Snowbreak went into Maintenance mode on the 2nd of March (or the 3rd, depending on your time zone).
Snowbreak re-opened at 6:00AM UTC on the 8th of May.
This means the game was down for the other 29 days of March, all 30 days of April, and 7 days of May, for 66 days total (again, possibly +-1 depending on your time zone).
The game has been censored, and a lot of stuff has been removed - mostly animations.
Read this article for my thoughts on that.
This article isn't about that - this is about the maintenance compensation we have received after the game game back online after its Maintenance.
The compensation for the Maintenance include:
A 5* operative selector box.
You can select any operative up to and including v2.8 Fragments of Truth, which was the patch of Vidya - Celestial Swan.
A 5* weapon selector box.
You can select any weapon up to and including v2.8 Fragments of Truth, which was the patch of Vidya - Celestial Swan.
66 Manifestation Echo Covenants (i.e. pulls for the new girl).
These will be removed after the "Winds of Warmth" event ends, so make sure you use them!
An additional 50 Manifestation Echo Covenants (i.e. pulls for the new girl) and Weapon Modding Agreement (i.e. pulls for limited weapons).
Every day for 14 days: 4x Memory Chip Bundle, and 2x large Baldr Inhibitor.
You will get 56 Memory Chip Bundles in total, which is enough for 56 Manifestation shards for your 5* operatives.
A dupe for an operative you already have gives you 60 Shards, so this is roughly 1 dupes worth of Shards.
Alternatively, since you can get 4 Shards per day for free, it's 28 days worth of Shards.
A new Namecard, Avatar, and some Chat Stickers.
There is a returning event, which gives out various resources.
I don't know how much exactly, since it takes a week for them all to unlock, but it looks pretty decent so far.
All of your time-limited items will still be available - they won't have expired due to the maintenance, and their timers will be as they were when maintenance started, so you won't have lost any progress or items as a result of the Maintenance.
Similarly, because v3.5 "Back from Bygone" ended prematurely, it and its event shop will still be available until the 15th of May, so you'll have a week to finish that.
It might just be me, but I can't see any way of actually getting the currency for the old event, so unless you had some already there's not much you can do with this shop.
This might just be me being blind though - maybe there is a way somewhere and I have just missed it.
Edit: I got the unclaimed rewards from the event via mail, so you'll either have already cleaned out most of the shop, or you'll get enough via the mail to get what you need.
It seems as if this is more a way for existing players to not waste the currency they had left over from the previous event, rather that something to let new players get all the rewards from an event they didn't take part in, which is fair.
A special Invitation Event will take place for Haru - Raikou.
Why Raikou specifically?
I don't know, but if I had to guess it would be because Raikou's outfit was relatively conservative, and didn't need to be changed that much, which Seasun thinks will probably help new players impression of the game?
Raikou#s abilities can also give her decent mobility, and her Assault Rifle feels decent to use on its own, even if shooting it isn't the optimal way of playing her.
Personally I don't like Raikou that much, but she's perfectly fine for 99% of the games content, and compared to the other Auctus Drive operatives, Raikou is probably the best all-rounder, so she's probably one of the better choices if Seasun was expecting a bunch of new players to start playing and wanted to make sure they had a decent operative to use.
Firstly, it's important to remember that every player missed out on the game for the same amount of time, so there isn't really any case of "this affects new players more/less than older players" or whatnot - the maintenance affected everybody equally.
It's a valid take to want compensation for the time missed, but it's also valid to remember that your operatives aren't less powerful now than they were before just because you didn't play the game for a while, because power is relative, and all the other players had the same delay.
Your operatives might not be as strong as you would have liked them to be by now, as their progress has been delayed by the Maintenance, but that's what the compensation is for.
Beyond just being an apology for the game being offline for so long, I suppose the question many players will ask is whether the maintenance compensation is enough such that the compensation puts your account in a better or worse place than if you had actually been able to play for those 66 days.
The answer for a lot of players is that it doesn't matter, as the censorship changes everything anyway.
This page isn't about that though. Again; I have a page for my thoughts on that.
The answer from a mechanical perspective though is... eh.
Whilst there are a lot of things that we didn't get, or didn't have the chance to get, some are more important than others.
For example, we missed 66 days of dailies.
We missed:
We missed out on 66 days of getting pulls and the premium currency needed to get them.
We missed out on 66 days of the Personal File, and thus 66 days of free Manifestation Shards.
We missed out on 66 days of being able to buy things from the shop.
This includes things like Fiber Axons, which are otherwise quite difficult to get in sufficient numbers.
We missed out on 66 days worth of daily rewards.
This is a lot of missed rewards, but many of them (e.g. Silverbuck) are not overly useful to experienced players.
You might have missed out on some of the v3.4 "Back from Bygone" event rewards.
It's possible that you already have almost everything from the shop anyway though, so you may not have missed out on much at all in that regard.
Personally I had basically all of the event rewards, almost everything I needed from the shop anyway, so I really wasn't missing out on much.
For me personally, the main things I would care about are:
Pulls
Manifestation Shards from the Personal File (i.e. the free dupes)
Rewards that are very difficult to get - notably Fiber Axons and Quantum Cells.
If you only cared about the first two then I'd understand completely, but if you were a new player, then caring about things like your level would also matter.
What you care about is personal preference, which is going to be influenced by how experienced of a player you are.
As compensation, we are getting 66 Manifestation Echo Covenant (i.e. pulls for a limited girl) - one per day, as well as a box to get a free 5* operative and weapon.
We are also getting 50 limited pulls for both operatives as well as weapons.
The selector box going up until v2.8 means you can select any 5* operative except for the following:
v3.0: Katya - Rhapsody and Tess - Phantasia
v3.1: Clarina - Crimson Moon
v3.2: Fenny - Pureheart and Siris - Freefin
v3.3: Mia - Starchaser and Haru - Raikou
v3.4: Bubu - Specular Soul and Mauxir - Lotus
v3.5: Acacia - Chrono Echo and Marian - Aquila
The two new girls released this patch (Longyan - Divine Fox and Fritia - Sparkdrive).
Not being able to select the two new girls released this patch is not a problem, as you can just pull for Longyan directly on her gacha banners, and Fritia will be given away for free later in the patch.
Snowbreak has had quite a bit of powercreep since its inception, and the above list of operatives that you can't get are a very large percentage of the metas strongest girls.
This has two big caveats:
Snowbreak is a game about waifu's, and picking and using your favourite is perfectly fine if it means you have more fun.
Snowbreak doesn't have much in the way of endgame content, so using whichever 5* you like the most is perfectly fine for literally 99% of content.
Well, for starters I already have an article on who to pick from selector boxes. Read that article here.
If you don't care to read such a long article, or just want recommendations for this maintenance box specifically, then here's a TL:DR:
Whoever you like the most - Snowbreak doesn't have much endgame - it's mostly casual content, for which any 5* operative is fine.
If you really like and want one specific operative, then get her.
Waifu's over meta.
If you don't already have her, and care about doing dps in endgame content, then select Vidya - Celestial Swan, as she's the games strongest support, and Snowbreak has fewer support operatives than dps operatives, so getting a strong support tends to be more useful than getting a strong dps.
(Note: Don't get Vidya - Celestial Swan confused with Vidya - Agave.)
If you don't already have her, and don't care about dps in endgame content, then select Eatchel - The Cub, as she's an amazing healer and a good support, and is thus generally the best operative for supporting you in casual play, although she's not that useful for increasing your dps in endgame content.
If you feel your team is weak, or it dies a lot anyway even in endgame content, then Eatchel is still great just to help you survive. (i.e. "Dead girls deal no dps.")
Things get interesting if you already have Celestial Swan and Eatchel, and there isn't any girl you really want but don't have.
In that case the obvious recommendation is Chenxing - Jade Arc, as she's by-far the strongest dps operative available from the box.
If you already have Jade Arc, then get Yao - Nightglow if you don't already have her, as Nightglow is the strongest non-Vidya support available from the box, and is the best non-Vidya support for Jade Arc.
If you already have all of those, then my next recommendation would be Katya - Dawnwing or Enya - Tempest, as Dawnwing and Tempest are probably the two best dps operatives for casual play.
Dawnwing is still extremely strong, and very good for endgame content, and Tempest is still strong despite the powercreep, but Tempest is amazing in many of Snowbreaks minigames and weird non-endgame side-modes.
We get 66 + 50 =116 Manifestation Echo Covenants, which are pulls for the new limited girls.
These pulls are time-limited, and expire after the current event ends.
This means that you'll need to use them this patch or else they will be wasted, so don't forget.
Whilst I recommend you pull for one copy of the new girl (Longyan - Divine Fox), if you do get lucky and get her, there are re-runs for a few of the other older operatives for you to use your remaining pulls on, however as of the game re-opening the only other girl you can use them on is Clarina - Crimson Moon, but Mia - Starchaser will become available later on this patch.
Much like Raikou earlier, I suspect Clarina was chosen here because her default outfit is relatively tame, and thus wouldn't attract much derision from new players who were expecting a less modest outfit only to have it be censored - Clarina is slightly censored, but the differences are small.
Clarina is a strong operative though, and has high DEF and strong self-healing, and she's great for endgame content, but I think she's also one of the best operatives for new players as well as for casual play, so if you don't already have her then you should try and pull for a copy of her after you've gotten Longyan.
As compensation, we are getting 4 Memory Chip Bundles per day for 14 days, for 56 total.
I am also getting an extra 4 per day for 7 days as well, for an extra 28 on top of that (for 84 total)
These can be spent in the Personal File, which allows you to get Manifestation Shards for your operatives.
You should only ever use these on 5* operatives - you'll max your 4* operatives naturally anyway, as you get them from your gacha pulls when you don't get 5*'s.
In my opinion, getting a copy of each operative is the most important thing you can do in the game, but getting Manifestation Shards for your 5* operatives is the second most important thing you can do in the game, so you should make sure you use these and not waste them.
You should absolutely use these to get dupes for your best or favourite 5* operatives.
Each Memory Chip allows you to get 1 Manifestation Shard for a 5* operative, so you can get a lot of Manifestation Shards from these.
For reference, 1 duplicate copy of an operative gives you 60 Manifestation Shards for them, and fully maxing an operative to M5 takes 480 shards.
Overall, from a technical perspective, the compensation is about what I expected.
Like all gacha games, Snowbreak makes money in one of three ways:
People buying gacha pulls
People buying outfits
People buying non-premium in-game currency (e.g. level up materials)
In the West, most of a gacha games money typically comes from outfits, and in the East most of a gacha games money typically comes from people buying gacha pulls.
Haru - Raikou being freely claimable immediately after the Maintenance ends and the game went online is an unusual move, as previous Auctus Drive operatives have always become available in the second half of an event, and in this case that's true of the other Auctus Drive operative released this patch (Fritia - Sparkdrive) but Raikou is an extra on top of that.
It makes sense for this event though - it gives new players a decently strong operative to have fun with immediately - After all, no publicity is bad publicity (as the saying goes, although whether that's always true is another matter...), and Snowbreak's extended maintenance has probably interested many people in the game, and the generous compensation rewards will probably encourage at least some people to play, and potentially a lot of people.
For people who feel like they have lost progress, it's a mixed bag - most of our pulls came from event rewards, so if you already had all of the pulls from v3.5, then you will have a lot more pulls for v3.6 than you otherwise would have had the game not have had the maintenance, and if you still have a lot of pulls to gets from the previous event, then you'll still be able to get them via the event shop and the mail, and you'll get a lot from the compensation anyway.
Most events in Snowbreak tend to give around 120 pulls, so getting 116 as Maintenance compensation means you're getting basically an entire patches worth of pulls for free.
You will have lost some progress on the Personal File, but the total amount of Manifestation Shards you'd effectively have lost is counter-balanced by the selector box (which gives 60 shards if used on an operative you already have, although a new operative you don't have is much morev valuable than a dupe of an operative you already have...), as well as the Memory Chip Bundles which translate to give you a decent amount of Manifesation Shards as well.
Overall, in terms of pulls and Manifestation Shards, I think we did ok. Not amazing, but I feel we're far better off than we otherwise would have been without the maintenance.
I know a lot of people wanted a free outfit to make up for the maintenance, but I always felt that was unlikely.
Seasun don't want to give us an outfit for a 5* operative, as then we might not want to buy them, and I imagine they really want us to buy stuff right now, whereas an outfit for a 4* operative might not have gone over too well as 4* operatives are so out-classed by 5* operatives than us experienced players basically never use them, so it might have been seen as so little it might have been somewhat insulting.
Personally, I would have also given the players a copy of one of the original 5* operatives, as well as a new and unique outfit for them.
(Probably Lyfe - Wild Hunt, as Lyfe is the poster-child of the game, and Wild Hunt is a fun and versatile operative, but she is also pretty weak by modern meta standards.)
Being for one of the weaker 5* operatives means that experienced players would still want to buy outfits for the stronger operatives they'd like use, whereas it would be a good gesture towards newer players, without really affecting what they will end up using at endgame.
It's a shame we didn't get an outfit as part of the compensation, but I do understand why we didn't get one.
The selector box is fun, but otherwise the compensation is about what I would have expected.
It's nice to be able to play the game again, and from a technical perspective the compensation seems decent, although that is of course completely overshadowed by the censorship, as well as the reasons it was censored in the first place and the questions those reasons raise about the games future.