Dota Underlords tunnels out of early access in February

The undertown is nearly ready. Its Dota Underlords are chomping at the bit, a mere month away from the point where Valve go 'yep, that's version 1.0' and bury the early access label on their wizarding general simulator. They say all this in their post about yesterday's update, a smaller affair aimed at reducing misclicks, fixing bugs, and delivering the usual round of balance tweaks.

Valve say 1.0 will be ready by the end of next month, and will introduce a Battlepass, UI updates, and a revamped Hero/ Item rotation. It will also include the City Crawl, which Valve haven't described but I suspect will resemble Dota 2's Cavern Crawl and more recent Jungle Expedition. They're nothing dramatic, just a more deliberate way of unlocking cosmetics by choosing extra goals in normal games.

The post also mentions there'll be one more update before the big one, tossing in a fourth Underlord.

Yesterday's update introduces a one second pause before you can select an ability when your Underlord levels up, so you don't pick one accidentally. I highlight this because it has happened to me and it's the worst. Good change, that.

Loads of hero abilities have been tweaked, though I've lost track of their significance. A big problem with multiplayer games is that people get too good at them, and it's even worse in Dunderlords because people have gotten too good at a game that's very different to when I was decent at it. Dunderlords works because of its swirling network of heroes and synergies, but over-complication is its weakness, too. Understanding why you're losing gets harder as the swirl grows swirlier. So say I in my Dota Underlords review.