Yeah, that particular guy got missed in the initial sweep. Pretty sure he’s the only one, though. 1.1 will nerf him back down again.
2 Likes
Is there a reason steel lances aren’t available earlier? I wouldn’t mind as much but having slim lances be the most powerful lance for most of act 1 feels weird. And every other steel weapon is available in the preparations shop.
Oversight. Steel lances are meant to be buyable, slims are not. It’ll be corrected in the next patch.
NP! I agree. Another point I’ll make – I don’t play at blazing speeds, but in both maps, I had reinforcements leftover by the time I got to the last boss. In addition to tuning them up, you could also consider having them come in a turn or two earlier so they aren’t stragglers. I’m not the type of player to delay ending the map to grind, but I think flow would improve a bit if they came earlier.
However, I also don’t think the maps lose much if they were removed. There’s a lot of EXP on these early maps w/ how many enemies there are, so reducing the reinforcements or removing them will likely help level curve too.
Totally – I could’ve sworn slims (outside of the axe) were available in the preps, but I may be mistaken. That said, even some sort of funky, regional weapon you can only buy here would make the shop better given the notice about on map armories stocking different things. Sidegrades are fine, but I’m guessing this isn’t my last chance to get a slim weapon.
I think for me it was more the message setting up the expectation the shops would have more offbeat weapons.
1 Like
Beat chapter 3. So far it’s the best chapter by far. Had to think, the enemies were scary enough that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted. Still a few too many ORKOs for my liking, but overall this map was really solid.
Some granular notes for you. The map is tight right up until the end, where it starts to drag. I think this is largely due to how the map feels after the boss dies.
Etienne charges by themselves, but the squadrons of pegs stay still until you get in their range. I’d recommend tying the pegasus knights (both bottom squads, the bottom right I didn’t even see until I saw I had 3 units left to rout. But honestly, given how far away the peg crews start, I’d give them all a unique IDs) to the boss’s charge AI. When Etienne speaks and starts charging, set the pegs to charge too. The cluster of enemies circling you and the boss charging will make it a much more climactic and tight finish.
Similarly, I’d set a flag to stop additional reinforcements from below deck after Etienne dies.
Alarik could stand to show up 1 turn earlier, but he wasn’t too far behind and was able to contribute a bit.
Looking forward to the next one.
6 Likes
The game is fun! Thank you for making it. This hack really feels like it was made for me specifically sometimes. Anyways, opinion time.
Gameplay
Unfortunately, I suffer from bad at fire emblem disease, so my gameplay thoughts will have to mostly rely on my monkey brain. Overall I had fun with all the maps, a lot of tight formations with very fun class matchups. Balancing felt really good, although it does feel like some later boss recruits gave up on balancing. Maps generally kept a good momentum, and I can’t say I dislike any maps.
My only major gripe is how reinforcements are used outside of most defend/escape maps. 80% of the time they just feel like a distraction to take care of. There were a lot of times where I’d just stop my forward momentum just to take care of a few guys, then return like nothing happened. Ch7 lasted way longer than it felt like it should, and Ch15 makes a whole gimmick of the chapter just kinda waiting for Micah to stop teleporting people. I also wish larger groups of reinforcements were warned about beforehand. The late game has large groups of units just show up suddenly, sometimes on top of my units.
Story
Man it’s so fun to read a story from someone who is a fan of history. Everything feels incredibly grounded, and it feels like I’ve only dipped my toe into a deep and expansive world. All the characters feel like people, even the cast of villains. I love how banal a lot of villains are in their acts of villainy, and most are given just enough depth to be interesting. Personally, it’s my favorite hack story, so I’m going to ramble about it.
Vibes, for lack of a better term
Most Fe stories generally start at the low point, and eventually around mid game the lord is in a position of military superiority. But every single chapter feels like Roxi is just barely surviving, which melds well with the gameplay. Every chapter feels essential to the story being told, and I’d be hard pressed to think of any I could cut. Music is really good and used very well(Ace Attorney my beloved). After the shoe drops in Ch4, the game was really difficult to put down. Extremely well paced and I felt the stakes in every fight. The maps and the story work so well in the Confed endgame fights, never been so hyped to see a boss show up before.
Roxelana
Honestly I never really engaged with Roxelana’s character after Act 1. I do like her, and her supports are great. But her personal issues felt incredibly disconnected from the plot, and her inner darkness/magic sword personality don’t seem like they make any difference. In the early game, I suppose her trauma involving the death of a former lover makes her overprotective of the Company. But for as much effort the game puts into political worldbuilding, Roxelana’s personal political opinions rarely impact the plot. Not that the game spends much time on actual political themes, the Exiles and the Confederation are very obvious wrong answers. But it would have been nice for Roxelana to make character choices beyond “I’d rather not get stabbed” and “I’d rather innocent people don’t get stabbed”. (In fairness, it’s implied that Roxelana’s consistent outbursts towards Exile leadership are one of the reasons they attempt to kill her, but it does rely on the Exiles being short sighted and evil in order to push Roxelana into the correct political path).
Calista
If I had a nickel for every good hack story with a main character named Calista…
Anyways, I really, really like her as a character. She’s a great foil to Roxelana and they have wonderful chemistry…oh she’s a dragon god. I’m very, very conflicted on this twist. On one hand there’s a lot of interesting stuff involving divine interventionism while the main antagonist is an imperialist nation. She has a great cutscene in 14 and her support with Cat is one of my favorites in the game. On the other hand, it’s a bit… silly? Roxelana just so happened to enlist the dragon god and Roxelana is apparently the only person that Calista met that she thought could change the world for the better. Not to mention their romantic relationship being a bit weird when one of them is that old. It’s also strange having 2 whole chapters to set up Cat as a dragon when Calista does all the important dragon stuff. Love the character, rather disappointed by the context.
Exiles
God I love the Exiles. I love them so much. All of their supports are great. Kostas, Chasmir, and Kalevi are my favorite characters in the game. Honestly I wish the Player Exiles had more of a presence. Chasmir’s cutscene time after his reveal is just “Hey Roxelana don’t call the King mean words…aww darn you called the King mean words”. Kalevi gets a lot of cool moments, but very little substance outside his supports(His support with Kostas is so good though). Kostas gets some great moments after the King’s betrayal, but he just sort of falls in line after the dragon yells at him. Thalassa is fun but mostly just fun comic relief. Everyone else just doesn’t care that much.
Not that the plot has to focus on them, of course. It just feels like a missed opportunity. The Ch15 quotes from them are really, really good, but also come out of nowhere? Ch15 Kostas is now a stringent anti-monarchist despite his last appearance being very not that. Ch15 Chasmir talks as if his main motivation is a personal loyalty to Roxelana, which feels very weird given their lack of connection. Ch15 Kalevi makes sense when you’ve seen his supports, but his cutscene time in 14 is mostly exposition. None of the Exiles even comment on the sheer level of destruction caused by the Exiles in 14! Nothing against Estrelle, but it’s weird that she gets way more emotional focus than any of the Exiles.
They just feel very underutilized given how good their supports are, and I wish one of them could have gotten some more emotional focus.
Micah
He’s so okay. There’s no substantial criticism I have of him, he works perfectly well for what he is. Would not be an issue if the other villains weren’t so grounded and human. But he’s just. So okay. The most character of all time.
Confederation
The Confederation is probably my favorite villainous faction in any hack. They’re all so human while being such bastards. The Senators especially are great, I love their “Frick we didn’t even want to be here but we gotta save our jobs” vibes. They all have such an impact despite having so little screentime. I’m very glad we never invaded the Confed homeland, it really does feel like I’m just playing a part of history.
Final Party
Very strong lord, although mine didn’t level spd very consistently. Chapter 12 was hell. Ended up giving her Judita to make up for her spd.
The dancer does dance. Her personal abilities were neat, got a lot of use out of Broken Vow.
She also got a lot of use out of Broken Vow. One of the best units in the game, very few other units are able to match her sheer damage output.
The lad. Carried my run, was able to take on some of the hardest formations in the game. When that 40% spd growth hits, it hits hard.
Really solid unit. Feels a little undertuned at times with how low his resistance is, but he can always contribute.
Hits like a truck and moves as fast as one too. She’s great
She made it to endgame thanks to her getting an S rank in staves. Still finds some use in tanking mages and Luna. Really good recruit when she joins, and always useful.
In a game where flyers tend to trade stats for move, Luthor comes straight from vanilla. Absolute monster.
Light magic hits hard, so having a high magic and high spd light user is very helpful. I’m sure the other light magic users may get higher stats, but he’s useful right from the start and never falls off.
Prf go vroom. Carried by his prf, but he makes great use of the other legendary swords after it breaks. A unit that feels forged for Isamaa.
Very solid, and has a surprising amount of survivability. Needs a good bow to do meaningful damage though.
Just very consistent okay damage output. Expected her to snowball a bit more, but she’s remains fine. Don’t get the point of the temperstone, it’s really bad.
I really love how this game does archers. No idea if Radu is the best archer in the game, but he never stopped being good for me so here he is.
The most useful person I put on the bench. She can fly, so she’ll always be useful.
One of the best units in the game. Having high spd and high move is always good, and there’s enough good lances to make up for her lack of str. Although she does fall off, only in endgame due to how unit slots worked out.
She has a rocky start with her low spd, but her magic growth helps her stand out along other mages. She eventually got a niche of oneshotting faster enemies, which was a godsend for the lategame. Also she gets Nos, which lets her Nostank for a map or two.
In summary, the hack is good chief.
8 Likes
What do the Oddka and Fetid Clam do exactly? I’ve been holding on them for ages and have not seen how they can be used
They can’t be used, but they do have a purpose.
Chapter 7 feeling is overtuned. Feels like an unintentional difficulty spike, largely because of how strong the prepromotes are. Their stats are scarier than the bosses, so I’m guessing this is an oversight. Recommend taking a look since they may have funky autolevels. The warrior from the middle-right and the rangers from the bottom-left were most notably too strong.
I think it’d be beneficial also to remove the 2nd wave of wyverns from the top left. In general felt like the map dragged out because of the reinforcements, this time both in strength and in number.
I lost because Roxie got doubled by the rangers from the southwest. She had maybe… 13 speed? I’ll give it another try later.
EDIT: Victory achieved 
4 Likes
Really enjoying this so far. My one suggestion to improve map flow is to nerf the prepromotes. C3/4 promoted enemies are extremely dangerous, the C3 paladins especially far too fast and strong to reasonably bait, especially since they’re surrounded by other dangerous enemies. -2 Spd and an equipment downgrade would be a big deal.
Enemy reinforcements also feel very tight. C3’s antiturtle is BRUTAL, and C4 spawning dense and varied squads every turn is definitely a lot to take in. I might look into nerfing these? I’d keep the variety, but nerf the density.
Still, everything about this feels like a very enjoyable mix of FE11 and CQ. Keep it up!
6 Likes
Just wanted to say that I loved this hack all the way through, played the whole thing and had a blast doing it!
But quick question
Is Luthor supposed to switch sides on this map if you recruited him on this map or is it a glitch?
He became unplayable after i beat the chapter.
1 Like
Yeah that’s an unfortunate glitch that the coming patch will clear - not with E-2, actually, but with C12. Basically how it’s meant to work - and how it will work starting from next patch - is that if you take down Luthor in C12, you get the recruitment event, and if you don’t, he comes back here. But the C12 recruitment event was looking for the wrong flag, so even players who didn’t defeat Luthor got the event. Apologies for the inconvenience; glad it’s been a positive experience otherwise, and congratulations on beating it!
3 Likes
Patchday. In the same Dropbox folder, the same link through the same OP. Isn’t a lot to say beyond that this contains a lot of tweaks and fixes below the cut, and that we’re soon approaching the point at which DoW is properly set in stone. Even now you can see the changes are all fairly small. We’re getting there.
Made a tier list as well, because there comes a point at which you make a tier list and this is that point.
Misc
- Fixed some movement sounds
- Reduced Purge / Bolting might by 2
- Fixed Isamaa inadvertently being a universal S-rank sword
- Fixed Estrelle missing a solo epilogue
- Fixed door keys being unused by AI in Ch4 (and reshuffled AI patterns to compensate)
- Implemented Levin64’s improved sage sprites
- New Ramond and Jurechka mugs by RandomWizard
- New Kirsten and Valentrix mugs by Gold (Vlak helping to edit the latter)
- Map facelifts for all remaining chapters by RandomWizard
- A full set of brave weapons now drop over the course of late Act 2 / Act 3
- Steel weapons (bar Elfire) +1 Mt, +1 Wt
- Ash longbow hit corrected to 80
- Reduced ash recurve price from 1000 to 800
- Minor other weapon changes
- Fixed an error where E-2 falcon knights would sometimes move on other phase
- Corrected oversight where slim lances could be bought in Preparations instead of steel lances
- Improved status screens by Vlak
- Improved credits sequence by AlexArtsHere
Characters
Vivica
- Now correctly has C Dark at base instead of D
- Now gains D staves on promotion instead of E
- +5% Skl/Spd growth
I apparently just forgot to bump up her magic rank in the patch where I intended to do that. Beyond that, promoting a step closer to physic staves allows her to marshal her gigantic Magic somewhat better.
Gerhard
- +5% Str/Skl/Spd/Def growth
Needed a prod. Gerhard’s working in a very limited space. Jaro’s already the HP/Str capram guy and the strong bases guy. Alarik has speed covered, Donagh the skl/spd/def spread. So Gerhard is basically just the solid generalist, but his growth total was relatively poor before.
Laszlo
- +10% Def growth
Laszlo is pretty bad whether or not I give him a defence bonus. But the man’s got a shield. May as well learn to use it in time, and lean into his niche of being extremely well-rounded if you can get over the hump. There aren’t many ways to directly buff him while remaining true to his character.
Kestut
- +2 Def/+10% growth
Kestut’s defence is still poor, but it’s no longer the resounding weakness in a unit that’s meant to be well-balanced.
Donagh
- -15% HP growth
- +10% Def growth
Shifts to make some room for Gerhard and carve out more of a niche for himself.
Catsidhe
- +3 Str/Skl/Def
- +20% Str/Skl growth; +10% Lck growth
- Temperstone gains +10 hit
Turns out it’s actually pretty tough to convert Myrrh to a game with strong enemies. Anyway, Catsidhe’s recruitment is meant to be a big deal, but she levels quite slowly, meaning the ‘precarious’ stage lasts a long time. These changes increase her reliability; it’s not so much about making her better at the start, as making her become a reliable lineman a bit quicker.
May end up just supercharging her growths. It’s really hard to know with Catsidhe, just because her numbers and curve really aren’t comparable to any other unit on the spreadsheet. We’ll start with this for now.
Chapters
PROLOGUE: MUSTER
- Repositioned initial enemies to feel more proactive; removed two ruffians, others have broad axes. Ruffian stats boosted slightly.
- Back reinforcements: 5 iron sword mercs become 3 steel sword mercs, archers now have ash recurves and are higher level. They now spawn a turn earlier.
CHAPTER 1: KICK THE NEST
- 3x3 cavaliers (turn 4+6+8) with iron/iron/javelin become 2x3 with steel/steel/shortspear (turns 4+7)
Pretty much just addressing Pandan’s comments a couple posts above. Fewer enemies towards the start means fewer things to go wrong means the back mercs can be faster in coming, which means Renate and Petras don’t have to fall far behind. The C1 cavs were just busy work; now they’re worth taking care of, but there’s a fair buffer between them.
Might be subject to larger changes later, but for now an incremental tweak.
CHAPTER 6: SHOW OF STRENGTH
- Instead of four Hetaeriae who all charge, two spawn who charge after a turn and three spawn set to charge-within-two-moves.
- Placed Andrea and Tiimo on the eastern front
- Removed Lasker’s Bolting
- Changed three mercenaries in the east to soldiers
- Updated Cillian’s arrival dialogue to be more in keeping with consistent Rijescan speech patterns
Chapter 6 is kind of a clusterfuck. By design, yes, but what isn’t by design is how the map kind of lends itself to solely taking the western path, and sometimes just getting completely crunched there. There’s also just a ton of DPS in that area that’s hard to soak up potentially, and difficulty can vary significantly depending on just what confluence of events happens at what time.
The simplest solution seems to be to just put one of each of the side objectives into each path, rather than encouraging funnelling up down the west. Of course, luring Andrea and Tiimo becomes a lot more precarious if Lasker’s got his Bolting, so that had to go. I feel like the map will just flow better this way.
Also, everyone on the east was a swordsman with a side of axes, so I changed the mercenaries to soldiers.
CHAPTER 7: PLAIN OF SCALES
- Fixed leftover super prepromote (Warrior in east woods)
- Reduced SW rangers by one level; gave one steel sword instead of ash recurve
Thought for a while about how to make the rangers a little less powerful. Toyed with having them advance as soon as they arrived so that they didn’t just blob up with Rioghain, but that risks simply jumping on and murdering Connacht’s squad. Decided in the end to take the bow off one of them. Decided not to make changes to the reinforcements yet.
CHAPTER 8: FULL CIRCLE
- Gave Vaivar 3 Con
Vaivar had once been overpowered, but now looked thoroughly undertuned. He’s a big lad, so giving him the constitution to actually use his spear felt appropriate.
CHAPTER 9: BLEAK SEASONS
- Replaced physic Exiles with a brigand, mercenary and soldier
The physic support units were a nice idea in theory. In practice, their AI was just too erratic, and what I thought was the cause turned out not to be. Now, each set of pioneers has a goon hovering nearby. They’re pretty weak, but still function as a buffer zone rather than something you think you can rely on and can’t.
CHAPTER 11: TRAITOR’S GRAVE
- SW myrm+mage spawns changed from turns 3-7 to turn 4 and 6 only, but level increased from 16 to 20
- NE spawns delayed by one turn
- Deployment slots raised to 15
- Zorya Shield chest now contains Francisca
- Silver Axe dropping Hetaeria now has and drops Greataxe
This map has a lot to do and a lot of chaff in your way. Now the chaff has been eased up a little and there’s one more guy to help out, which should also help given it’s a competitive time for deployment slots and that 15 becomes the new normal across much of Act 3 and Endgame.
Also there was a missing Greataxe from the S-ranks. I really regret letting my item drop spreadsheet tab fall into disrepair…
CHAPTER 12: LOOSE ENDS
- Added third chest with Fortify staff
- Francisca chest now contains Brave Axe
- Luthor now has, and drops, Zorya Shield
- Amended oversight with Adept tomes (previously had A-rank Aura; Frodafridh was the new A-rank, but they still had S-rank tomes, and the extra might from proficiency on top of that)
- Fixed Luthor recruitment to correctly rely on his defeat
- Brave Bowman now drops her bow
Luthor is now a tougher opponent that the player is incentivised to kill themselves, not just leave to the exiles. An extra brave axe helps out slower units, which had been highlighted as an issue in late-midgame.
Also a really stupid combination of errors made Luthor basically always recruitable. It was looking for flag A - triggered by a stray range event that basically always clicked just with Roxelana’s group’s starting position - not the global flag A0.
Oh, and there was always meant to be a full set of dropped braves… but I just forgot to ever drop a bow, apparently?
CHAPTER 14: REPRISAL
- Removed one wave of SE cavalry
- Removed one wave of E pegasi
- New scene at end
Until now, there was just a little too much enemy bloat, with fast-moving units coming in too close together. Now there’s, well, less. Also, Spensir was right. There really should be an emotional beat for the Exiles this map.
ENDGAME-2: REDEMPTION
- Replaced references to ‘ridge’ with ‘trench’
It’s what it looks like.
ENDGAME-3: A DREAM OF RELEASE
- Buffed dracoliches
It’s meant to be just about possible to punch through the middle, but it’s meant to be a challenge, not optimal. Like Ulduar, you get an achievement for beating the main boss without debuffing him by killing the lackeys… except there’s no achievement. But there would be if I wanted to code in achievements.
7 Likes
Hey there, I’ve been playing this hack lately. I’m currently in Chapter 8.
I have some thoughts, but the primary one I want to share at the moment is about Chapter 8. I think you should mark the enemies that cause a Game Over in some way, for example by using the boss shield icon. As it is, I find it difficult to tell them apart from other enemies. Their name being different isn’t enough when there are tons of enemies on the map.
I might share some other thoughts later, but I feel like I should wait until the game is over. Unless you want them now, despite my lack of full context.
1 Like
Designating the couriers as bosses would have gameplay impacts (forcing animations on, giving them extra experience). I could designate them with the ‘unit to defend’ marker, but that would probably be more confusing and make at least one person think they need to be non-lethally blocked, since it’s used conventionally (‘this unit is a game over on death’) at all other times in the hack; the way I figure, the clearest way is just for them to continue using a class that doesn’t otherwise appear in the chapter, and almost never appears otherwise in the game, even if its silhouette is somewhat similar to Soldiers’.
I honestly didn’t even realize they WEREN’T Soldiers.
Thanks for the response either way.
So iron blades now weigh less then steel swords, do the same damage, are more durable and cost effective, and are only 10% less accurate? Something does not feel right at all here.
I do love blades, but this balancing is wack. I would suggest not giving the +1mt/wt bonus to steel swords, and instead maybe just give it a simple -1 to wt to differentiate it from the blades.
This would make steel swords much more useful as a 9 wt sword is exactly what many characters need, and would preserve the gimmick of blades much better. This would make steel swords intrude on the niche of iron swords, but i think slim swords already did that much harder. (not that i dislike that change, i love fe4s slim weapons)
2 Likes
Clearly, Parrhesia intended for Roxie to LARP as Guts, and has been slowly but steadily helping us get there with their vision
2 Likes
i have been seeing alot of romhack protagonists clearly designed to use blade weapons, which is always good. Having blades available to use early to put on your jagen is also very fun.
2 Likes
This is another thing i noticed - why do the enemies have such high luck in this romhack? I feel like it makes sense on way too many levels for enemies to have low luck whether it be story or gameplay.
but it’s most major effect is making killer weapons super bad, so i feel like they should have their crit rates boosted just a bit to make up for it.