A quick guide to unlocking all Risk of Rain 2 characters and a short overview describing the characters and their playstyles. For those who want a quick, no BS unlock guide, each section has a quick unlock overview.
Currently, Risk of Rain 2 has eight different (and unique) characters for players to enjoy. However, you don’t get to enjoy them without working up a little sweat, instead, you need to unlock every character in RoR2 by completing various challenges.
For this reason, I have created a comprehensive character unlock guide for Risk of Rain 2 so every one of you can enjoy all eight characters (7 for non-pc I believe). I have also provided a brief description and short clip of each character to give you a feel of how they play and so you can more easily decide which one to work for first.
Table of Contents
How Many Risk of Rain 2 Characters are There?
There are nine characters in Risk of Rain 2 as of the Artifact update. All of them are as follows:
- Commando
- MUL-T
- Huntress
- Engineer
- Artificer
- Mercenary
- Rex
- Loader
- Acrid
The next sections will focus on unlocking the characters and what they feel like to play.
Commando
Commando is the first character you have unlocked in Risk of Rain 2 and as such has a pretty vanilla ability pool. He is considered a strong character in his own rights but has trouble dealing with large groups of enemies and his roll isn’t all that great either.
The Commando does have a pretty freaking nice stun. Something most of the other classes lack, and provides him with a good way to disable more annoying enemies (looking at you clay templar).
How to Unlock Commando
Commando is unlocked from the start of the game!
MUL-T
MUL-T is a top tier character in Risk of Rain 2 and has the best attack speed in the game with no items. Add the fact that he has fairly good mobility and a utility skill that gives him damage reduction and you’ve got a good survivor on your hands.
How to Unlock MUL-T
Complete the first teleporter event five times.
The easiest way to unlock MUL-T is by finishing the first teleporter event, quitting and then starting it over again. Once you’ve done this five times you will have MUL-T unlocked and ready for some robot action.
Huntress
Huntress, also known as the THICC girl, is a ranged survivor in RoR2 that is the traditional glass cannon character of the game.
She is a really good damage dealer and you really can’t go wrong with someone who has a blink, an AOE ability, a freaking ballista shot, and thicc thighs. 10/10
How to Unlock Huntress
Reach and complete the 3rd teleporter event without dying.
Getting the Huntress is a pretty natural progression and doesn’t require a whole heck of a lot.
Engineer
The engineer is the best character in the game for solo players. He has the ability to spawn up to two turrets that get all of his items thereby making him a three-person army.
Due to his rather simple design, the Engineer is considered to be a boring character to play and some even call him a support survivor (gasp), but I find him to be quite a blast to play.
How to Unlock Engineer
Complete 30 Stages.
Unlocking the Engineer is a tad bit harder than the other two and will likely take you a bit before you finally unlock him as 30 stages is a lot for a new player to handle.
Be aware, however, that you don’t need to complete all thirty stages at once. These can be completed over all of your runs.
Artificer
Artificer is all about big AOE damage. This techno-wizard-robot-thing is a super good early game character in Risk of Rain 2 and is the strongest (IMO) character with zero items.
She is heavily reliant on her cooldowns though, so if you are planning on maining the Artificer you are going to have to get comfortable with not holding down the fire button.
How to Unlock Artificer
Free the survivor suspended in time.
To unlock the Artificer you need to get to the Bazaar Between Worlds. Once there, you will need to go next to the giant gecko looking guy and use the mysterious crystal next to him (costs 10 lunar coins). Doing so will unlock Artificer.
You can get to the Bazaar Between Worlds by using a newt altar (costs one lunar coin) or by getting lucky and having a blue portal spawn after the teleporter is complete.
How to Unlock Mercenary
Obliterate yourself at the Obelisk.
To unlock the Mercenary you will need to complete stage seven and enter the celestial portal that spawns. Upon entering you will have to traverse a bunch of floating rocks until you reach the giant obelisk. Interact with the obelisk twice to obliterate yourself and unlock the Mercenary (this will kill you and end the run).
- Reach stage seven
- Complete the teleporter and go through the celestial portal
- Parkour the rocks until you reach the obelisk
- Use the obelisk twice to obliterate yourself and unlock Mercenary
How to Unlock Rex
Repair the broken robot with an escape pod’s fuel array.
This one is hard to do if you don’t understand what this means.
For starters, as soon as you spawn in a Risk of Rain 2 game you will need to go around to the back of the escape pod and interact with it. After doing this you will have a piece of equipment that is required to complete this challenge. You can’t do this with MUL-T (because he doesn’t spawn with an escape pod).
Next, get to Abyssal Depths (stage four) and use the air jumpy things to get to the very top of the rock formations. At the very top, there will be another platform to jump on, go there and there should be a broken robot thing. Use the equipment you got from the fuel cell and you will unlock Rex in Risk of Rain 2.
Sorry for the terribly written description. I recommend watching the video.
How to Unlock Loader
How to unlock Loader: complete the ‘Guardian Offline’ challenge – Defeat the Unique Guardian of Siren’s Call.
To unlock Loader, you will need to make it to stage four (Siren’s Call) and kill the Alloy Worship Unit, the most difficult boss in the game.
For the Alloy Worship Unit to spawn you will need to break random vulture eggs until you see a message about “a distant whirring”. Keep breaking them until you see another message about “the whirring gets louder” and he should spawn.
The AWU is a tough fight, but afterward, you get a guaranteed legendary to spawn and will unlock Loader, a super-powerful survivor in Risk of Rain 2.
How to Unlock Acrid
How to unlock Acrid: Beat the 9 challenges in the Void Fields
Acrid is a new survivor that just came out with the Hidden Realms update for Risk of Rain 2. He is a melee/ranged hybrid class that focuses on doing DOT damage with his poison that will do more damage to higher health enemies.
For the full guide to unlock Acrid go here or watch the video, this will just be a short guide.
- Get to the Bazaar Between Worlds
- Jump down behind the blue portal
- Go through the hole in the wall and into the null portal
- Complete the nine null cell events
- You have Acrid!
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