So, What Happens Now? (Patch 1.3.1 Pre-Preview)

Welcome back to the Weekend Warmup.

In case you missed it, last week we announ— y’know what? You know what’s going on. You’ve read the discourse. Let’s talk about what’s coming up next.

The team is focused on finishing up patch 1.3.1, hitting on September 8. We want to give you an earlier look into this patch because we’re adjusting many aspects of 2XKO to set it up for the long term. This time, you’re going to hear from several members of the dev team who will tell you what they’re working on. Many of these folks traditionally work behind the scenes, but they all have a part to play in the final shape of 2XKO, so listen up!

Before we jump in, patches 1.3.1 (early September) and 1.3.3 (late October) share a few things in common: we’ll add a ton of new content, we’ll address some long-standing player requests, and we’ll aim to increase stability of the game through balance and bug fixes.

The 2XKO team has worked hard the last few months to get as much into the game as possible. Here’s a pre-preview of what you can expect to see in 1.3.1.

Balance

Written by yohosie

Hey everyone,

Working on this game has been a dream product for so many of us. We’ve put a lot of sweat and tears into the game, and the love you all have shown us with the announcement has fueled us to leave 2XKO in the best state possible.

Core Rules

Next patch, you’ll be getting improvements to defensive systems. Players have been optimizing their offense, but defense is lagging behind the high pace of play. To help with this, pushblock and Break are getting improvements.

Pushblock distance is getting improved at a slight cost of a few more frames of recovery. In addition, you can now save your Assists by tagging after a Break or pushblock without performing an action. This phases them out instantly, decreasing the risk of our core defensive mechanics.

Now that you have improved ways to save your Assists, we’re increasing the true damage that Assists take, so they’ll have less recoverable health. 2XKO should be fast and high-octane, and timeouts should be reserved for zoning strategies.

We have some other adjustments coming, including:

• Freestyle is getting some adjustments from the previous patch. The Break penalty is decreasing, and you will no longer receive a penalty if an Assist is hit after Pushblock, Burst, or when your Assist is dead.
• Champions are getting their hurtboxes standardized, so champion heights are the same across similar size champions.
• Getup attack will require a hold for a few frames so players can perform wakeup options more easily.

Champion Balance

On the champion side, champion win rates and pick rates at all levels of play remain healthy, other than a nod to Senna who needs some help across all skill buckets.

But that doesn’t mean our meta is perfect. Win rates and pick rates only tell half the story – frustration and move diversity are now the driving factors behind our balancing decisions. What attacks are outclassed by others, and how can we make those attacks more viable? What situations or outcomes are frustrating to fight against, even if the balance of those champions is within a healthy range? We’re taking some steps to solve these issues in the upcoming patch in the following ways:

1. Increasing move diversity for champions

We do this quite often: champs receive small buffs or nerfs to help them use more moves in more situations. Expect business as usual for most champions, with an exception for Senna, whose Base form special moves are underperforming, and Akali, who sometimes prefers to be outside of Twilight Shroud.

2. Reducing frustrating outcomes

Frustrating outcomes are a two-way street. On offense, Yasuo, Darius, Teemo, and Warwick are getting some buffs to make offensive outcomes more stable. On defense, teching a throw from Illaoi or Teemo with their S2 Super setup and being put back into hell is frustrating. And in neutral, Thresh’s normals control too much of the screen.

3. Striving for stability

We have come a long way from Ekko and Yasuo winter, and now champion diversity is better than we could ever ask for. We want to ensure that we maintain that diversity both for the health of this year’s remaining Majors, but also for the long-term enjoyment of the game. Fighting games are forever, and we want to make sure that you love playing 2XKO today, tomorrow, or years from now.

That’s a Wrap

1.3.1 is our last major balance patch. There will be continued work on the game in 1.3.3, but we won’t be making any big swings, and instead focusing on bug fixing, tweaks, and polishing up Samira prior to her launch so we can set the game down in the best state possible.

This game has been a labor of love from so many of us. Working with my best friends on my favorite fighting game has been an honor. Our discussions, arguments, and the results speak volumes. ApologyMan, GCYoshi, and the holograms of NerdJosh, Funtaxx, and pattheflip – you all did fantastic, and I hope you walk away from this project as proud of it as I am.

You deserve credit too. Yes, you, the reader! Every player I’ve talked to at Majors and locals, every player who posts on social media, and even those grinding in silence. You’ve all contributed to this game in your own ways. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of players to serve.

ggs

—yohosie

Lux and Samira

Written by Riot GutsyBat

Hey folks - I’m Paul the lead producer on 2XKO’s Core Gameplay team (also known as CGP) - which includes champs, balance, and game modes like The Climb and Training mode. Way back at Evo we gave y’all a preview of our next upcoming champion, Lux, and I wanted to shine a little more light on our Lady of Luminosity as we’re getting closer to her full gameplay reveal.

Lux is an all-rounder - meaning she can fight pretty well at all ranges, but isn’t the best at any of them. That’s right - she’s beating the zoner allegations. We really wanted to create a champion with a straightforward game plan that rewarded the player for having rock-solid fundamentals. Expect strong normals, a pretty good fireball, a solid DP, and heck she even has an air dash too.

Lux Ultimate concept by Alex Redfish

We specifically chose Lux to be a champion that anyone can pick up and learn 2XKO with. We wanted a champion that would be easy for newcomers to fighting games to pick up, while also feeling familiar for experienced traditional fighting game players coming over to a tag game. If you’re a player far along in your 2XKO journey, don’t fret - Lux has some pretty cool advanced tools that will let you go deep. We’ll show more of those off in her full gameplay reveal next week.

We’ve learned a lot about champion development and players over the last couple of years. The team got both better and faster at developing champions over time, and this allowed us to move to a six-champions-a-year schedule which we felt really proud of. Fun fact - Lux was actually the champion that moved up the earliest from when she was originally meant to release; her development was smooth enough that we could shave several months off of her old schedule.

Before I get out of here, we obviously need to talk about Samira a little bit. One of Samira’s primary gameplay goals is to “unleash creativity.” We want Samira players to be able to really express themselves through open-ended offense, and they should be rewarded for creativity and originality. So, if you like playing champions with a lot of freedom in your routing - we think you’ll really like Samira. Oh, and she’s pretty much the polar opposite of a zoner. You’ll learn more about her in October.

Making fighting game characters has been a dream for a lot of us, and we’re excited to get these next two champions out to you all in the best (and most balanced) state we can. Thank you for playing 2XKO, attending your locals, and most importantly, eating my command grabs.

—Riot GutsyBat

Skins

Written by Riot HaiP

Hey, Hai here, and I help coordinate 2XKO’s art production with external partners, especially focusing on cosmetic content like champion skins and accessory items, such as finishers, avatar equipables, stickers, etc.

It’s gratifying to create such a wide breadth of content that makes meaningful visual differences to the player experience, particularly with champion skins. It all starts with the concept artists and narrative writers who lay the groundwork for what a skin could and should be, and then the 3D modeling, tech art, animation, VFX, and audio teams realize that skin in the game. It’s a lot of work for a lot of people, but also a lot of collaborative fun with so many ideas and possibilities to work with in the League of Legends alternate skin universes.

Demonic skins for Teemo, Illaoi and Warwick

We have a lot of great stuff in 1.3.1, including:

• Faerie Court Lux - the launch skin for our new champion, Lux.
• Demonic skins for Teemo, Illaoi, and Warwick - just in time to enjoy in our Demonic Halloween lobby!
• Good vs. Evil, with Yasuo leading Ahri, Akali, and Illaoi for team Sentinels, and Darius leading Braum, Ekko, and Jinx for team Ruined.
• Ruined and Halloween-themed avatar items and stickers.

Lux and her launch skin, Faerie Court Lux

Although there are still so many more skins we wish we could have made, we’re making sure that we go out with a bang. On top of this, we’re packing as much content as we can into October’s patch 1.3.3 (35 new skins!) to ensure that the 2XKO Ultimate Bundle is full to the brim with cool stuff. The art team is so proud to have been part of this journey, and we hope you’ll enjoy all the new skins coming soon!

—Riot HaiP

Lobbies

Written by Riot Jaffa

Hi folks! I’m Zoë, I’m the engineering lead for everything “around” the game, but I especially love our lobbies. It’s been a dream come true seeing the love you’ve given The Last Hit, duos, spectate, and seeing all your best avatar fashion. The Around Game team here is made up of socially-focused players, which means we’ve been watching you all play on Twitch too, and the team had some great suggestions on changes we could make for yous.

Feeling Cramped?

We’d noticed that the cap on our Private lobbies had become like choosing your top friends to feature on your MySpace* page. So what’s better than 15 friends? 39 friends! We’ve added a “large Private lobby” option when creating a Private lobby so that you can easily host online tournaments without splitting across multiple rooms and codes.

Me and all my friends

2XKhaos

We’ve also added Private lobby voice chat. Now, I’m not going to lie, when we playtested this it was chaos in the most fun way. People were yelling on top of each other, and the room got very loud very fast. Proceed with caution.

Our hopes here are that combined, these features should help TOs run more online tournaments smoothly by being able to organise across fewer rooms than previously possible. With more cabinet setups (we see you Lâmina de Aço and FlashNo47 👀) you’ll have the space to run more matches at once, and with basic voice comms direct the room a little more easily.

Zoë’s Last Hit

The team has been working hard to get everything ready for 1.3.1 for you all across many areas of 2XKO and I want to give them massive props for the work they’ve been doing. For 1.3.3, we’ll add some finishing touches such as adding training to our large Private lobby, and making sure everything is as stable as possible for you to keep playing in the spaces we all love so much. A huge thank you to everyone who made our lobbies, duos, progression systems, store, UI, matchmaking, and game servers possible. And thank you to all of you for playing with us! See you in The Last Hit :)

—Riot Jaffa

\ editor’s note: MySpace was a popular social media site in the 2000s.*

Stages

Written by Zatransis

Hey gang! I’m Mike, the Creative Director on 2XKO.

One of my favorite things about 2X is our ability to hop all over Runeterra through our stages. In this patch we’re visiting the Shadow Isles and Demacia, providing two very different locations to battle in.

Even though fighting game stages aren’t an environment you move “through,” representing Runeterra with accuracy, taking gameplay clarity into account, and hitting our style benchmarks takes a team of very talented developers to pull it all off. Depending on the stage, there’s a lot of worldbuilding that needs to be done, since many of our locales haven’t been deeply explored.

The Ruined Courtyard

The Shadow Isles is where Thresh feels most at home as he revels in torturing his opponents. Formerly an idyllic place called the Blessed Isles, the Shadow Isles are all that’s left after a cataclysm called the Ruination destroyed the barrier between the spirit and material realms. Today, the environment is incredibly hostile, with ravenous spirits seeking out the living and every corner cloaked in the Black Mist.

Even though this region is in total ruin, we snuck a few references in here that only the deepest lore masters will be able to spot.

The Ruined Courtyard

Grand Hall of Veneration

Demacia is the home of Luxanna Crownguard. They view magic negatively (understatement) which puts Lux in quite a tight spot! She is a noble and shooting rainbows out of her fingertips would be viewed as a big no-no. I really love Demacia because it’s so high-fantasy. For folks that are mostly familiar with Piltover and Zaun, Demacia is a total 180 and really shows how varied the world of Runeterra is.

The recruit, Cithria

The true “Hero of Demacia,” Poppy

Speaking of references, the Grand Hall features a shrine to Demacian icons Galio and Kayle. We also managed to add a couple of iconic NPCs in the background: everyone’s favorite recruit, Cithria, as well as a specific someone’s favorite champ. While we couldn’t make her into a fully playable character, the team wanted to honor the 324 days of commitment that @Poppy2XKO put into campaigning for their favorite yordle hero.

Our team loved envisioning the different locales of Runeterra (plus the alternate universes), and we hope players dig the variety we were able to create.

—Zatransis

Community Spotlight

Beat The Devs in TNS Weekly

Enter TNS 2XKO #44 tonight if you want a chance to play against developers GCYoshi13, yohosie, Koos, and Combo Fiend. If you take down a dev in the bracket (on either winner’s or loser’s side), we’ll get in contact to send you some 2XKO swag.

Enter now: https://www.start.gg/tournament/tns-2xko-44/

https://x.com/draggles/status/2092359785832452176

FGC Holidays

This week, the Spanish community hosts FGC Holidays, an annual celebration of fighting games and the people that power them. Check out their incredible 2XKO trophy!

Upcoming Dates

• Sep 3: Lux gameplay reveal
• Sep 8: Patch 1.3.1 live (with Lux)
• Oct 3-4: First Attack (2XKO Challenger event)
• Oct 9-11: Evo France (2XKO Major event)
• Late Oct: Patch 1.3.3 live (with Samira)
• Nov 21-22: Battle Coliseum (2XKO Major event)
• Nov 27-29: MINDSET 2026 (2XKO Challenger event)
• (Optional) Early Dec: Patch 1.3.5 (bug fixes only)

Closing Thoughts

As a reminder, we’ll be removing some features in 1.3.1 (scroll down past the sad stuff for the deets), but we’ve got more coming too: all champs will be unlocked, the Ultimate Bundle goes live (40 bucks for every skin in the game), there are some sick updates to The Climb that I won’t spoil, and more.

We are still here through the end of the year, and I’m going to continue talking with the community until they pry the keyboard away from me. If you’re doing something cool, let us know. See you next week!

—@draggles