As far as I’m concerned, Riot Games has struck card game gold with its new League of Legends based card game, Legends of Runeterra. If you’ve just started playing recently, you may have noticed card collection is quite a bit different from your typical CCG, so here are some tips for building your collection.
Get Your Weekly Vault to Level 10
All of the experience you earn in LoR contributes to your Weekly Vault, which can level up to a maximum level of 13 each week. Maxing out your Vault will grant you three Diamond Chests, awarding you a significant bounty of new cards and Shards (in-game currency). While getting your Vault to 13 is nice, aim for level 10 at the minimum, as this grants you a free Expedition (Arena or Draft mode) token. We’ll explain the importance of that shortly.
Reroll Daily Quests
LoR’s Daily Quests are incredibly easy to finish in short order, so you should always reroll them if you’re given one that rewards you with 1000 XP for one that hopefully gives you 1500 XP. Every little bit counts!
Be Strategic About Region Rewards
LoR uses a sort of Battle Pass type reward track for each of the game’s regions. Each time you earn experience, it’s used to not only level your Weekly Vault, but contribute to your actively selected region’s reward track. Costs increase as you move through the reward tiers on a given track, so if your goal is to develop a broad collection of cards, it’s actually best to switch active regions at every four levels to maximize rewards. If you’re dead set on collecting a specific region or two, it’s better to focus exclusively on those regions, but for everyone else, I’d suggest switching things up every four levels.
Never Spend Shards on Champion Cards
Shards are an in-game currency (think Dust in Hearthstone) that can be used to purchase Wildcards of various rarities, as well as entry into Expeditions. Wildcards are basically tickets that can be redeemed for whatever card in their respective rarity. An Epic Wildcard can be redeemed for any Epic card, a Common for a Common card, and so on.
The reason you never want to spend Shards on Champion Wildcards is that the cost to create one (3000) is the same as the cost to enter an Expedition. Expeditions always guarantee a Champion card as their reward, so even if you enter into an Expedition and immediately surrender, you’ll still get a Champion card. Which leads into our next tip…
Complete Expeditions Each Week
You can complete up to three Expeditions each week for card rewards and provided you have enough Shards, you should absolutely do so. Unlike Hearthstone’s Arena, LoR’s draft mode is a lot more forgiving, offering two separate runs per Expedition and a generous win/loss system that allows you to continually move on through the seven fights per run as long as you don’t lose twice in a row. You only get one shot at the 7th fight, however, but if you overcome it you’ll gain the maximum amount of rewards, but more importantly, enough Shards to buy your way into another Expedition.
Expeditions are also a great source of experience. Prior to the recently deployed patch, Expeditions were actually the best source of experience in the game, which didn’t feel so great for players who aren’t a fan of the mode, but they are still worth doing for experience. One thing to keep in mind, if you’ve won all 7 fights in one of the two runs per Expedition, the second run will only net you additional experience.
And there you have it! Got any of your own card collecting tips for Legends of Runeterra? Share ‘em with us in the comments below!
