True Rogue mode was introduced to Rogue Legacy 2 as part of the Swan Song update and has rapidly become loathed by achievement completionists. It is incredibly difficult, and even highly skilled RL2 players will notice that the difficulty can vary between Extremely Challenging and Basically Impossible based exclusively on how unlucky you get with Biome order and whether the boss Estuary spawns as a Prime or with a much less brutal Commander buff.

Without further refinement from the developers this mode will likely be played exclusively to get the Rogue Rogue Legacy achievement. This guide aims to offer tips and tricks to make that process less painful.

Since the writing of this guide, game updates have been rolled out that make True Rogue mode more forgiving... sort of.


The biome spawn changes should make it easier to fish for an early biome, the additional Soul Steal rune will help with sustain if you aren't able to find a health-giving Relic, and the guaranteed Commander Estuaries will help early in the run. Unfortunately, you can no longer hope for a non-Prime fourth boss, meaning you are now guaranteed to move straight from a Prime Estuary into the penultimate fight without any healing. Cellar Door giveth, Cellar Door taketh away.

Even more important for the savvy achievement hunter is this update:
Make use of this benefit to cut enemy damage and health in half again and go get that achievement! All else in this guide remains accurate to the latest version.

If you take nothing else from this guide it should be this: You can get the Rogue Rogue Legacy achievement with House Rules enabled. Turn them on, even if you are an experienced RL2 player who has refused them in the past. Using at minimum the recommended House Rules settings below take True Rogue mode from an exercise in infinite frustration to something feasibly achievable by most players that have at least some familiarity with the Prime Estuaries, even if it still may take a few attempts.

In each Biome you will stumble across a special room with a brand new, mysterious Master Relic: The Broken Medallion. Most players will assume you must pick up these Medallions and take their associated Resolve cost in order to beat True Rogue. It's a trap. Ignore them. Collecting these medallions not only reduces the number of other Relics you can collect, they dramatically increase the difficulty of the final two bosses of True Rogue mode. Your reward? A Gold trophy instead of a Silver trophy and the exact same achievement. Ditch the medallions, achievement hunter!

In normal mode, the base HP and Mana of each character class are quickly made obsolete by gear and castle upgrades. It just doesn't matter as much that your Astromancer has a 40% reduction in HP if she still starts with a few thousand!

In True Rogue mode HP is a precious commodity. The only ways to increase it are risky Blessings of Life (the poison apple), the Gnawed Bone relic, and the Demeter's Trial cursed relic -- all of which scale off your base HP. Furthermore, all characters are Contrarian, so you can reroll until you get a weapon you like on a character with good base stats.

For these reasons, make your life easier and choose Barbarian or Boxer if you can. Both start with 100% of base HP and have Passives that will be useful through your entire True Rogue run. Absolutely avoid glass cannon classes like Astromancer or Ronin. You'll have enough trouble staying alive through the final set of bosses, you don't need to be doing it with a couple hundred max HP.

The key decision points of True Rogue come in Relic Rooms. Relics are the only way to increase your DPS and survivability beyond the absolutely pathetic base, giving you a prayer of doing away with a Prime Estuary before you mess up a dodge and they turn you into chunky salsa.

Even with House Rules in effect reducing your Resolve hit by 50% you will inevitably run out by the end of True Rogue, so making good decisions on which Relics to take (and sometimes which Relics to ignore) is very important.

• War Drum - War Drum is a staple of normal mode and only gets better in True Rogue. It serves as a pure damage boost with no downside that will continue to scale through your entire run. Always get it if you see it.
  
• Tattered Rope - In a mode all about stacking Relics, netting 50 Resolve is always going to be nice. Yes, you'll have to be more careful about Hazards, but to have a prayer in True Rogue you're probably pretty darn good at avoiding those anyway.
  
• Catalyst - IF you get a source of status effect (from a weapon, a relic, or your base class), Catalyst acts as a pure damage increase.
  
• Coeus' Shell - This relic shows its biggest impact out of battle by preventing the damage from picking up a Blessing of Life. Once you have the shell, stumbling upon a fruit room will the a very happy moment - go charge the shell with six enemies, scoot right back to the fruit room, and get your HP increase with zero downside.
  
• Freon's Reward OR Lachesis' Measure - You'll need a source of sustain in True Rogue, and the health-drop-related relics just aren't reliable enough. The Measure is better if you are wielding a weapon that you can use to reliably skill crit. Freon's is better if not.
  
• Raven's Ring - Overwhelmingly likely to be a pure damage increase through the majority of your True Rogue run, especially after the first biome. And thanks to the three new Relic rooms just before the final boss that appear in all modes you can decide exactly how much HP reduction you can accept for a huge damage increase in the final fight.
  
• Rage Tincture + Ambrosia - Nearly self-explanatory, this classic relic combo holds its power in True Rogue too. Stay invincible longer and do tons of damage in the meantime.
  
• Hyperion's Ring - Think of this as a 50% heal in the final boss gauntlet.

• The Serrated Handle's Bargain - This Relic is a trap! Take it and you'll be thrilled with how you can zoom through the Biome itself, wrecking baddies left and right. And then you'll get wrecked by a boss in three hits when they fill the screen with damage you can't dodge because this is True Rogue, you are slow and only have one extra jump and one dash. Even worse, the double damage also applies to the Blessing of Life, making the biggest risk you'll take outside of the boss room even riskier!
  
• Aite's Sword - You're going to get hit. You just are. Don't take a permanent Resolve hit for a very temporary damage boost.
  
• All the Spin Kick Relics - A spin kick bard is a highly specialized build that's difficult to learn even more difficult to master. That's not why we're here. We're here to get the achievement. Ignore them.
  
• Skeleton Key - Fairy Chests only provide a bit more XP for additional Resolve in this mode. They will definitely not offset the Resolve you take from holding this Relic.
  
• Fate's Die - Normal enemies aren't the hard part of True Rogue. Bosses are.
  
• Cloak of Eventide - Same as above. You aren't standing still for 1.2 seconds in a Prime Estuary fight.

Everything else is in the middle or situational, but generally avoid intelligence/magic increasing Relics. A mage build is even harder mode in True Rogue, where the only source of max MP is the Dreamcatcher relic you may never even see, and doing things the harder way is not why we're here. We're here to get an achievement.

True Rogue throws four small Biomes at you in random order, with the boss of each Biome being a variant on the actual Estuary guarding that Biome in the normal game. Late-game Biomes like the Sun Tower or Pishon Dry Lake are dramatically harder than early Biomes like Citadel Agartha and Axis Mundi, especially at the boss fight where you may only have a couple relics and get thrown at a late-game Prime Estuary.

You can't control which Biomes you roll second, third, and fourth, but you can control where you choose to start. Expert players can just power through a first Biome Pishon, but the achievement hunter who only cares about results should restart until they land in an early Biome first. By the second boss you'll be stacking far more relics and HP increases and the harder Biomes will feel much less overwhelming.

Easily the hardest and most frustrating aspect of True Rogue are the bosses. Each Estuary can spawn either with special Commander buffs or as their Prime variant, with the Prime variant being much harder than the Commander buffed Estuaries. This is strictly random and there's nothing you can do about it.

Critically, you don't have just to win in True Rogue. You have to win with enough HP left over to not immediately die. This is especially true after the fourth Biome, where you'll be thrown directly into a fight with the second-to-last boss in the game with zero opportunities for healing. You need to win beautifully.

One crucial trick in these Boss battles is to start the fight over if things aren't going your way. How? Just force-close the game! As long as you haven't actually died yet, you will find yourself immediately outside the boss's chamber in exactly the same state you were in before you entered before. The game will try to autosave the second you lose your last HP, so you must take this option before actually dying, but if you've taken enough hits for your incoming victory to be pyrrhic just give it another go instead of starting a whole new run!

After defeating boss you will be giving the chance "Consume the essence of the Estuaries" when you open the boss chest. In addition to the bonus 10% HP, this is the same as picking up a Transmogrificator relic.


As stated, this will randomize your Weapon, Spell, and Talent, as well as give you a 7% damage boost and 20 bonus Resolve. It also counts as a new discrete Relic for the purposes of War Drum, providing an additional 4% damage for the first one.

This is, however, a major risk. A decent chunk of Rogue Legacy 2 weapons are purely situational or essentially gimmicks unless you've built an entire build around it, and True Rogue being what it is there is no guarantee that you'll find a different weapon before being pitted against a Prime Estuary. Be very careful in taking this "power" and generally err on the side of declining the Transmogrify if you are happy with your gear. It is extremely easy to turn a great run into something unsalvageable if you find yourself confronting a Prime with an umbrella.

One option is to take the Transmogrificator only after the first Biome. This gets you the +20 Resolve and +11% damage (including the War Drum proc, because you are definitely getting War Drum at some point) while still leaving plenty of time to find a better weapon -- and if you truly get hosed by the RNG and get a Weapon/Talent/Spell combo that's totally untenable at least you haven't invested much in the run yet. Then, in subsequent opportunities, decline the Transmogrificator if you are happy with your weapon as normal.

With these tips and tricks you will have maximized your odds of getting the achievement. However, there is no guarantee. Even taking every shortcut possible, using every House Rule, True Rogue is hard and RNG-reliant. You'll need to fully clear every Biome, make good decisions in every relic room, demonstrate great skill in the boss rooms, and you still need luck to prevent Prime Tubal from stomping your face in Biome 2. Just keep trying, bail on a run if its unwinnable, and you'll get there soon enough. And then like everyone else you are blessedly free to never, ever run True Rogue again.