A Vault Hunter's Guide to THVM and Playthrough 2.5!

I've been seeing a lot of people ask questions about farming, TVHM, and PT 2.5. After scouring through this subreddit, I haven’t found a single thread that explains exactly how they all work. However, I have found bits and pieces from many threads and I felt that it would be helpful to compile all of the information that I found into one general FAQ.

Introduction

So you’ve beaten Borderlands 2. Congratulations! What’s this? True Vault Hunter Mode, you say? All the game really tells you is that it’s where the real challenge begins. Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.

Or maybe you go on the r/borderlands2 and you see all these people sporting legendary (orange) weapons like nobody’s business and you want some of it yourself.

This guide is here to clear that stuff up.

True Vault Hunter Mode

The game has been out for a while so I’m not surprised if many of you haven’t at least accessed TVHM yet. Basically, the game starts over completely except you get to keep the skills, items, and weapons that you obtained in your first playthrough. You’ll be all the way back from the very start at whatever level you finished your first run through Pandora.

What else makes TVHM different? Well, enemies have become a lot tougher this time around. You could very well be fighting a bullymong that’s level 35. The names and forms of enemies have changed too. Badass enemies are more common. More enemies are armored or wearing shields. The guns you had at the end of your first run might have decimated waves of enemies now but they may not even hold up by the time you reach Sanctuary. Pandora is seriously out to get you this time around, but that also means its treasures will be more powerful and delicious and amazing and beautiful. You’ll get lightheaded from all the loot boners that you’ll get.

Some tips:

• Get a reliable shield. Fast shield recharge rate and low recharge delay are definitely things that you wanna look for. Anything else (spikes, roid, boosters, elementals) is all up to your discretion. As long as it can hold up while you’re getting mobbed by enemies, you should be good.

• Slag may not have been so popular your first time through but now it’s something you want to use dearly. Marcus showed you in one of his earlier missions that slag increases the damage an enemy takes. Take advantage of that. The enemies are REALLY tough now.

• Play with others! Teamwork can take the load off things, especially in some of the tougher missions (Bandit/Hyperion Slaughter). Plus! More players=more loot=loot boners.

Farming (and a little bit of PT 2.5)

So you’re using those tips and all is going well. You’re strolling through Pandora, shooting bandits left and right. Wonderful! You’re getting the hang of it. Now that you’re getting acclimated to TVHM, you begin to feel a hunger. FOR POWER(ful weapons).

I can’t find a clever way to segue into this next set of tips, so here’s how to get those succulent unique/legendary weapons.

First of all, save your sidequests that offer Blue (unique) rewards ‘til AFTER you beat The Warrior in Playthrough 2. Don’t even accept them! Once you beat The Warrior, Pandora is taken through Pimp My Ride and Xzibit pimps all of the baddies out and they all come out level 50 and all your sidequests become level 50 and mercy is just the name of a Doctor (who also happens to be trying to kill you). Welcome to Playthrough 2.5.

Why save the sidequests? Well, for one, once you beat The Warrior, all of the missions you’ve left untouched scale to level 50. The difficulty may have scaled but that also means the rewards did too. Would you rather have a level 45 Flame of the Firehawk shield? Or one that’s level 50? There’s no PT 3… yet (Or maybe there won’t be one at all. Just saying). You won’t be able to do the mission again when everything scales up.

How to farm!

This requires a little lot patience, diligence, and a good couple hundred of hours of free time.

1. Find the item that you wanna farm.
2. Reach the enemy/boss that drops it.
3. MDK the designated target.
4. If it drops what you wanted, hooray! If not, save and quit. Repeat step one.

That’s it.

Now, you may be asking, "Where do I get started?"

Well, I would advise farming for The Bee. It's a crazy powerful Amp Shield that has zero amp drain, increasing the damage you do greatly. That should definitely make the task a little less arduous. After that, start your hunt for glory.

Moonshot Farming

For a quick video guide, check out this video! (Thanks to xbox469269 for sharing!)

As for other farming methods, there is something called “Moonshot Farming.” The following is taken from gamefaqs user liinn over at the gamefaqs message board. The original post is here!

"For PS3/360 players, the process is this. (Note: For 360 users, replace “XMB” with “dashboard.”

The set up: Kill Warrior in story mission. Do not moonshoot Warrior at the console. Go jump off the cliff and die. Upon spawning, quit via game menu to save progress. Exit to XMB. (Optional: backup your file to USB thumb drive )

Moonshooting:

1. Load game.
2. Add a splitscreen 2nd player. Let the newly added 2nd player moonshoot Warrior and collect the loot.
3. Access 2p's menu, disable/enable badass points with "triangle" to trigger a save on 2p only. You should see the save icon flashing, and only on 2p.
4. Use 1p to exit to XMB, thereby not saving any progress.

Repeat 1 to 4.

If you made a mistake, copy your backup file from USB to PS3.”

For PC players, the process is a little more complicated. It’s a little long for this thread, so here’s a link to the gamespot message board where user Tuff726 offers a lovely explanation.

Treasure Room Farming

After beating The Leviathan in Captain Scarlet and Her Pirate's Booty DLC, you are granted access to THE TREASURE ROOM (insert fanfare). Open that shit up.

To farm THE TREASURE ROOM (fanfare), you have to go back to the lair of the Leviathan via Oasis. It's way too difficult to describe how do this with words so here's a lovely video that can show you how to do it.

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That’s about it for this guide. If you have any questions or any relevant points, feel free to post them in a reply and I’ll gladly edit this post.

Here are some helpful links in your quest for that scrumptious loot.

Borderlands Gun Trading - Come here to beg trade for guns!

Orange Loot Locations - What drops where? Look here!

Borderlands Wiki - Learn about loot, enemies, and locations!

Shift Code Alerts - It's always good to know when they come out.

Unique Mission Quests - Here are the quests to save until PT 2.5! (thanks Shintasama!)

Update #1: Added links added by commenters.

Update #2: Added information on Treasure Vault Farming (Captain Scarlet's DLC Required!)