Monday, October 15, 2012

Lost on Pandora

I am 115 hours into Borderlands 2, and I'm loving it (obviously). There have been a few angry moments, but, overall, I have had great fun shootin', lootin', and causing chaos on my own and, especially, with my co-op partner Oatmeal25.

Last night, though, (Saturday, Oct. 13th) Oatmeal was not available, so I decided to do a side mission solo to collect a little XP, some eridium, and some cash (that I lost due to several deaths and much ammo-purchasing the night before that). I equipped my level-39 Siren with a Merciful Nurse mod (essentially, a team health regeneration mod) and a relic that increases the chance of rare loot-drops, and headed out to Frostburn Canyon to pursue the side mission called Cult of the Firehawk. The mission description had it listed as "normal" difficulty, so I figured it would pretty straightforward. I was wrong.



After accepting the mission from Incinerator Clayton, I attempted to move down through the canyon, and was immediately swarmed by badass nomads, hellborn maniacs, and Superbadass Psychos. After a death, and much running away, I finally discovered that it was easier just to turn around and go up the hill behind me to accomplish my objectives, and avoid all the assholes on the other side.
Eventually, though, as the mission progressed (to The Enkindling), I could not avoid going down into the canyon and facing those dreaded Superbadass Psychos. I managed to defeat the first one only because he glitched; he got stuck in the ice and just couldn't move. So I filled him full of incendiary rounds. The second one was a bit easier because I was able to keep some distance between us and that allowed me to phaselock him several times and run away during the cooldown period.

After those two were done, the rest of the enemies were relatively easy. I cleared the area and moved into the cave. Instead of moving forward, though, I trekked off to the left, into a cavern full of Spiderants. I defeated them handily, and quickly moved forward. But then, I stopped suddenly because I stumbled across 7 camouflaged SMGs, all with little blue streaks of light reaching towards the stars, submerged in a shallow pool of water. Their stats were very high, they all had the last name Lascaux, and the red-text description, The gun of the Bulls. Here's where I found them (the arrow marks the spot):


It was an incredible haul, and in my giddy haste to collect them all, I neglected to get a screenshot of them sitting in that water, waiting to be plucked. I did, however get a screenshot of them as I put them into my storage bank in Sanctuary:


The names are Stopping Lascaux, Smooth Lascaux (4 of these, with only minor differences in styling and stats), Stoic Lascaux, and Deft Lascaux. According to the Borderlands Wiki, "Lascaux is a cave system in France, famous for its well-preserved paleolithic paintings of dun horses, Aurochs, and Megaloceros." The  camouflage on the guns resembles those cave drawings and they fire 13-round bursts that leave "a bullet pattern similar to the Lascaux cave paintings." And do you know what? They really do. I tried it out, and came up with what you see below.


That's the pattern of a horse on the box, created by firing the gun from a short distance.

So, after discovering those guns I moved on to the final objective of the Cult of the Firehawk mission, the Enkindling. Again, I had to struggle my way through several Superbadass Psychos, Spiderants, nomads, and maniacs before finally battling Incinerator Clayton. After I took him out, he dropped a very nice launcher called Prudential Pyrophobia.


It's a little different from the one listed in the Borderlands Wiki Pyrophobia/Variant Chart. The Damage and Burn Dmg/sec are higher, but it is otherwise the same weapon. And boy, is it ever effective.

So, what I thought would be a straightforward side mission actually turned into a 5-hour playthrough. It was worth it, though, because I managed a fairly decent haul of weapons, cash, XP, and eridium. I played a few hours again this evening (Sunday, October 14th) and grabbed a few more cool weapons. Stay tuned for a post featuring them, my favourite Borderlands 2 guns, and various screenshots from my two playthroughs. Take care.

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