Valorant 13.06 rolls out on Tuesday 22 September, and it is a meatier patch than usual. Riot Games is adding a new rifle, the Warden, built for players who like to hold a long sightline without switching to a sniper. The patch also opens a 16-player experimental mode called Gauntlet: Glitched, and replaces the Agent Gear system with a new progression track named Agent Mastery. Some of the numbers may still move, as Riot warns that the Warden and mode pages are subject to change. Here is what actually changes.
At a glance
The Warden costs 2,900 credits, deals 200 headshot damage and has a 2x zoom.
Gauntlet: Glitched puts 16 players into 8 duos, with agent abilities drawn at random.
Agent Mastery replaces Agent Gear, and Gear cosmetics you already earned stay unlocked.
The Warden, a rifle made for long sightlines
The headline addition in Valorant 13.06 comes down to one name. The Warden joins the rifle class at 2,900 credits, and its entry on the official Valorant wiki lays out a profile quite unlike the automatic weapons players already know.
Its damage stays flat from 0 to 50 metres: 200 to the head, 50 to the body and 42 to the legs. The alternate fire gives a 2x zoom, and wall penetration is rated medium. The Warden rewards precision over sheer volume of fire.
The trade-off shows up in the rest of the stats. The magazine holds only 18 rounds, with 36 in reserve, which is two magazines, and the fire rate tops out at 6.5 rounds per second. In other words, sloppy spraying gets punished, and a lost duel at close range is likely to hurt.
One thing to keep in mind before rushing to buy it: the Warden’s page is still flagged as unreleased content, and Riot notes that the information may change drastically. The values quoted here are the ones announced on patch day. If the rifle turns out to be too strong or too weak once millions of players get their hands on it, a tweak in a later patch would be no surprise, as that is the usual fate of any new weapon in a competitive shooter.
In practice, the Warden targets a very specific kind of player. Someone who holds a long angle, waits for a head to peek and wants to stay mobile where a sniper rifle would slow them down. It remains to be seen how the community takes to it in ranked, and whether Riot will need to adjust the numbers in later patches.
Watch it too
Valorant’s new rifle hits for 200 to the head
Gauntlet: Glitched, a 16-player mode played in pairs
The second addition in Valorant 13.06, Gauntlet: Glitched, is an experimental mode that throws out the usual format entirely. According to the mode’s page on the Valorant wiki, 16 players face off in 8 teams of two.
Each team starts with 100 HP. Rounds last 40 seconds and are played in sets of three within each stage. The losing team takes damage that grows as the match goes on: 10 HP in stages 1 and 2, 20 HP in stages 3 to 5, then 30 HP in stages 6 and 7. The last team standing wins.
The most interesting part concerns abilities. Every player drafts a random set of skills taken from existing agents. The usual team compositions simply don’t apply here. It is a playground where improvisation matters as much as aim, and a sharp contrast with the discipline of Competitive.
The shared health pool also changes how each round should be approached. Losing early on costs little, while a loss in the final stages can be enough to knock a team out. Duos who manage a lead well have every reason to play safe as the penalties climb, and teams trailing behind have very little left to lose. Like the Warden, the mode is still marked as upcoming content on the wiki, so its rules may yet change.
What Valorant 13.06 changes for agent progression
The third change is less flashy, but it affects everyone. The official patch notes Riot published on the Valorant wiki confirm the arrival of Agent Mastery, a new progression system for each agent.
Agent Gear gives way to these new reward tracks. Riot specifies that Gear cosmetics already earned remain unlocked, so dedicated players will not lose what their hours of play have already earned them. The notes do not yet describe the individual Agent Mastery tiers.
Valorant 13.06 also launches an Event Pass tied to Champions 2026 in Shanghai. It runs from 24 September to 19 October, with 122,700 XP to earn across six reward tiers, including player cards, a buddy, a title and Radianite Points.
Riot has also been busy on the cheating front in recent days, with a wave of bans targeting rank manipulation. Upcoming major updates for Valorant and the other games we follow are gathered in the Hitbox release calendar.
Every upcoming release and update lives in our video game release calendar, refreshed at each newsroom session.