2761

I would think they knew, but someone insisted that with proper checkpoints, Knoxx would be over too soon.

2762

It takes forever, it’s repetitive as hell, and it’s driving me nuts.

Maybe they wanted to bring a little “Demon’s Souls” tension to Borderland, LOL

2763

They only had one spawn for Zombie Island, too. However, that pack was a bit more hub-like so it wasn’t as PITA as the Armory.

2764

sure , steam friend me :D

2765

You guys can friend me, too. I’ll probably mostly be looking for groups for the endgame stuff though in a week or two:

2766

Thanks, is there any way to track the bonus levels? Did I miss it on the UI or did someone do some kind of analysis to prove it?

2767

Well, T-Bone Junction -is- a hub of sorts…it’s just that most of the other locations are reached by like two zones worth of highway travel from there, which is a major pain.

2768

My brother and I are currently co-oping our way through the game. If folks would like to join up, we are around level 20 right now. Friend me up. If I see you around when we play, I’ll invite you.

2769

I feel like I’m wasting the special power aspect in the game playing as a hunter. I’m level 24 and I’ve probably used the bloodwing about 5 times. So much easier to just aim for a critical hit on everything.

2770

Most people would have said “So much easier to send the Bloodwing against everything” :)

2771

If you’re playing a hunter, you really should try a Bloodwing/ Pistols build sometime (Rogue/ Gunslinger). The bird gets really powerful. In particular, you can equip him with a shock artifact against heavily shielded opponents.

2772

I suppose I could respec later for variety. I went for the first set of skills with the shield bypass.

2773

Like all the powers, bloodwing isn’t all that impressive if you don’t invest skill points into it.

Easy respeccing is one of my favorite things about the game- It’s easy to use different specs for various areas of the game or 2nd playthroughs in the same area.

That said, respeccing isn’t much fun until you have more points to play with (and a variety of class mods) than a level 24 has.

2774

I think it’s less about how impressive the thing is and more about forgetting that it exists. If I made a build dedicated to it I would remember it, but for some reason I forget some of the extra options in this game. I think I’ve used vehicle boost maybe once as well. So saying it’s “easier” to just shoot people was probably the wrong word choice.

It’s not a terrible thing, because I enjoy the shooting well enough to coast through the game every now and then.

2775

I had the same experience you did - the bloodwing was handy early, but generally it was so ineffective that I ended up forgetting I had it.

Later I made it to level 59 with a Hunter, and tried out some of the Bloodwing skills. Still wasn’t impressed. The first-tier skill doubles the damage it does, but it still can’t take out basic enemies by itself. I’d rather spend the time on aiming and shooting than launching the bloodwing.

One confusing thing about the bloodwing, at least for me, is that it isn’t fire-and-forget. You’d think that since it’s a bird, it’d choose its own target once you launch it. No, it won’t attack anything you can’t currently see, so if you launch and duck behind cover, it will just mill around aimlessly until you look at the target again.

I’m not all that impressed with the gunslinger skills, either. For my last game, I went exclusively gunslinger until I was level 30+, and used a gunslinger mod that increased pistol accuracy, fire rate, Deadly (critical hit damage), Relentless (extra damage after a kill), and Loaded (extra sniper rifle mag size - don’t know what it’s doing in a gunslinger mod, but that’s how they work). I still frequently found that a top-quality SMG or assault rifle outperformed a good-quality repeater or revolver. The bonuses just aren’t enough to make the difference if you’re not finding really excellent pistols. I did find a really good repeater eventually, but gear seems more important than weapon-specific skills.

It would help if the Gunslinger mod improved Hair Trigger (pistol magazine size, fire rate) instead of Loaded. +30% magazine size usually only means +1 shot for revolvers.

  • Gus
2776

I’ve seen you state this before.

It’s very at odds with what I see: I consistently see the bloodwing kill same-level basic enemies in a single hit. That means 6-9 or so enemies in a single flight. Even if it takes two hits, that’s 3-4 or so enemies killed every 13 seconds or so, with limited auto-targeting (line of sight needed as you observed).

The bloodwing won’t kill basic enemies in a single hit if:

  1. they’re higher level than your character,

  2. they have strong shields, since shock artifact won’t do enough damage to health and any other artifact doesn’t do enough damage to the shields, or

  3. you aren’t using a good hunter class mod (which can add an additional 120% damage).

Even at two hits for a basic kill, I still find that to be the most damaging power of any of the classes, especially considering how fast it recharges.

2777

The class mod is probably the difference. I found a few, but never bothered to equip one.

  • Gus
2778

That’ll do it. A good hunter mod will add 120% damage and reduce cooldown by 50%. A 320% (that’s minimum: I’m not sure how damage bonuses stack in Borderlands) damage bloodwing every 10 seconds hitting for 6 times is pretty crazy. The nearly guranteed daze and full healing is gravy.

2779

What’s the trick to get this game to run under 64-bit Win7? After the splash screen appears on the desktop, Windows reports it as no longer responding.

2780

I’ve never encountered that problem but have you tried running it as administrator?