How to Trade-Lock weapons (and other items)

Do you want to permanently lock a item to your inventory? This steam guide will teach you everything you need to know about trade-locking items.

What is Trade-Locking?

Trade locking is the process of using a un-tradable killstreak kit on a weapon to make said item un-tradable.

This guide will show you the most effective way to craft an un-tradable killstreak kit.

Why even trade-lock something?

There is no real benefit to trade-locking a item, other than to prevent it from ever leaving your inventory / account. However, some players may want to trade-lock a weapon to stop people from offering on said item. Other players may want to trade-lock a item to stop themselves from accidentally trading a item that they really want to keep. For example, if a player has several of the same item that they want to trade, they may want to trade-lock the one that they use, to prevent stats being wiped accidentally in a trade.

Some players trade-lock items as a sign of dedication to a item. If they really want people to know they love a item, trade-locking it is a easy way to show how much you like a item.

WARNING ABOUT TRADE-LOCKING

Once a item is trade-locked, there is NO WAY to revert these changes. If you want to sell or trade the item in the future, it will not be possible. Steam support will not revert changes made to items like this.

If you are on the fence about trade-locking a item, do not do it.

If a item that is trade-locked is modified via renaming, festivizing, adding/removing a killstreak kit etc, the item will still be trade-locked.

If a item that is strange that is trade-locked has its stats transferred to another item that is NOT trade-locked, it will still be trade-locked, and the tradable item will still be tradable.

I have added a graphic explaining all of this.

Material List

In order to trade-lock a weapon, you will need the following items:

- The weapon that you want to trade-lock
obviously. lol.

- Any CRAFTABLE un-tradable weapon
THIS MUST BE CRAFTABLE!
You can get these from achievement unlocks or out of the yearly smissmas stocking.

- Any basic killstreak kit
/b]
I recommend the pain train.
You can get these from the steam community market, or from trading with other players.

- A specialized killstreak fabricator that has not had any killstreak items added.
If it is a specialized kit, make sure it has not had a basic killstreak item added.
You can get these from the steam community market, or from trading with other players.

- Whatever ingredients are needed to complete said fabricator.
robot parts like taunt processors, bomb stabilizers etc etc...
You can get these from the steam community market, or from trading with other players.

Crafting the Killstreak kit

STEP 1

Craft the un-tradable weapon into un-tradable scrap metal via smelt class weapons.
( 2 weapons of the same class = 1 scrap metal)
You can also craft the scrap metal into a reclaimed to get multiple un-tradable scrap for later uses.

STEP 2

Craft the un-tradable scrap into the weapon on the basic killstreak that you bought.
( In this example we are doing the pain train because it has the simplest crafting recipe of 1 scrap + 1 sandman.)

STEP 3

Apply the basic killstreak kit to the un-tradable weapon.

STEP 4

Use the un-tradable killstreak weapon + Robot parts to complete the specialized fabricator.
This will create a un-tradable specialized killstreak kit for the weapon we want to trade-lock.

STEP 5

Apply the specialized killstreak kit to the weapon of choice.
THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE. MAKE SURE YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS!

Extra Bits: Trade-locking other items, and other methods

It is possible to trade-lock any item in the game. However in order to do this you will need a special glitched killstreak kit fabricator. These glitched fabricators came into the game around 2016 due to a oversight in the item schema, causing all kits unboxed and dropped from MVM to have no designated weapon attached meaning the kits can be applied to pretty much anything.

However, keep in mind that these kits costs Several hundreds of dollars! this is the cheapest one I could find, and it is going for 650 Keys.

Other methods of "trade-locking"

By technicality, these are some other ways to trade-lock items. These are more for jokes than anything honestly.

- You can just not trade the item.
- You can craft hats, weapons, and other items using un-tradable metal.
- You can get trade banned via steam. ( Don't actually do this lol)
- You can apply recently purchased killstreak kits & festivizers to give items temporary trade holds.
- You can private your inventory, so that other people cannot see what you own.
- If you don't want people knowing you have a item, you can trade the items to a private alt account, then private your inventory and trade it back. This will make it seem as if it no longer exists from item databases.

[transliteration]

Thanks, might use it

[pablo bozo]

this is really cool lol