Risk Of Rain 2: The Ultimate Bandit Guide (2024)

The Bandit is a fast-paced gunslinger in Risk of Rain 2. This survivor needs high accuracy and skillful timing of abilities to play effectively. As one of the survivors brought back from the original game, players may have a hard time adjusting to the Bandit's overhauled play style.

Bandit has a highly defined play style that can be difficult to get the hang of. Let's take a look at each of Bandit's default and alternate abilities, the best items to use, and some tips and tricks for mastering the Bandit.

Updated May 4, 2024: We've updated this guide to playing Bandit in RoR2 for readability. We've also detailed a few new items that you should prioritize when playing as Bandit.

How to Unlock Bandit

The Bandit is one of the easier survivors to unlock. To unlock him, you will need to complete the 'Warrior' Challenge, where you'll need to clear the third stage's Teleporter event without dying.

In general, it's best to clear out all the chests on the map before activating the Teleporter. Don't let the difficulty timer scare you, you'll have a much easier time if you get all the items you can before fighting the Teleporter boss.

Bandit's Abilities

The Bandit excels in mid-range, one-on-one combat. Here are his default abilities.

Bandit's Alternate Abilities

Bandit has three alternate abilities that can be selected in place of his default Primary, Secondary, and Special. These abilities, their effects, and how to unlock them are listed below.

Tips For Completing Bandit: Classic Man

Bandit's Blast alternate Primary skill is unlocked by successfully refreshing your cooldowns 15 times in a row using Lights Out. To complete this challenge more easily, we recommend stacking up on Crowbars to increase the damage of Lights Out against near-full health enemies.

Keep in mind that you can use other attacks in between Lights Out, including killing enemies. The only thing that will cause your counter to reset for this challenge is if you fail to reset your cooldowns when using Lights Out; that is, if you use Lights Out and it doesn't kill an enemy.

Tips For Completing Bandit: sad*st

Getting 20 stacks of Hemorrhage on one enemy can be difficult, but there are a few ways to make it easier. Hemorrhage lasts for 15 seconds, so you will have 15 seconds from your first stack to get the other 19.

Several Backup Magazines are essential for this challenge. We recommend at least seven or eight, but the more the better. You can easily stack this many by playing with the Artifact of Command, or using a 3D Printer.

Additionally, you'll need to make sure the enemy you're stacking Hemorrhage on can survive long enough to get all 20 stacks. This means targeting bosses with high health later in a run, like the Alloy Worship Unit.

Tips For Completing Bandit: B&E

To complete this challenge, you need to kill the final boss, Mithrix, with Lights Out. This can be difficult, especially since you only get one chance to do it at the end of a run.

The main thing to be careful of for this challenge is killing the boss too quickly. During your run, you should avoid collecting items that have effects that can kill Mithrix on their own, like Kjaro and Runald's Bands, AtG Missiles, Tri-Tip Daggers, and so on. Also, avoid taking items that can summon allies like the Queen's Gland.

Best Items for Bandit

The Bandit has a well-defined play style that doesn't heavily rely on certain items. That said, there are still several items that enhance Bandit's abilities very well. Listed below are some of the best items for Bandit that you'll want to shoot for each run.

Tips and Tricks

At first, Bandit might seem pretty straightforward to play, but there are a few nuances to his abilities that are worth mentioning. Listed below are a few tips and tricks to help you familiarize yourself with Bandit's main goals for success.

Bandit's main goal is to quickly kill low-health enemies with Lights Out, allowing you to consistently refresh your cooldowns. This will additionally allow you to use Smoke Bomb more frequently, and in turn increase your mobility and survivability.

Smoke Bomb is one of the Bandit's most important tools. Smoke Bomb will allow you to escape dangerous situations and reposition to an advantageous location, usually farther away from enemies, where you can pick them off at range.

This, paired with Smoke Bomb's damage upon entering and exiting invisibility, gives the Bandit some excellent crowd control for dealing with groups of enemies.

The final thing to keep in mind about Smoke Bomb is that, when used, enemies will target the last place you were. This means you can lure enemies to your previous position by using Smoke Bomb, allowing your allies to focus their attacks on that area.

As Bandit, you should always be aiming for the backs of enemies. Having guaranteed Critical Strikes against enemies who have their back to you is extremely powerful, and can enable some strong interactions.

Also, be sure to capitalize on Serrated Dagger and Serrated Shiv's ability to inflict Hemorrhage when Critically Striking. Using these abilities when exiting invisibility behind an enemy can deal high damage and stack additional damage through Hemorrhage.

Which Abilities Should You Choose?

Bandit has three alternate abilities that you can choose in place of his Primary, Secondary, and Special. If you're having trouble deciding which to choose, consider the following.

Primary

Burst and Blast may seem similar at first, but the effects of these two primary abilities can change Bandit's gameplay significantly. Burst is Bandit's default Primary ability, and will fire a spread of bullets that deals higher damage at close range.

On the other hand, Blast fires a single blast of bullets that deals more damage to farther enemies, or when aimed accurately at specific targets.

If you need help deciding which to choose, use Burst for close-range and Blast for long-range. Overall, the choice comes down to personal preference, as both abilities deal roughly the same amount of damage when used effectively.

Secondary

Bandit's default secondary Ability is Serrated Dagger, which deals high damage in melee range. Serrated Shiv instead throws a blade from long range that deals moderate damage. Similar to Bandit's two Primary abilities, his Secondary offers the choice of close-range versus long-range play styles.

Choose Serrated Dagger for a melee AoE option, and Serrated Shiv for a long-range ability that emphasizes staying far away from enemies.

Special

Bandit's second Special ability, Desperado, grants tokens when it is used as the killing blow. These tokens stack, giving 10 percent increased damage for each token held. However, the tokens are lost upon advancing to the next stage.

Overall, Desperado has the potential to deal much higher damage than Lights Out, especially when paired with cooldown-reducing items like Alien Head or Purity. This means Desperado is very good for one-shotting high-health enemies like Teleporter bosses.

On the other hand, Lights Out provides tons of utility by resetting the cooldown of Smoke Bomb. Between Lights Out and Desperado, choose the ability that better suits your playstyle, as they are both extremely strong when used correctly.

Which Survivors Pair Well With Bandit?

Bandit's core strengths are his high long-range, single-target damage and great mobility. Pairing him with another Survivor that either balances or strengthens these aspects will lead to the best results.

To that end, we recommend using Mercenary or Loader with Bandit. Both of these Survivors have great damage and mobility to match Bandit's, allowing both players to stay at the same pace while killing monsters and searching for items.