Banana Scoop

I guess now we can move on to the gritty part of the game. Welcome to League of Legends where your ELO is made up and first blood doesn’t matter. Well…it kind of does, but not to the extent that everyone really rages about it. I’ve seen people give up perfectly good games because of first blood, and truth be told I used to be one of those people until I learned to relax. This isn’t about first blood though, I just wanted to be special and add a gimmick into the article to keep you entertained. Have I done that? Good, now, let’s move onto the part of the game that is the most crucial. On Summoner’s Rift, there are 3 lanes, each with 3 turrets and 1 inhibitor per team and a creep wave that spawns once every thirty seconds. You must take down all the turrets in at least one lane to take out the enemy ‘inhibitor’ and nexus turrets.

The nexus is essentially like the enemies base, if you reduce its health to 0, you win the game. Unfortunately, the nexus is invulnerable to damage unless both turrets protecting it are down and at least one of the three enemy inhibitors go down. Towers, an important part of the field, are essentially marking your territory, and attack any hostile units that walk into its range. It prioritizes minions, but will attack enemy champions in one of two conditions. First, if the enemy champion is the only available unit to attack in its range, and second, if an enemy champion attacks you while standing in the range of the turret. If an enemy champion hits you while outside the turret range, the turret will not target them and you take damage for nothing.

Nexus, complete with two turrets and an onslaught of enemy minions...

Creeps begin spawning after the first minute and a half of the game and will continuously spawn until the game ends. and battle other creeps and enemy champions, helping you take down your lane and achieve victory. It is important to note that if you score the last hit on an enemy minion, reducing its health to 0, you are awarded with extra gold. This is important as it is the only way to amass gold in large quantities, making last-hitting an important gameplay mechanic that takes a lot of getting used to with any champion. It is important to note here that every champion has a different base damage stat, meaning it will take some getting used to any time you pick up and use a new champion. So, to sum up the general idea, you play tug-of-war with waves of minions until you get them up to the turrets to tank damage for you while you focus on taking the turret out. The enemy champions try to do the same thing and you fight for dominance in your lane. As a bonus, last-hit creeps to get additional gold to purchase more items and become more powerful, the more creeps you last-hit, the better. Once you take out all three turrets in your lane, you must take out the inhibitor in that lane and both nexus turrets before finally taking out the nexus. Once that happens, victory is yours.

Victory!

I’d like to take a moment here to note that it is not at all important that you stick to your lane. You can roam around if you have the time to, and hopefully help your allies out in the process. It is also not unheard of to switch lanes with a partner if you’re doing poorly against a certain champion.  League is all about finding a champion that works for you in the way that works best, although as of late it is frowned upon unreasonably in the community for doing anything outside of the current meta. Personally, I’m okay with using any team composition against any other team composition. In my opinion, if you wanna do a team of all tanks with your friends, go for it. If you want to do a team of nothing but females, do it. Who am I to judge? If you get the results you want (and by results I mean having fun, not winning.), then mission accomplished.

That pretty much sums up the mechanics of the game. The art style is unique, although not as toned and high definition as others. The flavor of each champion makes them all feel like completely different characters, with some obvious similarities between them. The feeling you get from hearing the announcer scream, “Victory!” There are no downsides to the physical game besides maybe the occasional bug or two, but RIOT is very good about debugging between patches, which regularly occur once every two weeks. So, dust off that keyboard and install the game to have an incredibly fun time with a diverse group of people. A word of warning for the sensitive folks, however, as the community itself can sometimes be very volatile and spiteful, and occasionally pros will make new accounts solely for the chance to win a game and feel better that they beat some newer players. Some advice to remedy that would be to find a group of friends and merely queue up with them to avoid the rage, at least on your team. With that being said, I hope you all will at least give this game a chance if you haven’t already, and I hope to someday fight alongside you on the fields of justice!

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