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Valve concoct Collector’s Items, several new chemistry sets for Team Fortress 2

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After umpteen seasons of Breaking Bad and a couple of years of schooling you might erroneously think you know chemistry. But step back from the periodic table and you’ll realise it’s the shape of a dirty great red herring – a labyrinthine maze of colour-coded lies designed to ward off all but True Chemists. In their first A-Level chemistry lesson pupils are sworn to secrecy, before they’re taught of the existence of special chemistry sets – simple paradigms for the creation of highly-powered or visually-striking objects.

It’s these formulae, more akin to magic than anything laypeople understand to be science, that freedom of information activists Valve attempt to smuggle into Team Fortress 2. They’ve secreted a new series of sets into the game this week, and enlightened the world at large as to the existence of what master chemists call ‘Collector’s items’.

The first confirmed Collector’s item is the Collector’s Ullapool Caber, which reportedly asks forno less than 200 bog-standard cabers to create. More items are sure to be uncovered in the coming days, and each will feature a red colour code.

Eight new strangifiers have also been discovered by the community thus far, and most ask players to collect a variety of constituent parts. Five – the Professor Speks, Boston Boom-Bringer, Blood Banker, Stockbroker’s Scarf and Dark Age Defender-require at least six ingredients.The other three areMutton Chops, Foppish Physician and Outback Intellectual.

Here’s the rest of last night’s patch notes:

  • Added a server cooldown period for Eternaween votes
  • Spooky Keys are now regular keys
  • Fixed seeing the fire texture on The Maniac’s Manacles, PY-40 Incinibot, The Parasight, and The Foul Cowl in DirectX 8
  • Fixed some Halloween spells not working during Eternaween

What’re your feelings on the introduction of another rare item type to TF2?