How to Collect Your League of Legends Preseason Rewards

Today’s preseason update in League of Legends brought some of the biggest changes to the game to date, completely tossing out the old Rune and Mastery systems for a new more feature-rich Rune-only system.

Along with the new Rune system comes the shift from IP to Blue Essence (BE), and if you’ve been playing a long while you probably want to get your hands on the rewards that come with the update. Icons, ward skins, and champion skins await for the previously diligent Rune hoarder, and special emotes are available depending on how many hours you’ve played.

All previous Runes have been broken down into Blue Essence and their Rune Pages converted into random skins. But simply logging in the first time under the new update won’t net you your Blue Essence and other goodies. Check out your Missions tab and you should see how to get your rewards: By playing a game.

You must finish a matchmade game before you can receive your rewards. This can be either a bot or a real game, it doesn’t matter — play a game, and you’ll be bombarded with Mission rewards tied to your previous Rune and Rune Page inventory.

So let’s say you’ve finished this part of the process. You’ve done your game, you’re ready to move on and get your stuff. Now it’s time to move onto the Loot tab and crack those babies open.

I was pretty pleased with my total 36k Blue Essence.

So how do you get further BE after this initial rewards burst? There’s only one real way, and that is by leveling up your account.

Unlike the previous system, which granted IP after matches, players will now be granted BE after they level up. With the level 30 cap removed (and no level cap in place), you can rake in the BE for a while.

This new system raises concerns that leveling will slow to such an extent that BE gains will be few and far between. Who knows if that’s how it will work, but we’ll be sure to see over the coming months.