Bugged Ethereal Item Guide

This guide is about bugged ethereal items. Their history, images of every bugged gem, and everything about them.

This is an official guide from https://www.reddit.com/r/Dota2Trade/comments/6jnbtq/discussion_bugged_items_with_ethereal_gems_their/

Intro

I'm doing this for people to learn about the bugged items with ethereal gems, as the title says, and compile a large image compilation of the ethereals. I get asked this sort of stuff a lot and might as well make a database for people to learn (it's pretty cool if I do say so myself). Verrrrryyyy few people knew about these before I made this guide and researched it out. I came across this bug a couple times when altering items (cheap mostly) when they didn't do anything but waste a slot and gem. I've helped many people with them, including ODPixel with a chest of Sheever's.

History

The colors of the items have been updated. I will update the colors on my guide later. You can view the new colors on this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dota2Trade/comments/8o11uk/psa_updated_list_of_effects_on_bugged_wards/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=Dota2Trade&utm_content=t3_6jnbtq


The first known "bugged" appearances occurred in December 2013 and were patched sometime in August 2014. These items vary from some signature chests bugging out and having the socket when opened, some self-made items, and the most prominent source of the bug is from kill assist gems. These were all bugs and are extremely rare now.

(Newly added information) I recently realized they can also be obtained through non bugged ways. Most casters/analysts that make it to a TI or some older majors (2015-2017) have gotten a signed chest with a self-made ethereal gem in it. Most of the chests can be opened to get an item with the self-made gem, then add a tradeable ethereal gem over the other. Now you have a nice tradeable ethereal item. Sculptor's Pillar chests are the most prominent because so many were given out to casters/analysts that attended, making the items within easier to obtain with ethereal gems.[dota2.gamepedia.com]

If you are looking to buy a bugged wearable, these will be the cheapest. The self-made items allowed content creators to add an ethereal in replace of the self-made gem, but most decided to destroy the self-made item to sell the gem. These are the rarest, but hard to tell which is which. Most of the items were affected by the kill assist bug, which when adding a kill assist gem to a socket would randomly make the socket ethereal. I happened to make two of this bug alone while crafting, so it seems like it was a common occurrence if you crafted with assist gems. People tended to put other gems besides assists into sockets, so that made this bug rarer. All of these have been patched for a long time.

In source 1 these items were useless and had no extra effects, sometimes it would just have an error image for the item. With source 2 these items now gained the effects of the gem, although not all work. The effect shows for most of the gems, but there is a base color that comes with them and that is that color. The base color is replaced by the prismatic gems that you see in unusual couriers. The gems vary from couriers, wards, wearables etc.

How the gems/colors work

Ethereal gems add the animations and prismatics add color. Ethereal gems were only made for unusual couriers and all of them have a prismatic gem. Some arcanas have a prismatic gem attached to add color, so the arcana its self acts as the ethereal gem. These bugged items, that weren't designed to be like this, are missing the color aspect and only have the underlying base colors. Some items like Trail of Burning Doom, are missing all the colorful flames that are the prismatic colors but have the black base smoke. This is why some bugged ethereals look like junk in bugged form.

How to craft

You have to have a bugged ethereal item and the extra ethereal gem you want to replace it with first.

Item tiers

• Tier 6 - The most common, even though the bug was still rare, items of this glitch are single socket ethereal couriers. Some of these couriers do not have an unusual variant or the unusual version is expensive and makes them desired. Most have unusual variants, so without the prismatic they aren't desired much.
  
  
• Tier 5 - The 2x ethereal (no prismatic) couriers. The 2x ethereal couriers gain both effects from the gems and make them really stand out. These couriers are rarer because the bug not only happened once but twice on the same item.
  
  
• Tier 4 - These would be the wearables from the Sculptor's Pillar chest.[dota2.gamepedia.com].
  
  
• Tier 3 - Wards. Yep, not many people moved gems around for their wards because people don't tend to change their wards much and yeah. All that resulted in very few of these wards being produced and they just look nice! You will see these from time to time in pro games, mainly in the Chinese scene because their market seems to have most of the bugged items resulting in them having an easier time getting their hands on them. Also, gems can look different on these because the gem effects are displayed when the object moves and most wards don't move much.
  
  
• Tier 2 - Other wearables. Prices vary widely depending on popularity and other circumstances that may make the item better. This tier pretty much can mix into tier 1 items.
  
  
• Tier 1 - These are big daddy items made by content creators, the rarer wearables, and 2+ ethereal and 1 prismatic couriers.
  
  The best things you will never have.[imgur.com]

Images of all bugged gems

(Normal) Ethereal	(Bugged) Wearable	(Bugged) Courier	(Bugged) Ward
Affliction of Vermin	Affliction of Vermin	Affliction of Vermin	Affliction of Vermin
Bleak Hallucination	Bleak Hallucination	Bleak Hallucination	Bleak Hallucination
Burning Animus	Burning Animus	Burning Animus	Burning Animus
Butterfly Romp	Butterfly Romp [gfycat.com]	Butterfly Romp	Butterfly Romp
Champion's Aura 2012	Champion's Aura 2012 [gfycat.com]	Champion's Aura 2012	Champion's Aura 2012
Champion's Aura 2014	Champion's Aura 2014 [gfycat.com]	Champion's Aura 2014 (no bats)	Champion's Aura 2014
Crystal Rift	Crystal Rift [giant.gfycat.com]	Crystal Rift	Crystal Rift
Cursed Essence	Cursed Essence	Cursed Essence	Cursed Essence
Diretide Blight	Diretide Blight	Diretide Blight	Diretide Blight
Diretide Corruption	Diretide Corruption [gfycat.com]	Diretide Corruption	Diretide Corruption
Emerald Ectoplasm	Emerald Ectoplasm	Emerald Ectoplasm	Emerald Ectoplasm
Felicity's Blessing	Felicity's Blessing	Felicity's Blessing	Felicity's Blessing
Frostivus Frost	Frostivus Frost [gfycat.com]	Frostivus Frost	Frostivus Frost
Ionic Vapor	Ionic Vapor [gfycat.com]	Ionic Vapor	Ionic Vapor
New Bloom Celebration	New Bloom Celebration [gfycat.com]	New Bloom Celebration	New Bloom Celebration
Orbital Decay	Orbital Decay	Orbital Decay	Orbital Decay
Resonant Energy	Resonant Energy [gfycat.com]	Resonant Energy	Resonant Energy
Rubiline Sheen	Rubiline Sheen	Rubiline Sheen	Rubiline Sheen
Searing Essence	Searing Essence	Searing Essence	Searing Essence
Spirit of Earth	Spirit of Earth [gfycat.com]	Spirit of Earth	Spirit of Earth
Spirit of Ember	Spirit of Ember [gfycat.com]	Spirit of Ember	Spirit of Ember [gfycat.com]
Touch of Flame	Touch of Flame [gfycat.com]	Touch of Flame	Touch of Flame
Touch of Frost	Touch of Frost [gfycat.com]	Touch of Frost	Touch of Frost
Touch of Midas	Touch of Midas [gfycat.com]	Touch of Midas	Touch of Midas
Trail of Burning Doom	Trail of Burning Doom [gfycat.com]	Trail of Burning Doom	Trail of Burning Doom
Trail of the Amanita	Trail of the Amanita [gfycat.com]	Trail of the Amanita	Trail of the Amanita [gfycat.com]
Trail of the Lotus Blossom	Trail of the Lotus Blossom	Trail of the Lotus Blossom	Trai

Gems that don't work

Champion's Aura 2013

Divine Essence

Ethereal Flame

Luminous Gaze

Piercing Beams

Sunfire

Triumph of Champions

Thankful credits

Users from reddit

/u/unknown321123 for many of the images with cm and some wards with some programming effort!

/u/4nglo Tested several gems as well as testing an Ionic Vapor gem.

And many more! (Please remind me if you helped!)

Thank you everyone for your effort!

[R1vLan]

[H] ITEMS BUGGED [W] OFFERS
ONLY COLLETORS
Low offers = blocked

[ZELENAYAzhabka]

LF any of bugged items
just send me ur offer

[Mirror of your eyes]

amazIng work, is there any market place you can find/but those? could not find one. Even a Chinese fine

[Hr. Sammler]

wow

[Alshayea]

[W] Bugged wards
[H] what you need

[SlayeR]

hello looking for bug items if you have check my profile thank you <3

[saiks]

Want to buy some
dm me

[PUPPET MASTER]

Look bugged items or ward write comment on my profile

[✪ 𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕓𝕚𝕝]

[H] $___$
[W] BUGGED WARD

JUST MESSAGE ME OR COMMENT ON MY PROFILE

[benji]

Looking for flaming treants for NP