Angelic robe and Elysian whip. Worth warping Shiela there, usually. I’d give her a vuln and an elixir to be safe. Also no harm in warping a green unit there with her if she needs help. All the friendly cavs in that chapter have swords so should be handy against the fighters.
Also, Miley with her PRF or Donnal with a longbow can chip enemies from below the NE treasure room, if Sheila can lure them into range.
It’s one of the game’s hardest chapters - good luck! 
Im handling it well my crew is getting lucky with green unit heals(the lord needed it) and all I need is 2 more turns to win pray to rngjesus nobody gets unlucky crit and death
Idk if it’s just me but all my units are getting such crappy level ups. I’ve leveled up most to level 5 or 6 and every time they’ve leveled up 1 MAYBE 2 stats per level. I’m not digging it boss. Making the game pretty hard ngl.
Growth rates can be checked in-game. You might be getting unlucky. up to you whether to restart this cursed run, or rise against this challenge and succeed despite the odds being stacked against you. Good luck out there 
That happened to me as well on my first run. Specially with the main character. They got better eventually.
Hi everyone - just uploaded v1.6 of The Dark Amulet. It’s a small patch in advance of FEE3 coming out later this year. Just a bit of polish I’d been meaning to do. 
v1.6
It has been a long time since my playthrough of TDA, but I remember the amount of reinforcements being generally more of a slog than a challenge and one of my biggest problems with the gameplay so I’m much more likely to recommend the hack to someone else now. I also remember feeling similar to pandan in terms of being disappointed with the writing of the female characters, but in my case I was more disappointed by specific spoilers than by general flirtyness.
Zeddard’s motive of revenge for his mother not being mentioned more. Even after he was corrupted by the amulet’s bloodlust it seems strange for him to act like he’s forgotten the inciting incident of his hatred and now just wants to kill.
Zeddard thinking that Sophia has forgiven him for poisoning her before she stabs him comes off less like he’s stupid and more like he thinks she’s stupid. Also Zeddard poisoning her at all seems like it directly conflicts with his motivation. He hates that his father got away with exploiting his mother but he himself is willing to exploit his wife and hold her as hostage against the man who actually cares about her. Again, this feels like the amulet is completely replacing Zeddard’s original motivation instead of twisting it and telling him that violence is the way to get what he wants like it did with Edric.
Velania was boring as a “femme fatale + cultist.” Especially with the Sleeping God having a slightly more interesting angle than most dark gods it felt like there was a lot of missed potential to ask why she would be a cultist of this kind of god. I know that not every villain needs to be as developed as Zeddard but Velania gets a lot of dialogue so I kept wishing she’d say something more interesting.
Madelina talking about how she can sit back and scheme while all the men kill each other felt doubly unsatisfying because not only did she set up Edric to support the system that enabled Zeddard’s mother’s tragedy but she also did so in a tropey “manipulative woman” way by lying about the father and did so purely to get power for herself. I haven’t read the new epilogue but I’m very happy to hear that this was changed and she at least has a more understandable reason for doing what she did.
It was these story bits combined with the general lack of satisfying non-romantic character moments for female characters that left me feeling like the backstories, personalities, and motivations of the female characters were consistently underdeveloped compared to the male characters.
Is the Main lord dual long swords change yet?
They’re way too long for him
I made them even longer, actually. He can now hit people at 2-range with them. 
Hello Vorgus, I have been having a blast with the dark amulet so far. I am on chapter 20, and had gotten the talk between Edric and Catrine. When using Catrine’s prf, it healed using the strength stat instead of the magic stat. I am playing on version 1.4 and don’t know if it was fixed. I thought I would bring this to your attention. I’ll post my full thoughts on the game when i finish. (I swear its soon but I also have band camp all week). Thank your for an amazing experience and have a great day.
That’s a known longstanding bug that I don’t know how to fix. There are a few:
Probably others, too. If I learn how to fix them, I’ll definitely do that!
After taking a quick look at these:
Bone Lancers are not affected by the Slayer skill
They’re also not weak to weapons with anti-monster effectiveness; fixing that should also fix the Slayer issue, I believe.
Catrine’s PRF staff doesn’t use the heal music and doesn’t use her MAG stat
Regarding the music issue, the staff needs to be set as a recovery staff here:
I couldn’t say about the Str/Mag issue.
Edric’s late-game PRF temporarily mutes the battle music
This sounds like an issue with the spell animation, try changing it?
So, this is genuinely the hardest FE hack I’ve played. If nothing else, I’m impressed with how fucking close to the knife’s edge you got with making some of these chapters impossible.
I find myself stuck at chapter 10, because I can’t get to the end of it while recruiting as everyone. If I don’t reach the faraway units, do I just not get them?
In Chapter 10, the following units are recruitable: Nadya, Gareth, Tancred, and Forness.
Tancred and Forness are recruited automatically at certain turns. Nadya needs to be spoken to by Edric or Freya. Gareth needs to be spoken to by Edric, Shorn, or Miley.
Elyse, Galen, and Harlan can’t be recruited in Chapter 10.
It’s a tough chapter. Good luck!
Okay, that’s the one spoiler I needed, because christ, I was diving deep to try and reach Else, Galen and Harlan and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how that was supposed to be possilbe.
damn good work, honestly. every turn of this bad boy has been a nail biter
I finished The Dark Amulet* on hard mode today and wanted to compile my thoughts and feedback on it. It was… a very mixed bag experience for me, with aspects I really disliked and aspects I really liked. The following review will be segmented into individual parts, and they will contain spoilers, so be warned.
*version 1.5. version 1.6 released while I was playing and I didn’t feel like repatching for minor fixes.
I liked most of the earlygame unit designs in the hack and thought they were fun to use. The hack makes good use of skills and PRFs to differentiate characters for the most part, although I feel like there is a bit of convergence with crit skills on many infantry units (Miley, Shorn, Dwalt, Morgana, and Rowan I think). Especially Rowan’s which makes him good at using Killer Axes but not much else. Also, the late joiners (Leandra or later, basically), with the exception of Sophia, are rather weak/undertuned in general. Othello and Fenix are alright filler, though. My favorite unit was Dwalt, resolve/heavy strikes is an awesome combination. Powerstaff dancer is crazy too. Also even though Edric was super screwed, he just popped off like crazy after promotion lol
Enemies like to use 5 crit weapons, and it feels like many units are lacking in luck, a problem inherited from vanilla FE8 (lol). It just makes it annoying when enemies just have low% crit on most people (though supports end up mitigating this).
The defend maps in this hack are kind of a total mess. There’s always just 10 too many enemies attacking you at every moment, and you often times just end up sitting in a chokepoint and praying, especially in the early maps. Chapter 10 especially felt hellish with 5 enemies bearing down from all sides and I ended up having to unequip for a couple turns. Forness being blue in the last two turns was cool, though. Chapter 23 was slightly better because it was a more open map but there were still many turns where like 6 guys spawn right in front of your face and you just have to run away for a turn and EP some of them. I ended up using the Rescue staff on Ormer, which made the map … maybe not flow as intended, but idk it was interesting lmao.
Also, sidenote: in all maps with green generics in them, the green units are total failures who just die immediately. It’s honestly kind of pathetic and annoying watching them just die.
I really liked some of the unique map ideas in the hack. The BEAR WITNESS map was really cool just going back in time, and the Sophia rescue map, which involved flier dropping and a weird side-path situation. The prison breaks were also unique, although the concepts were… superior to the execution here.
These prison breaks, man. I feel lucky to have trained Shorn and I struggle to think of what would happen had I not. They are just very dependent on having trained units, and Prison Break #2 is, uh, really brutal without most of your units promoted. It just feels mean to have such a map lategame, especially as the enemy variety has a lot of 1-2 range, something which your main cast lacks (aside from Harlan’s prf and maybe Galen). Speaking of 1-2 range…
Holy shit there are a lot of 1-2 range enemies in this hack, esp. lategame. 1-2 range enemies mean that it is just encouraged to send a juggernaut forward who can counter all of them, such as a mage or a 1-2 physical unit. A lot of enemies also have multiple weapon types just to have them, it seems like, which makes fighting them slower. Since 1-2 physical weapons are generally weaker and mages are generally squishier (well, Tancred is tanky, but my Tancred was really slow lmao) it makes it a lot harder to handle them, especially when they come in such huge numbers like the hack likes to do.
The lategame maps are definitely where the hack loses me. They are very long, filled with enemies and 1-2 range, and difficult, but in an annoying/uninteresting way to me. A lot of the times reinforcements would spawn right in front of you and you just have to fall back and tank them.
I have to complain about this now. My least favorite map in the hack was the 3 seize map with red Elyse, mostly because of all the enemy spam including enemy wyvern lords that most units can’t engage with. Especially since the army is split into 3 then it’s really hard to keep people safe without it becoming a total juggernaut solo fest. Also, in lategame a lot of enemies spawn mid turn and it’s just… irritating. I almost considered dropping the hack but I stuck around until the end for the story. Speaking of the story…
I enjoyed the story quite a bit. It was just a fun read, most of all, with all the character interactions just being enjoyable. The way you phrase dialogue is just cool. It’s just fun to read the hack, man. I do appreciate how the hack makes no effort to steer away from FE tropes, like Edric being a secret king (unless… 
) and Zeddard, while being a simple FE villain trope, is just very… fun. His dialogue is just very satisfying to read- the way he talks to Royce and Edric and Julia is just cool. It’s just awesome lol. The ending feels less sequel baity than I thought it would given the reputation (probably due to the rewrites), although Madelina being “evil” and turning red was only slightly foreshadowed. I still don’t see it as her being evil enough to justify red unithood but I understand that in Edric’s idealist eyes her cynical plotting seems evil. It just seems like a character conflict of idealism and honor vs. cynical political maneuvering, acting for the greater good. Also the fact that this plot came about because of Madelina’s abuse seems to be missing a key thread. Something about perpetuating a cycle maybe? And Madelina was kind of right. It is odd that she gets portrayed as a full-scale villain for her duplicitous but ultimately beneficial actions, and while her intent might not be great I get the sense that her desire for power comes from her lacking it so strongly. This seems coherent enough but it just didn’t grip me like it should for whatever reason. Maybe she is depicted as too unsympathetic?
Regardless I do appreciate Edric’s desperation in talking to the Sleeping God and thought that was a really cool character choice for the good boy protagonist to make.
Just uh, wow I did not like Velaina’s character at all. It just felt like she existed for people to call her a bitch lol. She just has that like sort of sexist writing vibe where she exists just to butter up the men and be evil and flirty and like, idk I just didn’t find her enjoyable at all. Also there was a missed opportunity IMO where it wasn’t really explained why she worships the Sleeping God. What is her motivation and the backstory of the cult? It just seems like a stain on the otherwise strong cast of villains.
I will probably have more later but that’s all for now.
Any chance this is playable on the delta app?
Hey I play on 44VBA very similar to delta. I played through with no noticeable bugs (v1.4)
Edit: welcome!
Thank you! Can you use 44VBA on your phone as an app? Apologies I’m unfamiliar, seems browser based
Yes it’s mobile friendly. I’m an iOS user and it requires using Safari, no other browser. You can bookmark the site into an app icon on your homepage for convenience, but it is entirely browser based. Works like a charm, even on airplane mode which is beyond me
