Getting started
Deadlock is a MOBA wearing a shooter: every match is the same five-step loop — pick a hero, farm souls, buy items, level abilities, smash objectives.
Getting started means learning one repeatable match loop and knowing where to practice it. Master the loop on a single hero and the rest of the game opens up.
The core loop
Every match is 6v6 across three lanes, each lane a 2v2. You spend the first ~10 minutes laning: last-hit troopers to bank souls, secure your own soul orbs, and deny the enemy's. Souls buy items from the shop in four ascending tiers — sorted into Weapon (orange bullet damage), Spirit (purple), and Vitality (health/armor) — while level-ups hand you Ability Points to upgrade your four abilities. Keep the two damage colours straight: orange = bullet, purple = spirit. Once you out-gear your lane you break the objective chain that opens the map: Guardian, then Walker, then Base Guardian, then Shrines, then the Patron. Objectives pay huge souls (a Guardian is worth about 1,500, a Walker about 4,000). Jungle camps add income on the side — after the 05-22-2026 patch the medium camps first spawn at 5:00 (down from 6:00), with strong camps and vaults at 8:00. The mid-boss (the Rejuvenator) respawns every 7 minutes and its buff lasts 4 minutes; taking it late can simply end the game. That same patch trimmed every hero's base HP by 10 and made Shrines invulnerable until one pair of Base Guardians is destroyed, so there's no skipping straight to the core.
Where to play and how to drill
There's one main queue, "Play Deadlock" — a 6v6 match where normal and ranked have been merged into a single pool, so every game both feeds your hidden MMR and updates a public rank badge (the 11-step ladder runs Initiate, Seeker, Alchemist, Arcanist, Ritualist, Emissary, Archon, Oracle, Phantom, Ascendant, Eternus). You pick three preferred heroes before you queue, and the system tracks a Core MMR plus a hero-specific rating built from your last 20 games on that hero. To practice without tanking real games: Sandbox is a solo map with free souls and instant levels where you can spawn dummies and bots, max a build in seconds, and rehearse combos and last-hit timing; Bot Match is a full game against AI on easy/medium/hard; and Street Brawl is a fast single-lane 4v4 with shared resources, ideal for warming up aim and combos. The experimental "Hero Labs" queue lets you try unreleased heroes but only unlocks after roughly 50 games, so ignore it while you're learning.
How to play it
Pick ONE hero and stick with it for your first 20-plus games — learning the match loop matters far more than hero variety, and the matchmaker rates you per-hero anyway. Treat farming as the job: aim to never miss a last-hit, and pull the trigger on enemy soul orbs to deny them, because a denied orb is income they will never get back. Spend your souls instead of hoarding — an item in your hands beats the same souls sitting in the bank — and buy from all three categories, not just Weapon. Don't chase kills into the fog; early on a clean lane and a dead Guardian are worth more than a risky pick. After laning, group up and convert won fights into objectives along the path, because that, not your kill count, is how you actually win. Before you queue for the day, warm up: turn on infinite souls in Sandbox to drill your combo and your last-hit window against trooper waves, then play a bot match or a Street Brawl so your first real fight isn't your first fight of the day.
Raw dataidentity & API
identity
- id
- mechanic_getting_started
- slug
- getting-started
- category
- progression
- flowStage
- start
- aliases
- new player guide, beginner, how to play, what to learn first, basics, game modes, casual, unranked, queue, matchmaking, hero labs, sandbox, practice, bots, bot match, training, tutorial, onboarding, first match, how to start deadlock
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- manual:mechanics/getting-started
- updatedAt
- 2026-06-06T00:00:00.000Z