A beginner's guide to Diretide

Candy Chaos

The first part of the game. Teams are required to deposit as many Greevil Taffys as they can into their baske which is located at their side's ancient camp spawn. The team with the highest count of Taffy as the timer ends will win the first phase of Diretide. All your teammates will receive experience and gold when a Taffy is dropped into the basket. Keep in mind that every candy picked up will reduce your max hp by 7.5%. It will only take 13 candies to reduce your hp down to 1, meaning you literally die from any source of damage.

Both teams start out with 25 Taffys each and will have eight minutes to gather as many Taffys as they can before the next mode begins.

Similar to a normal Dota game, creeps will spawn every 30 seconds and among the spawns, will be a baby Roshan. The baby Roshan, spawns once every three waves and will drop two Greevil Taffys if an enemy player is within about 800 range of it when it dies. The baby Roshan spawn is however, very tanky and may take more than a few hits before it goes down. Alternatively, you can also invade the opponent's basket, located at their ancient camp. A Taffy will be dislodged about every 2 seconds when you attack it and these Taffys can be collected. Opponents are able to teleport straight to their basket to defend their precious candy. It is an extremely high risk, high reward way of gaining an advantage. Not only are you increasing your Taffy count, you are also decreasing your opponents'. Click here to see where the baskets are located.

How to tackle Candy Chaos?

As mentioned above, stealing candies off the opponents' bracket is the best way to gather Taffy. However, that does mean that your hero has to cross the river, go uphill and hit the pumpkin while your enemies have full vision of you. The pumpkin buckets have True Sight and give vision, meaning that even the sneaky invisible heroes like Rikimaru will be in plain sight. You must make sure you have the right sort of heroes to quickly go in, pick up a couple of candies and come right out. Heroes with escape mechanisms or the ability to fly over terrain thrive in Candy Chaos. Here are some of the heroes we would recommend.



Storm Spirit Slark Ember Spirit Weaver Queen of Pain Magnus Anti-Mage Puck Mirana Batrider Morphling Nature's Prophet



Assuming that you are facing these sort of high mobility heroes, you will need to have wards scouting the danger zones from where enemies can and will zip in to steal a few candies before getting out.



Click on image to enlarge

Red: Spots where Radiant should ward

Yellow: Spots where Dire should ward

DO NOT BE GREEDY

Pick up three to four candies and get yourselves out of there. Getting six candies, for example, will reduce your max HP by 45%: if you had 1,000 hp to begin with, you will now only have 550 hp. That is easily one spell and two right clicks away from dying.

The Trickster Awakens



Roshan wants candy. Wallpaper by GlowingShutter. Click for 1920x1080.

Candy Chaos will proceed as usual with a very hungry Roshan.

8 minutes into the game, Roshan will leave his house (lair) and walk around from team to team asking for Taffy. He will stand beside you and ask you nicely at first but if you ignore him, he will hunt you down Chainsaw Massacre style. He will continue hitting his target until the target dies or anyone (even the enemy) gives him the candy he wants.

Assuming you do give him a candy, Roshan will sit down and eat it and then switches target to a hero on the opposing team. If you think giving him candy will solve the problem, no, it wouldn't. Giving Roshan Taffys will increase his movement speed and attack damage and this will be brought over to the third mode where you will be killing Roshan.

Roshan's target will be marked at the central timer.



What can you do?



Abaddon taking one for his team. Blinking onto the cliff.

"Screw the third mode, I want more candies in my basket," is what some would say before they feed Roshan the precious Taffys to get the aggro off themselves. This obviously means the Roshan will get stronger and stronger and will be a tough nut to crack in the third phase, but it will also ensure you have a fair 5v5 Candy Chaos till the end.

If you do not want Roshan to get stronger, Blink Dagger is the best solution. Roshan can't walk through terrain and blinking yourself onto an unreachable cliff will make sure you don't die to Roshan. Somebody in the game will just have to take one for the team to ensure Roshan does not get stronger.

At the end of the second mode, the team with the highest candy count in their basket and inventory combined will be crowned the winner and will receive items for their effort. In case of a draw, both teams will receive nothing.

Sugar rush

In a fit of rampage, Roshan will run off to either the Radiant jungle or the Dire jungle to eat all the candies he has collected. The main objective of the Sugar Rush mode is to kill Roshan, as many times as you possibly can in the time limit. Both the Radiant and the Dire will cooperate to take down Roshan together and it is obviously highly advisable to pause the game the second Sugar Rush begins to discuss things over with the opposing team. Every players in the game will have max gold and max level when starting this phase of the game.

The timer will not start until somebody touches Roshan. Everytime you kill Roshan, Roshan will increase in level and come back with more 15,000 more hp. Both teams will be given 2 minutes to kill Roshan with a 30 seconds increment every time Roshan dies.

The two teams that are able to kill or rather, damage Roshan the most will be glorified and earn places in the Diretide Hall of Fame. The ten players in the Hall of Fame at the end of each cycle will receive a very limited and possibly very expensive Platinum Baby Roshan.

So, what is the best combination to kill Roshan?

Honestly, we do not know. Diretide is very new and thousands across the globe are still constantly trying new combinations to damage Roshan the most. However, we do know a few heroes that should be in the composition when you are trying to go for the record.







Phantom Assassin Phantom Assassin has the highest critical hit in the game. If you are intending to go the damage route, Phantom Assassin is more or less perfect. With some damage items like Divine Rapiers, Phantom Assassin can bring down the first few levels of Roshan almost single-handedly.

Shadow Shaman With Refresher Orb and Scepter, Shadow Shaman's Serpent Wards can deal huge amounts of physical damage to Roshan. Besides that, Shadow Shaman can also hex Roshan to keep Roshan disabled so Roshan cannot use any of his skills. Shadow Shaman should always be coupled with other hex heroes such as Tinker and Lion.

Tinker With Re-arm in his disposal, Tinker does not need to wait for cooldowns and will deal high amounts of magical damage to Roshan. Dagon 5, Laser and Shiva's Guard is rather devastating.

Undying None of Undying's spells really work on Roshan except for his Ultimate, which, when coupled with Aghanim's Scepter, provides a 20% damage amplification to Roshan at all times. Undying is also commonly used as a tanker. With a Heart of Tarrasque, he will have no problems tanking for the team as well.

Sven Sven is arguably the second highest damage-per-second hero in the games. God's Strength will increase his damage by 200% and coupled with Daedalus, it will land some devastating crits on Roshan.

Troll Warlord Nothing like a Double Damage rune on everyone when he turns his ultimate on.

Some other smart tricks



Sven, PA, Doom. Magnus, Troll standing hitting Undying instead of Roshan.

1. Do not hit Roshan, hit Undying instead

All the record breakers this cucle have used Undying as a meat shield and attacked him instead directly hitting Roshan. Utilizing multiple Battlefury(s) for maximum cleave, this strategy creates the illusion that only half the heroes are actually hitting Roshan and therefore, causes him to not use some of his skills in early levels.

As you can see from the screenshot above, all the high DPS heroes such as Sven, Phantom Assassin and Troll Warlord are bunched up behind Undying. All of them have at least two Battlefury(s) and Rapiers for this purpose.



2. Buy Helm of Dominator in the early levels

There was one instance where all ten players bought Helm of Dominator very early on to capture neutral creeps that will buff their stats such as Alpha Wolf and Centaur. The neutral creeps are all placed safely behind them when they start hitting Roshan, and is moved away when Roshan starts casting his skills.



3. Buy a bunch of Drum of Endurance and have them transported by the courier

Drum of Endurance gives Swiftness Aura which gives attack speed aura and some damage. When activated, it also provides 10 extra damage. Since holding a Drum of Endurance is quite a waste of space considering you could be holding a Rapier, people place their Drum on couriers and have them transported and activated whenever the effect runs out.

Everybody gets an item after the game ends

For more information about all the items you will possibly get from Diretide and their functionality, you can read Jimo's guide on Steam forum here. We would like to thank Jimo for his guide in the making of this article to educate people on how to play Diretide strategically.