Beginners FAQ
By Kyo.
What are the lanes called? How are lanes assigned? What are the hero roles?
They’re referred to by the color they are on the map and on the transit lines. Lanes are assigned to players based on hidden MMR matchups, but are otherwise random. There are no hardline roles for each hero established, and everyone must farm and contribute actively to the team in their own way. Items and ability skill order will determine the role you play with your hero, even if some are inclined a specific way by default.
Why does it always seem like I’m behind on souls?
During the laning phase, you’re probably focusing too much on harass and not getting the last hits and denies on troopers. After laning phase, you need to be killing jungle camps between major map objectives.
An important part of keeping up in souls is also “catching” trooper waves, where you spot a wave of enemy troopers on the minimap approaching one of your guardians or walkers and move there in advance to last hit them so they are not wasted dying to the structure. Maintaining a high kill participation will also contribute to general soul gain, and when you are available to assist teammates in kills you should take the opportunity.
In addition to more obvious methods of collecting souls, you can also break crates and vases around the map after the 3 minute mark with any damage (or a dodge through them) in order to have a chance to receive souls.
Some areas have a substantial amount of these, like the subway tunnels connecting the secret shops to the outer lanes or the middle of the map where you fight mid-boss. While they don’t give souls, the golden idol statues when broken can give small permanent buffs to your hero that will add up over time, including:
- +2 Spirit
- +1.5% Fire Rate
- +4% Ammo
- +15 Max HP
- +0.75% Cooldown Reduction
- +3% Weapon Damage
Why do I never have enough ammunition to last hit?
This is usually caused by shooting at the enemy too much, or trying to shoot troopers on high health when you don’t need to. You only need to shoot the troopers once when their health bar is empty and they play a death animation, and then shoot the soul orb that exits their body once as well.
The item Ammo Scavenger can also assist with this, returning ammunition each time you successfully hit a soul orb. Alternatively, you can melee troopers to secure both the last hit and the soul orb values simultaneously at no ammo cost.
How EXACTLY do soul orbs work?
When you last hit an enemy trooper OR kill one of their heroes or structures (guardians, walkers), they will release green soul orbs. After a short amount of time these will disappear, giving you the full soul value. An enemy can shoot these souls in order to deny them, taking the money for themselves.
Due to this, you should always shoot orbs that are in danger of being contested by an enemy, but to save time and keep up tempo you do NOT need to shoot green orbs if there is no risk of an enemy attempting to deny, as you will receive full value when they expire.
Enemy orbs show up as orange instead of green, and you should prioritize shooting these in order to take souls away from the enemy with a deny. After about 10 minutes, ONLY the soul orb gives souls and last hitting the trooper does not, making confirming and denying even stronger.
What am I meant to do if I feel like I can’t win my lane?
Play safer and invest in regen items like Extra Regen, Restorative Shot and Healing Rite. Stay far back behind cover while focusing on denying enemy orbs while avoiding dying if possible. If your guardian is being heavily pressured, asking your teammates to assist you with a gank can sometimes help. If necessary, it’s fine to give up your guardian as a worst case scenario, but try to ensure you deny all of the souls released when it dies.
Is jungling worth it? Is there a dedicated jungling role? When should I clear camps?
Jungling is worth it, and all of the heroes in the game are capable of doing it to some degree. There is no such thing as a dedicated jungling role, as small camps take 2 minutes to spawn and all the others take until 7 minutes. Camps individually are also not worth as much as the trooper waves.
Clearing camps is something you should do whenever you aren’t busy with another major map objective (mid-boss, urn, taking enemy walkers for flex slots, managing waves). Camps are represented on the map with a little green triangle. Easy camps are just a triangle, medium camps are a triangle with one line beneath them and hard camps are a triangle with two lines beneath them.
All three normal camp types are visible in this minimap image, including the “safe” camp. Safe camps have one or two Sinner’s Sacrifice machines that look kinda like slot machines, and they can be broken with melee attacks in order to gain more souls (costing health per hit). It is optimal to use heavy melee attacks to take less damage when destroying them.
What are unsecured souls and how do I secure them?
Unsecured souls are gained by killing neutral camps in the jungle and from breaking crates, and are dropped on the ground on death for anyone to pick up. You can see how many you have by the red icon on the bottom left of your screen next to your soul counter.
Souls will slowly become secured over time, which is unreliable, and the best option to not lose them is to buy an item with them as soon as possible. The green number of souls you have INCLUDES the amount of unsecured souls you are carrying, and the unsecured number simply tells you how many you will drop on death.
How do levels and ability points work?
Your level is determined by how many total souls you have collected in a match, regardless of if you have spent them or not. If you hold ALT in game and mouse over the little flask at the bottom left of your health bar, you will see a display pop up that shows you at which values of total souls accrued you will obtain what bonuses. The level up bonuses include:
Where do I buy items?
Shops are available to buy items beside every lane, as well near the middle of the map and in your base. The base and mid “secret shops” stay open the entire match, while your lane’s shop will close once the local guardian has been defeated.
The item shop is too confusing / I don’t know what to buy?
From the main menu, click on the Heroes option and select your hero. In the top left of the screen will be a “builds” button that you can see player build recommendations in (this is disabled on the current patch as the build UI is being updated, you can still find builds in game and in the sandbox when you open the shop).
In a general sense, you want to buy several 500 soul tier 1 items during laning to increase your ability to trade damage and survive the lane, as well as a couple of core build 1200 soul tier 2 items if you’re doing well. Each time you purchase an item, it comes with a stat bonus on top of the listed stats relative to the tier of item it is as well as which category it is in (weapon gives % weapon damage, vitality gives %health, spirit gives a flat amount of spirit power).
What are flex slots? How do I get them?
Items in your inventory are sorted into blocks by category. The furthest left block is orange and is for weapon items, the second from the left is green and is for vitality items, the second from the right is purple and is for spirit items, and the final block on the far right are flex slots.
Flex slots differ from the other categories in that you may buy ANY item from ANY previous category for them. In order to unlock each flex slot you will need to in order:
I’m not sure what to do with my hero, how can I learn what I should be doing with them?
The watch tab in the main menu allows you to spectate matches, viewing better players will allow you to develop an understanding of what makes heroes strong and what they want to do on the map. Generally the featured matches are of higher level players, although this can be untrue if those matches are full of spectators and are moved to the end of the match list.
As the game is allowed to be publicly shown now, you may also find high level players streaming or creating videos.
What is Spirit Power/how do I tell what scales with it?
Spirit is a damage type represented in game by the color purple, the same as bullet (also known as weapon) which is represented by the color orange. Spirit Power is also a stat that you can gain through items, and certain abilities and hero stats scale with it.
You can tell that something scales with Spirit Power by the purple star with an up arrow being beside it, and can see the exact amount it scales by holding the alt key (by a function of Base Value + (Spirit Scaling*Spirit Power). The purple fire icon indicates that the damage type is Spirit.
How do you tell the timing for a dash jump?
Your stamina bar will flash blue to indicate the dash jump timing after you dash. Learning the timing for this is important, as a dash jump uses the same stamina as two dashes but goes further. This can be utilized to engage in fights, escape from enemies, or simply to move around the map at a quicker pace to be where you need to be.
What’s up with melee? When / Why would I parry?
Melee does a base amount of damage increased by your level and your weapon items (orange items). There are also some melee specific items to buff it in various ways. Parrying (F by default) stuns any enemy that melees you during it, and can be used in reaction to charged punches.
While stunned from a parry, the enemy hero will take more damage from your own melee attacks. Certain heroes like Abrams like to melee a lot, and can be parried often too. Additionally, melee can be used to secure trooper kills without any chance for the enemy to deny their soul orb.
What is the soul urn?
An objective that spawns inside the chalk outlines towards the inner sides of the yellow or purple lanes. It spawns in 10 minutes the first time it appears, and you can carry it to whichever spawn it DIDN’T appear on in order to collect souls for your entire team. As the one capturing the urn you receive 25% bonus souls and +1 Ability Point, but the reward is otherwise split evenly between your teammates.
You can’t cast abilities, use items or fire while holding it, and souls generated by it can be denied, so make sure to shoot or melee them before leaving after you deliver it. If you have a movement ability, you can cast it at the very beginning of the timer to pick up the urn and it will stay active while holding it.
What is the mid-boss and why can’t I hurt it?
An objective that spawns 10 minutes into the match. If you manage to kill mid-boss, he will drop an item called the rejuvinator after a short delay and a global announcement. The rejuvinator allows your entire team to respawn 50% faster once, as well as buffing all of your troopers with +50% HP and increasing your fire rate to help you push. He is located at the bottom middle of the map, represented by a yellow winged icon on the minimap.
The boss has a DPS check you must pass to hurt it, you must stand in the lower area of the room and he cannot be damaged if he isn’t attacking someone. The rejuvinator can be collected after defeating mid-boss by hitting it with a heavy melee after it finishes its descent, and it can be stolen by the enemy team during this time.
How does getting shot off the transit line work?
If you attach to a transit line and are shot by an enemy, you will be stunned and take a burst of damage after falling to the ground. This can often result in death, and should be avoided by not attempting to attach to the lines during active combat or while enemies are near.
If you’re attached to a line safely for 3 seconds (or instantly if you attach from inside your own base), you will get a buff that makes you immune to being shot off the line that is indicated by a blue glow around your hand.
How does move speed work? What is sprint speed?
All heroes have a base move speed that is visible on the bottom left of your screen during gameplay, denoted by an image of a little running guy and a number in m/s. This is reduced while firing your weapon. Sprint speed is a stat available on several items, and innate to a select few heroes including Bebop and Lady Geist.
Sprint speed is added to your move speed as long as you haven’t taken any damage in the last few seconds, and is denoted by a change in the running animation of your hero and white lines trailing behind you.
What are those grey walls / what’s a cosmic veil?
At various places around the map you will come across Cosmic Veils that either look greyscale or tinted with a rainbow shimmer. These will never block movement, but only allow sight one way. If you are on the grey side, you cannot see to the other side of the barrier. If you are on the rainbow side, you can see through the barrier as if nothing was there.
What are those orange and purple bars beside my health?
These bars are shields. They will take damage of the appropriate type before your health is reduced, with the orange bar being for weapon damage and the purple bar being for spirit damage. If your shield is damaged, it will take 20 seconds to start recharging if it isn’t fully depleted or 60 if it is. Shields do NOT inherit resists from items such as bullet armor and spirit armor, unlike your health.
What do I do after I take the enemy guardian in my lane?
You should then look to assist teammates with ganks, group up with your team for map objectives such as the urn, enemy guardians / walkers and mid-boss and otherwise look to farm camps and trooper waves on the map to keep your lanes pushed out and your income rolling in.
Do souls get shared, or do only I get the souls when I last hit?
Souls are split evenly to everyone present based on vicinity, except for hero kills which give the majority to the killer. Before 10 minutes in a duo lane, both laning partners are given full soul value while near each other from the troopers. Also before 10 minutes, half of the soul value of a trooper is given on the last hit and then another half on the soul orb confirm. After 10 minutes, souls are ONLY given by the soul orb and not the initial last hit, making denies extremely strong.
If someone leaves my game, what do I do / how do I sub in?
You can ask for someone to sub in, providing the match ID for them to join on, and report the leaver in the end scoreboard with the red R beneath their entry if it was intentional. You can press the P key on your keyboard to pause the match if you think the player will return soon. If someone abandons a match, it becomes safe to leave for all other players. If you wish to sub into a match you can spectate it and then look at the bottom right of the ESC menu for the substitute button. This can take some time to show up, and depending on how the player left the match may not become available at all.
How do I view my match history? Are there replays?
Click on the view profile button at the top right of the main menu. From there, select a match to replay the demo. If you receive a chunk error warning when attempting to download the demo, simply view a different match before coming back to the one you actually want to watch.
Can I convert my CS / other Source game sensitivity to this game?
Try your other source game’s sensitivity multiplied by 0.5
How long will the test last/how do I invite my friends?
The test is intended to last until release for the time being, you can invite friends from the main menu on the bottom right.
How do I change servers?
The test is currently on NA Central (Chicago), EU (Stockholm), Asia (Hong Kong), South America (Santiago) and Oceania (Sydney). In order to change your preferred server you can open the console with the F7 key by default and enter:
- citadel_region_override -1 (Automatic)
- citadel_region_override 0 (NA-C)
- citadel_region_override 1 (EU)
- citadel_region_override 2 (Asia)
- citadel_region_override 3 (SA)
- citadel_region_override 5 (OCE)
I sincerely hope this was helpful. Good luck to you!
More Guides:
- Deadlock – Quick Guide to The Jacob Lash
- Deadlock – How to Play Anytime
- Deadlock – Grey Talon Build (Spirit Power + Mobility)
- Deadlock – Wraith “You Can’t Kill Me” Build Guide
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