I just wanted to say thank you so much for the Free Shop. It's one of the things that I do look forward to (I'm greedy, I admit it :P), but it's one of those things that really everyone has a chance at. Fast or slow connection, new and old players, you name it.

So thank you, after such a wild ride for the holidays, for giving us one more thing to play with.

Yes thank you! :)

Indeed, thank you for the Free Shop, and for putting such amazingly generous gifts in there! I wasn't too bothered one way or the other for it opening, but now that it's here, wow! There's some really unexpectedly nice stuff in there! :D

Yeah thank you for the free shop! I got a lot of generous gifts. c:

Yes, thank you staff! There's been some pretty nice stuff in there, much more than I expected.

Thanks for the nice surprises <3

Yes thank you! I've gotten old books, plushies, beanbags and generally some awesome stuff that would have cost me a fortune otherwise. Thank you so much for mixing things up, everything is very much appreciated!

Thank you for opening the free shop!

Should a shop named the "Free Shop"ever really be empty when its open?

yes thank you!!! this is the most magical time of the year for me.

Those poor employees need time to run to the back and grab more, plus bathroom breaks!

yeah maybe rl they might but im sure its all script and script dont need a break.

I think it's to prevent items from going out constantly, as it is there are a ton of things being given out.

yeah i get that. was just making an observation is all

Just want to add my thanks. I've gotten some great items. It's like Christmas morning each time I click on a box. :)

Totally agree - the free shop is awesome!

All rules to the free shop. Thank you staff for all those wonderfull gifts! ❤

Thank you for all the free items :3

I got so many lovely things from the Free Shop this year. I agree, I think the whole thing is done very fairly. Everyone has a chance at getting good items and really all that is required is persistence.

I kept a record of my items this year, thought it'd be interesting to share some stats:

Total items: 287 (~35 / day)

Breakout by rarity category: Special | 1 | .3% (100 Credit Gift Card) Cash Shop | 4 | 1.4% Common | 2 | .7% Game Prize | 1 | .3% (Forum Shop) Melody Item | 166 | 57.8% Normal | 25 | 8.7% Rare | 43 | 15% Retired | 31 | 10.8% Super Rare | 14 | 4.8%

Or, in more generalized groups: Restockable | 84 | 29.3% Melody | 166 | 57.8% Retired | 31 | 10.8% Forum Shop | 1 | .3% Cash Shop | 5 | 1.7%

A bit disappointed in the 2 common items (, ). Even though they were both books that were pretty inflated beforehand, I'd rather get Melody stuff. CS and forum shop items are of course nice to see - especially 2% of the time. Wouldn't be difficult for most to grab one.

Breakout by item use: CSC | 1 | .3% Beanbag | 13 | 4.5% Book | 64 | 22.3% Elixir | 5 | 1.7% Food | 47 | 16.4% Instructions | 2 | .7% (These are the Nostalgic xxx Instructions) Minion | 27 | 9.4% Other | 5 | 1.7% Plushie | 30 | 10.4% Sticker | 8 | 2.8% Toy | 4 | 1.4% Weapon | 2 | .7% (Note: These are also books) Wear | 79 | 27.5%

It felt like books were very common this go around, but wearable items had them beat. However, if you exclude melody items, the percentages are even - both at 31%. It's worth noting I did get 4 subQ items (1.4%), 3 of which were retired - certainly happy with that. One thing I think would have made the giveaway much better would be more battle related items, especially Dark xxx Potions and various pylonics. Toys also turned out to be pretty rare, not that I'm complaining there. A couple rare weapons couldn't hurt either (That's actually what really got me into battling way back when - that is, getting my from a giveaway)

I also broke down Melody items per year released (going by subetalodge's data) 2004 | 7 | 4.2% 2005 | 15 | 9% 2006 | 12 | 7.2% 2007 | 8 | 4.8% 2008 | 12 | 7.2% 2009 | 10 | 6% 2010 | 6 | 3.6% 2011 | 8 | 4.8% 2012 | 21 | 12.6% 2013 | 39 | 23.4% 2014 | 14 | 8.4% 2015 | 14 | 8.4%

2013 being a big outlier here, at 23.4%. An even distribution would put every year around 8%. 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2011 seem a bit low at 3.6-4.8%, but I did not take into consideration number of items released each year. If I was designing it, I'd do something like 04-07 - 20%, 08-11 - 30%, 12-14 - 40%, 15 - 10%. That way the older items stay "rare", and you don't get a massive influx of the current years items that the majority of players already have.

Below were my most common items, grabbing 3 of each. 4 books, 2 wears. Overall though, 203 unique items. [item=Where Is My Hat?]

I also calculated an estimated value for each item (Very rough, I took one item per group (2013 melody book, for example) and copied its price to everything else in that category). Total value of this years items: 53.1m. Or, an average of just over 185k per item. If I were to sell everything, I'd expect something in the ballpark of ~25m. I typically use ~60% of SS for expected returns, but most of these items will be very HTS, so I used ~45%. Which is still 87k per item. As you'd expect, cash shop items make up ~15m (28%) of that. It's worth noting that one of my CS items was Nostalgic Neela Instructions which was selling at ~300k during the event (Now 2.6m). I'm a bit sad I didn't get a collection, but otherwise pretty happy with my grabs, Other "big" ticket items for me include: 3.1m | 1.7m | 1.9m | 1.75m

• 5 items currently going for ~1m.

Lowest cost item: - It was going for 175 sP after the event. It's retired though, so I went ahead and took all the ones off the SS under ~100k.. maybe they'll be worth a pretty penny one day. Surprised me it wasn't a Melody item, but then again, I'll admit I didn't price even close to all the items.

You can find the spreadsheet I'm using here: http://pastebin.com/XLre8ix3 (Copy into a .csv file and open in Excel (or similar))

whoa ^

But yes, thank you staff for the awesome free goodies!!

you are so amazing at collecting stats and information. You make me wish I'd been able to keep better track of what I pulled from the shop but I was on mobile for the entire week and never really paid attention.

I do I know I also got a lot of books. Two cash shop items that I am sure about (two of the new space items) and one retired SubQ. In all, I got maybe a dozen or so new items to my hoard, which would be items selling for more than 500k in user shops.

I got 21 Melody items that I didn't have in my wardrobe before, but did have in my hoard, from various years. I can list them if anyone is curious. I don't know. I just want to be cool like you. ;3; Stats and breakdowns. Beautiful.