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Dota 2 update 7.00 'The New Journey' now live

Monkey King has arrived, along with Dota 2 version 7.00. (Valve)
Monkey King has arrived, along with Dota 2 version 7.00. (Valve)

Valve has officially launched Dota 2’s update 7.00, titled The New Journey. The anticipated patch brings with it many changes to the core game, introducing a brand new hero, HUD, pre-game stage, talent trees and map changes, and other tweaks including graphical remodels and community-authored bots.

The update can now be downloaded for the main client, and is 6.6GB.

The New Journey introduces Monkey King, a completely new hero to the Dota lore. Valve has described the melee hero as a carry with escape and disable skills. The character’s appearance and lore pays homage to Sun Wukong, a Chinese mythological figure.

Monkey King possesses a move called Boundless Strike, in which he slams his staff into the ground in front of him to stun enemies and deal damage based on his critical attack. It’s similar to Earthshaker’s Fissure, sans blocking ability.

His Tree Dance allows him to leap atop trees, allowing for some unique positioning. From there, he can cast Primal Spring, an AOE attack which slows and damages enemies upon impact based on how long the ability was channeled.

Monkey King can jump atop trees. (Valve)
Monkey King can jump atop trees. (Valve)

When attacking, Monkey King charges his Jingu Mastery ability, which grants bonus lifesteal and damage for a certain number of attacks.

Monkey King can also disguise himself using Mischief, which uses the environment around him as “inspiration” for what he transforms into. So far we’ve seen him transform into a tree, bounty rune, illusion rune, and courier.

Finally, his Wukong’s Command ability summons a group of monkey soldiers to the battlefield.

The core gameplay has received a slew of changes, all of which are detailed on the Dota 2 patch site. Most notably, players can now choose Hero Talents as their hero levels up, with choices offered at the 10/15/20/25 level mark. Each hero’s Talents are unique, and the talents bypassed will not be available at later levels.

The map itself has been subjected to sweeping updates, with Roshan moved to a new spot with new stats, and a new “Shrine” building type. These 1500 HP, 20 Armor buildings can be activated by their respective team for an aura that grants 120/40 HP/MP regeneration, and lasts for five seconds. This healing value increases during the game by 2HP/1MP per minute. This ability has a five minute cooldown. Each team has five Shrines in the base, and there are Shrines outside as well.

The game’s heads-up display has been overhauled, giving players increased vision of the map, new top bar, and new shop and courier controls, among other changes.

Dota 2's HUD has been overhauled. (Valve)
Dota 2’s HUD has been overhauled. (Valve)

In addition, the game’s runes, jungle, terrain layout, neutral creeps and ancient creeps have all been altered.

Dota 2’s pre-game phase now shows more information for team compositions and allows players to plan with teammates about lanes, ward spots, and buy starting items. Each match will be preceded by thirty seconds of “strategy time” for participants to make final preparations and buy items, even before a player’s hero has spawned in the fountain.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of this hefty update, so check out the Dota 2 website for more details.

In related news, team OG won the 2016 Boston Major over the weekend, netting themselves a cool $1 million in prize money. In the lead-up to the event, we spoke to OG’s mid lane player Gustav “s4” Magnusson, who was confident his team would take the first place trophy at the event. Complexity Gaming’s Jaron “monkeys-forever” Clinton had also predicted OG to be a part of the top three, saying the team had “excellent teamwork” and that they “don’t tilt.”