Scream Fortress 2013

[Supreveio]

http://www.teamfortress.com/bazbobarrabus/

The Halloween update is finally here!

Discuss!

[DDYzErO]

I vote we have another night of just hell tower

[Perfect Villain]

i really wish the event lasted longer

[darklin0]

Farming presents will be fun. I always enjoyed the nights a few of us stayed up till the wee hours of the morning.

[Zork Nemesis]

I sampled the map on a LAN server, even alone I can already tell it's a ton of fun.

Yeah, it's Hightower. The carts have been replaced with the half-buried corpses of Redmon and Bluarch respectivly and throughout the match you'll have them shouting orders at you; they effectively replace the Administrator for this. It's pretty entertaining, but they bicker sometimes and it gets annoying. The first hill at the corners of the map by the cliff is no longer a hill for this event, but the elevator at the end is still in play.

Spells: They spawn by pushing the cart, and they'll also spawn all over the map during "Witching Hours" which occur whenever the clock tower off the cliff strikes 12. Spells can be used with the Action Button, and have a variety of effects. There's basic spells and there's super spells that you get during specific times. Some basic spells: Fireballs, bomb traps which scatter pumpkin bombs on the location, full health/overheal/uber, super jump, short-range teleportation, and short-time invisibility.

The stronger spells come from the tower in the center, which opens up during Witching Hours. These ones are a lot more powerful: summon a few skeletons which will chase your enemies down, summon a visage of MONOCULUS! to rain death on your enemy, and shoot what is essentially a shock core at your enemy. Characters will shout out their attack as they use them, with completely original lines, even the Pyro has casting calls.

Every other Witching Hour a horde of neutral skeletons will spawn and chase down players. They all use Melee, though I think the giant one throws Pumpkin bombs and all share the Sniper model for melee. One is gigantic, while many more are regular size and some look like midgets out of Borderlands with the Heavy's skull on their shoulders.

End of the match, I believe the winning team, or possibly everyone, not sure, is transported to what is basically Hell, forced to Thriller dance for a couple seconds, and then there's a new loot island with a "Happy Halloween" from the Bombinomicon itself. You can't get the prize in a low population server.

[F13ND]

Everyone is teleported at the end of the round.

[Knowing]

Interesting map edit

[Boss Llama]

Glad to see a map this year that can actually be played, while still participating. Definitely a step in the right direction for mechanics. The number of new items is staggering - makes it obnoxious to try and obtain sets without using the market or trade servers, but that's exactly what Valve wants us to do. Also, who am I to complain about variety? I don't love the map, but overall I think this is a better event than last year, and that's all I can rightly ask.

[black_and_blue]

I like that most of the achievements are actually achievable without farming them - if you just play the map enough, you'll probably get all the achievements.

But it seems pretty unlikely to win 142 rounds in two weeks!

[Zork Nemesis]

I have a feeling the "win 142 rounds" achievement will be available after the event ends just because of the grindiness. A win is also counted in this case if your team reaches the book first, NOT if you get the cart to the goal. You can get credit for the win if you're dead in Hell, unlike the book achievement.

Also, the achievement for reaching the book, while a Halloween achievement, is NOT counted toward the "four Helltower achievements" achievement. Also the reward for that particular achievement is another page, though it's one page I didn't already have so perhaps it's unique.

Now outside of the wins achievement, none of them are really grindy, though beside one they do require a decent amount of play. Hell's Spells is the only real easy one to get, since all you have to do is cast the spell you pick up from the tower. If you survive crossing the bridge, which is fairly easy, you'll get it. The rest require some paitence: 25 spell kills requires aim or practice. 99 skeletons killed takes time and also some luck since they don't always chase you. Either map spawned or player spawned skeletons count though, and you can kill them with things such as a sentry or the MONOCULUS! spell. 17 environmental deaths in hell takes practice as well, though Pyro is probably the best way to do that; the bat and fireball spells have plenty of knockback though. 10 deliveries to Hell can be a pain, as you have to be one of the players who actually scores the cart to the objective.

Valve went the extra mile with the update, especially where voice responses are concerned. Nearly everyone has a unique "battle cry" on the map about pushing the corpse (Scout: Move the mummy!) and everyone calls out their spellcasts in LARP-y goodness style, even Pyro. Over-the-top power tripping when you get a rare spell is also great (Scout: YOU SHALL NOT FREAKIN' PASS!). Even better, some of the new hats trigger unique round-start battle cries. The Magical Mercenary is one of them; an all-class unicorn hood (Demo: Unicorn brothers! Tonight, we pony-prance IN HELL!)

The map itself is a lot of fun, personally I like the whole "fight to the death" aspect of hell rather than teaming up against a boss. It puts the PvP back in PvP, where both Eyeaduct and whatever Lakeside became were both "wait until the boss spawns and don't bother playing the game". I still think Mann Manor did it best, but after the last couple of years this is certainly a nice change of pace.

Blutarch and Reddmon are also hillarious. Blutarch has this gem of a line: I sense a disturbance.......in the Force......and my lawyers tell me......that's all I can really say (or something along those lines). I do miss the Administrator's voice though, but these two make for a decent change.

As far as spells are concerned, a couple are pretty cheap. The MONOCULUS! spell is easily the strongest, since it's basically an invincible rocket sentry. Fireballs are ridiculously strong, able to one-shot a light class with afterburn in a massive splash, not to mention the ludicrous knockback.

EDIT: The unicorn hat has far more unique lines than I thought. Nevermind MLP jokes, this hat is just pure win for some of the epic lines the Soldier and Engineer have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8REVZE-REw

[Katotsu]

Blutarch has this gem of a line: I sense a disturbance.......in the Force......and my lawyers tell me......that's all I can really say (or something along those lines).

I sense a disturbance.........in the Force.......<something about lawyers>.......they tell me I'm not feeling anything.

Silly lawyers and their attention to copyright.

[Flash]

Thanks for the detailed updates Zork.

[Zork Nemesis]

Thanks for the detailed updates Zork.

I go where I am needed.

[BlackHawk_989]

Servers seems to really ping spike when a lot of new spells are casted

[TheCarpe]

I think this is a better event than last year, and that's all I can rightly ask.

It would have honestly been tough to do worse, the concept of Merasmus was fun but the event itself was just so poorly executed.