Borderlands 3 players: You’re not doing anything wrong, so just be patient

Borderlands 3 gives you plenty of ways to customize your characters, from the three skill trees of each new vault hunter, to the array of guns you can have equipped, and the class mods that you’ll collect as you play. But many of these options aren’t available when you begin the game, and it may take hours — if not days — until you’re able to access everything you’d like.

If you’re jumping in and you’re frustrated about not understanding all those systems and how to get to them, the key is: Just be patient, and keep playing.

All good things come to those who wait

In fact, this misconception plagued me for the first dozen hours or so when I was playing Borderlands 3 for review: I kept wondering what I was missing that would allow me to carry four weapons at once (instead of the two I started with), and when I would unlock the ability to use class mods that augment my abilities and the levels on my skill trees.

But rest assured that there’s no magic side quest that you need to tackle to get to this content. You’ll unlock the extra weapon slots, the ability to mine and spend Eridium, and even the use of your class mods — along with other options — in due time as you play through the Borderlands 3 campaign. The game just takes its sweet time offering these abilities to you, past the point that I expected to have full rein over my loadouts. But it will all be unlocked if you’re patient and keep plugging away.

If you’d like to know when each of the following unlocks or abilities become available to you, however, take a look at the guides linked above and below to get up to speed as quickly as possible.

But if you were worried about your first few hours of the game? Don’t be. The only thing you’re missing at that point is patience, and I was in the same boat.