I have been enjoying my time with the Borderland’s DLC - The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. It follows the structure set from the full game:

Enter into a zone - get quests from a bounty board/NPC - complete the quest - turn in the quest - move on to a new zone and repeat.

The Problem:

Right off the bat I started picking up brains from defeated zombies (When you kill a zombie by a head shot, their brain pops out), I thought “Ok cool, I pick up these brains and I either get a achievement for picking up X amount of brains or I’ll run into a NPC and turn them in for loot”. So off I went - getting quests, killing zombies, getting brains, turning in quests, repeat. I beat the last boss, credits roll and my quest log is clear. But why was I picking up brains this whole time?….so I see I’m missing an achievement titled “Braaaaaains!”

So, time to take a step back to the original content of Borderlands and everything in the DLC besides this one mission - Borderlands doesn’t encourage players to go off exploring! Any money, guns, etc players find are placed around areas you will be when your completing any one of the hundreds of quests.

After “finishing” the DLC content I went searching around for what I do with all these brains I have collected. Might I add that after completing the DLC my character had leveled up to the point where none of the zombies were a threat and were so low level that I didn’t even get xp for killing them.

A small jag here - Borderlands does have enemy scaling, but its tied to your progression in the main story, not your characters level. So I entered into the DLC around level 22, so that enemies were scaled to and around my level when I enter. Upon defeating the boss, I was level 27 or 28. The zombie enemies are now push overs and drop crappy loot because they are so low level. The only way for me to fight zombies around my level again, is to go back into the full game and do quests for the main story line (Since leveling in the DLC these quests are a breeze and are full of more crappy loot and weak enemies), are you noticing a trend here?

So I find (its tucked away in the corner of a zone, an area I never went to during any quest - remember the game up to this point has never awarded exploration) the NPC that is tied to the “Braaaaains!” quest. So I get the quest - Bring the NPC 10 zombie brains. Done and done good NPC sir, you see, over the last four hours or so, I must have picked up thousands of brains. Wait….whats this?, none of the brains I have picked up count and I now need to go collect “fresh” brains?? Ok…that’s bullshit….but since its only 10 brains, I can get that quickly and I’m guessing I’ll get some sweet loot (this whole game is about getting loot).

Upon turning in the 10 brains, I get a new request to get 25 brains, then 50 and then 100 brains. Really?? I need to get collect a total of 175 brains after I had picked up thousands over the course of my play through? I stopped when I got the request to bring the NPC one hundred brains.

This quest stands out as a black eye and a oddity in Borderlands, while Borderlands has its share of “collecting/harvest” quests, the collecting caps out around 3 to 5 items. This makes sense since no one likes “farming”! Borderlands is an RPG, and most RPG’s promote exploration, I’m all for that, but you can’t tell a player to spend 45 hours completing the full game along with the DLC by giving the player way points to every quest to then say “Hey, you should start exploring the world of borderlands for this one lone quest”.

Solutions:

Least amount of work - When I find the NPC I should be able to cash in all the brains Ive already collected to wrap up the “Braaaaaains!” quest line.

Taking a minute to drag the NPC nod to a different map - Move the NPC to the DLC’s starting zone (Jacobs Cove) so I could have started collecting the “right” brains off the bat. Since all the quests for the DLC come from this starting zone, it wouldn’t feel like such a chore running back and forth collecting the various amounts of brains. By the time I’m ready to fight the last boss, I should have collected enough brains to finish the quest line.

My favorite - Have the NPC in the starting zone, the quest then asks: “Bring me 175 brains, I will give you sweet loot when you trade in 10,25,50 and 100 brains at a time”. I would then be fulfilling this quest as I go around completing the main quest line of the DLC (Now it doesn’t feel like farming!). Since all the other quests are tied to this starting zone, I would be cashing in the brains along side the other quests (I’m multi-tasking!). Defeating challenging enemies around my level, not clearing through weak enemies just to finish the quest - goes back to the farming and processing through the rest of the DLC.

-Fin