Legends of Runeterra’s first major patch adds ranked mode, prepares for open beta
The Legends of Runeterra open beta is almost here. In anticipation of the beta arriving in the hands of thousands of players, developer Riot Games released early patch notes for the game. The notes feature economy changes, card changes, as well as a watchlist for features Riot employees suspect could get out of hand. The beta for Riot’s new collectible card game starts Jan. 23 for pre-registered players, and Jan. 24 for everyone else.
Here’s a breakdown of the open beta patch notes ’ most interesting updates.
The last reset
Image: Riot Games
One of the worst parts about testing a game like Legends of Runeterra is knowing you will lose all of your progress at some point. In the open beta, the developers reset every player’s account to zero — no leveled up regions, and your cards are back to default decks. But the studio has confirmed this is the last account progression reset for the card game. Whatever time or money you put into the open beta will transfer to the finished product later this year.
The ranked season
With open beta, Riot adds Legends of Runterra ’s first ranked season. Players can build a deck and see where they rank among the game’s best and worst players. The ranked season acts similarly to League of Legends — you play games, gain League Points when you win, and lose League Points when you lose. As you climb the ranks, you will move from Iron, to Bronze, to Silver, to Gold, and so on. The Beta Season lasts until Legends of Runeterra ’s official release sometime in 2020.
Play with friends
Image: Riot Games
With the open beta, the Legends of Runeterra client now supports a friends list. You can make friends while playing, add them to your friends list, and chat with them through the client. If you want to test a new deck or just show a buddy how much you’ve improved, you can also invite friends to a one on one duel. If you also play League of Legends, the friends list is cross-client — meaning you can tell which of your friends are dueling with cards, and which are on the Rift.
New customization options
You can now customize your own player space in Legends of Runeterra. With the open beta, Riot brings a new, region-inspired board for each of Legends of Runeterra ’s six regions. And in addition to the adorable poro that served as all players’ avatar in the preview patches, players can now select the T-Hex, Gromp Jr., and Scaled Snapper Guardians. Riot says more Guardians and boards are on the way, and you can change your style in the Collections tab in-game.
Riot has also changed many of the game’s cards with this new update. For a complete list of patch notes — including card balance and bug fixes from the preview patches — scroll down.
Legends of Runeterra open beta patch notes
Image: Riot Games
ECONOMY UPDATES
Since last year’s preview patches, we’ve reset all account progression (for the last time!) and made a variety of wide-ranging changes to LoR’s overall economy, impacting everything from the relative cost of coins to how much experience you’ll receive from wins. These changes deserve an [article of their own](HYPERLINK)—check it out for all the background and details. If you’re new to LoR or just want the tl;dr, here’s the short(er) version:
All account progression and content from the preview patches has been reset. There will be no further account resets —anything you earn once the open beta starts is yours to keep!
We’ve updated coin price points and purchasing power, mostly to align with price point standards on the Play Store and the App Store. During the preview patches, we used League of Legends’ RP price points as placeholders, but with LoR’s launch on mobile coming later this year, we needed to establish our own pricing structure. In designing that structure, we also reviewed regional pricing comparisons (particularly between countries on the same shard), which means the degree of these changes varies quite a bit depending on your local currency —some will see relatively similar prices (e.g., US dollar, Euro), while others will see relatively higher prices (e.g., Turkish lira, Brazilian real) or relatively lower (e.g., Japanese yen).
An important note: If you purchased coins during the preview patches, we’ve reset any content you purchased with Coins and returned that value back to your coin balance. Your exact number of Coins has changed, but we’ve made sure you’ll have at least as much purchasing power as you did before (i.e. prices have changed too).
We’ve adjusted Shard values and rewards to preserve the 10:1 ratio between Shard and Coin costs for content, as well as make some minor tweaks to relative shard values (e.g., Rare & Epic 4th copies are worth a bit more, Common 4th copies a bit less).
We’ve adjusted content prices in Shards & Coins to align with the above changes, though again there’s some minor variation (e.g., Common Wildcards are relatively cheaper, Epic Wildcards relatively more expensive).
Vault, Expedition, Prologue, and general chest rewards have all been updated. Much of this is tied to the above changes, but we’re also aiming to make Expeditions more accessible for everyone by adding an Expedition Token to level 10 Vaults and making Shards a greater proportion of the rewards you get from your Expeditions.
We’ve updated XP rewards to help you make progress without the grind—you’ll now earn bonus XP for your first few wins of the day and get more XP from losses, while XP gains will now tail off as you reach many hours of LoR in a given day.
RANKED
From the start, our goal was to create a card game with enough strategic depth and interaction to support skilled competition. Now it’s time to see where you stand among the best players in Runeterra: the open beta is bringing Ranked mode to LoR.
Your rise through the ranks starts with the Beta Season, which will last until launch. At the end of the season, you’ll earn a Beta Season-exclusive icon based on your highest tier reached to commemorate your first climb in Ranke
