The League of Legends Blue Essence Emporium is returning soon, Riot confirms in its latest developer update. The previously biannual sale has been on hiatus since July 2022 as Riot reworked its format, but it’ll now be making a return to the MOBA in League of Legends patch 13.17. Executive producer Jeremy ‘Brightmoon’ Lee and studio head Andrei ‘Meddler’ van Roon also discuss the potential future of League of Legends Arena and several other upcoming LoL updates.
Previously appearing twice a year, the Blue Essence Emporium was a great way to dump all your spare Blue Essence, with sales on all manner of League of Legends skins, emotes, and chromas. However, Riot put the feature on an extended hiatus following its run in July 2022, because running it was “so inefficient it caused delays and feature cuts in other projects like events and missions.”
Fortunately for those of you who’ve been saving up your Blue Essence for its return, Lee and van Roon confirm that the Emporium is coming back with League of Legends patch 13.17. That’s still a while off, of course, so you’ll have a bit longer to get ready for its arrival, but the team is planning to return to its previous twice-a-year format from now on.
There’s also a new ‘mass disenchant’ feature on the way, which will let you rapidly break down all your unneeded champion shards. Elsewhere, the pair confirm that new ability icons for Graves, Janna, Jarvan, Nami, Orianna, and Varus are coming in August. Other champions will be receiving similar updates in the future too, so stay tuned.
The previously discussed ‘Quick Play’ mode, which has you determine your role and champion combinations before queuing and skips the champion select stage altogether, is also back in development – Riot says we can expect it to arrive “later this year.”
Lee and van Roon also discuss the future of the ongoing League of Legends Arena. They say the team will be taking time to study the popularity of the mode and listening to feedback from players before deciding whether Arena will return in future – but add that, if it does, they want to include more functionality with the likes of custom lobbies and the ability to queue with multiple friends.
Arena-specific balance changes will also be made, including tweaks to specific champions along with some general percentage adjustments to help keep the mode feeling fun. More in-depth discussions on the future of the mode are coming in the next developer update, which will also include more preseason details along with news on Jax’s visual update and the next LoL champion, Briar.
If you’re jumping into League’s newest mode, you’ll want to check out our LoL Arena tier list to see who’s making the most of the format. If you’re an ardent Summoner’s Rift enthusiast, however, our regular League of Legends tier list is still your trusted companion.