4 Things I Learned About Dota 2 Cosmetics
Valve has been releasing several patches this year for Dota 2. Among these patches, there was a trend that was evident: the release of cosmetic items. As a free-to-play game, Valve has to earn money by releasing content from the Steam workshop in the hopes that gamers would purchase these digital items. Though purely cosmetic — and in the words of more than a few, “glorified pretty hats” — it allures gamers as it enables them to make their characters unique.
As a gamer, I too have purchased my fair share of cosmetic items from Dota 2. Here are the things that I learned:
In-Depth Customization
Want a different weapon for your character? You can buy tons and tons of them! Dota 2 offers several items for specific heroes. Items can range from shoes to head gear to a dead hammerhead shark being dragged by a sea monster. You can also purchase a whole set of items for your hero.
No, we weren’t joking about the whole “dead fish” thing.
Because you can purchase items piecemeal, you can mix and match them as you please. There are even some sets or items that have an extra flavor that comes with them. Some of these flavors include custom ambient effects, custom loadout and custom icons. In Dota 2, you can even rename items and give it its own back story. The customization is very diverse that Reddit has a subreddit dedicated to hero item composition. You can check it out and watch the madness.
More Skilled than You
There are several impressions that leap out when you see a hero with fully tricked out cosmetics. The easiest is the assumption that the prettier the hero is, the more skilled the player.
Some items allow players to place special inscribed gems that track certain in-game stats to flaunt to other players and show their skills with that hero. Some stats include the number of towers destroyed, mana drained and number of wins. There are hero specific stats that track skills used by those heroes. These include number of kills with Sun Strike, number of enemies caught with the use of Earthbind and the number of kills with Culling Blade.
The Rarer, The Better
Just like any other item drop system in the world, there is a rarity hierarchy for Dota 2 cosmetics. It starts off with the lowest rarity, at common, all the way up until the highest rarity which are the arcanas. The commons can be bought for as low as P10 centavos, while the arcanas are capped at P1550.
There is also a quality system that makes certain items more or less valuable. The lowest tier would include auspicious, frozen and corrupted. The higher tier of quality would include genuine, heroic, exalted, unusual and elder.
Currently, the most expensive cosmetic item would be a Heroic Snowball Stinger pricing at P17,951.68. Yes, that is the price of a digital item that a person can purchase at a digital store using real money.
Take a Chance with Your Items
Since there is a rarity and quality system for cosmetic items in Dota 2, with real world values ending up in the thousands of pesos, a trading and gambling system eventually followed. There are several sites where one can trade items with other players, as is with betting.
Need to trade or bet on upcoming matches? Dota2Lounge and Dota2Wage are just some of the sites that allow users to trade items with other people around the world. You could send trade offers to gamers with your items and hope to get a response.
If you are not patient enough to get better items and you have no cash to purchase items, you might as well gamble your items during tournaments. By gambling of your items, you may be able to attain more items for your collection. At most sites, there is a percentage that would show you which team is more favored to win a particular match against another team. Just like in real betting, the team with higher odds to win give a smaller return on investment for your items gambled. If you really want to get the big ticket items, you have to go big or go home while betting on the underdog.
No matter how you enjoy playing your games of Dota 2, think of items as garnish to your favorite dishes: they can range from just a little something to make it look not-terrible (like adding a leaf — any kind of leaf — on your plate of Lucky Me Pancit Canton) to making it even fancier (lemon butter sauce reduction with truffle oil on a plate of diamonds). While all of them adds flavor and increases your enjoyment of your main course, in the end, the decision to make your favorite heroes just a little bit prettier (at the expense of your wallet) remains entirely up to you.
Subscribe to INQUIRER PLUS to get access to The Philippine Daily Inquirer & other 70+ titles, share up to 5 gadgets, listen to the news, download as early as 4am & share articles on social media. Call 896 6000.
