[FE1] Starsphere Mercurius? That's a lie

Documentation
1

As the page claims, the “Miracle” increases growth rates. But by how much? So I set Marth to 0% growths, gave him the Mercurius, and went to town.


Before…


During…


After.

I believe that the said “growth boost” is a complete fabrication. (Also, Res is weird. And Castor somehow had a Thoron.)

2

boosting a growth rate from 0% to like 10%-30% still gives you a growth rate of 10%-30% which is shit. i wouldn’t think that miracle gives a huge growth rate boost to begin with.

3

Do you want me to do more testing? I see your point, but over six levels, surely there’d be one 10% proc assuming all went up 10%…

EDIT:


(The last one’s proof I didn’t use that iron sword the whole way through.)

Marth’s level 20 now. Still no procs. Myth busted.

1 Like
4

Idk if I’d consider that a “myth busted”, as you know the common phrase in this community is “PEMN” or personal experience means nothing; you’re dealing with luck and rates. It’s entirely possible for someone to get a Roy with 5 Res at 20/20(he gets +5 Res upon promotion), and he has a growth rate of 30% in that stat.
What I’m basically saying here is, your growth increase is probably minimal at best(in FE7/FE8 the increase was +5%); you’re going to need more tests to prove this is true or not.

Also remember that you’re expecting your 10% to go off one time in 19 levels, whereas you will get +0 90% of the time.

5

Alternatively, perhaps it’s not an additive change and is instead multiplicative?

1 Like
6

Actually he’d be expecting a stat up once in about 120-140 chances or so, not 19. I can’t remember which stats have growths and which ones don’t.

1 Like
7

perhaps there’s some sort of hard-coded restriction in place, where its growth boost won’t come into effect until you’re at a point in the game where you would legitimately have mercurius? i figure it’s an awfully specific thing to restrict, particularly in the nes era, but hey intsys has made hard-coded restrictions that are just as arbitrary!

8

I have never heard of it. That page indicates “credit: ChinaFE” but there is no record about it on ChinaFE. The effect of Miracle is double exp, which was cancelled in the NDS remake.

9

What are you even talking about; you have 19 levels to get any stat increases.
But good on missing the entire point of the response.

10

19 levels with a 10% proc for 7 different stats, not 19 levels with a 10% proc for 1 stat. I got the point (PEMN) but thought you might have made an error in calculating. No procs on one stat at 10% over 19 levels isn’t out of the ordinary. But no procs on 7 stats over 19 levels? Definitely warrants further investigation.

11

I didn’t do any calculating; there are no rates in my post outside of “you’re expecting a 10% to proc in 19 levels when there’s a 90% chance it won’t”
but ok

12

7 stats x 19 levels = 133 chances to proc.

Chance of no 10% procs in 133 tries: 0.00000082

Chance of no 5% procs: 0.0011

So I’m saying there’s a chance

2 Likes
13

I did some testing with the Miracle Sword. Marth would occasionally get +2 on level-ups. It looks like if Marth procs a stat, there’s a chance he will proc +2. The bonus proc seems to be a fixed chance (maybe 50%) because 100% growths does not guarantee +2 in all stats.

Edit: I set all of Marth’s growths to 10% and he still gets +2 procs sometimes.

14

Unlike the GBA FE’s there’s no separate byte to keep track of the duration of the Barrier staff. Resistance decreases by 1 every turn unless the resistance stat is “negative” (has the 0x80 bit set). The 0x80 bit is switched on when the Talisman item is used and will stop resistance from decreasing. So, if you wanted a character to start with 20 resistance (that doesn’t decrease) you would use 0x94 (0x80 + 0x14) for the base stat. Also, the Barrier staff and Talisman set resistance to 7 rather than add 7 resistance, so you can’t stack multiple Talisman or use Barrier + Talisman to have 14 resistance. This also means resistance will be lowered to 7 if those items are used on a character with greater than 7 resistance (actually, the Talisman doesn’t work correctly if (resistance AND 0x7F) > 120 but that doesn’t really matter)

Edit: Forgot about Pure Water.
If the character doesn’t have the Talisman flag, then it sets resistance to 7 (just like Barrier)
If the character does have the Talisman flag, it has no effect and no uses are consumed (unlike Barrier which will still set resistance to 7)

15

p < alpha = 0.05, therefore significant.

16

Ohhh, so it’s kinda like FE2’s angel ring. (Though the angel ring turns all level up’s procs into +2, not only sometimes)

17

Routine 03D126 (Miracle Sword level-up bonus)
First, check the user’s weapon = Miracle Sword

Str   : C0 : 11000000
Skill : 60 : 01100000
WpnLv : 30 : 00110000
Speed : 18 : 00011000
Luck  : 0C : 00001100
Def   : 0C : 00001100
HP    : 06 : 00000110

Memory[0030] = counter that constantly loops from 0x00 to 0xFF

Memory[0030] AND (values from above table)
If result = 0, then level-up bonus = +2
Otherwise, level-up bonus = +1

So basically, there’s a 25% chance of a proc becoming +2

4 Likes