Dota Underlords – Useful Tips & Tricks

by Falagar / Articles, Dota Underlords / 22 Jun 2019

Managing your Gold Economy

Gold can accumulate interests, so keep as much gold in your reserve as possible, rather than spending them on re-rolls early in the game. The interest that you will receive next turn is calculated immediately after the combat of the current turn starts, and is 10% of the total gold that you have (interest is the cap at a maximum of 5 gold).

On early rounds, it may be worth spending gold to buy 4XPs in order to level up quicker, especially if you are falling behind your opponents. A good round to spend gold for 4XP is round 5 – if you don’t need to buy heroes, you can gain a level straight away to place more from your bench.

On later rounds, once you have accumulated gold, re-rolls would be much more worth it. This is especially true since you gain access to higher tiers heroes in your shop as you level up.

Remember that win streaks and lose streaks give you additional gold. Therefore, consistency is important. If you are losing, you may want to deliberately continue losing unless you are confident that you can make a comeback.

The additional gold gain for win/lose streaks are:

3 rounds: +1

5 rounds: +2

7 rounds: +3

Of course, losing doesn’t mean you let your opponent relentlessly wreck you. Remember that the final damage to your health is calculated by summing up all of the stars of your opponent’s remaining army (excluding summoned heroes), so minimize the damage received by wiping most of their troops.

Spying Other Players

You can view other players’ boards by clicking their nameplates on the left of the screen:

Almost everything on your opponent’s screen can be revealed this way! You can see their heroes on their chessboard and bench, the total amount of gold that they have, their XP, their active alliances, their combat performances etc.

You should periodically check your opponents’ boards to see if their heroes’ active alliances counter yours. For example, if many players are using the “Demon Hunter” alliance, and your army is heavily reliant on Demons to deal damage, it is perhaps time to change your army’s composition.

Understanding the Global Shopping Pool

Heroes that appear in your shop are drawn randomly, based on a global pool shared by all players. This means that if your opponents have bought up many copies of a particular hero, you are less likely to see it in your shop.

A general piece of advice is to be more flexible with your alliance strategy and be willing to change it if your alliance’s pool runs dry (or if the RNG god is against you). Always view your opponents’ screen to see their boards and benches, in order to check if they are buying off heroes that you were looking for.

If you level up fast enough, you will have earlier access to higher-tier heroes compared to other players, and can buy them off the pool!

Positioning your Heroes

Your army can be positioned anywhere at the bottom 8×4 squares. Use that to your advantage! Put weaker heroes at the back, while letting your tanky heroes man the frontline. This reduces the chance of your weaker heroes getting wiped out early in the fight.

Some players like to clump all of their heroes at the corner of the board to protect against pesky teleporting heroes (e.,g. Queen of Pain) that teleports behind your army.

Checking your Army Alliance Composition

Quickly view the composition of your army, by utilizing the icons in the Alliances tab. By clicking on an alliance’s icon, will highlight the heroes (both on your board and on your bench) that are associated with that particular alliance. This allows you to quickly form your desired alliance synergies, especially if you are new to the heroes and don’t remember their alliances.

Dragging a hero on the board will also render a line that connects the dragged heroes with other heroes that shares the same alliance. Unfortunately, this may not be very convenient for color-blind users :(.

Maximizing your Looting Rounds

Loot rounds are when you battle the AI instead of another human player. Loot rounds happen at rounds 1, 2, 3, 10, and intervals of 5 thereafter (i.e. 15, 20, 25, …).

You do not take damage during loot rounds (and hence it does not affect your win and lose streaks), so it is best that you compose your army to win them because if you lose a loot round, the game chooses a loot for you. Loot items are generally quite powerful, so don’t waste the chance to pick the most suitable one for your composition.

You may want to consider using a special position for your heroes during loot rounds (such that melee heroes are at the front).

Taming the RNG

A common complaint about this game is that RNG plays a big factor. While it can be frustrating, the best you can do to prepare is to plan ahead of the different possible alliance compositions that you can create for your army.

This will require you to learn about the different heroes in this game, and how many heroes are assigned to an alliance (you can access that information in the in-game guide). This will allow you to calculate the probability of getting certain heroes. Again, be flexible with your army composition if necessary.

Using Keyboard Shortcuts

Yes, they exist. You can use the keyboard to access the shop, rather than having to move your mouse across the screen.

The default keys are:

Open/close shop: Space

Buy any of the 5 items: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Reroll: R

Lock: Q

Gain 4XP with 5 Gold: T

The game has many other key shortcuts (for example, to access other player’s boards, and to toggle the alliance list). To view those shortcuts, see Settings → Hotkeys.

Falagar

He is the founder and editor of Magic Game World. He loved gaming from the moment he got a PlayStation 1 with Gran Turismo on his 7th birthday.
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