Dota 2’s New Frontiers update is out and it makes the map 40% bigger

Dota 2‘s New Frontiers update has been released and it’s a big one. As well as tweaking UI and balance and reworking heroes, it also makes sweeping changes to Dota’s single, three-lane battlefield. Specifically: it makes it 40% larger than it was before.

Here’s the trailer for the update, which sets the scene of the map embiggening:

“The Dota map has been massively expanded. The core objective of the game remains the same — your lanes aren’t further away from each other, and everything you need to win is still in the center of the map,” says the New Frontiers microsite. “But with 40% more terrain, there’s plenty of room to reap new resources and discover new strategies. Both main jungles have also been fully reconfigured, shaking up vision placement, juke routes, farming and more.”

The Dota 2 map and the placement of towers, enemies, shops and other points of interest within it does a lot to define the tactics of the teams playing on it. Changing its size is less like modifying a Call Of Duty level and more like suddenly changing the size of a football pitch. Or it would be, if football pitches weren’t allowed to be wildly different sizes at different stadiums, for some reason.

Among the changed or moved features of the map is Roshan, who is stronger and has two new pits to live within in opposite corners. There are also now two portals players can use to instantly shift from one edge of the map to the other, new outposts, new creep camps, and a lot else.

The other major change in New Frontiers is a new hero attribute type. “Universal heroes” are a new stat group made up of existing heroes who each now gain 0.6 damage from each stat.

I’m going to stop paraphrasing design changes I don’t fully understand and instead point you again to the microsite, which goes into detail about every hero rework and every other tweak and adjustment.