I definitely don’t recommend holding promotions till 20 haha. The increased mov from promoting is pretty important for chapter 6, and generally promoting is an even bigger powerspike than vanilla FE because of skills. But if you do attempt it with unpromoted units I will be very interested to see the aftermath 
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That was a heartrending victory. I’ve finally had to let some units go, despite all my strategizing, and it wasn’t painless at all. Chapter 6 definitely feels like the run-killer for the extreme step-up in challenge it is.
Summary
My ironman status is tainted, since I went in, then got briefed on the gimmick of the stage, and reset on turn 3 when it was clear the strategy I had in mind wasn’t going to work and I really had to haul ass to not get crushed by the neverending stream of strong reinforcements. For all intents and purposes I’m considering my second try to be the valid one.
I promoted Dana to Valkyrie for inspiration, Leth to Summoner to summon bait for the bolting guys, and Rella to Tactician for Rally Spectrum.
Trying to rush upwards is very difficult when all the enemies on the stage are rushing down to meet you, and bolting guys are bolting you from both sides. There’s the constant conflict between rushing up to not get torn apart by the reinforcements, finding safe places from the bolting mages, and having to deal with the enemies that are coming down to meet you.
Then the miniboss shows up, aw lawdy. A more powerful bolting mage that is chasing you around, exactly what I needed, and she’s backed by all those reinforcements, so tackling her directly is a no go. This is where Curtis dies, as he doesn’t have enough movement to get away from the reinforcements, and he’s taken out. In a hurry, I pull out the remaining two Master Seals from supply and promote Kira into a Wyvern Lord and Tragan into a Bishop on the spot, I think this just narrowly allowed them to survive.
I decide to pick up all my footbound units and rush upwards and break through the wall where the two northernmost bolting mages are, and hole up in there to get a chance to breath. Knowing that i don’t have long however, I dance up Dallas so he can break the second wall and kill the Thoron guy in the same turn. I guess I made a mistake here because I was using Leth with Nosferatu and the hoplon guard to tank in the chokepoint, but she misses her attack on the swordmaster and gets severely damaged, and then the miniboss ignores the summoned skelly which I had sitting in her range to Meteor Leth instead, finishing her off. I was really relying on that skelly to be meteor bait, but this isn’t Blessed Heart where the skellies have Provoke.
I managed to get the chest in the entrance of that room before getting Dallas (with Hex) and Rella in position to score a guaranteed kill on the boss with her Armorslayer. My team or my strategy would have needed to have been much better to have avoided taking those casualties.
That was a super exhausting and difficult chapter. That was an Ironman-slaying chapter if I ever saw one. I’m not asking that you make any changes, I’m still ruminating on it, and it was honestly really rewarding to push through for the victory.
As an aside, have you ever played LISA? It’s a nifty little indie RPG that features Permadeath as a mechanic as well.
LISA Spoilers
Chapter 6 is so treacherous it really reminds me of some of the fights in that game, like the ones versus the mutants or against the boss Satan who can one-shot-kill any party member, excluding the main character. If you’re not tackling the challenges with absolutely everything you have, you’re going to get run over.
And as luck dependent as it is, that’s a really enjoyable game. Especially the Russian Roulette part, where you basically have to win 3 coin flips, and losing a coin flip kills a character permanently.
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I’ve tried one of the LISA games (I forget which) - it was very interesting, but I got frustrated with it and stopped playing after losing a bunch of progress to a stupid platforming death… I think if it was a pure RPG I would have enjoyed it a lot more, but I’ve never really been into platformers, especially when it gets in the way of other gameplay which is more enjoyable to me. I loved the concept and the post-apocalyptic aesthetic, though.
Chapter 6 is definitely a brutal one. Even after all my time playtesting the game, I still need to plan stuff out perfectly for it or I’ll usually eat at least one death. But as you said, I’m not sure if that necessarily warrants a change; there’s a lot of options available to the player by this late in the game, so I don’t think it feels as unfair as pre-nerf Artemia did. I will certainly keep an eye on it though as more people report on their experiences.
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I had way too much free time this week, and I played this game for something like 20 hours, and it’s been a blast. I’ve so far finished three playthroughs on normal mode, one having picked each starter, and while the first softlocked at the finale, the other two were successful. The only major thing to note is that I’m still on 1.0, but I don’t think it’s been all too relevant for the most part. (I’m assuming a lot of the mistakes I’ve found have been picked up)
Lots and lots of words
If your browser didn’t already crash, to be clear, this is a lot of words. I’d upload a txt if the website natively let me. Skim as needed.
House Keeping of things that do/might need a fix;
Shock and Awe states you gain +5 AS for using it, while Darting Blow states you gain +6; I haven’t been in a situation where the difference is relevant but one of them is probably wrong. (Assuming the weapon just has the darting blow skill programmed in)
The Flame Lance’s sealing effect doesn’t work, or Nus is immune to seal skills. I haven’t tested the Ice Bow.
- Starters
The dynamic the starters have is pretty interesting. I did a run with each of them as a starter, and by circumstance I happened to get each one once as a wild card. For my money, Rella is the best choice for the whole game, Avery has a stronger start but drops off very hard for the back half of the game, and Densel seems to be the weakest. Rella being crit immune and fast was relevant throughout the whole game, and it let her handle several situations where others faced low percent crits, she’s a good addition at almost any point in the game and makes great use of defensive stat boosters. Avery is close to unstoppable when played well in the first five chapters, and even though he gets absolutely stonewalled by four consecutive awful maps, being a Charm bot who can deal big, accurate damage on player phase is hardly a death knell for his viability. I used him twice, his starter playthrough he went General and when he was a wild card he went Great Knight, and both felt about the same just because his actual stats weren’t really what counted. My experience with Densel is definitely colored by how his levels went, in the playthrough where he was a starter, going into chapter 6 he had only leveled HP, magic, luck, and a single point of speed. But I think even if his combat had been solid, his overlap with the Chapter Two Axe Guy and overall lack of utility make him the weakest choice of the three. I feel like he’s at his best as a mid-game wild card, which is very weird. Aside from as a starter, I got him as the finale wild card, and again his lack of utility in any form made him pretty bad. It’s kind of an additional sting that his bonus crit does not matter vs Nus because he’s just immune to crits anyway. It might be worth changing him to add some form of unique utility to his base kit. Maybe changing his skill to Boon or Gridmaster + Reposition/Swap? Or giving some kind of prf? The other difficulties might end up changing my mind once I play them though.
Looking at Classes, I overall really like the class system. Weapon types and skills feel very deliberately placed for the most part. There are a few things that I don’t think work very well though.
The Shaman promotion is very unbalanced; Summoner is pretty much the only choice. Phantoms aren’t really blatantly overpowered so much as they really encourage you to play overly safely; a lot of this game’s tension gets sapped away when Phantoms do so much so consistently, and it’s really hard to turn down that kind of tool. In a game where the vast majority of other units carefully consider all promotion options, Shaman considering being a no-brainer simply feels bad. Druid could probably just use better promo gains. Even ignoring this promo in particular though, Warlock always sucks. Where most of the other “mixed” attacking classes have some kind of important utility to make them enticing, Warlock tries to be a pure combat juggernaut and then fails at that because every single Warlock candidate without fail has accuracy problems. Crit +20 is good for enemy Warlocks and Sergei, but on player Warlocks it ends up being mostly useless. I’d sincerely consider just giving the Bolt Axe the 20 crit (the thing sucks on everyone but Sergei anyway), give some of the Dark tomes they use more crit, and give Warlock a different skill instead; if you want to change the Sergei boss fight as little as possible on top of that, my best suggestion (after two minutes of searching) is Outrider.
(the different phantoms having different skills was also very cute, a pavise proc did actually save an attempt at one point.)
It is sincerely very impressive how this is these two are the only promotion choices in the whole game I can write off. The fact that everything else seems to have a time and place is really impressive. Battle Mage seems to be the next worst, but the only unit I’ve had to potentially use it is Avery.
Anything else I’d say about the classes would ultimately be a nitpick, stuff like enemies with Tactician not being able to use their skill. Overall, this foundation is very well laid.
*Maps
The maps in this game are pretty solid. The first two really just get the ball rolling, I don’t really have a lot to say about them aside from stuff about Artemia which got addressed. Most other maps I have something to say about.
Chapter 3 is very solid, but one thing I pretty consistently notice is that the Boss does not matter. At very most he blocks off access to the leftmost houses on the last turn, and the red gem is hardly worth gunning for considering the nearby village, the fact that the next shop isn’t for two maps, etc. I don’t think it’s all too bad that he’s not a huge impact, the map plays pretty well without him, but at the least he could come with something else interesting.
Chapter 4 should probably have a turn 50 “aight dumbasses I’m gonna flood this whole temple and wipe everyone out including myself, adios” event. It doesn’t need one, but it’d be funny.
Chapter 5 has a really funny dynamic because the left side village is pretty awful to go for. A lot of the other things on that half of the map are very good, but I’ve yet to have a run where I got the village and didn’t regret it afterward just because it requires so many resources to not only get there but get whoever you recruited out safely. In addition, the left side path up to the boss is a huge trap, because the high move cavalry you need to beat the pirate to the village can’t ever actually go north. Ignoring that village makes the map substantially easier, and from what I have seen of a characters you get there, you aren’t missing much. I don’t know if this needs a fix per se, just an observation about the flow of things.
Chapter 6 is a lot better once it’s clear the carpets give +10 res. I have yet to even attempt to get Wary Fighter from Diane, partially because it’s a pretty big risk, but mostly because Wary Fighter simply isn’t very good. It isn’t impactful against most generic enemies aside from promoted dogs, against Blaise it’s an active nerf, it doesn’t really make baiting deadlord Trace any safer because Astra is still lethal against nearly everything, and there are enough ways to boost speed out of Nus’s doubling threshold that it doesn’t matter much there either. This very well may be a difficulty thing; if Nus autolevels speed on lunatic, I could see this being a huge boon in surviving a round of combat. The other thing is that I’ve found Sergei pretty consistently underwhelming as a boss, though I have never gone into this map with all too many casualties, and I’ve never stretched my resources to go after Diane.
Chapter 8 is one that I don’t hate but is a map I tend to approach the same way each time. Consistently the best strategy is to siege tome the commander with one group and lead the other to the boss. I only tried to reach the commander in one playthrough, and it led to that entire half of my group being wiped by the reinforcements and gorgons.
The finale is very fun. The aspects I can’t immediately attend to always seem to die, and morbidly enough sometimes the best strategy seems to be to get them killed as soon as possible so you can get their divine weapon into better hands, Sergei, lest they accidentally lure too many enemies trying to stay alive and somehow cause Diane and Trace to approach at the same time in a giant ball of death, sERGei.
Nus is a fine final boss. Every non-Emblem Knight unit faces him faces clean 20% chance to cease existing before they get their hit in, so your planning has to account for a couple of your highest damage dealers getting rolled, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though I can see his crit on top of that being extremely frustrating. The final deadlord dying should generally be the last enemy on the map before Nus brings out his posse, and you have plenty of space to kite them all around before taking on Nus himself with your remaining force. From my experience, the best Emblem Knight tends to any of the physical brusier pre-promotes, as Tobias and Reese were my first two. though other physical brusiers can work; I used Ash. I could see someone getting a really cursed run with Chapter 8 Helena into a starter wild card and having a pretty painful Emblem Knight situation.
- Room to Randomize
Basically anything I’d want more out of the game would be more variance. Which is hard to ask without a lot more testing! Even with all the potential variation though, in three runs I’ve already seen a lot of similarities I think a few areas that wouldn’t be so bad in that area would be chest items, village items, and droppable stat boosters. The Angelic Robe, Bright Lance, Hoplon Guard, and Master Seals are the only items that really need to stay static for the chapters they’re in, I could see various other items being shuffled or being drawn from a small lottery.
Mini-bosses themselves shuffling would be pretty ridiculous given you can’t see them in preps, but the skill they use and the scroll they drop shuffling might not be so bad.
Wacky stuff would also be fun, but that’s super low priority.
- Unit Lightning Round
Unit Reviews! Randomization means some I’ve seen and used til the end multiple times, and there are others I’ve yet to even see. Skipping anyone I didn’t really use.
Kira is one of the best early game rolls. Extremely consistent two range is super good early on, and the Killer Bow is very good as a sort of prf. I could see her suffering a bit with being speed screwed but going sniper really helps with that.
Tragan is super solid early on but struggles a lot later on once his very low skill starts to actually affect his hit rates. Chivalry is an amazing skill.
Travis is tough. He always hoards the Bright Lance early on, he really badly wants the angelic robe as well, and then at least for me he never seemed to level defense so his bulk never kept pace with his offenses. I used him twice and both times he was always a hair behind where he needed to be to do something, too little res to magic tank past the early game, too little HP to hold ground, to little speed to double something. By the finale, both times he was just a rescue drop bot, even at tier 2 (Cav → Mage Knight, Wyvern → Wyvern Knight). I really want to try him as a Battlemage.
Dana is bad. That speed hurts, there is no saving it and it means she loses out on using her stats for anything until promotion, making live to serve mostly useless, even with Seraph miracle. I benched her when I got Mariam in the run I rolled her, and she came back in the finale to make a cameo unstoning people.
Krun’zak is stellar, at least early on. I rolled him twice, but both times he died, the first in chapter 3 and the other in chapter 4, both to silly mistakes.
The Belle I rolled was blessed out of her mind, she arrived with 9 magic and 12 speed and then continued to level both, and then Mystia double Bara crit her. Can’t really do an analysis with that roller coaster.
Leth was great. She did standard shaman stuff until chapter 6 and then became a summoner and did that for the rest of the game.
Marina was rolled twice and was great both times. Swordbreaker is very good against all the notable Sword bosses, of whom there are a fair amount. She never really got all that much strength though, so there was a very rememberable experience of her walking up to Nus with Chrystalis and dealing a clean 8 damage, not even doubling. She hogs the Earth Rune.
Anna is extremely consistent. Perhaps too consistent. I do wonder if she and the other thief could take turns, perhaps with the odds heavily but not entirely in Anna’s favor. That aside, super high speed and luck are great traits; I made her a dodge-tank rogue in one playthrough and a powerstaff bot in another.
The Chapter 2 Axe Bros all followed a similar arc, they started out very notably strong, as they’re all very durable and strong, and then they had some apparent flaw of theirs stick out more and more until by endgame they were just OK. Yuri with his strength (Warmonger probably didn’t help there), Jericho with his skill (Again, Warlock was bad), and Dallas with his speed. Dallas was probably the best throughout, even without all that many growths, just because solid strength and hit are such good attributes to have in chapters 7 and 8.
Zor’tix was fantastic when I used him, he took over after Belle died as a super strong mage with rare bouts of flier utility like snagging the chapter 5 right side village solo. I didn’t figure out until very late he could actually use regular dark tomes, but it honestly doesn’t mean a lot to him due to low con.
Edgar was rolled twice and was solid both times. Rally Speed and Healing means you have something to do every turn, and Rescue is great to have no matter what. He’s probably the best of these three.
Zaid was great when I got him. Reposition and Canto are, no joke, game changing. His combat was solid too but I found myself missing reposition so much in the following playthrough, it just allows for so many strategies, like getting armors/cavs across the sand patch in chapter 7 or helping lower mov units escape Diane.
Ash was super blessed when I used her, she came out the box with 11 speed and got to 15 before promotion. I made her Emblem Knight and then she got crit by Dreadvolt because she couldn’t canto out.
Of the dancers I saw, Nuri > Iris > Rufina. Iris had stats that died to one shadowshot in chapter 7 at full HP both times, which was really crippling, even if rally defense is better. Rally Movement is awful, it’s pretty much never a good way to spend a turn compared to a dance. I’d kinda love if one of the ones that could actually see combat got Galeforce instead 
Jules is hilarious. Rolled him once and made him a monk, his frailty and low level made him a liability in chapters 6, 7, and 8 but then in the finale he got life and death, blizzard and purge and spend the whole map pelting everything with siege weapons. He literally used enough blizzard uses to go from nearly base C rank to B rank, letting him continue the onslaught with Bolting. He ended the game a level 16 monk with more combat seen than some of the units I fielded for melee combat. Mad Lad.
Laurence is hilarious for the opposite reason. I rolled him twice and both times he just never seemed to get any stats worth caring about, at least not compared to each Chapter 2 Axe Guy. Yet both times he ended up seeing the field due to a lack of anyone better, and both times he continuously caused problems via such experiences as having sub 80 hit rate with a hatchet.
The one time I reached the chapter 5 left village, I got Rufus. The guy rolled 3 base skill. It’s my understanding that this is pretty bad luck, and vanity did sincerely help him not completely suck, but he was very much not worth the sacrifices I made recruiting him.
Mariam is good filler. Inspiration + Rally Strength is amazing support.
Reese is extremely good in chapters 8 and 9 but needs to survive 6 and 7 to get there. Resolve is downright goofy, see pic.
Celine was a carry in chapters 6 and 7, then did rescue stuff for 8 and 9.
Shaelyn was amazing if you get the chapter 7 bolting, easily the best siege tome spammer for chapter 8 and 9. Even with just blizzard she’s crazy strong.
Kerzil is pretty good. Not a world beater, and not really a candidate for Emblem Knight but alright where he showed up.
Tengu sucks. Guy comes in with sub 70 hitrates when he’s got WTA. He did not accomplish anything in two different runs where he was rolled.
Tobias is broken. Remove is broken. Death Blow + Brave Axe is very good. Made him Emblem Knight in my doomed run.
Erin is solid for both maps and makes a great Emblem Knight, Helena is very good for Chapter 8 itself but isn’t strong enough to be a great Emblem Knight candidate.
Alright that’s the post. I did warn you, I said it was a lot of words. There is no need to respond to everything here, just saying it to make it abundantly clear.
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Thank you, this is the most comprehensive feedback I’ve received so far! Good catches with the flame lance and Shock&Awe description, will fix these bugs for the next patch.
Thoughts about a few things
I do think Warlocks become a lot more terrifying in player hands if you pair them with a battlemage. Pushing their move up to 7 turns them into highly mobile carries with access to the highest mt weapons in the game. I’ve had some test playthroughs where I build my entire team around armor march, and warlocks usually end up being the juggernauts and bosskillers on such a team. Warlock Densel in particular is hilarious - between a killer axe, his personal skill, and crit+20, he will have around ~65 crit on everything up to Nus (or Nus as well if you give him the Emblem). Their hitrates can certainly be shakey, but there are ways to patch that up (Hex, the ch2 secret book, & Dallas’ quick burn). You might be right that they’re still the weakest class overall, but I think they have a fun niche.
You’re probably also right about Summoners being a no-brainer choice for Shamans. I’m considering two options for rebalancing them: One is toning down their promotion gains so that there’s a noticeable combat difference between them and the alternatives. The other is simply removing their staff rank so that they no longer eclipse the Druid’s utility entirely. Not quite sure which I prefer yet.
Super glad to hear about your hype Jules experience. Being the latest encounterable trainee, I was worried he would be a dud for most players, so it’s great that you found a niche for him!
I’m glad you’ve enjoyed Hope’s Trail enough to play through it multiple times & put so many of your thoughts into writing. Genuinely, this kind of the thing is the payoff which makes all my dev time worth it 
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Finished my lunatic run, I’m working on a writeup if you’re interested in reading it. It wasn’t pretty!
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Definitely interested, I’m impressed you cleared lunatic so soon! You might be the literal first person other than me in playtesting to pull that off.
Okay, a little writeup on difficulty/maps/units:
The only major bugs I’ve encountered is being able to get double the amount of recruits from the wildcard slot at Chapter 4 (if the game rolls Jules, it will also just give you Laurence as well, for free, without a dialogue prompt) and Chapter 9 (if you roll Helena, you will also roll Erin for free without a prompt). You can however roll just Laurence and just Erin, but if you roll the other two they’ll show up for free. I doubt this is intended as it makes that random outcome always the best option even if you aren’t using the character because you get their gear. I tested this with save states about a dozen times, and it does seem like there is an outcome where you’ll always get doubles that is reproduceable.
As far as other stuff goes, and as far as the identity of the hack is concerned, I found this to be a really unique experience. The new units each chapter replacing lost ones always feels good, and there are very few units who are suboptimal. If anything, because if the relatively small amount of Master’s Seals you get and the low stat growths in general, you’re encouraged to use the pre-promotes you get in later chapters as they stand on their own. A very Ironman friendly hack!
Notes on Units
The Bad:
Jaime: Completely outclassed by Kira and Dayle. Kira makes a perfect fit for a Wyvernknight bow user, as her high skill stat and personal skill pair naturally with the class skill. Dayle will always hit harder and doesn’t rely on positioning for his ability to work. Jaime also unfortunately takes up a slot that has two other magic uses, who are rare early on and kinda necessary for Lunatic runs (at least in my experience). I generally was resetting if I got Jaime in Chapter 1. Not sure how to fix her except to move her recruitment until later (maybe she could be a Ranger?) and put someone else in her place. A light user would make sense here, but then you’d have to move Tragan and if they swapped you’d have two archers in the opening set. Then you’d have to move Kira, and we don’t want that!
Dana: If you have no healer she can do that, but it just always feels bad to get her because she can’t do anything else and gets replaced immediately by any other healer, or anyone who promotes into staves. I like the idea of throwaways in Nuzlockes, like an exploding Electrode, or a Golem meant to Sturdy-block and then die, but early game matters a lot and I feel she would only need a little bit more speed to be useful.
Laurence: He’s fine as a stand-alone unit, and having a pirate in the water temple is nice, but he’s overshadowed by every other axe-user in the game. Yuri is leagues better than him in every way, having a more balanced stat pool, a better skill, and the ability to make a great Warshipper with his magic growth. Denzel is strong if promoted right (Warlock!), Dallas is a powerhouse, and even Jericho has a really unique niche, especially if you give him Pass. Like is said Laurence is fine, but he doesn’t feel unique.
Tengu: Tengu is pretty bad, mostly again because of how good the other axe units are and the fact that he’ll be way behind (not somewhat on par) of any other Warlock you might have made. In general I think the idea of later-game recruits is executed flawlessly in this hack, with the only exception being this guy. He’s also absolutely not going to be able to do anything with magic as his skill is often too low. I think a more interesting niche for him would be a speedy and accurate Warlock instead of a slow and unskilled one, because that would at least give him an identity in that line of magic.
The Good
There’s no other units I’m unhappy to see, except if my team already has a copy of their class or I needed a crucial recruit but missed them. Well done!
The starters seem balanced to me, if not Rella being slightly better, but not enough to matter.
All the dancers are good, but Mana is the best by a mile.
The trainees are very hard to use on Lunatic, and Travis is a straight reset. However, they’re very good bordering on insanely good in lower difficulty modes, so I think they’re right. I just wish I could use them in higher difficulties! Jules is probably the best in this respect, but Marius and Travis are instantly benched.
Rufus seems bad but is a little underrated, as his personal skill makes up for his lack of stats. If anything though, it would be interesting if he showed up a little sooner. If he appeared instead of Ash perhaps…
Map Design
Prologue is good but having Rella with some kind of ranged weapon would be a dream. It’s hard for her to get experience here. Probably not a good idea for later balance though, and she’s already pretty good.
Chapter 1 and 2 are solid.
Chapter 3: I’m not sure of the reason for the duplicate shops (are they exact duplicates? pretty sure) but I wonder if you could put an Arena down instead. This map is absolutely not feasible to host an arena as it’s very hectic, but it adds an interesting strategic layer for the people who want to use it and would tone down on the redundancy. Also, I’ll agree with a previous comment about the uselessness of the boss. The red gem is not worth it, especially on higher difficulty levels where you need to be using every single turn just to survive and reach the recruits. White gem maybe?
Water Temple: The highly random nature of the sinking tiles in the water temple is a cool gimmick and I wouldn’t want it to be changed, but it can lead to some nearly impossible maps because of RNG. Your entire south team can get stranded, meaning you need to complete the map with your top 5. It’s not worth changing, and I do like it, but it’s very hard on higher difficulties, especially with the pressure of Juno. If anything, I would put a Pure Water somewhere on an enemy, because I’ve had quite a few team wipes to the boss simply because of how difficult resistance is to get in this hack. This feels bad after navigating the RNG of the map. If you successfully navigate the RNG nightmare that is this map, you want the boss to be hard, but also not a completely run-ending possibility 8/10 times.
Chapter 5: I think I can confirm that getting to, recruiting, and safely evacuating the recruit at the village on the west side of the map is not possible on Lunatic unless you sacrifice someone to do it, or maybe have like, three fliers somehow, plus a dancer. I think this is fine, but it’s also kinda weird because no other recruit is that hard to get. On my successful Lunatic run, I just skipped it and focused elsewhere, and the map was still very hard.
Thunder Temple: There’s no way to get through this without a couple deaths on Lunatic, and that’s fine. I like the layering of the difficulty here. The only issue I might bring up is Diana, as she’s never worth killing, and easy enough to run away from if you’ve invested into dealing with the other siege tome users (you can easily have a longbowman at this point, if not two siege tomes yourself, plus a dancer). So she’s kind of an annoyance at best, and maybe she’ll annoyingly kill someone as well. The idea I had would be to make her appear at the top of the map and charge you slowly, but not be quite as strong. This means you’ll have to confront her eventually and her encounter will matter outside of “there’s just this unit I have to run away from” because you already have to run from the other units down south.
Chapter 7 is great, no complaints!
Fire Temple is probably my favourite map, it’s an absolute run-killer on Lunatic, but never something you can’t figure out because by that point you have a lot of resources. Confusingly though, I’ve had the chamber to the dragon open prior to killing both tacticians before, and so I was wondering what the trigger was?
Final map is a slaughter, very hard, no complaints outside of how some of the elemental gods seem to always die uselessly, but hey, I guess that’s their job.
The only other complaint I have is I wish for more content! But this is a very impressive hack, and an amazing concept. Very very well done.
Also… supports?
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Also whoops, I accidentally wrote a detailed strategy guide for the first couple chapters on Lunatic! If anyone is struggling, give it a read. I’ll continue it if there’s any interest.
Prologue: Lord Denzel
Prologue: Lord Denzel
For Lunatic, I choose Denzel. I’m aware that Rella is probably better in several ways, but Denzel has access to more experience in the Prologue, whereas Rella gets locked out of ranged attacks against mages and archers, and also doesn’t synergize with my Chapter 1 strategy. Avery is not an option because 4 moves is not enough to get through Thunder Temple, and promoting him early guaranteed means I’ll need a Master Seal I might not have. I did this map about a dozen times before I got the exact optimal strategy down, which involves breaking the wall early and sitting in the chokepoint while you feed Avery vulneraries. Once all the experience netting mobs are dead from Denzel’s Hand Axe and Avery dies, you hand off Rella’s Steel Sword to Denzel and book it while she blocks the last spider.
I was comfortably half way through level 6 by the time I escaped. Overall, I think the Prologue is balanced well, but I would like to be able to get a little bit more experience with Rella. A Wind Sword or a Light Brand would be overkill, however.
Chapter 1: Piersmaxxing
I roll Kira and Piers. I like Kira a lot because of early Killer Bow, Piers I will use to employ my patented Lunatic strategy known as Piersmaxxing, which involves isolating the cyclops and unethically farming exp with a low str sword user. Rella also works for this, but she often doubles earlier, making her get less exp overall. Piers also comes with a Lancereaver which is important for the armor knights guarding the light brand in Chapter 2. I would have preferred Tragan in the Kira slot because he trivializes the mages here and Chivalry is amazing in this chapter, however, this means I have a bow/sword/axe, which is a good starting team. Travis would be a reset unfortunately, as absolutely 0% of my Lunatic runs have a Travis that survives past Chapter 3, and that first slot is very important. Piers also gets the Steel Sword I stole from Rella before sacrificing her in the Prologue. Nearly perfect start.
On turn two, I pray I don’t get Dana. I get Crow. In previous Lunatic runs, I’ve noticed that any unit recruited at this encounter is always a dud. Dana is too slow to be anything but a staff bot, which isn’t at all monetarily feasible on a unit that doesn’t end up good, Crow is too weak defensively to hang against anything before he can promote, and Krun’zak, while good in other modes, can’t hit anything besides lances here, of which there are few. Krun is the best slot I think, because at least he can take a few hits before dying. My north village recruit is Belle, who can be very risky in this chapter, but she is able (unlike the other two recruits) to double attack the nearby cav with Iron Blade and kill him, which she does. Jaime is a brick unfortunately, as she has to be the one to dodgetank the forest during the choke point turn if you don’t get Crow, but Short Bow doesn’t do enough damage compared to the mages and Beacon Bow sometimes doesn’t land in her hands. Leth is outstanding and trivializes the rest of the chapter with Seal Defense, and the best recruit in this slot.
Turn three, Kristoph shows up. I was hoping for Skye because she can Javelin kite a few mages off the coast here to take pressure off the other team which is my strategy if I get her, and is a decent unit herself. Marina is the better pegasus, but she has no ranged weapons and struggles in this chapter, although can be very good against Nobu in Chapter 2. Kristoph I used once in hard mode, but he came up short and got benched for Kerzil. I give the exp house to Bella then rescue with Crow, and move all units south to the chokepoint near the shops. Crow takes a lot of damage here, but doesn’t get killed. Something to note, I don’t bother going to the south village to get the Bright Lance before the choke point turn, because it means one unit will not be in the fight and we want Crow to use a Javelin anyway. It’s enough to kill brigand and save the village until later.
Choke point turn happens, and my strategy here involves getting Belle into Wrath range, putting a fast unit on the forest tile (in this case Crow), and soaking as much other damage with Hand Axe Denzel as possible. This happens relatively according to plan, although Belle is left at 1HP after Wrath critting the mages, and Crow actually survives, but then dies to an unlucky poison tick. Kristoph can also take a shot from archers on this turn, making him equally as good as Skye for this chapter. After the other enemies are dead, I isolate the cyclops with Piers against the mountain, and then start Piersmaxxing. Piers hits the cyclops 21 times. I burn through the antitoxin doing this, and two vulneraries. Piers is now level 9. The rest of the chapter is easy and doesn’t involve thinking, although I do sell absolutely every item I don’t need. Unfortunately you cannot continue Piersmaxxing on Brent, because you’ll double him by now, and sometimes crit, and he hits very hard unlike the cyclops. I do however top off Kristoph on exp by using the Axe Reaver and the throne healing before moving on. Wasting Axe Reaver uses is less important than your lance user having higher stats for Nobu in Chapter 2.
I buy a Fire for Belle, a Steel Axe for Denzel, a Steel Sword for the upcoming Anna, a Hand Axe for the next axe recruit, 1 Light Rune, and as many Vulneraries as I can afford. Pass Scroll goes to whatever flier you get. Supply Scroll goes to whoever you think will live the longest. Angelic Robe usually goes to Leth or Belle, if you have Jaime at this point and haven’t reset, you better hope you get Curtis or you lose Chapter 2.
Overall, Chapter 1 seems very polished and balanced, and I like the mini-story about the cyclops rampaging through town. I also love to see an edited version of the second map from Sacred Stones.
Chapter 2: Kristoph-lock
Chapter 2 starts with Anna, who replaces Crow for our six man team. I like the recruit at the beginning of the chapter, as it means you can safely lose someone in Chapter 1 and not have to reset. Anna, though, is somewhat of a trap on Lunatic. It seems like you want to feed her body rings (you can set up to buy two from the shop in Chapter 3) and abuse Steal+, but there’s really not that much to steal in this hack, as most enemies only carry one weapon, and those that don’t are usually murders who will kill you after you rob them. She also cannot use the Light Brand here out of the gate because of her D rank sword skill. Still, she rounds out the team nicely for this chapter. I would also support Anna/Kai being in this slot, as getting an early Kai would be cool, and I also think a pre-leveled Anna would be interesting to see in Chapter 5.
My strategy for this chapter depends on if I get Curtis/Zor’tix or Edgar. With a magic attacker in this slot, you can reliably kill more enemies and wind up ahead before you have to deal with the sniper, but with Edgar you have to do some heavy turtling in the southwest.
Because I have Kristoph and Denzel, the only axe recruit I don’t want is Dallas, as he needs the Book of Skill from the cyclops chest to be viable here, and I would rather pass it to someone else. Yuri is a god, and makes a great Warshipper, as well as abusing Killer Axe for the entire game. Jericho, while the worst unit, allows you a very smooth Chapter 3 recruitment cycle with his 7 moves. I get Jericho, which is acceptable. Hopefully this means I can set up Chapter 3 easily and get Saria.
Of the three magic recruits, I get Edgar. I feel like Edgar is the best unit in the hack, and it isn’t particularly close. While the chapter is a little bit easier if you get Curtis because of his free light rune and ability to destroy the cyclops early, Edgar rounds out my specific team better. Zor’tix is too weak to use without stat boosters, although he comes in very clutch later on if you raise him right and promote him to a Vigilance tank. The worst combination of recruits would be Jericho/Zor’tix, so we’re 50/50 there.
Turn 1 I rush southwest, but Jericho rolls low enough STR he can’t kill the knight on the first turn, meaning there’s a high probability he dies before the rest of the team can show up. Luckily I have Edgar, who is surprisingly tanky, and because he can’t counter, the enemies target him instead and Jericho survives. I get the wall set up behind Jericho to the east and Piers to the north, and after drinking a few vulneraries we’re ready for the sniper. The idea here is to tank with a unit that won’t get doubled by the sniper in the choke point, wear her down with Fury, and hope to not get crit. This goes smoothly, and Piers picks up a few more levels.
After this, it’s important to swap out the axe recruit in the western choke point for a lance user. This is one of the reasons why Travis is a reset in Chapter 1, as he can’t tank this chokepoint to lock down Nobu while you get the Secret Book. Kristoph however, does this easily, even taking two crits per round from Nobu and surviving while Edgar heals him. Another thing to mention with Nobu’s AI is that he won’t try to stop you from taking the Secret Book if you fight him in the small path down south, so you’re safe to lock him there as long as you need. I rush down the cyclops with all the other units, grab the book, and kill Nobu. It would be optimal here to try to steal his elixir, but I haven’t tried that on Lunatic yet, and it risks Anna dying.
At the end of the chapter we get our wildcard recruit, which is unfortunately Dallas, although he’s better at fighting than Jericho in every way. But he’s much worse at being a 7 move decoy.
2 Likes
God damn, I did not expect a strategy guide when you mentioned a writeup! Thank you for both of these posts, lots of valuable feedback here. Jaime & Dana seem to have turned out a little weaker than I hoped, so I’ll be looking at ways to improve them. Recruiting multiple characters at once is definitely not intended behavior, so thank you for bringing that to my attention.
I wanted Ch3 to have two vendors & armories so that the player has access to them regardless of which direction they end up going - I didn’t want people to feel pigeonholed into going towards the shops.
Regarding the Fire Temple, the trigger is defeating either sub-commander, not both. If the chamber ever opened before you even killed one of them, though, then that would be a bug with event triggers 
Regarding the Water Temple, there are already two droppable pure waters on this map, on the General and the Wyvern Knight! I don’t blame you for missing these though, since the game throws a lot of items at you in a pretty short amount of time.
I doubt I will ever get around to writing fully fleshed out support convos for all 60 characters, but I was thinking of maybe adding pre-set supports for those who are related to each other, like what Pent and Louise have in FE7. Could add a new dynamic to deployment choices, like maybe one of your units is better stat-wise, but another one happens to have support with your strongest dude.
Can’t speak for others, but I am definitely interested in more of the strategy guide! I love seeing the creativity of people who are almost certainly better at FE than me.
3 Likes
I’m currently in the middle a playthrough and I’m having a ton of fun. Chapter 5 is a wall.
I have one major bug to note. Jules-Priest using an anima tome (right now I’ve only used a thunder tome) will cause the game to lock in battle animation if his attack does not kill the opponent. I’m not sure if it applies to anyone else but it’s definitely caused me to restart a few chapters if I forget to disable combat anims.
2 Likes
Sizable 1.10 update now in the Drive!
Changelog
BALANCE CHANGES:
- Dana gains +1 base defense and res, as well as +5% to her defense growth.
- Kristoph gains +1 base strength and skill
- Skye gains +1 base constitution and defense
- Saria gains +1 base strength
- Jules now joins with a Heal staff in his inventory as well
- Jaime’s personal skill is now Swap instead of Focus
- Summoners no longer gain Staves on promotion, to more clearly distinguish them from Druids
- Phantoms gain +6 base strength / strength cap and spawn with steel axes, to enable more uses beyond baiting
- Wyvern Lord(F) gains 1 less spd on promotion and 1 more strength - was weird for this to give more spd and less str than falco
- Priests promote into Druids instead of Sages now (kind of a bugfix; sages are not staff wielders in this game)
BUGFIXES/POLISH:
- Ice Bow / Flame Lance debuffs now apply properly
- Shock & Awe description now correctly says 6 AS instead of 5
- Ch5 now displays a turn counter to indicate that the player should really finish before turn 12
- Removed a spoiler from the class reel
- Fixed a bug which could prevent the ch6 Master Seal chest from opening
- Fixed typos in Avery’s character ending
- Fixed bugs which would sometimes give the player multiple units from an encounter
- Fixed a crash which occurred when Priest Jules would attack with animations on
NEW CONTENT:
- Tragan palette from Shark3143
Also, here’s a sneak peek at what’s currently being worked on:
7 Likes
this seems so interesting owo
1 Like
I think what actually happened is I chugged all the the Pure Water I got and still got absolutely rinsed by Bara, but thanks for reminding me
1 Like
Hard Mode is fittingly hard 
Got my first full on wipe on chapter 5, retried it and then got wiped again on chapter 6.
A wee few palettes
Excited for Ashe starter!
Reese
Tobias
Tengu
Teeth
Shaelyn
I put both druid palettes because I liked how m!druid turned out way more.
I made kira palettes too but then she got some that were better so >.> gj sharks
A very notable (and funny) bug
Killing Parces before Von Krell dies causes the game to softlock if Von Krell dies afterward.
2 Likes
I made kira palettes too but then she got some that were better so >.> gj sharks
If you plan on contributing palettes, feel free to ask me on discord what I’m planning to work on so there’s no wasted effort. I’m slowly chipping away at characters roughly in join order.
2 Likes
Thank you for these palettes, they look great! I was able to import all of Ash’s palettes, but the others gave me a “Palette order/values do not align” error, and Builder could not rebuild them in a way which was still usable. Except Teeth, she didn’t give an error at all but just looked kinda blurry / incorrect after importing (see pic below). Not sure what’s going on here but let me know if there’s a simple way to fix on my end!
Hope’s Trail 1.11 is now in the drive, featuring a very significant gameplay addition: Chaos Mode.
Chaos Mode
For players who desire greater variety and truly novel challenges, CHAOS MODE is available. This randomizes your starter choices, and merges all the regular encounter pools into two very big encounter pools.
- POOL A includes all unpromoted units, including Anna.
- POOL B includes all promoted units.
The three main dancers are included in both pools, but you cannot recruit a second dancer after getting one. As with Classic mode, Rufina will join if a main dancer gets killed (even if they get killed in the prologue!)
To play in Chaos mode, simply choose “yes” when Anna prompts you at the beginning of the prologue.
Please also note that Chaos mode disables almost all recruitment dialogue, which will affect the story experience. It is also far less tightly balanced. For this reason, I only recommend it after becoming familiar with Classic Hope’s Trail.
Full 1.11 changelog
NEW CONTENT:
- Added Chaos Mode
- Slightly edited male swordmaster animation from Shark3143
- Piers palette from Shark3143
- Travis palette from Shark3143
- Ash palette from Genuine_Angus_B33F
- Shaelyn palette from Genuine_Angus_B33F and Shark3143
BALANCE CHANGES:
- Tengu: +1 base skill and +2 base luck
BUGFIXES/POLISH:
- Female Warlocks no longer use the hand axe animation for melee attacks
- Fixed a crash that occurred if Von Krell (somehow) died after Parces
- Crit+20 now correctly gives 20 crit instead of 15
- Fixed the names and descriptions of gorgons which spawn in the Fire Temple
- The Fire Temple gorgons have had their stats brought up to match the other lategame enemies (+7 hp, +1 skill, +1 speed)
- Tengu’s dark rank will now correctly start at B instead of C when spawning as a wildcard
- Adjusted the ch7 boss battle quote
- Nuri’s death quote is no longer FE8 Joshua’s
9 Likes
Oh damn, that’s very cool, just when I thought about doing another run but being too familiar for Hard and kinda put off by Lunatic stat threshholds.
Are you still guaranteed to get a Dancer/Thief by a certain point or could they show up in the late game/not at all?
1 Like
Dancers and thieves are not guaranteed in chaos mode. Getting a dancer before endgame is extremely likely though, since there are three of them and they exist in both encounter pools. Getting a thief is less likely, so you may need to stock up on keys.