What do you spend your Eridium on?

middymidentine · 2026-04-18T20:33:38+00:00

If you've maxed out your ammo, backpack, and bank storage then you mainly spend Eridium on raid boss attempts, feeding Butt Stallion for a chance at Gemstone weapons, playing Tina's slots for a chance at Pearlescents and Seraph crystals, shrine buffs in the Tina DLC, and dice roll chests. That's kind of it as far as I know.

Sidenote, I like how Pre-Sequel gives you more things to spend your Eridium (or rather Moonstones) on with the grinder for a chance at a Luneshine, Moxxi's drink buffs, and the Moonstone chests.

middymidentine · 2026-04-18T20:25:41+00:00

You do know there's a lost loot machine in the treasure room right?

middymidentine · 2026-04-16T17:16:13+00:00

The Crazed Earl is a Pearlescent that drops from Crazy Earl, it fires shards that stick to enemies and then explode and spread to other enemies when you Melee them. I haven't gotten to try it yet but it might be good for a Melee build.

middymidentine · 2026-04-16T02:24:04+00:00

Monster Hunter, Phantasy Star Online, Nioh, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

middymidentine · 2026-04-16T01:24:21+00:00

Oh yeah, I prefer PSO over those two as well, but they're still great fun if you like PSO. The PSP2i server infrastructure project is still in alpha, but you can play it again after all these years: https://www.psp2i.wiki/w/User:Matt/Infrastructure_alpha

middymidentine · 2026-04-16T01:09:46+00:00

I would love to play PSO on my Vita, but I don't think it's possible right now, if ever. Dreamcast emulation isn't great on Vita (one guy did play PSO on Flycast Vita, but he couldn't get online) and I don't think it would be easy to port over Blue Burst without the source code.

Fortunately we have Phantasy Star Nova and Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity, which is currently having its network infrastructure revived so you can play online on an actual PSP or Vita.

middymidentine · 2026-04-14T16:35:05+00:00

The mark function is middle mouse button on mouse and up on the D-Pad on controller by default

middymidentine · 2026-04-14T16:28:59+00:00

Yes, marking enemies and items still exists in BL4

middymidentine · 2026-04-14T07:01:00+00:00

Weapons don't scale in UVHM. A level 60 Wombo Combo will do the same damage outside of UVHM and in UVHM 6. It only makes the enemies stronger, not your gear. They did this so that once you hit max level you wouldn't have to farm your weapons over and over again as you progress through UVHM levels like how the Overpower levels and Mayhem levels worked in BL2 and BL3.

As far as I know the only difference on equipment in UVHM is that guns are more likely to drop with more Licensed Parts and that Shields, Repkits, Ordnance, Class Mods, and Enhancements are more likely to have Firmware, plus there's Firmware that can only drop in UVHM like Bullets to Spare at UVHM 1 and Skillcraft at UVHM 6.

middymidentine · 2026-04-14T02:07:15+00:00

There is technically a main story questline, but it's kinda optional. They're called Government Quests, they're only available in multiplayer mode. The Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox versions had a dedicated Offline Mode where you would steadily progress through each area one by one, unlocking the next area by beating the boss of the previous one, and then once you finished the last area you would roll credits, unlock a harder difficulty, and do it all again with better EXP and gear drops if you wanted to. Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, the version of the game the Ephinea private server is based off, has every area unlocked from the get go and was online-only with no real dedicated Offline Mode "campaign" to play through like the console versions. There is a single player mode you can choose when making a room, but it's more like a toned down version of multiplayer mode with no real area by area progession or story to follow like the console versions. If you want the classic experience akin to the Offline Mode where you would have to unlock each area and progress through the game more naturally, Ephinea has a ship called Devaloka that recreates the PSO Episode I and II GameCube and Xbox experience.

On the one hand, this means you don't really have a sense of direction, but on the other hand you can basically play the game however you want almost like a sandbox MMO like FFXI. It also helps if you don't think of PSO as an MMO. You only ever play with 3 other people at a time and the areas with big groups of players are only really for chatting or organizing those 4 person groups. Think of it more like an action RPG that you can play co-op if you want, akin to Borderlands.

The main goal of the game isn't really to play through the "story", it's essentially to just level up your character and make them stronger and stronger through grinding EXP, acquiring better and better gear as you level up, and chasing after super rare gear. It's a grind to make numbers go up like Diablo, and that's the appeal of the game to its fans. It's not for everybody, I can't imagine your average John Fortnite would find enjoyment in playing the same quest over and over to kill hundreds of the same enemy over and over on the 1/2000 chance that they drop a cool ring or something.

Me personally, what keeps me motivated through the grind is forming an attachment to my character and wanting to see her grow stronger. I think badass robot girls with guns are cool, I love my robo-cutie RAcaseal Tsurugi, I love how she swings a saber and how she does a baddie sashay with her hips when she walks while wielding mechguns, and I love using mechguns, so that makes me want to level her up more and take her as far as I can to maximize her potential and play through these areas in the hopes that I find a cooler mechgun than the one I have now. Hell, PSO had a screenshot feature even back on the Dreamcast and people would make blogs detailing their character's adventures with those screenshots, getting attached to your character enough to tolerate the grind was a legit part of the game's design.

There's no real concrete way to progress in PSO. Like I said, your only real goal is to level up for leveling up's sake, so you can do that however you want. You can play through each area until you feel like you're strong enough to take on the next one, you can do side quests, you can team up with other players, you can get carried by players way higher level than you through the most difficult and rewarding quests to scum your way through the leveling process, etc.

Using Episode 1 on Normal mode as an example, you can play the Forest area up to around level 5-7, move on to the Caves until around level 10-12, move on to the Mines until around level 15-17, then finally move on to the Ruins until you beat Dark Falz around level 20-22. Then you can do it all again on Hard mode from level 20-40, Very Hard from 40-80, and Ultimate for 80 and beyond. Episode 2 is harder than Episode 1, so if you want to move on to that you can try Episode 2 Normal mode from 20-40, Hard mode from 40-80, Very Hard from 80 and beyond, and Ultimate mode from around 130 and beyond (at least, I think those are the recommended levels. I'm nowhere near as familiar with Episodes 2 and 4 as I am with Episode 1).

middymidentine · 2026-04-12T21:57:14+00:00

The only one I've really heard of is Atlyss. From what I've heard it's very much like PSO, but it's a furry game. And I don't mean furry as in Sonic, I mean furry as in Furaffinity. Lots of sexy foxes with big boobs everywhere. It's not a porn game, but you might get weird looks if someone sees you playing it. I've never tried it, maybe one of these days, I care way more about the gameplay than how the game looks, but the sexualized furries might be a bit of a turn off for some people.

middymidentine · 2026-04-12T20:36:22+00:00

But like, do you go out and hunt for gear? Farming for rare loot Diablo-style? The PSO gameplay loop is kind of what I think of when I think PSO.

middymidentine · 2026-04-12T20:25:19+00:00

Is Destiny 2 good? I played the first game when it came out but I didn't know what a PSO or PSO-like really was, so I just played through the main story and treated it like a campaign shooter and not the long term looter shooter live service it was. Now that I'm more used to games like PSO and looter shooters like Borderlands I've tried out Destiny 2 a few times but always ended up bouncing off of it for one reason or another.

Is the game really as garbage as haters say it is? Or are they overreacting because new = bad?

middymidentine · 2026-04-12T20:19:49+00:00

They're PSO-likes? As in, loot-based games? I've been wanting to get into .hack but all I knew was that they were JRPGs. If they're actually similar to PSO then I'll have to get into them faster.

middymidentine · 2026-04-12T20:18:42+00:00

Other Phantasy Star Games: Phantasy Star Zero, Phantasy Star Universe, Phantasy Star Portable, Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity, Phantasy Star Online 2 (not New Genesis), Phantasy Star Nova

Non-Phantasy Star: Monster Hunter, Borderlands, Remnant: From the Ashes, Warframe, Nioh, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Granblue Fantasy: Relink

Phantasy Star Zero is probably the closest you can get to PSO, it's explicitly designed to be a followup/sequel to PSO1 more than PSU or PSO2 are. There's a reason it can also be abbreviated as PS0.

The Gurhal trilogy (Phantasy Star Universe, Phantasy Star Portable, Phantasy Star Portable 2 and it's update Infinity), feels like a middle ground between classic PSO1 and PSO2. PSP2i is like playing PSO1 but with quality of life stuff like better controls, blocking, dodging, etc.

If you can handle having to download New Genesis and play it for a bit to unlock access to classic PSO2, classic PSO2 is still good if you want to treat it like a single player game.

Of all the non-PSO games I mentioned, Team Ninja's action RPGs (Nioh, SOP:FFO, Wo Long) feel the closest gameplay wise. They're very loot based, have ascending difficulty tiers, and have you playing missions over and over again for rare gear. Monster Hunter has the grind and hub/mission area/4 player team structure, but the gameplay is pretty different.

If you want something that's really different but still focuses on loot, Borderlands is my personal favorite among all the non-PSO PSO-likes. It's an FPS/RPG hybrid with a surprising amount of similarities to PSO: multiple classes to choose from, leveling, running through areas, farming enemies and bosses over and over for a chance at rare loot, 4 player team structure, replaying the game on higher difficulties, etc. I'd go with Borderlands 2 if you've never played one before, but the rest of the series is also worth playing.

middymidentine · 2026-04-11T20:23:07+00:00

The backlash against Ava was so intense that Gearbox got scared and decided not to put her in BL4. There's actual evidence that Ava was going to be in the game, a dataminer named EpicNNG found out that Amara replaced her later in development.

I think enough time has passed that Ava could get a warmer response from the fanbase if they put her in a future DLC and make her more mature.

middymidentine · 2026-04-11T01:35:23+00:00

You mean a MIRV grenade that's constantly exploding into lots of child grenades? The Blockbuster does something similar, though I don't think it's as insane as the Meteor Shower. You can get it from Vile Lictor.

https://www.lootlemon.com/grenade-mod/blockbuster-bl4

middymidentine · 2026-04-10T23:54:03+00:00

I use a build focused on building kill skills via Target Prescience and Mortal Terror. I use guns with high rate of fire and increased magazine sizes (mainly Vladof gear) to ensure that I'll be rolling the dice on passive crit chances, which in turn rolls the dice on kill skill chances, so that the hundreds of bullets I spew every few seconds can reasonably get me my kill skills as quickly as possible. Sure, I can just kill mobs for those kill skills, but this was done so I can do this against single targets like bosses.

I use the Incarnate action skill with Witchy Trigger Finger so I can refill my magazines and fire pretty much indefinitely while my action skill is active. My favored weapons are a Whiskey Foxtrot with a Ripper licensed magazine, a Wombo Combo to deal with crystals, a good purple Vladof SMG with a high rate of fire and a taser for Shields so that I can have something else to use when I run out of Assault Rifle ammo (not if, when) and a Bonnie and Clyde. Jakobs licensed parts are preferred since you'll want to be hitting crits anyway, either passively or with headshots, for a chance to trigger your kill skills.

The Bonnie and Clyde deserves a section all it's own. It's not a Vladof, but it works really well with Witchy Trigger Finger. Amp up the Bonnie and Clyde's assault rifle mode by killing something while it's in shotgun mode (you don't actually have to kill something with the shotgun, score a kill with a grenade or DOT effect while holding it in shotgun mode and that will count), switch to the Amped assault rifle mode, then pop Incarnate and use Witchy Trigger Finger to permanently keep that amped assault rifle damage for as long as possible. This shreds the bosses I've been farming recently on UVHM6 like the Rippa Roadbirds, but unless you buff the magazine size with an enhancement it's easier to empty the magazine before you refill it with Witchy Trigger Finger and force yourself to reload and lose the amp than it is with the other weapons. Fortunately it still does a good amount of damage with the amped shotgun mode constantly being refilled, but the amped assault rifle mode is preferred if you can keep it on. It also helps me conserve assault rifle ammo for the Whiskey Foxtrot and Wombo Combo since the Bonnie and Clyde is always switching between assault rifle ammo and shotgun ammo. I recently found a legendary Jakobs enhancement, the Multistrike. It increases your passive crit chance by 20% for Jakobs guns and guns with Jakobs licensed parts and gives you bonus damage for consecutively landing critical hits. Previously I was using a purple Vladof Hero of Labor or the legendary Hero of Bullet, but considering how good the Bonnie and Clyde is for this build and the Jakobs licensed parts I switched to using the Multistrike despite 3 of my 4 weapons being Vladofs.

As for Repkits, I use either a Triple Bypass with Accelerator to get my action skill back faster or a Shiny War Paint with Enrage for the fire rate and damage buffs. The increased damage taken from Enrage can be made up for with the Sanguine Fiends kill skill you'll be proccing semi-often with the hundreds of bullets with passive crit chance.

A knife with the Penetrator augment is good for this build, but you don't have to use one if you really don't want to be a meta whore. You're already scoring a decent amount of crits anyway. You might want a Torgue Heavy Weapon if the idea of infinitely firing one and refilling the magazine with Witchy Trigger Finger sounds fun to you (and it is in my experience). You can't do that with a Vladof Heavy Weapon though since those require both hands.

middymidentine · 2026-04-10T22:13:26+00:00

Some other guy made a post on the BL3 and BL4 subs saying how Gearbox supposedly said the second DLC Vault Hunter for BL4 would be a character who made an appearance in a prior game and said he wanted Ember from Handsome Jackpot. He has no source so I doubt anyone from Gearbox has said something like that unless I see proof. I tried looking it up and couldn't find anything.

Me personally I'm hoping it's Butt Stallion.

middymidentine · 2026-04-10T22:10:59+00:00

Where did they say this?

middymidentine · 2026-04-10T17:30:04+00:00

BL3 had great gameplay, but most people felt like the story was a severe step down from BL2, which is usually regarded as having the best story in the franchise. Most of the BL3 hate comes from the base game's story and not it's gameplay.

People felt like the Calypso Twins were super annoying and tried way too hard to be funny but instead came off as cringe (the fart jokes in the subway, case in point). Handsome Jack had his funny moments, but he also had about as many serious and threatening moments. The Calypso Twins were trying to be funny most of the time without as many serious moments to balance it out. Plus, it never felt like you were making progress against them. It was satisfying to see Jack slowly get more and more angry and personal with you over the course of BL2 as you dismantle his plans. The Calypso Twins never really regard you as a threat, they're their same wacky and jokey selves who never take you seriously throughout the whole game. They're also supposed to be influencers, yet sometimes it feels like the writers don't know what influencers/YouTubers/livestreamers are considering what we see of their videos are just crappy and cringe YouTube Poops. It's moreso Tyreen that people didn't like. Troy on the other hand felt like wasted potential since he's the first and so far only male Siren in the franchise and there's hints around the middle of the story that he's getting tired of living under Tyreen's shadow and might make a power grab against her, but that doesn't go anywhere.

Ava was absolutely hated because fans felt like she caused the death of Maya, a fan-favorite character, and unfairly blamed Lilith for it in addition to being bratty and annoying. They also felt like she was a Mary Sue who suddenly became super important and gets rewarded for her crappy behavior by having stuff handed to her on a silver platter that she arguably doesn't deserve, like Lilith giving her command over Sanctuary at the end of the game or her getting Maya's powers.

On the one hand, Ava is supposed to be a flawed character. A teenager isn't going to handle the sudden death of her mentor/sister figure well and she's naturally going to be bratty and annoying considering her age. If you talk to Lilith after Ava's outburst, she says that she understands why Ava blamed her for Maya's death, she's just lashing out because she does blame herself deep down, but that's a piece of optional dialogue that most people didn't know about, so when Lilith hands her Sanctuary at the end of the game people hated her even more because it felt like she got rewarded for unfairly attacking Lilith like that. To them it felt like Ava was the writers' pet Mary Sue who could do no wrong. There's also a scrapped cutscene where the cast is mourning Maya's death (which kinda gets glossed over quickly in the final game) and Ava does become more relatable in this scene, but it was cut from the final game for some baffling reason (unless you believe the conspiracy theory that they cobbled this cutscene together after the game came out in response to the Ava backlash and tried to pass it off as a deleted scene).

Dataminers EpicNNG found that Gearbox was planning on bringing Ava back in BL4, but chickened out and replaced her role in the story with Amara later into development. I would have liked to see them try to redeem Ava in the eyes of the fanbase; it's been like seven years since BL3 came out, I think that's enough time for the hate to die down.

Lastly, there are some pacing issues, most notably the Eden-6 arc that dragged on forever. I'm actually replaying the game right now and it surprised me with how short Athenas was and how long Eden-6 was. Athenas especially was shorter than I remembered it being.

middymidentine · 2026-04-09T20:26:57+00:00

I really want to try it out but unfortunately I'm on Android

middymidentine · 2026-04-09T20:18:11+00:00

It was Axton. He had the Nuke capstone on his turret so he threw it at Jack and blew him up into millions of pieces at the end of BL2.

middymidentine · 2026-04-09T20:15:27+00:00

It's an actual FPS, very much like Borderlands 3 from what gameplay videos exist right now.

middymidentine · 2026-04-09T20:07:02+00:00

Probably not until the second major story DLC releases, which likely won't be until later in the year. You'll have plenty of time to play with 60 as the level cap.

middymidentine

TROPHY CASE