DOTA 2 is by far the best competitive online multiplayer video game to feature donkey management.

In my previous Dota Diary about getting started with DOTA 2, one of the core features I mentioned is the need to spend money on items in order to keep pace with your opponents and improve your hero.

Killing AI controlled enemies and managing to take down enemy heroes rewards you with gold that starts burning a hole in your pocket. You can then exchange this for things in one of three shops on the map.

The speed at which I was advised by a helpful team-mate to spend my money at the start of the match was my first clue as to how important this was. For longer than I’d like to admit, items were something that didn’t really interest me. I knew they were there, but scanning through the selection of items which all have unique-yet-often-similar icons and tiny little mathematical modifications listed on their descriptions wasn’t something that was working out for me.

In this match, I was accompanied by meat-space friends, something that gives new jittery players like myself a tremendous amount of confidence, because if anyone starts getting too mean, you know that at least two of the other four people on your team have theoretically got your back.

A sound strategy for when you’re fairly confident someone hasn’t understood what you’ve said is to rephrase the question using different words.

The problem is that once you’ve trotted off to the front lines, the shop that you buy the bulk of your items from is so far away it might as well be in China (if you’re reading this in China, please reverse this illustration to read “it might as well be in the South of England”). Turning around and trekking back to base is definitely an option, but there’s a problem with doing this.

Just turning around and heading back to base is an issue because probably the most important part of DOTA 2 is making sure your hero is standing near to things that are getting killed so that you get experience. Without this, your hero stays at a very low level and critically, your opponents’ heroes grow up much faster than you do, making it even harder for you to win the match.

Enter the courier. Whilst “use the donkey” is one of those phrases you just don’t expect to be told in multiplayer video games, I was vaguely aware of what the courier is. The courier is an item anyone can buy that benefits the whole team as it can ferry items between the base and players up on the front lines.

Previously, the courier was always something that happened to other people. I had never really seen the point of the courier as I had been dying so frequently as to wind up back at base often enough to browse the shop without requiring the intervention of this beast of burden. Having played a little more, such a high death rate is symptomatic of being a new player and is known as feeding your opponents. It had got bad enough that team mates were no longer calling me a noob and were instead just referring to me as ‘the catering’.

Never let it be said that there is no such thing as a patient DOTA 2 player. My first attempt at using the donkey did not go well. After selecting the courier, my hero got attacked, I panicked and then frantically clicked to try and retreat. Unfortunately, having the courier selected meant that instead of performing evasive manoeuvres, my hero instead stood and watched helplessly as in the distance, a donkey turned its head and started trotting towards him.

The donkey was proving a liability and my gold stash was quickly turning into an extremely healthy savings account whilst also acting as the equivalent as a huge neon sign over my head indicating that I had no clue about what I was doing.

This struck me as very useful. The secret shop is somewhere that you can buy higher level and more expensive items later on in the game. It is also appropriately named as it is somewhere in the middle of the map in a location that appears to have been specially designed to be completely invisible to Davids. Having access to something that can home in on such a hard-to-find place would indeed be incredibly useful.

At this however point, fiddling around with the donkey was fairly low on my list of priorities and so we limped along for the rest of the match, with my two friends generally sharing the consensus that I might be a decent DOTA 2 player if I learned a few more of the basics, I assume like spending money.

Not one to be easily deterred, I woke up early the next morning and logged in to DOTA 2 to try and figure out how the courier actually worked. I started up match with only AI opponents and took a closer look at the little courier controls in the bottom right of the screen next to the shop window and learned that what I had previously considered as fiddly and awkward was in fact basically one button that would deliver any items in your stash to your location on the map. There are other options once you have the courier selected, but the absolute basics are in essentially trivial.

With confidence soaring, I leapt into a real human filled match to practise my newfound elite donkey skills.

Apparently, even if you’re not in a match with one of your friends, they can still see what you’re up to. I hadn’t seen him log in, but he was watching me forget to spend my money all over again.

After a few minutes, I was able to buy a bunch of mostly meaningless items and get them shipped next-lane delivery by the courier and in my pride shared my victory with my friend. I had worked out how the courier functions and delivered items that I had finally bought with my gold. Not only this, but I’d sent the donkey to the secret shop to do my secret shopping for me.

This is something I’m discovering with my DOTA 2 journey. The more you learn, the more ways you discover of potentially messing up. Maybe I’ll just leave the courier alone now.

Previously on the Dota Diaries: Starting out with DOTA 2