In this guide, I will explain the basics of Deadlock and many tips for beginners in detail.
Deadlock Basics
Deadlock basics for beginners!
Lanes and Their Assignment
In the game, lanes are referred to by their color on the map and transit lines. Players are assigned lanes based on hidden MMR (Matchmaking Rating) matchups, but the assignment is otherwise random. There are no fixed roles for each hero, meaning everyone must farm and contribute to the team actively. The items you purchase and the order in which you level up your abilities will determine the role you play with your hero, even though some heroes may naturally lean towards specific roles.
Selecting Your Hero
To increase your chances of playing the hero you want, right-click to favorite them during hero selection before queueing for a match. Favoriting your hero does not guarantee you will get them, but it significantly increases the chances. If you favorite 2 out of the 3 mandatory heroes required to queue, you will almost always get one of the two every match.
Managing Souls and Staying Ahead
If you find yourself falling behind on souls, it’s likely because you’re focusing too much on harassing the enemy rather than getting last hits and denies on troopers during the laning phase. After laning, make sure to kill jungle camps between major map objectives and “catch” trooper waves near your guardians or walkers to secure last hits. Keeping up in souls also involves high kill participation and assisting teammates. Additionally, breaking crates and vases around the map after the 3-minute mark can yield souls, while golden idol statues provide small permanent buffs that accumulate over time.
Conserving Ammunition
Running out of ammunition often occurs because you’re shooting too much at enemies or attacking high-health troopers unnecessarily. You only need to shoot troopers when their health is low enough to trigger their death animation and then shoot the soul orb that appears. The Ammo Scavenger item can help by returning ammunition each time you successfully last hit a soul orb.
Understanding Soul Orbs
When you last hit an enemy trooper, hero, or structure, they release green soul orbs, which disappear after a short time, giving you their full soul value. Enemies can shoot these orbs to deny you the souls, so you should shoot contested orbs but can skip shooting green orbs if there’s no enemy threat. After 10 minutes, only the soul orb grants souls, so last-hitting troopers becomes less crucial.
Handling Difficult Lanes
If you’re struggling in your lane, play more conservatively and invest in regeneration items like Extra Regen, Restorative Shot, and Healing Rite. Stay behind cover, focus on denying enemy soul orbs, and consider requesting a gank from your teammates.
Jungling
Jungling is valuable, and all heroes can jungle to some extent. There isn’t a dedicated jungling role because camps respawn slowly, and trooper waves offer more rewards. Clear jungle camps whenever you’re not engaged in major objectives. Camps are marked on the map with green triangles, with varying symbols to indicate their difficulty level. Additionally, “safe” camps contain Sinner’s Sacrifice machines that provide extra souls at the cost of health.
Unsecured Souls and Securing Them
Unsecured souls are obtained from neutral jungle camps and are dropped on death for others to collect. These souls slowly become secured over time, but it’s more reliable to secure them by spending them on items. The number of unsecured souls is shown by a red icon next to your soul counter.
Levels and Ability Points
Your level is based on the total number of souls you collect in a match, regardless of whether they’ve been spent. Holding ALT and mousing over the flask icon at the bottom left of your health bar shows when you’ll gain level-up bonuses, which include unlocking new abilities, earning ability points (AP), and increasing your hero’s power stats like health and damage.
Purchasing Items
Items can be bought at shops located near every lane, in the middle of the map, and at your base. Lane shops close when the local guardian is defeated, but the base and mid secret shops remain open throughout the match.
Navigating the Item Shop
If the item shop is overwhelming, you can view player build recommendations by clicking on the “Heroes” option in the main menu and selecting your hero. During the laning phase, aim to purchase several Tier 1 items to improve your lane performance, followed by core Tier 2 items if you’re doing well. Each item category provides a specific bonus, like increased weapon damage for weapon items or additional health for vitality items. For more detailed information, refer to the guides channel in the Discord.
Flex Slots and Unlocking Them
Items in your inventory are categorized by type, with the far-right block reserved for flex slots. These slots can hold items from any category and are unlocked by defeating enemy objectives in the following order: one lane’s walker, all four enemy walkers, one lane’s base guardians, and one of the shrines inside the enemy base.
Understanding Spirit Power
Spirit Power is a damage type represented by the color purple, similar to bullet (or weapon) damage, which is orange. Certain abilities and hero stats scale with Spirit Power, indicated by a purple star with an up arrow. The exact scaling can be viewed by holding the ALT key in-game.
Mastering the Dash Jump
Your stamina bar flashes blue to indicate the timing for a dash jump, which uses the same stamina as two dashes but covers more distance. This technique is useful for engaging, escaping, or quickly moving around the map.
Melee Combat and Parrying
Melee attacks deal damage based on your level and weapon items. Parrying, done by pressing F, stuns an enemy hero who melee attacks you, making them vulnerable to increased melee damage from your attacks. Parrying is especially useful against heroes who rely heavily on melee, like Abrams. Melee can also secure trooper kills without the risk of enemy denies.
The Soul Urn
The Soul Urn is an objective that spawns 10 minutes into the match inside the chalk outlines on the yellow or purple lanes. You can carry it to the opposite spawn to collect souls for your team, with a 25% bonus for the carrier and +1 Ability Point. The souls generated by the urn can be denied, so make sure to shoot or melee them before leaving after delivery. The urn restricts your ability to cast spells, use items, or fire, but if you have a movement ability, you can activate it right as you pick up the urn for extra mobility.
The Mid-Boss
The mid-boss spawns 10 minutes into the match and drops an item called the Rejuvenator after being defeated. This item grants your team faster respawns, buffs your troopers with extra HP, and increases your fire rate, helping you push lanes. The mid-boss can only be damaged after passing a DPS check and must be actively attacking someone to be vulnerable. The Rejuvenator can be collected by hitting it with a heavy melee, but be aware that it can be stolen by the enemy team.
Transit Line Mechanics
When attached to a transit line, getting shot by an enemy stuns you, causes damage, and often results in death. Avoid using transit lines during combat or near enemies. After safely attaching to a line for 3 seconds (or immediately when attaching from inside your base), you gain a buff that makes you immune to being shot off, indicated by a blue glow around your hand.
Move Speed and Sprint Speed
Every hero has a base move speed, visible on the bottom left of your screen. Sprint speed is added to your move speed as long as you haven’t taken damage recently, indicated by a change in your running animation and white lines trailing behind you. Sprint speed is a stat on certain items and is innate to some heroes like Bebop and Lady Geist.
Cosmic Veils
Cosmic Veils are grey barriers that either block sight or allow one-way vision, appearing as either barred off or rainbow-shimmering walls. These veils don’t obstruct movement, but they do affect what you can see based on your position relative to them.
Post-Guardian Objectives
After taking down the enemy guardian in your lane, assist your teammates with ganks, group up for map objectives like the urn, mid-boss, or enemy walkers, and continue farming camps and trooper waves to keep your lanes pushed and income steady.
Soul Distribution
Souls are split evenly among nearby teammates, except for hero kills, where the majority goes to the killer. Before 10 minutes, both laning partners receive full soul value when near each other from troopers. After 10 minutes, souls are only granted by confirming the soul orb, making denies more significant.
Handling Disconnections and Substitutions
If a player leaves your game, you can request a substitute from the Discord by providing the match ID and report the leaver if it was intentional. You can pause the match using the P key if the player might return soon. If a player abandons, the match becomes safe to leave for everyone else. To sub into a match, spectate it and look for the substitute button in the ESC menu.
Viewing Match History and Replays
You can view your match history and replays by clicking the view profile button in the top right of the main menu. Select a match to replay the demo. If you encounter a chunk error, try viewing a different match before returning to the one you want to watch.
Sensitivity Conversion
To convert your CS or other Source game sensitivity to this game, multiply your existing sensitivity by 0.5.
Test Duration and Inviting Friends
The test phase is expected to last until the first major patch, with your friends getting in before the end of the test as they continue to send out waves of invites to those who signed up for the playtest.
