Risk of Rain Returns – List of Best Starting Items for Engineer

In rough high-to-low priority order based on my recent run.

Engineer’ Starting Items List

Сrеdit gоеs to CanvasK!

• Prophet’s Cape is great on everyone, including turrets. Toss in some Hermit Scarfs for more dodging. Tough Times for when they can’t dodge.
• Repulsion Armor is a great first red.
• Time Keeper’s Secret is not super necessary, but comes in handy since turrets get a fresh one each time they are placed. When you become god and can’t think of much else to get, stack them–turrets will eventually get regularly assaulted by Overloading Worms and Wander Vagrants, stacked TKS will give you time to reposition and take shots at them.
• Gasoline and Will-o’-the-wisp for collateral.
• Barbed Wire, Frost Relic, and Chargefield Generator to help with Jellyfish and other monsters that get in. Fire Shield and Scorching Shell Piece for similar reasons that are more Parent or Sand Crab shaped. Toxic Centipede and Spikestrip can join if they want.
• A smattering of healing items so that you and the turrets can heal it a variety of situations. Bustling Fungus is for the odd downtime, Mu Construct for consistent TP healing when enemies aren’t in range, etc.
• Paul’s Goat Hoof and Red Whip to both loot and activate the TP fast and to get yourself out of danger while you wait for turret cooldown.
• Concussion Grenade, Prison Shackles, and Taser to keep enemies from getting in. Permafrost may also be handy.
• AtG Missile to deal with enemies out of range or to get them as they spawn. Get 10 of these for 100%. With enough attack speed, missiles will be proc’d faster than they can be fired so they will be delayed and continuously go for out of range and newly spawned enemies (sit back and enjoy the fireworks).
• Soldier’s Syringe and other attack speed items (20 is a decent amount). The more often you hit, the faster enemies die. And the more often you hit the more often you proc, which means you can put less priority in stacking on-hits for 100%.

Speaking of, aim for at least 1 of each (offensive) on-hit item. They all proc at different times, so the more you have the more extra damage opportunities you get.

Items related to gold are useless on turrets. They don’t benefit from Golden Gun and gold from Razor Penny, Life Savings, and Smart Shopper just goes to you.

If you manage to get all of this, you’re probably at least an hour in and a god. So just grab whatever is fun.

For reds I stacked Laser Turbine, but mainly to have a lightshow from 3 rapid fire lasers. The Ol’ Lopper will speed up killing. Wicked Ring to restock on turrets. inb4 someone says Dio’s Best Friend is bad because you shouldn’t use it because if you used it that means you died and that means skill issue, log off, etc.–we’re here to have fun and to me fun is doing stupid stuff in a 3 hour run and I’m not going to let a horde of 30 Volatile Lynx Totems taking cheap shots stop me from doing that; get a Dio’s if you want.