Much like the galactic water miners in the movie and possibly the book Dune Part 2, Dota has always been the only game in any genre that believes water is the most valuable resource in both the Dune-iverse and our universe, the universe. It's kind of crazy, then, that it's taken more than a decade for us to finally prove that bold claim by saying it out loud in print.

And if that was all we did, it would be enough. But we didn't stop there. We've re-made the river that runs through the Dota map. Not only is it wider, its current can speed your movement. Conversely, the new river's new evolving, amphibious creeps can drastically slow your movement by killing you.

And that's not all: How about a new resource! "Waterstone?" you say. In retrospect, that would have made sense. But it's actually called "Madstone" and you can use it to craft your own unique neutral items. Which is crazy, so the name actually fits pretty well.

We've also made some other map updates, replaced wisdom runes with much cooler wisdom shrines, and made a bunch of quality of life changes. It's all too much to detail in one blog post, which means you'd be out of luck unless we made a page dedicated to describing all the stuff in great detail. Which we did.

Well folks, you knew this was coming. We warned you it was coming. We even extended its coming. But now it's no longer coming, because it's here. No more last minute reprieves, no more entreaties from sad-eyed pets. We're doing it. Depending on when you read this, it's already done. Crownfall has been archived.

One consistent and recurring bit of feedback we got from the community over the course of Crownfall was what a bummer it would be not to be able to play their favorite minigame now that the event was ending. (No one agrees on what the best minigame is, but everyone has a favorite.) We agree — waiting in a matchmaking queue goes a lot faster with a game of Dragon Chess — and so we're happy to announce the Crownfall Archive, a collection of all the minigames and comics from all four acts, accessible from the main menu to everyone, regardless of whether you unlocked it while the event was active. (We've also preserved your progress through each of the Act I-IV maps for posterity.)

Additionally, if you're still sitting on any Crownfall rewards like candy or Crownfall Coins, you can continue to redeem them through the Archive.

We've really enjoyed getting to tell a story taking place in the realms of Skywrath, Druud and Icewrack. But there are so many more realms to explore. And so it's time for us to put the Ghastly Eyrie behind us, at least for now, and point our compasses at some new guiding stars. We'll see you there.

Snakes, as any biologist will tell you, are fascinating creatures. They don't have skeletons. They don't have brains or organs. They just have one tube-like muscle that makes up their whole body, a mouth, two eyes, and a butt. That's it. An animal shouldn't be able to be alive with that few body parts, and yet somehow the snake surmounts all of those obstacles and manages it.

It's at this point in the blog post that we should admit that the biologist we contacted about all this never actually returned our calls, so we had to guess at a few of the details in the previous paragraph. But honestly, we don't need a stupid snake expert to tell us that snakes look cool. They look cool on armor, on weapons, on bodies, even on hats. If you've got something that's cool already, and you put a bunch of snakes on it, it might actually explode, so watch out.

As you may have guessed, we're proud to announce the all-new 'Charms of the Snake' treasure, stocked up with nine community-made item sets ready to slither around your favorite heroes and wrap them in some scaly styles, just in time for Lunar New Year to ring in the Year of the Snake.

Each treasure opened will grant a serpentine set for Snapfire, Medusa, Shadow Shaman, Naga Siren, Razor, Earth Spirit, or Templar Assassin. You'll also have a chance to unlock a Rare Lich set or Very Rare Necrophos set. You can purchase 'Charms of the Snake' treasures directly for $2.49 to get in the spirit of the Lunar New Year and join the slinky fashion fun.

The International 2025 is coming to Germany in September. Companies interested in producing and distributing regional language broadcasts of The International are encouraged to apply now.

Like in recent years, proposals for the Live Event Broadcast Production of The International in Russian, Chinese, and Spanish language broadcasts will be accepted. The RFP (Request For Proposal) documentation and instructions for submissions can be found here.

For those seeking additional licenses and feeds, please fill out the form that pertains to the correct request:

• Production companies seeking a commercial license to produce a regional language broadcast of The International 2025 without additional access to the event can apply here.
  
  
• Streaming platforms interested in restreaming the official broadcast feeds to their platform can apply here.
  

As a reminder, DOTA 2 fans can create strictly noncommercial casts from DOTATV following the DOTA 2 Community Stream Policy here and do not need to make an official request.

Please reach out to theinternationalrfp@valvesoftware.com with any additional questions.

Thanks in advance to everyone interested in working with us to bring The International 2025 to life.

Amidst all the TI announcements and Crownfall conclusions, you might not have noticed that the humble Dota 2 Workshop is busier than ever. With a community of talented artists contributing lots of new stuff that we shipped throughout the year, sales of community-generated Workshop content generated more revenue for contributors in 2024 than any year since 2015—and that community of talented artists could also include you!

That's right: We're once again inviting all workshop contributors to spin up some new sets for any of your favorite heroes—including two newcomers who have been waiting eagerly in the wings to join the cosmetic fun. Artists can also include submissions for both Ringmaster and Kez, who are now enabled in the workshop.

To be considered, we request that all submissions be on the Dota 2 Workshop by the end of day on April 6th, 2025 PDT. Please make sure to mark your work with the "Spring 2025" tag when tendering items to the Workshop to ensure they aren't overlooked. (As usual, please avoid concepts involving human skulls, blood, and gore.)

Dota fans everywhere are of course encouraged to regularly visit the Workshop and vote through the Queue to ensure your voices are heard in the hunt for the treasures of tomorrow.

Banners, tattered but resolute, are unfurled. War trumpets, battered but resolute, are buffed with war trumpet polish until they gleam. Weapons, resolute but dull, are sharpened on whetstones in rhythmic strokes, until they are perhaps too sharp, and dulled up a little on nearby flagstones so no one cuts themselves. The banners (tattered, resolute and unfurled, see earlier) are hoisted high, their sigils stitched with sequins of the most defiant bedazzlement.

That's right. The stars have aligned and the stage is once again being set for cosmic battle. And this time, that battle has returned to where it all began: Germany, the site of The International's humble debut on the world stage, where it was watched in person by many tens of people. Now, fourteen years later, The International returns to Germany, to Hamburg's Barclays Arena September 11 - 14 — in front of, we trust, a slightly bigger crowd this time around.

The sixteen contending teams will once again consist of a mix of open qualifiers, regional qualifiers, and direct invitations, with more information on all of that to come. For now, there's still a ton of professional Dota to be played before we can get there. The January viewing calendar has already been packed, as teams around the world fight through qualifiers to earn spots in tournaments slated to kick off in the weeks and months ahead.

Stay tuned for more information on ticketing and scheduling for The International 2025. Until then, tune into some of the pro games to get an early edge on knowing who's who and clocking the teams to beat.

Back in December, it seemed entirely reasonable to bring Crownfall to a close halfway through January. After all, we reasoned, who could possibly need more time than that to finish exploring four huge overworld maps filled with tons of characters to meet, comics to read, and minigames to conquer?

Well, if what we're hearing from friends, family, dedicated fans, coworkers, bus drivers, security guards, and even some cats on the internet is true, it turns out a lot of people could actually use more time to finish everything. So we're extending Crownfall's end date one last time (for real this time) to Thursday, February 6. If you've still got progress to make, get moving, because the curtains for this show are finally actually about to, we promise, close.

A Frosty Farewell
We hope everyone stuffed their bellies full of enough grunch heart to tide yourselves over for the rest of the year, because another season of Frostivus is in the books — and all of the wrappings, trappings, snowballs, and stolen hats have been lovingly packed up and crammed back into the seasonal treasure hutch.

Winter Sale Ends
Sadly, there were no people begging on behalf of their pets for more end-of-year savings from our winter sale, and since the year did in fact end, and in fact ended two weeks ago, everything in the Crownfall Store is now (finally actually) going back to its regular price.

You can still unlock new story nodes with the Midgate, Druud, and Icewrack Pathfinder Packs, deck your heroes out in the sets from Skywrath from Crownfall Treasures I-III, or complete the transformations of Shen and Dragonus with the Vengeful Spirit and Skywrath Mage Arcanas, but unless you've got Crownfall Coins to use, items are back to full price.

Roll Credits
Crownfall might not be officially ending today, but today's update also includes a little something to celebrate the end of the journey. Everyone on the team put a lot of time into making this happen — from haggling with the Flightless in the bustling bazaars of Midgate; to returning the nomad Oglodi through the crimson sands of Druud to their rightful home of Barzum; to helping the overworked warden of Icewrack settle a domestic disturbance between the citizens of Snowcap Lake and a marauding dragon; and finally scaling the cloud-rimmed spires of Skywrath to commit a long-overdue regicide and put an actual Dota character in charge of everything. It's been a long ride, and a little bittersweet to finally close the book on it. So please join us for one last look back, in the form of a credits sequence featuring new music and some fun surprises. (Just click "Play Credits" on the main menu to roll them.)

It's been a busy year for Dota. We welcomed a new hero into our ranks (and a long-awaited one finally made his debut); we crowned another team of world champions at this year's TI in Copenhagen; we reworked every hero with new game-changing innates and facets; and we even managed to cram in a four-act multi-month narrative epic about talking birds.

And so, as the year winds to a close, we find ourselves filled once again to the absolute brim with the spirit of Frostivus. And that means a sackful of festive gifts for everyone for the duration of the Frostivus event, from now until January 15th.

The True Meaning of Frostivus Revealed (Hats)
“What kind of gifts?” one might festively wonder. Well, for starters: For the rest of the season, your hero will begin each game wearing a stylish Frostivus hat.

But don't think of it as a fashion statement. Think of it as a trophy case. Because you can also steal hats from enemy heroes and get them as gifts from your allies with the new Spirit of Frostivus ability. You can also get them the old fashioned way (murder/larceny), by stealing them off the skulls of heroes you've just killed, off the Tormentors, or if you really know what you're doing, even off Roshan's craggy dead head.

And every single hat you take, you can wear on top of all the others in a majestic, murderous hat-stack of glory. Plus since the post-game MVP screen now includes hat tallies, you'll have definitive proof of your hat superiority in the days to come.

A Frostivus Story
So now you've got a tower of Frostivus hats on your head. But can you truly enjoy them without knowing their exhaustive backstory? The answer, as we discovered, is yes. "They're just colored hats," you say. "Who cares where they came from?"

Well, six months ago would have been a great time to mention that, because we wrote a six hundred thousand word legendarium about it called The Hatmarillion. But everybody refused to read it, so we wrote a ten-page kid's book version of The Hatmarillion that takes about a minute to read, and everyone seemed to like that one better. Launch Dota and enjoy the story for yourself! (Frostivus trivia: You'll be able to read it THIRTY TIMES in the time it takes you to get through this blog post!)

Frostivus Forge
But wait! There's still more Frostivus spirit in the air! Unfortunately, it has been broken down into its chemical components and needs to be reconstituted into a seasonal compound. We've gathered up a pile of all the supplies you'll need to craft rewards in the new Frostivus Forge. The next step? The actual crafting part.

All you'll need to do is accomplish a variety of in-game hijinks like “snowball an enemy before you kill them”, “steal a hat”, or “high five an enemy” to earn unique supplies that feed your forge and craft new rewards. Each item requires a different recipe to craft, and you can unlock higher tiers by completing rewards in the lower tiers first. Seasonal Chat Wheels? Check. A new bell-shaped tormentor that you lets you play music? Obviously it has one of those. A drunken wizard riding a suspiciously-donkey-shaped reindeer courier? Why, it wouldn’t be a holiday without them!

Winter 2024 Heroes' Hoard
You know what else it wouldn’t be a holiday without? A box full of surprises! So we’re also unveiling the Winter 2024 Heroes’ Hoard, an all-new treasure featuring 17 item sets for a host of heroes.

But that's not all. To ensure this treasure's brims were truly tested, we stuffed in some new Immortal items amongst the sets. Then we added some new taunts. And a pet wolf for everyone's favorite pint-sized brawler. And when we realized the new Windranger set looked great when equipped with her Arcana, we included that, too. This treasure is available in the Crownfall store, so you can use your Crownfall Coins towards the purchase.

End-of-Year Ban Wave
King Kringle broke his ban hammer off in some well-deserving asses last year. He's spent the year constantly reforging and testing it on various smurfs and in-game baddies, and now he's ready to rechristen it with the blood of the naughty.

While we usually do most of our bans and penalties behind the scenes, it's become something of a Frostivus tradition for us to pull back the curtain a little bit and talk about this ongoing work. And so: This holiday season, we hope you look forward to some cleaner, friendlier, fairer games, free of the 65,594 smurf accounts we've taken action against this week.

Besides the smurfs, we've also dropped the hammer on a significant number of high-MMR griefers, players who try to have fun at the expense of others, exploiting bugs, trading wins, and otherwise undermining the competitive challenge that is at the heart of every game of Dota.

As always, we'd like to thank everyone that submitted a report over the year. All that data helps us find the players that are making games of Dota worse and take action. Dota is a better game because of you.

End-of-Year Sale
A Dota blog post is much like a towering stack of Frostivus hats, in that it always has something at the bottom. This time, that something is Dota's very own winter sale on Crownfall content, running now through January 3rd.

Unlock new story nodes with discounts on the Midgate, Druud, and Icewrack Pathfinder Packs, deck your heroes out in the sets from Skywrath from Crownfall Treasures I-III, or complete the transformations of Shen and Dragonus with the Vengeful Spirit and Skywrath Mage Arcanas. (If you still have a bunch of Crownfall Coins, you can use them to discount most Crownfall Store items further, even if the items are already discounted as part of the sale!)

You’ve still got time to dig into all that Crownfall has to offer as we ring in a new year, but the saga of Skywrath will finally come to a close on January 15th, so if you’ve still got more of the four acts to explore, best get cracking.

Over the last few days we've made the following changes:

• Fixed being unable to configure Quickcast behavior on Observer and Sentry wards in the Settings menu.
  
• Fixed Razor's Voidstorm Asylum Arcana using the incorrect icon for Storm Surge.
  
• Fixed Shadow Fiend Presence of the Dark Lord not losing stacks correctly on death.
  
• Fixed lighting issue on seasonal winter terrain.
  
• Fixed loading spinners not spinning correctly.
  
• Fixed Force Staff's tooltip description ending with 2 periods.
  
• Fixed sprays from events which have ended not properly rendering.
  
• Fixed various client and server crashes.
  
• Fixed Watcher colors not matching their team under some circumstances.
  
• Enabled Kez's Sai abilities in Ability Draft. The draft screen will show a random combination of Kez's Katana and Sai abilities.
  
• Crownfall: Heroes whose reward tokens associated with meta-progression upgrades now show up under the Crownfall Act IV filter in the Hero pick screen.
  
• Crownfall: Fixed Nest of Thorns Loading Screen not being visible.
  
• Nest of Thorns: Voiceline rewards for difficulties 3, 5, and 7 are now permanent.
  
• Nest of Thorns: Improved visibility of the Reaper, which spawns on difficulties 5 and above.
  
• Nest of Thorns: Spirits now ignore range modifiers and always spawn at a set distance away from the player.
  
• Nest of Thorns: Fixed score sometimes not updating properly.
  
• Nest of Thorns: Fixed incorrect text being displayed if launching the client with an invalid language.
  
• Nest of Thorns: Fixed Rot's Scepter obscuring various visual elements in the game.
  
• Nest of Thorns: Fixed Echo Slash and Swashbuckle not working correctly on Linux
  

Gameplay Update

Kez:

• Echo Slash: No longer applies cleave on units hit.
  
• Falcon Rush: Rush Range decreased from 650 to 575
  
• Grappling Claw: Hero Bonus Heal reduced from 40/80/120/160 to 30/60/90/120
  
• Grappling Claw: Cooldown increased from 15/12/9/6 to 16/13/10/7
  
• Talon Toss: Cooldown increased from 15/12/9/6 to 16/13/10/7
  
• Raven's Veil: Applied mark no longer applies parry bonus.
  
• Replaced +50 Raptor Dance Radius level 15 talent with new talent: Raven's Veil Mark Applies Parry Bonus
  
  
• Added additional HUD styling to better communicate the current stance Kez is in.
  
• Raptor Dance: Fixed particle effect not increasing when radius increased.
  
• Echo Slash: Fixed it hitting units slightly further than its range.
  
• Echo Slash: Fixed secondary attack cancelling Kez's invisibility.
  
• Falcon Rush: Fix secondary attack sound effect not playing.
  
• Shodo Sai: Fixed cases where Mark would not be applied properly if it was already applied.
  
• Shodo Sai: Fixed parry cancel sub-ability being affected by Faceless Void's Time Dilation.
  
• Fixed cooldown reduction not applying to alternate weapon abilities.
  
• Grappling Claw: Reworded description to clarify bonus hero healing.