[FE8][Removed by Author] Fire Emblem Deity Device: Saint's Blood


Man, I feel so stupid for not remembering that part of the post. I guess I was too focused on the image.

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No worries. It’s cool to see that there are people who like the game enough that they would want to see more of it at FEE3.

Hello, it’s me (again) :sweat_smile: .

I was going through my 3rd playthrough, and I noticed a detail that it never happened to me before: you CAN MISS chapter 10x.
It had never happened before to me. How does that happen? I’m guessing I took too long because I managed to capture the priest with a silence staff and 2 psychics at the bottom right of the map in chapter 10 and that’s why I didn’t unlock chapter 10x?

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yeah it’s turn-based requirement - gotta beat chapter 10 in less than 12 turns iirc

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Hey, everyone. Tomorrow will be a year since I released the last update, so I thought I should make a post. First, I want to thank everyone who has given the game a chance. Close to 300 people have tried the current release, which from what I’ve seen is a fair amount of interest for an in-progress hack, and I really appreciate it. Unfortunately, I’m not particularly close to another release. The next release is still planned to go through Chapter 17, and I’m currently working on Chapter 15.

I’ve touched on this before, but Deity Device wasn’t originally written to have a sequel. This is the main reason why Saint’s Blood is set so far in the future from Deity Device. Unplanned sequels read as very forced when some random incident pops up to drag characters through another trial after a prior story has been resolved. They also have a problem with power scaling and making new characters matter. Even though unplanned sequels often exist just to bring back popular characters, the story will usually start by focusing on a new character because the returning characters would be powerful enough to end the new problem very quickly. By the end the new character either fades into the background or winds up better than the returning characters for no real reason. By setting the story far in the future, I’ve wiped the slate clean while still having the events of the first game matter.

However, I wasn’t really thinking about the long-term implications when I made Orville the displaced Prince of Augustria. I put all of the FE4 references in the game on a whim. This left with me a future Celesia that has been in close contact with Jugdral for several centuries, which has had a significant influence on Celesia’s society. I started the game by having Poseidon make a goodwill visit to Celesia, and now that I’ve reached a later point in the story, I’ve been having to think of the political ramifications of Poseidon, as foreign dignitary, off having adventures in Celesia.

I know that progress has been slow, but I hope that those of you who have shown interest in the game will still be around to see the eventual end.

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I sure hope I can be here to see the eventual end. And since you brought it up, I’ll ask you this:

Please. PLEASE. Do NOT give us a sage with crit+15, astra, galeforce, infinite magic and a 1-4 ranged legendary spell with brave effect and +30 total buffing to the stats of an already stat maxed unit!

I loved Carson and most characters were very satisfactory to use back in Deity Device, but this is way to broken :rofl:.

I wouldn’t mind if some of the units were that buffed by the end of the game, just not during the rest.

As for the rest, is good to know that you are working on chapter 15. If the next release is going to be until chapter 17, that means it’s getting closer.

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I don’t plan to include any units as centralizing as Carson with Forseti, but to be fair, to the design of the original, Forseti has several prerequisites that could be easily missed by a new player playing blind. But the units that have crazy offense are designed to be very frail with little enemy phase potential. Jack and Oliver both need to be at half health to activate their full power, and Stella can usually delete an enemy each player phase with no fancy tricks, but she’s a frail archer.

And thank you for playing through the game so many times.

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I’m hungry. How is part 2 going?

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I’m working on Chapter 16 now. Quite a few scenes that I had written for previous new chapters have gone through various degrees of rewrites in the past few weeks. When I reviewed them, they seemed more like a skeleton of what the scene was trying to accomplish and were lacking in characterization. I’ve been finding it surprisingly challenging to write for Lacus now that she’s getting more screen time. She’s very brusque, and it’s challenging to not have her come off as robotic while preserving her character.

I’m optimistically hoping for an early spring release for the next patch, but sometime in spring is probably more realistic. The next patch is going to be more Milton centric than past releases, but you will get to catch up with pretty much everyone to some degree. I’m not sure how well my humor tends to land, but this is going to be a rather dour stretch of the game as the characters grapple with the aftermath of part one without many lighter moments.

Larry is going to have a PRF weapon in the new patch. I replaced the Hammer in his starting inventory with a new weapon called the Mining Pick that deals effective damage to armor and cavalry. This is to go along with his backstory of having worked in a mine until it closed and because Milton’s party didn’t have a “Rapier.” It has less might than the Hammer but has high accuracy for an axe.

Unrelated to the new patch, but I’m curious if anyone got the bad ending in Chapter 11 since I haven’t seen anyone post about it.

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Awesome, you just gave me an excuse to play the game from the beginning again.

My birthday present, awesome x2.

Well yeah, probably because…

...

in order to achieve the bad ending, you need to avoid the dialogue between Sparky and Sid. Or so I would bet. However, Sparky emphasises that you should make him speak to Poseidon, so you will make them speak.
Let me guess, the bad ending is the same cutscene as in good ending, with the difference that Sid will NOT be able to unlock his power because he hasn’t Sparky’s artifact, he didn’t speak to him after all. So he dies or he is captured because Theo is in need of his blood and Marta is captured too. That about it?

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There is a bad ending? O:

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It’s not a huge thing like the story is set to continue down a different path, but if Poseidon and Oliver don’t talk in Chapter 11, the ending scene plays out differently.

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God no please yes do give us another one of those lol. The thing about Broken characters you can just choose not to use them. I for one love broken characters and having one man armies. Carson saved me ass more than once. lol

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Well, a lot of players say that Deity Device feels a lot like FE4, and in a lot of ways, Saint’s Blood is like FE5, which also has a lot of characters that can be a bit broken, but they’re broken in ways that demand a bit more skill from the player than deleting everything on enemy phase. My aim is to create characters that feel powerful but aren’t braindead to use (not that I don’t enjoy demolishing armies on enemy phase every now and then). I don’t enjoy games where the challenge comes from my character being weak, so don’t worry about that happening. I love FE7, but whenever I start Eliwood/Hector mode, I’m dying to get Erk back because most of the starting team feels very underpowered and then Erk has to be held back from soloing most maps because mages are just that good Pre-Tellius.

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Well, no you can’t. The 5 most broken characters in Deity Device were mandatory, and it’s not like the rest of them weren’t broken as well :rofl:
I love broken characters too, to an extent. It’s satisfying to see them pulverize armies by themselves from time to time, but let’s not make them army killers from the beggining to the end.

I remember that chapter in DD part 2, when Carson’s group finally is finally found by Hellen and Luke. Even having like 3 or 4 broken characters at that point (+2 if Hellen and Luke are promoted) feels challenging because, until Hellen and Luke regroup with the others, you will be swarmed by steel lance’s knights that can easily kill all your characters, and there are also mages among them. You can’t escape from them either, as your group is entirely made of infantry. I like how challenging that chapter felt, personally, as very good characters couldn’t just demolish everything in their way and you had to use your brain a little. Are you aiming for something like this?

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ahhh the water princess is pretty broken too. The fire princess is strong but not broken due to much lower speed she rarely was doublingfor me and I was playing on easy lol

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What I’m mainly going for is for everyone to feel useful. The game is built around a small pool of playable units for each army that can be full-deployed on every map, so I’m aiming to have them all offer something useful. Whenever I’ve playtested the game, the enemy strength was such that I felt like I had to use everyone to some degree in most situations, or at least that everyone was useful. Even Theo who doesn’t see much combat because of his extreme frailty often gets used as a heal-spot. Ralph can probably dominate Milton’s first chapter and take little to no damage from the physical enemies, but I’m counting on the player to know that it’s probably a good idea to work on leveling all the Level 1 units rather than killing everything with the Level 8 Armor. Georgette may have the potential to become dominant on stats alone because of her high potential in Magic, Speed, and Defense, but her non-existent Resistance and low HP hold her back against mages. The way Milton’s attack and defense increase the more he’s damaged forces a consideration of when the player should heal him versus leave him in a powered up state. Oliver can pretty much delete anything if he’s in Wrath range, but it’s somewhat of a puzzle of how best to get him there because of his frailty and low Speed. The best method is often to let him get chipped down by enemy mages. Jack is pretty strong normally, but completely nuts when at half health as both his raw stats and Astra proc-rate get a buff, but because he’s frail overall outside of decent HP, it’s a game of how dangerously the player wants to live to use him at his fullest potential.

Most units are bult for offense, with both Defense and Resistance growths being fairly low for most characters, and if one is high, the other is often cripplingly low. I’ve found this creates an environment where enemies are threatening but not frustrating to defeat, which I consider a good balance of challenging the player without turning the gameplay into a chore.

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Makes sense. However:

Are we going to permanently stay with 2 different parties (or 3, if Sid’s sister becomes a third party) or will they unite as one at some point, like in DD?

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Martha and Milton are on there on own journeys and not aware of what’s going on with each other. While there have been a few crossovers such as Georgette and Clarabel knowing each other, expect something more like Gaiden/SoV where each group has its own goals.

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ohhhh a two journey the entire time that’s awesome i don’t think I’veeven seen that!! Closest thing is echoes and they join at the end!

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