After weeks of anticipation, Mel Medarda will be the next League of Legends champion and will be available for players to use right off the back when 25.S1.1 launches On January 9. On top of that, Riot has announced she will be featured in a new Novel released to further explain to fans who she is for those who have not watched the Arcane series. 

Today Riot Games released their latest dev update, which introduced League of Legends players into the new season. One of those introductions was Mel Medara, one of the main characters from the hit animated series Arcane. At the end of the Season, Mel fully embraced her Noxian heritage, donning the classic red and gold apparel. 

Mel introduces a new gameplay mechanic to LoL

Mel will be the latest champion introduced into League of Legends, and along with it comes a new gameplay mechanic that has not been seen before. This is called Projectile Reflection, where Mel can bounce incoming targetted abilities back to the original caster, and non-targeted abilities in the enemy's direction.

This is a big change coming to League of Legends and it will be interesting to see if any other champion will eventually get this new gameplay mechanic. In celebration of Mel’s launch, Riot has announced she will be free to play once one of the seasonal missions has been completed.

This isn’t the first time Riot has made a new character free-to-play, this is a common feature in VALORANT where once a player earns enough Kingdom Credits, they can unlock the new agent for free without the need of spending any real-life money. 

As mentioned above, players will be able to find out more about Mel Medarda in an upcoming novel called Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf, a novel that goes into detail on the life of Ambessa Medarda, one of the main antagonists and mother of Mel in the Arcane animated series. 

Be sure to check out Mel once 25.S1.1 goes live to the public on January 9.