Beginners Guide: Heroes of Newerth (HoN)

Main Lobby

MM (Match Making)

It's the big red button with writings "PLAY NOW!", computer pick random players who is queue for MM and assign too two teams. The MM automatically balance players based on its MMR(Match Making Ratio) and start the game. The difference when playing MM and public game, is you earn silver goblin coin(win/lose) in MM while you don't earn any coins in public game.

Create Game

This is where you create games with all available options to your wish and can also create practise game.

Public Games

List of queue games created by a host, that can be arranged to ping or game modes.

Match Stats

Records of  your previous games are recorded here and can be download to see game replay.

Herodex

View heroes basic information, ability details and your statistics in using the hero, also have the basic hero guides in using one hero effectively.

HoN Store

A place you can buy alternate heroes, account icons and symbols that can be bought using silver and gold goblin coins

Waiting Room

After choosing a game you wanted at the game queue list, you will be taken to the waiting room where you will wait till the free slot are occupied and ready to start.  If you wanted to see game information you can see the details at the middle of the screen, it contains the match name, match ID, host, server, map, game mode, game option and ping. And now let the game begin.

Picking Phase:

Time to pick a Hero, all the icons in the middle is the heroes you can use. But i already pick one, the name of the hero is "Monkey King" anyone know this hero? Tale of a legendary chinese hero who is expert in wielding a long red stick and have a kinton cloud "To the game".

Playing:

Sorry for the drawing, just wanted to pin-point important details in the game. I put numbers in the image so you can follow me nice and smoothly:

1. It's Monkey King, the hero i picked earlier, there is some indicator to know whether it is an enemy or a teammate, the HP bar above the MK is green that indicates it's a teammate.
2. An enemy, you can identify it by its HP bar which is red.
3. XP(experience point) bar every time you kill an enemy and destroy an enemy building you receive XP. If you manage to make a full cycle of XP, you level up and can improve your stats and gain one points of skill for every level.
4. Skill bar, every hero has a unique four skills and its up to you to figure out how to use them effectively.
5. HP(Hit Points) and MP(Magic Points) bar.
6. Gold earned in-game, needed to buy items at store, earned by killing creeps, heroes and enemy buildings.
7. Items purchase at store and can make your heroes more powerful.
8. The hero primary attribute, MK is an Agility type hero because of the symbol Bow with Arrow, Strength type have a symbol of a Hammer and Intelligent type have a symbol of a Book.
9. Hero status Icon.
10. Hero basic stats.
11. Minimap of the game.
12. Attack modifier, can only use one attack modifier at a time, if two modifier is used you can still switch to the other modifier manually by clicking the other modifier.
13. Game stats, its a record of the score of both team and your personal score

In Game Tips:

• A special power up spawns every two minutes in the river and can grant you movement speed, invisibility, regeneration, double damage, or illusions.
• Watch the Minimap. It is a great tool for keeping an eye on your enemy's position. Be careful for missing enemy heroes or allies coming to help you kill in your lane.
• Recipes are not useful on their own, you need all the components before they will do anything for you.
• Teamwork is essential to win. If you find yourself getting killed a lot while alone, stick with some allies.
• You can sell back an item for a full refund as long as it is within 15 seconds of when you bought it.
• When you read "Superior Magic" in a skill description, it means the skill will affect the target, even if it is magic immune.
• Easy way of communicating with team is the use of Voice chat.
• Be nice! A player will often ignore advice if you are screaming at them. Try saying it in a polite tone as a suggestion more than an order.
• Attacking enemy heroes when they are focusing on your teammate (and therefore ignoring you) can often turn a bad situation around. Use the opponents distraction to your advantage.
• When the opposing team has heroes with invisibility, use Dust of Revelation, Wards of Revelation, or a Bound Eye to reveal them.
• Look to see what skills are on cooldown from your team by highlighting their portraits top left.
• There are lots of places you can enter, the trees to hide or take shortcuts. Learning where these are will greatly increase your survival chances.
• Communication is important. Talk to your team, call for help, and listen to other players when they call a hero missing.
• Do not be afraid to lose. Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. Everyone was new at one point.
• There are many ways to use a hero and its up to you to experiment.

Monkey King HoN Spotlight

See Monkey King In Action

Well that all for now, those are only the basic info of the game. The best thing to learn is to play it, well as what they say experience beats everything. Till next time and hopefully I will start write another article. Thanks for reading my article.