MeinMMO spoke to the developers of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands about the endgame of the insane Borderlands shooter with a fantasy setting. And as expected, it gets crazy.
That’s what it’s about:
- Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a spin-off of the Borderlands series and will be released on March 25, 2022
- Publisher 2K let us play for a few hours and organized an interview with developers
- In the interview we talked about the endgame, unicorns, rabbits and lots of chaos
Wonderlands tells psychotic fantasy stories of insanity
How is the game going? In Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands you experience a wacky fantasy story and are a character on a game board – game master Tiny Tina provides the extra kick of madness.
In the course of the story you will visit several worlds with different sub-settings: there is a pirate world, an area full of goblins and dragons or the standard castle setting with knight stuff.
For a deeper look into the game, check out our Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands video:
But what if you visit all Wonderlands and have finished the story? MeinMMO spoke to Wonderlands developers about the endgame and can tell you: As in the previous parts of the Borderlands series, there is still a lot to do in Wonderlands.
- 20 chaos levels increase the level of difficulty
- Myth Ranks improve your character’s stats
- Build optimization through targeted loot
- Chaos Chamber generate random dungeons
In the following sections you will learn what the endgame of the twisted fantasy shooter has to offer. Here you can find our short play report on the demo:
Borderlands tries a new setting and it works better than the old one – Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands alluded to
No New Game+, but a lot of “chaos”
Who did you talk to? The interview was all about the Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands endgame and 2 developers answered our questions:
- Matt Cox
- Kent Rochefort
- Lead Designer – Chaos Chamber
When does the endgame start? Theoretically, the endgame starts when the story ends. However, if you are not yet at the max level 40, it is more of a kind of endgame light.
At that point, you can play other worlds that you haven’t seen before, or grind side quests in known areas to the max level.
If you have the 40 full, then the “chaos” is worth it! The developers explained to us that the “Chaos Chamber” and the “Chaos Levels” make up the majority of the endgame.
How is the endgame structured? Rather than relying on several different activities like Borderlands 3, Wonderlands drops many of these features and relies entirely on Chaos Chambers.
The Chambers seem like a mix of Borderlands 3’s endgame activities – except for the True Vaulthunter mode. New Game+ doesn’t offer Wonderlands at all – you can set a high difficulty (or a low one) from the start.
In the “Chaos Chambers” you play random dungeons and collect crystals that you can exchange at the end of a run for the type of loot you are currently hunting. In the next sections we will go into more detail about the dungeons and the targeted loot.
Also on board are the “Guardian Ranks” from Borderlands 3, with which you can specifically increase individual character attributes – but in Wonderlands this means “Myth Ranks”.
You can also further increase the difficulty with the “Chaos Levels” if you have unlocked the corresponding level via the “Chaos Chambers”.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will be a crazy loot shooter with magic and “Pokemon map”
The “Chaos Chambers” are random dungeons with bosses
How do the Chaos Chambers work? These “chambers” are the focus of the Wonderlands endgame. The activity drags you into randomly generated dungeons, each with their own enemies and flow.
Different rooms are chained together and filled with different threats that you already know from other areas. A normal run takes around 20-30 minutes and you have 3 lives to get through.
At the end of each room you have to choose between 2 portals and your choice influences how to proceed. You can also decide whether you want to activate curses (“Curses”) or blessings (“Boons”).
A curse increases the difficulty, but also your reward in the form of crystals. You use these crystals at the end of a run to specifically request loot – the more you have, the more loot.
During the run, you can also use the crystals to activate “boons” to secure advantages for you. This makes the dungeon easier, but you have fewer crystals to loot.
At the end of a passage there are boss fights, some of which are hidden by puzzles.
With the bosses, the developers are focusing on more action and are expanding the mechanics in such a way that you have to move and dodge more while you knock down the life points of the boss.
4 types of passes create “chaotic coincidence”
Lead designer Kent Rochefort said the developers wanted to create a kind of “chaotic coincidence” to make the dungeons different and new over and over again. You can choose from 4 versions:
- Normal passage
- Advanced passage
- Featured passage
- Chaos Trial
The normal passage consists of 6 dungeon rooms, a mini boss room and a boss room at the end. With the extended passage there are already 12 rooms.
“Featured” is a community activity: for one week, the featured run is the same for all players and not random. Things like damage, used builds or completion time can be compared.
With the “Chaos Trails” you will find another random dungeon with which you can increase your chaos level. This works similar to Boderlands 3 with the “Mayhem Mode”.
If you have unlocked a Chaos level, you can increase the Chaos level at any time, which increases the enemy difficulty in the “Chaos Chamber” dungeons and the rest of the world and improves the loot found.
Then you have to play a “Chaos Trial” again to get to the next level.
At release you can go up to chaos level 20. With later updates the max level will continue to rise. Creative Director Matt Cox explained to us that the chaos levels are designed in such a way that you could theoretically increase them infinitely.
Chaos gear and targeted loot using…rabbits
Let’s finally get to the most important point: the loot. The developers make it clear that the Chaos Chambers dungeons are the most efficient way to optimize your builds or get new powerful items.
This is especially due to … rabbits. At the end of each run, you can spend your collected crystals on rabbit totems, and each totem represents a specific type of gear.
Are you looking for a new assault rifle? Stuff the crystals in the Assault Rifle Bunny. Rather a new armor? Sure, then the armor bunny gets something to eat.
The developers want to achieve that you no longer have to farm the same activity for hours to get the desired loot. Instead, they offer you random dungeons with targeted loot that you can farm for hours!
With each Chaos level, the difficulty of the world and the Chaos Chambers increases. And more Chaos also means better rewards – the Chaos Gear.
Each new Chaos level increases the values of the weapons and equipment found:
- Chaos weapons and spells have better attributes like damage, rate of fire or magazine size
- Chaos gear has better effects and passive properties
Another mechanic is the “Moon Orbs” that you get when you complete “Chaos Chambers”. This allows you to “re-roll” equipment and sometimes even determine which effect you want to keep and which one is randomly re-rolled.
Summary Chaos Chambers
In the interview, we were a little disappointed that “bunnies” distributed the best loot, although we didn’t mean it that seriously. We would have preferred the “ass horse” – a loot-spitting unicorn from the Borderlands 2 DLC Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep.
However, creative director Matt Cox reassured us: “You’ll see a lot of ass horses in the game, don’t worry.” However, we are now rather more worried than before – but in a good way.
That was the big overview of the endgame of Tiny Tina’s Wonderland. If you have any questions on the subject, feel free to ask. We are happy to address any ambiguities and can also ask the developers for further details.
You can also leave us a comment with your opinion on the new endgame. If you want to read more about Wonderlands, then have a look here: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands features 2 new classes – trigger-happy mages and brutal hammer swingers
