[Update #2]: Dota 2 is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a bunch of thematic (and free) cosmetic items.

[Update]: Dota 2's Patch 7.34 has now arrived with an avalanche of balance changes and gameplay tweaks.

In a bit of an unexpected announcement given how secretive Valve tends to be, the Dota 2 team has now introduced a new development blog feature that will detail some of their challenges, interesting bugs and "occasional happy accidents" encountered while working on a game as ridiculously complex as Dota 2. The first of these development blogs is about Techies and their endless hordes of mobile Sticky Bombs!

This bug appeared with The New Frontiers update back in spring and it allowed Techies players to create an army of infinitely lasting and fully controllable Sticky Bombs. This not only allowed them to be used like an additional mine field, but also as a way to hunt down unsuspecting players without Techies ever putting themselves at risk. In other words, it was a brief nightmare!

A fun sight for any support

“Because Remote Mines could be manually detonated by Techies using an ability on the mine itself, the Remote Mine NPC was permitted to use abilities. This means it was flagged as both owned by the casting player (for kill credit) and as controllable by the casting player,” explains the blog post. “Right-clicking on a Twin Gate (or any channelable map entity) mechanically functions by converting an attack click into an ability cast on the channel target (you're "casting" on the Twin Gate while channeling). Other map entities require a hero to do the channeling. However, because Roshan can use the Twin Gates, non-hero units are permitted to channel them.”

“Which brings us to the Sticky Bomb bug: during the very short duration that a Sticky Bomb is in the air after being tossed, if a player clicked on a Twin Gate with both Techies and the Bomb selected with unified unit orders, the Bomb would also channel the Twin Gate. This put the Sticky Bomb in a channeling state that ended the 'toss' and broke the sequence of modifiers, resulting in unintended behavior.”

You can read all about this whole ordeal, as well as check out how the bug was eventually fixed, over at Steam.

Before you go, I do have one additional interesting tidbit to share - a potential map change! In the images showcased in the blog there is a mini-map that features altered Outpost locations. Instead of having them be in the main Dire and Radiant jungles, they have been moved to the triangle which feels like a much more appropriate location since the two outpost are no longer right next to each other.

Whether this change will come with the next update or not at all, I obviously have no idea. Still, it's always nice to take a peek behind the curtains of game development and see what sort of stuff is going on. As such, I can only hope Valve will continue with these types of blog posts as I'm sure Morphling and Rubick alone could keep them stocked with ideas for many years to come!

Whatever the case may be, I'll make sure to let you know once Valve announces something major. Until then, have fun with the hopefully bug-free Techies!