Risk of Rain 2 Acolyte and Enforcer: Every Skill and Unlock

Updated 2026-10-28: Added how many N'tormat Pages the Shrine of Descent needs for each party size, the second route in through Neural Sanctum, where to find the fallen Acolyte, which items she accepts, and the challenges that unlock both survivors' alternate skills.

TL;DR: Acolyte unlocks through A Broken Ritual in the Soulbound Threshold hidden realm. Her passive turns healing into attack speed, her primary has quickstrike charges, and Sacrifice builds seven Convictions into a Litany. Enforcer blocks everything in front of his shield, parries with good timing, and drops a Rally Point beacon that gives the team barrier and counts as a holdout for items.

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How to unlock Acolyte in Risk of Rain 2

Acolyte's unlock is the challenge A Broken Ritual, which the game describes as "Revive the survivor within Soulbound Threshold." Getting there takes five steps:

1. Collect N'tormat Pages. A Shrine of Compulsion, the Ancient Sepulcher in The Wake and the reward chest of the N'kuhana Trials each hand every player a Page, and your first Page brings the N'tormat book with it.
2. Find the Shrine of Descent. It can appear when a stage starts, at a random spot, but only if no major catastrophe has happened yet in the run and the team holds enough Pages. The bar grows with the party: 1 Page solo, 4 for two players, 9 for three, 16 for four. Pray to it before you start the Teleporter. It's free, and the message reads "The soul-binding trial awaits..."
3. Survive the Soul-binding trial. After the usual Teleporter event, the Teleporter overcharges while an extra Stygian elite boss attacks. When the overcharge finishes and that boss is dead, a Ritual Portal to Soulbound Threshold opens 10 to 40 m from the Teleporter.
4. Beat both phases of the Anima Harvester. A ritual timer starts at 210 seconds and each of four arena challenges adds 65. If it runs out, every player dies, and Dio's Best Friend can't prevent it. Our bosses guide covers the fight itself.
5. Revive the fallen Acolyte. Give her one permanent item tagged Healing or Food. Medkit is the common choice, but Energy Drink, Mocha, Topaz Brooch and Bison Steak all count, and so do higher tiers such as Harvester's Scythe, Leeching Seed or Aegis. Temporary and Ethereal copies don't, and neither does equipment or an item disabled by Hex of Loss.

She isn't lying on the floor when you arrive. During the ritual she hangs above the altar, and the wiki notes that the exhausted Acolyte appears once the Anima Harvester is beaten. A player who nearly missed her put it this way: "they're hanging up on a sacrificial type altar and you rescue them by doing the boss rush mode." Another said the body is easier to spot "by the green wispy lines coming up from it going into the sky."

There's a second way in. Casting the Reincarnation Page inside the sacrifice zone on Neural Sanctum sends the team to Soulbound Threshold, as long as a player holding the N'tormat stands in the ritual circle. That route closes once the ritual has been completed in the run.

If the shrine never shows up, count Pages first. Sixteen between four players is a lot, and Shredded Pages don't count. A run allows one major catastrophe, so the trial can't happen twice. The shrine also hides well: one player in a Shrine of Descent thread said they sometimes spend minutes looking for it, "especially on larger maps like Helminth, but it's always there."

The unlock goes to everyone in the lobby who owns Hallowed Concepts. Our stages guide covers the hidden realm in more detail.

How to unlock Acolyte's and Enforcer's alternate skills

Seven of the alternates in the tables below sit behind class challenges, which our achievements guide lists alongside every other survivor's. N'kuhana's Favor isn't tied to any of them.

A few details save runs. For Hit List, an elite counts as the same type as its normal version, and progress resets when the run ends. Not Even Close doesn't care what keeps the Lemurian in the air, only that it touched the ground first. For Burning Lead, only Trenchbroom shots fired with the shield up count, and Indomitable means about three seconds of unbroken contact with the laser. As one r/riskofrain player put it, "her abilities are some of the easiest of any character to unlock." The skin challenges are in our Hallowed Concepts skins guide.

Risk of Rain 2 Acolyte skills, one by one

Acolyte is a glaive fighter. Gearbox's September 14 reveal called her "a close-range glaive-wielding Survivor who can wield powerful combos, but not without cost," and the cost turned out to be her health bar.

A frame from Gearbox's Dev Diary #4 clip of the primary, labelled "Blade Slice." Image: Gearbox, Steam news.

N'kuhana's Grace. All healing, regeneration included, goes into recoverable health instead of her health bar, along with 40% of the damage she takes. Skill hits send back healing orbs that spend that pool. The pool decays by 1% of her max health per second, so the attack speed it grants only lasts while she keeps fighting.

N'kuhana's Favor. The alternative drops the pool entirely. Every heal grants a stack of attack speed, and her regeneration converts into permanent stacks. This is the passive that turns Leeching Seed into a damage item, which our Risk of Rain 2 Acolyte build is built around.

Blade Slice. Holding primary and pressing Jump or Sprint spends a charge on a quickstrike: an uppercut or a forward lunge that hits three times at base attack speed, up to nine hits with enough attack speed. The swing itself always takes 0.85 seconds, so attack speed adds hits rather than speed.

Bola Throw and Soul Jar. Bola stuns its targets and pulls their souls out as inert copies for 12 seconds. Damage dealt to a soul also lands on its owner, so hitting both at once doubles your damage. Soul Jar's Haunt can't kill anything, but each haunted enemy that dies releases seeking wights.

Sacrifice and the Litany. Sacrifice gives two Convictions when it lands and one more on a kill, up to seven. At seven it becomes her Litany, which spends one Conviction about every 1.3 seconds. Dark Summons turns her into the Anima Harvester, with its own four skills (Torrential Slash, Harrowing Chains, Soul Storm and Banish) and health that can't drop below 1. Anima Echo keeps her normal form, repeats her strikes, and lets her keep casting Sacrifice, so cooldown items like Alien Head can stretch it indefinitely.

GODEEPER: Which items turn Acolyte's odd healing into damage, and which passive to run. Risk of Rain 2 Acolyte Build: Best Items and Loadout →

Enforcer's skills: Trenchbroom, Steel Protection, Rally Point

Gearbox's Enforcer card from Dev Diary #4. Image: Gearbox, Steam news.

Gearbox pitched Enforcer as "the immovable object himself," and his kit delivers. He's slow behind the shield, very hard to kill, and his special doubles as team support.

Steel Protection. While the shield is up he moves at about a third of his walking speed and his primary changes form. Reactivate it to bash: hits blocked just before or after the bash are parried, and parried attacks go back at the attacker for six times the damage of the blocked hit. Projectiles fly back; other hits return as lightning.

A frame from Gearbox's Steel Protection clip in Dev Diary #4, with "Parried!" pop-ups on screen. Image: Gearbox, Steam news.

Surge Protection. The alternative trades the parry for barrier. Each blocked hit gives barrier worth half its damage, and when the stance ends he consumes all his barrier and shield, from any source, in an explosion whose damage grows with the amount spent. Barrier items feed it directly.

Rally Point. The beacon has a 30 m radius and lasts 16 seconds. Allies inside get barrier worth 20% of Enforcer's max health when it lands, plus 10% more for every kill made inside. It also switches on Lepton Daisy, Warbanner and Corpse Lily, items most survivors only use during Teleporter events. That's why the r/riskofrain Let's talk Enforcer thread is full of players rescuing scrapped whites; Amythosx_osrs liked that Gearbox "found a way to give relevance to some commonly scrapped items like banner, lepton daisy, and gunner turrets."

Big Man. The passive is a curiosity. Landing faster than 35 m/s stuns enemies around him, but it doesn't protect him from fall damage. Rally Point and Crash Point's dive do.

The October 14 hotfix

Gearbox's Hallowed Concepts hotfix for PC targeted two launch bugs: "Enemies spawning Out-of-Bounds on Soulbound Threshold" and "Enforcer clipping through terrain when using some abilities." The first one mattered for Acolyte, because Soulbound Threshold is where she unlocks. Gearbox warned that rare cases of Enforcer being "forced through the ground" may remain until a bigger patch, and console fixes were to follow.

What players are saying, and our take

Before launch, the r/riskofrain thread on Dev Diary #4 worried about Eclipse; u/Kangaturtle wrote: "Boy I hope Acolytes playstyle isn't completely nerfed by eclipse 8 curse." After launch, the conversation moved to her passive. In a thread on playing her well, Trisce called the alternative passive "outright far better than the default." On Enforcer, Nisha-XI said he "somehow managed to remove Railgunner from that spot" as their favorite survivor.

Our take: start with Enforcer. He's unlocked, his shield forgives mistakes, and his Rally Point makes any co-op group sturdier. Acolyte is the higher ceiling once she's unlocked, but she asks you to rethink every healing item, and the unlock itself means beating a timed hidden-realm boss. Our best survivors ranking places both against the rest of the roster.

The official reveal shows both kits in under two minutes: Acolyte's name card at 0:10, Sacrifice at 0:15 and Bola Throw at 0:21, then Enforcer's card at 1:07 and Rally Point at 1:22.

GODEEPER: The items that fit both survivors, plus all 11 Hallowed items ranked. Risk of Rain 2 Item Tier List 2026: Best Items for Every Run →

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you unlock Acolyte in Risk of Rain 2? Complete A Broken Ritual: beat both phases of the Anima Harvester in the Soulbound Threshold hidden realm, then revive the fallen Acolyte by giving her one permanent Healing or Food item, such as a Medkit. It unlocks for every player in the lobby who owns Hallowed Concepts.

Do you have to unlock Enforcer? No. Enforcer is unlocked by default once you own the Hallowed Concepts DLC. Only his four alternate skills sit behind challenges, such as parrying a Wandering Vagrant's Supernova for Surge Protection.

Why won't the Shrine of Descent spawn? The team needs enough N'tormat Pages: 1 solo, 4 for two players, 9 for three and 16 for four, and Shredded Pages don't count. It also never appears once the run's one major catastrophe has happened, and it spawns at a random spot, so search large maps.

What does Acolyte's Conviction do? Sacrifice gives two Convictions when it lands and one more on a kill. At seven, Sacrifice becomes her Litany: Dark Summons turns her into the Anima Harvester, or Anima Echo repeats her slashes. Each Litany spends one Conviction about every 1.3 seconds, so a full bar lasts nine seconds.

What is Enforcer's primary attack? Trenchbroom, a six-shell slug gun whose last shell is a guaranteed critical hit after a full reload. The alternative is Shrapnel Grenade. Both change form while his shield is raised: Trenchbroom fires piercing pellets and the grenade splits into bomblets.

When did Risk of Rain 2 Hallowed Concepts release? Hallowed Concepts released on Steam on October 8, 2026, and the Steam store lists it at $14.99. A PC hotfix on October 14 fixed enemies spawning out of bounds in Soulbound Threshold and Enforcer clipping through terrain.

Related Reading

• Risk of Rain 2 Items and Artifacts Guide: All 20 Artifacts: every item tier and artifact, for building around either survivor.
• Risk of Rain 2 Complete Guide: survivors, items and bosses in one hub.
• Risk of Rain 2 Survivors Guide: every current survivor ranked.
• Risk of Rain 2 Achievements Guide: challenges and survivor unlocks.
• Risk of Rain 2 Co-op Guide: where Enforcer's beacon earns its keep.
• 11 Best Risk of Rain 2 Mods: Thunderstore picks from the modding scene Gearbox recruited its new survivor team from.

References

• Risk of Rain: Hallowed Concepts is Available Now!: launch notes, October 8, 2026
• Hallowed Concepts Hotfix: PC hotfix, October 14, 2026
• Hallowed Concepts: Dev Diary #4 - Acolyte and Enforcer: first skill names
• Survivor Double Feature - Acolyte and Enforcer Reveal: first reveal
• Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts on Steam: DLC store page, developer and publisher
• Acolyte and Enforcer on the Risk of Rain 2 Wiki: skill numbers
• A Broken Ritual on the Risk of Rain 2 Wiki: unlock steps and accepted items
• Shrine of Descent and Soulbound Threshold on the Risk of Rain 2 Wiki: Page requirement, Soul-binding trial, Neural Sanctum route
• Challenges on the Risk of Rain 2 Wiki: alternate skill unlocks
• Survivor reveal video and Dev Diary #4 video: official Risk of Rain channel