Deadlock beginners guide: Objectives, heroes, items, & more explained

Are you hopping into Deadlock for the first time and finding yourself absolutely confused? We’ve been there too so here is a beginner’s guide to give you the rundown on everything you need to know.

Finally acknowledged by Valve, Deadlock’s blend of hero shooter and MOBA gameplay systems has attracted a lot of players as thousands flock to check out the early-access title.

However, for those lucky enough to gain entry, it may have dawned on you that this game is more MOBA than it is hero shooter, meaning it’s quite a complicated game to wrap your head around.

So to that end, here is a complete beginner’s guide to Deadlock in order to start piling up some wins.

Objectives in Deadlock

The objective of a Deadlock match is simple, kill the enemy’s Patron in their base before they eliminate yours. If you have played other MOBAs like League of Legends or Dota 2, this is the same thing as the Nexus or Ancient respectively.

The Patron is your end goal, and what you’re essentially doing is slowly attacking the enemy until you are in their base.

Conversely, you’ll also need to defend your Patron as if the enemy destroys it, you lose. So in a close match, it will be a push and pull between both teams, but in a stomp, one side will roll right through the other.

Gameplay fundamentals

Where things get complicated for newer players is in its gameplay. If you’re used to MOBAs, it’s quite intuitive. If you come from the world of Valorant or Overwatch 2, you might be overwhelmed.

Deadlock is a 6v6 game with four lanes heroes fight in. Players will be randomly put into lanes, where two of the four lanes will be 2v2, while the other two are 1v1.

In between all the lanes, there are alleys that are filled with monsters players can kill for Souls. Additionally in the mid-game, there is a mid-boss that teams can kill to gain an advantage. You can think of it as a jungle.

The map you play on is mirrored on both sides, and each side’s lane has multiple turrets to destroy before getting to the enemy’s base.

In a lane, minions spawn from both sides. You will have to kill the enemy’s minions to gain Souls so you can buy items. You also have to destroy all of a lane’s turrets before being able to get into an enemy’s base.

In a lane, there are three types of turrets; Towers, Walkers, and Base Guardians. Towers are the first line of defense in a lane, and generally where the early laning phase stars off.

The second line of defense is the Walker, which is the strongest of the three. It dishes out the most damage and can take the most damage as it requires you to be close to it to deal as much as possible.

Base Guardians are your last line of defense. In a lane, there are two of them side by side, and if they are killed the lane will have access to the base.

Once your team has access to an enemy base, you will be met by Shrines and a Patron.

Shrines are essentially Inhibitors in LoL. You will need to destroy them before being able to kill an enemy’s Patron. In a base, there are two of them, and you will need to take both of them down.

Once both Shrines are down, you can start damaging the Patron. The Patron is the big entity floating in the air. Once killed, it will transform into a Weakened Patron, which is a ball in the enemy’s spawn, and once you take that down, you’ve won. Conversely, if the enemy does all of this to you, you’ve lost.

Heroes

At the time of writing, Deadlock has 21 heroes to pick from.

There are no roles or classes for heroes, which means any character can be swapped with others in lanes and still have a relatively fair matchup with one another. Each hero has four abilities, although sometimes Ability 3 will be a passive of some sort.

As for picking which heroes to play, there are a few ways to go about it. In the heroes menu, Valve has handily recommended heroes for beginners, and you can try them out in the Sandbox to see if they gel with your play style.

Alternatively, you can check out our tier list and pick out some of the best heroes. We’d recommend Pocket, Lady Geist, and Dynamo if you really want to play the meta.

Or if you can’t be bothered, you can go the traditional route and pick the hero that looks coolest to you and main them. There is no shame in choosing this option.

Items

Being a MOBA, Deadlock has a shop for players to buy items from to help build your character. Different types of items will buff your stats, with other types also giving you items which you can cast.

There are three classes of items you can buy: Weapon, Vitality, and Spirit.

Weapon buffs your weapon, be it through an increase in damage, fire rate, reload time, or magazine size. Some upgrades will even give your bullets effects like Lifesteal or Bleed.

Vitality buffs your health, this can be through an increase in your health pool, Lifesteal, Bullet Shield, and Spirit Resist. These particular items will make you tankier.

As for Spirit, you can think of it as a combination of both Vitality and Weapon, with some other types of buffs. Some items will buff your survivability, while others will buff your attack. Other items also buff your abilities as well.

Obviously, not every single item will benefit every single hero and in every situation, as certain heroes may benefit more by being a glass cannon whilst others being a tank.

In addition to each item class, there are two different types you can get, active and non-active. Active items are ones you can cast for an effect, either onto yourself for a buff or on an enemy. Non-active are items that can’t be cast but give you a buff.

For the most part, if you are just beginning, we would recommend you stick with the default item builds in the shop. They are all tailored for each hero and are helpfully split between the early, mid, and late game.

However, if you’re a proper sweat, there are community builds you can browse through which players have created to tailor specific playstyles.

Settings

For the most part, the settings you should use are quite simple. We already have guides for these that go more in-depth, but we will give you a quick version of it.

For the video settings, if you want to maximize your FPS, you may want to turn the graphics settings all the way down to low, however, you can just choose the highest option which gives you enough FPS. You can read a more in-depth guide here.

For the mouse and keyboard settings, things can get quite tricky depending on what your prior gaming experiences were.

If you come from hero shooters like Valorant or Overwatch 2, you may find the abilities being bound to the number row quite awkward, whilst MMORPG gamers may not find too much of an issue.

So, we’d recommend adjusting your abilities to something closer to the WASD keys, such as the E, X, C, Q, and F keys for your abilities if you’re more used to other hero shooters.

Additionally, mouse settings can be quite complicated if you don’t already have an established sensitivity. But if you already do, it’s just a matter of converting it. You can check out our mouse and keyboard guide here.

That is all you need to know about Deadlock if you’re just starting out. It is a wildly complicated game to wrap your head around, with a lot of minute mechanics and details we haven’t even covered here. But with these basics nailed down, you’ll at least know what you’re doing when you load into a match.