Haunted Halloween Gift

Haunted Halloween Gift
Pickup Type:	Halloween Masks, Halloween Costumes, Halloween Spells or Voodoo-Cursed Items

“

Oh hohoho. I love Halloveen! Click to listen — The Medic, on receiving gifts.

”

The Haunted Halloween Gift is a special pickup which is spawned during the Annual Scream Fortress Halloween Update in Mann Manor, Eyeaduct, and Ghost Fort. It is a large, lime-green gift box with a bright orange ribbon. The player who collects the gift box on Mann Manor will receive a random Halloween Mask; upon collecting all nine, one can craft the Saxton Hale Mask. On Eyeaduct, the player who collects the gift box will receive a random Halloween-themed costume piece instead. If the gift box was collected in the Underworld, the costume piece will be in Haunted quality. On Ghost Fort the gift box will contain a Halloween Spell or several Voodoo-Cursed Items, or on rare occasion a Halloween-themed hat or miscellaneous item.

Spawning

The Haunted Halloween Gift will spawn at one of many predetermined locations on Mann Manor, Eyeaduct, and Ghost Fort. An alert will be sent to a random player when it appears in the map. The gift can only be seen and grabbed by the random player that was selected. If the player takes the gift then a new player will be selected after approximately 25 seconds and a gift will be spawned for them. If a player fails to find the gift then it will be despawned after 3 minutes and a new player will be selected.

Ten player connections to the server are required (meaning players who are on a team, in spectator, or actively joining the server) for the gift to drop; additionally, servers must be registered with TF2 Quickplay on Steam, to prevent cheating or farming to gain items. The total player count only includes actual Steam clients, not bots or the replay user.

Former System

Prior to the Spectral Halloween Special, gifts dropped server-wide. When a gift dropped, a notification was sent to every player on the server. Upon spawning, the gift would be temporarily transparent and unable to be picked up, allowing players some time to search for it and kill their competitors. The gift would then solidify and be awarded to the first player to touch it. Should multiple players be touching the gift as it solidified, the recipient would be selected at random. A second alert would notify all players that the gift was found and congratulate the recipient.

Due to the gift's rarity and the fact that any player could pick it up, it was not uncommon for all players on a server to abandon the map objectives and race to find the gift. The reasoning behind the new system included eliminating the need for such a server-wide scramble.

Contents

The Haunted Halloween Gift can contain a number of different class-specific items, depending on which map spawns it. Mann Manor spawns gifts that contain 1 of 9 Halloween Masks, while Eyeaduct gifts contain 1 of 27 costume parts. In addition, a gift found in the Eyeaduct Underworld will be of the Haunted quality. A gift on Ghost Fort can contain either 1 Halloween Spell or several Voodoo-Cursed Items, or on rare occasion a Halloween-themed hat or miscellaneous item.

Spawn locations

Mann Manor

Spawn locations on Mann Manor.

Eyeaduct

Spawn locations on Eyeaduct.

Spawn locations on the Underworld in Eyeaduct.

Ghost Fort

Spawn locations on Ghost Fort.

Audio cues

These audio cues are heard, along with a notification, when the Haunted Halloween Gift spawns or is found by a player.

• The Haunted Halloween Gift has spawned.
• The Haunted Halloween Gift has been found.

Gallery

• 

  Haunted Halloween Gift in Mann Manor.

• 

  Haunted Halloween Gift in Eyeaduct's Underworld.

• 

  Message that appears when a Halloween Gift has spawned for the player to claim.

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  Message that appears when the player finds a Halloween Gift.

• 

  Message that appears when the player fails to find their gift in time.

• 

  Message that previously appeared during past events when Halloween Gift spawned.

Related achievements

Ghostchievements

Masked Mann Collect a Soul Gargoyle in Mann Manor.

Update history

October 27, 2010 Patch (Scream Fortress Update)

• The Haunted Halloween Gift was added to the game.

October 28, 2010 Patch

• Fixed spectators collecting the Haunted Halloween Gift in Mann Manor.

October 29, 2010 Patch

• Fixed players who are spectating teammates being able to collect the Haunted Halloween Gift in Mann Manor.

October 26, 2012 Patch

• The Haunted Halloween Gift is now only visible to (and can be collected by) one player. This applies to Mann Manor, Eyeaduct, and Ghost Fort.

Bugs

• A gift may appear in an unreachable corridor near the first control point on Mann Manor. In this situation, the gift remains unfound until the server map changes.
• A player who finds a gift in the underworld in Eyeaduct who subsequently dies of attrition damage will not receive the gift. This can be avoided by jumping into the fog and triggering a fall death instead.
• Collecting a gift in Eyeaduct and Ghost Fort for the first time will earn the player the Masked Mann achievement.
• Gifts and their particles will not appear in a Replay recording.
• When playing on certain non-Halloween maps during the Halloween event period, there is a small chance a player will be notified "The Haunted Halloween Gift has disappeared", although no gift was spawned.

Notes

• A different alert shows up when the gift spawns in Eyeaduct's underworld: "The Haunted Halloween Gift has spawned somewhere below..."
• If the Haunted Halloween Gift spawns seconds before the round ends and nobody collects it before the teams switch sides, the gift will remain in place during the change.
• It is possible to collect the gift during Humiliation or while being stunned by ghosts.

External links

• Scream Fortress
• TF2 Blog - Sound of Blog Post Being Posted