SegmentNextRisk of Rain 2 Drifter Guide: Unlock, Every Skill And What Junk Is For
The Drifter arrived with the Alloyed Collective expansion and she plays like nobody else on the roster, because her kit runs on rubbish. Hitting things produces Junk, Junk pays for her cooldowns, and eight of it buys temporary items out of thin air. She also picks up the world itself: monsters, barrels and interactables all go in a bag and come back out as a weapon.
How To Unlock The Drifter
The challenge is Lost in Transit, and it asks you to free the survivor from the vault in Solutional Haunt. It is a location job rather than a fight, which puts it among the gentler unlocks on our survivor unlock guide. The expansion has to be enabled, which is also true of her stablemate the Operator, though the Operator needs no challenge at all.
Base Stats
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Health | 170, rising 52 each level |
| Damage | 12, rising 2.4 each level |
| Armor | 20 |
| Movement speed | 7 m/s |
170 is the third largest starting pool of any selectable survivor, behind MUL-T at 200 and False Son at 180, and the 20 armor matches Loader's. She is built to stand in the fight, which her kit requires, since almost everything she does is at arm's length.
Trash To Treasure, And What Junk Is
Her passive pays her for carrying Item Scrap, the leftovers most survivors dump into a printer. Each colour gives a different stacking buff: white scrap is 6 percent movement speed, green is 3 health a second, red is 30 percent attack speed and yellow takes 15 percent off her cooldowns. That turns the one pickup everyone treats as currency into a real loadout decision.
Junk is separate and is generated in combat rather than found. Her primary has a 40 percent chance to produce some on hit, and bashing or slamming enemies with a bagged object makes more. Junk is then spent to skip cooldowns: two for Cleanup, four for Junk Cube, and eight for either of her specials. A Drifter who is hitting things is a Drifter whose cooldowns barely exist, which is the whole design.
Her Skills
| Slot | Skill | Damage | Cooldown | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Passive | Trash to Treasure | None | None | Stacking buffs from carried scrap, by colour |
| Primary | Blunt Force | 170 percent, and 350 percent on the third hit | None | The third hit stuns, and every hit has a 40 percent chance of Junk |
| Secondary | Cleanup | Four hits of 100 percent, plus a thrown object | 6 seconds, or 2 Junk | Throws a volley of debris and something random out of your inventory |
| Utility | Repossess | None on the leap | 7 seconds | Leap forward and bag a monster or an interactable; what you do with it next is the point |
| Primary while holding | Bludgeon | 280 percent, scaling with the object's mass | None | Beat things with whatever is in the bag; generates Junk per hit |
| Special | Salvage | None | 30 seconds, costs 8 Junk | Spends the Junk on four temporary items |
The Alternate Skills
| Skill | Replaces | What changes | Challenge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junk Cube | Cleanup | A 400 percent slam, up to three 400 percent impacts and an 800 percent explosion, for 8 seconds or 4 Junk | Trash Compactor |
| Tornado Slam | Repossess | Spin forward for 220 percent a hit and finish with a 600 percent slam, on 8 seconds | In The Bag |
| Tinker | Salvage | Spend the same 8 Junk to reroll or alter item pickups and interactables, with a 100 percent shockwave attached | Leave No Trace |
How To Play Her
Lead with the primary until Junk starts arriving, because everything else in the kit is priced in it. Then use Repossess on the biggest thing nearby rather than the nearest: mass is damage for Bludgeon, so a bagged monster hits considerably harder than a bagged barrel. Cleanup is the panic button, and spending two Junk to fire it again immediately is usually better than saving toward Salvage, since a dead Drifter salvages nothing.
Salvage against Tinker is the real decision. Four temporary items on demand is raw power in a run that is going badly; Tinker is the better pick in a run that is going well, because rerolling an interactable you were about to waste a purchase on compounds. Scrap changes from currency to equipment the moment you pick her, which means the printers our items tier list assumes you feed can be left alone for a while; carrying four whites is a real movement speed buff rather than dead weight.
Drifter Questions
Is the Drifter good?
She is mid list on our character tier list, and that placement is provisional rather than settled, because she and the Operator are the newest survivors and have the least community data behind them. The health pool and the free cooldowns are real; the kit asks you to stay in melee range to get either.
What is her mastery skin?
Collector, earned the way every mastery skin is, by clearing a run with her on Monsoon. Our skins guide has the full set.
Can she bag bosses?
Repossess is described as bagging monsters and interactables, and mass drives Bludgeon's damage, so heavier targets pay more. What the rest of the roster wants from a run is set out across our builds guide, and the Risk of Rain 2 hub walks a run stage by stage.