borderlands 2 101! more or less all the basics!

this is a guide for new players to clear up confusion and so you can get right into the shooting a guy to death, grab his favorite gun and use that to kill his friends!

this will be a long guide and I will do my best to have checkpoints. also, this will take a long time to complete (at least, I am very certain of it), so I will update it now and then when I get more time and stuff to add! as I am going on vacation now for roughly 2 weeks until july 21st, it wont be further updated much.

this is the general basics of borderlands 2, to help the new looters to get going on the game and explaining basics such as gun manufacturers, elemental damage, how online works etc. most of you veterans will probably look at this guide and think "well thats pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ obvious sherlock!", but this isn't for you. also, rude!

finally, spelling errors will happen and I have a bad habbit of not using capital letters outside of writing I, don't ask me why...

firstly, the vault hunters!

as I often write really long and detailed guides, I will try my best to make as many checkpoints on different subjects. so here, you can find the general info about the 6 vault hunters in the game, their action skill, how I experience playing as them, what I find good or bad about them and so on.

use the GUIDE INDEX that should be located to the right and a little further down of this text box to find the different things I will write for you, to make it easier for you to find what you're looking for!

axton, the commando!

axton, the commando!

axton is your every game ever super soldier! players new to borderlands 2 but familiar to other shooters like call of duty or... I don't know, other popular shooters that are not borderlands 2, will see some familiarity with axton. he doesn't have much complication or major depth into his playstyle or builds (just wait until the axton mains will do all in their power to prove me wrong!), making him a good choice for people that are new to the borderlands universe!

axton can do well with most weapons, but he has multiple skills and class mods that primarily focus on assault rifles! he can gain great amounts of boosts to his weaponry, and assault rifles work very well for him!

his action skill is called "sabre turret", where he throws down a small package on the ground. when it hits the ground, it will build itself up and become the sentry gun, which will shoot at enemies nearby of it and take attention. it is a very cool weapon and is pretty good, either for killing badguys, attracting attention and bullets or simply look cool! it has a moderate 42 second cooldown, but that can be notibly reduced by skills, class mods and relics (we will talk about those things in a bit).

in general, axton is, again, good for new players. he is very strong and has great weapon coverage, but he becomes rather dull and boring with a bit of a personality crisis when you get up in the levels and try out the other characters, but that is not something you will think or notice of when playing him!

salvador, the gunzerker!

salvador, the gunzerker!

salvador is another great character for beginners, as he has some very good sustain powers since he has ammo regeneration available to him fairly early in the game!

salvador is the tanky character that, similar to axton, has massive damage output and is a great character! he is by far one of the best for taking out bosses, as only a few can be better done by other vault hunters, though that becomes a thing for later. as I said a couple lines above, he has good sustain power! having good early skills for health regeneration, and a pretty neat class mod that lets him and teammates regenerate ammo as long as he has it on, he is awesome!

salvadors main weapon of choice will have to be pistols! again, similar to axton, he is generally good with most weapons, and thus has a small identity crisis in what he wants to do! but, he does have skills and builds that fit very well for pistol usage, and his damage potential is mindblowing when you get going!

salvadors action skill is called "gunzerking"! when activated, salvador heals 50% of his max health instantly, gains damage resistance, health regeneration and ammo regeneration (both stacking/building on top of other things giving those stats) and pulls out a second gun for him to use, letting him dualwield any 2 weapons in the game! many of salvadors skills are linked to gunzerking and ammo improvements.

the cooldown of gunzerking is 42 seconds. however, there are many skills, class mods and relics to drasticly reduce this cooldown, to the point where you can be gunzerking all the time and rarely to never leave it!

gunzerking can and will most likely be very awkward to use in the beginning, as you fire your right hand gun with the left mouse button and your left hand gun with the right mouse button, aswell as feeling a bit wierd. but once you get used to it and get some good weapons, you can pretty much destroy anyone in your path!

salvador has great sustain power, damage power and boss killing power! due to this, he is another great choice for newer players that are new to PC games or shooters in general (due to his great health and ammo sustain)! that does not meen that only really bad people or really stupid people play him, its just a note!

zero, the assassin!

zero, the assassin!

zero is one of my personal favorite vault hunters, and he is pretty damn strong! he is fantastic over short, medium and long range combat with different weapons and builds!

zero's weapon of choice is his katana sword for close and high risk, high reward combat with melee. pistols for medium constant DPS damage. and sniper rifles for long range accurate critical hits and burst power!

this makes zero one of the most versatile when it comes to his playstyle! even though he is great with sniper rifles, he only has 2 skills in total that only work for them! it is also primarily the critical hits that he is the best with. his melee possibilities are a lot of fun if you can pull it off, but can be tricky. and his pistol build is fairly heavy on dramaticly boosting his firerate rather than his damage, granting huge amounts of DPS damage rather than burst damage. however, this dramaticly increases his ammo concumption rate and makes 2 manufacturers pistols (dahl and jakobs, look further down the guide to see more about them) very bad to use, as they have a very strict fire rate mechanic!

zero's action skill is called "deception"! this makes zero to become invisible and throw out a hologram that will draw attention from enemies! this lasts for up to 6 seconds, but can be increased in duration with a certain skill in his melee build. while zero is invisible, he builds up his gun damage, critical hit damage and melee damage up to a maxiumum 200% gun damage, 250% critical hit damage and 650% melee damage. this will apply to his next shot or melee attack while he is in deception (note that this builds up to the longer you stay in deception, not being in it instantly. also, the resets from the skill "many must fall" also resets the damage counter)!

this lets zero deal massive damage to a single target or position himself better, or to simply look at some really cool ninja moves that the hologram does! the cooldown of deception is 15 seconds, but ending it early by attacking someone will reduce the next cooldown. shooting automaticly ends deception even if you missed, while melee has to connect to an enemy for it to end.

he has the worst amount of sustain and is very squishy AKA not very good at taking damage with low health and shield boosting skills, and not getting self healing skills until around level 25. even then, the first one only regenerates health while using deception and the other heals when you kill enemies with melee, which is something to look out for!

overall, zeros melee and sniper builds focuses on strong single target burst damage, like an assassin. while his pistol build is a bit more towards DPS (damage per second) with firerate and critical hit bonuses. he is a great choice for people that like sniping or want to try melee, or simply want to play him.

maya, the siren!

maya, the siren!

maya is very strong with her playstyle, having a massive amount of healing abilities for her and her teammates, great crowd control and some very solid damage output!

maya's weapon of choice is SMG's and elemental weapons (I'll explain elements further down, you should be able to spot them on the list of topics)! she is a fantastic support class while remaining able to kick some bandit butt by herself aswell!

maya's action skill is called "phaselock"! with this, she targets an enemy and locks them up in the air where they will become stuck and unable to attack or move for several seconds! this can effectively be used either on an enemy to put them out of the combat for a while for some breathing room for you or your team, or to help focusing down and enemy! maya has many different skills that helps her and her teammates using phaselock, including being able to help teammates from fight for your life (also something I'll explain later)!

maya has several skills that increases duration of phaselock, reducing the cooldown from the base 13 seconds, increasing damage and firerate with weapons, healing everyone on the team while phaselocking and a lot of other wonderful things! she also has some great offensive capabilities with it such as applying elemental explotions to the target that gets phaselocked and the targets around, pulling all nearby enemies to the target or boosing several stats for maya to make her very powerful!

note that some enemies can not be locked up in the air, and will simply take a burst of damage instead. also, multiple phaselock uses on the same enemy, ither from the same or from different sirens will have shorter duration and reduced damage! this was likely made so that a team of 4 sirens could not infinitely phaselock a boss or special enemy, which would have been really over powered!

the amount of healing she can do for her and her teammates is allmost stupidly high, making it very difficult for you to die unless you are really underleveled or just doing something really stupid. this lets maya survive very effectively, and let her get away many near death experiences allmost as much as krieg!

sadly, her elemental capabilities is often more towards applying elemental effects rather than dealing tons of damage with them! this still makes her fantastic with the slag element though, which just boosts her supportive power and offensive power even more!

the reason for this is that all of mayas skills involving something elemental is either applying an elemental effect, increase the chance of applying elemental effect or giving herself some sort of elemental damage effect, such as an area of effect (AOE) around her, dealing elemental damage to enemies around her, but nothing that straight up boosts her elemental damage!

overall, maya has amazing healing, damaging and elemental applying powers to kick some major alien butt! she works fantastic as a healer and support character and trust her teammates to do most of the damage, applying slag and other elements to help the team or carry herself to victory and world domination with a trusty sub machinegun (SMG) in hand!

gaige, the mechromancer!

gaige, the mechromancer!

gaige was and is the first DLC character to borderlands history! she is very versatile and able to use more or less any gun type just fine!

gaige's weapon of choice is more towards gun types or stats! guns with shock elemental damage, small-ish clips, good base damage and firing more projectiles per shot works great! she works wonders with pistols, shotguns and sniper rifles because of these reasons, but again, other guns work great too and I will explain it after the action skill is covered! also, she does wonders with shock elemental damage!

gaige's action skill is called "summon death trap"! you summon death trap to fight for you, which is a giant robotic flying torso equipped with razor sharp claws, lazers and other nice things to make him a major badass teammate! he glies, which is nice and has noclipp enabled, which lets him fly through things just fine! don't worry, this is an intentional feature made by gearbox so he won't get stuck on every little thing he comes in contact with!

in normal mode, death trap is very strong, even with little to no skills put in to boost him! however, in true and ultimate vault hunter mode, he becomes a little more of a distraction than anything else if you dont build heavily around him! summon death trap has a 60 second cooldown, which can be reduced by skills, class mods and relics.

damage wise, gaige works wonders with death trap, shock elemental damage and massive amounts of gun damage with anarchy! and now I can finally talk about it! anarchy is a special skill mechanic for gaige and lets her become very strong with most if not all gun types! anarchy, when you have unlocked it, will make it so every time gaige kills an enemy or reload an empty clip on her guns while in combat, she gains 1 stack of anarchy! each stacks gives 1,75% increased gun damage, but also gives 1,75% reduced accuracy!

you can only lose stacks in 3 ways: the first is to die, in which you lose all of your stacks. kinda sucks, I know... the second is if you reload your gun before emptying the clip! this can be very frustrating for people new to gaige, and really sucks for people with a reload fetish, but you'll get used to it aventually. and the third way is to quit the game.

anarchy gives gaige a heavy snowball effect as you play in longer periods of time with her. as you get more and more anarchy stacks, you aventually can take down badasses with just a few shots! however, anarchy is also a bit of an issue for gaige aswell, aside from the horrible accuracy you get! firstly, this makes he a much more solo play type of character, as when playing online you have 1 to 3 other people to take your precious kills, dramaticly slowing down your anarchy building!

also, the anarchy stacks makes it really suck big time when you die or have to quit the game, since you lose the stacks! gaige is the only vault hunter where I have had rage quits because I died due to some random suicide enemy in the middle of nowhere and lost my hard earned 500 stacks. the same goes for when you have to quit the game, as it takes some time to build up the stacks again...

but that is the main bad things I have to say about her! other than that, she can be lots of fun to play! she has some fairly funny and/or cute things she says from time to time, she has a fun and fairly basic gameplay mechanic and when you go shock build with some certain weapons, you can make one hell of a light show!

gaige is a very fun character, with some, if not THE highest gun damage possibilities in the game! she snowballs very well with anarchy and is great for solo players and for people that play long stretches at a time! not very recommended for newer players, but a lot of fun non the less!

krieg, the psychopath!

krieg, the psychopath!

krieg is by far my favorite vault hunter! he is the second DLC playable character, and has a very high risk, high reward type of playstyle with never having the shields up, allways taking damage and rewarding yourself with it!

kriegs weapon of choice is his trusty buzz axe for melee, shotguns for weapons in general and fire elemental damage for a nice and toasty inferno!

kriegs action skill is called "buzz axe rampage"! when activated, krieg pulls out his buzz axe and goes melee, gaining increased movement speed and a whopping 500% melee damage and slightly faster swing speed with his axe! krieg can aim and throw his axes for reduced damage but being thrown at a distance! additionally, krieg regains all his health back every time he kills someone while in buzz axe rampage!

buzz axe rampage has a 120 second cooldown. 2 full minutes! however, this can naturally be reduced by taking damage and other things, to the point where it's at a 5-7 second cooldown, or not have any cooldown at all!

krieg is more or less an incarnation of all the psycho enemy types! the gun shooting psycho, which is just regular krieg but with less abs, but now with more abs!
the iconic melee psycho with his buzz axe rampage action skill but with more damage and more abs!
the allways cool and frightening and (just admit it ladies) hot, hellborn psycho with his hellborn skill tree, but with way more abs!
the suicide psycho with a certain skill that changes his fight for your life state, but with, you guessed it, more BOOM!
and the forever single badass psycho with a certain skill, but with way more abs!
did I mention krieg has some awesome abs? really, take a look here!



jokes aside, krieg's playstyle involves around taking damage all the time, often being on fire, dealing tons of damage all the time and having more near death experiences than every action hero ever made by hollywood!

similar to gaige, krieg is also a little more in his own favor by playing alone. since he is very reliant on killing baguys himself, it doesn't allways help when you have other people taking your victims from you!

also, krieg is rather heavy focused on killing mobs of fleshy enemies such as bandits and animals, rather than robots and flying things. this makes krieg a little less effective and successfull in fighting robots than the others. granted, that is not a big problem if you go and use shotguns, but that is a little awkward to use sometimes and doesn't allways have the proper gear or skill compositions to pull off...

still, krieg is a ton of fun, and is the only vault hunter that I enjoyed going through ultimate vault hunter with! he is great if you're interested in playing as a screaming, mentally insane, physicly ripped crazy guy that loves to talk about meat, blood and nipple salads, whatever that's supposed to be. he is one of the more difficult characters to master, as hitting with thrown buzzaxes can be difficult, and melee is often the best way to deal with some areas.

still fantastic at dealing tons of damage with his buzzaxes, his warm and crips inferno or his lovely shotgun with some kind of funny dialogue on the side!

GEAR!

here I will go over the different gear. I will go over the general pros and cons of the weapon types, what the different manufacturers have in personality and specialties with their guns, talk about the different shield types, go over what the class mods do and talk about relics!

again, use the box to the right to find the info you need!

gear quality!

gear quality is simply the color quality of the gear you can find. the base game has 5 ranks from lowest and worst to highest and best/rarest!

white

green

blue

purple

neon purple, AKA E-tech[borderlands.wikia.com]

orange, AKA legendary[borderlands.wikia.com]

the quality on the guns usually determin the stats on the gun, what bonuses it can have, the quality in the paint job or general design and how well it performs. then, with the addition of DLC, we got some more qualities and colors. however, these are mostly known by the name of the quality type rather than the color!

pink, AKA seraph[borderlands.wikia.com]. is obtained by defeating raid bosses[borderlands.wikia.com] from the 4 main campaign DLC's and can be purchased from the seraph vendors[borderlands.wikia.com], using seraph crystals. to obtain crystals, you have to defeat (or be in a game where someone defeats) a seraph guardian AKA raid bosses from DLC, in ultimate vault hunter mode (playthrough nr. 3). they are usually weaker or altered versions of legendy weapons, but some of them can be pretty good and are unique, such as the hawk eye[borderlands.wikia.com]

cyan, AKA pearlescent[borderlands.wikia.com], is obtained as very rare drops from come enemies, mostly found by farming loot midgets (a rare enemy). pearlescent weapons have very special effects, but sadly they often lack the useability compared to so many other weapons in the game. as far as I know, you require at least one of the ultimate vault hunter packs[borderlands.wikia.com] to be able to spawn and/or use them.

gun types!

here I shall talk about the different gun types, what their general pros and cons are and what manufacturers (see a little further down if you want to know more about them) make those guns! I will not list legendary or unique guns here, but I will mention what they meen further down the list! I will also give my opinions on the guns in usage, though I will try to keep it breef (watch how it will probably take most of the page, I am terrible at keeping my writings short)!

the guns you can find in borderlands 2 are: assault rifles, pistols/handguns, submachineguns/SMG's, shotguns, sniper rifles and rocket launchers/RPG's!

pistols!
+ high base damage
+ fast reload speed
+ low recoil in most cases
+ all manufacturers make pistols
- medium clip size, barely more (in most cases, anyway) than sniper rifles and shotguns
- slower firerate than assault rifles and SMG's
- have less ammo than assault rifles and SMG's

conclusion: the pistols are the bread and butter of weapons in borderlands 2, and will likely be something you will find yourself using a lot throughout a large portion of the game! with the high damage, low recoil and usually fast reload speed, they are very accurate and great use for close to medium range.

assault rifles!
+ high firerate, second highest firerate in general of all weapons
+ has a rare "spinnigun" barrel that can make them the fastest firing weapons in the game!
+ has a special "grenade" barrel that lets them do more damage per shot!
+ high ammo capacity (second highest)
+ good clip size, generally the highest
+ good DPS and sustained damage
- has the second lowest base damage of all weapon types, only higher than SMG's
- has higher recoil than pistols, making it difficult to maintain accurate shots unless burst firing
- the "grenade" barrel consumes more ammo, making it usually ammo in-efficient

conclusion: assault rifles need notibly more modifications and devotion into them to make them worth using more often than not. the in-efficient ammo problem with the "grenade" barrel is about the fact that the damage dealt per grenade shot from them (which consumes extra ammo between 2 to 4 per shot) deals less damage than another normal assault rifle using as many shots (still lots of fun to use though!).
as said, assault rifles need more devotion than pistols to make them more effective, as 2 of the manufacturers have generally the pistols being all around better than the assault rifles in allmost every way...

SMG's!
+ high firerate, making good DPS
+ highest total ammo possibility (of around 1620 bullets from the black market upgrade shop)
+ very good for elemental weapon users, high firerate = more bullets and better chance of applying elemental effects!
+ one of the strongest weapons in the game is an SMG!
- often has to do many critical hits to be efficient, which can be difficult as many enemies have difficult to reach critical hit spots
- has the lowest base damage of all weapon types, meaning you need that massive ammo pool!
- the strong SMG is from DLC and consumes 3 ammo per shot for higher damages (its called the sandhawk and is obtained from captain scarlett and her pirates booty DLC)
- in the later game its mostly maya that can pull off using an SMG properly
- in the later game they usually turn into elemental application weapons rather than damage dealing weapons (unless you have some specific build around them)

conclusion: SMG's are generally good guns with strong DPS, especially with multiple critical hits with a decent SMG can often melt enemy health bars in very short time. however, again with assault rifles, they need some devotion and focus to be useful into the later parts of the game unless you find some very strong ones or have a lot of ammo for them.

shotguns!
+ fighting sniper rifles for highest single shot damage
+ very effective with hyperion for elemental shotguns
+ have one of the stronger legendary weapons in the game (the conference call)
- has the third lowest max ammo, capped at 220 from the black market upgrade shop
- become less and less useable as the game progresses without specific builds around them
- krieg and gaige are the only ones with builds that work well with shotguns
- have low clip size

conclusion: shotguns are a hit and miss weapon. they have amazing close range damage, and it shows still later. but DPS wise, they get destroyed by pistols, assault rifles and SMG's (at least, most of the time). especially around ultimate vault hunter mode, shotguns become very rarely used without a devoted build. however, a good krieg and gaige build can make some really good work with shotguns!

sniper rifles!
+ highest base damage of all guns (shotguns have extra pellets to they can compete, but the damage ber projectile bullet is the highest with snipers)
+ has increased base critical hit damage, and can 1-2 shot most marauders with 1 headshot
+ amazing long range potential damage!
- has the second lowest total ammo, up to 132 from the black market upgrade shop
- only zeo and gaige can make good use of sniper rifles towards the late game
- critical hitboxes are small and picky when they feel like letting you get a critical sometimes

conclusion: sniper rifles are kind of interesting weapons. early game in normal mode, they can destroy many enemies even with little critical or weapon damage boosts to them (requires headshots), but soon fall to the "kind of ok but not really good" box together with shotguns and assault rifles. again, you can use them fine, but you need more devotion and build specifics to them.

finally, the critical hitboxes are not perfect, and several times when I have used sniper rifles or other scoped weapons and swore I hit the head (or wherever the critical spot was on the enemy) but it only registered as a regular bodyshot, leaving to frustration and wasted ammo.

rocket launchers!
+ highest base damage of all weapons
+ explotions lets you kill many enemies in 1 shot
+ fantastic to quickly get you up from fight for your life
+ special builds can be made to grant infinite rocket ammo, kind of overpowered
- has the lowest ammo capacity of only 33 ammo maximum with the black market upgrade shop
- the special builds with rockets require very specific gear that is rather rare and sometimes difficult to farm for
- ammo and RPG's are rare to find, and the ammo is very expensive in the ammo shop

conclusion: you will usually find yourself carrying a rocket launcher in the dark corner of your invntory that you rarely take a second glance at, and you will probably use it just to quickly get out of fight for your life or take down a strong enemy that you have trouble with. no need to devoted or specific builds to make them good, just not very often used outside of a "get out of fight for your life" card.

manufacturer: dahl!

here I will talk about the manufacturers, their personalities, specialties etc. I will not talk about the shields, class mods or grenade mods they may be making, as that will be covered by itself! so basicly, this is talking about their guns...

dahl!

trivia about dahl!

dahl is the military manufacturer and is (at least to my observations) where axton, the commando comes from. at least, his turret is. also, dahl is the company that made sanctuary and the mining operations in the caustic caverns. they are also the company that took Patricia Tannis to pandora!

they are the makers of the echo hud that the player is given by claptrap in the beginning of both borderlands games! they are the makers of the green trash bins found all over pandora that can contain loot, and they also made toolboxes you may find scattered around the place. they also created the dam that later became the bloodshot stronghold and a city somewhere in the dust that is now burried under piles of sand.

finally, the first pistol you get from clap traps cabinet is a white quality dahl pistol!

here is a link to the wiki page about dahl if you want to learn some more! http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Dahl

weapon designs!
design wise, dahl weapons usually carry camo paint jobs and look sort of realistic, at least compared to the other manufacturers.


weapons manufactured: pistols, assault rifles, SMG's, sniper rifles.

unique trait: while zoomed, all their guns will fire in bursts of 2 to 4 shots per burst (usually). this makes dahl weapons very accurate with their weaponry and thus very dangerous. however, regular fire is maintained while firing from the hip (not down the sights) and can cancel the burst. pistols and sniper rifles fire single shot when they hipfire, assault rifles and SMG's fire in full auto.

also, due to this mechanic, the firerate of the guns is not as much of a game changer. this leads to 2 things:

1: pistols have about the same amount of firerate (though slightly slower) as the assault rifles while zoomed, which makes the reason to use the pistol over the assault rifle for dahl notibly higher unless you have an assault rifle specific build

2: the "spinnigun" barrel has little to no effect on the dahl assault rifles with its increased firerate unless you fire from the hip, but this leads to most of the bullets flying everywhere but your intended target most of the time.

it also makes one big problem for one of their weapons: the sniper rifles. they are more or less useless compared to the other sniper rifles, being nothing but massive ammo wasters. the reason for this is that they also fire in bursts while zoomed, but they have a high amount of recoil. so usually, you end up hitting 1 bullet in the enemy, and the other 2 in the burst miss. you can try and zoom, fire 1 shot and quickly zoom out, but it gets tedious and has no benefits over any other sniper rifle.

so what I'm saying is: the pistols, assault rifles and SMG's are great, but the sniper rifles are horrible. perhaps in close range against something with a big critical hit spot "cough cough" warrior "cough", but other than that they are not particlarily good in combat. look kind of cool, but that is about it.

manufacturer: jakobs!

trivia!
jakobs have no guns in the game that have elemental effect. however, in the campaign DLC of captain carlett and her pirates booty, mister torgues campaign of carnage and sir hammerlocks big game hunt, you can find up to 4 elemental jakobs weapons. this makes jakobs the only manufacturer that does not have a single E-tech gun in the loot pool!

gun designs!
jakobs weapons are made out of wood and strong steel! their blue and purple rarity being made in decorated and stainless silver and gold metal! also, jakobs guns has a clear old western theme, having their pistols being revolvers instead of regular pistols!


weapons manufactured: pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles

unique trait: jakobs weapons has the highest base damage, and a small but not mentioned critical hit damage increase to all their weapons! jakobs weapons do not come in elemental types and no E-techs are made. also, their pistols/revolvers, assault rifles and shotguns usually, with perhaps 3 exceptions, fire as fast as you can pull the trigger. this makes jakobs not only very high on damage, but with a good trigger finger, you can have as fast a firerate as you want! the problem here is that you have to tap the button, and can not hold it as none of their guns are automatic!

that is where the bonuses sort of end. jakobs weapons suffer from high recoil, low magazine size and (not usual with pistols) have a slow reload speed. they also have a very slow recoil recovery rate compared to some of the other manufacturers, which makes their sniper rifles annoying to use many times since you have to wait several seconds before the sway gets reduced enough to make an accurate shot.

they also, due to the firerate being stuck on "fire as fast as you can pull the trigger", the assault rifles from jakobs are more or less terrible compared to the pistols, being nothing more than slower and weaker versions with slightly more ammo and clip size! their shotguns are also very annoying to use as they rarely have more than 2 shots in the clip, meaning that you spend 60% of combat looking at the high numbers and the reload animation!

with all that said, jakobs make fantastic reolvers! the high base damage, the massive firerate and the not too high recoil while aiming down sights gives them such a high DPS, it takes a very high amount of power to beat it!

also, even though the sniper rifle recoil recovery is extreemly annoying at times, it is stil viable for massive headshot damage potential! heck, even the bodyshots pack a punch!

the same matters for the shotguns, more or less. sadly though, there are much better alternatives for the shotguns and the assault rifles.

manufacturer: torgue!

trivia!
torgue, the creator of the torgue weaponry, sold the company for 12 bucks and a high-five!
mister torgue[borderlands.wikia.com] is the CEO of torgue corporation, and he likes explotions. upon the discovery of a third vault, mister torgue made a tournament to find "the ultimate badass that shall spill the blood of the ultimate coward" to open the vault and find pandora's nr. 1 badass.
he held the tournament in "the badass crater of badassitude", and later found out it was illegal (pandora has rules?) to do that, so moxxi got the arena. mister torgue is a character that gives quests to the player in tiny tina's assault on dragon keep!

wiki page on torgue (the manufacturer): http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Torgue

weapon design!
torgue guns are made of white gray metal, often corroded and damaged in multiple areas of the gun (nothing that affects the stats of the gun) and usually have a double set of collors in a chess board/goal finnish line pattern. the collors and loaction is slightly altered between guns and the quality of the guns.
torgue weapons are usually very large compared to some of the other manufacturers. some of the prefixes on torgue weapons have sexual innuendos in them, such as pounding, double penetrating etc.


weapons manufactured: pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, rocket launchers

unique trait:
torgue has the highest weapon damage, and all their guns deal extra explosive damage. this explosive damage makes the damage stat on the weaponcard rather misleading as the card could perhaps say 126 damage but in real time it dealt around 300 damage. also, torgue weapons deal splash damage! torgue and jakobs are 2 of the 3 powerhouse manufacturers, and torgue dominated the damage per shot stats. there are no E-tech weapons in the main game for torgue guns, but in tiny tinas assault on dragon keep DLC[borderlands.wikia.com] there is an E-tech shotgun made by torgue called the swordsplotion (just imagine for a minute what that might do).

so torgue does damage really well, anything else? well, yes there is. firstly, torgue weapons usually have a slow firerate. some of the slowest, actually. the recoil management is OK, which works very well with the slow firerate. pistols more often than not don't go much above the maximum accuracy point because they fire so slow. however, that can make torgue a little annoying to use!

then there is the reason torgue does so much explosive damage: all their guns (not rocket launchers) fire explosive yellow slugs. these yellow slugs are notibly slower than bullets, making torgue a bad choice for attacking enemies either at long range or that move a lot. they make some amazing damage weapons, and the damage per shot numbers are sky high! but the damage per second numbers compared to other manufacturers such as jakobs or vladof is most likely lower.

in final, torgue makes some very slow pistols, but their assault rifles and especially the shotguns are really good, with strong damage and only slightly below average firerate! note that I am talking about the weapons in general and not taking any special weaponry in concideration!

manufacturer: maliwan!

trivia!
maliwan makes their own alcohol beverage called "maliwan black label"
maliwan has the highest elemental chance and damage of all the manufacturers.
all maliwan weapons come with elemental effects of either fire, shock, corrosive or slag.
according to the voice in kriegs head named "nipple salads", someone wielding a maliwan SMG is instantly a vault hunter

weapons design!
maliwan weapons have a very slick and smooth guns, usually with a variety of colors to their guns. they are very futuristic and have unique reload animations that are fairly different from the other manufacturers.
maliwans weapons can often seem to have the weaponslightly glowing in first person view. this is likely an effect of the weapons very smooth and shiny metal that it is made of.
maliwan pistols and sniper rifles seem to have an elemental damage boost that is not directly told in the weapon cards.
all maliwan pistols consume 2 ammo per shot by default. a maliwan pistol that shoots 2 shots per trigger pull consumes 4 ammo, and E-tech maliwan pistols consume 3 ammo.


weapons manufactured: pistols, smg's, sniper rifles, rocket launchers

unique traits:
all maliwan weapons have elemental effects to them. they allways have (at least most of the time) increased elemental effect chance and elemental damage than any other manufacturer with the same base level and weapon!
maliwan pistols and maliwan sniper rifles gain increased elemental damage that is not written on the card, which probably explains why the pistols consume 2 ammo per shot. pistols gain a 100% damage bonus and sniper rifles gain 60% damage increase. this makes them very strong, and is why maliwan is the 3rd damage manufacturer.

maliwan weapons have the characteristic of having fast reload speed and high firerate on their weapons, but the clip size and base bullet damage is notibly lower than many of the other manufacturers. however, due to the elemental multiplier, using the propper element should not be a huge problem!

sadly however, in ultimate vault hunter mode, maliwan weaponry becomes nearly useless! as the elemental damage over time is the primary way of damaging enemies, you have a big problem! because of the constant health regeneration all enemies (except badasses and bosses) have in ultimate vault hunter mode, they can usually outheal the damage over time! especially near or above level 72, only the infection and perhaps grenades can outdamage their health regeneration in damage over time!

maliwan make some really cool looking and feeling guns, and who doesn't like burning enemies to a crisp? they are fun and very useful, all the weapons in general!

manufacturer: vladof!

trivia about vladof!

vladof seems to be russian!
the design for a vladof assault rifle seems to resemble the AK-47 (more or less)
I guess I don't have much trivia on vladof...

weapon designs!
color wise, vladof seems to enjoy a grey and/or black color to their weapons. however, the purple rated guns usually come in a shinier grey color, which can sometimes look like silver.


weapons manufactured: assault rifles, pistols, sniper rifles and RPG's!

unique traits!
the unique trait with vladof is that their assault rifles, pistols and sniper rifles all have very high firerate and a notibly low amount of recoil! even though vladof does not posses great damage-per-bullet, they have excelent damage-per-second! also, the low recoil makes it drasticly easier to mainting multiple hits over time with longer bursts of fire!

also, if high firerate and low recoil wasn't enough, vladof also has the second highest clip size of all the manufactuers (at least, usually), which lets you fire for a while without having to spend most of your time looking at the reload animations!

now, this is where things get very interesting! vladof makes some very peculiar rocket launchers! vladof rocket launchers "reduces ammo consumed as you keep firing"! this meens that after firing enough rockets in short time of each other, you will get to fire a free rocket or 2, which is pretty cool. now this might not sound like much, but with the right build (primarily with the gunzerker) you can do some pretty serious damage!

also, vladof makes a very special but also very rare barrel for the assault rifles, called the spinigun! this more or less gives a minigun effect to the assault rifles, in which they also come with larger magazines, and fire slowly at first but then, as you keep firing the firerate goes so high it's not even funny! this gives these guns so much DPS that you can melt through many enemies very quickly! this is especially true with for example the legendary "shreddifier" (vladof assault rifle with the spinigun barrel) and the legendary shield "the bee" (amp shield that grants a lot of damage) can melt through bosses' health bars very quickly!

overall, vladof makes some pretty neat guns! their sniper rifles and assault rifles are very strong and very good, while the pistols are a little less so. though the firerate is decent, it doesn't allways manage to match the raw power of a jakobs or the burst of a dahl. good manufacturer anyway!

manufacturer: hyperion!

trivia about hyperion!

cl4p-tp, better known as clap trap, is a hyperion manufactured robot!
hyperion is the main villain of both 1 or 2 DLC from borderlands 1, and is the main bad guy, bossed around by everyones favorite villain, handsome jack, in borderlands 2!
hyperion also manufactures the new-U stations and the catch-a-ride stations!
in ancient greek mythology, hyperion was the titan of light!

weapons design!
design wise, similar to maliwan, hyperion is very fancy, expensive and futuristic! all hyperion weapons reload the clip by removing the scope area of the gun and take out the slim clip and replace it, for so retracting it. color wise, they seem to enjoy yellow and red colors, with some green and black on the rarer weapons!


weapons manufactured: pistols, SMG's, shotguns and sniper rifles

unique traits!

all hyperion weapons have a very special effect most players call "reverse recoil"! what this does is probably what you imagine when you hear the words "reverse recoil"! the guns start very inacurate, having low accuracy and a lot of recoil to the point where the camera will jump all over the place while you fire! however, as you keep firing, you become more accurate and get less recoil to the point where you can potentially hitt several headshots on a bandit standing across the map while firing from the hip (you kind of need some luck for that, but you get the point)!

hyperion weapons, with the exception of the sniper rifles, usually have a fairly good rate of fire. their shotguns and SMG's ar the most notable, as the firerate and accuracy makes the shotguns very effective and useful on longer range than any other shotgun from the other manufacturers!

the SMG's are a little different. the white and green rarity SMG's are often (at least in my experience) more or less terrible. they have a slow firerate and small clips, and they build up the reverse recoil so slowly and inefficiently that you might get 6 out of the 27 bullets to hit anything! the blue and above SMG's however, are more or less fantastic! especially when you find them with a critical hit bonus, you can hit several hits and melt health bars very quickly!

the sniper rifles, though not allways containing great damage and have a slow rate of fire, you can usually get them fairly accurate while aiming down sights, to the point where there is no sway or recoil. this lets you land multiple shots, which is nice!

their pistols are OK, but not that great sometimes. they are not bad either, just kind of... meh.

manufacturer: tediore!

now we come to the two manufacturers I like to call: the who?

trivia about tediore!
tediore has the fasest reload speed of all manufacturers!
tediore is considered the cheapest manufacturer in the borderlands universe

weapons designs!
design wise, tediore guns are usually in a blocky square shape with a futuristic tone and style to them. they usually contain scaly pattern designs on their guns. despite this, tediore weapons are often made of plastic, thus the cheapness of their guns. they go on multiple colors depending on the rarity of the weapon, with purple rarity tediore guns having a shiny clear black body with a hint of purple.
most, if not all tediore weapons seem to have "tediore" written on them somewhere.


weapons manufactured: pistols, SMG's, shotguns and RPG's

unique traits!
tediore has the fastest reload speed of all manufacturers! but that is also their main mechanic! when a tediore weapon is reloaded, it is thrown like a grenade and all remaining bullets in the clip is lost! the weapon will then either explode upon hitting an enemy or after a few seconds if hitting no enemy. the explotion is decided by:
1 what element the gun is. no element = explosive, fire = fire etc.
2 how many bullets were left in the clip. more bullets = more damage on the explotion!
3 what level it is and what quality/rarity it has!
in general, especially and explosive or fire focused krieg, the psychopath can make amazing burst damage with the tediore explotions, even though it constumes ammo very quickly.

the other stats on tediore weapons are not particularily impressive, though not terrible either. one neat trick that you can do to take use of a tediore weapon is to carry one with you that is of a weapon type that you do not use. for example, if you do not use any shotguns but you find a tediore shotgun, you can fire 1 shot and reload it to get the explotions without draining ammo for your more important guns.

truth be told though, I barely ever use a tediore weapon as they are a little strange and awkward to use since you mostly just tap the fire button and hit reload. they can, mechanicly speaking, be devastating, but they are not a favorite of mine. they are kind of meh to be honest, and it is mostly the unique weapons that draw any attention to it from me. I sometimes forget that tediore even exists sometimes...

manufacturers: bandit!

last weapons manufacturer! yay...
trivia about bandit!
bandit seems to be (for what ever reason) replacing the S&S corporation in borderlands 2
bandit makes kinda cool looking guns

weapons design!
design wise, bandit weapons are often big and large in size. when taking a look at them, you can usually see they are made with spare scrap parts like bolts and screws etc. bandit weapons of white and green rarity have a red body paint job with shark teeth and/or eyes on them.

the blue and purple assault rifles come with belt fed magazines, resembling LMG's! all bandit manufactured gear has misspellings in the names.


weapons manufactured: pistols, assault rifles, SMG's, shotguns and RPG's

unique trait!
bandit weapons seem to have 3 things to focus on!
1 a big magazine! bandit weapons have the highest magazine size, with purple assault rifles ususally having over 100 bullets in the magazine!
2 a big gun that looks and sort of feels cool while you shoot it!
3 absolutely horrible stats, making some of the most worthless guns in the entire pandora history! seriously, bandit has horrible: damage, firerate, accuracy, high recoil, slow reload speed, very low elemental chance and are just downright terrible! tediore had at least something interesting and useful with them, but in using bandit weapons, good luck with doing anything with them!

however, bandit is not all bad in their guns. true, the general stats are more or less lacluster, the shotguns and rocket launchers are not half bad, though still outclassed more or less anyway...

I will admit that the designs are kind of cool at times, and some of the unique weapons such as the slagga[borderlands.wikia.com], the badaboom[borderlands.wikia.com] and a few more are kind of good, and they make some pretty good grenade mods and shields, though that comes later...

as for using bandit, there are generally better choices from the other manufacturers. don't belive me? ok, try going the whole game using mostly bandit weaponry. oh yeah, I got 78 bullets in my blip! too bad I have to use 70 of those to kill this one midget standing just a few feet away from me...

all shield types!

here I will cover all the shield types. I will not bother with unique shields or something like that, just talk about the general shields. I shall do my best to get pictures aventually...

regular shields

these are pretty straight forward. you simply have your shield capacity, recharge rate and recharge delay. not much else than that. moving on...

elemental imunity shields

these are more a stat bonus available for most shields. simply put, having these makes it so you take notibly reduced damage from that elemental type and makes you immune to have the damage over time effect applied to you! these are fairly rare to find, but certainly useful in the right places!

spike shields!

spike shields are only in effect while there is stil some shield capacity left on it! while it is up, all enemies that try to melee attack you will take spike damage shown as a stat on the shield. these come in fire, shock and corrosive elemental damage. very handy against creatures, psychos and other melee focused enemies! keep in mind that the spike effect only works on meleeing enemies, and the shield has to have at least 1 capacity to apply the spike damage!


nova shields!

nova shields work a little differently than spike shields. basicly, when your nova shield gets depleted, you will release a single powerful elemental nova, damageing all enemies within your reach! the shield will have to fully charge before you can release another nova. the novas come in explosive, shock, fire and corrosive elemental type!


roid shields AKA maylay shields!

roid shields/maylay shields are the bread and butter for melee builds! as the description of them tell us, while they are depleted AKA 0 capacity left, your melee attacks deal notibly increased melee damage! unlike nove shields, the roid damage persists whenever the shield is empty! keep in mind that it only applies to melee attacks and only works while the shield is down!
note: I find myself calling them roid shields, but the real name seems to be "maylay shields".


amp shields!

amp shields are practicly the oposite of maylay shields! while you have an amp shield active, your next shot fired with a gun will deplete a base amount of your shield in exchange for noticeable bonus damage to that shot! fairly handy for a sniper build, for example. note that while the shield is not fully charged, you will not be able to apply more amp boosted shots!
note: the picture I used is of an amp shield that has shock immunity, so you can see how that looks like!


turtle shields!

turtle shields are fairly interesting shields, with an up-side and a down-side! the up-side is that you gain huge shield capacity compared to other shield types! the down-side is that you lose some of your maximu HP. still, these shields are very good for zero and gaige particularily, as neither has great health regain skills, and thus have less downsides from the health loss!
note: despite the name "turtle", you do not move slower with these! at least, not unless you use the legendary version!


adaptive shields!

adaptive shields are pretty much the opposite of turtle shields! the don't have as high of a shield capacity, but they instead grant increased maximum health, and while the shield is active AKA 1+ capacity left, it will make it so you take a % reduced damage from the previous elemental damage you were hit with! these shields are great for maya, krieg and salvador as all 3 have a large amount of healing and krieg and salvador rarely have their shields up for long!


booster shields!

booster shields are very peculiar shields. when you get shot and/or take damage of any kind while the shield is up, you have a chance to drop a "booster". you or your teammates can pick it up from the ground to recharge 25% of your shield capacity. sadly however, this does not allways happen, and you often find yourself taking more damage trying to pick one up rather than simply continuing. just something to keep in mind.'


absorb shields!

absorb shields are a little similar but also a lot simpler and sometimes more convinient than boost shields. when shot, you have a chance of absorbing the bullet, ignoring all the damage and adding that bullet to your inventory, which is pretty cool. note that this can only happen while the shield is active, AKA 1+ capacity left!

class mods!

I will not talk about all class mods individually, but explain what they generally do ingame!

Class mods are items you equip on your character, that are only possible to equip to a certain class/vault hunter! The class mods all have different "titles" for themselves that define that specific line of class mods, and the name of the mod will be shown below or next to your name ingame for the other players and yourself to see!

Additionally, class mods can grant bonus points in a skill for your vault hunter to make that skill extra powerful! Note that you need to have at least 1 skill point spent in said skill or skills to get the effect from the class mod, and you still have to spend the full 5 skill points yourself in a skill tree to unlock the lower tier skills. It simply makes the skills grant a lot higher stats, but these can be very powerful.

Each vault hunter have multiple class mods that grant bonuses to the whole party! These change from vault hunter to vault hunter! One example is the siren's "nurse" class mod line, that grants a flat health regeneration bonus to everyone in the party! Another is the gunzerker's "hoarder" that grants a small amount of ammo regeneration to the whole team, adding a bit of strategy and teamwork to make some very powerful builds or potential, or simply helping out if you are new to the game!

Class mods notibly change in effect depending on the quality!

White class mods only give a stat bonus, and usually it is fairly low to the other qualities!

Green class mods grant stats and a small amount of bonus points to 1 skill in a skill tree for your vault hunter.

Blue class mods grant stats and a large amount of points to 1 skill, and 1 less point than that to another skill. At level 50 and above, blue class mods grant 6 bonus points to 1 skill, and 5 bonus points to another!

Purple class mods grant stats and give 3 different skills more points, though they get smaller and smaller. At level 50, they will grants 1 skill 5 points, 1 skill 4 points and 1 skill 3 points.

There are a total of 5 legendary class mods for each vault hunter, but only 2 of them are available in the main game. 3 More class mods were added for the ultimate vault hunter pack 2!

The first class mod is possible to farm from Terramorphous the Invincible[borderlands.wikia.com], and can be farmed after finishing the main story of the game, then going to tannis and accept the mission You. Will. Die. (Seriously.)[borderlands.wikia.com]. Due to some spoilers and secrets, I will not explain too much further, as the legendary class mods are very late game material! if you become very curious to find out more, just explore the wiki page. 2 Links right above this line here!

relics!

Relics are the last item type you will usually obtain in game! They are items that grant a passive effect as long as you have them equipped, and only 1 relic can be equipped at a time. Relics are the rarest type of non-unique loot you can find.

Relics can grant bonuses in allmost anything. Increased elemental damage, increased damage resistance, granting increased ammo capacity with certain ammo types and so on. The stat changes of the same relic type (for example max health relics) will be mostly affected by rarity rather than levels. for example, a blue rated level 13 health relic might have more health than a level 20 white relic. it is a little wierd, I will admit that.

The only legendary relic in the game is blood of Terramophous[borderlands.wikia.com], which grants a small but sort of useful amount of health regeneration.

Not a whole lot more to say about relics... I think movement speed is the only stat that is not boosted by relics, but I might be wrong...

multiplayer stuff!

multiplayer is a fairly big part of borderlands 2, and I will do my best to help you to use it!

joining an online game!

here, I shall do my best to explain how you join an online game in progress! this can be done from the main menu! first, you click on the matchmaking button, as shown below!


then, you can chose to either do a quick match, where you will search and automaticly join a game, if there are any. this is done by clicking on quick match. or, you can click on matchmaking, where you will get to see all the possible servers and games that you can join, and you can join them manually! this is done by clicking on the match browser button! you can also go back by pressing ESC or clicking on previous menu. fairly self explanatory...


if you click on match browser, you will aventually find either

hosting your own online game!

another way of playing online is simply letting people join yours! it is recommended that you tell them if there are missions or things you dont want them to do, and there are some people that for some reason think that accepting every mission, even if I am 20 levels above it, is a good idea... you know what, just read through this: http://steamcommunity.com/app/49520/discussions/0/46476144903173955/

now with that out of the way, this is how you can let people either piss off and leave you alone, or let everyone enter your game! its fairly simple and can be done from the main menu and the start menu while playing! first, you have to click on the "network options" button.

first in the main menu



then from an ongoing game



and then chosing the setting



online friends only: online friends can freely join your game and can be invited to your game. people NOT on your friendslist must be invited to join!

online invite only: only an invite from you can let other people join your game! fairly self explainatory.

online public: everyone can join your game! put it on this if you want people to join your game while you play!

LAN: local area network, basicly, I guess it connects internett and computers within a limited area. no idea what to really use this feature for...

offline: you go offline. people can't join you. simple as that. you really only need to know about online invite only and online public.

changes between single player and multiplayer!

this is generally what happens between single and multiplayer! the more players joining and playing together, the stronger the enemies are, the high spawn chances of badasses and other strong enemies is and the higher the chance of better loot. also, you have 1 to 3 other people to play with and kill stuff with, which is nice. the limit is supposed to be 4 players, but I have seen some server that say they have up to 6 spots. not sure if thats a hack or a glitch or intentional design.

either way, you probably notice, if you play on an online game with you or someone else joining or leaving that the game can lag and freeze up for a bit. this is because the game has to adapt the difficulty setting because "the creatures of pandora grow stronger" or "the creatures of pandora weaken" or something like that. basicly, it adapts the difficulty right then and there.

so to put it a bit simpler: more players = stronger enemies and more badasses = more chance of getting blue or purple rareity weapons and so on. its still generally easier to play online as long as you're not underleveled or undergeared.

story wise, nothing changes. the quests, main or side quest alike, will not change in the story depending on if you're playing solo or with others, so dont worry about that. it is purely gameplay based AKA more strong enemies and more blue or purple weapons may spawn!

finally, you can use text chat by pressing Y
then you type what you want to type
and then you press enter for everyone in the game to see...
good for communicating and/or letting everyone in the game to know if you're an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ or not

important note about multiplayer!

when you join a multiplayer game and they are even just a single sentence of dialogue from the main story ahead of you, there is a high chance that when you return to your own playthrough, the story progress will be erased and have not happened! you keep your gear, level and XP, but the story quest will not have moved an inch forward (though it shouldn't have moved backwards either). this can lead to a good bit of annoyance for you, so keep it in mind!

shift codes and golden keys!

As suggested by RuFleS from the comments, here is a run through of shift codes and golden keys. never thought much over these, so yeah...

Shift codes a special codes that can be found on many places, including a special section in the discussions part of the community hub! Shift codes can be redeemed by going into borderlands 2, clicking on extras in the main menu and click shift codes. There, you can see what shift code rewards you have gotten so far, and you can click on the lower part of the screen to redeem a shift code. The codes change between PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. And no, I have no idea exactly why that is...

Anyway, shift codes usually contain golden keys, but some can give you special skins, head costumisations and some other things. They usually tell you what you get for turning in these codes. as far as I know, the maximum amount of golden keys you can have are around 255, but do not quote me on it...

Now, let us talk about golden keys! as most of you probably purchased the game of the year edition (can't blame you for it, it is a pretty good deal), you will have 1 golden key available automaticly. The total amount of golden keys you have is global to all your save files. So, if you have 20 golden keys, then all of your save files can use those 20 golden keys! Once a key is used, it is used and will not return to you. But don't worry, you can get plenty of shift codes to refill your stock of them without much trouble.

golden keys are used on the golden loot chest located in sanctuary (yay, we finally got to this part!). only golden keys can open the box, and it will contain a guaranteed purple weapon, shield, grenade mod or class mod. It can also give relics, but they are locked on blue rarity. Still, this can be a big help if you feel undergeared. the items you get from the golden key chest will scale with your level. So if you are at level 44 and join someones game where the host is level 14, you can still open the gold chest for level 44 gear!

As I said(typed) earlier, you need a golden key to open the chest, but shift codes are plentiful. If you do not want to use the loot chest, nobody can really force you to do it... aaaand that is about it. happy looting!

general gameplay tips + skill tree management tips!

these are more of a personal experience, but I found it very helpfull!

when you start a new character, I would highly recommend that you try and find some time to explore and check out all the different skills in the skill trees of your character. that way you will not be overly confused or unsure of what you want to spend your skill points on once you got them!

also, if you are playing as a vault hunter with an early skill that lets you regenerate health, it could be a decent idea to upgrade that skill so you have some better sustain power! even just 1 point in that skill can help (though it might not be that much of it)!

also, you often want to grab side missions on a regular basis. more often than not, there will be sidemissions that are very convenient for the main story missions aswell, so you can easely complete them! however, if you are not the host, you should allways ask for permition from the host to accept a side mission! one of the more annoying things to experience in borderlands 2 (at least for me), is when I play online and some idiot goes and accepts 5 side missions that I am 10 levels above on, or side missions that I planned to save for the preperations to end game gear!

you can respec your skill points with a quick change station! in the main game, you can find 2 of them. the first is located in liar's berg, the first town where you met sir hammerlock. it is located across the bridge behind the broken bounty board!
the second quick change station is located in sanctuary, outside of the fast travel and golden chest room. you can't miss it. you can also change your looks if you wish to. respecing costs money, but money is rarely ever a problem!

early on, sniper rifles are extremely powerful! an up to level jakobs or maliwan with a proper element will often be able to 1 shot many regular enemies such as psychos, and just a few extra shots can perhaps take out badasses or other strong enemies! though this overpoweredness does not last very long without proper building around them, it certainly helps the early game with a decent sniper rifle!

[Shiva]

not sayin you're guide is bad or anything at all, but i still like jacobs shotguns better than the others. i dunno, mabey ive played too much doom or something but at least you dont have to do math homework with clip size, bullets used per shot, capacity, etc.

[Buttons the fierce]

Thanks n_n

[Count Smashula]

Its fairly un-common to find online games by randomly searching. The game will try and match you with someone on the same playthrough, roughly the same story mission and roughly the same level.

Go to the discussions and go to "looking for players" sub-section on the left of the screen. You can find people there.

[Buttons the fierce]

so i'm searching for games through matchmaking and I can't find a single one. am I doing something wrong?

[LC Money]

Okay. So your pictures are weird. A purple ornery jakobs pistol cannot spawn in the game as purple weapons always spawn with an accessory and ornery is a grip prefix. This also goes for the Top-Notch Home Security. "Top-notch" is a prefix which goes to tediore grips. Sooooo either you spawned these in willy-nilly without considering natural weapon spawning rules or I'm missing something. Source: http://www.xboxachievements.com/forum/showthread.php?t=425607

[Caleryth]

I am very new to the game and I've been playing a Mechromancer with a friend of mine but i don't actually play that character without him and the game gets boring after a while when playing alone. So i'd love to have a companion, trainer like you from the very beggining as you offered. If you're willing to play with me too, please contact me :3

[bart002]

ok this is weird I found a pink gun in a box 2 mins after the firehawk TPed me 10 feet forward...

[伝説 HUNDRED BEASTS]

Nice comment for Krieg, Look like hollywood badassed(escaping from dead lol)

[Sectator Pragmaticam Lex]

Haven't read your whole guide (yet), but there's a few things I beg to differ.
Salvador can be extremely proficient with shotguns. This video's old (from before uvhm2 was out) but should illustrate my point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVhSOzCmUsg
Maya can be very good at sniping too. Just use the Reaper skill (up to 88% (with a +6 class mod) increased gun damage to enemies with more than 50% health).
True, Bandit guns are really lackluster. Except launchers. Bandit launchers are just as good as Torgue's if you ask me.
Speaking of Bandit, a really good Seraph gun: the Tattler. Preferably fire or corrosive (shock only works on shields in uvhm, slag you're better off with a Slagga and a non-elemental would be a waste). Close in with an enemy, aim at crit and watch them melt. Works wonderfully playing as Siren (can immobilize mobs, making easier to close in and fire a mag on their crit).
Also sorry for the late game rant on a 101 guide, got carried on xP

[Milensius]

Many thanks!

Regards,
Your Basic Newbie