Remnant 2 is a hard game, with big damage, tough bosses, and required mastery of the dodge roll to survive on Veteran. On Remnant 2’s Apocalypse difficulty, having a strong build is fully required, lest you spend days staring at the same boss fog.
Apocalypse requires a good mixture of damage and defense to make things reasonable. Let’s go over some of the best options for your build so you can maximize your chances of survival.
Best options for Apocalypse mode in Remnant 2
Apocalypse difficulty in Remnant 2 amps up enemy damage, aggressiveness, and health. A strong mixture of damage reduction and damage increase is necessary if you want to work your way through the bosses. While there are several perfectly valid builds to rock if you want to get through encounters, here is our favorite for the current metagame.
We recommend getting your Archetypes to level 10 and Traits to the new cap of 85 before dedicating yourself to an Apocalypse run.
Best archetypes for Apocalypse
The Ritualist is the best archetype for Apocalypse in Remnant 2. This is largely due to the array of incredibly strong Status Effect Damage boosters currently available in Remnant 2. Being able to quickly apply up to six status effects is a huge boon for Apocalypse, so we’re going to focus on that quality of the build.
Your secondary archetype should be focused on defense. For that reason, the Archon is our choice. The Archon’s Reality Rune is fantastic for dealing with out-of-boss combats, slowing down elite enemies for easy kills. In boss fights, swap to Chaos Gate or Havoc Form, depending on whether you need damage or add control.
Other secondary archetypes worth considering include the Handler and Summoner for the free bodies on the field, as well as the surprising amount of Skill Damage that each provides.
Best Traits for Apocalypse
The best traits for Apocalypse difficulty are defensive, improving your chance of survival while providing minor boosts in damage through utility bonuses. Here are a few big winners:
- Siphoner (from the Dormant Facility Quarantine Event on N’Erud) for lifesteal.
- Barkskin (from the Meidra’s Sorrow Quiz) for Damage Reduction.
- Vigor (Core) for Health.
- Swiftness (Explorer Archetype Trait) for Movement Speed.
- Amplitude (from Labyrinth Wave Fight) for Area of Effect.
- Expertise (Core) for Skill Cooldowns.
- Spirit (Core) for Mod Power Generation.
- Fortify (Engineer Archetype Trait) for Armor Effectiveness.
- Strong Back (Challenger Archetype Trait) for Encumbrance Decreasing.
While staying alive is a good idea, Expertise is strong enough to keep your skill consistent. This is especially important if this is your first Apocalypse clear and you don’t have access to Devoured Loop yet.
Armor Traits are a good idea so you can cap out your Armor as cleanly as possible. Getting upwards of 85 armor can let you survive big hits from bosses, giving you a second chance to clear enemies. Having 60 armor for medium rolls can also be enough, though you will be one-shot with this much armor at times, even with strong Armor Effectiveness.
Best Weapons for Apocalypse
For our Ritualist build, the best weapons are Merciless, Enigma, and the Abyssal Hook.
Apocalypse weapons have utility, with one weapon being your boss killer, one being area-of-effect clear, and one being your emergency escape button. Normally, these roles belong to your Long Gun, Hand Gun, and Melee, respectively. However, specific builds can swap these roles as required to better-fit boss weapons and needed mods.
This build follows this overall format perfectly. Merciless shreds bosses and also applies the very useful Bleed Status Effect. Enigma gives your foes Overloaded, which is very handy, but more importantly chains lightning between targets. This makes Enigma critical for swarming bosses and dealing with ads through the relatively good impact that Overloaded has. The Abyssal Hook has great stagger and, through charged attacks, can generate even more knockback. You’re only whipping out your melee weapon during emergencies for this build, so you want the knockback to apply consistently.
Other winners for this build include the Sparkfire Shotgun, Nebula, Hellfire, and the Wrathbringer. The Wrathbringer is especially useful if your build utilizes the Atonement Fold since it can easily reach max damage numbers through Awakening.
This build uses two weapons with mods already applied. If you want to use weapons like the Sparkfire Shotgun which has no inherit mods, seek options like the Ring of Spears or the Knight Guard for mob clearing, or the Bore for high single-target Weakspot damage.
Best Mutators for Apocalypse
Our Mutators of choice include Momentum for the Merciless, Maelstrom for the Enigma, and Shield Breaker for the Abyssal Hook. Momentum improves Critical Hit Rate, which is very good for our build. Maelstrom improves Elemental Damage based on negative status effects, turning Enigma into a very effective shredder whenever you cast Miasma. The Shield Breaker gives you just a bit of shield, which can often be the difference between life and death.
Critical Hits are the source of most of our damage on Apocalypse, as relying solely on Status Effects can be tricky. Merciless’s solid rate of fire and very high damage work perfectly here. You can instead rock a defensive Mutator, such as Timeweave, if you’re worried about your health. Merciless’s Mod has very low Mod Power, making it great for Mod Spam Mutators.
Maelstrom and Shield Breaker aren’t as easily replaceable. The bonus damage from Maelstrom gets ridiculous, boosting your weapon’s damage by upwards of 40 percent alongside a 20 percent boost to Status Damage. Shield Breaker is some shield for you, great when you’re surrounded by enemies and trying to make one final push to freedom by flailing for your life.
Best Amulets for Apocalypse
For Apocalypse difficulty, we’ve been seeing a lot of success using the Whispering Marble Amulet. This Amulet provides three stacks of Bulwark, providing an 18 percent bonus to Damage Reduction, as well as giving you three percent damage per stack of Bulwark.
By default, this amulet is fairly passable. Bulwark is usually a fairly situational ability, requiring you to do things like take damage or deal melee damage to get easy stacks. This Amulet provides a flat, permanent plus-three to your Bulwark stacks. This means you can afford to go light on Bulwark in your build.
However, the reason we really like this amulet is because one of the Rings we’re going to utilize, the Dried Clay Ring, gives a Bulwark stack and provides damage based on your Bulwark stacks. The Whispering Marble and Dried Clay Rings provide 22 percent Damage Reduction and 25 percent All Damage. That’s pretty impressive offense and defense simultaneously.
Honorable mentions go to the Energized Neck Coil and Death-Soaked Idol. These amulets are strictly damage-oriented, but they each have some very awkward limitations. The Neck Coil is a bit finicky, not activating all the time and having a hard-set internal cooldown, making it more useful for clearing small foes than slaying bosses. The Death Stained Idol can reach a massive 25 percent of All Damage but suffers from requiring there to be five mobs alive nearby. That’s a fair shot on Apocalypse, but offering no defenses can be risky.
Best Rings for Apocalypse
The best Rings for Apocalypse difficulty require high damage or high-impact defense. So, we recommend getting the Dried Clay Ring, Ahanae Crystal, Black Cat Band, and the Devoured Loop.
We discussed the Dried Clay Ring above, but the Ahanae Crystal is the entire reason to rock Ritualist. The Ahanae Crystal, from completing a Hardcore Yaesha on your account, provides a five percent bonus to All Damage per debuff on the target. With no cap. This means your Ring can get 30 to 40 percent damage by itself. Some Amulets wish they could reach this damage percentage.
Our other damage option is the Devoured Loop, a ring with a small chance to refresh your skills on a critical hit. This can let you spam Miasma, the strongest Ritualist skill for this build, but also makes you take 10 percent bonus damage. The Black Cat Band helps to prevent you from dying through one-shots but can be replaced with additional damage rings such as the Shadow of Misery if things are too easy for you.
Alternatively, you can play with the Atonement Fold. This ring deals damage to you consistently, meaning it combos perfectly with the Hardcore Metal Band for free five Bulwark. It can also work alongside the Alchemy Stone for free and exceptional lifesteal.
Best Relic for Apocalypse
For Apocalypse difficulty, the Resonating Heart tends to be the strongest relic in Remnant 2. Healing as combat begins for the Relic bonuses of both Ritualist and Archon is a great idea, and the overhealed health means that, when you get hit, you’ll regenerate quite a lot of additional health over time.
The Enlarged Heart is another great one. If you survive a hit in Apocalypse, the double Relic speed and nearly full heal will often be what you need to get right back into the fray. You’ll probably swap options based on the fight you’re in.
Relic Fragments of choice are almost all chosen to boost damage. Ranged Crit Chance, Elemental Damage, and Ranged Damage carried our build, though the percentages are small enough that things like Armor Effectiveness can be the difference maker.
