League of Legends — Your First Two Weeks
Turret plating, the gold you are not collecting, and why a ward near your own base scores nothing at all.
Turret plating is free gold beginners ignore
Outer turrets carry stone plates. Destroying a plate grants 125 gold locally to whoever takes it.
On top of that, the first turret destroyed in the game is worth 300 bonus gold.
This reframes the early game. Plates exist only for the first stretch of the match, on a timer — so a lane that pushes for plates generates gold that no amount of farming later replaces. If the enemy laner is dead or has recalled, hitting the tower is usually worth more than clearing one more wave.
The passive gold clock
On Summoner's Rift, passive gold trickles in at 20.4 per 10 seconds, starting at 1:50.
Only one gold income item can be carried at a time, so stacking them is not an option — a reasonable assumption carried over from other games that simply does not apply here.
Summoner spells
At summoner level one you have 2 summoner spells to choose from, and more unlock as you level, up to summoner level 9. So a brand new account genuinely does not have the options a guide assumes it has. That is normal, and temporary.
All summoner spells begin a Summoner's Rift match on a 15-second cooldown, so nothing is available the instant the gates open.
Vision score, and why your warding might be worth nothing
Vision score is not a count of wards placed. Each minute a ward survives grants up to 1 point, scaled by how useful the ward actually was:
- A ward near your own buff camps takes a small penalty
- A ward at your base walls scores roughly 50% less
- A ward inside your own base, or right beside an allied structure, takes a −100% modifier — it is worth nothing at all
A ward killed quickly still earns as though it survived 20 seconds (0.33 points), so aggressive warding is not punished the way it feels like it should be.
The lesson: wards belong where the enemy is going to be, not where you feel safe. A ward at your jungle entrance is doing a job. A ward beside your nexus is decorative.
The first fortnight
- Hit the plates. 125 gold each, and they expire.
- Learn one role and two champions. Everything else is noise for now.
- Ward forward, not backward. Wards near your own base literally score zero.
- Expect a limited summoner spell pool until your account levels up.
- Last hit. Minion gold is the majority of your income and it never stops mattering.
Where this comes from
The numbers here were read from these pages on September 5, 2026. Games patch, and a guide is only as current as the last time somebody checked it — so if something below disagrees with what you see in game, the game is right.