Quartero's Curios: New Season, New Sets

As The International 2026 gets closer, our friend Quartero has refreshed his stock and introduced a new trio of cosmetic sets for Broodmother, Nyx Assassin, and Venomancer that players can unlock by grinding pubs.

Let's take a look at each of Quartero's new rewards and see how these three heroes performed in the latest competitive tournament to decide whether they're worth trying out while showing off your new cosmetics.

Quartero has renewed his inventory and players can grind again for a new trio of hero sets.

Broodmother: Golden Orbweaver

The first reward available for free this season is the Golden Orbweaver back piece, called "The Living Ingot." This Broodmother set brings a brighter and more colorful appearance to both the Black Arachnia and her spiderlings.

This is the kind of set that I think it's worth grinding. Great new look for Broodmother.

Broodmother was among the heroes completely ignored during BLAST Slam VII. She has fluctuated between a 50.52% and 47.86% win rate over the last 30 days, suggesting that unless you're confident the pick gives your team a strategic advantage, it might be better to stay away from the spider for now.

Nyx Assassin: The Amber Apis

If you reach level 10, you'll unlock "The Forgeless Blade," a helmet from Nyx Assassin's new set, The Amber Apis. This cosmetic leans into the classic black-and-yellow contrast already present in other Nyx cosmetics such as Shadow Hunter.

Nyx Assassin was awarded a very nice set and should be attracting some attention from Nyx players.

Nyx Assassin wasn't ignored during BLAST Slam VII, but what happened may have been even worse. He appeared in only three matches and lost all of them.

In contrast to Broodmother, Nyx maintained a healthy public matchmaking win rate over the last 30 days, ranging between 51.43% and 52.82%. That means that despite being off-meta in professional play, it might still be worth trying your luck with Nyx in pubs if you want to show off his new look.

Venomancer: The Venomous Vizier

Finally, we have "The Venomous Vestments," the first piece of Venomancer's Venomous Vizier set, unlocked at level 21. As usual for the centerpiece reward of each season, this set includes two styles: the default green version and an alternate purple style called "Poisonous Prelate."

Both new Venomancer sets also have plague ward custom visuals.

Venomancer also made only a handful of underwhelming appearances at BLAST Slam VII, winning one match and losing three.

With a monthly win rate fluctuating between 47.23% and 46.03%, Venomancer unfortunately looks like another hero you may want to avoid for the time being.

Other Important Information

This new trio of sets arrived in Quartero's Curios at the beginning of June and will remain available until September 3.

You need 1,000 XP for each Quartero level, and progress is earned regardless of match result.

Players receive 650 XP for a win and 250 XP for a loss in normal matches. If you'd rather play Turbo, you'll earn 425 XP for a victory and 175 XP for a defeat, which actually seems more efficient if your games are significantly shorter.

If you don't want to spend a whole lot of shards, take some time to grind these sets.

If you want to unlock rewards from previous seasons, that's also possible, but you'll need to spend 10,000 Dota Shards to gain 1,000 Quartero XP from earlier iterations of the event.

This can be useful if you're sitting on a huge stockpile of shards, although it's somewhat counterintuitive since players with spare shards are usually already active enough to unlock rewards naturally. That somewhat undermines the idea of giving players a way to recover missed cosmetics.

Quartero's Summer Extra Super-Duper Special Antique

Quartero's Special Antiques tend to appear as the level 5 reward each season and can contain a variety of cosmetics including (allegedly) Arcanas, Personas, and Immortals.

Quartero's Curios was an attempt on retaining active players that does not seem to be working too well.

Since Quartero's Special Antique is available as early as level 5, it's probably worth setting aside some time during the next three months to play at least one match a day. At minimum you'll collect a few cosmetics and, with some luck, maybe even score an Immortal or something equally valuable.

Closing Thoughts

Despite the perception that Valve puts relatively little effort into maintaining Quartero's Curios, this season's sets are visually impressive and the possibility of landing a high-value reward is always enough motivation to queue for at least one game a day, just like GabeN would probably want.

If you want to stay updated on the latest Dota 2 tournament news, meta shifts, and much more, keep an eye on the news section on the Strafe website!

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