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How item changes are redefining the jungle in League of Legends

League of Legends

There’s a reason we refer to the lion as the King of the Jungle, and it’s his gold efficiency when it comes to item purchases.

Lots of jungle players think about the same thing when speccing their League of Legends champions – but others focus simply on the final builds they’re working towards. It’s the latter group Riot are hoping to cater to with a new round of jungle enchantments-in-testing.

A lot of Riot’s updated jungle enchantments hover around a 1500 gold price point, which they think “really hits the spot” for a lot of players.

“If you’re thinking of the gold efficiency of each purchase on the margin, as some players do, then as long as it’s a gold-efficient use of that 1500 gold you’ll be happy with the purchase,” said Riot Axes.

However, a different set of players think in terms of final items. They know that a jungler’s passive eventually becomes valueless, and that Smite augments become less useful as a game wears on. Consequently, they’ve found many existing enchantments “really unappealing”.

It’s for those players that Riot are testing the “frankly bonkers” level of gold efficiency.

“We went for the higher gold efficiency in order to make the final items feel like a good buy to a player considering end builds,” explained Riot Axes.

“It does push cost effectiveness for that 1500 gold to a crazy point, but you can have at most one of these items per jungler per game, and it’s really making up for a bunch of non-combat power that you had previously spent, so we’re OK with it.”

For their next trick, Riot are working out how to smooth out build paths for jungle champions – particularly Sion.

Expect to see more feedback on preseason jungle changes for LoL hitting the official forums in the coming weeks. Will any of them affect you, do you think?

Thanks, Reign of Gaming.