Enjoy If you just installed LoL (League of Legends), then you probably want to know what you are playing and how to play effectively. This game has a high learning and skill curve which is one of my favorite qualities in a game. That being said, don't expect to pick it up just like that... it takes time and patience to get good. Pre-Game Knowledge: Summoner and Champions: You are a summoner that level caps at 30. You have the choice to choose over 65 champions. As a summoner, you are given two ways to customize your champion to benefit yourself. Those ways are the masteries and the rune pages. To access these contributors you need to view your profile by clicking the human icon as seen below. Masteries: From level 1-30 you will gain a point for your masteries tree. If you've played WoW, which I'm sure most of you have, then you can see the masteries closely resemble talent trees. There are 3 trees. Offense, Defense, and Utility. Offense is used to increase damage output, Defense is used to increase you're survivability, and Utility is used to reduce downtime on beneficials. Rune Page: You are given 3 rune pages. You can buy 7 for time sake but everyone can do fine with 3. At level one you have the choice to buy Tier 1 runes. These are very weak and you should never EVER buy these. Once you reach level 10, you can buy Tier 2 runes. I don't recommend you buy these. At level 20 you are able to buy the Tier 3 runes. These are the top notch runes and should start buying as soon as possible. Start with Quintessences first and work your way down to your liking. You should buy the runes that will benefit a variety of champions you like to play. Spells: Summoner spells are universal for all summoners regardless of what champion they pick. Most have large cooldowns and can save your life or destroy your opponents. You can buff these spells by placing points in your masteries that boost their effects. The Two Maps: There are two map/game types in LoL;Summoners Rift 5 v 5 and Twisted Treeline 3 v 3 Summoners Rift is much more popular than Twisted Treeline. The two vary greatly in play style. In SR you have a total of 22 towers which have large amounts of health and do massive damage at lower levels. SR has the dragon and Baron Nashor which give universal buffs to the entire team and change the game in your favorite effectively. In Twisted Treeline there are only 10 towers and a dragon. The dragon gives universal gold and a buff. The Game: Lanes and Jungles: Your champion has the option of going into the jungle, or laning. A jungle champ will usually if not always get the Smite summoner spell paired with a slow or escape spell (Ghost, Exhaust, Flash). Jungling benefits your team greatly. If your whole team groups up and kills minions, the xp is distributed among all of the players. In an ideal set up for SR, there will be 1 champion in the top lane (Known as the SOLO), 1 champion in the middle lane (MID), 1 champion jungling, and 2 champions bottom lane. The reason for this setup is to distributed the minion xp so your team levels quickly. Why 2 champions bottom lane and not top lane? The Dragon is always bottom on the SR map. 2 champions bottom will give your team a better control over killing it than 1 champion. I will cover jungling in depth later. If you are laning, your main goal is to farm as much as possible. Farm? You see, when you are the last person to hit a minion and get the killing blow, you get a nice reward of gold. This is known as "last hitting". Doing this repeatedly during early game (about 0:00 - 10:00) is crucial to your success. The caster minions give you 16 gold, melee minions gives 22 gold and cannon minions give you 27 gold. So...Cannon>melee>caster for last hitting. It is so important you do this in order to get a good start. Pushing: While you are in early game, you do not want to constantly auto attack the minions and push (Exceptions are if you have no jungle or they are pushing
