New Features and Creatures

[Binnatics]

Well, I'm pretty far into my first playthrough already and enjoying the game intense. There are great new creatures with nice appearances and abilities.
Thought I'd start a topic about what's new. I haven't tested the new features yet, except the single player new toys. There's still so much to discover :-D

First of all, here's some creatures that are new to the game:

Stalkers
These creatures are crawling dragon-like beasts that have the ability to become invisible. Although it takes some time for them to completely disappear (they turn from shadow to smokey to completely gone) they are really hard to spot when they've gone. They only stay visible in the minimap. Thank god they do respawn when they attack

Bullymongs
Great -in-your-face- monsters that look a bit like a yeti with gorilla-blood. They run straight at you and try to smack you to the ground. They are fast and you have to act fast. Once you level up and occasionally come back to their snowy area they seem hilariously week when shot at with higher lvl weaponry. Wonder how they evolve in playthrough 2 >:D

Walkers
Walkers are robots in the Hyberion Force. They look a bit cranky like the bots in early star wars films. But they can be awful enemies. It's hard to get critical hits because you have to shoot them in their single eye; a red camera-like sensor in their head. They can transform into suicide robots and run straight into you and blow up. Can be annoying ::)

Threshers
Threshers are underground worms. They try to sneak in on you and some have the weirdest ways of attacking. So there's one thresher that attracts you like a magnet and tries to pin you with its spines.

Rats
The rats. They are an art an-sich. Tough enemies with remarkable abilities. They are thin and fast moving and they usually spawn out of holes and tunnels in the ground. They are human, but have gone as far from any civil being as possible. They are cannibals and live in sewers and tunnels. They loot corpses and collect enormous amounts of goods. Funny when you shoot one that has been crawling the battlefield for quite a while. They usually carry very heavy guns and tend to like exploding projectiles.

Goliaths
The goliaths seem to be on the human range as well. They seem to appear under different groups and appear usually alone or in small couples. They are big, dumb creatures with usually massive guns, like a minigun or something. The funny thing about goliaths is their head. When you shoot it, they don't die; they turn into berserk mode and out of their body grows a sort of small skull-like head that balances on a thin rope. It's very hard to give them another headshot, but doable. If you manage, they will transform into a super raging goliath, and they seem to be able to get even worse after another transformation.
They won't transform again if you kill them. They just keep transforming if THEY kill others. I just managed to get a Goliath transform to its ultimate form, the GOD-liath. You get an achievement for it and it gives you loads of worthfull loot :-X :)
Once they transformed into a raging version, they'll attack whatever is close. So you can use them to get rid of annoying hordes of enemies. I met them often in the fighting arena where they usually spawned with 4. When they were all raging, they would kill eachother and I had only to kill one last raging ba$t@rd at the end.

In SP mode there is a new elemental effect called "slag"
What slag seems to do is basically weaken the defences of any creature that's been hit. He'll turn purple for a while, and when he is purple you can hurt him harder. Any damage will drop his health extra fast.
I seem to reach an experimental lab just now where bad guy Jack is experimenting with it a lot and he seems to have found a huge range of different applications for slag. Anyway; so far for me it just weakens defences. Which can be handy ;)

Something else has changed. Revolvers are no longer separate from pistols. They are one type of weapons now and use the same ammo. I haven't found out the positive side of this yet, since I haven't found a revolver with the qualities I was used to in BL1. I may find one sooner or later and then I'll have a revolver with 800 bullets >:D

That's all for now. I'm sure I forgot about some more creatures and especially did not write about all new features, but it's a start. I hope I can warm up others who have not yet ordered or bought the game >:D 8)

[Art Blade]

or who have but haven't got it yet.  :-() Nice post, Binn.  :-X :)

[PZ]

Indeed; great post Binn!

:-X

[mmosu]

Nice Binn :-X  You seem to be a bit further along than I am.  One of my favorite guns so far is a nice slag repeater pistol.  I like to slime 'em, then switch to a corrosive or incindiary SMG and listen to 'em fry  >:D
Speaking of Goliaths, I let one reach full maturity once  ???  It's name changed to "hulking mass of ultimate destruction" or something like that - I'm not really sure, I was too busy running for my life!  I ended up bringing him down by using deception to disappear when he got close, create space between us, and then pelt him with corrosive rockets before running away until the cool-down for deception ended and I could do it over again.  Rinse and repeat about 3 times and he finally went down  8)

[Art Blade]

 ??? funny.. all three of us play as Assassin "Zero"  :-()

[Binnatics]

I really thought that GOD-liath was the ultimate stadium, but I might be wrong. Anyway, when he grew so big, he was already so damaged by all his victims that I could kill him easily :-D

[mmosu]

Normally it does go that way - in fact, that's one of my tactics in Fink's Slaughter House when there is a Goliath around.  I'll set him off on his path of destruction, get to the second floor and make sure I've shot him just enough so that he does my dirty w@&k for me but is on the verge of death himself as he dispatches the last guy.  Things got a little out of hand in the aforementioned case though, and I ended up having to deal with a fully raged-out goliath with full health and no one else around to take attention off of me  :o.  By the way, he was about three times larger than when he started out by that point, and he had gotten a lot faster too!  It was all I could do to keep him away from me!

[Binnatics]

I like that bandit slaughter :-X ^-^

I'm currently dealing with the Hyperion Sluahgter, which is pretty damn hard :o

[mmosu]

Yeah, I just reached the Natural Selection Annex area of the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve.  Seems like things in the creature circle of slaughter step up quite a bit from the bandit slaughter too!  :o

[Art Blade]

I've not yet seen those slaughters, where or when do I get to see them? Or is it DLC?

[Binnatics]

Art, the slaughter missions are just regular side missions. But you won't find them too easy because there's not something like a yellow exclamation mark on your map to go to. It's a location. The first is pretty easy to find, that's the bandit slaughter. You'll find it when you enter the fridge. In the primary room of the fridge, where some vending machines are, you can enter another location, through a 'blue door' so to speak. And behind that door you enter the 'arena' where a guy shows up with the yellow exclamation mark. Talking to him will start round one.

The second location is in the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve. When you're half way through, you'll enter something that looks like the main facility. The rightmost location on the local map. There's another 'blue door' which takes you to another area. That other area contains the arena and the guy who gives you the creature slaughter. He'll suggest: "You got guns and I got creatures: Let's make some money".

Later on in the game, when entering Eridium Blight, you'll meet a robot named Mal (because he's malfunctioning). It's a robot that thinks like a human and he gives you some side quests in order to make him 'feel and act' like a human. In the end he'll try to kill you like humans do ( ;)) and behind his hideout is another 'blue door' that gives access to the arena for Hyperion slaughter. You know the location because you've been assisting me quite a few times in there ;) Remember when we had to fight our way back to the fast travel station getting ambushed by large amounts of Bullymongs and Rakks along the way?

All slaughters consist of 5 rounds which can be played separately. Each round contains various waves of enemies. Usually five waves, but sometimes more. E.g. the last Hyperion round contains 7 waves of enemies.

I love the slaughters since they give you a good feedback on your loadout. They also teach you quite a bit about your enemies. I know a lot more about Hyperion badasses now than before I played the Hyperion slaughter. I now know about which elemental is best to use against them, how to hit them critical and what to kill first in a multiple enemy encounter.
Besides.... it's just great fun!!! >:D 8)  ^-^

[Art Blade]

alright, cheers  :) :-X

[mmosu]

Agreed with that :-X  I thought I had some good guns when I first entered the creature slaughter, but trying to kill ultimate badass varkids taught me otherwise.  After grinding things out for awhile elsewhere and upgrading some of my kit, things are now a bit different  >:D

[Binnatics]

Wait until you start the 'real vault hunter mode'. I got frustrated quite some more times because of powerful enemies. And you'll need to get heavier guns AGAIN!!! :-\\

But damn when you have them, it cuts like butter again >:D >:D >:D

[Art Blade]

Wait until you start the 'real vault hunter mode'. I got frustrated

..until we joined forces once again  >:D

Binnatics and I enjoy the co-op gameplay quite a bit. For example: one player slags the enemy and the other player adds some acid-covered bullets to the mix which melts down those tuffies   >:D

[smg id=4774 type=link align=center width=500 caption="BL2 2012 10 28 00006"]

[PZ]

Lots of flames; kind of reminds me of when you blew up the border crossing in FC2  :-()

[Art Blade]

 :-()

[Binnatics]

Looking at the picture now it reminds me of the final battle in Resident Evil 5, where you also have to fight the boss in a volcano-like environment ;)

[mmosu]

Still catching up gents, hoping to have playthrough 1 in the bag by the end of the week (maybe)  ^-^

[PZ]

Enjoy, mmosu!  :-X

[Art Blade]

The more you level up, the stranger the enemies you find. This is particularly true for the "True Vault Hunter" mode which you will be given once you finished your first playthrough.