If you’ve been playing Risk of Rain 2 for a while, you might have hit the end of the nearly bottomless barrel of content that it contains and wondered if you could potentially spice up the experience with new characters, items, stages, or just some excellent addition that can make the game just a little bit better. Luckily for you, Mods exist, at least on PC.
These mods can all change the gameplay experience in many ways, but sorting through them on your own can be a pretty hefty task. The mod loader can sort by most downloaded, and that’ll get you somewhere, but if you want to know from experience what some of the best, most impactful mods are, read on.
How to Install Mods
First, if you want mods, you must get the mod loader. Everyone uses R2ModMan, which, despite the name, is just a generally helpful mod manager for games made in Unity and works for games like Inscryption, Cult of The Lamb, Dredge, and many others. It can be obtained through Thunderstore, though I’d recommend the version on GitHub so you don’t have to deal with CurseForge shenanigans.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, run the app and select Risk of Rain 2 and your version of the game. This does work with the Epic Games Store version if you’re into that. Afterward, select Online, browse for the mods you want (you can just search for the mods in this guide by entering their name), and then click Play Modded in the top left. It’ll only launch with mods by clicking Play Modded, not if you open it normally through Steam.
I’d also recommend clicking Favorite on Risk of Rain 2 on the game selection menu since that’ll pin it to the top and make it much quicker. You can also set it to default, opening up the Risk of Rain 2 menu as soon as you open R2ModMan. You can also sort through the mods however you wish once you’re browsing and enable or disable them by managing the Installed tab.
Quality of Life
Now that you’ve set up your mod manager, let’s grab some mods and try them out. First, I’ll dive into some Quality of Life, which is usually smaller, simple changes to the game that can mean a world of difference. This smaller scope means I’ll list these as bullet points since you can grab many with few consequences.
- Actually_Faster by Felda is easily one of the best Risk of Rain 2 mods, and it’s wild how much better it feels. It just makes the delay for activating Printers, Scrappers, Shrines, and Cauldrons way shorter, meaning you can spam-click them to your heart’s content. Playing without this makes the game feel naked, somehow.
- ItemStats by Moffein is one of the best mods for those still trying to learn the game and those familiar with it but need reminders of what something does occasionally. It’ll tell you exactly what an item does when you hover over it or pick it up, which is especially helpful for items with vague descriptions like the Ukelele.
- PingItemDescription by BetterPing makes your already practical middle-click ping way better. It’ll tell you exactly what you’ve pinged when you hit it, so you can remember how insane it is to get a Tougher Times printer on Stage 2.
- ProperSave by KingEnderBrine is an excellent mod that I cannot believe isn’t a thing in the vanilla game. It saves the game at the beginning of each stage, so if you experience a crash or need to close the game for whatever reason, you can hop right back in once you restart.
- EmptyChestsBeGone by TheRealElysium is a super lovely mod if you’re as forgetful as me and constantly circle back to try and open a chest you opened 2 minutes ago. It’ll remove them whenever they’re off-screen, making it a seamless, great mod that helps you identify what you haven’t looted yet.
- TeleporterShowRedux by Pipman3000 is also a mod for forgetful people because it’ll have the teleporter permanently pinged whenever you’ve gotten close to or pinged it. This has come in handy so many times and has put my terribly bad-at-remembering mind much more at ease.
These next few will be specific to multiplayer, so if you don’t feel like hopping on this game with your friends, you won’t need any of these. A lot of multiplayer quality of life ruins my intended experience, so I’ve curated a few that work well and will lead to a great time. By the way, if you search for MonicaPack on the mod manager, you can find a collection of (primarily quality-of-life) mods I’ve made that I enjoy.
- MultiplayerPause by Fr4nsson is pretty self-explanatory. You can use Ctrl + P to pause the game while in the middle of a round, so if someone needs to go for a minute, you can let them leave without risking them dying or running to the bazaar.
- TooManyFriends by wildbook lets you add a customizable number of extra players, so you can go right up to the 32-bit integer limit instead of having your game capped at four people. I’d only recommend going up to around eight because, after that, the stages will get pretty crowded with items (unless you want that chaos, of course).
- DropItem by Thrayonlosa can sometimes ruin the game’s balance, so I’d recommend using a bit of restraint. It’ll let you drop your items by just typing /drop [itemname], but this enables you to drop things like Tonic Afflictions or Lunar and Void items that you regret later, but it’s excellent for giving stuff to friends.
- LunarCoinShareOnPickup by dan8991iel is honestly just how it should be in the vanilla game. Every time a Lunar Coin is dropped. Usually, only the person who picks it up will get it, but now everyone in the game will get to share it, making these stupidly difficult donuts way nicer to find.
Aesthetics and Miscellaneous
Now for the mods that are still pretty light on content or extraordinarily simplistic but aren’t necessarily quality of life. First up are mods that change up aesthetics; usually, these come in the form of skins for the different characters but can extend to stages and generally make the game look slightly spicier.
- StageAesthetic by HIFU is a cool one; it’ll change the look of stages and make them have different lighting, textures, and a bit of new geometry, with some of them switching to a variant like Void or making the desert stage look like a grassland. It’s neat and helps many repeat runs feel less repetitive, and it’s just cool to see.
- LostThroughTimeSkinPack by dotflare brings a ton of incredibly unique, cool designs to every character. You get a barnacle-covered Void Fiend, Commando in a dapper suit, a Steampunk Loader, a militarian Engineer, and many others that all look great.
- ChildrenOfTheGrove by SethC gives an excellent skin to most characters based on the Grovetender boss, and it’s super high effort, having its custom physics and being entertaining in its own right to see when you’re playing the game.
These next few are miscellaneous, mainly because they’re a bit excessive in terms of how far I’d be willing to stretch the definition of “quality of life,” they don’t quite fit into the following few categories. These are still good mods; they don’t feel correct in any categories I’ve laid out.
- CustomEmotesAPI and BadAssEmotes by MetrosexualFruitcake are just a hilarious combination, giving you a ton of emotes, usually from Fortnite, with several others referencing various memes, funny dances, or generally stupid stuff you can use to assert dominance on your enemies and friends just because it’s funny.
- Teleporter_Turrets by RuneFox237 teleports your turrets to the teleporter quite simply. This turns a useless purchase that’s only good for specific builds into a helpful damage dealer that can take the pressure off you during the teleporter events. It’s a pretty decent balance change, and I find it quite fun.
- Heretic by Moffein is something you might think belongs in the Characters category, but she’s actually in the vanilla game; you unlock her by grabbing every heresy item. This mod puts her on the character select screen. Even though you weren’t meant to play as her from the start, she’s just a fun little bonus.
- BalancedObliterateRedux by Nebby makes Lunar Coin grinding a lot easier (if you aren’t one to just edit a text file) by making the obliteration altar in the Celestial Portal give you a large bonus for looping more and generally makes the process of grinding them out quite a bit easier. This feels like it should be vanilla, and it’s weird that this isn’t typical.
Characters
There’s an absolute boatload of character mods for Risk of Rain 2, and while not all of them are made equal, I tend to prefer the ones that try and recreate the vibe of the default cast or ones that replicate Risk of Rain 1 characters in 3D. Characters like Goku, Sonic, or Soldier TF2 are plenty of fun, but these feel pretty high quality on top of being a good time.
- Driver by rob_gaming is excellent, and they’ve got an entire wiki dedicated to them. Driver feels kind of like playing Hotline Miami in a fully 3D space, and they’re pretty fun, swapping out weapons for random ones you’ll find strewn about the stages, and is a pretty solid, fundamentally good character with that enjoyable mechanic on top.
- Risk of Rain 1 Characters are all from the first game, and if you’ve played Risk of Rain Returns, you don’t need me to tell you how they work. This is namely HAND_OVERCLOCKED, MinerUnearthed, SniperClassic, Enforcer by EnforcerGang, and ChefMod by Gnome; unfortunately, there are no mods for Pilot or Drifter just yet, though there is classic Bandit in the form of BanditReloaded by Dragonyck.
- Pathfinder by Bog is still in development, but it’s a banger concept, and it still works pretty well, regardless. The Pathfinder is a spear-wielder that also commands a robot bird. Like Engineer, your bird will inherit all your items and do a ton of damage, helping you out with far-away enemies and commanding double the damage you’d usually do.
- Arsonist_Mod by PopcornFactory is more focused on DPS and a meter mechanic, and they have the unique mechanic of converting half their damage into damage-over-time, so big hits will kill you a lot slower, as well as having a meter on all their moves, making you overheat and potentially explode from all that flame you’re throwing.
- Shaman by StormRiders feels like you’re playing a Terraria Summoner but in Risk of Rain. On top of having a bunch of minions to do your bidding, you can teleport them all to you at a moment’s notice, turn invisible and speedy to avoid damage and shoot enemies down with little magic blasts from your staff, on top of commanding your army.
Items
Items are probably more important than characters because they’ll affect you no matter who you feel like playing, and you can’t opt out of them. For that reason, I’ve been pretty stingy with this category, and I tend not to like most item mods, but these are the ones where I felt like the cooks in the kitchen were makin’ something good.
- VanillaVoid by Zenithrium is a pretty simple mod, and it’s very high quality, considering what it does. It just adds a bunch of Void variants to items that didn’t already have them, like the Delicate Watch turning into Clockwork Mechanisms that essentially function as a better, more stable Benthic Bloom that doesn’t ruin your builds while also being significantly balanced by breaking whenever you’re at low health.
- MysticsItems by TheMysticsword, Instead of focusing on a specific set of items, adds new ones to every category in the game, all of them more or less within what the vanilla game would be doing. They’re all pretty unique, and I especially like the Scratch Ticket, which adds a 1% chance to all your luck-based items, so that ATG, which usually has a 10% chance, goes up to an 11% chance and more if you find a printer.
- 1nsiderItems by 1nsider is another all-around item mod focused on vanilla-ish balance and variety, similar to Mystics, but I never see anyone talk about this one. It has a pretty varied, excellent spread of items, and I like most of them, especially the red items like the Employee Card or Quantum Scrapper, both of which serve to give you more items, and I like having more items.
- ClassicItemsReturns by Risky_Sleeps is back on the “it’s time to make this game just like the original Risk of Rain” streak because I’m not breaking it regarding items. This mod brings in a few things from the original game and some from Risk of Rain Returns. They’re still working on implementing everything, but what’s there is fun to mess with in 3D.
Stages
Stages are pretty few and far between as far as mods go, with the mods that add new stages usually being a single, high-quality location rather than the wide variety of maps you can visit in the vanilla game. Still, while we aren’t exactly doubling the content here, some extra variety is excellent, so let’s find out where we’re dropping.
- FogboundLagoon by JaceDaDorito has one of the most excellent maps and is a prime example of making a good modded map. This one is a new Stage 3, and it’s got a unique water mechanic that’s plenty deeper than the water on any other stage. It’ll let you float across it, and Gup will bounce on top to get to you, and I love Gup.
- Forgotten_Relics by PlasmaCore3 adds a few maps, as well as a few cool new enemies. These new maps mainly come in the form of a void-bound, deserted location with multiple tiers of land and a bunch of neat interactibles, as well as a big, sandy castle with a bunch of banners waving through the wind, which is a massive stage in the standard Stage 2 rotation as well.
- GoldenCoastPlus by Skell is a rework of an existing stage, opting to make the incredibly uninteresting Golden Coast into a far more worthwhile map, giving you a much better reward for taking on Aurelionite as well as throwing in a few scrapped elites that didn’t quite make the cut in the vanilla game.
All Rounders
Now, onto what some would call the cream of the crop: we have mods that add a little bit of everything. These mods don’t focus on anything but add many items, characters, and probably some quality of life, aesthetics, and many miscellaneous things. These mods drastically change the game and are practically DLC 3 before two is even out.
- Starstorm2 by TeamMoonstorm is one of the most extensive content mods for the original Risk of Rain (yes, I’m not done talking about it), and it’s been fully adapted for Risk of Rain 2. This mod contains three new characters, three enemy types, and 20 new items and the best part is that it can all be turned off in the same way as Survivors of the Void, and it approaches its new content in a similar way to that DLC.
- Aetherium by KomradeSpectre, firstly, has some exquisite hand-drawn artwork on its mod page, and I love that. It’s more focused on items than anything else, but it’s also got some new Relics, a unique buff, and plans to add new survivors, enemies, elites, and stages. It probably fits better into the Items category currently, but it’ll work better here as this guide ages.
Questions and Answers
Question: How do I get Risk of Rain 2 mods?
Answer: You can download R2ModMan from the GitHub page and then use it to download and play mods.
Question: Can I play Risk of Rain 2 mods on Console?
Answer: Unfortunately, the console version of Risk of Rain 2 is entirely different, and none of the mods you’ll see on PC will work for these versions.
Question: What are the best Risk of Rain 2 Modpacks?
Answer: The best modpacks to give you a pretty good experience without having to cherry-pick your mods are SurvivorDLC, BetterMultiplayer, and RiskOfRain2PlusPlus
Conclusion
This list was hard to put together, one because R2ModMan is quite janky, and two because my tastes in Risk of Rain 2 mods are pretty picky, and I’m rather hard to please. I’d recommend only going for a few mods in each category (if that) since having all these at once leads to an experience that’s mildly insane and difficult to play.
With a well-curated mod selection that’s up to your tastes, you can have an excellent time with any of these mods, though I tend to lean towards the pure quality of life and nothing else. I enjoy some extra variety occasionally; playing with new items as a bunch of fantastic characters can be pretty fun, and I want a ridiculous relic sometimes.
Continue reading:
How to Unlock Every Character in Risk of Rain Returns
Risk of Rain Returns Review – A Cruel Second Dimension
Risk of Rain 2 Seekers of the Storm DLC Gearbox Livestream Reveals
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