How to Unlock All Six New Alternate Skills in Risk of Rain 2's Hallowed Concepts

Risk of Rain 2's Hallowed Concepts update didn't just add a paid expansion full of new survivors and stages. Alongside it, developer Hopoo Games and publisher Gearbox Software shipped a free patch that gave six of the game's original survivors a brand-new alternate skill, each one locked behind its own in-run challenge. None of these six challenges require owning the Hallowed Concepts DLC, so every player who updates the base game can start chasing them today. The catch is that Hopoo buried the actual requirements inside a wall of patch notes rather than spelling them out character by character, which has left a lot of players staring at a locked loadout slot with no idea what triggered it. Here's exactly what each challenge asks for, confirmed against the official patch notes and the Risk of Rain 2 wiki's challenge listings.

What the Free Update Actually Changed

The Hallowed Concepts patch landed as a base-game update alongside the paid DLC, and its headline addition for non-DLC owners is a new "Karma" system plus six alternate skills, one each for Commando, Huntress, Acrid, Artificer, Engineer and REX. Every alternate skill is tied to a specific class challenge that has to be completed while playing as that survivor, and the skill only unlocks once the run ends in victory or, in two cases, once a specific mid-run objective is reached. None of the six challenges touch the Hallowed Concepts stages, bosses or items, so they're fully achievable on a completely free copy of Risk of Rain 2.

A few general rules apply across all six. The challenge has to be completed while playing the relevant survivor yourself, not a teammate in multiplayer. Difficulty, Artifacts and most mod settings don't block progress unless a challenge specifically calls for something incompatible, and several of these are easiest to chase solo so a careless teammate doesn't end the run before the objective is met.

It's also worth noting that none of the six unlock conditions are hidden behind a loading-screen tooltip or an in-game journal entry the way some older Risk of Rain 2 challenges are. Hopoo folded all of them straight into the patch notes as part of the Hallowed Concepts rollout, which is standard practice for this studio but means players who don't read patch notes in full are the ones most likely to stumble onto an unlock by accident and wonder what just happened. Checking your challenge log after finishing a run as any of the six affected survivors is the quickest way to confirm whether that run quietly satisfied one of them.

Commando: Sabotage and Huntress: Laser Cyclone

Commando's new Special, Sabotage, unlocks through the Commando: Retribution challenge. Turn the Karma option on at character select, then as Commando earn eight Karma stacks during the run before beating the final boss. Karma builds up through specific risky plays rather than passive time, so expect to spend a run or two learning what generates it before you can chain eight stacks into a single victory.

Huntress's new Secondary, Laser Cyclone, is a speed challenge rather than an endurance one. The Huntress: Tomb Raider challenge asks you to play as Huntress and obtain an Artifact from Bulwark's Ambry in 25 minutes or less. Bulwark's Ambry is the timed vault encounter that spawns on certain stages; feeding it enemy kills and item keys fast enough, and finding the encounter early in the run, is the real bottleneck. Prioritizing movement items and picking stages known to spawn the Ambry close to the start gives the cleanest shot at the clock.

Engineer: Laser Cutter and REX: Proliferation

Engineer's new Primary, Laser Cutter, has the simplest requirement of the six. The Engineer: Mad Scientist challenge just asks you to repair an Equipment Drone using an Escape Pod's Fuel Array while playing Engineer. Escape Pods occasionally appear as stage interactables with a Fuel Array item sitting inside; using that item on a damaged Equipment Drone rather than on yourself is the entire trick, and it can be done on almost any run without changing your build.

REX's new Utility, Proliferation, comes from the REX: Invasive Growth challenge: beat the game as REX while holding at least five different Lunar items, with Lunar Equipment also counting toward the total. The Bazaar Between Time, the shop that appears between stages, is the fastest place to buy multiple distinct Lunar items in one trip, since relying on random drops alone can take several runs to gather five unique ones before the final boss falls.

Artificer: Tectonic Blast and Acrid: Cloying Breath

Artificer's new Utility, Tectonic Blast, unlocks through Artificer: One Giant Leap: reach the final boss on the moon without activating a pillar. The moon stage's pillars are usually required to open the path to Mithrix, so this means using Artificer's own mobility, especially Flame Burst or Ion Surge, to climb or glide around them instead. It's one of the more technical challenges on this list and often takes several attempts to route correctly.

Acrid's new Special, Cloying Breath, comes from Acrid: Miracle: beat the game as Acrid after sequencing your items at least once. Item sequencing happens at a Shrine of Order, which rerolls your entire inventory into a single stack of one random item you're currently holding. Using a Shrine of Order at any point before the final victory, then finishing the run, satisfies the requirement, so it's largely a matter of remembering to interact with one when it appears.

Tips for Chasing All Six Without Burning Out

Because each challenge is tied to a different survivor, there's no way to knock out more than one per run. The fastest route is usually to pick off Mad Scientist and Tomb Raider first, since both can be completed early in a run and don't depend on reaching the final boss, before moving on to the three victory-condition challenges and finishing with One Giant Leap, which benefits most from practice on the moon stage specifically. Playing on Drizzle or Rainstorm difficulty removes a lot of the pressure that causes runs to end before a challenge objective is met, which matters more here than clearing time.

Hopoo's own Hallowed Concepts patch notes list the six challenges alongside the DLC's full feature set, including the Acolyte survivor and the new Karma-driven moon encounter, so players who do end up picking up the expansion will find Karma and the Shrine of Order used more deeply in Hallowed Concepts' own content. For now, though, all six alternate skills are sitting in the free update, waiting on nothing but the right in-run objective.