League of Legends Epic Jungle Monsters Explained

In this second part of our jungling guide, we'll talk about Summoner's Rift's epic monsters: Rift Herald, drakes and Baron Nashor. In our last article, we covered the basics of jungle camps and plants. Now it's time to level up our guide and step up to the big leagues. A few creatures on the Rift are commonly called "epic monsters" — Rift Herald, Baron Nashor, and the various drakes. They spawn less often, but they give much bigger rewards and are often the focus of the biggest fights between teams — especially since taking them down usually requires more than one person, but defeating them also grants a much bigger advantage. All Epic Monsters spawn in two spots along the river; the semi-open areas known as the Baron pit (top left of the map) and the Dragon pit (bottom right). In addition, all three have a trait that grants them immunity to any crowd control besides slows, and to anything that reduces their stats (such as Trundle's Q stealing attack damage).

You can click here to reach our previous League of Legends jungle guide.

League of Legends Rift Herald

While the humble Rift Scuttler is essentially a real pacifist, its bigger cousin is a completely different matter. It spawns in the Baron pit at 8 minutes and has a few powerful attacks that can deal a lot of damage, especially its big charge. However, they're easy to dodge. The Herald has a ton of HP, but it sometimes opens up an eye on its back that you can hit for big damage.

Killing Rift Herald drops the Eye of the Herald item, which anyone on the killing team can pick up within 20 seconds. It takes the place of your trinket. With it, the champion recalls faster as if they had the Baron buff, and can summon the Herald to fight for their team. It will then head to the nearest lane and charge down it, dealing huge damage to towers.

If the Herald is killed before 13:45, it respawns six minutes later. It disappears from the map at 19:45 unless it's currently in a fight, in which case it stays until 19:55 before leaving to clear the pit for Baron.

League of Legends Drakes

There are actually seven different types of drakes that can appear on the Rift. At first, a drake can be one of six "elemental" drakes — Cloud, Ocean, Infernal, Mountain, Chemtech, and Hextech. Killing such a drake grants the whole team a permanent buff, but the more your team kills, the more damage and damage reduction it grants against you. Drake spawns follow a different pattern in every game, where the first three are different and afterward the drakes match the third one until a team gets a fourth drake buff and only that team can earn the stronger "dragon soul" effect. Every drake after a team secures a soul is an Elder Dragon, whose buffs are only temporary and lost on death — but its power can decide a game, and often does. For most teams, giving up the elemental drakes isn't a huge deal, but the Elder Dragon should be contested whenever possible.

Once the second drake is killed, the map changes depending on what the following drakes are. A Rift dominated by Cloud drakes will have areas where champions move faster (like the Rift Scuttler zone), for example, while an Ocean Rift has more bushes, an Infernal Rift will have some of its walls destroyed, and a Mountain Rift will have more walls. A Hextech Rift has small portals that flash champions passing through them and then briefly turn them invisible, while a Chemtech Rift has fewer bushes and a toxic gas area that can hide champions and empower their attacks.

• Chemtech Drakes have higher attack speed as their health drops. Killing one grants the team bonus damage against enemies with higher max health, while the Chemtech soul turns champions into an empowered zombie state when killed, similar to Sion's passive.
• Cloud Drakes have good single-target damage, making them more dangerous to solo junglers. Killing them grants the team out-of-combat movement speed and slow resistance. The Cloud soul gives the team a permanent 10% movement speed bonus, rising to 60% for 6 seconds after using an ultimate ability.
• Hextech Drakes have a slow and chain-damage effect on every fourth attack. Killing one grants extra ability haste and attack speed, while the Hextech soul adds extra damage and a slow effect to attacks and abilities.
• Infernal Drakes deal area damage. Killing one grants the team bonus AD and AP per stack. The Infernal soul deals extra area damage on the team's attacks and abilities, on a short cooldown.
• Mountain Drakes don't deal as much damage as the others but are tankier. Killing Mountain drakes grants the team more armor and magic resist per stack. A Mountain soul grants all team members a shield that scales with bonus health, bonus AD, and AP. The shield comes back if the champion hasn't been attacked in the last 5 seconds.
• Ocean Drakes' attacks slow. Killing one grants the team health regeneration based on their missing health. An Ocean soul lets the team gain bonus health (scaling with AD, AP, and bonus health) and mana over 4 seconds after dealing damage to an enemy.
• Elder Dragon only appears once a team has secured a soul. It's even stronger, but killing it grants the team the Dragon's Wrath buff. Unlike other drake buffs, it's temporary and lost on death. However, all damaging abilities deal extra damage over time with it, and enemy champions dropped below 20% of their max health by such an attack are instantly executed.

League of Legends Baron Nashor

The big guy is one of the most iconic monsters in the League. It spawns in the Baron pit at 20 minutes, and killing it is one of the biggest objectives of the mid-game. Baron has it all — health, resistances, a damage amplification effect on whoever it last attacked, and several special attacks.

On the other hand, killing it is worth 300 gold for every member of the team, and everyone alive gets the Hand of Baron buff. It grants extra AD and AP, faster recall, and an aura that empowers nearby minions. The Baron buff, as it's commonly called, lasts three minutes but is lost on death.

Baron respawns six minutes after being killed.