You have to click to accept the item before you can get a new one, so idling for a long time hardly helps, and no more than 10 hours per week per account count (average maximum of 12 weapons per week). While playing the game, every 30 to 70 minutes (random, average 50 minutes) you are guaranteed to find one item, usually a weapon. Without some of those weapons, playing Team Fortress 2 can be hard and unpleasurable, but you will get them inevitably if you just play the class normally. The weapons will be usable in crafting, but not tradable. Some very potent class weapons one can acquire by getting 5, 11, and 17, or 10, 16 and 22 class-related achievements, the number depends on the class, each milestone giving a class weapon. : the most effective is trading with other players, jump to 'Trading' if you want to save time. There are many ways of getting new weapons.
