Borderlands 2
Building An Armory

This Forbes article about Borderlands 2 says:

The lack of good gear was the single thing keeping me from playing Borderlands 2 indefinitely... despite the fact that Borderlands 2 was a much more fleshed-out game than the original in many ways, I quit. I wanted to keep going, but the lack of top tier gear even after a hefty amount of play time made me think it was pointless... Finding the best gear in the game has always been the point of Borderlands...

Having the best gear in the game with which to play is the purpose of not only this page but the Legendaries page.

Having the best gear for each level immediately available the moment you reach that level is accomplished by using one or more characters you have played in previous games to accumulate and store the best gear you have found in those games and passing them to the character in the game you are currently playing.

Somebody once told me "That isn't an armory!!"

Well, the dictionary says "armory - a storage place for weapons and other war equipment." That is what we are doing, and though we are using people rather than a building to store them, the purpose and results are the same.

For me, this feature has greatly increased the appeal of repeat playing of BL2 to the point that it is now my favorite game by far. Not only do you immediately start each level with great new gear, but it's fun to build up your armory by finding new and better gear. Some people get others to give (or sell?) them better gear, but I honestly don't see the fun in that. Why not pay them to play the game for you while you're at it?

Also, if you do the frequent farming detailed on the Legendaries page, you usually get legendaries which are at a lower level, such as being at level 27 and getting a level 19 weapon. In your next game, you can pass this to your character as soon as he reaches level 19 with the additional benefit that you never have to farm for that weapon again.

Even though BL2 specifically tells you that you can use Claptrap's Secret Vault to pass gear to your other characters, I've never seen a video or web page discussing this subject.

Naturally, a new character can only use weapons which are at or below the new character's current level. That is, you can use a previous game's character to pass a level 50 weapon to a level 9 character, but the level 9 character won't be able to use it. However, if a past character is holding lots of really great level 9 gear, it's a huge advantage for the new character to upgrade his current gear to that saved gear as soon as he reaches level 9, with similar upgrades every time he reaches a new level.

The reason this is such a big advantage is that the game's difficulty is based on the assumption that at each new level you do not find the gear rated for that level until well into the level, and the very large majority of the gear you find will be far from the best available while by definition, the character holding the gear will be used to save only the best weapons of each type for every level.

So if you immediately draw from your armory the best gear available (including legendaries) as soon as you start each level, you are way ahead of the game.

Here's how to always have the best gear for your level immediately each time you level up:

This allows the current character to save his/her best weapons by passing them to past characters to hold onto and those characters to pass them to future characters when a new game is played.

You could consider the weapons held by those characters to be your "armory", so they could be called Armory Characters ("AC").

In the image below, Gaige is the current character and the others are characters from previous playthroughs which have been renamed to indicate the level of the weapons they are holding. Don't worry if you only have one or two previous characters. That's all you need to get started. This list started with one and grew from there. I had played several characters and deleted them before thinking of the armory. They would have come in handy when I started the armory, so don't make my mistake.

When you first reach Sanctuary, there are a couple of errands to run, but as soon as possible you should visit Claptrap who has a "mission" which gives you access to Claptrap's Secret Vault ("CSV"). You will be at level 9 or 10 if you followed the outline in the walkthrough on this site. Before getting your armory gear, get level 50 gear from an AC to sell for playing the slot machines.

Save-Quit and at the BL2 menu, press Y (on the Xbox) to bring up a list of characters like the one above and load the past character holding the weapons for your level (character "8-17" in this example) and have him put weapons for your level into the CSV, then reload your current character to get the gear out of the CSV. Since CSV only has four slots, it may take 2-3 trips to transfer all the level 9 gear.

When done, continue the game. If your current character has found some gear better than what's in the armory, then of course you would keep that and get rid of gear in the armory which it replaces, if any.

Note that a character can only pass gear listed in his backpack, not gear which is equipped. Ideally, you would like all the gear an AC has to be in the backpack and none of it equipped. This makes it easier to pass gear, but when an AC runs out of backpack space, you will have to equip some of the overflow and put more overflow into the safe.

If you have several past characters, you could use each one to save only as many as his backpack will hold and not equip or put in the safe any saved gear, but that makes the job of returning lower level gear and getting new gear more complicated because you may be returning a couple of level 12's, a 13, and a 14 (for example) and getting level 15 gear. It's much easier if one past character holds gear for ALL these levels instead of having to load a different character for each level. Also, over time you may accumulate more gear to save than all your past characters can hold in their backpacks.

Be aware that if you get gear from the CSV and have some slots not equipped, the gear will automatically become equipped instead of added to the backpack. So if you pick up gear and don't see it in your backpack, look to see if it is equipped.

After I made the videos for YouTube which combined a regular walkthrough with completing area challenges and farming for legendaries, I started a new game with the purpose of not letting my character access the existing armory. Instead, the character had to start a new armory from scratch.

This was even more restrictive than what others may have to go through who have saved past games at different levels from which they can get gear with which to start an armory, but it shows how easy it is to get an armory started even without help from past characters.

After your AC has killed the Warrior, you can get over 200 bars of eridium by doing a Save-Quit-Continue to kill the Warrior four or five times. I got over 300 bars during the video I made for YouTube.

After killing Jack in Normal mode, rather than replay the same missions in True Vault Hunter (TVH) mode, I would rather replay them by starting a new game and enjoy taking advantage of and building up the armory.

In such a case, picking up eridium may seem pointless since you can't pass it to a new game's character. But what you can do instead is use it to upgrade the capacities of the AC's backpack and safe. Then he can hold more gear for your armory.

Let's say you have no past characters other than the one who just killed Jack and farmed the Warrior. Once you are ready to convert this character into an AC, you Quit-Save, bring up the list of "past characters" which will have this AC-to-be character in it, select him, choose True Vault Hunter mode, then Continue.

Your AC will start a new game outside of Claptrap's Place. Once you get inside and get to the fast travel machine (so that after you Quit and Continue, next time you load this character you will come back by the machine instead of outside.

Next go to the closet where you found the first vault symbol. There will now be a CSV ("Claptrap's Secret Vault") locker to the left of the symbol which will allow you to send/receive weapons to/from your other characters in subsequent playthroughs who can send/receive in the CSV in Sanctuary.

To the left of the closet (in TVH mode) will be a safe which is a duplicate of the one in Sanctuary. This will also come in handy in storing weapons to send to other characters although it cannot be used to pass gear to other characters. And again, the safe and CSV are not here for the current character in Normal mode.

The locker between the safe and the CSV is an ordinary random locker in which you will find loot but in which you can't store anything.

Whatever is put into the CSV locker in the closet also appears in the CSV in Sanctuary, and vice-versa. (Yes, that's right - they are like quantum entangled or something.) The big safe at the far left cannot be used to pass gear, but it can hold gear until you are ready to take it out and pass it in the CSV.

If the AC did not complete the main mission to kill Jack, he will not have the CSV and safe at Claptrap's Place and will have to use the CSV in Sanctuary to pass gear.

The advantages of using Claptrap's Place are

1. The fast travel station (where the AC materializes when loaded) is closer to a CSV (the next room)
   while the one in Sanctuary is a healthy jog away,
2. The safe is also much more conveniently located,
3. Every time an AC goes to Claptrap's Place, the lockers have been restocked and some may
   contain level 50+ gear. Passing level 50+ gear is a way to give cash to the current player.

In the list of past character above, two level 50 characters are holding the lower level gear because it's better to have them finding and passing level 50 gear in the lockers at Claptrap's Place to the player at his lowest level. If they were holding gear for level 28+ characters, the level 50 gear would not help them as much.

High-level players usually have more cash than they need, so rather than sell off excess gear and pocket the money they don't need, they can transfer such gear to the character labeled Guns For Cash. Then when a new game is played, the Guns For Cash AC can pass that gear to the new character who can sell it to get cash for playing the slots.

Because you cannot pass gear which is equipped or in the safe, you should store the lowest level gear in the backpack because it will be the first to be accessed by a new character.

Then equip the next lowest gear, then put the rest in the safe. When higher levels come, the low level gear received back from the current player can be put into the safe and/or equipped and the next level gear moved into the backpack.

Also, if your current character type is, say, a Mechromancer, you can store in the safe all the mods for other specific character types since you won't be needing them. This frees up backpack space and also makes it less confusing by removing gear you can't use in the current game.

For a new AC to be able to hold the gear you save, he must start with an empty backpack. If you have more than one prior character, you can move all the first AC's gear you want to save to the other AC to hold. This gear may come in handy later in the game when the current character reaches the level of that gear. Otherwise, you will have to dispose of the old gear. The best way to dispose of it is to pass it to the current player to sell. If the AC is at level 50 or higher, this will give the current player. a TON of cash for playing the slots. The alternative is to put the gear in the safe and deal with it later.

When you first start saving gear, one AC may be able to hold it all. But each time you play the game, you will save more and more. For example, at level 12 you may have a powerful rifle and not find a better one until level 16, but the next time you play you may find one at level 14 which is better than the L12 but not as good as the L16 rifle, so you will want to save it to use in the future on levels 14 and 15. Then you may find a level 15 rifle to save, or a level 14 rifle which has a different elemental effect than the others, etc.

The point is that every time you play BL2, you will find better and/or different gear to save. Some times it will replace gear you were already saving, but other times it will be added to your armory, so the armory will gradually get bigger and bigger and require more ACs. There are 7 ACs in the image above, all holding a lot of gear, but this all started with just one AC and spread every time an AC ran out of space.

It is relatively hard to get Legendary gear so I hate to throw out even the ones which are not very good or which I just have no use for. So I set up ACs just to hold onto legendaries which I am not using.

Marking gear in an AC's backpack:

To make it easier to find gear I'm looking for in an AC's backpack, I usually mark the gear matching the current player's level (or his next level) as Favorites. If the AC is holding any level 50 gear to pass to the current player to sell, I mark it as Trash.

When a level 50 AC goes back to Claptrap's Place to send gear, you should check the lockers between the Fast Travel machine and the CSV locker for gear. Even ordinary level 50 gear is valued at $5k-$12k with some over $20k. This gear can be passed to the current low-level character for whom that is a LOT of money. He can use the cash to play the slots and win eridium to be used for upgrading ammo capacity as well as backpack and safe capacity.

You won't find such gear in the lockers every time, but you will often enough to be a real windfall for the current, lower-leveled player. And if you really need that money, just have the level 50 player Save-Quit-Continue until you do find some high-priced loot, or the level 50 player could play slots somewhere to win more level 50 gear to pass along.

You don't need to check ammo boxes since they will not have gear and you can't pass ammo nor cash. Actually, you could use cash to buy gear from a vending machine and send that to the new character to sell for cash, but gear that you pay, say, $12k for in a vending machine at level 50 may only get $1k or so when sold by the new player while found gear that shows a $12k value will actually sell for $12k.

When you go from the fast travel room to the next room there are several lockers on the left plus a dumpster and a couple of cardboard boxes, any of which may contain level 50 gear. Also check the locker between the safe and the CSV. There is another small room with two lockers on the other side of the room which you could check to be thorough, but since they are out of the way and level 50 gear ends up being plentiful, checking them isn't really necessary.

Just two level 50 ACs find more $5k+ gear than my lower level characters can use, so the guns for cash character in the list above is used to store the excess. It currently has over $300k worth of gear to pass.

My current system is that when a new character reaches Sanctuary for the first time, he gets about $100k to $150k from the ACs and plays the slots until he gets about 150-200 bars of eridium with which to expand the capacities of his backpack.

After this, the character will not be doing any more heavy-duty slot playing and should not have any use for more cash from the ACs. Since cash cannot be passed to others, any excess cash the current player ends up the game with is wasted, so once he has finished playing the slots, ACs should not pass him any more gear to sell.

Something which is very helpful when you first start building an armory is keeping track of what is in your armory; otherwise, if you get a new piece of gear, you won't know if it is better than what your "armory" already has, so you won't know if it needs to be saved or if it can safely be sold.

This is particularly true when you play the slots and have to figure out whether to keep or sell all the gear you are winning, especially when the gear is a level or two below your current level.

If you find better gear on the same or lower level, you need to update your list and eventually dispose of the old item.

To see what an armory record keeping document looks like, click here. You can download the same form in MS Word format here or just get a one-page blank form here. (These require MS Word or compatible software such as LibreOffice.)

In the "Weapon" column, the letters C, E, F, and S indicate the type of element effect a weapon has.. "Lvl" is the player's level required to use the gear. "Dam" is the damage a weapon inflicts. "Acc" is its accuracy. "Rate" is its rate of fire. "Rel" is its reload time with a lower number being better, and "Mag" is the number of rounds which the weapon can hold in its magazine.

In the "Other" column:

• "24.0, 6.0%" means that the elemental effect has 24 additional damage 6% of the time.
• "U2" means it uses 2 rounds at a time. This may also be shown in the Mag column like "12/2" which means it holds 12 rounds and uses 2 at a time.
• "2.4x" means it has a scope with 2.4x zoom.
• A name, such as "Caustic Infinity", indicates the weapon is a Legendary (orange) weapon. Such weapons usually have some additional benefit which does not appear in the chart. Google the names for more information.

Under "Mod", "Cool" means skill cooldown, then you have mods for rifles (magazine and damage increase), grenades (damage and resistance increase), and fire rate. "S" in column 1 means mods for Sirens, A for Assassins, G for Gunzerkers, and M for Mechromancers. Unmarked mods are for Commandos.

I print out these pages from MS Word for reference during a game and I'll hand write in changes. When a game is over, I'll go through the inventories of each of the ACs to make sure the list still matches what they are actually holding, then I'll make the changes in Word and print out a new copy.

A good bit of trouble, yes, but the payoff in always having the most powerful weapons is huge. Also, some people spend a lot of time running around Sanctuary looking for Michael Mamaril to give them a free weapon which may or may not be useful or they spend hours playing the slots to get better weapons, and building the armory is no more trouble than those and similar efforts and the result (a powerful armory in future games) is much, much better.

Rifles and subs (submachineguns) and even pistols can generally be used for the same purposes, so if there is a strong rifle of a particular type, then there is no point in keeping a weaker SMG of the same type and vice versa. For that reason, I have combined rifles, pistols, and subs in the list.

In the armory list, you will find some gaps in the levels of some types of weapons, such as having a level 17 launcher after a level 14 launcher. Why no launchers for levels 15 and 16?

One reason is that I may have saved a particular weapon, put it in the backpack of the current player, and found that I never used it. In such a case, I'll dump the weapon from the armory. For example, my experience is that in most missions, fire-based weapons are usually not as useful as, say, a similar corrosive weapons, particularly on a level where you are mainly fighting robots. But in, Sawtooth Cauldron, where you are fighting mostly bandits, a fire weapon is best for whichever level you usually do Sawtooth Cauldron on.

Another reason is that you may find some gear which at first glance seems to be much stronger than similar gear in the list, but which has drawbacks which make them less desirable. I almost never use Jakobs weapons despite their high damage ratings and supposedly high fire rates. Jakobs weapons are generally slow, have small magazines, never have elemental effects, and require pressing the trigger for each shot. In my opinion, the extra damage for one shot is not worth it. Even a legendary Jakobs doesn't seem worth the aggravation.

Finally, if I go up several levels by fighting the same bandits over and over, such as killing Bad Maw, then I'm probably not getting much new weaponry on those levels.

Obviously, if you have been on a mission and leveled up, you should return to Sanctuary and get your new level's gear as soon as it is convenient.

If you are going on a long mission and expect to level up during the mission, you may want to carry weapons with you for the next higher level. This would normally be weapons which will really be helpful in the mission, such as a better shield or rocket launcher.

For example, I'm usually at level 17 when starting the Train to Catch mission. I know that I will reach level 18 before getting to Wilhelm at the end of the mission, and I have a level 18 caustic launcher I want to use against him as well as other level 18 gear, so it's s no-brainer to get that stuff before starting the mission.

I also know that after turning in that mission, Sanctuary won't be accessible for a long time during which time I will be leveling up at Opportunity and having a tough fight against robots at Highland Overlook, so I will load up on level 20-21 gear even though I'm usually just at level 18. In addition, I will upgrade my backpack with eridium, do any missions I want to complete before going, etc.

If you are very close to leveling up, you might want to do a small mission to level up before going on the longer mission; otherwise, you can start your next mission, shoot a few bad guys to level up, then return to upgrade your gear. Of course, upgrading your gear will require you to Save-Quit-Continue, which will re-spawn the enemies you just killed, but that may be a small price to pay.

An alternative is to get the next-level gear and store it in the CSV or safe before starting the mission, then when you come back and get it, you will not have to Save-Quit-Continue at that time and the enemies will not re-spawn.

Or if you are, say, halfway through level 16, you could go back and kill Bad Maw enough times to level up, even though it is usually not worth going through a whole level-up from 16 to 17 with Bad Maw. Starting with level 19, you can go to Opportunity (even if you have not received the Opportunity missions yet) and level up by destroying the Constructor which appears on the far, far left of where you enter. See the Walkthrough for more info.

Whenever you get a weapon from your armory or find a weapon you want to add to the armory, mark it as a Favorite in your backpack to help avoid accidentally selling or dropping it.

Once my Armory Characters have gotten a lot of level 50 weapons to pass to the current character to sell for cash, my current character will usually not pick up gear to sell anymore. It saves a lot of trouble and allows more room to carry gear from the armory, including gear for one or more coming levels when I'm going on a long mission.

If you still need to pick up gear to sell to raise cash, stop and mark such gear as Trash. Not only does this also help avoid selling gear you want, but it makes selling faster since you can sell all Trash gear with a single click.

Since the CSV only has 4 slots for passing gear, it may take 2 or 3 trips (or more) to pass all the gear when your current character levels up. When you have a lot of ACs, as shown in the image above, it may take even more trips if old gear has to be returned to one or more past characters and new gear received from another character who's holding higher level gear.

In your first playthrough, you obviously have no past characters to pass gear to you. Instead, you have to start the ball rolling by saving your best weapons when you upgrade them rather than selling them. You have four slots in the CSV plus the slots in the safe, including as many safe upgrades as you are willing to buy Even so, you won't have room to save all the best gear you get in an entire game, but you have to start somewhere.

I expect that most people bothering to read this have already played BL2 at least once and will have at least one past character to pass gear to, so that is not a problem. And if you have some unfinished games at various levels in your past players list, that's even better since you can go through and get the best weapons from each of those as a starting point for your armory.

So again, maintaining an armory is a bit of work, but for me it really adds to my enjoyment of the game. I'm always anxious to level up and get the next batch of high-powered weapons, shields, etc. This makes battles easier as well since you would not otherwise get so many powerful weapons so quickly when you start a new level.

To that end, there are a few places in the game where I always level up a couple of times. They are Knuckle Dragger, Bad Maw, and Opportunity. Each of these are discussed on the walkthrough. The first time you start farming legendaries, you will level up a lot doing that and may not even need any other leveling up.

Finally, some video uploaders talk about spending all day (or longer) using some strategy or another to get better weapons, and this is less trouble than those strategies.

Leave comments at the videos on Youtube.