Golden Wrench

“

Now I've seen everything! Click to listen — The Engineer on wrenches made of precious metals

”

The Golden Wrench is an Engineer weapon discovered within TF2's game files after the July 1, 2010 Patch. 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 Golden Wrench is currently the only item, when found, that is announced globally to every user currently playing TF2.

The weapon is acquired through normal crafting processes, with a chance of the Golden Wrench dropping as well as the normal result. The TF2 Backpack Examiner has a list detailing how many people currently have a Golden Wrench.

Only 100 Golden Wrenches are 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. As of now, Template:WrenchNumber Golden Wrenches have been found.

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

The average time between Golden Wrench drops is precisely 01h:00m:17s. This is exceedingly close to one per hour.

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.

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.

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

The Initial Drops

On the night of July 4th, 2010, sixteen accounted for players received the Golden Wrench after a drop was triggered by Robin. The following is the process of events according to Nineaxis, Team Fortress Wiki moderator and contributor.

According to him, he queried Robin Walker about whether or not the Wrench was a preorder reward for another game, which it is not. Robin then invited him to play, promising more answers. After playing, Robin told him the code had a bug. A while later, Robin invited him to a server, supposedly having fixed the bug mentioned before, and proceeded to trigger the drops, mentioning that they do not drop randomly after Nineaxis asked. Shortly after, Robin left and halted any further drops, to presumably fix a bug that affected the wrenches which had been dropped.

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 presumed that it is 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 receives a Golden Wrench all TF2 clients receive a broadcast message, the count on The Engineer Update page is updated, and the player's name appears in the Official Wrench Log. It is unclear whether the 100 wrenches will be the only ones of their kind, or if only the first 100 will be numbered and more are to be given out later.

There is no limit to the amount of wrenches that can be dropped per day.

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.
• At 22:51 on 7 July, 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 continuous crafting around the times Golden Wrenches were dropping. He also claims a list of times at which the Golden Wrenches were dropping was leaked by a Valve employee, and that he, and others with Golden Wrenches, were in possession and used this list to their advantage.

Screenshots

• Golden Wrench screenshot 1.png

  First-person

• Golden Wrench screenshot 2.png

  Third-person

• 

  Pyro statue

• 

  Demoman statue

• 

  Engineer statue

• 

  Heavy statue

• 

  Medic statue

• 

  Scout statue

• 

  Soldier statue

• 

  Sniper statue

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  Spy statue

• 

  The message when a player crafts a Golden Wrench

• 

  The message broadcast when a hacker hijacked Grantz' account and deleted their wrench

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.

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 Golden Wrench might be plated with Australium, a "transformative" metal mentioned in the comic "Loose Canon"
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 postIt is stated that they reset the drop limit for the week.

See also

• Engineer Update
• Australium

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