Everything we know about DLC 3: Alloyed Collective (Risk of Rain 2)
DLC 3 is just a few weeks away and with it we’re getting a ton of new content. So today I’m going to be going through everything that’s been revealed so far. If you’ve kept up to date with the dev diaries, you probably already know about the two new survivors, but John Gearbox, formerly John Hopu, has steadily been releasing additional information in places like Discord and Twitter. So the goal of this video is to consolidate most of that information in one place. There’s a lot to go over. where you’re getting two new survivors, six new stages, seven new drones, seven enemies, multiple new bosses, 15 new items, and more. If you’re looking for something specific, timestamps will be in the description. Also, big shout out to Grove Tenders teased content doc. I’ll leave a link in the description to that as well. This was extremely helpful for putting this video together and uh is making sure I’m not violating my NDA. So, thank you for that. 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Um, if you guys are interested, click the link in the description box or go to byracon.com/disputed origin to get 30% off the essential open earbuds. That’s a buycon.com/disputed origin. It’s not only a great product, but it helps support the channel. Thanks again to Raycon for sponsoring this video. Okay, so starting off with the new survivors, I’m just going to give a general overview instead of going into the specifics of their abilities and everything since the dev thoughts already covered most of it. The main goal of this video is to show you guys things you might have missed or things not revealed in the dev thoughts, so we won’t spend too much time on this. The first new survivor is Operator. Fitting with the theme of the expansion, this guy is obviously all about drones. He spawns in with them and can launch them at enemies. He can also grab onto drones as a mobility skill. Operator feels a bit like a spiritual successor to the pilot from Risk of Brain Returns. And speaking of Risk of Brain Returns, the other survivor in this expansion is Drifter. Drifter is very similar to how she was in Returns, and her play style surprisingly translates really well to this game. This is probably the piece of content I’m most looking forward to playing with. Now, in order to make Drifter work, Gearbox is actually bringing back an entire mechanic from Returns. Those being the temporary items. Temporary items are exactly what they sound like. They are items that once picked up only last for a certain amount of time. We are shown a few ways to obtain them in the last dev diary. The first is Drifter’s special, which spawns them in. But there’s also a drone that drops them, a new interactable that spawns multiple at a time, and the duplicator, a returning item from Returns. This is an aspect of the DLC I’m very iffy on. I was not really a fan of temp items in Returns. Outside of Drifter, I don’t think they worked very well in that game, and I think they translate even worse to Risk of Rain 2. For my play style at least, I spend a lot of time looting. And an item that only lasts one minute is barely even worth picking up, let alone spending money on. We’ll see how well they end up implementing them, but I just hope they last a bit longer than they did in Returns. With that, moving on to the new maps. We are getting six new ones, and a lot has been shown off in regard to these. First, Pretender’s Precipice. Ash howls across the ledges of this fractured cliffside where broken solless tech and twisted metal experiments litter the ground. Duck through narrow nests and detour into the massive hollowedout corpse of a fallen solace, a rusting maze of tunnels and elevation where danger hides just out of view. This has been confirmed to be a new stage, too. There’s also Iron Alvium. This desert mining outpost has a habit of reminding you that it was built for machines, not human interlopers. One hulking drill grinds deeper into the heart of Petraor 5. Survive and be rewarded with loot scattered through the winding cave where iron veins once ran. This has been confirmed to be a new stage three. And this map is also getting a night variant. This probably will be locked behind looping though like it was in Seekers. I hate that they do that, but it is what it is. At least we’re we’re getting variants. There’s also Conduit Canyon. Break through a narrow canyon choked with live conduits and machine infrastructure. Power lines pulse through the walls, guiding cargo and energy to deeper zones. Hold your ground in close quarter fights as you push through this critical choke point. Succeed and uncover access to the planet’s core. This stage looks massive, and it is unconfirmed which stage this is replacing. This could be a new stage 5, but it could also just be a new area entirely outside of the loop similar to Prime Meridian. There’s also repurposed crater, a massive creator turned industrial stronghold. Some of the most powerful solace reside here. They now oversee the construction rigs, scaffolding, and solar arrays that are building their future. This is a fortress in progress, and you’re here to interrupt. This is confirmed to be a new stage 4, which is exciting news since we have not gotten a new stage 4 since Sunder Grove came out 5 years ago. With this being a stage 4, I expect it will have some kind of mechanic that will allow you to get a legendary item. Uh, I I should note though, it’s not 100% confirmed that the screenshots I’m showing you now are from the stage, but it likely is just based off of the description. The other two stages are a mystery, but one of them is almost guaranteed to be a boss stage. Moving on to drones. This is a huge aspect of the expansion. We’re getting seven new drones, but before we go over them, we’re also getting some huge quality of life changes to drones. The biggest one being an update to the drone AI. Even basic drones are a whole lot more accurate now and will basically do more than simply distracting the enemies. I cannot understate just how big of a buff this is. When I was playing the game at Gearbox, this was the very first thing I noticed on stage one. Uh there’s also some big UI changes to the drones. They now have pop-ups when you buy them, similar to the items. They also have log book entries now, so you can look them up Midame. Also like items, drones have colored rarities now with the basic ones being white and the bigger ones like the TC280 being red. Very nice update. It makes the game feel a lot more polished. Now moving on to the drones themselves, which we know a surprising amount about. We already talked briefly about one of them. This is the junk drone. It drops temporary items. It’s unknown how often it does this and at which rarities, but it certainly does. There’s also the bombardment drone. This is a red drone that shoots lightning at enemies. looks very strong. The freeze drone, another red drone which shoots out a disc and freezes enemies. The freeze effect is like two and a half guillotines and it works on Myithri. It’s one of the most OP effects in the game. So, this drone can definitely be a huge, huge game changer. And speaking of game changers, the cleanup drone. We don’t have a description for this one yet, but we do have some gameplay of it tethering onto different enemies and producing gold. Depending on how this works, this could be huge for speedruns and gauntlet racing especially. We don’t have a ton to go on, but it looks pretty insane in this clip at least. There’s also the transport drone. We don’t really know what this does yet, but it does look like it is one of the drones operator can start with, so uh it’ll probably be something pretty basic if I had to guess. Another one we don’t know a ton about is the jailer drone. It roots all targets within an area for a certain amount of time. how big the area and how long the time only god knows, but it’s probably related to the root effect uh that a lot of void enemies do. And finally, there’s the barrier drone, which projects barrier onto allied targets. I assume this works similarly to the healing drone, except instead of HP, it’s barrier, which means once again, Aegis is even worse. That’s all we know so far about the drones, but I do think these will have a huge impact on gameplay, probably even more than the items, which we’ll talk about now. This expansion is only getting 15 new items, the lowest amount in all three expansions, but I think it’s okay. First of all, drones feel very similar to new items, so I’m okay with not having as many, but also 15 to 20 feels like the right amount for an expansion like this. I think 40 in survivors was just too many. Um, big big adjustment to the loot pool there. And this feels a bit smaller. The first item is the hiker’s boots. This item increases your crit chance when you hit an enemy while at higher elevation up to 10% crit and it resets while out of combat. This is a very exciting item. It’s a crit that works similar to chronic expansion where you have to build up the crit through combat and it drops when you stop fighting. This is going to be better on proc survivors like commando. I don’t imagine loader will get much use out of this, but this opens up a lot of new build types. I do think this will increase the viability of lossiers for sure since lens maker glasses are not going to be exclusive for crit now. So that is just going to have all kinds of knock-on implications for the loot pool at large there I think. Another new common item is the eclipse light. Shout out to all my Eclipse players. The effect is unconfirmed but it likely has something to do with barrier. And that’s it for common items. We really didn’t have a lot. But uh when it comes to uncommon items, there’s a lot more to go off of. Box of dynamite is a green item that was in Risk of Rain Returns. Think of this as a budget spare drone parts. It upgrades drones by making them drop bombs and it spawns in a new drone, Lieutenant Drone Boy, the apprentice of Colonel Drone Man. This item will obviously be very good in the coming drone meta. The Faraday Spur is another confirmed item. This looks to be a mobility item. Running charges a blast and increases movement. When the charge is at 25%, jumping will release a blast and reset the movement speed buff. This item gives move speed, so I think it’s automatically a good pick. I feel like this item could have some pillar skip potential as well, so I’m excited to see the risk of resources guys lab this one out. Another green coming is the kinetic dampener. The effect is unknown, but it is likely something defensive. There’s also this unnamed green, which we know hardly anything about. We do, however, know some of the new reds. The most shownoff one is probably the orphaned core. This robo buddy rolls around and attacks enemies for you. The core inherits all of your movement speed and does more damage depending on how much you have. You can even pet it. Gearbox absolutely went off on this one. Their art and animation department is just great. This little guy has so much personality and polish. A night and day difference versus something like the empathy cores from earlier updates. This guy is also a drone, so I assume he will inherit drone parts as well and will probably be just as OP in the same way that uh drone parts empathy cores are. We talked about it a little earlier, but we’re also getting the substandard duplicator from Returns. They haven’t given a description yet, but it’s safe to say it probably works pretty similar to how it did in Returns. And in that game, it gives you a temporary copy of every item you picked up, and it increases temp items duration by 10 seconds. Depending on how well temp items are implemented, this red will either be really good or incredibly mediocre. There’s also this red item that we know next to nothing about. Nice. We got a new lunar that has been confirmed that again we don’t know a lot about. They teased us with half a description. Something something reduces all stats but can be given to an enemy on hit. Uh we’ll have to see how that one plays out. For equipment, there is only one that we know of that’s being added, but it’s a kind of crazy one though. The Deuse X Machina introduces a parry mechanic to Risk of Brain 2. On activation, you briefly enter a countering stance. If you activate it right before taking damage, it will negate all damage from that hit and guarantee that your next hit procs all of your on-hit effects. It also only has a 15-second cooldown when performed successfully. If you miss, it’s a 60-second cool down. This is very similar to the Merc parry from Risk of Brain Returns. And I do think this will be one of the best equipment in the game for players with a lot of experience. It will be somewhat item dependent though, similar to FMP. For this to be maximum useful, you do need to have a lot of on-hit effects, but the damage negation alone is more than enough reason to take it in my opinion. Uh Jon has also confirmed there are two new boss items coming, but we have yet to receive any info on it. That does it for items. There’s a lot that has yet to be revealed. So far, these seem interesting, but nowhere near as gamechanging as the drones. With that, let’s move on to the new enemies, of which there are seven, and you’ll immediately notice a theme. Most of these enemies are Robo Balls. There’s the Soloulless Cultivator. This dude has a drill and he launches at you. That’s kind of it from what I can tell. The Solace Invalidator. This guy shoots a pink blast that disables all of your items temporarily. The Solace Extractor. This guy will launch into you and steal your items, but uh killing him does return it. The Solace Transporter creates a mini blast on the ground similar to what bosses like Awolist units would do. There’s also the Solstus Scorcher. This dude launches oil and fire at you. This one killed me a lot during the play test and I think this one is going to be the hardest one to deal with. Uh the scorcher is very very punishing to get hit by. There’s also this battery looking thing. We don’t know the name of it, but it kind of retracts I guess. There’s also a few new bosses that haven’t been fully revealed and I don’t think they will be to be honest. But we do know that there’s two new boss items. One of the new bosses is almost certainly this vulture guy and the other one is likely this big alloy unit that we don’t have a name for yet. We do know that the final boss in the expansion will be called the solar swing, but we don’t know much else about it. Finally, for enemies, we are getting a new elite. The name has been confirmed as the collective elite, but not much else. Strangely, this has been confirmed to be a tier 2 elite, but it’s not loop exclusive, which is odd since you typically need to loop to encounter tier 2s. This might have something to do with the new boss. Moving forward to interactables, we don’t have a ton of info, but it does look like a lot is coming in this department. First, there’s the temp item shops, which we’ve already gone over. There’s also this node that looks like it can be interacted with. This is likely the DLC 3 equivalent of the housey night shrine. With it, we also know there’s going to be a new portal. Looks very uh futuristic and tech-like. Probably has something to do with the boss. Along with the drones, we are also getting the drone multi-shop. Gives you the choice between three drones. And apparently, an executive card will allow you to buy all three like it would for regular multi-shop. This is a great interactable. Kind of a no-brainer in my opinion. This was spotted in one of the trailers. It looks like a drone scrapper from Arista Brain Returns. We don’t know anything else about it, but it would make sense thematically. That’s basically it for confirmed content. A few final things, though. Like seekers, this expansion will have new skins for the old survivors. It’s not confirmed yet if this is all of them, but Seekers did it for everybody, so I think it’s pretty safe to assume that this one will, too. Definitely something these last two expansions have done a lot better than Survivors of the Void. And I’m tacking this on at the end because I realized I forgot to include it, but this expansion is also getting new music. Now, if you haven’t heard the news, the music in this expansion will not be made by Chris, the composer of the first game, the base game, and both expansion so far. This one and presumably future expansions will be composed by, forgive me if I get the name wrong, Stavros Maroneis. This is sad news, but my understanding is Chris worked very closely with Stavros. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about with this change. I absolutely love the music when I got to do the play test. There’s some bangers in there and it’s still very, very risk of rain. But that’s kind of it. Thank you guys for watching. I did a video very similar to this a few weeks before Survivors of the Void came out, which was over 3 years ago at this point. It’s hard to believe. I didn’t do one for DLC 2 last year because a there really was no marketing outside of the dev diaries. And b the devotion update leaked a ton of information about the DLC months before it came out. Uh there was they were also just very cy about the release date and it kind of dropped out of nowhere. So there’s never really a good time to do something like this. I have to say the hype cycle for this expansion has been great so far. I think having Jon as the community manager has made a huge difference and it definitely feels a lot closer to what it was when we were getting uh teasers for Survivors of the Void. Let me know if you guys are excited for this expansion though cuz I definitely know I am. Thank you to my members for supporting the channel and I will catch you guys in the next
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Teased content doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-afsqVyvRzHqGHw3VphqJXKXFNsTEH3Mmk14vyBwezM/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.48aaresku7na
Timestamps:
intro: 0:00
survivors: 2:58
stages: 4:34
drones: 6:38
items: 9:00
enemies: 13:20
other stuff: 14:30