Dota 2 for Beginners – Beginner’s Guide to the MOBA Hit

Dota 2 is a phenomenon! As successful as the title is, entering the MOBA world is just as tricky. Our guide will remedy the situation. Dota 2 is as entertaining as the Dragonslots USA. 

First of all, Dota 2 is an extremely comprehensive game with over 100 different heroes and is anything but easy. So if you are not willing to invest a certain amount of time in the game, you will not enjoy it as much. The game brings the most fun along with a group of friends. However, many beginners start with the public games or with games against bots. In the following, we therefore give tips intended for the public games.

What makes a MOBA

Like all games in the MOBA genre, Dota 2 is about reducing the enemy’s base to rubble. Two teams of five heroes each compete against each other. There are also two factions: the Dire and the Radiant. However, apart from the appearance of the buildings, the two factions do not influence the gameplay, even though the heroes are divided between the two factions. So if you fight for Dire, it’s still easy to play a Radiant hero and vice versa. The playing field of Dota 2 is separated by a river into two halves, the somewhat gloomy one of the Dire and the brighter one of the Radiant. In addition, there are three so-called lanes on the field, i.e., attack lines that are defended by towers of the respective team. Your primary goal is to take out many of these towers and then destroy the enemy’s main building, the Ancient.

In addition to the Ancients, there are six barracks each in the main bases of the Dire and the Radiant, which send automatically operating units, so-called Creeps, to the Lanes at certain intervals. These creeps each meet the opposing team’s creeps halfway through their path and then engage in a skirmish with them. Each of the ten players chooses one of the numerous heroes and then tries to collect a lot of gold by eliminating creeps and enemy heroes. The gold can then be used to buy items that make the hero stronger. The more enemies a hero takes out, the more experience they gain. This experience increases the level to a maximum of 25. You’ll find the most fun in Dota 2 in team battles, where the exact use of each hero’s four skills is crucial.

Once you are in the main menu of Dota 2, you simply click on the Play button, and then you can choose whether you want to jump into battle against real players or whether you want to compete against bots. We highly recommend playing against bots first, because if you’ve never played Dota 2 before, it will take a while to familiarize yourself with what’s going on because of its complexity. On average, a game lasts between 30 and 60 minutes, so allow some time before you start the fight. Before you start, you can also set the hero selection modes you would like to take. An explanation of each mode can be found in the corresponding box. Now you are faced with the decision of whether you want to play alone with nine bots first or compete with four other players against a team of bots. For the very first game, we recommend simply playing using only difficulty bots. Afterwards, you should also fight with real players, because you can learn a lot from them and get to know the process.

Hero selection modes

1. All Pick: Let your hero choose from all available heroes. You can also let the computer randomly decide which hero to play, which will result in you receiving 250 bonus gold.

2. All Random: Forces all players to choose a random hero. Also, all players will receive 250 bonus gold. If you are not satisfied with your hero, you can have another random hero assigned to you, but then you will also lose the 250 bonus gold plus another 100 gold.

3. Single Draft: You now only have one hero from each category (Strength, Intelligence, and Agility) to choose from.

4. Random Draft: The system selects 20 random heroes and then has all ten players choose one hero in turn. If you have decided, you cannot undo this.

5. Captains Mode: This game mode is used by professional Dota 2 players. A team captain is chosen, who then selects heroes for his team and bans heroes he does not want the opposing team to have available.

6. Least Played: Only provide the heroes you’ve barely played with. It’s well-suited for beginners, as your opponents usually can’t handle their heroes perfectly, and you have all the heroes to choose from.