February 6th was a historical day in the CS2 community – Valve has released the first update to Counter Strike 2, titled A Call To Arms. CS2 had a rough start, with many gamers criticizing the game’s initial release, claiming that Valve had botched it altogether. Did they manage to fix all, or at least the majority of it? Find out in our guide!

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What Is The Call To Arms CS2 Update?

Ever since the release of Counter Strike 2, Valve has given nothing but radio silence to the gamers, with some of them even starting a rumor that after the poor and underwhelming initial run of CS2 Valve has decided to abandon the game completely. Because of this, many of them were very positively surprised, when they spotted an update starting in their Steam client.

Call To Arms is the first CS2 update ever added to the game. It was also one of the biggest Counter Strike patches in the game’s history, adding new features to the game, quality of live improvements, and even fixing some really game-breaking bugs. So, what are the most important improvements introduced in the Call To Arms update?

Arms Race Is Back

One of the classic game modes that was missing in CS2 has made its official return in style! This quick-paced alternative to standard matchmaking was absent from Counter Strike 2, much to the player’s dismay. It’s thankfully back in all its glory, with seven maps total. Five old maps: Lake, Safehouse, St. Marc, Lunacy, and Monastery are making a comeback in the new, refreshed look of Counter Strike 2. The maps are almost identical to their CS:GO versions, so you won’t have to re-learn much in order to play. The update also added two new maps to the game: Shoots and Baggage. These two new maps feature the classic Arms Race gameplay: players have to score two kills with each weapon in a free-for-all death match. Once they reach a golden knife or a Zeus x27, they win the match after scoring the first kill with this weapon.

New Weapon Skins

The Call To Arms update has introduced a new collection, available in the Kilowatt case. The case features two new important elements: the Kukri knife and the first Zeus x27 skin. Most importantly, the Kilowatt case includes the first weapon skins that were created for the new Counter Strike 2 models. This means that these are the first skins that aren’t simply re-skins of old weapon skins. These are all extremely impressive visually and set the bar for new weapon skins at a much higher level.

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The full list of the weapon skins in the case includes:

  • Special rare Kukri knife skins
  • AK-47 | Inheritance
  • AWP | Chrome Cannon
  • M4A1-S | Black Lotus
  • Zeus x27 | Olympus
  • USP-S | Jawbreaker
  • Glock-18 | Block-18
  • M4A4 | Etch Lord
  • Five-SeveN | Hybrid
  • Sawed-Off | Analog Input
  • MP7 | Just Smile
  • MAC-10 | Light Box
  • SSG 08 | Dezastre
  • Tec-9 | Slag
  • UMP-45 | Motorized
  • XM1014 | Irezumi
  • Nova | Dark Sigil
  • Dual Berettas | Hideout

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New Stickers Placement

Stickers were already a popular way of modifying player’s favorite weapon skins, with some expensive CS2 stickers worth thousands. Gamers could not only choose to place their skins but also try scratching them off to give them a more weathered look. Well, this update has just revolutionized the sticker system completely, allowing gamers to place stickers anywhere on their weapon skin. Gamers can place up to five stickers on their gun. This allows gamers to completely customize their guns with stickers, any way they want! Also, besides the Kilowatt case, the update has also introduced the ambush sticker capsule, with a set of new, extremely flashy stickers.

Check out our guide on the new CS2 stickers system to learn more about this update!

New Features And Technological Fixes

The patch has introduced a plethora of new updates to the game. Here is a complete list of all the changes, that came in with the Call To Arms update:

ARMS RACE

  • Added Arms Race to available game modes
  • Added maps “Baggage” and “Shoots”

WEAPON FINISHES

  • Introducing the Kilowatt Case, featuring 17 community-designed weapon finishes, and the Kukri Knife with original finishes as a rare special item
  • Various bug fixes and tweaks

STICKERS

  • The Ambush Sticker Capsule is now available for purchase
  • Added support for flexible sticker placement. Stickers can now be placed at user-specified positions and rotation when applied to weapons
  • All weapons now support up to five stickers
  • Added a zoom feature during sticker placement to allow for higher precision sticker application
  • Various bug fixes and tweaks

MUSIC KITS

  • The NIGHTMODE Music Kit Box is now available for purchase in standard and StatTrak versions

ZEUS

  • Made Zeus reusable in all game modes, after a 30 second recharge delay
  • Added support for applying stickers and name tags to the Zeus
  • Adjusted the Zeus first person model position
  • Added Zeus kill icon to kill cards and post round damage report

SMOKE

  • Smokes now cast shadows
  • Smoke rendering and animation have been improved

GAMEPLAY

  • Added a “Refund All” button to the buy menu
  • Added a setting to disable first person bullet tracers
  • Silencers can now always be reattached regardless of whether detaching them is enabled or not
  • Player pings are no longer blocked by invisible geometry
  • Various adjustments to sub-tick shooting
  • Fixed several cases where players could silently drop down vertical surfaces
  • Improved smoothness of sliding along surfaces
  • Fixed an issue where collisions between players were jittery
  • To ensure loadouts are correct at the beginning of matches, loadout changes are no longer allowed while searching for Premier, Competitive, or Wingman
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SOUND

  • Added the option to select an audio input device for VOIP from the audio settings menu
  • Added the option to change your microphone threshold (the minimum loudness before we start transmitting audio) from the audio options menu, as well as metering for your current mic loudness
  • Added the option to listen to your own microphone from the audio settings menu to hear how you sound
  • Replaced the M249 fire sound effect
  • Replaced the Zeus charging, charge not available, and charge ready states sound effects
  • Further reduced occlusion effects
  • Minor mix adjustments
  • Fixed an issue where some player-centric sounds were being perceived as originating from slightly behind the player

NETWORKING

  • Reduced peeker’s advantage in many cases
  • The amount of peeker’s advantage in the steady state is reduced by 16ms
  • Also reduced the frequency of situations that lead to very large peeker’s advantage due to excessive command queue depth
  • Added cl_ticktiming console command that prints a report breaking down the various sources of latency
  • Added an option to buffer server updates and user commands by one or more packets. This can be used to smooth over stuttering due to packet loss, at the expense of increased latency

UI

  • Added support for separate main menu and item inspect background map settings
  • Added “Baggage” and “Warehouse” as options for the main menu and item inspect background maps
  • In-game team-only chat will now be prefixed with the team (e.g., “[T]” or “[CT]”)
  • Added ‘XP Overload’ status which is awarded to players who have earned all of their normal XP during the week (11,166 XP) and reached reduced XP gain. XP Overload status is attached to players’ names in scoreboard, main menu, death notices, etc. XP Overload status is awarded for a minimum of one week. Additional tiers of XP Overload status can be unlocked by earning all of the normal XP over multiple consecutive weeks
  • Agents with unique end-of-match cheer animations now have unique defeat animations as well. You can disable playing defeat animations for the local player in settings
  • Added more accolades to end-of-match

MISC

  • Adjusted the range of CS Ratings allowed to party together in Premier matchmaking
  • Fixed a case where high-DPI mice would result in jittery mouse movement
  • Added Minor improvements to animations during demo playback
  • Disabled rich presence update when running Steam Client in tournament mode
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MAPS

INFERNO

  • Fixed various gaps and adjusted grenade collision to make grenade bounces more predictable
  • Adjusted texture blending to improve player visibility

ANCIENT

  • Adjusted grenade collision on bombsite B ground to make grenade bounces more predictable

ANUBIS

  • Fixed holes in world at Lower Tunnel
  • Fixed collision on all pillars so players can no longer pixel boost
  • Fixed collision so utility does not fall out of world on top of structure at T Start
  • Fixed missing collision on steps at Street which would allow dropped weapons to fall out of world
  • Improved vis at CT spawn
  • Fixed invisible boost ledge at Bombsite B
  • Fixed various gaps in the world
  • Fixed missing collision on stair geo at CT spawn that allowed weapons/bomb to fall out of world
  • Fixed missing collision at Fountain that allowed weapons/bomb to fall out of world
  • Fixed some doors not generating bullet decals
  • Fixed vis issue at Street

OVERPASS

  • Fixed some collision that was causing unpredictable player movement

MIRAGE

  • Added collision to prevent bomb becoming unreachable
  • Adjusted some collision to prevent a ledge/pixel walk
  • Fixed player getting stuck when strafing on Middle Ramp by simplifying geo of floor and wall
  • Removed a clip brush from Apartments to improve flash lineups

NUKE

  • Built some collision to prevent bomb from getting stuck behind barrels
  • Fixed some disappearing mesh
  • Fixed dynamic shadow clipping on characters at Vending
  • Improved clipping in vents
  • Fixed bombsite water to have better reflections on low settings
  • Fixed vis issue at t-spawn
  • Fixed collision on ramp in Bombsite B
  • Fixed holes in world

VERTIGO

  • Fixed holes in the world and other minor geometry bugs

ITALY

  • Adjusted some collisions to prevent players from getting stuck in an apartment

OFFICE

  • Fixed a case where players could jump on a wall
  • Fixed a case where players could get stuck if they crouched

In Conclusion

The Call To Arms update is one of the biggest updates added to CS2 so far. It delivered far more than people expected, and was certainly a welcome change when compared to the poor CS2 release, and as of now it only signals that we’re in for more awesomeness in the future!

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