A lot can happen in a week.

So while Blackwalt was off digging for rocks in the Canadian desert, Graybush and I decided to finish up some missions in Borderlands. But on his last day before the trip, Blackwalt was playing with us in his usual supporting role as a Soldier. Around 11 p.m., after finishing up a particularly grueling mission in the Claptrap's New Robot Revolution expansion, he promptly declared that he was done for the evening, and left. Without waiting for us to turn in the mission for the reward.

Big mistake.


Pictured above is the room full of weapon chests that Graybush and I were led to after completing the mission, and more importantly, turning it in.

Pictured below is the same room, after we cherry-picked a few select goodies from said chests full of loot:

Sorry about that.

Those of you who have played Borderlands will know that weapons and other found goodies don't persist from one gaming session to the next, so we really had no choice but to maximize our profits. The room conveniently contained vending machines that allowed us to pick up and sell unwanted items for profit, with a minimum of walking (which is good, because my inventory was pretty much full going in).

That and the fact that we really had no idea if the treasure room would still be unlocked the next time we played, let alone full of the same calibre of goodies.

Here's an example of one particularly interesting item:

Note the gun's value in the lower left corner: $9999999. Let's just say it's my new favourite weapon.

To give you an idea, we had started to find the occasional weapons valued at $1 million+ recently, but this one takes the cake at nearly 10x that. At least we think it's only worth 10x the norm. Due to a programming glitch (or choice?), Borderlands doesn't display values over 7 digits long, so this could actually be worth a lot more. So please don't take it the wrong way when I decline offering to show it to you in person by dropping it on the ground so you can "compare stats". (Actually, there only is the one way to take it.)

Interestingly, this same glitch also makes it impossible to tell how much money we're carrying at any given time, as we hit the 7-digit mark over a year ago. One can estimate this when they die, though, as the cost of regeneration is believed to be about 10% of your total stash. So when someone goes running off ahead of the group and gets into trouble and the cost is in the tens of millions, you know they've been doing a LOT of hoovering.

On the other hand, I recently started a new character to use in Graybush's game when his buddy is in town, as he's a much lower level player at the moment. This is quite an adjustment for me, being used to killing baddies with my Level 64 Mordecai just by glaring at them. Let's just say it didn't take long to over-estimate my abilities and get my ass kicked.

Cost of regeneration? $64.