Legends of Runeterra has a card acquisition system similar to most other trading card games, but there are many easy ways to get new cards just by playing the game. The nice thing about this game is you can play it without paying a single dollar.
Starter Decks
A common question new players ask is what deck to choose from between the three starter decks. It really comes down to what you want to play and what you’re familiar with, but if we had to choose we would probably go with the Ionia PNZ deck with Jinx and Zed. It’s likely the strongest of the three based on the quality of cards you get right off the bat.
Crafting Cards
In Runeterra you use wildcards and shards to craft cards. Here’s what materials you need to craft different types of cards:
- 150 Shards = Common Card
- 400 Shards = Rare Card
- 1500 Shards = Epic Card
- 4000 Shards = Champion Card
If you head over to the store, you can purchase some wildcards with real money if this is something you are interested in, and this resets weekly. This means if you are the type of person who wants to drop money on this game, you are limited to the amount you can purchase per week. This is done to keep players from dropping a ton of money and making the game pay to win.
Weekly Vault
Another good way to get wildcards and shards is through the Vault. The weekly vault you can get by playing a specific amount each week and it’s basically just free value.
Region Rewards
The most common way to get shards and wildcards is through the Rewards page. There a bunch of different regions you can choose from once you are done with the prologue.
Whenever you are playing the game, you will have a region that is active. Let’s say for instance you select Demacia, this means when you play the game you will gain experience for Demacia.
You will want to strategically switch between the regions to get the most valuable rewards. Each time you level up your region you gain a reward associated with the region, so you’ll want to think about which region you want rewards from or what would be most valuable for you.
A good tip is to level regions in sets of four. The reason is because at level four of each region you’ll get a bunch of wildcard rewards. At level eight you’ll get a random champion card. So basically, every four levels you will get a good reward.
You can level each region to four, and then go back and level them to eight, and so forth to efficiently level your region rewards.
Expedition Mode
The final way to get some in game resources is through Expedition Mode. This is essentially the draft mode of Legends of Runeterra, if you’ve played other card games you may be familiar with this. You can start an expedition for one token, which all players are given one (1) of on each new account. You also get a token from the end of the prologue chain.
You build a deck from a series of cards and play them against opponents until you lose twice in a row or get seven wins. If you get knocked out, you can play Trial II, which is a second chance, to see if you can beat your first score. If you get the full 7 wins you can get 4,000 shards which is enough to get any one champion you want, ten rares, or twenty-five commons.
A tip to do well in Expedition is to know that picking the same color over and over again will increase your odds of getting that color. Diversifying your color picks will increase your odds of getting other colors. Try to stick with one color, if it’s a powerful color like Demacia. Otherwise you can try and build out a two-color deck.
The best region at the moment for Expedition is probably Demacia. Freljord, Noxus, and Shadow Isles are all also solid regions for this mode. Focus on picking cards with high raw stats rather than relying on finding the perfect synergy and combo cards. If you become good at Expedition this will be your most efficient way to farm in-game currency.
These are all the various different ways at the moment to acquire in-game currency which you can then use to craft cards and build strong decks. Good luck out there!
