The 2XKO‘s Alpha Lab test has been publically available for less than a day, and already players have found touch-of-death combos. These combos – some of which niche, others genuinely quite useful – provide a glimpse at the saucy potential of Riot’s very own fighting game.

The reason these have been found so quickly comes courtesy of two main reasons. This Alpha Lab test period, which is set to last roughly two weeks, isn’t just a online matchmaking alpha. Instead, dedicated training mode tools are present for players looking to optimize their play, allowing for stable practice spaces for discovering such combos. In addition, many of the pioneers of such combos have actually played the game before, be it at public play sessions at Evo 2024 and elsewhere, or private Riot events.

So let’s dive into some of these combos! Edwin – community manager at Square Enix and longtime fighting game player – has posted their own Darius x Ekko touch-of-death to Twitter. This starts off with a regular old medium hit in the centre of the screen, and requires five bars in total. So very costly, but not overly impossible to pull off in an actual match. It also uses the double down fuse, allowing Edwin to link supers together and cash out some big damage.

https://x.com/i/bookmarks?post_id=1821650147685638449

Recent Mortal Kombat 1 champion SonicFox posted a similar combo late last night. Using Ahri and Ekko and five bars of super meter, as well as the 2X assist fuse which allows for multiple uses of Ahri’s aerial projectile assist, we get a clean touch-of-death combo. You love to see it.

So these are cool, obviously. But what can you do when getting hit by such a combo? Well, 2XKO has a burst system. This is basically a “get off me” button, allowing you to break out of combos at the cost of some of your assist bar. That doesn’t mean these combos are useless by any means – getting hit by one of these basically forces you to burst at risk of death – just don’t expect these one hit kill combos to end games within the first 10 seconds.

Are you playing in the 2XKO Alpha Labs test? Are you keen to get in and practice some combos? Let us know below!