Episode 8 Act 3 of Valorant is underway, bringing an entirely new battle pass full of cosmetics along with other additions like a bundle perfect for spring. Even though this is the last act of the current episode, that won't stop the developers from adding new stuff throughout its duration.
A new map is also arriving during the season, which has been in the rumor mill for a while now. We have gathered all the relevant information about the third act so you don't miss any important details.
Release date
Valorant's Episode 8 Act 3 is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, April 30 with the arrival of patch 8.08. However, the exact time will depend on your time zone, and the season will start a day later for some countries.
A brief maintenance period will take place before the start of the season and it will last around 4 hours. The servers for North America, LATAM, and Brazil will go down at 6:00 am PT and come back up at 10:00 am PT barring any issues.
On the other hand, the European servers will go down at 4:00 am BST on Wednesday, May 1, and should return at 8:00 am on that same day.
Trailer
Here is the trailer for this new season that showcases some of the cosmetics included in the battle pass and confirms a new map is coming:
New map
The first teaser for this new map came through a Player Card from Episode 8 Act 2's battle pass. The cosmetic has an image of what appears to be some underground ruins, giving us a clue about the map's location.
A few days later, an unreleased promotional image of the map was leaked by Impossible_Ad1362 on Reddit, revealing that the map will be titled Bastion. The user was apparently testing a crawl bot on the game's official website and it discovered the following image among the files.
It is unclear if this will be a traditional or TDM (Team Deathmatch) map, but the image does give us a better idea of the overall setting.
The trailer for this season confirmed this new map will be revealed during VCT Masters Shanghai, which will take place from May 23 to June 9. We believe the reveal will take place on Sunday, June 9, before the event's Grand Final match.
Mystbloom Bundle
The launch bundle for this season is called Mystbloom and Riot posted the following trailer on the game's social media to announce its arrival:
As rumored, this new flower-themed bundle will feature five pink weapon skins, each having a blue and purple variant to make things more interesting. You can visit this link if you want to know everything about the skinline, including its prices.
Premier updates
Riot revealed through the official game's account on X (formerly Twitter) that the Premier mode is getting three major updates at the start of the season. Here is the list of changes with a short description of each one:
- Promotion: Teams that win their Playoff bracket this stage will be promoted at least one division at the start of the next stage. The top 2 contenders teams in each zone will get the opportunity to make it into a Challengers league.
- Top 32: Qualify for the Invite division in E9A1 by being one of the 32 teams in your zone's Contenders Division at the end of the stage.
- Playoff qualification: Playoff qualification threshold is now 600 Premier score for all divisions.
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