Spectral Halloween Special

The Fourth Annual Spectral Halloween Special is an upcoming major update.

One of the released features will be Wave 666, a modified version of Mann vs Machine pits the player against zombie reskins of robots, another — Merasmus the Magician as a ghost-boss of new KotH map, which name remains unmentioned.

Timeline

On October 23, 2012, the head of the Spy portrait on the TF2 Official Blog was changed to resemble a skull. Clicking on the skull led to a hidden page, with a newspaper page titled "The Teufort Reader". The bottom of the newspaper is ripped, showing two cards with odd symbols.

The following day, a comic titled Doom-Mates was released. The comic details Merasmus' return home from his weekend at WizardCon, and his growing resentment towards the Soldier.

The next day, a page was posted that announced the event begins the following day, October 26th, and gave a link to the update page with all the info. It announced a new Mann vs. Machine mission called "Wave 666", where instead of fighting robots, the players fight zombies, and a new Halloween King of the Hill match with Merasmus (with the Bombinomicon) as the boss. It added two new achievements and introduced Magic Spells, which players can cast on other items in their backpack to give their items new effects, from shifting paint colors to flaming footsteps. Additionally, the Gift Drop system will be different  –  last year, gifts spawned publicly and could be claimed by whoever arrived there first, while this year, players will receive private gift spawns that they can grab at their leisure.

Trivia

• On the second separator on the update page, a venus symbol can be seen

Gallery

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  Spectral Halloween Special Update page.

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  The Spy as seen on the blog.

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  The hidden "Teufort Reader" page.