So, I finally did it. The final three achievements have been quite tricky to get. Last time, I wrote about my issues with the ones before it but the issues don’t matter too much, as I finally got these last few ones:
- REX: Mastery
- 「V??oid Fiend』: Mastery
- Bandit: Mastery
The issue with these few was mostly that I didn’t really play them until now. I mean, I did get the other achievements for most of them but apart from that, Rex is fun though immobile. The Bandit is quite mobile and has nice synergies but I find some of his playstyle quite a bit too similar to other characters’ playstyles. Meanwhile, the Void Fiend is an interesting character and a lot of fun to play but I just haven’t been able to play many runs with him due to me playing other characters.
For the Mastery achievements, I just needed to complete Monsoon runs on all three of these characters. “Complete” in this case means to either defeat Mithrox, the Voidling, one of the Scavengers in “A Moment, Whole” or you just obliterate. For REX, I decided to beat Mithrix as I had a pretty good run going. For the other two, I just went ahead and obliterated in “A Moment, Fractured”, meaning that I was awarded five lunar coins and the respective skins. The characters themselves aren’t boring by any means by the way. It’s just that I prefer other characters.
The Bandit is, as I already mentioned, pretty mobile and has a lot of damage potential. His special ability allows him to shoot a high-damage burst shot that resets all cooldowns on-kill. His alternate special ability allows him to shoot a high-damage burst shot that gives you a stack on-kill. This stack then increases the damage that this ability deals by 10% for the rest of the current stage – and obviously, that number can get pretty high, meaning that you can potentially deal with high-health targets quite well. When you’re not bursting down enemies, you can apply haemorrhage onto enemies whenever you crit them with your M2. The alternate M2 is not a lunge but a dagger that you throw. Haemorrhage is similar to bleeding but more powerful alas short-lived. It deals 2000% base damage over 15 seconds and can stack while bleeding in itself deals only 240% damage across [3x proc coefficient] seconds with 20% per tick and four ticks per second. For the regular primary attack that would mean that the duration would be 1.5 seconds in total due to its .5 proc coefficient. Even without many crit items, Bandits can still do a lot, especially because of his “Backstab” passive, which always will count attacks done from behind as “critical strikes”, which is pretty strong!
The Bandit can deal pretty high amounts of damage which is why crit chance and crowbars as well as burst damage items such as the bands or wisps are pretty great on him. Similarly, his primary “Burst” attack fires a shotgun burst with five pellets meaning that all five of these pellets can crit, apply on-hit effects, and they’re all quite powerful depending on your build. Ultimately, I prefer the Captain over the Bandit as the Captain has more utility in contrast to the Bandit’s mobility. The Mastery Skin unlocked for the Bandit, “Chilly”, is a reference to the main character of DEADBOLT, Hopoo’s other game. The main antagonist in that game is called Ibzan and he’s a skeleton that feels constant cold, hence “chilly”. The weapons that the Bandit wields in this skin are also replaced with weapons accessible in DEADBOLT, meaning that you now see him lunge forward with a kitchen knife or throw a kitchen knife instead of his dirk – and the shotgun is also more stylized as well. I have yet to review DEADBOLT but it’s among my favourite Indie Games, actually, especially because of how satisfying the stealth mechanics are and how great the writing and soundtrack are.
REX is a bit of an oddball. REX is a mixture of a plant and a robot with a playstyle that starts him off somewhat weak at first but he snowballs quickly into this raid-boss-like monster that carries whole runs and destroys worlds. Through his primary, REX injects enemies with syringes that deal 3×80% damage, with the last syringe healing Rex for 60% of the damage dealt, weakening enemies in the process. The “Natural Toxins” passive ability makes it so that weakened enemies have their movement speed, armour and damage reduced, adding a pretty big debuff to your kit in the process. The rest of the abilities, essentially weaken enemies and heal Rex but I usually just go with the unlockable abilities that cost health but deal a lot of damage as well. Especially his alternate special ability is able to turn the tables effectively due to its root, AoE damage and healing per enemy hit.
Naturally, due to his 3-hit primary attacks, I end up stacking a lot of on-hit effects and attack speed on REX. Crits are nice but usually, REX is more about the “hitting often” rather than “hitting hard” if that makes sense. Hence, on-hit effects, attack speed, and mobility are pretty important on REX. To get the achievement, I ended up stacking a lot of attack speed, bleeding, missiles, etc. onto REX as well as crit chance to guarantee healing through Harvester’s Scythe as well as the attack speed procs through Predatory Instincts. Similarly, the Charged and Molten Perforator as well as the Splatterspleen have been pretty great on REX, although I find other items such as Planula and Titanic Curls equally useful due to the health boost and survivability they offer. The skin unlocked is called “Smoothie” and really just shows REX with a different colour palette and some flowers on him, vaguely resembling a pineapple. I’m all for that. I really enjoy getting a run going with REX, to be fair, but I rarely play him because of how slow he is in the early stages of the game and how unhandy I find some of his abilities. Yes, you can attack a lot faster than you technically should be able to by spamming both your right click and your left click but I’d rather play something else that attacks fast instead of REX, like the Huntress for instance or even MUL-T.
At last, the Void Fiend is essentially the new character in the game that was added alongside the Railgunner as part of the first expansion, Survivors of the Void. The Void Fiend depicts a “corrupted Commando”, although a different one than the one from the first game. His abilities centre around dealing and taking damage as well as inflicting critical hits to gain corruption. Corruption then causes your body to transform and your kit to change completely, meaning that you’re now more powerful. Healing reduces the corruption though and the corrupted form isn’t kept for a long duration, though, as it rapidly decreases over time, meaning that you end up in your normal form again shortly after, having to amass corruption again. As the Void Fiend has two sets of abilities, one per form, there are no unlockable alternate skills for him.
His skin is the “Purified” version which shows a more streamlined Void Fiend that has gained control over the corruption and is able to use it better. Maybe I’m just reading too much between the lines though. It just looks cool, so there’s that. The Void Fiend is a lot of fun and given that he’s new I didn’t have enough fun to try and play like him so far but when I did, it was great. His base skills are pretty strong, so he doesn’t feel too slow or anything in the beginning. A lot of his skills are pretty strong already, so you can make him work with just anything, actually. Most of his skills do end up bursting through enemies, meaning that burst-builds work quite well, but I find it a bit annoying that you have to be careful as to what items you get. Getting lots of healing may end up biting you in the back, after all, giving you no chance to turn into the corrupted version of the Void Fiend. Similarly, void items increase the minimum corruption level by 2% per item, so if you take a lot of those, you can end up with 100%, resulting in your always being in your corrupted form. This is great because you’re really strong now… but the lack of range is also a huge downside, which is something I dislike a little bit.
Anyhow, getting all 118 achievements took me a while due to time differences and because I struggled a bit with the Mastery ones. Frankly, I didn’t want to play some of these characters but after getting the Mastery ones, I’m positive that I’m liking them more and therefore, I may play more of them. Another reason as to why I struggled so much with the Mastery achievements was actually that I often would end up getting cocky and dying to something silly, like me overestimating those overcharged magma worms that came at me when I activated four mountain shrines… or like me just standing still and forgetting to pause… or me underestimating how strung “Collapse” as a status effect is… any many more. Hybris is honestly a common thing in Risk of Rain 2 and I love every single time that it happens. Getting the 100% in Risk of Rain 2, however, didn’t really touch my “Average Game Completion Rate”, though. I believe it was at 28% or 29% before and it now is sitting at 29%, which is nice… but I’d still like to get it up more. I also want to 100% more games because the 11 “perfect games” I’ve got listed there don’t paint a great picture of me, I think? I look like a bit of a degenerate, right now, which is fine in itself. I just want to complete more games to look like less of a degenerate.
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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