Briar’s League of Legends release has brought along with it a bug that has her switching sides in the middle of fights, leading to a variety of friendly fire shenanigans that have had some strange consequences.
League of Legends is a game that’s no stranger to some odd bugs. Considering how many different interactions there are between all the items and mechanics that exist in the game, things are bound to break eventually. And that “eventually” is often enough that an event like Worlds 2023 has an entire system in place to remake games and work around crippling, game-breaking bugs.
However, an emerging set of bugs with Briar has really taken this to the next level. A huge part of her kit necessitates her being taunted toward the closest enemy in a frenzy, but this bug has her confusing friend and foe.
In some cases, Briar kills her entire team without being able to do a thing about it. In others, teammates are killing her on accident and even reaping the rewards of shutdown gold. League has some weird bugs at times, but this one is definitely up there.
Briar bugs have League players killing their teammates
Briar’s entire character is all about hovering on the edge of an uncontrollable, bloodthirsty rampage and deciding when to tip the scale into that all-consuming rage as she takes on everything in front of her indiscriminately.
However, she wasn’t exactly designed to kill her teammates despite her lore making her out to attack anyone, friend or foe. As it turns out, players have discovered that she can run down her allies in certain scenarios.
What’s more, unless she has her E up, she’s powerless to stop herself from killing off her entire team.
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I found the easter egg! https://t.co/95fftw5a02 pic.twitter.com/ncflNQP8bm
— Vandiril (@Vandiril) October 18, 2023
It appears that whatever Easter Eggs got added for the character have had some unintended side effects considering these bugs weren’t all that present before the most recent patch.
But what’s even more interesting is that Briar gets the gold for killing her allies, shutdown included. If you’re trying to get rid of an ally’s shutdown gold without giving it to the enemy, this bug allows your team to snowball even further by taking that money and re-investing it into your jungler. It’s a win-win!
Joking aside, this bug seems to have very specific triggers that haven’t yet been identified, so it’s difficult to recreate. However, Briar’s indiscriminate killing isn’t one-sided.
A Malzahar used his E on an enemy in this clip. The ability is meant to spread to the next nearest enemy once the one afflicted with the DoT dies, and the game just so happened to read that enemy as his allied Briar. An easy 700 gold in pocket for Malzahar without giving the enemy a chance at the shutdown gold.
It seemed genuinely impossible to kill an ally directly in League of Legends, but something strange in the way Briar’s taunt is coded makes that possible. It may be lore-accurate and kind of funny, but it also should probably get fixed.