/dev: Arena - the Grand Reckoning

Hey hey! I’m Eduardo “Riot Cadmus” Cortejoso, Product Lead for Modes. It's been a while since we last talked about Modes, and I want to start by saying thanks to everyone who dropped by and celebrated Arcane with us on the Bridge of Progress! But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. Instead, I’m here to give you some more details about what to expect when Arena makes its return in Act 2, patch 2025.S1.5.

Before we begin though, I’d like to give a brief overview of how new game modes will interact with seasons moving forward, we’ve already started this with ARURF in patch 2025.S1.2, but here’s a quick summary:

• There should always be an alternate or novel way to enjoy League every patch, such as:

  • Returning favorites (Like ARURF or OFA)

  • Higher scope major updates (Like this Arena release we’re about to talk about!)
  • New game modes (Think Swarm from last year)
  • And a few new things we’ll be trying out!

• We’ll usually be playing within a season’s theme, but sometimes there will be reasons to diverge (Arena will be Noxus themed, but we may find reason to deviate so it’s not the same flavor for 4 straight months)

• Arena’s release schedule will be pretty closely tied to season acts, expect to hear about upcoming releases close to the start of an act (like right now!)

To the Grand Reckoning

To quickly recap what we talked about last year, 2025 is all about moving to Seasons for League, and game modes are no exception to that. So to celebrate Season 1 and welcome you all to Noxus, we’re moving Arena from the Rings of Wrath to the Grand Reckoning! All existing maps are no longer floating in the air all magic-like, this time they’ve been brought back to the ground by the might of Noxus so onlookers can spectate gladiatorial combat as part of the Grand Reckoning. So without further ado, let’s talk about updates to our existing maps!!

Koi Pond

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Koi Pond was our most controversial map amongst players the last time Arena was live. We agree that not everything was ideal and made some changes during the last run of Arena, but this time we took a much bigger swing at this map to address some points of frustration we saw in player feedback.

Introducing: THE RING. A new, walkable piece of terrain wrapping around the outer perimeter of the Koi Ponds, connecting them all together. The ring concept stemmed directly from suggestions the community had in order to address some frustrations the map presented, so please keep that passionate feedback coming! This should help prevent situations where players get stuck on an island with two enemies and feel doomed. While it won’t be easy to get away should you find yourself in this situation, it shouldn’t be a “gg go next round” situation anymore. We also removed Blast Cones as it was leading to some particularly frustrating scenarios of trapping certain champions depending on your movement options or auto-attack range.

Our Newest Map, the Reckoner Arena

99% of all Reckoners wish they had fought just one more round

In the Reckoner Arena you’ll find yourself right in the middle of the action with a few pillars scattered throughout. Watch out though, because these fights can get so intense that they make break the Arena itself! These pillars are destructible, and, upon taking enough damage, will collapse, dealing a large amount of damage to enemy champions hit and knocking them back. They’ll also leave behind a wall of rubble, forcing players to adapt to the updated terrain. Don’t worry though, they won’t mess with your vision.

Introducing Guests of Honor

The last time you all saw Arena we were still experimenting with different versions of Cameos since we saw a lot of player feedback about how intrusive some of them felt. This round, we’re trying something new by shelving Cameos and bringing in Guests of Honor to replace them.

When it comes back, each game of Arena will feature a group of famous Noxians or Reckoners (aka Champions), that will show up during different event rounds as “Guests of Honor.” Every player in the lobby will then be able to vote on the Guests that have shown up and then the winning Guest will introduce a new rule that will be in place for the rest of the game. Depending on how far you’ll get into the game, you’ll experience up to 2 Guests of Honor featured during a game of Arena, and with over 20 Champions featured, the possibilities are infinite! (actually math tells me it’s not endless but you get my point)

Our goal with Guests of Honor was to make it so each game feels unique and will push you to adapt, not only to your opponents, but to the evolving landscape. Our goal here (as with Arena in general) is to encourage players to remain flexible to whatever pops up in the Rings of Wrath Grand Reckoning and to reward that flexible thinking.

Here’s an example of some guests that might drop by your game and the rules they would apply to your games.

• Darius - Noxian Might: Every team loses 50 Health, heal 5 health when a team is eliminated. 

• Vladimir - Universal Donor: All players gain a bonus matching augment.

• Mordekaiser - Die Alone: One player from each team starts combat in the death realm.

Or course we have a lot more Guests of Honor lined up for you, with 14 featured on release and 8 more later in Act 2 (not to mention a bunch of new Augments that we’ve cooked up), but it wouldn’t be fun to spoil all the surprises now, so you’ll just have to hop into Arena and find out! Or look it up online, but that wouldn’t be very Noxian of you.

Progression in Arena

OK, now time for an area we’ve been LONG waiting to more directly address. Since its last appearance we’ve been working on Arena behind the scenes with a keen eye for player pain points we noted down during its last run. The primary standout was progression, and the general feedback was that many felt like there either wasn’t much of a reason to play Arena once you hit your desired Gladiator rank, nor were players really satisfied with the premise of a very easy competitively-minded progression track. For this reason, we set out to build something where players could be excited about playing Arena for the reasons they care about as well as redefining what it means to be a great and well invested Arena player.

When Arena returns, we’ll be introducing a brand new Arena “Fame” system as the primary way to progress through your Arena experience. You’ll generally gain Fame depending on how you place in any individual game, but in addition to just playing and winning there will also be a set of 3 missions you can accomplish per champion that will drastically accelerate your Fame leveling experience.

Your journey to Fame (or infamy) starts here

Every milestone will have a unique reward tied to it. Here is a quick rundown of what you can look forward to unlocking:

• Level 1: Overflow (Silver Augment) added to pool

• Level 2: Hattrick (Gold Augment) added to pool

• Level 3: Matchup Intro upgrade

• Level 4: Slow and Steady (Gold Augment) added to pool

• Level 5: 1 Reroll

• Level 6: Matchup Intro upgrade

• Level 7: And My Axe (Gold Augment) added to pool

• Level 8: Transmute: Chaos (Prismatic Augment) added to pool

• Level 9: Matchup Intro upgrade

Just to be clear, this isn’t like Swarm where you gain power by progressing. We were very deliberate with the rewards we offered here. You can think of it like a Roguelike in the sense that you aren’t getting stronger Augments, but different augments that will challenge your flexibility and creativity.

You might be asking yourself - “What’s a matchup intro upgrade?”. I could type something, but let me just show you:

Enter the fight in style with matchup intro cards

You’ll be unlocking new borders to your matchup intro card to hype yourself up and show off your Arena mastery before all Arena rounds moving forward!

A few other updates related to progression that we’ll briefly highlight:

• You can now (finally) progress Champion Mastery as part of your Arena experience
• Arena will have tie-in missions related to the battle pass
• The Arena God Challenge will retain its progress from the previous release (so if you have it already, congrats! Don’t need to grind this out again)
  • Small note, unfortunately Mel and Ambessa won’t count towards this challenge for the time being 
• There will no longer be a gladiator points/ranks as part of the Arena experience
  • We’re removing due to pretty limited engagement with this system in previous seasons beyond the 1st week or so, plus there is enough overlap with the Fame system that this didn’t make sense to exist alongside each other

Crowd Favorites and Bravery

Okay I know I said I wouldn’t spoil everything, but I do want to take a beat to talk to you all about two new mechanics we’re adding to champ select: Crowd Favorites and Bravery.

These are systems we introduced to reward players to experiment with which champions they bring into the Arena. Now we’ve mentioned we want to reward players that experiment and adapt to each game of Arena, but we don’t want to force anyone to pick a specific champion. That’s why we want to give you some small bonuses for your bravery.

Crowd Favorites up to 5 randomly highlighted champions that will pop up during champ select. If you select one of them, you’ll start the game with 1 Free Stat Anvil.

Bravery takes this idea a step further, but instead of choosing from 1 of 5, you’ll lock in a random champion. But what’s high risk without high rewards? If you’re brave enough to take the Bravery route you’ll be rewarded with 1 Free Stat Anvil AND 2 rerolls. You’ll ALSO gain additional Fame for signing up for the full Bravery experience. Word of warning - since you cannot choose your skin (you won’t even know what champion you get until you load into the game), you’ll always be on your last selected skin. I know it’s scary… that’s why YOU JUST GOTTA BE BRAVE THE PAYOFF IS WORTH.

We don’t expect everyone to opt for a Crowd Favorite or Bravery, but we hope that this will help Arena veterans find some more fun as they fight round after round, while also leaning into the adaptation and experimentation that’s so key to success in Arena.

When Can You Play?

If you’ve made it this far you’re probably just as excited to hop into a game of Arena as we are! Here are the times Arena will be going live:

Arena will be live until Patch 15.9 goes live on April 30, so make sure to drop by while it’s here. 

We can’t wait for Arena to go live and to hear what you all think of it, so please be sure to give us your feedback. See you in the Grand Reckoning!