The CS:GO Weapon Case, Weapon Case 2 and Weapon Case 3 grew out of the Arms Deal update, the August 2013 patch that put weapon skins into Counter-Strike. They share one key and one rare item pool: the five original knives in their original finishes. Here is what each case holds, which skins stand out and where the three sit in CS2 as of October 2026.
Three cases, one key
Valve's Arms Deal announcement, dated August 14, 2013, introduced timed weapon drops, cases opened with a key, trading, and selling on the Steam Community Market. The CS:GO Weapon Case launched that day next to the eSports 2013 Case. The Counter-Strike Wiki describes its nine finishes as Valve-made and credits it with introducing the Case Hardened finish.
Weapon Case 2 followed in November 2013, at which point the original case became a rare drop. Weapon Case 3 arrived on February 12, 2014, the day the CZ75-Auto was added, and it is still the only case made up entirely of pistol skins. All three open with the same CS:GO Case Key, and the game files give each its own collection: the Arms Deal, Arms Deal 2 and Arms Deal 3 collections.
What each case contains
Grades run from Mil-Spec (blue) through Restricted (purple) and Classified (pink) to Covert (red). The table follows the loot lists in the game's item file, which match the wiki's pages.
| Grade | CS:GO Weapon Case | Weapon Case 2 | Weapon Case 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Covert | AWP Lightning Strike | SSG 08 Blood in the Water | CZ75-Auto Victoria |
| Classified | AK-47 Case Hardened, Desert Eagle Hypnotic | P90 Cold Blooded, USP-S Serum | CZ75-Auto The Fuschia Is Now, P250 Undertow |
| Restricted | Glock-18 Dragon Tattoo, USP-S Dark Water, M4A1-S Dark Water | Five-SeveN Case Hardened, MP9 Hypnotic, Nova Graphite, Dual Berettas Hemoglobin | CZ75-Auto Tread Plate, Tec-9 Titanium Bit, Desert Eagle Heirloom, Five-SeveN Copper Galaxy |
| Mil-Spec | MP7 Skulls, AUG Wings, SG 553 Ultraviolet | Tec-9 Blue Titanium, M4A1-S Blood Tiger, FAMAS Hexane, P250 Hive, SCAR-20 Crimson Web | CZ75-Auto Crimson Web, P2000 Red FragCam, Dual Berettas Panther, USP-S Stainless, Glock-18 Blue Fissure |
That makes 9, 12 and 12 guns. Weapon Case 3 has a CZ75-Auto finish at every grade, because the case shipped with the gun.
The original five knives
The rare special item in all three cases is a knife: the Bayonet, Flip Knife, Gut Knife, Karambit or M9 Bayonet. Each comes plain, with no finish (traders call it vanilla), or in one of 12 finishes: Blue Steel, Boreal Forest, Case Hardened, Crimson Web, Fade, Forest DDPAT, Night, Safari Mesh, Scorched, Slaughter, Stained and Urban Masked. Five models in 13 versions gives 65 possible knives.
The game files show this exact pool shared by many early cases: all three eSports cases, the Winter Offensive, Bravo, Phoenix and Vanguard cases, and the 2015 Revolver Case. Wear caps differ by finish. Fade is limited to 0.00 to 0.08, so Fade knives exist only in Factory New and Minimal Wear, and Slaughter runs from 0.01 to 0.26, which rules out Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred. Case Hardened, Blue Steel and Stained use the full 0.00 to 1.00 range. For how the five models differ in shape and animation, see our guide to every knife type.
Skins worth knowing
AK-47 | Case Hardened. The finish this case introduced is pattern-driven: the paint seed decides how much of the rifle turns blue, and the rare mostly-blue layouts are the "blue gems" collectors chase. Our Case Hardened guide covers the famous seeds. Weapon Case 2's Five-SeveN | Case Hardened and every Case Hardened knife in the pool work the same way.
AWP | Lightning Strike. Its float tops out at 0.08, so it only comes in Factory New and Minimal Wear. The Desert Eagle | Hypnotic and Glock-18 | Dragon Tattoo carry the same cap.
Narrow ranges. MP7 | Skulls and both Dark Water finishes run from 0.10 to 0.26, so they exist only as Minimal Wear and Field-Tested. In Weapon Case 2, the Tec-9 | Blue Titanium stops at 0.04 and is Factory New only, while SSG 08 | Blood in the Water stops at 0.20.
CZ75-Auto | Victoria. The only Covert in Weapon Case 3 and the top step of its four-grade CZ75 ladder.
StatTrak
Every gun and knife in these cases can roll as StatTrak, a version that counts your kills. Under the odds Perfect World published in 2017, any item with a StatTrak version has a one-in-ten chance of coming out as one, and the knife slot as a whole comes up in about 0.26% of openings. The game files list a StatTrak version of the knife pool for all three cases.
Where the cases stand in CS2
None of the three is in the current weekly drop pool. For years they could still turn up as rare drops, but community drop trackers have recorded no rare-pool drops since December 2025, as Hotspawn reported that month, and Valve has not commented. In practice the supply of each case now only shrinks as people open them. Our drop pool guide follows the current state.
The knives gained a second route on October 22, 2025, when Valve let five Covert skins be traded up into a knife from the collection of one of those skins. That makes the AWP | Lightning Strike, SSG 08 | Blood in the Water and CZ75-Auto | Victoria inputs for the original five. Five StatTrak Coverts return a StatTrak knife.
If you are after a particular Case Hardened layout, the paint seed and blue % filters on Buy narrow the search to the patterns you want.
Sources
- 8/13 – The Arms Deal Update — Counter-Strike blog (Valve)
- CS:GO Weapon Case — Counter-Strike Wiki
- CS:GO Weapon Case 2 — Counter-Strike Wiki
- CS:GO Weapon Case 3 — Counter-Strike Wiki
- Container (case odds) — Counter-Strike Wiki
- items_game.txt — GameTracking-CS2 on GitHub
- Counter-Strike 2 patches/October 22, 2025 — Counter-Strike Wiki
- Is CS2 removing cases? Rumors explained — Hotspawn
