Getting back into TF2

>getting back into TF2
>discover the huge trading market and all the cosmetics in the game now
How do I get into this? Do I just make metal from weapon drops and go from there?

Nigga just play the fucking game

>Do I just make metal from weapon drops and go from there?

That's what I've been doing. But I also only have like 30 hours on TF2.

But I want to be the most fashionable merc on the server

you kill yourself and move onto CSGO
tf2 is fucking dead as shit

>CSGO
How's that balance working out for you sonny

Just a tip for people who never played TF2 before; spend five bucks and get two TF2 keys, maybe from the Steam Community market if you don't want all the money to go to Valve. Do not open crates. When they're tradable, trade them for a SHITLOAD of metal. Use that metal and trade for every single unique weapon in the game.

Also if you REALLY just want a bunch of cosmetics, do the two key thing, and go to scrap.tf and trade for a shitload of craftable hats, gives you plenty of opportunities to get cool hats.

you are a bit too late mate the trading scene is dead. Thank gorb i got all the items I ever wanted

Smelting your extras for metal is a start.

If you have some items with Vintage quality, you might be able to trade those off to get some metal or keys, if you're lucky. Some people collect items with non-standard levels and such. Also, very old series crates are in high demand, if you have any.

backpack.tf can tell you the general value of the items in your backpack, so you can see if you have anything that happens to be valuable.

scrap.tf is a site with a bunch of trade bots that lets you quickly trade metal for hats or weapons, or get rid of your unwanted stuff for metal. there are similar sites, but I don't know what they're called.

Never use Scrap.tf to sell your stuff, only buy.
If you're not a wealthy trader then you're never going to make profit selling stuff there.

As a start, sure. Stay the fuck away from trade servers and 3rd party trading sites, they're filled with nothing but Elder Jews that will rip you off. The community market is ok, but it doesn't have every cosmetic. You honestly came in at a horrible time, the market has crashed, burned, and rotted and nothing is worth anything anymore.

Wouldnt that be the best time to come in.

I dont like unusual s but I like how you matched your particle effect with the set.

no, no one is trading these days. Its bad cause the market is dead

>the trading scene is dead
How so?

well in the prime of the trading scene, there were hundreds of servers filled with mostly little shits trying to get hats, and now theres barely any people playing tf2 to begin with. There must be less players online right now then the amount of people who were only in trading servers back in the day

What I meant was none of the currency items are worth anything anymore. Used to be you could scrapbank for 10 minutes on a trade server and have enough metal to buy a Key, a Hat, and maybe even a Strange or two. But a Refined Metal (the highest tier of metal, used to buy Keys) is worth about 1/20th of what it used to be worth in 2012. You can still get unique weapons for a scrap each, but the more coveted hats are absolutely bonkers now.

The easiest way to get hats is by smelting weapons into scrap, smelting scrap into reclaimed, smelting reclaimed into Refined, then combining three refined to make a random hat. You dont spend a dime, but its terrible for your inventory, you'll often end up spending a whole page of weapons on one hat with this process, and its really only profitable if you have hundreds and hundreds of weapons to spare.

>Have a bunch of stuff to sell.
>Can't because steam now needs you to sign up for an android app just to sell things.

It's a little annoying to know that I have like $40 worth of ingame stuff I could use to just buy a game. But not a big enough deal to change out my phone.

>How do I get into this? Do I just make metal from weapon drops and go from there?- 18 posts and 6 image replies shown.
kek you're so fucking late

backpack.tf has inflated the metal to key price so insanely much that it doesnt even fucking matter unless youre going to pay real money for items

I figured OP just wanted to make his guys look cool, rather than go full jew in the trade market. This is good advice if you're looking to go hard.

Pretty much. The only thing that has actual value is keys, and everything else is relative to that. If you have keys, you can trade them for a bunch of metal, and trade the metal for a fuckload of common items. Similarly, if you're a lucky returning player, you may have a rare item that has retained key-like value that you can use to get all of the stuff you want. The barrier between players and the items they want is lower than ever, and just keeps getting lower.

Taking real money out of the equation, the value of metal vs. cosmetics has stayed, as far as I know, the same while metal has inflated. A craft hat is still worth ~1.33 refined metal as far as traders are concerned. The only change is that the real dollar value of those things has been dropping like a brick for years.

You should show us your backpack, OP. It would help us give you more detailed advice about how to proceed.

Nobody can jew you if you don't sell anything below backpack.tf's price for it.

Best thing for you would be to NOT get into it
I occasionally traded for craft hats and miscs in the past, and at some point I really wanted to become a better trader and make profits, but it's not worth it because the 'trading scene' in this game is one of the worst I have ever seen. It's jewery incarnate
Just play the game and if you really want to buy hats, make refined metal then go on trade servers. Don't use any trading site

Steam charts says otherwise though
But I guess a lot of players nowadays stick to casual mode (aka shit, I will never not play in community servers)

>Similarly, if you're a lucky returning player, you may have a rare item that has retained key-like value that you can use to get all of the stuff you want.
>Came back to TF2 a month ago
>wait, I am missing items?
>I gave away my bmoc, my juju, my vodoo soul and my laugh taunt when I quit

At least my best friend gift me two keys to tar again