Deadlock is Valve’s 6v6 hybrid of a MOBA and a third-person shooter. You aim your gun like in a shooter, but you also last-hit creeps, buy items, and push lanes toward an enemy base like in Dota. Two years into its playtest it still is not “released”, yet it already has a deep item shop, a ranked ladder, and a roster that keeps growing.

This guide covers what actually matters in your first twenty hours: how the souls economy works, how the map is structured, which heroes to pick first and why, and the specific habits that separate players who win lanes from players who wonder why they are always behind. Every number here comes from the game data our Deadlock section is synced to (build 23988212, July 2026 snapshot) or from a linked source.

What Deadlock Is, and How You Get In

Deadlock is still invite-only. As of mid-2026 there is no store purchase and no open beta: you get access through a Steam friend invite from someone who already plays, and Valve has said the game will stay in this early development stage for the foreseeable future. Coverage through spring 2026 consistently reports the same thing: closed playtest, friend invites only, full release not expected before late 2026 at the earliest.

The practical takeaway: if a site sells you a “Deadlock key”, it is a scam. Ask a friend who plays, or ask in a Deadlock community; existing playtesters send invites for free, straight from the in-game menu.

The game itself: two teams of six fight across a map with three lanes. AI troopers march down each lane, and killing things earns souls, the game’s single resource. You win by destroying the enemy Patron, the giant idol at the heart of their base. Unlike most MOBAs there is no role queue: any hero can flex into any job through the item shop.

As of the July 2026 snapshot our hero catalog tracks 56 heroes, 38 of them in the standard matchmaking pool and the rest in various stages of testing. Heroes graduate from testing into that pool patch by patch, which is part of why the game feels different every few months.

Souls: One Number That Is Everything

If you learn one system properly, make it souls. Souls are simultaneously your gold and your experience: the same number buys items and levels up your abilities. There is no separate XP bar. Out-earn your opponent and you hit every power spike sooner.

Three mechanics feed that number, and they stack:

Last-hitting. Only the killing blow on a trooper or jungle creep claims its bounty. Last-hitting is about timing the final shot, not out-damaging the wave. Spraying a full-health trooper mostly helps your opponent by pushing the wave toward their tower.

Soul orbs and denies. This is the mechanic that does not exist in Dota or League and that new players skip for weeks. When a trooper dies, its souls split roughly 60/40: about 60 percent drops as a ground orb your team gets automatically, and about 40 percent floats up as a small orb that either side can shoot. Shoot your own orbs to confirm the souls; shoot the enemy’s orbs to deny them entirely. A laner who confirms and denies consistently earns dramatically more than one who just last-hits, off the same waves.

Everything else. Neutral camps and breakable crates are your second income stream, with a catch: souls from them arrive unsecured and take a few seconds to bank, so dying immediately after clearing a camp wastes it. The Soul Urn is a courier-style objective, one of the biggest single bounties in the game, and it was reworked in the June 30, 2026 patch to be a standalone objective again.

The scoreboard tracks all of this as net worth. Check it before you take a fight. Deadlock does funnel catch-up souls to the losing side, but a team that is 10,000 souls ahead and has spent them is simply stronger, and no amount of aim fixes that.

The Map: Three Lanes, Ziplines, and a Kill Order

The map has three lanes with troopers marching down each. With six players per team, you will usually lane in two solo lanes and two duo lanes, then collapse into roaming mid-game.

Ziplines run the length of every lane and around the map’s edge. Jump on one and it carries you hands-free, so you can shoot and cast while riding. They are the backbone of rotations, with two caveats: how far you can ride is gated by how far your team has pushed, and you are fully exposed while riding.

Objectives fall in a fixed order, and each unlock matters:

  1. Guardians are the first tower in each lane. Cracking one pays souls to your whole team and opens the lane.
  2. Walkers are the lane bosses behind the Guardians. Taking a pair of them is the classic mid-game power spike.
  3. Guardians, Walkers, and a Shrine also unlock flex slots: four extra item slots on top of your 12 base slots, earned by the team and shared by all six players. This is why “we should take that Walker” is not optional macro advice; it is items.
  4. Shrines and the Patron sit in the base. Break the Base Guardians, smash both Shrines, then grind the Patron down through two phases. Only the Patron ends the game.

The wildcard is the Mid-Boss in the central pit. Killing it drops the Rejuvenator, a four-minute team buff that supercharges your troopers, slashes respawn timers, and lets you revive fallen allies. Most successful base pushes in the late game start with this buff, and most late-game throws start with getting caught contesting it.

Six Heroes Worth Learning First

Deadlock rates every hero’s complexity in-game, and our hero pages carry the same data. Rather than “pick whoever looks cool”, here are six picks that teach the game’s core skills, with the reasoning from their actual kits. Complexity is the game’s own 1 to 4 scale from the July 2026 snapshot; “NP” marks heroes the game currently flags as New Player Recommended.

HeroRole tagsGunComplexityTeaches you
AbramsTank, BrawlerShotgun1Surviving mistakes, brawling
SevenHigh Voltage, Area DenialBurst Fire1 (NP)Wave clear, teamfight presence
InfernusArsonist, ExplosiveRapid fire1 (NP)Damage over time, chasing
HazeAssassin, StealthyRapid fire1 (NP)Farming to carry, target selection
WraithDuelist, IsolatorRapid fire11v1 laning, mixed damage
DynamoTeamplay, InitiatorPistol2Support play, fight timing

Abrams is the most forgiving hero in the game. Siphon Life drains health from enemies around him, his Infernal Resilience passive regenerates a chunk of the damage he takes, and Shoulder Charge both engages and escapes. When you inevitably misposition in your first matches, Abrams lets you walk out alive and learn from it instead of watching a respawn timer.

Seven is the wave-clear tutor. Lightning Ball deletes trooper waves, Static Charge is a big area stun, and Storm Cloud is a teamfight ultimate you can use badly and still get value from. His burst-fire gun rewards deliberate aiming without punishing imperfect tracking.

Infernus solves the “my aim is not there yet” problem. His Afterburn passive sets enemies on fire after sustained hits, Napalm pools damage on the ground, and Flame Dash makes him one of the fastest heroes on the map. Damage over time keeps ticking even when your crosshair slips.

Haze is the classic farm-and-carry pick. Sleep Dagger sets up kills or covers a retreat, Smoke Bomb gets you out of trouble, and Fixation stacks bonus damage the longer you shoot one target. She teaches the carry rhythm: farm efficiently, pick isolated targets, and know when Bullet Dance wins a fight outright.

Wraith is for players who want to win their lane 1v1. Card Trick converts your shooting into spirit damage cards, Full Auto is a raw attack-speed steroid, and Telekinesis lifts an enemy helplessly into the air. She also teaches Deadlock’s two-damage-type system early, because she deals both.

Dynamo is the pick if you prefer enabling a team over topping the damage chart. Rejuvenating Aurora heals allies, Quantum Entanglement repositions you and nearby teammates through a short teleport, and Singularity is one of the best teamfight ultimates in the game: land it on three enemies and the fight is usually over.

Browse the full roster with filters for complexity and role on our heroes page, and read the roles and tags explainer for how the in-game hero cards work.

The Shop: Four Tiers, Three Columns

Items are bought at the Curiosity Shop, arranged in three columns (Weapon, Vitality, Spirit) and four soul tiers. As of the July 2026 snapshot, the live pool looks like this:

TierCostItems in the current build
1800 souls23
21,600 souls43
33,200 souls46
46,400 souls44

That is 156 purchasable items, browsable with full stats in our items database. Two systems make the shop deeper than it looks:

Investments. The more souls you sink into one column, the bigger that column’s passive investment bonus. Committing to a direction is rewarded; buying one of everything is not. The shop tiers page breaks down the exact thresholds.

Components. Many expensive items build up from cheaper ones, and you pay only the price difference. Your tier-1 pickups are rarely wasted money.

For a first purchase in lane, you cannot go far wrong with Monster Rounds (bonus damage to troopers, which directly means more confirmed souls), Extra Stamina, or Healing Rite to stay in lane after a bad trade. Later, learn imbues: items that bind to a single ability and only boost that one, which is where builds start to feel personal. When in doubt, open the in-game build browser and follow a popular build for your hero; it feeds suggested purchases straight into your shop.

One buying rule beats all others: read the damage that is killing you. Deadlock has exactly two damage types, Weapon (bullets, scales with level) and Spirit (abilities, scales with Spirit Power), and each has its own resist items. Dying to an Infernus burn and buying bullet armor is throwing souls away.

Movement and Fighting: The Shooter Half

Coming from CS2 or another FPS, your aim transfers, but Deadlock layers systems on top of it. (If you are also grinding CS2, our competitive settings guide covers that side.)

Stamina is a pool of charges, three for most heroes, that fuels every dash, air jump, and wall kick, refilling one bar at a time. Sprinting is free and separate. The movement page has the details, but the habit that matters is simple: never start a fight, or cross open ground, with zero stamina. The dash-jump (cancel a dash into a jump, then slide) is the first advanced technique worth practicing, because it moves you farther per stamina bar than dashing twice.

Headshots deal a 1.65x weapon damage bonus and flash yellow on hit, while bullet falloff cuts damage at range. Your effective DPS is aim multiplied by positioning: a mediocre shooter at close range with headshots out-damages a laser-accurate one spraying from falloff distance.

Melee and parry. Heavy melee hits hard and breaks through gunfire, but parry (F by default) catches an incoming melee and slams the attacker to the ground for about two seconds, a free punish window. Parry rides roughly a six-second cooldown, so whiffing it leaves you exposed. Against melee-heavy laners like Abrams, one read parry can decide the whole lane.

Mistakes That Cost New Players Games

These come up in nearly every low-MMR replay, and each one maps to a mechanic above:

  1. Shooting the wave instead of last-hitting. You push the lane to the enemy Guardian, farm under threat, and get ganked. Hold the wave on your side and time your shots.
  2. Ignoring the floating orbs. If you are not confirming your orbs and denying the enemy’s, you are conceding around 40 percent of the lane’s contested souls to an opponent who is.
  3. Sitting on souls. Unspent souls are zero stats. Shop every death, and remember tier-1 components roll into later items.
  4. Buying the wrong resist. Check the damage log, then buy against Weapon or Spirit specifically.
  5. Fighting on zero stamina. If you cannot dash, you cannot dodge, disengage, or chase. Count your bars like a CS player counts bullets.
  6. Spamming heavy melee into a ready parry. Feint first, or punish their whiff.
  7. Taking fights with no objective behind them. A won fight should buy a Guardian, a Walker, the Mid-Boss, or the Urn. Kills alone do not end games; the Patron does.

If you want a structured path through all of this, our getting started page sequences the whole learning loop, and the full mechanics index covers all 36 systems currently documented, from status effects to ranked. And once you are hooked enough to care how your hero looks, there is a skins browser for that too.

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