You'll need a ton of Gold if you want to farm all the possible upgrades in LoL Swarm. While technically you can just gain some Gold while playing, later upgrades require so much Gold you'll surely have to focus on farming some if you want to get deep into them. We've put together the best LoL Swarm Gold Farming build so you can efficiently farm gold for your upgrades?.

Best Gold Farm build in Swarm

First off, it's recommended you go with the champion Yasuo when trying to prioritize farming Gold in Swarm. Yasuo has some of the best clearing potential in the game and can also quickly dash around the map allowing him to easily farm as many Gold drops as possible with each level. After unlocking and choosing Yasuo, here's the best build for him to farm Gold in Swarm:

Gold Farming Weapons

• Steel Tempest evolved into Wandering Storms (Requires Critical Chance Passive)
• Battle Bunny Crossbow evolved into Bunny Prime Ballista (Requires Critical Chance Passive)
• Blade-o-rang evolved into Quad-o-rang (Requires Move Speed Passive)
• Cyclnoic Slicers evolved into Unceasing Cyclone (Requires Health Regen Passive)
• Paw Print Poisoner evolved into Bearfoot Chem-Dispenser (Requires Move Speed Passive)

Gold Farming Passives

• Critical Chance
• Damage
• Haste
• Health Regen
• Movement Speed
• Projectiles

Other Swarm Gold Farming tips

When it comes to farming gold specifically in Swarm, there are a couple of things you can do to make the farming more efficient. Here are the best tips for increasing your gold farming in LoL Swarm:

• Play in a group. When anyone picks up Gold, all players receive it, so playing in a group just means killing more things and picking up more Gold over the course of a level.
• If Solo, play on Story mode. In a group, play Hard difficulty. Hard will net you more Gold, but if you're Solo it will take too long to kill the mobs, making it an overall lesser Gold income rate in comparison.
• Go for Gold farming-centric Augments like Death and Taxes which gives every enemy a chance to drop Gold, or Pick-Me-Up which vacuums up all Experience Orbs and Gold on the map periodically.
• Prioritize purchasing the Gold Upgrades first as it will simply increase the amount of Gold you get while farming.
• Make sure to grab Golden Choncc or Miss Fortune to increase you overall Gold drops.
• YuumiBot makes a solid option to help pickup Gold if you're killing faster than you can loot.

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For most players, Leona is the first non-default Champion you will unlock in LoL Swarm. She also serves as the first tank-oriented Champion for the new game mode, providing a unique style of melee gameplay. We've put together the best LoL Swarm?? Leona build tha?t takes advantage of her innate tankiness and ability to deal massive melee damage.

Best Leona build for Swarm

The absolute best build for Leona in Swarm revolves around her ability to deal massive AoE damage while being a tanking juggernaut. With this build, you'll add some additional defensive weapons while also building up close-ranged damage and then expanding on it with Area Size and increased Projectiles. Here is the best build for Leona in Swarm:

Best Leona Weapons

You'll definitely want to evolve Leona's Champion Weapon, Shield Slam. Once evolved into Light of the Lion, she deals massive damage in a big cone while also marking the t??argets to then be detonated dealing even more AoE damage. Paired with some defense-oriented weapons like Iceblast Armor and close-range?? AoE weapons that are enhanced via Area Size, like Radiant Field and Ani-Mines, Leona can become a walking death machine. Here are the best weapons for Leona:

• Shield Slam evolved into Light of the Lion (Requires Armor Passive)
• Radiant Field evolved into Explosive Embrace (Requires Area Size Passive)
• Iceblast Armor evolved into Deep Freeze (Requires Armor Passive)
• Ani-Mines evolved into Jinx's Tri-Namite (Requires Area Size Passive)
• Vortex Glove evolved into Tempest's Gauntlet (Requires Health Regen Passive)

Best Leona Passives

The best Passives for Leona are Area Size for increased AoE damage followed by mostly defensive Passives like Armor, Max Health, and Health Regen. All of the chosen weapons evolve using these Passives, making it a great synergistic build. You can also pick up further damage increases like Ability Haste and Projectiles if you have the extra Passive slots to do so. Youll want to prioritize these best Leona Passives for this Swarm build:

• Armor
• Max Health
• Health Regen
• Projectiles
• Area Size
• Ability Haste

How to unlock Leona in Swarm

For most players, Leona is going to be the first Champion you unlock in LoL Swarm. All you need to do to unlock Leona is upgrade the Searing Shortbow weapon to Level 2 on any level. You can do this in a matter of minutes us??ing one of the starter characters, Jinx or Seraphine. Doing so will unlock Leona per?manently, allowing you to use the powerful juggernaut the next time you play.

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Even though the Bullet Hell survivor genre that Vampire Survivors has created is relatively simple, if you're new to the genre, some things can be a bit confusing. In Swarm, one such feature that can be confusing for newer players is the Access Cards system. Here is everythi?ng you need to know about Access Cards including how to get them, what they do,? and how they work with the Card Collector Augment.

What are Access Cards in Swarm?

Access Cards are special immediate upgrade drops for a specific Weapon, Champion Ability, or Passive that you already have unlocked in LoL Swarm. These Access Cards drop after you defeat an an Elite or Mini-Boss monster on any Lol Swarm level, and they drop on the ground where the enemy dies alongside a handful of gold coins. When you walk over the Access Car??d you will pick it up, and all allied players will receive a popup indicating a s?ingle random potential upgrade.

When? you level up normally, you get to choose from three different upgrades, with the potential to include new ones as long as you are not at your max. However, with Access Cards, it will randomly pick one single upgrade for you; there are no choices to be made with Access Cards.

In the event you have already maxed out your Weapons and Passives and have no m?ore upgrades to obtain, you will instead be able to choose to heal 25% of Maximum Health to all allies or receive 25 Gold for all allies.

How does the Card Collector Augment work in Swarm?

One of the Augments in LoL Swarm, Card Collector, revolves around Access Cards?. This is a default Augment that you can obtain right from the start of the game and do not need to?? complete and unlock requirements. With Card Collector, Each Access Card picked up after equipping this Augment grants you five percent of damage.

This can be a massive damage ?increase, especially if you pick up this Augment early in the level then proceed to take out Elite and Mini-boss enemies to collect Access Cards and ramp up your damage buff. However, as the description for Card Collector indicates, this only counts Access Cards picked up after obtaining the augment. Therefore, if you're in the middle of a run or near the end and choose this Augment, you won't get nearly as much use out of it.

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In League of Legends Swarm, Illaoi acts as a super durable tank while also dealing out some of the best damage in the bullet-shooter mode. With the right weapons and passives, you can literally stand in one spot and wipe out hordes of enemies with your tentacles. Here is the best LoL Swarm Illaoi build at launch that you should go for.

Best Illaoi build for Swarm

As Illaoi, you'll deal massive amounts of damage while barely taking any yourself as long as you have the proper build. You'll mostly specialize around your Tentacle Slam champion ability and evolve it into Grizzly Smash. However, you'll also want to grab some tanky Passives as well as some further damage options to really take advantage of Illaoi's unique abilities. Here is the best Illaoi build in Swarm:

Best Illaoi Weapons in Swarm

Like most Champions in Swarm, Illaoi is at her best when her Tentacle Slam is fully upgraded and evolved into Grizzly Smash. At this time, her tentacles have a chance of being bigger and stronger, and the Duration Passive makes it so you can have many tentacles at once. Paired with her ultimate that spawns 6 tentacles as well, you can eventually have a whole screen of tentacles slamming everything with ease, wiping out the entire map. You'll also want the best Illaoi weapons for Swarm:

• Tentacle Slam evolved into Grizzly Smash (Requires Duration Passive)
• Battle Bunny Crossbow evolved into Bunny Prime Ballista (Requires Critical Chance Passive)
• Bunny Mega-Blast evolved into Rabid Rabbit Raindown (Requires Critical Chance Passive)
• Gatling Bunny-Guns evolved into Double Bun-Bun Barrage (Requires Duration Passive)
• Statikk Sword evolved into Prumbis's Electrocarver (Requires Max Health)

Best Illaoi Passives for Swarm

First and foremost, you need to make sure you max out Duration to increase how many tentacles you have on the map at once. From there, you want to focus tanky Passives like Health Regen and Max Health while also grabbing some further damage Passives. Duration is a must, but aside from that it's up to you if you want to go 3 damage Passives and 2 tanky Passives or vice versa. Look for these best Illaoi Passives in Swarm:

• Duration
• Damage
• Health Regen
• Max Health
• Ability Haste
• Critical Chance OR Armor

How to unlock Illaoi in Swarm

Illaoi is one of the easier champions to unlock in Swarm and all it requires is for you to upgrade the weapon Radian Field to Level 4. Load up any map, with any Champion, and when you level up make sure to choose Radiant Field if and when available. From here, just make sure you upgrade Radiant Field every time i??t? is possible for you to do so. Once you reach Radiant Field Level 4 you'll unlock Illaoi permanently as a champion regardless if you successfully complete the map or die.

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Yasuo is one of the best Champions you can go with in LoL Swarm, bringing unparalleled mobility, damage, and rather solid survivability. Once fully built, this build can help Yasuo quickly clear massive amounts of enemies on any map across all difficulties. This is the best LoL Swarm Yasuo build in the game at the time of launch.

Best Yasuo build for Swarm

Primarily, the best Yasuo build in League of Legends Swarm centers around his weapon ability, Steel Tempest, which later evolves into Wandering Storms. This Critical Chance-focused build synergizes extremely well with other Crit-capable weapons allowing Yasuo to put out insane amounts of AoE damage. Proper use of Sweeping Blade and Wind Wall will allow you to survive the onslaught while quickly carving through lots of mobs. Here is the best Yasuo build in all of LoL Swarm:

Best Yasuo Weapons

The strongest weapon for Yasuo is the starter Steel Tempest weapon that you will evolve into Wandering Storms. Once paired with the Critical Chance passive, this weapon skill deals insane damage. Pair this with other Critical Chance capable weapons and you'll easily clear hordes of enemies throughout Swarm. You want to use these best Yasuo weapons in Swarm:

• Steel Tempest evolved into Wandering Storms (Requires Critical Chance passive)
• Battle Bunny Crossbow evolved into Bunny Prime Ballista (Requires Critical Chance passive)
• Bunny Mega-Blast evolved into Rabid Rabbit Raindown (Requires Critical Chance passive)
• Cyclonic Slicers evolve into Unceasing Cyclone (Requires Health Regen passive)
• Echoing Batblades evolved into Vayne's Chromablades (Requires Projectile count passive)

Best Yasuo Passives

Even though Steel Tempest is a big part of being effective with Yasuo, equally as important is getting the Critical Chance passive. This not only evolves Steel Tempest into Wandering Storms, but all the other weapons with this build are also Critical Strike capable, making it a very strong passive for Yasuo speci?fically. Here are the best Yasuo Passives:

• Critical Chance
• Projectiles
• Damage
• Health Regen
• Ability Haste
• Area Size OR Movement Speed

How to unlock Yasuo in Swarm

All you have to do to unlock Yasuo in Swarm is successfully complete the Subterranean Lab level on any difficulty (including Story) and defeat the level's final boss, Bel'Veth?. Load into Subterranean Lab on any difficulty either solo or with friends, and survive for 15 minutes. Afterwards, the level boss Bel'Veth will spawn which you will need to defeat to unlock Yasuo. When Bel'Veth puts lines all around the arena, note that she will then dash through all those lines in the order they appeared. Simply dodge out of the first one then move into its location, or find a safe spot that none of the lines intercept in order to take out Bel'Veth and unlock Yasuo.

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With the release of LoL Swarm, there nine total Champions immediately available for you to try. You only start with two—Jinx and Seraphine—but quickly unlock more. Most of the champions have their own unique playstyle as well as strengths and weaknesses, but some are certainly stronger overall than others. This is our LoL Swarm Tier List for all Champions at release.

LoL Swarm Champion Tier List

This tier list includes all nine LoL Swarm champions and is based around their overall capabilities across the board. If you build a specific way, or are playing multiplayer with others, the best champion for you may change based on the synergy with other cha?mpions.

Our S Tier champions in this tier list have survivability and high AoE kill speed making them strong options. Champions in the A Tier can handle most situations but may be lacking in a single category such as survivability, mobility, or even damage output. Champions in the B Tier are overall solid but either there are better options with other champions or they simply don't excel enough to make them worth playing. Finally, the lone character in the C Tier, Aurora, is a bit under-tuned right now and needs some buffs to be competitive with other champions. Here is our full LoL Swarm Champion Tier List for release:

S Tier

• Illaoi
• Yasuo

A Tier

• Briar
• Jinx
• Leona
• Xayah

B Tier

• Riven
• Seraphine

C Tier

• Aurora

Best LoL Swarm Champions

The current best champions in League of Legends Swarm mode are Illaoi and Yasuo. In fact, if you can play duo with a friend, if one of you plays each character you can trivialize most of the maps in Swarm, eventually being able to just stand completely still while you clear out the entire screen of enemies as they reach yo?u.

Illaoi

Illaoi naturally has insane survivability while still being able to deal out massive damage, just like her League of Legends counterpart. Her weapon Tentacle ??Slam spawns in tentacles as she slams areas around her, allowing you to quickly and efficien?tly create powerful zone control.

Tentacle Smash, Illaoi's 'E' ability, slams an area in a line dealing damage and knocking enemies up into the air. This allows you to create a lane for escaping swarms of?? enemies while also knocking up and interrupting powerful enemies like bosses. Finally, her 'R' ultimate ability Leap of Faith deals massive shock??wave AoE damage around her while spawning 6 Tentacles. If you evolve Tentacle Slam for Illaoi, the size and damage of your ultimate tentacles that spawn are also increased.

Ideally, you want to build around Illaoi's tentacles and tanky nature. For weapons, you'll want to evolve Tentacle Slam while also grabbing damage-complimenting weapons like Bunny Mega Blast, Statikk Sword, Bunny Guns, Radiant Field, or even Vortex Gloves. You can also grab Iceblast Armor for increased survivability. As for Passives, you'll want to grab Duration, Damage, Health Regen,?? Max Health, A??bility Haste, and Armor. This will make you insanely tanking while also allowing you to evolve all of your weapons and therefore output massive amounts of damage.

Yasuo

As Yasuo, you'll have some of the best mobility and survivability in all of Swarm while also dealing some of the best damage. The synergy between Yasuo's Way?? of the Wanderer passive that generates FLOW while increasing Critical Chance sets up for insanely high damage Crit Chance focused builds. Yasuo's Basic weapon Steel Tempest evolves into Wandering Storms, as massive AoE damage powerhouse.

Proper usage of Yasuo's 'E' Sweeping Blade ability can boost your survivability with its shield while also allowing you to ??quickly maneuver the map and get out of sticky situations. Finally, Yasuo's 'R' ultimate ability Wind Wall is one of the strongest crowd control options in the game as it knocks enemies backwards while also blocking all proje??ctiles from coming through.

If you choose Yasuo, you'll want to build around the fact that he synergizes extremely well with Critical Chance. You'll want to evolve Steel Tempest to Wandering Storms while using other Critical Chance weapons like Echoing Batblades, Bunny Mega Blast, Bunny Cros?sbow, Blade-o-rang, and Vortex Gloves. When it comes to passives, you need to prioritize Critical Chance, while also going for Projectiles, Damage, Movement Spee??d, Health Regen, and Ability Haste.

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The Vampire Survivors bullet-hell style variant for the League of Legends universe, LoL Swarm, has officially launched today alongside the new Aurora character. As per usual in the genre, you can evolve your weapons and abilities once you level them up and pair them with a specific Passive combination. We've put together these LoL Swarm Weapons and Abilities Evolves charts so you can keep track of the re??quirements to get each e?volution!

All LoL Swarm Weapon Evolves

With the launch of LoL Swarm, there are 19 total Weapons you can unlock. You will start with some weapons unlocked, and others can be obtained by completing certain achievements. Each weapon has a powered up Evolved Weapon form that unlocks if you reach Level 5 with that Weapon and also have the required Passive to unlock its evolved form. If you meet those requirements, you'll have a chance of getting the Evolved Weapon each time you level up. Here are all the LoL Swarm Weapon Evolves combinations at launch:

All LoL Swarm Champion Ability Evolves

Every Champion in LoL Swarm also has their own unique Ability with an Evolved Ability form as well as long as you reach Level 5 with that Ability and have the required Passive as well. These are all of the LoL Swarm? Champion Abilities and the required c?ombination to evolve them:

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The League of Legends universe has grown well beyond the bounds of its MOBA origins. Its characters have shifted over to other genres and game types, ranging from auto-chess and fighting games to turn-based RPGs and Netflix shows. So in that respect, Riot putting its champions into the bullet heaven genre with League's Swarm mode shouldn't be a surprise.

Officially announced today, Swarm is the new PvE game mode arriving as part of this summer's event. The full name is Swarm | Operation: Anima Squad, and as the name implies, it's not just themed around League of Legends, but specifically the Anima Squad line of skins. For those who don't play League of Legends, that might be confusing, so I'll simplify it a bit: these are multiversal versions of characters, like the different Spiders of the Spider-Verse.

In this alt-universe, the Anima Squad is a cybernetic and animal-themed team fighting against the Primordians to save humanity. You'll still see names you recognize, between old standards like Yasuo and Jinx, and newer faces like Aurora. The entire event takes place inside the League client, much like Teamfight Tactics. But while the format looks familiar, Swarm will feel quite different, whether you've been a long-time League player or just starting out.

We got the chance to go hands-on with the new game mode at a preview event amid Summer Game Fest. I've spent quite a bit of time with Vampire Survivors and the many, many games inspired by it, so I was curious to see what Riot was doing in the space. My first surprise was that Riot was building this inside the League client, rather than making it standalone.

In a Q+A with the developers of the mode, it was made there because the original prototype was built there. But also, building within the League environment offered some speed. Champions, animations, and other assets are already in the client. Teamfight Tactics was, according to them, easier to make faster within the client than without. And since this is a League even??t, Riot likes keeping it within tha??t ecosystem.

Legendary survivors

In Swarm, you pick from the roster of League of Legends champions and enter the arena, where you then start walking around and fending off encroaching hordes of foes. You don't fire (most) of those skills yourself, though. They auto-fire, as you simply steer your champion around the map. And, for a League first, you ?utilize WASD for movement, while opting to either control the direction of your fire with your? cursor or default to auto-aim.

Over time, the enemies get more durable and dangerous, eventually spawning special varieties of dangerous foes and even bosses. To combat this, you can pick up experience orbs that drop upon an enemy's death, choosing new abilities or boosting existing ones with a pick-three system every time you level up. If you've played Vampire Survivors, you know exactly how this plays.

Honestly, this familiarity isn't inherently bad. There's a reason many other games, not just Swarm, utilize concepts from Vampire Survivors for their own bullet heavens; the ideas are just that synergistic with the mode. Core concepts like picking up orbi??tal projectiles to push back enemies, increasing your movement speed or fire rate, and "evolving" abilities into stronger versions based on attack-attri??bute synergies all work as well here as they've worked elsewhere. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

One neat idea are "events" that can happen in the arena, where characters like Yuumi can pop up and kick off mini-game??s for rewards. They can be pretty difficult, at times, and sometimes involve complicated mechanics to complete while avoiding waves of enemies, like kicking soccer balls into goals. They're worth it, though, for the upgrades if you can manage them.

Where Swarm feels notably different is how its individual champions move, attack, and operate. More than most other games I've played in this genre, champions have core mechanics that define the way they survive in-game. Jinx is your prototypical bullet heaven character, whose machine-gun attacks and hype-up passive mean she gets the zoomies the m?ore she kills, and shoots faster the more zoomy she is. Shoot fast, kill faster, rinse and repeat.

Swap over to Riven, though, and you're playing something completely different. The broken sword-wielder does a hop-slam attack, metered off how much she has moved. So above all, keep moving. Her abilities encourage this further, giving you shields and scaling well with Armor, so you can get into the t??hick of the horde and still emerge alive.

Yasuo became a fast-favorite for several people at the preview event, I think. He loves increased odds to critically strike, and can start to really output damage the higher his crit chance gets. Add in his Wind Wall, which can create a barrier? and hold the waves of foes at bay for ranged attackers, and he's a surprisingly effective mix of utility and damage.

Champion identity might be the silver bullet for League of Legends' Swarm mode, as each character can function in different ways. The mode is also co-op, allow??ing up to four players to team up and fight back against the Primordians, and there's plenty of meta-progression to unlock too, between perm?anent upgrades to stats, new maps, and more characters.

Getting animated

Riot's vision for the game mode is also noticeably more colorf??ul and cheerful than the more grim iterations of this genre. Rather than bats and zombies, you're fending off aliens in bright locales. During our preview period, dangerous projectiles manifested as beach balls that would menacingly roll towards us. I'm not sure if that's staying in, but I hope it do??es. There was nothing quite like hearing someone yell out "not another damn beach ball" amidst the rows of PCs.

There were times where the screen got a little hard to read, thanks to how many enemies and colors were on the screen. Contrast could be a little higher, in my o??pinion. But for the most part, I knew where my character was, and where the enemies were. Following some of the shots and projectiles were a little harder, but it worked out okay.

The character and color extends to the bosses of Swarm, too. Boss fights aren't necessarily new for the genre either, but Riot makes use of its recognizable roster once again to construct massive, acti??ve boss battles. We got to challenge the Primordian version of Rek'sai, which meant taking out tunnels and dodging underground strikes. By the time we got there, our squ?ad was fairly overpowered, but it felt good to fell such a massive titan and do some light raid mechanics, dodging AoEs and focusing targets.

Swarm will no doubt benefit from the built-in audience of League of Legends, and probably appeal to anyone that loves those characters and their Anima Squad skins. As for bullet heaven genre fans, I do think there's e??nough here to merit downloading the client and trying it for the low, low price of free. While some core concepts will feel familiar, the way that champion toolkits have b?een integrated into the characters' actions works really well.

If anything, I'm curious to see whether it sticks around the way TFT has. The Anima Squad event kicks off on July 17 and runs through August 19, which leaves a short window for Swarm players to dig into all that's here. Riot made it sound like they'd watch the numbers, when it comes to whether this mode could ever come back. But I wouldn't mind seeing Riot continue to tinker with this idea. It's a good? one so far, and could get even better given time.

League of Legends' Swarm mode goes live on July 17.

_{Travel accommodations for this preview were provided by Riot Games.}

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