Xbox One owners that have yet to spend any money on the free-to-play relaunch of Killer Instinct have had over a month to master Jago's endokukens and shadow wind kicks. The limited character roster available for free has forced the thrifty brawlers out there to spend all their time in the game's dojo, survival arena, and online matches battling with Jago. Hopefully, they haven't grown too attached to the sword-wielding fighter.

As planned, Double Helix has rotated the free-to-play character out and introduced a new freebie in its most recent patch. Thanks to the first major update for the relaunched fighting game, players who haven't purchased additional characters yet will need to trade in their endokukens for eclipses and ragged edge attacks.

The 675MB patch makes Sabrewulf playable for free, in addition to implementing a long list of tweaks and updates. Players that wish to continue using Jago can purchase the fighter a la carte or pick up the Combo Breaker Pack or Ultra Edition, which both contain the full roster of launch characters.

Xbox One owners who have been spending a lot of time in the fighting game will be excited to see that many of its biggest problems are addressed with patch 1.1. The long list of tweaks covers save data being lost thanks to Kinect sign-in changes, full controller support, corrected command lists, and loads more. Check out Double Helix Games' forum for a comprehensive list of the changes.

There is no official schedule for when the free characters will rotate, but if the next change is just about a month away (like this first one was), then players have a pretty decent amount of time to get the hang of the newly free Sabrewulf before they are pushed on to the next temporary freebie.

Despite the change in the rotating free character availability, Killer Instinct's dojo mode is still built around Jago. Although the purpose of the training mode is to establish fundamental skills that can be transferred to any of the game's playable characters, the more advanced tutorials still emphasize the way things work specifically with Jago's custom abilities. It would be nice to see this feature eventually offer tutorials for each fighter's command list.

Killer Instinct's free mode still offers a somewhat limited experience of the game, but it's hard to complain when the full version is only a twenty dollar upgrade. Having the opportunity to play local multiplayer or ranked online matches before spending a cent is a pretty good deal. Plus players can now start gathering the character-specific achievements that are tied the the werewolf fighter before Double Helix proceeds to swap him out for another.

Have you been getting enough out of Killer Instinct's free-to-play mode or have you already spent a few bucks to unlock extra characters and costumes? Sound off in the comments.

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Killer Instinct is available now, exclusively on the Xbox One’s Games Store.

Follow Denny on Twitter @The_DFC.

Source: Double Helix