AWP | Hyper Beast (Field-Tested)

Field-Tested (FT) on the AWP | Hyper Beast is the third cleanest of five grades. Float values in this grade fall between 0.15 and 0.38. The paint covers only the rear third of the rifle, so wear does not show across the whole body. It is a Covert rank skin that drops from the Falchion Case.

What the AWP | Hyper Beast looks like in Field-Tested

The long barrel, the bipod and the front of the receiver stay as bare dark metal. Toward the middle of the receiver comes an almost monochrome zone: a dark gray base with whitish smears, like billows of smoke. Then the paint stops at a vertical orange-yellow band, and from there to the rear the color begins.

The rear is painted entirely. Raspberry and crimson streaks run down the thumbhole stock, with acid-green and teal veins breaking through them. Jade tongues flow from the receiver toward the trigger guard, and the scope ring is painted red. The beast is not drawn as a silhouette but as a spill of paint: on the left side the face does not read.

On the dense multicolor patch scuffs nearly get lost, while on the dark smoky part they show at once: the receiver edge lightens and turns gray. A copy's wear is set when it drops.

Where the AWP | Hyper Beast came from

The finish is by frontaLOBE, who posted the submission to the Steam Workshop on January 14, 2015. In the description the author named the source of the image: the illustration was drawn by the artist Brock Hofer, and the submission links to his posters. The author also promised more weapons in this theme there.

The Falchion Collection was released on May 26, 2015. In the notes for Operation Bloodhound, Valve described the case as sixteen skins by community authors and a new knife model. In Valve's skin catalog the AWP | Hyper Beast is number 475.

What to check before buying

Before taking an AWP | Hyper Beast, look at these:

• the float: toward 0.38 the edges on the smoky part lighten, while the colored rear holds longer;


• a name tag or stickers left by the previous owner.

There is no choosing by artwork here as such.

What the AWP | Hyper Beast costs in Field-Tested

The step between grades is uneven. Factory New is dearer by more than four times, Minimal Wear by half as much again. Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred are cheaper than Field-Tested by only a sixth. The three lower grades cost nearly the same, and the surcharge falls at the top of the scale.

Among Covert AWPs the AWP | Hyper Beast is third from the bottom. Only AWP | Chrome Cannon and AWP | Chromatic Aberration cost less. AWP | Neo-Noir, AWP | Wildfire and AWP | Printstream are already dearer, and AWP | Medusa, AWP | Dragon Lore and AWP | Gungnir by tens of times.

Getting the AWP | Hyper Beast

The AWP | Hyper Beast drops from the Falchion Case, and this finish is not found anywhere else. A trade-up for it is assembled like this: ten skins one rank down, all from one collection. The collection has two Covert skins, and the second is AK-47 | Aquamarine Revenge.

Five Covert skins of the set go into a knife craft. The Falchion Case has just one knife model, the Falchion Knife, so only the finish and the wear are left to chance.

StatTrak and Souvenir

Stickers and craft on the AWP | Hyper Beast

The AWP | Hyper Beast has a StatTrak version. No Souvenir packages were ever made for this finish, because packages only ever covered tournament map collections. A souvenir copy can still be built by hand. The Souvenir-O-Matic puts gold tournament stickers and a player autograph on a normal skin from the inventory. That is why the odd souvenir copy turns up where no package was ever made.

The colored rear swallows a sticker: on the spill of paints neither logo nor outline reads. There is one working spot, the dark smoky part of the body toward the bipod. Light single-color stickers hold there: white, light blue, yellow. Black ones vanish on the dark gray, so a craft on the AWP | Hyper Beast is built from light.

Who this wear suits

This listing is worth buying in this grade if:

• you want a Covert AWP for CS2 from the lower part of the rank: only two finishes cost less;


• the first-person view matters: in CS2 the hands show the painted rear, not a clean barrel;


• you need a base for stickers with a large dark field.

The band of 0.15 to 0.38 is long, and near its bottom the skin looks noticeably fresher. The smoky part looks most even up to roughly 0.20.