Cover-Credits:
League of Legends’ newest champion Naafiri who is set to be released in LoL Patch 13.14 will be the 164th champion to join the ever-expanding roster of the game. Notably, this year Riot Games already released support champion Milio and Naafiri will be the assassin darkin that it teased last year. Following Naafiri will be a “hangry jungler” noted the company in its 2023 Champion Roadmap. This hangry jungler is called Briar and she hails from the region of Noxus.
Apart from talking about her briefly, it seems like Riot Games has been dropping hints and easter eggs about Briar in its other game Valorant. Here’s all we know about Briar in League of Legends.
Briar the Vampire with a fervent hunger
Riot Games first revealed Briar in its Season 2023 LoL Pls video. In this video, the company showed a Castlevania-esque building with gothic themes. It also noted that this champion will be a hangry (hungry+angry) jungler. Following this, in the April 2023 Champion Roadmap blog post, Product Lead for Champions Lexi “Riot Lexical” Gao gave more information about the idea behind making this jungler hungry. She also touched upon Lead Champion Designer August “August” Browning seeing the vision for Briar.
In the blog post, Lexical said the developers explored tons of kits with fervent hunger while working on Naafiri but ended up ice-boxing it as they felt it was more in line with a diver/skirmisher jungler than an assassin. “And then lead designer August Browning saw it.
He’s always been really passionate about a certain type of mythological creature... Anyway, the team really liked the idea of exploring an uncontrollable hunger, and what happens when sometimes that hunger takes over and the creature is allowed to feast on those who deserve it,” she added.
Lexical added that Briar has learned who her friends and foes are and that she is on the path of reformation now that she has that “insatiable hunger somewhat under control…”
When Lexical talked about August being obsessed with a certain kind of creature, she means vampires. In 2022, Riot August stated that he always wanted to do a vampire champion and that he categorizes Vladimir as a blood mage and not a vampire. In an interview with Millenium.gg, he said, “I would like to make a Vampire with all the letters. I never had the chance, maybe one day they will let me. A vampire would be super cool. Turning into a bat and sucking the blood out of enemies and those moves. It would be so cool.”
Notably, August tweeted on 10th January, “Just locked the kit for "hangry jungler". They're the champion after Naafiri! Can't wait :D”
So the following are the facts that are confirmed about this new jungler who will be released after Naafiri:
The champion hails from Noxus.
She is called Briar.
She will be a vampire.
She has “somewhat” learned to control her insatiable hunger.
Briar teased in Valorant Cinematic?
Now that we have a fair idea of Briar, the hangry jungler who will be released after Naafiri in League of Legends, let us explore some of the potential easter eggs that Riot Games has dropped so far.
If you also play Valorant, you must know that the game just saw the release of Deadlock, and this new Norwegian agent was welcomed to the game via a detailed cinematic called Unmade. If you pay close attention to this cinematic, you will hear Deadlock and her team mention the name “Briar.”
At the start of the video, one of the characters says, “Briar team, status check 2!” The team that enters the laboratory in Norway is called Briar in the Valorant universe.
Likewise, in an earlier teaser for Deadlock, players were able to see a folder named Briar on Cypher’s computer. The teaser caption said, “Sova, Cypher here. I’ve decrypted the dossiers. We’ve got weapons experts, extraction specialists... the whole team's made up of elite hunters. Except one… a Kingdom scientist. I’ll keep digging.”
In this short clip, you will be able to see Cypher decrypting dossiers from folders named Ursa and KNG but not Briar.
As we already know League of Legends’ Briar is being designed by August. He was responsible for the ability kits of both Zeri (League of Legends) and Neon (Valorant). It would be interesting to see both Valorant and League of Legends have some sort of collaboration.
Readers should note that all the information mentioned in this article about Briar’s potential easter eggs in Valorant must be taken with a pinch of salt. Riot Games will release more information about Briar soon after the release of Naafiri.
