Creep score is the most reliable source of gold in League of Legends. It does not depend on your team, it does not depend on a fight going well, and it is available in every single game you play.
It is also the skill most players stop deliberately practising the moment they can hit minions at all.
Realistic targets
These are coaching ranges, not thresholds. Treat them as a direction of travel:
- Iron to Gold: 6 to 7 CS per minute is a solid, achievable goal.
- Average across the playerbase: around 8.
- Genuinely strong: 10 or more.
For reference, perfect solo lane farm is 107 CS at ten minutes, which is a professional ceiling rather than a target.
If you are climbing out of the lower ranks, aim for roughly 7 CS per minute, which works out to about 70 CS by the ten minute mark. That single number is worth more attention than almost any other stat on your scoreboard.
Consistency beats perfection
The player who takes 7 CS per minute every game outperforms the player who takes 9 in their good games and 4 in the ones where they died twice early.
This is because missed farm compounds quietly. Every wave you fail to collect is gold your opponent has and you do not, and that gap shows up as an item difference two power spikes later.
The practical version: after you die, or after a fight, the first question is always where the nearest safe farm is. Not where the next fight is.
Farming under tower
Tower shots do a fixed amount of damage, so the sequence for each minion type is learnable. As early-game rules of thumb:
- Melee minion at full health: let the tower hit it twice, then auto.
- Caster minion at full health: auto once, let the tower hit it once, then auto again.
- Cannon minion: survives roughly seven tower shots. Do not count. Watch its health bar and auto when it drops low.
These are early-game patterns. As minion health grows and your attack damage scales, the exact counts shift, so the underlying habit matters more than the numbers: watch the health bar, and let the tower do the part you cannot.
The cannon is the prize
The cannon minion is worth roughly 50 gold, rising slightly as the game goes on. It is the single biggest chunk of gold in a wave, which makes it the one minion worth changing your plan for.
It is also why recall timing and farming are the same skill. Backing at the wrong moment donates the cannon to nobody. There is more on this in the recall timing guide.
Trading without losing the wave
Two things decide whether a trade in lane is actually free:
Minion aggro. Basic-attacking an enemy champion pulls nearby enemy minions onto you. Minion damage adds up fast in the early game, so a trade that also gets you shot by six minions is a trade you lost, whatever the health bars say. Step out of range or into brush to drop aggro.
Wave size. A bigger wave lends you its damage. Six minions against three means your autos are backed by the wave, and the same trade that was even now wins comfortably. Check the wave before you commit, not after.
The kill zone
Chasing farm past the river, with no vision, against a jungler you have not seen recently, is the single most reliable way to die in this game.
Concede the CS. A missed cannon costs you 50 gold. A death costs the enemy's laner 300 or more, plus the farm and experience you lose on the timer, plus whatever they take with the free window.
There is a fuller treatment in the map awareness guide.
Practise the decision, not just the click
Last-hitting mechanics improve in practice tool. The decisions around farming, when to concede a wave, when to trade, when to back, do not.
Those improve by making the call under pressure and finding out whether it was right. That is what Klymo drills.