The return of ARURF to League of Legends!

As hinted at by Riot Meddler earlier this month, the highly requested temporary game mode, ARURF, will be returning later this year to League of Legends! This was confirmed by Riot Fearless, who made a post about the changes to ARURF for the public beta environment (PBE). For those who can’t wait to get their hands on ARURF mode, the game mode will be available for the next week or two on the League of Legends PBE, accessible by any player with an honor rating of three or higher.

What is ARURF?

ARURF stands for All Random Ultra Rapid Fire mode. This game is based on an older game mode, URF, first introduced on April Fools’ Day of 2015. In this game mode, all cooldowns are reduced massively, all aspects of the game are sped up, and the combat stats increased. It’s the flashy version of League of Legends one might think of if the game would be designed for mobile. During the period the game was available on the live servers, it was incredibly fun to play. However, the game mode has many flaws, which is why it will likely never become permanent. 

Changes made to the game mode on the PBE.

In the forum post where the return of ARURF was announced, Riot Fearless further explained some of the changes headed to the PBE for testing in advance of the re-release later this year. Here are some of the most important changes currently being tested:

• The Elder Dragon will now spawn at 9 minutes into the game, rather than 5 minutes. This will allow for more of a traditional laning phase, rather than a level 6 fight for the Elder Dragon to win the game. 
• The strength of the Elder Dragon has been reduced compared to those on the live-build of the game. With the increased speed of everything in ARURF, the buff was too game-deciding, and these changes aim to reduce that. Additionally, the first Elder Dragon buff’s duration has been reduced from 150 to 120 seconds. Where the empowered (second Elder and beyond) Elder Dragon buff’s duration has been reduced from 300 to 180 seconds. 

The other key changes from this patch include adjustments to turret plating in the ARURF game mode. Turret plate health changed from 1000 at each stage, to 500 to 1500 based on the stages. Besides this, the turret plate value has been increased from 160 gold per plate to 300 for each. The blog states the intent for this is to increase early lane aggression, rather than the focus on map objectives.

For more League of Legends content, be sure to check out our recent coverage of the new Star Guardian skins.