The recent – and chunky – Legends of Runeterra patch 0.9.0 brought a hearty round of changes to the card game’s Champions, followers, spells, expedition rewards, and more. The latest LoR patch 0.9.1 is a lot daintier, but there’s still a handful of tweaks and new content to check out. That’s where we come in – read on to see what’s in store for Legends of Runeterra next.
There are no card updates this cycle, but there is a brand-new guardian on the way – a ‘Minion’ – as well as two new boards, and some improvements to guardians, too. Riot’s also rolled out some adjustments to game pacing and feel, saying: “In response to player feedback, we’ve put together a group of devs tasked with improving LoR’s overall pacing and responsiveness (code name: ‘Feel Good’ – we’re clever like that).”
The studio says this “effort will continue as we head toward launch later this year (and beyond, if necessary), and we plan to release component changes over time as they’re completed.”
There are also some tweaks to deckbuilding, friend challenge XP rewards, and a batch of bugfixes to take a look at, too. Check the full LoR 0.9.1 patch notes (via Riot) below:
Dev Notes: Animations
- We’ve seen a lot of feedback about animations taking too long, and the tl;dr is… yeah, agreed. We’re going to speed some things up over the next few patches, beginning with this one.
- Finding the right pacing for the game is a work in progress (and will be for a while). We want interactions to be clear and cool moments to feel cool, but animations shouldn’t make you impatient for the game to get a move on – we’ll keep working to find the right balance. I think it’s fair to say we’ve so far leaned toward the ‘slow and clear’ end of the spectrum, and now it’s time to make things a little snappier. I love a good Draven axe as much as the next guy, but there are only so many hours in the day and I’ve got Ranked games to lose!
- We’re starting with some of the basic moments you see many, many times each game—things like drawing, summoning, passing your turn, and starting a new round. These aren’t the flashiest animations, but small changes to them can add up and make a big difference over the course of a match.
- We also know there are a few card-specific animations and interactions that are especially slow; we’ll be tackling those over time. Please keep telling us about the worst offenders, and look forward to a speedier LoR in the near future!
Riot Exis, Engineering Manager
Boards and Guardians
- New guardian now available:
- Minion
- New boards now available:
- Jinx
- Garen
- Guardian improvements:
- Silverwing and Gloomtooth make fewer noises while idle.
- Basilisk’s tail and Gromp Jr’s legs no longer clip through certain boards.
Game Pacing and Feel
This is the first batch!
- We’ve increased animation speed, decreased action lock-out windows, and removed effect buffers in order to increase responsiveness across a variety of game actions:
- Summoning units.
- Drawing cards.
- Dragging units out to attack.
- Playing Fast and Slow spells.
- Playing Burst spells.
- Initiative token flip at the beginning of rounds.
Friend Challenge XP
- Last patch, we made a change to friend challenge XP intended to curb win trading via surrender spam, but it was a bit too harsh on players looking to play with friends normally.
- For now, we’re increasing friend challenge XP for both wins and losses, but we’re also planning to make more systemic changes in a future beta patch.
- Win XP: 100 → 200
- Loss XP: 0 → 100
- XP gains capped at five wins (unchanged) and five losses per day.
Deckbuilder
Card counts now represented by ‘pips’ (you’ll know ’em when you see ’em) that better communicate copies owned, copies not owned, owned copies used in deck, and owned copies not used in deck.
Bugfixes
- Repeatedly hovering Region Road rewards no longer causes shadows to steadily consume the screen. Spooky.
- Muting AI opponents will now properly hide their emotes.
- The Rekindler and The Harrowing will no longer revive Champions that only had their unique spell cast (rather than an actual Champion unit played and killed).
- Champions will now properly level up if they return from being Detained after their level up condition was met while they were Detained.
- Twin Disciplines now displays correct effect text when selecting Discipline of Fortitude.
- Players should no longer get stuck on the loading screen when signing out of League of Legends while signed into LoR (communicated last patch but didn’t make it in).
- Players logging into LoR from different devices should encounter fewer crashes (communicated last patch but didn’t make it in).
That’s all we’ve got for Legends of Runeterra patch 0.9.1, but if you’re a fan be sure to take a look at our Legends of Runeterra cards, Legends of Runeterra Champions, and Legends of Runeterra decks guides, which you might find handy.
You should also get a look at the LoL patch 10.5 notes ahead of the update’s arrival in LoR sister MOBA game tomorrow, as well our LoL tier list to find out the best League of Legends Champions to play. There’s also a LoL Champions and skins sale on right now, in case you’re looking for a bargain.