FE7Lex v1.5 Released! (31 chapters so far)

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Great! I agree that keeping skill scrolls to skills that aren’t granted from classes is a good move. You don’t want to cheapen class identities after all.

Yeah, the problem with bonus exp is that it does change balance, which is why it might be something good to keep in mind if/when you decide to touch balance for other reasons. The less exp gained that way does decrease the impact though, so it’s not like you have to go full PoR/RD with it. Having some kind of cap on what level you can bexp up to might be good for balance as well, like being unable to go beyond your highest level unit or something.

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Mqn glad to see this great remake of the game Wish the Avatar unit was playable though.

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Do any of the staff users learn illuminate at some point? I chose the custom option of spells and staffs as their “modern” option, but the fog of war maps get pretty rough and the torch is not usable and barely helps with lighting.

Priscila promo options besides the Valkyrie only have generic palettes, I personally dont care, cause I think Valkyrie is is the best option for her.

Some of the maps have a little bit more deployment slots than the original hector hard mode, please dont reduce them, I think is balanced relatively fairly because some enemies are considerably tougher than the original, like, the pegasus knights are actually a serious threat with darting blow.

Also, I know it’s not story appropriate regarding the narrative, but have you consider the option of anticipating the possibility for the lords promotions?

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Currently, the only unit that learns Illuminate as a personal spell is Matthew, which means you’d have to promote him to Trickster to get it while using Personal Spells. I’ll increase torch accessory radius by 1 to help with this. I don’t really want to remove the thief’s niche for having longer fog of war vision. I want it to feel like you need thieves when FoW is in effect.

I did see that some maps have extra deployment slots compared to HHM. However, on Lunatic those chapters’ slots are reduced down to the HHM number or even slightly lower. I’m fine with our Hard difficulty being in-between on some chapters. And yes, Darting Blow pegasus knights are a menace, and they particularly seem to hate Eliwood… :smiley:

What do you mean by anticipating the lord’s promotions?

*Edit: Priscilla’s colors are a bug. I will fix this for the upcoming patch.

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Hey, thank you again for the prompt responses.

Yeah I totally agree regarding thieves, I think they should be a necessity in fog maps, and I think the slight upgrade of the lighting radius of the torches will help.

It seems like Lunatic will be quite the challenge, Hard mode so far hasn’t been a breeze, but is not exceedingly hard, I’m all for greater difficulties, but I’ll always struggle with fewer deployments.

Regarding the Lords, I meant if there would be a possibility to promote them earlier than their typical time frames of the original story.

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Right, my philosophy is that Hard should challenge your tactics but most maps should be beatable with only 1-3 attempts. In Lunatic, my philosophy is that you should struggle to beat each map, and it’s an accomplishment to clear each one. Obviously this will vary person-to-person, and there’s a lot that will change going forward. Thus, the balance will not be finalized until much later. There’s also the possibility for a Maddening difficulty to be added later for the real masochists… some people like that kind of thing.

I’m definitely planning to remove the story lock on the lord promotions. I’ll leave the heaven seal in, but you will be able to use it on whichever lord unit you please. I’m planning on having Athos give the first one to you directly after Living Legend, so they will come a bit earlier. In FE7 there’s not the same narrative reason for having the lords promote at a particular point, unlike FE6. (And FE6 is a prime example of why that’s a bad idea anyway in terms of game flow.)

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Love the game, did have a thought relating to a couple topics that have been mentioned, the limited deployment slots and bonus exp. I agree with a post above that limited deployment spots in hard mode is annoying, mostly just because there are obviously a good number more units that I would like to deploy to train up, but am just not able to because of the low deployment slots. Maybe incorporate bonus exp. in a way that you can use it to help units that were not deployed keep up in levels. That way it gives you more flexibility in keeping units up to a level that they are able to contribute later on without having to deploy them ever chapter. Gives more flexibility (and enjoyment) in using more units without having adjust game balance with increased deployment slots.

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I think changing up the deployment slots depending on the difficulty is an interesting idea, but I’m not sure how well it works in practice given that using fewer units consistently over time can actually make things a bit easier. Regardless, I’d at least be very wary of ever having fewer slots than vanilla.

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23x with that sniper and a druid boss with 7 move + debuffs + nosferatu+ miracle, Ballistas AND a fog of war where you can barely see 3 squeres in front of you is bullshit.

I finally beat the chapter after a good number of attempts. It’s not impossible, I’d say is not even extremely hard, but if you have a bad luck turn it will make you lose a unit. I had an S support between my Rebecca and Lowen, with my archer holding speedwings, seraph robe and a draco shield to survive the corridor.

After you kill the boss it’s more of a smooth sailing, but the combo of archers, ballista and boss can be quite annoying.

I think the sleep effect is not working properly, cause my Hector was put to sleep by one of the troubadours, but could still move the next turn.

Also, and i’m sorry for elongating myself in this but, you might want to reconsider some of the xp formula for some characters/classes. Because you have to deploy them in all maps, Elliwood and Hector (and feel better them their vanilla counterparts, did you up their growths? maybe not Hector, but Eliwood certainly feels stronger, unless i’m very blessed with him) are already at 14 and i think they’ll level cap pretty soon, so having an earlier promo for them might end up being more useful.

The staff users on the other hand level very slowly, the small heals give nothing, so it ends up getting a bit more difficult for them to keep up with the rest.

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I’ve updated the main download link with a new version. I’ve reworked some scripts that run behind the scenes, so some new bugs might emerge. Let me know if you find any. Also, I cannot reproduce the Florina crash, but I’ll fix that if I encounter it.

Changelog:

Additions
Added Chapter 25: New Resolve.
New joinable unit: Karla (with Early Recruitment enabled)
Added Wyvern Rider class.
If you set Revised Proficiency to “Full,” wyverns will use axes instead of lances.
New game rule: Distinctive Wyverns.
—Wyverns have -2 move but are stronger.
—Wyverns are weak to thunder magic instead of bows.
Added a voice for Damian.
Added map animation for the poison status.
Added an Underdog skill scroll as a village reward in In Search of Truth (replaces Concoction).
—Hopefully this makes it easier to level up trainee units like Anna and Lowen.

Balance Changes
Reduced enemy unit strength in Another Journey and Whereabouts Unknown on harder difficulties.
Reduced Teodor’s (23x boss) level and stats from their insane vanilla values.
The revised version of the Devil Axe now has recoil instead of a chance to kill yourself.
Enabled the Sword Cavaliers rule in the Modern preset by default.
More enemy cavaliers will be sword cavaliers if enabled.
Increased Hanna’s prophecy fee to 2000g.
Increased vision range bonus by 1 for the accessory version of the Torch.

Bug Fixes
Prophecy no longer auto-resets at the end of a chapter. Must pay poor Hanna.
Fixed crash when a centurion missed with a sword.
Fixed missing deployment slot on Whereabouts Unknown (hard difficulty only).
Added back a few missing enemy units on Whereabouts Unknown.
Fixed a bug where Uhai would not drop the Orion’s Bolt.
Fixed missing Uhai and Anna voice clips.
Fixed Teodor having far too much movement.
Fixed some missing promoted-class colors for Priscilla. Change is retroactive.
Fixed some missing promoted-class colors for Dorcas and Dart. Not retroactive.
Fixed missing Dorcas promotion quotes for some classes.
Fixed Ballista getting extra shots on A Glimpse in Time.
Fixed a mage missing its personal spells in The Peddler Merlinus.

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Hey… i’m sorry to be that guy again, I love the game, love what you’re doing, mad respect for your efforts… still, Dragon’s gate has only 10 deployment slots available, doesn’t hector hard mode give you 12 slots originally? I think normal mode is 13 in the vanilla game?

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Hi, I love the work you have done so far but I found a visual bug in the chapter dragon’s gate legault as an enemy stole the killer lance and the wind sword and when I recruited him in his inventory and in later chapters it appeared that the unit would drop him if he died.

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Hey, question regarding sorcerer erk, either i dont understand it or his war wizard skill is not working, doesnt damage neighboring units…

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Thanks all, I’ll look into these reports for the next update.

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Amazing work. Love the depth and detail of each playthrough. Young me couldn’t be happier to see the option to recruit Uhai when I started the game.

I wanted to point out a few things that I thought might need your attention in future releases.

  1. Florina’s imbue is broken (might be all Pegasus knights, but I only got Florina to 15). It crashes at the start of her turn trying to trigger the heal. Interestingly enough, the game doesn’t crash if she’s rescued. The game even knows to give her the healing. Feels like the game just doesn’t know what to animate because it hangs the moment before you’d expect to see healing.

  2. A: If you select items instead of spells, you can’t buy a healing staff even though there are multiple shops along the way. if you decide to play with weapon durability, you’ll be SOL for many chapters. I believe the first one I was able to buy is either at port badon or the chapter following (can’t quiet recall).
    To follow up on this, Sierra started with no heal staff in her inventory when she rejoins on chapter 13, so she had to just kinda, stand in the corner for like 3 or 4 chapters until you’re forced to make the decision between Sierra or priscilla as your healer.

  3. Should Teodor move off his throne in 23x? It wouldn’t be a big deal if he had 6 for his movement, but he strangely has 8, so i had a handful of deaths on that map until I could really learn the map because of his range and follow up range. He presents as the most dangerous spell caster at that point (and, to be fair to you, I may still be playing the original prior to his updated stats)

  4. Dorcas, on promotion, has a quote for warrior but not his berserker. He shows up and then just disappears like he was going to say something but changed his mind.

  5. I managed to get Sierra to learn Physic, but I can’t tell if she’s getting weapon exp from using it. I tried using it 3 times in a row after learning it (excitedly healing the whole party without needing to expose herself to danger) but it didn’t look like she gained any weapon exp from it.

I love the personal skills and the use(reskin?) of the Satori sign to enhance certain players unique skills. I’m really excited to test Matthew’s skill to see if he really can just dart through a map without getting targeting.

I may be in the minority on weapon durability and tomes/staffs over learned spells because I like the challenge it presents to have to manage your items, especially if you don’t arena abuse for gold. Really love the reskin of the Arena for early recruitment too.

Each of the “At Camp” scenarios fit really, really well. with only one small exception:

Summary

Lyn, not Eliwood, being the one concerned with Ninians’s health feels a bit odd when you rescue her in the boat, especially because of the supports that Eliwood gets with Ninian. I get that she cares deeply for her after traveling with her through the Caelin lineage dispute, I just felt like it was an opportunity to show early connection given there’s the option to marry her in the original game if you get supports to A.

Really excited to see this when it’s completed and how you handle interactions with nino, Jaffar, nergal, and Uhai.

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Thanks for the feedback. I will add these to the bug fixes for the upcoming update. There’s currently a game-breaking HP-related bug on the final chapter that needs to be fixed, so I will push an update shortly.

I agree in part with the Eliwood + Ninian cutscene potential for that base scene. However, I’m trying not to railroad the player into any particular S-rank support pairings given that I will be adding additional support options with some more S-rank potential later on. I think the vanilla dialogue in the game already oddly overplays the Eliwood + Ninian pairing (and Lyn + Hector) when there are other options the player can choose.

Teodor’s movement was fixed in the latest update. I believe berserker Dorcas’s quote was as well.

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Uploaded a new version to fix some bugs:

Fixed a crash when the Imbue skill triggered.
Adjusted status-inflicting skills to only work with combat weapons.
Fixed Legault not spawning on higher difficulties.
Fixed Opportunity Shot targeting units with Stillness+.
Fixed Opportunity Shot always firing without checking user’s SKL.
Fixed village text on New Resolve.

There have been several additional bugs reported that I haven’t been able to replicate. To reduce the risk of this, load your chapter-change save instead of the prep screen save when updating to a new version. I’ll keep an eye out for these bugs as I test going forward.

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I got to the end of ch 25 on normal mode (with dynamic growths) and I had some thoughts I wanted to try to break down
-Difficulty/map design: I want to start here since this was my biggest sticking point. I tried multiple times to tackle hard mode before stepping back to normal, and I’m not sure if its just dynamic growths tending to favor some units over others, but there were several chapters that were an absolute struggle and I ended up tapping out on the pirate ship. Especially with modern or custom settings, this is a very player phase oriented take on FE7, and I had, at most, marcus, oswin, and hector who could sponge on enemy phase, baiscally everyone else crumpled under a hail of arrows and/or dark magic, especially magic users. This caused a domino effect fairly frequently, as without Lucius or Erk to cut through armor or horse units, it was extremely easy to have my handful of frontline units getting bottlenecked and focus fired. I’m hesitant to say archers are the problem, as without the buffs they got, wil and rebecca are evrn tougher to warrant using, but I think some archers on the enemy side might need to be moved to give some more room to breath

-units: I haven’t had a chance to test everyone yet, but of the members I have used, I’ll go through some bullet points
+Serra- awesome, her personal skill is great, berserk and physic are a solid set of staff utility, and although staff exp on normal is scarce, I like her options for promotion (saint in particular seems really, really funny in concept)
+Lyn - amazing glow up; on dynamic growths, she consistently hit a STR and SKL/SPD/LCK level right out the gate, a free personal light brand with crit, and a really fun skill kit (Dodgy resolve is fun and making every weapon a psuedo lady-blade are great). I look forward to seeing what she can do as a Blade lord in the end game update
+Erk - both pupil and mage Erk really struggle. shaman gives him a surprising niche as an early dark mage unit, but there are no light magic units for him to get advantage over, and his famously average growths meant he hit strength as often as he missed magic, HP, and speed. Lucius consistently ran circles around him, and I suspect Pent will dunk on him unless heavily nerfed, like vanilla FE7
+Dorcas - brigand dorcas is basically perfect; access to berserker is kino, it gives him and barte much more unique identity, and his enemy phase skill is really solid. Mine ended up struggling a bit to hit double digit speed and missed several strength levels, so he was under curve, but still fun to use in Lyn mode
+Eliwood - early Eliwood is nice, and his skill set really complments his growths, but he continues to struggle next to Lyn and Hector; by chapter 20 on my last run, he was able to stand side-by-side on the frontline, but he still kind of feels like a support unit with his nerfed rapier (I kind of wish it just had a charm aura over vantage, even though it save him with enemy phase crits more then once). I felt like I had to feed him at least 2 or 3 levels in Lyn mode for him to even stand a chance at the start of part 2, sadly
+Leila - fixing what should have IS should have to start with, I like she has a magic sword build out the box to give her identity compared to Matthew and Legault, the custom assasin sprite is nice, and she looks like she could be a really good pick for adventurer as well
+Ana - this one hurts. Female Journeyman! Female Pirate! potentially female berserker to give you more axe options! but unless you feed her two back-to-back chapters, I don’t think she is playable when you get her. I kind of wish she was recruited with merlinus in chapter 15 instead to give her a chance to catch up
+Marcus - continues to carry, doesn’t matter that he’s not seth-tier, that personal skill is too good, and there are too many hard mode chapter you need him in. Basicalyl makes it pointless to invest in Lowen, Sain, or Kent
+Lowen - speaking of, I want to love recruit Lowen, and his personal skill (especially Caterer +) adds a niche no one else has in the game, and he can become a playable soldier! He ends up tanky when he gets levels… but you have to feed him, rebecca, and bartre, and marcus and oswain just obsolete him either way. a shame, since every paladin has a unique battle sprite from what I saw
+Renault - This is huge. I applaud this one whole-heartedly. Perfect personal skill, fills in some important lore right before dragon’s gate, a perfect candidate for war monk if you don’t upgrade his personal skill, and he’s built to fight the magic seal no matter how you chose to play him. Amazing, and I’m glad early recruit exists if just for him and Karla
+Karla - much less gimmicky to recuit, magic wo dao is cool, and an interesting personal. Guy is already a soloing monster by the time she arrived, but I look forward to using her in a future update
+Raven and Dart - I know they are potentially amazing from past FE7 experience, but with deployment slots the as tight as they are and so many units needing to be fed EXP (as well as hard and some normal chapters needing serra and priscilla) I sadly didn’t get to use either of my favorite infantry units much

+Weapons/drops: I like what you did with the modern weapons a lot. Two range swords for Lyn and Guy very early are great, but the heavy nerf to hand axes and javelins feels a bit double edged. It basically makes enemy phase a lot slower, but I understand infinite gba hand axes would make hector even more broken and javelin meta warps the game around it, so I get it but I’m not sure I like it. Bows have a great wedge they’ve cut out for themselves. The only other negative is there aren’t any real tools in the eliwood/hector chapters for weapon users to use effective damage or clear damage thresholds for stages where you are trying to clear paths to get to thieves fast enough or reach tricky villages. If there was a armory like the end of lyn mode on Lyn’s join chapter, I think that would help a lot

+The camp screen: solid, great addition. The conversations are cool and add character and lore, a support screen is basically a necessity in modern FE, the market would have nice to access sooner, but a shop to potentially buy skill scrolls, unique/powerful weapons, or stock up on concoctions and elixers between chapters will be amazing, especially with how gold stockpiles a bit in modern mode

+other/rapid fire
-the map sprites are all awesome; love the pallette choices
-underdog consistently bugged for me and taught swap whenever I used the scroll
-personal spells/staffs in great, liking some of the lists I’ve seen so far
-I’m uncertain if I should 20/20 and miss out on earlier access to promotion options, or early promote at 15 and potentially miss capstone class skills
-Love the choices for classes and battle animations across the board
-the customizablity for starting a new game is the highest I’ve seen in a fire emblem game, reminds me of a lot of pokemon emerald decomps that have been popular lately
-making the playthough a combination lyn/hector/eliwood mode is the best way I’ve seen this done, thank you for that
I hope I’m not too overly negative; this has a lot of potential, and I look forward to the next major update and hopefully starting the new year beating this game!

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Thank you for your thoughts: this type of post is super useful to me during development.

For the difficulty, I am trying to make the Hard mode about the same as Hector Hard Mode in the original, but there’s the added complexity of many different combinations of game rules that people might select. As it currently works, Hard mode adds a certain number of virtual levels to the enemies (depending on the chapter) with small increases if particular mods are in use such as Skill System or Improved Units. I think the feedback on archers is very useful, and I will move some of them farther back in the future if the player is using Modern Bows. The chapter with Lucius and Raven sticks out to me as particularly heinous in this regard.

Even so, Hard might be too difficult for some but too easy for others. I’m going to have to accept that to some degree. If any chapters strike you as specifically ludicrous in difficulty, I can reduce the enemies’ virtual level-ups for that chapter to make it more in-line with the others. The pirate ship is pretty tough in vanilla also, but I can reduce its sting slightly in the next patch.

It was good to hear the feedback on the units. My thoughts:
-I definitely think the revised Mani Katti gives Lyn much stronger of a presence now. Even though I made her optional later on, I still felt compelled to deploy her. So that’s a win.
-I might give Erk a little more love. I don’t necessarily want two Lucius-es, but I can improve his personal skill to give him more of a valuable niche. Like you mentioned, Pent is absurdly OP for a pre-promote and there’s little I can do about that. I don’t plan on nerfing any units below vanilla, so I hope to elevate the subpar ones to be viable alternatives.
-I’ve already increased Eliwood’s staying power with Improved Units, so I don’t really want to buff his stats further. I will try to give him excellent skills in his promoted class to make him more appealing of a unit. Also, I rather like the revised Rapier in its current form. I’ve been trying to reduce unnecessary effectiveness on random weapons to allow the Armorslayer, etc. to shine more. This is especially true with unlimited weapon uses.
-I’ve heard from multiple people that Anna is too weak to train effectively unless you’re on Normal difficulty. I’ll think about what to do for her to help make this easier. Fixing the currently-bugged Underdog scroll would be a good start…
-Agree with Raven and Dart: they’re very solid but there’s a lot of good units to use, especially now that many have been improved. Hopefully this can be seen as adding replayability to the game!
-Finally, Marcus… FE7 Marcus is one of the most OP units in the series. For half the game, no one can do what Marcus can do, and you absolutely need him to do those roles to succeed. Even Seth is more easily swapped out for other powerful units without suffering too much, given the infinite exp available in the Tower of Valni in Sacred Stones. Like I said, I don’t want to nerf any units below base. But if I did… it would definitely be this guy. I’ve tried to make it so the higher difficulties can’t just be Marcus-solo’d. However, I don’t view him as making the other Cavaliers redundant because IMO it’s always nice to have additional high-movement units.

With regard to javelins and hand axes, this nerf was necessary to return balance to the Force, so to speak. 1-2 range retaliation needed to be reduced to rectify the extremely tilted emphasis in FE7 toward enemy-phase tanking. Sticking Oswin in a hole and watching half the enemies die was amusing but not particularly interesting from a tactical perspective. Those weapons still function like normal if you’re not using Revised Weapons, though.

Glad you enjoy the between-chapter base and the conversations. As you can imagine, that has required and continues to require a ton of work on my end.

Regarding your comment about capstone skills: tier-1 classes all learn their last skill at 15, so feel free to promote after that if you aren’t trying to absolutely max a unit at 20/20. (Which is extremely difficult in FE7 for most units anyway.)

I’ve already fixed the Underdog scroll bug on my end. That will be in the next update, but I’m not planning to release another version until I’ve finished chapter 26. Since I have to add Heath and Isadora for that, it will take me some time. Whenever I add a new unit, it needs a crit cut-in animation, colorized map sprites, combat palettes, a whole voice set, etc. :sweat:

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Best of luck with the next update then! I appreciate the quick response.
As an addedum of sorts, if the market was available, say, chapter 20 (possibly retaking the castle in 19?), I think the following items could be added and alleviate some of my frustrations with hard mode enemy composition:
-an armorslayer. As is your best tools for dealing with high defense are the magic users and the killer edge, so giving eliwood a tool to participate would functionally soft buff him as well as make exposing mages less punishing (edit: I forgot you get handed a heavy spear, so the tools are there, I guess I’m trying to think of options that aren’t just “let marcus fix it”)
-a bolt axe; I’m not sure how easy adding new magic weapons is in Lex vs FEbuilder, but I think this would be a nice compromise between broken hand axes dominating enemy phase, and giving units like anna, hector, and dorcas tools to crack through bottlenecks; Hector and Dorcas tend to be low magis, so they wouldn’t dominate with it, and if anna has, say, a 30 or 40% magic growth, that would give her a niche to play in
-something like the guard naginata. I’m hesitant on this, since a defensive lance would just make oswin and marcus even better, so I’m almost tempted to say make it a personal weapon for pegasus knights or Lowen, but basically a one range lance that either reduces damage by 2 to 5 instead of 1, or just gives a static +2 to DEF/RES opens up the unit options who can plug holes that aren’t the knight boys. Alternatively, this could be a defensive sword, but that and the wind sword would just be too much sword bias I think

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