Seasons and New Content

Casefiles and Events

Seasons

The service runs in seasons of about ten weeks. Each season, ΜΝΗΜΗ rehearses one forecast harder than the rest, and the season takes its name and look from it. A season brings a Casefile, at least one event, and usually new content (New Content and Early Access, in this document).

The Season's Story

Each season's forecast is shaped by one of the questions Pithos has never closed (Pithos): who sent the soldiers into ARK and what they carried out, who the Family are, who truly leads the Connections, what the Tissue is growing into, and, behind them all, what Spencer told Alyssa Ashcroft. Some seasons also move what the sleepers themselves are never told, such as what their bodies keep from night to night (The Sleepers and the Remembered, What the Body Keeps). A season never answers its question. It moves it: new files in the nights, a new last page in the Casefile, a new record that does not fit. Over the life of the service the questions close one by one, and the last to close is the one Pithos fears most. The answers, and the order they come in, are fixed in advance (The Sealed File), so no season ever has to invent one.

The Casefile

A Casefile is the season's pass, and there is only one kind: complete, free, and the same for every player. There is no premium track, nothing to unlock with money, and nothing on it that only some players can earn.

• Fifty pages, each holding something: dress, gear, finishes, charms, emblems, figurines, poses, backdrops, and Ribbons. Every Casefile holds 1,000 Ribbons across its pages, a full set's worth.
• Progress comes from playing, paid by the minute exactly as Ribbons are. Weekly Leads, small tasks such as extract from Raccoon City by the Subway or free three of the Stranded in one night, speed it up. None is required.
• It finishes in about thirty hours spread over the season, around three hours a week.

When the season ends, the Casefile closes, but nothing on it is lost. Every item on it enters the Wardrobe at its ordinary price. The Casefile itself moves to the Casefile Archive, where any player can choose it as their active Casefile and go on earning it at any time, for free. A player works on one Casefile at a time and keeps their progress on every other.

Events

An event is a stretch of a season, usually one to three weeks, with something that happens only while it lasts: a condition, a variant of Survivor, its own tasks, and its own things to wear. Its items are earned by playing it, for free, and can also be bought from its first day.

When an event ends, the event itself ends: its condition, its variant, and its tasks are gone. Its items are not. Every one of them enters the Wardrobe the day the event closes, at its ordinary price, and stays there. An event may come back in a later year with new items. The old ones never left.

Hallowed Night

The autumn event shows how the rules work together. For two weeks, ΜΝΗΜΗ runs Hallowed Night, a condition in two places. In the Valley, the villagers walk in the masks and robes of an All Saints' procession they never finished. In the Ruins, the old dead are joined by newer ones: thrill-seekers who climbed the wall on a Halloween night in costume, to dare each other inside. The event's own tasks pay out macabre dress and gear: a carved-pumpkin charm, a Mr. Raccoon figurine in a sheet, a mourning dress, a carved-bone helmet look in both tiers. A player who plays the event earns its items free. When the two weeks end, Hallowed Night is gone from the maps, and every item it gave is in the Wardrobe.

The Calendar Rule

An event never places a date on a map that its records forbid. The Raccoon City of September 1998 never sees the end of October, because the missile fell on its first morning. An autumn event runs in the Valley, where the records allow the end of October, and in the Ruins, where it places no date on the night itself. Event dress is ΜΝΗΜΗ's to compose and may appear on any map; an event's conditions and variants appear only where the calendar allows them.

Crosstime Weekends

Every weekend, from Friday at 18:00 to Sunday at 23:59 in each region's own time, ΜΝΗΜΗ may make any Survivor night a crosstime night, in which the people and creatures of one time can wait in another time's map (Story Nights and the People of the Records, Crosstime Weekends). Players do not choose a crosstime night, so the queues are never split. Crosstime Weekends begin once a second time is in the game, and the people of the Valley join them when the Valley arrives. A crosstime night changes who is placed in it and nothing else: its rules, its Ledger, and its Ribbons are those of any other night.

Release Weekends

Every release of new things for sale arrives with a Release Weekend (The Economy). Because an event's items can be bought from its first day, every event opens with a Release Weekend.

New Content and Early Access

What Arrives

New places and new nights arrive through the life of the service: Survivor maps and new versions of existing ones, companions, the Stranded. All of it is free on the day it opens to the public: to every First Run owner before the Opening, and to everyone after it.

The Order of Arrival

The game does not launch with everything in these documents. It launches with what the First Run can pay for, and each stage after it is paid for by the one before.

When	What opens
Launch	Survivor in Raccoon City, September 1998.
First Run, first year	Raccoon City, 1998, through its seasons and events.
First Run, second year	Raccoon City Ruins, 2026, the hardcore map. Crosstime Weekends, now that a second time is in the game. The first anomalies (The Dead and the Engineered, Anomalies).
After the Opening	The Valley, 2004: the village, the castle, and the island, if the First Run's first year sold enough to build it (The Business Case, Running It). Whatever else the service can pay for (The Service, Promise 14).
Only if it can be paid for	A future mode, and only without taking anything from Survivor (Future Development). Last of all, the Refuge (The Refuge).

The order follows cost. Raccoon City in 1998 is the world the remakes had already rebuilt the most of, and building it whole builds most of the Ruins too (Presentation and Technology, Raccoon City, Rebuilt Whole). Each new world is a new night to watch before it can be played alone.

Early Access

Besides the First Run, how things look, and Patron, the only thing a player can pay for is to arrive first. A new map or version of a map may open to holders of an early access ticket up to forty-eight hours before it opens to everyone. A Survivor map announced for the 12th opens to ticket holders on the 10th, and to everyone on the 12th.

• The ticket costs US$4.99, in money only, and every Patron holds one.
• A ticket covers its holder's party. Friends in a ticket holder's party share the early nights with them (Survivor, Parties).
• Every new place opens unranked. For its first week of public play, a new map or version counts on no board for anyone. Early access adds two days to that week for ticket holders; it gives them no head start on the Ledger, the boards, or any competition, which all open a week after the public launch.
• Nothing in early access is exclusive. There is no badge, no item, and no title for having been there first.
• Early nights are watched. ΜΝΗΜΗ counts them toward what a new place needs before it opens offline (Offline and Ownership), so early access brings offline play closer for everyone.

Early access is sold for money alone because its only value is time. It costs a player nothing in play to wait two days, and, like Patron, it is a purchase whose whole purpose is to support the game.