How to unlock Heretic in Risk of Rain 2

Hopoo does love secrets, so it is not surprising that they snuck a secret character in the Anniversary Update for Risk of Rain 2. You cannot select Heretic from the Survivors screen, and you won’t be able to unlock this beast permanently. You will need to jump through quite a few hoops to get access to Heretic on a run.

In this guide, we will break it all down for you, and tell you why you want to play as Heretic in the first place.

How to get access to Heretic

In the simplest sense, you just need to get all four of the Heresy Set items in a single run to get Heretic. You can get these from Lunar Flowers using Lunar Coins. These items are:

• Visions of Heresy – Fire a flurry of tracking shards that detonate after a delay, dealing 120% base damage. Hold up to 12 charges that reload after 2 seconds
• Hooks of Heresy – Charge up a projectile that deals 175% damage per second to nearby enemies, exploding after 3 seconds to deal 700% damage and root enemies for 3 seconds. Recharges after 5  seconds.
• Strides of Heresy – Dealing damage adds a stack of Ruin for 10  seconds. Activating the skill detonates all Ruin stacks at unlimited range, dealing 300% damage plus 120% damage per stack of Ruin. Recharges after 8  seconds.
• Essence of Heresy – Fade away, becoming intangible and gaining +30% movement speed. Heal for 18.2% of your maximum health. Lasts 3 seconds.

Visions and Strides of Heresy were introduced to the game in the Hidden Realms update, but the Hooks and Essence of Heresy are new items. To get access to them, players will need to complete the Blockade Breaker challenge, and defeat 15 bosses in a single run. Once that is done and all the Heresy Set parts are available in the game, players can throw themselves at the mercy of the RNG Gods and hope they get them all in a single run. If they do, they will become Heretic.

As you pick up the different items on a run, they will replace specific abilities, and it is only when you get the full set that you will become Heretic

The easy way to play as Heretic

If you want, you can run the Artifact of Command to make this very easy, as you will be able to pick your items. While we are sure plenty of people in the community want to experience Heretic the hard way, other will appreciate the easier method. You’ll still need to unlock all the Heresy Set items, so keep that in mind.

Why be the Heretic?

Heretic has the highest base damage and base health in the game, and is a beast. He also has a built in triple-jump, and gets huge scaling with each level up. The downside is that he continuously loses health, so you’ll need to gear into healing items to avoid dying from this bitter passive.