For most skins the pattern index is a number you can safely ignore. For a famous handful it changes the price by orders of magnitude. This paint seed decides how the finish sits on your weapon — and on the right skin, that placement is the entire difference between an ordinary copy and a grail.
What the pattern index actually does
Alongside float, every skin instance rolls a pattern index — also called the paint seed — from 0 to 1000. It shifts and rotates the finish texture across the weapon model, so two copies of the same skin can show completely different parts of the artwork. Like float, it is locked forever at drop and is visible to any buyer through in-game inspection.
The skins where the seed is the price
For most skins the pattern barely matters. For a famous few it drives the entire valuation, and those skins are always sold with the seed number stated in the listing. Learn the categories below before you shop them, because the premium lives entirely in the seed.
- Case Hardened — seeds with maximum blue coverage are the legendary Blue Gems.
- Fade — the seed sets the fade percentage, meaning how much of the full gradient shows.
- Marble Fade — specific seeds produce the sought-after Fire & Ice color layout.
- Crimson Web — the seed decides spider (web) placement; centered webs win.
- Doppler and adjacent finishes — the seed determines the phase or variant.
How to buy a pattern skin without getting burned
Treat every pattern premium as a claim you have to verify. Before paying up, check the exact seed through inspection and cross-reference community pattern tiers — a blue Case Hardened with the wrong seed is just a regular skin at a regular price. Screenshots exaggerate coverage, and the back of the weapon is often plain.
When you are ready to hunt specific seeds, our skins database is the place to start narrowing down finishes and reading up on which patterns carry a premium.