How To Summon and Kill Merasmus [#1]

How to summon Merasmus the wizard and give him a beating without receiving one yourself. Works for all classes and (most/all) maps. Now including screenshots!
Bonus: Also teaches how to enable the developer console and how to disable autobalance for bots.
This is NOT a guide teaching strategies on what to do when Merasmus spawns on a Halloween map and how to kill him.
No, it's about commands and easy killing.

Intro

Welcome to the first guide in a to-be series about console commands and stuff!
This guide is dedicated to teaching you the steps to summoning Merasmus the Wizard from the realm of magic, giving him a good beating, and then sending him back (possibly ded).
This only works on servers with sv_cheats 1 enabled.
Without further ado, let's begin!

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any incidents involving tf2-ers and vengeful wizards.

First Things First

First Things First

Create a server or just make a game through Training.
Note that on certain maps (like the one I'm using) Merasmus just stands there and doesn't even attack you, which makes it easier but dull.
Halloween maps that can naturally spawn Merasmus on official servers and their regular versions (e.g. koth_lakeside_event and koth_lakeside) are maps in which Merasmus should be able to normally move and kill. Try those if you don't want to take the risk of non-wizard-compatible maps.

Enabling Cheats

Enabling Cheats

The Golden Command
Open the console by pressing the "~" on your keyboard and type in "sv_cheats 1" (w/o quotation marks ofc). Then press Enter (you should know this).
Tip:
For people like me who experiment with commands like addcond and ent_create a lot, this is pretty much the starting command we use everytime we open a singleplayer server.
That's why cheating is hard I put "sv_cheats 1" in my Default.cfg file which is loaded when I enter the server, so I'm spared the hassle of typing in two words and a number.

Note: If pressing "~" doesn't work, refer to the section of this guide on enabling the console.

The Summoning

The Summoning

Spawning Merasmus the Great Wizard
Now aim your crosshair at somewhere you want to spawn Merasmus on, preferrably somewhere on the ground (aiming at other places might glitch out and spawn a Merasmus you can't see).
Open console again and type "ent_create Merasmus" (again w/o quotes).
Press Enter and Merasmus the Useless Wizard will magically appear at where you were aiming.

Staying Alive

Staying Alive

You can't rek somebody if he kills you in 2 seconds, right?!
Here's the Top Three Commands for not being unalived:
- "addcond 57" = gives you lifetime, medic-free uber
- "addcond 92" = gives you the Regen power-up from the Mannpower gamemode for better survivability or a delayed death (notice: does not work in spawn)
- "addcond 73" = the ultimate quick-fix pocket medic spawns and heals you until you die, just that you can't see, hear, or feel him

Here's me with all three cheats:

Murdering Merasmus (commands)

Maiming Merasmus

The Actual Beating
Now here's the Top Three Commands for gaining the power and the strength to easily murder the wizard.
- "addcond 56" = gives you lifetime, kritzkrieg-free crits
- "addcond 72" = move faster! shoot faster! reload faster! also gain infinite non-damaging atomizer jumps!
- "addcond 90-97" = mannpower powerups, check tf2 wiki for details

Mauling Merasmus (loadout)

No, that crit fan won't help you kill a giant wizard. At least, not much.
For maximum damage, try combining crits with weapons of high damage output.
Here's some examples.

Crit Brass Beast = op

Shotgun shots at point-blank are decent but kinda slow.

No, the crocket jumper does not do extra damage.

Maiming Merasmus (bots)

Calling In Friends
Killing tf2's most powerful wizard he's also the only one by yourself can be lonely and difficult, even with cheats.
Why not spawn some bots to help?
First disable autobalance completely with these two commands:
"mp_autoteambalance 0"
and
"mp_teams_unbalance_limit 0"
Then add some bots to your team with the following command. Change "teamname" to your team's name (e.g. red) and "number" to the number of friendly bots you wanna add.
Make sure your map is bot-compatible (if not, try "nav_generate" and spawn the bots again and hopefully they should work).
"tf_bot_add teamname number"
Spawn the wizard and they should (hopefully) go and gang up on Merasmus.


If the bots aren't helping enough or are just too weak,
try giving THEM cheats with the command "bot_command all insertcommandhere".
For example, I can give all the bots crits with "bot_command all addcond 56".

FREE CRITS, REGEN, AND OVERHEAL FOR EVERYONE :D

Note that if you give everyone uber (including yourself), Merasmus won't go around killing people because everyone's ubered, and your teammates will probably stand around not noticing or attacking that giant green Hogwarts graduate in the middle of the map.

Enabling Console

If pressing the "~" key does nothing, console may be disabled.
Press "Esc" and click on "Options".
Now tap "Advanced..." and tick the box for enabling the developer console.
If it's already enabled or it still doesn't work, navigate to the "Keyboard" tab in "Options" and scroll to the bottom. Check what key is bound to "Toggle developer console". If it's not bound, bind it to something. If it is bound, try pressing that key instead of pressing "~".
If all that fails, I can't help you.
Good luck.

NOTICE

You can NOT get any achievements such as killing Merasmus through this way.
Enabling cheats disables achievements, so better resort to friends achievement servers.

That's it, folks!

That's it for this guide.
Have fun dominating the helpless wizard!

Sources

Thanks to
-the official tf2 wiki (wiki.teamfortress.com) for the documentary on commands
-valve for creating tf2 (I'll rant about how they're destroying tf2 with all these skins and crates some other time)
-merasmus for coming along and "agreeing" to be the victim of this guide

[Jeacu]

tried it, and managed to kill Merasmus on time - but it said that i couldn't get the Skull Island achievement because cheats were on

[After Hatter]

go to map koth_lakeside_event and type in console sv_cheats 1; halloween_force_boss_spawn; buddha; sv_cheats 0; and it will spawn the real merasmus if you havent got the skull island topper be carefule because if you kill this merasmus you will recive a skull island topper

[uzar]

good guide thanks

[Anyar]

No problem, it's a very common misconception.

[Cole Schmidt]

Thanks, I was just worried.

[Anyar]

Sorry for the late reply, but no. sv_cheats 1 is built into the game, I've used it and the developers wouldn't ban you for something they purposefully put and let anyone use.

Some community servers even have sv_cheats 1 on and it's perfectly fine.

[Cole Schmidt]

Will I get VAC banned if i do sv_cheats in an offline match?

[Anyar]

ok

[luigi from mario brothers]

nvm i got it to work

[luigi from mario brothers]

it doesnt work for me