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"WHERE ARE THE CONTRACTS / HOW DO I GET A GARGOYLE / WHY ARE THERE NO NEW MAPS AND ITEMS / WHEN IS THE UPDATE HAPPENING?"

Halloween Mode is activated at the start of October. While in this mode:

• Old Halloween maps and bosses are enabled.
• Halloween-restricted cosmetics and item spell effects are visible during gameplay.

Soon after, the year's actual Scream Fortress update is released:

• Players without a Soul Gargoyle item are given one.
• Halloween contracts and item transmutation are enabled.
• New maps and cosmetic items are added.

Nobody knows when the update will drop each year. There is no set date. Simply be patient. You can view the update dates for previous years on the TF2 wiki (https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Halloween_event).

The whole event ends in early November.

GENERAL

• Check your achievements and ConTracker for spooky objectives and rewards!

• Items received from contracts, transmutations, and the Halloween Gift Cauldron are untradable and unmarketable. Any tradable/marketable versions of these items that you see are from long ago, when they were distributed using different methods that are now deactivated. Don't complain that you can't sell your free items, just be grateful they were given out in the first place.

• Haunted quality items are rarer versions of their regular Unique counterparts. The only difference between the two is that Haunted items have spooky green names.

• During Halloween updates you can right click on your Soul Gargoyle item to transmute three Halloween items into a random Halloween item drop. Some non-Halloween items can be used for transmutations as well. On every 10th transmutation you get an additional drop that is guaranteed to be Haunted. Don't transmute achievement items or your Strange Haunted item (described below), you'll never get them again.

• While under the effect of the spell pickup that shrinks you, jump repeatedly to fly! On Helltower, you can also go into the small tunnels in the rooms next to the starting cart positions.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND ACHIEVEMENT ITEMS

• Wearing either the Horseless Headless Horsemann's Head or the Saxton Hale Mask will make you immune to the Horseless Headless Horsemann's BOO! stun.

• Two different crafting recipes use the Haunted Metal Scrap, but you only get one Haunted Metal Scrap per account. Do your research on the TF2 Wiki before crafting!

• Only Premium players can craft an item with the Haunted Metal Scrap. If you're Premium and still can't see it when crafting, read the entire screen during each step of the process.

• Completing Helltower: Hat Out of Hell does not count towards Helltower: The Mann-tastic Four.

• One of Carnival of Carnage's achievements drops the Halloween Gift Cauldron, which will give you three random untradable/unmarketable 2014 Halloween items when opened. One of these items is guaranteed to be both Strange and Haunted. You have a nearly 2% chance of getting any particular item as your Strange Haunted item, as there are 51 to pull from. While some items are more desirable than others, they are all equally common.

CONTRACTS

• Some of Steam's services go offline for regular maintenance on Tuesday evenings (EST). If this occurs while you're playing, any contract progress you've made that round will be lost.

• Form a party to help complete each other's contracts faster! In a party, your contract will track each party member's gameplay as if it was your own. (It's free contract points! /img/x7y26gaw83r51.png) If a party member scores a kill, everyone in the party gets a soul. If you collect a crit pumpkin, each party member with a "collect a crit pumpkin" objective has it count on their contract. If a party of six is on a team that caps a point, the five souls from the capture turns into thirty souls for each party member! However, it's a little finicky. Unless you're playing on a Zombie Infection or Versus Saxton Hale map, only party members on the same team share points. If a person is added to a party in the middle of a round, that person won't share points until a new round, or sometimes a new match, begins.

• Bind a key to the "say_party" function. It's missing from the keyboard options, and it will let you communicate with your party during a game without needing to go to the main menu.

• Completing the bonus objectives of Halloween contracts is completely optional. They do not reward items. They are there to provide alternate methods of adding contract points to the primary objective. Completing them does reward extra contract stars, which you can use to unlock multiple contracts at once. However, you still can only have one contract active at a time. You will be able to unlock every Halloween contract by completing only primary objectives.

• Even after you've filled a bonus objective, it will still contribute points towards your primary objective.

• A green ghostly Soul Gargoyle will sometimes appear on Halloween maps, only visible to you. Find and collect it to get ten bonus souls. It takes a moment for those souls to reach you, so only grab it if the area is safe. Being a cloaked Spy can increase your chances of survival.

• If an enemy player is helping you get Pumpkin Bomb kills, have them be a Dead Ringer Spy. Dead Ringer false kills still count, and the Spy can quickly find another bomb without needing to respawn.

• On Harvest Event, kills from weapons that stun/slow the enemy count as scared kills.

• On Eyeaduct, Ghost Fort, and Corruption, teleporting out of special areas using the Eureka Effect counts towards "escape" objectives. It doesn't count on Sandcastle.

• On Ghost Fort, killing Merasmus makes him come back sooner, while not killing him and letting him escape resets his respawn timer to its maximum. Tell the other players this.

• On Helltower and Bonesaw, walking back and forth into the object in the Hell cage will quickly fill your primary objective.

• On Pit of Death, Mannsylvania, and Circus, you can pick up and drop a pickup over and over again to completely fill your primary objective. Look for your "drop the briefcase" key in your keyboard options.

I've got some tips for non-spooky TF2 gameplay here: https://old.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/vncp71/tips_for_new_tf2_players/