Borderlands 2

Walkthrough

The video version of this walkthrough is at this link on YouTube. The advantage of the videos is that you can see exactly what to do - sort of. In some videos, the player gets to spinning around or goes all around the area defending against attacks and it can be hard to figure out exactly where he went.

So the advantage of the written format is that with the maps which are marked to show important points and which you can compare to your in-game maps, it should be much easier to find where you are going.

Another advantage of the web page format is that you can bring it up in a tablet while playing the game and it will be easier to find the information you need compared to searching through videos for the same information. There is even a black-on-white version for printing so you don't need a tablet to use it.

Links are given to the videos on YouTube for each mission. Click on the mission name (in the body of the text, not the Contents list).

This walkthrough covers only the story up to killing Jack (and the Warrior), including all missions and sub-missions from all sources and all the challenges which can be completed by a solo player with a couple of exceptions. It doesn't cover replays at higher levels nor DLCs. An area challenge completed during the first level cannot be completed for credit at higher levels (i.e.: after killing Jack) anyway.

Missions and challenges are discussed in the order in which they become available in the game, though your mileage may vary depending on your level versus the level you would be at if you strictly followed this outline. If multiple missions become available at the same time, the shortest/simplest is usually done first; this is usually the one with the lowest level. Sometimes closely related missions are done simultaneously, such as the Highlands Overlook missions.

If you have played BL2 a bunch of times, much if not most of this may seem old news to you, but I find that every time I play the game I learn something new, so you may find something new in here as well. For example, I only recently noticed that the acronym for "Catch-A-Ride" is "CAR" (I'm slow). So I'll refer to those vehicles as "cars" to save typing.

I've been spoiled by the Deathtrap robot which is Mechromancer's "skill". It is better than the Commando's turret because the robot will go forward and attack enemies which are in cover, which the turret cannot do. Deathtrap can also turn and fire in different directions, including up in the sky. So in this walkthrough, I will be using "Deathtrap" / "the robot". If you are not playing as a Mechromancer, you'll need to make adjustments.

General Tips:

  • You can usually run past enemies without getting hurt much if at all. This is especially easy as a Mechromancer when you can bring up Deathtrap to follow along and fight any enemies that might attack and to restore your shields if you get damaged (once you reach that feature).

    You will miss out on the points and loot you would have gotten for killing them all, but if you have to backtrack through an area you've been or get a mission which makes you repeat a trip through an area or if you are farming a Boss for a legendary weapon, you may want to skip the fights the second time through, especially since the points for killing them again usually don't amount to much.

    If you have to run by an area where enemies are hanging out, they will not bother you if you don't infringe on their area. For example, if you are leveling up at Opportunity by killing the Constructor in the far left corner of the map, you have to run past an area crawling with enemies, but as long as you stay to the left of their area, you are okay.

  • Opening your Echo Communicator ("EC") pauses the game. Here are two ways this can be useful:

    1. If you want to sell gear when there are hostiles around, opening the vending machine menu does NOT pause the game and you can still be attacked. Instead, open EC to pause the game, go through your inventory and mark gear you want to sell as trash, then close the EC and open the vending machine and press the button to sell all trash.

      While on that thought. Be sure to mark all gear as Favorites which you want to keep, in order to minimize the chance of selling them by accident.

    2. If you are using a slow loading weapon such as a Launcher, instead of hitting reload, bring up EC to pause the game, swap the weapon for a different one, then swap it right back. When you exit EC, it will be reloaded.

  • Propeller Bots: The propellers deflect bullets. I used to resort to a launcher against them, but any good weapon will do if you aim at their feet which the propellers don't protect. Of course the Mechromancer's bot can help too since it can attack while you get behind it.

    Corrosive grenades are also good against them, though due to the limited number of grenades you can carry, they should be a last resort. A legendary Kerblaster is good against them because its ammo explodes all around them.

  • Shoot at all critter piles when driving around to see if anything interesting pops up. Takes very little time. I look primarily for the purple eridium to pop out.

  • When walking around, open every loot container which is reasonably convenient, even if your backpack is already maxed out. You never know when a container will have a better weapon or eridium or even a loot container midget who drops a legendary weapon. (See Weapons.) Also, you can earn Challenge points just for opening loot containers.

  • Save-Quit-Continue to get back to a fast travel station if you have to go a long way to get back, such as at Wildlife Exploitation Preserve. A notable exception is Bloodshot Ramparts, the area from which you rescue Roland. If you S-Q-C in that area, instead of going back to the entry area of the Bloodshot Stronghold, you come back at the entrance to the Ramparts and have to run a long way to get out.

    The reason for putting all the missions in one document is that you can load this into a tablet's browser (phones might be too small for viewing maps) and use it offline without having to load a different page for each area/mission. The page uses a black background to cut down on glare if you use it while playing in a dark room. For a black on white page suitable for printing, click here.

    Contents:

    The following links are to info in this file. Video links are in the text.

    My First Gun

    As in BL1, instead of immediately following Claptrap at the very start of the game, you can scour the initial area for money, health and ammo in containers or green-glowing blobs (ice piles). Unlike BL1, where you can find some good weapons and money in the opening area, this is pretty much a waste of time in BL2 because the money you find is only $1-$2 at a time, and you will be maxed out on health and ammo soon enough, and you will find no weapons in this outside area.

    Claptrap's Place:

    Vault symbol: In the closet to the right.

    There is a card table is in the middle of the first room with cards and bundles of cash on it but no yellow spikes (sneaky bastards).
    Click on the cash to get the yellow spikes and pick up the cash.

    In the next room is a Fast-Travel Station. If you have any DLCs, you can fast travel to them to pick up any nearby loot in those areas and then come right back. The payoff is that such loot will be more than the $1-$2 you find scattered around in the main area. Badassitude is probably the most lucrative, plus it has a vending machine with several cash boxes in the area and often a grenade in the ammo box to its right.

    However... if you have some level 50+ characters saved from past BL2 games, you can have them pass expensive weapons (e.g.: $10k+) to your current character through Claptrap's Secret Stash (once you get to Sanctuary). See the Armory page for more info. Then your current character can sell them to raise cash. With this virtually unlimited supply of big bucks, you don't really have to worry about picking up small amounts of cash nor cheap gear to sell, despite what may be advised throughout the rest of this document. I still pick these things if I don't have to go out of my way up just because I'm obsessive-compulsive.

    Blindsided

    Just before meeting up with Knuckle Dragger, Claptrap will go through a big metal shipping container with loot boxes on either side of the entrance. Shipping containers are often good places from which to take cover and fight throughout the game and this one is no exception.

    First go through the container. When Claptrap starts talking, immediately turn and go back to the container. Keep facing the back and after the cut scene, Knuckle Dragger will drop down there. Shoot her and she usually jumps on top of the container then jumps back. After 2 or 3 times, she heads back to the cliff where she originally appeared. Switch to a sniper rifle to finish her off. If you don't have a sniper rifle, she will eventually come back and you can kill her with whatever you have, just not as easily.

    Once you kill KD, several smaller Bullymongs will come running towards you. Come out and shoot them with a fast-firing weapon as soon as you can. Some are small enough to get into the container if you let them.

    Knuckle Dragger is your first chance to get a very powerful (for the next few levels) legendary weapon. See the Legendary Weapons page or the link above for the video.


    Cleaning Up The Berg

    You'll be at or close to Level 3. (If you farmed KD, you may be well into level 4.) The next story mission is Best Minion Ever, but it is a Level 5 mission. You can either do the optional missions or follow the leveling up procedure below or both.

    Glitch: One time one of the Bullymongs which attack as you approach The Berg got lost. I didn't think anything about it and continued my usual approach of staying up on the cliff, going left until I could jump down to the roof of a building for a good vantage point from which to kill everything.

    After I did, Claptrap didn't open the gate, so I assumed I had missed someone. I scoured the area and killed all the Bullymongs in the graveyard, but still no go.

    I then assumed that the missing Bullymong was the reason. I was going back up the hill to the top of the cliff when I found it stuck in the side of the cliff and killed it. Mission accomplished? Nope, once the gate opened, the bandits and Bullymongs I had killed all respawned. Oh well, that's more XP for me.


    This Town Ain't Big Enough

    Kill all the Bullymongs however you wish. Unlike most other places, these Bullymongs will not re-spawn nor be replaced by others when you come back here (with the exception of the glitch described above).

    Leveling Up

    If you farmed Knuckle Dragger, you may already be at level 5 in which case you can skip this section.

    Once through the gate out of Liar's Berg, you should see rakks in the distance. Throughout the game, when you see rakks, it's best to get your back against a wall, such as against the cliff around the left corner outside the gate, shoot once or twice to attract them, and kill them as they swoop towards you, usually 3 or 4 at a time. If you don't, they may later attack you while you are fighting other enemies. Also, this early in the game, killing rakks gets you some decent XP.

    If you have a sniper rifle, shoot the bandits at the building with the health machine (straight ahead), then the bandit camp down the slope to the right (start by shooting the fuel tank), then the camp beyond that one. A glitch in the current version is that the fuel tank in the camp down the hill usually doesn't show up from where you killed rakks, but appears when you start down the hill. But if you aim at where it's supposed to be, the target data appears and you can shoot it twice to make it explode, even though it doesn't appear.

    Shooting the fuel tank instead of just shooting bandits has several advantages: (1) It can kill multiple bandits when it explodes. (2) Fuel tanks normally spit out gear, money or even eridium (but not before reaching Sanctuary) when they explode. (3) You earn challenge points.

    After killing the bandits in the first camp down the hill, go to the next camp after it and kill the bandits there and loot that area. Then jump down to the ground past this camp to loot the frozen skag piles in the area.

    Now you can do Bad Hair Day (below) if you wish. If you are level 3 or 4, don't be bothered by the mission being level 5. You'll be firing from a distance until they are almost dead. The main problem will be getting close enough to melee them without getting hit by their snowballs.

    Do a Save-Quit-Continue to repeat these steps until you level up to at least level 5 where you get your character's Skill. (e.g.: robot, turret, etc.) which you really need before going to do the Symbiosis side mission.

    You don't have to do all the side missions in the game if there are some you don't enjoy, but it is well worth doing Symbiosis in order to farm the KerBlaster rifle from Midge-Mong. It is a very powerful weapon you can use for many levels up, and later in the game when it no longer kills enemies as easily, it can still be used to generate ammo for the rocket launcher when used with the Sham shield you can farm from BNK3R.

    If you don't want to do the side missions, you can stop leveling up once you get to level 5 and activate your Skill and go on to the main mission. You will also be giving up the challenges for these areas as well as a lot of loot, but they are not that big of a deal if you want to just get going.

    I recently played a game in which I played no side missions nor challenges. I leveled up as described above and later in some places to be described later. Near the end of the game (killing Jack), I ended up playing main missions which were 2-3 levels over the level I was at and where enemies all had skulls by their names, but using weapons from my armory made it not too dificult.

    I frequently skip some side missions which I have little interest in completing, but at least once in a while it's fun to do every part of BL2 - side missions, sub-missions, and area challenges.

    If you don't have a sniper rifle, you will have to do a lot more running around and fighting to kill all the bandits with a pistol or shotgun. But the pistol is just fine for killing the rakks and you get a ton of points for them, so you can level up just killing rakks over and over, doing a Save-Quit-Continue after each round.

    Handsome Jack Here is a mission you get from an Echo in the bandit camp down the hill. It is simple to do before moving on.

    Bad Hair Day

    After the second bandit camp down the hill, you can circle around to the left until you see some Bullymongs in the distance. A sniper rifle is easiest to wear down their health, but a pistol will do in a pinch. They won't come after you if you keep your distance, allowing you to weaken them as much as needed. Don't use The Hornet or a fire weapon because it makes it hard to lower their health enough without killing them.

    Eventually they will come after you or you will have to approach them to kill them with melee and pick up the hair. You should be able to get all the hair samples you need here, but if you end up having to kill some of the bullymongs to protect yourself, you can continue past the initial bunch to find some more Bullymongs.

    In fact, while you are sniping the Bullymongs from a distance, you may be surprised by some Bullymongs wandering towards you from the left and you will have to kill them. The Hornet pistol (from KnuckleDragger) makes quick work of them.

    When you first reach the area, a Brat Bullymong will be wandering around. Aim for his feet. A shot to the body usually kills him.

    The shots will get 2-3 big Bullymongs to come down and walk back and forth across the same area. The first couple of shots can be to their bodies. Once you get their health down to about 1/4th, aim at their legs until they each have just a sliver of health left.

    They constantly walk in front of each other, so you have to be careful not to accidentally hit one you have already reduced to a sliver, but it's alright if you kill one because it is tough to get all four at once anyway.

    Once you have them all down to a sliver (or Brats down to 1/4th) of health, approach them by going over the small hill to the right in order to get close before they start throwing stuff.

    If you have a weapon which has bonus melee damage such as The Hornet with a big blade, equip that. Then wade in and start melee-ing. You may get killed, but a 2nd Wind is pretty easy with 3-4 of them ready to go. As wasteful as it seems at this point, if you can't get to one to melee him and you are about to die, you can just shoot one of them to get a second wind.

    Even after getting the 4 hair samples, if I'm taking my time to see everything and appreciate all the art work, I continue to circle the area to take in the sights which also involves killing more Bullymongs.

    Once you are ready to turn in the mission, you can Save-Quit-Continue to get back to Liar's Berg and turn the mission in to Hammerlock to get the upgraded sniper rifle.

    Best Minion Ever

    Normally you would do all the side missions in an area before continuing with the main mission, but it can be advantageous to start this main mission - killing Boom-Bewm and opening the gate for Claptrap - before doing the side missions.

    The main advantage is that Boom-Bewm can drop the legendary Lobbed Bonus Package grenade mod. While the Symbiosis side mission is not overly difficult, fighting your way through all the Bullymongs to get to the Vault Symbol in Southern Shelf is, and having this very powerful grenade mod plus the extra kill power from leveling up will make things easier. The Hornet from Knuckle Dragger is also a great help.

    In contrast, killing Boom-Bewm is pretty easy if you have followed the steps above and reached level 5. After the initial battle with Boom-Bewm and opening the gate for Claptrap, it only takes about a minute to Save-Quit-Continue (which causes Boom-Bewm to respawn), which returns you to Liar's Berg, sell gear and buy ammo, then run back to Boom-Bewm. There's no need to stop to fight the bandits in the two camps, just run by them. Then it only takes another minute to kill Boom-Bewm and collect their loot. So in less than 15 minutes you can kill Boom-Bewm 7 times.

    In 4 or 5 games I've gotten the legendary on my first try. Only recently have I repeated the battle to get it, taking 4 tries the first game and 6 tries the next two games, meanwhile leveling up from 5 to 9 due to repeatedly killing Boom-Bewm.

    Make Boom Go Boom: This challenge requires you to kill Boom-Bewm without getting hit by Big Bertha (the canon). After entering the Boom Bewm area, run to the left. A cut scene will interrupt you, but as soon as it is done, run to the far left of Boom's big cannon apparatus and as far back as you can go and still see Boom up on the cannon.

    When you reach the front of the canon, activate Deathrap who will keep Bewn and some bandits busy while you shoot at Boom sitting on Big Bertha. The Hornet is an even better weapon to use than the sniper rifle. After several shots to the head, there will be a big explosion, but he comes out alive somehow. Deathtrap should still be attacking him, however.

    Circle around so that you can see where that fight is going on and stop at a distance to throw in some grenades and take some more shots with the sniper rifle or Hornet.

    Look at the gear Boom-Bewm drops to see if you get a legendary Bonus Package grenade mod.

    If they didn't drop the legendary, you can replay this battle until they do. First open the gate for Claptrap before doing a Save-Quit-Continue; otherwise, Boom-Bewm will not respawn.

    If you choose to loot the area (which I don't do when repeating the battle), return to the elevator where you came into the arena. Send it up without you and find a hidden room to the right with a so-so weapons chest.

    Do the Save-Quit-Continue. You will come back next to Hammerlock. Sell loot and buy ammo, if needed, then run back to Boom's area as before.

    It shouldn't take more than a few quick tries to get the legendary mod.

    Playing as Commando requires a different strategy because the turret is not as powerful and aggressive as the Mechromancer's robot.

    Run to the left as before, but don't stop until you reach the back wall, then turn around and watch for Bewm. He likes to come out and then jump over you to the back wall. If you take that position first, then when Bewm first comes out, you can activate the turret and start shooting at Bewm.

    He may still try to jump to where you are which just makes it easier to kill him.

    See the Legendary Weapons page for more informtion about this mod.

    Shielded Favors

    Head over to get the shield. You may run out of backpack space on these missions, so sell any excess gear first.

    When you get to the first structure, try using the elevator to get the instructions to find the elevator part which is behind an electric field in the next camp. To deactivate it, you have to shoot a box about 2/3rds of the way from the left and about half way up. This will encourage Bullymongs from the next area to come down and attack whoever is there (bandits, you, whoever).

    For fun, you can snipe the box from a distance and watch the ensuing action, then go in and clean up the area.

    Pick up the elevator part, return to the health machine, and buy a shield. If the machine has one better than yours, keep it; otherwise, get the cheapest one and immediately sell it back. Mission accomplished.

    Symbol 1: When done, go out the back door, turn right and go to the corner of the building, get on the ledge (sloping piece of corrugated metal) on the side of the building, staying close to the building so you don't slide off. (See the picture.) Go as far as you can and jump to the end of the crane. Turn and jump onto the roof, cross over and jump down, then turn back and get onto the balcony. It has a weapon chest and on the floor is the first vault symbol for Southern Shelf. Here's a video.

    After turning in this mission, Hammerlock will give you the Symbiosis mission.

    Southern Shelf Bay ("SSB")

    Challenges: Vault Hunter On A Wire, I Can See Your Corpse From Here (4 telescopes), Vault Symbols (2), Midge-Mong Has No Friends.
    Only the first vault symbol for SSB is in the area outside Midge-Mong's town; the rest of the challenges are in (or near) town.

    When you get to SSB you will find ammo and health machines. Sell as much as you can bear to part with because you will run out of backpack space when exploring SSB.

    Stop at the mouth of the cave you are in and kill all the rakks.

    When you get to the edge where the ground drops down a few feet, you will see Bullymongs. KIll them.

    To the left of this area is a bridge which takes you to Midge-Mong's town. To the right, you will see another Bullymong. If you attack him, all his friends, family and neighbors will join in. If you keep going to the right, you will be fighting lots more Bullymongs. This is why you want to be at level 5 (at a minimum) and have your skill first, as well as Boom's legendary grenade mod and the Hornet pistol.

    I initially played BL2 many times without ever taking the paths to the right, so you don't HAVE to do it, but it is a fun challenge and it also leads to a vault symbol without which you cannot complete that challenge. You can do very well in the game without ever worrying about the challenges, but they add some interest to the game if you decide to try to complete as many as possible.

    If you take the paths to the right you will eventually come upon an ice-bound ship leaning to the left. This is not the one you see when you look out over the water from the cave, which is at the completion of the loop made by going right. The one you want is about half way through the loop.

    Symbol 1 (for SSB): On the right side of that ship's cabin is a vault symbol. After this you will have to make a running leap to the next area which leads to several groups of very tough Bullymongs.

    Having found the symbol, if you don't want to continue the loop back and fight the Bullymongs, you can Save-Quit-Continue to return to the cave; otherwise, continue fighting until you get to the end of that landmass, jump down onto some ice floes and hop back to land where you will be near the cave again.

    At the vending machines, sell off the gear you picked up and restock ammo. Head over to the bridge to find Midge-Mong.


    Symbiosis

    Vault Hunter On A Wire: When you get to the bridge, walk across on the chain. When you are farming Midge-Mong for the KerBlaster, you will take this chain on a run with Bullymongs chasing you, so walking it should be a piece of cake.

    (Warning: In some areas of BL2, icy water doesn't bother you, but here it can kill you, so if you fall in, be prepared to die if you can't get out in a hurry. Tip: Go to the front of the bridge.)

    Telescope 1: Go up the slope and on the right is a telescope.

    Telescopes 2 & 3: When you get to where the string of boats starts on the right, go onto them rather than going straight through town. Two telescopes are on the boats. One is in plain sight on the right of the boat you come to after the boat on the left that has the cabin with the ladder on the right side. The other telescope is on the last boat and up a couple of levels on a balcony and opposite an automobile trunk loot container. When you reach the building, take the ladder on the right and the next ladder on the right.

    Symbol 2: When you get back on shore, stay to the right and up some stairs you'll see several large supports. Walk behind them on the left, turn, and look up to find a vault symbol. You have to jump up to be able to click on the symbol. By the time you come back around, Deathtrap should have killed the rest of the bandits in that area.

    Before going up to Midge-Mong's room, you need to clear out all the bandits on all the levels, including those on the boats who you should have already killed.

    Telescope 4: On the top deck just outside the room where you find Midge-Mong. Don't get too close to the door or you may activate Midge-Mong before you are ready.

    Midge-Mong: Another challenge is to kill Midge-Mong (both the midget and the Bullymong) before Midge can rally his troops.

    • If you have a turret, throw it down to block the door before approaching it. This may trap Midge-Mong inside. Join the turret in shooting at them. If it doesn't trap them, you probably can't kill them in time to complete the challenge, though you can still complete the mission.

    • If you have a robot, deploy it just before approaching the door, then approach the door in the middle to try to block them in (usually doesn't work, but some times it does). They will not be trapped in, even if you stand in front of them, but Deathtrap will chase them down the stairs. When they stop, throw a couple of legendary grenades at them and that should kill them and complete the challenge.

    • If you are a Siren, you can lift Midge-Mong into the air and shoot them. You probably won't be able to kill them, but you can put a good dent in them, then keep chasing them around, lifting them again when your skill recharges.

    As soon as the door opens, zoom in with the Hornet (to get 6-shot bursts) and pull the trigger as quickly as you can. This should take a good chunk of their health.

    After you kill Midge-Mong, you'll want to go inside their room to get loot and to use the vending machines, but after you enter, a tough enemy will come out of a door in the far corner and after you kill him, a second one will come out, so be prepared. If you have the legendary grenade mod, you can toss a grenade back towards the door as soon as it starts to open, which will kill the first guy, then repeat for the second one. If you are out of grenades, The Hornet will take them down pretty quickly.

    You can never completely kill all the bandits in the town because they continually respawn (though they didn't when I played as a Siren, for some reason). Do a Save-Quit-Continue to rematerialize in the cave. If you ran back instead and want to farm M-M, you will have to S-Q-C anyway.

    Assuming you didn't get the KerBlaster when you killed Midge-Mong, see the Legendary Weapons page for farming tips.

    Best Minion Ever, Continued

    Everything is pretty straightforward until you reach some stairs and find out that Claptrap can't climb stairs, so he waits by an elevator/crane for you to bring him up.

    Symbol 2: After you kill all the routine bandits, you will go up a ramp to the spot where you bring up Claptrap. If your backpack is full or nearly full, continue up the ramps to a vending machine and come back to this point. Jump up to the area beside the ramp. Go as far as you can, turn left, and jump to the next platform. At the next jump, the current level goes down to a slightly lower platform. Jump from it rather than trying to make it from the higher level.

    Some of the jump distances seem impossible, but you can make them. The vault symbol is on the floor. See the video.

    Jump back to the lower level, go back up the ramp and bring up Claptrap.

    Fireproof: The next challenge is to kill Flynt without getting burned. There is a partially enclosed area on the left side (facing Flynt) near where you dropped down. Move forward until Claptrap starts talking and there's a cut scene, then turn around and get in the fenced in area. Snipe the bandits but don't shoot at Flynt until you can't see any more bandits. When all the bandits are dead, Flynt will jump down without your shooting at him.

    If you have a turret or robot, use it when Flynt gets close and help kill him. Throwing a couple of legendary grenades out will help if he has gotten close enough.

    You complete a challenge for not getting burnt in the process. It's pretty easy. Flynt drops a legendary weapon, Thunderball Fists, on rare occasion, but it is one of the longer farming runs in the game. See the Legendary Weapons page for more info.

    Return to top.

    Three Horns Divide

    Symbol 1: When going down the road to Corporal Reiss, keep going a little more until you reach a billboard on the left. Scale it to find a vault symbol on the back.

    Go back to find Corporal Reiss. He is on the ground getting beaten up. Toss a grenade to kill his attackers. Reiss isn't going to make it anyway.

    In a minute, rakks will attack. A turret or robot can handle them while you continue on to a structure beyond. Loot that area. If you don't have a robot/turret, just run to the loot area before the rakks arrive.

    Symbol 2: After talking to Reiss, go to the nearby bandit camp. After killing the folks there, go to the left and on the back wall of the left building is a vault symbol. (How do people find these things?)

    Another vault symbol is in a large enemy camp across the road from the first symbol (on the billboard). You will enter there in the side mission The Ice Men Cometh, so you will get it later.

    Sanctuary

    Symbol 1: Report to Scooter. Look on the floor in the corner under the stairs.

    Help Scooter. He will give you 4 bars of eridium and you should have picked up 2-6 more by searching piles, etc. Upgrade your backpack when told to do so.

    I start by adding space to the backpack four times (4 caps, 8 caps, 12, then 20) as the eridium becomes available. The extra backpack space is very handy when playing the slot machines so that you don't have to run to the vending machine as often, and they will be needed in the long run to hold the variety of weapons, relics and mods you will acquire.

    If you have an armory, you will soon be able to get any gear in it for your level, so sell everything which isn't better than what you will be getting in order to clear out your backpack.

    If you don't already have an armory, then when told, visit Roland's HQ. In preparation for playing the slots, store anything you want to keep (including equipped weapons) in the safe after having sold the rest EXCEPT for one weapon (e.g.: pistol) needed for Marcus' mission. Ideally, your backpack should otherwise be empty except for your shield and grenade mod, neither of which you can win playing slots.

    Symbol 2: On the way to see Claptrap --

      Under the Dahl sign across (to the right) from the newsstand, jump onto a stack of tires.
      Jump onto the pipe, then the roof, then to the cap on the vent post in the center.
      From there, jump onto the next roof.
      On the other side of that roof you may see some loot boxes but if you go down after them, you can't get back.
      Instead, jump onto the curved roof to the left.
      On the other side of the curved roof is the building with the newsstand out fromt.
      From the top of the curved roof, jump across the path to that roof (don't try a running start).
      Jump on top of the higher roof if you didn't get there on the fly.
      You'll see some loot boxes on the right on a flat part of the roof. To your right is the symbol.

    Claptrap's Secret Stash: Assuming you finished helping Scooter, get access to his Secret Stash, but don't get any gear from your armory until you play the slots. If you still have weapons you don't want to sell in your backpack, you can temporarily put them in the Stash locker except for one pistol you will need for Marcus's missions.

    Do No Harm:: Go to Zed's nearby and do that mission. You end up with a shard of eridium to take to Tannis. You can do that now.

    On the way to Marcus's store --

      Echo 1: On the left before you get to Marcus. You can't miss it.
      Symbol 3: Half hidden behind the left side of the dumpster in the nook on the left.
      Echo 2: On Marcus' counter.

      Rock, Paper, Genocide: A simple side mission, but this is where you need the pistol (for the slag follow-up). Afterwards, you can optionally sell that pistol and whatever you get from Marcus.

      Symbol 4: Go back out and to the 2nd bench on the right with a pipe next to it going up with a joint just below the awning.

        Move to where your face is about even with that joint and a few inches from it.
        Turn to look at the outside edge of the joint and jump up onto the pipe. It may take multiple tries.
        Jump onto the roof.
        Jump past Marcus' sign to the next roof.
        Get on the mattress and jump onto the next roof.
        Follow it around until you reach a balcony.
        The symbol is in on the door.

    Go to Moxxi's. Get the bullymong mission from Hammerlock. Play the slots.

    Echo 3: In the middle room at Moxxi's.
    Symbol 5: Out the door nearest the Echo, immediately look left to see a small symbol.
    Echo 4: On down the path at the bottom of the stairs on the right. Echo challenge complete.

    If you have trouble with the above, see this video.

    If you have an armory which has high-priced gear being held for conversion to cash by the current character, transfer those weapons over first so that they can be sold and the cash used to play more slots; otherwise, send over the weapons saved for the current character's level. See the armory page for details.

    When completely finished playing slots and getting gear from the armory, get your gear, if any, back from the safe at HQ.

    Get the side missions Medical Mystery from Zed, Name Game from Hammerlock, and Assissinate The Assassins from the mission board in Sanctuary.

    Back to Three Horns Divide

    Name Game: While doing this mission is a good time to farm a very powerful legendary weapon - the Unkempt Harold. It is dropped by a guy named Savage Lee who can be found fighting Bullymongs in Marrowfield (the area you went through to find Corporal Reiss).

    What makes this farming opportunity good is:

    1. The Unkempt Harold is a weapon you will be using for a long time.
    2. It's a fairly short drive from the respawning point to Marrowfield.
    3. With Deathtrap's help (or even a turret's) and a couple of Lobbed Bonus Package grenades, you can kill the Bullymongs and Lee very quickly.

    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.

    Meanwhile, you can complete the Name Game mission in or around Marrowfield.

    Three Horns Valley

    Missions: No Vacancy, Neither Rain..., Medical Mystery, Assassinate The Assassins, Dam Fine Rescue (start only).
    Challenges: Vault Symbols (3), This Ain't My First Rodeo.

    From Three Horns Divide there are two entrances to Three Horns Valley ("THV"). Take the left one.

    After you enter THV you can go up a path on the left to get some loot in a small camp.

    Symbol 1: Continue through the camp and go left around the pond to a small shack at the end. Approach the front slowly in your car and two badasses will come out. After killing them, go inside to find a vault symbol.

    Zip on around to the Happy Pig Hotel, taking the path up behind it for some loot chests which sometimes have eridium. Jump from there onto the roof below which has some loot containers. Loot the rest of the area if you wish. Move to the right end of the building and jump to the roof of the next building with a loot chest.

    Rodeo: In front of Happy Pig is a large, rocking pig. A challenge is to get on top of it. Across the street is a gyser. It may take a few tries, but if you stand on it just right (the outside edge by the ground) it will blow you up to the top of the pig.

    Instead of approaching the geyser from the direction you want to jump, approach from the side so that you can get a better view of the sloped area you want to get on. This makes it easier to judge where you are standing so that you can correct your position next time if you miss.

    No Vacancy: Turn on the power at Happy Pig. There is a recent video in which the guy does this mission on foot. If you lose your car, there is a C-A-R station right around the corner from Happy Pig. Why walk when you can ride?


    Neither Rain...:

    With power back on, get the Neither Rain mission, sell as much gear as you can bear to part with and get a car and head over to the Neither Rain mission site. Park by the first mail box and start up the stairs to the first corner of the building on the left where you normally jump on the boulders to the left to circle around the building, but you have the option to keep going up the boulders until you reach a campsite. It has a few loot sources, but it also has some tough rakks to kill to get some level up points.

    If you farm for legendaries when you can, level up points will not be a problem, so skip the rakks if you wish.

    When done, go on down and finish killing everyone at the Neither Rain site and note where all the mission mail boxes are - they are the ones which won't open yet. If you don't have them memorized already, you may want to practice with the list below.

    Drive back, sell all your spare loot, pick up the mail to deliver, and drive back over. Some people leave their car there, run back to Happy Pig, and then transport back to the car, supposedly to save time. There is way more than enough time if you just drive back and follow these steps:

    1. Don't forget to use the first mailbox by where you parked.
    2. Go up the stairs, jump left and go around the building to the next mailbox.
    3. Jump off that level to the pier on the right that goes out to the right-most cabin.
      Go to the right side of the cabin for mailbox 3.
    4. Run back to the central path, turn right, and go to where the stairs go up to the other side start but turn right, run down to the first path on the right (opposite the near end of the boat) and continue to the stairs, up the stairs and back around for mailbox 4.
    5. Jump from that level to the path you just took and go back to the stairs on the right.
    6. Run down that walkway, down the stairs, to the left, and you can see the last mailbox.


    Medical Mystery:

    Hopefully, you upgraded your rifle ammo capacity to 820 or more (preferably 820) back in Sanctuary. If you never upgraded it and have some eridium, you might want to go back and do it. A mod to increase your rifle's damage is also nice to have.

    Before I accumulated an armory of powerful weapons for each level, I had trouble with Doc Mercy. Now after killing all his minions, I get out a rocket launcher, walk to the bottom of his stairs, and when he comes out, blast him with a few rockets. He never makes it onto the stairs. If you don't have a legendary weapon, you can kill him with whatever you have, it may just take longer.

    Playing as Mechromancer, I deployed the robot to kill the bandits, but once you have Mercy's weapon, you need to have the robot go away because you don't want it killing the bandits you are supposed to kill.

    After killing Doc Mercy, get his weapon and get positioned at the top of the stairs and fire a few shots. The bandits will come running up the stairs giving you easy critical (head) shots on them. There are only 15 bandits to kill of the 25 needed, so when you kill them, go back to Happy Pig, refill your ammo, and drive to the right edge of the mountain you were just in until you meet some skags.

    If you want to farm Mercy for a legendary Infinity pistol, do so now and kill the other 10 bandits at the same time. (See Legendary Weapons.) Otherwise, you can get the other 10 bandits needed at Southpaw Steam & Power.

    The Southpaw Steam & Power compound is to the right. Kill the skags or they will be pestering you while you are fighting the SS&P bandits. Pull around front and exit the car, then shoot at some bandits inside to get their attention then kill them when they come through the gate.

    Symbol 2: When you have the other 10 bandits you needed to complete the mission, finish off any stragglers, then circle the compound outside on the left until you reach some pipes. Go over the pipes and look back to see a vault symbol.

    Go back to the gate and climb some boxes and stuff on the left side of the gate until you reach a ladder to get upper level loot.


    Assassinate The Assassins:

    SS&P has its own challenges: Symbols (3), Boss Run (kill all 4 bosses in 10 minutes).

    Weapons needed to kill assassins for extra credit are pistol, sniper rifle, and a shotgun. A melee attack is also required so a weapon with bonus melee damage would help. Be careful deploying a turret or robot since they may kill the targets before you do.

    If you somehow did not kill 25 bandits yet, keep using the mission weapon until that's done.

    Inside SS&P are vending machines and a lot of lockers to loot in the next room, some of which may have eridium.

    Symbol 1: Down the ladder and around the corner to the right in the big sunken area outside the room with the lockers.

    Symbol 2: After killing the first assassin, go up to the next level and clear it out, then go to the far right corner (from where you entered the area), jump onto the railing beside the big pipe, then onto the pipe. It is just below-left of the fan in the middle.

    On your way to the third assassin, Reeth, you will enter a large room with a platform at the door and a lower level which is filled with bandits. After you kill all of them, enter the room and go down the stairs, more bandits will come out and can easily swamp you, so make sure your Skill is charged. When you go down towards the end of the room, yep, more bandits.

    Symbol 3: After killing Reeth, back up and look for this big wheel on the left. Jump onto it from the end and let it carry you up to where you can jump onto the structure in front of the symbol. If you forget to jump, you die.

    Before the last assassin (Rauf) is a small area with a lot of loot boxes. Up the stairs is a room with elevated areas on either side, and a second area where the assassin comes out which can only be reached by going through the side rooms. Even if you are trying to do the time challenge, Rauf will not come out until all the bandits are killed.

    When done, you only have to go through a couple of doors to get back to the room where you started. You can sell the loot you picked up and go back to the last chest if you couldn't carry all the weapons from it.

    Each of the assassins can drop a different legendary and any one of the four can drop the legendary Emperor SMG.


    The Ice Man Cometh is a Three Horns Divide mission you get in Three Horns Valley mission, but you can't get it until later. This is the previously mentioned mission which gets you to the last vault symbol in Three Horns Divide.

    Return to top.

    Frostburn Canyon

    Hunting The Firehawk:

    From the vending machines, go out and turn right and right again to get to a path going down to the entrance to a cavern. The whole area to the left of the path are a lot of enemies to kill, but nothing to be gained but a little XP and a little loot. If you choose to kill them, return to the vending machines to sell and restock, then head down the path.

    Totem 1: At the top of the path look for a big wheel with a totem below it.
    Totem 2: Another totem can be see further down and to the right.

    Symbol 1: At the entrance to the cavern, look for a path to the left and follow it to a symbol on the ground. Then go back to enter the cavern.

    Echo 1: Bear right at the water and then bear left and go as far as you can. An echo is on the floor.

    Totem 3: Over the long set of stairs going up by some pipes.
    Totem 4: Past the top of the stairs down the path near where the two badass psychos jump out.
    Totem 5: Go up to the area on the right were the psychos jumped out and go through to another area.
                     Bear left to overlook an enemy camp. Not far away you will see the back of a totem - the tire and skulls.
    Totem 6: Over the path entrance to the right of where the large puddle of water is.
    Totem 7: The next one is not far ahead hanging over the path.
    Totem 8: Hanging down from the center of the leftmost raised walkway.
    Totem 9: Keep walking straight to a drop-down to an icy area. Totem is overhead just before you get to that area.

    Symbol 2: Jump down to the icy area and go to the right.

    The 10th totem and two more echos are found as part of another mission and will be pointed out then.

    From the icy area, climb back up the ladder and turn right into the tunnel with the spouting fire which leads to the Firehawk.


    A Dam Fine Rescue::

    The Bloodshot Stronghold is off to the right when facing the Happy Pig Motel. When you first go the gate to Bloodshot Stronghold and honk, back up quite a bit to avoid getting overrun by the bandits that come out. After you kill them, pull up to the gate and a turret will rise to the right of the gate. Or you can just skip killing them.

    The Dust

    Missions: Damn Fine Rescue (second part). Too Close For Missiles, Positive Self Image. (More missions in Return To The Dust later.)

    Challenges: Vault Symbols (3), Echos (3), The Van Is Damned, If You're Not First You're Last.

    Welcome to the Dust:

    When you first enter the Dust from Three Horns Valley on the west (right) side of the map, once you get around the curve and are facing east, you will see a buzzard (bandit helicopter) coming in the distance. Stop and fire at it. When it's down, another will come behind it. You can skip these and go straight to Ellie's on the right if you wish.

    Buzzards will continue to bother you the rest of the time you are driving around The Dust. You will also see bandit vehicles driving around and spiderants popping up all over.

    Eventually you will get to the area on the left side of the map. In the far lower left corner of the map is a train depot with a gateway to Lynchwood. You won't get a mission to Lynchwood until much later in the game. If you do the Clan War missions later, the final part is at the train depot and you can use the portal to "discover" the Lynchwood fast travel machine which you can use if you are doing the Lynchwood missions later.

    If you don't plan on doing the Clan War missions but do plan on doing the Lynchwood missions, you may want to hop in and discover the fast travel now.

    While in Lynchwood, you can pick up loot, but don't buy from the vending machine as the prices are upscaled for the higher level you are supposed to be at. Backtrack the way you came to get back to the depot in The Dust or you can fast travel wherever you want to go.

    The Moonshiner's Shack near the depot has a Vault Symbol and an Echo. (I didn't number these because it depends on when you are in the area.) After you kill the inhabitants, climb onto the roof of the shack to the left of the entrance and work your way around to where you can jump on top of the large cylinder. The Vault Symbol is to your right. Pick up the Echo on your way out.

    The slot machine in this area is a pleasure to play because you can position yourself to the front-right of the machine and reach the loot from the left side as well as the front without ever moving.

    As noted on the Slots page, even though it takes more time than playing two machines at once, just having one machine means that you don't have to keep rotating around to get to two machines. But the biggest benefit is that when your backpack fills up, you are only a few steps away from a vending machine.

    One other benefit is that if you are doing a mission in which you have to destroy bandit vehicles, while you are playing slots, several times a bandit vehicle will stop outside of the building and you can step to the door and destroy it. A nice corrosive pistol will do, as will almost any weapon. Beats chasing them around The Dust, though you may not get all the needed vehicles this way.

    Gwen's Head: This is a special weapon which randomly spawns in The Dust in one of the five loot chests marked on the map. It's not a great weapon, but it's a pretty cool Easter Egg if you are a fan of the movie Se7en.

    Echo 1: To the right as you enter Ellie's.

    If You're Not First takes place at the Modunk Speedway at the bottom of the map.

    As you enter the track, there is a timer which starts when you go under it. Hit the turbo before you get to the timer. Pass what looks like a lane going left and take the next left. After the bridge, take the shortcut at the yellow and black striped pole on the right, then hit the turbo for the straightaway and the jump at the end of the bridge. The exit with the timer is just to the right after you land. It's not that hard if you practice it a time or two, but don't forget to Save-Quit-Continue when you are ready to do it for real.

    If you don't see an acknowledgment on the left of the screen saying that you completed the challenge then you didn't make it in time, and you have to Save-Quit-Continue to zero the timer so you can try again.

    Damn Fine Rescue : This part of the mission requires you to destroy bandit cars in order to get parts for constructing a bandit car which will get you into the stronghold.

    Too Close For Missiles:   You get this mission from the guy at the right of Ellie's shop. Get a car, exit Ellie's and turn right. Go to the first long rampish rock (it comes to a point) to the left and use it to fly into the Buzzard camp.

    Symbol 1: After landing, go to the round platform with stairs and go up the stairs on the left. Circle around to the right to find loot boxes and jump to the ground. Go under the platform and look up for the symbol.

    When done with the mission, you can just drive your car off the cliff to drive back to Ellie's or do a Save-Quit-Continue.

    The Van Is Damned: Every once in a while a van with a loot box on top will cross The Dust accompanied by a couple of bandit vehicles. Destroy the escorts and the van will stop. At the front of the van, jump up to get to the loot box.

    Positive Self Image is similar to the car parts mission. Complete it and you are done with The Dust right now or you can leave it to do on your next visit.

    Return to top.

    Cult Following - Back To Frostburn Canyon

    If you have been following this walkthrough, you should be around level 13 now. Even when I skip all the side missions and only level up when I have to (mainly at Liar's Berg), I'm still at level 13 at this point. Yet the following missions are at level 9.

    Possibly the reason for the low mission level is for people who have somehow made it this far and are still below level 12, which is what Damn Fine Rescue is. It hardly seems possible, but why else make this so low?

    Anyway, if you made it to The Dust, you can go back to Sanctuary and get the Cult Following (in Frostburn Canyon) and In Memoriam (in Three Horns Divide) missions from Lilith. When you get to Frostburn Canyon, you will get the following additional side missions:

      Eternal Flame: You do NOT want to try to ignite pyro nomads because they are highly fire-resistant, so kill them with non-fire weapons and use your fire weapon on other bandits.

      False Idols: The challenge is to kill Scorch without damaging (much less killing) his minions. This means you can't use a turret or robot nor anything with explosive damage such as grenade or launcher. Even a shotgun is risky. Since Scorch is a fire critter, you can't use a fire weapon. This calls for a high-powered electrical sniper gun and a good shield. Once Scorch is dead, you can kill all the others however you want.

      Scorch may drop the legendary SMG HellFire.

      After killing Scorch, you can finish up two challenges from your first trip here --

      1. Totem 10: Keep going across the ice until you get to a big set of stairs. A totem is above the stairs.

        *** Remember these stairs because when you get Kill Dr. Zed's Abmoniation, this is where you want to come.

      2. Echo 2: At the top of the stairs go right to a shack on stilts. An echo is at the back of the shack.
        Fuse box is close to the echo on the shack.
        Echo 3: Continue along the ice which ends at a second shack on stilts.

      Lighting The Match: You have to take Matchstick to the freighter where you (temporarily) killed Flynt. You can fight your way up to the top again, or you can just run by everything. You don't get many points for killing all these low-level bandits.

      If you didn't get the legendary Thunderball Fists from Captain Flynt before, you may want to try again since you have to be there anyway.

      The Enkindling: This takes place in the cavern area just past the 3 metal elevated walkways in the large open area before you get to Totem 10 (see Hunting Firehawk, above). Again, you can fight your way in there or just run past everything.

    Back to Three Horns Divide

    In Memoriam:

    As in the Scorch mission, a Challenge is to kill Boll without damaging his pets. (Of course, once Boll is dead, you are going to absolutely kill the skags, but whatever...) Just snipe him from the entrance. He has a shield, so an electric sniper is good to have.

    If the skags come after you, just back out of the entrance until they stop and keep sniping Boll. A good sniping point is on top of the rocks to the right of the entrance.

    If you see Boll roaming around by himself, you can try running in with a launcher and blast him before his skaggs join you.

    After killing Boll and picking up his echo, you get a second part to the mission - picking up 3 other echos. (Echo numbers are the order we get them; they don't match the numbers in the game.)

    Echo 1: From Boll's campground you can see an anchor hanging down which has an echo on the rope above it. (If you don't see it glowing, you must not have picked up Boll's echo.) Shoot the echo to drop the anchor. Snipe bandits near it. Then drive over and pick up the echo.

    Echo 2: Drive back the way you came to the cliff on the other side of the bandit camp next door to Boll's. Drive your car off the edge of the cliff then climb up on a container to get to the next container which gets you to a ladder up to the pipe, The echo is near a weapons chest.

    Echo 3: Head back towards Sanctuary to the black patch of ground to the right of the road. Or you can just Save-Quit-Continue, which places you very close to the last echo. Turn the wheel on the mound to the right of the big noisy pump to get the echo to spit out.

    Back to A Dam Fine Rescue

    Weapons needed: Bad Maw is pretty easy to kill, so pick the weapon you like best. Just for fun I sometimes kill him with nothing but the novas from the level 9 legendary Flame Of The Firehawk shield. Bad Maw is one of the few named enemies who does not drop a legendary weapon. Inside the Bloodshot Stronghold is another named enemy, Mad Mike, who also does not drop a legendary.

    At the end of this mission you have to kill a constructor and lots of robots, so I like a launcher with several ammo capacity upgrades. In between you will face many crowds of bandits in the Stronghold and robots and bandits in the Ramparts. I usually use a fire sniper for the bandits and a corrosive sniper for the robots. I use the legendary Unkempt Harold pistol for close fighting. A singularity grenade is handy for doing the whirlpool challenge, though I've never found one at that low a level. You can come back after you find a singularity mod if you wish.

    All side missions available to this point have been done, so it's time to return to Bloodshot Stronghold, honk, get out and kill the few bandits. Bad Maw will come out.

    Symbol 2 (THV): After you kill him, go to the left of the drawbridge wheel and along the edge of the ice until you reach a vault symbol. It is easy to fall off the edge coming back, so jump on something instead of coming back on the edge.

    Farming Eridium and Leveling Up:

    You should be level 13 or 14 by now. To reach level 16 and get quite a bit of eridium, repeatedly enter Bloodshot Stronghold, S-Q-C to respawn Bad Maw, kill bandits in the watery room, loot that area and the next, Go back out and kill Bad Maw again, and repeat.

    You don't have to kill bandits and loot the areas, but it takes little effort and helps level up faster. It also seems that killing the bandits and looting the area yields about as much eridium as killing Bade Maw, if not more.

    When you come inside after killing Maw, you can run up the stairs to the door to the watery room, throw a couple of grenades to get things started, then release Deathtrap to kill the bandits while you loot the room you just came through. Then you can come back up to crack the safes and loot the lockers.

    If you don't want to kill bandits inside, stop as soon as you get in the door after killing Maw and Save-Quit-Continue. Doing this by the door results in your reappearing by the door instead of by the Fast Travel, so you can then just turn around and go back out the door. Again - this is faster, but you won't get as much eridium.

    On each level from 13 to 16, you get fewer and fewer points for killing Bad Maw, making it take longer to go up each level. For example, you can level up from 13 to 14 by killing Bad Maw 10 times, but it may take 14 times to go from level 15 to 16.

    Finally, toss a grenade into the next room and kill the bandits there without entering the room (which attracts more bandits which takes longer). The first time you level up, if you have an armory, go back to Sancturary to get all the level 14 and 15 gear from the armory.

    After you reach level 16, go back again to get level 16 and 17 gear and dump gear you don't need any more. Then return to...

    As a coup de grace, you can go to the door to the next room which will cause some bandits to appear to the left and throw them a grenade. After it does its work, you can do the Save-Quit-Continue and go back out to kill Bad Maw again.

    Note that just going back out the door will not respawn Bad Maw. You have to Save-Quit-Continue first, and if you do so while still outside, you will come back at Happy Pig instead of inside.

    If you farm the inside as just described as well as what you get when killing Bad Maw, you can easily get over 70 bars of eridium going from level 13 to 16.

    After reaching level 16, the amount of points you get for killing Bad Maw are reduced enough that it takes a lot longer to get to level 17. You could do it, but at 16 you will already be at a level above the missions you have to do. So after reaching 16, go back to Sanctuary to update your gear from your armory, update your backpack with the eridium you picked up, and come back.

    Do the mission: Rescue Roland

    Kill the bandits in the first room (which is small and water-filled in the middle), then go to the next room and loot it.

    Echo 1 & Sofa 1: Pick up the echo on the table and jump on the sofa to start a couple of the challenges for Bloodshot Stronghold. You will not be able to complete either challenge until you get Splinter Group side mission.

    The next room will have a lot of bandits to kill and when they are done, a big door will open and more will enter.

    Echo 2 & Sofa 2: After killing them, exit the room and go down the steps to the right to a passageway (with two bandits) leading to a room with a main area in the middle and a higher level running the length of each side. An echo is half way down the right area and a sofa is in the left area.

    Give It A Whirl: The next room has a big whirlpool in the middle. A challenge is to get a bandit to fall into the whirlpool. The easiest way (if you are not a Siren) is to get a bandit close to the water's edge on the bottom level and then drop a singularity grenade in the water near him.

    Since a singularity grenade normally doesn't appear until a much higher level, I just blow off this challenge, though you could return later if you really want to do it.

    Echo 3 is on the next-to-top level in the whirlpool room. As a Merchromancer, I run through this whole are to the stairs at the far end, releasing Deathtrap along the way, go up the last set of stairs on the right, turn left, and get between the locker and the wall for cover and shoot at bandits from there while Deathtrap does his thing.

    When you enter the next room, note the location of a room protected by an electrical field. Kill the bandits on the entry level and the higher level and enter a hallway which goes to the left. Down the hall is a doorway to the left. Go up the stairs to find the fuse box for the electrical field. If you have a large armory and plenty of cash, you might want to skip this.

    Echo 4 & Sofa 3: The next room has a small 3-walled area to the right of center with an Echo recorder in it. Past that on the right is the third sofa to jump on. That's all that can be done on the sofa challenge at this time.

    Echo 5: The room with Roland in a cell comes up next. An Echo recorder is on a table to the right.

    Symbol 1: Look for a ladder on the right wall when facing Roland. Go up the ladder, jump over the rails onto the pipes and follow them to a room which has a symbol on the wall. It also has switches which unlock the cell with the loot. If your pack is already full, wait until you sell off gear at Ramparts and come back to open the loot cell (which you have to do even if you open it now).

    Echo 6: After killing the robots and bandits in the areas on the other side of Roland's cell, the last Echo is in the last area. Don't forget to shoot the fuel tank. You can now exit to Bloodshot Ramparts with a couple of vending machines to the right and a loot chest to the left. You can sell excess gear and go back to pick up any you couldn't carry if you wish.

    Bloodshot Ramparts:

    Bloodshot Ramparts has its own set of challenges.

    Key 1: After you come through the portal, you'll see a car hanging off the left near where a couple of bots chased bandits off the edge. A key is in the trunk..

    Toll Booth & Key 2: When you get to the toll booths, pay the toll for that challenge. Ahead and to the left is a car hanging over the edge. Get the key out of the trunk.

    Key 3:When you go into the next small area, there is a bus to the right with a car on top with a key.

    Key 4: There's another small area opening out into a larger area from which you have to walk through a couple of shipping containers to another large area. To the left after entering that area are stairs going up. Follow along that level until you see a car on the right with a key.

    Vault Symbol: Keep going the way you were until you go down a ramp. Under the ramp is a vault symbol on the wall.

    Key 5: Fight your way around to where the constructor is holding Roland. After freeing Roland, look for the last key in the car behind it.


    Splinter Group:

    This takes place in Bloodshot Stronghold and continues its challenges.

    Sofas 4 & 5: The last 2 sofas for the sofa challenge are in plain sight.

    Vault symbol is on the wall to the right of the hole you go down to the splinter group.

    The order in which to kill the splinter group is Lee, Dan, Ralph, Mick. Each of them will come out in correct order at which time you can use your turret or robot and a launcher to kill them as quickly as possible.

    Any you don't kill the first time will come back as a group and it will be much harder to kill them in order. With all of them out at once, you shouldn't wear spiked armor, don't use splash weapons, and don't use a turret or robot.

    These guys can drop the legendary Storm Front grenade mod. See the Legendary Weapons page.

    Turning the red lights green:

    • Turn the wheel 1 time.
    • Turn on the TV 2 times.
    • Flip the next switch on the right 3 times.

    Out of Body Experience:

    This mission is picked up at the start of Splinter Group. When you are through with Splinter Group, you continue into Bloodshot Ramparts as you did when rescuing Roland, but the mission ends up in Moxxi's bar.

    Return to top.

    The Tundra

    There's a lot to kill here, especially if you do the Might Morphin' mission, so expect to level up, even if you are just starting a level. If you have an armory with a more powerful rocket launcher or other weapons and/or better shield for the next level and/or better corrosive weapons, you may want to go back and get it/them now. Also beneficial would be mods to increase your launcher damage or corrosive damage.

    Before starting Mighty Morphin' snipe the bandit in front of the shack down the hill.

    Mighty Morphin':

    This is the first side mission in the Tundra.

    While there are varkids all over the Tundra, the area marked "Mighty Morphin'" is the best to use for this mission because the varkids there are easier to control.

    The goal is to just injure a varkid which will cause it to create a kind of blow-up pod which you must inject with the stuff Hammerlock gave you. A large, flying, mutated varkid will spring from the pod which you must then kill.

    After killing the first one, the mission changes and you must kill 4 more. Because the mutated varkids are so hard to kill, it's best to just inject 1 or 2 pods in one session. Then Save-Quit-Continue to get the same varkids to respawn. The bandit down the hill also respawns, so snipe him each time for XP.

    All the other crawling varkids are just a nuisance, so you might want to kill a bunch of those and try to get 1 or 2 of the remaining ones to mutate. That is why it is better to use the marked area on the map where there are fewer varkid than on the right.

    If things go badly, just Save-Quit-Continue and try again.

    If you have a turret or robot, you don't want them out before an injected pod hatches because they will kill the varkids or the pods too soon. Once a pod is injected and hatches, then you can release the hounds.

    Don't shoot the varkids with a fire weapon because if they burn, you will wake up Mordecai (as part of the Train To Catch mission) and he will shoot at varkid before they make pods, making it harder for you to control the situation.

    Once you kill the four mutants, switch to the Train To Catch mission.


    A Train To Catch:

    If you are doing all side missions, go to the area on the right and kill all the varkids there. A Lobbed Bonus Package grenade mod helps clear the area.

    The structures beyond this last varkid area is used in another mission, No Hard Feelings, which is why you may as well kill the varkids now. This mission is given by an echo recorder dropped by a bandit you can kill, usually between or around the shack and the Varkid Ranch Observation builidng.

    Symbol 1: Go to the shack and then over to the Varkid Ranch Observation builidng. Circle around to the right on the path or over the rocks. When you get to a ladder, go up to the roof. Get to the opposite side of the building where you will find a vault symbol on the floor. Look inside to see the fuse box on the opposite wall. Shoot it, go back down and loot the building.

    The loot in the building is nothing special, so I usually skip going inside to loot it.

    From here, there are two ways to get to Tina. One is to follow the path through the varkid colonies, killing them all as you go and looting their piles. The piles in the Tundra have more than their usual share of eridium, so this might be worth the effort.

    The second way to go is via the river which lets you bypass all the varkids. As previously noted, icy waters can be deadly in BL2, but not here.

    What's Yours Is Mine: The goal is to deactivate 5 pink bombs whose locations are shown on the map. The problem is that they explode if you get too close. You can spend a lot of time trying to sneak closer and succeed 3 or 4 times, only to have one blow up. I've tried this a few times, but don't think it's worth the effort.

    Symbol 2: Tina will send you after some of her dolls. Exit Tina's gate, turn left, then take the next right, then follow the path up to some train tracks. (See the map.) Kill the bandits and discover the other vault symbol on the right side of the building.

    Follow the map above to the Old Man Johnson Farm. The house has a shielded area. The off switch is in the barn. To get in, climb up on the tires and jump through the hole in the roof. To get back out, look for a ladder on a column inside, jump over to get under the holes in the roof, then jump out.

    Go back to the house and through a trap door to a basement. There is some loot there, but the significant thing is a Fast Travel Station which provides a way to more quickly get to/from Tina's home base instead of having to start over at the entrance to the Tundra.

    Go down the left side of the map to the Buzzard Academy. When you reach the last building, go around it and this gives you a protected vantage point from which to fight the bandits. The first doll is on a table to the far left of this area. Go up the path to the right to get to the level with the 2nd one.

    Wheel 1: The first building you get to on that level has a wheel for one of the challenges for this area. Turning it brings out waves of bandits to kill. Normally, you don't want to do this until you have killed all the ones that first welcome you.

    King Of The Buzzard World: Another challenge is to scale the building with the smoke stacks on top. Jump from a box to a section with two more boxes leaning against the roof and continue from there.

    Go back to Tina who will turn the dolls into rockets. You will have to invade a bandit camp. The direct route is over the bridge. A safer route is to go through the water to the front-left corner of the fence, go through, and climb up on the roof of the building on the left to snipe while Deathtrap handles the close work.

    The safest route is to go past the bridge, through the water, and come in when you get past the fence, then go up the ladder to the platform where you place the dolls.

    If you go in the front or left way, then after killing everyone, circle behind the buildings on the right side of the camp and go up a ladder to a raised platform. After placing and arming the dolls, jump down and climb up the resulting downed train car.

    End Of The Line:

    Vault Symbol: Kill all the robots between the vending machines and the cliff down to Wilhelm. After the last 3 robots run at you and you kill them, look at the wall on the left for a vault symbol.

    Before jumping into Wilhelm's area, check your ammo. If necessary, run back to the vending machines.

    Jump down the cliff and IMMEDIATELY run past the left side of where Wilhelm comes out so that you are in position when he starts moving to the back left of the area. If you have a robot or turret, deploy it right away (but see Master Of All, below) and start shooting Wilhelm with rockets. Your goal is to kill him before he gets his shields up. A strong corrosive weapon is also good against him.

    Master Of All...: This challenge asks you to kill Wilhelm without destroying any of his surveyors. This means you can't deploy a turret or robot. This is trivial if you are level 19 or so and have a strong corrosive launcher.

    To reload, use the trick of bringing up your backpack and swapping the launcher back and forth.

    You should be able to do it if you are on level 18 (or even 17), which you should be if you have completed all the missions to this point, and if you have some powerful weapons and mods, which you should have if you are using an Armory.

    I completed the challenge with just a corrosive rifle and a mod that increased elemental damage.

    Do not turn in the mission to Lt. Davis yet!! Doing so will start a chain of events which will keep you out of Sanctuary for a while, so first sell your loot, do any side missions you haven't done yet (and want to do), play the slots and spend your eridium.

    If you have an armory, upgrade your weapons; in fact, it's probably a good idea to get the weapons for at least the next couple of levels and carry them with you as you may not be able to get to them when you actually level up and you will have a tough battle to get back to Sanctuary.

    But first you can do a couple of missions back in the Tundra. Get these missions by going back to Sanctuary.


    Mine All Mine:

    Go to the Mount Molehill Mine. Kill everything, look for a wheel near the center for that challenge. Kill everything again. About where the point of the arrow is on the map will be some crates, a big shipping container, etc., leading to a conveyor belt which you can go up, under some pounding device, and continue to the top area to complete the mission.

    You Are Cordially Invited:

    Go to the area marked Madam Von Bartlesly on the map, up on a plateau overlooking the Buzzard Academy. Kill the Madam without getting hit by her. She can drop the legendary Baby Maker SMG.

    Afterwards, if you look over the edge of the path you can see a weapons chest. You can jump down to loot it, but the weapons are nothing special and you have to Save-Quit-Continue to get back.


    The Pretty Good Train Robbery:

    Go to Ripoff Station on the map. Kill stuff. Look for a wheel to complete that challenge and kill more stuff. The mission is simple.


    Rising Action:

    This is where you turn in the Train To Catch mission, then say goodbye to Sanctuary for a while.

    The Ice Man Cometh:

    The main mission (Bright Lights...) will take you near the Happy Pig in Three Horns Valley where you can pick up this mission. When you get it, take the road to the right to go back to Three Horns Divide. You'll see the billboard on the right where you found a vault symbol. On the left is the bandit area for this mission.

    Symbol 3: This is the last vault symbol for Three Horns Divide. Go up some stairs on the right. Continue to some double-wide stairs and go up. Go past a fuel tank and to the left is a quarter-round lean-to. The symbol is on the far wall of the lean-to.


    Bright Lights, Flying City:

    This mission takes you through the Fridge.

    Vault Symbol: Before entering the Fridge itself, you can enter Fink's Slaughter House. It has a vault symbol on the top floor on a pillar towards far left corner of the arena. If you don't want to do the battle, you can just leave.

    Fink's is a pretty tough battle and you don't get anything for it except some slow leveling up. I prefer to level up in Opportunity, if necessary. If you are still farming for legendaries, you probably do all the leveling up you need that way.

    You can do the Fridge challenges as part of later missions. If you killed a goliath on your way through and picked up the mission Goliath Has A Good Idea, save it for later when you can do it with other missions. Our priority now is to get back to Sanctuary.

    Return to top.

    The Highlands

    Try the Fast Travel station. It should tell you that there is an error. Bring up your mission list and make sure that it has checked off to try the Fast Travel. I can't tell you how many times I've fought my way to the end of this area only to find out that it hasn't been checked off and I have to go back and do it all over again.

    If you want to fight through the stalkers, cross the bridge and bear right to get to a loot area, then continue on the right edge of the area until you reach the area where the Hyperion robots are hanging out.

    Alternatively, you can bear left from the fast travel machine until you reach the edge of the cliff overlooking the Hyperion robots, jump down, either kill or run past them to the Hyperion Extraction Plant. Cross the water. Kill the constructor. Kill the thresher to get the fast travel component. Exit to the next Highlands area.

    If you are around level 19 and have a corrosive launcher and Deathtrap's help, you should be able to kill the thresher without too much difficulty. After destroying the constructor, wait for Deathtrap to run down and then recharge to make sure he is available for thresher-killing duty.

    Once you enter the Highlands, to the right is a Catch-A-Ride with loot boxes on its roof. Beyond that is the Aggregate Acquisition area. Several challenges and side missions take place there, but they come later.

    You should be around level 19 now. If you have a good armory and equipped yourself with some strong weapons, you can go to Opportunity and farm for eridium and XP. I do this when I'm playing as a Mechromancer because the robot is very helpful.

    Here's the gear I use:

    • Launcher - preferably with chemical damage, fast rockets, and 5+ magazine.
    • Caustic Infinity pistol - what it lacks in power it makes up with continuous firing.
    • Chemical sniper rifle
    • Good shield (600+)
    • Legendary grenade is helpful but not essential.
    >Farming Opportunity made easy:
    • Follow the road as far as you can, which is a drawbridge entry to Opportunity.
    • Run to the left past the first area where the building overhangs the walkway.
    • When you get to some loot boxes, deploy the robot if you are a Mechromancer.
    • It would be preferable if you can kill the Hyperion robots without it
      in order to be sure that Deathtrap is ready when the Constructor appears.
    • Open the loot boxes. You may get some eridium or a loot box midget.
    • When you get to an open area, 1 or 2 robots should be around. If not, wait.
    • Switch to whatever mod and relic will help you the most with your weapon.
      If using Deathtrap, don't help him too much because the constructor will come out earlier.
      When Deathtrap disappears, switch to a faster cooldown Mod and Relic.
    • Loot some boxes and get to the left between some big shipping crates and the water.
    • Switch to a launcher, a launcher Relic and an Elemental Mod if you have them.
    • When you hear a rumble, deploy Deathtrap and a Constructor will land.
    • Wait for it to settle down and then hit it with all the rockets in your magazine.
      Bring up your weapons menu, swap out some other weapon for the launcher.
      Swap it back. This gives you a loaded launcher without the delay of reloading.
    • After you and Deathtrap kill everything, loot the area.
    • The constructor drops some eridium more often than not.
    • Because you are too early to be in Opportunity officially, Save-Quit-Continue puts you
      by vending machines outside of Opportunity. Sell loot, buy ammo, go to the nearby C.A.R.
      Drive back to Opportunity and repeat.

    Defending the beacon:

    • Follow your map to the mission point at Overlook. Your mission is to defend the beacon while the Fast Travel station there is being repaired.
    • There are two ways to defend the beacon.
      • The easiest way is to not try to. As soon as you deploy the beacon, run back to the gate, get in your car, and shoot at robots from a distance. At some point you will kill them all and can safely go back to repair the beacon, then run back to your car again. Repeat this until the Fast Travel station is ready. This is actually about as fast as the next way.
      • A more adventurous way is to stay in the area around the beacon to fight the robots. During any lull, you can visit the vending machine to refill ammo. If you did the farming at Opportunity described above, you should not have any trouble with this approach. Even if you the beacon has to be repaired, you fix it, reload your ammo, and keep going. You have to succeed in this mission because otherwise the game couldn't continue.

        Stand in the area in front of the beacon. Keep the Cooldown Mod and Relic loaded because having Deathtrap's help is essential. Be especially watchful of the fast-charging robots that blow themselves up. They will try to run up next to the beacon and explode.

    Back to Sanctuary

    When the beacon is ready, loot the area and fast travel to Sanctuary. Lots of missions await, one of which you can see out the door from the fast travel station.

    Won't Get Fooled Again: Quick and easy. Facing the suspects, the 2nd from the right did it. As sub-missions, you are asked to question Moxxi and Zed. Before doing this, go to Roland (if you haven't already done so) and get the Wildlife Exploitation mission, then go to Claptrap and get the invitations to his birthday party so that you can hand them out while visiting the people below..

    Claptrap's Birthday Bash: Pick this up and talk to the invitees the same time you are doing other stuff. This is a nuisance mission, so feel free to skip it.

    The following missions are covered in the order shown below, but they can be completed in any order you wish or skipped entirely or in part. Several of the missions lead to more missions when you get to the destination.

    Mission Board: Clan War, The Good, The Bad, and The Mordecai [The Dust]
    Marcus: Safe and Sound [Caustic Caverns]
    Hammerlock: Perfectly Peaceful [Caustic Caverns]
    Scooter: Medicine Man, Swallowed Whole, Cold Shoulder [The Fridge]
    Hammerlock: Slap Happy [The Highlands]
    Roland: Main Mission: Wildlife Exploitation Preserve ("WEP")
    Tannis: Hidden Journals, Doctor's Orders [WEP]

    Back To The Dust

    The next two missions are from the Santuary Mission Board.

    * The Good, The Bad, and The Mordecai:   The first step is to find Carson. If you did the Too Close for Missiles mission, his body, partially covered by a sheet of metal, was one of the last places you went on that mission.

    This time, after you fly your CAR over to Goose's Roost, instead of fighting through bandits the long way around, you can go left, climb over the rocks, and you will be close to where his body is. Or you can veer to the left when you jump your car and end up in that area.

    From there, go to Friendship Gulag. You'll have to fight your way down the left side to the back. After you get close to your target spot, the fighting gets harder. There are some shipping containers to the left of it which you can get behind.

    While Deathtrap is keeping them busy, you can stick your head out now and then to join in the fighting.

    From there, you have to go to the graveyard in front of the church near the very top of the map.

    Normally, to get to the graveyard, you have to start behind Ellie's garage and fight critters all the way back. A less stressful shortcut is to go where the right asterisk is and climb up on the rocks from the left and walk over.

    The two guys you fight there can be farmed for a legendary Lyudmila sniper rifle.

    After you kill the two guys, you can drop down into Bug Gulch and farm the Black Queen spiderant. See the Legendary Weapons page for more info.


    Clan War:    This turns into a series of side missions:

    Starting the War

      Follow the instructions to get the war started.

      Echo 2: After getting through the gate to the Hodunk camp, it's in front of the first building on the left.

    First Place:

      After you blow up the distillery at the Holy Spirits bar by the Highlands Overlook, the owner, Mick Zaford, will recruit you to help him get back at the Hodunks in The Dust. He will give you some dynamite to place on the Hodunk race track.

      Follow those directions. Wait for the 3 racing cars to all get onto the bridge then hit the plunger. If you don't destroy all the cars, you have to chase after and destroy the survivors.

      Vault Symbol: At the start of the bridge where the dynamite plunger is, go up the ladder, past the plunger to the ducts which go over the track parallel to the bridge, but before you get to the end of the ducts, you have to jump off to the right of the fence.The symbol is on the back of the first building.

    Reach the Dead Drop:

      Go to the Hodunk Speedway and get instructions to go to the Holy Spirits bar in Highlands and listen to an echo on the seocnd floor.

      Vault Symbol: Go to the room on the first floor with the medical vending machine. Turn right and you will be facing a wall with a bunch of posters on it. A very small symbol is on the left edge of teh posters and near the bottom of them.

    End Of The Rainbow:

      This is an immediate follow-on to the Dead Drop mission.
      Stay way back of the bag man while following him.

    Trailer Trashing:

      You have to drive out to the Highland portal at the lower left section of the map to get this mission from a guy standing around there. Go back to the race track and set fire to some trailers, then go back and turn in the mission to the same guy.

      As an alternative to driving out there, you can fast travel to Lynchwood if you went there as previously recommended, then come back through The Dust's Lynchwood Station portal.

    Wakey Wakey:

      Drive back to the racetrack and get this mission from the old one-legged man.
      • Go to Moxxi's bar in Sanctuary.
      • Drink 3 lagers to get a good buzz.
      • Go to the Holy Spirits in the Highlands.
      • Crash the wake.

    Zafords vs Hodunks:

      Turn in the Wakey Wake mission to Ellie and get the last mission in this series. Drive back out to the Lynchwood Train Station or fast travel to Lynchwood and come back in the portal to The Dust.

      Pick a side, kill the others, and that ends the series. To me, this whole series is just a lot of running back and forth and is not very challenging or interesting, so I usually skip this when I'm not doing a run in which I play every mission.

      However, each side may drop a legendary weapon (Maggie or Slagga), depending on who you side with. See the Legendary Weapons page for more info.

    Sanctuary Hole & Caustic Caverns

    Symbol 1: You first encounter bandits in a small area at the bottom of some stairs. Go up those stairs and around the left of the next stairs. The symbol is around the corner to the left.

    Fuse Box and Sugar Shack: Go up another set of stairs and jump over the rail to the platforms on the right. Keep going and jump to another platform. You'll see the fuse box and the door to the Sugar Shack is around the left corner.

    Rabbit Hole: Go back out to the platform and take a running leap into the hole.


    Caustic Cavern

    Missions:     Perfectly Peaceful, Safe and Sound, and Minecart Mischief.
                         Check your HUD map to find out when "origin evidence" echos and Minecart mission are nearby.
                         The Lost Treasure mission comes later, but you'll need to refer to this map.
    Challenges: Ever Blow Bubbles?, Harchek's Revenge (Blue), Bet I Can Make It, Can't Feel A Thing, Vault Symbols (2).
                         This video shows dealing with the challenges.

    This walkthrough assumes that this is your first trip through here in this playthrough, so the southern vault symbol cannot be reached without first being opened from the other side.

    Ever Blow Bubbbles?: At the shack turn right and go past the left side of the junk pile. Keep jumping over the (corrosive) water. You'll reach some land with a broken overpass. The idea is to get on a bubble and let it grow and burst, throwing you up onto the overpass. You will have to deal with a lot of crystalisks which will get you going on the Perfectly Peaceful mission.

    You also have to wait for a bubble to start beside a section of overpass and then walk into the bubble - don't run or jump.

    Harchek's Revenge: Instead of going back the way you came, go along the outer edges of the islands until you see a small cavern. Through it awaits a giant blue crystalisk named Blue. Kill it before it spawns crystals. A launcher may be best, depending on your weaponry.

    Safe and Sound: Blue is holding onto the safe, so once you kill him, open the safe and take the pictures. Moxxi gives a better reward for them than Marcus. Blue can drop the legendary shield Fabled Tortoise, but it's not worth farming.

    I Bet I Can Make It: At the point of land shown on the map, you can look out and see a small island. Run out there. No skill involved here. You either have a high enough shield or you don't. A mod to help you withstand corrosion might help. I tried with a shield that claims to make you immune to corrosive damage and it was gone in two seconds. Don't really understand that.

    On the other hand, if you farm Blue for his legendary Tortoise shield, it has a couple of features which can help - a very high damage resistance for its level and although it lowers your movement speed by half, it doubles your movement speed when depleted so that when your shield is running out and you feel doomed, all of a sudden the speed increase kicks in and you make it easily.

    Videos on YouTube have players at different levels, from 22 to 50+, and the amount of damage they take on the Challenge from about 1000 to over 70,000.

    Can't Feel A Thing This challenges initially appears as "undiscovered". If you do the previous challenge, you automatically complete this one; otherwise, the key is to stay in the water as long as your shield holds out and get back out until it recharges, then get back in. In other words, you can break the challenge down into manageable chunks.

    Vault Symbol 1: Follow the map above until you reach the point marked with the red asterisk. You have to circle that jutting area from the right to get to the symbol, starting just to the left of an "origin evidence".

    Minecart Mischief: Look for the yellow exclamation mark on your HUD for the location of the mission echo, then go to the location of the cart, which is just south of the entrance to the Minecraft Easter Egg location shown on the map above.

    Minecraft time-out: Jump over the Minecraft-ish looking boulders next to the railroad tracks and keep going until you find a mine entrance blocked by Minecraft-ish blocks. Smash your way in to explore. The Badass Creeper can drop the legendary Longbow sniper rifle which is a poor weapon.

    Back to the Mischief: Push the cart along the tracks until it won't go any more, then look in a nook to the side of the door for a wheel to open the door. Keep this up until you reach the ore processing area. Dump the ore, but don't pull the lever until you've looted the area. After you pull the level, swarms of varkids will attack.

    After completing this mission, go up the stairs on the left side of the far area and open the door for future use. Come back and jump into the lower area, go through a long hall, turn right and through another door.

    Vault Symbol 2: To the left is a ladder going way up. Stop when you are nearly to the top and turn around. You should see a recess with a vault symbol on the wall at the end. You may need to be just above that area and then jump into it.

    Return to top.

    Back to The Fridge

    Missions: Cold Shoulder, Note To Self-Person, Swallowed Whole.
    Challenges: Vault Symbols (2), It's Off to Hell We Go, Fairest of Them All, Stiff Competition, The Rakk Knight echo, Trapped Rat.

    Area names (for easier reference):

      opening area is the first area you go into after opening the door with the wheel; mostly empty space..
      middle area is the next area with an icy area on the right, a line of cars and junk in the middle.
      far area is between the middle area and the frozen river.

    Symbol 1: At the far right of the opening area, turn right and climb up onto the roof.
                      The symbol is in the middle of the front of the roof.
    Symbol 2: Look across the middle area to see a platform with a tarp over it and some boxes lit up.
                      To the right of it on the ground level is a small sheltered area. Squeeze in from the front left to see the symbol.

    Cold Shoulder: Get 2 of the girly magazines from inside vehicles in the middle area. Get the flowers from around the edges of the frozen river and the pizza from a pile of cars in the middle.

    The last piece of pizza is below a ledge on the near side of the frozen river. Go to the edge and look down to locate the pizza's spike, then drop down to it.

    As you get back to the opening area, watch on the right for a ladder going up to a platform. Go up the ladder and find the last girly magazine. Follow the map marker to the nearby place to put the goodies and wait for Laney to come out.

    Kill Laney without killing any of her midgets. to complete the Fairest of Them All challenge. She comes out first, so you can use a rocket launcher on her.

    Later we will Save-Quit-Continue to come back to kill her midgets first to complete the challenge It's Off To Hell We Go. A fire sniper rifle is good for picking them off without hurting Laney.

    Laney can drop the legendary Gub.

    Rakkman is located a ways past Laney's quarters. He is not part of a mission nor challenge, but he can drop the totally worthless Gunerang, if you are into collecting weapons which primarily blow you up.

    Note to Self-Person: A goliath drops the mission. If you did not get it during your first trip through The Fridge, go to the far area and look for and kill a goliath. After picking up the mission, go inside and follow the map from room to room. Eventually you will reach a wide open area with a lot of rat guys running around.

    On the left of that area is the loot chest encased in ice. When you open it, a giant goliath, Smash-Head, will come out. His weapon is very deadly, so after opening the chest, don't stand around picking up loot; run for cover.

    Smash-Head can drop the legendary Sledge's Shotgun.

    Stiff Competition: Kill Smash-Head before killing any of his midgets. Your best bet is to head back to the entrance and snipe at him. He may follow you in, but keep running further back in and he will turn around. Watch your HUD map to see when he's leaving, then run up and shoot him in the back and run away again. Don't shoot at his head when the midgets are on his shoulders.

    You can farm him for the legendary Sledge's Shotgun.

    Trapped Rat: After crossing the big open area and going inside you will be facing some double doors. You want to head towards them but first turn right and pick up The Rakk Knight echo, then go back towards the double doors again.

    You see an opening in the wall with a view of a frozen New-U machine. If you have an incendiary homing grenade (corrosive doesn't seem to work), you can throw it in the window and kill the frozen rat; otherwise, shoot the New-U to free it from ice then remove your shield to make it easier to kill yourself and drop a grenade at your feet. You will respawn in the room and can blast the frozen rat.

    Swallowed Hole: Follow the map on your echo communicator. There's a bonus for using an electric weapon.

    Return to Highlands Outwash

    Slap Happy is a mission you get from Hammerlock in Sanctuary.

    To get to Slappy, you can go through the same area leading up to where you fought the thresher for the fast travel part. In doing so, you have the opportunity to kill a bunch of stalkers and examine their piles. Assuming you got the Stalker of Stalkers mission already, you should be able to complete it here.

    If you don't need to kill Stalkers, an easier way to go is through the portal "to Highlands Outwash" on the right side of the Highlands map shown below. This portal is a little odd because even though there is a road leading into the area, the portal is a door off to the side. Once, through, turn right and you are there.

    This is really convenient if you are going to farm Slappy because this is where you reappear with you Save-Quit-Continue, though the legendary Striker shotgun he drops isn't a very good weapons.

    Back to the Highlands

    Missions: Hidden Journals, Medicine Man, Stalker of Stalkers, Shields Up, Arms Dealing, Best Mother's Day Ever.
    Challenges: Winds of the Highlands, Failure to Communicate, Vault Symbol

    You can do the first three missions at the same time. If you want to avoid having to kill the same enemies over again, try not to Quit-Save before finishing all the missions, though they will spawn anyway after enough time has passed..

    Before leaving Overlook, go to the bounty board and pick up all the missions, then start the Medicine Man mission.

    Medicine 1: Repair the health machine and buy the first dose. Then make Stalker the current mission.

    Flag pole 1: Get a car and drive to the left side of the C-A-R (as you look at it). To your left is a flag pole for you to touch.

    Stalker: Drive over the edge of the cliff to the area below with all the stalker piles. Kill all the stalkers, shoot all the piles (and any hanging pods) and watch for blue mission spikes to pop up. Go over the next cliff to the next lower level and repeat. It's possible to get all 5 chapters from these two locations but if you don't, there will be other chances soon.

    Flag pole 2: Go to the back edge of this area to touch the flag pole you saw from above.

    Medicine 2: Drive out to the road and turn left. Cross the bridge and go until you see an engineer carrying a health machine. Kill him and buy the next dose.

    There are more stalkers and stalker piles in this area if you didn't get all the chapters yet.

    Tower 1 for Failure To Communicate: Exit the car and look up at the tower above the wall at the end of the road. Shoot the round tank-looking thing next to the antenna.

    Flag pole 3: Turn left and go through the gate marked "invisible assholes". There is a shack on the right, then one on the left, then around some rocks another on the left with a flag pole at the far corner. If you still need Stalkers you can find plenty here.

    Journal 1: A journal is off the end of a pier in a boat.

    Journal 2: Go back down the road to the bridge and look for a platform on the right side. Go down the stairs to a shack with a journal in it. I played a lot of games in which I would inch out to the end of the beam, turn, and hop onto the next beam (sometimes falling off) to get inside the shack. Then I realized that if you approach the table beside the shack, you get a prompt to pick up the journal on the other side of the wall.

    Assuming you are ready to turn in the Stalker mission, or if you just need to sell some gear, go to Overlook.

    Flag pole 4: Drive through the tunnel and across a small bridge. To the left is a river with a path on the other side that splits left and right. Take the left path and go to the base of the waterfall and park. Cross over to the flat top rock and climb up to the flag pole.

    Over the next big boulder is a building which is part of the Aggregate Acquisition. From now on you'll be fighting robots and some engineers/soldiers (and one constructor, for good measure).

    Fuse box: Go down the stairs on the other side of the building and shoot the fuse box on the tall square building which protects a room with a Journal in it.

    Tower 2: Fight your way towards the square building and when you reach it, look at the round tower on the left. Shoot the tank on top.

    Symbol: Go around the left side of the tower and find a vault symbol on the back. The map shows a flag pole near the northern edge of AgAc. We'll get that later.

    Journal 3: Come back out and circle around the small square building on the right. Continue to the room with the journal.

    Flag pole 5: Exit through the gates of AgAc. Go straight past the C-A-R, and just on the other side where there's a portal to Highlands Outwash (see map above), take a path up to find a flag pole. Next continue driving towards the water wheel.

    Journal 4: A building to the left of the water wheel has a trailer next to it. You can see a journal inside at the other end. Shoot the pods to release the door. To the left of the trailer is a shack with a door blocked on this side. It has a mail box on the other side needed for Arms Dealing. You may want to kill the varkids in the area now so they don't bother you when doing that mission.

    Flag pole 6: Go back down and take the left path up to the tower but turn left towards a fence and at the fence drive up the boulders until nearly at the top. Stop, get out and touch the pole. Drive back down, get out, and go through the fence to the portal to the Wildlife Preservation Preserve to activate the Fast Travel Station to save yourself this drive in the future.

    Come back through the portal, walk down to the C.A.R., get a car, and drive over to the nearby tower.

    Tower 3. Climb up on the rocks to the left of the tower. Look out over the water to another tower in the distance and shoot it.

    Tower 4 and Fuse box: Drive down the path and around to the left to a building with a mail box in front. Go to the left of the building and through a doorway on the right to get to a shed with an electric barrier. Shoot the tank at the top of the tower you just came from. Also shoot the fuse box on one of the antennae.

    Medicine 3: Go to the beach area to the right of the bridge to Opportunity. The medicine machine is on a small island ahead.

    Flag pole 7: Go up the path on the right to a flag pole. Note the building in the water to the left of that path which has a mail box you'll be going to.

    Medicine Man: Return to overlook to finish this mission and get the Shields up mission.

    Shields Up: Buy five shields from the medicine machine or if you are hard up for cash, either wait until you find five shields or fast travel to Liar's Berg where you can buy them cheaper. Stand at one end of the grinder to allow plenty of room for the dropped shields to land when you drop them from your backpack. Drop them one at a time. Pick up the results, turn them in, and get the second part of the mission.

    Go to Aggregate Acquisition, enter the gates and fight your way to the stairs on the right at the end. Go up the stairs to the platform and do the mission.

    Flag pole 8: Once done with the mission, go down the stairs on the other side of the platform and look over the edge of the cliff for the last flag pole. Jump down to its level to touch it and Save-Quit-Continue to return to Overlook.

    Best Mother's Day Ever:   Drive over the cliff behind the C-A-R at Overlook like you did before. Kill Henry the giant stalker. Do the mission. Henry can drop the legendary Cradle shield.

    Arms Dealing: This is a timed mission. Before starting it, make a dry run where you go to each of the mail boxes shown on the map. Be sure to kill all the critters and robots at each location so they don't slow you down.

    You are told to go to the first mail box, which is next to the C-A-R in Outlook, in order to start the mission; however, the timer does not start if you don't do the second step of taking the arm out. So save that for last since you have to come back to Overlook to finish it anyway. Instead, drive to the most distant mail box before starting the timer and work back towards Overlook:

    Return to top.

    Torture Chairs:

    You just walk around Sanctuary and pick up some echos. The only tricky thing is that the HUD marker for the echo in Zed's looked to me like it had an up arrow in it which would indicate it's on the roof, but it's in the back left room in Zed's. etti

    Wildlife Exploitation Preserve

    This is a long mission with only one set of vending machines about half way through (in addition to those at the start). So while picking up all loot is generally a good policy, here you may want to leave anything under $300.

    Missions: Wildlife Preservation (story mission) and 10 Slag samples) and Doctor's Orders (4 Slag Notes). See the Legendary Weapons page before doing these missions if you intend to farm the Legendary Loot Box Midgets.

    Challenges: Siren's Song (4 echos), Vault Symbols (2), Bear Minimum (5), Secret Stashes (3), and Ride Together Die Together.

    10 Slag samples are pretty easy to find, so they are not mentioned below. The first 6 are shown on the map, and the last 4 are in the last couple of rooms near the end, so they aren't even shown on the map. If you are farming the Loot Box Midgets before continuing the mission, you will pass a couple of slag samples each time you make a farming run. They respawn and you can get all 10 if you do at least 5 farming runs.

    When entering the first area, look for a stone bridge/ramp to the right and follow its path up the mountain, stopping to kill rakks on the way. (If you farm later, run to this ramp and jump down to the river to get out of the varkids' area.)

    After meeting Mordecai, he will start sniping at stalkers below. You can join in the fun if you want, although you don't really gain anything by doing so. Just bonding with Mordecai, you know.

    Echo 1: Start back down the path but jump off at the lighthouse. An echo is on its steps.

    Bear 1: Continue down to the short bridge but turn left instead of crossing it and go to the first goo hanging down with a bear in it.

    Fuse box: Head back to the robot killing area, go through the gate and note a room on the left with an electric barrier under an Hyperion sign. You can't shoot the fuse box, so instead shoot the fire barrel on the top roof above the room.

    Symbol 1: Watch the claw crane come down on your right where it will pick up a box. Stand at the right end of where it says "Hyperion" and hop on the claw when it starts up. Ride it over to the roof of a building and jump off before it goes down. A vault symbol is on a wall on the roof.

    Up the stairs is a sunken area with skags. Before going down there, if you want to get the Naughty Bear (Easter egg), see the video (click on the name above).

    Go to the far right of the lower area and fight your way to the entry to a much larger outdoor area.

    Stash 1: As you enter the larger area, bear right towards the overpass until you come to the entry to a stash on your right. After looting it, come out and turn left and continue on. When you get to the far area which has the door to the next area, go up towards the door but turn and go up the ramp-like rocks to the overpass.

    Alternative approaches:

    1. Turn right coming out of the stash and go until you can use the stones to get up to the overpass. Kill rakks. Continue down the overpass until you get past the hills up against the overpass on the left. Don't worry about Tumbaa and Pimon yet; you can get them later.

    Symbol 2: However you got to the overpass, you now keep going and find a vault symbol on the road.

    Stash 2: Go to the end where there is a giant mushroom looking thing with claws sticking out.
    Jump onto a mushroom claw, cross the mushroom, then jump over to the center edge of an area on the same level with the top of the mushroom thing. Stash #2 is in the back..

    Stash 3: Jump down to the ground, turn around to the left and go under the waterfall to the final stash.

    Bear 2: Go back to the big open area and circle around to the left towards the observation tower.
    Just short of the tower is a giant mushroom with a bear in its goo hanging down.

    Echo 2: Continue to the steps of the tower to find an echo.

    Finish looting the area and come back to the door to the next area. Sell excess gear at the vending machines, ammo up, loot boxes, and go into the round area to fight stalkers, then into the next outdoor area to fight robots and a few more stalkers.

    Just to the right of the vending machine is a door to the Creature Slaughter Dome DLC. If you don't have the DLC, it is well worth the $5 Microsoft currently charges for it on XBox Live. The reason why is that without it, you must start each farming run by going from the start of the WEP entry to the current building. With the DLC, each time you Save-Quit-Continue, you will spawn outside the door to the DLC, saving a lot of time and aggravation.

    You can also go out the door you just came in (the building's door, not the DLC's) to hunt or farm Tumbaa and Pimon. You complete a challenge if you kill them within 10 seconds of each other. They don't always appear, but when they do, they'll be within eyesight of the door.

    Bear 3: Go through this building and outside the far door, turn left and get up on the concrete walkway around the building you just exited. Go along the walkway next to the windows until you reach the goo with the bear.

    You cannot enter the next building until you defeat an army of bots and stalkers. When done, enter the building, go down the hall, turn right, and the Loot Box Midget boxes are in a room on the right. The Loot Box Midgets in the four cardboard boxes sometimes drop legendaries. See the Legendary Weapons page before continuing beyond this room.

    Bear 4: When you are ready to exit to the stalker area, first go to the right corner of the area to the left of the exit for another goo-bear.

    Echo 3: Go to the room on the right of the exit to collect a sample, a note, and loot, then go out the door and to the end of the walkway to an echo.

    Bear 5: After you drop down into the stalker area, follow the creek all the way to the end to pick up a sample unless you got 10 already while farming. As you approach the next door, turn left and go to the mushroom with the last goo-bear.

    Go through the door, across a small area to stairs, up the stairs to another area with rakks, skags, and finally some troops. Go inside. Push the button behind the receptionist. Open the safe to find a note for the Doctor's Orders mission, though you should NOT pick up these items if want to continue farming the Loot Box Midgets.

    After clearing the next area, go to the storage containers on the left wall (as you entered) and pull the switch to open them. A note is in the last container.

    Echo 4: Against the opposite wall is a chair with the last echo.

    Take the elevator down to the arena and kill Bloodwing. You can either run back to the start of the WEP or Save-Quit-Continue to rematerialize there, unless you used the DLC in which case that is where you will rematerialize.

    You can come back later and the Son of Mothrakk will have taken Bloodwing's place. Kill it for a chance at getting the Chikamin Skullmasher sniper rifle.


    Back to Sanctuary

    The usual: Get new gear from your armory, sell junk gear, play the slots, buy backpack upgrades.
    Turn in missions. Pick up new missions: Rakkaholics, Animal Rights, Poetic Justice, Once and Future Slab.


    Rakkaholics Annonymous:

    Go to The Dust. Straightforward mission.


    Animal Rights:

    Go to Wildlife Exploitation. Again, nothing tricky about the mission, but you may want to farm the loot box midgets again as well as killing and farming Son of Mothrakk.

    Return to top.

    Leveling up at Opportunity:

    The leveling up bar has 10 divisions. At this point I'm just over 23.8 and have a lot of level 24 gear waiting, so I'm going to take a detour to Opportunity to quickly level up. I also came here at level 19 and usually level up a time or two when I first get missions here, as well as a later visit any time I need a quick level up.

    Fast travel to Highlands - Hyperion Bridge. Get any car from the C-A-R on your left, turn right, go to the bridge and enter Opportunity.

    Weapons: This job can be done with nothing more than a good launcher. At level 23 I have one with damage of 8148 with a 3-rocket clip. Also equipped are a launcher damage relic and/or a mod to improve weapon reload time.

    Upon entering Opportunity, go left and stay left past a couple of barricades until you reach some shipping containers. (The "Level up" area on the map further down.) The round pad sticking out is where a constructor will land. Turn right at the shipping containers and look around for robots.

    You may not want to use your skill on these guys in case it doesn't recharge in time for the constructor.

    After killing them, you have about a minute before the constructor lands. I've upgraded my backpack to carry 30 rockets. You may need about 10 more rockets to destroy both the constructor (takes 3 shots from the 8148-damage launcher with a robot helping) and more robots. If you don't have enough, you can run like heck back to the vending machine to restock or use other weapons for the robots.

    I wait for the constructor between the first shipping container and the edge of the water to provide cover from the upcoming robots. A rumbling starts before the constructor lands. When you hear that, deploy your robot or turret.The constructor bounces before setting down. I wait to avoid missing with a rocket.

    Three rockets plus the robot's help destroy it. After finishing off the Hyperion robots and picking up loot, I am now at level 23.9 and need one more constructor kill, so I Save-Quit-Continue.

    Since I haven't received a mission in Opportunity yet, its fast travel station didn't activate when I came in (which is unusual since other areas fast travel stations will activate before getting their missions). So I materialize at the Highland - Hyperion Bridge station and must cross the bridge again, but first sell gear and restock ammo.

    A repeat of the above gets the level up plus 6 bars of eridium - 2 the first time and 4 the next. Average is around 1-2 bars per kill. There's also a red weapons chest and a lot of ammo and cash boxes

    To show what a good weapon the level 19 Caustic Infinity pistol is, just for fun I equipped it along with a +24% elemental damage mod and a +10% pistol damage increase relic and stood a couple of feet in front of the Constructor when it landed, deployed my robot, and after the constructor dropped its reflector shield, shot it in the eye until dead - with a pistol.

    Thousand Cuts

    Missions: Poetic Justice, Once and Future Slab (main mission), Shoot This Man In The Face.
    Challenges: Vault symbols (2), Portrait of the Gunzerker (echos), Grave Matter, Slab UHF.
    Weapons used: fire sniper for bandits, pistol/rifle for buzzards and close fighting, launcher for the slab battle.

    Words cannot describe Slab UHF. Watch the video.

    Echo 1: Enter the first fighting area. To the right is a vending machine with an echo to its right. All the buildings in Thousand Cuts have a lot of loot containers, so they will not be pointed out individually.

    Graves 1-2: Go to the next group of buildings and take the bridge to the left to an island with 2 graves and photo op for Scooter's mission.

    To the right of that bridge is a platform and stairs down to an area to loot. Across from that is a shed with a nudie magazine for Scooter. This is all of that mission for this trip.

    Echo 2: When you get to the bridge/shipping-container to the next area, look right to see a shed which has an echo. Cross the bridge, turn right, go up stairs and around to jump to get to the shed and then jump back.

    Echo 3: Keep going until you reach a large metal bridge with some sections removed so that you can go underneath it to get an echo. At the end of the bridge, turn right, and go to the platform at the end. Below is a ledge that has a weapons chest and a ladder back up.

    Shoot This Man In The Face: Cross over the end of the bridge and circle the rocks to find Face McShooty.

    Fuse box: When done with McShooty, bear left to a path to a tower. Circle right around the tower and send the elevator up without you. Either drop down in the hole or walk around it and shoot the fuse box.

    Echo 4: Get the elevator back down and ride it up. Keep circling around until you find the echo. You can jump down to the path from here.

    Grave 3: Keep bearing left at the end of the path back to find a grave.

    Graves: Keep on bearing left until you reach a graveyard with the rest of the tombstones.

    Vault Symbol 1: Go to the far left corner of the building and circle around to find a symbol on the building.

    Go inside the building for the slab initiation. When done, come out and fight the robots. When that's over, you'll be close to the bridge in the first area you entered. (You can sell gear now if you need to.) Cross the bridge and take a picture for Scooter.

    Symbol 2: In the distance past a bomb crater is the last picture site. After you take that, turn left and go to the right of the bombed-out buildings. Get on the roof of the right one, hop onto a post, then onto the front of the next one. Turn right and a symbol is on the wall.


    Back to Sanctuary

    Turn in mission to Scooter. Report to Roland.

    New missions: Rocko's Modern Strife (L20), Man Who Would Be Jack (L22), Home Movies (L21), Hell Hath No Fury (L22), The Bane (L24)

    Rocko's Modern Strife:

    Return to Thousand Cuts to perform this mission. No new challenges nor side missions. There are some videos of people running around searching all the loot containers in Thousand Cuts for Loot Box Midgets, but there doesn't seem to be much return for the time and effort compared to Wildlife Exploration Preserve.

    You have to get onto a turret to kill Hyperion robots as they come towards you, but eventually they start spawning behind you, so leave the turret when to bots start getting into that area and go back to kill them.

    Return to top.

    Opportunity

    Missions: Statuesque, Man Who Would Be Jack (L22), Home Movies (L21), Hell Hath No Fury (L22).
    Challenges: Echos, Cameras, Vault Symbols, Shame the Foreman.
    Weapons: Whatever you need for fighting constructors, robots of all kinds and engineers.

    The Top o' the World challenge is not covered here because it requires a co-op partner.

    Upon entering Opportunity, go to the mission board on the right and get the Statuesque mission. See the section above about leveling up in Opportunity. If you want to level up some more, just repeat those steps with the following exceptions:

    1. Every time you restart, get the mission assignment again. This unlocks a loot area for you.
      Do not interact with the constructor in the unlocked area until you are ready to start the mission.
    2. When you S-Q-C, you will come back in Opportunity instead of Highlands as you did before.
    3. You may see enemies in the first area next to the fast travel machine but you can run right by them to get to the Constructor area.

    When ready to continue, go into the trailer and pick up the supply beacon for the Home Movies mission. Then interact with the constructor in the unlocked area and complete the mission, then come back to the starting area for the rest of this walkthrough.

    Man Who Would Be Jack: This mission overlaps with many of the challenges so make it the current mission.

    The most difficult challenge is finding the cameras because they are small and hard to spot, there's so many of them (8) and they could be anywhere and some of them may have already been destroyed during earlier fighting.

    Hopefully, the following walkthrough and map will get you to them. Here is the best video I could find, but it is not in the same order as the following nor does it take into account other nearby challenges or missions to do at the same time.

    Echo 1 is next to the ammo machine (top of the following map).

    Camera 1: From this point you can find a camera on the left side of the building ahead. If you did the Statuesque mission, some of the cameras may have already been destroyed in which case you may see a smoking black spot instead of the camera.

    Camera 2: Go up the stairs in the direction you just shot and keep going to the end of the building and turn right. You should see a turret gun on the side of the building in front of you. Destroy it and look to its left to the corner of the same building for camera 2.

    Go up one of the sloped supports and at the top, turn left and go to the roof to where the beacons are.

    Camera 3: Go off the roof under the lit sign on the far side and go down the stairs in front of you until you come to a pool with a rail around it.
    Look at the H sign to your right and shoot the camera to its left.

    Symbol 1: Jump over the rail into the pool and go under the right section of the walkway to find the symbol. If it is too dark to see what's on the underside of the walkway, just keep looking up and moving around until you see the prompt.

    Echo 2: Jack's double is in the area of kiosk k0. Kill him. An echo is on a bench behind the kiosk marked on your HUD.

    Camera 4: Look past the kiosk to find a camera on the corner of the far wall. If you have trouble spotting it, compare your HUD map to the map above and put a marker on the HUD map in the same spot. Don't forget to unmark it when you are done.

    Go around the kiosk to use it. Turn around and go up the stairs on the left and keep bearing left until you reach a grassy area overlooking kiosk 1. (See the map above).

    Cameras 5 & 6: Go as far as you can to the end of the grass and look left and above the Jack poster to where Camera 5 is sticking off the corner of a building.
    Rotate right and look across (right and above the lit rotating "H") for camera 6 on the wall at the back of the walk way.

    Echo 3: After you go to the kiosk below, get the echo by the vending machines at the bottom left edge of the map.

    Camera 7: Go northwest from the machine (towards the big pier) to the first stairs on the right. Go up those stairs and the next stairs to see a camera on a post in front of you.

    On the other side of the post are stairs going down. Put a map marker on your HUD map because this is where you have to come back to get to the underground room at the end of the Man Who Would Be Jack mission, then continue to kiosk 2 on the map and then go to kiosk 3.

    After you have done the last kiosk, which is near where you entered Opportunity, switch to the Home Movies mission. The three posters of Jack are in the same area. After placing the lures on them, you should be ready to place the orbital beacon that you picked up from the trailer next to where you got the disabled constructor for the Statuesque mission.

    The easiest way to get to it is go past the entry area (where the fast travel machine is) to its right and follow the edge around until you reach the pier. There is a big shipping container at the end with a weapons chest in it.

    Follow the HUD marker you placed earlier to find the underground room where you finish the Home Movies mission. It is near the room where you finish the Man Who Would Be Jack mission, so you can finish them both on the same trip.

    Camera 8: After you finish that mission you will still have a side mission marker ("!") on your HUD map. When you go to that point you can look over to see camera 8 between two doors, though it may have already been destroyed. Check the Challenges list to make sure you have finished the challenge.

    Symbol 2: When you go to kill the foreman you will be close to the 2nd vault symbol. Go to the point shown on the map. Go down the stairs. Circle around until you can go under a platform. Go under a couple of steps, turn around and see the vault symbol.

    Shame The Foreman: Use a launcher and kill him quick, then follow your HUD to his shed. After killing a constructor, cross to the other side of where it was and go to the elevator to the fuse box shown on the map above. As soon as you push the button to go down, start walking off the elevator in order to get off on the next floor where the fuse box is.

    Drop down the elevator shaft and go back up to the top. Cross back towards the foreman's shed until you spot a structure with a Hyperion sign on it. Go down the short staircase to the left of that structure then drop down onto the balcony below to get to the loot room that was protected by the electric field.

    When done looting, finish the mission.

    Foreman Jasper can drop a legendary shield, Black Hole. You have to S-Q-C before you can farm him.

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    The Bane

    You get this mission in Sanctuary from a guy on the ground to the left of the side entry to Moxxi's. Next you have to visit Marcus and then go to The Dust and follow map markers which take you to a guy named McNally to get his ECHO.

    McNally randomly drops a legendary SMG called Hammer Buster. McNally is ideal for farming the Hammer Buster by doing a Save-Quit-Continue without picking up McNally's echo. (You can pick up his other loot, however.)

    1. He is fairly close to Ellie's where you come back when you Contniue
    2. As you walk from the Fast Travel to the CAR machine, you can check the spawn point for Gwen's Head.
    3. As you drive from Ellie's to McNally's (he's to the right of the racetrack), you can check the second spawn point for Gwen's Head.

    Unfortunately, this is a rare combination of a not particularly great unique weapon (Gwen's Head), a below average legendary weapon (Hammer Buster - I never use it), and a completely worthless mission weapon (Bane)

    After you get McNally's echo, you have to go to Lynchwood to finish the mission which you can do while working on other missions. Still not worth it.

    Hyperion Contract

    This is simply a mission to kill a bunch of random bandits. If you don't already have it, go to Highland - Overlook and get it from the mission board. You will be killing a ton of bandits in the upcoming Lynchwood missions.

    The Hyperion Contract requires you to kill 100 bandits. Extra XP sub-missions require you to kill 25 bandits using different types of attacks/elements. This is fairly hard to do. If you kill even 1 extra bandit with one type of attack/element, you won't be able to complete all the sub-missions, so watch your counts carefully, but even then you or Deathtrap may kill 1 the wrong way and the mission fails.

    Lynchwood

    Missions: The Bane, 3:10 To Kaboom, Animal Rescue, Breaking the Bank, Showdown.
    Challenges: Vault Symbols (2), That's Impossible, Do Or Die (4 echos), Last Train, Look Ma.
    Duel of Death challenge is not covered here because it requires co-op play.

    Echo 1: Exit the station door and look in the dumpster to the left.

    Breaking The Bank: Follow your HUD map to the bank and examine it. Go up the nearby stairs and pick up the laxative marked on the HUD map. Don't miss this or later you will have to make a long trek back to get it.

    Echo 2: Continue up towards Echo 2 until you get to a building with multiple stairs. Go up them and look around for the Echo.

    Animal Rescue: To start this mission, go to the ! marker on your HUD. For the first mission, go back down the tracks to the first set of stairs on the right. Go up the stairs to the top of the building. Jump to the next building and pick up the medicine.

    Symbol 1: Jump up on the box the medicine was on, jump onto the left side of the roof. Turn right and go until you reach the vault symbol on the roof of the last building section.

    Go back and do the next part of Animal Rescue.

    Go back to the station. Sell stuff and buy ammo. Exit the station and go right. Continue until you reach the elevator.

    Switch back to Breaking The Bank. Fight your way to the stairs going up to the right, but keep clear of the green glowing switch on the right because if you simply get too close, the timer will start. Up the stairs, continue to kill rat-boys until you get the bank mission objective. Go back down to the next lower level. Switch to...

    3:10 To Kaboom: Following the previous paragraph, you should have killed all the bandits on both levels, which makes this mission very easy.

    Go to the switch which is now to your left. Flip it and run across to the switch on the other side and flip it to close the door and stop the car carrying the bomb. Grab the bomb, RUN the rest of the way - first to the rail car and then up stairs to the detonator switch.

    When you get to the detonator, don't push it until the train stops and the cart with the bomb gets below it. If anything went wrong and you failed the mission, you have to go back to the mission board at the station and get it again.

    The stairs you went up to the detonator is where Mad Dog will come down later when you are farming him.

    That's Impossible: The tower shooting out flame is where you have to throw the grenade. It has four light around it and it flames out after the fourth one. You have to time it so that the grenade hits after it opens and before the flame comes out. A Longbow grenade makes it easy.

    Look Ma, No Hands: Switch back to the bank mission and go to the next point. You will come across some rat guys riding giant skags. Try to kill the riders without killing the skags, but the skags are very dangerous so feel free to use a launcher on them once the rider is down. You may not get the 5 riders needed here but more will come on a later mission.

    Do the laxative-bomb part of the bank mission and Save-Quit-Continue back to the station. Sell junk. Buy ammo. Do the bank. Follow your HUD map to escape and to bury the loot. Push your button once to set the loot down and a second time to actually bury it. Save-Quit-Continue to get back to the station to turn in the mission, sell junk, buy ammo, and pick up the Showdown mission.

    Switch back to Animal Rescue and head towards the food locations which are in the same area as the Showdown mission.

    Fuse box: After you get to the first food item, take the first clear area to the left to a shed with the fuse box. The protected area is a car trunk loot container up on the next area. For now, keep picking up food for the skag. In a bit you'll get into the Showdown mission. When that's done, get back to picking up food.

    Echo 3: When you get to the building with a big star on top, turn left between the buildings and look behind the round thing for an echo.

    Echo 4: Keep going to a cavern with a vending machine inside. Across from it is a rusted out minivan with an echo inside. You will also see the last food item nearby.

    The Bane & Look Ma: Now you can switch to the Bane mission. While you are finishing that up, you can get the rest of the skag riders you need. First, take the elevator up.

    Symbol 2: Look for the car trunk loot container. Climb it up to the roof and look down between the blue roof and the green roof.

    Switch back to Animal Rescue. Give the food to Dukino. He needs more food - 5 skag tongues. Go up the stairs near him and shoot some more giant skags with riders and pick up the tongues. Give the tongues to Dukino and then you have to follow him to a shelter. Once you help clear that area, the mission is finally over (for now).

    Last Train: Saving the hardest challenge for last. The 5:00 train (more or less) has a bandit on the back that you have to kill. The train moves fast so you only get 1 or 2 shots at most. Launchers and homing grenades seem to be too slow. That leaves a very powerful sniper rifle. A mod that increases its damage and an amp shield would be helpful. If you can't get it now, you will be coming back here later if you do the Demon Hunter mission.

    Go back to Sanctuary. Take care of the usual business and meet with Claptrap to start the next mission. (All other missions should be completed by now.)

    Return to top.

    Where Angels Fear To Tread

    When Claptrap gets you in, you can only go so far before you are stopped by a barricade where a turret pops up to your left. Once you blast that and the barricade is down, I used to stay back and destroy all the bots before advancing, but if you just go on up as far as you can go straight, you can destroy a constructor that comes out there, then you don't have to deal with all the robots it creates.

    When you run down the road to the next area, stay to the right so that a blast doesn't knock you over the edge. Soon you get to the gate and some troops and bots will come out. Once they are down, it again pays to be aggressive and run around to the right and go up the stairs to the next level.

    Another constructor will land on the level above that and you can blast it with a launcher and keep working your way up to the stairs to the entry to the Bunker.

    Alternatively, you can stand just outside the gate and snipe at the constructor from there.

    Keep going until you go through a portal door to the Bunker area and destroy all the big guns.

    After BNK3R comes out, the safest place to go is back down towards the vending machines, but stop in front of the Hyperion sign where you go in after the battle is over. I used to go to the top back area which was recommended in videos but found this lower area to be greatly superior. For one thing, you'll get only 1 or 2 bots down there and the Bunker can't hit you at all while you can shoot it with whatever you want when he camps out over one end or the other of that area.

    Another benefit of being in that area is that when you run out of ammo, the machines are right there.

    If your weapons and shields are advanced enough, you can go up to the open level and it is easier to shoot him.

    Bunker can be farmed for The Sham bullet-absorbing shield and The Bitch submachine gun (both legendaries).

    Challenges:

    Vault Symbol: It is along the ring under the left side of the waterfall. You can get to it by jumping at that point into the big leaves next to a couple of vertical pipes.

    Bunker Buster: Destroy BNK3R without destroying its auto-cannons.

    The rest of the mission is pretty straightforward. It involves going down to where the Siren is being held and "freeing" her.


    Back to Sanctuary

    Turn in the mission. Pick up Bearer Of Bad News.

    Get other missions while meeting people.

    • Demon Hunter - mission board.
    • Chosen One - Marcus
    • Monster Mash 1 - Zed
    • Truxican Standoff - outside Scooter's; finish it when you get it.
    • Capture The Flags - Brick
    • Open Roland's Armory - finish it when you get it.
    • Toil & Trouble - main story mission.

    After turning in the mission, you can go back to farm BNK3R.

    Hyperion Contract is probably still open.


    Demon Hunter

    Back to Lynchwood. Do the mission. You can farm Dukino's Mom for the legendary Mongol launcher.

    Eridium Blight

    New Missions: Customer Service, To Grandmother's House, Kill Yourself, A Real Boy, Hyperion Slaughter.
    Challenges: Pipe Dreaming, Can You Hear Me Now (4 comms), 'Twas Slag, Vault Symbols (3), Tie Clip, Save The Turrets, Bring Out The Big Guns (5 turrets), Vault Hunter vs. The Volcano.

    Comm 1 & 2: After picking up the new missions at the Eridium Blight mission board, drive across the street onto the broken bridge. Get out and look ahead to see a comm dish to shoot. Turn around and see a second one in the distance.

    Turret 1: Drive over to the gate on the right side of the road and destroy the turret gun (marked G1)

    Go through the gate. Kill rakks (Monster Mash 2) and bullymongs.

    'Twas Slag: This challenge involves King Mong. You may see him on the rocks to your right when you go through the gate (G1 on the map). If he's not there, he is often to the left of the bridge/portal by "Gun 2" at the bottom of the map. Or he may not spawn at all.

    Weaken King Mong with turret shots then get out and finish him with a slag weapon. He sometimes drops the legendary Badaboom launcher.

    Tie Clip: The challenge is to get close enough to Donkey Mong to get the prompt to clip his tie without getting hit by a barrel. He is harder to find than King Mong. See the Strategy section on this page for help.

    Symbol 1: Take the first path to the right after the gate and follow it up to the second entrance. Turn left and go towards the big gates. Take the first left and the symbol is on the other side of the left building.

    Fuse box 1: Go back to the road by the gate. Near the top on this side is a fuse box. It controls an area down and to the right of the road just past where you turned to go through the gate to this area. You can get that area later if you wish. It's full of really nasty beasts. Killing them is not part of any mission or challenge.

    Go on down the road on this side of the gate to where it curves left and a path goes to the right and splits. The upper path leads to the Real Boy and Hyperion Slaughter missions. Pick up the Real Boy mission and then go inside.


    Hyperion Slaughter:

    If your level is high enough, do the Hyperion Slaughter first. The first four rounds will be leveled up to your starting level. That is, if you are level 28.9 and sign up for Round 1, each of the first four rounds will be at level 28 even after you go to level 29.

    The last round will be at least one level higher and may be more. So if you started at level 27, the final round is usually level 30. You will have to leave and come back when you have reached level 30 in order to do the last round because you cannot get from 27 to 30 doing rounds 1-4. When I started at 28.9 and rounds 1-4 were level 28, round 5 was 29 even though I was at level 30, and some videos show players at level 32, so it's not clear how the level for round 5 is set.

    The first couple of rounds are pretty easy. You can just run up to where the bots come out and start shooting. If you die, it's easy to come back with Fight For Your Life. On later rounds you need to get to some place where you can recover and hide from rocket fire. When you first enter and go to the circle in the middle, keep running straight to the yellow platform and get in the shipping container on the edge. This is a pretty good home base from which you can deploy your turret or robot and/or regain shields and health. You can't be attacked from behind and seldom does anything come up to the front of the container.

    If you die, quickly Save-Quit-Continue before you rematerialize. Either way you are going to have to start the level over. If you S-Q-C, you save the rematerialization fee while the only disadvantage is that you lose any good loot that you hadn't picked up yet. But not that much good loot drops anyway. If you see eridium or purple weapons, make a special effort to pick them up as soon as you can.

    If you have been playing the slots and upgrading your ammo carrying capacity, you should have no trouble; otherwise, you may run out of some ammo, mainly in the last round. This is why it is good to max out your carrying capacity for sniper and launcher ammo. Even then, you have to be very careful about how you use your rockets, and on later rounds you may run out of sniper ammo if you stay back in your shipping container to snipe at bots on the far ledges. A relic that boosts sniper ammo carrying capacity would help

    You can get virtually unlimited rockets with the combination of The Sham shield (farmed from Bunker), a Kerblaster rifle (farmed from Midge-Mong at Symbiosis), and rifle ammo to spare. When you run low on rockets, change into The Sham and fire the Kerblaster at your feet. You get one rocket (up to your max rocket capacity) each shot taken with the Kerblaster.

    A level 20+ Caustic Infinity pistol is a good weapon to have here since it never runs out of ammo and the corrosion kills robots, even from a great distance. A pistol damage relic (e.g.: +19% damage) and Elemental Damage mod would help.

    Also helpful are mods and relics for increasing damage for launchers, rifles, etc., and for decreasing cooldown times. There is a relic to increase sniper ammo carrying capacity by over 40%. With already maxed-out capacity, this increases it from 132 to 189 rounds. Since the sniper rifle is usually the most useful and the first to run out of ammo, this relic is great.

    It's also good to be able to carry 9 or so grenades. A high-damage (e.g.: 2400x7) corrosive homing grenade like the legendary Homing Pandemic is great for general use as it can kill enemies from any distance which you can't even see. A transfusion grenade for when health is handy if you don't have great weapons and shields.

    Hyperion Slaughter Vault Symbol is on the bottom of the elevator floor. Raise the elevator, push the button to bring it back down, go underneath it and "discover" the symbol. You'll get crushed, but you can Save-Quit-Continue to escape the rematerialization fee.

    Turret 2: When done with Hyperion Slaughter, your car will be gone. Run down the hill and to the right to find a nearby C-A-R. Just before you get to it you'll see a structure on your right. Go towards it until a turret gun pops out. A couple of bots will also appear.

    Comms 3 & 4: When you have finished them off, look back the way you came up to the structure to see the last two comm dishes in the distance.

    Turret 3: Continue down the road to the bridge and turret 3.

    Turret 4: Turn left at the bridge and go to the tower on the right. A turret will appear.

    Fuse Box 2: If you keep driving, the road runs into another road. To the right is a platform with Mailbox 4 for when you do Customer Service and with a ladder down to another platform crammed with bots and a room with an electrical shield. The fuse box is easy to find and releases more bots.

    Go back to your car and you can turn left to go back to the road, or follow the path as far as you can to reach a couple of safes and temporarily clear the area of bullymongs which may be handy when you come back to do the Customer Service mission, although it is not absolutely necessary to do so.

    Get back to the road and go back through gate G1. If you shot the fuse box, you can drive across the road to the right of the barricades and follow the path around to the right. If the electric barrier is still there, go back and shoot the green light near the top of the other side of the gate tower.

    Otherwise, you can jump down where the ladder is and kill some really nasty bullymongs (or die trying). This is a purely optional exercise - not even any challenge points and no great loot.

    Turret 5: Continue down the road a little way to a tower on the left with a turret gun.

    Symbol 2: Cross the bridge then bear left and then right. Clear the camp of bandits. Cross the next bridge and park. Take the pedestrian bridge towards the ladder. Half way there on the left is a vault symbol.

    Kill Yourself: Climb the ladder, pick up loot, and jump. Don't push the "counselling" button if you are going to kill yourself. You may hate to give Jack the satisfaction, but that's a lot of eridium to pass up if you don't. If you Save-Quit-Continue after you die but before you rematerialize, you can save the rematerialization fee, but if you don't care about the money, you get the benefit of rematerializing right where you left your car parked.

    Real Boy: Continue over the next bridge, turn right and park. Clear the area of bandits and pick up stuff for the mission. Be sure to go up the ladder to the cabin on the platform and clear it for the Customer Service mission.

    Cross the next bridge and take the first left into a small town. Clear it for the Customer Service mission. Drive off the end and land near the bridge.

    Customer Service:

    1. Go back to the first camp you cleared after crossing the bridge. It should still be clear. If not, clear it again then go to the mail box. This starts the timer.

    2. Go back to where you parked for the Real Boy mission. Go in the entry and up the ladder to the right to get to the mail box. If you've been following these steps, this area should still be clear.

    3. Go to the next town you cleared and go to the mail box in the middle of town, then drive off the platform at the end of town to land by the bridge as you did before. Go across the bridge and immediately turn left and go straight down under the pipeline.

    4. Follow your HUD to the next nearby mail box; come back out and go left and back up to the road near the closed bridge.

    5. Mailbox 5 & Symbol 3: Follow the road and look to the right for a Hyperion compound just before you get back to G1 on the map. It wasn't worth trying to clear this area in advance because you can now drive down near the door, go in and run all the way to the back left side of the building for the vault symbol. Run back to the mail box marker shown on your HUD then get the heck out of there. A turret or robot is handy, but you should be able to get in and out okay without one.

    This completes the mission.


    A Real Boy:

    Turn in that mission and pick up the next one (Face Time).

    Do the Face Time mission and continue to Grandmother's House...


    To Grandmother's House:

    This is just past the town that you cleared and drove off the edge. Complete the missions then drive off the cliff to come down across the road from the fast travel machine or you can just Save-Quit-Continue.


    Pipe Dreaming:

    From the fast travel station, go down the road, across the bridge, but instead of bearing left as before, turn right to get to the base of a pipeline support. Get on the other side and do a running jump to the right side of horizontal pipe-looking thing, then jump onto a small ledge, then onto the pipe, then onto the level with a dumpster. Open it and jump on the edge of its lid and then up to the next level. Circle around to the pipeline.

    If you haven't already cleared the area of bullymongs, they may jump onto the pipe or throw boulders and knock you off. Donkey Mong may even show up here. So watch for red dots on your HUD and have a weapon ready to kill them if they join you.

    Once things are clear, run along the pipe until you get to a break in it and jump to the next section. Don't try to time it to the last second; try jumping just before the very end. The next section has a chest. Mission accomplished and you can Save-Quit-Continue from there.


    Save the Turrets: This challenge comes later as part of the main mission where you are protecting Claptrap as he tries to hack the gates.

    Vault Hunter vs the Volcano: This challenge is a pain and doesn't have much of a payoff. Here's a video if you really want to do it.

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    Sawtooth Cauldron

    Missions: Chosen One, Capture The Flag, Toil & Trouble, The Great Escape, The Lost Treasure.
    Challenges: Vault Symbols (2), Happy Camper, Race to the Top, Haiku Hitman (4 echos).

    This opening area and the bandit town which is the top right area are famous for loot box midgets who drop legendaries. I got a level 27 legendary Frakker from the washing machine next to the vending machines in the opening area while preparing this page.

    You can farm this area by checking the washing machine, then dropping down to the large area below and checking all its chests. You can Save-Quit-Continue until you are satisfied. There are other ways to farm it, but all of them are time-consuming and don't pay off as often as at Wildlife Exploration Preserve, so I'm not getting into it here. You can check YouTube for videos.


    The area in the center of the above map has a vault symbol and echo, but they are located on the top of that area ("Mortar's area"). You need to use an elevator to get to them.

    Echo 1: As you head through town, you will spot the first echo in a big opening on your right. Continue past it to the edge if you would like to snipe at a few bandits down below. Take a look to your left to see a lower platform with two ammo boxes on it and a ladder back up. Directly below where the horns stick out is the entry to the cavern where the main mission will take you. This is a shortcut for times you don't want to go through the bandit areas, such as for Race To The Top or when farming Mortar.

    Chosen One: Go to the end of town to pick up Kai's first echo.

    Capture The Flag 1: Continue to the platform overlooking the top left part of the map above. Jump down and clear the area of threshers and bandits, then go to the flag pole and raise the flag.

    Echo 2: Pick up the echo from the last camp area before the stairs and short tunnel to the next area at the top-right map.

    The Lost Treasure: While circling this area you will see some stairs going up the side of a hill where you will find this mission. You get clues by killing random bandits, so it's better to pick up this mission before clearing this area of bandits, but even so, you may not get all the clues in this area alone, in which case you need to keep an eye out for the blue mission markers wherever you kill bandits. After getting the four clues, the mission finishes in Caustic Caverns.

    Capture The Flag 2: Take your time to explore this area's large number of chests and bandits. After killing the local citizens, follow the HUD marker to a spot to raise and defend a flag.

    Toil & Trouble: Follow the mission marker into the cavern. Note the stairs up on your left which is where you will go when the elevator doesn't work. You can either bear left or right to circle around to the mission point. Whichever way you go, try to remember the route for when you do the Race To The Top or when farming. When done killing bandits after pushing the elevator button, circle back around to the stairs you just noted to get to the next area which is the large lower right section of the map.

    Chosen One: When you come out to the lower right area with the threshers, you will see a HUD map marker to the left and one to the right. To complete the sub-missions, you have to save the one to the left for last, so follow your HUD map to the right marker, then turn around and go back to the other marker, which is at Kai's body. This completes the mission.

    Capture The Flag 3: Follow the marker on your HUD to the nearby flag pole.

    Toil & Trouble: is the active mission now.

    Tannis Riding A Fish: (Easter egg.) You are at the bottom right of the map above. Shoot the barrels by the water in this order: Blue shock barrel, Red incendiary barrel, Green corrosive barrel which is on its side on a small bit of land out in the water, Yellow explosive barrel behind a fence near the flag pole, and the Purple slag barrel. (Mnemonic: "Be Ready. Get Your Pie.")

    Symbol 1: Following the main mission again you will get to the area which has the vault symbol indicated on the map above. It is on the inside wall of the shipping container. After getting it, go back and up the stairs as indicated on your HUD map.

    Echo 3: After clearing the area, go push the button and destroy the buzzard (aircraft). Turn around and go to the stairs on the right of the building. Go up the stairs, up the ladder to find the echo. For more loot, jump to the round structure and then to the next roof (which looks too far but isn't). Go to the far left corner and jump down to the roof with barb wire around it.

    Echo 4: Before starting down, climb on a junk pile to get on a pipe that goes to an outhouse for some loot. Then head back down to the elevator by following your HUD map. After killing Mortar (a launcher is nice), go up the elevator. After clearing the area, start marking the crates in front of the elevator and circle counterclockwise from there. Behind one of the buildings you will find an echo.

    The Great Escape: If you are still circling counterclockwise, behind the last building you will find a goliath with this mission. Alternatively, facing the elevator it is the building to your far left.

    Symbol 2: Go in the elevator, push the button and quickly back out, then jump on top and face right. When you see a loot chest, jump on top of it. Loot it and face the inside of the elevator shaft. A couple of floors down you will see an area with a clearing. Jump to that girder and the vault symbol is on your right. Or try this:  send the elevator down without you, then push the button to bring it back up, then immediately jump down to the right side of it and watch for the chest. Jumping off on the way up gives you more time but you may miss the elevator.

    The Great Escape: Jump down to the top of the elevator and follow HUD markers. When done, you will be back on top again. Send the elevator back down for later use, then go to what should be a round blank area on your HUD map.

    Race to the Top: Save and quit, then continue. The timer starts as soon as you materialize, so immediately run to to the opening in the rocks to the left of the vending machine. Jump down near the entry to the cavern (where the horns stick out) and go inside. Take the left or right route to the elevator - whichever you are more familiar with. Keep running past all the bandits firing at you. Go up the elevator and out to the top. Done. Very easy.

    Happy Camper: Coming out of the elevator turn left and go as far as you can. In the corner where there is a break in the rails, look down to see the camp site including a car trunk weapons chest. Jump down to complete the challenge.

    Mortar can drop a legendary Pandemic grenade mod. This is one of the best weapons in the Normal mode game, so you should definitely farm him for it.

    The Lost Treasure: You should have easily gotten all the clues by killing bandits. Go to Caustic Caverns to complete the mission. You may need to refer to the Caustic Caverns map further up the page to be able to follow the "clues".

    Each clue leads to a switch you must throw, then finally to a loot chest. All the videos for this quest are confusing because the player has to run around in circles fighting off crystalisks and threshers, which you'll be doing too. This is why you will need to get your bearings using the CC map above. You can run by critters going from one point to the next, but when you get to a switch, you'll probably have to stop and fight a few.


    1. Use the directions under the CC map to get to the point marked bubbles and continue those directions until you reach the first switch which is on the side of a pillar. The first pillar you come to is actually a pair of pillars. The next pillar beyond these is the one you want.
    2. The second switch is on the outer wall of the Infested Warehouse. When you go in the door, turn right out the side door, flip the switch, come back in the next side door and out the top door.
    3. Go past the structure with the loot chests and through the tunnel to the right. Go under the overpass and the switch is on the left.
    4. You'll see some big round nests ahead. Run through those and get to the door leading into L4.   Bear left and the switch is on the wall.
    5. Go back the way you came until you can circle around to the L5 point.   This is a large open-air elevator.
      Go up and continue to the upward path on the right.
      Continue until you get to an area with a big switch sticking up in the center. It brings up the loot.

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    Arid Nexus - Boneyard

    Missions: Data Mining, This Just In, Monster Mash.

    Challenges: Vault Symbols (2), Under Pressure, Dead Air.

    Monster Mash: Dr. Zed gives the Monster Mash mission parts and while the fast travel machine will highlight locations to go for each part, only part 3 missions have to be done at particular spots. The 1st part is to kill spiderants. The 2nd part is to kill rakks and skags. 3rd is to kill 20 Skrakks which are located only in Arid Nexus Boneyard, then go to Frostburn Canyon and kill the Abomination ("Spycho"). After you turn in part 3, you can come back and farm Spycho for the legendary Neogenator shield.

    When you go back to Sanctuary to turn in MM2 and pick up MM3, you should be able to get the This Just In mission if you don't already have it.

    This Just In & Dead Air: The mission is to kill the guy. The Dead Air challenge is to turn off the radio on his back before you kill him. This can be tricky when you kill him for the mission, but you should be farming him for the Bee shield, in which case you can easily open the door, walk up behind him, turn off the radio, and kill him.

    Before farming him go back to Sanctuary and turn in the mission.

    If you do not get this mission before doing the Data Mining mission, be sure to get it BEFORE turning in Data Mining or you will be blocked from doing this mission until after you have killed Jack. When you farm the radio guy, he will eventually drop a Bee Shield which is one of the best pieces of gear you can get.

    Data Mining: Go up the ramp to the ladder to the pipeline.

    Monster Mash 3, part 1: Go to the map marker and kill the skrakks. Part 2, killing the abomination, comes later.

    Symbol 1: Go all the way south. Symbol is on the side of the turret tower.

    Data Mining: Go to the buildings on the other side of the pipeline and turn the wheels.

    Symbol 2: Drive up the ramp leading to the top of the pipeline and turn right. Go as far as you can to find the symbol.

    Under Pressure: Go north towards the two beams of light going up in the sky. On the C-A-R is a button to press to bring down a constructor and other bots. Kill them all.

    Data Mining: Do the rest of the mission up to going to the Badlands.

    Arid Nexus - Badlands

    Missions: Data Mining, Get To Know Jack, Uncle Teddy, Hungry Like The Skag.

    Challenges: Hey! Over Here, Boned, The Beginning of the End (5 echos).

    Hungry Like The Skag: This mission drops when you kill skags. You can complete it by killing more skags as you do the steps below.

    Go to the entry to what used to be Fyrestone and go to the mission board to pick up Get To Know Jack and Uncle Teddy.

    Echo 1: Go across the street to the old C-A-R station to get an echo.

    Echo 2: Continue back to Baha's old house. The echo is in the outhouse.

    Uncle Teddy: Go into Baha's old house, pull the fan chain, go down into the basement, and complete the mission. To turn the mission over to the evil corporation, go back to the mail box by the fast travel machine; otherwise, hold it until you get back to the mission board and use the mailbox next to it to turn the mission to Una.

    If you pick Una, you will get the Lady Fist pistol. It is not a legendary weapon; all you have to do to get it is to turn the mission in to Una, but it has +800% critical hit damage and other improvements.

    Boned: Keep circling around clockwise looking for skags to kill and eventually come to Bone's old camp. Kill Bone 2.0. In the shack with a chest by it there is a Get to Know Jack echo inside.

    Hey! Over Here: Back in Fyrestone, go to the building on the left with the ammo vending machine. Climb up the rocks around the right side and continue up to find the old Claptrap and a loot chest.

    Fuse Box: Go right of the electrified room. Climb up on the roof and move as far to the right as you can. Look north for a structure in the air on two supports with a fuse box sticking up on the left side. You should be able to just see it sparking. It may take a few shots to hit it.

    Echo 3: Go inside the room to find the echo.

    Echo 4: Across from the room is a building with a ramp on the right. Go up the ramp to the roof to get the echo.

    Echo 5: In a dumpster next to the building where you fight the giant bot (named Saturn).

    Data Mining: This building is a good place from which to fight Saturn. You can keep it between you and the bot, and the shed provides protection from its rockets. Saturn can drop either of two legendary items: Invader or Hive.

    After you destroy Saturn, complete the mission, after which constructors will appear at each end of the building. If you have a bot or turret, you can deploy it at one end to fight that constructor, then run to the other end to destroy that one. Don't miss the ladder on that level to get to a loot chest. When done, jump down to the ground and go back to the small building where the last echo was.

    Get To Know Jack 2: On the roof of the building is a loot chest and an echo for the mission. Go up its stairs, jump onto the railing, onto the shed and onto the far right edge of the roof. The rest of the Jack echos are in Arid: Boneyard.

    After you go through the portal back to Arid: Boneyard, turn right and fight your way over to the C-A-R. Looking out from the C-A-R you'll see a tall windmill with a small structure to its left. The next Jack echo is in the rakk nest on the top of the windmill.

    To get the echo, flip the switch on the side of the small structure. This rousts the rakks, one of which will have the echo. Shoot him to get the echo. It may fly up into an area to the right of the portal to Arid: Badlands. To get back up there, you'll have to go where you broke the pipeline and go in it like you did before.

    The other Jack echos are comparatively simple to get to, but you'll want to get a car first. While there, you can flip the switch to bring out the constructor and badasses if you want to have a little fun.

    After you get the last two Jack echos, go back to Arid: Badlands bounty board to turn them in.

    Monster Mash 3: Kill Dr. Zed's Abomination:

    Go to Frostburn Canyon and do this mission.

    The map marker is confusing, so follow the steps under Return To Frostburn Canyon further up this page.

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    The Talon Of God

    Challenges: When Nature Calls (3 toilets), Environmental Protection (3 terminals), Vault Symbols (2)
    Here's a video for just the challenges. For a video of The Talon Of God mission, use the link above.

    Symbol 1: To the right of the vending machines.

    Toilet 1: Across from the vending machines.

    Terminal 1: On a raised platform on the left before you get to Brick, which is well past where you have to jump over the bridge with the gap in it. It will be the first time that Brick actually stops and waits for you. You don't have to get up to it, just shoot it.

    Toilet 2: Below and facing the terminal.

    Terminal 2: At the start of the low bridge with the big battle with Brick vs. bots.

    Terminal 3: Turn right at the end of the bridge and go as far as you can into the point of land on the map.

    Fight your way to the scene of a big battle with badass bots and Hyperion soldiers. Once those guys are dead, you can get on the bridge where the soldiers came out and snipe at the constructor in the distance. Its rockets cannot reach you. If you run out of sniper ammo, even pistol ammo will eventually kill it without your getting hit.

    Symbol 2: Go down the stairs on the left side of the bridge, make a u-turn to the right of the stairs, jump to the first bridge support and then the second one.

    Toilet 3: On the second level above the ground at the end, it's behind you and facing you.

    The End

    There is a fast travel machine by the vending machines. If you go anywhere with it, you cannot come back to it. The closest you can come is the start of Hero's Pass and you have to fight (or run) your way through it again.

    After you sell gear and buy ammo at the vending machines, drop down into the Jack/Warrior arena. Call this the "entry wall".

    On your way out to meet Jack. you come to an ammo dispenser and shortly after that, the path has a ledge where you jump down to continue to Jack. You cannot jump directly back up to the top of the ledge, but there is a little piece sticking out to the right of the ledge which you can jump onto and then jump onto the ledge. (You can run around the ledge, but this is faster.)

    You can kill the Warrior however you prefer, but here is a less stressful method:

    After the Jacks come out, you do not have to chase them. Go back and get to the top of the ledge just mentioned. The Jacks will come after you. This puts you closer to the safety of the entry wall after killing him (not that getting back there is really a problem). If you have a robot, you can deploy that when Jack comes out, go back to the wall, and wait for the robot to kill him. If you have a homing grenade, you can toss it out to help the robot.

    After Jack sics the Warrior on you, go back to the entry wall. The Warrior cannot do anything to you there (on rare occasion he may throw something and do minimal damage) and you can shoot him with whatever you have for as long as it takes to kill him. Try to stay on one side or the other because in the middle you bring up the Exit option and if you press X (on the Xbox) thinking you are going to reload your weapon, instead you'll travel out to Eridium Blight and have to start Hero's Pass over to get back.

    If you have relics or mods which increase the damage of your weapons, they will help speed things along. The Bee Shield really speeds things along because of the amp.

    Do NOT shoot the rakks. They spawn infinitely, so you are just encouraging them to attack you. If you have deployed your bot, he will shoot rakks and they will attack him but not you. The bot/turret will not attack the Warrior all out, though it appears that the bot will shoot him with electric bolts now and then.

    If you have followed this guide for getting eridium and maxing out your sniper and launcher ammo, you should have plenty of ammo. If you run out, you can always go out to the first ammo dispenser.

    If you die in this area, do a Save-Quit-Continue before you rematerialize to save the fee. You gain nothing by letting it redo you and paying the fee because the Warrior's full health is restored when you go back. You have to get to the ledge past the first ammo dispenser to trigger spawning the Warrior. Then go back to the entry to fight. Again, a crystalisk sometimes comes out and needs to be taken care of.

    After you have killed Jack and the Warrior, Jack's body sometimes covers the point you need to activate to proceed. If this happens, Save-Quit-Continue which should put you by the vending machines, then come back and Jack's body will be gone.

    Do the activation to trigger the ending scene. When it is done, you can interrupt the credits, then press Save-Quit-Continue and you will be prompted to select which mode to play. If you want to farm the Warrior for tons of XP, eridium, and other loot, select Normal. You will materialize by the vending machines next to the Warrior's arena. If you do not select Normal, you can go back in Normal Mode later using the Fast Travel, but you will have to run through Hero's Pass again.

    In the game played for the videos, I farmed the Warrior for a long time and never got a legendary, so I just gave up. I did get over 300 bars of eridium and leveled up twice while farming the Warrior, so it wasn't a total waste of time.

    If you are a Mechromancer, Deathtrap will continue to kill the infinitely spawing rakks, which drop loot and give you level-up points, even after you kill the Warrior, while you run around picking up loot. This requires the skill tree item which adds 5 seconds to the bot's duration every time you or it kills something.

    If you decide to go to lunch while Deathtrap is racking up level-ups for you, it won't work. Once you are gone, he quits killing rakks, but you can get him going again when you come back.

    The End for Me Too

    Having made it this far, the most fun for me is to start a new character to use (and improve) the armory. To use this character as an Armory Character, Save and quit to the BL2 menu, bring up the list of characters and choose this one and True Vault Hunter ("TVH") mode. This will start you back in the snow outside Claptrap's Place.

    Once you get inside, go into the second room and activate the fast travel machine. You don't have to go anywhere, just get close enough to activate it. If you don't do this, then next time you use this character you will start back in the snow again.

    Go back to the closet in the first room that has the vault symbol in it and you will now see a safe to the left of that closet and a Claptrap's Secret Stash locker inside the closet. Use this locker to pass all the gear from the current character to the Armory Characters.

    If you don't have any ACs yet, the current character will be your first one.

    For more information, see the Armory page.

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    True Vault Hunter Tips

    After a dozen or so times of stopping after killing Jack the first time, I get an itch to play on in the True Vault Hunter mode ("TVH") instead of starting a new game. I did this in my most recent game and have some tips from that experience to pass along.

    Things get tougher. Playing the first stage (up to killing Jack) over and over and starting each level with the strongest weapons available thanks to the armory, the game is pretty easy.

    In the higher levels (above 32 or so) without the advantage of an armory with lots of legendary weapons for every level, the game is a lot tougher. The most awesome legendary weapons, like Caustic Infinity pistol and Homing Pandemic grenade mod are not as lethal any more.

    After leveling up a lot either by playing all or at least a lot of side missions or by fighting bosses over and over, once you start over in TVH, you are no longer several levels above the mission requirements, so you are fighting enemies who are more your equal.

    In my most recent game, I started TVH at level 34 and was still there by the time I got to The Berg. My experience getting to The Berg taught me that all those side missions which I breezed through originally would be a lot tougher in TVH, so I didn't feel like doing all those side missions.

    I would have liked to do Symbiosis to have a crack at a legendary Kerblaster, but the odds of getting one are small, the time and effort required to retry are large, and the upgraded enemies would have been awfully tough, so I skipped it.

    I didn't even do Bad Hair Day even though I would have liked a level 34 sniper rifle, but didn't think I could melee an upgraded Bullymong.

    Best Minion Ever was rated at level 35 and I was 34.5, so I leveled up the same way I did the first time - killing rakks and the bandits in nearby camps from a distance and with the help of Deathtrap.

    Having gotten to level 35, I grabbed Claptrap and started out for Boom-Bewm, hoping to get a level 35 legendary grenade mod and planning on retrying until I got one. After all, my main goal in playing TVH was to build up my armory for the higher levels.

    After a tough battle, including getting killed once, I finally killed Boom-Bewm, but didn't get the legendary. I thought it was too hard to keep trying again and again, so I pushed on with the main mission with the intent of coming back later.

    After getting to Sanctuary, I upgraded with the relatively few level 35+ weapons I had in the armory, picked up the missions, and took off.

    I did the Bullymong missions, fixed the power in Three Horns Valley, killed Doc Mercy once and 25 bandits, and by then, I was at level 37 and decided to go back to Boom-Bewm and try for the grenade mod. I discovered that I could snipe Boom-Bewm from the bandit camp next door, then I released Deathtrap to clean up. In 2-3 tries, I had the legendary Homing Bonus Package.

    Next was farming Doc Mercy, who can drop one of the great weapons in the game - an Infinity weapon which never has to be reloaded. It just spits out a steady stream of bullets, making it far more destructive than its damage rating.

    This is an ideal level up and farming opportunity -- he is close to the respawn point with ammo machine. You just hop in a car, drive around to the cave opening, hop out, and toss a couple of Homing Bonus Package grenades at the bandits along with releasing Deathtrap.

    When the bandits are all dead, watch for Doc Mercy to come out. Throwing 5-6 grenades at him is enough to do him in. I've also killed him from a distance with a powerful sniper rifle.

    If no legendary drops, you Save-Quit-Continue and repeat until it does. Meanwhile, you are getting XP for all the killing and Doc sometimes drops eridium as well. It took about 4 tries to get a Burning Infinity.

    I would have preferred a Caustic Infinity and went back later to try again, but after over 50 tries with no luck, I gave up. It only takes just under 2 minutes per try, but that's still an hour and forty minutes for 50 tries, and the longer you try, the fewer XP you get so leveling up would take even longer.

    Even if I had gotten another Infinity, there's no guarantee that it would have been a Caustic. I'm happy to have at least gotten one.

    Farming Bad Maw for eridium and to level up was not as productive in THV. It would take 20-30 kills to go up one level.

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    I've gone over this document pretty thoroughly, but given its scope, I would be surprised if there are NOT some errors in it. If you find some, please leave comments on the videos on Youtube.

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