Load the Game

Dota 2 finally has a better item drop system thanks to the latest patch

• Egon Kilin
• October 31st, 2014

Item drops in Dota 2 used to be a wonderful thing back in the day when you actually got something useful every once in a while. If you’re like me, by now your inventory is probably full of common items for heroes you never play with and the worst part is that you can’t even sell these items because nobody wants them. To top it all of, it’s likely that the items in question dropped more than once, so now you have plenty of worthless duplicates in your armory. Well, this won’t be a problem anymore fortunately as Valve recently released a patch that changes how the Dota 2 item drop system works.

Instead of being level based, item drops are now time based and include full sets, bundles, and Arcanas that drop at a rare rate. Seeing as how leveling up is not as important anymore in regards to item drops, Valve went ahead and removed all battle boosters from Dota 2. The patch notes say that anyone who had an unused purchased battle booster in their inventory will receive a free Treasure of the Rotten Gallows Redemption Token in its place. If you happened to have had an activated battle booster, don’t worry about it going to waste because it was replaced with a Treasure of the Rotten Gallows. The treasure in question was added with the latest patch and includes new item sets for Death Prophet, Sven, Lion, Clockwerk, Drow Ranger, Riki, Chaos Knight, and Treant Protector. There is also a small chance that the treasure will reward you with the new Echo the Locator ward or the Bewitcher’s Bundle, which includes a new ward, a new courier, and two new loading screens.

Aside from changes to the Dota 2 item drop system, the patch also fixes a few bugs and makes it so that the Buyback button now only accepts left-clicks. Also worth mentioning is that the item sets found in the Treasure of the Rotten Gallows can not be traded or marketed for three whole months. Quite a drastic change from how things worked before this patch. This should presumably stop players from opening the chest and immediately putting the dropped items on the Dota 2 marketplace if they don’t like them, thus making them less valuable. While these new item sets will get to keep their value, it won’t do you much good since you can’t sell them anyway if you don’t need them. I’m not sure if Valve made the right decision here to be honest as players will likely spend less money buying the chests knowing that the items inside can’t be traded for three months.