Summoner's Rift
The Summoner's Rift is the most commonly used Field of Justice.
The map was given a graphical and technical update on May 23rd, 2012 and remade from scratch on November 12th, 2014.
Lore
Summoner's Rift Summoner Platform
Summoner's Rift Landscape
Summoner's Rift is located in a remote forest between Freljord, and the Ironspike Mountains. The Summoner’s Rift is one of a few locations in Valoran where magical energy is at its greatest concentration, making it a highly sought-after locale to pursue magical endeavors.
Historically, the forest where the Rift resides was the site of several battles between two summoner factions symbolized with the Stag and Owl crests, they sought out to use the natural magical energy of the area for their personal use.
The large amount of concentrated magic has mutated the local wildlife. From Template:Moi, Template:Moi to Template:Moi it has also attracted the attention of a powerful Template:Moi who currently resides in one of the battle torn ruins. Template:Moi, and Template:Moi are creatures made from local flora and earth infused to construct a magical being. The Rifts unstable magic has inadvertently cause the reemergence of Template:Moi, a large Serpent/Worm largely believed to be dead for centuries. It has his corruption affecting the land around him.
Other known creature that live in this area are species of forest Chameleons, Ducks, Antlermice, Porowls, Owls, Crows, Dragonflies and Butterflies.
Gameplay
Summoner's Rift Minimap
The objective of Summoner's Rift is simple – destroy the enemy nexus. In order to do this, champions must traverse down one of three different paths (or lanes) in order to attack their enemy at their weakest points they can exploit. Both teams have their lanes defended by numerous turrets; each turret grows in strength the closer it gets to its respective nexus and each turret must be eliminated in order to gain access to the next turret in that lane. Cooperating with fellow summoners is an absolute requirement for success, as it is easy for a champion to find themselves ambushed by enemies in the lanes of the Rift.
In-Game Description
Summoner's Rift Map
The newest and most venerated battleground is known as Summoner's Rift. Traverse down on of three different paths in order to attack your enemy at their weakest point. Work with your allies to siege the enemy base and destroy their Nexus!
Features
Fight Against Baron Nashor
- 19000 unit distance from Blue Team Nexus Obelisk to Red Team Nexus Obelisk (measured with
Caitlyn's Ace in the Hole). - Three lanes to fight your way to the enemy base.
- A forest populated by neutral monsters of varying degrees of toughness, the toughest of which provide buffs and/or gold for your whole team.
- Powerful turrets defend key areas on the map. You must confront these in addition to your enemies if you are to make headway toward victory.
- A map dividing river that lies in neutral territory, allowing for quick travel between lanes.
- Two bases at opposite corners of the map, populated by a shop, a Nexus, two turrets to defend the nexus, two base gates that only the team aligned with the base can pass through, and inhibitors that suppress the other team's minions.
Unique Shopkeepers
Summoner's Rift during its history had a total of four shopkeepers.
- The first one was a Manbacon. This is an infamous race that is living in Runeterra. Manbacionians usually set up shops in a small pack and they also like to smoke.[1] He sold some standard starting items like the Doran's Blade, the Doran's Ring, the Doran's Shield. He was selling his weaponry at both the Blue team and the Purple team bases.
- The second shopkeeper was an elderly male Yordle with a cart pulled by an animal resembling a big cat or a rabbit of an unknown species (PBE data mining posted here revealed it to be a "yonkey"). He replaced Manbacon and he was also present for both the Blue and the Purple bases.
- A pair of new shopkeepers replacing the previous vendor: in the Blue base there's an elderly female Yordle with a large animal resembling a Bantha from Star Wars and in the Red base there's an elderly male otter merchant attending his shop inside a large hot-air balloon that got punctured.
Versions
Summer Version
It is the default and first version released of the map.
Winter Version
Snowdown Showdown Summoner's Rift
A variant of the regular Summoner's Rift with a winter seasonal variants, designed for the 2009 Snowdown Showdown event. This version was a permanent option before it was replaced with the Autumn Version on November 2010. It was also available during the 2010 Snowdown Showdown, replacing the Autumn version temporarily and made a return for the 2011 Snowdown Showdown in December 2011. An updated version was released for the 2016 Snowdown Showdown. The Winter Version of Summoner's Rift has a few differences:
- A mostly white background, because of the snow.
- Snow falling and covering the terrain.
- The River is frozen.
- Presents and Poros can be seen throughout the map.
- Baron Nashor wears a Santa hat and earmuffs.
Autumn Version
Harrowing Summoner's Rift
The Autumn Version of Summoner's Rift was a special variant designed for the 2010 Harrowing Seasonal Event. It replaced the Winter Version as the secondary version available and renamed Autumn Version after a poll on November 2010. It was temporarily replaced again with the Winter Version for the 2010 Snowdown Showdown. The Autumn Version uses music from the Twisted Treeline.
- There are coffins at bottom right area of the map. These signify the "death" (cancellation) of several champions.
Blood Moon Version
The Blood Moon Version of Summoner's Rift was a special variant designed for the 2017 Blood Moon Event.
Arcade Version
The Arcade Version of Summoner's Rift was a special variant designed for the August 2017 release of three Battle Boss skins.
Development
Summoner’s Rift Update
Retextured (left) and Original (right) Summoner's Rift
May 23, 2012 brought graphical and technical updates to Summoner’s Rift. The updates brought players better aesthetics as well as improved overall graphical performance for players on lower settings. Some of the enhancements included:
- Better game performance at low and mid spec.
- Updated textures across Summoner’s Rift.
- Improved animations on many of the monsters, including the Ancient Golem, the Lizard Elder and, of course, Baron Nashor.
- A new, animated shopkeeper to service all of your champion’s item purchases.
Summoner's Rift Evolves
On November 12, 2014 a new update to Summoner's Rift went live for use on the Team Builder queue and all bot modes. Then in November 19 the updated Summoner’s Rift was released for all queues, replacing the old one entirely. This time the update has been more heavier than the previous one, and the map was remade from scratch, changing the overall art style. From the minions, to the monsters, the structures, the decorations, the vegetation and even the music it was all completely remade. The new Summoner's Rift is in all respects a new map, made preserving the spirit and gameplay of the older Summoner’s Rift. The new elements are:
- General
- A new handcrafted artistic style to Summoner's Rift.
- Gameplay on the map is more readable than in the previous map. Making action the top priority on the screen rather than the environment.
- Cleaned up a lot of the terrain (so that the widths of the visuals match the width of the mesh).
- This is particularly noticeable in Red-side jungle.
- Purple Team changed to Red Team.
- Red base features an owl and mage motif with curved linear shapes. Blue base is inspired by a stag and paladin theme with blockier shapes. Both of the owl and stag sigils meet in middle lane.
- Fog of war upgrade - fog is darker and the fade between fog and non-fog is now more abrupt/crisp (it's not a gradual fade).
- General bug fixes.
- Camera angle adjusted to be more similar to Howling Abyss (higher angled, less perspective).
- This should make the difference between playing up and down less significant.
- Large and Epic Jungle monsters now show their current health value above their health bar.
- Bottom and top lane brushes are now centered between their respective towers (previously off-centered by ~450 units).
- Ambient critters have been added in the map.
- New minion and monster icons.
- New Kill indicators on screen (including a hexakill indicator).
- Updated look to minions, cannon minions and super minions.
- Red minions wield axes while blue minions war hammers.
- Two new shopkeepers for both of the Bases.
- Each jungle quadrant has a unique theme. Blue buff jungle has a blue hue, while the Red jungle has a red hue. West jungle is more destroyed by the influence of Baron Nashor while the east one retains its more natural look.
- New Summoner's Rift music.
- Jungle
- The Ancient Golem and its Lizard henchmen were replaced with the Template:Moi golem and two monolithic Template:Moi, the Sentries were removed in preseason 7
- The Golem and Big Golem have been replaced by the Template:Moi and Template:Moi, respectively.
- The Giant Wolf and the Lesser Wolves have been respectively replaced with the and the Template:Moi.
- The Wraiths have been replaced with bird-like led by a .
- The Wight has been replaced with the Template:Moi, a walrus-frog hybrid.
- The Lizard Elder camp is now inhabited by the , a fiery ent-like creature, and two Template:Moi. The cinderlings were removed in preseason 7
- Template:Moi and Template:Moi have received Visual updates and kit reworks.
- A new passive monster has been added in the north and south parts of the river, Template:Moi.
- Plants were added to the jungle in Season 7: Template:Moi knock units back, Template:Moi provides vision, and Template:Moi provides HP and mana.
Check out some Summoner's Rift concept art!
By Riot ForScience [2]
Summoner's Rift has come a long way since League's launch in 2009, but our latest update to ol' trusty was the biggest change in the map's history.
While all updates go through iterations and testing, Summoner's Rift required a huge team of artists to concept and sketch out art for months before we started working in 3D. To celebrate the end of SR's beta run, we're releasing a few of the concept art pieces the environment team created, complete with notes and insights from the artists themselves.
- SRU Concept Art Gallery
Remember the old 
Wraiths? We sketched out a ton of ideas for things that could replace them. After trying a few of these guys out, we started leaning towards some bird-like creatures that eventually evolved into the Template:Moi you see in the Rift today (1. Vulture Monkeys, 2. Dire Porci Rat, 3. Shroom Thugs, 4. Crystaling, 5. Mudworm, 6. Mandrake gone bad, 7. Stumpils, 8. Plant Chomper, 9. Scorpo Flies, 10. Flame Pixie, 11. Not Warrior, 12. Globs)
Back on Howling Abyss we designed one of the shopkeepers to have this massive pack-yak. We really loved the idea but we could not get him to work within the constraints of the Freljord. He eventually became a she, and fit perfectly into SR. We always knew that we wanted some type of shipwrecked balloon-riding yordle for the north shopkeeper.
We knew really early on that Wraiths didn't feel indigenous to the Rift, but it took a really long time to find a Template:Moi that would fill his shoes.
The team really resonated with the idea that the magic of the Rift physically forming into its guardians, and the Template:Moi in particular to reflect the raw aggression that you feel when you pick up the 
red buff.
There was a lot of focus on how we wanted a unique dragon from other IPs and fantasy games. We tried a grounded dragon, but ended up with a thick, heavily armored guy, so we carried on until we gravitated around this study, which put us on the path to finding the unique League take on a Template:Moi.
We spoke about quadrants during the map update's beta stint, but here's a really clear representation of what we wanted to pull off. It's a really early painting, but even still you can see the redwoods in the north, the cairn-stones in the east, and the overgrowth and vines in the south. We ended up going with a different direction in the west jungle, but its color palate and tone is still pretty similar.
This concept shows the contrast between the Paladins' and Mages' use of magic. In the case of the Paladins, magic is used in a very tightly restrained and controlled way. In the case of the Mages, magic is used in a more organic and chaotic way. This hearkens back to the old map and the Order vs. Chaos sides.
Our early minion concepts explored ideas like minions made out of animated magic scrolls, bolts of cloth animated by magic, and even just sound.
This was actually a very late exploration of Template:Moi. Many of our earliest ideas for Dragon were not even dragons at all, but ran the creature gamut of what could fill that role on the map before we decided to go back to a more traditional scales and wings creature. The dragon we have in-game is a combination of the proportions of the first dragon, the head and wings of the third dragon, and the tail of the seventh guy!
Trivia
- The general layout of two long lanes extending on the border of the map and a middle lane between them, each crossed by a river, was inspired by the fan-made mod Defense of the Ancients, popular map for Warcraft III of which once Steve 'Guinsoo' Feak was serving as the main designer.
- The monster camps in this map were made to spawn everytime the same places since V1.0.0.96: before that, wolf camps and golem camps randomly alternated.
- Urf's Ghost can be found in the halloween version near the top of the river (Top Lane) just to the right of the top most brush found in blue's jungle. He will even attack passing Warwicks and either do 1 damage or pop his Banshee's Veil if the bubble is up on the Autumn version of the map.
- Garena announced that the map will polished red (Be aware that news source is Turkish) within Play it Red event due to Garena Carnival for a limited period in Garena server on June 2014.
- A will spawn in each of the bases if a Freljord champion is on the team.
- If five Pool Party skins (or Rumble in the Jungle or Surfer Singed) are present on the map, a yellow rubber duck will spawn on Summoner's Rift near the bottom Middle part of river instead of a normal duck.
- If five or more Bilgewater champions (or champions with Bilgewater skins) are present on the map, two sharks will spawn in the lower right corner of the map.
- Numerous File:Tesla Effect HelmetBroSquare.png Helmet Bro helmets can been seen in various locations on the map:
- South Template:Moi nest.
- Template:Moi pit.
- North west red team Jungle entrance.
- Several Items that have been removed from the game can be seen on the map:
- Two Emblems of Valor can be seen in one of the towers surrounding Summoner's Rift.
- A Heart of Gold can be seen in the Red Shopkeeper shop. The sign on the item use to say "sold".
- Old Aegis of the Legion shield can be seen in the Blue Shopkeeper shop.
- A Philosopher's Stone can be seen hanged up on a stone tablet at the south-west part of the map.
- Two
- Old Baron Nashor's skull can been seen in the Baron pit.
- A Sai and a Pizza can be seen in sewer in down-right part of map referencing to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- A smiley face is a tribute to a smiley face that was present on the old map, which was also located on exactly the same spot, at the southern part of the map.
- "The Sword in the Stone" at the north-east part of the map is a reference to Excalibur and to King Artur's legend.
- A random cogwheels can be seen on the eastern part of the map.
- At the eastern entrance of the Red base, when first entering the map, a frog can be seen scurrying and falling to his death.
- His official fandom name is "George, the Suicidal Frog".
- There can be seen Porowl on tree. Porowls are magical, mysterious cute creatures that inhabit Summoner's Rift
- Porowl is based on Poro
- A grave altar with a File:ProfileIcon0786 The 99,999 RP.png gold spatula of Urf is at the same location as his old grave on the Autumn map grave was.
- Elder mage face can be seen carved on one of the tables on the map . It is a reference to the mage statues from the old Summoner's Rift map.
- A Template:Moi statue can be seen at the north-east part of the map, near red teams Gromp.
- Numerous rune writings can be seen carved on the walls and into the floors of both the Blue and Red bases, as well as around the map.
- Greek Mythology Medusa Shield can be seen
- Blue and Red Minions can be seen having launch near river referencing to Ancient Golem's Couldron
- Bard's face symbol have been seen in various locations on the map before his initial reveal. Since his release, those symbols have been removed from the map.
- A stone wall carved with the Protectorate and Magelords around a crystal can be seen at the north east part of red teams lane. In the Beta version of the map, the wall had no carvings and it was cracked.
- Tahm Kench's laugh could have been heard in the river area by using the laugh command, it was used as an initial teaser for the champion.
- Kindred's Mark of the Kindred would show up randomly above a champions head at the beginning of the game and during death in a form of Lamb and Wolf masks. These were used as initial champion teasers for Kindred.
- Zoe's Sleepy Trouble Bubble would spawn in both Summoner's Rift bases at the beginning of the game. These were used as initial champion teasers for Zoe.
- There are 2 videos that show up most of Secrets and Easter Eggs Listed above: Secrets & Easter Eggs Part 1 and Secrets & Easter Eggs Part 2
Summoner's Rift map has been used for certain special, limited-time, featured game modes that circulate in and out.
- During the Fall of 2013, Riot's first featured game mode was called One for All mode [3]
- The mechanics were similar to Classic mode, with the only different being that all champions on each team are the same
- This mode would later inspire the creation of the One for All: Mirrored mode
- An Icon was to be given by playing this mode.
- Between April 1 and April 13, 2014, Riot made Ultra Rapid Fire mode and since then this mode has been coming back each year for April Fools' Day [4]
- An Icon was to be given by playing this mode.
- The mechanics were similar to Classic mode, with the added twist of the mode:
- Between July 17 and July 27, 2014, Riot made Doom Bots mode.[5]
- In this mode players fought against champions controlled by computer generated AI.
- The Bots themselves got enhancements to their abilities and passives.
- There were 3 levels of mode difficulty, with each level the bots would get considerably "cheaper".
- An Icon was to be given by playing this mode.
- Between April 1 and April 13, 2015, Ultra Rapid Fire mode returned for another yearly celebration of April Fools' Day [6]
- An Icon was to be given by playing this mode.
Kog'Maw's classic splash art.
Braum's shield.
Aatrox's lore.Media
- Related Music
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References
Template:Places