If you logged in to League of Legends yesterday, you were probably greeted by an update to the patcher. My own migration took more time than expected, but in the end I’m hoping the technical support for this new launcher will help reduce Riot’s customer support load.

The new launcher is designed to be able to handle older versions of the League of Legends engine so that game updates don’t break old replays. It’s also intended to smooth out the patching experience, so hopefully fewer reinstalls are required.

As Slamtastic mentioned on another post, this does have an effect on the way custom skins are handled. It is still possible to install them, it just takes a little more effort. You can find a thread with instructions on the League of Legends forums.

Thankfully, Riot seems to have worked out the FPS/latency issues that some players associated with the new launcher. I know the last time I went from new launcher to old I saw an FPS bump of 10-15 frames. I haven’t noticed any FPS loss since yesterday’s update.

Back on the road today so another quick post as we fight through rain outside Philly. This is some good news, though. Riot has seen fit to pick up three more community skins for official distribution.

This is the kind of thing I love about Riot. The developer could easily put an end to custom skins, or at least send them underground. Instead they embrace the artistic community around the game, throw some RP at the guys making the skins, and give us more choices in game.

As for the skins, you can now get Groovy Zilean, Deep One Kassadin, and Frosted Ezreal in the game store. Zilean is my favorite of the three, but I might have to wait for a sale before I pick him up.

On the whole, I have always been impressed with Riot and its outreach to the community around League of Legends. Riot does an awesome job promoting third-party tournaments and supporting them with Riot Point sponsorships. The company also hosts a load of community events and interviews, which goes a long way toward giving the community a sense of involvement with the continued development.

The Exiled Morgana skin is just another step in the right direction. If you aren’t a regular forum-goer, you might not know about the huge custom skin community. A lot of their creations are incredible, and though other players can’t see them, it’s pretty cool to have Iron Man Blitzcrank stomping around the Fields of Justice. The new Exiled Morgana skin was actually the brainchild of a summoner by the name Pawige, who originally created “Fallen Angel” Morgana for the community to use. Riot liked the skin enough that they decided to make it official, and created their own version of the skin, crediting Pawige and offering him some Riot Points for his work.

I don’t think I can overstate how much this makes me like Riot (as if I wasn’t already a huge fan).

I’m a big fan of Riot’s various skins for the champions in game. A lot of them are pretty damn cool, and it’s nice to be able to show your pride in a particular toon by playing with one of the skins. Buying all of them would be a little ridiculous, though, and there are a few standard models with no skins at all. Thankfully, a small community of artists has cropped up to provide custom skins for free.

If you head over to heroesmod.com you can have a look at the skins available for any character. The site has full instructions for installation. My personal favorite is the Necron Blitz I used for the picture, but there’s also an Iron Man Blitz, a pretty cool Nidalee skin, and a nice replacement for Morgana. The skins only exist client-side, so your friends/enemies won’t see them, but it’s a nice way to add some flavor to the game. Did I mention it’s free?

Start with the tutorial for simple directions on installation. A lot of the skinners on the forums suggest you mess with a zip file in your DATA folder and it’s just not necessary.