Danke. I uhm… most of this is just time, I’ve been doing sprites on and off for like 15 years, there’s probably a more efficient way to learn though.
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It’s been a while.
Some of you may have seen this post that I made.
To keep myself on track, I thought to make a devlog of sorts, talking weekly about changes I’ve made during the week. This first one it’s going to be long, since there’s plenty to cover:
Devlog #1: Statscreen and some balance changes
So, I have decided to make some changes to the statscreen:
Not pictured is the fact that an icon should be displayed right of the character’s name if they have a status effect (and the icon when being rescued left of the character’s name, like in vanilla).
This is still unfinished, since I have to:
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Find a way of conveying when the unit is receiving stat bonuses (likely using arrows like the ones displayed when rescuing to be able tell if it is receiving a buff/debuff at first glance, combined with displaying the actual amount in the R-Text).
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Decide where I’m going to put the marker for when the unit is rescuing.
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Decide how to display when the unit has a talk conversating.
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Fix an issue when pressing select to view growths.
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Decide if there’s any other data from vanilla’s statscreen that I want to include.
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Change the tiles used for the equipment box.
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Fix an issue involving class cards.
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Add some sort of decoration to the background of the right area.
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Finish getting R-Text sorted out.
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Make the “HP” label display growth color too.
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See if I can improve the way skills are displayed (the current layout doesn’t quite convince me).
I’m also considering making the character’s name, class and items use narrowfont for consistency.
Now that the unit’s inventory has been moved to the first page, I’m thinking of using the second page for weapon ranks and gaiden magic spells, and the third for supports. I need to be able to display 8 items both for weapon ranks and magic spells (since Ethel and Iris are a thing) so this means no B/W/L display anymore. As for supports, I have an idea that would theoretically allow for 10 support partners if it works, so I’ll work with that in mind.
You may notice that I have changed the skill icons: now they have 1 pixel less height and width, and a less eye-catching frame. This resulted in the icons’ images getting cropped, but well, hopefully they still look decently. There are still several icons (and skills) that I’ve yet to do, though.
And talking about skills: we’ve officially exceeded the 254 skills that SkillSystem is designed to be able to handle. So, to make things work, I decided to “cheat” a bit, and turned personal skills into functions that check for specific characters. This means that Nihil no longer negates them, so have fun.
Also, there’s several characters/items/skills that have received changes:
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Tharja now has Demoiselle and Heartseeker as level up skills. The first one means her personal skill slot is now free (I don’t know what to give her, but she could use some help) and the second helps her counter her accuracy issues without negating them entirely.
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Talking about characters without personal skills, I’ve decided to let Rune have a Dark weapon rank instead of Shadowgift, so I need to think of one for her too.
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I’ve buffed Crit Boost to grant +20 crit. I thought of going +30 like Binding Blade but then I remembered that Shiraha and Ricardo get access to both Crit Boost and Killing Machine.
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Rallies now have their buffs slightly increased.
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Lenna’s personal skill now grants +40 crit. Combine with Areadbhar (which I have decided to give Killing Machine on top of the defense-negating effect Taylor wanted) for absolute mayhem.
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Ortega now has +1 Str and his Prf has +1 Mt, which hopefully allows him to one-round the soldiers of his joining chapter on hard mode. Additionally, he now has Jet-Stream Attack as personal skill (with his old personal skill, Locktouch, becoming a level up skill now) which allows him to perform a “triangle attack” of sorts with any ally. He also gets Steal+ instead of regular Steal, and both Seal skills got merged into a new one called Melt Armor.
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In Amos case, I buffed Fury’s effect (now grants +3 to all stats, including Mov), and replaced two of his level up skills. Now, instead of Lifetaker and Galeforce, which required him to get kills (which was easier said than done) he gets No Guard from the start and Reckless Fighter at level 5 promoted, both strong skills with strong demerits, which I feel fit Amos personality.
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After promotion, Boulder can now summon literal boulders. They can’t move (though you can shove them) or fight, but they should still be useful.
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Miracle now works like Engage’s Hold Out.
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It was long overdue, but I nerfed Double Lion by giving it recoil like Fury. Of course, this nerf doesn’t affect everybody equally (Morbick has Sol, Zienfall has Ironclad and the Runeaxe and I made Razmataz inmune to this effect).
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Pharmos now gets Armsthrift as personal skill, with Steal+ being now a level up skill.
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I decided that, instead of giving Tulli 4 skills that boost avoid, I would give her a new personal skill called Endangered Species that gives her x1.5 Avoid (if you’re wondering what happened with Blossom, it’s no longer a skill, but she still has doubled growths and halved Exp gains). I also changed her Dance skill for Goddess Dance, allowing her to refresh multiple people at the same time. And a higher level cap. Not everything is a buff, though: she no longer has the +15 Hit from the Burn skills, and Goddess Dance doesn’t grant Exp. Also, on a whim, I recolored her portrait to have a more minty palette.
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As much as I love multi-hit skills like Astra and Nine-Blade Firestorm, I think the GBA engine is a bit too slow for them, so I reworked them into skills that increase the damage dealt by critical hits (Astra criticals deal x5 damage instead of x3, and Nine-Blade Firestorm’s deal x9 damage). Swordmasters now get Astra as class skill, and Xandra gets Outrider as her promoted class’ skill for synergy. I need to remember to rework Darkhon’s weapons and skills, though.
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I changed how Alora’s Prf works: it is now a Smash weapon with double Mt that grants 100% skill activation rate. I probably should raise the level at which Aether is acquired.
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I’ve increased Braddok’s base stats and level, which hopefully will make him easier to train, and buffed Holy Aura to be on par with Sword Saint.
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Yue now has the Saunion instead of a Slim Javelin.
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I saw DAT commenting in a thread about the idea of daggers that use Dex instead of Str, so now Delilah’s dagger uses Dex (which does benefit Delilah). Also, I’ve raised Plague Doctor’s bases.
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I’ve lowered the amount of Exp Amber gains from using staves, since it was crazy previously. I’ve also buffed her personal skill.
There are some other changes and stuff going around, but I think the post is already large enough as it is, so I’ll leave it for another time.
Let’s see how many do I end releasing before the patch is out.
6 Likes
Huh, well glad to know you’re still working on it. As per the alterations to ortega, I actually like you doubling down on the gundam joke.
The slight boost to his inherent attack isn’t a bad idea, really it’s just fighting colm’s bad bases and con that makes it interesting with replacing him.
3 Likes
Love how the statscreen looks, can’t wait to hear more of the devlog.
Made Laresta a custom splice, hope it"s good.
Parts used were Velvitkitsune, Melia, and Backer
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And when the world needed him most…
He returned
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Exia gets a Meisterlance. Real smooth.
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That screenshot is from a special map I use to test stuff, so Exia still has a Brave Lance in the actual game, unless you want to change it.
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I don’t know if I ever submitted a portrait for Spades.
If you don’t have one already, here’s one that’s based off King of the Skull Servants I like:
2 Likes
Devlog #2: Some updates and setting up further changes
Things I have done this week:
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Updated Laresta’s and Spades’ portraits, and Laresta’s palettes.
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Increased the effects of the weapon triangle.
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Changed Liberation’s name to Libération (important, I know).
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Updated Weapon Skill Display (fixing the display bug involving Supply/List and Weapon Skill Display in the process) and set up for future repair/forge shenanigans.
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Started messing with Support Rework Rework.
The first point is pretty self-explanatory: I got new portraits submitted so I updated them. I had to use two portraits for Spades (one for dialogue, and one for everything else) due to some funkiness with the frames. I also took the chance to update Laresta’s palettes, which I did a while back. Though there’s so many palettes I have yet to do… At least I got the palettes for the map animations of the manaketes sorted out.
So, the weapon triangle change. That’s something I just decided on a whim. Now, instead of ±1 Mt and ±15 Hit, it’s ±2 Mt and ±20 Hit. I just like these numbers. It shouldn’t be gamechanging, though Lenna is now going to have an even easier time against axe-users, and I guess Grado is going to be tougher since he has Triangle Adept+.
Not much to comment on the new name for Libération. It’s one of those minor changes that you tend to forget about until you stumble into it again, so I just took the chance. It’s not like I had to import a new character like in other instances.
Weapon Skill Display is what I call the patch that displays weapons’ skills in the statscreen, and the skills of Skill Scrolls anywhere. It is something I made using Dragz’s Awakening Style Durability as a base (which is deprecated by now) and had this graphical bug when in the convoy or list where the skill icons of Skill Scrolls got overwritten by item icons. So, with the recent release of Auto-Refreshing Weapons, I decided that it was time to revisit it…
And this is the result:
…That being said the only stuff I’ve actually borrowed from Auto-Refreshing Weapons is what makes weapons with 0 durability remain in your inventory (so that they can be later repaired in that shop that Aswink wanted). I also took the chance to look into the Forging patch and rework it so that it can work with breakable weapons too (though that means durability is now capped at 63, so no 70 uses Sunflame anymore) and made it so forged weapons have their name displayed in that color everywhere (though there’s a couple of places where it is still displayed as normal). I still have to make the shop itself, give the weapons proper forge bonuses (I’ve provisionally set them to +1 Mt and + 3.5 Hit per level for most weapons, with forges capping at +3) and fix an issue with forged weapons sell prices.
And lastly, I’ve started messing with the new support patch. I haven’t gotten very far, since I’ve been fixing incompatibilities with my current setup, so I hope I have more to say next week regarding that.
Well, that concludes the changes I’ve done this week. So let’s talk about something else.
Last week is said that “there are some other changes and stuff going around”. One of these changes is this:
As you can see, I’ve made some changes to the promo screen, now displaying promotion bonuses instead of the description (which means I no longer need to worry about stuff breaking if classes’ descriptions have more than two lines) and displaying icons for the class weapon ranks (including “Strike” in Drieyat’s case), mounted/flying icons and class skill icons.
That is something I wanted to do since long ago (in fact, it is one of the first changes I made for this update). It is based on by Sme’s New Promo Screen, which unfortunately I couldn’t install since it’s incompatible with the patch I use for the promotions, and I lacked the skill back then to fix that. But well, that’s no longer an issue, so it’s here now.
Another change I made (this one more recent) was to increase steel weapons accuracy by 15-20. While there are people that are bothered by their weight, their low hit has always bothered me more: it’s one thing to trade the ability to double for a single, stronger hit, but if that single hit has a higher chance of missing, it’s not something you can confidently rely on. I prefer steels to be somewhat reliable, and not completely overshadowed by killer weapons. And it’s not like there aren’t characters that benefit from the extra accuracy.
The last change I’m going to mention today is that I’ve changed the tileset for the final map. It now looks like this:
Quite nice.
This was a request from ReturnOfTheBlackKnight (well, it was changing the map itself but for now I’ve only changed the tileset). He also suggested using the characters from the route you didn’t choose as Deadlords of sorts. Which is cool, but I’m also considering the possibility of letting the player play both routes in one playthrough. I guess, in that case, I could do something like FE5 where certain fallen allies and bosses may appear. Though, I guess, since this is a PME, maybe I should ask for submissions. I personally would love to see something like Rune’s sister appearing as one of these Deadlords.
Well, I think I’ve talked about most of the things I wanted to talk this week, so see you next time. Hopefully I’ve gotten the support system sorted out by then.
6 Likes
I never use FEBuilder for the testing so hope it works. (I’m the guy who edited its moving jaw).
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Well, there were a couple of issues with it. First, the game displays images using 8x8 tiles, which means that for frames to display correctly, they need to be aligned to these tiles.
As you can see, they’re not properly aligned here. This results into something like this ingame:
I think we can agree that that doesn’t look good. Allow me to fix it:
I lowered the portrait and shifted the frames a bit, and it looks much better. Now it would look like this ingame:
And this is the reason I had to use two portraits: since the transparent background color is, well, transparent, you can see a part of the portrait you aren’t supposed to see right now. So I removed that part of the portrait that’s supposed to be used in conversations, while I use the other for the places where it actually is supposed to show that part.
Here’s the cutscene portrait…
…and here is what it looks like ingame.
10 Likes
So this is the solution I’ve looking for a long time. Thanks a lot!
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Oh that looks really good. Nice
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Are you also planning to buff the final boss ? I won’t give any recommendations for now but last time I played, didn’t feel that hard. Ashnard isn’t the most OP character in this PME but he and Jormund were enough to wreck the final boss.
I’ve not analysed properly but there are certainly a LOT more stronger units out there. With broken skillset.
Fire emblem was never known for a good final boss, anyway. You either make the boss too easy or too hard, which will softlock the players. We can increase difficulty by adding some strong minions who support the final boss (like Nemesis) but it will reduce the boss’ credibility as an absolute unit.
EDIT : Ok, I replayed that savestate to refresh my memory and it’s NOT that easy with just two people. I was speed running the game with my own characters so the final boss was fairly challenging. But if you use all the characters then I doubt he’ll be a challenge at all, considering I didn’t have ANY healer besides level 19 unprompted Runa (Ik dumb move) whom I forgot to promote until final chapter. It was painful but doable. I’ll try this again with entire army when I’m free. What are other’s reviews about the boss ? I’m really curious.
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Well, I guess I could buff Grado, especially since Nihil no longer negates personal skills. He’s the only boss that doesn’t have Hard Mode bonuses, having the same stats regardless of the difficulty, so I could change that. Granted, with how high his stats already are, he’s just going to hit the cap in most stats… I guess raising his caps/giving stat bonuses to his weapons like vanilla Demon King are also options, although a bit boring. Maybe giving forges to his weapons on Hard? Or replacing Great Shield with Dragonskin, or something. I’m not sure.
As for my personal opinion on Grado… It’s been a while since I’ve done a full playthrough. I tend to play on Hard, without skirmishes/tower and using arena only to train Xilian and Braddok to level 10, and combined with the fact that last time I tried to train 16-18 units to fill all deployment slots in chapters 19/20, that led to having most of my army exp-starving. I had to cheese Sagumoto, and when I reached Grado I ended relying mostly on 3 units: Tulli (of course), Eliza (who had ended overleveled due to flying around in Darkling Woods with the Dark Aura Scroll) and Edji (whose Absolute Focus was bugged, allowing him to dodge even Solar Rage). It took a while, but, with some Physic support from Rune and Amber, he eventually went down.
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I’ll think of some way. I’ll give you some suggestions later. I’ve already thought of something to make Grado, perhaps a bit more interesting. But nihil is nerfed ? Honestly, that’s going to change things BIG TIME.
For example, Jormund’s only major weakness to Grado would be his resistance… But since Apotrope won’t be negated, things will change. And I’m not even experimenting with all the crazy characters in this PME. Honestly, even slightly good planning can completely cheese the boss.
For normal or easy mode, it’s fine. But I want something different in hard mode. Something which really requires planning and even with that it still remains hard. Take Ashnard in FE9 Hard mode for example. (Even though Resolve exists)
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Devlog #3: Support Rework Rework Rework? (Part 1)
As I said last week, I wanted to work on the support system. And the result is…
…I’m not sure what’s happening. Also, those supports are for testing purposes, and will most likely be changed in the future.
So, the support system.
Vanilla FE8 has a table where up to 7 support partners are registered, with their own base support points and growths defined in it, another table that contains the support bonuses granted by each affinity, and 7 bytes of the character struct that allow to store the support points of all seven partners in the game’s RAM at the same time. Once certain thresholds are reached, support conversations become available, which allow to increase the support level. That being said, the game only allows you to view 5 of these support conversations, so you must choose carefully.
Snakey1’s Support Rework Rework, which I decided to implement, scraps both tables, and uses the first 2 bytes of the 7 allocated to store support levels (which now allows up to 8 support levels, in contrast of the 3 vanilla had) and the other 5 are used to store the characters’ IDs of the support partners, which allows the unit to have up to five supports partners at the same time. Since there is no support points anymore, the conversations are tied to specific chapters instead of support thresholds. As for the support bonuses, they are defined in a new table that allows to define specific bonuses for specific levels of specific supports, instead of having them tied to affinities.
What I’m trying to do, though, is to store the support partners in a table again (though this time without base support points and growths) and use 4 bytes of the 7 in RAM to store support levels (with the other 3 being unused for now). This would allow for up to 10 support partners at the same time, with up to 7 support levels (1 less than base Support Rework Rework due to “0” no longer being a level). That being said, I’m not planning to use all 7, only C-A in most cases while allowing S in specific scenarios like Amber-Merrin or Tharja-Robin.
I still have plenty to do starting from fixing that graphical bug, so I’ll keep working on that next week.
On another note, I recently played a bit with the previous version of the PME… and discovered that I forgot to floor Delilah’s Luck stat. I also got the idea of making a couple of changes to Death’s Grip, and some other minor changes. I’ll probably change Moonlight’s Grace too.
Anyway, see you next week!
EDIT: And it’s fixed:
Devlog #4: Some testing and many bugs
You’d think that, after “Support Rework Rework Rework? (Part 1)” would come a “Part 2”, right?
Well, I thought that at some point too.
So I was in the mood for some testing, so I picked a bunch of characters from that “special map I use to test stuff” that I mentioned earlier, and decided to tackle the Rausten chapter. And well, in the process I had to deal with several bugs.
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Remember when I “updated Weapon Skill Display and set up for future repair/forge shenanigans”? Apparently I introduced three bugs in the process: one caused consumable items to not break, another made staves still usable with 0 durability, and the last one caused Aether, Adept and Thunder Force to not work properly (due to the way they edit the hit counts). I fixed the first and the last, at least. I still have to look into how to fix the staves.
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I ended repointing the +5 Dex stat bonus (for Gleipnir/Levin Sword/Makhaira) since I wanted to use its previous location as part of the support partners table.
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I had messed a comparator in Thunderstorm and No Guard, which caused them to not work as intended. I also made Slow Burn and Musical Score to not display its bonus when in prep screen, which should be for the better.
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Some changes I made to the post battle skills caused Galeforce to not work properly for units with Canto+.
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I messed Emerald personal skill, causing her to take half of the damage inflicted when attacking. Hilarious.
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Norcarna’s personal skill wasn’t working properly when using the Luna tome. (I believe, due to the nature of the bug, that there may have been some similar issues with Luna and Apotrope/Dragonskin, but I haven’t checked that.)
Anyway, now it works:
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I added Ishtar’s personal skills (yes, I still haven’t finished making skills). For now, I’m just using Rally Strength’s animation, though ideally I would like to give it its own animations and sound effect. What sound effect would be good, I wonder.
Also, talking about rally animations reminds me that they’re bugged in the SkillSystem version I’m using right now, so I need to do something about that. And I need to give some animations to Edji’s Absolute Focus and Tulli’s Goddess Dance. -
Not a bug, but I decided to make it so that the green units in that map don’t move anymore. Now you won’t have to watch them suicide against any enemy that enters their range though they’re still very weak. Maybe I should raise their levels?
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Also not a bug, but I decided to install Dragz’s Classlocked Weapon Ranks. Mostly since Olivia wants it if she’s planning to return to Falcoknight after reclassing to Kinshi Knight. I might take the chance to allow more people to reclass like that. That being said, now I need to see what do I do with Lenna, Hapi and Harvey, since they have personal weapon ranks in weapons their classes can’t use.
Also, this change made me notice that I somehow messed the weapon ranks of Gorgons, Mogalls and Arch Mogalls, so that is another bug fixed. -
I also messed up when giving Ganondorf his new level up skills, causing them to not get loaded. Now it’s fixed:
I’d ask if I’ve overdone the hard mode bonuses, but he still can’t hit Tulli.
You may have noticed the icon right of the character’s name: that’s the status effect icon I mentioned earlier (specifically, the poison one). It should also show a countdown next to it for other status (since poison doesn’t have one). …Now, looking at it, I’m wondering if maybe I should move it to the left of the name instead.
Also, I’d like to mention that I ended nerfing Dark Aura: now it is ±2 instead of ±3 for its buffs/debuffs. I did this change mostly due to the scroll, rather than Ganondorf himself, though I believe he’s still pretty strong despite that.
Here is Callista for comparison:
I guess that sums up this past week events.
I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do next week. Is there anything you guys want me to do or talk about?
Devlog #5: Slow progress
This week I have been sort of aimless, which wasn’t great. I did manage to get a couple of things done, at least.
So, those who have played skirmishes/Valni/Lagdou may have noticed that their bosses were unusually weak when compared to the other monsters in the map. This is because, in FE8, bosses use the same autolevel routine as playable characters which:
- Uses character growths instead of class growths.
- Doesn’t give extra levels to promoted units.
Since boss characters’ growths are still the same as vanilla and skirmish bosses’ bases are on the low side, this resulted on them being far weaker than they should be.
Here is the boss of Lagdou’s floor 1 (Hard Mode), for reference:
I need to fix those class cards.
And here is the same boss, after I changed the autolevel routine:
Quite the change.
I’ve also noticed that Gorgons born from Gorgon Eggs seem to be on the weaker side when compared to their peers, but maybe that’s fine, since they’re newborn monsters.
Another thing I did was adding a Strike weapon rank in the statscreen for those that use monster weapons. It displays a dash like when you don’t have a weapon rank in vanilla since, well, it doesn’t have rank.
I wonder why the dash is displayed two pixels down when compared to vanilla.
Aside for that, I have been considering changing the UI graphics, but I haven’t progressed much since I’m not even sure what do I want it to look like. I have also tried my hand at making the whole “using rescue arrows to convey stat bonuses” thing, but it’s not quite working yet…
Hopefully next week is more productive.
Devlog #6: Finishing unfinished business (somewhat)
Every week I post this later.
So this last week has been a bit more productive, when compared with the previous one:
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First things first, I have managed to make the “using rescue arrows to convey stat bonuses” thing work.
I’ve also tweaked the green arrows to have less white on them. Which led me to learn that the arrows used with Battle Animations On are different from the ones used everywhere else. Huh.
I still have to do the R-Text thing, but I’ll leave it for when I decide on a final layout for the Statscreen. -
I’ve also looked into how to fix the “staves usable with 0 durability” bug. It was actually pretty simple to fix (and I believe I could make weapon-locked staves now, if anybody wants that).
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Made Luna not activate if it would not add extra damage (e.g., if unit is using the Luna tome).
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Fixed Unlock’s subtitle help text, which only mentioned doors, instead of doors and chests.
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Fixed the “small display bug involving Obstruct” mentioned in the “TO DO LIST”.
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Fixed a small display bug involving Swipe and Skill Scrolls.
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Made Dire Thunder use Res instead of Mag because I can.
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Lastly, I started working on Gaiden Magic. Hopefully next patch’s version will finally be bug-free.
Aside from all that, I learned that, since vanilla Hard Mode Darkling Woods already has 50 enemies from the beginning, adding Callista caused one of the Shadowshot Arch Mogalls to not spawn due to exceeding the unit cap. I’m not quite sure how to fix it (or whether I want to fix it).
That covers everything, I think. See you next week!
5 Likes
These are the numbers I was hoping to see
1 Like
Devlog #7: Theorycrafting forges, or something
It’s been a while.
You might have wondered what has happened with the weekly schedule. Truth is, I have been a bit busy and, in the moments when I wasn’t, I tended to be too tired to do anything productive. This has resulted in almost no progress in the technical side of things during these weeks, which is… not ideal.
Note that “no progress in the technical side of things” doesn’t mean “absolutely no progress”. I have been staring at the stats of the weapons in the hack and thinking about how I want to handle forge bonuses (alongside some changes I might want to make to the weapons themselves). Now, I could just do something like “+1 Mt, +5 Hit per level except Killer weapons getting Crit instead” for all weapons… but that sounds boring.
So here are some of the changes I’m considering.
Iron, Steel and Silver weapons
The standard weapons. I didn’t do anything too fancy with the forge bonuses since I believe being “boring but practical” fits them, so they gain +1.5 Mt and +5 Hit per forge level. As I mentioned in an earlier post, forges go up to +3, so that is +4.5 Mt (rounded down to 4) and +15 Hit at max level.
What I did, however, was to alter their base Mt and Hit.
I did also mention that I buffed the accuracy of steel weapons because I preferred steels to be somewhat reliable. To double down on this, I slightly lowered the accuracy of silvers and some irons, so now steel weapons have +10 Hit when compared to iron weapons, and +20 Hit when compared to silver weapons. Aside from that, I also adjusted their Mt so that there is a gap of 4 between one weapon and another in a superior tier, meaning that, for example, a max forged Iron Axe would have the same Mt as an unforged Steel Axe.
Here’s a table with the actual stats, for those curious:
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | B.Rng | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit | M.Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron Sword | 5 | 85 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 100 | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| Steel Sword | 9 | 95 | 10 | 0 | 1 | 13 | 110 | 10 | 0 | 1 |
| Silver Sword | 13 | 75 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 17 | 90 | 8 | 0 | 1 |
| Iron Lance | 7 | 80 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 11 | 95 | 8 | 0 | 1 |
| Steel Lance | 11 | 90 | 13 | 0 | 1 | 15 | 105 | 13 | 0 | 1 |
| Silver Lance | 15 | 70 | 10 | 0 | 1 | 19 | 85 | 10 | 0 | 1 |
| Iron Axe | 9 | 75 | 10 | 0 | 1 | 13 | 90 | 10 | 0 | 1 |
| Steel Axe | 13 | 85 | 15 | 0 | 1 | 17 | 100 | 15 | 0 | 1 |
| Silver Axe | 17 | 65 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 21 | 80 | 12 | 0 | 1 |
| Iron Bow | 7 | 80 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 95 | 5 | 0 | 2-3 |
| Steel Bow | 11 | 90 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 15 | 105 | 9 | 0 | 2-3 |
| Silver Bow | 15 | 70 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 19 | 85 | 6 | 0 | 2-3 |
You may notice that the bows have 2-3 range at max forge. I may end up regretting it, but since the forge system comes with the means of increasing max range, I decided I would use them. And it’s not like the player doesn’t have stuff like Imperious or Lifelight available already.
Killer Weapons
Unlike in the previous case, I decided that the base stats of these didn’t need any changes unless I decide to give them -5 Crit at last minute or something.
As for the forge bonuses, it’s +1 Mt and +3.5 Crit per level this time. Creative, I know.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | B.Rng | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit | M.Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Killing Edge | 9 | 75 | 7 | 30 | 1 | 12 | 75 | 7 | 40 | 1 |
| Killer Lance | 10 | 70 | 9 | 30 | 1 | 13 | 70 | 9 | 40 | 1 |
| Killer Axe | 11 | 65 | 11 | 30 | 1 | 14 | 65 | 11 | 40 | 1 |
| Killer Bow | 9 | 75 | 7 | 30 | 2 | 12 | 75 | 7 | 40 | 2-3 |
Shamshir, Harmonic Lance and Wo Gùn
I struggled a bit to find a niche to them, since they were too similar to killer weapons, so I decided to fix that. First, I lowered their base weight by 1, so that Shiraha/Yue/Velvet can use them without being weighted down. Then I increased their hit by 10 and their crit by 5 so that other characters might find reasons to use them too. Lastly, I lowered their Mt by 1 because they were starting to look better than the killer weapons.
For the forge bonuses, I decided to double down on those divergences by making them get +0.5 Mt, +5 Hit and +3.5 Crit per level. This means they will end with weaker Mt than most weapons, but they will also be pretty accurate when compared with other high crit weapons. A niche, even if I’m not sure about how valuable it will be.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shamshir | 7 | 85 | 4 | 40 | 8 | 100 | 4 | 50 |
| Harmonic Lance | 8 | 80 | 6 | 40 | 9 | 95 | 6 | 50 |
| Wo Gùn | 9 | 75 | 8 | 40 | 10 | 90 | 8 | 50 |
Note to self: change Shamshir’s availability (and probably Wo Gùn’s too).
Ruin
The “Killer” Dark Tome. Those who have played Awakening may remember that its forge mechanics don’t allow to forge weapons beyond 50 Crit, so I decided to do the same here never mind the fact that there’s already 3 weapons that exceed that amount of crit at base. Which is probably for the better, since there are things this tome needs more.
Instead, I decided to grant it +1 Mt and +3.5 Hit per level, and an extra +1 range at max forge, making it end with 1-3 range like FE16 Death Γ.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit | Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 4 | 60 | 9 | 50 | 1-2 |
| +1 | 5 | 63 | 9 | 50 | 1-2 |
| +2 | 6 | 67 | 9 | 50 | 1-2 |
| +3 | 7 | 70 | 9 | 50 | 1-3 |
Poison Weapons
I think we can agree that these were sorta bad. Not surprising, being originally enemy-only and with poison being… well, poison. I considered removing them but, at the end, I decided to rework them a bit instead.
Said rework involves them getting Poison Strike, mostly. I also decided against increasing their Mt (though I gave the Poison Venin Axe +1 Mt since it had the same Mt as the Toxin Venin Lance). What I did increase was their Hit (+10), Crit (+5) and Wt (+1). As for the forge bonuses, I went for a simple +1 Mt and +3.5 Hit per level.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | B.Rng | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit | M.Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venin Edge | 3 | 80 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 90 | 7 | 5 | 1 |
| Venin Lance | 4 | 75 | 9 | 5 | 1 | 7 | 85 | 9 | 5 | 1 |
| Venin Axe | 5 | 70 | 11 | 5 | 1 | 8 | 80 | 11 | 5 | 1 |
| Venin Bow | 4 | 75 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 7 | 85 | 7 | 5 | 2-3 |
Slim Weapons
Another weapon set that I considered removing, in this case I decided to rename them to “Quick” weapons and make them brave. For the forge bonuses, to distinguish them from other weapons, they actually gain +1 Mt and +5 Crit per level.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quick Sword | 3 | 100 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 100 | 2 | 20 |
| Quick Lance | 4 | 90 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 90 | 4 | 20 |
Incidentally, there’s no Quick Bow since Pulley Crossbow is a thing.
Quick Axe
Ricardo’s prf. To make it align better with the “new” Quick Sword and Lance, I gave it +5 Crit and +2 Wt (though than Wt increase doesn’t really matter, due to Ricardo Con. It’s just there for consistency). The forge bonuses are the same as the other Quick weapons, which greatly benefits Ricardo since he learns Killing Machine. This also gives him a reason to keep using his prf, since in previous versions it became redundant as soon as you acquired the Brave Axe and Meisteraxt in Ch17, due to Axefaith.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 6 | 80 | 6 | 5 |
| +1 | 7 | 80 | 6 | 10 |
| +2 | 8 | 80 | 6 | 15 |
| +3 | 9 | 80 | 6 | 20 |
Horse-slaying weapons
So, effective weapons. I had a couple of doubts about how to tackle these: should I keep the Mt low due to how it scales with effectiveness, or should I ramp up the Mt value to compensate for the low base Mt, and maybe increase Wt/lower Hit which each forge in compensation? It’s not like there’s a rule that says that effective weapons should only be useful against opponents they’re effective against. Or should I just increase base Mt and call it a day?
Well, in the case of the horse-slaying weapons, I decided to go for the later. I gave +4 Mt to both the Zanbato and the Horseslayer Ridersbane, and +2 Mt to the Halberd Poleax. I also gave -5 Hit and +1 Wt to the Zanbato and +5 Hit and -1 Wt to the Poleax. Then, for forge bonuses, I went back to the +1 Mt and +3.5 Hit per level. Steel weapons are still better in most scenarios, but these are definitely more useful than in vanilla.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zanbato | 10 | 80 | 12 | 0 | 13 | 90 | 12 | 0 |
| Ridersbane | 11 | 70 | 13 | 0 | 14 | 80 | 13 | 0 |
| Poleax | 12 | 60 | 14 | 0 | 15 | 60 | 14 | 0 |
Armor-slaying weapons
Then, for these, I decided to go through a different route compared with the horse-slaying ones, turning them into Engage-style Smash weapons. This meant doubling their Mt in exchange to make them unable to double and always going last. For consistency, I also increased Armorslayer’s Wt by 2 and lowered Armorslayer and Heavy Spear’s Hit by 5.
As for the bonuses, due to their inability to double, they’re +2 Mt and +3.5 Hit per level instead.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Armorslayer | 16 | 75 | 13 | 0 | 22 | 85 | 13 | 0 |
| Heavy Spear | 18 | 65 | 14 | 0 | 24 | 75 | 14 | 0 |
| Hammer | 20 | 55 | 15 | 0 | 26 | 65 | 15 | 0 |
Dragon-slaying weapons
And then, for the dragon-slaying weapons, I decided to keep their base stats largely unchanged (I gave +5 Hit to the Wyrmslayer), but, for the forge bonuses, I decided to go with the option of ramping up the Mt value and increasing Wt which each forge in compensation. As such, they now gain +3 Mt per forge, but also +3 Wt. They can still double, but with their massive Wt at max forges, they will heavily weight down all except the highest Con characters meaning Taylor units.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wyrmslayer | 8 | 80 | 5 | 0 | 17 | 80 | 14 | 0 |
| Dragonpike | 10 | 70 | 8 | 0 | 19 | 70 | 17 | 0 |
| Dragon Axe | 12 | 60 | 11 | 0 | 21 | 60 | 20 | 0 |
Longbow
I actually like the concept of having Iron/Steel/Silver Longbows like in FE10, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend several item slots on it, so I decided to use the forge system to emulate these tiers. To that end, I set the forge bonuses to +4 Mt per level, with -5 Hit and +1 Wt per level as a trade-off. Additionally, I gave +5 to the bow’s base Hit.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit | Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 5 | 70 | 10 | 0 | 2-3 |
| +1 | 9 | 65 | 11 | 0 | 2-3 |
| +2 | 13 | 60 | 12 | 0 | 2-3 |
| +3 | 17 | 55 | 13 | 0 | 2-4 |
Flux
The standard Dark Tome, and actually the only one that can be called “normal”. As such, I decided to follow the same route as with the Longbow and make the forge levels emulate different tiers. In this case, I went for +3.5 Mt/Crit, -5 Hit and +2 Wt per level. And would you look at that, despite those penalties, at max forge it’s still better that vanilla Fenrir.
Almost forgot, I also decreased its base Wt by 1.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 7 | 80 | 7 | 0 |
| +1 | 10 | 75 | 9 | 3 |
| +2 | 14 | 70 | 11 | 7 |
| +3 | 17 | 65 | 13 | 10 |
Fenrir
Talking about Fenrir, I felt like it needed some radical change. And while I could just lower its weight, I wanted to be a bit more creative.
So I turned Fenrir into an Engage-style Smash weapon.
As a result, now it has a titanic 30 Mt and has its base range reduced to 1 (though it becomes 1-2 again at max forge). It also gains +3.5 Mt per forge level due to being unable to double.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit | Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 30 | 70 | 18 | 0 | 1 |
| +1 | 33 | 70 | 18 | 0 | 1 |
| +2 | 37 | 70 | 18 | 0 | 1 |
| +3 | 40 | 70 | 18 | 0 | 1-2 |
…Now add Double Lion to that. Because both Hayden and Omna needed it.
Fire Magic
Their base stats are unchanged. That being said, I ended getting a bit creative with their forge bonuses:
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For Fire, I gave it a fairly standard +1.5 Mt per level. However, to make it stand out a bit from other lightweight tomes, I gave it +10 Hit per level.
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In Elfire’s case, I decided to ramp up its Mt bonus (since Sunflame isn’t meant to be stronger), so it receives +3.5 Mt per level. In exchange, its Wt increases by 1.5 per level.
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Then, there is the brand new Sunflame. Same Mt increase as Fire, but instead of increasing accuracy, I went for a Wt reduction, making it lose 1 Wt per level.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | B.Rng | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit | M.Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fire | 5 | 90 | 4 | 0 | 1-2 | 9 | 120 | 4 | 0 | 1-2 |
| Elfire | 10 | 85 | 10 | 0 | 1-2 | 20 | 85 | 14 | 0 | 1-2 |
| Sunflame | 10 | 90 | 10 | 0 | 1-3 | 14 | 90 | 7 | 0 | 1-3 |
Thunder Magic
For these, I decided to make their range increase at max forge, just like bows.
-
Thunder base stats have received no changes. Regarding the forge bonuses, I originally thought of using them to turn it into some sort of “Killer” Anima Tome, but I felt that that would make Ruin look bad in comparison; the result being me settling for a more average +1 Mt and +3.5 Crit per level, on top of the aforementioned range increase at max forge.
-
Statwise, unsurprisingly, Elthunder is designed to be a middle ground between Thunder and Thoron. Its forge bonuses are the same as Thunder.
-
For Thoron, I decided to increase its base Crit by 10. It doesn’t exactly need forge bonuses, since it is currently only available as a Gaiden Magic spell, but I decided to give it some anyway: 2 Mt (due to its inability to double) and 3.5 Crit per level, as well as the 1 extra range at max forge like the others. And for anybody thinking that a spell with high Mt, Crit and 1-4 range might be too much: too late, Imperious already exists.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | B.Rng | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit | M.Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thunder | 8 | 80 | 6 | 5 | 1-2 | 11 | 80 | 6 | 15 | 1-3 |
| Elthunder | 13 | 75 | 11 | 10 | 1-2 | 16 | 75 | 11 | 20 | 1-3 |
| Thoron | 18 | 70 | 16 | 20 | 1-3 | 24 | 70 | 16 | 30 | 1-4 |
Fimbulvetr
Due to Elthunder basically being a better Fimbulvetr even if it has the same availability issue that vanilla Fimbulvetr does, I decided to rework it to give it a new niche. And by “rework it”, I mean giving it its Three Houses stats, on top of making it inflict Sleep like Thracia’s Blizzard and making it effective against Dragons because why not.
I didn’t think too hard about the forge bonuses: +1 Mt and +5 Hit per level, meaning it will go back to its old hitrate at max forge.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 12 | 65 | 10 | 25 |
| +1 | 13 | 70 | 10 | 25 |
| +2 | 14 | 75 | 10 | 25 |
| +3 | 15 | 80 | 10 | 25 |
…Maybe I should have it inflict Freeze instead, but I’d need to figure where to put the Freeze icon, since my System Icon sheet is sorta full… unless I remove Sleep itself, or something.
Aircalibur
The “common” Wind Tome. I didn’t make any changes to its base stats from its previous iteration. Like Fimbulvetr, I gave it +1 Mt per level; unlike Fimbulvetr, I gave it +5 Crit per level instead of Hit.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 9 | 95 | 5 | 5 |
| +1 | 10 | 95 | 5 | 10 |
| +2 | 11 | 95 | 5 | 15 |
| +3 | 12 | 95 | 5 | 20 |
I feel like it makes Wundergust look bad in comparison, since it can’t be forged; I’m not sure what to do about it.
Light Magic
Light magic was particularly lacking, both due to how lackluster vanilla tomes are and because of the lack of custom tomes. So I decided to revamp the vanilla tomes:
- Lightning Light now has -1 Mt, but in exchange it has a massive 200 Hit. It gains +1 Mt per level, and it also gains +1 range at max forge.
- Shine is now the standard Light Tome, with +10 Hit and +2 Crit. It gets +2 Mt and -1.5 Wt per level.
- Divine has now +1 Mt, -10 Hit, +5 Crit and is effective against armors. It also gains +1 Mt and +3.5 Crit per level, making it the “Killer” Light Tome and I can already see Ozaki nuking Exia.
- Aura bases are mostly unchanged, with only +5 Crit. Its forge bonuses are +2 Mt and +5 Hit per level, cementing its position as the “strong” Light Tome.
| Weapon | B.Mt | B.Hit | B.Wt | B.Crit | B.Rng | M.Mt | M.Hit | M.Wt | M.Crit | M.Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light | 3 | 200 | 6 | 5 | 1-2 | 6 | 200 | 6 | 5 | 1-3 |
| Shine | 6 | 100 | 8 | 10 | 1-2 | 12 | 100 | 4 | 10 | 1-2 |
| Divine | 9 | 75 | 12 | 15 | 1-2 | 12 | 75 | 12 | 25 | 1-2 |
| Aura | 12 | 85 | 15 | 20 | 1-2 | 18 | 100 | 15 | 20 | 1-2 |
Battle Axe
This is another weapon I felt was lacking a niche, so I doubled its Mt and made it unable to double instead. I considered whether to turn it into a Smash weapon or not, but decided it wasn’t necessary to go that far.
For forge bonuses, since it can’t double, I decided to grant it +3 Mt and +5 Hit per level.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 26 | 60 | 15 | 5 |
| +1 | 29 | 65 | 15 | 5 |
| +2 | 32 | 70 | 15 | 5 |
| +3 | 35 | 75 | 15 | 5 |
Wicked
Velvet’s prf, which weights the tiny berserker down by quite a bit, so I decided to give it -1.5 Wt per forge level. On top of that, I also gave it +1.5 Mt and +3.5 Crit too.
Now it still weights her down, but its not as bad as before and will nuke any monster.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 17 | 90 | 15 | 15 |
| +1 | 18 | 90 | 14 | 18 |
| +2 | 20 | 90 | 12 | 22 |
| +3 | 21 | 90 | 11 | 25 |
Festung
Rune’s first prf. While I originally thought of giving it a high Mt bonus to compensate its inability to double, after remembering how high the base Mt of her other prf is, I decided to choose another route. So, instead, Festung gains +3.5 Crit and +1 range per forge level.
| Forge | Mt | Hit | Wt | Crit | Rng |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +0 | 10 | 80 | 8 | 10 | 1-2 |
| +1 | 10 | 80 | 8 | 13 | 1-3 |
| +2 | 10 | 80 | 8 | 17 | 1-4 |
| +3 | 10 | 80 | 8 | 20 | 1-5 |
If anybody thinks this is broken, I remind you that Siara has Hawkeye and Tome Range +1 and can use Imperious.
Other weapons
There are many that I have to study what sort of changes or bonuses to give them, but I don’t have it as clear as those above:
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For the siege tomes, I probably don’t want to do anything to crazy, despite their inability to double. I’m actually considering nerfing their base range and letting them recover their original range through forges. Eclipse and Venenum deserve special mentions because there is no point in raising their Mt, so Hit and Rng are their most realistic options for bonuses.
-
Stone is in a similar position as Eclipse and Venenum, in that there is no point in raising Mt or Crit. That being said, I’m not sure about by how much should I raise its Hit… or if I should raise Rng at all.
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For the ranged lances and axes, I’m considering keeping their bonuses on the low side. Something like +1 Mt and +3.5 Hit or something similar, barring exceptions. As for said exceptions, I feel like giving the Hatchet and Spear Crit instead of Hit, and I might give extra range to the Gravity Axe and Saunion. I guess I could also increase Hand Axe’s Mt bonus since there is no “Short Axe”… though I also might just change some base stats. And I feel like the Short Spear could use some help.
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Blades are another group I feel lacks some sort of niche. I suppose the simplest solution would be to go through the same route as the Battle Axe, though I need to consider whether I give them their current Mt x2 like in the Battle Axe’s case or use the Mt of their “standard” equivalent instead, like in Engage. Of course, that would make the Iron Blade have +1 Mt and be worse in every other regard compared to the Steel Sword, but that is nothing new. I also need to think if I will give the Steel Blade the same Hit increase as the other Steel Weapons…
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In Imperious’ case, I’ll probably give it the same Mt bonus as Thoron. Yes, I’ve made it unable to double. I’m unsure if I want to give it any other bonus.
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For Cyclone, Iris prf tome, I was considering increasing its Wt due to Quick Cast, but then I realized that it would only give it +1 AS or so. I will probably still do it, but is anecdotal at best. It also runs into the same problem that Aircalibur has about making Wundergust look bad.
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Gleipnir is now weaker than Fenrir (which sort of fits with the inherent wackiness of Dark Tomes). I’m considering what sort of niche should I give it and, for now, I’m leaning into making it 2-4 range. We’ll see.
-
Vidofnir seems sort of weak when compared with the other physical Sacred Twins, so I’m considering increasing its base Mt by 4.
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For monster weapons, I probably want to have their bonuses be on the higher side, since they don’t have as many options as other types. I also might increase range in the case of dragonstones/breaths.
There are still plenty of weapons left (especially prfs), so I welcome suggestions.
Anyways, I hope the next one will not take as long…
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Nice! Having played again Resident Evil 5 recently and remembering about RE4 too, this forge system for the weapons almost reminds me of those games.
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