EDIT - The Snowtapult message has now been changed. See Amber's post. Should the Snowtapult be open all year instead of just during the winter?

mentioned this in another topic but decided to create one for it in case my comments get lost.

If you go to Arctic Frost and click on the Snowtapult link you'll see the message -

I have no idea when the change to Luminaire only was made but hundreds of people trying to get the 50K snowball achievement in the same few weeks can't be good for the servers. Let us use it all year and only close it during Survival if the Survival strain problem was never sorted out.

The 50K snowball achievement is overwhelmingly difficult with the current system. Maybe more people would try for it if we could plod along with it throughout the year. It would also be a small compensation for broken achievements linked to some of the mini games which no longer work.

From what I remember the snowtapult had been increased from December to I believe the beginning of March, I want to say. It's open all Winter.

I would love to be able to work on this year round. Arctic Frost is snowy year round, so why not?

For the people that won’t want their avatars covered by snow all year, maybe there could be a way for them to opt out of being hit. I think people have been asking for that for years.

There is the shield, but it doesn't completely block snowballs, so if they were to make this available all year (which I am in favour of ONLY because of the 50k achievement) it would be good if there was an option to opt out, or at least to not have them appear on your HA. I don't know how it would work for throwing a snowball at someone who has the shield if you've opted out, though.

It's all very confusing because of the message you get if you click on the Snowtapult. I don't know how old the message is. Maybe it dates from the Great Pandemic of 2009. :D

One complaint I've seen is how long it takes to buy 50K snowballs from the Avalanche Emporium with a 5 second wait between each purchase. The shop is currently open so it should be possible to get snowballs from the Frosty Claw vending machine as well according to the SubetaLodge vending guide.

However, there's a bit more confusion because -

Is the Avalanche Emporium meant to be open now or is it a mistake? In another topic I asked Galaxia to check. I was able to buy two snowballs from there yesterday but they're labelled Retired.

The reason the achievement is so high is because there was a snowball fight a few years ago. I might be remembering wrong but I think you could buy 50 snowballs at a time during the event and then you only needed to refresh the snowtapult to throw them. I think the option to buy multi-packs of snowballs makes more sense than keeping the snowtapult open all year but I'm not bothered if it does stay open.

Two things that definitely need changing -

1. The message you get when clicking on the Snowtapult because it doesn't make any sense now. (If it's really available to use from December to March the Survival strain problem must have been fixed.) We need to know when we can use it, not when we couldn't because of a bug in the past.

2. If the Avalanche Emporium is officially open now it might be better to change Snowball rarity to 105 (Artifact). If this would mess up vending them from Frosty Claw a message saying something like "Ignore the Retired status" could be added to the shop description outside the Snowtapult season.

I don't mind if the season isn't extended but I think we should be able to buy multipacks of snowballs. However, is the 5 second limit working? I can buy one, go back and buy another immediately.

It would be nice if we had an option to turn off being hit with snowballs. I do use the shield and hide it behind a background but it's a bit of a pain if I forget.

The Snowtapult has not been restricted to just Luminaire since at least 2018 or earlier. It has since been all winter which ranges from around Dec 20 - March 20 (dates depend on each year). As per usual, Survival had the bug where hexes override your infection despite this issue being 'fixed' every year; snowballs are on the hexes system so they were turned off to prevent them from interfering with survival. I assume the Snowtapult will be open again when winter begins.

OK, so for clarity's sake the out of season message should say something like "The Snowtapult will be open some time between Dec 20 and March 20. " If snowballs interfere with Survival infections again it can be changed to the current message until after Survival.

My snowball count is 257 because I haven't bothered with this event for years so I can understand how confused new players might be,

I would love multi-packs of snowballs.

. Thanks.