Dota 2’s next massive patch, The Dueling Fates, drops November 1

[UPDATE: Dueling Fates draws closer, with the announcement of patch notes, new heroes and more! The Flying Courier is working to deliver everything you need to know about Patch 7.07.]

In a rare move, Valve has announced Wednesday, November 1 as the single, specific date for their upcoming Dota 2 patch, The Dueling Fates.

The date was shared via their official Twitter account, which has been increasingly used for blog updates and other important news:

The date drop seems to be in response to mounting pressure regarding the current state of the game. Dota 2 has been in 7.06 since mid-May, making this one of the longer periods without a massive update. There have been alphabetical patches to address the typical push and pull of overpowered heroes in the game, but none of these have had outstanding impact on the state of the game.

So far, all Dota 2 fans know, for sure, is that there will be two new heroes. These playable characters were already previewed in a trailer shown at The International 7, which took place back two months ago, in mid-August. One of the new characters is an armadillo-like sword-fighter shown using his shell as an aggressive feature, and the other is a purple fairy-like creature carrying a very aggressive wisp.

Before TI7, one of these heroes saw a few pieces of programming in the game’s code. This was likely for the fairy-like one, as wisp-like descriptions were given to some of these lines. However, no details, including in the game code, have been given about the other one.

The new heroes are the only official details known about the patch at this time besides the date.

With the game hitting a mild state of staleness, fans have been keeping themselves entertained in their patience (or lack thereof) before a new update.

Even those in the know got in on the pre-patch fun. Yesterday, a broadcast studio, Beyond The Summit, held a “Pre-Patch Countdown” stream, veiling their intentions behind six hours of live entertainment with a live countdown. It turned out the studio did know one detail: the actual date, which Valve would be releasing the day of the stream. It mildly backfired, though, as Valve officially shared the patch date late-stream via Twitter.

Fans have also noticed that Valve has been pushing changes to the game’s “backstage” Dota 2 test client at all hours of the day—and with increasing frequency. This is giving players faith that Valve and Dota 2 balance master IceFrog are hard at work on something spectacular come November 1.