Team Fortress 2 has been a breakthrough game for Steam and weapon trading in general. With the Mann-conomy update released on September 30, 2010, Valve has introduced item trading and inventories to Steam, forever changing how players interact with the platform. With the release of this update, Valve has created an entirely separate economy of Steam items, which players could trade among themselves.

Although many players would trade items amongst themselves, many more have decided to simply sell their items for real money. Cashing out Steam items, however, wasn’t that easy, especially while the trading features were in their infancy. In order to create a unified system of measuring prices of different weapons and hats, players have turned to one of the most basic crafting ingredients in TF2 – refined metal.

Used for much more than simply craftin gitems, Refined Metal became an accurate method, and was used as a calculator for different TF2 items prices. If you wanted to know how much an item is really worth, all you had to do, was look at how much refined metal was it worth on trading sites.

So, are you interested in buying skins, or do you want to craft hats and weapons at your own? If your answer is yes, than here’s a guide on what is refined metal in TF2 and how to get it.

What Is Refined Metal?

In order to understand the importance of refined metal in TF2, you must first learn a little bit more about crafting. In the WAR update released in 2009 Valve introduced the crafting mechanic to the game, which allowed everyone to try their hand at creating in-game items instead of waiting for them to drop or opening mann-co crates. TF2 players could create different weapons for their favorite classes and even try their hands at crafting a random hat, which allowed players to get rare and expensive items, provided they got lucky.

In order to craft all these different items, players need to gather metal pieces in their inventory. The easiest way to obtain them is to convert any two weapons wielded by the same class into scrap metal. Scrap is the most basic type of metal any player can get, and while it’s cheap, it’s also one of the most basic ingredients. Three scrap metal pieces can be combined to create reclaimed metal. Three pieces of reclaimed metal, however, can be combined together to create a single piece of refined metal.

Refined metal is the most important crafting piece in TF2. Although reclaimed metal is enough to create class weapons through crafting, refined metal is used to create hats via crafting. Because of this, refined metal pieces are necessary to craft the most valuable pieces of TF2 equipment, and in turn can provide you with a lot of value.

While refined metal is used in crafting, it was also used as a price measure before players could easily purchase and sell TF2 items for real money. And although prices for different hats and weapons are now calculated in standard dollars rather than pieces of refined metal, it still plays a key role in TF2 crafting.

How To Get Refined Metal?

Since refined metal is so important, Valve has provided players with a couple of different ways to obtain it. Here is how to get refined metal for your Steam inventory and start crafting:

Smelting Class Weapons

The most basic way to obtain refined metal pieces is by smelting class weapons. While it’s an easy way to deal with the different TF2 weapons in your inventory you don’t need, it’ll still cost you some time, unless you purchase some of the cheapest weapons you can on the Steam community market to smelt in this process. That is because in order to get a single refined metal piece you will need to smelt 18 weapons. While it’s a hefty cost, chances are you’ll probably accumulate some TF2 weapons you don’t need in the process of playing the game. Smelting them to obtain refined metal can be a good method of putting them to use, when you don’t feel like playing with them in online matches.

Trading With Oher Players

If you’d like to obtain straight refined metal quickly, without having to bother with the lengthy crafting process, you can simply opt to trade for it with other players. This was the standard procedure in the past, when refined metal was considered an unofficial TF2 currency and used to purchase and sell items to other players. Many TF2 players have a lot of refined metal in their inventory specifically for this reason, and buying it off other players isn’t that difficult or expensive. However, if you plan on trading refined metal with others, keep in mind that only the refined metal obtained from scrapping tradeable items can be traded to other players. This means that if you chose to scrap an untradable item to receive your refined metal, you won’t be able to trade it with others.

Purchase It Online

At the moment, there are many different online websites that specialize in selling refined metal to TF2 players. If you’re looking to purchase some refined metal, you should check out some designated TF2 trading websites, which allow you to easily purchase pieces of refined metal for low prices. This is the best way to do it if you want to simply craft a hat quickly. Most TF2 trading websites allow you to quickly purchase refined metal by either paying real money or simply trading in TF2 items you don’t need.

In Conclusion

Here’s everything you need to know about refined metal in TF2. If you ever feel like you have some hats or TF2 weapons you might want to sell for real money, check out Skinomat, where you can always sell TF2 items for the best prices possible!