Tons and Tons and Tons of Shitty Loot

This is going to sound mean, but loot in Borderlands 2 really sucks. It’s awful. It’s annoying as heck. In fact, it’s a large amount of rummaging through crap until you find something half decent.

In the early levels of Borderlands 2, that doesn’t matter. The loot is kinda supposed to be shitty since it’s the start of the game and you’re basically scavenging shit. Plus, it makes no sense to give new players stupidly powerful stuff because it’s early doors. The Hyperion weapons chest you open before you get to the first proper area is that bait to continue, giving you something other than shitty pistols. That being said, you will continue to keep on getting shitty pistols until you at least get to Three Horns Divide and make your way to Sanctuary.

As you play though, you’ll come across more and more weapons. A huge amount of them. Open a crate, get weapons. Kill an enemy, probably get a weapon. Open up a portable toilet? More weapons. Maybe a shield or grenade mod if you’re lucky. You’ll almost certainly get more weapons than you can carry. Early on, Borderlands 2 conditions you to check every weapon and see if it’s worth picking up or not. I mean, eventually you’ll come across some genuinely good weapons, but along the way you’ll be tripping over unwanted white-rarity weapons. Many of which will be the same or at least very similar.

You’ll find better weapons as you level up, of course. And of course, as you level up, you’ll have to let go of weapons you like because they simply don’t get the job done any more. There’s no point sticking them in your bank in Sanctuary either since you won’t be able to go back and use them any time soon. You might as well just sell that nice gun you had and move on.

Eventually you’ll get some rare weapons. That you will have to sell because they too fall behind after a while. Because previous areas don’t level up at all and each location has a set level, you can’t even go back and get a higher version of a rare weapon you like. In fact, while playing, I’ve been told to completely ignore objectives until later on, simply so we can get higher level rewards. It’s a common thing in your first playthrough with a new character.

True and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode though change that. In those modes, enemies and weapons sort of level up with you. If you start True Vault Hunter Mode at level 30, all the enemies will be level 30, and so will all the guns and loot. But loot, unlike enemies, doesn’t actually level up as you do. So you still need to sell old, under-leveled items because they simply can’t keep up any more. Worse, you need to make sure you HAVE good loot because enemies quickly get a lot stronger. Slag and correct elemental types become more important.

At least in these modes, you CAN go back and try and get leveled up versions of weapons you like. Most of the time. Quest items that are only given once will fall off, but loot drops from repeatable bosses will be the same level as you when you beat them in True/Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode. If your Infinity pistol for example stops working and becomes too weak, you can go back and kill a boss again and again in an attempt to get another one.

But since the chance of getting rare weapons isn’t that high, you’ll often have to redo areas for a chance to get your rare loot again. You have a choice of leaving and fast-traveling back or literally quitting to the main menu and loading back in, so you can avoid the long runs of enemies that often get in the way of boss fights.

All the while, you’re being showered in loot that you simply have no use for. The uncommon but flawed and mediocre stuff gets sold to vendors while everything else gets left behind.

Really it’s no wonder why the bandit problem on Pandora is so bad. If all those damn Vault Hunters cleaned up after themselves, there probably wouldn’t BE an armed Bandit problem…