Hi, I felt like sharing some more of the changes I’ve been working on. Having levels not reset after promoting is now compatible with the Strength/Magic split. It wasn’t when I started on Saint’s Blood after the Deity Device Revamp was done. Now all classes have a level cap of 40, and no classes have the promoted flag set, so there will be no experience bonus or penalty depending on whether a unit is/fights a promoted unit. Caps work like FE4 where unpromoted class caps are equal to the promoted class caps minus the promotion bonuses, so units with high growths in a stat won’t be wasting level ups when that stat hits 20. And units with story promotions will not be stuck at the level cap until promotion. There is also no downside to promoting early, but the minimum promotion level has been raised to 15. However, promotion items will be somewhat hard to get. I don’t think it will be as bad as having only just enough promotion items available to promote all of the units, but they definitely won’t be sold in shops like they were in Deity Device.
In response to comments about movement and the pacing of chapters, I’ve rebalanced movement to be in line with FE5. Mounted units have 8 movement at base. Most foot units have 6 movement but some don’t gain movement from promoting. For example, Swordmasters have 7 move, but Heroes have 6. Knights and Priests have only 5 movement, but Generals and High Priests have 6. There’s also another tool the player will have to affect movement, but it’s a secret for now.
Something you might not be aware of is that this doesn’t actually work. Units with lvels above 31 are not able to be loaded and the levels don’t persist through suspend.
Looking forward to seeing what else is in store for Saint’s Blood!
Went through the demo in one sitting. I think this is a big step up from deity device in terms of gameplay, and I think the unusual mix of the deity device special and thracia mechanics is actually pretty promising.
Unit balance
I think the unit balance is less skewed than deity device early game, where it felt like it was either easy enough for only 1 unit to do everything or dropping 10 cavalry that only 1 unit could do anything.
I think reducing magic weight and magic caster con could allow foot physical units to compete more heavily in the capture niche.
Magic users still pretty strong due to superior range and damage, and enemy quality being low enough that the difference in bulk doesn’t yet differentiate them by much.
However, the cavaliers with canto+ and mounts with better capture gives them more of a niche compared to magic users.
I really enjoy sword troubadours (especially with canto+), so I’m a bit biased.
The character skill sets seemed more defined and related to the unit niche. Personally I’m not a fan of proc% skills as they can’t be planned around, and in the early game have such low percentages of activating they might as well not exist. This is a personal taste.
Jack is rather odd since he has ‘adrenaline rush’, though vantage cancels crits which conflicts with his 15 crit boost. I assume armsthrift is meant to cancel out astra’s extra weapon usage.
Difficulty
I think difficulty is still quite on the easy side overall, as a lot of units can still readily one round and take mutiple hits.
The additional stronger gear like steel blades, and elmagic helps makes player units vulnerable.
However, I also feel like its quite easy to get too much good stuff especially since enemies aren’t very tough, but that’s the difficulty of universal capture as a design mechanic. This goes doubly so if enemies need stronger gear to be threatening yet at the same time this means the player can get their hands on more of them. I guess this is not a major issue if the player is always restricted on what extent of weapons they get access to and the player ‘economy’ is not a design focus.
Two of the chapter 1 archers being stationary feels odd since then they pose no threat, and two more simply don’t do anything with attack when adjacent with AI. I assume this is intentional to make the enemy numbers higher without making it too difficult for the player, but I think just outright cutting them makes more sense (and since this random thief somehow summoned an entire army into the middle of the town where a prince just passed!)
I think in chapter 4 where whole divisions of enemies can spawn on top of where your units are makes manoeuvring a bit awkward since your plans can be interrupted immediately without any warning. I think maybe having the map be bigger and reinforcements have to walk further to get to you might make this less jarring.
In chapter 5 the thief after opening both chests simply refused to do anything and embraced death with open arms.
Not a huge fan of the innate crit myrmidons as they can orko or barely scratch your units but very low chance of the former. I reckon giving them with killing edges where needed is preferable as the player can be immediately alerted by the UI and needs to acknowledge the crit as being guaranteed in planning.
Story
The structure seems quite different from deity device’s intro, jumping between 4 different groups. Interested to see how the wildly different lords play out, and what happens when they meet up more.
I like the idea that the decisions made by the protagonists are a contested issue in the sequel.
I thought the variety of expressions by Sid is a nice touch, though I think enough people have mentioned how jank the colours are.
Thanks for the feedback. It’s very helpful. Lowering the Constitution of some units has actually been something I’ve been working on, as has increasing the strength of enemies.
You can compare the Mercenary in the released version vs. what I'm currently working on.
The plan is for individual enemies to be stronger while reducing the overall number of enemies.
Yeah, Jack doesn’t have Vantage anymore. I completely forgot about it negating crit when I put it on him.
I’m also thinking of reworking Milton’s PRF tome so it either has less might or is very heavy.
Georgette’s PRF tome is going to be changed to be low might (2 to 4) with 30-ish crit rather than effective damage on Horses/Armors.
Martha’s base speed is lower, so she’s more dependent on Quickdraw to double.
I’m giving Armors swords and having Ralph start with an Iron Sword as well as his Iron Partisan so that it’s easier to not have him one shot everything due to his high base level.
For Myrmidons, I might take Shrimperor’s suggestion of giving them Death Blow (crit when initiating combat). I still think there’s not much reason for Myrm’s to exist if there’s no worry of them getting a crit, but that way, the counterplay will be to not try to take them on enemy phase.
I completely forgot to set an escape point.
For chapter 1, the archers will move after a certain point. I don’t want to shrink the map because it’s used as the backdrop of a lot of cutscenes in the early game, but I might reduce how much of the map is actually in play as far as enemy placements since it’s a lot of ground to cover with three units.
Ok I finished with the demo and it’s pretty interesting
magic is strong but no range like in deity device means that it’s less broken and more managable.
mrymidons having extra crit is cool but I’d recommend critical force instead of crit +15, that should keep weapon with zero crit rate like iron weapons have virtually zero to maybe 10 crit rate, but generally wyverns take like 0 damage from them so there are no issues.
as for the difference between mounted units and fliers, Mounted units have canto+ and wyvern knights are generally tankier and hit hard which makes for an interesting differentiation and gameplay flexibility.
There’s a lot more balance between physical and magic units even tho offense wise magic is probably superior.
Capture I honestly never used it but I imagine capturing some priests for status staves would be nice or mages for tomes and there don’t seem to be a lot of funds but there aren’t shops so I guess it’s not much of a difference.
The unit balance seems to be a lot better than deity device currently sure units hit like nukes but the nukes are generally frail to die in two hits so it’s fair enough.
The story
as always is pretty good, and the game does a good job between story and gameplay story integration is one of the best parts…
The game being easier is kinda refreshing for a change conpared to most hacks which prefer jacking up the difficulty.
As for bugs: there’s a glitchy potrait in ch 4 with Martha , Cathy and everyone talking to poseidon.
This version is much better than blue outlines, which also makes more sense, but I never noticed that this guys is heterochrome eyes. It looks good though. Also, can’t wait to see how that new mercenary look like.
For the myrmidon suggestion, maybe give them that " whatever Stance" skills that provides 6 speed during defending session, which will make the player will choose either turtling the myrmidon will an increased risk of taking critical hit or take them out during player phase with lower chance of hitting due to the increased speed.
For the consideration of getting too many good weaponries through capture in early stages, maybe make a “dummy character” that has Watchful skill and use it for an enemy unit you want to give a stronger weapon to increase the difficulty but also preventing player good to get good items too early via capturing.
I reworked Georgette’s and Milton’s PRF weapons. Georgette had a weapon that was effective against horses and armors, and in her hands, it would pretty much let Georgette delete those unit types like Micaiah with Thani. But the thing is that Georgette doesn’t really have Micaiah’s weaknesses, so it’s a bit overtuned on her.
Her new weapon has low might and high crit, and is pretty much there to try and get crits off of her high natural magic.
Milton’s old PRF made him into a bit more of a powerhouse than he’s meant to be, at least against the enemy makeup of his first chapter. His new PRF has double triangle effect, which in practice is Divine Magic that has the normal Triangle Boost against all Anima.
I have more updated PRFs to share. There was a pretty wide consensus that the Apple Cavs were underpowered. I reworked their PRFs to be less niche.
Adam’s Honeycrisp is now a lance with Pugi stats and loses its effectiveness against Horses. Not many throwing weapons have shown up in the demo chapters, but the common ones have had their hit reduced and weight increased a significant amount, making these stronger 1-2 range weapons fairly valuable.
Eve’s Granny Smith now has a magic attack at range. It no longer works like an Armorslayer but still reverses Weapon Triangle.
And more ranged options should improve the pace of Chapter 2.
I know progress has been slow, but I have a much more demanding real-life job now, so please be patient.
I finished it for the third time now, lol and I have a little feedback: I found leticia’s spells mostly useless except for Wind Prayer and Holy Verse: fire, because even if ice or earth is effective they still kill with wind or fire most of the time and fire is effective against more enemies then the others. splash saber is pretty much useless considering poseidon already has the silver sword which does significantly more damage I would add maybe a breakable wall on the other side of clarabels cell considering once you free her she just spends the map slogging back to recruit larry and by then Im pretty much already done with the map. also
Thanks for your comments and for playing 3(!) times. A lot of the balance has changed pretty significantly for the next release. Leticia is slower and no longer has the potential to become physically tanky with a series of moderately lucky level ups, so she relies more on blowing up enemies in one hit with an effective spell. Though even in my playthroughs of the available version, her Ice spell was pretty much always the only safe way to defeat the boss of Chapter 3.
What makes the Splash Sabor useful is that there’s no cost for using it because it replenishes after battle. It will get more powerful as Poseidon gains strength, but it might not be worth carrying around as Poseidon learns more spells.
I’m still keeping the details under wraps, but the player will have an additional movement option in Milton’s party in the next release.
Soooo stoked for this! Absolutely love Deity Device and am sure I’ll love this one. Quick question, not to stop your creative genius from flowing but I was wondering how long do you think this hack is gonna be? However long or short is perfectly okay because i know you’ll deliver something fantastic! I might be an odd one but I loved all the Dialogue in Diety Device because I’m a sucker for lore and background on EVERYTHING in the stories I read(plus I just love reading).
Thanks for the support. As far as length, I don’t have the entire rest of the game mapped out by chapter. The first story arc will go through Chapter 11. The next release will probably go through Chapter 7 or 8, and then the one after will go through Chapter 11.
I’m guessing the full game will be around 30 chapters. You don’t play as Milton much during the first arc, and his story doesn’t really ramp up until after Chapter 11. And with how much I have planned for Milton while also continuing Martha and Poseidon’s story, I can see the game running fairly long.
I’ve been playtesting the rebuilt version of the game, and I’m wondering if there’s interest in me releasing that version before I have any new chapters made. The gameplay wise, there was a lot of rebalancing as well as significant bug fixes such as Milton now having a fully working convoy thanks to Hypergammaspaces helping with the installation. And because I completely rebuilt the game from scratch, you would have to replay the beginning in the new version anyway before you could continue. If there’s interest in releasing the revamped existing chapters, I’ll do a release once I’m done debugging. If not, I’ll hold off until there’s new content.
