While I'm not the biggest fan of the Compendium system, mostly because you have to pay money to gain the ability to spend even more money, it does seem that Valve have learned their lesson with 2016 Winter Battle Pass as you can earn a fair chunk of rewards simply by playing well.

The Battle Pass & Compendium combination will set you back $7,99 and offer you plenty of quests and achievements to complete in return for cosmetic items as well as everything you might want to know about the upcoming Dota 2 Shangai Major. Here's a quick overview of the Battle Pass:

The biggest new addition is the quest system. Prior to the start of each game you will be able to chose one of three Paths which will determine your objective for that game. Competing the quest and actually winning a match in the process will reward you with battle points and progress you to the next quest. 

The three paths are Support, Carry and Solo and each come with their own flavor of quests. The Solo will most often be tasked with disrupting the enemy team, securing kills and so on while the Support for example will need to... well... support the team through clever use of wards, healing abilities, early ganks and so on.

But rather than just doing it all for glory and battle points there is quite a reward waiting for you if you manage to complete the entire set of quests - a full set of armor for Lich, Lina and Dragon Knight depending on which path you maxed out. But wait, there's more, if you order within the next 5 minutes if the community at large manages to finish 2,500,000 of these quests an upgraded version of the already amazing looking armor sets will be granted to you.

Even the base version looks pretty damn cool

The battle points you earn through questing can be used to increase the level of your battle pass unlocking progressively more items as you go through. There are four new chests filled nifty cosmetics to collect so if you plan on getting a specific one I hope you're wearing your lucky socks & underpants combination.

But for those that aren't a fan of relying on lady luck I have some good news, Valve has opted to remove the trading restrictions on these new items for the duration of the battle pass so you are free to swap items with your friends, and even strangers, in order to get the one you want. Just be careful about scammers who are probably going to have a field day with this announcement.

If you find yourself earning far too few battle points through questing you can also get them more reliably through gambling... that sounds wrong to say. The betting system is slightly changed from how it worked the last time around. Instead of bidding with your hard earned battle points you will now use tokens which are automatically granted to you at the start of each week.

Each token won through the betting system will translate in to a battle point for you. In other words you will be using imaginary currency to gamble for a different imaginary currency which you can then spend on cosmetics for your hero. Seems strange when you think about it but its not actually a bad system.

And if you find yourself carried by one of your team mates and wish to tell them how grateful you are, you can use the chat system by pressing enter (and be among the elite few who actually says nice things in Dota 2) or by tipping them 50 of your tokens as a show of appreciation.

Of Course its Alchemist...

If you feel that the quest, Compedium and wagering system just aren't enough activities for you to partake in there are also achievements which will directly increase your battle pass level thus allowing you access to a wider range of cosmetics.

Speaking of those, the evolving courier this time around is the amphibious Axolotl, a creature that actually exists and is so strange it might as well be a real life alien. Much like the real deal you will be able to shape and change your Axolotl courier in a variety of ways by leveling up your Battle Pass.

Along with the courier come two new winter themed wards... both in the image of Phoenix along with a couple of Frozen Effigys so you can look really cool, new taunts and most interesting of all a winter terrain re-skin along with new frosty Radiant, Dire and neutral creeps!

Its a snowl! ... get it? (sorry)

There's a few more small things I didn't cover so if you're interested in all of the details I'd suggest you head over to the Battle Pass & Compendium page.

Finally, the $7,99 question, is the Battle Pass & Compendium combo worth it? I guess that will depend on how much you enjoy "questing" in Dota 2 and the whole process of collecting cosmetics because there are plenty of them for you to find here and they are not bad looking at all though you might have to do a bit of trading to get the specific ones.

Also worth mentioning is that along with the battle pass you get the Compendium which if you plan to watch the Shangai Major is an excellent companion. Overall its a pretty good deal and you'll get a good amount of fun out of it but, once again, your enjoyment will depend on how highly you value your virtual hats.