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Runeterra Reforged Mechanics Overview
Teamfight Tactics returns to Runeterra (well… the Convergence’s mixed-up version of it, anyway) with our new set, Runeterra Reforged, but exactly where you battle is up to you. Vote on where the game takes place with Region Portals at the game's start, changing the rules and mechanics for the whole lobby to adapt to. The new set also introduces our Legends feature, which allows you to influence your Augments before entering a game. So wherever Runeterra Reforged takes you, you’ll be able to strategize with Legends ahead of time. Here we’ll dive into the details of the two new mechanics coming with Runeterra Reforged in patch 13.12—let’s get into it!
Region Portals: TFT Travels Across Runeterra
The first thing you’ll notice when you load into your first game of Runeterra Reforged is that the opening Carousel is gone. Instead you’ll see three Region Portals at the center of the map and you (along with 7 others) will be able to vote on a destination by moving your Tactician into the Portal.
Voting for a Region Portal isn’t a winner-takes-all situation. Instead, all votes will be weighted equally, and a Portal will be selected from amongst them at random, with your votes influencing the probability for each Portal. For example, if seven people vote for The Immortal Bastion of Noxus, but one person votes for the Stillwater Hold of Piltover, there’s a 7 in 8 chance of going to Noxus, and a 1 in 8 of going to the Stillwater Hold.
Each Region Portal brings you to a new part of Runeterra with an all new ruleset to play with. As I am writing this, we are still working on a few Region Portals, but expect there to be a minimum of 28. Let’s check out 8 of them here!
Take a dark passage to Thresh’s Sanctum in the Shadow Isles, where TFT finally answers Thresh’s question, “What is the worth of a soul?” Here, anytime a champion dies, there’s a chance to collect their soul. At the end of each stage, get loot based on how many souls you've collected!
When you live in The Sump of Zaun, you’re just trying to make it day by day—you don’t have the luxury of saving up, diversifying your portfolio, vesting your stocks, or any of that Piltovan nonsense. So when you take a Region Portal to the Sump, you’ll be going to a game without interest. Instead, as early as stage 2-1, each player will gain 3 flat gold every round. Expect this to create some aggressive early games as players access higher levels or starred-up units much earlier.
The Petricite Forest of Demacia is able to harbor great power—that’s why Ryze chose it as a place to hide his shiny things—but when you take a Region Portal here in TFT, all of your units will be enhanced with extra Health and an increase in size. Expect abilities and items that do percent max Health damage or scale with max Health to be a bit strong here, but area of effect abilities should also be ever so slightly stronger due to the increased size of units.
The Immortal Bastion of Noxus is an ancient fortification that the capital city of Noxus was built on top of. Visiting this ancient site grants a placeable battle flag which gives attack speed and a shield to units starting combat adjacent to it. I guess you can teach an ancient bastion new tricks.
Over in Piltover, the Stillwater Hold is a fortified prison off the coast of Piltover. It not only held our second favorite Arcane character (after Silco—to be clear), but it also holds all of TFT’s Augments captive. That’s right—traveling to the Stillwater Hold in TFT disables Augments for the entire game. This is certain to be a contentious one!
Miss the Treasure Dragon from Dragonlands? Then take the Region Portal to the Warlord’s Palace in Shurima where the stage 4-7 PvE (Raptors) round is replaced by a Treasure Armory that can be rerolled infinitely for 2 gold per reroll. The loot options here will be powerful, so make sure you have some gold saved up!
Speaking of returning mechanics, if you miss the Divine Blessing from Dawn of Heroes, grab a Portal over to Targon Prime from… uh, Targon in case that wasn’t obvious. Upon dropping to 40 Tactician Health, a blessing from the Targonian gods will descend from the sky, showering you with loot—the perfect power infusion to turn around that loss streak!
Finally there’s The Lavender Sea from the Void where, starting on stage 2-1, a Void symbiote infects a board hex. The hex grants damage reduction if it's in the first two rows, or increased damage if it's in the back two rows. The hex will move to a different location after each Carousel and PvE round, so you’ll have to keep repositioning to maximize its efficiency.
There are over 20 more Region Portals to discover in Runeterra Reforged, each with rules as different as the destinations you’ll visit. We can’t wait to see what new comps you’ll pull off as you adapt to your new surroundings... And now that we’ve introduced a mechanic that adds a ton of variability to TFT, it’s time to introduce one that gives you a bit more control.
Legends: Plan Your Tactics Before You Teamfight
Legends allow you to influence which Augments you are offered in a game before it even starts! Pick from amongst 15 unique Legends, each representing a different playstyle. Equip your favorite Legend in the pre-game lobby similar to how you’d select your favorite Tactician, Arena, or Boom. Okay, let’s get into the deets.
The Deets: Legends only influence the leftmost of your three Augment offerings. While the first (Stage 2-1) Legend Augment will be of equal power to Augments of the same tier (Silver, Gold, Prismatic), the second and third (Stage 3-2 and 4-2) Augment offerings will be slightly weaker than Augments of their same tier. These second and third Augment offerings should be used as your fall-back option, for use in situations where the comp you are building doesn't benefit as much from the other options.
If you don’t like your options, feel free to slam that Augment reroll button, because now each Augment can be rerolled individually! This allows you to compare Augments to each other rather than rerolling the entire selection. This also allows you to see more of our over 100 new Augments! You will have a grand total of 18 Augment rerolls a game so you can make more informed decisions. #EndAugmentDiff
By making the second and third Legend offerings slightly weaker, we lessen the advantage of building your composition to maximize these guaranteed Augments before you even start the game. The synergy of each Legend is pretty high, so the nerfed versions of Stage 3-2 and 4-2 Augments will make sense when we get into some examples—which is right now!
Legend: Urf
First up, Urf. Urf is for players who love going deep in a trait web, or just want to see their Noxus champions finally get along with their Demacian allies by equipping Noxians with Demacia Emblems and vice-versa. Running Urf will give you more opportunities to experiment with rare, yet powerful combos like Rogue Emblem Yasuo, which will allow this melee carry to become much more slippery AND access the enemy backline more easily.
There’s tons to explore with Urf, but before I get too excited, let’s explore what the Legend actually offers:
| Urf | 2-1 | 3-2 | 4-2 |
| Silver | Branching Out: Gain a random Emblem and a Reforger | Tiny Grab Bag: Gain a random component, 8 gold, and an Item Remover | Final Grab Bag I: Gain a random component, 15 gold, and an Reforger |
| Gold | Ancient Archives I: Gain a Tome of Traits | Big Grab Bag: Gain 2 random components, 12 gold, and a Reforger | Final Grab Bag II: Gain 2 random components, 18 gold, and an Item Remover |
| Prismatic | Ancient Archives II: Gain 2 Tome of Traits and 8 gold | Giant Grab Bag: Gain 3 random components, 18 gold, and a Lesser Duplicator | Urf's Grab Bag: Gain 2 item components, a Champ Duplicator, and a Spatula |
Legend: Caitlyn
While Urf brings back some familiar Augments, some Legends like Caitlyn bring entirely new packages.
Caitlyn is all about focusing on a comp and giving you the tools to get there—she just doesn’t know exactly what that comp will be until the game starts. If you’re the type of player that just can’t decide what comp to run, Caitlyn’s 2-1 Augments will help calibrate on a trait web by kickstarting the build path. Her 3-2 and 4-2 Augments will help pursue said comp with extra resources, be it XP or rerolls.
| Caitlyn | 2-1 | 3-2 | 4-2 |
| Silver | Ones Two Three: Gain a random two-star 1-cost, and a random one-star 2 and 3-cost unit | Knowledge Download I: Gain 12 Experience | Rolling for Days I: Gain 10 free rerolls (These carry over) |
| Gold | Stars are Born: The first tier 1 unit and tier 2 unit you buy are upgraded to two stars | Knowledge Download II: Gain 22 Experience | Rolling for Days II: Gain 15 free rerolls (These carry over) |
| Prismatic | Starter Kit: Gain a random 4-cost, an item they can use, and a two star 1-cost that shares a trait with them | Knowledge Download III: Gain 36 Experience | Rolling for Days III: Gain 25 free rerolls (These carry over) |
Legend: Pengu
While Caitlin is a great choice for players who want to get a head start on their comp and take over lobbies early, Pengu is the perfect option for the exact opposite.
| Pengu | 2-1 | 3-2 | 4-2 |
| Silver | Tiny Titans: Your tactician gains 30 health, grows larger, and has 130 maximum health | Item Grab Bag I: Gain a random Full Item | Final Grab Bag I: Gain a random component, 15 gold, and an Reforger |
| Gold | Metabolic Accelorator: Your tactician moves faster and heals 2 health after a pvp round | Item Grab Bag II: Gain a random Full Item, and random component, and 5 gold | Final Grab Bag II: Gain 2 random components, 18 gold, and an Item Remover |
| Prismatic | Tiniest Titan: Your tactician is small and fast, heals 2 health after a pvp round, and grants 2 gold per round | Item Grab Bag III: Gain two random Full Items and 8 gold | Urf's Grab Bag: Gain 2 item components, a Champ Duplicator, and a Spatula |
Pengu is for the Piltover enthusiast (econ trait), lost streak masters (now you can even convince yourself you’re doing it on purpose!), and open fort disasters. It’s the perfect Legend to turn an 11 loss streak into a 11 boss streak by giving you the tools to take the losses and scale into the late game.
The Pengu Legend brings back a new Augment, Tiniest Titan, which will allow you to loss streak while staying healthy AND gain quite a lot of gold.
Legend: Veigar
We’ve got one more Legend to share that’s just short enough to sneak into the tail-end of this article. Veigar is all about big spell crits, which are very useful if you want to be yelling “AHAHA. AHAHAHA! MUAHAHAHA! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!,” every time you send your opponents into a gray screen after having your Ahri crit on her third cast of Essence Theft, deleting the entire enemy team.
| Veigar | 2-1 | 3-2 | 4-2 |
| Silver | Jeweled Lotus I: Your strongest unit’s spells can critically strike | Tiny Power I: Your team gain 10% AD, AP, and AS | Partial Ascension: After 15 seconds, your team deals 33% more damage |
| Gold | Jeweled Lotus II: Your Spells can critically strike. Gain 15% critical strike chance | Tiny Power II: Your team gains 15% AD, AP, and AS | Ascension: After 15 seconds, your team deals 45% more damage |
| Prismatic | Jeweled Lotus III: Your Spells can critically strike. Gain 40% critical strike chance | Tiny Power III: Your team gains 25% AD, AP, and AS | Final Ascension: Your team deals 20% more damage. After 15 seconds, triple this |
In addition to guaranteeing spell crits for your caster comps, Veigar also provides Augments to make sure those spells are doing damage in the first place. Tiny Power and Ascension may come at the cost of less power for their Augment tier, but they provide ample synergy to amplify your Jeweled Lotus crits!
The Philosophy of Legends
Now that you know about Legends, and specifically about 4 (soon to be 5) of the 15, let’s jump into lecture mode with a bit of devspeak, cause you know we like doing that here at TFT.
TFT has become a more complex and dynamic strategy game over the years to meet the appetite of our increasingly big-brained Tacticians (that’s you btw). The mastery ceiling and bar has risen with each passing year as Tacticians have figured out how to perfect econ, roll downs, pivots, and more nuanced strategies like open fort. In response, we’ve added more variability and puzzle pieces to master, helping keep even our most veteran players engaged in crafting new strategies and cooking up fresh combos. We’ve done this through adding layers of set mechanics (e.g. Augments, Dragons, the return of Radiant items) and the introduction of more complex traits (e.g. A.D.M.I.N. and Gadgeteen) and champions (e.g. Aphelios in Monsters Attack, Ryze in Runeterra Reforged).
But with the increase in complexity and variability, there’s been a desire to have more agency for many of our players. Enter Legends. Runeterra Reforged brings an incredible amount of variability between Augments, Champions, Item distribution, and of course, Region Portals. The set also brings over 100 new Augments—that’s a lot to learn, but Legends can help with that too. Legends give you an opt-in way to control for some of this variance without removing what makes TFT so fun—each game feeling totally different. How are they opt-in, you ask? Well, alongside a slew of heroic Legends, we’ve got the Poro Legend for our true flex masters. Let’s take a look at the Augments offered with Poro real quick:
| Poro | 2-1 | 3-2 | 4-2 |
| Silver | N/A: A true flex-master doesn’t need preselected Augments | N/A: Your brain must be huge to not take any preselected Augments | N/A: You are truly a master of variance |
| Gold | N/A: You are the Legend, there’s no need for preselected Augments here | N/A: You’re just flexing on us now aren’t you? | N/A: No one tells you which Augments to take |
| Prismatic | N/A: You are truly the most adaptive player in the lobby | N/A: We get it, you don’t need to influence your Augment options before the game | N/A: Okay Tactician, we get it. You can get first playing anything |
So feel free to be a 20/20 Poro player if that’s how you prefer, but for the rest of us, controlling some of our Augments may prevent us from getting dizzy when learning the new set—I know I’ve appreciated running Caitlyn in playtests!
Before you go, I want to add that we are going to be watching Legends closely over on the live team. Legends will require balancing throughout the set, so expect the numbers of the Legends described above to change. We’re incredibly excited to see how Legends impact playstyles and how you best utilize them come the release of Runeterra Reforged with patch 13.12!
Runeterra Reforged is our most comprehensive set to date. It’s full of new mechanics, and scattered with displaced champions and traits from across Runeterra—there’s tons to explore here! If you’re itching for more words from your favorite devs, be sure to check out Mort’s Monsters Attack! Learnings article and check in with our Twitter as we reveal more and more of Runeterra Reforged each day. Finally, I know your busy schedules make it tough to keep all the dates for our release straight, so we had an artist mock this up for you!
