plz do not buy t1 or t2 runes . Trust me , plz don't . it's tempting to buy t1 and t2 runes and those cool looking champs , but don't . Save them for t3 runes. I'm new in this game (4 weeks) and made about 30k ip , spent 12k for runes and rest for 11 champs , all t3 runes. Do not try the upgrade rune method , it's pointless . Do not buy different runes of one color . (for example , all my red runes (marks) are magic penetration , all yellow (Seal) are armor and so on ..)

I wish you well

Tier 1 runes aren't bad, but if you want to get rid of them, you'll need 5 to get 1 rune of the next tier up. So, if you want to turn your tier 1 runes into tier 3, you'll need to have 25 to get 1.

If you don't mind the lower starting stats, go ahead and wait til lvl 20. If you want to play around with runes before that to see how they work, then you'll want to stick with tier 1 and skip tier 2.

I don't know why people are downvoting those correctly recommending to not buy runes until 20 (I fixed as many of the votes as I could)

The fact is this: Once you hit 20 t3 runes are available, and those are the ones your going to be using for the rest of your lol playing days. Which means *for sure* that previous tier runes *will* be a waste eventually.

Also, how long do you really think your going to be lower than lvl 20? a couple weeks? lvl 20 is like 80 wins or something if that. Most of your opponents will not have bought runes anyway, so there really is no point at all.

Lastly, once you hit 20 most people will be playing with t3 runes, so you need to be as well. If you don't save up your ip for at least one proper runepage, you will be at a disadvantage. That's the bottom line.

I appreciate all of your advice. Having read all of the newer comments, I decided to buy a couple of tier 1 runes just to learn about how they work as a compromise to buying a full page. I feel that it will be better to save most of my IP for later tiers and looking at how little I get per game, I probably should listen to the more experienced players. Anyway, thank you again!

runes make a large difference when playing someone at an equal skill level but if you are playing vs someone much better or worse then you you really wont notice the effect of runes as much. as many people have said ur best off saving for tier 3 runes but buying tier one runes wont set you back too much but avoid tier 2 runes like the plague.

I would advise you to not buy any runes until level 20. Start saving IP once you hit level 15 so you can buy a whole bunch of them and maybe fill up a rune page for your favorite role. A complete rune page (Marks, Seals, Glyphs, Quints) costs about 10k IP, so aim for that.