A Series of Unlikely Gaming Stories 2 – The Diamond Volibear

Back in Season 3, things were simpler. Things were busy. There was always people playing matches in League of Legends. The map was ugly, the characters were blocky, but things were pretty stable and everyone seemed somewhat satisfied. Even a newbie like me, I was satisfied with the game.

Then, I was a newbie, really slowly leveling up. I only had a handful of games under my belt, and in those days, it took forever to level up a new account. Even if you got all those first wins of the day bonuses and made use of the experience boost from bot games between levels 1 and 10. Around the time when this happened, I was only level 5, I hadn’t even unlocked Flash. Back in Season 3, you didn’t unlock that until you were level 12 of all things.

Understandably, I wasn’t very good at League of Legends. No one is unless you’re leveling up a second (or third, or fourth or hundredth) account or you’d had experience playing over MOBAs – Dota 2 and Heroes of Newerth were the only other real options back then, and LoL was by far the most densely populated. I’d managed to lose my first few bot games, and was only recently beginning to understand basic movement and attacking. The only character I owned was Nunu, and that was because I won my first game with him and he only cost 450 points. I was saving up for Kog’Maw, but at 4800 points, I’d be at it for a while. Playing nothing but a kid on a yeti.

Anyway, this bot game was a beginner bot game. There were only beginner and intermediate bots and the beginner bots were often ranged ones, meaning my melee-based Nunu would struggle.

Unfortunately for me, I started playing in the middle of a giant fake player problem. Non-official bots had been swarming Coop VS AI for some time, leveling up accounts to be sold on the black market to banned players. It wasn’t uncommon to join a Coop VS AI match and find oneself playing with three people and a bot.

That day though, I’d ended up with three fake player bots and someone with a sparkly border. This sparkly person was clearly a Diamond-ranked player, probably just getting their first win of the day. I’d seen silver players before but never diamonds.

The fake players didn’t care. They just ran endlessly down midlane, feeding kills to a Ryze Bot. Ryze Bots were the third worst bots to feed after Annie Bots and Cassiopeia Bots – their low ability cooldowns, low mana costs and AI meant they could chain their abilities really well. Having three players in mid lane dying constantly also meant that I was in bottom lane on my own, a level 5 melee-only player fighting against two ranged characters – a Lux Bot and a Miss Fortune Bot.

Of course I was struggling. Lux can easily snare and trap you, and Miss Fortune combines high damage with slows, meaning you’ll take extra damage as you try to escape. I spent my time clinging to my tower, hoping it would protect me. At least in Season 3, towers actually did some damage and weren’t wet noodles. I was struggling though, with no gold, minions dying, no ability to last-hit and my turret slowly being whittled away. The only gold I’d earned was from the Lux Bot over-extending and getting nuked by the tower and me finishing her off.

But somehow, despite a super strong Ryze Bot, we hadn’t lost any towers. Being the single-minded noob I was, I hadn’t noticed the Volibear all game. I didn’t notice them until I noticed that the Miss Fortune Bot was no longer coming to bottom lane. Not long afterwards, Lux Bot disappeared as well.

With no ranged characters to rain on my parade, I managed to push towards and eventually destroy the enemy tower.

Suddenly, I hear an Inhibitor being destroyed. Not only had this Volibear, who I had not been paying attention to, managed to destroy the top three towers, but he’d also managed to destroy the middle outer tower and had just destroyed an inhibitor too. All in the space of about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, the bots were all AFKing in our base.

By the time I managed to recall, buy items (I hadn’t recalled for the entire match) and made my way to the inhibitor, the Volibear was busy destroying the two Nexus turrets. I made it just in time to help him destroy the Nexus.

After the match, the Volibear immediately disconnected. I reported the three bots and moved on, still unsure on what I had just seen.

Eventually, I found out that destroying bots was easy, Diamond or not, but back then, it was a sight to behold for a newbie like me.