On October 23, 2025, Valve expanded the “Trade Up Contract” in Counter-Strike 2: now you can trade five red (Covert) skins and get a rare “gold” item — a knife or gloves. For a lot of players, this became the simplest way to get a knife without opening cases.
But it’s not a “make it pretty” button. Mistakes cost real money: some people mix collections and lose their shot at the knife they wanted, some get confused with StatTrak, and some buy in when prices are overheated and everything’s flying up.
In this guide, we’ll break down how knife crafting works, how not to throw your contract for no reason, which builds you’ll see most often, and how to judge the risk so you’re crafting with a plan — not just praying to RNG.
A “Trade Up Contract” is an in-game system where you give up several skins and get one item that’s higher rarity. After the 2025 update, there’s a separate branch for knives and gloves: you hand in 5 Covert skins (red-tier), and you get 1 “gold” item.
Important: this didn’t replace the classic 10-item Trade Up. It’s just a separate format — “5 reds → gold.” One more thing about StatTrak: if you want a StatTrak knife, all 5 items in the contract must be StatTrak. You can’t mix StatTrak and normal items — you’ll get a normal result.
Why did the market get shaken up? Because demand for red skins jumped hard (they became “consumables” for knives), and there are more knives and gloves on the market now — so some older prices really dropped, while some red skins got more expensive.
Below is the basic flow. It’s the same for any knife — the only difference is which collections you take your red skins from.
Go to Inventory → scroll to the tools section → open “Trade Up Contract.” The game will show the contract window where you add skins.
Only Covert items work for knife/glove contracts. Exactly five. If even one item is a different rarity, the game won’t let you confirm the contract.
Before you confirm, the game shows which collections your skins are from. That’s your “chance map”: the more collections you mix, the bigger the knife/glove pool you can roll.
Click “Complete Trade Up.” The game will ask you to confirm again — that’s normal. This is irreversible, and your skins will be removed from your inventory.
You’ll see a short animation, and the item will instantly show up in your inventory. If you plan to sell it, don’t forget marketplace fees and Steam Wallet limits.
The most common reason for “why didn’t I get what I wanted” is mixing collections by accident. The contract works on a simple rule: your result odds depend on how many items from each collection you put in.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
The game shows the collection list before you confirm. Spend 10 seconds and check it — it’s way cheaper than buying another 5 reds later.
Think of a collection as a set of possible “gold” items. The wider the set, the lower your chance for the exact knife you want. So a good craft is always a balance: either you pay for control (5 from one collection), or you save money but take more risk.
Below is a simple table to quickly estimate odds based on your collection split:
| Skin combo | Result odds |
|---|---|
| 5 skins from Collection A | 100% — result from Collection A |
| 4 skins A + 1 from B | 80% A, 20% B |
| 3 skins A + 2 from B | 60% A, 40% B |
| 3 skins A + 1 from B + 1 from C | 60% A, 20% B, 20% C |
| 2 from A + 2 from B + 1 from C | 40% A, 40% B, 20% C |
If you care about one specific knife, it’s almost always better to stick to one collection. If your goal is just “get a gold item cheaper,” you can mix — but you have to accept that the result gets way more random.
A “recipe” in crafting is basically the choice of collection(s) and a set of 5 red skins. Below are some of the most popular directions — plus what to watch for so you don’t accidentally buy the wrong rarity tier.
People love the Butterfly for the animations and the fact it usually holds value. The easiest way to boost your Butterfly odds is to pick a case/collection where it takes up as much space as possible in the “gold” pool.
In the Operation Breakout Weapon Case (“Breakout”), the rare items are only the Butterfly Knife (Butterfly Knife) in different finishes. So if you do a contract from this collection, the knife model will be a Butterfly every time (the skin/finish is still random).
To build the contract, you need 5 Covert skins from Breakout. In practice, there are only two:
Most players either buy five of the same one (cheaper and easier to track), or mix these two — but they always stay inside the same collection.
If you want a cheaper entry, you can mix collections where the Butterfly exists in the rare pool, and pad the contract with cheaper reds from other cases. But here’s the catch: the more cases you combine, the wider the pool — and your Butterfly odds drop.
To avoid buying blind, do this: first open the case page and confirm the “special items” really include the Butterfly Knife, then check which exact red skins belong to that case, and only then build a 4+1 or 3+2 contract.
Simple example for Spectrum Case: the Covert skins there are AK-47 | Bloodsport and USP-S | Neo-Noir. If you use 5 reds from Spectrum, your result will be a “gold” item from the Spectrum pool, where the Butterfly can appear among the knives.
Players love the Karambit for the animations and the blade shape. The key thing: a “guaranteed Karambit” is rare, because it almost always shares the pool with other knives from the same case.
Below is the general logic by cases/collections. The numbers are a rough guide, because the pool depends on the specific case and its special item set:
| Collection | Craft cost | Karambit odds | Knife market price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Case/collection where special items are only Karambits (almost never happens) | $500–700+ | close to 100% | $800–2,000+ |
| Gamma / Chroma and similar cases (Karambit is in the pool) | $300–500 | usually not very high | $1,500–3,000 |
| Mixed contract from 2 collections | $300–600 | depends on 4+1 / 3+2 split | depends a lot on the finish |
If you’re chasing Doppler (and especially Ruby/Sapphire), treat it like a lottery: your chance at a specific phase is tiny, and the entry is expensive. For beginners, it’s usually smarter to grab a more stable knife first, then come back to the “color” phases later.
The Talon Knife is part of the knife set that showed up in the Horizon Case. The crafting mechanic is the same as everywhere: pick a collection, get 5 reds, confirm the contract.
Step-by-step looks like this:
The main idea is simple: the narrower the pool in your chosen collection, the higher your chance to hit the knife model you want.
Success here comes down to the collection. In Horizon Case, the special items include Talon Knife, Stiletto, Ursus Knife, and Navaja. Plus, gloves can sometimes be in the pool too — it depends on how Valve tied “gold” drops to that specific container.
The rule doesn’t change: you need 5 of the cheapest Covert skins from that collection. After that, it’s on you whether you’re OK with the risk of pulling a different knife from the pool instead of a Talon.
A truly “guaranteed recipe” almost always means choosing a collection with a narrow pool. If the pool is wide, all you can do is run the math and decide if the risk is acceptable.
A solid workflow is:
This way you at least know what you can lose in the worst case — and you’re not slamming the button on pure эмоtion.
The Nomad Knife is part of the Shattered Web Case knife set. This uses the “new craft” in the usual way: to roll a “gold” item from this case, you need 5 Covert skins from Shattered Web.
Here’s the step-by-step plan:
In Shattered Web, the pool usually includes multiple knives at once (Nomad, Skeleton, Survival, Paracord) — so your odds for one specific model won’t be “locked.”
The Skeleton Knife is a specific knife model from the Shattered Web set. A common mistake is that people call any knife with cutouts a “skeleton,” but for crafting, the model matters — not the look of the finish.
To avoid missing, do two things first:
Step-by-step strategy:
If your goal is just your first knife in your inventory, you don’t have to tunnel on Butterfly or Karambit. There are simpler models that are often cheaper and still look fine.
Below is a rough guide for “base” models. Prices and entry cost depend heavily on the case you pick and the condition (float):
| Knife | Where to craft | Minimum craft cost | Market price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gut Knife | Multiple collections | $50–150 | $40–500 |
| Flip Knife | Multiple collections | $100–200 | $200–1,000 |
| M9 Bayonet | Multiple collections | $200–400 | $500–2,000 |
| Falchion Knife | Multiple collections | $100–250 | $300–1,500 |
These are just ballpark numbers. Before you buy, always check live prices — the market moves, and it can swing hard in a couple of days.
Prices for red skins and knives jump all the time — especially after patches, tournaments, and big sales. But to make it easier to navigate, here are typical ranges by budget and risk.
This isn’t a “price list.” It’s a quick guide so you know what kind of risk you’re signing up for:
| Craft type | Cost | Risk | When to pick it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheap | $50–150 | High (lots of outcomes) | Experiments, testing |
| Mid | $200–400 | Medium (often 4+1 / 3+2) | Balance of cost/risk |
| Expensive, “controlled” | $500–1,000+ | Low (narrow pool) | If you want control |
The cheaper the entry, the more you’re buying pure randomness instead of control. And vice versa: when you pay more, you’re usually paying to narrow the outcome pool.
Here’s an example of how to read profitability. Important: “expected profit” is not a guarantee. It’s meant to show that odds + outcome prices matter more than one attractive target knife price.
| Target knife | Craft cost | Success chance | Knife market price | Expected profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Butterfly Vanilla | $150 | About 20% (risky) | $70–100 | −$50 to +$100 |
| Butterfly Night | $200 | About 30% | $400–600 | +$200–400 |
| Butterfly Doppler | $350 | About 45% | $1,000–2,000 | +$650–1,650 |
| Butterfly Fade | $400 | About 50% | $2,000–3,000 | +$1,600–2,600 |
| Karambit Doppler | $500 | About 40% | $1,500–3,000 | +$1,000–2,500 |
| Karambit Ruby/Sapphire | $1,000+ | <1% | $5,000–20,000+ | Random |
Read it like this: if your chance is 45%, then 45% of the time you hit the strong outcome, and the rest of the time you get a different item from the pool that can be much cheaper. That’s the risk.
Crafting is easy button-wise, but brutal in the details. Here are four mistakes that burn budgets the most.
The usual story: “5 from one collection is expensive, but mixing is cheaper.” Result: the pool gets bigger, your odds for the knife you want go down, and you pull something you didn’t plan for.
How to avoid it: if your goal is a specific knife, stick to one collection. If your goal is just to test luck, mix — but accept the risk upfront.
A lot of people think you can put 4 StatTrak and 1 normal, and still get a StatTrak result. Nope: the contract must be 100% StatTrak, or the result will be normal.
How to avoid it: either all 5 items are StatTrak (if you want the counter), or all 5 are normal. Mixing almost always ends in disappointment.
After patches and hype, prices for the reds you need can spike in a single day. If you buy on эмоtion, there’s a good chance your entry will be cheaper a week or two later.
How to avoid it: watch the price for at least a couple of days, don’t buy “today at any cost.” Usually the market cools off and the entry becomes more reasonable.
A beginner sees an expensive knife and assumes crafting is automatically profitable. But profit is math: entry price, list of possible outcomes, and the odds for each one.
How to avoid it: before you craft, quickly estimate expected value (EV):
Yeah, you can get lucky once — but over time, the players who do the math and don’t hit the button on эмоtion come out ahead.
