Survivors of the Void, the newest DLC, has just been released for Risk of Rain 2 and with it, we have two brand new survivors. The first of which is the Railgunner.
A bit of a spin on the sniper from the first game, the Railgunner is a powerful survivor with an insane amount of burst damage in her kit. In this Railgunner guide for Risk of Rain 2, we will be going over all of the Railgunner’s abilities, the best items for her, and some tips for playing the Railgunner.
If you want to see the other new survivor, check out our Void Fiend Guide!
This survivor is a truly interesting new survivor (and not just because of her shoes).
Table of Contents
Railgunner Abilities
Passive: Magnetic Accelerator
Much like Bandit, the Railgunner has a passive ability that affects her critical strike. In this case, all of her critical strike chance is converted directly into crit damage.
What this means for her is that she can never actually upgrade her crit chance. However, every time the Railgunner lands a critical strike, it will do much more damage than a normal survivor. Ten Lens Makers Glasses will double her crits!
And what’s even better, she can stack the crit items infinitely! Because crit glasses affect your chance usually you will only go up to ten in total (giving you 100% crit chance). But the Railgunner doesn’t have to worry about that! Any excess crit chance is just more damage to her.
A truly great passive.
Primary: XQR Smart Round System
Now, for the Railgunner’s primary, we have the XQR Smart Round System. This functions similarly to the visions of heresy lunar item that fires tracking darts, except this one has no reload requirement. You will only use this when not scoped in, so not much.
The main drawback to this is its lack of damage. A mere 100% is pretty lackluster compared to some other survivors, and with no way of increasing crit chance, you’re stuck at 1%. Definitely not ideal.
Secondary: M99 Sniper
THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!
Without a doubt, the most important ability in the Railgunner’s kit is going to be her M99 Sniper. This secondary allows you to scope in and highlights “weak points” which are essentially just guaranteed crits. Lots of synergy with the Railgunner passive here.
Let’s also note the insane 1000% damage that pierces through enemies. Wowza.
Not mentioned on the tooltip is the fact that every time you shoot your M99 Sniper, you will have a reload bar. If you hit a perfect reload you will reload faster and do an extra 500% damage on your next shot. Make sure to hit that perfect reload!
Utility: Concussion Device
An unsung hero of the Railgunner’s abilities, the Concussion Device is a utility skill that will knock back both you and all enemies around it. In other words, this ability doubles as a mobility skill.
You can hold up to two at one time and you should certainly make sure you always have one available. The Railgunner is a rather immobile survivor without it!
Special: Supercharge
An ability you certainly won’t forget. Supercharge is the Railgunner’s special ability and gives your M99 Sniper a bonus of 4000% damage and 150% weak point damage (crit). The drawback is, you can’t use weapon abilities for 5 seconds.
Seeing a Railgunner use a Supercharge is a sight to behold. Early on you will be able to easily one-shot teleporter bosses with just one round from this ability. And another great thing about it is, it can go through enemies! Meaning you can even clear packs with this broken ability.
One other thing to note about this ability is that it scales really well with crit damage. Because it gives you an extra 50% crit damage, the more crit chance you’ve stacked, the more damage this 50% bonus you will do. I can’t wait to see Mithrix getting one-shot by this absolute unit.
Make sure to save your Concussion grenades for when you’re weapons are disabled though! It will be your only way to prevent death once you use Supercharge.
Best Items for the Railgunner
This section is going to cover what I believe are the best items for the Railgunner and is essentially an item guide for Railgunner.
At least one of the items here has to be fairly obvious by now, but here is the full list:
- Len’s Makers Glasses: More crit chance = more scoped damage = ez win
- Backup Mags: You’d think they wouldn’t work, but Hopoo actually made them good for Railgunner
- Crowbar: A must for any burst survivor
- Bands: More damage multipliers
- Shatterspleen: God Tier for AOE when you have good crit
- Plasma Shrimp: Guaranteed to proc when you have shield for 40% total damage
- Polylute: More single target
- Lysate Cell: More stacks of your special skill
AVOID PICKING UP THE LOST SEER’S LENSES! THEY WILL REDUCE YOUR DAMAGE!
The Railgunner isn’t the best item proccer in the game, so basically, none of the proc chain items are going to make it on the list. Most of the items Railgunner focuses on are damage multipliers and crit chance.
Harvester’s Scythe and Predatory Instincts are good, but the crit chance they give doesn’t scale and their effects aren’t great for Railgunner so they don’t make it on here.
Tips for the Railgunner
A few tips and tricks for you out there that want to main the Railgunner:
- Always hit the reload. It gives a 500% damage boost to your next shot
- Your shots pierce through things, so try and aim for several enemies at once
- Weakspots are always crits. Aim for the squares
- Save your mines for when you use your Supercharge. You don’t want to be completely out of abilities when you use it.
End
And that’s it for the Railgunner guide. Hope this helps you learn the new survivor and have fun out there on Petrichor. Make sure to check out the other guides while you’re at it!
