General Discussionwithin this year I might be offline for 3-9 months at a time

yes

My cousin says his dota would eventually ask for an update after a month of being offline and would not be playable. Isn't this true?

only if u ever connect to the internet, and i think even then you can go back offline and play offline

http://www.mabzicle.com/2014/12/how-to-play-dota2-in-offline-mode-or-no-internet.html

Thanks for the link. Looks like so much trouble for just to keep this game running offline but this will come useful eventually 👍

I had run dota 2 offline for 1 year though. Just dun open steam when you're connected to internet.

going on a ship?

You can't run it within a week or so being after offline. You can run Dota via exe steamapps>common>dota 2 beta>game>bin>win 32/64>dota under Steam folder.You need to launch Steam in offline though (but even though Steam doesn't let you play, u can play via executable file of Dota, even while your Dota update is queued.) (No problem opening Steam while online xD).
source: own experience

@TU_MAMA420 i hope im not jinxing myself with this but at the very least i am expecting so...

@captain didn't you have to do some weird console shit just to make it run?

Yeah I did some console but that was about 2 years ago when I still in high school. So idk if it still work now but might try this:

So to do this you'll need to enable console first by right clicking Dota 2 in steam and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Launch Options" and type in "-console". Click OK and close, you can start the game now and it should take you to something similiar to this screen.
Open console and enter this

sv_cheats 1
sv_lan 1
dota_bot_set_difficulty 4
dota_start_ai_game 1
dota_force_gamemode 1 * All Pick = 1 * Captains Mode = 2 * Random Draft = 3 * Single Draft = 4 * All Random = 5 * INTRO = 6 *
Diretide = 7 * Reverse Captains Mode = 8 * Greeviling = 9 * Tutorial = 10 * Mid Only = 11 * Least Played =
12 * Limited Heroes = 13 * Compendium = 14 * Captains Draft = 16 * Balanced Draft = 17 * Ability Draft =
18 * All Random Death Match = 20 * 1 VS 1 Solo-Mid = 21 * All Pick (Ranked) = 22 ( change "1" to any
above)
map dota.bsp
jointeam good/bad

I did that like a month ago.