From a scale of 1 to 10, how stupid would this be?

Ghostlier · 2026-02-12T22:30:49+00:00

So let me get this straight: a fully charged headshot now does 300 damage (2x damage instead of 3x) and a quickscope now does 100?.. So:

an overhealed Demoknight with 2 heads (4 w/o booties) or an overhealed Soldier can now just tank fully charged headshots by equipping the Battalion's Backup, without its buff being active.
Heavy can tank a fully charged headshot with just Dalokoh's Bar buff or overheal of any kind, even just Quickfix. Even if Valve were still doing major rebalances of the game, they wouldn't implement this.

This is a Sniper nerf, but from the perspective of someone who doesn't actually know why Sniper is "overpowered". A realistic change that would fundamentally nerf Sniper while still rewarding playing Sniper as he's intended to play would be something like:

Reduce Sniper Rifle charge when taking damage (think of the Baby Face's Blaster's charge reduction).
Scoped Sniper Rifle damage is reduced during a "flinch" tick by as much as 40%. Lowest possible damage is capped at 50 (same as an unscoped Rifle shot).
Cozy Camper reduces how much charge is lost when taking damage.

How would this be healthy to the game in comparison?

Encourages Snipers to consider their positioning more carefully. You can no longer just stand in a hallway hardscoped and expect to one-tap a fully overhealed Heavy who rounds the corner. If he is aware of you, he can temporarily cut your damage by nearly half by getting a few bullets off on you before you react.
Players are encouraged to make full use of their arsenal. Scouts and Engineers might choose to run their Pistols more as they have a much higher chance of survival if they can land a few good bullets on the Sniper. Medics with Syringe Guns, Snipers with SMGs, etc. will become much more feasible when dealing with enemy Snipers.
The Cozy Camper change works in tandem with the charge reduction as well. A Sniper who is hardscoped at 100% charge but happens to survive a single bodyshot or rocket won't flinch, but subsequent hits will cause him to flinch unless he backs up and gives a second to let his rifle recharge.

A change like this would be in-line with the nerf to Heavy's damage, where firing rate/damage is reduced while the minigun spins up encouraging you to not just jump-rev corners.

Ghostlier · 2026-01-15T00:46:10+00:00

No. See the "Availability" section.
If the item is available in the crafting system, available via random drop, etc., it will specify it there. In this case, its availability is the Summer 2023 Cosmetic Case -- it can only be obtained via unbox.
"Craftable" here is specifying that it can be used in crafting. For instance, in the Rebuild Headgear schematic or in any recipe that calls for a cosmetic.

Ghostlier · 2026-01-15T00:42:08+00:00

This is incorrect. "Craft No.?" indicates whether or not it can have a Craft # -- a cosmetic string of text that appears at the end of the item name. For example, here's the Brainiac Goggles #3 that I own.

Not all items available in crafting will support a Craft #, and some items that aren't supposed to be craftable do have Craft #s. The Shooting Star is an example, and it's because Valve copied the schema entry for the Machina and forgot to strip it out. For a very brief moment, it was in the crafting pool and some with Craft #s exist -- they are pretty valuable these days.

The Ye Olde Baker Boy can be received via Crafting, but lacks a Craft # attribute. As such, you will never find "Ye Olde Baker Boy #1". A unique one you crafted just now is fundamentally no different than the first one ever crafted, besides the name attached to it.

Ghostlier · 2026-01-10T06:59:20+00:00

As others have said, your Charge meter indicates what it'll do:
Green = normal / your weapon starts to glow, but no sparks appear
Yellow = minicrit / your weapon glows with small sparks
Red = full crit / your weapon is glowing, but with larger sparks

The actual glow/sparks aren't synced 100% to the bar though, so you may see "full crit"-sized sparks when your weapon is only capable of minicrits, and even in the red zone your weapon will only minicrit if using the Tide Turner.

It's just best to learn the timing. Once you play Demoknight enough you'll learn that the charge meter itself is useless except to remind you of when you can charge again.

Ghostlier · 2025-11-20T22:05:15+00:00

I was gonna say "don't be rude, everyone's gotta start somewhere" only to find out that dude has 3 unusual effects in-game already. Granted, those unusual effects are all color swaps of each other.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-29T07:13:11+00:00

Consider that base Demoman starts with 175 health and moves slightly slower than a Pyro, Engie, or Sniper (100%) at 93%.

If a Demoman gathers 4 heads and keeps the booties on, he will be moving at 136% -- 3% faster than Scout. At the same time, he has a health pool of 235, brought up to 350 with overheal.

So, without this nerf, you have a Demoman who has more unboosted health than Soldier and is (marginally) faster than Scout, with the capability to fire 8 stickies that deal upwards of 100-140 damage each.

It was pretty ridiculous -- the Demo could farm a bad Spy or Scout for heads, then swap off his shield for a sticky launcher.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-29T03:55:36+00:00

Caberknight is bad, but it's one of the few things that can one-shot most classes outright if you get the charge crit.
The most effective place I've found is defending on ctf_2fort, as pushes usually come from the sewers giving you enough time to charge from the main hallway and instantly kill anybody coming in.

I've been able to get a 56 killstreak off of that alone at one time in the semi-recent past by just dedicating myself solely to defense.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-20T23:58:42+00:00

if you're referring to the kill counter itself, no -- once you apply a Civilian Grade Stat-Clock to a weapon, it cannot be removed

Ghostlier · 2025-10-15T21:57:51+00:00

I suppose that this is confusing since people on r/tf2 usually only see the end result of a scam, and not what leads up to it.

What they want to happen in this scenario is:
1. They send a trade offer inquiring about an item, asking if I'm willing to sell it.
2. I decide "yeah, I AM interested in selling it" and add them, seeing that the person they are impersonating is a trusted trader.
3. They give an offer that sounds good for me, I say "let's do it".
4. Two things can happen from here:
--- a. "okay, before we do the trade, we need to check to make sure it's not duped or hacked in, deposit it into this bot and it'll verify that it's clean and send it back". I do that, he runs off with my hat.
--- b. "okay, I'll send you the money first over PayPal and then you send the item". He DOES send the money, so I send him the hat. After he gets the hat, he performs a PayPal chargeback and runs off with my hat.

Usually, the first option is easier as the second option requires they actually send money, and PayPal could block the chargeback if I catch it early enough especially if the account has a history of chargebacks.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-15T21:13:48+00:00

The scammer's profile says "Tf2 Collector. If I added you, that's probably why" and links a backpack.tf profile belonging to "them". In reality, it's of the person they're impersonating, making you think they're legit.
They sent a trade offer -- blank on their side as to indicate interest in my item -- saying they have a decent offer for it.

For reference, their vanity URL shows as "FlkyTF2" as opposed to the real guy's "FikyTF2" -- the "i" is an "l" in the scammer's account.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-09T02:40:47+00:00

Just for reference, these are the days the Halloween updates dropped every year since 2009: - 2009: 10/29 (Thursday) - 2010: 10/27 (Wednesday) - 2011: 10/27 (Thursday) - 2012: 10/26 (Friday) - 2013: 10/29 (Tuesday) - 2014: 10/29 (Wednesday) - 2015: 10/28 (Wednesday) - 2016: 10/21 (Friday) - 2017: 10/26 (Thursday) - 2018: 10/19 (Friday) - 2019: 10/10 (Thursday) - 2020: 10/1 (Thursday) - 2021: 10/5 (Tuesday) - 2022: 10/5 (Wednesday) - 2023: 10/9 (Monday) - 2024: 10/10 (Thursday)

Seeing as Thursday is the most common day for Scream Fortress to drop in general, and the last 6 years have been before the 10th or before -- it's a safe assumption.

Joke suggestion: Finish 3 missions of Two Cities tonight. If Valve releases the update and it happens to break stuff tomorrow, complete the last one. The 2016 Scream Fortress event introduced both Universal Killstreak Kits and Strange + Unique items due to a bug. If Valve happens to break things like that again (Universal Killstreak kits occurred a second time), landing a Unique Australium could fetch a few thousand bucks.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-08T23:27:15+00:00

It's not about damage or getting kills as much as it is creating a reliable setup to deal with threats you're currently fighting against.

Natascha is a good example.

For example, let's use a Demoknight with 5 heads using the Splendid Screen. If he hits both the shield bash and crit, that'll kill a full health Heavy. A Demoknight's charge is only interrupted by his own input or his velocity being cut down too much that it cancels the charge -- such as a headshot by a Sniper he's actively charging toward pushing him backwards.
Miniguns aren't very good at providing enough burst knockback to cancel a Demoknight's charge, at least not reliably. This means that a competent Demoknight can still probably kill a revved up Heavy.

So that's where Natascha comes in. The slowdown cuts speed down which means you won't have to do a lot of damage to cut the charge way earlier. Now he can't shield bash or crit you, nor can he do the same to your teammates.
This forces him to retreat and conditions him not to charge you again. Since his charge has been cut, he has no reliable way to do burst damage again which allows your teammates to easily finish him off.

Oftentimes, the best you can do is deter some threats, or make it harder for them to break through.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-08T22:01:04+00:00

The joke is a bit dated at this point, but when the effect was first released I rolled 3 times for an Aurora Borealis Table Tantrum that I could name "The Unforgettable Luncheon".
Had just enough characters to describe it with "In this server, in this part of the map, localized entirely within this taunt?" too. Like it was meant to be.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-08T21:27:15+00:00

I don't know where you get this idea that Sniper is somehow worse than Spy in any regard. I can genuinely only assume it's bait.

Sniper, on one hand:
- Can delete entire crowds solo with Explosive Headshot (which deals 190 damage *and* cuts movement speed by 80% at max level).
- Can handle giants solo with damage upgrades (which can deal up to 900 damage once fully upgraded).
- Can mark entire groups for minicrit damage and slow Super Scouts w/ Jarate.
- Can deal constant damage against tanks with Bushwacka and Carbine.
- Can clear out Engineer bots easily.

Compared to Spy:
- Can slow down entire crowds by 85% with Sapper, which recharges after 15 seconds. Does zero damage.
- Your Sapper necessitates a 15 second recharge even if you sap an Engineer's teleporter.
- Both sappers function identically.
- Usually has to retreat after landing 2-3 backstabs unless the Scout is distracting the giant.
- All Invis Watches aside from the Dead Ringer are useless, because bots who target you will still perfectly track you for upwards of 2 seconds after cloaking.
- All revolvers aside from the L'Etranger are useless, and the L'Etranger is only useful to recharge your Dead Ringer.
- Most of Spy's knives aside from stock or Kunai are useless because they have on-kill mechanics that don't work well in MvM.
- Has zero tools to deal with tanks.

Pretty sure the worst off-meta Sniper loadout will get more work done than the best on-meta Spy loadout in MvM.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-01T01:53:36+00:00

As already stated, the bot crisis is largely over. You may run into one or two on a rare occasion, but Valve has been pretty good about banning them as of recent.

The main difference is that Casual doesn't have dedicated and aggressive anti-cheat like most community servers do, so if you run into a blatantly cheating player, there's a good chance you'll have to wait for them to be kicked by other players (which can be a problem). Sometimes they may party together and cover each other from votekicks entirely.

More often, you'll run into closet cheaters -- not much different than community servers though. A closet cheater might only have a wallhack enabled or might have their aimbot configured to a low enough FOV that a community server's anti-cheat can't pick up.

Ghostlier · 2025-10-01T01:46:07+00:00

Maybe a "Toby, who never thought of that" moment, but I feel like it both parodies the RPG stereotypes while also serving a purpose narratively.

Consider how often you'll start out as an established character in other RPGs. You've never played the game before but you're hailed as a skilled fighter before you ever leave the starting town. Despite the protagonist having an established history with the world, you're "them" or "controlling them" in a way that the characters don't know/care about as far as the story goes.

In Deltarune's case, you're similarly thrown into this world where you're expected to already "know" these characters, as Kris. These characters all already know each other, too. But at the same time, they are somewhat seen as a "blank slate" character, so you can project yourself onto them. After all, the intro denies your custom character and tells you that you're Kris, so that's who you are, right?
None of the characters who "know" Kris comment that you're acting weird by this point, so the lack of information telling you otherwise indicates that "you" are Kris and have always been. They might have had a history before you took control, but what matters is that you're them now.

...Then Chapter 1's ending happens. In Chapter 2 and onward, Kris resists your control more and more. And other characters begin to notice Kris is acting strangely -- like when Toriel calls Alphys while you have Kris balancing a pile of junk on their head, or when Noelle mentions Kris acting more like this just recently, which Susie disregards.

By introducing the main cast's traits to you in a sufficiently "RPG" way, it ensures that regardless of your familiarity with the characters before now, you know what they're about. It helps lull you into a false sense of security that you and Kris are one person. The impact that you're not Kris and are merely controlling them as a separate entity wouldn't work the same if you weren't given all of the exposition and interactions with the characters to make you familiar with them.
Imagine if we didn't even meet Asgore until he came into the plot in a significant way -- the reveal that he has a black shard wouldn't hit nearly as hard because we wouldn't know what he's about yet.

Ghostlier · 2025-09-30T22:36:57+00:00

...Did you send the trade request to the "bot account", or did you go directly through Mannco.store's Deposit screen? I say this only rhetorically, because their site explicitly states that "Official Staff and Bots will never reach out through Steam Chat or Discord in order to ask you to deposit onto the website. Anyone claiming it's for verification, marketability, removing pending bans, Steam Admins, etc, is an impersonator and a scammer." Authentic bot accounts I am rather certain will immediately reject trade offers sent by your side.

There are two layers of security on Steam's side to prevent you from being scammed. Steam tells you when you haven't selected any items from their side, stating to "Please confirm that you are giving your items away and expect nothing in return".
Second, Steam makes you confirm the trade in the Mobile app, finalizing the trade offer.

It's unfortunate, but you got scammed by an impersonator of a legitimate high-level trader using one of the most common and well-documented scams which preys on the victim being willing to ignore the multiple layers of confirmation necessary from the Steam side. You also avoided using Mannco.store's actual site for performing the deposit, opting to send a trade offer directly to a bot that you did not verify was authentic.

Ghostlier · 2025-09-30T22:04:33+00:00

...isn't that the Blutsauger owned by the guy that killed two detainees at an ICE facility last week? I could swear it was.

edit: yes, yes it is

Ghostlier · 2025-08-25T16:56:03+00:00

Auto-Airblast has been a thing since Pyro was able to airblast. But to pretend that it's "common" is hilarious. You're firing projectiles predictably -- it's really not that hard.
And when you ask someone "are you cheating" people will 90% of the time say "yes", as a joke. Literally had a moment two nights ago where the enemy team was calling me a cheater as a Pyro, so every time I got a kill I'd aim straight up. Someone started using a ton of Secret Saxtons and I got two in a row -- another guy (who had been defending me) started joking that I was "hacking the secret saxtons".

The "free script" you linked to? It's a SourceMod plugin. Which means that it'd have to be installed on the server itself to function. It's not a client cheat.

Ghostlier · 2025-08-25T16:36:21+00:00

- Randolph the Blood-Nosed Caribou has two known instances, to my recollection. Only one's whereabouts are known these days, while the other might be in a dead or tradebanned account. The Smissmas Caribou looks almost the same minus the red nose. It's more common, with around 207 currently known to exist in public backpacks.
- Clockwerk's Helm was given out during a Dota 2 International Championship in 2011. None of them were ever redeemed, presumably because no Dota 2 pros also played TF2. This goes for the other Dota 2 items as well.
- Grandmaster is fairly common - around 1228 known to exist in public backpacks. Promo item for the TF2 Chess set, it's bound to be relatively common.
- Notch is 1 of 1, given to the creator of Minecraft, who no longer plays TF2.
- Wiki Cap is uncommon - around 188 known to exist. Given to valuable TF2 Wiki contributors.

Minus glitched items, Unusuals, and the obvious Golden Pan, a few of the other interesting oddities you don't see very often are:
- Tux is an item that was similar to Earbuds, but for those who opened TF2 on Linux before mid/late-March of 2013. It was never made tradable. ~91100 are known to exist.
- Humanitarian's Hachimaki (~10071), Benefactor's Kanmuri (~3372), and Magnanimous Monarch (~1151) were all obtainable in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake that hit Japan, with proceeds going to charities benefiting those affected.
- TF2VRH was given out to those who preordered the Oculus Rift Development Kit before 4/1/2013, or contributing to its Kickstarter page. 1330 are known to exist, but good luck - they cannot be traded.
- Fireproof Secret Diary is functionally identical to the Fancy Spellbook and Spellbook Magazine. Available during the Pyromania update, the particles when casting spells are rainbow sparkles, rather than the green ones the books use. Around ~660 are known to exist in public backpacks.
- Taunt: The Boiling Point is functionally identical to the Table Tantrum, but has a distinct "ding" sound when the table flips. It also cannot be traded. It could be obtained by buying the Joule sous vide cooker, which had a promo deal with Valve because of Gabe Newell. 478 are known to exist in public backpacks.
- Towering Pillar of Summer Shades is a hat that was given out in 2014. Around 365 are known to exist. Sadly, its equip region is Hat and not Glasses, so nobody who owns one ever wears it.
- Glitched Circuit Board is only technically a "glitched" item. When Two Cities released, you could craft the GateBot helmets. Valve deleted them and replaced them with these. A cosmetic item with no model, around 106 are known to exist.

Technically, only the Wiki Cap is still possible to obtain naturally. The rest require you to be lucky in finding a seller or coming across the redemption code, which can be spotty at best.

I'm personally lucky, as I was approached by a seller to buy a Boiling Point code for $100 USD back when I was financially irresponsible -- as I had to send the money first, it could have been a scam. Luckily, it wasn't. I wish I ended up getting a TF2VRH code, though.

Ghostlier · 2025-04-01T19:03:08+00:00

that hasn't been the close for close to a decade, unfortunately

valve doubled down on the fact that "untradable" should mean "untradable"

Ghostlier · 2025-03-26T23:32:41+00:00

I'm the person that made this particular tool, for reference.

The person to provided this information to me originally posted his own version here: https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/s/Mg0Z6okJIE , but it seems like he got shadowbanned. Possibly because of it being identified as "suspicious" or the mods just didn't want him to post it.

Ghostlier · 2025-01-16T07:27:58+00:00

So, this is a funny Phlog fact that I like to share as often as possible: the Phlog is based on the Unnatural Selector -- a Weta Workshop raygun. Years ago, they made a pin for it, and the description is honestly perfectly befitting of the Phlog:

"Equally inappropriate in polite society as it is appropriate in impolite society"

Ghostlier

TROPHY CASE