Welcome to Thunderdome

Posted: **Tue Feb 02, 2010 3:25 pm**

Leisher wrote:2.5?

The unofficial name for what happens after the second playthrough. No quests are reset or anything, but the enemies level up.

Old Haven has SuperBadAss Lance members that are fucking tanks. & those are just the technicians. The commanders are worse.

Edited By Malcolm on 1265142362

Posted: **Tue Feb 02, 2010 3:53 pm**

I can't wait for Borderworlds.

Posted: **Tue Feb 02, 2010 4:36 pm**

Leisher wrote:I can't wait for Borderworlds.

Needs more ...

i) critters
ii) vehicles

It'd also be cool if the bounty boards continuously generated missions (think Privateer-style). Shops having more inventory that just 8 or 9 guns at a time would be nice, too.

Posted: **Wed Feb 03, 2010 12:01 am**

i) critters

Agreed, they could use more variety.

ii) vehicles

This I'll agree with IF they fix the driving. That's the worst part of the game.

It'd also be cool if the bounty boards continuously generated missions (think Privateer-style).

Since the game is essentially Diablo as an FPS, I'd agree.

Shops having more inventory that just 8 or 9 guns at a time would be nice, too.

This I don't really care about. I rarely bought weapons from vendors.

Hey, did you ever see the "hidden" vendor machine in New Haven? Right across from the broken and working gun machine? We just happened to notice it one time. When I say one time, I mean it has never appeared since, and all it sold were gold weapons. (Those are the rarest ones, right?)

The most expensive thing I've seen at a vendor was a rocket launcher for 4.5 million.

Posted: **Wed Feb 03, 2010 2:12 pm**

This I'll agree with IF they fix the driving. That's the worst part of the game.

Yeah, the driving sucks, but I've gotten semi-used to it. If I spent more time in the car, I'd probably complain more. I do 99.9999999% of the driving when my buddy & I play any FPS -- Halo, Gears of War, etc., & he works the turret.

Hey, did you ever see the "hidden" vendor machine in New Haven? Right across from the broken and working gun machine? We just happened to notice it one time. When I say one time, I mean it has never appeared since, and all it sold were gold weapons.

I dunno about hidden. It's behind a door that's closed every now & again. It comes up about every third time for us.

(Those are the rarest ones, right?)

I pay attention to the weapon stats & the colours don't add up. If gold's supposed to be the "best", it ought to have better fire rates, reload rates, damage per shot, spread, etc. than others. I've got green & blue combat rifles that beat the everloving fuck out of every gold combat rifle I've found. I'm still trying to figure out what the weapon colours mean, but I can't find a direct, consistent correlation to quality.

Edited By Malcolm on 1265224456

Posted: **Sat Feb 27, 2010 4:48 am**

New DLC is out. It's "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx." He's apparently Stella's boss from the original. My buddy got it this week & we tried it out. A few things ...

1) There's at least one new vehicle, maybe more.
2) Level cap is now 60, I think.
3) Pearlescent weapons have been introduced. They're rarer than orange.
4) New enemies
5) Lots of new quests (more than "Dr. Ned's Zombie Island" -- which we finished in one evening).

The Atlas army enemies are bitchy as all hell. There was a point where 2-3 of their snipers killed both of us at least six times each in a row. Supposedly more & better guns, but so far the drops have been worse than shitty. I wouldn't mind this except for a couple thoughts :

1) Better guns would make it a lot easier to drill the new enemies (who've got the nasty habit of respawning infinitely in certain cases or instantly teleporting near your location to jump you from behind w\ no warning from your radar)

2) New enemies have been hitting hard & often. The roadblocks we took down tonight were each like mini-Old Havens on steroids. The Lance dudes punch through our shields & health extremely well.

Our weapons seem comparably shitty to theirs. Three rockets from one of them will kill either of us. Twenty rockets from me might get one of the tougher ones down to around half. Their guns just seem to be more powerful than the ones we've got -- until we go to loot them. The drops they give are hands-down worse than our current loadout. How do NPCs do more damage to us (presumably the heroes are more bad-ass than a grunt) w\ seemingly craptacular weapons? If a sniper's killed me ten times running w\ his static rifle, it'd better be the fucking hammer of Thor, & I want it available for loot.

Driving hasn't gotten much better. You can get a heavier vehicle this time, w\ heat-seeking missiles. You may as well throw paper airplanes at your targets, though, for how effective they are. They track just fine; they just don't do the sort of damage you'd expect from a guided anti-tank weapon. It takes a least a dozen or so individual missiles to kill an Atlas army grunt. Rockets from enemy vehicles demolish my car in short order. My rockets barely dent them. It takes LOTS to bring down a bandit patrol.

Also, when I'm in a car that's got eight wheels & has to weigh at least 3 tons, I have assloads of momentum when I'm going 30mph. That means I should be able to crash through a pile of loose debris, NOT get stopped dead in my tracks.

Last in this category & somewhat related, let's talk about colliding w\ living things. If you're driving on a dark road & you hit a deer dead-on at top speed, it's probably going to sustain significant injuries. Let's scale that down to a human-sized victim. If a minivan hits a person at 30mph, that person is dead, period, outright, 99.99% of the time. Your auto might take a bit of pain, but the organic being is sure as fuck getting the short end of the equation. Not in Borderlands. I've run over level 51 humans & not only have they survived the hit, they've taken perhaps 1/3 of their total health as damage & aren't fazed in the least. What's more, my VEHICLE has blown up. If you saw a semi hit a dude on the road, you wouldn't expect the truck to explode & the pedestrian to walk away.

There's some SERIOUS gameplay issues in terms of the logic of the violence. Unless you're the Hulk, three rockets dead-on to your unprotected chest should blow you apart. You sure as shit should at least stumble or something. You shouldn't be returning fire immediately.

Posted: **Mon Mar 01, 2010 3:56 pm**

That still makes me want to play it.

Posted: **Mon Mar 01, 2010 4:53 pm**

Leisher wrote:That still makes me want to play it.

It's still worth the $8 or whatever. & to be fair, the physics/violence problems I mentioned were present in the original. But it's still a fucked up world where one shot from my sniper rifle or burst fire from my assault rifle is 10x as effective as a trio of rockets.

Posted: **Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:55 pm**

Hmm, the board ate this post the first time around ...

Found some new guns this past week. I used to walk with ...

1 assault rifle (default weapon)
1 rocket launcher (for big, slow things)
1 shotgun (for point blank range)
1 sniper rifle (for long range)

I've found a single combat rifle that's pretty much replaced all four of them now with the semi-drag that it's got a relatively small mag size -- only about a dozen shots. My skills that up that stat make it well worthwhile, though. It's got a scope, hits hard, has respectable refire & accuracy rates, & causes explosive damage. I now walk around with that as well as another rifle that hits insanely hard but fires slowly.

The final boss of General Knoxx's Armory apparently has a chance to drop the best gear you'll find thus far.

Anyhow, now that I've found bigger guns, I'm dying a lot less. I'd been playing without a scoped weapon for a long-ass time. Makes me wonder how the hell I got along without one. Bought a skill respec that made a huge difference, too.

Posted: **Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:01 pm**

My cousin discovered a glitch in the game that allows you to fill every skill tree. If you do a google search for it, you'll find it.

I'm not a fan of cheats, but he did it before I got there, and honestly, you essentially already max out two skill trees, and the skills you leave open are pretty pointless (like Brick's spawn cash when punching skill). Thus, it didn't bug me too much.

A warning though, we were going to play through the new DLC last night, but he did this glitch to our characters and glitched their missions by mistake. Thus, they couldn't advance the story. He finally got them fixed today, yes it's fixable, but we won't be playing the new DLC until next weekend.

Edited By Leisher on 1267912967

Posted: **Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:19 pm**

Beat the Secret Armory of General Knoxx last night. A few items ...

The final boss of General Knoxx's Armory apparently has a chance to drop the best gear you'll find thus far.

1) The final boss doesn't drop the best loot. In fact, he dropped shyte loot. There is, however, a critter in a sidequest that goes by the name of Crawmerax the Invincible. While he isn't, he is impervious to damage except by critical hit. He's also got a tiny army of minions to fuck with you and each requires a specific damage type to waste. There is a cheap, bastard solution to the problem, though. One assumes the designers put it in there intentionally, but it's just such a gaping bug/feature that I can't believe they intended it. Just check it & see. He did drop assloads of orange/purple weapons, though. Easily more than could be carried by two players. Fortunately, there's a set of shops nearby. I suspect Crawmerax is NOT respawnable or rekillable (they go to a bit of length to make sure) as you could farm him for uber items ad infinitum.

2) I cannot overemphasize the ass-whoopingness of proper elemental damage. By the end of the game, I was hauling around 3 asasult rifles (1 explosion, 1 fire, 1 shock) just because of the specialized Lance troops that I'd encounter.

3) Speaking of the Lance troops, if one believes the damage I was doing to them, I took down a Badass Defender with at least ten headshots, if not more, to the tune of about 2500 damage per shot. If you totaled my shield & health, I've got maybe 3500 points of damage before I get dusted. Not only are the enemies tougher than you, they can snipe from half a mile away with any weapon -- shotguns, revolvers, pistols, whatever. They can also withstand a dozen headshots from a rocket launcher.

4) Still a lack of critters. There's some skags, but the vast majority of encounters were with Lance troopers (who now come in three additional flavours -- corrosive, pyro, & shock). The Lance Rocketeers were annoying as all hell. Maybe I just felt that way because I wanted one of their rocket packs (which is impossible, by the by). Also, if you wander around in the desert enough, you'll be greeted by building-sized, four-legged spider-like things called drifters which are apparently part Mexican jumping bean & can change their trajectories in mid-air. They will one-hit kill you if they land on you. They'll also blow the fuck out of your car with acidic spew if you try to take them at range.

5) There's pretty much nowhere to use the instant travel option. There'll be lots of driving. You do get a choice of three vehicles (speedy, tank-ish, in between), though. However, you'll be driving mainly through four screens' worth of highway (with about 4 manned Lance roadblocks each) inhabited by infinitely spawning flying patrol robots who'll track you through the entire area & also Crimson Lance APC-lookin' things (that can one- or two-hit kill the speedy car with their main gun). I mention that because the non-speedy cars are so fucking slow as to be virtually worthless. The extra firepower & protection they provide is about as much of an upgrade as going from a Yugo to a Chevette. Skip the heavier weapons & armor, go for the speedy, save yourself about an hour or more of total driving time.

6) There's an endurance challenge called the Circle of Duty. You versus multiple waves of Crimson Lance troops, specialists, rocketeers, & vehicles in a closed arena. We've made it past the first two rounds after a few tries. A spot of strategy is required.

7) Found ZERO pearlescent weapons, which are supposed to be the best kind. I assume they're white; that's also the colour of the shittiest weapons. Spectacular move there, chaps.

During the end sequence, two major events happen in quick succession (won't spoil it). For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why they have to happen a few minutes apart. There's no logical reason you couldn't perform Action 1, take more time than two or three minutes, & then have Action 2 kick off. Seems like a deliberate attempt on the part of the designers to screw you out of some reward.

9) Level cap is now 61.

Overall, it's worth the below $10 pricetag because of the new vehicles, Crawmerax's loot drop, & initial shock you receive when you get your ass beat down at a Lance roadblock the first time. & unless you plan your quests very carefully, you'll be spending at least a third of your time driving. & driving hasn't gotten any better.

Think I might convince my buddy to grab the Underdome DLC, as it's the last one remaining we've not played.

Edited By Malcolm on 1269279087

Posted: **Mon Mar 22, 2010 3:14 pm**

1) The final boss doesn't drop the best loot. In fact, he dropped shyte loot. There is, however, a critter in a sidequest that goes by the name of Crawmerax the Invincible. While he isn't, he is impervious to damage except by critical hit. He's also got a tiny army of minions to fuck with you and each requires a specific damage type to waste. There is a cheap, bastard solution to the problem, though. One assumes the designers put it in there intentionally, but it's just such a gaping bug/feature that I can't believe they intended it. Just check it & see. He did drop assloads of orange/purple weapons, though. Easily more than could be carried by two players. Fortunately, there's a set of shops nearby. I suspect Crawmerax is NOT respawnable or rekillable (they go to a bit of length to make sure) as you could farm him for uber items ad infinitum.

Got a chance to play through this a bit two weekends ago, and found the path to Crawmerax open. We fought him, my cousin with his lvl 61 chick (what class is she?) and me with my lvl 42 Brick. I was worthless in the fight in terms of damage, but was invaluable for teamwork. He'd run to the left, and there's a small ledge you can sit on and not get hit...most of the time...however, Crawmerax won't move around for you to hit him in his weak points. Thus, I'd move behind him and hit him with rockets. No damage, but it did move him around.

Also, not sure if it's because of the glitch he used, but we simply left the level and came back to fir Crawmerax respawned. It also left behind the loot he dropped when he died previously. After killing him 5-6 times, you can imagine the loot we had onscreen. Easily 100+ items just laying on the ground, and not a single pearlescent item.

2) I cannot overemphasize the ass-whoopingness of proper elemental damage. By the end of the game, I was hauling around 3 asasult rifles (1 explosion, 1 fire, 1 shock) just because of the specialized Lance troops that I'd encounter.

I'm not a huge fan of this in any game. I have no desire to carry around multiple types of the same weapon and then go into my inventory for the right one every time I encounter an enemy. Fine, allow my fire weapon to do more damage to certain enemies and less to others, but I should NEVER face an enemy that's invulnerable to my weapons. I mean, even if I'm shooting a fire based creature with a flaming bullet, there's still a bullet in there...

3) Speaking of the Lance troops, if one believes the damage I was doing to them, I took down a Badass Defender with at least ten headshots, if not more, to the tune of about 2500 damage per shot. If you totaled my shield & health, I've got maybe 3500 points of damage before I get dusted. Not only are the enemies tougher than you, they can snipe from half a mile away with any weapon -- shotguns, revolvers, pistols, whatever. They can also withstand a dozen headshots from a rocket launcher.

That's insanity. I expect that's more a result of rushing out the expansions rather than properly play testing them. I expect we'll see less of this in the next game.

Also, if you wander around in the desert enough, you'll be greeted by building-sized, four-legged spider-like things called drifters which are apparently part Mexican jumping bean & can change their trajectories in mid-air. They will one-hit kill you if they land on you. They'll also blow the fuck out of your car with acidic spew if you try to take them at range.

Can you kill them?

5 - The driving is nothing more than point a to point b stuff and should be treated as such. Definitely something they need to address in Borderworlds.

6- Didn't see that, sounds cool.

7- I guess you can clone them online, ala the early days of UO. My cousin has around 8-10 of them. He has only found 1 while playing.

Borderworlds has made my top ten list of most awaited games.

Posted: **Mon Mar 22, 2010 3:45 pm**

my cousin with his lvl 61 chick (what class is she?)

That's the siren. Her greatest asset is the ability to go invisible. When my buddy pulls that, all the critters in the local area start targeting me...

I mean, even if I'm shooting a fire based creature with a flaming bullet, there's still a bullet in there

My turret (which normally mows down damn near anything w\ all the boosts I've got for it), does almost no damage if it's shooting the wrong kind of Lance Troop. The fire artifact makes it worthless for pyros, for example. But the corrosive/fire against unshielded opponents is becoming more than a luxury. They take an entire magazine to kill otherwise (& my mags have 100+ rounds).

That's insanity. I expect that's more a result of rushing out the expansions rather than properly play testing them. I expect we'll see less of this in the next game.

They're not invulnerable by any means. Their shields (with a few exceptions) seem weak. Their health is off the charts.

Can you kill them?

Yeah, for decent XP & loot, to boot.. They've got some glowing parts on them & they're where you can crit them. Problem is that it's hard to hit them unless you're standing under them or within their jumping range. You can drop them w\o using crits, but they quickly become bullet sponges. Talking on the order of hundreds of rounds to bring them down. You can drive right under them, though.

Looking semi-forward to hitting the Circle of Duty to test out my new guns. The sniper I found does about 1100 damage per hit w\ a ridiculous zoom. Got a combat rifle that hits in the upper 200s at a fire rate of 15, 86 in the mag which gets upped to ~130 total after all is said & done.

Oh yeah, & a word about the Badass Lance Royal Guards -- I was in a vehicle going top speed trying to run one down. Vehicle was brand new. I ran into him and <s>the sickening amount of kinetic energy I had turned him into a thin red paste</s> my vehicle blew up. Honestly, wtf? I have a fucking car. Any vehicle that runs over me is a one-hit kill, bar none, end of story, no takesies-backsies. I might even hear an argument for the car taking nontrivial damage, but the humanoid I pointed it towards should be dead most certainly.

Edited By Malcolm on 1269287290

Posted: **Mon Mar 22, 2010 11:28 pm**

I agree with the vehicles thing. They already nerfed the weapons on them and ridiculously lower your XP gains when killing something in one, so why not let them kill folks like normal?

Posted: **Thu Mar 25, 2010 11:57 am**

I suspect Crawmerax is NOT respawnable or rekillable (they go to a bit of length to make sure) as you could farm him for uber items ad infinitum.

Scratch that. He's respawns right after you leave the area. We had the quest completed, but not turned in. Will try next time & see if we can still transition to his lair.

The loot he drops is ... a mixed bag. He dropped mainly purple & blue items with a few oranges, several greens, & ZERO fucking pearlescent weapons (which are apparently fucking cyan). I picked up probably fifteen different combat rifles that were an upgrade from what I had (which was considerable to begin with). I've got a rifle weird a weird feature/bug, though. When I look through the scope & shoot, it's fully automatic. When I shoot it without looking through the scope, it's strictly a three-shot burst.

Oh, & fuck what the game says about devastators. Explosive damage doesn't hit them as hard as corrosive. I was mowing them down left & right with the aforementioned rifle.

Beat the third & fourth (of five) levels of the Circle of Duty. The vehicles are stupid & get hung up at one corner of the map. They're virtually a non-factor. We were doing fine on the fifth level until one wave spawned on the platform we were holding, effectively dropping half a dozen Lance troops behind us. After we took them out, some rocketeers showed up.

They are a complete fucking nightmare in the circle because there's absolutely no cover. And whereas the other enemies in there tend to lay back & move up slowly, the rocketeers just fly all over the goddamned sky all the time. The normal ones aren't a problem; the Badass Rocketeers present problems due to their INSANE amount of health.

Anyhow, we scatter to take them out, more Lance troops spawn on our platform. As we get halfway through them, another wave spawns in the corner & starts sniping. My buddy goes over to finish them off while I take on the remaining half of the previous wave. As I kill the last one in my vicinity, a group of rocketeers spawns damn near on top of me & it's over. If any party member dies in the circle, you get to start again.

Oh, and FUCK the Lance Royal Guards.

Posted: **Sat Mar 27, 2010 3:24 am**

Was over at my buddy's place. We decided to get ourselves a pearlescent item, damnit. Must have killed Crawmerax twenty times. Dropped enough gear so that the frame rates slowed to about one-half normal.

Fucking shitty news : we got zero pearlescent drops. Frustrating as all hell. Come on. Not one out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of items I saw tonight. The percentage chance for a pearlescent drop is certainly single digits, almost certainly less than 1%, quite conceivably just a few hundredths or less. It's definitely not the 1 pearlescent : 66 orange ratio I saw quoted somewhere.

Good news : on the whole, Crawmerax drops loads of respectable combat rifles & sniper rifles. He also drops a lot of shit pistols, SMGs, Eridian weapons, the occasional 2000+ shield, plenty of mods, and a sprinkling of artifacts. He's also the enemy to level up your combat skills. I'm now at least 20 in all of them.

Better news : I went through over ten combat rifles tonight. As in I said, "There's no way I'm finding a better rifle. This is it for this expansion." And every time I was wrong. I got some solid fire, corrosive, & shock rifles (necessary for fending off Crawmerax's fucking greebles). I was floored at the non-elemental rifles I got. I went from being unable to solo standard Lance troops to decimating them in twos & threes. The difference is night & fucking day. Normal rocketeers are like wheat before the scythe. Unless I need lots of zoom, I don't even use a sniper rifle anymore. I walked around with that rifle, a sickeningly fast Stinger SMG, a quick fire/reload Liquid sniper, & an absolute beast of a shotgun called the Desert Bulldog.

Best news : we finished the Circle of Duty's fifth battle. The Circle was easily the most challenging & fun side mission. I'd love to try to do it straight through with a four-player, level 61 team without dying.

I'm hoping Gearbox will find someway to transfer old Borderlands characters to Borderworlds.

Posted: **Fri Apr 02, 2010 3:11 am**

Borderlands is on sale on Steam.

$25 for 1
$75 for a 4 pack

Posted: **Mon Apr 12, 2010 5:01 pm**

Could be getting the Underdome tonight.

Posted: **Tue Apr 13, 2010 2:04 pm**

Underdome is had.

Cool things : Each player has a bank that stores up to 42 additional items. Especially good if you hit up Crawmerax so you can stow the good items & not have them eat up valuable inventory slots.

So far ...
Looks like it's Thunderdome-esque in that you go against a shitload of enemies in a to-the-death, round-by-round kind of thing.

There's 3 battlefields. The first time around, you'll face 5 rounds of 5 waves each. The waves always have set themes & they always come in the same order (starter, gun, horde, bad-ass, boss). The last wave is always a boss (like Nine-Toes, Krom, Taylor Kolb, etc.). The prizes are somewhat shitty.

The second go-thru of the three battlefields looks to extend things to 20 rounds. That's 100 waves total x 3 battlefields = 300 waves. We beat the first go-thru.

Welcome to Thunderdome

Borderlands - 360 & PS