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"Dragon pit" redirects here. For other uses, see Dragon (disambiguation).
The location of the dragon pit.
The dragon pit is one of the game's most unique jungle camps as its occupant varies throughout a match of League of Legends, with even the initial spawn be determined at random. These dragons serve as a neutral objective that rivals 
Baron Nashor.
One of five monsters may occupy the pit at any one time:
Prior to V6.9, 
The Dragon 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.
Contents
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 5:00 elapse, spawning with a random new element not yet chosen from the pool. - Rift Changes: 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 Elder Dragon 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.
- Cloud Rift: The Cloud winds quicken! Air currents flow throughout the area around Blue and Red buffs, granting speed boosts to everyone inside, even units that are untargetable. Additional Scryer's Blooms spawn to the entrances of the jungle. Dragon Pit also becomes a speed boosting wind tunnel. These speed zones grant 20% bonus movement speed, increased to 35% while out-of-combat with champions.
- Infernal Rift: 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. Additional Blast Cones spawn to the entrances of the jungle and Alcoves. The entrance to Dragon pit widens.
- Mountainous Rift: 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.
- Ocean Rift: The Oceans bring life! Brings new life to the Rift. Most of the brush in the jungle grows larger and new Honeyfruit spawns near the buff camps. Water pools into puddles throughout the jungle, which functions with Qiyana's Terrashape and Waterwalking. New brush patches sprout up around the Dragon pit.
Rewards
Main article: Dragon Slayer
Slaying a dragon will grant the Dragon Slayer buff based on the element / color of the dragon slain. Slaying four elemental dragons will grant the Dragon Soul of the dominating element after the rift changes. Slaying the 
Elder Dragon grants the Aspect of the Dragon 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 Dragon Slayer stacks, up to 80% bonus damage and 28% damage reduction.
- Dragon Breath: Dragons deal bonus physical damage equal to 7% of the target's current health with their basic attacks. Additionally, Dragons gain 30% armor penetration.
Abilities
- Taking Flight: Dragons knock back all nearby enemies upon starting the fight.
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. Smite, Cho'Gath's Feast, Nunu's Consume) 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 Rift Scuttler 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 Control Ward or Oracle Lens 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.
Recommendations for each type of elemental drake
- The buff provided by Cloud Drake is particularly useful for champions with either very long or very short ultimate cooldowns. For example, a single stack will shave 12 seconds off a 120 second cooldown ultimate (if there is no other source of ability haste), or allow Teemo to place more shrooms on the map. However, it is generally considered to be the weakest of the dragon buffs, since it will not give any advantage in a fight if everyone's ultimate is ready. Also, it is the toughest of the dragons to kill, so it is often not worth prioritizing early.
- The buff provided by Infernal Drake is considered by many players the strongest, due to its raw power boost. If viable, contest the dragon at all costs. In the early game it doesn't make much difference, but its power in late game is massive.
- The buff provided by Mountain Drake allows teams more durability for extended fights, and its effectiveness increases the more resistances the team builds - it can be useful to build more armor and magic resistance when you have multiple of this buff.
- The buff provided by Ocean Drake is deceptively powerful during the laning phase: the healing during downtime allows less assertive laners to extend their presence. Another benefit is its ability to mitigate damage against poke teams, forcing the enemy team to spend more mana and delaying or even preventing potential flanks.
- Focus on killing the drakes with the buff that can benefit most your team. For example, focus on infernal drakes for team fighting, and on cloud drakes for roaming and split pushing.
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 Dragon to fight, this retired dragon can still be seen flying at the west edge of Summoner's Rift as ambient wildlife.
Media
- Related Music
2016 Season - Login Screen
World Championship 2017 - Login Screen
Worlds 2018 - Login Screen
- Related Videos
Preseason 2020 Spotlight Gameplay - League of Legends
Gameplay & Ranked in Season 2020 Dev Video - League of Legends
Patch History
This section is about the changes to dragons. For the changes to the Dragon Slayer buff, see Dragon Slayer#Patch History.
Dragon Slayer buff, see Dragon Slayer#Patch History.- Cloud Rift
- New Effect: Cloud zone bonus movement speed is increased to 35% while out-of-combat with champions.
- New Effect: Bonus Scryer's Blooms added to the entrances of the jungle.
- In front of each base's gates.
- In front of each tri-brush in the river.
- Infernal Rift
- New Effect: Bonus Blast Cones 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
- V10.10 - May 15th Hotfix
- Bug Fix: Fixed an issue where Cloud Terrain was not granting speed boosts.
- Bug Fix: Killing drakes with Shaco's Hallucinate 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
- Elemental drakes
- Kill gold reduced to 25 from 100.
- Kill gold reduced to
- 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 Elder Dragon, which spawns 6 minutes after the last drake has been killed. If it is killed, another Elder Dragon spawns after 6 minutes, and so on.
- The remaining elemental buffs will be
- Example: First drake: Cloud Drake. Second drake: Infernal Drake. Rift changes: Mountain Rift. Rift drake: Mountain Drake. Afterwards: only Elder Dragons.
- First Drake: At 5:00 into the game, an elemental drake (
- 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 Elder Dragon. If it is killed, another Elder Dragon spawns after 6 minutes, and so on.
- At 5:00 into the game, an elemental drake (
- 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.
- Cloud Rift: 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.
- Infernal Rift: 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.
- Mountainous Rift: 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.
- Ocean Rift: The Oceans bring life! Brings new life to the Rift. Most of the brush in the jungle grows larger and new Honeyfruit spawns near the buff camps. Water pools into puddles throughout the jungle, which functions with Qiyana's Terrashape and Waterwalking. 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.
locked.- Elemental drakes
- Respawn time reduced to 5 minutes from 6.
- First drake spawn increased to 5:00 from 2:30.
- Kill gold increased to 100 from 25.
- Experience increased to 150 − 330 (based on level) from 75 − 300 (based on level).
- Elder Dragon
- 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 Cloud Drake took bonus damage from behind periodically, as though it had Rift Herald's Eye mechanic.
- Elder Dragon respawn time reduced to 8 minutes from 10.
- Elder Dragon
- Removed: No longer deals more damage and takes less damage based on how many elemental drakes your team has secured.
- The dragon pit became distinct from The Dragon 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.
- Infernal Drake
- Grants +8 / 16 / 24 (based on Stacks)% attack damage and ability power.
- Mountain Drake
- Grants +10 / 20 / 30 (based on Stacks)% bonus true damage to epic monsters and turrets.
- Cloud Drake
- Grants +15 / 30 / 45 (based on Stacks) bonus movement speed while out of combat.
- Ocean Drake
- 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 Elder Dragon 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.
- Basic attacks and spells burn the target for (45 × Elder Dragons 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.
- Basic attacks and spells burn the target for (45 ×
- Enhanced Infernal Drake: + 12 / 24 / 36 (based on Stacks)% attack damage and ability power.
- Enhanced Mountain Drake: + 15 / 30 / 45 (based on Stacks)% bonus damage to epic monsters and turrets as true damage.
- Enhanced Cloud Drake: + 22.5 / 45 / 67.5 (based on Stacks) bonus movement speed while out of combat.
- Enhanced Ocean Drake: Every 12 / 8 / 4 (based on Stacks) seconds, restores 10% of missing health and 10% of missing mana.
See Also
References
Units
| Champion · Champion summoned units · Little Legend · Structures (Turret · Inhibitor · Nexus) | |||
| Minions | Small | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Large | |||
| Monsters | Lesser | ||
| Large | |||
| Epic |
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| Featured game mode | |||
| Removed content | |||
