The Artificer is one of the harder characters to master in Risk Of Rain 2. This is largely because she has few survivability and mobility options to speak of. After playing with the other characters, players will come to expect this and find Artificer to be a slow glass cannon.
That being said players that can master this character are in for a real treat. She’s by far the best damage dealer in the game and with the right hands can melt hordes and bosses alike. Here are some great ways to build her and tips to get the most out of the Artificer.
10 Tip: Keep Moving
While it’s important to keep moving with any character, it’s especially so with the Artificer. She can’t take many hits so dodging, kiting, and evasion are her only options at survival.
Of course this can be tough as the Artificer has very few abilities to help her run around. Players will need to get very comfortable spamming her sprint or reserve some items to help with her mobility. Whatever build the player chooses keeping her mobile is important for survival.
9 Build: Balanced Build
Because the Artificer lacks mobility and sustainability players can build her to have some of those features through items. Energy Drinks will give her that boost of speed she’ll need to evade many attacks. Old War Stealthkit can be used to get speed and invisibility whenever she takes damage.
Tougher Times gives her some much needed sustainability by having a 15% chance to block an incoming attack. Medkit helps her recover some lost health and makes Old War Stealthkit more usable. Personal Shield Generator can help entering a fight. The build sacrifices some of her damage potential to give her mobility and survivability.
8 Tip: Develop A Rotation
Every single one of Artificer’s abilities have a cooldown. Even her primaries will need to go through cooldowns before they can be used again. Because of this it’s important for players to develop a rotation or pattern for when they use which ability.
An example is Flame Bolt four times, Nano-Spear, Snapfreeze, Flamethrower, then starting over with Flame Bolt. The player is able to do some kind of damage nearly at all times and allows Flame Bolt to recharge while using Flamethrower. This ensures the player always has some means of attack and is never caught waiting for cooldowns.
7 Build: Mitigated CD Build
For players who become frustrated by Artificer’s cooldowns they can focus on a build that mitigates them to some degree. Purity is perfect for this as it drops the primary cooldown to a negligible half a second.
Of course, Purity is a Lunar rarity item making it really hard to find. Brainstalks can simulate this effect for four seconds upon killing an Elite. The Bandolier has an 18% chance to drop an ammo pack that resets all skill cooldowns. This build does leave the Artificer more vulnerable but being able to trigger her skills more often offsets this considerably.
6 Tip: Kill Them Before They Kill You
The main way for the Artificer to stay alive is to ensure the enemy dies before she does. Playing as the Artificer in this indie game will commonly see the player reduced to the brink of death but surrounded by smoldering corpses.
Players should improve their aim to ensure that every attack meets its mark. A combination of raw damage and damage over time is essential to ensure everything dies quickly. Losing health isn’t too much of a problem so long as the enemy is losing theirs faster.
5 Build: Raw Power Build
The Raw Power Build capitalizes on the notion that survival means killing everything faster than the Artificer dies in this indie game. Backup Magazine is a great item for this build as it allows the Artificer to launch multiple Nano-Spears and significantly improve DPS.
The AtG Missile Mk. 1 is also a very helpful item as it has a 10% chance to launch a missile dealing 300% damage. Having an attack source not directly tied to a cooldown is immensely helpful. The fact she’s also the highest damage dealer makes that potential 300% with every attack even more devastating.
4 Tip: Ion Surge Paired With Passive
If players decide to use the Ion Surge instead of the Flamethrower they’ll want to become familiar with the Artificer’s Passive Ability. The ENV Suit allows the Artificer to hover in the air while the player holds the jump key.
This is helpful as the Ion Surge will launch the Artificer into the air. Players can use the Ion Surge for a quick escape when surrounded or during a boss attack and use the ENV Suit to hover out of range. Players can also use it to stun enemies and drop Charged Nano-Bombs while hovering above them.
3 Build: Manipulator
This build is less about efficiency and more about having fun with Artificer’s quirky playstyle in this indie game. Generally speaking she uses the Ion Surge and ENV Suit strategy to hover above the fray while items and their effects deal with opponents.
Kjaro’s Band is used to create Runic Flame Tornados, though completing Death Do Us Part can be tricky. Will-o’-the-wisp for a lava pillar. Squid Polyp to create Squid Turrets. Happiest Mask has a 7% chance to create a ghost version of the killed enemy. While these minions distract and damage the enemy the player rains havoc from above. It’s a rough build against bosses, but it’s fun against hordes.
2 Tip: No Running With Fire
If players decide to use the Flamethrower as Artificer’s special they’ll need to keep in mind that sprinting will turn it off. This poses a problem as the Artificer doesn’t have the greatest mobility in the first place and now there’s an incentive not to sprint around.
There are two ways to offset this; items or freezing. Items like Pauls’ Goat Hoof give the player greater speed when not running and Wax Quail can be combined with hovering to sort of fly around. Alternatively the player can use Snapfreeze to freeze enemies in place before blasting them with fire.
1 Build: Slow Death
A really fun and devastating build for the Artificer in this third-person shooter is blasting enemies with freeze, stun, and burn effects. Artificer will utilize Flame Bolt, Nano-Spear, Snapfreeze, and either Flamethrower or Ion Surge. These abilities give a balance of burn, freeze, and stun or further burn depending on the special chosen.
The player can use a variety of items to gain even more opportunities to inflict status effects and damage over time. Tri-Tip Dagger is useful on frozen enemies to inflict bleed damage. Stun Grenade gives a 5% chance to trigger a stun with each attack. Gasoline is a great choice if players decide to go the Ion Surge route as it replaces Flamethrower’s burn effect to some degree. The idea is to stun or freeze enemies in place then overwhelm them with fiery death through burning.