Greetings, friends and dungeon associates!

The World.

Before I get into gameplay things, I want to briefly touch on tariffs. The landscape in that regard has changed rapidly and repeatedly over the past few months, and I expect the next few months to probably be similar. Simply put, there isn't a lot of value in us trying to guess where it'll be when we ship until we are printing games. We will navigate it as best we can, based on the terrain that is in front of us at that moment. My hope remains that we will wind up in a place with a low, stable number that can be planned for.

The Game!

And now, the fun part of the update! Gameplay!

Over the past several months, I've been iterating on the Forge concept and the Relics concept, specifically focused on evolving the "two tier" system I referred to in the previous update.  At that time I anticipated making a set of simple relics and a set of advanced relics. But when I got down to it - the simple relics weren't particularly interesting enough to justify their existence. So instead - there will be two versions of the Forge, and the Forge will be required when playing with Relics (or a hybrid deck including Relics). One side of the Forge can be used *without* a Relic. Good for first plays, teaching plays, or hybrid games that want to stay simple. The other side will be used for normal play with Relics.

Why have a Forge without Relics? Because it allows fueling the forge to happen from skill, spell, and hero effects, dungeons, and encounters. If I were to constrict fuel generation *purely* to the Relics themselves, they wouldn't feel quite as integrated into the set as a whole. This allows for what we want - a set built around the Forge!

The Basic Forge has 4 slots, and these slots will only be filled with Fuel tokens. When it fills, there will be a Flare (negative effect), and it will empty. The Relic Forge has 9 slots, and they will be filled with a mixture of Fuel tokens and whatever your chosen Relic forges there.

For example, lets look at the current version of the Prism Talisman. Relics each have three effects. One that can be used during an encounter (color coded like normal skills), one used before an encounter (colored like a Heroic Feat), and one that happens when the Forge flares (colored red).

ABSORB lets you send 1 or 3 dice from your pool to the 9 slots by using the keyword forge. As a reward for forging 3, you get a black die equal to the highest die you sent.
REFRACT lets you use those stored dice. Returning two lets you swap those stats for an encounter or gain a heroic die - great for a Peril or Foe you're not set up to tackle! It replaces those dice with fuel tokens.
RAINBOW BURST happens immediately when the forge becomes full. It rolls all the dice stored in the forge - all 6s get exiled, but you can choose other die to keep in your pool. The rest go back, and fuel tokens are removed.

This trio of effects give you a little puzzle as to how to approach the game. You might build your hero out with one dominant stat and try to swap it often, or maybe focus on storing dice individually to gain the heroic die from Refract instead. Maybe you try and trigger Rainbow Burst at opportune times to get an extra die. Overall, you'll need to decide each game how to use your chosen Relic to best exploit its abilities, and that (we hope!) is fun to figure out :)

One other thing you may notice is that the 2P version of the Prism Talisman is designed to be used by both players together. Having two different "mini-relics" operating on the small dice pools of 2 players was not working at all, and so we decided to go with a shared relic model instead. 4P games will have two relics, each shared between a pair of players.

Here's the Ancient Tome, which operates in a wildly different fashion - you can use it to gain blue dice each encounter, but if you don't spend time studying, you'll be in trouble! If you do study, though, the rewards are significant...
 

We have working prototypes for 11 Relics, and we're testing and balancing them right now. We expect that testing to continue through June - and ideally we'll get to stream some of those tests now that things are coming together. This concept and flow for Relics is one we're getting more confident in by the way, and once we lock in the rules, layout of the cards will begin. The Relics cards will be text-dense and not require a lot in the ways of art, just templating to make it all clean and easy to read.

Schedule

So, given all that, where are we? We're much closer than our last update, but not quite done yet. Playtesting and balance are crucial to this game and set working properly. Our goal is to go to print this summer, and right now that seems pretty attainable. We will of course monitor the continuing tariff shenanigans, and plan accordingly when the time comes.

A big Thank You all for your patience and the many kind words shared in public and in private with us. It has been an extremely difficult year for the entire games industry (and frankly the world). Supporting the people you care about and/or the people who make the things you care about goes a long way. We want to make cool things for you, and the more we can focus on that, the better!

Next Update

Aside from streams, which we really want to resume in June, my plan is to move to Monthly updates at this point. Expect one in late June. Hopefully the Relic cards will look a bit nicer than what's above by then :)