Imperial Lux

First time I saw Imperial Lux was back in like season 2 or 3, cant remember exactly. Someone on the enemy team locked it in and I had to look it up because the splash looked nothing like default Lux. That regal red and gold armor caught me off guard. Not gonna lie, it still holds up better than you’d expect for a skin from 2011.

The royal treatment on the Rift

Imperial Lux swaps out the standard blue and white color scheme for a deep crimson and gold look. Think Roman centurion meets Demacian royalty. The armor plating is heavier, the staff gets a redesign with ornate detailing, and the overall silhouette reads more commanding than base Lux. Clean change.

Being a Standard tier skin at 975 RP, you’re not getting new particles or sound effects here. Voice lines stay base. Her Q, W, E, R all keep the default light magic VFX. Thats the reality of older 975 skins before Riot started loading them up with extra features. The value is purely in the model and texture swap.

Might be overthinking it but the red color palette actually makes her abilities feel slightly different in lane. Light Binding coming from a red-armored Lux just reads differently than the standard version. Played maybe 15 games with this skin last month in Diamond and the E felt harder to spot against certain terrain. Could be placebo, probably is, but I noticed it in bot lane specifically.

A Legacy piece from early League

Imperial Lux dropped November 29, 2011. Season 1 era. That makes this skin over a decade old at this point and it shows in certain areas. The texture work is noticeably dated compared to anything released after 2018 or so.

This one sits in the Legacy vault. You’re not finding it in the regular shop rotation. Hextech only these days, or you wait for one of Riot’s occasional vault openings. The Legacy catalog has its charm though. Running a Legacy skin in ranked always gets a reaction from someone on the team. Had a Kayn jungle last Tuesday around 1 AM type “og skin” in chat when I locked in Imperial Lux during champ select.

The Legacy skinline is where Riot parks older cosmetics that don’t fit current shop standards. Some of them aged well. Some didn’t. Imperial Lux falls somewhere in the middle. The concept is strong, the execution is limited by 2011 tech. No recall animation, no new VFX, standard voice pack is base only. For 975 RP that was acceptable back then, but the bar has moved significantly.

Should you chase this one?

Real verdict: Imperial Lux is a collector’s piece. If you main Lux and want variety across your skin wheel, its a solid pickup whenever the vault opens or you roll it from chests. The red and gold colorway is genuinely distinct from every other Lux skin. Been maining Lux on and off since season 4 and I keep this in rotation purely for the aesthetic change.

But if you’re comparing value to something like Star Guardian Lux or Porcelain Lux? Not even close. Those skins bring new particles, new recall animations, the whole package. Imperial Lux is a texture swap with personality. (Random aside: the splash art is genuinely one of the better classic-era pieces in the game, worth zooming in on.)

975 RP feels fair for what you get, assuming you can even buy it. The Legacy availability is the real barrier. Skip this unless you already have strong feelings about Lux or you’re building the full collection. For everyone else, there’s 15+ other Lux skins competing for your RP and most of them bring more to the table. Kinda feels like the skin exists as a time capsule now. Respect it for that.