LoL’s new Arena mode: New maps, augments, champ cameos, and more

For the upcoming summer season, Riot Games has finally introduced a fresh experience to League of Legends with the debut of Arena, a deathmatch-style game mode featuring four teams of two as they battle for supremacy on a handful of new maps.

Arena will bring plenty of variation to every match, through different game elements that will spice up each skirmish, outplay, and moment for every round until you either rise above your peers for the win or get humbled with a loss.

There will be multiple different champion combinations that you can experiment with alongside your friends, while pairing yourself with some augments to bolster yourself with never-before-seen powers. You will also need these powers when dodging around the various map hazards that will occasionally appear in your games, in the form of various champions in the new Soul Fighter skin line.

How Arena works

In Arena, teams fight in rotating 2v2 combat rounds until only one team remains, similar to Teamfight Tactics and its duo Double Up mode. In a similar vein, each team has a collective health count that depletes every time a round is lost. A team is subsequently eliminated when their health drops to zero, while the final team left with health wins the game.

Unlike Double Up and TFT, however, players will never play against AI opponents, and are instead given a bye round when there are uneven teams remaining. If you find yourself eliminated, you can leave the game and immediately start up the queue for another match.

Arena consists of two phases: the preparation phase and the combat phase. Before the fight begins, players are given a chance to load up with items from the store and choose an augment power to take into battle. Every mythic and legendary item has had its price equalized across the board, to prevent snowballing through gold, while augments introduce wacky and powerful aspects that will completely change the way a champion plays.

After preparation, players are sent to one of four new arenas, where they will fight against a team to the death. For those looking for a more challenging experience, Arena will also have a ranked system with MMR that should keep people coming back for more across the season.

New maps in LoL’s Arena

There are four different maps featured in League‘s new Arena game mode that will bring a different experience every time to load into a battle phase. These maps will have different types of terrain and unique map aspects that will force players to switch up their playstyles depending on their team composition, the enemy duo, and the map they’ve thrown onto.

Arena Augments

Like TFT, augments are really strong power-ups that provide players with a multitude of powers that will drastically shift a match, depending on what kind of effect the augment has.

For example, some players can acquire the Battle Sled from Nexus Blitz at spawn, allowing them to slide around the map and collide into the enemy team for massive damage and a knockup. Players can equip themselves with Veigar passive, which gives them AP whenever they hit a champion with an ability.

These augments are the life-blood of Arena, and should be one of the primary reasons why players will continue to grind out and experiment with different combinations in each match.

Arena champion cameos

Champion cameos are map-wide player events that affect both teams, which will also feature the champions taking part in the upcoming Soul Fighter summer event. These cameos will force teams to adapt based on the various obstacles thrown at them, like a massive Jhin ult appearing over the whole map as he fires, hitting anyone who fails to dodge at the right time.