Dota Underlords - Valve's Auto Chess

Thank you

Boy, I have to say I really love this. I’ve run into zero bugs so far, and the team building and moment to moment choices in this, along with fishing for unit upgrades is really fun. The only problem I have, is a few grumbles about information on synergies when trying to find a good combo, but that’s something that will come with game knowledge.

If someone wants a key add me on steam, I think my username there is timsfker.

I’d love to give this a try, sent a friend request.

So being my steam friend might be too high a barrier for some people (aww), so I will actually just paste the remaining two keys here:

8LQ4K-7R5H2-WH4PE

8LQ5B-9TZ7I-K2A07

Replace the “Q” with “Y”.

I grabbed the second one. Thanks @Tim_N for supporting my laziness!

And someone else grabbed the first one.

I don’t have a giveaway key, I got mine from Bobtree.
But just yesterday Valve said that they are still planning to start open beta “this week” so you’ll likely be able to play today or tomorrow.

And it’s out:

http://underlords.com

I’d been thinking that it wasn’t really possible to do builds around a single carry unit, like in Auto Chess, due to just having one item per hero. Turns out it’s totally possible. I got Forged in Battle as an early item pick two games in a row. This item gives Brawny units (i.e. Auto Chess orcs) +50 max HP for each unit they’ve killed.

The first time around I didn’t really manage to do anything with it. Had a Beastmaster with maybe 10-15 kills, which is really nothing. So the second time around I just concentrated on trying to stack up kills for the Brawny units. So get a Drow Ranger for the attack speed boost, a Pudge for the Heartless synergy just for the armor. Run multiple low-level copies of the same unit just to build the odd kill for the second copy rather than keep it on the bench (the kills transfer over when units are merged). And rotate the items such that new Brawny units started with whatever boosted health and defense, and then ones that had built up a good stack of kills would have the attack items.

It looked pretty bad early on, but kept building up steam until half way through the game it felt like I couldn’t lose. The result was a 3* Beastmaster with 118 kills, and something like 9k HP.

Whoa, nice one.

By the way guys, this is not only out for PC but also apple and Android.

I’m having a really good time with it.

I just ended up with Forged in Battle in the tutorial on my phone, plus the smuggler which gives you better loot. Now my luck has been spent before even playing a regular game.

So, I was kindly gifted a key for this interesting-seeming game but have no idea at all how to play it. I have no experience with the original mod, nor with DOTA, so I’m without any context here. The in-game tutorial doesn’t seem to be functional yet - are there any resources I could be pointed to? Text is better, but video will do in a pinch.

The tutorial worked for me on the phone. Worst case you can watch someone like Quill18’s youtube videos of the mod. Kripparian should also have some streams on twitch of this particular game.

It’s there now on PC too. I guess they just got it up and running today. Nevermind!

This seems pretty fun, but games last a lot longer than I expected. Well, the tutorial game did - I didn’t realize how many rounds were involved!

With the mod, and the mobile version of autochess it can go upwards of 30-40 minutes if you end up among the last people. The tutorial probably seems longer here as well, because moving to the next round is dependent on you clicking that play button instead of a timer running and the next round starting whether you are ready or not.

The tutorial seems a bit bugged. After the game ends it just sits there and doesn’t say anything to you or prompt you to go back to the main menu.

I’ve been spending the last couple of days trying to figure out what level of hero to invest in. It’s been really tricky to figure out of a tier 2 something is really better than a tier one something else with 2 stars. It’s not at all the case that just because something is a higher tier of hero, it’s “better”, especially with all the synergies.

I thought I had a really good idea, to spend no gold until I got to round 15 or so (i.e. not upgrading or re-rolling the shop, and just picking new units when I got to a new tier). The idea being, that I would only be upgrading units that were tier 3 and above, so I wasn’t putting resources into a tier one unit. This also takes advantage of the losing streak bonus, and you don’t really take much damage the first 15 rounds or so. It actually worked really well a few times, and failed horribly a few others, still confused lol.

There is a lot to unpack in this game, especially as fast as it comes at you in multiplayer. I may go back to bots and pause until I really learn all of the heros and good combos. In multiplayer, I just feel like I’m flying blind most of the time.

This is a viable strat. Not only from the losing streak, but racking up the gold early gives you the benefits of interest earlier than the other players. There’s also a global buff that gives you +1 gold from losing. If you happen to stumble onto that early the strategy gets even better.

I have yet to see someone win an actual game doing this, though.