AK-47 | Hydroponic (Battle-Scarred)

The AK-47 | Hydroponic in Battle-Scarred (BS) is the most worn end of this rifle's scale. The float bounds here are 0.45 and 0.80, and the 0.80 ceiling is shared by the whole finish: no copy is more worn. The skin is Classified, and The Rising Sun Collection it belongs to has no case.

What the AK-47 | Hydroponic looks like in Battle-Scarred

Brown lacquered wood with the grain showing makes up the handguard and stock. The receiver and dust cover are nearly white, with acid-green leaf silhouettes of various sizes laid across them. The gas tube, the front sight base and the muzzle are bright green metal, and the grip is terracotta. The magazine is dark steel with white ribs and carries no artwork. Valve's description calls the motif bamboo, but on the model itself it is leaves you see.

In Battle-Scarred every vulnerable spot is affected at once. The pale receiver turns gray along its edges and the green metal on the high points is worn down to steel. The wood darkens and loses its lacquer at the corners of the stock. The wear was set when the skin dropped, and it never changes.

Where the AK-47 | Hydroponic came from

The AK-47 | Hydroponic was not made in the Steam Workshop but by Valve itself. The skin appeared on May 26, 2015, when The Rising Sun Collection was added to the game. Its number in Valve's catalog is 456.

Valve's text credits the work to a gunsmith named Yukako, who used the rifle's wood to emphasize the green theme. Metallic paints are mentioned in the description too.

Pattern index on the AK-47 | Hydroponic

The look of the finish depends on the pattern index. The leaves on the side of the receiver fall differently, and some silhouettes are cut off by the edge of the part. A small red dot sits at the rear edge of the receiver. After float, this is what mainly separates listings, so two rifles with equal wear can look different.

What to check before buying

Picking a copy of the AK-47 | Hydroponic comes down to three things:

• float: near the 0.45 bound, more pale paint is left on the receiver;


• pattern index: how the leaves lie on the side of the receiver;


• stickers and a name tag left on the AK-47 | Hydroponic by the previous owner.

The 0.45 to 0.80 band is wide: the wear name is the same, the condition is not. The spread of 0.35 is 44% of the finish's whole scale, so the float number tells you more about a listing than the wear name does.

What the AK-47 | Hydroponic costs in Battle-Scarred

Measured against Battle-Scarred, the other wears come out like this:

• Factory New costs about four times more;


• Minimal Wear asks about 1.6 times this price;


• Field-Tested costs a few percent more;


• Well-Worn costs about a twentieth more.

Battle-Scarred is the cheapest of the five. The price order does not follow the wear order: Well-Worn sits a little above Field-Tested, and the gap between Field-Tested and Battle-Scarred all but disappears.

Among Classified AK-47 skins, the AK-47 | Hydroponic is the most expensive in this wear. The nearest, the AK-47 | Jet Set, is almost three times cheaper. The AK-47 | Case Hardened is about four and a half times lower, and the AK-47 | Redline more than thirty times. The cheap end of the rank, the AK-47 | Ice Coaled and the AK-47 | Searing Rage, sits two orders of magnitude lower.

Getting the AK-47 | Hydroponic

No CS2 case contains the AK-47 | Hydroponic. Ten skins from the rank below can be traded up for it if they are skins of this collection; the possible inputs include the Desert Eagle | Sunset Storm 壱 and the Five-SeveN | Neon Kimono. The collection has a single Classified skin, so the trade-up returns exactly this one.

In the other direction, ten of these rifles can go into a trade-up whose result is the AUG | Akihabara Accept, the Covert skin of the same collection.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AK-47 | Hydroponic

Valve never released a StatTrak version of the AK-47 | Hydroponic. There were no Souvenir packages for this finish either; those were made only for tournament map collections. But you can build a Souvenir copy yourself: the Souvenir-O-Matic puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on an ordinary skin from your inventory.

The pale receiver with green leaves and the dark wood of the stock give two different backgrounds. Light and golden stickers read on the wood; dark, saturated ones on the white receiver. Green and yellow stickers blend into the leaves, so build the craft on contrast with the artwork rather than similarity.

Who this wear suits

The AK-47 | Hydroponic in this wear is worth buying if:

• you want the cheapest way into the finish and wear does not bother you;


• the rifle is a working tool in CS2 rather than a showpiece;


• the pattern matters more than condition: the leaves on the side can be chosen, and everyone's float here is high.

Within 0.45 to 0.80 copies differ noticeably: near the lower bound the white receiver is still recognizable, and near the top gray edging runs along the whole part.