League of Legends developer Riot Games threw a huge curveball at the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase yesterday by announcing that all of its games would be coming to Xbox Game Pass. As part of the deal, Riot is making all of the champions in LoL and Wild Rift, as well as all of the agents in Valorant, free while your Game Pass subscription is live, alongside the promise of a free rotation of tier one Little Legends in Teamfight Tactics, and access to Legends of Runeterra’s Foundations set. Sheesh.
With all of this content costing either earned in-game currency or paid currency, this sounds like a great deal But just how much money will your Game Pass sub really save you across Riot’s titles? The short answer: over $1,500 if you have fresh accounts. However, we here at The Loadout don’t do things by halves, so let’s break down the maths further and get granular with it. Brace yourself.
Currently, in League of Legends, there are 160 champions on the button, each costing different amounts of Riot Points (LoL’s paid currency). That’s 14 x 260 RP champions, 22 x 585 RP champions, 28 x 790 RP champions, 64 x 880 RP champions, and 32 x 975 RP champions. If you were to buy every single champion with RP on a fresh account, that would require 126,150 RP. Acquiring this much RP would necessitate the purchasing of $845-worth of RP bundles in the shop.
Meanwhile, in Valorant, there are 19 agents in the game right now. Each new account starts with Brimstone, Jett, Phoenix, Sage, and Sova, leaving 14 left to acquire. Getting each agent to contract level five – the level which actually unlocks them – costs 1,000 Valorant Points, or 14,000 VP for the full monty. Currently, it costs $129.97 to stock up on enough VP to unlock them all.
Next up are the 84 champions currently available in Wild Rift. Similarly to Valorant, you start with five champions on a fresh account: Ahri, Blitzcrank, Garen, Jinx, and Master Yi. Each champion costs 725 Wild Cores, meaning 57,275 Wild Cores are required to secure the services of the 74 remaining champions. Based on current Wild Core prices, you will need to cough up $524.93 in bundles to max out your account.
As for Legends of Runeterra, it’s hard to quantify just how much is saved from the game’s Foundations set being unlocked. The closest we can get is the Starter Bundle, which offers up the essentials from the set for 1,845 Coins. Buying enough coins for this will set you back $19.99.
Finally, onto Teamfight Tactics. We don’t currently know exactly how many Little Legends will be in this selection, though at 490 RP per egg, we can imagine we’re easily looking at 20 bucks-worth+ of value, though that’s a total guesstimate so we won’t be factoring it into our calculations.
As such, at most, you will be saving $1,519.89 across all of Riot’s games (and that’s without Little Legends and the true value of the Foundations set) should you make use of fresh accounts. However, there are a few caveats that can bring this value down a few bucks on both the League of Legends and Valorant fronts.
Firstly, there’s LoL’s tutorial. For new players, they will most likely nab themselves a free champion (one of Brand, Darius, Lux, Master Yi, or Miss Fortune) from the tutorial, alongside 3,900 Blue Essence, the currency earned through gameplay – this is enough for a 3150 BE (or 790 RP) champion. Should they pick Brand or Darius (the two most expensive champions at 880 RP each), that’s 1,640 RP knocked off of the requirement. This will save you $10 in RP, bringing the total price down to $835.
Additionally, there’s the New Player Pack in the shop, which for a very respectable price of 650 RP will net you Ekko, Jinx, Lee Sin, Morgana, and Wukong – that’s a saving of 3815 RP, or a further $20. As such, you’re probably most likely to save around $815 in total on League.
Valorant also grants you the option to unlock a couple of agents for free – one at level five, and one at level ten. As a result of this, you can save yourself 2,000 VP for very little effort, or $10 in VP bundles. This would take the total spend for Riot’s hit competitive FPS game down to $109.98.
So, should you do the bare minimum to cut down the costs, Riot’s Game Pass deal will save you up to a cool $1,469.90. Regardless, it’s one helluva deal, and those who want to get their hands on new champions and agents like Bel’Veth and Fade should definitely take advantage of it.