Risk of Rain 2 Items and Artifacts Guide: All 20 Artifacts

Updated 2026-10-31: Hallowed Concepts added no artifact, so the count stays at 20 and Prestige is still the newest. Added the effect and unlock code of all 20, how the unlock trial works, the rest of the Hallowed Concepts item list, and two artifacts players report misbehaving since the October 8 update.

TL;DR: Items split into 9 core categories: Common, Uncommon, Legendary, Boss, Lunar, Void, Equipment, Lunar Equipment, and Elite Equipment. Alloyed Collective added Meal Items, and Hallowed Concepts added Hallowed Items plus the Hexes you endure to earn them. There are 20 confirmed artifacts, the newest being Artifact of Prestige (Alloyed Collective, November 2025). Void items corrupt specific vanilla items rather than existing as standalone entries.

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What are the item tiers in Risk of Rain 2? (quick answer)

Nine core categories, confirmed via the game's own wiki: Common (White), Uncommon (Green), Legendary (Red), Boss (Yellow), Lunar (Blue), Void (Purple), Equipment (Orange, active items), Lunar Equipment (Blue), and the often-overlooked Elite Equipment, items that sit in the equipment slot but apply constantly instead of being triggered on a cooldown. Two DLCs added categories of their own: Meal Items from Alloyed Collective, and Hallowed Items and Hexes from Hallowed Concepts.

Key takeaways

• 9 core item tiers, including the often-missed Elite Equipment slot, plus three DLC-only categories: Meal, Hallowed and Hex
• 20 confirmed artifacts total, newest is Artifact of Prestige (Alloyed Collective, Nov 2025)
• Void items corrupt specific vanilla items rather than existing independently
• Alloyed Collective added 18 new named items across Equipment, Lunar, Boss, White, Green, and Red tiers
• Hallowed Concepts added 11 Hallowed Items and 14 Hexes; Hexes are the price you pay for them

The core tiers, with real examples

Every item in each of these tiers, with its effect text and the DLC that adds it, is in our Risk of Rain 2 items list. For which ones to grab first, our item tier list ranks them.

Common (White) items are the most frequently dropped tier, individually weak but designed to stack. Confirmed examples: Soldier's Syringe, Tougher Times, Monster Tooth, Lens-Maker's Glasses, Paul's Goat Hoof, Crowbar.

Uncommon (Green) items are a step up in individual power. Confirmed examples: AtG Missile Mk. 1, Will-o'-the-wisp, Hopoo Feather, Ukulele, Predatory Instincts, Red Whip.

Legendary (Red) items are the rarest standard drops and tend to define a build on their own. Confirmed examples: Brilliant Behemoth, Ceremonial Dagger, Frost Relic, Happiest Mask, H3AD-5T v2, Alien Head, N'kuhana's Opinion.

Boss (Yellow) items drop specifically from boss monsters. Confirmed examples: Titanic Knurl, Queen's Gland, Halcyon Seed, Pearl, Genesis Loop.

A support drone, one of several interactable ally units scattered across stages that can drop or provide items outside the standard chest loop. Screenshot: Risk of Rain 2: Alloyed Collective Steam store page

Lunar items and Lunar Equipment are purchased with Lunar Coins rather than found through normal drops, and nearly all of them carry a genuine drawback alongside their benefit, which is why the game keeps them in a separate category instead of folding them into White, Green, or Red. Confirmed examples: Shaped Glass, Brittle Crown, Transcendence, Corpsebloom, Gesture of the Drowned.

Void items, added by the Survivors of the Void DLC, work differently from every other tier: each one corrupts a specific existing vanilla item rather than existing as an independent drop. Confirmed pairs: Encrusted Key corrupts Rusted Key, Lost Seer's Lenses corrupts Lens-Maker's Glasses, Needletick corrupts Tri-Tip Dagger, Safer Spaces corrupts Tougher Times, Weeping Fungus corrupts Bustling Fungus.

Elite Equipment is a smaller, easy-to-miss ninth category. Unlike standard and Lunar Equipment, it behaves more like a passive item once it's in that slot: its effect is present at all times rather than something you activate on a cooldown. The wiki's equipment total across all three groups is now 46, and its item page is the place to check exact per-tier counts, which move with every DLC.

GODEEPER: Item priorities look different depending on which survivor you're running, since some kits lean much harder on specific stat lines than others. Risk of Rain 2 Survivors Guide: All 20 Characters Ranked →

What actually matters for a new player's first few runs

New players tend to overvalue Legendary drops and undervalue stacking Common items, which is backwards for how the game's scaling actually works. A single Legendary item is powerful, but ten stacked Common items compound across a run in a way one rare drop usually can't match early on. The general advice repeated across the community and the wiki's own item pages holds up: prioritize picking up everything on early stages rather than being selective, since item scarcity is a bigger problem than item quality in the first ten minutes of a run. Selectiveness becomes more useful once a run is already going well and specific survivability or damage gaps need patching.

Equipment items deserve separate attention from the passive tiers because they're activated manually on a cooldown rather than applying automatically. A common early mistake is picking up an Equipment item and forgetting it exists for the rest of the run. Checking what's currently equipped after every stage transition is a small habit that meaningfully changes how much value a run gets out of that item slot.

One word you will meet in challenge text and guides is "sequencing." It means the Shrine of Order. For 1 Lunar Coin it picks one item type you own in each tier (Common, Uncommon, Legendary, Boss, Void and Lunar) and turns every other item of that tier into it. The pick goes by type, not by count, so 20 Medkits and 1 Soldier's Syringe give you a 50% chance of ending up with 21 Syringes. Acrid's Miracle challenge spells it out: "beat the game after sequencing your items at least once." We only sequence a tier that is already mostly one good item. Our Shrine of Order guide lists the three stages it spawns on.

Alloyed Collective's item additions

The November 2025 DLC added 18 new items by name, confirmed directly in the official patch notes: Deus Ex Machina (Equipment), Neutronium Weight (Lunar), Faulty Conductor and Functional Coupler (Boss), Eclipse Lite and Hiker's Boots (White), Box of Dynamite, Collectors Compulsion, Faraday Spurs, and Kinetic Dampener (Green), Substandard Duplicator, Orphaned Core, and Networked Suffering (Red), plus 5 Meal Items: Seared Steak, Quick Fix, Hearty Stew, Sauteed Worms, and Ultimate Meal.

Meal Items are genuinely new territory for the item system: they're tied to a new "Wandering CHEF Item Combining" mechanic introduced in the same DLC, rather than dropping through the normal chest-and-loot-pool loop every other tier uses. If a build guide mentions Meal Items, it's specifically referencing Alloyed Collective content, not something available in the base game or the earlier two DLCs.

Interactable machines like this one sit alongside the item pool as part of a run's moment-to-moment decision-making. Screenshot: Risk of Rain 2: Alloyed Collective Steam store page

Hallowed Concepts' item additions

Hallowed Concepts, released October 8, 2026, added 11 Hallowed Items and 14 Hexes, per Gearbox's launch notes. The two belong together: the store page describes the deal as "Discover and endure Hexes in exchange for Hallowed Items." A Hex is a curse you carry on purpose, and the Hallowed Item is your payment for carrying it. Like Meal Items, neither category exists unless the DLC is enabled for the run. Our item tier list is where we rank individual picks.

Those two tiers are not the whole DLC. The wiki's Hallowed Concepts page also lists 8 Pages of the N'tormat, 3 boss items and 1 Lunar Equipment. Each Page adds a ritual you cast from the N'tormat, the DLC's new key item; scrap one and you get a Shredded Page, which does nothing. Gearbox's notes count the three yellows as "3 New Standard Items." Effects below are the wiki's text as of October 31:

The Mycelium Cap is the one we see players building around. An Enforcer player wrote on October 14: "Today I discovered that mycelium cap works with enforcer's rally point and im amazed, the damage and utility are just insane, imo might be his best item." Rally Point is also the anchor of our Enforcer build, and our bosses guide covers which new boss drops which yellow.

Did Hallowed Concepts add new artifacts?

No. Gearbox's October 8 launch notes list 2 survivors, 3 enemies, 3 bosses, a new Elite type, 3 standard stages, 6 interactables, 14 Hexes, 11 Hallowed Items and 3 new standard items. No artifact is in that list. The only artifact the notes name at all is Evolution, inside a False Son bug fix. The October 14 hotfix fixed two bugs, neither of them an artifact. The wiki's artifact history agrees: its last "Added 1 Artifact" entry is Alloyed Collective's Prestige, so the selection screen still shows 20.

If something in the DLC felt like an artifact, it was probably one of three things. Karma is an optional setting from the free update that shipped alongside the DLC, and it makes the final fight on the moon harder; our Mithrix guide covers it. Hexes are curses you pick up on purpose and cleanse at a Hallowed Shrine. The Concept Reliquary shares a name with the Artifact Reliquary you fight in Bulwark's Ambry, but it is a free chest that hands you one random Hex.

All 20 artifacts

Artifacts are run-modifying rules unlocked separately from items, toggled on before a run starts rather than picked up during one. The confirmed full list of 20, per the game's own wiki: Chaos, Command, Death, Delusion, Devotion, Dissonance, Enigma, Evolution, Frailty, Glass, Honor, Kin, Metamorphosis, Prestige, Rebirth, Sacrifice, Soul, Spite, Swarms, and Vengeance.

Artifact of Prestige is the newest of the 20, added by Alloyed Collective in November 2025 and confirmed both by the official patch notes and the wiki's own artifact page. If you're looking at an older artifact list from before late 2025 and it only shows 19, Prestige is the one that's missing.

A handful of the more commonly discussed artifacts, for context: Glass trades a large chunk of your max health for a large damage boost, a classic high-risk, high-reward toggle (500% damage on 10% health). Command lets you choose exactly which item you get from every drop instead of it being random, useful for testing specific builds without relying on RNG. Sacrifice removes chests entirely in favor of a chance at an item drop from every enemy kill, changing the game's whole pacing. The table below has the game's own wording for all 20.

Artifacts need to be unlocked individually before they can be toggled, and 19 of the 20 unlock the same way: a code entered on stage 5, then a trial in Bulwark's Ambry with that artifact switched on, rather than a flat playtime or currency cost. That's part of why a returning player who last checked in years ago might see artifacts they don't recognize on the selection screen: newer artifacts like Prestige simply weren't there to unlock yet.

Every artifact, its effect and its code

Effects are the in-game descriptions as the wiki lists them. Codes read top row, middle row, bottom row, with ● circle, ■ square, ▲ triangle and ♦ diamond. We checked all 19 codes against Prima Games' list on October 31 and every one matched the wiki.

The 16 marked base game arrived together in the Early Access Artifacts update. The Devotion Update of May 21, 2024 added Delusion and Devotion, Seekers of the Storm brought Rebirth, and Alloyed Collective added Prestige.

How to unlock an artifact

Get to stage 5. The Compound Generator sits below the map on Sky Meadow and at the top of the map on Helminth Hatchery. Set its nine nodes to the code, use the laptop next to it, and a portal to Bulwark's Ambry opens. Inside, one Artifact Key waits by the Artifact Reliquary. Feed it in and monsters start spawning; more keys drop from kills, and a key you use leaves every player's inventory, so you cannot stockpile them. Destroy the Reliquary, take the artifact, and a portal to a first stage lets the run carry on.

Rebirth is the exception. It has no code. Beat False Son at the end of Prime Meridian, then offer an item at the Shrine of Rebirth there. That ends the run and unlocks the artifact, and your next run with Rebirth on starts with the item you offered.

GODEEPER: Boss-tier items specifically drop from the boss roster covered in detail elsewhere on this site, including the two new Teleporter Bosses Alloyed Collective added. Risk of Rain 2 Bosses and Alloyed Collective DLC Guide →

Drones like this one are part of the game's growing roster of ally units, several of which were expanded in the Alloyed Collective DLC. Screenshot: Risk of Rain 2: Alloyed Collective Steam store page

Which artifacts are worth turning on

Command first, and it isn't close. Every drop becomes a Command Essence that you open to pick an item of the same rarity, which is why challenge-unlock guides start by switching it on: QuattroTheHuman's Operator guide opens with it because it "makes unlocking stuff a hell of a lot easier," and ToaRex's Hallowed Concepts skill guide turns it on again. The price is real. 3D Printers stop spawning, to the point that Gearbox's December 2025 patch removed the printers from the Computational Exchange under Command, and you can still be hit while the menu is open. Temporary pickups get a menu each too, and one r/riskofrain player wrote on October 15 that "artifact of command is the most popular artifact but it makes both Drifter and Junk Drones really annoying to use." Use Command to unlock things and test builds, not to learn the item pool.

Prestige is the one we'd turn on for loot. It puts at least one Shrine of the Mountain on every stage and makes their effects permanent. Each Mountain shrine makes the Teleporter boss fight harder and adds one more item per player to its reward, and the boss-item roll happens on every extra drop, so a Prestige run piles up yellows fast. On October 11 a player guessed another's setup from one screenshot: "def prestige with that many yellows." The flip side is that the harder boss fights never reset either, so we'd wait until stage 5 bosses feel comfortable.

Sacrifice and Swarms are the classic pair, and right now we'd leave Swarms off. Sacrifice removes chests and gives every kill a chance at an item, never below 5%, split 63% Common, 27% Uncommon, 9% Equipment and 0.9% Legendary, so Reds get rare. Swarms doubles spawns, halves monster health and halves the gold and experience each monster gives, and it lowers Sacrifice's drop chance by up to 5%. Since the Hallowed Concepts patch, though, players report that Swarms no longer doubles anything. The first thread appeared on October 15, and one reply on October 17 read "i get even less enemy spawns and 1 boss at the teleporter"; a second thread followed on October 19. The October 14 hotfix notes list two fixes, neither for Swarms, and we found no Gearbox post about it on Steam through October 31. Until there is one, run Sacrifice on its own.

Glass is a skill check: 500% damage on 10% health, with one-shot protection switched off. Devotion is the newer artifact we think gets overlooked. Broken drones become Lemurian Eggs that hatch into followers when you give them an item, but Void Infestors can take over your Lemurians; one player in a Devotion thread on October 22 put it as "Void will mess up artifact of devotion hard." Death, Frailty, Spite and Vengeance only make a run harder, so save them for challenge runs, and Death only matters in co-op, where one player's death ends it for everyone.

One more oddity. Metamorphosis is supposed to keep the random survivor the Ambry trial gives you for the rest of the run, and both the wiki.gg and Fandom wikis still say so. Since the update, players report being switched back on leaving the trial: "for the Trial of Metamorphosis I got Loader, but once out of the Trial I got turned back to Operator," one wrote on October 20. Neither patch note mentions it, so treat it as an unconfirmed bug for now.

Step-by-Step: plan an item and artifact run

1. Pick a survivor. Start with the Survivors Guide to match a character's kit to the item effects you want to stack.

2. Route the stages. Use the Stages Guide to understand the current stage pool, alternate routes, and hidden realms before choosing a slow or fast clear plan.

3. Shape the item pool. The Item Tier List gives a second pass on high-value drops, while this guide explains how Void and Lunar categories change the usual rules.

4. Spend your interactables. The Interactables Guide covers chests, printers, scrappers, shrines, and drones so an artifact toggle does not turn a useful route into wasted currency.

5. Prepare for the late run. Check the Bosses Guide, then use the Eclipse Guide or Simulacrum Guide if you are choosing a mode with its own progression rules.

How we checked this

• On October 31, 2026 we read the wiki's Artifacts (revision 37377), Hallowed Concepts, Items, Shrine of Order and Shrine of the Mountain pages as raw wikitext, and matched the 19 artifact codes against Prima Games' list. All 19 were identical.
• We read Gearbox's Steam notes for the Hallowed Concepts launch, the October 14 hotfix, the Devotion Update and Alloyed Collective in full. None of the Hallowed Concepts posts adds an artifact or mentions Swarms or Metamorphosis.
• Player reports come from r/riskofrain threads dated October 11 to 22, 2026. We did not replay each artifact for this update.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many item tiers are in Risk of Rain 2? Nine core categories: Common (White), Uncommon (Green), Legendary (Red), Boss (Yellow), Lunar (Blue), Void (Purple), Equipment (Orange), Lunar Equipment (Blue), and Elite Equipment (a smaller always-on category). On top of those, Alloyed Collective added Meal Items and Hallowed Concepts added Hallowed Items and Hexes.

How many artifacts are in Risk of Rain 2? 20, confirmed directly by the game's own wiki. The most recent addition, Artifact of Prestige, was added by the Alloyed Collective DLC in November 2025.

What are Void items in Risk of Rain 2? Corrupted variants of specific vanilla items, added by the Survivors of the Void DLC. Each Void item replaces one specific base-game item rather than existing independently, for example Encrusted Key corrupts Rusted Key and Needletick corrupts Tri-Tip Dagger.

What new items did Alloyed Collective add? 18 new items confirmed by name in the official patch notes, spanning Equipment, Lunar, Boss, White, Green, and Red tiers, plus 5 Meal Items unique to a new Wandering CHEF item-combining mechanic.

What is the Artifact of Prestige? The newest artifact, added by the Alloyed Collective DLC in November 2025. It's confirmed real via both the game's official patch notes and its own wiki page.

Are Lunar items good or risky in Risk of Rain 2? Both. Lunar items are purchased with Lunar Coins rather than found in normal item drops, and most carry a real drawback alongside their benefit, which is why they're kept in a separate category from standard tiered items rather than folded into White, Green, or Red.

Did Hallowed Concepts add new artifacts? No. Gearbox's October 8, 2026 launch notes for Hallowed Concepts list survivors, stages, 14 Hexes, 11 Hallowed Items and 3 new standard items, but no artifact, and the wiki's artifact history still ends with Artifact of Prestige from Alloyed Collective. The count stays at 20.

How do you unlock artifacts in Risk of Rain 2? Enter the artifact's 3x3 code at the Compound Generator on Sky Meadow or Helminth Hatchery (stage 5), activate the laptop, take the portal to Bulwark's Ambry and break the Artifact Reliquary with Artifact Keys dropped by the enemies there. Rebirth has no code: you offer an item at the Shrine of Rebirth after beating False Son.

What is the best artifact in Risk of Rain 2? Command for most players, because it lets you pick every item and is the shortcut challenge-unlock guides lean on. The cost is a run without 3D Printers. For more loot at more risk, Prestige makes every Shrine of the Mountain permanent.

Related Reading

• Risk of Rain 2 Complete Guide: the hub for every Risk of Rain 2 guide on this site.
• 11 Best Risk of Rain 2 Mods: 2026 Thunderstore Picks: Best Risk of Rain 2 Mods: 11 Thunderstore picks for content, survivors, co-op, saves, UI,
• Risk of Rain 2 Hallowed Concepts Reveals Acolyte, Enforcer: Risk of Rain 2 Hallowed Concepts adds two new Survivors, Acolyte and Enforcer, confirmed September
• Risk of Rain 2 Shrine of Order Guide: what "sequencing" does to your items and where the shrine spawns.
• Risk of Rain 2 Mithrix Guide: the moon fight, including the optional Karma setting from the Hallowed Concepts update.

References

• Risk of Rain 2 on Steam: official store page and current review data.
• Risk of Rain 2 official wiki: Items: item tier structure and names.
• Risk of Rain 2 official wiki: Artifacts: the full 20-artifact list.
• Steam: Risk of Rain: Hallowed Concepts is Available Now!: October 8, 2026 launch notes, no artifact listed.
• Risk of Rain 2 official wiki: Hallowed Concepts: every item the DLC added.
• Prima Games: All Artifact Codes in Risk of Rain 2: independent check of the codes.
• Risk of Rain 2 official wiki: Shrine of the Mountain: reward formula behind Prestige.
• Steam: Alloyed Collective Patch 1.4.1: December 2025 notes, including the Command printer change.