League of Legends: Objective Bounties Explained

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Objective bounties are a new addition to League of Legends, introduced during the preseason for Season 12. Their goal is to help teams that are behind on gold and objectives to catch up with the enemy team, evening the playing field a little more.

In this article, we’ll go over what the objective bounties are in general, how much gold they are worth, and some strategies involving them. 

Related Reading:

• Season 12 New Dragons Explained
• Season 12 New Rune Changes

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What are Objective Bounties?

Objective bounties are similar to Champion bounties. When a team gets significantly behind on objectives, the bounties become available to give them a chance to regain some ground. Riot assured fans that they’ll optimize this in a way that doesn’t make the other team’s lead worthless — they just want to give losing teams an opportunity to catch up slightly.

According to the 11.23 patch notes, Objective bounties take four different elements into consideration — XP, Gold, Dragon, and Turret leads. When claimed, the gold will be split amongst each member of the team. Here are the gold values per objective bounty at the start:

• Baron and Elder Dragon: 500 gold
• Drakes and Rift Herald: 500 gold
• Outer Turret: 250 gold
• Inner Turret: 400 gold
• Base Turret: 400 gold

How to Optimize Objective Bounties

The key to optimizing Objective bounties is picking which to go for. Keep in mind that you don’t have to get every single bounty. You can try (and should, if you can!), but it’s certainly not the end goal. If your team recklessly pushes for every bounty, it will almost surely result in getting even further behind. Pick the right ones and continue to play strategically. The worst thing you can do is to get even further behind and also not get any of the bounties anyway. Your team getting aced is not worth 500 gold. 

The best way to figure out which bounties to go for is by just playing normally. Think of them as similar to the bonuses to tower gold in the early game. It’s nice to get the extra bit of gold, but it isn’t worth dying over. Objective bounties are mainly intended to help your team get back into the game if they manage to make a comeback. Think intelligently and always play from a risk management perspective.

Which Objective Bounties are the Best?

Each type of Objective bounty is worth getting if you have the opportunity, but some are better than others. In general, focusing on tower bounties is the most efficient — it’s easier to take a tower than a Baron or a Dragon. In most of the games I’ve had where my team received Objective bounties, the towers ended up being the ones we got most frequently. If you’re the jungler, however, you should definitely focus on the larger objectives.

Are Objective Bounties a Good Addition to League of Legends?

This is a complex question, but Objective bounties are ultimately a good thing. They don’t grant enough gold to become a problem, but they grant enough to be worth getting. Since they can’t single-handedly turn a game around, I think they’re a good addition to the game.

That, of course, depends on whether or not Riot starts balancing them to be game changers, though. It’s important that a team’s lead isn’t just thrown away all over a single tower or dragon, so Riot has to be careful with this.

Join the High Ground

So that’s it for objective bounties! They’ve really helped to freshen League of Legends up a bit this preseason, and hopefully now you’ll have a better understanding of how they work. Have fun as we start the new season of League.

Happy gaming!