This week's Dota Underlords update was accompanied by the news that it's almost broken free of Early Access and will soon hit 1.0. It launched on Steam back in June, and in February the first season will officially kick off. 

It's not a moment too soon, as Valve's auto battler has been losing traction. Initially it boasted a player count that was double Artifact's at its peak, but it's steadily been declining, now down by around 90 percent, and so far has shown no signs of plateauing. No update has managed to move the needle significantly, but the 1.0 update should get a bit more attention. 

There's only one more update to go before the milestone, along with some balance tweaks and fixes, and one more Underlord. The 1.0 patch that follows will include the battle pass, hero/item rotation, a UI update and more. 

Check out this week's patch notes here. 

Dota Underlords, Valve's Early Access auto battler, has shed most of its players in the six months since it launched on Steam. In June, it peaked with more than 200,000 people playing concurrently, according to Steam Charts, but in the last day it's had fewer than 15,000. 

Spotted by Reddit user SharkyIzrod, the average player number has dwindled to just over 11,000, with peak players below 20,000. When Underlords launched, auto battlers seemed like the thing to watch, but interest in the genre as a whole seems to have sunk considerably since. 

The number has been dropping consistently every month, so it doesn't look like updates have tempted players to return yet. Recent Steam reviews are still mostly positive, however, so it doesn't look like widespread dissatisfaction is the cause. 

It calls to mind Artifact's troubles, unfortunately, which Valve ended up pausing and now averages around 100 players. In that case, however, the exodus was more immediate and severe, and Underlords isn't quite there yet—the player count hasn't settled, though.

Riot's auto battler bid, Teamfight Tactics, seemed to be doing a lot better the last time the company announced figures. In September, it apparently had a monthly player base of 33 million. It seems here to stay, then, but the future of the genre itself seems a lot less certain. 

Though the dip is less pronounced, Dota 2 also had a relatively saggy month. The first half of 2019 saw it get close to returning of the highs of 2015 and 2016, but over the last 30 days it's dropped to the lowest its been since 2014, with an average of 393,589 players and a peak of 627,790. 

The Big Update has finally gone live in Valve's autobattler Dota Underlords, meaning that the Underlords themselves, Anessix and Hobgen, have now joined the fight. Players will select an Underlord at the beginning of each match to lead their team with abilities and buffs that will grow stronger as they play.

The Underlords—Hobgen, a fairy arsonist who relies on fire-based ranged attacks and grows in power as he sets enemies on fire, and Anessix, the Mistress of Secrets, who summons demons to fight on her behalf and can cast healing buffs on her crew and curses on her opponents—each have a set of 22 unique talents, half of which are locked by default. Playing the game unlocks the rest of their talents, which can modify their abilities "in powerful and unique ways."

Underlord abilities are powered by a resource called Hype that's generated both passively and by killing enemy units—and also each other. Underlords are powerful but they're not immortal, and if an Underlord is killed in battle their counterpart becomes "empowered" and will earn double Hype for the rest of the fight.

The update also brings in a new Duos game mode that pits eight teams of two against one other in tag-team throwdowns. Each team member will hire and level their own crews but will be able to help out their partners by sending them gold and heroes, and teamwork will be essential: Health and levels are shared, so ignoring your partner's woes to focus on your own probably won't get you too far. Duos will debut with Casual matchmaking, while Ranked Duos mode is expected to go live soon.

Freestyle is another new Underlords mode that will give players the ability to set up and execute scenarios to see how strategies will play out or how different heroes will fare under particular conditions. (If you're curious what happens when you make a bunch of Potatoes fight a bunch of Tomatoes, for instance, now you can find out.) There are new alliance options for Insects, Healers, Brutes, and Champions, 12 new heroes available to hire, and because there are now so many heroes to choose from, the Jail, which will hold a random selection of 8-12 heroes, updated daily, who thus cannot be hired—although all alliances can still be fully completed, even in their absence.

The update also makes some big changes to the interface, including the dashboard and notifications, adds new voice lines to most of the game's heroes, and makes the usual array of bug fixes and balance tweaks.

It is, as the name suggests, a Big Update. The full patch notes are available here.

Valve has provided more information on the "Big Update" coming to Dota Underlords in the near future. Along with another selection of heroes drawn from the Dota 2 roster, the game will be adding a system to keep the hero pool from overflowing. Specifically, it'll be throwing some of them in jail.

Here's how (and why) it works. As the hero pool expands, it becomes harder and harder to rank up the heroes you've purchased from the shop, since the odds of finding matches for heroes on your bench get reduced each time a new hero is added to the general pool. Valve says it doesn't plan on removing any of the heroes that have appeared in the beta season, and so when season one kicks in and adds 12 new heroes to the pool, some of them will get tossed in jail for 24 hours.

Each day, a different group of 8-12 heroes will be jailed, effectively banning them from appearing in the shop. This won't be completely random: Valve says that the list of jailed heroes for each day will be created such that players can still complete every alliance.

A nice added benefit of this system is that it prevents an established meta from taking hold and making the game feel stale. You're going to be faced with different composition options each day.

Valve also revealed the rest of the heroes who will be appearing in the Big Update. They include Shadow Demon (a tier one heartless demon), Bristleback (a tier four brawny savage), Sven (the ace of knights, who is also human and scaled), Io (a tier three primordial druid), and Faceless Void (primordial and the ace of assassins). 

There's still no word on precisely when the Big Update will drop, but judging from the way Valve's talking about it, it'll be sooner rather than later.

Valve has shared some new details about the next 'Big Update' for Dota Underlords, and they weren't kidding: this one really is big. It's introducing brand new heroes and alliances, and it apparently marks the 'beginning of the end' for the Dota Underlords beta.

Heroes in Underlords are getting another reshuffle. Valve has established a new 'Healer' alliance, which includes Enchantress, Warlock, Omniknight, Necrophos, and newcomer Dazzle. Dazzle is a tier-two troll healer who can send out a bolt of power that arcs between allies. The energy heals teammates but harms enemies nearby. When the Healer alliance bonus is active, all friendly healing is amplified.

Valve also unveiled the forthcoming Insects alliance. Sand King is finally going to have some friends around, in other words. Sand King is joined by new heroes Weaver (tier two insect hunter), Nyx Assassin (tier one insect assassin), and Broodmother (tier four insect warlock).

It'll be interesting to see how all of this shakes out. A couple heroes, Sniper for instance, have three alliance affiliations, so it's unclear whether heroes like Warlock and Necrophos will be losing one of their existing alliances in order to join the Healer gang.

And this may be slightly picky of me, but at least three of the four members of the Insects alliance are arachnids. Maybe to be safe we can just call them 'bugs.'

Valve says they'll have more information to share about the Big Update in the days to come.

Players who want a low-stress way to play autobattler Dota Underlords without risking their precious rank will soon be able to do that, as it's getting separate casual and ranked modes in the next update. As Valve's blog post puts it, with tongue firmly in cheek, "we've made the ground-breaking design decision to have two ways of playing".

To unlock the ranked mode you'll have to complete at least five games in casual. Daily challenges can still be completed in casual mode, and you can queue up solo or with friends. However, in ranked mode you'll only be able to queue solo, which is bound to be a bummer for some people.

There's also a new rank system coming, one that's designed to be more transparent, and in which "your Rank is now a number you can see that moves up and down in a predictable way. This change is based solely on where you finish in a Ranked match and does not depend on your opponents' Rank."

You can read the full announcement here.

If you've played both Dota 2 and Dota Underlords, you've probably noticed that most of Dota 2's heroes haven't made their way into the autobattler yet. That's about to change, according to a recent datamine of the latest client update.

Tyler McVicker, who runs the unofficial Valve News Network YouTube channel, went through the changes introduced in the latest patch. Perhaps the biggest news gameplay-wise for Underlords is the inclusion of references, skins, and models for 16 Dota 2 heroes. These include, alphabetically: Chen, Clinkz, Dark Seer, Dazzle, Earthshaker, Pangolier, Riki, Rubick, Spectre, Storm Spirit, Sven, Undying, Vengeful Spirit, Weaver, and Zeus.

Where exactly they'll all fit into the Underlords ecosystem remains a mystery, and it seems as though some are much closer to implementation than others—notably Storm Spirit, who has a model and skin in the game files now.

The datamine has also unearthed indications that Underlords will at some point be getting a replay feature and a "Turbo mode" that is rumored to be sped-up version of the game that has faster animations and lets you amass units quickly.

There are also hints at the Underlords themselves, which McVicker reckons will eventually replace the couriers from the original Dota Auto Chess mod. How those will function is still unknown.

In the meantime, you can enjoy Underlords' first battle pass now for free.

Valve is taking an interesting approach with Dota Underlords battle pass. In the lead up to Underlords' Season 1 Battle Pass, Valve is giving away a free prototype battle pass to everyone playing the beta.

Valve is treating its "Proto Pass" like a test, but its cosmetic rewards are very real. Through a mix of daily and weekly challenges, players unlock new game boards, win streak and respawn effects, banners, victory fireworks, and more.

"Like many aspects of the beta, the Proto Pass is a learning experience for the Underlords team—so please keep the feedback coming so that we can adjust plans for our Season 1 Battle Pass accordingly," the announcement posts reads.

Since Underlords is free, its first real battle pass will set the tone for how the game will balance its money-making versus keeping players happy. After the event that was Artifact, I bet Valve is treading cautiously this time around.

Additionally, Dota Underlords' Friday update cleaned up parts of the UI, improved matchmaking, and made a bunch of balancing changes. Check out the full patch notes to see more.

If you're diving into the burgeoning autobattler genre, check out our big comparison of Dota Underlords, Teamfight Tactics, and Auto Chess to find out which you should try.

Dota Underlords, Valve's Dota-themed autobattler, is due an update this week, with "experimental features" that the team's keen to test on its Early Access guinea pigs. There are some tweaks and reworks coming, too, along with the first version of the battle pass. 

We'll have to wait to find out what's in this beta battle pass, and you can give Valve feedback on what you'd like to see when the proper battle pass appears with the first season. Expect it to change a bit before launch, then. It due out next week. 

This week's update, due on Thursday, will also tweak Shaman and Warlock units, introduce three mystery items and the equally mysterious experimental features. No patch notes yet, but here's some of what's coming:

• Warlock Alliance rework.
• Warlock Units tweaks.
• Shaman Alliance rework.
• Shaman Units tweaks.
• 3 New Items.
• Tweaks to the Alliance Items and how they work.
• Tweaks to Win and Lose Streaks.
• Large Scoreboard.
• And some experimental features.

Dota Underlords' launch was considerably more successful, at least in terms of player numbers, than the currently on-ice Artifact, though the numbers have steadily been declining for over a week. At its peak, it had more than 200,000 concurrent players, but that was ten days ago. Still, more than 100,000 people were playing at the same time yesterday, so it remains pretty busy. 

If you're wondering which of Auto Chess's progeny to play, check out our comparison of Teamfight Tactics, Dota Underlords and Auto Chess. 

Editor's note: The original headline stated the battle pass was coming this week, but that's just the update. The battle pass will appear next week.