After Smite players have defeated the powerful Fire Giant jungle boss countless times, Surtr has had enough. He’s breaking away from the jungle and will join the Smite roster as a playable character in the battleground of the gods. Surtr is set to be the first major god released in 2023.
Surtr was announced in Smite’s upcoming year of new playable characters. Although Surtr was the first confirmed one, several others are on the way, with the development team at Hi-Rez providing only visual hints of what they could be, and nothing has been confirmed until we get closer to their arrival.
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When Surtr arrives later this month, multiple changes are coming alongside him. Smite will receive the yearly sweeping game and balance updates, as Hi-Rez always does at the start of a season.
On top of those are the upcoming Shards, a new type of active ability players can pick from, such as the Vision Shard, which has already been in the game when players have not purchased their second Relic. There will be five in total for the players to select. Hi-Rez has revealed two, the Horn and the Claw Shard. The Horn shard lowers the cooldown timers for non-ultimate abilities for a short time, and the Claw shard grants a player magical or physical power per level and ability lifesteal for a short time.
Class passives are also coming in the Fire Giant update, but we have little information on how those will work. These will likely better define the five classes in Smite, giving them an obvious advantage in their preferred role and potentially preventing players from using more creative gods in non-preferred roles, such as having Warriors in the Jungle or a Mage in the Support role.
We’ll be hearing more about Surtr and these many upcoming changes arriving to Smite, during next week’s Fire God update show, on Wednesday.
