Risk of Rain 2 cheat guide — unlock all character cheat

Risk of Rain 2 is one of the biggest indie success stories ever. There are many survivors to play that you normally unlock by completing in-game challenges. Some players have figured out how to unlock all the characters in a very cheeky way.

Now, all the characters have their little challenges to unlock them, but while the rest of us were working hard, someone out there was working smart. This seems to be a legacy issue from the original Risk of Rain, which was a well-documented way to unlock things in the game. Here’s what you need to know about the not-so-hidden unlock all characters cheat in Risk of Rain 2.

Related: Risk of Rain 2: All bosses and what you need to know about their attacks

Unlock all Risk of Rain 2 characters cheat

To unlock all the characters in Risk of Rain 2, you first need to do the following steps:

1. First things first, make sure you are NOT running Risk of Rain 2 at the moment. The files you need to access with be locked otherwise.
2. Navigate to the Steam folder in your program files.
3. From there, go to User Data. There should only be one folder in here that corresponds to your User ID.
4. Click on it, then go to folder 632360.
5. Go into the Remote folder and then the User Profiles folder. In here should be a single XML document. Back this up by creating a copy of it on your Desktop, just in case anything goes wrong.
6. Open the XML file using Notepad, then scroll all the way to the bottom. Once you have already played the game and unlocked an item, it should be straightforward to see where the Unlocks are recorded. You will see lines of code that start with <unlock>.

You want to copy one of the below lines of code for each character you don’t yet have unlocked. In this instance, “Toolbot” is for MUL-T, and “Mage” is for the Artificer. Make sure to insert the lines of code between the last <stat name> line, and </stats>.

Codes to unlock characters in Risk of Rain 2

• <unlock>Characters.Huntress</unlock>
• <unlock>Characters.Engineer</unlock>
• <unlock>Characters.Mercenary</unlock>
• <unlock>Characters.Mage</unlock>
• <unlock>Characters.Toolbot</unlock>
• <unlock>Characters.Loader</unlock>
• <unlock>Characters.Treebot</unlock>
• <unlock>Characters.Croco</unlock>
• <unlock>Characters.Captain</unlock>

Save the file after inserting the codes, then start up the game. The characters should be unlocked for you.

This cheat is not what the developers intended, and the usual caveats about cheating being bad manners apply. Though, if the developers haven’t closed the loophole between that game and this one, perhaps this isn’t something they have an issue with.