Risk of Rain 2 Armor: Types, Enemy Armor And More

In the game, the player controls a character who has to go through different environments while killing monsters. Therefore, to make your gameplay easier, it is important to know everything about the Armor and its defensive stats in the game. In Risk of Rain 2, Armor is an obscured stat. The players start with little to no armor, and it increases as they get certain items.

Risk of Rain 2 Amor

In Risk of Rain 2, armor functions the same as in any game. It reduces the amount of damage dealt with you. The armor that a player has can be different. It depends on the value of the armor. A higher value of armor means the player will have higher resistance to damage dealt.

The damage reduction you get from the armor isn’t linear. It follows a formula to determine how much damage resistance you have; more on that later on.

The armor can be positive or negative, yes, negative. When it is negative, the damage dealt will multiply instead of reducing. Keep in mind that in Risk of Rain 2, the damage dealt will never be less than one. If it was, like a god-mode, it’d take all the fun away from the game. Although it may be fun for some people, for most, it is not.

The armor in risk of rain 2 is for both Survivors and Boss Monsters. Boss monsters, too, can have different values of armor. They can have positive or negative armor that will increase or reduce damage taken. If you don’t have items or means to reduce their armor, you can use the Armor Piercing Rounds.

In the long run, it’s necessary to choose the perfect survivor and ensure that it has enough damage reduction.

Armor functionality in Risk of Rain 2

As we’ve mentioned before, the armor in Risk of Rain 2 isn’t linear. For example, at 100-armor, you get a 50% armor reduction. You can’t expect to get a 500% armor reduction at 1,000-armor; that would be absurd. This is because stacking armor has diminishing returns. This means that at one point, the reduction you get for each armor increase will be neglectable.

Now, you might ask, how to calculate the damage taken per hit with the armor. There are different formulas for the positive and negative armor values.

Positive Armor

The positive armor in Risk of Rain 2 reduces the damage taken by the player. Positive armor is the base armor that the character has. It can be increased by getting items that increase the

Damage Taken

If your character has positive armor, then the damage that your character takes is calculated with this formula:

100 / (100 + Armor)

The value you’ll get will be between 0 and 1. By multiplying this value with the damage taken, you’ll get a value that will indicate the damage your character takes.

Damage Reduction

The formula for damage reduction is as follows

Armor / (100 + Armor)

Negative Armor

You can get negative armor too. This depends on the debuffs or curses that your character gets. Negative armor isn’t limited to your character, there are items and a survivor that reduce the armor of monsters too.

The playable character REX weakens enemies that it hits. During the ‘weaken’ state, the monsters’ speed and damage will be reduced by 40%. It also reduces the armor by 30.

Okay, so ‘Weaken’ decreases the armor, but how do you calculate the damage taken in negative armor? To figure that, these formulas are used:

Damage Taken

The damage taken in negative is multiplied by the value you get from using the formula

2 – 100 / (100 – Armor)

The number you get through this formula will be between 1 and 2. The negative armor in this gets subtracted, and you get two negatives that make a positive.

Damage Increase

For damage dealt with monsters, the formula is

100 / (100 – Armor) – 1

Damage Reduction Table

Now that you know the basics of how the Risk of Rain 2 armor works. Here’s a damage reduction table available on the Official Risk of Rain 2 Wiki. This table tells how much damage reduction percentage you’d get for a certain armor value.

 This table shows that to get a 50% damage reduction, you only need 100-armor. But at 200-armor, you only get 66.67%. To get a 99% damage reduction, it would take 330 Rose Bucklers to get the 9900-armor required.

Risk Of Rain 2 Items That Effect Armor

Getting Armor in Risk of Rain 2 seems complicated. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it a lot easier than it seems. The damage reduction of the character increases if their total armor increases. The goal in Risk of Rain 2 is to increase the Armor. We’ll look at items that increase Survivor’s armor and base armor.

Monsters’ armor in Risk of Rain 2 can’t be ignored. How much damage you can deal with them depends on their armor, so we’ll take a look at their armor too.

Items that Increase Armor

Several effects and items in the game increase the survivor’s armor. Some of these increase the base armor, while others increase armor when they’re active. We’ll briefly go over these effects and items one by one.

• When playing on the lowest difficulty, Drizzle, each character gets a 70-armor bonus.
• The item Spinel Tonic, when activated, gives 20-armor with other buffs. Once the Tonic wears off, there’s a chance that you’ll gain a Tonic Affliction. It will decrease all the stats by -5%. The Spinel Tonic has a 60s cooldown.
• Rose Bucklers each grant 30 armor while sprinting. This item can be stacked.
• Irradiant Pearls increase all stats by 10% per stack. It includes the base armor too.
• Jade Elephant gives a massive 500 armor boost for 5 seconds. Its cooldown is 45s. It’s useful when you are surrounded by monsters and want to get out almost unhurt.

Repulsion Armor Plate

The Repulsion Armor Plate reduces incoming damage in Risk of Rain 2. Each plate that you stack decreases damage taken by 5. The damage reduction stacks until you take 1-damage each time you’re hit.

For each plate that you stack, you get an additional 5-damage reduction. Its stacks are linear, meaning if you have two plates, you’ll get ten damage reductions. At five plates, you’ll get 25 damage reduction, and at 20 plates, you’ll get 100 damage reduction. Mind, this doesn’t increase your armor, only the damage reduction.

The Repulsion Armor Plate might seem like a powerful item, but it’s a weaker item. It has diminishing returns once the difficulty reaches insane and beyond. At that point, it will only soften blows of damage from higher-level enemies.

It is a good item for the beginning levels. But don’t expect to become invincible by stacking it, as it just won’t happen.

Survivors Armor in Risk of Rain 2

Some Survivors in Risk of Rain 2 have base armor. This means they have armor from the beginning. Knowing their armor will give you a better understanding of the Survivors. Let’s check them.

• Acrid, Loader, Mercenary, and Rex all have 20 base armor. It’s good for the start as the base armor helps you stay alive in the beginning.
• MUL-T has a base armor of 12. 12 armor seems less, but it’s better as you have something in the beginning to help you.
• The rest of the Survivors: Artificer, Bandit, Captain, Commando, Engineer, Heretic, and Huntress, all have 0 armor. Even if they have 0 armor, their skills help them stay alive. Their skills and passive skills are powerful enough to make them balanced. In some situations, they will last longer than those with base armor.

The Survivors that have base armor have it in their kit. MUL-T is a Survivor that can get extra armor by using their skills.

• The utility skill Transport Mode gives MUL-T 200 extra armor.
• MUL-T’s special skill Power Mode increases their armor by 100.

Monsters’ Armor

As we mentioned at the beginning of the guide, both the survivors and monsters can have armor. Some monsters, such as the boss monsters, have base armor. Their base armor ranges from 10 to 100.

Apart from that, there are two monsters whose armor increases due to certain effects, they are:

• Life-draining trendings of the Clay Dunestrider increase its armor by 200 when it’s active.
• When the Scavenger is looking for an item, its armor increases by 200.

How to reduce armor?

Now you might be wondering since armor has such effects on damage taken or damage done how to inflict damage on enemies that have armor. For that, some effects reduce the target’s armor. Using this will surely give you an advantage over them.

• If you hit a target 5 times while Shattering Justice is activated, it will reduce the target’s armor by 60.
• Weaken or Natural Toxins of REX reduce targets’ armor by 30 points.
• Cripple is a debuff that reduces its victim’s armor by 20.

Risk of Rain 2’s Armor-Piercing rounds

You now know how the armor in Risk of Rain 2 works and what items increase or decrease it. The effects that decrease armor have certain conditions. For example, to get the Weaken/Natural Toxins effect, you’ll have to choose REX. Whereas shattering justice is a legendary item, you can’t get it easily.

So, how to increase your damage output to bosses with armor? Although many items increase the damage dealt to enemy bosses. Some of them increase the crit chance, while others have their unique effects. But the one item that is easy to find, and increases your damage is the Armor-Piercing Bullets. In Risk of Rain 2 Armor-Piercing Bullets deals 20% additional damage to the bosses. It increases by 20% per stack. Meaning you can stack this to increase your total damage output against the bosses. It will help you kill bosses quickly. So, you can focus on the teleporter and the swarm of enemies near you.

Armor-Piercing Bullets in Risk of Rain 2 have a common rarity. They are easy to find. You can get stacks of Armor-Piercing Bullets to increase your armor.

Summary

Armor is a stat in Risk of Rain 2 that most of the

players seem to ignore. It can be the only thing keeping you alive when you’re surrounded by a swarm of monsters. If you’ve been following our guide then you’d know that it is as important as other buffs. Some survivors’ gameplay differs according to their base armor too, as they are stronger early game.

While getting armor items for your survivor, keep one thing in your mind. After 100-armor, there’s no point in getting extra armor, as it has diminishing results.

Next: Risk of Rain 2 Tougher Times