Effortposts Around Units We Like (From Custom Campaigns)

[Rivian]

This post is on behalf of Bloble, who has not made a FEU account for our own safety for his powers cannot be contained.
Visuals provided by BobbyAsaka. Enjoy.

IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO LEARN ABOUT LARRY HABAN FROM SHACKLED POWER, PUNKS. HABAN IS A GREAT KNIGHT WHO JOINS FROM THE FIRST TURN OF THE FIRST CHAPTER, ROCKING A SILVER SWORD, A SWEET HAIRDO, AND AN ATTITUDE TO MATCH. YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE’S ROCKING? A HUGE 29 BASE HP, 13 BASE STRENGTH, 7 BASE SPEED, AND 11 BASE DEFENSE. THAT’S RIGHT, HE’S GOT THAT FE6 MARCUS STATLINE, TRADING OFF STRENGTH FOR SPEED. MARCUS IS A GOOD UNIT, YOU MIGHT THINK. THAT MEANS HABAN’S GOOD TOO, RIGHT? WRONG. YOU ABSOLUTE BUFFOONS. SHACKLED POWER’S DIFFICULTY CURVE IS STEEPER THAN BINDING BLADE’S AND ITS UNITS ARE STRONGER TO COMPENSATE; HABAN WILL LOOK OBSOLETE BEFORE THE END OF THE SECOND MAP, WHEN YOUR ARMOR KNIGHT IS FASTER AND TOUGHER THAN HIM AND YOUR LORD AND MERC HIT HARDER AND FASTER. BY THE THIRD MAP YOU’LL HAVE A UNIT WHO’S GOT MORE MOVE AND IS BETTER AT RESCUING THAN HE COULD EVER HOPE TO BE WITH HIS 13 CON. COME CHAPTER 4 YOU’VE GOT TWO CAVS WITH THE SAME MOVE AND BETTER BASES AND THEN THAT’S IT, THERE’S NO MORE REASON TO LET LARRY LEAD. HE’S GETTING DOUBLED AND HIS TANKINESS IS GONE AS SOON AS STEEL WEAPONS SHOW UP AND HE WILL ABSOLUTELY GET BODIED BY THE FIRST HAMMER OR HALBERD YOU SEE - WHICH HAPPENS TO BE IN THE PROLOGUE - IF YOU’RE ENOUGH OF A DUMBO TO THROW HIM INTO THE FRAY WITHOUT CHECKING ENEMY EQUIPS.

BUT HABAN’S GOT TRICKS UP HIS SLEEVE. HE’S GOT NUANCE, AND I PITY THE FOOL WHO DON’T SEE IT. MY MAN CAN USE SWORDS, LANCES, AND AXES, AND AIN’T NO ONE ELSE DOING THAT FOR A WHILE UNLESS YOU WANNA EARLY PROMOTE AN ARMOR KNIGHT WITH YOUR FIRST KNIGHT CREST. GO ON, TELL ME YOU’LL GIVE HUTE THAT CREST AND I’LL SHOW YOU A LIAR. (I did give Hute the first knight crest, I guess Bloble’s whole speech is now irrelevant.) HABAN DOESN’T NEED NO INVESTMENT AND HE DOESN’T NEED TRAINING - EVEN THOUGH HE’S GOT A BIG FAT 90% STRENGTH GROWTH. I AIN’T EVEN TALKING ABOUT HIS GROWTHS, HE DOESN’T NEED 'EM. HE KNOWS HOW TO USE WHAT HE’S GOT AND HE’S GONNA HAVE TO USE IT REAL WELL IF HE WANTS TO PROVE WHY HE’S THE BEST DAMN JAGEN YOU’LL EVER SEE.

BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW SHACKLED POWER’S SLIM WEAPONS GIVE +3 SPEED WHEN EQUIPPED, DID YOU, PUNKS? TAKE THAT 7 UP TO 10 AND SUDDENLY HABAN’S HOLDING IT TOGETHER AGAINST MOST ANY UNPROMOTED ENEMY YOU SEE FOR THE FIRST HALF OF THE GAME - EXCEPT THOSE DAMN MYRMIDONS, WHO WILL DO JACK AND SHIT TO HIS BULK ONCE HE PULLS OUT A LANCE. WHATEVER ENEMY HE FIGHTS IN MELEE, HE’S GOT AN ADVANTAGE AGAINST THEM, THAT’S THE REAL SKILL DIFFERENCE.

BUT SO WHAT, YOU THINK. HE’S A SLOW AND SQUISHY JAGEN, WHAT’S THE POINT OF CHIPPING OR KILLING IF HE’S STUCK ON THE FRONTLINES NEXT TO BETTER UNITS? CANTO. PLUS. THAT’S RIGHT, HABAN’S THE ONLY UNIT IN SHACKLED POWER, A LARGELY LOW-SKILL GAME TO GET CANTO PLUS (SHUT UP NELLO THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU). HE’S THE ONLY GUY WHO CAN DIVE IN AND HIT A FOOL AND WHEEL BACK TO SAFETY. YOU COMBINE THAT WITH HIS FREAKY WEAPON TRIANGLE MAGIC AND YOU’VE GOT DEATH ON FOUR LEGS. HABAN’S A UNIT WHOSE STRENGTHS AREN’T IMMEDIATELY APPARENT, WHO COVERS NICHES NO OTHER PLAYER UNIT CAN, AND WHO WILL ALWAYS SURPRISE YOU WITH JUST HOW MUCH HE CAN GET DONE ON THE BACK OF A SLIM WEAPON AND CANTO+ FOR THE ENTIRE FIRST HALF OF THE GAME. AND IF YOU WANT TO USE HIM LATE? WELL, THERE’S ALWAYS THAT STRENGTH GROWTH AND BASE WEAPON RANK. BUST OUT A BRAVE WEAPON IF YOU WANT TO ONE-ROUND LATEGAME, HE CAN USE THREE DIFFERENT KINDS. PLAY YOUR CARDS RIGHT AND YOU MIGHT JUST FIND HABAN PUTTING OUT ENOUGH DAMAGE TO WIN THE DAMN WAR HIMSELF. SURE, HE CAN’T TAKE HITS WELL AFTER A WHILE, BUT YOU’VE GOT OTHERS FOR THAT BY NOW. THE WIMPY RECRUITS HABAN HELPED YOU RAISE CAN FORM UP A FRONT LINE WHILE YOUR CAVALRY COMMANDER PUTS THE FEAR OF GOD INTO WHATEVER POOR SOUL HE’S CHARGING.

OH, AND HE’S AN AWESOME CHARACTER TOO, BUT YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT. THIS AIN’T ABOUT HOW HE’S GOT CONVOS WITH HALF THE BOSSES YOU’LL FIGHT. IT AIN’T ABOUT HOW HE’S SPITTING SICK BARS ALL GAME LIKE THE HARDEST DRILL SERGEANT YOU’LL EVER MEET. I AIN’T EVEN ABOUT HIS AMAZING SUPPORTS EITHER. I’M TALKING RAW GAMEPLAY HERE. GAMEPLAY’S THE MEAT AND POTATOES OF FIRE EMBLEM. AND HABAN? HE’S THE STEAK THAT KEEPS ON GIVING, THE MOST FUN UNIT TO USE ALL THE WAY FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END OF SHACKLED POWER.

[WaywardTroper]

(last one I… promise. call it a Last Promise even)

There’s a shadow that looms over FEU, and really the fire emblem fan community in general. For every step forward we take, that shadow only grows longer, and what was once fact turns to legend and myth, where merely referencing it evokes powerful, fearful emotions in the greybeards who still know “The Truth”

And that truth is… there is none greater then Kelik from Last Promise

Kelik is an exercise in making the player grow - he is static, immaculate, elegant, and divinely powerful from the minute his theme song starts playing. Every facet of his character is crystallizeed from the moment he talks down his first bandit and swords them to death. He does not grow as a character or a unit, he just puts in a little more effort as the chapters progress.

No the real test, the real weight you have to bear, is if you are willing to meet Kelik at the peak; your other major characters go through arcs, sure, Shaun and Anakin learn to believe themselves and accept the mantle of leadership, but Kelik was already right, knew who he wanted dead, and how this conflict would end, and was just waiting for everyone else to get on the same page, player included. Thus, your challenge is if you agree with, empathize with, or just don’t want to be against Kelik and his motives, if you accept all there is about him and walk into his mystery and hold on for dear life.

Kelik is iconic, in the sense all it takes is a single line, or a song, or even his palette and silhouette to evoke of who he is, but he is also crystallized identity of an era lost to time - he is Ichigo Kurisawa, he is Shadow the Hedgehog, he is Rurouni Kenshin, he is Vergil, he is 12b year old me, he is 13 year old you, kid with stick in hand imitating an iajitsu pose and thinking about how cool 2007 was as linkin park’s Miniutes to Midnight plays from your cd player and you can’t wait to watch Toonami when you come home.

And really, he continues to permeat every inch of FEU, even still, if you make a sword-wielder draped in a blood red pallette with midnight hair, they are only an echo of Kelik. If you make a gruff, emotionally distant pretty boy or gal with a penchant for saying “Tch” you’re hearing the voice of Kelik speak back, and if you use any of the animations created by the community to depict your over-the-top swordmasters, all they are is running the path Kelik had to walk first

Its telling that Kelik does not promote in the normal FE sense - he doesn’t gain rank and become a master or a general or a lord. He becomes a Legend… but maybe “becomes” isn’t the right phrase, no he is aknowledged and accepted by you and his peers that he is a Legend

There is only one at the top, and he’s still waiting for everyone else to get there.

[Parrhesia]

Sigrid (Vision Quest)

This is the other post I had earmarked from the first time I thought about this thread. That in mind, let’s talk about Helga.

My idea of the meta is stuck in 2013, so that in mind, I think Helga is probably the strongest unit in VQ. Mine was no exception. I gave her love and she repaid it in spades, I trusted her with all my hardest jobs, and she never let me down. When, in one of VQ’s strongest missions, there needed to be a side objective where I assumed, correctly, that I needed to fight the boss with some benched-but-still-viable monk, it was Helga I trusted to fight her way through and drop him in the relevant position. The enemy phase was dicey, but I calculated it all and realised she’d survive with 10 HP.

Turns out the boss had a sidearm with 10 more might than the weapon he starts with.

I did complete the sidequest, and my reward was an S-rank light tome. This would have been a lot better in my mind if I had any care to deploy my one light magic user for longer. Even if it had just opened up a squad slot, by losing both the and my best unit in the game. Goddammit.

Time passes, and then I get another primary light magic user. Trouble is, there’s about six chapters left in the game, but that isn’t so bad - she’s even got her own Prf tome. And because there’s so few chapters, the S-rank is basically just her second Prf in waiting. Though it’s, um. Though it’s basically just worse. But, hey.

She’s also a monk of level, like, five.

Now I don’t use vanilla Ests. Honestly, I’m a sceptic that vanilla Ests exist. They’re all zero, no hero. But someone I do always use is Ross, and there’s two big reasons for that:

1. He has a hatchet, which means he always hits.
2. He’s level Minus Ten, which means he gains XP insanely fast.
   So fuck it, I give Sigrid a spin. She was level 5 and had Paragon. She was gaining 100 XP from every kill I could get her. And as VQ had hit its endgame, and the loot train that had characterised its side objective up to that point decreased in relevance, suddenly I had a side-quest again: getting this person who would explode if any physical unit looked at her up to viability.

She had a massively accurate brave tome Prf that did credible damage even at her bases. She had zero durability, and I’ve played FE10; I know how to play around having a vulnerable light mage with zero durability. But this time the payoff - and yes, of course it’s illusory, training Sigrid will never be ‘worth it’ compared to just having another slugger - is real.

Because she really did catch up, after a map and a half. And then she kept going. Here’s my Bulan, my actual favourite VQ character, and her statline is about the norm for my squad: near caps, generally not at them.

A very solid unit, in the context of VQ, who was performing well and a key part of my plan. Great! Here’s Sigrid.

I joined Serenes Forest in late 2009, the time where the pushback started to pick up momentum against the received wisdom that Nino Is 10/10, where PEMN was the watchword of the day. Sigrid showed me that green numbers still had a hold over me, after all these years. The brave tome, unbelievably, was still kicking, but at this point it was absurd overkill. And of course, she still had the S-rank. And that S-rank was not worth Helga’s life, just as Sigrid was never worth Jai’s, who died forging out into the fog looking for someone Sigrid could kill. But you’d better believe, in the push to the final boss, it was that weapon in hand.

Was it ‘worth it’? Obviously not. But, by God, it was cathartic.

Custom campaign Ests tend to be a lot more… extreme than vanilla’s, and frankly, I think that’s necessary for them to feel satisfying. But what Sigrid did best of all, I think - and it’s an influence you can see in Jauger in Do5 - wasn’t just the green numbers. Yes, it was nice that she really was my best unit by a distance, at the end. But she wouldn’t have got there if it wasn’t for her ability to hit strongly and reliably from the very beginning. I knew, if I could keep her safe and the dancer nearby, she was getting 200 XP a turn. She was utter dogshit objectively, but I could rely on her. In general, I’m an advocate for making units better at their strengths and accepting with their weaknesses… but there are limits. They still need to do their job.

Don’t look to Nino. Look to Ross. Look to the Hatchet. Put down the foundations, then apply the Gamer Fuel .

[SubwayBossEmmett]

Let’s give it up to my two favorite GBA cavs of all time!

Shaun and Bradley from 4kings!

Joining in chapter 1, a player might look at Shaun’s bases/growths and go:
“what the fuck am I looking at”

For Shaun he starts with two 50 use mini brave sword prfs with the same might as an iron sword… and an iron sword. Ultimately very unassuming.

However for his first round of combat just after joining is able to ORKO an archer with his prf over said iron sword.

Bradley is likewise not too stand out being incredibly slow with not much bulk to make up for it makes him seem like an active liability.

However, Bradley immediately clarifies one of the greatest skills in 4kings. Making sure you avoid taking damage.

Despite being so conceptually simple this is strictly one of the best weapons in the game for being an accurate and lightweight (read costs no speed) ranged option that turns this 0 res seeming chump into one of the cleanest mage killers in the entire game. People have been known to refer to him as Chadley.

In general, Bradley with his Saunion manages to pull surprising one shots or orkos against weighed-down enemies with his prf but can face a real chance of death not being able to fight back at one range. Bradley in general lets you rush ahead and pick off/heavily chip key threats and can end up being effectively a strong front liner despite his underwhelming stats.

But wait, I haven’t explained why Shaun is good yet.

That of course lies in the power of FRIENDSHIP and MAGIC SWORDS

Their support is by far the fastest in the game and quickly gives both +3 damage and +15 hit at A rank. They’re a great introduction to why you should care about 4kings supports because they help immensely with reliability and damage thresholds.

Additionally, magic swords in 4kings are a very key low feature in regards to discussion of the game but justifies the magic and strength split. Light brands help give so many interactions/inventory management different per unit giving enemy encounters unique match ups all game long. The game clearly wants this to be an important mechanic because it ends up giving you one in ch2 from a nearby village. You could argue that it ends up being the most generally effective (non prf) 1-2 range tool in the game and can be later upgraded as more premium/expensive runeswords.

Shaun has the best magic for it in ch2 (even if he doesn’t have the best skill) but it still has a somewhat shakey hit rate at this point in the game at 70 hit (although still better than 65 hit jav and 60 hit hand axe) so it will need to be used with WTA or against very weighed down targets. He is still competing for it vs the swordlord and rogue jagen of the game for it. And what’s great is that they all have their arguments for it but I’ll focus on Shaun for now.

Shaun doesn’t just rely on growths to deal his damage though. His base, promotion gains and Bradley’s support helps turn Shaun into the damage dealer and debatably the best combat mage in the game outside of trained Yufin who needs significantly more hit rate supplementing. The game has a lot of force-deployed maps so it’s realistically not hard to get their A support by like ch10 due to them growing in 3 tiles. Probably even earlier with deliberate effort.

The mages with 1-2 in ch3 suffer in far worse bulk or have some accuracy issues than Shaun, even ignoring the movement difference.

Shaun and Bradley ultimately play unlike any other cav or really unit in general for GBA to me where they both have to tiptoe the line of where they both very much fear and respect enemies but at the same time can be some of the most aggressive units in the game when it comes to facing them. They reward paying attention to your surroundings and positioning but can both pop off in the right context. They both sum up a lot of why I love 4kings as a hack being technically close to vanilla in several ways but then absolutely running and being in love with it’s own unique ideas and what to further explore.

I definitely like Shaun and Bradley as a fun duo too in their writing but I am running out of steam. They get a sweet paired ending together which is nice.

bonus points:
some friends and I talked Krash into giving Shaun an extra prf in ch21 for flavor and it fits the lore well enough.

[ArcherBias]

Cromar - Bells of Byelen

Earlier, Lowres did a write-up on Benji, and how his unique kit and major drawbacks (accuracy and stats) turned him from a bad mage into an anchor, someone who could simplify the long turns and large maps found in Journeys Gaiden by giving you a jumping off point. Similary, Retina talked about Teodor, and how sometimes, it’s good to let a unit be inarguably dominant for the sake of greater design goals. The unit I want to talk about hits on both these points in a way that I think makes him truly something special.

Cromar is a Hero who joins in C6 of Bells of Byelen. His stats are incredibly high, in both base and growth, far surpassing any of the units you get in the first half of the game. Fun fact, his numbers are directly copy-pasted from Zieg, a similarly powerful early unit in TearRing Saga, and one you might know for certain story spoiler reasons. He also shows up with Dullahan, a Prf taken again from TRS (albeit from Shigen instead of Zieg,) which grants him immortality while it’s equipped. That is, if he dies while holding it, he will simply revive following that round of combat. If that wasn’t enough, Cromar’s status as a prepromote who joins before Chapter 13 also grants him a permanent, hidden EXP buff, meaning that his insane growths aren’t just a shiny medal.

Obviously, these insane traits come with a catch. Cromar’s skill, Dusk Bringer, activates Fog of War after his first round of combat on any map of the game. Every time Cromar attacks while fog is already active, the universal vision radius on the map changes in a decreasing cycle (7 → 6 → 5 → 4 → 3 → 7.) As a downside, Cromar’s skill is incredibly daunting, and turns a large portion of BoB’s playerbase away from Cromar’s juicy statline. However, with proper planning, you can mitigate this downside and reap the benefits of one the most excitingly dominant units I’ve ever had the pleasure of using in Fire Emblem.

Is the Map Feeling Foggy?

Fog’s scary, often bullshit, and people are willing to bench a unit this stacked just to avoid it. This is undeniably true, but it’s worth noting that Fog is worse on some maps than others. Large, multiobjective gauntlets aren’t amazing for Cromar, as Fog just kinda hurts you more on those types of maps. There’s more reinforcements, probably more base enemies to memorize, maybe a whole second phase. But then you get chapters like Chapter 7: Crimson Harvest, or Chapter 20: Blood Hunt. These are relatively contained, with fewer reinforcements and more stationaries. Fog isn’t just managable in these cases, it’s outright trivial. Recognizing which maps Cromar can go to town on rewards reading maps in preps, and coming to a judgement on whether or not he’s wanted/needed. It’s a great game-within-a-game, and it gets you to interact with the mechanics!

Some chapters, like Chapter 18: A Test of Strength, have a lot going on, and Cromar might not want to show up for them. That’s okay, and isn’t even much of a downside for Cromar anyway. Fatigue means no one truly has perfect deployability for the entire game, so he’s still resetting his Fatigue for future maps.

Gonna give particular shoutouts to Chapter 8: Zykhra Gate, where my personal favorite strategy is to split my army into Cromar and not-Cromar, where Team not-Cromar takes on one half of the map while Cromar solos the other half with the Ice Sword. (which he can use thanks to his incredible B Swords at base, he needs it trust me)

You Can Like, Not Use Cromar For a Few Turns, By the Way

Some maps that seem like they’d be bad for Cromar are actually the exact opposite. You just have to re-read Dusk Bringer’s description:

(emphasis mine)

Cromar doesn’t activate Fog of War on deployment, he activates it after combat. This means that he can be kept in the back pocket for a few turns, and then brought out to the frontlines (thanks to his 7 Mov, oh yeah, he also has 7 Mov, btw) for a tricky enemy phase, or a more frantic second phase on a multipart map. Chapter 13: Journeying West is a map with a deceptively dangerous back half, in which the entire map runs at you in an attempt to overwhelm you. This is the exact type of scenario in which Cromar thrives, so you can deploy him and use him for Shoves and Rescues, and then frontline him when it really counts.

Conclusion

This unit fucking rules. Bells of Byelen’s cast trends super hard towards the middle, with a lot of units ending up somewhat unexcitingly usable, but not much more. Cromar exists in complete defiance to this design norm, and in doing so, can warp entire playthroughs around him. It’s also nice that he’s like, actually good enough to warrant wanting to warp your run around him. Pretty much everything about the guy is another layer of subgame (Are you going to deploy him? Are you using him immediately, or are you saving him for a specific part? Should he be using Dullahan here, sacrificing accuracy for safety?), which is something I have nothing but respect for. Also, he’s a unit who’s extremely dominant that scales comically well that isn’t trivializing the game. You’re still asking a lot of questions while using him, and getting rewarded for your decision making. I urge you, if you’ve played Bells and skipped over this gem of a unit, give him a shot some day. He’s great. And if you haven’t played Bells, maybe think of this post if you do decide to try it.

[DrGreen3339]

how did i wind up making the two best maps for cromar

[ArcherBias]

built diff

[BladerDj]

Lajos - Vision Quest

I think an important thing about unit design is not just how they feel in terms of fun and what they can bring to the table, but also what their individual jobs are and when you can use them effectively. Esfir was already mentioned, I think VQ does an excellent job in giving thieves a purpose. It definitly makes the game harder not to use and train her even if it doesn’t seem like that at first.

But for this thread I want to focus on a Prepromote that is not just there to be a better archer than your starter. You can train him of course but in my case, I didn’t, which gave me a neat insight into Lajos.

This next bit is borrowed from my big “Vision Quest Review” since I phrased my feelings towards the units I used already:

Lajos was prolly the best Prepromote in the game for me. He did a very well job. I began cycling around my army depending on who is useful in certain missions and Lajos was always someone I could pick to do certain jobs for me. He never required much grinding to do what he’s supposed to do and when he eventually hit Level 5 he got a nice Crit Bonus. Because there are quite some fliers in this game it’s always nice to have a strong archer that you could use. And while he won’t gain much Exp for a long time he doesn’t really need it to be useful. Which, for me, is good enough to call him one of the best units – For certain jobs. He can replace an eventually dead Vagelis. He will be outclassed by either him or the archer you get in Part 3-1 (don’t remember her name because she died). But just because someone outclasses a unit doesn’t mean this unit magically becomes useless if you need one of his role. (Not to mention that he should start getting good ammount of Exp this late in the game, especially if “low leveled”…) Swap gives him a good second option next to shove. And his shots become very reliable due to Certain Blow. Once he hit S-Rank he and Vagelis could trade around the Boogjacht for maximum damage.

Definetly a unit I could always count on if needed. Usually a second pick if I needed to fill guebs. But a no brainer if I was sure I’d encounter many fliers.

---

This is how my Lajos ended up with.

Compared to his bases

You can see that mine didn’t grew much, yet still managed to give me the feelings above. Keep in mind that it wasn’t until late midgame or even the early last part that he reached around Level 5 though the exact details I forgot. He was always fieleded when there was a ballistae though and when there was sign of bunch of fliers that might come at me.

Aaaand I think this is a good lesson. A unit does not need to be an allrounder or a beast in combat. Just like a Jagen, it is good enough to be very useful in certain situations rather than be one of the overall S Tier characters. Though cycling units is something few people do since FE is all about unit growth. Even when forced to cycle like in Thracia. Have a map with fliers? Use your archers. Have something to transport or far away villages? Use fliers. (You probably use some fliers anyway lol.) Just make sure the player profits from using them if they have a reason to.

[RandomWizard]

Evelia (Absolution)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single hackrom in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an early-game healer. So it goes for Absolution (by ZessDynamite), a Lex Talionis project I’ve shilled on Discord more than enough times already. Just in case - y’all should play absolution by zessdynamite.

Anyway, when Chapter 1 of Absolution (by ZessDynamite) kicks off, you’re given a squad of six units to play with. The other five are all fun and interesting in their own right (even Ramon), but our focus here is on the unassuming staffer at the back of the line.

Part 1: One Measly Gacha Game Reference

At first glance, her build mostly just looks awkward - that low Magic leaves her staff uses not doing much, and she doesn’t exactly have much bulk either. She’s stafflocked, so she can’t fight, and yet her most competent stats are best suited to a physical attacker. What the heck is going on?

The presence of Fire Balm totally recontextualizes how you use Evelia as a unit. She can heal, sure, but that’s not her main appeal - her actions are often best used putting that +2 Str/Mag boost wherever it’s needed most. And it is needed; between doubling, crits, combat arts, and raw power, Absolution (by ZessDynamite) is full of places where Evelia’s buffs make the difference between killing the enemy and leaving that foe alive.

You can just use her as a standard healer, despite this, but you’ll need to make use of her defining personal skill to have a reasonable time getting past the challenges ahead. Heck, you might even want to plan your whole turn around her, getting relevant combat units to be damaged at the start of your turn so Evelia can heal and buff them. This goes for just about every unit in the game, but Evelia’s unusual base setup provides an obvious place to start thinking about using skills in cool ways.

(don’t mind that i used the debug menu to cheat these into chapter 1)

Evelia’s skill doesn’t just stand alone, though. Absolution (by ZessDynamite) also uses it as a tutorial for combining skills with items you may find. In the first couple chapters, beyond just Evelia’s starting Heal staff, she can also pick up the AoE-healing Mend and the accuracy-boosting Fortune. Both of these provide new considerations for using Fire Balm; Fortune can grant the boost at long range to even allies at full health (plus the hit rate boost being useful on its own; units like Ramon and Eduardo really enjoy the assurance when they’re going for one-shots or one-rounds), while Mend lets her buff multiple allies at once if you’re clever with both damaging and positioning them.

In general, Absolution (by ZessDynamite) is a master class in designing around skills. Really, your whole early-game party is built to take optimal advantage of Fire Balm, and to teach the player how to use it, and skills like it, to maximum effect. As a game designer, there’s a lot of inspiration to take here in your own use of skills. How do those skills change their user’s game plan? What items synergize with those skills? How can those skills let other units do new and interesting things? There’s a lot to learn there, and Absolution (this joke is getting old) is a great place to start.

Part 2: Just the Beginning

You may have noticed that in the earlier screenshot of Evelia’s stat screen, she had three skills, not just Fire Balm. The first one is Healtouch, which just grants a boost to healing done with staves. I’m admittedly not sure why that’s there, beyond just to patch up her low Magic for players actually trying to use her for support. The third skill, though?

Now this is where things get interesting.

At base, Miracle fixes another flaw of Evelia’s statline (her very low bulk), giving novice players a chance to recover from mistakes leaving their healer unprotected while they learn the rhythms of Absolution’s gameplay and combat. She can help hold down a defensive line in a pinch, and when you only have six or seven units to work with, that’s an invaluable bit of utility.

Thing is? Miracle isn’t Evelia’s skill.

(image taken from the Absolution thread, because i cannot be bothered to get my own skill menu screenshot at this point)

Absolution has a mechanic taken from the Tellius games where many skills can be swapped between and equipped to units. Most of those skills are initially found as skill scroll items, but others start out on units you recruit. Evelia’s Miracle is in the latter camp. When you get access to the skill-swapping menu in Chapter 5, Miracle is a tool you can start moving around straight away. You’ve already seen how powerful it is on this backline support unit, so combining it with scrappier combat units is an obvious place to start experimenting. And once you’ve started moving one skill around, why not do more?

And so the player is introduced to this whole unit customization mechanic, through an inconspicuous skill on a single unit.

Part 3: One Master Seal Later…

Later in the game, once you get a chance to promote her, Evelia’s whole statline is justified: she promotes into War Monk, gaining access to axes and stat boosts to match. These give her yet another new niche to work with; her high Strength, Speed, and HP, back from those first couple screenshots in this very long post, combine to let this buff-bot act as a surprisingly potent backup combat unit. She’ll likely not be one-rounding everything, but extra chip damage she gives will help other units secure kills, in much the same way as her Fire Balm did from the start.

This whole build ties into her story relevance, too, minor though it is. Despite being a Cleric, she’s not particularly religious. She’s a combat medic in the player party’s army, responsible for keeping the band of skill-reliant oddballs that is the entire Absolution cast alive. As anyone who’s ever played a MMO healer will understand, this is not a particularly pleasant experience - hence the desire to use exercise, and physical combat, to blow off some steam.

This whole package comes together into a very clever twist, writing-wise as well as mechanics-wise, on the “early-game healer” Fire Emblem archetype. Just by thinking through how best to use all the tools this one unit has at her disposal, you’re equipping yourself to understand the gist of the entire Absolution (by ZessDynamite) mechanical sandbox. And even if you don’t care at all, keeping Eduardo’s health bar topped off and Lakshmi out of one-shot range is still more than enough to keep Evelia on the team.

On top of all that, she has a gorgeous portrait by Levin64 of Levin Pixelings fame. What’s not to love?

[DrGreen3339]

The now-deleted above post was an accidentally posted unfinished version of this, I coulda sworn i just chose to edit it instead of an entirely new reply lol.

Addington (TMGC) & The Power of Positioning

TMGC is a hack filled with units whose personal weapons/skills allow them to turn the tides of combat in their favor, but one of the units I find most interesting is one who does not start with any combat potential, nor will they ever get any. This unit is, of course, Addington.

In the freeroam interlude played after clearing Chapter 12: Holy Orders, if you go to a secluded corner by the leftmost stairwell, you will encounter a hooded man (who is totally not Novala from vanilla) offering you his prized automaton for a hefty fee of 7776 gold (for obligatory Thracia 776 reference). Without context, you’d expect this automaton to be something akin to the Fates automatons (who wield bows and saws) or some other cool fighting machine, but the actual product is…

So it kinda looks like the man was trying to scam you. The automaton is just a barrel with some mechanical doodads and a face that’s just a piece of paper with a face drawn on it. Addington can’t even use any weapons and its growths are all 10%. Why would anybody with game knowledge invest 7776 gold into such a unit? Well, there’s more to Addington than meets the eye.

So let’s say you deploy Addington just to have a 10 move unit who can spam shove, but opening the skills menu greets you with this:

This unassuming barrel has access to every positional skill in the game. Addington’s true purpose becomes clear at this point: its not meant to troll you or anything, it’s meant to make it much easier to position the rest of your army.

Most of the positional skills are straightforward enough, having the same effects as they normally would. But the one to write home about is Swarp, which is much more rarely distributed and is perhaps the strongest positional tool in the game. Only Peggy, the earlygame cleric, gets Swarp as a positional skill and only if she reaches level 15 unpromoted (unless I missed something which I very well might have). Swarp is effectively a ranged swap, with a range of Mag/2 (the same as most ranged staves like Physic.), but Addington has a variant that allows him to always Swarp from 5 spaces despite having 6 base magic (either that or the floor is 5).

Swarp is an amazingly versatile ability when utilized properly, being able to act as a psuedo-Rescue staff, get your allies more movement if the likes of Reposition and Smite aren’t enough, perform hit and run tactics, and more. While Peggy’s Swarp is more potent due to her higher magic, she often wants to spend her turns healing or fighting, and Swarping might leave her deep in the backlines, behind your other units. But this is not an isssue for Addington, as it has Canto, allowing it to reuse the remnant of its massive 10 movement to reposition itself after using its tools. This means that it’s easier to reunite Addington with your army or pull it out of enemy range after using its positional tools more aggressively. But even the mastery of positioning is not Addington’s only trick, for it has Summon.

We also cannot forget Addington’s real most important tool, Whirr. When you click Whirr, it makes a funny noise. This is a truly gamechanging effect and may need to be heavily nerfed in the future.

Addington’s Summon skill is described as summoning “something truly fantastic, specific to this unit.”

It summons a crate.
The crate cannot move or be held, but can be targeted by positioning skills.
In essence, this is more of a single-hit barrier. I don’t have a lot to say about this one because it’s more situational overall than Addington’s positioning skills, but the ability to slow a strong enemy’s advance or block a treasure room from a thief is always nice.

In summary, Addington is seemingly meant to be a joke played by Retina, but if you invest the money into this funny little barrel, it can help you gain control of the playing field, a very helpful tool in strategy games.

[KrashBoomBang]

Linda (Requiem)

Got the inspiration to make a second post here, this time about Linda from the FE7 hack Requiem. This hack is a very interesting case where, just like vanilla FE7, it features two different story parts, Val Mode and Ash Mode. And just like FE7, after beating the game once, you can start a new file directly from Ash Mode, which is great because Val Mode is inarguably the least fun part of the game. I already made a post about how skipping Val Mode improves the game in a variety of ways, and one of those ways is the playable cast. Just like vanilla FE7, units who join in Val Mode receive new base stats if you skip Val Mode (or if they retreat during those maps). But compared to FE7 units like Kent and Sain, whose bases are only marginally increased when joining in the main mode, Requiem’s rejoiners get significantly larger buffs that completely transform them.

Linda is the most impressive case for these buffs by far. In Val Mode, she is literally just FE7 Rebecca. Near identical bases and growths, she is absolutely awful. She even has the gall to join with E rank bows–Rebecca at least had D rank! And due to the general nature of Val Mode, where the two ridiculously overpowered prepromotes are best off stomping through the whole thing, it’s unlikely you’ll want to or reasonably be able to train Linda up very much. This means that when she rejoins during Ash Mode in a normal playthrough, she still has her terrible stats and E bows, preventing her from using the Break Arc (an armor-effective bow) she rejoins with. A truly terrible unit in every sense of the word.

But if you skip Val Mode, Linda now rejoins being autoleveled up to 10. Her bases are not actually fixed like some of the other rejoiners, so they can fluctuate, but it honestly doesn’t really matter much. Going from “literally Rebecca” to having offenses around 8/10/12 is super nice and makes her way more usable, even better than Skye the nomad who just joined right before her! As part of being autoleveled to 10, she also now joins with D rank bows, letting her use that Break Arc she joins with. And you wouldn’t think effective weaponry in an FE7 hack would be all that good, let alone on an archer, but turns out she can very easily double and 2HKO armors with this thing, making her very satisfying to use even without many enemy fliers hanging around. The game seemed to understand that this armor-killing role was fun too, since in a couple of chapters you also pick up a magic bow she can use.

Linda is really not a complicated unit at all, but she’s great proof of how simply having good stats and cool weapons is enough to make a unit fun sometimes. She is, at the end of the day, a pretty basic archer who is good at killing stuff (she even gets a personal crit boost on promotion as an added bonus). But this simplicity is what makes her satisfying to use. And it’s especially satisfying when you contrast this performance with how garbage she is if you play with Val Mode. People always like to say that archers in FE7-9 are bad, but just like with Rath and Innes, Linda demonstrates how easy it is to make them good: just give them stats and weapons.

[Vulgard]

Speaking of archers with stats and weapons, allow me to talk about my favorite romhack archer, as well as my favorite unit in Four Kings.

Ava.

Now, why is Ava epic, in my opinion?

• Ava is an archer with stats, in a game where being an archer with stats is useful. Four Kings has notably powerful enemies, and getting two-shot by them is very common. In fact, the hack is rather notorious for not giving you a lot of units that can tank. As such, being able to avoid counters is a useful trait, and Ava naturally has that. Even if the enemy has a 1-2 Range weapon (not uncommon; mages and Tomahawk users are frequent), she can use a Longbow to get around that problem, or in the lategame, a Brave Bow.
• Ava is very fast, so she can double and kill a lot of enemies. The tools she has access to help her with that quite a lot, too. The hack’s variant of Short Bows is brave, so every archer has a D-rank tool that lets them hit twice, even if they don’t double. Ava is fast enough to quadruple with them, securing an ORKO against most enemies. And the ones she can’t kill easily with physical damage (such as armors), she can kill with her personal weapon, the Mystic Bow, which targets Resistance.
• Ava has utility outside of combat. She is one of your Thieves, and the hack features stealables and/or locks to open on every map, so she always has some thieving tasks to complete. Apart from that, once she promotes, she gains access to staves, including a personal staff that gives an ally the Ninis’s Grace effect. Her Magic is not bad, either, so her healing with staves is solid, should you want to use her as a healer. I’ve personally found her a lot more useful as a combat unit, because she does have the stats to kill things (especially fliers, of course) in the lategame, but the staffing option is there.
• Ava has 6 Movement and good terrain data, much like the Thief class. That is so nice to have. It increases the flexibility of positioning quite a lot, especially considering the fact Four Kings does not let every unit Shove, like some other hacks do.
• The game’s balancing ensures that Ava always has a variety of advantageous matchups and useful contributions, if you use her well. There is a number of enemies she can eliminate with a Short Bow before they can counter her, as well as a number of armors she one-rounds who are less convenient to kill with other units. She can also kill some enemies with siege weapons across 2-tile walls, if she uses a Longbow – and in general, there is usually a way to have her player-phase action be useful on any given turn.
• Her weaknesses are not that much of a problem to work around. Ava’s greatest shortcoming is that her Defense is terrible and her HP, while alright growth-wise, is not great. However, this can be worked around. She does get one-shot by Tomahawk enemies, but if you invest an Angelic Robe into her, this stops being a problem – and I found that a good investment, because it expanded her range of options. Apart from that, in the lategame, many enemies use brave weapons, which she cannot tank – however, it’s not like you would want to be tanking brave weapons with your archer, who can’t counter even if they survive. And Ava is easier to place outside of enemy range than other infantry units, because she has 7 Movement after she promotes, while maintaining her superior terrain data. Besides, you can simply have Ava avoid getting countered when she attacks on player phase – Longbows help with that, as does attacking enemies who aren’t carrying a 1-2 Range weapon.
• Finally, Ava has good Resistance, and while Resistance can sometimes be a meme stat, it is definitely not a meme stat in Four Kings. Enemy mages hit hard, and a TON of maps have Bolting (or other siege enemies) on them. Four Kings is also a game where your non-Ava Thief notoriously has 0 Resistance, forcing him to use Pure Water or receive an Angelic Robe (or else he will get one-shot by siege tomes). Ava doesn’t have this problem – she can tank a siege tome anytime, and she doesn’t get popped by a mage if she engages one on player phase and he can counter her. This means she can safely walk into the range of siege tomes and not be expected to die instantly, vastly improving her flexibility. There are some maps where enemy stealables (or other Thief objectives) are located within range of a siege tome, and Ava can work around that more easily than the other Thief. Besides, not a lot of units in Four Kings have good Resistance, especially not physical ones, so Ava having that trait is nice in general. While her low HP might prevent her from withstanding too many magical attacks, if you invest a Robe into her like I do, she might be able to survive a couple, which is genuinely an accomplishment by Four Kings’ standards.

[FrisoLaxod]

I have many hacks with characters I love: Cosette from Deity Device, Kenneth and Simone from TMGC, Ellerie from Cerulean Coast, etc.

But there’s only one unit I had both a gameplay and story experience with that stuck out with me, and that was Shorn from The Dark Amulet. (So spoilers for that hack)

Now at first glance I laughed at Shorn in the face. An edgy hardass myrmidon, but with mediocre strength, with his only stat worth mentioning being his speed stat? He’s all talk

But Dark Amulet is a game in which unit growths are almost all low across the board, I didn’t notice I was looking at one of the best units.

As I play through the early game, I my Shorn gets strength. Then strength again, then AGAIN. Am I lucky? Absolutely. Did this change my opinion? Yes.

I started making him my main carry, he dodge tanked everything and was my solution. I still found his personality dumb and I constantly laughed at him for how edgy he was.

And then chapter 9 hit.

It was an escape chapter, and the three units you start with are the lord, Shorn, and Shorn’s sister, a new unit and a thief. When you talk to Shorn with her, he gets the Kelikaga, his prf (yes I know)… And you start to see a different side of Shorn. He gets flustered, and you notice how he cares about our lord, Edric, how he’s actually loyal to him despite being hard on him before.

From here on, he starts changing. He becomes more understanding towards Edric’s problems, and officially becomes his second-in-command. He opens up.

In his supports, you start seeing him show how he cares about people, and you discover more about him. The reason he was so hard on Edric was because he lost someone he cared about, his boyfriend, in battle because he got too confident. He swore to have that never happen again.

As the game continues, he keeps showing off, being a great unit all around, even when strong units keep appearing, he still keeps being one of your best melee units.

In his supports with Gareth, you discover how he never wanted revenge for what happened to his partner. It was his fault, and there was nothing he could do but keep moving on, and be stronger. His strength of character is shown again and again.

On a conversation with the other starting unit, Miley, he earnestly reveals how he considers them friends, and how he’ll protect them. You start seeing how the shell he was before… breaks.

His devotion to Edric starts increasing, and you notice that maybe… Maybe he cares about Edric the same way he cared about his partner?

Gameplay wise, you have to deploy them together constantly to get their A support, which is unlocked at chapter 23 at the earliest. By this time, you will have gotten his 2nd prf, Kelikaraga, and seen his unique level 10 promoted skill that only the initial 3 have. He gets Galeforce. He becomes an absolute monster in the battlefield, being able to sweep enemies left and right. He truly shows his power, and demonstrates that he’s not all talk.

If you choose to get their A support, he reveals to Edric that the reason he was so hard on him was because he didn’t want the same that happened to his partner to happen to him. He reveals that his devotion runs deep, and that he loves Edric. He tries to run away but… Edric stops him, he says he doesn’t understand his feelings, but that he doesn’t want to let Shorn go. Boyfriends!

All in all, Shorn is a really great character that shows how someone overcomes the fear of loss.

[cb1052]

Clint (Shackled Power)

Clint is a pirate who joins you in chapter 7. A retired veteran who moved to the Piss River Misery Swamp in order to leave the horrors of war, his bases are… unimpressive.

The game already has an axe lord with pirate movement and 2 Fighters before that, and Prosel/Eddie’s offenses are usually slightly to significantly better than base Clint at this point— although Prosel is famously memed on for being frequently stat-screwed.

His bulk is notably worse than Grant although his speed is decent enough that he doesnt risk getting doubled, so his only notable advantage is… Res. He looks unimpressive and benchable, right? Perhaps this old sea dog won’t come out and fight another day.

However, he has an obvious secret weapon. See, every axe unit in Shackled Power has a Prf, because axes are cool (and to make up for axes being slightly underwhelming outside of Prfs). Prosel gets the Royal Chopper, which is basically just Wolf Beil 2, and can ORKO cavs and armors well into the midgame. It is also notably accurate with 90 hit, patching up his mediocre skill. Grant gets the Grongigas,
which is a Hammer with Seal Def and 69 hit. It also weighs him down to the point of getting doubled by mid-speed enemies, and his Skill is already bad, so it kinda sucks. Eddie gets the Blitz Axe, which gives Darting Blow and makes him able to ORKO most things on PP. And Clint gets the Vedava, an axe named after a big titty mermaid GF (seriously, look it up).

The Vedava is also 1-2.

It is significantly more accurate than a hand axe, has higher might, 5 crit, and uh, also not to mention +3 res and tomebreaker. With this thing, Clint becomes a proper 1-2 physical mixed tank, and in a game with bombs that hit res, that role is a welcome thing to be.

So he does some combat on his join map, and then you beat it, and then the next map happens. Chapter 8 of Shackled Power is a sprawling escape map that just happens to feature enemy mage formations as well as a scary Sage boss. Clint can mop up and ORKO these mages on EP better than anyone else in your army up to this point, allowing him to be around level 12-ish like the majority of your combat frontliners. (The only unit who could come close is maybe Javelin Cyrus, but the hit rates and AS are still shaky, and he might as well be used to rescuedrop Clint, who can ORKO pretty much guaranteed.)

Chapter 9 comes along, and aside from being good at tanking the bombs, there’s not much Clint specifically can do, but off of his stats and reliable 1-2 alone, you might as well bring him.

That’s not the real test for Clint though. That test is in Chapter 10, where it is probably expedient to promote him. See, while Eddie and Grant use Hero Crests, which both have more competition in swordies and are harder to come by in the early game, Clint uses a Crook Seal, the only user of which at this point is the famously shaky earlygame thief Darrel. You could promote Darrel to a halfway decent Assassin… or you could promote Clint. Chapter 10 is a big defend map that requires you to spread out super thin in order to get all the side objectives. You need units who can approach the Sethian Ideal of 1-2 range ORKOs, and unsurprisingly, your invested Clint with his Vedava can somewhat the role. He gets crit boost and a significant speed boost that allows him to double most enemies on that map, and his bulk is solid at fighting small groups of enemies. However, his promo only gives him +1 str, his prf is usually near broken by then, and with his mediocre Str base this means that he might fall off eventually if his growths don’t comply…

If they don’t, Clint’s last hurrah comes in Chapter 14. That map has a very big lake making up most of the middle of it, with fliers and ballistae bombarding you from islands. Clint is nice to have for waterwalking on that map, while your fliers can go do other things.

But it’s not a flaw that Clint can fall off. It’s cool to have a unit who is a worthwhile investment target for a temporary goal, rather than shooting straight for endgame. Clint is nice to have in the early and midgame, and it’s fine if you don’t want to bring him to endgame, because he served his purpose after all. What more can you ask of an old veteran?

I’ve emphasized specific maps in this writeup because it goes to show how performance and specific tasks on specific maps can really make or break a unit. Clint would never have been anything to write home about without the C8 mages and C10’s spread formations and C14’s lake, so if you want to design a unit, you don’t have to think just about their stats and class. Think about what interactions they can have with the maps that brings them fun uniqueness. Classes like Pirate/Berserker or fliers are good for emphasizing this sort of unique role, because they bring unique terrain access to the table. Clint is a good case study in emphasizing a unit’s unique strengths while still leaving room for weaknesses.

[luminescentblade]

Clio (Drums of War)

A decade ago I used to be much more involved in the romhacking community, but then life happened, and I’ve more or less retired from it for many years. A year or so back, however, since my good friend Parr finished his hack Drums of War and I gotta support my friends, I played it as my return to the romhacking scene in about a decade.

Now, I notably dislike armor knights. I don’t like lower mov, and I play fairly aggressively. It’s pretty rare for me to use one in the long term, so come end of act 1 I’ve benched the starting two, and never even recruited Etienne. I’m the kind of aggressive player who likes a bit of bulk, though, since that brings more reliability to my strats in the first place, but I found myself having only Roxelana as my one real tank and everyone else I got kinda squishy. Karolas could offtank sometimes but not quite always enough.

Then enter Clio. Bases! beautiful. Movement! beautiful. Sure, DoW enemy archers do usually default to the 3 range bows, but it’s nothing good positioning can’t play around, especially with her mobility, and come chapter 12 she can just…not have that anyway. She became the second defensive core to my team, and having good enough stats to also do the hyper-aggressive plays i generally like to do. Chapter 12 sees Luthor bringing the iotes equivalent, so then there goes bow weakess too. I remember her being one of the few units on my team come chapter 13 who can go toe to toe to the high stat swordmasters, and chapter 13 also brings the other thing that I think made Clio stand out–Judita.

Clio starts with a high base sword rank and a low base lance rank, which is pretty uncommon for wyvern units and gives her a cool unit identity. While the player do need to invest in lance rank to get her to use some of the better lances fliers commonly want to have access to, I would definitely prioritize getting her A->S sword by chapter 13 as well, because Judita, the S rank sword of the game, is a brave sword. Normally it is a good weapon for Roxelana, but I really like it on Clio due to her higher mobility, allowing for what I like to call gank strats. Clio’s statline also works very well with it–her best stat being strength, but her speed is good enough to get the 4xs on anything that is too bulky to die in 2 hits if need, too. My post-13 strats had very heavy use of Judita ganking and it made my experience of DoW very enjoyable. Clio consistently was easily one of my top units and I’ll just sum it up with this one screenshot (cropped for limiting possibly spoilery content):

[Vulgard]

I know I’ve already written multiple romhack unit effortposts here, but I’m going to continue because I enjoy discussing romhacks and there aren’t many places to do so.

The next unit I’d like to tackle is Gecko from Cerulean Crescent.

Now, Gecko is a vastly different unit from the ones I discussed here before. She is not a unit with excellent base stats, and she arguably has no base contributions, either. She’s the hack’s early-game trainee, and you have to feed her kills because she can’t really get them on her own.

I don’t tend to use units like this very often, but I made an exception for Gecko. First, she has Galeforce, and seeing that on her skill list naturally makes me think, “This’ll be so fun if I make her good.” Then there is the fact that she has unique quotes tied to personally defeating bosses, which makes me want to bosskill with her. And of course, there is her personal weapon, the Frying Pan, which refreshes its uses every chapter, gives her a statboost, and has some crit on it. The idea of bonking bosses with a pan-wielding trainee and getting unique dialogue for it was just awesome to me, and so I did it. A lot.

Of course, the road to greatness is paved with obstacles, and I had to invest a lot in Gecko to make her good. I gave her stat boosters, I gave her a lot of EXP, and on every map where I deployed her, I tried to make sure she would do stuff before I worried about most other units. Was this undue favoritism? Probably. She did not do anything spectacular. Even after the training arc was over, she still wasn’t some amazing contributor; she was definitely one of my best combat units, and she did make use of Galeforce to flexibly defeat enemies on player phase, but she wasn’t some god-mode unit. But honestly, I thought it was okay. The journey felt more important than the destination here.

In the end, Gecko and her dreaded frying pan turned into a Dread Fighter wielding dreaded… swords, but still pulling out the frying pan on occasion. I think it’s just fun to raise a unit who gives you multiple amusing reasons to invest in her, even if the payoff isn’t exceptional. The payoff for me, in this case, was enjoyment. Playing the hack felt less like I was clearing a campaign and more like I was Gecko Gaming.

[Darkiway]

Does Server 72 count as a custom campaign for the purpose of this thread?

Because if it does, I’d like to share a few too many words about my main girl, Almanac.

First off, some context. Server 72 is a game quite unlike traditional FE games; it is a game in which the player has full* agency over a given unit’s stat distribution. As there are no growths or traditional level ups to speak of, what fundamentally distinguishes units are their class skills and weapon types.

*Characters like Almanac, who have a later join time, come with some pre-invested stats you can’t undo. Almanac herself is part of the final group of units the player obtains.

Now, with that said, Almanac is a user of Swords and Dark magic. She comes in fresh with middling speed, decent magic, low str (though more than 0), and low hp and def.
The game provides a fair amount of magic swords for her and her lovely wife to use, but more importantly, she gains access to the ridiculous library of dark magic Server 72 has to offer:

There are too many good dark spells to list and explain thoroughly, but it suffices to say that until this point, dark magic had been limited to just one of your starting units (Philo), who can only hold so many tomes. The addition of another dark mage allows you to give more thought to non-combat options like the ability to petrify foes or grant them flier weakness to bow. Most importantly, it gives the player more incentive to experiment with the spell Shift, which allows the user to swap places with another unit within range, be it ally or foe.

Shift is a powerful tool that allows a savvy player to get around some of the toughest challenges the notoriously difficult game has to offer. And it works exceptionally well in the hands of Almanac because the spell seems essentially tailor-made for her skill kit, which is summarized as follows:

1. Almanac gains the ability to take another turn after casting dark magic for the first time on a given player phase.

2. Almanac gains the ability shadowstep, which allows her to teleport next to an ally essentially for free. She gets to attack when she does so.

3. The above 2 let Almanac accrue bonuses to damage and mana recovery (allowing her to keep spamming her abilities).

I’m forgetting some specifics here, but in essence Almanac can freely warp around the map with easily the best action economy a Fire Emblem type game has ever seen. If that wasn’t enough, there’s plenty of occasions for your to abuse the map design by shifting enemies into the void in maps that allow for it. This is very important to making Almanac the most busted unit in the game (next to another Effortpost worthy character, DD).

You see, the final gauntlet of chapters is brutal. A boss that shows up multiple times in this gauntlet possesses 900+ HP and can only be damaged by throwing enemies into the nether. Almanac is the most efficient unit for chipping away at it from a mana economy standpoint.

Then there’s the legendary Floor 50 boss. Its defeat is the puzzle at the crux of the story, for which Almanac’s shadowstep is yet again a viable solution. Beyond that, it also serves as a decent fail safe in case other solutions the player may have come up with don’t bear fruit, which is extremely important given the map is a grueling 4 hours long, give or take. Nobody wants to restart that.

And last but not least, there’s Floor 51, which features call backs to some of the hardest scenarios in the game, notably the Fury boss. Without explaining the entire set up here, all you need to know is that Almanac trivializes the Fury event to the point this part can serve as a check point to heal and recover your mana fully. This feat alone makes Almanac S+.

[SubwayBossEmmett]

Ironically this was actually inspired by the effort posts about maps because I was thinking of my favorite set pieces across romhack maps. My brain quickly went to Code of the Burger King ch18 but I realized it was mostly for maybe the most creative romhack character of all time.

…samto from fe3

but in uh Code of the Burger King

For context this hack is a mega inflation fest and here’s a boss right next to samto right after recruitment. This is also potentially the second to last map in the game.

Let’s see his stats vs a boss like 8 tiles away from him.

Not looking great.

However what samto lacks in base stats he makes up for in POTENTIAL. While his growths are also impressive, that’s not his real potential.

Sure they’re big but his level and time left means a 6 move footie is doing jack shit for you in a really power crept game even if he had better stats.

Samto has the power of multiple potential recruitments.

He has a recruitment conversation with every single character in Code of the Burger King. Even the summons from the potential 2 summoners.

Each is unique.

Each recruitment conversation has its own event that can impact Samto or the person recruiting Samto.

Some Examples

Turning into a fleet (the only fleet in the game)

Turning to stone

Stealing someone’s provoke skill

Giving out a prf to a pre-existing unit

Handing out Wrath/Vantage (cringe default skill sys wrath though)

Get a second dancer why not.

And plenty more that’s just such bewilderingly cool effort and flavor by Retina. Although in a funny/ironic twist Burger King (main lord)/Sephiran (main sublord)/Fiona (your jagen) don’t give any effect or unique eventing even if they have their own convo and are the first 3 in the list.

Uh, pretty aggressive 180 from my other post but hey it’s a unit I love.

[Yasako]

Lex from Sun God’s Wrath is somehow simultaneously miserable to use and incredibly awesome to use.

He’s an early game archer with poor bases and horribly lopsided growths (he basically only has 90 hp and 50 str to speak of), and while that can be offset with the crusader scrolls that’s a waste on him.

See, he’s an archer with Counter, which means 1.) he’s an archer he gets soft provoke and 2.) he will do so much reflection damage from huge hp and jack shit def/res. He can do chip, lure, and cleanup. Not too impressive until… he gets Galeforce. Relatively early, too; he usually gets it by Chapter 4.

This means he’s pretty reliable to mop up an enemy then chip one for a higher move unit to finish off. It also means he’s gonna get boatloads of exp as long as you deploy him.

Now, at level 14, his next big power spike, he gets Double Lion, which when combined with his huge str stat and Galeforce means his low spd is no longer an issue, and if he can double an enemy from 3 range he’s gonna kill 'em.

Finally, there’s his promotions. Sniper gives him some 1.5x proc damage boost, whatever. What matters is that his T3 is piss easy to reach (he caps level like 10 chapters before the final one I swear) and it’s Bow Knight. He gets Canto, 9 move, stupid high damage output from 2-3 range, and Galeforce. Send him in to instantly obliterate a key objective and/or lure in a high risk enemy that you can blow up next turn.

It’s just really oddly satisfying to play with his curve of usefulness/power. And it helps that his ability to attack from range and to proc Galeforce is nigh indispensable for doing well on that one Survive map really early (which is when, in other games, you decide you don’t wanna bother with your crap ass early game archer).

[OverZealous]

Eileen (Shackled Power)

One of my favorite aspects of Shackled Power’s writing is the extent to which the ludonarrative translates aspects of the story into gameplay elements. The best example I can choose for this is Eileen, who is your typical early-game Pegasus Knight.

Appearing in Chapter 3 as an eager reinforcement for Prosel and the gang as they try and bust through a Gothen dig site, she is immediately berated by Haban for being unprepared for fighting. Her statline certainly helps cement this initial sentiment, given her paltry 5 base strength and lacking bulk. Eileen retorts that her ability to fly over the fences in this chapter would allow her to distract the enemy while staying safe, to which Haban begrudgingly accepts her help.

This might be one of my favorite dialogues in the game, just because of how rich it is with subtext and foreshadowing. Looking at Eileen through her combat prowess, as Haban does, she is unremarkable. She suffers from the same problems that most early-game pegasi suffer from, which is that her usefulness in combat is gated behind a 30% growth. It is very likely that once Cadence comes around, a Pegasus Knight with a far more powerful statline, Eileen will be relegated to the bench for good. In my initial playthrough, I thought quite similarly to Haban. Eileen was quietly benched and Cadence took over with her flashy magic lances.

But, if we look at things from Eileen’s perspective, Shackled Power makes terrific use of cliffs, mountains, and open bodies of water that frequently incentivizes flier usage. Even if her combat isn’t incredible, her value as a low-con flier shouldn’t be understated. In fact, Chapter 3 provides one of the clearest examples of Eileen’s virtue. If you actually follow Eileen’s advice rather than blowing her off, you can use her to kite around Fulshir forever once he starts moving from the storage room. While Prosel sneaks in to grab those chests, Eileen can dance around Fulshir’s range by using the fences as barriers. And what is your reward for listening to Eileen? A White Gem and an Elysian Whip, a direct reward to Eileen for executing her strategy properly.

Story Spoilers for Shackled Power

From a story perspective, this ties into Eileen’s backstory so neatly. She is a flunky from the army, unable to pass her physical examination because she was too weak. Not only is this a great narrative explanation for her noodle-arm strength, it also causes her to directly run into conflict with her mother, Commander Rita.

Rita abused Eileen frequently for her failures in the army, leading to feelings of inadequacy festering within Eileen. When she’s finally given a chance to prove herself with Prosel, she jumps at the chance! Forget Haban, this loud, overbearing brute who symbolizes everything that Eileen hates about the army. She’ll do it her own way!

On Haban’s end, Rita is an old friend who tasked him with making something useful out of her wayward daughter. Haban carries out his “torment” on Eileen not out of malice, but because of a complicated mix of stubborn pride and genuine care. As an instructor, Haban will not allow this stubborn pegasus rider to make a mockery of his command. And as a leader, he sees that Eileen’s desperation to prove herself to the world will get her killed if she goes about it recklessly.

Eventually, Haban begins to soften up regarding Eileen’s performance, realizing that the kind of harsh discipline that Rita enforced would not help Eileen become better. He recognizes that she has tactical talent that makes up for her physical shortcomings, and comes to rely on the carrot rather than the stick when it comes to keeping Eileen focused. In a way, Haban’s journey mirrored my own regard for Eileen in future playthroughs.

The final piece that really elevates Eileen for me was my most recent playthrough through Shackled Power, in which she got crazy Strength blessed. (At 15/1, she had 16 Strength) In a playthrough where my goal was to get Haban’s blade all the way into Birgitta’s face, it was pure narrative poetry that his A-Support partner, this flunky Pegasus Knight who was always told she would never amount to anything, was getting results far beyond what was statistically likely. It’s almost as if the more that Haban puts himself into the fray, the more motivated Eileen was to do the same.