The latest CS2 update seriously shook the market, and many players woke up to see their inventories dumped in price, while others saw some serious monetary gains. The sudden CS2 update brought a lot of significant changes to the game, and one that has absolutely rocked and shocked the CS2 world: players can now craft knives.

This has brought in a significant change to the trading world; many players are completely losing their minds, while others are happy that they can now afford CS2 knives and gloves.

Shocked to see what happened? We're here to catch you up to speed about the new CS2 update!

Remember, if you want to quickly trade skins to respond to any market fluctuations, make sure to visit SkinsMonkey, where you can always trade CS2 skins for the best deals possible!

Key takeaways:

  • The new CS2 update allows players to craft CS2 knives.
  • Players who have five Covert skins can turn them into knives and other special, rare items.
  • The update also introduced retakes game mode, allowing players to jump into post-plant scenarios.

Why Did My CS Skins Go Down?

In the past, rare items like knives or gloves could only be opened in CS2 cases, meaning that to open a CS2 knife, you had no choice but to spend real money. This significantly increased their total price, since they couldn't be obtained without spending a significant amount of money either way, making them some of the best CS2 skins to invest in.

Last night Valve decided to completely switch it around, you can now craft a knife in CS2. Knives can be crafted the same way just like any other skins in the game, and only require a handful of Covert skins to get your chance at scoring a knife for yourself. Although the knife you get is always random, this means that you can now turn five covert skins you don't need into an expensive CS2 knife.

Here's a video by Sparkles going in-depth about the new CS2 update and its possible implications for the CS2 economy:

This has naturally created a serious outrage in the CS2 market. Since knives can now be crafted, many of them immidiately lost all of their market value. Players are seeing their rare and expensive CS2 skins lose thousands of dollars in value overnight, with some of the most expensive CS2 inventories losing literal hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Consequently, Covert rarity skins rose up significantly in price. One of the reasons why Covert skins that weren't popular choices had such low market prices was that they could only be used in-game or sold. However, with the new CS2 update, you can potentially turn any of your covert skins into CS2 knives, which led to an immediate increase in the price of all Covert rarity items. This means that one Covert skin you were sitting on that you didn't need can now be worth many times its original price.

How to craft CS2 knives?

Crafting CS2 knives is relatively straightforward and can be done just like any other CS2 trade-up. The only difference is that you only need 5 Covert skins to craft a CS2 knife. In order to craft a CS2 knife:

  • Open a standard trade-up contract, the feature now supports red-rarity skins.
  • Select skins for a trade up:
    • 5 covert skins for a standard CS2 knife
    • 5 covert StatTrak skins for a StatTrak CS2 knife
  • Submit your trade-up contract and wait for your skins

Once you've successfully completed the trade-up contract, you should instantly receive a CS2 knife or a pair of CS2 gloves.

Check out this video by Skyed to learn more about how to craft CS2 knives:

Will CS2 Skins Drop in Price?

The latest update to CS2 is one of the biggest in the Counter Strike franchise, significantly changing one of the biggest features in the game, and the community responded by completely rocking the economy. It's no surprise that traders are refering to it as the CS2 gold rush, considering the market just experienced its 24-hour record.

If you're curious about how to respond to these insane fluctuations in the skin market, now is absolutely the time to trade CS2 skins. The latest version of the game has completely shaken up the CS2 community, although the total sum of the update's impact will become visible after two periods, when all of the newly crafted CS2 knives are released from Steam trade lock. The latest update affected mostly three different parts of the market:

Covert Skins

As we already mentioned, previously, the covert skins were only used for their aesthetic, meaning that the least popular of them would often cost as much as other cheap CS2 skins. This has completely changed with the last update, and now any covert quality item that you own has most likely shot up in price. Since you can now craft CS2 knives, everyone is on the lookout for a potential big payout. Since five covert skins can now be turned into Karambit Blue Gem (if you're lucky, of course) via a trade-up contract, even the cheapest Covert items have shot up in price to insane heights.

If you're sitting on Covert skins you don't need now is absolutely the time to sell them. While it's difficult to predict how exactly this gold rush will end, it should be possible to gauge its total impact on the game in around a month, when the prices will generally stabilize. Until then, you have a great window to sell your Covert skins for a huge payout!

CS2 Knives

Absolutely, the most controversial part of the update is that you are now able to craft CS2 knives. This has a huge impact on the economy, effectively dumping the prices of practically all knife skins in the game. If you wanted to make huge bucks on your collection of rare CS2 knives, you might have just missed the mark. One of the reasons most players speculate this update happened was in order to reduce market manipulation and make it easier for an average player to obtain knives, which were pretty much restricted to CS2 collectors due to a high price tag.

While it's much easier to get your hands on a knife now, this has obviously saddened the collectors significantly. Currently, many CS2 knife skins have lost a significant amount of their total worth, and it's not clear if they are going to shoot back up. Although the full extent of the damage will be known after two weeks, when the trade lock drops on the knives that were just crafted, it's likely they will lose their worth over time. If you were planning to trade CS2 knives from your inventory, now is absolutely the time.

CS2 Cases

One of the classic features of Counter-Strike 2 has been impacted as well, and many of the best CS2 cases have significantly shot up in price as well, especially the older ones. Since now all of the cheap Covert skins you open in CS2 case can potentially be used in knife trade-ups, this has made opening CS2 cases significantly less risky.

Consequently, many older weapon cases have shot up in price, and players are looking for weapon cases to open more covert skins for potential trade-ups. With the new update, the best CS2 cases have significantly increased in price, and continue to do so, though it's not clear for how long this trend will continue. You can trade CS2 cases now, though holding them has a chance to earn you a serious payday in the future.

What Else Was Added in The Update?

The shock therapy that the Skins market received has certainly taken up all the space when it comes to news; there were a couple of different features sneaked in as well. The latest CS2 update has also added:

Retakes Game Mode

Retakes game mode was the absolute classic of CS:GO, and a favorite of many high-ranked players bored of the official game mode. Retakes game mode offers a fast-paced environment, where players get dropped straight into action immidiately, as each round starts with the bomb already planted. This lets players immidiately jump into the game, without having to worry too much about long-term planning.

Anyone who's a fan of the retakes game mode will be happy to learn that you can now play retakes matches straight from the matchmaking queue. Players can now queue up for matches of retakes, with fast matches of eight rounds, with a different loadout each. Instead of buying weapons and armor, players are presented with a different choice of equipment each round that they can choose from. Retakes are a great way to practice your gaming in stressful situations, so make sure you give it a shot!

Map Updates

One small, but significant change as well, were the small different tweaks to various CS2 maps. Most importantly, Inferno received a number of tweaks meant to improve visibility, as well as the map's balance. Inferno adjustments are a long-running topic due to the map's popularity, and few maps were re-worked to this extent to facilitate satisfying gameplay for both sides.

In addition, a couple of different maps were refreshed to fit their latest version from the Steam Community Workshop. The three maps updated are Golden, Palacio and Rooftop.

Complete Patch Notes

There were different small tweaks added to the game in the patch as well. The full list of the latest CS2 patch notes includes:

Gameplay

  • Adding Retakes as official game mode supporting Defusal Group Alpha and Defusal Group Delta maps on official matchmaking servers.
  • Fixed Molotov and Smoke interaction logic in cases when multiple smokes are active in the map.

Maps

  • Updated Golden to the latest version from Steam Community Workshop
  • Updated Palacio to the latest version from Steam Community Workshop
  • Updated Rooftop to the latest version from Steam Community Workshop
  • Inferno
    • Adjustments to top of Quad and under Balcony to improve visibility.
    • Various optimizations.

Trade-ups

  • Extended functionality of the “Trade Up Contract” to allow exchanging 5 items of Covert quality as follows:
  • 5 StatTrak™ Covert items can be exchanged for one StatTrak™ Knife from a collection of one of the items provided
  • 5 regular Covert items can be exchanged for one regular Knife item or one regular Gloves item from a collection of one of the items provided

Miscelaneus

  • Performance optimizations when the game is in the main menu and item inspect UI
  • Fixed inventory item icons sometimes rendering in blurry state or not rendering
  • Fixed several server-only sound events to not start multiple times
  • Stability improvements

In Conclusion

This was definitely one of the biggest updates in the game's history. Although we'll learn the full extent of the changes in about two weeks, the CS2 skin market will definitely be going through some serious fluctuations in the next couple of days. No matter what happens, if you're a CS2 trader, make sure to pay attention to what's happening in the market to make profit on the changes.

If you enjoyed this article, make sure to check out the rest of our website, featuring free CS2 skins giveaways, as well many guides and articles, including:

FAQ

Can you craft CS2 gloves?

Yes, gloves can be crafted in the same way as CS2 knives. To craft CS2 gloves you need five Covert rarity skins as well.

Can you craft StatTrak knives?

Just like with regular weapon skins, you can trade up for new StatTrak skins, featuring a StatTrak knife. All you need to do is to include five StatTrak items in your contract.

Can you trade skins from trade ups?

Yes, any of the skins you obtained from trade ups can be traded normally with other players.