No, no bard on this route. I’m glad you liked the finale!
Elizabeth’s growths will change in a future patch, but I don’t know how much of a buff that is, so there might be some buffs to her base stats as well.
I found she was fine in the early game as basically your only horseback unit. But she definitely dropped off fast after getting a few mediocre levels in a row for me (res skill hp, skill hp, skill defence is not what the doctor ordered. Low strength meaning low damage and low speed meaning getting doubled by everything was a bad combination). Looking at the late metis tome, I’m reconsidering putting work into Biserka (her slow movement kept her from being great once I had the freedom to add other units) in the later part of the game since she would become the mythical high speed-growth armor knight, and her getting sidelined early means she has a lot of levels left to gain.
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honestly even being ‘bad’ in the long run, I think she fills a useful niche regardless, so I don’t mind her being less powerful than my other units. Not everyone needs to be a huge combat asset for the whole game, the idea that some characters are good placeholders for a specific period due to unique traits until you get he chance to upgrade seems fine to me. Also, knowing how bad she was this run gives me more incentive to early promote her in future runs to get more mileage out of her during the period she’s still useful.
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Uhhhhh Aelys has no supports? Is that intended or are all supports not implemented yet even for the existing characters? I would’ve thought she could at least support Emreide.
Yeah, supports are not yet implemented. To be honest I don’t know why I didn’t put at least Aelys-Emireide support in the game, considering how much it makes sense.
Some questions and feedback about the stealth chapter and about the “bonus” afterwards:
I found the text for the mission intro a bit confusing (Arstons bit about surgical attacks), I assumed they wouldn’t raise the alarm if killed in one combat. Also what is your intended way of actually doing the stealth route? I was able to do it with Skylar alone since I gave him both uses of the boots, but I don’t think it’d be possible without the boots, maybe with one use. Only other way I see might be with Warp/Rescue shenanigans, but I only had one unit at B+ staves. I guess its okay for it to require some kind of specific setup since you also get Exp and good rewards for going the non-stealth route, just interested if there’s something I overlooked.
About the thievery mission: I think the idea of getting as much as possible thievery done with dancing and rescue strats is really cool, but I’m not a fan of the stat requirements, I’ve been using Skylar a lot imo, but at lvl 11/promoted at 17 with 20 speed he only had 25 speed so I couldn’t get the Silver Card just for getting somewhat speed screwed - giving Speedwings to a unit that will likely cap out naturally just for that also feels pretty bad/counterintuitive when there are other units that can really benefit from not getting doubled as often.
Oh also the mission before that was really cool! I liked the win condition and set it up in a way that I destroyed all pillars in a single turn so I didn’t have to play a FoW chapter in exchange for using some Siege tomes.
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bringing an 8-move flier and carrying skylar makes it just as easy to do without staffs or boots. You can escape while you have him rescued (this is a trick I used to make the timing work in the prologue to pick up everything and kill all xp-granting enemies).
I’m currently still on there trying to figure out if I can steal both the gem and hoplon guard without using staves or boots. Main issue I’m having (i’m on hard mode) is the 2 range on the soldier and the placement of the second general.
I think I have a setup that can do it with 1-2 sleep uses and no warp/rescues. But I don’t think it’s possible to do better than that on hard mode while still stealing all the things.
Definitely need to get a better understanding of the wandering unit ai. At a glance it looks like approaches closest unit, but it isn’t clear how it breaks ties, and whether it is move-path distance, or absolute distance.
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Figured out a method. Needed an extra unit to drop and carry an extra time, and had to use a save state to double check how ai responded to certain spacings. But both items can be stolen on hard using both 8 move fliers, an 8 move horse unit (I used the new pally) skylar and the dancer. The spacing/timing is really really tight (you end up finishing on turn 9).
Was honestly kind of surprised it actually worked given how close the prior methods were without success.
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@zarg before I drive myself mad doing a second sweep to make sure I didn’t miss a square on my first check (because I didn’t find it), is there a secret shop on For Old Time’s Sake? Only thing that makes sense is if it’s there it’s under some square of one of the "enemies’ and either I noted it down wrong, or its one of he ones who doesn’t move (or at least doesn’t in the first couple turns, I haven’t checked yet if they move later on), or that it’s behind the door that I suppose might be unlockable with an unlock staff?
Current working theory is you need to pick up a berserk staff, then if you use that on the top-left guards they kill each other an open up access to their squares?
Or that there just isn’t one on that map. Which is probably more likely, but sad.
Thanks for the feedback! The intent with that bit of dialogue was to communicate that you don’t want to take as many enemies as possible on at once - because the reinforcements WILL overwhelm you. Instead, he recommends you focus on one guard at a time.
The stealth route is admittedly obtuse, and the solution(s) vary on difficulty. If you’re playing on Normal, you need lure one of the generals (he said he’d move), then use the forests at the starting spot to play a bit of cat and mouse, and while doing so, put yourself in a position where you can then run in building while the general that moves tries to catch you. Then it’'s just a matter of avoiding enemy attack ranges.
The requirements for the most rare items is intended to be very high to the point they’re not obtainable without some sort of trade-off. However, I might lower the requirements if they cause problems.
Thanks, and nice work! My goal with many of these late game maps has been to make chapters that not only incentivize splitting up as means of securing (side) objectives, but also make objectives that allow people to approach them in different ways using the tools they best see fit.
Nope, no secret shop in that map. I am open to the idea of adding one, but the reason I didn’t was that I didn’t want that shop to sell items that either are redundant because many other shops sell those as well, but I also didn’t want to put some very rare weapons there either as that might give an unfair advantage.
For old times sake was fun enough that if you haven’t finished settling on how the other route goes I am definitely hoping to see more of that style of mission. Honestly the mansion before that was pretty interesting too. The idea of a stealth level in an FE game kinda blew my mind for a hot second.
Honestly, I could see an entire hack centered around that stuff.
On a related aside, it felt odd that 1. the guards knew that random dancer and the princess from the tower were thieves on that map, 2. that one of the guards in the upper left had a droppable axe (despite the fact you can’t engage in combat in that chapter without losing) and 3. that neither avanni nor camian could really do anything meaningful. You’d think that since this is “going back to their roots” that they would actually be more involved than spending turns to prepare to end the map. On the one hand, obviously it makes the map way easier if they could steal as well, but the fact that they are both forced into your party and do basically nothing on a mission where it’s supposed to be their wheelhouse felt strange. Is there any way to at least implement a taunt or similar effect that they can use for just that map to make it feel more on-brand? The idea of them working as a trio where camian might try to play a surly drunk as a distraction or avanni seduces a guard to draw their attention would make sense thematically, but as-is they just kind of march up the map and are more of a liability than an asset (as thats one more unit you have to keep out of detection ranges).
I think just setting the ai so that it only calls you out and attacks skylar might help there? Then at least you could use avani and damian to physically block the guards’ way to buy time for skylar to do his thing. Alternatively if there is some way to direct the villager ai so that you can use them (maybe ‘old people’ run away from cam, because he’s scary, and teenage and adult men follow after avanni because she’s young and attractive).
Then again that’s probably way too much thought and effort for a fun side-mission that was all upside anyway XD
RE: Secret shop, I could see room there for some outlandishly-priced stat-boosting items maybe? I would probably have spent a good 15k on just another boots if I had the chance, even if objectively the weapons I could buy with that after acquiring the silver card would be more useful.
Alternatively a shop full of questionable items that is really more of an easter-egg than a serious set of options. Devil Weapons, Poison weapons, a Dragonstone (that nobody can equip), the Karkos Fruit (which does nothing), etc.
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Good point on Avanni and Camian not doing much on the map despite being force-deployed. I’ll look into ways to make using them more interesting.
I’d probably have to make custom stat boosters, or duplicates that are much more costly than the ones you get throughout the game - otherwise people would find it more worthwhile to simply sell the stat boosters they got, and I don’t want that. I like the easter egg idea, though. When it comes to the droppable axe, it’s a joke.
As for stealth chapters, they have been in the series and in rom hacks before, but I wanted to put my own spin on it. From what I understand, they generally are not among people’s favorites, which is why there is a non-stealth way of clearing “The Exalted Realm”.
While I reiterate that this is one of the best Fire Emblem Hacks I have ever played, both in terms of storyline and map design, the difficulty is really excessive.
The chapter where you have to resist 11 turns and save the inhabitants, with continuous enemy reinforcements, is almost impossible.
I replayed it 6 times, skipping animations, and almost had a nervous breakdown. 
I would like to point out that there are also those who, like me, play on real hardware (GBA or DS Lite with gba flashcart) WITHOUT using/abusing savestates, as on the contrary does those who play on emulator and pride themselves on enjoying the gameplay effortlessly. 
Unfortunately, I fear that I will have to give up playing it, with deep regret, without being able to follow the development of the plot and the relationships between the characters, to whom I was growing fond of. 
Greetings.
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I totally understand. If I didn’t have savestates there are absolutely points I would have given up.
My personal rule is that I was not allowed to use the states to save “good levelups” or anything similar, but could use them for states where I am confident I could get back to the same state within a couple tries consistently (but don’t want to put in the effort of redoing it each time while I learn the map more), or where something might only work some of the time due to hardmode bonus stat distribution or similar and I don’t want to have to bother with extra resets on the occasions where an enemy spawns +1 HP/def and makes the math not work anymore.
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Though, to be fair, the vast majority of my uses of states were to make sure I could complete all side objectives. I think a playthrough where I was willing to take begrudging victories it is possible on hard mode to beat without save states, likely pretty reliably.
Whether I could do it without Nelarca becoming a summoner is another question entirely. There were far too many cases where her being able to absorb a free hit thanks to the phantoms was what made all the difference. I would also probably end up either committing to quick “cheesed” wins on many maps to skip their hard parts or to accepting a substantial amount of grinding on the handful of maps that weren’t truly time-constrained.
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Item Guide has been added.
I’m enjoying the game so far. My only complaint, and a very specific to me, is that while I started on the hard mode I gave up and restarted on normal after the boat map, and the contrast was stark - the first and second chapters felt kinda empty, with the incentive to move forward exclusive to the hard mode. It quickly picked up though, and now I really struggle.
Still, I kinda wish there existed a hard mode but with normal or even easy enemy stat distribution, I love how higher difficulty means harder enemy placement and type, with better equipment, but extra enemy stats on top of it is too much for me. Once I finish the game on normal I will try a run on hard, but with everybody having +3 to all their base stats to balance that out.
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@zarg what happens in Eye for an Eye if you didn’t actually kill the sister in the earlier chapter? It’s not a route map, so killing the sister wasn’t strictly-speaking required.
Would also make the premise of the level seem odd if a player actually blitzed through the earlier level and didn’t kill the sister in the process (and thus there was no basis for revenge).
I would like to see someone play that map without killing the ranger boss. Until then I’m going to assume she will be killed.
You’re correct on that it’d mess with the premise for Chapter 14. However, I could just come up with an excuse (the sister disappears and is assumed to be dead?).
In the abstract it’s not THAT hard if you’re willing to early promote the dark mage.
If I understand the AI correctly so long as your fliers or other one-shottable (without crits) units are not nearby you can pretty safely just spam summon so that he ranger is attacking the phantom every turn until all her weapons break.