Wonderlands Redux Review: Double Jump and Air Dash FTW!

This is my review on Wonderlands Redux, an overhaul mod for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.

Wonderlands Redux has been released, and I have been playing it for a while now. I have finished the Story Campaign, beaten its Chaos Trials to the highest level, and played the Mirrors DLCs with the overhaul mod.

Now, I want to share my experience playing Wonderlands Redux. I think one of the easiest ways to share my experience is to talk about its pros and cons. So, without further ado, here is the Wonderlands Redux review.

The Pros of Wonderlands Redux

First, let’s talk about the pros.

Even though there are so many features in Wonderlands Redux, not all of them are interesting to me. Furthermore, if we discuss each feature one by one, it would take too long. You could check its Nexus page or GitHub page for more details and features about Wonderlands Redux.

That’s why I have picked only some features that I truly enjoy for this list. These are the pros of Wonderlands Redux:

Double Jump and Air Dash

This is a game-changer and the best feature of Wonderlands Redux. It may sound simple enough, but it changes how I play the game a lot. In battle, it adds useful and exciting maneuvers, whether to approach enemies or escape from the mobs. During exploration, it makes it much faster to reach your destination, and it makes it so much easier to reach difficult places.

I truly hope there will be a stand-alone mod only for this part because it’s so amazing.

You can also sprint in the Overworld with Redux. However, I think it’s not that useful – at least compared to the double jump and the air dash.

Checkout my other article: Dying Light 2 Modding Tutorial

 

Chaos Trials are really challenging now

The Chaos Trials are the most important part of Wonderlands’ endgame. However, in the vanilla version, I feel bored after doing it a couple of times – even more so now that you have to do it 100 times with the latest official update.

With Redux, the Chaos level is cut down to 10 and scaled accordingly. Plus, Chaos Trials will be so much more challenging with the mod. The enemies hit harder and have much more health. Furthermore, the enemies’ spawn rate has increased dramatically. The double jumps and air dash will be very useful here because you will be trapped to death by the sheer number of enemies without those maneuvers.

Easy Access Endgame Bosses

In the vanilla version, the puzzles to trigger the raid bosses are not always available when doing a Chaos run. So, you have to try a couple of times if you are unlucky. However, in Redux, there is a new mode in the Chaos Chamber called Boss Raid Rush. In this mode, you can directly clear the puzzles to challenge the raid bosses.

Also, there are some totems or items inside the maps that you can use to spawn notable enemies. Now, farming items from bosses outside the Chaos run is so much easier.

Last but not least, in the vanilla version, it’s really cumbersome to farm items from DLC bosses because you have to repeat the entire process again and again. With Redux, after Difficulty 1, you will spawn at the boss’ phase and skip the boring part when doing Mirror DLCs.

The endgame part of the game, where you just farm bosses, will be so much faster and easier with Redux.

New Items, Including Pearlescent and Unique Rarity

There are tons of new items in Wonderlands Redux, including Pearlescent rarity gear. Pearlescent gear also has an additional trait, aside from its unique effects. Additionally, Unique items (Blue rarity with red text) now have their own rarity, so you will identify them much more easily. Many notable items in the game also have reworked special effects. It’s truly a remarkable experience to try and learn the new effects once again in the same game.

Action Skill and All Equipment Slots Unlocked at Level 1

Although they lose their usefulness quickly, these features are great to begin a new game with Redux. You don’t need to wait too long to get the Action Skill or equip all gear.

The Cons of Wonderlands Redux:

No More Save Editor

Because Redux adds and changes so many items, you can no longer use the save editor optimally. You will get an error if you try to open the character with any items from Redux. You could still open and change some things with the save editor, but you have to remove the items from your character first. You could change your first class and some other things, but you can’t edit any items to get perfect or OP weapons.

You could also change Myth Ranks stats if you cleaned your Bank and Lost Loot Machine.

For me, this is the biggest drawback because I really like to experiment with the save editor to get the perfect gear for my taste. You could still use Cheat Engine to modify parts of your gear, but it won’t be as fast and easy as using the save editor.

If you’ve never used the save editor and want to try it, keep in mind that it may ruin your experience since grinding for the perfect gear is the main drive in the endgame of a looter shooter game. With the save editor, you will lose the reason to farm the perfect gear. So, if you want to use it, keep it in moderation.

Also, on a related note, don’t ruin other people’s experiences. Play alone or with your friends if you want to play using mods or the save editor.

Checkout my other article: Step-by-Step Deadfire Modding Tutorial and Tools

 

Less Enchantment Varieties

This could be a bug within the mod, but at the time of this writing, I can only get a small number of enchantment varieties with Redux. No matter how long I farm from enemies or how many tries I make at the Enchanting Table, only a few enchantment options appear on my gear.

Plus, because you can’t use the Save Editor, it’s really sad to have so few options for the endgame builds. Furthermore, because some of the damage in the endgame comes from the enchantment, you will feel much weaker in the endgame compared to the vanilla version.

AFAIK, the Redux team has tried to fix it with the latest hotfix. However, I still couldn’t find many enchantment varieties in the game. Also, there is no list of what enchantments are disabled intentionally and what is missing because of the bug. Hopefully, the Redux team will truly fix it in the coming days.

Boss Raids Still Require Puzzles

Personally, my biggest gripe with Wonderlands in the vanilla version is having to complete annoying puzzles every time I want to face a raid boss.

I still don’t understand why the developers think it’s a good idea to force a time-consuming and soul-crushing process every time you want to farm a raid boss.

Sadly, even though the process is a bit easier, you still have to complete the puzzle every time you want to challenge the raid boss. I just hope the Redux team will remove the puzzle entirely and spawn us directly in front of the raid boss in the future.

Some Features Can Be Acquired Using Separate Mods without the Cons

While it’s not Skyrim with 60k+ mods, there are some interesting standalone mods for Wonderlands. If you only want some of the features of Redux without any drawbacks, you could try to find them in this GitHub library.

For example, if you only want to go straight to the bosses in the Mirror DLCs, you could try this mod from Apocalyptech. The same modder also offers a faster animation mod for many things that some of them are also included in the Redux mod (AFAIK). I think mods that don’t change or add items will still allow you to mess around with the save editor in case you can’t live without it.

Speaking of the save editor, you could also use it to unlock equipment slots even at the beginning of the game, or you could also use it to edit your level to 5 to unlock the Action Skill immediately.

In other words, if you only want some parts of Redux, you could try to search the library first for standalone mods that you can combine with others to customize your experience. Meanwhile, the Redux team advises against combining the mod with others because it’s big and complex, which could cause conflicts with other mods.

So, while Redux is great, it’s a whole package that you have to accept, including its drawbacks.

Finally, those are some pros and cons that I want to share in this Wonderlands Redux review.

For the time being, I think I will keep it installed since Redux is the only reason I came back to play Wonderlands. I will wait to see the updates from the Redux team. Hopefully, the Enchantment bug will be fixed in the near future, and there will be no more puzzles for the raid bosses.

Yabes Elia

Yabes Elia

An empath, a jolly writer, a patient reader & listener, a data observer, and a stoic mentor

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