For the January promo. there are obstacles within the maze. They will show up every time you go for a shortcut. Some will just ask you an equine question and some will require you change your horse. For example there will be chasms, thistles, rainbows, fire, water and boulders and boxes. You must change to the correct horse or backtrack and take a much longer route. Here is a list of the horses you need for which obstacle.

A Pegasus for a chasm so it can fly over.
Winged unicorn to get past the rainbow
Winged Percheron for a boulder or box to push or lift it-
Pony for a low hanging log/branch so it can go under
A winged jumper horse breed to jump over a log
Fire coat was a path blocked by fire.
Water element coat horse for a water.
Donkey for thistles.

However

For those that have the season divines, you can use them to get through the mazes without changing your horse you use

Spring for the first maze
Summer for the second maze
Fall/Autumn for the third maze
Winter for the last, divine Maze.

Those not having them you will have to get the right breed/coat as per the first list.

Don't know if this belongs in a spoiler, but anyway, I'd advise getting what you don't have soon, especially the The Fifth Element coats, before the prices double or more.

When will the mazes start? Before or after 1/7/18? I need a M. Blood from my Libra so I can put it on the 'jumper horse breed'.

the mazes. I'm only on Maze 3 at the moment, but from what I read of other players, the obstacles requiring the 5th Element horses aren't until Maze 4. I'd hazard a guess that if you're going on free steps alone and don't plan on buying treats or opening Titan's Challenges to find treats(which is the special offer), you'll likely only get to somewhere in Maze 3, which means you won't need the 5th element coats at all.

maze event I finished was the 2016 August Maze and only needed to open 11 TCs to finish (equivalent to 22 passes). The last maze we had you could have finished it for roughly the same amount, so it's possible 20ish passes is the mark this time.

Keep in mind it fully depends on not going the wrong way, which wastes moves, having the horses needed to get through the shortcuts (getting through the shortcuts is not only shorter, but gives you free treats as they count towards the collections).

Finding treats in TCs is the special offer and you can get treats at all levels, even as a consolation prize. My strategy was to stop and claim my gifts at level 3 each time I reached it so I didn't risk losing 9+ treats by trying to go to higher levels and only getting 3 treats as consolation.

Does anyone here know if any winged draft horse will work or does it have to be a percheran?

Believe I read on the AU server it has to be a Percheron but I could be wrong

Sorry do this needs to be in a spoiler

Does anyone have strategic maps for the upcoming Maze event?

Believe I read on the AU server it has to be a Percheron but I could be wrong

Sorry do this needs to be in a spoiler

Isn't the snowballs event gonna appear this year? I hope it does ..

boulder on the earlier mazes I used a regular Draft horse. When I came across a box on the later mazes I needed a Winged Draft Horse. I used Drum breeds in both instances, so breed probably doesn't matter for those as others did use Percherons

Are the mazes and same for everyone or are they different? Like are shortcuts in the same place, etc?

I compared locations of where someone else said the shortcuts were to mine and they were the same. It'd take a lot of extra coding to make the mazes different for everyone. We're given the warning that "contents of the squares could be different in the real version" but during the last Mazes that just meant the gift square contents were different. I don't think the treats or gifts were in different places, though there were some extra treats on the live version that weren't there on preprod. We'll have to see how they do it this time though.

Thank you for the verification about what kind of draft is needed.

Does anybody have pictures of the different mazes already? I've been back as far as page 2173 but nothing

any news on the next promo. This is my 1st time through the promos so I don't know if the repeat each time or if there are new ones each time