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Unlock your League of Legends potential: 11 essential beginner tips
Like many strategy games, learning how to play League of Legends is far from easy, but these beginner tips will help fast-track your progress.
With five positions, multiple epic monsters and over 100 different champions to learn about, learning how to play League of Legends (LoL) is undoubtedly intimidating. But there’s a reason that it's one of the most popular games in the world, with tens of millions of players worldwide.
The MOBA genre is notoriously difficult to learn and League of Legends is no different. It is somewhat beginner-friendly however – at least compared to MOBAs like DOTA 2.
If you're completely lost and unsure of how to get started, check out our beginner’s guide, which will give you a true understanding of what LoL is. Otherwise, here are some great tips to give you the best possible start in learning how to play.
01
Learn the map
The map you'll primarily play on is Summoner’s Rift, which is made up of three lanes: the top lane, the mid lane and the bottom lane. Filling the gaps between these lanes are jungle areas filled with mysterious creatures and a river that cuts through the middle of the map, which is host to giant, game-changing monsters like the Drake.
Learn the League of Legends map thoroughly if you want to succeed
© Riot Games
What are toplaners, midlaners and junglers?
Typically, there are five roles that players can take in game: top, jungle, mid, AD carry and support. These roles, as you may have guessed, decide which lane you will walk into at the start of the game.
Toplaners: They typically take tanks who can survive for a long time and short-ranged brawlers who like to repeatedly fight in 1v1 battles.
Midlaners: Go mid with assassins who are very mobile and kill champions very quickly or mages who throw out a lot of powerful abilities.
The bottom lane: This is slightly different with two characters: an ADC, aka marksman, who focuses on dealing damage via long-range auto attacks and needs time to become strong. They're accompanied by a support, who protects the carry, helps the team by warding and doesn't need to last hit minions for gold.
Jungler: These roam the jungle areas between lanes, killing the jungle monsters who spawn in 'camps' as quickly as possible before trying to surprise-attack (gank) enemies.
02
What's the best role for beginners?
While we did say to try every role – and you still should – if you’re really struggling, then the easiest role to pick up is support. As a support, you don't have to worry about last hitting minions, so you can focus purely on getting used to using your abilities and the flow of the game.
Support is a great role for learning the game
© Riot Games
Make sure to help protect your ADC in fights and prioritise completing your support item's quest, so you can get more wards quickly. A quick tip: if your quest needs you to kill minions (when you have a charge ready), try to use them on cannon minions, as they’re worth the most gold, and then melee minions as the next best option.
In general, you should be able to try any role and be just fine. The only role you might want to avoid as a new player is the jungler role, which needs good knowledge of every lane and is the most difficult to play.
03
Try different champions
Once you've got a general idea of the lanes and what each role does, why not try them all? There's no pressure, especially against bots, so use your early games to make mistakes and then learn from them.
Playing each role will give you a better idea of how the game is played and, ultimately, you'll figure out which position you enjoy and want to learn most. Learning is a lot easier when you’re having fun and, so it's best to focus on one role and learn how to improve in that position. But there's no rush to make that decision.
League of Legends has over 150 champions
© Riot Games
Every week, 17 different champions are temporarily made free to play thanks to the free champion rotation. This means that there's never a shortage of characters to try and by playing them all you'll greatly improve your game knowledge.
04
Learn your Hotkeys
A large part of learning any game is getting used to the controls. These are the key controls you should learn, some of which are hidden and can be very useful.
The obvious ones you likely already know. If you’re playing with default controls, QWER is for your champion's abilities.
Get your Hotkey knowledge on point as soon as you can
© Mathew Valbuena/Red Bull Content Pool
F and D allow you to use Summoner Spells like Flash and Ignite, which can be hugely beneficial in fights.
Your number keys 1,2,3,4,5, 6, and 7 will allow you to use any active abilities of the items you've bought, depending on what slot you've dragged them into. As a bonus tip, it can be a good idea to change the hotkey for your trinket ward to T, which then frees up 4 for another item active.
Y will lock and unlock your camera, the latter being very useful, as you need to be aware of your surroundings. Don't worry if you lose sight of your character, you can use spacebar to snap the camera back to your champion.
B activates your recall, which teleports you back to base, and is very useful when you want to buy items or regenerate health. You can also open the shop at any time, even when recalling, by pressing P, so you can quickly decide what you want to buy next.
To communicate to your team without typing, G gives you a selection of pings that can give quick messages like asking for help or warning a team-mate that an enemy is approaching.
Finally, tab allows you to see the stats and items of everyone in the game, so you can figure out who is strongest. It also allows you to mute people annoying people in your chat.
05
Learn how to survive
Dying a lot in your first few games is inevitable, but it's crucial that you try your best to change this because dying less is actually far more useful than chasing more kills.
To help you with this, initially focus on two things: towers and minions.
You’ll quickly learn that towers hurt a lot. Fighting under an enemy tower is extremely risky unless your target is very low health or you have a lot of team-mates to help.
It's important you learn the enemy turret range, so you can avoid stepping over and taking unnecessary damage. However, your own tower makes for great protection, if a fight goes south then getting under your turret will likely save you. Because of this, when you’re under your tower you can be far more aggressive.
Don't underestimate the damage of enemy turrets
© Riot Games
Make use of minions
As for minions, they actually make a great guideline for how to position your champion. You typically want to be stood behind minions, not only because it puts you a safer distance from your opponents, but also because minions will protect you from skillshots – they'll literally take a bullet for you.
And be aware, if your wave of minions runs out, then enemy minions can turn on you and this damage must not be underestimated. Minion damage builds up very quickly and catch people off-guard. So, if you notice you have a much bigger wave of minions, try to get your opponent to fight within that wave and you'll have a huge advantage.
06
Communicate like a veteran
LoL is a team game, so communication really is key
© Barış Acarlı/Red Bull Content Pool
At the end of the day, LoL is a team game and you will need to work together with your team-mates to win. Even those who are horrible in the chat.
Thankfully, you don't always need words because the ping wheel is a fantastic tool. It's especially a good idea to get in the habit of using the yellow question mark when you don't know where your lane opponent has gone.
Otherwise, you need to learn the lingo of LoL, as there a lot of terms you likely haven’t heard before. It’s its own language, but thankfully we have a dictionary on all the terms you’ll likely come across.
07
Practice last hitting
Last hitting is the act of dealing the last bit of damage to kill a minion. Getting the last hit will earn you all the gold for the minion kill and this will likely be your main source of income – you can't go on a killing spree every game.
Every champion has a different auto attack animation, so the timing is slightly different. This is why it can be helpful to spend some time in the practice tool and focus solely on farming minions.
Also, it's very difficult to last hit while enemy minions are attacking your turret, so try to remember that melee minions take two tower shots and one auto to kill whereas ranged minions take one tower shot and one auto attack to kill.
As an extra tip for farming, pay close attention to your minions' attacks mid-air, as this will help your timing massively.
08
Be aggressive
We did say to focus on not dying earlier and that's still the case. However, you can only truly learn and get better by taking fights and pushing yourself to try and outplay the opponent. This way, you learn what you and your champion are capable of.
Sometimes, the best way to learn is diving into fights
© Riot Games
When safe to do so, with no tower influence, try and have a small fight with your lane opponent. You don't necessarily need to get the kill, but try to come out with more health than them.
Eventually, you'll learn from all of these deaths and will have a good idea of when you can fight. You'll notice mistakes, like when your opponent wastes a strong ability or walks too far forward, and you’ll be able to capitalise.
09
Change some settings
LoL has a ridiculous amount of settings. In a game or the practice tool, you can press Esc to bring up a wealth of options and these few small changes can make a big difference.
Make your minimap bigger
Regularly checking your minimap for nearby allies, enemies and fights is a very important skill and increasing the size of your minimap will help you form this habit. To do so, go to interface and then slide your minimap scale to somewhere between 50 and 70. You don't want this too big, because hovering over the minimap will change the direction you cast your abilities. It can also be a good idea to slightly decrease the size of your HUD (your ability icons) so you can see more in fights.
Show the mana/energy costs on your HUD
Another useful change is to show the mana/energy costs of your abilities on your HUD. This way you can quickly figure out whether you have enough mana to fight with your full combo. To turn this on, go to interface, then under abilities and attack display, tick the box labelled show spell costs.
Knowing your mana costs is very helpful, especially with mages
© Riot Games
Turn on Smartcast
Finally, after a few games it's generally a good idea to turn on smartcast for all of your abilities. This means you can cast an ability by just pressing Q, W, E or R, without needing to click. This is crucial, so that during a fight you’re casting your spells as quickly as possible. With no range indicator, it can be difficult at first, but it's very worth getting used to. To do this, go to hotkeys and then click quickcast all at the top.
Range indicators
Optionally, if you really miss having the range indicators for moves, you can give yourself this as an additional option by scrolling down in hotkeys to normal cast and then bind your spell 1, 2, 3 and 4 to Shift + Q, Shift + W, Shift + E, and Shift + R. This way you can alternate between quick cast and normal cast.
10
Learn to play camera unlocked
This is a common problem for a lot of new players, but again it's another good habit you want to develop early. Play with your camera unlocked.
By pressing Y, your camera will no longer stick to your champion and can be moved around by your mouse off-screen or clicking on the minimap. At any time should you need to return to your champion, you can hit Y to return to camera locked or press spacebar to zoom back to your champion.
Why this is so useful is because you’ll see a wider view of what is happening, you'll be much more aware of your surroundings and might just spot an enemy who's trying to gank you.
One tip that can help you get used to this is lowering your camera speed in the general game settings from the main menu, not in-game. Keep this somewhere near the middle, but lower it down if you find camera unlocked too jarring.
11
Buy boots early
Boots are the unsung heroes of LoL's items
© Riot Games
Boots, even before being upgraded, are much more useful than you would think. They may not give you more damage, but they will get you to fights quicker, they help you return to your lane sooner and they can help you dodge skill shots, which ultimately could win you a skirmish.
If you're a support you may very want to buy boots on your first recall to help you place wards. Otherwise, buy boots after purchasing your first item or if you have spare gold while building towards that first item.
12
Watch the best
If you want to become better, you might as well watch the best. There are always opportunities to watch high level LoL, as esports tournaments like Red Bull League of Its Own display the talents of pro players.
Watching the pros play is a great way to learn LoL tricks and techniques
© Stephanie Lindgren/Red Bull Content Pool
You’re not going to become one of the world’s best LoL players overnight, but you can get a lot of tips on how to play LoL well and specifically watch how pros play your favourite champions.
Our viewers guide can help you get started with the esports scene, otherwise find a champion you like and search online to find a video of a pro player using them and you'll be amazed how much you can learn.
