Risk Of Rain 2 is one of my fave action roguelikes, as it’s a good time with pals and has all the hallmarks of things I enjoy most in my games: shooting and looting. That’s why the latest free update excites me so, as it introduces an artifact that makes chests malicious and another that lets you hatch angry lizard companions. Oh, and there’s a new map, too.
The Devotion Update, AKA version 1.10, adds two new Artifacts – run modifiers, basically. The first of these is called the Artifact Of Delusion, which resets all chests once a teleporter event has finished (i.e., once you’ve killed a stage boss). You’ll have a chance to return to chests you’d previously cracked open, but if you do, you’ll be presented with three options: the item you were originally granted, and two you definitely weren’t. If you remember what that specific chest gave you, then you’ll get another! But if you don’t, you’ll lose the item entirely. My short term memory couldn’t cope with this.
The other Artifact sounds like a winner, though. It’s called the Artifact Of Devotion and it replaces drones (turrets, helpful healy bots etc.) with eggs that spawn Lemurian pals (little lizard guys). You’ll need to sacrifice an item to hatch a lizard friend and if multiple Lemurians are present, items are shared between all of them. If a Lemurian survives a teleporter event, it’ll grow stronger, giving them new attributes, plus an extra stack of whatever item you sacrificed to birth them. If they die, they’ll drop a scrap of the same tier of item they were given and their item is straight up removed from the pool (ouch?). As someone who loves AI companions, I can’t wait to raise my own lizardy guy.
Elsewhere, there’s a new map called Verdant Falls to explore. It looks all lush and green with the odd waterfall, so that’s me sold on it. There’s also a new Mercenary skin that lets you dress up as the guy from Dead Cells, and that I’m sort of indifferent about, but hey, it’s a nice touch if you are a fan of Dead Cells Man.
Risk Of Rain 2’s next DLC, Seekers Of The Storm, is “coming soon,” so you may want to keep up with its progress over on its Steam page. It’ll add new maps, playable characters, items and more.