[Update #2]: Dota 2's next hero, the ghastly gunslinger Muerta, will be launching in early 2023.

[Update]: Dota 2's Update 7.31b has now landed with fixes for some of the newfound balance problems. The Spring Cleaning 2022 update has then followed with a whole bunch of quality-of-life improvements!

It took nearly a year to get here, but Dota 2's much-anticipated Update 7.31 has now finally arrived! The highlights include the addition of the Primal Beast as a new hero, a massive rework of Techies, as well as a chunky rebalance of literally every single jungle creep.

As befitting the name, the Primal Beast is a huge and highly durable initator that wants to charge directly into the enemy team in order to cause havoc. A fairly simple and easy to learn concept, but I'd be lying if I said that going around screaming and smashing things isn't fun. Speaking of which, you can find the full details behind his abilities over at the Primal Beast hero page.

Given how hated they are by the vast majority of the playerbase, it should also come as little surprise to hear that Techies has been reworked to function more like a standard hero. Their new abilities now promote more active team-fighting rather than sitting in the jungle placing mines, though those are still around as an ultimate ability. You can check out the full details by exploding over to the Techies hero page.

Jungle creeps have undergone a similarly massive rework. Not only are there new jungle creeps to ruthlessly farm for gold, but the ones that have been around for years have now been enhanced with new abilities and passives. The end result is that jungle creeps will be noticeably harder to farm, especially in the early game, so running away to jungle after a bad lane will be a lot less viable. Similarly, the freshly buffed jungle creeps are also a massive boon to heroes like Chen, Enchantress and Doom, so expect to see them pop up more often!

As for the rest of the changes, I'm afraid there's nothing too major. A couple of items have been added or reworked, some shards and scepter effects have been changed, and a whole bunch of heroes have undergone small tweaks. Slightly disappointing as I must admit I was hoping for a bit of a shake-up, though Dota 2 has been in a good place for a while now so I suppose there's really no need for it.

Whatever your thoughts on the matter may be, you can check out the full list of Update 7.31's changes over at the Dota 2 website. Enjoy!