Items are in-game equipment that provide heroes with bonus attributes and special abilities. Most items can be purchased from several shops on the game map, while others are dropped by creeps. Lower tier items are combined into higher tier items, usually with the help of a recipe. Heroes have six item slots in their inventory, three in their backpack, and six more in their stash. Items can be picked up and delivered to their owner with a courier.
Basics Items
Consumables
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Attributes
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Equipment
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Miscellaneous
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Secret
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Upgraded Items
Accessories
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Support
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Magical
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Armor
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Weapons
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Artifacts
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Non-purchasable Items
Neutral Items
Neutral items are items obtained through tokens that are dropped by neutral creeps. They cannot be purchased or sold at shops and cannot be destroyed.
Each player may equip only one neutral item in a dedicated neutral item slot. Unused neutral items can be put in the dedicated stash within the fountain.
Boss Rewards
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Collectible Items
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Unreleased Items
These items exist in the game files, but are not available in-game. For items that used to be available, but are still in the game files, see Removed Items. For unreleased neutral items, see Neutral Items.
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Removed Items
Dota 2
These items that existed in the Dota 2 era and got removed.
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DotA
These items have existed in the history of DotA, but never existed in Dota 2.
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Event Items
These items were only available during limited time events or had an account bound limited amount of uses. Besides the river vials, all of these items got removed from the game files and are no longer functioning and can no longer be created with cheats in custom lobbies. The river vials, although still within the game, can no longer be acquired or used, as they expired.
Shops
There are two different shops per faction. The Base Shop and the Secret Shop. In the shop areas, items can be swapped from the backpack without time penalty.
Base Shop
The Base Shops are located within the Fountain are behind the Ancients. All basic items except the secret ones can be bought there. Additionally a majority of the upgrades can be completed there.
Secret Shop
The Secret Shops are slightly hidden shops located near the center of the map. The shops allow players to buy items that cannot be bought elsewhere or to spend extra gold while in the early game.
Removed Shops
Side Lane Shop
Two Side Lane Shops were shops that could be found at the edges of the map. They allowed players to buy certain useful items without returning to base or to the secret shops. All side shops have been removed from the game in 7.23 update.
Other information
- Heroes cannot use items owned by other heroes, with a handful of exceptions. See Item Sharing for details.
- Some items can be disassembled. See Disassemble for details.
- Most items may be sold back to vendors. See Selling for details.
- Most dropped items can be destroyed by force-attacking (A) them.
- Allies' items which are not flagged as shareable cannot be destroyed.
- Gem of True Sight and Divine Rapier cannot be destroyed.
- The range for dropping an item on the ground is 100.
- The range for picking up an item from the ground is 150.
- The range for transfering an item to another unit is 300.
- Most item effects cannot be effectively stacked with multiple copies of the same item on a single hero, with the copy only being able to provide the base stats of the item.
- Cooldowns are shared between identical items with active abilities, and if one item with an active ability can be upgraded into another, most of the time both will share a cooldown.
- Multiple instances of the same aura or debuff will not stack, even if the two copies of the item providing it are owned by separate heroes.
- Some items do not provide their effect to heroes with passive abilities providing the same or similar effect. For example, most heroes with a bash ability cannot use the passive ability from Skull Basher.
- Some items have effects that only apply to heroes that are ranged or melee.
- When combining one item from multiple items, the resulting item will attempt to be placed in the inventory slot of the component that has the most similar active effect.
- For example, Magic Wand will combine in Magic Stick's inventory slot.
- The shop at the enemy fountain can also be used to buy items, sell items, and access the stash.
- The Secret Shops have a restricted inventory, and cannot be used to access the hero's stash.