Risk of Rain Returns Beginner's Guide

Contents hide

1 Quick Start: Your First 10 Minutes

2 Which Survivor Should You Actually Start With?

3 Why the Difficulty Clock Kills More Than Enemies Do

4 Item Priority: What to Grab in Your First Loop

5 Should You Loop? The Providence Trap

6 Unlock Alternate Skills with Providence Trials

7 Multiplayer: What Changed Recently

8 How does looping affect Risk of Rain Returns’ final boss?

9 Is Drizzle difficulty worth using, or does it hurt progression?

10 What’s the fastest way to unlock more survivors?

11 Sources

You are not losing runs in Risk of Rain Returns because the enemies are too strong. You are losing because a hidden timer in the top-right corner of the screen is quietly making every enemy on the map stronger, every second you spend picking up loot or backtracking for a chest. That timer, not any single monster, is what kills most new players before they ever see the fifth stage.

Risk of Rain Returns is Hopoo Games and Gearbox’s 2023 remaster of the 2013 roguelike Risk of Rain, rebuilt with new survivors, overhauled multiplayer, and a scaling difficulty system that punishes hesitation more than bad reflexes^[1]. This guide skips the exhaustive item-by-item wiki dump and focuses on the three decisions that actually separate a five-minute death from a five-stage run: which survivor to start with, how the difficulty clock works, and when to stop looting and leave.

Quick Start: Your First 10 Minutes

Do these five things before you touch anything else:

Set difficulty to Drizzle — there’s no penalty for it, and it halves how fast the clock scales^[2].
Start as Commando or Huntress — both are unlocked by default and don’t punish mistakes the way melee survivors do^[1].
Budget five minutes per stage, max, before you activate the teleporter — competitor guides agree on this number for a reason^[10].
Grab 2-3 items per stage on your way to the teleporter, not every item on the map.
When the teleporter boss spawns, fight in open ground — you need room to kite, not a corner.

Which Survivor Should You Actually Start With?

Commando and Huntress are your only options at first, and that’s fine — of the 15 total survivors, 10 come from the original 2013 Risk of Rain, one (Pilot) is a returning face from Risk of Rain 2, and two (CHEF and Drifter) are entirely new to this remaster^[1]. Which one you unlock and main next should depend on how you actually play, not which one looks strongest on paper.

Player Type	Start With	Why
New to roguelikes	Commando	High rate of fire and range forgive bad positioning while you learn the stage layouts.
Casual, limited time	Engineer	Turrets deal damage while you loot, so a rushed stage still nets kills and item pickups.
Hardcore / optimiser	Miner or Mercenary	Both trade safety for burst damage — Miner’s heat mechanic and Mercenary’s dodge-cancel combos reward frame-perfect play with the fastest clear times.
Completionist	Whoever you just unlocked	Every new survivor opens its own set of Providence Trials, so cycling through the roster early builds toward 100% skill unlocks faster than mastering one character.

CHEF is worth calling out specifically: its SEAR secondary hits for 260% damage (FLAMBE, the alternate, hits for 520%), and its passive turns oiled, glazed enemies into crowd-clearing detonations — a genuinely different playstyle from the kite-and-shoot loop most starting survivors teach you^[5].

Why the Difficulty Clock Kills More Than Enemies Do

Risk of Rain Returns scales difficulty on a timer, not on how many stages you’ve cleared. The HUD tracks ten escalating tiers — Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, Insane, Impossible, and three escalating tiers beyond that the game itself names I SEE YOU, I’M COMING FOR YOU, and HAHAHAHA — and every one of them arrives faster if you linger^[2].

Setting	Clock Speed	Health Regen	Best For
Drizzle	50% (half speed)	1.5x	Your first 5-10 runs
Rainstorm	100% (normal)	1x	Once you’ve unlocked 4-5 survivors
Monsoon	150% (fast)	0.6x	Experienced players only — adds exclusive Blighted elites

The practical takeaway: the clock, not the difficulty label, is your real opponent. A slow, cautious Drizzle run and a fast, sloppy Rainstorm run can hit “Hard” tier at the same in-game minute — the setting only changes how forgiving that tier is when you get there.

Item Priority: What to Grab in Your First Loop

Grab movement and attack-speed items before you chase anything flashy — they compound every stage that follows, while most legendary items are a one-time power spike you’ll only find once anyway.

Tier	Drop Chance	Stacking	Priority
White / Common	~75%	Strong, near-linear per stack	Grab every one you see
Green / Uncommon	~20%	Good, moderate returns	Grab on the way to the teleporter
Red / Legendary	~4%	Weak past 1-2 copies	Take it, don’t detour for a second one
Yellow / Boss	~1%	Build-defining, single copy	Always take it

The stacking column is the part most new players skip, and it’s the difference between a build that snowballs and one that plateaus. Paul’s Goat Hoof adds 15% move speed per stack with no diminishing returns, and Soldier’s Syringe adds 12% attack speed per stack the same way — both are common items, both are everywhere, and both keep paying off at stack ten the same way they did at stack one^[9]. Compare that to a Red item like Alien Head (-30% cooldown per stack, but you’ll rarely find more than one in a run) — powerful the moment you get it, but not something to farm for.

Close-up of a glowing item orb resting on mossy alien terrain — Common items look unremarkable up close — their value is in how they stack.

Should You Loop? The Providence Trap

No — not on your first several runs, and the reason isn’t just “it’s risky,” it’s a specific mechanism: Providence, the final boss, scales with the same clock everything else does^[8]. Looping back from the Divine Teleporter at the Temple of the Elders to farm more items before the final fight doesn’t make Providence easier relative to you — it often makes the fight harder, because the extra time you spend looping scales the boss up faster than a couple of extra items scale you up.

Use this decision tree at the Divine Teleporter:

If you have a build that clears the current stage in under 5 minutes without close calls → proceed to Providence. You’re geared enough; delaying only helps the boss.
If you’re missing a core damage or mobility item and you’re still on Drizzle → loop once, rush the teleporter, don’t farm. One fast loop is safer than a slow one.
If you’re already struggling to survive teleporter events → skip Providence this run. Restart on Drizzle and treat the death as data, not a setback^[10].

Contact Light, the final area, has its own keycard rooms and chests — GameSkinny’s testing found these usually net more usable items than a risky loop does, which is the strongest argument against looping for anyone who isn’t already comfortable with Monsoon-tier enemy density^[8].

Unlock Alternate Skills with Providence Trials

Every survivor you unlock also unlocks that survivor’s Providence Trials — short, character-specific challenges tied to one of their skills, like Commando’s timed slide-to-the-finish-line trial^[11]^[12]. Completing one swaps that skill for a genuinely different alternate version you can use in normal runs, not just a stat tweak. If a survivor feels one-dimensional after a few runs, check their Trials menu before writing the character off — the alternate skill is often the one that changes how they play entirely.

Wide shot of a silhouetted explorer approaching a glowing archway across an alien landscape at dusk — Knowing when to leave a stage matters more than what you find on it.

Multiplayer: What Changed Recently

If you’re jumping into co-op, know that the game officially supports up to 4 players locally or online, matching the “overhauled multiplayer” the remaster shipped with^[7]. According to Risk of Rain’s own developer account, the V1.1.0 Steam Deck update added an experimental option to push lobbies beyond 4 players, plus a ping and emote system for callouts mid-run — worth trying if your squad is bigger than the standard cap, though the game itself flags anything above 4 as unsupported and more prone to issues^[13]. If your group leans toward longer co-op sessions generally, our best co-op survival games ranking covers where Returns sits against similar picks.

How does looping affect Risk of Rain Returns’ final boss?

Looping back from the Divine Teleporter scales Providence up on the same timer that scales every other enemy — it does not create an easier, separate version of the fight. Only loop if you can do it fast, without farming, since the boss gets stronger for every extra minute you spend.

Is Drizzle difficulty worth using, or does it hurt progression?

Drizzle carries no progression penalty — you unlock survivors, items, and achievements identically to Rainstorm or Monsoon. The only thing Drizzle changes is how fast the difficulty clock scales (50% speed) and your health regen (1.5x), making it the correct default until you’ve unlocked several survivors^[2].

What’s the fastest way to unlock more survivors?

Most survivors unlock through specific in-run conditions tied to achievements rather than playtime, so the fastest path is playing varied runs on Drizzle rather than grinding one character repeatedly — a wider spread of runs exposes you to more of the unlock conditions naturally. Once a survivor is unlocked, their Providence Trials open immediately, giving you a concrete next goal instead of blind farming^[11].

If you’re building out your roguelike backlog beyond this one, our best roguelikes ranking lines up where Risk of Rain Returns sits against genre picks like Hades 2 — and if you’ve played that one, our Hades 2 complete guide is a useful contrast: Hades 2’s boon system rewards synergy-hunting mid-run, while Returns rewards restraint and knowing when to stop looting.

Verified against Risk of Rain Returns patch 1.0.4 and the V1.1.0 Steam Deck update. Item percentages and difficulty values may change in future balance patches — check in-game tooltips if a number looks off.

Sources

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.