Risk of Rain 2 Best Items — Rankings, Stacking and Priorities

Author: Verdict Games Editorial Team Last Updated: October 3, 2026

The Bottom Line

Early, take raw damage and attack speed (Soldier's Syringe, Crowbar, Lens-Maker's Glasses) plus one or two Tougher Times. From stage 3, on-hit and on-kill greens (Ukulele, AtG Missile Mk. 1, Will-o'-the-wisp, Predatory Instincts) carry you. Reds that multiply everything else — 57 Leaf Clover, Brilliant Behemoth, Ceremonial Dagger, Sentient Meat Hook — are the jackpot. Scrap what your survivor cannot use, and spend scrap at printers so you never lose a random item.

Summary

In Risk of Rain 2 your build is your inventory, and every copy of an item stacks. What matters is how an item scales at ten copies and whether your survivor's attacks actually trigger it. This guide ranks the best items per rarity, explains linear, hyperbolic and exponential stacking with real numbers, covers proc coefficients, early versus loop priorities, and printers, scrappers, cauldrons and lunar items.

Who This Is For: Risk of Rain 2 players who want to know which items to take, print and scrap, and why Intermediate

Key Points

Most items stack linearly: 10 Soldier's Syringes give exactly +150% attack speed. Chance-to-avoid items like Tougher Times stack hyperbolically, so 10 copies give 60% block, not 150%.

Exponential items (Shaped Glass, Alien Head, Fuel Cell's cooldown) never hit diminishing returns, which is why they dominate long loops.

On-hit items are multiplied by your skill's proc coefficient. A 0.6-coefficient attack needs 17 Tri-Tip Daggers for guaranteed bleed; a 3.0 attack needs 4.

3D Printers take a random item of the same rarity unless you hold scrap, which is always consumed first. Scrap before you print.

Lunar items are bought with Lunar Coins and cannot be scrapped. Each has a real drawback; take them for a plan, not because they are rare.

In Risk of Rain 2 your build is your inventory, and every copy of an item you already own stacks with it. A white that looks weak at one copy can define the run at fifteen, while an item that reads well can do almost nothing for a survivor whose attacks barely trigger it. The rankings below weigh both: value per copy across a run, and how reliably it works for most survivors. The sections after them explain the stacking math and proc coefficients behind those calls.

Numbers come from the item data on the Risk of Rain 2 wiki (wiki.gg). Seekers of the Storm items are marked (SotS); items from Alloyed Collective, the newest expansion, are not ranked here.

The best items by rarity

Rarity is the coloured border on the icon: white (Common), green (Uncommon), red (Legendary), yellow (Boss), blue (Lunar) and purple (Void). A Small Chest drops a red only 0.99% of the time, so reds mostly come from Large Chests, Legendary Chests, Rusty Lockboxes and printers.

White (Common)

Soldier's Syringe +15% attack speed per copy, linear. Attack speed raises your damage and the number of hits that roll for every on-hit item, so it improves everything else you pick up. Lens-Maker's Glasses +10% crit chance per copy; crits deal double damage. Ten copies reach 100%. Also feeds Predatory Instincts, Harvester's Scythe and Shatterspleen. Tougher Times Chance to block a hit entirely. Hyperbolic, so the tooltip's 15% is really 13% at one copy and 60% at ten, but it never stops helping and works against any damage source. Tri-Tip Dagger 10% chance per copy to bleed for 240% base damage. Linear chance, scaled by proc coefficient. Excellent on fast hitters.

Crowbar +75% damage per copy against enemies above 90% health. Superb on stages 1 to 3 where most enemies die in one or two hits; weaker against bosses once their health drops. Paul's Goat Hoof +14% movement speed per copy, linear. Speed is defence in this game: you dodge more and reach chests faster. Armor-Piercing Rounds +20% damage per copy against bosses. Teleporter bosses are where runs end, so this pulls its weight. Bustling Fungus Heals 4.5% of health per second (+2.25% per copy) after standing still for one second. Best on survivors who stand still to shoot, and on Engineer, whose turrets never move. Chronic Expansion (SotS) Each kill adds 3.5% damage (+1% per copy) for 7 seconds, up to 10 stacks (+5 per copy), refreshed by dealing damage. Strong when kills come steadily.

Sticky Bomb, Gasoline, Topaz Brooch, Focus Crystal, Medkit, Monster Tooth Useful but replaceable. Gasoline helps clear stage 1 crowds; Focus Crystal (+20% damage within 13m) suits melee survivors only.

Repulsion Armor Plate, Bison Steak, Cautious Slug Flat values (5 damage reduced, 25 health, out-of-combat regen) that stop mattering as enemies scale. Good scrap fodder.

Green (Uncommon)

Ukulele 25% chance on hit to fire chain lightning for 80% TOTAL damage to 3 targets (+2 per copy). Clears crowds for every survivor and adds more targets each stack. AtG Missile Mk. 1 10% chance on hit to fire a missile for 300% TOTAL damage (+300% per copy). The chance does not grow with stacks, the damage does, so it scales with proc rate. Predatory Instincts +5% crit; crits grant +12% attack speed, capped at 36% (+24% per copy). An attack speed item in disguise for any crit build. Will-o'-the-wisp On kill, a lava pillar for 350% base damage (+280% per copy) in a 12m radius. Turns one kill into a chain of kills on crowded stages.

Harvester's Scythe +5% crit; each crit heals 8 health (+4 per copy), scaled by proc coefficient. Reliable sustain once crit chance is high. Hopoo Feather +1 jump per copy. Movement and dodging, especially against bosses with ground attacks. Kjaro's Band / Runald's Band Hits dealing over 400% damage trigger a fire tornado (300% TOTAL, +300% per copy) or ice blast (250% TOTAL, +250% per copy) on a 10-second recharge. Great with heavy single-hit skills, weak with rapid small hits. Leeching Seed Heals 1 health (+1 per copy) per hit, scaled by proc coefficient. Strong on survivors that hit very often. Old Guillotine Instantly kills elites below 13% health (hyperbolic). Late loops are full of elites, so this ages well. Sale Star (SotS) An extra item from the first chest opened each stage. Pure item gain; cannot be printed.

Fuel Cell, Bandolier, Berzerker's Pauldron, Death Mark, Wax Quail, Infusion Good in the right build: Fuel Cell with a strong equipment, Bandolier when damage sits on cooldown skills. Infusion caps at a flat +100 health per copy.

Red (Legendary)

57 Leaf Clover All random effects roll one extra time (+1 per copy) for a favourable result. Every chance-based item you own effectively gets better at once. Does not affect Tougher Times. Brilliant Behemoth Every attack explodes for an extra 60% TOTAL damage in a 4m radius (+2.5m per copy). Turns single-target attacks into area damage. Ceremonial Dagger Each kill fires 3 homing daggers for 150% base damage (+150% per copy). Kills cause kills; it clears whole waves on its own. Sentient Meat Hook 20% chance on hit (hyperbolic) to hook up to 10 enemies (+5 per copy) for 100% TOTAL damage. Huge crowd damage with a modest proc coefficient of 0.33 on the hooks.

Unstable Tesla Coil Lightning hits 3 enemies (+2 per copy) for 200% base damage every 0.5s; switches off every 10 seconds. Damage without aiming. Alien Head Skill cooldowns reduced by 25% per copy, exponentially. Huge for survivors whose damage lives on cooldown skills. Frost Relic Kills create an ice storm around you (1200% damage per second, slows by 80%) that grows with kills, up to 18m (+12m per copy). Hardlight Afterburner +2 charges of your Utility skill (+2 per copy) and 33% less Utility cooldown. Mobility and survival in one slot.

Dio's Best Friend, Rejuvenation Rack, Aegis, Soulbound Catalyst, Brainstalks Defensive or setup-dependent. Dio's revives once per copy; Rejuvenation Rack doubles healing; Soulbound Catalyst needs a good equipment.

Yellow (Boss) — the ones to want

Boss items drop when a Teleporter boss of the matching kind spawned: every green reward from the Teleporter has an independent 15% chance to become that boss's item instead.

Shatterspleen — +5% crit; crits bleed, and bleeding enemies explode on death for 400% damage plus 15% of their max health. The best boss item for crit builds.
Titanic Knurl (+40 health, +1.6 regen per copy) and Planula (heal 15 per copy when hit). Solid defensive stacks.
Molten / Charged Perforator — 10% chance on hit for extra damage.
Irradiant Pearl (+10% all stats per copy) — from the Cleansing Pool, which trades away a lunar item.

How stacking actually works

Every item except equipment and Beads of Fealty gets stronger with more copies, but not all of them the same way. Most item disagreements in the community are really disagreements about this section.

Type	Formula	Verified example	What it means for you
Linear	1 + a x stacks	Soldier's Syringe: +15% attack speed each, 10 copies = +150%	Each copy is worth the same as the first. The default for most items.
Hyperbolic	1 - 1/(1 + a x stacks)	Tougher Times (a = 0.15): 1 copy = 13.04%, 10 copies = 60%	Approaches 100% but never reaches it. Each copy is worth a little less.
Exponential	a ^ stacks	Shaped Glass: damage x2 per copy, 5 copies = 3,200% damage	Each copy multiplies the previous total. No diminishing returns.
Reciprocal	a / stacks	H3AD-5T v2: 10-second cooldown, halved by the 2nd copy, a third at 3	The tooltip's -50% is only true from 1 to 2 copies.

Linear loses relative value over time: going from 50 to 51 Soldier's Syringes moves attack speed from +750% to +765%, which you will not feel.

Hyperbolic is used where 100% would break the game: block chance, stun chance, Old Guillotine's threshold, Sentient Meat Hook's trigger. The tooltip shows the coefficient, not your real chance — Tougher Times reads 15% but one copy gives 13.04%; Old Guillotine reads 13% but one copy executes below about 11.5%.

Exponential items compound: Shaped Glass (damage x2, health x0.5 per copy), Alien Head (cooldowns x0.75 per copy), Fuel Cell's cooldown (x0.85 per copy) and Old War Stealthkit's 30-second recharge (halved per copy). These keep scaling deep into a loop.

Some caps are not in the tooltip: ten Lens-Maker's Glasses reach 100% crit, after which copies do nothing except on Railgunner. Bandolier uses its own formula where the first couple of copies matter most.

Proc coefficients and on-hit items

Many of the best items say "chance on hit". That chance is multiplied by the proc coefficient of the attack that hit. A coefficient of 1.0 rolls the full chance; 0.5 rolls half of it.

Attack	Proc coefficient	Tri-Tip Dagger chance per copy	Daggers for guaranteed bleed
Typical 1.0 attack (e.g. Commando's Double Tap)	1.0	10%	10
MUL-T's Auto-Nailgun	0.6	6%	17
Railgunner's Supercharged Railgun	3.0	30%	4

What follows from this:

Fast hitters that keep a 1.0 coefficient are the best on-hit platforms, which is why Commando's Double Tap does so well with Tri-Tip Dagger, AtG Missile and Ukulele.
Items triggered by items are weak procs. Ukulele's lightning has 0.2 and the Meat Hook's hooks 0.33. Sticky Bomb, Brilliant Behemoth, Gasoline and the two Bands have 0.0 and trigger nothing further.
Crit chance is never reduced by proc coefficient, and some effects scale with it instead: Tri-Tip bleed lasts 3 seconds x the coefficient, and Harvester's Scythe and Leeching Seed heal more on high-coefficient hits.

What to prioritise early vs. late

Phase	What the run needs	Prioritise	Can wait
Stages 1-2	Kill fast, open chests before the timer climbs	Soldier's Syringe, Crowbar, Lens-Maker's Glasses, Paul's Goat Hoof, 1-2 Tougher Times	Defensive reds you have not found yet; equipment cooldown items
Stages 3-5	Survive Teleporter bosses and elite packs	Ukulele, AtG Missile, Will-o'-the-wisp, Predatory Instincts, Armor-Piercing Rounds, Hopoo Feather	Flat-health items such as Bison Steak and Infusion
Looping (stage 6+)	Not be one-shot; delete crowds of elites	Tougher Times stacks, Old Guillotine, movement, 57 Leaf Clover, Ceremonial Dagger, Behemoth, Meat Hook	Flat-value items: Repulsion Armor Plate, Topaz Brooch, Crowbar against bosses

Early, value items that are good at one copy — Crowbar's +75% is enormous when everything dies in a hit. Later, value multipliers and percentages. Flat numbers (5 damage blocked, 25 health, 15 barrier) are sized for stage 1 enemies; percentage and chance-based items keep their value as enemies scale.

For the timer and stage flow that makes "kill fast early" matter, see the Beginner Guide. For when to loop and what deep loops demand, see Loop or Moon.

Printers, scrappers, cauldrons and lunar items

1

Scrapper — turn dead items into scrap

Converts an item into scrap of the same rarity (white, green, red, yellow). Selecting a stack scraps up to 10 copies at once. Lunar, equipment and void items cannot be scrapped. Scrappers stay usable during the Teleporter event.
2

3D Printer — copy the item you want

Takes one item of the same rarity and drops the displayed item. If you hold matching scrap, the scrap is always consumed first; otherwise a random item goes. Uncommon printers appear from stage 2, Overgrown (boss) printers from stage 2, and red Mili-Tech printers from stage 5.
3

Cauldrons — trade up in the Bazaar

In the Bazaar Between Time, 3 whites buy one green and 5 greens buy one red. Scrap is used first here too. Time and difficulty are paused while you are in the Bazaar.
4

Lunar items — buy with Lunar Coins

A Lunar Pod costs 1 Lunar Coin for a random lunar item; the five pods in the Bazaar show their item and cost 2 each. Lunar items cannot be scrapped, but a Cleansing Pool trades one for a Pearl (80%) or an Irradiant Pearl (20%).

The correct order is scrap first, then print. If you walk up to a Syringe printer with no white scrap, it eats a random white — possibly your Lens-Maker's Glasses. Scrap the whites your survivor gets least from, then print.

Lunar items worth knowing. Every lunar item has a drawback, and some of them are severe:

Shaped Glass — x2 base damage and x0.5 maximum health per copy, and it removes one-shot protection, so one big hit can kill you from full.
Gesture of the Drowned — 50% less equipment cooldown, but your equipment fires automatically whenever it is ready. Only for equipment you want firing constantly.
Purity — all cooldowns 2 seconds shorter, but -1 luck, which cancels a 57 Leaf Clover.
Egocentrism — orbiting bombs, but every 60 seconds a random item is converted into more Egocentrism. It eventually eats your build.

Void items (purple) come from Void Cradles. Each corrupts a normal counterpart: picking up a Needletick turns every Tri-Tip Dagger you own into Needleticks. Read what a void item replaces before you take it.

Survivor-specific notes

Commando — fast Double Tap at a 1.0 coefficient makes on-hit items worth more on him than on almost anyone.
MUL-T — the Auto-Nailgun's 0.6 coefficient needs more on-hit copies; Power Mode keeps him slow, which suits Bustling Fungus.
Railgunner — 3.0 on the Supercharged Railgun, and excess crit chance becomes crit damage, so Lens-Maker's never stops helping.
Engineer — stationary turrets are healed constantly by Bustling Fungus.
Heretic — avoid Cleansing Pools; they can take one of her Heresy items.

Which survivor to pick for which item style is covered in the Survivor Tier List.

Common mistakes

Reading hyperbolic tooltips as linear. Five Tougher Times is about 43% block, not 75%.
Printing without scrap, and losing a random item of that rarity.
Stacking Lens-Maker's past ten on anyone but Railgunner.
Kjaro's or Runald's Band on a survivor that never hits for over 400%. They will rarely trigger.
Shaped Glass with no defence, or Purity alongside a 57 Leaf Clover.
Keeping flat-value whites into loops while a scrapper sits nearby.
Taking a void item without checking what it corrupts.

For a broader opinion on how the item system plays, see our Risk of Rain 2 review.

Risk of Rain 2's item system is one of the best in the genre because it lets small decisions compound into absurd results — a handful of whites on stage 1 really does become a screen-clearing machine by stage 8. Its weakness is that the game tells you very little about how anything scales. Tooltips show coefficients rather than real chances, proc coefficients are invisible in play, and nothing warns you that Purity cancels your Clover. Once you understand the three stacking types and the proc coefficient, most "is this item good?" questions answer themselves, and printers stop being a gamble. That knowledge, more than any tier list, is what turns a lucky run into a repeatable one.

FAQ

By rarity: among whites, Soldier's Syringe, Lens-Maker's Glasses, Tougher Times and Tri-Tip Dagger; among greens, Ukulele, AtG Missile Mk. 1, Predatory Instincts, Harvester's Scythe and Will-o'-the-wisp; among reds, 57 Leaf Clover, Brilliant Behemoth, Ceremonial Dagger, Sentient Meat Hook and Unstable Tesla Coil. Shatterspleen is the strongest boss item for crit builds. The exact order shifts with your survivor's proc coefficients.

There are three main types. Linear: each copy adds the same amount (Soldier's Syringe, +15% attack speed each). Hyperbolic: the chance approaches but never reaches 100% (Tougher Times uses 1 - 1/(1 + 0.15 x stacks), so 10 copies give 60%). Exponential: each copy multiplies the last (Shaped Glass doubles damage and halves health per copy). A few items use special formulas, such as Bandolier.

A multiplier on each hit that scales the trigger chance (and sometimes the strength or duration) of on-hit items. MUL-T's Auto-Nailgun has 0.6, so each Tri-Tip Dagger gives 6% bleed chance instead of 10%. Railgunner's Supercharged Railgun has 3.0, so four Daggers guarantee bleed. Proc coefficients do not affect critical strike chance.

Yes, but scrap first. A printer takes one random item of the same rarity from your inventory unless you hold scrap of that rarity, which is always used first. Scrap the items your survivor gets little from, then print copies of the one you want to stack. Uncommon printers appear from stage 2, red Mili-Tech printers from stage 5.

Some are. Lunar items cost Lunar Coins (1 from a Lunar Pod, 2 in the Bazaar Between Time), cannot be scrapped, and all have a drawback. Shaped Glass doubles damage per copy but halves your health and removes one-shot protection. Gesture of the Drowned is strong only with an equipment you want fired constantly. Buy them to fit a plan, not as free power.

Ten copies give 100% critical strike chance, and copies beyond that do nothing for most survivors. Railgunner is the exception: her passive converts excess crit chance into crit damage. Predatory Instincts and Harvester's Scythe each add 5% crit as well, so you usually need fewer than ten.

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Risk of Rain 2 Best Items — Rankings by Rarity and How Stacking Works