What is Rainstorm Refinery

Rainstorm Refinery is my attempt to create my '''ideal''' Risk of Rain 2 experience for myself and my friends. It is a fairly large balance mod primarily focused on refining and expanding various playstyles for a "vanilla +" feel. While I would ideally like to utilize more buffs and reworks then nerfs, a lot of content (especially newer stuff) does need to toned down in order to maintain the difficulty that I and many other people expect from a Risk of Rain game.

What does this mod contain?

All Changes

Survivor Balance

As of right now, this mod makes changes to all survivors except Heretic and the new Alloyed Collective survivors (I need to get a feel for them a bit more before I make any adjustments). These changes frequently come in the form of simple number changes, but there are several cases of more significant additions in order to make certain skills feel more unique. Overall, bad default/alternate skills have been tuned up, minor changes have been made to make a lot of skills feel more fluid to use, and a lot of the more recent survivors have been heavily nerfed (and even still they remain incredibly powerful, SOTS 2.0 part 3 really did break survivor balance in half). These changes include, but are not limited to:

• Commando's default secondary and utility are more useful, and both specials have received massive buffs.
• Huntress's default primary has its own crit synergy to maintain parity with the alternate, and Arrow Rain is much stronger.
• Bandit's secondaries each have a unique variant of Hemorrhage with additional effects.
• Some of MUL-T's less used primaries are buffed, but Power Mode is more limited.
• Engineer's default secondary and utility are much less clunky and are more enjoyable, while the turrets don't scale quite as well with items.
• Artificer's ice wall can block attacks, and Ion Surge has been moved and reworked as an alternate utility.
• Mercenary does a bit more damage overall, and the secondaries are Agile.
• REX's health costs ignore armor and block chance but are slightly reduced, no longer deactivate Cautious Sluf/Oddly-Shaped Opal, and no longer reduce health in E8. The alternate special has also been revamped into something I actually enjoy using.
• Loader has reduced utility damage but her alternate grapple has unique physics and Thunderslam is more interesting.
• Acrid's secondaries have both received new unique properties, Blight stacks reset duration, and Frenzied Leap actually synergizes a bit better with Acrid's kit.
• Captain's primary has reduced damage but more flexibility via removed falloff once fully charged, shock is better and most beacon types (except Hacking) have been buffed.
• Railgunner has slightly reduced power in her default secondary and her specials.
• Void Fiend has had corruption gain reworked, and feels a lot smoother to play with quicker animations, at the cost of reduced power in corrupted form.
• Seeker has been nerfed all over to try to keep her in check and she's still OP. The revive is less broken but can be used with both of her specials, and Tranquility's stacking bonuses are slightly less powerful.
• CHEF's skills are slightly weaker on their own, but stronger in combination with activated oil pools actually being fairly strong now. To complement this, the Boosted default utility has been reworked to make sure oil is always a aprt of CHEF's kit.
• False Son's most broken elements - Growth and Lunar Ruin stacking - have been nerfed, but some abilities have received minor buffs to feel less clunky.

Item Balance

Additionally, significant changes to items in the White, Green, Red, Boss, and Void tiers have been made, as well as Equipment. In terms of item balance, here are my goals:

• Make sure all items serve some kind of purpose on their own.
• Make sure all items can be strong in certain scenarios, and that these scenarios are not too rare (basically, no item should always be scrapped).
• Ensure that powerful item synergies can remain in order to keep runs unique, but are not too powerful as to be an automatic win.
• In the case of void items, there needs to be an actual choice between them and their uncorrupted counterparts.
• Equipments are generally a bit stronger, with some additional reworks to allow for additional synergies.

Overall Difficulty

This mod also adjusts certain elements pertaining to difficulty. To start with, it uncaps monster levels so that enemies keep scaling well into the late game (this won't really have too much impact unless you were only barely getting by). The other change is a significant modification to the gold formula, as gold drops from enemies are now increased slightly in the early game, but have reduced scaling with the difficulty coefficient. This makes it such that, as enemies become more plentiful, each individual enemy drops less money. This is both an indirect buff to items that grant money as well as a way to force players to continue engaging with the central game mechanics in longer runs.

There exists a config for this mod, but the options within it are reserved for the changes that I see as possibly controversial. If there are certain config options that you want me to add, let me know, but I will NOT be adding config options to adjust every single value (for the sake of my own sanity).

Contact

• Sorry, the github repository isn't public because there are a lot of in-development branches for future changes that I don't want to make accessible at the current time. If you have questions, comments, or bug reports about the mod you can contact me through discord. My username is OblivionAXiS, and I am on both the official RoR2 discord server and the RoR2 modding server (though I don't really send any messages in either).

Credits

• Risky_Lives (RiskyMod, RiskyTweaks): thank you for publicly available code on GitHub, which I pretty much used as my RoR2 modding tutorial. RiskyFixes is also included as a dependency as a collection of vanilla bug fixes/extremely minor balance tweaks that I want in my mod but would rather not implement myself.
• Many other balancing mods served as inspiration for what I did (or in some cases, what I didn't) want to do in my mod. It's hard to remember all the mods that have had an influence on this one, but here are some that I know have directly inspired one or more of my changes:
  • Groove_Salad's Groove Salad vs the Game
  • kking117's FlatItemBuff
  • TheBestAssociatedLargelyLudicrousSillyheadGroup's Well-Rounded Balance

1.3.2

• Added balancing to the following:
  • Items: Razorwire
  • Equipment: Helfire Tincture
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Elusive Antlers buff stack decays at a rate of 1/second as opposed to vanishing all at once
• Visual changes:
  • Glowing Meteorite telegraphs are more distinct
• Fixes:
  • 🌧 Fixed a few specific item reworks still being applied when disabled in the config
  • 🌧 Fixed a the mod breaking if loaded without the Heretic mod enabled
  • 🌧 Fixed the reworked Ion Surge still recharging while airborne

1.3.1

• Added balancing to the following:
  • MUL-T's Power-Saw now has a brand new effect, firing a piercing sawblade when releasing the attack or when canceled by a skill
  • Stages: Gilded Coast enemies now drop additional gold to reduce the amount of waiting needed
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Commando Suppressive Fire damage reduced from 150% to 120%
  • MUL-T Power-Saw damage buff removed (since it now has a much more versatile and interesting buff)
  • CHEF Dice fire rate slightly increased (still a nerf from vanilla)
• Fixes:
  • Fixed vanilla bug where MUL-T with Retool has innate "ghost" equipment slots that can only be accessed with Functional Coupler (this bug is also fixed in WolfFixes but that mod is not a prerequisite for this one)
  • Fixed vanilla bug where the visual radius of Faraday Spurs is half the intended radius (similarly to the above, this fix is also from WolfFixes)
  • Fixed logbook description for War Bonds not being modified
  • Fixed REX's default utility tooltip stating that it had 2 charges despite this no longer being the case
• 🌧 Added config options for Will-o-the-Wisp/Voidsent Flame proc coefficient, as well as Ignition Tank
• Added ability to disable all Item or Survivor changes in the config
  • Notably this allows compatibility with the Quality mod by disabling Item changes

1.3.0 - Heresy, pt. 1

• Added support for Moffein's Heretic mod, with the goal of eventually bringing it up to the standard of a full character
  • Added a proper character overview and drop pod spawn
  • Character AI rewritten (no longer copied from Commando) - Goobo Jr. users rejoice
  • Once again has negative regen but more balanced and has a minor interaction with recollecting Heresy items
  • Some visuals/animations adjusted
  • Item displays, while planned, have unfortunately had to be delayed for next update
• Added balancing to the following:
  • Survivors: Heretic (as a whole), Captain Supply Drop and Diablo Strike
  • Items: Brand new rework for Resonance Disc
  • Lunar Items: Focused Convergence, Light Flux Pauldron, Stone Flux Pauldron, Neutronium Weight, Shaped Glass, Transcendence
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Captain Defensive Microbot fire rate reduced by ~40%
  • Heretic's Ruin and Lunar Root debuffs can now be transferred by Noxious Thorn
  • Seeker's Meditate now has increased base radius (10m->16m), but radius scaling with Tranquility is drastically reduced (max 70m->30m)
  • Seeker's Meditate proc coefficient increased (0.8->2)
  • Operator's Nano-Bug debuff can no longer be transferred by Noxious Thorn
  • Eclipse Lite grants significantly reduced barrier when recharging multiple stocks of a skill (mostly notable for Heretic's primary)
  • Warbanner base radius increased (12m->15m) with slightly reduced scaling (6m->5m), now additionally reduces recharge time with subsequent stacks
  • Bandolier ammo packs cap out at a maximum of a 30 second recharge, and cannot overstock skills with a recharge longer than that
    • Essentially just for Captain Beacons
  • Soulbound Catalyst projectile damage increased (320%->360%)
  • Glowing Meteorite now uses a new damage falloff, HalfGradient, which quadratically scales to 50% damage at the edge
    • This falloff type is also used by the reworked Diablo Strike and will be used for many more telegraphed attacks in the future to make their behavior feel more consistent
  • Glowing Meteorite deals half damage to yourself and allies, just like other friendly fire effects
• Fixes:
  • Fixed the consumed Infusion not properly granting its stats
  • Fixed drone multishops not being left open when using the reworked Executive Card
  • Fixed False Son's base acceleration not being increased to match other survivors
  • CHEF's Boosted Sear oil puddles now properly deal twice the damage as regular fire puddles
• Visual changes:
  • Captain's Shock Beacon now includes a radius indicator like was done in the WolfoQoL mod
  • Lysate Cell logbook entry now mentions cooldown reduction (it doesn't in vanilla)
  • Consumed Infusion icon resprited
• 🌧 Added a couple more boss item changes to be toggleable in the config

1.2.5

• Adjusted balancing:
  • Damage of Laser Scope's multihits toned down slightly (75%->70%)
  • Happiest Mask damage on subsequent stacks slightly increased (400%->500%)
• Fixes:
  • 🌧 Fixed Plasma Shrimp doing like a billion damage
• Overhauled visual appearance of changelog and readme page

1.2.4

• Fix for Alloyed Collective patch
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Engi Bubble Shield rework applied to Drifter's random Bubble Shield projectile
  • Numerous minor adjustments to Warped Echo
  • Pocket I.C.B.M rework applied to Missile Drones and Operator's Missile Drone command activation
  • Adjusted Pocket I.C.B.M + War Bonds interactions
  • Decided to allow Spare Drone Parts and Box of Dynamite to work with Empathy Cores and Orphaned Core (might reconsider or nerf SDP even further in the future)
    • Still don't apply to Engi Turrets or other generic mechanical allies
• Fixes:
  • Fixed Pocket I.C.B.M not properly calculating the number of Plasma Shrimp missiles to fire

1.2.3

• Added balancing to the following: Items: Molten Perforator (had previously been implemented erronously, plus this time there are more significant changes made)
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Seeker primary nerfs toned back, plus added a velocity increase
  • All playable drones as well as Lemurians and Elder Lemurians (for Artifact of Devotion) now have skill damage flags associated with their attacks, allowing them to make use of Breaching Fin and the reworked Laser Scope
• Fixes:
  • Fixed certain Warped Echo interactions with WolfoTweaks (no longer applies armor twice or puts the player into danger - a vanilla bug that I have chosen to adopt as a feature)
  • Fixed mod conflict with Red Alert (just a stopgap for now by disabling global execute tweaks when used together, I still have no idea what the root cause is)
  • Made the mod work even when loaded without certain dependencies (particularly NetworkedPrayerBeads because people see a deprecated mod and think that they need to turn it off)

1.2.2

• Added balancing to the following:
  • Items: Eclipse Lite (was previously implemented but not enabled).
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Allowed boosted CHEF skills to be used if boosted Oil Spill was interrupted by using Yes CHEF again
  • CHEF roll no longer counts as a combat skill
  • Several additional gold pickups now can only be picked up by players: Cleanup Drone's drops, Gilded elite gold drops, and gold drops created by one of Drifter's cleanup projectiles
  • Added the following items to the temporary item blacklist: Rusted/Encrusted Keys, Decryption Key, Dio's/Pluripotent Larva, Infusion, Shipping Request Form, Benthic Bloom, and Functional Coupler
• Visual changes:
  • CHEF secondaries now include the Agile keyword
• Fixes:
  • Fixed CHEF skills becoming unusable if boosted Roll was interrupted by using Yes CHEF again
  • Fixed Executive Card not working as a multiplayer client
  • 🌧 Fixed Executive Card cooldown not being properly set when Wolfo's WolfFixes mod is used, again
  • Attempt to fix possible AssetBundle loading conflicts

1.2.1

• Added balancing to the following:
  • Brand new rework for Laser Scope
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Commando Phase Round damage increase per pierce reduced to compensate for base damage buff (200%->100%)
  • Bungus base heal radius increased (3m->6m)
• Visual changes:
  • Improved visuals and sound of Lost Seer's Lenses void crit effect to make it more obvious when it triggers
• Fixes:
  • Fixed a couple other stat adjustments being accidentally disabled (specifically void items)
  • Spare Drone Parts/Box of Dynamite can once again apply to Gunner Turrets
  • Massively improved consistency of several IL hooks for mod compatibility; notably now works alongside Starstorm 2
• R2API_ProcType was added as a dependency in order to facilitate the Laser Scope rework

1.2.0 - Items Galore

• Added balancing to the following:
  • Boss Items: Charged Perforator, Defense Nucleus, Genesis Loop, Little Disciple, Molten Perforator, Queen's Gland, Shatterspleen, and Titanic Knurl (Planula will receive changes later on but said changes are currently dependent on WIP teleporter boss changes)
  • New Alloyed Collective Items: Eclipse Lite, Box of Dynamite, Faraday Spur, Kinetic Dampener, and Networked Suffering
  • Functional Coupler doesn't drop equipment on the ground when items are temporarily disabled
  • Eclipse 1 has a reworked difficulty modifier that actually increases difficulty rather than just nerfing allies
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Acrid Blight dps per stack increased from 60% to 90% (compensation for base damage nerf, as blight was still underperforming compared to poison)
  • Self-damage skills (REX, Void Fiend) no longer put the user into danger (good for Oddly-Shaped Opal/Cautious Slug), but they do still disable shield regeneration
  • Seeker's Saving Grace barrier now scales with shields
  • Adjusted some item tags to standardize barrier items as purely Healing, and shield items as Healing/Utility
  • Warped echo no longer enters danger (vanilla behavior), now simply disables shield regeneration for 2.5 seconds on activation
  • Warped echo now takes the user's armor stat into account when triggering
• Visual changes:
  • Collective Elites now display their buff icon
• Fixes:
  • Fixed a bunch of this mod's stat adjustments being accidentally disabled
  • Fixed Topaz Brooch breaking on-kill effects
  • 🌧 Fixed teleporter items dropping as temporary items

1.1.4

• Fixed for Alloyed Collective
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Sojourn no longer reduces max health in Eclipse 8
  • Loader's utility skills are once again combat skills due to encouraging boring gameplay when used with Red Whip.
  • Aegis armor per stack increased from 10 to 15
  • Harvester's Scythe healing now ignores proc coefficient (as long as proc coefficient is > 0)
  • Topaz Brooch percentage barrier now scales with shields
  • Warped Echo now properly enters danger (notably disabling shield regeneration) of the initial damage tick
  • Warped Echo now has a form of pseudo one-shot protection, preventing cheap kills from full health
  • Head Stompers proc coefficient re-added
• Enemy damage source mod temporarily removed as a dependency while it updates to Alloyed Collective

1.1.3

• Belatedly remembered to add Soulbound Catalyst to AIBlacklist because homing projectiles on Scavengers is not good

1.1.2

• Added balancing to the following:
  • Brand new rework for Soulbound Catalyst, turning it into a damage item while maintaining its existing synergies
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Lost Seer's Lenses proc damage nerfed (1500%->1000%)
  • Replaced REX default utility buff (extra stock) with a different buff (increased weaken duration) as it didn't really have much impact when playing
  • Removed REX utility cooldown adjustments
  • Allies can no longer pick up Ghor's Tome and Bandolier drops
• Fixes:
  • Fixed REX primary weaken duration being nearly doubled from vanilla (it's not a buff that it needs and it infringes on the Directive: Disperse's role)
  • 🌧 Fixed certain tooltips not displaying properly
  • 🌧 Fixed Executive Card cooldown not being properly set when Wolfo's WolfFixes mod is used

1.1.1

• Added balancing to the following:
  • Items: Wax Quail, Strides of Heresy (Shadowfade)
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Captain's Shock Beacon has 50% increased radius (10m->15m)
  • Seeker's Reprieve skill has slightly less initial velocity
  • False Son's default special properly scales with attack speed
  • Roll of Pennies % health for maximum money increased from 15% back to 25% (this is a nerf)
  • Executive Card cooldown increased from 30s to 45s
  • Milky Chrysalis airdash speed reduced, but now increases air control while active
• Many small adjustments for SOTS Interactables:
  • Halcyonite Shrines have fewer rare drops on average, and now pull from all drops equally instead of favoring SOTS items
  • Shrine of Shaping credit cost 50 -> 20
  • Prime Meridian geodes now include shields when granting percent barrier
  • Prime Meridian geode reward is no longer locked to SOTS items and has fewer rare drops on average, but cannot include "Stage Start" items (including Rusted Key, Shipping Request Form, Regenerating Scrap, and Sale Star)
• Fixes:
  • Fixed multiple issues regarding Unstable Transmitter's barrier generation
  • Fixed Seeker's Palm Blast still being able to grant multiple stacks of Tranquility at once if used on bosses
  • Fixed Huntress's autoaim range buff being overridden by a dependency mod

1.1.0 - The Equipment Update

• Added balancing to the following:
  • Items: Tentabauble
  • Equipment: Disposable Missile Launcher, Eccentric Vase, Executive Card, Jade Elephant, Milky Chrysalis, Molotov 6-Pack, Ocular HUD, Preon Accumulator, Royal Capacitor, Radar Scanner, Super Massive Leech, The Backup, and Volcanic Egg
  • Lunar Equipment: Effigy of Grief, Glowing Meteorite, and Spinel Tonic
  • Lunar Items: Corpsebloom
• Adjusted balancing:
  • Added an additional equipment cooldown reduction to Bottled Chaos, and added Gnarled Woodsprite to the random equipment blacklist
  • Increased projectile velocity of Loader's alternate secondary to make it more consistent when grappling from farther away
  • Buffed MUL-T Rebar Puncher damage a bit more (700%->800%), slightly nerfed double rebar (Retool has a longer cooldown)
  • Slightly increased Acrid's default secondary damage (300%->320%)
  • Increased accuracy of Fireworks projectiles
  • Nerfed Ceremonial Daggers' targeting range (130m->60m)
• Added dependency mod SnappierStalks as a buff to Brainstalks
• Added dependency mod DamageSourceForEnemies so the reworked Breaching Fin as well as Luminous Shot work in Artifact of Devotion, as well as to enable future endeavors.

1.0.1

• Adjusted balancing:
  • Remove Mercenary alt secondary launch force nerf (idk why I added it in the first place)
• Update Wiki files and README

1.0.0

• Public release
• Contains balance changes to all survivors except Heretic
• Contains balance changes to the majority of common, uncommon, legendary, and void items
• God I hope I did this right