Your first week in the league: a practical guide

Day one: pick a username

You can open the site and type straight away; the warm-up test on the home page needs no account and no name. The moment you press Find match on the Ranked 1v1 card, or Join lobby on Battle Royale, the site asks for a username, because your opponents see you by it. You cannot enter a match without one; if you cancel, you are simply back on the solo test.

Names are 3 to 20 characters long and use letters, numbers and underscore only. Turkish letters such as ç, ğ and ş are not accepted. Pick something you are happy to keep: your first choice does not start the 30-day wait between name changes, but any change after that does.

Warm up before you queue

The warm-up sits below the league cards on the home page. It is a normal typing test, 30 seconds by default, and the words are already on screen when the page opens. The clock starts with your first keystroke, so reading the first line costs you nothing. Warm-up tests give no LP, but your 30-second English runs here also feed the pool of ghosts that other players race.

One or two runs before your first match are enough. The point is not to set a record but to get your hands moving and your eyes reading ahead before the clock matters. League matches use English text, so if you usually type in another language, warm up in English.

Placement: ten matches that measure you

Your first 10 league matches are placement matches. They give no LP; each one measures your level, and the first few count most heavily while your level is still being found. After the tenth match your league opens, and the screen shows the league you landed in.

Placement puts you a little below the level it measured, on purpose. Starting right at your ceiling would leave nowhere to climb, and a small margin means your first ranked matches feel like progress rather than a struggle to hold your ground.

Play your placement matches the way you normally type. Trying to type above your level usually costs accuracy, and accuracy counts heavily in the match score.

Reading the match result screen

After every 1v1 the result screen shows several things, and it pays to read them all:

• The outcome: win, loss, draw, a forfeit either way, no contest or under review. Whoever has the higher match score wins; equal scores are a draw.
• Who you played: against a human or against a ghost. A ghost is a recording of a real past run, or a labelled bot, never a disguised player.
• Your LP change, such as +14 LP. Ghost matches show half weight next to it. If the match was unrated, the screen says unrated and gives the reason.
• Your score breakdown: speed × accuracy × consistency + streak = total. This line tells you exactly where your points came from.
• The league card: placement progress during your first ten matches, then promotions, division changes and how many LP you need for the next division.

Set a daily goal you can keep

The daily goal is a number of league matches: 3, 5 or 10, with 5 as the default. Every day you hit it extends your streak, and days reset at 00:00 UTC. Only 1v1 league matches count; Battle Royale lobbies and warm-up tests do not, and neither do forfeit losses, so you cannot fill the goal by joining and leaving.

Start with the smallest goal that you will actually meet every day. A streak of short sessions beats an ambitious goal you give up on by Thursday. Finishing every weekly quest opens the weekly chest, which gives a streak freeze; you can hold up to 2, and a freeze saves a missed day automatically.

What not to worry about yet

A few things look important in week one but can safely wait:

• Ghost matches. When nobody is in the queue you get a labelled ghost within seconds. They count at half weight, so they are real progress, just slower.
• Unrated matches against people. Rated human matches need an established account: 7 days and 30 clean runs, or a linked Google or email account. Until then those matches are unrated, and that is expected.
• The top leagues. Apex and Legend have limited seats, top 1000 and top 500. Climbing through the first seven leagues comes first.
• The monthly reset. Seasons follow the calendar month. At the end, a quarter of your LP above 1200 is removed; below that nothing changes, and your hidden skill level is never reset.
• A bad loss. LP gains and losses depend on your opponent, and over time LP follows your actual level. One match does not define where you end up; the trend over weeks does.

How to climb steadily

Each league is 400 LP split into four divisions, from IV up to I, and the ladder runs from Initiate through Scribe, Striker, Operator, Accelerator, Vanguard and Keymaster to Apex and Legend. Climbing is mostly about typing a little better, not playing more, because LP follows your level.

• Protect accuracy. The match score cubes accuracy, so a clean run at a pace you control usually beats a fast run full of mistakes.
• Keep an even rhythm and build clean streaks: consistency and your longest correct streak both add to the score.
• Never leave a committed match. Once the countdown has started, leaving counts as a forfeit.
• Keep a stable connection. A short drop is not a loss, because your run is retried until the deadline, but a run that never reaches the server is.
• Read the breakdown after a loss. If accuracy is what dragged the score down, slow down slightly in the next match rather than trying to type faster.
• Stop when you are tired. A goal-sized session with full attention is worth more than an hour of tired matches.