sikle reported that a Necronomicon recipe was found in the Dota 2 files
Team Spirit analyst Mark “sikle” Lerman reported on his personal Telegram channel about changes found in the game files following a recent update.
The quote is reproduced with the source’s spelling and punctuation intact
Happy Chest Day—I hope everyone’s happy with the latest Pudge set. Here’s what the developers have been hiding from you:
- The option to set separate hotkeys for heroes with many additional abilities—Invoker, Kez, and Largo—is now working.
- The way Plague Ward data is stored has been reorganized—previously, it consisted of 5 (not 3, but 5 levels, by the way) separate units, but now it’s just 1. The game reads the info from the ability. But here’s the catch: it also reads the experience value, but there’s no experience there, so you won’t get any for killing the wards. Bug ¯_(ツ)_/¯
- They’ve brought back the old Necronomicon recipe: Belt of Strength + Staff of Wizardry + recipe = 2,700. This recipe was in place before the 7.07 patch (2017). Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but when they changed Specialist’s Array from neutral to a regular item, it was added to the game shortly after. If they add the Necromancer in the same state and with the same ability, I don’t know why—Dota isn’t ready for that.
- New lines have been added, potentially hinting at either past tests or future ability additions.
All of them are disabled (status 0): - A new convar has been added that handles teleportation in the Fog of War: dota_unit_use_new_tp_fow_logic—a test feature available only to developers. Also, four more convars for the new unit movement system: dota_use_experimental_npc_controller_* — also for developers. Since the old pathfinding convars have been generally removed <...> and new ones are being added—with the nav_* convars disabled—it’s safe to say that the developers are improving how units move. It will be interesting to see if this affects the behavior of starting packs later on. The `gameinfo_cannot_override` convar and a couple of others are aimed at security.
- dota_madness_color — back in June, they added the dota_health_bar_madness convar, which has no practical use, so speculation still remains as to what this mechanic is and what it’s for. It’s unlikely to be for the Mask of Madness, although it arrived in the exact same version as the setting for the Soul Ring’s separate health bar. A new mana-like mechanic?
- MIN_ATTACK_RANGE — a new flag: “cannot attack targets closer than X.” It isn’t being used anywhere yet; it may be a fix for model-related bugs that Valve has already addressed.
Read also: The Immortal Trove “Trove of Terror” has been released in Dota 2—here’s a look at all the sets
Previously, Valve moved the Terrorblade Arcana item from his head to the hero’s base model, which caused the Reflection’s Shade gem to appear twice.
Photo by Mark “sikle” Lerman.
