Welcome to my Smite 2 Jungle Introduction Guide, my name is Bell.

I'm a longtime Smite player, I started playing back in Season 3 when I was about 14 years old, and I have over 8000 hours in Smite 1 over the span of 9 years, and currently 645 hours in Smite 2, since I started playing in the Alpha Weekend Tests.

I'm also a Mentor in Hi Rez's Smite Discord where I answer questions for new and returning players, so I thought I'd put a lot of information in one spot for people who were curious about Jungling as it can be kind of a lot if you're a newer player.

If you find this useful, be sure to let me know.

Also share it to others if you think it's worth it.

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To quote Smite 2 directly,
"Junglers are roamers and gankers who focus on gaining gold by slaying Jungle Monsters and Enemy Gods.

Their strength lies in their ability to flank and ambush enemies."
What makes a good jungler then? 

Generally, the characteristics of a good jungler are high burst damage (early or late game), good or great mobility in their kit, good jungle clear, and an impactful ult in some way or another. Junglers like most gods have a pre-determined timeframe of the game in which they are the strongest.

The Jungle role in Smite 2 is one of the most dynamic and high-impact positions in the game.

Unlike laners who focus on farming minions and controlling a specific area, Junglers move across the entire map, securing camps, ganking enemies, and contesting objectives.

A skilled Jungler can dictate the pace of the game, enabling their team to gain an advantage through aggressive plays and objective control.

The Core Responsibilities of a Jungler: may include, but are not limited to: Farming efficiently, ganking and applying pressure, warding, and providing map awareness. Junglers do not rely on minions for gold and XP but instead clear jungle camps scattered around the map.
Efficient jungle pathing ensures that you get ahead in levels and gold while also being available for ganks.

A well-timed gank can secure a kill, force enemy relics, or pressure an objective.
The best Junglers know when and where to gank, balancing farm with aggression.

Warding the jungle prevents enemy invades and helps secure objectives, as well as hindering the enemy Jungler from ganking your teammates.
Paying attention to enemy positioning and letting your teammates know through callouts or VGS can also be a core part of Jungling.

The Attributes of a Good Jungler Player:
To play Jungle effectively, you need to develop certain skills:
Map Awareness & Decision Making
Knowing when to gank, farm, or sneak an objective (or fight over one) is critical.
Keeping track of enemy positions, buffs, and timers helps you make good judgement calls.
Always be aware of which lanes are pushed up - or have easily gankable gods.
Mechanics & God Knowledge
Most Junglers rely on burst damage—knowing your god’s full damage potential in a kit dump is incredibly important to evaluate whether you can kill someone in a timely fashion.
Some gods have a strong early, and a weaker late, and others have a weak early, and a strong late.

Knowing both yours and your own enemies is very important for evaluating ganks.
Game Sense

No two games are the same - being able to play from behind, ahead, even, into certain types of team compositions or with incredibly bad/good teammates are all very important.
Being able to evaluate when to sit on a lane and when to basically abandon it are also incredibly important.

You cannot be in 3 places at once, and cannot win 3 lanes at the same time for people.

Common Mistakes Newer Junglers Make:
Farming too much and never ganking
Ganking too often and falling behind
Never shotcalling
Not knowing when to give up on a gank
Sitting on the wrong lane(s)
Playing gods with weak earlies and trying to fight early
Ganking a lane that is certifiably lost instead of helping a winning lane snowball

Above is a provided map with labels for every camp in the Conquest Map as of Open Beta 4.

Familiarize yourself with it, especially for jungling.

Jungling Vocabulary and Associated Terms: 

Gank(s) or Ganking: Attacking an enemy (usually in a Lane) from an unexpected angle/position/time.

Split: Usually in the context of splitting farm, it just means you share the XP & Gold values of the camp/wave with a teammate.

Camps: The main source of farm for Junglers, the majority of the Camps in the Jungle are intended for the Jungler to drop or split, barring some exceptions.

Buffs: Jungle camps that drop temporary stat boosts that last for a certain amount of time before expiring, or expiring upon death.

Neutral Farm: Camps that are in the middle of the map, and are not directly placed in one team's Jungle. They are intended to be fought over, or pressured around.

Contested Farm: See above.

Timers: How long it takes a camp to respawn after clearing every mob in the camp. If someone asks you to "be on the timer", they want you to be there as soon as it spawns.

Clear: The amount of time/effort it takes to clear (in this context) a camp. A god with bad clear will usually be a bad Jungler.

Invade: Going into the enemy Jungle and killing one (or more) of their camps.

Secure: Ensuring you or your team get the last hit on a camp/buff or an objective.

Overextended: When a god is pushed up so far down lane, it's harder for them to make it back to tower if you were to Gank them, and therefore easier to punish.

Collapse: As a team, picking a person(s) and converging on them with the intent to kill them.

Counter-Gank: A gank responding to an initial gank, in hopes of turning a fight.

Steal: Taking an objective by securing the last hit with an ability.

Power Farm: Focusing entirely on farming instead of ganking early.

Hypercarry: A god (in this context, a Jungler) who scales particularly hard in the late-game and can carry teamfights, usually with the trade-off of a weaker early.

Snowball: Getting an early lead (via kills or invading) and using it to dominate the rest of the game.

Backline: A team's damage dealers (Mid laners, ADCs).

Frontline: A team's tanks (Support, Solo).

Pick: Catching an enemy out of position and killing them before a teamfight can occur.

AA Cancel (short for Autoattack Cancel): Every basic attack (AA) in Smite 2 has an animation time before the next action can be taken. However, damage is applied before the full animation finishes. AA Cancelling works by cutting off the end of the animation, allowing a faster transition into another attack or ability. This means you can get in more damage within a shorter window, improving your DPS on a lot of gods.

1.) Auto-attack an enemy → Wait until the damage registers.

2.) Immediately cast an ability → This cancels the remaining attack animation.

3.) Follow up with another auto-attack or ability → Repeat as needed.

Starts change often and are very fluid, but they can also settle in-place for months at a time. If you mess up a start early for yourself or your team - it can absolutely ruin the early game for yourself and others. Always be aware of what the current start is before stepping back into Conquest.
Currently, Junglers have about 2 to 3 options for starts. Provided are two examples of the most common or popular starts.

Start One (Speed Buff Start)

Start at the Back Harpies, then go to the Speed Buff, then Ward Camp, then Oracles/Mid Wave, then the Rotating Camp, then the Red Buff, then the Ward Camp, then the Scorpion Camp, and finally the Back Harpies.

Start Two (Red Buff Start)

Start at the Red Buff, then go to the Back Harpies, then the Ward Camp, then the Rotating Camp/Mid Wave, then the Oracles, then the Ward Camp, then the Speed Buff, then the Back Harpies, move onto the next Back Harpies, and finally finish at the Scorpion Camp.



While these are two of the more common starts, there are still more options available. Some require coordination with your team, and others can be done by yourself. As long as you understand the requirements for a "good" Jungle start, you can experiment a little.

[GOD:Cernunnos] with aspect is terrible.

[GOD:Mordred] is decent but has literally no engage or chase without his enhanced ult.

[GOD:Cabrakan] is ok - he's a great [ITEM:(183)Polynomicon] abuser but Intelligence Junglers have really weak early's and his is particularly bad compared to other Int Junglers.

[GOD:Amaterasu] fell off hard after her aspect nerf - still useable but just feels the worst of the limited AA junglers we have right now.

[GOD:Ymir] is good for abusing idiots, kinda like a worse Loki. Just suffers from a complete lack of range and mobility.

[GOD:Pele] is probably the worst conventional Strength ability jungler.

Just suffers from subpar numbers and gets blown up easily if you're full damage once you commit with the ult.

Still useable though.

[GOD:Odin] is kinda subpar, his utility is mostly in stuff like Ranked as a counterpick option due to the utility of his Ultimate.

[GOD:Nemesis] is decent with a Crit build, but struggles into many matchups with other top junglers and has lackluster chase and lockdown leading to a lot of dropper kills.

[GOD:HunBatz] is okay, his ult is useful, he got grazed a little too hard by the nerf-hammer a few patches ago and still suffers from it.

His chase is good but his lockdown is pretty bad without ult.

Also does poorly into Awilix.

[GOD:Athena] is like a worse version of Aladdin.

Weak early, decent mid, strong late.

Excels at double stacking with [ITEM:(183)Polynomicon] and [ITEM:(168)Hydra's Lament] or just straight up [ITEM:(168)Hydra's Lament] and crit.

Once you get to late you blow people up with little comparison, it's just a bit rough actually getting to that point.

[GOD:Fenrir] honestly can be pretty good, and would be placed higher then this, but his performance is incredibly comp-dependent.

Some games you can get away with full damage, others you can't.

Some games you can get away with bruiser, others you can't.

He kinda suffers from Pele's problem of getting blown up when he goes in.

He's still pretty good though.

[GOD:Thor] is flexible both full damage and bruiser (with aspect).

Good utility, good damage, the buff to his ult landing time to match Smite 1 brought him back to being a menancing Jungler.

[GOD:Thanatos] is still [GOD:Thanatos].

Snowball early, run the game.

Don't snowball?

Kinda feels rough.

Good utility with his Silence and his Ultimate execute.

[GOD:Susano] got a good buff this patch and feels less variable in his game-to-game performance.

He does suffer from the lack of ability to build bruiser compared to other better Junglers.

[GOD:Loki] is still the most consistently strong idiot abusing Jungler in the game.

Safe, good damage, punishes bad players (most players).

Also suffers from the lack of bruiser flexibility though.

[GOD:Awilix] is a great counterpick to a few Junglers, as well as some other Gods in the game.

Other then that she's still strong all around.

[GOD:Achilles] is one of the strongest [ITEM:(168)Hydra's Lament] users in the game, and has amazing synergy with going full damage or bruiser.

Useful utility in his relatively quick execute as well.

[GOD:Aladdin] has a VERY weak early, his ult is borderline useless until you're about halfway through the game, but if you can get over these hurdles he's incredibly safe and hits like a truck late-game with little counterplay.

He can be a bit harder to play, but as long as there's not a [GOD:Awilix] in play, you can make him work incredibly well.

[GOD:Hercules] still hits like a truck at most stages of the game.

His CC is fast, hard to react to, and very useful for chaining together.

He can be built full damage or bruiser, and can be incredibly hard to 1v1 in the Jungle and can bully many gods effectively.

Speed Buff



This buff is almost universally intended for the Jungler. It has a respawn time of 180 seconds.

Red Buff



This buff is intended for the Mid laner, but can be grabbed by the Jungler the first 1 or 2 drops, as the Jungler will usually get more value out of it in the early game. It has a respawn time of 180 seconds.

Blue Buff

This buff is intended for the Solo laner throughout the game. Ideally, you would split this camp with the Solo laner. It has a respawn time of 180 seconds.

Purple Buff



This camp is intended for the ADC. Usually, you will avoid dropping this camp unless it is being contested by the enemy team. It has a respawn time of 180s.

Side Harpies

These camps are intended for the laners, but can be done if your laner isn't that bothered about it.  They have a respawn time of 120 seconds.

Back Harpies

These (the two by Speed Buff, and the one by Scorpion) are intended for the Jungler, but sometimes people are fat and do them on the way back to lane. The shield buff they drop scales with their Infamy level, up to 300HP. They have a respawn time of 90 seconds.

Ward Camp

These are intended for the Jungler or the Mid laner, but primarily the Jungler. They have a respawn time of 240 seconds. It drops a singular ward that functions as a regular ward in every sense except the icon it uses.

Oracles

These are intended for the Mid laner, or the Jungler. They have a respawn time of 180 seconds.

Rotating Camp

The one by Mid lane is intended for the Mid laner, or the Jungler. The one by Duo is intended for the ADC, but occasionally can be done by the Jungler. These also have a 180 second respawn timer.

Scorpion Camp

This camp is intended for the Jungler. It has a respawn time of 240 seconds. It drops a singlular ward that pings every enemy on the map (but doesn't tell you which one they are) for a few seconds.

Roaming Harpies

These can be found roaming around both the left-side jungle (on both sides, around Speed Buff) and the right side jungle (between Red and Blue Buff).

Rogue Camp

These are intended for the Laners, but can be done by the Jungle more rarely. They have a respawn time of 90 seconds.

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Infamy System

Infamy levels are a point-based system that determines the level of the buff that the camp will drop. Infamy is generated for a team anytime a Buff Camp of the corresponding type dies anywhere on the map. Defeating enemy camps in this way denies them Infamy and grants it to your own team's camps. To quote the official source: "

• Each creature falls into a specific category that rewards different amounts of Infamy:
• Large creatures grant 40 Infamy.
• Small creatures grant 15 Infamy.
• Very small creatures grant 5 Infamy.
• Upon reaching a new Infamy level, the jungle camp will increase in Infamy rank and start granting new rewards.
• The Infamy level thresholds are as follows:
• Level 0: All camps start here
• Level 1: 210 Infamy
• Level 2: 560 Infamy
• Level 3: 980 Infamy "

Understanding Ganks
Ganking is the act of ambushing an enemy in a lane, often from the jungle. A successful gank doesn't always have to result in the enemy dying, although this is usually the best outcome. 
Ideally you achieve one of these things:
Forcing relics/an Ultimate ability - these can allow for a followup gank later and result in a more successful kill, or allow your laner to kill them by themselves later.
Creating pressure - This can be done in a multitude of ways, but allowing your laner to play up and get more neutral farm while the enemy laner is worried about you coming back and punishing them is a common occurence of this.
Getting a kill - This is self-explanatory.
Forcing a back - Similar to creating pressure, for example, forcing the enemy ADC to back while your team is in position and still healthy, can let you get relatively safe Gold Furies, or push towers.

Key Indicators of a Good Gank
Enemy is pushed up too far/overextended - Whether in lane or in your jungle, punishing someone for being at your team's towerline or far away from the safety of their team or a tower can be incredibly easy at times.
Enemy has used their escape/relic/ultimate - If you want to gank a Neith, and you see her backflip, you can often run her down and force her to use her relic or die. If you run at her and she has it up, you might need more options to keep threatening her, such as blink, your ultimate, etc.
Level or item advantage - If you are 4 levels up on someone, or a couple items up on them - it can be incredibly easy to kill them compared to if you were on even footing with them. Conversely, if you are under their level by a decent margin, you will be at a large disadvantage.

Gank if...
Your teammates need help and are being pressured
You see an easy kill opportunity in a lane
Your camps are already cleared, and there’s nothing to farm
It's around the area where your available farm is

Farm If...
You are noticeably behind in levels or gold
No lanes are in a good position for a gank
Your team is winning fights without you
More then a couple camps are up