I like the idea, but don’t like repeating personal/class skills, so here’s my take:
Vanessa: Swift Stance. Plays into the basic strengths of a peg knight, high speed and magic res, which Vanessa is supposed to embody as your first peg knight.
Forde/Kyle: Blue Flame. Now this plays into the more abstract concept of the Cain and Abel archetype. Basically it incentivizes you to play them as the pair of “rival companions” to maximize their potential.
Moulder: Spur Res or Breath of Life. This one depends on a few different things. First is the Myrrh overhaul. If she loses Breath of Life, that could be used for Moulder, as a way to incentivize him into a more aggressive class like War Monk. Otherwise Spur Res is a nice simple replacement. Moulder is your first Cleric, so him having a more basic personal skill is fine.
Natasha: Lily’s Poise. I mean if we’re talking about supporting effects, this one fits the bill quite nicely, plus, VoP fits Knoll due to how it stacks with the rest of his aura debuffs…could use a buff though.
Cormag: Lunge. Now here we veer into lnto left field. But basically the idea is to take advantage of Cormag’s high stats, and access to Savage Blow, throw him into a enemy battallion and let him domino his way through them.
Saleh: Kestrel Stance. Again, basic skill that adds to Saleh’s firepower, which while nothing to scoff at, as he’s the Pent of the game but, depending on at which point he joins in, campaign route and difficulty setting, he can struggle and get killed rather easily, so this should give him that extra bump across the board.
I do not like repeating personal skills either but I felt those suited based on personality to the individual better, which would mean replacing other characters personal skills
Ismaire changing killing machine for Resolve, considering she even gave her life to protect the sacred stones, even when she had been betrayed by Carlyle
Amelia going from Resourceful to Perfectionist, Aptitude or Blossom would be simply related to her growth as a knight to her nature as a recruit, Knight Aspirant is also a possible choice but this one already belongs to Franz
Knoll going from Voice of peace to Foresight(which yet again conflicts with another character…) This one change being because Knoll being a researcher and (vaguely reminding now) due to some magic Knoll and Lyon were able to predict the future catastrophe that was to befall on Grado. This skill would be a reminder of that prediction of the future
I’m gonna stop now since if I keep going like this I’ll end up swapping personal skills back and forth XD
Eh i think it boils down to which aspects of personality you want to accentuate. But i think the Skill System still has enough wiggle room to replace them ones who lose rally skills without duplicating skills. Also replacing Killing Machine on Ismaire? Gasp the horror, you heretic. xD
Resourceful on Amelia is a major boon, especially when paired with Impale. Also Aptitude/Blossom is kinda of a trap since you can get the same effect by…giving them actual high growths…and once you max out your level, the skill slot becomes a dud.
Hey killing machine isn’t that good on Ismaire because of her Str and magic cap and mainly because all S rank weapons that she can use (besides Sol katti) lack critical rate so for Ismaire the issue is dealing low damage crits against bulky enemy units or have underwhelming crit rate. Resolve would help her out of getting value even when on low hp and because she has access to vantage and she would synergize with it.
I understand your point about Amelia but the issue lies as I said previously back when I placed Amelia on the tier list that she is severly limited on using effective weaponry due to Halberdier being lance locked, were she to go general route then she gets crippled out of one of her strong points as a speedy general because of Wary fighter. (Thinking about it, how would sound changing skills based on the gender of the same class? Just thought about it, ex: Female Swordmasters relying in criticals while male swordmasters have more of attack based offense) Anyway, as you said Impale is one of the core points of why Amelia is good, but the lack of weaponry (New idea, Slayer+ weapons, Zanbato+, Heavy spear+ and such, we have longbow+ and shortbow+ so why not) Hinders her.
Thing is, Resolve is a high value skill that already has too many users in the Praetor class (which btw could you help me download to this page from the repo a alt paladin sprite that was made for Sain/Kent? I think it would make for a nice reskin for Praetor, but i can’t view the dropbox files), Caelach and a skill scroll so that would make it overkill. I’d argue giving certain S-tier weapons some crit where it makes sense (certain swords, bows, maybe axes)
Yes, while Amelia is lance-locked, lances have Heavy Lances, Horseslayers and Dragonspears, not to mention Vidofnir and Mallet, which pretty much covers all the bases needed to get your millage from Resourceful and then some. (As for modified skills based on gender, eh makes sense on paper, but given how the game already veers with having gender based promo routes and stat caps, having a secondary split like that seems too much) I’d argue that her growths hinder her more than her access to weaponry…hell of the Trainees, the only one who doesn’t have shaky growths is Ewan and even he’s kinda iffy in some spots. Hence the point i’ve been trying to make, to add more Metis’ Tomes as high end rewards across the campaign.
EDIT: Here’s the image, i think this would make a better Praetor than the vanilla Paladin. Creator is RobertFPY, and this was made for Kent’s promo.
Honestly, I’d say that instead of Metis tomes we could simply just get more stat boosters, though I feel like main campaign is fine left by itself. As a personal preference, I’d wish the chest on floor 10 gave something else than just Juna fruits. Maybe af few undertoned unlimited use weapons? Grand Seals as a ultra rare reward (Old Cursed Orbs, gave +3 to all stats instead of +1)
About the topic of Amelia, which just seems to come back, I’d say to just introduce slayer+ weapons which can be bought on the armory of Lagdou Ruins, instead of Amelia just having to be stuck on using Maltet (which is honestly her best weapon)
About Resolve, you might be right and I could be overfilling units with resolve
Indeed an undertoned infinite weapon (For example : Emblem weapons in Last promise) would be extremely good. Not in the main game but in the post-game.
Here’s my two cents on Stat boosters. They certainly have their place to either help cover certain pain points or accelerate certain power stats. However i think that the core scaling has to come from the natural level ups and over use of Stat boosters will trivialize that a bit. However Juna fruits and Metis Tomes instead enhance that by making your level ups more valueable, hence why I think those should be prioritized over basic stat boosters as droppables during the campaign. Though I would agree that Juna Fruits as a floor 10 reward is underwhelming. Maybe as a dropable in the temple map where you fight Lyon?
As for the issue of Amelia/slayer+ weapons, the thing is that would trivialize the game way too much to the point where you can have heavily underpowered units kill high powered enemies. With Amelia, the mechanic is there, but restricted to a niche… Niches should be enhanced, not diluted.
I’d say the only issue with Amelia currently (shaky growths aside) is her lack of access to Lancefaire as a mono-spear wielder…but then again she has Opportunist and Pragmatic (IIRC) which gives her quite a bit of extra situational damage and together with Short Shield gives her another unique niche as a anti-melee unit. (what did you think of the sprite for Praetor btw?)
The Praetor sprite was great! Sadly I believe that at least in floor 1 of Lagdou ruins there is the presence of enemy praetors so it would feel weird to see them using those battle animations. If those were to be exclusive to Forde and Kyle I would be fine with it, but that’s a matter of implementing character exclusive animations.
About slayer weapons, I mainly said to introduce them as a way to make them more obtainable since they are quite rare to get and I believe some of them are missing in the armories around the map?
About Opportunist and Pragmatic, I don’t feel like those skills really end up benefitting Amelia much. One of the strong points of Amelia would be dragon slaying, which means facing against dragons, all of them having 1-3 range so opportunist does nothing, Pragmatic would be pretty much the same since you will aim for one round kills to evade dragons getting their defiant skills so Pragmatic ends up being also disabled.
To maybe give more value to opportunist, how would sound a weapon like the Saunion from SoV which has 2-3 range, giving more room for opportunist plays?
I’d be fine with the sprite being Kyle/Forde exclusive… Hell if Amelia has her own Halberdier sprite, why not then? (Poor Blood, having two randoms talking back and forth about what should or should not be in the hack xD)
True, basic slayer weapons are lacking outside of an armory in the map where you recruit Syrene… Which is then destroyed once it becomes a skirmish map.
I mean those 2 skills may not help with the dragons, but they do help with most other classes… Although I would trade then for Lancefaire in a heartbeat. All being said, she’s not the worst of the trainees, in that she can grow extremely well and has strong niches. That spot belongs to Ross currently i’d say, who has neither. Also I have no idea what the Saunion is or what it does.
At this stage I just really want to see what Blood does in terms of balance and skill distribution… Especially for the Myrrh overhaul though her being reverted to a 1-range does not sound fun
For real, we just end up fuelling each other to just start spitting whatever random ideas come our way and this is getting near spam level of posting
Isn’t that only applied to the Lite version of Myrrh? Otherwise It would just be a massive nerf and that’s not what she needs
As I said, it is a lance in Fire Emblem Shadows of Valentia that has 2-3 range
Ross really just needs the skill scrolls to come and he will actually get good, other than that, maybe change Journeyman stat caps to the same as a Berserker or just with a bit less strength but more skill and speed instead, keeping the same skills as the current journeyman though since those are actually way better if Ross ever got Berserker stat caps
Eh either one of two things happens: We either get told to cut it out, or he goes “well that’s interesting, it just might work”. Besides it’s fun to actually have a back and forth on this stuff.
The thing with Ross is many fold: his growths are bad, even when compared to his dad, his personal skill is underpowered (could be fixed with a numbers tune though) and his class of choice (Berserker) is kinda anemic compared to Warrior, which doesn’t fit him that well. Berserker as a mono weapon class should be premiere choice for damage, while Warrior should offer a mix of offense and utility. I’d say swap out Pursuit on Zerkers for Frenzy and give Warrior a debuff type skill.
@adalvar@UncleDrAgN
I don’t mind the discussion, and even though it usually takes some time for me to answer, I eventually read everything posted here. While it’s good to throw some ideas around, there are some limitations of what I can currently do with the hack.
First, there’s almost no memory space left, which means I can’t really add much more. The maximum ROM size of a GBA game is around 32 Mb, and this limit cannot be exceeded. This is a problem I’ve been struggling with for a very long time and is the result of all of the custom animations in the hack. I often wonder whether it was a good idea to include so many custom spells.
Second, some aspects of the game have limits independent to the ROM size. For instance, there is a limit of 255 item and UI icons. I have already used all of them and this prevents me from adding new weapons.
As to the praetor animation, it’s easy to assign them exclusively to Kyle and Ford, bit first I will have to check whether there animations for all the weapons they can use and if the animations will allow a palette recolor.
Well thanks i guess…as long as no toes are being stepped on. Any particular idea in this fever dream of a brainstorm that caught your eye? Also can we expect the update as a potential Christmas day gift?
Yeah i think it was mentioned that the ROM size has been an issue, but then again half the fun of a hack is custom spells and stuff, so having so many nice ones is good i think. Tooltips could use some overhauling…make them more technical rather flavour in writing for clarity’ sake. On the other hand most of what was discussed was simply swapping around skills for better fitting characters.
Oww cool…i think there is a dropbox file in the repo, which has animations for it all.
I’ve been thinking about a possible “fix” to the item issue.
Fusing some passive stat boosting items
The idea about this one would be merging 2 of those charms while retaining their current value of +3, this would incentivize choosing between the omniboost Cursed Orbs offer or investing further on said stats
Examples being Sol and Luna seals being fused for +3 Def and +3 Res, perfect for Provoke users
Removing common promotion materials and making all of them into Master Seals instead
I say to do this also on the basis of Orion’s Bolt being the most useless promotion material, which only has 1 single user while also lacking a bunch of Hero’s Crest for most other units. This overhaul would also open more choices when making a team on a normal Sacred Stones run
Before finishing things up, have you ever considered adding high rarity weapons (such as Astra, Luna and Sol) in Sacred Trilogy? Just wanted to know
Wouldn’t it be good if Tower of Valni was just removed for more space ? Even after increasing the difficulty and modifying enemies, people can easily cheese mid-game with tower abuse. Not only will it stop this experience farming but also give more space for new contents.
As for post-game we have plenty of things to amuse us. Weapons and bosses from Fe 6 & 7. Truly amazing !
Maybe shortened would be nice…but tower existing is a big part of FE8. Honestly removal of arenas would go father in terms of experience/gold farming abuse.
