Spawning
The Haunted Halloween Gift will spawn at one of many predetermined locations on
Mann Manor,
Eyeaduct,
Helltower and
Ghost Fort. When a player receives a gift, they will incur an approximate 48-minute cooldown, during which time they will be unable to find gift boxes. After this cooldown finishes, they will be eligible to find another. If a player does not pick up their gift box within 3 minutes, the gift is despawned and the player must wait 5-10 minutes before another spawns. Once they finally receive their gift, they incur the usual ~48-minute cooldown. If the player's cooldown expires when they are not connected to a game server or playing a non-event map, they will receive a gift spawn within a minute of connecting to a server running the event map.
Ten player connections to the server are required (meaning players who are on a team, in
spectator, or actively joining the server) for the gift to drop; additionally, servers must be registered with
TF2 Quickplay on
Steam, to prevent cheating or farming to gain items. The total player count only includes actual Steam clients, not
bots or the
replay user.