So, you’ve been playing Team fortress 2 for a while and you quite fancy one of those fetching hats that everyone seems to be wearing on the public servers. Yet you don’t have 500 hours to spare in the hope of finding one (at random) and have lots of crap sitting in your inventory. Rather than playing til your thumbs bleed, why not have a go at crafting one for yourself? We’ve designed a simple yet comprehensive starter guide to help you learn how to do just that. I present to you the Official PC Games N Beginners’ Guide To Crafting Hats!
Do you have the mettle?
There are three types of metal required for crafting items in TF2. All crafted items need these metals, so if you want to make cool stuff that you can show off to your Steam buddies, you’ll need ‘em. First tip; be careful when selecting weapons for smelting, as some aren’t available for trade and this means that anything you craft from them will suffer the same fate.
To begin with you’ll need to familiarise yourself with the crafting screen. To get to it, all you have to do is click on the ‘Loadout/Stats’ button in the main menu, then click the hammer and anvil ‘crafting’ icon
Scrap Metal:
You’ll first see a screen that asks you to choose a blueprint. Here, select the option ‘smelt class weapons’. To craft one scrap metal – the first of the three metals involved – you’ll need to choose two weapons belonging to the same class from your backpack. You do this by clicking on the empty grey boxes labelled ‘weapon’.
So, with the Soldier class for example, you’d take any two of his weapons (they don’t have to be the same), then click the all-powerful ‘craft’ button and Bob’s your uncle – one scrap metal.
Reclaimed Metal:
The second type of metal you’ll need for crafting lovely things is known as reclaimed metal. It’s the second stage in the metal-refining process that allows you to ultimately craft either weapons and of course, hats. For this, you’ll need to select the ‘Combine Scrap Metal’ blueprint. Now, to get 1 reclaimed metal you’ll need to do a bit more work than when you crafted the scrap metal in the previous stage. This time around you’ll need to combine three scrap metal (that’s 6 weapons so far), then take those three scrap metal and craft them together for one reclaimed metal. Phew!
Refined Metal:
The third and final metal that you get from the refining process is, you guessed it, refined metal. If you weren’t quick enough to see that there’s a pattern emerging, this is where you’ll see that there’s a pattern emerging. To get one refined metal, you need to combine three reclaimed metals in the same way that you combined the three scrap metals in the previous stage, this time, selecting the ‘Combine Reclaimed Metal’ blueprint. This means that’ll cost you a grand total of eighteen weapons. Totally worth it. Honest.
One thing to remember is that not every item requires refined metal. Weapons for example, simply require reclaimed or scrap metals in varying quantities, alongside other weapons. But, if you’re looking to craft hats, which we’re quite sure you are, you’ll need to step up your game and start churning out some of that refined goodness.
Class tokens:
What you’ve got so far is actually enough to start crafting hats. However, if you don’t want to be disappointed when you craft a completely random hat for a class you don’t play, you’ll need to craft a fourth refined metal and an item known as a class token. Class tokens allow you to determine what class the hat you craft will be for.
To acquire one of these glorious little chappies, you need to select the ‘Fabricate Class Token’ blueprint and fill the boxes with three weapons from whatever class you’d like to make the token for.
Right, almost done:
The final step in the process is to put everything you have crafted to use. All your efforts will be rewarded when you finally get that first hat, place it atop your head and wear it proudly into battle (or a trade server).
Selecting the ‘Rare Items’ tab, look for either the ‘Fabricate Headgear’ or ‘Fabricate Class Headgear’ options. If you choose the former, you’ll only need three refined metals which will generate a random hat that could be for any class. If however, you choose the latter, you’ll need four refined metals and one class token. This will create a class-specific hat (depending on what class your token was crafted for).
There is still an element of randomness to this process, as despite the fact that you can determine what class the hat will be for, you can’t choose what hat it will be. In short, patience and a lot of time will pay off.
Lead image courtesy of *Don-ko.