Fire Emblem: Requiem - V1.4 is up

[TheNiddo]

So, really enjoying the mod so far. Feels like an actual FE game to me. Up to chapter 18 at the moment. Been getting a bit stat screwed: Drake is level 17 and has a grand total of 5 speed. Andrei is fairly speed screwed and a bit defence screwed as well (Even WITH the Speed and Defence boosting items). Hawke is speed screwed and defence screwed (11 speed and 6 defence before I promoted him at level 20 whyyyyy)

All observations are of course, in Normal Mode.

Chapter 8: It was a fairly difficult chapter. Fair for the most part, but it took a lot of trial and error. Ultimately had to lean heavily on my pre-promotes to get past it. I think it would be better however if in the previous chapters you could either bring everyone or only had to leave one person behind. You have to leave 2 behind, and you're going to want to bring Josie. Rayden you can leave behind most of the time, but that leaves one more slot you gotta leave behind. That's most likely going to be Linda who then becomes dead weight the moment the ballista runs out of shots.

I was originally going to say that the last chapter in Val's mode should have more characters slots as well, but upon finishing it I could see why that wasn't the case.

Chapter 11: Oh boy this chapter. The one time I didn't have fun with this mod. Maybe its because a lot of my characters are a bit on the screwed side. But those Elite units were just too much. I spent a good 2 hours trying to survive their onslaught without triggering units on the lower half of the map. I had to constantly try different combinations of positioning and weapon trading/juggling and rescuing and even then there were 2 or 3 turns where I only got past them because the enemies missed 65% chances 3 times in one turn. And that was after I started abusing RNG burning with unit movement ranges.

The biggest problem by far were the Elite Archers. Getting too many double attacks and dealing too much damage per hit for my units to weather. A few of the mages gave me some headaches as well (I think one had a non-base level weapon IIRC?) Toning down the archers just a tad (like a point of strength and speed) would help a lot I feel. Make that section less of a nightmare if you get stat screwed.

Chapter 14 gave me a heart attack on that last turn, lol. I thought that boss was going to get an actual action, so I was madly trying to get everyone out of the way, but in a way that the other enemies didn't kill them.

Character balance opinions:

I think Andrei needs some love. He's in an awkward spot between main lord and supporting character, so you kinda want to use him all the way to endgame. But then his stat spread (even if he's not screwed like mine) is rather subpar for long periods of time it seems like outside of hitting his strength cap quickly. Not quite sure what to do about him, maybe take 10% off his HP growth, split that 10% between Defence and Speed to try to lower the chance of those two categories getting screwed over? Maybe tack on an extra point of defence to his starting stats? (He was the one who died the most for me in Val's mode), often by 1 or 2 hit points.

Val feels very much like Erika. Not that it's a bad thing, just something I noticed.

Keiran is awesome. Liked having a Wyvren Rider early on. Wanted to use Kane and Isaac but just had no room for them in Ash's mode.

Edward feels like dead weight. I normally try to use a thief regularly. He got benched hard. Just has no way to stand out combat wise.

Really like having Ash as a lord. Always liked the idea of having a dark magic using as a lord. Stat wise both he and Alicia are doing quite well thank goodness.

[Mekkah]

Not quite sure what to do about him, maybe take 10% off his HP growth, split that 10% between Defence and Speed to try to lower the chance of those two categories getting screwed over?

This does nothing for him on average. 5% extra growth means 1 point in 20 levels. If you want Andrei to be better on average, he should just have increased base stats.

[Sacred Blaze]

So, really enjoying the mod so far. Feels like an actual FE game to me. Up to chapter 18 at the moment. Been getting a bit stat screwed: Drake is level 17 and has a grand total of 5 speed. Andrei is fairly speed screwed and a bit defence screwed as well (Even WITH the Speed and Defence boosting items). Hawke is speed screwed and defence screwed (11 speed and 6 defence before I promoted him at level 20 whyyyyy)

Chapter 11: Oh boy this chapter. The one time I didn't have fun with this mod. Maybe its because a lot of my characters are a bit on the screwed side. But those Elite units were just too much. I spent a good 2 hours trying to survive their onslaught without triggering units on the lower half of the map. I had to constantly try different combinations of positioning and weapon trading/juggling and rescuing and even then there were 2 or 3 turns where I only got past them because the enemies missed 65% chances 3 times in one turn. And that was after I started abusing RNG burning with unit movement ranges.

The biggest problem by far were the Elite Archers. Getting too many double attacks and dealing too much damage per hit for my units to weather. A few of the mages gave me some headaches as well (I think one had a non-base level weapon IIRC?) Toning down the archers just a tad (like a point of strength and speed) would help a lot I feel. Make that section less of a nightmare if you get stat screwed.

Character balance opinions:

I think Andrei needs some love. He's in an awkward spot between main lord and supporting character, so you kinda want to use him all the way to endgame. But then his stat spread (even if he's not screwed like mine) is rather subpar for long periods of time it seems like outside of hitting his strength cap quickly. Not quite sure what to do about him, maybe take 10% off his HP growth, split that 10% between Defence and Speed to try to lower the chance of those two categories getting screwed over? Maybe tack on an extra point of defence to his starting stats? (He was the one who died the most for me in Val's mode), often by 1 or 2 hit points.

Edward feels like dead weight. I normally try to use a thief regularly. He got benched hard. Just has no way to stand out combat wise.

Wow, that Drake, Andrei and Hawke sure do sound like they suck.

With chapter 11 though, wouldn't it have been better to just start over and try and get further away from the elites before they arrive?

It is an escape chapter after all and the point of them is to kill off your units. Taking them on requires some measure of luck and splitting them up. (By using someone to pull the first group around to the right side of the map) There's no real reward for killing them anyways, aside from a bit of extra exp.

I usually get pretty good Edwards on my playthroughs. In the beginning (if you don't give him then Energy Ring) you can give him the effective weapons, like the Armorslayer and Lancereaver to do good damage against the enemies. He usually has the speed to be able to double even when using heavier weapons. Later, he'll be used quite conservatively as he'll need to get chests and stuff, but he can catch up fairly quickly, because he's a thief. And then well, in the end, he's not going to be your best sword unit, but then again, it wouldn't really make much sense for that to be the case. He should still do well enough with Silvers/Killers though.

I don't think Andrei's as bad as a lot of people make him out to be, but then again this is all based off of my experiences.

So I guess I could give him some sort of buffs, but I'd need some ideas. Like Mekkah said, 5% growth increases are unlikely to really change much in the long run.

In terms of bases, I could give give him 8 speed, as opposed to his starting 7.

I could also raise his HP (by 2, maybe?) and cut 10% of his HP growth to bump his speed growth up to 50%. (Two extra points in 20 levels on average, but that might just be what he needs.)

But then well, the thing with these buffs is that I'm worried that it might just make him dwarf Valentine in terms of stats throughout the beginning and then it will later on make a character like Jace obsolete as well.

As an extra note:

I've added a new section to the front page for those of you who have completed the game, mostly. It contains some image albums of my characters on certain runs after completing the game.

[Wayward Winds]

The problem I had with Andrei was his speed not being sufficient to double in most cases, and he was a pretty poor dodger. Axe magnetism was luck based so I shouldn't really hold that against him, but it happened anyway. Andrei's high-ish strength (still weirdly lower than Val's at that point) wasn't quite enough to counter his flaws. And then I confronted a number of facts:

When he joins in Ch. 15, he's no longer got a good niche. He's not a forced/free deployment for the most part as he was in Val's story. Even if you've dropped Nala for being too much of a featherweight, and not really bothered with Jace, you've still got Val (who pretty much outclassed him in every way but res for me, and that was due to the 2 > 30 something glitch), and Ordanze joins up immediately after. The next chapter, you get Laraya. That's three sword using characters faster, better at dodging, better at critting... just generally better. True, none of the others pick up another weapon class after promotion as Andrei does, but that doesn't help until a few chapters on.

I also knew that I'd soon have at least two Falcoknights (Gemma and Nella) and a Paladin (Kane), all of whom would be able to use swords, and in Kane's case, axes. All of them were ahead of Andrei on the dodging front, and the mobility front. All Andrei had was his glitch provided res. See why I dropped him? I tried, but after Ch. 17 passed and he still wasn't improving relative to the other party members, he had to go.

...Admittedly, I ended up being axe-lite given that my only late game axe users were Kane and Thelma, but my party did pretty well anyway. And if I'd been more worried about axes, I had existing specialists in that department to train anyway. I would have trained Marco, but the deployment slots couldn't accommodate him.

Off Andrei and onto those Elite Egardians of Ch. 11. I agree that you should probably run away from them, but in my case Drake scuppered that plan. If you don't want to tangle with the boss (and in my case I couldn't see my stats doing anything good on that front), you have to take the long way round. Drake is slow. The Elite Egardians caught up with him, so I had to turn around and fight them off. And yes, it was a ruddy nightmare!

...I'm not saying it should be changed, I probably made Drake engage too much in the early parts of that chapter anyway (thus slowing him down even more). To be fair, I wasn't expecting that level of threat from behind - I expected something, but not something that would take at least two of my stronger characters to kill one enemy, and stupidly accurate and 2/3 hit kills back. Yes, for the only time in the hack, I had to resort to save scumming.

Edited August 16, 2015 by Wayward Winds

[TheNiddo]

Ya in Chapter 11, I more or less had the same thing happen with Drake. Wanted to make sure I visited all of the houses, didn't want to run into the boss, went the long way, Drake was dragging everyone down and somebody got hit so I had to heal them and then I got bum rushed. They got to me too quickly so I couldn't keep pressing onwards because would have just triggered more units.

I can't remember, are their any flying units in the Elite group? If their are, switching them out for 5 movement units might work: you don't have to stop to fight the Elites that way, its still a group you want to avoid if possible, but you don't get tagged by fliers quickly and stuck fighting them until the other Elites catch up.

The changes I suggested to Andrei were less about straight up buffing him and more about trying to lower the chances of him getting screwed. It's a bit tricky to buff him without making Val obsolete, but then there are the problem of the other sword users you get pretty quickly after you get him back. Something I can spitball out about that is maybe give him even more Con? Out of all of those sword users he has the highest Con, but he's only beating Jace, Ordanze, and Laraya by 1. I actually ended up giving him a Body Ring before I promoted him. Perhaps just buff his Con up by 2 so he can use some decent swords without any speed penalties? That could work as his niche: doesn't have the greatest speed when compared to the others but he's not weighed down by most of the swords in the game?

Compared to other axe users: Kane would have the same amount of Con but is an all rounder who trades some skill for some defence and access to two weapons from the start. Vincent would be tied until promotion where he takes the advantage and has better strength, speed, and def on average. Hawke would have 1 less con until promotion but has better strength, speed. Marco still has a Con advantage along with strength and defence.

Another possibility would be to buff his unique sword a bit. Basically have it be "without his unique sword he's slightly worse but has access to ranged weaponry upon promotion when compared to other sword users, with his unique sword he's slightly better overall"? Gives a reason to use the weapon repairing staff as well.

Edited August 16, 2015 by TheNiddo

[Wayward Winds]

I can't remember, are their any flying units in the Elite group? If their are, switching them out for 5 movement units might work: you don't have to stop to fight the Elites that way, its still a group you want to avoid if possible, but you don't get tagged by fliers quickly and stuck fighting them until the other Elites catch up.

If I recall correctly, it was mercenaries, mages, archers and fighters; two of each. No fliers anywhere in sight.

[Sacred Blaze]

Ya in Chapter 11, I more or less had the same thing happen with Drake. Wanted to make sure I visited all of the houses, didn't want to run into the boss, went the long way, Drake was dragging everyone down and somebody got hit so I had to heal them and then I got bum rushed. They got to me too quickly so I couldn't keep pressing onwards because would have just triggered more units.

I can't remember, are their any flying units in the Elite group? If their are, switching them out for 5 movement units might work: you don't have to stop to fight the Elites that way, its still a group you want to avoid if possible, but you don't get tagged by fliers quickly and stuck fighting them until the other Elites catch up.

The changes I suggested to Andrei were less about straight up buffing him and more about trying to lower the chances of him getting screwed. It's a bit tricky to buff him without making Val obsolete, but then there are the problem of the other sword users you get pretty quickly after you get him back. Something I can spitball out about that is maybe give him even more Con? Out of all of those sword users he has the highest Con, but he's only beating Jace, Ordanze, and Laraya by 1. I actually ended up giving him a Body Ring before I promoted him. Perhaps just buff his Con up by 2 so he can use some decent swords without any speed penalties? That could work as his niche: doesn't have the greatest speed when compared to the others but he's not weighed down by most of the swords in the game?

Compared to other axe users: Kane would have the same amount of Con but is an all rounder who trades some skill for some defence and access to two weapons from the start. Vincent would be tied until promotion where he takes the advantage and has better strength, speed, and def on average. Hawke would have 1 less con until promotion but has better strength, speed. Marco still has a Con advantage along with strength and defence.

Another possibility would be to buff his unique sword a bit. Basically have it be "without his unique sword he's slightly worse but has access to ranged weaponry upon promotion when compared to other sword users, with his unique sword he's slightly better overall"? Gives a reason to use the weapon repairing staff as well.

There aren't any flying units that come out with the elites. It's just Mercs, archers, fighters and mages IIRC.

And yeah now that Wayward Winds and you mention it, that is quite a problem for Andrei with him losing his niche.

More con is an idea and probably something I will do although I'm thinking 10 instead of 11 con to start with perhaps. It might be more of a reason to use him over the final character you'll get as well, who so happens to be another Hero.

Making his personal weapon better is a good idea though, because it is really lacking in any real reason to use, especially once you get him back. Right now, it's basically just a heavy nerfed killing edge, which isn't of much use to anyone really.

There are two ways I'd probably go about this:

• Give it higher raw MT. Raise it to about 11-12 (Currently 9) or something. If I leave his speed alone, then this shouldn't make him OP in Val's mode either.
• Give it some kind of effectiveness and leave it's MT. Knights and horse-mounts would probably be ideal, but there are other options. (Another mage-killer, maybe, although that does seem a little bit random.)

Other options:

• Make it a weaker brave sword or something. It would sort out his doubling issues and he'd have the strength to kill things with it, hopefully.
• 1-2 range weapon. I'm not really inclined to do this one though, because you already can get the Wind Edge and then the Light Brand around about the point when you get him back.

Edited August 16, 2015 by Sacred Blaze

[TheNiddo]

Hrm....

Assuming let's say Andrei gets a base stat buff of +1 Con and +1 Speed (Two things you've mentioned as possibilities so I'll use that as the base here). In a way that "removes" the -2 speed penalty he's currently getting from his unique weapon. If he doesn't get his base speed buff I'd say knock a single point off of its weight so he ends up at the same point, and then make it a weaker brave sword. It would help him a lot in Val's mode: he has the strength to 2SK a lot of things but doesn't have the speed or defence to take the hit between rounds frequently. Getting two attacks in from the start would keep him a lot safer in Val Mode, and let him try to get his footing quickly in Ash Mode before other sword users pop up.

Going by a Militant Edge's stats of 5MT/90HIT/0CRIT/5WT/46USES, maybe make the new Flamberge something like 4MT/95HIT/5CRIT/10WT/60USES? If you wanted to get really fancy could also make it give Andrei +2 Res or something just so he doesn't crumple if 2 mages look at him early on.

I'm not a mod designer by any means, but I would think something around that level would let him be more reliable, without invalidating other characters or being something he had to cling to for the entire game. Though I do admit I'm not sure if he would then overshadow Val or not. Granted, Val gets her fancy rapier so maybe that's enough to keep her competitive with him?

Edited August 16, 2015 by TheNiddo

[X-Naut]

From my experiences Andrei isn't too bad, I had to give him the speed booster in Val mode and one other booster IIRC but he rocked once he returned and especially after promotion. Then again, I've only played through this game once, so I only have that to go off of. A Con boost should help him since it lets him use axes after promotion better. WRT Flamberge I disagree with making it a 1-2 range weapon; either horse effectiveness or making it target resistance should suffice.

[arkel]

I really like the idea of making Andrei's weapon a weaker Brave Sword. Maybe raise his con by 1 too.

[RoxRobstah]

I made Almer buy stuff in the shops in chapter 6 only to realize later that Almer can't put stuff he's holding into storage or trade it to anyone. So now he is stuck holding my five items and I basically wasted ny gold, I guess. Oops.

Am I just an idiot? I never played FE7.

[Sacred Blaze]

You can get stuff that he's holding by selecting any character on the trade screen (Preferably a character with no items) in the preparations menu and then going onto "List". From there you need to find one of the items he's carrying which is marked at the top as "Owner: Almer". Then you take the items off of him.

[RoxRobstah]

Thanks!

Just started playing as Ash and love the game so far. Prologue being hard felt weird, especially with most of your fighting force out of your control, but I do like the difficulty overall so far.

Around like chapter 6 or so, it felt to me like healing gave too much experience. By the time I ended Val's story, Katarina was already level 20 while most of the rest of the party was around 11-14. It seemed like an issue with the chapters themselves? When I entered some of these later chapters, my party's general level would outclass the enemy's level by a lot. Chapter 8 had me regularly fighting level 5 enemies with level 12 units, which meant I didn't get much experience per kill, and Katarina got more experience from healing almost every turn. The castle layout also meant I could fight enemies 1-3 at a time rather than them all coming at once, so I could make it so that Katarina always had someone to heal but was never overwhelmed with injured party members, so using vulneraries or a secondary healer was unnecessary. And then there were so many weak-ish enemies, Katarina could heal for very small amounts over a long period of time and gain a ton of experience, while my fighting force shared what little scraps of experience trickled down to them.

Not sure of a simple solution to solve the issue. Less experience off of staves could work, maybe, but it felt more like my fighting units weren't getting enough experience from the low leveled enemies. Although, changing the levels of the enemy units without changing other stats would have other obvious consequences.

Sorry if this was mentioned before; I didn't want to spoil myself by reading the thread too much.

[Sacred Blaze]

Katarina, level 20 by the end?

I mean, that's not impossible, but that seems a bit much without healgrinding. Do you have one of the older patches, by any chance? I did lower staff experience a little bit. That being said, Katarina will pretty much go ahead of your other characters, either way.

Anyway, the enemy levels have to be kept kind of low, unfortunately, otherwise characters levels will shoot up a bit too far. You wouldn't want level 15-20 Val mode characters coming back into Ash's mode.

EDIT: I guess that can also be blamed on me making these big maps all the time though, in some part.

Anyway, regarding the other earlier posts, (Andrei stuff) I haven't been ignoring what you've been saying.

I'm trying out some of the possible options I mentioned and seeing how good or bad he can be. I'm definitely raising his con, but I'll have to look more into the other stuff.

Edited August 17, 2015 by Sacred Blaze

[RoxRobstah]

I don't think I have an old patch? I don't have any reference, though. Katarina gets 15 exp for Heal and 20 for Mend. I guess I might've grinded a little bit, but I don't think I did that much, especially when it became obvious that Katarina was getting more exp than the others.

I like that the healers aren't behind on experience in the beginning, though. If this is an actual problem, I would prefer if healing exp scaled down slightly in the higher levels rather than having healing doing less experience all the time, if that's possible. Then again, I like to play a little slow, and I was okay with healing giving a lot of exp in Awakening, so maybe there is no problem.

[Wayward Winds]

For me (at this point I was on either v1.0 or v1.1), Katarina hit lv. 20 somewhere in Ch. 7 (healing someone 9/10 playable turns in every chapter to that point, though I never stopped my advance to accomodate a healing break). If that was when your Katarina reached lv. 20, you've probably got an old patch. It resulted in me taking Rayden for healing duties instead of her in Ch. 8...

When you've got a few FE/Pokemon hacks loitering around your computer/phone, it's a good practice to name the patched ROM with version number immediately after patching, e.g. FE Requiem v1.3. It helps you tell at a glance whether you need to update, or differentiate between versions if, like me, you tend to keep older builds that are notably different. (I believe I've got four builds of Elibian Nights at this point).

[Luminar]

i'm stuck on chapter 19... it gives me a option to go to a side chapter, i tried the a key and start key and it shows the map i just completed, or the screen stays black. how can i continue?....

[Luminar]

sorry... i fixed it... had to reset and resume chapter.

Edited August 18, 2015 by Luminar

[RoxRobstah]

My Katarina had level 20 literally at the end of chapter 8. I checked the ReadMe file that came with the patch file, and it mentions 1.3 changes so I can only assume that I'm playing 1.3.

[TheNiddo]

Mine was only level 14 by Chapter 8, and she was on healing duty quite a bit.

Are you guys like, healing every little scratch or something? I tend to heal once they hit 75% HP.

[arkel]

Mine was only level 14 by Chapter 8, and she was on healing duty quite a bit.

Are you guys like, healing every little scratch or something? I tend to heal once they hit 75% HP.

I think most people heal even 1 HP just to give her the experience.

[Agro]

I try to get her to heal every turn so she levels up quicker, naturally

[Wayward Winds]

I think most people heal even 1 HP just to give her the experience.

Now that's just wasteful when you don't know when your next stave is coming.

I was on an old patch at that point, and I generally didn't heal until <60% health. But sometimes the RNG takes a liking to the enemy.

[Alusq]

I'm currently at ch15 now that I've stopped playing for the day, and I've got to say: this game's story is blowing me away. I completely underestimated it because it looked so "mundane" at first ("oh, okay, I'm protecting the land and this is Lyn Mode, got it), but it really picked up and after just several chapters I was memory-abusing to get crits and perfect level-ups just so I could beat the chapters quicker to see what happened next. My MVPs are currently a duo of Keiran and Linda, but Gemma and Clare are on track to start wrecking as soon as they promote too.

Requiem is the first FE mod that I've ever played that has a Lyn Mode which doesn't leave me with a bad taste in my mouth thinking that I just wasted time playing ten or so superfluous chapters full of events that don't matter. Val's mode feels genuinely important and if I play through the game again without cheats after I beat it (I've been playing mostly legit ever since the end of Val Mode, since I figure that the level-ups I've accumulated should be enough), I won't skip it the same way I usually skip Lyn Modes in FE mods, and you get mega kudos for that. You deserve a medal of gold, silver, platinum, and diamonds for being a shining example of having a Lyn Mode in a mod for real, good reasons, not just because FE7 did it. It's also no small feat that the story is the part of the game that reels players in, whereas many other projects depend on the novelty of new classes, animations, etc to be interesting. I honestly can't praise it enough.

I don't know if you intend on working on Requiem again beyond just balancing stats and such, but if you do re-visit it and you want custom music, let me know.

Also, I'm not sure if you've addressed this in recent patches, but in Val Mode's final chapter, Bran can be defeated by Rayden and Josie pretty easily. While I /was/ memory-abusing, they had both only leveled up once or twice between the two and I gave them secret salves, so they could still hold their own and defeat Bran with a few Deathspear/Burst crits. You may want to give him a "death" quote where he congratulates your boldness and says he's pulling back for a moment or something (or even "pah; enough of this" and the chapter auto-ends after his defeat). You could also give bows to the warriors nearby Bran to deter Josie from flying in there with Ray in tow and wrecking everything.

[TheNiddo]

So, I've ran into a small problem near the end of the game.

The chapter with Legato. The one with the doors? I thought that enemies with keys would spawn in like before. I've cleared out the entire bottom section. No keys. I also have no keys in my storage and didn't bring the thief with me. Am I kinda screwed here or do the doors eventually open on their own?

Might wanna add keys to some of the starting enemies. If my thief had been killed in a previous chapter and I just carried on, I might be perma-screwed. And that's never good.