Of everything revealed on July 30, the line that travelled fastest was the shortest one: no battle pass, no tour of duty, no gimmicks. The Coalition is going back to the idea that buying the game is what earns you the right to unlock its contents. Two beta weekends later — the open one closes today, August 17 — the model has survived contact with a few million players unchanged. Here is how customisation and progression actually work in Gears of War: E-Day.
Cosmetics: gritty, grounded, and no crossovers
The studio has deliberately skipped promotional crossovers and IP guest stars, building skins out of its own characters, world and imagery instead. Legendary-tier skins get more imaginative, but the reference point is always Gears lore.
- Characters: over 60 skins at launch across COG and Locust. Every major character and skin that appears in Campaign can be unlocked on day one, with more each season.
- Weapon Skin Sets: a skin is acquired once and applies to every eligible weapon. No more re-buying the same pattern gun by gun.
- Poses: lobby and intro/outro stances, not emotes; they cannot be triggered in gameplay.
- Banners: now also appear in-game during Horde Siege, marking where your squad completed an objective.
- Emblems, Icons, Titles: the icon you equip is also the marker shown when you tag an enemy or object. Titles are earn-only.
- Menu Music: four tracks at launch, including an instrumental version of Metallica’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
How you earn it
Two routes. Direct: seasonal and event challenges, achievements, and the Gears 3–inspired medals system. Indirect: play matches, earn Coins, spend them on the specific items you want in the Barracks.
Crucially, an item tied to an active challenge or achievement cannot be bought around while that challenge is live. Miss a limited-time reward and it re-enters the Barracks after a cooldown, so the people who earned it on time get their window to show it off first.
Coins come from match performance, from every ten Player Levels, and from unlocking medals. Match-earned Coins have a weekly cap — described as more than enough for a Legendary character skin with change to spare — while Coins from medals and levels are uncapped.
Iron is the premium currency: optional, for buying specific items instantly instead of grinding for them. The in-game shop rotates weekly discounted bundles for Iron only, with two policies worth noting: no shop exclusives (everything in a bundle stays available in the Barracks afterwards) and complete-the-set pricing (bundle price drops based on how many of its items you already own).
The pay-only exceptions are narrow: Premium Edition content and its five Seasonal Customization Packs, charity bundles — proceeds from the upcoming Never Fight Alone bundle go to Crisis Text Line — and a handful of partnership items such as the Legendary Ride the Lightning weapon set made with Metallica.
Progression: medals and Re-Up
- Medals are back from Gears of War 3: 80+ series at launch with tiered challenges, awarding Coins, banners and emblems. Bronze / Silver / Gold / Onyx now top out with a new Diamond tier that grants an exclusive Player Title. Up to three medals can be displayed on your emblem.
- Player Level caps at 100 and then lets you Re-Up four times, 500 levels of total progression. Finish the last Re-Up and you get the Gears 2–inspired wings next to your name.
- Challenges: 12 weekly (half Horde Siege, half Versus, XP only, no fear of falling behind), 20 seasonal per season unlocking cosmetics and base characters, five per limited-time event, plus non-expiring Foundations challenges for newcomers.
- Achievements all unlock Player Titles, and four Mastery achievements each award a Legendary character skin, including the E-Day version of Gears’ most infamous achievement, Seriously?, here renamed Dead Serious.
What the beta actually paid out
Six cosmetics plus a medal and a title were on the table across the two weekends, and everything on the list lands in your inventory on October 6:
- Open Beta Medal and First in the Fight Title: just launch the multiplayer beta
- Crush the Bug Banner: 25 headshots
- Crush the Bug Emblem: 10 revives
- Crush the Bug Icon: five Prototype Lancer chainsaw executions
- Rare Crush the Bug Weapon Skin Set: extract from Horde Siege eight times on Infantry difficulty or higher
- Epic Blast Damage Mags Character Skin: reach Player Level 20
Read the fine print, though: only those challenge rewards, the Beta Medal and the Beta Title survive. Class progression, Player Level and any other medal progress are wiped at launch. Progress did carry from the first weekend into the second on the same account, and class levels were capped at 10 in the test client against 30 in the full game, so Player Level 20 was never a head start, just the price of the Mags skin.
The economy after two weekends
The Coalition patched the beta between weekends, but the changelog was gameplay and technical — Prototype Lancer tuning, Horde Siege hit detection, Series S hitching, PC networking and SSD requirements. Nothing in the customisation or progression model changed, and no revision to Coins, Iron or the weekly cap has been announced.
That is worth flagging rather than celebrating: the weekly Coin cap is still an unpublished number, and the studio’s own position is that it has tuned the earn rate carefully and will adjust post-launch based on feedback. In other words, the fairest-sounding economy of the year is still asking to be judged on figures nobody outside The Coalition has seen. We will know in October.
Editions, pre-order and hardware
- Standard Edition: base game, $69.99 / £59.99.
- Premium Edition: five days early access (October 1), the Emergence Customization Pack (Death’s Rendezvous Marcus, Bloodied Hunter Tai Kaliso, poses, weapon sets, banner, emblem, icon), four further Seasonal Packs, 1,000 Iron, and the Bravo Squad Signature Weapon Pack for Campaign.
- Collector’s Edition: $249.99 / £249.99, shipping October 1: a 15-inch Marcus-and-Dom diorama statue, a 1:1 metal replica of Carlos Santiago’s COG tags, art print, in-game photo, a SteelBook case designed by Luke Preece, a note from The Coalition, plus the Premium Edition upgrade.
- Pre-order bonus on every edition: the Legendary Exfil Dom character skin and the Legendary Exfil weapon skin set, live in-game from October 1.
On the shelf rather than in the Barracks, Xbox announced two Limited Edition Wireless Controllers on August 12. The pre-made Gears of War: E-Day Limited Edition Xbox Wireless Controller is up for pre-order now at $89.99 / £84.99 and ships September 30 — one day before Premium and Collector’s early access, a week before launch. From the same date, Xbox Design Lab opens a custom build featuring exclusive artwork by heavy metal illustrator Luke Preece — a skull on crossed Lancers — the same artist behind the Collector’s Edition SteelBook, with metallic triggers and D-pads, rubberised grips and engraving on top.
Meanwhile the Campaign makes its playable debut at gamescom 2026, where both controllers go on public display — so expect the next wave of E-Day news to be single-player, not cosmetics.
Five post-launch seasons are confirmed, starting with Season 1: Emergence. E-Day launches October 6, 2026 on Xbox Series X|S and PC, day one on Game Pass Ultimate.
