The Beginner's Guide to Heroes of Newerth

Without further adieu or poor attempts at humor, I present to you the Noob's Guide to Newerth! Here we will cover all the basic things a greenhorn like yourself absolutely needs to know before you can hope to succeed in a game and hopefully show you how to learn your way to the top.
Heroes of Newerth, 101

I'll start by touching on a few basic terms you'll run across in this guide, these forums and in player chat:

* Hero: The main unit controlled by the player and the other players.
* Creep: A creep is an AI controlled unit. "Lane" creeps are creeps that patrol down one of the three lanes while "Neutral" creeps are those you will find scattered in the forests.
* Lane: There are 3 lanes in a map - the Top, Middle and Bottom. There should never really be more than two heroes in a single lane unless one team is 'ganking' or 'pushing'. There are three Towers per lane.
* Ganking: The act of ambushing an opposing player.
* Pushing: The act of attempting to destroy enemy towers.
* Defensive Towers: Usually just called Towers. Killing the enemies' towers gives your team a large gold bonus and gets you closer to their throne.
* Throne: If this building dies, you win!... or lose, depending on which one just bit the dirt. It's a large structure, flanked by two Towers and located right in front of the Healing Fountain.
* Healing Fountain: This is the place where you start out at the beginning of the game. You will heal rapidly while standing in the waters.
* Shop: It's where you buy items. There is one located right next to your healing fountain and another four 'hidden' shops around the map. You will see them as white squares on your minimap. Certain items can only be purchased from these shops.
* Barracks: There are two types of Barracks - Ranged Barracks and Melee Barracks. You will see one set of them at the end of each lane. If you destroy your enemy's ranged barracks, more powerful ranged creeps will spawn. Likewise, if you destroy the melee barracks, more powerful melee creeps will spawn.

The main goal of the game is to destroy the opposing team's Throne. There are many ways to do this. Your entire team can push in one or all of the lanes and then let the creeps finish them off, slowly whittle them down or - if a hero gets powerful enough - he can charge in and simply destroy it himself. If all three lanes are pushed and all six barracks destroyed, extremely powerful creeps will begin spawning. At this point, the game is almost completely over as the creeps are simply too powerful to stop and they make short work of any heroes or towers that may get in their way.

Until you're competent enough to craft your own starting builds and customize them however you want, I reccomend you buy two sets of Runes of Blight, one Health Potion and at least one Mana Potion. All of these can be found in the Supplies shop. Finish off your remaining gold with a Pretenders Crown and then as many Minor Totems as you can afford or carry. You should be able to afford at least one of each.