Valve have finally added a tutorial system to Dota 2, starting things off with an introduction to basic mechanics. Taking control of noob friendly Dragon Knight, players are tasked with taking down the evil Razor with a little help from a wizard and a talking bird.
Players can now play bot games on their local machines, instead of using Valve’s servers. The store has also been restocked with a selection of cosmetics fresh from the community workshop.
We’ve seen tidbits of the tutorial system for a few months now, but it’s now finally in-game. Players are tasked with completing quests laid out on a campaign like map of the Dota 2 universe. The introduction sees you play as Dragon Knight, a hero that is arguably an easy hero for new players. This quest teaches you mechanics such as health/mana, levels, abilities, the shop, items, last hitting and hero combat.
It’s still a work in progress with developers asking for feedback on the forums. Expect more to be added to the tutorial in the near future.
The cosmetic additions are vast. They include items for Alchemist, Batrider, Dazzle, Naga Siren, Nyx Assassin, Queen of Pain, Silencer and Weaver. Another community chest is up for grabs too, named “Treasure of the Crystalline Chaos”. It’s contents include some of the above cosmetics as well as a unusual visual effect modifier called “Crystal Rift”.
Finally on unreleased hero watch, signs point to Skywrath Mage arriving next week unless Valve think otherwise. Elder Titan has indeed turned out to be a renamed version of Tauren Chieftain, obviously to avoid copyright claims from Blizzard. Abbadon’s textures have finally made an appearance, proving that the developers are working hard to get things done. If we’re lucky, we could maybe see another triple hero release with Abbadon, Bristlebog and Elder Titan.
Here are the full patch notes below and check out Cyborgmatt’s blog for a detailed analysis:
- Added Mechanics I for new players!
- Added 7 new item sets to the Dota store.
- Immortal and Tournament items can now be traded on the Steam Community Market.
GAMEPLAY
- Clockwerk: Fixed Power Cogs pulling more than just heroes inside the cogs.
- Huskar: Fixed Berserker’s Blood not stacking at the proper health thresholds.
- Keeper of the Light: Fixed Mana Leak accumulating mana loss during magic immunity.
- Phantom Lancer: Fixed an issue where illusions made by a player on the other team would create uncontrollable Juxtapose illusions.
- Tusk: Fixed a case where heroes with very small collision size could escape Ice Shards.
- Tusk: Fixed a rare bug where teleporting could cause Walrus Punched units to end up in odd positions.
- Fixed various aspects of Spectral Dagger logic being dispellable.
- Fixed sometimes being revealed if your projectile hits the target after you become invisible with Shadow Blade.
- Improved TP interaction with FoW.
- Fixed two ledges (below the two rune spots) where you could get units stuck with Telekinesis and Vacuum.
UI
- Added the ability to examine chests.
- Added a Game History tab to the Team Profile.
- Added checkbox for filtering Live Games to just Team games.
- You can now click on Team names in Live or Recent games to view their team profiles.
- Added a post-game Match Quality survey panel.
- Added an icon to backpack slots if that item is currently equipped.
- Fixed the courier delivery icon popping when the courier collected stash items.
- Fixed courier delivery being delayed by 0.5 seconds if there were no items to get from the stash.
- Fixed courier move orders not clearing the transfer items buff icon.
- Players can now set a custom rich presence status that can be displayed on the UI.
- Fixed Lina’s Fiery Soul buff not showing the correct cooldown if it was refreshed with 3 stacks.
AUDIO/VISUAL
- Updated Arc Lightning’s visual effects and sound.
- Updated Shadow Shaman’s attack sound.
- Updated Ether Shock’s visual effects and sound.
- Updated Mjollnir and Maelstrom visual effects.
BOTS
- When a push is happening into a base, global desire to farm is significantly decreased.
- Fixed a case where bots far from the lane front could thrash into and out of Push Lane mode.
- Single-player bot games now run locally on the user’s machine.
- Increased reaction time by about 50% in all modes.