Wear value and appearance
A skin receives a wear value when the item is created through an eligible item source such as a drop, container opening or Trade Up Contract. The value is associated with the finish and maps to a named wear condition, from Factory New through Minimal Wear, Field-Tested and Well-Worn to Battle-Scarred. The item’s visible appearance depends on the finish’s own texture and how that finish responds to wear.
Wear does not gradually increase because a player equips or uses a skin. It is an item property rather than a durability meter. A weapon does not become more worn through matches, and using it does not reduce its performance. The visual condition may be important to a collector, but it has no combat effect.
Finish-specific ranges
The numeric value is often called a float. A lower or higher value does not always produce a simple uniform change across every finish: some finishes have restricted value ranges, and the texture can make wear more noticeable in one area than another. The in-game inspection view and item details help distinguish the named condition from the actual finish appearance.
Wear is separate from Pattern Index. Wear describes a condition value, while the pattern seed determines how the finish’s pattern is positioned or selected. Together they help describe an individual copy of a Weapon Skin without changing the weapon’s gameplay.
CS2 applicability
This entry describes wear as an item attribute in CS2. Named wear bands and possible float ranges are assigned by the finish; item-specific limits should be checked for the particular skin rather than generalized to the whole inventory.
September 27, 2023 Counter-Strike 2 launch update
The September 27, 2023 patch adjusted wear values for some weapon finishes, including Custom Paint Job finishes whose wear appeared too strong. It does not list all affected finishes or publish exact old and new values. Wear changes visual appearance and condition; it does not alter weapon performance. See Weapon Skins for finish styles.
Float values and condition bands
A finish float is set when an item is created. It is not a durability meter: using or inspecting a weapon does not increase its value, and the value cannot be changed afterward. Zero is the clean end of the scale and one is the heavily worn end. Most weapon finishes have float values distributed around a bell-shaped curve, so extreme values are less common; this describes the distribution, not a guarantee for every finish.
The standard condition labels use these float intervals: Factory New, 0.00–0.07; Minimal Wear, 0.07–0.15; Field-Tested, 0.15–0.37; Well-Worn, 0.37–0.44; and Battle-Scarred, 0.44–1.00. Boundaries are commonly shown as adjacent interval endpoints in item listings. A finish can have a narrower permitted range than the overall scale: P250 | Whiteout, for example, ranges from 0.06 to 0.80. The displayed condition is therefore determined by the item’s actual float within that finish’s allowed bounds.
Wear appearance depends on the finish style. Some styles show scratches or surface aging more strongly as float rises, while others place or reveal wear differently; a shared condition label does not mean two finishes will look equally damaged. Float is independent from the Pattern Index, which changes pattern placement, and neither attribute changes combat performance. The September 27, 2023 CS2 update also corrected overly strong wear on several Custom Paint Job finishes, a finish-specific visual adjustment rather than a change to float progression.