The Black Rose

How to acquire the Black Rose!

Obsolete!

This guide is now obsolete!! The "AVA" game is no longer available in the steam store. This guide no longer has updated information due to the shutdown of "Alliance of Valiant Arms." Please consider this guide an archive of old information. Commenting is now disabled.


Ratings are appreciated!

Acquiring the Black Rose

This blade has the beauty of a rose, and the sharpness of it's thorns. It's not an item you can find while playing TF2, so how do you get it? Well by playing a completely different game, of coarse!

The "Black Rose" is one of the few items available in Valve's Team Fortress 2 that can only be acquired by unlocking an achievement in another steam game. For this item, the game in question is Alliance of Valiant Arms.

If your unfamiliar with either game title, both can be found in the Steam Store under Free to Play games. I've also linked the titles directly to the corresponding page throughout this walkthrough.

Notice: It's been brought to my attention that Alliance of Valiant Arms is not accessible on Steam in certain regions. Gamers have made it known on the Steam forums that they want the game in these regions, and a GM had responded letting them know they were forwarding the inquiry to the development team. However, this unfortunately means that the Black Rose is currently unobtainable in certain regions, at least for the time being. A current list of white listed countries can be found here. If your in a region that can't access AVA, skip to the Slay It With Flowers section of this guide for another option.

Update: As of July 2nd 2015 the Black Rose is now craftable in Team Fortress 2 as a tradable item. This guide had been written to help players acquire the Black Rose prior to that update and is still current. A new section will be added to this guide later to assist crafters in crafting the Black Rose.

If any images in this guide are not displaying properly, it is a loading issue with the steam servers. I assure you the images are still there. You can try to reload the guide to view them or simply check back later.

Please do not resort to adding me on Steam just to attempt to trade me for my Black Rose. It is not for trade. If you can't acquire the knife with the help of this guide, go to Steam Support.

Alliance of Valiant Arms

Once you've got Alliance of Valiant Arms installed and ready to play, you'll need to make a character. You may want to take the oppurtunity to go through it's tutorial, and play a match or two in the new player areas to get the hang of the games controls. Then roll into a public server and see how you do. If your simply playing to acquire the achievement, disregard that and head into a public server to get your head handed back to you.

Unlike other items that can be unlocked in other games, the achievement you need to acquire for the Black Rose is fairly simple to obtain. The achievement in question is 1st One Down* and it is earned simply by completing one online game. I should point out that this game needs not be won, but must be played on a public server to unlock the acheivement. So if you don't mind having a sniper make you perform a backroll upon death, just die repeatedly till the match is over.

Once you've gotten the acheivement, head back to Team Fortress 2 to claim your new knife.

* In addition, this achievement will unlock the Holy Mackerel melee weapon for use in Alliance of Valiant Arms.

New Item Acquired!

Once you have earned the achievement in Alliance of Valiant Arms , it's time to get back to sneaking and backstabbing in Team Fortress 2. Simply log in and you will see a notification or alert for a new item. Too easy!


This is a screenshot of the Black Rose as it is being aquired.

The Black Rose is a sexy replacement to the stock butterfly knife that has no other advantages or disadvantages, and since it's an achievement unlock, it's not tradable or marketable. This knife is a must have for any true practitioners of espionage.

See the "Slay It With Flowers" section on making this item tradable.

Selecting a Style

There are also two different variations of the Black Rose, which the official TF2 wiki hinted at but I had to dig deeper to figure out what they actually meant. What this means in a nutshell is that the knife can be set to a different style from within your backpack. When you go into your backpack, click on the icon for the Black Rose and you'll see the "Set Style" button highlight. Click on it and you may then select which style you want to use in game. You can switch out styles at any time!

The default style is known as "Mystery and True Love"... don't ask me why it's called that, I really haven't a clue.* What I can tell you is that this variant is tainted either a red or blue hue depending on which team you are on.

I personally prefer to roll with the all black version known as the "Baccara" style. It's kind of like the equivalant of painting a stock knife with a distinctive lack of hue! This style also compliments that all black hat you've been wanting.

* I've been informed that the knife's default style is so named because they released it on Valentines Day in 2012.

Killstreak Kits

They introduced Killstreak Kits for the Black Rose! I'll be adding more content on this later, for now I just wanted to let everyone know.

Slay It With Flowers

Since the Black Rose may be unobtainable in your region, you may be looking to trade for one. Since this is an achievement item that is normally not tradable or marketable, you may feel like you have to use a cheat to get it, but that's not true.

There is a way to legitimately trade the Black Rose with the use of Gift Wrap that can be purchased in the in-game store, or on the Community Market. Since the Black Rose is a promotional item for a game that is released, it can be gift wrapped. If you need more information on this, please refer to A Carefuly Wrapped Guide found in the Related Guides section below.

Once again, do not attempt to add me to trade me for my Black Rose, it's not gonna happen. If you can't get the knife with the assistance of this guide, go through Steam Support.

About this Guide

When I decided to create this guide I quickly realised that this guide should definately be submitted for two different games: Alliance of Valiant Arms and Team Fortress 2.

After I went through the work of creating the guide, I then put forth the effort of duplicating it so that it could be found under the Community Hub as Guides for either title. Any updates to the guide will be made on both variants, and I've since fine tuned it so that it's not confusing to either player base.

If you appreciate this guide, regardless of which game you found it under, please feel free to add it to your favorites and give it a rating!

Frequent Comments

I've noticed a lot of the same comments on these guides, and most of them are duplicitous, so I've created this section to give you my best answer to any questions and to respond in kind to any comments. I'll try to periodically delete older comments to keep these guides clean. This will be written in the form of a typical Frequently Asked Questions section.

Please note, comments are now disabled on this guide due to repetitive questions that have already been answered within this guide.


"Hey will you trade me your Black Rose? I really like it."
Hahahaha, no. I like it too! I created this guide to help you get it for yourself, not to encourage you to attempt trading for mine.

"I'm not getting the achievement."
Please make sure you follow the tips for getting the achievement, and if your still not getting it, seek assistance from the discussion forums for AVA.

"I don't have the game but I want the knife."
The game is absolutely free and can be found in the steam store under the Free to Play section.

"I dont have any money to buy the game so this isn't helpful at ALL"
Once again, the game is free to play, you don't need money to purchase it. Obviously you didn't read the guide at ALL

"If we delete the game, will we still have the item?"
If you uninstall AVA, it will have no effect on your in game items for TF2. If you uninstall TF2, the items you own will still be linked to your steam account.

"I can't find it on Steam but when I click on the link, it comes up with: This item is currently unavailable in your region. Please help."
The developers haven't released the game in your region, and I can't assist you with this. You have the option of trying the forums for further assistance.

"Too bad the game isn't available in my region."
I concur. I see no reason why this game shouldn't be allowed in certain regions, but that is in the hands of the developers.

"I hate to break it to you but the promotion expired."
Its not expired or i wouldnt have it. If the promotion does expire, you'll still be able to trade for one.

"I can't get holy macheral. Is it in the shop?"
According to the official TF2 wiki, if you have the achievement that unlocks the Black Rose in TF2, you should have also unlocked the Holy Mackeral in Allaince of Valiant Arms. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy AVA enough to keep playing it after earning the achievement, so I can't tell you if I unlocked mine or not. If you need further assistance with it contact their support system.

"We need other tutorials on how to get promos like this!"
I intend to write a few more, keep an eye on the Related Guides section.

"Thanks man very helpful!" and "Thank you so much!!"
Thank you mate! I'm glad you appreicate the work that went into this. Please rate it up so that more gamers will see it and get the in-game loot.

"This is the best guide I've ever seen. Thank you."
That is quite the compliment, thank you! Please make sure you add it to your favorites and catch any future updates on it.

"I love the vocabulary and sentence structure that is used throughout this guide. I feel both enlightented by the words, and excited that the knife can be aquired in such a simple way. Thank you for creating this guide with suck language. I highly respect people when you use this while speaking or in writen content."
I admit I do have a flare for writing in slang. Thanks for the compliments.

"Can you craft it?" or "I can make it."
No you can't. This item is not craftable.

"I need it. I love spy."
Likewise.

"I got it and was sad that it wasnt black so i scrapped it... now i noticed the style select."
Ouch. I'd look into trading for one. See the Slay it with Flowers section.

"I deleted it for some scrap accidently and I want my black rose! I can't get it again but I want it back! How do i get it back without making a new account?"
Unfortunately they don't reimburse you for lost achievement items. I'd look into trading for one. See the Slay it with Flowers section.

"You're stupid right?"
Asks the guy that admits to using a third party program (which I won't mention) to unlock the achievements on a Steam game in a comment. In my opinion, Valve just does not have enough moderators to ban these cheating idiots.

"I think this is too much of a guide for one simple, easy to get item... Maybe if there's a guide for this there should be one for the Alien Swarm parasite hat too."
I'm working on a guide for that as well, keep an eye on the Related Guides section.

"Do we really need a guide for this?"
Apparently we do need a guide for this, I mean you're here right?

"So THATS how you get the Black Rose!"
Indeed. THATS why I wrote this guide.

"Well, time to play a game just to get an achievement for an item I've always wanted."
Go get it!

"I got the Rose yesterday. Thanks for the help and for this guide. I was confused on how to get it at first."
Enjoy the new knife!

"I now have a black rose because of this." and "Thanks, now I have a badass knife because of you."
Now go stab some backs for me!

"Can't wait to try, thanks!"
No problem!

"Good!!" or "It's Good." or "Good Job!"
Thanks!

"Nice" or "Nice guide!"
Thanks again!

"+rep"
+rep = RatE it uP!

Sources

Some of the initial research for this guide started at the official TF2 wiki, and they deserve a shout out here. As always, I'm just giving credit where credit is due!

Thanks to an update on http://trade.tf/items/updates we now know that the Black Rose is newly craftable in TF2 as a tradable item.

Thanks to the various players that pointed out there are currently regional restrictions with Alliance of Valliant Arms, making this guide completely useless to them for the time being. I appreciate your input and will do what I can on my end to promote getting this game to other regions.

The Leaky Spigot

If your TF2 inventory is on the dry side you can join The Leaky Spigot Giveaway Group for a chance to acquire some items for free. On the flip side, if your inventory is so full it's about to blow a pipe, you can offer up some of your extra items to the group. Let's bust out the gift wrap and get into the Leaky Spigot spirit of giving!

Steam Awards

Thanks for the Steam Awards!

I have been creating guides for the Steam Community for a few years now, long before Steam Awards were a thing. I love creating content for the games I play. In 2020, Valve decided to reward players that create content with the points shop system.

The Steam points are very appreciated, and certainly encourages me to create more content for the gaming community. I even spent a few of the points to give more space for Steam guides on my profile. This lets me present up to seven of them on my profile at once. If you want to see what else I've created, you should check out the Other Published Steam Guides section of this guide!

Decennial Guide

This guide was first published in 2013. See for yourself! You can check the dates on the top right pane of this guide. As we are heading into 2024, that makes this guide over 10 years old. The term for a 10 year anniversary is Decennial and I am now calling this a Decennial Guide.

If you appreciate this guide helping out the player base over the last ten years, throw it a Steam Award as a thank you! I'd really appreciate it!

Team Fortress 2 Guide Index

This guide is part of the TF2 Guide Index, a master guide pointing to all published guides specifically for Team Fortress 2 that Mr. Jester has contributed to.

Team Fortress 2: Guide Index 

A Guide for Team Fortress 2

By: https://www.twitch.tv/ronjester

This guide is a master list of all guides I've published for TF2.

"Stab, Stab, Staab!"

Other Published Steam Guides

You can check out all of my Published Steam Guides here, the following guides I feel are related in one way or another.

Aim Lab Achievement Guide and Walkthrough 

A Guide for Aimlabs

By: https://www.twitch.tv/ronjester

This guide follows the development of Aim Labs from it's very Early Access on Steam. This guide will be published as a Work in Progress, and will evolve with the game.

Twitch Integration for 7 

A Guide for 7 Days to Die

By: https://www.twitch.tv/ronjester

This is a quick walkthrough on how to use Twitch Integration for 7 Days to Die as a streamer or a viewer.