Riot has gone and added another game mode to Valorant and honestly, it’s pretty good! The player base has been requesting gun-game for quite some time and we finally got it… sort of. If you haven’t had a chance to play Escalation yet or you’re still a bit confused about what the game is really all about, don’t worry I’ve got you covered.

What is Escalation?

Escalation is a 5v5 mode where agents are picked for players at random. Not to worry though, similar to Deathmatch, the agents don’t have access to their abilities. The goal of the mode is simple and very similar to a traditional gun-game from Call of Duty: The two teams will race through a predetermined set of weapons to reach the finish line first. There are 12 “levels” (weapons) to complete or the team that is furthest along after 10 minutes will win by default.

Also similar to Deathmatch, when a player is killed they’ll drop a health pack that lasts for 10 seconds and fast respawn timers with invulnerability for 5 seconds (without moving).

Progressing/Upgrading Weapons

Teams must work to earn 7 points on a level (weapon) to advance to the next level (weapon). A kill on the current level (IE using the gun your team is currently on) is worth 1 point and a kill on a previous level (IE a kill with the previous weapon) is worth 0.5 points.

You may be wondering how you get a kill with a previous weapon, well that’s an easy explanation. While the team collectively earns points to advance their armaments, each player must also get at least one kill to advance to the next level. So if you’re not doing too hot with a certain gun, you’ll get left behind.

Gun Loadouts

So far, Escalation seems to have a pretty specific pattern for the starting and final levels.

Level 1: The game seems to start off with either a Vandal, Phantom or Raze Showstopper.

- By the way, the weapons that can be used also include Raze’s ultimate, Sova’s Shock Darts. Raze’s Boom Bots and even a Snowball Launcher similar to Brimstone’s Molly!

Level 2: Always a Vandal or Phantom.

Levels 3-11: Random - unfortunately there is no pattern to these levels and you can randomly roll anything in the store plus those abilities.

Level 12: Shorty, Classic, Knife, Shock Dart or the Snowball launcher.

Escalation has been a crazy and entertaining game mode so far. It’s not as good of a warm-up as Deathmatch due to the constant switching and randomness of the weapons, but it’s a good break from playing competitive/unrated and is definitely something I’d recommend checking out!