Just 24 days after making an announcement about a standalone Dota version of Auto Chess, Valve has already made Dota Underlords available to the public. Currently, you will need to have The International Battle Pass 2019 to play the game, but don’t worry, Dota Underlords will be available to everyone for free on Steam (Windows, Mac, and Linux), Android and iOS, once the open beta begins. However, Valve hasn’t given us a date as to when the open beta will begin.
Since only Battle Pass owners can play the game right now, Valve is calling this a ‘server stress test to prepare for the open beta’ or in other words, a private beta.
How to install Dota Underlords (Complete Instructions):
If you have already installed the game, skip to the next section.
Before starting with the instructions, let me remind you once again, that you will need to purchase The International Battle Pass 2019 in order to play Dota Underlords right now. It is available for $9.99 (699 INR). Here’s the complete instructions:
- First you will need to install Steam. Click here to download the Steam installation file.
- After installing steam, you will need to install Dota 2 onto your PC. Dota 2 is available for free. All you need to do is go to the store tab on Steam and search for Dota 2.
- After installing Dota 2, open the game client from your Steam library.
- Now you will have to purchase The International Battle Pass 2019
- Once you have the Battle Pass, you will be able to claim Dota Underlords from the Dota client. After claiming it, you will find it in your Steam library.
- Install the game and you are ready to go!
How to play:
Dota Underlords is a new stand-alone game that pits you against seven opponents in a battle of wits that will have you building, combining, and leveling-up a crew in a battle of dominance for the city of White Spire. In this game, victory is determined not by twitch reflexes, but by superior tactics – From the blogpost.
If you have never played Dota Auto Chess or Dota 2 for that matter, don’t worry, because Dota Underlords is very easy to learn. It doesn’t have an overly punishing and challenging learning curve like Dota 2.
- In Dota Underlords, you are playing against 7 other opponents, each of whom have their own ‘chess board’.
- Dota Underlords is a round based game. Each round, you get to buy units from your ‘selection panel’. You can buy as many units as you want, as long as you have the gold for it. More about how to earn and use gold will be explained later.
- Once you buy a unit, it will appear on your ‘bench’. You can move units from the bench onto the chess board by dragging them. You can have up to 8 units on your bench, and a limited number of units on your chess board.
- The number of units you can have on your chess board depends on your ‘level’. Every player starts at level 1 and can reach up to level 10. More on how to increase your level will be explained later.
- In each round, you will battle against one of the surviving opponents except for the neutral rounds. Your opponent will be chosen randomly.
- The first 3 rounds of the game will be neutral rounds. After that, every 5th round starting from round 10 will be a neutral round. After every neutral round, you will be able to choose an item to give to your units. More on items will be explained later.
- Every player starts with 100 HP, and once you drop down to 0 HP, you are eliminated from the game. The last man standing wins the game.
- How do players lose HP: Every round, you will be battling one of the surviving players randomly. If you lose the round, you will lose HP depending on how many enemy units have survived.
- Similarly, all the opponents fight a random opponent every round. The game ends when all but one player has reached 0 HP. The last man standing wins.
How to earn gold:
In Dota Underlords, you earn Gold after each round, depending on 3 things:
- If you defeat your opponent, you get 1 Gold.
- If you are on a winning streak or losing streak (yes, losing streak) you get you up to 3 extra Gold.
- Every round you get interest, which is 10% of the Gold you currently have.
So for example, if you have 10 gold, you will get 1 extra gold as interest. If you have 20 gold, you get 2 extra gold, and so on.
You can get a max interest of 5 gold if you have 50 gold saved up.
How to use your gold:
There’s three ways you can use your gold:
- You can buy units from the selection panel. The cost of a unit depends on its unit tier. Currently there’s 5 tiers of units. A tier 1 unit costs 1 gold, tier 2 costs 2 gold and so on.
- You can re-roll for 2 gold. When you re-roll, your selection panel is refreshed, giving you 5 new units to choose from. However, if you are unlucky, you might get a few units that were already on the panel before. However, you need to be very careful while spending your gold on re-rolling. I will explain more on this on my advanced guide which is coming up soon.
- You can buy 4 ‘experience’ for 5 gold. Read the next section to know experience is for.
How to level up (How to increase the limit of units on your board)
As explained before, the number of units you can have on your chess board depends on your ‘level’. To increase your level, you need experience (xp). You can earn xp in 2 ways:
- After every round you get 1 xp.
- You can buy 4 xp for 5 gold. You can buy xp from your selection panel as shown above.
Here’s a graph showing how much XP you’ll need to advance from one level to the next.
Alliances:
In Dota Underlords, every unit belongs to 2 alliances (some have 3). Having a set number of different units from the same alliance, gives you bonuses and synergies.
For example, let’s take the ‘Brawny’ Alliance. Having 2 Brawny units increases the max HP of each Brawny unit by 200. Having 4 Brawny units increases the max HP of each Brawny unit by 500.
Few Alliances give bonuses to all the units on your board. Let’s take the Scaled alliance for example. Having 2 units from the Scaled Alliance gives +30% magic resistance to all your units. Having 4 units from the Scaled Alliance gives +50% magic resistance to all your units.
Items:
After every neutral round, you get an item to give to your units. If you win the neutral round, you get to choose from a selection of 3 items. If you lose, you will still get an item, but you won’t be able to choose.
Each unit can only hold 1 item. You can give an item to your unit by dragging it from the item panel on the right. You can also take back the item whenever you want, so don’t hesitate to give an item to a unit.
And there you go, you are ready to play Dota Underlords now. A more advanced guide will be released later on which will cover detailed information on all aspects of the game. Good luck for your matches!
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