Valorant dev opens up on the design process behind the new Ruination, Sentinels of Lights, and K/TAC skins

Valorant brought three weapon skins in Episode 3 Act 1 – “Ruination”, “Sentinels of Lights”, and K/TAC skins, as of yet.

The new “Sentinels of Light” skin bundle came with the Patch 3.02 update, which was inspired by the League of Legends “Rise of Sentinels” event. The devs have previously introduced the “Ruination” skin bundle in Patch 3.01 to celebrate the event with a collaboration between Riot Games’ published releases.

Apart from these two skins, K/TAC was also introduced as a battle pass skin in Valorant Episode 3 Act 1.

Riot devs recently revealed the story behind the two League of Legends crossover skins – “Ruination” and “Sentinels of Light.” They also mentioned the idea behind Valorant’s K/TAC battle pass skin and the process of developing new “materials” for Valorant skins.

Planning and process behind Valorant’s ‘Sentinels of Light’ and ‘Ruination’ skin bundles

Making this collaboration happen was a big challenge for the developers in the first place, as Valorant and League of Legends have completely different universes. Moreover, bringing the “Black Mist” inside of the crystal by not affecting the competitive integrity of the weapons, at the same time was not easy. However, they still enjoyed and embraced the challenge of making this collaboration happen.

Chris Stone, a weapons artist who’s part of the Valorant Premium Content team opined,

“Sentinels of Light is Riot’s big summer event, bringing the “Ruined” and “Sentinel” thematics to each of our games. Although VALORANT doesn’t occupy the same space as League of Legends, it was a fun opportunity to bring the “Black Mist” that is taking over Runeterra to our weapons.”

While creating the “Ruination” skins, Chris worked with the team’s FX artist on the signature shapes of the Black Mist effect. In fact, one of the textures made by the FX artist was used in the end.

On the other hand, the “Sentinels of Light” skin highlighted the “Relic Stone” which can hold back the Black Mist at bay. The main idea behind bringing the skin is to try to resist the “Ruination” in the League of Legends’ universe.

The lead artist of the “Sentinels of Light” skin experimented with the textures and features to perfectly represent the lore behind the skin. Chris Stone further mentioned the best feature to be the changes in crystals caused while firing and reloading.

Apart from the two League of Legends crossover skins, K/TAC is the other skin introduced in Episode 3 Act 1’s battle pass.

To develop the battle pass’s K/TAC skin, a “custom Normal Map” was made which had a special texture “with magical and oily effect”. The devs tried their best to create a better battle pass skin for the players. In context to this, Chris stated,

“The K/TAC skins are an example of extending the life of new weapon skin tech such as the one in Ruination. While our outsource team was working with our external vendor on the K/TAC skin line, I felt that the materials we were using could be improved to deliver a super clean Battlepass skin for players.”

Both the “Ruination” and “Sentinels of Light” skin bundles were only possible due to the amazing collaboration idea by Riot Games and the intense hard work of the developers.