Scream Fortress VIII Begins

[Shawn Zipay]

The eighth (yes, eighth) annual Scream Fortress event for Team Fortress 2 is now live. This event brings you ghosts of events past including all of the old maps, new contracts, new taunts, a Creepy Crawly Case, along with three new Halloween maps.

Plus, for all you unusual effects fans: For the duration of the event, all unusual cosmetics that you unbox from any case or crate will have a Halloween 2016 unusual effect, and the chances of receiving an unusual cosmetic across all cases, even old ones, will be DOUBLED. It's usually single! That's TWICE as many chances! And that's terrifying!

There is also a chance to get the "Unusualifier" taunt, which is the special Halloween creation for this year. The full list of changes from tonight's update can be found below.

Changelog for TF2 for October 21, 2016

Scream Fortress VIII has arrived!

• Featuring 3 new community maps: Brimstone, Pit of Death, and Maple Ridge Event
• Added the Creepy Crawly Case
  • Contains 21 new community-created items that make-up the Creepy Crawly Collection
  • Has a chance to give one of 3 community-created Halloween-restricted items as a bonus item
  • Has a chance to give a taunt Unusualifier as a bonus item
  
  
• Added a taunt Unusualifier
  • A new tool that will Unusualify the specified taunt with the Unusual effect listed in the tool's description
  • Can be found as a random bonus item when opening a Creepy Crawly Case
  
  
• Added two new taunts to the Mann Co. Store
  • Taunt: The Victory Lap
  • Taunt: Second Rate Sorcery (community-created)
  
  
• Added 8 new community-created Unusual effects
  • 4 new effects for Unusual hats
  • 4 new effects for Unusual taunts
  
  
• Continue last year's event by collecting the souls of dead players for your Soul Gargoyle by killing enemies, doing map objectives, or collecting the Soul Gargoyles that spawn in the maps
• Join Halloween matches by selecting the "Halloween" category in Casual
• Scream Fortress VIII runs through November 9th, 2016

During Scream Fortress VIII

• All players who launch the game will receive a Soul Gargoyle if they don't already have one from last year's event
  • Grants access to Merasmissions and Halloween item transmutations
  • Tracks Merasmissions completed and souls collected
  
  
• Added 3 new Merasmissions for the featured maps
  • Completing a Merasmission will give players a classic Halloween item and the chance for a Creepy Crawly Case
  
  
• The chance to receive an Unusual item from a case opening has been increased during the event
• All cases and Mann Co. Supply Crates will grant Halloween 2016 Unusual effects instead of their normal Unusual effects

Matchmaking

• The Competitive maps list has been updated
  • Added pl_badwater and ctf_turbine
  • Disabled cp_granary and cp_badlands
  • Maps will continue to enter and exit this list over time
  
  
• Added "Load Saved Settings" and "Save Current Settings" buttons to the Casual mode Map Selection menu
  • Search criteria is now manually saved to give players more control over the default settings when the game is launched
  
  
• XP earned in Casual matches has been adjusted to reward players more for their personal contribution to the match
  • XP per point has returned to 6.5 XP per point
  • XP earned for match completion and objective completion now scales based on your score relative to total amount of points scored by everyone in the match
  
  
• Increased the matchmaker's priority of matches with imbalanced teams
  • This should reduce the occurrence of extended imbalanced matches when multiple players leave

General

• Added the AsiaFortress Cup Season 10 tournament medals
• Added LBTF2 6v6 Season 13 tournament medals
• Improved several aspects of texture handling for OS X and Linux clients
  • This should reduce the rate of "Out of memory" errors for players on high texture settings, especially on level change
  • Players still encountering this error can reduce texture quality to medium or lower to greatly improve stability pending further improvements
  
  
• Fixed a missing material issue on cp_sunshine
• Fixed players not taking damage when exploding as a bombhead without stunning Merasmus
• Fixed Mann vs. Machine zombies not using the correct skin in Ghost Town outside of the Halloween event
• Fixed a bug with the vote-kick timer in Mann vs. Machine mode
• Fixed taunts not restoring the proper weapon when the taunts are finished
• Fixed the Pomson 6000 playing the shotgun reload sound
• Updated the sounds made when the Scout shoves someone while using the Shortstop
• Updated some Merasmus audio files that weren't playing properly
• Updated the localization files