Valorant Announces New Agent Astra & Battlepass Content

The popular competitive first-person shooter Valorant is getting a new hero and a new battle bass to celebrate the start of Episode 2: Act II. Episode 2: Act I of Valorant had been ongoing for the past two months since it launched in January. After Act I refreshed the competitive ranks with improvement to the progress bar and the new Escalation mode, players have been hitting the competitive grind with ferocity.

Act I introduced Valorant players to the newest agent, Yoru. A duelist who hailed from Japan, Yoru added a new dimension to Valorant strategy, literally. With his ability to walk between dimensions and teleport to a personal tether, Yoru added another high-damage threat who could slip in and out of fights. Act I also brought a new Act I Battlepass, which included skins, player cards, sprays, and titles for players to unlock. Among the most popular were the Ignition skins and Dot Exe skins.

Act II will not only bring more new content in the form of cosmetics in the battlepass, it will also include a new agent, Astra. The battlepass will, as in the past, include free unlockables as well as others that will require players to spend 1,000 VP (approximately $10 USD). In the free track, players can unlock a Prism III Classic pistol skin, a gun buddy, a spray, and a Bind + Icebox card. If players splurge for the paid battlepass, they will also unlock the Prism III Axe skin, a Cavalier Vandal skin, Cavalier Operator skin, one additional spray, and a Sova + Cypher card.

But what most Valorant players are most looking forward to in Act II is the reveal of the newest agent, Astra. She was initially leaked back in January, but many of those details appeared to be incorrect. Hailing from Ghana, the new agent can harness the power of space, move into astral form, and harness her radiant power to control the field of battle. Her abilities require her to enter the Astral Form to place stars before she can use her other abilities. Her stars can also block bullets by using Cosmic Drive, but the stars also activate her other abilities. These include Gravity Well, which pulls enemies towards the center of the target before exploding, and Nova Pulse, which concusses nearby enemies.

All-in-all, Valorant players should be excited for the start of a new line of content. With Astra adding new elements to change the flow of battle, the core gameplay of Valorant is getting a fresh change-up. Players will be even more incentivized to jump into games and grind to unlock all the new loot, to the delight of many.

Valorant first came into the public eye in a big way. The only way to get into the beta was to watch the game be played on Twitch, and there were plenty of big name streamers people could watch to do so. Beyond its strong start from a marketing standpoint though, the game also had a great roster of interesting and diverse characters, called agents, supporting it too.