Voidling

Armor | 20 (Plus Adaptive Armor)

The **Voidling** is an alternate final boss in Risk of Rain 2, added in the *Survivors of the Void* expansion. It is encountered in the depths of the void after reaching .

## Boss Encounter

The battle with the Voidling has 3 phases, largely similar to one another, with the Voidling having three starting attacks and gaining one extra attack per phase.

### Phase 1

The Voidling will first appear once the player makes their way from the starting platform to the center ring of the Planetarium, attacking from the far side of the ring. It slowly walks around the ring throughout the fight.

#### Primary: Homing Swarm

The Voidling charges up for 2 seconds, then fires 5 multiple bursts of homing bullets every 0.5 seconds and a final end lag of 3 seconds. All of these durations scale with attack speed. Each burst contains 6 missiles fired in a 20º spread cone from the Voidling, homing in if a shot gets with 30m from a valid target. This attack can be very difficult to dodge, as hiding behind cover alone often isn't enough. Running directly towards the Voidling while dodging direct shots can be a good strategy, as near-misses are unlikely to curve sharply enough to deal damage.

Each homing missle travels at 70m/s and deals 30% damage with a proc coefficient of 1.0.

This skill has a cooldown of 10 seconds and holds 2 charges. The cooldown starts the moment the first burst of missiles is fired.

#### Secondary: Laser Burst

The Voidling charges for 1 second (scales with attack speed) and then fires a laser directly at its target 5 times at 0.4 second intervals and has a final end lag of 3 seconds. All of these durations scale with attack speed. Each laser explodes upon impact dealing 100% damage with a proc coefficient of 1.0 in a radius of 6m with sweet spot falloff. However, the last laser deals 200% and also leaves behind a lingering void pool which deals 80% damage with a proc coefficient of 0.5. It ticks 5 times per second for 45 seconds. The damaging patch can kill in mere seconds, so it is often necessary to find new cover after the attack finishes.

The individual missiles can be blocked by .

This skill has a cooldown of 10 seconds, which starts when the first laser is fired.

#### Utility: Sweeping Beam

The Voidling lowers itself to just above the ground for 2 seconds, charges a beam for another 2 seconds, and then fires a thick horizontal beam with a radius of 8m. The Voidling rotates for 8 seconds, effectively rotating two full times and the beam aims progressively lower as the Voidling rotates. The beam pierces through terrain, so mobility is necessary to dodge it rather than cover. Being underneath or above the Voidling is safe.

The beam has a range of 400m, deals 133.33% damage with a proc coefficient of 1.0, and ticks every 1/30th of a second in its path. If the player remains stationary, they can be hit 5 times by it as it swipes across once.

Once done, the attack has a 5 second end lag during which the Voidling stands up again.

This attack has a cooldown of 40 seconds, counting from when it activates it.

#### Behaviors

1. **Remain stationary**: the Voidling must be within 100m from its target. This behavior lasts for 2 seconds and cannot be chosen twice in a row.
2. **Use utility**: the Voidling must be within 200m from its target, have line of sight, and have less than 80% health.
3. **Use secondary**: the Voidling must be within 400m from its target and have less than 90% health.
4. **Use primary**: the Voidling must be within 400m from its target and have line of sight.
5. **Strafe**: the Voidling must be within 200m from its target. This behavior is active for 2 seconds.
6. **Chase**: no requirements. This behavior is also active for 2 seconds.

### Phase 2

The Voidling retreats into a void rift, and the Planetarium will fill with  of Void Fog. The player has to follow the Voidling through the void rift, which will lead to a small platforming challenge through the void. The void fog will constantly damage the player until they travel through another void rift at the end of the platforming segment, where they will find the Voidling in a randomly selected arena for the second phase. Falling off this section will simply teleport the player back to the start of the challenge, usually without incurring fall damage since the teleport trigger is not very far below the level.

Throughout this phase and the next, the Voidling will be supported by small monsters that have been captured in the Void, such as . In addition to attacking the player, these monsters are also hostile to the Voidling and vice versa, potentially drawing the Voidling's attention and luring away its homing attacks (although they likely won't last long under its onslaught).

In this phase the Voidling gains access to its special skill.

#### Special: Nullifier Black Hole

The Voidling rears up to nearly its full height for 3.43 seconds before opening up its entire body and emitting a telltale thunderous sound, revealing a nullifier implosion sphere similar to a  own death implosion. This attack is much larger, lasts 10 seconds, and at its apex has a radius of 50m. It also drags all of its enemies towards it with considerable force, which increases throughout the duration of the attack but does not scale with distance. Most deadly of all, ***it is instantly fatal on contact***.

Like other void implosions, this attack ignores  effects and  and can affect friendly creatures (for example, another Voidling if the Artifact of Swarms is enabled). Since it is a continuous attack that is fatal on contact, it also will kill the player again immediately after being revived by  or the , effectively ignoring extra life items unless the player died right before the attack ends, or they have many extra lives to stall out the attack's duration.

Strong movement speed is ideal for avoiding this attack, however it is also possible to get behind some terrain object so it gets put in the way of the attractive force.

This skill has a cooldown of 60 seconds, which starts the moment the black hole sphere appears.

#### Behaviors

The Voidling gains one new behavior, which supersedes the rest in terms of priority.

1. **Use special**: the Voidling must be within 500m from its target, have line of sight, and have less than 40% health.

### Phase 3

The Voidling again retreats into a void rift, and same as before, the Planetarium will fill with Void Fog. The player must give chase through another platforming challenge.

For the final phase, the Voidling will not clear the void fog in the arena, and instead constantly projects a bubble around itself with a radius of 150m, similar to the holdout zones in the  or . Anything outside this bubble, including other enemies, takes constant suffocation damage. If the Artifact of Swarms is active, the player must be inside the radius of *both* Voidlings' bubbles in order to avoid damage.

### Aftermath

After the Voidling is defeated, the Planetarium's air becomes safe again and a large purple portal will appear. Entering the portal ends the game with a "Fate Unknown" screen similar to , albeit with a purple icon instead of a blue one.

Do note that in spite of the ending message, finishing the run in this fashion neither counts as beating the game, nor obliterating, and will not give the player any of the related achievements, or unlocks for any difficulty. However the survivor will still go up a level in the Lunar Gamemode if accessed via the Glass Frog.

## Notes

* The Voidling has two weakpoints that  can take advantage of: one at the center of its eye and one on the back of its head.
* For Phases 2 and 3, the randomly selected arenas appear to be based on other environments in the game.
* A Voidling Ghost can be created on any phase if the  activates. If this occurs on the final phase, the ghost will project the same  effect that can still damage survivors, despite being on the same team. This can make it hazardous to get to the final portal if low on health, so it might be worth waiting for the ghost to die first.
* Entering the blue portal after phases 1 and 2 will trigger a huge burst of healing, capable of not only fully restoring a player's health but also completely filling their barrier if they have even a single .

## Tips

* Bringing lots of mobility items such as  and  is essential, as it will make both dodging the Voidling's attacks and chasing it through the platforming challenges easier. This is especially important for dodging its Nullifier Black Hole, particularly for short-range Survivors.
* If the player's total heath pool is reduced to 1 (Either from several Shaped Glass stacks, or from a really unlucky streak with Spinel Tonic debuffs), then they are functionally immune to the enhanced void fog, up to a certain point, as the health drain / damage ticks are percentage-based. You will still die from it if you spend too much time in the fog, as the percentage drain ramps up over time, eventually reaching the 100% threshold, which will deal the full 1 point of damage that kills the player.
* Multiple stacks of  can be highly effective at distracting Voidling and especially it's Homing Swarm Attack. The Void Allies spawned have large health pools which scale with enemy level, teleport to you if you are far away (thus allowing them to survive between phases), and spawn quickly with several stacks.
	+ The most reliable method to obtain the Zoeas is to bring a  and multiple yellow items to corrupt into the Void Locus, and kill a Void Devastator with the Tricorn.
	+ Interestingly, the Void Allies are not immune to the damage of the Void Fog.
* Due to the Voidling's immense height and the dangers of staying close to it, medium-range and melee Survivors will suffer against it. Long-range items and equipment are especially important for Survivors who lack ranged skills or the mobility required to get up to the Voidling's body.
	+ are unable to reach the damage point of the Voidling due to its height unless it rears downwards, putting him at a disadvantage.
* Voidling has a tendency to get stuck in one spot on the Abyssal Depths variant of , which can be exploited to one's advantage. However, this isn't 100% consistent.

## Lore

```
We almost got rid of it.

It was too massive, with too much weight.  It took up too much room, and was too dangerous.  We tried to massage it into its surroundings - we felt we had captured its essence well enough.  But its words beat into our minds and we weren't allowed to realize that it had been keeping us here.

We had begun spending all our days staring at it until it became formless to us.  Whispers of meaning with no words travelled through our ears and strung us up like a necklace of fools.  Totally mesmerized we sat around it like a campfire as it cultivated each of us with its cold embrace.  One by one we were scanned, and we were made to present all we had with us:  Feathers from local species, masks from strange spirits, abandoned metal scraps and rusty old equipment.  It examined each individually, its iris flexing mechanically as it traced the silhouette of every artifact.

For a moment I snapped out of it.  I felt fear.  I wanted to scream out, to raise my weapon, but my body was wholly resistant.  Suddenly, the others all turned their heads to face me from across the circle, their eyes wide and faces expressionless.  I felt a sharp pain in my chest and my neck stiffened.  After its final scan it vibrated out of existance, its atoms disseminating into the air.  We were left frozen husks around a campfire long since turned to ash.

We almost got rid of it.
```

## Version History

Survivors of the Void
* (Undocumented) Added New Monster: Voidling

## Trivia

* There is a unique ending associated with defeating the boss in the game's files, but it is currently unused.
* During the platforming challenges, it is possible to look over and see the other possible platforming challenges in the distance since all are part of the same level. It is not possible to reach them, however, as straying too far from the current one will simply teleport the player back to the start of the challenge, just like falling off.
* In keeping with the deep-sea theme of the Void and the monsters related to it, the Voidling's visual design seems to draw inspiration from ocean life, especially crustaceans. The Voidling in particular bears striking resemblance to the Japanese spider crab (*Macrocheira kaempferi*).
* Although the Voidling appears to walk, it is actually programmed as a flying enemy. Its main body flies around the arena, and its legs are purely aesthetic and simply "stand" on the nearest terrain; they even lack hitboxes entirely. This includes standing on the bounding boxes of the arenas.
* The Voidling performs its full spawning animation on every phase. However, this is only possible to see on the second and third phases if the player completes the platforming challenges extremely quickly.
* Much like Mithrix, the three stages of this battle are actually three separate creatures with different scripting that just use the same model.
* By going straight from Stage 1 to the Bazaar Between Time, followed by Void Fields, Void Locus, and finally The Planetarium, Voidling can be reached as early as Stage 4, making Voidling the ending that can be reached in the fewest possible stages. Note that this is usually not actually the fastest possible victory you can achieve, as breaching the Cell Vents in Void Fields and charging the Deep Void Signals in Void Locus takes a while, and killing the Voidling usually takes longer than Mithrix too, so winning via defeating Mithrix is almost always faster than winning via defeating the Voidling.

1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArfnKisfApU