Step 1: The Principles of DotA2

What is the objective?

In DotA2, despite what it may seem, you only have ONE goal - to kill the opposing sides ancient.

Radiant Ancient

Dire Ancient

Let's assume you've barely, if ever, have played DotA2. In each game you get a hero that is unique. You and four other players will battle against the other team of five to destroy their ancient. No matter how many kills either team has, no matter how many towers or advantage if your ancient falls you LOSE. Let's keep this in mind as we look at ways to win our DotA2 matches.

How can we reach our goal?

Ok, so we now know the majority of the basics of DotA2, so now I suggest you check out my beginner video at: http://www.twitch.tv/garyoakirl/b/366158355

If you've played a few games and have a decent feel of the game, feel free to skip that VOD and move on.

This is the map of DotA2, with lines drawn on it to declare the "territories" owned by each side. One thing you might notice off the bat is that the DotA2 map is asymmetrical. Next you might notice the river, dividing both sides. Ultimately your eyes will arrive at the "lanes", the 3 treeless paths to the enemies base. They are easy to remember, from top to bottom you have top lane, middle lane and finally bottom lane, regardless of what side. Eventually you will learn the strengths and weaknesses of each one, but for now let's just get the names down!

This is the arena in which blood will be spilled in Defense of the Ancients!!!

These are towers!

In each lane there are 3 tiers of towers, each increasing in strength. These stand as outposts early in the game and are deadly to fight until you've gained strength. You MUST completely destroy all towers in at least 1 lane to access the Ancients towers and ultimately, the Ancient itself!

Position of the Towers and Creep movement

"Wait what? I get that the circles represent towers, but what the heck is a creep!?" Glad you asked my friend, a creep is a unit that is spawned every 30 seconds by your ancient. They look like this!

The green ones are Radiant, the red are Dire. Killing a creep nets 38-53 gold depending on which creep and how lucky you are! We'll go more into last hitting at a later date. The last very important basic idea you must know about are the Barracks.

These are the barracks, killing either one of them grants significantly stronger creeps of that type in that lane for the rest of the game. Killing these will be your primary goal to destroy the Ancient.