One of the things that make League of Legends stand out from many other games in the genre is its accessibility. You can be rich or poor, male or female, old or young; League can be played by anyone and is played by everyone. The core experience of the game is always available for free for everyone. But Riot Games goes one step further.
Usually, you have to buy Riot Points with real-world money in order to purchase skins for champions and wards and customize your range of available champions to play. With Blue Essence, and especially the Blue Essence Emporium, you can do a lot of the things for free that would otherwise require you to play money.
You don’t have to spend money to enjoy customizing the way your Champions look. You just need to keep playing!
Also read: How to check how much money I’ve spent on League of Legends
What is Blue Essence?
To understand the Blue Essence Emporium, it’s essential to know what Blue Essence is and what you can do with it. To put it simply, Blue Essence is the in-game currency in League of Legends that you can earn simply by playing the game daily.
Previously, the term “Influence Points” or IP was in vogue. You could double the amount of IP on your first win of the match each day. Otherwise, you used to get about 100 IPs per match. Then Riot Games, true to their legacy of experimenting and innovating, changed the way the in-game currency worked.
The Blue Essence was introduced, and it completely changed the way the currency in the game operated. Now you don’t get Blue Essence after each match which was the case with Influence Points. You get Blue Essence only after your first win of the match, upon leveling up and participating in various events that are always active on the League of Legends client and just watching competitive League of Legends matches via the LoL client.
Sounds simple enough? Riot actually invented a way to keep us hooked to the game, and who is to complain? We would log in to League every day just to play but earning Blue Essence through all these various means makes the client a lot more interesting. There’s more to League of Legends than just a 5v5 match.
Also read: How to get Blue Essence Faster – Blue Essence Farming
The Cool Things You Can Do with Blue Essence:
You can spend hours customizing. Some of the things you can get with Blue Essence include chromas, ward skins, and emotes, buying icons, and gemstones.
Champion skins usually cost Riot points which you have to buy with real-world money. Chromas actually refers to the customization of the skin tone of champions after you’ve purchased a skin. If you have a mercenary Katarina skin, you can change the color of the green jacket.
With Shockblade Zed, you can change the color of grey robes that are greyish-white by default. You can buy new ward skins as well by using Blue Essence. You can even get new summoner icons if you feel like it.
Also read: Best Ward Skins in League of Legends
What is Blue Essence Emporium?
The Blue Essence Emporium is a shop that opens twice a year for a limited time in which you can buy many different goodies to boost your League summoner profile. You can get XP boosts, new rune pages, name changes for 50% off if you want to change your summoner name, and more.
When does Blue Essence Emporium open?
It usually opens once during midseason and once in pre-season. It’s always good to keep an eye out for when the Blue Essence Emporium opens up while playing the game to keep earning Blue Essence. A lot of stuff that you would otherwise have to pay real-world money for is available for purchase via the in-game currency that is the Blue Essence during the Blue Essence Emporium.
How Does Blue Essence Emporium work?
There are many surprises and mystery boxes to discover as well during the Blue Essence Emporium. Some of these include the Mystery Icon Box, which is always an icon you don’t own before opening the box, the mystery ward skin box, some emote such as the “Make it Rain” emote that was an Emporium exclusive in November of 2018.
If you have lots of Blue Essence saved up during the season, you can buy Gemstones which are otherwise very rare to find. There are mystery ward skin boxes as well. These boxes include Esports wards, some wards that specific to any event happening at the time. The summoner icon boxes can consist of team-specific icons, i.e., icons based on pro-teams such as the SKT.
A few years back, an Emporium exclusive skin was the URFWick skin for Warwick that you could buy for 150,000 BE(Blue Essence). A 150,000 BE might sound like a lot but remember, you get BE just by playing the game! So just keep playing and saving up Blue Essence for the twice-a-year sale when the Blue Essence Emporium opens up, and Riot will reward you for your loyalty!
It’s also important to keep in mind that if something is available for purchase during the midseason, it might not be there for pre-season afterwards! Riot is always innovating and mixing up what you can and cannot do with Blue Essence. And in each Blue Essence Emporium, the things available to buy are different! This is one more reason to save as much Blue Essence as possible before the Emporium starts!
The Chromas available for various champions, and their skins are there only for a limited amount of time during the Emporium. The same holds for all the other goodies you can buy with BE. The downside is that if you missed the opportunity to make the most out of Blue Essence Emporium, you might not get the same chance again. The upside is that if you do manage to make the most out of Blue Essence Emporium, you can brag and show off because very few others might have grabbed the same opportunity as you.
Conclusion
If you are a newbie to League of Legends and see enemy champions or your team-mates with cool champion skins, unique ward skins, and summoner icons, there is no need to despair. You can simply enjoy the game and earn Blue Essence by playing regularly. Once the Blue Essence Emporium sale hits, you can get cool new skins to show off as well!
And every Blue Essence Emporium brings with it new opportunities to grab. And Riot is likely to keep up its tradition of keeping us all excited for the next Emporium where we can used our hard-earned BE to get all sorts of cool stuff for free!
