I don’t know if there is a specific place to post bug reports, but I just finished chapter 4 and upon finishing all the dialog (I assume transitioning into chapter save screen) the program just turns black with no way to progress anything. I also tried going into some save states, and all my states after the start of the chapter gave me the same issue when suspending the game. Has anyone had this problem? I am on version 2.55 on VBA 1.8.0.603. I was having so much fun pls help 
Ended up answering the question on the Discord (which tends to be the easiest way to get ahold of me in a hurry), but for general circulation: it’s most likely an emulator issue. The hack has been tested largely on MGBA and, as far as mobile emulators go, has seemingly worked flawlessly on Delta. If the screen is black after skipped cutscenes in particular, report the issue (since I can fix it if I know where it is), but it’s most likely hanging on a recruit prompt and mashing through it will get you through the other side - or just resuming chapter and re-completing it.
1 Like
Yaama, Companions, it’s patchday. Mostly this is a day for balance tweaks, with some of the weaker units in the cast getting long-awaited buffs. I’ve also made a new Tier List Maker that reflects more recent portrait changes. I imagine this is probably the last big unit balance change DoW will ever get, as things set more and more in stone; hopefully it helps give boosts in the right places.
EDIT: Forgot to actually add Etienne’s skill bonus. If you downloaded before the hour, well, either redownload or have a slightly less accurate Etienne. Apologies for the inconvenience.
v2.6 Patchnotes
- Fixed issue where the cursor would interfere with the MMB (thanks again to Catball)
- Recoloured some interface elements
- Added promoted palettes for Warrior, Warrior, Warrior, Sorcerer and Sorcerer
- Sander: +1 Def, +3 Lck, +10% Lck growth; C → B-rank swords
- Goran: +1 Lv, +1 Skl, -1 Def
- Alarik: +1 Skl, +1 Spd, +2 Con, +5% HP/Skl growth, -5% Def growth; now comes with Vulnerary
- Etienne: +3 Skl; Lance rank C → B, Axe rank D → B
- Kestut: C → B Anima
- Deadeye: A → S-ranks all weapons; +1 Str/Skl/Def
- Wardog: +5 Spd cap
- Most magic classes: +5 def cap (15 → 20; 20 → 25 for Wizard)
- Brave weapons reduced in price (7500 → 6300 - 7200)
- C8: Vaivar’s Ruby Gem now drops automatically
- C12: Bolting now drops from mage
Mostly, these have been targetted at units who were circling DoW’s drain. DoW doesn’t really have truly bad units in the way vanilla tends to; there is straight-up no Sophia or whatever. But it was clear that some units were in need of a little boost.
Alarik wasn’t fast enough to be fast and wasn’t good enough to be anything else. His Constitution was a problem in particular; being burlier helps him lean more into the axe-myrm niche. Also, despite being isolated initially, he didn’t come with a vulnerary.
Deadeye was one of the weakest units in the game despite being cool and costing money, but I didn’t want to compromise on his bow armour image by making him faster or giving him better Constitution. I buffed his existing strengths slightly, but the major boost, I suspect, is the weapon ranks; not only a de facto +2 to all damage, but being able to slot into any legendary niche.
Etienne’s stats hadn’t been changed since launch. He essentially serves as that early extra crutch, but probably never sees use past C6. More reliability was recommended, and now provided. In addition, as an experienced soldier, it makes sense if he has good rather than conspicuously poor ranks in his non-sword areas.
Goran was kind of a sleeper hit. He kept being buffed because people kept trying to use Hesterine, and whenever I buffed Hesterine I generally buffed Goran to go with it until, oops, turns out he’s like a top 3 unit. A modest kick in the teeth feels warranted.
Sander is always going to be kind of bad; DoW just isn’t a good game to be a myrmidon in. I leaned into his ability to dodge with a Luck boost, and buffed his weapon rank so that he can pick up the silver sword as a favouritism move. It probably isn’t a good idea, but why not? Similarly, Kestut gets a better rank in large part so that, if you nab that early Bolting, someone can actually use it. And an extra Bolting was added later; it’s a bit weird if you can get Purge trivially but not Bolting (nobody cares about Eclipse).
Raising the defence cap for magicians is Vivica’s approximately 18th indirect buff. Really it was just something that felt kind of bad to run into and that was about it. C8 had a bit too much for a thief, or even two thieves, to do. I’m now happier with where the crime quantity is, after initially going overboard.
And most importantly, I made a couple of other things blue that hadn’t been, including at last finding the palette for inactive main menu tiles. I’m now more pleased with where the interface sits than ever.
10 Likes
Ooh, congrats! It’s great to hear the game now feels complete to you and it’s really cool next to Drums of War being all but complete now as well. Awesome!
5 Likes
Okay, normally, I don’t write reviews, but I’m willing to make an exception for this one. Here are a few parts to the review:
Story: "Build An Army. Trust No One" (for real!)
Without giving too much detail, I want to say that the story was amazing (how did you learn how to write a compelling story? Tell me your secrets!). I’d say that it is right up there with 7 Siblings (another great hack btw, highly recommend) and Vision Quest (for food). What’s great is how the gameplay depict how you are always surrounded by a larger army and self-serving interests. Even the dialogue provides a grounded sense how most people would feel and respond. At the same time, the dialogue including supports has comedic gems! Also, it’s nice that a lot of characters’ organically contribute to the the story without feeling like everyone HAS to say something (looking at you, Three Houses!)
If I had to make a little nitpick, it would be the lack of maps. Although the introduction does have the world map and a great speech from one of the important characters, it would be nice to see the map to keep up where each characters are going. However, the dialogue does a good job of explaining where people are going while Codex provides rich world building context.
Gameplay: Fair and Fun
At first, I was kind of miffed by the lack of displayed growth rates (yes, I am one of those BiG nUmBeRs = GoOd people). Man, that bold decision really paid off. All of the units, even prepromoted recruits, felt that they can immediately contribute. Also, it’s nice to see how we can experiment what feels good for us to use, as the game is iron-man friendly and enemies do not overwhelm you like modern insane FE games.
Also, I think the gameplay was a great challenge. Nothing felt completely unfair, but we had to be strategic with our positions and unit/weapon selection especially when maps are very fun and somewhat quirky side objectives. I do like how there were a lot of strong bulky but low leveled enemies, compelling you to use certain units and weapons. For example, the soldiers and archers are physically bulky, so they need a magic unit or strong weapon to take them down. Also, making archers using longbows was a nice touch to how they can be used. Finally, the gold was not super abundant, which is great because it compels you to manage your resources more carefully without being too stingy. And the bounty system was interesting. I have used it, but it turns out that the gold you get is not game-changing but certainly helpful.
Summary: 9.9/10
Overall, this game was an amazing experience. I’m actually replaying it right now and enjoy every minute of it. I think it is a great shame that you made this masterpiece (better than the modern FE games) without an monetary benefit. I hope you continue to spoil us with great hacks like this for us.
7 Likes
Hey now, don’t hurt my man poor Sander like that.
Spoiler
We already got beaten badly in a duel for a man’s heart. He doesn’t need your negative energy. 
But yeah, actually, in my first playthrough (v2.5), he was one of my better units when I paired him up with Kadri and Andrea, but I’d say that Andrea is definitely the better Myrm with her prf. Sander may be more bulky but with his relative lack of ranged weapons does hurt his utility a lot.
Must try this out sometime too.
It’s nice to come back to the community and find that for every two things left unfinished, at least one new one gets done…
… or was it the other way around?
(Writing this at nearly 2 AM will do that to you).
Needless to say- will try this.
I beat the game and now I can sing it’s praises properly. The game is a little hard for me, while I have loved the series from the start I for sure struggled to beat this game and some maps felt like I was banging my head against the wall but when I wasn’t in those moments I was really just loving the game.
I love the games narrative going from toxic faction to faction and realizing liberation is the only path forward was a great message and actually something I wanted to fight for. It took a long road to get there but it was an exciting payoff. The characters are amazingly well written and the mechanic of recruiting bosses is fantastic. Most of the tweaks to the base GBA formula I really enjoyed, I think archers were a little too powerful but ultimately it was a great time.
I wish I managed to get more paired supports, I ended with 3 A ranks and 1 didn’t have a paired end despite seeming like it might. The central romance of the game is really compelling one probably the best main romance I’ve seen in any SRPG I’ve played not just in Fire Emblem.
The Squad
The MVP of the party for sure, Estrelle is just such a fucking amazing and badass character. I love her so much and I love how down bad she is for Roxelana. In my head she is 100% with Roxy and Calista whenever their in town, happy little triad. As a unit she hard carried finishing off so much content, able to handle so much of the hardest parts of the game including finishing off the final boss solo.
Roxelana is one of the most compelling MCs in all of SRPGs, she is really cool, she is tough, she’s got a ton of trauma and it clearly effects her and her choices all while still making a really compelling leader. She is a really strong unit and I never felt like she was holding me back and she promotes at a good time in the game. I love that so much of the story is centered around her love for Calista and their building relationship.
Calista is a great dancer, her additional dances didn’t see a lot of use in my run, I typically preferred the other action to buffing someone but she was tough enough and fast enough to preform well. She is the best dragon character I’ve seen in the series just an utter delight to hear talk every time.
Thalassa’s high mobility magic and ability to use staves made her consistently one of the most useful units I had. While she started out not super impressive in her debut I really enjoyed using her and was glad to have her with me in so many of the late game maps where she showed her stuff. I think her and Kristine’s dynamic is really cute and I would have loved to have actually managed to get them to A rank.
My Vivica capped her magic super early on, she was constantly the strongest damage dealer for single attacks and with great utility with staves helping the party out when needed. Her and Renate are really cute. I think her fun air of mystery was really neat and I really enjoyed it.
A lot of times late game healers feel like dead wait for me but Kadri felt like she was always doing so much for the team with her staves just being able to use those higher rank heals when so few others could.
While she fell off, I attempted to bring her back into the fold later in the game when my GF who I was playing with mentioned Saskia’s other A support was platonic attempting to bring her back into the fold just so they could support. I didn’t manage to get them to A rank but I love fliers so much I didn’t mind if she wasn’t the best anyway, I also adored her dream of being a baker and the dynamic I did get to see between her and Saszkia.
It felt a little hard to gage how good Catsidhe was doing thanks to her super low speed she struggled sometimes with not dying but I really enjoyed using her and she was one of the more fun dragon units I’ve got to play around with. I also think she is a sweetie pie.
I thought Dzeneta was compelling from the second I saw her, I was really hoping she was the recruit from her map and I was glad that she was. She wasn’t my best unit but she was my star lance user.
I was smitten with Clio the second I saw her, she is just so pretty and being on a cool dragon, I love her, how could I not stan. Was she particularly strong, no, but was she a great character, yes. I also thought what I got to see of her and Dzeneta was really cute, I enjoyed the differences between warriors and soliders chats.
I couldn’t take the gold from that poor village so Sanne was along for the ride and while her bad speed did make her not the best attacker I still found her useful just at being a good well rounded magical attacker.
Probably the unit who fell off the hardest for me Renate’s low speed meant she was worse at tanking then the majority of my units in the late game even if she was pretty good in early game. I didn’t do her any favors by hard pivoting her to axes because I realized she was the only woman in the game capable of using axes so I needed someone to use them. No regrets in bringing her to end game though, her and Viv are super adorable, so there.
I am to my bones, a simp for a bratty rich girl so I mean, when I saw Valentrix I thought, she probably sucks but I am going to use her. She didn’t suck though, she was pretty useful even into the last map being able to use high level staves was really clutch and high level magic was great.
Lucetta is one of my favorite characters in personality, apperance and as a unit. She and Estrelle were great even if they don’t have a paired ending in my heart they did start the company together. She was consistently laying the smack down on units since she was able to double most things and smack there res. Not to mention heal utility is just really useful in this game.
I want to keep Saszkia safe, she is very good, very sweet even if she is hurt by how good archers are I never stopped using her once I got her. She was a really fun unit to use and I just love fliers, I love um, can’t say it enough.
I’d say for basically all parts of the game Kirsten was the strongest unit. Constantly able to one round every enemy I put her against, without being counted, consistently able to tank enemy hits and with good avoid too. She is strong, with far reaching strength, she is just kinda wildly strong. There was never a point in the game where I thought Kristen wasn’t the answer to a problem, she was consistently able to help clear most challenges up. Plus her blunt personality is really great and charming to me, I love her.
Overall this was a brilliant experience, thank you for making it, I really loved it and I think it might be one of my games of the year.
8 Likes
Excellent news: CRK has unearthed the HQ scan of the DoW cover art! Behold:
You can find and commission her at this Twitter account (occasionally NSFW).
21 Likes
Just beat the Prologue!
I have a question:
Summary
Is the village closest to where those two green units start able to be saved or no?
Last time I checked it wasn’t, as the green units got killed instantly. However, in the newest update they were given the opportunity to fight back and resist a little, which leaves me wondering too 
Even if they moved at full speed every turn, the party can’t get anywhere near the village. If there is some sequence of AI manipulation that technically saves it, there is no reward.
1 Like
Absolutely loved this hack one of the best I have ever played, but when Rover supports my boy needs them.
2 Likes
Just finished the hack and all I can say is it a masterpiece. Everything about this game is so refined and it was a joy to experience.
- The map and level design were excellent, and some of the later maps were some of my favorites I’ve played in any romhack.
- Difficulty was spot on. The early maps made you work to keep all of your units (which I certainly failed at) where the later maps held you to a certain level of efficiency to clear out dangerous enemy groups before they could crack-back on the enemy phase.
- All of the spritework for the units in this game is beautiful. Not a single character felt like a throwaway or a lazy inclusion. The major boss sprites were also magnificent.
- While story is usually the least important gameplay aspect for me when playing a hack, I never felt bored of DoW’s story. Every character that made their way into the spotlight felt uniquely written and dialogue was always interesting.
Awesome job to Parr and others on making such an excellent hack!
4 Likes
Hey, the wolf is new! I hadn’t updated the game to the latest version, but now I will. When does he appear?
Yaama, companions. It’s been a while, but it is again patchday.
I’ve been playing through the game again for the first time in some months - unsurprisingly, I was burned out as hell having played through every map 5+ times, and especially the earlygame maps, which I’ve completed at least a dozen times each - and using the fresh eyes to go through and fix some things that I either just reliably overlooked or was in some way used to, or else consequences of other changes.
While I felt this was a significant enough set of changes to warrant pushing out a patch a couple of weeks ahead of the rest, there’s going to be changes to Acts 2 and 3 as well to come as I go through them, so this is basically the first half of a greater 2.7… after which the game isn’t going to change much, honestly. We’re reaching the settled state of the game, and I don’t anticipate changes other than bugfixes in 2024. As always, thanks to everyone who has given feedback.
v. 2.65 Patchnotes
- Saszkia: +2 Skl
- Act 1: Earlygame Ecorcheurs -1 Pwr
- Prologue: Removed one Wardog from starting opposition
- Prologue: Removed one Armour from Radu’s village opposition
- Prologue: Set Machva rebels to delay charge by 1 turn
- C1: Corrected status of Zoltan’s citizenship
- C2: Alarik now surges forward a few tiles on recruitment
- C2: Centre ship longbowmen now have recurves
- C3: AuclairSqd Adepts now split apart on opposite sides of the ziggurat-fort
- C3: Auclair: +2 Spd
- C4: Kestut and Laszlo no longer open doors with their chest keys (???)
- C4: Troubadour no longer tries to heal, is now area denial (stationary with Sleep staff)
- C4: Ramond’s battle quotes / death quote / BGM all correctly play
- C4: Micah’s Guard no longer charges (attack in two → attack if in range)
- C5: Corrected status of the Exiles’ citizenship
- Added easter eggs to weird edge-cases
- Minor tweaks to scenes for better flow, especially early
- Fixed a number of missing […]s and erroneous [ToggleSmile]s in earlygame
Misplays on Prologue will no longer lead to as crippling a tempo loss. I’ve had a few complaints over the months on the first pod of enemies, but I honestly feel like Radu’s squad was iffier; they’ve both been turned down in any case to help the player reach the ironclads easier, with the wave being delayed by a turn.
C2 gives a little more room to manoeuvre on your own ship, and has Alarik push forward more to get caught out less. Auclair had been nerfed into the stratosphere by the weight increase to blades; he’s more of a threat now, but the player will no longer have to deal with both of his Adepts at once.
I hate mob key AI. I will never understand it. Use of the phrase ‘concerned citizen’ for comedic effect works better in games where the absence of citizenship isn’t a major plot element. Saszkia’s bad accuracy gets an initial boost, though her growths are still slanted toward Strength. Ramond’s quotes in C4 pointed to the version who joins you, but a more recent patch made boss Ramond into a different instance so he no longer had Steal.
Until next time.
8 Likes
Yaama, companions. Loath though I am to overwrite the 69th edit of the OP, it was necessary. The Act 2 patch is in and wound up larger than expected.
v. 2.68 Patchnotes
- Helje: +1 Strength, but now comes with iron rather than slim lance
- Saszkia: +1 Strength
- Clio: +2 Skill
- Evander: +2 Skill
- C5: Corrected status of the Exiles’ citizenship (actually remembered to, this time)
- C5: Central skeleton archer removed; another sword skeleton added in northwest
- C5: Central mage in Auberdin’s garrison replaced by myrmidon
- C5: Retreating enemies now fall back to the north
- EoA1: Kadri shade now reflects Kadri’s current sprite
- C6: Carmilla now comes with backup slim lance
- C7: Warrior, Warrior, Warrior, Sorcerer and Sorcerer level increased from 10 → 12; Warrior level increased from 1 → 2
- C7: Ridge Guard archer levels reduced by 1
- C7: Connacht now has boss dialogue with Debreszen and Rioghain
- C7: East Rhiannon reinforcement shamans have Flux instead of Luna
- C7: Chapter now ends immediately upon rout
- C8: Slightly expanded Exiles chat before map
- C8: Clio recruitment now comes with popup clarifying she doesn’t actually need to talk to Roxelana
- C9: Western river-forders now staggered
- C9: Moved one final-wave Ecorcheur sage up to the far NE instead of clustering with the rest
- C9: Thalassa comes with Thunder instead of Fire
- C11: Hetaeria-led SE spawn delayed by 1 turn
- C11: Removed one Mercenary archer; pushed other back tiles; pushed north room Mercenary soldier and fighter into east approach
- C11: Moved one Warrior mercenary one tile west
- C11: North-to-northeast carpet hallway armour squad no longer move; now given 1-2 range weapons
- C11: Northeast room Warrior mercenary and Mercenary mercenary now charge if in range instead of charge within two ranges
- C11: Eclipse druid and Sleep sage now immobile
- C11: Gate Hetaeria / armour formation tighter-knit; given squad AI
- C13: Swapped position of Agovanje sage and far NW champion
- Final Prayer now requires C rank (down from A), grants 20 WEXP
- If displayed Crit is below 10, it becomes 0; immense thanks to DragZ
- Critical bonus for Warlord and Swordmaster increased from 15 → 20
- Various minor text and eventing fixes
- Made some of Connacht’s dialogue delivery more consistent
- Wulfram is now correctly a Juggernaut in Act 2 appearances
- Several tracks (3, 5, 11, 12, 13, 46) improved (mostly to be less discordant); immense thanks to Vava
The ironman run continues apace. Saszkia died almost immediately to a misplay in 6, taking Brilliance with her, then I took a frankly hilarious death in 7 (inching Hesterine to a tile where she could lure one guy, seeing she’d be attacked by two guys, then moving her instead a tile above and right, where she was attacked instead by two different guys and died to exact damage), then some sloppy misplays in 8 saw Ramond and Donagh go down. 9 and 10 went without a hitch, but 11 saw me get rinsed, and three more went down (rest in peace Andrea, Kirsten, Thalassa).
You’ll note C11 is seeing the most changes.
There’s only fairly minor changes to 5, 6 and 8. C7, swear to God, originally had Connacht’s generics able to push through a lot better; I guess maybe I nudged up Guard stats a pivotal point or two. So they’re nudged up a bit more. 9’s main issues were the overwhelming east firepower in the last wave and the demand for 3-range action economy in the NW; these, I fixed.
11 looks like a lot of changes but for the most part it’s about reducing the amount of chaos in the NE corridor push; four moving parts no longer move, three more have been shuffled, one is gone. I’ve looked ahead to 13; the guy with Rescue apparently sometimes used her Rescue, which I don’t remembering seeing but did more recently patch in something to adjust staff AI, so probably that’s a byproduct. Anyway, she’s closer now so can be immediately killed, while also putting less concentrated magic damage in the centre.
The big mechanical change is to low% crit. It no longer exists. Either on player or enemy side; unless you can stack up at least 10% crit, you don’t get any. Everyone’s a low% crit hater on enemies - and it was pretty rare in DoW these days, though still reared its head from time to time - but I also dislike it on players and just don’t think it has a place in the game. If crits happen, it should be because the player stacked the odds to make them happen. This patch exists because I mentioned in a voice call that it’s what I would do if it was possible, and then DragZ made it possible, so massive shout-out.
Helje, Saszkia, Evander and Clio aren’t bad units, but were nudged up a bit for reasons of vibe. Helje was the only non-Prf enemy boss to join with something besides iron; now she doesn’t, but the strength makes up for it anyway while ensuring she’s just a little better in her own right.
I’m noticing as I go along just how much better I am at eventing than I was, and just how much higher my standards are. The cutscene eventing for Acts 1 and 2 is a mess, a bunch of Low commands overwriting vanilla, zero consistency; it took me a while to figure out how to structure event sequences, and putting that knowledge in has helped polish a lot. Micah gets discussed a little more in C8, papering over the odd part where he just suddenly becomes referred to as PM without anyone ever mentioning him becoming such.
Related note, I don’t know anything about music, but Vava - again, massive shout-out - does. The ear-splitting quality that was in a few tracks is now no longer present; particularly useful given that they’re player phase tracks. I hope to be done with my run in another probably couple of weeks, and then the hack really will be close to its final form. And then I can work on other things. I haven’t abandoned the idea of an Easy Mode…
7 Likes
I’m partial on the no crits unless it’s 10% because on one map I crit 5 different times (one time 2 in a row with Hesterine) with 2%-4% crit rate. It was very fun and satisfying and felt it upped the excitement of getting them so many times like that. So with that said, do I need to update the game for any reason or will it suffice to continue my run on the current build(I downloaded 2 updates ago, counting this one). Thanks for such an amazing hack! I love the no skills and not being able to see the growth rates in game. Keeps me from judging characters out the gate.
1 Like
Yeah, there were no major necessary fixes and I’m pretty sure there won’t need to be in the future, so if the aggregate of the changes is not to your liking then feel free to push on. Glad you’ve been enjoying.
Awesome! Thanks for the clarification and encouragement. You are an amazing developer and can honestly say this hack will be one I replay from time to time for the foreseeable future! Keep up the great work and I’ll be hoping for your continued success with everything you do. Thank you for your hard work and dedication!
1 Like