Unlocking New Team Fortress 2 Weapons - Spy/Sniper/All

Team Fortress 2 just changed the way players unlock new weapons. It used to be people had to finish a certain amount of Achievments to unlock their classes new weapon. For example, a scout would have to finish 10 of 38 achievements to unlock the first new weapon.

Now Valve made the new weapons collected by RANDOM DROP, much like MMO (everquest, World of Warcraft) games do. This means that in order to get the new spy or sniper weapons you have to pub for weeks in order to get them.

Seeing how i play Spy for my TF2's clan, i really wanted the new spy weapons. I pubbed for about 10 hours and got 16 random new weapons, all of which i had previously unlocked and many were duplicates.None of them were the spy or sniper updates. This pissed me off. I have been trolling steam forum's TF2 page and found the easiest way to unlock the weapons, which you can find below:

1. Launch TF2, go to Options --> Video ---> and under Display Mode click Run in a Window. This will let you play tf2 in windowized mode, letting you alt tab and keep "playing" the game while you do other stuff on your computer.

2. Join a server named achievement_idle, if everyone is spectating join them or if they are sitting in the respawn join them there.

3. Play as scout and type in console the following: "+forward" and also "+right". This will have your scout run around in a circle and keeps you moving so you can also work on the achievement run 25,000 kilometers.

4. Alt Tab out to windows and wait. I tried this earlier for 2 hours and got 2 weapons (which i already had.) If you leave this over night you can probably get a lot of weapons.

Also note that i tried creating my own server and connected it to Vac and sat in the server alone for 8 hours and did not get any achievements. This is when i found the idle map and discovered thats the best way to get it.

1. Click on Find Server.

2. At the bottom, click on Change Filters.

3. Make sure you have the following deselected: Server Not Full. Make sure you have the following selected: Has users playing and Is not password protected. Make sure you do not have the Latency too low like under 50, make it nothing, 100 or 200.

4. Where it says Map, type in achievement_idle. This will only allow those servers with that map playing.

5. You will probably find about 5-15 servers. Most of them will be full. What you need to do is find about 4 of them or however many you want and right click on the server name and Connect to Server. If the server is full, try to auto-rejoin, make sure it is not set to ALERT, make it auto-join. Do this for about 4-6 servers and you will eventually join one. It took me about 15 minutes to join 1 of the 5 servers.

6. As a added note, when joining a server look at how long the people have been in the server. Try to find one that has someone in the server for more then one hour.

I hope this helps everyone get their weapons sooner. I was really upset that valve decided to change the system and make it completely random on the update of my favorite class.

1. I want the spy weapons, should i play as spy?
Answer: No, it does not matter at this time. No matter what class you are it will not help getting certain weapons you want.

2. Do i have to run around or play to get weapons?
Answer: No, you can sit in a respawn all day long, heck you can even spectate and find weapons.

3. If i do really well can i get more weapons? Or if i do bad will i get less?
Answer: No, as of now there is no way to influence the randomness of the weapon drops. If you kill 100 people in a row it will not increase your chances to find more weapons.

4. Should i delete duplicate weapons?
Answer: NO! Make sure you keep duplicates unless your backpack is full! You will be able to trade weapons in a future update! So hold on to all weapons so you can trade them with friends.

5. How often can you get a weapon?
Answer: I believe its once every 30 minutes you will get the chance to receive a weapon. I think that at the 30 minute mark a random chance is generated for you. It appears to be let's say 30% chance you will find a weapon every 30 minutes. It also appears that the spy and sniper weapons drop less.

6. So why did Valve change the system?
Answer: Valve did not like people "grinding" away when new updates came out because almost half the servers would be playing which ever class upgrades were coming out. During the Scout update the first few days almost everyone was playing scout and it was rather annoying. Valve is trying to make the game more fun for new players and eliminate the grinding of achievements, so that is why they came out with this random drop method. It is a good method for new players, it sucks for experienced players that want the spy or sniper weapons.

7. When can we trade weapons?
Answer: The earliest is next week, latest would probably be a month hopefully. Also they are going to change the "randomness" of drops and make it more likely to get weapons you dont have, i believe.

Players talk about which weapons they got and how long they played the game

Discussion on the importance of achievement_idle map for the people

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