The Game Principle of League of Legends
The gameplay of League of Legends is actually quite easy to understand. On the 5 vs. 5 map called the “Summoner’s Rift”, the usual team consists of a “Top Laner” for the top lane, a “Jungler” who takes care of the monsters in the river and jungle, a “Mid Laner” for the mid lane, and finally, in the bot lane, a marksman and a supporter.
Earning Gold/Experience
The players of each lane try to collect gold by killing minions. At a game time of 1:30 minutes, the minions spawn for the first time, each from the Nexus of both teams. After that, they spawn at regular intervals but always simultaneously from the red and blue team’s Nexus.
It is important to land the last hit on a minion to receive the gold reward for it – this is called making the “last hit”. Since the minions of the different teams attack each other, this is often not easy at first and requires some practice. After a few games, last hitting will become easier for you. Last hits can be achieved with auto-attacks, but also with abilities and spells.
Of course, you can attack the minions before the last hit, but you should still try to make the last hit to kill them. The minions are divided into different groups: melee and ranged minions. The melee minions grant 20 gold at the start, and the ranged minions 17 gold. In the first 20 minutes, with every 3rd minion wave, a cannon minion also spawns. This minion deals extra damage and grants you even 40 gold. The gold values of the individual minions increase with the duration of the game.
The better you are at last hitting, the more gold you earn. If you have a gold advantage over your opponent, you will reach the items that make you stronger faster. By effectively last hitting, you quickly gain an advantage over your opponent and can defeat them in combat.
Killing enemy champions also earns you gold – sometimes even up to 300! This value increases and decreases with the points of the slain champion. If you stop their killing spree (a winning streak), you get more gold for the kill. If the player is already far behind and has many deaths and no kills, they are not worth much gold.
Experience:
If a unit dies and you are nearby, you gain experience points from it. You do not need to have made the last hit on that unit to receive experience points. Experience points are important because you must level up your champion again during each game. You start (in the Summoner’s Rift) at level 1 and can reach a maximum of level 18. For each level reached, you can distribute a skill point to one of your abilities.
This means that you gain an advantage over your opponent not only through a lot of gold, but also when you are at a higher level and have already distributed more skill points.
