In-depth Guide and Analysis to Gold in Dota 2

Many players will ask this question whether they are supports, carry , offlane etc...
                                             

How do I get more gold in Dota 2?

Gold is an essential resource in Dota 2, with Gold you can acquire expensive items to dominate your opponents, get wards for map control and having timely buybacks to save your barracks from destruction.

First we have to understand the concept of Gold in Dota 2. In this Article I will cover on Reliable / Unreliable Gold and Gold regarding Hero Kills and Assists.

Part 1 - Understanding about Gold

It is not that simple as to killing Heroes or Creeps will get you gold but what are the types of Gold you can get? What are the other ways to get gold and which is the best way to get them?

Types of Gold

There are two types of Gold in Dota 2 

Reliable Gold

Unreliable Gold

- Facts about Reliable Gold 

  •You WILL NOT LOSE Reliable Gold when dying
  •You use Reliable Gold last when buying items 
  •You use Reliable Gold first when Buying Back
     •Can only be gained by
                 1) Killing / Getting Assists Heroes
                 2) Shared Gold from Towers (Not the lasthit)
                 3) Shared Gold from Roshan (Not the lasthit)
                 4) Hand of Midas 
                 5) Track Gold 
                             

 - Facts about Unreliable Gold

• You lose only Unreliable Gold when dying
• You spend Unreliable Gold first
• Can be obtained by

             1) Killing Creeps , Wards , Neutrals, Last hit on Tower / Roshan

             

             2) Gold per Second [ You get 1 Unreliable Gold every 0.6 Seconds]

             

             3) Skills such as Goblin Greed and Devour 

                                                       

             4) Selling items

Note : Buying and Selling Items

It is a known strategy that you can buy and sell items in the Side Shop as done by DK.Burning and other players to make use of the Regeneration Items in the Side shop (eg. Buying a Ring of Health for 9 Seconds and selling it away will allow you to regenerate a total of 45hp for free). There is a drawback to this strategy. If you were to spend Reliable Gold to buy the Ring of Health in the Sideshop and selling it, it will convert your Reliable Gold to Unreliable Gold which may affect certain scenarios. Do take note of this that buying and selling items in the side shop is not entirely 'Free'.

How do I check how much Reliable Gold and Unreliable Gold I have?

                         

Hover your mouse over your Gold in-game.

Spending Gold & Saving up Gold

So how can we use this knowledge to our advantage? Lets focus on this important difference between Reliable and Unreliable Gold

You will only lose Unreliable Gold when you die !

One technique we can use is for us to note around how much Unreliable Gold we have and how much Reliable Gold we have left. In certain situations it can be helpful to us.

1) When we are dying.

It is a strategy to buy items or to use our gold before we die to reduce the amount of Gold lost due to death, since we know that we will only lose Unreliable Gold due to hero deaths, we can spend up to all our Unreliable Gold only. This will allow us to keep a certain amount of Reliable Gold and not waste it to save up for our big items.

2) Planning ahead for big items. 

Assume that you are an Earthshaker saving for a blink but you realise that you are quite far ahead and need to buy some items such as Wards Dusts and Teleport scrolls etc. Watch you unreliable gold, try not to spend your reliable gold until you have your blink. Since you will not lose Reliable gold due to spending, you can use reliable gold to build up for your expensive items such as Blink Dagger.

Part 2 - Gold from Hero Kills

We now know that Hero Kills grant us Reliable Gold but the question is how much Gold do you get and how is Assist Gold split about?

The Formula to calculating the amount of Gold Gained for getting a last Hit on an enemy Hero is:

(Streak value + 200) + (Hero lvl*9)

Here's a Table showing what Streak Value is :

Example : Killing a Level 10 Hero with a Wicked Sick will grant : 625 + 200 + 90 = 915 Gold to the person who got the last hit of the enemy Hero.

Then what about Assists? 

An important note to know that only allied Heroes that are within 1300 Range within the Death of the Hero will get the Assist Gold [Excluding the killer]. This means that even if you dealt damage to the target and gold an Assist in your scoreboard, you will NOT get assist gold if you are not 1300 range within the target when he died.

How much Assist Gold am I getting?

Assist Gold is calculated differently from Hero kills, it is independent on the dying Hero's Streak meaning it doesnt matter if the dying hero has a Killing Spree or Beyond Godlike, your Assist Gold will still be the same.

Assist Gold is Dependent on 2 Factors :

          1) Number of Heroes sharing the Assist Gold

          2) Level of the dying Hero

The formulas are:

1 Hero nearby : 125 + (12 x Enemy Hero's Level)

2 Heroes nearby : 40 + (10 x Enemy Hero's Level)

3 Heroes nearby : 10 + (6 x Enemy Hero's Level)

4 or 5 Heroes nearby : (6 x Enemy Hero's Level)

This shows that the more Heroes getting assist gold on the same kill the lesser each player will get.

A graph will better explain this

Table :

(Click to Enlarge)

Graph:

As observed from the graph:

      • The difference between having 1 & 2 Assist Hero is significant
      • The difference between having 3 & 4 Assist Hero is significant
      • Going for Higher Level heroes grants more assist Gold.

Lets look at another set of data regarding TOTAL assist gold depending on how many nearby allied Heroes sharing the Assist Gold 

Click to Enlarge

Graph showing Total Assist gold gained for each Hero Level

The graph shows that the TOTAL Amount of Assist Gold earned by team differs greatly dependent on the target's Hero Level.

Observation made:

•  At Level 6 and above, having 2 Assist Heroes grants more total Assist gold than 1 Hero
•  At Level 6 and above, having 4+ Assist Heroes grants more total Assist gold than 3 Hero
•  At Level 11 and above, having 4+ Assist Heroes grants more total Assist gold than 1 Hero
•  At Level 16 and above, having 3 Assist Heroes grant more total Assist gold than 1 Hero
•  At Level 20 and above, having 4+ Assist Heroes grant more total Assist gold than 2 Heroes
•  Having 2 Assist Heroes ALWAYS grant more total Assist Gold than 3 Heroes

How this information can be useful to you is very limited though. An example could be your Sand King is close to a Blink and you as another support could consider moving 1300 range away if the kill has already been 99% ensured in order for your other support to get more gold. Or when your team is behind by quite a bit you want to maximise your entire team's gold by going for more 4-5 man ganks after certain levels.

Conclusion

Having better understanding of the concept of Gold in Dota 2 is important and works hand in hand with understanding the act of obtaining Gold itself from farming. There are many guides on farming and I will soon cover farming on this blog. So do check back !

How to earn free Steam Wallet Money

Want to be able to earn free Steam Wallet money without going through all those scams websites where they ask you to share their webpage without getting anything?

Here's a few foolproof methods to get free steam money through Dota 2 !

Method 1) Selling unwanted items in your inventory

Too much extra items that you do not use in your inventory? You can sell them on the Steam market ! 

Step 1 - Open your inventory and click the sell button !

Step 2 - After clicking Steam will show you the prices that the item was last sold for recently

Step 3 -Then decide on a price ! Depends if you want to sell at the lowest price or higher a little !

TADA ! FREE STEAM WALLET MONEY

Method 2) Trading and Selling on www.Dota2Lounge.com

Dota2 Lounge, Betting, Trading etc all in one place.

This is how I made bulk of my money from. There are many different trading methods you can experiment around and find out yourself but here I am going to teach you the simplest method and lowest cost method.

Lets try buying and selling a Greevil Egg

Step 1- Be sure of a certain item price ! 

Go to Steam market and search for the item's price.

Steam App > Community > Market > Find the Search Bar Below

Type in the item we are looking for and press 'Enter' !

Take note of the listed price here. This is the lowest price you can sell the item for. You want to be able to sell the item at the lowest possible price so that it will assure you that your item will be bought instead of other peoples'.

Step 2 - Go to Dota2Lounge or any Dota 2 Websites and find a trade that you can profit from. 

An example is this guy is willing to trade 1 Empty Egg for 2 Random Rares. 2 Random Rares means any Rares that are not 'Colored' (Meaning its not Auspisious or Frozen etc.). You can buy a Random Rare in the Market for about 17c-20c. 2 Rares = 34c - 40c. Worse case scenario you earn about 17cents ! Rinse and Repeat = Profit !

 IMPORTANT NOTE - 

Do only make a trade if you can make a reasonable profit. There is something known as Steam Tax / Fees currently at 15% (5% Steam Fee and 10% Dota 2 Fee) In this case when we well the item for 57cents, we will only get 50cents, still its a profit of 6-10cents. If you can lots of items for sale you can earn a big amount.

Enjoy your free Steam Wallet funds ! Leave a comment too if you have any queries or feedback !

How to get free Dota 2 immortal items

The Dora community has done it and are going to receive free Dota2 immortal items .

Just by simply buying a compendium you will gain access to 1 of the 5 random immortal items

Shadow Fiend getting Ethereal Blade

A Dota Forum suggested with a unique SF build. Shadow Fiend with Ethereal Blade. Is this viable?

I understand that many people have tried this build and worked for them. Ethereal Blade deals damage equal to x2 of your Agility and causes the Unit to take extra Damage from Spells. Shadow Field with plenty of nuking power from his Razes should be able to take down most Heroes.

Combo :

Ethereal Blade -> Walk towards him -> Raze x3

This should net you a kill easily.

However is it really that good compared to the usual Shadow Blade into BKB and into Damage items ?

Looking at the pros and cons :

Pros:

1) Ethereal Blade causes him to easily aim his Razes since the Debuff has a slow components.

2) SF has a decent Agility gain allowing him to do decent damage with EB's active.

3) increases SF agility by 40 which helps to increase his attacking capabilities

4) Allows SF to be immune to Physical Attack allowing him to cast his Ultimate without being attacked (spells still can hit him)

Cons

1) Does not address SF's biggest weakness regarding his HP and lack of escape mechanism

2) Ethereal Form for SF can be burst down even faster than normal .

3) SF requires time to cast his razes thus within the intervals he can be burst down.

4) DIFFICULT BUILD UP. I believe this is the reason why EB should never be core on SF 5k gold is a lot of money and unless you are snowballing very hard it difficult to farm up this item when you have no escape mechanism and one of the easiest Heroes to gank.

I still feel the usual builds are better. Looking at the cons it clearly shows how unreliable EB is and how opponents can counter it (Pipe) . Its more of a fun a cheeky build compared to the usual.

6.78 DotA changelog

* Rage cooldown increased from 15 to 17 seconds

* Flamebreak cooldown increased from 11 to 14

* Tether movement bonus decreased from 20% to 17%

* Living Armor damage block instances from 7 to 4/5/6/7

* Chemical Rage bonus HP reduced from 300/600/900 to 250/500/750

* Gyrocopter attack range reduced from 375 to 365

* Team 2 now bans second instead of first in Ban Phase #2. (All other phases and orders are the same)

Pretty obvious that its an emergency Change log before TI3 starts . Hit pretty hard on first pick and ban materials regarding cooldown and Trent Protector now needing levels. They nerfed all the important picks and maybe we see something new at TI3

Familiars from Visage are no longer countered by Flak Cannon

As of the 26 June Patch. A bug has been fixed where Gyro's Flak cannon can hit Familiars. Now it will no longer select familiar a as a target. This means that Gyro will no longer be a counter to Visage's Familiars during team fights. Horray !

Items that activates Essence Aura from Outworld Devourer

These are the items that will activate Essence Aura from Outworld Devourer / Obsidian Destroyer. They will give 25% mana and has a 40% chance to proc.

Dust of Appearance 
Animal Couriers
Observer Wards
Sentry Ward 
Blink Dagger 
Ghost Scepter 
Buckler 
Tranquil Boots 
Medallion of Courage 
Arcane Boots 
Drum of Endurance (can be used even where there are no charges left) 
Pipe of Insight 
Force Staff 
Necronomicon (Level 2 and 3 only) 
Eul's Scepter of Divinity 
Dagon 
Veil of Discord 
Rod of Atos 
Orchid Malevolence 
Scythe of Vyse 
Shadow Blade 
Ethereal Blade 
Abyssal Blade 
Black King Bar 
Shiva's Guard 
Manta Style 
Bloodstone (LOL) 
Diffusal Blade 
Heaven's Halberd 
Mjollnir 
Satanic
Okay a few notable ones. Dusts and Wards do activate Essence Aura which could be broken if abused. Think about it. A Storm Spirit without Mana, casts Dust plants Sentry and Wards has a chance to regain back all his Mana. I wonder if these items remove Curse of Silence Debuff. Hmm.
OK do take note of a few practical ones. Mainly dusts and Drums without charges. This could mean life or death for certain Heroes like Skeleton King etc. Just pop a dust or click drum once and regain back 25% or more of your mana enough to cast 1 more spell. Could be potentially game changing.
SO ALL TAKE NOTE : DRUMS AND DUSTS ACTIVATE ESSENCE AURA WHICH HAS A CHANCE TO REGAIN BACK A PORTION OF YOUR MANA. YOU CAN ACTIVATE DRUMS WITHOUT CHARGES.
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