Dota 2: What Is The Underhollow?
Dota 2 released the full-scale battle royale-like game mode on Thursday titled The Underhollow, and though the mode is similar to battle royales, the MOBA impression is still left on the dungeon crawling adventure.
The game mode pits eight teams of three against each other on a large map, and like other battle royales, after five-minute intervals the map begins to crumble away and force players toward the center. Not only do you fight the AI to gain better loot and gold, but you must also face other players. Your enemies are trying as hard as you are to survive in the underground, and will have no qualms about attacking you. It’s not just a race to the middle, but a race to see who can have the best in-sync team, items, and strategy.
There are three tiers of enemies. All teams start on the first tier, and won’t encounter a player team until they reach the second tier. During these tiers, you will fight mini-bosses for loot such as items, gold, and support items. Like most Dota 2 matches, your items will define how powerful your hero becomes, and sharing items with your teammates becomes a quick key to victory for the entire party. With each higher tier, the quality of the items increase as well, but you cannot claim them unless you are powerful enough to defeat the boss on that tier.
If you can get past the second tier, there will be a significant drop in the teams you have to face. However, upon defeat, all the loot you have claimed up to that point will drop for surviving teams to scavenge through.
The Underhollow's MOBA-like elements of leveling up and using items to upgrade your hero goes well with a battle royale setting. And while most regular Dota 2 matches last from 30 minutes to an hour, we see The Underhollow finishing before it even hits a 20-minute mark. It is a fresh breath of air to the regular basic matches that a lot of Dota 2 is home to.
