<\/div>I haven’t deliberately clocked the chances of getting worthwhile loot, and I don’t think anyone has done any original research on this subject. The wiki<\/a> doesn’t have anything concrete on loot probabilitiesExcept for the loot chests in the Dragon Keep DLC, because the workings of those are exposed to the player via 20 sided dice.<\/span>. It says that red chests pay out “better” than grey ones, but you can intuit that yourself just from opening a few. What we don’t know is how much better.<\/p>\n I know trying to figure out the payout rates on games of chance is incredibly susceptible to confirmation bias. It’s one of the reasons that slot machines and lotteries do so well. Once the odds of payout get to be very small it becomes really hard to track them accurately without engaging in literal bookkeeping. It doesn’t take you long to differentiate between a 10% chance of winning versus a 20% chance, but telling the difference between 0.01% and 0.001% is difficult without investing a huge amount of time.<\/p>\n But allowing for my possibly skewed impression, I will say that after 600+ hours of play I’m pretty confident that chests in Borderlands 2 are the worst way of obtaining “loot”. <\/p>\n Sure, opening a chest will have a better outcome than shooting a single bandit. But when you factor in the time it takes to reach a red chest and the relative efficiency of other methods, going out of your way for a red chest doesn’t seem like a great use of time.<\/p>\n Note that when I say “loot” I’m specifically talking about rare and useful items. For the purposes of this discussion, trash weapons to haul to the vendor for money is not “loot”. Loot is items of blue quality or better. (Eridium also counts in my book.) Whites, greens, ammunition, and cash are all useful, but they’re also incredibly common. You can do nearly anything and get lots of this stuff. What we’re looking for is stuff that might tangibly improve your loadout.<\/p>\n It’s easy to get thrown off by probability. Yes, red chests have way better payouts than bandit faces, but you spend way more time shootin’ faces than opening red chests. So rather than think of this in terms of probability, let’s think of this in terms of “Loot over Time”. As in: Will activity X yield better LoT than activity Y? <\/p>\n Of course, this is hard to measure, because you can’t actually spend all your time opening chests. They’re an opportunity that comes along every hour or so. I admit this is all very nebulous and probably not very persuasive. If nothing else, see this is a chance for us to compare experiences on the game and see if our individually biased observations line up. <\/p>\n Here is how I rate the means of obtaining worthwhile loot in Borderlands 2, from best to worst:<\/p>\n This one is a bit tricky because not all boss fights are created equal. The first couple of boss fights aren’t anything really special. Boom Bewm always drops a grenade mod and Captain Flynt always drops the same blue pistol. But this is still early in the game and those fights have different goals than the later fights. Bloodwing doesn’t drop anything, and instead that quest pays out with a handful of chests. Same goes for when you meet “The Firehawk”, the battle for Angel, and the warden bot that holds Roland prisoner. Chests are usually full of trash, so these quests basically pay out in a really inconvenient form of money. And that’s assuming you’ve got enough inventory space to pick up your prize. If your pockets are full at the end of a long murder maze, then these boss fights effectively pay nothing!<\/p>\n But there are a few bosses in the game that shower you in loot, and these are the ones I’m interested in. Specifically: BNK3R, Saturn, The Warrior. These fights always drop real loot. Their payout goes down over time, but I’ve never been able to figure out if this is because they’re designed to give diminishing payouts or if they pay less as you gain levels relative to the boss.<\/p>\n In any case, on your first encounter you can feel very confident you’ll get, at bare minimum, a blue item. Purple is pretty likely, and legendary orange isn’t uncommon. If you’re looking for rare drops, then fighting these guys is a great way to go about it. For the cost of a five minute fight you can get a handful of loot that’s statistically far better than the output of two dozen red chests.<\/p>\n This one needs a qualifying asterisk that it’s only good under certain circumstances. The catch here is that randomly looking for loot midgets is not a good way to go about farming them. However, the playerbase has figured out that if you open a particular set of boxes during a particular missionDoctor’s Orders<\/a>, in the same complex where you fight Bloodwing.<\/span>, then you have an excellent chance of finding loot midgets. As long as you make sure to never complete that quest, and if you’ve got some DLCCreature Slaughter Dome<\/a>, which was a pre-order bonus that later became available as paid DLC. Having this area available means you can enter and exit the arena, which gives you a save point halfway through the complex, just a few rooms away from where the loot midgets spawn.<\/span> that gives you a spawn point near the boxes in question, then farming loot midgets can make for pretty good LoT.<\/p>\n Money is largely useless in Borderlands 2. Maybe once in a very long while there will be an exotic item for sale in a vending machine, and maybe those items will very occasionally be useful to your particular character class, level, and build. I suppose it’s worth keeping around a handful of money on hand just in case an opportunity like that comes along.<\/p>\n But by the mid game you’ll be swimming in useless money, and the only thing to spend it on is the slot machines. This is a shame, because the slot machines are kinda boring to play. Okay, it’s amusing the first time you get a bad spin and the machines surprise you with a live grenade, but that excitement is long gone by grenade #3, much less grenade #300.<\/p>\n Still, just five or ten minutes of play should net you a nice pile of potentially useful blue items. However, the machines only give out guns and eridium. Since you can’t buy eridium with money directly, this can be a roundabout way of turning excess cash into those delicious bars of eridium. It’s not fast, but it’s something I do when I’m on the phoneSorry mom.<\/span> or listening to a podcast.<\/p>\n But if you’re looking for shields, class mods, artifacts, or grenade mods, then slot machines are not for you. If you’re hoping for purple or orange items, then you’ll have much better luck fighting bosses.<\/p>\n Be warned that it can take longer than expected to get rid of unwanted cash. I’ve played a lot of the slots at various levels and this basic rule seems to hold: Play the slots until you’re totally broke. Then gather up all of the trash items the machines have spit out and schlep them to the vendor. When you’re done selling it all, you’ll have about half your money back. So if you start with $10k and play until you’re broke, once you’ve sold it all you’ll have $5k, and so on. <\/p>\n This means that you’ll likely under-estimate just how long you’re going to need to play the game. You’ll pull the handle and see that a spin costs you about $500. “Oh great”, you think, “This will just take 20 spins to get rid of this $10k. No a big deal.” But it’s more like 20+10+5+2+1=38 spins. <\/p>\n The other thing to note is that the slot machines are keyed to story progress, not your level. Occasionally the cost of the machine goes up, and it will begin paying out slightly higher-level items. I’m reasonably sure this happens when the population of Sanctuary changes, such as when one of the original vault hunters arrives or departs their headquarters. When the characters change, it seems to update the slot machines as well. <\/p>\n Not really a very good way of making loot. Occasionally a guy will drop some trash loot for you to pick up and sell. Very occasionally that loot might be slightly worthwhile. Like, maybe you’ll find a blue. Still, if you’re looking for gear then your goal should be to shove past these idiots to reach the next boss, where you can be almost guaranteed something good.<\/p>\n The chests in Borderlands 2 are overwhelmingly filled with trash. Finding good things in them is so rare that after hundreds of hours I’ve come to dread the sight of red chests. It means I’m about to have my pockets filled with stupid white and green items to sell. Sometimes you’ll find a blue, but if you want something blue then you’re better off taking all that trash, selling it, and spending your money on the slots. (Assuming you’ve got the patience for that.)<\/p>\n The contents of a red chest seem to be roughly equal to an encounter with a cluster of bandit huts: You’ll get 2-4 items of common or trash quality, some ammo, and if you’re extraordinarily lucky, maybe some eridium. Generally red chests require you to hop over some boxes so you can follow some power lines to throw a switch so you can bypass a forcefield and reach a chest. After going to that trouble it’s pretty disappointing to find a box of trash. Again, if you want good loot then ignore the red box and just push on to the next boss fight.<\/p>\n The most frustrating chest in the game is this one:<\/p>\nBoss Fights<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Loot Midgets<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Slot Machines<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Shootin’ Dudes<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Chests<\/h3>\n
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