The July 2021 Technical Preview gave us our first hands-on look at a sample Battle Pass and the various systems surrounding it. If you're wondering how the Battle Pass looked, how it was progressed, and how you could use consumables to augment your progression through the Battle Pass, you've come to the right place.
The Battle Pass was accessible from the Main Menu through several means, such as pressing the "Y" button and selecting "Battle Pass" or using the Settings menu to access it. On the Battle Pass screen, players could scroll through the Free and Paid rewards at all 20 tiers of the Battle Pass, view their progress towards the next tier, purchase it for 250 cR (Credits) if they had not already done so, and activate Consumables.
Tiers with two rewards offer the leftmost one for free to all players upon reaching the tier, and about half of the free rewards are cosmetic unlocks. Additionally, some tiers offered consumables instead of cosmetic unlocks, either XP Boosts or Challenge Swaps.
Each tier of the Battle Pass required the player to earn 500 XP or spend 200 cR to advance. XP could only be earned by completing the finite Daily and Weekly Challenges, while cR, as the premium currency, was only allotted at the start of the Tech Preview in a single batch of 3000. Due to the limited number of Challenges available, players would have needed to use XP Boosts wisely and purchased a few tiers with cR in order to reach Tier 20 by the end of the Technical Preview.
Page 1 of the Battle Pass, showing Tier 1 through the first half of Tier 6, can be seen above. This screenshot was taken after the Battle Pass was purchased, so the "Free" indicator is not visible on the leftmost item in two-item Tiers.
Page 2 of the Battle Pass, showing the second half of Tier 6 through Tier 12.
Page 3 of the Battle Pass, showing Tiers 13 through 17.
Page 4, the final page, of the Battle Pass, showing the second half of Tier 15 through Tier 20.
The rewards for each stage of the Battle Pass are transcribed in text as follows:
Free:
Tier 1: Challenge Swap
Tier 2: Karaba Sirocco Armor Coating (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 3: N/A
Tier 4: Challenge Swap
Tier 5: N/A
Tier 6: Cloven Seafoam Armor Coating (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 7: N/A
Tier 8: Scorpion Punch Armor Coating (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 9: N/A
Tier 10: Challenge Swap
Tier 11: N/A
Tier 12: N/A
Tier 13: Challenge Swap
Tier 14: N/A
Tier 15: Challenge Swap
Tier 16: Cosmic Corruption Armor Coating (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 17: Ghost Grey Armor Coating (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 18: N/A
Tier 19: Challenge Swap
Tier 20: N/A
Paid:
Tier 1: AVIATOR Helmet (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 2: XP Boost
Tier 3: Rampant Visor (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 4: UA/AGATHIUS Right Shoulder Pad (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 5: UA/AGATHIUS Left Shoulder Pad (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 6: XP Boost
Tier 7: Goblin Visor (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 8: XP Boost
Tier 9: Phalanx Visor (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 10: XP Boost
Tier 11: UA/ALAIR Right Shoulder Pad (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 12: UA/ALAIR Left Shoulder Pad (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 13: Vandal Visor (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 14: Blue Rampage Armor Coating (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 15: UA/Type RG Knee Pads (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 16: XP Boost
Tier 17: XP Boost
Tier 18: Dragoon Visor (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 19: UA/Type SP Knee Pads (Mark VII Armor Core)
Tier 20: TRAILBLAZER Helmet (Mark VII Armor Core)
This breakdown helps show that, in the Tech Preview, Free players could earn all but one Armor Coating for the Mark VII Armor Core and every Challenge Swap. Upgrading to the Paid Battle Pass would allow players to obtain far more cosmetic items as well as multiple consumable XP Boosts.
The final aspect of the Battle Pass section is the ability to use Consumables, as seen above. There are three options on the Consumables page:
"Level Up": Spend 200 cR to advance the Battle Pass by one Tier
"Activate XP Boost": Consume an XP Boost to double the XP earned from all sources for 30 minutes, including time spent in menus. In the Tech Preview, the only source was Challenges, so activating this when all Challenges were completed did nothing.
"Use XP Grant": A feature not enabled in the Tech Preview. Likely consumes an XP Grant to give the player a set amount of XP toward their Battle Pass.
The only other Consumable featured in the Tech Preview is the Challenge Swap (shown by the small icons to the left of the Weekly Challenges). When on the Challenges screen, players can select a Weekly Challenge they do not wish to complete (or cannot complete) and consume a Challenge Swap to switch it out for another randomly selected Challenge. Players must still complete the Weekly Challenge, but they are welcome to reroll the requirements so long as they have a Challenge Swap.
Daily Challenges could only be completed one at a time and became increasingly more difficult to complete with the same payout per challenge until they ran out. Since PvP was not enabled for more than 2 hours in this Tech Preview, the Daily Challenges for each day ended after earning the fourth one due to the fifth requiring PvP match completions. There may have been more Daily Challenges beyond this fifth challenge, but they were not available in the Tech Preview.
Players could progress three Weekly Challenges simultaneously with the Free Battle Pass and four simultaneously after purchasing the Battle Pass. After the player completed an active Weekly Challenge, a new one from the Upcoming Weekly Challenges section would replace it until there were no more challenges in this section. There were 13 Weekly Challenges, and completing them all would unlock the final Capstone Challenge, which required players to kill 50 enemy Spartans to earn the Stone Green Armor Coating for the Mark VII Armor Core.
Note that none of the above rewards, values, or rules for Free versus Paid items are final, and they may change considerably between this Tech Preview and the final release of the game this Holiday. That being said, don't be afraid to provide feedback on things you liked and things you didn't like about this system, as it will likely be a factor in the final version released with the game.
Summary
The Battle Pass system in the Flight was only a slice of what players can expect when the full game launches this Holiday. The below conclusions detail what I believe are their current plans for the system based on what we saw in the Tech Preview. Since much of it may change between now and launch, the below summary points may become inaccurate or obsolete once the game is released.
The Battle Pass will have Paid rewards in every Tier.
The Battle Pass will have Free rewards in many Tiers spread throughout the entirety of the Pass.
Free rewards can include Armor Coatings and Challenge Swaps.
Paid rewards can include a larger variety of customizations and XP Boosts.
All XP comes from Challenge completion. There are a finite number of Weekly and Daily Challenges available at any given time, providing a hard time-gate to the XP a player can earn.
Players can use an XP Boost to double all XP they earn for 30 minutes, including time spent in menus. It is best to use these when you will be completing a large number of Weekly Challenges in the next few matches.
Players will be able to use a consumable XP Grant to instantly earn a set amount of XP.
Players will be able to use premium cR (Credits) to advance the Battle Pass as an alternative to earning XP.
On the Challenge screen, players can consume a Challenge Swap to swap out the objective for any active Weekly Challenge. The Challenge must still be completed, but the requirements will be randomly rerolled.
As the player completes active Weekly Challenges, new Weekly Challenges from the Upcoming Challenges section will rotate into the Active Challenges section until none are left.
Completing all Weekly Challenges in a given week will unlock the ability to complete the Capstone Challenge, which will reward players with an exclusive cosmetic item.
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