How a Standard Deadlock Match Flows
Deadlock is a 6v6 third-person shooter built on MOBA foundations: three or four lanes, a souls economy driven by last-hitting, soul orbs and denies, ziplines for fast rotations, and a ladder of objectives that ends at the enemy Patron. To play well, you need to read two things at once — the phases a match moves through, and the objectives that give each phase its purpose. This guide walks the full flow from the opening laning stage to the base assault, then covers the map objectives, the new Haunts, how the different game modes bend the flow, and where to review a match after it ends.
The Three Phases of Match Flow
Every match slides through recognizable stages. The exact timing depends on how quickly objectives fall, but the shape stays the same: farm and lane, trade map control, then break the base.
Early Game: Laning and the Souls Economy
The match opens on the lanes. Each lane is anchored by a Guardian — the giant figure with the torch — that you must bring down before you can push any farther. During this phase the entire priority is the souls economy: secure your last hits, contest the soul orbs that pop off kills, and deny the enemy their farm. Souls are the currency that buys every item in your build, so a laning phase won on economy quietly wins the mid game. Beginner-friendly heroes such as Abrams, Haze, Seven, Infernus, McGinnis and Dynamo are good picks for learning this rhythm because their kits are forgiving while you drill your last-hitting.
Mid Game: Trading Objectives
Once Guardians start falling and the first Walkers take damage, the map opens up. Teams stop living in their lanes and begin rotating along the ziplines to contest the strongest available objective. This is the phase where a single pick or a won teamfight converts into a Walker, a map objective, or a stolen buff. The mid game rewards map awareness more than raw mechanics — knowing which objective is worth the rotation is the skill that separates even teams.
Late Game: Shrines, the Patron, and the Base Assault
The flow ends at the enemy base. With the outer objectives down, the attackers move onto the Shrines guarding the base and then onto the Patron itself. A completed base assault — the final push that ends the match — is the payoff for every objective your team took along the way. Because the defenders fight on home ground, this phase demands coordinated engages and a clean read of when your team is strong enough to commit.
The Mid-Boss and the Rejuvenator
Sitting between the lanes is the Mid-Boss, which drops the Rejuvenator — one of the classic match-defining objectives carried over from Deadlock’s core design. Winning the Mid-Boss gives your team a window of overwhelming momentum, which is exactly why teams fight so hard over its pit. Timing a Rejuvenator grab just before a base assault is one of the highest-value plays in the game.
The Objectives That Define the Match
The match flow is really a sequence of objectives. Knowing the ladder — Guardian, Walker, Shrine, Patron — and the side objectives around it tells you where your team should be at any moment.
Lane Objectives: Guardians and Walkers
Guardians sit at the head of each lane and must fall before you can advance. Once they do, the Walkers are the next structural step toward the enemy base. Treat the lane objectives as a fixed progression: you take them in order, and skipping ahead usually means feeding a fight you cannot win yet.
Map Objectives: Sunken Plaza, Bell Tower, and More
Beyond the lanes, the Cursed Apple packs high-risk, high-reward objectives into its districts:
- Sunken Plaza — shrouded beneath the district’s main square, a descent where the sounds of the outside world fade away as you drop toward the reward.
- Bell Tower — ascend the Chinatown Bell Tower for a highly concentrated soul hotspot, but the bell rings loudly while you collect, broadcasting your position.
- Tough Crates — these need a Heavy Melee to break open, and the extra souls are worth the swing.
- Buff Containers — revamped golden statues that now also grant Spirit Resist, Bullet Resist, Ability Range, and Move Speed as permanent bonuses.
Souls, Buffs, and Utility Pickups
The flow is also fuelled by smaller pickups scattered across the map. Healing Snacks let a sharp-eyed player top up in a pinch, and Steam Vents provide invisibility and a small amount of regeneration while you stand on them — perfect for ducking in and out of veiled cover with your team while navigating the streets.
Haunts: The New Neutrals
The neutrals you used to know have been replaced by a variety of creatures called Haunts with new behaviours, each with its own flavour. Their soul value and comparative difficulty are now shown directly in the HUD, so you can size up whether a camp is worth clearing the moment you see it. Notable Haunts include:
- Specimens — the disembodied hand crawling across the kitchen floor.
- Gutter Ghouls — humanity’s buried thoughts given form.
- Barrel Mimics — gunpowder spirits lying in wait.
- Past Dues — books that would rather put you to sleep.
- Stage Hands, home to the Theater district.
- Crabbage Pots and the Festival Spirit, both native to Chinatown.
- Shrooms, found in the Haunted Lot.
- Underhands, lurking below the Plaza.
Learning which Haunts sit in which district — Theater, Chinatown, Haunted Lot, Plaza, and beyond — lets you plan a farming route that keeps you safe while you climb toward your next item.
How Game Modes Change the Match Flow
The standard 6v6 flow is the backbone, but two other ways to play bend it in different directions.
Standard 6v6
The classic mode: full lanes, full map, and the complete Guardian-to-Patron objective ladder described above. This is where the souls economy and objective trading matter most.
Street Brawl
Street Brawl is a new fast-paced game mode built for quick action. You join a 4v4 battle for the city across a best-of-five match, and each round takes only a couple of minutes. Crucially, players start each round with equal resources and no farming — the streamlined flow strips out the laning economy entirely, so every round is a pure fight over the objective.
Practice and Coop Bot Matches
Before carrying the match flow into live games, it helps to rehearse it where nothing is on the line. Deadlock’s sandbox has expanded, and the practice map — loaded with the map dl_streets command — drops you into an empty space with useful cheats enabled. This is the closest thing to a pressure-free coop bot match environment: no live opponents, every variable under your control, and room to drill movement, ability combos, and objective sequences until they are automatic. Use it to learn hero kits and item timings so your first real fights are not your first time practicing them.
The Postgame Summary: Reviewing Your Match
When the Patron falls, the revamped postgame takes over. It introduces a new MVP scoring system and a postgame summary, including a postgame graph that tracks all the permanent buffs collected during the game. This screen is the honest record of how your match actually flowed — where the fights went, and who carried them.
Where to Find Match History and Your Match ID
For players asking where to find match history or where to find their match ID, the postgame screen is the natural starting point: it is the game’s own record of the match you just finished, with the MVP breakdown and the permanent-buff graph rolled into a single overview. Because Deadlock is still in early development, dedicated match-history tooling and shareable match-ID features continue to evolve alongside the rest of the client, so treat the postgame summary as the reliable place to review a game, and expect the surrounding match-tracking features to grow as development continues.
Hero Release Voting and the Wider Flow
The way the game itself evolves follows a similar rhythm. New heroes are released two per week, and the community votes on the release order. You earn votes by playing — the First Win of the Day grants bonus votes — and you cast them in the new Pregame lobby and at the Hideout ballot box. In the Pregame lobby the winning team’s votes count double, so there is a small competitive edge in winning your pregame. New Hero Priority Tokens let players more reliably select the newest heroes once they arrive.
Quick Match-Flow Tips
- Win the economy early. Last hits, soul orbs and denies in the opening lanes set the tempo for everything that follows.
- Take the objective ladder in order. Guardian, Walker, Shrine, Patron — skipping steps usually costs you a fight.
- Fight for the Rejuvenator before it is contested. A well-timed Mid-Boss grab is a free base assault.
- Use Steam Vents to move as a group. Shared invisibility turns a rotation into a pick.
- Check the HUD for Haunt value. The soul value shown tells you instantly whether a camp is worth the detour.
- Rehearse in the practice map. Load
dl_streetsand drill your flow before you take it into a live match. - Read your postgame. The MVP breakdown and permanent-buff graph show exactly where your match went right or wrong.