Which sprite abilities are actually worth running

Updated 3 August 2026 · 7 min read

A role-by-role breakdown of all 25 sprite abilities — survivability, loot, information, mobility and collection-building — and when each earns its slot.

There is no single best sprite. Abilities do different jobs, and the right one depends on whether you need to survive fights, open better loot, find people first, move faster, or build your collection. This page groups all 25 by what they are for, describes each ability as the game states it, and says plainly where the choice comes down to preference.

Why isn't this a tier list?

Because an honest one can't be built from what is public. Ranking Demon above Boss would require knowing how often you get eliminations versus how often 25 extra effective HP decides a fight, and Epic has published neither figure. What is knowable is what each ability does and the situation that makes it good. That is a real answer; "A tier" is not.

What does each ability actually do?

Which sprites keep you alive?

Seven address survivability, in two philosophies.

Passive, always-on: Boss simply raises your maximum Health and Shield. It asks nothing of you, never misfires, and is the only one that helps in a fight you are losing from the first shot — the reasonable default if you don't want to think about your sprite.

Conditional, higher ceiling: Demon siphons on eliminations and Pollo regenerates squad shields after them. Both reward you for already winning, so they feel excellent in aggressive play and absent in a match where you take one bad fight. Zero Point turns each self-heal into a Shield Bubble Jr., rewarding disciplined healing rather than kills.

Ironmouse is the outlier: it triggers when your health drops low, granting Cloak and low gravity while it heals you — the only ability that does something because you are losing.

Duck and Water are situational by design. Duck wants you emoting or jamming, Water wants you in water; both are good on water-heavy routes and close to nothing otherwise. Ghost only spawns at night, which caps how often you can run it at all.

Which sprites improve your loot?

Four, and they trigger at different points in a match.

Earth improves what chests give you, so it works from the first minute and decays as your loadout fills. Llama upgrades weapons from ammo boxes, which matters mid-game. Burnt Peanut pays out on eliminations, with a shot at mythic loot once maxed — the biggest single payoff here, and one that requires you to be winning already. Dream grants a random item at each level, reaching legendary loot at max.

None is strictly better; they are good at different clock times.

Which sprites tell you where people are?

Three, and this is the clearest case where the answer depends on your mode.

• Seven shows enemy footstep trails to your whole squad — the only one that gives information before contact, and the only one whose value scales with squad size.
• Grim marks anyone who attacks you, converting being shot at into knowing where from.
• John Wick reveals nearby enemies after a knock or elimination. It answers "is this a third party?", which is when most won fights are lost.

Squads and want to find fights: Seven. Want to survive an ambush: Grim. Die to the second team more than the first: John Wick. A genuine three-way split, not a ranking.

Which sprites make you faster?

Air is the general-purpose answer: faster sprint, higher jump, no fall damage. That last clause quietly changes how you rotate, because it removes the cost of dropping off anything. Striker gives Overdrive on mantles, hurdles and wall-scrambles, suiting players who move through terrain rather than around it. Batman adds a glide on a leap. Fishy is a swim-speed specialist — transformative on water rotations, irrelevant elsewhere. Vini Jr.'s slidekick is mobility that also deals damage.

The four offence abilities sit alongside these. Aura and Fire both trigger after you deal enough damage, so they favour sustained engagements over one-shot trades. King multiplies pickaxe damage, which is narrow. Punk's infinite ammo chance is the one with no stated rate anywhere.

Which sprites help you finish the collection?

Two abilities directly help you collect, and they are the ones to run when your goal is the dex rather than the win.

Batman makes rare sprites appear in chests more often. Peely marks nearby rare variants and their carriers, turning collecting into a targetable activity — at the cost of revealing your own location, a real trade rather than a free bonus.

Variant bonuses stack on top of the base ability and matter here too: Holofoil increases your chance to find variant sprites, Gummy awards extra Sprite Dust on extraction, and Quack shares a portion of earned progress with every other sprite in your match inventory. If you are grinding the collection rather than the win, those are often worth more than the base ability you gave up.

So what should you actually run?

Pick the role first. With no strong preference, Boss and Air are the two lowest-regret choices: neither has a trigger condition, neither can whiff, and both help in every match. Everything with a higher ceiling — Demon, Burnt Peanut, Ironmouse, Seven — is conditional, and the condition is usually "you are already doing well" or "your squad will act on the information".

That is not a cop-out. It is the actual shape of the design.

Ability text is as it appears in game. Where Epic has not published a figure, none is given here.

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