Starting in the preseason for Season 8, which is expected to start in early November, League of Legends is going to undergo more changes than we've ever experienced before. Along with runes being completely revamped and your current ones being converted to currency, the loot system is going to be much different.

With these changes come a few strategies that will allow you to maximize on your overall rewards. In this guide, let me explain to you a few simple things that you can do right now to ensure that you're getting the most Blue Essence out of your resources before the preseason starts!

Understanding the IP Conversion

First, here's what's going to happen: Influence Points (IP) are being turned into Blue Essence (BE). If you have 190k IP right now, that means you'll be given 190k additional BE at the start of the preseason.

That sounds like a lot, right? It's harder to get BE than IP right now. To compensate for that, your current Blue Essence is being multiplied by 6.5. If you have 1000 BE right now, that'll convert into 6500 BE at the start of preseason.

Now let's get into the ways that you can take advantage of this conversion rate being imperfect.

Spend All of Your IP on Hextech Mystery Champion Shards

Hextech Mystery Champion Shards can be found in the Accessories tab of the Shop for 1700 IP. The annoying part is that you can't buy multiple at a time, meaning that converting hundreds of thousands of IP could take some time.

This spreadsheet shows the math behind purchasing 138 Hextech Mystery Champion Shards (including all champions). Hextech Mystery Champion Shards can get you BE in two ways:

• Innately, by having BE included in the shard
• By disenchanting the champion shard into BE

For example, a Hextech Mystery Champion Shard containing a Master Yi Champion Shard will also include 110 BE in the shard.

As you can see above, that shard will then disenchant for 87, totaling 197 BE. Multiplying 197 by 6.5 gives 1280.5. However, you paid 1700 for the Hextech Mystery Champion Shard. So, you lost currency? Yes, you did. However, it's extremely uncommon that this is going to happen. Only 35 out of 138 of the champion shards will result in a net loss.

When it's all mathed out, you can expect an average gain of 8.4% BE if you do this.

Reroll or Disenchant All Champion Shards You Won't Use

This kind of ties into what we just talked about but for an entirely different reason.

Not only will you be getting more out of champion shards if you use them as an IP converter, but disenchanting them is also going to net you less BE in the preseason. Right now, disenchanting a champion shard will pay back roughly 33% of the cost to purchase that champion. However, starting in the preseason, that's getting toned down to 20%.

Additionally, you won't be able to reroll champion shards into permanent champions anymore. Either way you look at it, you're getting more value out of doing something with them right now.

Devise Your Own Hextech Chest Strategy

This is a little tricky and it's a gray area where I simply can't give you a hard-lined answer on what to or not to do.

Here's an excerpt from Riot's official post on the loot changes:

"To offset the disenchant rate changes, we’re going to change the way loot chests work so you’ll have a chance to get two drops in each chest. Get ready for chests inside of your chests. We’ll also add "bad luck protection," so you won’t ever go on long streaks without getting a skin shard or a gemstone from chests."

Since then, Riot has not released any information on if these changes will be applied retroactively to chests before Season 8's preseason. Two things can happen here:

1. This will be applied retroactively, in which your chests will contain more reward, protection from bad luck, and the potential for including another chest.
2. This won't be applied retroactively, in which you lost out on converting the champion shards you get from these chests to earn more BE or rerolling permanent champions.

My gut tells me that chests earned before Season 8 will not follow the new model. I'm personally going to be cracking open all of the chests I get until the preseason, but it's on you to look out for any future information on how chests from the past will be treated. This is a bit of a gamble!

Rune and Rune Page Compensation

Along with IP being converted, all runes purchased with IP before Season 7 are going to be turned into BE. With the new runes coming out and old ones going away, Riot has decided to compensate players who spent on them. All tier 1 Marks, Seals, and Glyphs are being converted to 100 BE. All Quintessences are being converted to 300 BE. If you purchased runes during Season 7, the price of those is simply being refunded as BE.

Rune pages purchased with IP will be giving you 1500 BE each. Rune pages purchased with RP will be giving you an Epic Skin Shard per every 4. This rounds up, meaning that if you purchased 5 rune pages with RP then you'll be getting 2 Epic Skin Shards.

---

Looking for more League of Legends content? Check out some of our other articles:

• "Runes Reforged" Will Make LoL Beginner Friendly Again
• See How Many Hours and How Much Money You've Spent in League of Legends
• How to Disable Zooming In/Out in League of Legends

Over a year ago Brexit was passed, separating the UK from the European Union. As a result of this, the British pound dropped to the lowest value it's ever been. And the ramifications of that decision have already started to have effects on the video game industry as a whole. But now it's affecting players of one of the most popular games on the market -- League of Legends. 

For the past year now, UK LoL players who have bought Riot Points have technically been paying less for a lot more RP than anyone else in the world. After sitting back and waiting to see how the state of the British pound fairs with time, Riot Games finally decided it needs to act to make things equal again.

On July 25 at 23:59 BST, Riot will be increasing the cost of RP for UK players by 20%. With the price adjustment, here are the new values for Riot Points:

Along with the price changes, will be adjustments to the price points. Realizing that with the price drop there's no price point to get just enough to buy certain skins, Riot has added a £15 price point that will get you 2,525 RP. The developer has also removed the £2.50 price point to balance it out (and because almost no one was buying that price point anyways).

What do you think about the price increase? Is it fair to UK players, or should Riot be waiting longer for the British pound to regain its value post-Brexit? Sound off in the comments below, and keep your eyes on Gameskinny for more League of Legends news.

In League of Legends, game knowledge and mechanics are everything. Ensuring that you have a comfortable setup and peripherals that function the way you need them to is essential to climbing the solo queue ladder. However, there are a lot of in-game features that aren't necessary to have around if you're a pure, hardcore player. Although, it is nice to know how to use those features if you ever want to use them. 

The zooming feature in LoL is one of those that offers no real strategic advantage in-game, but it is nice to know how to use. I've heard of people using it to zoom in and click a Thresh lantern or things like that, but if you're really a skilled player that's accurate with your mouse, then that'll never be an issue. Other than that, zooming in or out is really just a way to check out your skin.

Here are the steps required to disable zooming in League of Legends. Keep in mind that this will also disable other mousewheel functions, like using it in the shop.

Setting Up for Disabling Zoom in League of Legends

Step one is to make sure that you're zoomed at the level you want to permanently be. I don't know anyone who plays the game any other way than zoomed all the way out, so launch a custom or practice game and make 100% sure that you're zoomed out.

After, close the game client entirely.

Find Your League of Legends Configuration Files

The default Windows installation path for League of Legends is as follows:

C:\Riot Games\League of Legends

Here, there should be a Config folder. Open this folder. You should see many files, but these are the two we're after:

• input.ini
• PersistedSettings.json

If you see those two files, proceed. If not, you need to find them and the way I recommend you do that is by contacting Riot Games Support.

Backup and Edit Your League of Legends Configuration Files

Backing up files before you make edits is just good practice in general, so what I'm going to recommend you do at this point is copy and paste those two LoL files in the bulletpoints above into another folder so that you have them for keeping.

After, you need to delete the PersistedSettings.json file. PersistedSettings.json is a file that League of Legends uses to store a copy of your game settings serverside. That means that anywhere you install LoL, you'll be able to sync your settings to what you have them as on your other machine.

We're deleting it because PersistedSettings.json doesn't respect edits made directly to configuration files. Don't worry though, because the file is going to recreate itself.

After you've deleted it, open the input.ini file in a text editor. Go to the very end of the file and add this after a blank line:

[MouseSettings]
RollerButtonSpeed=0

The RollerButtonSpeed setting is telling the game how many ticks of the mousewheel to process. Setting it to 0 will completely disable it.

Save your input.ini file and close your text editor.

---

Although I only have experience with doing this on Windows machines, the process should be the same on Mac or Linux computers (assuming you're able to find where these files are located compared to Windows). If you're having any trouble with getting this to work, drop me a comment below and we'll work it out.

Check out some of our other recent League of Legends guides and a few other articles below:

• See How Many Hours and How Much Money You've Spent in League of Legends
• League of Legends: What is Victor's Emblem and What Should You Do With It?
• "Runes Reforged" Will Make LoL Beginner Friendly Again

Being one of the most popular games in the world, League of Legends has managed to squeeze a lot of time and money out of 67 million active monthly players. As a free-to-play game that tries to encourage users to spend real money through microtransactions, players have two choices: spend a lot of time grinding for Influence Points to unlock the Champions and Runes that they need to progress, or spend real money on Riot Points to buy them (as well as many other goodies).

Now in its seventh season, it might be a good time to look back on just how much you've put into the game. The answer may surprise you.

In this guide, we're going to go over how you can see the exact amount of time and money you've invested in League of Legends.

Find Out How Much Time You've Spent on League of Legends

Although Riot doesn't personally provide this information to users, it is data that they store in their API, and there are third-party sites with API access that will allow you to view this information about your account. One example is LolTimePlayed.

You can go to this website, type in your Summoner Name, and it'll show you how much time you've spent on League of Legends, broken down by match type. It also gives you a worldwide ranking for your time played.

There's even a page that shows the top 1,000 players in terms of time spent in-game. At the top of the list is an EUW player who has invested 14,782 hours on the game. That's pretty insane.

Find Out How Much Money You've Spent on League of Legends

This data comes from the Riot Games website itself. On the privacy section of their site, you can log in to your account and see some advanced details -- including the total amount of money that you've spent on the game throughout your career as a player on the Rift.

Further down the page are some more specific statistics -- like your total Champion kills, assists, wins, and so on.

It's worth noting that there is a button at the bottom of this page that says "Looking for more?" which gives details on how you can get some very sensitive data about your League of Legends account.

As it states, it requires a handwritten letter and a $5 fee. However, this allows you to see your report history, detailed transactions and chat logs, login history, account changes, and even more specific information. A lot of players have no idea that you can see your report history, and this is how.

---

How much time and money have you spent on League of Legends? Let me know in the comments below! If you've having any trouble getting either of these sites to show your information, let me know and I'll try to lend a hand.

Be sure to check out some of our other recent League of Legends articles for more tips and interesting takes on the game:

• League of Legends: What is Victor's Emblem and What Should You Do With It?
• "Runes Reforged" Will Make LoL Beginner Friendly Again

With the introduction of the new League of Legends VS event comes a mysterious new crafting item -- the Victor's Emblem. This item has been a source of confusion for a lot of players recently, as it doesn't seem to have any purpose initially. Luckily, a Rioter on the official forums has shed some light on this new addition to the crafting menu and what you can do with it. 

For the VS event, players were given a choice between two champions -- Riven and Yasuo -- who are meant to represent order and chaos, respectively. After making a selection, you have to complete 7 missions with whoever you selected. Doing so successfully will earn you the Victor's Emblem. With the emblem in your loot, the only thing left to do is to wait -- as it can't be used until the event is over.  

Once the event is finished and a victor is decided, you will be able to craft the Victor's Emblem into a special icon. Which icon you receive is determined by who wins the event. So if you have a preference, now's the time to hop on and fight for your chosen side!

That's all you need to know about Victor's Emblem! Which side will you be fighting for in this new League of Legends event? Let us know in the comments!