Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands vs Assault on Dragon Keep

The Different Tiny Tina Adventures

Tiny Tina is a beloved character in the Borderlands franchise and now has her own games. However, what’s the difference between these 2 games. Because you got Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure. In this article, I’m going to explain what each game is and has to offer.

Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep

Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure is a stand-alone version of Borderlands 2’s DLC, Assault on Dragon Keep. It’s called “A Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure” to promote the release of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.

Assault on Dragon Keep gives an impression of what you can expect from Wonderlands. Tiny Tina has made her own D&D adventure and you get to play it alongside her. This game takes place on 2 layers, the NPCs playing the board game and you actually playing inside the game from a first-person shooter perspective.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a follow-up on the success of the Assault on Dragon Keep. However, this time around it isn’t a 5 hour DLC but a fully developed AAA game that doesn’t have to work within the limitations of its main game. While Assault on Dragon Keep needed to work within the confinements of Borderlands 2, with Wonderlands, the developers can create unique systems that are tailored towards the gameplay.

What’s New?

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands adds a lot of new features to the foundation that Assault on Dragon Keep offered but it also shifts away from the Borderlands formula.

Playable Characters

Assault on Dragon Keeps has 6 playable characters. Each Vault Hunter has 1 action skill and 3 skill trees you can spend points on.

Wonderland gives you the ability to create your own playable character, giving you a wide range of options to customize your character. When designing your hero you can choose from 1 of the 6 skill trees each one represents a class. Each class has 2 action skills, however, once you are halfway through the game you get the option to multi-class and add another skill tree to your loadout.

Overworld

In Assault on Dragon Keep, you walked from 1 location to another in first-person mode. Yes, you can use fast travel stations to quickly move from one map to another.

In Wonderlands, there is a whole new Overworld that lets you travel from location to location but it also adds new gameplay elements to the game. You can discover new locations and engage in random encounters. While these elements aren’t forced upon you or required to complete the main campaign the developers do want to reward you when you do engage in these things.

Magic Spells

Since Assault on Dragon Keep was a Borderlands 2 DLC the game relied on grenades for the most part. However, the developers did manage to add in a few magic spells. They kinda hacked the grenade slot and added grenade ammo regeneration to these magic spells. This gave you access to 3 magic spells, the fireball, lightning-bolt, and magic missile. Each magic spell did have a normal and powerful version.

In Wonderlands, the magic spells act more like mini-skills which range from fireballs, hawks, hydras, meteors, to circles of protection. Magic Spells runs on the famous weapon system that Gearbox has developed. This means you can get a lot of variations as there are also different delivery systems; fire and forget, repeating spells, channeling spells, self-casting spells.

Melee Weapons

In Assault on Dragon Keep, you can play Krieg who has a buzz axe but that’s about it. The off-hand melee isn’t really utilized in the game. You can punch stuff but it’s not very effective.

In Wonderlands, Gearbox added Melee weapons to the game. You have a dedicated melee slot in your loadout where you can equip your swords, maces, axes, and what have you. While melee combat still comes secondary, it does provide you with interesting ways to create combat loops as melee weapons can trigger certain buffs. For example, hitting an enemy with your sword weakens them to ranged attacks or increases your magic cooldown rate.

Take Away

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands takes place after Assault on Dragon Keep but you don’t have to play the latter or any of the Borderlands games to fully immerse yourself into the game. Wonderlands is expanding on all fronts and is designed as a “full meal” rather than a “snack”.

TTWL Release

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will be released on March 25, 2022, on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and PC (Epic Exclusive, Steam Release later in 2022)