Riftbeast (7) has proven to be a super consistent trait whether you’re sitting there to star up your 1-costs, or pushing levels to slot in flexible Legendary units.

Drop Pebbles, Cinderling stocks are on fire! Through optimized builds, and consistency of starring this little guy up via Riftbeast shops, Cinderling’s ramped up as a powerful carry. We’ve got a base AD and ability nerf to keep him in check and give Pebbles fans a more equal footing.Cassiopeia Defender is one of the most consistent comps of our patch. We’re taking a big chunk out of the main damage threat here.Master Yi is another reroll star that’s become a powerhouse, especially with an Artifact or two. We’re lowering his defenses to keep this melee-carry burstable.Amumu has had a lot to cry about with our release patch. Let’s cheer him up with a double buff.Draven’s our worst performing 5-cost by a considerable amount. We’re swinging big with a buff to allow him to cast much sooner and take advantage of more bleeds being built up. Attack Speed, which was already his best stat, is going to be even better, so grab those bows!

Note that these changes will be patched separately tomorrow, September first in the early evening. Alongside a few gameplay-related bugfixes we also have a quality of life, or game feel, adjustment for dragging and dropping units to allow for more reactive/snappier unit movement. This should be most noticeable when using the units on your bench as a virtual fidget spinner.Update: we discovered some unintended bugs related to the flushing system below so ahead of release, we'll be pushing it back to a future patch.In our effort to continue to improve performance across devices, we’ve put in a medium-term fix that “flushes” particles when they build up. This is just one of the fixes we plan on rolling out to improve performance, but this fix should specifically help reduce instances where you experience worsening performance as you get into the later stages of a game. Impact may vary depending on your device specs, but we'll continue to roll out fixes over the next few patches to continue improving here.

Note that these changes will be patched separately tomorrow, September first in the early evening.

With load times longer than we wanted with our release, we’ve added a spinning graphic in the loading screen to reduce paranoia around whether or not it is a crash or just a longer loading screen. Even with loading times coming down since release, we still want this around and are still working on future optimization.

We’re moving fast and hard here to ship as many bug fixes and performance improvements as possible, but in our eagerness to do so, a new bug emerged yesterday resulting in us temporarily disabled the Double Up queue. It’s back now, so grab your Double Up pal and let em’ know.

The team’s out with our first round of bug fixes targeting high priority bugs from memory leaks that cause performance issues to Finishers not abiding by global volume/sfx settings (they were loud).While this is our first mid-patch update we expect to have another follow up soon with more bugs squashed and a check-in on live balance as the meta evolves.

Patch 18.1 is our first foray into the Enchanted Wilds on live with our transition from Hextech to Unreal. With the new engine, it's taking time for us to get up to speed, reach parity, and eventually, accelerate into the full potential of our new engine. With that in mind, there are going to be some very noticeable differences between set 17 and 18 that we are actively working to close the gap on.

For a detailed dive into Wisps mechanic make sure you check out the Enchanted Wilds Overview. For now, here are some highlights.

In hextech, units were hardcoded to retarget after being CC'd (stunned, knocked-up), targeting the closest enemy to them. This meant if a backliner was hit by an AOE stun, they'd retarget whoever is closest to them'bad luck if you're an assassin that's snuck into the backline. With Set 18, we're able to do away with this awkward retargeting as CC will no longer be accompanied by target amnesia.

Pro-tip: You still shouldn't miss loot at Stage 4-7.

We're removing a few Opening Encounters that were too warping, while adding some more standard-style Encounters to keep lower impact variance varied. We've played with high and low impact Opening Encounters for a while now, and, especially in a set like 18, there doesn't need to be such extreme highs in variance with this system, as much of the game to game variance comes instead from Wisps, Augments, Item distribution, and what units you see in the shop.

There's always so much to cover with a new set! Good thing we have plenty of friends who're more than willing to lend a helping hand with things like comp guides, pretty cheat sheets, and more!

The following Augments are lost in space.

The following Augments have been reclaimed by the Wilds.

Adjusting a few Augments to be ready for the new set.For Augments Backline Blueprint / Frontline Foundation, we've made a tooltip adjustment to allow for easier use for champions like Diana in Backline Blueprint, whose last-listed trait is a tank trait, and Kog'Maw and Azir whose last-listed traits have no Emblems, but who have Invoker and Executioner respectively, which are valid Emblems.We've renamed Challenger's Grace Renamed from Precision and Grace to prevent player confusion due to 'Precision' also being a keyword for ability crit.Pandora's Bench now better reflects the actual likelihood of a champion getting rolled rather than independently rolling a champion without context of their available copies in the pool.

Bringing back two forbidden Artifacts for some powerful combos.

With a new set and roster, we're tuning our existing Artifacts to better match the kits of existing champions, while also making them more exciting through sharper power fantasies.

With Set 17, Space Gods, being playable alongside Enchanted Wilds, we've got a small balance update for the dominant Milio and the less dominant Twisted Fate, who currently has a 1 in 81 chance to lose to PvE'

On launch, the following Cosmetics will be available. We will be adding more with subsequent patches.