Diretide is a special game mode during Dota 2's Halloween event. It is much less serious than normal modes and statistics aren't recorded during play. However, players can still earn battle points and items for playing the mode.
Phase 1[edit]
Every player is given a preview of the item they will get at the beginning of the game. Each faction's ancient creep spawns will be replaced with a Candy Stash, which stores 25 Greevil Taffies at the beginning of the game. Candy Stashes behave like other buildings, having True Sight vision, being affected by the Glyph of Fortification and being a valid spot to teleport to using TP Scrolls, though they have infinite health. Both teams will need to obtain Greevil Taffies dropped by Roshlings on the map or from raiding the enemy Candy Stash, then deposit the Greevil Taffies at their own Candy Stash to gain gold and xp for their team. Greevil Taffies are unhealthy, and will decrease a hero's max hp the more the hero has in their inventory. Once a hero dies, all the taffy they held will be dropped.
Phase 2[edit]
After 10 minutes, Roshan will come out of its pit to go trick-or-treating. He will randomly target a hero on either side and will move to the hero to take its candy. If the hero doesn't give Roshan candy, he will start attacking the hero. The candy raiding from Phase 1 contunes, though jungle creeps will also drop taffy. At the end of the phase, the team with the most candy in their stash gets the item promised at the beginning of the match.
Phase 3[edit]
After 10 minutes of taking candy, Roshan will get a sugar rush. Each player will get a preview of the item they will get if they defeat Roshan at the beginning of the phase. Roshan will run to a pre-set location on the winning faction's side and all players will be given 20000+ gold to prepare themselves for fighting Roshan. In this phase, Roshan is a lot stronger than in normal gameplay, having an ungodly amount of health and dealing a lot of damage. He also has a few new abilities while sugar rushed.
- Toss - He will select a hero at random and toss it to another hero. Doesn't seem to do as much damage as his other attacks, if at all, though it does make fighting him as a melee hero very annoying.
- Shell - Roshan becomes impervious to physical attacks for a short period, but will take bonus magical damage. At the start of this state every hero will get all their ability and item cooldowns refreshed.
- Wave of Force - Roshan slams the ground after a noticeable startup, dealing tons of damage, knocking back and disarming heroes caught in it temporarily. It does more damage the closer the hero is to Roshan, and getting hit at point blank is almost always an instant kill. The wave has quite a bit of range, and even ranged heroes can get caught by it if they don't move away.
- Apocalypse - Roshan rains Sunstrikes at every hero that is outside a 400 radius but within a 1200 radius of him. The location of the strikes are visible to all heroes and can easily be dodged by moving away, but getting hit once deals 3000 damage, enough to kill most heroes. Getting knocked back by Wave of Force just as Apocalypse is activated makes it very difficult for players to escape.
Once Roshan is defeated, the game will end and all players that contributed to Roshan's defeat and did not abandon the game will get the promised item. Players who defeated Roshan in the shortest time will also be shown in the Sugar Rush Hall of Fame on the "Play" tab.