How To Get Prickles Out Of Skin

CS:GO Skin Quality Guide: Weapon Types, Wear Levels, StatTrak, Stickers and Souvenirs

Playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is quite a tense experience. To be really successful here, you should invest time and energy in developing various skills - as the basis, to be able to use various CS:GO guns effectively in many game situations.

Skins become more than just decoration for dedicated players. It's a way to prove your level and express your personality in the game. Especially now you can play cs go offline!

In this article, you can get helpful information about the quality of skins for CS:GO weapons.

To boost your skills really quickly, we recommend reading the Simple but Advanced CS:GO Guide for Beginners to Become a Pro.

Are They not the Same?

Let's start with the very term of quality. First, CS:GO skins were introduced in the Arms Deal Update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. They are strictly cosmetic items that change the basic appearance of in-game guns.

Since then, the community and Valve produced lots (really lots) of skins - for every taste, you know. So, the quality of skins is not about how they look like. We all are different, and it's hard to make substantial criteria on the basis of our personal opinions.

CS:GO Quality of Skins Is Based on:

Rarity - the most valuable skins are super difficult to obtain
Presence of the StatTrak feature
Is the skin worn out or new?
Is the skin a souvenir?
Has the skin stickers and what those stickers are?
Is the skin a contraband item?

So, the overall quality makes up prestigious (just cool) skins. The high quality makes up a high price to buy CS:GO skins. And of course, it can attract attention to players with such guns - of teammates and opponents.

We'll discuss all the items from our list further in this article. To start, let's answer the very basic question.

How to Get Skins?

The game gives new CS:GO skins quite willingly. The only problem here is the randomness of such presents. You might wait for ages for a cosmetic item that would complement your style perfectly, and get lots of other stuff from the random drop, which you don't really want.

Players get skins after completing matches of the official matchmaking and achieving new ranks. You can play CS:GO a lot, develop your skills, and fill your inventory. To get skins faster, check out the article with 33 Best Pieces of Advice to Rank Up in CS:GO.

Often, the game gives CS:GO cases. Special keys are needed to open them, and these keys cost real-world money. You open a case, and the random system chooses a skin from the pre-made list.

Getting something rare in such a way is unique luck.

Of course, there is a proven way to get skins of your choice - purchase them on DMarket. We have offers from many players, and prices are often very low.

So, the question of where to buy CS:GO skins becomes not so important than where to get funds for this. Here we have almost the same answer - on DMarket, you can sell skins from the random drop and spend this money in any way you would like to.

Give Me Something Rare

Skins differ from each other by their rarity, that's the most obvious aspect of their quality. The less number of such skins has been released by Valve, the more rare and valuable they become.

The rarest skins are CS:GO knives and such items as AWP Dragon Lore. Getting them from the game is almost impossible. CS:GO case odds for other skins are much more promising.

To understand the rarity of a particular skin, pay attention to the color mark. This chart shows the rarity gradation from common to rarest:

Consumer grade (Common)
Industrial grade (Uncommon)
Mil-spec (Rare)
Restricted (Mythical)
Classified (Legendary)
Covert (Ancient)
Melee Weapons (Exceedingly Rare)
Contraband items (Immortal)

How Many Kills?

Presence of additional features, make skins Counter-Strike:GO more valuable or you can say - they increase the quality. StatTrak is one of such.

CS:GO StatTrak skins have special counters for the kills, made from these weapons. StatTrak counts only killed characters of real players and ignores bots. After purchasing a skin, its StatTrak becomes reset.

You can get a StatTrak skin only from a CS:GO weapon case with this item - with no guaranteed result. Or, you can buy this skin on DMarket, of course.

CS:GO Wear Levels

By using skins in the game, players slowly make their appearance worse. A shine new gun becomes worn-out and loses its quality a bit.

Usually, it takes a lot of time to turn Factory New skins into Battle-Scarred. Check out this characteristic for your purchases, it's indicated in the title.

Here is the CS:GO skin quality order (some skins have only some of them):

Factory New (FN)
Minimal Wear (MW)
Field-Tested (FT)
Well-Worn (WW)
Battle-Scarred (BS)

CS:GO Souvenirs

Some skins can be obtained from watching big official esports tournaments. These items are especially valuable - you can't get them afterward from cases or from the random drop.

Souvenirs are the same skins but with special stickers. They appear in the form of a souvenir package with only one skin inside.

Stickers

Unique stickers prove the origins of souvenir skins. Other CS:GO stickers do almost the same - they make up unique skins, and the value of stickers increases the value of the cosmetic item.

There are lots of stickers on DMarket. Some of them relate to some events, others - to esports teams and players. Many stickers are just beautiful pictures.

You can use many stickers for one weapon, but you can't take them away from a skin. So be careful with them. Cheap and common stickers decrease the quality of good skins.

CS:GO quality should be support from rare and beautiful stickers on rare and beautiful skins. The final set also should be beautiful.

Some stickers can be purchased individually, but they are also available from sticker capsules, which in the same way as CS:GO weapon cases do. Stickers also have a kind of wear levels - you can scrape them off, and this action can't be reversed.

Stickers Can Be:

High-Grade (Normal)
Remarkable (Hologram)
Exotic (Foil)
Extraordinary (Foil, souvenirs)
Contraband (discontinued)

Sell a Contraband Item on the Market

Time after time, the developers of CS:GO remove some skins from cases and the random drop. Such items become available only on marketplaces and they are called Contraband items.

These are very rare and valuable.

Such situations happen, for example, when someone's artwork somehow appears on a skin. Like with the skins M4A4 | Howl and the sticker Howling Dawn, which were discontinued after a plagiarism accusation.

Some players try to make collections of different items with the same pattern. Like Asiimov Skins that are available for an AK-47, P90, AWP, M4A4, and P250. For someone, getting another item in such a series is more important than following any quality standards.

Quality of CS:GO skins is based on many aspects. The primary among them is whether you like it or not. Do you feel the skin would be amazing in your game? Try and get it - this is the best proof of the quality.

Play CS:GO and enjoy the game - probably, this is how pro players achieve their breathtaking results.

Using their configs may help you feel more comfortable in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and become a more effective player. To do so, check out the article about PRO CS:GO Players Settings & Configs Explained.

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