Winter Crate Poll Results

Nothing earth shattering here with a fairly even distribution of the new crates.  Valve throws in some of the others for good measure.

Naughty crates	660 (55%)
Nice crates	672 (56%)
Series #34	211 (17%)
Series #33	172 (14%)
Series #32	117 (9%)
Series #30 (salvaged)	163 (13%)
I got a winter key too!	232 (19%)

Votes so far: 1193
Poll closed

New update...

Team Fortress 2

• Added community-created winter items to the drop lists, the craft tables, and the store
• Added the Spirit of Giving
• Gifts from Secret Saxtons and Piles o' Gifts now have a chance to grant a gift in addition to whatever item they would have granted normally
• Fixed hearing the deny sound while rotating a sentry during placement
• Manmelter balance tweaks:
  • Added particle effect on muzzle that appears when ready to fire
  • Increased projectile speed while maintaining the same travel arc
  • Increased extinguish range
• Added festive lights to all ropes and cables
• Fixed a problem that would sometimes allow the detonator projectiles to crit on burning targets
• Updated the localization files
• Updated the gamehaptics file:
  • Added draw/melee swing/melee hit/crit forces for the The Sharp Dresser and the Spy-cicle
  • Added draw/recoil/reload/crit forces for the Pomson 6000
  • Added draw/recoil/crit forces for the Manmelter
  • Added draw/recoil force for the Wrap Assassin
  • Added melee hit/world hit force for the Third Degree
  • Added crit forces for the Holiday Punch
  • Fixed missing forces for Demoman swords
  • Refined recoil force for the Sandman

Undocumented changes

• The Spirit of Giving and Secret Saxton have been distributed to all players.

Get coal for Christmas : win!

Valve continues to mix it up with more holiday madness (link here).  This is less a TF2 thing rather a Steam contest where they give away things like games, coupons on games and more.  Now you can get coal in your steam account.  Rack 7 of them up and craft them for a special Steam gift.  Or hold on to them where each coal is an entry into the Steam grand prize drawing on January 2nd.  Merry Christmas indeed!

Can I have a Holiday Headcase for Christmas, Santa?

Prices are starting to reveal themselves and we have again updated the Australian Christmas items.  The newer weapons are in high demand and can sell above the average prices listed.  However, these prices are what the majority of them are going for.  Strange Festive weapons are very expensive with respect to their non-festive counterparts.  May they go higher once they are no longer available?  Only Santa knows.

One interesting thing we are noticing is the premium traders are paying for festive keys in items.  Some profit-making trades are occurring with festive keys for hats/miscs/weapons.  This is not true for the metal equivalent for the keys.  Most trade in the 3 ref range, and slightly higher at times.

We await how and when Valve will release the final few winter items.  I don't know about you, but I want my Ebeneezer!  Trade on.

Holy Yule Log Mrs. Claus! 10 refined for a hat?

We are deep in the middle of Australian Christmas ladies and gents.  Popular items appear to be the Santa beard (All-Father) as well as the Brown Bomber hat.  You will notice we have been updating the sheet slowly with pricing that we verify several times over before it goes up.  Some items have not traded often or do so for prices with high variances.  The strange-festive items are particularly hard to pin down.  We'll put them up as their pricing becomes more definable.  Can you get a Spy-cicle for a scrap from someone?  Maybe, but most people are selling them in the 2 refined range, that's why its listed as such.  Some items are not released yet as well.  The B.M.O.C. is one of them.  When we know more we'll fill you in.  Carry on.  Happy trading. 

Prices, prices, prices

Where are all the prices on the new items?  Well as you know faithful traders, we want the market to sort itself out on these new items before we put any sort of guidance in.  Some items have an obvious range like the naughty/nice keys and crates.  We can confidently put those prices up, but until we get more pricing witnessed we are just going to let you all figure it out.  Some prices will start to trickle into the sheet tonight so keep your eyes peeled.  That is all.  Be merry.

Australian Christmas is here....

Team Fortress 2
- Australian Christmas has begun!
- Added community-contributed winter event items
- Added new Grordbort Pyro and Engineer item sets
- Added the "Valve Gift Grab 2011 – TF2" achievement
- Added Naughty and Nice winter keys to the Mann Co. store
- Added a new Valve-authored control point map: Foundry
- added 12 achievements for Foundry
- added achievement reward milestone reward for Foundry achievement
- Added UGC Highlander medals
- Relaxed some restrictions on what misc items can be equipped simultaneously
- Additional improvements for client stability
- Updated the localization files

Part 1 here.

Part 2 here.

Christmas update part 1 today/tonight...per wiki

As expected, pyro and engie get all the goods for this round.  Wiki has most of the information here, you can piece together the rest.

New Poll: Naughty & Nice...

New poll for drop day Wednesday....naughty and nice crates.  We don't know what Valve's up to exactly and that's what makes it fun, so let's get a sampling of what drops are happening out there in TF2 land.  Share what comes into your BP.  You can select multiple answers and change your answer as the week progresses.  Keep in mind this poll is for the drop week starting December 14th and ending December 21st.  That is all.

New TF2 blog post....more Christmas shenanigans...

Gotta love Valve.  Hell, they make boatloads of cash on TF2 but they deserve it!  They constantly put out content and don't rely on anything in the past to keep the game going.  Engie has some Australian Christmas revelations with pyro.  New pyro flamethrower looks clear.  Link here.

A good site to visit: Skial.com

There are lots of servers and trade forums.  One we came upon that we found by pure accident was skial.com and their trade server.  They have a strong international following so a trader can get a more worldly view of pricing, not just the US where a lot of us reside.   Interestingly their trading server map uses our little spreadsheet (although an older version but we're working on getting them updated!) as its background!  Pretty cool, you should check it out.  In your TF2 server search window look for "skial".

Also, check out their trade forums here.  We like the rule "only complain about an item's price once per thread".  Genius!

Official: key waiting period removed for recent purchasers

With a little digging and help from you we can say that keys are now officially tradeable upon purchase for anyone who made a recent purchase within 30 days.  However, as we already posted NEW accounts will have to wait until your credit card is verified or they catch you skimming cards.

Thanks to Sterling Peoples.  Link here.

Server vs. Forum pricing

One thing I'd like to comment on today is the occasional discrepancy between the prices for items on trade servers and the pricing on forums.  Often the in-game price for items will be further away from the market price in both directions than forums.   Why is this?  It's very simple really: on a trade server the motivation is to move items more in the moment and to a smaller audience.  Everyone streams to trade servers once new items are released and promos are unlocked.  This is the place to get high variance from market pricing.  Traders with 'hot' items will unload them to the impulse buyer.  Traders with 'not so hot' items will look to just sell them to craft or upgrade their items.

Posting to a forum works as a wait and see situation potentially to a larger audience.  There are many thousands of users who look at forums while away from their gaming pc/mac.  They aren't buying or selling on impulse most of the time and pricing will be closer to market.  New items can be pricy on forums but similarly to trading on a server there is a short window of time for this.

Carry on.

We screwed the pooch! (and site update)

To err is human, so they say.  And to put it simply we are embarrassed to not have caught the Spine Chilling Skull 2010 error on price.  While his name will remain nameless, someone (Alex) mistakenly put the 2011's price in for the 2010 hat (which was around a Bills hat or 6-7 keys at the time).  That said, we will remove the price for this hat temporarily until the market decides what the hat is worth again.  These hats trade slowly so it may be a bit until we re-update that price.

Thanks to several people for catching this: "Sterling Peoples" who contacted us directly and a few on the forums, "Traveler74", and "corporate tax" and "KingOfMars27" on SPUF.  Our apologies for the confusion and kudos to the smart traders who caught it.  We changed the label for the older version to include the year 2010 to make sure this doesn't happen again!

That said, we can announce some progress on our site update.  We expect to have work completed by mid-January.  Some long-awaited improvements are on their way, including better searching as well as other improvements.  We'll keep the major details under wraps until then but as we said it will address many of the concerns that we have heard from you.

New update, get crafting!

Team Fortress 2

• Fixed wearable gibs spawning outside of the map
• Fixed some missing strings for the Backwards Ballcap
• Updated these items so they can be crafted and traded:
  • The Dr. Whoa
  • The Dashin' Hashshashin
  • The Sharp Dresser
  • The Point and Shoot
  • The War Head
• Updated the localization files 

Undocumented changes

• Added Naughty & Nice Winter Crates. 

Source Engine Changes (TF2, DoD:S, HL2:DM)

• Added video options UI for Windows Vista / Windows 7 DirectX extensions. Disabling the extensions will increase memory usage, but can improve compatibility with video drivers.

Store price vs. TF2 trading price

TF2 trader Shadow brings up a good point, store prices vs. TF2 trading prices:

Shadow said...
"Dude there's a mistake there infernal impaler (clean) should be 7-8 refined and the dirty one 4-6 just like the aspector they are the same price on the store."

Sometimes when an item first enters the marketplace it is close to its store price (or if its a promo from a game, its game price).  However, this is NOT always the case.  Moreover, two items from the same promo or the same price at the store can have completely different demand on them. 

Case in point as Shadow brings up the Infernal Impaler and the Apparitions Aspect.  For whatever reason people seem to place more DEMAND on the Aspect.  Therefore a higher price can be asked for it.  It's not complicated but a lot of traders have trouble with this and sometimes its hard to rationalize.

Your eternal blog post

The new crates having been out a couple days and the marquee item is clearly the new strange Your Eternal Reward.  Not particularly surprising, as the "unique" or regular, dropped version is consistently one of those items people actually pay a scrap for (along with the Original, Huntsman, and whatever is new).  Also, Your Eternal Reward has been one of the best selling items in the store.  Maybe some of you spy gurus can shed some light on this for us.  Just de-cloak and jot down a few words.

More later.

Update to the update...new crates!

Team Fortress 2

• Added the Itsy Bitsy Spyer
• Added a "Buy Now" feature that allows item purchases on the web
• WebAPI changes:
  • Moved IEconAssets/GetAssetPrices to ISteamEconomy/GetAssetPrices
  • Added new web API ISteamEconomy/GetAssetClassInfo for getting descriptions of items

Undocumented Changes

• Added Mann Co. Supply Crate Series #33 and #34, and series #29 and #31 no longer drop. 
• Teddy Roosebelt and the Pocket Medic are now labelled as a "Pocket Buddy"

New update: Itsy bitsy spyer?

Team Fortress 2 Update Released

Product Update - Valve

 

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

• Added the Itsy Bitsy Spyer
• Added a "Buy Now" feature that allows item purchases on the web
• WebAPI changes:
  • Moved IEconAssets/GetAssetPrices to ISteamEconomy/GetAssetPrices
  • Added new web API ISteamEconomy/GetAssetClassInfo for getting descriptions of items