Euro-inspired dungeon crawling sequel to the 2017 smash-hit Gloomhaven
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Happy New Year! (UK/EU Updates)
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Jan 03, 2023 at 09:05:05 PM
Happy Holidays Mercenaries!
This is a fairly short week around the Cephalofair offices as we pause to spend some time with friends and family, but just the same we wanted to make sure to check in and let you know some quick and hopefully exciting updates!
North America
USA: Fulfillment continues! We'll keep saying this over and over again but y'all are the largest group and we'll continue seeing you fulfill through January. Some winter storms on the west coast have thrown a curve ball into getting product from Oakland, CA to the warehouse in Sparks, NV which may account for why you've seen fewer notifications on this side of the country than the East, but "I assure you, we're open" and continuing to ship pledges out as soon as they come in! REMINDER: All states are being fulfilled simultaneously and in no particular order, we are not shipping by region. We're getting a handful of concerned messages and just wanted to reassure you that just because your neighbor down the street got their game, and you still need a shipping notification - it doesn't mean it's not still coming! We aren’t able to give you a window when your copy will ship due to the volume of orders but we appreciate your excitement! Thank you all for your patience.
Canada: We excitedly saw Canadian fulfillment start last week and are glad to say things are flowing regularly north of the border. It was brought to our attention that some pledges may have shipped without notifications and the problem has been identified ahead of the next wave being sent - which was why we started with a smaller test shipment on the first wave. UPS has confirmed another large batch of orders will be shipping out this coming week!
Asia/SouthPacific:
Frosthaven has left the building and is enroute to VFI-Asia for fulfillment. Addons are also in the process of making their way from Europe and Shanghai and we look forward to fulfillment starting soon in the New Year.
United Kingdom
FIRST CONTAINERS LAND IN A WEEK! That's right, next Friday our first containers are projected to hit the warehouse, with fulfillment to begin immediately upon arrival. A big thank you to our partners at Spiral Galaxy Games who are bravely receiving more containers for us than they traditionally are able to for most projects - admittedly partially out of sheer necessity for this project - but more-so due to their absolute commitment to providing EXCELLENT service. Like in other regions, we'll need to clear some floor space for additional containers coming in so we've asked Spiral Galaxy to fulfill in the order that gets the most amount of packages onto your doorsteps in the shortest amount of time.
Europe & Rest of the World:
FIRST CONTAINERS ARE HERE! Before I say anything else...THANK YOU to our partners at Fulfillment Europe and their staff. While it's exciting to get a bunch of containers landed at once - it is NOT exciting to get them all in on the week of Christmas. We owe Melanie, Michael, and their staff a tremendous debt for spending some unplanned time back in the office last week getting containers into the shop for fulfillment. Thanks to their help FULFILLMENT WILL BE BEGINNING NEXT WEEK! As with other regions, we have even more containers coming in and a need to clear some floor space so we've asked Fulfillment Europe to proceed with orders in the order that best keeps fulfillment flowing and gets the most amount of boxes on your doorsteps in the shortest amount of time!
Oceanic:
Not a lot of news this week as the Aetherworks office has been closed for the holidays, but we expect some updates next week from the team upon their return and are excited to get things underway in January. More news to come and thank you for your patience!
-Fulfillment End-
As the last update of 2023 - on behalf of the Cephalofair Team - HAPPY NEW YEAR & THANK YOU for all your support in 2022! We truly thrive off the excitement, support, and engagement of this community and can't believe yet another year has passed getting to do what we're most passionate about - bringing epic strategy and excellent people together.
While we still certainly have quite a bit of fulfillment ahead of us in the next couple of months - we are excited to be taking the opportunity to reflect on all the successes of the past year, as well as the areas we know we can strive to provide higher quality work. We're excited to already be taking steps to "level up" what Cephalofair looks like in 2023 operationally and creatively - and hope you will be pleased with the results!
Have a great weekend - we'll talk to you next year!
Frosthaven Official Tutorial & Companion App Now Available!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Dec 24, 2022 at 01:05:49 AM
Hello Frosthaven!
We are happy to announce that the Official Frosthaven Tutorial - How to Play series is officially LIVE from the gloomthusiast himself - Paul Grogan of GAMING RULES! This two part series covers everything you and your group will need to know from 1) GETTING STARTED & SCENARIO PHASE to the 2) OUTPOST PHASE.
With the Outpost Phase being a brand new system in Frosthaven we especially hope Paul's guidance will help fortify your rules confidence, and in turn, your outpost! THANK YOU PAUL for your biggest game tutorial to-date!
We're also excited to share that the Frosthaven: Official Companion app is available on both iOS and Android. Since the first announcement back in May, our partners Lucky Duck Games have been hard at work to bring this initial implementation of the official companion app to life.
With their soft launch for the app last week, it was fun to see how many of you jumped on the opportunity to check it out.
Cephalofair hopes to continue to see community feedback, in order to provide the Dev Team ways to improve the app for useability and gameplay. For any feedback, please reach out to Lucky Duck Games at [email protected]. All of us Cephalofair and Lucky Duck Games appreciate the outpouring of community support!
Lucky Duck Games has provided some pointed updates about the app, where it has progressed from launch and what they will be focusing on in the near future.
From Vincent, CEO of Lucky Duck Games:
Hi everyone, and thank you for taking the time to read this release note!
Let me first point out the fact that Lucky Duck Games is committed to making this app the most complete, robust, and reliable companion app for Frosthaven.
We have been hard at work since we first presented you with our initial implementation, and thanks to this community, and the many feedback we received on that first post, we decided to delay the release in order to include more functions on its release including, for example, auto calculation of move and attack values on monster ability cards, adding the loot deck, possibility to add NPCs, and many more!
In that regard, we have an official journey ahead of us to keep improving the stability and feature list of the application, and the following document will go over each planned release.
Here is what the app supports officially as of today.
V1.0 – Released December 16th
Create multiple parties to maintain the state of multiple campaigns at once.
Allow for multiple devices to synchronize at the same time, allowing remote play, or everyone around the table to see all stats without sharing their device.
Choose which scenario the group wants to play, and the application will automatically set up all the monster stats, monster ability decks, and loot deck for that scenario.
The application supports opening sections in a scenario. Doing so will automatically instantiate the monsters (normal & elite) in that section.
The app takes into account the majority of the scenario and sections special cards and hp for monsters.
Mark each scenario as started or completed, and track your progress.
At any point you can draw from the Monster or Ally Attack Modifier deck, or from an extra Boss deck.
Input the initiative of your heroes and draw Monster Ability cards for each of the monsters. Heroes and enemies will automatically be sorted by initiative, and the ability cards of each monster drawn and revealed.
Support for auto calculations of move and attack values on Monster Ability Cards.
Maintains the hp, xp, loot, and the various conditions of each of your heroes and monsters easily.
Create Summons from your Hero, and track their various statistics.
Create NPCs and set their name and hp, as well as their conditions. You can also input their initiative or snooze them.
Maintains the status of the 6 Elements.
Stop at any point, and resume your session in the state it was when you left.
Undo or redo any actions between each round.
If you do not want to input player initiatives, you can disable player initiative or even hide players.
If you do not want to play a pre-made scenario, create your own custom session by adding any monsters from the game.
Important release note: Since the launch of the app, the 3rd party networking solution we are using is unfortunately experiencing stability issues in some regions, while working perfectly in others. We have decided to implement another 3rd party solution, which should be available by mid-January. Until then, we recommend playing Offline if you experience slow connection in your area.
Following some immediate feedback, we already released a patch few days ago:
V1.0.1 - Released December 19th
Shuffling of Attack Modifier decks following the correct rules
Removed shuffle icon from +2 and -2 modifier cards.
Fixed typos
Added 9th level for heroes
Now what is coming next?
V1.0.2 - Late December
History for all decks
Guidelines document, with explanations on how to use the app
Reminder notes for some special rules
Bug fixes, QOL improvements
V1.1- Mid-January
Custom names for characters when creating party
Gloomhaven and JOTL characters
Boss special cards
Better centered images for monsters
Loot deck upgrades
Conditions automatic expiration
V1.2 - Late January
New and more robust networking implementation
Landscape for tablet
Manual reorder of characters
Dragging to modify HP
V1.3 - February
Desktop Version
Finally, we want to thank the Frosthaven community for your continued support and feedback. Together, let's build the best Frosthaven: Official Companion app system!
Vincent, for Lucky Duck Games
Happy Holidays from Cephalofair!
over 1 year ago
– Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 04:05:46 AM
Hello! Another short update coming at you while we try to get back onto our normal bi-weekly schedule.
We don't have too much shipping news for you since Price's update last week. Here's the rundown:
US: USA West Coast fulfillment has started, and addons orders across the US have started as well.
Canada: Canadian shipments have also started. Note shipping notifications won't be sent to backers until your copy touches down in the Canada warehouse.
Asia/South Pacific: Orders are being picked up and prioritized by VFI-ASIA with the goal of getting everything shipped by Chinese New Year.
EU/Rest of the World: No further updates here.
We are, as always, doing our very best to get the game into people's hands as quickly as we can, but I'll just reiterate that this fulfillment is necessarily a very long process and will be extending into next year.
Whether you have Frosthaven in hand or not, all of us here at Cephalofair wish you the very best holidays!
Art by John Dunnet
Finally, the embargo on reviews lift yesterday, and it's been great to see all the thoughtful considerations and appreciation from so many people! I just wanted to highlight this ThinkerThemer video. Even though both Amy and Maggie were new to the Gloomhaven world, they were able to get to the heart of the game and enjoy it from the perspectives of both mechanics and theme.
So we will be back in the normally scheduled two weeks with more shipping news. In the meantime, enjoy your holidays!
A Brief Freight and Fulfillment Update
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 03:49:10 AM
Hello Backers!
As promised we are back this week with a quick impromptu Freight and Fulfillment update post-PAX:Unplugged.
GeneralFulfillment:
We’ve moved a TREMENDOUS amount of containers over the last month, having shipped 100% of Frosthaven units from China - and anticipate hitting fulfillment hard on the other side of this month’s Holidays.
We know that the delays have been a big disappointment with how positive things sounded on our ability to move international freight under a new (and much needed) partner. But want to offer reassurances this was a one time transitional hiccup and are making sure that all channels are ready to ship DAY 1 of production completion in all future crowdfunding ventures.
North America:
All Frosthaven containers have left Shang-hai and are inbound to their appropriate fulfillment warehouses! Fulfillment operations continue daily, with most recently U.S. West Coast orders started to be fulfilled out of Sparks, Nevada.
We also have started seeing lots of orders containing addons beginning to ship, and expect Retailer Backer orders to begin very soon as well. Ultimately, we’re only at about 15% completion for North America - for perspective. Still a lot to go so don’t fret if you haven’t gotten a notification just yet.
Canadian orders were admittedly supposed to have started by now, but based on some surprise red tape with UPS we saw some very frustrating delays getting this going. This was frustrating for both us, and for UPS who had some surprise customs changes dropped on them just as we thought we were good to go. All that to say - we’re being told the US warehouse is now FULLY READY to start pushing as many shipments into Canada as possible, starting Monday.
Please note: As mentioned in previous updates - we are NO LONGER able to change addresses on Canadian orders. Should you receive a notification for delivery at a previous address, please attempt to make arrangements.
EU & Rest of the World:
All Frosthaven containers have left Shang-hai and are inbound to Fulfillment Europe! First containers have touched down in Hamburg and are in the process of making their way to the warehouse for fulfillment. With the delays we’ve seen, and upcoming Holidays - we expect fulfillment to kick off as soon as the team is back in the New Year. We apologize that things have taken so long to get started - but have been assured that the red-tape issues we’ve encountered are now fully behind us and next project things are already set up for immediate freight shipment into Germany. Thank you all for your patience, understanding, and excitement for Frosthaven! And Happy Holidays to our ever patient and hardworking fulfillment team, Fulfillment Europe!
UK
All Frosthaven containers have left Shang-hai and are inbound to Spiral Galaxy! Like the EU and RotW above - first containers land sometime this month - but with planned upcoming holidays we anticipate fulfillment to kick off formally in the New Year. Thank you all for your patience, understanding, and excitement for Frosthaven! And Happy Holidays to our ever patient and hardworking fulfillment team, Spiral Galaxy!
AU/NZ
All Frosthaven containers have left Shang-hai and are inbound to Aetherworks! Like the EU/RotW/UK above - first containers are touching land sometime this month - but with planned upcoming holidays we anticipate fulfillment to kick off formally in the New Year. Thank you all for your patience, understanding, and excitement for Frosthaven! And Happy Holidays to our ever patient and hardworking fulfillment team, Aetherworks!
Asia & South Pacific
With all base units hitting water for international regions - we are giving the instructions to begin trucking products to VFI-Asia for fulfillment. We don’t have an official fulfillment begin date, but will work to get those details confirmed once we have official ship out/receiving estimates next week from our freight partners.
-Fulfillment End-
We’ll be back next week with another regularly scheduled update. In the meantime, please enjoy this wonderful paint job of Frosthaven’s “Starting Six” by Cephalofair’s own contributor and community member - Wilting Moon!
Happy Holidays - and Happy Fulfillment!
Greetings from PAXU
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Dec 06, 2022 at 11:52:28 PM
Hello! Happy, um, Saturday. I am very sorry for not getting an update posted yesterday. It was a very hectic day for us at PAXU announcing our next project, the Gloomhaven Roleplaying Game!
If you want to know more about that, you can read the announcement over at cephalofair.com, or watch the announcement and a live play of the RPG (which I had a lot of fun with) on the PAX Twich channel. You can also go here to sign up to get all the updates about the Backerkit crowdfunding project that is launching in April.
We don't have a lot of shipping info today for you, however. Things are moving along, and we have started touching down product internationally. Price will have a more detailed off-cycle shipping update for you next Friday once we are recovered from PAXU.
In the mean time, enjoy this art from the RPG, which shows that any class and ancestry combination is possible, and we'll catch you next week!
