The jungling role in League of Legends is arguably the most challenging and impactful role in the game. Jungling as a role is also vastly different than any other role in the game. Instead of being in a lane where minion waves come consistently, the Jungle player has a set of camps disperesed throughout the map. The jungler is also responsible for helping the laners gains advantages through "ganks" and securing powerful objectives such as Dragons, Rift Herald, and Baron. As long as a player has the summoner spell Smite, they can purchase a jungle item. These jungle items are what allow junglers to gain full exp and gold from jungle camps, as well as upgrade Smite so that it does more damage to jungle monsters. While clearing will be covered more in the next section, the Jungler usually starts on one of the 2 "buff" camps, either Red buff which gives a burn and slow affect on basic attacks or Blue buff which gives increased mana regeneration and ability haste. For their first camp Junglers often recieve assitance from the either their Top or Bottom laners, depending on which side they start on, called a "leash" to make killing the first buff easier and faster. While not required, a leash is almost always given because because the first minions waves take long enough to reach the side lanes that aa laner can easily help their jungler and make it in time. The jungle role take a long time to master, as you are mastering more than just a character, you have to master adapting to the state of the game as well. As another tip, if you are going to play this role it might be best to turn off chat since you will be blamed for the rest of your teams shortcomings, whether you have any impact on them or not.
Efficient jungle pathing is essential for maintaining a strong presence on the map. In most games, you can know which side of the map you need to focus on and this should be the main driving force for how you do your first clear. Generally, you want to start the game on the opposite side of the map you intend to play for, so if you want to focus on playing topside you would start on the bottom side of the map and vice versa. While there is no set "Best Clear" the usual aim is to either hit level 3 and gank early by clearing 3 camps, or clearing the whole jungle to hit level 4 before Scuttle Crab spawns. The overall best practice for first jungle clear changes from time to time due to balance changes, some patches the majority of jungle champions are better off full clearing, and some patches it leans more towards trying for a level 3 gank. Out side of the first clear, it becomes more arbitrary on when you should or should not clear a camp.
Junglers should adapt their playstyle and champion choices to fit the needs of the team. You have to balance between providing enough support for your team, while also not putting yourself behind by not clearing your main sources of gold and exp. This balancing act takes a lot of time to get a good sense for, but ideally you want to predict where the enemy team will make plays and clear camps on that side of the map so that you can continue to gain resources while being close to where your team needs you to be. You also want to minimize the time jungle camps are alive, as the level they spawn at remains the same until they respawn, meaning they become less valuable the longer they are alive. The jungle also offers the widest range of champions types. Most lanes focus on one role, like Bot lane being a primary carry or Top lane usually providing tanky frontliners. Jungle however features all of these roles, from carry champs that prefer to farm like Graves and Master Yi, gank heavy tanks like Jarvan and Maokai, and everything in between. Usually the champions you are choosing from will be from a short list of what are considered the strongest champions. These champions often fill the same role, so sometimes playing jungle will entail primarily supporting your team where as other times you are the focal point of the team. Pictured to the right are a few champions and the way they prefer the first clear to go. For the full clear group we have Graves, Udry, and Hecarim. For the Gank focus group we have Jarvan, Elise, and Sejuani.
As mentioned jungle is a very difficult role that has a lot of different skills to master. One of these is tracking the enemy jungle player. By carefully watching where you see the enemy and looking at their Creep Score (CS) you can make predicitions of where they are. For example, during the time you are doing your first clear, if you see the enemy jungler on the top side of the map with 12 CS, you can guess that they will move towards the bottom side after. This is because every camp gives you 4 CS when cleared, so you know they cleared their top camps and now have nothing left to do top after. Building on the idea of tracking the enemy you can also learn to effectively Counter Jungle. Counter Jungling is when you invade the enemy jungle in order to steal their camps. This is usually done when the enemy jungler is on the other side of the map so that you can take resources from them without them knowing. Not only does this give you an advantage, it can cause the enemy to waste time walking to an area of the map with no resources in it. Arguably the most important skill for jungle is being able to effectively Smite objectives. Being able to consistently secure objectives will give you a big advantage over the enemy team. Outside of a few exceptions, you want to smite the objective at the exact amount of damage that your smite does. This removes any ability for it to be stolen by an enemy. There really are not many ways to practice building these skills other than just playing the role, so try not to get discouraged if your first games of jungle go poorly.