Ethereal: Diretide Blight

Where the Name Comes From

Ethereal: Diretide Blight has an autumnal, Halloween-ish streak to it: the name points at Diretide, the Dota 2 festive mode, and blight means rot or decay. The gem costs a couple of dollars, which for a class capable of giving an item an effect of its own is close to a token sum.

The Ethereal Gem in Two Lines

Diretide is a separate festive mode that Valve brings back to the game from time to time along with a pile of themed items.

The mood of it is carnival with a dark edge, and the names of items from that wave were picked to match: blight, rot, pumpkin green.

For a buyer the name works as a hint about mood rather than as a technical description.

What you actually get on your own model is best judged from the preview in the card above the text.

Why a Seasonal Effect Is This Cheap

Its job is to bring an item particles that it does not have and cannot have without a gem in the socket.

Everything else is handled by neighbouring stones: a Prismatic recolours the result, while a Kinetic deals with hero animations and has nothing to do with this pair.

The roles were deliberately separated so that an owner can change the picture piece by piece.

None of these details concerns game balance — it is decoration and only decoration.

Sockets for the different gem types are not interchangeable either, and mixing them up at the point of purchase is easier than it sounds.

What You Need in Order to Socket It

The sum holds in single-digit dollars, which is to say at the very foot of the line.

Festive stones went out widely, since the mode drew large numbers of players and more copies ended up settling than with gems from narrow sets.

The rarity printed on the item is high nonetheless, and that mismatch is normal — a rarity label and a real print run agree far less often than people assume.

The current figure is pulled from active offers and shown in the card above.

Choosing a Shade to Go With It

You need an item with a rare gem socket, and no amount of money will add one after the item exists.

With no suitable item, the gem simply sits in the inventory and never shows itself in a match.

Separately: socketing wipes the previous stone with no way of getting it back.

On a cheap purchase that risk looks trivial right up until the stone being replaced is an expensive effect.

Where to Buy Ethereal: Diretide Blight

The theme here is a sickly green, and it falls into place most naturally with Prismatic tones from the same part of the palette.

Warm shades tend to break it: red or gold turn blight into something festive and the original idea disappears.

A muted dark tone works as well — it quiets the effect down while leaving its shape recognisable.

The final call is still made from the preview, because the same pair of stones looks different on different models.

It is worth viewing the effect and the shade on the item you intend to use, rather than on some random model from the catalogue.

The gem sits on this LIS-SKINS page, with its Ethereal neighbours in the gems and runes section.

The routine is the usual one: authorisation through Steam, choice of offer, payment by card, cryptocurrency or wallet.

The item moves into your Steam inventory, and a resale with a withdrawal starts from the same site.

At this price it is reasonable to take two stones of different moods at once, since trying variants on a model costs less than deliberating over their names.

The Prismatic shades are in the same place, and without one the green burns in whatever colour the effect came with.