Ethereal: Bleak Hallucination

What the Name Promises and How to Check It

Ethereal: Bleak Hallucination carries one of the gloomier names in the line and does what every Ethereal gem does — it gives an item a particle effect it did not have before. This is the bottom floor of the class by price, a few dollars against the tens the top of the line commands, which is why so many people meet Ethereal gems here first.

What an Ethereal Gem Is Responsible For

The name is descriptive rather than technical, and Valve does not publish a breakdown of which particles an effect is assembled from.

So the only honest way to know what you are buying is to open the effect preview in the card above and look at it.

The advice is not a formality. The same glow wraps a compact figure's silhouette entirely and scatters into separate patches on a large one.

Decide by the name alone and disappointment is close to guaranteed, because names in this line were chosen for mood rather than as a description of the picture.

Why It Costs Less Than Its Neighbours

The Ethereal stone is the source of the effect. Before it goes in, the item does not glow at all; afterwards it has particles of its own.

The colour of those particles is set by a different gem, the Prismatic one, and that is bought as a separate line on the bill.

Without a Prismatic the effect still appears, simply in whichever shade it carries by default.

None of this touches the mechanics of a match in any respect: the whole business is about the picture.

There are several dozen Ethereal gems in Dota 2, and the spread of prices inside the one class is wider than the gap between classes of gem.

Where It Can Go

The rarity on the item reads Mythical, but within the line itself Ethereal gems are tens of times apart on price, and this one sits near the floor.

Supply holds the figure down: widely distributed effects settled into inventories by the hundred, and demand for them is met without strain.

Paying less costs you nothing in build quality — a cheap gem and an expensive one work by the same rules, and the difference lives in the picture and the print run.

What is being asked for the particular copy right now is shown in the card above.

Who an Inexpensive Ethereal Gem Suits

You need an item with a rare gem socket. Sockets of that kind are neither created nor bought — an item either shipped with one or it did not.

In the catalogue that mostly means Unusual couriers, though a suitable socket turns up on a handful of other items as well.

Socketing is one-way: whatever gem is already sitting there is destroyed when the new one goes in.

Breaking that rule with a cheap effect stings in a particular way, because the stone you lose can easily be worth more than the one you are installing.

Where to Buy Ethereal: Bleak Hallucination

Anyone who wants to try the class as a whole without spending courier money on a first experiment.

Anyone who already owns an item with an empty rare socket and wants something in it without wading into collector territory.

Collectors of the line, who pick up effects ahead of time and find items for them afterwards.

If what you want is one of the famous effects people argue about on forums, though, that search runs through the top of the catalogue, where the sums are of a different order.

The gem is sold from this very page: sign in through Steam, choose an offer, pay.

Cards, cryptocurrency and e-wallets all work, and the item is credited to your Steam inventory once the payment clears.

The reverse trade is arranged in the same place — the item goes back to the platform, the money goes to a card or a wallet.

Have a look at the Prismatic stones while you are there: a pair of Ethereal and Prismatic comes together more cheaply than people expect, and it is the pair that gives a finished look.