Crimean Archivist

Long story short, I got a message in my inbox earlier today asking whether or not Shadows of Valentia should or should not have marriage and kids (and my answer was a resounding no). I put forward a couple of ideas, which you can read if you're curious, but I thought it might be fun to reach out and see what everybody else thinks. A handful of relevant questions: How many new characters should there be? Who should they be (personality, ethnicity, nationality, class)? How are they recruited? This is more intended to be a fun way to tap into other people's creativity over say, a heated discussion over whether or not one method or another is better.

Lunatic, easy. Even that's a bit of a stretch because usually only bosses have skills. Someone asked a while ago whether there was an easy way to find support charts for the different paths. I have those. Birthright Conquest Revelation As best I know they're all optimized for readability. They all take the info provided here and make it easier to parse. I refer back to these all the time to make setups for runs. Now I have a question: what's the highest unit rating someone has come across in someone else's castle that was achieved without hacking? I've heard tell of 500+, which seems unlikely.

Azama is a good one, and apparently a sleeper pick. He's almost guaranteed a point of Str every level up, so it really sets him up for alternative options even if you don't want to keep him there. Only problem with it (and Ballisticians in general) is that the Cannon command doesn't net you exp which means you have to pace your usage of it early on.

More generally, if a unit already has a class in their set, they shouldn't A+ anyone with that as their default. This applies a whole lot more to kids than parents, with way more nuance. For example, Rinkah!Shiro benefits from A+ support with Asugi. Kagero!Shiro doesn't.

RD is one of my favorite FE games in large part due to the stellar mechanics and depth therein; the maps are varied, and the difficulty is one of those numbers where its challenging at first, but then once you figure out what works you can get it pretty consistently. The fact that BEXP gains are a guaranteed +1 in three stats contributes a lot there -- average stats in RD are way higher than the table given here on SF because of BEXP alone. Those are "vanilla" average stats. But some silly/fun things in Radiant Dawn that are great: Disarming an enemy and then stealing their weapon Adept + Cancel (+ Disarm) Most strats that involve unshifted Tibarn Unshifted laguz with spell cards Unshifted laguz punching mages to death (overlaps with unshifted Tibarn strats) and much more I can't think of at the moment because it's been a while since I've played the game entirely through. In general laguz are pretty fun to use despite their general lack of consistency due to gauges. That said, gauges are a big part of what make laguz interesting, so it's a tradeoff. The sheer depth of the game, given its diverse cast and unique skill mechanics, provides a lot of replayability once you get over the hump. Part 2 really is pretty jarring, though. It's unlike anything else in FE outside of FE4, and even then, you only experienced one cast jump in FE4. P2 jumps every chapter and it's really annoying as a first-time player. Part 3 manages that a lot better, and by Part 4 you're (mostly) prepared for it, even on a first run.

I tend to stop at two offensive skills unless the additional options were obtained via Nohrian Trust and don't need to take slots on Corrin. Procstacking gives diminishing returns at the upper extreme and some combinations don't synergize well. If I run a build optimized for most skill activations between Astra and Sol, but my strategy relies on survival (Sol), I may find that I fail due to the fact Astra will block Sol pretty regularly. That said, I'm a big fan of Astra, which has a very large payoff per activation, and Dragon Fang, which is very consistent in terms of damage output even though it has one of the lower activation rates. Sol is good for survivability, while the rest of the skills have relatively niche uses imo.

I think it's an attempt to balance the randomness of the hit system with the planning of the dual system. Because Dual Guards now have consistent behavior and aren't RN-based, the player has the ability to choose, within limits, which enemy attacks get completely negated. This would trivialize many groups of enemies under the old system, as a cluster with sub-30 hit chances would perhaps be able to hit one time, which can be taken away via Dual Guard. Making the lower range 1-RN keeps those enemies relevant. Dropping the hit rates in the upper region by a small amount further shifts the balance so that those enemies get more opportunities to hit. It's still a fairly simple system, and as Dark Holy Elf said towards the beginning of this thread, other formulas have gone to something similar recently. As for full 1-RN, old, Japan-only FEs have it, and it makes for a lot of inconsistency and emergency planning. Requires more skill to reach consistency, sure, but also holds much more potential for rage-inducing RN strings. XCOM also uses a 1-RN system, and it's one of the most polarizing (and I would argue more often than not, disliked) features in the game, especially for Ironman mode.

Okay, for all intents and purposes, this project is officially closed. I'm going to be continuing up to 25000 points for sake of completeness, but the system is at the very least approximated well enough by the model that barring a breakthrough from the hacking community, provides the most accurate and easily understandable breakdown of the system. I have two write-ups available on my tumblr, one on the model (which, if you're here, you already know about), and one on how I came to the decision to declare the project complete. Thanks again to everyone who contributed their time, efforts, and data. It's been a fun ride.

I haven't hit a bad combination yet, honestly. I've run +Str/-Lck, +Mag/-Res, and +Spd/-Res, and I'm currently running +Spd/-Skl in Lunatic (up to chapter 15 of Birthright). I was most disappointed by +Mag MK -- even though I thought that Mag was important to have and useful, I found myself doing less damage than I'd hoped in both NN and MK when using tomes. However, I haven't tried MK without +Mag, so idk just how much of a difference it made. If I had to do it again, I'd try Diviner/Dark Mage talent and S-rank Camilla/Beruka for MK and see how the slight Mag boost from that class tree helps.

I thought we ascertained that Quixotic only affects battle skills.

Yes, please. And we're going to likely need tens of cases, depending on how many terms are a factor. At every turn, we need to record the AS differential, enemy Atk, enemy Hit, enemy Def/Res, and enemy HP, along with player character Atk, Hit, Def/Res, and HP, at the least. I don't necessarily think that Hit is a factor, but I'd rather be too rigorous than too lax. Basically, we need to isolate a one-enemy case between two player characters, like the one you've provided, for many different stat combinations (ignore statuses like sleep and paralysis for now). We can also test the same case against multiple player character combinations, such as Edward-Nolan, Edward-Micaiah, Leo-Micaiah, etc., for 1-1, to get a broader range of values from the same test cases. Try to find relationships in terms of two, three, four variables. If we get something that works for two characters, try another case and try to predict the outcome. If it succeeds, keep going. If it fails, reevaluate based on other variables. Once we get a fairly accurate one-enemy prediction function, then we have to figure out how that changes in a two-enemy, two-target system. If no change, fine. If there's a change, we have to find the how and why.

If F is some function of Atk (0 when no counterattack is possible), Def, and HP, written as F(Atk, Def, HP), and priority is by greatest value (I changed my mind based on how code tends to be written), then: F(?, 6, 9) < F(0, ?, ?) < F(?, 5, 8) If other stats for those two are available somewhere it could be a good starting point indeed. Then once we hit on a prototype formula, we can test it against predicted edge cases.

Honestly, though, whatever is available to the player is fair game. If necessary you could just as easily Spd tonic her through her early usefulness -- she's better than Mozu on Lunatic Birthright 8 easily, even without the switch (assuming you didn't just grind them both, in which case who cares). The thing about both of those paths is that you have the grinding option, so unless you're explicitly going for no-grind, which units you pick doesn't really matter. Point being, not every unit needs to be endgame worthy, they just need to serve some purpose at some point.

Orochi -> Dark Flier. Instantly patches up most problems with her in both Birthright and Revelation, continues to fix those problems as she levels in it, and eventually produces a unit that, while not dominant, is not vanilla 9-Spd-at-endgame Orochi (which actually happened to me on first Birthright run, but I was too far gone in a grindless run to invest in anyone else). The earlier you switch the better.

I may eventually do something similar to this, and maybe do 6 males, 6 females, and their kids. That would give me two extra slots, keep the gender ratio balanced, and produce some interesting challenges for earlygame.