How to get orange essence fast in LoL

The two most common currencies in use in League of Legends are Riot Points and Blue Essence. However, joining Blue Essence as a free, in-game acquired, currency is Orange Essence.

Due to its mysterious nature and convoluted ways of acquiring and spending it, we bring you an in-depth guide to find all you need to know.

What is Orange Essence in LoL?

Orange Essence is League of Legends’ premium free currency. This may sound like an oxymoron, but we assure you that is not the case. Orange Essence allows players to buy almost everything that Blue Essence cannot purchase, thus ensuring that the entire content of League of Legends is free to play.

Riot Points, though, are League of Legends’ only source of income. Due to that, getting Orange Essence, which infringes on the content locked behind Riot Points, is tricky, and involves lots of grinding.

What can Orange Essence buy in League of Legends?

The easiest explanation of what it can buy in League of Legends is that, Orange Essence can buy everything Blue Essence can’t. The goal of Riot Games, and their point of pride, is in the fact that League of Legends is a completely free-to-play game.

Due to that, in 2016, they introduced Orange Essence to make up for the shortcomings of Blue Essence. Of course, there has been some changes since it was first released, but the currency is still very valuable.

Orange essence can buy champion skins, summoner icons, ward skins, and Eternals for free. That is, players won’t have to spend real-life money to purchase these, as is the case with Riot Points.

How to get Free Orange Essence in LoL

We’ve already established that Orange Essence is a scarce resource in League of Legends. Not only that, but earning it is far harder than Blue Essence. There are quite a few ways to do it though, with no extra effort on your part, that don’t require spending Riot Points.

Buying Champion Skins for free in LoL

Champion skins in League of Legends are variant versions of the base champion design. They are purely cosmetic and offer no in-game advantage or disadvantage to players. Due to the prestige they convey, champion skins are still highly sought after.

The most straightforward way of purchasing Champion skins is with Riot Points. However, Orange Essence offers a free alternative. This is done with Hextech chests, which are awarded every time you or one of your premade teammates achieve the S rank on a champion for the first time.

When opening Hextech Chest in your loot tab, in the League of Legends client, you have a chance of receiving a Champion skin shard. These Champion skin shards can then be upgraded to permanent Champion skins, by paying with Orange Essence. If you don’t like any of the Champion skin shards you have collected, you also have the option of re-rolling three of them into a Permanent Champion skin, with no Orange Essence cost.

League of Legends Champion Eternals

In a nutshell, Eternals are champion-specific stat-trackers that capture, celebrate, and flex your moments of glory in and out of game. They were added to League of Legends in 2020. They track all manner of things you’ve done in the game, such as champion kills, games won, or damage dealt. When you pass a milestone, something like 50 Bicycle Kicks on Lee Sin for example, a callout pops up in game that all players can see to celebrate the moment.

By completing missions during League of Legends yearly events, or reaching Gold-rank during a season, players will receive an Eternal Capsule that contains Eternals Shards for RP-only Eternals sets.

This Capsule will, then, contain Eternals shards, which can be unlocked completely with Orange Essence, thus bypassing the Riot Points requirement.

Free Exclusive Summoner Icons

Summoner Icons in League of Legends are your account’s profile picture, basically. Every player gets the same amount and type of Summoner Icons to choose from, but it’s the exclusive one that are the best. And Orange Essence can get them for you, with no real-world money involved.

Usually priced with Riot Points, they can be bought during the Essence Emporium for Blue Essence, or upgraded for Orange Essence from shards all the time.

Summoner Icon shards are dropped from the, before-mentioned, Hextech Chests. They are usually tied to an event or a certain champion, and stylized in that theme. The upgrading price in orange Essence is based on the cost of that Summoner Icon in Riot Points.

Buying Ward Skins for free

League of Legends Wards are an in-game item, designed to give players vision in the map’s fog of war. Just like champion skins, Wards can have skins of heir own, though they are not nearly as popular.

Much in the same way as Champion skin shards are upgraded with Orange Essence, so are the Ward skin shards as well. Upon receiving them from a Hextech Chest, one unlocked with a Hextech key, you have the option of upgrading them to Ward Skin Permanents.

Ward skins are not champion-locked, however, and it is likely that you will choose one to use all the time, and disenchant the rest for some easy Orange Essence.

How to get Free Orange Essence in LoL

We’ve already established that Orange Essence is a scarce resource in League of Legends. Not only that, but earning it is far harder than Blue Essence. There are quite a few ways to do it though, with no extra effort on your part, that don’t require spending Riot Points.

Keep Up With Event Mission Tab

Keeping up with the Missions tab in League of Legends. Whenever there is an event in the game, the missions tied to it award Event Tokens, Prestige Points and Orange Essence. However, you first must start these Missions, which is just one click of a buttonaway.

eSports & Amazon Prime

If you keep up with eSports, watching League of Legends tournaments via their client awards Orange Essence as well, so make sure to use that. If you’re a user of Amazon Prime, make sure to set up tour Twitch Prime Gaming, and redeem the Prime Gaming Capsules gained from it.

Disenchanting

The final way is, of course, by disenchanting. Disenchanting is an option given for everything that can be upgraded with Orange Essence in the first place. After disenchanting a crafting material, usually a shard of some sort, you are given Orange Essence as recompense.

In our opinion, Ward Skin shards can all be disenchanted once you’ve chosen one to use, while Champion Skin shards take some deliberation. Only start disenchanting them once you’ve set up your own champion pool, and are sure you’ll be using certain champions rarely, if ever.

Orange Essence is the only Riot Games currency that bridges the gap between the free-to-play content, and the one behind a paywall, with neither Wild Rift nor TFT having anything similar. The most common use of this resource is buying skins for your favorite champions, once you get a good drop from a Hextech Chest.

Knowing which skins are good, and which ones are not up to standard is the easiest way to make sure you are spending your Orange Essence correctly. To easily access this information, visit our expansive skin collections lists of the best skins in League of Legends.