Caves
And it was at that moment I realised I phrased the hint poorly.
It’s the cave in C14.
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The hint
But… b-but…
Chapter 13 is full of lava! It’s LITERALLY a rock that melts your body ! And we’re in a cave ! I- AAAAAAAAAAAAH
i really should have realised it literally perfectly described another place
I do plan on a minor update down the track, where I’ll rephrase that hint among other things. Most importantly, I figured out how to fix the bug of Shove sometimes not working (aka ‘I tried a thing on vibe and it worked for some reason’). But that won’t be for a while, probably the new year.
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If it makes you feel any better, I’m going to add to that workload.
The Status ‘inflicted’ by Calista’s dances are in Japanese in the preview.
And also opening the door makes the chest disappear (maybe my emulator only bug ? It is a weird one.)
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opening the door makes the chest disappear
Sounds like a case of incorrectly-handled overlapping tile changes. @ Parr you can use the placeholder tile in a tile change to not change whatever tile is there. That’s the one that looks like a blank square with a dotted-line border, found in the top-left of most tilesets:
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End of Act 3
Hey, it’s just a reskined redemption ?!
Feast your eyes on those rare sights, Parrhesia !
Man, aside from Petras it’s really not worth it ah ah !
Scouting job done, going to play Act 3 in 0% now…
The third chapter is probably going to be the most painful.
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I should stop saying “this was the worst chapter yet !” because it somehow feels like that every time in amazingly different ways. I simply need to accept that at this point nothing but sheer determination will see me through this and ‘having fun’ is a notion of the past.
This is a very serious PERFORMANCE, okay ?
Chapter 12 is my magnum opus. There’s no wriggle room, no margin for error ; the enemy has superior numbers, equipment and stats. You’re on a hard time limit, and it’s not waiting for you. I’m especially proud of how I handled the part with Estelle, Roxelana and Calista (who decided to come out of retirement for this chapter, thanks game for making her a mandatory deployment !), but the way I masterfully weaved units around the ranges of archers and mages is just as great.
It’s also… my greatest failure. See, toward the 76 minute mark I feel the brainfog starting to settle in, and that’s a super long video length nobody’s watching all of that, so I decide to SUSPEND my game and pick it up later.
… Yeah, you can HEAR the cogs in my brain turning there. “End, end… as in ‘ending the game’, for me to pick later, yes, that’s what I want, of course !” and then I FUCKING END MY TURN IMMEDIATELY PLACING THIS GREATEST PLAY OF A RUN IN MORTAL PERIL. And also giving myself a fucking heart attack IRL ; I nearly died.… I immediately picked the run back up (after taking a deep breath), but not before having cut off the video out of habit, so then I had to spent an extra hour and a half researching how to stitch two videos together on a smartphone and performing the surgery to avoid having two uploads, one of which isn’t even 10 minutes long.
… Actually that app dropped, like, half of my frame and some of the resolution, this looks horrible. Screw it, I’m uploading both parts separately ; I’ve aged ten years in ten seconds from the adrenaline rush, I’m not spending a single extra minute figuring this out.
I will now kill myself (in Minecraft).
MEGA SPOILER FOR THE PLOT OF ACT 3
Okay, I should probably actually talk about this chapter, uh ?
Roxelena, for single-handedly winning the war in the name of the Exiles, is rewarded with poison in her wine. Struggling to stay alive, she’s saved by Calista who turns out to be the dragon goddess Rijesca in human guise ! Estrelle, realizing she just got a taste of what the King will inevitably do to her, turns on the spot - unfortunately years of ruling exclusively through fear bites her when her troops realizes who’s currently the bigger fish in this pond.
Meanwhile, Kalevi realizes with horror what’s about to unfold from the unsteady behavior of his sweetheart, and brings the Company to the palace to cut down their former comrades.There are three sexy and dangerous ladies on the top, forced-deployed, the rest of their troops at the bottom, and an indestructible wall between the two of them - you’ll have to go the long way around while enemies pour in from all sides.
Drums of War features the Four Gods of War and we get our first two here. Estrelle is a freebie, with Luthor available if you subdue him before leaving. It’s a tall order, but I manage - the other two are waiting for us at the end of Act 3.
What I missed on is the pearl: that’s 10k of funds gone, just like that. No use crying over spilled milk though - I’m just happy to be alive still.
Broken vow was used, Ardor was used, COMPOSURE was used, this was a struggle for survival with every possible ressource needed expanded.
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>positions Luthor perfectly for Juditha to attack him
>red AI goes “I LOST 5 HP!! TIME TO RUN !!” and books it to the opposite end of the map
>gets jumpscared by a purple unit and dies, destroying the sacred weapons in eternal limbo
… le sigh
EDIT: A SECOND HUSCARL HAS HIT THE SOPLICA
At this point I’m strongly considering just forsaking what ever divine weapon is destroyed next…
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Hey there, I just finished your hack a while ago and wanted to give some positive feedback - I’ve played my fair share of FE hacks but this one blows most of them out of the water due to the incredible writing, tight map pacing and unique recruiting new characters VS acquiring gold mechanic.
I could gush on and on about what I liked in particular, but since you’re the author after all you know just as well how solid this hack is. Still, I really want to mention a couple of things just because:
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As others have said, the writing is great. Very unique and more grounded tone compared to other hacks, and the final endgame maps feel incredibly cathartic after all the stuff the playable cast has been through. It’s nice not to have the final boss be a generic evil emperor or sorcerous overlord, yet you still wanna kick their backside so hard. Especially noticeable since I feel like most hacks tend to peter out towards the end or finish on an underwhelming note.
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Besides being able to choose between gold or new recruits, I really liked the idea of having non-human playable characters. I didn’t use the other two much, but Rover saw a lot of favoritism (despite being somewhat squishy) and managed to hit his level cap. I hope you’ll eventually add supports for him, even if most of them would just be characters calling him a ‘gud boi’.
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Another character of note was Catsidhe. I figured she was an Est archetype just by looking at her stats and join time - but wow. Her level-up gains were incredible, managing to get a full 3 HP most of of the time. I started using her straight away and she quickly became an nearly indestructible tank, one-shotting enemies left and right. I hit her level cap with all her stats save Skl and Spd (both stuck at 14) maxed, with about 20 uses on both stones left. I know from her limited weapon uses she is obviously intended to be fielded only when needed, but still… probably the tankiest character I’ve ever seen.
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Finally, a minor bug or type that I’ve noticed: some of the chapters in Arc 2 or 3 are numbered wrong, resulting in several Ch11s. I played through whatever version was up about six weeks ago so maybe you’ve already fixed it by now.
That’s all, I guess. Don’t have a lot of constructive feedback or what else, just wanted to say that I enojyed your hack a lot. I’ll definitely replay it again sometime, maybe go for a full recruitment run and figure out what happens if you get all those secret items (turns out I missed just one on my very first playthrough…)
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This was absolutely fantastic. I’ve been excited to play this since FEE3, but finally found the time over break. I’m so glad I did, because I have not been this enraptured in a story in a long time.
I have so many spoiler-laden thoughts that are probably not worth your time, 99% of which is praise. This feels like the game that everyone says Radiant Dawn is. It’s grounded, suspenseful, and character-driven, everything that makes me love a story.
I do have two questions:
- Is there a repository of supports? I wasn’t able to get most of them, but would like to read the ones I missed.
Slight spoiler warning
- What do the brewmasters give you? I was an item short.
I hope you had as much fun making this as I did playing it. I can’t wait to see what you do next.
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Glad you’ve enjoyed it! I’d still be interested to hear thoughts if you wanted to write them out (and this goes for anyone); it always helps inform how I go moving forward.
Supports are accessible through the main menu, Extras => Support Conversations. It’ll say ‘3% unlocked’ or however many are unlocked in saves, but the conversations can all be accessed, even on a fresh file.
the other thing
It’s a reskinned Juna Fruit; lowers level without lowering stats. It isn’t particularly useful except for Catsidhe and Rover; really, it’s more of an achievement popup than anything.
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Excellent, I’ll be sure to check those out! And thanks for the tip. Glad I didn’t miss too much there.
Take it from an author, never underestimate an artist’s imposter syndrome, ah ah ! Feed your favorite artists plenty of compliments if you want to keep them spry and healthy !
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For the sake of my sanity and self-esteem, I’ve stopped counting the hours it took me to grind this down.
Get in the box, Roxelana. Or Rijesca will have to fight for you again.
Chapter 13 is the part where I drop any pretense that I know what I’m doing or am good at Fire Emblem in general and just shove everyone in a closet for a few turns.
And then play the rest of the map agonizingly slowly on account of being traumatized by it.Let’s address the dragon in the room right away.
Third faction and healing AI.
This map is built in a way where red and purple units are bound to clash at some point, making planning on your phase purely and simply impossible.
Sometimes you can keep an ally in killrange of an enemy and have them tear each other apart, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes they’ll thin their numbers, sometimes they’ll gang up on you. Sometimes the enemies will just skip a turn entirely, sometimes they won’t.
However this AI works is a secret kept between God and my smartphone pretending to be a GBA circuit board.That’s bad on its own, but where it gets worse is that the Huscarle are EXTREMELY deadly and them killing a unit who holds a legendary weapon will destroy it forever.
I’ve gone through and discarded at least half-a-dozen attempts where I was poised to win the map for sure only to watch in horror as an S rank weapon was sent into the shadow realm, never to be seen again.
Screams into the void
Screw chapter 13.
Anyway, team composition optimized for building supports, Caitsidhe here for her monster slayer weaponry, Rioghain is a treasure to be cherished, bow for 3-range harassment from beyond the walls. Hostage good because staff ranks and I’m not going to deploy Chasimir forever. Randomness of the AI is mitigated by using the door as a chokepoint.
Let’s upload this footage and try to forget this ever happened.
I want to reiterate, just in case, that I’m doing this of my own volition and have tons of fun doing so. Just a particular kind of fun.
On that note, I’ll get back to playing Limbus Company for a while…
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This chapter made me quit the game for now lol. Like I literally said F this…my team was made for support building this chapter too didn’t know Luthor was going to support dude so he underleveled…it’s just a mess. I may have to use my manakete too
Finally beat this hack! I really enjoyed my time with it, and have nothing negative to say about it.
I thought the way many encounters played out was tough as heck, but still totally manageable. The hack has fairly high hit rates and I never felt I was short on useful equipment. Regarding that, I really enjoyed the way the economy panned out. You’re encouraged to buy as much as you can carry, but you don’t exactly have enough money to buy as much as you really need.
While many units were outclassed by late joiners, there were a few standouts in my party. In particular, Radu, Sander and Lucetta were excellent throughout the entire run, and Petras even came in clutch at the very end, long after I was deploying him consistently. It never really felt like training the chumps at the start wasn’t worth it, even after all the prepromotes with capped everything were thrown at me, because I still knew they carried their weight at the start of the game.
The story hit very close to home, so much so that I don’t want to elaborate any further. An emotional journey.
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I did end up writing a short review of the game. It’s spoiler-free, but long enough to put under a dropdown. Can’t recommend this enough.
The moment I began to fall in love with Drums of War came at the end of the Prologue. After being subdued, the last boss of the first chapter recounts being deployed as a foot soldier during the invasion of a neighbouring state. The bandit's description of watching his friends collapse under enemy arrows, only for them to be trampled a second later by friendly cavalry, contained a linguistic depth that instilled an uncomfortable empathy for his experiences. It's easy for books to evoke that feeling in me. Movies and TV shows can reach those heights too. But it's incredibly rare for a video game, let alone a GBA Fire Emblem hack, to contain such high quality prose.
Until Echoes, Fire Emblem games lacked both narration and acting, both incredibly powerful storytelling tools, and instead relied on two to four static portraits providing each other with dialogue boxes overlaid onto environment backgrounds. The most narratively successful Fire Emblem games, such as FE4 and FE9, generally excel because of a unique story structure and engaging plot twists. Though Fire Emblem has many lovable characters, its narratives are often weak, and I rarely finish a story cutscene in the main series impressed by its line-to-line writing.
Drums of War certainly has a strong story structure and engaging twists, but I believe that its greatest victory is constructing interesting and lovable characters that manage to avoid boring character tropes. Not every member of the Company is created equal (I much prefer Kadri, Parrhesia’s twist on Lena, over the oafish old soldier, Petras), but their recurring appearance in main story cutscenes reminds the player that Drums of War isn’t a story about a game over condition and their aide tromping around a continent - it’s a small cohort’s quest for survival in a collapsing nation.
The game is by no means perfect. Unfortunately, the quality falters in the beginning, right when it’s arguably needed the most. I’m skeptical of most opening map narrations, and Drums of War’s reinforces that perspective. As a first time player, the narration overloads you with faces, cities, and countries that you have no chance of remembering. A second playthrough won’t provide any more clarity, as the portraits used are often only vaguely related to the narration’s description (for example, Connacht appearing as an example of a Confederation ally in Rhiannon). Though the map helps frame later events in the game, revealing it with a much shorter briefing at the end of Chapter 1 or beginning of Chapter 2 could have helped pace the overloaded exposition of the Prologue.
It especially bothers me because Kallaste and Baros’s conversation is a perfectly adequate way to introduce the world. We don’t need to know about Rhiannon yet (Kallaste does a perfectly fine job of reintroducing them later), and I don’t think we even need to know about Barossia, period. I’m still not sure why it’s important other than being part of the Confederation’s core. The first few minutes of the game contain its weakest writing, and I’m extremely thankful that I didn’t let it convince me to start pressing the skip cutscene button.
Luckily, it’s all uphill from there. The tension builds until Chapter 5, where a series of catastrophies set the stage for the rest of the game’s events. The romhacking community is deeply oversaturated with low effort or low quality games. Placing gripping sequences like Chapter 5 early on helps distinguish Drums of War as a hack that deserves a player’s time and attention. It also makes it easy to recommend to others. “Play until Chapter 5. If you aren’t hooked by then, stop playing - it’s probably not for you.”
I want to keep this spoiler-free, so I won’t venture further. Honestly, even if I did, I’m not sure how critical I could be. The opening narration really is the worst part of the game, and that’s a massive compliment. Anyone willing to get past the rough start has strong characterization, striking prose, and a gripping narrative to look forward to for the rest of their time with the game.
I can’t recommend Drums of War enough. If you’re looking for a great Fire Emblem story, or interested in writing your own one day, this game provides a shining example of how to do it right.
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How do i get the dog (Rover)? i completely missed it the 1st time i played.
I am doing a challenge ironman + no danger zone run and need a Monster unit slot that isnt Catsidhe.
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Try houses. The signposting is contained within the game.
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you need a unit with 30 luck. rover then senses that one unit “has got that dog in 'em” and joins on map start
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