You’ve asked for it. The FGC has asked for it. And Riot finally delivered: 2XKO now has a real single-player mode — and it’s a roguelite. Welcome to The Climb.
What Is The Climb?
Dropping today in Patch 1.2.3 alongside Thresh and Senna, The Climb is 2XKO’s new PVE mode designed for solo play or co-op duos. You pick your champions, select your Fuse — the powerful teamwork modifier that defines your duo’s identity — and then battle through a branching map of increasingly difficult CPU opponents until you reach the final boss or your run ends.
Single-round matches. No resets. Health, Break meter, and Super meter all carry over from fight to fight. Every victory matters. Every hit you take matters.
The Augment System Changes Everything
Here’s what makes The Climb genuinely exciting for fighting game players: the augment system. After every win, you choose from a randomized selection of augments that modify your champion’s kit. Over 100 augments are in the pool. Some are generalist power-ups that work with any playstyle. Others are character-specific, building on interactions that don’t exist in normal matches.
These perks stack. A run can start to feel completely different from match to match as your augments compound. The right combination turns your champion into something the game wasn’t originally designed around — and that’s the fun of it. You’re theorycrafting in real time, every run.
Three Difficulties, Campfire Rests, Real Pressure
Choose from three difficulty tiers when you start a run. The fights scale harder the further you climb and the more powerful your augments become — the game is actively trying to match the threat level to your stack. When you’re in trouble, Campfires scattered across the map let you stop and restore health — but using one means giving up a fight you could have otherwise taken for an augment. That’s a real strategic tradeoff that’ll have you weighing risk versus reward on every route decision.
Why This Matters for the 2XKO Community
Fighting games have a retention problem. The moment-to-moment PVP experience is incredible, but the grind of losing online while still learning the game drives new players away fast. A roguelite PVE mode solves that in two ways:
- It’s a safe space to learn — you’re fighting CPUs with real pressure, so you’re actually practicing decision-making without getting 10-game-streak punished by a GrandMaster.
- It’s rewarding to grind — Chromas for base champion skins, avatar items, stickers, and Battle Pass XP all drop from The Climb. There’s always a reason to run it again.
For newer players especially: The Climb is where you should be spending time right now. Pick a character you want to main, run The Climb on Normal, and use the augments to experiment with interactions you wouldn’t try in a real match. You’ll develop intuition faster than any amount of ranked ladder grinding will give you at the start.
Is It Good?
The FGC’s initial reaction has been genuinely positive — and that’s notable because this community is not easy to please when it comes to content modes. The branching map structure, the augment stacking, the fact that your resources carry over between fights — it all creates tension that most PVE fighting game modes completely lack.
Riot built a single-player mode that actually respects what makes fighting games feel good. That’s harder than it sounds.
→ Read Riot’s full breakdown of The Climb on the official 2XKO site.
→ New to 2XKO entirely? Head to the Guides Hub on tjpuma.net for character breakdowns and fundamentals — or book a session and we’ll build your foundation together.
