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Risk of Rain 2 - Anniversary Update - March 25, 2021





Our goal with this update is to upgrade and round out the game as a whole, and also be a ‘thanks!’ to all our fans that supported us through Early Access. This patch includes both new content and updated old content. Let us know if you like it!

Changes with the 🌧 icon in front of them are changes or additions suggested by the community. As always, if you want to stay up to date on the game feel free to join the discord at https://discord.gg/riskofrain2

  • Added System: Morgue + Account Stats
    • Browse past runs and all of your account stats - like favorite survivors, progress to completion, or your favorite equipment - now in the Logbook!
  • Added New Survivor
    • New Survivor: Bandit
  • Added New Survivor Skin
    • New Survivor Skin: Bandit Skin
  • Added 5 New Items
    • New Lunar Item: Hooks of Heresy
    • New Lunar Item: Essence of Heresy
    • New Boss Item: Empathy Cores
    • New Boss Item: Charged Perforator
    • New Boss Item: Planula
  • Added 5 New Skill Variants
    • New Skill Variant: MUL-T Special
    • New Skill Variant: Mercenary Utility
    • New Skill Variant: REX Special
    • New Skill Variant: Loader Special
    • New Skill Variant: Captain Utility
  • Added 1 New Monster
    • New Monster: Lunar Chimera (Exploder)
  • Added 1 New Elite
    • New Elite: Perfected
  • Added 1 New Boss
    • New Boss: Grandparent
  • Added New Interactable
    • New Interactable: Lunar Shop Refresher
  • Added 9 New Challenges
    • New Class Challenge: Bandit: Sadist
    • New Class Challenge: Bandit: Classic Man
    • New Class Challenge: Bandit: B&E
    • New Class Challenge: Bandit: Mastery
    • New Class Challenge: MUL-T: Seventh Day
    • New Class Challenge: Mercenary: Flash of Blades
    • New Class Challenge: REX: Full of Life
    • New Class Challenge: Loader: The Thunderdome
    • New Class Challenge: Captain: Smushed
  • Added 93 New Lore Entries
    • New Lore Entry: Monster Tooth
    • New Lore Entry: Lens-Maker's Glasses
    • New Lore Entry: Paul's Goat Hoof
    • New Lore Entry: Bustling Fungus
    • New Lore Entry: Crowbar
    • New Lore Entry: Tri-Tip Dagger
    • New Lore Entry: Warbanner
    • New Lore Entry: Cautious Slug
    • New Lore Entry: Stun Grenade
    • New Lore Entry: Backup Magazine
    • New Lore Entry: Armor-Piercing Rounds
    • New Lore Entry: Bison Steak
    • New Lore Entry: Focus Crystal
    • New Lore Entry: Item Scrap, White
    • New Lore Entry: AtG Missile Mk. 1
    • New Lore Entry: Infusion
    • New Lore Entry: Hopoo Feather
    • New Lore Entry: Ukulele
    • New Lore Entry: Leeching Seed
    • New Lore Entry: Red Whip
    • New Lore Entry: Harvester's Scythe
    • New Lore Entry: Berzerker's Pauldron
    • New Lore Entry: Razorwire
    • New Lore Entry: Brilliant Behemoth
    • New Lore Entry: Frost Relic
    • New Lore Entry: Happiest Mask
    • New Lore Entry: 57 Leaf Clover
    • New Lore Entry: Dio's Best Friend
    • New Lore Entry: Wake of Vultures
    • New Lore Entry: Resonance Disc
    • New Lore Entry: Defensive Microbots
    • New Lore Entry: Titanic Knurl
    • New Lore Entry: Pearl
    • New Lore Entry: Irradiant Pearl
    • New Lore Entry: Genesis Loop
    • New Lore Entry: Artifact Key
    • New Lore Entry: Corpsebloom
    • New Lore Entry: Gesture of the Drowned
    • New Lore Entry: Beads of Fealty
    • New Lore Entry: Defiant Gouge
    • New Lore Entry: Mercurial Rachis
    • New Lore Entry: Empathy Cores
    • New Lore Entry: Essence of Heresy
    • New Lore Entry: Effigy of Grief
    • New Lore Entry: Spinel Tonic
    • New Lore Entry: Disposable Missile Launcher
    • New Lore Entry: Foreign Fruit
    • New Lore Entry: Primordial Cube
    • New Lore Entry: Royal Capacitor
    • New Lore Entry: Radar Scanner
    • New Lore Entry: Eccentric Vase
    • New Lore Entry: Volcanic Egg
    • New Lore Item: Hooks of Heresy
    • New Lore Item: Essence of Heresy
    • New Lore Item: Empathy Cores
    • New Lore Item: Charged Perforator
    • New Lore Item: Planula
    • New Lore Entry: Lesser Wisp
    • New Lore Entry: Lemurian
    • New Lore Entry: Hermit Crab
    • New Lore Entry: Solus Probe
    • New Lore Entry: Brass Contraption
    • New Lore Entry: Bighorn Bison
    • New Lore Entry: Stone Golem
    • New Lore Entry: Clay Templar
    • New Lore Entry: Greater Wisp
    • New Lore Entry: Elder Lemurian
    • New Lore Entry: Lunar Chimera (Exploder)
    • New Lore Entry: Beetle Queen
    • New Lore Entry: Stone Titan
    • New Lore Entry: Aurelionite
    • New Lore Entry: Wandering Vagrant
    • New Lore Entry: Magma Worm
    • New Lore Entry: Grovetender
    • New Lore Entry: Imp Overlord
    • New Lore Entry: Scavenger
    • New Lore Entry: Overloading Worm
    • New Lore Entry: Grandparent
    • New Lore Entry: Distant Roost
    • New Lore Entry: Rallypoint Delta
    • New Lore Entry: Scorched Acres
    • New Lore Entry: Siren's Call
    • New Lore Entry: Hidden Realm: Gilded Coast
    • New Lore Entry: Hidden Realm: Void Fields
    • New Lore Entry: Hidden Realm: Bazaar Between Time
    • New Lore Entry: Hidden Realm: A Moment, Whole
    • New Lore Entry: Sundered Grove
    • New Lore Entry: Commando
    • New Lore Entry: Engineer
    • New Lore Entry: Acrid
    • New Lore Entry: Loader
    • New Lore Entry: Mercenary
    • New Lore Entry: Bandit




  • General

    • Final Stage
      • 🌧 The final stage has been redone entirely, with unique objectives and a new, large arena to play in. We won’t spoil it. Please let us know how you feel!
    • Low Health Threshold
      • 20% ⇒ 25%
    • NPC AI
      • All AI now have dramatically improved pathfinding
      • All AI now gets position updates on targets who are invisible only every few seconds, rather than losing the target entirely
    • Minions
      • Drones no longer have resistance to AOE attacks
      • 🌧 All minions now teleport to their owner if they stray past 400m
      • 🌧 All Minions now scale to the ‘ambient level’ of the run
        Developer’s Notes: The ‘ambient level’ is the level of the run that grows over time. Previously, the enemy team used the ‘ambient level’ to set their level. Now, all enemies AND minions are at ambient level. The result of this is that player minions, like ghosts from Happiest Mask, purchased Drones, and yes - the Squid Polyp - will scale much better over time. This matches drone scaling in RoR1.
  • Survivor
    • Commando
      • Update VFX of Double Tap, Phase Round, and Suppressive Fire
      • Double Tap
        • Now fires a single bullet per click
        • Bloom Reset Time: 1s ⇒0.7s
        • Damage: 90% ⇒ 100%
        • Duration: 0.2s ⇒ 0.15s
      • Tactical Dive
        • Duration: 0.5s ⇒ 0.4s
      • Phase Round
        • Now deals 40% more damage every time it passes through an enemy
    • Huntress
      • Now unlocked by default alongside the Commando! Her previous unlock condition (beat the 3rd stage) now unlocks the Bandit.
    • Engineer
      • Both Gauss Auto-Turret and Carbonizer Turret now also inherit your equipment. They won’t activate it, but they will hold it.
      • Grenades now have slight anti-gravity.
    • Artificer
      • Nano-Bomb
        • Tendril Damage: 20% of explosion ⇒ 10% of explosion
        • Tendril Fire Frequency: 0.25s ⇒ 0.125s
      • Tendril Same Target Frequency: 2s ⇒ 1s
        Developer Notes: This change is made specifically to avoid the Artificer’s Nano-Bomb tendrils proccing Ice and Fire Bands. The tendrils will now fire twice as often, but at half the damage.
    • Mercenary
      • Blinding Assault
        • 🌧 Now has a lingering 0.2s invincibility to help chain together Blinding Assaults in high-latency online games
  • Items

    • Bustling Fungus
      • Start Delay: 2s ⇒ 1s
      • Now heals at a higher tick rate - overall healing is the same, but the healing is smoother over time
      • 🌧 Now has small visual mushrooms that grow over the area
    • Energy Drink
      • 🌧 Speed Boost: 30% (+20% per stack) ⇒ 25% (+25% per stack)
        Developer Notes: Mathematically, the Energy Drink was worse than the Goat Hoof for speed after the first pickup, even while sprinting. This change will consistently make Energy Drink stronger when sprinting, and also makes its stacking behavior more consistent. This may make the Energy Drink too strong, but it’ll at least make a bit more sense now.
    • AP Rounds
      • Improve visual effects to be more noticeable
    • Focus Crystal
      • Damage Boost: 15% (+15% per stack) ⇒ 20% (+20% per stack)
      • Now shows radius for ‘nearby’ distance
      • Now causes numbers to be pink when active
        Developer Notes: There are many characters and builds where the Focus Crystal should shine through - however, it never seems to be quite high priority enough for the effort required. We’re hoping that by making it both flashier and stronger, players will prioritize it.
    • Rusted Key
      • 🌧 Now subtly glows and pulses
      • Now grants items at the same rarity as a Large Chest
      • Now spawns a Lockbox per player with a Rusted Key
      • Now consumes a Rusted Key when a lockbox is opened, and requires a Rusted Key to open
      • No longer scales reward chance with the number of Keys in your inventory
        Developer Notes: People have always been a bit confused about the behavior of the Rusted Key, so we made it make a bit more sense by actually consuming a key to open. 1 Key = 1 Box. Since the item no longer gives ‘infinite’ items, we can also make it a bit stronger and make the lockbox more noticeable.
    • Crowbar
      • Damage Boost: +50%(+50% per stack) ⇒ +75% (+75% per stack)
      • Improve visual effects to be more noticeable
      • Update pickup text to include the damage threshold
        Developer Notes: Same reasoning as Focus Crystal - there are many heavy-hitter builds and characters, but Crowbars aren’t prioritized.
    • Gasoline
      • Now deals 150% base damage on detonation alongside the burn effect
    • Stun Grenade
      • Added visual effect when the item procs
    • Bison Steak (New! Yum!)
      • Replaced ‘Fresh Meat’ item
      • No longer grants regeneration on kill
      • Now grants 25 (+25 per stack) max health
    • Tri-Tip Dagger
      • Bleed Chance: 15% (+15% per stack) ⇒ 10% (+10% per stack)
        Developer Notes: Right now, bleed is okay until you can stack it infinitely, in which case it becomes incredibly strong. We want to smooth out the power curve a bit, increasing the number of daggers required for ‘infinite’ bleed to match the number of Glasses required for 100% crit.
    • Lepton Daisy
      • 🌧 Now activates in all ‘holdout zones’, like Void Fields, and not just during the Teleporter Event
    • Old War Stealthkit
      • Now activates when falling to low health, rather than as a chance when hurt
      • Stealth Duration: 3s (+1.5s per stack) ⇒ 5s
      • Stealth Cooldown: 0s ⇒ 30s (-50% per stack)
    • Bandolier
      • 🌧 Packs now restocks skills by the amount a full cooldown would
      • 🌧 Packs now also apply to stashed skills, like MUL-T's second primary
    • Radar Scanner
      • 🌧 Now details if an interactable is a Barrel, Chest, Drone, Shrine, or something unknown
    • Frost Relic
      • 🌧 Now applies ice slow debuff
      • 🌧 Now has a softer visual
      • Damage Coefficient: 150% ⇒ 300%
      • Radius: 3m (+1.5m per kill) ⇒ 6m (+3m per kill)
    • H3AD-5T v2
      • 🌧 Now calculates damage from distance traveled, not speed on impact
        Developer Notes: Even though this makes less sense from a physics standpoint, it will align better with player expectations. Super long fall = big boom.
    • Resonance Disk
      • Redo firing logic to be more understandable
        • Now grants 1 stacking buff per kill, lasting 5 seconds
        • Now fires the Disk at 4 stacks, resetting all stacks
    • Defiant Gouge
      • 🌧 Monster Spawn Points: 100 (+100 per stack) ⇒ 40 (+40 per stack)
        Developer Notes: A single Gouge would spawn way too many monsters. Now, having 1 or 2 Gouges should be a reasonable option.
    • Focused Convergence
      • 🌧 Now activates in all ‘holdout zones’, like Void Fields, and not just during the Teleporter Event
    • Queen’s Gland
      • Limit of deployed Beetle Guards now doubles for Artifact of Swarms
    • Halcyon Seed
      • Changed summoned Aurelionite pre-stack scaling from current-difficulty-based hp + damage bonuses to leveling up to the ambient level like other summoned characters
      • Summoned Aurelionite attention span: 5s ⇒ 15s
        Developer Notes: Aurelionite’s raised attention span should make it less likely to get distracted by weaker monsters attacking it so it’s more likely to spend its time fighting stronger monsters.
    • Mired Urn
      • No longer capable of targeting and healing from allies
  • Monster

    • Hermit Crab
      • Base Damage: 4 (+0.8 per level) ⇒ 12 (+2.4 per level)
      • Mortar Projectile Count: 3 ⇒ 1
      • Mortar Projectile now has more visible trail
        Developer Notes: When fighting Hermit Crabs, it’s always been difficult to parse where and how many there are. To help clarify their behavior, we made it clearer so 1 mortar = 1 crab.
    • Parent
      • Health: 900(+270 per level) ⇒ 585 (+176 per level)
      • Update visuals to match closer to RoR1 design
      • Update animations
    • Greater Wisp
      • 🌧 Can now be stunned and frozen
    • Lunar Chimera (Golem)
      • Health: 1900 (+570 per level) ⇒ 1615 (+485 per level)
      • Twinshot Attack
        • Total Shots: 4 ⇒ 10
        • Damage Coefficient: 2 ⇒ 1
        • Force: 8000 ⇒ 1000
        • Now fires in series, rather than all at once
        • Update visuals to be less noisy
      • Raised the aim origin to be closer to its cannons so it can fire more accurately
    • Lunar Chimera (Wisp)
      • Tracking Bomb
        • Damage Coefficient: 6 ⇒ 5
        • Speed: 90 m/s ⇒ 60 m/s
        • Update visuals to be less noisy
    • Beetle Queen
      • Summon Beetles
        • Beetle Count: 5 ⇒ 2
        • 🌧 Now summons Beetle Guards instead of Beetles
    • Scavenger
      • Now properly spawn as elites
        Developer Notes: Apparently, Scavengers were already spawning as elites - with their health and damage buff - but did not have their elite equipment (Burning, Glacial, etc). Now they will.
    • Void Reaver
      • Added a minimum distance between bombs
    • SPOILERS! Final Boss, Last Phase. SPOILERS!
      • Base Health: 1000 (+300 per level) ⇒ 1400 (+420 per level)
      • Added stagger state triggered by taking high damage
      • Item Steal
        • Now consistently returns items as you deal damage, rather than randomly, i.e if you have him at 50% health, you will have 50% of your items back
        • Now consistently returns items to players in multiplayer in order (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4) rather than per-player damage
        • Now returns items in the order that you found them, rather than in reverse order
        • Now utilizes Crowbars
  • Stages
    • Bazaar Between Time
      • Now allows you to reroll shop contents, at the cost of 1/2/4/8… lunar coins
    • Wetland Aspect
      • Altered stage layout to add more identifiable landmark areas
    • Sky Meadows
      • Reduce initial map monster spawns by -24%


  • Various optimizations, both small and big! Let us know if the game is running better (or worse...)
  • 🌧 Added an option in settings to disable Screen Distortion, like from using Spinel Tonic, since many users reported motion sickness from the effect.
  • 🌧 Added an team-colored area indicators for attacks from Mini Mushrums, Malachite Elites, Titans, Imp Overlords, Aurelionite, and Void Reavers. Remove area indicators for attacks from Beetle Guards.
  • Graphics Updates
    • Update visuals for Gunner Drone, Gunner Turret, Backup Drones, and Healing Drones to match other assets
    • Update visuals for Chests, Large Chests, Category Chests, Barrels, and Equipment Barrels to match other assets
    • Update visuals for Bustling Fungus, Soldier’s Syringe, Squid Polyps, Cautious Slug, Goat Hoof, Gesture of the Drowned, Rusted Key, and Leeching Seed to match other assets
    • Update visuals for all broken drones to be easier to see
    • Update visuals for missiles
    • Update damage numbers to be more legible
    • Update skin visuals for Huntress, MUL-T, Loader, and Artificer
  • 🌧 Fire trail hitboxes from Burning elites are no longer spherical and properly match the visuals
  • 🌧 Reduced screen shake and post-process brightness on Magma Worm. Clean up projectiles to be less opaque.
  • Survivor Logs now require you to beat the game at least once with that survivor
  • 🌧 Updated the Beetle Guard visuals when they spawn from a Beetle Gland to stand out more
  • 🌧 Improved Sticky Bomb’s logic for sticking to enemies
  • Now display ambient level on the HUD
    • Ambient level cap raised from 94 to 99
  • Allow for scripted combat encounters, like Aurelionite or Alloy Worship Unit, to spawn as elites if Artifact of Honor is enabled
  • 🌧 Add invincibility earlier into player spawning to reduce chance of dying instantly on entering a map
  • 🌧 Update Captain’s Supply Drop on controllers having non-intuitive reversed controls


  • Fixed boss items spawning more frequently than intended, especially when more items drop from multiplayer or Mountain Shrine bonuses
  • Fixed large rocks in Titanic Plains clipping into the camera
  • Altered geometry slightly to make more difficult to accidentally go out of bounds on many stages
  • Abandoned Aqueduct now has defensive tar fully circling outside of the play area
  • Fixed korean language characters missing in certain cases
  • Fixed some animation issues on the Loader
  • Fixed physics issues with Commando’s Frag Grenades
  • Fixed certain drones not having 360° vision, causing them to attack or heal less
  • Fixed Lunar Chimera’s death animations not matching the sound timings
  • Fixed more occlusion issues in Sundered Grove and other maps that cause objects to disappear at certain camera angles
  • Fixed certain survivors not removing their limbs when picking up Paul’s Goat Hoof or the Royal Capacitor
  • Fixed Helfire Tincture’s burning effect being offset
  • Fixed Chain Lightning and Razorwire making trail renderers that were not being cleaned up, potentially causing infinite objects in the scene
  • Fixed Mini Mushrums making hitboxes that were not being cleaned up, potentially causing infinite objects in the scene
  • Fixed certain effects incorrectly rendering while the player has invisibility
  • Fixed enemy Beetle Guards not appearing in Void Fields or with Artifact of Dissonance
  • Fixed Vultures having base health regeneration
  • Fixed the ending sequence explosions missing an authority check, causing it to fire additional projectiles for every client in the game
  • Fixed Stone Titan and Aurelionite missing an authority check, causing them to fire an additional projectile for every client in the game
  • Fixed broken drones spawning underground
  • Fixed several monsters playing death sounds and creating the usual visual effects when vanished by Void Reavers
  • Engi Grenades now properly play impact sounds
  • Fixed Alien Head particles not being affected by invisibility
  • Fixed Titan’s laser lock-on only being calculated once, rather than continuously re-evaluating
  • Fixed Titan’s laser lock-on not respecting invisibility
  • Fixed clients not being able to use the exit portal in A Moment, Fractured
  • Fixed 3840x1080 resolutions being unable to navigate the Server Browser
  • Fixed the final boss’s crystals not being correctly colored
  • Enemies who are stunned, frozen, or shocked no longer continue to turn
  • Fixed dedicated server sometimes capturing the mouse cursor
  • Fixed transparent blue spawn point debug visualizers for certain map objects (like explosive pots) being visible to non-host players
  • Fixed game browser not filtering out lobbies and servers running on a different version of the game
  • 🌧 Fixed Solus Control Unit not being selected as a boss due to a misconfigured spawn card


  • Bandit’s doppelganger can still be located by its halo while invisible
  • dont make me say it again

Risk of Rain 2 DLC roadmap for 2021 includes a paid expansion




Risk of Rain 2 will get its first paid expansion as part of its 2021 roadmap, its developer has confirmed...
Read more.

Dev Thoughts #20 - 2 Years Later



From Launch To Now


As we prepare to launch the Anniversary Update - more on that below - we’ve also been looking back at our journey with Risk of Rain 2. On March 28, 2019, Paul swaggered onto stage at PAX East and we launched Risk of Rain 2 on Early Access - to wonderful reception from all our fans.

Since then, we have (yes this is about to be a huge flex)
  • Sold over 4,000,000 copies on Steam alone
  • Launched and grown to over 180,000 users in our official Discord
  • Received ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ from over 137,000 Steam Reviews alongside an 85% on Metacritic
  • Gained new community members with 88% of players playing for more than 1 hour - and 57% of players playing for more than 10, numbers we are extremely proud of

So, yeah. We’ve grown a lot since Risk 1 and DEADBOLT.

We have also expanded our internal team, and hired new great talents to help work on RoR2 and future games to come. If you’re interested in joining, we’re currently hiring! At the moment, we’re looking for a 3D Animator and a VFX Artist. Interested? Apply!

Anniversary Update


We’re happy to announce that the free Anniversary Update (or Content Update March, as some of you have started to call it) will be launching on March 25th 2021.

Our goal with this update is to really flesh out and round out the base game, and also be a ‘thanks!’ to all our fans that supported us through Early Access. A lot of the focus of this update is revisiting old items and finishing up content that didn’t make it into 1.0 release - we’ve added like 88 lore entries. Shoutouts to Sivelos for helping us do a ton of heavy lifting for these log entries.



We’re also adding our newest survivor - the Bandit - back into RoR2. Working on the Bandit was both fun and rewarding for us, because it really highlighted how much better we’ve gotten at making content since the original scrapped inception of the Bandit in internal development. Let us know how he feels!

PS: We know that the scrapped Bandit has always been a favorite for modders to add their own finishes and ideas to - and so we have implemented our Bandit as a separate survivor from the modded Bandit, in order to preserve community-made Bandit mods. Enjoy both!



Expansion #1


As we announced in our previous Dev Thoughts, we are planning on releasing a paid Expansion late (very late) this year. While we’ve admittedly been spending a majority of our focus for the Anniversary Update, we will internally be starting to shift towards working on the Expansion. As we develop and shape it over time, we will let players know how it’s going, and how big it will be.



Consoles


Since our Early Access release, PlayEveryWare has done a fantastic job keeping up with the breakneck pace of development and ensuring that console players experience Risk of Rain 2 at the highest of quality (alongside taking advantage of specific features) on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

We’re also glad to announce that we have a new, internal team at Gearbox that is focused on continuing to bring all future content of Risk of Rain 2 to our console players with even closer parity to our PC version of the game.

While the Anniversary Update will be staggered from PC releases like before, our goal with Expansion #1 is to ship on all platforms at the same time. We can’t guarantee 100% that we will achieve that - its something we’ve admittedly never done before - but that’s our goal.

Thank You


As always, thanks everyone for being passionate for the games we make. We have a lot of exciting things cooking - both for Risk of Rain fans and Hopoo Games fans in general - and we can’t wait to share them with you - one day.



-Hopoo Games



Risk of Rain 2 has more than 3 million players

Risk of Rain 2 had the makings of a success story pretty early on - in its first month of Early Access last year, the action-packed roguelike game attracted a million players. Now, months after its full release on Steam in August, Risk of Rain 2 boasts more than three million players, and its daily player counts are on the rise.


The three million figure comes from a LinkedIn profile (spotted by Twitter user Timur222) belonging to a brand manager for Risk of Rain 2, Chris Faylor, who has been working on Risk of Rain 2 as part of Gearbox Publishing. Describing his current role with Gearbox, Faylor says part of his job has included the "initiation, planning, and execution of marketing projects for Risk of Rain 2, resulting in over 3 million players to date."


That's an impressive figure by any measure, but Faylor may actually be lowballing it. According to PlayTracker, which uses a cycling sample analysis to extrapolate user data on games, Risk of Rain 2 has about 4.3 million players. SteamSpy, which uses a proprietary method to extrapolate user data from achievement percentages, estimates anywhere from five to 10 million owners.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Risk of Rain 2 Mithrix guide: how to unlock Captain

Risk of Rain 2 leaves early access with a tenth character, the Captain

Risk of Rain 2 Artifacts codes: how to get all 16 Artifacts

Dev Thoughts #19 - Risk of Rain 2 In 2021



Hey!

Believe it or not - we’re still here, and we haven’t fled the country with all our earnings. At least, not yet.

All of us at Hopoo Games have been keeping ourselves very busy these past few months - and we’re excited to catch everyone up on what we’ve been doing.

Hopoo Games Expanding


After the success of RoR2, we knew that we’d eventually expand Hopoo Games to better support RoR2 long term. During Early Access, we simply didn’t have the time or resources to find, hire, and onboard new members to our team.

Now that we hit 1.0 - and got a bit of a breather - we’re happy to announce that we have expanded the core Hopoo Games Team from 3 to 6.

[h2]Ben Schofield[/h2]

My name is Ben, and I’m here to say
I’m the newest programmer at Hopoo Ga... (mes)

In my eight years in the game industry, I've worked on pretty much everything, from UI to servers to tools, but my player-first mentality has kept my focus on gameplay. I love gameplay programming so much that I spin up side projects in my spare time just to get more of it, so I'm thrilled to dedicate my time to gameplay for Risk of Rain 2. Beyond that, I'm super excited to support this community. There's nothing better than building a game for an enthusiastic audience, so I look forward to seeing your reactions to the stuff we're cooking up!

[h2]Nick Bizzozero[/h2]

Hiya, I’m super excited to join the team - I am a huge fan of Risk of Rain 2 myself. A little about me: I started my 3d career doing mods of Project M, and I also made Strafe! Some of my favorite games include Quake, Team Fortress, Super Mario 64, and Super Smash Bros Melee. My favorite things in games are slipping and sliding around and rocket jumping : ) I will be doing my best to keep Risk of Rain 2 an engaging and visually slick experience! (╯ ͡❛ ⏥ ͡❛)╯┻━┻ 💪( ͡❛ ⏥͡❛ ҂)
[h2]Javid “Snonepe”[/h2]

Greetings! I'm Javid (Jah-vid, if you were curious). Both Risk of Rain 1 and 2 are games I've highly enjoyed and I'm absolutely ecstatic at this opportunity to contribute to the future of Risk of Rain 2!

Previously, I worked at Airship Syndicate for a few years where I handled a wide variety of animations for Battle Chasers: Nightwar and some additional work on Darksiders: Genesis. Additionally, I've worked on a couple of Source Engine based projects such as the Civil Protection Machinima, the No More Room in Hell mod and workshop items for Team Fortress 2 such as the Box Trot taunt.

I grew up playing a lot of JRPGs, some of my favorites being Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 9 and the early Paper Mario games. When I'm not playing Risk of Rain 2, I can be found playing Final Fantasy 14, Slay the Spire or Team Fortress 2.

--

We’re excited to work with our newest members, and we hope that you’ll treat them as kindly as you have me, Paul, and Ghor :^)

2021 Roadmap


As we leave 2020 (god finally) and enter into 2021, we wanted a way for fans to know how RoR2 was going to be supported going forward.

So, more roadmaps.



This roadmap is intentionally different from our Early Access Roadmap in both cadence and detail. As we explained in our last Dev Thoughts, we want players to know the game is still being supported, but we also don’t want to sacrifice our internal goals to hit the deadlines on a public roadmap. We’re keeping things flexible - so please note that the details may change over time.

Anniversary Update


March 2021 marks the 2nd year anniversary since the release of Risk of Rain 2 in Early Access. To celebrate this milestone, we’re doing a free content update!

This update is aimed towards upgrading and rounding out the game as a whole. This means that the Anniversary Update will be smaller in content compared to other CUs. Internally, we’ve already made great progress towards lore entries, quality-of-life improvements, and other meaningful changes to existing RoR2 content. We’re also revisiting some assets - like the Grandparent boss, for example - that were cut during development.

We’re also keeping an eye on our ever growing modding community, and are making some internal changes (like moving away from fixed enum indices for content and more towards scriptable objects, investigating an engine upgrade) to work toward an easier and more sustainable modding environment for RoR2.

Expansion #1


Near the end of 2021, we will also be releasing our first ever paid expansion. The hope for this expansion is that it’s big - we’re aiming at around 2-3 content updates in size, and it will easily be the biggest infusion of new content that RoR2 has received. We believe that we need a truly meaningful update to give RoR2 fans a reason to come back and support the game - and we’re sure that this expansion will hit that mark.

Doing an expansion of this size is new territory for us - and we’ll be keeping very busy - but we will still update players on our progress as we work on the expansion. While we still plan to ship the Anniversary Update on consoles at the same cadence as previous updates, we also have an internal goal of shipping Expansion #1 on all platforms at the same time - we’ll keep you up to date on that as well.

Thank You


The continued enthusiasm and support from the community makes hiring an easy choice - and we are excited that we can match our growing community with a growing team. As always - thank you for making working on RoR2 fun.

Catch you next year!
-Hopoo Games