How to Rock at Heroes of Newerth Part One

Heroes of Newerth (HoN) is becoming a more popular game every day. Because of this, Do Gaming thought it apt to put together a guide on how the game works and how to get good at it.

HoN is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, which is based on real-time strategy (RTS) concepts, and consists of an overhead map with three lanes in which to travel in. Gamers need to select one of the many heroes the game provides and gain experience points (XP) and gold, with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy base.

HoN is a very dynamic game and changes quite often. It also has a lot of aspects that may seem complicated in the beginning but are in actual fact fairly simple.

This guide is designed to help players who are new to the game in order to become better; it's also designed to provide snippets of info to players that have been around.

The guide will start with the basics and will continue all the way up to hero synergies and item builds for specific heroes.

Selecting a hero that is good for you

In the beginning of the game, team mates will be able to pick different heroes in order to synergise with other heroes to combine attacks and spells to use against the enemy.

There are many types of heroes as well as different roles that heroes can play. Each hero has either a range or a melee attack and will have one of three primary attributes such as Strength, Agility and Intelligence.

Gamers who are new to the game would probably be in better hands if they were to take a ranged hero (a hero that can shoot projectiles), such as Andromeda. These heroes are better for beginners as they help players get used to all the things in the game that make it the incredible battle it is.

Agility and strength heroes are usually heroes that beginners should stay away from. These heroes are normally most functional in the later parts of the game and players who want to use these are normally more advanced in killing creeps and earning gold. (We'll explain what a creep is a little later).

There are many types of hero roles in the game. There are “Carries” which are heroes that are designed to farm up gold and XP in the early stages of the game so that they become really powerful after a certain point in the game (usually later in the game, often called the late-game).

There are ”Support” heroes who are generally designed to help out the team by healing, giving mana (magic energy) or stunning and slowing enemies. These heroes are normally of equal power throughout the game and play an integral part in each team battle.

“Tank” heroes are the ones that have more hit points or armour than the rest and are designed to initiate the team battles and tank up a lot of the enemy damage.

“Gang” heroes are generally heroes with some type of disable power, such as a stun or slow, and move around the map to help their team mates kill heroes in different lanes.

These are just some of the roles that players can play with specific heroes and each role is as important as the next.

Creeping

This is the area where most players struggle.

A creep is an AI controlled unit that spawns every 30 seconds in a group and moves towards the enemy base along the lanes. Gamers need to kill a creep, or rather get the last hit on the creep in order to get the gold from killing it.

Players can also last-hit their own friendly creeps which results in a 'deny' of the creep. Denying a creep will give the enemy less XP as well as no gold, as they now cannot get the last-hit on the creep themselves.

Heroes can auto-attack enemies, which happens when a player doesn't consciously time their attacks. One way to stop auto-attacking is by moving the character around.

Generally, heroes are not supposed to auto-attack creeps and it is seen as a bad thing to do. Auto-attacking creeps will cause the player's group of creeps to push forward faster, which will cause the entire group to have to get to the enemy towers faster.

The result is that the enemy's towers begin to take out the creeps, which means that the enemy gains XP quicker, since the towers dish out more damage. It also leaves the lane open for other enemies to come and 'gang' the lane as there is no tower protection.

Early Items

Gamers are always advised to get some form of health (hit-point) regenerating item in the beginning of the game, which is often referred to as the lane stages.

Over time, heroes take damage and players will need to regenerate their hit-points by eating trees with Runes of Blight, which will give a small hit-point regeneration, or by quaffing a health potion. Heroes that cast spells might also need to regenerate their mana after using spells, in which case they can buy a mana potion at their fountain in their home base for lane use.

One thing that is never stressed enough is the importance of a Homecoming Stone, an item that can be bought at the home base and transports the player to a chosen team structure.

This is a cheap and effective way to gang other lanes, escape impending doom, or even protect towers with team mates. These Stones are great for moving around the map and helping the team out in general, and if there is one thing a hero should have on it at all times, a Homecoming Stone is it.

Movement

Movement around the map is another important thing in HoN. Gamers will need to balance out staying in their lane to gain XP and gold, as well as move around to create hero kills in other lanes. Heroes normally solo a lane by themselves in the middle and gang either top or bottom according to the rune spawn.

A rune spawns halfway in the river on the map between either the top and the middle or the middle and the bottom. These runes spawn every two minutes and can grant the hero certain abilities for a short period of time.

Such abilities are double damage, invisibility, haste, illusion or regeneration. Each ability speaks for itself and gives a huge advantage to the hero that picks the rune up, making it a perfect time for them to help their teammates in other lanes by killing enemies.

Gamers will find the most important tool in their game is the mini-map in the bottom left hand corner. It gives players an easy view of what is happening all over the map and will be integral in staying alive as well as getting kills.

Early game hints

Some vital mistakes that most new players make in HoN is that they either over-extend or are unaware of positioning.

Over-extending refers to moving a hero too far forward to get a few hits on an enemy, or chasing past a tower to get a kill. Doing this will often result in the hero dying or, at the very least, suffer a large amount of damage.

The most important thing for a new player to understand is that they should play passively and generally stay back. By no means should a player be afraid, but don’t get caught out of position by being too far ahead of the creeps, or caught alone in an area without teammates around. These kinds of mistakes will mostly result in the hero’s death.

A player must be conscious of position. Being unaware of position is not understanding what is happening on the map.

Generally, it is considered good manners to call a hero missing when an enemy hero leaves the lane that the player is currently in. This refers to alerting teammates that there is a possible gang coming to their lane.

This is, however, does not always happen as sometimes players forget to call missing or die in their lane, making them unable to maintain focus on the lane. This is where map awareness comes in. Most of the time, a good player will be able to spot the large enemy dot on the mini-map which will enable him to move back to the safety of their tower or even retreat to their home base altogether.

Hopefully this beginner’s guide will help players to better understand the game as well as prepare them for the upcoming guides which will be able to help gamers be the best they can be in HoN.