Alderun maps, heroes, mechanics and controls

• Maps & modes
  • The Crossing · Banners of the Gulch · Frostvale
  • Arena · The High Pass · Frostmarch Valley
  • Alderun · Duel · Ash Road
  • Game modes
• How heroes and combat work
  • Attributes & levels · Armour
  • Damage types · When spells collide
  • Vision & high ground · Day & night
  • Stances & shapes · Death & buyback
  • Items
• The heroes
  • Paladin · Mage · Lich · Barbarian
  • Rogue · Warrior · Vampire · Hunter
  • Druid · Valkyrie · Shield Maiden · Warlock
• Controls
  • Keyboard layouts · Keyboard
  • Mouse · Touch
• For agents · bots and plugins

The Crossing · 5v5 battleground

Two armies war across a river. Push the three lanes, rule the jungle between them, and bring down the enemy citadel in the far corner. Lane creeps march every 30 seconds from 1:30, and nothing falls without them.

• Towers fall in order. Each lane has three towers and a tower is invulnerable while the one ahead of it stands. Two inner towers guard the citadel: they open as soon as any lane's last tower falls, and the citadel opens when both of them are down.
• Barracks stand behind each lane's last tower. Destroying one makes your creeps in that lane stronger; with all three down, your waves turn overwhelming.
• The river is low ground. Fighting up out of it, basic attacks miss one time in four, and the banks hide what stands above them. The mid lane crosses at the ford.
• Gold: about a hundred gold a minute for every hero from the first wave, creep bounties to the killing blow, and 100 gold to every hero on the team that brings down a tower — more when that team is behind on towers.
• The fountain heals its own side and fights anyone who dives it.
• The jungle: seven neutral camps a side, refilling a minute after they are emptied — unless someone stands in the pocket. Two camps a side also leave a crest for the hero who clears them: the Crest of Cinders (+25% attack damage, faster attacks) or the Crest of Insight (much faster mana regeneration, +25% spell damage), for two minutes or until you die.
• Runes: a power rune every 2 minutes in one of the two river pits (Speed, Might, Restoration, Shadow, Illusion, Health or Mana), and four bounty runes every 4 minutes that pay the picker's whole team — more as the match goes on.
• Kharzum, the stone golem in the river pits, wakes at 10:00 and returns 8–11 minutes after each death in the other pit. His killers are paid, their lane creeps march 35% stronger for 3 minutes, the slayer takes the Crown of Undead, and he drops Kharzum's Heart: whoever walks over it cheats death once within the next 5 minutes. His blows can stun, he slams the ground around the hero he is fighting to damage and slow everyone beside it, and he grows tougher and hits harder every 3 minutes of the match. At 30:00 a Dragon circles the ford; its slayer takes the Dragon Helm.

Arena · team battleground

Destroy the enemy castle deep in its base before yours falls. Creep waves spawn from both sides' barracks and fight down three corridors; destroy a barracks to shut its lane down. A boss will periodically appear in the middle of the map, each hostile to everyone and each paying a unique helm to the hero who lands the killing blow.

Each boss comes once, and none appears once a castle has fallen. A dog wanders around your base — feed it Dog Meat to heal it. Buyback is on.

Banners of the Gulch · 10v10 capture the flag

Two cliff fortresses, Highvale and Gravemark, face each other across a forest valley. Steal the enemy banner from its flag room, carry it home while your own flag stands on its pole, and be the first team to three captures.

• Everyone starts equal. Heroes enter at level 12 with a restoring flask, and a 20-second truce once everyone has arrived gives you time to build your skill tree. There are no shops, no creep waves and no Recall.
• Swift Stride. In Recall's place (the B key) every hero carries a travel buff instead of a mount: a 3-second cast that damage interrupts, then 35% faster movement for 45 seconds. It does not stack with other speed bonuses, and it ends on any damage taken, a root, slow, stun or disarm (a silence alone does not), an attack, a spell, using an item other than a potion, or lifting a flag — a flag carrier cannot start it. Cooldown 90 seconds.
• Two-tier fortresses. Each fort stands on a hill: a flag floor and an upper floor joined by inner ramps. The front tunnel is the shortest and narrowest way in; a long flank climbs to the upper floor and a short flank reaches the flag floor — and the two forts put them on opposite sides. A teleporter circle on each fort's outer terrace drops whoever stands in it to the foot of the hill: a fast way down, never up.
• Carrying. Only a living, visible hero on the ground can carry a flag. Dying, flying, stealth, invulnerability or any blink or teleport drops it; stuns, slows, shields and the lion and demon forms do not. A carrier can drop the flag on purpose to hand it to a teammate. A dropped flag returns home after 10 seconds unless someone lifts it, and its own team returns it at once by touching it.
• Resurrection waves. The fallen return together at their graveyard every 45 game seconds (about 41 real seconds).
• No stalemates. While both flags are away from their stands, every carrier is Exposed: every 30 seconds it takes 10% more damage and 5% less healing, up to 15 times. From the fifth stack the carriers are Hunted and no speed bonus works on them. The stacks stay with the flags until both are home, so the team that kills the enemy carrier first wins the standoff.
• Runes. A Restoration Rune stands on each fortress hill beside its teleporter: it restores 10% of maximum health and mana every second for 10 s, ends the moment an enemy damages you, and returns 84 s after it is taken. One more lies out in the valley, each time at random either in the farmyard beside the dog or at the knight statue in the western graveyard, and returns 2 minutes after it is taken. Outside each fortress lie a Speed Rune (+50% movement for 10 s) and a Berserker Rune (+30% damage dealt, +10% damage taken, for 60 s), back 2 minutes later. Walk over a rune to take it; either team may take any of them.
• The Rune of the Undead appears in the stone circle of the western graveyard at 7:00 and returns 7 minutes after each time it is taken; both teams are told when it appears and who took it. Its taker raises five skeletons beside the tombstones — two swordsmen, two archers and a mage. They are not yours to command: they follow the hero who raised them and attack every enemy they see, for 4 minutes, or until that hero dies. Taking a second rune replaces what is left of the first squad.
• Time. A match lasts 25 minutes. The higher score wins, a tie goes to the team that captured last, and 0–0 is a draw. Captures and flag returns are counted on the final scoreboard.

Frostvale · 5v5 battleground

Two armies hold the ends of a frozen valley. The front line moves: capture the graveyards and garrisons along the one road to drag your respawns and reinforcement waves forward, break into the enemy keep, and kill its General — before your army runs out of soldiers.

• Capturing. Only heroes capture. Stand within 2 tiles of a flag: a neutral flag turns in 10 seconds, an enemy-held one in 20. More heroes do not capture faster, and heroes of both sides on the flag freeze it. A stealthed hero cannot capture. While your hero stands on a flag your side does not hold, a bar above the unit panel shows the seconds left.
• The front line is the unbroken run of flags your side holds from its own end. Your heroes revive at its furthest graveyard and your waves spawn at its furthest garrison. A capture behind the enemy's line does not move you forward, but it cuts their line at that point until they retake it.
• Garrisons each carry a tower and a squad of defenders. The flag alone decides who owns one; the tower is the defence, and a captured garrison's tower is a teleport anchor for Recall and scrolls. Waves only bring siege while your side holds at least one enemy garrison.
• The keep. The gate cannot be attacked while its side holds both of its home garrisons — the first home garrison lost opens it. The General is invulnerable while the gate stands. Two named guards defend each keep, stunning, netting or calling lightning on intruders; a guard killed is gone for the match, and each home garrison in enemy hands disarms one of them while it is held.
• Reinforcements. Each side starts with 360. A hero death costs 6, a garrison tower 12, a keep guard 30, and a creep killed on its own half 2. An army that runs out stops sending waves, its gate opens, and its heroes take twice as long to revive. If nobody has won at 45 minutes, the side with more reinforcements left wins.
• Gold is shared: every kill pays the whole team evenly. Each flag captured pays the team 50, and the Old Mine by the river pays its owners a steady trickle. Each keep has a shop, and each side's quartermaster sets up his wagon at its front graveyard, so an army that has pushed forward can spend on the spot.
• The blizzard sweeps the valley from 8:00, every 6 minutes, for 75 seconds, with a 15-second warning. While it howls, every unit but the towers sees half as far and the frozen river is slow to cross.

The High Pass · 10v10 battleground

Frostvale's war on a mountain scale. Twenty heroes, two keeps — Frosthold in the south and Stormcrag Keep in the north — and three ways through the mountains. Take the graveyards and garrisons that move your army forward, break the enemy gate and kill its General, King Sigurd or Overlord Thrazk, before your reinforcements run out.

• Three ways through. The Road in the middle is the only way the waves march, and it crosses the frozen river by twin fords. The Cliff Trail in the west is a raised shelf with graveyards of its own — a way into the enemy's rear while the armies fight at the river. The Iron Gorge in the east is a low canyon of neutral camps. All three meet in the river bed at Snowfall, and every way in is a narrow throat a few heroes can hold. Attacks from the river bed up the bank miss one time in four.
• The front line works as in Frostvale, along the Road: your waves spawn at your furthest garrison. A hero revives by where it fell — on the trail at your furthest trail graveyard, anywhere else at your furthest road graveyard. Captures are slower: a graveyard takes 20 seconds from neutral, a garrison 25 and a mine 10, and twice as long when the enemy holds it. Every capture pays your team 50 gold, and each of the two mines in the river pays every hero of its owner 1 gold every 2 seconds and adds 1 iron every 6 seconds to the side's iron store (200 at most).
• The King's reinforcements. Click your own General to spend the iron and some of your own gold: four Knights (Blue) or Ogres (Red) for 100 iron and 300 gold, or three Ballistas or Siege Golems — siege that razes towers — for 60 iron and 200 gold. They join your next wave where it spawns and march with it. One call waits at a time.
• The gates. A gate cannot be attacked while its side holds both of its keep garrisons and has reinforcements left — losing a field garrison never opens it. The General is invulnerable while his gate stands, and four Warmasters guard each keep, two for each keep garrison.
• Armor Scraps and Frost Blood. An enemy hero you kill drops Armor Scraps and a vial of Frost Blood where it fell, and a dead hero spills everything it was carrying; enemy soldiers sometimes drop some too. Walk over them to pick them up, then bank scraps at your keep's Armoury and blood at its Altar. At 50, 120 and 220 banked scraps your soldiers march out a tier stronger.
• The champion. With 10 blood banked, a hero at the Altar can call your side's champion — Ivar the Ice Lord or Grom the Ember Lord — who marches on the enemy with the waves for 8 minutes, tearing down buildings first. Killed, it costs its side 60 reinforcements.
• Captains and Lieutenants. Each side's Captain, Ulric or Kraag, guards a hall cut into the gorge wall behind two wardens. Kill the enemy Captain and his side's gate can be attacked for 60 seconds. Two Lieutenants a side patrol the road and guard the trail graveyard. All of them drop scraps and blood, cost their side reinforcements and come back a few minutes later.
• Reinforcements. Each side starts with 720, spent on fallen heroes, towers, Warmasters, officers, the champion and soldiers lost on their own half. A side at zero sends no more waves, its gate opens and its heroes revive twice as slowly. If no General has fallen at 60 minutes, the side with more reinforcements left wins.
• Also: gold is shared, the blizzard sweeps the pass every 6 minutes from 8:00, and each keep has a shop, with a neutral rare-item trader in the river bed and a quartermaster's wagon at each side's front graveyard. There is no buyback.

Frostmarch Valley · 10v10 battleground

A war for a mountain valley in the old style: the ground steps down from each keep through canyons and tower hills to one open field in the middle. There are no creep waves — the heroes fight it out, burn the enemy's garrisons, and kill the General, King Sigurd or Overlord Thrazk. The two halves are not mirror images: the Red Team's keep, Stormcrag, sits in the north-west corner behind a single causeway, and the Blue Team's Frosthold in the south, up one ramp between its two towers.

• Everyone starts strong. Every hero enters at level 12 with at least 1,000 gold. For the first 60 seconds both gates are barred, and everyone waits in their own keep.
• The road runs graveyard by garrison from one keep to the other; your front line is the unbroken run of it your side holds. Snowfall, a neutral graveyard on a hill on the field's west side, is off the road: take it for a revive point closer to the fight, or march past it.
• Capturing. Any flag takes 30 seconds from the enemy and 15 from neutral. A flag left part-turned stays that way until someone stands on it again, so its owner turns it back by standing there. Every capture pays your team 50 gold. Each graveyard is guarded by two soldiers and an archer of whoever holds it.
• Garrisons burn. The first time the enemy takes a garrison, its tower is gone for the match, and so is its Warmaster.
• The General can be attacked at any time, but each of his four living Warmasters — one for each of his side's garrisons — adds 25% to his health and damage. Burn the garrisons or kill the Warmasters, then take him. The gatehouses are scenery: the General, the fountain and the shop stand inside, the keep garrisons and the base graveyard in the open ward before it.
• Reinforcements. Each side has 150. A hero death costs 1, a garrison's tower burned 20 and the Captain slain 25. A side at zero loses. At 60 minutes, the side with more left wins.
• The mines are goblin dens under a golem. Kill the golem to take the mine; its foreman and two soldiers then hold it for you until the enemy kills the foreman. A held mine adds 1 iron every 6 seconds and gives back 1 reinforcement every 3 minutes.
• The King's reinforcements. Click your own General to spend the iron and some of your own gold: four Knights (Blue) or Ogres (Red), or three siege engines that raze towers. They march out of your gate with the next rising of the dead and fight until slain.
• Cavalry. Wolves of the neutral camps slain by a hero drop Wolf Hides. Bank 8 at your Armoury and four riders charge out of your gate at the next objective for 4 minutes.
• Scraps, blood and the champion. Armor Scraps and Frost Blood drop and bank as on The High Pass; at 50, 120 and 220 scraps your whole army rises a tier, soldiers already standing included. The champion called with 10 blood fights until slain.
• Captains and Lieutenants. Each side's Captain holds an outpost off its own road, up a ramp behind two wardens; once slain, he and his wardens never return. The Lieutenants patrol and come back 4 minutes after they fall.
• The low pass runs under the Red causeway: a lit circle at each mouth carries whoever steps on it to the other side.
• Death. The fallen rise together at their graveyard every 40 seconds, or every 70 at the base graveyard. There is no buyback and no Recall: in Recall's place every hero rides — Swift Stride (B), a 3-second cast, then 35% faster until a blow, an attack, a spell, an impairment or an item other than a potion ends it; cooldown 10 seconds.
• Also: gold is shared, the blizzard sweeps the valley every 6 minutes from 8:00, and each keep has a shop, with a neutral rare-item trader on the field and a quartermaster's wagon at each side's front graveyard.

Alderun · castle defense, solo or co-op

Hold the Castle of Alderun at the heart of the map. Thirteen waves attack from all four sides over about half an hour, each announced before it spawns. Four carry a boss with an escort and a signature spell — the Broodmother, the Death Knight, the Ember Lord and finally the Ancient Wyrm, which fights from the air in cycles — and each boss drops a unique item. If the castle falls, the game is lost; destroy the last invader to win. Two merchants stand by the castle, the Fountain of Life heals in the castle grounds away from the roads, and relic items unlock at hero level 10 here (12 elsewhere). AI companions each hold a road and come to help wherever the castle is hit undefended.

Duel · 1v1 and 2v2

A walled gladiator pit. Every champion enters at level 12 with all of those skill points unspent and a full Wayfarer's Flask. Once everyone has entered, a 60-second truce gives you time to build your skill tree — then the last team standing wins. There are no shops, no creeps, no revives, no Recall and no buyback; the pillars and rubble are cover for breaking line of sight. The truce drops to ten seconds the moment every champion has spent all of its points, and you may walk anywhere during it. If no champion comes within 12 tiles of an enemy for 15 seconds, the crowd loses patience: the fog lifts around every champion, for both teams, until the fight is joined again — a stealthed champion stays invisible, but the ground around it is lit. The duel lasts ten minutes, truce included, and an unfinished fight is a draw.

Ash Road · tower defense, solo or co-op

The Dark Castle marches thirty waves down a sealed, winding canyon road toward the Castle of Light. You command no army: you fly a wisp that builds, upgrades and repairs towers on the rock beside the road. The castle's health is your life pool — every creep that reaches the gate takes lives from it. Five tower lines, each upgrading into a choice of two: the Watch Tower (piercing, hits air), the Cannon Tower (siege splash, ground only), the Frost Tower (magic, slows), the Fire Tower (magic, burns) and the Shrine of Light (speeds the towers around it). Every fifth wave is a boss, some waves fly, and calling the next wave early pays gold. A wave that is cleared without a single creep reaching the gate pays every defender a bonus. Up to two players defend the same castle.

Game modes

A single-player battle starts from one of four presets:

Each map decides how many heroes a side fields in each preset:

Banners of the Gulch and the Duel always start their heroes at level 12 with no gold, and Frostmarch Valley at level 12 with at least 1,000 gold. Online, host a public or private game from the multiplayer screen, pick a game from the list, or join a quick match — on the first available battleground, or on the one you choose. Team chat and map pings reach your allies only.

Attributes & levels

Every hero has three attributes — Strength, Agility and Intellect — and one of them is its primary attribute. Attributes grow by a fixed amount each level (every hero has its own growth), and each level also grants one skill point and restores 100 health and 100 mana.

Spell damage bonuses from Intellect, skills and items share one rule: an area spell's bonus is capped at +30%, and a damage-over-time spell spreads its bonus across its ticks. The skill tooltip shows the amplified numbers your hero would really deal.

Skill trees. Skills are learned with skill points; most have several ranks, and a skill deeper in a branch needs the one above it first. Some skills and ranks also need a hero level: every branch's ultimate unlocks at level 8, and the top rank of each hero's core damage spell needs level 8 (or level 6 for a third rank). Heroes start with an empty spellbook apart from Recall and a few innate powers, and grow into their build over a match.

Resetting a build. Standing within 6 tiles of your base, the reset button beside the skill-point count in the Skills window clears the whole tree and gives every point back, for 320 gold per point spent.

On The Crossing, Frostvale, The High Pass and Frostmarch Valley heroes level to 30, and each level costs a steady amount more than the last; elsewhere there is no cap and the climb steepens faster. Killing a hero pays back a share of the experience the victim has earned, so a kill is worth about the same fraction of a level on every map.

Armour

Armor reduces incoming physical damage: reduction = 6×Armor / (100 + 6×Armor), capped at 75%. So 8 armor blocks 32%, 10 armor 38%, 25 armor 60%, and it takes 50 armor to reach the cap. Magic resistance is separate: it cuts spell and magic damage by its percentage directly (30 magic resistance means spells hit for 70%). Some abilities cannot be resisted and ignore it.

On the multiplayer battle maps — The Crossing, Frostvale, The High Pass, Frostmarch Valley, Banners of the Gulch and the Duel — every hero belongs to an armour class, and its class sets its base armor and magic resistance before Agility is added:

Plate shrugs off blades and is soft to spells; cloth is the reverse. On the Arena and Alderun heroes keep lighter bases — 0–2 armor and 0–10 magic resistance — and two passives (the Paladin's Heavens Gift and the Druid's Attunement) keep older versions, noted on each card.

Damage types vs. armor types

Every physical attack has a damage type and every unit an armor type; the matchup scales the damage before armor reduction applies. Values are the percentage of damage dealt. Every hero's attacks and weapon abilities deal Hero damage, and every hero wears Hero armor.

Rule of thumb: Piercing shreds light targets but scratches heroes and walls; Siege flattens buildings; heroes hit each other at full strength but deal half to fortifications. Magic attacks (magic towers, totems, elementals) and all spells ignore this table and armor entirely — they are reduced by magic resistance instead. Divine units — shops, fountains, a tower that is not yet open — cannot be harmed at all.

Who can be hit. Every attack and spell carries a target permission: a target's layer (ground or airborne) and its class (unit or structure) must both be allowed. Melee units reach only ground targets; most ranged attackers hit both, but some — ballistae, cannon towers, siege golems — are blind to the air. A hero in flight (the Vampire's Bat Form) drops off every ground-only attacker's list until it lands.

Undead matters too. The Lich and the Vampire are undead, as are skeletons, zombies and their kin: holy damage such as the Paladin's Holy Shock hits them for double, while effects that only touch the living — Death Call, Mesmerize, the Druid's Regrowth and Purify — pass them by. Buildings and mechanical units (totems, elementals, wards, traps, siege engines) are their own category and ignore most of the same effects.

When spells collide

Damage-over-time effects carry an element — fire, frost, or none. Two of them on the same target do not simply stack, and knowing the rules is worth real damage.

Opposing elements burn each other off. When a fire effect lands on a target already carrying frost — or the other way round — there is a 1 in 3 chance the older one is snuffed out. Only elemental effects interact, and only hostile ones: your own buffs are never at risk, and a plain poison or bleed is left alone. Chaining a Mage's fire and frost spells into the same victim will sometimes cost you the first, so a Fire build and an Ice build pull against each other on a single target.

Matching elements can be consumed for a guaranteed critical. Scorch (Mage and Lich) and the Fire Ray of the rank-2 Summon Totem devour an existing burn instead: the older effect is consumed and the incoming hit crits for double damage, guaranteed. Setting a target alight with Fireball and then scorching it is the intended combo.

Some effects are simply cancelled by damage: the Field Poultice, the Focus Draught, stealth, and the Recall you use to return to base all break the moment an enemy lands a hit on you. The Wayfarer's Flask deliberately does not — it keeps pouring through a fight, which is most of what you pay for.

Vision & high ground

• Fog of war. You see what your team sees: every allied unit, building and ward shares its sight with the whole side.
• Line of sight. Trees, walls, statues and cliffs block sight. A unit standing on higher ground sees over lower obstacles; a unit in a river bed or at the foot of a hill does not see what stands above it.
• Attacking reveals you. Whoever hits a unit is shown to that unit's side for 3 seconds, even from behind a tree.
• Losing a target. A unit chasing a target its team can no longer see gives up after 2 seconds — break line of sight to escape. A spell being aimed at a target that disappears into the fog is cancelled at no cost. Teleporting away makes arrows and bolts already flying at you miss.
• Heroes pick their fights. An idle hero only attacks enemies that come within 5 tiles or its attack range, whichever is longer — but for 3 seconds after being attacked it answers anything it can see.
• Wards. The Watcher's Totem (150 gold) plants an invisible ward granting sight in 8 tiles for 6 minutes; the Seer's Totem (125 gold) reveals invisible enemies within 4 tiles for 4 minutes. Up to two of each can stand at once; planting a third removes the oldest.

Day & night

Every battlefield runs a day/night clock: an opening day of 5 minutes, then nights of 3 minutes alternating with days of 8¾ minutes. The sun or moon beside the minimap shows the time of day; hover it (or long-press it on a touch screen) to see how long until it turns. At night every moving unit sees only three-quarters as far — buildings and wards keep their full sight — and effects that draw on the dark last longer: the Vampire's Veil of Night holds 20% longer when cast after dark.

Stances & shapes

A stance is a posture you hold rather than a timed buff. The Warrior's three stances each change his damage, armor and speed; entering one replaces the last and grants a short surge. Re-entering the stance you already hold does nothing, and each stance has its own 15-second cooldown, so the timing of a switch is the skill.

A shape goes further and swaps the whole spellbook. The Druid's Lion Form holds until he shifts back; while he wears it only his Wild skills can be cast, and in his own shape only his Nature skills. Returning is free, so nothing can trap him in the wrong book, and only spells his current shape allows appear on the bar. The Vampire's Bat Form is a timed version of the same idea: in the air, only Bite can be cast. The Warlock's Demon Form is timed too, but keeps his whole spellbook. Autocast settings survive every change of form.

Auras of the same kind do not stack: when two Paladins' Devotion Auras overlap, the higher rank applies. Different auras stack freely.

Death & buyback

A fallen hero revives at its base after 10 seconds plus 5 per hero level (never more than 3 minutes). On Frostvale and The High Pass it returns at the front line's graveyard instead, and waits twice as long once its army's reinforcements are spent. On Frostmarch Valley the fallen rise together at the front line's graveyard every 40 seconds (70 at the base graveyard). In Banners of the Gulch the fallen return together every 45 game seconds (about 41 real). In the Duel nobody revives.

Buyback (Arena, Alderun and The Crossing): while your hero waits, the Buy Back button over the spell bar returns it at once, at full health and mana, for 150 + 6 × level² gold — 1014 gold at level 12 — at most once every 5 minutes per hero.

Items

• Seven gear slots — head, armor, main hand, off hand, ring, amulet and feet — plus a backpack. Buying an item puts it in the backpack; equip it from the Inventory. A hero carries one of each kind of item.
• Requirements. Some items need a hero level, a specialization in a skill branch, or a specific hero (the Windrunner Longbow is the Hunter's alone). You may buy what you cannot wear yet.
• Sets — the Regalia of the Silent Star for casters, the Vow of Iron for melee and the Shroud of the Crimson Fang for the Rogue and Vampire — grant extra bonuses at two and three pieces worn.
• Relics, the most expensive tier, need hero level 12 (level 10 on Alderun) and are sold on the Arena and Alderun. The big battle maps keep their shelves to what a match can afford — nothing above 10,000 gold on The Crossing, or 8,000 on Frostvale, The High Pass and Frostmarch Valley.
• Boots make a hero faster: Boots of Speed, then Warstrider Greaves (attack speed) or Sandals of the Sage (mana regeneration).
• Potions restore over time rather than all at once. On The Crossing, Frostvale, The High Pass and Frostmarch Valley consumables stack in one slot, and three more kinds of sustain are sold: the Field Poultice and Focus Draught (cheap, cancelled by damage) and the Wayfarer's Flask, three sips that refill at your own fountain. Duel and Banners of the Gulch champions start with a full flask.
• Recipes (The Crossing, Frostvale, The High Pass and Frostmarch Valley): some items are built from others. Hold the parts and the shop sells the result for its price minus theirs, consuming the parts.
• Drop an item from the Inventory to leave it on the ground — that is how you give one to an ally. Anyone who walks over it picks it up.

Two keyboard layouts

Swap between them with the QWERTY Abilities toggle in Options. The change applies immediately, even mid-match.

Everything else below is identical in both layouts. The number keys work on the top row and the numpad alike, and keys are read by their physical position — so WASD stays WASD on a Cyrillic or any other non-Latin keyboard layout.

Keyboard

An ability that needs a target arms on the key press and fires on your next click. Ability and item keys are ignored while a window is open, and I and P only open a window when nothing else is open, so they never stack two windows.

Mouse

Touch