Risk of Rain 2 Lunar Items: The Most Powerful (and Dangerous) Picks 2026
Introduction
If you’ve spent any time in Risk of Rain 2, you already know that the lunar items are some of the most exciting — and terrifying — picks you can grab. These glowing blue temptations show up at Lunar Pods, the Bazaar Between Time, and occasionally as drops. And every single one of them comes with a catch.
Risk of Rain 2 lunar items are built around a simple idea: power at a price. You get something incredible, but you also give something up. That trade-off is exactly what makes them so fascinating to talk about, experiment with, and sometimes deeply regret stacking 10 of.
In this article, we’re going to break down every major lunar item in the game. You’ll learn what each one does, what it costs you, which survivors benefit the most, and which combinations are secretly broken. Whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned player trying to optimize your build, this guide has you covered.
What Are Risk of Rain 2 Lunar Items?
Before diving into the list, it’s worth understanding what makes Risk of Rain 2 lunar items different from everything else in the game.
Most items in RoR2 are straightforward upgrades. White items give you small bonuses. Green items scale harder. Red items are powerful and rare. But lunar items? They live in their own category entirely.
Every Risk of Rain 2 lunar item follows a double-edged sword design philosophy. You’re always trading something good for something better — or sometimes trading something great for something that feels like a punishment until you understand it. Hopoo Games designed these items to challenge your thinking and push you toward unusual builds.
You buy them with Lunar Coins, which you earn slowly over multiple runs. That scarcity makes every lunar purchase feel meaningful. You don’t just stumble into these items. You choose them.
The Full List of Risk of Rain 2 Lunar Items Explained
Purity — The Double-Edged Luck Killer
Purity is one of the most misunderstood Risk of Rain 2 lunar items in the entire game. On the surface, it reduces all your skill cooldowns by two seconds per stack. That sounds amazing. And it genuinely is — for the right survivor.
But here’s the catch: it reduces all your luck to negative one, regardless of how many you stack. That means your Tri-Tip Daggers won’t proc as often. Your Lens-Maker’s Glasses become significantly weaker. Anything that relies on chance gets nerfed hard.
The survivors who love Purity are ones who don’t rely on proc-based items at all. Artificer with high cooldown reduction becomes a machine. Loader can chain abilities constantly. If you’re building around utility skills rather than RNG procs, Purity rewards you massively.
Who should take Purity: Artificer, Loader, Void Fiend
Who should avoid it: Huntress, Acrid, anyone stacking Tri-Tips or Glasses
Shaped Glass — The Glass Cannon Gamble
Shaped Glass doubles your base damage every time you pick it up. Stack two, and you’re doing four times your base damage. Stack three, and you’re melting bosses in seconds. It scales exponentially, and in the early game it feels absolutely broken.
But Shaped Glass also cuts your max health in half per stack. One stack makes you squishy. Two stacks makes you dangerously fragile. Three stacks and you’re walking around with a sliver of health, hoping nothing sneezes in your direction.
This is one of the most polarizing Risk of Rain 2 lunar items in the community. Some players build entire runs around it. Others refuse to touch it. The key is pairing it with shields, barriers, or movement items rather than raw HP stacking.
Survivors like Huntress, who have natural dodge mechanics, can sometimes survive long enough to make Shaped Glass worth it. But if you’re playing a tankier survivor like Rex or Mul-T, the HP loss can feel catastrophic.
Best synergies: Aegis, Personal Shield Generator, Transcendence
Transcendence — Replace Your HP With Shields
Transcendence converts all your health into a regenerating shield. You get a massive shield pool instead, and it regenerates outside of combat. On paper, this sounds like a straight upgrade — shields regenerate, HP doesn’t.
And honestly? For many runs, it is an upgrade. Transcendence is one of the Risk of Rain 2 lunar items that can carry you if you understand its rules.
The downside is that you can no longer heal. Medkits, Leeching Seeds, Infusion — all of it becomes useless. If an enemy has percentage-based shield damage (like certain elites), you can also get chewed through fast.
The best use case is pairing Transcendence with items that boost shield capacity and regeneration. Topaz Brooch is incredible here because it generates temporary barrier on kill. Aegis extends barrier past your maximum shield. Pile up kills, maintain your barrier, and you become surprisingly durable.
Best synergies: Topaz Brooch, Aegis, Personal Shield Generator
Avoid stacking with: Any healing items, Rejuvenation Rack
Gesture of the Drowned — The Chaos Maker
Gesture of the Drowned cuts your equipment cooldown down to just half a second. That sounds incredible. You basically have permanent equipment uptime.
Except here’s the twist: your equipment activates automatically. You have no control over it.
For most equipment items, this is a disaster. Imagine your Royal Capacitor firing randomly into walls. Your Ocular HUD activating at the wrong moment. Your Recycler spinning constantly when you’re trying to find a specific item.
But Gesture of the Drowned becomes one of the best Risk of Rain 2 lunar items in the game when you pair it with the right equipment. The Fuel Array, Jade Elephant, and especially the Forgive Me Please make Gesture shine. Spamming Forgive Me Please with Gesture and a Gnarled Woodsprite is one of the most meme-worthy yet effective builds in the game.
Best equipment pairings: Forgive Me Please, Jade Elephant, Milky Chrysalis
Terrible pairings: Royal Capacitor, Ocular HUD, Recycler
Beads of Fealty — The Secret Ending Item
Beads of Fealty is technically one of the Risk of Rain 2 lunar items, but it doesn’t do anything obvious. It has no stat changes. No listed benefit. It just says it “seems to do nothing.”
But it does do something. Equipping Beads of Fealty when you reach the final stage changes your ending. Instead of fighting Mithrix normally and escaping, you get pulled into a secret encounter with an alternate final boss. The outcome unlocks special lore and a unique ending.
If you’re chasing story content and hidden lore, Beads of Fealty is worth picking up. If you’re trying to win efficiently, it’s a detour. Either way, it’s one of the most interesting Risk of Rain 2 lunar items from a game design perspective.
Strides of Heresy — Replace Your Utility Skill
Strides of Heresy replaces your utility skill with Shadowfade. This new skill makes you invisible, grants temporary health regeneration, and gives you a burst of movement speed. It lasts a few seconds and has a moderate cooldown.
The upside is obvious. Shadowfade is just a very solid utility skill on almost any survivor. Mobility plus invincibility plus healing is a strong combination.
The downside depends entirely on what utility skill you’re replacing. Replacing Huntress’s Phase Blink with Shadowfade is arguably a downgrade. Replacing Engineer’s Dodge Roll? That’s a massive upgrade. Replacing Commando’s Roll? Debatable.
This is one of the Risk of Rain 2 lunar items that requires you to think about your survivor first. The item doesn’t exist in a vacuum — it completely overrides your kit.
Visions of Heresy — Replace Your Primary Skill
Visions of Heresy replaces your primary attack with Hungering Gaze. This shoots a volley of seeking projectiles that track enemies and deal decent damage.
The appeal here is that Hungering Gaze scales with attack speed items, doesn’t require aiming (it tracks targets), and feels great in clustered enemy situations. On survivors with weak primary attacks, this can be a real upgrade.
On survivors who rely heavily on their primary — like Commando, whose whole kit synergizes with his default attacks — Visions of Heresy is a meaningful sacrifice. You lose your identity for consistent, reliable damage.
Hooks of Heresy — Replace Your Secondary Skill
Hooks of Heresy swaps your secondary skill for Slicing Maelstrom. This charges up and fires a blast of slowing energy. It’s decent on its own, but the real value is in what it does for specific builds.
Some survivors have undertuned secondary skills that you won’t miss. Others have secondaries that form the core of their damage rotation. Knowing which category your survivor falls into is the whole game with this item.
Essence of Heresy — Replace Your Special Skill
Essence of Heresy replaces your special with Ruin. Ruin stacks a debuff on enemies every time you deal damage. At seven stacks, you can detonate all enemies affected by Ruin simultaneously for massive area damage.
This one is genuinely powerful. Ruin can delete entire rooms when stacked properly. It scales with attack speed and damage. And it’s great for builds that lack AoE options.
The sacrifice is your special skill, which on some survivors is their defining ability. Losing Loader’s Charged Gauntlet slam or Captain’s Orbital Strike is a big deal.
How to Build Around Risk of Rain 2 Lunar Items
The key to getting value from Risk of Rain 2 lunar items is never taking them blindly. Always ask yourself two questions before picking one up.
First: what am I sacrificing? Every lunar item removes something. Health, skill, luck, control — something goes away. Make sure what you’re losing doesn’t define your current build.
Second: what does this enable? The best lunar item runs aren’t just “I took a bad item and survived.” They’re “I took this item and it unlocked a whole new way to play.” Transcendence plus Topaz Brooch. Gesture plus Forgive Me Please. Shaped Glass plus Aegis. These combinations turn trade-offs into advantages.
Best Survivors for Risk of Rain 2 Lunar Items
Not every survivor benefits equally from lunar items. Here’s a quick breakdown.
Artificer loves Purity because her cooldowns are her damage engine. Less cooldown means more Fire Bolts and Plasma Bolts, which means more consistent DPS.
Loader also benefits from Purity and can survive Shaped Glass runs better than most thanks to her grapple mobility and shield mechanics.
Huntress can run Shaped Glass aggressively because she can stay mobile and avoid damage that would kill other survivors.
Engineer gets a lot of value from Visions of Heresy because his primary isn’t that exciting, while Hungering Gaze pairs naturally with turrets.
Void Fiend has interesting interactions with multiple heresy items due to his corruption mechanic.
Common Mistakes Players Make With Lunar Items
One of the biggest mistakes is stacking Shaped Glass without planning for the HP loss. Players see double damage and keep picking it up. By stage four, they’re one-shotting bosses and getting killed by a single elite hit.
Another common error is taking Gesture of the Drowned without checking what equipment they’re holding. If you’re using a situational equipment item that requires precise timing, Gesture will ruin your run.
Taking Beads of Fealty by accident and not understanding why the ending changed is also surprisingly common. If you’ve never seen the alternate ending before, it can catch you completely off guard.
Finally, many players underestimate Transcendence. They see “can’t heal” and immediately pass. But if you understand how to play around it — stacking barrier generation instead of healing — Transcendence can make you nearly unkillable in the right build.
Lunar Items Tier List (Quick Reference)
S Tier (Best value when built around): Transcendence, Shaped Glass, Purity
A Tier (Strong in the right hands): Gesture of the Drowned, Essence of Heresy, Visions of Heresy
B Tier (Situational but useful): Strides of Heresy, Hooks of Heresy
C Tier (Niche use only): Purity on wrong survivors, Gesture with bad equipment
Story Tier (Not for winning): Beads of Fealty
Conclusion
Risk of Rain 2 lunar items are some of the most carefully designed pieces of content in any modern roguelike. Each one asks you to make a real decision — not just “do I want this bonus?” but “can I restructure my entire approach to make this trade-off worth it?” That’s what separates good runs from great ones.
The players who thrive with lunar items aren’t the ones who take them blindly. They’re the ones who understand their build, their survivor, and the full picture of what they’re giving up versus what they’re gaining.
If you’ve been avoiding lunar items out of fear of the downsides, I’d encourage you to experiment. Try a Shaped Glass run on Huntress. Build around Transcendence and see how far you can push it. Stack Gesture with Forgive Me Please and watch the chaos unfold.
Which Risk of Rain 2 lunar item is your favorite to build around — and which one has completely destroyed a run you were sure you’d win? Drop your answer in the comments. I’d love to hear the horror stories.
FAQs
Q: Are Risk of Rain 2 lunar items worth taking every run? Not every run, no. They’re powerful but situational. Only take them when they complement your current build.
Q: How do I get lunar items in Risk of Rain 2? You can buy them with Lunar Coins at Lunar Pods scattered across stages or at the Bazaar Between Time shop.
Q: Can you stack lunar items in Risk of Rain 2? Yes, most lunar items can be stacked. Shaped Glass and Purity are especially notable for their stacking effects — and consequences.
Q: What is the best lunar item in Risk of Rain 2? It depends on your build, but Transcendence and Shaped Glass are consistently considered the most impactful when used correctly.
Q: Does Purity affect Shaped Glass damage? No. Shaped Glass is a flat damage multiplier, not a proc-based effect, so Purity’s luck reduction doesn’t diminish it.
Q: What happens when you take all four Heresy items? Taking all four Heresy items (Visions, Hooks, Strides, Essence) replaces your entire skill set with Heresy abilities. It’s a full kit overhaul.
Q: Is Beads of Fealty useful for normal runs? Not for winning. It exists specifically to trigger the alternate ending. Take it only if you’re chasing that experience.
Q: Does Gesture of the Drowned work well with every equipment? No. It’s only effective with equipment that benefits from constant automatic activation. Most situational equipment becomes unusable with Gesture.
Q: Can Transcendence be paired with healing items? You can pick up healing items, but they won’t work. Transcendence removes your HP, so all healing-based items become dead weight.
Q: How many Lunar Coins does it take to build a full lunar item run? It varies, but a solid lunar-focused run can require 10–20+ coins depending on what’s available at the Bazaar and how many Lunar Pods you find.
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