The journey of legends: a beginner's guide to LoL

General contents

Chapter 0: Introduction

Chapter 1: What is LoL?

Chapter 2: Stats

Chapter 3: Objectives

Chapter 4: Champions

Chapter 5: General setup

Chapter 6: Composing a team

Chapter 7: Summoner spells, runes and masteries

Chapter 8: Warding

Chapter 9: Level 1 gameplay

Chapter 10: Laning

Chapter 11: Jungling

Chapter 12: Supporting

Chapter 13: Ganking

Chapter 14: Invading

Chapter 15: Early game objectives

Chapter 16: Teamfights

Chapter 17: Late game objectives

Chapter 18: Backdooring & splitpushing

Introduction

Welcome!
If you come here, I assume you’re interested in learning more about League of Legends and how it’s supposed to be played. What follows is a series of blogposts, dealing about a wide variety of topics concerning LoL.

This guide is meant for any player between level 1 and 1600 Elo, but will focus itself on level 30 summoners. This is the biggest group of players in the game, but I wanted to reach out to the very new players as well and give them a way to get to know this game.

As for myself: I’m a 1.9k elo player, flirting with the 2k border. I am not a pro, but I do like to think I know some stuff about the game. I've decided to share my knowledge about the game with the community, providing those who want to get better with the means to actually do so.

If you have any further questions concerning a topic after reading a blogpost, I strongly encourage you to leave a comment below or on the post in /r/Summonerschool. I will try to answer any question that remains.

Let’s get to it!

Chapter 1: What is LoL?

Starting with the very basics, we’ll have a look at what LoL really is. LoL is a teamgame consisting of 2 teams (blue and purple), each 3 or 5 players. Teams of 3 play on the Twisted Treeline (TT) map, teams of 5 play on Summoners Rift (SR). Since TT is being played very rarely compared to SR, we will focus anything discussed on SR.

So far we have 2 teams of 5 players and a map. On this map, you will find two nexuses. A nexus is your main building and destroying it means the end of the game. Luckily, you’re not just left with a nexus. On the map there are 3 roads, both having 3 turrets periodically placed and another 2 turrets at the nexus itself.

Turrets shoot at the nearest enemy, be it a minion or a champion. If a champion attacks an enemy champion under the turret, he will take aggro meaning the turret will attack him.

-Wait what? A minion? That’s right, there are minions. Both teams have automatically spawned ‘troops’ which will walk on the lanes on the game. These minions provide you with gold if you kill them, attack enemy minions when they encounter them, may deal some damage to enemy champions when they’re close and will attack turrets if no other enemies are near.

A minionwave consists of 3 melee and 3 ranged minions. Melee minions are a little more defensively oriented and ranged minions have a bit more damage. Minion waves spawn every 30 seconds from 1:30 minutes in the game. After that they get buffed every 3 minutes. Every 2 or 3 waves, depending on how long you are in the game, minion waves will have an additional siege minion with them. This minion has a cannon and is a lot beefier than other types of minions.

The lanes seem pretty full right now huh? Let’s add some more to that: champions. Players are divided amongst the lanes to provide the optimal goldincome teamwise. One person takes toplane, one goes midlane and 2 go bottom. As you can see, that means there is one left.

The map isn’t just filled with lanes, it also has a jungle. Both sides have an identical but mirrored jungle. In this jungle, you will find several neutral creep camps and a few buffs.

First of all, we have the wolves.

These creeps are often killed first by the jungler (the champion who goes into the jungle) and consists of a big wolf and two smaller ones. Killing a big wolf returns a small amount of mana and HP and gives a significant amount of gold compared to the two smaller ones.

Next up are the wraiths.

These creatures work the same way as wolves, except they have one campleader (big wraith) and three smaller ones. This big wraith is often a target of counterjungling (the act of stealing creeps from the opponents jungle) since he is easy to reach by the enemy and holds a lot of gold.

The last neutral creeps are the golems.

This camp exists of one big golem and one smaller one. These creeps are favorited by the blue side’s botlane to take them before even going into their own lane.

Neutral creeps spawn at 1:40 in the game while it takes until 1:55 for minions to meet up with the enemy minions in lane. This gives a window of 15 seconds to take the golems and still be on time for minions in your lane.

The other inhabitants of the jungle are the Golem (gives away a blue buff) and a Lizard (gives you a red buff).

The blue buff provides whoever has it with increased mana or energy regen (depending on what resource you use) and gives you cooldown reduction. This is a very favorite buff to start with for junglers, since it allows them use their abilities more often in the jungle without running into mana issues.

The red buff gives the wearer a buff that causes your autoattacks to slow the target and it puts Damage over Time (DoT) on him. This is a more aggressive buff which is particularly usefull when you gank (attack another lane).

Last but not least, there is a river. The river divides the map in the middle and basically outlines your territory. At the bottom side of the map, there is a dragonpit.

Upon death, the dragon provides the team that killed him with 190 gold per player and an additional 25 gold for the actual person that killed him. Dragon is an important early game objective because of the significant sum of gold that gets distributed. The later in the game, the less impact it has but nevertheless it is a ton of money.

At the upper side of the map, you will find Baron Nashor.

Baron is one of the most important objectives in the game and will be the major focus once you’ve entered a late state in the game.

The baron buff provides your entire team that is alive upon his death with increased Ability Power, Attack Damage and Health regeneration. Additional to that, you also get 300 gold and 900XP per person, regardless if you’re death of alive. Having baron means you just became a lot stronger and this is generally a time when you want to look for a fight with the opponent.

The other way to get stronger, is by buying items. Each time you are at your base, you will be able to buy stuff. You will have a choice from a lot of different offensive and defensive items, wards and consumables (potions, elixirs and an oracle).
Right now you have a general idea about League of Legends, the objective in the game, the way it is played and what the possibilities are.

If you have never played LoL before, then I hope the above explanation was good enough for you to follow whatever I will address next. If you have played the game before, then there probably wasn't that much new information here. The reason I explained these very basics, is to make sure everyone is on the same page before we get to the real deal.

Next time I will talk about ingame stats. This includes general information about them, how they synergize, how they counter eachother, when you should go for what stat, etc.

Hopefully see you then!

Speedzor