How to get Infinite Hand Grenades in Team Fortress Classic

If you’re familiar with Team Fortress Classic, then you should immediately notice something wrong with this picture. Grenades are items thrown with the F key (by default), they’re not a holdable item like your other weapons.

Well, while grabbing screenshots for my last article on grenades, I stumbled across something very cool. Absolutely a glitch, but one where you can get a bottomless supply of fully-functional hand grenades.

Here’s what you need to do to replicate the glitch yourself:

1) The first thing you’ll need to do is import the maps from Half-Life Deathmatch into TFC. In other words, grab the .bsp files from C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonHalf-Lifevalvemaps and move them to C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonHalf-Lifetfcmaps . Valve has prepared the game for this, the maps are designed to work as a functional 4-team deathmatch. All ammo and weapon pickups have been removed from the map, leaving only the health kits/charge stations, armor batteries/charge stations, and (I thought) useless grenade pickups. 

You should ignore the .bsp files with names like “c1a1a”, those are ‘maps’ from the actual game Half-Life. (Though I should note that if you do import them you can play through an enemyless, NPC-less, ammo pickup-less Half-Life as your favorite TFC class. But I’m getting off-topic.)

2) Load up a map with grenades pickups in it. The one I usually use is boot camp because there are like 4 different grenade spots and all are quite close to a spawn point. Spawn as anyone but Pyro, Demoman, or Soldier and go grab one of said pickup. You’ll notice you now posses an ammo-free weapon in slot 4, represented by the grenade launcher symbol.

This phantom launcher actually loads with the ‘rocket’ ammo type, which is why you can’t play as a class that actually uses rockets. See why below.

3) Now, empty all your weapons of their clip by just shooting at stuff. Don’t switch weapons after they run out, just let them swap to the next one as your ammo reserves run dry. Once you are empty, you should be holding a phantom grenade, and possess the power to throw an limitless amount unless you switch to melee.

These phantom grenades have some bizarre quirks, as they’re not supposed to exist. They lack physics models, so they jitter in place once they come to a rest. Your throwing arm is dressed in Gordon Freeman’s orange HEV, not whatever color team you currently are. Sometimes if you aren’t looking at them, they don’t make an explodey noise when they go off, though they always deal damage. It’s maximum ammo count is 30 (which can be raised from its initial value, zero, by going Engineer and building a dispenser). Any collected rockets can be thrown in a backpack or detonated by an EMP grenade because they’re not actually consumed as you wing explosives gaily.

Now, my TFC friends have informed me that this glitch was first found “at the turn of the century” so I’m definitely making too much of a deal out of this, but I find it absolutely awesome. Half-Life DM maps are almost never played in TFC any more, but if I ever get the chance I’d love to see how it affects the meta. Its relative difficulty to set up along with the lack of other weapons or grenade-cooking means you might not even be overpowered. Certainly you aren’t very versatile. Bunnyhop around spamming grenades blindly, and you can play a caricature of what TF2 players think gameplay in TFC is.