DLC #163 - Borderlands 2 - Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt

Borderlands 2 is the game that's kept on punching back. Every time you feel like you've finally dealt that knockout blow, it arises off the canvas begging for more.

However, even the toughest fighters eventually run out of steam, and despite a final flurry here, we're finally done with the Borderlands 2 DLC content, and all that remains is to dip back into the Main list one final time to wrap up the lot.

Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt takes you to the swamps of Pandora, where you link up with Sir Hammerlock for a "weekend of Big Game Hunting".

It also turns out that Professor Nakayama, a self-obsessed protagonist of Handsome Jack, resides here and wants you dead after hearing that you were responsible for his death. He is alleged to be secretly farming a cloning formula to bring Handsome Jack back to life, and must be prevented from doing so.

This pack adds a brand new main story questline, a handful of optional side missions, as well as new environments and enemies - It's very standard for Borderlands by this point, though is probably the lightest out of all the DLC packs in terms of overall content. It also still closely follows the general Borderlands 2 formula for trophies, adding 3 further trophies into the total list.

There is again 1 trophy associated to concluding the main questline, awarded for stopping Professor Nakayama, though this story is extremely short and only spans across a total of 4 missions, taking no longer than a couple of hours to beat from start to finish. There is also a trophy awarded for discovering every location. Standard.

However, despite this pack being the lightest on content - with only 13 side quests to complete for the remaining trophy - there was, yet again, another obstacle standing in the way;

Done That - Completed all Hammerlock's Hunt side missions.

The "Done That" trophy, awarded for completing all Hammerlock's Hunt side missions, produces another one of those moments that has occurred consistently within this journey - A challenge that spikes the difficulty of the game beyond logical reasoning.

In this particular instance, it comes from the quest "Voracidious the Invincible", another raid boss that joins Terramorphous the Invincible and Hyperious the Invincible on the "How on earth do I beat this?" wall of fame.

I had previously attempted to defeat Voracidious during the same period of time I was understanding just how challenging some elements of this game actually were, and attempted to take the same approach of returning with better equipment and weaponry later down the line in order to beat him with greater ease.

Except, that's not exactly how it went. I'd managed to beat everything else the game had thrown at me - Somehow - and yet, I couldn't beat Voracidious with my now maxed out level 50 character, and the weapons that had served me so well up to this point. I was suddenly stuck for ideas and had no idea where to turn. What do you do when you've beaten almost everything, yet are still struggling on Raid bosses??

For greater context, Voracidious is a giant Stalker accompanied by Chief Ngwatu, a savage warrior who will transfer a protective shield between himself and Voracidious at regular intervals. Chief Ngwatu is very vulnerable when he doesn't have the shield, and will die quickly if he takes damage without it. This sends Voracidious into his second form - a form whereby he becomes enraged and his attacks are not just way more frequent, but also way more deadly.

The general tactic is to keep Chief Ngwatu alive for as long as possible, chipping away at the shield throughout this time. Voracidious will become enraged once he hits around 25% health regardless, so his enraged form is unavoidable to an extent, but you want to have the shield depleted as much as possible when this happens, to increase your chances of killing him quicker.

The reality for me was, I just didn't have powerful enough guns to outlast Voracidious. The approach was sound, but as soon as he hit his enraged form, we always seemed to be in 1-hit territory, compounded by the fact I was generally extremely low on ammunition by this stage too, as the protective shield harbours an insane amount of hit points.

I was getting into a vicious cycle of dying, respawning for a certain cost, having to spend even more money to restock ammunition and then repeating the process. There were a couple of times where I got close and knew with a bit of luck I would have done it, but there were also times I was just getting slapped around so badly, it seemed it was there purely to remind me of how this game can have it's way with me at the drop of a hat, just because it wants to.

I found myself jumping back into farming the Pyro Pete Bar Brawl side quest to accumulate money for the sole purpose of buying ammunition to have more attempts at beating Voracidous, but it was also here where I got the stroke of luck I needed.

One of the enemies I downed within a run of the Bar Brawl dropped a rocket launcher that dealt 227,000 damage per rocket. This was an upgrade on my best rocket launcher by over 200,000 points and ended up being the difference maker in this fight for me.

I headed back in, equipped the launcher, and decided to use it from the point right where Voracidious became enraged, taking down the final 25% of health quick enough to the point where his enraged form didn't have enough time to influence the outcome of this fight.

Was it lucky? I suppose it was - Nothing else was working for me, and whilst I was farming more money, I was also trying to work on what I was going to do to in order to defeat him. My reserve option was to run the Terramorphous raid boss again, which is absolutely something I wanted to avoid, and I'm so glad it never came down to having to resort to this.

This is the culmination of some pretty challenging DLC packs, and somewhat unforeseen. I knew all about the challenges that awaited me within the main list, but was never aware of how tough this additional content was going to be. I still feel like there's a possibility that I just wasn't prepared well enough for it, and hadn't focused enough on my gear throughout the game, but the random difficulty spikes are extremely frustrating. You can coast past large portions of the content across all 4 of these DLC packs, and suddenly run into a brick wall - and how exactly do you prepare for that sort of erratic nature?

Anyway, we're almost there, and I'm certain in saying at this point, that there are no longer any nasty surprises lying ahead.

DLC #162 - Borderlands 2 - Mr Torque's Campaign of Carnage

Fingers firmly crossed still, but I think we're almost there. The burnout is real and I'm at the stage now where, as much as I've enjoyed the Borderlands 2 experience, I'm glad it's almost over.

We've had to do certain things the long way round, and this DLC pack was a big testament to this, as this is where we've had to farm the previously aforementioned Torque tokens to originally upgrade our equipment, and help us beat some of the side quest bosses within other DLC packs that were causing us issues.

Mr Torque's Campaign of Carnage takes you to the Badass Crater of Badassitude, where an open invitation awaits. Mr Torque is running an open deathmatch tournament to "find Pandora's Number 1 Badass", where the winner will be granted access to a new vault full of loot.

The tournament is structured like a leaderboard, where you'll start in 5th place, and have to progressively climb to the top in order to emerge victorious. This will involve completing quests in order to earn the right to call out and fight your next opponent directly above you, repeating this process until you reach the top, where you'll eventually fight the current Number 1 Badass - revealed very early on to be a protagonist called Piston.

The typical formula remains. A brand new main story questline, loads of extra side content, new environments to explore and unique enemies to face off against - Some of the characters you fight on the tournament leaderboard are especially stand-out. There are also 3 additional trophies that follow the exact same trend as the Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty pack.

Completing all 15 main story quests, and reaching the top of the leaderboard, will award 1 of these trophies, and is still fairly easy to progress through, as per the standard level of enemies still being around the 30 mark. There are also an additional 25 side quests, which will grant another trophy, but by this point, nothing had given me any trouble thanks to some proper forecasting on the back of the experience with the previous DLC packs.

The final tier of Bar Brawl side quests, where you have to clean out Pyro Pete's bar within a set time limit, does set the enemy level to 50, for whatever reason, and whilst this meant I did have to come back to this and tackle it later, I knew this would just be simply a case of reaching a much higher level and returning once I had matched this. I don't categorise this into the same grouping as boss fights which felt insurmountable and may need to have been revisited much further down the line from the point at which you first encounter them.

This DLC mostly served great purpose for the following things;

• Grinding out to Level 50, via the ability to replay the Death Race side quest, which in turn allowed me to obtain the "Capped Out... For Now" trophy from the main list - As well as finally equip some of the more powerful weapons I'd stored in my inventory.
• Earning Torque Tokens through various means, which are introduced via this DLC pack, in order to purchase stronger weapons that allowed me to tackle certain side quest bosses I was previously struggling to defeat.
• Accumulating much more money by selling Torque weapons, which have excellent re-sale value. I had previously struggled to fund boss fights by replenishing ammunition, and this alleviated this nicely.

As a consequence, I didn't struggle with any challenge contained within this pack. Every boss fight on the Badass leaderboard was easy enough to take down, including Piston, the final boss, and the big side quest boss, Pyro Pete the Invincible, was also plain sailing, despite being a bit of a bullet-sponge.

This could have been just as difficult as what I've experienced had I gone down a different route, but the Torque weapons and those I'd also farmed from Terramorphous the Invincible, helped make light work of these. Even the Level 50 enemies in the Tier 3 Bar Brawl were simple enough to deal with when I eventually came back round after hitting level 50 to give myself a reasonable chance. Incredible what learning and a bit of forward planning can do.

The final trophy is awarded for collecting 10 pictures of Moxxi, which are purely random drops from downed enemies, and will naturally come as you go. Shock, horror to see some classic RNG find it's way into this list somehow.

A larger total quest volume than both previously completed DLC packs, but much harder to nail an estimated completion time to, purely because I spent alot of extra time replaying certain quests to grind out for level 50, as well as Torque Tokens, which is where I probably spent the majority of my time here. Would it be fair to consider this as a factor? It was a purely strategic move, but also a necessary evil to progression for me, albeit mostly for the benefit of elsewhere with other DLC packs.

One last pack remaining before digging into the remainder of the main list for the final time.

DLC #161 - Borderlands 2 - Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep

Unravelling Borderlands 2 has been hard work, but there is definitely light beginning to emerge at the end of the tunnel.

There have been unexpected hold ups along the way, which is the main reason we've had to fast-forward across a couple of DLC packs to the final offering, jumping into the fantasy world of Tiny Tina's table-top RPG.

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep puts you into the thick of a fantasy world, playing as a pawn in Tiny Tina's imaginative Role-Playing Game, Bunkers and Badasses.

This contains all the elements expected of a typical Borderlands DLC journey. A main questline, which sees you rescue the Queen from the clutches of the Handsome Sorcerer, a ton of additional side quests and plenty of opportunity to earn some loot. The fantasy element also allows for some fun new dynamics. Enemies and obstacles are conjured up right in front of you on Tina's demand, the plot is constantly altered when the other players start to complain about certain rules and you're given options to bypass parts of quests with alternate solutions based upon the attributes of the other characters involved in the game.

It's great fun, extremely charming and also my favourite pick out of all 4 Borderlands 2 DLC packages.

The trophy list takes a completely different direction to the other 3 available though, with 10 trophies on offer, and no requirement to complete every quest like the other packages.

You'll still need to beat the main questline, as normally expected, which contains 4 quests in total, awarding 3 trophies along the way for progressing towards the end of the story, defeating the Handsome Sorcerer and rescuing the Queen. This should take somewhere in the region of 4-6 hours. The quest volume is low, but they are fairly lengthy, and some of the environments you move through are actually quite vast and easy to get lost in.

Outside of the main quest, this is the only DLC package out of the 4 that does not require you to complete every side quest on offer, so you can actually leave a generous amount of content on the table if you're purely looking to fulfil the requirements of the trophies alone.

One thing I'd carried forward and learnt from my experience with Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty was that I may have needed stronger weaponry in order to tackle whatever challenges may be waiting for me within these other array of DLC packages.

I had to move into the Mr. Torque's Campaign of Carnage DLC in order to find some better weapons that would allow me to revisit and beat a particular boss within a side quest that I couldn't defeat with my existing gear, and I forecasted potentially similar issues going forward, so I needed a solution that would pre-empt this - Not just for this package, but the others I still had to beat.

As I scoured through the trophy list for inspiration, I realised that I still had to beat Terramorphous the Invicible within the main game, and felt this may be an appropriate time to briefly part ways with this content, to defeat him in the hope that he dropped some seriously good loot that would significantly support me within these remaining DLC packages. Terramorphous himself comes with his own challenges, but because that technically comes within the main trophy list, we'll save the detail on that for another time, but I managed to beat him and pick up a handful of interesting items. A shield with 53,000 capacity, a sniper rifle that dealt 25,000 damage per shot and a pistol that dealt 8,000 damage per shot.

The only drawback at this point was the fact I had to be level 50 in order to equip them, so I had to grind out around 3 more levels by just replaying the racing side mission from Mr. Torque's Campaign of Carnage DLC over and over. A bit tedious, but I did manage to unlock the "Capped Out... For Now" trophy from the main list, awarded for Reaching level 50, along with the motivation of knowing how far this would get me in terms of overcoming the handful of boss fights that remained outstanding within these DLC packages.

I eventually carried these items into some of these remaining 7 trophies within this DLC, and made complete light work of the remainder.

Most of these trophies are associated to specific side quests - The "Dang Girl You Ace At This Game" trophy, will require you to beat another version of the Circle of Slaughter within Murderlin's Temple, which I breezed through with my new weapons, and the "Make It Raaaaaid" trophy requires you to Vanquish the Ancient Dragons of Destruction, which again, was made light work by the new weapons I'd acquired from beating Terramorphous. This particular side quest concludes in a battle against 4 different types of dragon which will attack you all at once, and there's no way I would have beaten this without farming for some new and improved loot, so I'm happy my strategy to delve back into the main game paid off.

In theory, this should also allow me to go back over the other DLC packages with the same logic and finish them in the same way, but this is a game full of surprises, so we'll see how that pans out.

By the way, the "Hmmmmm" trophy, awarded for Wielding the Mysterious Amulet, can potentially create 2 problems. Firstly, it's a missable trophy, because when you accept the associated quest, it simply gives you a choice to either punch the merchant or buy the amulet. If you punch the merchant, you'll conclude the quest with no option to purchase the amulet anymore, which means you'll have to start the entire DLC over again. Secondly, it'll cost you around £126,000 to buy, which you probably won't have unless you have some valuable loot to sell off.