The goal of the game is to deal more damage to boss Kyuubi (pictured) than the enemy team.

the team that last hits Kyuubi doesn't matter, only the team that does more damage.
Kyuubi spawns after 10 'Oz' bosses have been killed (pictured)
Note: this game is farm heavy, generally if you don't have the most farmed hero you will lose, support heroes are strong but ultimately are in service of the super farmed hero who will carry you when Kyuubi spawns. That means the team that wins this game is more often than not the team who farms the most efficiently, everything else is generally in service to this goal: Item builds, map control, farm location, curses, boss items. When you understand everything you do should revolve around this concept, you will undoubtedly have more success in this game.
Every 4 minutes there is a 'duel' which pulls every living hero into the duel arena, kills on enemy heroes in duels grant an extra medal and some bonus gold.

Don't be that guy that walks out of his spawn at the start of the game, teleporters are free, they are your friend, and generally they look like this picture.

Some teleporters have level requirements, more information on teleporters can be viewed in the map details section.

A brief overview of everything of note on the map, I know it's a mess but it can't be helped, you should at least be able to tell where the teleporters go and establish some terms for locations that will come up later. Note that some teleporters are one-way, some are two-way. This is something you'll just have to observe as you play as this guide is already going to be more than bloated enough.

Before we get into any gritty details, with just these core concepts and terms established we can set some ground rules for generally what your approach for every game should be (as a carry, we don't cover supporting in this guide as it is very easy and pretty much boils down to 'annoy their best player and pray')
First of all, creep priority. The gold/exp bounty of creeps in order of least to most: Outer arena creeps < middle arena creeps < Ancients (above and below middle) < Golems (golem area) < Servants (curse area) < Skeletons (Maximillian area). Note that siege golems in the rapier area give the most gold (a little bit more than skeletons) but no exp and are inefficient to farm until you get very strong.
Below is a flow chart that should tell you generally what you should be doing at each stage of the early midgame (this is where most games are decided). Note that I use 'stage' in a loose sense since how fast the game progresses is completely dependent on the actions of the players, you can beat this game in 12 minutes (and we have).

This section will go over only the most important items that should be in high consideration every game you play, in order of importance.


Corrupted desolator if you're trying to be the main carry of the game you pretty much always want this item. Minus armour and crit = more lifesteal which means you can farm skeletons efficiently with this.

Ultima sword Best crit in the game, high damage aura, free ♥♥♥♥ ton of HP. Very expensive item but ultimately probably the most slot efficient of any item in the game that doesn't require boss kills. Buy it if you right click at all.

Kaya, Yasha and Sange This item is crazy efficient and does a lot for every type of hero there is, but it does have a drawback in that it delays your tempo items such as corrupted deso significantly. I recommend buying this if you're 'off carry' and letting someone else take the bulk of the farm and buy the boss items. You should also buy this on every caster pretty much no matter what since there isnt any other direct spell amp items in this game.

Neutral bow This item is a good choice to buy if you're playing a strength carry that demands some investment into attack speed to farm efficiently, such as Mihawk or Kiss-shot. In this case you can follow up with brigands blade instead of corrupted desolator as your minus armour item, since you already have a crit. The active on this item also kills the shard illusions by itself which is convenient.

Baleful Buckler This item makes you completely debuff immune for its duration while providing you with hugely important stats such as status resist and lifesteal. This item it the quintessential item for shutting down annoying ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ such as mass cc lineups.

Sura's horn This item burns a percentage of mana and deals pure damage mana voids on proc, has applications vs both high int heroes since it does a lot of damage, and mana starved heroes like kaido (it has a flat burn component as well). Vs non-int heroes this item will fall off vs good players who will buy HP tomes to boost their hp far beyond their mana pools.

Stoppu watch This is the cooldown reduction item. I could stop there but the active is also relevant, you can use it to dodge spells, save your allies, and even dodge hex at the beginning of duels.

Doom Gives a lot of stats, short invulnerability on active and hp damage on attack, can be used similar to stoppu watch but with stats much better on a carry hero. You probably dont want to go beyond doom 3/4 until your items are maxed.

Rite of passage buy this, read the instructions on the item and use it to get aghanim's shard. Note that there is no guarantee of success.

Each level of Oz spawns 1 minute after the previous level dies, they don't have any complicated mechanics, generally each level of oz has 1 passive and 1 neutral item drop. These can be seen in the below image in ascending order (Oz 1 -> Oz 10)

Blessings and curses can be obtained once every 3 minutes by stepping into the middle of the curse area (pictured).

Stepping into the circle again will grant a new curse and a new blessing and remove the old ones. Note that once you have a curse and a blessing there is no way to completely remove them, only reroll them.
Generally, there are more game losing curses than game winning blessings so it will take you multiple rolls to get something beneficial, some curses will make the game borderline unplayable so understand the risk before you step into the circle.

Corrupted items.
Corrupted items are created when stepping into the curse circle with 3 essences and a holy item. If you want to prevent this from happening accidentally you can lock combining on those holy items.
Below is an example of a corrupted item recipe.

Here I'll bullet point some gameplay tips that I couldn't find another place for

• Brewmasters in the top left and top right of the arena count as hero kills, they drop money and grant a medal on death.
  
• You can spend your medals in the medal shop at the top of the golem area, essences are spent in the essence shops in the top of each spawn.
  
• When using the essence shop, you need all the components to be in your inventory and not your backpack.
  
• Ancients will tend to stack 4 or 5 times before anyone kills them, clear them before the other team to get a huge boost of gold.
  
• There is a fountain in the middle of the arena that grants a small amount of health and mana regen.
  
• Orb of frost is dropped from the forgotten one, who can only be accessed by killing max and taking the teleporter behind him.
  
• You can't kill the dark king and if you found a way there is no benefit to doing so beyond disabling the curse circle.
  
• When using rite of passage, only the Zaraki illusion drops the shard, you don't get any gold or exp for killing the other illusions so once you have the shard feel free to just leave.
  
• Acid bottle makes killing early oz levels much easier
  
• A list of console commands can be found on the discord and in the game description.
  
• If you get stuck try -forcekill, if an item like rapier bugs out and is owned by another player type -co to make you the owner of all items in your inventory. You can also pool items with this.