Valve has been giving a lot of love and support to their version of auto chess since its release in June, and now we’re about to see another Dota Underlords update. The Big Update that’s about to hit will clean up many aspects of the game. It effectively marks the beginning of the end of the game’s beta phase.
How did we get here?
Earlier this year, a custom mod appeared in the Dota 2 client called Dota Auto Chess. It was a strategy game designed to be a hybrid between chess and the MOBA. Instead of picking a hero to control and fight with, players would have to hire heroes that would then battle one another automatically each round. Hence, “auto chess.”
The game was a phenomenon and has since sparked a whole new genre and a range of copycats. After attempting to partner with the original creators of the custom mod, Drodo Studio, Valve went their own way and created Dota Underlords. Drodo Studio has their version of the game, called Auto Chess, currently also in beta for PC.
The balance of life and death
In Part One of The Big Update, we get a preview of new Heroes and Alliances coming to the game. First up is the Healer Alliance, which will amplify all friendly healing. As with healers in MOBAs and MMORPGs, having healers on your side will increase your survivability considerably. The introduction of the Healer Alliance to Dota Underlords will no doubt make tactics even more complex. Now you need to balance offensive damage output with the potential to outlive your opponents.
The new healer joining the roster of Dota Underlords Heroes is a Dota classic, Dazzle. With his well-known Shadow Wave ability, Dazzle can heal allies while damaging nearby enemies. He’s a quintessential healer that epitomizes the balance between offense and defense.
The bugs are in business
The second new Alliance joining the fray for the Dota Underlords update is the Insects. This Alliance will cause Spiderlings to swarm enemies from the edge of the board, causing any who are bitten to have a chance to miss their attacks. The Insect Alliance is another one that doesn’t focus purely on offense, but rather on improving your survivability through hindering your enemies. It’s a trait shared by all Heroes in the Insect Alliance.
With the Insect Alliance, we also see the introduction of three new Heroes: Weaver, Nyx Assassin, and Broodmother. Weaver will use his Shukuchi to become invisible and untargetable, while also damaging all enemies it passes through.
Nyx Assassin has access to two of his abilities from Dota. Spiked Carapace negates and reflects damage back to enemies, while also stunning the source of the damage. Vendetta allows him to teleport to an enemy, strike it for extra damage, and apply Break. Break disables all passive effects.
The final new Hero coming to Dota Underlords with The Big Update is Broodmother. She will have access to her Spin Web ability, but it will have the opposite effect of its Dota counterpart. Instead of speeding up Broodmother, it will slow the attack speed, movement speed, and cast speed of any enemies it is cast on.
You can download the free-to-play Dota Underlords through Steam.
