Warning: While this guide still serves it's original purpose of introducing newer players to the game and getting them through their first 10 matches, it's long overdue for an update to 6.80 and beyond. However, I'm not sure it's worth the time updating something that won't be read, so let me know if there's any demand to see this updated, and for me to actually make additional guides. I'm quite proud of my 1.5k readers though. :)

Also, if you liked the guide, make sure to give it a thumbs up or favorite, and if you thought it was lacking, leave a comment explaining why. Thanks!

Well, I'll start by explaining why I'm here. You can skip this part if you like. This is my first foray into guide creating, so I'm starting at the beginning. This guide will cover a lot of territory, so get your reading glasses on. I've created this guide mostly because I've had a couple of people from Reddit take up my coaching offer, and thought this needed to be done. I also want to contribute to the Dota 2 community because I really enjoy this game and want to see it reach a wider audience.

I'll try to include as many in-game screenshots as possible, and maybe one day I'll get around to making a video.

Any comments or suggestions for future material are more than welcome.

Hopefully you're here because you're a newer player and you are interested in playing Dota 2. That's great! However, Dota is a game with a lot of depth. The learning curve is more like a learning cliff. Don't get discouraged. This guide and others can help ease you into things.


Disclaimer: Some of the images I use, particularly the maps, are shamelessly used from other guides and sites.

This is the layout of the Dota map. There are a few things that need to be pointed out. The green side is the Radiant team, and the gray is the Dire team. Each team will have 5 players, and each player controls a hero. The X's represent each teams Ancient. (fun fact: Dota is an acronym for Defense of the Ancients) Each team's objective is to destroy the enemy team's ancient. The river, which flows diagonally across the map, roughly divides Radiant territory from Dire territory.

The blue and yellow squares are the main shops, where players buy items to make their heroes more powerful. The green squares are side shops, which can be accessed by either team and sell a small assortment of items. The red squares are the "secret shops", where players buy extremely powerful items.

The two triangles are rune spawn locations. Every 2 minutes, a rune will spawn at one of these 2 locations, and this rune provides a brief power up to the hero that claims it.

The most important part of this map is the dotted lines that indicate each lane. For better representation, here is another map of just the lanes.These lanes are important because each base will spawn creeps every 30 seconds. Creeps are weak monsters that march along the lanes and fight each other to the death.

There are some important things not shown on either map, but I will talk about them later, in the Jungle section.

A consideration for those who have played League of Legends:
If you look closely at the lanes, you will notice that the lines representing creep(minion) paths do not meet in the center of top and bot. At the top lane, the creeps meet very close to the Dire tower, and at bot, they meet closer to the Radiant tower. This is intentional, and is an important tactical consideration. I'll talk more about this later. (and by later, I mean in another guide.)

At the end of each lane in each team's base are 2 barracks, or "Rax" for short. These buildings are similar to Inhibitors from League of Legends. There is a Melee and Ranged, and destroying the corresponding barracks will cause your teams creeps in that lane to gain a substantial boost in power. Destroying both Rax in a lane will basically ensure that your opponent constantly has to defend that lane or else risk losing more buildings.


The average hero can see in a radius of 1800 units around him during the day, and 800 during the night. A unit's vision radius is usually written as 1800/800, representing day and night. The day/night cycle alternates every 6 minutes. Buildings have 1900/800 sight range.

You will notice that there is a height difference among terrain. The River is the lowest point on the map, as it would be in real life. This isn't just for looking pretty or being realistic. It has in game considerations.

You can't see anything that is on a terrain level higher than you, or blocked by some terrain feature such as trees. Ranged heroes also have a 25% chance to miss targets that are on higher ground than they are.

There are 90+ heroes in Dota 2, and there are more being added as the game gets closer to release. Each hero has 4 unique abilities that they use. This is a lot of stuff to know! I won't go into each hero and explain what they do, but I'll start by mentioning what each hero has in common.

As previously stated, most heroes have 4 abilities they can use. While there are some exceptions like Invoker or Chen, this is the norm. When you level up, you get a point that you can put into one of five things. You click on the "level up" button or press "O", the hotkey, and you can put your point into stats, which gives you +2 STR, AGI, and INT, or one of your 4 abilities. Each hero's last ability is his Ultimate, and can only be leveled up at levels 6, 11, and 16, which is why it can't be leveled up in this picture.

This is from my favorite hero's "learn" tab. (extra credit if you know who it is!) The three icons on the left are (from the top down) Intelligence(INT), Agility(AGI), and Strength(STR). On the right are Attack Damage, Move Speed, and Armor. Attack damage is how much damage your autoattacks do, move speed is how fast your hero moves, and Armor reduces physical damage when your hero gets hit.

The numbers on the left indicate how much of that stat the hero starts off with, and the + numbers next to it indicates how much the hero gains upon leveling up.

These three stats are the most important.
Intelligence dictates how much mana you have. Almost every ability in the game costs mana to use. It also affects how fast your mana regenerates.

Agility affects how fast you attack, and adds to how much armor you have.

Strength affects how much Health you have, and how fast it regenerates.

On this particular character's stat sheet, there is a gold circle around INT. That means he is an Intelligence hero, and all of his intelligence is added in to his attack damage when he attacks. The more INT he has, the harder he hits! Some heroes use Strength for damage, and some use Agility. It's all part of the character.

Each hero has a few things that they are particularly good at due to their abilties. While each character's exact role used to be up to much debate between players, Valve has done a pretty good job of offering their own.

The Big Ones:
These are the most talked about roles, and the ones that should be filled in every game if possible.

Carry- "Will become more useful later in the game if they gain a significant gold advantage." Everyone wants to play the carry. In the later stages of the game, they're able to wreck entire teams because of how much damage they do. Carries are generally identified by having autoattack bonuses. Example: Phantom Assassin can teleport to enemy heroes and increase her attack speed, and her ultimate gives her the strongest critical strike in the game.


Support- "Can focus less on amassing gold and items, and more on using their abilities to gain an advantage for the team." Carries have to amass a very large gold advantage to be successful, and that means someone else has to give up their fair share of the gold. Supports are those heroes. Good supports generally have stand-alone abilities like stuns or disables, and therefore don't need a lot of items to be effective. Example: Bane can reduce an enemy's damage by a large amount, can suck enemy HP and convert it to his own to survive, and has 2 separate disables he can use.


Nuker- "Can quickly kill enemy heroes using high damage spells with low cooldowns" These are sometimes refered to as "gankers" if they tend to move from lane to lane killing enemies. These guys are important for killing heroes, causing "ganked" hero to lose gold, and the "ganking" hero to gain gold for the kill. Example: Lina has 3 separate abilities that each do very large amounts of magical damage. Her ultimate is an extremely powerful single target nuke.


Initiator- "Good at starting a teamfight." When both teams get together to fight over a particular objective (usually a tower or Roshan), that's a teamfight. Initiators are the first ones into the teamfight, and usually have some ability that disrupts the enemy team and gives their team an advantage. Example: Tidehunter's ultimate is Ravage, a HUGE AoE that causes tentacles to stun and damage all enemies around him. He can follow up with Anchor Smash, which is a smaller AoE, but reduces enemy hero's damage by a percent.



The Others:

Lane Support- "Helpful in the early-game laning in protecting your team's carry." These heroes keep your carry safe while he farms by either healing him, keeping the enemies away, or some combination of the two. Example: Dazzle has a targeted slow, a heal, and can protect an ally from death for 5 seconds, making it impossible for them to drop below 1 health.



Disabler- "Has a guaranteed disable for one or more of their spells." Disablers are simply people that can stop the enemy from doing things they need to. Example: Shadow Shaman can turn someone into a chicken, preventing them from attacking or casting spells, and can hold someone in place, preventing them from moving, attacking, and casting.



Jungler- "Can farm effectively from neutral creeps inside the jungle early in the game." These guys usually have some ability that lets them survive in the jungle, or summon things to fight the neutral creeps for them. Example: Chen can convert neutral or enemy creeps to his side, and use them to fight the neutral camps.



Pusher- "Can quickly seige and destroy towers and barracks at all point of the game." Pushers generally have some ability that lets them clear creeps quickly, or have an ability that damages structures. Example: Leshrac's Diabolic Edict is one of the few abilities that can damage structures, and his Lightning Storm is great for clearing creeps.



Durable- "Has the ability to last longer in a teamfight." Having durability isn't a role so much as a characteristic. Being durable doesn't make you a "tank" though. You should do more than soak up damage. Many initiators are durable since they have often have to jump in the middle of the fight. Example: Skeleton King is a STR hero, and has a vampiric aura so that damage he does is returned as HP for him. His ulitmate is Reincarnate, which returns him to full HP and mana when he dies.



Escape- "Has the ability to quickly escape death." Like Durable, Escape isn't a role, but a characteristic. You wouldn't have much of a purpose if all you did was run away, now would you? Example: Let's say you are trying to gank Morphling. He can first Replicate, making a copy of you and sending it in another direction. Then he can then Morph, which sacrifices his Agility but gives him Strength (and HP). He can also Waveform, which makes him untargetable while quickly flowing through all terrain. If he's still in danger, he can instantly switch into his Replicate, taking it's position.

"Farming" is the act of intentionally focusing on amassing lots of gold to buy items. This is crucial for carries(see Hero Roles, above), since they depend on items to do most of their damage. It may not seem like an important aspect of the game to a beginner, but some people consider it to be the heart and soul of Dota. For instance, many pro players use a 1-5 ranking system to indicate who gets the most farm in the game.
You'll notice that poor Venomancer here has been reduced to buying just Wards and Boots of Speed. This is often the plight of hard supports. :(

You might be thinking "Why not just push as hard as you can? The objective IS to kill the enemy base, right? While that is correct, one does not simply walk into the enemy base. The enemy heroes will oppose you, and in order to get at those juicy barracks, you often have to kill the enemy heroes. It is much easier to kill someone when you have an item that gives you all sorts of outrageous bonuses and they don't.

Throughout the game, every player gets a small trickle of gold just for being there. Now nice! But it isn't much, so most heroes need income from other sources. Early in the game, most heroes will get their farm from killing creeps in the lane. This early game period where everyone is in lane killing creeps is known as the "laning phase".

During the laning phase, you want to stand near the area where the two creep waves clash, but not too close. You don't want enemy heroes casting spells and doing damage to you. Dying is bad.

When a creep(or hero) dies, it gives Experience(EXP) to all enemy heroes within 1200 range. Experience is split in the case of multiple heroes being in this area. If the creep is denied, it will give much less experience, but melee heroes will gain more than ranged in this case. This is one small benefit of being melee, but doesn't necessarily offset the huge advantage that comes with being ranged.

With this information, you might be inclined to attack the creeps as fast as you can to kill them and get more experience. There's a small problem, though.

YOU ONLY GET GOLD IF YOUR HERO KILLS THE CREEP

Landing the killing blow on an enemy creep is called "last hitting". Landing the killing blow on a friendly creep so that your enemy can't last hit it is called "Denying". Denying is marked with an exclamation point when the creep dies.

Hitting a creep and not killing it will not gain you anything. In fact, autoattacking creeps without last hitting will push the lane closer to your enemies tower. If this happens, you have one of two options.

• 1. Move up to the creeps and continue laning as normal. This means you are farther away from your tower, so you have farther to run if they decide to try and kill you. Very dangerous.
  
• 2. Stay back at your tower, forfeiting any gold and EXP you might get from being near the creeps and last hitting. Safe, but your enemies are getting stronger while you aren't.

Since neither of these 2 options are good, DO NOT AUTOATTACK THE CREEPS.

Here are some screenshots to illustrate this point:


When you are at the Radiant bottom lane, the creeps will generally clash somewhere close to your tower. This is good for you. Here you see that Sniper and I could easily retreat back to our tower if we needed to. Also notice that the trees block the line of sight for all of us, meaning if we had a friendly hero in our jungle, the enemy would not see him coming. (Note: They actually WOULD in this particular case because of the gap in the treeline. But move the creepwave just a little in either direction, and you have a perfect gank setup.)



Here you see that I have been attacking the creeps aggressively, and using my AoE nuke on the enemy heroes and creeps. Killing the enemy creeps means my wave advances, and we're right next to the enemy tower! Look at the minimap and notice how far I'd have to run back to my own tower. All Crystal Maiden has to do is walk up a little bit and freeze me, and Kunnka could land an easy Torrent. First Blood! Luckily these are only Medium Bots, so they won't be so punishing.

There are many ways to last hit effectively.

• One method is to walk back and forth next to the creep wave and simply click on the creep you want to last hit. This has the advantage of being somewhat precise and keeps you mobile.
  
• Another method is to stand directly next to a creep and spam the S button, (which will stop your characters attack animation) until you want to hit the creep. With some hero's animations, this results in an amusing jiggle. However, you will be standing in one place the entire time, right next to the creep wave. This makes you a sitting duck for harassment.
  
• Another method is to stand farther back from the creeps and run in to hit them when one gets low, then immediately run out. This tactic is often used by melee heroes who get harassed when they stand next to the creeps. This is somewhat harder to do because there is a longer delay between "I want to hit that creep" and actually hitting the creep, but it keeps you much safer.
  
• In reality, though, the best method for last hitting is a combination of all three of these techniques. Mix them up, and be unpredictable!

In this section, I'll discuss what items are good to start with and why, and also talk about some of the more important items in the game. Furthermore, if you have any problems finding an item, there's a very handy search function. It even accepts common slang terms for items like BKB, Lothars, and GG branch.



Team Dignitas has a great guide on how to spend your gold, so I'll link that here. Spending Your Gold[www.team-dignitas.net]


So what should you get at the beginning of the game? For your first few games, you can just get everything on the "starting items" section in the Recommended Items next to the shop. But for more in-depth consideration:

Animal Courier: If your team does not have one, GET ONE. They're very useful for bringing you items in lane, especially in the mid lane where there's no side shop. SPECIAL NOTE: Please remember to click on the courier to activate it.

Iron Branch: These are commonly called GG branches, and for good reason. They're the most gold-effecient item in the game for increasing attributes. They can be sold back later for 26 gold, or turned into Mekanism or Magic Wand.

Tangoes: Allows you to eat a tree, restoring 90 HP over 16 seconds. Can be used 3 times. Is not dispelled by taking damage, unlike Salves or Clarities.

Healing Salve: Restores 400 HP over 10 seconds, but is dispelled by taking damage. Back away from the creep waves and enemies when using.

Clarity: Restores 100 mana over 30 seconds, and is dispelled by taking damage. Get these if you are a mana dependent support (e.g. Earthshaker).

Gauntlets of Strength: Gives 3 STR for 150 gold. Good for increasing HP in lane.

Mantle of Intelligence: Gives 3 INT for 150 gold. Useful for having that little bit of extra mana in lane.

Slippers of Agility: Gives 3 AGI for 150 gold. Useful for agility carries to farm better. Builds into Poor Man's Shield, a useful early game item for said carries.

Ring of Protection: Gives you +2 armor for 175 gold. Not a very useful item by itself, but builds into Ring of Basilius, which is very useful in lane.

Observer Wards: See the section on Warding to understand why these are good.

What NOT to buy with your starting gold

Magic Stick: This item gains charges as your enemies cast spells. It can hold up to 10 charges, and each charge restores 15 HP and mana when you use it. While this is a great item, it can be bought from side shop. It is best bought from side shop when you realize you're facing a hero that's gonna spam spells. (e.g. Batrider, Undying, Keeper of the Light)

Boots of Speed These are simply too expensive to warrant buying them. You're more likely to escape a gank because you had regen consumables than you are some bonus movespeed. They can also be bought at side shop.

Bottle: This should usually be bought at around 1:30 and brought to you by the courier. That way you can catch the 2:00 rune.

Null Talisman, Wraith Band, or Bracer Here's a little math. Bracer costs 525 gold and gives +6 STR, +3 AGI, +3 INT, +3 damage. 3 branches and a gauntlet of strength costs 309 gold and gives the same thing, except for the damage. That's a 216 gold difference. These three items are great for saving inventory space, but terrible to get as a starting item.

Ring of Basilius This is a GREAT item in lane for you and your lanemate. 500 gold for +6 damage, +1 armor, and an aura that gives +2 armor and .65 mana regeneration. However, if you buy a Ring of Protection in base, you can buy the Sobi Mask at the side shop, and save that other 325 gold for buying more Branches and regen consumbles, which can't be bought at side shop. SPECIAL NOTE: Turn the aura off after you buy this. Your lanemate will still benefit, but your creeps won't. Giving your creeps +2 armor will push your lane closer to your enemy's tower.



Depending on what hero you are playing, they will have their own "recommended items" you can choose from. I'll just go over the biggest ones that you'll probably see in every game.

Black King Bar (or BKB) costs 3900 gold and gives +10 STR and +24 damage. The bigger part of this item is the Avatar, though. Activating this item for the first time gives you 10 seconds of magic immunity, but this number decreases each time you use it down to 5. Magic immunity means you can't be targeted by spells, and spells that do hit you will have no effect. However, there are some ultimates that can "penetrate" magic immunity such as Faceless Void's Chronosphere.
This is a very useful item for heroes that need to channel a powerful ultimate, or carries that need to shrug off stuns and disables.

Mekansm(or Mek) is a supportive item that costs 2306 gold to build, and gives you +5 to all attributes, +5 armor, and an aura that increases HP regen for allies. The most important part of this item is the active which costs 150 mana, heals 250 HP and gives +2 armor to all allies in a 750 radius around you.
This item will often tip the scales in your balance in teamfights, turning a disastrous situation into a winning fight. It is very important that your team have one of these.

Hold on there, cowboy. Before you get started, there are a few options you might want to consider.

First, right click Dota 2 in your library. Go to Properties, and click Set Launch Options. From there, type in -console. You might also want to add -novid if you don't want to watch that creepy guy with the valve in his skull every time you start up the game.

Enabling console will allow you to use commands like Net_graph 1 or any other console command.

Next, visit This site[skyride.org] and change some of those options. I would recommend the right click deny option, range finder option, and minimap misclick timer options.

Those are a few options that you can't currently change with the in-game options menu. For more, visit Customising Dota 2[www.teamliquid.net]

Your first game should probably be a bot game, since bots will never flame you, never call you a "feeder ♥♥♥♥♥♥", and don't sit in base and AFK when they didn't get to play mid. So load up the game, click the Play tab, Create Lobby, and change your setiings to Fill Empty Slots with Bots.

Put yourself on a team, and get started!

First, let's talk about hero selection. Your first few games should be played with someone easier to play such as Lion, Lich, Sven, or Skeleton King.

Every person prefers a different playstyle, so feel free to experiment around and try different heroes. A few heroes you should stay away from though are Chen, Invoker, Visage, Meepo, and Wisp. These guys are pretty hard to play.


If you've read all the other sections, you should be pretty good to go. Consider your hero role and the recommended items for your build, or you can go online and google a guide for your hero.

Rather than try to walk you through the game, I'll just provide some general tips.

• If you're on the Radiant side, go to the bottom lane. If Dire, go top. These are the "easy" lanes for each side. You won't always get to pick this lane in a real game, though.
  
• Don't autoattack the creeps in lane.
  
• Practice calling "MIA" if you think the enemy hero has left your lane. You'll hear the bots do this, and this is to let you know that someone might be roaming to gank you.
  
• Carry a Town Portal scroll whenever possible after about 5 minutes into the game. They're extremely useful for helping out teammates in trouble, or saving your towers. Just press F8 to buy one.
  
• Push F9 to Pause if you're ever confused and need to take a second to look at something. Bots won't rage at you for it. F9 again unpauses.
  
• Be very cautious about crossing the river. The other side is your enemies territory, and if you don't have allies to back you up, you're an easy kill.

This guy will be one of your best friends in Dota.
Wards cost 150 gold for two, and give vision in a 1600 radius around it. Most heroes have 1800 vision radius during the day, so this is pretty substantial. They're used to give vision around some of the most important areas of the map. After you buy it, click on the ward in your inventory, and click on where you want to put it. Simple as that.

In a perfect world, the supports would always buy the wards since they don't need as much money as the other heroes. However, in games with other humans, that doesn't always happen. If the support doesn't pick up wards by around 1:30, someone needs to. If you don't ward during that crucial time, it's too easy for the hero in mid to walk away, pick up the rune at 2:00, and walk to bottom or top and kill you, especially if you don't know where they are going, or what rune they picked up.

And trust me, the usefulness of wards never goes down. If the enemy team is doing Roshan, you want to know about it. If 4 people are coming towards your lane and they don't look happy, you want to know about it. If the enemy carry is farming his ass off and you need to kill him, you want to know where he is.

WARDS ARE IMPORTANT.


Here is a map of all the useful places you could put a ward in Dota 2.

If you're looking at this map and thinking "WTF is this ♥♥♥♥?" then don't worry, you're not alone. This is a comprehensive map of every possible place, and is probably worthless to a new player. I'll provide some screenshots of some of the starting places that wards should be placed.

However, when you're ready to digest the full extent of warding and understand this map, here's a link to the article it originally came from. I'd say it's THE definitive guide on warding right now.

The Ultimate Guide to Warding[www.team-dignitas.net]


In your first game, you may have noticed one of the "ward" symbols on the map.


There are 4 locations with this symbol in the game. They are marked with yellow circles on this map:You'll notice that they also correspond with some of the dots on the comprehensive map. These 4 symbols mark good ward spots on the map. If you don't memorize any other ward spot, at least you have these symbols to remind you of them. However, they aren't the best places. In fact, the one symbol that I took a screenshot of shows you a lot of river, which isn't really useful.

So here I'll provide screenshots of 4 more ward locations, and they are marked with the red circles on my simplified map. Obviously, there are many more places to put wards, but these are the locations that I find myself most commonly warding, and have served me very well.

This spot is very good for the Radiant because it gives vision of the top rune, the important parts of the river, and part of the Dire jungle.


This is a great ward spot if you are on the bottom lane as Dire. It gives vision of the bottom rune(I could go pick up that Regeneration rune!), and also lets you know if someone is coming to gank you, because you can't see beyond the line of trees without this ward.


This is a great ward for the Dire if they are worried about a carry farming up the Ancients(see Jungling, an upcoming section). It also gives vision of the top rune.


This ward is good for either side, although gives a little more utility to the Dire. It shows part of the Radiant jungle, if someone is coming from Mid to Bot, and the rune location.

This section will probably be included in an upcoming Intermediate level guide.

Changelog(why the ♥♥♥♥ would I even need this):

Thanks to:

The Dota 2 subreddit. I think they're instrumental in bringing new players into the game and helping them learn the ropes.

And all of my friends who helped out.