Risk of Rain 2 – The Artificer – Character Guide

by Falagar / Articles, Risk of Rain / 30 Mar 2019

The Artificer – Character Guide

The Artificer

HP: 110 (+33 per level)

Damage: 12 (+2.4 per level)

Speed: 7 m/s

The Artificer is a bit tricky to unlock. Firstly, you need to collect 11 Lunar Coins. Then, you need to use a Newt Altar, which are located in a specific spot in each map and costs 1 Lunar Coin which will make “A blue orb appears…” appear in chat. After you finish the teleporter event, a blue portal will appear. Go through it, and awaiting you will be Artificer, frozen in time. Spend your 10 Lunar Coins, and she’s all yours.

The Artificer is the sorcerer of the game, using the elements to her advantage. She’s a bit soft, has zero defensive abilities, and built mainly for hit and run attacks. She can devastate bosses and normal enemies alike.

Flame Bolt

Cooldown: 1.3s per bolt, 5.2s total

Flame Bolt is the only Basic Attack that has a cooldown! It has a stack of 4 shots, each that do 200% damage and ignite enemies on fire. The cooldown requires you to play Artificer differently than you would other characters. You run in, deal damage, then bail. Some good items for Flame Bolt are Bandolier and Crowbar. Bandolier gives enemies a chance to drop an item that replenishes cooldown, giving you your bolts faster, and Crowbar, which deals more damage to enemies at 90% health or higher. Since Fire Bolt usually takes 1-3 shots to take down an enemy, this can save you an entire bolt!

Charged Nano-Bomb

Cooldown: 5s

Following in the trend of “Abilities that don’t behave the way they should,” we have Charged Nano-Bomb. Artificer’s Secondary Ability is a chargable secondary, the only of its kind. If you just tap it, Artificer throws a ball of energy that deals 400% damage and stuns. When fully charged for 2 seconds, however, it deals a whopping 1200% damage and stuns! This ability pairs well with Armor-Piercing Rounds, which deals bonus damage to bosses. Since this ability already deals an insane amount of damage, the extra boss damage will really pack a punch. It also benefits from Backup Magazine, giving you an extra charge to deal even more damage.

Snapfreeze

Cooldown: 12s

Is it time for another ability that doesn’t work like the others? You know it is! Snapfreeze is Artificer’s utility ability. “Now hold on,” you might be thinking, “Just earlier you said Artificer has no defensive abilities! But now she has an ice wall?” And yeah, you’d be fair to think that. I thought so too, first time I tried her. But her utility doesn’t block projectiles, or enemies. (That doesn’t stop me from saying “Ice wall, coming up!” every time I say it…) No, what Snapfreeze does is it throws up a wall of ice that, when an enemy makes contact with it, deals 100% damage and freezes them. It also will instantly kill an enemy if their health is low, making it very useful against tankier enemies. This ability benefits from Afterburner, and Will-o’-the-Wisp. Afterburner allows you to have 2 charges of your utility, giving you an extra ice wall just in case. Will-o’-the-wisp causes enemies to explode upon death, meaning if you have a group of enemies that you freeze, one exploding could cause the others to chain and shatter.

Flamethrower

Cooldown: 5s

Holy hell. Artificer’s special ability, Flamethrower, is insanely powerful. It’s too powerful, in fact. The game says it deals 1700% damage in front of you, but the truth is, it deals twice that damage! You may be wondering how, well lets break it down, shall we?

At level 1, the attack does 11 damage a tick. That’s 92% damage, done 10 times a second. The attack goes for 3 seconds, adding up to 330 damage.
But wait, it also deals fire damage! In my testing, it usually adds up to around 87 damage. 330+87=417, which is about 3475% damage. This is all assuming you hit only one target, because it also pierces! So you can deal almost 3500% damage to multiple targets if all your possible ticks of damage land. Because of how incredibly strong this ability is, it can take out entire crowds of enemies, or just melt bosses. Believe me when I say this is the strongest special ability in the entire game. It gets even more powerful when you add certain items and equipment to it:

Primordial Cube: This equipment is a must for every Artificer. When used, it launches a black hole which pulls all enemies into. Once all those enemies are together, you roast them with Flamethrower.

Gasoline: When all those enemies are close together, Gasoline’s ability of igniting all enemies within 12m just adds a bit of extra damage to the already insane damage you’re dealing.

Will-o’-the-wisp: Similar to Gasoline, lets you chain damage together for even more damage.

Ukulele: This item has a chance to have electricity arc to another enemy every time you deal damage. You may be seeing a pattern here.

Leeching Seed: Leeching Seed heals you for 1HP every time you deal damage, and you are hitting a lot when you use this ability.

Bandolier: Know whats even better than Flamethrower? Flamethrower with no cooldown! Bandolier gives enemies a chance to drop an item that completely resets your cooldowns.

Happiest Mask: This very rare item causes a 10% chance of any enemy you kill to come back as a ghost that fights for you and deals 500% damage for 30 seconds. When you use Flamethrower against a group of enemies that have been pulled by Primordial Cube, you’ll have a larger ghost army than Aragorn.

Armor Piercing Rounds: This item is for when you use Flamethrower against bosses, as Armor Piercing Rounds deal extra damage to bosses.

So yeah, Artificer is one of the deadliest characters you can pick at the moment. All her abilities are deadly, the only drawback being her low health (tied for 2nd to last with Commando), and zero defensive abilities. This is understandable, as the path to unlocking her is a long one. But once you do unlock her, she is a force of devastation. She benefits from items like Paul’s Goat Hoof, Hopoo Feather, Old War Stealthkit, and Tougher Times. Paul’s Goat Hoof increases move speed, Hopoo Feather gives an extra jump, Old War Stealthkit makes you invisible when you take a lot of damage, and Tougher Times gives a chance to negate damage completely. Whether you’re fighting groups of enemies or bosses, The Artificer will take both down with ease.

Falagar

He is the founder and editor of Magic Game World. He loved gaming from the moment he got a PlayStation 1 with Gran Turismo on his 7th birthday.
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