Trove Carafe item causes FPS issues at The International 2019

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The International 2019 is the peak of competition for Dota 2 players, so of course, Valve would want the newest Trove Carafe items on display while the best teams in the world battle it out for the Aegis of Champions. 

But one item in particular seemed to cause an unusual drop of frames for PSG.LGD and OG as they played in the upper bracket finals. 

In one of the biggest games of the tournament so far, Sébastien “Ceb” Debs ended up playing Nature’s Prophet, one of the heroes to receive a shiny new Immortal rarity item. The Monarch of the Sapphire Glen gives Prophet a cape designed to look like a Monarch butterfly’s wings as well as summon the creatures in a special effect when using Wrath of Nature. 

Within the first 10 minutes, there were several pauses coming out from OG after Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen was experiencing FPS (frames per second) while working the midlane on his Zeus. Another pause at the 18-minute mark had officials checking Topson’s hardware before giving the okay for things to start again.

There was a brief period of no issues, but when Topson ran through mid in pursuit of LGD, he paused the game immediately. This time the pause lasted much longer because Jian Wei “xNova” Yap confirmed that he and some of his teammates were also experiencing the same lag. 

After a nearly 12-minute break, the teams were back at it and LGD were able to pull off the game one win. 

Jumping over to Reddit, a thread was calling out an issue with the Prophet Trove Carafe item, citing that the particle effects for Prophet’s ultimate are causing a slow down in the midlane that affects more than half the players in a game. Another user in that thread then went on to verify that their game using Prophet’s Immortal item experienced the FPS drop. 

According to Johan “N0tail” Sundstein, the FPS drop put the game to 80 FPS whenever the midlane was in use. This wasn’t enough to shift the outcome of the game in LGD’s favor, but it was an annoyance to the players who were trying to focus on the game. 

This issue has been acknowledged by players at TI, viewers who were watching the match through the Dota 2 client, and Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner, who was tagged in the initial Reddit thread. 

Because the problem was quickly located, it is unlikely that players will be using the other Trove Carafe Immortals during the remainder of The International 2019.