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If you’re looking for the notes for this update, you can find those here!
Although this is the last phase in the SotS improvement roadmap we have some big plans in store for the future of Risk of Rain 2, a sneak peek of which is later in this very Devlog! Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's talk about those big improvements to the Survivors…
Survivor Improvements
Not only have all three Survivors had their base kits improved and rebalanced, they have all been given TWO more unique alternate skills! These new and improved abilities give you a multitude of skill combinations to choose from to customize your runs.
For a full detailed list of the changes please check out the Update Notes HERE - But I wanted to give you a quick tour of the most exciting changes: new unlockable skills for each of the Survivors - First up: Seeker!
Seeker
The biggest change to Seeker’s kit is that she’ll now have the ability to Self-Revive. Previously, this ability only affected your teammates. Now, once you’ve made the significant investment during a stage to max out your stacks of Tranquility you’re given the ability to Self-Revive once per stage. Don’t worry, as long as you have the stacks, it will trigger automatically if you die.
Once you’ve reached max Tranquility you can now revive your teammates (once per stage) with any subsequent successful Meditation, it no longer has to be the 7th stack.
Speaking of Tranquility - Seeker has a brand new alternate Special ability that will help you stack it up if Meditate isn’t your speed… it’s okay to admit if you have trouble with the button combos, there’s no shame in it.
This new ability gives you a more aggressive way to gain stacks of Tranquility…Introducing: Palm Blast.
Palm Blast is a huge chargeable piercing projectile that deals 400%-700% damage to enemies. In keeping with Seeker’s support function, it also heals allies it impacts.
With a well timed Palm Blast that hits three enemies and/or allies in a single hit you will gain a stack of Tranquility. This is a great option for those who want to keep the flow of combat rolling.
Now let’s take a look at Seeker’s new alternate utility Reprieve. This one will come in handy when you’re trying to bunch a group of enemies together to make the most of your toolkit both old and new.
With Reprieve, similar to Sojourn, you take flight to take the fight to your enemies. But that's where the similarities between these abilities ends - Reprieve grants you a small amount of barrier and your flight duration is limited by the duration of that barrier. You also accelerate rapidly over time which allows you to traverse the stage much faster, but at the trade-off of aerial control.
But that isn't always a bad thing. The impact of Reprieve where the ability really shines. When you hit an enemy or surface a huge swirling vortex is created which pulls in and damages enemies; while also healing nearby allies.
This gives you the perfect setup to dunk on trapped monsters with the rest of Seeker’s kit making her a true force to be reckoned with.
Similar to her base abilities, each of the new attacks is greatly enhanced with each stack of Tranquility you gain, increasing in both damage and healing output as your stacks creep higher.
False Son
While False Son has had several of his abilities tweaked in damage output, we’ve made two significant upgrades to his base kit in direct response to community feedback…
Firstly, we’ve made it so that you can use his dash Step of the Brothers while using Club Slam OR Laser of the Father, giving you far better maneuverability using these charged attacks.
The second community-driven change to his existing kit is making his Lunar Spikes Agile. That makes this one of the very few abilities in the game which can be fired while sprinting.
While this does give False Son a great quality-of-life update, you might find it hard to pick between Lunar Spikes and the new secondary ability Lunar Stakes.
Lunar Stakes shoots a powerful piercing lunar-infused shard for 300% damage. Each time the Lunar Stake hits an enemy or impacts a surface a blast of lightning strikes dealing 150% AOE damage.
Each Lunar Stake impact applies Lunar Ruin to enemies, with an additional Ruin stack being inflicted by the following lightning strike. The available stacks of Lunar Stakes can also be increased by Growth. But, with this alternate ability it takes twice as many HP increasing items to increase your stacks!
Lunar Stakes adds a new option for taking out your foes at range - but what about if you like getting up close and personal with his Melee attacks? The new alternate utility ability Meridian’s Will should satisfy your lust for carnage!
With Meridian’s Will you teleport to your target inflicting 150% damage and stunning any nearby monsters. This also gives you a temporary attack speed and armor boost with your passive ability Lunar Tampering. Enjoy swinging your club slightly faster at those unsuspecting Gups.
CHEF
One of our top goals for this phase is to rescue CHEF from the bottom of the tier list rankings - so they have undergone the most dramatic changes of the three. Every single one of its existing abilities has had significant changes. CHEF’s Dice now allows you to throw out three separate cleavers at once. You can opt to let those auto-return or you can hold down the Dice ability, holding them in place and massively boosting their damage for the return back to CHEF. This ought to allow for far more culinary carnage with far fewer button presses!
Sear now has significantly greater range allowing you to scorch your enemies without forcing you into melee range.
Roll now charges much faster making it a far more viable mobility ability. Glaze has also had a huge improvement - but more on that in a minute…
Let’s get to the fun part: the new alternate abilities we’re adding to CHEF! With a lot of these CHEF is returning to its roots with some time-honored staples.
But let's start with a brand new one, CHEF’s alternate secondary ability Ice Box. This adds some crowd-control to CHEF’s arsenal.
Ice Box fires ice cubes which deal 3x150% damage to enemies and applies Frost to them. Enemies inflicted with Frost are slowed and with 6 stacks you’ll completely Freeze your enemies instantly killing them below 30% health, just like Artificer's Snap Freeze and Railgunner’s Cryocharge.
Personally, my favorite alternate ability we cooked up is CHEF’s new utility - Oil Spill. Twirl into the air spewing oil below you dealing damage to enemies as you land and coating them in oil which makes them vulnerable to your other attacks.
If you tap the Oil Spill button just as you land you can re-activate the ability 3 times in a row allowing you to spread Oil patches over a huge area or if you’re just trying to get up to the Newt Shrine, you can just tap it for a single launch.
What possible use could you have for enemies and an environment absolutely covered in flammable liquid?
That’s right, when you use Oil Spill or Glaze you’ll now leave large patches of oil soaked on the ground. Follow this up with a blast of Sear to ignite these patches dealing huge fire damage to your foes.
Ooooooooor, freeze the oil using Ice Box to make whole packs of enemies rapidly gain stacks of Frost until they are eventually Frozen.
Ahh yes…. delicious lemuriancicles.
And yes, each of these new abilities can be enhanced with Yes, Chef! But we’ll let you discover those exciting new combos for yourself!
The Future
So what’s next? A lot of folks have been asking what our plans are once this roadmap wraps up, and it’s a fair question. So today, we want to give you a little window into everything else we’ve been working on.
Overall, we’re really happy with where DLC2’s quality has landed after all these updates/patches, but there are still a few more things the team would like to plug away at. We’ve also been working on an optimization update for the game’s system memory. It will improve some parts of the experience, but will have the largest impact on lower spec PCs/Switch.
After the memory optimisation patch we have even more content to come, I’ll be keeping that a closely guarded secret today however, rumour has it that if you want to be the first to hear about the exciting future of Risk of Rain 2 you probably shouldn't miss out on the Gearbox section of PAX East on Friday 9th May… just sayin’ (make sure you’re following our socials too!)
As we have more to share on all these fronts we’ll let you know. As always we encourage you to give us your feedback, the best place to do so is on the Risk of Rain Discord.
The last few months have been an insane ride for the team. With Phase One they rebuilt (nearly) all of the items added with DLC2. With Phase Two False Son had his boss fight reworked and we made Halcyonite fly (amongst other things). And with Phase Three, the team made some much needed improvements to the Survivors while also adding six new Alternate Abilities.
Through it all we’ve had this community to celebrate our successes with and, almost more importantly, to tell us when something didn’t measure up. We can’t promise to always be perfect. But, I hope what we’ve shown is that we’re always working to make Risk of Rain the best possible version of itself - and that we’ll dedicate the time that’s needed to do that.
You have all driven us to explore new ideas, to keep challenging ourselves, and to keep listening. So thank you, truly, for being here every step of the way.
Over the last few months the entire team has been overwhelmed to see the recent reviews slowly climb up with each phase we’ve released. We just want you to know that has not gone unnoticed and we deeply appreciate everyone’s support and love for the game.
Bye for now,
- The Risk of Rain Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2306620/Risk_of_Rain_2_Seekers_of_the_Storm/
