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.