
Riot are celebrating the launch of their card battler by introducing a new region to the game.
Launching alongside the game itself on April 30th, Legends of Runeterra's first expansion set is called Rising Tides. While the expansion will bring with it new cards for the game's existing six regions, the biggest addition here comes in the form of the Bilgewater region.
According to Riot, "Bilgewater joins LoR’s cast of regions for even more deckbuilding possibilities, and brings a slew of options to take enemies by surprise and shoot holes in their plans."
"Pirate gangs never pass up a chance to plunder, swindlers and rogues keep the next big score in their sights, and monsters of the deep devour entire ships without warning."
The expansion set will bring over 120 new cards to the game. 60 or so of these belong to the new Bilgewater region, which Riot say will have five champions at launch. The developer haven't disclosed whether every Bilgewater-based League of Legends characters will be making an appearance here but mainstays like Gangplank, Miss Fortune and Fizz look to be locked-in at this early stage.
The other 60 or so cards being added here are divided among the other regions in the game. As part of this, Demacia, Noxus, Ionia, Shadow Isles, Frejlord, Piltover and Zaun will each get a new champion added to their roster.
As with the original six regions in Legends of Runeterra, Bilgewater cards can be earned through playing matches, weekly vault rewards and progressing along the Region Road for the faction. Riot are also extending the region roads for the other regions in the game by five levels (bringing the total to 25) and increasing the rate at which XP is earned for the first twelve levels of each of Runeterra's pre-Rising Tide regions by 50% to make it easier for new players to catch up on the competition.
The 1.0 Update for Legends of Runeterra will also add two new Guardians, a Bilgewater-themed board, 10 new emotes and 10 new cosmetic card backs to collect.
Riot say that Rising Tides will roll out to PC players early on the 28th of April with the game's mobile version launching a few days after that.