Guide icon source: Huntress Arctic Version by MutationIvo[www.deviantart.com]

From the person who brought you the guide on savescumming comes a guide with a slightly different tone: a reason why the average person shouldn't use something considered "cheaty". My original message about how difficulty-decreasing game mechanics can increase accessibility of games and thus increase the amount of people who find them "fun" has not changed. Video games ultimately are, for most people, a hobby, and shouldn't be unduly stressful or anxiety-inducing.

However, when I play Artifact of Command, I find myself having less fun due to a big chunk of difficulty coming from RNG. Some runs are doomed from the start; others are handed to you stage 1. With Artifact of Command, every run become salvageable, if it needed salvaging to begin with. There's even an ideal item list I found. By doing the same thing each run, you can minimize risk and maximize gain.

However, unlike XCOM 2, the loss of time from losing is far shorter with Risk of Rain 2. What could've been days of a campaign laid to waste by RNG is reduced to minutes of a run, hours at most. There is also less to gain: there are unlocks, sure, but those are the only persistent things between runs. While each mission can have lasting consequences in XCOM 2, such as losing a highly trained soldier, it is impossible to lose an unlock in Risk of Rain 2 unless you intentionally do so.

Many people have good reasons for picking Artifact of Command, but just because something is a good reason some of the time doesn't mean it's a good reason all of the time. My aim is to convince you to play without artifacts more often, or with artifacts that aren't Command, Swarm, and Sacrifice. This guide won't cover modded difficulties made to compensate for the ease provided by the aforementioned artifacts. With that said, let's get into the reasons I often see for Command, and why I believe these reasons are situational.

wandering vagrant by BlindVoid[www.deviantart.com]

Inspired by the song title of the same name and the concept of a "block" in debate, in which a prewritten response is offered to a common argument.

Let's get into it:

• Point: I'm strapped for time; I work 16-hour shifts and walk twelve dogs when I get home!
  
  
  • Counterpoint: That's okay! If you need your runs to be quick and satisfying, that's a play style choice. Get that bread! However, many people get more free time than just an hour or two at a time; in these situations, it may be worth testing the waters of more difficult content once you learn what items are good, how to maintain movement while doing damage, etc. Once you have these skills down, you can learn how to more efficiently compensate for suboptimal builds.
  
  
• Point: It's my choice what I do with my run, and mine alone!
  
  
  • Counterpoint: This is true! However, once it becomes a co-op game instead of a solo one, it's worth asking the opinions of your teammates to make sure you're doing what everyone wants. You can't make everyone happy every run, but you can alternate artifacts, mods, and other variables throughout the play session between runs. Seeing how other people approach the game can give you new ideas on how to play on your own, or give you a new appreciation for content you otherwise wouldn't try out!
  
  
• Point: I want to unlock skins/artifacts/alt skills!
  
  
  • Counterpoint: Nobody's stopping you! These runs are made much easier by picking items that cater to your survivor's skills. However, while you're doing that unlocking, you may not feel the rush that comes when you get a key item early on, or accidentally end up with synergistic items like getting a Plasma Shrimp after looting several Personal Shield Generators. You may be missing out on some gameplay enjoyment on your quest to get twelve crowbars. You're also likely to get the unlocks over time anyways; if every event has a probability of occurring, the more times you try, the more likely you are to succeed.
  
  
• Point: I like a good power fantasy in my spare time. If it's a co-op game, why should you care about balance?
  
  
  • Counterpoint: Balance is important whenever math is brought into a game. Qualitative elements dictate the flow in games that rely on social engineering or socialization in general, such as the much-memed Among Us. However, when damage, multipliers, intercepts, spread, and projectile velocity all come into play, one zero can be the difference between a fun game and an unfun game. In the same manner, a game that doesn't create a level playing field and instead skews the match too heavily in the player's favor risks boring the player, This can reduce retention, as well as create the concept of a "content drought", where all content is too easy and there is no "endgame". This is why the current "endgame", Eclipse 8, is so difficult: it not only requires a grind to get there, but is also challenging to play, and thus may feel more rewarding to successfully complete a run in.
  
  
• Point: I easily get stressed while playing video games, and it's not eustress! It's distress! I feel like alt+F4ing sometimes because I feel cheated by the game, and it's just not fun anymore.
  
  
  • Counterpoint: You're valid! Not everyone has the same stress tolerance. However, if you find yourself unable to enjoy things you previously used to enjoy, or find yourself getting upset or anxious when other people aren't, you may need to make some adjustments in how you respond to the stress rather than letting it dictate what you do. Finding new, healthy responses can be easy; try these[adaa.org] sources[www.therapistaid.com] if you feel the main issue is feeling anxious, and these[www.therapistaid.com] sources[www.apa.org] if you find yourself frequently angry.

grovetender by BlindVoid[www.deviantart.com]

Now that I've offered counterpoints to several of the most common complaints regarding the core gameplay loop when compared to Artifact of Command, I'd like to delve into the reasons why the core gameplay loop itself is worth making up the majority of your (unmodded) gameplay experience.

There are several people who have summarized[www.spokesman.com] this[www.inverse.com] better than I can, but I can offer a summary for the sake of brevity. A "roguelike" game takes inspiration from Rogue, an 80s procedurally-generated, randomized recreation of the dungeon-crawling aspect of a D&D game. Its focus was on gameplay, with almost no world-building or story elements. Games that take inspiration from this basis are called "roguelikes", and originally meant a game that was more derivative of the original formula.

Since the late oughties, a new subgenre has emerged called the "roguelite". You can see an official explanation from Steam on the difference here. "Roguelite" meant that no more were the ASCII graphics and fully randomized gameplay. There were now some handcrafted elements of the games, fully-rendered graphics, and other deviations from the formula that allowed for the genre to branch out in new and exciting ways. It is worth acknowledging that ROR2 artifacts in of themselves are one major deviation, as they are a form of persistent unlocks in a genre formerly based on impermanence, and allow for a predictable variable to be introduced.

*: I am not an expert on this field and am synthesizing several sources, as well as my personal experience, to present an opinion. From my research, this appears to be a divisive subject. If you have a differing opinion, please share it in the comments below.

Linear progression is a huge challenge. Without checkpoints, saves, or other mechanics meant to ease progress, a run can be botched by several consecutive poor decisions (or even one!) and require restarting a run that, in the old days, may have been going for hours or even days. Couple this with permadeath, which ensures that once a sufficiently poor decision has been made, the run is over, unable to be retrieved in any form or restarted with the same level design and loot. Finish that off with impermanence, where little (modern) to no (traditional) progress carries over to the next run, and you have a recipe for a punishing game to play.

With all this established, back to the header: why play a roguelike?

Many games these days are made to not only be beatable, but introduce enough random chance where an unskilled player can exceed the performance of a skilled player. This is often due to an effect neither player has much control over, such as finding an objectively better weapon or randomly receiving more of a resource. RNG in these cases is meant to reduce difficulty, not increase it.

Video games styled after older games tend to use RNG to increase difficulty. Take this and this as examples. With limited information and uncontrollable variables, both missions ended in failure. In roguelikes, much the same can happen, except it ends a run instead. It's possible to have a doomed run that can only be salvaged by skill. It's also often possible to doom a run intentionally or dance on thin ice with a build; Shrine of Order is a good example of the former, whereas Shaped Glass, Pluripotent Larva, and Benthic Bloom embody the latter. It is possible to doom runs unintentionally without sufficient game knowledge using these items.

To this, you may respond, "But standardheadache, what if you find a red or an aspect as your first item? Doesn't that make the game easier?" It's easier compared to other runs, but you still need to master map awareness, situational awareness, movement, aim, and game knowledge in order to beat the final boss. While this could be said of modern games, often at least one of these factors, often movement, is reduced in difficulty. In most modern shooters, a basic strafing pattern is all that's needed to be above average. Some shooters also reduce the importance of aim by increasing AoE availability, such as Warframe. Situational awareness can be padded by making everything have a higher time to kill, or how long it takes to die to every attack connecting. Each of these can be explored in more detail, but ultimately, chance doesn't make Risk of Rain 2 more easy, it can just make a single run less hard.

Speaking of chances of item drops, getting a Lens-Maker's Glasses or Paul's Goat Hoof 3D printer can change a run in an instant. This wouldn't be as satisfying if these were guaranteed, or if every item of their tier was as universally good. Without bad items like Warbanners, there cannot be comparatively good items like Energy Drink. Similarly, there are items that are good on some survivors that aren't on others; Railgunner doesn't really need Tri-Tip Daggers, but MUL-T and Captain love them. This can encourage prosocial behavior in multiplayer in the form of sharing items. When everyone gets the same amorphous blob of proto-item, it means that divvying it up gets a bit more difficult, and there are fewer decisions to make.

Overall, because roguelikes' main appeal is their difficulty, and because difficulty can encourage better habits and break bad habits, it's best to get a good sense of the base game before changing things up.

Risk of Rain II - April 2019 Wallpaper by Cyan-Orange-Studio[www.deviantart.com]

Hopefully this has been an entertaining read, and one that inspires you to try varying your relics or doing a few more vanilla runs. I don't want to espouse the "git gud" or "skill issue" mentality; I would rather empower my readers to make gradual steps towards improving their skills. One of the best ways to do this other than sinking more time into the game is to make it harder than the difficulty you can always beat the game on. You only learn when you're challenged, and therefore a little challenge is not only doable, it's healthy!

So get out there and let the items do the picking for you!

MAGMA WORM BABYY by iFoopets[www.deviantart.com]

If the contents of this guide interested you, please consider:

• The semi-official XCOM stance on using intentionally included game mechanics to reduce difficulty
  
• A more optimistic take on Artifact of Command, written by a games journalist I don't mind reading[spuf.org]
  
• A scholarly article regarding RNG in video games and how it can be intentionally used for balancing; includes a literature review[stars.library.ucf.edu]

beetle queen by BlindVoid[www.deviantart.com]