Roshan: How Killing Godzilla Makes You Immortal

So, you know how the game goes. You're either in the lane or your jungle, killing monsters and creeps for gold and saving up for that sweet Battlefury you saw in the shop. Maybe you've gotten a kill or two without dying. You're feeling confident! This game is in the bag, surely.

Suddenly, you hear a roar echo from the southeast corner of the map. The announcer informs you that Roshan has fallen to the enemy team, and one of your enemies (Most likely Ursa) has claimed the Aegis of the Immortal. What does this mean? And more importantly, how much trouble are you in?

Roshan is DotA 2's optional "boss" monster. He used to live near the Dire's middle lane before he had a change of address in Patch v6.82. He has more health than almost everything else in the game, and is more than a match for most heroes in single combat. On top of all this, he only gets stronger as the game progresses. If a team manages to bring Roshan down, they will be rewarded with 200 gold each (plus anywhere from 150 to 400 extra gold for the hero securing the last hit), as well as an item called the Aegis of the Immortal. Roshan will reappear at least eight and at most eleven minutes later, with another Aegis in hand.

The Aegis, once picked up, cannot be dropped by whoever claimed it. Not that they'd want to. After being picked up, the Aegis grants a second life to the holder. If they die for any reason, they will reincarnate within seconds at full power. If the Aegis goes unused for five minutes after being claimed, it will vanish and completely refill the ex-holder's health and mana.

Immortality is not the only prize to be claimed from Roshan's defeat. If he dies more than twice in a single match, his third defeat and on will drop one of the most powerful restorative items in the game: Cheese! No, really. Cheese will heal you for a bunch. That, or you can sell it for a whopping 500 gold.

So what are you waiting for? Pick Ursa, buy a Morbid Mask, and go kill that son of a gun. You'll do great, I promise.

Where I work, and why that's awesome.

It's time for a little context on who I am. The About page gives you a little, but you haven't really seen where I get to volunteer and what I get to do.

That, and it's hard to take photos of a video game. So let's get into it!

The heart and soul of Troy's journalism department. Well, more like the skin and skeleton.

Troy University has one of the best journalism degrees in the nation, and it all happens right here: Wallace Hall. The campus newspaper, the Tropolitan, is printed here, but I'm involved with the other half of the program. The 21st-century half. I help produce TrojanVision.

Look at all those awards. Look.

We're a campus news program that puts out three shows a day from deep within the bowels of Wallace, and we're pretty darn good at it. I'm not one of the anchors (yet). I am one of Jeff's "minions," the bearded, tv-show-logo-shirt-wearing legion of AV technicians who man The Booth.

This is where the magic happens.

This is where other, related magic, still qualifying as "the" magic, happens.

We run graphics, sound, teleprompter, cameras, video, you name it. The anchors have by far the most glamorous position, but they don't do half the work. Not even close.

But just look at that desk. You want to sit there. You know you do.

Plus you get to stare at these cheery guys for thirty minutes at a time.

The student volunteers at TrojanVision (and we are mostly all volunteers) get together every day to put on a half hour of informative local, national, and worldwide news. At any point someone could decide to press the wrong button and screw a given show up beyond repair... but that generally doesn't happen. Usually.

So next time you hop by Troy campus, look under the library. There's a whole TV station hiding down there you never knew existed!

Not like we can blame you for missing it.

You can catch a livestream of the show every weeknight at 5:00 Central time at troytrojanvision.org. Look for "Casey Garvin" in the credits. And possibly behind the desk. Maybe. I might need to shave first.

Welcome to the Jungle: Getting Gold and Levels in the Woods

So far we know about all the different lanes and how to go about exploiting the resources available within them. But beware, for there is a "fourth lane" for teams to take advantage of, should they have a hero on-hand who can properly exploit it: the Jungle.

The Jungle takes up the north and south quadrants of the map, between the mid lane and the two teams' safe lanes (lanes with the shortest distance between the creep line and their first tower). Inside the Jungle are numerous "neutral" camps of monsters, each rated one of four difficulty classes based on which specific groups of monsters can appear there.

Heroes can enter the jungle and do battle with the monsters within as an alternative to getting gold and experience in the lane, but doing so is usually impractical early on for many heroes. Usually, the only heroes "jungling" at early levels have exceptional self-healing abilities or the power to summon minions to take the hits for them, as there are no lane creeps to soak the damage these monsters inevitably deal. As the game hits its midpoint and jungle monsters grow steadily weaker in comparison to the heroes fighting them, generally anyone can jungle.

Every minute, the game checks to see if any camps are empty, and spawns a new band of monsters within if it is. This is done regardless of whether the previous camp is actually, you know, dead. Getting a camp's attention and drawing it out of its hidey hole to "trick" the game into spawning a new camp is a valid tactic called "camp stacking," used by DotA 2 players at all levels of play. It is especially effective when used with one specific level of jungle camp: the Ancient camp.

Unrelated to the game-defining buildings of similar name, Ancient creeps are unique in that they are totally immune to the majority of hero abilities -- meaning that certain heroes are incapable of fighting them efficiently. A properly "stacked" Ancient camp is nearly impossible to besiege normally. One of the few heroes who can do so is Tidehunter, whose damage-reducing Anchor Smash ability, coupled with his inherent bulk, makes quickly obtaining his one core item (the Blink Dagger) a breeze.

The Jungle is dangerous early on and has taken the life of more than one unwary hero. For those who know how to properly eploit its resources, however, it is one of the most reliable sources of gold and experience in the game.

Nature's Profit: The gain, loss, and spending of gold

Do you want to own all those sweet items you saw in the last post? How about an adorable animal courier to ferry items to you and your teammates to save them the trip home? Would you like vision wards to show what's going on in territory you're not currently occupying? Would you like healing potions? Scrolls of teleportation? Less time spent dead? You can buy all this and more with DotA 2's most precious resource: Gold!

But how does one acquire gold? In brief: Last hits. Allow me to explain.

When the creeps spawn and meet at the center of the map, they will fight each other. Inevitably, a creep's health will drop to zero and it will die, giving experience points to any enemy heroes around it. If a hero (or minions the hero controls) deals the damage that finishes the creep off, they will receive gold based on what type of creep it was.

This applies to all gold income sources -- destroying buildings, killing enemy heroes, and slaying Roshan (which we will cover much later, suffice to say he's a giant boss monster). Similarly, all income sources can be denied -- that is, a hero can attack his own creeps and buildings when they reach a threshold of low health to prevent gold from falling into enemy hands. This, too, hinges on securing the very last hit that brings it to zero health. Certain heroes (all heroes, if they have a specific item) are even capable of denying themselves.

There are two types of gold: Reliable and Unreliable. Reliable gold is acquired through killing enemy heroes, couriers, towers, and Roshan. Unreliable gold is gained through last hitting creeps and is granted to you at the start of a round to let you buy starting items, as well as a passive 100 unreliable gold per minute just for being in the game. Reliable and unreliable gold differ in a few key ways. Dying removes up to 30 gold times your hero's level from your unreliable gold. Buying items will spend unreliable gold first, but buying back (spending gold to revive from death instantly) will spend reliable gold first and disable your passive gold gain for the remainder of your respawn timer.

Remember these less-than-intuitive facts and you could one day go from this:

Pictured: A DotA 2 player who lost because he has no gold.

To this:

Pictured: A DotA 2 player who won because he has a lot of gold.

Up next: the Jungle. Happy hunting.

Arms and Armor: DotA 2's items and inventory

Alright, so you know what you need to do to win a game of DotA 2. Over the next few entries, we're going to get into what actually doing all that requires. Two very close concepts you need to understand are those of gold and the items you buy with it. 

Acquiring gold can wait until the next post -- suffice to say that there is a specific way to get it, and some heroes do this faster and more efficiently than others. We're focusing on why you want that gold: Items! Items are important to know about and keep up with no matter what hero you're playing, and there's a quite a lot of them. You may want to start taking notes.

There will be a test on Wednesday.

Items can be bought from the main shop at the center of your base, the side shops located near the corners of the map on the outer lanes, or from the "secret shops" hidden in the two jungles. The home shop and secret shop have entirely different inventories -- home generally has cheaper items and special "recipes" that you need to construct certain high-level items, while the secret shop sells more expensive and powerful wares. The side shops, on the other hand, sell a mix of both of the other shops' wares, allowing players to acquire certain items without having to leave the lane and make the perilous trek to the secret shop or needlessly occupy the team's courier.

One slightly counterintuitive concept is that of "building" items. The most powerful items in the game can only be put together out of multiple other items. The items needed to construct a greater item can be seen in the menu used to purchase things from the shop. Once all items needed are in your hero's inventory (or stashed at base, or both when the two are in proximity), they immediately fuse together to create the new item.

All items grant statistical bonuses -- increased health, faster attack speed, etc. -- but the most powerful and most expensive items grant valuable passive or active effects. One such item, the "Heart of Tarrasque," gives its owner a ridiculous health regeneration effect on top of the bonuses to strength and health. Inversely, the Scythe of Vyse has no passive effect beyond its stats, but it has an activated ability that curses its target with the form of a harmless critter for a few seconds. While it sounds silly on its face, this "hex" is one of the most powerful disabling effects in the game.

These are the basics of items in DotA 2 and why you definitely want to have them. Next week, we'll delve into how you get them.