never had an issue with ammo. Around level 15-20 I believe, I found a class mod that had SMG ammo regen. I never really found a better one then that. So my bullets were always maxed out =P But if you're still having issues with that, are you making sure to only aim for critical hits? Hitting enemies anywhere else is just a waste of bullets. The only time I would do that is if I wanted to set them on fire and let that whittle them down.

And yeah, it's good to have a nice sniper as well. You can one shot everything at a distance then finish up whoever gets close with the SMG. I would also carry a shotgun as a backup. I don't remember specifically what I had but the enemies didn't want me pulling that out. I recall killing everything in one hit with it and even bosses would lose a good chunk of life from it lol

[Atharigo]

I never really had ammo issues in the game, but that may be due to never using 1 gun type only (because i prefer having different weapons for different enemies) and always being around the enemies level so i never had huge damage debuffs (since it's a noticable damage change even if you're just 1 level below/above the spawns). Best tip i can give if you should still have ammo issues: Find a few chests around your level (or above, like the lv 25 one near the first arena quest/sledge's mine entrance) grab the drops, see what you need, sell the rest off. Then just reload near a med-station once you have about 60-70k cash (any after you leave the starting map will do) and just wait for the mod with smg-ammo regen to show up. Otherwise, wait for a legendary, the equalizer (revolver, lv 19+) seems to love to spawn, and respawns ammo faster than you can shoot it. I got random mobs to drop it more than once already (And it showed up a lot in shops as well). Oh and, one last thing. It's very much worth to have the same gun type twice because of different elements, it can make otherwise harder enemies a cake walk. And if you get completely stuck, there are more than likely people who could help you out if needed :p

[Mister Torgue Flexington]

Originally posted by Shuu:

Honestly, I find rocket launchers completely useless. Just stick to elemental weapons and get used to going for headshots.

it's funny how the rocket launchers in this game were practically useless, except for maybe 1 or 2. but yet, the Norfleet in "Borderlands 2" is the most overpowered launcher in the entire game