What do weapon prefixes like "Botkiller" and "Killstreak" mean?

Question

When playing TF2, I sometimes see people with weapons such as "Botkiller Killstreak Black Box" and then a number of kills that this person has with this particular weapon. How do I enable killcounts on my weapons, and what do the "names" (i.e. Botkiller, server-clearing etc) mean?

Answer 1

These prefixes are the quality (or actually also the type) of a weapon.

Currently there are 12 of these qualities.

• Normal: Stock weapons
• Unique: Dropped, Crafted,... weapons
• Vintage: The weapon was obtained before the Mann-Conomy Update
• Genuine: The weapon was obtained through cross-game promotion
• Strange: The weapon counts the kills. Usually obtained from a Crate
• Unusual: Adds a particle effect to the item. Rare drop from a Crate
• Collector's: Items that were obtained with a special Chemistry set.
• Haunted: Halloween Update items obtained in certain parts of Halloween maps.
• Decorated: Unique weapon skins obtainable from campaign contracts.
• Community: "Given to valuable Community Contributors"
• Self-Made: The weapon has been made by the owner
• Valve: This quality is given to Valve employees

If the weapon counts the kills it is a so called strange weapon. You only get such weapons by open crates or trading. The names for example server-clearing is the rank of the weapon. The rank gets higher if the weapon has more kills. You can find all ranks here.

If it is a killstreak weapon, the weapon and the eyes are shining in a defined color. More kills mean a greater shine effect.

A Botkiller weapon is a special stock weapon. Such weapons have a robotic head hanging on the weapon. To obtained a Botkiller weapon you have to complete a "Tour of Duty". Read more here.

_{Information from TF2 wiki.}

Answer 2

The prefixes only show a difference of a weapon compared to its normal counterpart. There are many that exist and most of the time, they boost the price of items.

• Strange is given to weapons that have been uncrated or modified (e.g. strange bacon grease). These show the amount of kills you got with the weapon and changes to other words/phrases when different goals have been reached. Strange Weapons also can have Strange parts added onto them. Vintage was added to items that were crafted with 'too expensive' recipes after they became cheaper.
• Genuine are given through participation in specific events.
• Australium/Golden and Killstreak: Australium weapons are obtains through a rare chance of completing the two cities tour.
  • These can also give you killstreak kit which can change the weapons into killstreak weapons. Specialised and Professional killstreak qualities are gotten through fabricators which give the kit for the specific quality and item. Those are very expensive.
• Killstreak gives cool effects (specialised or professional only) and a killstreak counter. Also Increases price.
• Botkiller can be done similar to the previous one but with the other tours.
• Collector's quality is gotten through Chemistry Sets gotten from random drops. Those sets must then be used with other specific items to get the item to be collector's quality.
• Haunted is given to items obtained from Halloween events.
• Unusual is given to hats that can be uncrated, unusual hats are extremely rare.
• Festive given to weapons uncrated from Smissmas crates.
• Decorated is given to unique weapons skins obtainable from the Gun Mettle Update. This quality comes in six grades of rarity and is further modified by five levels of wear.

There are other qualities that generally aren't obtainable outside of a few specific cases as well:

• Valve means the wearer of the item is a Valve employee.
• Community means they have contributed a lot to TF2.
• Self-Made means the wearer created that item through the Steam workshop

In conclusion: Strange, Festive, Vintage, Genuine, Collector's, Unusual, Haunted, Botkiller or Australium increase price.

More info on: https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Quality