I would recommend always playing the vanilla version first. That way you can see the differences.
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Wow.
I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart, truly. Thank you for taking the time to write these notes about every chapter in my ROM hack even though you didn’t have to. I’ve read everything you said about my hack and I agree with a lot of what you’ve said. I’ve said before that I want this hack to be the best it can possibly be and I believe that because of your help, I just might be able to do it. This was a very insightful read and I will do my very best to make the changes people want to see. 
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It was an honor to contribute to the hack! I hope to have more opportunities to help more like this in the future.
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this is just kind of bugging me since I don’t exactly know how it works but, Galle’s recruitment is just him surviving chapter 21 right?
I’m just a bit unsure since I don’t see anything to show me exactly what the event trigger for it is.
If I’m not mistaken, you first need to talk to him with Zeiss or Melady. Then make sure he survives and you’ll be able to recruit him in Chapter 23.
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Thanks for listening to the feedback from all the contributors here and the frequent updates. We also want the project to be the best/most enjoyable it can be.
I’ve started a 2nd playthrough already (I should probably wait a few more updates but whatever), this time Ironman, and hope to contribute more suggestions or report bugs.
I have a few more things to add/things I forgot to mention last time:
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Difficultywise, early game (C1 through about C8) is slightly too easy thanks to all the buffs to the cast, particularly Bors and Wolt, who are both now way too good imo. “Just advance Bors into 3-4 enemies” is now a valid tactic, which isn’t good. And Wolt has effectiveness against too many types (flying, cav AND armor), literally one-shotting Cavs and Nomads in C4 and is the best bosskiller. The Jeigans in Marcus and Zelot now feel relatively useless as they now suck pretty much the whole game (they have 8 Mov Rescue but their combat sucks) especially with Marcus just straight up ORKOing things from C1. Marcus should either be given a heavy weapon so he can’t double, or a weapon with less Mt than Iron so even if he doubles he can’t kill without critting, or reduce his base Str by 1. I favor just giving him a heavy weapon. C9 through something like C20 is about the right amount of difficulty, just need to remove the “bullshit difficulty”/luck-based elements mostly as well as taking a look at mercs and certain reinforcements. C21 until the Final is now too easy thanks to all the OP skills/Tome Range +1 on Cecilia and Guinevere/Galeforce emblem.
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Metis’s Tome is acquired way too late in the game.
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Bugs that occurred on 2nd playthrough so far that idk how to reproduce yet:
- In C1, I had Lance use a Vulnerary on a forest tile, and somehow Alen learned Aether?
- In C8x, Roland didn’t appear after I killed Henning. The event looked like it triggered. I heard the sfx and saw the conversation pop up (Roland said “…” or whatever) but no unit warped onto the throne. Ended up replaying the chapter and he appeared the second time. Maybe I spammed “B” button too fast the first time and it glitched out.
- Even though BWL records won’t be recorded properly (due to the character/unit id being past a certain value), I think you can still add support levels/convos to Eliwood, Lyn, etc.
So at minimum, I think these supports should be added to the game:
Lowen - Eliwood, Rebecca, Marcus
Guinevere - Elen, Melady, Zeiss, Galle
Eliwood - Lyn, Lowen, Rebecca, Marcus
Lyn - Eliwood, Sue, Dayan, Florina
Florina - Lyn
Rebecca - Lowen, Eliwood, Marcus
Galle - Melady
Melady - Galle
Unfortunately, Eliwood and Roy can’t support each other without removing OG content since Roy has too big of a harem/already has 7 connections.
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As I mentioned previously, maybe add more FE7 characters if possible. Isadora, Harken, etc. That would also help with the Sacae chapters feeling too boring from lowman deployment. You would probably need to add at least 1 more Send Home chapter to compensate though.
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I noticed from the last few comments of this thread you added a Prf for Larum and Elffin. For Elffin, good. But Larum is the only Dancer in the game already so she’s S tier. Would rather see buffs for actually underpowered characters and nerfs for OP characters than giving a Dancer more combat capabilities when a Dancer should barely see combat anyway. Especially since I’m checking in FEBuilder and it looks like you’re running out of room or ran out of room already in the ROM to add more Prfs for characters that might actually need it (you’re at the item ID “FE” already and it looks like the data can’t be expanded further). If you need to add a Prf sword, it would be better to give it to Fir or Ogier imo given the current balance.
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Talk to Galle with Melady and Zeiss in C21. Galle will give each of them a gift. Galle needs to survive C21 (he and his squad won’t attack Melady and Zeiss).
Then in C23/the Brunnya chapter, talk to Galle again with Melady (maybe you can use Zeiss as well I don’t remember but I used Melady) and he will join you. Galle is near your starting position so you can reach him on Turn 1 I believe.
This happens often in several of the extra chapters. The most frequent ones for me have been St. Elimine and Barigan, though I also had it with Bramimond and Athos at least once.
I noticed that you send home 4 characters at once with the send home feature. Which is fine, but you’ve tied it to the only way to get Spirit Dust, which means you get a massive influx of Spirit Dust all at once near the end of the game. I think it could be better to space out the send home so you only send home one unit at a time, but you start much earlier, so the Spirit Dust is more evenly spread.
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Thanks for the confirmation, just wanted to be 100% sure about it.
Now for some minor nit picking.
As far as difficulty goes it can be pretty rough in spots, I mean chapter 8 alone is still really rough and time consuming. A good chunk of the enemy stats and layouts are still using Embers bones so there is that. So you’ve got to take some of it with a grain of salt.
As far as the bugs you encountered goes, the vulnerary thing is a know issue with the skill system that as far as I know has been around for about 2-5 years. Some about how the healing items are configured can randomly grant a unit a random skill.
First time I encountered it was playing The Dark Hour where my sword wielding priestess got freaking axefaith after chugging an elixir. And just recently I had a unit in Grug2 chug 5 of them and on the 4th overall use the unit got Boon, it’s just something that can happen.
Now as for the item memory he’s actually got more room then you think. He still has The original Foreblaze Dummy, and that one Dummy sword, the four dancer rings, all of Formotis’s attacks, the 9 gold bags, the 3 other vulneraries and dance item, the solar and lunar braces, all the sacred twin items myrrh’s dragonstone, the mine, and shinebarrier, and 17 spare dummy slots.
After counting some other items I forgot to list, he’s got 51 item slots he can futz with if he so chose. 56 if he wanted to convert all the promotion items for just master seals.
Just to see if I could I even converted that odd Stone Shard into a statbooster and even gave it a description and everything.
Weird. Well now that I know about it, I’ll just make sure to use save state before the event until it gets fixed.
As far as difficulty goes it can be pretty rough in spots, I mean chapter 8 alone is still really rough and time consuming. A good chunk of the enemy stats and layouts are still using Embers bones so there is that. So you’ve got to take some of it with a grain of salt.
I feel like C8 isn’t that bad. I mean the author made it less tedious already by adding the door shortcut to Lilina and adding a crack in the wall for easy access to the chests on the left. The only issues I have with C8 is the Merc reinforcement from the top left is too strong and Legance doesn’t swap out of his Spear and has too many proc skills (Luna and Great Shield), leaving Wolt as the most reliable strategy. Otherwise, it feels fine.
C5 is the only early game map I feel is tedious for obvious reasons. But that could possibly just be a skill issue.
As far as the bugs you encountered goes, the vulnerary thing is a know issue with the skill system that as far as I know has been around for about 2-5 years. Some about how the healing items are configured can randomly grant a unit a random skill.
First time I encountered it was playing The Dark Hour where my sword wielding priestess got freaking axefaith after chugging an elixir. And just recently I had a unit in Grug2 chug 5 of them and on the 4th overall use the unit got Boon, it’s just something that can happen.
Ok good to know it’s not just me. I did make some edits to the ROM (adding support levels for Guinevere, Galle, etc.) and thought I accidentally broke something else.
Now as for the item memory he’s actually got more room then you think. He still has The original Foreblaze Dummy, and that one Dummy sword, the four dancer rings, all of Formotis’s attacks, the 9 gold bags, the 3 other vulneraries and dance item, the solar and lunar braces, all the sacred twin items myrrh’s dragonstone, the mine, and shinebarrier, and 17 spare dummy slots.
After counting some other items I forgot to list, he’s got 51 item slots he can futz with if he so chose. 56 if he wanted to convert all the promotion items for just master seals.
Just to see if I could I even converted that odd Stone Shard into a statbooster and even gave it a description and everything.
True. Still, it’s odd to give a Prf to a dancer of all units when I feel like there’s a lot of other things to fix first or other units to give Prfs to first.
well, I mean he did technically nerf Elffin by taking away play, since two refreshers is kinda broken, (he doesn’t have the play flag enabled) and honestly I prefer when my dancers can do something other than just dance. don’t get me wrong, refreshes are good, but sometimes even just giving them staff utility is enough.
but personally I count this as one man’s gargantuan effort to make any future fe6 hacks not actually have use fe6 as their base.
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Yeah I had no problem with Elffin with getting a Prf, since he’s no longer a dancer. In fact, I asked the author to buff Elffin because he was probably the worst unit prior to the latest patch. But Lalum was fine. In fact, Lalum was already buffed by giving her weapon/sword access.
Don’t get me wrong either. I mean I’m not opposed to Lalum being able to do more than just dance. I just think giving undertuned combat units better combat should be higher priority than giving a dancer buffs to combat (when dancers don’t have the bulk to reliably EP anyway and on PP, even with the Prf, you’re going to be using dance the vast majority of the time). You got Fir and Sin, for example, who are struggling even in their join chapter. Ogier is still inferior to Dieck, being swordlocked and having lower Con. And he also struggles a little bit in Axeland. You have Dorothy, who is overshadowed by Wolt and Sue (and Sin is overshadowed by Sue). Saul is kinda…bad. I remember in vanilla Elen was the worse cleric. But Elen at least has a massive Mag stat now. Saul has infantry movement, doesn’t have Elen’s Mag, and even has 5 Con so he can’t Rescue or drop anybody. I think the author already did a decent job at making all units usable, and I don’t think all units need to be equally viable, but the relative differences between certain comparable units is too large imo.
well saul is a weird case since if he was a Monk instead of a Priest he’d at least have that going for him, he’s normally a bases unit with a better staff rank, due largely to staff EXP being extremely stingy in FE6.
though Project Ember DID give Ogier, Sue, and Saul personal weapons, though Sue and Saul’s were obtained on chapter 21 so…
it’s also why Dieck and Barth start with Promotion Items in their inventories, carry over from Project Ember. most of the PRFs are holdovers from it, along with Galle and Gwenevere, and Eliwood and green hair knight guy (can’t think of his name).
honestly I think it would be better if the PEM devs worked with him to just make “project Ember but in FE8” since ZeN already did the hardest part on his own.
but I suppose having some junker units just makes who to “send home” easier, I mean Wade and Lot are dead weight due to Fury constantly draining their HP from any and all attacks they recieve.
though Project Ember DID give Ogier, Sue, and Saul personal weapons, though Sue and Saul’s were obtained on chapter 21 so…
it’s also why Dieck and Barth start with Promotion Items in their inventories, carry over from Project Ember. most of the PRFs are holdovers from it, along with Galle and Gwenevere, and Eliwood and green hair knight guy (can’t think of his name).
I see. I haven’t played PE (in fact I’ve only become very interested in romhacks only recently) but I’ve seen PE mentioned as one of the more famous/recommended hacks and I know this project was inspired by it. It’s a little puzzling why certain changes that are actually worse balance were kept, while other changes that were actually better for balance were discarded. Sticking a Hero Crest in Dieck’s inventory just incentivizes using him even more than Ogier. Swords and axes vs. swords, availability lead (C2 vs. C8), higher Con, and then adding the possibility for earlier promotion for Dieck and also removing the Prf that Ogier already had from PE?
I don’t think PE got it quite right either with Prfs (regardless of whom they’re for) being obtainable in C21. Not much fun being able to use unique weapons for only a very small part of the game.
I appreciate new playable characters and Prfs and skillsys and all the other cool stuff that these projects added to vanilla, but I just wish more attention was put into balancing as well rather than focusing on how much cool stuff can be added to the game, or how much more favoritism characters that are already good can be given. Balancing is especially important for a project like this, since it has the potential to be used as a new base for modding.
honestly I think it would be better if the PEM devs worked with him to just make “project Ember but in FE8” since ZeN already did the hardest part on his own.
Yeah it would be ideal if they worked together rather than having multiple projects trying to achieve essentially the same thing. As far as I’ve read, this project is more-or-less PE in FE8 w/ skillsys anyway.
but I suppose having some junker units just makes who to “send home” easier, I mean Wade and Lot are dead weight due to Fury constantly draining their HP from any and all attacks they recieve.
The HP drain from Fury is annoying, but my experience with Wade and Lot so far has actually been good and I actually feel like they’re tuned just about right–neither busted nor bad. They live at least 2 rounds on EP against most enemies despite the HP loss and Fury helps them ORKO. They also have huge availability lead/easy time building supports. Powerstaff is also a thing in this hack (I think it’s broken but at least it’s not a proc skill), so you get more healing actions.
Fury (along with Intimidate and axe hit rates being buffed) is also what makes enemy Fighters actually a threat in this hack and makes life difficult even for swordies in the Western Isles.
Well, in earlier builds there was actually more of PE in tact, such as Debais being recruitable of which I still have since my chapter 8 save already recruited him so he’s just here now, but there was basically some plagerisim issues/accusations so he had to:
- Gut Debias, Gwenevere and Galle’s supports.
- Gut Debias’ recruitment since that was wholly PE’s idea.
- Completely cut Roach another PE exclusive.
- Remove special boosting items for Marcus and Zelot that boosted them greatly (i think like +1 move and +4 to all other stats but con for marcus and a really good PRF for Zelot)
- Remove at minimum 4 PRF’s that I am aware of. (Saul’s, Dorothy’s Ogier’s and Cath’s (of whom would only have it if recruited at chapter 22)) also ment to say dorothy not sue previously.
- Remove a few other Unique but not Personal weapons.
- Likely a few other things I haven’t/don’t know-about/seen.
For the sake of you atleast knowing what they were, Ogier basically came with a Levin Sword with 40 uses and gave him +10 luck, and Cath get a knife that gives her +20 Res.
Oh, and most unit’s growths are their PE growths just FYI, which was done to give each units a more clear use.
I’m trying to unlock Lilina and Gwendolyn’s supports, but they seem to take forever (I’ve wasted 100 turns in Chapter 8, and Lilina’s supports with Barthe opened up rather quickly).
I don’t think recruiting certain characters should be copyrighted or anything…it’s not some super genius/creative idea that nobody else can think of. Same for certain characters being able to support each other. Just need new support conversations.
Neither do I think Prfs for characters should be copyrighted. Just name them something different.
Marcus and Zelot need buffs pretty badly in ZeN’s hack. Marcus was a Jeigan that now has extremely limited contribution even in early game thanks to ORKOing things and the whole early joining cast being buffed hard as well as enemy stats being buffed. Zelot doesn’t have it much better. They need something to make them more viable in the windows they used to be viable in (early and mid game), or need some way to scale into the late game. I’d like to see some minor buffs to them (bases, growths, Prfs, better personal skill, idc but they need something). I’d also like to see nerfs to overbuffed characters like Bors, Wolt, Wendy, Sophia, etc. to avoid power creep/making the game too easy and in Wendy and Sophia’s cases to make them remain more faithful to their vanilla feel as now I find they snowball too quickly and have too high of a ceiling.
Levin Sword for Ogier with Lk actually makes good sense going into Axeland, helping him EP.
+20 Res Knife sounds interesting, although I hope Chad and Astolfo also got something.