The first Dota Major Championship is nearly upon us. The battle begins as sixteen of the world’s best teams enter the Group Stage. You can follow all the action live in the Dota 2 client by visiting the new ‘Featured Tournament’ section. Check out real-time brackets as well as links to watch any matches you may have missed. Coverage is scheduled to begin around 10:00am CET (here’s a helpful time zone converter).



Our film team has put together a few short features for the event. The first follows CDEC’s stunning run from Wild Card underdog to championship contender at The International while capturing the thoughts of some of the biggest names in the game as they prepare for the Frankfurt Major. In addition, we've just added all the player profile videos from TI5 to Steam.

Watch 'The Journey to the Majors'

Add this free app to get updated videos in the future directly onto your Steam account.

The first Dota Major Championship is nearly upon us. The battle begins as sixteen of the world’s best teams enter the Group Stage. You can follow all the action live in the Dota 2 client by visiting the new ‘Featured Tournament’ section. Check out real-time brackets as well as links to watch any matches you may have missed. Coverage is scheduled to begin around 10:00am CET (here’s a helpful time zone converter).



Our film team has put together a few short features for the event. The first follows CDEC’s stunning run from Wild Card underdog to championship contender at The International while capturing the thoughts of some of the biggest names in the game as they prepare for the Frankfurt Major. In addition, we've just added all the player profile videos from TI5 to Steam.

Watch 'The Journey to the Majors'

Add this free app to get updated videos in the future directly onto your Steam account.

- Added new Featured Tournament section to Watch for The Frankfurt Major. Includes live schedule and bracket views with easy access to live broadcasts and replays
- Fixed several memory leaks in the client and server
- Reduced rendering memory usage
- Fixed a regression in GPU performance
- Direct3D9Ex support enabled by default, which improves alt-tab behavior
- Reduced CPU usage when game is minimized
- Added alt click support for showing XP remaining until next level
- Added a sound for the Aegis expiring (audible to allies only)
- Added support for player color on Boots of Travel
- All places in the UI where ping times are displayed now display the network round trip time. Previously, different places displayed different measures of latency. For more details on this change, see this post on our dev forum: http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=184807
- Fixed a bug where spectator gems were not incrementing correctly after watching a game
- Fixed Ghost Scepter with Dazzle Weave interaction
- Fixed Io portrait popping
- Fixed a bug with spikey Zeus head
- Enable normal maps in portrait views
- Workshop Importer: Fixed issue with portrait editing the where camera framing and spotlight shadows did not exactly match the in game portrait view
- Workshop Importer: Added template for chat emoticons and team logos
- Workshop Importer: UI improvements to make complex submissions more manageable
- Workshop Importer: Portrait editing UI improvements
- Fixed an issue where Radiant fountain and building particle effects would sometimes not be present when spectating
- Fixed hitboxes for Tinkbot courier

- Fixed a crash related to Lotus Orb being used on Illusions.
- Fixed a rare crash during Alt+Tab.
- You can now change the value of cheat protected console variables while viewing a demo.

- Fixed a bug with Troll Warlord animations when cancelling Ranged Axes.
- Fixed equipping HUD skins outside of a match.
- Fixed some memory leaks.

- Fixed not being able to watch a single-match series.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Collection tab in the Armory having the correct number of slots.
- Added previewing sets with the infuser applied to the Tribute treasures.
- Fixed some memory leaks.
- Fixed some cases where Lone Druid's Bear was not displaying the disarm state correctly.

- Spectator gems increment when spectating games.
- Fixed a crash when spectating or watching replays of tournament games.
- Elder Titan's Astral Spirit is no longer box-selectable while not summoned.
- Fixed Ember Spirit's Fire Remnant rarely creating the remnant visual effect in the wrong place.
- Fixed drag+drop of multiple selected items in the Collection tab of the armory.
- Fixed leaderboards not being updated.
- Fixed a bug where players who clicked the "leave game" button after timing out would not properly be treated as abandoning the match.
- Fixed Invoker's Heaven Piercing Pauldrons.

- 6.85b: Scepter Doom no longer increases damage
- 6.85b: Scorched Earth damage and heal reduced from 12/24/36/48 to 12/23/34/45
- 6.85b: Scorched Earth cooldown rescaled from 60/55/50/45 to 55
- 6.85b: Spiderlings Poison Sting slow reduced from 12% to 8%

* Fixed a bug where using Demo Hero with your equipped items would show the default items instead.
* Fixed some loading screen tips.
* Added a new convar cl_dota_alt_unit_movetodirection that enables alt+right click to issue a directional move command.
* Added filtering by tournament to the Watch Downloads page.
* Custom Games: Added SetKillingSpreeAnnouncerDisabled to the game mode entity. SetAnnouncerDisabled no longer also disables the Killing Spree announcer.
* OpenGL: Fixed a crash when playing the Custom Game THD2 on Koishi Komeiji Ultimate.
* OpenGL: Fixed a bug where there would occasionally be geometry corruption when a Hero first loads into the map.
* Workshop Importer: Motion extraction for run animations now uses any bone named “root” (if present) instead of the base of the skeleton.

This year, we felt the best way to mark the passage of October was to create a spooky, pumpkin-filled Custom Game. Haunted Colosseum is a new 5-on-5 battle for territorial control, complete with Capture Points, devilish traps, and warrior behemoths. It's available now, you can learn more about it here, and then launch Dota 2 to try it for yourself.



We've revamped the Custom Games overview page with the goal of promoting discovery of great Custom Games, and getting people into lobbies and playing as quickly as possible. To do that, we've replaced the "Suggested Games" list with an "Open Lobby" list, and we've added a new panel which highlights an automatically-chosen Game of the Day.



This update also includes the second Tribute treasure for Fall Compendium owners: the Tribute of the Sharpened Feather.

There are a lot of additonal changes and improvements in this update, such as a new section in your profile for showing off your tournament tickets, a way to see and manage your downloaded replays, support for offline solo play, a new matchmaking region in Tokyo with connectivity to Taiwan and Korea, a couple of balance changes with 6.85b, and more. Check out the complete notes for the full rundown.