Map

The map is the playing field for all Dota 2 matches. It is comprised of two sides, one for the faction, and one for the  faction. To win, players must destroy the opposing side's Ancient, an important building at the center of each team's base.

General Information

 * Total map size approximately 15,000 units x 15,000 units.

Factions
Each faction occupies a diagonal half of the map, separated in the middle by the river. The is based at the lower left corner of the map, while the  is based at the upper right corner. The Ancients are located inside strongholds at the heart of each faction's territory.

Lanes
The map is segmented into three different lanes, the top, the bottom, and the middle lane. Each one of these lanes leads to the other team's base. During the early stages of the game, most gameplay is centered around the lanes. This is called the Laning Phase. Hero arrangements during the laning phase is a common matter of strategy.

The bottom lane for the Radiant, and the top lane for the Dire, are considered the safe lanes. The creeps meet each other close to the towers, which means there's less of a chance that the other team will try to kill you while you are near your tower. These lanes are recommended for beginners, as they provide some added protection against ganking.

Runes
At the start of the game and every 2 minutes onward, runes will spawn on both sides of the river every two minutes, one of them will always be a Rune of Bounty.

There are six possible runes that can spawn: Double Damage, Illusion, Invisibility, Regeration, Haste and Bounty. Double Damage increases your Hero's auto-attacks by 100%, Illusions grant you two Illusions, Invisibility grants you invisibility after a 1 second fade time, Regeneration restores your health and mana to maximum, Haste grants you maximum movement speed and immunity to slows, and the Bounty rune will give gold and experience depending on the time the rune is picked.

Towers
Each faction has defensive towers placed all over their side of the map. These towers do a lot of single target damage and prevent Heroes and creeps from pushing into the enemy base. In the early stages of the game, a hero can only take a few hits from a tower before dying. So one must be careful as to not get too close to towers until they have gained enough strength.

Barracks
In each base, there are 6 buildings called the barracks. There are pairs of barracks at the end of each lane; one for melee creeps and one for ranged creeps. If one team destroys the enemy barracks, their creeps in that lane will gain a major power-up. If all 6 barracks are destroyed, all of the opposing creeps will gain an even larger power-up, which makes them very difficult to defend against. These 'mega creeps' can usually assure victory because of their high health, damage and numbers, and can kill a Hero quickly if they are reckless enough.

Ancient
This is the main building in both bases. If one team destroys the other team's Ancient, the game is over and the destroying team has won. This building does not attack and will slowly regenerate health over time. It is defended by two towers and cannot be attacked until those towers are destroyed.