Acrid is the ninth survivor in Risk of Rain 2 and a tanky champion whose skills can make him an unstoppable force on the battlefield. Acrid can deal massive damage with his primary melee combo, and his secondary poison type allows him to target multiple enemies nearby.
What makes Acrid the best choice is his contagion ability to spread damage to multiple targets. If you learn to master all his abilities, you can turn him into a formidable tank that can take a beating and dish out massive damage in return.
Acrid was released as part of the Hidden Realms update and can be formidable when taking down bosses. Mastering Acrid Build in Risk of Rain 2 can be beneficial, especially when playing as a team. This guide will help you understand the best build and loadout.
How to Unlock Acrid in Risk of Rain 2?
You can unlock Acrid after completing the “To be Left Alone” mission in the Bazaar between Time levels. The first thing you need to do is activate the new altar. This step requires lunar coins and going through Void Fields. Once you activate the altar, you must go down the blue portal.
Keep going down until you reach the entrance to the null portal, this will lead you to a hidden realm/cave known as “Void Realm”. Note that this is where you will unlock Acrid, and to exit this area, you need to complete the challenge. When you land on the ground, you will find a purple light that will create a shield. You will get constant damage outside the shield.
You will encounter randomized monsters and items inside the shield. You need to charge the portal 100% to drop all the monsters dead and the shield will shrink. When one shield shrinks, you must find eight other shields in the realm, activate them, and charge them at 100%. If you’re unsure where to find the next shield, you need to look for a purple beam in the air, so look around for the light before moving.
Once you traverse through the first 5 shields, the rest lie pretty spaced out, and you must jump around a lot. This is where you will need the Hoppo Feather. You will receive Acrid as a reward once you take down all null shields.
Acrid Build Abilities and Skills in Risk of Rain 2
Acrid’s Most abilities include poison; it can spread poison with either melee or long-range attacks. Let’s review Acrid’s abilities and skills and understand what they do.
| Passive Ability | Poison: This ability damages 10% of max HP (including shields) for 10 seconds. This cannot apply more than once or kill enemies. (Alternate ability) Blight: it gives poison damage while dealing with 60% damage per second. |
| Primary Abilities | Vicious Wounds: Mauls an enemy for 200% damage, with every third hit dealing 400% damage. |
| Secondary Abilities | Neurotoxin: Spits toxic bile to deal 240% damage. (Alternate ability) Ravenous Bite: Bites an enemy for 310% damage but grants regenerate buff. |
Other than these primary and secondary abilities, Acrid uses utility skills like Caustic Leap, which allows you to leap in the air and land hard to cause 320% damage to foes while stunning and poisoning them via a pool of acid that deals 25% damage. An alternate utility includes Frenzied Leap, which gives 550% damage to enemies after you jump in the air but with a reduced cooldown by 2 seconds. As for the special skills, epidemics deal 100% damage and poison enemies with a disease that can spread to 20 targets.
Fast Agile Speedy Torture (F.A.S.T) Build
This build is all about speed, which makes Acrid invincible and dangerous to enemies. Here is the list of items you will need to have for this build:
- Energy Drinks: Paul’s Goat Hoof (for speed), Hopoo Feather (more jumps), Wax Quail
- Defense Items & Abilities: Focus Crystal (close-ranged damage), Soldier’s Syringe (increased attack speed), Backup Magazines, Lens-Maker’s Glasses, Frost Relic, Dio’s Best Friend, Molten Perforator
- Damage Items: Berzerker’s Pauldron (kills 4 enemies in quick succession), Predatory Instincts (more critical hits), Brilliant Behemoth
Lastly, as for the equipment, you need to have Gorag’s Opus to buff all the allies for 7 seconds with 50% increased speed and 100% increased attack speed. Foreign Fruit is an optional piece of equipment that heals you 50%.
Risk of Rain 2 Acrid Damage Build
The next Acrid build focuses on AoE and Bleed damage. You will need to use the following pieces of equipment to make your Acrid boy hardcore killing machine:
- Energy Drinks: Ukulele, Will-o’-the-wisp, Foreign Fruit
- Defense Items & Abilities: Focus Crystal (close-ranged damage), Ceremonial Dagger, Backup Magazine, Dio’s Best Friend, Unstable Tesla Coil
- Damage Items: Tri-Tip Dagger, Gasoline, Razorwire, Shatterspleen, Queen’s Gland
Best Items for Acrid
If you’re choosing to play with Acrid, here are some of the best items you can use to make him into a deadly machine:
- Ukulele: This item adds up to 80% more damage to Acrid’s AoE attacks by doing lightning chains on at least 3 enemies.
- Focus Crystal: As Acrid has mostly melee attacks, this item increases the damage by 20% to all enemies nearby on almost all attacks.
- Death Mark: Acrid’s poison counts as a debuff, and you need at least four or more debuffs to mark enemies for death.
- Primordial Cube: The poison pulls in enemies within a 30m radius into its center and wipes out entire groups.
- Shatterspleen: This powerful item gives Acrid a 5% chance for a critical hit, lands a critical strike while dealing 240% damage to enemies, and explodes when bleeding enemies die, dealing 400% damage.
- Tri-tipped Dagger: When equipped, this item gives Acrid a 10% chance to bleed an enemy, dealing 240% base damage.
- H3AD-5T V2: This allows Acrid to do more damage and increases jump height while creating a kinetic explosion when he hits the ground.
- Vision of Heresy: It helps Acrid fire up to 12 tracking shards, each dealing with 120% base damage.
- Delicate Watch: This increases Acrid’s damage by 20% and if he takes damage below 25% it breaks this item.
