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A Risk of Rain 2 run has a shape our pages keep describing from different angles: a survivor you had to earn, a first few stages where the stacking items decide whether you scale, a teleporter boss that punishes what you skipped, and a loop that makes everything harder and opens the portal that unlocks the Mercenary. This hub follows that shape. Each section names what the items tier list, the survivor pages and the guides to artifacts and lunar items say about that moment of the run, so you read what you need when you need it rather than a page at a time.
Reading Order
| Page | What it settles | Stage of the run |
|---|---|---|
| Survivor builds guide | The ten items three of the four survivor pages share, each survivor’s unlock and its one must-have | Before you pick |
| Items tier list | Twenty-five items ranked S to D with the stacking text for each | The first stages |
| Huntress | The survivor you already have: 36 items sorted into four lists, default and alternate skills | The first run |
| Engineer | Every ability with its numbers, two builds, a 30-stage unlock | Once you have cleared stages on Drizzle |
| Artificer | Five builds, one of them written for Monsoon and one for the stages where enemies one-shot you | When you are looping |
| Mercenary | Animation cancels, two builds, and the Obelisk that unlocks him | After the first Celestial Portal |
| Survivor unlocks | All nineteen characters and the challenge behind each one | Before you pick |
| Character tier list | Who carries a run without item luck, and who needs the run to go well first | Before you pick |
| Artifacts | All twenty run modifiers with the nine-symbol code for each | Once you can reach Sky Meadow |
| Lunar items | Every coin trade and the drawback hidden in each one | Whenever the blue portal opens |
| Skins | What a Monsoon clear and the two expansion runs actually pay out | After you can finish a run |
Before the Run: What Each Survivor Costs
The Huntress is playable from the start, carried over from the first game. The Engineer wants 30 stages cleared in total for the Engineering Perfection challenge, and his page says the counter survives across runs and that Drizzle and the small early stages are the quick way there. The Mercenary is the expensive one: keep a single run alive through enough areas that the game brings you back to the first stage, wait for the white Celestial Portal, walk through it and let the Obelisk obliterate you, and he is yours on the next run. The Artificer is bought rather than fought, for 10 Lunar Coins from the crystal in the Bazaar Between Time, and the price for every other character, from the Loader's hidden guardian on Siren's Call to the Drifter's vault in Solutional Haunt, is listed on our survivor unlock guide. Which of them is worth earning first is the character tier list's question.
The survivor builds guide puts the four side by side and does something none of the individual pages can: it counts which items three of the four call for, and which of the tier list’s placements a survivor page reverses.
The First Stages: The Stacks That Decide the Run
The tier list’s S tier is five items, and every one of them scales per copy: the Syringe for 15 percent attack speed a stack, Lens Maker Glasses for a 10 percent critical chance a stack, Paul’s Goat Hoof for 14 percent movement speed, Tougher Times for a 15 percent block chance, and the Hopoo Feather for an extra jump. The page’s argument for each is the same argument: the number keeps climbing per copy, and the author admits to having overlooked crits in early playthroughs before seeing what a stack of glasses does.
The survivor pages add their own first-stage advice. The Huntress page calls the early phase tougher than it looks and wants a Foreign Fruit for it, with a single Fuel Cell only if that fruit arrives early. The Artificer’s crowd-control build opens by killing twenty enemies as fast as possible so her primary scales, and suggests the Swarms artifact to make that quick. The Engineer page’s first tip is to always have both turrets down, and it notes that they revive themselves.
The Teleporter and Its Boss
Two tier-list entries are written for this moment. The Tri-Tip Dagger’s bleed is the page’s pick for passive damage against bosses during the teleporter event, and Runald’s Band, an ice blast that slows by 80 percent, is called effective during the teleport phase. The Old Guillotine finishes Elites under 20 percent health, and the Crowbar’s 150 percent against enemies above 90 percent is the opener the Mercenary page also wants for bosses, paired there with Armor Piercing Rounds.
The Mercenary page has the most to say about surviving a boss. Eviscerate makes him untouchable for its duration, so the page reserves it for the heavy burst attacks, with Blinding Assault as the escape when Eviscerate is on cooldown, since the dash is invincible for its whole animation. The Engineer’s Bubble Shield, 15 seconds of no incoming damage in a 9.75-metre bubble, is the support answer to the same problem, and you can hold two. The Huntress page’s answer is distance: Blink or Ballista into the air and shoot down.
The Loop and the Late Stages
Once you loop, our pages start retiring items. The tier list drops Cautious Slug and Red Whip to Tier D because a late run is not out of combat long enough for out-of-combat regen or an out-of-combat speed boost to trigger, and it rates the Bundle of Fireworks a curiosity for opening chests into a crowd when better damage exists. Infusion, by contrast, is a Tier A pick precisely for the end game: a permanent health point per kill up to 100 a stack.
Two survivor builds are written for this part of the run. The Artificer’s Will-o’-the-Wisp build is for stages where enemies can one-shot you, taking Ion Surge over the Flamethrower for the positioning, and her Monsoon build is offered to anyone who switched to that difficulty and lost to the first boss. The Mercenary’s Invincible build is the other late-run page: Alien Head, Hardlight Afterburner, Backup Magazine, Bandolier, Dio’s Best Friend and Predatory Instincts, with the page’s claim that four Alien Heads all but end the run in your favour. The loop is also where the Mercenary is earned in the first place, since the Celestial Portal only appears once you have been sent back to the first stage.
Questions Our Pages Answer
Which items should you stack first?
The tier list’s S tier: Syringe, Lens Maker Glasses, Paul’s Goat Hoof, Tougher Times and Hopoo Feather. The page says each one is worth more with every copy.
Does the items tier list apply to every survivor?
It is written as a general list, and the survivor pages overrule it in both directions: Cautious Slug and Energy Drink rank low but sit on the Artificer and Huntress lists, while the Syringe ranks S yet appears on the Mercenary page alone. The builds guide has the full set of disagreements.
How do you unlock the Mercenary?
Loop a run until the white Celestial Portal appears on the first stage, go through, and obliterate yourself at the Obelisk.
After Your First Clear
Beating Mithrix once turns the game into a different one, because the things you were ignoring become the content. The first is the artifact list: nineteen codes to punch into the generator on Sky Meadow, one trial each in Bulwark's Ambry, and a set of toggles that let you rebuild the rules, Command above all, which turns every item argument on this hub into something you can simply choose. The second is the lunar shelf, where every item is a trade rather than a gift and the coins you spend survive your death. The third is the skin list, which is really a list of Monsoon runs you have not done yet. Thirteen of the nineteen survivors still have no page of their own here, and that is the honest gap in this folder.