Tutorial

VAINGLORY TUTORIAL

Overview

You control a single hero in a 3-player vs 3-player battle. Your goal is to shatter a giant crystal (called a Vain) in the center of the enemy team’s base on the opposite side of the map. Their goal is to shatter your Vain crystal.

You’ll travel down the lane from your base to the enemy base in attempts to reach their Vain crystal before they can reach and break yours. Along this path, you’ll encounter stationary turret cannons that will shoot you and your teammates on sight and kill them. You also have turrets on your side of the lane that will shoot down enemies. Enemy turrets are very dangerous to you; they will kill your hero in a few quick cannon shots. Yet to advance, your team must take down these turrets one by one.

Assisting you in this goal will be two other players on your team and an infinite supply of computer-controlled minions. The minions will automatically appear every few seconds in your base and travel down the path to the enemy's base, attacking any enemies that get in their way.

Enemy turrets are powerful but have a weakness: They will always attack your minions before they will attack you. If you approach the turret with minions near you, you will be temporarily ignored, giving you a brief opportunity to attack unopposed. Kill the enemy minions in your way and escort your minions up to a turret—then destroy it as fast as possible!

Your hero will grow from weak to incredibly powerful over the course of the aprox. 20-minute game. Your hero gains power three ways: by leveling up, by buying items and by upgrading the three special abilities depicted along the bottom of the screen. The more powerful your hero is, the easier it becomes to reach the enemy crystal. So, get as powerful as you can as quickly as possible. 

Always keep in mind, Vainglory is a race between both teams to see which team can level up and buy the most powerful items the fastest; the more powerful team will have a distinct advantage and a greater likelihood of victory. 

Controlling Your Hero

• Placing Your Hands on the iPad: You will control your hero entirely by tapping the iPad, so you can hold the tablet in any manner comfortable to you. Because of the game’s fast pace, we find the best way to play is to place your iPad on a table and use both hands to tap, using your index finger on each hand. This allows you to react very quickly—tapping your hero to run forward or briefly retreat in fractions of a second. Try using both hands and see what you like best.
• Movement: Tap anywhere on the screen to move to that location.
• Basic attacks: Tap on any enemy to attack it. Your hero will continue auto-attacking that target as long as it is selected.  It is not necessary to tap the screen again and again to attack an enemy hero or minion; just tap once to select the enemy and your hero will take it from there. If your currently selected enemy dies, your hero will pick a suitable target nearby and begin attacking, if possible.
• Your first ability: You start at Level 1, with one Ability Point available to spend. Tap on either of the [+] icons to learn your first ability. You can now tap that ability icon button to activate it. Your character can reach up to Level 12. With each level, you earn one additional ability point to upgrade an ability or learn a new ability.
• Going Home: If you’re low on health or energy, the [Home] button on the lower right of the screen can teleport you back to your base. The teleport requires five seconds of uninterrupted channeling, which will be cancelled by moving, attacking or taking damage.

On Your Screen

1. Your hero: Always centered on your screen with blue health bar.
2. Your level: The number before your username is your current hero level
3. Enemy hero: Enemies always have orange health bars
4. Friendly minions: Always colored blue with blue health bars over their heads
5. Enemy minions: Always colored orange with orange health bars
6. Enemy turret
7. Your items: If the item is in color, it can be activated for an effect.
8. Your three abilities: The [+] over an ability indicates that you can tap to upgrade / learn that ability
9. Withdraw button: Tap this to begin teleporting home
10. Hero info: Tap to learn more about your hero abilities, as time permits. (Note: Once on this screen, you can tap anywhere to toggle between descriptive detail and hero stats.)
11. Scoreboard button: Quickly see which items your allies and enemies have purchased. Great for making purchases to counter others' items.
12. Shop button: Tap to view items in the shop. You can view this anytime to see what you can afford and what you might buy next, but you will not be able to make purchases unless you're standing next to the middle shop or shop back at your base.
13. Your gold count: Displays how much gold you currently possess.
14. Kill count: Displays how many enemy heroes you've killed. (You must register the last hit on the enemy for this number to increase.)
15. Death count: Displays how many times you have been killed by enemy heroes.
16. Match time: Displays the time elapsed in the match. Use this to track time-based game elements such as the Gold Mine payout.
17. The communication pings: Use these to coordinate team tactics. (These pings will only appear on your allies' screens.)The Mini-map: See ally and enemy (if visible) positions across the entire battlefield

Game Map: The Halcyon Fold

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The Bases

Vain crystal: Shattering the enemies' Vain crystal is the main objective of the game. The Vain regularly spawns waves of minions and sends them along the lane towards the enemy base.

Spawning Platform: Where players start and teleport home to. The spawning platform quickly restores all of your health and energy and also allows you to shop for items.

The Lane

• Minions: Minions march down the lane and fight to their deaths. Minions are weak and are easy to kill, but in numbers they can tilt a battle and act as meat shields against enemy turrets.
• Turrets: Turrets deal massive damage. At low levels, a turret will kill you in 2-3 hits. Do not approach turrets without the help of some friendly minions to attract turret fire! Turrets generally prefer to attack minions, but will attack you under two scenarios:
  • You are the only available target in range. (This usually happens because you walk into turret range without friendly minions nearby.)
  • You attack an enemy hero inside turret range. Turrets are wired to defend their allied heroes. So if you hurt an enemy hero, a nearby turret will immediately target you instead of minions.

The Jungle

While the main objectives of the game are in the lane and bases, the jungle immediately below the lane provides important advantages that affect the battle above.

• Heal camps: Kill this monster to receive a heal and energy recharge.
• Money camps: Kill these two monsters for extra gold and XP.
• Minion Mines (appear at 4:00): Kill the miner to seize control of a Minion Mine. The miner will then respawn as your ally. This will gradually increase the size & power of your lane minions. However, these super minions also provide more gold and XP to the enemy when killed. You can attack an enemy-controlled Minion Mine to take control of it. If your team ever loses all Minion Mines, your minions will be reset back to their starting (weakest) level and size.
• Gold Mine (appears at 4:00): Attack this miner to seize control of the Gold Mine. The Gold Mine is always accumulating gold. When you seize the Gold Mine, it will pay out gold to your whole team. The miner will then respawn as your ally and automatically pay out to your team whenever gold reaches 100% again. At any time while the Gold Mine is under your control, the enemy team may kill the defending miner to take control of the Gold Mine.
• The Kraken (appears at 15:00): As you enter late game, the Kraken will emerge and replace the Gold Mine. The Kraken is a powerful monster that will require all three members of your team to defeat. If you defeat the Kraken, it will rampage down the lane and wrecks enemy turrets. If not subdued, the Kraken will advance all the way to base and help destroy the enemy Vain crystal.
• Middle shop: Provides an additional location where players can shop. (You can always shop at your base and when waiting to respawn.) Beware however: Enemies may still attack you while you’re shopping shop here!
• The brush: Scattered around the map are areas of brush. Brush provides stealth to anyone inside it. If you’re outside of a brush, you can’t see into it or past it. If you’re inside a brush, you can see outside of it, as well as enemies in the same brush as you.
  

Gold & Item Shop

EARNING GOLD

Your hero will automatically earn one gold coin per second. Consider this a salary for taking on such a risky endeavor as these battles turn out to be.

However, the main way you get gold is by killing enemies. Every enemy you kill will automatically give you some amount of gold. Killing minions and jungle monsters is the easiest. Killing enemy heroes will give you much more gold than killing minions. Destroying enemy turrets will give you more than killing enemy heroes.

Keep in mind that the gold bounty is always given entirely to whomever deals the final killing blow to an enemy. An enemy minion may take nearly all of its damage from you, but if your teammate steps in and executes the killing blow, that teammate will get 100% of the gold bounty. This game mechanic is called last hitting, and it is an essential rule to understand about how the game works and how players collect gold.

For example:

• When attacking enemy minions, let your minions do most of the work dealing damage. But make sure to step in at the last second to strike the killing blow to give you all the gold! If a friendly minion delivers the last hit, you will receive nothing.
• If you are low on health and want to attack a jungle minion that will heal you, get a teammate to attack the monster first and deal nearly all of the damage. Then, step in to deal the killing blow. You will get all of the gold and the heal. If your allyunderstands last hitting too, they will be perfectly okay with this, and will frequently encourage you to do it.

SPENDING GOLD

All heroes will be able to spend their gold at a shop that supplies powerful items of various kinds. You will be able to buy these items when your hero is on the spawning platform at your base, or if you visit the store that is in the middle of the map. You will always be able to open and view the catalog that the store offers at any time, anywhere in the game, but you will only be able to make purchases when you are in range of a shop minion (on your spawn platform or in the middle of the map).

Please note, items do not change the visual look of your hero, nor swap their in-game weapons for the new weapons acquired; items simply improve your hero stats in very useful and powerful ways by sitting in your hero's inventory. You do not need to further equip an item after you've purchased it; when you have bought the item and it is in your inventory, it is automatically granting you its bonuses.

Items generally improve these aspects of your hero:

• Movement speed: Purchase boots or items that indicate they boost movement speed (such as Warhorn).
• Max health: Increases your hero's total health and health regeneration.Armor: Reduces the damage your hero takes from nearly everything (exceptions: turrets and and many hero abilities).
• Cooldown acceleration: After you use an ability, it goes on "cooldown" and can't be used for a period of time. Items granting cooldown acceleration speed up the timers on your three hero abilities, so you can use those abilities faster.
• Energy: Increases total energy and energy regeneration, so you can use abilities more often.
• Weapon power: Increases the damage your hero deals from basic attacks.
• Attack speed: Increases how fast your hero strikes basic attacks.
• Lifesteal: When you deal damage, you are healed for a percentage of the damage you dealt.
• Crystal power: Increases damage and power of abilities.
• Halcyon Potion: Consume to restore some health and energy
• Minion Candy: Consume to make nearby allied minions stronger

Some Elements Special To Vainglory:

• Gold Mine: The Gold Mine functions as a large source of team-wide gold in early/mid-game. The Gold Mine is a capture-and-hold point in the center of the map where most early team fights will occur.
• Minion Mine: Taking Minion Mines will gradually give you super-minions. They can be taken extremely early, but they might over-push your lane and feed bonus gold to your enemies. Your larger minions will last significantly longer in front of turrets and allow your team to push the lane, but they also give more gold to the enemy team when last hit. If you want to hold both Minion Mines, make sure your team is willing to push the lane to avoid feeding free gold to the enemy team.
• Kraken: Defeating the Kraken will send him rampaging down the lane toward the enemy base. The Kraken excels at tanking and destroying turrets and serves as an excellent late-game means of invading the enemy base and winning the game.
• Middle shop: There is a shop in the middle of the jungle. It’s not a secret shop; it contains the same items as your shop at base. However, use it with discretion because you can be attacked while shopping.
• Abilities: Each hero has three abilities. Your ultimate can be learned at Level 6 and you can put three ability points into it. You can put five points into your first and second abilities. However, this adds up to 13 points and your hero maxes at only Level 12. This means that at max level, one of your two regular abilities will have an extra point over the other.
• Wards: There are no wards, but Vainglory does have scout traps. Scout traps are essentially land mines that grant vision. Place a scout trap and it will grant vision in the area around it; if an enemy player walks over the scout trap it will explode, dealing significant damage to all enemy players near it and revealing them on the mini-map for seven seconds. (Even if they walk into brush, they will still remain visible.)

Thanks for reading! Jump into a game, and check the News section regularly for more.

—CaptainNeato