To understand how the MOBA (massive online battle arena) Smite is played there are several things that players must know. Among these are, map layout, lanes, jungle, titans, towers and minions. The game is fairly simple for a MOBA , but the MOBA genre is complex.

The goal is to pick a character, and work together with your four teammates to kill the enemy team’s titan (which is how you win). Titans are placed on opposite sides of the map with several obstacles preventing players from attacking them. These obstacles are towers, and phoenixes (or structures). The map is divided into three different lanes with a “jungle” that’s used to go between lanes. Two towers and one phoenix for each team are placed in each lane between the enemies and the allied titan.

If an enemy enters a tower that you control, it will fire at a constant rate at them doing significant damage, but it can only attack one enemy at a time. A tower can only be destroyed by taking 2,000 damage from auto attacks (left-click). Structures that are located further down the lane can only take damage if the structure before it has been destroyed.

Phoenixes are located closest to the titan, and have 1,500 health, however, it does more damage per attack and regenerates health when not under attack (they also come back after a while once destroyed). At least one phoenix must be destroyed before the titan will take damage, but the more structures destroyed, the less health the titan will have.

The next important thing to know about is minions. A wave of (or seven) minions will spawn near the phoenix and run down the lane towards the enemy titan. They will run into enemy minions and fight to a stalemate unless a player intervenes for doing this a player will receive “xp” and gold. When players gain enough xp they with level up which will make their stats increase, and allow them to upgrade their skills. Gold will be discussed more later.

When minions get to a tower, they will attack it doing only a little damage, but a structure will prioritize attacking minions before players. This allows players to attack the structure themselves. The structure will always prioritize minions unless players enter its range first, or attack an enemy player.

If one of the enemy team’s phoenixes die, the lane that the phoenix was in will spawn stronger minions (or fire minions). This puts more pressure onto the lane because enough minions can do quite a number on a titan.

Gold is important in Smite. The most significant way to make one’s character stronger is by buying items to increase their stats. It’s very important to buy the right items, otherwise the character won’t be as strong, or won’t work as well as their counterpart on the other team. There are many different items to adapt to many different situations. A full item set of six is called a “build.”

When one’s build is complete, they can save their gold to buy potions which increase their stats drastically, but only for a short time. Items are so important that oftentimes, the amount of gold teams make is used to measure who’s ahead.

In the jungle between lanes, there are “camps” where various monsters reside. There are two types of camps: an xp camp, and a buff camp. Xp camps are what they sound like; they give xp and some gold, so they need to be utilized to get levels ahead of your opponents.

Buff camps are more important. In addition to giving gold and xp, they drop one of three “buffs” (depending on which one it is). These increase a player’s stats for two minutes. The red camp drops a damage buff which increases the amount of damage a player can deal. The yellow camp drops a speed buff which increases a player’s movement speed. And the blue camp drops a mana buff which makes mana regenerate slowly and gives you CDR (cool down reduction).

Also in the jungle are two “objectives” which have the power to turn the tide of a game. Objectives are basically large monsters that are stronger than the others which give your team a massive boost for defeating. The first is the gold fury, which gives 300 gold to each player on the team that killed it. The second is the fire giant, which is much stronger than the gold fury. The fire giant gives gold and xp to the team that killed it, but more importantly it gives the whole team the “fire giant buff” which increases all stats on a character.

The final thing to discuss is how characters work. Each character has 4 abilities and a passive ability. Using a non-passive ability costs mana, which each character has a limited reserve of. Each character’s final ability is called an “ultimate” or ult. These have very long cooldown times, but are very powerful. When a player is killed, they will respawn after a certain amount of time. They respawn in a fountain (which is behind their titan). Returning to the fountain will refill hp and mana.

Smite is a unique take on the MOBA genre, utilizing a third-person camera instead of the standard top down view. For some, this more action oriented style of play is what makes them like Smite.

AHS student and Smite player Devin Post says, “Smite is the only MOBA I like.” Though AHS student and League of Legends player Michael Condly says “[I]t’s a wannabe DOTA/LoL but also wants to be unique and ‘different.’”