Super Quick Update
6 months ago – Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 01:51:07 PM

Happy Halloween!

We’re running about a week late on shipping, but products should start trickling out tomorrow. The fulfillment warehouse apparently got swamped with another Kickstarter (and a spat of illnesses), and has been updating us every few days that our products are still being packaged and going out soon. It’s always hard to tell when little mounting delays should prompt an update, but I figured I should let you know everything we’ve learned.

They are hoping to trickle orders out tomorrow, but it could be a few days. We're double checking with them and keeping an eye on the shipping portal to spot the first outgoing packages. You should receive an email with a tracking number when your package goes out!

Thanks for your patience!

Orders Locked, Cards Charged!
7 months ago – Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 10:47:21 AM

Quick update to mention that we’ve locked all orders and pre-orders on BackerKit and charged the remaining cards. I want to apologize to anyone who was caught by surprise by a sudden charge (as I neglected to mention it in the previous update). Backerkit doesn’t allow us to charge for pre-orders upfront; instead, cards are charged all at once after we lock orders. Unfortunately, this makes it seem -- to anyone who assumed that they’ve already paid for the book -- that they’ve been charged twice for a preorder. I want to reassure you that's not the case. Nobody has been double-charged. If you still have questions about your order, reach out to our new support page and be sure to leave your contact email and your Kickstarter email (if that is different).

An interesting consequence of Backerkit’s weird system is that we actually gave access to the PDF to everyone who pre-ordered, even though they hadn’t been charged. These sorts of compromises are why we’ve chosen to move away from BackerKit for all future projects.

In other news, everything seems on track with shipping. I look forward to shipping your books out soon!

Last Chance to Update Your Address
7 months ago – Fri, Oct 06, 2023 at 07:17:17 PM

Valda's is in our warehouse! The first of two shipping containers is, anyway. So this is your LAST CHANCE to go to BackerKit to update your address for shipping. We're locking orders on Monday at 4:00 PM EST

We believe we'll start shipping on or about October 23rd, as the warehouse needs to take inventory and get ready to ship everything. We'll keep you posted as we begin shipping.

Order Waves

Not every order is going out at once, however! Some products are still on their way to the warehouse, and the fancy custom dice are also still en route, so orders will be going out in about three waves.

Wave 1 (starting on Oct 23rd): Hardcover Spire of Secrets, Valda’s Essentials, Dark Matter Special

Wave 2: Core Bundle

Wave 3: Lich, Valda’s Infinite Tower

Depending on your add-ons, you might be in a later wave. Wave 2 is waiting on the slipcase and spell cards, and Wave 3 is waiting on obsidian dice.

VTT Progress

We’re working hard on the Foundry VTT and Roll20 is coming along swiftly! The final sprint of Foundry work is mostly figuring out answers to hard implementation questions, but we officially have every class, subclass, spell, magic item, and race in the VTT (albeit with several piles of [WIP] tags, as we continue to figure out all the tricky details). We have an integrator working on this full time, so progress has been steady and ongoing. Barring disaster, we plan to have a final file ready early next month.

(Quick note: your email for this will probably be incorrect, as I got two updates temporarily posted to the wrong channel!)

August Update!
8 months ago – Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 04:39:37 PM

Progress report!

Container ships are en route! I’ll go into detail below, for those of you interested in a play-by-play, but suffice it to say, I don’t feel comfortable making hard and fast guesses about the shipment date right now. We know when things are arriving in the country, but not how long the trip from port to warehouse will take, how long it will take to get through US customs, or how long it will take to inventory.

Shipping Times

This update took a little longer than expected because we hit a small roadblock with customs, costing us over two weeks. However, once that was resolved, we got everything arranged for shipments: we needed a full container load, plus a smaller partial container load. The main container is already on the ocean and scheduled to reach port around September 30th, but the smaller partial container will take a bit longer -- probably around October 10th.

Because we have two containers coming in at different times, we’ll be staggering fulfillment, shipping available products as soon as they’re available. Dice boxes and custom dice are still en route as well, so folks who ordered those will likely be among the last waves to go out.

We’ll lock shipping addresses on September 30th.

Foundry Update

We’ve been full-speed hammering away at Foundry and we’re nearing the end! There’s a lot of loose ends to tie up in the data entry right now -- questions about how to implement tricky mechanics, clarifications of intent, and so forth. Then, we need to import a ton of art and assign a mountain of icons.

This whole process has been a pretty time-consuming one, and one with more twists and turns than I expected. However, I think the result is going to be really neat. With all that in mind, we’re soon pushing toward the Roll20 module!

Roll20 Compendium

In a perfect world, we would be able to convert our Foundry module to Roll20, tie up a few loose ends in the code, and call it a day. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that easy. We staggered the development of the VTTs with the assumption that we’d be able to reuse most of the Foundry work (the HTML journals if nothing else), but it’s looking like we’re starting from scratch on Roll20. Disappointing to say the least.

With that in mind, I’ve gotten a pretty solid Roll20 conversion squad together -- four people, myself included. The crew has a good mix of data entry experience, web development skills, and free time, so I’m hopeful that things will be pretty expeditious.

However, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: designing for Roll20 looks like it could be a nightmare. Imagine boiling everything in Valda’s Spire of Secrets down to a single spreadsheet, with snippets of JSON code and formatted HTML manually inserted into cells. Then, they ingest the spreadsheets, and we have to make manual changes afterwards. The expected labor is around 100-400 hours, and I reckon Valda’s will be on the high end. So I reckon it might take as long as three months once Roll20 onboards us; longer, if members of the conversion team leave, underperform, or have an emergency that pulls them away from the project.

I sincerely apologize for the long lead time on this, but I hope to report rapid progress over the next couple of months.

Thank you for your patience, and to all the amazing folks who said hello at GenCon!

Quick Update!
10 months ago – Fri, Jul 07, 2023 at 05:13:10 PM

It's manufacturing time!

The run-up to printing the books involved three more rounds of proofs, but we've finally got production samples on hand, more or less on schedule, despite finding that a bunch of pages were out of order in the Starter Kit rules. These sorts of bumps in the road are expected, but we're finally printing!

Things will be finished in manufacturing within the next three to five days, so I should have (rough) shipping estimates very soon. We’re officially kicking into high gear to get things shipped overseas!

On the VTT front, we're making great progress! Our main Foundry conversion specialist has been pretty overburdened, so we've been pitching in to help convert everything. The goal is to get the VTT finished by late August, come hell or high water!

Thank you for your patience as we've been waiting to get things finished.