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

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Apologies for the short turnaround between patches, but there’s another one up. A few minor tweaks that added up into something I wanted to push out the door.

2.25 Patchnotes
  • Added new mug for Kalevi
  • Slight fixes to mugs of Catsidhe, Roxelana
  • Renamed Torch (staff) to Illuminate
  • Deadeye: +3 Speed
  • Amended phrasing of Turn Rewind option
  • C6: moved droppable Restore staff from central Bishop to Lasker
  • C10: Added message clarifying that torches are safe to sell
  • C12: Ramond now has battle, death, and vs. Estrelle quotes
  • C12: stealable Lapis Gem on general is now Angelic Robe
  • C14: removed stealable Angelic Robe
  • C14: improved position of militia
  • E-2: removed two deployment slots from south
  • E-2: split north group in half, put one set of three closer to the front
  • E-2: Removed 1-2 enemies from every formation
  • E-3: split off epilogue from rest of chapter to display fully accurate turncount

Having a Restore staff on-hand is too important - though status doesn’t play that significant a role in DoW anyway - to leave to chance, and you’re already racing the Exiles through the entirety of C6, so now it’s a guaranteed drop. Also, wanted to slightly reduce the amount of money floating around in the pool, so it comes at the expense of a stealable Lapis.

I agree that Deadeye is kind of mid for a boss recruit. Low Con was flagged as a problem, but I like the concept of him being the one archer (besides Berenice) who kind of struggles with Con. So I boosted it directly, by 3. This probably also makes his swords more appealing; I haven’t used Deadeye much in my own runs, but I imagine longbows are just a better weapon-type.

I’m still not wholly sure where I sit with thieves, but I think adding individual stealable items to outdoor maps feels bad. It works in VQ because VQ is full Crime Emblem. The approach in DoW - which was to roll out a bunch of outdoor stealables to incentivise theft - is kind of half-cocked, it’s not what the game is built around. So I think I’m settling on ‘only make thieves something you’ll miss out for not bringing on chest maps’, so if you aren’t training them you just unpack Kalevi where necessary. The situation I don’t want is ‘in this 12-turn chapter I feel like I have to use a unit I wouldn’t otherwise bring just in order to take one action, and they’ll be a liability the rest of the time, and if I don’t bring them it’ll feel bad’. That was kind of the situation C14 had. The militia have also been repositioned to hopefully be less in the way, and stabilise the north more reliably.

The current state of E-2 was a stopgap. I like deployment limits around 10-12 for medium maps, 14-15 for large, 18 at most. I don’t make small maps. It’s not in my nature. When recommendations were widespread to increase deploy limits and/or reduce enemy count, and I was post-breakup and mid-moving continents, increasing deployment was the easy fix at a time when the easy fix was, uh, appealing. But 20 units felt excessive, so I’ve wanted to roll back that change and strip a few enemies back to compensate; 1-2 from each pod, maybe 10-12 in all. None of them taken from the guys who only exist to dissuade spawn-camping, so now I’m a little worried I overdid it, but whatever. I have rarely overnerfed things.

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What is the final reward for the random 4 items?

Summary

I have 3 of the 4 items- the Oddka, the Miasma, and the Fetid Clam- but I missed whatever the other one was.

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If you get the full set of five, you get a reskinner Juna Fruit; reduces a few levels without reducing stats. It’s not really that useful, honestly; more an achievement popup.

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Aaaand Finished!

Really, really great job with this. I had a great time from start to finish, and as I said in an earlier post, in terms of writing quality this is easily one of my personal favorite FE rom hacks.

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Rover is best boy

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Patchday again. A few minor changes, a few significant visual overhauls.

2.3 Patchnotes
  • Added new mugs for Baros (Lumi), Sanne (RW), Hesterine and Laszlo (both Levin)
  • Buffed Baros sword rank to A
  • Hesterine: +2 Spd, +1 Def
  • Goran: +1 Spd
  • Sander: +1 Str, +1 Skl, +1 Spd, -2 Res
  • Alarik: -1 Lv
  • Dzeneta now has Reposition, not Pivot
  • Sighed and finally got around to fixing the infinite Reputation-duping
  • Fixed guy in E-1 stranded on cliff
  • Fixed oversight in E-2 where Rhiannon brigade had 8 guys instead of 7
  • Shortened range of both Gorgon weapons by 1; reduced might of Demon Surge by 10
  • Fixed Gianluce going through his lines too quickly
  • Courtesy of Feier, added a far better epithet for Ochulo
  • Miriam no longer namedrops a Feodor right next to a Teodor recolour

Hesterine and Goran were still underpowered, what else was new. Units are designed to stand out compared to those around them, but there was room to push both of their speed a little more; cavalier’s a fast class in any case, and it was an area where Goran - the slow representative of a fast class - could outpace Kirsten, the fast representative of a slow class.

They’re decent units on paper, but nobody ever seems to use Sander or Alarik past Ch4, so I gave them slight pushes. They had both been pretty much the same now as always, while other units around them had been improved, sometimes immensely. Sander loses his lingering Resistance to help Andrea’s stand out more by comparison.

It’s slightly weird that Baros comes with a silver sword, but swords aren’t his best rank, so that’s been bumped up. I’d dithered on giving Dzeneta Reposition; it’s a very powerful skill, but she’s a pretty middling fighter. Ultimately it fits her flavour better to shift positioning around than to just sprint really hard, and I don’t find Pivot that interesting a skill personally anyway. I’m remembering now that I forgot to change her recruitment screen to say she Repositions and does not Pivot, so that’ll be the first change made next patch.

I refreshed the 0% growths patch. No more pseudo-, though genuinely, if you plan to do a run with that patch, tell me and I’ll make it happen. What was probably the biggest obstacle to a 0% growths run, the Ch12 gauntlet, has been nerfed significantly since the prior version, so I felt it was worth renewing. Also added a 100% growths mode, because that’s apparently in vogue these days - makes sense, a true minimal turncount run will rig all the levels needed anyway. And it doubles as a pure non-difficulty Story mode, so.

The Gorgons in E-3 are strong, you want to deal with them proactively, but they’re a little less punishing now and don’t close off as many tiles before they’re dealt with.

The new mugs look really good, so it’s worth downloading for that alone. See you all soon enough, I’m sure.

EDIT: wait there’s a patch to set growth types and not just attack febuilder with a scroll wheel
…
lol


The horrifying revelation that I am This Guy.

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Everyone play Drums of War right now. Whatever I type in here cannot do justice to how transcendent this hack is.

Gameplay

Gameplay-wise this hack doesn’t do anything mechanically standout, but executes the existing GBA mechanics to perfection. Maps have tight action economy on virtually every turn, up to 5 bosses on each map, and varied objectives like escaping after baiting a group of enemies and killing 3/5 bosses of your choice. Units have no skills, meaning the only resources you have to leverage against the enemy are your units’ stats, items, and your own raw tactical skill as a player. Playing this was exhilarating, and emerging battered and bruised - yet alive - from a tough enemy phase really sold the desperation of the Company as the story went on.

Drums of War’s standout feature is the ability to ransom bosses. After almost every map in the hack, you’re presented with one of the map’s bosses and given the choice to either recruit them or ransom them for a gold reward. These boss recruits often have stellar bases and unique utility to justify their gold cost, and given the stringent gold flow and highly difficult earlygame maps like Chapter 4, these choices are interesting and meaningful.

Admittedly the choices become less equal as the hack goes on, as the boss recruits get better bases and the player gets more gold from other sources. But this isn’t a bad thing, as it ensures the player always has enough strong units to beat the game with. It also creates a different, equally interesting dynamic, where your choice of whether to recruit a boss is dependent on which free units you invested into. For example I ransomed the ranger boss Rioghain as I had an extremely competent marksman Kirsten and was resolved to train the fighter Donagh, but I recruited the vanguard boss Domovoi without blinking because I didn’t invest into either of the earlygame armor knights.

My MVPs were, who else, two earlygame mage girls. Felice is a mage recruited at the beginning of the prologue, and I fed her most kills in the first ~4 chapters. She started to hit her stride around Chapter 5 and kept that up for the entire game, possessing a lot of flexibility with 3-range Thunder tomes and the ability to wield staves in low deployment maps. She landed the hit on the final boss, and boy was it deserved.

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The other mage girl was Lucetta, the boss recruit of Chapter 3. She started off as a monk with fantastic speed and resistance, and the unique utility of being able to wield light magic at base. She’s also one of only two characters in the hack to gain movement on promotion, something I made sure to take advantage of in maps where rescue dropping was key. I gave her the growth boosting item to help her overcome her middling magic growth, and it paid off in spades.

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All in all, the gameplay of the hack was very solid. There were some few rough patches - maps with 5 bosses tend to be long and arduous, and the lightning fast map pace made for a lot of resets and loaded save states - but I greatly enjoyed it nonetheless.

Story

Far and away the best aspect of the hack is the story. It uses the format of Fire Emblem to tell the tale of Roxelana Callaste, a captain in Rijesca as she fights for the safety of her Company and the sovereignty of her nation. Ignoring the obvious differences between that scenario and your standard Fire Emblem fare, Drums of War possesses an entirely unique tone. Roxelana and the Company are constantly on the back foot, caught between power-hungry and manipulative factions looking to exploit Rijesca for their own gain. Every chapter is another decisive battle, where loss means the extermination of them all and the loss of their home.

And yet despite this bleakness, Roxelana never loses the hope for a better future. Her character is compelling in her resolve in the face of trauma both old and new, and the player is always drawn to help her realize this goal no matter what.

Beyond Roxelana herself, Drums of War’s side cast is also stellar. Every automatically recruited character has some throwaway lines in the main story if alive (the Chapter 2 archer Kirsten has a lot of lines in the first endgame chapter, if you can believe it), and many others are plot relevant without stepping on each others’ toes. Special mention here goes to Kalevi, the spymaster for the Rijescan rebels. He offers a unique perspective on the conflict at hand, especially at the end of Act 2, and has fantastic interactions with Roxelana and the other rebels within the Company.

It is because of the breadth of Drums of War’s worldbuilding that characters like Kalevi shine. The world is filled with many factions that each have their own motivations and loyalties, from Magistrate Baros’ Guard loyalists, to Wulfram’s disgraced old guard Exiles, to Estrelle’s self-serving independent mercenary Escourchers. All of these factions play off of each other in the conquest for control of Rijesca and inform the ideals of the characters who come from them.

The supports are, as expected, fantastic. They may be few in number - each free recruit has ~2-3 supports while boss recruits only have 1 - but each chain is incredibly well-written and adds texture to all members of the ensemble cast. And the cast is put first here, none of the supports serve to exposition dump about worldbuilding that isn’t shown in the main story. They’re also very funny. They bring a lot of much-needed levity to the hack in a way that also somehow enhances the characters rather than reducing them to punchlines.

Play Drums of War right now.

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Patchday! One of those where it’s just a bunch of small changes that eventually added up to a sizable list, so fuck it.

v. 2.4 Patchnotes
  • Ironclad class speed reduced by 2 (Renate/Petras speed unchanged)
  • Fixed typo in Metaxa’s description
  • Fixed errors in male Paladin caps
  • Fixed errors in female Paladin caps
  • Sage promotion now gives D staves
  • Changed unit descriptions to allude more to background
  • Made Sanne’s Codex entry less clumsy
  • Bulked up Codex to 75 entries
  • Improved several Aulestri palettes
  • Fixed Aulestri pegasus rider palette
  • C4: Ramond (as boss) can no longer steal
  • C6: Lapis Gem downgraded to Ruby Gem
  • C10: Fixed issue where Dzeneta’s recruitment box still mentioned Pivot, not Reposition
  • EoA2: Improved scripting at end event, made transitions less sudden, had Druzhina run rather than stand around like idiots
  • C15: Finally fixed issue where Domovoi would talk after defeat if shot through a door
  • EoA3: Fixed potential issue where Reputation might not spawn?

Enemy ironclads got their speed nerfed. I’m not sure why they had a base of 2 to begin with. I think because my original class bases went off a scale of 1-10, rather than being thought of as actual stats. … Actually, yeah that was probably it. Anyway, they’re no longer faster than shamans, and that should help give a significant boost to Vivica.

E weapon rank becomes less and less a thing every patch. Felice seems Good, With Investment and Kestut is pretty middling, so handing Sages D Staves felt more anti-frustration than gamebreaking, and it helps Thalassa’s staff weakness stand out more.

I’m not sure why I thought there was a soft cap on Codex entries. I made more so that almost every character has one; I’ll probably bulk it out slightly more later, but it’s kind of a ball-ache to expand right now because all of my meticulously labelled flags got thrown out between computers. So I have to check flags constantly, now, to add more.

There’s still a little too much non-ransom money floating around, and C6’s blue gem village is a bit janky to get, so downgrading that felt logical. A few Aulestri and Ecorcheur palettes looked terrible because it was still very early in development, and I’d just straight-up overlooked fixing the pegasi post-re-palette. Given that nobody reported this, I imagine nobody plays with animations, underlining that this is all wasted effort, but–

End of Act 2’s scripting looked pretty janky. When I made it, I was just relieved enough when it all worked, but I’m a lot more confident with eventing stage directions now. And the Paladin caps were wrong, remarkably, independently, for both sexes.

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That’s just a sign of passion. When you fix something that people don’t even see but you can’t leave unfixed. A sense of obligation.

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It is, once again, patchday. A few more significant tweaks, this time. And one change in particular means this is a slightly experimental patch.

v. 2.5 Patchnotes
  • Added new mug for Thalassa (Levin)
  • Removed potential implication Thalassa’s father was Jurechka, not random Dutch guy
  • Illuminate Staff now E rank, worth 2 WEXP, reduced to 8 uses
  • Evander’s bounty is now worth 4000 (+1000)
  • Rioghain’s bounty is now worth 5000 (+1000)
  • Most mid- and lategame generic IDs have Lck reduced by 3
  • Flying units now have 25-Con aid formula
  • Isamaa significantly buffed, but no longer provides Resistance
  • C1: Moved units off shops/armouries
  • C4: Fixed turn order issue which would disrupt enemy charges if thieves died on turn 1
  • C4: Fixed Micah’s bodyguard sharing Squad AI with the other Guardsmen
  • C4: Fixed issues with NW and NE wallbreaks
  • C7: Spawns on boss death now happen at start of turns, not immediately. Promoted units still wait a turn before charging.
  • C9: Thalassa appears with Illuminate staff
  • C9: Turn 1 Ecorcheurs made more forgiving; area denial magi spaced out further from player deployment
  • C10: Adjusted eventing to account for outlier player actions
  • C11: Tryphon’s stats slightly reduced
  • EoA2: Vendor now sells Vulnerary / Pure Water / Barrier instead of redundant, preps-available tomes
  • C15: Swordmaster has stealable Ruby Gem replaced with Elixir
  • E-2: Kalju’s visit events no longer survive the demolition of their houses
  • Donagh: +5% Skl/Def growth; +10% Spd/Lck growth

The headlining change is the most likely to break things. I removed Recovery AI from every enemy in the game. I did this by going through every enemy pod and using the scroll-wheel. A misclick here or a mis-aimed cursor there could reposition a unit or assign them a different Squad AI ID or anything. I was careful as I could be while performing a repetitive task roughly a thousand times. So no guarantees.

On a similar note, Micah’s bodyguard, since being implemented literal months ago, turned out to share Squad AI with the other Guardsmen. I had often wondered why in pictures of C4 the guy was never on the throne, even in situations where it seemed like the enemy had been kept at bay.

A lot of DoW’s eventing was very complex for my relative skill level early on, and while that did push me into improving quickly, it did leave a few shaky events that I was just relieved at the time worked. For instance, you know the Prologue line that’s pretty obviously just overwriting the vanilla “now all that’s left is their leader…”? Yeah, if I remove that the entire chapter breaks, and at this point it’s held together so flimsily that I don’t want to touch it. But the pseudo-ambush-spawns of C7 on boss kills - though the player would likely not be in their range, and though they were set to delay their charge a turn - were relatively simple to fix.

Similarly, I didn’t actually know for quite a long time that [ToggleSmile] went for the whole scene, not just the actor speaking. This was hard to notice for a while in older scenes, because Roxelana’s old mug had a very subtle smile. Newer Roxelana emotes better, which makes it really jarring when she seems delighted about Carmilla’s lynch mob or whatever.

Another nerf to the C15 Swordmaster steal, since having the guy with 30 speed necessary basically qualifies as an easter egg at this point. But for the first time in a hot minute, it’s being compensated for by increased bounties for Evander and Rioghain.

C9’s a motherfucker of a chapter, but I shifted the Ecorcheurs in such a way that gives the player slightly but significantly more breathing room in the east, and added a change suggested by bpat to hand out a second Illuminate. E-2’s entire hurry-up mechanic kind of worked on the honour system this whole time and it took until Dragz to notice. Donagh was bad but has 5% higher Skill growth so now he’s good. Act 2/3 enemies had a little too much evade, now they have a little less. C10’s eventing has shifted to account for taking Luthor on, without just making it impossible. Fliers having worse Aid wasn’t actually a flier nerf, it was a heavy infantry nerf. And Thalassa’s new mug is fantastic, courtesy of Levin. All in all, a few changes that should just smooth over the experience, provided nothing breaks.

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Donagh was bad but has 5% higher Skill growth so now he’s good.

Donaghbros… we’re so back.

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And Drums of War’s FEE3 trailer finally graces the airwaves, about six months after being put together. Which is why some of the footage looks a little old. Because it
is

Anyway! Taking advantage of that to put out some updates.
First of all, I am now finally free to unleash the glorious commission work done by CrimeanRoyalKnight; there’s an absolutely massive-resolution one now in the OP that I’m about to repost, and hopefully we can get an even higher-quality scan down the line.

With the release of that art, I’m now free to push out the strategy guide for FE. Now, I’m no professional guide writer, so I did the logical thing: stapled together a bootleg, bought a discount time machine, warped back to 2006, allowed the good folks at Prima to do their thing, printed the result into a glorious black-and-white A4 paper, scanning the result. I hope that their advice holds players in good stead. That’s now in the OP, as well as in the Dropbox for good measure.

Also in the Dropbox is v. 2.55, which is a very minor patch that mostly tweaks units.

Patchnotes
  • New MMB, courtesy of Catball
  • Changed grey hieroglyphics to on-brand blackcurrent
  • Felice: +1 Spd
  • Gerhard: +1 Def/Res
  • Kestut: +1 Lv, +2 Res, +1 HP/Mag/Skl
  • Andrea: +3 HP, +1 Str
  • Tiimo: +1 Str, +2 Def/Lck
  • Karolas: +1 Str/Res, +2 Def/Lck, -5% HP/Lck
  • Luthor: -1 Lv, -3 HP, -2 Str/Spd
  • EoA3: Gave lingering Warden a Talk
  • EoA3: Gave spears to guard conscripts
  • EoA3: Had Ashwood muse on Micah’s power spike

I think we are mostly done with major updates at this point, and settling towards something looking like the final version of the game. Much love, fellow Companions.

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The premise is really interesting and I loved how much work you put into commissioning Prima circa 2006 to make that guide for you! The story of this game fascinates me. Congrats on the new cover art and FEE3 trailer!

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I unfortunately haven’t played this yet but just had to stop by and praise your FEE3 trailer. I hadn’t heard of the romhack before but definitely will be trying it out now. That was incredibly well put together.

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Just saw the trailer. The game looks amazing and CrimeanRoyalKnight’s art was wonderful to look at!

Look forward to playing this when I have the free time!

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This art is so beautiful :sob:

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Playing through the game with one of my GFs, it’s a little hard for my dumb ass but I am enjoying it. I am curious if fighting Estrelle in chapter 5 is the chance to recruit her and I’ll lose out on her or if I can grab her some other time?

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Glad you’re enjoying it thus far! And no, nothing good comes of fighting Estrelle in C5.

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Drums of War has been on my radar since before the recent trailer, but this definitely bumped it up even further that it already was on my list of priorities. What a great review, thanks for writing it!

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Very minor hotfix is now up. It’s pretty much only relevant if you choose to turn down the Chapter 12 boss recruit, and I wouldn’t bother installing it if you don’t feel like it. However, it does add new portraits for Kadri and Sanne, and as always is fully compatible with old saves. But if you don’t feel like going through patching again, you’ll be fine.

v. 2.56 Patchnotes
  • New portraits for Kadri and Sanne, thanks again to Levin
  • C15: Removed second copy of Aura
  • Fixed issue where non-Prf instance of Nibelung was still a Prf
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