Legends of Runeterra Wiki – A Complete Guide to Legends of Runeterra

Legends of Runeterra is a collection-based card game that is based on the world of League of Legends, and it was released by Riot Games in 2020. Within just a few weeks of its release, its popularity skyrocketed, and now it’s among the most famous mobile games of the year 2022.

With the release of every update and patch, the world of Runeterra keeps getting bigger and bigger, and many have progressed far enough in their journey to conquer the game in the past three years, and many have conquered it in their way, but what about those who are planning or have just started their voyage?

In this Legends of Runeterra guide, we will take a deeper dive into the game to help new players can get familiar with the world of Legends of Runeterra

What is “Legends of Runeterra”?

Legends of Runeterra is a collection-based card game, but it is way more than that. The game’s mechanics work like a tower defense game. Here, your main objective is to destroy your enemies’ Nexus while defending your own from them.

To achieve this objective, your cards and decks will be a great help to you, but the most dangerous weapon in your arsenal will be your wit.

Number and level will play a vital role in your victory or defeat, but you’ll find both of them lacking in front intelligence, and that’s the best part of playing a strategic game.

Legends of Runeterra offers really good animations, music, sounds, and characters with a lot of fun experiences; in short, this game will be worth your time. 

How the Game Works and Controls

The game works on a turn-based battling system, where you take turns attacking and defending.

You’ll attack when you have the attacking token, and you’ll be defending when you don’t have it.

At the beginning of each round, you’ll be able to choose which card to play on the battlefield, and when you are attacking, you’ll be choosing which card to attack from the played cards earlier that you’ve selected at the start of the round, and the same goes for defending.

Note: If you wish, you can choose not to attack or defend.

Legends of Runeterra Battle system

You step onto the battlefield to bring down the opponent’s Nexus Hit point to zero. To do so, you’ll begin the round with a starting hand of 4 cards, but when you choose your starting hand, make sure to have at least one or two cards that cost one mana, because if you’ll be attacking first, you’ll need those cards.

It is not yet decided whether you’ll be attacking or defending at the beginning of the round; it will be decided by fate whether you’ll be attacking or defending.

The Mana you’ll be getting will be determined by the round you are in.

For example

Round I: 1 Mana

Round Il:  2 Mana 

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.

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Round X: 10 Mana

maxed out at 10 mana per round, and for the rounds higher than 10, you’ll be getting 10 mana per round; any unused or extra mana will be converted into spell mana (capped at 3); do note that you can’t have more than 3 spell mana, and they won’t replenish themselves like ordinary mana.

Legends of Runeterra Keywords

You can think of Keywords as some special effects or abilities, they appear on certain cards to indicate that this card possesses some unique effect although some of them will occur when certain conditions are met and some will occur without any requirement.

Here we’ll be discussing some of the Keywords that you’ll be seeing, In the beginning.

BARRIER: Stop the next damage from being done to a unit.

CHALLENGER: A challenge cannot be backed down from. To engage their opponents’ units in combat, units can select which enemy unit to block.

ELUSIVE: Only other elusive units can successfully block elusive units.

EPHEMERAL: After they attack the enemy or the round is over, units with these keywords will perish.

FROSTBITE: Prevents a unit from attacking for one round.

OVERWHELM: Excess damage dealt to a unit will go to the Nexus.

RAPID ATTACK: Quick Attack units always launch their attack first.

REGENERATION: At the start of each round, a unit’s health is fully restored.

STUN: Units that are stunned are unable to engage in combat this round and cannot attack or block.

TOUGH: Reduce one damage from any incoming attack

Legends of Runeterra Game Modes

Challenges

Challenges mode is most suitable for beginners and for players who don’t have any prior experience in card games. This mode will help you better understand the game and its mechanics, as you’ll be playing with some pre-constructed decks that will be provided to you. You’ll also be given instructions throughout the challenges so that you can get a better grasp of the game.

Labs

A place where crazy experiments are held, and that’s why it’s a mess; they also don’t care about rules, so be ready to face anything when it comes to labs. Despite all this, it’s a great place where you can complete daily quests easily, especially those hard ones, which makes it worth the trouble to play the labs.

Labs are usually available for a limited period of Time, and you can pick from one of the three sections of the lab to play, each with a different set of rules.

Some labs let the player decide to select from a set of pre-constructed decks. And they also allow the players to see the contents, names, descriptions, and covers of the pre-constructed decks before playing.

Only one thing is certain about the labs: nothing is certain about them.

Path of Champions

Path of Champions is a series of campaigns. It’s a single-player mode where you’ll be playing against A.I. and you’ve got to beat all the levels of an adventure to complete that particular campaign. You have the freedom to replay it as many times as you want, and you also have the option to play that particular adventure on a higher difficulty level than before once you complete the campaign.

There are lots of campaigns in Path of Champions, and they’ll be available to you after you complete the  prologue of the game, where you’ve to beat four stages

It’s completely free to play, and here your deck grows and changes as you progress through levels and beat them, but to win the campaign, it’s not enough to stuff your deck with powerful cards; selecting the right buffs, abilities, and levels is also important.

Completing a campaign provides you with lots of different rewards for both the champion and the player. When you complete a campaign, your champions will get tonnes of experience, and you’ll get vault, items, relics, decks, Legend points, and many other rewards.

Note: You won’t be able to change campaigns once you’ve selected one; you’ll have to either win or lose the campaign to change to a different one.

Gauntlet

Gauntlet is a limited-time event that takes place by rotation, and the rules of deck building are quite different.

In Gauntlet, you’ll be choosing one or more decks, which will depend from time to time, and you’ve got to play the entire Gauntlet run with the selected deck. The condition to end a Gauntlet run is 

1. Win seven matches in a row.

2. Lose two consecutive matches between rounds 1 and 5.
3. Lose one match at round six.

Cards and Decks

The deck is a very broad topic to touch on, and you’ll be busy learning about the game in the first and second weeks. You’ll get to know about them as the game progresses, and by that time you’ll have enough experience to choose them according to your needs.

As for cards, there are four types in the game.

1. Champion
2. Follower
3. Spells 
4. Landmark 

Champions

These will be the most powerful cards in your deck. Champions are creatures that possess great stats and powerful abilities, and these creatures can evolve, unlike other cards. To evolve them, you’ve got to fulfill a level-up condition; every champion has a different level-up condition, and upon completion of these conditions, your champion will “evolve” and become even more powerful with greater skills and stats than before.

Note: You cannot have more than six champions in your deck. 

To play the champion, you just need to have enough mana to pay for it and put it on the battlefield. 

Followers 

These are creatures similar to Champions, but they possess less powerful abilities and stats compared to Champions. 

Both of these attack the enemy units and defend against them; their attack power will be mentioned on the left side of the card, and their hit point will be mentioned on the right.

The number mentioned on the left means the amount of attack it’ll deal to the enemy, and the number mentioned on the right means the amount of damage a unit can take before it is destroyed.

Spells

This type of card is different from the one mentioned above. Unlike followers and champions, spells can be cast from the hand, and they can be cast even in the battle phase. To cast a spell, you simply have to pay its mana cost.

There are three types of spells found in the game: slow, fast, and burst. 

But you can’t play a slow spell during the battle phase or in response to any spell cast by the opponents; you’ve to play the slow spell beforehand, if you wish to play it.

But the remaining types of spells don’t carry this limitation, as they can be played even in the battle phase. But things are a little different for the burst spell, as it can’t be countered by any spells.

Landmarks

These cards carry the traits of both spells and champions because you’ve to play them on the field, but they won’t attack or defend. 

These cards have unique passive abilities, which will stay in effect as long as they are on the battlefield.

The Vault 

Runeterra claims that it’s a play-to-win game, not a pay-to-win game, and it’s not a bogus claim as you can get a vault of level 10 every Thursday just by completing most of your daily missions, and this is a guaranteed way to get a champion’s wildcard.

For beginners like you who just started playing the game, there is a login reward that you can claim each day until the seventh day, and these rewards can be pretty helpful as they can be card bundles, chests, capsules, and guaranteed copies of Champions.

All of these rewards will be more than sufficient for you to build a competitive deck of your choice, and when you add the regional rewards to them, you are bound to have some pretty powerful cards in your arsenal.

Learning from others’ experiences is the best way to save time and progress rapidly, and that’s why we have here some tips from some advanced players so that you’ll know what things you should do and what things you should avoid.

Words of the wise 

When you are attacking first, don’t leave the chance to strike, even if you deal only one damage.

When it comes to shards, don’t waste them and use them very wisely.

Spells and landmarks are more important for your victory than the champions, so make sure to use them more often.

Pay close attention to the advice (in-game tips) given to you in the game; they’ll teach you more about the game.

Make sure to use your spells and abilities in combos, as they’ll deal more damage to the opponent’s cards and help you gain the upper hand in the battle.

Don’t rush; a game can take about a half hour or so if it’s challenging enough, but most of them will be over in 10 to 15 minutes, so it’d be wiser to play every round strategically and carefully than to just throw random cards because you are desperate to win.

Keyword abilities can change the tide of the battle, so make sure you know about them.

Don’t forget to upgrade your champions.

Try to complete daily quests as they’ll give you tonnes of experience and rewards, plus they’ll help you increase the level of your vault.

If the game becomes challenging, change your region to obtain the regional rewards from a different region.

Conclusion 

Legends of Runeterra can ly overwhelming for new players, as it gives you the freedom to pick about any mode after you complete the tutorial.

Being a beginner comes with the eagerness to learn about the game, and it’s the most fun stage of any game, so that’s why we’ve created this beginner’s guide so that we could help the new players experience the beautiful world of Runeterra. So feel free to check the comments box if this guide helped you learn something or if you’ve got something to share, and don’t forget to check our guides for other games here at Shadow Knight Gaming.