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Red Bull Wololo III winner Darko 'DauT' Dautovic talks victory
Last week, Darko 'DauT' Dautovic won the Red Bull Wololo III tournament, so we sat down with him to talk about his route to glory, unusual strategies and his cult status on Twitch.
In the Red Bull Wololo III finals last week, Darko 'DauT' Dautovic beat Kai 'Liereyy' Kallinger in a nail biting 4–3 series after managing to overcome a matchpoint for Liereyy and closing the series out in the next map.
DauT wasn't favourite to win the tournament, but he managed to claw his way through the bracket, beating both Mr_Yo and Hoang 'ACCM' Huy before making it to the grand finals. We had the chance to sit down and talk to the player behind the unorthodox strategies and massive Twitch following to catch up about his win in one of the biggest Age of Empires II tournaments of the year.
Coming into the tournament, DauT’s expectations weren’t sky high. He played well in the previous editions of Wololo and even reached the quarter-finals, but his goal was reaching the top eight once again, as he did in the first edition. "At the beginning, I didn't think I could win the tournament, but after every round I was getting more and more confident," he recalls.
Once he reached the final, DauT still wasn't sure that he’d be able to win it all, but after every map he became more sure of himself. Then, when Liereyy had his first match point on Cattails, he managed to stay calm: "I had a clear plan of what I wanted to do there and I was confident that I was able to even the score."
For DauT, the biggest hurdle he had to overcome was the final map: "His Civilization was so much better than mine and I wasn't sure how to stop his attack."
DauT was sure that if he played a standard opening, Liereyy would be able to punish him and win. He tried something that he'd never practised before simply because "it looked good in my head." With the casters shouting, DauT managed to come back and beat Liereyy, giving him the lion's share of the $30,000/ €25,000 prize pool as an award for his creative and unconventional play.
In celebration of winning the tournament, DauT started shouting, which unfortunately woke up his young children. "The games lasted for quite some time and it was almost 1am when we finished," he explains
However, humble as DauT is, he tells us that his strategies aren't usually made up on the fly, with his whole team behind him to prepare for different matches and maps. "A big shout out to Gamer Legion, especially Tatoh, who's been my main practice partner for the last three years," he says.
One of the most unconventional tactics DauT used was his utilisation of Cavalry Archers, a fast but expensive unit that are often seen as overpriced for what they can accomplish on the battlefield. DauT used them multiple times in the finals however, much to the surprise of the viewers and the casters. DauT tells us that Cavalry Archers have always had a place in the game, but the problem is that they aren’t strong enough to compete against crossbows in the early Castle Age: "However, once you get all the critical upgrades for them, they are an amazing late-game unit."
DauT is one of the oldest Age of Empires II players still competing at the highest level and despite being one of the best players in the game, he also finds time to stream on Twitch. Here he amassed something of a cult status. During the Wololo finals, the Red Bull Twitch channel saw its fare share of DAUTSLIDE and PETTHEDAUT emotes fly by.
DauT says these emotes started out as jokes from his team-mate, Ørjan 'TheViper' Larsen: "We always had a lot of banter going on between us and some of the jokes turn into memes and emotes (like the Lord DauT one). People seem to pick up on them quite quickly."
If you’ve seen DauT in action and want to start playing Age of Empires II at a high level, then he has this golden tip for you: "The most important thing is to enjoy the game. If you like RTS games, where strategy and decision making is more important than micro and macro, you're in the right place."
