Dota 2 Ticket Trader Guide: Candy and Discount Tokens

While the competitive scene holds its breath ahead of The International 2026, Dota 2's single-player content has crossed a milestone that many players let slip by: since late July, Act 1 of the Macabre Carnival has been complete. The Midnight Train's six wagons are open, the closing cinematic has aired, and Valve has announced no date for Act 2 — which stands every chance of landing during the tournament.

So you have a quiet window to finish Act 1 and not waste what it grants. The most common mistake with this event isn't playing badly: it's letting discount coins sit unused when they can only be spent once, or never claiming the 31 free tickets hidden away in the mini-games.

This guide doesn't tell the story of the train: it treats the Macabre Carnival as an economy, with its exchange rates, its clocks, and its trade-offs.

A note on terminology. Valve localizes the event: scrap tickets, seer stones, the candy shop, the ticket vendor, the fortune teller, discount coins, the Treasure of Wonders, the secret rooms pack, the Curiosity Shop, and automaton personas are the official terms from the French patch notes. Heroes, sets, wagons, and tickets remain in English: Valve hasn't published them in French, and we won't translate anything on our own initiative.

What Act 1 actually gives you, without touching your credit card

The event kicked off on June 25, 2026 with The Prison Car and The Smelting Car. The second chapter opened The Blimp and The Storage Car on July 10, and the third delivered The Cauldron Car and The Engine Car in late July. Six locations, and a total nobody bothers to add up.

Look at the coin column: fifteen in total if you play for free, while the spending threshold is ten. The free route therefore only funds one transaction, and five coins will end up wasted. The choice of that single purchase is not trivial.

Farming tickets: the eleven heroes who hand out three at once

Each hero is tied to three tickets. A win in classic mode pays out all three; a loss only gives you one, picked at random among the three. In turbo, a win grants two random tickets and a loss grants none.

Since the July 1st update, every match now pays out Scrap Tickets in addition to whatever else you earn, win or lose: two in Ranked/Unranked, one in Turbo. Six Scrap Tickets can be exchanged for a Hero Ticket of your choice, which turns losing streaks into guaranteed progress. Co-op games against Hard and Unfair bots grant, for their part, one ticket per game regardless of the outcome, plus Vision Gems — but no refresh of the candy shop.

Then comes the mechanic most guides skim over. The nodes on the train often require several copies of the same ticket, and eleven heroes drop three identical cards: a single win with the right hero can then complete an entire node.

A sensible caveat: since a loss only gives back one random ticket, this table only holds if you win. Wraith King, Sven, Chaos Knight, Doom and Abaddon forgive a lot in solo queue; Io and Oracle do not. If you're missing The Fool or The High Priestess, you're better off farming Scrap on your usual heroes.

The exchange menu also accepts three identical tickets for one of your choice, and four different tickets for one. Since July 1st, the hero filter button displays a tooltip showing how many tickets you're missing for the next reward: more reliable than any copied table.

Not to be confused with the ticket merchant: he doesn't give back tickets, he consumes randomly imposed combinations to deliver Vision Gems and candy bags. Best reserved for surplus you no longer have any use for.

The five minigames: 31 free tickets, no queue required

The minigames unlocked along the train are the cheapest source of tickets: they can be replayed at will, outside of matches, and each score threshold can be claimed once.

That's 31 random tickets, plus two emoticons: :slark_squint: at 24,000 points in Pick the Lock and :jester: at 30,000 in Blimp Jump — scores to be achieved in Endless mode, not Story mode.

One trap specifically concerns French speakers: Automaton Attack is a typing game, and the displayed words follow the client's language. In French, the words to type therefore come with accents, while the multiplier drops back to 1 as soon as a single word is missed. The workaround documented by the community is to temporarily switch Dota to English for long enough to cross the 2,500-point mark. Spaces and punctuation, meanwhile, can be ignored in both languages.

Discount coins: a single purchase, not to be missed

Ten coins can be traded at the Curiosity Shop, either for a discount of about $7.99 on any item priced at that amount or above (the exact amount varies by region and currency), or for a free Dark Carnival Prize Pack: 30 candy bags, 10 candy shop refreshes, and 3 vision stones. The discounts don't stack, only one applies at a time.

The trade-off is simple. If you were going to buy an arcana or a Curiosity Shop bundle anyway, the discount is by far the better value. If you're not going to spend a cent, take the Prize Pack: ten refreshes are worth much more than five coins that will sit unused until the event ends. What you shouldn't do is hoard them while waiting for Act 2: there's no guarantee the next act will put coins back into circulation.

Two clocks you shouldn't miss

The candy shop. The list of trades changes every week, and ten refresh slots are recredited every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, that is 6:00 p.m. in Paris during summer time; every win grants one more, with a turbo match counting for half. Two rules to know: all candies have the same value despite their different appearances (three trade for one of another type), and items obtained here are neither tradable nor sellable on the Steam Market.

The fortune teller. Her daily quota also resets at 16:00 UTC. Each reading consumes one vision stone and returns a random reward: node unlock, candy, refreshes, tickets, or event items (balloons, fireworks, and carnival pies). The tier depends on the total number of predictions revealed: 2 for a graffiti, 5 for the :hypnosis: emoticon, then 10, 15, 20, and 25 for the four pieces of the King of Fools set, and 30 for a Treasure of the Wondrous. With the 12 stones from Act 1, those from bot matches, and those from the ticket vendor, the 30 readings are achievable for free — as long as you don't miss the daily appointment.

Ticket gifting, the mechanic that groups underuse

Unlocked at The Storage Car, Tinker's stall lets you send tickets to your friends, showing which ones they're missing. Two limits: you lose the tickets you send, and the cap is five per day. In a coordinated group, this mechanic removes the bad luck of the draw — everyone plays their usual heroes and redistributes the surplus.

Should you pay for the secret rooms pack?

The pack immediately grants the Dark Carnival creeps and music pack, then opens a second progression track along the train. In terms of numbers, it adds 15 discount coins (three possible spends of ten instead of one), 16 candy bags, 6 vision stones, 3 Treasures of the Wondrous, and two loading screens.

Honest answer: none of this is necessary. The main storyline and the four completion sets remain free. The pack is only worth it if you're aiming for the Treasure of the Wondrous in bulk, or if the three discounts cover purchases you would have made anyway.

What's left to do before Thursday

The International 2026 kicks off on August 13 in Shanghai, and Valve has a habit of reloading its events during the tournament. The Act 1 finale cinematic shows the silhouettes of the upcoming automaton personas — Tidehunter, Lich, Sven, Pugna, and Lifestealer — but no schedule has been released.

Three priorities until then, in this order: claim the tiers of the five mini-games, the cheapest tickets in the game; spend your ten discount coins rather than hoarding them; run one fortune teller pull per day, the only counter that never makes up for lost time.

One last detail that many discover too late: the seasonal graffiti from the Macabre Carnival expire when the event closes. They're not there to be collected, but to be used while the carnival is running.