Good day! It's been two weeks, so it's time for another Grand Festival update! We just got back from Gen Con earlier this week, where we had a very busy and productive time. Some fun was had, of course, and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting everyone who came out to the booth to demo our games, show off their art or other creative works, or just tell us how much they enjoy Gloomhaven. It is always rejuvenating to meet fans face-to-face.

Now that the big conventions are behind us for a while, we are back to work getting things ready for the first wave of fulfillment. The most immediate part of that is opening the pledge manager.

At this point, the Gloomhaven Grand Festival pledge manager has been built, and is being double/triple tested today for our official "smoke test" to start on Monday. A smoke test is sending out the pledge manager survey to a random selection of 5% of the project backers, which allows us to catch any launch issues should they arise ahead of launching the full data set across all ~35k backers.

While we'd intended to launch the smoke test this week, returning from Gen Con proved a bit more work than anticipated and we'd prefer to have Backerkit staff on hand, given the size of this project, so are refraining from a Friday/Weekend launch. Instead, our smoke test will fly early Monday, and then the full pledge manager will launch Tuesday (though note that this will also occur in batches and may take a day or so to get out to everyone, given the large number of backers).

Just so it's clear how the pledge manager will operate, Price has the following Important Notes for you:

The fulfillment will happen over 5 Waves:

Pledge Manager Close/Open

When a given fulfillment wave begins ocean freight, we will charge all outstanding orders and cut off new orders to that product wave.  Once those are closed off, the pledge manager will reopen for all later product waves, should you wish to add or modify your order.

If your pledge for products from a specific wave is not confirmed when that wave closes, or multiple attempts to charge payment fail, you may lose the discounted pledge pricing and guarantee that the product will still be available, and any partial funds you still have in the pledge manager will persist as credit for future waves.

Late Pledges & Preorders
Late pledges will be made available through the Backerkit preorder store for those who missed the Gloomhaven Grand Festival. While pricing will still be slightly reduced from MSRP for preorders, the reduction won't be as significant as it was during the Backerkit campaign.

Late pledges will open once all backer surveys have been deployed, and late pledges will be fulfilled after normal fulfillment has completed in each region.

Shipping & Taxes
Shipping is automatically calculated separately for each fulfillment wave based on total weight, then combined across all fulfillment waves to arrive at your full shipping charge. All outstanding shipping and taxes will be charged for all items in your cart at the time any product wave goes into fulfillment.

If you want to wait to pay shipping and taxes, you can wait to confirm your order until the wave you want is up for fulfillment, but please make sure to confirm your order before that product's fulfillment window closes by keeping up with project updates and timelines!

There is no option for combined single wave shipping, and no option for split shipping. Address changes can be submitted via Backerkit between fulfillment waves.

                             

We've also made lots of progress on getting the printings underway for the first wave: Frosthaven second printing, the Frosthaven playsurface books, and other Frosthaven add-ons.

First, I am pleased to say that all typo edits for the second printing of Frosthaven have been made to the files and they are now ready to be submitted for digital proofing with the factory. This means that the next step is the factory will layout the files in the format they will be printed, and we will have one more chance to look over those digital layouts before we start the printing process.

For the Frosthaven playsurface books, everything is coming together with the full layout of these books, including covers and indices and all that. We're still going through rounds of edits and are whittling down the errors slowly but surely (there are A LOT of page numbers to cross-reference). Once the editing is complete, we will also go through digital proofing for these.

And lastly, I also wanted to give you a small update on Buttons & Bugs progress, which is wave 2, and more significant updates will come soon. Artist Mofei Wang has begun to bring our mercenaries into the miniaturized world of Buttons & Bugs. The Vermling Mindthief has been transformed into something a little more friend-shaped, showing off a brighter coloration and warm environmental lighting - but watch out! Those teeth may be tiny, but they are still sharp!

And that is all for this week! Look out for the pledge manager launch on Tuesday, and I'll catch you again in two weeks!