Summoner's Rift



The Summoner's Rift is the most commonly used Field of Justice.

The map was given a graphical and technical update on May 23rd, 2012 and remade from scratch on November 12th, 2014.

Lore




Summoner's Rift is located in a remote forest between Freljord, and the Ironspike Mountains. The Summoner’s Rift is one of a few locations in Valoran where magical energy is at its greatest concentration, making it a highly sought-after locale to pursue magical endeavors.

Historically, the forest where the Rift resides was the site of several battles between two summoner factions symbolized with the Stag and Owl crests, they sought out to use the natural magical energy of the area for their personal use.

The large amount of concentrated magic has mutated the local wildlife. From, to  it has also attracted the attention of a powerful  who currently resides in one of the battle torn ruins. , and  are creatures made from local flora and earth infused to construct a magical being. The Rifts unstable magic has inadvertently cause the reemergence of, a large Serpent/Worm largely believed to be dead for centuries. It has his corruption affecting the land around him.

Other known creature that live in this area are species of forest chameleons, ducks, Antlermice, crows, dragonflies and butterflies.

Gameplay


The objective of Summoner's Rift is simple – destroy the enemy nexus. In order to do this, champions must traverse down one of three different paths (or lanes) in order to attack their enemy at their weakest points they can exploit. Both teams have their lanes defended by numerous turrets; each turret grows in strength the closer it gets to its respective nexus and each turret must be eliminated in order to gain access to the next turret in that lane. Cooperating with fellow summoners is an absolute requirement for success, as it is easy for a champion to find themselves ambushed by enemies in the lanes of the Rift.

In-Game Description


The newest and most venerated battleground is known as Summoner's Rift. Traverse down on of three different paths in order to attack your enemy at their weakest point. Work with your allies to siege the enemy base and destroy their Nexus!

Features



 * 19000 unit distance from Blue Team Nexus Obelisk to Red Team Nexus Obelisk (measured with ).
 * Three lanes to fight your way to the enemy base.
 * A forest populated by neutral monsters of varying degrees of toughness, the toughest of which provide buffs and/or gold for your whole team.
 * Powerful turrets defend key areas on the map. You must confront these in addition to your enemies if you are to make headway toward victory.
 * A map dividing river that lies in neutral territory, allowing for quick travel between lanes.
 * Two bases at opposite corners of the map, populated by a shop, a Nexus, two turrets to defend the nexus, two base gates that only the team aligned with the base can pass through, and inhibitors that suppress the other team's minions.

Unique Shopkeepers
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Summoner's Rift during its history had a total of four shopkeepers.
 * The first one was a Manbacon. This is an infamous race that is living in Runeterra. Manbacionians usually set up shops in a small pack and they also like to smoke. He sold some standard starting items like the, the , the . He was selling his weaponry at both the Blue team and the Purple team bases.
 * The second shopkeeper was an elderly male Yordle with a cart pulled by an animal resembling a big cat or a rabbit of an unknown species (PBE data mining posted here revealed it to be a "yonkey"). He replaced Manbacon and he was also present for both the Blue and the Purple bases.
 * A pair of new shopkeepers replacing the previous vendor: in the Blue base there's an elderly female Yordle with a large animal resembling a Bantha from and in the Red base there's an elderly male otter merchant attending his shop inside a large hot-air balloon that got punctured.

Summer Version
It is the default and first version released of the map.

Winter Version


A variant of the regular Summoner's Rift with a winter seasonal variants, designed for the 2009 Snowdown Showdown event. This version was a permanent option before it was replaced with the Autumn Version on November 2010. It was also available during the 2010 Snowdown Showdown, replacing the Autumn version temporarily and made a return for the 2011 Snowdown Showdown in December 2011. An updated version was released for the 2016 Snowdown Showdown. The Winter Version of Summoner's Rift has a few differences:
 * A mostly white background, because of the snow.
 * Snow falling and covering the terrain.
 * The River is frozen.
 * Presents and Poros can be seen throughout the map.
 * Baron Nashor wears a Santa hat and earmuffs.

Autumn Version


The Autumn Version of Summoner's Rift was a special variant designed for the 2010 Harrowing Seasonal Event. It replaced the Winter Version as the secondary version available and renamed Autumn Version after a poll on November 2010. It was temporarily replaced again with the Winter Version for the 2010 Snowdown Showdown. The Autumn Version uses music from the Twisted Treeline.
 * There are coffins at bottom right area of the map. These signify the "death" (cancellation) of several champions.

Blood Moon Version
The Blood Moon Version of Summoner's Rift was a special variant designed for the 2017 Blood Moon Event.

Arcade Version
The Arcade Version of Summoner's Rift was a special variant designed for the August 2017 release of three Battle Boss skins.

Summoner’s Rift Update


May 23, 2012 brought graphical and technical updates to Summoner’s Rift. The updates brought players better aesthetics as well as improved overall graphical performance for players on lower settings. Some of the enhancements included:


 * Better game performance at low and mid spec.
 * Updated textures across Summoner’s Rift.
 * Improved animations on many of the monsters, including the Ancient Golem, the Lizard Elder and, of course, Baron Nashor.
 * A new, animated shopkeeper to service all of your champion’s item purchases.

Summoner's Rift Evolves
On November 12, 2014 a new update to Summoner's Rift went live for use on the Team Builder queue and all bot modes. Then in November 19 the updated Summoner’s Rift was released for all queues, replacing the old one entirely. This time the update has been more heavier than the previous one, and the map was remade from scratch, changing the overall art style. From the minions, to the monsters, the structures, the decorations, the vegetation and even the music it was all completely remade. The new Summoner's Rift is in all respects a new map, made preserving the spirit and gameplay of the older Summoner’s Rift. The new elements are:


 * General
 * A new handcrafted artistic style to Summoner's Rift.
 * Gameplay on the map is more readable than in the previous map. Making action the top priority on the screen rather than the environment.
 * Cleaned up a lot of the terrain (so that the widths of the visuals match the width of the mesh).
 * This is particularly noticeable in Red-side jungle.
 * Purple Team changed to Red Team.
 * Red base features an owl and mage motif with curved linear shapes. Blue base is inspired by a stag and paladin theme with blockier shapes. Both of the owl and stag sigils meet in middle lane.
 * Fog of war upgrade - fog is darker and the fade between fog and non-fog is now more abrupt/crisp (it's not a gradual fade).
 * General bug fixes.
 * Camera angle adjusted to be more similar to Howling Abyss (higher angled, less perspective).
 * This should make the difference between playing up and down less significant.
 * Large and Epic Jungle monsters now show their current health value above their health bar.
 * Bottom and top lane brushes are now centered between their respective towers (previously off-centered by ~450 units).
 * Ambient critters have been added in the map.
 * New minion and monster icons.
 * New Kill indicators on screen (including a hexakill indicator).
 * Updated look to minions, cannon minions and super minions.
 * Red minions wield axes while blue minions war hammers.
 * Two new shopkeepers for both of the Bases.
 * Each jungle quadrant has a unique theme. Blue buff jungle has a blue hue, while the Red jungle has a red hue. West jungle is more destroyed by the influence of Baron Nashor while the east one retains its more natural look.
 * New Summoner's Rift music.


 * Jungle
 * The and its  henchmen were replaced with the  golem and two monolithic, the Sentries were removed in preseason 7
 * The and  have been replaced by the  and, respectively.
 * The and the  have been respectively replaced with the  and the.
 * The have been replaced with bird-like  led by a.
 * The has been replaced with the, a walrus-frog hybrid.
 * The camp is now inhabited by the, a fiery ent-like creature, and two . The cinderlings were removed in preseason 7
 * and have received Visual updates and kit reworks.
 * A new passive monster has been added in the north and south parts of the river,.
 * Plants were added to the jungle in Season 7: knock units back,  provides vision, and  provides HP and mana.

Check out some Summoner's Rift concept art!
By Riot ForScience

Summoner's Rift has come a long way since League's launch in 2009, but our latest update to ol' trusty was the biggest change in the map's history.

While all updates go through iterations and testing, Summoner's Rift required a huge team of artists to concept and sketch out art for months before we started working in 3D. To celebrate the end of SR's beta run, we're releasing a few of the concept art pieces the environment team created, complete with notes and insights from the artists themselves.


 * SRU Concept Art Gallery

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Trivia
Map=
 * The general layout of two long lanes extending on the border of the map and a middle lane between them, each crossed by a river, was inspired by the fan-made mod Defense of the Ancients, popular map for Warcraft III of which once Steve 'Guinsoo' Feak was serving as the main designer.
 * The monster camps in this map were made to spawn everytime the same places since V1.0.0.96: before that, wolf camps and golem camps randomly alternated.
 * Ghost can be found in the halloween version near the top of the river (Top Lane) just to the right of the top most brush found in blue's jungle. He will even attack passing and either do 1 damage or pop his  if the bubble is up on the Autumn version of the map.
 * Garena announced that the map will polished red (Be aware that news source is Turkish) within Play it Red event due to Garena Carnival for a limited period in Garena server on June 2014.
 * A will spawn in each of the bases if a Freljord champion is on the team.
 * On Summoner's Rift near the bottom Middle part of river, a duck has 10% chance of spawning at the beginning of the game. This duck's name is Karl.
 * If five Pool Party skins (or or ) are present on the map, a yellow rubber duck will spawn instead of a normal duck.
 * If five or more Bilgewater champions (or champions with Bilgewater skins) are present on the map, two sharks will spawn in the lower right corner of the map.
 * Numerous Tesla Effect HelmetBroSquare.png Helmet Bro helmets can been seen in various locations on the map:
 * South nest.
 * pit.
 * North west red team Jungle entrance.
 * Several Items that have been removed from the game can be seen on the map:
 * Two can be seen in one of the towers surrounding Summoner's Rift.
 * A can be seen in the Red Shopkeeper shop. The sign on the item use to say "sold".
 * Old shield can be seen in the Blue Shopkeeper shop.
 * A can be seen hanged up on a stone tablet at the south-west part of the map.
 * Old skull can been seen in the Baron pit.
 * A smiley face is a tribute to a smiley face that was present on the old map, which was also located on exactly the same spot, at the southern part of the map.
 * "The Sword in the Stone" at the north-east part of the map is a reference to and to  legend.
 * A random cogwheels can be seen on the eastern part of the map.
 * At the eastern entrance of the Red base, when first entering the map, a frog can be seen scurrying and falling to his death.
 * His official fandom name is "George, the Suicidal Frog".
 * A grave altar with a ProfileIcon0786 The 99,999 RP.png gold spatula of is at the same location as his old grave on the Autumn map grave was.
 * Elder mage face can be seen carved on one of the tables on the map . It is a reference to the mage statues from the old Summoner's Rift map.
 * A statue can be seen at the north-east part of the map, near red teams Gromp.
 * Numerous rune writings can be seen carved on the walls and into the floors of both the Blue and Red bases, as well as around the map.
 * face symbol have been seen in various locations on the map before his initial reveal. Since his release, those symbols have been removed from the map.
 * A stone wall carved with the Protectorate and Magelords around a crystal can be seen at the north east part of red teams lane. In the Beta version of the map, the wall had no carvings and it was cracked.
 * silhouette can be seen on the left side of the stone wall, as seen here.
 * laugh could have been heard in the river area by using the laugh command, it was used as an initial teaser for the champion.
 * would show up randomly above a champions head at the beginning of the game and during death in a form of ProfileIcon0938 Kindred Lamb.png Lamb and ProfileIcon0939 Kindred Wolf.png Wolf masks. These were used as initial champion teasers for.
 * would spawn in both Summoner's Rift bases at the beginning of the game. These were used as initial champion teasers for.

Summoner's Rift map has been used for certain special, limited-time, featured game modes that circulate in and out.
 * -|Game Modes=
 * During the Fall of 2013, Riot's first featured game mode was called One for All mode
 * The mechanics were similar to Classic mode, with the only different being that all champions on each team are the same
 * This mode would later inspire the creation of the One for All: Mirrored mode
 * An Icon was to be given by playing this mode.
 * Between April 1 and April 13, 2014, Riot made Ultra Rapid Fire mode and since then this mode has been coming back each year for April Fools' Day
 * An Icon was to be given by playing this mode.
 * The mechanics were similar to Classic mode, with the added twist of the mode:
 * Between July 17 and July 27, 2014, Riot made Doom Bots mode.
 * In this mode players fought against champions controlled by computer generated AI.
 * The Bots themselves got enhancements to their abilities and passives.
 * There were 3 levels of mode difficulty, with each level the bots would get considerably "cheaper".
 * An Icon was to be given by playing this mode.
 * Between April 1 and April 13, 2015, Ultra Rapid Fire mode returned for another yearly celebration of April Fools' Day
 * An Icon was to be given by playing this mode.


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 * The Summoner Rift concepts are usually done before Riot make 3D in-game models. Sometimes they will make a concept, but it does not work in the game. Examples: The design is hard to click on; Or it does not fit the environment; Or it does not look like tanky enough; or look weak enough; The creatures have to look, in relation to each other; at the correct power level or defensive power level. An environment piece has to be visually appealing but not distracting to champions or effects. All the concept work is about trying to answer those questions. Does it work with gameplay? Does it fit the big picture? Art serves gameplay.
 * A Raptor, Forest chameleon, and Antlermice can be seen in classic splash art.
 * The stag symbol of the Protectorate looks similar to shield.
 * The owl symbol of the Magelords looks similar to the Porowl, a species of owls that live in Summoner's Rift.
 * Summoners Rift Shopkeepers will be getting their Voice-over in future game patches, similar to the Howling Abyss shopkeepers.
 * This map has ties with the Protectorate and Magelords showcased in lore.

Media
Music=
 * Related Music