Smite 2 is certainly exciting for anyone who’s enjoyed the long-running MOBA, but unfortunately there’s a bit of bad news for players who have invested heavily into the first game. As it announces its sequel to take on the titans of League of Legends and Dota 2, developer Titan Forge confirms that your Smite skins from the original won’t be making it over – although the team does have a way to compensate you for them.
Smite 2 is a completely standalone sequel, built in Unreal Engine 5, to one of the best MOBA games, which boasts over 35 million players worldwide. The announcement of Smite 2 at the ongoing Smite World Championships is looking promising so far, and alpha testing is set to arrive later this year. However, the upgrade is leaving one big part of the first game behind.
“As we’ve said before, Smite 2 is a true sequel to Smite and a new, standalone game – so let’s address the question on everyone’s mind,” general manager Travis Brown says. “Existing content from Smite 1 will not directly transfer to Smite 2, but don’t worry; just because your content doesn’t directly transfer, that doesn’t mean we’re not rewarding our loyal players in Smite 2 for their time, money, and accomplishments.”
“Smite 2 is a multigenerational leap from Smite one, moving from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 5,” executive producer Alex Cantatore explains. “That means we have to completely rework or recreate every piece of content for it to function in Smite 2.” Art director Ben Knapp adds, “Because we want to make sure all the content that goes into Smite 2 is strictly better, it takes about two months of work to get one skin from Smite to Smite 2.”
“As of today there are about 1,600 skins in Smite, excluding mastery skins,” art producer Sherri Harney estimates, “to just port every skin to Smite 2 it would take about 246 person-years of work and we couldn’t do that and make Smite 2 as amazing as we knew it could be if we started fresh.” Cantatore says the team made this “hard call” early in development: “We believed that our players wanted a better version of Smite more than anything else.”
The good news is that two new systems are coming in the sequel for those of you with prior investment in Smite. The first is Legacy Gems – you’ll be given a number of these equal to every single gem you’ve spent in the first game, and that amount will be doubled if you buy any of the Smite 2 founders packs. These “can be used to pay for 50% of most in-game purchases in Smite 2,” effectively making everything half-price until you’ve used up all of your Legacy Gems.
Divine Legacy goes live in the first update of year 11, and is essentially a lifetime achievement system that rewards you for your progress across each year of Smite’s history. You’ll earn points for your progress, match history, mastery levels on each god, and unlocked skins across each year of the game to date, with your cumulative total unlocking rewards in both Smite and Smite 2.
While it’ll certainly be sad to wave goodbye to those many years of skin unlocks, it’s a decision that the team at Titan Forge has thought about very carefully, and its Legacy Gems system feels like a good way to reward players who do want to make the jump to the sequel.
If you’re in the mood for even more gods and legends, the best fantasy games have you covered. Or you can hone your competitive edge ahead of Smite 2 with more of the best multiplayer games in 2024.
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