AWP | Atheris (Field-Tested)

The AWP | Atheris in Field-Tested (FT) sits exactly in the middle of the wear scale, on one of the more affordable bright AWPs in CS2. On the wear scale that is 0.15 to 0.38. It is Restricted rank and comes from the Prisma Case. The collection came out on March 13, 2019.

What the AWP | Atheris looks like in Field-Tested

On a black base an atheris viper is hand-painted in green and blue, coiling around the barrel and spilling onto the side of the receiver. The scales are drawn in separate brushstrokes, so up close you see relief, while from a distance the snake reads as a single patch of cool color. In Field-Tested the scuffs run along the barrel edge and the scope mount, and on a black ground they show up clearly lighter. The snake on the body of the AWP | Atheris lies on flat areas and stays intact.

What to check before buying

These are worth checking:

• the float: on a black base, worn edges stand out as pale streaks;


• stickers on the body and any name tag;


• whether a regular listing has been mistaken for a Souvenir one, since the prices differ.

The pattern is the same on every copy, so nobody pays extra for a pattern here.

The spread inside 0.15 to 0.38 is noticeable, and the first listing you see is rarely the best one.

What the AWP | Atheris costs in Field-Tested

The neighboring wears line up by price like this:

• Factory New costs about eight and a half times as much;


• Minimal Wear costs about three quarters more;


• Well-Worn is about a quarter cheaper;


• Battle-Scarred is also about a quarter cheaper.

An eightfold gap to the cleanest wear is unusual for a Restricted skin. It comes from demand for crafts: the flat black base in Factory New is prized as a blank for expensive stickers. For play that premium makes no sense, since in a match the difference between Factory New and FT does not show at all.

Getting the AWP | Atheris

The AWP | Atheris comes from the Prisma Case, and the skin's collection is the same.

You can also build this AWP through a contract: ten Mil-Spec skins from the set make one Restricted skin. Galil AR | Akoben, AK-47 | Uncharted or FAMAS | Crypsis will all do. The collection has five Restricted skins, so the result is random: the chance of landing the AWP is one in five. The wear of the output repeats the wear of the inputs.

The skin itself also goes into trade-ups as a cheap input toward the Classified rank. There is no gain in that: ten of the cheapest Restricted skins cost more than a ready-made Classified skin from the set.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AWP | Atheris

The AWP | Atheris has a StatTrak version. Souvenir copies of the finish turn up as well, though no Souvenir packages were ever made for it: packages only ever covered tournament map collections. Those copies are built with the Souvenir-O-Matic, which puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on a normal skin from the inventory.

A black base is the best possible background for stickers: any color reads on it, and a sticker has nothing to compete with except the snake itself. Green and blue blend into the artwork, while white and red give contrast. The stock and the magazine are free for stickers; the side with the snake is usually left open. Builds are what this AWP is most often bought for.

Who this wear suits

Buying the AWP | Atheris in Field-Tested is justified in these cases:

• you want a bright, inexpensive AWP for CS2 without the eightfold premium for Factory New;


• the snake matters more than clean edges, and in FT it is intact;


• you plan an inexpensive craft on a black base.

On black, light edges show at once, and by 0.38 the body looks clearly worn. For an expensive build, though, people still go for the cleaner wears.