What are the best Dota 2 neutral items? The 7.23 Outlanders update to Dota 2 stirred things up in a major way. Fans were getting a little too comfortable with a meta that hadn’t really shifted since before The International 2019 and were looking forward to a patch that would throw a few new heroes into the mix and fiddle around with various stats and items. Instead, the proverbial heavens opened and an unprecedented amount of brand new items fell from the sky, causing mass confusion and panic. Havoc Hammer. Ninja Gear. Mind Breaker. Who are you? Where’s my Stout Shield gone? Why is my carry trying to feed me jelly? Stay calm, gratefully accept the jelly into your gullet and let us explain the best Dota 2 neutral items you should look out for in game.
Dota 2 neutral items drop from jungle creeps from the seven minute mark onward. Neutral items are divided into tiers – Tier 1 items are the first type to drop after seven minutes in, joined by Tier 2 after 15 minutes, Tier 3 after 25 minutes, and Tier 4 after 40 minutes. There is a fifth tier, and if you make it all the way to 60 minutes you’ll be able to find Tier 5 items, which are powerful enough to hopefully bring about a swift end to the game so you can peel yourself out of your gaming chair and go look out of the window at the outside world.
How many neutral items are in Dota 2? There are a total of 58 Dota 2 neutral items, but only four neutral items from each tier can drop for your team, so let’s hope you get lucky and find one of the best ones. We’ve chosen our top items from each tier – the ones we would be happiest to receive in the majority of games – with the caveat that some items are great but conditional on whether you have the right heroes on your team to make best use of them.
Best dota 2 Neutral items
Tier 1Tier 2Tier 3Tier 4Tier 5
Tier 1 neutral items Trusty Shovel After a one second channel time, you dig up either a Bounty Rune, a Healing Salve, a Town Portal Scroll bundle, or a fighty Kobold. If you’re trapped in your base and don’t think you can farm neutrals safely to get the next tier of items, there’s a chance an unearthed Kobold will drop a neutral item for you, which just might save your bacon.
Statistically, you’re likely to get something worth at least 100 gold at least every minute, which is huge value for near-zero effort, as long as you’re using it off cooldown. Your team will save a bunch of money on TP Scrolls, and though you can’t share Healing Salves, you can cast them on your friends so they don’t need to head back to base as often. Carrying the Trusty Shovel also gives you a bonus +150 health.
Mango Tree This Dota 2 neutral item grants you the power to create a single, glorious Mango tree, from which Enchanted Mangos will ripen and drop every 60 seconds. Mangos, if you’re not already aware, give you +0.6 passive Health Regen while they’re in your pockets, and you can scarf them down and instantly gain 110 mana.
When planted, the Mango Tree also gives vision, meaning you can plant it in the Roshan pit and find out if your enemies are looking to take the Aegis – but you may want to be a little safer with its placement as the enemy team will ruthlessly fell your juicy friend if they find it. It’s useful to position it somewhere you or your carry can make use of the periodic mana top-up to farm the jungle and push out lanes with spells.
Royal Jelly Consuming a portion of Royal Jelly grants a target allied unit a permanent buff that provides +2.5 Health Regen and +1.25 Mana Regen, giving you a substantial advantage in the laning stage. It comes with two charges, so you can share with your favourite support (cough). While most of the Tier 1 items eventually get left in the fountain gathering dust once the fancier accessories become available, Royal Jelly won’t permanently take up your neutral item slot, isn’t temporary, and is useful on every single hero, making it one of the best tier 1 neutral items.
Honourable Mentions: Broom Handle, Faded Broach, Keen Optic
tier 2 neutral items Pupils Gift Who knew that giving an apple to your teacher would boost their secondary attributes by +13? The Pupil’s Gift is a great item on any hero that can benefit from boosting their secondary attributes – for example, a right-clicking Agility carry gains buffs to their Strength (260 health, 1.3 health regen, 1.04% magic resistance) and Intelligence (156 mana, 0.65 mana regen, and 0.91% spell damage). Lifestealer, a melee Strength hero with lifesteal (surprisingly) gains buffs to his Intelligence and Agility, which means he’ll be attacking and moving faster, making him a very happy little monstrosity. An Intelligence hero receives Strength and Agility, which is particularly useful because of the added health and armour on a hero that is likely to be relatively squishy. This item will always be well received and find a useful place on your team.
Philosopher’s Stone The Philosopher’s Stone gives the bearer an additional 200 Mana and 60 gold per minute at the expense of -35 Attack Damage. On anyone other than a right-clicking carry, this is a huge buff – fantastic for supports and spellcasters who tend to be mana hungry, like Zeus.
Vampire Fangs Gives you 15% lifesteal, 6% spell lifesteal, +250 night vision, and makes you feel like the edgy protagonist of a teenage romance novel. This item is great for any right clickers who can benefit from the increased farming capability.
Honourable Mention: Dragon Scale
Tier 3 neutral items Titan Sliver The Titan Sliver adds a 16% buff to your Base attack damage, 16% to Magic Resistance and 16% to Status Resistance. The resistance buffs stack multiplicatively. This item is especially good if you’re facing a team with a lot of magic damage, but in any game, the Titan Sliver will make your carry much more formidable.
Repair Kit Using a Repair Kit on a building will restore 40% of its health over 30 seconds, also granting it +10 Armor. It comes with 3 charges and provides you with +17 health regen while carrying it. Being able to prevent a push for 30 seconds is a huge deal and can buy your team valuable time to create map pressure elsewhere without having to give up a tower.
Orb of Destruction Orb of Destruction reduces your target’s armour by 5 and decreases their movement speed for four seconds. The movement speed slow depends on whether the bearer is a ranged hero (15%) or melee hero (30%) – making this a fantastic item for melee cores. On your Phantom Assassin or Monkey King, or pretty much anyone who builds Desolator, the Orb of Destruction will very possibly make the opposing team cry.
Honourable mentions: Spider Legs, Greater Faerie Fire, Telescope
Tier 4 Neutral Items Prince’s Knife The Prince’s Knife gives you +60 Projectile speed, and every 12 seconds your next attack hexes the target and turns them into a hapless frog, hopping around foolishly for 1.5 seconds, during which time you are encouraged to laugh at them. Put this on a ranged right-click hero like Sniper or Drow and watch the enemies croak.
Spell Prism Spell Prism gives you +12 each to Strength, Agility and Intelligence, as well as +4 Mana Regen. Most importantly, however, its passive ability reduces cooldowns by 20%, making it fantastic on any casters on your team.
Timeless Relic The Timeless Relic adds +25% to your Debuff duration and +15% to Spell damage. That’s a huge increase in Debuff duration, so if you give it to a hero with lots of control they will be transformed from a nuisance to a menace. Timeless Relic is also great on spellcasting heroes like Zeus, Outworld Devourer, Leshrac and Puck in particular.
Honourable mention: Minotaur Horn
Tier 5 Neutral Items If your game lasts the 60+ minutes necessary to generate tier 5 item drops, please accept our sympathies, and remember that you can always disconnect for a couple of minutes to use the bathroom or reconsider your life choices. Pretty much all of these items have a huge impact on the game – they’re all so astonishingly powerful that getting any of them is a substantial gain, so we’ve chosen the ones we’d most enjoy seeing drop in our games.
Fallen Sky Turn into a literal meteor and bring about the end times. Essentially combining a Blink Dagger with a Meteor Hammer, Fallen Sky gives you +20 Strength, +20 Intelligence, + 15 Health Regeneration, +10 Mana regeneration and the ability to crash down upon your enemies’ puny heads every 15 seconds. Even if you somehow end up losing the game, you’ll at least be able to experience a heavy dose of catharsis.
Apex Apex gives you an eye-watering +75 buff to your Primary attribute. Place this item into your carry’s hands and tell them to win you the game. They will then win you the game.
Woodland Striders These boots give you +50% Movement Speed, +50% Health Regen, and the Tree Walking passive ability, which allows you to become one with the forest, walking through trees unimpeded. Its active ability, Woodland Stride, creates a path of trees behind you as you walk for 3 seconds. Not only does this sound spectacularly fun, it also means ranged carries can sit in the woods and deal huge damage from relative safety. In the immortal words of Kate Bush, “It’s coming for me through the trees/Help me someone, help me please”. But whatever you do, don’t take these shoes off and throw them in the lake, because they’re really powerful.
Now you have your Dota 2 neutral items wishlist, it’s almost guaranteed that none of these items will drop in your next match. Even so, there’s a lot to be said for most of the neutral items in the game, and if you know how best to utilise them they can still bring you utility, at least before you’re fully 6-slotted. Don’t forget, if you can’t make good use of a neutral item, zip it back to the neutral item fountain stash – and whatever you do, don’t let that neutral item slot sit empty like a chump.
Read more: The best free games on Steam If you’re still learning the ropes in Dota 2, check out our guide to the best Dota 2 heroes for beginners – or let us help you decide on the best MOBA for you.
What are the best Dota 2 neutral items? The 7.23 Outlanders update to Dota 2 stirred things up in a major way. Fans were getting a little too comfortable with a meta that hadn’t really shifted since before The International 2019 and were looking forward to a patch that would throw a few new heroes into the mix and fiddle around with various stats and items. Instead, the proverbial heavens opened and an unprecedented amount of brand new items fell from the sky, causing mass confusion and panic. Havoc Hammer. Ninja Gear. Mind Breaker. Who are you? Where’s my Stout Shield gone? Why is my carry trying to feed me jelly? Stay calm, gratefully accept the jelly into your gullet and let us explain the best Dota 2 neutral items you should look out for in game.
Dota 2 neutral items drop from jungle creeps from the seven minute mark onward. Neutral items are divided into tiers – Tier 1 items are the first type to drop after seven minutes in, joined by Tier 2 after 15 minutes, Tier 3 after 25 minutes, and Tier 4 after 40 minutes. There is a fifth tier, and if you make it all the way to 60 minutes you’ll be able to find Tier 5 items, which are powerful enough to hopefully bring about a swift end to the game so you can peel yourself out of your gaming chair and go look out of the window at the outside world.
How many neutral items are in Dota 2? There are a total of 58 Dota 2 neutral items, but only four neutral items from each tier can drop for your team, so let’s hope you get lucky and find one of the best ones. We’ve chosen our top items from each tier – the ones we would be happiest to receive in the majority of games – with the caveat that some items are great but conditional on whether you have the right heroes on your team to make best use of them.
Trusty Shovel
After a one second channel time, you dig up either a Bounty Rune, a Healing Salve, a Town Portal Scroll bundle, or a fighty Kobold. If you’re trapped in your base and don’t think you can farm neutrals safely to get the next tier of items, there’s a chance an unearthed Kobold will drop a neutral item for you, which just might save your bacon.
This Dota 2 neutral item grants you the power to create a single, glorious Mango tree, from which Enchanted Mangos will ripen and drop every 60 seconds. Mangos, if you’re not already aware, give you +0.6 passive Health Regen while they’re in your pockets, and you can scarf them down and instantly gain 110 mana.
Consuming a portion of Royal Jelly grants a target allied unit a permanent buff that provides +2.5 Health Regen and +1.25 Mana Regen, giving you a substantial advantage in the laning stage. It comes with two charges, so you can share with your favourite support (cough). While most of the Tier 1 items eventually get left in the fountain gathering dust once the fancier accessories become available, Royal Jelly won’t permanently take up your neutral item slot, isn’t temporary, and is useful on every single hero, making it one of the best tier 1 neutral items.
Pupils Gift
Who knew that giving an apple to your teacher would boost their secondary attributes by +13? The Pupil’s Gift is a great item on any hero that can benefit from boosting their secondary attributes – for example, a right-clicking Agility carry gains buffs to their Strength (260 health, 1.3 health regen, 1.04% magic resistance) and Intelligence (156 mana, 0.65 mana regen, and 0.91% spell damage). Lifestealer, a melee Strength hero with lifesteal (surprisingly) gains buffs to his Intelligence and Agility, which means he’ll be attacking and moving faster, making him a very happy little monstrosity. An Intelligence hero receives Strength and Agility, which is particularly useful because of the added health and armour on a hero that is likely to be relatively squishy. This item will always be well received and find a useful place on your team.
The Philosopher’s Stone gives the bearer an additional 200 Mana and 60 gold per minute at the expense of -35 Attack Damage. On anyone other than a right-clicking carry, this is a huge buff – fantastic for supports and spellcasters who tend to be mana hungry, like Zeus.
Gives you 15% lifesteal, 6% spell lifesteal, +250 night vision, and makes you feel like the edgy protagonist of a teenage romance novel. This item is great for any right clickers who can benefit from the increased farming capability.
Titan Sliver
The Titan Sliver adds a 16% buff to your Base attack damage, 16% to Magic Resistance and 16% to Status Resistance. The resistance buffs stack multiplicatively. This item is especially good if you’re facing a team with a lot of magic damage, but in any game, the Titan Sliver will make your carry much more formidable.
Using a Repair Kit on a building will restore 40% of its health over 30 seconds, also granting it +10 Armor. It comes with 3 charges and provides you with +17 health regen while carrying it. Being able to prevent a push for 30 seconds is a huge deal and can buy your team valuable time to create map pressure elsewhere without having to give up a tower.
Orb of Destruction reduces your target’s armour by 5 and decreases their movement speed for four seconds. The movement speed slow depends on whether the bearer is a ranged hero (15%) or melee hero (30%) – making this a fantastic item for melee cores. On your Phantom Assassin or Monkey King, or pretty much anyone who builds Desolator, the Orb of Destruction will very possibly make the opposing team cry.
Prince’s Knife
The Prince’s Knife gives you +60 Projectile speed, and every 12 seconds your next attack hexes the target and turns them into a hapless frog, hopping around foolishly for 1.5 seconds, during which time you are encouraged to laugh at them. Put this on a ranged right-click hero like Sniper or Drow and watch the enemies croak.
Spell Prism gives you +12 each to Strength, Agility and Intelligence, as well as +4 Mana Regen. Most importantly, however, its passive ability reduces cooldowns by 20%, making it fantastic on any casters on your team.
The Timeless Relic adds +25% to your Debuff duration and +15% to Spell damage. That’s a huge increase in Debuff duration, so if you give it to a hero with lots of control they will be transformed from a nuisance to a menace. Timeless Relic is also great on spellcasting heroes like Zeus, Outworld Devourer, Leshrac and Puck in particular.
If your game lasts the 60+ minutes necessary to generate tier 5 item drops, please accept our sympathies, and remember that you can always disconnect for a couple of minutes to use the bathroom or reconsider your life choices. Pretty much all of these items have a huge impact on the game – they’re all so astonishingly powerful that getting any of them is a substantial gain, so we’ve chosen the ones we’d most enjoy seeing drop in our games.
Turn into a literal meteor and bring about the end times. Essentially combining a Blink Dagger with a Meteor Hammer, Fallen Sky gives you +20 Strength, +20 Intelligence, + 15 Health Regeneration, +10 Mana regeneration and the ability to crash down upon your enemies’ puny heads every 15 seconds. Even if you somehow end up losing the game, you’ll at least be able to experience a heavy dose of catharsis.
Apex gives you an eye-watering +75 buff to your Primary attribute. Place this item into your carry’s hands and tell them to win you the game. They will then win you the game.
These boots give you +50% Movement Speed, +50% Health Regen, and the Tree Walking passive ability, which allows you to become one with the forest, walking through trees unimpeded. Its active ability, Woodland Stride, creates a path of trees behind you as you walk for 3 seconds. Not only does this sound spectacularly fun, it also means ranged carries can sit in the woods and deal huge damage from relative safety. In the immortal words of Kate Bush, “It’s coming for me through the trees/Help me someone, help me please”. But whatever you do, don’t take these shoes off and throw them in the lake, because they’re really powerful.
