Legends of Runterra, the League of Legends digital card game, will be launching with a Bilgewater boom based on the revealed patch notes. New cards, boards, guardians, card backs, and more make up an extensive list of updates coming to the game on its release from beta. Keep hold of your Nexus as there is plenty to cover, but don’t panic as the full patch notes can be found after this overview.
Perhaps the largest element of Patch 1 is the introduction of the Rising Tides card set; a whole new set of cards completely disrupting the established meta of the beta gameplay. Rising Tides introduces over 120 new cards, 11 new Champions (including my main man Twisted Fate), 6 new card effect keywords, and brand new cosmetic items. These brand new cosmetic items include two guardian characters and new card backs for all the different factions. Legends of Runeterra certainly isn’t settling for a quiet launch.
On top of this, there is an entire galleon of other rewards coming for new players and beta veterans alike. For your first seven days, players will be receiving in-game rewards simply for logging in ranging from randomised card packs through to a whole new starter deck. In addition, Riot Games are making it easier for new players to unlock cards by boosting experience gain for the existing factions by 50% up to level 12.
If you prefer to get your gaming on the go, Legends of Runeterra will also be coming to iOS and Android at launch on April 30th. Depending on your region, it may even be available to download before then! Of course, check the requirements when it appears in your app store to see if it will work on your device, or check out the full patch notes below.
Whatever way you look at it, Legends of Runeterra is making sure that both established players and new members of the community are getting something at launch. This is perfectly in line with the game’s clear design philosophy of making the game as widely competitive as possible. Now, onwards to Bilgewater!
Full Patch Notes
Thank You from the LoR team
Wow. The past few months have flown by, and we’d like to express a deep appreciation for everyone who has played Legends of Runeterra during Open Beta! We’ve learned so much from playing alongside you. With the help of your feedback and playtesting, we’ve iterated our card balance, progression systems, and even our performance settings to try to provide the best possible experience, and we know the game is better for it. Our goal is to continue our exploration of Runeterra, sweet outplays, and awesome Champion moments right there beside you for years to come. Thank you for your excitement and passion, we wouldn’t be here without you!
For everyone who is joining us for the official launch, welcome! You’re jumping in at the perfect moment, with full crossplay between your PC and Mobile accounts so Legends of Runeterra is available wherever you are, a progression system that’s rewarding however you want to play, and a ton of awesome cards to collect and play with. We can’t wait for you to start your journey, and we’re committed to making your experience as exciting and enjoyable as possible. We hope you dive in, and let us know what you’d like to see next!
Now, onwards to Bilgewater!
—Jeff, Andrew, and the Legends of Runeterra development team
Rising Tides
The Rising Tides expansion charts new territory with the addition of Bilgewater, the next region of Runeterra, as well as 11 new Champions and 120+ new cards!
New Region: Bilgewater
In the treacherous harbor of Bilgewater, locals live and die by one code: take whatever you can. Pirate gangs never pass up a chance to plunder, swindlers and rogues keep the next big score in their sights, and monsters of the deep devour entire ships without warning.
Bilgewater joins LoR’s cast of regions for even more deckbuilding possibilities, and brings a slew of options to take enemies by surprise and shoot holes in their plans. You win by bombarding your opponent with attacks they just can’t deal with, and when it’s time to sink or swim, you’ll have all the firepower you need to pull it off.
New Cards
Rising Tides features a full regional roster of five Champions and 60+ cards for Bilgewater, as well as new cards and a new Champion for all six existing regions. Attack from all new angles built around new keywords or mechanics, or see what kinds of new twists you can add to your favorite strategies—it’s all in the cards.
We’ve revealed a bunch of Rising Tides cards over the last few weeks, but not all of them. Starting today, you can head to one of the sites below and see the full catalog of new cards in Rising Tides!
- https://lor.mobalytics.gg/
- https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/lor/cards
- https://www.runeterrafire.com/
- https://blitz.gg/lor
- https://lor.poro.gg/
- http://lor.inven.co.kr/
Rising Tides comes to PC with Patch 1.0, which will go out at approximately 10 AM, April 28 PT.
NOTE: If you hold off on redeeming your weekly vault until you’re on Patch 1.0, it will be able to include cards from Rising Tides!
Mobile Launch
Right alongside Rising Tides, LoR is officially launching on iOS and Android!
Once we release Patch 1.0 to PC tomorrow (~10 AM, April 28 PT), we’ll distribute the mobile client to the Play Store and App Store. Depending on where you live, it may take anywhere from 4 to 48 hours past that time for you to see the app in your store.
On April 30, mobile should be fully live in all launch regions and LoR will officially be launched!
Note: LoR will not be launching in China or Vietnam at this time.
While a Riot account will not be required to access LoR on mobile, we strongly encourage you to use your existing Riot account (or create one), as a Riot account is required for cross-platform play and sharing your account progress between PC and mobile. (We also can’t help you out with account recoveries if it’s not a Riot account.)
Minimum specifications:
- iOS
- iOS9
- Arm64 processor
- NOTE: We do not recommend 1GB RAM devices such as the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPad Air 1. Legends of Runeterra is available for download on these devices but you may experience poor performance or interruptions when playing.
- Android
- OS 5.0
- 2 GB RAM
- GPU Adreno 306 & equivalents or better
Moonstruck Poro Launch Reward
As a special thank you to beta players and everyone who joins us at launch, all accounts that log in to LoR by 11:59 PM, May 7 PT will receive an exclusive Moonstruck Poro Guardian.
The next day, we’ll begin distributing the reward, and you should see it in your collection within 24 hours. If you still don’t see your guardian after 48 hours, please contact Player Support. Don’t worry, your poro pal will wait for you.
First-Week Login Rewards
To help get new folks started in LoR, we’ve added a one-time per account track of first-week login rewards. All existing accounts as of Patch 1.0 will get to run through the track—enjoy!
New LoR accounts (and those existing as of Patch 1.0) can now redeem login rewards each of the first seven days they log in:
-
- Day 1: 1x Capsule
- Day 2: 1x Expedition Token
- Day 3: 1x Golden Chest
- Day 4: 1x Commander Ledros, 2x Atrocity
- Day 5: 1x Champion Capsule
- Day 6: 1x Platinum Chest
- Day 7:
- 2x Ashe, 1x Rimetusk Shaman, 1x Icy Yeti, 2x Icevale Archer, 2x Shatter
- A new starter deck (Freeze and Decay) will be added to your collection, based on the above 8 cards plus others acquired in the Prologue starter decks.
- While we’re turning this track on for current players, there is one known issue—players who own duplicate copies of Day 4’s rewards (2x Atrocity, 1x Commander Ledros) will have them converted into shards without a visualisation or duplicate protection. All Day 7 rewards ARE covered by duplicated protection (and fully visualized).
Region Road Updates
Bilgewater joins the regions of Runeterra with its own Region Road, and all Region Roads are now extended so you can pursue all the new cards (and regional card backs!) in Rising Tides. New and returning players (or those who just like to take their time) can now earn extra XP for early levels in the original regions.
- Bilgewater Region Road added.
- All Region Roads extended from 20 to 25 levels.
- New levels for existing regions will only drop Rising Tides cards (until you unlock them all).
- Levels 1-20 can now drop Rising Tides cards.
- The last level for each region rewards a regional card back!
- “XP Boost Level” system added—earn extra XP towards completing early Region Road levels.
- From Patch 1.0, the first 12 levels on the original six Region Roads (i.e., not Bilgewater) will multiply XP applied toward them by 50%.
- System will be adjusted over time—for example, to include Bilgewater levels, or to advance further down Region Roads with future releases.
Personalization
Rising Tides ships with all-new emotes and card backs as well as a Bilgewater-inspired board and two new guardians. Emotes and card backs are available in the store, or you can unlock regional card backs in the extended Region Roads.
Boards
Slaughter Docks
For legends who take bold risks for big rewards.
Guardians
Powder Monkey
Personality: Cheeky
Hobby: Hot Potato
Hanging out with this one is a blast.
Baley
Personality: Innocent
Hobby: Staring contests
The most adorable omen of death you’ll ever see.
Emotes
- 10 new emotes now available for 190 Coins each.
- Emote selection now customizable.
- Emotes section added to Collection and Store.
- Original six emotes converted to Collection items automatically owned by all accounts.
Card Backs
- 7 regional card backs can now be earned through the updated Region Roads.
- 3 new champion card backs now available for 490 Coins each.
- The Loose Cannon (Jinx)
- The Might of Demacia (Garen)
- The Unforgiven (Yasuo)
- Card Backs section added to Collection and Store.
- Default Summoner’s Rift Card Back converted to a Collection item automatically owned by all accounts.
Per-Deck Loadout
To go along with all the new options, we’ve added the ability to customize and save individual deck loadouts for boards, guardians, emotes, and card backs. Whether you want to make sure your favorite guardian is always along for the ride or accompany your strategy with the perfect theme, you can now set up every deck just right.
- Loadout preview and selector added to the deck info panel when selecting a deck (in either Play or Collection).
- Click on the icons to adjust a deck’s loadout—choices now customize options on a per-deck basis (rather than for all decks).
- Expeditions also get their own loadout—edit it once and it will last until you next update it.
- Newly created decks will start with the loadout of your last-played deck.
- Decks created before Patch 1.0 will be set to your last used loadout from before the patch.
- Various associated UI cleanup.
Ranked
Launch also brings the end of the Beta Season and the start of LoR’s first post-launch ranked season—the Season of Plunder. Beta participants will earn a Beta Season-exclusive icon based on the highest tier they reached. Beta ranks will be partially reset for the new season, then you’ll have about two months to climb as high as you can before the Season of Plunder ends and the next Ranked reward is granted (reward details coming soon).
- Beta Season will end at approximately 9 AM, April 28 PT.
- Beta Season ranked rewards will be granted with your first login after Patch 1.0.
- Ranked queue will be disabled for approximately 24 hours, then we’ll start the Season of Plunder around 10 AM, April 29 PT.
- Ranks partially reset:
- Master accounts will drop 800LP (8 divisions).
- Diamond and Platinum accounts will drop 750LP (7 divisions + 50LP).
- Gold and Silver accounts will drop 675LP (6 divisions + 75LP).
- Bronze and Iron accounts will reset to Iron IV.
Playing Units on Full Boards
- Having a full board of 6 units no longer prevents you from playing additional units—you may now do so and select a current unit to be Obliterated, with your new unit replacing it.
- This won’t trigger Last Breath effects, because the replaced unit doesn’t die.
- If the new unit you played makes more units after being summoned, those will still “overflow” and be Obliterated—you can’t make more space beyond the unit you’re replacing. (You can also still play spells that generate units on a full board, but they’ll “overflow” too, so maybe don’t do that!)
We made this change so that longer games will retain more interesting decisions even late into the game when boards are filling up. We want you to be able to keep playing the sweet units you draw, if you want to, and until this patch, you were essentially locked out if you had a full board of 6 units—you couldn’t play any more from your hand. Now, you can replace one of your units on a full board with the new one played from hand—choose the one you want to replace and it gets Obliterated.
Expeditions Archetypes
We’ve got a ton of Expeditions updates for Rising Tides, with both eight new archetypes to draft and updates to all existing archetypes.
- Eight new Rising Tides archetypes added to the Expeditions draft pool.
- This includes six new archetypes for every existing region paired with Bilgewater and one for solo Bilgewater, as well as one new bonus archetype featuring Jinx and Fizz.
- Rising Tides archetypes will temporarily be twice as likely as they would be otherwise to appear in the initial Champion Picks. We’ll even out these chances in a later patch.
- Card lists have been adjusted for all existing archetypes, primarily adding cards from Rising Tides and in many cases removing older cards to make room for them.
New Player & AI Adjustments
We’ve made a variety of adjustments to smooth out the new player experience, and added new challenges and AI decks for Rising Tides.
- Added 6 new challenges based on Rising Tides keywords and mechanics.
- New Rising Tides AI decks added.
- Various AI decks adjusted.
- Starter deck card lists, names, and art updated.
- Various tweaks to the first few new player games vs the AI, such as guaranteed AI deck matchups, adjusted draws, and modified AI behavior.
Language Support
We’ve added additional language support to LoR. New players should be correctly auto-detected, while existing players can swap languages in their login screen settings.
- Traditional Chinese now supported.
- Russian now supported.
- Turkish now supported.
Miscellaneous
- Silverwing Scout renamed to Silverwing Diver.
- Ezreal (Level 2) art flipped. For those who saw the Rising Tides previews, we also flipped Maokai (both levels).
- Quests adjusted for Rising Tides content.
- Expedition Trade screen UX adjusted—the swap button will now always swap between options, while “Skip this trade” toggles to “Accept this trade.”
- Fixed an issue where Epic Capsules from Expeditions rewards incorrectly displayed as an Epic Card (visual bug only, contents were correct).
- In-game mail system added (for rewards distribution and other uses).
- Player support can now fully migrate accounts with incorrectly assigned regions of residence—more info here.
For more information visit www.playruneterra.com and follow them at:
- YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/legendsofruneterra
- TWITCH: https://twitch.tv/riotgames
- INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/legendsofruneterra
- TWITTER: https://twitter.com/playruneterra
- FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/legendsofruneterra
Will you be diving into Legends of Runterra when it open launches on April 30th? Have you been playing it already? Let us know in the comments below!
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