Legends of Runeterra

Open Beta Economy Updates

Jan 19, 2020

LoR is headed to open beta with a whole bundle of updates and changes. In this article, we’d like to elaborate on some key changes to the underlying economy, but you can also check out the full patch notes for info on card updates, new features, and so on.

Since last year’s preview patches, we’ve reset all account progression (for the last time!) and made a variety of wide-ranging changes to LoR’s overall economy, impacting everything from the relative cost of coins to how much experience you’ll receive from wins. We outlined our goals for progression when we announced LoR last year, then elaborated on them when we made some updates for the second preview patch. The specific design of the economy is based on these goals, so we’d like to recap before getting into all the updates.

With LoR’s progression systems, we aim to:

  • Create a game where how much money you spend is NOT the deciding factor in your success as a player.
  • Give players meaningful choices in how to expand their collections, and support the discovery and experimentation that make card games fun in the first place.
  • Ensure being “set complete” before the launch of the next set is achievable without spending a Coin, even if you’re not a streamer or a pro.

Alright, let’s dive in.

Final account reset

All account progression and content acquired during the preview patches has been reset. There will be no further account resets—anything you earn once open beta starts is yours to keep!

If you purchased content using Coins during the preview patches, we’ve reset any content you purchased returned that value back to your Coin balance. Your exact number of Coins has changed (more info in the next section), but we’ve made sure you’ll have at least as much purchasing power as you did before (i.e., prices have changed too).

Coin pricing

As those of you who played during the preview patches may have noticed, our store initially used League of Legends’ RP price points as placeholders. That worked fine for a preview, but LoR is headed to mobile once we launch later this year, which means we need to establish our own price structure that aligns with standards on the Play Store and the App Store.

In designing LoR’s price structure, we also reviewed regional pricing comparisons (particularly between countries on the same shard), which means the degree of these changes varies quite a bit depending on your local currency—some will see relatively similar prices (e.g., US dollar, Euro), while others will see relatively higher prices (e.g., Turkish lira, Brazilian real) or relatively lower (e.g., Japanese yen).

Overall, you’ll now receive fewer coins when purchasing them, but content prices have also gone down. Here’s an example (in USD):

  • Previous values
    • $10 = 1380 Coins
    • Champion Wildcard = 400 Coins
  • New values
    • $10 = 1000 Coins
    • Champion Wildcard = 300 Coins
  • Effective change
    • Purchasing Champion Wildcards with Coins now requires ~3.5% more when using USD (varying slightly depending on the number of Coins purchased).

LoR currently operates with ~25 currencies, and the exact price changes vary further depending on content (e.g., Common Wildcards are relatively cheaper, Epics relatively more expensive). Rather than try to exhaustively document all the different percentages, we encourage you to head to the store once the open beta starts and check out the various new price points for Coins and content in your local currency. Volume discounts (bonus Coins for larger purchases) have also changed (again, varies by currency), so make sure to check those out as well.

Finally, it’s important to note that price point standards on the Play Store and App Store are periodically updated by Google and Apple, so we expect to have to review and adjust our own structure over time. Whenever that’s necessary, we’ll share details as soon as we have them.

Shard values

The Coin pricing overhaul required that we also adjust Shard values and rewards to preserve the 10:1 ratio between Shard and Coin costs for content. While we were at it, we also made some minor tweaks to relative Shard values (e.g. Rare & Epic 4th copies are worth a bit more, Common 4th copies a bit less).

Content pricing (Shards & Coins)

We’ve adjusted content prices in both Shards & Coins to align with the above changes, though again there’s some minor variation (e.g. Common Wildcards are relatively cheaper, Epic Wildcards relatively more expensive).

Rewards (chests, expeditions, and the vault)

Vault, Expedition, Prologue, and general chest rewards have all been updated. Much of this is tied to the above changes, but we’re also aiming to make Expeditions more accessible for everyone by adding an Expedition Token to level 10 Vaults and making Shards a greater proportion of the rewards you get from your Expeditions. Here are the highlights:

  • Vault
    • Expedition Token added to level 10+ Vaults.
    • Random champion card removed from level 10+ Vaults.
  • Expedition rewards
    • Now grant greater value in Shards at all levels.
    • Now provide less value in chests and capsules at all levels.
  • Prologue rewards
    • Expedition Token added to the 10th Prologue level.
  • Chests
    • Higher level chests now contain fewer Shards (keep in mind individual Shards are now worth more, so the difference is smaller than it appears at first glance).

With these changes, players should be able to more consistently finish their Expeditions trials and reach open play, and get a greater chunk of their Expeditions rewards in raw Shards they can put towards specific cards or more trials.

XP rewards

Finally, we're shifting the spread of XP across your games to help you make progress without the grind. The most noticeable change is bonus XP for your first few wins of the day. By frontloading the biggest chunk of your daily XP, we hope you'll play as many games as you want, not as many games as you have to. We've also buffed the XP you get from losses, because even LoR masters can't win all the time.

This shift gives you more XP up front and over both wins and losses by taking it from later games, which means eventually your XP gains will tail off as you reach many hours of LoR in a given day. Check out the exact numbers below:

Constructed XP

  • First-wins bonus XP
    • 400 bonus XP for your first PVP win each day, 200 for the 2nd, and 100 for the 3rd.
    • Base PVP win XP now 200 (from 250).
  • More XP from PVP losses
    • Base PVP loss XP now 100 (from 25).
  • Diminishing XP rewards over many hours
    • PVP Wins (per day)
      • Wins 11-15 (in one day) reward 150 XP.
      • Wins 16-20 reward 100 XP.
      • Wins 21-30 reward 50 XP.
      • Wins 31+ reward 0 XP. Get some sleep and come back tomorrow you maniac.
    • PVP Losses
      • Losses 5-10 (in one day) reward 50 XP.
      • Losses 11+ (in one day) reward 0 XP.
    • Vs AI Wins (per day)
      • Wins 5-10 reward 75 XP.
      • Wins 11-20 reward 50 XP.
      • Wins 21+ reward 0 XP.
    • Vs AI Losses
      • Base XP reward is 50 XP.
      • Losses 5-10 reward 25 XP.
      • Losses 11+ reward 0 XP.
    • Comparison to old values (PVP)
      • Reduced win XP doesn’t set in until 11 wins in a day, which is on average about 20 games or 3 hours and 20 minutes of daily play.
      • Overall win XP is higher until 14 wins in one day (where it evens out), then lower.
      • Losses grant more XP until 21+ (where they now grant 0)
      • Generally, we don’t expect players to reach comparatively lower XP until they play for about 7-9 hours straight in one day.

Expeditions XP

  • Base Expeditions wins = 100 XP, Base Expeditions losses = 50 XP (unchanged but included for reference).
  • Per-game XP for Expeditions shares the same PVP tracks for Constructed play outlined above, but will diminish to 0 more quickly due to lower base values.
  • Expeditions grant a bonus burst of XP (0-2000 XP depending on wins) upon completing a trial (unchanged but included for reference). This end-of-run burst XP is not subject to diminishing XP rewards, and will always be granted at full value.