Sins of a Dark Age Beginner’s Guide

Sins of a Dark Age Beginner’s Guide by OiTheRolk

So I found out some people have no idea whatsoever how to play this game, so I decided to make this rough guide to help them. Enjoy!
I suppose as there is no tutorials yet, the best way to learn would be to create a custom game, (with or without bots as you prefer), and just walk around and stuff to get used to the controls

BASICS:

Terminology

At your Keep (the castle near the fountain), you will notice three sets of minions periodically spawning. They will take three paths, where they meet up with enemy minions and attack them. These three paths are called lanes. There is the top lane, the middle or mid lane, and the bottom or bot lane.

Everywhere that is not a lane is called the jungle. You do not have to worry about the jungle right now – you will only see junglers and the jungle being used extensively at a somewhat higher level of play.

Basic Movement

Move: Right click on the ground. The hero will then walk where you ordered him to.
Attack: Right click on a unit. The hero will attack the unit on which you clicked.
Recall: At any moment, you may press B to recall. If you are not taking any damage, after a short delay, you will be teleported back to your fountain.

Basic Casting

You have four spells at your disposal, binded to the hotkeys Q, W, E, and R.
Q, W and E are basic spells, and R is your ultimate. You acquire it at a higher level, but it is also a stronger and better spell than the other three.

Upgrading spells: At the very beginning of the game, you can see your four spells at the bottom of the screen. They are greyed out icons, placed roughly in the middle of the grey bar thingy (i don’t know the technical term for it, sorry)
Over three of them, you will notice green, shining buttons. Each reads “+ 0/4”. Click on one of them to level the corresponding spell. You may hover over the spells to read its description (the description will appear over your summoner icon, on the bottom left).. This way, you can concentrate on upgrading the spell you think is strongest.
Notice that the fourth spell also has a button over it, but that the button is greyed out. This means that you can’t upgrade the spell yet.

Casting spells: To cast a spell, simply press its corresponding hotkey, then left click where the spell should go. Some spells can be only targeted on units, whereas others are targeted in a direction or an area. Some don’t require targets at all, and activate as soon as you press the hotkey.
NOTE: You will see the corresponding hotkeys if you hover over the spell button. They tell you the hotkey right under the description of the spell (bottom left)

Shop

To the right of your spell buttons, you will see two rows of five squares. Six of those squares are greyed out backpacks, two look like a drawing of a red vial on a parchment, one is a blinking, colored backpack, and the last is a picture of a coin with a number under it. The latter is the amount of gold you have.
You may click on the blinking backpack to access the shop.
***NOTE: you may only buy items when you’re near your fountain (the spot where you spawn at the beginning of the match).***

Consummables: The two icons that look like drawings of a red vial on a parchment are your slots for consummable items. Consummable items are especially useful if you run out of mana or if you are low on health, among others.

Glyphs: On the left of your spells, you will notice two more blinking icons. You may click on one of them to access the glyph shop.
Glyphs are basically additional spells that you may buy. Their hotkeys are D and F. There are different offensive, defensive and utility uses for the glyphs, so you may want to buy them quite early. Be wary, however: once you buy a glyph, you may not sell it back.

What items do I buy?: For now, you may stick to the recommended items. If you open the shop window, the recommended items are shown at the top of the window.

Earning gold

To buy items in the shop, you need to earn gold. You earn gold by killing minions (the archers and foot soldiers that periodically spawn at your fortress, by killing enemy heroes and by destroying enemy towers.
Towers will prioritize focus on minions rather than heroes. Watch out, though: if you attack an enemy hero while he is under his turret, the turret will switch focus to you.

MORE ADVANCED STUFF *You may read this part once you feel more or less comfortable with what I wrote above.*

Advanced movement
Ctrl+right click: moves your hero to target location. If he encounters any enemy on his path, you will attack him.

Advanced Spellcasting
Ctrl+spell hotkey: quick cast. The spell will automatically be cast in the direction of the mouse.
Alt+spell hotkey: self cast. If the spell may be targetted on yourself, self cast will do that automatically.

Items with actives
Some items have active abilities. You may activate these abilities at any time by pressing the hotkey corresponding to the item slot in which resides the item. To find out the hotkey, hover over the item slot.

Minion and turret aggro (aggression)
Sometimes you will find that minions or turrets attack you, and it seems almost like they do it for no reason. Well, here is why:
-If you attack an enemy hero who is near to them, and if you are within their range, they will attack you.
-If you are within their range, and there are no allied minions around, they will attack you.
Other than that, you are fine.

How do I get them to stop them from attacking me?
Get out of their range, or out of their sight. That includes using abilities to turn invisible, or hiding in bushes.
Additionally, for minions, if there is a minion who is your ally nearby(provided you are not attacking their hero), they will switch focus to it.

Advanced Tips by Astorax

Slightly more advanced level once you get the basics down…Please ignore this part until you have a handle on the basics, it’ll just make your life more complicated.

You only get gold from minions by hitting the last hit on them to kill them. No matter how much you attack them, if you do not get the final hit, you get no gold for them. The skill for this means you will want to click like a madman around the creeps but not attack them until they are low enough that a single hit from you will kill them.

This is for multiple reasons. One, you’re more likely to get the last hit on them. Two, you don’t actually WANT to push your lane too hard. If you push too far forward, it exposes you to ganks from the jungle (gank is a term for an enemy champion surprising you in lane and killing you). It also means you’ll be close to the enemy tower, and the enemy hero. So they are in a position of strength as they have the safety of their own tower nearby.

Another thing to know. In the jungle area (not in one of the 3 lanes, but the areas inbetween) there are patches of leaves that will make you invisible to the other team if they do not also have a champion in the bushes with you. This means you can hide in a bush until an enemy hero comes nearby, then gank them. Often you’ll see groups of champions all hiding in a bush waiting for someone to come by then mass gank them.

The recall is free to use. Don’t hesitate, at least early on in game, to use it if you’re low. It’s always better to lose out on some gold and xp in lane, than to die because you stayed too long and got killed.

If you can, try to always have a health consumable on you. Don’t forget to pop it, especially if you’re running away and getting hurt. Often even just the little bit of health you gain over time from the health potion is enough to save you from dying to an enemy champion.

Ask questions. Often. Those of us that play this genre a lot will likely be more than happy to give advice or help. I play this genre quite a bit (LoL and DotA2) and I’m more than happy to help out where I can.