Borderlands 2

Challenges are things you can to do to accumulate points which can be used to improve your weapons, shields, etc. You can see a list of challenges in your character's wrist computer ("Echo Communicator").

Completing one challenge does not earn you an upgrade, just points towards an upgrade. And the upgrade itself will only be a 0.3% increase, so the immediate effect of completing challenges is very small, but the cumulative effect can be significant because upgrades from challenges carry over to new games, no matter which characters you play, so that you start off stronger/better each time you play the game if you have completed challenges.

For example, you may start a game with a 25% increase in health, weapon damage, etc., carried over from previous games. That is pretty significant.

Some challenges are for specific game-playing situations which you personally may not encounter, such as if you only play solo but a challenge is for co-op mode, so you are not going to be able to complete every challenge. For example, a challenge in The Dust is to have your co-op partner kill you by starting up Ellie's crusher with you inside. It is possible to push the button yourself and jump in, but if you do you will get no points. You must have a partner to push the button.

General Challenges

General challenges are related to enemies, loot, weapons, general combat, and some miscellaneous categories. For example, a challenge may be to pick up 100 green weapons, for which you will receive challenge completion points, but then the challenge will be extended to getting 500 green weapons, and so on. In other words, the vast majority of general challenges are infinite.

General challenges are too many and varied to be able to keep up with all of them while playing a game. You will complete some of them during the normal course of play. You could look at the list on your Echo Communicator from time to time if you wish and do whatever it takes to complete a specific challenge, but the payoff is so small that it hardly seems worth the effort.

For a list of general challenges, see this IGN Wiki page.

Area Challenges

Area challenges are for specific areas of the map, such as Sanctuary and The Dust, and sometimes just for specific buildings/compounds in an area. Each area has its own set of challenges which can be as few as one or as many as a half-dozen or so. Most of these are for finding something or completing a task specific to the area.

For example, a vault symbol is a symbol etched into a wall or floor. (Vault symbols which appear on flags don't count.) Each area has at least one but more often each area will have 3 or 4. When you get close enough facing a vault symbol a prompt will appear saying to press a button to "discover" it or it will say "discovered" if you already did.

Another common type of challenge is looking for Echos, which are recordings providing history related to the area. Challenge Echos have white spikes (similar to those over white weapons) sticking up from them to make them easy to recognize. Unlike Vault Symbols which are often hidden and hard to find, Echos are almost always out in the open and can't be missed. However, we will point out where you come across them because in some large areas, such as the Dust, you may not ever get around to the area they are in, and every once in a while, an Echo may be hidden behind something.

One thing which is somewhat confusing is that after you get them, if you go back to the same area after a Save-Quit-Continue, the white spikes will appear again and you can pick up the Echos and listen to them again, but you get no more challenge points for doing so. Having the white spikes reappear just makes it harder to remember which Echos you have already picked up. Why the game was designed to do this is a mystery to me.

In fact, once you complete an area challenge, there is no way to repeat it in the same game unless you quit without saving; but when you start a new game, while challenge upgrades carry forward, the challenges themselves are reset and can be completed again by your new character for more upgrades.

Because most area challenges are tricky to find or complete, they will be pointed out in the Walkthrough. If you still have trouble finding/completing them, there are videos on YouTube showing how to complete challenges for each area and links to such videos are usually given in the walkthrough pages as well.

The problem with the videos is that the steps for completing area challenges are rarely (if ever) shown in mission specific videos. Instead, all the challenges for an area are lumped together into one video and rarely in the order you will come across them in the course of completing a mission.

In fact, in many videos in which area challenges are lumped together, you may only be able to complete some of the challenges in a first visit to an area and must come back later complete the challenges, yet this is rarely, if ever, pointed out in videos and if pointed out.

Finally, while videos usually show where the character is on a map for each challenge, the videos move around so much that it can be difficult to figure out exactly where you are supposed to go.

On the walkthrough on this site, each challenge is presented in the order in which it can most conveniently be completed, whether in the middle of the current mission or during a later one or on its own. Step-by-step directions are given for locating it and shown marked on a map. If needed, a picture will be provided and a link may be given to a video as a last resort.

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