[2019] Early Access ‘Skills 2.0’ Content Update – September 17, 2019

: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page [url=https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/632360/announcements/detail/3629261603725096696]here[/url].

This is the second major content update for Risk of Rain 2 on PC. With this update we are focusing on Skills 2.0, brand new content, as well as other general changes and quality of life improvements.

Skills 2.0 introduces a new way to play your favorite survivor! Our new “Loadout” system allows for swappable skills and skins at the beginning of each run. Each survivor will maintain their unique identity, but have some options to tinker with before jumping into a run. While some skill variants play off existing skills, some variants are entirely unique abilities available to a survivor. Each new skill and skin in your Loadout will be unlocked only with survivor-specific challenges - good luck! More skills and skins are planned to be added in future updates.

This Content Update will be coming to consoles soon - for details on how our Content Updates get ported to console versions, check out our previous Development Thoughts here!

Changes with the ‘🌧︎’ icon in front of them are changes or additions suggested by the community. As always, if you want to stay up to date on the game feel free to join the discord at https://discord.gg/riskofrain2

==== Major Content and Changes ====

• Added Survivor: Loader
  
  • The Loader is a slow but powerful bruiser that can use her grappling hook to uniquely navigate the environment.
• Added Stage: Siren’s Call
  
• Added System: Loadouts
  
  • “Loadouts” are a new system that allows you to mix-and-match your selected Survivor’s abilities before entering a run.
• Added System: Alternate Skins
  
• Added 15 skill variants
  
  • New Skill Variant: Commando Secondary
    
  • New Skill Variant: Commando Special
    
  • New Skill Variant: Huntress Utility
    
  • New Skill Variant: Huntress Special
    
  • New Skill Variant: MUL-T Primary
    
  • New Skill Variant: Engineer Secondary
    
  • New Skill Variant: Engineer Special
    
  • New Skill Variant: Artificer Primary
    
  • New Skill Variant: Artificer Secondary
    
  • New Skill Variant: Artificer Special
    
  • New Skill Variant: Mercenary Secondary
    
  • New Skill Variant: Mercenary Special
    
  • New Skill Variant: REX Secondary
    
  • New Skill Variant: Loader Secondary
• Added 7 skins
  
  • New Skin: Commando
    
  • New Skin: Huntress
    
  • New Skin: MUL-T
    
  • New Skin: Artificer
    
  • New Skin: Mercenary
    
  • New Skin: REX
    
  • New Skin: Loader
• Added Elite: Celestine
  
  • Celestine are new high-tier elites that only spawn late into the game, similarly to Malachite elites.
    
  • New unique visuals and SFX that signifies a Celestine elite has entered the stage
• Added 2 bosses to the game:
  
  • New Boss: Solus Control Unit
    
  • New Boss: Alloy Worship Unit
• Added 2 monsters to the game:
  
  • New Monsters: Alloy Vulture
    
  • New Monsters: Solus Probe
• Added 6 Items and Equipment to the game
  
  • New Item: Focus Crystal
    
  • New Item: Lepton Daisy
    
  • New Item: Shattering Justice
    
  • New Equipment: Blast Shower
    
  • New Equipment: Volcanic Egg
    
  • New Lunar Item: Strides of Heresy
• Added Interactable: Lunar Seer
  
• Added 3 Challenges to the game
  
  • New Challenge: Warm For Life
    
  • New Challenge: Blockade Breaker
    
  • New Challenge: Guidance Offline
• Added 22 unique Class Challenges to the game
  
  • New Class Challenge: Commando: Rolling Thunder
    
  • New Class Challenge: Commando: Incorruptible
    
  • New Class Challenge: Commando: Mastery
    
  • New Class Challenge: MUL-T: Pest Control
    
  • New Class Challenge: MUL-T: Gotcha!
    
  • New Class Challenge: MUL-T: Mastery
    
  • New Class Challenge: Mercenary: Demon of the Skies
    
  • New Class Challenge: Mercenary: Ethereal
    
  • New Class Challenge: Mercenary: Mastery
    
  • New Class Challenge: Huntress: Piercing Wind
    
  • New Class Challenge: Huntress: One Shot, One Kill
    
  • New Class Challenge: Huntress: Mastery
    
  • New Class Challenge: Engineer: Better With Friends
    
  • New Class Challenge: Engineer: 100% Calculated
    
  • New Class Challenge: REX: Bushwhacked
    
  • New Class Challenge: REX: Mastery
    
  • New Class Challenge: Artificer: Chunked!
    
  • New Class Challenge: Artificer: Orbital Bombardment
    
  • New Class Challenge: Artificer: Massacre
    
  • New Class Challenge: Artificer: Mastery
    
  • New Class Challenge: Loader: Swing By
    
  • New Class Challenge: Loader: Mastery
• Added Environment Log: Siren’s Call
  
• Added 7 Lore Entries to the game
  
  • New Monster Lore Entry: Jellyfish
    
  • New Monster Lore Entry: Beetle
    
  • New Monster Lore Entry: Beetle Guard
    
  • New Boss Lore Entry: Solus Control Unit
    
  • New Boss Lore Entry: Alloy Worship Unit
    
  • New Survivor Lore Entry: REX
    
  • New Item Lore Entry: Little Disciple

==== Gameplay Changes ====

• General
  
  • Reduce the spawn frequency of the “aggressive” director
    
    • This should result in spawning behavior a bit more similar to Early Access Launch, where the Director will be able to save up a tiny bit more before spawning things. This doesn’t make the game easier or harder - there should just be slightly fewer small monsters, and more big monsters.
  • 🌧︎Fix health regeneration boost being applied outside of Drizzle
    
    • Drizzle difficulty is intended to have increased health regeneration of 250% for players. This was being accidentally applied to ALL difficulties since launch. Oops. We will be monitoring this closely to make sure the pacing of the game stays consistent.
  
  
• Survivors
  
  • Commando
    
    • 🌧︎Update Suppressive Fire (R) to fire more bullets with more attack speed
      
    • Add 2 new skill variants
      
    • Add 1 new skin
    
    
  • Engineer
    
    • 🌧︎ Bubble Shield now flashes before it expires
      
    • 🌧︎ Update Pressure Mines:
      
      • 🌧︎ Now “arms” over time to 900% damage and an increased radius
        
        • Players (including us) were mostly just using Engineer's mines as somewhat underwhelming grenades as soon as they came off cooldown. This change puts more power in strategic placement and reduces how often the skill needs to be used for it to be effective.
      • 🌧︎ Now scales max available mines with max secondary stock
        
      • Max Stock 10 ⇒ 4
    • Add 2 new skill variants
  • MUL-T
    
    • 🌧︎ Show both primary and alternate fire descriptions in Character Select
      
    • Move “Multifunctional” passive into “Retool”
      
      • This change was made to make the UI for MUL-T’s skills easier to read. There is no functional difference.
    • Add 2 new skill variants
      
    • Add 1 new skin
  • Huntress
    
    • Add 2 new skill variants
      
    • Add 1 new skin
  • Mercenary
    
    • Add 2 new skill variants
      
    • Add 1 new skin
  • REX
    
    • Add 2 new skill variants
      
    • Add 1 new skin
  • Artificer
    
    • Add 2 new skill variants
      
    • Add 1 new skin
• Items
  
  • Guillotine
    
    • 🌧︎Tier: 1 ⇒ 2
      
    • Update Logbook entry to properly reflect its stacking behavior
      
      • In the Logbook, it said it scaled the execute threshold by 20%(+5% per stack), but it ACTUALLY stacked by 20% (+20% per stack). Instead of reducing the threshold down to 5%, we decided to keep the current behavior and upgrade it to tier 2 instead.
  • Cautious Slug
    
    • Regen Rate: 250%(+250% per stack) ⇒ 300%(+300% per stack)
  • Sticky Bomb
    
    • 🌧︎Proc Chance: 5%(+2.5% per stack) ⇒ 5%(+5% per stack)
      
      • Tier 1 items are the most commonly stacked, and should therefore linearly stack without diminishing returns in most cases.
  • Crowbar
    
    • Damage Boost: 50%(+30% per stack) ⇒ 50%(+50% per stack)
      
      • Tier 1 items are the most commonly stacked, and should therefore linearly stack without diminishing returns in most cases
  • Topaz Brooch
    
    • 🌧︎Barrier Gain: 20(+20 per stack) ⇒ 15(+15 per stack)
  • Aegis
    
    • 🌧︎Has been reworked in functionality
      
      • Barrier gain from overheal is no longer capped
        
      • Now grants barrier for 50% (+50% per stack) of the amount you overheal
  • Halcyon Seed
    
    • 🌧︎ Friendly Aurelionite now has special AI to be more aggressive
  • Crowfunder
    
    • Proc Coefficient: 0.2 ⇒ 1
  
  
• Stage
  
  • Bazaar Between Time
    
    • 🌧︎ Add Lunar Seers
      
      • Lunar Seers allow you to, at a price, determine the next upcoming stage. The intent for this is to allow us to continue adding content that is stage dependent (Timed Security Chest on Rallypoint Delta, Broken Robot in Abyssal Depths, etc) without it becoming frustrating in the future to actually land on those maps.
  • Abyssal Depths
    
    • 🌧︎ Brighten ambient lighting
      
    • 🌧︎ Ambient lighting is no longer extra dark inside the cave portions
• Elites
  
  • Malachite
    
    • 🌧︎ Health Bonus Percentage: 2820% ⇒ 2350%
• Drones
  
  • 🌧︎Drones can now be repurchased after they die, excluding TC-280
    
  • TC-280
    
    • Base Cost: $500 ⇒ $350

==== Music & SFX ====

• Add new stage track
  
• A bunch of other tweaks and updates to SFX

==== QOL ====

• 🌧︎ Damage numbers can now support up to 998,000,000 damage (truncated as 10K, 100K, 1M, etc)
  
• 🌧︎ Money values in the HUD now have commas
  
• 🌧︎ Newt Shrines, Shrine of the Mountain, and Altar of Gold now become unavailable once the Teleporter starts charging
  
• 🌧︎ Game now remembers your preferred difficulty until you close the game
  
• 🌧︎ Update geysers on Scorched Acres to have shorter launch arcs so they don’t cause fall damage
  
• 🌧︎ Add cost of purchasables to their chat message when pinged
  
• 🌧︎ Add unique shrine icon for Altar of Gold
  
• 🌧︎ Add new unique UI sprite for Lunar Coins. Update Lunar Coin model to have a hole in the center to match new icon.
  
• 🌧︎ Add equipment cooldown to logbook
  
• 🌧︎ Add stats for regen and armor to logbook entries for survivors and monsters
  
• 🌧︎ Minion kills can now spawn Lunar Coins on your behalf
  
• 🌧︎ Damage dealt by your minions is now reported in the post-game screen
  
• 🌧︎ Minion healthbars are now nested below their leader’s
  
• Dead players now remain in the allied healthbar area
  
• Update level up effects

==== Bug Fixes====

• 🌧︎Update skill icon not accounting for cooldown scale when calculating the display value for the cooldown progress indicator
  
• 🌧︎Fix Flamethrower Drone creating two flamethrower effects
  
• 🌧︎Fix floating trees in Gilded Shores
  
• 🌧︎Fix trees in Scorched Acres and Rallypoint Delta not having collision
  
• 🌧︎Fix stuck spawn location in Scorched Acres
  
• 🌧︎Fix AI pathing in Wetland Aspect to reduce the chance of a boss spawning on the wrong side of a wall
  
• Update Wandering Vagrant’s Nova attack to properly apply on-hits
  
• Fix Aurelonite firing more projectiles for every connected player in the game
  
• Fix water splashes being oriented 90 degrees in the wrong way
  
• Update ambient sound in the Celestial Portal to not include insects
  
• Canceling Artificer’s Nova Bomb early now properly stops the sound
  
• Fix some spots in maps that could cause you to be stuck
  
• 🌧︎Fix Asian characters being clipped in ally healthbar
  
• 🌧︎MUL-T’s Transport Mode now properly applies crits
  
• 🌧︎Replace instances of unknown deaths (pots, out-of-bounds, etc) having a white box and a blank entry with a generic “mystery” attacker
  
• 🌧︎Update a bunch of typos for stacking behavior and skill damage that were inconsistent with in-game values
  
• 🌧︎Fix friendly Aurelionites dropping Logbooks when they expire
  
• 🌧︎Fix falling enemies never properly being removed, resulting in spawns stopping after shoving enough enemies off the map
  
• 🌧︎Fix Follower-type items still remaining before and after entering a stage
  
• 🌧Update Dio’s Best Friend on Huntress to no longer clip into her scarf
  
• Remove word wrapping in a few instances
  
• Fix enemy team level-up sound effect playing simultaneously for every instance of a monster in the map
  
• Fix cropping issues on Warbanner and Tri-Tip Dagger icons

Thanks for SWINGING into this update - we hope you all enjoy the new build!