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The most played online game, League of Legends, is set to return with the season 8 in January, 2018. This legendary MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game is played by over 100 million players worldwide monthly, and they are definitely impatient for even the tiniest pieces of news about the new season’s updates and changes. There is truly a lot to look forward to, as Riot Games has already announced removing level 30 capping and merging blue essence with IP, as well as several other exciting novelties. Have patience, dear reader, and dive into what the next season will look and feel like together with us.

By the way, it’s no secret that people, especially gamers, are impatient by nature. If you want to start playing with the big boys right now, but you are too busy to spend hours and days leveling up your champion and earning blue essence, you can buy LoL account that is already leveled up and ready for use. If you want to be among the first ones to experience all the novelties of the 2018 season with rare skins, cool champions and unique emotes in your possession, this option is definitely worth your consideration.

When Is The 2018 Season Set To Start?

Even though preseason has already started in November of 2017, we’re still in the limbo of not knowing the exact date of the start of the next season. The latest information suggests that the season’s start could be on January, 9; yet, Riot Games has yet to confirm it. As of now, it’s LoL preseason time when you can practice your gaming skills and earn rankings that will be included in your initial ranking for season 8. A piece of advice: don’t miss this opportunity to become experienced enough to do your best during the placement matches when the season starts.

Top 3 Big Changes In LoL Season 8

Revamped Rune System – Runes Are Free

The runes have already been made free during the start of the preseason in November, 2017. So, rune farming has become obsolete, basically. Yet, Riot Games cares about and appreciates the dedicated summoners: they will be compensated for runes purchased before September 2017 partially or fully, depending on when the purchases were made:

Globally, runes and masteries have been combined and turned into a single streamlined system. Now, there are 5 types of paths available instead of the Mastery Trees from previous seasons:

• Precision – allows sustained damage and improved attacks;
• Domination – allows target access and burst damage;
• Sorcery – you can benefit from resource manipulation and empowered abilities;
• Resolve – adds crowd control and durability;
• Inspiration – this path’s advantage are rule bending and creative tools.

As you can see, each Path has its value that it adds to gaming experience. The Paths’ themes and structure remain similar to the ones of Mastery Trees. Each slot (previously known as a branch) provides summoners with a unique set of runes. Total amount of the runes available to choose from is 60.

This revamped system is available for all summoners regardless of their level, and you can customize it in champion selection.

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No More Leveling Cap To Hold You Back

That’s right – now summoners can level up endlessly! Level 30 cap has been removed.

The leveling system has been totally revamped: from now on rewards are tied to it. The reward system has also been changed significantly – now summoners receive rewards depending on how much time and efforts they have invested.

So, instead of getting and stocking influence points after every game you play, you will get a capsule that contains blue essence and champ shards after you level up. Besides, when you reach certain levels, called milestone levels, you will earn rare gemstones or emotes. Disenchanting champ shards is still an option, yet, it will bring you only a 20% discount.

The reason behind this change is to make LoL capturing and extremely entertaining for long-term summoners again. Now they have something to strive for besides collecting more champions – unique emotes, champ shards that are the reward for reaching higher and higher levels in the game. Also, Riot Games claims that the rewards are tailored specifically to summoners’ needs: for example, if you are new to playing LoL, you will receive more capsules with champions that will help you level up faster. If you are a high-level player, you have no interest in getting champions – so, you will receive stuff that will allow you to show your status in-game.

Influence Points Merged With Blue Essence

Now you are able to buy anything you could purchase with either blue essence or influence points using only BE. IP is removed from the game completely. There’s no need to worry about any inflation or changes in prices – all the prices in the store remain the same as they were in the IP-based system. All your blue essence points you had in the old system are converted into the new system multiplied by 6.5. Te influence points are converted into BE 1:1.

The reason for this massive change in the game’s mechanics is that developers want to connect several systems that were separate before – those ones are leveling, loot and rewards systems. For example, it was quite disappointing that when you got a champ shard you didn’t want and you disenchanted it, only to realize there was little you could do with it. Now, you just spend it in the store for any champion you want. Thus, this change connected the loot system with the store directly, giving summoners more options on how to use their rewards.

Is There Anything Else?

Hell yeah! This season brings us numerous other improvements implemented to make gaming experience as awesome and rewarding as ever. The following ones definitely deserve your attention.

• Rerolling champ shards into permanent champs is not possible anymore (there are going to be too many champ in the system due to the changes in the rewards system). Yet, rerolling skin shards isn’t going anywhere.
• There will be a limited-time BE store with exclusive stuff opened at least once a year.
• The IP boosts are not sold anymore. All the IP boosts you had are converted into XP boosts, and XP boosts will cost you the same as IP boosts used to.
• The “first win of the day” has been turned into a daily mission that brings more XP than the “first win of the day” used to bring.
• LoL veterans’ loyalty is recognized by exclusive emotes. So, if you’ve played 500 hours until August 31, 2017, you will get the Defender of the League emote, with 1,500 hours score before that deadline you will be rewarded with the Champion of the League one, and 2,500 hours score will pay off with the Conqueror of the League one.

What Are The Reasons For The Changes?

Globally, there were four main issues that LoL developers aimed to fix:

• A lot of summoners had huge amounts of IP, yet they had nothing to spend it on;
• Spending IP on runes came at the expense of unlocking new champions, so it didn’t feel good;
• The leveling system had nothing to offer long-term summoners who had invested a lot of time into playing LoL;
• Grinding in order to unlock new champions took new players too long.

All these changes are definitely overwhelming and tempting to try them. We all can’t wait to get our hands on all this stuff to experience the innovative changes next season. Stay tuned for the exact date for the start of 2018 season, as well as for more news on other changes to League of Legends. Besides, while you’re waiting, you can ease your impatience by playing LoL preseason!