A Beginner’s Guide to Dota 2: Part One – The Basics

Hello. My name is Hokyanto, and I really, really like Dota 2. I’ve played it for around 1500++ hours, and to give you some idea of how much I like it, the first draft of this was written when I was on 306. Yet this game contains such an unimaginably vast amount of content and variety that there’s still plenty of stuff I simply don’t know. On the plus side, I’m good enough and confident enough that – at worst – I’m a generally competent player.
I think Dota 2 is great, basically, and I’d like to introduce you to it. Unfortunately, it’s a daunting game to actually get into, and it’s harder still to learn how to play it without being screamed at, which is why I’m writing this guide. If you’ve never played Dota 2before – hell, if you’ve never played a MOBA before – this is for you. If you haveplayed Dota 2 before but are still fairly new to it, the forthcoming guides will likely be of more use.

Over the course of these guides I’m going to go over how it plays, what you should be doing at any given time, some basic tips that are incredibly helpful after your first couple of hours, how you should start off playing, what heroes you might like to try early on, and a glossary of commonly-used terms you’ll hear in game. But for now, let’s start with what Dota 2 is and how it works.

If you’re an absolute beginner, then this guide is for you! It’s got the David Bowie seal of approval. (This guide does not have the David Bowie seal of approval.)

Tim, why should we trust you to teach us how to play it if you say there’s a load of stuff you don’t know?

You should trust me precisely because there’s a load of stuff I don’t know. It wasn’t that long ago that I was completely new to the game, and I’ve got a pretty good grasp on what I wished I knew back then. Equally, there’s all sorts of stuff that isn’t all thatimportant when you’re beginning, and I intend to signpost it as such and only talk about it later.

I’m good enough that I can tell you what will help you, but I’m not good enough that I can talk about high-level techniques, and I was a newbie recently enough that I fully understand the muted terror you’ll feel when you fire up your first game. I’m you, a few months on. Also, I have no doubt that there will be 20,000 people in the comments telling me I’m wrong and I’m an idiot, so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of advice from “expert” players right below this piece.

And that’s Professor Tim, to you.

IT BEGINS.

Alright. “Professor” Tim, what is Dota 2?

Dota 2 is a competitive multiplayer game in which two sides of five attempt to destroy each other’s Ancient – a huge building at the heart of each side’s base. The game takes place from a top-down view, with each player controlling a single hero via standard RTS controls. Those heroes are picked from a pool of over 100, and each has his/her/its own unique stats, skills, and abilities. Different heroes work well together in different ways, but for the most part, players spend their time levelling up and buying items in order to gain a big enough advantage over the enemy team that they can destroy the foes’ Ancient.

Short version: pick a hero, level him up, buy items to make his stat numbers bigger, work with your teammates, smash the big thingy on the other side of the map.

Of course, it’s not actually that simple, or games wouldn’t last 40 minutes on average. For starters, the enemy is trying to do the same thing as you, so getting an advantage isn’t easy. For another thing, the paths to the Ancient are blocked by deadly towers that have to be destroyed first. Oh, and there’s a constant wave of NPC “creeps” marching from each base to the other; for the most part, you’ll be trying to “push” your creeps towards the enemy base. And did I mention that the game is sufficiently balanced that advantages in terms of gold or experience can sometimes be counteracted by good tactics?

All you have to do is go to this page and click the big green button. PLEASE DO NOT ASK ME FOR A BETA KEY BECAUSE THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY BETA KEYS AT ALL.

Okay, so how do I get in on this?

Well, now! The game’s actually out of open beta and has launched. That doesn’t mean you can just hop in immediately, though – Valve are adding people in batches so that the servers don’t wet themselves in terror and fall over. All you need to do to get in on that queue, though, is go to the Dota 2 page on Steam and click “Get Dota 2.” Before too long, you should get an email telling you that you’re in.

Aren’t free-to-play games rubbish? Is this pay-to-win?

Free-to-play games are regularly rubbish, but you’ll be pleased to hear that Dota 2 is most definitely not pay-to-win. Everything gameplay-related is free – you don’t need to pay for heroes or wait for them to come into rotation, or anything like that. The only things that cost money are cosmetic items, and they’re randomly dropped at breakneck pace anyway. Of course, with 100 heroes, there’s no guarantee you’ll get one you want.

Heroes can be dressed up in a variety of ways, you see; there might be different weapons, or helmets, or gloves, or… whatever. You can buy different announcer packs, or HUD skins, or different shapes of ward. But again: all of these are purely cosmetic, and (almost) all of them have a chance to drop anyway. Hell, the only advantage you get for levelling up your profile is that you’re guaranteed a cosmetic item drop when that number goes up. It doesn’t really mean anything else.

Imagine a fighting game with over 100 characters, all of which are reasonably well balanced, and you begin to understand why Dota 2 takes a bit of learning. (Although it’s not a fighting game.)

The only thing that’s even mildly intrusive is that matches will regularly reward you with locked treasure chests containing a random item from a small selection, and the keys for these cost a couple of quid. That’s it, though. You never have to open them if you don’t want to.

Not too much bullshit, then. How many maps are there, anyway?

Just one.

This game’s shit.

Oh piss off. Look: the variety comes from the insane amount of heroes and the insane number of ways they can be built (and the insane number of different ways you’ll needto build them, depending on what you’re facing). The map is there to facilitate this, and it’s got plenty of little tricks to learn anyway. Think of it like a fighting game – the stages don’t matter nearly so much as the characters.

Alright, fine. But one map? Is there something special about it?

Yeeeeah, I should probably talk about the map. Here’s what it looks like:

Which looks fairly simple, but… okay, well. On the bottom-left of the screen you have the Radiant base – that’s one of the two teams – and on the top-right you have the Dire base. Each of these contains, as the furthest red or green spot from the enemy base, that team’s Ancient. Destroy the enemy’s Ancient to win the game.

As you can probably see, there are three big paths going from one base to the other: one directly above the Radiant base that goes clockwise, one directly to the right of the Radiant base that goes anti-clockwise, and one that’s a straight diagonal run from one base to the other.

Each of these paths – or “lanes”, usually differentiated in game as “top”, “middle”, and “bottom” – has two green dots and two red dots between the base. These are towers. We’ll talk about them – and every other element on the map – in detail shortly.

This is the sort of occasion when it’s safe to attack a tower, but early on, you don’t really want to get this close to one that isn’t on your side.

There are also sections of the map which can be moved through, but which aren’t on the main lanes. These bits are generally referred to as the jungle, and hanging around in them is more dangerous than sticking to the lanes for two reasons… which we’ll also come to shortly.

Also on the map are a pair of shops that sell a few of the items that you can acquire from your base, as well as two “secret” shops which sell powerful items that can onlybe acquired from there.

Finally, there’s Roshan. Do you see the little red mark to the right of the Dire tower in the middle of the map? That’s Roshan’s cave. He just hangs out there unless someone goes and bothers him.

That’s a hell of a lot to take in.

I know, and I’m sorry, but I need to get you up to speed on the map and give you a reference guide when I start talking about other bits and bobs. Writing “along top lane” is a lot faster than writing out “along the big path that’s directly above the Radiant base, which curves around at the top of the map to move right towards the Dire base,” and you can always refer back to my description of the map anyway, if you need to.

So what was this other stuff you mentioned? Towers, and a rainforest, and Roshan?

Towers, jungle, and Roshan. Towers are –

I know.

You know what?

I know it was “jungle”. I was just winding you up.

I hate you. As I was saying: towers are the first big obstacle standing between you and victory. Before you can attack the Ancient, you first need to take down every tower on at least one lane, plus the structures on that lane which are inside the enemy base – another tower, and two barracks; destroying the barracks makes your creep waves along that lane more powerful.

You don’t normally want to be this close an enemy tower this early on, but I was playing with bots and needed a screenshot of a tower so shush.

The problems here are that A) towers have lots of health, and B) towers do lots of damage. There are very few heroes that can tackle a tower alone, even when they have a few levels under their belt.

I said earlier that you spend a fair bit of time pushing creep waves further up the lane. Creep waves are – generally – evenly matched, so without player intervention, they’ll tend to just fight each other to a standstill. With players helping them out though, they’ll gradually march towards the towers and attack them, also helpfully tanking the damage the towers put out so players can join in on the demolition too. So yeah, creeps are important, and are your primary means of taking on towers.

Creeps are also your primary means of gold and experience for most of the game. Whenever one dies, all opposing heroes in the vicinity get a bit of experience, and if one of them landed the killing blow – “last hit” it, specifically – then they also get a chunk of gold. The first phase of the game is called the laning phase; this is when heroes split into groups and stay on the lanes (usually two to top, one to mid, and two to bottom), trying to last hit as many creeps as possible while also trying to stop their enemies from doing the same.

There’s a lot more to it than that – denying creeps, letting the carry farm, and all sorts of other complicated terminology that actually means very simple things – but you don’t really need to know that right now. What you do need to know is one simple rule: if you’re wanting to move your creeps towards the enemy tower, have your hero auto-attack the enemy creeps by right-clicking on them. If you don’t want to attack an enemy tower, then only go for last hits. Also, with one or two hero-specific exceptions, you should never use any of your abilities on creeps. It’s a waste of mana.

Enchantress probably has the easiest time in the jungle out of any of the heroes, considering she can “enchant” absolutely any of the creeps in there to fight for her. It’s not too hard to farm it for XP from level 1 when you’ve got big bad monsters doing your fighting for you.

Right. So the rainforest? YES I KNOW IT’S CALLED THE JUNGLE

That’s the big, sweeping expanse between the lanes. This is filled with things called neutral creeps – enemies that just hang out unless someone attacks them. They’re a good source of gold and experience, but for most of the game, they’re also far too powerful for heroes to take on. There are a few heroes, called “Junglers”, who can go there to level up at the start of the game, but you should probably stay away from them early on.

The other danger is that – because you have no creeps of your own going through it – you can’t normally see what’s in there. Which means that enemy heroes might be lurking there, waiting for an unwary player to wander through.

It’s normally reasonably safe if you’re just passing through, but you should generally avoid hanging around in it or killing neutral creeps until later in the match, when it’s actually a fairly quick and safe way of grinding some experience and gold. Again, though, there are heroes who should do the exact opposite. Sorry. Pretty much everything in Dota 2 comes with a caveaat, and that caveat is usually “unless you’re playing this guy.”

So the jungle’s dangerous but useful. Got it. Who’s that Roshan guy you mentioned?

Roshan isn’t something you need to worry about too much right now – if your team says “let’s do Roshan” then you want to head to his cave and beat him up; equally, if your team says “they’re doing Roshan” then you want to head to his cave and beatthem up.

Equally, Ursa probably has the easiest time against Roshan. Once he hits about level 7 or 8 and gets Vlad’s, he can take Roshan by himself. Pro-tip: if playing against Ursa, ward Roshan. And if you don’t know Vlad’s is or what warding means, check back soon for the next part of the guide!

Basically, he’s a big monster – big enough that most of the team has to work together to bring him down, usually. It’s worth it, though, because on death everyone on the team that landed the killing blow gets a big chunk of gold, and he drops an item called the Aegis of the Immortal. Whoever picks that up pretty much gets an extra life; a few seconds after they die, they’ll respawn where they fell. As you can imagine, not letting the enemy have this is pretty important, but as he respawns every 10 minutes there are ample opportunities to nab it for yourself.

Again, though, you have to be careful when attacking Roshan. If the enemy knows you’re in there, you can suddenly find yourself fighting Roshan and the entire enemy team. Picking your moment is important.

Anything else I need to know?

We haven’t talked about runes, the phases of the game, or any of the other “basics”, but this has gotten pretty long and talk about them will come naturally when we discuss everything else. There’s only one more thing which you really, really need to know, and this is basically the single golden rule that should govern everything you do: do not die.

Even with Black Hole, going 1v5 as Enigma was not a good idea against these bots.

As with everything else in Dota 2, there are exceptions – points at which you can’thelp but die, or occasions when it’s worth dying because it’ll result in an acceptable trade or it’ll save the team – but you’ll get used to spotting those moments as you play. When you’re starting out, focus on not dying.

There are three reasons for this. Firstly: if the enemy kills you, they get experience and gold, which means they either gain an advantage or catch up to your team. Secondly: if you die, you’re out of the game until you respawn, which means you’re not getting experience or gold, which means you’re falling behind… and it also means that the enemy has an opportunity to push, as one of you is out of the game for a little while. Thirdly: Dota 2 actually punishes you if you die, as you lose a chunk of gold.

Dying is bad. Try not to do it.

Dying often results in incomprehensible strings of words which loosely resemble sentences held together by swearing, but in this case, I’m actually not the one being shouted at. Hurray!

Is that it?

Not even close, but that’s enough to give you an overview of how it plays, plus some tips for absolute beginners. If you haven’t played Dota 2, you now know what’s going on; if you have, then this has hopefully reinforced the stuff that the tutorials beat into your head and given you a couple of extra pointers. But are you ready for public games? No.

Next time, we’ll talk heroes – which ones are good choices for beginners, which one is right for you based on what you want to do and how you want to play, and which ones you should avoid unless you want to have a nervous breakdown. Plus some more general advice that might save your sanity in your first few online matches, and maybe even a few tips on how and when to get started on those, if there’s room.