Monsoon Master Guide

Overview

Turn your Monsoon failures into success stories. Complete guidelines for the Monsoon difficulty but without the clutter. For both SP and MP.

– There are no rules, only guidelines –

1. Rush the First Two Stages

Roam the first two stages for loot as efficiently as you can but stick to these crucial teleporter activation timings for starting the boss fight:

• Stage 1 — around the 3:00min mark,
• Stage 2 — around the 7:00min mark.

There is not enough coin per time spent on the first two stages. The suggested timings also allow you to potentially grab the Preon Accumulator in the timed chest[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com] on Rallypoint Delta for free. You know you are doing alright time-wise when the legendary chest[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com] on Abyssal Depth as potential stage 4 costs no more than $3,000 (the lower the better).

2. And Farm the Rest with a Plan

Fully loot the remaining maps from stage 3 onwards. Do so in a circular fashion when roaming the level. Pick up at least one Bundle of Fireworks[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com] to speed up the process.

Set yourself a starting point and clear the map running in a huge circle collecting all chests and farming coin while doing so. Once finished you should end up where you started from ready to initiate the boss fight to move on to the next stage. This allows you to save on time, fully collect all loot without forgetting any, and to spread out enemy spawns so that they don’t become too difficult to deal with all too quickly. Don’t forget to grab as many side objectives (legendary chests, Newt shrine) as you can while doing so.

3. Prioritize Items Correctly

Especially in the early game prioritize item categories for your character as follows:

• Damage over
• Healing over
• Utility

Irrespective of character class a certain critical mass of items is crucial for your run’s success. Healing items have become much more important on Monsoon due to its heavy penalty to healing regeneration. Classify Utility as pure luxury items for now.

4. Visit Newt Often

Try to always activate a Newt altar when roaming the map for loot in order to enter the Bazaar Between Time[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com] between stages. Keep looking for the following lunar items there (in this order):

• Shaped Glass[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com]
• Transcendence[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com]
• Gesture of the Drowned[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com]
• Glowing Meteorite[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com] (effortless farming)

Lunar items can give your run a significant headstart or fully realize your build in ways otherwise not possible. Learn all the maps and their Newt altar locations. For the drop rate of Lunar coins is laughably low, consider cheating them in[www.gamepur.com], which amounts to little more than editing a text file.

5. Avoid Item Trades

Walk away from trading your items in no matter how enticing a trade may appear and especially at Newt’s. The rare exception are overpowered items, such as these and many more (also depending on the character):

• Unstable Tesla Coil[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com] (gg)
• Shattering Justice[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com]
• Ukulele[riskofrain2.gamepedia.com]

Trading can be reasonable even if only for nigh-final builds in the late game and in the hands of veteran players extremely familiar with their character. The critical mass of items you have acquired so far must be kept intact in order to keep your run alive. Also, trades almost always result in net negatives; they are trade-downs or risky RNG gambles with little pay-off.

6. Fight for Loot, Not Kills

Your whole purpose of roaming the stage (in a circular fashion) is to acquire loot in order to become god-like and to progress to the next stage. If there is no point in fighting, then don’t.

Especially in multiplayer a lot of players lose sight of the main objective. There is no point in bashing one endlessly spawning enemy wave after the other if it doesn’t lead to equally proportionally valuable loot. Wasting time like that may cost you the run.

7. Know When to Retreat

Be prepared to flee, for there comes a point in time during the run when you have to retreat from a fight to recharge your health (lest you die), because you either have overestimated your character’s current power level or underestimated the enemy’s.

Incoming damage can easily be misjudged and negative status effects can accumulate only all too quickly leading to certain death. However counterintuitive it seems in a god-builder game like this, you need to anticipated and seize the opportunity to retreat in dangerous situations when given the chance to do so, otherwise the time spent on your run will be for naught. Caution keeps your run alive especially against boss fights, special enemies (especially when spawning in multiples), and when your build is yet to fully mature.

8. [𝐑𝐄𝐃𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐛𝐲 𝙃𝙤𝙥𝙤𝙤 𝙂𝙖𝙢𝙚𝙨, 𝙇𝙇𝘾 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟖 𝐔.𝐒.𝐂. §§𝟐𝟐𝟒𝟏, 𝟐𝟐𝟓𝟒, 𝟐𝟐𝟓𝟓]

9. Enable Immediate Corpse Clean-up

Go into the Graphics options and set “Corpse Clean-up” to “Immediate” and “Max Corpses” to “0.”

The onslaught of visual information in hectic, nail-biter encounters can make the battlefield unreadable, especially if the corpses of dead enemies are staying around needlessly cluttering the map. As a side-effect, disabling it also helps game performance immensely in busy scenes.

0. Play as Mercenary