Fates Forever: Tips, Cheats, and Strategies

Fates Forever is a MOBA for the iPad created by Hammer & Chisel, better known as the company Jason Citron started after selling OpenFeint for an ungodly sum of money. If this is your first time to the MOBA rodeo, don’t worry – Gamezebo has plenty of tips and tricks to help you ready yourself for the competition.

Stay Primed: Touchscreens simply don’t have the precision of a mouse and keyboard. To combat this, directed spells in Fates Forever are gestured based. When you activate such a spell, its range will appear as a circle around your hero, which you can drag in whatever direction you want to attack. By keeping these circles primed, you save yourself several seconds, and can still use non-targeted spells the same as usual.
Teleport Liberally: In some MOBAs recalling yourself to base costs valuable time and gold. Doing so in Fates Forever still takes time, but it’s completely free. As such, if you’re really hurting for health, or need to spend your money on items, don’t be afraid to teleport. Another bonus is that leaving your own base grants a speed bonus, so you’re not even hurting yourself that badly for accruing experience and gold.

Hold Back: Just like League of Legends and Dota 2 the best way to make money in Fates Forever is through last-hitting minions. “Last-hitting” is when your hero lands the killing blow on a creature, granting you a bounty in the process. While Fates is much faster-paced than most games in the genre, you should still avoid auto-attacking creatures in lane when you’re not actively trying to take down a tower. You’ll make more money, and keep yourself from pushing into enemy territory before you’re ready.
Make Some Space: The exception to the last-hitting rule is when you’re pushing against a tower, or actually standing under it. In these cases, you need to kill minions as quickly as possible. This makes space for your armies to focus the structures, slows their deaths from incoming damage, and provides a longer buffer for you to attack buildings yourself. In fact, if you’re feeling confident you can blow area-of-effect spells to kill enemies even faster.
Play to Your Role: At the start of a match you can select one from a number of passive buffs to your character. To start, these include regenerative health, mana, and better jungling (killing neutral monsters out of lane). You must play to these strengths. If you’re a spellcasting hero, focus on mana. If your team doesn’t already have a jungler, take advantage of the asymmetrical team compositions to build some experience away from your allies. Just try not to pick a role the other members of your team have already selected, and balance accordingly.

Use the Environment: In MOBAs, certain heroes are equipped “ganking.” This is when you ambush an out-of-position opponent and kill them before they can escape, or wait for reinforcements. Fates Forever’s map is too small to be conducive to roaming ganks, but makes up for it by adding foliage that can conceal your character by standing in it. By hiding and waiting for your enemy to get aggressive you can jump them from such tall grass near your own towers, or alongside allied heroes, giving you a better chance of securing a kill than stand-up fights.
Tap, Don’t Drag: This one sounds more like an ergonomic tip than a strategy, but it does have tactical repercussions. The idea is that there are two ways to move in Fates: you can drag your finger in the direction you want to move, or you can tap to it. Dragging seems easier, at first, because it means less movement on your part. Tapping, however, has its benefits. For one it gives you greater direct control over your characters position (just as if you were using a mouse and keyboard). It also lets you keep your hands to the side of whatever device you’re playing on, blocking less of your view of the screen. That’s crucial to any MOBA, as positioning is always paramount to dodging and ambushing enemies.

Kite the Towers: A single round of Fates is only meant to last about 15 minutes. One reason for this is that heroes and towers do massive damage compared to other games of the genre. Just as in those games, you can use that to your advantage by “kiting” enemies. Basically, think of it as guerilla warfare. You poke at your enemy with a single attack or skill, then pull back towards your tower. If they come into range, they’re taking damage from your tower and giving you the advantage. If they don’t, you can start the whole process over again, until you’re comfortable going in for the kill.
Stand and Fight: One of the most common mistakes in the likes of Dota 2 and League is underestimating the standard attack. The same applies to Fates Forever. By running from a fight you operate from a position of weakness, letting the enemy get off spells, and auto-attacks for free. By standing and fighting for a moment you punish them for their aggressiveness, but also force them to evaluate if they should run. If they do, now you’re the one outputting free damage, and possibly scoring a kill.

Steven Strom

Steven "The Future of Games Journalism" Strom plays entirely too much Dota 2. He sometimes plays games when he's not too busy writing about them and their place in our culture, and thinks maybe they're not just a fad after all.