All about LoL

Lo's updated guide to League of Legends! :D

Hey guys so I wanted to make an updated post about my current favorite game, LoL. Earlier this year I was writing an intro about it on my blog HERE but I felt like I could explain the game more in depth and thoroughly so that some of my friends can pick it up really fast. By now, LoL is one of the fastest growing competitive games in the world and everywhere from Europe to Asia, this game has collected massive amounts of fans and players. If you're looking for a game you can play with your friends, this is definitely a good game to try. And of course, it's free to play!

League of Legends is a FREE TO PLAY, player vs player (pvp) game which means you are literally playing against other players in REAL TIME. It is labeled as an "MMO" (massive multiplayer online) and more than strategy, the game focuses on key skills and knowledge of item usage, mechanics of the game, and basic overall understanding of how the champions work.

In LoL, you are titled as a "Summoner" and the characters you choose are titled "Champions". You have a wide variety of champions to choose from but they are not all unlocked. You receive a list of 10 champions that you can try out for free every week. The more you play the game, the more "IP" (influence points) you receive as the game's currency, and you can unlock champions accordingly. The idea behind this is that the free week rotations will be every week, so eventually, you will have a chance to try out every champion before you buy them as you cannot get a refund for champions you buy with IP. There is also "RP" (or Riot Points) that you can purchase with REAL money. You can unlock champions this way but also you can buy SKINS for your champions.

There are several TYPES of champions to choose from. In Summoner's Rift, the basic layout is that there are THREE lanes. As of current, there is one champion that goes top lane (preferably a melee/bruiser), one champion that goes in the middle lane (preferably a mage/AP=ability power/ranged) two champions that go bottom (ranged AD=attack damage/carry) and a Support champion (that supports the "AD CARRY" as they call it.), and a Jungler (preferably a champ with high sustain (hp regen) or tanky, fast, and has enough dmg to at level 2 to clear the jungles) With that said, the types of champions you can choose from include: Bruiser, tank, melee, ability power mage, attack damage, ranged attack damage, stealth, assassin, support, jungler, and hybrids (who use both ability power and attack damage).

Each champion has FOUR skills = QWER keys as well as a passive skill. 

Passive skills are inherited to your champion and are not needed to activate. Depending on what your passive is, your champion may get a buff or an extra ability. The main skills are in your QWE keys. The "R" is considered as an "ULTIMATE" which is basically a special skill that either does a lot of damage or helps your champion significantly one way or another. Some ultimates are a skill and some are just really big buffs that help your champion.

I will show you some examples with some of my favorite champions for each lane without going into too much detail:

Top lane - GangPlank. GP is a bruiser/melee champion with a really cool "global ult".

Q - a ranged shot.

W - he eats oranges to heal or to remove any CC effects. (cc=crowd control like slows and taunts, fears, traps, etc.)

E - a buff that he can give to himself and team mates that are nearby. boosts attack speed and movement speed for a small duration.

R - a global ult, meaning, you can use it anywhere on the map. Fires a barrage of cannons in selected area, does damage over time to those standing in it, and also slows the enemies.

Mid Lane - Ahri - Mage/assassin/ranged AP (ability power)

Q - fires an orb towards an enemy, that retracts back towards ahri (so it can hit the enemy twice like a boomerang)

W - three fire shot, basically an AoE dmg skill (Area of Effect/can hit more than one target)

E - Charm (does magic dmg to whoever it hits as well as lures the target towards Ahri without being able to do anything)

R - she can quickly flash over to her targets, three times and do damage. It's a good escape tool for her as well.

Bot lane - Ashe - AD Carry/ranged . I think in every MMO there is a ranger. Ashe is a frost archer though so she shoots icy arrows. That's different right?? She is one of my favorite champions to play.

Q - toggle effect. shoots arrows that can slow down her target.  (CC)

W - an AoE skill that shoots multiple arrows in a line

E - acts as a 'ward' (basically an item that gives you vision around the map because there are areas on the map that you cannot see without wards.) you can shoot her arrow towards a location if you feel that someone is coming to your lane from the enemy team (aka their jungler) it also gives you gold boost.

R - also a global ult (well, you can shoot across the screen) does dmg to whoever it hits as well as stuns them for a second (considerd a 'hard' CC because it doesn't only slow, but actually stuns them)

Bot Lane - Sona - Support/ranged . Sona's skills do multiple things depending on if you hit the target or your own ally. It's a bit more to explain so I recommend just looking her up yourself but basically.....

Q - does dmg to two targets (cannot be chosen but will hit whoever is nearest) the range on this is REALLY long so it's good for poking and harassing.

W - heals

E - speed boost

R - stuns enemies in the area it hits. Also does magic damage.

Jungler - Nocturne - assassin/melee . Quite possibly one of the scariest champions as he uses "darkness" to kill his enemies. But he's my favorite jungler xD

Q - makes a trail of damage, doing dmg to whoever it lands on

W - shield that gives him atk speed boost if hit

E - does dmg and fears the enemy if they are attached to the effect long enough

R - a semi-global ult, it has a range, but he can basically fly over to whoever he targets (within the range) and uses darkness to blind everyone on the map. It's pretty frightening when you're in game because all you hear is "daaarkness" before he strikes someone. But the thing is, since he is blinding everyone, you can't tell who exactly he's striking....unless it's you! It's awesome.

Currently, there are FOUR different maps that you can choose from.

Summoner's Rift is basically the "NORMAL" map. I will explain this in a little bit.

Twisted Treeline is a 3 v 3 game, where the map is much less complex than Summoner's Rift. I don't play this one very often but you always want to start on Summoner's Rift as it will give you a good overall understanding of how maps work in LoL. Then you can try out Twisted Treeline to get a good sense of how to play on it.

The Crystal Scar is basically a "capture the flag" type map. There are five turrets that stand around the circularly shaped map. The goal is to capture more flags than the other team. This is a much more casual map to play on if you think Summoner's Rift is too long or too intense.

The Proving Grounds is actually the newest map added on LoL. This is a single lane map and is basically a "fight or die" style of play. Here you are given limited space on the map since it's only one lane and you must work as a team to kill the other players off in order to destroy their turrets. It's a really fun map if you are just wanting to play casually. Usually these games are not very long at all. A fun aspect of Proving Grounds is playing "ALL RANDOM" which basically does not give you the choice to choose your character. I think it's more fun this way because sometimes your entire team is like, all supports or all bruisers. It's not always "fair" but it does make the game more entertaining.

Once you choose your map, you will be brought into a screen that looks like this. Here you can choose your champions, rune page, mastery page, and summoner spells.

Champions are all in the center box as shown. The ones with the (!) exclamation point indicate that the champion is "free to play" for that week. If they don't have the (!) on the upper left corner of the champion, it simply means you have unlocked them. Most likely, if you just start out, they will all have that symbol on it.

Runes and Masteries - If you're familiar with video games in general, then you probably don't really need much of an explanation on these. Runes you can buy with IP earned by playing the game, to give your champion better base 'stats' (Stats meaning their HP, MP, speed, armor, etc.) and masteries are free. You gain more mastery points as you level up. Basically the Masteries are divided into three separate trees: OFFENSE, DEFENSE, and UTILITY. Depending on what skill tree you fill up, the items on your champions that you buy in game will increase in their respected skills. For example, if you fill up the OFFENSE tree for your offensive champion, they will increase in the overall damage they can do. Typically, defense is for tanky champions and utility is for support champions. You can fill more than one skill tree but you are only given 30 mastery points maximum.

Summoner Spells basically spells you can use in game to help your champion out. There a few to choose from. For example, there is a HEAL spell and a MANA spell, so if you need the extra healing boost in your lane, you can opt to go for heal. A popular spell is "FLASH" which basically let's your champion literally "flash" to where your mouse points. There is a limit on range of where you can flash to but it's very useful for getting out of situations since many champions use CC (crowd control) and are able to slow you down or trap you to kill you.

Once you are in game, you are able to buy items. You earn GOLD while you're playing in game. You can press "B" to teleport back to this area, which is your base, if ever you need to buy or go back to heal.

Here is a basic look at the Summoner's Rift map. You will either start at the top of the screen or the bottom of the screen, which is indicated by the loading screen before you enter the actual game. If your team is on the bottom of the loading screen, it means you will start at the bottom of the map.

The baseball field looking area is your team's BASE. The three square shapes with the purple beam coming out are your inhibitors. You cannot kill the inhibitors until you kill the turrets which are right in front of each inhibitors. The turrets are all over the map and are what you NEED to kill in order to get closer to the enemies base. The turrets do damage to your champion, so to prevent getting killed by them, your goal is to push creeps (minions that spawn from your base towards the enemy base) so that they can take the turret damage, while you safely whack away at the enemy turrets.

That is the over all goal in League of Legends. Kill enemy turrets, kill the inhibitors, kill the Nexus. 

There are a lot of mechanical factors that go into the game but I won't explain every single thing. You will learn most of it just by playing the game, but as a beginner's guide, you should note a couple of important things.

In Summoner's Rift, there are JUNGLES, which are indicated by the red and blue circles on the map. The blue circle has two neutral monsters. These are monsters that will attack you if you attack them, but do not belong to either you nor the enemies. If you look at the enemy side of the jungle from your blue, that is the enemy's RED jungle and on the opposite side your red jungle, it is the enemy's blue. Either teams are able to take these jungles as they are neutral monsters. Killing them does give you gold.

In the blue jungle, there are some wolves on the lower side of the jungle and then there's a big blue golem on the upper side of the jungle. The BLUE golem actually gives your champion a buff. It will give you increased MANA regeneration and boost energy regeneration for champions that use energy as opposed to mana. The buffs will only last a couple minutes so it's best to use them wisely.

In the red jungle, on the left side there are wraiths you can kill. And then on the right side, there are two big golems you can kill but these golems don't give you buffs. They give you good experience though so are worth it nonetheless. Then in the center, is the red lizard. The red lizard also gives the champion a buff, increases attack damage for a duration of time.

The light blue circle represents the DRAGON, which is another neutral monster. However, the dragon is much stronger so to kill it, will often need the aid of a few of your team members to kill it as it does do quite some damage to your champion. Killing the dragon will give your entire team a good amount of gold.

The purple circle represents BARON, which is this huge weird looking worm thing. Basically BARON is a pivotal part of the game if used correctly. It is also a neutral monster and it does a lot of damage to your champion. Unless your champions is very strong and very fed at late game, most likely, you cannot solo this creature. You usually need your entire team or at least 3/5 of them to defeat it. The baron gives the entire team a hyper buff which increases your HP regeneration, your damage, and overall armor. In sticky situations, getting baron can be the factor of a victory or loss.

Here is a closer look at the in-game perspective of the map, champion, and details. 

One of the things I really like about League of Legends is that there are so many different champions to choose from. This makes it so that you can always learn to master a champion and not get tired of the game. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely very enjoyable with the right team. There is so much more that goes into this game, but if you would like to learn and would like to play, feel free to message me and let me know! I would love to recruit more people into the game.

League of Legends is one of the most popular video games all over the globe at the moment. It surpasses STARCRAFT2 in popularity within MMO's and the best part is, it's FREE TO PLAY! So why not try it out?

I'm not actually much of a gamer myself. LoL is probably the only game I really spend time on and that's because there is no stress to level up my champion as it is not an RPG. It's more like a fighting game in a sense, so it's easier to pick up and put down and continue without much worry. Also, I think it's a pretty easy game to get into considering that I'm not really a great gamer and I got into pretty easily. Find out more about it at the League of Legends website or feel free to ask me.

Hope this was helpful to those who are starting or curious about the game.

XO