Risk of Rain Returns: The Best Red Items

Highlights

• In the Risk of Rain games, red items are highly coveted and rare, offering unique and powerful effects.
• The AtG Missile MK 2 item launches multiple homing missiles with each hit, creating a chain reaction of on-hit effects.
• The Ancient Scepter is a special item that unlocks powerful upgrades for a Survivor’s Special Skill, making it a valuable find.

In the Risk of Rain games, there are three ‘basic’ rarities of items which are white, green, and red. Depending on the game, there are a couple more of the yellow (Boss item), blue (Lunar item), or even purple (Void item) varieties, but those are all obtained under unique circumstances. In the act of opening Chests or interacting with Shrines of chance, getting a Red Item is about as lucky as it gets.

In Risk of Rain Returns, red items are a bit more common than in Risk of Rain 2, but finding them is still not easy by any stretch of the imagination. So, with that in mind, let’s go over the best of the best red items out of the possible 32 red items in Risk of Rain Returns and why they’re worth grabbing every single time.

10 AtG Missile MK 2

Even More Missiles On Top Of All The Other Ones

Starting things off with a pretty simple red item, as far as the effects go, the AtG Missile Mk 2 item is basically just three AtG Mk 1’s all compressed into one item. When players obtain this, they’ll gain a base 7 percent chance to launch even more missiles on hit, with each missile getting ridiculous damage scaling.

And, because each on-hit ‘trigger’ causes 3 missiles to spawn, there are even more chances to trigger another on-hit effect, which might trigger another on-hit effect, and the chain continues.

9 Happiest Mask

Much Better In The 2D Games Than The 3D One

Fans of the Risk of Rain IP who have really only played Risk of Rain 2 might be surprised to see Happiest Mask on a ‘best of’ list. This is because, in RoR 2, this item only had a 7 percent chance to spawn ghosts on kill, though these ghosts would have 1500 percent damage scaling and would last 30 seconds.

It might read like a useful effect, but in reality, it barely ever triggered. And, when it did it would often make ghosts of enemies that either didn’t deal a lot of damage or still had the potential to damage the player with the Happiest Mask (such as a Grandparent ghost). In Risk of Rain Returns, this item is much more reliable, spawning ghosts with every kill. And while the damage and duration are lower than in RoR2, the frequency of spawns more than makes up for it.

8 Heaven Cracker

Piercing Attacks In A 2D Game Are Overpowered

Piercing attacks in 3D games are usually good, if not great, but they’re rarely ever ‘amazing’. However, in games that are 2D piercing effects are typically among the best of the best, and Heaven Cracker is a great example of this.

Enemies can only travel in four directions (mostly two) in a 2D plane, so being able to pierce through them with attacks means a lot more enemies are going to get hit, especially in a roguelike with so many enemies on screen at once. Additionally, there are a good number of Survivors in Risk of Rain Returns with a pretty high base fire rate, leading to this item’s effect being triggered almost constantly.

7 Repulsion Armor

Doesn’t Even Have To Be Hits That Deal Damage

On its own, the next item on here, Repulsion Armor, is still good but absolutely not at its best. But, when this item is part of a build that also includes items like Tough Times, Hermit’s Scarf, Prophet’s Cape, and so on, Repulsion Armor is ridiculously strong.

The armor increase it applies when it activates is already powerful enough, but the damage reflection basically makes it so that most bosses end up accidentally killing themselves from hitting the player (save for maybe Providence).

6 Brilliant Behemoth

More Explosions For All Your Explosions

This next red item should be pretty obvious as to why it’s included here from the description alone. But, in case that’s not enough of an explanation, adding additional explosive damage to each shot, especially AoE damage, is going to exponentially increase the damage output of any character in the game.

Even Acrid, a character that usually just applies poison to nearby enemies and runs away, will get a lot of use from Brilliant Behemoth each time his Epidemic Spreads. Now just imagine this item on someone like Commando who is constantly unloading tens of bullets every second, if not more, and that’s not even taking other explosive items like AtGs, Sticky Bombs, or Will O’ the Wisps into account.

5 Hardlight Afterburner

+2 To Utility Skills = A Lot More Fun Overall

This next item, like Backup Mags, is an item that jumps back and forth from ‘overpowered’ to ‘useless’ depending on which Survivor obtains it. For example, Commando, Huntress, Bandit, Engineer, Miner, Acrid, Sniper, Mercenary, Loader, Chef, Pilot, Artificer, and Drifter all get a lot of out Hardlight Afterburner.

This means it’s only really just ‘okay’ or ‘bad’ on Enforcer, Han-D, and the super secret character. In Risk of Rain 2, the list of Survivors this item is great on is a bit smaller, meaning it was amazing in the first game, great in the second game, and is now back to amazing in the remaster/remake.

4 Wicked Ring

A Skill Resetting Miracle Item

Wicked Ring is another red item that is heavily dependent on a few other items in the player’s build in order to show its true worth. If a Survivor doesn’t have any other Crit Chance items, Wicked Ring is still helpful, but it won’t trigger all that often.

But, with even just two Lens Maker’s Glasses, all of a sudden Mercenary can use their Eviscerate Skill almost constantly. Again, on certain characters, this Ring isn’t going to see a lot of use. Still, on most of the playable cast, Wicked Ring is just a way to barely ever have to deal with Skill Cooldowns.

3 Shattering Justice

Crippling Enemies Until They’re Tissue Paper

As enemies keep scaling based on the in-game time in the Risk of Rain games, so too do their stats. Whether that’s overall health, damage, armor, and so on, it’ll only get harder and harder to kill anything if players don’t get the right types of items.

Shattering Justice is one of those items that can either push an already powerful build into the ‘brokenly strong’ level or it can save an unlucky build from being a failed run. -30 Armor is no joke, even on boss enemies, and it’s also an item that does a lot for the Providence fight.

2 Fireman’s Boots

The Only Time Shoes Acrid ‘Needs’ To Wear

Again, Risk of Rain Returns is a bit different from Risk of Rain 2 in that correctly kiting enemies into bigger groups and maintaining the proper distance matters a lot more. So, every Survivor actually ends up taking a page out of Acrid’s playbook, at least a bit, as they’ll kill a couple of enemies, make some distance, attack again, gain some more distance, and so on.

With the Fireman’s Boots, this hit-and-run cycle is a lot more efficient for killing enemies, as they’ll constantly be taking a decent amount of damage due to the fire trail left behind.

1 Ancient Scepter

Hard To Unlock & Then Hard To Be Without

And finally, let’s go over by far the most ‘unique’ item in Risk of Rain Returns, the Ancient Scepter. To unlock this item, players will first need to beat the game as the Mercenary on Monsoon difficulty, which will take some work. After that, they’ll be able to obtain this item from any chest (though the chance is low).

The reason this red item, in particular, is so good, is because it just simply makes the Special Skill (AKA the fourth Skill from left to right) even better for all Survivors. From healing on kills to creating additional explosions, this item modifies all of the Survivor’s Special Skills in a lot of fun ways that always make seeing the Ancient Scepter pop out of a chest a welcome surprise.