After the arrival of the first season, the iconic fighter of Warner Bros. MultiVersus is making big moves. Bugs Bunny’s rocket trap is gone. Finn is getting nerfed. LeBron is getting better. And new Gremlins characters Black Adam and Stripe are on the way. It’s a big day for one of the biggest fighting games of 2022.
The MultiVersus Season 1 patch comes in two parts. The first will be released on August 15, and the rest will follow later in the week. Finally, Morty from Rick and Morty will be playable from August 23rd. But the biggest news is who is getting stronger and weaker as a result of the latest gameplay tweaks. Bugs Bunny is at the top of the nerf list, providing some long overdue solace to players who have spent the last few weeks getting their asses kicked.
“Bugs Bunny is a little overconfident in everything he does,” write developers Player First Games. “We’ve given him some additional punishment windows to help address that.” Just over a week after Bugs dominated EVO 2022, the unstoppable cartoon fan has fixed both of his dual rockets, as well as his safe spawn multiple exploit. His previous tunnels also now disappear, and Pie’s life on his Ground Down attack is limited to 8 seconds instead of infinite. (Yes, in classic Looney Tunes fashion, pies are a big part of Bugs’ arsenal.)
Finn, meanwhile, has also gotten on players’ nerves, with the developers agreeing that he was too difficult to play. As a result, it will generate half as much gold and less recovery on multiple moves to make it easier to counter. Scooby Doo’s Velma is also being rebranded, with her Air Side Special losing range and her Air Up Special no longer chaining to her Air Down Attack for easy extra damage. Finally, LeBron James, who was kicked out of EVO for still being experimental, will see a huge increase in his combo potential and will no longer accidentally skydive.
All of these balance changes and more come with a revised Season 1 Battle Pass, whose quests to unlock cosmetics and other rewards will now be a little less arduous. Arya, Batman, LeBron, and Steven will move into the game’s free rotation for the next two weeks. And Morty will be joined by Rick before the end of the season.
But these are not the only two. Warner Bros. and Player First Games also teased the addition of Black Adam, the DC supervillain/antihero in the upcoming Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson film, and Stripe, the super gremlin from the 1984 film of the same name. Both were shown in new artwork, though the actual arrival date has yet to be officially announced. MultiVersus had a big launch on Steam earlier this month, and with no shortage of other movie tie-ins to reveal, there’s no reason for the party to stop anytime soon. Unless Warner Bros. decide to cancel the rest of their DC schedule.
The full Season 1 patch notes are below:
general
- Morty is coming on 08/23! It will be our first lead character!
- The patch will come in two parts. The first will be on August 15th and the second will arrive shortly after (hopefully in the next few days). So not all the changes, but most of them will be in the August 15th patch.
New Free Character Rotation (8/15 – 8/30)
- Arya
- Batman
- LeBron
- steven
Meta Systems
- Free spin characters now have an icon in the character picker to identify them
- Battle Pass XP match rewards increased to 10 for wins and 5 for losses, up from 5 for wins and 3 for losses.
- Battle Pass missions based on disabled non-tank classes
- Developer Note: Since players may not have access to fighters in specific classes other than Tank (thanks to Wonder Woman), we felt that relying on rerolls was not a reliable enough method to solve these missions.
- The requirements for several seasonal quests have been reduced:
- Call a player from the top of the map 50 times (previously 75) Call a player from the side of the map 50 times (previously 75) Call a player from the bottom of the map 50 times (previously 75) Get 50 assists ( previously 75) 125)
General advantages
- Clear The Air – Greater consistency in the beneficial effect.
- We are aware of inconsistencies in how this perk interacts with Velma’s buffs and Batman’s Batarang. We will cover these interactions in a future patch.
- Make it rain, dog! – Projectile speed is now correctly applied to thrown objects.
- Painted Target: Fixed an issue where projectiles would not apply bonus damage
- Ready for Retaliation: Reduced non-stacked gray health from 3 HP for 3 seconds to 1 HP for 3 seconds
- Reduced stacked gray health from 4 HP for 3 seconds to 2 HP for 3 seconds
- School Me Once… – Increased consistency in projectile block spawn. Notable: Getting hit by Jerry will now generate a projectile block buff
- Slippery When Feint: Fixed an issue where the dodge distance was not increased when canceling the hit
- Snowball Effect: Fixed an issue where projectiles would not apply bonus damage
- Static Electricity: Increased consistency in projectile electrical damage application. Notable: Thrown items will now apply electricity
Game systems:
- Ice Debuff: Slow movement speed on 1 stack reduced from 20% to 15%
- Slow now scales linearly with each Ice Debuff stack. Fixed a bug where fighters affected by Ice Debuff received extra knockback.
- Skill Cooldowns: Fixed a bug where cooldowns would not trigger correctly if used near an ally on Jake
Game Modes:
- FFA: Fixed a bug where the popup text would show the wrong point value.
UI:
- Advertiser Pack: You can now preview a character’s Advertiser Pack before deciding to unlock it.
Tutorials:
- Various bug fixes –
- Fixed tutorials causing stage hazards to be disabled in other game modes. Fixed the spike down tutorial to require an actual spike instead of any aerial attack. The Reindog binding step from the intro tutorial no longer counts if you enter your ally. after they are finished. Fixed Shaggy falling off the map during the aerial combat tutorial demo. Added a wall to the second step of the KBI tutorial.
Glossary and terms:
- New Terms
- Added Wall Fatigue to the glossary. Added the terms Block, Hazard, and Wipe to the glossary and updated the move lists accordingly.
Characters
Caption:
+ = Buff
– = Nerf
~ = Change
Note: Highlighted attack notes refer to default controls.
Arya
The purpose of these changes was to make Arya’s combos more consistent and successful at lower skill levels.
- + Air/Ground Up Special: Hitting a fighter will now more accurately launch it at an angle to allow Arya to track
- + Air Up Attack: The first hit will combine more accurately with the second hit.
- + Neutral Air Attack: Now has a pre-strike branch.
- + Ground Side Attack: Arya will maintain speed on the first hit of the side attack.
- + Ground Down Attack: Now has a slightly earlier dodge branch
- ~ Ground/Air Neutral Special: Fixed a bug where Arya would not copy capsule hitboxes to her normal neutral attacks when stealing a fighter’s face.
- Set Arya’s hurtbox to match her victim’s hurtbox while disguised as them. Fixed a bug where Arya’s top UI would offset incorrectly when she steals a face. can be used during disguise attacks. Fixed a bug where Arya’s costume hitboxes would remain active during her normal attacks.
Batman
- ~ Air/Ground Special: Fixed a bug where Batman would overshoot his fight target if the fighter he was fighting dodged.
- Increased overrun distance when facing an ally. Fixed Batman fighting crash at short distances with high latency.
- – Ground Side Attack: First hit added 3 scent recovery frames.
- – Air/Ground Neutral Attack (appears in Patch 2): Batarang pickup will now return 9.45s of its cooldown from 11.55s. This change helps create a window from when the batarang is used for the opponent to react. With perks like Coffeezilla making this cooldown even shorter, we felt this change was necessary to create a counter against the batarang.
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is too confident in everything he does. We’ve given him some extra punishment windows to help fix this.
- ~ Air Up Special – Fixed an exploit where bugs could spawn two rockets.
- ~ Air Side Special – Fixed an exploit where bugs could spawn two rockets.
- – Neutral Air/Ground Special: Fixed an exploit where bugs could spawn multiple safes without triggering their cooldown.
- – Safe HP reduced from 16 to 14.
- ~ Air Down Special: Previous bug tunnels will now disappear when new tunnels are created.
- -Air attack
- Added 4 scent recovery frames.
- – Air Side Attack – Increased scent recovery by 5 frames.
- – Air Neutral Attack: Scent recovery increased by 5 frames.
- – Ground Attack: Cake max life has been set to 8 seconds, from infinity.
- – The cake no longer applies a lens
Finn
Fighting Finn felt too difficult as Finn felt a little too confident and could throw attacks without much fear of punishment due to how quickly he recovered. Crucial Hurt/Hit box updates are coming soon, but won’t be in this patch.
- – Passive: Attacks affected by attack decay no longer generate coins
- Finn now generates 100 gold instead of 200
- + Air Down Special: Fixed an issue where the gem needed 200 gold to spawn, but only cost 100 to spawn. The gem now requires and costs 100
- – Air Side Special – Added extra scent recovery.
- – Ground/Air Up Special – The strength of the vacuum effect on the backpack has been reduced
- Weaker backpack hits will no longer “overwrite” stronger knockbacks from other attacks. Blowing with all the hits will still drop a coin. Recovery of added odors. Hitboxes should match attack better (not perfect until our…