The Undisputed Truth

Best Guide to DotA on Garena

Garena is a program that allows you to play multi-player games like Warcraft 3, DotA, Call of Duty 4, 5, Left for Dead etc without using the in-game multi-player option (which usually sucks like BattleNet).

I decided to do a guide because most of the stuff I learnt on my own and the only other guides out there are pretty stupid. Here is a guide to getting started to playing DotA on Garena :

1) Download the Garena client

2) Install and register.

3) In picking a name, you can cheat the system and get a colored nick. You usually have to pay for this, but you can get it anyway for free using hex codes.

For example :

|c00ff0000 — Red

|c000000ff — Blue

|c0000ff00 — Green

|c00ffff00 — Yellow

|c00ff0080 — Pink

|c0000ffff — Teal

|c00000000 — Black

You use these before your name like this : |CFFFFFF80AB-CD

The effect is a sky-blue colored nick of AB-CD.

By the way, all that is required for a new user account is an email address. So you can create several of these if you like. I have 3.

Here is a more comprehensive list and also here is an entire website dedicated to almost all color variants using hexadecimal code.

*N.B I’m not sure all of these colors work, most people usually stick with Red, Blue or Black, but feel free to experiment with a new account.
4) Join a room closest to your region or country. In my case it would be the TriniGamers, USA and Canada DotA rooms. The reason for this is to ensure latency is limited. Latency is the time delay between host and client, commonly referred to as lag. You can have a good connection, but if you go trying to play in Australia when you’re from Chile, you will certainly lag unless your connection is really good. So do this, as online gaming requires quick reactions, you don’t want to have 3-5 seconds delay between the time you order a move to the time its actually carried out.

Also, close resource-hog programs and stop all downloads, they can cause lag and delays in the game as well.

5) Setup your executable path for where Frozen Throne.exe is located, click “Start Game” and join a host. Sometimes there are no hosts, you’ll just have to wait, or host yourself choosing “Create Game” and select the latest version of DotA in your maps folder.

6) When joining a host, there are a few things to consider :

- If you’re in a ladder room, don’t be too enthusiastic to join hosts where all Sentinel slots are filled and the players talk to each other a lot. This may mean they are either a clan, an inhouse LAN game or a group of friends on Ventrillo. This spells a whoop-ass and loss of exp for you the the 4 other non-suspecting people that are gonna be on your team. People argue about this, saying its fair, but I beg to differ. DotA is primarily about teamwork and friends naturally communicate better than just 5 random guys. The chances of you winning in a situation like that is low, unless you call up your own friends for a scrim against them, or their team is really bad

- People with stupid names with a bunch of numbers of them usually are noobs or leavers. e.g thingamajig557224eg. So boot them if they join your game or ask the host to boot them.

- Request that the host uses the -ah command when the game has started. -AH stands for anti-hack, it may help against players who maphack, isn’t sure to work, but its better than nothing.

Maphacking is basically removing the fog from the map and also allowing extra stuff like the ability to see invisible units. It totally fucks up the experience of DotA but unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about it for now.

- Save your replays or use the “Print Screen” key to save any wrongdoing done by players. You can upload these to the Garena – Report Abuse section and the mods will take the necessary action against the infringers. An example of when this came in handy was a game against a host who teleported into our base and destroyed all of our bought items every 5 minutes. I reported him and he was banned.

7) In gaining experience to access higher level rooms you can do the following :

- Just play games and wait

- Host games (hosts get higher exp)

- Host or play either of the following maps which have been proven to give very high exp. points per minute played : FuFu United Ninja All-Stars, Pimp My Bloody Peon.

There’s another map called Garena AFK Exp Map which claims to do the same thing. It fails at doing so however as the exp gain isn’t as much and it was stated by Garena themselves that such AFK maps are illegal.

- You can also just buy a Gold Membership which gives you :

Double EXP in Garena and level up faster

Instant entrance to almost all Garena rooms even when it’s 225/225 (full)

Ability to view the exact value for pings in rooms and games

Higher Buddy List Capacity

Colored nicks (hehe, see #3)

Discounts on special avatars from the Avatar Shop

- Other than that,  for exp. you can be active in the Garena forums,  stay online without playing in Garena (for a little exp while you’re not at the computer) and  enter tournaments, events and contests hosted in Garena and the Garena forums.

Also, finished games give higher exp. – In ladder rooms, leaving games results in deductions from your exp.  Unfortunately if you’re on the host’s team and he leaves, you all lose exp. Fortunately however if you’re on the opposting team and the hosts leaves regardless of how the game went you get extra exp than if you just won the game.

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