Andy Forsberg's Blog

1. The well replenishes your health and mana when you’re near it.
2. All the really good items are in the woods.
3. In order to make the best weapons you have to buy items that fulfill certain recipes.
4. Orb effects do not stack. That is, if any of your hero’s abilities say “orb effect” then you should not buy any items with orb effects or they will interfere with one another. For the same reason you should never buy more than one item with “orb effects”.
5. Avoid feeding or letting your hero die as much as possible.
6. Begin using strength heroes to get a feel for the game, then move to agility, and then to intelligence heroes once you really start to understand things.
7. Boots are always necessary fairly early in the game. Power treads are always a good call. The other types of advanced boot variations are not always practical.
8. In the beginning of the game melee heroes need to stay back a safe distance so they don’t lose so much health they have to run back, but they have to remain close enough to creep battle to get experience as well.
9. Know that the river contains runes in two places that appear randomly and are free. These runes include abilities like: double damage, invisibility, illusion, haste and regeneration.
10. It is important to deny opponents. You can deny creep kills, tower kills, and hero kills. Deny creeps by killing your own creeps when they’re about to die by attacking them with your hero, simultaneously try to prevent your opponents from doing the same to you. Deny towers in the same way. A good way to deny hero kills is either by using an ability to damage yourself to death if your hero has the option and you know you will be killed otherwise, or run into neutral creeps for the same reason.
11. There is a giant creep in the middle right side of the map named Roshan. Killing this creep is difficult, but when done results in more gold for your team and Roshan drops the item Aegis of Immortal. This item when carried will bring you back to life after you die in the same spot you died, as though you didn’t actually die in the first place.
12. Be careful whenever your by yourself and the entire opposing team is MIA or not shown anywhere on the mini map, they may be planning on ganking you or attacking you as a team. Make sure to warn teammates when the opponents in your lane are MIA so they are aware of the potential danger.
13. There are two building at both ends of each lane known as “rax” or “barracks” — destroying both of these buildings will make your creeps in that lanes more tough and give you a major advantage in the game.
14. Make sure to get the final blow on as many creeps, towers, and heroes as possible so that you retain the gold from the kill. When killing hereos, make sure to stay near them when they die so you get the experience from their death.
15. Whenever there is a new version go to http://www.getdota.com to download it, don’t try and download it from people who are hosting games. If you need training you might want to start off by playing computers, you can get AI versions of DotA from http://www.getdota.com as well.
16. Don’t leave a game until it’s officially done. It’s just not cool and there’s far too many people doing it these days ruining the game for everyone.
17. There are a ton of different game modes, start training in the -apem mode so you can choose your own hero and not get killed by towers easily. Look for games with n00b in the title, because this game has an insane learning curve.
18. Respect IceFrog, he is responsible for making the game as amazing as it is.

Andy Uncategorized