https://twitter.com/BelvedereDota/status/565622213815332866I played a
Year Beast game because it came on. Won and got a set for Drow. Yay~ Also the mode sucks and it counts towards your win / loss. Pretty sure the only reason we won is because we had two people who bought the arcana on our team so our year beast was like 5x stronger than theirs.
Here's how it works:
When the event comes up, you basically queue for an all pick match. You pick like normal and the game proceeds like normal until 5 minutes in. The only difference is you choose a level up path for your year beast (I think it's attack, defense and speed. Don't remember).
At 5 minutes, the year beast spawns and goes to a random lane. You can then choose to upgrade your year beast with the P2W money. You can upgrade the beast to level 2 in your path or use an ability like thundergod's wrath or global silence. Or give it an aegis or teleport it, etc. All of this costs money, the most expensive being levelling up the beast. It's 5000 P2W money for level 2 and 10000 P2W for level 3. At level 3 it basically becomes broken with shit like hero resurrect and a 50% chance to refresh any of your skills. The ults are 1000 P2W money and teleport is 50 P2W money.
The objective is to basically kill the ancient like normal.
Your skills and everything all work on the beast. So things like repel, troll ult, etc. all work. You can't control your beast except by using P2W money. 50 P2W money will make it attack a specific target for example.
The beast is strong but can be killed by 5 people ganging up on it. Just basically imagine Roshan except with way more attack speed and damage. At level 3 you might as well give up trying to kill it unless you're really farmed.
Essentially, if you want the most powerful beast for the mode you need about 15000 P2W money for level 3 and a few thousand for other abilities.
Edit edit: My mates and I are going to join a local lan tourney now haha. Free $200!