Dota 2 Patch 7.38 brought back the game’s most lucrative exploit, and it’s even stronger now

Well, it’s that time of the year folks. A new Dota 2 patch and a new way to exploit the nefarious Hand of Midas item. This time around, it needs a pair of heroes to work and is more complicated, but it’s still worth the effort as thousands of gold can be racked up in mere minutes.

With Patch 7.38, the entire Dota 2 map has changed, as have most of the heroes and items in the game. However, it seems that in this all-encompassing update Valve managed to break something yet again, enabling the Hand of Midas to be exploited for the umpteenth time. As explained and showcased by Reddit user LokeLok on Feb. 19, the Hand of Midas can rack up 10 extra charges over the two it gets by default. To do so, you need to purchase Hand of Midas and Holy Locket, spend all the charges for Midas and send it to a cooldown, give Midas to Dazzle, swap Midas and the Holy Locket’s inventory slots, and voila—you have 10 Hand of Midas charges now, which the user rightfully called “an abomination.”

To put things into perspective, the Hand of Midas grants 160 gold per unit killed with it and twice the experience, meaning that one could potentially rack up 1,600 gold in a minute and an untold amount of XP, growing both in terms of levels and their items. According to users replying to the thread, Midas seems not to be the only item affected by this, as any item can be given additional charges. One user claims that Desolator can immediately get its 30 stacks, and Blood Grenades can miraculously multiply in your inventory, granting incredible amounts of HP during the early stages of the game.

Valve is known for causing exploits like these with its massive Dota 2 patches. Hand of Midas was hotfixed time and again last year after several exploits were discovered and kept cropping up, forcing Valve to patch things up as fast as possible, as these kids of bugs can easily break the entire meta and turn the game into a total unplayable mess.