Snowbreak New Player Guide

What is Snowbreak?

Snowbreak is a 3D waifu gacha third-person shooter.

Controls

• Shoot stuff with left-click.

• Aim-Down-Sights with right-click.
  (You can change this between a Toggle and having to hold down the key in the options menu.)

• Use your standard Ability with E
  Using your Standard Ability uses S-Energy (the gauge in the bottom left).
  Each operative has their own S-Energy, separate from other operatives.

• Use your Ultimate Ability with Q
  Using your Standard Ability uses U-Energy (the gauge in the top right)
  All your operatives share the same U-Energy gauge.

• Use your other operatives Support Abilities with Z, X, or C, depending on which specific operatives support ability you want to use.

The Waifus and Operatives

Snowbreak has quite a lot of waifu's for you to use. Each girl can have different variants (called Operatives) that can play very differently.
For example the character Vidya has two forms - Agave (who is a main-DPS) and Celestial Swan (who is an off-field support operative who debuffs enemy resistances)

Different operatives can play extremely differently, even if they are for the same character, including differences like weapon or damage type:
E.g. Fritia's Hush form uses an Assault Rifle to deal Thermal damage, whilst her Turbo form uses a Sniper Rifle to deal Chaos damage.
E.g.2 Yao's Winter Solstice form is a main DPS, her Nightglow form is an off-field support, and her Quiet Quitter form is a healer.

Most characters have more than one Operative form, but some characters have only one.

Beyond just using them in combat and seeing them in the story, SCZ also allows you to do things like chat with girls in the base, and each girl has quite a lot of story and lore.

Gacha

Snowbreak releases either one or two new operatives each patch.
Each patch generally gives you enough resources to get the 100-pull pity for the new characters guaranteed-pull gacha.
(The pity is 100 pulls. Each patch tends to give you enough currency for around 120-ish pulls.)
If a patch releases two new Operatives, then you'll get the second for free just by logging on during the event, often only during a specific part of it.
As such, just do all the dailies and event content and you should be able to get the new operative without any trouble.

Note that the pity for banners always rolls over, so if you don't get one character, you'll have a head start on the next one.

Pulling dupes of an operative gives you Manifestations shards for them (60 shards per pull) that you can use to strengthen them, but you can get those for free via the Personal File with enough time, so you only ever actually need one copy of an operative in order to max them out.

Premium Currency and Gacha?

Snowbreak has two premium currencies:
BitGold BitGold is only purchased with IRL money - there is absolutely no way to earn it in-game.
(Blue) You can use BitGold to buy other in-game currencies, as well as outfits, weapon skins, and other non-combat effects.

DigiCash You can earn DigiCash from various sources in-game.
(Purple) Whilst there are many things you can spend it on, the only thing you should spend it on are Manifestation Echo Covenants.
I.e. Only spend it on gacha pulls for the current events new operative.

Everything that isn't a gacha banner operative/weapon pull is something that you can (and do) get from normal gameplay.
You'll get all the operatives from the standard operative banner eventually, so there's no point buying pulls for that.
You'll also eventually get all the weapons from the standard weapon banner as well, so there's no point pulling for that.

As such, the only thing you really need to spend your DigiCash on are the limited-time operative banners, and if you already have the new operative and have some extra currency saved up, then you can do a few pulls for their weapon.
If you're an f2p player then you won't get enough currency each patch to pull both the new operative and their 5* weapon.
You might be able to save up enough currency to get a 5* weapon maybe every 4 patches, but possibly more or less depending on how [un]lucky you are.

Squad

In Snowbreak you usually have a squad of three operatives, one of whom is active (i.e. that you're using to shoot stuff)
The other two operatives not on the field are usually support operatives - they provide buffs to your main DPS and debuffs to enemies, or potentially heal you.

In multiplayer content, you and [up to] two other players use one operative each, for a team of three total.

Operative strength and powercreep

Snowbreak has a lot of operatives that you can use.
Snowbreak has very little content that could be classified as "endgame" - just the Neural Simulation and Supreme Battleground game modes.
Whilst other content might be difficult for new players, for an experienced player with max-level operatives that have some investment into them, all content other than Neural Sim and Supreme Battleground isn't overly difficult, and can be cleared with any operative.
As such, whilst you may wish to use a team with investment and synergy for those two modes, for all other content you can just use whichever operative you want.

This means you can generally just use whichever operative you like the most, and outside of those two modes your favourite operative will be perfectly fine.

Things you should be doing in Snowbreak

Each day you'll want to

1. Do all the Daily Tasks.
   I recommend:
   1. Use 180 Presence - Ideally do the Abyss-tier Material collection for the current event to get event currency.
   This also gets you the "Complete any stage 1/5 time(s)" dailies as well.
   2. Do 4 Personal File clears for your 5* operatives in Fight -> Personal File
   3. Do a Random Event in the base. This is a short story dialogue section for a random operative you have in your base. It's fun, but does level up their base level.

2. Use all your Memory Chips on Orange (5*) operatives in the  Fight > Personal File menu to get Manifestation Shards for them.
   Do this even if you don't need them for the daily - Getting Manifestation Shards for 5* operatives is the most important thing to do for long-term progression in SCZ.
   To get Manifestation Shards for a character, you need to do their Personal Story first.
   If you read all the story this takes 25-30 minutes per operative. If you skip through all the story you can do an entire file in like 3 minutes per operative, maybe less.

Every week you'll want to:

1. Clear both bosses in Fight -> Dispatch -> Neural Simulation
   You can auto-clear the Level.4 fights to get most of the rewards, but ideally you should clear both the Level.5 fights as well.

2. Get 1,000 Neural Connection in Fight -> Gigalink.
   (You get two double point bonuses each day, so spreading your fights out over the week means you can clear them in less total time, but that isn't required.)

3. If Supreme Battleground is active as part of the current event, you'll want to clear both T5 bosses.

Everything else is seasonal or longer-term content (every two weeks or more) you can usually clear at your leisure.

Trial Operatives

If there is a gacha banner active for an operative, then there will also be a trial for them available so you can try them out.
Since there are usually only a few operatives on banner at a time, there are only a few operative trials available at a time.

Many operatives are also available to try during at least one story missions, which you can play at any time once you've unlocked that story mission.
You can play story missions in "Experience Mode" which allows you to play them with no presence cost, albeit with no rewards either.
The majority of operatives are available to try in at least one story mission, although there are some operatives that are not available to try in any story mission.

Click here for a list of all the games story missions and which Trial Operatives each one has.