Risk of Rain 2 (ROR2): How To Get and Use Brittle Crown (Lunar Gold Guide 2025)

Brittle Crown is one of the most volatile lunar items in Risk of Rain 2. It can shower you with gold every time you deal damage, or it can wipe your entire wallet the moment you take a big hit. Getting the item is easy if you know where to look, but using it well takes some understanding of how its gold mechanics scale with difficulty, stages, and damage taken. This guide breaks down how to get Brittle Crown, how it actually works behind the scenes, and when it’s worth picking up in your runs.

Also Read: Arc Raiders: Where To Find Voltage Convertors

What Is Brittle Crown in Risk of Rain 2?

Brittle Crown is a Lunar (blue) utility item in Risk of Rain 2. Like most lunar items, it gives a strong benefit with a big drawback attached.

Core effect (current version):

• On hit:
  • Every time you damage an enemy, there is a 30% chance to gain gold.
  • The amount of gold scales with time via the game’s difficulty coefficient and is based on a percentage of a Small Chest’s price.
• On taking damage:
  • You lose gold equal to the percentage of your max HP lost (per hit).
  • At higher stacks, both the gold gained and lost scale up linearly.

In other words:

If you play well and avoid getting hit, Brittle Crown turns your damage into a constant stream of gold. If you get hit a lot, it can drain your wallet almost instantly.

With the Survivors of the Void era changes, the gold you lose is not deleted from the game anymore – it goes to the enemy that hit you, and you can earn it back by killing them.

How To Get Brittle Crown in ROR2

Brittle Crown is unlocked by default, so you don’t need to complete any challenge or achievement. You just need Lunar Coins and access to Lunar Pods / the Bazaar Between Time.

1. From Lunar Pods on normal stages

During regular stages, you’ll sometimes find Lunar Pods instead of normal chests:

• They look like blue, cracked pods instead of the usual chest designs.
• Opening a Lunar Pod costs 1 Lunar Coin.
• When you open one, it spawns a random lunar item, which can be Brittle Crown.

You can’t control which lunar item you get from normal pods, so this is pure RNG.

2. From Lunar Pods in the Bazaar Between Time (Lunar Buds)

The most reliable way to target Brittle Crown is through the Bazaar Between Time, the hidden blue shop realm.

Step 1: Open a Blue Portal

To reach the Bazaar Between Time, you need a Blue Portal at the teleporter:

• Spend 1 Lunar Coin at a Newt Altar hidden in the stage, or
• Let a Blue Portal spawn naturally (small base chance; this chance gets lower each time you use one).

When you see the message “A blue orb has appeared”, finish the teleporter event and enter the Blue Portal.

Step 2: Use the Lunar Pods in the Bazaar

Inside the Bazaar Between Time:

• There are five Lunar Pods lined up, called Lunar Buds.
• Each one shows a specific lunar item floating above it.
• Each pod costs 2 Lunar Coins instead of 1.

If you see Brittle Crown above one of these pods, you can directly buy it. If it’s not there:

• You can spend another Lunar Coin on the Lunar Shop Refresher (a blue, spinning object in the Bazaar) to reroll the shop and Lunar Pods.

This is the most consistent way to intentionally grab Brittle Crown if you’re willing to spend coins.

3. Using Artifact of Command

If you activate the Artifact of Command, enemies drop item “essences” instead of random items, and you choose what each essence becomes.

• When a Lunar essence drops (from a Lunar Pod or certain sources), you can manually select Brittle Crown from the lunar item list.
• This still costs you Lunar Coins for the Lunar Pod / Bazaar purchase, but you remove the randomness of which lunar item you receive.

4. Other niche ways Brittle Crown appears

With Eulogy Zero (lunar item that lets items randomly transform into lunar items) and certain modifiers, monsters can sometimes roll into holding Brittle Crown themselves in special modes like Void Fields, Simulacrum, or with the Artifact of Evolution.

That doesn’t give you the item directly, but it can:

• Make enemy rewards spike (since their Brittle Crown gold affects reward payouts).
• Create weird “gold ping-pong” interactions in long, late-game runs.

How Brittle Crown Works (Numbers & Mechanics)

Here’s a breakdown of what the item actually does under the hood.

Gold gain on hit

From the main wiki math:

• Each time you deal damage, Brittle Crown rolls a 30% proc.
• On a successful proc, you gain:
  • Gold equal to 8% of a Small Chest’s cost, multiplied by the difficulty coefficient, per stack.
• This means:
  • The later in the run you are (harder difficulty, higher stage), the more gold each proc gives.
  • Stacking multiple Brittle Crowns multiplies this income.

You’ll see coins flying out of enemies when it procs, but the visual effect always shows small coins even if the actual gold gain is high.

Gold loss on taking damage

Every time you take damage:

• The game calculates two values:
  1. Percentage loss:
     • % of your max HP lost from that hit × your current gold
  2. Flat loss:
     • Gold equal to the raw damage taken (scaled to gold value)
• Brittle Crown then subtracts whichever number is higher.

Example (simplified):

• You have 1000 HP, 2000 gold, and 1 Brittle Crown.
• You take 50% of your max HP in one hit (500 damage).
  • Percentage loss: 50% of 2000 = 1000 gold.
  • Flat loss (depending on scaling): suppose it evaluates to less than 1000 gold.
• You lose 1000 gold in a single hit.

That’s why a single mistake in mid/late game can wipe out most of your money.

Survivors of the Void “buff”

Originally, the gold you lost just disappeared. With the Survivors of the Void balance change, that lost gold now gets transferred to the enemy that hit you instead of vanishing. If you kill that enemy, you can earn the gold back through normal gold-on-kill drops.

So:

• Early versions: Brittle Crown could literally zero out your gold forever.
• Now: the gold becomes a sort of temporary “loan” to the enemy, which you can reclaim by killing them.

It’s still risky, but less punishing than before.

When Brittle Crown Is Good (And When It Isn’t)

Early-game snowball (Stages 1–3)

Brittle Crown shines in early stages:

• Enemies hit you for low absolute damage.
• Chest prices are still affordable.
• Extra gold lets you open more chests quickly, giving you a huge item lead.

If you’re confident in dodging, you can turn one or two Brittle Crowns into a massive early lead, especially combined with good AoE damage.

Best survivors for Brittle Crown

Brittle Crown is strongest on survivors who:

• Play at range and dodge well.
• Don’t rely heavily on self-damage mechanics.

Great pairings:

• Huntress – Constant hits with homing attacks, excellent mobility.
• Railgunner – High precision burst; ideal for not getting hit.
• Commando, Bandit, MUL-T – Good kiting potential with decent range, depending on player skill.

Situational but interesting:

• Engineer – His turrets do get the gold-on-hit and gold loss effects, but they gain/lose gold separately from you, and they can’t spend gold, so the item is mostly wasted on them unless you’re playing around gold-based equipment.

Bad pairings:

• REX – Self-damage abilities count as getting hit, which can shred your gold whenever you spend HP on skills. This combination is often called out as run-ending.
• Any melee survivor (Loader/Acrid, etc.) if you’re not very confident in avoiding hits; one bad crowd or elite can erase your gold.

Mid to late-game (after first loop)

As runs get longer:

• Enemies start dealing huge chunks of your HP in a single hit.
• Your gold count is much higher (tens of thousands).
• Losing gold based on % HP lost becomes extremely punishing.

Result:

• You might gain a few hundred gold per proc…
• …then lose 10k+ in a single hit.

Most players consider Brittle Crown good early, dangerous later. It becomes a liability once you have enough items that gold isn’t your main bottleneck anymore.

Best Brittle Crown Synergies & Combos

1. The Crowdfunder

The Crowdfunder is equipment that fires bullets continuously, draining gold per shot but scaling damage with how long you fire it.

With Brittle Crown:

• Each hit has a 30% chance to generate gold.
• As long as you keep hitting enemies and avoid getting hit, Crowdfunder can almost pay for itself, or even turn a profit.

This combo basically turns your gold into a sustain beam that feeds itself.

2. Shrine of Blood plays

Shrine of Blood trades a percentage of your HP for gold. Brittle Crown interacts with this in a special way:

• The gold you gain from the shrine isn’t counted when calculating Brittle Crown’s gold loss for that hit.
• Under the right conditions (fullCombinedHealth vs current gold), you can use Shrines of Blood without losing money overall, and in some setups, still profit.

This is very math-heavy and niche, but it’s a way advanced players squeeze even more value out of Brittle Crown.

3. Fireworks & chest-spam builds

Community discussions mention builds where you stack Will-o’-the-wisp, AtG, Sticky Bomb, Warbanner, and especially Bundle of Fireworks: opening a single chest causes a huge burst of explosions that clear waves and generate tons of gold.

Brittle Crown accelerates the early gold loop, helping you reach that “open everything instantly” feeling sooner. This is more of a synergy with “gold snowball” as a whole than a direct interaction.

Practical Tips: Should You Take Brittle Crown?

If you’re hovering over Brittle Crown in a run, ask yourself:

1. What stage am I on?
   • Stage 1–3 and still building items? The risk can be worth it.
   • Deep into a loop with thousands of gold? It’s usually a bad idea.
2. What survivor am I playing?
   • Ranged, mobile, confident at dodging: more likely to pay off.
   • Melee or self-damage heavy (REX): it can ruin your run.
3. Do I need more gold right now?
   • If the map is packed with unopened chests and shrines, Brittle Crown can fuel a big power spike.
   • If you already have strong items and not many things left to buy, the downside outweighs the benefits.
4. Do I have crowd control & AoE?
   • More hits on more targets = more gold procs.
   • Single-target-only builds don’t gain as much value.

Simple rule of thumb:

Take Brittle Crown early on ranged survivors when you can play safe and want to snowball. Avoid it late game, on REX, or when you’re already rich and getting hit a lot.

FAQ

Is Brittle Crown worth picking up?

• Yes, early-game if you can avoid damage and want fast gold to open chests.
• No, late-game or on survivors that get hit frequently or use HP for abilities.

Does Brittle Crown stack?

Yes. Each additional Brittle Crown:

• Increases the gold gained per proc.
• Increases the gold lost percent or flat amount per hit.

Stacking is very risky unless you are extremely confident in avoiding damage.