Bandit is one of the playable characters in Risk of Rain 2, though you’ll need to unlock him before you can play him.
Table of Contents
How to unlock Bandit
Bandit is an unlockable character in Risk of Rain 2, available through one of the challenges. With a focus on speed, stealth and skill combos, he can be a bit difficult for some players, but very rewarding for those who stick with him.
To unlock Bandit as a playable character in Risk of Rain 2 you’ll need to complete the Warrior challenge. You won’t be able to try him out or see him in-game without doing so, short of using Co-op.
The Warrior Challenge
The Warrior challenge requires players to reach and then complete the third stage’s teleporter event. As if that wasn’t enough, you’re not allowed to die at all in the process. This means that if you have an item that will prevent a game over by reviving you shortly after death, it won’t work for this, even being dead for a split second at any stage during your run to the third teleporter is enough to fail and deny you access to Bandit.
In other words, using the likes of a Dio’s Best Friend will not allow you to cheat this. You just have to deal with the challenge.
There aren’t any extra criteria beyond the game itself to the challenge at least. Simply reach level 3, and complete it. Doing so will clear the Warrior Challenge and unlock Bandit in Risk of Rain 2. You shouldn’t need to worry too much about doing this, it’ll likely happen naturally when you’ve played enough.
Bandit’s abilities
When you do clear out the Warrior Challenge, Bandit will be waiting for you in the character select screen on your next new game. He comes with a distinctly western theme, if his name and hat weren’t enough to give it away, he also comes packed with a shotgun and revolver to emphasize the obvious.
The Shotgun serves as his basic offensive ability. You can fire up to 4 shots at a time, after which you’ll either need to let a reload animation play or simply fire one shot a second as it automatically replenishes. This weapon has some seriously respectable damage for a basic attack, but the limits of a reloading weapon will influence your build later.
For his right-click ability, Bandit packs a melee range slash known as Serrated Dagger, with significant base damage and bleed effect on critical hits. Yet again, powerful but restricted. His shift skill meanwhile is a smoke bomb, which has a variety of uses. It packs an instant invisibility effect, alongside a short-range stun and burst damage effect both at the start and end of invisibility.
Finally, his R skill is where the revolver comes in. This also ties the entire kit together quite well but is where a lot of the potential difficulty comes from. Lights Out will deal significant damage (600%) to whatever it can hit after a short wind-up delay following the keypress. Now, that damage is useful don’t get me wrong. But it’s not why you want to use this skill. The main allure of it is that a kill with it will instantly refresh all of Bandit’s other cooldowns. This includes skipping the reload time for his Shotgun.
Bandit’s Combos
As mentioned above, the real core component of Bandit is his R skill, Lights Out. While it does a respectable 600% damage on its own, if used to reset Bandit’s cooldowns across the board it becomes much more valuable than the damage it deals. It’s also worth noting that Lights Out will in fact reset itself, as well.
Proper and aggressive usage of Lights Out resets will take Bandit from a slower, clunkier survivor to one that will chain his abilities in a never-ending sequence of death to anything breathing within his effective range. It removes the need to wait and reload his Shotgun and instantly re-enables your Smoke Bomb skill to allow you to get close enough to land a hit with your melee range Serrated Daggers.
An ideal combination of attacks against a stronger enemy would involve you firing all of your Shotgun into them while advancing, closing the gap with Smoke Bomb and getting in the Serrated Dagger shortly thereafter. This is lethal to many things alone, but not to the majority of bosses. You can however then follow up with Lights Out on a weak target near the boss, and repeat the combo again.
As long as there are these vulnerable targets nearby, Bandit can repeat the chain for as long as you can land the skills involved correctly. Quickly managing to expend all your skills and then resetting them with Lights Out is likely to be the most difficult and likely most crucial part of learning to master Bandit, and it’s clear that Lights Out is the core skill that ties Bandit’s kit together. Before you start properly employing the execution reset, both the skill and even Bandit himself may feel a little lacklustre.
Now that you know what to expect, get out there and go unlock Bandit in Risk of Rain 2 already, would you?
