Risk of Rain 2 is an addicting Rogue-Like with many unique scenarios controlling how each run goes. Every Survivor can wield a variety of Items. These items are obtained by spending money on Chests scattered across the map by invisible entities referred to as Directors. Every Environment grants the Directors points to spend on procedurally generated maps to spread interactables and enemies across the Stage. As a result of the process, each game run feels drastically different from one another.
We will explain how each rarity of item functions differently from one another while having drastically different means of obtaining them. We highly recommend understanding every item’s use and how to obtain each rarity for all content levels, alongside understanding Every Survivor’s Strengths and Weaknesses.
Common Items in Risk of Rain 2
According to their namesake, Common Items are the easiest items to obtain in Risk of Rain 2. Small Chests, which have a 79.2% chance of spawning Common items upon purchase, are the second highest spawns in any stage alongside Common 3D Item Printers. Because of these items’ low cost and high spawn rates, the Common Multi-Shop Terminals and Small Chests are the most common non-Barrel Interactables in the Early Game and Late Game. Multi-shop Terminals frequently spawn Common Items in the first three stages but are always Uncommon in the 4th and 5th Environments.
Although it’s rarely performed, you do have the option to exchange a Legendary Item for 3 Common Items in Commencement. It’s recommended if you have a Legendary Item that directly damages your playstyle or if the displayed Common Item will help you more against Mithrix in his boss fight more than your Legendary Item(s) will.
Although there are exceptions to the rule, Common Items tend to be based on the ability to stack them and provide passive buffs that can be indefinitely grown when you get duplicates of the same item. Common Items are activated frequently in a run. They can help your Survivor become faster, hit faster, endure better, and have a chance to activate on-hit effects more regularly.
The benefit size is related to the number of stacks of the item you have. The exceptions to this tradition would be Gasoline, Monster Tooth, Rusted Key, and Warbanner, which all activate after killing enemies or leaving the Stage.
Uncommon items are often a mixed bag. Some can provide great passive bonuses, while other common items in RoR2 can be terrible additions to your build.
Uncommon Items
Uncommon Items can be obtained in nearly every average Chest but usually tend to be rarer than Common Items while being more frequently obtainable than Legendary Items. These items have an 80% chance of dropping through Large Chests and are guaranteed to be in Multi-shop terminals on the 4th and 5th Environments in a loop.
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How to Get Uncommon Items in Risk of Rain 2
Uncommon Items can also be obtained in Small Chests but have a 19.8% chance, dropping roughly once every 5 Small Chests. This change is shared by Crashed Multishop Deliveries spawned by the Shipping Request Form, but the chance of getting rarer items will increase per stack.
It’s important to mention that Rusty Lockboxes have the same drops as a Large Chest but cost a Rusted Key, which is a common item. You can also gain a randomly chosen Uncommon Item in exchange for 3 Common Items when in the Bazaar Between Time or in Commencement.
Uncommon items in Risk of Rain 2 can be obtained for free once per Stage when using a Regenerating Scrap on an Uncommon Item Printer. Items of this rarity are the most frequent drops after defeating a boss in a Teleporter Event.
Notable Uncommons Items in RoR2
Uncommon Items are just as plentiful in the variety and options to choose from as normal Common Items. Still, their gimmicks typically revolve around needing specific criteria in order to activate them. For instance, some Uncommon Items require other items to function, like Ignition Tank, which causes Ignite effects to deal 300% more damage over time. Unless you are the Artificer who can apply an Ignite without an item, you will need to pair the Ignition tank with a lot of Gasoline.
Other items with effect include Berserker’s Pauldron, which gives you 50% movement speed and 100% attack speed after slaying four enemies within one second. Some items require less to activate, such as the Rose Buckler, which increases your armor by 30 while sprinting, or the Hopoo Feather, which gives you an extra jump per stack.
Of course, there are a few items, except for Ukulele or AtG Missile Mk.1, which are both on-hit effects. Overall, Uncommon Items require more synergy with Common Items. Depending on the Survivor or the build you have, items like Death Mark could be nearly impossible to activate.
Legendary Items (aka Red Items)
Although Legendary Items are extremely hard to obtain early in a run, there are four ways currently in the way to guarantee to obtain a Legendary Item without gambling, aside from 3D Printers since they require a pre-existing Legendary Item to use.
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How to Obtain Legendary Items in Risk of Rain 2
Legendary Items can be obtained by trading 5 Uncommon Items for a Legendary Item at the Bazaar Between Time or in Commencement. You can also obtain them by defeating the Alloy Worship Unit in Siren’s Call after destroying eggs on the map. Players can also obtain Legendary items in Risk of Rain 2 from a randomly spawned Legendary Chest, from the guaranteed ones in Abyssal Depths or Sundered Grove, or by breaching the 9th cell in the Void Fields.
Legendary Items have a 1% chance of spawning from Small Chests, a 20% chance of spawning from Large Chests, and a .9% chance of appearing in an Adaptive Chest. Adaptive Chests are rare. Moreover, they cycle through Common, Uncommon, Legendary, and Equipment Items upon purchase. This allows you to choose an item if you Interact when it appears on the preview.
Exemplary Red Items in RoR2
Legendary Items offer cataclysmic changes to your character or your item build. These red items are some of the most game-changing pick-ups in Risk of Rain 2. Legendary Items are also quite easy to use, just like Common Items, most often being akin to an extra passive.
A Legendary Item in RoR2 that performs this passive function is the Laser Scope, which causes Critical Strikes to deal an additional 100% damage. Brilliant Behemoth also does this by causing all your attacks to explode in a 4m radius for 60% bonus damage.
Other Legendary Items in RoR2 have unique effects like Pocket I.C.B.M, which causes all missile items and Equipment to fire an additional two missiles and increase their damage. Or Dio’s Best Friend, which revives you with three seconds of invulnerability after you die, but the item will be consumed.
Other Legendary Items can completely change how you play, such as Brainstalks. Brainstalks causes your skills to incur a 0.5-second cooldown every time you kill an elite monster. Any Legendary Item you acquire will massively impact your run on almost any Survivor.
Special Boss Items
Boss Items are Unique, Uncommon items that drop from their corresponding boss via completing a Teleporter Event. They are also sometimes called Planet Items in Risk of Rain 2. You may also obtain them by using the Trophy Hunter’s Tricorn Equipment Item on a Boss, instantly killing them and replacing them with their corresponding Boss Item. The main consistency of these Boss Items is to mimic certain abilities or passives that Teleporter Bosses have in their move-set.
An example of a great Boss item in Risk of Rain 2 would be the Genesis Loop which causes you to explode for 6000% base damage whenever you fall below 25% HP, which is dropped by the Wandering Vagrant, who performs a very similar ability when you fight them.
Other items are only acquired by visiting a specific stage, like the Halcyon seed summons the Aurelionite during the teleporter event. This Planet Item can only be obtained by completing the Boss Fight in the Gilded Coast. Reaching this Hidden Realm requires activating the Altar of Gold to open the portal to the Gilded Coast. Both types of Pearls, obtained from placing Lunar Items in a Cleaning Pool, count as Planet Items as well.
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Lunar Items in Risk of Rain 2
Lunar Items can be obtained in two manners, and some of these Lunar Items might function like Equipment. Unlike traditional Equipment Items, Lunar Equipment Items drop similarly to their passive counterparts. You can obtain Lunar Items either through spending a Lunar Coin on a Lunar Pod that randomly spawns in a stage or by spending 2 Lunar Coins on a Lunar Pod at the Bazaar Between Time, this time with a preview of the item you will obtain.
Lunar items are powerful items that come at a cost to use. This tradeoff is mainly dependent on your build, the current Survivor you are playing as, and how far you are into the run. Some great Lunar Items in RoR2 are almost always worth picking up, like the Gesture of the Drowned, which reduces Equipment cooldown by 50%, but automatically activates it.
Most Lunar Items are the biggest gamble you can make in Risk of Rain 2, like Transcendence Converting all but one health into regenerating shields, but you gain 50% more maximum health. Another huge gamble is using Egocentrism in Risk of Rain 2. It transforms random items in your inventory into copies of itself at a fixed time interval to gain an orbiting bomb that stacks indefinitely. There are even a few terrible blue items in Risk of Rain 2 almost never worth getting.
However, acquiring four specific Lunar items is the only way a player can transform and play as the hidden Survivor, Heretic. The Heresy items slowly change your moveset by replacing them with The Heretic’s moves until you fully transform into her.
Void Items
Void Items can be obtained through two means, by spending 50% of your Maximum Health on a Void Cradle or by spending an Encrusted Key on an Encrusted Cache, said Key being only obtainable by opening a Void Cradle. Encrusted Caches lets you choose between 3 Void Items in Risk of Rain 2, and Encrusted Key will transform any Rusted Keys you obtain or already own with copies of itself unless you no longer have Encrusted Keys in your inventory.
Void Items are the newest addition in Risk of Rain 2. These Items range from Common, Uncommon, Legendary, and Boss items. The theming behind these items is they corrupt their normal counterparts to add different effects. They will force their normal counterparts into copies of themselves inside your inventory, forcing you to choose between the two basic effects.
One example of Void Items is Needletick corrupting all Tri-Tip Daggers, turning their chance to proc Bleed into a chance to Collapse an Enemy for 400% base damage.
Similar to Lunar Items, you should be careful when picking up Void Items since they remove your ability to benefit from the stats or function of their normal counterparts.
Equipment
Equipment Items spawn from Equipment Barrels, Equipment Multi shops on the 3rd and 5th stages, and Adaptive Chests. They don’t share drop chances with any other item besides when using the Adaptive Chest, and they all function drastically different from other items in the game.
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How to Find Rare Equipment in RoR2
Equipment Items functionally give every Survivor a fifth ability, with a relatively long cooldown upon use. Alongside Void Equipment, Elite Equipment has a chance to drop once every 4,000 elite kills, which cannot be obtained with any other method. Elite Equipment doesn’t have an activation effect and instead transforms your Survivor into an Elite while held. The same buffs that an Elite Obtains are provided to your Survivor based on which variant you equip.
There are currently 4 Lunar Equipment, 27 Standard Equipment, and 7 Elite Equipment Items in Risk of Rain 2. Since they function so differently from other Items in RoR2, they provide separate effects from one another and can benefit from completely different builds.
Some Equipment Items benefit Mobility, Damage, On-Hit, Grouping, Item Finding, Healing, Area Denial, Speed, Armor, and many other effects. Learning what every Equipment Item can do is recommended since they vary so drastically.
Wrapping Up Our Risk of Rain 2 Items Guide
That sums up our guide to all the Item Rarities in Risk of Rain 2. Knowing what items have a higher chance of dropping what type of item you need can help you maximize your chances of starting your build at the start of a run. For newer players, we always recommend reading up on what items synergize well with the Survivor you’re currently planning to play, along with choosing to prioritize smaller chests at the start of your runs rather than bigger chests or Shrines of Chance.
For another great RoR2 guide, check out our ranked tier list of all Risk of Rain 2 characters. We hope it’ll help you find your next favorite Survivor!
If you haven’t yet purchased Risk or Rain 2, feel free to grab it from the RoR2 Steam store. If you like FPS roguelike games, you’ll be very pleased with this masterpiece!
All images were captured in-game from Risk of Rain 2.
