The past week in Dota 2 has been quite eventful. And it would’ve likely been an exciting one if all the events didn’t revolve around a single item—the Hand of Midas—that continues to be exploited. Now, a new bug involving the Lone Druid has been discovered.
Though not as powerful as the initial couple of Midas exploits, the Lone Druid can now reset, or speed up, the recharge of Midas by utilizing the all-too-powerful Spirit Bear. If Druid casts the Hand of Midas on a creep, then gives it to the Spirit Bear with a full inventory and passes the Midas into another slot in the backpack, the item gains an extra charge that only the Spirit Bear can use. I’ve confirmed this exploit in a demo area, and it appears that after the extra charge is spent, there is no way of resetting the cooldown until it ticks down on its own.
This is just one of many Hand of Midas exploits that, though not too powerful, essentially grants Lone Druid double uses for the price of one. The charge mechanic has also been rumored to be the culprit behind all the exploits. That’s still unconfirmed, but judging by Valve’s continuous 100MB or bigger updates to fix the damned item, it’s probably not some small thing going wrong in the back end.
This week, we’ve seen the Hand of Midas being reset through drops and purchases, hand-downs between players, Arc Warden using all of the item’s charges on his team with his illusions, and Techies essentially casting Midas infinitely by moving it around his backpack. All of these exploits impacted matches to varying degrees, with some of them making heroes like the Ogre Magi quite popular for a couple of days due to his Multicast ultimate.
The Lone Druid exploit is likely to be patched as soon as Valve catches wind of the circulating videos showcasing the bug, though it’s highly likely Dota 2 players will figure out some other way of exploiting the covetous Hand of Midas.
