Borderlands 2 Walkthrough Part 1: Intro and Character Selection

Borderlands 2 is in its core a first person shooter, however it also has a character building element usually found in Role-Playing Games. It also has a good random loot generating system, promising at least 87 billion possible unique guns. At the end of the day though, you will have a blast just shooting the hell out of enemies.

From the Main Menu, choose to start a New Game. The opening intro cinematics will now play. The intro scene is actually pretty funny, and tells you some of the story of Borderlands 2, so if you have not watched it before, it is recommended that you do it. By the way, if you were wondering about the name of the intro song, it is called "Short Change Hero", by The Heavy.

After the cutscene ends, it is time to select your class. Different classes suit different playstyles. Read the descriptions below and decide which one sounds most fun to you. You will be able to create more than one character, so feel free to try all of the classes out.

As we go over the character choices, pay attention to the following:

Action Skill
This is the character's main skill, the one you will be using most often.

Skill Trees
Each character has three skill trees to choose from. When you level up and gain skill points, you spend them in one or more of the skill trees. While you can spread your skill points among all 3 trees, it is better to specialize in one or at most two skill trees, so that you gain access to the more powerful abilities in that tree. You will get your first skill point at level 5, so you will have some time to think about where you will be spending your skill points.

CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER

Axton (Commando)

Action Skill: Sabre Turret - Deploy a turret that automatically fires on enemies.

Skill Trees:
Guerrilla: The Guerilla tree focuses heavily on strengthening your turrets adding more guns, accuracy, and firepower. Also has some skills that improve your shield and grenade capabilities.
Gunpowder: The Gunpowder tree basically makes you better with guns.
Survival: The Survival tree lets you survive longer in battle, increasing your speed, maximum health, and lets you cope better with status effects and other dangers.

Axton is a solid choice. Your turret can help a lot when you are fighting, especially if solo. Although, if you do not spend points in the Guerilla tree, the turrets can be pretty weak, but the other skill trees can cause Axton to become quite powerful. Basically when choosing this class you will either make your turrets very powerful, or make Axton himself very powerful.

Zer0 (Assassin)

Action Skill: Deception - Become invisible, while creating a holographic double of yourself for decoy. 15 second cooldown.

Skill Trees:
Sniping: The Sniping tree makes you lethal when sniping enemies from afar. Kill enemies before they even see you!
Cunning: The Cunning tree makes you extremely powerful in all sorts of situations, such as when Deception is active when attacking from behind, or when your shields are depleted.
Bloodshed: The Bloodshed tree makes Zer0 deal massive damage in melee. Choose this tree if you like melee.

Zer0 can deal massive amounts of damage, and fast, whether from a far distance, or from melee range. Zer0 is the finisher in the group, meaning he is particularly effective when fighting single targets, and can kill them off faster than anyone else in the team. However, Zer0 is less effective against a large amount of targets.

Siren (Maya)

Action Skill: Phaselock - Locks an enemy in another dimension for a short time, rendering it unable to attack.

Skill Trees:
Motion: The Motion tree allows Maya to take the most advantage of her phaselock skill, as well as boost her movement and reload speed. The most powerful skill in this tree lets you gain control of an enemy making it fight for you!
Harmony: The Harmony tree is the healer tree, letting Maya heal herself and party members.
Cataclysm: The Cataclysm tree allows Maya to deal elemental damage such as fire, shock, corrosive, and slag damage, and inflict negative status effects on the enemies.

Maya is a good support character with her healing tree, though she can also cause a lot of trouble to enemies on her own.

Salvador (Gunzerker)

Action Skill: Gunzerking - Lets Salvador draw a second gun.

Skill Trees:
Gunlust: The Gunlust tree makes Salvador a lot more effective with guns.
Rampage: Rampage is the DPS tree, making you cause tons of damage in combination with the Gunzerking skill.
Brawn: Brawn is the tank skill tree, letting you regenerate health better, take less damage, and resist negative status effects.

Choose Salvador if you want to do DPS or be a tank.



Best Class For Solo Play and/or first time playing Borderlands
If you are going to play solo, or have never played Borderlands before, the easiest character to play as is Axton, who can do pretty well solo because of his turrets and survival skills.

Next, you will be able to further customize the appearance of your character by changing the head and skin. When you are satisfied with how your character looks, you can also change its name from the default.

Additional Resources
This Walkthrough/Strategy Guide will guide you through all the story missions and side missions, as well as provide you a lot of hints, strategies, tips, and other advice to help you in the game. But to learn more about the Borderlands 2 and the world of Pandora, we highly recommend you check out the Wiki, which has just about everything there is to know about the game:
Borderlands 2 Wiki

Welcome to Pandora.