I've searched the forums and can't seem to find anything on this specific issue of jungling, so -

my question is, are neutral creeps in the jungles different difficulties, and if so, is there a way to tell?

As an example, I'm recently trying this game out after playing HoN alot, and in that, jungle mobs difficulty is denoted by different colors on the minimap - yellow dots meant easy spawns, red dots meant difficult spawns.

Here, all the skulls denoting neutral creep spawns seem to be the same color, so it's causing me alot of difficulty for trying to get used to jungling in this game, especially since the layout of the jungle is different, I can't just go to where the easy creeps did spawn in hon.

Another question is, HoN had a giant monster right off the river that you could kill that generally took the entire team to do that gave bonuses, LoL seems to as well, but I'm not sure of the exact placement. Also there seem to be more than one special monster spawns like that - I've heard of some "dragon" that can be soloed, whereas the giant monster could not be. Can someone explain this to me in more detail too?

Finally, at what time do monsters respawn? Every 2 minutes? And are there runes or powerups that spawn in the river?

thanks

I'm not an expert but I can give you some quick info.

The creeps spawn a couple minutes into the game, and I don't know how often they respawn but all of them do. They vary mostly, but golem (blue mana/CD buff) and lizard (red slow/damage buff) always stay in the same place for each side. There are two 'coves' where uber-creeps lurk.

The red skull at the top left (on purple side) is the Baron Nashor, and killing him generally takes a 5 man team with lv 16 or so avg, or good gear. The reward is a super buff (its going to be nerfed, actually!) Baron can often win or lose a game (I don't know anything about DoTA's creeps).

The uber-creep at the bottom (blue side) is just a dragon that takes a bit to kill, but is MUCH easier and can be taken out as a team at level 1 if you have smites/heals/ a good tank. He can be solo'd around level 6 by certain heroes (junglers like Warwick) and he gives the entire team 165g for the kill (as well as the 25g for a regular creep kill). Dragon should be killed at all times, as 825g for the team is nothing to scoff at and is easy to solo past early game.

There are no runes or powerups and you will just have to learn the jungle. I don't jungle myself so I hope Warwick (or Nasus) players can provide some more info for ya later on that.

Difficulty of jungle creeps is relative to your summoner spells, mastery spec and number of points you have, and your hero. Any hero can pretty much jungle with the right speccing and summoner spells.

Primarily in terms of difficulty without exceptions: Baron (LoL's Roshan, the big river guy.) > Dragon (South river) > Big Armadillo > Big Golem > Dual Golem > Tri Wolf = Ghosts

All of these creep places have specific locations. Ghosts always spawn in the same place as do Baron, Dragon, and Big dillos and Big golems. Dual Golem and Tri Wolf share a spawn place.

When jungling it is best to start at a Dual Golem/Tri Wolf or the Big Golem pending your hero, summoner spells, and spec then hitting the other mentioned. Then go down to the ghosts then possible the Big Dillo or the other Dual Golem/Tri Wolf and back to Big Dillo. This is all relative to depth in mastery, hero, and summoner spells of course.

You will learn the locations pretty quick.

Yes, Baron Nashor(?) is the big snake your team kills. Like the Big Armadillo and Big Golem it gives rune bonuses (which replace Dota and HoN river runes, pretty much) though Nashor's goes to the entire team. He can be killed with less than full team.

Dragon is in south river. He gives gold to the whole team (I believe), but experience to only those who are present. He can be solo'd at relatively low level - an a team of level 1s with the right summoner spells.

I do not really know how respawns work. It seems like each spawn point has its own respawn timer which is based on when it was killed. Weaker spawns come back faster. I would say the best gauge of time for Nashor/Big Dillo and Golems is the duration of the buffs they give you.

imho i would say ghost > tri wolfs, coz the ghost are 1 big + 3 little creeps with a lifeleech aura

@respawn time

i think golem, lizard etc is based on the (buff time + x) seconds, whereas x is not a constant

Good info so far, here's what I can add, as an avid jungler (from DotA and now in LoL)...

Dragon respawns 5 minutes from killing it.

Non-buffing neutrals seem to respawn every 1-2 minutes (it's faster than the ones that offer a buff anyway).

In DotA, the map would show which camps had respawned, and here that only works if your team killed them. In LoL, if the opponents kill a camp, and you check it out, the minimap will continue to say there's a camp available to be killed there.

Some champs can go right into the jungle at the start depending on masteries and summoner spells. It's possible to take out one of the little camps and get to a lane without missing a single minion kill at game start (the neutrals spawn a few seconds after lane minions do).

If you're going to be in the jungle for any real amount of time, it's worth your while to buy a madred's razor, as it procs a 500 dmg attack on minions (useful for farming a lane too). It's fairly cheap (900g?) and with a lifesteal item, the proc can keep you from having to return to base for a while.

It's possible and realistic (I'm doing this at summoner level 15) to lane until you can afford your razor (and vamp scepter unless you have a champ who can heal), then head to jungle, grab the neutral creep buffs, and use them to kill the dragon at level 5-6, by 10 minutes in the game. Unfortunately I feel that it relies too heavily on the proc from the razor to accomplish this, so I wait until ~15 minutes, or whenever I get some better items.

I hope this helps, keep jungling!

The harder enemies are the ones that give a buff; as stated, the Ancient Golem and Elder Lizard. You can tell in-game they are harder because they have the buff effect on the unit (swirling runes going in a circle around it), but sadly this isn't displayed on the minimap.

Quote:

Originally Posted by criptix imho i would say ghost > tri wolfs, coz the ghost are 1 big + 3 little creeps with a lifeleech aura

For dedicated junglers, like Warwick, you often use Rally to take down the Ancient Golem first. Rally gives you a lot of extra damage and heals you over time more than the Heal summoner spell (!). The Golem buff gives you reduced cooldowns and lots of extra mana, which allows you to kill things in the jungle faster. Being fast is important for a dedicated jungler, because you are really racing to get XP and gold as fast or faster than the champions in lanes. Nearly anyone can jungle to some extent, but if you can't keep up in XP/gold, it's not worth doing full time.

Anywhere in excess of one razor basically makes everything that isn't Nashor, another hero, or a tower trivial >.>