Valorant: Launch Patch Notes v1.0 - New Agent Reyna, New Map Ascent And More

Valorant has fully launched and the first official patch notes for version 1.0 are now live.

With the tactical-FPS game now going live around the world, the update for launch adjusts a number of agents and addresses a few bugs.

Most importantly, a new agent is arriving called Reyna and a new map is coming called Ascent.

Valorant 1.0 Patch Notes

Highlights

• Updates to Sage, Raze, Jett, Phoenix and Omen
• Hit registration improved
• Can't ride Viper's Toxic Screen Supersonic wave
• Updated map 'Split'
• New agent Reyna
• New map 'Ascent'
• New game mode 'Spike Rush'
• Competitive mode disabled for launch
• Voice and chat restrictions enabled

GAMEPLAY AND BALANCE

AGENT UPDATES:

SAGE:

• Healing Orb cooldown increased 35 >>> 45 seconds.
• Barrier Orb segment health reduced 1000 >>> 800.
• Barrier Orb duration reduced 40 >>> 30 seconds.
• Friendly Barrier Orb walls now show on the minimap.

RAZE:

• Blast Pack maximum damage radius reduced 2 >>> 1 meter.

JETT:

• Cloud Burst smoke duration increased 4 >>> 7 seconds
• Tailwind automatically breaks Cypher’s Trapwires after being briefly revealed.

PHOENIX:

• Blaze duration increased 6 >>> 8 seconds.
• Blaze damage: 15 every 0.25s >>> 1 every 0.033 seconds.Blaze healing: 3 every 0.25s >>> 1 every 0.16 seconds.
• Hot Hands healing: 3 every 0.25s >>> 1 every 0.08s.Updated the HoT model to match recent changes to the DoT abilities.
• Curveball max flash duration increased 0.8 >>> 1.1 second.
• Run it Back automatically reloads all weapons on respawn.

OMEN:

• Paranoia is now equipped instead of quickcast, and hit detection improved, especially at close range.
• Dark Cover, Omen now enters a “phaser” world where he can see through walls to place his smokes and pressing RELOAD toggles between phased and normal targeting.
• Dark Cover controls have been updated where Omen can now increase smoke distance with PRIMARY FIRE, decrease it with SECONDARY FIRE, and throw smoke with the ABILITY KEY.
• Shrouded Step, Omen can now see his teleport location on the map and receives an in-world indicator of where he’s targeting when his vision of the point is obstructed.
• From the Shadow, Omen can now cancel his teleport while in Shade form by pressing the ABILITY KEY again—Omen still loses all of his ult points if he cancels.

SOUND VISUALIZATION (AUDIO ATTENUATION):

Brought in more sounds made by Agents under the category of sounds that display their audio distance on the mini-map via the white circle. This includes ability sounds, reloads, spike interactions and more.

MAP UPDATES:

INTRODUCING A NEW MAP: ASCENT:

Ascent is a map set in Italy that features a large, open middle area that both teams can skirmish over. Mid is a playground for diverse ability use and successfully controlling the area opens additional routes for Attackers to both Spike sites.

As our new map for launch, Ascent will be slightly more common in our Matchmaking rotation for the first few days so that you can get more opportunities to play on the map.

SPLIT:

• Restructured mid chokepoint.
• The train station maintenance crew was able to replace the burned-out speaker system.
• A certain frog’s head is now a little warmer.

HAVEN/BIND/SPLIT/ASCENT

• Expanded our new system that combats map exploits to all other maps—this will eradicate anyone trying to escape the playspace.
• Continued to fix level collision in order to enhance the smoothness of the gameplay space.
• Completed draw call optimizations.
• Also continued to block spots for Cypher’s Spycam that prevented counter-play; as always, huge thanks to everyone who helps us find these!

COMPETITIVE MODE UPDATE:

• Competitive mode will not be on at launch.

PERFORMANCE UPDATES:

The team rallied in this patch to fix a number of performance issues. Our focus for this round is primarily on the framerate dips you may sometimes experience in combat. Simpler scenarios, where very little is happening, may not see the same dramatic gains in FPS. Rest assured, we’re not done improving performance and you can expect to see more from us on this subject in upcoming patches.

• Combat Performance: Addressed multiple causes of framerate dips in combat.
• Disabled bullet casings from calculating physics + audio bounces. We’re looking to bring a more optimized version of this feature back in a future patch.
• Reduce the cost of z-pings and death pings by 10x
• Fixed bug causing 90 raycasts per second when pinging
• Fixed a bug where NOT opening the options menu every game would cause framerate to drop on a regular cadence
• +FPS for mid to high specs: Sped up calculations on the CPU for a game and render threads. These improvements will be felt the most on machines with powerful GPUs bottlenecked by their CPU speeds. Optimized minimap for visible elements
• Fixed bug where minimap would calculate twice per frame
• Fixed bounding boxes on a variety of VFX, reducing the number of VFX updating at any given time
• Reduce the cost of updating transform on the render thread
• Reworked a variety of HUD elements that were previously built on a particularly slow component
• +FPS for low to mid specs: Content improvements that will primarily help low to mid-tier specs when rendering the world. Reduced draw calls on all maps
• Removed non-gameplay impacting map particles on Low and Medium Detail Quality
• Optimized First Person Shadows to no longer consider lights that do not impact final shadows
• Removed unintentionally large textures across gun buddies, scopes, silencers
• Optimized VFX for Character
  • Omen: ALL ABILITIES
  • Sage: ALL ABILITIES
  • Viper: ALL ABILITIES
• Closed exploit where Nvidia Inspector could be used to see through Viper and Phoenix wall abilities
• Added a setting for speaker configuration
• Additional tooltip clarity around what graphics quality settings actually do
• GPU Time stat now correctly excludes idle time

QUALITY OF LIFE:

• Dying to a non-enemy player will no longer grant ultimate points. This includes dying to the spike, fall damage, a teammate’s ability, or your own ability.
• Added VALORANT Community Code pop-up for new players
• Added chat and voice restrictions for repeat offenders of our Community Code. Chat and Voice restrictions last 72 hours. Getting a restriction will require you to log out.
• Chat restrictions will be enforced for ‘all’ and ‘team’ chat, but your ‘party’ chat will still be available.
• Voice restrictions will be enforced for ‘team’ chat, but your ‘party’ voice will still be available.
• Reporting categories updated to cover a wider range of Community Code violations
• Transition screens added before Character Select and In Game
• The button to upgrade a gun skin now indicates what type of improvement (variant, animation, etc.) will be granted by the upgrade
• Visual updates to collection and contract pages
• Adjusted ping calculation to be more accurate
• Added a setting to disable the spectator count widget on the HUD
• Updated the death camera to avoid obscuring the screen immediately after death
• Added a build version watermark
• Observer UpdatesAdded team-specific 1st-person fresnel highlighting for observers
• Adjusted consistent coloring for Attackers/Defenders on the HUD
• Attackers and Defenders don't swap in HUD on side swap rounds
• Keybinds are consistent from round to round for swapping between players
• Fixed scoreboard not showing the correct score
• Removed the 'freeze time' that would trigger when waiting for a player to reconnect at the start of the buy phase
• Updated shop icons

HUD & UI:

• Added VFX to abilities, killfeed, and ceremonies (e.g., Ace or Clutch)
• Updated Spike visuals in the inventory
• Updated Armor icons in the shop
• Updated character portraits
• Added chat message regulation so that only send one chat message is sent when multiples of the same ping or VO command are used in rapid succession

BUG FIXES: IN-GAME:

• "Fixed a bug with “rewinding” for Hit Registration that could cause the client to slightly disagree with the server on where a target was when you pulled the trigger. This affected all players slightly, but scaled up in severity at
• lower FPS.
• Fixed an issue where client-side tracers desynced when yaw switchingThe server and client would sometimes disagree on where shots were landing when firing extended bursts.
• Fixed a bug that let you shred the gnar at supersonic speeds using Viper’s Toxic Screen as a projectile boost
• Fixed the ability to activate Viper’s Poison Cloud mid air if it has been picked up.
• Removed slow from Viper’s Snakebite tooltip.
• Cypher’s Spycam now shows the direction it is looking right when it is possessed.
• Fixed more unintended Cypher Spycam locations
• Fixed Sova’s arrows sometimes unpredictable bouncing
• Fixed Sova arrows from revealing through some walls
• Fixed a bug with Jett’s lower body popping out of place during her glide—thanks physical therapy!
• Fixed an issue where blood was disabled
• Fixed an Observer bug where dead players appeared as Phoenix on the HUD when an entire team was dead
• Fixed a spectator issue where Cypher's tracers would appear inaccurate if the spectator swapped to him after he had entered/exited his camera
• Fixed an issue where a team could all disconnect on side swap rounds to surrender, but they would receive a win instead of a loss
• Fixed a bug that allowed Bucky's right-click to penetrate through world geography
• Fixed a bug for the comms halo above a player's head, it should now activate with both Party chat and Team chat
• Fixed an issue where credits on the HUD appeared to be much higher than the 800 you receive on side swap rounds
• Fixed an issue with the scoreboard that would show enemy team above the credit cap
• Fixed a bug where players were fully movement inaccurate after being resurrected or respawning
• Fixed overruns on interactable objects like orbs or the Spike
• Fixed an issue where ally loadouts appeared to show damaged allies at full health
• Fixed issues with HUD prompts that would be cut off if the key to activate the prompt was bound to a key with more than one letter
• Fixed a bug where the buy phase announcement would always say to press B to buy, even if the key to open the Armory was bound to a different key
• Fixed an issue where reconnect messages would spam every round start
• Fixed an observer bug where text would overlap in the buy phase announcement
• Fixed an observer bug where some abilities were not appearing on the minimap properly
• Fixed a bug where the ping wheel on the megamap would not grey out when ping limited
• Fixed a bug in the Armory where weapon details would vanish after purchasing a weapon
• Fixed a bug where the Equip Last Equipped Weapon hotkey was not functioning properly after using an ability
• Fixed overlaps with instability indicators (i.e. High Ping) and the Spectator widget
• Fixed overlaps and overruns in the Combat Report
• Fixed an issue with dead player models occasionally flickering
• Fixed an issue with animations when aiming with the Odin for spectators
• Fixed flickering mouse cursor in a few places
• The tooltip pointing at Contracts can now be dismissed FOREVER
• Fixed a bug where half the Arsenal page would fade in when clicking on the Collection tab
• Fixed a bug where the personalized Store offers would blink before fading in
• Fixed a bug where various menus could overlap the lobby screen after a queue dodge

BUG FIXES: GAME CLIENT:

• Fixed some visual bugs in the settings menus
• Fixed a bug with windowed mode where the VALORANT window would not save its location properly.

KNOWN ISSUES:

• In very rare cases where a player has a lot of incoming packet loss, an enemy model may appear to be crouching when they’re actually standing (or vice versa). The connection has dropped the packet that says “this player un-crouched”, and there can be a short delay before it’s resent. We have a fix for this coming asap.We’re also looking into ways to improve the visual clarity of our hit impact effects (especially sparks). In many of the clips that we reviewed, readability issues caused shoulder shots to read like headshots, further contributing to the feeling of hit reg being off.
• All impact effects (spark and blood) are pinned in world space where the hit was registered on the server. These show up after hearing back from the server, at which point the victim or attacker may have slightly shifted positions. Often, we've seen the target crouch into or move their head to where the hit impact renders.It’s difficult to read the exact hit location (centre point) from the spark effect when compared to blood.