This beta really needs a more in depth beginners guide...

I really dodn't understand why u need a guide, I mean to play this game its extremely simple, to play it at the level good players do just needs time if u can ever reach that level. U just need to practice, but to play the game, thats easy, stardock and Gpg made sure it was an easy to understand game.

ditto. Its as easy as right-clicking where you want  to go or what you want to attack. Click an item or skill and click where to target. Everything else is just spending a little time bullying AI's to figure out what skill does what.

yeah plz explain what excatly u need help with, the more info the better.

Javalsinger does this help:
http://forums.demigodthegame.com/341837/page/1/#2082987

Read the links ive posted there, they should help. Lots of guides/beginner tips

Granted, this game may be simple.  And to all those with experience in the related genre's it may be truly simple.  But to an old fart with little recent gaming experience, I don't know where to begin...

For example, I begin a 'practice' game by selecting a demigod and playing vs. one easy AI demigod.  The game begins...  I buy a few potions and off I go.  I see units of mine rushing off...  Do I control them?  How?  Where are they going?  Where the heck do I go?

So I wander off...  I see enemy units attacking my towers or something...  should I go there and defend them?  Should instead attack his towers? I go defend mine...

I'm knocking off his units and over his demigod comes...  Should I run away?  I'm weakened so I take a healing potion and go toe to toe with the other demigod...  I'm losing health quickly...  So I run away....  He takes out my tower....  I'm losing and I've done nothing.. 

Rinse and repeat....  I'm lost.  I don't know what to do...  The mechanics may be simple enough, but I'm clueless as to HOW TO PLAY....

I've read all the strategy guides above, but they all assume a basic level of understanding as to how to proceed...  I lack that basic understanding....

Does that make my issues any clearer?

Thanks,

Javaslinger

First,

Did you play Dota anytime?

It's not easy to say. In  the game  as you have written many you can decide a lot of things.. It's important to buy the right items, upgrade the best things and ...

So i can be difficulty for beginners.

First, If you don't play any game in the genre, you should open a game, choose any demigod and start..

Then:

1. You can only skill your demigod and can go through the middle to the enemy forces, without any tactics, simpely kills mobs and try to surrive

If you do that a lot of times, you will understand, when you should activate this spell or when you should run away (if you have lesser lifepoints (maybe first 100, then you see you die again, and you back after 200 lifepoints etc..

I hope you can understand it, my english is not so good

If you don't understand something, ask me, i say it clearer

After a few games dieing...dieing...and dieing again, you will understand a few tactics how you can surrive..

It's not important to win every game, it is important to have fun ( If you are losing all the time, it isn't fun), but if you play it 10 times losing, you will be better and better..

So you will your first win vs. a easy..then normal...(hard..nightmare) AI ..

Maybe tactics for beginners:

1. as i have written a few sentences before.. Go through the middle and surrive

2. buy some items and look, what have changed (more damage..more armor..) You will find what is the best for you

3. Upgrade your creeps, and look, what change,

I think all this ...(maybe ) Tactics will help you to be better..

I think it is only to find your best way to win ( Upgrading, Buying items , Spell-tactics)

Sorry for the long text, but i don't know how to say it shorter..

Thanks,

Union_Freedom

So u want to destroy the oponets citadel. In order to that u must destroy your enemy towers, the best way to do this is buy catasouri or what ever they are. U can't get them right away so when your demigod is doing pretty good(killing other demigod/demigods) start getting buying stuff at your citadel which ups towers and grunts and stuff. If u get priests than angels after angels u will be able to get catasouri which are like catapults. U can't get them until u have enough war rank which is gained by holding flags so always want to get them. Flags give war rank and other things. Hover mouse over them to find out what else. U usually want to go right to your opponets demigod and try to kill him/her/it so u have free power to capture flags and reap chaos. In late game how ever grunts become to powerful and u might want to finish some of them off especially giants and catasouri before fighting you opponets demigod. Generall u want to stay away from your opponets towers and let your grunts try to kill them. DO not go chasing far into your opponets base unless u no what your doing. Until mid to late game u want to just allow your grunts to attack towers and really not try destroying them just damaging them now and than. Okay if u want to be able to get a good demigod here are some suggested items. Pelenore's crown is basicly a must if u need mana, for its cheap yet still helps alot. U prob won't need to get another mana item for the rest of the game. Also warpstone is a very usefull item for retreating and chasing, or just popping up in you opponets face. If u are ranged, use that to your advantage attack retreat. Oh yeah u dodn't control units if you dodn't control the units rushing into battle, if u want troops u need to be a generals and use a spell to get them or buy idols which summon them. Idols can be found at the bottom of the item shop.

If u need somethong else or just more plz ask. sry for being isgnororant just this game came easy to me because i had been following for a while and had a good idea what to do.

My suggestion is to make a 5 v 1 game.  

Put 4 AI computer on your team so you have a total of 5 people.   Then see if you can win.  If you do, do 4v1, then 3v1 until you are comfortable with 1v1.

I think this is the best suggestion.

Just to put my .02 in -

Let's start at the beginning.  Ignore the castle, the towers, the grunts, and the demigods for a moment and just picture two rivers.  Each river flows from its origin until it hits the other river's current.  When the rivers meet they negate each other. 

------->I<-------

Windowdressing aside, that is all Demigod is about.  Two rivers of mobile units or "grunts," one dark current and one light, flowing from their respective wellspring to meet in the middle of the map.  All things being equal they will cancel each other out forever.

This is where you come in.  Ideally, your Demigod uses its abilities and vast power to shift the balance of power until the enemy citadel is crushed.  It can do this in several ways. 

- kill enemy grunts so that your grunts can run past them and attack the main barriers to victory - the towers and forts.  Whaling on the towers and forts will help your grunts to their main objective - the Citadel.  This is your ultimate objective and when it collapses you have won.

- upgrade your grunt streams in both power and type at your Citadel.  Note that in order to do this you need to control flags scattered around the map.  Flags have three benefits - they offer a direct buff like +15% hitpoints or +15% experience, they bring experience for capturing them, and they increase your war rank.  War Rank ties into Citadel upgrades, so if you don't have the requisite rank you can't yet buy the upgrade, even if you have the gold.   

- buy items and gain levels to make your Demigod powerful enough to crush the Citadel without help.  You gain experience from capping flags, killing enemy units, and killing enemy Demigods.  You gain gold by killing units and Demigods and also destroying buildings. 

*Of course, the enemy is trying to do exactly the same things with their Demigod, so it is important to strike a balance between attacking their river and defending your own. 

On Demigods - Each of the 8 Demigods has a different set of skills and stats.  Rook, for example, is generally powerful, but slow.  Regulus has good range and attack speed but low damage per hit and low health and armor.  Mess around with the different Demigods until you find one that suits your style. 

Basics -

Each of the demigods has a set of spells they can unlock by levelling up.  The spells are shown on the lower left side of the interface, and clicking the + symbol next to your portrait will allow you to chose which spells, abilities, and passive buffs you want access to.  You have access to more powerful spells and can upgrade them as you reach higher levels. 

You can select a spell by using the hotkey or clicking it with the cursor and then selecting a target.  The slots to the right of your portrait are for activateable items bought at the item shop (building near citadel in your base) and the farthest right is for unlockable persistent Favor items which can be bought on the favor menu.  You can pull that menu up by clicking of the Favor Item slot. 

The favor menu and the item shop menu are tabbed on the left side.  Click on a tab with the cursor to access a new page of items.  The first page of the item menu deals with consumable items that will be used up after one use.  Lower pages feature items you can buy as equipment for your Demigod.  Some of these items are activatable like spells and will appear in your item slots to the right of your portrait , but most are passive and provide buffs to one or two of your stats.  For example, if I buy 5 items which buff my armor then normal attacks will do much less damage.  On the other hand, if my opponent is using spells to hurt me I might invest in +life items since armor doesn't mitigate spell damage. 

Generally, you will win most effectively by controlling all or most of the flags, killing enemy Demigods without letting them kill you, destroy their towers and kill their units, and balance spending at the citadel with spending at the item shop so that your Demigod can win fights but your river is still stronger than theirs. 

Does that help?

yeah i guess bwhat blitz says might work......... but i add on to him, watch what computers do, do that but be smart about it, like dodn't just run into enemy bases. This will put might also allow u to understand the basics. Than I suggest gettinga human player to play with against lots of ai and watch what he does.

Thanks everyone for the advice...  Blitz's suggestion has proved very useful... It is much easier to learn the mechanics when you've got 'blockers'...  Though I still manage to die quickly.  Those towers are deadly...

This is proving to be a very fun game....

Thanks again and any more advice is always welcome!

Javaslinger

Javaslinger want to play a game some time, I can tell u what to do differntly because its hard to tell some one how not to die when u dodn't no how their dieing, plus u can see what things i do.

perhaps take a look at some DotA matches @ youtube. afaik the game is quite similar to demigod. so you might get the idea of how to survive at lower levels.

im in the same boat as javaslinger... i suck, but im still enjoying it i kinda  forgot about this game until this weekend, hadnt played since the first beta, and wow... its looking like a real game now... so far i just play the AI, and sometimes i win, mostly i lose, but i think im getting the hang of it. discovering i could upgrade the citadel by accident helped a whole lot though

im really looking forward to getting the single player part of this game, hopefully thatll let me get the hang of it to the point i can try playing other real people... although if the other games i play online are any indication, ill prolly suck at it forever i hope the matchmaking takes ranking into account so i can get matched with people who suck just like i do, so maybe we can all have a decent game without it being too terribly one-sided...

matchmaking is going to take ranking into acount i beleive and i think we might see some 2 okay people against 1 pro action to.

I wonder what that will look like.  Two decent experienced players will usually beat one pro as long as they tagteam.  As soon you get two pros though I think they could beat any number of decent experienced players if the map is small enough.  2 organized vs 5 random the 2 will win every time because they will completely dominate kills and gold even if they don't always have map control.  Makes it hard to balance asymmetrical teams, imo

Don't forget achievement items .  They will surely play a big part in matchmaking.

What is the point of making a guide in a game's BETA stage?

Please don't forget this game is still in BETA.

How many times do we have to repeat that to get it into some people's heads?

This game is still in BETA phase.

Your point if someones gonna try to test the beta than they need to be able to play well.

its difficult to test all the features if you dont even know what the features are. for example, it wasnt until just a few days ago that i even realized you could buy upgrades at the citidel, and i only discovered that by accident because i misclicked on it... which is what brought me to the forums, wondering what else i might be missing out on...

having just some basic information, a mini-manual, with this info gathered in one place (and updated as needed) would have been a huge boon.

This is an amazing quote and should be the forward to the manul in my opinion.  It really gets at what this game is, the beauty of it and the power you have as a demigod.

Thanks for stepping forward with your confusion Javaslinger. I am certain you speak for many, whether you know it or not. It is so easy to forget everything we take for granted in the game knowledge we develop that comments like this are a breath of fresh air, and a good reminder of who our potential audience includes.

Many of the conventions in Demigod require some level of background in more recent RPG or RTS games to fully comprehend. We hear you loud and clear, and will be releasing an introductory marketing/walkthrough video very soon that should help bridge the gulf of understanding.

It may already be too late for you, as it sounds like you are brunting your way through the absence of manual and walkthroughs on your own, but others like you may find it useful and informative. In the meantime, some of our other beta testers have made some good videos that will (I hope) lead the way for others to follow.

Thanks for Gir92 for these helpful videos:

Walkthrough_1

Walkthrough_2

Walkthrough_3

- Servo