The Artificer is a new character introduced in Risk of Rain 2.
The Artificer is a high burst damage survivor who excels in fighting large groups and bosses alike.
She is unlocked by completing the "Pause" Challenge.
Abilities
ENV Suit
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Holding the Jump key causes the Artificer to hover in the air. |
Flame Bolt
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Fire a bolt for 220% damage that ignites enemies. Hold up to 4.
Ignite does 50% damage in 1 second over 2 ticks, stacking. |
Charged Nano-Bomb
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Charge up a nano-bomb that deals 400%-1200% damage and stuns all enemies.
Additionally, the orb fires arcs of lightning at nearby enemies, once per enemy, dealing 100%-220% damage. |
Snapfreeze
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Create a barrier that freezes enemies for 100% damage. Enemies at low health (around 33%) are instantly killed if frozen.
Note that if an enemy is frozen, the instant kill shatter occurs on damage that brings them below 33% health. |
Flamethrower
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Burn all enemies in front of you for 1700% damage over 3 seconds, and applying ignite on each tick, over 21 ticks in total.
Has a 1 second delay after using before it starts dealing damage. |
Notes
- Whilst the Artificer has very powerful abilities that can deal a lot of damage and stun enemies, she lacks any significant evasive or defensive abilities besides basic sprinting and jumping.
- As such it is advisable to prioritize acquiring some kind of movement-based item, such as the Hopoo Feather or the H3AD-5T v2.
- With the June Update, the Artificer has gained the ability to hover through the use of their ENV Suit. This allows for easier positioning, giving the option to approach groups of enemies from above.
- Flame Bolt has a short cooldown/recharge on each shot, so the player can fire a total of four quickly, but after this their fire-rate is severely diminished.
- Charged Nano-Bomb lashes out at nearby enemies as it passes, so it may be more effective to throw it over the heads of a group of enemies rather than directly at them. Its high damage when charged makes it deadly against Elites.
- It's also possible to sprint while charging it. While the initial cast of the ability will interrupt sprinting, it can be manually resumed without releasing the ability. Because of this, it's useful to learn to immediately tap the sprint key after using Nano-Bomb.
- Snapfreeze's freezing effect is essentially an area stun with light damage, and can be combined with other abilities to quickly dispatch weakened opponents. Players can pass freely through Snapfreeze barriers, but enemies that try to pass through it will be frozen.
- If used on a boss, the icicles get immediately triggered and the boss takes some damage, but no freezing effect is applied. Because of their size, bosses usually trigger the entire barrier. Since they are neither affected by freezing nor does it do a lot of damage, Snapfreeze is rather useless against bosses and is better used on other targets.
- Flamethrower has a short range and devastating damage. It can quickly burn down tougher opponents. Using drones or teammates to draw attention away allows the Artificer to get in close.
- It can also be cancelled early by sprinting or using other abilities.
- ENV Suit can be used to aim and charge abilities, but getting hit while hovering may cause the character to fly across the map.
Trivia
- Artificer is referred to as simply "Mage" in the Steam UserProfile for the game