Man this game gets better as you get used to it/things keep going. I keep thinking "I've just about had it trying to get through solo" when I reach a really frustrating section/mission that absolutely destroys me (read: I die at least 3 times just trying to get through an area) but then it's like the game knows and gives me a drop that changes everything, like last night after having the only weapon I had with slag being a weak-ass pistol with like a 12% chance, I suddenly happen upon a Maliwan sniper that not only does double the damage of my current best sniper with equivalent stats the rest of the way down but also has a 54.6% chance of slagging enemies.
Couple of questions: Does doing the side missions in your initial playthrough (1) affect playthrough 2/TVHM? I keep seeing people saying to avoid the side missions entirely until you beat the second playthrough so that the missions/rewards will level up but does that really mean that any side missions you do in playthrough 1 do NOT show up in playthrough 2 (unlike BL1)? If so laaaame! EDIT: Looks like this was answered as I was typing my huge diatribe below. Glad I haven't screwed myself over by taking sidemissions on in the first run through!
Question 2: Any other "hoarders" in games here, and how do you deal with it? I bought all of the backpack upgrades as soon as I could and I keep finding myself having to make hard decisions on loot (the best I can get myself down to is around 23/27 full backpack) every other mission even including using the bank/stash between missions (and I've purchased half of the upgrades for that). The problem with the variety is you can get a LOT of equally-good (for different situations) but entirely different weapons of the same class, so even when I take things down to only what I really want to keep/can't decide on, I still have something like 4 handguns, 4 sniper rifles, 4 smgs, 3 assault rifles, 3 shotguns, 2 rocket launchers, 2 shields, 3 artifacts, 3 class mods, and 4 grenade mods. Like recently I found a cluster grenade mod that does pretty weak base damage compared to my current bruisers and only has 4 children, but those children are homing, they also slag, AND they also transfuse which can be a lifesaver when I get myself in too deep and am waiting for my stupid slow health regen mod to work (if I'm using that one). On the other hand I have a normal cluster grenade that does 3x the base damage of that one and also has 10 children (perfect for tight rooms full of enemies or giant slow movers), but no effects at all and a long-ish fuse, a corrosive AoE grenade that does pretty good corrosive damage for a long time (great for bottlenecked bots), and a slag grenade with "make it rain". Every weapon type is a different version of this same problem. I had this same problem with BL1 but not nearly as pronounced as the combined strengths/weaknesses of weapons didn't seem to vary nearly as much.
