Two months after the disastrous Seekers of the Storm expansion, Gearbox details its Risk of Rain 2 rescue plan, and players are actually pretty excited

A little more than two months after releasing Seekers of the Storm, its first expansion for Risk of Rain 2, Gearbox Software has shared its plan for the long-term future of the expansion, which it hopes will “build Seekers of the Storm into something that can be celebrated by the community for years to come.”

Gearbox acquired the Risk of Rain series in 2022, pledging to bring players “world-class content” and ensure “a bright future for this genre-leading franchise.” As we noted at the time, quite a few fans weren’t convinced, and it turns out they were on to something: Seekers of the Storm arrived in 2024 in an absolutely dreadful state that, because of changes it made to the base game, caused big headaches for everyone, even people who didn’t buy the expansion.

A couple small updates have been released since then, but now we have a more fulsome look at Gearbox’s cleanup plan, which includes “significant changes” to Seekers of the Storm. Gearbox said it’s “exploring” updates, which suggests to me that at least some of it isn’t carved in stone at this point, but the general strategy is set to unfold in three phases focusing on Items and Elites, the False Son boss fight, and Survivors.

It’s going to be a major undertaking: All but one of the new items added in Seekers of the Storm are being completely redesigned to make them feel more “transformational” and a better fit with “existing build synergies,” and the False Son fight is being redesigned and rebalanced to make it “more clear and fair.” All three of the game’s survivors will get “large improvements,” with a particular focus on Chef, who’s being rebuilt and buffed to be more “elegant” and powerful.

Specific time frames haven’t been revealed but Gearbox said the changes will roll out over the next few months. “This is a huge undertaking, but one that the team is excited about,” Gearbox wrote. “We also want to thank everyone for giving us time to put together a wholistic plan. We know that you’re eager to see what’s in store and we can’t wait for you to jump in.”

There’s a certain amount of skepticism in responses to the roadmap announcement on Steam, which is understandable: As unforced errors go, this one was a banger, in no small part because so many people called it two years in advance. But there’s also quite a number of replies expressing gratitude for Gearbox’s commitment to fixing what it broke, and for clearly communicating its intent to players. It’s far from unanimous, but there’s relatively widespread, legitimate hope that Gearbox will, eventually, get it right.

Gearbox has also released a new bug fix patch for Risk of Rain 2 on PC; the console updates are expected to arrive over the coming week. Full patch notes for that one are below.

V1.3.5 Notes:

• Resolved a player reported issue that resulted in the spawn rate of elites being too high after stage 2.
• The Mul-T Sentry skin has been tweaked to eliminate a small spike seen and reported by some players
• Resolved a reported issue where the Voidling would not re-appear upon starting the second phase of its fight.
• False Son would have trouble using his ‘charged’ attack if your attack speed became extremely high. This has been resolved, so resume printing syringes at your leisure.
• As a connected client, some players reported that Seeker’s Spirit Punch had a chance to collide twice with the enemy and deal double damage. That has now been addressed.
• As a connected client, players reported that The False Son’s Boss fight would sometimes not show certain animations. He’s back to using those abilities properly.
• Players reported that on a certain version of Aphelian Sanctuary, a mysterious floating tree would spawn. The tree has been returned to the ground where it belongs.
• Players reported that the lightning on Prime Meridian would only ever target the Host in multiplayer sessions. The lightning will now attack everyone equally.
• Platforms for The False Son’s arena on Prime Meridian would sometimes not change for clients when moving between phases. They will now appear/disappear just as they would to the host.
• Resolved a reported issue that led to players sometimes not properly spawning in when entering cross play sessions.
• Players that use PlayStation controllers on PC reported to us that Xbox glyphs were being displayed instead. The correct glyphs will now be displayed.
• As a connected client, players reported that sometimes The False Son’s large boss health bar would not reappear after changing phases. It will now show back up for all players.
• Resolved a reported issue with the Prismatic Trial leaderboard not displaying any times.
• Players have reported a mysterious Xi Construct creature appearing in the new Aphelian Bulwark Ambry Variant. That monster has now been removed from the monster pool.
• Addressed a reported issue where the affliction stacks that Tonic gave you would display a place-holder description.
• Resolved an issue where – when fighting the False Son Boss with Artifact of Swarms – the Prime Meridian event achievement would unlock after only killing one of the bosses.
• Players who attempted to join lobbies reported to us that sometimes it would just not allow them to join and not tell them why. An issue has been resolved that made certain error messages not appear when joining lobbies. The most common of those was not receiving a message when a crossplay-enabled user attempted to join one without crossplay enabled.
• Resolved an issue that could sometimes trap players outside of The False Son’s boss room upon being resurrected by Seeker.
• When playing as Mul-T and using the Sentry skin, sometimes players would not receive the visual effect when frozen. You are once again able to turn Mul-T into an ice cube.
• Resolved an issue players reported where applying bleed with Noxious Thorns could make monsters turn on each other and ignore the player.
• Addressed another reported issue with Noxious Thorn where it would not correctly apply + 1 stack of another active debuff. It had sometimes only been applying its bleed stack.
• Resolved an issue where using Sojourn, Eccentric Vase, or Volcanic Egg could lock you out of viewing the False Son fight into or teleporting up to the platform.
• Players reported that the Wandering Vagrant’s homing orbs could sometimes turn invincible. That issue should now be addressed.