Hello everyone! My first project here was just a simple FE6 Redux. But since then, I’ve learned a lot about hacking, and today I present… …another simple FE6 Redux. Okay, maybe I haven’t learned that much.
link to the patch (apply to an untranslated FE6 rom. Hard mode is unlocked from the start): Dropbox - FE6_BugFixEdition - Simplify your life
The goal of FE6 Bugfix edition is to let you play the game the way it was intended to be played. I tried to find a bunch of examples where there was pretty strong evidence that the devs had intended for something to work differently than it does, and then change them to give the intended behavior.
Here’s a list of all the bugs I fixed:
Messed up deployment positions in chapters 2-5
This project was originally conceived a couple months ago, when I learned that the stupid deployment setups in earlygame FE6, with Merlinus leading the charge, are actually a bug. If you view the chapters in FEBuilder, you can see the intended deployment positions, which sensibly have Merlinus and Elen in the back. But whoever was in charge of making these setups apparently didn’t realize that who starts where is determined by the deployment order, not by the character IDs associated with the starting positions, which leads to the silly setups in the actual game (this issue obviously becomes moot after chapter 5, when you get access to preps).
[A comparison of the intended deployment positions for chapter 3 (top) and the ones that actually appear in the game (bottom)]
Double Hard Mode Bonuses in Chapters 1-5
In the chapters of FE6 before the prep screen, the turn 1 player phase event calls a function that applies hard mode bonuses to all enemy units on the field. However, the enemy units already have hard mode bonuses applied when they’re loaded. This leads to enemies that start on the map having their hard mode bonuses applied twice, making them very strong (and leading to a noticeable dropoff in enemy quality come chapter 6). I removed these calls, so that all enemies get the intended amount of hard mode bonuses, making early game significantly more manageable on hard mode.
Hard Mode Bonuses for recruitable units
Beloved as they are, hard mode bonuses for player units are pretty clearly a bug. The game has a list of “units who shouldn’t get hard mode bonuses”, and includes every playable unit who starts out red. Unfortunately, this list is only checked when applying hard mode bonuses at the start of the map, and not when applying them to reinforcements. Thus, only Raigh, Hugh, and chapter 16 Douglas are actually blocked from getting HMB, since every other recruitable red unit appears as a reinforcement. I reverted all recruitable units to their normal mode stats (this is accomplished in the somewhat hacky way of having them appear as green units who immediately turn red, because I didn’t feel like messing with the function that applies hmb).
Bugged RNG
While FE6 is not 1 RN as some people claim, there is a glitch where the RNG can very rarely generate a 100 rn, meaning that an attack (or more likely, a status staff) with 100 hit can miss. See here for more details: Fire Emblem6 Rng Data
It turns out that this bug also applies to the [0,n] rng which is used in generating hard mode bonuses, meaning that a unit can very rarely roll higher on their HMB than they should be able to (AFAIK this is not documented anywhere online, credit to muhmuhten for discovering this and providing a fix). My patch fixes both of these bugs.
Status Staff AI
Gryz summarizes the way that FE6 status staff AI works here: Gryz-255 comments on General Question Thread
The sleep/berserk AI is clearly intended to choose the target which maximizes (hitrate against target + target’s level), but since it forgets to store the hitrate, it pretty much always picks the last unit (unless the hitrate against them is less than the previous unit’s level). My patch fixes this, so sleep/beserk staff users will try to go for someone they have a good hitrate on (sorry Fae). The silence staff AI has been changed to target units with usable tomes or staves, instead of only those with usable staves. Credit to muhmuhten for the staff AI fixes.
Dragonstone Stealing
For some reason dragonstones are on the list of stuff that AI controlled thieves can steal. You could maybe argue this is intended behavior, since there’s not a clear way that they ended up on there, but given that there doesn’t seem to be any reason for them to be there, and how out of place they seem with the other stealable items, and how it was changed in later games, I’m comfortable calling this a bug. AI controlled thieves will no longer steal dragonstones in BugFixEdition.
Roy running in place after promoting
Now we’re getting to the really really trivial changes. The game waits longer than it needs to for Roy’s promotion event to run, leading to him awkwardly running in place for a few seconds after promoting. I reduced the wait time so Roy can avoid some embarrassment.
Shanna/Thea Talk in Ch19S
For some reason, Shanna and Thea have a talk conversation in chapter 19S. Since the conversation has no text, it’s pretty clearly not intended. This conversation has been removed.
Tweaks to individual enemies
There are 4 warriors in chapter 20xI who are level 18, consistent with the unpromoted units in the chapter instead of the other promoted units. They have been changed to level 7, to match one of the other warriors. Similarly, the level 15 warrior reinforcement in chapter 12 has been changed to level 7. A shaman in chapter 20xS has had his target AI changed from 28 (archers) to 08 (prioritize damage (standard)).
I know that this is not all of the bugs in FE6. There are some weird bugs with arena where you can end up fighting a brigand with a bow or a warrior with fire, but I couldn’t find any documentation on what causes that to occur, let alone how to fix it. There are also some bugs related to rankings (in particular the funds ranking is unusually easy if you get the best end) that I probably could have fixed with a bit more effort, but I ran out of motivation, because I never play ranked and I didn’t want to figure out how the game end event works. If you know a way to fix these, or any other bugs I’ve missed, feel free to let me know and I may update this at some point.
In addition to the regular BugFixEdition, which includes all the changes listed above, I added two more patches in the folder, which fix some things that are pretty clearly not bugs, but are also pretty widely agreed to be bad.
The “BugFixPlus11AFixes” adds a few very small changes to address the dumbest parts of Ch11A. Echidna now starts with an iron sword equipped so she doesn’t die the same enemy phase that she spawns, and Klein/Thea no longer have a 20% chance to not move. I also removed the “20% chance to not move” AI from chapters 10B and 15 (where it was applied to Garrett and his brigands), and I went ahead and removed the weird Galle AI from chapter 21. Since Klein/Thea/Galle got custom AIs, it seems pretty clear that they weren’t intended to just charge. But IMO the game plays better when they just have charge AI.
The “BugFixReduxVers” goes even farther (although it still has a very light touch as far as reduxes go). In particular, it makes the following 3 changes:
No Ambush Spawns
All turn-based enemy-phase reinforcements (same turn reinforcements) are changed to be player phase reinforcements. The zone based reinforcements in Ch6 and Ch7 are changed to be turn-based player phase reinforcements. The reinforcements for opening the bottommost doors in chapter 6 are removed. Note that Ch21 still has ambush spawns, because FE6 doesn’t have a setting for player phase zone-based reinforcements, and when I tried to change them to turn-based reinforcements it froze the game.
Halved avoid from gates and thrones
FE6 bosses can be kinda annoyingly dodgy. Boss fights are not really an engaging part of normal FE, so that’s not a great thing. Thrones only give 15 avoid now, so you have some more options against annoying bosses (this is especially nice since no HMB nerfs Rutger a bit).
Rapier/Horseslayer is effective against nomads and troubadours/valkyrie
This is a pretty small change, but it’s something that multiple people suggested as a “bug” so I figured I’d include it in the redux version. As for why it’s not an actual bug, even though it was changed in FE7/8, FE6 is following the tradition of FE3, where horse-effective weapons aren’t effective against bow cavalry. Also in the Japanese, the rapier says it’s effective against “knights” and it is in fact effective against the classes which have “knight” in their name. Unfortunately, there’s not a good way to translate this to English, since Cav/Paladin don’t use the word “knight”.
I’m not expecting that this will become anyone’s definitive version of FE6, but I figured it would probably be of interest to some people besides me. If you don’t like the gameplay of base FE6, this is probably not going to fix it for you. Play something like the Numbers Patch of Project Ember.
If you like FE6, but get annoyed at the tough earlygame, or you don’t like the idea of hmb, or you don’t like the fact that the rng is broken, or you just want a patch that removes ambush spawns and very little else, then this hack might be for you. If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know.
Credits:
muhmuhten for writing a bunch of asm for me.
Terraspark (and Gryz’s posts) for helping me understand status staff AI
7743 for FEBuilder
Gringe for the English translation patch
Folks in Mekkah’s Keep and the r/FE discord for helping me compile a list of bugs