I. Basics
Players in League of Legends are referred to as summoners within the game. During the course of a match, a summoner takes control of one champion and uses skills and basic attacks to fight the champions of other players towards the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy base. Summoners are divided into two teams, either 5v5 or 3v3, and must work together to coordinate battles and overall match strategy.
When you first log in to League of Legends, you will be faced with an interface known as Pvp.net. Through this interface you can access the store, check the official forums, check your summoner profile and statistics, manage a friends list, or join a match. If you click the summoner profile button near the top-right corner of the window and then select the champions tab, you can see which champions are currently available for use. There are currently 70 champions in LoL, but they are not all available for use at any given time. Each week, Riot decides on a set of free champions which can be used by anyone for the duration of the week. If you wish to continue playing a champion after they are no longer free, you must purchase the champion through the store using IP (in game currency earned in each match) or real currency. You can also purchase runes and skins through the store, but those are less important and will not be discussed here.
The key bindings for controlling your chosen champion within an actual match are quite simple and easy to pick up. Move your champion by right clicking a location on the map or minimap. In most situations, your champion will automatically begin attacking enemies when the come into range, but to target a specific enemy, right click on it. In addition to these basic attacks (also called autoattacks) every champion has four(or more in rare cases) skills plus a passive ability. The four skills are bound to the Q, W, E, and R keys. The passive ability is not bound to a key, as it takes effect without any player input (hence passive). The player can at any time return to his spawn point by pressing the B key. This is referred to as backing, going b, or bluepilling. Also, pressing Enter creates a chat bar which you can use to communicate with your teammates or the other team.
There are currently three types of matches available to LoL players, with a fourth coming soon. First, there are custom games, which are typically the most casual type. Players can test out new champions, play with large groups of friends, or set up special types of games with special rules (such as the popular All random all mid game). Next, there are normal games, which are more competitive than custom games. Here you are either grouped with other players according to your skill level, or you may form a team yourself with people from your friends list (called a premade team). Either way, the game tries to match you up against players of similar skill levels so that it will hopefully be a fair game. Finally, there are ranked games, which can be highly competitive and are only available to experienced players. Since this guide is aimed towards newcomers, I will not discuss ranked games. To start a match, click the Play button at the top of the Pvp.net interface. This will take you to a menu where you can select from the match types described above. You must also choose between the Summoner's Rift 5v5 map and the Twisted Treeline 3v3 map. This guide will focus on Summoner's Rift, the more popular map, so when you create a match, you should select it instead of Twisted Treeline.