Everything We Know About Axe’s Disappearance and Hints About the “Dark Carnival” in Dota 2

What happened to Axe, and how might this be connected to a new event that hasn’t been officially announced? We’ve compiled everything known about these strange occurrences.

When players logged in on June 23, they discovered that a key hero—Axe—was missing. In his place, the menu displayed a “Wanted” notice with an illegible message about his disappearance, and he can no longer be selected—not even in Demo Mode, where he used to be the default opponent. Since qualifiers for The International are currently in full swing, the developers made an exception only for Captains Mode so as not to disrupt the competition.

Those who saw the Ringmaster trailer may recall that it was Axe who fell into the Ringmaster’s trap while trying to demonstrate his power on one of the rides. We weren’t shown what happened to Mogul Khan next, but at the end of the trailer, an announcement appeared reading: “No hero is safe.”

Axe’s in-game dialogue is marked by bloodthirstiness and references to himself in the third person—his combat experiences have taken their toll and, by all accounts, left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

With the release of patch 7.41d, some players noticed a change that didn’t make sense at the time: “Bad Feeling increased from 0 to 0.5.” It was impossible to understand what this meant until the developers added this positive effect to the game, which was noticed by data miners. On the same day, Valve employees left them another message: “Why are you reading the names of our variables?”, renaming one of them.

The effect itself serves no purpose and disappears after the first death. For it to trigger, Axe and Ringmaster must be on opposing teams, and there’s a 30% chance that Mogul Khan will receive it. The buff also has a second stage where, judging by the text (“Hmm-mm-mm. Seems like everything’s fine”), the character stops worrying, but no detailed information about it was found in the code. Given that the “Bad Premonition” stat has been increased from 0.5 to 1, it’s highly likely that the developers are ready to reveal something to players.

In this way, Valve is clearly drawing players’ attention to an upcoming update—the community is most eagerly anticipating the release of a new event. Previously, dataminers found clues related to the “Dark Carnival”—that’s the name of an unannounced event in the code.

The creators of Dota 2 often leave hints ahead of major updates. For example, before Monkey King was added, bananas appeared where trees had been cut down, and later, one of his lines hinted at a fourth spirit—in addition to Storm, Ember, and Earth Spirit.

Team Spirit analyst Mark “sikle” Lerman pointed out the background of the missing person announcement, which features glowing lightbulbs—similar to those seen in Ringmaster’s debut textures. Mark expects a new event to be released, preceded by Axe’s return with the second phase of “Bad Omen.”

DotaFlow dataminer noted that the path to the image announcing the hero’s disappearance contains a reference to the “Dark Carnival” folder. This may indicate that what’s happening isn’t just a hint at the upcoming event, but part of it, and the search for Mogul Khan may continue after the event begins.

Photo: Valve; Mark “sikle” Lerman.