Acrid

Acrid is a playable character in Risk of Rain 2.

A macabre, poison-spewing ex-prisoner, Acrid fights with a potent array of damage-over-time effects and self-sustaining melee ability.

Its unique ability to inflict Poison or Blight Status Effects makes it an incredibly lethal choice when stacking items that inflict additional debuffs.

Tips

 * Choosing between Poison and Blight depends a number of factors:
 * Poison deals more damage than a single stack of Blight in all cases (sometimes significantly more due to its proportional damage) and lasts longer, but it cannot be stacked.
 * This makes Blight more useful in multiplayer if more than one player chooses Acrid.
 * Acrid's Poison can't kill on its own, but Blight can.
 * This is made less relevant when holding items that can finish off low-health enemies, such as and.
 * The damage from both can be increased with, ,  and.
 * Blight is affected by and, since it uses Acrid's base damage.


 * Vicious Wounds' attack animation can be cancelled and reset by initiating a sprint. This allows Acrid to attack extremely quickly with no items. In Development Thoughts #11 it was noted this behavior will likely get removed.


 * Grabbing and opening battles with Neurotoxin can allow Poison to bring enemies to killing range more easily. However, grabbing any offensive drones and/or other damage over time items can cause problems with this strategy.


 * Poisoning bosses via Neurotoxin and Epidemic and running away while the poison ticks is a great tactic.


 * Acrid does not take any fall damage while using Caustic Leap or Frenzied Leap.
 * The player can use Caustic Leap or Frenzied Leap after falling off the map to avoid taking fall damage.


 * Epidemic gives Acrid great early-game area-of-effect damage. When combined with items such as the, , and , this lets Acrid easily clear crowds of enemies.


 * Intentionally shooting Epidemic at the floor or walls can reliably hit flying monsters such as.


 * Acrid does not spawn from an Escape Pod, making Acrid unable to unlock Power Plant in a single-player run.

Version History

 * Anniversary Update
 * Major Content
 * Added lore entry

Trivia

 * The challenge necessary to unlock Acrid, "...To be left alone" is a reference to Acrid's victory screen from the first Risk of Rain, which reads "...And so it left, with a new hunger: to be left alone."
 * Acrid is referred to internally as "Croco."
 * Acrid is commonly known as “Poison Doggo” as an internet meme.
 * Instead of starting in an Escape Pod, Acrid starts asleep on the surface of the planet. During its wake up animation, it is actually vulnerable to enemy attack before the player is given control if its spawn location is particularly unlucky.
 * Acrid originally fell onto Petrichor V, along with the majority of UES Contact Light's cargo, locked inside of a crate that landed atop the area known as Sunken Tomb. It can be presumed that the Void Reavers managed to imprison it in the Void Fields some time between the events of the first two games.
 * Although first looks may presume this, Acrid has been confirmed by the developer Hopoo that it is in fact not a Lemurian.