Welcome everyone to the first edition of a weekly Team Fortress 2 item wrap-up that I am calling “The Drop Reset Report.” I am BobbyDigi and I am addicted to TF2 and collecting items therein. I follow the news, rumors and conversation that revolves around new and updated items and plan to fill you in each Thursday after the drop system resets. Now, on with this week’s news.
October 9, 2012 Patch
Sit down collectors—if it didn’t already hit your radar, this one is going to knock you flat. Along with two new Mann Vs. Machine tours and badges to go with them, the update on Tuesday introduced four new sets of Botkiller Weapons! Thirty-six new guns have entered the fray. Before now, there were only two sets of Botkillers; Regular, which have now been renamed Silver, and Gold. By completing the Operation Steel Trap tour, players are awarded a trophy in the form of a Silver Botkiller Weapon, with a small chance that a Gold version is granted. Now both the new tours have new guaranteed trophies and a new rare versions as well. By completing Operation Oil Spill—the new intermediate tour—players are guaranteed a Rusty Botkiller Weapon with a chance at a rare Blood version. The new expert tour—Operation Gear Grinder—promises a Carbonado Botkiller Weapon with a chance at a Diamond version. This totals 54 Botkiller weapons for players to collect. As with the original sets, all Botkillers continue to be Strange quality.
The Rusty and Carbonado Botkillers will probably end up pretty easy to get a hold of. The Silver Botkillers fetch one to three keys currently, with the Scattergun being the more popular/expensive weapon and the Stickybomb Launcher being the least. It will be interesting to watch the Blood and Diamond weapons as they seem like they will be high demand items due to their looks. The Gold Botkillers have steadily gone down in price, from more than twenty keys during the week of release to less than ten recently, but they have had a constant flow of supply. Not everyone is going to play the new tours as much as Steel Trap, causing the supply to not be as big and with Gear Grinder being as difficult as it is, the demand to trade for the Diamond weapons will be high. That is a recipe for some expensive trophy guns.
The Current Botkiller Weapon Heads and Tour Badges
Preorder Deliciousness
Five new items in Genuine quality were available until Tuesday. The two games that introduced the new Genuine promo items became available on Steam, cutting off the ability to grab those items in Genuine quality.
Those who preordered XCOM: Enemy Unknown received three genuine items.
- Area 451 – An alien head for Pyro. The name being a nod to both Area 51—rumored alien crash site—and Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 and its burning books.
- Crafty Hair – A flattop hairdo based on the soldiers in the original X-COM. It’s tall and yellow by default. Want your Scout or Soldier to look like Guile from Street Fighter? This is the hat for you.
- Vigilant Pin – A generic looking pin with some stars on it.
Anyone that ponied up the $60 for a Dishonored pre-order received two Genuine items.
- Lacking Moral Fiber Mask – A spy gas mask modeled after the mask worn by Corvo Attano, a disgraced bodyguard in the game.
- Whale Bone Charm – Yet another pin. This one is styled after the whale bone charms in Dishonored.
The XCom items seem to have a bad rep already, with quite a few players writing them off as ugly. In the past this has lead to some rare items as players who are not interested in the game do not buy it and less of the item make it into the Mannconomy. The Lacking Moral Fiber Mask, on the other hand, seems well received but is still rare due to the $60 price tag on the game to get it. My sources show around 2500 of each of the XCom items made it into player’s backpacks while less than 1700 of the two Dishonored items are out there. That makes The Lacking Moral Fiber Mask the rarest Genuine hat to date.
Total War Items
On the weekend ending September 30th, Steam held a sale revolving around the Total War game series. Those who already owned or purchased the games were granted items in Genuine quality in TF2 based on the specific games. If a player either purchased the Total War Master Collection or owned all the games in the collection they were granted a new all-class melee weapon: The Freedom Staff. The Genuine versions became tradable and all seven of the items were added to the Mann Co Store and became craftable on Tuesday.
More than 10,000 of each of the Genuine hats and miscellaneous items were given out during the sale but only less than 4,500 people ended up with all the games or purchased the collection. This makes the Genuine Freedom Staff the third rarest Genuine weapon, only shadowed by The Genuine Maul and Genuine Robo-Sandvich. Due to the fact that The Freedom Staff became craftable by any class melee recipe (only costing eight weapons), it took less than an hour for the craft number on to be in the hundreds. One lucky player, Reddit user MagicalKillaCow, crafted #1, 2 and 3 Freedom Staff. He reports that a collector has since purchased #1 from him for $250.
Mann Co. Supply Crate Series #49
Crate 49 started dropping on Tuesday, holding three Strange weapons, three new Strange parts, and two not-so-new hats. The Strange Scattergun is available once again, and alongside it are two never-before-Strange weapons, The Strange Shovel and The Strange Homewrecker. The Strange parts are; Engineers killed, Low Health Kills and Robots Destroyed. The Surgeon’s Stahlhelm for the Medic and the Furious Fukaamigasa for the Soldier are #49’s available hats.
The Strange Scattergun has held its value around three keys since it stopped being available when crate series #23 stopped dropping over a year ago. It being in a current crate will make the value plummet. Many a soldier has waited patiently for The Strange Shovel, and helpful Pyros should revel in the combination of The Strange Homewrecker and the Sappers Destroyed Strange Part that is still available in series #47 crates. The Robots Destroyed Strange Part will probably be popular on the Botkiller Weapons. Players can finally tally how many of those motherless bastards they have killed.
Small Change
- The Champ Stamp, King of Scotland Cape, Stovepipe Sniper Shako, and Freedom Staff received updates to their materials/models.
- The “Sappers Removed” strange part can now be attached to The Gunslinger.
- Crate Series #44 will not drop anymore.
- Eight new Mysterious Promo bundles were added to the game files.
Wrap it up
In terms of TF2 items, Tuesday was huge. Thirty-nine new weapons, three new hats and some items that have not been available for a while are available again. Be sure to share your thoughts on the new items in the comments below. This is Digi signing off. Keep on grabbing those items and I’ll see you next week right here on The Drop Reset Report.
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