Heres a miniguide on how to jungle tinker. Since I get this request way too often that its easier just to point people to one source.

TLDR: Stack ancients on sentinel side, kill with march, profit.

Why Jungle Tinker:
Jungle tinker farms twice as fast as a normal solo lane, as good as the best free farm. Lane tinker, on the other hand, is god awful in this meta, because he's total food for smoke ganks, has zero lane control and presence, and gives an easy snowball victory to the other team for each kill due to saving up for BoT. Jungle tinker is faster, better, stronger. Compare 15 minute Solo mid "won lane" travels to 8 minute "normal game" jungle travels. Look at any replay of your own Tinker games- how do you compare to 8 minute Boots of Travel (that is, Soul Ring + Boots of Travel for 3500 total gold). That should be reason enough.

Why Ancient creeps and not red/green camps? You can hit both the red/greens at the same time. Its even possible with good timing to stack both at once, aggroing one with attacks and the other with march. However, a few things hold that back. For one, if a Satyr Hellcaller spawns too early, its +5 hp/s regen aura totally shits all over your march damage, due to the 25 second cooldown. For two, the ancient creeps on average give more than the red and green camps combined anyway, so you actually benefit a ton more. And for three, you're in a better position to avoid ganks and fight back against wards.


Before You Jungle:

The first step is to be on Sentinel, not Scourge. The second step is to be on DotA 2, not DotA 1, so make that Radiant, not Dire. The reason is that in DotA 1, March does not hit flying units and will not affect Black Dragons and thus will not work. The reason for Sentinel side is the difference of the map. The sentinel ancient creep camp is in a very good position, easily defended and hard to flank. You can see any gank coming for you over the hill, and the only lane in a position to gank you is middle. You can easily keep your marches from being visible to the upper ward spot and middle lane, keeping your presence a secret as long as possible. Even if your hard lane tower falls, that lane still isn't in a good position to gank you, as your middle lane solo hero can defend it. The entire camp spawn can be covered with one sentry ward from outside of its zone, to counter any observers. On the scourge side, however, you can't see over the cliff, and any ganks can sneak up on you easily. If the hard lane falls, that lane can gank you by cutting down 2 trees to see over the bluff, or pass through the secret shop.

How to Jungle:

Your starting items are nothing but a single Sobi mask, assuming a 603 gold -AP mode start. You don't need any clarities if you have an allied courier, and even if you don't.

Go to the camp right away at the start of the game to see if your opponents put an observer on the hill- if they do, counterward it right away with sentries, it is worth the delay the 200 gold will cost you, even though it doesn't block the camp.

Stack the camp by hitting it at every :51 and running down the lower path, as in blue.



After the first stack (don't waste mana on a march that only hits the initial camp, since you'll get it stacked in 30 seconds), cast March of the Machines every time it is off cooldown either between :00 to :32 or so, or at 0:50, pulling the creeps right after its been cast in order to maximize the damage it deals. Aim it as in the next picture- no need to be precise, stand around there and click near the X, and try to angle it slightly down to the left. If you pull the creeps in the path in Red, the march will be able to pass through the trees and overlap the creeps a second time, making it faster. However the creeps can get stuck walking out of the zone and block the spawn sometimes on that path, so to be safer on stacking pulls, lead them down the path in blue. One of your goals with aiming your march is to make sure your goblins aren't visible to the enemy hero in mid lane when he goes uphill. The less your opponents know about where you are, the better.



As soon as you can afford it, which should be just about when you run out of mana after 3 casts of Goblins, immediately buy a Soul Ring, preferably by the courier. If you don't have the courier, you actually have enough time to run to your fountain and back without missing a single stack, if you do it right after a stack. With soul ring, you have essentially infinite mana to spam. Just keep stacking and marching and you'll jump from level 2 to level 6 by 7:00 or so.

Once you hit level 6, you can rearm soul ring to finish off the last of the stack- pull the camp and make sure you're far enough behind the bend they won't attack you, and keep rearming soul ring and spamming march until the whole camps clear. Voila, you should now have enough gold for Boots of Travel, around 8:00 to 9:00 depending on circumstances. This last little bit will leave you at 1 hp as you rearm soul ring- be wary of enemy Zeus / Spectre / Bloodseeker / etc.


Items/Skills:

Your jungling build should be:

Starting Items: Sobi Mask (nothing else
-> Soul Ring
-> Boots of Travels
(-> Bottle, immediately after jungling)

Your first 10 levels should be:
1: March
2: Laser
3: March
4: Rockets
5: March
6: Rearm
7: March
8: Rockets
9: Rockets
10: Rockets

What you do from there on out is up to you and how to play Tinker in general. I highly recommend, your general item build should continue with Dagger -> Guinsoo -> Game is already won (with situational ghost staff), and skillwise, either 1 point laser (defensive) or 4 points laser (offensive) for 11-13, and don't take Rearm level 2 until you have a mystic staff / guinsoos, and never take level 3 Rearm at all. Yes, never at all. Leave it unskilled at level 25, you heard me.


How to Hold a Contentious Jungle

Your opponents won't always blissfully ignore you and let you grab your first 8 minutes of jungle unaccosted. If they do, power to you, thats the norm for pubs. But you shouldn't just know how to fight back if they come calling, you should be aware that a Jungle Tinker is actually an easier lane to hold from ganks than a Solo Mid Tinker.

Check for observers at the start of the game to counter-ward them immediately. Place the sentries near the normal ward spots- you can have it pretty far to the west before it intrudes on the spawn zone, but the 950 AOE will cover the whole camp. If a hero comes to gank you, you can use the stacked camp to your advantage- either to suicide with it, and/or to lure the creeps to attack your ganker. When pulled behind you, they can easily block the passage entirely, and if they land any attacks on a pursuing hero, a couple salvos from a black dragon will liquefy any low level heroes that early in the game. Unlike a normal red/oj/green camp jungle hero, they cannot easily poach your stacks. Only a bare few heroes can hurt them with spells, so be aware of that in the picking phase (ie Beastmaster, Bristleback, Alchemist, Techies). Even if they successfully gank you, they might not be able to stop your farm, as the ancients will rip them new arseholes if they try to autoattack them down. You can use your march of the machines to both flood the passage to seriously harm anyone following you and aggro the ancients at the same time, cutting off their escape if they chase- you can easily turn around a gank and get a kill out of it yourself, or at least a "died to neutral creeps"

If for whatever reason the ancient jungling gets super difficult and you cannot possibly hold it, for example, invisible enemy heroes simply camping out there, or your mid lane losing so catastrophically that the enemy solo can walk all over you unchecked while your ally russian refuses to help, then you can always abandon the ancient camps and go down to the red/greens and stack/march both of those at once. Its slower, but if the enemy team is focused on your hill, you can get away with it easier. If you're level 3 or 5+, Satyr Hellcallers won't be much of an issue.


Obligatory Replays

Just a couple of the last few I played;

24317753
^ Total stomp, but shows off the jungling method

24760933
^ Lend my nooby ally half the experience from the camps, only for predictable results, but shows off some fun tinkering midgame. And that ultra kill.