Risk of Rain 2: Seekers of the Storm getting massive 2.0 update

Even though Risk of Rain 2 was a huge darling for the longest time, Gearbox ended up fumbling its first take on the game’s DLC. Notably, Seekers of the Storm wasn’t just unfinished but also ended up breaking the base RoR2 experience, and now Gearbox is trying to salvage it.

More specifically, Seekers of the Storm is still “enjoying” a Mostly Negative review rating on Steam due to its many faults. Highlights include a remarkable number of technical problems (e.g. the reworked base game tied its physics to frame rate), a smaller amount of content than its Hopoo-produced predecessor, and a questionable balancing act for the new goodies. The former developers weren’t thrilled with what Gearbox had done to the title, either. The good news, though, is that Gearbox did clear up most of the bugs introduced with Seekers of the Storm and it’s now announced a remarkably comprehensive 2.0 fixing roadmap on what’s to come.

Seekers of the Storm DLC is getting fixed with the 2.0 Roadmap

Generally speaking, then, Gearbox aims to revamp Seekers of the Storm in three phases:

• Phase One: redesigning all items (except for the Sale Star) for improved build synergy, reworking all Twisted Elite enemies to make them fairer, and reworking Gilded Elites.
• Phase Two: encounter rebalance (including damage and armor tweaks), ability clarification and visibility, and improvements to the final Boss room.
• Phase Three: improvements for all three Survivors’ ability kits, with a particularly substantial rework of the Chef.

Bug fixing will, on the other hand, be delivered throughout all three phases depending on how the rollout goes. Thankfully, Gearbox isn’t about to gut the good things from the DLC: “Some content, people already love,” says the recent blog post over on Steam. “Stages, Survivor Skins, and Sale Star are all parts our team is particularly proud of. So, beyond bug fixes, those will remain largely unchanged. The rest of Seekers of the Storm is where we’re focusing.”

An example of what’s to come is the Antler Shield item, which previously had a chance to reflect incoming damage. The 2.0 version of the item revamps it entirely into the Elusive Antlers, which increase movement speed and spawn orbs of energy that give stacking movement speed boosts and a temporary barrier. That’s a massive improvement that’s bound to make the Elusive Antlers a far more interesting item.

According to Gearbox, we should expect a full rework to the Knockback Fin, Antler Shield, Bolstering Lantern, Noxious Thorn, Unstable Transmitter, and War Bonds items. At the same time, significant changes will be made to the Warped Echo, Luminous Shot, and Runic Lens items. The rest will be mainly just tweaked and balanced to make it more interesting in practice.

A solid showing overall, then, though it remains to be seen whether Gearbox can deliver. This is the company’s first attempt at producing its own Risk of Rain 2 content after Hopoo Games sold the IP, and it’s going to take a non-trivial amount of effort to bring it back from total derailment. Seekers of the Storm 2.0 is going to roll out “over the next few months,” says Gearbox, so let’s see how that pans out.