Poll of the Day > i've been playing risk of rain 2, and i don't get it

(+) Yeah! (+)

what am i supposed to be doing

they told me it was like hades

this is not like hades at all

Most everything is unlocked via achievements
Also there's a persistent currency that's only used during runs

It's like Hades in terms of the basic roguelike structure, but that's about it. If you want something that's actually more like Hades, look at Children of Morta, Curse of the Dead Gods, or Moonlighter. For a similar experience in a sidescroller, check out Dead Cells (I highly recommend this one), Rogue Legacy, or Skul.

Like the first RoR, RoR2 is largely about balancing progression speed with taking the time to power yourself up. Progress too quickly, and you won't be strong enough to handle the later zones. Progress too slowly, and the difficulty timer will result in enemies scaling faster than you can. Finding that balance takes a fair bit of practice, especially where it shifts depending on your item luck, which survivor you're using, and a few other factors that you're really only going to get a handle on by getting experience. Beyond that, there are a few tips that will help:

• Make a point of finding the teleporter in each stage as soon as you can. You don't have to activate it right away (especially in the first stage, you'll want to find a couple items first), but you should try to know where it is so you can decide for certain when to stop farming and move to the next stage
• Don't go out of your way to kill everything you see unless there's a chest nearby that you need more money for. Even then, try to emphasize scouting to find more items/the teleporter over camping that chest until you can open it, since that will both trigger more spawns and help you get more items
• Keep an eye out for 3D printers (the white rectangles with an item floating over them) that provide items that are particularly useful for your chosen character, like Syringes for Commando or Crowbars for Huntress. Defensive items are also really helpful for everyone, especially in the early game. Don't burn all of your white items whenever you find one, but if you've scrapped anything (the cylindrical interactable, which lets you choose which items to turn into scrap), those are the best use for that scrap. This is one of the primary ways you'll shape your build (unless you're using the Command artifact, but that comes later)
• Also like the first RoR, this is a hard game. Don't feel too bad about lowering the difficulty to Drizzle; it makes the game a lot easier and you can still unlock everything you could on Rainstorm (only two item unlocks are tied to the difficulty setting, and they're both from Monsoon), which allows you to unlock helpful items and get a better handle on how the game works

Keep at it. Risk Of Rain 2 has awesome music. Its the kind of game you play after a long, hard day at work and dont want to be bothered by anyone.

Unlocking new characters is fun. But you will need to look up how to achieve certain ones.

Its no Binding Of Isaac, but its one of my favorite roguelike.

Edit: As for Hades, I cant get past the 3rd area. I gotta return to that game.

It's honestly the most fun 3rd person bullet hell game that exists

If you aren't having fun it's because you suck at it and need to get better at it. Once you understand how ridiculously OP a lot of the power up combos make you it becomes fairly routine to become just an unstoppable god of a vharacter

BouncyBouncy posted...

If you aren't having fun it's because you suck at it and need to get better at it.

As much as I hate to pull the "git gud" thing here, this is really true. The first one was the same way. There's a very significant difficulty hump that you have to get over before it gets properly fun, and it can be hard to see the other side of that hump until you make some real progress in getting there. It's not for everyone, since many people don't really enjoy having to beat their heads against a game in order to force it to be fun (and that's perfectly fine), but a ton of fun is there if you're willing to put the effort into finding it.

i beat hades at 32 pact, i think i understand the concept of git gud

Then I encourage gud-gitting, since it's a delightful game once you get past that initial hump. It just does not have a friendly difficulty curve at all (unlike Hades, which offers one of the best examples of difficulty scaling in the entire industry), which I think is a reflection of how old RoR1 is (and therefore how few modern rogueli(k/t)e design conventions it incorporates) because 2 is deliberately emulating the experience of the original. Personally, I'm only just starting to crest that initial curve now, after 20-odd hours of failing while unlocking new stuff and figuring out what I'm doing, and I can confirm that it's been worth the slog even though I still haven't beaten the game. But then I've also been stubborn and refused to play on anything but Rainstorm, so I really only have myself to blame for that.

Also, Engineer is OP, and you'll unlock him after clearing any 30 stages (over any number of attempts). That may help you get the momentum you need to get over the hump.