If you’ve ever loaded up League of Legends for the first time and immediately felt overwhelmed by the 160+ champions, weird jargon, and teammates yelling about “CS” and “jungle ganks”, you’re not alone. I’ve been playing LoL since Season 3, hit Diamond three separate times, and still remember how confusing my first 20 games were. This guide breaks down how to league of legends in simple, actionable steps, no gatekeeping or overly complex mechanic deep dives required. You don’t need to memorize every champion ability to have fun and win more games right off the bat.
How to League of Legends: Lay the Foundation Before Your First Match
Most new players skip client and game settings entirely, and that’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Bad settings make it harder to land abilities, spot ganks, and react fast to what’s happening on screen. First, turn on quick cast for all abilities; this lets you cast abilities with one click instead of clicking and then selecting a target, cutting your reaction time in half. Next, adjust your minimap size to 120% or higher and turn on ally pings so they show up as bright, unmissable notifications. I used to play with the default tiny minimap for my first 100 games, and I missed 70% of jungle ganks because I never noticed the enemy jungler popping up on the edge of the screen. Spend 10 minutes tweaking these settings before you queue for your first match, and you’ll already be ahead of 90% of other new players.
Stick to 2-3 Beginner-Friendly Champions Instead of Chasing the Meta
The LoL meta shifts every two weeks with patches, and trying to keep up with what’s “strong” right now is a waste of time when you’re just starting out. When you’re first figuring out how to league of legends, it’s tempting to try every flashy new champion you see in pro play, but that’s a surefire way to stay stuck as a new player. You’ll learn way faster if you pick a small pool of simple champions and master their abilities, cooldowns, and trade patterns, instead of switching to a new champion every game. For reference, I still play the same 3 champions I mained in Season 4, and they’ve never been meta, but I still win 60% of my games on them because I know their limits inside and out. These are the most forgiving, low-skill-floor champions for each role, perfect for new players:
- Top lane: Garen – no complex combos, built-in health sustain, and a simple ultimate that executes low-health enemies with one click
- Mid lane: Annie – point-and-click burst damage, a team-wide stun you can charge up passively, and low mana costs that let you make mistakes without going out of mana
- ADC: Caitlyn – the longest basic attack range in the game, so you can farm safely from far away, plus an escape ability that lets you jump out of ganks easily
- Support: Soraka – your only job is to heal your teammates and silence enemies who dive your backline, no complex skill shots required to be useful
- Jungle: Amumu – simple jungle clear path, a massive team-wide stun that works in every teamfight, and built-in damage reduction that lets you survive mistakes when ganking
You don’t need to buy every champion with your blue essence right away. Save your essence for rune pages first, then unlock 2-3 champions that fit your preferred playstyle, and stick to them for your first 50 games. You’ll be shocked at how much faster you improve when you’re not relearning abilities every time you queue up.
Master Laning Phase Fundamentals Before Worrying About Teamfights
The first 15 minutes of the game (the laning phase) sets the tone for the rest of the match, and most new players throw their lead away by chasing unnecessary kills instead of focusing on the basics. The most important metric in laning phase is creep score, or CS: the number of minions you kill for gold. Hitting 10 CS per minute is worth more than a single kill in the first 10 minutes – 10 minions give you 200 gold, the exact same amount as a kill, with zero risk of dying and losing gold and XP. If you’re still learning how to league of legends, you don’t need to worry about perfect CS right away, but aiming for 6-8 CS per minute is a great starting goal. So many new players will abandon a full wave of minions to chase a low-health enemy across the map, get ganked, and end up losing 300 gold worth of minions plus the 300 gold they lose from dying, even if they get the kill. You should also drop a ward in the river brush closest to your lane at 3 minutes, right as the enemy jungler finishes their first clear and starts looking for ganks. I once lost a whole lane because I skipped placing a ward to chase a 100-health enemy mid laner, got ganked by their jungler, lost two full waves of minions and my turret, and was too far behind to contribute for the rest of the game. Small, consistent choices in laning phase add up to a huge lead faster than any flashy outplay.
Prioritize Objectives Over Kills to Win More Consistently
League of Legends is not a team deathmatch, even if half your teammates act like it is. The only goal of the game is to destroy the enemy nexus, and kills are just a tool to help you take objectives that get you closer to that goal. Your job is not to get the most kills on the team, it’s to win the game, even if that means letting your jungler take the kill on the enemy ADC so they can get ahead and carry. Objectives like drakes, rift herald, and baron nashor give global buffs to your entire team that make every fight easier, way more than a random kill on the enemy support. For example, the first cloud drake gives your whole team 10% movement speed, which lets you get to fights faster, escape ganks easier, and rotate between lanes to take turrets faster. If you win a 2v2 fight in bot lane, don’t back immediately to buy items. Take the enemy bot turret, then take the drake if it’s up, before you head back to base. So many teams win fights but don’t take any objectives after, and end up losing the game 30 minutes later because the enemy team stacked more drake buffs. Kills don’t win games, objectives do, and remembering that will help you climb ranks way faster than focusing on your KDA.
Learning how to league of legends takes time, and you don’t need to hit Diamond in your first season to have fun. Don’t get discouraged if you lose your first 10 games, even pro players have losing streaks that last 5+ games, and the average player takes 200+ games to get a good handle on the basics. The tips in this guide will cut your learning curve in half, and the best thing you can do is show up to every game ready to learn one new thing, instead of worrying about winning every single match. At the end of the day, it’s just a game, and the most important thing is to play champions you enjoy, even if they’re not considered “meta” by the wider community.