UPDATES

I was really busy yesterday, praying to every omnipotent being I could think of in hopes that they could possibly bring up my precious item server on TF2, but Robin Walker (God of Hats), Gabe Newell (God of Delays) or Andrew Hussie (God of useless killings) failed to answered my call, so I just ended up doing nothing all day except watching random YouTube videos and eating canned pudding, so my Tuesday had effectively become my normal Saturday. But you haven’t come here to read my endless bantering about how Canned-Pudi Inc. is sure to be worth 10 times the amount Apple is wo TF@ no you came here to read about my useless opinion!

Today we’ll be touching base on the following subjects

• Team Fortress 2 (Hats and Other items)
• League of Legends (Free Champion Rotation & new skins)
• Homestuck
• State of Santa's Workshop

Let me just get out my trusty name-drawing hat, this is gonna require me drawing out something special... Homestuck? Nah, not going to start there, we'll just go in the order of the list.

Team Fortress 2

All right, for all of you following the TF2 blog (linked here) should know that Valve loves to act like busy little bees, in the form of adding new items, going back to about a week ago, Valve has added a ring for Valentine's Day, simply called the "Something Special for Someone Special" to the Mann Co. Store. The ring is a cute misc item for $100 bucks, but can't be traded, and comes with a free thing of gift wrap and  name tag, for gifting to that special someone, and upon gifting, everyone on TF2 is sent the message of love that had just happened. So beautiful, no? Other items include the Snapped Pupil for Demoman (A picture of his good eye, taped over his eye patch) and a Boombox, the Boston Boom-Bringer, to replace the Scout's pack and to bring some much needed beats to Teufort civillans.

League of Legends

A bit of old news for anyone who does follow Leage of Legends, but its always nice to see who's FTP this week.

• Kassadin- Void Guy, quite annoying when he teleports to you and launches goop on you
• Master Yi- PRO
• Rammus- Spikey the Armadillo
• Singed- WW's best bud, and a lunatic
• Taric- Opals are so fabulous
• Malzahar- I HAVE A WALL AND A TARANTULA AS A PET. DON'T MESS WITH ME
• Miss Fortune- "Pirate Hunter" who's dad was totally not killed by Gangplank
• Caitlyn- All sheriffs have top hats, all top hats are purple. This is final.
• Talon- Absolutely nothing like Ezio from Assassin's Creed. Totally.
• Fizz- Self-Explanatory

Along with the free rotation, Riot has left us with a forum post as to how they choose their free champions, check it out. We also see some new skins, a very women-empowering NSFW skin that will definitely win Vayne Tramp-Of-the-Year. But, there's also a new skin for Ryze, which scares me to no end. But, that's no different from normal.

Homestuck

I'm completely caught up on Homestuck, into act 6, and almost understand whats going on. Seriously, so many little children, so little time. I got to say, Hussie is magic, and I'm just talking about his lips (which have the power to kill all the heroes who have ever existed.)

Here in the Workshop

Recently I hit 1,500 views, actually I'm at a bit above 1,650 but I forgot to make a post for 1,500. All I have to say is, thanks. I didn't imagine a blog that's just a cute little project from my AP class would end up actually being a legitimate source for learning (or for anyone looking up Jax for whatever reason, which alone has gotten nearly 900 views.) But, if you take out Jax's one post, I'm at like 750, which still beats everyone else in the class by like 10 fold. So thank you everyone for making this little project into something a bit bigger. For anyone who does red this blog, please take a bit of time and vote on what you'd like to see more of, I will respond to you guys. Feel free to comment as well.

T. Hanks

--Santa

League of Legends: The Post That Santa Forgot

Here in my workshop I have a schedule for my posting, generally on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday for easier reading purposes. It also makes it so I keep a more rigid schedule, as it is my goal to blog 3 times a week. Yesterday I completely neglected to do Wednesday’s post. It was on my time the entirety of the day, but I never got to it. Why? Because I was much too busy playing the thing I was going to review.

A few of my more frequent readers may remember me mentioning a week or so ago that in the upcoming patch they were completely overhauling Coop v. AI. They were adding around 30 or so new bots, updating the modes to include Dominion, and making the bots just one step closer to Skynet.      Other than my fears of the new robot overlords, I did spend basically all of my time yesterday investigating this new mode so I could give all my readers a good feel for what they could expect if they were going to start playing Coop. My suggestion: Do it.

The old bots, to be nice, had absolutely no skill. None. Absolutely Nothing.  When I first started playing League of Legends I had next to no skill. I had never played Defense of the ancients (A Warcraft III mod that is the birth idea of the League) so I tried a range of characters. My first game of LoL I rolled Pantheon and got him 2 Warmogs. I figured more health meant more survivability. I was very wrong.  So, I started play Coop, and started on easy mode. I chose the lovely pirate known as Gangplank. He had the longest chest hair I had ever beheld. Gangplank would end up being the first champion I ever bought, following Heimerdinger (who became FTP after Gangplank, and before I had enough IP to get him, he also reminded me of an Erwin Schrodinger-Engineer hybrids, another love at first sight.) These were the two champions I really bonded to, and give me a mix depending on our team: AP or Attack Damage.

I used to engage in countless bot games, playing until I didn’t have to look down at the keyboard, didn’t die, and got at least 10 kills. When I hit this point, I went on to Intermediate games, doing the same process to get a strong hold of my champions.  When I finally felt that I knew my champions I went out and played real games. With my experience being much higher than other players at my skill level I generally did a lot better in games. I got other champions (most notably Anivia, Cho’Gath, and Graves) and did the same processes for them, as of recently I bought Leona for a tank, and I’m starting to do the same for her.

However, I find myself with the need to completely re-do the roster for all of my champions. This new updates gives a more wide-range feel for these champions, and makes the game feel much more realistic. So my line-up of champions: Anivia, Cho’Gath, Gangplank, Graves, Heimerdinger and Leona gives me a full feeling of the League, (two AD carries, one AP Nuke, one tanky-mage and one AD Tank) but this also means that I need to re-train so I can get back up to my old playing status. It’s hard to juggle 6 characters, especially when you end up playing a few over the rest. But, I’m getting back into all my characters, slowly and surely, and rest assured, I bet the same thing could easily happen to you.

--Santa

LoL: sharing the Love

Every few days I check the League's Homepage to see if anything new has happened, and so then I can turn around and report it to you, since you guys love to hear me go on about the LoL so much. However, today I found that something new HAS happened! As it turns out, Riot figured that Stark's Fervor was really quite expensive, seeing to the big old Recurve bow making it all expensive when you could be using the 40% speed boost. So, the decided to change it up, granting health AND cool-down, while giving an attack speed bonus and life steal to all nearby teamies. They also decided to rename Fervor to Zeke's Herald in honor of some guy who recruited like 1,000 people to join the league using the "Refer a friend" use system. Reading up on this system it has clearly stated to not put it somewhere where people could just accidentally click it. And there's now way you should make around 5,000 smurf accounts so you can get all content unlock ever. However, I could use some more IP. If you just so happen to need an account, feel free to use this link here, and help me out. I'm not much of one for begging, but it'd be kind of cool if I got 10,000 Riot Points. Help a bro out.

Other items include a reworked Emblem of valor (+25 armor, nearby teamies get 10 hp regen per 5 seconds) and the locket of the "Iron Solari" which builds out of the Valor and grants an additional 10 defense, 300 health, another 5 regen. per 5 and an activatable shield that does: "Shield yourself and nearby allies for 5 seconds, absorbing up to 50 (+10 per level) damage (60 second cooldown)." I can now see myself possibly getting some of these items to help my team out, that is if Im not too busy getting 2 Bloodthirsters.

Another thing I've decided to start doing is giving the free champion rotation, really start to help you guys out. I know I always forget. I'll give each character and a summary of what they do, or why they may be free this week.

Free Champions for Season 2: Week 10

• Jax- After having so many changes made to him, it seems Riot's giving us the chance to test drive their new baby
• Nunu- giant yeti tank with slows. Fairly easy to play, fairly cheap. Good champion for new characters who want to sponge up some damage
• Ryze- AP Nuke with a cute little cage to make everyone mad, also a cheap champion for anyone who wants to do cheap damage.
• Zilean- support who's ult literally brings people back from the dead. He also makes bombs and doesn't afraid of anything
• Shen- Tank ninja. He can teleport too. Oh, he's also pretty cheap. Anything else?
• Gailo- gargoyle meets pterodactyl. His ult is a major AoE which annoys everyone.
• Urgot- Humpty-Dumpty successfully put back together, still gives me nightmares.
• Caitlyn- Chick with big gun with OP ult. I've made my point.
• Cassiopeia- One of the hardest characters to learn and probably my overall least favorite character. There is nothing worse than a good Cass going up against you, I've nicknamed her "Snake Bitch"
• Sejuani - The latest champion. Riot always likes to give out the news ones for a bit to let everyone take them for a spin.

One last thing, I hit 1,000 views. I literally doubled my views in 13 days. I don't know what it is about you guys and Jax, but hey I'm not complaining.

--Santa

LoL: BOTS AND EXPLOSIVES: LIFE COMPLETE

YES! THE RIOTS GOD HAVE ANSWERED MY ONE UNWRITTEN PLEA!

for all of those wondering why I'm having a giant fangasm is because Riot has recently announced a few new updates to one of my favorite features: Co-Op Vs. AI. For those of you fearing Skynet, don't fret, its only now getting to the point of robots gaining sentient thought. We have a few more years of life yet before we must welcome our new robot overlords. The inclusion of this update not only lends new robots for me to completely decimate hone my skills against, but also comes with the Crystal Scar (AKA Dominion) as a new set of Co-Op gameplay.  Now, I do realize that some of you may think that bots are useless, stupid wastes of time that serve no purpose except for a quick game and easy IP. And you may be right. But in the end, I have countless of hours of fun just screwing around with friends, and for all its worth, I love the bots for their help in training me. God knows I use them for figuring out countless builds. Bot games really are perfect tools.

Oh, and before I leave, I just want to bring this up. I'm not much of a fan generally of new champions, but this one looks like a mix of bomberman and a teddy bear. I'm interested in this guy.

--Santa

LoL: Link-Happy Holidays and Jax: the Perfect Combo



LOOK AT ME MY STATS ARE SCREWED UP

That's right, ladies and gentlemen of  the internet! Riot just could not resist the idea of making new skins for their champions, or for that matter, come up with a good way to fix Jax. But, thats besides the point, now that Jax is all new and stuff (I'm not going into detail, you can read up on it here. To sum it up, they tell us nothing, except they're completely re-doing him, but keeping the essence of dodge is countersrike. I know, right?)


Here's how I feel about this situation: I  never really cared for Jax. I'm sorry. I e I see a remember the days of Jax getting like 50% dodge chance and me getting angry, rahe quitting and going to eat a gallon of Haagen Daaz. But, I've grown out of those ways (mostly since I came to the conclusion that since I don't get dodge, Jax becomes as useless as Rumbe) but now I fund that I have to wait until the new champion spotlight to figure out how much they may have destroyed/buffed Jax.


In other news, its another holiday! Not an official one, but if you click here you can see some interesting thins. Like the new skins. I personally don't care, I got Snowmerdinger, so now I need nothing else.
Except a good Leona and Graves skin.
WORK HARDER RIOT.
--Santa

A Triumphant Return From Christmas, Why Viktor sucks, and How I got (Theoretically) Rich

Yes, I know.

I know.

It's been awhile.

A long while.

But all that matter now is that we can finally be that big old happy family again.

Well, until I go onto Spring break. But until then: Its news time!

A bundle of things have happened since I last updated you guys/ girls (guys). 

• Viktor Came out on LoL
• Christmas
• I got Earbuds
• I sold Earbuds for my first unusual (Mirror w/ Green Confetti)
• Re-sold for a very good price
• Bought another unusual (Pith Helmet w/ Green Confetti)
• Sold for buds
• Sell Buds for Unusual (Big Chief with Orbiting Fire)
• Sell the Big Chief (Only seconds ago) for 3 Earbuds.

So yeah, I mostly traded for a week. But, hey now I'm part of the 1% of people who are genuinely rich (Hypothetically.) And now I just sold two of those buds for a Vintage Bills. God, I am a sucker for anything with a blue border, I really am. So yes, once again I am sucked into the community of Stout Shako shouting Demopans. But you know what? I've come to accept this. I love everything about Team Fortress 2: the game, the classes, the features, its music, its humor, community content, and of course, hats. So, I will continue trading, no matter how pointless it may be. Goal of getting a V bills and Earbuds: Complete. Let's aim for the big guns of a Hotrod with Sunbeams.

Now, lets get down to the big bit: League of Legends and their new machine man: Viktor. I must say, this update had me on edge. I thought that I was going to be facing something huge, they made him a comic and everything. Instead we got a little man with annoying death beam and a slow/stun. Which as far as I'm concerned is good, Volibear was so overpowered upon his release I had to stop playing the game.  But seeing that this is for once, an underpowered release, I find it to be a nice break from the norm. 

During Christmas I got two games: Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Dead Rising 2- Off the Record. I don't know if I will do reviews for the or not, since I personally think my reviews are probably fairly boring. So, I'll leave it up to you- the viewers. I'm going to make another poll, and who knows? Maybe more than 2 people will vote this time. Oh well.

--Santa

LoL: A Farewell To Cheap Getwaways

Well, I got on the League today and found that something I had been fearing for the last month has finally come true: the refunding of Dodge runes. For everyone except me, this is most likely a good thing, but have you ever stopped to think about what has happened?

Well, League of Legends is a bit more fair now, Jax could be a monster to kill....

but I lost what I loved most! My ability to dodge random attacks! One time, by the undying power of the lulz gods, I dodged Cait's ultimate. The rage the followed was enough to kill 20 men. To this day I have no idea how I exactly managed to do this feat. Maybe Riot thought, that'd be pretty funny if that kid just made that Cait explode with rage.

Dodging was an odd ability. With my measly 6.75% dodge, I did manage to avoid a good bit of damage. It basically blocks out 6.75% of all melee attack damage, when you consider, because 6.75% of attacks automatically miss. This gives the advantage to someone in a team fight, or when you just so happen to run away (I can't tell you the number of times I've been called a hacker when avoiding melee attacks and running)

Now we find ourselves at the beginning of a new era, an era where I can no longer just parry blows with no thought at all. The rise of new runes, and a completely revised way of playing. I've been using dodge runes for half a year, and I say now that I will deeply miss all of the times I pissed off Teemo.

Well, I guess I'm going to have to buy something defensive-- stupid Banshee's Veil costing so much gold.

But nothing feels better than avoiding a Cho'Gath feast, eh?

However something does hang on my mind, and its mostly within Riot's recent updates. Saying this I mean that we have seen about 10 new champions with only one major change, being the Jungle in Classic. With the rise of season 2, I can only stop to wonder if the League is moving too quickly. I seem to only be really good at Dominion, but there's no championship for that. I'd love to see more features (Like a new gametype and Voice Chat which could be implemented in 2012) since Dominion, although very fun, isn't very good for some champions. Riot certainly is on the right track, and has achieved magic with this game, its not very often that I have multiple games that I want to play at the same time, and the League has kept me on my toes for the last couple months. I can only hope that Riot will stop to think that maybe a champion every week is maybe a bit too much, and will instead put a little more time into actual gameplay, and not champions. God forbid we get another release like Volibear, super OP or a champion like Rumble, who I haven't seen played in just about 100 games. Just something to think about.

--Santa

Updates: Australian Christmas, Snowmedinger and Skyrim, Oh My!

Today has been a good day, people of the internet! Well, actually, yesterday was the good day, and now it’s running over into Thursday’s timeslot. But that is no reason to complain! Yes, it’s that time of year ladies and gents, we are in the middle of Christmas themed gaming.

It’s that time of year when all the big game developers make their games all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Well, computer developers tend to. Stupid Bethesda never puts anything fun on the consoles. Or on anything.

No, instead we are now seeing eggnog potions of health in the League and Christmas crates returning in TF2. AND OH YES A NEW COMIC! NARRATED BY THE ENGINEER NONE THE LESS!

I get quite excited when my favorite Texan starts telling me the stories of old Nick, and how he gets into silly little fights with the mafia. But, you know what that means: new hats. Robin Walker & Co. decided they didn't want to go to the trouble of making hats this year (I see no reason why) and have instead let the community at large design some, and will eventually pick their favorites. In the meantime, I can only hope and dream that they give out festive keys to every little player of TF2 so we can pray for a hat. Or maybe even an unusual. Last year I got “Pink as Hell” paint and sold it off in a few minutes. I can only hope I won’t get stuck with something like the Coupe’ Disaster. Nobody wants that.

But, not to be outdone, the League is bringing back their snowy Summoner’s Rift. And to keep it fresh, they’ve made Heimerdinger into Snowmedinger. As a big fan of our little Austrian genius, I’m ready to shell out any amount of money for the cute little guy. Other things include some festive runes, and other skins (like this cute little Gangplank one) but nothing else. But, its always nice to see people gear up for the holidays.

As for Skyrim, I’m still playing. Not as much, I’ve been quite busy as of late, but I plan on grabbing the last of the Dragon Shouts that have been evading me for the last few weeks. They can’t hide forever, and I just can’t wait to be able to scream at chickens and incinerate them into my Christmas day meal. Happy holiday’s internet.

--Santa

PS: Guess who just made a GOTY poll? Vote your hearts out, internet.

League of Legends: Updates, and Pirates

Okay, so I had to stop thinking about Skyrim for a bit, so I hopped onto my computer and started playing TF2 again. Yeah, I started trading again. But, I stopped after I got myself a Teddy's Roosebelt and Villian's Viel. Then I got back into League of Legends, like I always do.
It's the start of season 2.


Yeah, for all of you kids out there, you can win some major cash. Regional winners (From North America, Europe, and Asia) will get $1 million to split with their teamies. Oh yeah, the winners of the WORLD SERIES GET $2 MILLION. So, if you win both: thats $3 million for your team of 5, or $600,000 each. Yeah, and my mom always said I would get nothing by playing video games, except Type 2 diabetes. WELL WHAT NOW MOM? I COULD GET BOTH! Oh, wait, I forgot, I'm only somewhat good at videogames. Yeah, those really good guys will always win. Stupid Garens, always spinning and winning.


But, I've come to terms with my mediocraty. It makes me happy to know that they basically completely destroyed the jungle, making it useless. NO WARWICKS TO GRAB ME NOW. Well, that and I usually roll Gangplank, who they recently changed. He now has a very cutepirate dance. And a cuter beard. And no more feathers sticking out of his chest. It almost makes me sad that I bought the sailor skin for him. OH WAIT! NOW I'M A PIRATE WHO'S A SAILOR WHO DANCES. Its fantastic.So, to complete what else has happened for me with LoL is two important things:
I got Graves
I hit level 30
Yeah, I know I stated this earlier, but now I'm going to go into depth. Hitting level 30 with my other blogging friend, timmeh, and now I just roll around in ranked, loosing most games, pretty cool.
When I first played Graves, I knew it was love at first play. Let's list his pro's

• He's a ranged Carry, doing phyiscal damage
• He looks like Godmund, my D&D character
• He has a southern accent
• He's the equivalence of a ranged Gangplank

Yeah, life complete. Between him, GP, Heimerdinger, and Cho'Gath I'm complete. Well, I might buy Leona, I could use a good tank, but only time will tell. I also bought Anivia, but, yeah. Not thebest idea. A week later they lowered her price, and screwed me over. All I want is a cool skin for Graves, since I'm not really ready to spring onto hired gun, I can wait for a big boy skin thats legitimatley cool.


Well, until next time, Im going to keep playing LoL, and Skyrim.
Okay, and maybe Toontown
--Santa
PS- Full review of Skyrim coming sometime. It's going to be a long one.

Dominating Has Never Been So Rewarding

League of Legends is one of those games that can really make an impression on everyone who plays it, from the lores to the vast amount of character abilities that you can have, and control. But, the main point is always in the game, which as I found out, Dominion completely changes up. For all of you gamers out there, its like Modern Warfare 2's Domination tied up with the fast action of a good game of Dustbowl on TF2. League of Legends is quickly pulling me back in as a very powerful and addicting game, and Dominion is the main cause of it.

For those of you who like a visual representation of the map, click this! It shows the entire map, and'll give you a good representation of how the game works. Once again, you get to be on one of two teams, blue or purple, and spawn on their respective sides. But, you start out at level 3, more gold, and gaining xp and gold over time, and at a rather fast pace. This pushes gameplay a lot faster, and lets you get a larger grasp on your abilities. Now, you get one minute or so to talk shop with your team, and decide which of the 5 towers you want to capture, or "cap." There are 5 points of interest all around the map: The windmill, the quarry, the refinery, the drill and the boneyard. Capturing 3 of these points will swing power in your favor, and hurt the enemies' nexus. Since you can't hit the enemies' nexus, it now has an odd form of hit points, which are damaged when you have 3 or more towers, one of the champions die, or you complete an objective, given every 10 minutes or so. The Nexus has 500 hp, and although it may seem like a lot, it only takes about 15-30 minutes to finish one game of Dominion, packing all of the intensity of the original gametype into a faster paced game. 

But, LoL isn't all about the fighting; it's also about finer things, like how you can kill people faster at the beginning. In LoL, you are a Summoner, a magician who controls your champion through magical powers. And you have 2 spells that you can cast to help your team, or yourself, and runes, which affect only yourself. Both of which you unlock as your summoner level goes up. Spells are free, but runes must be purchased, and at levels 10, 20, and 30, you unlock Quintessences, which are like super runes. Runes do everything that items can do, but can also grant the abilities to gain more experience, or build better over levels. You also get Masteries, similar to runes, but free, and not quite as powerful. Masteries come in 3 different slots: Offensive, defensive, and utility. All of these can give powers to your champions before you even enter battle, but be warned, as not all of these powers will help every champion and playing style, try to experiment!

Seeing to the fact that I believe that seeing can really impact, I thought I would showcase two of my favorite characters in League of Legends. First up is Gangplank, that swashbuckling pirate. Yes, he says just about every single stereotype you can think of, he is a drunkard, a brute, and inappropriate, but he's also quite fun to play, and my first champion. Gangplank is a carry, making him quite strong later on in the game, and is a melee character. Gangplank has two unique things about him, one is his main ability "Parrrley" yeah, it is a bad joke. But it is special. Gangplank fires his Ye Olde pistol, and deals around 20- 70 damage (depending on its level) and however much attack damage you have, too. To put this in perspective: Gangplank gets around 200 attack damage by the time I hit level 15, so, 270 damage, that's also with pretty good range. This ability can also critically damage (for 200 or 250% if you get Infinity Edge, a very nice weapon), and apply effects like slowing and whatnot. Gang's ultimate attack is cannon barrage, which allows him to take his ship's cannons, and fire anywhere on the map. Literally anywhere. I can fire right on their spawn if I want to be that big of a dick. My usual build for Gangplank goes for attack speed, critical strike, and attack damage. I can get gang attack twice a second critting every time, and deal 800 damage per hit. He can be a very scary guy. 

Now, you your immediate left, you will see a giant insectoid. He is wearing a suit, top hat, and monocle. He also has a bottle of champagne and a pipe rubber banded to his claws, yes, this is the greatest skinned champion of all time, Gentleman Cho'Gath! Now, Cho'Gath does not usually come in his greater, cockney accented form, I had to buy him like this. He is the epitome of human eating Praying Mantises, as his ultimate allows him to eat enemy champions. If he successfully eats them (essentially killing them) then he will gain a feast stack, making him grow larger, and giving him more health. Cho'Gath also features a scream that can stop enemy champions from casting abilities, spikes that he can shoot from his back, and the ability to stomp on the ground, and fracture it. While Cho'Gath may require more grace than Gangplank, he is also much more, how do I say it, civilized, and hi famous catchphrase: "Let us Fight Like Gentlemen" is even printed on one of Riot's T-Shirts, showing him sitting in a nice chair. I bought that shirt, and I am currently wearing it. What can I say? I can be quite the fan boy.

For the rest of you hanging on the fence about joining this League, do it. It is a large download (not quite the size of TF2, but it comes close) and snazzy things such as skins can't be bought without throwing money into the game, but, you do earn champions with IP, given out at the end of each game, and Riot also goes through the free champion rotation, giving you the chance to sample before you buy. So, if you need to kill a few hours, or maybe just one, try out the league, Riot is always trying to out do themselves, and as Dominion has shown, they're always coming up with something new.

Legends Are Made, Not Born (LoL pt. I)

So, on Sunday I was thinking (Since I didn't have many ideas at the time to blog about) and thought "Self, what can you cover today? Team Fortress 2 hasn't had an update in weeks, you haven't played enough of Minecraft 1.9, and Fallout: New Vegas doesn't run very well on your computer," (I sold my earbuds for New Vegas, can you believe that? And mother used to tell me that sitting and doing "nothing" would never get me anywhere. Now sitting down has fueled my addiction, minus the fact that I have a horrid computer.) Then I came up with it, a game I hadn't played in a long time. So, I opened it, and set out on its download, and to my surprise, it had some new features, but still greeted me like an old friend, today I start discussing League of Legends.

For all of those whom may not of heard of this astonishing game, just head on over to this cute little thing and check out Riot's webpage just for LoL. This game flows perfectly, now whether or not it flows how you want it to depends on your teamwork. As LoL is based on teams, it becomes a lot more fun when you have some friends to play it with. Riot says they may eventually implement a voice-chat feature, which would help more than my method than to use conference over Skype for easy game play ideas. The entire point of the game depends on your map, I'll start out with Summoner's Rift. You can either play 3 x 3 or 5 x 5, and I almost always go for the latter. The 5v5 map is larger, and allows for a more intense gameplay.

To start, you spawn on a symmetrical map, and are either on blue (bottom left) or Purple (top right). The point of Summoner's Rift (the name of the map) is to destroy your enemies’ nexus. Their nexus is on the other side of the map, in the enemies’ base. Next you have the inhibitors, which spawn your cute little minions, known as creeps. From there you can choose one of three lanes, which are protected by turrets, which fire at you when you go all alone, or will fire at creeps first, unless you attack an enemy champion, then it will select you. Turrets fire for high damage, and do more damage over time, so it’s risky to attack your enemies under a turret, but you can attack back, destroying it, turrets have a good deal of health, and take half as much damage as most champions, it’s wise to attack it with the waves of your minions, and will probably take more than one wave of their scapegoating to take it down. There are two turrets in each lane, one protecting the inhibitor of each lane, and two protecting the nexus. When you get to the enemies inhibitor, and destroy it as well (it can't defend itself after the destruction of its guardian turret.) Its destruction puts one minion in your wave on super steroids, giving it around 3,500 health, more than most characters. But, inhibitors do respawn over time, just as a note.

Destroying the nexus ends the game, but you may wonder how you will do this? At the beginning of every game you start at level 1, advancing to 18 with the gaining of experience. Every level you can power up one of your abilities, and getting to use your 'ultimate' move at level 6. You can also buy items at the store to increase your attack and move speed, physical and spell damage (known as AP), critical chance, defense, and so on. You can gain experience, and gold from the killing of creeps, killing of enemy champions, or "jungling" in the land in-between lanes, which has creatures of all shapes and sizes, some which rant magical abilities to yourself, or your entire team, if you can kill them.  But, what makes LoL special is its array of characters.

There are over 80 characters in LoL, and Riot adds about one each week, allowing for vast types of strategies and gameplay, most classes fall into categories, and can fit into more than one, you have:

Carries: Characters who are weak at low levels, but will roll into higher powered characters as the game progresses

Tanks: characters with high health, but usually low attack

Ranged: this character can attack from far away

Melee: this character attacks with a melee attack

Assassins: this character is usually stealthy, and can deal high damage quickly

Pushers: characters who can bully others in a lane

Mages: characters deal more magic damage

Fighters: characters deal more physical damage

Supporters: have lower attack and AP, but have higher attributes to help the team

These characters come in all different shapes and sizes, click to see more. With all these combinations, LoL gives not only the power of choice, but the feel of control that many other games don't give you. LoL allows for a really close team experience while only taking about 45 minutes to an hour, which can be its greatest problem too, it takes a long time for one game, but, Riot may have made a solution. In part 2 I'll cover a new gametype, and more customizable powers you can have.