When it comes to running and gunning, you really can’t go wrong with any of the Borderlands games.
The Borderlands community isn’t feeling left behind either, as modding grew with the second release in the franchise
Mods are a great way to keep the game exciting. And considering how the base game may be a tad boring by now… well be prepared to pour days into the game with these mods installed.
One common complaint about Borderlands 2 is how violence was noticeably lessened compared with the first game.
Shooting through hordes of bandits just isn’t as fun without exploding heads and scattering limbs.
And modder juso40 offers a simple solution for that.
While his More Blood mod doesn’t exactly bring back the death animations from the previous game, it does add blood splatter and particle effects upon enemy hits – which is better than nothing.
If you wanted to take things even further, you could check out VAXIS’ Longevity Mod.
This mod aims to make the game more immersive by tweaking some of the death parameters to make for a more epic feel to combat.
Dead bodies, blood splatters, bullet homes, and explosion effects now stay on screen much longer making the arenas feel much more impacted during gunfights.
VAXIS does warn that the mod will take a toll on your machine, so just be sure your hardware can handle the additional load.
While Borderlands 2 is received generally positive feedback from gamers, there are still some small annoyances here and there that the community took the liberty to make fixes for.
Most games these days let you skip any intro animations, or even include an option for the game to automatically do so in the settings menu.
After all, we only really watch the video the first time we run the game – and having to go through it over and over is just a bother.
Mishant’s No Intro mod let’s you do exactly that: allowing you to jump into the game much quicker than before.
Vehicle animations are more of the same really, as they can get pretty annoying fairly quickly.
I myself noticed this as I was playing through the first Borderlands game, as getting in and out of vehicles was just painfully slow.
Especially coming from hectic gunfights where the game tends to get pretty fast-paced, it felt like my character was taking forever to get into the driver’s seat.
Faster Vehicle Animations is a simple fix, giving you three speed options to cover all vehicle animations including mounting, dismounting, and seat switching.
Another annoying part of looting in most any RPG are level requirements.
Grinding for good loot drops is basically pointless if you’re too under leveled to use the powerful gear you just got – especially considering you probably had to go up against stronger enemies to get them.
Well for that we have the No Level Requirement For Gear mod.
Modder OB4MA says it best:
“I think that you should be able to use a pistol if you are level 1, not level 35.”
The game’s Fight For Your Life mechanic has been given some upgrades as well, and all you have to do is install this next mod to get them.
FFYL is basically your last chance to stay alive when things take a turn for the worst during fights. And you’re going to want to get back up each time to avoid having to repeat missions.
This mod lets you customize a number of different settings related to FFYL to make it easier or harder, depending on what you’re looking for.
Customizable options include rejuvenation delay, revive speed, FFYL damage, and movement speed among many others.
The Borderlands sequel makes improvements to the open world gameplay as well, allowing you to explore much more of Pandora than in the previous game.
Exploring the larger map also means that objectives will be scattered throughout the world, making vehicles your quickest means to of getting around.
While the list of available vehicles has been greatly expanded since the first game as well, Catch-A-Rides are still pretty limiting.
More Vehicles mod changes that, making each vehicle type available in any of the Catch-A-Rides around the map. And making it possible to select pretty much any vehicle you want from whichever Catch-A-Ride location is closest to you.
While grinding side missions is often a great way to earn some XP in most RPGs, it’s hardly as rewarding in Borderlands 2.
The way optional missions work in the game is that you receive a set amount of XP for completing each regardless of the mission’s difficulty.
This just doesn’t make sense seeing as the game categorizes quests into different difficulty levels, as you’d expect that rewards increase as the missions get tougher.
Optional Objectives Plus fixes that, allowing XP earned from quests to scale with their difficulty level – making them much more worthwhile.
Up next is another useful mod from OB4MA, this time aimed at making sure you never miss those high-tier loot drops.
The quest for better gear never ends in Borderlands.
And it doesn’t really get much worse than finding out that you missed something along the way.
ARPG Style Loot Beams makes drops impossible to miss, adding bright color-coded light beams to the ground and making it much easier to spot where each item is.
Not only that, but this mod adds customizable sounds and particle effects for loot drops as well – giving you both visual and audio cues to aid in your looting.
Throughout your time with Borderlands 2, you’re inevitably going to reach a point where your character has just become way too powerful for any enemy in Pandora.
This can either happen if you’ve completed the main storyline and are still grinding for gear, or if you’ve simply leveled up way too much and have become OP.
Either way, you might find yourself looking to up the difficulty a bit. And this Difficulty Mod lets you do exactly that.
It does so by simply tricking the game into thinking that there are more players than there actually are, so you can play through a difficulty level of 4 player coop even though you’re actually playing solo.
If you’re looking for a more complex way to make up the game’s difficulty level, FFYLands is another option worth looking into.
While the mod is basically an overhaul that touches on pretty much every aspect of the game, its main goal is to make the game more challenging but more rewarding at the same time.
FFYLands affects everything including guns, enemies, and even the vault hunters themselves.
With this mod installed you’ll find that vault hunters have new skills to explore, bosses will be much harder than before, and new loot to find.
Borderlands fans know that if the game was about one thing – it would be loot.
There’s already crazy amounts of guns and accessories to discover in the game, but who’s going to say no to more?
The mod adds 11 completely new weapon accessories to spice up gun customization.
What’s even better about this mod is that none of the new additions replace features from the base game. So you’ll be getting all of them on top of what’s already in vanilla.
If you’re looking to change things up when it comes to the weapons themselves, you can’t go wrong with Aaron’s Arms-porium.
As a labor of love for the Borderlands 2 modding scene, Aaron0000 compiled all his weapon mods in one convenient package for everyone to enjoy.
There’s loads of new content in here including recreations from other Borderlands games, reskins, accessories, and even completely original weapons he made himself.
As if you’ve already discovered each and every weapon from the base game, this will surely add another crap ton of hours to throw into Borderlands 2.
Aaron0000 apparently wasn’t done, as he even ported one of his popular Borderlands 1 weapon packs so you can enjoy them in the sequel as well.
The Campin’ Dutchpack offers “just about every flavor of destruction under the sun” as Aaron0000 puts it himself, giving you access to 54 new weapons, 13 shields, 1 new grenade type, and 2 new relics to play around with.
Other than weapons, character mods are another great way to keep things interesting in Borderlands 2.
While the sequel gives you a completely new cast of vault hunters to play as, some of us just can’t get over our attachment to the crew of the previous games.
Well modder 55tumbl has a solution for that – why not make the characters from the original game playable in Borderlands 2?
His first mod brings back our favorite soldier Roland.
If you’ve played through some of the newer characters and feel like there’s really not much more to explore, you could try some of the class overhaul mods available for Borderlands 2 to keep things exciting.
55tumbl didn’t just add some of the older characters to the game, he introduces his own take on Maya with this next mod as well.
His Elemental Banshee Maya modifies her skills and class mods to make for more emphasis on elemental and melee damage.
Replacement skills and mods were carefully selected to make for some interesting combinations, so it should take another few playthroughs for you to discover this new Maya’s true potential.
There aren’t many things more satisfying in an FPS than brutally killing enemies with melee attacks.
It’s much more challenging. But pulling it off often makes you feel like you’ve gotten much better at the game.
This Immersive Melee Attacks mod makes melee-focused builds even more rewarding, tweaking the game’s melee attack values to make them much more feasible.
The mod covers melee attacks for Maya and Zer0 as well as Krieg and Gaige from the DLC.
Community patches are always a good idea. Especially since tthey’re usually a compilation of suggestions from the most active community members themselves on how a game can be made better.
Luckily, the Borderlands 2 community has their own patch. And it’s definitely worth checking out.
It contains over 450 changes and bugfixes aimed at improving your overall experience, so there’s tons of new content to explore here.
Many of the names from the previous mods are attached to the project as well, including Aaron000 and 55tumbl.
If you’re looking for a more drastic change, there’s no better way to completely revamp this game than with a complete overhaul.
Borderlands 2 Exodus is by far one of the biggest mods you can get, adding over 130 completely new pieces of gear, new gameplay mechanics, and even mini bosses.
What will really make the game feel different is how much is rebalanced.
Characters, weapons, skills, and even accessories will have modified damage and bonus values – so you’re going to have to relearn most of what you know from your vanilla playthrough.
