Welcome, my friend, to the wonderful world of Team Fortress 2! In this guide I'll be hoping to teach you the strange and mysterious ways of the TF2! To beat the player you must first become the player...

That sounded better in my head, NGL.

First off, we have the biggest part of the game. One of the biggest parts of the game. A part of the game...

Weapons!

Now, a very common mistake a lot of new players make is that they'll find a new weapon, be so happy and use it without even looking at the stats because it's new, right? So it's gotta be better, right?

No. TF2 is incredible in many ways, and this is one of them. Those players out there, with all the fancy hats and glowing weapons?

They have the exact same level of stuff as you. Everything is balanced. The Hue-Long Heater, for instance, for the heavy. You get a ring of fire around you while you're spinning the barrel of your gun, which looks badass, and you might see one and be like "oh dude, I want that..."
But it uses extra 6 ammo per second. Minigun by default uses 10 ammo a second, so that's 60% more. And 6/sec when you're just spinning it up, waiting for someone to appear. You may not think that's a lot or it really matters, but you'll suddenly find you've run out of ammo and have to run at the heavy's sluggish pace to the nearest ammo pack before some rocket flies at you and you get blown into oblivion. And all so you can have a ring of fire around you that's unlikely to do anything unless someone gets right up close.

Anyway, basically always read the stats, decide if actually you do want this weapon to use right now or not. The defaults are often the best. My scout, pyro, demo, heavy, engineer, medic, sniper and spy all have their main weapons as defaults and maybe something else as their secondary. Woah. that's like all my classes...

What I'm trying to say is use the default weapons. The amount of times I've seen new players on servers asking if anyone'll give them some "sniper stuff" or whatever, and I gotta explain what they have is fine...

Now we're onto the slightly more expensive bit. Strange weapons.

These are amazing weapons which will make your weapons amazing and look so good and-

Nah. They just count your kills with that weapon. You can add kill counters to do stuff like count your soldier kills too or underwater kills or... Damage done total. That's actually a pretty cool one.
You get stranges from crates (see below. Somewhere. Crates)

And Killstreak weapons. You can get kits from crates, MvM or find them a killstreak kit-kit. Yaaay.

They count how many kills you get in a life and are like "HEY GUYS!! RETEPWORM GOT 5 KILLS!! HEY... HEY GUYS!!!" on the top of everyone's screens. It's pretty swell.

Oh, and specialised killstreak weapons make your weapon glow every once in a while, and professional killstreaks give you glowing eyes on killstreaks.

Now, the big stuff baby. Ask yourself... go on... If Team Fortress 2 is a free game... and it's not P2W (Pay to Win)... How is it still going after 8 years? The answer...

Hats.


HATZ


The TF2 hatconomy is an amazing thing. You start your journey, a simple default, entering the unknown. You start with the Mercenary badge, to show when you started. You dominate (get 4 kills in a row on someone without them killing you) someone wearing the Ghostly Gibus and suddenly.. You have it. Your first hat. Soon you find pyrovision goggles and, after equipping them all, you've done it. Stand proud, man. You've taken the next step. You are... the F2P.

Free to Play.

Good job. You have a hat. But then... look at all these hats around you. You look in awe at everyone with their majestic.. art on their head, and you want one. How? Get premium.

Taunts are ways to annoy people or look cool generally. Press G by default and do a taunt, with whatever weapon you're using (each few weapon has their own taunt). If it looks like, if someone were in front of you, it'd kill them, it probably will. The hard part is getting them to stand there for the 4-5 seconds it takes, then it's an insta-kill. It's pretty swell.

Yes, even the heavy's finger gun is a insta-kill,
For more info on taunt timings etc, click here.

You also can buy/find(Premium)/trade taunts. Uh hu. You get ones rocking guitar taunts where lightning slams behind you because you're so badass, you can taunts where you can make someone else do a backflip, you can get taunts where the engineer get's a deck chair to relax on. And you have the conga.


This is initiated by one person, and then everyone can join in by pressing G while looking at someone doing the conga, and you start to dance. And dance. You can still control yourself.. sloooowly... by holding A and D. NEVER interrupt a conga. Anyone can join a conga, so don't be that one guy who just goes and kills the whole of the other team and ruins the fun. This is TF2, not CoD. Get your act together son.

WAIT WAIT-

Before you dismiss this as another of those games like WoW, just hold up. You can spend... 15p and get permanent premium. How? On the menu find the Mann Co. Store, go to weapons, the sort smallest price to largest and find the cheapest thing there. Buy it and have permanent premium. You even get a free hat for it. And now you have 6 pages of backpack, a chance of finding a hat instead of a weapon, and those special gift drops they give at events with badass stuff inside. It's hella worth it.

This is one of the most important parts of your TF2 life. Trading.

There are many trade websites and servers out there such as TF2Outpost[www.tf2outpost.com] (what they're selling on the left, buying on the right) and https://scrap.tf/ (pretty easy to use) and http://backpack.tf/ (pricing mainly). Because yes, yes. TF2 has an economy larger than some countries.

Probably.

Anyway, everything has a price, either metal, keys or buds.

So you want to start off in this market, get yourself that hat, some strange weapon or maybe even any normal weapon. But how do you get the currency?

First, metal. This is made by crafting weapons together. You find a weapon every 30-70 minutes, and you can craft two weapons used by the same class together to get a scrap, 3 scrap together to get a reclaimed, and 3 reclaimed to get a refined, then ATM it costs 13 refined for a key (check this [backpack.tf]for current price), and 1 earbud is currently 14.32 Keys.

Basic stuff will be sold in ref, so 1.44 would be 1 refined (1), 1 reclaimed (0.33) and 1 scrap (0.11). More expensive will be sold in keys, then in buds for unusuals. An unusual might cost 1 bud, 2 keys and 5 refined, say.

These are amazing. They can cost £££. They are so rare and so valuable that if you ever see one, son, you will serve that man and sacrifice yourself for them in an instant if the needs be. These are...

Unusuals.

*dramatic pause for gasps of disbelief and amazement*

So what is an unusual?

It's like a normal hat... but with a few more particles floating round it. What more could you want?

Of course, each hat and each effect is worth a different amount. The Unusual Burning Team Captain[backpack.tf] is worth 540 buds. That's 7,830 keys. That's £10,833.62 ($16,493.11).


But hey... it's worth it right? Heh... Right? Someone?


So how do you actually get unusuals? Well, if you've played even a few minutes of TF2 you'll have probably found your first crate. Inside could be a hat. Even maybe, just maybe, an unusual (1% chance). But it's more likely some cheap strange weapon. Popular YouTubers like Star_ or Jerma will often do unboxing videos where they unbox 50 crates and waste a hell of a lot of money so you can laugh at their failure. Yaaay....

Ya can see one, by Star_ here. Best example of a speed-crate unboxing ever. Go DJ Ster.

Yeah, don't do unboxing. Just trade the keys instead and buy the hats and stuff you actually want.

So maybe you've been on at some point and seen some soldier flying through the air, feet ablaze, firing rockets everywhere as they fly from the sky. That's called Rocket Jumping, and it is so fun. Have a video by NateFox.

You're welcome.

People have been requesting a section on MvM, so here it is.

Here's the official trailer. I still think it looks so badass.

Mann vs. Machine is a coop gamemode where 6 Red and Blu players fight against waves of Grey robots who were built my Grey Mann to destroy Mann Co.

Valve thought this would be too confusing though, and humans are now Red and robots are Blu. The robots try to carry a bomb to a hole outside your base to blow it up. The robots are robotic versions of the 9 classes, but there are many different versions of each class.

Killing robots drops money which is divided between the whole team when you pick it up. You can buy upgrades with this money and make yourself A LOT more powerful. Like, medics can get a shield which is charged up by healing people and when used will stop all projectiles (rockets, arrows, grenades etc) and damage any enemies who touch it. Soldiers can upgrade their guns to have 12 rockets, 100% damage bonus and enough health given back on a kill to bring them back from the dead.


Almost. Almost bring them back. I mean, 100% health on kill. You need more than that to come back from the dead without waiting 10 seconds. Like, you need 30 moneyz.

After you complete a MvM mission for the first time, you get a Powerup Canteen. This is equipped in the action slot of your character, and when you have it on you can fill it up with powerups; critz

There's a certain Meta to MvM where people have it stuck in their heads that YOU NEED ONE SOLDIER, DEMOMAN, HEAVY, ENGIE, MEDIC AND SCOUT or PYRO and that sniper and spy are terrible and you should never use one.

However, this is not really true. In the gameplay at the bottom of this section they use both a sniper and a spy. Snipers can take out the big guys and medics before they have a chance to pop an uber, spys can sap robots near them once in a while, temporarily disabling normal bots and significantly slowing giant bots. And being able to disguise as spy means he can be an even better money collector than scout sometimes.

You have two types of MvM: Mann Up and Boot Camp. Boot Camp is just for messing around, learning stuff, ya know. Mann Up mode requires a ticket which can be brought from the store for 51p, and after completing a tour (3-6 missions depending on difficulty), you get a random botkiller weapon (a strange weapon with a bot's head hanging off it somewhere).


TAAAANKS

Yes, there are Tanks in this gamemode too. On later waves, one will usually spawn at some point and break down the barrier. They can have between 10000 and 60000 health (depending on difficulty and distance it has to travel) and have no weapons, but have their own bomb which they deploy at the bomb site if it reaches it. It also has a health bar at the top of the screen.You can have multiple tanks, to which the announcer shouts "Multiple tanks!". Helpful.

When a single robot carries the bomb for long enough (5 seconds), it will reach Stage 1, which gives it and all robots around it a defensive buff. After another 15 seconds, it'll reach Stage 2, and all robots around regen 45 health a second. Another 15 seconds and Stage 3 is reached, and all surrounding robots get critz. On reaching a new stage it will taunt and surrounding robots will wait for it, giving you a chance to kill it.

Giant robots don't get these stages, and it always shows a full bar.

Official Valve MvM page

Full stats of all the different types here


Normal robots have normal health. Special robots can have more, and giant robots can have up to 70000! (though most will just be around 5000)

Engineer robots teleport in near the bomb and will find somewhere to build a teleporter to teleport robots in and a sentry gun to defend it. You'll be alerted by the announcer when they appear, and a active teleporter shows a large blue beam shoowing up from it so you know where it is. They have 500 or 275 health.

Spys will spawn invisible and disguised near players and will decloak and attempt to backstab players and sap engineer buildings. Failing that they'll get out a revolver and shoot players. They come all at once, so many, so when you know they're around, trust no-one.

Sentry busters are.. basically a bomb on legs .They're the ones that should really be getting their bomb to the bombsite and steamrolling the defenders, but instead they seek out sentry guns and blow up in a massive explosion next to them. They also blow up if you kill them. But they have 2500 health so generally don't bother even attacking them unless the engineer is dead or away from his sentry. Because once they're near enough to the sentry they stop and take 2 seconds to prime the bomb and blow up. And they blow up if you're holding the sentry too. So pick up your sentry when you see one, run towards it or at least away from your dispenser and team-mates, touch it and run away again. You'll have time to get away before it blows up. Or use the rescue ranger and pickup your sentry from a distance, but then, if it's next to your dispenser, that'll go down instead.

Robots also taunt when they kill you. So that's fun.
God, this is becoming a MvM guide. So umm...
If you still wanna know how a proper game looks, here's another video, by Star_ again, with a full gameplay of MvM. Otherwise, I'm out.

There aren't really many rules to TF2... you have your usual "No hackz" or whatever, but TF2 is unique in that it has a special, very important, silently acknowledged rule.

You see someone and you're about to fight them and they crouch and get out melee... They want a truce. Because why not. Don't kill them. This is TF2, not CoD. Welcome to the real world. The kinda-real world-

If you see someone doing the conga, you join that conga. You don't kill them. Have some respect for the rich, please.

If someone gets out their melee weapon and obviously wants a melee fight, then you damn well go out there and you punch them death. Like a gentleman.

Of course, should they try anything sneaky, you get out your guns and you blow them outta this world. How rude of them.

There are, of course, some other stuff people do kinda hope you'd do. Pyro's airblast, scout's mad milk and snipers jarate all extinguish burning team mates. Medics, heal other people instead of being a pocket medic and refusing to heal anyone but a single player (and if you're going combat medic... still heal other people sometimes at least). As a pyro, throw flames at team-mates once in a while to spy-check them.



Yeah, I didn't draw that. I can't draw. Credits go to ah-darnit[ah-darnit.deviantart.com]


Also, someone pointed out... don't forget... you can move as a sniper... or any class really. Don't become just a sitting target. Or a standing target. Or crouching...

Whatever. The point is, videos are fun, so have another one.

Yep, TF2 has comics. They're actually really great. Go check them out here.

Although as a whole TF2 has a wonderful community, there are as always people out there who will try and steal your items and your account. They'll usually see you when you put up some trade on a trading site like Bazaar.tf. Now, due to the recent update on trading which means it requires a CAPTCHA to trade with someone, many viruses which would have gotten onto your computer and traded all your stuff away no longer work. However, there's no guarantee that some bots won't be able to manage to read them and make it work anyway.



Of course, you should always have an antivirus program to stop them (I recommend Avast 2015 Free [www.avast.com] as general protection and Malwarebytes [www.malwarebytes.org] to get rid of a existing virus).

But the single best way to stop them is to simply not be tricked by them. They will add you and send you a message that will look something like this


They'll be messages that have a link in to a website that isn't Steam (althought it may look like a Steam link, it may be steamcommurity.com or steamcommunlty.com, or another website completely. Notice the example above is steamcommunuty.com.

Some people in the comments of this guide have been doing this, spamming the same message to a website saying they'll give you free items. No. They won't. They'll just take yours.

If you do happen to meet a phisher, there are very simple steps you can do to deal with it that take less than a minute.

1. Click the dropdown arrow next to their name in the chat box
   
2. Click "View Steam profile"
   
3. Click "More" on the right
   
4. Click "Report Violation"
   
5. Use the Snipping tool or something like it.
   
6. Upload the photo to some picture hosting website like prntscr[prntscr.com]
   
7. Send a link to the screenshot to Valve in the report violation window.
   
8. Go back to their profile and "More"
   
9. Click "Block all communication"

That is by far the most helpful way to get a phisher banned. Just reporting doesn't give Valve proof and will take a very long time, if ever, before action will be taken. You can, of course, skip steps 2-8 and just block them, but they won't help stop them again.

There you go, son. You now posses all the knowledge you need to get out there and be the champ!

Except stratz. If you see the bad guys...
Go bang bang.

Any more questions, leave them in the comments and I'll be sure to reply to them as soon as I can, online quite regularly so check back in a day and I'll have replied for sure. :)


This guide took me a few days, so any comments and ratings would be very much appreciated. Thanks!



Peace out.

Just before you're finished with this guide and you prepare yourself to enter the world of TF2... you might wanna read this[www.landoverbaptist.net]. Appeared online when I was looking up some image for this guide. Very worrying stuff.


Also, a user is trying to phish here offering "Free Items & Buds", I delete the comments when I see them but if I haven't, don't click the link they give. It's a scam.