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Light dwindles and cold creeps in. The Shifting Snows Update has arrived, bringing with it this year’s Winter Map as well as a small gameplay update. As heroes shiver down the lanes to meet their fate, a new effigy material has emerged from the ice, new treasures have brought new armor to warm by the fire, and the arrival of Gift Wrap heralds the season of Givening. Check out the Shifting Snows Update page for more information.

More info: http://www.esl-one.com/dota2/frankfurt-2015/

Hey everyone,
We just announced ESL One Frankfurt 2015! After the success of this year, we absolutely wanted to do it again. Today, we announced that it will take place on June 20-21, 2015.

We wanted to address some of the feedback you gave, which resulted in a few changes we made this year to make the event more enjoyable for everyone.

As we mentioned in September, there are a number of features in the works for Dota 2 that we’re really excited to share with you. Among them is a major improvement to Dota 2’s engine that we are aiming to release in the first half of next year. One of the main features in this engine improvement will be the ability to rapidly create entirely new game modes. You’ve seen some of this work with the Dota 2 Workshop Tools Alpha that began earlier this year. In the past, our Diretide and Frostivus updates contained game modes that were very time consuming to build and maintain, and would need to be rebuilt from the ground up after the release of the engine update.

Once again, we’re putting out a call to artists to create items based around the themes of Chinese New Year, Chinese history, and springtime, and submit them to the Dota 2 Workshop to be considered for the next New Bloom Festival. This time around we would like to ask artists to avoid the use of dragons and written Chinese characters, as well any concepts that involve human skulls, blood and gore. Additionally, to have the best chance of having your work make it into the game, please be careful not to mix cultural concepts in your designs, such as traditional divisions between the dress of children and adults, warriors and civilians and upper and lower classes. Also, our workshop particle process is due to be reworked, so please refrain from using custom particles in your submission.

The dark bargain is struck. Today through December 7th, the Nemesis Assassin Event will allow all heroes a unique opportunity to earn trophies and items. During each day of the event, contracts will be put out on the life of those heroes listed on Oracle’s Nemesis Registry, and these contracts can either be Fulfilled or Denied during the course of the match.

An enigmatic new hero strides onto the battlefield. Oracle is coming to let you seize the fates of both friend and foe. Prefer to deal a deadlier destiny? Phantom Assassin’s new arcana, the Manifold Paradox, is available for preorder, and will be on sale for 20% off until December 7th. Learn about the Nemesis Assassin Event in Day 3 of the Foreseer’s Contract update, arriving this week!

A mysterious figure, a ruthless assassin, and an infinite number of possibilities. The Foreseer’s Contract is coming soon. Head to the update page to get your first peek at a deal with incalculable ramifications, then come back next week to learn more.

In an unexpected turn of events, popular player Mushi has just announced his departure from Team Malaysia, leaving the team with only three official members. No reason for his departure has been stated yet.

Former Team DK player Yee Fung 'Mushi' Chai has just announced via twitter that he is no longer an official member of Team Malaysia. An official statement regarding the exact reasons for his departure has yet to be given. Having reached out to Mushi, he explained that he would officially make a statement once things are settled.

The Russian organization Moscow Five will launch a new international roster for their DotA2 division, centered around the former captain of their main squad Vladimir 'PGG' Anosov. The team consists of PGG, sQreen, ZXC, Bignum and Neqroman.

IeSF (International e-Sports Federation) World Championships will feature 14 teams from 14 different countries fighting for the $50,000 prizepool. It will take place from the 12th - 16th of November in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Team Empire has announced that their squad will not attend the upcoming DreamLeague phase 2 which will be played out on LAN. Internal issues seem to prevent the organization from sending a full roster to Stockholm which is why they pulled out. An official replacement has yet to be announced.

 

What they could not do last season against Empire and DK, they did it this season against Secret Team. Evil Geniuses are the StarLadder X champions, after their 3-2 victory in the best-of-five grand final. The Americans will be taking home the $106,000 first place prize.

The offline finals of Starladder X continued today with the fourth and final day of the event. Yesterday saw the demise of Team Tinker, Virtus.pro, IAP Execration, and Natus Vincere, effectively halving the participants. Cloud 9 defeated Alliance in a best-of-three series, and faced Evil Geniuses, who promptly beat them 2-1. The Americans then battled Secret in the best-of-five Grand Finals, taking an impressive 3-2 victory despite their enemies' Upper Bracket advantage.

StarLadder starts today but unfortunately not without one more bump in the road. Cloud9's bOne7 is unable to play due to a medical emergency. The team's matches have been moved to tomorrow, giving them more time to find a stand-in.

The star studded StarLadder season 10 finals start today, with eight teams plugging in at Cyberarena in Kiev once again to play in the prestigious event, which has now become a backbone of competitive Dota 2. However, one of the teams still does not have their status set to go. Cloud9 will be playing without bOne7 who woke up with extreme back pain which after a medical diagnosis turned out to be kidney stones. The team is now forced to find a last minute stand-in on very short notice. Due to their situation, all Cloud9's matches have been moved to tomorrow to give them the most possible time to find a player.

image: Na`Vi Gaming

The departure of captain Puppey and Kuroky left a void in the former Na'Vi, which has now finally been filled as both VANSKOR from Empire & fng from PR have been enlisted by the multi-gaming organization as part of their new Dota 2 team. Na`Vi announced their new line-up. The Ukrainian trio of Dendi, Xboct and Funn1k will be joined by Vanskor and fng

image: evilgeniuses.gg

After several months of absence from in-game action, Fear will be rejoining EG. The hard-carry position was open after the depature of Mason, but it will not be surprising if the current members decide to switch their roles.

New Treasure Chest

Treasure of the Fractured Prism

This is a promotional chest for the Korean folk.

The whole event was called 도친소 which was an abbreviation for "Let's introduce our friends to dota". The event consists of 4 stages, of which two are already completed.

Stage 1: introduce friends to dota link

Invite friends to play dota, and for each person you invite you get more stuff.

• 3 people invite: limited edition item I
• 15 people invited: limited edition item II
• 30: Headset and TI4 Plushie
• 50: Keyboard+Mouse and TI4 Plushie
• 100: Nexon cash with a value of ~500 dollars
• ?Mystery present?: Out of those who have invited over 100 people, one user will be drawn to receive a special item.

Also, there was an "attendance check", and every 5 times, you got a nexon box.

Stage 2: Play lobby games with friends link

For every ~5 games or so, you get in-game cash, as well as the ability to gift your friends the nexon boxes (no idea how this worked, since I didn't do it)

Stage 3: Let's play together link

Play games on Korean server, and fulfill certain conditions to earn either a Nexon box, in-game money, or a raffle ticket (for a chance to win a 27" monitor, one of 3 graphics cards, one of 3 SSDs and one of 5HDDs).
This is ongoing, you have to simply play a normal/ranked game for the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th days, and win the games on the other days. Each day you claim a prize.

And stage 4 is some crap about taking a photo with your newly introduced friend along with some recounting of how much fun you had for a chance at gift certificates link

 

image: nbcnews.com

What is an "Ice Bucket Challenge"?

It's an effort to raise awareness of ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's disease) where participants must dump a bucket of ice cold water and then dare someone to do the same. If they can't, the alternative is to donate $100 to the ALS association
> For more info or to donate

Economy Updates

New Currency Support

Massive number of changes to add support for new currencies in the Dota 2 Store. All the items entries have now been changed to work with that. The entire set of supported currencies are listed below.

Era has been one of the longest-serving players in Dota 2, having joined Fnatic in February 2012 and playing for them first in HoN and then Dota 2. With hundreds of competitive games to his name, he has finally parted ways with his long-time organisation to seek greener pastures elsewhere.

Only two days after Kuroky was announced to leave the team, Ukrainian organization Na`Vi has reported yet another departure. Long-term captain Puppey will part ways with the team and is set to rebuild a new one with his friend Kuroky. A replacement for the both of them is expected to be announced in the upcoming days.