Level

Level is a statistic that all characters have in Risk of Rain 2. The higher a character's level, the higher their stats. As in most games, all characters in Risk of Rain 2 begin at level 1 and steadily level up, becoming progressively stronger over time.

The level of a character affects their:


 * Base maximum health
 * Base health regeneration
 * Base damage

Player Level
Players level up by gathering experience. The biggest source of experience is from defeating monsters, which drop whitish-blue experience orbs when killed that are automatically collected by the player that kills them. The amount of experience dropped depends on the current difficulty, the type of monster, and whether the monster is an Elite. The experience collected by the killing player will be equally received by every other player. As such, a kill from a drone will also grant experience to the player. However, if a monster is killed by a non-player entity, e.g., fall damage, or the Void Fog, that experience is lost. An exception to this is an enemy dying from falling off the stage. In this scenario the experience will be rewarded to whoever last damaged the aforementioned enemy, however long ago that had occured. This will most likely be the player as there are very few non-player sources of damage.

Aside from killing monsters, players can acquire small amounts of experience by opening barrels. Additionally, when proceeding to the next stage via Teleporter or portal, all of the player's leftover gold is converted into half that much experience before entering the next stage.

A player's current level can be found using the formula $$level = log_{1.55}(1+0.0275*totalexp)+1$$, with a minimum of 1. The amount of experience required to reach a certain level can be found with $$exp = -4/0.11*(1-1.55^{level-1})$$.

Since each subsequent level requires 1.55 times as much experience as the previous one, leveling up outside of early stages becomes nearly impossible. Ultimately, players require items to survive and fight on.

Ambient Level
Non-player characters use a completely different leveling system than players, instead scaling their level with the ambient difficulty. This ambient level is given by the formula $enemyLevel = 1 + (coeff - playerFactor) / 0.33$, where coeff is the difficulty coefficient and playerFactor is a constant that scales with the player count of the game (see the math behind scaling difficulty). This level is displayed in the top-right corner of the screen, alongside the current scaling difficulty. This level is capped at 99 for the default and any alternate game modes. However, Simulacrum is an exception since it both uses its own level formula and also the level is capped at 9999.

A monster's level also determines how much experience it will drop for a player that kills it; the experience reward is found with $reward = coeff \times monsterValue \times rewardMultiplier$. The experience yield of a monster is exactly half the amount of gold it drops.

Although this level system is used primarily for monsters, nearly all non-player characters, including player minions, use the ambient level. There are a few exceptions:


 * and use the player level because the inherited items should be sufficient for a power boost.
 * summoned by the player also use the player level, which is most likely a bug. However, Strike Drones summoned by Equipment Drones or by do scale with the ambient level since their summoner also does.
 * The following enemies, even though hostile to players, do not scale with the ambient level because they are spawned by special means: the unique in  secret area, the, and any  that specifically come out of killed  enemies.
 * The homing projectiles of the, , and , while not sentient entities, have stats since they can be destroyed by attacks.

Trivia

 * The game uses a 64-bit integer to track the accumulated required experience up to any level. Since 94 is the highest level before the integer overflows, this is technically the highest level achievable by the player.
 * This is not normally achievable since if the player keeps looping to continue farming monsters, the difficulty coefficient will grow so much that the credits received by the Director will overflow to negative and will be unable to spawn any monsters. It is possible to keep collecting gold from barrels, or by using with, or by using  before enemies stop spawning, and then trade this gold for experience before leaving a stage. However, the exponential growth of the experience required for each new level ensures this is beyond realistic to continue levelling up after enemies stop spawning.
 * The game actually keeps track of the experience gathered for all the various teams, i.e., Neutral, Player, Monster, and Void. Enemies and allies scaling by the ambient level do so with the use of a hidden item, which overrides the relevant team's actual level. As discussed in the ambient level section, some special spawns do not scale with the ambient level, which means they will be at the respective team level, which will most likely be 1. However, since any team is hostile to every other team, it is possible for the Monster and Void teams to acquire experience from killing each other.
 * The player and drones do not reward experience upon death.
 * Using the is another way to orchestrate enemies killing each other and acquire experience, even if it is from friendly fire. This is noticeable in  where the Artifact Reliquary's health bar visually indicates when it levels up from monsters killing each other.
 * While the death implosion of, , and can kill friendlies, the experience orbs cannot reach the offending entity since it has been destroyed. As such, these kills will never grant experience.
 * The same applies for the and  suicide attacks with the.