★ Nomad Knife

The ★ Nomad Knife is the Nomad Knife in CS2 with no skin: there is no paint on it, and the listing description reads "Not Painted". Covert rank, with the ★ mark. The model came into the game on November 19, 2019, with Operation Shattered Web, where Valve showed it alongside the Paracord Knife, the Skeleton Knife and the Survival Knife. A plain knife has no wear category at all: with no paint there is no float and no pattern, and every copy is identical.

What the ★ Nomad Knife looks like

The ★ Nomad Knife is a folding knife with a wide drop-point blade of bare steel. Factory grinding marks show across the blade: light and dark streaks run along the grind and meet at the tip.

The handle is steel too, with finger cutouts and a dark ribbed insert at the butt end. A stud for opening sits at the heel of the blade, and the pivot screw is in the middle of the handle. The color comes from the steel itself, and that is all there is to it: in the community such items are called vanilla.

How the plain ★ Nomad Knife differs from a skinned one

When a knife has a skin, the buyer looks at wear and float, and on a Doppler at the phase as well. A plain knife offers nothing to choose, and that changes the whole way of reading a listing:

• there is no wear: no Factory New and no Battle-Scarred, and no float band is given for the listing;


• there is no pattern: copies do not differ in artwork or in shade;


• a name tag can be applied, and the name stays on the item when it is resold;


• knives never take stickers, since they have no slots for them.

One choice remains: the regular version or StatTrak. So Nomad listings are compared on price alone, and any of them can be bought on LIS-SKINS.

What the ★ Nomad Knife costs

Among the skins of this model, the plain knife sits in the middle of the lineup: ten skins cost less and fourteen cost more. Below it lie the camouflages, Safari Mesh, Forest DDPAT, Boreal Forest, Scorched and Rust Coat, as well as Urban Masked, Night Stripe and Ultraviolet.

Above it start Blue Steel, Case Hardened and Crimson Web, each costing between a tenth and a fifth more. The top of the lineup is Tiger Tooth, Slaughter, Marble Fade and Fade. Doppler costs three times as much as the plain Nomad Knife, and its gems five times as much or more.

Is there a StatTrak version

Yes: the ★ StatTrak™ Nomad Knife is a separate item on its own page. The counter tallies kills made with that particular knife; the reading goes to the buyer as it stands and cannot be reset. The premium over the regular version is small for this knife, a few percent.

Getting the ★ Nomad Knife

In CS2 the ★ Nomad Knife drops as a rare special item from three cases: the Shattered Web Case, the Fracture Case and the Fever Case. The plain version sits in the same rare special pool as the skins, so it comes up at random when a case is opened. You cannot choose whether a skin or bare steel drops.

The second route is a trade-up contract: five Covert skins turn into one rare special item, and there too you choose neither the model nor the skin. The only deliberate way to get a plain Nomad Knife is a ready-made listing.

Who it suits

Buy the plain ★ Nomad Knife when:

• you want a knife with no artwork that fits any loadout and does not clash with weapon skins;


• you would rather not deal with float, phases and pattern indexes, since there is nothing to choose here;


• you like the shape of the Nomad and do not want to pay three times as much for Doppler on the same model.