You may be asking yourself how many skins are in league of legends? League of legends has been around since 2009 and has been creating champions and skins for 13 years now. That’s a long time to be able to create both new champions and skins! As of October 2022 League of legends has 1,453 skins!
Skin Types in League of Legends
There are 4 main types of skins
- Available – These skins are currently available for purchase there are 971 currently available skins
- Legacy Vault – These skins are available through Hextech crafting or special in game events through the loot system there are currently 342 Legacy Vault skins
- Rare – These skins are only available periodically or through special means such as completing a special event for in game content. There are only 81 rare skins.
- Unavailable – These are the hardest skins of all to obtain, many you could only have gotten through special circumstances over the last 13 years of playing the game and had to be around in order to obtain. There are only 59 unavailable skins
Rarest Skins in League of Legends
Black Star Alistar is one such skin that very few players obtained because you needed to preorder the digital collector’s edition of league of legends which wasn’t necessary for most because League of legends is a free to play game.
King Rammus was another skin that was only given to those who were chosen to be in the closed beta. This was still in the early days of league before it was even publicly available so you had to be one of the strongest chosen few in order to obtain this skin!
How does league of legends skins make the champion skins different?
There are a few different ways that league of legends changes the skins to incentivize users to buy them. The most easily noticeable is changes to the skin itself also known as SFX and VFX changes. SFX stands for Special effects and VFX stands for visual effects. This changes the way the champion looks, often adding costumes, cosmetic changes to the champion itself. Another way skins are changed are through new ability animations. Goalkeeper Rammus turns himself into a soccer ball when using his Q ability. Corporate Mundo throws briefcases instead of cleavers. These fun updates to the abilities inspire players and offer fun little changes to the game that incentivize users to buy these skins.
It should be noted that some players believe that there are inherent advantages to certain skins. These have sometimes been referred to as pay to win skins. One example of this is Steel Legion Lux whose ability visualization changes made her abilities virtually invisible offering a huge advantage to anyone using this skin. It was bad enough to the point where they actually had to disable the skins in pro play and adjust the settings itself. Keep this in mind and watch new skins for advantages in order to gain an advantage on your opponents.
Another way that champion skins are changed are through enhanced recall animations. A good example of this is the DJ Sona skin which has an enhanced recall where she DJ’s on her DJ board while recalling. These recall enhancements give something fun and different to watch while your champion is recalling to base and can showcase a little more of the champion skins personality.
An often overlooked feature added to skins is voice changes. Champions have some triggers for voice and visual effects that many aren’t aware of. The commands for these that can showcase the updates to a champions voiceover are:
League Champion Commands
- /joke – champion will tell a joke
- /taunt – champion will taunt the enemy
- /laugh – champion will laugh on command
- /dance – champion will break out into a dance good for having fun prior to game starting with your team
One of the newest additions to champion skins is the idea of chromas. They realized that they were able to add a new champion skin with multiple chromas or color schemes within the same skin. This gave them the ability to monetize the same champion skin multiple times just changing the color schemes. Dark theme, light theme, neon theme etc. It also gives players on these skins more options for choosing a unique skin that is suited to them.
