• Honestly, I'm surprised that I held out this long. Between Giant Bomb and Idle Thumbs, I've been bombarded with Dota 2 almost constantly. I thought watching Brad Shoemaker's Daily Dota would be enough. Then, the Thumbs crew launched a new Dota Today podcast. It was too much. I had finally gone over the edge.

• Last night, I tweeted this: @bradshoemaker Damn you!

• To be honest, this isn't the first time I tried Dota 2. Back during the test, I downloaded the client, loaded up a bot match (to be fair to any other players), played for five minutes, turned it off, and clicked "Delete Local Content." Honestly, my Steam account said that I had five minutes played when I reinstalled it last night. I had been so used to League of Legends and so in the dark about Dota that I just bounced off of it.

• So with a little more knowledge this time, I tried again. I played another bot match set on Easy because I didn't want to weigh down anyone else. I played as Lina, having seen Brad play her. I knew enough from the streams to pick a build and buy my starter items. I went to the top lane to try and support my bot buddy. Then I died several times before the bots finally carried us to victory. I got in a few kills and explored the map a bit, but I've got a long way to go. Here are a few questions that I have about the game:

• • How do I deny? I tried various button combinations, but I counted attack my own creeps to save my life.

• • Why the hell are there recipes? Really, from a design standpoint, what purpose do they serve?

• • I really need to figure out how to use the stash and courier. Any advice?

• • If I'm going to rebind the item hotkeys, where is the suggested place to move them?

• • Any other advice for a newbie?

• I know that I'm going to try again. I enjoyed LoL for a time, and I'm enjoying myself in Dota. I just hope that I don't descend into the madness into which so many others have fallen. Wish me luck.

© 2013 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.

You should give this video I did a watch, it pretty much will answer most of your questions. (It's in another thread, but I'll link it anyways). It will go over deny, courier, hot keys, and stash. It's the first of a series I am creating directed at brand new players.

http://youtu.be/Q0P4_PxzkoM

To deny you hit A then left click your creep, it has to be below 50% to attack it. As far as recipes go, I guess the idea behind it is you want the big items to be an expensive purchase, but the smaller items that go into it to still be attainable for a lower cost. So adding recipes, that give you nothing other than the ability to create that bigger item, solves that. I'm sure there are other reasons I am not thinking of.

My best advice to give you is fuck the bots. Play a few games with them maybe, but it really isn't even the same game. Yeah you are going to suck, but hopefully so will everyone else you start off with. Playing vs humans you will learn so much faster. If someone is going to be a douche just mute them. And to be honest I jumped in to real games cold, knowing nothing about mobas and my learning experience wasn't really that bad as far as the community goes. Unfortunately many people don't say the same.

There is also a giantbomb group that you can play with or learn from that won't be dicks to you. I think there is a thread somewhere or you can just join GiantBomb on the chat system and there are always people starting up games. Good Luck!

Deny by "attack moving" onto a creep (hit the A key and then give 'em the clicks). If you've played an RTS you understand what I mean.

There are recipes so that you can pad out the cost of expensive, high level items without making the other smaller components more expensive. League of Legends has recipe costs as well, just they are a hidden cost that you must pay when you are about to complete an item. The removal of recipes as a tangible item is because, in League of Legends, they serve no purpose. In Dota, however, they serve a purpose.

In Dota, you lose gold when you die. Particularly, you lose a portion of Unreliable gold, which is any gold you get that is NOT from hero kills, Roshan, and global tower destruction gold. Therefore, the idea of buildup is important in an item's balance (even moreso than League of Legends). So for example, a Black King Bar has three components; a +10 strength Ogre Club for 1,000 gold, a +24 damage Mythril Hammer for 1,600 gold, and a Black King Bar recipe for 1,300 gold. Normally, you have absolutely no reason to buy the recipe, since it practically wastes space and money because it does nothing for you. However, if you are having trouble safely gaining 1,600 gold, then you can dump some of your Unreliable gold onto the recipe so that you can at least be making progress towards the BKB. This is also important in item designs like Blink Dagger, which have large gold costs (2,150 gold) but have absolutely no item buildup. It is one of the very small mechanics Dota has that actually adds a lot of nuance and depth to the game without adding much complexity.

Using the chicken and the stash, just make comfortable hotkeys and learn how to use them. I assigned the courier's hotkeys like they are in HoN and made my courier hotkey tilde (~) so that I can do it all in an instant.

Item hotkeys I did the same thing; changed them to how they are in HoN: QWEASD with the Alt+ modifier on each of them (so top-left item is Alt+Q, top middle is Alt+W, etc. etc.).

The only other advice I can give you is join the Giant Bomb chatroom in-game and play games with us. We're cool dudes and I am sure plenty of people (including myself) are willing to teach you!

EDIT: I didn't know right from left.

Thanks for the help everyone. Coming from LoL has put me at a weird disadvantage since I have to overcome a few expectations. I'll see if I'm brave enough to join the group.

@anjinm: Heh, you realise recipes are in league as well? It's just called "combine cost" and is slightly less obvious, but fills a similar purpose. It's also useful to be able to change the cost of a recipe/combine to balance the item without potentially breaking another item.

@tobbrobb: Yeah, I didn't figure out LoL treats upgraded items like any other purchase while Dota is a combine. Makes a lot of sense once I got my head around it.