Snowmando Fortnite Skin - Fort Fanatics

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Cody is a writer who has been with Fortnite since the day it launched in early access. He adores the battle royale genre and Fortnite represents the bulk of his time in the space. Cody does not just play the regular battle royale modes but also spends loads of time in Creative modes that the community has come up with. Cody has been in the video game business as part of media and content creation for more than 10 years. During that time, he has contributed and even led some of the largest sites in the world dedicated to gaming and entertainment. He has also dabbled some in PR and was a tester for Activision in the past working on the Call of Duty series. When not playing games or writing about them, he enjoys cooking, sharpening his Japanese skills, and watching the latest anime shows.

Bottom Line Up Front

Snowmando takes the idea of Frosty the Snowman and converts him into a military-themed winter character. He is a swole snowman ready to pummel all of his enemies into dust or, err, snow. Above all else, the essential part of this entire character is how you unlock him. He forgoes the usual methods of unlocking a battle pass skin and is completely and utterly free to own. There are no strings attached for unlocking him, minus the timing. In this way, there is no reason not to own this skin since there is not much you have to do to get him.

Snowmando Fortnite Skin Overview

As you already know, Fortnite is a free game. You have countless hours of fun to enjoy throughout the battle royale experience without spending a penny. However, Epic Games is trying to run a business, so the developer needs to make money. The company has made an astronomical amount of money by selling battle passes and skins to the massive player base. This worked for many years and even sucked me into the experience; it was the first free game I spent money on for microtransactions. And, trust me, I don’t regret it one bit. In fact, this is a topic for another time, but Fortnite was the first free game to convince me to spend money on it. It was my mantra to enjoy free games, especially on mobile, and not spend anything on them no matter how hard they tried to convince me.

And it worked for a very long time until Fortnite came around. Fortnite changed the entire gaming scene as a whole with its cosmetics, which were impossible to get without money or V-Bucks. Thankfully, though, Epic has been generous at times in the past, especially more recently now that the developer does not need money as severely. Enter the Fortnite Snowmando skin, one of the most unique characters ever released in the Battle Royale game. Not because of his actual design, since it is pretty basic, all things considered. Instead, what is impressive about Snowmando is the way in which Epic released him. At the same time, though, this was also his downfall. He has one of the most fascinating circumstances in the entire history of Fortnite, and there are very few skins out there that can claim the same as him. Here’s everything that you need to know about this character.

Appearance

Snowmando has a name that kind of gives away what he is all about. You have a mash of two words: snowman and commando. Put both words together, and you can imagine how this character looks. Snowmando features your boy Frosty in a whole new light. There is something about thirst culture that seems to permeate everything these days, for better or worse. In the case of Snowmando, he is a swole snow daddy who is ready to get his icy hands dirty in battle. Though he is a unique character in design, he steals the basis from someone else. The bizarre Rippley vs. Sludge skin, which I am honestly not a fan of, had its base body design taken for Snowmando. Though he uses the same general body shape as that character, he looks nothing like them, which is excellent because that skin was a total bust, in my opinion.

The buff snowman is wearing camo pants on the bottom half of his body. Rather than the usual camo styles, it is somewhat unique in a color scheme of red, orange, and brown. Perhaps the camo is this way to celebrate the holidays, which is the entire theme for Snowmando. For his shirt, he is wearing a brown sleeveless vest that is zipped up. He provides some protection for the soldier snowman, which is helped by the utility belt that he is wearing. He has a bit of style going for him, but the purpose of this character is not to be stylish but to be ready for battle. We can see this in the massive arms that Snowmando has, showing off the immense strength that he has. This is not your average snowman, as it looks like he is downing a dozen protein chug jugs a day. As for his head, he has the same pointy head design as Rippley vs. Sludge, but it looks much better here. He has cute little eyes and a classic carrot for a nose on his face. Unfortunately, it looks like he has no mouth, which is unfortunate. Overall, Snowmando is Epic Games showing its creativity by taking an established character and design and putting its spin on it. This means he is not the most original skin around but a solid one nonetheless.

How to Unlock the Snowmando Fortnite Skin

When it comes to Epic releasing new skins in Fortnite, you know the drill. You’ve got your battle pass skins that require purchasing the new season pass for 950 V-Bucks. Or you have the skins that appear in the item shop for you to buy, ranging from less than $10 in total to some that are more than $20. Rarely are their times where a skin uses a different method than those two tried and true forms of unlocking skins. However, Snowmando is one of the few exceptions out there. The method for unlocking this particular skin was unique even at the time when it was first released.

I remember the time when Snowmando came out quite fondly as it was right in the middle of the holiday season in 2020. This holiday season was a bright spot in the middle of an otherwise horrific time that was going on in the world, which I’m sure you can guess why. The holidays are my favorite time of year, and Snowmando made the season even better by gracing us with his presence during this time. The method for unlocking him during the Operation Snowdown holiday event in Fortnite was unique. He was not just a normal skin you would purchase in the item shop as part of the holiday festivities. No, you could unlock this character for absolutely nothing at all. That’s right; you did not have to spend a single V-Buck on Snowmando when he was first released. All you had to do was complete the Operation Snowdown challenges associated with him, and you would gain this skin forever in your locker. At the end of the day, nothing beats free, and that is precisely what Snowmando was.

Operation Snowdown Challenges Explained

To unlock Snowmando for free, players had to complete at least nine of the Operation Snowdown challenges. You did not have to do all of them at the time but at least most of the available missions. Here is the complete list of the challenges that you could do during the event to unlock Snowmando:

Visit five different Snowmando Outposts
Open up five treasure chests at Snowmando Outposts
Dance at five different holiday trees
Place top 10 with friends in squads three different times
Destroy five nutcracker statues
Travel a total of 5000 meters in a Stormwing plane
Destroy ten enemy structures using the Stormwing plane
Collect 100 gold bars
Catch a Snowy Flopper
Revive a teammate in three different matches
Hide inside of a Sneaky Snowman in three different matches
Play duos or squads with friends five different times
Deal 100 damage with the lever-action rifle
Start a campfire two different times

I remember completing these missions quite fondly during one of my favorite seasons of Fortnite ever. The holiday event was a jam-packed time for the game, probably the busiest of the entire year. Everyone was trying to complete these challenges, have fun, and spread the holiday cheer in an otherwise difficult time for the world. Some of the tips that I gave when this event was going on had to do with carefully picking your missions. If you only cared about getting the Snowmando skin, you could ignore about five of the tasks that were too annoying or difficult.

I would recommend avoiding the time-consuming ones like visiting the Snowmando Outposts, destroying nutcracker statues, and dancing in front of trees. These are all enjoyable holiday activities that fit the theme of the time, but they also took quite a while and several matches at times to complete. Instead, I would stick to the easier ones, like dealing only 100 damage with a lever-action rifle, which is only around equal to the health of a single player—or opening up treasure chests if I did visit the Snowmando Outposts, which were easy enough to locate.

Playing with friends is always great; those were easy to knock out together with some pals online. I adore the Stormwing plane and missed it greatly since its debut in Chapter 1, Season 7, so I did all of those. Collecting gold bars were simple enough, requiring just defeating players, completing bounties, and the like, as always. The Sneaky Snowman one was a bit tough as it is not a feature that many players know about. There was a Sneaky Snowman item or just the snowmen that you could find on the island. Interacting with them would allow the player to hide inside of them to surprise anyone who came by. So long as you did nine of these missions, you could unlock Snowmando.

Can You Still Unlock Snowmando Today?

It turns out that I was wrong; there is a cost to the wonderful free nature of Snowmando. That sad cost is the worst of them all: being unable to unlock this skin anymore. That is right; you are not able to unlock Snowmando anymore at this point in time. If you missed out on the original event at the tail end of 2020, you are sore out of luck today. Though he was initially available for nothing at all, you had to be there to get this skin freebie. If you missed out, that was your only chance, and you will possibly never have an opportunity like that again. With that said, there are a couple of key points that you should know about. For one, I think that Epic kept it this way because Snowmando was a special holiday event skin. Bringing it back and making it so that anyone could get it for free now would somewhat water down the experience that everyone had at the time.

I get that, but it is a pretty lame excuse at the same time. The other reason you are likely unable to get Snowmando today is that Epic kept the generosity up in 2021’s holiday time, offering some new themed skins to unlock for free. Since Epic is keeping the free skins going and will likely do it again this year, it makes sense to offer something entirely new rather than just bringing back older rewards. That said, there is a simple solution to all of this that Epic will, hopefully, do in the future. The easy answer to bringing back Snowmando would be to offer him as an item shop skin now. Sure, it would be rather lame to sell an outfit that was previously free, but it can be a lesson to not miss out on special events.

It would allow anyone to get still him that wants to but not waste the free event that happened in the past. To improve the situation, I think it would be good to come out with a new skin style for Snowmando that would be available to everyone who unlocked or bought him. This could soften the blow some for both sides. Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot of precedence for this matter. Recently, some battle pass skins have returned to the game in a welcome manner, but that is about it. We haven’t seen free event skins come back in this way yet, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I think it is inevitable at some point, likely around the time of a new holiday event in Fortnite. After all, it would allow Epic to fill out the lineup of skins for that limited-time event without having to make too many new ones for players.

Snowmando Mini-Review: Worth It?

If you want to know if Snowmando is worth it, do I even need to answer? It was a free skin, after all! You really can’t beat free at the end of the day. But you might be wondering if he is worth unlocking through the challenges. Even that is worth it, in my opinion. The challenges are simple and only take a little time to do. And let’s say that he does come back as a paid skin in the item shop. So long as Epic offers something new with the skin at that time, I think he will be worth your time and money. After all, Snowmando is one of the best holiday skins ever released in Fortnite. There are some paid skins; in fact, most of the paid holiday skins are not as good as this one. Everything from the character’s shape to the cute face to the buff nature is so excellent. Snowmando is my go-to skin for the holiday season. There are two more that I like a little more, but I think that Snowmando is easily the third-best Fortnite holiday skin to date. Considering that he costs nothing to get, that is pretty impressive indeed.

Best Alternative Skin Recommendations

The Snowmando situation is an unfortunately tricky one. Until Epic Games changes its policy in some way, it is impossible to unlock him. Hopefully, that changes in the future, but it could be quite a bit of time until then. For now, though, I have your back with a minor solution. Here are some of the skin recommendations that I have for you if you like what Snowmando is going for. As expected, all of these recommendations are holiday skins, so keep that in mind. Without further ado, here are three skins that I think Snowmando fans would like:

Merry Marauder

Annoyed with the fact that Snowmando is locked at this time due to not being an item shop skin? Well, Merry Marauder has no such restriction. He reappears in the in-game store every holiday season at least once. He is a hilarious gingerbread man character who is so unhappy for no reason. His skin styles are nothing special but still worth picking up for the creative default look.

Slushy Soldier

Do you like the snowman nature of Snowmando? Then you might want to pick up the Slushy Soldier as a replacement item. Unlike the star of this skin guide, Slushy Soldier is a snowman soldier available in the item shop and returns every holiday season. Unfortunately, he pales considerably in comparison to Snowmando’s design.

Globe Shaker

This holiday skin is one of the most inventive and hilarious of the bunch. Almost like a character straight out of The Umbrella Academy, it is a snow globe head attached to a sentient person’s body. It’s a little creepy the more I think about it, but the design is pretty awesome.

FAQs

Question: How do you get the Snowmando skin in Fortnite?

Answer: Unlocking the Snowmando skin in Fortnite was simple, free, but also a little time-consuming. Players had to complete nine Operation Snowdown challenges during the holiday event. It did not matter which nine they did so long as they completed that many.

Question: When did Snowmando skin Fortnite come out?

Answer: The Snowmando skin came out in Fortnite during the holiday season in 2020. This was also during Chapter 2, Season 5 time frame.

Question: What rarity is Snowmando?

Answer: Despite being free and having no general skin styles or customization options, Snowmando is an epic-level skin.

Conclusion

Snowmando remains one of the most iconic skins in Fortnite history for me. He was the very first that I knew of at the time that was entirely centered around allowing the player to unlock him for free. I did not receive any free skins up until the point of the holiday season during Chapter 2, Season 5, and unlocking Snowmando.

To this day, he is one of my go-to holiday skins in battle royale. He would also set the stage for future events where Epic would give away some free holiday-themed outfits to players. He is far from the only holiday skin in the battle royale game. Another fantastic one, but for Halloween, was one of the first skins to ever release in the game: the Skull Trooper Fortnite skin.

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