Overwatch season 5’s mid-season update is here, and with it comes quite a lot more than your typical mid-season update. Staples like Junkrat’s Loot Hunt return, and it coincides with another round of the Excavation Initiative this time. There’s a big end-of-season story event set in Rialto that caps off Vendetta’s rise to (and recent fall from) power and locks some of its rewards behind a paid pass. And rather unexpectedly, there’s also an Overwatch x Stellar Blade collaboration.
Overwatch‘s Eve Protocol crossover adds five skins from Shift Up’s action game:
- Widowmaker as Eve
- DVa as Lily (with Toki designed after a late-game Stellar Blade boss)
- Freja as Raven
- Vendetta as Tachy
- Soldier 76 as Adam
The collaboration runs through Nov. 17. Like with most recent crossover events, the skins are all available in the shop only. There’s no event that rewards you with a free skin from the collaboration.
Also in new skin news, the back half of the season sees Roadhog get his first Mythic skin, a fitting milestone to mark his popular revamp at the start of season 5. Roadhog’s Mythic is, fittingly, Necrotic Knight. The base version Blizzard showed sees Roadhog clad in silver and toxic green armor with a mask sporting one of those plague doctor beaks. Doctors stashed herbs in those beaks in the middle ages, though something tells me what Roadhog has there is rather less wholesome and healthy. Anyway, the skin’s later tiers give him scarlet armor decorated with ropes of jade and a big skull mask. It’s pretty cool.
The story’s big climactic event is Taking Reign, where Doomfist and Overwatch clash in Rialto. (Vendetta’s presumably still in jail following the events of last week’s flashy animated story.) Taking Reigh lasts for five weeks and has 24 tiers of rewards, though they’re divided into a free track and a paid event track similar to how NetEase handles Marvel Rivals events. The free pass includes an epic Sigma skin recolor, and the paid one has Vendetta’s new weapon and a legendary Doomfist skin. That track costs 1,000 Overwatch coins or roughly $10.
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Blizzard’s changing how Overwatch‘s competitive drives work this season, too, where you earn points by winning matches and lose points when you lose. Namely, drives aren’t just competitive anymore. You can get your signature tag by playing in competitive mode, or you can stick to quick play to get legacy weapon points. Once you reach the fourth checkpoint in this season’s drive, you can choose to equip certain signatures from previous seasons’ drives if you want.