If you read the early notes from the Test Client, please re-read these as there are some significant changes!
This should be live within the hour. The chat server will have to be reset, so it will go down right before the patch goes live.
Please remember that MANY MANY mods will be broken, as with every patch.
Version 0.3.6
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Game Modes
- Added Dev Hero Mode
* When enabled, Dev Hero Mode allows work-in-progress "development" heroes to be played
* All future S2 Hero additions are going to be added as "dev heroes," this allows us to get feedback on a large scale and evaluate balance before including the hero in the stable hero pool
* Dev hero mode must be enabled when hosting games. It can be filtered in the game list. Dev heroes will not be used in matchmaking or competitive tournaments
- Added new advanced game option "Tournament Rules"
* When enabled, allows the host to specify in the game lobby which team gets first ban
* Only affects BP and BD gamemodes
- Added "Hardcore Mode" advanced game option
* No passive gold/sec gain
* A creep/hero deny results in 0 experience for the enemy team
* A tower deny results in 0 gold for the enemy team
- "Item Drop" advanced game option now drops all items on death.
* Items dropped on death cannot be picked up by couriers, sold, or killed on the ground.
* Items dropped on death can be picked up and used by anyone.
- Added 5 seconds to each players pick time in Random Draft (25 -> 30)
- Added 5 seconds to transition between bans and picks in Random Draft (15 -> 20)
Important Bug Fixes
- When using Runes of Blight on a tree, heroes will now approach from the correct side. (Will now no longer go all the way around a tree to eat it)
- Heroes are much less likely to keep blocking each other as they try to run past each other (HUGS!)
- Fixed ability tooltips sometimes getting stuck on screen
- Fixed an issue causing buying while dead to sometimes not work
- Abilities used from in the fog will no longer originate from the 0,0 position
* This includes Devourer's Hook, Electrician's Grip, Pollwog Priest's Tongue Tied, Puppet Master's Puppeteer's Hold and Voodoo Puppet, and Witch Slayer's Mana Drain
- Fixed sound system/voicemanager interactions that were causing crashes upon sound system restart
- You can now drop an item into an inventory spot with a building under it
Matchmaking 2.0
- Matchmaking has received some serious revisions that should drastically improve match making quality. Please help us further perfect our match making system by giving it a try and leaving feedback on the forums
* Reworked how matches are formed to more consistently replace players who fail to load and to decrease time to find matches for players with exceptionally high or low SMR ratings
* Players new to matchmaking must complete 5 provisional matches, in which they will be matched with other new players. If not enough new players are available, they will eventually be matched with regular players.
* Players now have the option to set their initial standing according to general skill level, which affects the types of players they will be matched against. The three options are Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.
* Solo matchmaking uses Banning Draft (BD)
Ingame Changes
- Added a new keybinding: Direct Pathing
* When held down and an order is given (Move, Attack, Cast, etc) will move the hero in a direct path towards where you click no matter what is in the way. Ignores cliffs, heroes, and creeps. Useful for chasing through the woods or pushing yourself against a cliff to cast into the river!
- Re-arranged some of the shop to put modifiers into the correct (bottom) shop. This includes all lifesteal items. Brutalizer and Lightning items are now in the Combat shop. Be wary of your hotkeys!
- If you buy an item on a courier then transfer that item to your hero, you can now sell that item for its full value within the 15 second sellback period
- Added game option "Minimap Rightclick" (default on). When disabled, the player cannot right-click on the minimap.
- The game will no longer display an incorrect disconnect message indicating that the hero was removed and assets distributed to their team if the disconnected player was a referee or spectator
- Fixed disconnect messages appearing twice when a player disconnects in game
- Calling a vote to remake, pause or kick (through the console) before the pre-match game phase will no longer work. (ie. only after the players are loaded into the map can they call these.)
- If displaying chat timestamps were enabled in game, various game messages sent to both teams were not being timestamped (disconnects, Kongor kills, Barracks destruction, etc). These messages now display the timestamp properly if the client has this option enabled.
- New death for the legion main building
- Finally took down our Christmas lights...
- New Hellbourne sounds and effects for buildings
- Random small chest sound/model fixes
- The game option "Show exp numbers" is now on by default for new installations.
- Added an option "Center Camera on Respawn" that allows users to toggle whether or not the camera will automatically focus on their hero after respawning
- Unpause now plays a noise so players are aware
- Fixed some neutral NPC sounds playing globally
- Updated map to remove texture seams
- Added a visible 'corpse' for NPCs dying
- Heroes can no longer pickup runes while stunned
- Referees are now treated as spectators
* Fixes the fog issue, allows them to see the scoreboard, allows them to talk with other referees and spectators
- Added some environmental sound effects on Caldavar
- Double Tap returns!
- Fixed the sound bug where muting someone might not always work
- Restrict most actions while the game is paused
- Fixed the "Share All" courier button to reset its state at the start of every game
- Fixed a bug that occurred when spectators used the "Disable Fog of War" or "Lock Camera" options would see those settings carry over into the the next game they joined or played
- Fixed some tooltips for items in the shop
- Fixed spectators at 1920x1080 resolution
Pre-Game Changes
- Hero icons no-longer react to mouseovers/clicks when there's no hero
- The loading race values now start at 1 and end at 10, the old race values should no longer appear when loading the next game
- Pressing ALT in the game lobby will now toggle the chat mode between "Team" and "All" chat modes.
- Moved the Ping/Players/Version labels in the game lobby a bit to the right as we weren't making use of the space and server names with long names like those we use for South Africa overlapped into these labels
- Voice chat indicator/mute button shows up in the hero picker/etc. now (on the inner side of the hero name)
- Pressing the "All/Team" button in the game lobby will now set focus to the chat input line
- Lobby now has sounds for actions (kick, join etc)
- Increase the max spectator slots to 10
- Fixed the Alternate Picking crash
- The host option "Disband" has been changed to "Disconnect", Upon disconnecting the game server will assign another player as the host and print a message to the game lobby indicating the transfer of hosting privileges
General Changes
- Replays now begin recording during the picking phase
- Removed the "Tier" filters, columns and inputs from the game browser and create game interface
- Added filters, sortable columns and all inputs for Min/Max PSR to the game browser and create game interface
* Players may now specify a Min/Max PSR range when creating a game. Min/Max PSR games will appear normally as they would in the game browser and other players may join a game if their PSR falls within 2% of the range the game server Min/Max PSR is set to. (This means a player with 1471 PSR should be able to make it into a game marked Min 1500, and a 1734 player would be able to join a game marked as Max 1700, but those are the very edge of the 2% tolerance, so anything higher or lower would be rejected.)
- Games outside of a player's PSR range are grayed out in the game browser similar to the way "No Leaver" games appear to a player with leaver status. If no range is specified when the game is created then no range is enforced. If a player is invited to a game, the server ignores the PSR restrictions for them allowing friends to play in games they may not normally be able to be playing
- Added Min/Max PSR to the /gi or /gameinfo commands
- The players PSR is now retrieved and stored locally on the client when logging in, and is accessible through the UI_CMD() GetPSR()
- Removed the ticks, grinds, blips and whatnot that were playing when the game started up
- Added an option "Disable Background Effects" that allows users to toggle whether or not all the background lobby effects and animations are played. (Credit to Pancakeslp for the original mod)
- Fixed some buddy request/add notifications playing sounds a bunch of times when logging in if a player had those notifications saved in their history
- The Notification Duration slider under options->interface now sets the duration (1-15 seconds) a notification is displayed for
- Fixed a number of incorrectly labeled tooltips on the options menu. Disabled the "Health/Mana Bar Scale" in the options
- Removed the "Options" menu from the F10 in game menu
- Fixed "Add PlayerName" buttons on options menu to align properly and correctly add the player clicked on
- Increased max size of joinable channels to 30
- Using the slash command /join
"password" will now attempt to join the channel with the password specified. (Anything in between the quotes at the end becomes the password)
- Fixed some issues in the client/interface causing the change password dialogue to not work
- Fixed the lock/unlocked tooltip for hosts to display the correct tip (was previously showing the opposite tooltip it should have been showing)
- Players can now select Logon/Logoff and Join/Leave Game notification settings for clan members separately from the notifications they select for their friends
- Fixed an issue where notifications were not being saved to the history properly
- Fixed the default notification time to be 10 seconds instead of 10000
- Updated sub-account description
- Removed "Show Menu Transitions" from the options menu as the option is not currently being used
- Fixed iris closing sound being heard on disconnect
- Fixed "/r" to not reply to a clan whisper automatically with "/c m", instead it will reply directly to the sender with a "/w PlayerName" just like how "/b m" works
- Trying out new color for the selected item in listboxes
- Fixed the "Show Winner" button on the match stats screen to correctly display and announce the team who won
- Fixed sound driver list sometimes showing the current driver incorrectly
* This means the sound system will only restart if it is indeed necessary
- Fixed a couple places where linux system class was using incorrect character conversions
- Added console command "precacheworld ". So for example type "precacheworld caldavar" to precache its resources
- Removed cvar browser_maxPing as it was not being used
- Invisible Mode will now remember its state the next time the game re-loads
- Players in "Invisible Mode" will no longer auto join default HoN or Clan channels when leaving a game, allowing them to properly remain in a hidden state
- Clicking on the clock in the system bar now toggles between 12 hour and 24 hour display
- Re-arranged Public and Create Game interfaces to make more space and added icons/checkboxes for the new "Hardcore" and "Dev Heroes" game options
- Moved "Alt Hero Picking" on the Create Game interface to an Advanced Option, which is what it is actually categorized as
Items
Bananas
- Can now be sold for 500 gold
Doombringer
- Can no longer be transferred to your stash, manually dropped on the ground, or given to teammates.
Frostburn
- Snare is now 5% a charge and stacks 3 times
Frostwolf Skull
- Recipe cost increased by 500
Geometer's Bane
- Now spawns illusions in a triangle and randomizes the position of the hero on use
Nome's Wisdom
- Rebalanced
* Strength lowered from 6 to 4
* Agility lowered from 6 to 4
* Intelligence lowered from 16 to 14
* +Damage lowered from 10 to 6
* % Mana Regen removed
* Aura armor lowered from 4 to 3
* Healing from the Aura tweaked so that if the healing exceeds your max health, a shield of equal value is applied for 10 seconds.
Nullfire Blade
- Fixed so it can now properly dispel Jeraziah's Protective Charm
- Recipe will sell for the correct value again
Plated Greaves
- Cooldown increased to 30s, duration lowered to 15s
- AOE effect now grants +20% damage but only affects allied non-player controlled creeps
- AOE effect no longer grants armor
Stormspirit
- Can now target all heroes (allied and enemy). Can no longer target Kongor.
Tokens
- Can no longer be sold
Heroes
- Added Balphagore as a dev hero. Must host games with the dev hero option enabled to play him
* Feedback on this hero is appreciated, as we are still fine-tuning balance and making necessary adjustments
Behemoth
- Fixed weird shadows with Fissure
Blacksmith
- Fixed some issues with multicast and Frenzy
Chipper
- Voice added. Nuts.
- Tar Toss will no longer apply its slow to Magic Immune units
- Sawblade Showdown's Staff of the Master upgrade no longer provides a static 70% movement speed slow. Instead, units who walk into the saw blades will have a 4 second snare applied to them that starts at 90% and quickly reduces in strength over the duration.
- Sawblade Showdown won't slow couriers anymore
Deadwood
- Clearcutting now causes trees to die with a cooler animation.
Madman
- Barrel Roll will once again grant invulnerability during the duration of the roll
Magmus
- Lava Surge once again provides invulnerability during travel time
Engineer
- Ult to 85s at all levels from 90/75/60
Fayde
- Voice added
- Updated description
- A ton of effect changes
- Slice renamed Cull
- Illusions from Burning Shadows now attacks much faster
- Illusions from Burning Shadows are back to full size
- Illusions from Burning Shadows can no longer be selected or show healthbars
- Cooldown on switching between Scythe and Shadow Stance removed
- Fayde now starts in Shadow Stance
- Charges on Shadow/Scythe Stance increased to 2,3,4,5
- Reflection
* Manacost increased to 150,175,200 from 150
* Duration changed to 30,35,40 from 40 at all levels
* Reflection stealth state will no longer have charges that do nothing
* Shadow Cripple now reduces all healing on the target by 50% while it's active
* Shadow Cripple is no longer dispellable
Glacius
- Updated Ice Imprisonment tooltip to explain that it lasts 10 seconds when cast on creeps
Keeper of the Forest
- Updated Root effect to match the area better
Legionnaire
- Added custom sounds for his charge
Maliken
- Updated recommended items
Ophelia
- Command will no longer give the bonus HP to couriers she has bought or to heroes/herself in weird situations
Pandamonium
- Voice added
Plague Rider
- Voice added
Pollywog
- Units under the effects of Morph can no longer evade or deflect attacks
- Cooldown of Wards changed from 110/95/80 to 100
Pyromancer
- Fixed a bug causing ult to trigger Nullstone twice (causing the cool down to decrease too much)
Soul Reaper
- Rewrote some tooltips
Witch Slayer
- Units under the effects of Miniaturization can no longer evade or deflect attacks
- Fixed a bug causing ult to trigger Nullstone twice (causing the cool down to decrease too much)
Valkyrie
- Call of the Valkyrie will now determine the close-range target to get hit twice at the time the ability is used, rather than after a 0.5 second delay
- Tweaked leap distance from 630,690,780,840 to 630,720,780,870
Vindicator
- Voice added
Voodoo Jester
- Cask now bounces for 2/4/6/8 times, instead of the incorrect 2/4/5/8 times
Warbeast
- Metamorphosis will no longer apply to his courier
Wildsoul
- Wild will no longer apply to his courier
Zephyr
- Correctly credit him for damage that his ult does
No World Cup would be complete without spectacular coverage and commentary. So, in addition to the exciting launch of our 
