Mithrix, the King of Nothing, is the base final boss of Risk of Rain 2. Before the Anniversary update, Mithrix was a simple and easy-to-defeat boss that left many feeling underwhelmed. Hopoo Games, upon the release of Bandit and the other Anniversary features, completely redid his boss arena. Upon his rerelease, Mithrix was given four entire boss phases and completely decimates unprepared Survivors when they enter his arena.
Lunar Items in Risk of Rain 2 are strange and sometimes powerful items that give a benefit for a downside, being transcribed as being Mithrix’s own creations in the Logs of the game. Entering the final stage of Commencement is difficult enough, but by acquiring some of Mithrix’s own Lunar Items, we can make his fight a little bit easier. Here are our picks for the best Lunar Items to use against the King of Nothing, Mithrix.
5. Effigy of Grief
The Effigy Of Grief is one of the few Lunar Items in Risk of Rain two that functions as Equipment. When activating the Effigy of Grief, it spawns a small pillar that slows all characters inside and reduces their armor by 20. Using the Effigy will apply the slow to help keep Mithrix in one place while shredding some of his armor. Mithrix is the only boss in Risk of Rain 2 that is affected by more negative status effects like Freeze when other bosses are immune.
This Lunar Item’s debuff is labeled as Cripple in Risk of Rain 2. This means that other armor shredding items will stack along with the Effigy. Other armor shredding items that can be stacked with this debuff include Shattering Justice or the Symbiotic Scorpion, both providing their own methods of removing armor from enemies.
How to Use this Great Lunar Item to Fight Mithrix in Risk of Rain 2
As Lunar items function, the Effigy of Grief not only works on Mithrix but also on allies. Unlike other bosses, Mithrix’s attack patterns are predictable, and his battlefield is empty, meaning it’s easy to predict and not be caught off guard by your own Effigies. Before Ben’s Raincoat got reworked, you used to be able to use your own Effigy of Grief without being debuffed, but now you only get a second of Debuff Immunity and a small barrier when entering the field.
You are able to place up to five Effigies, so it’s highly recommended to always have one in the center for when Mithrix slams down into the center of the stage, and in any area he does, his spinning flames move within. You can throw these Effigies into the stage from a distance while waiting for cooldowns to refresh since Mithrix doesn’t spawn until you get into range.
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4. Strides of Heresy
Strides of Heresy is one of the few Heresy Items we objectively believe makes Mithrix easier to fight due to the manner by which he brawls with the Survivors. One stack of this great Risk of Rain 2 lunar item allows the Survivor wielding it to become intangible and heal for 3 whole seconds. Moreover, each stack adds 3 more seconds.
Survivors who struggle to outmaneuver the King of Nothing might be unable to evade his spinning flame ability efficiently during phase 3 and might desire sacrificing their Utility skill in exchange for the ability to evade an incredibly high burst of damage.
Mithrix relies heavily on his ability to take out most Survivors in one hit, and since One-shot Protection is reapplied on healing to full, Strides of Heresy can allow a Survivor to take a moment to breathe before getting hit by an ability that would’ve killed them. Although this ability might not be the best choice for Survivors like Void Fiend and Acrid, since they naturally have more mobility, the ability to duck out of combat for an extended period of time isn’t anything to scoff at.
3. Egocentrism
Egocentrism is one of the strangest Lunar Items in Risk of Rain 2, with its unique ability to absorb other items in your inventory and converts them into endless stacks. You create an orbiting bomb every three seconds that detonates on impact with a nearby enemy for 360% damage. The time your bombs respawn is shortened based on the number of stacks you have.
The downside is every 60 seconds, a random item from your inventory is converted into a stack of Egocentrism. So long as you are picking up more items that Egocentrism can absorb, this Lunar item is one of the strongest pick-ups in the game. Yet it’s often preferred to take this item on Survivors who naturally have better movement abilities or Survivors who don’t need a lot of items like Loader.
After reaching 15 stacks of Egocentrism in Risk of Rain 2, the bombs will be generated further away from the player, thus increasing its range the longer you have this item. This item is great for fighting Mithrix because he is always trying to get into melee range to fight you, and thus the bombs will hone onto him while you are naturally evading his attacks.
Egocentrism only becomes more and more dangerous if you spend too long in the fight and you begin to run out of items. The other unfortunate situation is entirely controlled by RNG when this Lunar Item decides to absorb one of your more important items rather than your useless Common Items.
2. Spinel Tonic
The Spinel Tonic is another Lunar Equipment Item that, to most players, is regarded as one of the best Equipment in all of Risk of Rain 2. When you use the Spinel Tonic, all of the following buffs are applied to you for 20 seconds:
- Increases damage by 100%
- Increases attack speed by 70%
- Increases armor by 20
- Increases maximum health by 50%
- Increases passive health regeneration by 300%
- Increases movement speed by 30%
Some players would forget that the Spinel Tonic is a Lunar Item since its downside is that when the tonic wears off, you have a 20% chance of gaining Tonic Affliction. When you gain the Tonic Affliction debuff, your stats are reduced by -5%. All of these buffs are available to you at the press of a button.
However, Tonic Affliction is only applied when the buff wears off, meaning if you reuse the Spinel Tonic, the debuff isn’t applied so long as you maintain the buff. With at least seven Fuel Cells in RoR2, you can maintain a 100% uptime on this buff and will never suffer the downsides. There is another way to remove this downtime with our last great Risk of Rain 2 Lunar Item choice.
1. Gesture of the Drowned – The Best Lunar Item in Risk of Rain 2
The Gesture of the Drowned is hands down the strongest of all the Risk of Rain 2 Lunar Items. If you are a veteran, this pick may be no surprise. However, if you are newer to Risk of Rain 2, we will explain why Gesture of the Drowned is so powerful.
The Gesture of the Drowned reduces your Equipment cooldown by 50%. Yet, it forces your Equipment to activate automatically whenever it’s off cooldown. Most Equipment in Risk of Rain 2 is meant to be used off cooldown, and Gesture of the Drowned not only helps this focus but now turns any Equipment you pick up into a more passive ability.
Obtaining at least four Gestures of the Drowned makes our previous entry, the Spinel Tonic, have a 100% uptime, completely negating its adverse effects. The list of excellent synergies continues with a handful of other Equipment like Jade Elephant, Ocular HUD, Gorag’s Opus, and much more.
Where Gesture of the Drowned May Not Be Useful
Of course, Gesture of the Drowned doesn’t work seamlessly well with all the Equipment in the game, like The Crowdfunder or Preon Accumulator. Therefore, we recommend knowing what Equipment does before picking them up with Gesture of the Drowned in your inventory.
Mithrix’s final phase cannot take Equipment items, but it will take Gesture of the Drowned. Luckily, Mithrix doesn’t get any use out of Gesture of the Drowned due to insufficient equipment.
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Summary of How to Beat Mithrix in Risk of Rain 2 using the Best Blue Items
Mithrix can be a tough fight, especially with his final phase, since he takes away all of your items until you can deal enough chip damage to gain them all back. While that phase of the fight can be avoided entirely, we found these Lunar Items made the rest of the right marginally easier with good consistency.
It’s also hilarious to use Mithrix’s Lunar creations against him. If you have recently started playing Risk of Rain 2, we recommend reading the lore entries for all items, especially the Lunar ones. If you still find Mithrix’s fight to be a struggle, you can find our breakdown of his fight in our guide on how to beat Risk of Rain 2.
For those of you interested in what items to avoid, especially on builds, you should check out our list of the 5 worst blue items in Risk of Rain 2. Some of them are so bad they have almost no use at all, and all of them can cause serious harm in specific scenarios.
