Wandering Waters Dota 2 patch brings new mechanic to neutral creep camps

Dota 2 latest patch, 7.38, dubbed Wandering Waters, brought plenty of changes to the game. The map has been once again transformed as the side lanes got flooded and there is more water than ever.

As the water streams run near each of the safe lanes, the neutral creep camps in the flooded areas got a new mechanic too. There are three new Flooded Camps in each water stream, an Easy camp and two Medium ones.

Neutral camps residing in the streams

• Easy camp - between tier 1 and tier 2 towers (3 Pollywogs)

• Medium camp - near tier 2 tower (2 Boglets, 1 Marshmage Apprentice)

• Medium camp - in the main jungle that used to be a hard camp (2 Croakers, 1 Marshmage)

• Ancient camp (2 Ancient Croakers, 1 Ancient Marshmag)

Evolving neutral creep camps

Each of the Flooded Camps has 3 creeps and one of the creeps will get upgraded every 5 minutes. This means that at the 15 minute mark the Easy camp becomes Medium and both Medium camps become Hard camps. At the 30 minute mark, the initial Easy camp will fully evolve into a Hard camp while the Medium will reach the final transformation to Ancient camps. Given the fact that each creep can evolve only twice, the Pollywogs in the Easy camp will never get to become Ancients.

Can the evolution be prevented?

Yes! You can mess up the enemy carry farm by blocking these camps. When the camps are blocked either by a ward or by a hero, the evolving process does not take place, thus you deny experience and gold to your enemy. Stacking the camps that are not fully evolved will not increase the number of upgraded creeps, so if there is only 1 Ancient creep in the camp, attempting to stack that camp will not create another Ancient creep.