An Aghanim’s Labyrinth Guide
The new event in Dota 2 and Battle Pass 2020 gave us the Aghanim’s Labyrinth mode. While cooperative game modes always fuel our emotions, playing this one can result in a lot of valuable prizes, so it is well worth the work.
In this article we will cover tips on how to play Aghanim’s Labyrinth so you and your friends can have the best playing experience possible. So, what’s in store for this Aghanim’s Labyrinth guide? Find out.
What Is Aghanim’s Labyrinth?
For this Aghanim’s Labyrinth guide, we will start at the beginning. During the August 28 update for Aghanim’s Labyrinth, Valve added a new difficulty level—Apex Mage—as well as three new heroes: Slark, Templar Assassin, and Queen of Pain.
Some heroes have already gained popularity among the participants of the weekly “Aghanim’s trials,” where teams speed through the labyrinth and earn gifts.
Basically, Labyrinth represents various rooms where you fight different creeps and bosses. As you progress through the game the difficulty increases. You’ll have to adapt to certain tactics and creep’s abilities in order to continue through.
During the entire walk of the Labyrinth, you will receive Shards and magic fragments. Shards are used to improve your abilities in the game. Fragments will unlock permanent passive enhancements. You can unlock the fragments after the game, so you constantly keep getting stronger and stronger while trying to get through the Labyrinth. You can also buy items each time you clean a room.
After completing a trial or room, you have to decide where to go next. Selecting the next path means that you will also have to choose a specific encounter (creeps and bosses that you will have to face). This is where our Aghanim’s Labyrinth guide really comes in handy.
Encounters
After each room, you’ll have to choose a path. Each path has an icon, either Heart, Coin or and Chest.
- Chest: It will give you Neutral Items, Tomes, and Consumables after cleaning a room. The tier of neutral items will increase as you progress through the game.
- Coin: Everything is clear. You get a gold reward after encounter. The harder the creeps, the more gold you get.
- Heart: If you see a Heart icon, it means you will get an additional life for one of your teammates. Depending on the depth of the wave you will get more additional lives.
How Do You Choose an Encounter?
Each encounter will have a different difficultly, rarity, type, and reward. Depending on what you get, the playstyle and rewards will change.
Difficulty
Rooms with non-moving creeps are easier to clean since they can be kited and killed with small packs, like Trents, catapults, etc. These should be prioritized first.
Rooms with spawning creeps are a little more difficult, but the creeps themselves are killed quickly (such as warlocks, skeletons, etc.) These should be your second priority.
Labyrinths, where creeps are constantly running after you are the most inconvenient, and it is better to skip them if you can.
The most difficult rooms in the Labyrinth (that you should probably skip most of the time) are Alchemists, Brood and Morphs.
Rarity
There are two types of rooms: ordinary and red rooms. We always take red ones, as they give Aghanim’s Shards and boost the hero a lot.
Type
Normal creep rooms are your best pick. There isn’t anything unexpected here, and you should have an easy time with them.
Rooms with a question mark can be quite random and might end up being a room with no boss. Usually, you would choose it if you are at your strongest. These rooms should be avoided if you are inexperienced.
Although rooms with traps are the easiest ones, and you should always opt for them, many people do not know how to pass them. But if you play with a well-coordinated party and already know how to go through them, feel free to go ahead and play through them.
Reward
Initially, we choose gold as it allows us to buy key items. However, if you are about to face a hard creep wave or a boss, it will be logical to take hearts.
As for the chests, the most neutral items are very random and usually useless before the 12 room.
If you are all set with the main items and have one or two lives, you should go for neutral items. Tier 3-4 may be quite imbalanced.
It is ideal to play safe, and with each choice you can opt for gold, but once we get to room 13, we start to take items instead. However, this is your best-case scenario without deaths.
The balance of hearts in your team is the main indicator of success. If all goes well, you can play however you and your team want to.
Heroes
You can play any lineup on the apprentice, magician, and sorcerer difficulty. It all comes down to your knowledge about creeps’ abilities, good coordination, and blessing skill tree (upgrades outside of the game).
However, there are certain factors you should keep in mind. Usually, any lineup requires a tank, support, and damage dealer. So, getting at least a Sniper and Winter Wyvern is a must.
If you look at Aghanim’s Labyrinth Trials lineups, you’ll see that most players pick Wyvern, Sniper, Tusk, and Weaver.
Aghanim’s Labyrinth Tips
The tactics of Aghanim’s Labyrinth is very simple: you need to kite the creeps. That’s why only one melee and three range heroes are taken.
At the same time, it is important to go aggressive on creeps in small packs; do not rush. Do not forget about the explosive barrels scattered across each room, because they do a lot of damage to enemy creeps. It is best, of course, to undermine the barrels with Sniper due to the large attack range.
Here are a few other tips to keep in mind as well for certain rooms:
- Drow Ranger Room: Always buy Dust of Appearance.
- Aghanim: Constantly move and watch the spears.
- Timbersaw: Take him to the bottom of the room, there are fewer trees and he will not be able to use his chain.
- Do not buy intermediate items: The amount of gold is limited, so focus on buying must-have items immediately (Desolator, Orchid, MKB, Daedalus, Force Staff).
- Always save 1,000 gold to buy life from Bristleback.
- Learn the skills you need for your role. For example, if you are a Sniper, then you would probably want to choose skills that increase damage. If you are a Wyvern, get cooldown reduction, and so on.
Of course, if you play Aghanim’s Labyrinth in solo just to farm the Battle Pass levels or for fun, then you can win with many combinations and tactics. However, if you want to get the best results in Aghanim’s Trials, you will have to adapt to certain strategies, and preferably play in party.
Who knows, maybe you will become the owner of the next Baby Roshan, Kunkka Shoes, or a random arcana. Good luck in the Labyrinth!