Another beginners tips

Heroes of Newerth Tip : Don’t buy worthless items for your Hero.

So how do you know what to buy? Read hero guides at the HoN beta forum if you’re a participant. Pay attention when selecting your hero to what their main stat is (Agility, Strength, Intelligence), but be aware most heroes do not buy the same items even if they have the same primary statistic. Also keep in mind that the only bonus you get from boosting your primary stat is additional auto attack damge, which may or may not help you based on your hero.

* If you don’t know, ask! Your team could be helpful even in a public game. If you are at a point where you have gold for some items, ask your team and they should be able to help out a bit. Buying the wrong item just plain sucks (though you can sell them back for a partial refund). A safe buy for most heroes’ early game survivability is 2x Pretenders Crown as they buff your max hp and mp a bit, then the Marchers (run speed increase) next after you get more money.
* Get Items That Complement Your Skills, Not Your Primary Stat: Typically the most powerful part of your hero is your special skills that you improve as you gain levels, so sometimes you may want to ignore adding +Int to an Int character in favor of +mp/hp regen so that you can spam more nukes (though Int does boost your mana pool and base regen) and make less trips back to heal up. You may never actually use your autoattack in the late game depending on your hero, so the value of stacking your primary stat varies greatly from game to game.
* It takes time to Learn Build orders: No way around it, it takes time to learn good build orders for skills and items to buy. Plus, it completely depends on what hero you are using. Ask more experienced DoTA/Heroes of Newerth players what the best build order is for your hero. Remember, you can bring up the Shop menu ANYWHERE by pressing B on your keyboard so if you’re hugging a tower while waiting for enemy creeps to come to you, you can browse the items in the game and figure out what you want to buy in what order. However, you can only purchase items if you’re at the fountain or secret shop / outpost.

Feel free to ask me questions about what item builds for what heros etc.