Changes arrived for Riot Games this February after the surge of frustrations. League of Legends Dev Blog announced multiple improvements on gameplay for February. Here’s a summary of what came in for players in the announcement.  

Hextech Chests Return with a New Implementation

One of the players’ wins from League of Legends dev blog announcement is the Hextech Chests return. They quickly returned it after its controversial removal earlier this year. From patch 25.05, players will get to possibly earn ten Hextech Chests and Keys for every act. 

However, eight of these are made available in the free Battle Pass. This replaced the previous Season skin as well as Mystery Epic or Lower skin. Pabro said through the announcement video, they didn’t fully grasp the significance of Hextech Chests for the community.  

Meanwhile, the players can earn the remaining two Chests per act with the Honor system. Yet, this is still under construction so the rewards will be delivered through missions. These returning chests are identical to the previous Champion Mastery and have the same drop rates. It’ll follow these provided rates:

  • 50% for Skin Shards
  • 25% for Champion Shards
  • 10% for Emote Permanents
  • 11.5% for Ward Skin Shards (plus 150 Orange Essence)
  • 3.5% for Summoner Icon Permanents (plus 150 Orange Essence)
  • Bonus drops include 10 Mythic Essence (3.6% chance) plus an additional Chest and Key (10% chance).

Champion Acquisition Made Easier with 50% Cost Reduction

Riot Games also made an effort to add improvements for newer players. In the League of Legends dev blog, they shared to cut the Blue Essence cost for all champions by 50%. This will help players to build on their champion roster even if they’re just beginning their League journey.  

Meddler further explained that this accessibility improvement will help the game thrive in the longer term. Also, players who purchased champions during patch 25.4 can get a 50% refund by contacting support. 

Skin Quality Improvements and Battle Pass Changes

Riot made sure to enhance the quality of their recent skins after the players expressed their dissatisfaction. Recently, the Exalted Mordekaiser skin received a lot of criticism leading to its delayed release. The developers will take more time to improve all their future Exalted skins. Yet, this also means slight changes from their initial release schedule in every Act. 

On the other hand, these are all the adjustments for Riot’s Battle Pass:

  • Replaced one non-Prestige skin with 25 Mythic Essence in the paid Pass
  • Lessen the overall number of Season skins to focus on quality over quantity
  • Implemented a structure of 3 thematic skins per pass (2 normal, 1 Prestige)
  • Act 2’s paid Battle Pass will feature Prestige Darius, Sion, and Talon

This time, they’ll lessen the promotional placement of their Exalted Skins within the client in consideration of community feedback.

Monthly Clash Tournament Returns 

To make patch 25.5 even better, League of Legends dev blog shared plans of monthly Clash tournaments return. This reverses the previous decision to reduce the frequency of this activity in League of Legends. 

They note that March’s Clash event will have All Random URF (ARURF) and regular Summoner’s Rift Clash for April. This perfectly sums up the players’ feedback on a mix of game modes they’d like to play for Clash events. 

Blue Essence Emporium and Your Shop Returning Soon

Other returning features are the Your Shop and the Blue Essence Emporium. Yet, these are for future releases specifically, Your Shop for patch 25.06 and Blue Essence Emporium in patch 25.07. All these are responses of Riot after the boycott calls from the community to remove the current Riot Games CEO Dylan Jadeja. The petition even reached over 36,000 signatures, showing significant dissatisfaction.  

Conclusion

It seems that the League of Legends Dev Blog for February perfectly answered the demands of the community. It brings back previously removed content along with improvements on some of the well-loved game features. This just shows how Riot Games is keen on listening to their fans to maintain their player base.