Team Spirit Analyst Finds Confirmation of an Upcoming Dark Carnival Event

Mark “sikle” Lerman found new evidence in the Dota 2 files confirming the imminent release of an event called Dark Carnival.

The Team Spirit analyst announced this on Telegram.

“Dark Carnival is coming after all:

➖The modifiers dota_foreboding_modifier and dota_foreboding_modifier2 have been added to the game. This is the very ‘foreboding’ that was hidden in Axe’s patch. It’s a buff.

➖The string m_bHackAllPlayersLoadedForDarkCarnivalPreLaunchModifierApplication, prepared for the event, was renamed to m_bHackWhyAreYouGuysReadingOurVariableNames (“why are you reading our variables?”).

‘Bad Feeling’ is a buff that can be obtained in actual gameplay:

– Requires Axe on one team.

– Ringmaster on the other.

– All 10 hero slots must be filled (i.e., a standard 5x5 lobby).

– The game rolls a die and has a 30% chance of granting this buff to Axe.

– The chance is determined at the start of the game, before the picks, so if it doesn’t appear, it won’t show up later in the game.

– The buff has a second stage; in the localization, this stage is called “Hmm-mm-mm,” and the description is “Everything seems fine.” The conditions for obtaining it are unknown or have been left for later.

– The buff disappears when Axe dies.

The buff itself doesn’t do anything. All of this is a hidden Easter egg leading up to an event that—judging by the value of 1 in “Bad Vibes” rather than 0.5, as it was in the patch—is coming soon. The last time something like this happened was a couple of days before Largo’s release. Two years ago, when Ringmaster was released, the developers already showed exactly how Axe gets sucked into the box, so this event could be a direct sequel or just a reference (Axe has PTSD).

What a wonderful day for a carnival

To Valve: we’ll KEEP reading the variables and digging deeper.”

Mark “sikle” Lerman discovered a hidden “Bad Feeling” buff for Axe in the game files, which has a 30% chance of appearing in matches against Ringmaster but currently has no effects and likely serves as a teaser for a future event. The Team Spirit analyst believes the event will launch in the coming days.

As a reminder, the summer phase of the Dota 2 event “Quartero’s Curiosities” began earlier with the release of Patch 7.41d.