Pokemon UNITE’s Ranked and Standard battles will move to a new map in September

The Pokémon Company and TiMi Studios will replace Remoat Stadium, the current map for ranked and standard battles in Pokémon UNITE, for the new map Theia Sky Ruins on Friday, Sept. 2 onwards.

Remoat Stadium has been the map for ranked and standard battles in UNITE since the release of the MOBA game in July 2021 and the community had been asking for a change in the past months. Theia Sky Ruins will feature a new layout, different wild Pokémon, new objectives, and perhaps most importantly the introduction of Rayquaza as the final objective of the game instead of Zapdos.

“Whereas Zapdos disables the opposing team’s goals, Rayquaza is going to allow the team [that beats it] to have easier goals by scoring faster, as well as higher attack. It’s more of a buff to the winning team than a debuff to the opposing team,” UNITE’s producer Masaaki Hoshino said in an interview with The Gamer.

Theia Sky Ruins could fundamentally change the current way UNITE is played because of all the different wild Pokémon spawns. It will have extra Pokémon spawning in both the top and bottom paths, which should help players that play there.

On Remoat Stadium, the players that play top or bottom usually take a while to farm experience as the central area offers more wild Pokémon than any other path in the first minutes of the 10-minute match.

“It’s been one year since launch and people want something new, so we wanted to introduce a new way to play Pokémon UNITE,” Hoshino said.

The addition of map Theia Sky Ruins is just one of the changes coming to UNITE in September as part of the second half of the game’s first anniversary. Mew, Dodrio, and Scizor will all join UNITE’s pool of playable characters next month.