With League of Legends quickly
rising to be one of the most played games on a PC, it seems high-time I talked
about it. League of Legends, made by Riot Games, is a MOBA-style game. In English,
that means a team game with players on each team trying to conquer the other’s
base. League of Legends (LoL) has garnered a huge audience and is even featured
in E-Sports matches alongside games like Starcraft 2 and Counterstrike. However,
the learning curve can be a little high when you are playing through the early
levels. Instead of spending 5 pages trying to explain the basics of LoL, thisvideo guide explains it much better than I could and even has pretty pictures. This
guide can serve as a list of tips and tricks to follow as you level your way up
to level 30. As a veteran of LoL, playing hours a day with friends and foes
alike, I decided that a nice LoL 101 guide would be quite handy for new players
who want to try their hand at this quite fun game.
To kick things off, I think a few
tips and tricks are in order.
Try Every Champion at Least Once
With
free champs rotating every week, you should try out as many champions as
possible to understand what each one does and what their abilities are. Even
the new champs are put into rotation a few weeks after they are released, so
always look out for new champs to experiment with. After a figuring out what
roles/champions you like you can narrow down the choices and work on only a few.
For Lvls 1-10, Pick One Role/Champion and Stick With It:
This sounds
slightly counter-intuitive to what I just said above, but both can be true. At
first play a lot of champs, but once you level up a few times you’ll start
finding certain roles or champs that you like to play more often than any of
the others. When you do, try to stick to that one champ or role and learn how
to play that really well. Since this is a multiplayer game and you are a part
of a team, you end up helping your team out more by playing a champ you know
well, than playing someone you don’t know just to fill in a role. By learning
one role you also start understanding how your role ties in with the team as a
whole.
Use the Internet /Friends/Guides…Do Your Research!:
Since this is
a team based game and your players depend on you to do your part, you should do
your best to be as informed as possible. There are plenty of guides, tutorials,explanations, and helpful communities that can aid you when learning a new
champ or new role. Say you decided to pick up Ashe for the first time and have
no idea how to play an AD Carry. There are many sites and forums that post
guides to the proper item builds, leveling orders, and playstyles that will tip
the odds in your favor. Here the old cliché “Knowledge is Power” really does
apply. Even if you don’t have that much skill as a newer player, being well
informed about a certain champ or what role you are playing can go a long way
in helping out your team win.
Don’t Worry About The Metagame:
League of
Legends can have a very interesting metagame, with strategies and builds
shifting often to counter and re-counter champs that are popular at the time.
However as a lower-level Summoner, you really shouldn’t worry about that.
Eventually you will probably have a lot of discussions about the metagame and
how this champion counters that one. But in the early levels, worry about
getting the basics like last hitting or map awareness down. You are much more
valuable to your team if you can do your job well than spout off the best
counter to Morgana.
Try To Play With Your Friends:
The best games
of League are played with your friends. If you have friends who are already
playing, then they can help you with item builds and champ selections. Friends
are also a great place for support and encouragement. Not everyone is going to
be happy if you don’t do well and having friends who can help out instead of
just yell at you is always beneficial. If you don’t have friends that play LoL,
try and find some people who you can play with against bots. The more people
you have on your friends list, the better your chances are at not playing
against random people.
Choose Carefully What You Buy:
Considering
the fact that you can buy things like XP and IP boosts with real money, along
with different tiers of runes depending on your level, be careful with what you
think is worth spending IP and RP on. For example, the tier 2 runes aren’t
worth spending IP on at all. Just save up and buy tier 3 runes once you reach a
high enough level. Another thing to avoid buying is the XP boosts. When you buy
an XP boost, you get additional experience points when you complete a game,
making your early levels take less time. But when you do that, your deprive
yourself of the practice you need. If you level up 2 or 3 times in the time it
normally takes to level up once, then you will reach a new level of playing
that you aren’t ready for. It might seem really tempting to buy one or two to
get a little more XP to hit the next level, but resist the temptation. You’ll
feel much better about it when you reach level 30 and feel like you can handle
yourself.
Don’t Leave/Go AFK/Give up:
Sometimes
a game can be really difficult, or someone on your team is berating you and you
feel like quitting just to spite them. Don’t ever do it: always to try to finish
your rounds. No matter what happens, see the game through. Even if your team
decides to surrender before the game really is complete, stick with it until
the end. If you leave early too many times, you will get warnings, alerts, and
eventually punishment. Not only that, but if you leave because you are losing,
or because things aren’t looking good, then you lose out on valuable experience
playing when you are in a losing position. Like most competitive games, losing
a game can be more valuable than winning because when you lose, you can learn
from your mistakes. It sounds trite, but it’s still true and if you want to
really do well in League of Legends, then sticking around for the last 10
minutes, even if you know you will lose, is always worth it.
Watch Patch Updates
One of the
things that keeps LoL interesting is the patches made to it every month. Like
many competitive games, a patch that updates a game can change the attributes
of abilities, items, and champions. That in turn inspires new strategies and
ideas as the whole game is changed because of the patch. For example, the most
recent patch “buffed,” or improved specific stats, a champion named Rumble.
After the patch, a lot of people started playing with Rumble because his buff
made him quite powerful. This change starts the metagame I mentioned before,
and it also creates an opportunity for players to take advantage of the new
champ and create new builds and strategies. As a LoL player, It is important to
keep an eye out for new patches and to pay attention to which champs, items,
and abilities are altered in the patches.
League of Legends can be a really fun and engaging fame that keeps you glued to your computer screen for hours. It gets even better once you discover that people around you are playing as well, and you get together for a good round or two of LoL. I would definitely recommend downloading it and trying it out. It’s free for goodness sakes, and the hours you can get out of the game are quite worth it. I know I’ll be playing League for at least a few hours tonight.
