Image credit: The Toastening, by ToastPlusScience.



After kneading the community into a yeasty mush of excitement, Valve have finally pulled their update out of the oven. Love and War is available now, bringing a selection of new taunts and weapons. In addition, they've slightly tweaked their long-standing secret recipe. By which I mean they've seriously altered the balance of the Demoman's Sticky Launcher.



The primary themes of Love and War are, in no particular order, guns, bread and dancing. The new taunts can work across the team divide, and as such, the game is currently filling with impromptu conga breaks.



The new weapons have somehow caused everyone in our office to reinstall the game, despite it already being packed with weapons. Chiefly, I suspect, it's because we want to try out the Soldier's new parachute. Although, I'm just as interested in the Scout's new back-critting shotgun. (I hold the unpopular opinion that Scout is the best stealth class. Other people would say Spy, but he can literally turn invisible. That's cheating.)



But here's a thing: a couple of balance changes will cause dramatic shifts to long-standing loadouts. For one thing, there's the Sticky Launcher with this update, its bombs now have a damage ramp-up. It's a big nerf to air-sticky attacks, as it'll take two seconds from shooting for a bomb to do full damage. It's an attempt to shift the weapon to its original trap-setting purpose. It's just weird that it's taken this long to happen.



Also changed: the Pyro's Axtinguisher. That will now only do mini-crits on burning targets if attacked from the front. It makes me a sad Pyro.



See the full patch notes below.



Love & War Update





Added 5 new weapons, 15 new taunts, and 43 cosmetic items for the Love & War update

Partner Taunts can now be performed with the opposing team

Added a new Taunt Loadout with 8 slots so multiple taunts can be equipped at the same time

Taunts are no longer equipped in the Action Slot

Pressing the Taunt key in game now brings up the new Taunt Selection menu

Pressing the taunt key while the Taunt Selection menu is open performs a weapon taunt, or joins a partner taunt





Mann Co. Store





Added 15 new taunts and a taunt bundle

Added 5 new weapons and a weapon bundle

Added 44 new cosmetics and a cosmetic bundle

Added "Taunt" category into the store

Added Mann Co. Stockpile Crate Key

The "Hats" and "Misc" categories have been merged into "Cosmetics"





Items





Added the Mann Co. Stockpile Crate to the droplist

Each Mann Co. Stockpile Crate can be repeatedly shuffled to contain a set of 4 possible items

Added the Mann Co. Audition Reel. Contains taunts and a rare chance at an unusual taunt

Updated Mann Co. Crates to display which Unusual Series they can potentially output

Added Bread Box Special Crafting Recipe. This recipe will no longer be available after July 9th, 2014. Items from the Bread box have a chance to be strange.

Added crafting recipes for newly added weapons

Added Killstreak Kits to MvM for newly added weapons

Added OzFortress Season 11 tournament medals





Weapon changes and updates





With The Hitman's Heatmaker, pressing reload now activates focus when it is full

The Axtinguisher now does mini-crit damage from the front and full crit damage from behind to burning targets

The Bushwacka can no longer randomly crit

All mini-guns now have damage and accuracy ramp up after they start firing. Full accuracy and damage is reached 1 second after firing.

All Demoman stickybombs now have damage ramp up. Full damage is reached 2 seconds after firing.

Updated Loch-n-Load reload animation

Sentry bullets are now affected by damage falloff outside of sentry scan range

Sentry bullet damage has been changed so it calculates damage based on the sentry's position, not the Engineer's





Misc Changes





Updated the Halloween holiday to automatically be enabled when the server runs an _event map

Added a check to prevent achievement announcement spam

Converted several weapon models to use the c_models system

Updated the localization files

Bug Fixes

Fixed an exploit where charging Demoman could turn more than allowed

Fixed a bug where Halloween spellbooks were overriding PDAs and Disguise Kits

Fixed The Director's Vision taunt not playing both variations for the Pyro

Fixed the Pyro's spell audio not sounding like the rest of the Pyro's audio

Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause items to unequip themselves

Fixed a dedicated server crash related to using 'mp_forcecamera 0' with one player on the server

Fixed a regression with the trigger_gravity entity not correctly applying its settings

Fixed another exploit where Engineer buildings could build up a large amount of health

Fixed a server performance issue related to the item_teamflag entity

Fixed the itemtest command

- Fixed cosmetics shared between multiple classes not rendering correctly

- Updated the cosmetic item list to sort by name





Map Fixes





Updated cp_granary

- Removed collision from lights and small props protruding from walls

- Fixed collision on fences

- Fixed the tire props near Blu's forward spawn so players may no longer jump up to the spawn door platform

- Fixed players shooting through gaps around forward spawn doors

- Fixed door protruding through roof on Red's forward spawn

- Fixed a collision bug that gave players access to the roof above Red's spawn door

- Prevented players from building inside spawn room doors

- Adjusted area portals to improve rendering and performance

Updated koth_harvest_final

- Added metal panel prop to Blu building, which now mirrors the jump up on the Red side

- Small performance increase through prop fade adjustments

- Players can no longer build inside spawn doors

Updated pl_upward

- Fixed physics debris triggering the payload cart s finale explosion





Image credit: The Toastening, by ToastPlusScience.