This sits outside the game itself, which is exactly why it is hard to find a straight answer about it.

Short answer

The short version: it is canon where the developers say it is, and enjoyable regardless.

Fan work is frequently better than official work and is not the same thing. Assets circulated online are often ripped rather than released, which affects what you can legally do with them. League of Legends is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look.

Whether it is worth your time

Release order and chronological order are different, and both have their advocates. Adaptations take liberties, and the interesting ones take them deliberately. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. Official art books contain material that never appears in the game itself.

Licensed soundtracks are the most likely part to be missing from a re-release. None of this needs a paid tool, a third-party launcher or an account on a site you have never heard of. Canon status is decided by the developers rather than by the adaptation's writers.

What exists officially

If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about. Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.

  • Look for an official assets page before downloading anything.
  • Check whether something is official before treating it as canon.
  • Expect one number in every guide to be out of date; the method is what matters.
  • Expect licensed music to be missing from re-releases.
  • Credit fan artists if you reuse their work.

Where to find it legitimately

Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on.

The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time. It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different.

What is fan-made

A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows.

Everything below is framed around the current state of League of Legends rather than a launch-week impression. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over.

Where it fits with the game

Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds.

Where people go wrong

  • Downloading a helper tool for something the game already does in its own menu.
  • Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.
  • Copying a setup wholesale from a streamer without understanding what each part does.

League FAQ

How long does this take?

Minutes if it goes cleanly, an evening if you hit the edge case in the caveats list. Neither is unusual.

Why do other guides describe this differently?

Most were written for an earlier version and never revisited. Compare the steps against what your build actually shows.

Is it any good?

The reception is mixed and depends heavily on what you wanted from it. The section above sets that expectation honestly.

Is it canon?

Where the developers have said so, yes. Adaptations produced under licence are frequently their own continuity.

That is the whole of it — if something here stops matching League of Legends, the game changed, not the method.