Dota Underlords – Game Mechanics / Tips & Tricks

Some lesser known mechanics and tips & tricks you can use to get ahead.

Other Dota Underlords Guides:

• Beginner’s Guide.
• Basic Tips & Tricks.
• The Complete Beginner’s Guide (Tips, Tricks and Strategies).
• How to Enable Developer Mode (Cheats).
• Victory Combinations and Tactics.
• Introduction to Alliances.

Interest

All credit goes to Phoenix Wright!

Hold onto your gold

For every 10 gold in your possession, you receive 1 gold interest at the end of the round, with a MAXIMUM of 5 interest.

It’s very important to note that you will still get interest gold if you spend your gold right before the round turns, so if you don’t immediately need a unit, hold off on buying it until the last 5 seconds of a round!

Upgrading Units

It takes 3 units of the same star level to upgrade to the next tier, 2 star units generally have double the stats, while 3 star units generally have quadruple the stats.

Level

Your level determines quite a few important factors:

• How many units you can have on the board is directly affected by your level.
• The units offered to you in the shop, as well as the items you find from loot rounds is weighted around your level.

At the end of each round you gain 1 XP, You can convert 5 Gold into 4 XP at any time by pressing T.

Alliances

Each alliance has different effects based on how many unique hero units you have on the board with that alliance. Alliance effects can be viewed in-game through the Season Info panel, or by mousing over any alliance in game.

Two of the same hero unit will only contribute towards one alliance, you must have different/unique hero units with the same alliance to get alliance benefits, except for the case of the Demon alliance which you MUST only have one type of that unit to reap the benefit.

Units

Units have:

• Rarity
• Health
• Alliances
• Skill
• Other Attributes
• Items

Rarity

Determines how strong the base unit is, as well as how much a single unit costs. Goes from tier 1 all the way to tier 5.

Health

The green number displayed in the portrait for each Hero is how much health they have before they are defeated. This number updates in the game as it is played, so if you want to know a current unit’s HP, just click on it.

Alliances

These are covered in the above section.

Skills

Each hero has a unique skill which does a variety of effects, from summoning new units, disabling other units, or causing massive damage. Mouse over the skill on each Hero to see what it does, and if there is more than one number, those are further unlocked through leveling your hero to the next Star Rank.

If the skill is an active ability, then it will also have a Cooldown, which can be mitigated through the usage of items and/or possibly other skills in the future.

Other Attributes

Mana, Damage Per Second, Damage, Attack Speed, Move Speed, Attack Range, Magic Resist, Armor, Health Regen, These stats seem to correspond with their DotA 2 counterparts.

Items

Similar to Hero Rarity, items vary in rarity up to Tier 5, with Tier 5 being reserved for the best items.

Items have a variety of effects, from increasing your movement speed to enhancing certain alliances with new abilities, and everything inbetween.

Each hero can equip a single item at a time, and items which generate mana can not be equipped on units with passive abilities that don’t need mana generation.

You earn items by playing through loot rounds, win or lose, you’ll get an item, if you win, you’ll get a choice between 3 (Or more if you take an item which allows you to select more), and if you lose, you’ll be forced to pick one at random.

Summons

Unlike DotA 2, Summons last indefinitely(until defeated), and if you equip a hero unit that can summon with Refresher orb, or something to reduce cooldown enough, your unit can keep summoning and the previous units will not despawn.

Silence

Being silenced means your hero can not cast active abilities, however passive abilities are still usable through silence, therefore it’s advised to give your heroes such as Luna Mask of Madness.

Positioning

Certain units have passive abilities which affect their allies 1 square away such as Drow Ranger, and there are items which affect alliances such as making units 1 square away from Warlocks recover 25% of the damage they deal through spells/abilities, or units near Knights taking damage reduction, in addition to the Knight alliance also providing a bonus for Knights that stay together.

Due to a recent update, units will try to stay in formation when put around units with special 1 square away abilities, therefore you should try to take advantage of these when you can, though a melee unit won’t exactly stick around near a ranged unit necessarily.

Selling

You can always sell units for what you paid to get them, click the unit and hit E, or drag it to the left side of the screen. You can purchase units and then sell them later, or even during the same round to accrue interest before it ends if you decide you don’t want that unit anymore.

This can be useful when trying to stop an opponent from buying out a certain unit, in order to block their progression with upgrading their hero by depleting the stock of that hero.

Tabbing Between Other Players

It’s very important to keep an eye on what your competition is doing, this can be achieved by pressing:

• Pressing TAB goes to the next player’s screen directly below the player you’re currently viewing on the left-side pane clicking any player’s portrait.
• Pressing A which will go to the player that the person you’re currently viewing is attacking.
• Pressing S which will go to the player that the person you’re currently viewing is defending against.
• Pressing F1 which will return to your view.

Things you may want information on is their items, heroes, and current alliance bonuses in order to prepare yourself for fights with them, watching how their units fight and their formation can give you insight on what you’d need to beat down a stronger opponent especially if you find a weakness in their formation.