Golden Wrench

“

That there is a gold-plated kill! Click to listen — The Engineer

”

The Golden Wrench is an exclusive Wrench replacement for the Engineer . It has a different skin and kill icon than the regular Wrench, and enemies killed by it turn into motionless golden statues instead of normal ragdolls. In all other ways, it is identical to the standard Wrench.

The weapon used to be acquired through normal crafting processes, with a chance of the Golden Wrench dropping as well as the normal result. It can no longer be found or crafted.

Only 100 Golden Wrenches were available. The players who receive a Golden Wrench are listed in the Official Wrench Log which can be accessed by clicking the To Wrench Log button on The Engineer Update page. All 100 have now been found.

Damage

• Point Blank: 65 (59 to 72 damage)
• Mini-Crit: 88
• Critical Hit: 195
• Damage Repaired per Hit: 105
• Upgrade Amount per Hit: 25 (Corresponding loss in metal)
• Metal Cost per Repairing Stroke: 1 + Damage / 5
• Metal Cost for reloading ammo: 1 per bullet, 2 per rocket salvo

Damages are approximate and determined by community testing.

Function times

• Attack Interval: 0.8

All times are in seconds. Times are approximate and determined by community testing.

Discovery

The material file containing the kill notification icon also contains an encrypted message saying,

"lek/NIxV HkQ6U RDB FXV/R s1Hefy yiY6t e76mmuL. So misJJ3k ivV9g Vy6X5 oepq sP7R/?"

This text can be decrypted with the key "saxtonhale", revealing the message,

"Clearly here is more space than needed. I wonder what else was here?"

Such a message implies that the Golden Wrench was intended to be discovered within the game files. The message is likely referring to the large 512 × 1024 image that only contained the Golden Wrench's kill icon, the message and link to the decrypter.

On the night of July 4th, 2010, sixteen accounted for players received the Golden Wrench after a drop was triggered by Robin.

On July 5th, 2010, it was revealed that there is a possible limit of 100 wrenches to be dropped over the next few days. According to the page, it can be inferred that it was only found by random chance when anything is crafted (although it was later revealed by Drunken F00l that the wrenches drop at set times, not randomly). When a player received a Golden Wrench all TF2 clients received a broadcast message, the count on The Engineer Update page was updated, and the player's name appeared in the Official Wrench Log.

When another Golden Wrench was found by a member of the Community, a message appeared to all clients stating the player's name and which number Wrench it was, accompianied by a statement of "Success!" by the Announcer. When a Golden Wrench is destroyed, a similiar message appears alerting all clients to the fact that it has been destroyed, and the Announcer's "Failure!" statement is played.

Enable in-game

If you wish to enable the Golden Wrench on a local server, download this file and place it in tf/scripts/items. This replaces the Flare Gun. Alternatively, you may use this file to replace Natascha. Bear in mind, this will ONLY work on your local server or servers that are modified in the same fashion.

An alternative method, is for server owners running a copy of Sourcemod. You can assign the "turn to gold" attribute to the normal Wrench, using the TF2items plugin.

However, this attribute only works for the Wrench. When assigned to any other weapon, the attribute shows, but does not take any effect.

Controversy

• The Golden Wrench no. 27 holder, Grantz, was hacked and had his Golden Wrech deleted maliciously. He has since had his Golden Wrench reawarded by Valve.
• On July 7, 3 players received VAC bans and had their Golden Wrenches removed: Drunken F00l, ChrisFPS [SuRƒ] and Rukes.com{EMC}.
  • Drunken F00l had said he received his VAC ban for using a third-party script to automate recrafting metal before its removal and for knowing the wrench drop times leaked by a Valve employee. It should be noted that he got the item manually. Drunken F00l and others used the information to their advantage to get the Golden Wrenches.

Charity Event

Steam user WiNG agreed with Robin Walker that Golden Wrench #31 could be destroyed in order to raise money for the Child's Play charity. The event has been dubbed the "Golden Charity" and is currently ongoing until the 23rd August when donations will stop. The 31st Golden Wrench will then be deleted on August 31st 2010 to celebrate all the donations. WiNG will be inviting 20 select Team Fortress 2 players to join him in a server to witness the deletion of the Wrench directly, while a global announcement will span all Team Fortress 2 servers. The Golden Charity event has been dubbed as a strong moment in Team Fortress 2's history, as it promises to raise a large amount of money for the Child's Play charity in return for the deletion of a simple virtual item. If you would like to learn more or donate to the charity, please visit this link: http://www.toptiertactics.com/golden-charity/

Trivia

• The Golden Wrench uses a kill icon that isn't one of the two normal kill icon colors.
• Even though enemies killed with the Golden Wrench turn into golden statues, they can still move their facial muscles and cry upon dying. (This is true for normal rag-dolls as well). The sound they make when they hit the ground still sounds like flesh, despite being made of metal.
• The Golden Wrench is a possible reference to King Midas, who gained the ability, or curse, to transform whatever he touched into solid gold. The Engineer can even state that he's got the Midas Touch when he kills someone with the Golden Wrench.
• The Golden Wrench might be plated with Australium, a "transformative" metal mentioned in the comic "Loose Canon"
  • A possible clue to this is that prolonged exposure to Australium leads to a love of physical violence. (as shown by the progressive hidden pictures of Radigan Conagher in the Engineer update).
  • In the comic Loose Canon, the mysterious woman mentioned to Radigan Conagher that she had managed to collect 100 pounds of Australium. This value may correspond to the 100 available Golden Wrenches.
• The Golden Wrench does not turn enemy Hats and Misc. items into gold.
• The Golden Wrench freezes jiggle bones.
• The "turn to gold" attribute is hard coded to the Golden Wrench - meaning if it is added to another weapon using a server plugin, it will not cause killed enemies to turn to gold.
• It was once possible to craft the Golden Wrench using the 'Fabricate Class Weapons' blueprint. However it was impossible to create an Engineer token so nobody was able to do so. Valve then fixed the Wrench so that it could not be crafted altogether.
• Valve disabled the ability to smelt metal back into scrap during this time. This was likely to stop metal craft spamming.
• The Sniper's gold statue has a higher chance of remaining upright compared to the other classes, due to their disproportionate models.
• If a Spy is killed by the Golden Wrench while he is holding the Dead Ringer, he will see his own death message even though he normally would not.
• Users on the Steam forums suggested that the drop limit should be reset early so that everyone gets a fair shot at a Golden Wrench. In the July 6th, 2010 blog post it is stated that they increased the drop limit for the week.
• The average time between Golden Wrench drops was precisely 01h:00m:17s, exceedingly close to one per hour. This is probably due to the fact that there needed to be 25 wrenches handed out per 24-hour day.

Gallery

• Golden Wrench 1st person cropped.png

  1st person view.

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  Full 1st person view.

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  Pyro statue

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  Demoman statue

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  Engineer statue

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  Heavy statue

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  Medic statue

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  Scout statue

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  Soldier statue

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  Sniper statue

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  Spy statue

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  The message broadcast when a player crafts a Golden Wrench

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  The message broadcast when a player deletes a Golden Wrench

See also

• Engineer Update
• Australium

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