Welcome to the third Dev Diary for Alloyed Collective where you will be introduced to the latest Survivor on the roster for Risk of Rain 2: Operator.
With the new Drones being introduced with the DLC we wanted to design a Survivor that made the most of these new and improved battle companions. But don’t worry, Operator doesn’t just sit back and let the Drones take all the glory. Instead, he uses their abilities to enhance his own combat skills making this union of man and machine an agile powerhouse on the battlefield.
As always, you know the rules, before we get started head on over to the Alloyed Collective Steam page and wishlist that sucker! Seriously, I’ll wait… done? Okay, let’s keep going!
Lone Operator: H3-11 OCR Custom
Although Operator arrives on the planet with 2 drones of his choice he’s certainly more than capable of defending himself without them. For starters, he has his primary: H3-11 OCR Custom pistol.
Like the majority of the primary attacks in the game you can just hold down the attack and let it do its thing. It does a respectable amount of damage and is more than capable of popping Wisps and dropping Lemurians. It even has an added bonus of each kill shot ricocheting to the enemy with the lowest health nearby dealing 75% of the bullet’s damage.
However, the truly big brain Survivors among you will let this primary stack up a bit. Each stack increases the damage of the shot and if you let it get the full 3 stacks it transforms the H3-11 OCR Custom into a deadly skill shot that would even leave Railgunner jealous.
A fully charged shot is highly accurate, does massive damage, and has no damage fall-off. That’ll allow the patient and skillful among you to turn Operator into a front-line sniper… and you didn't already forget about the ricochet did you??
Ace Operator: Ascent Protocol
Operator’s Utility Ability allows you to very rapidly navigate stages to press the advantage, escape danger, or just style on your enemies. Introducing: Ascent Protocol.
Command one of your Drones to boost you up into the air and clip on for a smooth descent back to the ground - all the while having full use of all of your other abilities letting you rain destruction from on high.
Operator might look diminutive but even the most hench of drones cant keep him in the skies forever. Luckily after a brief cooldown you can aim at one of your spare drones and re-activate the skill, leaping towards it and maintaining your flight even longer.
Operator never loses in a game of “the floor is lava.”
Smooth Operator: Ejection Core
Operator doesn’t have to rely on his bullet ricochet to deal AOE damage to monsters. With his special ability Ejection Core he can overcharge a drone and yeet it at a group of his enemies to melt health bars and shred their defences.
Not only does the drone impact hit like a truck, it also launches enemies into the air and applies the Bugged debuff to them and stuns them while they are airborne. Any enemy with the Bugged debuff takes additional damage and their descent is slowed allowing you to continue pelting them with bullets even longer ramping up the hurt to ridiculous levels.
Just using your own attacks might let you get a couple of kills while using Ejection Core, but with the help of your Drones you can absolutely lay waste not only to Bugged enemies, but the entire ecosystem of Petrichor V…
Drone Operator: ADMIN-OVERRIDE
You’ve probably noticed throughout this superbly written Dev Diary there's a little aiming reticle that keeps popping up on enemies. Well, that's not your target, it's your Drones’ target.
When using Operator’s secondary ADMIN-OVERRIDE you command your currently active Drone to attack its target with an ability which is different & unique to every Drone in the game, new and old.
This works in conjunction with his passive Drone Queue which cycles through your available Drones, including those purchased during your run, one by one, after using any of Operator’s Drone abilities.
For example the Healing Drone once activated both heals you AND gives you a temporary speed boost.
Some Drones have entirely new unique attacks, like the Bombardment Drone. This shocking addition dashes to your target and fires stunning chain lightning. That’ll make any affected enemies an easy target for its follow-up AOE bombardment attack.
But my favorite of the bunch is the good ol’ TC-280 Prototype which, on command, does a deadly strafing run that obliterates any targets in its path.
Each new Drone that you collect gives you an extra charge of this ability. So if you’ve got a tough teleporter event coming up you can save those charges up and on your command UNLEASH HELL WITH YOUR ARMY OF DRONES.
Operator also comes with a full suite of alternate abilities and starting Drones to choose from but I'll let you discover those for yourself when Alloyed Collective arrives later this year.
And now for a small bit of bad news: We don’t have a release date for you today.
I know many of you will have rocked up to this Dev Diary excited to see the release date for the DLC. But there are still a handful of things we want to sort out before we give you a date.
I announced in Dev Diary 2 that it was our goal to make Alloyed Collective the best addition to Risk of Rain ever, and in my humble opinion we are damn close to achieving that goal, we just need a little bit more time to get there. When we give you the date, we want it to be a cast-iron guarantee, but we can't do that today.
The good news is we’re still very much on track for a release later this year as promised. In the end we want the team to have the time they need to make DLC3 without having to crunch.
Again, our sincere apologies to everyone looking forward to that particular reveal today. We’ll share a date with everyone as soon as we’ve locked it in. - trust me when I say it will be worth the wait!
Never Operating Solo
Operator is the first of two new Survivors coming in Alloyed collective, in the next Dev Diary we’ll be showing off the 2nd who is returning from a previous Risk of Rain game!
Let us know in the comment section who you hope it’ll be & head on over to the Alloyed Collective Steam page and give it a wishlist. We’ll see you again real soon!
Bye for now!
- The Risk of Rain Team