Every League of Legends Dragon, Their Buffs, Souls, and Map Changes
League of Legends dragons are the elemental drakes and the Elder Dragon that spawn in the bottom river pit on Summoner’s Rift. There are six elements (Infernal, Mountain, Ocean, Cloud, Hextech, Chemtech); each kill gives your team a permanent stacking buff, four kills give a Dragon Soul, and the Elder Dragon then grants a 150-second execute buff.
How many dragons are in League of Legends?
Seven League of Legends dragons exist, counting the Elder Dragon. The six elemental drakes are Infernal, Mountain, Ocean, Cloud, Hextech and Chemtech, and only one of them can spawn at a time. Elder Dragon is the seventh and appears only after a team has taken a Dragon Soul.
The thing is, you never see all six in one game. The first two drakes are two different random elements. After the second one dies, a third element is picked, the map transforms to match it, and every drake from then on is that same element. So a normal game shows exactly three elements at most. That’s why your team can hold, say, one Cloud stack and three Ocean stacks, but never four different buffs.
When do League of Legends dragons spawn?
The first drake spawns at 5:00, and each new drake appears 5 minutes after the previous one dies. Patch 26.1 moved a lot of early timers (minions now arrive at 0:30 and Baron Nashor at 20:00 instead of 25:00), but Riot noted that other epic monster spawn times stayed the same.
Once a team reaches four Dragon Slayer stacks and claims the soul, elemental drakes stop spawning for good. Elder Dragon takes the pit, with a 6-minute respawn. You can always see which element is coming next: its insignia shows on the pit wall and next to the timer.
In practice, the 20-minute Baron and the third or fourth drake now line up much closer than they did in 2025. A team sitting on three stacks around minute 19 has a real choice to make. Do you set up the soul fight, or take Baron while the enemy is busy defending the pit?
What does each dragon buff do?
Each of the elemental League of Legends dragons gives your whole team a permanent buff called Dragon Slayer, and that buff stays with you through every death until the game ends. Values per stack, as listed on the official League wiki:
| Drake | Buff name | Bonus per stack (1/2/3/4) |
|---|---|---|
| Infernal | Infernal Might | 3% / 6% / 9% / 12% attack damage and ability power |
| Mountain | Mountainous Vigor | 5% / 10% / 15% / 20% armor and magic resist |
| Ocean | Oceanic Will | Restore 2% / 4% / 6% / 8% of missing health every 5 seconds |
| Cloud | Cloudbringer’s Grace | 5% / 10% / 15% / 20% slow resist and out-of-combat movement speed |
| Hextech | Hextech Prowess | 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 ability haste and 5% / 10% / 15% / 20% attack speed |
| Chemtech | Chemtech Blight | 6% / 12% / 18% / 24% tenacity and heal and shield power |
Infernal looks small on paper. It isn’t.
A percentage bonus grows with your items, so a fully built carry gets far more from 9% than a laner does at minute 8. Mountain is the opposite case, honestly: great for tanks and frontliners, and it quietly makes a whole team harder to burst.
Ocean is the sneaky one. The healing works on missing health, so it does nothing when you’re full and a lot after a skirmish, which lets a team fight, regroup and take the next objective without recalling. Cloud matters most for rotations and picks, since moving faster out of combat is how you arrive at a fight first.
Hextech gives both ability haste and attack speed, so almost every champion uses it. Chemtech is the frontline buff: more tenacity against crowd control and stronger heals and shields from supports like Lulu or Soraka.
What does Dragon Soul do?
Dragon Soul is a permanent team-wide buff for the first team to reach four drake stacks, and its element is always the one that took over the map. It lasts the whole game and stays through death. Here’s what each soul does, with base numbers from the official wiki, and most also scale with your stats:
- Infernal Soul: damaging attacks and abilities trigger an explosion around the target for 100 base adaptive damage, hitting nearby enemies too (3-second cooldown).
- Mountain Soul: after 5 seconds without taking damage, you get a shield starting at 220.
- Ocean Soul: damaging enemies heals you for 150 base and restores 100 base mana over 4 seconds, at 30% effectiveness against minions and monsters.
- Cloud Soul: 15% bonus movement speed, rising to 60% for 6 seconds after you cast your ultimate (30-second cooldown).
- Hextech Soul: damage chains electricity to up to 3 nearby enemies, dealing bonus true damage and a decaying slow (8-second cooldown).
- Chemtech Soul gives 13% more damage and 13% damage reduction while you’re below 50% health.
Which soul is strongest? It depends on your team more than on the soul itself (if we’re being picky, Infernal and Ocean tend to swing teamfights the most, because both trigger on every hit). A poke composition loves Ocean, while a team of divers would take Mountain’s shield every time.
What does the Elder Dragon do?
Elder Dragon gives every living teammate Aspect of the Dragon for 150 seconds. Your damage burns enemies for extra true damage, and any enemy champion you hit while they’re below 20% of max health gets executed by dragon fire after half a second. Die and you lose it.
The execute is what wins games. Shields and health bars stop mattering once someone falls under that 20% line, so a team with Elder can force fights it would normally lose. Riot’s wiki notes the execute doesn’t go through invulnerability, like Zhonya’s Hourglass, or effects that hold a champion at a minimum health, which is why those tools gain a lot of value late.
Patch 26.1 changed the Elder’s numbers. Total gold dropped from 1,350 to 850 (100 kill gold plus 150 for each player instead of 250), and all its experience is now team-wide: 650 global XP, with comeback experience for players who are behind. Riot also gave it roughly 20% more effective health, with a minimum level of 13. Funny enough, its health regeneration is so high, 250 per second, that, according to an old Ask Riot answer, Baron loses a one-on-one fight against it.
What changed for League of Legends dragons in 2026?
Patch 26.1, the start of Season 1 2026, made the elemental League of Legends dragons noticeably harder to kill. Riot said epic monsters now take 10% to 30% longer to kill, and late soul fights even longer, because “claiming Dragon Soul is just as impactful as taking Baron Nashor.”
- Drake health is now 3,625 plus 375 per level (5,106 to 10,000), with higher armor and magic resist.
- Mountain drakes have 15% more health instead of extra resistances.
- Dragon Vengeance, the damage reduction drakes get against teams that already hold stacks, went from 7/14/21% to 15/30/45%. It no longer makes drakes hit champions harder, though.
- Kill gold rose from 25 to 75, and local experience is now 160-400.
- Comeback experience became linear, still capped at double for a team four levels behind.
Put simply, the fourth drake is now a long, dangerous fight rather than a quick take. True damage from Smite and the jungle pet ignores the extra resistances, so a jungler with lane priority can still solo early drakes. That puts more weight on winning lanes before the pit fight starts, especially bot and mid. Atakhan, the 2025 objective, was removed in the same patch, so the river is down to Dragon, Baron, Void Grubs and Rift Herald again.
How does the map change with each dragon element?
After the second drake dies, Summoner’s Rift turns into the elemental version of the third drake, and it stays that way for the rest of the game. Changes hit the dragon pit area and the jungle around it, and each element has its own twist:
- Infernal Rift burns away some jungle walls and adds Infernal Cinders you can pick up.
- Mountain Rift adds new rock walls, so routes get narrower.
- Ocean Rift grows extra brush and more Honeyfruit.
- Cloud Rift adds wind currents that speed up movement along some jungle paths.
- Hextech Rift adds pairs of Hex Gates, including links from each base toward its own jungle.
- Chemtech Rift fills parts of the jungle with blight zones that hide whoever stands inside.
Sure, terrain sounds cosmetic. On Mountain or Hextech maps it changes how fast you can reach a fight, and on Chemtech and Ocean maps vision gets harder. Our map overview guide covers the rest of Summoner’s Rift, from lanes to camp timers.
How should you play around dragons?
Treat each drake by its value. Early drakes are cheap, so trading the first one for top-side plates or Void Grubs is fine. The third stack is different, because it turns the next drake into a soul point for your team and forces the enemy to answer.
Look at your role too. Junglers do most of the dragon work, and the mid and bot laners decide whether that work is safe, since whoever has priority in those lanes reaches the river first. Our breakdown of LoL roles explains who usually moves first, and the champion counter and ARAM guides help when you’re not sure how your pick handles a river fight.
Two habits help at every rank. Ward the pit entrance about a minute before the timer, not ten seconds before. And finish drakes with Smite or another big burst of true damage, because steals still happen (less often since the 26.1 Smite buff, but they do).
New to all of this? Riot’s 26.1 changes make League of Legends dragons slower to take but just as decisive, so the team that plans one drake ahead usually wins the soul.
FAQ
How many League of Legends dragons are there?
There are six elemental drakes (Infernal, Mountain, Ocean, Cloud, Hextech, Chemtech) plus the Elder Dragon, which only spawns after a team claims Dragon Soul.
When does the first dragon spawn?
The first drake spawns at 5:00, and each new drake spawns 5 minutes after the previous one dies. Elder Dragon respawns every 6 minutes.
How many dragons do you need for Dragon Soul?
Four. The first team to reach four Dragon Slayer stacks gets the soul of the element that transformed the map, and elemental drakes stop spawning.
What does Elder Dragon do?
It grants Aspect of the Dragon to living teammates for 150 seconds: a true damage burn and an execute on enemy champions below 20% of maximum health.
Do dragon buffs stay after death?
Dragon Slayer stacks and Dragon Soul are permanent and stay through death. Aspect of the Dragon from Elder is lost when you die.
What changed for dragons in patch 26.1?
Drakes got more health and resistances, Dragon Vengeance damage reduction rose to 15/30/45%, drake kill gold went from 25 to 75, and Elder total gold dropped from 1,350 to 850.
Which of the League of Legends dragons gives the best buff?
It depends on your team. Infernal suits damage-heavy compositions, Mountain suits tanks and divers, and Ocean suits poke and long fights.
