Valve Corporation has recently delivered another unique game mode within their massively popular game Dota 2, dubbed ‘Aghanim’s Labyrinth’, and for the uninitiated, it’s surprisingly both fun and challenging. In a lot of ways its reminiscent of Diablo 3, with a heavy emphasis on cooperative gameplay. The goal? Simply traverse the dungeons depths, and work in tandem to destroy a litany of creeps and captains. If all goes to plan, you will be rewarded with items, gold, levels, and highly unique skill buffs, which greatly enhance your teams ability to cope with the upcoming hordes of enemies.

Tips and Tricks

Team Composition

Though each hero brings a certain special something to the equation, having a balanced team is more important here than in a standard Dota 2 match. This becomes even more essential when considering that Aghanim’s Labyrinth is a four man game, as opposed to a five. Based on many runs, and a relatively successful win rate, a standard composition that seems particularly effective is to split your team into two melee, and two ranged. The reason for this stems from the simple fact that at multiple points in the game, you’re going to be attacked from many angles by many aggressive units. Having two melee heroes, allows for somewhat more effective kiting/grouping so that your damage dealers can both survive and destroy the enemies in spectacular AOE fashion. In particular, the most successful runs have included such heroes as: Viper, Mars, Omniknight and Sniper, though Winter Wyvern can be substituted for Omniknight with similar success. Having a proper tank, a proper heal, and two heavy damage dealers who can provide AOE damage seems consistently imperative, however I’ve seen runs that include three healers and one DPS, or three melee and one range, with relative success as well.

The Right Direction

In total, there are three different paths your team can continuously choose from as you travel deeper within the labyrinth. If your team is dangerously low on individual lives, and similarly low on gold, you may want to consider taking the path that provides your team with extra lives, which is marked by a large heart. If an absence of lives isn’t an immediate concern, you may choose either the chest (which provides items) or the gold path (which provides extra gold at the end of the round). Both the gold and the chest paths will provide more of each based on the depth your current dungeon resides in. However, it’s generally a good idea to avoid certain pathways, as some are harder than others. For instance, any path that is self-described as ‘Traps’ should be avoided at all costs, and though you may feel that a trap specific level is easy for yourself, rarely does the entire team survive unscathed, and usually quite the opposite.

Items

In general, the right items for your hero usually have one specific commonality (they are extremely effective late game). In regular Dota 2, it’s obviously important to build items that have a direct impact on the early and mid game. However, in Aghanim’s Labyrinth, everything you purchase should scale to your late game builds. This means avoid items like Mjollnir, and Drums of Endurance, and focus on items like Octarine Core, Heart of Tarrasque, Sange and Kaya, and MKB. Similarly, every hero at some point needs to provide themselves with a survival item, and players should not be tempted to build for pure damage, since the final boss has little care for aggro-ing your tank and will attack everyone with the same level of hate and malice. NOTE: All heroes who cannot move quickly, need to buy a force staff to avoid the final boss’ lasers. The exception to this rule maybe weaver, since his sukuchi is effective enough at outrunning the aforementioned ‘laser beams’. Finally, it is important to note that both Aghanim’s Scepter and Divine Reaper are both purchasable, as long as buy the necessary ingredients.

And Lastly…

At the end of each run, win or lose, you’ll acquire points that can be spent in a special subsection of the Battle Pass. The skill tree is broken into three main branches, which includes Strength, Agility, and Intelligence. For the most part choose whichever branch that you prefer, and attempt to stick to that attribute in the hero selection screen. Whether you’ve played Aghanim’s Labyrinth before, or are deciding to give it a shot, I hope this basic guide has helped. Remember to take your time in deciding which path to take, which item to buy, and which skills to buff and always play as a team. Aghanim’s Labyrinth is certainly one of the better game modes we’ve seen in recent years, so if you’re anything like me, you’ll absolutely love it. Check out  our latest article here, on Xbox News: Connection and Cloud Gaming