VALORANT

New Escalation Game mode announced for Valorant

02/15/2021

On Monday, Valorant developer Riot Games revealed an exciting new game mode coming to the game in Patch 2.03 called Escalation.

Escalation is a five on five game mode where players compete to level up through getting kills. There are 12 total levels and the team that completes the 12 levels or is the highest level when the timer expires after 10 minutes wins the game. Each different level grants players different abilities and guns. The squad level, however, is different from individual player levels.

Every player has an individual weapon level that they must work to complete. To achieve the next weapon level, players must get one kill with the current weapon. The squad level will still go up regardless, but players who get kills with weapons below the current squad level will only get half a point for their squad per kill.

One of the key features of Escalation is that players cannot use Agent-specific abilities. Instead, there are a set of global abilities that everyone can use regardless of who they play.

https://twitter.com/ValorLeaks/status/1361383749053743109?s=20

Escalation levels and abilities in Valorant

Here are some of the different levels and abilities in Escalation:

Level 1: Always either the Ray’s Rocket Launcher Capability or Vandal or Phantom Weapon.
Level 2: Always either Vandal or Phantom.
Levels 3to 11: A variety of weapons and abilities
Level 12: Shorty, Classic, Knife, Stun Arrow or even a snowball thrower

According to Riot, each game will last around seven to nine minutes with a maximum of 10, and players will get 800 experience points for completing a match. Like with Valorant’s Deathmatch mode, Escalation matches will not count toward quest progress.

Escalation strongly resembles Arms Race from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a popular game mode that the community hoped to see at some point in Valorant. This is a limited-time game mode, meaning it won’t be around forever. There is currently no word on how long it will stay around, but be sure to check it out when it goes live with Patch 2.03 later this week.