Things to know

[Yurtles]

I've gotten far too excited about Borderlands 2 and have been trawling for information relentlessly the last couple days and have picked up a couple tidbits worth sharing;

* The golden key you get for pre-ordering lets you open the chest for a purple level gun set to your current level once and once only. You can get more keys, but you won't get them in-game.

* You can get another golden key by signing up to Gearbox's Shift (some kind of social thing as far as I can tell) and linking it into your game. Details here.

* There is some enemy level scaling - The game sets the level of enemies in new areas according to your level (to a limited extent) the first time you enter them and then they'll be set to that level. So if you head back to older/newer areas the enemies will still be whatever level they were set to from the first time you entered that area.

* Ammo, money and eridium (new currency) are all shared between players regardless of who picks it up.

* Gearbox thread about how to activate the console on PC and all the supported console commands. Things like displaying FPS and tweaking the FOV beyond the slider limits included in the game option.

[PirateEggs]

* Ammo, money and eridium (new currency) are all shared between players regardless of who picks it up.

I saw so many people complaining about that, it previously shared the money anyway, so what's the problem? Also, you generally play co-op with friends, so sharing with them shouldn't matter, unless you're just an all round bad person.
I don't care regardless, as long as there's enough to go around.

[SuBw00FeR]

Well in number one Ammo wasn't shared, so you'd have people picking up your ammo (say if you used sniper etc) even though you needed it more.

[Auld]

Well in number one Ammo wasn't shared, so you'd have people picking up your ammo (say if you used sniper etc) even though you needed it more.

Until you mentioned it again I didn't even read the shared ammo bit. Thats awesome!

I always liked the shared cash of BL1, meant you didnt have to worry about every getting a fair share if you played with mates. I do wonder about Eridium though, so far I've picked it up in amounts of 1, how do you share that between 4 people? Round Robin?

Lastly if its on the ground and you walk near it, you pick it up automagically, win

[Yurtles]

I was thinking about the eridium sharing too, it'd surely have to just give everyone one and keep the drop rate the same regardless of how many are playing. Probably the same for ammo and money too. Also added a couple other things to my list.

[Auld]

Phwoar extra gold key, will sign up for that.

Also there is a shared stash between characters......extra sparkly.

[Yurtles]

Interestingly I was just reading that you can edit game files to give yourself unlimited golden keys if you want. And I've seen keygens for golden keys on Xbox/PS3. I have a sneaking suspicion that BL2 is about as locked down as BL was (i.e. not at all).
Which actually makes me glad, sure you'll get unsavoury types abusing it but I reckon we'll also see some amazing tweaks for the game coming out before too long as well.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Okay, for those who pre-ordered the game and got the golden key...be very, very mindful that you don't accidentally open the golden chest. There is no warning whatsoever that you are about to use your key, and for those who go around opening EVERYTHING without looking, it is really, really easy to open the chest.

For those who don't know, the chest is located in Sanctuary, specifically in the building where you can customise your character and where the fast travel device is located. The chest looks like this:



Of course, it is easy to assume that this is simply a different type of 'normal' crate given that this is a new game with new items.

Myself and Bickety accidentally opened this crate at different times. Not even realising this was the golden crate.

Yes, there is a easy exploit out there to give yourself potentially multiple keys...I tried it myself and it does work. But I just gave myself one key to make up for the one I lost.

[Mythor]

I walked towards it but realised before opening it that it was a sort of golden colour...
I may open it with my Axton today. Don't want to cheat a bunch of keys since then I'd just spend a lot of time farming the stupid chest...

Two things about the vehicle/player skins and the player heads:
1. Some of them are WHITE quality, so you should look even at the white drops. Hoping they change that...
2. You have to click the item inside your inventory to actually add it to your selection of skins.

[cdkit3]

Yeah.... I wasted my Gold Key.... was just running around sanctuary opening things..... then opened the chest and went... well damn....

[Auld]

Not sure what all the fuss is about with the Golden chest, its only a purple. By level 20 I assume I'll have mostly purple items with a few oranges anyway. By 50 I expect to have mainly orange level items.....how much use is the chest going to be?

I am going to open it around 20 and hope for the best.

[SaNE]

how much use is the chest going to be?

I gave myself a few (255) keys, then spent the next hour or two opening the chest to use said keys to get back to my original amount of 4 (the Shift website seems to give you more than the 1).
The floor in that room absorbs any and all items you drop in there (just turn around facing away from the chest and drop them, or sell them if you want more money than needed).

The guns are purple and they are pretty decent but the problem I have with it is that what you get is totally random, so if Bob opens the chest and he's an Assassin, he has the very large chance of getting gear that is useless... So it's pretty pointless unless you are going to make one of each.

Also just to mention, if you do give yourself keys; The amount in the file is the amount you are going to give yourself and once you give yourself them you can't remove them without using the chest. It seems that something else (seems to be 'in the cloud') stores the amount you have until you use them.

[Yurtles]

You crazy kids and you golden keys, lol. I knew I should have put a picture in along with the warning instead of just linking to a fully comprehensive description of how the keys work written by Gearbox themselves including a picture of the chest in question. Pictures and videos, it's all the internet generation has time for. Society is crumbling.

[Bicketybam]

Another tip: If you are already sick of the intro movies, you can edit the WillowEngine.ini in your My Documents/My Games/Borderlands 2/Willowgame/Config dirs and search for : [FullScreenMovie]

Then make this :

StartupMovies=2K_logo
StartupMovies=Gearbox_logo
StartupMovies=NVidia
StartupMovies=Loading

look like this :

;StartupMovies=2K_logo
;StartupMovies=Gearbox_logo
;StartupMovies=NVidia
;StartupMovies=Loading

and you're done.

[PirateEggs]

Another tip: If you are already sick of the intro movies, you can edit the WillowEngine.ini in your My Documents/My Games/Borderlands 2/Willowgame/Config dirs and search for : [FullScreenMovie]

Line 1370 for NP++ users. (Should be the same line for everyone?)
I hadn't got around to changing mine yet, I'd only launched the game twice.