League of Legends Arena Mode: How to Play, Augments & More

The 2023 Summer Event in League of Legends – Soul Fighter – will be rolled out on 20th July and players are already excited about it. This event is going to be one of the largest summer events in League of Legends as well as for other Riot Games titles including Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runettera, and Wild Rift. During this event, the much-anticipated 2v2v2v2 game mode also called Arena will be released. In essence, it is a team deathmatch-like (TDM) game mode that captures the essence of an anime tournament arc. Players fight in pairs against other teams and the last team standing wins the mode.

The Arena mode will be a cross between Teamfight Tactics (TFT) and League of Legends. You queue up for a game of Arena, then get through the ban phase, and then fight others in a series of multiple rounds. Each round will have a buy phase and a combat phase. Apart from this, there are also surprise cameos from Soul Fighters, said Riot Games.

Here’s all we know about the Arena mode in League of Legends and all the different Augments available for players.

Arena Mode: Pick/Ban Phase, Fights & Augments Explained

In the 2v2v2v2 Arena game mode, four pairs of players will fight one another over six rounds. Before the fight commences, players can choose items and upgrades and notably, there are no runes or summoner spells for this mode. Additionally, everyone starts at Level 3 and will level up throughout the rounds. For the first two buy phases, players get 1000 gold. When a player levels up, the amount they get to spend in the shop for items also increases each round. Once you have bought your boots and a starter item, you will start getting 3000 gold per buy phase.

Apart from the guaranteed gold in every non-Augment phase, players can also get extra gold in Arena mode. If you kill at least one enemy champion, you get 350 gold. Interestingly, you can spend 700 gold to buy a one-round boost using a new type of elixir called “Juices.” 

In this game mode, just like in TFT, Augments are powerful abilities that change the way your champion is played. In certain buy phases, instead of receiving gold, players will each get three Augments to choose from, each providing a different powerful ability. These Augments are separated into three tiers: Silver, Gold, and Prismatic, and are available in the second and fifth rounds.

After the preparation phase, players are sent to one of four new arenas, where they will fight against a team to the death. Notably, there are four different maps featured in Arena mode and each one of them has different terrain and unique map aspects that will force players to switch up their playstyles.

Augments and their Effects

Riot Games said, “These Augments are designed to combine in interesting ways with champion kits, augmenting their fantasy and forcing players to adapt to some really crazy situations.”

There are over 100 Augments in Arena mode and here’s a detailed list of what they are and how they work: 

Silver Augments & Effects

Gold Augments & Effects

Prismatic Augments & Effects

(The Augments and their effects, seen in the above tables, have been sourced from Dot Esports and Sportskeeda)

What are Arena Cameos?

The Arena mode or the 2v2v2v2 game mode also features some brief appearances from champions in the Soul Fighter theme. These champions help mix up fights with their cameos. 

Cameos feature the 10 champions that have Soul Fighter skins and they randomly choose a fight to affect. Each champion has their own unique mechanic to keep each fight interesting. “Lux sweeps the arena, ulting the first person she finds. Sett takes damage until he runs out of health before punching at the enemies of the team who last hit him. And Shaco? Well, he just runs around and does Shaco things,” noted Riot Games. 

Cameos will bring in game-to-game variance, which Riot Games hopes will make Arena a fun mode to play.

For those of you who like competing in everything, there is good news. Arena mode will have its own ranking system and tiers. You can read more about League of Legends’ exclusive Wood rank here in this article.

Notably, the big Soul Fighter 2023 Summer Event is scheduled to kick off on 20th July with LoL Patch 13.14 and this is the same date as Naafiri’s release.