Enigma In The Jungle
I wanted to try something different and write up a challenge: in a single player game, farm a soul ring, brown boots, and 900 gold by 7 minutes as a jungling Enigma. More specifically, here are the rules:
- Create a custom lobby and join on either team. Cheats are not allowed.
- There are no explicit restrictions on your starting items. However, as this is preparation for an actual game, I’d recommend starting with realistic items (such as no quelling blade).
- You may only kill neutral creeps in your jungle. No ancients, no towers, no lane creeps.
- You may use runes.
- The goal is to have a soul ring, brown boots, and 900 gold by 7 minutes. You should also be level 6 or higher.
The goal here is to solidify the mechanics involved so that you can easily and consistently farm well in the jungle in real games. Getting the basics down will also make it easier for you to adapt to changes that you need to make against live opponents: ganking, avoiding ganks, checking runes, supporting, blocked camps, etc.
Naturally, I’m also going to explain how to accomplish this challenge! Below you’ll find the basic techniques that will teach you what you need to know to jungle successfully. This is not intended to be an extremely comprehensive guide on jungling; I won’t talk about things like how Midnight Pulse can be useful or how to do ancients/Roshan. After the basics section, I’ll include some techniques and ideas as to how you can better benefit your team.
Eidolons
First, a quick section on Enigma’s Eidolons for those of you very new to the hero.
Enigma’s second skill, Demonic Conversion, converts creeps into three Eidolons that you can control. This skill works on most creeps; you can convert any lane creep (from either team) and most jungle creeps. You cannot convert magic immune creeps (Mud Golems) or creeps that are level 5 or greater (the largest creep in the hard camps).
Eidolons are slow-moving summoned units that you can control. In particular, we’ll be using them to hit and tank jungle creeps. After attacking six times, an Eidolon will multiply into two Eidolons. The new Eidolons have full HP and have a bit of time added to their spawn duration. Only the original three Eidolons are able to multiply.
Pregame
There’s really not that much to do at the start of the game—just buy your items and get ready for creeps to spawn.
There are only two kinds of starting items that you need: an animal courier and clarities. You will need at least three clarities. If you feel that your micro is a bit lacking, I’d suggest getting up to five. You need the courier to ferry out items to you as you continue to jungle. In a real game, you’d probably need to help with supporting anyway.
Once you’ve bought your items, head out into your jungle. You want to hang out near the hard camp closest to your fountain. Make sure you don’t block the spawn box!
Jungling Path
The approach I take is to kill as many camps as possible, preferably larger ones.
On Radiant, I’ll start at the mid lane hard camp, proceed to the nearby medium camp, then go to the other hard camp. I’ll go further to the other medium camp if the first medium camp hasn’t respawned (because it hasn’t hit the next minute). Otherwise, I’ll start heading back towards the hard camp. In a real game, you’ll sometimes find that the second hard camp is blocked.
On Dire, I’ll start again at the mid lane hard camp. I’ll proceed to the nearby medium camp, then to the last medium camp. I’ll then cycle between these camps; I go to the closest camp that has creeps spawned in it.
Proper Eidolon Summoning
One of the mistakes often made when jungling is to summon your Eidolons at the wrong spot. When you cast Demonic Conversion on a creep, the three Eidolons are spawned wherever that creep was standing. Some players will simply walk up to a camp and cast Demonic Conversion on one of the creeps. The result looks like this:
The primary problem with doing this is that it makes it much harder to keep your Eidolons alive:
- The neutral creeps are able to immediately attack your Eidolons.
- It takes longer for you to micro your Eidolons so that they are no longer attacked.
- It is harder for your Eidolons to get in their six attacks (so they split) before dying. If your Eidolons don’t split, your jungling ability is severely crippled!
This is even more problematic with low levels in Eidolons or when summoning at a large camp, as three of the camps make it even harder for your Eidolons to survive:
- Centaurs will immediately stomp your Eidolons, dealing some damage and stunning them.
- Hellbears will immediately clap, dealing a lot of damage to all three Eidolons.
- Trolls are all ranged, making them a bit harder to de-aggro.
The proper way to summon Eidolons is to aggro the camp, then walk away from the camp. The neutral creeps will follow you. As they reach their leash range (the point where they turn around), convert one of the creeps into Eidolons.
This helps to alleviate some of the problems before for a few reasons:
- Neutral creeps will get few attacks in, if any, before turning around. This helps your Eidolons get enough attacks in to split.
- Your Eidolons get in some extra attacks as they chase the creeps back to the camp.
- You have more time to micro your Eidolons and spread them out as they walk back towards the camp.
It’s worth noting that you don’t need to aggro the medium camp once you have a few points in Demonic Conversion. It doesn’t hurt though.
Eidolon Micro
The micro involved with jungling is not too complicated. You need to move hurt Eidolons away so they stop taking damage and get their six attacks in. After the Eidolons split it’s not as important to keep them alive (as they’ll die shortly later anyways).
You don’t need to micro your Eidolons very far; about 150 units away is often good enough. You want to start moving them away right as the neutrals first attack them. If you wait until they’re low on HP, you probably won’t have enough time to move them. The most important Eidolon to micro is the first one that gets hit (the later Eidolons will be closer to splitting).
If you do this successfully, you should be able to see all of your Eidolons split.
Mana Management
The other tricky part about jungling is making sure you have enough mana to summon Eidolons, particularly before you have your soul ring.
After summoning your Eidolons, you and your Eidolons will follow the neutrals as they walk back to the camp. After you’ve done so, make sure that your Eidolons are closer to the neutrals than you are (so that the neutrals will attack your Eidolons and not you). Then, if you have less than 170 mana (the amount of mana needed to cast Demonic Conversion), use a clarity.
You need to use your clarity while you’re still finishing up the initial camp because it takes time to regen your mana. Don’t forget!
Challenge Results
I did a run once as Radiant and once as Dire.
I picked the challenge goals based on the weaker two of these runs. (I actually messed up and got my clarity cancelled twice on my Radiant run…at the same camp.) I bought a flying courier in both of these runs, so I actually farmed 220 gold more than what is shown.
I think that the 900 gold goal is actually a bit conservative (I exceeded that by 400 gold on Dire). I also did several of the team techniques described below, which often lower your GPM by a bit. If you have trouble at first, just keep practicing!
Now, let’s go into a few extra techniques that you can use to help out your team. These isn’t an exhaustive list; use your own judgment as to what will help your team the most!
Support Items
As Enigma is such a fast and powerful jungler, you’ll still jungle quite well even if you spend a hefty chunk of your starting gold on support items.
In both of my runs, I started with an animal courier, observer wards, and three clarities. You can help out your team by buying the courier, observers, or sentries. In fact, you have enough money for any two of these. You can also buy tangoes and pool allied heroes on top of these things. You could also buy the courier, both types of wards, and three clarities if you wait a bit before heading into the jungle.
You can also help with items after the game has started. I got the flying courier in my runs. You could also buy needed consumables (wards, dust).
Creep Sacrificing
If you wait at any of your tier 3 towers before the game starts, you can immediately sacrifice an allied lane creep when they spawn. This helps to deny experience/gold and to bring the corresponding lane closer to your tower. I recommend sacrificing your mid or offlane’s ranged creep.
After sacrificing, walk back to your fountain to regen your mana, then head out to the jungle. You’ll arrive around 15 seconds after the creeps spawn. While you’re regenerating your mana, you can also buy any additional needed items.
Check Runes
This one’s straightforward—check to see if the rune spawns near your jungle! If you follow the path I take when jungling, you’ll end up pretty close to the rune spawn point at 2 minutes. The decision to take the rune or to guard it for an ally is up to you.
Regeneration, double damage, and illusion runes will help your jungle go more smoothly. In my Radiant run, I got two clarities cancelled but subsequently found a regen rune.
Gank
Depending on the lanes, ganking your safe lane or your mid lane can be quite easy to execute. This will probably slow down your jungling the most, as you’ll need to spend more time walking around and not farming. However, this could also tip the laning phase heavily in your team’s favor. If your jungling path takes you to the creep camps closest to your safe lane, it’s easier to gank without slowing down your jungle.
Thanks for reading; I hope this article was useful to you! If you know someone who might benefit from this article, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with them as well!
