Risk of Rain 2 has over 100 items and over 30 different types of equipment you can use to your advantage during your runs. The riskiest and sometimes best items are in the Lunar category. Lunar items usually take a unique build or set up to reach the most effective results. Today’s main item we will be focusing on is the Transcendence Lunar item in Risk of Rain 2 and if it’s good enough to obtain in an average run.
Transcendence in Risk of Rain 2
Transcendence is widely debated on whether or not it’s worth picking up or avoiding entirely. It gives the player 50% more health but converts all but 1 Hp into shields. This shield constantly regenerates after 7 seconds, and since you only have 1 Hp, your Health Regen is set to 0. While you have this Lunar item in your inventory, any Healing Disables de-buffs are practically ignored. Fall damage is also reduced to 1 since fall damage is calculated off your green Hp. Your shields still increase with Hp increases like Infusion or Bison Steaks.
Additionally, you don’t lose your One-Shot Protection since it relies on your combined HP, including your base Green HP. You also do not have to worry about Void Fields instantly killing you. The damaging field takes Shields & HP into account. Sadly one survivor cannot use this item, which happens to be REX. Rex’s abilities involve healing or self-inflicting damage to use specific skills. Since your HP is set to one, and base healing doesn’t replenish shields, Transcendence is practically useless on REX.
Transcendence – Item Interactions in Risk of Rain 2
Healing Items
Transcendence directly affects healing items the most. Both regenerative and burst healing items are treated differently, but the most important thing to remember is how the type of healing is treated. Since there are tons of great items that scale off of different kinds of healing, and some scale off of max HP, which reduces their effects to practically nothing. The list of items that Transcendence effects are:
Bustling Fungus: Only heals 1 HP and is rendered entirely useless. It is based on a percentage of green HP.
Cautious Slug: Boosts your passive HP regen by 3HP per second out of combat, but this does not affect your shield recharge. This item is objectively the most useless item to pair with Transcendence in Risk of Rain 2.
Medkit: It should go without saying that this item is practically useless unless you have N’Kuhana’s Opinion or Aigis, which will add temporary barriers to your shield. Additionally, it will only heal 1 HP. Without any items that scale off healing, this item has no use.
Monster Tooth: This item is rendered useless by transcendence in Risk of Rain 2 and only heals 8-9 HP based on how many stacks you have. Like Medkit, this item is only useful when paired with other items and rarely fills that need.
Lepton Daisy: Doesn’t recover more than 1 HP since it does one burst of healing during the teleporter event per stack. Normally heals 50% HP.
Interstellar Desk Plant – Doesn’t heal more than 1 HP per pool every half second due to being based on the total percentage of HP.
Rejuvenation Rack: Doubles healing numbers to usually equate to 2 HP. It goes without saying this item will never be useful with Transcendence.
Related Article: Shrine of Order in Risk of Rain 2
Health-Relient Items
These items specifically scale off direct HP and only partially affect them. They have relatively unique effects when paired with Transcendence. It used to be the case where items that are consumed at low health wouldn’t activate. Yet, that is no longer the case as of a recent patch.
Delicate Watch: This item treats your combined HP as normal, breaking when you go to 25% of this number. This might make the item easier to break since healing HP is faster than waiting 7 seconds for shields to come back fully.
Power Elixir: Unlike the Delicate Watch, this item entirely loses the functionality it has when dropping below 25% Max HP. This item is just as useless as Cautious Slug, except it can’t be scrapped when consumed.
Personal Shield Generator: Although it might seem like it would add 8% to your overall HP, the Personal Shield Generator scales off the HP you would’ve had before picking up Transcendence in Risk of Rain 2 instead of the combined HP you have after picking it up.
Old War Stealth Kit: Turns you invisible once dropping to the same threshold as the previous two items. This effect lasts for 5 seconds and takes 30 seconds to recharge. You can restore the majority of your shield while invisible from this effect. You also gain 40% speed after this effect pops and until it expires.
Genesis Loop: Explodes, dealing 60x your base damage at the same 25% health as the Stealthkit. The cooldown is calculated based on a completely different expression and has a damaging effect instead of a defensive effect.
N’Kuhana’s Opinion: This item will not use your buffed health pool from Transcendence, multiplying the damage the skulls do by 1.5x the damage it would’ve done without it. This also makes collecting Soul Energy take longer by the same amount, although most healing items are slowed to a crawl if they aren’t on-hit effects.
Aigis: Although most of the items included in the healing section are reduced to 1, healing can still be converted into a Barrier to negate the severe downsides of not being able to regain HP with transcendence in Risk of Rain 2. This item scales directly with the amount healed, and unlike N’Kuhana’s, it isn’t percentage-based.
Specialty Items
These items scale a bit differently than the past two sections and are more specific in how they function with Transcendence in Risk of Rain 2:
Infusion: Grants 150 shields when fully stacked instead of 100 due to the 50% increase from Transcendence.
Bison Steak: Gives roughly 37.5 shields due to the 25 health increasing by half.
Titanic Knurl: Grants 60 shields instead of 40, but the health regen is useless.
Plasma Shrimp: ALWAYS is active due to always having shields. Which can set up insane proc chains.
Ben’s Raincoat: Used to grant 100 bonus HP per stack, equating to 150 shields with Transcendence. Now grants a 10% barrier based on combined HP.
Equipment
Equipment differs from regular items since all different types of equipment are self-activated and typically have a cooldown of 30 seconds or more. There isn’t a lot of equipment that hinders the use of Transcendence in Risk of Rain 2, but a few are affected by the items passive.
Foreign Fruit: This item heals 50% of your green HP instantly. Which, with Transcendence, essentially has the same effect as Bungus but with a high burst cooldown. This item is even less helpful because at least Bungus can heal allies.
Gnarled Woodsprite: This is like the Foreign Fruit but still has utility when activated on allies since it heals 10% of their Max Hp a second instead of yours.
SuperMassive Leech: This equipment still offers healing through the form of lifesteal. For the next 8 seconds, you heal for 20% of the damage you deal. This equipment, much like the others, has no use since life steal does not replenish shields. When paired with Aigis or N’Kuhana’s Opinion, which both have direct effects scaled off of healing received, this item is improved drastically.
Conclusion
Transcendence proves to be a good alternative to the traditional gameplay standard of Risk of Rain 2, given that the player considers what items to scrap and which to keep. The player should avoid picking up health items unless they are using a legendary item that benefits with Transcendence. Unfortunately, Transcendence was a far more exploitable item before the Delicate Watch changes. Additionally, the changes to Ben’s Raincoat make it hard to stack shields as easily as beforehand. Those who pick up this item should be careful.
