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.