Item combine costs: Titanic Hydra's 50G is the cheapest of 105 legendaries. Count the whole build tree and it's 1450G, right in the middle at 47th

I sorted Summoner's Rift's 105 legendary items by combine cost alone, and the cheapest was Titanic Hydra at 50G. Out of its 3300G price, the amount you pay after collecting every component is just 1.5%. But once you add up the combine costs hidden inside the components, that ranking flips over.

What the combine cost is

Having every component in your inventory doesn't make the finished item free. You still pay the difference between the item's price and the total of its components, and that difference is the combine cost (the base field in ddragon's data). For Titanic Hydra: Tiamat 1200G, Tunneler 1150G and Giant's Belt 900G add up to 3250G. Add the 50G combine cost and you get 3300G.

This covers the 105 completed items on Summoner's Rift that cost 2000G or more. Boots and support items are left out. Source: game data published by Riot Games.

The 5 cheapest final steps

Item	Combine cost	Share of price
Titanic Hydra	50G	1.5%
Mercurial Scimitar	125G	3.9%
Trinity Force	133G	4.0%
Ravenous Hydra	150G	4.5%
Mortal Reminder	150G	5.0%

Across the 105 items, the combine cost averages 622G with a median of 663G. As a share of the price, the median is about 23%, so a little under a quarter of the price goes into that final combine. Only 15 of the 105 items are under 10%.

(I always assumed an item was basically done once you had the components. Not even close.)

The 5 heaviest final steps

Item	Combine cost	Share of price
Mikael's Blessing	900G	39%
Manamune	1100G	38%
Abyssal Mask	1000G	38%
Redemption	850G	37%
Terminus	1100G	37%

23 items are above 30%. With Manamune, even after you own Tear of the Goddess, Caulfield's Warhammer and Long Sword (1800G in total), you still need another 1100G to finish it. That feeling of recalling and only ever buying more components? This is what it looks like in numbers.

Add the components' fees and the order changes

Here's the real point. Titanic Hydra's final step costs only 50G because Tiamat already charged a 500G combine cost along the way. 500G of Tiamat's 1200G is combine cost, which is more than the price of the Long Swords it's built from.

So I broke every item down to its basic components and added up every combine cost paid along the way. Titanic Hydra's total becomes 1450G, 44% of its price, which puts it 47th of 105. Dead center. The median across all 105 is about 42%, so Hydra turns out to be a perfectly average item.

Whole-tree combine cost	Total	Share of price
Ardent Censer	1600G	73%
Mikael's Blessing	1450G	63%
Titanic Hydra	1450G	44%
Infinity Edge	725G	21%
Banshee's Veil	600G	20%
Death's Dance	525G	16%

Ardent Censer, in first, spends 1600G of its 2200G on combine costs and only 600G on basic components. 500G at Aether Wisp, 400G at Forbidden Idol, 700G at the end. It charges you at every step.

At the other end, Death's Dance has only 525G of combine cost in its 3300G. Its Pickaxe (875G) is a basic component, Steel Sigil's combine cost is 150G, Caulfield's Warhammer's is 100G, and the final step is 275G. Almost all of the money goes to basic components.

The Mejai exception

It's under 2000G, so it's not part of the 105, but the most extreme case is Mejai's Soulstealer. Its component, Dark Seal, costs 350G out of the 1500G price. The other 1150G, or 77% of the price, is combine cost. Even across all 118 completed items including boots and support items, it's first by a mile.

Takeaway

If you only look at the final combine cost, Titanic Hydra looks like a bargain you can finish for 50G. In reality you already paid 500G at Tiamat, and across the whole tree it sits right in the middle. The combine cost is either loaded onto the final step or split up and prepaid in the components, and Hydra is the second kind.

On the flip side, items with a heavy final step like Manamune and Mikael's Blessing make you save up all over again after you have the components. When you recall with an awkward amount of gold and wonder which item gets closer to done just by buying components, the combine-cost share might be a useful thing to check.

I paid that 50G for Titanic Hydra like it was sales tax, and Tiamat had already taken 500G from me the whole time...