[FE8] Fire Emblem: The Drowned King (WIP, Pr. - Ch. 18)

[Rushless]

Hello people, I have reemerged from my slumber to reveal a new project I’ve been tinkering on for a while now. It is a hack of FE8 called Fire Emblem: The Drowned King!

It is an old-fashioned ROM hack supposed to play something like how FE7 does, with linear promotion and a single-routed story, and no skills.

The Story

The Drowned King takes place on the continent of Ferris, split into six nations. The Kingdom of Ambrose. The Theocracy of Auspicia. The Dacian Coalition. The Republic of Pontus. The Northern Islands. And finally, the Empire of Valeria. The story takes place thirty years after a brutal conflict known as the Iron War.

Since the war, Ferris has existed in relative peace, though tensions have flared up once more. Dacia and Valeria have signed and alliance and have begun attacking Ambrose and Auspicia. As a result, the King of Ambrose, Leopold, has gone on a journey to meet the Valerian Emperor to sort things out before they escalate further.

Our story follows Randall, a solder in Regiment XIII of the Ambrosian army. A small unit stationed on the Dacian border and generally considered the dregs of the military. Everything changes when what seems like a simple border patrol ends up becoming something much more sinister…

Planned Features

• 30+ Chapters
• 60 Playable Units
• Classic GBAFE-styled gameplay, so, no skills, linear promotions, etc
• Some gaiden chapters, because I love making work for myself
• Iron Man Friendly, hence the 60 playable units
• No ambush spawn reenforcements, because I’m not a sadist

Current Features

• 23 Chapters (Prologue - Chapter 18 + 4 Gaiden Chapters)
• 48 Playable Units
• Supports written for all currently available characters. (There may be some typos)
• Still no ambush spawns

Map Examples

Screenshots

Patch
The Drowned King
(NOTE: Save data from Version 13/10/2023 or before will not be compatible with any patch from 29/10/2023 onwards, sorry, it had to be done.)

Recruitment Guide

• Pierre (Ch. 3): Talk with Randall, Elaine, Marit, Erin or Bianca.
• Bianca (Ch. 3): Visit village in centre of map.
• Hester (Ch. 4): Talk with Randall or Sasha.
• Thatch (Ch. 5): Talk with Randall or Bianca.
• Michael (Ch. 6): Talk with Patrick or Enid.
• Roscoe (Ch. 6): Visit village in north-east of map.
• Emilie (Ch. 7): Talk with Randall or Erin.
• Gustave (Ch. 9): Visit village in north-west of map.
• Jackie (Ch. 9): Talk with Randall and pay 4000 gold to recruit. Alternatively, talk with Elaine, Marit, Erin, Bianca, Sasha, Hester, Enid, Emilie, Thea, Nathalia, Cristina or Cherry to recruit for free.
• Fabio (Ch. 10): Talk to him or Vladimir with Randall. This will recruit both him and Vladimir.
• Vladimir (Ch. 10): Talk to him or Fabio with Randall. This will recruit both him and Fabio.
• Olivia (Ch. 10): She will join the party automatically if she survives to the end of the chapter.
• Hilde (Ch. 11): Talk with Randall, Alaric or Gereon.
• Theresa (Ch. 12): Talk with Anthony.
• Hesiod (Ch. 14): Talk with Randall.
• Zoey (Ch. 15): Visit village in west of map.
• Adriano (Ch. 15): Talk with Zoey.
• Crow (Ch. 16): Talk with Randall, Marit or Edmund.
• Rolando (Ch. 17): Talk with Cesare.

Changelog

30/01/2023:

• Randall given an iron lance
• Stanley given an iron sword
• Chapter 1 remapped slightly
• EXP Coefficient Gain bug fixed

31/01/2023:

• Stanley’s growth redistributed
• Prologue slightly remapped
• A glitch with Edmund’s mug has been fixed
• Added visible growth rates and talk events
• Added a couple more talk events throughout the chapters
• Added a couple new boss conversations
• Fixed the paladin axe animation being missing
• Increased base luck for most of the cast

01/02/2023:

• Tweaked growth rates for most of the cast
• Slightly buffed certain units in terms of bases
• Massively nerfed Stanley
• Remapped Chapter 5 and Chapter 2 slightly
• Buffed certain enemies and reinforcements
• Moved some items around
• Removed a bug where you’d get a game over if Sasha died
• Fixed a few typos
• Edited the boss of Chapter 4 so defeating him no longer ends the chapter

17/02/2023:

• Added opening cutscene on the world map.

18/08/2023:

• Fixed a glitch where the save screen would not display after the end of Ch. 2
• Added a new character to Ch. 5
• Did some slight tweaks to Ch. 2 and Ch. 6
• Added two new class lines! Hunters → Horsemen, a bow infantry unit that promotes into a mounted unit who can use both bows and lances. Enchanters → Night Riders, a mounted unit who can use anima magic who gains the power to use dark magic upon promotion.

29/08/2023:

• Act II of the hack released! The Dacia arc is done, containing Chapters 8-13!

07/10/2023:

• Title screen changed
• A few new supports added
• Changed the music on a map or two, nothing too huge

13/10/2023:

• Act III of the hack released! The Pontus arc is done, containing Chapters 14-18!

29/10/2023:

• NOTE: Any save data from before this update will not be compatible with this update, sorry.
• A couple quality of life changes added, mov getters and the like
• Some gaiden chapters added!
• Some music changed around
• Thea can no longer use swords, sadly

[WarPath]

Hello! I love me some plan and simple GBA gameplay, so I decided to give this a whirl with a little free time this afternoon. I’m only through the prologue and Ch. 1 so far, but I hope to maybe pick this back up again maybe tonight or tomorrow.

Overall, I’d say this game played very much like normal mode in the vanilla FE GBAs, so if this is what you’re going for, then you are on the right track. The first couple chapters didn’t offer too much challenge as enemies are pretty weak, and Stanley could have easily beaten both maps on his own if I’d let him. I would call it a pleasant, but not particularly engaging, experience. This might change in the future as I progress, but I wanted to say this from the start as this was my immediate strongest reaction.

The story started off fairly simple, but got more interesting quickly with the invasion. I don’t have too many thoughts right now since the characters themselves haven’t had much time to shine, but Bailey has been a standout so far with his anger at being betrayed. Dialogue in general seems to flow fairly well and is easy to follow, so no complaints there.

Some more detailed feedback:

General

• You may not know this, but vanilla FE8 actually has this very weird quirk until Chapter 8 where your experience gain actually increases as you gain levels, instead of decreasing. I noticed the is still in this hack, and you may want to disable it, as a couple of my units are already very high level after 2 chapters. You can adjust this in FEBuilder/find to offset to adjust it if using buildfiles by looking up the patch “Adjust Mode Coefficient Experience Gain” in FEBuilder.
• While I appreciate vanilla mechanics, I think the hack could use some modern, quality-of-life-type features if you’re so inclined to add them. Things like a growths display, enemies displaying when they won’t move, and making “Talk” a free action are things I’d recommend looking into if you’re so inclined, because I think they tend to make the overall experience smoother. A modular minimug box would also be welcome.
• The eventing in general is pretty nice, so good job with that, but they could use a few more STAL commands to pause before something else happens - things like a unit moving and a convo starting immediately are common, and brief pauses can help add emphasis on what’s going on in the scene.
• The description for Knight lists that they can only use lances, but they also seem to be able to use axes now

Prologue

• Randall starts with only is personal lance, but it feels a little bad to have to use it here when it can’t hit any enemy in this chapter for effective damage. I’d suggest maybe tossing him an iron lance as well to start, and you could maybe compensate by just lowering the gold given the village if you so desire.
• A number of units here (Elaine in particular) have very low luck and immediately face crits rates from enemies, particularly mercs. This wasn’t a serious issue since enemies don’t hit very hard, but I would recommend maybe slightly raising base luck of units (and lowering growths correspondingly) just to help players avoid nasty low % crits that they can’t avoid early.
• The boss was a bit tedious and annoying to take on since Stanley with the Iron Sword was the only unit to have a hit rate over 80. I’d suggest maybe removing the boss’ terrain to help speed things up, since he is not very threatening either way, but the extra avoid makes him more tedious to take on.

Chapter 1

• Same deal with the low luck on Bailey here, I would raise it a little so he’s not randomly ended by a merc for an unlucky player
• The breakable walls is a neat idea, but things just got very clogged with all of the reinforcements filing down a one-tile choke. A lot of enemy phase combat for usually only one unit at a time made it a bit of a slog. I’d recommend maybe widening the hallway to 2 tiles.
• Edmund can get doubled by mercs in this chapter, and they’re the only enemies he has weapon triangle advantage on. This makes him leave a poor first impression.
• Elaine’s Iron Sword was almost broken by the end of this chapter, seeing as it saw heavy use against the many axe enemies here and was typically the best option in both early chapters. Consider adding another early sword here, maybe.

All in all, I did have a good time. If you intend for the hack to be much harder, I can give some additional critique, but for these two chapters at least, the intention seemed to be for them to be pretty easy, so I filtered my feedback towards playability/fun over difficulty. Hope to be back soon after playing more!

[Rushless]

Firstly, thanks for taking time to check it out. Means a lot.

Ok, I did not know about the mode coefficient experience gain. Thank you for telling me, I’ll fix that.

Quality of Life wise. I’ve been meaning to add most of those, and actually thought I had made Talk a free action. I’m not sure where to find the relative patches for them as I can only seem to find the ones that are lumped in with SkillSystems.

Not sure what’s going on with Knights… Will have a look at that. They’re supposed to be lance-locked here.

I’d never struggled too much getting critted on my test runs, but that is of course personal experience. So I’ll probably tweak that a little.

I’ve been considering making Randall capable of wielding both lances and swords, so maybe have him begin with the Partisan and an iron sword would work?

Regarding difficulty, yeah the first couple chapters aren’t supposed to be too taxing.

Also story is kinda being stunted by me not being able to figure out how to get a working world map in there. That’s definitely a work in progress though.

Again, thanks for checking it out.

[Ivandsi]

I’ve gone through all current release chapter. I agree with @WarPath on giving Randall a basic weapon besides his personal one. Half of the uses of the lance ended up going down bc I only had that for him till I had access to the preparation screen.

The story so far is going at nice pace tho I do have to agree once again that EXP is getting a bit ridiculous since the units I have invested are already over Lv 15 and this is by Chapter 7 (with less than half your planned amount of chapters).
Fitting for a unit like Elaine (which is one of the few I’ve invested) but a bit ridiculous for a unit like the Lord (image example of my Lord’s level by the end of the chapter below)

I don’t know if you are planning on an earlier promotion or smth along those lines after this chapter but that much growth seems a bit too quick (specially since with him being the Lord he always ends up getting EXP from deploying in all maps regardless of whether I focus on feeding him EXP or not)

Regardless, I feel this is a decent hack (haven’t played through that many myself) that I’ve enjoyed so far

[Rushless]

Thanks a lot or taking your time to check it out, it means a lot!

The snowballing exp could be something to do with the mode WarPath mentioned. Randall is supposed to promote in at the end of Chapter 13.

[Rushless]

I went ahead and fixed the coefficient gain bug you mentioned, and also changed the loadouts for some of the starting characters slightly.

Also the corridors in Chapter 1 have been widened.

EDIT: So it turns out the knights using axes glitch was actually just a bug with Marit in particular. That’ll be fixed in the next build. Also, do you know where I can find the patches for displaying growths and units that don’t move?

[Jack_G]

Just started playing this hack and I’m really enjoying it so far (just completed chapter 3). Each map so far has been well designed, especially chapter 1. The armour knight is instantly useful in choking the breakable walls and the poison encourages the player to play quickly. The fact that you have to go east to get the door key and antitoxin before you are able to save the trio in the cell adds tension, which is great. The story also seems pretty good so far, and I’m intrigued to see where it ends up going.

A few minor changes I would make to improve is to add visible growth rates. You can find the patch for that here: Teq's Minor Assembly Shenanigans . I think you also may have forgotten to import the paladin axe animations as stanley does not display animations when using an axe. I also think it would be a good idea to give the playable units +1 or +2 luck across the board, because at the moment, you face a lot of low % criticals. The difficulty was also a little on the easy side, but that’s obviously down to personal preference. If you ever need playtesting for future chapters, feel free to drop me a pm, I’d be happy to lend a hand.

[Rushless]

Thank you for taking the time to check it out!

I think you’re right about the paladin axe animation. I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll get on adding the visible growth rates.

[CornPimp]

I like how quickly the name of the hack makes sense.

Did a quick ironman of it, and I’ll share my main thoughts.

General

No difficulty selection, so I will try to refrain from comments on the like unless it’s a real problem.

Growth rates are absolutely insane. Every unit procs at least 3 every level. After like 2/3 levels, any unit is either unkillable, or a killing machine. The rates may need to be lowered, or you could have exp gain lessened. Either way, with units this insane, the game becomes enemy phase focused, which is boring as units just juggernaut.

I really like how none of the armories sell 1-2 range, I actually had to use my javelin sparingly to deal with small groups of mages.

Prologue

Designed nicely for a single frame map. Great use of space. All the enemies can’t actually do anything to you, but it’s the prologue, I guess. The event at the end is pretty fun.

Chp 1

Honestly, sucks, and is the only map I’d say is really bad. The scrubs in the “cell” (who suck entirely and are never used again, they need to be buffed) escape out the bottom breakable and Stanley chokes the 1 tile. Boring, no reason to do otherwise, and unfun. Could be fixed by adding a thief, though that just adds an extra turn to escape up the 1 tile.

Chp 2

In contrast, this one’s pretty good. The snags serve no purpose as the side objective is on the way to the main one, so I would suggest isolating the isle otherwise. That way, there is a reason to go south and help the new batch of scrubs. (Ok actually the axe guy is pretty good). The armorslayer doesn’t help this map anyway, as Stanley one rounds the armorknights. (And the boss). The reinforcements were actually purposeful this time, though, and my man kristoph almost died. If it were me, I would add antiturtle on turns 5 and 6, but that’s just me. At least the king drowns, making this the most epic chapter.

Chp 3

Another really good one. The new mercenary guy is great, he even disposed of the garbage armourknight for me. The door encourages fast play if you hope to stop the reinforcements (I didn’t, this was an ironman and I’m too pussy), though the key being on the opposite side of the map is… questionable… but at least you got a useless one last map.

Chp 4

Defense map, aka garbage rout map (kidding, I like defense maps). The starting corrider is very wide, giving you no choice but to get out in the action. The reinforcements are timed well enough to keep you out there, though personally, I would add more as the current ones are a little weak, particularly the ones on the sides. (they prioritize attacking the player, and die in 2 hits, so they’re not at all threatening.) This map is pretty good, except for one glaring issue that makes it terrible: boss kill ends the map. I didn’t kill him until the final turn, so it wasn’t really a problem, but with this knowledge, the strat is rush the boss with Stanley and end the map in 3/4 turns, which isn’t particularly engaging. I’d say removing this flag is actually a must, even if it means you spend a turn or 2 on an empty map, reinforcements can always be added to fix this, whereas a boring map that ends all to quickly can’t really be fixed. Since it’s a defend map, d e f e n d.

Chp 5

Starting off with a bunch of 1 tile chokepoints surrouded by forests, taking up over half the map time is VERY questionable design wise. Since there is no antiturtle here, there is no incentive not to spend the duration of the map here, as aforementioned lack of antiturtle and just reinforcements in general means the green unit carrries no risk of dying. Also, the boss is way too dodgy.

Chp 6

Reminds me of a typical tlp map. (Holy shit, is the flamberge being here a reference?) Probably the best map in the game, as the antiturtle was annoying (and there), which enouraged fast play, but the insane enemy density (a trend) made progressing forward difficult. The ballista also gets you going instantly. I’d say leave it as is tbh, as even the defensely insane units struggle with the mages, so you can’t just have 1 guy defend the reinforcements (stanley has a boss to kill), and the forest prevents you from running all to quickly. Great map

Chp 7

The second map with antiturtle!-and it’s a binding blade sized map. That means the strat is to rescue randall and RUN, leaving the reinforcements in the dust (this type of map only really works if the enemies are fe6 levels of buff, but they aren’t). Reinforcements block your way, but there are only 3, and they’re just as strong as the next guy. I would suggest adding a breakable wall that leads to the courtyard (but one with high hp), and adding more enemies in the courtyard, to make the map more interesting. (After avoding/killing all the enemies inside, it’s just genealogy of the horsey war all over again).

Overall it was like 60/40 good to bad, would play again if it were slightly harder.

[Rushless]

Thanks for taking the time to check the hack out.

I’ve gone back and tweaked most growths, shaving off 5%s here and there, now most of them have a growth sum of about 270-280, so fairly average for GBAFE standards. There were a couple standouts there, such as Marit or Thatch who’s growths were generally sort of absurd. A couple units, such as Randall or Edmund will still have very good growths, but that’s on purpose, with one being the protagonist and the other being a Donnel archetype. In turn I have buffed a lot of units bases slightly, just to make them more viable when they join. I’ve also taken the libery of nerfing the hell out of Stanley, I don’t know why I thought 15 attack was a good idea.

I’ve made a few changes around the chapters.

Chapter 2: The bridge that links the village to the right island is now a snag that can be only be accessed from the village side of the river, unless you have a 2-range weapon.

Chapter 3: Moved the key to the nomad next to the door.

Chapter 4: Killing the boss no longer ends the chapter. Also, even if you have to spend time on an empty map, that’s time for Hester to steal things.

Chapter 5: Done some remapping and reworked reinforcements.

Chapter 7: Buffed the nomad reinforcements. And the courtyard.

So, regarding Chapter 1, I’ve been trying to get rid of that 1-tile corridor, but every time I do, it causes the enemies to stop working properly. For some reason, without it, the melee ones won’t break the walls or attack the people inside the cell, and the archers straight up will not move. I don’t really know what the problem is there, but that’s why the 1-tile is still there for now.

I’ve updated the link now!

[Rushless]

I have added an opening cutscene now!

[Genericguy]

can you add casual mode please.

[Rushless]

It’s something I have thought about but I’m not sure whether to add or not.

The game is designed to be pretty iron man friendly, as you get a LOT of units early on and in the earlier parts of the mid game as well.

[Genericguy]

oh ok thank you

[Rushless]

Quite a big update today, adding two whole new class lines to the hack:

• Hunter → Horseman
• Enchanter → Night Rider

I’ve also made a few bug fixes, tweaked a few supports, and added a new character!

I know it’s been a while since the last update, but that’s because I’ve been cooking up Act II of the hack, which is very close to being finished now. All I need to do is polish off a chapter or two and write supports for all the new units (which might take a bit) and then Act II should be ready to release!

[Rushless]

Act II is now done, with 6 new chapters and a buncha new characters, weapons, etc

[Rushless]

Just did a few more little tweaks to the hack, am currently writing supports. Hopefully Act III of the hack should be releasing fairly soon, as the main content of it is done apart from the supports of the new units.

[Cyrosus]

Love the game, also not sure if it was mentioned yet but thea can use e rank swords without a sword rank.

[Rushless]

Thanks for taking the time to check it out. Glad you enjoyed it

Yeah whoops Thea ain’t supposed to be able to do that, I’ll get on that

[Rushless]

Ok so, I’ve updated the ROM with a few new things:

1: Quality of Life Features: I had been a goober and forgot to add ExModularSave when I started working on the hack initially, so I’m doing that now before Act IV brings us over the 50 unit limit. So all the stuff from that, plus mov getters I finally figured out how to add, visible BWL stats for playable units, etc. Little things, really.

2: Unfortunately, because of the save now being both expanded and modular, save files from previous versions of the hack will no longer be compatible with the hack, sorry, they’ve been sacrificed in the name of the greater good. The greater good is called Bertrand and he is a very handsome bishop who will be joining your party in Act IV, but forget about that for now.

3: Gaiden chapters! Four gaiden chapters have been sprinkled around the hack and are fully playable and can net you neat prf weapons for certain units in your army, and add cool little extra plot details for them too.

I am not sure how to do spoiler tags or drop down menus in this forum so uhh…

SPOILERS: GAIDEN UNLOCK CONDITIONS

• Chapter 5x: Have Patrick fight the boss of Chapter 5, Danielle.
• Chapter 10x: Have Richard talk to Olivia in Chapter 10, and make sure both survive to the end of the chapter.
• Chapter 12x: Have Carolus fight the boss of Chapter 12, Franziska.
• Chapter 15x: Have both Francois and Zoey fight the boss of Chapter 15, Aurelia.