Legends of Runeterra’s latest patch speeds up animations to make games faster

No chance of getting board.

Legends of Runeterra’s latest update introduces quality-of-life improvements to game pacing, as well as new boards, Guardians, bug fixes and other small changes.

Riot Games has heard the community’s feedback on animations taking a little too long, and it’s in agreement. Instead of being “slow and clear”, they’ll be much snappier. Things like drawing, summoning, passing your turn, and starting a new round will happen faster, which will speed games up in the long run.

Riot’s also aware of other card-specific animations and interactions being particularly slow, and it’s promised to “tackle those over time”. It’s even put together a group of devs tasked with improving the game’s overall pacing and responsiveness, so we can expect plenty of further tweaks in the near future.

Here’s a look at all the pacing changes in this patch:

• Summoning units.
• Drawing cards.
• Dragging units out to attack.
• Playing Fast & Slow spells.
• Playing Burst spells.
• Initiative token flip at the beginning of rounds.

In the last patch, friend challenge XP was toned down to limit win trading via spamming surrender, but Riot admits it was a “bit too harsh” on players looking to play normally with friends. It’s increased win XP for both wins and losses, but expect further changes later down the line.

Head into the in-game shop and you’ll find a bunch of new Guardians and Boards to purchase with coins. There’s an adorable Minion Guardian, as well as Jinx and Garen boards to add some flavour to your side of the battlefield.

Elsewhere, card counts are now represented by “pips” (you’ll know them when you see them) which’ll better communicate copies owned, copies not owned and more.

To round things off, Riot’s squashed a number of pesky bugs which we’ve listed below:

• Repeatedly hovering Region Road rewards no longer causes shadows to steadily consume the screen. Spooky.
• Muting AI opponents will now properly hide their emotes.
• The Rekindler and The Harrowing will no longer revive Champions that only had their unique spell cast (rather than an actual Champion unit played and killed).
• Champions will now properly level up if they return from being Detained after their level up condition was met while they were Detained.
• Twin Disciplines now displays correct effect text when selecting Discipline of Fortitude.
• Players should no longer get stuck on the loading screen when signing out of League of Legends while signed into LoR(communicated last patch but didn’t make it in).
• Players logging into LoR from different devices should encounter fewer crashes (communicated last patch but didn’t make it in).

That’s it for patch 0.9.1 and despite its small size, we’re pleased to see all the changes which should add some fluidity to each game. It’s safe to say we can expect more substantial updates in the near future, so keep an eye on the site for all the latest Legends of Runeterra news.

If you’re interested in giving the game a shot, or you’re a casual player who wants to climb the ranked ladder, then make sure you head on over to our Tier List and Best Decks pages. What’s more, our Budget Decks page is worth a glance if you’re just starting out and need a strong deck on the cheap.