TF2: Item Qualities [TF Trivia]

if you've spent any amount of time looking at your or anyone else's team fortress 2 inventory then you've probably noticed that item names will appear in various different colors these colors represent what is known as item qualities and they aren't just there for show with every color having a specific meaning behind it and as with all things in team fortress 2 some qualities are much rarer than others with their own history and interesting trivia behind them and just as a quick note before we get into it i do plan to cover glitched items in a future video so for the sake of this video i'll only be talking about the intended qualities and their meanings let's start by quickly going over the most common and obvious ones and then move on to the ones that some of you might not have even heard of the most normal quality is called normal it's so normal in fact literally every account in tf2 has normal quality items because these are just your stock items it's represented by this dull gray color next up is the most numerous item quality known as unique which is kind of funny given how there are hundreds and thousands of copies of each of these items because this is the quality given to almost every regular item in the game weapons cosmetics even crates and other tools whether they're bought from the manco store obtained through crafting or rewarded via random drops they'll almost always have this yellow colored unique quality the name likely comes from the fact that originally there were only stock items which everybody had and therefore they didn't need to be tracked in any way once unique items were added the developers needed a way to know who had what item thus each item has a unique id these ids can be seen on item tracking websites like tf2items.com that's right your random girarty you've had in your backpack for six months from a random drop you don't even remember is special and unique at least in exactly the same way that almost every other gerardi ever dropped crafted or bought is genuine is this muddy green color this is a quality that was added to represent promotional items to distinguish them from their non-promotional counterparts for example the cannivers kunai fan of war and all of these other items were originally added to the game as a reward for people who pre-ordered total war shogun 2. to represent the versions of these items that were awarded in this way as opposed to those that were crafted from item drops or bought on the store the promotional ones are all marked genuine and of course this goes the same for many other promotional items in tf2 that can also be obtained other ways but not every genuine item has a unique counterpart sometimes the quality is given to an item that only exists as genuine but the overall rule for this quality is that is reserved for an item that was obtained through some sort of cross-promotional purchase or event haunt it this quality is represented by a very bright greeny blue color and can only be found on certain halloween restricted items typically known as costumes haunted items generally aren't aborted for any particular reason when you do something that unlocks a halloween costume such as open a halloween package and by completing maras missions there's a chance that that unlocked costume will be haunted there are some exceptions where haunted costumes were or still are given as a bonus item or guarantee such as from the 2012 eerie crates but for the most part they're randomly given in place of regular halloween costumes despite being cosmetically no different to their unique counterparts they do have a slight functional difference beyond just being rarer in so much as that they can be sold on the steam community market as where unique quality items can't next up we're getting into the much more interesting trivia vintage represented by this dark blue color in september 2010 valve introduced item trading crate unboxing and the manco store in the manned economy major update due to these new significant means of obtaining items any item that was already in a player's backpack before this update was converted from unique quality to vintage quality to signify that it existed before this update hence the name vintage most promo items were excluded from this treatment such as bills hats earbuds and the gibbous or jaibus if you think being technically correct is the best kind of correct instead these promo items only exist in unique quality because genuine hadn't been added to the game yet with the exception of glitched variants which as i said we'll talk about in a different episode despite there being a pretty clear-cut and blanket decision to convert all existing items to vintage at that point in time there was actually a second wave in march 2011 where valve added a list of crafting recipes to the game that were otherwise undocumented and they simultaneously reduced the cost of most of those crafting recipes to show acknowledgement to the items that had been crafted before this time those items were also converted to the vintage quality there have also since been some one-off vintages such as the additional version of the pyrovision goggles for those who played around the time of the original pyromania update a final bit of interesting trivia for vintage is that some hats actually had the word vintage in the name before this quality was added the result is what the community has dubbed double vintage with the in-game names of items now reading vintage vintage tyrolean and vintage vintage merryweather respectively with the introduction of in-game skins valve started using the quality known as decorated to denote skinned weapons instead of a single colour for the titles of these items in the game there are six colours that are dependent on that specific skin's rarity there are a lot of interesting variables actually behind how the patterns of decorated weapons are generated but again that is something for another video otherwise these are functionally identical to their unique vintage or genuine counterparts although strange variants usually have a cool cosmetic stat counter on their in-game model but what is a strange variant unlike the qualities that we've talked about so far strange is the first quality that actually has a different in-game functionality compared to the unique or other variants it is in fact the tf2 word for an item that counts your stats usually the kills the cool thing about these items is that their names change as they rank up for most items this starts at just strange when you've got zero kills and it goes all the way up to hale's own for 8 500 kills the extra cool thing is that certain items have their own unique ranks such as the holiday punch an item which can cause attacked enemies to automatically laugh with ranks such as thigh slapping and grin inducing items which are cosmetic or weapons that can't otherwise get kills instead count things relevant to whatever their action is for example the mad milk will count enemies soaked and the spirit of giving will count how many of tf2's random gifts known as secret saxons that you've given out from playing man vs machine mode you can be awarded with bot killer or even ultra rare australium items despite having prefixes to their name these items will always be strange and therefore will have the standard orange color name that all strange quality items do most strange items are strange when they come into existence usually come from a crate or the previously mentioned rewards from mvm missions but there are also a series of stranger fires that can be used to convert an otherwise non-strange item into a strange one such as the strange bacon grease that converts regular frying pans into kill counting strange quality almost everyone will no doubt be aware of this next quality already but next up is unusual unusual is the word for hats taunts and weapons with an ever-growing series of visual particle effects revolving around them in-game and there is currently over 200 different effects available outside of glitches or very few incidents where valve have rewarded community members which we'll talk about in a moment unusuals are exclusively obtained from uncrating with a typical one percent chance of getting unusual with every box opening the one exception to this rule is of course the unusual horseless headless horseman's head taker and the unusual haunted scrap metal required to craft it neither of which have any particle effect at all believe it or not these were actually added about a month after the introduction of regular unusual hats so why did valve decide to use the same quality despite not having any particle effect at all honestly your guess is as good as mine this very red red color represents a collector's item despite being added back in 2013 collectors isn't a quality that you'll probably see very often and that's because not only did the tool required to make collectors items called a chemistry set stop dropping back in 2014 but because in addition to the tool you actually need 200 copies of the same item to make a collector's quality one for example if i wanted to create a collector's festive gerardi i would first have to source the discontinued chemistry set and not just any chemistry set but the festive derati specific one then i would have to buy trade or otherwise obtain 200 unique festive gerardi to use with the chemistry set which would all get consumed and instead replaced by one single collector's festive gerardi other than its quality label it is functionally identical to a regular festive character shout out to shark the girati loving legend who provided this footage despite the limited drop period of chemistry sets there are quite a variety of them for both weapons and cosmetics so if you are an actual collector of a specific item and you want a way to prove it then collect this quality is made especially for you to round off this video we've got the three rarest and most unique qualities in the game community quality is one so rare that i would hazard a guess the majority of players have never even seen one in game unless of course you spend time playing with tf2 community legends or are in fact one yourself because community items are special versions of items awarded directly by valve to players who have done something significant for the tf2 world there's no one single specific thing that will earn you a community quality item but they have been awarded over the years too creators of major community projects such as kritzcast podcast the competitive broadcaster x television and item marketplace owners like marketplace.tf community quality items have also gone to dedicated translators creators of steam avatars and organizers of charity events there is one special item that is always community quality the wiki cap and as its name suggests it is given to players who have made significant contributions to the community maintained wiki there are also a couple of one-off community quality items awarded for very specific reasons such as the community spine chilling skull granted as a make-a-wish foundation gift to a young cancer survivor similar but different to the community quality is self-made represented by the same light green color on the in-game menus self-made items are given to community contributors of in-game items where they receive a self-made version of the very item that they helped to create for community created unusual effects which are of course not an item on their own there is a unique hat called the unusual cap with the contributor's created effect applied to it as this is the only way to get this hat all unusual caps are actually self-made quality as opposed to unusual contributors to maps that are added to the game are given a self-made map stamp of their map and creators of items that can be unboxed are also given a self-made key and case along with the item itself but the coolest thing about both community and self-made items is that they all have their very own unique cosmetic particle effect in addition to any unusual effects known as community sparkle it is quite subtle compared to typical unusual effects but it is much cooler given its limited availability and the fact that when you see it you know that that person has earned it by doing something awesome for the game that you love or by creating the very weapon skin effect or whatever it is that you're looking at i've of course saved the best until last and i have a feeling that a few of you will have been waiting for this one and despite its rarity i reckon more viewers will know about these than community himself mate i am of course talking about valve quality items represented by this pink purpley color valve items are exclusive too you guessed it valve employees the thing about working for valve of course means that you can do whatever the hell you want with your game's code and that's exactly how valve weapons work robin walker one of tf2's original creators has a rocket launcher for example that does and i'm not joking one million nine thousand nine hundred percent extra damage and other ridiculous stats like 250 hp on kill it even has a particle effect that otherwise is used only for in-game explosion which is labeled on the weapon as flying bits the truth is you probably never will see this quality for real in-game bear in mind that community service can have all sorts of mods and plugins that make people look like they have items that they don't really own so if you see a valve weapon in a random cp orange or minecraft trade server chances are it's not actually robin walker hanging out on an afternoon off work if you enjoyed this video you might also like this one about a different bit of interesting tf2 trivia or this one which is relatable to all gamers please consider subscribing if you haven't already and otherwise i'll see you soon thank you everyone [Music] you

Channel: Casperr

Views: 225,313

Rating: 4.9685812 out of 5

Keywords: tf2 gameplay, team fortress 2 gameplay, let's play team fortress 2

Id: eQeCw1EZau4

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021