The Railgunner is one ofRisk of Rain 2’smost recent character additions alongside Void Fiend, both of which were added in theSurvivors of the VoidDLC. Of course, new character(s) will be coming in the eventualSeekers of the StormDLC forRisk of Rain 2, but until that comes out, let’s take a deeper look at Railgunner. Railgunner excels at honestly most everything but is designed around her high-damage sniper shots. When built correctly, the Railgunner is probably one of, if notthe most ‘broken’ character in the game.
Of course, like with just about every other character in this game, unless you’re using the Artifact of Command you can really only tailor your build based on the items you’re offered. However, there are some items that are especially incredible on Railgunner, so it’s worth breaking down exactly what items to keep an eye out for inthis beloved sci-fi roguelike.
Updated October 21st, 2024 by Jacob Buchalter:With the release of Risk of Rain 2’s DLC, Seekers of the Storm, a whole slew of new items were added to the game. Sadly, for the most part, the new items aren’t really near the top of any rankings, except for a select few. With Railgunner especially, the pickings as far as new item synergies are pretty slim. However, there are plenty of items (including the new ones) that propel Railgunner’s damage to absurd proportions. With that in mind, let’s take another look at all the items offered in Risk of Rain 2 and talk about which ones make the best build for Railgunner.
Complete Overview
For Those Who Don’t Need In-Depth Reasoning
First, let’s just go over all of the items that are useful on the Railgunner regardless of their reasoning or their rarity. Most items in Risk of Rain 2 can work well on most characters, but some items work much better than most. So, we’ve listed below every item we find to have a very noticeable effect on Railgunner, with each one ordered from least to most useful in regard to their rarity category:
Gasoline is good on just about every character
Movement Speed + Attack Speed is always good
Allows Railgunner to melt bosses even faster
General Damage buff if you may play safe
Gigantic damage on the first shot against enemies with Crowbars
Useful on Railgunner due to Secondary Skill being spammable
Only good with Voidsent Flame or Gasoline
Prayer Beads
Uncommon
Useful on just about every Survivor as long as you build up stacks
Gives Railgunner a reliable healing option with crits
Great for when Railgunner fires while not ADS
When it procs the missiles deal absurd amounts of damage
Just great synergy with Railgunner’s core gameplay loop
By far Railgunner’s best damage items
Just a fantastic item on literally every Survivor
Runic Lens
Legendary
Because of the absurdly high damage per shot of Railgunner, this actually triggers quite often with her.
Less armor equals even chunkier sniper shots
General damage buff and additional AoE is also nice
Skyrockets Railgunners damage potential
Generally useful on any character
Synergizes with Railgunner’s gameplay loop
Primordial Cube
Equipment
Pulls all enemies together for Railgunner to absolutely shred with a single shot
Shatterspleen
Boss
Great for clearing groups of enemies & makes ADS shots even stronger
Great for both ADS and non-ADS shots
Needletick
Void
Good to have if you’re not building for Bleed damage at all
Lost Seer’s Lenses
With a way to get guaranteed crits players don’t necessarily need Lens-Maker’s Glasses
One of the best survivability items in the game
Voidsent Flame
Synergizes fantastically with Railgunner’s core gameplay loop & Crowbars in general
Shaped Glass
Lunar
Railgunner is one of the most viable characters for using this Lunar Item relatively safely
Remember, the table listed above has items ordered from least to most useful from the top down, separated by their item rarity. This means that Crowbar is one of Railgunner’s best items overall despite being so high up in the table, as it’s in the last slot of the ‘Common’ items. Now for those who would like a more in-depth explanation of all of Railgunner’s core items, continue reading below.
Key Common Item
Crowbars
The first big ‘key’ to a great Railgunner build is to try and focus on grabbing Crowbars.They are a common item, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find, and you’ll have a decent chance each run of bumping into a Crowbar Printer, so make sure to always keep track of any nearby Scrappers. In any case,the Railgunner benefits from this item tremendously.The Railgunner’s main source of damage is an incredibly high burst of damage that has a relatively slow rate of fire to compensate. So, more often than not, with even just a few Crowbars, Railgunner will one-shot most enemies and even most Elites (at least until the timer starts getting really high up there).
For the other main single-target DPS item to keep an eye out for, we’re talking about Bands.To be more specific, Kjaro’s Band or Runald’s Band are two uncommon items that are, quite frankly, amazing onbasically every SurvivorinRisk of Rain 2.However, for Railgunner especially, Bands will exponentially increase her damage output. There are of course the ‘free’ Bands that come from the secret room in Abandoned Aquaduct, and even just grabbing those will give Railgunner most of the DPS boost she needs to make it through any ‘standard’ run.
Movement Speed Common Items
Mocha, Paul’s Goat Hoof, & Energy Drink
It’s always underplayed in basicRisk of Rainguides, butmovement speed is king in this game, regardless of Survivor choice.The more movement speed you have, the more you’ll be able to run circles around enemies, and the more you’ll be able to completely avoid all incoming attacks. With movement speed, you can scout stages faster, keep proper spacing from enemies, and technically lower the overall difficulty by clearing stages quickly.
Now, at a glance, Railgunner might seem like a Survivor that suffers from a lack of movement speed. And, compared to Survivors like Mercenary or Loader who can get around the map in a flash, she is a bit slow. However, Railgunner’s Concussion Mines (because no one actually uses the Polar Field Device alternative) are actually pretty good for getting around or getting up to high places. Still, it’sabsolutely worth grabbing the standard movement speed buffing items if you see them such as Energy Drink, Paul’s Goat Hoof, Wax Quail, or Red Whip.
Mocha & Soldier’s Syringe
In case you’ve never played Railgunner, this is a character who has an ‘active reload’ mechanic you’ll constantly have to interact with in order to maximize her damage output.And, for players just starting out on the Railgunner, grabbing items that make that active reload a bit easier can be very helpful. How it works is actually pretty unique, asthe more attack speed Railgunner has, the bigger the bar is in her active reload UI.This means the more attack speed you have, the easier it is to keep that active reload going (AKA keep the +100 percent damage buff on your next shot going).
The best items, in particular, for making this mechanic easier are:
Raw Damage Common Items
Armor-Piercing Rounds & Delicate Watches
This next recommendation is a bit risky, as it involves items that buff Railgunner’s damage against specific enemies and items that buff Railgunner’s damage overall, but with the risk of losing that buff if Railgunner gets below 25 percent health.Yes, these items in question are the Armor Piercing Rounds and Delicate Watches.
For Armor-Piercing Rounds, it should be pretty obvious. This common item gives a 20 percent buff to the damage done to bosses (with each additional one buffing this by another 20 percent). And, considering how high Railgunner’s single-shot damage is,with just a single Crowbar and a single Armor-Piercing Round, Railgunner can basically one-shot the bosses in the first few stages.
Meanwhile, Delicate Watches are good on just about every Survivor (outside of maybe Rex). However, these are especially noticeable on Railgunner since they give a 20 percent damage increase to all damage for each Watch you pick up. This means with just two of these Watches Railgunner’s already absurdly high single-target damage is now 40 percent higher. And that’s not even taking the other DPS buffing items or Armor-Piercing Rounds into account.Just be careful when you’re carrying Delicate Watches, as it feels so incredibly bad to briefly mess up, get under 25 percent HP, and lose all those Watches (and their buffs) at the same time.
Void Items
Weeping Fungus & Safer Spaces
One might think that a classic ‘sniper’ archetype character would heavily benefit from an item list Bustling Fungus that passively heals Survivors while they’re standing still. However, once you move up to even Rainstorm difficulty, you quickly realize that standing still is just asking to die. Only the Engineer can really take advantage of Bungus it seems, even more so sinceRailgunner’s XQR Smart Round System Primary shots have just enough innate knockback to interrupt Bustling Fungus anyway.
With that in mind, you shouldabsolutely go for the Void-Corrupted variantof Bustling Fungus, Weeping Fungus.This Void Item is pretty much incredible on everyone, but this combined with Safer Spaces gives Railgunner pretty much all the security she needs to feel safe. Other fantastic Void Item recommendations for Railgunner include Voidsent Flame, Polylute, Plasma Shrimp, Lost Seer’s Lenses, and Needletick.
Legendary Items
Laser Scope & Brilliant Behemoth
Moving on to Legendary Items, there are two items in particular that 100 percent break the game and make it an absolute cakewalk for Railgunner, regardless of difficulty.These items are Laser Scope and Brilliant Behemoth.
Railgunner is a Survivor completely designed around critting constantly, so getting Laser Scope is basically a no-brainer since it doubles the damage output of crits. However, Behemoth actually has the bigger impact here, as any item that has a buff to total damage is incredible on Railgunner and Behemoth gives a 40 percent buff while also giving her shots much more AoE damage.Runic Lensis an item that not many players expect to be great on Railgunner when they first read the item description (it’s pretty confusingly worded), but it actually has more of a chance to trigger based on the damage dealt by the hit, which Railgunner does a ton of per hit with her primary shot (when scoped). So, this item actually ends up triggering pretty often.
Equipment Items
Primordial Cube & Ocular HUD
For her Equipment, there are a couple of decent to great options such as Royal Capacitor or Volcanic Egg (excluding the obvious recommendations of Recycler and Executive Card). However, Primordial Cube and Ocular HUD are the best choices overall, and here’s why:
Boss Items
Shatterspleen, Molten Perforator, & Charged Perforator
For Boss Items, Shatterspleen is, hands down, the best option for Railgunner.Because Railgunner basically has complete control over when she crits enemies, she can trigger Shatterspleen with basically every shot, giving her an absurd buff to her overall DPS and AoE potential.
However, if Shatterspleen isn’t in the cards, then just looking out for the standard Perforator items is also equally amazing,with Charged Perforator still being the best Boss item in the game overall.
