Riot Games’ latest League of Legends battle pass has left players confused due to its seemingly minuscule rewards for dedicated grinders. After completing the main track of the battle pass, players can earn a repeatable reward of just 25 Orange Essence (OE) for every five additional levels they complete.
For context, Orange Essence is the currency used to unlock cosmetic items like champion skins in League of Legends. An average epic skin costs around 1,050 OE to unlock, which means players would need to complete the five-level cycle a staggering 42 times—equivalent to 210 extra levels—just to earn enough OE for a single skin.
The math gets even more frustrating when looking at the actual time investment required. According to the game’s reward structure, battle pass levels require 500 experience points to complete. The unlimited mission that provides this experience gives 50 XP per completion and requires 50 “objective points” earned at a rate of about 1.3 points per minute of gameplay.
This works out to nearly 39 minutes of gameplay for a single mission completion. To earn enough Orange Essence for a decent collection of skins, players would need to sink thousands of hours into the game—a commitment that seems way over the top, even for die-hard League fans.
What makes things even tougher for players is that these repeatable rewards are only available to those who buy the premium battle pass. Free-to-play folks don’t get this option at all, so their best bet for OE is mostly just disenchanting unwanted skin shards from loot boxes.
This reward system hasn’t gone over well in the League community, with many people wondering if the 25 OE amount is actually a typo. Some folks have guessed it should have been 250 OE, which would better match all the effort required.
In the past, Orange Essence used to be much easier to get from event drops and loot chests. Veteran players often stack up plenty by disenchanting duplicate or unwanted skin shards. But newer players, or those who aren’t lucky with loot boxes, are finding this new system especially tough.
Despite all the talk, Riot Games still hasn’t clarified whether the reward amount is on purpose or just a mistake. The system seems designed to keep skin unlocks feeling rare—and might be nudging players to just buy skins directly with real money instead of grinding for in-game currency.
