Small update while I continue to work on chapter 13E, with some unfortunate consequences. I have changed the hack’s Casual Mode system to use the start of game menu version instead of the global flag B0 version, as 1) it looks nicer than the pop-up yes/no textbox at the game’s start and 2) it gives me easy support for casual mode retreat quotes, which are now implemented. Unfortunately, this does mean that anyone who was playing on Casual Mode with a previous version of the hack will have their save turned into Classic Mode upon downloading the new version, and at this time I don’t yet have a game option configured to allow you to change it mid-playthrough.
Taking inspiration from Echoes/Sacred Echoes, I’ve also implemented some mourning dialogue where certain characters react to certain other characters’ deaths on classic mode.
Also, don’t know if this was already in one of my previous updates, but if so I didn’t mention it when I did: Akuma’s base stats have been buffed to allow him to barely survive one round of combat with Tenshi on either phase in chapter 12E or on player phase in 18A.
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Chapter 13E is now ready and live for playtesting! As always, please leave any feedback you have so I can continue to improve the project. I don’t have a team of playtesters behind me, so early versions of chapters often come out rough around the edges despite my best efforts – every bit of feedback helps!
Also, chapter 12E has been adjusted to make it a bit easier – Tenshi now spawns on turn 7 instead of turn 6.
Like on Alexander’s route, there will be a “13x” mini-chapter with no condition to unlock, in theory it shouldn’t take too long to make but it all depends on how motivated I am to make it. I’ll be back with further updates when they come!
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Have you considered modifying everyone’s mugshots ? At least to be a slightly better. Especially that of lords like Alexander and Elys. Ashley looks pretty cool btw.
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It’s a long-term goal of mine to rework them, one I’m slowly making progress with in between working on other things. Portraits just take time.
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Just here with some very minor updates while I work on 13x:
- Balance adjustments to chapter 13, as expected.
- New portrait for post-timeskip Alexander!
- The display error with the Luck stat cap has been fixed, it now properly ends the stat bar at 30 and shows 30 as green/capped.
- Previously, chapter 2 just used Bone and Bazba as generic unimportant bandit bosses because I couldn’t think of anything better. They’ve now been replaced by different characters, with their dialogue updated and slightly expanded. (They’re still equally unimportant to the story, I just had a funny/dumb idea while messing around with the character creator.)
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Working on some art updates at the moment. Elys now has new portraits for both pre- and post-timeskip (and even an alternate pre-timeskip one in the Prologue where she doesn’t have her House Leader cape), the Engineer’s melee sword animation has been updated to feel a bit more impactful, Titan’s portrait is now taller since I found the patch to break the hackbox and can properly convey how big he is, some other portraits have been slightly adjusted, and we have a proper portrait for BEST BOY MYSON! Also rewrote the class description promotion information to fit on the promotion screen without using narrowfont for better readability. More to come soon!
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New gameplay update: Fixed Growths Mode option is dead. Long live no random stat variance on enemies! By enabling and disabling the SkillSys Fixed Growths Mode flag before and after every enemy load (since the usual “remove enemy stat variance” patch in Builder is incompatible with SkillSys and I’m not touching the actual ASM), enemy stats are now fixed, while player stats retain their usual random growths. While not a huge change to gameplay, it has nice benefits like base speed Jahid being guaranteed to double Engineers in chapter 5 and base speed Bennett being guaranteed to double Revenants in chapter 15, instead of both being at the mercy of enemies’ random stat rolls, as well as just increasing the overall consistency of the game.
This does, unfortunately, mean any save file on Fixed Growths Mode from an older version will be turned into Random Growths Mode as soon as you load it in a new version. Sorry if this affects you, but I believe this change to be worth it.
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A few more minor adjustments and fixes:
- Some prologue enemies weren’t giving EXP, fixed.
- The Archer in the prologue now drops a Steel Bow (still only uses an Iron in combat), so as to give Ashley a better chance of being able to one-round chapter 2’s Brigands (she only needs a point of speed with the Steel, as opposed to a point of Strength with her PRF).
- A few Brigands in chapter 2 have been replaced with Mercenaries.
- A Mercenary in chapter 6 now drops a Ruby Sword.
- Seraphim tomes now double the weapon triangle’s effects.
- The chapter 12A Knight Crest now starts in Vox’s inventory. The village now gives a Transmute tome, a C-rank Anima tome that targets Def instead of Res.
- Animation and palette updates for the Seraph and Dark Flier classes, palette fix for Pegasus Knight Anna.
- New custom animation for Iago!
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I’ve made some additional tweaks to the early game, but nothing major (chapter 5’s ballisticians show up a turn later, chapter 6 has been nerfed a bit once more, chapter 7 has some visibility adjustments). But anyway, this is the Buff Kai Update.
Kai was already a great unit purely because of summoning, but the fact that he could summon without investment, combined with his stats being generally subpar, made it generally correct to just not train him at all. Well, his stats are a bit better now: +3 base Strength, +2 base Magic, +2 base Res, C rank base in Axes instead of D (Jahid now starts with D base also), and slight buffs to his growths. While it doesn’t fix Kai’s main problem of having bad speed and shaky accuracy, it does make him better at what he does best, that being hitting really hard and being able to use the Bolt Axe.
But we’re not done there. Kai’s class has also been changed, from Fighter into a “new” class called Brawler. I say “new” in quotes because it’s basically just Brigand by a different name, and with the ability to walk on Cliff tiles as well as Peak tiles. This is mainly a change targeted at helping him get around in his join chapter, but also helps him a bit elsewhere. His promotion options are now Warrior vs new class Beastmaster, a 7 mov mounted class that retains Brawler’s mobility (but has less strength and bulk than Warrior, no bows, and a weaker Mastery Skill). Oh, and I’ve finally implemented something I’ve wanted to do for a while: when Kai promotes, after the next time you start a chapter, Buddy will be promoted as well! (The condition that changes this over happens immediately after the preps screen.)
My goal with these changes is to make Kai into a unit potentially worth training, and not just leaving at base level and using for summoning. It’s not going to suddenly make him a combat god, his speed is still not great, but he’s no longer completely overshadowed by Jahid and others.
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A simple change but with wide-reaching effects: generic enemy Dark Mages and Sorcerers have received a meaningful change to their statlines. I’ve been thinking about making dark mages favor Def over Res for a while, but was holding back because I wasn’t sure how I felt about what it might change in a few existing places where I wanted them to still have more Res than Def. Then I realized: hey, wait, I can just have both! Generic enemy dark mages now come in both male and female versions. Male dark mages favor Def, female dark mages favor Res.
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Chapter 13x of Elys route is finally done! For how small of a chapter it is, it took me way too long to get around to actually finishing it lol. Some other slight tweaks have been made elsewhere, as usual. As always, enjoy, and please leave any and all feedback to help me improve the game!
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New chapter is here: Chapter 14 of Elys route! As usual, some other small updates have been made, such as a new portrait for Tenshi, Shining Bows and the Transmute tome now having 1-2 range (the former was a decision I changed, the latter was an accident I fixed), some music updates, some added and adjusted dialogue, and the catch-all “I probably tweaked some small numbers here and there”. As always, please leave any feedback you have as you play it, and I hope you enjoy the game!
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As usual, I’ve been pushing out a handful of smaller changes since my last post, most prominently a substantial rework of Chapter 5’s layout, a new portrait for post-timeskip Jasper, and applying some patches that should reduce enemy-phase lag. I’ve also just gone through all of my older maps on a quest to make them slightly less ugly, fighting against my old height errors, tilespam forests and grass, and so on, and while they’re still far from perfect they should look a lot better.
EDIT: I have caught and fixed a fairly significant bug in chapter 8 with a warning not appearing and reinforcements spawning early, and also tweaked the behavior of green unit Lysithea in that chapter so she’ll use her healing item more often.
EDIT2: Have now also fixed a mistake in chapter 8x with the dark mage not having enough weapon rank for their weapon.
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Much smaller update, but one I feel like announcing anyway: I’ve made a custom battle animation for BEST BOY MYSON! He still uses the generic Summoner map sprite for now, but that will change soon. EDIT: His map sprite has now been updated! He’s now a Summoner with a hat!
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New QoL update! I have added the Danger Radius and Droppable Item Marker hacks by Huichelaar and Mkol. Enemies that drop items now have a little green “item bag” symbol marking them on the map, and in non-Fog maps, enemy ranges can be marked to be continuously highlighted! Press Select over an individual enemy to highlight them, or press select over no enemies to highlight/clear all – do note that highlighting everything will cause lag. (Additional shoutout to Contro for pointing me to these.) Please report if there are any bugs, this is my first time installing a hack that isn’t a Builder patch.
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Fix: I forgot the opening cutscene flashback used fog when adding danger radius, have now restored its proper palette.
Update: New portrait for pre-timeskip Jasper!
EDIT: Additional update: I have slightly changed the hit rate formula. Luck now gives 1 hit per point, instead of 0.5. This will result in slight accuracy increases across the board, most noticeable on lategame enemies and Willow.
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Having discovered that the Counter and Countermagic skills cannot actually kill the attacker by default in vanilla SkillSys, I have now changed this so that they do. However, doing so revealed a bug where the wrong death quote would play when one of those skills killed a unit with animations on. As such, Taiyo, the one boss to have those skills, now has no animations to avoid that, as the ASM wizards and I were unable to find how to fix it otherwise.
Also, some portraits have been updated, and various other small changes have been made as usual. As always, have fun and please let me know how things go!
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I’ve just done a substantial overhaul of Chapter 10. It is now no longer fully symmetric, and should both look and play nicer. (Also, the main boss is no longer on a pillar tile, since she’s already really hard to kill without an avoid buff.)
I’ve also buffed Mogalls a bit. They’re no longer weighed down by their weapons, and while their stats are mostly still the same, their weapons now have crazy high hit rates, making them hyper-accurate threats. Fitting for the magic floating eye creatures.