The First Blood update is on its way for Dota 2. Hitting Steam on September 23rd, the update introduces three new elements to the already ocean-deep game. Local gaming support tops the headlines, alongside and improved armoury and a new game known as Captain’s Draft.
As revealed on the Dota 2 website, The First Blood update will bring the MOBA to LAN parties. Local play will allow you to host up to nine other players on a local network, allowing for perfect home games or cyber cafe competitions. No doubt this news will be big among both old-school Dota players and those in the asian markets where internet cafes reign king.
Captain’s Draft offers a new pre-match game where teams must create the perfect set-up of heroes from a randomised pool of twenty-four characters. Each team chooses a captain, and then must face off against each other as they take turns to ban two heroes from the selection. Players must then pick a hero from the remaining pool, ensuring that their choice provides the perfect foil for the enemy’s selection. It’s a test of wits; make sure you ban the most threatening heroes, but be sure to leave the ones you need for yourself.
The armory is getting a little overhaul, with the ability to build filters in order to navigate your inventory by item type, quality, rarity and other stats.
Introduced to the store in the First Blood update are a selection of new treasures, and the Portal pack that brings in GLaDOS as an announcer. The pack also throws a Portal-themed skin over the HUD and comes bundled with Aperture Science Wardcores too.
A whole host of tweaks and fixes also ship with the update, including saving control groups to the cloud and banning users for 30 days when external tools attached to Dota 2 are detected. You’ll also find that any item drops you discover will be dictated by your Dota profile level. You can read up on every change the update brings in the notes available at the First Blood website.