[FE8][Complete] Guard of Avelon (5 Chapters)

[Kyrads]

Download Guard of Avelon

This hack is based around extreme stat deflation, sort of a concept hack to play around in the design space to see how far I can push down the stats and still have a functional, fun fire emblem experience with everything stripped back.
It also has a plot but I can’t promise a groundbreaking narrative in 5 chapters!
Hopefully for the denizens of FEU this should be an interesting little project to waste a couple hours on, I hope people find it fun!
As always, feedback is greatly appreciated and always a treat to get so feel free to leave your thoughts below.

Credits

Development and Writing:

• Kyrads

Patches and ASM:
01command_hack - Hextator, 7743
16 tracks 12 sounds - Argo, Brendor
Actions After Support (Contemporary Style) - circleseverywhere, 7743
Actions After Talk (Contemporary Style) - circleseverywhere, 7743
Add Event: Get/Set Unit Status - 7743
Adjust Mode Coefficient Experience Gain - VennoBennu
Anti Huffman Patch - Hextator, 7743
Cavalry Rescue Value for Men - 7743
Cavalry Rescue Value for Women - 7743
Change Easy and Normal Mode Penalties into Bonuses - Shuusuke
Change formula of automatic growth auto level of enemy - stan
Change image in upper right of the preparations - 7743
Change Maximum Luck Cap - 7743
Change Minimum Damage From 0 to 1 - midori patch
Changing the Universal Doubling Threshold (attack speend) - macplustrees
Convert Chapter Titles to Text_ver2 - circleseverywhere, 7743
Disables the Prep Store for a Particular Map 7743
drumfix - circleseverywhere
Fe8 Battle Stats with Anims Off ver2 - Vesley, Tequila
FE8 Display Growths - Tequila
FE8 Null Move Display - stan
Fix CAM1/CAMERA2 going out of bounds = TR143
Fixed Growths Mode - TR143
HPBars_with_warnings - circleseveywhere, Tequila
Limit Weapon Rank Display - jjl2357, Blademaster, Hexator, Tequilla
Limitless Trading - aera
Map Danger Zone (Select: Toggle) - circleseverywhere
Modify Number of Supports - Brendor
ModularMinimugBox 2018 (VisionQuest Style with ItemList) - Pandan, Scraiza, ZaneAvernathy
Multi Class Pick Skill - kao, 7743
Multi Tile Marker Display multiple exit markers on the map - 7743
Playable Character HP Limit - 7743
Prevent Freeze for Camera Event 0x26 - 7743
Remove arrow wiggling advancing RN - Crazycolorz5
Remove Support Viewer - Aera
Remove the menu that displays the support list from the preparation screen - Shuusuke
Set Default Option “Animation” - 7743
Set Default Option “Cursor etc” - 7743
Set Preperations Store Pricing - aera
Set Staff Experience - 7743
Show Heal Amount - Tequila
Skip Intro and Class Roll - 7743
Skip World Map Fix (Remove World Map Completely) - 7743
Skip: Game Opening Demo - Fati
Skip: Opening (OPENING_CUT) - 7743
Sound NIMAP - circleseverywhere
Sound NIMAP2 - Alusq
Sound Room 100% Unlocked - 7743
Stat Bar Max Length - 7743
Toggle Difficulty Select Skip - Stan, 7743
Toggle New Game Intro Cutscene - circleseverywhere
Toggle New Game Text - circleseverywhere
Toggle: Health & Safety Warning - circleseverywhere
Upper Limit of Moving Power - beikehanmu
Vulnerary Heal Amount - 7743
256-Color Title Background - Leonarth

Portraits:
Aria - Levin64
Eloisa - Laurent Lacroix
Dariel - Knabepicer
Simone - RandomWizard
Six - Levin64
Milo - RandomWizard
Kale - Kyrads
Eileen - SSHX
Bryan - Laurent Lacroix
Reena - Laurent Lacroix
Saami - Levin64
Luke - Scottythebody
Eli - Levin64
Baldrick - Toa
Mavis - MournfulRelic/Kyrads
Georg - Avalon
Gaum - Roze

Animations:
Fencer - GabrielKnight
Knight (Sword) - TheBlindArcher
Mercenary Repalette - Eldritch Abomination, Knabepicer
Berserker - DerTheVaporeon
M!Pegasus Knight - SixThousandHulls
F!Mercenary - TheBlindArcher
Thief - Skitty, GabrielKnight, Pikmin1211, Maiser6
F!Fighter - Black Mage

Weapon Icons:
Javelin, Hand Axe, Dagger, Iron Poleaxe, Steel Poleaxe, Iron Pike:

• Kyrads

Greatbow - Lisandra Brave

User Interface & Other Graphics:
Stat Screen - feels
Title Screen - Samuel Earp

Music:
All FE3 Music - Sme
FE5 Squadron B - Dolkar
FE12 Before Battle - Scraiza

Playtesting:

• Leche
• Pandan
• Sdaht
• Bpat
• Godspetturtle
• Moris

Special Thanks:

• 7743 for FEBuilder
• FEU community for all the amazing resources and support for hacking!

Changelog

V1.1

• Graphics Fully Updated (Title Screen Bug Fixed)
• All Portraits and Palettes Done
• Writing Tidied Up
• New Final Boss Map Theme
• Various Balance Changes to Classes, Characters & Items
• Talisman Buffed
• Various Enemy Placement & Equipment Adjustments
• Terrain Healing Buffed
• Misc Errors and Bugs Fixed
• Weapon Experience Gain Improved

[Pandan]

Cool hack, congrats on release! Was fun to playtest.

[ArcherBias]

i remember really enjoying the two maps i tested forever ago, very fun game, check it out!

[Silver-Star]

I recognized this one. This one is from FEE3 2021 which presents a video about it. Guess I have to watch it in the meantime.

[JrpgAddict]

@Kyrads

This was a pretty nice hack with decent story and pretty hard difficulty with the reduced stats, shame its so short!

[Kyrads]

Appreciate that you enjoyed it, glad you had fun!

[sdaht]

I’m a tad late, but as a playtester I can say that I had a blast with this project and its shorter form factor makes it a high possibility that I’ll revisit the hack at some point. Kyrads has done a really great job on this so I hope that everyone else enjoys GoA as much as I did.

[Frog]

Finished it this evening, it was a nice experience! I really enjoyed it.
I wrote some notes while playing & after finishing it. Sorry in advance for the wall of text, but hopefully there’s something useful here.

General notes

• The concept of inflated stats was super cool, and quite unlike any other hack I’ve played.

• I really appreciated it being only 5 chapters long - I tend to rarely finish hacks due to their length, so a hack I could finish in 2 days was pretty nice.

• Even though there was only a minimal plot, it was enjoyable. I liked Six and Reena, and it had some nice moments, like the old man at the end of chapter 2. The dialogue itself, while a bit unpolished at places, also helped give it a unique identity - I think I will forever associate “gods” with this hack now

• I liked the use of (almost) solely FE3 music for this hack, especially as it had strong FE1 vibes. However, by the final chapter the map theme became a bit annoying - I wonder why you didn’t use Holy War (which was in the sound room) for it?

• While using fixed growths was obviously super important for this hack, as someone who never used it before, I didn’t really understand it at first. It became clearer after the first few level ups, but it felt weird always only getting HP with units on the first level, then an amazing level-up on the second. Also, once some auto-levelled units like the fighters joined, it became even more confusing - would they get an HP only level-up, or an amazing one? I know this is more about the fixed growth patch than this hack, but since every stat point matters here, it would be nice to have an explanation somewhere.

• Speaking of growths, there’s a minor bug where the HP label doesn’t appear next to the HP growth.

• Does this game use 1RN? Because I missed an absurd amount of 80-90 hit rates, including missing both attacks of an 88% hit once. Maybe I was just super unlucky, and I did manage to recover from these misses in most cases, but it was pretty annoying.

• I did like the use of Gaiden-style minimum damage of 1, though - especially considering the HP stats in this game.

Chapter by chapter

Most of my nit-picks are super minor and probably my fault for not paying attention/misreading stuff, but I still thought I’d mention them.

Chapter 1:

• It was quite easy, but served as a nice introduction to the unique mechanics of this hack. I liked it.

• However, I quickly forgot about the 6 turns thing and turtled the entire chapter. This is mostly on me for not paying attention, but perhaps a reminder 1-2 turns before the 6th turn would help?

• This will obviously get fixed in the future, but having 3 different characters using the same placeholder portrait in the intro was super confusing.

Chapter 2:

• It wasn’t super memorable.

• At first, I assumed both paths had a similar difficulty, so I sent equal sized “armies” there. However, it quickly turned out that the bottom part had much more enemies, due to enemies in the bottom charging you while the top had mostly only move to attack AIs. This led me to almost losing units in the bottom path while the top ones just sat around turtling, before diverting almost my entire army to the bottom. It wasn’t a huge problem, just felt a bit weird.

• I thought that the ruins explanation included the small house ruins and tried “visiting” them too, before realizing you only meant the ruined villages. I only wasted one turn on that, but still.

Chapter 3:

• A lot was going on here, especially compared to the first two. It was quite fun.

• The NPCs had terrible AI, even for green units, and especially for recruitable ones - Bryan committed suicide by attacking an enemy with 1 HP, even though Aria was only a few tiles away from him… Reena only survived because an ~80% attack missed her. I also had 2 turns where Aria was 1 tile away from being able to talk to them, but due to Bryan committing suicide and Reena running away from her, I couldn’t recruit them. I only managed to recruit Reena on turn 6…

• The mercenary moves before the boss. This is super minor but prevented me from killing them - I placed Simone to bait the boss, but accidently baited the mercenary instead, who blocked the boss from attacking Simone. I should’ve probably accounted for that, but didn’t think about it until it was too late (it was turn 7).

• Using torches on the fighters to mark that they’re attacking the villages was a cool idea, but I didn’t really understand why you didn’t just use brigands - especially since it was only these two fighters. I forgot about that gimmick by turn 4/5, and almost lost a house because of that.

Chapter 4:

• I really enjoyed this chapter. I always love it when chapters encourage you to split your army, and catching up to the thieves was both non-trivial and doable. The pincer reinforcements were also really good - I lost two units to them (Luke and Eli), but that was entirely my fault for trying a bad manoeuvre and spreading my units too thin. Overall, this was my favourite chapter in the hack.

• This felt like a pretty big difficulty spike compared to the previous levels - as I’ve said, I lost two units here, where I never felt anyone was at a risk of dying in the previous ones (except for the suicidal NPCs, but that was out of my control). But that’s more of “the previous levels could’ve been slightly harder” problem than a “this level was too hard” one.

• This was also the first level where I really felt the deflated stats - nobody in my army except for Simone could survive more than one hit.

• One thing that I noticed in this chapter is that Aria can’t access the supply, which could potentially cause a soft-lock if someone sends the door key to the supply and lets Eli die. I assume most people won’t do that, but still.

Chapter 5:

• I had to restart once in this chapter, so I’ll start by talking separately about my two attempts. In general though, the main problem for me was that I had no way of opening the left door without Eli (who died in the previous chapter).

• First attempt:

  • I split my army again, with my three best units (Six, Simone and Saami) on the right alongside Nell, and everyone else on the left. After a few turns, I realized that nobody dropped a door key on the left side, so most of my units (including Aria) were just stuck there.

  • Around that time, the bottom reinforcements arrived. At first, I tried killing all of them, but after a few turns realized they were infinite (and way too powerful to actually defeat), and tried retreating to the breakable wall, but it was too late. Slowly and agonizingly, all my units died, before an archer finally killed Aria and freed me from this suffering.

  • While this massacre was happening in the left side, my other team defeated everyone on the right side and opened the door to the boss with little resistance. It was a bit absurd.

• Second attempt:

  • I just completely ignored the left side, and just sent everyone to the right. This led to most of my units sitting around uselessly for the first half of the map, as there really weren’t that many enemies on the right side.

  • Around the time that I reached the hallway before the door, the bottom reinforcements started reaching me, so I baited them one-by-one mostly using Dariel.

  • Eventually, I was stuck between the armours and the reinforcements (it was at that time that Milo missed two 88% attacks against an armour…), so I started actually killing some reinforcements with most of my army, while Six, Simone and Milo killed the guards of the boss.

  • In the end, I managed to defeat the boss and seize just as the reinforcements were about to overwhelm my army. It was very tight, but also super satisfying to beat the chapter with zero casualties.

• All in all, it was a nice chapter and I enjoyed it in the end, but the lack of a door key on the left side kinda ruined it for me.

Endgame team

She was a pretty underwhelming lord - having just 1 strength, terrible strength growth, and using the weakest weapon type (swords) led to her being borderline useless, especially once Saami joined. She was still usable in the first three chapters, but in the last two, she was almost completely dead weight.

My favourite character in the game, both personality wise and gameplay wise. Too bad they don’t have a portrait…

My other MVP. I don’t think anything in the game ever did more than 3 damage to her, and 90% of the time it was only 1. I’m a weird person that likes using archers and armours even in vanilla, but Simone is definitely one of the best armours I ever used, even compared to other hacks which usually buff them - and giving her more than 1 weapon type (and especially negating her weakness to axes, the only weapon type that could potentially deal damage to her) made her borderline broken, in my opinion. She truly carried the team for me the entire game.

Saami was pretty good, especially once I gave her the Iron Blade. She one-rounded most enemies, and could take a hit. She made Aria look even worse…

I love axe users, and since Reena was my only one, I probably invested too much into her. While she had an annoying tendency to leave enemies on 1-2 HP even with Steel Axe, she was still very useful, and being basically the only character in this game that could deal double digit damage is obviously a big plus.

Dariel was okay, but felt a bit outclassed by the rest. Still, I enjoyed using him.

Milo was obviously super useful as the only playable mage in the game, but was pretty unmemorable.

Elosia was a pretty underwhelming Jagen - her stats were pretty terrible, and her only use was the Silver Lance, which I only used a couple of times. I kept expecting her to be a decent tank like most Jagens, and was disappointed every time. She still managed to survive to the endgame somehow, though.

Kale… existed, I guess.

The 0% defence growth was disappointing - what’s the point of giving exp to healers if I can’t tank with them?
(Not really, although I do enjoy tanking with healers)

Two healers are better than one.

TLDR; I liked the mechanics, Six & Simone MVPs, chapter 5 was really annoying without Eli. Great hack!

[Kyrads]

Hey sorry for the late reply, wow lot of thoughts here, just wanted to say I really appreciate the thorough feedback and I’m glad you enjoyed it, it means a lot!

RE: General Notes

I definetly feel you regarding long hacks, always burn out and don’t always finish them so glad this scratched your itch!

• Glad you liked the FE3 music, I really wanted that retro kind of feel to the game and I felt FE3 had the perfect music. Regarding the last map, I did consider Holy War however I felt given the final boss was just a bandit it felt like it didn’t match the tone and I couldn’t really find anything else that worked for me, but I get where you’re coming from on that. Might take another look for a different tune to use maybe from fe4 or fe5.

• Good point about the fixed growths, it might’ve been worth mentioning it causes some funny starting levels.

• Regarding HP growth display I believe that’s just part of the growth display patch I used, and unfortunately I don’t know anything about MSS to fix it.

• The game does not use 1RN, did consider it but ended up passing it up, guess you just got unlucky there I’m afraid.

• Yeah the gaiden damage was suggested to me and it made the game so much better since, given the deflation there was originally an annoying amount of 0 damage flying around.

RE: Chapter By Chapter

Chapter 1:

• Glad you liked the difficulty, it used to be a bit harder but I felt it might’ve been a bit too tight for players.

• Good point about the turn thing as well, I’m pretty forgetful myself so it def wouldn’t hurt to have some kind of little reminder for the player.

• Def get what you mean about the portraits, hopefully will be addressed soon!

Chapter 2:

• Honestly I agree with everything you say here, the map was a bit of a dud and probably too early for me to try and introduce a split. Might try move some enemies around and see if it improves things. I will also see about changing the text to make it clearer that it’s full size villages and not houses that have items.

Chapter 3:

• I must’ve been getting lucky with the Green AI to not run into the same kind of issues, I’ll have a look at making them behave a bit better, Bryan suiciding is particularly bad.

• Understand the point about the mercenary, it is a tad frustrating. I’m not sure if I’ll change the order but I’ll bear it in mind.

• Can’t take credit for the torch thing, I cribbed that from Sacred Echoes so thanks Gamma. I didn’t use brigands because I was using a minimalist class list since given how small the stats were there just wasn’t much need for multiple classes with the same weapon types. However you make a good point. Might give them one of those flashing objective icons or something.

Chapter 4:

• Fellow split map appreciator, love it. I’m glad you enjoyed this one! Means a lot, especially since I had been kind of unsure about it and it had gone through a lot of revisions.

• Good to know about the difficulty, I always thought it was harder but not that much harder than 3, I think I did intend for the game to slowly ramp up the difficulty with each subsequent chapter though so this works for me.

• You make a good point about softlocking there, I generally prefer no supply on lord but I may have to reconsider with the softlock potential.

Chapter 5:

• Probably worth me adding a droppable door key on that side, Eli is quite a crucial unit to lose unfortunatley, plus it’d be easy for someone to not pay enough attention and send Eli right.
  It’s probably worth noting that this hack isn’t really intended for permadeath and is more meant to be played resetting for deaths. I didn’t want to do game over on every unit though because that feels pretty unpleasant. I may want to add something to the opening chapter explaining this.

• Yeah those reinforcements are intended to be a soft time limit to the map, I may want to either make them lesser in number or indicate them better before the map.

• Glad you enjoyed it, I hope the flow of reinforcements wasn’t too early, would you think it should be pushed back or was it good difficulty?

RE: Endgame Team

• Interesting thoughts on the units, I’ve been hesitant to buff Aria but perhaps she should have an extra point of strength or something if she’s underwhelming. A few people have said similar.

• I’m really glad you liked Six’s personality! He was probably the most fun to write so I’m glad it came across well in such a short hack, especially while lacking a mug.

• I like armour’s and archers a lot even in vanilla too so I feel you there. While I can definetly agree she is powerful, she is restricted by that 4 mov and I think without the power she has/dual weapons she would probably be a pretty unattractive option for players. Particularly as she would get wrecked by fighters without swords. However I may consider adding a few more anti armour weapons into maps to balance her out a bit.

• Surprised at your take on milo, most people think he’s the best unit in the game lmfao. Also I’m curious but what is giving him the +4 res in that screenshot?

• Surprised Eloisa wasn’t too good for you, I def nerfed her bulk a few times to stop her being a snowball but maybe I went too hard doing that?

• Kale does exist honestly

• I do love healtanks true, gonna give her 10 defence. And two healers sure is a thing that is good.

[Frog]

Replies

Glad you enjoyed it, I hope the flow of reinforcements wasn’t too early, would you think it should be pushed back or was it good difficulty?

No, I think it was good difficulty, but indicating them better before the map would certainly help.

Surprised at your take on milo, most people think he’s the best unit in the game lmfao. Also I’m curious but what is giving him the +4 res in that screenshot?

I think it was a mixture of personal bias and there being enough offensive characters that I didn’t really need another one - especially one as fragile as him. Six and Reena could defeat most enemies that Milo could, while still having 2 range and being able to take a hit. I actually found myself using Dariel - a character I didn’t much care about either - more than Milo, simply due to me needing more tanky units than offensive ones. Milo was still very useful for armours and mages, though.

The +4 res in the screenshot is from a Pure Water I used before luring the mage near the boss (I took the screenshots on the turn I seized).

Surprised Eloisa wasn’t too good for you, I def nerfed her bulk a few times to stop her being a snowball but maybe I went too hard doing that?

Like Milo, Eloisa was just yet another offensive character in a cast filled with them. I didn’t really need her in the early game except for weakening and some rescuing, and by the later chapters she was outclassed by pretty much all the other melee characters. Sure, her Silver Lance was powerful, but it still could only one-round mercenaries, and I think I used it only 4 times in the game. Eloisa was basically a marginally better Kale. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in my opinion, though - I’m just used to more tanky Jagnes, and Eloisa wasn’t one.

[Kyrads]

Thanks for the feedback again, all super valuable stuff. Interesting perspective about offensive vs defensive characters, not an angle i’d really considered it from. May consider buffing Eloisa’s buff as I do like bulkier jagens, I was just worried about her being too good given that she never actually has an opportunity to fall off.

[Valena-NO.23]

This is a great game. I hope to translate it into Chinese. I wonder if you will allow it?

[diealot]

Great Fun and Simple Hack about a noble and her band of soldiers fighting bandit and rescuing innocent people from bandit.
My only regret is not being able to recruit the 2 axe fighter in chapter 3 Especially Reena because they die so fast.

My Best Units which I use Cheat to get to max stat(100% growth rate and fast exp)

Bug to report: After finishing the game I get this screen:

[Kyrads]

Hi there, sorry about the late reply!
I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the hack, you’re more than welcome to translate, more people being able to play the better.
Though I am planning an update to add missing portraits and some other game tweaks so you may wish to wait for that, but its your call, thank you again!

[Kyrads]

Hey, thank you for playing the hack, I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it!
The fighters are def hard to reach in time, it’s def a shout to make them less at risk of dying.

Interesting unit screenshots lmao, never expected to see maxed out stats in a deflation hack but hey!

I’m aware of the title screen bug I just kinda was too lazy to fix it, but i’ll do that in the next update haha

[AuraWolf]

Played through most of this on Tuesday (did only chapter 1 sometime last week), wanted to get my thoughts down before I forget to/become lazy.

General

I had a pretty good time with the hack! While its shortness could be disappointing, I also think it makes the mod very approachable; it was definitely a big reason as to why I was motivated to give it a try.

The deflated stats, of course, was another thing that drew my attention. I’d say my opinion on them is basically neutral after playing, though there is one main concern I have with its implementation: effective damage vs knights. Rapier/Armorslayer with WTD are non-issues to whichever knight they’re targeting. There’s probably a few different ways to tackle this (I have my own idea, but I’d prefer to avoid shilling my own stuff haha), but the way it currently is, knights are a bit stronger than you’d expect.

Chapters

Chapter 1 and 2 were nice and simple. I don’t think I have much to add.

My favorite chapter is definitely Chapter 3. The enemy pressure wasn’t as high as I was expecting from a Survive map, but the amount of side objectives makes it an enjoyable experience. Based on reading the thread, my experience may have been a bit different from everyone else, though; I was able to counterattack the knight on enemy phase 1 with Milo, and that drew Bryan over to finish that enemy off.

Chapter 4 was also good, though I think I’m a little less fond of it because it felt a little slow towards the end (besides the sudden reinforcements that came out of the door, I guess). My Thunder purchase in the previous chapter also felt unnecessary since one of the chests in this chapter has one (I ended up selling one of them and a chest key for another Fire tome). However, I will say that this chapter does a much better job at giving your newest units a chance to shine compared to Chapter 3.

After the warning about the enemy equipment quality, I was expecting more of a jump in difficulty for the last chapter, but it wasn’t too noticeable besides the Elfire mage (the killer weapons were dealt with by either Milo or Simone). For the sake of ironmanning, I think the chapter’s still in a fine place. If anything, the repeated map theme was the main thing didn’t make me feel like I was playing the finale. It was cool to see a boss that has both the potential to OHKO a lot of your units and plenty of leeway for beating him.

Turncounts:
Chapter 1 (5 turns)
Chapter 2 (8 turns)
Chapter 3 (6 turns)
Chapter 4 (11 turns)
Final (12 turns)

Characters

She’s a little underwhelming compared to most of the cast, but depending on your goals, that might not even be a bad thing. She doubles fighters, but Milo and Simone don’t really struggle to deal with them in the first place. With how the math plays out vs knights, using a Rapier doesn’t do much better than just whacking them with an Iron Sword. On the other hand, I don’t think I ever used the Horseslayer because she started doubling cavaliers.

He’s ok. Dariel probably requires less upkeep than Aria to do whatever you’d want out of him, but he doesn’t really offer much for using him, so he’s easily one of my least used units.

(x1 Dracoshield, x1 Talisman)
Probably one of the best units, if not the best. He gets a lot of mileage out of levels, to the point where he’s a much better answer vs fighters than Aria is. Even if you don’t use him a lot, his chip damage can still let him contribute without being a nuisance.

(x1 Speedwing)
A bit overshadowed due to how strong Milo is and a complete lack of enemy fliers (If they did exist, they definitely weren’t memorable encounters), whereas there’s a decent amount of enemy knights, but Six is still useful enough. Didn’t get too much usage out of the Longbow, but chip damage is still useful.

(x1 Energy Ring)
Making knights 5 mov is a very popular decision these days, so it was interesting to use a 4 mov knight with better weapon triangle control. Simone is roughly as good as Milo, but I think that can also be dependent on how willingly the player is to ferry her to useful positions. Her ability to enemy phase isn’t really contested by the rest of the cast, even with the existence of effective weaponry (due to deflation) and the 1 damage minimal change.

Kale is alright. In the later chapters, I think I mostly used him for ferrying around Simone. He can’t really take off into becoming a juggernaut, but he doesn’t offer any advantages over using Eloisa. Speaking of her…

She’s solid. Her bulk isn’t anywhere close to as good as Simone, and I found Milo’s offense a lot better overall. With that said, that’s not really fair to hold against Eloisa in particular. Her mobility and Silver Lance are still incredible boons to the team.

Yep, healers are useful. (Just gonna put Nell here too because I don’t have anything unique insight for him)

Bryan having a Hammer is nice due to knights being present on both sides of the split in Chapter 4 and Final, but you could probably just as easily use it with Reena (unless he dies with it I guess). Pretty minor contributions besides that, I think?

(x1 Angelic Robe)
A good filler combat unit. If the player doesn’t have a strong enough Milo, I can easily see her leaving a much stronger impression.

Ferrying over/through forests in Chapter 4 was nice, and chip damage against mages was at least something. That’s about it.

Looking back on the hack, Eli’s capabilities played out a lot differently than I expected. The anti-turtle thieves in both Chapter 4 and Final can very easily reach the treasure before you get Eli over there, so using Eli doesn’t really reward you besides taking their Chest Key(s) if you want extra money. On the other hand, the Dagger gives Eli a bit of a Gotoh feel for dealing with Gaum (I didn’t even realize how effective he’d be as an answer to Gaum until I randomly checked the battle forecast preview). As a thief, he’s a bit disappointing, but as a unit overall, he definitely fulfills a niche.

Bugs

The generics in Chapter 1 use this vanilla description.

The Chapter 2 boss has a C-rank in Lances.

Thank you for the hack!

[Kyrads]

Hey there, sorry for the late reply been a bit sick the last few days. Thank you so much for the feedback, im really glad to hear you had a good time with it!

General

The approachability of it due to the short length was def a goal for me, plus it was just a lil experimental thing for me so i didn’t wanna go wild on it. That’s an interesting note about effectiveness I hadn’t considered when designing though you’re right, I’m ngl though I do like me some very strong armour knights so I’m not surprised.

Chapters

Really useful chapter feedback, I think 3 is definetly my favourite as well so I’m glad it came off well. I def had issues with the pacing of 4 so I’m certainly not surprised. I’m ngl I kinda forgot I didn’t sort out a unique map theme, was kinda hard finding something that fit the retro vibe I was going for + final battle + bandit map, most big map themes in fe are not for bandits haha.

Characters

I def can’t address everything here but I will say, Aria being the best definetly was my goal, though she could certainly see a little bit of a tune up, it’s really hard to differentiate units at such a highly granular level though, just 1 str is a big buff for her compared to others.

Milo being incredible to nobodies surprise, I do like threatening mages so I’m not surprised he’s good, though perhaps he could’ve been tuned down a touch.

Somehow never considered the lack of fliers in terms of archer viability but god you’re right yeah, missing a huge thign there. Def think the longbow needs a buff it’s kinda flaccid.

Really interested to hear your feedback on Simone, I personally view infantry movement knights as a bit of a bandaid like 1-2 bows, so I’m glad you got good usage out of her in spite of her movement! I’m glad her EP strengths are uncontested as well. She def requires effort to make the movement worth it but I’m glad you got the payoff!

I had never considered Eli’s capabilities against Gaum but yeah god it really is a match made in heaven given Gaum’s high defence, bit weird to have the side thief feel like the gotoh though haha. Interesting point about Eli’s thief utility but you’re right, a lot of the objectives don’t really require him so he can be a bit underutilised there.

But yeah thanks again for playing and thanks for catching those bugs as well, really appreciate you taking the time to give your feedback, so glad you enjoyed!

[Kyrads]

Hey all, finally got around to fully finishing Guard of Avelon, now with a full cast of portraits, polished map design, balance and tidied up writing. Check out the dropbox link here or in the OP for the current version.
If you have any feedback or just enjoyed the game feel free to post! I hope you enjoy!

Download Guard of Avelon

Changelog

V1.1

• Graphics Fully Updated (Title Screen Bug Fixed)
• All Portraits and Palettes Done
• Writing Tidied Up
• New Final Boss Map Theme
• Various Balance Changes to Classes, Characters & Items
• Talisman Buffed
• Various Enemy Placement & Equipment Adjustments
• Terrain Healing Buffed
• Misc Errors and Bugs Fixed

[Kyrads]

This is really late so I apologise but if you’re still interested in creating a translation and haven’t already, now would be a good time as I’m done with all the important polish for the hack. Thank you again for your offer regardless.

[Valena-NO.23]

Dear author, thank you for reminding me. I’m busy recently, but I’ll make time.