
Dragon's pit

The location of the dragon pit.
The dragon pit is one of the game's most unique jungle camps on Summoner's Rift as its occupant varies throughout a match of League of Legends, with even the initial spawn being determined at random. These dragons serve as a neutral objective that rivals .
One of six monsters may occupy the pit at any one time:
Prior to V6.9, was the sole occupant of the dragon pit and there was generally no need to distinguish the camp from the monster in terms of gameplay. With the introduction of the elemental drakes, it became necessary to document the objective separately from the individual dragon units. The dragon system received a substantial overhaul in preseason ten, modifying the spawn mechanics, rewards and even the layout of the pit.
On V12.2, a hotfix update was issued to temporarily disable the and its associated systems ( Chemtech Fog, , and ) as a result of their higher impact on matches than other elemental drakes and the negative feedback they received by the majority of the community.[1]
Game Mechanics
Spawn
- Random Drakes: At 5:00 into the game, an elemental drake ( ) of a random type spawns in the dragon pit. When a drake is slain, the next drake will respawn after 5 minutes elapse, spawning with a random new element not yet chosen from the pool.
- Rift Shift: After the second drake has been slain and the third drake has been determined, the map will transform into Elemental Rift based on the drake's element. From now on, the drake will not change elements between respawns.
- Elder Dragon: Once a team has killed their fourth drake, the camp will now instead spawn the with a 6:00 respawn timer.
The next dragon to spawn has their insignia noted in both the spawn timer and the wall of the alcove.
Elemental Rift
The third drake transforms the Rift before it spawns and after that, its element will be the only one to spawn for the remainder of the game. The transformation on the Rift occurs on the same areas, which are the dragon pit and the buff camps. The
type is determined by the element that dominates the rift.- Air currents flow throughout the area near the camps for 20% bonus movement speed, increased to 35% while they are out of combat. 6 additional each spawn in front of both bases' gates and by the tri-brushes near the river. and , as well as the Dragon pit. These currents create speed zones that grant champions within
- Industrializes the map with hextech technologies, summoning pairs of
hex-gates within both teams' bases and near the pits for and , functioning as portals for transit. Champions can interact with these gates to initiate Hexgate Warp, causing them to
channel for 0.75 seconds. Upon completion, they
dash to the other side of the gate over 2.25 seconds, during which they are
untargetable and
unable to act. They may also choose a location to dash another time up to 500 units away from the gate upon reaching their destination, though not through terrain. Pairs of hex-gates have a 30 second cooldown after being activated.
- The channel will be interrupted by taking damage, performing another action, as well as becoming
grounded. If this occurs, the gate is placed on a 1.5 second cooldown.
- The channel cannot be started while affected by
cast-inhibiting crowd control or
ground.
- Champions taking gates will also
blink to their destination after the same time spent dashing.
- The blink occurs regardless of the dash completing or not.
- The gates that lead from the hex-gates within each team's base cannot be interacted with.
- Champions being transported through a hex-gate will be indicated by the portal.
- The
untargetability gained from completing Hexgate Warp will not destroy inbound projectiles.
- The channel will be interrupted by taking damage, performing another action, as well as becoming
- The following tables refer for interactions while a champion is channeling Hexgate Warp as well as being locked out from travelling through a hex-gate:
Type | Channel | |
---|---|---|
Attacking | Disabled | |
Abilities | Disabled | |
Movement | Disabled | |
Items | Usable | N/A |
Disabled | All items are disabled | |
Interrupted by | N/A | |
Consumables | Disabled | |
Spells | Usable | N/A |
Disabled | ||
Interrupted by | N/A | |
Interrupted by |
- Burns up the walls near the entrance of the Dragon pit and the patches of brush and sections of the walls surrounding the camps for
Murk Wolves, and within the alcoves.
and , opening up a pathway in their pits. 10 additional each spawn in front of both bases' gates, near the camps for and
- Triggers a seismic shift throughout the map, causing rock formations to emerge near the camps for
Raptors as well as near the entrance of the Dragon pit.
and
- Sprouts life throughout the map, causing 6 patches of brush to grow larger and 12 puddles of water to form in the jungle. Two patches of brush grow near the Dragon pit. 4 additional
- These puddles of water can be interacted with by and .
each spawn near the middle lane and the camps for .
Rewards
- Main article: Dragon Slayer
Slaying an elemental dragon will grant the
buff based on the element of the dragon slain. Slaying four elemental dragons will grant the of the dominating element after the rift changes. Slaying the grants the buff.Features
Passives
Resistant Skin: Dragons are
immune to all crowd control, except
stasis. Additionally, Dragons' stats cannot be modified by any means.
Ancient Grudge: Elemental Dragons gain 20% bonus damage and 7% damage reduction per stack against enemies with stacks, up to 80% bonus damage and 28% damage reduction at 4 stacks.
- Dragon Breath: Dragons deal bonus physical damage equal to 5% of the target's current health with their basic attacks. Additionally, Dragons gain 30% armor penetration.
Abilities
- Taking Flight: Dragons
knock back all enemies within
550 units of them upon starting the fight, displacing them further based on proximity and not through terrain.
Notes
- Dragons' basic attacks are considered spells - they're unaffected by any effect that would behave with basic attacks, and can be negated by
spell shields.
- Dragons cannot damage other monsters.
- If the team that slays a dragon has a lower average level than that of their opponents, they receive 25% bonus experience per average level difference. The bonus experience is sharply increased for the lowest level members of the team, equal to 15% per number of levels behind the dragon squared, up to a maximum of 200%.
Strategy
- Killing dragons is one of the main tasks of the
Jungler. Junglers often require assistance from their team for this task, and the champions best positioned to provide this assistance are usually the mid laners and bottom laners.
- When a team attempts to kill a dragon it usually gets weakened during the fight. Given the nature of the dragon pit, the team attempting the kill has limited escape paths. For this reason it's usually a good idea to gank the enemy team when they're trying to kill a dragon. A good gank may score several kills, steal the dragon kill, or both.
- Dragons (and other epic monsters) should be finished with effects that instantly deal a high amount of damage (i.e. , , ) to prevent the enemy team from stealing the kill.
- When initially attacked, dragons will
knock back every nearby champion, and begin attacking and chasing the closest champion. Attacking the dragon from a safe distance to get it to attack an unprepared enemy champion can be useful.
Tips to prepare dragon ganks
- Have a ward in the river close to the dragon camp entrance, providing complete vision of the pit. This will reveal enemies attempting to kill the dragon while also spotting enemies standing guard at the entrance. Killing the is a good way to provide vision in front of the dragon pit, but it does not provide vision inside the pit itself.
Tips to prevent dragon ganks
- Use a or to check for wards before attempting to kill a dragon, do not destroy wards unless you absolutely must eliminate their vision.
- Eliminate the bottom lane enemies and then attack the dragon with the help of your bottom lane teammates. The enemy middle lane and jungler are usually not strong enough to fight three champions at once.
- While on the red team, lure the dragon out of its pit. This makes the dragon chase you into the river, making it harder for the enemy team to steal it by engaging over the wall of the dragon pit.
Benefits of Dragon Slayer
The stacking buffs provided by
grant powerful effects which boost the overall strength of champions that are empowered by them.- buff speeds up a team as they move across the map faster than their enemies can. It gives a team enough time to head towards an important objective and gain control over it. The decreased slow effectiveness also helps with outrunning a chase.
- buff greatly increases the attack output of a team as their cooldowns come up quicker and their attacks come out rapidly.
- buff becomes more and more effective as a game continues as a team builds up their stats, with the buff giving even more stats which in turn leads to a massive boost in attack power.
- buff toughens up a team and allows them to take more extended fights, making it difficult for the opposition to deal with.
- buff restores tons of health after having taken lots of damage. It is particularly useful for taking down an objective after a skirmish as the team will restore their health overtime and be healthy in time for the next fight.
Trivia
- In League of Legends: Turret Defence, its
old version featured as a wave enemy.
- In
Teamfight Tactics Sets 1 and 2, a Dragon features as a PvE Round monster in Round 8–7.
- In Set 2, the Dragon's element is different depending on the game's element.
- In Sets 1 and 2, the Elder Dragon features as a monster in Round 10–7.
- Prior to V6.9, there was only one species of to fight, this retired dragon can still be seen flying at the west edge of Summoner's Rift as ambient wildlife.

Media
- Related Music
- Related Videos
Patch History
- Elemental Drakes
- Pre-elemental rift health increased to 5730 − 10290 (based on level) from 4090 − 6970 (based on level).
- Post-elemental rift health increased to 9230 − 13790 (based on level) from 5790 − 8670 (based on level).
- Elemental Drakes and
- Dragon's Breath health ratio reduced to 5% of target's current health from 7%.
- Attack damage reduced to 35 from 50.
- Attack damage reduced to 105 from 150.
- Health per minute increased to 290 from 180.
- Attack damage reduced to 47 from 66.7.
- Attack damage reduced to 70 from 100.
- Attack damage reduced to 105 from 150.
- Attack damage reduced to 70 from 100.
Hex-gates
- Bug Fix: Fixed a SFX bug where players would sometimes hear Hexgates being used, even if they were not looking at them.
Hex-gates
- Bug Fix: Champions taking hex-gates are no longer able to cast their non-movement summoner spells after inputting a command for the second dash.
- New Effect:
- Champions taking hex-gates
channel for 0.75 seconds, then upon completion
dash to the other side of the gate over 2.25 seconds while being
untargetable. They can choose a location to dash again up to 500 units away from the gate upon arrival.
- Champions taking the gate will still always blink to their designated location.
- The location still cannot be chosen over terrain.
- Champions taking hex-gates
- Old Effect:
- New Effect:
- V12.2 - January 24th Hotfix
- Removed from the game.
- Removed
Chemtech Fog - Removed
- Removed from the game.
Chemtech Fog
- Maximum bonus damage increased to 12% from 10%.
- Stealth timer increased to 2.5 seconds from 1.5.
- New Effect: Camouflage is now based on out of combat timer instead of instantly stealthing upon entering.
- Bug Fix: The exclamation point stealth indicator has been fixed and will correctly reappear above your champion if you are visible to an enemy inside the Chemtech Fog after completing certain stealthing abilities.
Chemtech Fog
- Bug Fix: Stealthed champions within gas zones now properly shimmer when taking damage.
- Bug Fix: Invisibility effects for and with Brush element while they are within gas zones now properly take effect.
Hex-gates
- Bug Fix: Champions taking hex-gates no longer briefly appear at their destination upon completing the channel.
- Bug Fix: , , and now arrive at their destination with their owner, rather than before them.
- Bug Fix: are no longer affected by hex-gates.
- When the map transforms into the Chemtech Rift, summons foggy zones within each jungle quadrant. Units within these zones are empowered by
Chemtech Fog, which grants them
camouflage if they haven't declared an attack, casted an ability, or
channeled within the last 1.5 seconds, and up to 10% increased damage against enemies with 340 − 1020 (based on target's level) greater current health than them.
- Units cannot gain the camouflage while channeling.
- New Elemental Drake
- When the map transforms into the Chemtech Rift, summons foggy zones within each jungle quadrant. Units within these zones are empowered by
- When the map transforms into the Hextech Rift, summons pairs of
hex-gates within both team's bases and each jungle quadrant. Hex-gates can be interacted with by champions to
channel for 0.75 seconds. Upon completion, they
blink to the other side of the gate but become
vanished for 2.25 seconds. Pairs of hex-gates have a 30-second cooldown after being activated.
- The channel can be interrupted by taking damage, performing another action, as well as becoming
grounded. If this occurs, the hex-gate is placed on a 1.5-second cooldown.
- The channel cannot be started while unable to cast abilities or
grounded.
- The blink location can be chosen a slight distance away from the gate, otherwise the blink location is always at the gate.
- This location cannot be over terrain.
- The gates that lead from the hex-gates within each team's base cannot be interacted with.
- The channel can be interrupted by taking damage, performing another action, as well as becoming
- New Elemental Drake
- When the map transforms into the Hextech Rift, summons pairs of
- New Effect: Cloud zone bonus movement speed is increased to 35% while out-of-combat with champions.
- New Effect: Bonus added to the entrances of the jungle.
- In front of each base's gates.
- In front of each tri-brush in the river.
- New Effect: Bonus added to the entrances of the jungle and Alcoves.
- Near each tri-bush near Gromp.
- By the Wolf Camp.
- In front of each base's gates.
- In the alcoves.
- New Effect: Bonus added to the entrances of the jungle and Alcoves.
- V10.10 - May 15th Hotfix
- Bug Fix: Fixed an issue where Cloud Terrain was not granting speed boosts.
- Bug Fix: Killing drakes with will not affect how Souls are granted, impact the type of drakes that spawn, or block Elder Dragons from spawning.
- Reduced the intensity of the map-wide tint for Infernal and Ocean Rifts' ground and Fog of War.
- Infernal Rift: More clearly defined the terrain, improved gameplay clarity, and polished the texture of the map.
- Mountain Rift: More clearly defined the terrain, improved gameplay clarity, and polished the texture of the map.
- V9.23 - November 25th Hotfix
- New Spawning Rules:
- First Drake: At 5:00 into the game, an elemental drake ( ) of a random type spawns in the dragon camp.
- Second Drake: If it is slain, an elemental drake of another type spawns after 5 minutes.
- Rift Changes: After the second drake has been slained, an element, that is different from the two previous drakes, is selected and the Rift is changed based on that element. From now on, the elemental drake of that element will be the only one to spawn.
- Rift Drake: 5 minutes after the last drake has been killed, an elemental drake of the Rift's element spawns. This repeats until a team has killed their fourth drake.
- Elder Dragon: Once a team has killed their fourth drake:
- The remaining elemental buffs will be
locked.
- The next dragon to spawn with be the , which spawns 6 minutes after the last drake has been killed. If it is killed, another spawns after 6 minutes, and so on.
- The remaining elemental buffs will be
- Example: First drake: . Second drake: . Rift changes: Mountain Rift. Rift drake: . Afterwards: only .
- Old Spawning Rules:
- At 5:00 into the game, an elemental drake ( ) of a random type spawns in the dragon camp. If it is slain, another random elemental drake spawns after 5 minutes; this continues until the game reaches 35 minutes. The same type cannot spawn more than 3 times. After 35 minutes have elapsed, the next dragon with be the . If it is killed, another spawns after 6 minutes, and so on.
- Elemental Drake health changed:
- New Health: 2650 (+ 240 per level, minimum level 6) before the Rift transforms; 4350 (+ 240 per level, minimum level 6) for the third drake onward.
- Old Health: 3500 (+240 per level, minimum level 6).
- Elemental Rift
- The third drake transforms the Rift before it spawns and after that, its element will be the only one to spawn for the remainder of the game. The transformation on the Rift occurs on the same areas, which are the dragon pit and the buff camps. The first three dragons are now always different from each other.
- The Cloud winds quicken! Air currents flow throughout the area around Blue and Red buffs, granting speed boosts to everyone inside. Dragon Pit also becomes a speed boosting wind tunnel.
- The Inferno blazes! Sunders the Rift. The brush nearest to Blue and Red buffs burn away, and new pathways open up through the Blue and Red buff pits. The entrance to Dragon pit widens.
- The Mountains rise! Triggers a seismic shift throughout the Rift. Two new bluffs of rock emerge in each jungle quadrant. A rock formation rises in front of the Dragon pit.
- The Oceans bring life! Brings new life to the Rift. Most of the brush in the jungle grows larger and new spawns near the buff camps. Water pools into puddles throughout the jungle, which functions with and . New brush patches sprout up around the Dragon pit.
- The third drake transforms the Rift before it spawns and after that, its element will be the only one to spawn for the remainder of the game. The transformation on the Rift occurs on the same areas, which are the dragon pit and the buff camps. The first three dragons are now always different from each other.
- Elemental drakes
- Respawn time reduced to 6 minutes from 8.
- Now says if Dragon was stolen.
- V8.7 - April 5th Hotfix
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where the took bonus damage from behind periodically, as though it had Eye mechanic.
- Elder Dragon respawn time reduced to 8 minutes from 10.
- Removed: No longer deals more damage and takes less damage based on how many elemental drakes your team has secured.
- No longer levels up during combat and now waits to level up until they've been out of combat for 30 seconds.
- The dragon pit became distinct from with the introduction of five distinctive dragon units.
- One of the four elemental drakes will spawn at random, with each kill granting a distinct by stacking buff.
- Grants +8 / 16 / 24 (based on Stacks)% attack damage and ability power.
- Grants +10 / 20 / 30 (based on Stacks)% bonus true damage to epic monsters and turrets.
- Grants +15 / 30 / 45 (based on Stacks) bonus movement speed while out of combat.
- Every 18 / 12 / 6 (based on Stacks) seconds, restores 10% of missing health and 10% of missing mana.
- After the 35 minute mark, only the
- Basic attacks and spells burn the target for (45 × slain) (+ 45 per Elemental Dragon Mark) damage over 3 seconds and increases the strength of Elemental Dragon buffs by 50%. This stack only lasts 120 seconds or until death.
will spawn. It grants a 120 second buff that increases other dragon's buff by 50% while also granting a burning effect on basic attacks.
- Enhanced 12 / 24 / 36 (based on Stacks)% attack damage and ability power. : +
- Enhanced 15 / 30 / 45 (based on Stacks)% bonus damage to epic monsters and turrets as true damage. : +
- Enhanced 22.5 / 45 / 67.5 (based on Stacks) bonus movement speed while out of combat. : +
- Enhanced 12 / 8 / 4 (based on Stacks) seconds, restores 10% of missing health and 10% of missing mana. : Every