New case, kukri knife, "Arms Race" mode, and lots more

On the night of February 7th, Valve released a major update for Counter-Strike 2, introducing a new case, kukri knife, "Arms Race" mode, and a host of other changes to the game. The patch notes were published on the official CS2 website.

Arms Race

Added Arms Race to available game modes
Added maps "Baggage" and "Shoots"

Weapon Finishes

Introducing the Kilowatt Case, featuring 17 community-designed weapon finishes, and the Kukri Knife with original finishes as a rare special item
Various bug fixes and tweaks

Stickers

The Ambush Sticker Capsule is now available for purchase
Added support for flexible sticker placement. Stickers can now be placed at user-specified positions and rotation when applied to weapons
All weapons now support up to five stickers
Added a zoom feature during sticker placement to allow for higher precision sticker application
Various bug fixes and tweaks

Music Kits

The NIGHTMODE Music Kit Box is now available for purchase in standard and StatTrak versions

Zeus

Made Zeus reusable in all game modes, after a 30 second recharge delay
Added support for applying stickers and name tags to the Zeus
Adjusted the Zeus first person model position
Added Zeus kill icon to kill cards and post round damage report

Smoke

Smokes now cast shadows
Rendering and animation have been improved

Gameplay

Added a "Refund All" button to the buy menu
Added a setting to disable first person bullet tracers
Silencers can now always be reattached regardless of whether detaching them is enabled or not
Player pings are no longer blocked by invisible geometry
Various adjustments to sub-tick shooting
Fixed several cases where players could silently drop down vertical surfaces
Improved smoothness of sliding along surfaces
Fixed an issue where collisions between players were jittery
To ensure loadouts are correct at the beginning of matches, loadout changes are no longer allowed while searching for Premier, Competitive, or Wingman

Sound

Added the option to select an audio input device for VOIP from the audio settings menu
Added the option to change your microphone threshold (the minimum loudness before we start transmitting audio) from the audio options menu, as well as metering for your current mic loudness
Added the option to listen to your own microphone from the audio settings menu to hear how you sound
Replaced the M249 fire sound effect
Replaced the Zeus charging, charge not available and charge ready states sound effects
Further reduced occlusion effects
Minor mix adjustments
Fixed an issue where some player-centric sounds were being perceived as originating from slightly behind the player

Networking

Reduced peeker's advantage in many cases
The amount of peeker's advantage in the steady state is reduced by 16ms
Also reduced the frequency of situations that lead to very large peeker's advantage due to excessive command queue depth
Added cl_ticktiming console command that prints a report breaking down the various sources of latency
Added an option to buffer server updates and user commands by one or more packets. This can be used to smooth over stuttering due to packet loss, at the expense of increased latency

UI

Added support for separate main menu and item inspect background map settings
Added "Baggage" and "Warehouse" as options for the main menu and item inspect background maps
In-game team-only chat will now be prefixed with the team (e.g., "[T]" or "[CT]")
Added 'XP Overload' status which is awarded to players who have earned all of their normal XP during the week (11,166 XP) and reached reduced XP gain. XP Overload status is attached to players' names in scoreboard, main menu, death notices, etc. XP Overload status is awarded for a minimum of one week. Additional tiers of XP Overload status can be unlocked by earning all of the normal XP over multiple consecutive weeks

Agents with unique end-of-match cheer animations now have unique defeat animations as well. You can disable playing defeat animations for the local player in settings
Added more accolades to end-of-match

Misc

Adjusted the range of CS Ratings allowed to party together in Premier matchmaking
Fixed a case where high-DPI mice would result in jittery mouse movement
Minor improvements to animations during demo playback
Disabled rich presence update when running Steam Client in tournament mode

Maps

Inferno

Fixed various gaps and adjusted grenade collision to make grenade bounces more predictable
Adjusted texture blending to improve player visibility

Ancient

Adjusted grenade collision on bombsite B ground to make grenade bounces more predictable

Anubis

Fixed holes in world at Lower Tunnel
Fixed collision on all pillars so players can no longer pixel boost
Fixed collision so utility does not fall out of world on top of structure at T Start
Fixed missing collision on steps at Street which would allow dropped weapons to fall out of world
Improved vis at CT spawn
Fixed invisible boost ledge at Bombsite B
Fixed various gaps in the world
Fixed missing collision on stair geo at CT spawn that allowed weapons/bomb to fall out of world
Fixed missing collision at Fountain that allowed weapons/bomb to fall out of world
Fixed some doors not generating bullet decals
Fixed vis issue at Street

Overpass

Fixed some collision that was causing unpredictable player movement

Mirage

Added collision to prevent bomb becoming unreachable
Adjusted some collision to prevent a ledge/pixel walk
Fixed player getting stuck when strafing on Middle Ramp by simplifying geo of floor and wall
Removed a clip brush from Apartments to improve flash lineups

Nuke

Built some collision to prevent bomb from getting stuck behind barrels
Fixed some disappearing mesh.
Fixed dynamic shadow clipping on characters at Vending
Improved clipping in vents
Fixed bombsite water to have better reflections on low settings
Fixed vis issue at t-spawn
Fixed collision on ramp in Bombsite B
Fixed holes in world

Vertigo

Fixed holes in world and other minor geometry bugs

Italy

Adjusted some collision to prevent players getting stuck in apartment

Office

Fixed a case where players could jump on a wall, fixed a case where players could get stuck if they crouched

As of the update's release, professional CS2 teams are competing at IEM Katowice 2024. The playoff stage matches will start on February 9th at 17:15 EET. Follow the tournament progress through the link.