Chaos Zero Nightmare Season 4 Went Live July 29 With Hilde and Eunie, and the Fei Patch Was a Separate July 8 Preseason

Galactic Disaster Season 4: "Shattered Light and Claw" went live on July 29, 2026, delivered by maintenance, with Hilde as the launch combatant and Eunie as her partner.

The Fei and Ruixiang build that most coverage still files under "Season 4" is a different patch. It shipped on July 8, 2026 as the preseason, three weeks earlier, and it carried the Act 1 revamp and the Basin of Hyperspace rework.

Two updates, two rosters, one season name. Sorting them is the whole job, because the free selector, the coupon window and the pull advice all sit on different sides of the line.

Two builds, three weeks apart

The season string is "Galactic Disaster Season 4", the fourth season of Galactic Disaster, not a standalone Season 4. Korean-origin coverage renders it "Broken Light and Claws"; it is the same season.

July 28 also circulates as the launch date. That was the date given at the Anime Expo 2026 panel on Friday July 3, presented by Super Creative PD Kim Hyung Suk. The build shipped July 29, and Game8, GameDaily and Inven Global all timestamp it there.

Hilde and Eunie are the launch pair

Hilde is a limited 5-star, Instinct attribute, Ranger class, built as a Sub-DPS around a bow. She generates Homing Arrow cards that trigger extra attacks and feed ally card draw, and she applies Ionization.

In the fiction she commands Ironrain's Fireteam Fox and is styled "the Battlefield Trickster", a genius strategist. GameDaily describes her plainly as a draw-focused sub-damage dealer, which is the version that matters at the deck level.

Eunie is the 5-star Ranger Partner that ships with her. She boosts her assigned Combatant's Attack and enhances Extra Attack damage off specific attribute cards. Inven Global prints her name as "Uni"; the EN client is Eunie.

Both are gacha units. Neither is a giveaway.

Arabella and Olga come later in the season. Arabella fights with a "flexible blade", a whip-like snake sword, partnered with Licinia. Olga uses a massive scythe, partnered with Emilie. Their rarities and attributes have not been announced, and neither have their dates.

Every published date in this cycle

Three of those gate content you cannot get back: the coupon, the Chizuru and Itsuku rerun, and Rei's outfit. The compensation row is account make-good rather than season content, and it closes first.

Earlier coverage of this cycle claimed Yuki and Westmacott reruns. No source located supports that. The confirmed rerun is Chizuru and Itsuku, August 8 to September 1.

What Super Creative has not published

Four things are missing from every source reached as of August 3, 2026, and no page should be printing them:

• The maintenance start time and timezone for the July 29 update. The date is solid, the clock is not.
• The Season 4 end date. No stated length exists. The nearest proxies are the three-week combatant cadence and the Beach Cafe Festival's September 30 close, and both are proxies, not an end date.
• The free selector's claim deadline. There is no date and no timezone, only "first week of Season 4".
• Arabella and Olga release dates. Only the three-week gap is official.

The Outfit System is not only cosmetic

The Outfit System is the flagship addition of Phase 1. Outfits are alternate appearances, and they also unlock exclusive voice lines and additional character stories, which puts them closer to a costume-gated content layer than to a skin shop.

They are excluded from Story, combat events and Psychotherapy, so the alternate look does not follow a character everywhere.

The first recipients are contested. Game8 and Inven Global name Hilde and Tiphera, Inven spelling it "Tipera". GameDaily names Heidemarie and Sereniel. Heidemarie is plausibly Hilde's full name, but nothing here has been checked against the shipped client, so treat the pair as unresolved rather than picking a side.

Rei's free summer Outfit arrives August 19, 2026, with no timezone attached to it.

The Kaleidoscope Hatchery and the Protos story

The Kaleidoscope Hatchery is the new Chaos area, and it is introduced through the Season 4 story rather than unlocked from a menu. It holds Unidentified Areas, cards, Environment Variables and Invader Bosses, and its Supply Store pays out character-acquisition currency, Core items and growth materials.

The story is an investigation into a series of disappearances targeting strategic assets called Protos. The party runs into another Protos, named Anis. Inven Global's rendering translates these as "Firsts" and "Anes", which is the same plot with different nouns.

That story is the only part of Season 4 that is genuinely new narrative. The Act 1 work everyone cites belongs to the other build.

The July 8 preseason: Fei, Ruixiang, and what Act 1 actually got

Fei is a 5-star Void Ranger who stacks Descent whenever an ally draws a card, then spends the stacks on the attack card Heavensfall, with Flame Arts chaining extra attacks. She shipped with a Trauma Code story.

Ruixiang is a 5-star Ranger Partner, not simply a Partner. She raises the partnered Combatant's damage whenever Void Attack Cards are created, and her Ego Skill Incense draws up to three cards.

Act 1 Chapters 1 to 5 were revamped in the same July 8 build, retroactively, for every account regardless of progress. The official wording is specific: new characters and events added, the story fully re-recorded with voice acting, world-building expanded, character narratives deepened, plus "Enhanced Captain Role and Abilities".

That is not a full rewrite, and no source says it is. Nothing published states the text was rebuilt from scratch, and Game8 keeps its own lore breakdown behind a premium article, so no free source carries a diff. An earlier version of this article printed "full rewrite of Act 1"; the accurate word is revamp.

Two preseason systems came with it. Desire Cards are built through the Zero System by merging "Shattered Light and Claw [Preview]", clearing the matching Codex and obtaining Save Data; they stack and combine within a season, and the set is deliberately incomplete, with more Cards, Fate effects and Equipment arriving across the season. The Backup Protocol System activates key Environment Variables from previous seasons inside seasonal chaos areas, as a catch-up mechanic.

Basin of Hyperspace went from 10 floors to 8

The roguelike tower lost two floors. Basins 9 and 10 were removed outright, taking the mode from 10 floors to 8. Basin 8 absorbed the difference: boss monsters can now appear there, and it is clearable for up to 5 stars instead of 3.

The Support Effect System is where most write-ups get it backwards. Three Support Effect types are provided per season, and only one can be selected per team. It is a constraint, not a loadout of three. An earlier version of this article said players choose three per team, which inverts the rule.

Season resets are also less punishing: up to three basins below your highest 3-star basin stay cleared in Dimensional Twilight.

Two new Core Items landed alongside. Core of Mutation applies a Mutation Effect to Save Data, and Core of Resonance lets you select one Common Card into the Save Data pool. Season 4 also adds two Memory Fragment sets, Sanguine Thorn and Battlefield Evolution.

Sortie picked up Hardcore Mode ranking, exclusive missions and titles, a Sortie Archive and a Chaos Core boss fight. Full-Scale Offensive Season 3 added three bosses: Judas, Colossus and Beginning of Desire.

The coupon, and the selector nobody has dated

CZNS40729START gives Crystal x500. The redemption period is stated in exactly this form by the official EN account: 07/27/2026 to 08/20/2026, 14:59 (UTC).

The start date matters. It went live on July 27, two days before the season, because it is a briefing coupon issued for the Galactic News Network Live: Galactic Disaster Season 4 Briefing. It is not a launch-day code, and it came from the official account, not from a community thread.

There is a second 500-Crystal code circulating with an August 3, 2026, 14:59 UTC expiry, listed on Game8's July 29 patch-notes page. Different code, different window. Merging the two is how the August 3 deadline ends up wrongly attached to CZNS40729START, which has another two and a half weeks to run.

Redemption path: Menu, top right, then Settings, then Account Settings, then Register Coupon. Rewards land in the in-game mailbox. The official STOVE page redeems the same codes.

The free 5-star selector is real but it is not what earlier coverage described. It goes to everyone who logs in during the first week of Season 4, from July 29, as a login reward. It is not a mail gift issued at the start of the preseason. Community reporting caps the pool "up to Dian", and that pool is community-sourced rather than officially posted.

Its expiry is unpublished. Not "no end date has been announced" in the sense of open-ended: there is a bound, "first week of Season 4", and no source states the claim date or the timezone that closes it. Log in now rather than betting on a guess.

Background

Chaos Zero Nightmare is a free-to-play dark-fantasy roguelike deckbuilder RPG with turn-based card combat, developed by Super Creative, the Epic Seven studio and a Smilegate subsidiary, and published by Smilegate.

It launched globally on October 22, 2025 at 03:00 UTC, after more than 2 million pre-registrations. Platforms are iOS, Android and PC via STOVE. Steam is not named in any 2026 source located, so the PC route to print is STOVE.

June 2026 revenue was $3.3 million on mobile, $2.5 million iOS against $0.8 million Android, on 140,000 downloads. That is down 41.1% from May 2026's $5.6 million. Cumulative revenue across the October 2025 to June 2026 series is $47.6 million, mobile only: the series carries no PC revenue at all.

The curve peaked at $11 million in December 2025, bottomed at $1.7 million in March 2026 and spiked back to $5.6 million in May. Season 4 is the first full content season after that volatility, and it lands roughly three months before the October 2026 first anniversary.

Three things will tell you where Season 4 lands

Whether Arabella gets a date. The three-week cadence from July 29 points at mid-August, but nothing is announced, and a slipped Phase 2 in a season already framed around balance and QoL rather than content volume would be the tell.

Whether the selector deadline ever gets posted. A free 5-star with no published claim date is either a rolling login reward or a support-ticket queue in three weeks. The official channel posting terms would settle it.

Whether the Outfit System sells. It is the only monetisation surface Season 4 added, it carries voice lines and character stories rather than pure cosmetics, and July's numbers arrive against a $3.3 million June.

FAQ

When did Chaos Zero Nightmare Season 4 release?

July 29, 2026, delivered by maintenance. July 28 was the date announced at the Anime Expo panel on July 3, and the build shipped a day later. No source publishes the maintenance start time or its timezone.

Who is the Season 4 launch character?

Hilde, a limited 5-star Instinct Ranger built as a Sub-DPS with a bow. Her partner is Eunie, a 5-star Ranger Partner. Both are gacha units.

Are Fei and Ruixiang part of Season 4?

They are part of the same season, but not of the July 29 launch. Fei, a 5-star Void Ranger, and Ruixiang, a 5-star Ranger Partner, shipped in the preseason build on July 8, 2026.

Does the CZNS40729START code still work?

Yes. It gives Crystal x500 and runs from July 27, 2026 to August 20, 2026 at 14:59 UTC. A separate 500-Crystal code expiring August 3 exists; do not confuse the two windows.

How do I get the free 5-star selector?

Log in during the first week of Season 4, from July 29. The selector ticket is a login reward, not a mail gift from the preseason. Its claim deadline is not published, so claim it rather than waiting.

Was Act 1 rewritten?

It was revamped, not rewritten from scratch. Chapters 1 to 5 got added characters and events, fully re-recorded voice acting, expanded world-building and an enhanced Captain role, in the July 8 preseason build. It applies retroactively to all accounts.

How many floors does Basin of Hyperspace have now?

Eight. Basins 9 and 10 were removed, and Basin 8 can now spawn boss monsters and be cleared for up to 5 stars instead of 3.

How many Support Effects can I use?

One per team. Three Support Effect types are provided per season, and you select a single one for each team. Permanent Effects run once equipped to the formation; Additional Effects are stronger and trigger on a condition.

Which banners are rerunning?

Chizuru and Itsuku, from August 8 to September 1, 2026. Reports of Yuki and Westmacott reruns are unverified.

When does Season 4 end?

Not published. No source states an end date or a season length. The closest proxies are the three-week combatant cadence and the Beach Cafe Festival's September 30, 2026 close.

Is Chaos Zero Nightmare on Steam?

Not in any 2026 source located. The confirmed PC route is STOVE, alongside iOS and Android.

Sources

• Season 4: Shattered Light and Claw Guide, Game8, consulted 3 August 2026
• Chaos Zero Nightmare Season 4 Is Live, Adding Hilde And An Outfit System, GameDaily via Yahoo Tech, consulted 3 August 2026
• Smilegate Launches Galactic Disaster Season 4, Inven Global, consulted 3 August 2026
• Galactic News Network Live: Galactic Disaster Season 4 Briefing, official Chaos Zero Nightmare channel, consulted 3 August 2026
• Hilde Character PV, official Chaos Zero Nightmare channel, consulted 3 August 2026
• Smilegate Newsroom, preseason press release, consulted 3 August 2026

Written by

Lorenzo Bruno signs this article and takes editorial responsibility for it. Published 29 July 2026, last updated 3 August 2026.