Welcome to Risk of Rain 2 – How to build and use artificer on-kill Style Guide.

A Comprehensive Guide for Artificers that uses ignition effects and on-kill items for multiplayer and single-player runs. Fun and effective.
(Last update: PC v1.2.4.1 + DLC).

 

Introduction

 

This guide will teach you how to create and play on-kill artificers. With a small item pool, it is simple to construct but extremely effective on high stacks. This build works in both single-player and multiplayer modes. It has a slightly different item list so your teammates can have better items. This build is enjoyable, and you can enjoy nuking your enemies across the entire map.
 

TL;DR

Artifact: Command + Swarm

Skills: Flame Bolt + Flamethrower

Items: Ignition and Gasoline Tank

Character and Skills

 

This guide is Artificer-based, so we will (obviously!) be using Artificer. These skills will be used in the guide. This build requires Flame Bolt to function. However, you can modify the skills to suit your needs. These are the skills of Artificer.

Misc: ENV Suit

The hover suit is pretty simple. To hover, press the jump button and then descend slowly. This is useful for preventing fall injury. You can sprint or do additional jumps (e.g. Hoopo Feather) while hovering.

Primary: Flame Bolt

This is your primary damage source in the early stages of the game. It is located in your “primary” skill slots, but it behaves differently to most survivors’ primary skills. This ability has 4 max charges. If the charges are not full, it regains 1 charge every 2 seconds. This ability is not spammable. Use it with care.

This skill has a unique interaction that allows you to reduce attack speed and the time between shots. These buffs are beneficial but do not increase your overall power. We only need one skill rotation (using all the skills once), after stage 1. This is it. Do not use syringes. Leave them for your colleagues.

You should not use the alternate skill “Plasma bolt”, as it does not work with the rest.

Secondary: Cast Nanospear

A projectile that can be charged to penetrate enemies and freeze them for execution. This is a great tool to use for anti-air, before Gasoline is purchased. You can charge the spear to do more damage, but if you only require the freeze, you can cast it immediately instead. The freeze duration and execute range don’t increase with charge time.

The spear is less damaging than the alternative skill, “Charged Nano-Bomb”, and it affects a straight line rather than a sphere. The spear is not affected by gravity and has a freezing effect that is usually stronger than stun effect.

Except for the final boss, this ability can’t freeze bosses. Snapfreeze (the next ability) is the same.

Snapfreeze: Utility

An ice wall that freezes enemies upon contact. This skill is helpful for crowd control. Although this skill takes a while, you can quickly cast it by sprinting. It cannot freeze bosses, but it can damage them a lot. Bosses are often large enough that they trigger multiple pillars.

It is highly recommended that you This skill can be replaced with “Shadowfade”. A skill granted by a lunar item gives you more maneuverability and survival than Snapfreeze. This skill is described in the items section.

Special: Flamethrower

This skill has the greatest damage potential of all your skills. It quickly applies burn to all enemies within a short range. It hits 22 ticks by default (a.k.a. 22 times for the skill’s duration. Attack speed will determine the damage ticks, and luck will affect each tick’s burn chance.

You cannot sprint while this skill activates, as sprinting will cancel it. You can use this technique if you want to cancel the flamethrower quickly.

The alternative skill, “Ion Surge”, deals much damage in exchange for more excellent vertical maneuverability. This sounds great on paper, as you can avoid all ground enemies by hovering and surging, but the game counters this by making you more aerial enemies when your aircraft is airborne. You can experiment with these skills to see which suits you best. I prefer the flamethrower because it depends more on the items in this build.

Artifacts

This build uses a small number of items that have greatly increased power when stacked. Artifact of Command is highly recommended to simplify stacking. You can also use scrapers or 3D printers to get rid unused items and stack important ones.

Artifact of Swarm, which is a build that relies on on-kill effects, could be used to increase enemy spawning on the map. This amplifies the effects and also gives enemies with lower max health.

Items Common

Core Items

These are the items you must have for the build to go smoothly. Ask your teammates if they can leave them these items if they find them.

Gasoline

This is the foundation of this build. They are used to damage and ignite enemies when you kill them. Stacking this item increases the damage and area of its effect. This item should be stacked as many times as possible until it is fully utilized.

Topaz Brooch

This small barrier will gradually decay over time. The more max health you have, the faster it decays. This item grants you some tankiness because Artificer is very immobile and can be hit occasionally. This item can be stacked to increase the barrier per kill. This item should be kept in 2-3 stacks.

Aegis users will find Monster Tooth stackable better than Topaz Brooch. The tooth grants healing based upon max health % and not a flat amount.

Monster Tooth

When you kill an enemy, a green healing orb drops down and slowly moves toward the nearest player. You can heal yourself by picking up the orbs. This will heal you for a percentage of your max health. If no one grabs them, the orbs will disappear soon. Stacking this item increases its healing %. If you have Aegis, you should have at least 2 stacks of this item.

Additional Items

These items will be helpful in your game but not as important as your core weapons. These items can be shared with your teammates equally as they are useful for all survivors.

Tough Times / Safer Places

Tougher Times has a low chance of blocking damage, while Safer Spaces guarantees that it will block one (1-) instance of damage every once in awhile. Safer Spaces is more effective if you can avoid most damage. It will also guarantee that you can open Void Cradles or Blood Shrines without using any of your health. Tougher times is always better on high stacks (20+).

There should be at least 2-5 stacks of each item. Stacking Tougher Items increases the chance of blocking; stacking Safer Spaces decreases the cool-down time between blocks.

Energy Drink

You can sprint faster to avoid obstacles and move faster around the map. It provides a greater speed increase per stack, which is generally better than Paul’s Goat Hoof. Flamethrower does not provide speed increases, so you can’t sprint fast while using it. This item can be stacked to increase your sprint speed. This item should be stacked in 1-2 stacks.

Items: Uncommon

Core Items

These are the items you must have for the build to go smoothly. Ask your teammates if they can leave them these items if they find them.

Ignition Tank

All things that are burn-related will dramatically increase your damage output. Combining this with stacked Gasoline will nuke the entire map in your first kill. This item should be stacked as many times as possible. Stacking this item gives you a 300% increase in burn damage per stack. There is no limit to how many damage you can do.

This item cannot affect Voidsent Flame or Will-o’the-wisp. However, it would be best if you did not take Helfire Tincture because the self-damaging effect is amplified by this item and can easily kill you.

Fuel Cell

Your max equipment cost amount should be increased by 1 stack. This build will use Forgive Me Please as the gear. More information will be available in that section. This item can only be used by two (2) stacks. You cannot have more than three dolls at once.

Additional Items

These items will be helpful in your game but not as important as your core weapons. These items can be shared with your teammates equally as they are useful for all survivors.

Hopoo Feather

Each stack of Hopoo Feather gives you an extra jump. This item aids in mobility for Artificers. This item should be kept in 1-2 stacks.

Berzerker’s Pauldron

After you have a multi-kill score of 4, you can increase your attack speed and movement speed. This allows you to move faster, fire flame bolts faster, and do more damage with your flamethrower. Stacking this item will increase the duration of the buff. This item should be kept in a stack of 1-2.

Ghor’s Tome

This gives you a chance to get a treasure on kill. You can pick up the treasure, which looks like a chunk or gold, to get money equal to the cost for a small chest at the current stage. This is an on-kill build so you should share the kills with your teammates. This makes the valuable item for everyone as your teammates can also grab the treasures.

This item is much less helpful when an Artifact of sacrifice is enabled. You don’t need money to buy chests for items. This item should be stacked according to the team’s gold needs. Each stack gives 4% chance to drop a treasure, so you will need 25 times to get a 100% treasure drop chance.

Items: Legendary

Core Items

These are the items you must have for the build to go smoothly. Ask your teammates if they can leave them these items if they find them.

Soulbound Catalyst

This reduces your equipment cool down on kill. This is used to provide Forgive Me Please with permanent up-time. More information will be provided in this section. This item can only be used once (1-stacked).

Additional Items

These items will be helpful in your game but not as important as your core weapons. These items can be shared with your teammates equally as they are useful for all survivors.

Ceremonial Dagger

When you kill an enemy, you will get 3 homing daggers. This is a semi-core item. It greatly increases your uptime. The daggers will kill enemy while you wait for your skills recharge. Stacking this item will increase the damage of your daggers. This item should be kept in one or more stacks. If you don’t have Aegis, you should get one before stacking 2+ Ceremonial daggers.

This item is located in the “Additional Items”, section. Legendary items are rare and you should share it with your teammates before you get multiple legendaries. This item can be used as a Core Item if you are a single-player.

Aegis

Transforms excess healing into barriers Topaz Brooch will be outnumbered by Aegis in later stages, as the healing -> barrier of Monster Tooth will be higher than the flat barrier amount from this brooch. This item’s conversion % to heal-barrier is increased by stacking it. This item should be kept in a single (1-stacked) stack.

Equipment

Only One

Forgive Me Please

This equipment will emit a voodoo doll which will stick to any surface when you use it. After that, the equipment triggers your on-kill effect at each doll’s location for 8 seconds. Each player cannot have more than three (3) voodoo dolls at once. Here’s a list of possible on-kill effects for this build:

– Gasoline: explosion/burn

– Topaz Brooch: grant barrier

– Monster Tooth: heal orbs drop

– Berzerker’s Pauldron: frenzy buff

– Ghor’s Tome – Drop treasure

– Soulbound Catalyst – Reduce equipment cool-down

– Ceremonial dagger: spawn 3 daggers

Soulbound Catalyst, when combined with 2 Fuel cells (or 1 Gesture to the Drowned), will ensure that you always have three dolls available or active. This allows you to trigger on kill effects without having to kill enemies first. This is particularly useful for situations where there are no weaker opponents to initiate the chain reaction (e.g. Final boss

Items: Void / Boss / Lunar

Safer Spaces, a void variant of Tougher Times (the Teddy Bear), is the only Void item that might be viable. Both are included in the Common Items section. While Weeping Fungus might be suggested, it is far outperformed by Monster Tooth and Forgive Me Please. You might consider opening cradles or donating void items to your teammates. This is a game of cooperation, and your teammates will likely use these items better.

You won’t find many Boss / Lunar items to work with this build. If you don’t have any, you can donate them to your team in exchange for other items you need. If you are interested in Boss / Moon items, here are some options:

Viable Items

Molten Perforator

Fireballs with burn effect (with a chance to spawn) can be triggered when you hit enemies. Although you don’t have much on-hit power beyond flamethrower, Ceremonial Dagger can proc this item and apply burn effects to enemies hit by the fireballs. This makes it one of the most useful Boss items. This item can be stacked to increase fireball damage.

Gesture of the Drowned

This item allows you to use your equipment whenever it’s ready automatically. It can be combined with Soulbound Catalyst to ensure there are always three (maximum) dolls on the platform. This means you won’t be able to focus all the dolls on the same spot to do more damage/healing. This item is only for those who prefer it. This item can be stacked. This particular build is recommended. It has no benefit so you should only own one stack.

Strides of Heresy

Your “Snapfreeze”, (ice wall) skill is replaced by “Shadowfade”. This skill grants you flight, movement speed, and intangibility (cannot be hit) for a brief time and heals you in the meantime. This skill allows you to discard some damage, which increases maneuverability and survival. This skill is often very useful on Artificer’s later stages.

Stacking this item increases your skill duration and healing percentage. This item should be stacked in 1-3 stacks.

This skill recharges when Shadowfade duration ends, not when it is cast.

Gameplay

The Early Stages

Do your best to survive and locate your essential items. The first stack of Ignition Tank can effectively double your Flame Bolt or Flamethrower damage, so it is worth looking for. If you want to swap your Snapfreeze for Shadowfade, it is a good idea to search for Lunar Pods and Newt Altars.

Transition Stages

You should now have quite a few stacks gasoline and some ignition tanks. You might consider adding more survivability items to your Gasoline stacks before you get them even larger. This is because you must be alive to deal with damage.

You might consider purchasing Ceremonial dagger first if you are using Artifact of Commands but do not have Fuel Cells. Although the doll is generally stronger, the daggers can provide enough power to clear the transition stages with ease.

Boss Stage

In this stage, Forgive Me Please should be your equipment as it will be the only way to trigger the on-kill effects during most of the boss fight. Your freezing skills can be used to freeze the boss and execute them at low health. To furthur increase your survivability, you could also get additional Strides of Heresy stacks by using Lunar Pods.

Looping

Have fun stacking up the items! You won’t be stopped as you race through stages, with your doll torching everything in its path. Be careful of Void enemies, as they can still hold you hostage after your death.

Consider increasing your survivability, maneuverability, and ability to defeat the alternative boss. These will be more important than the normal boss fight. This is also the time to swap Snapfreeze for Shadowfade, as Snapfreeze will almost be ineffective on the alternative boss fight.

Thank you / Credits

The “Ignificer”, Comprehensive On-Kill Artificer guide, is now complete. If you have any questions, suggestions or errors, please comment below. If you find this guide useful, you can like, up-vote, or award it. This guide can be shared on other sites provided you credit me and/or include the link to my original post. Thank you for reading my guide. I wish you all the best with your Ignificer runs.

Credits

Achievements: Screenshot of the “TPMiKL Profile”, Steam Client, TPMiKL

Artificer Loadout Page: Screenshot of “Risk of Rain 2”, Ingame, TPMiKL

Artificer “Incoming Transmission”, Risk of Rain 2 Steam Trading Card Hopoo Games, Steam

All other images and screenshots:
https://riskofrain2.fandom.com/ – [fandom.com]
 

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