Welcome fellow player, to the exciting world of Dota 2. This guide aims to help you taking your first steps while avoiding some of the confusion that may surround the game.

Please note that this guide is targeted at players that have never played a DOTA game (and Awesomenauts, while excellent, doesn’t count). If you’ve previously played League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth or other such game, most of the information presented here will not be as useful to you.

The guide will mainly focus on getting around as a new player and will avoid many strategic issues and core gameplay mechanics.

The Goal of the Game

Simply put, the goal of the game is to destroy the other team’s main building, called an Ancient.

In order to do that, you must first destroy all of the enemy towers. The towers start around the Ancient and then spread out to 3 lanes. At the course of the game, your team will push to destroy each tier of towers and then move to the enemy base in order to win the game.

While those are the overall goals of the game, your priorities as a player should be as follows:

1. Not die.
2. Gain gold and XP by killing creeps in lanes.
3. Supporting other players when possible.

Choosing Your Hero

At the beginning of a match you’ll be presented with several different heroes to choose from. Heroes are divided based on their primary attribute, their role and their attack type (which isn’t really noticeable on the hero selection screen).

As a new player, you should pick your hero based on the following priorities:

1. Range over melee. Melee heroes are generally harder to play. This will limit your choice of attributes, as beside two exceptions, all strength based heroes are melee.
2. Do not pick a hero with the Carry role.
3. Prioritize heroes with Support, Lane Support and Durable roles.

The image to the right illustrates the hero cards in-game. The top right symbol is the main attribute icon – red for strength, green for agility and blue for intelligence. The icons below it are the role icons – hover your mouse cursor on them to read their description. Directly below the hero’s image is their list of skills.

Note that you have a limited time at the beginning of a match to choose your hero. Your best bet is choosing a hero at random, via the button to the left of the hero selection screen. If the random hero presented to you fits the guidelines above, go for it.

Try playing a different hero each match in order to learn as much as possible during play.

Choosing Abilities

There isn’t a generic advice for choosing your skills, as all the heroes are very different from one another. However, try prioritizing your skills based on the following guidelines.

Most importantly: read your skill description!

1. At 1^st level, get a direct damage skill, or as close to it as available to your hero.
2. At 2^nd level, get a passive skill. If you don’t have a passive, get a straight healing or support skill.
3. Alternate between the two until level 6. At that point, get your ultimate (the last skill on your bar).
4. After that, every 3-4 levels spend a skill point to raise your stats (by clicking the “level up” button and then the stat area).

Buying Gear

Your hero will spawn at your base’s fountain. Right by it is your team’s standard shop. Press the golden “shop” button to your right (or press B) to open it. The basic rule is, go with the items suggested by the game. Right at the beginning of the match you should buy all items under “starting items”, by right-clicking on them.

As you gain gold over the course of the game you’ll be buying additional items from the shop. Returning to it in middle of a fight isn’t a good idea, so try to wait for a pause in the action (or buy items when you re-spawn after death. hopefully, this won’t happen too much). As a (very) rough guideline, return to the shop first at 1000 gold, 2000 and 4000.

Basic items can be bought as-is from the shop, but more advance items require a combination of other items before they can be acquired. If you have the cash, simply right-clicking on the item will automatically buy all the required components and assemble the item.

However, if you don’t have the cash for it, don’t wander around with your basic items for too long. Left-click on the advance item to see its components and start buying them individually, by right-clicking each on its turn.

Some items require components from the Secret Shops. When you try buying such an item, the game will ping the secret shop’s location on your mini-map. In addition, all shop locations are marked on the game map below – the secret shops are the ones in the middle on the jungle.

Lane Conduct and General Advice

Each team has three lanes – top, middle and bottom. The longest lane of the three (top for Dire, bottom for Radiant) is considered the “safe” lane, while the shortest is the “hard” lane. Try and stick to the safe lane for the beginning of each match, until you get more confidence.

Never go alone. The middle lane will normally be played by a solo hero while the top and bottom will each have a pair. As a new player which plays support, you should always stick to a teammate.

Unless it’s a team fight (i.e. 5 on 5), never fight without friendly creeps around. They will absorb some of the damage directed at you, block enemy’s path and even try to fight other heroes in order to protect you.

Until all of the tier 1 enemy towers have been destroyed, do not go beyond your natural line-of-site, which is marked by the river at the middle of the map. If you find yourself in the middle lane, do not cross the river to the enemy’s high ground; go back to your side of the river.

That is it for now. I didn’t go into the core mechanics of the game (such as “last hitting”, if you hear someone mention it) as most new players will be overwhelmed as it is.

The most important thing is to try and enjoy the game. Don’t worry so much if you’re playing well or not, as long as you’re trying and having fun. I’ve played this game for 16 hours so far, with 17 matches, only 6 of which ended in my team winning – and I had a hell of a time doing it!

I’d very much like to hear in the comments from any of you how have found this guide useful, and from those that wish to contribute additional advice.