Dota Underlords official artwork for the new Underlord Jull

[Update]: Dota Underlords' next titular Underlord is the small but scrappy Enno.

While Valve's willingness to experiment with Dota Underlords is certainly commendable, sometimes all that tinkering results in quite a few problems. Most notably, the last few major patches have greatly increased the average match length, to the point that they sometimes even exceeded actual Dota 2 matches, which isn't exactly ideal for a game that bills itself as being easy to pick up and play.

As such, I'm very happy to say that the newest update has now greatly sped up the early game, and thus also significantly reduced the overall match time. Unit health has been lowered across the board, players now start with a higher unit cap and more gold, while creep rounds have been removed entirely in order to get everyone smashing into each other as soon as possible.

I won't go into all of the details as the list of balance changes is fairly long and just and specific. So if you're curious about just what has changed, you'll find the full patch notes over at the Steam news post.

What is important to mention, however, is that Valve has now added the third titular Underlord - Jull. He is a powerful (and extremely aggressive) melee tank that loves to get into the fight as soon as possible, which is quite a departure from the previous two Underlords which preferred to stick to the backlines and offer words of encouragement.

In order to ensure Jull isn't immediately railroaded into certain alliances, as well as to make Underlords as a whole a lot more enjoyable, Valve has also made it so you now pick your Underlord at Round 10. This should eliminate a nice chunk of randomness from each game, as well as hopefully increase build diversity by letting players dictate their own path.

You can learn more about the Jull-tide update, as well as Dota Underlords itself, over at Steam. Have fun!