The Dota 2 noob’s Diretide social survival guide

I hopped into Diretide excited and full of life. I stepped out with a throbbing headache. If there’s something you need to learn about Dota 2, it’s that you don’t cruise through most things and that everyone is a noob.

Don’t worry, though, Diretide is fun. It’s just not relaxing. You’re still a noob and while it would do you good to search for a proper guide about the event’s mechanics, there are some things that those guides don’t cover —things like players in-game, their practices, and jargons. That’s where Games In Asia has got you covered.

An introduction to Diretide

Most Dota 2 players would already have an idea about what Diretide is. For those who are new, it’s an in-game event hosted every Halloween. Each side has a pot full of candy called Greevil Taffy, which is placed where the ancient neutral camp used to be. The goal is to attack the opposing team’s candy pot and take the candy that falls out of it.

Eight minutes into the game, Roshan will start asking for candy, and will attack you if you decline to give him any. Giving Roshan a single candy won’t actually hurt your score count, but it will give Roshan extra boost in stats, which will make him hard to deal with later. Another eight minutes into the game, the team with more Greevil Taffy will be declared the winner, and will receive a random item.

But the Diretide game does not end there. Roshan will then run to either the Dire or Radiant jungle, sit there, and eat his candy while he waits for the players to attack him. A more detailed guide can be found in the Steam community forums.

Now that we got the basics of Diretide covered, let’s get down to the details of the whole experience and how to deal with it.

1. What does co-op mean?

The pre-game (the part before you pick heroes) phase is where both teams agree to cooperate and beat the game. This is typically an agreement that 1) you will not kill each other and 2) you will be balancing the number of Greevil Taffies for each team. This phase helps both teams to collect enough gold and experience so you can buy items to kill Roshan later. Following last year’s Diretide experience, teams who finish with the same number of taffies both get rewarded for having the highest taffy count.

In the previous games I’ve played, the common practice is that a player or two from each side goes to the opposing side to attack the candy pot. The remaining members who own the candy pot then pick up fallen Greevil Taffies for their team. None of the attackers should be picking up candy for their own team, or you break the co-op agreements. This continues for the first sixteen minutes of the game.

2. Turn off auto-attack, use shift and spam ‘H’ or ‘S’

So you agreed not to kill each other, but your hero keeps on attacking the heroes on the opposing team! This is a great way for you to get flamed and just like warring countries, it’s only a matter of time before someone declares an end to the truce and starts killing enemy heroes. However, there’s a simple solution to that.

First, turn off auto-attack so your hero doesn’t attack enemies even without being told to. Second, be aware that when you pick up candy, there are tendencies where the hero still attacks the enemy even with auto-attack off. You can cancel that by pressing ‘H’(hold) or ‘S’(stop). Alternatively, you can queue actions by holding shift and right clicking on the ground, so there’s no chance for your hero to attack.