Category: Borderlands 2

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Borderlands 2 S04 – Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary True Vault Hunter Mode

Starting our playthrough of the Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary DLC in True Vault Hunter mode was a little bit of a disappointment.

It appears that this DLC hasn’t scaled correctly for our current level, meaning that the majority of the enemies we took on during this session were easy to take care of.

As per usual, there’s a certain amount of scene-setting at the start of this campaign, and that amounts for the majority of the content of the first video.

The initial battle in Sanctuary was fairly enjoyable but was obviously set up so as to be impossible to complete (otherwise the story would have been a little short!). From then on, we started to meet the infected enemies that will probably make up most of the content of this DLC, requiring a switch away from my corrosive sniper rifle as they were resistant to damage from it.

There was another good battle as we tried to meet up with Mordecai and his new avian companion before we headed back to our new base camp in readiness for (hopefully) starting the campaign proper. Hopefully, the challenge will increase as we get further into the story.

Meeting Tina to build a bomb in the Shooting the Moon mission was fun, and while some of the side missions we took on were a little tedious, there were some periods of enjoyable combat in the second video.

The final video had a few good sections. There were some interesting battles on our way to meet Cassius, and as we headed back to Helios again to rescue Butt Stallion.

On the whole, a fairly enjoyable DLC, only let down by the fact that its level was set around the 42 mark, and we were playing through above level 50.

We previously played Commander Lilith vanilla ahead of the B3 release and it was serviceably entertaining if laden with enough pointless side missions to make the process often border on tedious.

This time we did it in #tvm but unfortunately, the DLC didn’t scale to our level 50 characters, as such it was overly easy.

There were some highlights, the core Shooting the Moon mission was fun, and the subsequent mission to find an antidote to the DLC resolution is solid content.

What do I recall about these videos? That Vaughn is quite entertaining but an underused host to some uninspired content. It’s great to be back playing with some of our B2 favs but we also spend a fair amount of time with some we don’t care for; Ellie’s missions in B2 are some of the most tedious, as they are here, and Scooter is just Scooter. They do their best to make the content empathetic but you don’t really care.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m all in when it comes to killing bandits, robots and Hyperion soldiers but my interest wanes when killing animals and plant-life. There is, unfortunately, an excess of plant life in this DLC.

The stand-out beyond the core missions now I recall from the vanilla playthrough was some great loot, not so much this time as the loot was capped at level 40 (ish) and we were level 50

The DLC is pretty and does bridge B2 to B3. Play it if you haven’t, it’s free. If you’re above level 40, I’d only do the core story missions unless you feel compelled to wallow in the world and you love killing plant life.

If you don’t feel compelled to do it first hand then watch our videos and experience the joy vicariously.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

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The Final Showdown – Borderlands 2 S03E08 – True Vault Hunter Mode

The road to the final confrontation with Jack and the Warrior provides for some classic Borderlands 2 combat.

Wave after wave of Hyperion soldiers and robots (some very high-powered) provide excellent opportunities for some very enjoyable sequences of death and destruction.

With some experimentation going on with weapon loadouts (primarily finding the best sniper rifle to use!) we soon cleared out everyone that had been put in our way, and headed in to the Vault of the Warrior for our final showdown with Jack and his new-found friend.

The final battle was a bit of a slog, but amazingly we both managed to make it through without a single death. I came incredibly close at one point when I found myself underneath the lava in Second Chance for a significant time, but just about managed to get a kill to revive myself.

Once the Warrior and Jack were gone, the big reveal gave us a hint as to what might be to come in Borderlands 3. So come on, get it off Epic Exclusive and on to Steam!

In the meantime, what’s next?

The final stage of the main B2 story mission comprises three stages. First, you have to fight your way through the main gates protecting the vault compound. Then you have to fight your way through several layers of security leading to the vault and then when you’re in the vault you have to kill the Warrior, which is big and mean and breathes fire.

As the first two stages are all about taking down Hyperion robots my slag sniper and the golden corrosive gun did the job nicely.

Just inside the second stage, there’s a blown-up bridge you have to jump over which for some reason I regularly fail if I’m in coop. This time was no exception. Very annoying. I think it was my only respawn.

Save for that there were some excellent moments, AD and me sniping from scaffolding as Brick tore into the robots was a highlight.

As you get nearer the vault the fighting gets tough and a fight for life is waiting around every corner. The rule of the day is don’t rush into anything.

In the actual vault having to fight Jack is a nice variation on the boss confrontation but taking down the Warrior is still about staying alive and sheer volume of damage. The only weapon that seemed to make any impact was my slag pistol, which I also used to kill the Warrior in the vanilla game.

I’m not sure if you get extra loot for letting Lilith kill Jack but it is quite a nice way to end the game.

All in all, only playing through the story missions was a great way to experience B2, especially in TVM. We were way too strong at the beginning but I’ve never been averse to a bit of demi-god mode. I’m already itching to get at it again in Ultimate Vault Hunter, which from a brief taster seems much harder.

See you there.

 

 

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Infiltrating the Stockade – Borderlands 2 S03E07 – True Vault Hunter Mode

After Brick and his boys blew up the bridge for us, we now had to get to the Hyperion Info Stockade to find out where the Vault was.

As ever, the expected simple route didn’t work out, so we had to overload the pumping stations to blow a hole in the pipeline to give us access to the Stockade. Cue lots of enjoyable fighting against Hyperion soldiers and robots.

Once into the Stockade, Jack threw more high-level robots at us to fight our way past, including a couple of very challenging battles against the very well armed Saturn robot, and then a Constructor. Downloading the data also led to some more enjoyable battling of robots and the like.

Nothing particularly outstanding in this session, but some pretty decent sections of combat that definitely made this a fun session. Next time we’ll be taking on the Warrior in the final mission of the story. Watch this space!

You will notice at the beginning of this episode I have switched from using the golden gun as a primary to a slag SMG. It has taken me countless hours of gameplay in full knowledge of the world dynamics to realise a slag gun coupled with my corrosive cloud is a deadly combination in B2.

The slag SMG is a great option because it gets a lot of rounds into the enemy in a short time, almost always into a slagged state as the corrosive kicks in. If the enemy is high powered enough to survive the initial onslaught I’ll then pull out the golden pistol to pile on the corrosive damage.

Corrosive works really well against robots but isn’t so effective against flesh, but that’ll take me another few hours to figure. All the way to episode 9 in fact and Finks Slaughterhouse. I believe the penny only dropped because AD mentioned it.

This mission against the Hyperion data centre is pretty good fun, with a combination of challenging robot opponents and some interesting building assaults all the way to the underwhelming data centre. It would have been nice if the kind of assault required to shut down the pumping stations had been deployed inside the data centre which is roughly the size of a three-story house and mostly comprised of a single staircase.

We now have the location of the vault and the mission ends with all our friends in Sanctuary wishing us well in the final assault. Tune in next week for that mission and the finale to the main story campaign.

 

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Conflict in Sawtooth – Borderlands 2 S03E06 – True Vault Hunter Mode

“Just go collect some explosives”, says Brick. What could be more easy?

This turned into a pitched battle through the Main Street Reservoir and Cramfist’s foundry, before annoying Mortar enough to allow us to ascend the elevator and steal some explosives.

The difficulty is really starting to ramp up now, and this video contains a number of deaths for both of us! I’m finding that sometimes my weapon load-out leaves a little to be desired, so it may be time to return to Sanctuary to spend some of the Gold Keys I’ve accumulated.

The battles in this episode were often very busy, with lots of high level bad guys to take on. Some of my deaths were a little frustrating personally, as it always seemed like I would be attacked and almost killed by the sole enemy, leaving me with next to nobody to kill in order to revive myself.

Borderlands 2’s rather comedy driving physics also made another entrance right at the end of the video, where both JBG and I sped over a seemingly flat bridge, only for both our cars to end up almost taking off as if we’d driven up a 45° ramp and end up performing some sort of bizarre mating ritual for a few seconds!

Next video should see us heading to the Hyperion Info Stockade to find the location of the Warrior. Should be fun!

Considering we’re only in Sawtooth to find splosives there’s a whole lot of fightin’ happenin’ to get to them splosives. ‘Specially given the amount of ordinance laying about in B2, you’d think it’d be a little easier.

However, Sawtooth is one of the best levels of gameplay with varied environments both indoors and outdoors, wide-open spaces and street-level fighting. It is enormous fun. Not to mention this gold pistol is still kicking ass.

We both died in Sawtooth too, which I don’t particularly care to do. It was one of those situations where a stray shot takes you down, and the only co-located bad guy is a super-powered midget who’s hairline you can barely see over the top of the platform. You’d prefer not to die, but it happens, I guess.
We’d already spent a while here in the last session and spent the best part of an hour here getting out.

Sawtooth is always good fun and this time was no different, save for the dying that is.

 

 

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The Darkest Hour – Borderlands 2 S03E05 – True Vault Hunter Mode

We’d fought our way up to the Bunker in the last video, so now it was time to infiltrate it and meet Angel.

We had a good battle with a horde of robots while trying to take out the autocannons, before finding out that the Bunker wasn’t actually a place, but actually BNK3R, the defence mechanism Jack had put in place around the core containing Angel.

Battling lots of robots is always great fun, and when you add in a high-level, well-armed, flying droid into the mix, things get better and better! After dispatching BNK3R, I found a rather nice view off the edge of a waterfall, only to find the current of the water I was standing in pushed me off the edge to a rather embarrassing death!

Further robot battles were the order of the day as we infiltrated the Core, with Roland and Lillith turning up to help us. Angel was duly dispatched, only for Jack to appear, kill Roland and take Lillith hostage.

Our next mission was to infiltrate the Hyperion Info Stockade to find out where the Warrior was. As ever things were never as simple as they seemed, as the bridge to the Arid Nexus was drawn up in front of us, meaning we had to to find sufficient explosives to effect entry.

After our synchronised deaths at the hands of some high-level Bullymongs, we found some more enjoyable combat as we fought our way through Sawtooth Cauldron and Smoking Guano Grotto. The next video should see us fighting to get the explosives, bring it on!

There is a moment in a good story where you hit your lowest point, usually as you approach Act Three. Probably someone important dies or almost dies. Above all the moment tells you the bad guys are in total control. This moment in storytelling is called The Darkest Hour.

Borderlands 2 has endured for so long because it is propped up by a good story. The attack on the Bunker is the false high at the back of Act Two, as we reach and then kill Angel which turns into the darkest hour when Jack appears and kills Roland. With Jack in total control of the story, we have no choice but to fight back, starting with our quest to hack the Hyperion computer systems by gaining access to the Arid Nexus.

As per the last few sessions, my golden pistol was deadly, its use by me is described in some detail in previous blogs if you’re interested.

Although Roland’s death is shocking the proceeding attack on Angel’s bunker is a grind occasionally bordering on fun, see knee-high laser beams as an example of making gameplay difficult over challenging. The same applies to Angel’s crypt too. I always love killing robots but the obstacles often make it a slog.

Sawtooth Canyon is a lot more fun and has always been a section I look forward to, mostly because of the varied environments and bad guys, requiring different tactics and gunplay approaches. The section is so long we resolve it in the next video.

So, see you in the next one as we trawl deep into the major conflict of Act Three 🙂

 

 

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The Road to Angel – Borderlands 2 S03E04 – True Vault Hunter Mode

The sections of the main campaign in Thousand Cuts and Opportunity are some of my favourites in the game. There’s a good variety of enemies to face off against, and the locations provide for some interesting gameplay.

If memory serves they also provide some interesting side missions too, so we may return to these locations later to cover some of the better ones.

The variety of enemies means that changing out the weapon loadout is often necessary, as you switch from fighting Slabs to Robots to Hyperion soldiers. Aerial bombardment is a particular challenge in this section too, particularly when you’re fighting up a relatively narrow road trying to avoid being blasted off the edge by an attack from the skies.

The final section through Thousand Cuts up to the bunker is particularly satisfying, as a host of high-level enemies are thrown at you to try to prevent the assault on the bunker. We probably should have ended this video before starting this section, but JBG and I were having so much fun we pressed on regardless and ended up deciding to end the video in the middle of a key mission.

Another satisfying factor in this video is that the challenge is definitely ramping up again now, as we start to face higher level enemies closer to the end of the campaign. Now we’re coming into the second half of the campaign, this bodes well for some exciting videos to come!

You may have heard me banging on about my amazing golden pistol the last couple of gameplay blogs. If not here’s another chance.

This session was more of the same in as much it was huge fun. I’ll never have a problem walking as a demi-god through levels and obliterating all those before me.

AD complained it was a little easy. I guess that’s why I love playing as the siren, phase-locking with level nine Helios never gets old. Demi-god all the way.

As the first point of order, we easily convinced Brick to join our gang by killing his best soldiers (funny old world). The slab mission is always good because there are lots of bandits to kill and we like to kill us some bandits.

In Opportunity, we stole Jack’s voice from a body double and I died. Death in Opportunity is easy to come by, demi-god or not. I was toe to toe with a super badass on a platform when AD launched a series of rockets at the badass. The explosions lifted me off the platform and dropped me in the ocean a long stone’s throw away. I drowned. Dying always makes me a little grumpy, but it’s not really dying if your accidentally killed by your pal, is it?

Armed with Jack’s voice module we started the first stage of the assault on Angel’s bunker; lots of robots and lots of Hyperion soldiers. I used my golden pistol almost every step of the way. The low bullet and corrosive damage are compensated by the sheer number of bullets it can fire in burst mode. With my corrosive cloud skill, nothing stood in my way.

 

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Wildlife Preservation – Borderlands 2 S03E03 – True Vault Hunter Mode

We’d managed to capture a power core after defeating Wilhelm, and when we installed this it turned out to all be a trap! Sanctuary’s shield was down, and we were under attack. The only thing for it was to ready Sanctuary to take to the skies.

Regretfully, we weren’t able to do this in time before the attack took out the Crimson Raiders headquarters. Luckily Lillith was on hand to phase Sanctuary to a new location. The only way we could get back there was to re-establish the link to the Fast Travel network by stealing a beacon and have Angel use this to reunite us with the rest of our friends.

Our final objective in this mission was to retrieve a Claptrap upgrade from the Wildlife Preservation Reserve to enable us to infiltrate Control Core Angel. We had to fight our way through the shipping yard and into the holding cells, battling lots of robots, soldiers and various critters along the way. Finally we found out that Jack had been experimenting on Bloodwing, and our rescue mission soon turned into a fight for survival against a former ally.

Unsurprisingly this resulted in the death of Bloodwing, but at least we managed to retrieve the upgrade and return it to Claptrap in Sancturary.

During the earlier portions of this playthrough in True Vault Hunter mode, I was a little disappointed at how simple things appeared to be progressing. During this session things finally started to get a little more challenging again, and I found myself enjoying the battles a whole lot more as a result. Hopefully this upturn will continue through the remainder of the Borderlands 2 story.

There is a quality to the Borderlands 2 experience that comes with having a well-crafted skill tree and weapons to complement those skills and your play style.

I’ve always preferred the sniper rifle for medium to distant targets, the fast-firing SMGs (preferably with elemental damage and a big magazine) for short to medium distance targets and pistols with sights for short to medium given specific scenarios. I always carry a high damage shotgun ideally with explosive damage for those up close get the fuck out of my face encounters.

Rarely though do you ever find it all works seamlessly and you’re constantly on the hunt for a weapon that fills some necessary need. I guess that’s good game design.

While we were rescuing Roland I picked up a gold pistol which had a fast multi-shot fire rate, fast reload, decent magazine size but low damage in both bullet and corrosive elemental. It immediately handled well and because it had such a fast fire rate it actually did a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

I equipped it soon after and haven’t stopped using it since. It works best as a secondary weapon to either the sniper or SMG, depending on the situation. Because of my additional Siren corrosive cloud damage it’s a great way to finish off enemies especially if I have them phase-locked. As the back-end of the B2 main story missions is robot heavy I felt like a demi-god as we moved through levels.

In this gameplay we did a lot, it started with the loss of Sanctuary and trying to re-unite with it, which largely involved creating a new fast travel system in Overlook and then fighting off hordes of robots. I think at several stages I said I was having too much fun and really was.

An incredibly fun session because for once, weapons, play style and skill tree all worked well together. I think this was also the first time I started to realise combining slag damage with my corrosive cloud skill was a deadly way to take down almost any opponent very quickly. It would take me a few sessions to work out but this was the first time I started to realise how powerful it was.

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Rescuing Roland – Borderlands 2 S03E02 – True Vault Hunter Mode

After a good session last time, we’d found our way to Sanctuary and met Lillith. Our first order of business in this session was to head out and rescue Roland. After a bit of messing about getting an appropriate vehicle, the mission proper started with us fighting our way through the Bloodshot Stronghold to find Roland.

As ever, our task wasn’t to be straightforward. No sooner had we met Roland, before he was whisked away by W4R-D3N. This was the start of some more prologued shooting, as we fought our way through scores of robots to catch up with Roland before destroying W4R-D3N and setting Roland free.

After a brief trip back to Sanctuary, we learned that Jack was transporting the vault key on a train, which we had to hijack and search to find the key. On our way, we met Mordecai and Tina, before blowing up the train and finally meeting the famed Wilhelm, who Angel had been harping on about for quite a while now! Wilhelm was quickly dispatched, dropping a useful power core as he did so. All we had to do now was head back to Sanctuary, replace our own ageing power core and retire to a life of peaceful solitude on the nearest beach.

This sequence of missions is probably my favourite in the whole Borderlands 2 main campaign. The tight confines of the stronghold leads for some intense gunplay, and this followed with the more wider spaced robot fighting section is a good contrast in mission style. The level of difficulty is still a little low given our high XP levels, but hopefully things will start to become a little more challenging in future sessions.

Roland’s rescue has always been one of my favourite sequences in B2. It doesn’t matter whether I’m underpowered or overpowered as we were in this session. One-shot kills no problem.

Finding the parts for a bloodshot car has always been a necessary chore and breezing passed Bad Maw is a nice change from the usual challenge it presents in a vanilla playthrough.

The fun starts in the Bloodshot Stronghold, the open spaces and narrow corridors with different levels of attack coming in waves is FUN and one of my favourite all-time game sequences.

There are a few stages in B2 I consistently die. The confrontation with Mad Mike and his deadly overpowered rockets is one of them. Mad Mike went down quickly here, but it was like unexpectedly taking down a challenging seasonal opponent. It felt good over easy.

The sequence leading to Roland’s rescue from 26-32 minutes was probably the best AD, and I have worked together, it looks good on screen, especially with my phase-lock now jumping between bad guys.

During the Bloodshot sequence, (18:37) I picked up a gold pistol from one of the cupboards, I clocked it was gold which was why I took it but didn’t pay it much attention then.

My second weapon slot always has a high fire rate, usually an SMG or pistol with good short to medium zoom. On the surface the gold pistol I picked up ‘React Hornet’ is underpowered, but it’s very high fire rate and reload coupled with corrosive damage make it an excellent weapon to go against lower-powered flesh and any level mechanical opponent. What makes it exceptionally useful is dropping down from the longer zoom of the sniper and working the crowd with its short to medium zoom.

I equipped React Hornet as we entered Tundra express and I expect it to be my primary weapon for long periods as we move forward. As you watch the video, you can see how much fun I’m having using it. I mention it during the gameplay several times as we take out Wilhelm and on through the next video.

A great session to play, hopefully, that comes across in the video.

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Finding Sanctuary – Borderlands 2 S03E01 – True Vault Hunter Mode

The first video in a new series playing through Borderlands 2’s Main Campaign in True Vault Hunter mode.

After completing Mr Torgue’s DLC, we decided to play through the main Borderlands 2 DLC campaign in True Vault Hunter mode, concentrating on the story missions initially.

We picked up the action in Liar’s Berg, initially clearing the town of Bullymongs, before concentrating on the story missions. We escorted CL4P-TP to his ship (killing lots of baddies along the way!) before finding our way into Sanctuary. We helped Scooter get Sanctuary ready to fly and then headed into the Crimson Raiders Command Center to find out what we needed to do next.

The calm didn’t last long though, as we immediately headed out to Southpaw Steam & Power to track down four Hyperion Assassins, dispatching them as we came across them. We were then told that Roland may have been captured by a mysterious gang called The Children of the Firehawk. We had to follow the signs to find The Firehawk, who turned out to be none other than our Siren friend Lilith. After helping her defeat the bandits, we decided it was a good time to call time on this video, in readiness for trying to rescue Roland next time.

On the whole, I was slightly surprised at how straightforward these missions appeared, despite playing in True Vault Hunter mode. Hopefully, as we progress through the story things will become a little more challenging.

There is something reassuring about starting another playthrough of Borderlands 2, you know there will obstacles, lots of bad guys but you already know what’s coming and what weapons you’ll need to get through it. Then it’s about taking down bad guys and surviving and not doing anything stupid like killing yourself by accident.

The great thing about this playthrough is that we’re focusing on story missions. There is no time-wasting. We are both in True Vaulthunter mode, level 40+ and in no need of XP boosts unless the mission is particularly fun.

Getting to Sanctuary was effortless, possibly too easy but still enjoyable. Then we killed the assassins in double quick time because that side mission is always fun, then onto the story. I forget the order now but think you get straight into finding the Firehawk and Lilith. Still great fun.

Next up is Roland’s rescue, really looking forward to it.

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Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage – Episode 6 – True Vault Hunter Mode

The final video in our series playing through Borderlands 2’s “Mr Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage” DLC in True Vault Hunter mode.

This video was planned to be a bit of a ‘wrap-up’ session, completing a couple of remaining side missions before continuing on to the final story mission.

We headed back into The Forge, where it appeared someone had been trash-talking us, so we had to deal with them in the appropriate manner (death, obviously!). Then it seemed that Mr Torgue himself wanted to send a camera crew along with us, capturing us killing bikers using Torgue branded weapons. This was a bit of a challenge as neither JBG nor myself had many Torgue weapons, so we were somewhat hamstrung by trying to use relatively underpowered weapons to accomplish this.

Finally, we returned to Flyboy’s territory, to attempt Tier 2 and Tier 3 battles collecting his ‘bling’ and destroying the Escort Buzzards. The Tier 2 battle was relatively straightforward, but by the time we’d failed the Tier 3 battle both JBG and I felt we’d done enough of this type of mission for one session!

It only remained to head back to the arena to take on Piston. Unsurprisingly, he continued to cheat, turning up in a robot dinosaur that proved pretty challenging to defeat. There were a number of times where one of us needed reviving, and luckily when we both ended up in that state, the Badassasaurus was close to death, so it was relatively easy to finish him off. Piston then needed dispatching, which we managed to do without too much drama.

After that, we headed back to Moxxi’s bar for a well-earned drink.

I have to say, playing through Mr Torgue’s DLC was highly entertaining, and it’s definitely a DLC that I’ll consider returning to in the future.

The final video of the Torgue campaign. This DLC has been excellent, for me largely because it has been about fighting bad guys and not nasty creatures. It’s all about bad guys for me.

That said we started with a wrap-up mission for fly-boys which turned into a slog. Largely because the enemies were all in the sky, so if you were fighting for your life the process could be tedious as the sky emptied and you were casting about for something to hit.

The final faceoff with Piston was serviceable, the monster truck made it challenging but a Boss Battle none the less. I would much better enjoy a tiered arena battle.

All in all, I loved the Torgue DLC. Borderlands 3 is in our sights so not sure how much more we will be returning to Borderlands 2, but if I was looking for something fun to do over a long night this would be on the shortlist.