Deadlock Beginner Guide - Ten Tips and Tricks for Newcomers

Deadlock -Valve’s newest title- has many new players joining the game every single day. These players come from all kinds of genres, but Deadlock is still a MOBA first and foremost. If you’re not familiar with that particular genre, it can seem overwhelming quickly. Our Deadlock Beginner guide is the ideal resource for players who are completely new to games like these, and includes handy tips to get you started with this amazing game.

1. Optimize Your Video Settings

As with any competitive game, it is a good idea to tweak your settings before even jumping into a game. A stable framerate and low input lag will improve your experience and performance.

By tweaking your settings you can reduce this significantly while also improving the performance of your game. Be sure to read our existing guide on Deadlock Best Settings for an in-depth look at every setting in the game.

2. When in Doubt, Farm Souls

Souls are the main currency in the game. They allow you to buy items and upgrade your hero. As such, farming souls is very important. The stronger your hero is, the better the chances of winning the game.

So, you should always be farming souls. There are several ways to do this but, the main one is killing Troopers. They are the minions in Deadlock and killing them grants you souls.

While lane progression is important, don’t get tunnel-visioned and let enemies get a soul lead on you. Always be actively farming troopers and putting pressure on the enemies.

If you want to know more about how Souls work, feel free to read our article on everything you need to know about Souls in Deadlock.

3. Stick to One Lane

Speaking of lane progression: the most common mistake beginners make is switching lanes every time they die. This is especially the case for players migrating from shooters. It’s understandable, too: it’s always fun to head to where the action’s at, but this can hurt your team coordination.

Choose a lane at the start of the match and keep making progress in it. Of course, if a teammate needs help in another lane or if there is an opportunity to make a break in the enemy’s defenses, go for it. But, in most cases just stick to your lane and keep applying pressure there.

This ensures your teammates won’t be worried about the other lane as they will know you are there.

4. Buy Early-Game Items As Soon As Possible

This is quite self-explanatory: your goal in the early game is to buy your items as soon as possible. Although this loosely applies to all stages of the game, it’s even more important in the early stages of the game.

Early-game items like Basic Magazine or Healing Rite can be game changers depending on your hero. So, don’t lose yourself attacking the Guardian, troopers, or other heroes, and watch your soul count. When you have enough, retreat back to the shop and buy some items.

There is a shop near your Guardian in every lane so you don’t need to run back to base.

5. Look for Denizen Camps

If you have played a couple of rounds, you might have seen groups of one-eyed monsters on the map. These are called Denizens, and killing them gets you Unsecured Souls. The tutorial doesn’t mention Denizens, so a lot of new players are unaware of how important they are for farming souls.

Denizen Camps are divided into three categories according to difficulty and the souls they reward:

Small Denizen camps are weak and spawn around 2 minutes into the game. They are represented on the map by a small triangle.
Medium Denizen camps spawn at the 7 minute mark. Medium camps are marked on the map by a triangle with a bar underneath it
Large Denizen camps also spawn at the 7-minute mark. However, Large camps should be taken after 10 or 15 minutes as they are quite hard. Tier 3 camps are marked by a triangle with two bars underneath it.

Medium Camps are the best bang for the buck in terms of Souls. Firstly because of the abundance of these camps on the map. Secondly because they are not that difficult to clear. As the game progresses, you should try going for Tier 3 Camps.

Some heroes are better for Creeper farming than others. For example, McGinnis’ ultimate can take down an entire Tier 3 camp by itself (given it’s upgraded enough). A lot of teams assign the creeper farming job to one player, which is something you should try too.

6. Don’t Focus Only on Frags in The Early Game

While killing enemy heroes is good as it allows you to progress in a lane, doing this in the early game has diminishing returns. The respawn time in the early game is quite short, so even if you manage to kill an enemy hero, they will be back quite quickly.

Of course, go for the kill when a hero is weakened, but don’t make it your goal to only go for kills. In the early game, the main priority is to farm troopers, Souls and buy items. Only go for kills when you’re sure you can finish the job and get back to safety without dying yourself.

7. Secure and Deny Souls

Whenever an enemy dies, they will release Soul Orbs that ascend to the sky and break after reaching a certain point. The player that killed the enemy will receive the Souls from that kill when the Soul Orbs disappear after ~3 seconds. However, if anyone breaks that Soul Orb, the soul reward will go to that player.

In short, what you need to do is always shoot the Soul Orbs to secure them. Otherwise, the enemy will have a chance to steal your Souls. Similarly, try to steal enemy Soul Orbs too. Enemy Soul Orbs are colored orange and your Soul Orbs are colored cyan.

8. Have a Planned Build

It’s fine to experiment with different heroes and builds when you are new to the game. However, as you get familiar with the game and become more competitive, it’s important to start planning out builds for your main heroes. Understand what different items do and test how they work with your hero. The Sandbox is a great place for this.

You also don’t necessarily need to make a build from scratch. You can choose from builds made my other players from the “Browse Build” button in the Build Menu. Find one that works for you and tweak it to your preference.

Your build also changes from match to match. You might encounter a hero that uses a lot of Crowd Control attacks, so you might need to alter your build to counter that. As such, your build can change quite significantly depending on the match. The important thing is to be aware of this and make changes accordingly. The last thing you want to do is aimlessly buy items.

9. Keep An Eye Out For Crates And Gold Idols

The map is filled with wooden crates and shiny gold idols. Often, players just ignore them but they can get you some pretty nice buffs. Wooden crates drop Unsecured Souls and the Gold Idol can offer buffs like more fire rate, stamina health, etc. These buffs are very small like a 1.5% health increase, but every little bit can help, and breaking the Gold Idols costs almost no time. Do note that some crates and Idols won’t drop anything.

Always keep an eye out for both: they can easily be spotted and all you need to do is shoot them. So, while you repositioning or retreating, smash a couple of them for some quick rewards.

10. Complete the Spirit Urn Objective

The Soul Urn objective spawns at the 10-minute mark. It’s a simple pick-and-drop objective that rewards a ton of Souls if you complete it. The Soul Urn spawns at one of the two altars on either side of the map. All you need to do is pick it up and drop it at the other altar. Do note that the hero that carries the Urn can’t use any abilities, items, teleporters, or zip lines. Enemies can (and usually will) fight you for the Soul Urn.

We have a detailed guide on the Spirit Urn objective if you want more information.

Conclusion

MOBAs can be extremely difficult to understand at first. While the skill ceiling of these games is basically limitless, even the basic gameplay loop can be daunting to grasp if you’re new to the genre. This basic guide, along with the links to our other articles that we scattered throughout the map, should be a great source of help to get you started though.

Good luck, have fun!