Last updated on September 20th, 2022 at 04:27 pm
I’ve been playing Borderlands 2 ever since its release in 2012 (It’s 10 years old this year!). From those years of playing the best shoot and loot game ever, I have picked up a few tips for Borderlands 2 to help new players.
Don’t Get Too Attached
You’ve just found the best gun ever. It may be a purple weapon or one of the boss weapons that have their own special quirks. To begin with, you find yourself gunning down every enemy with relative ease. As you progress through the main campaign the weapon starts to lose its edge. Even its special ability is becoming more and more useless. But you can’t ditch it, it’s one of a kind…
As soon as you find a better weapon, ditch your favorite. It is taking up valuable space in your inventory and isn’t doing you any good. When you go through your second, third, etc new game plus you will have the opportunity to pick up boss weapons that are far stronger than they are in your first playthrough. It can be hard to let go, but trust me you need to. In fact, towards the end of the game, you may pick a new favorite that may be better suited to the battles ahead.
Grey weapons are the common rarity weapons in the game. Even these can outgun legendary weapons if you get one at a high enough level. You need to remain flexible when choosing your weapons.
Don’t Go For One Weapon Type
Here is my next Borderlands 2 tip. Since the ammo pool for each weapon type is shared. Having the same weapon type for all 4 of your equipped means you risk being out of ammo very quickly. Once you are out of ammo you’ll have to scavenge some which can be difficult during a heated battle. I recommend that each slot in your equipped weapons is a different weapon type. This way you will always have a weapon to switch to when your ammo runs dry for one weapon type.
Also as you progress through the game you will gain access to elemental weapons. These are super effective against specific enemies:
- Burn – Effective against Red Health Bars.
- Shock – Effective against shielded enemies.
- Corrosive – Effective against orange armored enemies.
- Slag – Weakens enemies so they are less resistant to damage.
You don’t need to have all 4 elemental types. At the beginning of the game, you are better off with burn weapons as most of the enemies will have red health bars and very weak shields. But as you progress the shields get stronger so it becomes useful to keep a shock weapon equipped. There are areas where all you will be facing are Handsome Jack’s robots. These are very susceptible to corrosive damage, at this point you can do away with the burn weapon type until later. Slag though useful, doesn’t come into its own until your second and third playthroughs when the enemies are very resistant to attacks.
Side Quest Galore
A useful Borderlands 2 tip is that you shouldn’t complete every single side quest. As you progress through your first playthrough, your character levels up very quickly. As they progress in levels the side quests start to become less difficult. With the least difficulty being Trivial and highlighted in a grey color. At this point do not bother doing the quests as the reward is very small and the time spent completing the quest could be spent doing more difficult quests or even the main quest line.
Since there is a second playthrough option where the difficulties start to ramp up for all quests, you can then complete any quests that you missed in your first playthrough. Allowing you to explore the interesting lore of the game while leveling up your character at quite a pace.
Selecting Perks Effectively
Each character has at least one playstyle. Each character also has three development trees that focus on one aspect of the character. When leveling up your character it’s important to consider what type of build would be useful for your character to get the most out of them. Instead of providing builds here, I have suggestions below which provide great ideas for builds for each character. Choose one and see how it feels. If you get it wrong and don’t enjoy the playstyle, your skill points can be reset at the Customization store, one of which is located in Sanctuary near the job board.
Move On
The final Borderlands 2 tip is to get ready to move on. Once you reach level 35 + in the standard playthrough, it is time to move on to True Vault Hunter mode. You carry over all your weapons, skills, skins, and levels. The game starts again but this time the difficulty is increased to be suitable for level 30 characters. If you stay in the normal mode, you will find that the quests are not rewarding enough experience nor is it enjoyable to play since you are killing everything with relative ease.
If you get to the end of the game and somehow you are under level 30. Make sure to complete any sidequests so that you stand a chance in this new game mode. Otherwise, it will be less enjoyable and borderline frustrating. This new mode also ramps up the difficulty from area to area. So you may find yourself having to grind to farm better weapons to move forward with the story.
That’s All the Tips for Borderlands 2
I hope the above has helped newbies when playing one of my favorite games (especially on handhelds). If there are any tips I missed please place them in the comments section for me to add to this list.
