The Legends of Runeterra developers are back with another bi-weekly patch. Continuing the trend of alternating between big and small patches, this one is a smaller patch. It doesn't address card balance but instead focuses more on quality of life features for the game, as well as introducing new cosmetics and fixing a couple of bugs.

After community feedback indicated that the pace of Legends of Runeterra's animation can be on the low end, Riot is making several adjustments to speed them up. In their words: "I love a good Draven axe as much as the next guy, but there are only so many hours in the day and I've got Ranked games to lose!" Aside from speeding up overall animations the developers are removing effect buffers and decreased action lock-out windows (you can play cards faster after one another). This goes for:

• Summoning Units;
• Drawing cards;
• Placing units in the battlefield;
• Playing spells;
• Getting the initiative token at the start of a round.

Shiny new cosmetics

Once more, Riot is treating those who want to personalize their Legends of Runeterra experience with new cosmetics. After every region represented in the game got its first Guardian and board, new themes are being explored. Jinx and Draven both get their own board and a new Guardian enters the fray: Minion! The boards will both be available for the standard 990 coins price, and Minion will cost 590 coins.

Other patch notes

The two other main patch notes regard XP gain and the in-game deck builder. In the previous patch, Riot sought to counter win traders in friendly challenges who were just trying to farm XP. They overadjusted though, as they say in the patch notes, and now punish those who legitimately want to have some fun with friends while earning some XP on the side. The XP you get from a win against a friend is raised from 100 XP to 200 XP, while a loss now earns 100 XP instead of nothing at all. Furthermore, you can only earn XP from friendly challenges up until five wins and five losses per day.

To make the deck building experience smoother, Riot is changing the numbers to be represented by 'pips'. According to the developers, these pips will "better communicate copies owned, copies not owned, owned copies used in deck, and owned copies not used in deck." We don't know exactly what they'll look like yet, but they'll be in the game soon.

Images via Riot Games