The upcoming League of Legends ranked season is going to focus almost entirely on the Void, with monsters from beyond our plane of reality invading Summoner’s Rift and forcing it to undergo a makeover.
Between terrain changes, new objectives, and transformed jungle camps, you should expect the Void’s influence to play a heavy role in your ranked games once the 2024 season begins. One of those biggest Void-based additions to Summoner’s Rift in 2024 will be a new jungle camp that spawns in Baron Nashor’s pit known as the “Voidgrubs.”
Starting at the five-minute mark of each game, three Voidgrubs will spawn inside the Baron pit, where they’ll remain until they’re either killed or despawn. These Voidgrubs will replace the first Rift Herald of each game, meaning teams will no longer have two Heralds to fight over moving forward. Each of the three Voidgrubs has its own respawn timer, and only six Voidgrubs can be spawned throughout the course of a single game. Fourteen minutes into each game, the Rift Herald will take its usual spot inside the Baron pit, giving players a threat they’re more accustomed to facing.
Voidgrubs differ from the Rift Herald in that they provide players with another early-game buff to fight over. While the Rift Herald definitely has its place in the game, the early-game pressure that Shelly provides through her tower-taking prowess is something Riot Games would evidently like to save for the mid-game rather than the early stages of a contest. Instead of the Eye of the Herald buff, Voidgrubs will give players who take them down a buff called Hunger of the Void, which gives a damage-over-time buff that increases their damage to structures, as opposed to getting a flat boost from the summoned Rift Herald.
The Hunger of the Void buff stacks depending on how many Voidgrubs you’ve killed, making it a potentially very strong effect in the hands of solo laners who might travel to the Baron pit early on in games to get an extra boost to their laning phase capabilities.
Don’t worry, though, Rift Herald enthusiasts. The famous early-game objective isn’t going anywhere. If anything, the Herald is actually getting a major upgrade in 2024. You’ll still be able to summon the Rift Herald and let her charge into a tower, but you’ll also get access to a new Rift Herald interaction where you can jump onto its back and ride that thing like a Sandworm from Dune, charging it straight into a turret yourself and dealing even more damage than usual.
These changes will make the topside of the river even more dynamic and worth fighting over, especially in the early stages of League games. They’ll go live on the League PBE later today, Nov. 20.
