Valve rolled out a new set of gifts for the Dota 2 players, including a new treasure chest and a new wave of bans for cheaters.
As many prepare to celebrate the Lunar New Year, Valve took the opportunity to roll out a new game update themed around the Year of the Dragon. The Dragon’s Hoard treasure brings 17 new item sets and introduces the first ever Ancient cosmetic.
The Ancient Dragon King skin is a rare bonus drop that changes the Radiant or Dire Thrones look with a giant Chinese dragon flying around.
There is a caveat to this Ancient skin. According to the in-game description, the Ancient Dragon King “will only visit your Ancient during the Year of the Dragon,” which implies that the skin will expire next year.
Besides the chest item drops, players can also earn a new courier by sending treasures to their friends. Pandora the Packwyrm comes in two styles, the first being unlocked after sending your first gift and the second one becoming available after sending out 8 gifts.
In the spirit of giving theme of the new update, Valve has also made another “special gift” to the community by rolling out a new wave of bans for cheaters.
“We've rolled out some new cheat detection code. Well, actually, we rolled it out a few weeks back, and we've spent the time since accumulating quite the set of cheaters,” Valve mentioned in the official update blog post.
The new anti-cheat code targeted those who used the Overplus third-party tool and it resulted in new accounts getting a VAC ban.
The New Lunar Year update is promised to be followed by a Crownfall patch, but no details about a possible date release or content were given by the game developer. However, the community was fast in data mining everything possible about the “Crownfall” and here is what was found:
The next update will revolve around the special relationship between Vengeful Spirit and Skywrath Mage and it might bring Personas or Arcanas for both heroes. Given the complicated love story between these two, some assume that the Crownfall update isn’t that far, as Valentine’s Day is around the corner.
Until the Crownfall patch, Valve announced a plethora of general and Ability Draft Draft bug fixes to have been deployed in the Dragon’s Gift update.
General fixes:
- Fixed a number of issues that would prevent guides from loading in-game (If you manually enabled Steam background downloads to try to work around this problem, you can safely disable it again)
- Fixed another case where Roshan could go walkabout: Night Stalker casting Dark Ascension while Roshan was channeling a Twin Gate
- Fixed an issue where already-captured Outposts could be channeled
- Fixed an issue where the neutral item picker would hide on key release under some Quick Cast modes
- Fixed Doubloon having only +2 instead of +2.5 mana regen
- Fixed Eternal Shroud's magic resistance applying to illusions
- Fixed Eternal Shroud's interactions with Medusa Mana Shield
- Fixed Safety Bubble's tooltip not mentioning that the barrier bypasses self-inflicted damage
- Fixed an issue with the effects on Shiva's Guard
- Fixed Chen's Holy Persuasion not taking Turbo's creep bounty multiplier into account when giving gold on cast
- Fixed Legion Commander's Aghanim's Shard still giving bonus armor and duration for Overwhelming Odds
- Fixed Marci's Unleash proccing upon Bloodstone pickup and drop
- Fixed Muerta's Gunslinger being purgeable
- Fixed keybind not working to upgrade Ogre Magi's Multicast
- Fixed a bug that allowed inactive Phantom Lancer's illusions to block Neutral Camps
- Fixed a rare server crash with Primal Beast's Uproar
- Fixed column shop layout not displaying Khanda and Harpoon
- Added magic resistance from Intelligence and increased damage for Universal heroes to expanded tooltips
- In Turbo, show the "[Hero] was chosen by both teams!" message to everyone, not just the player who tried to pick the already-picked hero
- Added spell icons for Windranger's Gale Force when using Compass of the Rising Gale
- Increased performance when displaying many chat messages from global channels
- Fixed various tooltip issues
- Updated tips shown during pause for the 7.35b Gameplay Patch
Ability Draft fixes:
A number of previously unavailable Scepter/Shard abilities are now granted, some abilities are accessed by toggling auto-cast on the base spell:
- Glacier granted with Marksmanship
- Crystal Clone granted with Frostbite
- Parting Shot granted with Pierce the Veil
- Work Horse granted with Stampede
- Burning Barrage granted with Skeleton Walk
- Friendly Shadow granted with Shadow Walk
- Counterspell Ally granted with Counterspell
- Lightning Hands granted with Arc Lightning
- Burning Army granted with Death Pact
- Unrefined Fireblast granted with Fireblast
- Poison Nova granted with Noxious Plague (Poison Nova passive ability is hidden)
- Chemical Rage now grants Greevil's Greed. It will appear as a buff instead of on the ability bar.
- Fixed Spirit Bear not having any abilities.
- Fixed Blinding Light not appearing as a draftable ability.
- Fixed Alchemist have 4 basic abilities at draft, which would push other abilities off by one.
- Cloak and Dagger Shard no longer grants Sleeping Dart.
- Ravage Shard now grants Dead in the Water instead of Tendrils of the Deep.
- Invoker Ability Draft Shard updated to the new EMP Shard instead of the old Meteor Shard.
- Proximity Mines now grants Minefield Sign as an additional ability.
- Fixed Shadow Wave and Dream Coil's Scepter attacks not working on melee heroes.
- Fixed Spirits working on illusions when you have a Scepter.
- Fixed Ogre Magi getting Multicast instead of Dumb Luck as an innate.
- Fixed Primal Spring, Pulse Nova, Rot, Infernal Blade, and a number of other abilities not granting stacks of Fiery Soul.
- Fixed Talents not appearing for Starbreaker, Cinder Brew, Phantom Rush, and Power Cogs when the ability is drafted on their original hero.
- Fixed Death Seeker not being togglable with hotkey.
- Fixed not being able to toggle Call of the Wild Hawk to switch between Hawk and Boar.
- Fixed Hairball appearing without a hotkey until it is toggled.
- Fixed Chemical Rage Scepter not giving bonus damage and spell amplification.
- Fixed Horn Toss being given by Shard instead of Scepter.
- Fixed Rain of Destiny being given by Scepter instead of Shard.
- Fixed Hunter's Boomerang and Decoy being given with either Shard or Scepter.
- Fixed Timbersaw getting Second Chakram with Scepter. It now is only granted with the talent if Timbersaw drafts Chakram.
