Yet another video game is becoming a Netflix animated series, this time Valve MOBA Dota 2. Coming on March 25th, Dota: Dragon's Blood will tell the story of possibly the most boring and generic character in a silly game filled with weird and wonderful wizards. Shrug. Come meet the lad in the new trailer below.
]]>I'm in a good place with Dota Underlords. We're long past that initial rush, those halcyon days where layers of the puzzle kept peeling away, one after the other. We're past the rough patch, too, when it seemed like we were over. That long plateau. We're comfortable, now. I can see the path that leads from here, the subtle ways I can improve.
So what if the spark's gone? I've settled for less.
]]>After almost eight months in early access, Valve have revealed the full release date for Dota Underlords - February 25th. This will mark the start of the game's first season, introduce a full battle pass, a new meta, and brand new content. Oh, and a new Underlord was added to the game like, last night.
]]>Few realised at the time, but last January we witnessed the birth of a genre. Dota Auto Chess shot to the top of Dota 2's custom games, enticing MOBA players with wizarding army management. The big names took notice. By June we had Riot's Teamfight Tactics and Valve's Dota Underlords, squaring off against each other. An unknown number of millions flocked to TFT, while Dunderlords hit 200,000 peak concurrent players.
Six months later, Teamfight Tactics seems relatively stable, while Dota Underlords is dropping fast. We normally don't pay player numbers much heed, but given autobattlers were last year's big new genre and Dota and League Of Legends are both long-term titans, it's hard not to ask the question: how come?
]]>The undertown is nearly ready. Its Dota Underlords are chomping at the bit, a mere month away from the point where Valve go 'yep, that's version 1.0' and bury the early access label on their wizarding general simulator. They say all this in their post about yesterday's update, a smaller affair aimed at reducing misclicks, fixing bugs, and delivering the usual round of balance tweaks.
]]>A lizard-riding auntie with a shotgun and an incarnation of aether today arrived in Dota 2 and Dota Underlords in matching Outlanders Updates. Snapfire and Void Spirit are the two new heroes announced at The International in August, and here they are in both games now. They're accompanied by big updates for each, with Dota 2 adding new buildings and dozens of new items and Underlords adding a new quick-paced mode plus the other Spirit heroes. These patch notes sure are a lot to take in. Damn, Dota.
]]>The Underlords of Dota Underlords are no longer a naming flourish, today becoming actual units leading our armies with handy perks and abilities. Valve name today's update The Big Update because, well, it is. Along with the first two Underlords, it adds new heroes from Dota 2 and new Alliances with new bonuses. A Duos mode has arrived too, with teams who can play on separate boards but can give heroes and gold - and share a life total. Things. Lots of things. A big update. The Big Update.
]]>I presumed Dota Underlords was already set in some sort of dungeon, so it pleases me that Valve will soon add an additional prison. This is just one part of the upcoming Big Update, which will add a buncha new heroes while substantially changing how the game works. Valve will be jailing 8-12 random heroes each day in an attempt to keep things fresh, but ensuring that all alliances can still be completed. It sounds like a neat way of keeping people on their toes, and makes the job of anyone writing guides for this often inscrutable auto-battler even harder. My thoughts are with Ollie in this trying time.
On closer inspection Dunderlords takes place in an underground town, and my prejudices clearly need to be kept in check. Let us look at these upcoming heroes with the respect they are due.
]]>The carefully crafted selection of Dota Underlords alliances available to you each match is one of the game's defining features. Just as much as deciding which heroes to use, where to position them, and which items to equip yourself with, your combination of alliances will decide who lives and who dies on the 8x8 battlefield.
With all the minor and major updates that have happened to various alliances and heroes recently, we thought it best to go back over our Dota Underlords alliances guide and let you in on which alliances are faring the best overall in the current meta.
]]>Dota Underlords builds are wondrously complex and finnicky beasts. Combining your knowledge not just of heroes and abilities and items and alliances, but also the pacing of a match and your relative needs on different rounds can all get pretty mind-boggling pretty quickly - especially now that you also have to factor in the new Ace Tier heroes and effects with versions #245 and later.
So we thought it'd be a good idea to revisit our Dota Underlords builds guide to see what still works and what no longer does. Below we've put together seven of the very best builds heading into October, from Knights and Dragons to Savage Trolls, and many more.
]]>Dota Underlords, I think we can all agree, is a real head-scratcher of a game. Simplified heroes and systems it may have compared with its perplexing, ponderous progenitor Dota 2, but then Dota 2 never had multiple 10v10 fights happening at once, did it? So we've put together this comprehensive Dota Underlords strategy guide, packed with beginner-friendly tips and explanations of everything that goes on in a match, from heroes, alliances and items to gold accrual, meta-dominating builds, and much more.
]]>The Dota Underlords heroes roster is sublimely complex and difficult to wrap your head around even if Valve weren't shaking everything up with massive content updates every week or two. With each hero sporting different alliances, abilities, and basic stats across three different levels, there's an awful lot to bear in mind when forming your army.
Our Dota Underlords heroes guide will walk you through everything you need to know, from our handy Dota Underlords cheat sheet - which contains essential info for newcomers on every single hero in the game - to our descriptions and explanations of some of the strongest heroes in the current meta.
]]>The Dota Underlords items roster is no stranger to upheaval - not since the August Update, which removed every alliance item from the game and added three entirely new items into the fold. But now, they've only gone and added a whole new type of item in these new-fangled Contraptions, which can be placed onto the board to affect the outcomes of fights in various ways.
Our Dota Underlords items guide will walk you through every single item in the game, from newcomers such as Tombstone and Healing Ward to old favourites such as Pipe of Insight and Mekansm.
]]>Mastering the Dota Underlords gold and economy system is absolutely essential for winning matches with any sort of consistency. It is what enables you to start from nothing and end with an insurmountable army of 3-star Knights and Mages and Trolls and whatever else you desire to populate your board with. Our Dota Underlords gold guide will walk you through the very best practices for ensuring a strong economy throughout a match, with full explanations of all the ways you can accrue gold over time and how best to use all that hard-won moolah.
]]>It's gone a bit quiet down in Dota Underlords. Valve's autobattler hasn't received a chunky update for a few weeks, with team-battle tacticians left to twiddle their thumbs while the meta stagnates. Last night's patch made Arc Warden a bit weaker and poked at a handful of other numbers, but I'm more interested in Valve's explanation for why update's have slowed down a tad. It's apparently because they've got "The Big Update" penned for the first half of October, which will bring "2 playable Underlords, the Duos team mode, 6 new Heroes, 3 new Alliances, and an updated user interface."
"Underlords" are not currently a thing in Dota Underlords, and there is next to no information about what one is. Intriguing.
]]>Dota Underlords patch notes tend to be pretty game-changing - as it should be, for a game still in early-access. But boy, does it make my life as a guides writer busy! Now they've gone and added two entirely new mechanics (Ace-Tier Heroes and Contraption items) amid a plethora of other balance changes and features.
So it's time once again to sit down and have a read through what's changed in our Dota Underlords patch notes analysis, exploring how each change may (or may not) shift the meta in a new direction.
]]>Another new Dota 2 hero has been announced at The International, hot off the heels of Snapfire, the elderly lizard-riding goblin announced earlier this week. They should have lead with this one. Snapfire is not an easy act to follow. Still, Void Spirit will also be joining the MOBA this autumn, though he seems somewhat reluctant to do so in his introductory video, which you can see below.
]]>Steam is in an odd position in China. It’s like a pirate radio station, sitting offshore and letting the gamers access all that unfiltered content. With no official servers and awkward payment methods, the experience that the huge numbers of users have isn’t optimal. So Valve and local partners Perfect World are setting up a version of Steam for China, named Steam Platform. The first details of which were dropped at an event hosted by Perfect World in China this week.
There’s no launch date, and no look at the client or its features, but things are motoring along.
]]>Turns out, Dota Underlords is a liar. See, this whole time we were all effectively building two teams. One might be fighting the good fight out front, but it's only the defensive game playing out on my telly. Sure, I could beast out a player on my end screen, but it's possible enough unlucky rolls could make the away game play out completely differently.
It's not a huge deal, really. But there's a little disconnect when - even if I'm fighting your team - we're watching two entirely different games. Fortunately, that's no longer the case.
]]>What is an auto and how do I battle it? This is going to be a tough one.
Seriously, why are all the cool kids suddenly talking about level three Dragon Knights? That would be because they are playing Dota Underlords, the best of the auto battlers. At least for beginners.
]]>In preparation for the release of Dota Underlords' first season, Valve have released a prototype Battle Pass (the aptly named Proto Pass) to all Underlords players, free of charge. The catch? No catch; they just want feedback on how it works, so they can get the Season 1 Battle Pass perfect before it's released. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a square deal to me. Let's talk a little about this Proto Pass in our Dota Underlords Battle Pass guide; and we'll also take this opportunity to dive into what we know about the release of Dota Underlords Season 1, from new heroes to upcoming features and much more.
]]>Most of the board games I like are exciting. They're about betrayals, surprises, audacious cunning. They're games that weave drama around humans rather than systems, driven more by the delights of psychology than the dryness of systems. They pop because humans, at least when they're onto you, are hard to control - but that can be exhausting. Board games cater for less aggressive competitions, too. I also like games where you sit back, tinker with a system and watch it grow.
They're called engine-building games, and Dota Underlords is a pretty good one.
]]>Oh, I'd missed doing this: combing through reams of arcane patch notes, jointly audibly reacting as you and your friends stumble across change after change that unravels your understanding of a game you're invested in. Valve are upending Dota Underlords this weekend. Neutrals will be nastier, spells will no longer target (most) summons, over half the heroes are due to be rejigged and - most interestingly of all - re-rolling the hero shop will never cough up a hero that was just on offer.
What does it all mean! Good things, mostly.
]]>I look at my enemy, and I despair. Their army bristles with max-level units, scary abilities, synergies between both. Losing one more fight will knock either of us out of the game. It's do or die. I plunge all my funds into last-ditch recruitment, refreshing the available roster of heroes time and time again in the hopes of stumbling across one - just one, please, just one - of the heroes I need. My pleading works. The final unit clicks into my freshly-oiled machine with three seconds left on the clock, and I hold my breath as our armies square up one last time.
That's Dota Underlords at its best. It's a shame you often need to put up with it at its worst.
]]>I fell pretty deep down the Dota 2 hole. I’d say the game served as another life for a teenager that didn’t really have one, but that would undersell what Dota 2 was for me. I played hours of it, every single evening, for several years in a row. That phase had as much to do with the friends I chatted with than the wizards I clicked on, but at the moment that’s besides the point.
The point is that I’m currently falling for Dota Underlords, but only because I know the game it's based on like the back of my RSI-riddled hand.
]]>With today's exceptionally quick launch of Dota Underlords, I finally understand Valve Time. When unhurried, the studio takes longer, compressing the excess time for use later. When they need to hustle to get a game out of the door before the competition heats up? They reverse the valves and work like demons. At least, that's how I'm explaining it. Underlords is a turn-based tactical deckbuilder with near-nothing to do with chess, and is out now on both PC and mobile, with full cross-platform play. It's free (albeit in open beta) and on Steam here.
]]>Defying all we thought we knew about Valve Time, the studio have just simultaneously titled and launched Dota Underlords. It's Valve's take on ultra-popular Dota 2 mod Auto Chess, which they had been teasing for a while now. While the game will eventually be free-to-play, with an open beta due in approximately a week, they've just opened the floodgates to anyone with a Dota 2 2019 Battle Pass. It supports eight players online and has AI bots to play against too. Below, a video from YouTuber "Kripparrian" giving it a quick peek.
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