To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of HoN, this cosmetic patch added several UI changes, a hero guide system, and two alt avatars.

Version 2.0.29
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- Added a new Alt Avatar: Winston Charmadon
- Added a new Alt Avatar: Thor Thunderbringer

- Fixed Silhouette stacking neutrals when using a homecoming stone
- Fixed the Tutorial and removed the "Shop" section of it for now

New "Simple Tooltips"
* Shorter and more concise for easy reading
* Are now default
* Old Long Tooltips can be enabled in the options menu

New UI for the Hero Picking phase
* Now with a hero's role instead of their background story
* Includes the simple tooltips for easy picking

Redesigned the Ingame Shop!
- New Features of the Shop:
* Can switch between standard categories and a filter where you can see items by what they do
* Can switch between descriptions and item only view
* New recipe-tree when left-clicking an item
* Guide system added that lets dynamic guides lead a new or experienced player!
* Guides can auto-levelup abilities of the hero you are playing
* Guides change the recommended items of a hero based on the items picked for the guide
* Guides can be voted up or down and the highest % ones are listed at the top. You can tag one as favorite or default for this hero ingame!
* You can make and browse all guides for all heroes at http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/guides
* Recommended items are tagged with Stars
* Added a search feature in the upper left for all items
* Opacity can be changed

- More about the shop:
* This is designed to be much easier for newer players while still retaining all of the goodies that experienced players like
* Left click to "Select" an item, which will open the build-tree in the bottom half of the shop where you can see recipe trees
* You can left click any item to make it the focus of the tree, even ones in the tree itself
* Right click any item to buy it. Right click a recipe item to pop up a box to buy all remaining components. Or click the buy all remaining button in the lower section
* Ctrl-Right click to buy just the recipe of any item (normal behavior). Same with Hotkeys.
* Expanded tooltips in the upper right

In development for S2 Games

While there are no balance changes to discuss in this patch, [S2] Idejder has made a statement in regards to the work put into these new additions. He also talks about what S2 Games is working on for upcoming versions.

[S2] Idejder:

“

For everyone complaining about how it's just a "normal patch," keep in mind these changes to the UI are very time consuming and have taken us months to do correctly and iterate them.

The system is MUCH larger than it appears with every item, hero, and ability tooltip in the game being re-written by us (by hand); hero guides for every hero in the game that you can sort, favorite, and rate; two modes for icon only or descriptions; ability to auto-level-up abilities for you; ability to change recommended items per hero per match per guide; syncing with the website so you can browse there or in-game; new art tooltip style; and the best alt avatar ever. Armadon.

We have a lot of balance fixes and two reworks in the pipeline along with several heroes, but those take time and competitor feedback. These are not things we are going to just push out there, so they take time. We will put them live when we can and feel confident about them.”

11 days of FREE-to-play

From May 13th to May 22th, anyone can sign up for an account and play for free! It's a great opportunity to try out HoN if you've never played before, or a chance to get your friends to try it out. Register at http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/create_account.php and see all of the HoNiversary promotions in HoN Newsletter Vol. 9.

Links
forums.heroesofnewerth.com - 2.0.29 Patch Notes
reddit.com - Comment by [S2] Idejder

2.0.29 HoNiversary Patch, Idejder on S2's upcoming plans