The League of Legends Season 2024 is almost here! In preparation for the upcoming season, the team at Riot has pushed some changes to the PBE and listed every change being made to the main game when it launches at the beginning of next year.

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Here are all the details on upcoming changes from today’s press release and the official blog post:

League of Legends Season 2024 Gameplay Changes:

Void Changes

Voidgrubs and Voidmites

 

We’ve got some brand new residents moving into the Baron pit this season: the Voidgrubs. They are Voidborn beasties that will be taking the place of the first Rift Herald of each game before despawning at 14 minutes to make room for Rift Herald. Three Voidgrubs will spawn at 5 minutes, each with its own respawn timer of 4 minutes, and a maximum of six can spawn in a single game.

When aggroed each Voidgrub will unleash a swarm of Voidmites to attack their enemies. Should you manage to take down some Voidgrubs your entire team will earn the Hunger of the Void buff which will give the user damage over time bonus damage to structures. This buff stacks based on the amount of Voidgrubs you manage to take down and, when you manage to take down 5 or 6, you’ll also periodically summon 1 or 2 Voidmites respectively to help you take down structures.

Rift Herald

Rift Herald is back and they have a brand new, Voidgrub inspired look! But Shelly’s appearance isn’t all that’s changing. Now, when you crush the Eye of the Herald, Rift Herald will spawn as usual, but the user or an allied champion will be able to right-click the Herald and jump onto them, allowing the rider to steer Shelly (similar to a Sion ultimate). If you charge Herald into a turret then it will do more damage than if they charged into one uncontrolled. If you happen to run into an enemy champion then they will be damaged and knocked airborne. Once you collide with terrain or a turret the champion riding Shelly will be knocked off, going back to their usual selves.

Void Camps

As it turns out, the Void is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of 2024 updates. Having expanded its presence throughout the map, Blue Sentinel, Red Brambleback, and Rift Scuttler are looking a little… Voidier.

Once Baron Nashor emerges onto the Rift at 20 minutes, the next time Blue Sentinel and Red Brambleback respawn they will rise again as Voidborn Sentinel and Voidborn Brambleback respectively. This transformation also comes with increased durability making them harder to take down, but fret not because this extra effort is worth it! Now, once slain, Blue and Red will grant their buffs to the entire team of the player that takes them down (excluding any allies that were dead).

Similarly, after 20 minutes once Rift Scuttler rises again after being slain she will be Voidborn Scuttler. When slain, Voidborn Scuttler will send out a massive Scryer’s Bloom effect, revealing all champions and wards in a large surrounding area. Similar to Scryer’s, all wards revealed this way will be reduced to 1 HP.

Baron Nashor

Now it’s the star of Baron pit himself, Baron Nashor! In line with the visual update we’ve made to Herald, Baron himself will also be getting a fresh coat of pixel paint and wow, you’ll have to give the team a hand for coming up with this re-imagined Baron.

But a visual update isn’t the only thing Baron’s getting with the updates. He’s also getting three brand new forms: Hunting Baron leaves the pit unchanged, Territorial Baron creates a wall in front of the pit, and finally, the All-Seeing Baron closes off the front and opens up both sides creating a tunnel. These new configurations create variation in how Baron fights play out game to game.

In order to make each Baron encounter more unique we also added different attacks for each Baron variation. All-Seeing Baron opens a Void Rift that creates a damage over time zone within the new tunnel pit. Territorial Baron pulls champions near him with his handy new hands. Finally, the Hunting Baron blasts all nearby enemies with lightning from above.

Terrain Changes

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so instead of trying to read textual descriptions of the map changes allow me to visually demonstrate instead (in addition to textual descriptions).

Top

Up in the top side we have two major changes. First, we somewhat mirrored the terrain from blue to red side making gank paths more similar and the lane trickier to gank. Second, we created a new little wall and brush combination in the middle of the river entrance.

Jungle

In the jungle, the mighty jungle… new walls did arise. The biggest terrain change here is a new, wide wall directly across from the Baron and Drake pits. These should help create some safety for junglers on their own half of the map and equalize mid laners’ options to roam towards both top and bottom.

Mid

Now moving into the mid lane we’re creating more space by pushing the brush back a bit and moving one gank path further back. This should help create some more safety for immobile mid lane mages so players feel a little better when picking these types of champs.

Bot

And finally we’ve made our way down to the bot lane. The first change is similar to the top lane, we added in a small wall and pixel brush right beside it. Next up is a red side only change. We mirrored the blue tri-brush area onto the red side and opened up a new gank path beside the tower. This should help make both sides more symmetrical, eliminating any side-based advantages when it comes to gank protection and warding.

Infernal Drake Changes

Given the terrain changes we’ve introduced with this set of changes, we also need to adjust some Drakes so that they’ll play nicely with all of the new walls (or lack thereof). This includes moving a few small walls and brushes for Mountain and Ocean Drake.

However, after we spent so much time building walls across the rift we took a step back to look at Infernal’s map changes again. Now, once the Infernal Rift is locked in, Infernal Cinders will spawn around the map. Each cinder will give the champion that picked it up adaptive stats beneficial to your champion and a burst of movement speed. Upon death, champions will drop half of their cinders which can then be picked up by other enemy/allied champions. We wanted to experiment with these changes after considering player feedback about the Infernal Rift being the least interesting in terms of gameplay. Our goal is that this will help us create more interesting map states beyond just terrain changes like Hextech and Chemtech 2.0, but we’ll keep a close eye on how these changes land and how players like them.

Dynamic Music

You know our cool new Void creatures? Well, the brand new visuals aren’t the only thing changing around the Baron pit with our changes. We also added in brand new music for when there is fighting around Baron or other Void objectives, so make sure you’re listening in!

Item Changes

Mythic Items will be removed from the game with the goals of shifting power from items into the champions themselves and giving players more flexibility with their build paths. With this change, there will come a plethora of item additions, removals and adjustments to power and effects. Additionally, an update to item tooltips will be rolled out, making descriptions more digestible at a glance while keeping detailed information viewable as needed.

That sums up the biggest changes coming to League of Legends Season 2024! If you’d like to read the full breakdown, you can check out the League of Legends blog post here.

We’ll be sure to let our readers know once these features are patched into the game.