Fire Emblem: Illusory Dungeon | A Fire Emblem Rogue-Like [FE8]

[Tinnes_Cenn]

I forgot that I wanted to do a Fixed Growths run, so I just started one earlier. Miraculously, no one has died yet, despite wonky things happening. No desert map yet, so no Metis Tome yet. Goal is to try to farm the reinforcements in Finale 1. The best one to farm with would be the starting Fighter (promoted to Warrior or Hero) chucking Hand Axes everywhere. Assuming I don’t screw up and the map RNG is kind, I should be fine.

Starting Team: Basic Units (Priest, Fighter, Mage)

Map 1: Eh, standard tutorial map. Gave the boss kill to the Fighter.
Recruit 1: Wyvern Rider (Steel Lance)

Map 2: Map was the one with the Killing Edge Mercenary guarding a chest in the northeastern side of the map and a reinforcement Fleet with a freaking Ballista (which was dangerous for my Wyvern Rider). Managed to get the chest (10K Gold) and kill almost everything. I was not risking my only Flier in the event I had to deal with the Water Ruins. Granted, I know it’s been updated, but I’m traumatized. DX Anyway, only things that didn’t die was the Fleet, the reinforcement Cavalier with a Light Brand, and the Mercenary near the Shop holding a Vulnerary.
Recruit 2: Knight (Iron Lance, Javelin)

Map 3: Map was the one with the Mercenary carrying a droppable Angelic Robe. Priest was surviving on 4 HP, while I was farming the Cavalier reinforcements with the broken as heck Wyvern Rider. Managed to get the chest in the southeast part of the map (Short Spear) and also got the Blue Gem from the Archer, with Merriette’s Burning Edge. Finished it at Turn 20 after killing literally every enemy, including all Cavalier reinforcements.
Recruit 3: Cleric (Fortify, Physic)

Map 4: Now dealing with the rain map that has a bunch of rivers and snags. Skipped the chest in the northwest. Got a Secret Book from the village. Killed just about every axe-user with Merriette, who is now Lv8.
Recruit 4: Got an Archer (Steel Bow, Killer Bow)

Map 5: Foggy village map. Northwestern house got me 5K Gold, and southeastern house got me a Killer Lance. Managed to kill the Thief to get another Lockpick. The chests gave me an Earth Seal and a Silver Lance. Couldn’t use the Earth Seal yet, as no one is Lv10 yet. However, I’m holding out on it until Lv20. Almost lost my Wyvern Rider, because a Nomad came from the fog and shot him. He survived on 3 HP, so that’s neat. Mage was an absolute unit, as he kept avoiding everything while almost always setting everything on fire. Wyvern Rider still managed to do well with a Steel Lance, despite the WPN Triangle Disadvantage. Fighter got the killing blow on the boss at Turn 16.
Recruit 5: Shaman (Fenrir, Luna)

Finale 1: Paladin Map. I had to rush killing the sub-bosses to get the bridge up as quickly as possible. While that was happening, my Wyvern Rider was trying to kill the unmoving Soldiers and Knight. Fortunately, I got an Archer, so the Wyvern Rider mini-boss was basically annihilated from a safe distane via a Longbow I bought from the map; meanwhile, Merriette destroyed the Brigand mini-boss. From there, I had to rush trying to kill the mobs. Merriette managed to steal the Red Gem from the Archer. The southwestern Archer was killed by my Wyvern Rider, and the chest gave me a Silver Bow. I managed to kill the Paladin boss by bumrushing her with everyone else. Fighter got the killing blow again. The southeastern Mage got killed by a lucky Luna crit from my Shaman who was the only one who could tank the Fimbulvetr, and the chest gave me the Secret Seal. By that time, the reinforcements came. So, what I did was place my Archer on the easternmost pillar and my Fighter just southeast of him. All other units were just beyond the reach of all the reinforcements, once they got in reach of my Archer and Fighter. Fighter Hand Axes the Pegasus Knight, and Archer Killer Bows the Wyvern Rider. Pegasus Knight can double my Fighter but has horrible ATK and HIT, due to WPN Triangle and gets dropped to less than half with a single Hand Axe hit; however, due to Fixed Growths, my Fighter also has about 65% display HIT with a Hand Axe. Wyvern Knight gets dropped under half HP if it doesn’t get crit’d. Once it’s Player Phase, I just mop the rest of that wave of reinforcements. Will be repeating until I lose a lot of DUR.

Seized the Throne after I ran out of Bow DUR on my Sniper.
Results:
Archer managed to hit Lv20 after breaking both his Steel Bow and Killer Bow. He was using his Longbow which did less than 50% on the Wyvern Riders but still 1-shots the Pegasus Knights. Promoted to Sniper and impressed me by dealing an unnecessary crit to a Wyvern Rider via his new Silver Bow he could finally use on Enemy Phase…THRICE…IN A ROW! YOU HAVE A 9% CHANCE, BUDDY! Then on the next Enemy Phase, he activated Sure Strike unnecessarily, because he already has 100% HIT…TWICE.

Fighter managed to hit Lv20 and was promoted to Warrior. His display HIT against the Pegasus Knights jumped to about 80%.

Merriette managed to hit Lv20 and will be promoting to Rogue before the next map.

With enough luck and contengencies, farming the Finale is pretty doable. This was under Fixed Growths, so save scumming for stats can’t occur.
Recruit 6: Pirate (Iron Axe, Killer Axe)

Oh, also, with averages, the Wyvern Rider is objectively that much better than the Armor Knight.

EDIT: Updated up to Finale 1.

[UnhingedManchild]

Knight deserves +3 hp, +3 str, +3 skill, and +3 defense. I swear (or nerf wyvern, but eh I don’t think that’s necessary.) His shitty move and non-flying ability is just leagues worse than wyvern esp when their stats are basically identical otherwise.

Great info, that’s pretty shocking to me, ig I’m too terrified of those finale reinforcements

[Tinnes_Cenn]

Farming the reinforcements relies a lot on what units you were able to recruit and what units you start out with. A Bow-user makes the Paladin Finale 1 map a cake walk. If you start with the Dancer Train, farming the Paladin Finale 1 map becomes extremely easy, IF you manage to recruit Bow-users. Magic-users can nuke the Wyvern Riders, and Axe-users can somewhat reliably deal with the Pegasus Knights.

Unsurprisingly, it’s still very luck-based, not only with the recruits but with how fast you’re able to open up the bridge. If you can’t activate the bridge quickly enough nor kill the boss fast enough, farming becomes pretty impossible, unless you already have powerful promoted units (and are NOT in Fixed Growths mode). On a random note: I find it pretty funny that Flouxni seems to have thought ahead that some players may attempt to cheese the map by Rescue-Dropping via fliers, so the reinforcements are all fliers.

Also, I’m not sure why, but now I just have not been able to get the Warrior Finale 1 map, ever since I found out about the Paladin version.

Something else I learned, because I forgot that the Secret Seal promotions lower stats, is that the Secret Seal promotions are pretty painful to use in Fixed Growths mode. Granted, Great Knight was able to get a huge SPD boost and MOVE boost, but Great Knight really does seem like a worse Paladin. Wyvern Lord has much better STR, DEF, and MOVE, and the only thing Great Knight has over Wyvern Lord is much higher SPD. Oh, the difference between Lv1 and Lv2 for these two units in Fixed Growths mode is 1 HP. Both promoted at Lv20.
On promotion,
Wyvern Lord gets +3 HP, +2 STR, +1 SKL, and +3 DEF;
Wyvern Knight gets -4 HP, +2 STR, +6 SKL, and -6 DEF;
General gets +3 HP, +1 STR, +2 SKL, and +3 DEF;
Great Knight gets +1 STR, +2 SKL, +4 SPD, and -2 DEF.
Something interesting to note is that they’re using the Female Mounted Unit Aid calculation (CON + AID = 20). That explains why using them for Rescue-Dropping was so frustrating. So, all of our Phantoms are females; reason might be because Merriette who entered the dungeon is female? Time to change the Phantom face portraits to female characters, I guess! XD

I’m considering not using Secret Seals at all with Fixed Growths. Alternatively, I can make it a challenge to try to win with units only using Secret Seal promotions (and I guess Assassin Merriette) in Fixed Growths mode. To make myself not go crazy, I can just change all instances of Earth Seals to Secret Seals or use Cheat Engine to turn modify all Earth Seals in my units’ inventory into Secret Seals.

EDIT 1: Added additional thoughts about farming Finales.
EDIT 2: Added additional thoughts about the Wyvern Lord and Great Knight.
EDIT 3: Added promotion bonuses for Wyvern Knight and General to add to the comparison.

[Aoi]

Not sure if this is planned, but a suggestion!

Randomized and editable Character names/portraits (The Last Spell is a good example). You could even have background notes on each character, and design some unique ones that have a chance of appearing with different rarities indicated by color. It’ll make the game a lot more interesting for streamers to play, and help getting players attached to their units.

[Tinnes_Cenn]

@Aoi Welcome to the community and congratulations on your first post!

Concerning naming characters, Flouxni has mentioned that isn’t going to happen. I don’t there’s a way to implement that currently without custom GBA ASM coding.

I’m not sure if unique portraits was mentioned.

I have ideas on how to do unique colors, but it’s going to take some time to figure out and implement. Once I finish it on my end, I’ll see if Flouxni is interested in adding them to the rom hack.

[Tinnes_Cenn]

Made a custom female phantom portrait. I just realized what that means for Berserkers and the Monster Mash team. Well, too late for that! XD

EDIT: Realized that I forgot to raise the portrait, so:

[Aoi]

I suppose you could do it the hard way and just … make a TON of named characters with semi-unique portraits and add them to the pool with more randomized stats/items, with a handful of more detailed, hand-crafted ones thrown in there as rares?

[DATonDemand]

I wanna put in more monsters lmao

[Ocylth]

It would be best to promote Meriette to Rouge since it’s a Rogue-like Game.

[Tinnes_Cenn]

@Ocylth Welcome to the site. Congratulations on your first posting!

@Ocylth

Meriette to Rouge

But she’s already red!

[Tinnes_Cenn]

Uhh…What?

[UnhingedManchild]

Is this about the Luna? Ye idk why this is here sometimes. I’ve def found it on peg knights and armors in the recruit area like this.

[Tinnes_Cenn]

I also found it on a Soldier I recruited.

The thing is that I’ve only just looked through the Monster Item Rates, and Luna should NEVER be a drop for those classes.

[BlazingHero657]

So.
started a hard mode run, with flier starters this time.
had a nice run, which fell apart at finale 2 (almost everyone died (why is the boss so damn dodgetanky/regular tanky??))
but the run continued.
i’m commenting now because i’m in finale 3, it’s turn 13,

and 80% of my army has been stranded here for several turns.
i don’t think having the platforms be completely random chance as to whether or not you’ll be stranded is particularly engaging/fun. how do i know, or at least guess it’s random? the same platforms will lower and raise in the same batch of platforms, sometimes multiple times in one turn. If i didn’t have a flier left, this map could be so much more frustrating, but as it is i can fly over to the boss. Meriette herself can only move one tile per turn in the water, which if you’re going for treasure like i did, is a lot of time wasted.
tbh this was one of the only times in the run (barring the first time i played) where i was like “what am i supposed to do here?” because at least the finale 2 boss was just a big statstick for me to eventually hit and kill, but here? i’m even more at the mercy of rng, and it feels bad to possibly game over because of something almost entirely out of my control.

Post-map edit: sent my flier to the boss and killed it. my army never got free to go anywhere. that map should probably at least have platforms on a rotation, no?

Post-Game Edit: That was the only tricky portion of the game left. the rest was relatively easy, including the final boss, even on Hard (for the same reasons as my other post talking about it). once again, the goons were stronger than the boss itself.

[Tinnes_Cenn]

Funnily enough, I just had a similar experience earlier.

When I got the Water Ruins map, I saved a second file to see what would happen if I had one with no Fliers and no Water Walkers (sans Meriette) and one with them.

The one with none basically almost lost, because the entire team (except Meriette) was stranded on that central walled landmass. Meriette had to solo the boss in order to not fail the run. Also, I was not able to get any chests.

In the one with no restrictions, I got all chests and killed everything, including all the reinforcements. I had a Wyvern Lord, a Wyvern Knight, and a FalcoKnight; I was not lucky enough to get a Pirate/Berserker, too. Ironically, I got a Berserker as a recruit reward after that map.

As for Finale II, you’re basically required to have a Sage, Mage Knight, Sniper, or Bow Knight there-- alternatively, a well-trained promoted Meriette. The Throne tile really makes that Finale rather unfair.

As for Finale III, the sub-boss’s stats are so low that it can get destroyed by Magic Users before it even gets a chance to act. The final boss is so constrained to a small area, and the party is so close that the final boss has literally no chance. XD

[Vye]

Found a pretty game breaking bug. Act 3 finale, killed all the units in the starting areas, doors refuse to open. I’ve reset chapter, reloaded the save file from the preparation stage, same issue. No idea what caused this, since I’ve had successful runs in the past.

[edused]

Dunno, if this is still a problem, but maybe you could make a function that forces one of the select few bridges to be raised, and call it after the previous one. In essence that one would overwrite the state from the previous “fully random one”, so at least one bridge is “always” on. This would work better with that function described above that rolls for every bridge separately (wheter to change) than the one in, that rolls for which bridge to change, in that that “collision” wouldn’t make the whole other function moot, nor would it push for the map progressively getting “bridged up”, As a collision would make a variance between ((-1|0)|(0|+1)) bridge[if half the bridges are raised, which is where the math skews to. lowering a raised bridge:-1,raising a lowered one:+1, raising a raised, and lowering a lowered is 0], get overwritten to ((0|0)|(0|+1)) [which would skew towards more bridges on being raised at once on average, but I don’t want to calculate right now where’s the equilibrium, since I assume you want it at “half bridges raised”], for one of the bridges, always.
With more independent rolls on bridges, the game skews to 50/50 but closer to a “normal distribution” instead of a pyramid, and it can flip over completely in the other extreme, instead of being forced into “cut of the pyramid” from the previous state.
If you want previous state to matter, instead of the bridges exploring every possibility on switch, you could make a counter for each bridge (for example 7) and rather than changing bridge state directly add either 1, 2 or 3, so that bridge will fall down and get back up in anywhere between 5 and 14 turns, but 7 on average (although the first switch being 4 turns and the next one 3 on avg), if the map/game handles having variables well that is.

[thelemur]

Hi. Love the hack, love the idea. Would it be possible to port characters from ‘official’ fire emblem game as part of the character pool? Maybe at the later levels? Im thinking of the characters from across the series like in myrm emblem, tho im sure thatd be terrifically ambitious to do that w all classes.

In my ‘perfect version’, of this rom hack, we’d have something like a total FE character pool, and the characters in the pool would be determined at the build time of the image (ala ff4 free enterprise). Think of it; infinite randomly generated GBA emblem! Def getting ahead of myself on that one, tho.

[timblewhip]

Love the hack. I’m shit at FE so I was trying easy mode. Kept things together til first boss stage turn 15, 4 flyers twice my party’s level spawn and gank me filtered by easy, jfc…

[Omnifox999]

Nah, just try and go a bit faster. Anti-turtles get us all at some point lol, had my first run killed off when I hadn’t realized there even were any.