TF2 – Engineer Update

50 more wrenches have been found¹, which means the next day of the Engineer Update has been released. This one introduces more than just a new weapon; a new map and the achievements have been revealed. But for now, we’ll start with the weapon, which replaces the pistol.

The Wrangler does no damage outright, instead allowing you to aim your Sentry Gun at the target of your choice. This forces the Engineer to camp with his buildings, but opens up a whole new world to how he works with them. Sentry Guns have always had that weakness of being tricked into attacking the scout under the effect of Bonk! or an Ubercharged heavy, while a Demoman takes advantage of the distraction and destroys it. I can see it being used cleverly to force the gun to attack the medic in a combo, for example.
In addition, when an Engineer has The Wrangler equipped, his sentry gun has a “shield” around it that absorbs 60% of damage it receives, and makes it fire faster². As a negative, when the Engineer swaps to another weapon from The Wrangler the Sentry Gun goes inactive for three seconds, presumably while it switches to “autopilot” targeting. Not sure how this will work if say, a spy is disguised; could an Engineer use the sentry to spy check?
It’s interesting that while the Frontier Justice is seemingly designed and balanced for both defensive and offensive Engineer play styles, while the Wrangler requires the Engineer to be defensive only.

With this update also comes a new Payload map made entirely by Valve, titled Upward. Not much is known apart from what you can see in screenshots, but the full wiki page is available here, complete with description and screenshots! Make your judgements.

And last but not least, today the achievements were revealed³. While how to get them was not, I’ve been having fun guessing how each is obtained. Take a look at them via this cleverly placed link, and post here if you think you know what one is about. The first few are obvious (Search Engine suggests it’s earned by using the Wrangler to kill a Spy), but what do you think?

1. 59 at the time of posting this article, only 16 until the next update page!
2. Doubled firing rate for the guns, and an increased rocket rate.
3. One of those achievements became the name of this blog post. Isn’t that just neat?

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I woke up today, and the first thing I did apart from check my twitter account was to check the number of wrenches found. This has become a daily routine for me this week, and a particularly thrilling one at that, which shows just how dull my life can be.

However, apart from the fact that when I woke up 74 (!) wrenches had been found, something else had happened. Apparently there was a reason that the TF2-famous Drunken F00l managed to get the 58th wrench; it wasn’t chance. Apparently the wrenches weren’t random as Valve had led us to believe, but were instead dropped at predetermined times, and whoever crafted first after the drop got it. Several people got when the drops were going to be, and crafted at exactly the right time. That, along with some crafting scripts, resulted in people, including F00l being VAC-banned and their Golden Wrench removed and recycled back into the system.

Today no official weapons were released, but a new map was revealed; a second official Payload Race called Hightower. This is interesting because the screenshot supplied seems to indicate that the cart actually goes on an elevator. This is an interesting aspect if it’s actually what it looks like; do you need to stay on the cart for the elevator to work, and if there is no-one on it the elevator goes back down? Interesting gameplay mechanic there. Hopefully this proves popular and makes Payload Race a more played game mode.

It was also hinted that along with the official melee weapon (which judging by the achievements page is most likely his acoustic guitar), we’re also getting a community made melee item for the Engineer too. That gives the Engineer three alternative melee weapons to choose from (if you count the Golden Wrench).

I can’t wait to see what the choices in melee are and what their abilities are, as they are the ones that normally result in an overpowered “upgrade” instead of an alternative.

As a final note, what does this look like to you? It looks like movable sentries to me.

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Here we are kids, the final day of the Engineer Update. I cannot wait until I finally get a chance to get in game and try all the new weapons, feast on the little bug fixes that will be slipped in, and play all three of the new maps.
The third Payload map was revealed today; Thunder Mountain. The caption “Really long track” suggests that it is a multi-stage map, but apart from that that is all that is known.

The name of the community contributed wrench has been revealed as being called Southern Hospitality too. It has a bleed effect, which is slightly shorter than that of the Tribalman’s Shiv, has no critical hits, and makes the user more vulnerable to fire.

The official weapon release today is an interesting one. Entitled The Gunslinger, this robotic hand (and not a guitar like I expected) replaces the wrench, and does a few things. First up, it grants the user 25% additional health (which will no doubt be subject to buffs and nerfs as time goes on), and every third punch in a series of attacks is guaranteed to be a critical.
In addition, it “Lets the Engineer drop mini-sentries instead of normal sentries”. These mini-sentries look similar to normal sentries with a blue light on their top. The differences being:

• It only costs 100 metal to build
• Cannot be upgraded or repaired
• Builds four times faster
• Deals half the normal damage

The gun is designed for the offensive engineer who builds and rebuilds in random places to try and catch the enemy off guard. The low cost means it’s not detrimental if the Engineer planned on building something elsewhere, and the fact it cannot be repaired, while a negative, means the Engineer doesn’t have to concern himself with coming back and repairing it, or guarding it.
Unfortunately, because of the negatives this isn’t a viable option for classic defensive engineers, which explains the addition of the Southern Hospitality in the update.

The update is out today, and you can read all the extras that were added on the official patch notes, or in this blog post I’ve conveniently written here.

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