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Riot Games is on a roll in Season 12 with the numerous mid-scope updates, the durability patch and the company is releasing new champions to keep its League of Legends player base busy. Only last week, players were introduced to Void Empress Bel’Veth and are still trying to learn their way around her in the jungle. Now, Riot has surprised by releasing the champion trailer for League’s 161st champion Nilah.
On 16th June, Riot Games posted a 12-second teaser trailer for Nilah which showed a silhouette of the new champion as they emerged from the mist and shadows on a dock. It wrote, “The waters of life flow on forever. Whose story will they tell? From distant shores, tomorrow.”
Today, on 17th June, the company officially revealed Nilah’s champion trailer and said, “Evil falls to joyous strength. You will know her name.” This was quickly after the trailer in Chinese was allegedly leaked ahead of time.
Who is Nilah: The Joy Unbound?
In the trailer, Nilah declares, “I am Nilah of the Seventh Layer. May you find joy in the world beyond,” before bolting towards her enemy.
The trailer posted by Riot seems to be a continuation of the earlier teaser and is set on a similar dock. Nilah walks through what seems to be a destructed and dilapidated pier and a dark mist follows her through. She prays to the god of waters and runs on water and takes on a sea monster with her whip.
In the gameplay cuts of the video, Nilah can be seen using her whip at melee range and jumping around her enemies with swift movement speed. This probably means that Nilah will also be a highly mobile champion in League of Legends. She also uses a spell shield, similar to Sivir’s, to block Twisted Fate’s stun card.
She also high-fives a hand, the same one that appeared in the League of Legends Season 2022 Opening Day livestream and Nilah calls it “Demon.” From the looks of it, it could very well be that this is the dark mist or force that follows Nilah.
Riot Games has been talking about a stranger from the land of a thousand colors who supposedly has a joyous laugh and Lead Producer of Champions Ryan “Reav3” Mireles stated that the next champion after Bel’Veth would be a non-traditional bot-laner.
In the latest League of Legends Champion Roadmap, Riot Games wrote, “There was a fight that erupted between the stranger [Nilah] and the Noxian band of ten people. Oyster Bill said all he heard was the joyous laughter and the sound of splashing water and when the mist cleared up, he found all the Noxians dead and the stranger missing.”
Nilah seems extremely fun and could bring a new dynamic to the bottom lane since she is a non-traditional bot-laner. It is revitalizing to see Riot Games experiment with champions like Zeri and Renata Glasc and the expectations are through the roof for Nilah as well. Riot has yet to reveal the official release date for Nilah but players can expect to see her hit the rift in LoL Patch 12.13 or LoL Patch 12.14. The League of Legends community is also speculating that she will receive a Star Guardian skin upon release
