We've got the full patch notes for this week's Call of the Mountain update which brings tons of new cards to the game! Read on for more details.
Quote From Riot The Call of the Mountain expansion arrives with a new region—Targon—as well as 89 collectible cards, 7 champions, and a variety of new features & content across the game. Try out new champions and strategies in the Discover Targon Lab, or pioneer your own path upon the mountain.
Call of the Mountain arrives with Patch 1.8, which will be playable at approximately 11 AM PT, August 26.
New Expansion: Call of the Mountain
Call of the Mountain marks the start of LoR’s new bimonthly card release cadence, kicking off a three-expansion set exploring the new region of Targon. In addition to the new region, Call of the Mountain features 89 collectible cards, including 7 champions, as well as a variety of new features & content across the game.
New Region: Targon
On this towering mountain, cosmic beings lend their might to mortals. Astral dragons soar beyond the sky. Tribes of the faithful devote themselves to the sun and moon.
Playing Targon endows you with the ability to raise your units to new heights. You win by reaching the apex of your power and confronting enemies with awesome force. Align yourself with the celestial, and the stars themselves will ordain your victory.
New Cards
Call of the Mountain features 51 collectible cards from Targon, including the champions Leona, Diana, Aurelion Sol, and Taric. The remaining 38 cards are spread across the existing regions, with a focus on Freljord, Ionia, and Shadow Isles, and their new champions—Trundle, Lulu, and Nocturne.
The next two expansions will follow in October and December, each featuring 40 collectible cards, including 3 champions. By the time the third expansion is released and the Call of the Mountain set is complete, all regions (including Targon) will have an equal share of champions and near-equal share of other cards.
Region Road Updates
Targon joins the regions of Runeterra with its own Region Road, and the roads for Freljord, Ionia, and Shadow Isles have been extended so you can pursue all the new Champions and cards in Call of the Mountain.
- Targon Region Road added, featuring 20 levels.
- Note: The Targon regional card back will arrive with the October expansion.
- Freljord, Ionia, and Shadow Isles Region Roads extended from 25 to 29 levels.
- New levels for existing regions will only drop Call of the Mountain cards (until you unlock them all).
- From Patch 1.8, Levels 1-25 on all existing roads can now drop Call of the Mountain cards (and levels added in Rising Tides are no longer anchored to Rising Tides cards).
- Bilgewater’s Region Road now benefits from the XP Boost Level system—earn extra XP towards completing early Region Road levels.
- From Patch 1.8, the first 12 levels on the Bilgewater road will multiply XP applied toward them by 50% (same as other existing regions).
- System will continue be adjusted over time—for example, to include Targon levels, or to advance further down Region Roads with future releases.
New Lab: Discover Targon
In this preconstructed Lab, choose one of 6 decks packed with new cards and strategies from Targon!
- Friends Forever: Bring your Support units to the fore as you overcome your foes with the power of friendship!
- Crystalline Strength: Combine Noxian forces with Targonian buffs to Overwhelm your enemies and secure victory.
- Blaze Of Glory: Dazzle your opponent with an unrelenting assault from your Daybreak units.
- Align The Stars: Unleash the power of Targon's Dragons and Celestial units as you find your destiny in the stars.
- Lurking Darkness: Evade and outmaneuver your opponents with the power of Nightfall.
- Star Ramp: Harness the Freljord's natural magic as you accelerate towards Targon's game-ending threats!
Dev Notes: Balance in Call of the Mountain
Now that we’ll be releasing cards every two months, we also need to adjust the way we approach balance updates over time. Our goal remains monthly updates to keep the game healthy and balanced, but we also want new card content to be at the forefront when released. We want to focus the bulk of our live design attention on updates around the mid-way point between expansions, with more minor adjustments around when we release new cards.
In that spirit, we’re making a few smaller changes with this patch, in part to test out what those smaller updates may look like. After this one, the next patch won’t be landing for three weeks rather than the usual two (details under Miscellaneous below), so we’re spreading our upcoming balance efforts across both of the next two patches. This will help ensure more flexibility with adjustments after Call of the Mountain’s release and provide cleaner windows to make any follow-up tweaks.
Where possible, we’d also like to continue providing previews of what we’re working on for upcoming patches, and in the case of 1.10 and 1.11 (things may shift between them), a few of those things include:
- A major update for Lee Sin, giving him more options for synergies and allowing him to come online and impact the game earlier in a match.
- Adjustments to the difficulty of Ezreal’s level-up quest.
- Adjustments to Yordle Grifter’s allegiance effect.
But all that’s in the future, so for now we hope you enjoy the updates below and the rest of Call of the Mountain!
- RubinZoo, Live Design Lead
Card Updates
Fury of the North / Sejuani's Fury of the North
OLD TEXT: Give an ally +4|+4 this round.
NEW TEXT: Give an ally +3|+4 this round.
Fury sees play in a higher variety of archetypes than is typical for a buff spell due to its versatility and outright potency. This adjustment aligns the effect more towards Freljord’s defensive-oriented spells, reduces its finishing potency in all decks, and even ever-so-slightly nerfs Sejuani’s overall stat package.
COST: 4 → 5Assessor is too effective in decks built to maximize it, giving them access to large amounts of card draw while also providing decent board development. We like the card’s statline where it’s at to preserve interesting potential with deck-buff effects, so we’re increasing the cost to slow it down and reduce its efficiency.
OLD TEXT: To play me, discard 1 and draw 1.
NEW TEXT:Play: Discard 1 to draw 1.
Following up on our last changes to these two units, just a small quality-of-life tweak to allow them to be played while no other cards are in hand.
OLD TEXT: To play me, discard 1 and draw 1.
NEW TEXT:Play: Discard 1 to draw 1.
See Sump DredgerBundles
- Stars Above bundle now available for 1422 Coins. Bundle includes:
- Celestial Summit Board
- Cosmo Guardian
- An exclusive Targon icon
- Targon Emotes bundle now available for 570 Coins—grab all four new Targon emotes at a 25% discount.
Deck Bundles
Summon the power of the sun and stars with Celestial Radiance, a ready-to-play Targon deck available in the store for 2016 Coins (prorated for any excess copies based on your existing collection).
Your Daybreak units and healing spells hold the line while you invoke the aid of greater threats. If your opponent manages to last through the day, call on colossal Celestials to end the battle and reign supreme.
Champions: Leona, Aurelion Sol
Theme: Daybreak & Invoke keywords
Playstyle: Midrange beatdown
Ranked Rewards & New Season
Call of the Mountain brings with it a new ranked season, as well as ranked reward icons for last season based on the highest tier you reached.
- Ranked will be disabled from around 9 AM PT, August 25 to around 10 AM PT, August 26 to prepare for the new season.
- Ranked reward icons for the last season will be distributed with the patch.
- Ranks will be partially reset for the new season:
- Master accounts will drop 8 divisions.
- Diamond and Platinum accounts will drop 750LP (7 divisions + 50LP).
- Gold and Silver accounts will drop 675LP (6 divisions + 75LP).
- Bronze and Iron accounts will reset to Iron IV.
- Masters LP updates:
- Fixed an issue that was causing Masters players to lose fewer LP than intended when losing to lower ranked opponents.
- Updated the initial seeding mechanism for new Masters players to anchor based on their MMR percentile relative to all other players in Masters.
Expeditions
We’ve got a ton of Expeditions updates for Call of the Mountain, headlined by seven new archetypes to draft. This includes a mono-Targon archetype, an archetype with Targon and each of Freljord, Ionia, and Shadow Isles, and three new bonus archetypes featuring Diana with Miss Fortune, Leona with Yasuo, and Nocturne with all the Mistwraiths you can imagine.
- Seven new Call of the Mountain archetypes added to the Expeditions draft pool.
- Call of the Mountain archetypes will temporarily be three times as likely as they would otherwise be to appear in the initial Champion Picks. We’ll even out these chances in a later patch.
- Card lists have been adjusted for almost all existing archetypes, primarily adding cards from Call of the Mountain and in some cases removing older cards to make room for them.
- NOTE: Active Expeditions will not roll over into Call of the Mountain, and players will be forced to retire any active runs. Active trials (not those mid-draft!) will be compensated normally.
Challenges, Quests, & AI Decks
- 5 new Call of the Mountain Challenges added.
- New Call of the Mountain quests added, and several less popular quests removed.
- Several new Call of the Mountain AI decks added.
Minimum Specifications (iOS)
As we mentioned last patch, we're raising LoR's required iOS version to iOS 13 with Patch 1.8. We've also updated the LoR support site, where you can always find info on supported devices. Please note that 1 GB iOS devices (iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPad Air 1) are not supported by iOS 13.
- Minimum required iOS version now iOS 13.
Miscellaneous
- For those who saw Taric's preview, we originally clarified in community discussion that his spell duplication ability would work with Playful Trickster, potentially creating an infinite attack chain. We've since updated Taric's text and functionality to prevent this interaction (and other potential ones like it).
- As we mentioned last patch, Patch 1.8 will last an extra week (so three weeks in total rather than the usual two) before we update again. Patch 1.10 (yes, we’re skipping 1.9) will land on September 16, last the usual two weeks, and resume our normal update cadence.
- You can now select certain personalization items when queuing for Labs, starting with Emotes and Card Backs.
- Added new deckbuilder support for Celestial cards.
Comments
Anyone knows the list for the deck bundle? It looks like good value, especially if it's a full set of champs.
It seems a little crazy to me that they're teasing a major update to Lee Sin right as a ton of new cards are arriving. It creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy whereby players will think Lee Sin is bad and avoid him because Riot is effectively saying as much - after all, they wouldn't be planning a big buff if the thought he would be good after the cards are released. It is entirely possible that someone would have made a meta deck with Lee Sin, but this artificially creates a bias against him.
Players should be the ones figuring out the metagame - it should not be dictated from on high by Riot's balance previews. For all Riot knows, the decks they think are the best decks in the format at v1.8 will never be discovered. Maybe players will only play worse decks, maybe better, but regardless these kinds of broadcasts only serve to mess with player perceptions.
Since Riot was willing to say that, they must already have enough data on him to know he should get some buffs. They don't need more data on him to decide to make those changes. Plus, his play rate will go down anyway with the new expansion coming out and players wanting to use the cards.
Besides, I doubt many people at all will change what they play based on this. If someone already enjoyed Lee Sin enough to want to make a deck around him, I doubt a vague patch note would change their mind.
I mean I partially agree but I think anyone who just writes Lee off like that is making a dumb decision anyway. I'm not saying he is good or bad, but players that don't explore are free to make that mistake as far as I'm concerned, and it is a mistake in my eyes.
I think that they are giving this previews to be more open about the design process and give players faith that certain cards will be changed. I think that telling people that Lee Sin is going to be changed will actually encourage people to try him out more and see what decks he already works in, so that they can better theorycraft which decks to build around him when he's buffed. It also gives Lee Sin players more hope because they know that even if he doesn't work out in this meta, he will be improved later on. Lee Sin has a lot of synergy with Targon Gem cards that will also make him more of a consideration again, so I don't think that this announcement will cause people who wanted to try him out with the new cards to decide not to play him. Finally, Riot isn't even saying that they think Lee Sin is too weak, just that he isn't designed as well as he could be. They could end up making him something like a 5 Mana 2/5, which might be a nerf, and it would still fulfill what they wanted his change to do to his playstyle.
Respectfully, any reading of that text that suggests Riot isn't saying that he's too weak is wrong. They would not feel a need to make a "major update" to Lee Sin in which he gets "more options for synergies" and will be able "to come online and impact the game earlier in a match" if he were already good enough as is (at least in the eyes of the Riot dev team). Maybe the change will be so significant that more closely resembles the old Lux/Mageseeker revamp rather than a normal buff/nerf patch (as it happens, the potential for this makes experimenting now even less appealing), but there's no world in which getting more synergies and coming online earlier translates to a nerf.
In any previous balance patch, I might have agreed with you that people will feel encouraged to revisit him as a means of preparing for his upgrade, but in an expansion patch when you know he's going to change, there's no point. There's already tons of new content to experiment with, and Riot has signaled that he isn't worth your time between now and next month.
Your point about him synergizing with Targon Gems is exactly the kind of thing that makes me think Riot shouldn't have said what they did. Right now, Lee Sin is not seeing much play, but there might be good Lee Sin decks with Targon in the metagame. But Riot is already signaling they don't think that's true, and right now they're the only ones with data about how these new cards will impact the game.
I get that people appreciate how public Riot is about what they're working on and what changes are coming down the pike. In some ways, I agree, it's refreshing and positive. But there's also merit in playing these things a little closer to the chest. A better, more cryptic alternative to announcing specifically that a major rework for Lee Sin and an adjustment to the level up requirements for Ezreal are coming might have been something like "With the influx of powerful burst spells in Call of the Mountain, we'll be closely monitoring champions with spell synergies to ensure proper balance." This doesn't call out any particular champion by name, but still hints at some of things they'll be looking into over the next month.
The Trifarian Assessor nerf hurts my two Noxus/Freljord decks that I've been playing for quite some time, Frostbite Ashe and Sejuani/Vladimir self-harm. I will admit the card draw was pretty good, but I personally didn't think the nerf was super necessary *shrugs* I don't know the meta though so maybe that's just my ignorance talking.
At this rate, combined with the nerfs to Fury of the North and Crimson Disciple, my Sej + Vlad deck might not be worth it anymore :(
Ashe Noxus was super prevalent at higher levels -- there have been Giant Slayer events were half the contenders were running and succeeding with it. It's problematic when professionals anticipate opposing a specific deck and they think their greatest chance to beat it is to take the 50-50 odds with a mirror match. :-P But yeah, I feel you with Vlad. First Crimson Disciple, now this. He just keeps getting caught in the crossfire.
Yeah, Vlad himself needs a powerful buff to make him the power card of his package. Riot has always just been making his support cards really good, but then they end up better in decks without him (Crimson Disciple, Transfusion, Imperial Demolitionist, etc). I also think that Trifarian Assessor could be buffed to either have a little more health, or maybe changed to a 4/2 that draws an extra card without any 5+ Power allies.