Welcome to the 4th production update email for Batch 4! This month was a bit of a doozy, so strap in and come along for the ride.
TLDR: We're progressing well. I'm cautiously optimistic we can start shipping in July. Most orders will likely ship in August. It'll take around 2 months to ship all the orders and I'm hoping to be done by the end of August or early September. (Provided there's no more unexpected delays)
The Good
A quarter of the cards have arrived, so we have started sorting and packing them!
We get the cards and the card boxes separately, and we have a few steps to quality check and organise them all.
1. Seperate the Kaycee's mod and Base game cards
2. Add 6 card dividers between different segments in the base game - The card dividers go between segments like the creature cards, squirrels, items and bonus cards to help you keep them organised.
3. Pack Kaycee's mod into 3 separate foil packs and heat seal them. - This stage is fun because I can randomly add hand drawn cards into the mix.
During all these steps we are quality checking and making sure there's no printing or cutting errors.
We're still waiting on the remaining 75% of the cards. Expected to arrive in the next few weeks. So fingers crossed that's accurate!
The problem rulebooks from last month have been re-printed. So we can keep packing the folders!
These store the rulebook, sigil reference guides, death card pen, card sleeves and the coin! These folders are one of my favourite parts of the box set.
Cutting the scales is progressing along too.
This is one of the steps that just keeps going throughout the entire production and shipping process as it takes so long.
They're looking great!
The Bad
This was going to be in the ugly segment, but it resolved itself before I wrote this update email:
The metal parts arrived, and they look fantastic! These get shipped to me in small shoebox sized boxes which weigh about 25kg each or 55lbs! It's guaranteed the delivery driver will make a joke about how deceptively heavy these packages are.
The metal parts are the Kaycee's mod coins, Base game coins and the Golden Teeth that sit on the scales.
The problem, only 60% of them arrived. My supplier was totally unresponsive for a week and I was started to get worried they'd ghosted me. Luckily, I just needed a bit of patience, as the remaining 40% of them arrived about 10 days later.
I'm quite anxious waiting for all these parts to arrive, so when anything like this goes wrong and parts are missing or broken I get quite stressed. I need to get better at balancing the stress of completing these things as quick as possible. While also accepting that good things take time, and it's better to ship a great product instead of a rushed one.
The Ugly
The bells shipment has been majorly delayed a whole 5 weeks (!) and is scheduled to arrive right at the end of June or start of July! Luckily the bells are made to our spec, so they can go straight into your box without any finishing steps. So as soon as they arrive we will have all the parts required to start packing and shipping orders
Our humongous shipment of the wooden boxes arrived a few weeks ago! Batch 4 is our biggest batch yet, so the scale of all these boxes really puts it into perspective. These boxes are custom made for us by some excellent woodworkers to precisely fit the foam inserts which hold all the individual components. The photo at the top of this update doesn't even show all of the boxes that arrived!
The ugly part? Every single wooden box on the top layer of the shipment was crushed, damaged and/ or cracked.
That's close to 10% of the entire order of wooden boxes totally damaged beyond repair.
This was heartbreaking to see. Not only from my perspective receiving damaged products that I can't use, but also to see all the hard work from the woodworkers damaged in transport.
Whenever I order boxes, I order more than I need. So we still have just enough to complete Batch 4 even with these damaged boxes!
It'll be tight, a lot less of a buffer than I'd like to have, which really limits our safety margin for mistakes, extras and cosmetic issues.
In summary, there's nothing catastrophic. And we're still on schedule to ship In July & August! Everything is just a bit too close for comfort. The deliveries of a few parts are theoretically arriving the moment I need them, and the quantity of boxes are right at the edge of how many we need. Living life on the edge right now. The stress levels are rising.
The list of simultaneous tasks I could work on keeps growing. Currently I can choose between: - Packing cards - Stickering card boxes - Sealing foil packs - Packing folders - Sanding & Staining Wood - Laser cutting wood - Gluing scales - Adding magnets to teeth - Packing wooden boxes - Adding decals to wooden boxes - Sorting coins - Adding bones to tins - Adding hearts to tins - Stickering heart and bone tins - Packing Kaycee's mod boxes - Probably a few other things
Now that almost all the deliveries are completed, these are the steps I can pick between. It feels like a monumental mountain of small jobs, but as long as we keep plugging away each day doing as many of each step as we can it'll get done.
I'll also pepper in a few working bee weekends where a group of friends and family come and smash out tons of them in a day.
As always, any questions, thoughts or music recommendations, reach out anytime: nathan@crypticcrafter.com
Incredibly clear how much love and effort goes into each and every detail of these sets. Amazing to see. Can’t wait until my set arrives!
Really love reading these updates, they’re so well written and always reassuring. It’s so refreshing to see someone who cares so much about their craft, can’t wait to get my hands on the final product!
Despite the mishaps it is reassuring you seem to always have a plan! Wishign you best of lucks for the final steps :D
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3 comments
Incredibly clear how much love and effort goes into each and every detail of these sets. Amazing to see. Can’t wait until my set arrives!
Really love reading these updates, they’re so well written and always reassuring. It’s so refreshing to see someone who cares so much about their craft, can’t wait to get my hands on the final product!
Despite the mishaps it is reassuring you seem to always have a plan! Wishign you best of lucks for the final steps :D