July Platform Update

Hey everyone 👋🏼 Matt here from Heart of Daggers.

July has been a massive month for the platform.

The Hope & Fear expansion has arrived, the Homebrew Vault has received some of its biggest improvements yet, Campaigns now give Game Masters much more information about their players, and we’ve introduced new ways for Marketplace creators to support the community.

We’ve also improved Character Sheets, Visual Mode, custom inventory creation, account security, Homebrew discovery, Marketplace bundles, and plenty more.

As always… take a deep breath and let’s go…

Hope & Fear Has Arrived

Heart of Daggers has now been updated with content from the Hope & Fear expansion. This will be available to use on August 25th.

That includes:

All new classes
All new subclasses
The new Dread domain
New items and consumables
New weapons and armor
New transformations
New character artwork
Dedicated artwork for equipment

The new content is available throughout the Character Creator and Character Sheets, allowing you to build characters using the latest official Daggerheart options.

We’ve also commissioned new artwork to help bring these classes, subclasses, equipment choices, and transformations to life across the platform.

This was a huge update behind the scenes, and we’re incredibly excited to finally have it in your hands.

Game Masters Can Now View Full Character Details

Campaigns have received a major upgrade for Game Masters.

Game Masters can now open a player’s character directly from the Campaign page and view much more information about them.

This includes:

Class and subclass information
Ancestry and community
Domain abilities
Character traits
Equipment and inventory
Other important character details

This should make planning future sessions and encounters much easier.

Instead of needing to ask every player which abilities they selected or opening multiple separate pages, Game Masters can now quickly review the party from within the Campaign.

It is especially helpful when designing encounters, planning character-specific story moments, preparing rewards, or making sure everyone gets opportunities to use their abilities.

Live Game Master Inventory Updates

Items sent by a Game Master now appear live inside a player’s inventory.

That means Game Masters can hand out weapons, armor, consumables, quest items, strange letters, mysterious keys, cursed relics, or surprise pieces of loot during a session, and they will appear immediately on the player’s Character Sheet.

Surprise inventory additions are now super sleek and easy.

Create Custom Items from Your Character Sheet

You can now create custom inventory items directly from your Character Sheet.

This includes:

Weapons
Armor
Items
Consumables

The creation process uses the same streamlined system available inside the Homebrew Vault.

When creating an item, you can choose to save it only to that individual character or save it to your Homebrew Vault so it can be reused later.

This makes it much easier to create one-off rewards, campaign-specific equipment, character keepsakes, improvised items, and custom gear without needing to leave the Character Sheet.

Clearer Homebrew Inventory Items

Homebrew items inside character inventories are now clearly marked as Homebrew.

If an item has also been saved inside your Homebrew Vault, you can quickly open the original Homebrew page directly from the character’s inventory.

It is a small quality-of-life improvement, but one that should make larger inventories much easier to understand and manage.

Visual Mode Looks More… Visual

Visual Mode on Character Sheets is now much more useful during actual play.

Class Features and Hope Features are now clearly displayed and can be accessed directly from Visual Mode.

We’ve also improved the way cards behave, making them smoother and easier to physically and visually manage on the screen.

The Spellcast Trait and Roll button are now available inside Visual Mode as well, reducing the need to move between different Character Sheet sections.

Visual Mode was always designed to provide a more card-focused way to interact with your character, and these improvements make it a much more viable option for running an entire session.

Did someone say NPCs?!

NPCs have officially entered the Homebrew Vault!

You can now create custom NPC cards containing:

Motives
Difficulty
Hit Points
Stress
Features
Choices
Triggers
Effects

NPCs use a brand-new card design created specifically for Heart of Daggers.

Once your NPC is ready, you can download the card and use it within your campaigns, adventures, notes, or sessions.

We’ve also added 100 unique NPC artworks to choose from.

These include everything from strange creatures and wacky beasts to mighty heroes, villains, travellers, townsfolk, and common folk.

This should make it much easier to quickly create memorable NPCs without needing to find or upload artwork separately.

Homebrew Vault Creator Profiles

Homebrew Vault creators now have their own creator profiles. Each profile displays the creator’s public Homebrew creations in one place, making it easier for the community to discover more of their work.

If you discover an adversary, ancestry, environment, subclass, or other creation that you enjoy, you can now visit the creator’s profile and browse everything else they have shared.

Quick View In The Vault

You can now also preview several types of Homebrew content without leaving the main Homebrew Vault page.

Quick View is currently available for:

Adversaries
Environments
Ancestries
Communities

Simply click the creation’s image to open a quick preview.

Cards Look Much Better

Subclass and Domain cards created through the Homebrew Vault have received a significant visual refresh. The updated cards now follow the Daggerheart style more closely, including improved typography, layouts, symbols, and card presentation.

Domain symbols can also be selected automatically based on the domains used by your Homebrew class.

Homebrew + Character Creation

Browsing Homebrew options during character creation is now a much smoother experience. Homebrew entries now display additional information per entry.

This should make it much easier to distinguish between similar creations and understand where each piece of Homebrew content came from.

Divine Wielder Beastbound Druid?!

Characters can now access the Beastform and Companion sections without needing to be a Druid or Beastbound Ranger. This provides much more flexibility for Homebrew classes, subclasses, multiclass characters, campaign rewards, and unusual character concepts that may grant access to Beastforms or Companions in different ways.

Creators Rejoice: Community Copies Are A Thing

Marketplace creators can now offer Community Copies of their products. Community Copies allow creators to set aside a specific number of free copies for members of the community who are experiencing financial hardship or cannot currently afford the product.

We know how generous the Daggerheart creator community can be, and this gives creators a simple, built-in way to make their work more accessible.

Please remember that Community Copies are intended for people who genuinely need them. If you can comfortably purchase the product, doing so directly supports the creator and helps them continue making new content.

Marketplace Bundles Can Now Include 15 Products

Marketplace creators can now add up to 15 products to a single bundle.

Bundles can offer customers a convenient way to pick up several connected products while also giving creators more flexibility when presenting their catalogue.

Platform-Wide Marketplace Sales

Platform-wide sales are now becoming part of the Heart of Daggers Marketplace. Throughout the year, we plan to run a small number of seasonal and community-focused sales.

These may include events such as:

Fear Fest (Halloween, coming soon)
Critmas
Daggerheart anniversaries
Free RPG Day
New Year celebrations
Other special community events

Marketplace creators will always be informed before a sale begins and will have the option to opt out if the sale does not align with their own marketing plans.

Multiple New Ways to Sign In

You can now create or access your Heart of Daggers account using Sign in with Apple.

This provides another fast and secure option for signing into the platform, particularly for people using Heart of Daggers on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Passkey Support

Heart of Daggers now supports Passkeys.

Passkeys allow you to securely access your account without needing to enter a traditional password each time.

Depending on your device, you may be able to sign in using Face ID, Touch ID, your device PIN, or another secure authentication method.

This makes signing in faster while also providing stronger protection for your account.

We Say Farewell to the Adventure Builder

The Adventure Builder will officially sunset on August 31, 2026.

When we originally created the Adventure Builder, the goal was to give the community a way to create and share complete Daggerheart adventures. Instead, it became primarily an internal planning and note-taking tool used privately by individual Game Masters. There is nothing wrong with that, and it was not the community-focused direction we originally intended for the tool.

As Heart of Daggers continues to grow, we need to make sure our development time is focused on the tools that provide the most value to the largest number of players, Game Masters, and creators.

Retiring the Adventure Builder gives us more space to improve existing tools and design even better experiences for the platform’s future.

Thank you to everyone who created an adventure, tested the tool, shared feedback, or gave it some love during its time on Heart of Daggers.

We absolutely love what the folks at LegendKeeper are doing. Their platform and tools offer a great experience, and we highly recommend them: https://www.legendkeeper.com/

Final Thoughts

July has been one of the biggest months Heart of Daggers has had so far.

We’ve grown to over 26,000+ active subscribed users engaging with that platform. We have tens of thousands of characters, encounters, adventures, homebrew, and campaigns created.

The arrival of Hope & Fear brought a huge amount of new content to the platform, while updates to Campaigns, Character Sheets, Visual Mode, the Homebrew Vault, Marketplace tools, and account security have made the platform stronger across the board.

As always, thank you to everyone using the platform, reporting issues, sharing ideas, supporting creators, and helping us decide what to build next.

A huge amount of this work comes directly from community feedback.

If you want to share your creations, show off your characters, talk about your campaign, or hang out with other Daggerheart players, Game Masters, and creators, come join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/heartofdaggers