Welcome to the 4th and final pre-release Devlog for Alloyed Collective - before we take a closer look at Drifter and her abilities let’s get into that release info you’ve all been patiently waiting for.
Release Details
Alloyed Collective will release on the 18th November 2025, for the same cost as the previous DLCs at an SRP of $14.99 in the USA (as far as regional prices - whatever the SRP that Seekers of the Storm is in your location right now, that’s the price Alloyed Collective will be!)
Is it worth wishlisting Alloyed Collective now you know when the release date is? ABSOLUTELY, DO IT RIGHT NOW so you know the INSTANT it's dropped!
A quick note for our Nintendo Switch players — the team has a couple additional improvements we want to make before releasing Alloyed Collective on Switch. Unfortunately, those changes couldn’t be completed in time for our original target, so the Switch version will arrive a bit later.
Alloyed Collective will launch on PC & both generations of Xbox and PlayStation on November 18, with the Nintendo Switch release date to be confirmed once we’ve completed the final round of optimizations.
Drifter
Introduced in Risk of Rain Returns, Drifter is making the leap into 3D landing with the best of her Brawler-Support kit from Returns. But worry not, there will also be some brand new exciting additions to her kit - the likes of which we’ve never seen in Risk of Rain before, and probably thought we never would!
Key to mastery of Drifter and her abilities is managing her unique resource: Scrap Junk. Yea... so we were gonna call it scrap like in Returns. But scrap is already a thing in ROR2. So it’s junk now, just go with it… Generated by attacking enemies, Junk litters the battlefield until you collect it, it’s up to you to choose if you use it up quickly to empower your attacks - or max out the meter, unlocking the full potential of Drifter's most powerful abilities.
Her most reliable source of Junk is her primary attack Blunt Force.
Blunt Force
With Blunt Force Drifter does a triple-melee-swing with her massive sack dealing 170% damage per swipe. The third attack in the sequence is a larger 350% damage slam which also stuns enemies. Each one of these attacks has a chance of beating some junk out of your foe.
There are some more special features of Blunt Force. But they involve her other abilities so we’ll be talking about those as they come up further in the Dev Diary. One such interaction involves her unlockable Secondary attack…
Junk Cube
Usually in these Dev Diaries I focus on the Survivor’s base kit and let you discover the unlockable skills for yourself, but with it being a fan favorite from Returns and being featured so prominently in the reveal trailer how could I not switch things up and highlight her unlockable secondary ability: Junk Cube.
Slam down a huge cube of Junk for 400% damage which you can then whack with Blunt Force a further 3 times before the cube blows up for a final 800% damage.
You can even cast aside the laws of physics and ride the cube while you slap it with Blunt Force turning Drifter into a guided missile of death and destruction.
If you’ve got a lot of junk in the… uhhh… sack you can bypass the ability cooldown by consuming 4 Junk and immediately creating another Cube. This allows Drifter to turn her precious resource into multiple cubes of chaos (Patent Pending*).
Using Drifter’s brand new Utility ability Repossess you can even pick up the Junk Cube and throw it directly at your enemies. I wonder how many other objects you can pick up and throw using Repossess?
Repossess
Yes. The answer is Yes.
She really can pick up and throw anything that isn't bolted down.
And even a few things that probably should be.
In fact, unless it would be completely gamebreaking (picking up the teleporter and throwing it off the stage would be questionable game design at best) chances are Drifter can Repossess it.
While being held in your bag your primary Blunt Force does additional damage based on the mass of the object you have held, and you gain additional Junk from killing enemies this way.
However EVERYTHING held has a health bar. Using blunt force repeatedly while holding the chest you promised to keep safe may not be a wise plan…
Some of the objects you can pick up even have unique interactions with enemies. For example if you lob a wisp at an enemy it’ll set that enemy on fire - but I won't spoil all of those interactions in this Dev Diary. Ok maybe one more.
We cannot wait to see the creativity the community uses with this ability to break the game in ways we've not even considered. A couple of my favorites include a pretty broken interaction involving one of Captain’s beacons…
And once during testing Bruno was taking his sweet time looting the stage so I relocated his Engi Turrets to the teleporter without him knowing…
And speaking of “helping” teammates, that leads us to the last ability we’ll be revealing - Salvage.
Salvage
Drifter’s Special Ability Salvage is the one bit of her kit which has been essentially unchanged between Returns to Alloyed Collective. Once your Junk meter is 80% full you can consume it all and generate 4 temporary items.
Salvage is where the “Support” part of “Brawler-Support” comes into play - you can take all these items for yourself, or share them with your teammates - whether you like it or not.
“But Mr Community Manager man, doesn’t that mean temporary items are a new item type in the DLC that you’ve managed to deftly keep secret throughout these amazing Dev Diaries??”
It sure does Billy - and forcing your friends to play as Drifter so you can follow them around waiting for them to use Salvage is not the only way to get temporary items in Alloyed Collective.
Final Thoughts
Now we’re done with the final pre-release Dev Diary and we’re SO CLOSE to Alloyed Collective I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has followed along over the last few months. After seeing everyone’s reactions to the Seekers of the Storm post-release improvement phases and now seeing everyone get excited for Alloyed Collective- the whole team cannot wait for you to get your hands on the latest addition to Risk of Rain.
During these Dev Diaries I've showcased and previewed all the exciting content you’re used to: Survivors, Stages, Items, Enemies etc. There is, however, even more content in Alloyed Collective that we've not even hinted at. Systems, Stages, Encounters - There’s some amazing stuff in there that you 100% are not expecting that I am desperate to tell you about..
…but for the sake of your own ability to discover it all, I shall refrain. Just know it took a lot of effort to keep my big mouth shut.
Make sure you let us know what you think of Drifter and Alloyed Collective too when it's released on November 18th - the best place to do that is on our Discord.
Thanks again, bye for now
- The Risk of Rain Team.
P.s. One last time - Wishlist it plz. Seriously, it makes everyone think I’m super smart and handsome when you do <3
P.P.S. Btw for our Steam Deck players out there, we've also released some Risk of Rain themed startup videos for you today!
*No of course we have not actually patented ‘cubes of chaos’