With Borderlands 3 out now, millions of series fans will be jumping into its looting and shooting shenanigans, travelling from planet to planet, shooting goons, and picking up exorbitant amounts of weapons and gear along the way. For many, Borderlands 3 is going to be a long-anticipated return to the zany and colourful of Gearbox’s franchise, while for others, it’ll be their first foray into the series. Regardless of which camp you fall in though, we’ve compiled some few basic beginner’s pointers that’ll surely help you out as you get started with the game. Without further ado, let’s get right to them.
BACKPACK CAPACITY
Borderlands 3 floods players with a deluge of cool new loot on a constant basis, and obviously, you’ll want to pick it all up the moment you see it- it is a looter shooter, after all. This means that your backpack will fill up pretty quickly, at least in the early goings, which in turn means you might not have enough space left to pick up future loot. The solution? Make sure that you get the backpack SDU before anything else, to get extra space in your inventory.
AMMO CAPACITY
You can run out of ammo surprisingly quickly in Borderlands 3, especially in the opening hours of the game, and it goes without saying that this is a problem you’ll want to avoid. So once you’ve upgraded your backpack, you’re gonna want to get the ammo reserve SDU next- at least the first tier, to make those ammo scarcity woes a bit less infuriating.
WEAPONS
Getting the ammo reserve SDU isn’t the only way for you to solve ammo issues in the early stages of Borderlands 3. There are six different weapon types in the game, and each of them obviously uses a different ammo type, so make sure that when you’re heading out into the field, you equip weapons of different kinds. Don’t have any repeats- you might like two or three weapons of the same type, but they’ll all consume ammo from the same pool, which is something that you should avoid.
SHEILDED ENEMIES
You’ll run into more than just a few enemies in Borderlands 3 who’ll be equipped with shields, or who will only have shield health bars. Thankfully, there are weapons in the game that are designed specifically to give you an edge against such foes. Make sure you always have guns on you that can destroy shields, as these can make short work of shield-bearing enemies pretty quickly, even if you’re a little lower levelled.
ELEMENTAL DAMAGE
Elemental weapons have always played an important role in Borderlands’ combat, and that’s no different in Borderlands 3. While this is something series veterans need not be told, for newcomers, it’s solid advice- always keep an eye on which elemental weapon you need to use against particular enemies. Enemies with shields have blue health bars and are weak to Shock attacks, enemies with armour have yellow health bar and are weak to Corrosive attacks, while enemies with red health bars are weak to Incendiary damage. Cryo attacks slow enemies down, while Radiation attacks cause damage over time, and also spread from one enemy to others in their vicinity like a contagion. Making smart use of elemental attacks can change the course of a firefight in Borderlands 3.
LOST AND FOUND
There will be times when enemies will drop loop, but they’ll drop them in unreachable places where you simply cannot go. But don’t worry- this doesn’t mean that loot is lost forever. Loot that you lose this way gets transferred over to the Lost and Found machine on Sanctuary for you to retrieve. Keep in mind, though, that the Lost and Found machine has an upper limit for the amount of loot it can store. So keep checking it regularly- and maybe also invest in the Lost and Found SDU early on to increase its capacity.
GETTING DOWNED
Death in Borderlands 3 doesn’t come easily. When you lose all your health, rather than immediately conking out, you’re temporarily downed, where you can crawl around and wait for a teammate to revive you. There’s another way for you to get back to your feet though- while you’re downed, if you kill an enemy, you’re granted a second wind, lifting you back up. So it’s a good idea to leave a couple of weaker enemies untouched, just in case, and then look for them and easily finish them off in case you ever get downed.
CHECK YOUR MAIL
You can check your mail by going to the Social tab in the pause menu, and it’s a good idea to keep checking this screen. Why? Well, for starters, this is where you get your Vault Insiders Program rewards, but even if that doesn’t apply to you, there’s other reasons to keep checking your mail. As you keep using weapons throughout the game and hit certain milestones with one of the several weapon brands (which you’ll do just in the regular course of gameplay, most of the time), those weapon manufacturers will send you loyalty gifts, in the form of – you guessed it – loot. The loot they send can be pretty good too, so make sure you don’t miss out on anything by ignoring your inbox.
PINGING
Like Apex Legends, Borderlands 3 has a nifty pinging system, and though it’s something that you won’t care much about if you’re playing solo, it’s a system that’ll come in very handy when playing co-op (especially if you’re playing without voice chat). Pinging is made even niftier because it’s colour coded- loot is marked in blue, friendlies are marked in green, and enemies are marked in red.
CLASS MODS
Starting out with whichever Vault Hunter you pick means you’re subscribing to a particular class, but upgrading that character whichever way you choose doesn’t mean you’re restricting yourself. You can also expand your repertoire of skills by using class mods. Class mods can let you enhance skills even if they’ve been maxed out, while using class mods, you can enjoy the benefits of skills that you haven’t even unlocked. The better the class mods, the more skill points they’ll add. All of which is to say, class mods are a great wy to beef your character up even more- so don’t ignore them.
CHALLENGES
Would it really even be a looter shooter if it didn’t have Challenges? Of course Borderlands 3 has challenges- and you should definitely keep an eye on them. They’ll reward you with Eridium, which is an important resource in the game. The harder the Challenges, the more Eridium they hand out. Many of these Challenges are the kind you’ll beat without going out of your way to do so through regular gameplay, but the especially harder ones – which reward more Eridium – are the ones you’ll want to keep an eye on as you get further into the game.