Topaz Light

Completing Mega Man 1 legitimately with absolutely zero use of save states/Restore Points at any point, for any reason is probably my crowning achievement as a player of video games when it comes to the sheer difficulty of a game I completed. I've also beaten the VVVVVV fangame 333333, albeit on easy mode which was still so tough I kinda dread whatever hard mode is like, and Mega Man Unlimited, another fangame of its respective series, and a pretty darned tough one. I didn't, like, finish them with flying colors or anything; I had a bit of a rough time of it in spots, but I was able to complete them all legitimately and that's what matters to me.

A lot of times I just kinda ignore, it, but sometimes it makes the contrarian side of me just love the character even more. Hell, it actually caused me to start specifically liking Arden, despite previously being relatively indifferent to him, due to all the grief he was being given by the fanbase for being the Tempest Trial reward instead of Ayra! At the end of the day, though, everyone's entitled to have their own opinions on things like this! I'm sure there are ardent fans of characters you don't care for who just wouldn't be able to fathom why you dislike them. As long as people aren't being mean to each other over it, the best course of action is to just live and let live, I think, at least when it comes to matters as low-stakes as this.

First! For Arvis: WEAPON: Valflame SUPPORT: Ardent Sacrifice SPECIAL: Iceberg A: Fury 3 B: Recover Ring C: Defense Ploy 3 SEAL: Resistance +3 or Squad Ace C 3 Good, or no? I wanted to center it around capitalizing on both of his unique skills, since nobody else can have Valflame or Recover Ring, and it makes for a very interesting supportive Red Mage all put together. Also, for Arden: Would he or would he not be helped by Deflect Magic 3? I know Reinhardt or any similarly-powerful Blue Mage is still gonna roast him, but it seems like it would go a long way towards helping him not die instantly whenever he's so much as sneezed at by a caster. Also, I know this is obscenely high-investment, but I'm contemplating something like Slaying Edge+, Aether, and Steady Breath for the respective skill slots. I know his base kit is geared towards a Brave+ build, but I'm interested in looking into something a little different for him, that capitalizes on and augments his tankiness. To that end, I'm also considering Panic Ploy 3 as either his Sacred Seal or his C passive, since he definitely has the HP to get great mileage out of it.

If you're a fan of standard turn-based JRPG-type games, Fire Emblems The Sacred Stones (FE8), Awakening (FE13), and especially Gaiden (FE2) and its remake Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (FE15) have the most in common with that genre, and any of them would be good places to start, since you'd have more familiar, common elements to help you keep your bearings as you get accustomed to all that makes Fire Emblem Fire Emblem. If you're less concerned with starting out with something similar to something you're already familiar with, or if similarity to turn-based JRPGs just doesn't really do much for you for any reason, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (FE7) is also a good starting point! It was designed with it being the first Fire Emblem title released in the West in mind, so it's very beginner-friendly! Really, almost any installment can work as a gateway entry, but there are a few that can't; those being Mystery of the Emblem (FE3 Book 2) or its remake New Mystery of the Emblem (FE12), Thracia 776 (FE5), Radiant Dawn (FE10), and Fates: Revelation (one route of FE14); the reason being that these are all sequels or otherwise intended to be played after other games, and as such, their stories contain spoilers for those games. Also, Thracia 776 is absolutely brutal, and you should probably hold off on attempting to play it until you've got a significant amount of experience with Fire Emblem under your belt. Here's where you can get each game I recommended! Gaiden: Famicom (physical; Japan-only) or Nintendo Wii, Wii U, or 3DS (digital; Japan-only) The Blazing Blade: GameBoy Advance (physical) or Wii U (digital) The Sacred Stones: GameBoy Advance (physical) or Wii U (digital) Awakening: Nintendo 3DS (physical or digital) Echoes - Shadows of Valentia: Nintendo 3DS (physical or digital) Please note that GameBoy Advance cartridges can also be run on Nintendo DS systems up to, but not including, the Nintendo DSi, as well as the GameBoy Player peripheral for the Nintendo GameCube! ...And actually, Gaiden is probably not such a good place to start, but its remake should be just fine! Also, keep in mind that, in any games released prior to Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem ~Heroes of Light and Shadow~ (FE12), permadeath cannot be turned off. Starting from that game, Fire Emblem games have offered an option when starting a new file to turn permadeath off for that playthrough, in which case fallen units will simply return, fully-healed, at the end of the map in which they were defeated. Selecting Casual/Newcomer mode turns permadeath off, while Classic leaves it on.

Berkut. I really want to use him, but he's just so... bad. It's really difficult to justify investing resources into him. Sully is in almost the exact same boat, actually. Also, Mae. It's not as much that she's a bad unit as that I keep getting only instances of her with meh to terrible IV spreads. (+Def/-Spd, for Mila's sake!) Also her art's just. Really, really bad. I mean, I'm gonna use her anyway, but...

So, I've been thinking, since I'm getting better at hacking FE11, I wanted to put a post here asking about how one might go about buffing the awkward secondary and tertiary characters in abundant classes or gameplay roles, or characters who otherwise just kind of suck. For a full list of the characters I'm talking about… Matthis Roshea Vyland Bord Cord Darros Castor Dolph Macellan Gordin Tomas Wrys Maria Caesar Radd Rickard Jake Beck Basically, anybody who you don't really have much reason to use since everyone else of that class you get is just kind of better. If anybody has any additions to this list they'd like to make, I'd be open to adding to it! The idea, I'm thinking, is to buff each of these characters, but do so in a way that also allows each of them to keep their own distinct identity as a unit. Base stats, growth rates, and base weapon ranks are all on the table as things to consider. I'm also looking to vary up Cain, Abel, and Frey from each other more than just Cain's difference in starting weapon ranks, because their bases and growth rates are… really samey. For some ideas I personally have had… I was thinking of gearing Roshea to be a character who's still slow, but whose attacks reliably hit and hit hard, while Vyland would've been taken in more of a "Myrmidon-on-a-horse" sort of direction. For Gordin, Norne, and Tomas, I was thinking of having them be geared towards durability, speed, and power-hitting, respectively. I also had the idea of Matthis being a weird, Magic- and Resistance-focused Cavalier based on his blood relation to Lena, since his growth rates are really bland otherwise. For Jake and Beck, I was thinking something along the lines of one being accuracy-focused and the other being focused on raw power. …etc. etc. Now, I've played Shadow Dragon a decent amount, but I'm sure there are people who are a lot more intimately-familiar with it than I, so I'm hoping for some additional insight into ways in which these weaker, lesser-used characters could be buffed without making them overpowered and while still retaining some variety and uniqueness between them. EDIT: Worth noting, I'm not talking about just efficient/LTC-style play here! I do want to retain diversity between characters along the axis of how focused they are on growth versus bases, so, for example, a character like Radd should probably stay relatively growth-focused, coming underleveled for his join time but having an unusually-high probability of becoming very strong when trained.

Okay I sorta kinda worked it out actually My solution was to copy the "armorknight" ("ARMORKNIGHT" in the battle sprite section) files, paste them, and replace the "armorknight" part of the file name with "knight_f" (again, "KNIGHT_F" in the battle sprite section). There weren't originally any files with those names in the directory, but when I did this, it worked, surprisingly! What I would infer from this is that each class has a sort of "internal name" used to find the graphic files that go to it, and that you just have to match the files to that name, but I'm not entirely certain. Also, I checked and Soldiers can indeed reach level 30, it looks like! At any rate, I got female Knights working, it would seem! Now I just need to figure out how to edit map palette files to give Ballisticians back their blueness as allies.

So, I'm wondering how to go about defining which battle and map sprites are associated with a given class. I'm trying to add in a female Knight to the Sum Patch to go along with female Generals, going into the "female Dismounted Knight" class slot. I've copied all the information over from the male Knight class (save for Class ID), and even set it to promote into the female General. The problem is, I have absolutely no idea how to go about setting which sprites the class uses, on the map or in battle. It appears to use the female General sprite in battle—at least, that's what shows up in the battle sprite box when the class is highlighted to be reclassed into—but it has no defined map sprite, and the game crashes when you try to back out into the main reclass menu after changing a character into it. Ideally, I would just set it to call the exact same files the male Knight uses for its battle and map sprites, but I don't know how to actually do that, or even if it's possible. I know Arch ported the female Cavalier and General classes back into Shadow Dragon, graphics and all, but I don't know what process he used to get the graphic importation and association working. If anyone knows how to do this, I'd greatly appreciate your wisdom! …As an addendum, does anybody know if Soldiers in Shadow Dragon are flagged as being able to reach level 30, like other single-tier classes? I can't seem to find any conclusive answer to that.

To be honest, I don't think there really are any classes I actually hate, or even dislike, although I will say that 3DSFE has probably kinda ruined Great Knights for me. They were never a particular favorite class of mine, really, but something about them in Awakening and Fates is just… really, really boring to me. I totally acknowledge that they're a useful class and all that, they're just… really bland, and their 3DS outfit designs aren't helping.

WHEW OKAY, so, I actually had not done that because I'm a fool and I didn't read any of the Readmes, but, thanks to you tipping me off about the need to decompile the ROM and decompress the database, I was able to get the Nightmare modules working and make some progress! And, I've actually made a few discoveries! I don't know if they're new, but… It's super easy to create new Reclass sets. I set Thief, Ballistician, and Soldier to Reclass Set 0x07 and it works perfectly fine. The two-digit value labeled "Unknown" in the Character Editor Module that ranges from 00 to 0A is hair color! The hair colors each value corresponds to are as follows: 00 - Blue 01 - Green 02 - Pink (Blue on male units) 03 - Gray (Blue on female units) 04 - Red 05 - Purple 06 - Brown 07 - Blonde 08 - unknown 09 - unknown; seems to be used by all bosses 0A - Bald (Blue hair on female units) Marth, Julian, Rickard, Bantu, Jake, Beck, Xane, Tiki, and Nagi are all assigned hair color values matching their appearances, despite that that can never be seen because none of their classes have variable hair color implemented. …Actually, Freelancer/Chameleon and female Manakete might; I actually didn't test that, but none of the other classes have the character's hair visible at all in their battle sprite aside from Lord, which I know for a fact does not support changing hair colors (unless somebody would like to prove me wrong on that). Curiously, Purple and Blonde hair for female characters seem to be fully-implemented and working just fine in Shadow Dragon, despite that neither hair color is ever actually used by a female character in that game. Now that I think about it, it's probably a relic of Avatar creation having originally been planned to debut in Shadow Dragon… or perhaps they had planned at one point to make a Mystery of the Emblem remake that contained all the content on that game's original SNES cartridge? I'm not really sure, but I'd wager it's probably the former.

Another really important thing to remember is that it's not really feasible to make a unit who's just good at everything in FE Heroes; every character is going to have some sort of weak point, no matter what. Your best bet for making a unit good is deciding on a niche that gels well with their stats, weapon type, and movement type, and going all-in to make them amazing at that role, while considering what other sorts of units and builds might synergize well with them.

I think Chrom probably wants -Resistance more than -Defense in this case; his Resistance is already so garbage that sparing him the penalty isn't going to help him in any meaningful way, while having a bit more Defense may actually help in certain matchups with physical melee units. Incidentally, how many Chroms do you have, and what are their IV setups? It'd be helpful to know what you have to work with when giving advice! Worth remembering; when merging units of the same star tier, all + levels and inherited skills between the merged units are retained and added together! You could get started building a strong Chrom now, and then merge him into one with better IVs if such a Chrom comes along, while retaining the total + levels and inherited skills you gave him!

Make healing/supportive staves able to miss Bumping into an enemy in fog of war conditions ends the entire player phase instead of just that one character's action All units are AI controlled and you have to earn their trust by supporting them with the main character. They won't stay put for you to do this easily and there is a GBAesque support limit. You only get manual control at maximum support rank. The ally AI is not very good All reinforcements are placed in the worst possible locations and appear at the beginning of the enemy phase. If you try to block them they'll just pop out of the next nearest tile they can occupy All units are recruited via a gacha system that you need to pay real money to draw from. There is no other way to draw from it and the game is not free-to-start All cutscenes are animated in CD-i Zelda style, with the game's equivalent of FMV sequences being in crappy, low-budget live-action with bad costume design that looks nothing like the character each actor is supposed to be playing. The voice actors in the animated cutscenes and the gameplay are not the same people as the actors for the live action sequences All generic units use the Wilhelm Scream as their death voice clip, without exception, and have no other voice acting That person who draws the horrifically-moeblobbed versions of Est, Lachesis, Mist, and Mae for Fire Emblem Heroes is the official artist and every single character looks like that

Ahhh, good to know! The reason I wrote +8 instead of +7 is that I was assuming it'd still be counting the "base" addition of +1 for merging a character without any + levels and then adding all the + levels on top of that. So it'd essentially be +(merged's unit's + levels + 1) to the receivers + level. Does it not work that way?

So, here's a question: If you're merging two units of equal star counts, and you're merging a unit with additional + levels into another of the same unit, will the two units' + levels be added together? Say you merged an Ike +5 into an Ike +2; would that result in an Ike +8, or just an Ike +3?

For future reference, this site is a great place to look for all kinds of Fire Emblem Heroes information, tips, and build suggestions for characters! Here's Eliwood's page there! For build-related information, you'll wanna check out the "Strategy" and "Builds" tabs. I hope this helps~

At first, I was just completely enamored with the game, since I'd been wanting another Fire Emblem game more in the vein of the classic, pre-DS titles… pretty much since before Fates even was announced. I really enjoyed my first playthrough of the game quite a bit. Now, my opinion has kinda leveled out a bit and, while I still hold the game in pretty high regard, I'm more conscious of its flaws. The map design choices are downright wonky to at times even indefensible, and the lack of class-specific stat caps definitely hurts a lot more than it helps; there is literally no reason to ever make someone a Baron over a Gold Knight, ultimately, for example. The story has a lot of flaws, but I find it enjoyable regardless… I'd say all in all it's probably about equal with Awakening's story, having stronger strong points which in turn make its weaker aspects hurt more. Echoes is better in certain areas; certainly worldbuilding, at least, although it is the same world, so… I do still really love Gaiden/Echoes' magic system, though; it's honestly my favorite take on magic so far in the series. Each character having their own spell list in magical classes… for the most part… adds another layer to each character having unique properties that are affixed to them, which was a really big thing I liked about how Skills worked in Jugdral and Tellius. I just wish they'd given every character a non-generic spell list and not just the characters who can access magical classes without DLC plus Conrad. The way they buffed Archers was also a very interesting approach to that particular issue, too. To be honest, I think that Gaiden introduced a lot of gameplay concepts that warrant further exploration than they got. Just… maybe leave that map design by the wayside where it belongs, haha~ As for the story, I loved the characters the first time around, and I only appreciate them more as I read more supports and base conversations that I may have missed the first time, and try them out in different classes and such. For me, at least, Fire Emblem Echoes' cast absolutely blows away Awakening's and Fates'. The voice acting actually contributes a lot to each character's characterization; more than I expected going into the game, to be honest. My only complain vis a vis the characters and their interactions is that there aren't nearly enough supports. The extra Rise of the Deliverance supports are stellar; some of the best in the game, honestly. I just wish there were more supports in the game. I also wish Celica didn't get shafted so hard as the story drew to a close. That really, really sucked, honestly.

Because of course, the only reason somebody would ever use or allocate special resources to a character is because they're good. Of course. ...Anyway, I only ever used one on Conrad to check out his special Nomah clone spell list as a Sage. Not sure who else I wanna use them on, though, honestly. I would use one on Clair, because I love her, but the limited promotion options for female Villagers combined with Conrad being the only non-magical or Villager-accessing character to have access to any non-generic spell list in either magical class line really makes giving Pitchforks to the girls of SoV kind of a huge, underwhelming bummer, honestly.

Amusingly enough this is actually almost exactly the opposite of my opinion. I at least kind of like all the female voices—voice 3 in particular being my favorite—while I don't really like either of Cam Clarke's Corrin voices; whenever I play with a male MU, I always use voice 2, the one done by Yuri Lowenthal. I love Clarke as Arthur, though; I think his voice is much better suited to that role.

So, I opened up the Nightmare modules for FE11 and poked around in them again, and was swiftly reminded of why I stopped to begin with. The stat values given in the editor don't make any sense and don't seem to correlate with the values listed online in any meaningful way. I was wondering if anybody here had the "key" to converting stat and growth values between regular, comprehensible numbers and whatever bizarre cipher the numbers are hidden behind in the editor. Thanks so much for your time!

So, I was thinking about how Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius currently (as of this writing) has an ongoing contest for fan-made characters, with the winner being able to potentially make it into the game as a special, limited-edition character, and I was thinking it would be neat if Fire Emblem Heroes did something similar, where players could make their own Heroes, with the winners getting their Heroes into the game as summonable characters and getting some kind of special bonus, like maybe one free five-star instance of their winning Hero, and/or a bunch of Orbs and/or Hero Feathers or something. I think either "one winner per region" or "one winner per weapon color" would be good parameters for how many winners there could be, or something like that. Heroes entered would, of course, be limited to only have the usual of "weapon plus skills in three other slots" for their innate skills, and there should be some notice that the unit's provided stats may be adjusted by the Fire Emblem Heroes development team for balance purposes to prevent completely broken Heroes from being put into the game. Additionally, of course, units wouldn't be able to innately learn any skills that their weapon or movement type would bar them from learning, or be able to have any other characters' personal weapons, barring maybe weapons like Gradivus, Parthia, or the Regal Blade, that aren't actually personal weapons at all in their home games. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I think it'd be really cool, personally!

Probably just because she's Sacaean, it's Sacae's legendary weapon, and this version of her is assigned Bows as her weapon type.

I'm gonna grab Lyn as my free chosen summon, 'cause I don't wanna miss out on the game's first, and thus far only, horseback bow-user. Really, I think they're all very cool, and I'd be happy with any of them! I'm just really excited for Lyn gameplay-wise in particular.

[CURRENT FAVORITE] Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, five bad things: The lack of class-based stat caps. I know every character has personal cap modifiers layered over Gaiden's original universal 52 HP/40 everything else caps, but the lack of class-based cap modifiers really hurts class differentiation in some cases, the most egregious example being that there is literally no reason to ever have somebody ultimately end up a Baron when they could end up a Gold Knight instead. The only thing Barons have on Gold Knights is their useless Heavy Armor skill, which halves damage from bows, because of course, enemy bow-users are the deadly heavy-hitters that threaten your physical tanks. Of course. Variable stat caps could give some actual reason to make Barons viable over Gold Knights, for example. Map design. Yadda yadda yadda overused complaint yadda yadda yadda a lot of them are still bad. Especially the swamp and desert maps. Gender-based promotion options for Villagers. All Villagers, regardless of gender, should've had access to Mercenary, Soldier, Cavalier, Archer, Mage, and Cleric/Curate, with Pegasus Knight being female-only and men maybe getting Wyvern Rider or something as an equivalent? Why are support options so limited? Seriously; there are tons of pairs of characters who really should have supports but inexplicably don't, and even more who have potential for really interesting interactions with each other. The plot's pacing starts getting kinda wonky around Act 4 moving into Act 5. Rudolf should've gotten more screen time than he did and should've interacted directly with Alm at least once or twice prior to the reveal. Celica shouldn't have gotten shafted and forced into being secondary to Alm, and the characterization of both Lords should've been more centered around the theme of duality and making them reflections of Mila and Duma. Making Alm the Mila equivalent and Celica the Duma equivalent would've been a really interesting twist to put on it, on a somewhat different note. [CURRENT LEAST FAVORITE] Fire Emblem Fates, five good things: The new classes are really cool, for the most part! Removing genderlocks on classes is also really cool and good, although they should've gone all the way and had no genderlocks on the amiibo/DLC classes, either. I love what the game did with Knives as a weapon type, making them actually interesting and distinct and cool compared to them kinda sucking in Path of Radiance and being a little boring in Radiant Dawn. A lot of the music is pretty good! I really like how they doubled down on having separate cultures with their own distinct sets of classes and such within the world.

Okay, so, to be honest, I really, really don't want to see Fire Emblem bring in the extremely bland set of stock fantasy races like Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc. They're boring, they're bland, they don't match with Fire Emblem's aesthetic, they're boring, they're overused, and they're boring. However, I would be totally down for Fire Emblem to have more of its own fantasy races in its stories and worlds; that could be rad. If it is to happen, they should definitely have them have distinctive gameplay features to set them apart more than just character design. Fire Emblem does have some nonhuman races—the dragonkin/manaketes, the Laguz/Taguel, the Zunanma, Kitsune, and the Wolfskin—but for the most part, they're all variants on the same basic theme of a mostly-human individual who transform into more powerful beastly forms in order to engage in combat. The Zunanma seem to innately be hybrids of human and animal or draconic features, but that's only based on the one illustration of them. I'm definitely biased in this regard, but I'm a huge fan of fleshed-out and interesting nonhuman races, so I'd love to see Fire Emblem bringing in some more nonhumans who aren't simply additional variants of that demihuman shapeshifter theme.