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Valve pulls back the curtain on Dota 2’s impending update, Foreseer’s Contract

Dota 2 Foreseer's Contract

Dota 2’s next big update, Foreseer’s Contract, was fully unveiled today, introducing a new hero, Oracle, to the MOBA’s roster along with the Manifold Paradox arcana item for the Phantom Assassin, which was voted for during the Dota 2 International earlier in the year. 

Those are the big additions, but new items, emoticons, awakened Compendium Gems and creep models have also been thrown into the update pile.

The Manifold Paradox is a fancy item for the Phantom Assassin that changes weapons, adds custom spell effects and new animations and even changed the Assassin’s voice.

Here’s the full list of its abilities:

  • Weapon evolves and changes colors as Phantom Assassin fulfills contracts
  • Enemies see a special splash effect when struck by Coup de Grace
  • Phantom Assassin’s kills are marked on the battlefield with a Paradox Memorial
  • Animated chat emoticon
  • Custom portrait and minimap icon
  • Includes custom spell effects for all of her abilities
  • New dual wielding animations
  • Altered voice
  • Custom hero and spell icons
  • Custom base skin with special ambient effects
  • Custom loadout pose and effects

Take a gander at the next page for the patch notes.

Gameplay

  • Enabled Broodmother in Captain’s Mode
  • Enabled Phoenix in Captain’s Mode
  • Fixed Midnight Pulse rounding down
  • Fixed Illusions not showing the same Black King Bar charges as the primary hero
  • Fixed recursive damage loop with stolen Fatal Bonds and Sticky Napalm
  • Fixed Spirit Bear being unable to pick up Bounty Runes
  • Fixed Pounce not being removed by Blade Fury
  • Fixed some minor incorrect purgeability behaviors with Invulnerable states on Bane, Ember Spirit, Faceless Void, Morphling and Storm Spirit
  • Fixed Runes not spawning at the right time in save/load games
  • Fixed save/load not remembering Black King Bar charges
  • Fixed some cases where reconnecting to a match would fail until the client was restarted
  • Town Portal Scroll effect coloring intensified to show more of the casting player’s color

Network

  • Improved detection of Poor Network Conditions. Now it can trigger if multiple players experience degraded connection quality, even if they do not totally drop connection. When poor network connections are detected, the match is immediately safe to leave, match results are not recorded, and prediction items are not consumed
  • Fixed a bug which caused end-of-match rewards, such as All Hero Challenge progress, to not be granted if players left very quickly after a match ended at the same time that match signout was delayed

Bots

  • Added Phantom Assassin Bot
  • Added Oracle Bot
  • Bots can no longer use buyback if affected by an Aghanim’s Scepter-upgraded Reaper’s Scythe

Audio

  • Added new sounds for each rune type
  • Added a new sound for when Linken’s Sphere is cast on an ally
  • Added a new sound for Helm of the Dominator
  • Added a new sound for Spirit Breaker’s Empowering Haste activation
  • Added a sound layer to Desolator attacks
  • Updated the sound for Roshan’s Slam
  • Updated the sound for Windranger’s Windrun
  • Basic attacks that miss or are evaded no longer play sounds

UI

  • New healthbars added for Ancient buildings, Roshan, and hero creeps (Spirit Bear, Familiars etc)
  • The item context menu now allows “Move to Stash” while dead
  • Fixed alt-pinging the enemy’s item sometimes getting truncated
  • Linken Sphere now shows up as a buff icon when cast on allies
  • Fixed the Reaper’s Scythe indicator not appearing in the top bar when buyback is unavailable to a killed hero
  • Allow tab cycling (without unit selection) between owned units to cycle to illusions
  • If Unified Unit Orders is unchecked, holding down control while issuing orders will only issue the order to the selected unit group and not the entire selection
  • Damage taken by illusions is now expressed in ability and item descriptions as the total amount of damage that the illusion will take. Previously, it was shown as an amount of bonus damage to then be added to the base 100%
  • Several tooltip adjustments and fixes
  • Added a Terse option to Fight Recap
  • Spectating in DotaTV will now show player pings and drawings
  • Added an option for sorting items in your armory by those received most recently

Economy

  • Fixed crash from Lion Infernal Wings weapon particle
  • Fixed broken eyelid animation for flying Prismatic Drake courier
  • Fixed mesh inside wrist guards for Battletrap armor
  • Fixed custom portrait for Crystal Maiden when equipped with Yulsaria’s Glacier
  • Enabled item set for Lone Druid Wolf Hunter and added Spirit of Calm to the Tools of Haruspex item set
  • Fixed Eki Bukaw ward hitboxes
  • Fixed eye attaches for Lil Nova courier
  • Updated foot particles for Mirana’s Sapphire Sabre-Lynx mount
  • Updated emoticons in the DotaCinema Captains Draft 2.0 bundle

Workshop

  • Magnus – Increased texture budget for his weapon to 256×256
  • Elder Titan – Enabled alpha-test