League of Legends – Ultimate Beginner’s Guide – Part One: The Basics

So, You Want To Start Playing League of Legends?

You’ve just started playing League of Legends. Or you’ve been playing it for a while now, but you can’t seem to get the hang of it. You keep losing games, keep getting your ass kicked, and your teammates are constantly annoyed with you.

You kinda know what you’re supposed to do, but you don’t really know how to do it well. Then there’s all these items, notifications, stats, buffs. There’s all those special monsters in the middle of the map too.

And let’s not forget, the game also has over 160 different Champions from you to choose from, each with their own abilities and specific roles within the game. League of Legends adds new Champions frequently, so this amount might be even higher by the time you’re reading this.

Learning how to play League of Legends is as if you’re trying to learn to play guitar, only it’s a guitar with almost 200 different strings.

So if you just started out, and you suck and you feel kind of helpless, don’t worry, that’s normal. But hey, don’t worry, we’re here to help you out. Read this article and at the very least, you will know what to do, where to go and maybe the most important of all, what to avoid doing.

How League Of Legends Is Played

In League of Legends, two teams of each five players battle against each other on a map called Summoner’s Rift. There are alternative game modes like ARAM that feature other maps, but for the moment, let’s just focus on Summoner’s Rift, where 99 % of games are played.

Summoner’s Rift is divided into two, more or less mirrored territories. Each half of the map belongs to one of the teams. The map contains three lanes that lead to the other player’s base. These are top lane, mid lane, and bottom lane. (also called bot lane). At each end of the map, the teams each have a building called the Nexus in their base. The objective of the game is to destroy the other team’s Nexus.

However, before you can get to your enemy’s Nexus and destroy it, you’ll have to remove a few obstacles.

Aside from the enemy players themselves, in each lane, each team has three towers on their side of the map that protect the enemy from moving further up their part of the lane.

Each enemy base also contains three Inhibitors, also one per lane. Before you can damage the enemy Nexus and the towers that defend it, you have to destroy at least one Inhibitor.

Finally, the enemy Nexus itself is protected by two Turrets, both of which must be destroyed before you can damage the Nexus.

If you want to win a game of League of Legends, this means you’ll have to destroy:

• the enemy Turrets in at least one lane
• an Inhibitor, in at least one lane
• both enemy Nexus Turrets
• then finally, the enemy Nexus itself

You’re not alone in this, of course. Aside from your teammates, you are also assisted by computer-controlled characters, called minions. Every 30 seconds, beginning at the 1 minute and 5 seconds after the game starts, a number of minions spawn in each lane. These minions go down their respective lane and attack all enemy characters and structures that get in their way.

Together with your team mates and these minions, it’s your job to take down the enemy Nexus to win the game…and prevent the enemy from taking down yours.

If you have played a few games of League of Legends already, you’ll probably know all this already.

Which Role Will You Play In League Of Legends?

As we said before, League of Legends has a lot of different characters that you can play as. These characters, called Champions, each have their distinct skills and abilities. These skills are not completely random. They fit the role the character should play.

The Different Parts of Summoner’s Rift

Before we go into all the different roles you can play as in League of Legends, we’re going to talk about the layout of the map. This will give you a good idea of why a certain part of the map requires certain specific roles. To do that, first we have to explain how the different parts of the map are different from each other.

The Base

The base is where every team starts out in a game of League of Legends. It contains the Nexus, the Inhibitors, as well as a shop to buy items to help you out and give you boosts. Finally, the base also contains an area where you can go to quickly regenerate your health if you are weakened.

Putting it shortly, you want to spend as little time as possible in your own base. Every second you spend in your base means less time you can work on securing objectives. Of course, you need to go there sometimes to heal up or buy some better gear. On the other hand, you want to get as quickly to the other team’s base so you can wreck his Inhibitors, and finally of course, the Nexus.

The Top Lane

The first League of Legends location we’ll discuss is the top lane. This lane is, of course, located at the top of the map. Together with the bottom lane, this lane requires a longer distance to be traveled to get to the enemy base – because a straight path is faster than a path that is angled, obviously.

The top lane is different from all other lanes because it is farthest from certain locations that provide certain resources on a more regular basis, like the drake pits, although it is the closest to the Rift Herald and Baron Nashor location (more on that later). Because these locations require more attention because of the benefits they provide, it is advisable that your team focuses more attention on these than on the top lane.

Since you’re going to want to allocate some more attention to those other objectives, but you can’t leave an entire lane undefended, ideally, one team member is assigned to hold this lane. Because he is by himself, he should be able to take a bit of serious damage to be able to hold the line.

The Mid Lane

The Mid Lane is the straightest and shortest path to the enemy base. If the enemy advances in the mid lane, this is a more dangerous situation because they can get to your base faster. This means any change in the mid lane is going to affect the balance of the game – who’s winning vs. who’s losing – a bit more than the other lanes.

Because it is in the middle, it is also relatively closer to all the other objectives and lanes. Because of this, Champions that decide to take the Mid Lane need to be versatile and quick. This way, it is easy for them to assist in other locations when they are needed, for example to secure certain neutral objectives like drakes, or assist a teammate in need.

In short, the mid lane requires a champion that can hold his own but is flexible enough to assist with other objectives.

The Bot Lane

The bottom lane, also called bot lane, is the lane that seems to be more or less equal to the top lane. However, there are nuances that require other roles to be played optimally.

As we said earlier, the top lane is quite a bit further from Dragons, which are neutral creatures in the middle that you can take out and that provide significant bonuses to your team. Because the bottom lane is closer to these objectives, ideally you’re going to want an extra guy to help take these. Because they don’t need to be doing this constantly, they can also just help advance up the bottom lane.

So you have two players, who can work together to advance up the lane and help secure the nearby neutral objectives.

The Jungle

Between the bases and the lanes, there is a large, unexplored territory where there are no turrets or buildings. This territory is called the jungle. It is populated by neutral monsters that you can kill for gold, experience, and certain stat boosts, as well as other advantages.

These monsters provide a fair amount of resources for your team. If you don’t have someone who is working on getting all these resources, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table that can be used to help you win the game.

Aside from just ‘farming’ jungle resources, the team member who play jungle also has a secondary role: he’s also responsible for ‘ganking’. In League of Legends, ‘ganking’ means moving from the jungle to another lane to disrupt the balance of power of the fight there.

If your mid laner is having a tough fight with his counterpart from the other team, you can just unexpectedly join the fight to suddenly turn it into a 2-on-1 fight in your favor.

Aside from the regular monsters, the jungle also contains certain ‘boss’ monsters, such as the Rift Herald, Baron Nashor and the Elemental Dragons. If your team is able to kill these before the enemy can, you can get potent bonuses that can turn the tide of the battle in your favor. But more on that later.

In other words, one of your team mates should dedicate himself to managing the jungle. Ignoring the jungle is a surefire way to lose a game.

Next Up…Part Two – Which Role Are You Going To Play?

We hope that after reading this, you’ll have a basic understanding of how League of Legends is played. Once you understand these basics, you’re ready for the next chapter: the different roles and types of Champions you can play as, how you should play them, and which one is right for you.

In Part Two, we’ll go into more detail on all this.