* Fixed Morphling's Morph resetting charge counts for Astral Imprisonment, Stone Remnants and Windrun when switching to and from the Morphed hero

Today's update delivers the second half of the Summer Scrub, focused on bug fixes and some quality of life improvements just in time for The International.

One of the first changes you're likely to notice is the implementation of a new version of the customizable hero grid. Players can now create multiple grid presets, each with their own unique layouts and categories. You can drag and drop heroes around the grid and rename or resize different buckets to suit your needs for any situation.

We've also added a new alternate layout for the in-game item shop that allows you to toggle the classic column view to a new grid-style layout that retains the Basic and Upgrade sections while adding multiple grouped sub-categories for ease of use.

On the game side, we decided to do a little house cleaning related to players exploiting matchmaking, botting or transferring accounts, resulting in a fresh ban wave for cheaters today. We've also made multiple performance improvements focused on minimizing hitches during teamfights.

There's also a whole host of bug fixes that you can read about over on the update page here. Thanks to everyone in the Dota community who helped us identify which things were most in need of a good scrub.

The International Group Stage is almost upon us. As the teams, fans, and broadcast crews make their final preparations for the crowning esports event of the year, it's time to unveil some of the final details for everyone watching.

Tournament News

Head over to the in-game Compendium for a complete list of Casters and Talent for this year’s event. Don’t forget to fill out your predictions for hero picks, team results, player performance, and tournament meta. Predictions lock before the start of Group Stage play.

We’ve also launched the official tournament website for The International 2019 as a hub for keeping up with the daily tournament proceedings. As the Group Stage and Main Event progress, you’ll be able to see updated standings and new social media content posted each day from Shanghai.

• Group Stage: August 15th – August 18th, 2019 – As before, two best-of-two groups of nine teams. Top four teams in each group advance to Upper Bracket, five – eight advance to Lower Bracket, bottom in each group is eliminated.
  
  
  
• Main Event: August 20th – August 25th, 2019 – The tradition continues as 16 teams battle through a best-of-three double elimination playoff. Lower bracket first round is best-of-one, Grand Finals are best-of-five.
  

Media

The top eighteen Dota teams in the world have earned the right to join the final test of the Dota competitive season. As the tournament progresses, check out the main stage and behind-the-scenes action on our media page, which features all content from our YouTube Channel, event-specific Twitter feed, and Instagram.

Pubstomps

Whether you're playing or watching, Dota is best enjoyed with friends. To help people around the world connect with each other for their own celebratory Dota events, we’ve once again partnered with Barcraft United to facilitate Pubstomp administration. Their official landing page will launch later this week to help find a Pubstomp in your area.

- Added a one time popup describing Ranked Roles before queuing for Ranked.
- Removed random hero selection from Ranked Roles matches
- Added The International Talent section to the Compendium

- The optional unit query panel has been removed. We started fixing a couple bugs with it and felt that the feature needed large design changes to be usable by a bigger portion of players, as less than 1% of players have used it after we added the option for it.

Introducing the first-ever Hero Persona—a completely different visual and thematic take on a classic hero—available now to Battle Pass owners who invoke level 305 or beyond. Featuring all-new models, animations, voice performance, and item slots for future customization, this first persona sends the ageless Invoker back to his earliest days studying the wizarding arts. Every legend has a beginning, and the Arsenal Magus is no exception.

Aeons before he was recognized as the most dangerous magician alive—in days even he no longer remembers—the Invoker was the adolescent star pupil at an ancient wizard's academy. Now, harnessing dangerous magics purloined from his headmaster's secret archives, young Carl has discovered the means to journey forward and join the battle of the Ancients well before his time.

Head over to the Acolyte of the Lost Arts update page to learn more, and then head into the lanes spry in step and brimming with powerful magics.

Congratulations to the six teams that have earned the right to join the twelve DPC standouts in battling for the Aegis of Champions. Mineski, Royal Never Give Up, Natus Vincere, Chaos Esports Club, Infamous, and Forward Gaming have all emerged from the Regional Qualifiers as worthy additions to the field of the world's finest Dota teams.

Now that the final list of eighteen teams is set and preparations in Shanghai are well underway, it's time to explore The International 2019 Compendium. To get started, Battle Pass owners are invited to unwrap Player Card Packs and begin assembling the perfect rosters for this year's Fantasy Challenge.

You can also select your Favorite Team to unlock customized emoticons, effigy banners, team sprays, team balloons in place of your sky snakes, and special Teleport effects. The Teleport effects even have upgraded versions for players who collect a full set of a team's silver or gold cards.

The International Compendium also includes Hero, Team, Player, and Tournament Predictions. Test your knowledge of the professional scene by correctly predicting the meta of the tournament before the first draft begins. The more results you correctly predict, the more Battle Points that await. All you need to do is choose.

The International 2019 Collector's Cache returns for another round, featuring multiple items from this year's Call to Arms as well as some hidden workshop gems for a span of favorite heroes—including a Rare set for Necrophos, a Very Rare set for Ember Spirit, and an Ultra Rare set for Juggernaut.

Available now for $2.49, unboxing thirteen of these treasures will automatically grant you thirty-two Battle Levels, and the odds of receiving a bonus rare item increase with each one you open. You can also recycle any unwanted sets for two Battle Levels.

Volume II of the Collector's Cache will only be available for the next thirty days and is the only way to receive these exclusive item sets, apart from the Ultra Rare Juggernaut set which will be marketable near the end of 2020 after next year's tournament concludes. As is tradition, 25% of each sale contributes directly to The International prize pool.

Once again, we'd like to thank all of the community artists who tendered submissions to the Dota 2 Workshop, as well as the entire Battle Pass community for your support.

The sun is shining, the creeps are marching, and it's the perfect time to open up the proverbial windows and give the Dota world a healthy scrub. To that effect, we'll be working on an update focused on bug fixes that should help get the lanes in good shape as we head into the final stretch before The International.

To assist in our efforts, we'd love the Dota community to put on your bug-hunting hats and sound off on any bugs you've encountered during your games. While we will be primarily looking for bug reports, we are also interested in adding some quality-of-life improvements, so if you have any ideas please don't hesitate to share.

Up next for the Battle Pass, we are aiming to ship the Kid Invoker Hero Persona with next Friday's update on the 19th.

Immortal Treasures:
- Added custom sound effects for Pugna, Timber, Lion, Warlock, Centaur and Lifestealer immortals.

Mo'rokai:
- Added a 100 point reward for losses.
- Increased the point reward for winning to 300 from 250 (the total for winning with a bonus token is unchanged).
- Jungle Map and Weather effects are no longer automatically applied
- Each team now has two guaranteed bans.
- Increased experience, gold and essence gain by 30%.
- Wagering and Tipping have been added.
- Updated the Mo'rokai Event page in the dashboard.
- Penalties are now being assessed for abandons, and games should now be correctly marked as safe to leave when appropriate.
- Fixed a bug that prevented wins from applying towards Jungle Expedition and Daily/Weekly Quest progress.
- Fixed a bug that allowed players to not be assigned a hero if they were disconnected during the hero pick phase.
- Fixed a bug that caused bonus tokens not awarding the correct number of additional points. Players are being granted 1000 points for each bonus token consumed, up to that users point cap for the week in which it was consumed.