Hi everyone, we hope you’ve been doing well over these last few months! We’re back with another development update covering the progress we’ve made thus far in each major section of development  — with a few sneak peeks thrown in as well!

Since our last update, a bulk of art assets have been completed for launch. This includes all of the artwork associated with our newest town in the storyline, as well as 5 new peddler NPCs who will be selling various new items!

What We’ve Finished:

• All artwork for the 5th town - Town Map, NPC’s, Pets, Clothing
  
• All peddler NPC’s & wares for Peddler’s Port
  
• 3’s Forest, Silvie’s Mine, Aviar Cove Adventuring Backgrounds
  
• Additional avatar item rewards for the affection system, alchemy, adventuring, some new features, etc
  

What’s Being Worked on:

• New Item Art & Additional NPC Avatar Items
  
• All Guild Emblems & Banners
  
• Event Art Assets & Miscellaneous Graphics
  
• A few month’s worth of items for the monthly shops
  
• Kickstarter Backer Design Rewards (To be completed over time before/after official launch)
  

Additionally, the artwork progress for Adventuring is doing great. Not only are all of the multi-layered parallax town backgrounds finished, but our amazing pixel artist has done some great work on Adventuring’s new pixel assets. Below is a little sneak preview of a new encounterable in Adventuring - a mysterious gate that leads to new locations.

We are happy to announce that we’ve recently welcomed a new writer to our team! While they are in the process of learning the ropes of our questing systems, they will be helping out our main writers with new side quests, affection quests, and more.

With the help of our wonderful new developer who is taking on the bulk of the Adventuring overhaul, our main dev is now able to fully focus on creating and revamping other major features. Unfortunately, our overall development progress in this area hasn’t been as robust as we had projected due to unavoidable life and work obligations for members of our team. This has resulted in production delays for certain features that are necessary for launch, and is part of why it has been difficult for us to estimate a launch timeframe.

With that said, we are working hard to make Dappervolk the best that it can be for launch and are still aiming for a late 2019 launch date. If we encounter any unexpected delays that may push back this estimate, we’ll be sure to update everyone on it as soon as possible.

Here’s a brief look at a few of the higher priority features that our developers are currently working on:

• Guild System
  
• Site Navigation Bar expansion
  
• Quest page revamp
  
• Pet System Upgrade
  
• Text Box upgrade
  
• Block/Mute feature
  
• User Profile adjustments
  
• Random Encounters
  
• Shop System expansions
  
• Event System adjustments & additions
  
• Pet Accessory adjustments
  
• Custom pet/item queue feature
  
• The Ad Theater feature
  
• Referral System
  

+ many more smaller adjustments & lower priority features

If you’re interested in our smaller, weekly progress updates, you can tune into our Twitch art streams in which we answer questions about our development process - or join our Discord to chat with fellow DV fans!


As always, thank you for taking the time to read our latest update! We are so grateful for everyone’s continued patience through our long development process, and we hope to be able to give you all more definitive news soon!

Once unlocked, users will be able to decorate and arrange the contents of their homes on an easy to use grid-based system. Additionally, we plan to integrate a player's Adventure sprite into this feature, allowing you to freely hop throughout your home and even invite your friends over to chat in real-time! Each home will also include skills activities and crafting - but more details on this will be revealed in the future, as we are currently focusing on building the framework for this feature and refining the artistic direction that we'd like to take for the massive amount of assets that it will require.

Please note that, while we regard housing as one of our most important new features, the sheer amount of technical considerations and graphic assets that it will take to produce this feature is something that we do not want to underestimate during development. Because of this, there is a possibility that housing may not be completely ready for release at the time of official launch. Nevertheless, we are extremely excited about the feature and can't wait to share more about it with you as we progress further through development!

BETA CLOSING DETAILS
When beta comes to a close, the site will enter into a period of closed development where accounts will not be able to be logged into. During this time, all testing data generated during beta (currency, items, character choices, posts, etc.) will be reviewed and then wiped in preparation for our future official launch of the site. Because of the non-permanent nature of all testing data, please make sure that you save any information onsite that you want to keep before the site closes at the time listed above - for example, your friends list, profile coding, forum guide content, and so on!

If you bought or redeemed any reward codes during beta, these codes will become active again for redemption when the site reopens for official launch. Additionally, any carry-over prizes obtained during beta (such as the event trophy and spring bloom item) will be re-issued to all qualified accounts and should be in your inventory when you log in once the site reopens.

Additionally, once beta closes our two beta-exclusive Support Bundles being sold on Gumroad will also close. The next few days will be your last chance to grab these bundles before they retire permanently - this means that all of the exclusive items within them will never be sold again! For anyone who may be interested in making any last minute purchases, the two bundles are linked below:




CLOSED DEVELOPMENT
The period between the closing of beta and the opening of official launch is going to be a critical moment for our team to focus on improving and building upon Dappervolk. We have a lot of work ahead of us, including implementing user suggestions/feedback and adding entirely new features - so this downtime will give us the opportunity to concentrate our efforts on bringing you a bigger and better Dappervolk for the official launch of the site!

How long will closed development last? This is one of the most important aspects of our closed development that we're grappling with, as it will largely depend on the progress of our three largest and most complex features (Guilds, Housing, and Adventure) and any unforeseen bumps in the road that we may encounter while getting them ready for release. There are bunch of other team efforts that also need to come together to make official launch possible, so there's a lot to be coordinated and considered when trying to give you all an accurate picture of how long we'll really need to ensure that everything is ready. But rest assured, you won't be kept in the dark on this! Our end of beta "farewell" post will include more details on our current development projections and how to keep up with our progress throughout closed development. Stay tuned!


As a reminder to everyone, our custom creator contest will be ending at the same time that beta closes. The lucky user(s) that spun the most of each custom creator will be rewarded with one as a prize during official launch!

• In the spirit of autumn, all of the test items that we're using are an autumn-y witch/warlock theme!
  
• These items will be repurposed into seasonally obtainable items during official launch, so everyone will have a chance to obtain them again in the future.
  
• Bonus Prizes: For every 10 spins in this shop, the shopkeeper will reward you with a free bonus item of your choice from that month's shop stock! This should help reward collectors and give players a bit of control over the unpredictable nature of the turnip chance machine.
  
• When the site officially launches, the turnip chance machine's stock will renew each month, with the previous months' items permanently retiring. This type of retiring system will only apply to items that are "limited" rarity.
  

We would like to thank everyone for their diligence in testing out the mechanics of our first major event as well as our event feature's interface. Through all of your efforts and feedback, we've gained a lot of valuable information that we'll be taking note of for future events!

Curious about some of the data that we gathered from the event? Here are some interesting stats from the community!







According to player feedback, we intend to improve future events of this type in the following ways:

• The event won't end as soon as the bar is filled, this gives everyone time to get to the tier they want if they plan ahead, and users won't be "taking away" points from others!
  
• There will be "overtime" stretch goals that unlock additional prizes after 100% is surpassed! This will add more to look forward to and strive for if the goal is reached early.
  
• Rankings for tied scores will be based on the user that achieves that score first. Currently it is ordered by ID#, but our coders have reassured us that ties are always "friendly" (both users are awarded the higher prize).
  
• There will be more story and art based things for event outcomes in the future!
  

Additionally, we are working on a variety of new event types for the future!

• A collection based event where you collect points throughout the site in order to spend them at an event shop that opens up at the end of the event.
  
• A team-based event where you pick a team/side to earn points for and try to collectively acquire more total points than the other teams by the end of the event!
  
• A community based event where you earn points by interacting in some way with other users and spend the points on rewards afterward!
  
• Official side contests/raffles happening on the forums during seasonal events related to the event/season!