Risk of Rain 2 tips – general tips and tricks on how to survive

To finish up, we’ve collated some useful and practical Risk of Rain 2 tips and tricks below. Take a look through these tips if you’re struggling to survive beyond the first few stages.
  • Play proactively and remember the Teleporter. Your goal at the beginning of each stage should always be to find the Teleporter. That doesn’t mean you should necessarily activate it right away (it’s better to gain gold/experience/items for a while first), but you should always be aware of where it is so you can head to it as soon as you decide it’s time.
  • Don’t be too quick to make up your mind about a Survivor. In a game like Risk of Rain 2, your run and your experience is defined not just by the character you play as but the items you receive. Don’t be too quick to dismiss a certain Survivor as “underpowered” or “weak” simply because you had a bad run with them. Play multiple runs with each one, and you might find your new favourite character.
  • You can pause in singleplayer but not multiplayer. Pause in singleplayer anytime you need a breather by hitting ESC and bringing up the menu. But don’t be tempted to do this in a multiplayer session, because it doesn’t work, not even if you’re the host.
  • Make good use of Risk of Rain 2’s Ping tool. Yes, Risk of Rain 2 has a Ping tool, and it’s very useful in a variety of situations. You can use it to highlight a tough enemy for your teammate, an item on the floor, or even the location of the Teleporter itself. This is even useful in singleplayer to ensure you don’t forget your way to the Teleporter.
  • If you go out of bounds, you’ll start to take damage every second. Just putting this in here because this really confused me the first time it happened to me. Look for the ribbons around certain Environments which mark the boundaries of the playable area. If you go much beyond this threshold, dark tentacles of damage will lash at you from the ground, dealing damage each second until you return to the playable area.
  • Stay on the move and sprint everywhere. Risk of Rain 2 can quickly devolve into chaotic bullet hell territory if you’re not careful. The secret to staying alive is to always stay on the move, and don’t get bogged down killing enemy after enemy. Make good use of your ability to Sprint – but be aware that sprinting does limit your aim sensitivity.
  • Items trump experience and levels. This is important because when you use the Teleporter to proceed to the next stage, all your gold is transferred into experience. But items and item builds are always going to be more valuable than the level of your character, so make sure you spend as much gold as possible on chests, items, drones, and anything else you find before you go through the Teleporter.
  • Lunar Coins persist between runs. You can always see how many Lunar Coins you have in the top-left, just beneath your gold. These Lunar Coins will carry over to future runs until you use them, so if you’d like you can save up a dozen or more Coins for a single “Super-Lunar Run”.
  • Activating the Teleporter will lock chests and other interactables. When you spawn the boss of each stage at the Teleporter, across the map all the chests and other interactable structures such as Terminals and Drones will be locked, preventing you from interacting with them until the Teleporter is fully charged.
  • Focus on DPS above all else with your build. Your undoing will nearly always be failing to build up your damage to match the increasing difficulty of the run. As much as possible, focus on upgrading your attack speed with Soldier’s Syringes and collecting a variety of on-hit and crit-based items.
And that concludes – for the time being, at least – our Risk of Rain 2 guide. Hopefully you’ve learned a thing or two about how to survive and strike the fear of death (and death itself) into the hearts of your innumerable enemies. Time for a new run, then, eh?