Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands hasn’t even been out for a month and it’s already getting DLC. The first, “Coiled Captors,” is part of the “Mirrors of Mystery” series of additional biomes to shoot and loot your way through, which itself is part of the game’s season pass. It’s out today for all platforms.
A spinoff of the popular Borderlands series of loot-shooters, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a fantasy-inspired respray set sometime between 2012’s Borderlands 2 and 2019’s Borderlands 3. Historically, Borderlands games have gone heavy on the DLC, each one coming with several full-length expansions. Some of the best narrative campaigns in the series, like Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep (Borderlands 2) or Bounty of Blood (Borderlands 3), are found in the DLC.
“Coiled Captors” is not nearly on the scale of such meaty expansions. Though there’s a story—something about freeing an old god from being trapped in mortal shells—it’s intended to be a replayable gauntlet, something akin to the endgame Chaos Chamber mode, where you repeatedly run through dungeons, gunning down waves of enemies in the name of finding better loot. (Completing “Coiled Captors” will add its enemies and rooms to the possible runs in your Chaos Chamber.)
Gearbox showed off the new mode today in a brief trailer, panning over the new battlegrounds and enemies, plus “Chums,” the boss. You’ll also note how, rather than the over-wubby dubstep the studio’s marketing department is so historically fond of, it’s set to a punk-metal song that wouldn’t be out of place in the end credits of your favorite anime:
You can access the “Mirrors of Mystery” mode at Dreamveil Outlook, a region located near Brighthoof, the main hub city, in the game’s overworld. Like every other enemy in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, the cannon fodder within “Coiled Captors” will scale to your level, though it’s set at a base of 13. (If you’ve unlocked Brighthoof, you’re likely not too far behind that anyway.) Neat thing about Chums: Once you start “Coiled Captors,” the boss fight gets tougher each week over the next four weeks. Not-neat thing about Chums: Every time you die, you get kicked back out of the mode and have to start that run over again.
In a press release announcing today’s news, Gearbox outlined the next three chapters of “Mirrors of Mystery,” respectively named “Glutton’s Castle,” “Molten Mirrors,” and “Shattering Spectreglass,” but did not provide a timeline. Personally, I’m hoping it’s a bit further out than “Coiled Captors.” My backlog can only take so much.
