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Empty neutral item slot lighting up: Small QoL feature garners great praise from Dota 2 players

By Manodeep Mukherjee
Modified Aug 01, 2021 17:52 GMT
Neutral items are a relatively new addition to Dota 2 (Image via Valve)
Neutral items are a relatively new addition to Dota 2 (Image via Valve)

A very small quality-of-life update in Dota 2 has garnered a barrage of praise from players. What this QoL feature does is quite simple: if a player has no items equipped in the neutral item slot, it lights up whenever a neutral item becomes available.

This feature was neither a part of any major update nor was mentioned in the patch notes by Valve. So, it is almost as if the whole player base organically discovered this feature, some arguably not even realizing it is new because of how natural and intuitive it feels.

Clicking the neutral item slot in Dota 2 now directly opens the stash tab

Neutral items have become a part of Dota 2 since patch 7.23, which came out on 26th November 2019. A dedicated slot for neutral items was added to the game with the subsequent big patch, 7.24.

Prior to this QoL update, it was not rare, especially in lower-tier pubs, for players to forget to pick up neutral items from the shop tab. Hopefully, with the lit-up slot in the HUD now, players will be more mindful in that regard.

There are four neutral item drops per tier for a team in a Dota 2 match. Since this is one less than the number of players in a team, it is most often the support players who don’t get to have a neutral item before the tier 2 neutral items start dropping. This QoL feature will essentially serve as a reminder to them.

Another feature that was added parallelly related to the neutral item slot is that clicking the slot now directly opens the neutral item stash tab of the Dota 2 shop. This makes navigating to the neutral item stash menu much easier.

This quality-of-life user interface update has genuinely garnered a lot of praise from the Dota 2 community. While some users suggested that a similar "light up if empty" feature could be added for TP Scrolls, it remains to be seen whether Valve thinks it is necessary.