New weapons case, collections, stickers and charms added to CS2

In today's update, Counter-Strike 2 gets it's first operation sized content influx. "The Armory" update comes with a new weapons case, three new weapon collections, two sets of stickers and two sets of charms. Previously referred to as "keychains" by the community, charms were the talking point throughout the last couple of updates, courtesy of Counter-Strike data miners on X.

Introducing a completely new cosmetic item, The Armory update has seen comparisons with CS:GO's Arms Deal update on social media, as the former brings Counter-Strike 2's first operation themed patch. The Armory pass can be bought in-game from the home screen and levelling up XP with an active pass grants players credits which can be used to redeem aforementioned cosmetics.

Slightly deviating from CS:GO's operations, the credits used to redeem cosmetics can only be obtained by levelling up XP by playing the game and cannot be bought through the store. Players can now stack up to five passes simultaneously, dynamically levelling up all of them through XP.

The new weapons case ships with the recently added Kukri knife. A new preview function has been added, allowing users to check out how a scrapped sticker would look beforehand, a feature for which players would frequently visit third-party sites.

The Desert Eagle Heat Treated comes with a case-hardened style finish and is up for grabs as a limited edition item. The skin will follow most of the case-hardened characteristics including pattern variety.

Apart from cosmetics, a 7-day re-trade and re-market restriction has been added to counteract scams. Cases can no longer be deleted from inventories and weapon addons can be previewed on inventory items. Various animation fixes were also shipped including a few core inverse kinematics that deals with the movement of legs.

As teased before by one of Valve's developers, the update also adds a networking change. misdelivered packets are now measured based on the impact they have on the gameplay. For instance, when gameplay disruptions occur due to network jitters when packets are delivered in the right order, the packets are still considered as misdelivered.

Various map fixes have been deployed and Italy has been added competitive matchmaking. Here are Valve's full release notes:

THE ARMORY

• The Armory is now available in the store

• Features 3 new weapon collections, 2 charm collections, 2 sticker collections, the Gallery Case, and the Heat Treated Desert Eagle

• Purchase and activate an Armory Pass to start earning Armory Credits

• Make progress toward credits whenever you earn XP with an active Armory Pass

• Redeem credits for items in the Armory

CHARMS

• Introducing Charms: dynamic items you can apply to your favorite weapons. Currently available exclusively in the Armory

• Drag and drop Charms to precisely place them on the weapon of your choice. A weapon can have one charm attached at a time

• Use a Charm Detachment to detach the Charm from a weapon. The Charm will return to your inventory and can be reused

• Redeeming a Charm from the Armory grants three complimentary Charm Detachments. Additional Charm Detachments are available for purchase

INVENTORY & ITEMS

• All items acquired from the in-game store (including the Armory), Trade Offers, and Steam Community Market are now subject to a 7 day re-trade and re-market restriction

• All stickers, patches, and charms available on Steam Community Market, in the Armory, or on friends' Steam Inventory web pages can now be previewed on your own inventory items

• Removed ability to delete weapon cases from your inventory

• Added sticker scrape level selector when applying new stickers to weapons

• Added precise sticker wear level selector when scraping existing stickers on inventory weapons. Any applied stickers can only increase their sticker scrape level

• Added a way to immediately remove existing stickers from inventory weapons in addition to sticker scraping

• Added nametag module preview on the actual items when applying nametags

• Fixed several cases where applying nametags or stickers would unequip the weapon from your loadout

• Customizing a base weapon that's currently equipped will now auto-equip the newly customized version

ANIMATION

• Improved character posing when on large slopes

• Made feet pin and unpin differently for all use cases to help remove aggressively leaned characters (AKA the MJ lean)

• Pin/unpin IK logic now not affected by poor server ping times

• Feet IK now repositions to idle pose if the feet have pinned at a largely different pose to that authored

• Re-authored run, walk, and crouch content to fix wide/scissor leg posing when traversing

• Changed ladder animations and behavior so characters heads are much more representative of where the player camera is, including characters now display crouch correctly when on ladders

• Removed popping when crouching or uncrouching while jumped and reduced leaning on jump animations

• Fixed character's pose popping when falling off a ledge

• Fix for many cases where character's posing would subtly pop when traversing with slow moving weapons

GAMEPLAY

• Flashbangs and HE grenades no longer prematurely detonate when they exceed their 'stuck bounce' limit

GRAPHICS

• Added a Display selection dropdown for non-windowed Fullscreen mode to the Video settings screen

• Fixed graphics artifacts for fire effect in the Advanced Video tab

AUDIO

• Fixed a bug where UI sounds wouldn't position correctly when in-game

• Fixed an issue where step sounds would play for the local player but fail to broadcast to other players and vice-versa

• Fixed an issue where ragdoll water splash sounds would erroneously play on alive players

• Fixed a case where voice chat didn't work on community servers

• Fixed a case where incoming voice chats would sometimes never close

NETWORKING

• Added telemetry option to display graphs of network jitter and misdelivery

• Changed how packet misdelivery is measured. Previously, if packets arrived out of order, this could be counted as misdelivery even if it was corrected and did not impact gameplay. Also, jitter was not considered, even though excessive jitter can disrupt smooth gameplay. The new measurement method will only count reordered packets as misdelivered if they impact gameplay. Furthermore, if network jitter exceeds a threshold where gameplay is affected, the packets are counted as misdelivered even if they are not dropped and arrive in order

WORKSHOP

• Added optional 3rd layer to environment blend shader

• Added biplanar mapping as an option for environment shaders

• Added optional wetness layer, paintable in Hammer on environment materials with the feature enabled

• Added color correction, roughness, and normal adjustments to foliage shader and static overlays

MISC

• Removed support for command line options that were intended for development purposes only

MAPS

• ANCIENT

• • Fixed some disappearing geometry

• • Fixed some cases where players could detect player movement through water from across the map

• • Fixed some pixel peeks

• • Fixed a case where player shadows could be seen through geometry

• • Adjusted some clipping for better player movement

• ANUBIS

• • Fixed some missing collision

• • Nudged some geometry and clipping that were blocking grenade throws

• • Improved clipping on some floors for more predictable grenade throws

• • Fixed a pixel peek

• • Adjusted clipping in a few areas for better player movement

• DUST II

• • Fixed some clipping at B site

• ITALY

• • Added to competitive matchmaking

• • Fixed bird animations

• MIRAGE

• • Fixed some C4 stuck spots

• NUKE

• • Fixed a pixel walk

• • Fixed some C4 stuck spots

• • Fixed some gaps in geometry where items could get lost

• • Fixed some disappearing geometry

• OVERPASS

• • Adjusted some grenade clipping to prevent bad grenade bounces