I bought all the DLC and haven’t run into the issue described yet anyway.
I’ve got both Knoxx and Ned, and I did get some notifications the first time I ran it, but not since. So I wouldn’t describe it as normal. I did have a recurring problem with the DirectX installation step not working correctly until I deleted a .DLL it was complaining about.
I got this during the Steam sale and am not enjoying it for some reason. I’m playing solo which may be some of it, but I enjoyed Torchlight a ton. After playing this and Brothers in Arms Hell’s Highway, I think I just don’t like the way Gearbox does FPS combat.
Anywho, since I only spent $10 it’s not a big deal. Yay for Steam sales.
It may very well be the claustrophobic console field-of-view or mouse smoothing, both symptoms of lazy porting. Try some of the PC tweaks. They made a huge difference for my enjoyment.
http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=79043
or try a tool that implements those PC fixes:
http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=85874
Wade42
2725
Hmm… I had the opposite experience: Torchlight felt like a slog for me (appreciated the mod support, though), but I’m digging Borderlands single player. Maybe it’s the immediacy of FPS combat that does it for me? Maybe it’s 'cause I just finished Fallout 3 and was primed for a wasteland, but ready for more color?
My main complaint so far is that it feels like I have to use cheezy tactics to get past some of the bosses. I’m maybe halfway through the game, and Mad Mel and Mothrakk were killers. That said, I’m having a lot of fun. I’m left wondering if I should pick it up on 360, since my co-op buddy does not have a gaming PC.
Indeed, I’m with you there!
PS: Stepsongrapes - I saw the tweaks when you posted them in the Bargain Thread; thanks for that! Unskippable logo videos drive me bonkers…
Mothrakk is brutal if you don’t know what to expect. If you do, it’s fairly easy - just find someplace with overhead protection. I like the long shedlike structure near the entrance to the Headstone Mine, myself. Shotguns are my usual weapon of choice, but I did it last with Witherstone’s Hunting Rifle. Burst damage is much more important than sustained DPS, since you’ve only got a few moments in the open before you have to duck back under cover. Accuracy isn’t at a premium since Mothrakk is huge, but real scatterguns (i.e. ~10% accuracy shotguns) have too large a spread.
It’s good to learn how to kill Mothrakk, since there’s a very similar beastie in the Rust Commons West, and it’s not announced like Mothrakk.
Mad Mel is ridiculous. It’s pretty much the same as the outriders, except that invariably I end up colliding with an outrider while driving in circles, and get killed. Then I either repeat - if I don’t mind dying a few more times, and paying the resurrection fee - or stay out of the arena and take potshots at the vehicles as they drive by. This is slow since they take a lot of damage, and I have to retreat to recharge my shield whenever a rocket lands nearby.
Mad Mel would be a lot more fun if it were done someplace like the desert speedway. That arena is way too cramped, and driving in tight little circles is not interesting. It’s probably easier if you’re playing co-op, since with a human gunner you can take a rocket car instead of a machine gun. Colliding the extra cars would still be a problem, though.
Wade42
2727
I used the ‘hide in the spawn area and take potshots’ method for Mad Mel… Yes, it was quite ridiculous.
With Mothrakk, I ended up getting a vehicle with machine guns, getting lock on, and chipping away at him while driving for dear life. I considered hiding in the underground shack next to the torches, but the vehicle method seemed like more fun.
I always take the rocket cars, just hit space to use the lock-on feature and fire away.
The rocket cars are truly awful against moving targets. The problem is that the lock-on aims directly at the target, with no lead. Since the rockets move relatively slowly, unless you’re at point blank range you invariably miss. The machine guns hit instantly, so even though they do less damage, they’re a much better choice if you must use lock-on because you don’t have a gunner.
While it’s true that the Mad Mel arena forces you into fairly short range, I still found this to be true.
I’ve found (for me at least) I just have much better luck with the rockets. All I need to do is maneuver in behind or next to the other car and you have no issues taking out normal cars in two or three rockets and Mad Mel wasn’t really an issue.
Cougar
2731
I just hugged Mad Mel’s rear bumper and spammed rockets. It took me three tries, I think, but I ended up killing him without pulling out my hair.
~C~
Nyx
2732
If you jump out of the car and hang out at that little entrance ramp just before entering the arena, you can just pelt bullets at mad mel as he drives around in circles. The only caveat is that I think you need to actually get into the arena first and kill a few enemies to get mad mel to spawn first.
That makes sense, but I’ve never been able to do what I’d call “tactical” maneuvering in the arena. It seems like I’m usually just driving in circles with no idea where any of the other cars are unless they drive right in front of me, or more commonly ram me from the side. I usually die 2-3 times while taking Mad Mel out with machine guns. So it sounds like they’re equally effective tactics.
You must enter the arena at least once to get the cars to spawn, and you have to kill a couple of regular outriders before Mel spawns.
Okay I hate those turret towers. I’m at a part now where I have to pass both a machine gun turret and a rocket turret next to each other and they are tearing me up.
Tman
2735
Only place that rings a bell with two turrets is Jaynistown or Old Haven.
In any regards, use a good pistol. Not repeater, a pistol. It takes less than six shots to take out any turret. I don’t know why they are so much better at taking down turrets than the other guns. If you can zig zag close to them, shotguns are also very effective.
Or you can try & snipe it, but that can take forever.
Yeah the gun towers can be a pain for the classes using shorter ranged weapons. I just finished my first full playthrough with a Sniper based hunter and could two shot them. I remember doing that one boss who sits on one at the far end of a long zone, I didn’t realize I had killed the boss until I got to the final platform and found him dead. Then I realized he was sitting on the gun I had sniped all the back from the start lol.
I started a new run as the soldier last night. I really love the feel of all the different guns in this game. Gearbox did a great job with the feel and sounds of the different weapon types.
Krom Canyon’s entrance in Rust Commons East has two turrets as well, though they are more separated than the pairs in Jaynistown. You can snipe those from outside their engagement range, unlike most.
You can always find a place where you can shoot at one turret and cover protects you from the other. You want something that does a lot of burst damage, and is reasonably accurate. Sniper rifles, scoped revolvers, and assault rifles qualify. Step out, shoot, step back into cover and let your shield recover.
Sniper rifles do suffer a bit because you usually can’t hit the critical area, which is a box in the back of the turret. You’re depending entirely on the damage per shot of the rifle, which you normally don’t emphasize compared to accuracy and scope multiplier. Whether a revolver is better really depends on the relative stats of the two weapons.
Machine guns, repeater pistols and SMGs may have higher sustained DPS, but usually aren’t accurate enough and don’t offer the kind of instant damage you get with a revolver or sniper rifle. Rocket launchers have great burst damage, but are usually low in accuracy and if you miss while shooting up - and you’re always shooting up against turrets - the rocket keeps on going.
Shotguns are typically very high burst damage, but getting close enough so the entire turret fits in the shell cone can be difficult, unless the shotgun is very, very accurate and scoped (perversely, looking through a scope acts like a choke, narrowing the shot spread).
The easiest way to do them for my hunter was with an explosive sniper rifle. Just hit the gun and the explosive proc would do the rest. It was also always fun hitting one enemy and seeing him and the guy next to him get blown to pieces.
Explosive / Flaming / Shock / Corrosive are all damage multipliers. Both against specific defense types, and the extra damage if they proc (+25%-100%, depending). When selecting a sniper rifle with any class, I’ll weigh total damage, including elemental bonuses, against accuracy and scope multiplier.
If a target is very distant, the accuracy and scope multiplier can mean the difference between hitting regularly and missing. If it’s closer, it’s the difference between a body shot and a critical hit, which does 4x the damage of a normal hit (+100% for critical and +200% critical bonus that most sniper rifles have). Obviously x4 damage for a critical outweighs an awful lot of normal damage.
If I’m playing a hunter sniper-spec’d, proc damage has low value. If I’m level 25+, my shots completely ignore shields, and the proc damage strikes the shield, if any. Only against unshielded targets do I get the full benefit of the proc damage. Of course, it’s true that many significant tough targets have no shields. Bruisers, Crimson Lance defenders, and the like.
What I said about sniper rifles and turrets - it’s wrong.
I was running through the Crimson Fastness, and I tried both a revolver and a sniper rifle on the same turret. Despite the declared damages of 411 for the sniper rifle and 254 for the pistol, the rifle was doing about 50 damage per shot and the revolver was doing about 150. My class mod wasn’t affecting pistol damage, either.
There’s some weapon-specific damage reduction here. Other armored targets (i.e. spiderants, skags) reduce revolver and rifle damage about the same amount, but turrets reduce sniper rifle damage a lot more than other weapons.
