NEW PLAYERS

• Watch the 'How to play Dota2 in 4 minutes' video above
  
• Read this
  
• Check out the official guide here
  
• If you have time, watch this.
  

• DotA2 uses Valve's Source engine: global lighting, cloth simulation, and integrated voice chat are part of the game.
  
• AI bots will eventually take over for disconnected players (maybe), and are available to play against in unranked training matches as well.
  
• Some hero skills work slightly better with the replacement of the Warcraft III engine with the Source engine. Examples include Rubik's Spellsteal.
  
• Valve has integrated Steamworks. You can create and submit new items which get voted on and potentially added on a weekly basis.
  
• There are several available matchmaking modes, currently including All Pick (Any Hero), Single Draft (Select between 1 of 3 heroes, 1 per attribute), Captain's Mode (Draft of most heroes, captain makes picks), Random Draft (Pool of 20 heroes, players make picks), All Random (Everyone gets a random hero + bonus gold), Captain's Draft (Like Random Draft with a banning/picking captain), and Least Played (All Pick, but your top 40 most played heroes are unavailable)
  
• A coaching system where veteran players can help out new players. "The coach sees the pupil's screen, and gets private voice and chat channels to communicate with them. The coach probably won't be able to take control of anything directly (once again, the details are currently under discussion)." This system is nearing release
  
• The game is F2P with a cosmetic shop. All heroes are unlocked, you buy cosmetic items:
  

  quote:

  It is important to Dota's competitive design that all players have access to all Heroes and that players can't purchase a competitive advantage. We solve that in a simple way, the game is free, all the Heroes are free, and items are earnable in-game. That means, you'll never have to pay to play and win at Dota.

What's the deal with the store? This poo poo is expensive? What is a chest? I still can't read the op so this section also has TRADING INFO in it?

• DotaCinema's VOD archive. Fantastic, check it out!
  
• Valve's DOTA2 Page and Blog
  
• Playdota, DotA's Official Site
  
• Icefrog's Devblog for DotA
  
• TeamLiquid, which now supports DOTA2!
  
• Gosugamers for the Competitive Scene as well
  
• CyborgMatt's blog, Where he analysis patches to see what wasn't in the patch notes.
  
• DotaHut Solomid.net's Dota 2 guides. Featured guides mostly written by professional players.
  
• Tired of trying to figure out prodota streaming habits? Take it easy with this addon for Firefox or Chrome!
  
• OH MY GOD A DOTA2 IN GAME TRANSLATOR / Mirror. WARNING: Nobody really loving knows, but this tool may get you a 30 day dota ban as of 9/23. Again, this hasn't been confirmed!
  
• STATS WEBSITE RIP 2012-2013
  
• More Detailed Stats Site but it takes time to cache your games and whatnot.
  
• Hero stats in pro games
  

• Go to the Play tab
  
• Find a Lobby
  
• Private Games
  
• Type in the password given into that box and hit search. The password is usually lljk, or lljk2, etc
  

• chat_join lljk - Automatically joins a chat channel when you start dota, in this case, lljk.
  
• con_enable 1 - Adds the console to your game, same as adding -console to the launch options. Press ` (by default) in game to toggle console.
  
• dota_health_per_vertical_marker 200 - Changes how much health each of those bars is; by default it's 200, you might want to change it to 100 if you play League or want more accurate health bars.
  
• dota_minimap_misclick_time 0 - You can up the time on this to set how long your mouse has to be on the minimap to click on it, if you constantly click on the minimap by accident.
  
• dota_force_right_click_attack 0 - Right click deny Change the 0 to a 1 to enable it.
  
• dota_disable_range_finder 1 - Range indicators If you set this to 0, you'll see a small red/green bar from your character to your mouse pointer that makes spell ranges much more visible than looking at the mouse cursor changing alone.
  
• dota_sf_old_heropedia "1" Old hero learn tab thing? I dont know why you'd want it but there.
  

• To remove camera pan acceleration, put the 'camera acceleration' bar all the way to the right. I'd also put the camera speed bar to the right.
  
• Your hotkeys start out silly, move the item hotkeys somewhere off of the numpad (like alt qweasd) and change your level-up skill and stats hotkey to something you can get without moving your hand super far (I use Z and X) Forgot to mention: B for buy! I'd like to set C to center on my hero but it wont let me.
  
• Enable double activate item and enable shop hotkeys in Game (if you want, I plan on learning to buy from the shop)
  
• Turn the render slider all the way to the right!
  

• Go to your steam/steamapps/common/dota 2 beta/dota/itembuilds folder.
  
• Paste "item" "item_tpscroll" in every hero's core item list.
  
• Don't like having Mask of Madness as a core item on Night Stalker? Want an urn instead? Change that stuff all in the file.
  
• There's a dota2alttab item list here.
  
• http://dota2-itemchanger.googlecode.com/files/dota2itemchanger.zip - A program made to do the same thing, but easier. Requires .NET
  How to use the program:
  
  1. Unzip anywhere
     
  2. Run dota2itemchanger.exe, select a hero, and then drag&drop items from the left to the starting/early/... box in the right (the box appears after you select the item type at the top)
     
  3. Click save (you will get warnings if you don't add any items for a category)
     
  4. A new .txt file (for example, default_antimage.txt) will be created in the current directory. You can open it in notepad and check it, maybe make modifications about the item order
     
  5. Create a backup of the default hero itembuild (for example, c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\dota\itembuilds\default_antimage.txt)
     
  6. Copy the file from 4. to the location mentioned at 5.
     
  7. Start the game, create a practice game and check if everything is ok
     

• http://pastebin.com/FxPCueM8 - Adds aliases to search for hon and dota1 item names. Goes into "...\dota 2 beta\dota\scripts\npc", make sure to make a backup. Credit lprsti99
  
• http://pastebin.com/pew7W7A2 - Courier Autofetch script. Goes into autoexec.
  
• AND ON THE THIRD DAY IT WAS REBORN: NBA JAM ACCOUNCER
  
• http://www.dota2layout.com/ - An online layout editor so you can make pretty pictures of dicks jizzing out agi carries and share it with the rest of the world more easily.
  
• http://pastebin.com/EVQKkxgn - If the dota:// links dont work for you, running this (saved as a .reg) will fix it. Make sure you change the M:/ path to the correct drive/path for your dota2 installation
  

Skyl3lazer fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Jul 21, 2014

• A 'complete' guide to dota on the steam workshop that tries to be both very newbie friendly and incredibly in depth
  
• The Dota 2 Alt-Tab Guides are a great resource once you have basics down
  
• Nigma makes some good guides to dota2.
  
• A good perspective on what you're in for, from Eurogamer.
  
• This guide gives a lot of good tips for brand new players
  
• There's a good in-detail guide on how the game works here on teamliquid. This is mainly for people who are just spectating the game.
  
• Dotacommentaries also has some decently casted games.
  
• The guides on PlayDotA are still relevant for DotA2. These Three Links are a comparison guide for icons from dota1-2 so you can identify what's what. These images are linked because they are huge.
  
• If you use playdota for the guides, this greasemonkey script will automagically convert the images for you!
  
• A super long Three Hour Tour Of Dota For The Uninitiated. Watch this if you have free time and know nothing.
  
• What the gently caress is this animation cancelling poo poo i dont even know
  
• Invoker training!
  
• This is a very very in depth look at skill mechanics. Some of it may be outdated for dota2, or changes to skills since 2009.
  
• A Map that details all/most of the possible pull locations, times, and methods.
  
• A Jungling Guide that I wrote for TMC.
  

• Where did all my mana just go?
  You spent it all on that one ability! Generally mana pools start out much smaller and abilities are much more expensive. Some Heroes can't even cast a spell more than once off a full bar at level 1. Don't expect to be aggressive from level 1 in the same way you can in LoL. You will eat through your mana potions and sit there vulnerable.
  
• What are all these stats? How do I build Bloodthirster?
  Itemization in DotA is very different than LoL. All Heroes have three stats, Str, Agi, Int. Str increases health and health regen. Agi increases armor and attack speed. Int increases mana and mana regen. Each hero has one stat as their primary, increasing that stat increases your attack damage. Itemization is pretty confusing but you can still build +damage and +attack speed.
  
• That's cool, but where's my AP, how do abilities hit harder?
  As a general rule, ability damage only scales with rank, unless it explicitly scales off something else. Some items and abilities reduce magic resist, which effectively increases damage, but it's impractical to explicitly stack these.
  
• Where are the bushes? How did that guy disappear up some stairs?
  Dota has no tall grass, it does have elevation. You can't see up onto higher ground so try to always ward higher ground as it gives more visibility.
  
• Hey, where did my gold go!?
  You dropped some of it when you died. You can never lose gold from killing other Heroes. Other gold is "unreliable."
  
• What's this courier thing?
  You don't have to go back to the fountain to buy. You can buy from anywhere! However, you can't retrieve the items you bought until you go back to the fountain and pick them up, or have the courier deliver them to you.
  
• How do I b?
  You have to buy teleport scrolls. You can teleport with them to any friendly tower or your fountain. It's a quick cast and isn't interrupted by damage so you can use it as an escape against anyone without an interrupt.
  
• This store is confusing!
  Yeah, pretty much. In addition to the stat stuff, nearly every higher end item has an on use effect or passive or both. Make sure you read up on items and make sure to use their abilites! Also each side has a "Secret Shop" in the jungle you have to go to for certain items.
  
• Some other notes:
  Last hitting during early game is comparatively difficult to LoL since you do a very small amount of damage to creeps.
  Press A then click to last hit your own creeps for denials.
  Top and Bottom are not symmetrical.
  The jungle is huge and confusing as poo poo I'm still working this out also stuff hits hard.
  Alt is ping, Y is a chatwheel.
  There are gems in the river that do things! Just ping them for your team since you don't know what you're doing.
  Places on the map with eyeball graffiti are good places for wards.
  There's like 900x more CC abilities in this than LoL, watch your positioning.
  

• If you played HoN during it's beta, it won't be all that different for you. If not, read on!
  
• Turn rates are drastically slower in dota than in HoN. This is at the top because the first thing you'll think upon playing your first DotA2 game is 'why is it lagging'. It isn't lag, heroes in this game have slower turn rates, and in some cases slower cast times (think pre buff Jereziah or Torturer)
  
• There is a secret shop where HoN has observatories, as well as side shops. Some items are only available at these shops, and cannot be bought in base.
  
• Many heroes that HoN has that came from DotA have been reworked in HoN or DotA since they were transferred. Important examples include Rampage/Spiritbreaker, and Keeper/Treant
  

• heh
  

Skyl3lazer fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Mar 16, 2014

• Do NOT import any external drama into this thread. IRC drama especially is generally an instaprobo or ban
  
• Nobody cares what you think of another dota-esque game
  
• Don't gimmickpost about how good you are or whatever
  
• If you disagree with someone, that's fine, but explain why you disagree
  
• Try not be be stupidly insulting to your fellow posters
  
• No callouts
  
• If you post your stats you better loving have some content too. MS Paints of the game are also acceptable.
  
• No racist/homophobic/whatever posts. There are people from all over the world playing, and we are all just as bad as each other.
  
• NO COMPLAINS ABOUT THE CHATMUTE SYSTEM. YOU PROBABLY DESERVED IT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.
  
• Don't circlejerk. This isn't a war zone, it's a thread.
  
• I guess don't post your stream link a lot
  

Skyl3lazer fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jul 9, 2014

Enigma89 fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Mar 14, 2014

Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Mar 14, 2014