Dota 2 celebrates Lunar New Year with Dark Moon event
Grab your pals
A new temporary game mode has arrived in Dota 2 [official site] with the 'Dark Moon' event to mark Lunar/Chinese New Year. Prizes are up for grabs! Dark Moon is a PvE wave survival mode, with five heroes beating back hordes of nasties in a way that feels a lot like many Warcraft 3 mods. Well, in WC3 modland it'd likely also have shoddy Spider-Men and hilariously overpowered items but hey, we can't have it all.
Valve have also launched the Winter 2017 Battle Pass, the combination sticker album and gift bag leading into April's big tournament, the Kiev Major.
The Dark Moon event pits five players against waves of enemies trying to knock down Selemene's temple. It only has a limited selection of heroes, either ones who are good at mashing hordes or useful for standing up against them, while enemies faced are variants of Dota heroes too. It's set on a custom map, enemies flooding in from all through rings of towers that can be knocked down but which will respawn. That's it. Kill 'em, try not to die, survive to the end and beat the final boss. If you want the nitty-gritty, hit up this Dota fan wiki page.
Playing Dark Moon rewards players with points, which can be spent to spin a wheel and win a random prize from this list. It's the only way to get the new Dark Moon Baby Roshan courier, though he is a mighty rare baby.
Here's some of that DotaCinema mob playing Dark Moon. I haven't watched this through but they are usually relatively polite.
Also now here is the Winter 2017 Battle Pass, on sale for £6.49/$7.99.
As with previous Battle Passes (and Compendiumiaes), it's basically a way to get fancy new items. By completing challenges, making predictions for the Kiev Major, and so on, you can level up your Pass to get more rewards. It comes with a (temporary) wintry terrain and one treasure chest with Chinese-y-ish wizard hats, then unlockables include icy special effects for some items, unique wards, a courier with unlockable variants, and more treasure chests. This is all leading up to the Kiev Major tournament which starts on April 20th. Lol 4/20!!!! Blaze it!!! Lol!