LoL: From Noob to Not-So-Noob: Introduction

So you’ve decided to join the fun yet scary world of League of Legends, good on you! There’s plenty of others who have made the same choice and have been through the same pain and hardsh- I mean fun and excitement of learning the game and getting to grips with the huge amount of stuff you need to learn. I was one of them. So I’ve decided to make this guide to try and help new players and hopefully make your starting experience in LoL an easier one.

The first thing to realise with LoL, is that due to the competitive nature of the game and the rpg elements being relatively minor, with the focus being almost entirely on personal skill, you will suck at this game to start with. If you’ve played other MOBAs like DotA or HoN in the past you might suck less, but you’ll still suck. This is why this guide isn’t a ‘from noob to pro’ guide. I’m not a pro myself, I don’t get paid to play the game, and I don’t doubt that I still make many stupid mistakes within the game. My aim isn’t to make you one of the best LoL players in the world, it’s a beginners course to lessen the pain of learning the huge roster of heroes, the multitude of items, the confusion of runes and masteries and to help you get to grips with general game mechanics and tactics which new players may not find directly obvious. By the end of the guide, you should be well on your way to at least knowing WHY you aren’t amazing at the game and should hopefully know what you can do to improve.

At the same time, I don’t want to bore you stupid by expecting you to read through pages and pages of text. The fun is in the playing, and I’ll be focusing at first on getting you into the game playing more than the cerebral background behind the game. That’ll come later on in this series of guides. I’m writing these in a series of relatively small chunks with the intent that you’ll play a game or two between each one. Whether you do that, read them all at once or just read the bits you want is of course entirely up to you.

So, let’s get into the game. As a starting point I’m going to assume you have been through all the tutorials on offer. If you haven’t, do those now as it will explain the core of the game and what you’re doing.

One of your first thoughts when looking at information on the game may be that there are a lot of champions to choose from, and you may be wondering which you should buy first. For now, don’t worry about that too much and just try out whatever champions are on this week’s roster of free champions. This should get you to grips with a variety of different champions, as well as teaching you what each one does for when you happen to come up against one on the other team. We’ll go through champions and buying them later on, but for now I want to focus on getting you into some games and getting some experience (and IP) behind your belt.

One big benefit of LoL compared to its older counterpart DotA is that it has a proper matchmaking system. As such, your first games should be against other fairly new players, though thanks to some players being lovely people you are almost guaranteed to play against some very experienced players on alt accounts. Don’t worry too much, for your starting levels winning isn’t as important as trying to get to grips with the game and your first few champions , as well as the following core principle which will be your main focus while you are learning, that is : Staying Alive