Legends of Runeterra |OT| Yay! Now I Can Bat Around the Bodies!

[jon bones]

Set in the world of League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra is the strategy card game where skill, creativity, and cleverness determine your success.



Sign up to play at https://playruneterra.com - when you do, you will be able to play starting this Thursday at 1 PM Eastern!
The game is technically in Open Beta, but it is very full featured (challenge your friends, play ranked mode, etc) and there will be NO MORE RESETS. Your collection is your collection.
Best yet - iOS/Android versions are well underway and will arrive before the end of Q2!

Allow me to borrow a post from Lumination that perfectly highlights why this game is something special:

The game is not shy to borrow the best mechanics from its older siblings and add some cool ones themselves.
MtG:

There is a stack. Your opponent is going to buff his 2/2? Cast your fast spell that deals 2 dmg to kill it first. Also, defender gets to choose blocks.
Hearthstone:

Your mana grows by 1 every turn. You'll never be land screwed. Minion damage sticks, so smaller minions can do more than stall.
YGO:

Summoning sickness is not a thing in this game. If you have attack priority, attack as soon as you play a minion. This in conjunction with blocker's advantage evens out offense and defense quite a bit. Makes going first vs second really, really close.

Artifact:

Back-and-forth turn structure. Every time I play a card, you can play a card. I summon a new attacker? You can set up a new blocker.


Unique mechanics:

Floating spell mana. You have an empty pool mana maxing out at 3. Every mana you don't spell gets stored in the pool. This mana can be used anytime, but only on spells. This means you don't feel screwed by opening draws because you can always make back tempo later. Your opponent skipped 2 turns? You might want to play around that 6m AoE he has up his sleeve on turn 3. You can only use this pool for spells because the devs were smart enough to realize that spells are typically one-shot effects and not "infinite" value generation like a 6m minion would be.



The champion cards you build around. These are the LoL champions we all know. They come with mini-quests to complete to level them up to unlock their full potential. The flavor is also off the charts. Thresh can lantern another champ out of your deck onto the field. Darius can dunk you to instant kill you if your hp hits 10 and your board is clear. Fiora can OTK you if she kills 4 minions without dying. The list goes on. As another example of intelligent design, the devs knew that drawing multiple copies of your powerful champions can skew the game. So when you play one champion, all other copies become companion spells that synergize with the champion without letting you flood your best cards out repeatedly.



Overall, the game is oozing with good presentation, smart as hell design, and comes with a very interesting core set. If you're an aggro player, do you go Noxus for the beefsticks that can't defend? Shadow Isles for the swarming spiders that buff up? Piltover for the discard from your hand for direct burn? It definitely feels like nothing was done by mistake, every piece was meticulously thought out.

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For those who don't play League, but are interested in the characters & world, I highly suggest checking out this latest lore short:

 

[jon bones]

Notice of things to be aware of:

1. Don't purchase cards in the deck builder ui. Purchase them in the collections 'cards' ui. The deck builder ui sometimes eats shards / wildcards and doesn't give you the card. I have a ticket open with Riot right now where I've lost 7 wildcards and 300 shards. They are refunding me these things and told me to not use the deck builder ui to purchase as it is bugged.

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Thank you Sr Kitsune ! He wrote this great post out:

I highly recommend the Mobalytics wiki, it explains very succinctly many confusing keywords, and adds small descriptions of the deck styles of every region.

https://lor.mobalytics.gg/wiki

If you come from Hearthstone, from Aguilio's guide in mobalytics:

If you come from Magic (Again from Agilio's guide):

More helpful images, again from another Agilio's guide:

Game flow:

 

[PinguThePenguin]

I'm curious to see how friendly the game will be in terms of monetization and meta-gameplay. If it's something I can casually enjoy, then I would be finally ready to try a League of Legends game.

 

[Evolution of Metal]

How many cards and champs are we talking about.

Can I use Riot Points to purchase new cards? Is it one global server, or EUW/EUNE/NA like LoL?

 

[darkside]

Whats the monetization like on this game?

I don't think I could handle another again thats as aggressive with monetization as Arena has gotten. I really loved in HS how you could dust off cards you didn't want any longer and get stuff you did want.

 

[SirThou]

Can't wait for this. Game looks fairly simple to pick up from videos and streams I've seen, and there's been plenty of good word of mouth about it. Been picking up LoL again out of excitement too, which has been enjoyable.

 

[Mercador]

I'll try that one, I'm loosing fun on HS.

 

[Mifec]

I'll deffo try it again, liked what little I played before

I highly suggest checking out this latest lore short:

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This made me read the comic and god damn is Riot bad at stories.

 

[DanteMenethil]

I was so pleasantly surprised at how closer to magic than hearthstone the beta was with smart changes like simultaneous turns to keep the pace up. I left magic arena because of the ever changing business model that got greedier and greedier. I'm really liking what I'm seeing with LoR. And a mobile client coming this year, unlike magic arena too.

 

[jon bones]

I'm curious to see how friendly the game will be in terms of monetization and meta-gameplay. If it's something I can casually enjoy, then I would be finally ready to try a League of Legends game.

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Whats the monetization like on this game?

I don't think I could handle another again thats as aggressive with monetization as Arena has gotten. I really loved in HS how you could dust off cards you didn't want any longer and get stuff you did want.

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I updated my second post with info but the fun part is Vault Day.

Every match you play & daily quest you complete earns XP and levels up your Vault. Everyone's Vault opens up on the same day and it's a big explosion of cards. There are no ways to increase this or open more with cash - it's purely a free thing.

 

[DiceHands]

mannn i cant wait. wish it was starting today, but i can wait 3 more days... (i think)

 

[zulux21]

I'm curious to see how friendly the game will be in terms of monetization and meta-gameplay. If it's something I can casually enjoy, then I would be finally ready to try a League of Legends game.

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Ditto.
as long as I'm not forced to face randoms online to make any significant progress I will likely play this for a while on and off.

Magic and hearthstone make most of the daily quests require you to play a bunch of games online against other players, typically requiring you to win. I generally prefer playing card games like this while watching stuff on TV, and like having the ability to just walk away for five minutes in the middle of a match to do something, so I really only play card games that I can play with friends and solo to progress.

Has this game been confirmed to get a story mode down the line?
I would love to learn about the characters in the game while playing, as I know league has a rich lore, but i've never been interested in playing actual league.

 

[Won]

Will be interesting to see the business model unfold. Grabbing some wild cards of the store is probably going to be a serious power spike in the first 2 weeks.

The typical balance and refund dance with patches might also be trickier.

First month is gonna be a wild ride.

Anyway looking forward finally playing it properly.

 

[Owl]

Not sure how I feel about their monetization system tbh. Seems to reward grinding too much without the option to pay to bypass the grind. Really depends on how much of a grind it is to be able to build I deck I suppose, but I usually like running a few different decks and that seems like it's going to take forever to get full decks of different regions.

Definitely will play the game for a while though since it's coming during a very slow period for gaming for me.

 

[mjc]

I'm eager to try out a new card game since HS really lost me at some point last year. Hopefully this scratches the itch.

 

[IllumiNate]

How many cards and champs are we talking about.

Can I use Riot Points to purchase new cards? Is it one global server, or EUW/EUNE/NA like LoL?

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This game will use separate coins and you won't be able to use your League currency

 

[Rosé Fighter]

I'm cautiously excited for this!

 

[Deleted member 9100]

Really excited for this one. Between this, the new expansion in Magic and the new adventure in hearthstone launching tomorrow, it's a great week for card game fans.

 

[Deleted member 52442]

For those asking questions about monetization and progression, the devs did a blog about it a while back:

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/news/progression-by-the-numbers

There will be a slight adjustment (for the better/or the same according to them) that they'll give us information about this Wednesday.

Also, right now some content creators have access to the game, but only a handful are actually making content on a regular basis.

I've been watching a lot of the content from the content creators who currently have access to the game (very few) and learning and deck building and the like.



Swim especially is great, he's been theorycrafting the game every day for the past few months even while it was down, not sure how well that will translate in practice but he stomped a few other content creators playing atm.






Dawnspeakers look really strong.

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[Lumination]

How many cards and champs are we talking about.

Can I use Riot Points to purchase new cards? Is it one global server, or EUW/EUNE/NA like LoL?

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There are:
24 Champions
36 Epics
108 Rares
150 Commons
-------
318 total

You can have 3 copies per card and there you cannot open more than 3 of the same champion iirc. That said, I do think because decks can be quite champion-driven that the initial week or two might pretty slowly for F2P. Once you get a few playsets of champs under your belt, deckbuilding will feel better. I hope they recognize this and start people off with playsets and not a handful of single champs. But doubtful of that tbh.

They're using a new currency, so you cannot port over existing Riot Points. Last I heard about servers, there will be shards, but bigger than LoL. Europe is supposed to be one shard. But maybe things have changed, because they've been putting in effort to unify accounts across regions and I don't see the point of that if they're still going to shard.

This made me read the comic and god damn is Riot bad at stories.

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I've played League consistently for 7+yrs and I couldn't tell you anything non-meme about the lore. It's really, really hamfisted and bad lol.

But I actually enjoyed the little tidbits of flavor in LoR. It's done at general TCG level there, which is lightyears above LoL.

 

[Mifec]

I've played League consistently for 7+yrs and I couldn't tell you anything non-meme about the lore. It's really, really hamfisted and bad lol.

But I actually enjoyed the little tidbits of flavor in LoR. It's done at general TCG level there, which is lightyears above LoL.

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Oh I know I played league A LOT in the earlier seasons. I'm talking specifically about the Lux/Sylas comic, it's the most cowardly pathetic shit ever when it comes to representing revolutions against a disgusting ruling class.

 

[Everywhere]

I love LOL but not sure about card games.

Will definitely give it a try though.

 

[piratepwnsninja]

I'm super excited for this! I ended up getting CB access... the day after CB ended. I really like how the back and forth of rounds works. If they manage to balance the grind, I think this is going to do really well.

 

[jon bones]

I'm super excited for this! I ended up getting CB access... the day after CB ended. I really like how the back and forth of rounds works. If they manage to balance the grind, I think this is going to do really well.

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You & me both - this work week is moving like molasses!

For those asking questions about monetization and progression, the devs did a blog about it a while back:

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/news/progression-by-the-numbers

There will be a slight adjustment (for the better/or the same according to them) that they'll give us information about this Wednesday.

Also, right now some content creators have access to the game, but only a handful are actually making content on a regular basis.

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Thanks, those are some interesting decks. I may have to rethink what I build first once tomorrow's notes come out.

 

[Deleted member 52442]

Thanks, those are some interesting decks. I may have to rethink what I build first once tomorrow's notes come out.

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Yeah swim is an interesting guy, he has been streaming deck building for the game for months even while its closed apparently.

Also here's another guy with some interesting decks:

 

[ZeroX]

I missed this thread, I'm excited to jump into the game. Really hope it builds to have a good playerbase. I'm not seeing a lot of talk about it online, the reddit seems very tame, but whatever talk there has been is almost all positive.

And yeah Swim is going all in on Runeterra, he got burned by Artifact, Gwent and Underlords, he really needs a game to take off.

 

[Deleted member 52442]

Today we get patch notes. Tomorrow the game!

Here's what a max level vault opening looks like for people who want to play completely F2P

https://support-legendsofruneterra.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360036043313-Weekly-Vaults

 

[Strider]

So fuckin hyyyyped. I already know this is a going to be a game I play for years. I think I'm gonna be a scumbag and level up Noxus first :P
Will have to look over all the card changes though ofc to fully decide...

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My expectations for this game is that it sits comfortably in third (population wise) behind HS and Magic. Hearthstone is just a huge juggernaut and Magic is well... Magic lol Despite arenas greedy monetization model and lack of of mobile support it's still the OG and has the physical game obviously.
But truly I think LOR will be the best Digital CCG out there once they get a few updates and a couple more card sets in there... This game is very promising. It's exactly what I wanted from Artifact (still in for long haul lmao).

 

[zulux21]

So fuckin hyyyyped. I already know this is a going to be a game I play for years. I think I'm gonna be a scumbag and level up Noxus first :P
Will have to look over all the card changes though ofc to fully decide...

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My expectations for this game is that it sits comfortably in third (population wise) behind HS and Magic. Hearthstone is just a huge juggernaut and Magic is well... Magic lol Despite arenas greedy monetization model and lack of of mobile support it's still the OG and has the physical game obviously.
But truly I think LOR will be the best Digital CCG out there once they get a few updates and a couple more card sets in there... This game is very promising. It's exactly what I wanted from Artifact (still in for long haul lmao).

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It will be interesting to see how the population goes.
For example, I burned out on hearthstone years ago. (I only played for a few days as I didn't like the monetization model and found their matchmaking system to be horrible. I constantly was getting put with people who had a ton of legendaries in their deck as a new player and rarely ever won. Meanwhile I would often have a winning record in the arena, so it's not like I completely sucked :P.)
I never got pulled into the new magic game.
I don't play league of legends or care about the IP at all.
I'm gonna be trying this out first thing tomorrow and have been watching this for a while because it legitimately looks like a great card game.

 

[Deleted member 9100]

What's the class/color to focus on if I want to go for aggro to begin with?

 

[Vex]

I've been waiting to get my hands on a new digital card game since I quit Hearthstone some years ago! HS' meta was just getting out of control. Too much annoying bullshit when climbing ladder.

Cautiously optimistic!!!11

 

[Yerffej]

I'm eager to try out a new card game since HS really lost me at some point last year. Hopefully this scratches the itch.

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This is me. Luckily Slay The Spire picked up the slack.

 

[jon bones]

yesss i can feel the hype!

with friendlies available at launch, we should def get games in

my riot name is: jonbones #NA

So fuckin hyyyyped. I already know this is a going to be a game I play for years. I think I'm gonna be a scumbag and level up Noxus first :P
Will have to look over all the card changes though ofc to fully decide...

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My expectations for this game is that it sits comfortably in third (population wise) behind HS and Magic. Hearthstone is just a huge juggernaut and Magic is well... Magic lol Despite arenas greedy monetization model and lack of of mobile support it's still the OG and has the physical game obviously.
But truly I think LOR will be the best Digital CCG out there once they get a few updates and a couple more card sets in there... This game is very promising. It's exactly what I wanted from Artifact (still in for long haul lmao).

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HS will stay #1 because of how simple it is and it's availability abroad

Magic I think has a chance to lose out, because mobile is such a big feature to lack

What's the class/color to focus on if I want to go for aggro to begin with?

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it's going to depend on what kind of aggro you want to do:

if you want to use zed + his shadows to put board pressure on fast, you'll focus on ionia first

i like jinx/draven discard aggro, so i'll be focusing on piltover first

i think shadow isles would also make sense as zed / hecarim has nice synergy

 

[Kalentan]

Can I go with a Garen focused deck?

 

[ZeroX]

Shark Chariot has the best artwork in the game so I gotta go Shadow Isles. Seems like they'll have plenty of viable decks too.

 

[jon bones]

Can I go with a Garen focused deck?

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Yes, I like the idea of Garen / Lucian in a deck together. Use Ghost to give Garen Elusive and get his hits in / leverage Lucian's double attack + additional attack phase.

 

[Kalentan]

Yes, I like the idea of Garen / Lucian in a deck together. Use Ghost to give Garen Elusive and get his hits in / leverage Lucian's double attack + additional attack phase.

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Clearly they need to make Demacia Vice skins for Garen/Lucian cards.

 

[Skyfireblaze]

I'm excited for this! :D But as excited as I am for the game I still wonder if they will do anything to fix the issue that Shadowverse and to an extent all card-games with a crafting system have. Since crafting essentially gives everyone all cards most games eventually boil down to a hard meta no matter what rank you are where everyone only plays variations of a handful of meta-decks that get essentially figured out by top level players in a matter of days and then everyone down to the lowest ranks just copies them.

This essentially takes half the game away for most people and it then just boils down to who plays these decks the best with a sprinkle of luck. But oh well let's see how it goes here first!

 

[jon bones]

Clearly they need to make Demacia Vice skins for Garen/Lucian cards.

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i'd pay good money for vice skins for Garen & Lucian cards + a board skin + guardian

hopefully that's the direction they plan on taking cosmetics

I'm excited for this! :D But as excited as I am for the game I still wonder if they will do anything to fix the issue that Shadowverse and to an extent all card-games with a crafting system have. Since crafting essentially gives everyone all cards most games eventually boil down to a hard meta no matter what rank you are where everyone only plays variations of a handful of meta-decks that get essentially figured out by top level players in a matter of days and then everyone down to the lowest ranks just copies them.

This essentially takes half the game away for most people and it then just boils down to who plays these decks the best with a sprinkle of luck. But oh well let's see how it goes here first!

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i wonder if the way they are tiering ranked prevents a little bit of that.

you see in games like league, certain champions play better at low tiers than high tiers. if you can't drop below diamond, then maybe the meta at that level shifts a bit and you see different kinds of decks succeeding at different levels.

 

[Skyfireblaze]

i'd pay good money for vice skins for Garen & Lucian cards + a board skin + guardian

hopefully that's the direction they plan on taking cosmetics



i wonder if the way they are tiering ranked prevents a little bit of that.

you see in games like league, certain champions play better at low tiers than high tiers. if you can't drop below diamond, then maybe the meta at that level shifts a bit and you see different kinds of decks succeeding at different levels.

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That would be nice if it actually works that way. I thought about something similar for Shadowverse where each rank would have a "Deck Power" limitation where maybe the lowest rank has a DP limit of 2000 and then it gradually rises till the last rank makes it unlimited. DP would be calculated by the cards and the winrate certain combinations have.

 

[Hassansan]

Maaaaan! I thought this was out today for us normal plebs :/

Also I found this bit a little bit .. interesting to say the least

Believe it or not, we only recently added the ability to get wildcards with Coins as a result of strong feedback from early testers. When we had a version of the current system without the ability to directly purchase a card

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lol, I always got the feeling that this game main strategy was to undercut the competition but now it's clear as day.
I just hope people with limited time don't get a bad value when they try to spend.

 

[Won]

I think I have settled to do a Zed/Heracim deck with sharks first and then go down the Noxus path to get the self damage package.

Beyond that I have to see how that business model really plays out first.

 

[Kyuur]

I'm excited for this! :D But as excited as I am for the game I still wonder if they will do anything to fix the issue that Shadowverse and to an extent all card-games with a crafting system have. Since crafting essentially gives everyone all cards most games eventually boil down to a hard meta no matter what rank you are where everyone only plays variations of a handful of meta-decks that get essentially figured out by top level players in a matter of days and then everyone down to the lowest ranks just copies them.

This essentially takes half the game away for most people and it then just boils down to who plays these decks the best with a sprinkle of luck. But oh well let's see how it goes here first!

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Have they said what their stance on balance is?

If they're only doing cosmetics as paid stuff, then they're free to rebalance cards like they do for League itself and it becomes a non-issue.

 

[Owl]

Hmm, I signed up for the closed beta a couple days before it ended, but I never got a granted access confirmation email. When i check the site, it says preregistration complete, access pending. I'm guessing I won't get to play tomorrow then and will have to wait till Friday? That sucks, the wait is killer.

Edit: It seems like the site says access pending for everyone, even people who played during the closed betas? In that case maybe I have some hope for tomorrow.

 

[Deleted member 9100]

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/news/open-beta-patch-notes/

Patch notes posted

 

[Yerffej]

Kinda hard for me to tell watching videos. Is the art, in general, more cohesive like Artifact? Or is it scattershot the way Hearthstone is, drawing from years of artwork of varying quality?

 

[jon bones]

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/news/open-beta-patch-notes/

Patch notes posted

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Economy too:

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/news/open-beta-economy-updates-1/

both articles sound great - free Expedition token at Vault level 10, which is awesome.

Kinda hard for me to tell watching videos. Is the art, in general, more cohesive like Artifact? Or is it scattershot the way Hearthstone is, drawing from years of artwork of varying quality?

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The art is very cohesive - it's all done by one studio and it all shares a common vibe.

 

[Yerffej]

Economy too:

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/news/open-beta-economy-updates-1/

both articles sound great - free Expedition token at Vault level 10, which is awesome.



The art is very cohesive - it's all done by one studio and it all shares a common vibe.

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Good. Thank you.

 

[Lumination]

Economy update posted:

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/news/open-beta-economy-updates-1/

A lot of it doesn't mean much without understanding exactly how much XP is worth, but some quick gleaning in combination with the old article on weekly vaults:

• You should be 75% base set complete by the first expansion if all you do is hit the LV10 vault weekly. -quote from Riot
• You need 13k XP for the LV10 vault, which is the breakpoint for the free expedition (ie free Champion card).
• Your daily quest gives you 1000-1500 XP (pulled from a single graphic and my memory, subject to change). So, 1250 XP on average.
  • Can store up to 3 dailies.
• You earn 600 XP for 1st win of the day, 400 for 2nd, 300 for 3rd, 200 until your 10th win.
  • After that, it tapers off 50 XP per 5-10 wins until 30 wins.
• You earn 100 XP for the first five losses.
  • Tapers off 25 XP per 5-10 losses until 20 losses.
• So, 3 wins + 3 losses a day + your quest gets you 2,850 XP/day which means you need to play 6 games per day, 4.5 days a week to hit the weekly LV10 vault.
  • Alternatively, 4 games per day, 5.5 days a week also gets you there.
  • Alternatively, if you're good at the game, you need 3 WINS a day, 5 days a week.
  • These estimates are a bit higher than in reality because you can bank 3 dailies, so you'll be recouping about half of your missed XP from your rest days anyway.
• The LV10 vault used to give a free champion, but now it gives an expedition token instead, which is net positive reward.
  • You should be able to forfeit your expeditions for the minimum champion card.
  • Each expedition is actually two arena runs and takes the best outcome for reward computation, but you can always play twice for the fun of it.

So unless the daily quest rewards change, this is pretty much what you're looking at for F2P progression. Outside of the weekly vaults, leveling up each of the 5 regions will be the bulk of your starting progression. If I have time tonight, I can sit down and do some analysis on the returns of that, but it will be much less clear since I have no idea what's in the different capsules and chests and whatnot. Bottom line, if you want to hit 100% set completion, getting every LV10 weekly chest + grinding some expeditions will most likely get you there.

EDIT: Just found a video uploaded today from some early access content creators:


You can net your daily quests and bonus win/loss XP from friend matches too. That's pretty awesome.

 

[Boat Times]

Never played League of Legends but I do love card games, so I installed this today and tried to pre-register. I'm also trying to download Teamfight Tactics, does anyone here know if that's a separate launcher/username or is it the same ecosystem as Runeterra?