This guide will touch on all of the items in the game, how they stack, and where/when/with whomst they are useful.
Introduction
This will list each item and its effect. I will not be using the effect’s description verbatim from the logbook, since frequently this leaves out important information. There will also be a notes section that describes generally how useful the item is, or any pitfalls or shortcomings it may have.
For purposes of this guide:
- Common Item – White
- Uncommon Item – Green
- Legendary Item – Red
- Boss Item – Yellow
- Lunar Item/Lunar Equipment – Blue
- Equipment Item – Orange
This guide will also discuss how effectively items stack together, i’ll try to stick to these terms to describe stacking:
- Linear – Additional items continue to increase the effect of the item by the same amount for each item. Examples: Backup Magazine, Soldier’s Syringe, Paul’s Goat Hoof.
- Reduced Linear – Additional items increase the effect of the original item at a reduced rate after the first item is obtained. Examples: Energy Drink (30% on the first item, then 20% for every additional), Gasoline.
- Logarithmic – Additional items increase the effect of the original item by a smaller amount than the previous, becoming a less effective increase the more items that are gathered. Essentially, gathering more of the item causes diminishing returns. Examples: Tougher Times, Fuel Cells, and to an extent, Corpsebloom.
- Unique – This item follows a unique stacking method, like Tri-Tip Blade or Rusty Key. This method will be described in further detail in the notes section.
It might also be nice to define a quick list of effect types that would be mentioned:
- On hit – Whenever one of your attacks does damage to an enemy. This could be the result of some other trigger, such as fireworks released from a chest, which can trigger on-hit effects.
- On kill – Whenever an enemy dies as a result of damage that your character inflicted. The killing blow is all that is needed.
- Out of Combat – Typically when your character is not receiving damage for a short period (around 5 seconds), and when your character is not using offensive abilities (essentially any attacks, but mobility skills do not count as combat).
- Out of Danger – Similar to Out of Combat, but the only requirement is your character has not taken damage for a short duration. Attacking is still allowed without breaking this status.
- Standing Still – Your character cannot be moving. A lot of enemy attacks still carry a tiny bit of force behind them which can move you, interrupting this effect. Engineer turrets can never be moved while deployed.
- Deals x% Base Damage – Your character’s base damage is used to calculate the damage for a number of things, including your abilities and most items, especially items that deal damage over time. Your base damage steadily increases with your level, and there are few ways to increase it outside of specific, rare items.
- Deals x% Damage – Different from base damage. This is usually a property of on-hit items. On-hit items will deal x% damage based on the damage of the attack that caused the on-hit effect to activate. If your sticky bomb deals 250% damage, and you deal 100 damage to an enemy, that sticky bomb is expected to deal 250 damage. The reverse is true of low damage attacks, which while they may cause bombs to appear more frequently, they will use the far less damage of your rapid fire attack.
A quick point to mention, Engineer turrets must be considered as individual characters with a copy of all of the engineer’s items that deployed them. That is the best way to make sense and predict how an item will perform on a turret. Outside of money and experience, anything that would normally credit a character for doing something that an engineer turret does goes to the turret, not the engineer.
Common Items – Part 1
Effect: Increases attack speed by 15% (+15% per stack).
Stacking: Linear
Notes: As simple as it is useful, pretty much every character can rely on a flat increase to attack speed. Faster attacks are more damage and more on-hit effects. The only character that does not benefit as much from this item as the others is Artificer, who has cool downs on all skills. She can sling her firebolts faster, but she still has to wait for them to cool down.
Effect: 15% (+15% per stack*) chance to block incoming damage.
Stacking: Logarithmic
Requires: “The Learning Process”; Die five times
Notes: When hit, this item has a chance of stopping all incoming damage from that hit. On-hit effects are still applied (such as fire damage), but damage over time can also be blocked in a similar manner. In fact, this item has potential to block any kind of damage you take, including damage from the Shrine of Blood and fall damage.
The asterisk* on this item is what stops it from breaking the game. This item stacks logarithmically instead of linearly, so additional items do not increase the effect as much as the previous item. The general consensus around it is to stop collecting them around 10-16 bears, where the diminishing returns begin to become too great. At that point, you should be around 75% resistant to any hits. This item is a useful take on any character, but especially characters with low mobility or health pools.
Effect: Killing an enemy spawns a healing orb. When picked up, the orb heals for 4 (+4 per stack) health.
Stacking: Linear
Notes: This item was far more useful in Risk of Rain 1. Currently, the orbs do not heal much, and must be manually picked up (so you have to be nearby what you kill). In addition, the orbs expire after a very short time (about 5 seconds, if that), so it is rare that you are able to take advantage of them. Hopefully in the future, this item is modified to be more useful. For now, it should be avoided if possible for other items.
Effect: Your attacks have a 10% (+10% per stack) chance to deal a critical hit, which does double damage.
Stacking: Linear
Notes: Incredibly useful; but only up to a certain point. While there are no diminishing returns, getting your critical chance above 100% is pointless. Some tricksters may want you to believe that if you have 200% critical chance, then you can hit for double or even triple crits, but they are trickster spirits who only seek to confound and bamboozle. Once your crit chance reaches 100%, that’s it. You do double damage all the time, no more, and no less. It is commonly accepted that you should stop collecting these around eight or nine items, as there are a scant few other items that also increase critical chance which can fill the gap of the last 10-20% for you.
It should also be noted, that I believe explosive damage can also benefit from critical chance, however damage over time (bleeding, burning) does not.
Effect: Increases movement speed by 14% (+14% per stack).
Stacking: Linear
Requires: “Is this bugged?”; Fail a Shrine of Chance 3 times in a row.
Notes: Another simple-as-is-useful item. It increases your base movement speed. Its sister item, the Energy Drink (which only increases sprint speed), gives a larger speed boost per item, but only affects sprinting. The Goat Hoof increases speed at its source, so all other things that affect speed only during certain situations (like sprinting) also benefit from this item.
Effect: After standing still for two seconds, create a sphere around you that heals for 4.5% (+2.25% per stack) of your maximum health every second. Allies within a 3 meter (+1.5 meter per stack) radius also heal for the same amount of health.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (both for healing and radius)
Notes: Also called the Big Bungus. For majority of characters, this item is not extremely useful. It requires you to stand still to activate, in a game where standing still can usually result in swift and painful obliteration. However, it does heal allies, which can be useful in early and possibly mid-game.
For Engineers, however, this item is crack cocaine/MDMA/methanphetamines. This is due to the fact that their turrets, when placed, generate a healing zone since they are always standing still. This not only helps them soak huge amounts of damage, but it also creates a healing zone for anyone else on the team. If you’re not an engineer and someone else is, don’t even bother picking this up and just let the engineer take it. He will get far more use out of it.
Given enough stacks and due to the spherical nature of the healing zone, the fungus can also begin to heal flying allies, like drones and ghosts of enemies generated by Happiest Mask.
Effect: Deal 150% (+30% per stack) damage to enemies above 90% health.
Stacking: Reduced Linear.
Requires: “The Basics”; Discover 10 unique white items
Notes: The infamous crowbar nuke. This is mostly useful on characters with high damage, one-shot abilities, as that initial shot is magnified for additional damage, getting the most worth out of each crowbar. Once the enemy is under 90% health though, you go back to doing normal damage. This makes it much less useful on suppressive classes like Commando and Engineer.
If they ever do add the Sniper back, this will be his cocaine. It should be noted that use items and explosives also benefit from increased damage granted by this item.
Effect: On hit, 15% (+15% per stack*) chance to cause an enemy to bleed, dealing 240% base damage over time.
Stacking: Unique
Notes: If this item is anything like the Rusty Blade from Risk of Rain 1, it has a very unique method of stacking (which it appears to still have in the sequel). Each blade in your inventory is considered individually when deciding to inflict bleeding damage, as opposed to it being a flat chance for the whole stack. This means if you hit an enemy while you have 10 blades, each blade decides if it inflicts bleed damage of its own accord (15% chance for each blade). This could mean you get no bleed damage, or this could mean you get 2400% bleed damage in a short time frame.
Obviously, the more blades you have, the greater the average bleed damage inflicted is.
Bleeding damage also stacks for consecutive hits, so characters with fast rates of fire (Commando or MUL-T come to mind) can cause large amounts of bleeding damage in short time frames.
Effect: When leveling up, your character drops a banner that influences all allies within 16 meters (+8 meters per stack). Allies under the influence of the banner gain +30% attack speed and +30% movement speed.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (radius), No stacking (attack speed/movement speed bonus)
Notes: Given that leveling up becomes a very rare occurrence later in the game, the banner is seldom very useful. Side note: Engineer benefits from these since he is more suited to staying immobile.
Common Items – Part 2
Stacking: Reduced Linear
Notes: The game confusingly uses “out of danger” in its wording in-game, but “out of combat” in the logbook. In any case, it appears the former is the correct definition. This item will increase healing after you do not take damage for a short time, however you are free to use abilities and deal damage yourself without interrupting the healing it provides. It’s helpful, however the healing can be rather slow on its own, and small amounts of damage over time can prevent it from helping you at all.
Effect: Gain a shield worth 25 (+25 per stack) points of health. Recharges while outside of danger.
Stacking: Linear
Notes: An okay choice that provides a small buffer of extra health. The shield will quickly recharge after not receiving damage for a short time. While useful, the amount of shield given is rather poor at later levels, and you would need a great number of shields to provide a good solid chunk of your health. An item like Infusion, while uncommon, and effectively raise your maximum health by four times as much as a single shield generator (albeit you would need kills, but since you’re always killing things, this is mostly a moot point).
Effect: Heal for 10 (+10 per stack) health 1.1 seconds after taking damage.
Stacking: Linear (health healed), No Stacking (time delay for healing)
Requires: “Elite Slayer”; Defeat an Elite-type monster
Notes: An okay choice. This item helps shrug off portions of damage taken. It is important to note, that if you take damage before the item heals you (during the 1.1 seconds of delay), the healing will be interrupted and you will not get healing for the first hit you took. This reduces its usefulness for frequent but low damage attacks, such as damage over time from fire.
Effect: Killing an enemy ignites all enemies within a 12 meter (+4 meters per stack) radius of the killed enemy. Enemies ignited burn for 150% (+75% per stack) of your base damage over time.
Stacking: Reduced linear (both radius and damage)
Notes: A very solid choice that can quickly mop up clusters of weak enemies. This item can make quick work of the ever-present wisps and jellyfish that plague the skies. Once you destroy one of them, nearby ones ignite, then die, then ignite the ones nearby them, causing a fine chain reaction. This can also help create supplemental damage on harder targets that are clustered nearby weaker ones.
The only time this item falters is on clusters of hard targets that are difficult to kill. This item is best at cleaning up weak, trash enemies.
Effect: On hit, 5% (+5% per stack) chance to stun enemies for 2 seconds.
Stacking: Linear
Notes: Another solid choice for characters with high attack speed. The beauty of stuns is that they interrupt attacks on non-boss monsters, such as Golems and Beetle Guards. This means you don’t have to spend as much time dodging around or diving for cover from their attacks, since you can interrupt them just by attacking. Naturally, it’s probably a good idea to stop collecting these around 19 or 20 of them since the duration of the stun does not stack, only the chance of the stun occuring.
Effect: When using an interactable object, launch 8 (+4 per stack) fireworks that seek out enemy targets and deal 300% base damage.
Stacking: Reduced Linear
Requires: “…Maybe one more”; Duplicate the same item 7 times at the same 3D printer
Notes: Surprisingly robust, this is essentially a free and smaller version of the disposable missile launcher that occurs every time you interact with something (not just chests, like the description says). It procs even on shrines, the teleporter, and when repairing drones. The missiles are welcome damage against targets and can easily clean up weak trash enemies around you while you are busy looting. This also nets you a small sum of cash for the next chest.
And still, any kills generated from the fireworks trigger any on-kill effects your character has, which can further snowball a combo along. This is a solid item for any character since you’ll always be opening chests.
Effect: Increases sprinting speed by 30% (+20% per stack).
Stacking: Reduced Linear
Notes: The sister item of Paul’s Goat Hoof. This item, however, only increases sprinting speed, but does so by a larger amount than a Goat Hoof. This makes it very useful when scouring the map for chests and evading fire. This is especially useful on Huntress, who can still attack while sprinting.
According to the logbook’s description, it literally contains pretty much every hard street drug known to man, so unlike those items that I mentioned that were cocaine for certain characters, this item is literally cocaine and every other drug known.
Effect: Add +1 (+1 per stack) charge of your secondary skill.
Stacking: Linear
Requires: “Flawless”; Complete a teleporter event without getting hit
Notes: Very useful for most characters, except for Engineer, who already gets 10 charges of his mines. Commando gets to shoot more penetrating rounds, MUL-T gets to become the black Scottish cyclops of stun grenades, Huntress gets to spin around flinging glavies everywhere, Artificer can spam more nano-nukes, and Mercenary becomes an attack helicopter with his whirlwind.
This allows most characters a lot more damage output since they don’t have to wait for their secondary skill to recharge after using it every time.
Effect: On hit, 5% (+2.5% per stack) chance to attack a bomb to an enemy, which detonates after a short time for 250% (+125% per stack) damage.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (both proc chance and damage)
Notes: Very good stacking potential. Stacking not only increases the damage to nuke levels, but also the proc chance, which allows you to stack more nukes. The explosion also damages nearby enemies that are clustered together. A solid choice on anything with a high attack speed.
Effect: A rusty lockbox containing a random item will appear in a random location in each stage (the rarity of the item tends to be higher per stack).
Stacking: Unique
Requires: “Keyed Up”; Defeat the teleporter bosses in under 15 seconds
Notes: The rusty lockbox only starts appearing on the stages after you get the key. Once you grab it, you have to go to the next stage for the lockbox to spawn. The lockbox is a small, black box, larger than a capsule but smaller than a normal chest. It’s easy to mistake it for a rock (or something) if you don’t know what it is. The more keys you have when you open the box, the better the item usually is. It’s good to have at least one of these keys on hand since you get a free item per level if you do.
Effect: Deal an additional 20% (+10% per stack) damage to bosses.
Stacking: Reduced Linear
Requires: “Advancement”; Complete a teleporter event
Notes: This would be a solid item, however it only counts ‘boss’ enemies as the ones specifically spawned by the teleporter that have to be killed, not just ‘boss’ type monsters that begin to randomly spawn at higher difficulties. It is, however, a substantial damage increase, so it is not a terrible item to take.
Uncommon Items – Part 1
Effect: On hit, 10% chance to fire a missile that seeks an enemy target and deals 300% (+300% per stack) damage.
Stacking: Linear (damage), No stacking (proc chance)
Notes: Disappointing that the missiles no longer stack proc chance as they did in the first game, however they now stack a huge amount of damage. Very useful for characters that do a lot of on-hit effects (i.e Commando, MUL-T). In multiplayer, it may be more useful to ensure each character gets an AtG missile launcher instead of having one character hold them all. This means more missiles flying around which can easily nuke weak enemies on their lonesome.
Effect: On killing an enemy, the enemy explodes in a 12 meter (+2.4 meters per stack) radius for 350% (+280% per stack) base damage.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (radius and damage)
Notes: The sister item to Gasoline. Stacks excellently for huge damage, though the radius does not stack as well. The explosion is sure to, at minimum, modestly damage anything around it. With stacks of gasoline, the burning damage can finish off anything that survived the explosions, then cause those mobs to explode in turn. Combine gasoline and this item for huge chain reaction potential.
Effect: Gain +1 (+1 per stack) maximum jump count.
Stacking: Linear
Notes: Another simple-useful item. Allows your character another mid-air jump before having to touch the ground. For Mercenary, who already has two jumps, it gives him his jump after he has already expended the two he has normally. It should be noted that jumps allowed via Hopoo Feather will not trigger the speed boost from Wax Quail. Mercenary is the exception where he can use Wax Quail twice in the air since he already has two jumps built in.
In later stages, the floor is usually literally lava. Having a large stack of Hopoo Feathers can keep you airborne for a great amount of time and help you escape danger.
Effect: On hit, 25% chance to fire chaining lightning from the hit target for 80% base damage. The lightning seeks out up to 3 (+2 per stack) enemies from its source within 20 meters (+2 meters per stack).
Stacking: Reduced Linear (Enemy count, range), No stacking (proc chance, damage)
Notes: Stacks very well and is very useful against groups, since the lightning can zap weak enemies in a cluster while you focus on a big bad. The stacking is not bad, however it does not stack damage or proc chance, and the range stack is rather small. Works wonderfully on bosses and hard targets, since the lighting just continues to zap surrounding smaller enemies.
Effect: Dealing damage heals you for 1 (+1 per stack) health.
Stacking: Linear
Notes: Useful on any character with a very high rate of fire. Much less useful on characters that deal lots of damage in a few shots, and Engineer since the healing goes to his turrets when they damage something, instead of him. If you can get enough of these, and enough rate of fire, you should be able to out-heal moderates amount of damage just by attacking, however the healing is rather gradual and you can get smacked out of the sky if you’re not careful.
Effect: On hitting an enemy with a critical strike, increase attack speed by 10% for approximately a second. Maximum capacity for attack speed increase is 30% (+30% per stack).
Stacking: Linear (speed capacity), No stacking (increase per hit)
Requires: “Rapidfire”; Reach 200% attack speed
Notes: Pretty good on characters with high attack speed and those who already have high critical chance, since that would essentially give you bonus attack speed for attacking. Is not good on characters that cannot maintain a high rate of fire, like Artificer or Engineer (though his turrets benefit from it a lot if they have high critical chance).
The number of stacks allowed increases the potential for speed, but the stack wane very quickly, limiting its usefulness.
Effect: While out of combat, movement speed is increase by 30% (+30% per stack).
Stacking: Linear
Notes: Solid item, sister to Energy Drink and Paul’s Goat Hoof, except this item is only useful for getting around the map and not for combat. Attacking or taking damage will stop you from getting this benefit, however the speed boost is very high for a single item, and it stacks well.
Effect: When taking damage, there is a chance to become invisible and gain 40% movement speed for 3 seconds (+1.5 seconds per stack). The chance of this item activating increases with the amount of damage taken.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (effect duration), No stacking (proc chance, movement speed gain)
Notes: Very useful for squishy characters. The invisibility temporarily stops enemies from targeting you (though area of effect attacks and damage over time can still kill you easy), and the movement speed can help you get out of danger. However, this item cannot be relied upon to activate at any given moment, so you have to monitor when it activates, and then take advantage of it.
It is useful on Engineer to protect him, and his turrets can benefit from the invisibility to get some damage out while not being attacked. Other squishy classes like Huntress and Artificer can also benefit since their relatively small health pool means they take a larger percentage of health for damage than other classes.
Effect: Gain 5% critical strike chance. On hitting an enemy with a critical strike, heal for 8 (+4 per stack) health.
Stacking: Reduce Linear (health gained), No stacking (critical strike chance increase)
Requires: “Prismatically Aligned”; Complete a Prismatic Trial
Notes: Useful on fast firing characters that already have high critical chance. The healing is rather substantial for an on-hit item (much more healing then leeching seed on its own). However, if you have low critical chance or low rate of fire, this item is much less useful. Best used with MUL-T or Commando.
Effect: Gain +1 (+1 per stack) equipment charge. Reduce equipment cooldown by 15% (+15% per stack).
Stacking: Linear (Equipment charges and cooldown)
Requires: “Experimenting”; Pick up 5 different equipment items
Notes: Absolutely incredibly useful. Not only does it reduce your equipment’s cooldown, but it also lets you spam your equipment much more in a short time frame if you really really need it. This can allow you to leave equipment on recharge for some time, then only using the whole inventory of it when it is really required. Great for offensive equipment items like Disposable Missile Launcher, Royal Capacitor, or the Prion Accumulator.
Uncommon Items – Part 2
Effect: On killing an enemy, increases your maximum health permanently by 1, up to a maximum of 100 (+100 per stack) health.
Stacking: Linear (maximum health capacity), No stacking (health gained per kill)
Requires: “Slaughter”; Defeat 3000 enemies
Notes: Much less broken than it was in the first game, where there was no limit on how much health you could gain. Now, this is a solid choice to help squishier characters get a little tougher. This is not a good choice to take on Engineer, as any kills made by his turrets will cause the infusion stack to go to the turret, and not the engineer. These stacks are then wasted when the turret is killed or redeployed. If playing engineer, try saving these for Huntress, Artificer, or any other character that can make use of it.
In addition, the number of infusions you get doesn’t increase the rate you gain maximum health per kill like it did in the first game. You still get one health for one kill, you just have a higher maximum.
Effect: On kill, 18% (+10% per stack) chance to drop an ammo box, which resets all cooldowns when picked up.
Stacking: Reduced Linear
Notes: Very useful on characters with long skill cooldowns like Huntress and Engineer. The boxes can be picked up by anyone, and instantly add one charge to all of that character’s skills when picked up (for characters who have multiple charges per skill). Recharging of a particular skill is not interrupted by the ammo box, it continues to charge where it was before the box was picked.
This makes it a solid choice for engineer so he can redeploy turrets and shields faster, or Mercenary so he can stay in the air longer with Eviscerate and Blinding Assault, or for Huntress to continue chaining Arrow Rain.
Effect: Killing 3 enemies within 1 second increases your movement speed by 50% and attack speed by 100% for 6 (+4 per stack) seconds.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (effect duration), No stacking (Movement/attack speed bonuses, effect trigger threshold)
Requires: “Glorious Battle”; Completely charge a teleporter with less than 10% health remaining
Notes: The bonuses provided from this buff are immense and noticeable with any character. The only shame is that they do not stack with additional items, and the window for killing enemies remains 1 second. With a few stacks though, this bonus can easily last for half a minute or more. Good for characters that can benefit from the greatly increased attack speed (Commando and MUL-T, to some extent, Mercenary).
Effect: Increases armor by 25 (+25 per stack) while sprinting.
Stacking: Linear
Notes: Misunderstood. Provides some good damage resistance, but only when you sprint. Interestingly, though, it also provides damage resistance to damage over time and I think fall damage. Best to equip on Huntress, who can still attack while sprinting.
Effect: On hit, 8% chance to strike the enemy with a runic ice blast, slowing them by 80% and dealing 250% (+125% per stack) base damage.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (damage), No stacking (slow amount, proc chance)
Requires: “Death do us part”; Find the hidden chamber in Abandoned Aqueduct
Notes: It’s okay. The proc chance is rather low, and the damage is alright, and the slow is welcomed, but it simply does not stack well after you get the first one. There’s better items you could collect a ton of in this rarity.
Effect: On hit, 8% chance to strike the enemy with a runic flame tornado, dealing 500% (+250% per stack) damage.
Stacking: Reduced Linear
Requires: “Death do us part”; Find the hidden chamber in Abandoned Aqueduct
Notes: Better than the former, Runald’s band. It has no slow effect, but it does way more damage. The proc chance, however, remains rather low. Stacks a bit better as well.
Effect: On hit, slow enemies for -60% movement speed for 1 (+1 per stack) second.
Stacking: Linear (effect duration), No stacking (slowdown amount)
Notes: It’s also okay. The slowdown is somewhat helpful on fast enemies like Imps, but it is a shame the slowdown amount does not stack. The duration of the slowdown is also only useful for characters who cannot keep up consistent hits (so, characters that do not benefit well from any on-hit item at all). Try to avoid for other green items if possible.
Effect: When jumping while sprinting, receive a boost forward equivalent to 10 (+10 per stack) meters.
Stacking: Linear
Requires: “Going fast recommended”; Reach 300% movement speed (includes sprinting)
Notes: Very fun, very useful, very good at stacking. Two or three of these already launches you a good distance and speed forward. Six or seven will see you leaping uncomfortable distances. If you jump into an angled surface, you can launch yourself impressive distances into the air, and the game essentially turns into Tribes: Ascend. A very good item for characters with inherently low mobility. This also makes it faster to jump around than it is to sprint to places.
Legendary Items – Part 1
Effect: All of your attacks explode in a 4 (+1.5 per stack) meter radius for 60% damage to nearby enemies.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (Range), No stacking (damage bonus)
Notes: A solid choice, this essentially provides great bonus damage to anything around whatever you hit. This damage also benefits use items and projectiles like Fireworks and AtG missiles. Stacking them is okay, and increases the range, but not the damage. This gives great potential when combined with items like Gasoline, which can finish off the nearby already weakened enemies.
Effect: Killing an enemy releases 4 (+2 per stack??) homing daggers.
Stacking: Unknown, believed to be an increase in daggers spawned per kill or damage.
Notes: The game is not clear on how this item is supposed to stack. In the first game, it increased the number of daggers spawned, so it could be safe to assume it does so in this game as well. The Daggers do very good damage and have decent tracking ability. They also will be spawned any time an attack kills an enemy — even if that enemy is killed by homing daggers. This gives this item great chain ability and snowballing potential.
In contrast to items like Gasoline, which has a limited range, the daggers spawned can seek enemies from great distances, and usually hit their target with decent accuracy. The damage is also very good against weak targets, and usually the daggers alone can kill an enemy, causing more daggers to be released. This item only falters with numerous hard targets, where the daggers can’t reliably snowball. The tracking on the daggers is not the greatest, and neither is the lifetime of the daggers. Once they have been flying for a bit, they stop tracking and eventually despawn.
Effect: Killing an enemy surrounds your character with 3 icicles that deal 3×33% damage.
Stacking: Unknown, believed to be an increase in damage.
Notes: In the first game, this item had great snowballing potential in mobs of weak enemies. Each enemy killed spawned a new batch of icicles, which could do damage combined with the old icicles. Wading into a number of enemies usually caused the area around you to become a macerator for enemy forces, so the icicles only stopped once you ran out of enemies.
Stacking is unclear for this item at the moment, as is if the effect doubles if two enemies are killed at the same time, since the animation is not the greatest.
Effect: Killing an enemy has a 10% chance to spawn a ghost of the killed enemy, that does 500% damage. The ghost of the killed enemy bleeds health constantly, and lasts 30 (+30 per stack) seconds if not healed.
Stacking: Linear (Base Lifetime), No stacking (Damage/proc chance)
Notes: Oddly enough, the ghosts merely bleed health over their lifetime, equal to their maximum health over their ideal lifetime every second (an enemy with 500 health that lasts 30 seconds is going to bleed 500/30 health/second). These ghosts can also be healed by any healing ability that heals allies as well – bustling fungus and the Gnarled Woodsprite, among a few things possible.
The ghosts also have a hidden effect — each ghost counts as a spawned mob in the game’s logic, and the game can only spawn a maximum number of mobs before it is forced to stop. Having ghosts out essentially reduces the number of hostiles the game can throw at your passively.
It is also hilarious that this item works on boss-type enemies, unlike in the first game. Bosses bleed huge chunks of health, but they still have naturally destructive abilities (combined with 500% damage increase, hello Vagrant Dying EMP).
Effect: Increases jump height. Ignore fall damage. Holding space while airborne slows your vertical momentum upwards, then greatly increases your character’s downward velocity, angling towards the nearest enemy below you. On hitting the ground, create a 10 meter kinetic explosion, dealing 2300% base damage that scales up with speed. The effects of this item are on cooldown after an explosion is generated, and will recharge in 10 (-50% per stack) seconds.
Stacking: Logarithmic (Recharge speed), No stacking (Damage, jump height, radius)
Notes: Very fun when combined with movement items like Wax Quail and Hopoo feathers. Easily capable of dealing absurd amounts of damage, and the damage dealt can also proc on-hit effects such as sticky bomb (which will use the damage from the impact, so it increases the already absurd damage).
The only complaint people have of this item is that additional jumps granted by Hopoo feather do not benefit from the increased jump height, and normal jumps become rather ‘floaty’, giving you a lot of air time with no control over how high you jump. The negation of fall damage appears to last even if the item is on cooldown, however.
Effect: Whenever your character receives healing, store 100% (+100% per stack) of the healing received as soul energy. Once soul energy reaches at least 10% of your maximum health, fire a skull that deals 250% of your soul energy as damage.
Stacking: Linear (Healing -> Soul Energy conversion), No Stacking (Max HP Threshold, Damage)
Requires: “Her Concepts”; Find the Altar to N’kuhana
Notes: It’s pretty terrible on most characters, unless you are already kitted out with obscene amounts of healing, at which point this probably becomes irrelevant. But the secret is that the healing doesn’t have to have any effect on your character in order to get soul energy. Any healing received, even if you already have full health, will still count for soul energy.
This means that engineer turrets, who are always sitting in huge nests of busting fungus, will start shooting heat seeking skulls every single second at any nearby enemy. This item becomes a must for any engineer.
Effect: When coming within range of an enemy, the Tesla coil activates for 10 seconds. While active, the Tesla coil fires lightning that hits up to 3 (+3 per stack) enemies for 200% base damage every 0.5 seconds. After being active for 10 seconds, the Tesla coil switches off for 10 seconds.
Stacking: Linear (enemy count), No Stacking (damage, attack speed, duration)
Requires: “Macho”; Deal 5000 damage with one attack
Notes: Great item that kills things without you even having to touch it. The range does not appear to be defined just yet, but it is a modest range. The lightning fired bounces between enemy targets, and more or less nukes weak targets out of a crowd for you (which, in turn, can cause nasty on-kill effects for anything bigger that survives). Less useful on classes that remain rather far from the action.
Effect: All random effects are rolled +1 (+1 per stack) additional time. The most favorable outcome of the rolls is chosen.
Stacking: Linear
Requires: “The Long Road”; Complete 20 stages in a single run
Notes: Any random event or effect (such as on-hit procs or critical strikes) are rolled an additional time, and the game will choose the better outcome of any rolls. This essentially gives many things a chance to proc a second time if they don’t the first, and can improve things such as item rolls or lunar coin drops. Invaluable.
Still sorely missed will be the 56-Leaf clover from the first game. Rest in peace.
Legendary Items – Part 2
Effect: On hit, 20% chance (+20% per stack) to fire homing hooks at up to 10 (+5 per stack) enemies for 100% damage. Enemies hooked by this item are pulled towards the hit enemy.
Stacking: Linear (Proc chance), Reduced Linear (Enemies targeted), No stacking (damage)
Requires: “Deja Vu?”; Loop back to the first stage in a single run
Notes: At first glance the item itself just seems to be a small amount of extra damage to other nearby enemies. But once you actually use it, you find out it’s actually fantastic for anything that has an on-kill or on-hit effect with a limited radius. The logbook neglects to add that enemies hooked by this effect are pulled towards the enemy that originally proc’ed the hit.
This makes it incredible for drawing loose clusters of enemies together to kill with on-kill effects like Gasoline and Will-o’-the-Wisp. It also hooks a very large number of enemies even with one item, so this can make low stacks of gasoline and other such items easier to work with.
Effect: Reduces cooldowns on all skills by 25% (+25% per stack).
Stacking: Logarithmic
Notes: Great for any character with long cooldowns, but especially for Artificer, since she has no skills without a cooldown. Engineer and Huntress benefit well since a lot of their skills have relatively long (15-30 seconds) cooldowns. Pretty straightforward.
Effect: On kill, reduce your current equipment’s cooldown by 4 (+2 per stack) seconds.
Stacking: Reduced linear
Requires: “Newtist”; Interact with 8 unique Newt Altars
Notes: Straightforward and good on any class except for engineer. Engineer relies mostly on his turrets to get his kills, and when turrets kill things, on kill credits for items such as this go to the turrets, not the owner of the turrets (I.e, the engineer). Anyone else kills things by their own hand, so any kill benefits from this.
It’s also good to note that the equipment cooldown is done by a flat value of seconds, not percentage. This means it makes equipment with short cooldowns get back to ready status even faster, such as Royal Capacitor. Use items like the Preon Accumulator still benefit, but they still suffer from extremely long cooldown.
Effect: Upon your character’s death, this item is consumed from your inventory after a short delay. Your character is revived with three seconds of invulnerability and full health.
Stacking: None
Requires: “The Lone Survivor”; Survive for 30 consecutive minutes
Notes: Everyone wants this because it gives you a second chance when you inevitably screw up and die. You can revive as many times as you have non-consumed Dio’s in your inventory. Unlike in the first game, Dio’s do not regenerate after a certain amount of time. Once they are consumed, they are gone forever (though a greyed out version of the item will still remain in your inventory to remind you of your sin).
Engineers especially can benefit from Dio’s, since his turrets will revive upon death as many times as you have active Dio’s. This does not consume Dio’s from you inventory, and the turrets get new Dio’s whenever they are redeployed. This allows them to absorb some hits that instantly kill them and continue to provide damage and distraction.
Effect: Add +2 (+2 per stack) charges to your character’s utility skill, and reduce utility skill cooldown by 33%.
Stacking: Linear (Skill Charges), No stacking (cooldown reduction)
Notes: A great item on any character with a good utility skill, which is about everyone but Artificer. Commando gets increased horizontal mobility with dodges, MUL-T can travel further distances or do more damage with transport mode, Huntress can blink further distances or correct a poor reposition, Engineer can continually place shields for uninterrupted cover, and Mercenary can use his Blinding Assault with much more flexibility while waiting for other skills to cooldown.
Artificer does not benefit as well simply because her utility skill is not related to mobility, it’s just an ice wall that is questionably effective.
Effect: On kill of an elite monster, gain the power of the slain elite monster for 8 (+5 per stack) seconds.
Stacking: Reduced Linear (Effect duration)
Notes: Avoid. Avoid avoid avoid. Right now in the game there is a developmental oversight involving shock enemies (the blue ones with a large portion of health as shields). Killing a shock enemy takes half your health and turns it into rapidly recharging shield for the duration of the effect. Once that effect wears off, the shield is removed and converted back into health.
But the developers forgot that it should probably heal your health for the shield you still had, and it doesn’t. So essentially, when you kill a shielded enemy and the effect wears off, you are out for half of your health that you have to regenerate on your own. Once this is fixed, this effect will probably be somewhat passable. The burn and freeze effects are okay, but still underwhelming.
Effect: On kill of an elite monster, gain a buff for 3 (+2 per stack) seconds where all character skills have no cooldown.
Stacking: Reduced linear
Requires: “Decide”; Defeat an Elite boss on Monsoon difficulty
Notes: I haven’t had a chance to experiment with it. Presumably it is really good on characters with spammable abilities but are hampered by cooldowns. Commando can spam suppressive fire/FMJ, MUL-T can spam stun grenades/transport mode, Huntress can fling glaives and more importantly Arrow Rain as many times as she can, Merc can gain an infinite number of invincibility frames during eviscerate, and Artificer can spam nanobombs or firebolts.
Engineer in theory is the only guy who does not benefit. All of his cooldown skills are limited to a maximum number of entities that can be placed at one time (10 mines, one shield, two turrets). So unless they are constantly being destroyed or something, there’s not really any benefit to this.
Effect: All healing received is +100% (+100% per stack) more effective.
Stacking: Linear
Requires: “Naurtopath”; Without healing, reach and complete the third teleporter event
Notes: As useful as it is straightforward. All healing is twice as effective. This makes anything that heals you heal twice as much. There’s not really any strategy here.
This is an interesting item because Corpsebloom does exactly the same thing, but just comes with huge downsides (all healing twice as effective but all healing applied over time and capped)
As a note for the prerequisite achievement: Naurtopath simply must be achieved without the use of any healing items. This would be anything that shows a green number over your character when it heals you (Leeching seed, Medkit, healing drones, Foreign Fruit, to name just the surface). Natural healing and healing provided by Cautious Slug do NOT invalidate this achievement. The task is not asking you to get to the third teleporter without getting hit, just without using healing items. Just be careful of what you pick up.
Boss Items
Effect: Increase maximum health by 40 (+40 per stack) points, and increase health regeneration by 1.6 (+1.6 per stack) health per second.
Stacking: Linear
Associated Boss: Stone Titan
Notes: It’s not terrible. It does provide a decent amount of protection to a squishy character instantly, and the health regeneration is welcome. However an item like Infusion can give you up to 2.5x as much maximum health as this item can on its own (though kills are required), and a personal shield generator will instantly give you 25 shields (though no regeneration). It may be better saved for classes that need the health (Huntress, Artificer, Etc).
Effect: Summon an allied Beetle Guard with 100% health and 300% damage. If any Beetle Guards die, a new guard is summoned every 30 seconds. Can have up to 1 (+1 per stack) Guards active at one time.
Stacking: Linear (Guard count), No stacking (Guard Damage/Health/Respawn Speed)
Associated Boss: Beetle Queen
Notes: It’s also not terrible. The guards are rather tanky and provide a great distraction. They can also deal good damage to groups on account of their attacks, and respawn fairly quickly if put out of action. They also benefit from healing items they may wander into or have used on them (Bustling Fungus or similar healing areas). Their only downfall is they are useless against flying enemies, but despite this will continually try to attack them anyways. Can help keep enemies distracted from squishier classes.
Lunar Items
Effect: Increase your character’s base damage by 100% (+100% per stack). Reduce your character’s maximum health by 50% (+50% per stack).
Stacking: Linear (Base damage), Logarithmic (Health reduction)
Notes: Absolutely great on any class and player that can avoid taking hits. This increases your base damage, so it increases almost all damage you do, even damage over time effects. The obvious drawback is you die twice as fast, but this is not a big problem if you can focus items that increase your maximum health. Stacking these further halves your health each time but continues to make your damage insane. Solid item if you can avoid getting blasted.
Effect: On hit, 30% chance to gain 3 (+3 per stack) gold. When your character is damaged, lose gold equal to either the amount of damage you are hit for, or the percent of maximum health you lost, whichever is greater.
Stacking: Linear (Gold per hit), No stacking (gold loss, proc chance)
Notes: Avoid like the plague, becomes a burden in late game where you can be hit for but shrug off large amounts of damage. The amount of gold you get every hit, which isn’t even a 100% chance, is literally chump change in the grand scheme of things outside the first two levels. Even with characters who specialize in on-hit effects hardly benefit from the gold, and will shortly lose it whenever they get grazed by a wisp.
Effect: Gain 50% (+25% per stack) maximum health. Convert all but 1 health into regenerating shields.
Stacking: Reduced linear
Notes: Very situational. There are a few unique things you need to know about having a large amount of shield; Shields rapidly regenerate when not taking damage for a few seconds (on the order of a few hundred points a second). Having ONLY shields means you have no health to speak of. Since you have no health, you do not benefit from any healing items. Healing items will not restore your shields. This also means shrines of blood become useless to you, since you cannot burn your one HP and you won’t get any gold if you don’t lose any health.
This item is good to take if you do not have a lot of healing items but need maximum health. You should also be able to avoid damage if needed, since your shields will only recharge without being hit for about 4-5 seconds. Chip damage will kill you much more easily since you cannot heal it off without not taking damage for some time. Avoid if you have already invested into a lot of healing items, as those will shortly become useless if you take this.
Effect: All healing is 100% (+100% per stack) more effective, however all healing is applied over time. The amount you can heal per second is capped to 10% (-50% per stack) of your current maximum health per second.
Stacking: Linear (Healing effectiveness), Logarithmic (Healing capacity per second)
Notes: Something to be avoided on builds that already have very good amounts of healing, since this throttles that healing down to 10% per second or less. Engineers in particular should avoid this, since their bustling fungus can easily heal 50% or more of maximum health in a second with a few solid stacks. Grabbing this as engineer severely throttles the amount of damage his turrets can take.
This item may be good to take on a tanky character (MUL-T for instance) who does not already have a lot of healing. Since MUL-T can take a solid hit or two without dying, he can afford to get hit and go on the defensive while healing from healing items over time. This only works if his healing items aren’t already very strong, since otherwise you would mostly be throttling his healing (though 20% healing over two seconds is better than only 10% healing over one second, one can argue).
Oddly enough, Rejuvenation Rack does the exact same thing as this item without the horrendous downside.
Effect: Reduce equipment cooldown by 50% (+50% per stack), but equipment is forced to activate whenever it is off cooldown.
Stacking: Logarithmic
Requires: “The Demons and the Crabs”; Kill 20 Hermit Crabs by chasing them off the edge of the map
Notes: The downside to this item can actually easily be an upside for offensive items that automatically target, like Royal Capacitor and Disposable Missile Launcher, since these are activated without any user input, letting you focus on the fight at hand. This means these items are always doing consistent damage as long as you are in the general vicinity of a target. The cooldown reduction also synergizes well with Fuel Cell’s reduced cooldown, however you will no longer benefit from additional charges presented by Fuel Cells (unless using the Royal Capacitor, which cannot fire without a target).
For situational items that you would rather save to use, you’ll have to get rid of them or not pick this item in the first place. MUL-T has a unique role in that he can swap to a different use item slot, allowing the off-hand item to recharge without causing it to be activated by Gesture of the Drowned until he switches back to it. This can make great use of a high number of fuel cells.
Lunar Equipment/Use Items
Effect: On use, rain meteors from the sky, damaging ALL characters for 600% damage per blast. Meteor shower lasts 20 seconds.
Cooldown: 120 Seconds
Requires: “Moon Worshipper”; Carry five lunar items in one run
Notes: The item of ultra goobers in Risk of Rain 1 returns to slay you with friendly fire. It does great damage, but the risk of hitting you or your teammates is usually too great to warrant using it. There’s much better use items that don’t endanger your team. Combine with Gesture of the Drowned to become the ultimate chad.
Effect: On use, create an area of influence around yourself with a radius of 8 meters. Deal 5% of your maximum health per second as damage to yourself. Deal 0.5x of the damage done to yourself to all allies within the area of influence, and deal 24x damage to enemies within the area of influence.
Cooldown: Unknown
Requires: “Multikill”; Kill 15 enemies simultaneously
Notes: I think you can toggle this item on and off, but i’m not entirely positive. Does more damage with characters that have more health, but will still kill you in the same amount of time (unless you can out-heal the damage it does). Have not experimented with it much. Deals reduced damage to allies, at the least, so its somewhat more viable than Glowing Meteorite.
Effect: On use, drop the effigy on the ground directly under your character. All characters within the effect radius of the effigy are slowed by 50% and has their armor reduced by 20.
Cooldown: None, can be picked up once placed.
Notes: Unfortunately the pick-up-put-down portion of this item makes it frustrating to use. It does not benefit at all from anything that affects equipment cooldown, or extra charges offered by fuel cells. You also have to enter the influence area and risk yourself in order to grab it again, and the radius is too small to be useful all of the time. Only is effective on the slowest of bosses. Avoid unless you have nothing better.
Equipment/Use Items – Part 1
Effect: On use, launch 12 missiles that seek out nearby targets and deal 300% damage each.
Cooldown: 45 seconds
Notes: Old reliable. Great for clearing out flying trash mobs, and has relatively short cooldown. The missiles can also do a good chunk of damage against harder targets, so this item is never a bad pick unless fighting in very confined spaces for some reason. Despite the moniker of ‘disposable’, this item doesn’t actually get consumed when you use it. Works especially well with Gesture of the Drowned, Soulbound Catalyst, and Fuel Cells.
Effect: On use, instantly heal for 50% of your maximum health.
Cooldown: 45 seconds
Notes: Perhaps the simplest use item. If you can remember to use it, or you have time to use it and don’t get insta-killed by something, very flexible for staying alive or getting a burst of health you need. Also works well with Soulbound Catalyst and Fuel Cells. Rejuvenation Rack makes this heal 100% of your health every time as well.
Effect: On use, create a black hole that slowly moves in the direction it was fired. The black hole draws enemies within 30 meters towards it with great force. Lasts 10 seconds.
Cooldown: 45 seconds
Notes: God-tier with on-kill items like Gasoline and Will-o’-the-wisp, this item is great for clumping loose groups of enemies together into a single mass for easy burning. The black hole also stops moving when it hits the ground or a wall, so it can be used to pin enemies to surfaces temporarily, or can be used to drag them off of the edge of the map or into hazards. Getting more creative, you could also fire it straight up into the air and drag ground-dwelling beasts into the sky for massive fall damage.
Is also great for dragging large clusters of enemies into a boss, where each one of them turns into a bomb to shove into his face. Since the black hole moves, it can also be fired in a line to drag all enemies along a path into its center, and can be used to make breathing room. It should also be mentioned that the black hole also attracts explosive barrels to itself for added fun. This item is truly robust and never really a bad pick unless you lack area of effect damage.
Stacks fantastically with Fuel Cells and Soulbound Catalyst for more creative shenanigans.
Effect: On use, gain +100% critical strike chance for 8 seconds.
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Notes: It’s alright on most characters, except for Engineer since his turrets do not benefit from it. Once your base critical chance gets sufficiently high, this item essentially becomes obsolete. More or less doubles your damage per second for a short time, but the cooldown is a little high.
Effect: On use, summon four Strike Drones that fall under your command. Each strike drone lasts 25 seconds before self-destructing.
Cooldown: 100 seconds
Requires: “Mechanic”; Repair 30 drones or turrets
Notes: Not only do the drones kick some♥♥♥♥♥and come in a decent number, they also distract a lot of targets. This item works great with Fuel Cells since you can call in 8, 12, 16, 32, 64 or more drones depending on how many cells you have handy and how much your CPU can stand being on fire.
The only shame about this item is the very high cooldown and the fact that the drones last only 25 seconds.
Effect: On use, this item has a charge-up time of approximately 3 seconds. After charge-up, the weapon fires a slow moving Preon charge, which shocks enemies within 35 meters for up to 600% damage per second. On contact with an enemy or surface, the Preon charge detonates in a 20 meter explosion for 4000% damage.
Cooldown: 140 seconds
Requires: “[REDACTED]”; Open the timed security chest on Rally Point Delta
Notes: If you played DOOM 2016, you know that this is essentially the BFG from the game. This gun does absurd damage and is great for softening bosses and large clusters of enemies. Somewhat unintuitive, however, is the fact that it is sometimes better to miss your intended target and fire over them so the Preon charge can zap the enemies for more damage than simply a contact explosion. Late game, the contact explosion easily hits the damage capacity of 9999 damage, so getting more zaps in can be more worthwhile than blasting something point blank with it.
This item has a very long cooldown, so it is best saved and used tactically, especially with fuel cells.
Effect: On use, gain temporary flight for 15 seconds by holding the jump key. Gain 20% movement speed for the duration of flight.
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Notes: About as boring a utility item as you can get. The flight is actually quite slow, even with the movement speed increase. Can be useful to reach hard-to-get areas early game, but beyond that should be ditched for something else, unless you really dislike staying on the ground.
Equipment/Use Items – Part 2
Effect: On use with a targeted enemy, a lightning strike hits the target, dealing 3000% damage and stunning nearby enemies.
Cooldown: 20 seconds
Requires:: “Ascendant”; Defeat the teleporter bosses after activating two Shrines of the Mountain
Notes: The best use item for offensive damage in the game. It has an absurdly short cooldown for something that does so much damage, so you can use it almost all the time to knock out priority or simply bothersome targets from almost any range. With Fuel Cells, the multiple charges usually allow you to knock a boss into the dirt with a few taps of your equipment use key. With Gesture of the Drowned, all you have to do is look in an enemy’s general direction and they are deleted.
Effect: No cooldown. Equipment use toggles this equipment on or off. When activated, fires a continuous barrage that deals 100% damage per bullet. Rate of fire and damage slowly ramps up while active. Each bullet fired costs 1$, and cost increases over time.
Requires: “Funded!”; Collect $30,480 total gold
Notes: Tied for worst use item in the game next to Milky Chrysalis. Costs cash to fire, so it is useless unless you have already opened everything and are fighting teleporter bosses. The damage is okay, but the cost ramps up too quickly to be useful. May be viable late game for supplemental damage where each kill rakes in literally thousands of dollars, but at that point you probably have way better use items. Avoid at all costs.
Effect: While being held as the active use item, passively heals your character for 1.5% of your maximum health per second. On use, can be sent to the targeted ally (or yourself if no target) to heal them for 10% of the target’s maximum health. Once sent to an ally, passively heals that ally. Can be recalled by using the item on yourself once charged.
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Requires: “One with the Woods”; Fully upgrade a Shrine of the Woods
Notes: It’s very underwhelming. The item has short cooldown, but can rarely be activated fast enough to send to someone in need. With multiple charges it may come in more handy, but Foreign Fruit is much better at healing yourself. Can fill the gap if you want to heal your drones, allies, or ghosts or something, since it can heal any ally at all. As mentioned, if you don’t target anyone with it, it targets you instead.
Effect: On use, reveals all interactable objects within 500 meters for 10 seconds. Marks interactable objects with a yellow question mark that all players can see.
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Notes: A great utility item for finding chests. Allegedly it is capable of finding the legendary cloaked chest, but it can also pick up the lockbox for you if you are having difficulty finding it. The only interactable it does not seem to pick up is the teleporter, which seems to be an oversight. Besides that, it picks up shrines, drones, chests, newt altars, and many more things.
This is a decent item on MUL-T since he has speed to get around and has a spare equipment slot he can reserve for something for combat. Other characters would have to sacrifice a survivability related use item to carry around the scanner.
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- Risk of Rain 2 All Items from Survivors Of The Void DLC
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- Risk of Rain 2: Complete Huntress Guide
- Risk of Rain 2 Mercenary Invincible Guide
- Risk of Rain 2 Ultimate God Build (Unkillable Build)