[0:00]League of Legends has changed a lot over the years, and in 2026 it is now looking better and more accessible than ever before. With additions like role quest, the ability to move with WASD, and tons of other great improvements, with many designed specifically to help out new and returning players. There really has never been a better time to finally give League a try. But even then, jumping into a game like League can really feel overwhelming without the right help. So today, whether you're completely new or you're coming back after a long break, this particular guide is really going to get you up to speed with everything that you need to know step-by-step. But first, we're skill cap for over a decade, we've helped millions of players just like you get started and improve at League of Legends. And for 2026, we are excited to introduce our newly updated beginner courses, breaking down and expanding on many of the core concepts that are going to be covered in this video. Into bite-sized lessons that you're actually going to understand from day one. No confusing terms, no assuming that you know things, just clear, practical advice that you can use to get an advantage in your very first games. Designed to set you on the right track and acting as the perfect entry point into the rest of our world-class content, including our Bronze to Diamond series where we take brand new players and we guide them all the way to diamond using nothing but our courses. So you can see exactly what it takes to improve. So whether you're just starting out, or you're looking to climb faster than everyone else this season. Check out the exclusive one-time beginner discount link risk-free today in the description below. Now, League of Legends is everywhere, from hit TV shows, sold out esports events, to iconic songs and music videos. It's literally the biggest game in the world for a reason. But what actually is League of Legends? Well, League is what we would call a MOBA, and that's short for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. And the arena for where all that battling takes place is on what's known as Summoner's Rift. And a quick warning here, depending on when you're watching this video, Summoner's Rift might not look exactly like what you're going to see in this video. Riot regularly updates the map with new regional or seasonal themes throughout the entire year. But don't worry, these changes are usually just visual changes, they are going to change anything else. So, with that said, each match of League is 5v5. With teams starting on the opposite sides of Summoner's Rift. Blue side starts at the bottom, red side starts at the top, with this map being divided into three lanes. There's top lane, middle lane, and bottom lane, as well as a jungle area between filled with neutral monsters. Now, at the start of every match, you spawn at your team's fountain.
[2:34]This is the only place in the game where you can heal and buy items. From there, you head straight towards your assigned lane based on your role. Then after 30 seconds, waves of minions are going to start spawning and begin marching down all three of these lanes for the rest of the game. And since this is a PvP game, you're also going to be facing an opponent in your lane. Your goal is to last hit enemy minions or defeat your lane opponent in order to earn gold and get experience. Then that gold is then spent to buy items from the shop at your fountain that make your champion stronger. While the experience that you gain allows you to level up, providing you skill points that are used to unlock or upgrade your abilities as the game goes on. You can convert that power into grouping up with your team and taking one of the many objectives around the map to earn combat buffs. Now, with the ultimate goal being to eventually push down one of these three lanes, destroying the turrets on the way until you expose your opponent's nexus. And that right there is the primary objective of every single game on Summoner's Rift. Destroy the Nexus and your team is declared victorious. Now, yeah, that was a lot to take in, a lot of terms there, but don't panic about any of it. Now that you understand the overall objective of every game, we can really start to break things down step by step here. First up, the best place for any new player to start is the League tutorial. In fact, you don't have much of a choice as the game is going to force you to do it. This is split into three different parts, helping you get used to moving around, using abilities, and buying items. But even then, there's still a lot that it leaves out. So, strap in, we're going to do a quick rundown of the basics together here. Each champion in League of Legends has four abilities, which for point-and-click are by default set to Q, W, E, and R. Don't worry, we're going to cover WASD a little bit later in the course. Then on top of that, you have a passive skill that usually ties your champion's whole kit together in one way or another. For abilities that need to be aimed, holding the key is going to show you the abilities range and the direction it's going to travel. For targeted abilities, holding the key instead shows a circle, letting you know how close you need to be in order to use it. And then, you can simply aim or put your cursor on that target and let go of the bind to fire the ability. You then have two extra spells called Summoners, which you can select at the start of every game. You won't have all these unlocked when you first start out, but they're basically just extra abilities that you can use at any point during the game. Which are by default, bound to D and F. And I say pick, but basically one of those is almost always going to be Flash once you unlock it. Which Flash lets you blink a short distance on a very long cooldown. And then, for the other options, you have a teleport you can use to get places on the map after a short channel. A damage over time spell called Ignite, a heal for you and an ally, a shield, a speed increase called Ghost, and Exhaust, which slows the target and makes them deal less damage for a short period of time. Oh, and there's also Smite. Now, you automatically get assigned this when playing the Jungle role, but more on that in just a little bit. Now, as for the rest of the HUD and controls, below your abilities are your health and mana bars, your current level and XP bar, which is this right here. Each champion on Summoner's Rift starts at level one, with the exception of Swift Play, where you're going to instead be level three. Every time you're near a minion or a champion that dies or kill a jungle camp, you're going to gain experience. With every level you advance, you gain extra passive stats and more importantly, a skill point, which you can then place in either your Q, W, or E, to either unlock or improve your abilities. Now, if you're not sure what to level, don't worry about that, League does make it pretty dang obvious. The recommended ability is just going to start flashing when you gain a level, and you can confidently put your point there as a beginner. Now, your ultimate, which is your R, works just a little bit differently, and it can't be unlocked until you reach level six, and can then be improved at levels 11 and 16. To the left of your abilities is your character panel, which shows things like your attack damage, ability power, and defenses. You can also switch this panel to another page that shows your runes and how much they've contributed that game by clicking this button here. But really, as a new player, this information isn't that important yet, so we're going to recommend just hiding it for now and reduce the screen clutter and just keep things really, really simple. Now, to the right of your abilities, you have your inventory. This is where any items that you purchase from the shop are going to end up. Now, there are a few ways to bring up the shop. You can either click right here, which is also how you see your current gold, you could press P on your keyboard, or just manually click on the shopkeeper at your fountain. Although, while you're able to access the shop from anywhere to check the price of items, you can only purchase them when standing in the fountain. Any items that you purchase will go directly into your inventory, which is by default, bound from one to seven on your keyboard. Now, this is going to be good to know as some items even have on-use effects, but don't even begin to worry about that just yet. And when you want to get back to base after all of that, just press B to recall. After a brief channel, you're going to safely return to the fountain. To the right of your inventory is your trinket ward, which we're going to break down in just a little bit. And next to that is the new roll quest feature. You can ignore that for now, as we're going to properly discuss that when we discuss roles. Then, up next, we have what you're going to very quickly learn is the most important part of your HUD, and that, of course, is the minimap. This is where you can see almost everything, from allied to enemy champions, to turrets, objectives, jungle camps, and even minions. For any new player, trying to watch that minimap, all while learning how to move, fight, use abilities, man, it's just ridiculously overwhelming to say the least. And that is completely normal to feel. It's a lot, truth be told. There's even players in the upper 1% of the entire game that still do not look at their map as much as they should. So, especially early on, for you, don't stress so much about trying to keep track of every single thing all at once. The best advice is to take quick glances during the downtime that you have, like when you're walking back to lane or when nothing urgent is going to be happening on your screen. Then, as you begin to play more games, your awareness is going to naturally improve over time, without you even having to think about it. Anyway, pass that, above the minimap, you can see your team, along with their level, their health, their mana, and cool down of their ultimate ability displayed by this green orb. Now, above that, you can check when dead enemy champions are going to be respawning in their fountain. Then, in the top right, you have the kills of both teams, your kills, assists, and deaths, and your creep score, or CS for short, which is just how many minions you've killed. Then, lastly, the in-game timer. To bring up the in-game scoreboard, you're going to hit tab. This is going to enable you to track the KDA, the CS, and the items of both your own and the opposing team. Enemies will only update though, if they're currently on vision, otherwise, they're going to be displayed as a question mark. Tab also shows you a load of other information, like how many objectives you have, as well as when they're all spawning, but again, more on that later. So, as for moving around the rift, you have two options: either using point and click or the brand new WASD. Let's start with the default point and click first. To move around, it's all done with right-click. All you have to do is click the floor to issue a movement command, or even click the minimap to travel longer distances. Then to attack, using your champion's basic attack, you again, just right-click on the target. To swap to WASD, you're going to want to hit escape in-game, and then under key binds, select keyboard. Now, bear in mind with this, this is currently disabled in ranked play, but Riot has stated it should go live in ranked games later this year. Now, once you enable it, in order to move around, you're going to instead be able to use WASD. Right-click will replace Q to your first ability, and left-shift will replace your W. Also, your first Summoner will be replaced with Q. Then in order to use your champion's basic attack, you'll instead use left-click. While right-click can still be used to travel longer distances by clicking the minimap. All right, now that you know how to move around and have a basic understanding of the HUD, the next thing to cover is roles. Before you queue up any games, you are going to be asked to choose two roles out of the five that are available. Your first choice is your primary role, and the game's going to try to place you there whenever possible. The role you pick determines where you play on the map, and it also influences the types of champions that you're usually going to see or play in that position. So, starting off with top lane. Top is a 1v1 lane, where to survive, you're going to need to be on a champion that is very, very self-sufficient and can hold their own. Typically falling into one of three archetypes. Tanks that are built to soak up damage as possible and act as the team's frontline. They're great at engaging fights, protecting allies, or locking down enemies while still dealing some respectable damage. Juggernauts are the only subclass who excel at both dealing and taking significant amounts of damage, but in turn they have a tough time closing in on targets due to their low range and limited mobility. Skirmishers are built for 1v1's or smaller scale fights. They excel at split pushing and taking structures. Often making them strong split pushers that want to fight away from the rest of the map and focus on taking structures over all that team fighting that happens on the rest of the map. Next on the list is mid lane. Mid puts you right in the center of everything, which means you can get to any part of the map quickly. Now, unlike top or bot lane, mid is a much shorter and much safer lane. Because of this, the type of champions usually played here are things like mages or casters. Champions that deal high amounts of burst damage, but are typically squishy and immobile, needing the safety of the shorter mid lane to survive. You'll also even occasionally find Assassins in mid lane too. These specialize in taking out squishy champions, and they love to be in the center of the map on that mid lane to roam to other lanes and look for cheeky kills. Now, then there's bot lane. If you enjoy playing with a partner or a duo, then bot lane is going to be the lane for you. The meta in bot lane revolves around having one carry champion, known as an ADC, which is just short for Attack Damage Carry, and that's paired with a support, all playing together in a 2v2. Now, as the carry or ADC, your job is exactly what it sounds like, to carry. These types of champions, they're known as marksmen, and they start off weak in the early game, and then they scale massively as the game continues to go on. Eventually, providing their team with the main source of consistent damage output that tends to come from their basic attacks rather than their abilities. But to get to that point, you're going to be heavily reliant on your lane partner, our support. Support is unique in the fact that rather than last hitting minions for gold, like every other player on your team, you gain it passively through your support item. With support champions typically providing more in the way of utility for the team than pure damage output. Either through engage supports that look to set up their team with powerful stuns, knock up or hooks, or more conventional support type called Enchanters that focus on keeping their team alive, and buffing their damage through various shields and heals. If you've played healers in other games, Enchanters, they're going to feel really, really familiar. But besides supporting your team as a support, support players have another very, very important job, controlling vision. Asides from the free trinket ward, everybody gets supports gain extra wards through a unique item. Now, we're going to break this down properly a little bit later. The most unique and diverse role out of all the roles is undoubtedly jungle. So, instead of staying in the top, the mid, or the bot lane, the jungler plays in the space between them. And instead of killing minions, they earn their gold and experience by clearing jungle camps, neutral monsters that are found in predetermined locations around the map. But jungle isn't only about farming camps. It's your job to also impact your lanes through what's known as ganking. You're going to hear this a lot in the league community. Ganking is essentially leaving the jungle to surprise enemies in their lane. And a big part of that role is managing your time. Spend too much time farming camps, and you're going to quickly become the reason your laners lose 1v1s. But if you're always ganking, you're going to end up under leveled and low on gold yourself. But due to how diverse this role is, jungle has one of the widest champion pools in the game. As long as a champion can clear camps effectively, you can jungle. The most popular picks, though, are going to be the ones that bring something valuable to ganks. Like crowd control or strong burst damage. But please, for the love of the teams that you're going to be playing with. And above all else, do keep in mind that everything that we just covered so far regarding roles is just a general guideline. While you are going to find that certain champs are much more common in certain roles, League gives you plenty of room to experiment. You can take ranged or mage champions top lane, play tanks or bruisers in the mid lane, try out mages in the bot lane, or even pick a more carry and damage focused support. That freedom and that room for experimentation is part of what makes League, well, League. And when you're ready to learn more about any of those roles, we have got you covered with complete courses over on our website. Organized into easy to digest chapters. But still on the topic of roles, there's one more system that ties directly into them, and that is role quests. Which are a brand new addition for 2026. Now, depending on your chosen role, you're going to automatically receive a quest at the start of the game. You're going to be able to see this by mouse overing this icon right here on your HUD. You can also check the progress of your own and other players quests by pressing tab. But don't stress too much about these as they're designed to reward you over time for doing what you'd already be doing anyway. For example, top, mid, and ADCs will gain progress from killing towers, killing minions, or killing champions, doubled when in their assigned lane. Jungle progresses by killing jungle camps, and support progresses by dealing damage to turrets, champions, or helping their ADC last hit. With them all, all of them, naturally completing around the 12 to 15-minute mark, depending on how well you're doing. Now, as for the rewards, if you're brand new to this, this won't matter much yet, but returning players should know this. Top laners will gain access to a free teleport with a longer cooldown or an enhanced teleport if they already took it as one of their chosen Summoners. They also receive bonus experience throughout the game, and their level cap is increased to 20, instead of the standard 18. This gives top lane a natural level advantage, helping them stay relevant as a front line, split push, or damage threat. Junglers are going to get massively enhanced movement speed while in the jungle, as well as an improved version of Smite. Mid laners, they receive a free boot upgrade for extra stats and extra movement speed, along with an empowered recall that has its cooldown reduced by kills and assists. ADC players receive a burst of gold, earn extra gold from minions and kills, and their boots, they no longer take up an inventory slot, allowing them to build an extra item in the late game, providing even more scaling. And lastly, the supports, they gain cheaper control wards, extra passive gold generation, and control wards no longer take up an inventory slot and can instead be used by pressing V by default. So, you doing all right so far? Now that you understand all the different roles, let's zoom out here, take a big picture and talk about where everything actually happens, the map itself and the objectives around it. Objectives come in many, many shapes and forms, from evolving purple void creatures to magical elemental dragons, to just plain old turrets. But each one of them play a crucial role in helping you win the game. So let's start with the most common objective that you're going to interact with. That's going to be turrets. Each team has 11 turrets total. Every lane has three of them, known as the outer turret, the inner turret, and the inhibitor turrets. And then inside each base, there's going to be two protecting the nexus itself. Turrets are the main defensive structures on Summoner's Rift. They largely existed to stop stronger champions from simply just walking into your lane and killing you on repeat. And in order to progress the game and advance down your opponent's lane, you're going to have to take down each and every turret one by one. So, these turrets, they attack one unit at a time, which you'll see highlighted by the red targeting beam. The first thing that enters that turret's range becomes the target, until it dies or until it leaves the range. But there's one very important exception here that you need to know. If you damage an enemy champion while standing inside that turret's range, the turret will immediately switch to targeting you. Turrets also have what's known as plating, which is why the health bar looks just a little bit different. Turrets reward a substantial amount of gold, and that gold is split evenly between each of the five plates. This encourages players to push their lane and chip away at that turret whenever they have the chance to in order to cash out. Now, you might also notice turrets occasionally building up this effect around them. This thing right here. This is another new feature called Crystalline Overgrowth, and it accumulates when it's turret hasn't been attacked for a while. And what it means is the first hit done to it will deal bonus damage, which all helps you break the plates faster. So, to understand the rest of the objectives here, we need to talk about the jungle. We touched on this slightly when discussing roles. But the jungle is divided into four quadrants, with each team having their own side of the jungle. Each half of the jungle has six unique monsters: Gromp, Wolves, Blue Buff, Raptors, Red Buff, and Krugs. Then in each river, both at the top and bottom side, there's a Scuttle Crab. The only ones that you really have to care about here are the red and blue buffs and Scuttle Crab. Red and blue, when killed, provide combat buffs, which you can see under a champion. With red granting health regeneration and causing your attacks to slow, making ganking a whole lot easier, and then blue providing mana or energy regeneration, as well as lowering the cooldown of your abilities just a little bit. When the game starts, the jungler typically begins by killing their buff to help with the rest of their clear. Now, as the game moves forward, and these monsters respawn, the buffs they drop will be left on the floor for another player to pick up. Now, onto the Scuttle Crab. These appear slightly later in the game, typically around the time that you clear the rest of your camps. And when it's killed, it creates an area that helps your team in two different ways. Providing an area that gives your team a speed boost when walking through it, as well as providing vision in the river. It's often one of the game's very first mini objectives that teams fight over because both junglers, depending on their route, can end up at the same one. Now, when you look at the map itself, you can see exactly where each of these camps spawn, highlighted by these icons. And it's a tip for anybody looking to try out jungle is to click this button right here to the left of your minimap. This is going to highlight the camp on your minimap where you should start, along with what camp you should do next, making learning jungle, let's just say, a whole lot less intimidating. Anyway, let's get back to the big stuff here. If you look at the map, you're going to notice two special areas marked on opposite sides of the river. These mark the location of what's referred to as neutral objectives. Epic monsters that require the help of multiple players on the team to secure in order to gain game-changing buffs. In the south, we have the Dragon Pit. At the five-minute mark, a special dragon appears right here for both teams to fight over. It can be one of six different types, and a new one spawns every five minutes after the previous one is killed. Each of them providing unique team-wide buffs that last for the entirety of the game, even persisting through death, making them an extremely high priority. Now, while you don't need to memorize all of the Dragon's effects right away, that'd be kind of crazy. Here's an idea of all the buffs and what they provide. Infernal grants your entire team bonus ability power or attack damage. Mountain provides resistances, and cloud gives you movement speed. Then once the third dragon of the game spawns, all future dragons will be that same element and the map will change slightly to reflect that. For example, if it's the Mountain Drake, some extra rock formations are going to spawn. Most of these are pretty minor, but the most impactful is undoubtedly from the Hextech Drake. As when this happens, these little Hextech gates are going to spawn that you can use to get back on the map quicker or cross from one side to the other. You're able to see which Drakes your team is accumulated by hitting tab in-game. And once you've reached four dragons in total and fill up this bar right here, your team is going to then be rewarded with the Dragon Soul buff. A permanent version of that game's chosen elemental Drake, providing a greatly enhanced version of its buff. For example, Infernal Soul is now going to cause your attacks and your abilities to explode around the target. Mountain is going to give you a shield, and Cloud Soul gives you even more movement speed, which is further increased when using your ultimate. And so on, and so forth. On top of these additional effects, once one team claims that Dragon Soul, the elemental Drakes will then be replaced with Elder Dragon. This is the game's most powerful objective, which grants the team that kills it an incredibly strong temporary power up that increases damage and causes you to execute any enemy champion below 20%. Oftentimes, it's going to guarantee that that team is going to take the win in the next team fight. Anyway, while all that goes down on the bottom side of the map, up here on the top side, we have the Baron Pit. Here, three different neutral objectives spawn throughout the game: Void Grubs, Herald, and Baron Nashor, all of which help your team push down lanes and destroy towers in various ways. Void Grubs spawn first at eight minutes, providing a fairly easy to take objective that grants the entire team a permanent buff that does additional damage to turrets and spawns these little Voidlings. At 15 minutes, Void Grubs are then replaced with Rift Herald. Slaying this drops an item you can pick up and then use in order to summon a neutral monster you can jump inside and drive, enabling you to crash it straight into a turret, dealing bonus damage. Then, with Baron Nashor spawning much later into the game at the 20-minute mark. Now, out of these three, this is going to be the one that requires more or less your whole team to take down. And once it's killed, it grants your entire team gold and a temporary buff, lost on death, and that increases your damage and empowers your recall. More importantly, though, when you're around allied minions with this buff, it's going to empower them, causing them to deal more damage and take a lot less. Which makes it very common for teams with this buff to take multiple turrets in a single push. Okay, that was definitely a lot of information, some information overload. And while that does definitely sound very confusing at first, trust us, it's really, really not. Once you play a few games, you're really going to understand how these objectives work. And the best part is you don't need to remember or even know when they appear. Just press tab during the game and you're going to see all the timers right at the top of your screen, showing exactly which objective is next, and a countdown to when it will spawn. And when just starting out, please do not stress too much about objectives. As you play, you're going to naturally learn when and why they matter, and the best times to take them. But for now, just know that these exist, and if your team's are looking to take one, be ready to help them. And now that we've gone through everything about the map and all of its objectives, let's zoom back in on what you're actually going to spend most of your time doing each and every game. Laning. Laning is simply the term that we use here as lovers of League to describe playing against your opponent in one of the three lanes. Here's where League really starts to get tricky, though, especially for new players. As how that lane actually plays out, depends entirely on which champion you picked, and what opponent you're up against. But here's the good news about all this. No matter what champion that you're playing or who you're facing, your goal is always going to be the same. Become stronger than your opponent. And how you do that is by earning more gold and gaining more experience. Sounds pretty simple, right? Which is why, before we go any further with this, you need to meet the most important things on Summoner's Rift. Minions. Minions start marching down the lanes at 30 seconds after the game starts, and then every 30 seconds after that. This ramps up as the game progresses, but don't worry about that for now. With each of these waves of minions consisting of three melee and three casters. And every third wave having a siege minion. Again, ramping up over time with more waves having siege minions as the game progresses. Oh, and to overwhelm you with even more information on top of everything else that we've already given you, there's also these things called Super Minions that spawn when an enemy's inhibitor gets killed. But that's not important for right now. I just simply wanted to say that. So, throughout the game, minions are your primary source of both experience and gold. To put their value into perspective for you here, you get 300 gold for killing a champion, while last hitting a minion is going to give you an average of around 20 gold. So, just last hitting 15 minions, which is a little over three waves, is the equivalent of a kill. Not to mention, all the additional experience that you gain from it. This is also why you can't just randomly leave your lane whenever you feel like it. Sure, you might pick up a kill or two roaming around the map to other lanes, but you'd be bleeding gold and bleeding experience the entire time you do it. Which is also why securing that last hit on minions is one of the most crucial skills to develop in League and get better. One recent addition to the game to help with this is last hit assist. You can toggle it on in the settings, and although it's only available in the non-ranked play, this is going to show a white indicator on a minion's health bar when your auto attack is enough to secure the kill. But asides from farming minions, you can also get ahead of the lane by fighting your opponent, and this is what in League terms, we like to call trading. You're going to hear that a lot in pretty much any YouTube channel about League. Either through a combination of your champion's basic attacks by right-clicking or using one of your four abilities, that is trading with another champion. Now, there's something about minions that a lot of new players really don't realize. They actually act like tiny bodyguards. This works through something called minion aggro. And basically, if an enemy champion attacks you while you're standing near your minions, those minions will immediately turn around and start attacking them back. Which in the early game does a considerable amount of damage. Anyway, even if you don't kill your opponent, coming out ahead in these trades can still lead to you being stronger. You could force that champion to have to return to base and heal, they're going to miss out on gold and experience from minions while they're gone. Or maybe you just damaged them enough that they get scared and start playing way further back. Now, when this happens, you've now got what we like to call lane priority, just a fancy way of saying that you're the one in control. With lane priority, you're able to leave your lane first if your team needs help with those pesky objectives that we were just speaking about earlier. Now, I can already hear half of you asking me this: How do I know when I win trades? And yeah, to be completely honest, it's kind of complicated. Like, without a doubt, it's the most complicated part of League of Legends as a whole, and there's not really an easy way to answer this. This champion gets countered by that champion. This one wins early, but loses late. This one's weak until level six. This one needs this certain item to be strong. Blah blah blah blah. There's over 170 champions in League, and not even the best players in the world are going to know the ins and outs of every single match-up. You're just not going to find it. But the good news is you don't need to worry about any of that to actually start winning trades and coming out ahead in lane. There are simple fundamentals you can learn that work no matter what champion you're playing or playing against. Things like fighting when you have a level advantage, basing at the right time, or even just how you build your champion. But listen, that's far too much to cover in this single video, which we've already blown your ear up about on all the other things that we've talked about. Which is why we made a beginner course focused entirely on laning and minions. It walks through all the stuff that actually decides your early game, without assuming you already know everything. From match-up fundamentals to super practical things like how to last hit under tower without guessing. All these habits that experienced players use every single game without even thinking or realizing that they were noobs like you at one time. And once you learn these things, laning, it stops feeling so overwhelming. But anyway, something we've neglected to mention up to this point of the video is the fact that Summoner's Rift is covered in what's known as Fog of War. You can only see what's happening in the areas where you or your team currently have vision. Everything else, it stays in the dark and it stays hidden, which you can see on the minimap right here. The good news is that your whole team shares that vision. If your teammate can see something, you can see it too. This shared vision comes from several different sources. It comes from allied champions, friendly minions, towers, wards, and even Fae Lights. Throughout Summoner's Rift, you're also going to find bushes of all shapes and sizes. Now, while they might look different, they all follow the same rule. And these rules are slightly different to your standard Fog of War. Even if you have vision of the area around a bush, you still can't see inside that bush itself unless you have direct vision in there. Which you can get from any of the same sources. So, that's allied champions, minions, wards placed inside the bush, or even certain champion abilities. Anyway, wards. These are items you can purchase, and even get given for free, that you can place on that map to give yourself and your team vision of the surrounding area. There are two types of wards to talk about here. You have stealth wards and control wards, which you'll often hear be called pink wards for obvious reasons. Stealth wards, they're invisible wards that everyone starts with, thanks to your free trinket. And that's this thing right here that we mentioned earlier, given to you automatically at the start of every game, which by default is going to be bound to four. These are free to use, and they'll passively recharge over time. When you place them, they turn invisible after a short delay, and they stay hidden from enemies unless they use special tools to detect those wards. As long as they're active, they're going to grant you and your team vision of the surrounding area. You can see how long your stealth ward will last by the white bar right here. Once these time out or get destroyed by your opponent, that ward will disappear and you're going to lose vision of that area. Control wards are a little bit different, though, and they can be purchased for 75 gold in the shop. These not only provide you vision and last indefinitely, but more importantly, they reveal and disable enemy stealth wards, temporarily disabling those and making them visible for just long enough for you to destroy them.
[31:36]Typically, they're picked up by junglers and supports. Now, you might remember earlier in the video when we mentioned that supports play a huge role when it comes to vision control. That's because as a support progresses their role quest, their starting item upgrades, unlocking replenishable stealth wards that refresh every time they return to base. This makes supports the only role that can place wards consistently throughout the game, outside of the single control ward you can have down and the basic free yellow trinket everyone gets. One brand new change to vision in 2026, though, is the addition of Fae Lights, which you'll see placed around the map. What these do is they mark ideal spots to place your wards, since not only are they positioned in high traffic areas and common ward spots, but when placing a ward in one, you'll also reveal an area around them, letting you spot enemies earlier and giving you more time to react. But now, let's jump to the good stuff: choosing your champion. League, as we mentioned, has over 170 unique champions. And finding one that fits your play style perfectly, it's going to take some time. And that is okay. But in the meantime, we do have a couple of super easy to learn suggestions you should try out for each role. Starting off in the top lane, our first pick is Garen. Garen is the quintessential top lane bruiser and one of the most beginner-friendly champions in the entire game. His Q gives you a burst of movement speed, bonus damage on your next attack, and silences the target. His W grants bonus tank stats, and when activated, gives you a shield that reduces incoming damage. And his E, well, makes you spin around and deal massive damage to anything around you. Then his ultimate is a crazy single target execute that ignores defensive stats, and it makes it really easy to finish off low health enemies. Basically, his kit all fits together in the most intuitive way possible. You press Q to run at your target, you press W to take less damage, auto them once, and then hit E to spin to win, finishing them off with your ultimate once they drop below enough. And to top it all off, Garen's passive makes it really hard to deal with them in lane, as you passively regenerate health when you haven't taken damage for a short time. But if bruisers aren't your thing, we get it, and you think tanks might be more your play style, one of the best is undoubtedly Malphite. Malphite is, uh, well, literally an immovable object. Your Q is a ranged poke ability that deals damage, slows the target, and gives you movement speed. W gives you passive armor, and on activation, causes your next few attacks to do AoE damage. Then E is an AoE ground slam that does damage to nearby enemies and applies a debuff, reducing their attack speed by a massive amount. But what makes Malphite so dang strong is his ultimate, a dash that knocks up any enemy's head, dealing massive damage. Making him one of the biggest team fight threats in the entire game. So, there's two champions in top. Moving over to the jungle, our first recommendation is Warwick. He's perfect for beginners, as he's able to sniff out low health enemies, giving you a visible trail right to them while you're clearing your camps. Q bites the target, dealing high damage and healing for yourself while even letting you follow enemy mobility. W provides the blood trail and bonus attack speed against low health targets, and can even be activated to guide you to the closest enemy champion, regardless of health. And E reduces damage and fears nearby enemies. And his ultimate is a long-range leap that locks down a target, deals big damage, and it also heals you. Oh, and his passive just gives Warwick extra healing from his attacks the lower he drops. All in all, this makes him one of the best duelists and 1v1 champions in the entire game. But if you're wanting to make more of an impression in team fights, then look no further than Amumu. He's tanky, he deals high damage, and he brings a ton of crowd control. Q pulls yourself to any target hit, it stunts them and deals high damage. W passively deals damage to anybody near him, and E deals decent AoE damage and gets its cooldown reduced whenever Amumu gets hit. But what truly makes Amumu is his ultimate, a massive AoE effect that deals high damage and stunts any target hit. Single handedly, this is going to allow you to carry games even as a complete beginner. All right, jungle out of the way, mid lane. If you enjoy mage type champions, then our first suggestion is Arcane's very own from the hit TV series, Mel. Her passive has two parts. First, it makes last hitting minions an absolute breeze, as you'll automatically execute low health minions with your attacks and abilities. The second part causes your abilities to apply stacking marks to the target, which can be consumed using your ultimate for a big chunk of extra damage. Outside of that, Q fires a barrage of bolts in a small area. E is an orb that deals AoE damage, slows, and even roots targets. And her W is one of the most broken abilities in the freaking game as it allows you to reflect almost every spell in the game back at your opponent while also making you invulnerable. But if mages aren't your thing, I get it, and you want to try an assassin, then look no further than Naafiri. Now, assassins are usually going to be weaker in lane due to their short range. But Naafiri's simple, powerful kit helps her bypass all that weakness that other assassins have. So, her Q throws daggers that deal high damage and apply a bleed. If you hit the same target twice, you're going to get bonus damage and healing. Her E is a short dash that deals high burst, and W gives her brief immunity, along with bonus damage and movement speed. With her passive periodically spawning packmates that help with last hitting and significantly boost her damage. What really makes Naafiri shine, though, is her ultimate, a targeted leap that deals massive damage. So, after jumping in, you can chain your Q's and E's to burst enemies down, then escape with W. And if you secure a kill or assist, you can even cast your ultimate again, leaping to the next target and gaining a shield. All right, moving on to the bot lane, our first pick is Jinx. A champion that gives you the perfect feel for what playing ADC is all about. Her Q lets you switch between fast attacking mini gun and a long range rocket launcher depending on what you need. Her W is a long range skill shot that lets you poke or slow enemies. E places traps on the floor that root anybody who passes over them. And her ultimate is a map wide rocket that can finish off low health targets regardless of where you are. But what really makes Jinx exciting is her passive. As whenever you get a take down, you get a massive burst of attack and movement speed, letting you clean up fights. Great in team fights, amazing late game, and overall a solid ADC that is well worth putting the time into. But for a different take on ADC, you could instead try out Miss Fortune. Unlike Jinx and other marksmen, she is a bit more spell focused in how she deals damage. And what that's going to do is it's going to quickly teach you how to balance dealing damage with your auto attacks, as well as spells. Her passive makes her first attack on a target hit harder, helping with last hitting minions. Q is a shot that deals high damage and bouncing to targets behind. W gives passive movement speed lost when taking damage, but could be activated to gain the boost as well as some additional attack speed. And E is an AoE slow. But Miss Fortune is all about her ultimate, Bullet Time. Just look for a safe spot in a team fight, hit this, and watch as they completely melt. And last but not least, let's cover some support picks. If you're looking to heal, shield, buff, and keep your allies safe, then Milio does it all. Q deals damage and knocks targets away. W is an AoE heal that also buffs allies inside it with bonus attack range. E shields allies and gives bonus movement speed with two charges, and your ultimate heals and removes debuffs from everybody near you, allowing you to get your whole team out of any crowd control. And on top of that, Milio's passive empowers allies hit by his abilities, causing their next attack to deal bonus damage. But if rather than keeping your team alive, you enjoy making plays, being a tanky front liner and lock an enemies down, you need to try out Leona. Q is a targeted stunt on a short cooldown. W provides bonus resistance for a short period. E is a root and a gap closer in one. And R is a long range AoE stunt. Her kit is just made to engage. You can E on to a target to root them, stunt them with Q, then follow up with your ultimate, keeping the target locked down for a ridiculous amount of time. Now, when it comes to building your champion of choice, there's two things to consider, runes and items. However, unlike a lot of games, Riot has made this process a complete breeze for beginners. For runes, after selecting your champion, you can click this little button here, and it's going to suggest three different rune pages with a short description of what they do. These are all, for the most part, just passives that either enhance your damage, survivability, or even utility in specific ways. A quick note here that if you're playing Swift Play, you're going to be able to select these alongside your champion before the game even starts. Then, the same goes for items in game. Once you open the shop, you're going to be able to view the recommended items, along with a brief description of what they do. Now, while you can definitely make some slight optimizations to these as you learn more about runes and more about items, you honestly really can't go wrong here. As all Riot does is pull the data for these items and rune builds from what other players are most commonly building on that specific champion. And one thing that might not be immediately obvious here to the layman is you don't need to save up for complete items. Just double-click any complete item, and the system will automatically buy available components based on your current gold. And you can see your progress toward that item in the bottom right right here, below your inventory. Now, we touched on WASD earlier in the video, but even as a complete beginner, there's probably a ton of in-game settings that you might want to change right from day one. So let's wrap this video up by going over a few of these. First, let's talk about your camera settings. By default, your camera is now set to dynamic, which automatically follows your champion and lets you look around slightly by moving your cursor to the edge of the screen. This is going to be great for complete beginners to MOBAs in general, since it's going to help you stay centered around your character without really having to think or worry about camera control. That said, dynamic camera has some major limitations. It restricts how much you can easily see, which makes it harder to track enemies in fights and can really limit your awareness. Now, because of this, you'll never see any of the experienced players using this. Instead, the majority of players opt for free camera, as this just gives you complete control. And you can then center the camera at any time by pressing or even holding space bar. Next, something we suggest that all new players do is to go to the interface and then reduce the size of the HUD. By default, this is set to 100, but we recommend somewhere around 50, as this just lets you see far more of your screen. Then in the same section, we suggest increasing the size of your minimap. Now, like we mentioned earlier, your minimap is a crucial part of League. And increasing the size can help with your awareness right from the get-go. Again, somewhere around the 50 mark is going to be great. And lastly, enable Show Spell Cost, which is located right here. This simply just shows the exact mana cost for each and every one of your abilities on the icon, making it easy for you to quickly identify how much mana you need for each one, as well as also tell you if you have enough for your full combo. And remember, everything that we've covered in this monstrosity of a guide is just the beginning. If you want to go deeper into the champions, deeper into the settings and all the fundamentals that we talked about, check out our newly updated beginner's course. This course is designed to put you right on track from day one, building the core skills and the habits every player needs, from mastering champion abilities and combos, to learning how to play each stage of the game with absolute confidence. We also dive much deeper into the settings, covering things like Attack Move for better Kiting, Quick Cast for faster combos, and other must-have tools experienced players use every single game. And once you've built those fundamentals, and you've mastered all the basics, the rest of our world-class courses are there to take you to the highest rank possible. So if you want the best possible start to League of Legends, and to improve faster than almost anybody else, be sure to check it out today using the exclusive beginner discount code in the description below. So it has been a long ride, folks, and if you made it this far into the video, then thank you so much for watching. We put a ton of work into this. We wish you the best of luck, and we hope this video helped introduce you to one of the best games out there, man. We have a blast with it. Hopefully, you'll love it as much as we do. Catch you guys in the next one.
