Marvel Rivals Age of Ultron PvE Mode: How It Works and What to Do First

The Path to Doomsday: Avengers: Age of Ultron PvE mode went live in Marvel Rivals today, July 30, and it’s a co-op-against-AI mode where you and up to a small squad play Avengers heroes fighting through a corrupted Avengers Tower and Ultron’s Data Space. This guide covers exactly where the mode sits in the menu, how it differs from normal matches, which heroes you’re stuck with and why, how the run itself plays out, the new health kit resource layer, and the one platform question everyone is typing into search right now.

At San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, 2026, NetEase Games and Marvel Games announced that Marvel Rivals‘ next Path to Doomsday chapter — a PvE mode pitting Avengers characters against Ultron’s drone army — will launch July 30. It’s the second chapter of the game’s ongoing Path to Doomsday content line, and it continues Marvel Rivals’ run of special events based on Marvel Studios’ Avengers films, including content tied to The Avengers and Avengers: Endgame. The pitch is simple: a corrupted F.R.I.D.A.Y. floods Avengers Tower with sentries, and you play as the Avengers pushing back. The tower that once protected the world now blares with alarms, teetering on the edge of collapse, and the Avengers assemble once more, swearing to fend off Ultron’s invasion. If you’ve played the game’s earlier Blood Hunt event, the format will feel familiar — story missions with rewritten dialogue standing in for standard competitive queues.

The mode lives outside the normal PvP queue entirely. It sits alongside Blood Hunt, the other PvE mode currently running in the Events tab. That’s the key thing to know if you’ve been clicking through the ranked or quick-match menus and not finding it — Age of Ultron isn’t a map variant inside those, it’s its own listing under Events, launched with today’s build. The update rolled out as the final patch of Season 9, at 9 AM UTC on July 30, 2026, and since it’s a minor update there was no server downtime, so there’s no need to wait for maintenance to clear before jumping in. The mode runs on its own dedicated map too: the Avengers Tower map was specially designed for this PvE mode, so you won’t be able to play regular PvP modes like Convoy on it.

The biggest change is who you’re fighting. There’s no enemy team of players here — every threat on screen is AI. Because PvE encounters throw massive hordes of enemies at the team rather than precise 6v6 PvP skirmishes, character viability shifts completely, and high area-of-effect damage, crowd control, and self-sustain dominate the meta. That single fact reshapes how team-ups and hero picks matter — pairs built around single-target burst in ranked PvP can fall flat against a horde, while abilities that clear groups suddenly look far stronger. If you’re trying to figure out which duos actually hold up when the enemy count spikes into double digits, our breakdown of Marvel Rivals team-ups and the best pairings to build around is worth checking before you queue, since co-op synergy doesn’t map cleanly onto competitive synergy.

Kits also change on a mechanical level. Heroes get new character-specific abilities for this mode — Iron Man, for instance, is shown firing a barrage of rockets at countless waves of Ultron forces, suggesting abilities are tailored to the encounter rather than pulled directly from the standard kit. Expect some of your ranked muscle memory to not translate one-to-one here.

You don’t get to bring your full main-menu roster into this one. The confirmed trailer starts with Captain America before jumping between Black Widow, Iron Man, and Bruce Banner, ending on Scarlet Witch — these are the confirmed playable heroes, and more may surface as players work through the mode. The reason the cast is capped is baked into the premise: this is a movie-accurate retelling of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the mode integrates the new storyline inspired by the movie into the game, with players using Avengers heroes to battle Ultron’s army across Avengers Tower and his Data Space. That’s a narrative restriction, not a technical one — the mission is telling a specific story, so the roster mirrors who was actually in that fight on screen.

One thing that’s already been shot down: don’t expect to play Ultron himself. Unlike the previous Marvel Rivals Avengers mode where players could pick the villain Loki because it was PvP, in this PvE mode you can only choose from the available Avengers heroes.

The interface changed for this mode in a way regular matches never needed. A health kit counter now sits in the HUD, and you go into a run carrying at least three of them — a resource-management layer the standard hero-shooter loop simply doesn’t have. In PvP, sustain comes entirely from Strategist healers; here, you’re also managing a personal consumable stock, which changes how aggressively you can play a squishier damage hero versus how carefully a support needs to ration cooldowns.

Here’s the honest part: NetEase has not published a difficulty tier structure or a detailed rewards breakdown for this mode as of launch day. There’s no confirmed list of difficulty levels, no confirmed token or currency payout, and no confirmed cosmetic-unlock ladder tied specifically to clearing the mode. Anyone stating specific numbers for rewards right now is guessing — treat any such claim you see elsewhere as unconfirmed until NetEase posts an official breakdown.

Marvel Rivals is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam for its standard PvP content, so this PS4 gap is specific to the new PvE mode, not the base game.

“It’s just Blood Hunt with a new skin”

The mode differs from Blood Hunt in that heroes get new character-specific abilities tailored to this encounter, rather than reusing the standard PvP kit wholesale. Treating it as a reskin of the earlier PvE event will leave you unprepared for how differently some heroes play here.

“You can play as Ultron since he’s the star of the trailer”

It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever pilot Ultron in this mode — since it’s PvE rather than PvP, players can only choose from the available Avengers heroes. Save that expectation for a future PvP-focused event if one ever brings him in as playable.

“The roster will expand mid-run based on your loadout”

The hero list is fixed to the movie’s cast for this chapter, not to your account’s unlocked roster. There could be more heroes revealed before the mode fully settles, but it isn’t a pick-anyone free-for-all like standard Quick Match.