Dota Underlords Beginner’s Tips Guide – Learn How-to Get Better!

Our Dota Underlords Beginner's Tips Guide features some early knowledge about the game that should help you get a head-start when jumping into your early career of Valve's stand-alone Auto Chess! The game appears a bit complicated at first, but there's some early tips and tricks you'll want to know that should you in the beginning.

Dota Underlords Beginner's Tips & Tricks

Here are some tips that will hopefully help you early on when learning the ropes of Dota Underlords!

Look for Synergy within Alliances

Synergy is the name of the game! You want to make sure you are combining units together that have similar synergies to gain buffs. Each Alliance requires a certain amount of Heroes on the board to give you a buff. You will get a buff from each vertical bar you fill for that particular Alliance. You'll notice the image above, the first Alliance requires two Heroes to gain a buff, second requires two as well, but the third requires three and also has three total buffs for the Alliance.

Try to strategize around purchasing Heroes that will help contribute to these potential buffs. Keep in mind that only unique Heroes will contribute to the Alliance buff count. So, if you have two of the same Hero on the board, you won't gain an additional bubble towards completing the buff.

Upgrading Heroes

Upgrading your Heroes is a pretty important step to getting in more damage and survivability. To upgrade a Hero, you will need three of that Hero of the same level. Heroes start at 1-star and can be upgraded to 2 and 3-star. You will need three 1-star of the same Hero to go to 2-stars, and three 2-star Heroes to go to 3-star. Upgraded Heroes get more health, mana, damage, and all the other stats. Their special ability is also upgraded when you gain a star.

What this really means is that you want to purchase heroes in the hopes that you will be able to upgrade them in the future. You might hold onto a 1-star Hero you have already out on the board on your bench for a while just to wait and upgrade. These upgrades are pretty significant, especially early on in the game. If you can get a couple of two star Heroes out on the board, you can do very well early on in the rounds.

Gain Interest on Your Money

This is kind of an interesting mechanic in Auto Chess and now in Dota Underlords. If you have more than 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50+ gold, you will get 10% interest if you start the combat round with it. This is pretty important because getting that extra gold can give you a long-term advantage as you head into future rounds.

You'll notice I mentioned at the start of the combat round. If you want to purchase something in the shop, but don't plan on using it this round, you can wait until after the combat starts and then make your purchases. The amount of money you had locks in for the round once combat starts, so you will get the interest for that total and not the amount you end the combat round with! The basic strategy then, is to try and start each combat round above the threshold to receive that tier of interest.

You will only get additional interest until you hit 50 gold. After that, it's the same 5 gold per round you are above 50. That means you can spend your gold pretty freely as long as you maintain a total above 50 to gain the max interest possible.

Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks

If you can win three rounds in a row, you will be given one extra gold up until five wins in a row. If you win six rounds in a row, you will then be give two extra gold up until the eighty round. If you can win nine or more rounds in a row, you will get three additional gold per round.

Believe it or not, this also works in reverse! If you lose games in the same amounts of those win-streaks, you will gain gold! This can sometimes be a strategy, while it's not great to lose, it's good to get a lot of gold. If you do lose a few times, at least you are gaining more currency. The key to losing as a strategy, is to lose in very close rounds. You lose one health for the loss, and you lose health based on the star ranks of the Heroes that survive from your opponent. So, if your opponent has two Heroes that are two stars each left at the end of the round, you will lose five health points (2-star + 2-star + 1 = 5).

Rounds & Items

You start the game off fighting against creeps for three founds. After each of these rounds, you'll get your choice of an item. After that, you will fight creeps again at round 10, and then every five rounds after that. If you lose against the creeps, you won't be given an item choice but you will receive an item randomly!

Try to select items that work with your Heroes and will potentially synergize with your plan in the future. Melee Heroes benefit from melee buffs, Heroes that use abilities will benefit from mana buffs, and there's even global items that will buff certain Alliances!

Don't Roll Early in the Game

Rolling early in the game isn't a great usage of money. If you aren't sure what rolling is, it means when you pay 2 gold to see new Heroes in the shop. This is used more in the mid-to-late game as a way to start upgrading your Heroes. You'll want to stockpile a bit of gold so you can start gaining interest, and then have gold to really hone in on the Heroes you need later in the game.

Early Basic Strategy

A pretty typical early strategy is to just grab some warrior Heroes like Axe, Tusk, and Tiny. They are higher health Heroes that can take more of a beating. After that, you can look to upgrade these, or start buying Heroes towards the next strategy you wish to focus on.

Early Positioning

Positioning can be pretty important in this game, particularly against certain strategies. The basic positioning you'll want to do is just placing your bulkier melee Heroes in front, and your weaker but hopefully higher damaging minions behind those. This protects them from the initial rush of your opponent's melee units. One pretty good defensive strategy you might need to employ early on is against Assassin Heroes. These Heroes jump immediately behind your Heroes and start attacking the back line. To protect against this if you know it's coming, is to place all of your minions in a corner and pretty much block in your weaker Heroes. That should make it a lot harder for them to immediately tear up your back line!