We already knew a lot of changes were coming to League of Legends in advance of Season 3, but today Riot’s Kuo-Yen “Xypherous” Lo revealed a key revision of how certain items will upgrade throughout the game. Rather than always spending gold to buy a new item, certain items like Tear of the Goddess will upgrade over the course of repeated use, and others will become different items after hitting a certain threshold.
Tucked into a post about improving and clarifying item tooltips, and tweaking the way Tear of the Goddess works to increase a champion’s mana cap, Xypherous happened to mention that the Archangel’s Staff now transforms into a Seraph’s Embrace once it is maxed-out, rather than requiring a new purchase from the store.
“If you think about it there’s no real reason why gold has to be the only way to upgrade an item,” he wrote. “But if you already have 1000 Mana and 10 Mana Regen per 5, what possible upgrade could you want from Archangel’s Staff? Just what are you going to do with all that mana anyway when you’ve charged this item for 25 minutes of the game?”
The answer, apparently, is to have the Archangel’s Staff morph into something roughly identical with one important new power: a shield that drains 25% of the player’s mana (which should be absurdly high thanks to the item).
But less important than the tweaks to the item itself is the notion that usage can now change and upgrade an item. It will be interesting to see whether this is reserved for a couple items that were already dependent on use, or whether this opens the door for other items to have an alternate upgrade path independent of gold.