Borderlands 2
Farming for Legendary Weapons
Legendary weapons have an orange rarity. See this Wikia page for a list of such weapons. The BL2 Walkthrough on this site tells when a legendary is available, usually with a reference to this page.
Legendary weapons each have special powers which may not be immediately obvious until you use the weapon, so don't sell off a legendary without researching it first. Google the weapon name for more information about each weapon's features, but if you get one, try it out for yourself. The Frakker shotgun gets bad comments from a lot of people, but after trying it out, I was very impressed with its wide-range killing power.
Some legendaries are so powerful they can continue to be used against enemies up to 20 levels higher than the weapon's level. Others have features which don't add much to their power and, in fact, may not be as powerful as non-legendaries of the same type and level, such as the Emperor machine gun, the Rocket Speed Bunny, and the Gunerang.
Legendary Drop Rates
This section contains a lot of technical information about drop rates. It's been collapsed because it takes a lot of space and may not be of interest to everyone.
Click here to open this section
In early January 2018, I Googled Borderlands 2 Legendary drop rates and ...drop rate charts and was not able to find any consistent, much less documented, information.
In some places, people say that the rate of legendary drops by named enemies (bosses) is 1 in 20, or 5%. Others say it's 1 in 10 (10%). Some people claim that a particular legendary has a drop rate of 3% or whatever. I feel certain that the drop rates are the same for all the named enemies. To have different drop rates for different bosses would be more work for the developers and why would they want to vary them?
Paul Hellquist, creative and design director for Borderlands 2, says on this web page about BL2's "rolls of dice" (the computer's random number generator) which determine what loot drops:
|
I'm sure some of you have experienced times in Borderlands when you feel like you are on "hot streaks" and "cold streaks" where you are getting a ton of (or none of) what you want. [You believe that] the game must be skewing the rolls in or out of your favor! Let me assure you: This is not the case!
...every time an item drops there in an equal chance for every number to be rolled. There is no secret re-weighting based on how long since the last legendary, or since the last sniper rifle dropped or anything like that.
The only [exceptions to pure randomness relate to] ammo and health drops... These are the "need" and "emergency" item pools. ...the drops are based on how much ammo you have. If you are low you will probably get [ammo from] the "need" [pool] but not "emergency" ammo [pool]. If you are super low you will probably get two extra ammo drops, one from each of these [two] pools.
|
This is the only authoritative page I've found on the subject, and it even it doesn't give drop rates for legendaries from bosses, just that the odds of getting a legendary from a "standard enemy" are 1 in 10,000.
I have stated elsewhere that BL2 seems to be good at giving you ammo when you run out, and this confirms it.
Because specific legendaries can be a lot of trouble to get, and higher-ranked ones substantially more difficult to get (if you ever get them), even if you don't go whole hog in creating an Armory, you should at least follow the instructions on the armory page for saving legendaries to pass along to your players in future games.
For example, if you look at my videos you will see that I am almost always using a Caustic Infinity pistol, yet over the many, many BL2 games that I've played (which I play up to killing Jack in Normal mode then starting a new game), only twice have I gotten one, a level 19 and a level 23. So if it were not for the Armory, I would be playing almost all of my games without my favorite weapon which I use most of the time (starting at level 19).
In the series of videos I made at the end of 2017 and early 2018, I farmed every named enemy who had "an increased chance" of dropping a specific legendary in the Normal mode game. The list below shows the number of tries that it took for each one.
Please keep in mind that it is very unlikely that the names of the legendaries and of the enemies are relevant because it is very likely that the drop rate is the same for all of them. Some legendaries which dropped in 1 try in this game took 20+ tries in the next game played and vice versa, such as Kerblaster taking 24 tries in this game and dropping on the mission kill (no farming) in the next game. But I've shown the names just in case I'm wrong.
1 - Baby Maker, Madame Van Bartlesby
1 - Emperor, any of the 4 Assassins
1 - Gub - Laney White
1 - Gunerang, Rakkman
1 - Homing Pandemic, Mortar
1 - Infinity pistol, Doc Mercy
1 - Unkempt Harold, Savage Lee
1 - Sledge's Shotgun, Smash-Head
2 - Hornet, KnuckleDragger
2 - Invader, Saturn
2 - Transformer, Pimon
3 - The Bee, Hunter Hellquist
3 - Fastball, Boll
4 - Neogenator, Spycho
4 - Striker, Slappy
4 - Veruc, Mobley
5 - Logan's Gun, Wilhelm
5 - Maggie - Zaford
7 - Bonus Package, Boom-Bewm
10 - Hellfire, Scorch
10 - Madhous!, Mad Dog
10 - Pyrophobia, Incinerator Clayton
10 - Storm Front, Splinter Group
10 - Tortoise Shield, Blue
15 - Deliverance, Tumbaa
16 - Mongol, Dukino's Mom
17 - The Bitch, BNK3R
24 - Kerblaster, Midge-Mong
28 - Black Hole, Forman Jasper
28 - Maggie, Zaford
40 - Badaboom, King Mong
48 - The Cradle, Henry
I'm not sure how to treat the following -- When farming Wilhelm, Logan's Gun dropped on the 5th run, which I showed above, but I kept going and another dropped in 2 more runs, and then a third in 1 more run, then in 9 more runs, Rolling Thunder dropped. For purposes of doing calculations, I just ignored these extras.
What is striking about this list is that a whopping 25% of the time (8 out of 32 legendaries), the legendary dropped on the first try, and another 50% took only 2-10 tries.
The average time for a farming run for the list above is about 2.5 minutes, so a farming session which took 10 tries only took about 25 minutes on average, which is very reasonable when you consider the benefits.
The immediate benefit is getting a powerful piece of gear to use right away. The long-term benefit is being able to pass the legendary along to your character in new games you start. This means that you never have to farm for that particular legendary again.
And while there are 38 named enemies you can farm for specific legendaries in Normal mode (not counting DLCs), only 11 of them are marked in the Contents section below as "must-haves".
Statistics was my worst course when working on an MBA, but below are charts calculating legendary drop rates from bosses (or what I call "named enemies" since I don't consider someone like Boll to be a "boss").
The GOT column in the first table shows the cumulative number of legendaries found at each number of runs, based on the list above. The next column divides the numbers in the GOT column by 32 to get the cumulative percentage of the 32 legendaries farmed which were found by the number of RUNs shown.
For example, by 10 runs, I got 24 legendaries which is 75% of the 32 total legendaries which were farmed. By 40 runs, I had already gotten 97% of the 32. The 100% shown for 60, 80 and 100 runs is a number very close to 100, such as 31.968 which has been rounded up. You can't actually guarantee that 100% of the legendaries will be dropped by any specific number of runs, but the odds of it NOT dropping are increasingly very, very small.
The second table is for the assumption that the drop rate is 1 in 20 or 5%. The numbers in the GOT column are the odds that a legendary will drop by the number of RUNs shown or fewer. For example, given that the odds of a legendary dropping for any one run are 1 in 20, the odds of 1 dropping in 20 runs or fewer are 64%.
Since there were 32 legendaries, we multiply the GOT % by 32 to get how many of the 32 legendaries would drop by each run. By run 10, 40% x 32 = 12.8, so we should have gotten about 10 legendaries in 10 runs while the first chart shows that we actually got 24 legendaries in 10 runs.
We can comparee the numbers in the x32 column of the second table to the numbers in the GOT column in the first table to see how close the calculated totals are to the actuals in table 1. I was surprised to see that the numbers were not very close because I had believed that the 1-in-20 drop rate was probably correct.
The third table shows the same types of calculations based on a drop rate of 1 in 10 or 20%. That table shows that we should get about 20 legendaries in 10 runs which is fairly close to the 24 we actually got. On the other hand, in the video farming sessions, two of the legendaries took 40 minutes or more, which seems to fit the 1 in 20 table better than 1 in 10 table.
After completing the game represented in the table above, I started a new game to farm every legendary to compare to the above. I even farmed Thunderball Fists from Captain Flynt. It takes 5+ minutes to do a run, so I would only do about 10 runs in a row, pause, and come back to it later.
When I got to about 40 runs, I looked on YouTube for farming Flynt and found a video where the player said it took him over 135 runs to get the legendary. I eventually got it in 56 runs.
With odds of 1-in-20, the odds of NOT getting a legendary in 100 runs is .005, or in other words, you could farm Flynt 200 times, stopping each farming session when you get the Fists, and only once would you not get it in 100 runs.
With odds of 1-in-10 in any one run, the odds not getting the Fists in a farming session after 135 runs would be about once in 20,000 sessions. Again, this is not 20,000 runs, but 20,000 sessions of as many runs as it takes to get the Fists. That is spectacularly unlucky.
What makes it worse in this particular case is that a run in Flynt farming is one of the longest in the game. And while a higher level Thunderball Fists is a great weapon later in the game, the one you get in Normal mode is not effective for very many levels.
The number of legendaries we actually got in 1-5 runs is much higher than either of the other tables predicts. The reason is that the sample size is so small. A sample size of, say, 1000 legendaries would be much better, but even if you just repeat for 1000 times the farming of the named enemy which takes the least amount of time to farm (KnuckleDragger or Boll), it will take at least 1 minute per run on average.
A thousand runs at 1 minute each would take about 17 hours. Personally, I'm not that curious.
In fact, I can already hear people thinking "This guy needs to get a life." just because of all the trouble I've already gone to.
| Total actual GOTs: |
| RUNS |
GOT |
÷32 |
| 1 | 8 | 25% |
| 2 | 11 | 34% |
| 5 | 18 | 56% |
| 10 | 24 | 75% |
| 20 | 27 | 84% |
| 30 | 27 | 84% |
| 40 | 31 | 97% |
| 60 | 32 | 100% |
| 80 | 32 | 100% |
| 100 | 32 | 100% |
| |
| 1 in 20: | | | |
| RUNS |
GOT |
x32 |
| 1 | 5% | 1.6 |
| 2 | 10% | 3.2 |
| 5 | 23% | 7.4 |
| 10 | 40% | 12.8 |
| 20 | 64% | 20.5 |
| 30 | 79% | 25.3 |
| 40 | 87% | 27.8 |
| 60 | 96% | 30.7 |
| 80 | 98% | 31.4 |
| 100 | 99.5% | 31.8 |
|
|
| 1 in 10: | | | |
| RUNS |
GOT |
x32 |
| 1 | 10% | 3.2 |
| 2 | 19% | 6.1 |
| 5 | 41% | 13.1 |
| 10 | 65% | 20.8 |
| 20 | 88% | 28.2 |
| 30 | 96% | 30.7 |
| 40 | 98.5% | 31.5 |
| 60 | 99.8% | 31.9 |
| 80 | 99.9% | 32.0 |
| 100 | 99.9% | 32.0 |
|
A run can take anywhere from 1 minute (e.g.: KnuckleDragger or Boll) to 5+ minutes (e.g.: Captain Flynt or The Warrior), including the Save-Quit-Continue which takes about 30 seconds, with the average being about 2.5 minutes (e.g.: Midge-Mong)
If the drop rate is, indeed, 1 in 10, then you should get a legendary in no more than 20 runs 88% of the time.
This means that 12% of the time, it will take more than 20 runs.
12% seems like a small percentage, but there are 38 named enemies who can drop legendaries in the Normal mode (up to and including the Warrior) by my count. If you farm each of these enemies, on average 4 or 5 of them (38 x 12%) will take 20 tries or more.
20 runs at 5-6 minutes is around 2 hours PER LEGENDARY.
20 runs at 2.5 minutes is 50 minutes per legendary.
20 runs at 5 minutes is 1 hour and 40 minutes per legendary.
However, you only have to farm for each legendary one time, then the next time you start a game, you can just pass it to your new character which makes the time invested much more reasonable.
Also, as many as 27 of the 38 legendaries show in the contents can be skipped. Even using the 1 in 20 table, only 1.4 of the 11 "important" legendaries should take as much as 40 runs.
More Complications
How does farming two named enemies at once affect the drop rates?
There's Boom-Bewm, either of which can drop a legendary Bonus Package grenade mod. If the usual legendary drop rate for bosses is, say, 1 in 10, then do they each have a 10% chance of dropping it, which gives you a total chance per farming run of 2 in 10 or 20%? Or do they have a combined 10% chance, which is what I would guess to be the case.
Likewise, I would guess that the four members of The Splinter Group, each of whom can drop the Storm Front grenade mod, also share the same 10% (or whatever) drop rate that individual bosses have, which means that any one of them only has a 2.5% drop rate.
I would guess the same for the four Assassins, any one of which can drop an Emperor SMG?
There are also pairs of bosses who can be farmed at the same time but who each drop a different legendary, such as Mobley & Gettle (The Dust). My hunch is that they each have a 10% drop rate, but maybe not.
Then there are bosses such as Wilhelm, BNK3R, and Saturn, who can drop two different legendaries.
Contents:
Below is a list of the legendaries which can be farmed from named enemies during the game in Normal mode and excluding DLCs. The most important weapons have a * to the side. Some of the others (+) could be useful if you don't already have something better. I personally wouldn't bother to farm the others although they could also be useful in specific situations.
The names are linked to their place in the document. Videos have been made for a walkthrough of BL2 in which missions, sub-missions, challenges and legendary farming are all done during the same walkthrough. Links are provided for the video covering each farming opportunity.
Sorted By Order in BL2:
Sorted by Legendary Name:
- The Hornet (video), which is dropped by Knuckle Dragger, is a corrosive pistol. It is the first legendary weapon available and the fastest farming procedure in the game. The Hornet can one-shot Bullymongs and bandits and even damage nearby enemies, making it by far the most powerful weapon you can have around Liar's Berg when starting a new game.
It will not be effective as many levels up as the next few legendaries, but by the time it starts being less effective against enemies, you will be at Sanctuary and can upgrade all your weapons if you have an armory.
After killing KD as part of the main mission, go through the portal from Windshear Waste to Southern Shelf, then immediately come back then Save-Quit-Continue ("S-Q-C") to get KD to respawn. This will make you rematerialize by the portal rather than back at Claptrap's Place.
The shotgun you got from the now-defunct red chest in the room you are in will kill KD in 4 shots or so. After you rematerialize, move to the left side of the room and aim past the right side of the door where KD will drop down. Shoot her a couple of times and back up to entice her in, then kill her quickly.
Because KD's loot goes flying out to her left (your right), if you kill her outside, her loot will go flying over the ledge and spread out below. By killing her inside, her important loot will be confined to the room.
If you keep farming her, you will run out of ammo, so open the 3 ammo boxes to your right after killing her. If they fill you up to 78 shotgun shells (or 177 rounds if you have gotten a Hornet and are using it to farm for more XP), do a S-Q-C; otherwise, check the 2 boxes on the left side of the room. If you are still under the max ammo for the weapon you are using, don't worry about it. You'll get more on subsequent runs. If you are a worrier by nature, you can loot the piles outside.
Don't waste time trying to pick up every last dollar. I wouldn't even bother to pick up her white weapons because they aren't worth much and you will run out of backpack space needed to carry the Hornet(s).
It takes around a minute to kill KD, pick up the loot, check the loot boxes, and S-Q-C, meaning you can farm KD 10 times in 10 minutes. This makes farming KD a much quicker way to level up than any other spots in the game, including the method described at Liar's Berg. You'll reach level 3 very quickly. If you keep farming KD, you won't get as many XP for killing her, but it is still faster than at Liar's Berg, at least for getting to level 4.
Most of the Hornet variants have 18-19 damage. The Twin Hornet is around 16x2-17x2 but use 2 rounds. I usually stop when I reach level 4 because it would take at least 20 more kills to reach level 5, but if you are determined to get a Twin, you can keep going.
- Bonus Package (video) is a very powerful grenade mod which Bewm can drop in the Best Minion Ever mission. In True Vault Hunter mode (after killing Jack), you may get a Homing Bonus Package, which is really nice since it hunts down enemies, but in Normal mode, you only get the basic Lobbed Bonus Package.
Before you can farm Bewm, you have to kill Boom-Bewm the first time and open the gate for Claptrap. Then S-Q-C, which puts you back in Liar's Berg. Sell loot, buy ammo, then run out of the Berg and drop down to run around the first bandit camp. Run up the ramp at the 2nd camp and through the shipping container, continue on and drop down into Boom-Bewm's area.
Kill Boom-Bewm the way you did the first time. and if he doesn't drop a Bonus Package, S-Q-C and repeat. Total time for a run is 2 minutes or less. That equals 5 tries in 10 minutes, which is often enough to get the mod.
- KerBlaster (video) is a rifle that is like shooting Bonus Package grenades. Midge-Mong may drop it during or after the Symbiosis mission. It is well worth having but it might be better to come back later when you have better weapons and shields. This is also a time when having Deathtrap as your Skill is a huge advantage.
The first time you kill him, you can't get to him until you kill all the bandits in the area, but when farming, he will come out right away, so you can just run by most of the Bullymongs and bandits.
If he does not drop the KerBlaster, a Save-Quit-Continue will bring you back to the portal in Southern Shelf Bay. Restock at the ammo machine, if needed, then start running. When you reach the Bullymongs, release Deathtrap.
Videos show people taking "shortcuts" by doing grenade jumps, but it only takes a few seconds to run past where they do that to the back of the area where you go up two flights of stairs, then return to the stairs going up to M-M's room.
By that time Deathtrap may already be fighting M-M at the foot of the stairs where you can help finish them off; otherwise, start up the stairs and you will probably meet M-M coming down. Just blast away at them. The Hornet (#1, above) will kill them fairly easily.
The whole attempt, from the Save-Quit-Continue to killing Midge-Mong again, should only take 2 minutes, only a few seconds of which is actually fighting Midge-Mong.
- Thunderball Fists (video): is a shock pistol with a secondary explosion which can be boosted by grenade damage bonuses such as from Explosive Relics.
Higher level TFs are great for fighting Stalkers, and are also surprisingly damaging when fighting Crystalisks due to the secondary explosions.
The problem is that farming for it is long and tedious (over 5 minutes per run) because it is dropped by Captain Flynt and your spawn point is all the way back at Liar's Berg.
Videos on YouTube show shortcuts, but they are for very high-level characters and require doing grenade- or launcher-assisted jumps. In Normal mode, especially if you are farming him right after killing him the first time, you can only carry 3 grenades and you would not have the launcers required.
There is a "shortcut" which involves walking along and jumping between girders and chains with a good chance of falling off. At best, you only save a few seconds compared to just turnning non-stop all the way. If you do fall off, it will take you much longer than the non-shortcut route. I tried it a few times and gave up on it.
After running all the way to Flynt's ship, shoot him once to get him to drop down, then go into the room under where he sits and wait for him to drop down. The room gives you better protection. If he doesn't drop the Thunderball Fists, do a S-Q-C and keep trying.
Like other bosses on the normal level, he can't be farmed for any but the low-level legendary. The best hope for getting a higher level Thunderball Fists (e.g.: level 26) is to farm the loot chests at the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, although the odds of getting any one particular weapon there are not very good.
- Unkempt Harold (video) is a very powerful pistol which can be used through many levels. It is dropped by Savage Lee in Marrowfield, a Bullymong area you went through to find Corporal Reiss (which must be done before Lee will spawn).
A good time to farm for it is during the Name Game mission. If you have gotten the legendaries described above, you should not have any trouble killing Savage Lee..
When you materialize in Three Horns - Divide, immediatly check your HUD map for red dots. If you see some, Savage Lee should be there, usually just north of where you materialized. You can kill him there and kill him again in Marrowfield without having to S-Q-C.
What makes this farming opportunity good is:
- The Unkempt Harold is a weapon you will be using for a long time.
- It's a fairly short drive from the respawning point to Marrowfield.
- You can do a farming run from start to next start in under 2 minutes.
Although the drop rate is only about 5%, many people report getting it within the first 4 or 5 tries or even on their first try. It is well worth spending whatever time is needed..
- Infinity pistol (video) never runs out of ammo. Not having to stop to reload makes this weapon much stronger than its damage rating indicates. The best model is the Caustic Infinity because of the ease with which it destroys Hyperion robots.
While Infinity pistols are possible from any sources of Legendary gear, Doc Mercy is the most reliable, relatively speaking, I've gotten an Infinity from Mercy with 5 tries or fewer, but I've also gone over 60 tries without getting one. (That's 2+ hours at 2 minutes per try.) Claims for the drop rate on the Web range from 5% up.
You are most likely to get a non-elemental Iinfinity which really isn't very good if you get the other legendaries detailed here, but one time I got a DVA Infinity which has the fire elemental effect. The DVA prefix normally indicates that the weapons fires two rounds for every shot, but the DVA Infinity only fires 2 rounds 25% of the time. Even without the extra round, it is better than a non-elemental Infinity.
I have gotten level 16 and 23 Caustic Infinities, but don't remember where I got them. I assumed it was from the Wildlife Exploration Preserve (see bottom of this page), but it appears not to give weapons below 19 or above 22 in Normal mode..
Youtube videos show people using the opposite side of the geyser that got you to the top of the Happy Pig to get you onto some boulders to the right of Mercy's lair.
The advantages of this approach is that Mercy will come out right away. You can kill him without having to contend with his bandits. If he doesn't drop an Infinity, you can Save-Quit-Continue, saving some time.
The disadvantages are:
- If you don't position yourself just right, you'll come up short and have a bunch of critters chasing you. One video shows the character taking a half-dozen tries just to make the jump and having to fight critters when he misses. It would have been so much faster to just drive around.
- With the side attack, he is more likely to drop his loot over the side of the stairs (making the loot harder to find) than if you take the long way and attack him when he is at the bottom of the stairs.
- The bandits drop eridium once in a while and you will be missing out on that as well as on the XP from killing them which is pretty quick and easy to do.
- You will also miss out on the many loot boxes which can replenish your ammo as well as having eridium now and then.
The possibility of having to fight critters and search for his loot can offset whatever time is saved by taking this shortcut.
That being said, if you have an Unkempt Harold (especially the Double Penetrating variant), you can easily kill Mercy with it and with Deathtrap's help.
To position yourself correctly on the geyser, approach it from the right side so that you can see where you need to end up - at the bottom of the slope on the edge of the geyser, perhaps more on the ground than the slope. In a few tries you should be getting it right almost all the time.
I went back on level 28 and used this method. In 20+ tries, I hit the spot every time but one. Then 2 shots with a level 21 Thunderball Fists, killed Mercy in 1-2 shots and most of the time his loot dropped by his feet. A few times I had to go looking. I finally got a level 10 Patriot's Infinity whose claim to fame is +50% melee, but it is non-elemental so I probably won't use it.
- Emperor (video) can be dropped by any one of the four assassins of the mission Assassinate the Assassins.
- Fastball (video) is a grenade mod which travels much faster than a regular grenade but not instantaneously. It has very high damage rating but a very small field of effect, making it good for killing a tough enemy but not for crowds. See Farming Wilhelm below.
Fastball only works at a fairly close distance, say 20' or less.
Boll, in Three-Horns Divide can be farmed for it during/after Lilth's mission In Memoriam after you complete Hunting the Firehawk. Because his location is a short distance from the fast travel and he is easy to kill with weapons you should have by now, he is fairly fast and easy to farm.
The Legendary Loot Midgets in Wildlife Exploration Preserve can drop them. I've gotten 2 there and the are really fun to use. Enemies who are somewhat difficult to kill drop like flies or simply are blown to tiny pieces.
- Storm Front (video) is a grenade mod dropped by Dan, Lee, Mick and Ralph at the Bloodshot Stronghold in the Splinter Group mission. It splits into a number of grenades which stick to surfaces and then shoot out bolts of electricity at nearby enemies. You can take out a whole group of Stalkers with one grenade.
I never got this mod in the 2 or 3 dozen times I played the game, but I recently went back at level 21 with a good shield and rocket launcher. Running past all the bandits (Bloodshots, whatever) and one-shotting the 4 rat-guys takes the usual 2 minutes or less.
On my first try, I got a Rubberized Storm Front. It's okay, but I prefer a non-rubberized, so I kept trying and in 4-5 more tries, got the Lobbed version. (Your results may vary.) I'm only using the Lobbed one.
In another game it took 39 tries and I got the Rubberized Storm Front, so I was pretty disappointed, but it is not as bad as I feared. It bounces along until it finds an enemy and then does its magic. As with any rubberized grenade, you have to be careful of having it bounce back at you.
A long farming session on the Splinter Group is worse than against enemies which can be farmed quickly. It is a long hard run to get past the many rooms full of enemies without stopping to kill them which would each run even longer.
And killing the 4 guys is a time-consuming chore in itself because if you just injure one of the guys without killing him, he will disappear and come back later, so not only does it take longer to kill them, but you have to wait around for them to come back.
The good news is that you should have already gotten the Fastball grenade from farming Boll, and with its huge damage rating, a direct hit will instantly kill one of these guys (as it will so many enemies). And because they always come out in the same order (back left, the clockwise from there), it's not that hard to stand near the middle of the room and hit them as soon as each one appears.
In the video series in which I have a well-stocked armory, I use the Nukem launcher to one-shot kill each one, so the final video in my BL2 series includes how to one-shot kill them with the Fastball.
I must say that Storm Front is more awesome than even Bonus Package. It can take out a whole area full of enemies, but the fun part is watching it happen.
- HellFire (video) from Scorch in Frostburn Canyon is an SMG with high incendiary effect.
- Pyromania is dropped by Incinerator Clayton in Frostburn Canyon.
- Rolling Thunder (video) is a grenade mod dropped by Wilhelm at the end of the Train To Catch mission. Wilhelm can also drop Logan's Gun which is a pretty bad legendary pistol.
Rolling Thunder is a rubberized grenade, which are usually more trouble than they are worth, but this one is great with crowds and against charging enemies because it keeps exploding as it bounces along. You still have to be careful that it doesn't bounce back to you, but that is generally not a problem. Don't throw it at enemies with a wall right behind them of if you do, clear out of the area to which it will bounce back.
Farming Wilhelm is easy because when you Save-Quit-Continue, he runs right across in front of you. If you got a Corrosive Fastball from Boll, above, one or two hits is enough to destroy Wilhelm. I have a level 18 corrosive Launcher which takes him out quickly as well, plus if you have a Sham shield in your armory from a previous game and the KerBlaster from Ming-Mong, you can keep generating more launcher ammo for additional tries.
- Baby Maker (video) is an SMG dropped by Madame Von Bartlesby in the Tundra Express. It's not one I use.
- Gub (video) is dropped by Laney White in The Fridge.
- Sledge's Shotgun (video) is dropped by Smash-Head in The Fridge. It's fine for a shotgun but has very limited range.
- Gunerang (video) is a pistol from Rakkman in The Fridge - the kind of weapon that is like throwing a weak grenade when reloading. Terrible weapon - think: boomerang that blows up in your face and only hurts enemies if it hits one before reaching you. It's even worse than a rubberized grenade..
- Madhous! is a rifle dropped by Mad Dog in Lynchwood. Run the route taken in the "3:10 To Kaboom" mission. He will jump towards you from the stairs you ran up to push the plunger to blow up the train.
The Madhous! is another gimmicky weapon. Bullets wander all over. It would only be useful against a tightly-packed group of enemies in an enclosed space.
- Slagga & Maggie (video) are two weapons one of which may be dropped at the end of the Clan Wars mission in The Dust. If you side with Mick Zaford and kill Jimbo & Tector Hodunk, they may drop the Slagga which can fire 3 slag projectiles at the cost of one; otherwise, if you kill Zaford, he may drop the Maggie, a pistol which fires 6 projectiles at the cost of one..
- Lyudmila (video) is a sniper rifle dropped by the two guys by the church in the The Good, The Bad, and The Mordecai mission. It took me two runs the first time I tried. The next time they kept dropping the Veruc but not the Lyudmila.
If you just came from Friendship Gulag (the first part of the mission), when you S-Q-C, you will come back at the C-A-R near the gate. Do almost a U-turn to the left until you see the church steeple, and then it's a short drive to where you climb up to the church. Steer well to the right of the church to the climbing up area. See the walkthrough for more info.
- Nukem (video) is a probably the most powerful launcher in the game. See this variant chart for a list of the various configurations possible.
Nukem is dropped by the Black Queen spiderant which can be found in Bug Gulch just over the edge of the area you are in when you finish the previous mission.
The Black Queen is notorious for not spawning very often, then it may not drop the Nukem. But after you finish an attempt to get Lyudmila, drop over the cliff well to the right away from the buildings. If you don't pass the spawning station as you head to the buildings, you didn't go far enough to the right; otherwise, keep going straight between the buildings until you get to the very back of the area on the map.
Once you understand where Black Queen should appear, instead of running all the way back to that area, you can stop just after you pass the spawning station and look back there. If you don't see her, just Save-Quit-Continue.
If you do see her and you have a good sniper rifle, you can shoot her from a distance. (See the video.) If you kill her from a distance, you can look through the sniper scope to see if she dropped a legendary; if she didn't then S-Q-C.
If you shot her from a distance and she ran off, you'll have to go down in her area, but usually she will come back out and you can stop and shoot her some more until dead.
Some people freak out because Black Queen doesn't show up half the time, but her drop rate appears to be about the same as other bosses per run that you make whether she appears or not. However, if you make a dozen or more runs and she never appears, then see the video for where to drop down.
It fires in an arc rather than a straight line and creates a pretty cool mushroom cloud. A video said that it will kill you if you are too close, but when tested, I got pretty close without ever being damaged, but any launcher may kill you if you fire at something just a few feet away.
A powerful as this is, what's more impressive is that the level 13 Corrosive Fastball grenade mod (from Boll, above) has almost the same damage rating plus a corrosive effect.
- Hammer Buster (video) is a rifle dropped by McNally during the mission The Bane. Being a short drive from Ellie's, it is easy enough to farm, but the rifle is not one that would justify an hour spent farming for it.
- Longbow (video) is a sniper rifle dropped by Badass Creepers in Caustic Caverns in the Minecraft-styled cave next to where the Minecart Mischief mission begins. Not a very good weapon and when farming, each attempt takes a long time, although it can be combined with farming runs on Blue (next).
- Fabled Tortoise (video) is a shield dropped by Blue in Caustic Caverns. It's generally considered not to be worthwhile because the Tortoise name comes from its slowing down you movement by half, but if you want to do the Hidden Mission ("I think I can do it") in Caustic Caverns, which takes place right behind where Blue hangs out, it has a couple of plusses that can do the job. See the Walkthrough or the video.
- The Striker (video) is a shotgun dropped by Slappy. It is easy to farm due to the proximity of the portal to Outlands, but probably not worth the effort.
- Cradle (video) is a shield dropped by Henry the giant Stalker in the Stalker area below Highlands Overlook. From the fast travel machine, turn around and run to the metal platform behind the shack and jump down to Henry's area.
The Cradle is more of a gimmick - a shield which is thrown like a grenade when depleted.
- Chikamin Skullmasher (video)
is a sniper rifle dropped by Son of Mothrakk who takes over the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve arena after you kill Bloodwing. The best way to farm for it is after farming the WEP loot box midgets (LBMs). Of course, you have to finish the Wildlife Preservation mission first and go back later.
From the LBM area, you can run past the Stalkers, through the empty grassy area, up the stairs to the Skags area. You'll have to fight the rest of the way, but I went back at level 27-28 and had no trouble (with the Mechromancer's robot's help). A mad dash to the arena's elevator and you are about done.
An electrical Thunderball Fists pistol and Deathtraps' electric bolts took Son of Mothrakk down in about two seconds, though other weapons can do just as well.
When the Skullmasher didn't drop the first time, a S-Q-C put me back at the Natural Selection Annex from where I did another LBM run then continued on to try SoM again. The sniper rifle dropped on the third try.
- Black Hole (video)
is a shock nova shield with singularity effect which pulls nearby enemies towards the wearer before exploding when the shield is depleted. Because other shields are resist more damage, I would only use this if expecting to fight in a crowd.
Black Hole may be dropped by Foreman Jasper in Opportunity after completing the Hell Hath No Fury mission.
The easiest route to him after doing a S-Q-C is to run along the left edge of Opportunity until you reach a ledge which drops down. Turn right and follow the map marker, but he isn't far away by that time. You come around a corner and are right next to him, making him faster and easier to kill than other routes where he sees you coming. A farming run takes around 2 minutes.
There is a more direct route, saving you maybe 15 seconds or so, but it is hard to describe. Check Youtube for a video if you are interested.
- The Bitch and The Sham (video)
are dropped by BNK3R after being killed in the Where Angels Fear to Tread mission. The Bitch is a Hyperion SMG with high accuracy. The Sham is a bullet absorbing shield with "extremely high bullet absorption chance". (More info.)
I checked several videos which claimed to show how to farm Bunker, but they only showed them getting one of these legendaries, not how they went about it. After destroying BNK3R as part of the mission, I went to the portal between Thousand Cuts and Bunker, exited, came back, but BNK3R never showed. Same thing when I did a S-Q-C.
I decided that that the complete mission had to be finished, which is not always the case, so I tried that and when I went back afterwards (running all the way from the entrance to Thousand Cuts), BNK3R showed up. You only have to make the run the first time you farm, then a S-Q-C brings you back inside The Bunker. Some vids suggest going out the portal and back, but this actually takes at least as long as a S-Q-C when you add in the extra time for getting to and from the portal.
The first time I farmed The Bunker, I got a level 26 Sham after about 7-8 tries, When making the video, a Bitch was dropped on the 17th run. I tried several more to get the Sham, but do no avail and since I already have it in my armory, I quit trying. On the plus side, BNK3R gives tons of cash and eridium when killed.
BL2 treats Logan's Gun and KerBlaster ammo as rockets for purpose of adding absorbed ammo to your loot, so firing one of these at your feet while wearing The Sham is a cheap way to get rocket ammo. This is especially useful if you can't get to an ammo machine, such as in the Hyperion Challenges or when fighting the Warrior.
The level 26 Bitch is surprisingly lethal. When fighting Dukino's Mom (next), it was able to kill her much more quickly than a corrosive automatic rifle with a much higher damage rating.
- The Mongol (video)
is a rocket launcher dropped by Dukino's Mom in Lynchwood. Sometimes you can get a legendary right away and sometimes you are in for the long haul. This was a long haul, and I would have given up if I hadn't been making a video. The upcoming Badaboom is at least as good if not better, but then my opinion may be warped by how long it took.
Dukino's Mom is far from being an easy kill. In fact, she killed me on my first farming run and drained most of my shields and health several other times. Without Deathtrap to distract her and to recharge my shield, I'm not sure how I could have killed her.
The Mongol uses two rockets to fire just one, but that one will release multiple smaller rockets at random, making it possible to kill several enemies at once even if they are not in splash range..
- Badaboom (video)
is a rocket launcher dropped by King Mong.in Eridium Blight. If you don't see him on the right after you go through the gate to his area, continue to the end of the road at the bridge and he is can usually be found off to the left.
It takes 20 seconds to get to the location by the first gate and 45 seconds to the location at the end of the road. With Save-Quit-Continue taking 30 seconds, the total time for a farming run is 50 to 75 seconds plus however long you spend killing him and picking up loot.
Even at 1.5 minutes, you can do 10 runs in 15 minutes, 30 runs in a half hour, etc., making this one of the shorter farming runs in the game for what is an excellent weapon. He also drops a lot of eridium and other weapons.
The Badaboom's claim to fame is that it fires six rockets at once with only slightly less damage per rocket and at the cost of just one rocket ammo.
Donkey Mong does not drop a legendary weapon and his appearances are even rarer.
- Pandemic (video)
is a corrosive grenade mod. The Homing version is the best because it will travel a good distance to find an enemy, but the Lobbed version is better than nothing since as it spreads, it also seeks out others to "infect" (hence "Pandemic"). The Rubberized doesn't seem to do as well as the others even though it may have a higher damage rating.
The Pandemic is dropped by Mortar who brings the elevator down in Sawtooth Cauldron. Although it may seem like a long run, a run only takes about a minute-and-a-half including the Save-Quit-Continue. This is a short run for one of the best weapons in the game.
In fact, even if you get a lobbed or rubberized variant, I think it is worth continuing to farm until you get the Homing version, although as with any farming, you should be prepared for a long session.
- The Bee (video)
is a shield which amplifies the damage of a weapon by a tremendous amount as long as the shield is fully charged. This usually comes at the cost of shield protection drainage, which means that you normally get one amplified shot and then have to wait for the shield to recharge.
But The Bee has an Amp Shot Drain of 0, meaning that you can continuously fire massively amplified rounds at an enemy.
In the video, when farming the Loot Box Midgets, when I put on a level 31 Bee shield and shot the LBMs as they jumped out of the boxes, they were dead before they hit the ground (using a Caustic Infinity pistol).
The Bee Shield comes from Hunter Hellquist (This Just In mission from Mordecai) in Arid Nexus Boneyard. You have to kill him for the mission and go back to Sanctuary to turn in the mission and return to Arid Nexus to farm him.
The farming itself is quick and easy. His station is near the spot where you will spawn and any decent weapon will kill him.
You will want to get the Bee before going to kill Jack, but if you do not get the mission before turning in the Data Mining mission, you will be blocked from the This Just In mission until AFTER you kill Jack.
The This Just In mission gets turned into Mordecai who also is one who gives the This Just In mission, you you have to click on him as if to turn in the Data Mining mission, but then a menu pops up with both of these missions on it. Just click on This Just In, do that mission, come back and turn it in, go back and farm for the Bee, the go back and turn in both missions.
- Invader and Hive (video)
can individually be dropped by Saturn, a giant bot that lands on a bridge in Arid Nexus Badlands. In a recent game in which farmed everyone in the normal mode again, I got the Invader on the second farming run, but the Hive is said to be very rare.
When farming, a good approach is to get under the bridge and when he lands, throw a corrosive homing grenade up in his direction. He will jump down and you can unload a rocket launcher into him. I was using a level 26 Quick Drawler Badaboom and killing him wasn't that hard.
If your weapons aren't strong enough yet, you can always come back later, though neither the Invader sniper rifle nor the Hive rocket launcher are any great prize.
- Neogenator (video) is a shield dropped by Spycho (the "Abomination" in Part 3 of the Monster Mash mission). He is located in Frostburn Canyon.
Farming The Warrior
After you kill Jack and the Warrior, stop the ending credits. The game will then leave you where you were before the credits started. Do not select the True Vault Hunter mode. Do a Save-Quit-Continue and you will come back by the vending machines. Restock ammo, sell gear, and go kill the Warrior again.
If you don't do it right, the worse that can happen is that you restart the game in True Vault Hunter mode. In that case, Save and Quit, bring up the list of characters, select the same character, but then select Normal mode, then when you re-materialize, fast travel back to Hero's Pass, run past everything to get back to where the Warrior is and after that, when you kill him and Save-Quit-Continue you will come back by the vending machines.
If you are playing as a Mechromancer, activate Deathtrap and it will keep killing rakks which spawn as long as you are active. This earns you XP and the rakks drop loot, including eridium and cash. The Warrior also drops a ton of eridium plus you get XP for killing it each time, so while you are farming for legendaries, you will keep leveling up and piling up the eridium.
Like any other farming run, you can get a legendary pretty quickly or you can farm for hours before getting anything. The negatives are that the legendaries are random and you can spend a lot of time farming and then get some legendary you already have or don't want.
Moonshot-Farming The Warrior:
A more productive way to farm The Warrior is to call in the Moonshot after killing him, grab the legendary he drops before the bubble around Jack and Lilith bursts, and Save-Quit-Continue.
I've never tried this, but there is a discussion of it on this web page along with a link to a video of the process in action.
Farming Legendary Loot Box Midgets
The great majority of legendaries can be dropped by Loot Box Midgets. Very, very rarely, a legendary can be found in just a simple loot chest or won at a slot machine. I once found a level 8 Restructuring Conference Call shotgun in a loot chest that I almost missed opening in Frostburn Canyon..
In most cases, the only way to get a higher-level legendary from a named enemy is to advance to the True or Ultra Vault Hunter modes. For example, you will get a level 6 KerBlaster from Midge-Mong whether he drops it on your first playthrough or if you go back at level 17. If you farm him after you reach the True Vault Hunter mode, you may get a level 34 KerBlaster, but this is normally too high ranked to be of use in the first playthrough of a future game until very late in the game, if ever.
However, you may get a slightly more powerful or faster, etc., legendary of the same type and level, but it will also usually have slightly worse stats in other areas. For example, you may get a Bonus Package grenade mod with 232x10 damage, 489 spread, and 1.2 fuse time and then later get one with 220x10 damage, 450 spread, and 0.0 fuse time (which I prefer).
You may also get another legendary of the same type but with a different effect. For example, a Caustic Infinity pistol is very effective for a long time while a non-elemental Rapid Infinity is virtually worthless, so I would keep farming if I got the latter.
I have a level 19 and a level 23 Caustic Infinity and a level 24 Incendiary Infinity. Having a weapon which never runs out of ammo an doesn't need reloading makes the weapon play at many levels above its rating. I've used the level 23 Caustic Infinity on level 45 and above.
The Wildlife Exploration Preserve ("WEP") is the best place to farm Legendary Loot Box Midgets although a lot of conflicting information exists about doing so:
- There are 4 main loot boxes you are farming in WEP and while on other farming runs you are told to finish the mission first, that is neither necessary nor desirable here. If you open the doors in the building in order to finish the mission, then on subsequent farm runs, you'll have to deal with all the beasts which respawn and can get at you through the doors you opened, which is a nuisance.
- Some vids say you can't farm if you finish the main WEP mission, and while it is easier if you do NOT finish the mission first, you CAN come back and farm after finishing the mission.
- Some vids say that you have to be in either the True or Ultimate Vault Hunter mode to get legendaries, but that is not true either.
- Some say that if you pick up any of the Doctor's Orders, you can't farm, but that is only partially true.
While I have looted the boxes after picking up a couple of Doctor's Orders,the only way to be sure of getting LBMs in all four boxes is to not pick up any of the Doctor's Orders.
One of the four boxes has a blue spike coming out of it, indicating a Doctor's Order. You can open the box without picking up that document. But even if you pick it up and complete the mission, you may still get 2-3 midgets out of the boxes, but very rarely would you get all four.
When picking up loot, don't use the trick of holding down the button to pick up multiple items at once because that may cause the Order to be picked up. I knew this, did it without thinking, and paid the price by only getting 3 midgets the rest of the time.
Sadly, it appears that the LBMs at WEP only drop weapons with levels from 19 to 22. The Doctor's Orders mission is level 19. I farmed around level 27 and still got level 19-22 weapons. I tried one game of not playing anything but the main missions, trying not to level up. I managed to reach WEP at level 15, but my plan fell apart fighting the level 19 bots and stalkers who killed me many times.
When I finally got to the loot boxes,I would deploy Deathtrap, open a box, and take off running. When Deathtrap ran out of steam, I went back with a launcher and usually managed to kill the LBM I had let out, but it was a chore. I got no legendaries and had no desire to try again. I think it's safe to assume that they do not drop weapons lower than the mission level, since that is the case for other missions.
The main problem with looting here is that when you Save-Quit-Continue, it puts you back at the start of the Wildlife Preservation Preserve.
If you have the Creature Slaughter Dome DLC, you can go out and back in from the Natural Selection Annex which is in the building before the field where you fight all the Stalkers and Hyperion robots. You still have to fight them to get the door to the next building open, but you save about a minute-and-a-half and the trouble of having to run up to that point.
In one farming series I got tired of that run enough that I paid the $5 for the DLC. Even without the DLC, with a decent shield and a little help from Deathtrap, you can run from the start of the WEP past all the enemies without having to pause to fight and without getting hurt too bad; it just adds an extra 1.5 minutes to the already longish 4 minutes the rest of the farming run takes.
I've gotten legendaries from the four boxes in the ordinary course of play (i.e.: not doing multiple looting runs of LBMs) many times, including some very nice level 19 and level 26 Caustic Infinity pistols. (Infinities at these levels are only obtainable from loot boxes. Doc Mercy only drops low level ones in Normal mode and higher ones in TVHM and UVHM modes.)
For the level 27 runs, I went back to try to get higher level gear but got the same level gear. The levels may be based on the level of the Doctor's Orders mission. If you manage to get the mission at a level lower than 19, you will still get level 19 legendaries; it's just a LOT harder to kill everything to get them.
In the level 27 session, I did 10 runs and got a legendary on 6 of them, including one run with two. I assume that this high percentage of legendary drops was a statistical fluke, and I was only getting 3 midgets. In the first farming run in that session, I carelessly held down the X button to get all the loot from the yellow upright loot chest to the left of the cardboard boxes and it sucked up the Doctor's Order from the 2nd box. Not to be greedy, but I wonder how much MORE loot I would have gotten with a fourth midget.
Also, in the level 27 session, I was using a level 26 Caustic Infinity pistol (no reloading) and increased its damage with a level 21 Bee shield, an elemental Mod and a corrosive Relic and was mowing down everything. When opening the boxes, I shot each midgets as he popped out of the box into the air and they were dead before they hit the ground. Fun times!
Listed below are legendaries obtained from farming these boxes in order to show what to expect. The level shown on each line is the level of the gear. Here is a link to a forum where people (all at level 50+, I believe) list legendaries found in 100 runs in WEP.
Many of these legendaries are pretty junky, but the outstanding ones make it all worthwhile. The Shock Fastball does TWENTY THOUSAND damage and it's just a level 21 weapon. In contrast, the launcher that I use on level 21 only does one thousand, four hundred damage.
When making a video featuring farming these loot boxes, the first time I did about 18 runs and got 3 legendaries. You can see the video if interested.
Return to the home page
Leave comments at the video on Youtube.
|