Hello, guys, it’s your boy Librarian Husky and today we’re talking about playing jungle in League of Legends!

Understanding the Jungle Role

Jungle has a reputation of being this complex, mysterious role that seems to require a PhD in League of Legends to even attempt. And to be fair, there is a lot to juggle as a jungler. While your laners are focused on their little slice of the map, you’re trying to keep track of objectives, help struggling lanes, secure vision, counter the enemy jungler, and somehow find time to actually farm your camps. Well, that’s what junglers want you to believe, at least.

We may upset the jungle mains, but we genuinely think it’s both the easiest role to learn while also being the strongest role of all five. At the same time, jungle is much easier to pick up than you think, and in this guide, we’re going to make it so easy you’ll be confident loading into a game, even if it’s your first time on the role.

We’ll cover everything from some beginner-friendly champions, how the primary jungle system known as pets work, how to properly kill the jungle camps, beginner opening routes, everything to make your ganks more successful. And then we’ll teach you some simple rules that you can follow so you always know where to go and be at all times.

Choosing Your Champion

First things first, you can’t load into a game of League without picking a champion. So here’s our recommended picks if you’re unsure about what to play. We always encourage you to play anything that you find enjoyable. You will improve faster if you’re actually having fun and want to improve at your champion. But if you have no idea where to start, here are some good recommendations:

For some brawler champions, you can’t go wrong with either Volibear or Xin Zhao. Volibear, in particular, is probably the best jungler we could recommend for beginners in lower levels of play. He’s just a monster who can run over everyone because no one understands how his kit works. Basically, your W marks someone for a while. If you W them again with the mark, you deal a ton of damage and heal yourself based on your missing HP. Since no one plays around this mechanic, it’s almost impossible to lose fights as Volibear. He’s the perfect beginner champion. Not only that, but he ganks and does objectives very well too. You never even have to recall since you heal so much from your W, even on objectives. And the best part of it all is that his ultimate disables enemy towers, so unlike other junglers, you have way more options for where to score kills on the map. Volibear is genuinely extremely easy and very effective at what he does.

If you’re more into being a dedicated tank, then Amumu is the number one recommendation. The reason is that he actually does a ton of damage unlike other tanks, so he’s very self-sufficient and you can make plays on your own without relying on another ally for damage. And for an assassin pick, we’ll always recommend Nocturne. His ultimate is very straightforward, letting you dash to anyone even from far away.

Understanding Pet Mechanics

And then you just press all your abilities and outduel most champions. He’s very easy to assassinate enemy champions on.

Now that you’ve got your champion, let’s talk about loading into the game. First things first, make sure you take the Smite summoner spell. The client automatically forces it on you if you queue jungle, but always make sure you’ve got it on. Otherwise, you can’t buy one of these store pets, Which you need to clear the jungle. And these little buddies are the reason why we believe jungle is so easy these days. They are technically extremely complicated. Don’t even bother trying to read everything they do because it’s a lot. To put it simply, they just make killing the jungle easy.

There’s a slight difference between the three we’ll cover soon, but here’s what they all share in common. First, they deal damage to camps alongside you automatically. The best part about it is that they deal area of effect damage. So for the most part, you can just focus fire the big monster in every camp, and your pet will usually clean up the little ones for you. The pet makes it so easy to kill monster camps that you could theoretically play around 90% of the champions in this game as a jungler fairly decently. Doesn‘t mean they’re good picks, but that’s just how easy jungling is these days. Not only that, but they restore health along the way as you kill the camps. And one of the most underrated parts of the pets is that they effectively give you infinite mana. So you never have to think about it. Almost everywhere that isn’t a lane or one of the two bases counts as the jungle. And when you’re standing there, you get extremely high mana regeneration. When you’re running low, it’s almost impossible to run out of mana. Making resource management a non-issue. Pets really are your best friend as a beginner and they trivialize killing the jungle monsters. All you do for most of them is focus fire the big one while your pets help you out with damage while also restoring your health and mana constantly.

Which brings us to our next mechanic around pets. You’re expected to pay them back for how useful they are by feeding them treats. You’ll notice at the start of the game that you start with 40 stacks on the item. Your goal is to get this to zero, and you do so by killing jungle camps. You don’t even have to think about it. The pets will feed themselves else when you kill the camp. Before we continue, players hearing this information almost always think that they should prioritize this as quickly as possible by just sitting in their jungle farming camps. However, you don’t need to rush this.

Riot’s Jungle Treat System

Riot introduced a catch-up system to address this issue. Treats are gained passively throughout the game. When you eliminate a jungle camp, your pet consumes a treat, increasing the number of stacks. This system allows you to quickly catch up, even if you haven’t slain a camp recently. Riot aimed for simplicity and efficiency in the jungle, ensuring a straightforward experience. Upon reaching 20 stacks, your Smite damage against jungle monsters rises from 600 to 900. Additionally, it becomes usable on enemy champions, inflicting a minor amount of damage and a slow effect. While not a significant upgrade, it can aid in securing occasional kills. At zero stacks, your pet evolves entirely. Subsequently, your Smite will deal 1,200 damage to monsters. The choice of the pet you acquire becomes crucial at this stage. Each fully evolved pet confers a slight buff, enhancing your combat prowess. The green pet grants a shield, the blue one offers movement speed in bushes and after camp kills, while the red pet deals damage and slows enemies upon champion hits. Opting for a specific pet mostly boils down to personal preference, as the enhancements are moderately beneficial without causing undue stress. Notably, the red pet is perceived as the least potent among the trio and is typically only selected in specialized scenarios.

Defaulting to either the green or blue pet is generally recommended. The pets significantly simplify jungle camp clears, requiring you to focus on the primary monster in each camp for efficient completion. However, a few tips can enhance your jungle clearing process. The Raptor camp stands out as an exception due to the substantial damage inflicted by the smaller Raptors. This becomes relevant during the initial encounter at around levels two or three. Consequently, prioritizing the elimination of the smaller Raptors before finishing off the main one may be advisable, depending on your champion’s capabilities. Some champions excel at dispatching the smaller Raptors early on, necessitating experimentation based on your selected champion. However, this concern only arises at the game’s outset. Subsequent Raptor camp clears become as straightforward as other camps, regardless of your champion selection. Another essential aspect to master in camp clearing is kiting, which involves maneuvering between your basic attacks and spells for optimal efficiency.

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Understanding Jungle Camp Leash Range

You want to move around the camp’s leash range, which is outlined. As long as you don’t go out of it, you’ll be fine. By kiting the camps, you can mitigate how much damage you’re taking since the monster isn’t auto-attacking you as it chases, letting you preserve some health. We’ll discuss what Jungle routes you want to do soon, but kiting can also be used to go from one camp to another. So for example, if you’re killing the Raptors, you may want to kite them down as you move to the next camp. This lets you save health while fighting them but also gets you to your next destination faster. Depending on how new you are to League, rest assured that kiting isn’t mandatory. You can 100% just sit there and tank the camps, and you will still clear the jungle easily. This is just a skill you may want to work towards.

All right, now that you know how to clear the jungle, let’s talk about the order in which you’re going to kill the camps. There’s two simple details that will make this easy to understand. First, you want to think of the jungle in two quadrants. There’s the blue quadrant and the red quadrant. Each one holds three camps, and they’re named this way because of the important buffs in the area. The Blue Sentinel, when killed, will give you a buff that provides a ton of mana or energy regeneration and some cooldown reduction. The Red Brambleback, on the other hand, gives your auto attacks a slow and a bit of damage. These buffs are relatively powerful, and you want to make sure you pick them up along your opening routes.

Okay, for your opening route, there’s two settings you want to check. First, go to Interface and find Neutral Camps and enable it. This setting just shows icons over all the jungle camps you’ll be killing. Afterwards, in your settings, go into Game and enable Recommended Jungle Path. Riot pulls data from the millions of games being played and shows you the route that you should follow on your specific champion. So, if you just follow this trail, you will generally do fine. And that’s because the recommended path being shown to you is simply the most standard jungle route you can learn, the full clear. All you’re doing is starting at one of the major buffs in one quadrant, then you’re killing the other camps, then you transition through mid to the other quadrant and kill all the camps there. After killing all six camps, you will be level four with both powerful buffs. As simple as that route is, it is probably the most effective thing you can do in 95% of your games. Even the most experienced junglers use it nearly all the time. And after completing the full clear, you want to venture out into the river. The Scuttle Crab here spawns at 3 minutes and 30 seconds, which generally lines up with when most junglers finish their initial clear. From here, you’ve got a choice to make. If you don’t see anyone around, you can take the crab for yourself.

Scuttle Crab Encounter Strategy

However, the enemy jungler is sometimes doing the exact same thing you are. Depending on what direction they went, the enemy jungler may end up on the opposite side as you do, or they may end up pathing the exact same way you did. So, in around half your games, you will run into them as the Scuttle Crab is spawning. Then you have a choice to make. You shouldn’t feel too bad about giving up the River Crab if you don’t think you can win the fight. The Scuttle Crab is not really that important to secure. Or you can fight them over it if you feel like you’re stronger. Rest assured, the champions we recommended are all fairly decent duelists in the early game, so you can usually win the 1v1 over the Scuttle Crab with these picks.

Another detail to pay attention to is the enemy jungler’s health and level when they arrive to the fight. If they’re lower health than you and didn’t hit level four, you’re basically guaranteed to win that encounter. So, to wrap things up, your most common route is simply clearing all six camps and then trying to secure the Scuttle Crab on the side of the river that you end up at. A slight variation of this route is one that includes a transition gank through mid during your full clear. Same as before, you will clear one quadrant of your jungle, but if you notice that you can potentially make a play in mid lane instead of entering your other quadrant, you can simply go to mid, make a play, and then this neatly transitions you to the other quadrant of your jungle. Anyway, from there, you can continue your full clear. The one downside to this route is that it’s 15 to 20 seconds slower than a typical full clear. So, for example, if you were to transition gank through mid while the enemy jungler just kept clearing, they will probably arrive at the Scuttle Crab before you do. It’s a slight downside, but one to consider. There’s one other route to mention, but this is one you actually don’t really want to do.

We’re only discussing it because it’s such a popular route that you may hear about it and question whether you should try it. The fast level three route is one where you do a combination of the Blue Sentinel, Rump, and the Red Brambleback. As the name of the route implies, this gives you a fast level three while also securing both of the powerful buffs. The goal of this route is to try and gank one of the lanes on the map as quickly as possible. On certain aggressive junglers, this can have pretty solid results. But this route has so many flaws that we can’t even discuss them all in this guide. But the biggest issue is that the gameplay at a beginner level is too random. It’s way too difficult to plan for something. In many games, you will hit level three and then look around where you can help, but your teammates may randomly be dead in top or maybe you try to go to another lane. The enemy player begins playing extremely safe so you can’t do anything there either. So you’re just stuck aimlessly roaming around wondering what you should do. This is why we don’t recommend it. It’s too random and not at all beginner-friendly.

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Understanding Jungle Pathing for Beginners

As a beginner, sticking to the full clear or transition gank routes is sufficient. However, if you wish to learn when and how to adapt, consider exploring pathing courses that cover jungle routes in detail. Your opening route is straightforward initially; the challenge lies in deciding where to go early on. The decision of which quadrant to start your opening route mostly depends on the lane you aim to influence first. It may seem daunting at first, especially without a deep Understanding of champion abilities and matchups.

A simple guideline for beginners is to differentiate between melee and ranged champions. Understanding this basic information can help you consistently make better decisions. In general, it’s advantageous to path towards a double melee lane as melee champions often engage each other to last hit minions. For instance, starting on the blue quadrant and ending up in the top side could lead to successful engagements if both champions are melee. Conversely, it’s wise to avoid early encounters in lanes with two ranged champions due to their ability to farm safely from a distance. But what should you do in a lane with a mix of melee and ranged champions?

In such scenarios, understanding the dynamics of each champion type and how they interact in lane is crucial for making informed decisions during your jungle pathing journey.

Understanding Lane Matchups

For the first few levels, range champions are overwhelmingly stronger than melees, since they can attack them while they last hit. The melee player tends to play safe while the Ranged one pushes up aggressively. So if your teammate is a melee character versus a ranged one, it’s almost always a good idea to look towards that lane. Ranged players are usually squishy, and if they are pushing up aggressively, then it’s going to be very easy to secure kills in that lane.

What about bot lane? There‘s four people down there. What do you do then? It’s actually just as simple as the other lanes. Bot lane is typically a combination of a carry and a support. The carry is almost always ranged, so don’t think about them at all. Only look at the support matchup. And from there, you can follow the same rules as before. So if there are two melee supports in lane, it’s usually a good idea to go down there since it’s very likely there will be a lot of action, just like you would in mid or top.

Now that you’ve decided where to go, let’s talk about some tips for securing kills more consistently. The almost surefire way of guaranteeing your team scores a kill during one of your ganks is by approaching from the flank. If your opponents have to run through you to get back to the safety of their tower, it will cause them to take more overall damage. So if you’re ever in a position where you’re behind an enemy laner and they’re fairly extended in the lane, it’s almost guaranteed that you will score a kill.

Securing Kills Through Smart Positioning

Positioning is key in securing kills in lane. It’s essential to take advantage of the enemy’s positioning mistakes to capitalize on opportunities. When approaching for a gank, consider flanking maneuvers to catch opponents off guard and cut off their escape routes. By positioning yourself strategically, you can force the enemy into unfavorable engagements, increasing your chances of securing kills.

In addition to flanking, map awareness is crucial for identifying vulnerable targets and coordinating with your team to execute successful ganks. Keep an eye on the minimap to track enemy movements and anticipate potential threats. Effective communication with your teammates is also vital to synchronize your efforts and maximize the impact of your ganks.

Furthermore, target selection plays a significant role in securing kills. Prioritize high-value targets, such as carries or high-damage dealers, to disrupt the enemy team’s damage output and tilt engagements in your favor. By focusing your efforts on key threats, you can swing team fights in your favor and secure decisive victories on the Rift.

Thank you for diving into our guide! Discover our exceptional League of Legends boosting services and elevate your gaming experience with our top-tier boosts.