The Rift Scuttler will be much more valuable in the next jungle update

Last week, Riot Sotere popped onto the forums to detail how the jungle will be changed up in patch 8.10. Ultimately, the team is looking to spice things up and nerf ganking in the long run. There are a couple key goals that were highlighted at the top of the post:

• Reduce early lane pressure from junglers
• Increase the number of jungle vs. jungle interactions in the early game
• Encourage variation in optimal pathing
• Reduce mana restraints as a hard blocker for champions that want to jungle

Early game gankers like Lee Sin and Vi have a really weird place in League at the moment. Either they hard camp a lane for the first 10 min and become unstoppable, or they fade into obscurity the moment the mid game hits. By offering more jungle vs. jungle fights, like the team wants, these champs should have another gold avenue that isn’t so ... frustrating to play against.

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But the biggest change is the brand new Rift Scuttler rework.

There will now only be one Rift Scuttler on map at once, rather than each spawning on their particular side after a few camps have gone by. Which side gets the coveted crab is completely random, but the map will give players a lot of heads up. This forces jungle interaction early game. If you move to gank, you lose pressure on Scuttle, which is also getting a bump to rewards.

The Rift Scuttler is gaining health and becoming harder to kill overall. However, the XP is being increased by 17 times, which isn’t a joke or exaggeration. The gold reward is also being increased a bit. Overall, it’s becoming a much more desirable camp, which is great considering the overall experience nerf coming to the jungle.

Getting level three will now take four camps, three camps if you clear Krugs, or two camps and the Rift Scuttler. This puts a huge emphasis on the Rift Scuttler as a camp, allowing the jungler who takes it to get ahead in level very quickly. Once ahead, high-end junglers can punish their foes with invades or repeated ganks. However, like all things, these changes are likely, not guaranteed.

These changes are planned for the patch 8.10 and should be hitting the Public Beta Environment Tuesday.