5 Creative/Troll Builds for Risk of Rain 2

With a sprinkle of meme magic on the side

Let’s start strong with the link for the game on Steam, so you can find even more recommended builds in the comment section, and the review of Risk of Rain 2 for those who are not familiar with the game already.

Ight less go now.

To the delight of all the proudest fans of Risk of Rain 2, today I’m going to reveal some of the most “original” builds I’ve tried in Hopoos’s masterpiece so far. Not all are particularly effective, and not all are realistically feasible without Artifact of Command or questionable amounts of lunar coins.

5 – Necro-Engi

Surely you’ve already read about this build somewhere, because it’s so efficient that it’s almost a staple for the engineer. The build itself is very simple:

STRAT

Bustling Fungi, known to RoR2 veterans as Bungi, create a healing zone around the owner if the owner remains motionless for a few seconds. Each Bungus after the first increases the radius and intensity of the effect.

By themselves, the Bungi are not the most useful item there is, also because staying still on Risk of Rain 2 is more dangerous than going to Chicago with a Rolex on your wrist, but they have a particular synergy with the engineer.

The engineer’s special ability allows him to create turrets that inherit his own objects, and static turrets (deafult R) are immune to the pushback effects of enemiy attacks. This means that once a turret has been placed, it is possible to stay in the surrounding area and benefit from all the Bungal ​​heals. If two turrets are close enough to each other, you can even benefit from both healing zones at the same time.

This is where the two legendary items come into play: the Rack doubles the healing generated by the Bungi, while N’kuhana transforms the excess healing into Yu-gi-oh’s the Flaming Skulls from Yu-gi-oh. Just place the turrets side by side and stand still between the two to produce an unstoppable wave of explosive skulls that will make you reach wave 50 of the Simulacrum effortlessly.

Once you have reached the core build (which counts about ten-fifteen Bunghi), it is possible to enrich it with Safer Spaces (to prevent the turrets from being one-shot), Infusions (increase the survivability of the towers and the damage of each Flaming Skull ), a Lysate Cell (to place up to three towers at once) and, of course, ten Glasses (to make sure all skulls do double damage). As for the speed of attack, or even movement, I scratch my neck, in this build they are irrelevant.

4 – MUL-Terminator

If any of you are familiar with the MUL-T Survivor, they will know that the robot has two special abilities at its disposal, but only one of them is immediately available. To unlock the second it is necessary to enter and beat the Fields of Void during stage 7 or higher. The challenge isn’t trivial, but considering which skill it unlocks, it’s worth a try.

We are indeed talking about Power Tool, which allows you to equip a copy of the primary weapon as a secondary weapon (in our case the Nail Gun) and fire from both at the same time, effectively doubling the Survivor’s attack speed. To get the core of the build you will need:

STRAT

From here the build can be enriched in a number of directions. If we wanted a surreal flow of healing, we would have to find many more Scythes (+6.4 life points on-hit + 3.2 per stack), if we wanted to create a build with absolutely ridiculous bleeding damage, 17 Daggers (remember that the coefficient of proc of the Nail Gun is only 0.6), and in general, for every build that has to do with the on-hit effects, a  57 Leaf Clover, to reduce the number of items necessary to obtain a 100% proc chance (I am thinking precisely of Daggers, Sticky Bombs and the such) and to increase the possibility of proccing fixed probability effects such as Ukulele and Sentient Butcher Hooks.

With that taken care of, since Power Mode slows MUL-T, a handful of Paul’s Goat Hooves can only make this piece of artillery on wheels even more exhilarating to play, same with Hopoo’s Feathers.

To make the most of this build, try to aim both your weapons straight at the teeth of the Portal Boss and fire without moving. I assure you it will become one of your favorite builds, and will cheer you up every time you beat Mithrix Phase 1 in under ten seconds.

3- Standing Here, I realize

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance memes are going crazy, and I’m not the type to ignore a good meme. Transform yourself into the Senator both-Arms-strong with this simple Loader build:

STRAT

Having 30,000 health points in a game where a player is expected to have around 2,000 health points before the final boss is an advantage. The cost for this advantage is a substantial reduction in movement speed, so punishing that it’s pretty much a death sentence for most Survivors. Except our friendly neighborhood spider woman, who can move with her grappling hook without suffering the penalties that plague her normal walking.

For this reason, it’s crucial to grab as many Backup Mags as we can (it’s a white object, so it shouldn’t be difficult). This will allow us to achieve two very important objectives at once: to move (essential to advance between the levels) and not to be swallowed by the antimatter explosions of Void monsters (which, I want to remember for the skeptics, do not inflict damage, but change your status from alive to dead, on-hit, instantly).

If you have a buddy in multiplayer, the build is fine just like that. Otherwise throw in a N’kuhana, or a Hellfire Tincture plus Razorwire and power-walk to success.

2 – The Phantom Menace

You know that survivor who looks like a dog and who spits Clorox when he attacks? You probably know that Clorox deals damage equal to 10% of the enemies’ maximum health, but did you know that that number can be significantly increased?

This build has a 99% chance of killing you in one run and I don’t even know if it works exactly as I described it. Don’t play it. Think about it every now and then and have a laugh, but don’t play it.

For the damage, you will have to buy:

STRAT

Now, follow my reasoning well. The ideal strategy with this character is to spray Clorox in the bosses’ faces, survive for ten seconds (the duration of the poison effect), spray them again and repeat the cycle until they die.

At first glance we might think, just buy 90 Focus Crystals and the Clorox will inflict 100% of the enemy’s maximum health, but that’s not quite the case. The maximum dps is capped at 50 times the value of Acrid’s base damage, which means that, at level 15, with an attack value of 60, an application of Clorox can reach a maximum of 30 thousand damage.

Here an extremely dangerous but no less original strategy comes into play.

You see, Shaped Glasses can double your BASE damage, in exchange for half your maximum health. This means that the bravest can buy two or three of those damn suicide trinkets and increase the damage per application up to 240,000 damage.

Now, many of you won’t be particularly confident that you can survive for 10 seconds inside the Voidling arena with 200 health, and I understand you, so here comes the second part of the build: survivability.

Buy three Strides of the Heresy and spam the movement skill as soon as you poison the enemy, buzz around him like a hornet and as soon as he reaches 1 hp give him the coup de grace, praying the Lord that he doesn’t do the same to you.

1 – Voodoo Sorcerer

As much as I’d like to talk about the full-Purity build for the Mercenary or the Amazon Prime build for the Captain, I think the top spot goes to one of the most ridiculously strong builds I’ve ever tried so far.

Either way, grab the Artificer, unlock its Special Ion Blast (unlocks by killing 15 enemies in mid-air with the Blaster, a joke if using the Artifact of Swarms). Once you do that, get your hands on:

STRAT

Every single item in this list creates an unstoppable chain effect with the others: the equipment (which we will call Doll) activates the on-kill effects of the other objects 8 times in 8 seconds; gasoline ignites enemies on-kill in a large range; badges give Shield on-kill; daggers are remote guided attacks that are activated on-kill; Tanks increase fire damage; Will or The Wisp deal damage and trigger on-kill effects and finally, the Catalyst reduces the Doll’s cooldown on-kill.

With this core build, you’ll never have to wait more than five seconds after one Doll expires to activate another and unleash devastating area damage. If you are a power-gamer through and through, you can also throw a Drowning Gesture in the pot and get a manicure while your dolls burn everything that moves on the map in a matter of 10 seconds.

By Lorem Ipsum

My name is Lorem Ipsum and I am your favourite game journo. Indie games enthusiast, my biggest strengths are the variety of games I've played (from the A of Auto-clickers to the Z of ZPGs) coupled with my extensive knowledge of game design and psychology of perception. My biggest weakness is my eccessive modesty, that sometimes can overshadow my genius.