Coming to a game with over 160 champions can be overwhelming. With the new season, getting champions might be harder than before.
League of Legends (LoL) is a gem full of mechanics, strategy, and especially champions - 169 champions. Ambessa was the last one launched on Nov 6. With the new season, came a lot of changes. The new pass and rewards and the disappearance of the Hextech chests and keys made fans very unhappy on social media due to the little blue essence we're getting in the game.
LoL Blue Essence: The "882 hours" discussion
All of this discussion of LoL blue essence calculations started some days ago when a player wrote on Reddit that in this new season, you'd take 882 hours (37 days) to get a new champion for free. In the old version of Battle Pass, you could get four random champion shards for every five levels. Now, you get 200 blue essence.
To give you a general idea if you've never played the game, you need 7800 blue essence to buy a champion as soon it is launched. You can buy it at a cheaper price if you can get its champion shard. However, that's random and unpredictable. Here is a list of all the champions' prices available in-game from the cheapest to the most expensive.
- 450 BE
- 1350 BE
- 3141 BE
- 4444 BE
- 4800 BE
- 6300 BE
- 7800 BE
Riot Games answers to fans' concerns
Also known as "BarackProbama", the Senior Design Lead on the Motivations Team at Riot Games, commented on this problem with some "quick math." According to him, a player can get 28,500 blue essences annually, not including new player missions and rewards. BarackProbama wrote: "It doesn't feel to me like someone who is new to the game is going to have trouble acquiring both a set of randomized champions or champions they have a particular affinity for and want to acquire for free."
Riot Meddler also addressed this question on X (as well as other problems that surfaced with the new season). The head of League Studio wrote: "Unlocking new champions via blue essence wasn't meant to get harder. Digging in to understand whether something isn't functioning as intended now".
This doesn't mean the problem with LoL and Blue Essence will be solved. The Riot Games team is still evaluating the problem and understanding its impact on the community of new players.
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Riot Games update: changes are coming for the Blue Essence
On January 15, Riot Games addressed this problem with various changes coming to the game. Since the season has already started and many people are already completing the quests, these updates won't come until patches 25.S1.2 and 25.S1.3.
"There are a few problems we’re seeing. For a lot of you, BE rates are significantly lower right now. It also is meaningfully slower (up to 30%) to go from level 1 to 30 and to access Ranked", Riot wrote in their update.
"First, when it comes to BE earn rates, we’re going to significantly increase the free Pass earn rates as per the table below. In short, we’re increasing the total BE from Milestones from 4750 to 9000 and we’re increasing repeatable Epilogue milestones from 50 to 750 BE. The Epilogue changes should go live in Patch 25.S1.2", the company wrote.
In the next patch, you'll be able to do a one-time easily completable quest worth 4250 BE to compensate for the Blue Essence that should have been rewarded. Starting in Act 2 Pass, the final Champion Capsule in the Pass will be changed to a Glorious Champion Capsule.
This article was first uploaded on Jan. 13 and updated on Jan. 15 with Riot Games' response. That's all for now. Stick around for more League of Legends news and updates on esports.gg.
