Dota 2 exploit lets players use this powerful item with no cooldown

Exploits in MOBAs are few and far between, but when they happen, they tend to be game-breaking. Such is the case with Hand of Midas in Dota 2, which players can now use to farm massive amounts of gold with no cooldown whatsoever.

Players spotted the exploit and shared it on the game’s subreddit and the Dota Cinema YouTube channel on Aug. 26. In all the clips, players use the Hand of Midas, an item that grants a good amount of gold when cast on creeps, with no cooldown—pulling off the trick with a few simple clicks.

After casting Hand of Midas and depleting its charges, players drop it to the ground. Then, they purchase another Hand of Midas from the shop and immediately sell it. Lastly, they pick up the thrown item from the ground, and it miraculously refills with an extra charge. This lets players spam the item to grant them hundreds of gold in mere seconds, allowing the purchase of even the most expensive items with little trouble.

On the subreddit post from today, players claim the glitch was introduced with Patch 7.37, which substantially updated the game’s core mechanics, items, and lots of heroes and their spells. It seems that in all that huge groundwork, Valve made some mistakes and made Hand of Midas, and potentially some other items, usable with no cooldown. Players in the thread claim Refresher Orbs and other items with a high cooldown also appear affected by the exploit but cannot be used as efficiently as Midas due to the high gold costs.

Exploits in games such as Dota 2 are rare, though every time something crops up, it’s usually quite the troublemaker. This exploit in the right hands can wreck games, as a hero such as Alchemist could farm up his full build in only a few minutes. Valve hasn’t addressed the exploit at the time of writing but it’s likely to patch it quickly.