Overview
This guide is for showing new players how to improve their Battleborn Experience by using simple things, and also teaching them the basics of the game.
The tutorial
Now, as so many people have said, the intro cutscene is boring and lame. I sort of agree with this, because I ended up running the tutorial 4 times. However, just mute your PC and go do something else. I actually can say that I watched it once, and then waited it out while the game was silent for the rest of the times.
When you get back, play the tutorial and gather ALL the things. The story mode of this game highly favors completionism, and the Gearbox devs just love hiding things in their levels. So, let’s assume that you got at least silver on the tutorial (Gold would be preferable) and you unlock the starters. This is where the game gets to be really fun, and you are provided a choice. Which character will be the one you choose?
The character
Picking a character that’s right for you is important, as the entire game is lackluster if you’re playing something that you don’t like. So, think about past games like this, and ask yourself, “What do I like to play?”.
Another thing you should do is to have a side character. For if your character is picked or is somehow not capable, pick a character that you like other then what may seem to be the obvioous option.
Underneath the tab “Command” in the main menu, you can view all the Battleborn and things about them. Click that button, the press the “Q” key on your keyboard and select “Unlocked”. This will put the Battleborn/Heros you have unlocked at the start of the list. By clicking on a character, you can see more about them. On the top right, you will see 3 things defining that Battleborn, Such as Miko being a Healer and Marquis being a sniper.
Now, I need to say this for the entirety of the BB high level players; Only play Marquis if you are capable of sniping consistently. Marquis is really only helpful if they can repeatedly headshot, and is one of the easily squashed Battleborn in this game. There, I just save a ton of you from embarassing yourselves.
All characters will level up in game by doing certain tasks, like getitng kills or building things. Each level you unlock an “Augment” in the Helix. You can choose between two of them, and some are better than others. You, however, are the one who decides that based on your playstyle. For example, you can either choose between a cooldown decrease on a move or increasing that move’s duration with Miko.
With charcters, you can gain Character XP, which will unlock colors, a taunt at the end, and alternate Helix options for your character. Some of these alternate options can make a character, while others are useless.
Every character has lore challenges, which require an arbitrary goal to be met (Ex: Play 3 matches as Oscar Mike with a montana on your team) before you get some Credits and EXP, plus a paragraph or two about your character’s history.
Each character falls into a different clan, being Rouge, Jennerit, UPR, Eldrid and LLC. This is important for loot packs for skins and taunts.
There are also many character guides out in the steam community, so if you want advice, go look there. I learned a lot from guides on characters, so I highly reccomend you do so.
Now, you might be wondering why the rest of the characters are locked. Gearbox wanted you to have to learn how the game works before you play the more complex characters. You can either hit a certain Command Rank (Universal XP) or meet an arbitrary unlock requirement, such as getting silver on every story mission for Kleese or beating “The Heliophage” to unlock Deande and Melka. This brings us to the next point, the Campaign.
Campaign and private
This game’s 8-stage campaign is one of the best ones out there, but it gets to be even more fun if you have friends with the game. Now, some of the campaign is very difficult, so I reccomend doing missions 1-3 at the start, maybe doing mission 4. You can do these missions one after another and be fine, but mission 5 is where it starts getting difficult.
Next, use the private mode as a way of learning the maps and mode. I play incursion practically exclusively, but the other modes are great as well. If you don’t have friends to play the game with, private can be played with bots.
Use both of these to learn your character’s moves and playstyle. Some characters, like Caldarius (Unlocked by beating Mission 3) have two paths you can take to change your character. In our example of Caldarius, you can buff your gun that you use OR you can buff your energy blade. Using private and the campaign to learn your favorite path of your favorite character, and the basics of the game. However, the AI is nothing compared to the real people you’ll meet in online.
Something else to note, in game XP is mose easily gained through buildables, which are purchased with shards. The gold hook-shaped things in those bumps on the ground give you some when you step on them, and the gold chunk images on the minimap are large clusters of them. These shards can also be used on Gear. Buildables can range from turrets to health stations, and are extremely helpfull in all modes. Except for maybe capture.
Almost all Battleborn have sheilds, and if not gear can fix that. These sheilds will regenerate really quickly after a short moment of not taking damage. As of the fact that most characters with sheilds do not have base health regen, if you’re low on health it’s time to run. If the enemy cannot see you and you’re fairly well hidden, press B to return to the spawnpoint and get full health & sheild.
Gear & the marketplace
At command rank 3 you unlock gear. This will be your primary usage of the Credits you earn from games. The only other usage is buying Alani, and soon from the time of this guide’s release, Pendles. Each costs a whopping 47,500 credits, and you get roughly 600 credits per win and 120 per loss (Calculated with my losses and wins in Incursion Matches). If you want those characters, you’re gonna have to work for them. You also can drop real life $$$ on skins and taunts for characters, such as the ones you could get from humble bundle. You have 3 refunds you can use if you mess up.
Back to the main spotlight, gear. Gear can be activated with shards in game, and can buff any one of your stats. Some gear will give you shards per second, while others will increase your raw damage output. However, no game is good without case openings, and this is a good example. You can purchase 5 types of gear cases; Common (White, teir 1), Uncommon (Green, tier 2), Rare (Blue, tier 3) Epic (Purple, tier 4) and clan packs. The tiered ones will give you one of thier level or higher from each pack, plus lower levels in higher numbers. The gear follows the same tiering. After Epic, there s a fith teir called Legendary, which is orange. You have a chance at getting one from an epic, or you can get the deluxe edition for 3 Legendary packs. Curently that’s the only way I know of to get them, and they can be extremely helpful and sometimes character changing in some cases.
Gear also can have negatives on it and sometimes multiple buffs. In order of tier:
White can have 1 permanent low buff
Green can have a mid-low range permanent buff AND a second buff that only activate after a requirement is met, and then only temporaily (Ex: 5.00% more damage for 10 seconds after buying a buildable).
Blue is the same as green, but with a more likely requirements (7.50% more speed after a kil) and a higher permanent and secondary buff.
Purple will have 2 high permanent buffs.
Orange will have 2 permanent buffs AND another special buff (Ex: Sheilds recharge after 3 seconds of sprinting).
You’ll also unlock an orange peice of gear for getting all of a character’s lore challenges, and it gives a specific buff to that character.
Clan packs will give you green-blue gear and a chance at a hidden skin or taunt for a character. Each character has at least 1 hidden taunt and 3 hidden colors, the color schemes being pink and blue, yellow and purple, and white and light blue. Every 5 command ranks you will get a Commander clan pack, which will garunteeably give you something for a Battleborn from that clan.
NOTES:
Sheild peircing gear does NOT affect sentry shields in incursion.
Some gear will give health regen over time. Most characters do not have passive health generation.
You can buy more gear space and more loadouts with credits, and you can rename any of your loadouts by clicking on it and pressing the “x” key on your keyboard.
Hit “Q” to change how gear is sorted.
Online mode & other people
This game goes from good to great with the online mode. The main thing you need to do is to know what you are doing. Going for just kills in incursion the entire game is not worth it. Another thing is that you need to use your character properly. Don’t try to be a tank with Toby, he’s a sniper for pete’s sake.
Another thing is that pre-coordinated teams (PCTs) are very strong in this game. If a team of max command rank (Universal XP) is facing a full team of halfway-to-max but are in a PCT, they will surely win. You can make a PCT for yourself by inviting steam friends to the game. They will show up on the right with you, and there will be a yellow bar connecting your names. This is shown for everyone. Go ahead and yell in the comments about how PCT also stands for Pacific Crest Trail and Pennsylvania College of Technology and a ton of other things. This guide’s already long enough as it is.
Certain titles are cool as well. Titles are under the “Career” tab of Command, and they are displayed under your name. The big highlights are the “Master of _____”, where you insert a Battleborn’s name in the blank (Ex: Master of Thorn). You unlock these titles by having all the lore challenges unlocked for that character and being character rank 15 and finishing a match. You also get a cool purple color for your character. Another top-tier title is “Right Behind You”, which is obtained by getting 30 assists in one match (Not as hard as it may seem). For assists overall you can get “Always Late”, which is given at 2,000 assists. One of the best titles, however, is “Worthy of Song” which is given for getting 25 kills in a single match. I am not certain if offline works for this, but it might.
Earlier, I mentioned CR, or command rank. This caps at 100 and starts at 1. Just because they are a rank 100 does not mean they will be pro. Titles like Worthy of Song prove skill, but a CR 100 means that they played the game a lot. They also could have had their main character snatched up by someone who is bad at the game, which made them choose someone else. All of you will be OK, as you have a second character. If our friend did not have a side main, then they will be easy to kill.
Another detail is that you can acces any part of the menu while in a queue for a match. That is when I mess with gear and titles. I reccomend you do the same.
Side note: Battleborn’s queue system works like this: assemble team of 5, find other team, launch game. This is strange, but it works out well. If you’re the only player on a team, you have a lower chance of getting a full team. Another way of putting that is that the more full a lobby is, the faser it fills.
Something to note; without the humble bundle, the queue times were the biggest problem the game had. Now it’s player balancing. Expect to see CR 100s and PCTs on the enemy team sometimes, and rarely both at once. There are also a few unbalanced characters. At the time of writing this, Benedict is really strong when played right. However, a Marquis will shoot him down out of the sky like a player would in duck hunt.
I hope you feel educated, as this is the only guide I plan on writing for this game. Maybe. Don’t quote me on that.