[Update]: Valve has unleashed yet another update, this time around with even more significant balance changes!

If you've been playing Dota Underlords for a while now, then chances are you're aware there's only a couple of permutations that really work. The rest might get you through the mid-game, but sooner or later they'll end up getting absolutely crushed by Knights, Mages, or some of the similar archetypes.

In order to address this problem, as well as promote more of the Alliances, Valve has now issued a rather massive balancing patch. Numerous heroes have been heavily rebalanced and shuffled around the rarity tiers, Alliance-based items have been reworked so they appear in multiple tiers and offer different benefits based on the tier, while a whole bunch of 'normal' items have been tweaked in order to get them somewhat closer together in terms of power level.

Perhaps most surprisingly of all, neutral creep waves have received some serious buffs, even the wolves that frequently destroy players! However, in order to compensate for the newly introduced challenges, losing to a neutral creep wave will no longer remove options from your item choice, but rather offer items from the previous creep wave's tier. It's still harsh, but certainly better than being forced to take an item with absolutely no synergies for you.

The update has also brought in some nice improvements to the recently added Battle Pass. Besides the new game board finally being included, experience gained from quests has also been significantly increased, as has the experience you gain for simply finishing a match. In other words, the Battle Pass has suddenly become a lot less stressful to complete, even for casual players.

You can read more about these changes, as well as check out all of the details, over at Steam. Have fun with the new meta!