I’ll be real with you, the monsters are very buggy and untested lol. I just threw that preset on bc it was really funny to me. But I’ll eventually get around to fixing that
Took a look in FEBuilder.
It looks like the female thief class (yes, including Merriette) is assigned the Slayer skill. This also means that, as long as Merriette isn’t promoted, she’ll deal effective damage to Monsters.
Looks like the Mogall are tagged as “Athos Locked”, while the Arch Mogall are not. Instead, the latter are tagged as “Monster Weapons”. This means that you can equip the dragonstone weapons the Manakete use on the Arch Mogall. However, if you do so, they will be forced to just map animations, not attack animations, as the Arch Mogall do not have animations set for any of the dragonstones.
The bug I encountered was Zephiel in the Arena bugging the heck out during his attack animation, forcing unavoidable resets. I’m not sure what’s causing it, as the battle animation files look right. At least, I think they are.
Why are the Pupils renamed as Nuns? Ewan the Nun. XD
Edit 1: Double-checked the animation files again, and even imported the .bin file from FE6, and it still glitches up. So, may have to ask other rom-hackers why this is happening.
Edit 2: Okay, apparently, the original animations of Zephiel in FE6 can’t be used in FE7 and FE8, so a fixed version needs to be used. Found here: https://github.com/Klokinator/FE-Repo/tree/main/Battle%20Animations/Infantry%20-%20Knights%2C%20Generals%2C%20Armors/[Zephiel-Base]%20[M]%20King%20Zephiel%20Vanilla%20%2BWeapons/1.%20Sword%20(Eckesachs%20FE7-8)
Edit 3: Tried replacing the animation. That didn’t fix it, either. So, best to find someone who might know what’s wrong and how to fix it.
Thanks for looking at it! Funny enough, I can have the arch mogall equip tomes, I was able to get flux and Nosferatu to work, so ig he’s not completely unusable. IIRC my mogall went from E dark to A dark upon promoting, too, so not hard to find a dark tome he can use
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Np I’m not trying to sound ungrateful or anything, just noting odd shit I come across as I play. Still totally loving the monster run. The tarvos (promoted, in pic, this is mid act 2 rn) is so much fun, he has the stats of a general, the move of a paladin, and wields the warrior’s weapon combo of axes + bows; super unique to use.
Hoping to finish my hard monster run throughout the weekend and see many of the changes you’ve added.
Never had this happened yet, but what’s the turn limit before it game over?
Sb 20 turns on any map that isn’t “finale” (act 1,2,3 finale.)
However, there are some rather strong reinforcements that endlessly spawn on the finales, such that it mostly feels like a 20-21 turn limit anyway, because those reinforcements will catch up and murder your units.
I assume that’s to prevent grinding on finale levels unless you have really good units, as well as a kind of ‘Hurry Up’ mechanic in most maps.
How much feedback have you received on the act 1 finales? The paladin boss map versus the warrior boss map?
So, I think I’ve rolled the warrior map 4 times, been able to beat it every time, and even loot one or both of the side chests sometimes! Meanwhile, that fuckin paladin boss map ends my runs probably 40% of the time, sends at least 1 of my units to the grave around 80% of the time, and NOT ONCE have I been able to loot either one of the side chests. I was watching/chatting with some random YTer who had just died to this map and he agreed the paladin map was FAR more brutal than the warrior map. Here are the three major reasons why I think the paladin seems so much harder:
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After you beat the two initial “mini bosses” on the paladin map, that 3-lane bridge spawns, instead of draining ALL of the water like it does on the warrior map. This basically costs me an extra 4-5 turns just to walk units back up and around to actually then cross the bridge. The warrior map drains ALL of the water and it’s easy to press right up into the boss area from both sides immediately.
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The sleep staff user is in such a better position on paladin map than warrior map. Paladin map sleep user has the entire wall section that makes it hard to deal with her before she blows all of the sleeps. Longbow is actually decent at killing her before she has a chance to do anything, but iffy because she is on a pillar for +def and +avo, so your longbow user needs to be really good to be reliable here. Meanwhile, with the warrior map, yeah sleep is definitely annoying there, but the priest has tended to make himself somewhat vulnerable because there isn’t a thick ass wall between my army and him, and he isn’t in fucking pillar terrain for defensive bonuses.
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The paladin boss himself not only has 3 weapons (a SILVER SWORD!) with 2 of them being range 1-2, but he also can hit either res or def at range 1-2 because light brand versus short spear, respectively. He is MUCH harder to deal with compared to warrior, who IIRC has steel axe and steel bow, so he has no mixed 1-2 range capability nor the ability to pick on your weaker def/res stat. Warrior is FAR easier to kill because he has to commit to either range 1 OR range 2 during enemy phase, and that’s when you attack him for free at that other range on your player phase.
Anyway, consider this my suggestion to remove/change at least one of these problem pieces on the paladin map, if not two of them. IMO the water/bridge thing is the most annoying one for the player, but I’d imagine removing the sleep staff (or just get rid of the lady cleric altogether, honestly,) is programmatically easier to change/remove, and this will give the warrior map the niche of “deal with the sleep staff” and the paladin map the niche of “move fast due to funni bridge.” Also strong suggestion to change the paladin’s weapon selection to one of: (steel lance + light brand) OR (steel sword + short spear.) I like the idea of light brand on him, personally.
TLDR act 1 paladin boss finale map is magnitudes harder than act 1 warrior boss finale map, I suggest remove sleep staff/lady cleric from paladin map and make the paladin’s weapons less versatile/powerful.
I agree- having played both maps a few times, the paladin one is often a run-killer, while the warrior one is smooth sailing. If nothing else, having to move up and around to get to the bridge is aggravating, though if reinforcements came in slower on that map, it might be cool if only because you get to pass by the shops again.
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Huh, I had no idea there was even another version of Act 1 Finale.
So, when I read about that, I went to check FEBuilder; and, yeah, sure enough, there it is! I kept rolling the Warrior one all this time! XD
Well, time to save-state and RNG abuse to roll for the Paladin version!
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I was playing around with FEBuilder and changed the palettes of the Phantom and Illusion Fighters. I think the Phantoms look better paler, while the Illusions look different pale but also wearing dark purple. Yeah, I’m still thinking what colors illusions should be. Literally black shades are hard to do, because that results in the eye dots not looking quite right, even if the eye dots were changed to white or red. Also, I’m not a fan of just turning them into shadows, because they’re illusions, not shadow people. However, I guess making slightly modified custom animations, instead of just a palette change can work, too.
It’s a suggestion for the game, because I personally got tired of looking at default unit colors…Also, a few units have light green hair as a default hair color, which weirds me out, for some reason. XD
Oml you lucky dog. I feel like you are in for a massive shock when you finally get the paladin boss. Do you play on hardest difficulty by any chance? Please tell me how it goes when you try it, lol.
On a slightly different note, I tried the “magic trinity” starter squad - looks like the monk unit was given a D in dark instead of a D in light, so he starts with E light and D dark. It was actually fun, maybe you consider this a feature for anyone paying attention to the typo? But idk if I just got unlucky or what; on the map immediately following the tutorial, everybody died except the monk and meriette. I worked on the monk’s dark rank and he eventually started carrying while I recruited more units, until the inevitable paladin map where I lost all units again except meriette, the monk, and a lucky peg knight. Monk and peg eventually got fed and promoted from there. I even came across the juna fruit to reduce level from 20 down to 10 for extra stat grinding on the peg knight, lol. With S dark, the now-bishop pretty much nuked everything with Luna/Nosferatu. And it was this run where I realized that the final boss is pretty vulnerable to Luna (well, who isn’t as long as the user has good mag power) when the bishop literally one-rounded him with double crits, lol.
Great changes with the balancing of the promoted units that the player gets in act 3. Act 2 finale was much more manageable now that the fucking top right side warrior isn’t sporting 45+ hp and 25+ str, while the top left side sage also isn’t sporting 20+ mag and speed. Goodness, at least one of them would end me on a decent chunk of my runs.
It feels like act 3 might need slightly more powerful enemies (if only for hard difficulty) because I’m not sure if I’ve EVER lost a run after beating the act 2 finale (and I’ve now beaten the most recent update 3 times on hard - once with standard units, once with monsters, and once with the magic trinity squad.) I’d hesitate to suggest putting more promoted enemies in because of how much XP they give, so maybe it should be more lv ~20 unprompted enemies? Idk, but great work with the hack.
TLDR I have an unhealthy obsession with this romhack
Staying on brand with doing quick bugfixes/minor features while I’m still too busy to dig into the real content and balancing, we have another minor patch!
FE: ID v1.3 Release Changes
Fixes
- Girl Thieves no longer get slayer
- Arch Mogalls can continue to use their eyes and lost their dark magic
- Arena should hopefully be less weird???
Changes
- Merriette gives some warnings on certain maps, letting you plan better when blind
- Duplicate maps are a thing of the past. Every chapter will now be a unique map
Balances
- The monsters got some stat caps. Now they’re actually polished.
- The Paladin Map. Yeah I know, it tended to be rough during my testing too.
- It should be more clear that you have to use the bridge to cross
- Enemies are slightly weaker
- The paladin got his equipment nerfed
Known Issues
- Summoners once again. I’ll get to it, I promise
Hopefully now that the semester’s ended, I’ll have more time to really dig in and not only touch up the later maps, but also touch up the whole of the hack. But that’s for later.
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Gosh, darn it! I JUST found the Paladin map in v1.2! Oh, well.
Have you given some thought to the aesthetics of the phantoms and illusions?
Took a look at the thing through FEBuilder and started laughing when I found that the Slayer skill was moved to the unused Civilian children. That works! /jk XD
A fix you forgot to mention is that the Trinity of Magic team has been fixed, so the Monk doesn’t have Rank D Dark, anymore, too.
Another bug that does occur is that, if a base unit that has multiple weapon ranks promotes into another class with enough Weapon EXP in the weapon types to increase both weapons to rank S (such as Cavalier to Paladin), both weapon ranks will increase to rank S; however, using one of them would de-rank that one to rank A. Perhaps, enabling the mod that allows multiple S Ranks can fix this. However, as the game currently has no rank S weapons, it can be ignored.
Also, because Ninian’s rings from FE7 are in the data of FE8 and are still usable by the Dancers, do you plan on allowing them on the romhack?
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YES I forgot about the weapon thing! My wight in my monster run had the same issue - promoted and received A bow, S lance, S sword. I used a lance and his lance rank dropped to A (sadge.)
@Flouxni nice updates! I’m really stoked to hear that I’ll never have to do the act 3 volcano map 3 times in a row ever again. Thanks for tuning the paladin map down a bit, too. Also, forgot to mention - I’m fighting the final boss twice each run, it’s looping for some reason (as of v1.2 at least.)
EDIT: One more suggestion - the opening tutorial says something to the effect of “you have 20 turns to beat maps, except for boss chapters.” Well, isn’t every map technically a boss chapter (defeat boss?) Do you think it would be clearer to say “20 turns to beat maps except for FINALE chapters, which have no turn limit, but strong enemy reinforcements will appear”?
Do you use FEbuilder to set this hack up? I’m mildly interested in DLing it to see what the UI looks like…
Dancers are kind of objectively the single best class in the game, and single-handedly make runs easier just by getting them, so I see no real reason to give them something as powerful as Ninian’s rings.
Fair enough.
@UnhingedManchild I’ve only been playing in Difficult mode. I could be mistaken, but I don’t think there’s a difference between the modes, from what what I saw on streams or videos.
Also, I just started a Dancer Train run and immediately got my three Dancers to Lv20 in the Tutorial map. At least, they have enough Speed to avoid almost everything now.
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Perfectly balanced now!
Lol pally probably doesn’t have sword rank to use steel blade. What does that even require? B?
But on topic of dancers, yeah 1 dancer is plenty powerful as is (although it’s super cool that they tend to come with stat buff items.) However, I’ve been terrified of trying the bard train, that looks legitimately difficult when meriette has to be the main combat unit…
Minor ask; how hard would it be to start the bard train dancers at lv 20 with stats that fit a lv 20 dancer? Basically, to save the time of dancing them all to lv 20 on the first turn of the game lol. Because if I’m playing a mode where 3/4 my starting army is dancers, I’m having them dance themselves to lv 20 for that tiny boost in avo, def, HP.