All heroes involved in the death of an enemy hero are rewarded experience and gold, while the hero that has dealt the killing blow receives the greatest portion of gold. The player obtains gold though periodic income and combat experience, which is used for buying various items for his or her hero. The maximum level a hero may achieve is 25 and the experience required per level gain increases with each new level. Experience is gained for being within the range of enemy units when they are killed. Every hero has four abilities that may be acquired and upgraded as the hero gains experience and levels up. Players control a single hero from a top-down perspective, while common features of real time strategy games such as base management and resource collection are removed. Players on each team choose one of 94 heroes, featuring a variety of abilities and advantages to compensate for any shortcomings. At any point after fifteen minutes has expired a team can choose to concede defeat – this loses them the game and requires a unanimous team vote to pass or a ‘four of five’ vote after the thirty minute mark. Victory is achieved when one of the teams manages to push into the base of the opposing team, and destroys their primary structure the Hellbourne’s ‘Sacrificial Shrine’, or the Legion’s ‘Tree of Life’. Bases are strongly defended with extra defensive towers, and buildings from which units spawn.

Defensive towers are positioned evenly through each lane, until the lanes terminate at a team’s base. The standard map is split into three continuous ‘lanes’ (Two in one of the lesser-played maps), running from one base to the other. Both teams are based at opposite sides of a map. Heroes of Newerth puts two teams of players against each other: the Legion and the Hellbourne. This team based arena style action RPG was heavily inspired by the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne custom map, Defense of the Ancients and is S2 Games’ first game title in the Dota genre. Heroes of Newerth, HoN for short, is a free-to-play science fantasy, action real-time strategy game developed by S2 Games for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Heroes of newerth heroes list