Quick Guide: How to play Aghanim’s Labyrinth event game

The highly anticipated battle pass went live today, bringing a host of rewards, features, updates, and most excitingly, the return of the Aghanim’s Labyrinth event game - and this time, with a makeover! The rooms, map, monsters, almost everything look spruced up. And what’s great about this event is that players do not require a battle pass to play and anyone can jump straight into the game. 

Many have enjoyed the entertaining Aghanim's Labyrinth during its introduction a year ago, so if you’re late to the hype train, fret not, we have a quick guide for you!

The event requires 4 players, so you can gather a party of 4 friends or queue in the matchmaking pool to team up with strangers. The game will land your team in an enormous labyrinth of monsters. From the starting point, you have to work together to fight off these monsters from room to room. You can also buy and collect items, and select special buffs for your hero. The goal is to survive 17 rooms - where you’ll meet mini-bosses along the way, and defeat the final boss to best the Continuum Vault. 

Before the game begins, you need to choose your hero from a pool of 14 heroes (more heroes from last year's labyrinth can be unlocked by leveling your Battle Pass). It is important to pick a hero with wave-clearing abilities and crowd control to be able to survive the simultaneous hordes of monsters.

The key to surviving each room is to kite and pull the monsters around.

For this kind of play, the usual lineup is a mix of a tanky melee, a ranged damage dealer, and a healer support. Keep in mind these monsters that you’ll meet will have different strengths and weaknesses from one another. Some of them are weak against physical damage, some are insanely tanky, some are very agile - so to be safe, draft something that is universal.

You will start with 3 charges of life each and it can be seen under your hero's icon.

If you die, you will lose one life charge and you will be resurrected. But dying without any charges left means you have to wait for the round to end. The players that are still alive need to finish the monsters in the room and if they succeed, you will respawn. In case all of your team dies without any remaining lives, then it’s game over. So make sure to value your life and DON'T FEED away those charges!

Do note that there is also an option to buy a Life Rune at checkpoints or intervals between rooms, but it comes with an expensive cost.

In the event game mode, there are no healing salves and mangoes in the shop, but you can destroy nearby crates to get either one. The salves and clarity fill your HP and mana immediately, and it also applies to all of your teammates when consumed. There are also buffs that drop from checkpoints such as Tome of Agility, Tome of Strength, and more.

After clearing a room, a prompt will appear and ask you to “Choose a Legendary Scepter Shard”, which offers ability upgrades for free. You should choose the buffs according to what you feel is suitable for your role - if you’re a support, you should probably get cooldown reduction and if you’re a damage dealer, get something to amplify your damage.

In Aghanim's Labyrinth you will also stumble upon many other ‘shops’ that sell upgrades, Life Runes (to replenish life charges), Cheese, Bottle refills, and more.

You will need to wisely decide whether you want to spend your gold on items or buy Life Runes or buffs; this can largely influence the outcome of your games.

From the beginning, there are a plethora of paths and rooms that you can explore. At the entrance door, you can claim either one of the two outposts to choose your next room. Above each outpost, you can see either a Life Rune, treasure, or gold symbol, which depicts the room’s reward. So if your team lacks life charges or needs to buy more items, you’ll have an idea of which room to pick.

In the first 4 rooms, you will meet the standard monsters and traps. The fifth room will be the mini-boss, which is stronger than the usual monsters. Then, you will experience a fun bonus round where you try to collect as much gold as you can. This pattern repeats until the 17th room where the final boss awaits.

Every room also has different missions and you might get a little confused about what you are supposed to do. So you can always refer to the top-right of the screen for a clear objective.

Throughout the Continuum Vault in Aghanim's Labyrinth, players can collect random drops of Arcane Fragments. These accumulated fragments can be used to buy permanent upgrades for future games. There will also be random drops of Battle Pass points that you can collect to level up.

The challenge doesn't stop there. Every time your party wins the final boss, you will also unlock a harder mode of the labyrinth. The difficulty level goes up in order from Apprentice, Magician, Sorcerer, Grand Magus, to the Apex Mage.

As of now, Aghanim's Labyrinth is still fairly new and there are still a lot of things to be discovered. For new players, fully grasping the game will need a couple of tries but trust me, once you start rolling into the labyrinth, there is no going back. So go ahead, dive into the game and slay those monsters!

Stick around esports.gg for more Dota 2 news and guides.