History VideoGame / RiskOfRain2

The game is mechanically similar to the first game, with the goal of locating a teleporter in a level and activating it as the difficulty increases every 5 minutes. The game sets itself apart by being [[Videogame3DLeap in 3D]], rebalancing various mechanics to adjust, and contains a vastly improved CoOpMultiplayer with up to 4 players (which can be increased far beyond that with mods).

The game is mechanically similar to the first game, with the goal of locating a teleporter in a level and activating it as the difficulty increases every 5 minutes. The game sets itself apart by being [[Videogame3DLeap in 3D]], rebalancing various mechanics to adjust, and contains a vastly improved CoOpMultiplayer with up to 4 players.

** The 57-Leaf Clover rerolls any percentage-based effects that don't trigger, giving them another chance to activate. Each stack adds an additional reroll. This significantly ups the odds of fixed chance items like the [=AtG=] missile launcher triggering.

* UncommonTime: Several songs in the score feature complex time signatures:
** "Thermodynamic Equilibrium" has 5 subdivisions in each beat of 4/4, but its bridge metrically modulates to 4 subdivisions in each beat of 5/4.
** "Köppen as Fuck" is written in 7/4, but modulates to 4/4 (with a bar of 5:4 every 4th bar out of 8) during the slow, chugging sections. "Disdrometer" is also written in 7/4, but the snare alternates to 4/4 in some parts, giving it a lopsided feel. "Into the Doldrums" and "Antarctic Oscillation" are also written in 7/4, though the latter also switches to 5/4 for the quieter sections.
** "The Raindrop that Fell to the Sky" is in 5/8, though the first section has enough of a half-time tempo that it can also be counted in 5/4.
** "You're Gonna Need a Bigger Ukelele" is in 7/2.
** Beyond this, Christodoulou uses quintuplets in numerous songs that are otherwise not in uncommon time signatures, such as "Antarctic Oscillation".

*** The outro of soundtrack song "Terra Pluviam" directly quotes "Mission to the Asteroid", the opening song of Michael Land's score for Creator/LucasArts video game ''VideoGame/TheDig''. Composer Chris Christodoulou has cited Land's score as a major inspiration for his own work.

** The Delicate Watch lets you deal more damage, but if your HP drops to 25% then all Delicate Watches you're carrying will break, and cannot be repaired.

-->-- '''Logbook'''

*** Nearly all of the tracks in the ''Survivors of the Void'' DLC have titles taken from various works of literature, poetry, and music, the only exception being "[[Music/FryderykChopin Prelude in D Flat Major]]." These are "[[Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu A Placid Island of Ignorance]]"; "[[Creator/EdgarAllanPoe Having Fallen, It Was Blood]]"; "[[Literature/BookOfJob Out of Whose Womb Came the Ice?]]"; "[[Film/TheWizardOfOz Once in a Lullaby]]"; "[[Literature/BookOfGenesis The Face of the Deep]]"; "[[Literature/{{IT}} A Boat Made from a Sheet of Newspaper]]"; "[[Music/TheBeatles They Might as Well be Dead]]"; and "[[Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea Who Can Fathom the Soundless Depths?]]"

* BizarroElements: while the Elite Aspects encountered in early game form a fairly standard FourElementEnsemble, in the late game weirder aspects start to show up: [[TheCorruption Corruption]], [[PerfectionIsAddictive Perfection]], [[{{Invisibility}} Incorporeality]], and [[PowerOfTheVoid Void]].

** Shaped Glass halves your HP and doubles your damage output. This can in turn be offset with items that raise your HP, like Stone Flux Pauldron or Transcendence, though you also need increasingly more of these to offset Shaped Glass. (Also, exercise ''extreme caution'' when using this item as [[spoiler:the Heretic]], as her health degeneration is a flat rate independent of Shaped Glass' effects on her max HP. Transcendence disables this, but has its own drawbacks.)
** Speaking of Transcendence, it converts all your HP to shields, which negates the effectiveness of many healing items, but it also completely negates the effect of Malachite (which disables health-based healing, but not shield-based healing), and it also disables the [[spoiler:Heretic]]'s health degeneration, vastly improving her survivability. It also reduces all fall damage to 1, since fall damage is based on the player's maximum health (which is always 1). If players get Transcendence, they should plan for it in advance and avoid items like Bustling Fungus that depend on their maximum health stat. The legendary item Aegis, which transforms all excess healing into barriers, helps a lot with Transcendence; alternatively, if a player is willing to give up their survivor's utility skill, they can use three stacks of Strides of Heresy, or a single Strides of Heresy and a single Hardlight Afterburner, to create a Shadowfade ability that will last long enough for the player to fully recharge their shields while invulnerable.

** The Delicate Watch, added in the ''Survivors of the Void'' DLC, boosts all damage done by a survivor by 20%. However, every held watch breaks instantly if the survivor dips below 25% health.

** Shaped Glass turns you into a full-on GlassCannon — it doubles your damage, but halves your health. Furthermore, the effect is a multiplier, so each stack will dramatically increase damage (2x, 4x, 8x, 16x), but dramatically reduce health (-50%, -75%, -87.5%). With the right build (and skill at not getting hit), this can let you mow down enemies with ease, but death will always be one or two good hits away, though certain shield/health barrier items can correct for that (see CursedWithAwesome above).

*** The Bazaar Between Time, accessed by finding Newt Altars in main stages and spending a Lunar Coin to activate them, has a group of small, floating rocks, which lead to a cave, housing a giant axolotl creature referred to as "The Newt" (who is not aggressive, but can be attacked and killed), allowing players to trade in Lunar Coins for Lunar items, Reforge items of lower quality for a guaranteed higher-quality item, or "Dream" to choose which Environment the next stage will be. The [[spoiler:portal to the Void Fields]] is also hidden here.

* EscapePod: All player characters bar [=MUL=]-T, Acrid and Void Fiend start the game landing in an escape pod. MUL-T falls out of the sky in a crate, Acrid spawns in something that looks similar to a Void Cell asleep until you press a button, and Void Fiend arrives in some kind of inky, fleshy plant bulb that opens and spits it out when the player commands.
* FantasticDrug: While not explicitly stated as such, the Spinel Tonic induces some visual distortion and discoloration, including affecting your vision with a grain filter and fish-eye lens, giving the illusion of a high. There's also the fact that it enhances your stats and has a chance to negatively affect your performance if it wears off, thus encouraging the player to consume it constantly with Fuel Cells and/or Gesture of the Drowned.

* FriendlyFireproof: Players and their allies are immune to any damage done by other players and their allies, and your enemies are immune to attacks by your other enemies. This is averted by the Glowing Meteorite and Hellfire Tincture, which can damage both the player using it and their allies. It is also completely averted if you activate the Artifact of Chaos, which turns on friendly fire for all allies and enemies. Mired Urn also averts this as the draining effect specifies that it targets nearby ''[[ExactWords characters]]'' as opposed to just enemies.

* GameMod: The game's modding API is almost famously friendly, everything from balance to text rewriting to adding new characters is (relatively speaking) crazy easy. Some of the most popular mods add back in the missing characters and items from ''Risk of Rain 1'' and DummiedOut content that was half-finished in the game files.
* GiantEnemyCrab: The base game has Void Reavers, while ''Survivors of the Void'' adds Void Devastators, two enemies that look more-than-a-bit like crustaceans. Also added in the ''Survivors of the Void'' DLC is [[spoiler:the Voidling, a new alternate final boss.]]
* GildedCage: The Gilded Coast, where Aurelionite was imprisoned by Mithrix, embodies this trope to a literal extent. This is also noted in it's Environment Log:

** Items aside, [[SquishyWizard Artificer]], [[TheGunslinger Bandit]] and [[ColdSniper Railgunner]] all qualify for this trope by default. All three are capable of truly hideous damage outputs, but have low base health, no armor, and limited mobility (though "limited" is still more than some characters can say).

** Player summons, most notably Squid Polyps, can turn against the player if they get infected by a [[PuppeteerParasite Void Infestor]].

* CreatingLife: Providence and Mithrix do this, resulting in the Stone Golens and Stone Titans, although each of the brothers feels [[CreatingLifeIsAwesome differently]] about the [[CreatingLifeIsBad subject]]. This contrast is made all the more evident in the logs relating to Aurelionite.

* LoreCodex: the Logbook is a prime example of this trope. Also doubles as a MonsterCompendium.

** Benthic Bloom in the ''Survivors Of The Void'' DLC. The corrupted form of 57 Leaf Clover, each stack of Bloom will upgrade three random stacks of items at the start of each level, turning them into random items from the next rarity pool (white to green, green to red). While red items do have very powerful effects, white and green items are often BoringButPractical, and a lot of red items rely on these to maximize their effects. This can lead into situations where you have several Laser Scopes but no critical hit chance, or Aegis, Rejuvenation Rack, and/or N'Kuhana's Opinion with Interstellar Desk Plant as your only healing option. You'll quickly start losing items faster than you can replace them, a problem which will quickly get worse if you happen to roll into a stack of 57 Leaf Clovers, which will turn into more Benthic Blooms. Greed will be a run's downfall when grabbing this item.

** This is also present amongst the flashier tier 3 items with examples, including Rejuvenation Rack and Dio's Best Friend. Rejuvenation Rack flat out ''doubles'' all healing received, something that all characters can really appreciate, especially REX who is heavily reliant on their healing skills to pump out damage. Meanwhile, Dio's Best Friend acts as a one-time revive, which on Engineer has the added bonus of also resurrecting your turrets when they go down.

*** The corollary of this is Purity, an item that reduces your luck in exchange for reducing your cooldowns by two seconds. One Purity will exactly offset the luck bonus of one Clover. For certain loadouts, though, the reduced luck stat won't even matter - for instance, a scant two Purities and one Lysate Cell render Mercenary able to spam Eviscerate relentlessly to deal consistent damage while making himself all but immune to it.

** Uniquely, [[spoiler:Heretic]] [[InvertedTrope inverts this instead]], as her health *drains* over time instead of replenishing. To make up for it, her utility ability gives her a powerful healing effect for its duration.

* LastLousyPoint: Monster Logs are just as rare as the first game and are a major hurdle in getting a 100% complete codex, but special mention goes to Irradiant Pearl. You need to find a Cleansing Pool, which can only spawn in 3 out of the 9 standard biomes and only spawn about 10-15% of the time to begin with, and trade one Lunar item for a Pearl, with only a 4% chance for it to be an Irradiant Pearl. Also, the Cleansing Pool doesn't spawn [[NoFairCheating if you have Artifact of Command on]]. The drop rate was buffed to 20%, but even then it's still the rarest item by far.

* NonStandardGameOver: If you manage to loop the game and reach at least Rallypoint Delta or Scorched Acres, [[spoiler:a celestial portal opens up and leads to an obelisk that the player can interact with to obliterate themselves, ending the run. This is required to unlock the Mercenary, and it also nets you 5 Lunar Coins for doing this]]. [[spoiler:If you also have the Beads of Fealty in your inventory, the obelisk instead takes you to a different area containing one of four BonusBoss Scavenger variants, and killing it rewards you with 10 Lunar Coins and the game fades to black. The results screen at the end for either end says you were "killed by the Planet" and your "Fate unknown...".]]

** Crowbars offer an AlphaStrike bonus for damaging a healthy enemy. The bonus is nothing to sneeze at, especially when stacked; pair it with a high-damage attack (like the Royal Capacitor, Preon Accumulator, Loader's dash, etc.) and it's possible to OneHitKill nearly anything, up to and including bosses!

** Focus crystals grants a flat 20% increase to damage when the player is within 13 meters of an enemy they're hitting and scales with no cap. While this obviously make it amazingly powerful for the Mercenary and Loader, even the ranged characters will usually find themselves crowded up close by enemies, making it an excellent damage item overall.
** The Repulsion Armor Plate is a plain looking item that just provides flat damage reduction, ala Tough Times from the original ''Risk of Rain''. It does nothing else, but a no strings attached decrease in damage taken is a godsend, especially on Monsoon, and the higher DynamicDifficulty levels during a run.

* BreakablePowerup: The Delicate Watch lets you deal more damage, but if your HP drops to 25% then all Delicate Watches you're carrying will break, and cannot be repaired. Power Elixirs will also be consumed if you drop to 25% HP, but a Power Elixir will heal you to 100%, essentially acting like a SingleUseShield.

** Rather than shocking you like in the first game, the Jellyfish now violently explode when they get close to you.

** Gesture of the Drowned halves the cooldown of your Equipment, but forces it to automatically activate whenever it's not on cooldown. The idea is that it makes it so you lose control over your equipment in exchange for having it activate more frequently... but you can pair it with Fuel Cells, an uncommon item that reduces your Equipment's cooldown by 15% and adds an extra stock of it. If you find enough Fuel Cells, it's possible to have your equipment activate ''near-constantly'' without input, which allows you to have stuff like infinite Jade Elephant/Spinel Tonic or pick up a Royal Capacitor and gain the ability to smite anything you so much as look at.

** The decreased attack speed and decreased movement speed, respectively, of the DLC items Light Flux Pauldron and Stone Flux Pauldron can be largely offset with large stacks of either Soldier's Syringes and Paul's Goat Hooves, respectively, or Mocha, or both. And unlike 57 Leaf Clovers, all three of the latter items are white items. The downside is that you will need to stack a lot more of them to offset the Pauldrons' effects - Soldier's Syringe increases attack speed by 15%, Paul's Goat Hoof increases movement speed by 14%, and Mocha increases attack speed by 7.5% and movement speed by 7%, while the Light Flux Pauldron multiplies attack speed by 1/(1+n), with n being the number of Light Flux Pauldrons the player has collected; likewise the Stone Flux Pauldron's effect on movement speed. (However, neither of these can ever go below 0.1.)

* DifficultButAwesome: Some of the survivors and lunar items fall under this.
** Shaped Glass turns you into a full-on GlassCannon — it doubles your damage, but halves your health. Furthermore, the effect is a multiplier, so each stack will dramatically increase damage (2x, 4x, 8x, 16x), but reduce health by smaller amounts each time (50%, 75%, 87.5%). With the right build (and skill at not getting hit), this can let you mow down enemies with ease, but death will always be one or two good hits away, though certain shield/health barrier items can correct for that (see CursedWithAwesome above).

** Though not a traditional double jump, some survivors have mobility skills that can be used midair as an improvised one. Commando's Tactical Slide, for instance, will give him an upward-angle boost if used in the air instead of on the ground.

** There are three floating islands in A Moment, Fractured that are so far away that they can't even be seen from the main islands. If you manage to reach them with some combination of Hopoo Feathers, the Milky Chrysalis, and/or the Artificer's glide and Ion Surge, you will find several massive, literal Easter eggs.

** [[spoiler: After defeating Mithrix, a glass frog will appear at the spawn point, where the player can spend Lunar Coins to "pet" it. If the ''Survivors of the Void'' [=DLC=] is installed, petting the frog 10 times will spawn a portal to The Planetarium and the fight against Voidling.]]

** [[spoiler: Speaking of the Void Fields, its "Deep Void" counterparts - the Void Locus and The Planetarium - probably fit this trope best. A warped, chaotic mass floating in an inky violet span of nothingness, with carved stone and what looks like coral and seaweed jutting out of the environment in inexplicable places. The inhabitants all resemble sea life, but wrong - not to mention aggressive - and implode in a black hole on death. The realm is stated by several logs to be inescapable, with the creatures of the Void constantly watching and [[MadScientist experimenting on]] anything they drag into this dimension. To top it all off, a prolonged stay results in horribly-deformative corruption that warps the mind and body alike, as poor, poor Void Fiend [[BodyHorror can attest]].]]
* EndlessGame: It is theoretically possible to keep going as much as your human willpower/physical ability would allow since there is no limit to looping. However, you ''can'' end the game if you decide to Obliterate (a form of NonStandardGameOver that qualifies as "winning" but not "beating the game") or fight the FinalBoss (which is considered "beating the game"). ''Survivors of the Void'' also adds The Simulacrum, a wave-based, combat-centric mode that challenges players to just survive for as many waves as possible.

* ShockAndAwe: Blue enemies have an electrical aura which causes damage to the survivor if they're close enough. The Unstable Tesla Coil gives this power to the survivor, and the Ukulele makes their shots do the same.

*** Nearly all of the tracks in the ''Survivors of the Void'' DLC have titles taken from various works of literature, poetry, and music, the only exception being "[[Music/FryderykChopin Prelude in D Flat Major]]." These are "[[Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu Placid Island of Ignorance]];" "[[Creator/EdgarAllanPoe Having Fallen, It Was Blood]]; "[[Literature/BookOfJob Out of Whose Womb Came the Ice?]]; [[Film/TheWizardOfOz Once in a Lullaby]]; [[Literature/BookOfGenesis The Face of the Deep]]; "[[Literature/{{IT}} A Boat Made from a Sheet of Newspaper]];" [[Music/TheBeatles They Might as Well be Dead]];" and "[[Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea Who Can Fathom the Soundless Depths?]]."

** N'kuhana, a death goddess and generally sinister figure, is associated with green. N'kuhana's Opinion is green and black and causes the player to shoot out flaming green skulls, and malachite elites will rarely drop an item called N'kuhana's Retort, which is green and causes the player to have the same abilities as malachite elites. The altar to N'kuhana hidden in the [[spoiler:Wetlands Aspect]] is also filled with green light.

* StoneWall: The Stone Flux Pauldron, added in ''Survivors of the Void'', doubles your health and halves your speed, turning you into one of these.

* VictorGainsLosersPowers: Some of the rarer item drops you can get off of defeated bosses appear to be actual chunks or organs from the bosses themselves. Naturally, these give you abilities similar to the respective boss it was acquired from. There's also an item that makes it so that the player briefly gains the powers of any elites they kill.

* ZergRush: The game spawns more and more enemies as the game goes on, and after playing for long enough a player can easily end up facing hundreds of monsters in quick succession. The Artifact of Swarms doubles enemy spawns at the start of the game.

** Shaped Glass halves your HP and doubles your damage output. This can in turn be offset with items that raise your HP, like Stone Flux Pauldron or Transcendence, though you also need increasingly more of these to offset Shaped Glass.

*** The corollary of this is Purity, an item that reduces your luck in exchange for reducing your cooldowns by two seconds. One Purity will exactly offset the luck bonus of one Clover. For certain loadouts, though, the reduced luck stat won't even matter - for instance, a scant two Purities renders Mercenary able to spam Eviscerate relentlessly to deal consistent damage while making himself all but immune to it.

** The Lost Seer's Lenses from ''Survivors of the Void'' replaces all Lens-Maker's Glasses to grant a chance to instantly kill non-boss enemies on hit. As a trade-off for this monstrously powerful effect, it requires a whopping ''200 stacks'' to make it a guaranteed chance, compared to a mere ten for the Glasses.

** The Hellfire Tincture is an equippable item that harms enemies, allies and yourself 15 meters around you, dealing [[PercentDamageAttack percentage-based damage]] to yourself, allies, and specially enemies, who get dealt this damage multiplied by 24. It is a huge boon for melee survivors who have to get close to enemies to begin with, even more so considering that the Mercenary has conditional invulnerability with his dashes and Eviscerate and Acrid can regenerate health using his regular attacks or his Ravenous Bite ability. If that isn't a good deal already, Razorwire, which deals damage to enemies around you if you get hit, gives your character an InstantDeathRadius when Hellfire Tincture activates, as it also works when you get damaged by it. Getting this winning combination will make the game a breeze until the second loop. Alternatively, the [=DLC=] item Ben's Raincoat lets the player NoSell the self-damage, which negates the Razorwire synergy, but opens up a new one with Ignition Tank, an item that increases Ignite damage.

* LethalJokeItem: The Regenerating Scrap has no immediate effect in-game - it's effectively an equivalent of the scrap you get from junking a green item at a scrapper, ''except'' that, as its name implies, it regenerates whenever you go through a teleporter or a portal. This makes it a lot more powerful than you'd first think, because if you aren't using the Artifact of Command, you can print new green items once a level. Moreover, regardless of whether you're using Command, if you collect five of them, you can visit the Bazaar Between Time for the cost of a single lunar coin and use the Regenerating Scraps to get a legendary item from the red cauldron. (This is both much likelier and much more powerful if you're using Command, in fact.) You can do this after each stage, as long as you have lunar coins and can access a Newt Altar (note that they don't always spawn on every stage). Red cauldrons also frequently (though not always) spawn on Commencement, giving players a final chance to exchange Regenerating Scraps.

* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: The vast majority of song titles in the soundtrack relate to rain or water in some way, though sometimes indirectly - for instance, "Köppen as Fuck" is named after the tropical rainforest's Köppen Af designation, and "They Might as Well Be Dead" is a line from Music/TheBeatles' "Rain".

* {{Jetpack}}: The Milky Chrysalis grants limited flight. The Artificer innately has one that functions like the Rusty Jetpack from the first game, offering a slowed descent rather than actual flight.