Risk of Rain 2has a pretty massive roster that’s only getting larger with the upcoming Seekers of the Storm update, and it can be hard to get a gist of each character in the game. They all have descriptions, but none of them are particularly helpful till you’ve logged hours playing the character.
So that’s where I come in. I’ve got around 300 hours in Risk of Rain 2, every achievement, which includes beating the game with every character on Monsoon, and in this list, I’ve compiled a helpful summary, tips, and recommended items to prioritize with each character.
The Basic Character
First off, the first survivor on the roster, Commando, is a DPS-focused character and very little else. He specializes in very quick, weak shots, and is incredibly item-dependent and runs with him survive on whether you get items with on-hit effects. He’s simple, easy to understand, but also easily the most underpowered survivor. You can win with him, and good runs with him are very fun, but that’s about it.
Move Fast, Shoot Good
Another starter character, Huntress is less easy to play, but great if you don’t want to aim and want a character that can get out of situations very quickly. She fires off arrows that you can build to either do heavy burst damage, high DPS, or both if you’re lucky. Overall, she’s pretty decent, and once you unlock Ballista, she’s an incredibly consistent survivor.
One-Shot King
If you’re looking for a pure long-range burst survivor whose potential damage ceiling is (technically) higher than every other survivor, run Bandit with Desperado. This awesome special ability gets more damage the more enemies you kill with it, meaning if you consistently kill with it, you get tons of damage. He doesn’t have great mobility or movement skills to compensate, but man is he fun.
Customized To Your Liking
Mul-T is a super customizable survivor, with a fun DPS melee attack, inaccurate but high fire rate nail guns, great burst damage with rebar, and scrap launcher exists. All of these are valid options, and with power mode, you get to use two at once, but with re-tool, you’re able to use two different equipment. Unfortunately, he’s very slow-going at the start, so getting a run going with him can be hard.
Set Up And Watch The Havoc
Engineer is an incredibly weird, incredibly unique survivor, which means when people talk about items in this game there’s usually an “except for engineer”. He specializes in camping things out, playing away from the action, and acting as support to his incredibly powerful turrets. Prioritize getting Bustling Fungus, as that’ll make the turrets practically invincible when they’re near each other.
6Artificer
Float Above The Fray
Artificer is a weird one. Her main gameplay is gonna be hovering above enemies where they can’t hit you, and getting in big chunks of damage with your ice wall and spear, getting in a bit of chip damage with your primary in-between. Her jetpack helps her get around, and it’s usually best to go with ion surge and build for burst damage. If someone tells you to run flamethrower, they’re wrong.
7Mercenary
Teleport Behind Enemies
Mercenary is a melee survivor who focuses on swift movement, a high hit rate, and having a ton of I-frames. you’re able to use his primary to preemptively strike twice, then use your utility to burst through enemies, exposing all of them and weakening them, which is great when you use Eviscerate. Using Slicing Winds does give you a projectile and even more ways to apply expose, though, so pick your poison.
Healing To Hurt
REX is a weird one. He’s one of the only survivors where healing is any sort of priority, and one of the few survivors where taking Transcendence isn’t always a good idea. The downside to playing him is some attacks inflict self-damage, but the upside is that he’s also an insane DPS character if you’ve got the health to spare. On-hit healing usually isn’t good, but it’s pretty decent with REX, since you get more hits.
Big Punch For Big Damage
Loader, one of the most infamously overpowered characters in the game, is like Spider-Man with a pile driver. She hits like a truck, can move faster than one, and her only downside is that the only way to deal with flying enemies is either slowly punching them or throwing out your pylon. Either way, make sure to press the run button every time you swing or let go of a charge, it’ll do more damage the faster you’re going.
Status Effect Heaven
Acrid is possibly the easiest character to finish a run with. Essentially, as long as you’re using poison (blight is terrible, by the way), every enemy will die eventually, no matter how big their health bar is. Acrid is great at stomping on the ground, shooting enemies with his special, and watching everyone on the map take poison damage till they’re one hit from death. It’s a fun playstyle, especially if you find it hard to avoid enemies usually.
