Mechanics

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How the game works, in plain terms: the economy, combat, movement and objectives, with real numbers, a resist calculator and a crowd-control index.

1 Pick a hero 2

Start from role, complexity, weapon, abilities, and what the hero wants to do in fights.

Getting started The whole game is one loop: farm souls, buy your power spikes, turn them into objectives.

Hero roles, tags & complexity Deadlock has no fixed roles — pick by what the hero DOES in a fight, not by a label.

2 Win lane 3

Learn souls, last hits, denies, troopers, and the first item timing.

Lanes and troopers Win YOUR lane first: out-last-hit, deny when free, push only when you can rotate back.

Souls Souls are everything. Secure your own orbs first; deny only when it is free.

Soul orbs & denies Secure beats deny. You win lane by getting YOUR souls, not by stealing theirs.

3 Buy items 3

Read Weapon, Vitality, Spirit, tier costs, actives, passives, imbues, and upgrade paths.

Shop tiers, investments & components Buy on your power spikes. Each tier roughly doubles the last — never sit on souls.

Imbues Imbue items don't buff you across the board — when you buy one, you bind it to a single ability, and its effect plus any ability stats it carries only touch that one chosen ability. Which ability you pick steers your skill order and your whole build, and changing your mind means selling and rebuying.

Active vs passive items Most items in the shop are passive: buy one, slot it, and the stats and effects just apply on their own. Active items are different — each is an extra ability bound to Z, X, C or V with its own cooldown, and because there are only four keys you can run at most four actives at once.

4 Spend AP 2

Use unlocks, 1/2/5 AP upgrades, skill order, and build priorities together.

Hero levels & ability points Spend AP on your win-condition first. The 1 / 2 / 5 steps unlock the real power.

Builds & the build browser A build is a plan: your spikes, your actives, and the counter the game is asking for.

5 Take fights 4

Compare damage types, resists, crowd control, parry windows, movement, and stamina.

Bullet & Spirit resist (armor) Resists stack multiplicatively — the first 30% is worth more than the next. Match resist to the threat.

Status effects & CC Slow is everywhere — Debuff Resist is rarely wasted. Save your hard CC for the kill.

Parry Parry on reaction to a heavy-melee wind-up: it stuns and amps them. Whiff and you are punished.

Stamina, charges & sprint Movement is damage you never take. Learn dash-jump and zip-dash first; arrive with stamina.

6 Play the map 4

Track Guardians, Walkers, Shrines, Patron, flex slots, Urn, Mid Boss, and Rejuvenator.

Objectives Souls win fights; objectives win games. Trade kills for Walkers, flex slots and map control.

Flex slots Every Walker you kill unlocks a flex slot — more active power in fights. Prioritise Walkers.

Soul Urn The Urn is free souls and tempo. Deposit when safe; contest theirs as a team, not a hero.

Mid-Boss & Rejuvenator Mid Boss drops the Rejuvenator — a team-wide comeback / closeout buff. Take it with vision and a won fight.

7 Follow meta 1

Use patch notes, hero/item update history, ranked context, and player leaderboard movement.

Ranked, MMR & leaderboard Climb by hitting your tier’s benchmarks — damage, last-hits, objectives — not just KDA.

+More references17

Active reload Active reload is a quick-time event you only get from the Active Reload weapon item: while reloading, press Reload as the marker hits the highlighted band on the bar to instantly finish the reload and gain a short burst of fire rate, bullet lifesteal and move speed. Nail it in a fight and it's free damage and sustain; whiff it and you just reload normally, no harm done.

Boons (level-up stats) Each level crosses a soul threshold and grants a Boon — your passive power curve. Keep farming to spike.

Dash-jump & slides Dash-jump cancels a dash into a jump to fling you much farther than the dash alone; chaining that launch into a slide and a slide-jump carries the speed for far less stamina than dashing twice. It's how slippery heroes rotate, dodge shots, and slip out of fights.

Dash, air dash & air jump A dash is a quick burst-step in any direction; you can fire one off the ground, fire one in mid-air, and tap an extra air jump to reset your trajectory. Each move costs a stamina charge, so the player who keeps one in reserve for the dodge is the one who wins the fight.

Glossary & meta The words the community actually uses — souls, denies, flex, midboss, boons — in one place.

Guardians Guardians are the towers that gate every lane: the first Guardian out front, plus the inner Base Guardians that wall off the enemy's Shrines and Patron. They're tanky team objectives — cracking one hands your whole team souls, opens the lane, and (for the lane Guardians) unlocks build space — but they punish anyone who tries to solo them.

Headshots & bullet falloff Every gunshot carries two range-and-aim modifiers: a headshot lands on the head hitbox for a 1.65x weapon-damage bonus and flashes yellow, while bullet falloff shaves damage down the farther your target is. Your real bullet DPS is aim multiplied by positioning.

Last-hitting Last-hitting is landing the killing blow on a trooper or jungle creep so its souls go to you. Only that final hit claims the bounty, which is why winning lane is about timing kills, not out-damaging the wave.

Light & heavy melee Every hero has a melee on one button: a quick light tap for finishing and free damage, and a charged heavy that winds up, lunges you forward, and hits far harder. The heavy is your gap-closer and burst, but the windup is readable and parryable, so melee is a mind game, not a free button.

Mantling & wall jumps Mantling auto-climbs you over low ledges at zero stamina cost, and wall-jumping kicks you off a surface to redirect or scale walls — together they let any hero reach high ground and juke without spending an ability. The May 2026 patch added a stamina-regen brake so you can no longer spam wall jumps inside a brawl.

Net worth, leads & comeback Net worth is the running total of souls each player and each team has earned all match — the headline number on the scoreboard and the truest read of who's ahead. Leads snowball into earlier items and won fights, but Deadlock funnels extra catch-up souls to whoever's behind, so a lead only matters once you spend it and press it.

Neutral camps & breakables Denizen camps, Sinner's Sacrifice machines and breakable crates are your second income stream on top of lane. The catch: the souls they pay arrive unsecured, so they take a few seconds to bank and you drop them if you die before they finish.

Shields & barriers Shields and barriers stack a pool of temporary health on top of your HP bar that soaks incoming damage of every type before your real health is touched. Unlike a resist percentage, a barrier is a fixed pool that burns down and goes on cooldown — but nothing the enemy does can shred it away.

Shrines & Patron The Patron is the giant idol at the heart of each base and the only thing you must destroy to win the game. Reaching it is the hard part: you break a pair of Base Guardians to unlock the two Shrines, smash both Shrines, then grind the Patron through two phases while it heals, fires lasers, and gets tankier for every defender guarding the pit.

Walkers Walkers are the towering lane bosses standing guard behind each Guardian — the second objective in every lane. Cracking a pair of them open is the mid-game power spike: it swings thousands of souls and pushes your whole team toward flex slots.

Weapon vs Spirit damage Deadlock has exactly two damage types. Weapon (bullet) damage is your gun and most basic items, and it climbs as you level; Spirit damage is your abilities and tech items, and it climbs with Spirit Power. Reading which color is shredding you tells you what your enemy built — and what you should build.

Ziplines Ziplines are the team-colored transit lines that run the length of every lane and ring the map; hop on with your jump key and they carry you hands-free so you can shoot and cast while you travel. They're the backbone of rotations — but your reach is gated by how far your team has pushed, and you ride fully exposed, so an enemy can shoot you off for a chunk of HP and a stun.