Dota Auto Chess: A Beginner’s Guide

Dota Auto Chess is a custom mode of Dota 2 and is extremely popular in recent times. Let’s learn through how to play Auto Chess.

For anyone who has played Dota 1 and the W3C engine, you probably know about custom games/maps. Custom games are brought back by Dota 2, but none of them are really popular. However, for now, Dota Auto Chess is a custom game that has become extremely popular in the past few days. This custom game has nearly 2 million subscribers! We have almost 50,000 concurrent players in this custom game. BSJ also hosts a $5,000 Dota Auto Chess tournament for subscribers on its Twitch channel. Dota Auto Chess really brings a breath of fresh air to Dota 2, but unlike most other custom games, it’s not really easy to play. If you are new to this mode, you will probably be a bit surprised. Let’s find out together how Dota Auto Chess is played in this article:

Start the game

The game starts with you controlling the courier (chicken). Courier is what drives everything. There are a total of 8 players and the last survivor wins. Each player has his own board like a chess board. The first is to choose a hero. Each player initially has 1 gold, and all early heroes cost 1 gold.

You will see that each hero has two categories – Species and Class. For example, Bounty Hunter is a Goblin species and class Assassin, while Dragon Knight has two species, Human and Dragon, and class is Knight. Currently, Dota Auto Chess has a total of 52 heroes and all are divided by species and class. Dragon Knight, Lycan and Puck are the only three heroes with two species. Each hero has a skill from Dota 2.

After choosing your first hero, click on the courier, click ‘T’ and move the hero anywhere on your half of the board. The first three rounds, you will fight creeps. Creep drops items and can use couriers to pick up items and give them to the hero. After each round, you gain experience to level up. As you level up, you can have more heroes on the board.

In the picture above, the bar shown above shows 2/3 chesses. That means the player currently has 2 heroes on the table, and can have up to 3 heroes. The player’s Gold can be seen on the right. Gold is used to buy heroes or gain experience faster (5 gold for 4 exp). Press ‘Alt’ to show how many points you need to level up. Items cannot be purchased with gold and can only be obtained when they are dropped from creeps.

Slowly, you will have more gold and be able to buy more heroes. At first, all heroes are 1 star. Place three identical 1-star heroes on the table to combine them into 2-star heroes. Three 2-star Luna heroes will give you a 3-star Luna hero. To put it simply, to have a 3-star hero you need 9 1-star heroes of that hero! Hero upgrade increases HP, skill level and damage dealt to the enemy courier. In case the 5 heroes that appear on the table are not the ones you want, you can spend 2 gold to ‘refresh’ and get 5 new heroes. But remember, if the new set doesn’t have any good heroes, you’ve lost 2 gold of your investment. Hero can be sold for the same price as purchased. The sell button is located to the left of the “Refresh Chess” button.

Fight

Every time you level up, place more heroes on the board. At the end of round 3, everyone will reach level 3 and have 3 heroes on the table. Round 4 is when players play against each other. You will be playing against another random player on your board. At the same time, your hero army will move to another player’s board and challenge them. Combat happens automatically, you don’t need to do anything. Everything on the board happens automatically, like chess using heroes in Dota 2 – and so we have Dota Auto Chess.

Fight at home

If you win on your home field, which is your chessboard, the courier will not lose blood. But if you lose, the courier will lose health based on the number of troops left. Total damage is calculated as follows:

Damage = Total number of stars of heroes left on the table

For example, if Nature’s Prophet 3 stars, Juggernaut 2 stars, and the enemy’s Treant is left on the table, the total damage taken by the courier is 3+2+1=6. When the courer takes 100 damage, you lose. The initial damage will be low. But later on, when the number of troops is more, the damage will increase.

Fight on the opponent’s field

While defending your board, your hero army also moves to the opponent’s chess board. If you win, the enemy courier will lose health.

Tactic

There are many strategies in Dota Auto Chess. But basically, if there are multiple heroes of the same species or class, you get an extra bonus. For example:

• If there are 3 Warriors on the table, the armor of all allied Warriors will increase by 8
• If there are 2 Trolls on the table, the attack speed of all allied Trolls increases by 30

Each species and class has different bonuses! It helps you create different combos. Some species/classes are strong in the early game but not strong in the late game, while others are the opposite. That’s what you need to experience in Dota Auto Chess.

Hero placement also plays an important role. Tanks are usually placed in the front while ranged heroes like Tinker and Lina are usually in the back. But the Assassin class can jump behind to kill those ranged heroes, note this!

Gold

Gold can be obtained in three ways in Dota Auto Chess:

1. Defeat an opponent to get 1 gold
2. Continuously winning or continuously losing can receive up to 3 gold
3. Gold is obtained from interest, equivalent to 10% of your remaining gold

There are strategies based on the games you lose at the beginning of the game, hoarding gold when you lose continuously, receiving interest and then coming back!

If you haven’t played Dota Auto Chess yet, let’s play it now and will share the good tips that you learn!

According to VP Esports

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