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Episode 8 Act 1 kicks off today, January 9, 2024, and players may be wondering when they will receive the Episode 7 Ranked gun buddy in Valorant. This is the special cosmetic item that all players who have unlocked their rank even once during a given Episode receive upon the start of the subsequent Episode.
Depending on the highest rank you reached in Valorant's Episode 7, you will be awarded a gun buddy. For example, if Gold 2 was your best rank across Act 1, 2, and 3 of Episode 7, you will receive the common Gold rank-shaped buddy with Episode 7 written on it. The same thing applies to all ranks, irrespective of the subdivision within it you reached.
Valorant Episode 7 Ranked gun buddy release date and time
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The Episode 7 Ranked buddy will be the first thing you receive when you log into Riot Games' shooter title after downloading Valorant patch 8.0 on January 9 or 10, 2024 (depending on your region). This will also give you access to all the content from Episode 8 Act 1.
However, considering the patch deployment time is slightly different for different regions, it is useful to have the drop times handy. Remember that before you can log into Valorant Episode 8 Act 1, the title's live servers will go down for maintenance. This will take place at the following times:
- Asia Pacific: Servers will be going down for maintenance on January 9, 2024, at 13:00 PDT.
- Brazil: Servers will be going down for maintenance on January 9, 2024, at 06:00 PDT.
- Europe: Servers will be going down for maintenance on January 9, 2024, at 20:00 PDT.
- Korea: Servers will be going down for maintenance on January 9, 2024, at 13:00 PDT.
- Latin America: Servers will be going down for maintenance on January 9, 2024, at 06:00 PDT.
- North America: Servers will be going down for maintenance on January 9, 2024, at 06:00 PDT.
After this happens in your region, you must wait approximately two-to-four hours before you can start playing again.
How to get the Episode 7 Ranked buddy in Valorant
You don't need to do anything separately to get the Episode 7 Ranked buddy. It will be automatically be added to your collection once you start playing in Episode 8 Act 1. To equip it, go to the Collections tab and attach it to any gun you wish to.
Episode 8 Act 1 will also bring back Icebox to the competitive map pool as well as offer a fantastic skin collection called Kuronami.
