# Risk of Rain 2 Dev Diary 7: Seekers of the Storm Roadmap Phase 1 - Items & Elites - Product: Risk of Rain 2 (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/risk-of-rain-2) - Vendor: Hopoo Games - Date: 2024-12-10 - Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/632360/view/510692079688483816 - Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/risk-of-rain-2/releases/2024-12-10-dev-diary-7-seekers-of-the-storm-roadmap-phase-1 What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog. Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'. --- - **added** — Elusive Antlers is a new item that grants a small permanent speed bonus and spawns floating orbs that grant a larger temporary speed boost when collected - **changed** — Antler Shield renamed to Elusive Antlers - **changed** — Breaching Fin increased in impact, now stuns launched enemies for the duration and applies 20% additional damage while airborne, with up to 2 extra relaunches per cast and additional launches per stack - **changed** — Breaching Fin upgraded from common rarity to uncommon rarity - **changed** — War Bonds upgraded to red rarity and now triggers a barrage of missiles on boss monsters when the teleporter event is triggered, with missile count scaling based on gold collected during the stage - **changed** — Noxious Thorn reworked to have a 10% chance to inflict bleed and transfer 33% of debuffs to another enemy within 20m range on defeat, with additional stacks spreading debuffs to more enemies - **changed** — Chance Doll item log updated to accurately represent its chance of effect and received visual improvements to indicate successful item upgrades - **changed** — Unstable Transmitter reworked to create a glowing radius when falling below 25% health that teleports enemies charged into and applies bleed, with duration extended by enemy deaths - **changed** — Sonorous Whispers elite drop rate reduced to 4% while retaining guaranteed drop from large monsters - **changed** — Growth Nectar buffed to grant 7% increase to all stats for each buff up to a maximum of 4 stacks, with stat increase and maximum stacks increasing per additional Growth Nectar acquired - **removed** — Electric Boomerang no longer applies bleed when carrying Sawmarang equipment - **changed** — Runic Lens improved with better visuals and sound effects to display when it takes effect and updated logbook entry for clarity - **changed** — Prayer Beads now explicitly tells you the buffs gained and has been blacklisted from printers **Video Version Here: ** Welcome back! It’s great to be speaking to you all again so soon! Following the reveal of the Seekers of the Storm Roadmap last month, I'm happy to announce that Phase 1 - Items and Elites - is here and ready to play on all platforms! You can see a full breakdown of all the changes and bug fixes in the update notes (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/632360/view/510692079688483818)! Some Items are completely overhauled, while others have had significant balance changes. Most items have had impactful quality-of-life updates too. Those updates range from just addressing reported issues to new visual or audio cues that better communicate their effects. You can read the update notes or jump in right now to experience these improvements. But I'd like to show off some of my personal favorite changes in this update. ##### Elusive Antlers First off, let's look at Antler Shield. On top of a ground up overhaul, it’s also received a new name. Introducing the Elusive Antlers. Elusive Antlers grants a small permanent speed bonus. But, it has an additional twist. Upon picking this item up, small floating orbs will spawn throughout the stage. Collecting these will grant you an even larger speed boost, but only for a short amount of time. One of our larger goals for this phase was to reintroduce items that could improve some of the scarcer parts of the item pool. With Elusive Antlers we’re hoping to give players another powerful way to gain movement speed; but in a way that feels more fun than just boosting flat stats. ##### Breaching Fin Breaching Fin (formerly the Knockback Fin) was called out as having a lack of synergies with other items in the game. We liked the ability to launch enemies into the air - throwing a Hermit Crab up in the air is objectively hilarious - but we wanted this to be an exciting moment for players to take advantage of. In pursuit of that goal, we’ve greatly increased the impact Breaching Fin has. Not only does it retain the chance to launch grounded enemies into the air, they are now stunned for the duration, and take an additional 20% damage from all sources while airborne. Players who decide to take advantage of this airborne monster can relaunch it an additional 2 times. Gathering more stacks of the item will reward you with an extra launch per stack. Those extra seconds can give you a valuable chance to exploit their vulnerable state! Stacking Breaching Fin high enough allows you to send enemies high into the skies of Petrichor V. Due to this massive power boost we’ve upgraded this item from common (white) to uncommon (green.) ##### War Bonds While War Bonds could be useful if you obtained one very early in a run, the bonus gold was quickly outpaced by the ease at which you can collect large sums of money quickly in the mid and late game. So it can feel like a somewhat disappointing item - especially considering its rarity. We’ve upgraded War Bonds to give it a new effect worthy of a red item - now when you trigger the teleporter event a barrage of missiles bombard any boss monsters that are foolish enough to appear… …That ought to give you a bit of a head start. Sticking with the “War Bond” theme, the amount of missiles that appear are increased by the amount of gold you’ve collected during the stage. Our goal is that this creates some much-needed synergy with gold-producing items like Ghor’s Tome and Roll of Pennies. ##### Noxious Thorn Noxious Thorn has had an almost full rework. Its effect now makes it one of the strongest items in the uncommon pool. Previously this item had a chance to apply bleed to enemies that attacked you. It also had a chance to increase the stacks of other existing debuffs. This mechanic was a little unclear to players. It was often challenging to tell when this item had taken effect. Now the Noxious Thorn has a 10% chance to inflict bleed onto an enemy. Upon dispatching your enemy 33% of its debuffs are transferred to another monster _[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/632360/view/510692079688483816]_