Cases were first introduced to Counter-Strike nearly a decade ago, and they’ve been an essential ingredient of the game ever since. 

While the contents of these cases are purely cosmetic, they elevate the gameplay experience by allowing players to customize their characters and weapons with different skins.

For the uninitiated, cases in CS2 are virtual containers full of knife, weapon, and character skins. Some of these items are common, and therefore cheap, while others are extremely rare, and therefore eye-wateringly valuable. 

Rare skins can fetch huge prices on the Steam Community Market—so huge, in fact, that they can only be traded on third-party sites without Valve’s $2,000 wallet limit. 

Each case has a variety of contents, and you can review these before spending a key on opening a case up. Once you spend your key, however, just one of these items comes out at random. 

It’s like visiting a casino, but you’re playing for virtual skins instead of shiny quarters.

So how do you get your hands on them without spending your hard-earned cash?

There are several different ways, ranging from time-consuming but reliable to expensive fickle. 

The most universal way of earning cases is by simply playing the game. In every week that you rank up, you’ll get the choice of four random rewards, at least one of which is always a case. 

You get to choose two of these rewards, so at the very least you should be able to open a case every seven days—and sometimes two.

Next up, there are missions and challenges related to specific in-game operations. These are time-limited, though, you’ll need to ensure you act quickly to earn your free cases.

Then there are drops, available to players who earn 5,000 XP. The beauty of this method is that you can chart your progress towards the next case by monitoring your points total, giving you a tasty little carrot to chase. 

Finally, and most straightforwardly, you can source cases by trading with other players via Steam’s own sharing functionality or through other CS2 sites and communities. 

Naturally, in order to exchange cases with other players you’ll need to come to the table with cases of your own.

Understanding the Odds

Drops are random in CS2, but there are systems you can employ to improve your odds of receiving skins. 

For a start, you can simply buy the case you’re looking for on the Steam Community Market or a third-party CS2 case opening platform. This method isn’t free, and you can lose a lot of money if you don’t play responsibly, but buying cases can save you a hell of a lot of time. 

It’s also worth getting your head around drop rates. Cases can drop from both the active pool and the rare pool, and the active pool tends to contain cases that have recently been added to the game. 

In general, the five most recent additions are included, meaning the drop rate for each of them is around 20%. The rare pool, meanwhile, contains everything else, giving each item a drop rate of between 0.02% and 0.05%. 

Drops are ultimately random, though, so the only real way of improving your odds is to obtain more cases. And the only cost-effective way to increase your collection of cases is to play a lot of CS2.

Which sounds like a good deal to us. Counter-Strike 2 is available on Steam with its official site right here.