(Willow only ORKOs at base in her join chapter against the one Steel Axe Brigand and the one Swordreaver Brigand, as she’s one point short of doubling them if she’s not weighed down. Now, if she gets a level, she’s fairly likely to gain speed and ORKO them from there, but that takes a few kills to happen so it’s not until midway through the map. Then enemies past that chapter have a bit more HP and Res, so even if she starts doubling right away she often won’t quite kill unless she also hits Magic levels early.)
I’ve started plotting out some stat adjustments. Obviously something something numbers in a vacuum something something just test the damn game, but like, just at a glance, would these adjustments sound reasonable?
Possible changes, not finalized
Elys: +1 HP +1 Def, -5% HP growth -5% Def growth
Alexander: +3 HP +3 Str +1 Skl, -10% HP growth -10% Str growth -5% Skl growth, +2 base level, -1 HP promo gain. (I’m tempted to hit his Def growth again but I’m always tempted to hit his Def growth again, on paper his Def’s not impressive but I swear he’s always Def-blessed (or just snowballing raw level count). The base level increase is sort of a universal growth nerf, in a way, so that should cover it…)
Ashley: +1 base level, some slight growth nerfs
Felakhos: +1 mov (it probably won’t break anything…)
Caitlyn: +2 Mag, -10% Mag growth
Sophia: Seek is now a prf, and is now brave but can’t naturally double. Spd+2 has been reverted to it just being 4 weight to Light’s 6, since there’s no longer the option to give it to another unit for that to matter. (this is an indirect nerf to Caitlyn, as she liked the option to get +2 speed from it given how borderline her speed stat often is, but I believe the change to her magic stat is an overall buff)
Jasper: -15% HP growth (he’s meant to be on the fragile side of the army overall, his high base HP was a buff a while back to let him safely fight Kostas at base but I never really corrected for it in his growth)
A few other characters I lost track of: like -5%ish HP growth because I realized a few characters’ HP growths were just a little high for my liking.
Vulns heal 15 (up from 10), Concoctions heal 25 (up from 20)
Also, with regard to the places to visit:
Duscur is the big one that came to mind for me as well. I’m thinking I might relocate chapters 4 and 5 to a random fortress there instead of Conand Tower, and work in appropriate details about how the people of Duscur react to that.
Sreng is already visited in chapter 9, and stuff related to it begins happening in chapter 7.
Almyra is visited in chapter 21x, but I do admit I’ve kind of ended up pulling the same “Almyra is theoretically important but mostly off-screen” thing as the base game for most of the main story… not sure where I could naturally fit something else in there.
With regard to a few other places outside Fodlan’s borders, as you mentioned having heard about earlier, the story does tie in some other FE settings, as some of the unexplored outside-Fodlan places. Specifically, Dagda is future Fates-land, and Morfis is future (well, post-Marth pre-Awakening) Khadein/Thabes in Archanea. Would it have been “better” writing to just develop them as their own things independently? Perhaps, but I had ideas and enjoy playing “find the pieces to make stuff fit together”. Dagda/Fates-world becomes the central focus for a while post-timeskip when it goes to war with Fodlan, and then Morfis will be in focus in lategame.
(Oh, also, glad you found the 6x boss to be interesting, he will return in lategame and is in fact planned to be recruitable, which is perhaps hinted at by his tome being labeled as a prf.)
