[FE8] Oops, All Archers! (V3.0, Out of beta!), New Bosses!

Hi guys, my name is HeroicVileplume, and this is my first public project. So, I was playing Sacred Stones, and I thought to myself: What could possibly make this game hard? What if every character was put in a class that sucked, and were forced to go against enemies in classes that didn’t? Thus, this project was born, a project in which every unit is eternally locked to 2 range (until they aren’t). The skill system patch and some custom items and promotions are added to spice it up!

The difficulty of the hack is greater, but only due to your units being worse. The enemies are unchanged. Hard mode is reccomended, Ironman is fun if you like that kind of stuff.

This project is, for the most part, complete. I’ve tested up to Chapter 17 (which is the last chapter with significant changes) and everything looked great. I might make some changes in the future, such as added unique promoted classes for the Lords, but the hack is fully completable in this version. This hack unfortunately doesn’t have unique palettes, and likely won’t, as I am colorblind and have no eye for visual design.

Oops! All Archers Classic
Oops! All Archers Evolved/Bosses Patch

Evolved is the new patch, classic is the old one.
Anyway, here’s some great info about the hack and its changes!

Classic Changes

Class Changes:
Falcon Knight has traded swords for bows, and it is now named Kinshi Knight
Assassin now has bow access
Rogue is now called adventurer, now uses Bows and Staves instead of swords, and loses the ability to steal (Steal is now a personal skill of Rennac and Colm)
Male Archer promotion options changed to Ranger, Warrior, Adventurer
Female Archer Promotion options changed to Sniper, Assassin, Kinshi Knight
Eirika and Ephraim can promote normally. If you accept their story based promotions instead, Eirika will promote to Sniper, and Ephraim will promote to Ranger
All promo items work on archers.
Archers and Snipers can waterwalk

Unit changes:
All unpromoted units are now archers.

All promoted units have been swapped to the class that most closely resembles their old class
This includes:
Seth, Orson → Ranger
Dozla, Duessel → Warrior
Saleh, Rennac → Adventurer
Syrene → Kinshi Knight

Eirika and Myrrh had their bases buffed (Eirika to compensate for her 0 personal bases, Myrrh to compensate for her much worse class)
Magic bases and growths were buffed for certain units.
Cormag was moved to be slightly closer to the player on both routes, as he starts on terrain that is impossible to reach in both routes.

Tons of Personal skill changes, including:
Vanessa → Boon. Earlygame healing to counteract the fact that there is no tier 1 healer
Lute → Discipline+. Paragon made her too strong. This is less powerful but still makes sense character wise.
Ross → Blossom. I did a run through with Paragon!Ross, and it didn’t feel like I was using a trainee at all. This makes his as hard to train as vanilla FE8, but increases the reward.
Amelia → Miracle. Amelia is even worse now, and this is a desperate attempt to give you any reason to use her. She should be absurd if trained now
L’archel → Galeforce. See above
Marisa → Quick Draw. Much more salvageable than the 2 above her, but still the same concept
Tethys → Rally Spectrum. Much, much less salvageable than the 3 above her, but still the same concept
Saleh → Slow Burn. I didn’t want him to have a magic buff because there aren’t any natural magic users in this game.
Rennac → Oppurtunist, Steal. He has steal because he is one of the base game thieves, and he got oppurtunist because I don’t like having repeat personals.
Colm → Steal, Locktouch. See above
Myrrh → Fortune. Her old personal does nothing, I thought this one fit.
Gerik → Solidarity.

Weapon Changes:

The Cleave Bow is a Rapier bow with Pass (beansy Double Bow)
Regenleif is a Rapier melee bow with Canto+ (LordGlenn Bow 18)
Sieglinde is a melee bow with Savage Blow (2wb icon blitz bodkin arch)
Siegmund is a melee bow with counter (2wb Icon Blitz Silver Arch1)
The Shining Bow is a 1-2 range magic bow that replaces the antitoxin in shops.
The Gleipnir is now a physical bow (Beansy Failnaught)
The Ivaldi is now a magic bow (Beansy Fujin Yumi)
The Excalibur is also a physical bow (2WB Icon Blitz Excalibur)
The Dragonstone is a Myrrh PRF Bow

Credits:

Animations:
Assassin ponytail and Jaffar+bow (Animation by Keks_Krebs, Beccarte, SD9K)
FK v2 with weapons (Improved Falcoknight by Flasuban, Bow by Knabepicer, Nuramon.)
Adventurer by Leo-Link

Weapon Icons:
Beansy Double Bow
LordGlenn Bow 18
2WB Icon Blitz Bodkin Arch
2WB Icon Blitz Silver Arch1

And thanks to everyone who has contributed to the skill systems patch (especially its OG creator, CirclesEverywhere)

Evolved Changes

Work In Progress

Most of this stuff is in the readme if you’d like to read it again while playing.

Well, I hope you enjoy my first project. If you play it, please leave your thoughts here, I’d love to read them. I might eventually do a follow up project (FE7 Armor Knights only and FE6 Edgy Classes (myrms, wyvern, shamans) only both sounded pretty fun.

PS: This is my first public project, so if I forgot something hack creators are supposed to put in the top post, let me know

20 Likes

Congrats on the release of your first project! I’m sorry to say but if Seth isn’t a ranger that has a 1-10 range longbow then you’ll be doing his character a great injustice :slightly_smiling_face:

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Archers are my favorite class and I always deploy every single bow user available, so… CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!! :triumph:

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Hold up, let me write that down real quick…

If I eventually update this hack with new weapons, I might add a siege longbow PRF for one of the underpowered units (idk, maybe L’arachel, Ewan?)

2 Likes

Really interesting project. I like both archers and Sacred Stones so I’ll definitely try it.

2 Likes

I’ve played some chapters and let me tell you, good freaking job. I was afraid the game would be softlocked by making everybody an archer, but everything seems fine just far.

Thank you. I wanted to start with Sacred Stones because the game gives you so much leeway to screw with the player because the original is so easy

1 Like

This looks like fun to play, I’d definitely also love to see an all armor knight FE, I’m guessing you’d have to include bows though to give characters more options unless you want magic armors to be a thing (not that I would mind, it’s a neat idea).

Yeah. I’m still workshopping ideas for it, but I like how this hack has short term and long term limits placed on the player (ie: no healer in the earlygame, little access to 1-2 range, limited access to magic and magic weapons), and I’m not sure how I would want an armor Knight hack to do that.

Limiting high-movement units is definitely something I could mess around with, as well as making it harder to tank magic enemies reliably. I’m just not sure how far I need to go with it. Archer is a relatively niche idea, an armor Knight can be almost anything

The Sleep staff doesn’t seem to be working. The animation works normally but it has no effect on your units.

Also, the game randomly crashed for some reason in Chapter 13 Eirika route

Hiya, I just finished running through the patch on Hard Mode Eirika’s route. First, congrats on your first project. I love Archers, they’re my third favorite class in the series, so it’s nice to see a hack where my only option is to take a bow to everyone’s face. I enjoyed playing through it, for the most part, but there were a couple things I noticed playing through the game that may need to get looked at.

First was an odd glitch involving snags, so on chapters 4, and 17. If you attacked them at all, the game locked up and you couldn’t do anything without resetting. This worked regardless of weapon, range, or even who was doing the snag breaking. On chapter 4, it’s an annoyance, but not a problem, but on 17, it’s entirely possible to have to reset because the enemy attacks the snags. You can work around it with multiple fliers but without them, you’re softlocked without LTCing the map.

The second is Cormag and his recruitment, you cannot recruit Cormag on Eirika’s route(Chapter 13) because his spawn is on mountains that he cannot traverse as a archer. So the game crashes immediately on him spawning, so the only way to complete Chapter 13 Eirika Route is to clear it in 4 turns, before he shows up. Entirely doable, but you lose out on Cormag. (I did not read the first post, but I literally just played E13 today, and Cormag crashed it)

There’s also a minor glitch with Adventurer/Assassin Promotion, both classes lower bow rank after promotion. For instance, Knoll starts at A rank, and on promotion to Adventurer, he had 40%ish through B rank. Assassin did the same with Tethys, she had mid C, and went back to D on promotion, but this didn’t happen with Sniper.

I believe those were the only mechanical things I encountered when playing. I don’t know if units being able to promote regardless of level is intended, but it was hilarious. Other thoughts I had was, I think some of the monotony that I experienced might be fixed by trying to differentiate characters by giving them promotions that are similar to where they started in FE8. For instance, Natasha not having a staff promotion because the only one is Adventurer feels odd when Gilliam has the option and doesn’t tend towards magic. It’s doubly so for Tethys; she has a very good magic growth, but her only option to make use of it is the Shining Bow, and the S rank magic bows. But her skill also makes her not a great combat unit, so having Adventurer as an option gives her both staff utility, and locks utility. I don’t know how the coding and putting different promotions for different units would work, but with only 6 classes to work with it might help in making certain units more usable.

Edit: I saw the post above and I remembered something. Amaterasu was not working when I played. Similar skills such as Gerik’s… Boon? I think it’s called Boon? His worked just fine, but Amaterasu did not when I was playing.

Edit 2: There is also a glitch involving the Dracozombies, including Morva. They cannot use their breath attack. So they cannot attack or retaliate, and thus do not move with regard to the generic Dracozombies on final.

All in all, I had a good time, and I want to see the patch flourish because I think its a fun concept. Thank you for making it.

1 Like

Yes, I just found out about this too. Now I’m wondering if this glitch also occurs in Ephraim route.

I did not play Ephraim route to confirm, but a friend mentioned that a friend said that it did. I have no way to confirm that other than playing through it myself.

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Weirdly enough, Amaterasu doesn’t work.

I am currently on vacation and will look into these bugs when I get back. I can fix the Cormag thing super easily, but I’m not sure what causes the snags, CH13 Eirika crash, the sleep staff, or the weapon ranks going down.

I agree that there should be more options for promotion, especially for units that don’t fit the given options. My only reason for limiting some of the choices is that I couldn’t find animations for certain genders of certain classes (such as female adventurers)

Edit: For other up-and-coming romhackers, the issue that causes the Cormag crash is related to how the coordinates were set up. I added new coordinates that put Cormag on a valid tile, but without deleting the earlier coordinates, the game tries to make him walk to the new ones. Because that isn’t possible, the game stalls/crashes. It was a super simple fix

Edit 2: No idea why Amaterasu is broken, so I’m just going to give Vanessa Bond and change Gerik’s to Solidarity. I’ll also add more healing in the earlygame to counteract that

Edit 3: I have no recollection of doing this, but I think the bugged manaketes happened because their breath weapon is A rank, and I think it doesn’t have a rank in the base game. Also, I went ahead and replaced the snags in both maps that had them

Edit 4: Do I code in my sleep or something? Have no recollection of messing up the sleep staff, but that’s fixed now

Edit 5: Pretty sure I figured out the missing weapon ranks. So that is (I think) all the bugs fixed. I’ll put out the new version later tonight or tomorrow, but I’m considering making a few changes (definitely adding more vuln’s and maybe elixirs to a few character’s inventories, also considering making Moulder a prepromote Adventurer and swapping Rennac to Assassin (Moulder to remedy the lack of earlygame healing without early promoting a male unit, Rennac because there are no male assassins or prepromote assassins.)
Thoughts on both changes?

Edit 6: Apparently there is a female adventurer, just not under thief. What I will likely do is create a second class tree of slightly different archers with different promos ala Myrm Emblem. Just need to find a few more classes with bows…

4 Likes

New update that (hopefully) fixes all the bugs is now out. This doesn’t include Adventurer!Moulder or Assassin!Rennac, but if anyone wants that alternate version, I can post it pretty soon

Is it weird that I am finding this version easier than vanilla? Almost certainly, right?
Anyway, having a blast. Archers are my 2nd fav prepromote right behind soldiers, and I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. Wish there was some way of visually deciphering who is who on the map without mousing over em, but I have no clue where you’d even BEGIN to implement a solution to that

I was expecting cheap shitpost and found a strangely high-effort hack where everyone uses bows. I can’t wait to try this.

Gilliam’s skill helps with tanking a lot. And there’s Vanessa healing skill too. In the older version there was no early healing (because amaterasu didn’t work) so it was a bit harder.
The magic bow helps a lot too.

Just started work on the next version. Expect to see most of the bosses changed into some famaliar faces (along with some of the maps).

Until then, I await you on the dread isles (Denning will be Orson now, btw. At least enemy Orson)