TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Hey, new stuff!

1. Halloween/Full Moon is in effect for the next seven calendar days.
2. “Limited” is now an item quality, to stand for items that were once craftable or purchasable and no longer can be.
3. There are five promotional Halloween/Full Moon restricted items that can be earned if you purchase the game Alien: Isolation from the Steam Store before October 7th, 2014. This one-player survival horror game is $49.99, with a $17.99 upgrade to Season Pass.
4. The following new items and changes to the item drop list are thus:
   • Two new crates, the Director’s Cut Reel and the Limited Late Summer Crate (#86) are added to the drop list.
     • The Limited Late Summer Crate cannot yet be opened, required a yet-unreleased special key.
     • The Director’s Cut Reel is like a combination of the Strongbox and the Audition Reel: It will drop one of four taunts when opened with a standard key, but you can input words to use to “roll” for different items. It drops from the same drop list of taunts as the Audition Reel.
   • The Audition Reel is removed from the drop list.
   • Items from the all-cosmetic Strongbox Pack, released back in February, are now craftable and buyable from the Mann Co. Store.
5. The rest of the patch notes.
   • The taunt for the Scorch Shot now shoots a projectile.  Apparently that was a bug!
   • New sounds for the Boston Basher.

1. Halloween Mode On for the Next Week

Why? Probably has something to do with the Alien-themed promotional items (see 3.).

2. “Limited” Item Quality

Items that cannot be crafted or bought in the Mann Co. Store (but had once been craftable or purchasable) are now given a new item quality prefix of “Limited” Quantity. This item quality doesn’t change the color of the item text, but the prefix is assumably added to all items to let people know that Valve seem to be making two promises: 1) More copies of a discontinued item will not be available, thus preserving the rarity (and thus the market value) of those items; and 2) Valve are helping the fanbase to easily identify items that are rare, or at least, cannot simply be bought or earned again.  Hopefully Valve remembers to tag all applicable items with the prefix!

3. Alien: Isolation Promo Items for TF2!

Now you can be Amanda Ripley, looking for your mama and trying not to become alien food and/or wear new Alien-themed hats in Team Fortress 2!   There are five items; three for the Scout, and two for the Pyro.  The Scout items dress him up in an Alien costume:

Scout cosmetic

Scout cosmetic

Scout cosmetic

Pyro cosmetic

Pyro cosmetic

Here’s the nifty part: one of the Pyro’s two items is a reskinned flamethrower! And a Pyro wearing both of his promo items will do more damage to Scouts that are wearing a set of three-Alien-promo items! But I don’t think that the three Scout items count as a set (like the Pyro’s), nor do they have any special effect.  All five items are Halloween/Full Moon restricted.

4. New Crates!

Yay!  But they can’t be opened yet.  Boo!

I’ll post an item list here when we can open them….

5. Full Patch Notes

• Added Alien: Isolation promo items^[1] and enabled Full Moon holiday for one week
• Added Limited Quantity Item attribute on items that can no longer be crafted or purchased through the Mann Co. Store
  • Limited Quantity Items can be placed on the Steam Community Market
• Removed Audition Reel from crate drop list
• Added Director’s Cut Reel to crate drop list
• Added Limited Late Summer Crate to crate drop list
• Fixed the Festive Bat using the lowest LOD for the first person view
• Fixed the Scorch Shot taunt attack not firing a projectile
• Fixed incorrect bumpmap setting for the Frenchman’s Beret
• Updated the equip_region for the Mustachioed Mann
• Updated sounds for the Boston Basher

Undocumented changes

• Changed the cosmetic items from the Strongbox Pack to be craftable, and added them to the Mann Co. Store.
• Fixed the incorrect description on Horace.
• Corrected the name of Community items on the web.

[N] Obey

Not a whole lot going on with this latest patch:

1. rd_asteroid was changed, and then repatched to the previous version.
2. pl_cactuscanyon temporarily removed its second stage.
3. Snipers can no longer jump immediately after firing a scoped shot.  This will change the dynamics of counter-sniping.
4. One new promo item: Horace!  It is not yet available.

Patch 1

• Added a new promo item^[1]
• Client/server memory improvements
• Fixed ragdolls not applying the ice/gold effect for cosmetic items
• Fixed the Australium Scattergun material looking pixelated
• Fixed some issues with clipped text in the localized versions
• Fixed the difficulty of the current challenge not displaying correctly in the MvM scoreboard
• Snipers can no longer jump immediately after firing a scoped shot
• Updated the materials for The Dalokohs Bar
• Updated the equip_region for The Dashin’ Hashshashin
• Updated the Stout Shako to fix a lighting problem
• Updated the localization files
• Updated rd_asteroid
  • Added line of sight blocker to the front doors to prevent Snipers on battlements from shooting into the bases
  • Removed reduced spawn time bonus for players that die in the enemy base
  • Moved interior battlements health and ammo further into the base
• Updated pl_cactuscanyon
  • Stage 2
    • Removed from the sequence so stage 1 links to stage 3
  • Stage 3
    • Added rollback to cart while in the train collision zone
    • Cart is now unavailable to push for a short period at the start
    • Adjust spawn times during the final push-pull
    • Pushed spawn gates forward in the right-side exits of Blu spawn
    • Adjusted cover surrounding the middle exit of Red spawn

Patch 2

Rolled back the previous changes to rd_asteroid

[N] Obey