Table of contents
New Weapon Arsenal
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a fantasy looter shooter with the Borderlands trademark loot system. While the game builds upon a familiar foundation, Gearbox Software is mixing it up through this new theme. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will provide a new arsenal of weapons for you to loot.
The Gameplay reveal trailer gave us a glimpse of what we can expect from the weapon arsenal as we see Guns, Crossbows, Melee Weapons, and Magic Spells pass by.
New Guns
The character in the reveal trailer is wielding a machine gun. If this was a Borderlands game, I was going to be confused. The weapon looked like a Torgue Assault Rifle if you looked at the design of the body and the big shells. However, the barrel would be something you would find on a Vladof Assault Rifle. I know legendary weapons can mix and match different manufacturer trades in Borderlands 3. But this sets us up for new things to come, which would be awesome as it would make the gunplay feel fresh again.
You will start with 1 weapon slot and unlock 3 additional slots as you progress through the game.
Weapon Types
You will be able to find ammunition for these 6 different weapon types.
- PISTOLS
- If you’ve got good aim and a steady hand, Pistols can take you far. These trusty sidearms are great for practicing clutch headshots and picking off rank-and-file targets from close- to mid-range.
- SMGS
- Pepper nearby attackers with a barrage of hot lead using SMGs (Submachine Guns, if you’re fancy) and their high rate of fire. Eliminating tougher enemies will quickly chew through your ammo supply, so try to make every bullet count.
- ASSAULT RIFLES
- Whittle the opposition down using the solid, sustained damage of Assault Rifles. These versatile tools of destruction are effective at just about any range, provided you keep an eye on how many bullets are left in your magazine.
- SHOTGUNS
- If you like your fights up close and personal, Shotguns are ideal for blasting nearby baddies. Their wide bullet spread makes them less effective from a distance, but they pack one hell of a punch in close quarters.
- SNIPER RIFLES
- Eliminate key targets before they even see you coming with Sniper Rifles, every long-range hunter’s weapon of choice. Granted, zoomed-in scope shots aren’t ideal when a charging skeleton is swinging a sword right in your face.
- HEAVY WEAPONS
- Make quick work of enemy hordes with the powerful splash damage of Heavy Weapons. Just make sure you don’t miss the few shots you get, because reloading is going to take a while.
Weapon Manufacturers
In the first official gameplay trailer, you can spot a bunch of weapons. One of the weapons has the Fediore branding on it. As a Borderlands player, you quickly recognize this as Tediore. The weapons manufacturer that produces weapons that you throw away when instead of reloading.
The Fediore brand is a spin-off of Tediore and has already made an appearance in the Bunkers & Badasses board game. It’s assumable that the other brands will also use their board game spin-off.
- Tediore = Feriore
- Don’t settle for inferior weapons. With a small dose of polymorphing magic, Feriore guns can take on new forms as you fling them across the battlefield, like winged blasters and bouncing bombs. Moments later, they’ll reappear in your hands ready to unload all over again!
- Hyperion = Hyperius
- Create some cover for yourself even when you’re on the move with Hyperius guns, which project a magical shield out of thin air whenever you’re aiming down the sights. They’ll also get increasingly more accurate the longer you fire, so unloading a clip in one continuous stream is a great idea.
- Dahl = Dahlia
- Variety is the spice of life-and-death shootouts, so mix things up with the alternate firing modes of Dahlia guns. These have different behaviors based on the gun you’ve got; for example, Full Auto mode will let you hold the trigger to spray bullets hither and thither, but the staccato blasts of Burst Fire mode mean you’ll have to keep squeezing the trigger if you want a continuous stream of fire.
- Vladoff = Stoker
- With the absurdly high firing rate of Stoker guns, you’ll quit worrying and surrender yourself to the steady stream of slaying. All that rapidfire chews through ammo in a hurry, so make sure you’re well-stocked before you gleefully hold down the trigger.
- Maliwan = Malefactor
- …
- Bandit = Skuldugger
- Through some form of arcane trickery, Skuldugger guns never need to be reloaded as they continuously regenerate their own ammo supply from the aether. But magic has its limits, so you can’t fire forever—eventually you’ll need to lay off the trigger and let these cool off a bit lest they overheat.
- Torgue = Torgue
- Torgue heard that you like explosions in your explosions, so he and his manufacturing team made sure that all Torgue guns cause as much detonation and combustion as possible. Some can even shoot magical mines that stick to enemies before bursting into flames, leaving behind piles of smouldering ash.
- Jakobs = Black Powder
- If you’re a crackshot looking to aerate some skeleton skulls, pick yourself up a Blackpowder gun. Critical hits will cause your bullets to ricochet, damaging a nearby enemy as a bonus. Blackpowder pistols can also unload just as fast as you can pull the trigger, so get to squeezin’.
Weapon Attachments
Throughout the Gameplay Trailer, you see guns with attachments hinting at an alternative firing mode.
Crossbow Barrels
In the Gameplay reveal trailer, we see multiple crossbows being used, however, if you look closely you see that there is a gun with a crossbow barrel to it.
Magical Barrels
In Borderlands 3 we had those alien barrels that altered the way weapons acted. In the gameplay reveal we see a weapon that has a barrel with magical glowing markings on it. This could be the TTWL alien barrel but displayed in the new fantasy theme.
In an interview Creative Director, Matt Cox, confirmed that Magical Barrels commonly have elemental effects but there are other types of magical barrels.
Bows and Crossbows
Randy Pitchford responded to the question if they would add Bows & Crossbows into the game. To which Randy replies; “ok”. His response immediately sparked even more hype in the community. This leaves us with the question; are we getting them or the enemy?
Well, we got our answer in the Gameplay reveal trailer. We will be able to fire bows, some will even be attached to weapons.
Bows can weaken enemies to make them more susceptible to melee damage.
Melee Weapons
The press release already mentioned ‘slash your way through enemies’ and ‘Broadswords collide’. It’s no secret anymore we will be getting melee weapons in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. This is something the Borderlands community has been asking for and we are getting it in Wonderlands.
You will be able to find a wide range of melee weapons in the game. There will be swords, maces, axes, and more.
Like the ranged weapons, melee weapons will also be procedurally generated. This means that they have various weapon parts that determine the weapon’s performance. This could mean we will be seeing things like different handles, lengths, charms, etc. on swords for example.
Melee is a secondary combat mechanic and therefore has 1 dedicated slot in your loadout. Dedicated melee builds are probably not going to be a thing outside of some odd builds and legendary items.
Melee does have great synergy with other gameplay mechanics. You can easily integrate it into your combat loop by using specific perks, skills, or status effects. For example, arrow bolts could weaken enemies to melee attacks but could also work vice-versa in conjunction with other combat mechanics.
Personally, I wasn’t a fan of melee combat in a first-person game. However, with Battleborn, Gearbox proved to me that it can work and it can be fun. While that game wasn’t successful with the mainstream, Gearbox leveled up because of that game and it already showed in Borderlands 3.
It looks like you can use your melee weapon while sliding and perform combos.
In the Gameplay reveal you see your character throwing a hammer and recalling it just like Thor in the Avengers would do. However, if you played Battleborn you know that this is something that Boldur could do. The spin-to-win is something we have seen on Rath, this is confirmed to be an action skill.
Magic Spells
Magic spells are obtained as books in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. They are not simply a cosmetic change compared to the grenades from Borderlands. Instead, magic spells are like mini-skills.
Magic Spells run on the Borderlands™ weapon system. This means you can expect a big variety of spells just like we saw a lot of different grenades in Borderlands 3. The first thing that comes to my mind is that a fireball spell could have multiple fireballs, flight straight or home in on enemies, etc etc.
Spells come in a variety of different types from fireballs, hawks, hydras, meteors, and circles of protection.
Spells have a lot of different delivery systems; fire and forget, repeating spells, channeling spells, self-casting spells.
We see spells being cast through a wand and hand gestures.
Dualwielding Spells and performing the Polymorph spell are both skills of the Spellshot Class.
In the ‘Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep’ DLC for Borderlands 2, you also had magic spells. These kinda had a cooldown as the game automatically recharged your “grenades” as that was the hack Gearbox used to have magic spells in that game. It wouldn’t surprise me if you have a magic bar in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and you can gather mana potions along the way to refill your bar. I already spotted some potion bottles in the Gameplay trailer.
Weapon Rarities
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands has 5 different weapon rarity types. The higher the rarity the better the item is, however, don’t just ditch your weapon because you find one of a higher rarity. The weapon does need to fit your character’s play style.
- Common (White)
- Uncommon (Green)
- Rare (Blue)
- Epic (Purple)
- Legendary (Orange)
