First Borderlands 2 DLC Coming a Week Early
Image via Gearbox Software
As if they didn’t think their fans were playing enough Borderlands 2 already, Gearbox has announced via Randy Pitchford’s Twitter that their first piece of DLC, the new Mechromacner class, will be releasing a week ahead of schedule (sometime today, October 9) on all platforms. To play as Gaige will cost you ten bucks if you didn’t have the good sense to pre-order the game and get in on the Premier Club. I have not had the chance to play with newest resident of Pandora yet, but I have been able to tinker with her skill tree a bit, and she seems to be a quite versatile fighter. The Mechromancer’s action skill summons her robotic pal, Deathtrap, to assist Gaige and her teammates in combat, and he can be upgraded to do all sorts of tricks, but the crazy, robot-building genius herself is the one with the more interesting perks.
If skill points are spent in her “Best Friends Forever” tree, things get a bit easier for the player: missed shots have a chance to ricochet and hit enemies, Deathtrap stays in battle longer, shields recharge faster, and both mech minion and master gain addition health. This could serve to open up the game to those new the Borderlands or even video games in general. Gaige also has a skill tree that gives both her and Deathtrap lots of elemental damage abilities, but where things really get fun is when she goes down the path of “Ordered Chaos”. If points are put into this skill tree, the player gains “Anarchy” bonuses to damage and penalties to accuracy when she kills enemies in battle. Most options along this path demand the player take penalties to certain stats, like magazine size or health, to gain bonuses in others, such as reload speed and shield recharge. From the looks of it, every Mechromancer build could play quite differently; I’m excited to hop in and see if this girl and her robot are as deadly and customizable a pair as they seem.
