Look — we all want to slay in style. While skins won’t make you a better player, they can improve your gameplay experience and allow you to flex on your opponents. And let’s be real: There’s something seriously satisfying about flashy attack animations and upgraded sound effects.

While skins can be purchased by splurging on RP, you can obtain them for free in a few ways. I’ll provide an overview of the various methods below, starting from the most common strategies.

Grind Hextech Chests

Hextech Chests — loot boxes that allow players to unlock a variety of in-game goodies — often contain champion skin shards. You can earn Hextech Chests for free by participating in events, completing champion milestones, or hitting certain split checkpoints in ranked.

Hextech Chests have a 50% chance of dropping skin shards, though the exact drop rate can vary depending on if you have bad luck protection in place. If you earn a Masterwork Chest, your odds also greatly increase — Masterwork Chests have a 70% skin shard drop rate. However, these are a lot harder to come by without splurging on RP.

Climb the Ranked Ladder (Victorious Skins)

Climbing the ranked ladder doesn’t just reward you with Hextech Chests; it can also reward you with some nifty skins. If you manage to play enough games by the end of the ranked split, you’ll receive an exclusive Victorious skin as a reward for your hard work. You’ll also receive free chromas based on your final rank of the split (which you can equip to flex on your opponents).

The Victorious skin design, and the champion that receives it, varies every split. However, so far these skins have all been visually impressive with equally swanky attack animations. My personal favorite is Victorious Lucian.

Earn Honor

Being tilt-proof in League of Legends — aka not spamming “jung diff” the moment you lose lane — can earn you free skins thanks to LoL’s dedicated honor system. If you keep a positive attitude in your games and hit Honor level 5 by the end of the season, you’ll be rewarded with an Honor skin for free.

Riot usually lets players know in advance which champions are next in line for Honor skins, so be sure to check out their official news page for further updates. Champions that have previously received Honor skins include Malzahar and Akshan.

Reroll Skin Shards

You don’t have to let unused skin shards collect dust in your crafting tab; you can actually reroll them to gain free skin permanents. Here’s how the process works:

1. Navigate to the loot tab in the client
2. Select “crafting”
3. Check if you have three unused skin shards available for reroll
4. If you do, click on one of them and choose “re-roll into random skin permanent”
5. Select the other two skins you want to reroll
6. Hit the blue helmet icon in the center to begin the process
7. You’ll receive a random skin permanent for free
8. Bask in the glory of your new skin (...or regret your decision)

While the randomized aspect can be frustrating, it can be highly rewarding — you may reroll three 975 RP skins and end up with an Ultimate skin. Let’s hope Lady Luck is on your side!

Conquer in Clash

Playing Clash isn’t exactly the easiest way to gain free skins. However, if you’re willing to battle it out with friends and polish up your teamwork skills? You may be in for a whole bucket load of free skins. Depending on how far you progress in your Clash bracket, you can earn rewards such as skin shards, mystery emotes, and ward skins.

There are currently two Clash modes: Summoner’s Rift and ARAM. If you can’t persuade (or force) any friends to play Clash with you, you can use the dedicated “Find a Team” tool to join a Clash team with a free slot. You can also connect with other Clash players through LoL Discord communities (like the dedicated Dignitas group).

Master Pick’Em

Are you a diehard fan of Worlds? Then you can actually use that passion to unlock some sweet skins. If you perform well in Pick’Em and score within the top 5,000, you’ll be rewarded with the year’s Worlds skin. And if you manage to score perfectly? You’ll unlock all the ultimate skins in the game for free.

Of course, the chances of this are… pretty low, to say the least, so I definitely don’t advise relying on this method to get free skins.

Adding Style to Your LoL Games

While skins are technically ‘premium” cosmetic items in League, that doesn’t mean you have to fork out on RP. As our article above has shown, there are plenty of ways to unlock them for free, from grinding Hextech Chests and earning honor to conquering Clash tournaments.

Of course, there is a drawback: Most of these methods have a randomized element at play, meaning it may take some time if you’re after a specific skin. If you have your heart on a particular skin, you don’t have to splurge on its full RP price though — you can wait until it goes on sale or pops up in Your Shop.