Patch 1.2.2 Notes and Springbound Event Live

You know what they say - April showers bring May flowers, and as it turns out, they’re being tended by Loxodont this patch!

Springbound | May 2025 Event

The Springbound event is here! Our May event has Rainy Day Clairen, Birder Maypul skins, and Gardener Loxodont as the featured skins with adorable clay art icons to match. Gardener Loxodont comes with custom victory and taunt lines, while Rainy Day Clairen has a new victory line. The new cosmetics are paired with 25,000 Aether Coins and 250 Aether Bucks.

Our free track for May contains the Rainy Day Clairen Emote, the Springsplosion death effect, Spring Egg platform, and the Easter Egg Kragg skin and icon. Players equipping any event skins above, or the Honey Etalus, Bee Kragg, or Ladybug Kragg skins will receive 20% Bonus XP on the event track. There are also brand new Honey Etalus, Treefrog Ranno, Blue Tang Orcane, Doberman Forsburn, and Husky Fleet palettes, plus plenty of new icons in the in-game shop!

Combo Breaker Zetterburn Palette

Combo Breaker 2025 is our first LAN event of the Rivals 2 Championship Series! Rep the event and show your support with the brand new Combo Breaker color themed palette for Lovers Zetterburn. If you buy the bundle but already own the base skin, you’ll receive an Aether Bucks refund to make it even just like with our other bundles. Keep an eye out for more circuit palettes in the future as summer events start coming in hot!

This palette is FREE for all players attending Combo Breaker.

Ranked Shop Update

Champion Wrastor has been added to the Ranked Shop! This includes a skin, two emotes, and two icons for everyone’s favorite bird.

Lobbies and UI

We’ve got a bunch of lobby updates and improvements in this patch for players to help things run a bit more smoothly.

• Training Mode Menu has been updated with Input Recording and Playback!

• The Rock, Paper, Scissors screen has been completely revamped!

• The stage striking UI has been updated!

• The Pause menu has been given a brand new look!
• The critical Hit effect has been given a visual upgrade.

Localization

• Localization has been added for the following languages: German, Spanish (LATAM), Spanish (ES), Portuguese (Brazilian), Japanese, French.

Balance Changes

This time around we've got a hefty amount of changes coming to the game, so let's dive in!

• Buffered attack inputs will now remember your joystick position on the frame that they were pressed.
  • Previously, if you input an Up Special but then tilted your joystick sideways before the Up Special started, you would get a Forward Special instead. Now, you will get an Up Special. This does not apply to tilt cancels. Strong Attacks performed with the Strong button will use the joystick position 2 frames after the button is pressed, to reflect the recent change that allows you to change your Forward Strong into an Up/Down Strong within 2 frames of starting it.

• Hitting an article will now deal half the normal hitpause.
  • This makes it less punishing to attack articles, such as Ranno Bubble and Forsburn Clone, and reduces the duration of lingering hitboxes due to hitpause. This does not apply to Kragg's rock and pillar, since they have custom hitpause already.

• Opponents that get spiked into the ground without going into tumble will now only get the full hitstun duration if they land within a few frames after being spiked. Landing after this window will act like a normal hitstun landing, capping your hitstun to 8 frames.
  • The duration of this window depends on the character's fallspeed (with fastfallers having a shorter window and floaty characters having a longer window). This reduces the followups after landing non-tumble spikes high above the ground, while keeping low spikes powerful.

• A character’s shield hurtbox will no longer be active during the ShieldStart state.
  • Shield hurtboxes being active on frame 1 of shielding made some grabs connect in situations that looked like they should whiff, since the shield was not yet visible.

• The large circular hurtbox will no longer appear during the projectile parry window.
  • This hurtbox could still be hit by non-projectile attacks, so it could expand your hurtbox and make you get hit by something that would otherwise whiff.

• Armoring through an attack will now restore your walljump.
  • This mostly benefits Etalus, who can now walljump after using Forward Air to armor an attack.

• Fixed a bug that would cause certain projectiles to be destroyed by other projectiles in situations where they normally wouldn't.
  • This affected projectiles that normally can't be hit at all, like Maypul's Down Air Root.

Zetterburn's Forward Air is having its sweetspot size adjusted to make spacing the move a little more difficult. We're also increasing the utility of his fireball in neutral, since it has been fairly lackluster since the recent universal projectile parry buff.

• Forward Special projectile speed: 25 > 30
  • This move lacked a bit of utility in neutral after the projectile parry change, as it could now be done on reaction much more reliably. Speeding it up won't push it into unreactable territory, but it will tighten the timing a bit and create some situations where fireball can be more useful than before. This also means the fireball will hit opponents quicker, giving Zetterburn less time to follow up, depending on the spacing.

• Forward Air's sweetspot shrunk slightly and moved forward to retain the previous forward range.
  • This makes the sweetspot spacing slightly tighter in certain scenarios. This should also result in slightly less reverse hits.

• Up Air sourspot knockback angle: 65 > 60
  • This makes DI away more effective at escaping weak Up Air combos.

Ranno has a few moves that threaten a bit more range in neutral than we would like. To address this, we're slightly decreasing the forward range of both fully charged darts and DACUS. We're also making his Up Air's 2nd hit more consistent and giving him a few other quality-of-life changes on some frustrating interactions.

• Time between Forward Tilt hits: 3 frames > 2 frames
  • This prevents opponents from floorhugging hit 1 and then shielding hit 2.

• Ranno will now lose all of his Neutral Special charges when he gets parried.
  • This is how charges functioned in Rivals 1, giving the opponent more reward for parrying him.

• Neutral Special poison dart angle change with charge: 10 > 7 degrees
  • This means the 4th dart will now go at a similar angle to the previous 3rd dart, reducing the horizontal range of aerial Neutral Special.

• Neutral Special can now be canceled with the Parry button if your Air Parry Setting is set to Neutral Air.
  • This makes it function how it did before the cancel input changes a few patches ago.

• Up Special divekick ground friction: 1.2 > 1.0
  • This increases the distance he slides by around 9cm, making it slightly more lenient to ledge cancel.

• DACUS speed multiplier: 0.9 > 0.8
  • This reduces the distance of his DACUS by approximately 50cm.

• Up Air hit 2 no longer has a sourspot.
  • This move is too inconsistent when linking into the 2nd hit to make effective use of the sweetspot and sourspot, so we're making hit 2 have the same knockback for all hitboxes.

Kragg is getting a few changes to the speed of a few of his moves. His Forward Special cancel will now take a few extra frames before the burst action can happen, and his Forward Tilt will now take a few extra frames to act out of.

• Forward Special can now only be canceled after 5 frames.
  • This delays the burst movement of this move slightly, while still being bufferable, to give opponents a bit more time to intercept it.

• Forward Tilt recovery: 18 > 20
  • Because this move can be used after hitting a Dash Attack and it covers a wide area, we're adding some recovery to reduce its combo potential.

• Rock can now only be hit once.
  • This clears up some confusion that occurs when two players both hit the rock.

Fleet is getting some love to her Jab combos and a bug fix to her Ledge Special intangibility.

• Jab 1 knockback angle: 45 > 50
• Jab 2 knockback angle: 50 > 55
  • Because Fleet does not move forward with her jabs, opponents could often fall out of the jab combo because it sent them too far forward. These higher knockback angles will keep opponents closer to Fleet.

• Ledge Special intangibility normalized between Back, Up, and Forward windows. The intangibility now ends on the first active frame for all 3 windows.
  • Previously, the Up and Forward versions were bugged and kept their intangibility all the way until the recovery frames, while the Back version ended before the active frames. Now they all last until the active frames, allowing Fleet to trade with active moves consistently.

Overall, Maypul's recovery has been less of a weakness than intended, since her options once reaching the wall are very strong. We're limiting her to one wall cling per airtime, as well as making small changes to her Up Special and Up Air. We also are switching up her tether target priority so that she doesn't end up in a bad situation in doubles.

• Up Special max horizontal air speed: 17 > 13
  • This reduces the distance Maypul can cover when drifting after Up Special.

• Up Special's ledge grab box now gets much shorter after entering the Special Fall window.
  • This does not affect her ledge grab box at the peak of the Up Special, but reduces the disjoint of her ledge grab after she falls for a bit.

• Up Special hit 2 hitboxes shrunk slightly.
  • We're reducing the horizontal range so that it doesn't clip opponents at ledge as easily, while preserving the vertical range so it can still be used in the same situations as a finisher.

• Maypul can now only wall cling once per airtime.
  • The resource is only consumed if she wall clings for more than 5 frames, to prevent her from accidentally spending this resource when attempting a normal walljump. The wall cling is restored on touching ground, grabbing ledge, or hitting an opponent.

• Neutral Air landing lag: 9 > 8
  • This move is supposed to be a very good approach tool, but the landing lag made it a bit difficult to get value out of, especially on shield.

• Back Air hit 1 damage: 4 > 3
  
• Back Air hit 1 knockback angle: 90 > 85
  
• Back Air hit 1 hitstun multiplier and hitfall hitstun multiplier: 0.8 > 0.9
  • This lets her use the first hit of Back Air in more situations, since it was fairly limited before. The new knockback angle gives opponents more agency in avoiding followups.

• Up Air recovery: 15 > 17
  • This move is still a little too overcentralizing to Maypul's kit, both in her punish game and recovery. This small endlag increase aims to increase the counterplay in both scenarios.

• Tether will now prioritize teammates over enemies not in hitstun.
  • Actionable enemies are the most dangerous thing Maypul can tether to, so we're making her tether to the safe option (teammates) if possible.

Clairen is getting an air acceleration change to bring her more in line with the rest of the cast and make spacing her tippers more committal. On top of that, we’re increasing the recovery frames and reducing the active frames of her Neutral Air’s final hit and making her Up Special 2 less susceptible to getting punished after hitting opponents.

• Air acceleration: 1.0 > 0.75
  • Clairen had the highest air acceleration in the game (excluding Wrastor in slipstream), which allowed her to space her tippers with more leniency than we would like.

• Up Special air acceleration set to 1.0
  • Since her overall air acceleration is being changed, her Up Special felt a bit worse than we would like. This will make her Up Special feel identical to the previous patch.

• Up Special part 2 sourspot knockback: 6.5 + 0.35 > 8 + 0.35
  • This makes Clairen less punishable on hit when landing this move, since the opponent will be pushed further away.

• Neutral Air recovery: 12 > 15
  • This makes it more punishable and reduces the followups slightly when used high in the air.

• Neutral Air final hit active frames: 4 > 3
  • This move was lingering slightly longer than we would like.

• Ledge Special hit 2 hitbox now reaches more forward.
  • Landing a max-range hit 1 could often make hit 2 whiff on characters that get thinner during hitstun (i.e. Ranno and Maypul).

Loxodont is getting a few changes to some of his more brutal Special Attacks that are stronger than intended in the air. These changes should make them act closer to how they appear. We are also reducing the power of his sweeping Forward Air on shield, as it can be pretty difficult to punish.

• Neutral Special fully charged knockback multiplier: 1.3 > 1.15
  • Because this attack is very strong uncharged, a 1.3 multiplier made it stronger than we would like, especially when paired with level 3 Down Special. This new multiplier will make sure the reward is still very high while removing the situations where this two-piece combo kills at absurdly low percents. To put it in perspective, it takes Strong Attacks 60 frames to hit a 1.3 multiplier, while it used to take Loxodont Neutral Special 30 frames.

• Up Special falling hit hitstun multiplier: 1.0 > 0.8
  • This move has extremely high base knockback to allow it to link into the landing hit, but this knockback was especially deadly offstage, where opponents would often have no chance of coming back if hit by this large move. This hitstun reduction shouldn't affect it onstage in most cases, but should make recovering against it less of a death sentence.

• Forward Air sweetspot damage: 10 > 9
  
• Forward Air landing lag: 10 > 11
  • This move was too good on shield even when used at point-blank range, when it is intended to require spacing to be safe on shield.

While Forsburn is pretty solid balance-wise, many Forsburn mains have expressed that his playstyle has become somewhat stale, with too much emphasis on his normal attacks and little reason to use his deception tools. To remedy this, we're shifting his power around to make him more unique and interesting to play. We're also giving some love to his Up Throw, since his low-percent throw game was a little more straightforward than it could be.

• Forward Special recovery: 7 > 4
  • In a previous patch, this move's recovery was increased from 3 to 7 to tone down his mixups when spawning clone in neutral, specifically when used after a fullhop to descend with Back/Down Air. Since those aerials have since been toned down, we're almost fully reverting the change to give Forsburn more chances to spawn a clone in neutral.

• Forward Tilt recovery: 16 > 17
  
• Up Tilt recovery: 15 > 17
  • We're toning down these extremely fast tilts both on hit and on shield.

• Up Tilt knockback: 7 + 0.55 > 7 + 0.7
  • The extra scaling makes his Up Tilt Strong attack loops end earlier.

• Back Air landing lag: 11 > 12
  
• Back Air sweetspot shield stun: 9 > 8
  • This makes shielding Back Air more effective as counterplay.

• Up Throw recovery: 33 > 31
  
• Up Throw knockback: 9 + 0.5 > 10 + 0.5
  • This makes it more rewarding at low percents, so that his best option after grabbing the opponent isn't always Down Throw into tech chase.

Etalus is getting a quality-of-life change to his Forward Special as well as some love to his Forward Air to make it useful in more situations and deal more damage. His Up Special is getting a change to its post-launch actionability that was accidentally slower than intended, while also getting a small startup increase and a quality-of-life change to help with misinputs.

• Forward Special icicle hitbox expanded backward.
  • This makes it less likely for opponents to slip between the icicles unharmed.

• Up Special speed threshold for cancels: 22.66 > 32.58
  • This makes it match the cancel timing from Rivals 1. It was actually intended to match from the beginning, but was modeled after an outdated version of Rivals 1 instead. This means that Etalus will be able to act sooner after an Up Special releases.

• Up Special post-charge startup: 2 > 6
  • With the faster actionability after launching, he could get an attack out a bit too fast. This change makes the Up Special launch happen on the same frame as in Rivals 1, so the cancel timing is also the same. This also makes the spike hitbox appear 4 frames later, which helps to balance how strong it is both onstage and off.

• Etalus can now start an Up Special by holding up and special on the IASA frame of any state.
  • Because his Up Special is chargeable, he can't mash the special button to get a well-timed Up Special like the rest of the characters. This change allows him to just hold the input instead. This was already possible out of hitstun states, but now it works for any state.

• Up Special ledge grab box now reaches 10cm higher.
  • Because of the variable distance of his recovery, it can be tricky to sweetspot the ledge, especially since he pokes his head relatively high up during his Up Special. We're increasing his ledge grab leniency very slightly to help with this.

• Down Special shockwave will now freeze players if any part of their ECB is over it, instead of just their center.
  
• Forward Air damage: 11 > 13
  • This felt a little weak damage-wise for how strong the knockback is.

• Forward Air's armor starts 3 frames earlier.
  • Forward Air armor is one of his most unique tools, but its high startup made it too difficult to use in situations where it would be useful, so we're shaving some frames from the startup.

• Back Air innermost hitbox size reduced.
  • This reduces the reverse hit range, since this move was overshadowing his other aerials when used after Dash Attack.

• Down Air landing lag: 10 > 12
  • This move is extremely versatile and leads into some of Etalus' strongest punish options. We're increasing the landing lag to tone down the combo potential and make it slightly more punishable on whiff/shield.

• Opponents can now wall tech immediately after getting grabbed by Etalus' Up Air.
  • This gives opponents a chance to survive after Etalus wall techs their attack and instantly hits them with Up Air. The game will check for an active tech window on the first frame after Etalus grabs a player close enough to a wall.

• Down Throw will no longer remove his ice armor.
  • This throw was not strong enough to warrant Etalus losing his armor, so now he gets to keep it while still getting the strength increase on the throw.

Olympia has proved to be fairly strong, with a few aspects being stronger than intended, such as her recovery at top level. To fix this, we're reducing the effectiveness of Down Special Cancel while recovering, while also removing some of the mixup potential of her Up Special. Even though her offense is intended to be her strength, there were a few moves that have proved to be a bit overcentralizing, such as her safe aerials, neutral special setups, and forward special followups. These are all receiving some small tweaks to increase the potential for counterplay while still keeping them strong.

• Neutral Air hit 2 damage: 5 > 4
• Neutral Air landing lag: 7 > 8
  • This reduces the effectiveness of this move on shield.

• Forward Air recovery: 18 > 20
  • This slightly reduces the potency of her options after ending this move in the air, both on hit and whiff.

• Forward Air landing lag: 11 > 12
  
• Forward Air early hit damage: 11 > 10
  • This reduces the effectiveness of this move on shield, while also making it slightly more punishable on whiff.

• Up Air recovery: 15 > 18
  
• Up Air early hit damage: 8 > 6
  
• Up Air mid hit damage: 8 > 6
  
• Up Air landing lag: 10 > 11
  • This reduces the effectiveness of this move on shield, while also reducing the damage buildup when hitting with it mid-combo.

• Neutral Special will now have a 30 frame cooldown when the gem field is deployed.
  • This prevents Olympia from instantly popping the gem field on hit, which would force the opponent into a scramble situation. It also prevents her from punishing a parry attempt by stopping the projectile early and then instantly popping it.

• Forward Special slam landing recovery: 12 > 16
  
• Forward Special knockback: 6.5 + 0.7 @ 80 > 6.5 + 0.9 @ 80
  • This makes it send opponents farther away at higher percents, which can reduce the potency of onstage followups, but also makes it potentially more powerful when used offstage, since DI out can lead to a direct KO.

• Up Special can no longer fastfall until the Special Fall window.
  • This adds some commitment before you can fastfall to ledge when forced to recover high.

• Up Special no longer gives a small horizontal boost when holding backward at the beginning of the Recovery window.
  • This makes it more risky to use offstage, since she won't be able to drift backward as far.

• Down Special cancel's speed will now decay with each use until Olympia touches ground or grabs the ledge.
  • This makes intercepting Olympia's recovery more rewarding, since she won't get the full Down Special cancel dash back.

• Getup Special recovery: 29 > 33
  • This increases the punish window when this move gets shielded, while also toning down the followups Olympia gets when hitting an opponent with it.

• Bug fix: Getup Special crystals will now deactivate if Olympia is interrupted during the startup.
  

That's it for today! Thank you for reading this far and please be sure to check out our new Nolt Board, where community members can leave feedback about the game and help us continue to add helpful features!