[FE8] Fire Emblem: Drums of War <v. 2 - COMPLETE! 22 chapter campaign!>

Yeah, fair point. It’s a product of trying to keep internal consistency in what gets what compared to the baseline irons, but it shouldn’t leave a D-rank largely inferior to an E-rank. I’ll probably slide swords down and blades up in weight; 9 weight definitely feels right for steel swords.

As for luck, I’m just not much of a fan of floating crit rates without deliberately trying to stack them up. Weapon accuracy is largely higher than vanilla to compensate. I suppose killers could get an extra +5 crit to make them better at their niche, given the cost. Given how rarely they appear on enemies, it’d be a pretty harmless change, so I’ll go ahead with it.

2 Likes

How about this patch?

NAME.en=Icon Display(install)
INFO.en=Display icons on units that match certain criteria. For more information, check the FEU author's explanatory article.
AUTHOR=Vesly https://feuniverse.us/t/veslys-asm/12011/50 https://github.com/Veslyquix/ASM/tree/main/IconDisplay

Alright, thanks for the recommendation, gave that patch a shot and it did work.

On reflection, though, I’m finding it incredibly distracting to have up to 7 flickering icons on-screen at once along with the rest of the movement, to a degree that actually gives significant eyestrain. The near-unique class will have to suffice.

I will, however, give that icon to chapter-ending conversations (C5, and the end of every act). Not the issue I looked to solve, but hey, happy little accident.

1 Like

Then how about changing the graphics of those units?
For example, how about changing the look of the thief, wagons, civilians, etc. so that they look less like combatants?
I think the graphics with the Soldier’s spear would be misleading.
I understand the problem, as I too have had several game overs trying to figure out the rules for that chapter.

I used the vanilla soldier because they’re armed combatants; they’re just weak ones being sent away from the front as messengers. I’ll change the first-turn reference to ‘Runners’ to ‘Couriers’ in Red text, using the unique character name they’re designated with. Beyond that, I am comfortable with the current signposting on that chapter.

1 Like

Question but is the save file still compatible with the new patch?
Downloaded last week patch and am at ch 7

Confirming my save works w/ latest patch.

For C9 – recommend beefing up deployment or reducing enemies (or swapping out mages for 1 range enemies). In particular I found the right side to be really busy and slow to deal w/ because of all of the mages. Was a bit easy to get overrun there because you don’t get as many units deployed to that side, there’s a high volume of them, and many have longer range.

I’d also add warnings after each pioneer death so the player knows how many they can feasibly let die before a game over.

Really like the layout, but some tweaks to flow and placement will go a long way here.

3 Likes

Patchday. Nothing major, just assorted tweaks. If you’re tired of patching, skipping this one won’t kill you. Mostly addresses issues made in recent posts, while attempting to further make Vivica relevant.

Patchnotes
  • Actually gave Laszlo his planned +10% defence growth boost lol
  • Corrected oversight where Shine was not buyable in preparations
  • Non-S-rank swords -2 wt, except blades, which gain +2 wt
  • Killer weapons gain +5 crit
  • Fixed unintentionally massive speed of some lategame supports
  • Added icon to units who you talk to to end a map
  • Vivica: +2 Lv, +3 Def, +2 Mag/Res, +1 Skl
  • Thalassa: +2 Lv, -10% magic growth; -5% HP/Spd growth
  • Elisenda, Luthor, Estrelle: +2 Lv (no other changes)
  • Prologue: Unvisited recruits now join party after chapter
  • C4: Fixed door key goon AI, enemy no longer stymied by death of thieves
  • C6: Lasker’s stats dumpstered; turns out the Bolting was keeping him in check this whole time
  • C7: Thill buffed somewhat
  • C9: Deployment increased from 14 to 15
  • C9: Changed Thunder Ecorcheur magi to Elfire
  • C12: Changed order of death reinforcements
  • C12: Gave rogue a lockpick so he would actually pick locks
  • C12: Changed position of stealable Lapis from Picarette to generic southern general
  • C15: Slightly reduced Wulfram’s stats
  • C15: Changed location of a pillar
  • C15: Fixed issue where Micah’s aggro radius would remain after his departure
  • EoA3: Corrected oversight where the shop didn’t sell Nosferatu
8 Likes

Well I’m a little confused about this, so I’ll ask: is Roxelana a man or a woman? I’m asking these because his/her descriptions are confusing. The character looks like a guy to me, even if when pressing R on the name, the word “her” appears. Because of this, I’d normally guess she’s a woman and leave it at that but, since there are more confusing data about her (example: in character profile it says “she” is 15, meanwhile in codex says 32), I figured I’d ask about it.

Resume: what the hell is this person’s sex and age? Thank you :rofl:

The description refers to her having spent fifteen years in the Guard, not being fifteen years old. She enlisted at 17, and is now 32, turning 33 during Act 3.

2 Likes

So she’s a woman and I just misread that part. Alright, thank you :sparkling_heart:

Beat the hack last night. Overall, I think Drums of War is one of the top [complete] experiences out there, and I’m sure any additional updates will continue to make the experience stronger.

Since the hack finished so recently, I approached the game more as a playtest than as an experience to sit back and consume. I took some notes throughout and want to share my feedback + offer up some ideas for changes.

Below are a few areas specifically I want to address:

Economy

The defining gimmick of DoW is the boss recruits. I was pleasantly surprised at how many there were throughout, and ultimately former enemies became the backbone of the army. The tradeoff of “unit or cash” is interesting, especially since the game is just stingy enough with money to make me consider topping up gold versus getting a new unit.

That said, I ransomed ~2 bosses and was able to maintain enough gold throughout the whole game without issue. Maybe it’s because I was content to use cheaper weapons for longer than intended (slims are great), my units were blessed, or the game gave me just enough gold to get by, but I rarely felt like I missed out by taking the unit over cash. The only bosses I ransomed were ones I knew I wouldn’t use (Tiimo and Dzeneta). Otherwise, I sustained myself on selling weapons I wasn’t using and the few gems, statboosters, and excess master seals I had on hand. I ended up not needing like 5 master seals because the game gave me so many prepromote bosses that outclassed other units (more on this later), further nerfing value of the ransom.

I think you have an opportunity to tighten the economy more and make the tradeoff more visibly stark. I think nerfing the starting Lapis gem to half its value would go a long way in tightening the screws upfront, creating much more urgency for cash early. Alternatively, more expensive/interesting stuff to buy early would also help here.

Writing

I was excited to read Drums of War knowing its creator worked on Dream of Five and wrote Garath. The moment to moment writing was generally solid. While occasionally lengthy, the dialogue was generally quality. It took itself seriously enough to get me invested in the outcome. Connacht’s character writing was the clear highlight. His distinct style of speaking and actions made him a fast favorite. I also liked Renate and Gerhard a lot. While few of the characters were truly standout, none of the playables were grating. It’s a solid cast.

The overall plot was structured well. The shifting dynamics of power and the war were generally well-articulated. The weakest link in the overall storytelling were the villains.

Few were worthy of sympathy and many seemed needlessly mean to Roxie. Throughout the story, there seemed to be many opportunities for a long-term alliance or ceasfire to emerge, and constantly Roxie was betrayed. Wulfram in particular was the worst in this regard and I found his actions hard to justify, even for a self-conscious “king”. Most of the villains were pretty forgettable, but in general the vibe I got from everyone not in Roxie’s group was that they were a pompous shithead. Would’ve loved more sympathetic villains in general. Given how many alliances of convenience are temporarily struck throughout the plot, it would’ve been a nice juxtaposition to frame some inevitable encounters as more a clash of unfortunate circumstances (like Berenice near the end, but on a larger scale and without recruitment potential), where perhaps in easier times, Roxie and her adversary would’ve been pals. I generally felt little guilt or remorse against any foe, because they almost always instigated the player in some way.

The best villain was Micah. I like him as a foil to Roxie. Both are the last two powers standing, and both achieved this through their strength, guile, and loyalty to themselves. It’s an interesting mirror of how the selfish aim of survival can take different turns. Micah plots to gain power, while Roxie gains it through her will to survive and outlast. I would’ve liked to see this dynamic explored more since I think the two have interesting parallels given they are the most “formless” of the major forces in the plot. Both align to others where convenient and climb the power ladder accordingly, but in different ways.

Last detail on writing I’ll share is that every chapter had a lot going on. The start and end event runtimes could get lengthy, and given how much happens, it felt often like the characters served the needs of the plot and its steady march versus the plot serving the characters. I would’ve loved more time to breathe between major developments, since so much changed so quickly. While I’m sure some like no filler, I think it’s necessary to give time for the player to settle into this part of the story and get more familiar with characters. This would’ve added more weight to each change and shift in allegiance, too, and maybe given villains more opportunity to not just show up to be shitty to Roxie.

Favorite scene was Roxie’s dinner with Jurechka. I liked the end of act 1 dream sequence a lot too.

Gameplay

The gameplay was generally solid. Seldom did it feel unfair. I liked that there were gimmicks and twists on common objectives. Most of them landed well enough. When they didn’t, it was usually because something wasn’t clearly articulated (timers were a touch slow, especially E-2), escape points weren’t marked (this would be a nice change since it was unclear where I needed to escape from in a few maps), or enemies were too numerous at specific points in the map.

Most of my deaths came from “suffering from success” because of ORKOs on EP. I did need to savestate given the size of the maps and their density.

In general, most of the action happened on EP. Whenever things got dicey, the solution was almost always “slow down”. I’m not a huge fan of this, and there was little incentive to not just turtle out. The anti-turtles that existed were fairly lenient, and there were few instances where I really needed to rush. This meant I could generally roll up into a death ball and bait and switch as needed. Thankfully, a lot of the enemies move, so I was encouraged to strike first. However, there were situations where a huge formation or wave would crash into me, and the solution was to try and choke w/ heavy weapons so I wouldn’t die from killing them all w/ double attacks. Fewer, higher quality enemies would be the solution here, or adding more deploy slots (which felt needlessly arbitrary at times.)

In general, I felt most of the maps were too large. I would’ve broken some of these up into multiple chapters with fewer bosses, but in absence of that, reducing the total enemy count and reducing the map size would help. I also ran an army that was majority 5 move units, so this may also be coloring my perception of size.

Deployment was throttled more than necessary, and given the flow of units, there were a lot of units I never got to see in battle. Deployment was generally too low (especially later on) for the amount you’re asked to do. When deploy was low, it encouraged me to try to juggernaut with Roxie or Gerhard as much as possible since I simply didn’t have enough to work with to play maps normally. E-1 being 7 deploy and the Valentrix chapter being sub-10 also felt needlessly restrictive given how many units I had, and these 2, along w/ a few other lower count maps, led to a power gulf between units that I wasn’t keen on. By the end, the lion’s share fell to only a few units, while the rest either healed or did the occasional chip or stray kill. Given how fast I was able to promote, I usually found myself gaining hardly any experience for fighting, so I felt inclined to try to blitz maps to save resources instead.

In general, I think you could improve things quickly mostly by 1) reducing total enemy count, 2) increasing deploy, 3) boosting enemy speed, 4) tweaking a few turn-based timers, and 5) shrinking down a few maps to make them less intensive. If you only did the first 3 items here, the game would be stronger for it immediately IMO.

Highlights for me were Ch3, Ch4, Ch5, and Ch11. Lowlights were E-1, E-2, Ch12, and Ch13. I didn’t truly dislike any of them. The highlight chapters generally were mostly my speed – challenging, good volume of enemies per turn, and a reason to move. Lowlights usually cut deployment, had awkward timers, or suffered from some of the other things I highlighted.

Final Thoughts

Drums of War is easily a top 10 all-time [complete] hack on the strength of its moment to moment writing, visuals, and mix of gameplay objectives (I love escorting villagers).

Where it stumbles are areas I am generally most prickly about, but it never got to a point where I wanted to drop the hack. No chapter was a bottleneck to progress, albeit seeing large map after large map encouraged me to take more breaks. The game is oozing with stuff despite clocking in at a more modest ~18 chapters.

I end up dropping most [complete] hacks I play and getting through this in a week is a testament to its quality and consistency throughout.

I look forward to seeing future tweaks and rebalancing! Nice work. Happy to chat through any specifics if it’s helpful :+1:

And of course, the team

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Roxie’s good. I think she was blessed. Had some speed issues until late where she picked it up. She got all the best swords and benefited from it. Solid lord, arguably too strong for my taste since she ended up steamrolling most of the late game w/ Calista support.

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If you’re going to do a refresher, having them immediately like Calista is nice. Not much to say, surprised we didn’t get dragon Calista gotoh for endgame, but many would argue dancer is better.

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Gerhard got some good levels early and beat out Jaro for deploy towards midgame. I kept calling him ‘axe Storch’ in my head because of the palette lol.

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I love hackrom soldiers. I knew I had to use him, and wasn’t disappointed. Not too tough to train. Impractical, yes, but certainly fun. Harpoon is excellent. Love the mug.

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Used more for combat than heals. Magic growth was slow and shifted more towards utility by the end, but still solid.

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First promo. I probably underused her since she had such good combat, but was frail enough that she didn’t end up doing as much as she should’ve. Can see a smarter player finding ways to break the game with her.

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With the heavy flow of enemies, Renate and Petras were invaluable. They were super economical too, able to contribute meaningfully with irons for most of the game. Excellent portrait.

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Same as above. He was a bit stronger by the end, but Renate dealt with mages better.

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Immediately pooped on Radu. 3 range is good.

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Outclassed Vivica hard. Mostly used for utility. Never bought a dark tome. Deadeye support.

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His strength and access to 3-range kept him around through the end. Faced low % crit a lot. Excellent mug, favorite character in hack.

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Mostly filler for bigger deploys. Probably strong if you invest more, but rarely was worthy of the best weapons to make it happen (Gerhard and Roxie took the good recurves and swords).

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Bow armor! 3 range was too good to pass up. Bulk and weapon access was also nice.

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In a game where I was concerned w/ money, Estrelle’s prf was nice. Reminds me of Stefan FE9 but better.

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Like the portrait. The only S light user I had besides Sanne. Put in some work near the end with it.

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Sanne is super well-designed. Immediately fills a gap for the player on any tome they don’t have a user for. Got deployed w/ S dark and S anima.

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Ramond was solid for a bit, but eventually I benched him. Was nails vs. mages, but otherwise unremarkable.

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Helje was useful for a while. Flying utility was nice early and then became less relevant. She peaked at the swamp map and then retired since her damage output tapered off. Excellent early though.

Influences?

I did notice a few influences throughout. The biggest notes for me were Dream of Five (in a good way!), Cerulean Coast, Requiem, Sword of Heaven and Earth, and Death or Glory. Curious if I got any right.

7 Likes

WHAT? The creator worked in Dream of FIve? Damn, that was my favorite hackrom once upon a time. Now that I think about it, what happened to that game? I truly miss it.

I’m in the prologue and I gotta ask once again: is there any way to save the village the pirate is going to attack? I can’t seem to get there in time no matter what I do.

There is not. I already asked and they said even if you could get to it it won’t have anything to get.

Something involving real life and personal issues which divided the team or something. Someone should be given the full details for it.

Congratulations on your victory! And thanks again for your thoughts. Apologies in advance that I’ve had one hour of sleep in the past day and a half, so this will be a slightly incoherent stream of consciousness…

I’m not averse to increasing deployment slots by any means; I mostly kept them lower out of a desire not to overload the players’ turns, but if adding one or two to several maps would help smooth them over I can make that work.

(Honestly, I kind of regard the lack of deployment slots as… almost an encouraging flaw to see, if that makes any sense at all? I want players to feel like they’re incentivised to use a big squad and all have their uses, not to just juggernaut and have a few units every map that barely see use.)

The naturalsazvbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
Sorry, I passed out and came back to find out a cat had rested on the keyboard for a while.

The natural cycle of DoW’s development has generally been to make an oppressive map, playtest it myself and shave away the worst excesses, release it to the public and generally make things easier from there by filing away things people find excessive. So by and large chapters have been made easier and easier over time. There’s definitely levers like timing and gold that I’d like to tighten again - though gold can probably stand to be tightened already, given one or two of my files were able to clear the game without many supply issues pre-dating the silver card in EoA3. Yeah, I think the most intuitive thing to do is probably just shaving off the money slightly and seeing where it lands.

Now, some of the levers I’d like to tighten will, I think, be enabled by… whenever I get to finalisation and get to split between a Normal Mode and a Hard / Intended Difficulty / Whatever; the current patch looks more like Hard, but the anti-turtle timings are probably Normal, since when there’s an alternative present I won’t have to prioritise so much that the bulk of players are able to complete it.

The big writing challenge remaining is that there’s various dynamics that could use expansion, but with the hack already on the wordy end in terms of scene density, I definitely need to be careful about bloating things. Hopefully a few scenes dotted around the hack can go a long way to expand on things; the new C14 scene based on a recommendation from SirSpensir appears to have been well-received, and it’s been pointed out that battle quotes are an underutilised avenue for development, so I’m working on significantly expanding those as well.

Really glad you enjoyed it, and that praise means a lot to me. In terms of influences, DoW was mostly influenced by my work on Do5 - often by what not to do in terms of its map design - and not much by other hacks; I’ve basically not touched other hacks while working on this, since, well, I’ve played a frankly sickening amount of GBAFE over the past year… but I did manage a VQ playthrough at some point, and that ended up chiefly influencing use of stealable statboosters and gems as mini-stretch goals, inspired by my use of Esfir.

WHAT? The creator worked in Dream of FIve? Damn, that was my favorite hackrom once upon a time. Now that I think about it, what happened to that game? I truly miss it.

Yeah, I wrote pretty much all the dialogue as of the last publically-available patch (everything except some supports, I think?) and was able to shape the story to some extent and in smaller details after the initial design documents were laid out. Do5 pretty much died when the bulk of the core staff reached university; there were some minor teenage dramas, I quit in a huff at some point because I was tired of rewrites and wanted to move forward, but really it was just that we ran out of our window before real life got in the way.

Anyway, for the next two and a half weeks or so, I’m going to be in the process of moving back to Australia… and realistically spending some time after that recuperating. Not quite sure if being stuck to a laptop with no spare monitor means I’ll be more or less inclined to work on FEBuilder; it is a small window, and that’s valuable right now. But if I’m generally less available, that’s going to be the cause.

I think I’ll be using that time to rest and recharge, compile feedback, make small fixes… and get ready for the big rebalance down the track. Since that will dictate a replay. Unfortunately the stage has been reached at which even a small, straightforward fix can potentially become a big issue down the track, so I think we’ll see very few structural changes to maps from here on out. But small tweaks can add up to a big difference, and there’s still a lot that can be done here.

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One thing you could do is implement checks for characters being dead/alive, or recruited/not recruited, in scenes. I know that you’re afraid of bloat, but I personally always like that when it’s present. I’ve seen at least one spot where such a check would probably be a good idea:

'Chapter 8

At the end of Chapter 8, Kestut and Laszlo were brought up in a cutscene (with the latter even showing up and talking), even though the latter died in Chapter 4 and the former wasn’t recruited. Don’t ask me why I recruited neither of them, unless you want to see a cursed Chapter 4 screenshot of my abominable strategy.

3 Likes

Well thanks for your explanations. I wish someone picks up that game some day and finishes it. By the way, Pandan couldn’t be more right about the deployment slots. One or two more, as you said, would be great.

1 Like

Anyway, I feel like I can comment on the hack now. As of writing this, I am in Chapter 9.

This is a very ambitious project. It has a lot of effort put into the portraits, the descriptions, the dialogue, the story, the maps, everything. It does a lot of things I’ve never seen in hacks before, and its boss recruitment mechanic is fun. I’ve recruited every boss up to this point, because I figured that I wouldn’t know how to spend my money during a first playthrough anyway, and I believe this was the right decision. The boss units are quite powerful, and I ended up with a team of mostly them.

Unfortunately, I’m dropping the hack. I’m going to be contrarian in this opinion, but I didn’t like playing it, and at this point, there’s no sign it’ll stop doing things that make me dislike it.

Let me explain.

I think that, objectively, the hack is good. It’s pretty high quality overall. It has nice-looking portraits, clever dialogue, a developed plot, plenty of good units, and elaborate maps.

The “elaborate maps” part is where I’d like to stop.

Simply put, the maps give me cognitive overload. Almost every single one of them does. They tire me out and I can’t fully process them as I play them. Every time I finished a chapter, I was too exhausted to fully comprehend the story, which also impacted my enjoyment of the plot. For that reason, I don’t feel like I can say much about the story – especially since after some time, I even needed to ask people what was happening, because I realized I didn’t understand the current events.

The maps feel like I’m playing FE4, but there are no castle seizes and the maps are not segmented – instead, everything plays out in one continuum where nothing is gated by seizing. The maps expect me to pay attention everywhere, whether it is through special objectives or through reinforcement squads appearing somewhere, and the story dialogue also gives you extra information quite often, which is yet another aspect to remember. Given the colossal size of the maps, the sheer number of enemies on these maps, and the often unusual objectives, I found my experience rather overwhelming. I felt like I could never relax, and I often didn’t know what was asked of me because I simply missed dialogue. Like I said, I was often too worn out to understand what just happened. I genuinely didn’t realize that

Spoiler

We defected from our original army

For about two chapters after it occurred, because my brain was too drained. The gameplay was actively affecting my ability to enjoy the story.

In simpler terms: I found that there was too much happening on basically every map. Even the Prologue throws you right into the thick of it, with like 5 villages to visit – oh, reinforcements – oh, that village just got destroyed, was I supposed to save it? – oh, story event – oh, the boss just charged at me. I know that this is a strategy game and you’re supposed to be good at surveying the battlefield, but in my case specifically, I felt that the game was asking for too much. The maps are huge, objectives are unusual, allied units are red (I know that one is funny, but it didn’t help when I was already exhausted), reinforcement groups are numerous and appear often, bosses are big and typically don’t just stand there. Couple all of that with classes becoming more specialized in a lot of aspects (making picking the right matchups quite important) and there is a lot to plan for, as well as a lot of information to take in, at every turn.

It’s not for me. It’s too much. And since I’m not enjoying playing these maps, I figured it was best to stop.

Would I recommend that other people play the hack? Yes, absolutely. It doesn’t appeal to me, but that doesn’t mean it won’t appeal to others. In fact, I think a lot of people would enjoy it.

But I am not one of those people. Which is a shame, because I do recognize that this project is quite impressive. Its gameplay just actively hurts me.

3 Likes