/dev: Return of the Doom Bots

Hey gamers, the robot uprising has begun and they’re kicking things off by bringing back Doom Bots for patch 25.17! But this time it’s even... Doomier. They want a rematch and this time they’ve gotten stronger! 

Doom Bots is a PvE gamemode pitting you and four other teammates against Veigar and his army of overpowered, busted-as-heck bots. Your goal is to survive against the bots for 15 minutes, then take on Veigar while protecting your Nexus!

When we rolled out our new bot tech last year a lot of you asked us what it would be like to play Doom Bots with these upgraded bots, and it got us thinking... So the revival of Doom Bots is thanks to you.

Without further ado, let’s get into what’s new.

Badder Bots, Doom-Boss Fights, New Curses… Oh My!

Of course the real stars of the show are the Doom Bots themselves! We’re always making investments into how we “make” League, and our upgrades last year to bots unlocked our ability to iterate quickly to find fun and interesting ideas. This meant we could add a new “Doom Bots” layer on top of them instead of building an entirely new one… And on this layer we put a bunch of silly nonsense and accidentally created a bot that was so evil he kept crashing our early playtests. Of course: Wukong, The Monkey King of Doom!

Wukong’s Q is larger and more powerful, hitting multiple enemies in a single strike. His E will create more clones based on its rank, and when he ults, there are even more clones! Start thinking about your wave clear options, because if he gets his combo off you’ll be looking at SEVEN spinning Wukongs powered by Veigar’s evil. And of course, he’s doing all this with buffed stats.

But honestly… we want some surprises when it comes to the bots. One more? Okay, okay… One for the long-suffering supports. Nami, the Tidecaller of Doom will be looking out for her fellow Doom Bots. Nami’s bubble splits in three when it lands, so practice dodging! Her E is now an AOE that will affect more allies per rank, and her ult… well, we think the name fits even better now.

All that’s to say… good luck!

We Took the Tiny Evil and Made It… Beeg

When we started work on resurrecting Doom Bots, one area where we felt there was big room for improvement was the boss. Teemo was spectacular, and we loved the tone he brought to the mode, but we felt we could do more than sending him back down mid lane to destroy your base. Literally he just walked. That was his mechanic.

Swarm taught us a TON about making bosses for League, so we really wanted to apply that knowledge here. As we explored options and ideas for improved mechanics, only one choice came anywhere close. Enter the evilest option that exists in our roster… Veigar!

With Veigar we had two main goals: make the first half matter, and involve the Doom Bots in the finale. On making the first half matter, after you’ve spent 15 minutes duking it out with the Bots, we don’t want you to just forget about them. So now when Veigar comes down, the bots will come after your remaining structures, then during the fight Veigar won’t attack your Nexus until all your inhibitors are destroyed. If you do well in the first half, you’ll gain an edge in the second!

For bringing the bots into the finale, while you’re working as a team to dodge into safe zones and stop Veigar, we thought it made sense to play into Veigar’s lore a little bit here. Because Veigar was captured and tortured by Mordekaiser, we thought it made sense to tie it together and, well, give Morde’s abilities to Veigar. So watch out, he might send one—or all of you—into the Death Realm to fight his Doom Bots!

Trials of Doom

Some of the feedback we received around Doom Bots way back in the day was that you wanted more difficulty, so we took this point into account and are introducing an entirely new feature called “Trials of Doom.” Each patch, there will be a unique Trial that'll rotate until the last patch of Doom Bots' run (where all three will be available). We don’t want to spoil all the Trials just yet, but here's a preview of the first one.

The first Trial turns the difficulty up, but also gives all the Doom Bots Veigar’s passive, so with each successful spell hit, they gain Adaptive Force. Veigar’s Curses also won’t turn off like they normally do, so they’ll stack across the 15 minutes, turning the Rift into a real bullet hell.

We’ve given you some buffs to make it fair…ish, in this one everyone gets a huge amount of bonus item haste. Each Trial will also add a special Prismatic item to the shop. In the first Trial, try and outstack Veigar and his Doom Bots with your own Demon King’s Crown. 

If you beat all three Trials, there’s a title in it for you. But be warned: Trials of Doom aren’t for the faint of heart. Get a team together, plan your strat, and try them out!

Missions and Curses

Curses are a core element of Doom Bots, and we didn’t want to change much here. We realized though that the best Curses are mean, even sometimes painful. But if there’s a way to use them against the Doom Bots—to escape certain death, or even turn the tables—Curses become a lot more fun to try and play around. So we added a few new Curses with that philosophy. So when you’re being polymorphed, or shrunk down to yordle size, think about how you could turn that into an advantage!

Aside from all of that we felt something was missing. Defending against the Doom Bots was fun, and so was dodging Curses, but we wanted something a bit different. We were looking for things to break up the defense—to give you all a bit of hope amid all the Doom!

We ended up creating Missions. Two moments in the game where Veigar sets a challenge for his opponents, offering a small amount of power if players can overcome the goal he’s set for them. Again, we drew from Swarm here, thinking about what had worked for Yuumi’s Quests, and then finding distinct Doom Bots versions.

You might be asked to out-damage the Doom Bots in a test of strength, or to take down a giant Ziggs before he destroys all your buildings. Do these things and you’ll take home a random Dragon Soul, and a nice chunk of gold to get you the items you’ll need to fight Veigar himself. But be warned: if you fail, Veigar will punish you, or reward his faithful Doom Bots!

Good Luck!

We had a ton of fun making Doom Bots again and we’re excited for you all to try it after all these years. A lot of us are really big fans of the original, so to see the passionate requests over the years for it to come back really fueled us to go beyond just “bringing it back.”

We hope you enjoy it and we’re looking forward to hearing what you think when it goes live in a few weeks! Thanks for reading our words!