• Speak to Cro in the Grove to begin the seasonal quest "An Unfamiliar Path"
• There are 3 quests in total, to be unlocked in succession.
• The repeatable quest can be completed 5 times a day, allowing for progression and accumulation of currency.
• The Grove Goods Shop is stocked with Pann's items and will be open all month, taking Grove Treasure as currency!
• Other than quests, Grove Treasure can also be obtained through Random Encounters, Adventuring, and Turnip Thief.
• Clue - Take note of who you travel with, what paths you take, and at what time you take them.
  

 

 

• The ingredients to make the hatching item can be found in Pai, Agnes, and Oran's shops' Bonus Prize pools.
• The item alchemy recipe is available in your recipe book and shown above.
• This Seasonal Pet will remain in the shops for 3 months and rotate out at the end of November to be replaced by a pet for the next season.
• Seasonal pets are obtainable annually on a rotation! The hatching items can be alchemized at any time of the year.
  

 

• This is a preliminary poll, after which we'll be making more polls on subject matter and themes for various batches!
• Our plan is to make batches of merch and open preorders/orders at set times in order to get each batch shipped out in a timely manner.
• The type of merch and subject matter will be up to both staff discretion as well as user votes, such as this poll! 
  

Why do we want to make physical merchandise?
Offering physical merch through companies like Makeship is a passive form of advertisement that also helps us to support our team and fund additional development. Users have also been requesting multiple forms of physical merch since Dappervolk opened its doors and we would like to be able to fulfill some these suggestions/requests.

Does Dappervolk have prior experience making merch?
Yes! During our Kickstarter we offered merch sets with some tiers, successfully delivering all physical items on time after the funding ended. We are also very familiar with the process of product design and fulfillment and are excited to get back into the swing of making physical items.

Why not offer permanent merchandise instead of doing limited runs?
Since we have a small team and don't have the space or manpower to permanently set up shop delivering merch, we decided that doing batches would be the most sustainable method.

Will managing merchandise runs have an effect on site growth or staff productivity?
No, most of staff time will not need to be dedicated to the release of any physical merch beyond prototype approvals and the shipment of some items. All production will be handled by third party companies.

Is the winning merch type from this poll going to be the only merch being made?
No, this is an overall interest gauge for different types of merch, so that we know what's in the highest demand amongst our players. We're looking forward to making multiple types of merch going forward in different merch runs!

PEDDLER & WISHING WELL UPDATE
We're currently working on a shop update for the world-hopping peddlers in Peddler's Port! Some of the content is a long time coming and we're excited for everyone to add to their collections. We're also compiling our stockpile of wishing well related pets and items which we'll be releasing periodically over the next while.

DAPPERVOLK WIKI MIGRATION
Due to some recent overarching changes to the host behind our fan maintained Dappervolk Wiki that don't align with our site values, we've begun to make the move to a different wiki host (Miraheze) and we're happy with how it's coming along so far!

Once all of the content is successfully moved over, we'll be adding navigation to our official new wiki on Dappervolk itself to better direct any users who want to use it. The old wiki will still exist but will no longer be updated, we think Miraheze will be a much better place for fanmade guides compared to the old one due to its consumer friendly policies.

CUSTOM BATCH STATUS
Our current batch of Custom requests may be a little bit slower to come out this month due to some workload considerations, we'll be back on schedule by next month if there does end up being a delay! Thanks very much for your patience.

WISHING WELL UPDATES
Due to our larger update plans that we've been pushing towards, our smaller wishing well updates have been neglected as of late, leading to a rather large stockpile of unreleased pets and items. We'll be looking into doing some more regular smaller content updates to tackle this stockpile!

MERCH PLANS
Regarding our plans for merchandise, we'll be holding some polls to see what everyone wants to see first and also providing info on future merch logistics so stay tuned for that at some point!

CUSTOM BATCH STATUS
Due to our workload last month, the current custom batch is a bit delayed. They'll be completed some time this month!

• Nineve (#46) and Elkcrown (#3063) became Dappervolk's first ever Community Managers!
• Morphine (#35897) and Musicality (#39022) joined the official Moderation team!
• speckledplanet (#5301) bolstered our team of Writers!
  

• This included edits to all NPC dailies, 118 new items, and 4 new pets to hatch and alchemize.
• This was our fourth installment in a total overhaul of the dailies on Dappervolk to streamline the gameplay loop and make it feel rewarding for players.
• All future towns are intended to follow this style of balancing, so this was a major step in bringing us a bit closer to introducing new towns and continuing the Main Quest. 
  

The Frog Pond and it's current sole resident - Paulie, is a permanent area introduced as a place to spend Potatoes in a new shop full of new items. It will be gradually added to for future expansions to both Paulie's shop and future NPCs with a new variety of wares to buy, and stories to read. 

• Paulie made a splash by releasing his shop in two parts alongside a Gathering Event that helped kickstart players' Frog Coin stock.
• After both parts were released he introduced 22 new items, 6 new pets, and several secret "wiggler" trophies to collect!
• His pond will be seeing some much awaited new life in the near future.
  

 

• Their shop became the permanent home of the Avatar Calendar items, and they brought with them 17 new clothing items and one new pet hatching item!
• They also contributed a new quest to earn Carnival Tokens through in their ingredient hunting quest "Of Distilleries and Procurement."
  

Our new Community Managers put their heads together and introduced more routine official contests that take place outside of major event seasons to provide some fun and regular community engagement.

• We decided that these contests would award a special currency to be used in a brand new shop, Nico's Boutique, which has served as a new location for fancier items and pets to be released through.
• So far, 27 new items and 3 new pets have been released through the Boutique.
• It has served as an additional location for past seasonal content to be hosted as well. 
  

We have been slowly planning merch designs in the background in order to spearhead our future marketing projects to bring more activity to the site when we're ready! So far, our planned list of merch includes but isn't limited to:

• Stickers
• Prints/Art Zines
• Enamel Pins
• Plushies (With Makeship in the future)
• T-shirts/Apparel
  

2024 saw some major updates to Dappervolk's backend coding and security. We updated the following over the course of a few months after extensive compatibility testing:

• PHP version
• MYSQL
• Laravel Version
  

A new feature that was made easier to implement with some of the coding updates done over the course of the year was our News Polls system.

• These polls have made it easier to access the community's collective sentiment regarding a variety of subjects.
• It will remain a cornerstone in allowing the Staff team to ask for feedback without demanding users engage with longform discussions on the forums.
• We're looking forward to hosting more Polls soon as the need arises!
  

We introduced custom markdown to Dappervolk's text editor which allows players to use tags and have the site call item and pet images with tooltips upon mouseover. The tooltip includes the item name, its description, and how many are owned along with other applicable info.We pushed the Clothing Diary feature which allows the user to look up any wearable item on site and see its preview on an avatar skin of their choice. Shortly after its release, we expanded its functionally to include a small search button that when clicked, automatically takes you to the Trades Market in search of that item. It then also received an update to search by stat affinity!

• This includes item tooltips, the clothing diary, and when tagged on the forums with Dappervolk's new markdown system.
• This was a longstanding request from the community dating and certainly one that feels good to finally have completely ironed out. 
  

• Multiple quest hand-in pool updates over the course of the year
• Oran's Accessory Vault was implemented for users to "abandon" or retire accessories the no longer want
• Backend optimization to decrease Tradesmarket load time
• Many food and hatch items were converted into totems to allow better personalization of pets' profiles
• The Custom Archive pages received an update to include a modal that provides ownership information, name and description, and a preview of the custom without the user needing to search through the owner's profile page.
• An archive was created for Seasonal Shard Pets to reduce the size of news posts and provide a single location to view all recipes and pets.
• Numerous other small backend fixes and optimizations
  

 We added a total of 76 Atelier items and 22 Salon items in a large Nico's Shop update, this included several items worked on in streams as well as numerous wishing well items completed by our team.Our long awaited Vaer Balancing update marked the last of our major town rebalancing projects.

• This update was also our largest, as it also included an additional Main Story epilogue and all 6 NPC Affection Milestone side quests.
• We released a total of 135 new items into the NPC shops and 10 new pet species, 5 of which are fantastical and the rest quaint.
• To celebrate this achievement, we also hosted a Gifting Event during this time called "Poe's Shell'ebrations"
  

• Tradesmarket Revamp & Updates - Stock lots, QoL updates, Optimizations
• Peddler's Port Update - New content for existing NPC's
• Peddler Content Update - New Peddler area with new shops & NPC's
• More Ad Theater Fixes & Updates
• Guild Balancing Update - Balances to EXP gain, updates to existing systems, etc
• Various QoL fixes
• Thalies Event - Aiming for September this year, whether we can complete this depends on multiple factors/pipelines
• Vaer Event around December
• Frog Pond Update - New NPC, stories, items & pets to collect
• Pet Accessory Market 
• Custom Market 
• Block System Update 
• Turnip Shop Updates 
• Email Newsletters 
• First Merch Run - We're looking at doing merch in batches of preorders, and accumulating enough surplus to market the game at various conventions/venues! 
• More Major Marketing Pushes - More content & events on social media, Collaborations, etc