When built properly, there's no other Survivor in Risk of Rain 2 that's as strong as the Railgunner. Here are the items that make up a proper build.

The Railgunner is one of Risk of Rain 2‘s most recent character additions alongside Void Fiend, both of which were added in the Survivors of the Void DLC. Of course, new character(s) will be coming in the eventual Seekers of the Storm DLC for Risk 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 not the 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 in this 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

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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:

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 on basically every Survivor in Risk 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 basic Risk of Rain guides, but movement 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’s absolutely 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.

Active Reload-Buffing Common Items

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, as the 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:

• Predatory Instincts
• Mocha
• Soldier’s Syringe

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 since Railgunner’s XQR Smart Round System Primary shots have just enough innate knockback to interrupt Bustling Fungus anyway.

With that in mind, you should absolutely go for the Void-Corrupted variant of 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 Lens is 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:

• Primordial Cube: This item turns Railgunner into an absolute nightmare, as it makes it so that her Supercharge shot can hit any number of targets at the same time. Essentially, kite a horde of enemies into a big group, get them all pulled into Primordial Cube’s AoE, and then fire a Supercharge into the middle. With even just a single Kjaro’s Band this should immediately melt any enemies inside the area of effect.
• Ocular HUD: Ocular HUD works a bit differently on Railgunner, similar to how attack speed affects her differently. Essentially, instead of giving her a 100 percent Critical Hit chance for its 8-second duration (which would be useless on Railgunner), Ocular HUD increases her Weak Point damage by 100 percent. That should be enough of an argument for this Equipment, but in case it isn’t just remember that a Railgunner with even mediocre aim can hit the Weak Points of most enemies, at minimum, 80 percent of the time.

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.

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Franchise

risk of rain

Released

September 11, 2020

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Developer(s)

Hopoo Games

Publisher(s)

Gearbox Publishing

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