Defense of the Ancients – farming, creeping, and laning 101

Our Dota 2 starter pack aims to ease you into the (now decades-old) world of the OG MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena). If you are a new player, you probably have no idea that Dota2 was initially developed as a custom map for Warcraft III. Many games, including League of Legends, Realm of the Titans, and Heroes of Newerth, followed Dota in creating the MOBA genre. If you think about joining the online sensation that has drawn in millions of players, worldwide, read on.

DOTA2 is a 5v5 team-based MOBA where the basic goal is to destroy the opponent’s Ancient. The initial draw of any MOBA is the sheer volume of heroes you can choose from. There’s so much variety that you will be easily lost.

Luckily, the game highlights each hero’s role, strengths, and weaknesses but it is up to you and your team to figure out the best combinations. Each hero can be equipped with items that further boost the hero’s role in the early, mid, and late game.

Basic objectives and goals

As we mentioned in the beginning, destroying the opponent base is the game’s objective in Dota 2. Three lanes make up the map, with The Jungle separating them. These lanes are filled with computer-controlled NPC’s called creeps. These creeps are at war with each other and are constantly spawning from opposite ends of the map, fighting each other. There are 3rd party creeps that are part of the Jungle, tougher to beat, and offering bigger rewards. 

As part of the team, your job is to pick a hero. There are over 120 to choose from and each has pros and cons. The most important thing is to find one to suit your play style and to fill in a role for the team.

Once you pick your hero, you select a lane to enter. In this lane, you can do simple actions to win your lane and gain an advantage in the late game. Typically, one hero enters the middle lane, two enter the bottom lane, and two enter the top lane. This is of course, up to the team and who you play with. \

Eventually, if you are successful at killing the enemy team, you will drive a creep wave to the enemy’s base. You need to destroy their creep-spawning buildings, causing you to spawn super creeps. You do this by killing creeps, scoring kills, and taking the enemy’s towers.

Dota 2 has introduced a unique system called “denial”. This enables you to kill ally heroes, friendly minions, and towers to prevent your enemy from gaining the monetary reward of taking out that unit or structure. The game depends heavily on farming and denying. You can take down the enemy’s throne once one or more of the enemy creep-spawning structures, also known as raxes, have been destroyed, giving your team victory.

Progression and factors for winning

There are several factors, as was already discussed, that when combined help you win the game. Farming creeps, denying creeps, taking down opposing towers, and eliminating enemy heroes are some of these things.

In Dota 2, the laning phase is the most crucial time for farming creeps. The act of farming them involves dealing the deciding blow to an enemy creep, earning you additional money to spend. Pushing a lane is something that must always be avoided. In essence, avoid passively engaging an opponent creep! The majority of the time, it will just be refused, and your lane will then be pushed to the opposing tower, leaving you open to a gank by a member of the opposing team. A gold advantage will result from having a good farm later on in the game. A game will almost always be won by having an item advantage, and a gold advantage is an item advantage.

Yes, you should strive to last-hit your opponents’ creeps to steal their gold while in the lane, but you should also watch out for your allies’ creeps who are nearing the end of their HP and attack them. This is again the concept of denial. It can be used for a tower as well. This reduces an enemy’s gold, which is sometimes sufficient to win a lane. It is equally crucial to farming the adversary minions. While practice is necessary, you can master anything with enough focus.

Additionally, you should avoid bothering people during this period. It is basically the enemy hitting you a few times to reduce your HP and try to force you out of the lane. Try to harass others back, or try to avoid being harassed. Still, farming and denial are the main priorities.

Taking down the enemy towers

Most of the time, winning your lane will result from destroying the enemy tower. It is now time to push and destroy the tower if all of your opponents in your lane are either dead or gone. Keep the river warded so that if the enemies go missing as you push their tower, you can prevent them from ganking you. Call MIA (Missing In Action) out of consideration for your team.

Assassinating Enemy Heroes

In the early game, killing heroes is not your main objective. This isn’t the Grand Championship so don’t focus on griefing enemy players 🙂

Your objective is farming, as was previously indicated. A safer and more reliable way to earn gold is through farming, which removes the uncertainty of whether you’ll kill the adversary or they’ll kill you. You should be aware that when you kill an adversary in DotA, they also lose gold. Of course, it also applies to you.

However, you can harass the enemy while farming, and if they start to lose health, you can work with an ally to take them out or, if you’re strong enough, you can take them out yourself. But in the middle to end of the game, ganks increase and team battles begin. At this point, you should still be cautious in your lanes and farm whenever the team is not in action, but scoring kills will actually help your team and weaken the opposition. The team will gradually become more focused on the middle lane and jungle. Winning lanes and the farm your team has amassed are directly related to winning these team fights.

Thank you for sticking out till the end of our first official Dota 2 starter pack! We have a lot more useful tips and tricks ready to share with our community. Dota 2 is a huge game and its META is constantly evolving. That is why we’d like to invite you to come back every once in a while. We’ll have something new to share!