Scaling difficulty is a core mechanic of Risk of Rain 2. As a run progresses, the difficulty will steadily rise, making enemies both stronger and more numerous. The steadily rising difficulty is represented in-game through a bar in the top right corner of the screen. Risk of Rain 2 Escape a chaotic alien planet by fighting through hordes of frenzied monsters – with your friends, or on your own. Combine loot in surprising ways and master each character until you become the havoc you feared upon your first crash landing.
Basic knowledge you'll need to get your feet and play with confidence right away: The first stop of any and all new players.
Other Risk of Rain 2 Guides:
- How to Unlock All Characters.
- Altar of Gold, Gilded Coast and the Aurelionite.
- How to Restore Your Unlocks.
- Shrine / Environment Guide.
- How to Find Teleporters.
- Newt Alter locations.
- All Items Tier List.
- Mercenary Guide.
- Engineer Guide.
- Artificer Guide.
What Can I Learn from This Guide?
If you've played Risk of Rain 1, the answer is probably not much. If you're a stranger to the game and decided to hop in for the sequel, welcome aboard!
This guide is not going to be a thorough walkthrough of everything in the game, written by an expert 100 hours into the game. What this guide hopefully is is a quick rundown of the essential knowledge of the game and what you can expect to find in the game; the answer key to all your silly little questions. I will avoid digging into too advanced concepts or secrets so that you can discover and digest them at your own pace.
Without further ado, let us begin.
Controls
General Controls
- WASD - Your trusty ol' movement keys.
- E - Interact with stuff.
- Q - Activate equipment-type items you may have picked up.
- Ctrl - Toogle Sprint: Press once to start running.
- TAB - Hold to see how you're doing. You can also point at items to double-check what they do.
- M3 - Ping: Found the teleporter? Want to focus down an enemy? Aim at things of interest and press this button to let your team know!
Skills
Every character has all kinds of different abilities and ways to attack, so you'll want to read up on what they do beforehand. Most of them will also have short cooldowns, so don't just spam them.
- M1 - The 'shoot gun' button. Has no cooldown, but also tends to be the weakest.
- M2 - A slightly stronger attack.
- Shift - Often a dash of some sort. Useful for evasive maneuvers or just speed up exploration.
- R - Often your strongest ability. Of course, the cooldown also tends to be the longest.
How to Win
You will appear at a random spot in the level, and your ultimate objective will be to find the teleporter to the next level, which will also appear at a random location. It can be pretty tough to spot, especially if you're not familiar with how it looks like. Keep your eyes peeled and remember to let other players know if you find it by pointing at it and pressing the Ping button (Mouse 3 by default).
Those horn-like arcs are unmistakable
Once you activate the teleporter, you will need to charge it; all you need to do is stay inside the red bubble around the teleporter and hang in there. However, a boss will appear as soon as you activate the teleporter, and you'll also have to kill them before you can proceed.
Use the teleporter again once you've done all this and you'll shortly be teleported to the next level. There is no ending... yet; you will eventually loop back to the first level. Survive for as long as you can before you get yourself killed.
This game can be pretty hard, especially on your first few tries. Therefore, I recommend trying a couple of runs in singleplayer to get used to the controls and then hop right into multiplayer. This should help ease the burden on yourself and pair you with other people that can show you the ropes.
How to Get Stronger
As you look for the teleporter, enemies will appear all around you. You can kill them to earn money, which is automatically collected and shared with all players.
This money can then be spent to get items, which will be the main way you will power up throughout the game. Each item grants a small effect, but they can also be hoarded infinitely; Survive long enough to get plenty of items and you'll become a one-man army!
Now, while most items have passive, permanent effects, Equipment Items are a different story. You can only carry one at a time and they won't do anything until you activate them (Press Q by default). They provide brief and extremely powerful effects and you can use them as many times as you like! However, they also have much longer cooldowns, so make each use count!
Items are color-coded into four groups. Passive items are, ranked from most to least common, white, green and red. The rarer the item, the more powerful they tend to be. Equipment items are all color-coded orange, and can vary in usefulness.
Always. Keep. Moving
You might think that farming all the items in one area before moving to the next will yield the easiest experience. Think again. As time goes on, the game will progressively get harder and harder. Enemies will become tougher, stronger and more plentiful. Heck, the game might just start throwing bosses at you before you even reach the teleporter.
You'll need items to keep up with the rising difficulty, but you can't hang around in one place for long either; you must strike a careful balance. If you already looked at your close surroundings, move along. If you spotted an item but it's at the other side of the map, forget it. Grab whatever's easily accessible and head straight to the teleporter.
...That said, only one person needs to activate the teleporter for everyone to move to the next level. Do look for opportunities to split up in order to bag more items than you could otherwise allow yourself to.
What is This Thing?
Chests
Your most common source of items. For the price listed above the chest, you can open it and claim the loot within.
Equipment Chest
A particular kind of chest, this one is guaranteed to give you an equipment item.
Tri-Pod Chest
Risk Of Rain 2 Mods
Another particular kind of chest. It has three items, but you can only buy one of them, so make sure to stand in front of the one you want before you pay up.Legendary Chest
Much larger and stupid expensive. This one is guaranteed to give you a red item. Good items don't come cheap, you know!
3D Printer
Give up a random item in exchange for a copy of the item shown. I wonder what would happen if I had one of these... or seven.
Shrine of Chance
Pay money for a chance of getting an item. Feeling lucky?
Shrine of Combat
Spawn a handful of enemies to fight. That's it. Need some quick cash?
Shrine of Blood
Take damage in exchange for money. You really need some quick cash?
Shrine of Order
Reroll all of your items, mostly into bad ones. You'll probably want to just ignore this thing unless you only had bad items, to begin with.
Shrine of the MountainOnce activated, an additional boss will appear once you activate the teleporter. Are you up to the challenge?
Drones
You can also find broken drones; you can drop a bit of cash to fix and recruit them. Some will shoot at enemies and others will heal you every now and then. They carry over though levels and can be a big help, just keep in mind they can be destroyed.
Recommendations, Tips and the More Subjective Stuff
- Consider activating the teleporter and using the money from the boss fight to go shopping afterward for greater efficiency. Just make sure you're actually ready for the battle beforehand!
- Fall damage can hurt you real bad, but it will never drop you below 1 health.
- Try sharing items and think about who can make the best use of what. Keep everyone on their A-game and avoid relying on a single person to carry everyone else.
- Remember to ping points of interest or priority targets to other players!
Recommended for You:
- All Risk of Rain 2 Guides!
You May Also Like:
| Risk of Rain | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Hopoo Games |
| Publisher(s) | Chucklefish |
| Producer(s) | Duncan Drummond Paul Morse |
| Designer(s) | Matthew Griffin Duncan Drummond Paul Morse |
| Programmer(s) | Duncan Drummond |
| Artist(s) | Duncan Drummond |
| Composer(s) | Chris Christodoulou |
| Engine | Game Maker |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One |
| Release |
|
| Genre(s) | Platform |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Risk of Rain is a 2013 platformvideo game incorporating Metroidvania and roguelike elements, developed by a two-student team from the University of Washington under the name Hopoo Games. The game, initially a student project, was funded through a Kickstarter campaign to improve the title, and was published by Chucklefish to Microsoft Windows in November 2013. OS X and Linux versions premiered as part of a Humble Bundle on October 28, 2014. Ports for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, developed with assistance from Code Mystics, were released on April 12, 2016. A Nintendo Switch version was released on September 19, 2018 and an Xbox One version was released on August 30, 2019.
The player controls the survivor of a space freighter crash on a strange planet. As the player progresses through levels, selected randomly and with some procedural placement of objects within the level, they attempt to survive by killing monsters and collecting items that can boost their offensive and defensive abilities. The game features a difficulty scale that increases with time, requiring the player to choose between spending time building experience and completing levels quickly before the monsters become more difficult. By discovering various hidden locations, players can discover artifacts which can alter gameplay. The game supports up to ten cooperative players in online play and up to two players in local play.
A sequel, Risk of Rain 2, was released in August 2020.
Gameplay[edit]
At the start of the game, the player selects one of twelve characters. Initially, one character is available, the Commando. As the player completes various in-game objectives, more characters become available. Each character has various statistics and a set of unique moves; for example, the sniper has the ability to hit creatures from a long distance for large, piercing damage but their firing rate is slow, while the commando can do rapid, moderate damage at close range.
Within all but the last level of the game, the goal is to locate a teleporter, placed in a random location. As the players hunt for it, they will encounter monsters; upon death, the monsters will drop in-game money and will provide the players experience. As the players gain experience they will increase the player level, gaining more hit points and stronger attacks. Money can be used to open various chests, buy items at stores, activate attack drones that aid in combat, or pray at shrines that have a random chance of dropping items, described by game lore as the space freighter's cargo. There are over 110 items in the game, and these provide benefits such as passive bonuses that improve offensive or defensive capabilities, or a special usable with a cooldown.[1] Players can only hold one usable at any time, but they can collect many passive items, including multiple versions of the same item, stacking the benefits of these items. The location of these items is randomly determined through roguelike procedural generation.
Once the players have found the teleporter, they activate it, starting a 90-second countdown on Drizzle (easy) and Rainstorm (medium) difficulty and a 120-second one on Monsoon (hard) and the players have to survive. During this time, many more monsters, including at least one boss character (if the Kin artifact is not active), will appear. After the countdown is over, no new monsters will appear but the players will have to defeat all remaining monsters before they can use the teleporter and proceed to the next level. At this time, any remaining money the players have is converted to experience points. At the penultimate level, the players have the option of taking the teleporter to the final level (the crashed ship), or to use the teleporter to run through much higher difficulties of previous levels so as to gain more experience and items; when this latter option is taken, the teleporter on these levels will allow the same choice to either proceed to the final level or continue through additional levels. On the final level, the player must fight a final boss character; if they survive, they are able to escape the planet and win the game.
The difficulty of the game is determined by a timer. The difficulty level increases every 5 minutes up through 10 levels, with newly spawned monsters having more health and stronger attacks.[1] Additionally, boss characters may spawn before the players have found teleporters on higher difficulties. If playing alone, the game is over when the player dies. In multiplayer mode, a player that dies must wait until the other players survive to the next level, upon which they are brought back into play.
The item drops are based on the various progress the player has made in the meta-game through repeated playthroughs. For example, defeating certain boss characters for the first time will unlock an item that can then drop in future playthroughs. Other items are based on completing certain goals, such as winning the game a number of times, or performing specific goals with each of the characters. In Rainstorm or Monsoon modes, monsters will also rarely drop log books that describe the monsters; this itself is used to unlock more items and a playable character.
Development[edit]
Risk of Rain was developed by two students at the University of Washington, Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse, later releasing the game under the name Hopoo Games. The two took inspiration from their favorite games in the past and combined them into a single package, focusing primarily on the platformer and roguelike genres.[2] They also wanted to add the idea of a game that scales in difficulty that 'puts the player in a sense of urgency and makes them make tough choices often'.[2]Risk of Rain was developed using the GameMaker: Studio tool.[3] The title Risk of Rain was selected not only to allow the game to be easily searchable via the Internet, but came to allude to the concept of a single protagonist in the large game world always worried about 'a risk of failure or bad things happening'.[2]
The original idea Drummond and Morse had for their game, which they started developing as sophomores, was a tower defense where the difficulty of the attacking creatures would rise with the distance that they were from the defense point, but they found that players would opt to avoid venturing from that point.[1] They sought to find a means to force the player to keep moving and came to the idea of 'difficulty = time' concept.[1] Though this is implemented so that it appears that the difficulty increases every five minutes to the player, internally, a difficulty counter is incremented every minute as to create an apparently smoother transition to the player. This counter translates into a semi-exponential growth in newly-created enemies' attack strength, a semi-logarithmic growth in these enemies' health points, and a logarithmic growth in the rate that the player's health increases with character level. Drummond and Morse found this created favorable gameplay that created moments of 'highs and lows' and keep the player on edge, having times where the player may feel overpowered to the enemies and moments later find themselves in a struggle to stay alive.[1] Another mechanic they had explored with the 'difficulty = time' approach was to incorporate the speed at which the player defeated enemies into the difficulty counter, but found this removed the 'highs and lows' in the game.[1]
Another element of the difficulty approach was the rate which enemies are generated. The game uses an artificial intelligence (AI) system that 'buys' enemies to spawn at random intervals using a point system; this AI is given points at a rate that scales with the difficulty counter. Enemies have point values, with more difficult enemies costing more points, and the AI will buy as many as it can. Due to limitations with GameMaker, Drummond and Morse found that having too many enemies spawn in stressed the game, so created a means for the AI to buy an 'elite' enemy if it were to otherwise buy five of a single type; these elite enemies have additional attributes, such as higher attack values, and present a harder challenge to kill. They found this workaround created extra dynamism for the game, which Drummond called as 'a merge of game functionality and game design'.[1]Risk of Rain was tested primarily to balance the difficulty system, and Drummon and Morse were aware that with all the available items to collect in the game, it is possible to 'break the game' by acquiring specific combinations of item drops which would make the player overpowered or invincible. They believe this was still acceptable since this was highly tied to the game's random generator.[1]
The game is presented in 8-bit-like two-dimensional graphics. This economy of graphics allowed them to both develop sprites for new enemies easily, but also allowed them to give a sense of scale to the larger bosses compared to the player's character.[2] Character designs were made to provide enough differences between classes, and to give abilities that relied on the player's skill to give the player satisfaction of playing well, such as introducing a damage boost on the sniper's gun if the player times their reload appropriately.[2]
After completing most of the core game on their college budgets, the Hopoo Games team turned to Kickstarter to gain additional funds to update the game to the latest version of GameMaker, obtain a musician to provide music for the game, and additional quality control. The Kickstarter was launched in April 2013 seeking $7,000, and ended up with more than $30,000 in backers. This enabled them to hire Chris Christodoulou to compose the game's soundtrack and add several additional gameplay features to the title.[3] The success of the Kickstarter led to a publishing partnership with Chucklefish, providing them server space and forums for the game's players. They would later gain help of Matthew Griffin, from Yeti Trunk, another developer that has worked with Chucklefish, to help improve the game's multiplayer code.[4]
The Hopoo team announced in February 2014 that they were working with Sony Computer Entertainment America to bring the game to the PlayStation Vita.[5] Hopoo announced that the game would come to the PlayStation 4 alongside the Vita version, thanks to assistance from Code Mystics. These versions support an online matchmaking system and the ability for two local players to join with other online players. The PlayStation versions also support cross-platform play, enabling both PlayStation 4 and Vita players to play together.[6]
A version for the Nintendo Switch was released on September 20, 2018, supporting both local and online play.[7] An Xbox One version was released on August 30, 2019, alongside ports of the sequel Risk of Rain 2 for the Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.[8]
Release[edit]
In February 2015, Hopoo Games partnered with IndieBox, a monthly subscription box service, to offer a physical release of Risk of Rain.[9][10] This limited, individually-numbered, collector's edition included a flash-drive with a DRM-free game file, the official soundtrack, an instruction manual, Steam key, and various custom-designed collectible items.
Reception[edit]
| Reception | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Risk of Rain was named one of the Student Showcase winners of the 2014 Independent Games Festival, and subsequently won the Student Prize Award.[17][18]
By the time of the release of the sequel in 2019, Risk of Rain had sold more than 3 million copies.[19]
Sequel[edit]
In May 2017, Hopoo Games announced that they had been working on a sequel Risk of Rain 2 over the previous 6 months. The game maintains the same core loop as the first game but transitions from a 2D to a 3D setting.[20]Risk of Rain 2 was supported with help from Gearbox Publishing.[21]Risk of Rain 2 was first released in early access on March 28, 2019, with plans to spend a year before a final release.[22]
Risk Of Rain 2 Mods
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ abcdefghWiltshire, Alex (February 5, 2016). 'How Risk Of Rain Increases Difficulty Over Time'. Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
- ^ abcdeTach, Dave (August 23, 2013). 'Risk of Rain hands-on: Retro agoraphobia'. Polygon. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
- ^ abHopoo Games. 'Risk of Rain'. Kickstarter. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
- ^'Risk of Rain: Online Co-op!'. Hopoo Games. July 13, 2013. Retrieved July 13, 2013.
- ^Tach, Dave (February 11, 2014). 'Risk of Rain is headed to PlayStation Vita'. Polygon. Retrieved February 11, 2014.
- ^Drummand, Duncan (February 23, 2016). 'Risk of Rain Heading to PS4, PS Vita'. PlayStation.Blog. Sony Computer Entertainment. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
- ^Devore, Jordan (September 20, 2018). 'Risk of Rain just launched on Nintendo Switch'. Destructoid. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
- ^Devore, Jordan (August 30, 2019). 'Risk of Rain 2 just popped up on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One'. Destructoid. Retrieved August 30, 2019.
- ^'IndieBox Unboxing: Risk of Rain - Geek.com'. Geek.com. March 19, 2015. Retrieved June 3, 2017.
- ^'IndieBox Announces Risk of Rain: Limited Edition | IndieBox'. www.theindiebox.com. Retrieved June 3, 2017.
- ^'Risk of Rain for PC Reviews'. Metacritic. Retrieved May 26, 2017.
- ^'Risk of Rain for PlayStation 4 Reviews'. Metacritic. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
- ^Smith, Quinton (December 12, 2013). 'Risk of Rain review'. Eurogamer. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
- ^Reeves, Ben (December 9, 2013). 'Risk Of Rain'. Game Informer. Retrieved March 20, 2014.
- ^Woolsey, Cameron (November 19, 2013). 'Risk of Rain Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
- ^Kholar, Philip (December 24, 2013). 'Risk of Rain Review'. Polygon. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
- ^'Papers, Please takes the grand prize at 16th annual IGF Awards'. Gamasutra. March 19, 2014. Retrieved March 19, 2014.
- ^'2014 Independent Games Festival announces Student Showcase winners'. Independent Games Festival. January 22, 2014. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
- ^'Hopoo Games' Risk of Rain 2 Welcomes an Estimated 650,000 Players In Just Its First Week of Early Access' (Press release). Gamasutra. April 4, 2019. Retrieved April 4, 2019.
- ^Wood, Austin (December 22, 2017). 'We finally get our first look at Risk of Rain 2'. PC Gamer. Retrieved December 22, 2017.
- ^Kim, Matt (March 28, 2019). 'Gearbox Publishing Announces Partnerships With Astroneer, Risk of Rain 2, Justin Roiland, and More'. USGamer. Retrieved March 28, 2019.
- ^Chalk, Andy (March 28, 2019). 'Risk of Rain 2 makes a surprise appearance on Steam'. PC Gamer. Retrieved March 28, 2019.
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External links[edit]
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