[FE8] Sacred Stones Advanced

[Diogenes]

Hello everyone! I'm relatively new to the forum and I'm making a FE8 hack. It's not too ambitious, just basically vanilla FE8 with some new and rebalanced classes, extra weapons, extra supports, much harder difficultly, and eventually (if I can figure out how) a few more chapters. I don't want to go down in ROM history, just create a better alternative to regular FE8.

Re-Balanced difficulty and class changes. AKA, the bulk of what I'm doing. Things done already are highlighted in Green

• Much harder difficulty, but still beatable without tower/ arena abuse. Should you need it though, the tower is easier to abuse, with better item drops. The top levels of the tower have master seals, stat bonus items, fili shields and iron runes (You Shouldn't Need Any Of Them).
• Classes have been rebalanced. Snipers have +15 crit. Mage knights and Valkyries have +8 crit. Wyvern Lords have axes instead of swords and 7 movement, but some enemy wyvern lords have all 3 weapons and 8 movement. Dancers can use staffs and steal, and Rouges, Assassins and Dancers can move again after actions. All mounted classes get 8 movement except great knights, who get 7. Also Rouges and Assassins get 7 movement. Promoted Ephraim can use axes and promoted Erika can use Lances. I kinda want to demount them too.
• Seth starts out as an injured Paladin. Low caps HP, but promotes into a regular paladin at level 10 with better stats then he normally starts out with. His growths are even crazier though, because Seth means Death.
• Monster classes are buffed over all. Mogals can use regular magic too, and their promoted attack drains like a rune sword. Deathgoyls and Bow Wraiths get +15 crit. Cerberus' Hell fang will be a brave ability, and mauth dogs will have it sometimes. Spiders are scary. Skeletons are spooky.
• New Mystic Class for Saleh and enemies. They use Light and Dark and have +8 crit (Beware the higher crit Light Tomes). They promote from Monks and Dark Mages, so they're a male only class. This also means that there is no more summoner class, and Artur can't be a sage. New Halbardier/Lancer class for promoted soldiers. They would have +15 crit and Amealia would be able to promote to this. Maybe Gilliam too.
• More Weapons that aren't broken, and nerf sacred weapons. Generic versions of the Rapier/Reingleif. The trainee axe is still weak, but super effective against armor and Calvary. Enemies will have all these new weapons, and only enemies will have poison weapons, which are buffed. Bows have 2-3 Range. Short bows have 1-2 range. Long and Poison bows have 2-4 range.
• Infinite use weapons in every class except staffs.
• Better drops and steal options in the main chapters. Metis tome had 5 uses and you get 2. Boots have 2 uses and you get 2.
• Buff Gilliam, Moulder, Garcia, Marasia, Dussel, Dolza, Knoll, and whoever else I think needs it. Tell me who needs it!

New Content AKA Stuff I largely don't know how to do yet.

• Add new chapters to make the game longer. Originally I wanted to eliminate the split and have certain characters go with Ephraim and certain Characters go with Erika, but that seems beyond me. Instead I'll add Bonus Chapters. 2 to the pre-split Erika chapters. 2 to the split routes. Three to the post split. I'd like to make some bonus chapters accessible to the world map rather than tacked on at the end of regular chapters, but I hear that's almost impossible. (I suck at this coding stuff. and this animating stuff. and this spriting stuff)
• Writing and inserting more Supports. I'd like to make it so you can rack up as many B supports as you can.
• FE7 style Pre battle quotes and in battle dialogue that make it blatantly obvious who I ship (SethxErika, AmealiaxFranz, LutexArtur, TethysxHalf the Army)
• New Characters! Ewan gets a pet Mauthdog (That turns out to actually be Velour). Amealia is afraid of skeletons until Franz shows her they can be friends. Lute give Author a present that not only has venom and silk glands, but high HP and Def as well. L'Rachial gets a new horse named Chiron right around the same time she starts getting mysterious love letters. More to come!

As you can see this is a huge undertaking, and I don't expect to finish it all. I'm going to use available animations for all I can, and maybe beg help for the animations that don't exist yet. There are animations for the halbardier class I want to use, but the link in the animation resourse thread is dead. I also once saw a video of a swordwoman attacking with a mauth dog that I want to use for Velour, but I don't know what the deal is. I hope to be able to work out a deal with people who can help me. _{I can write smut for you perverts if you give me what I want} Right now I've increased the difficulty of the presplit and about four Erika route chapters, but that part is the easiest thing I have to do. Any feedback you folks can provide is much appreciated.

[Elieson]

Nosferatu mogalls don't sound like a bad idea

[phobia]

you should try to do L'arachel's adventure as sidequests

[Diogenes]

you should try to do L'arachel's adventure as sidequests

And now I know what sacred stones needed all along.

[phobia]

And now I know what sacred stones needed all along.

absolutely Dozla the Jeigan and you can downgrade Rennac to a thief if need be, and throw in some filler characters

[MRDRHAWK]

you had me intrigued with this until I saw the section about writing and then I just zoned out tbh

The balance ideas are... okay, I guess (though innate Galeforce in FE8 sounds kind of ridiculous), but the writing ideas just sound pointless and ultimately do nothing to fix the issues the writing in FE8 does have. It also feels like you're shoehorning in monster classes for the player side, which feels pointless if there's no real reason to do so.

Poison bows having four whole range also sounds like horseshit and I do not appreciate this sniping thank you

[Strict_Gryphon90]

These changes sound absolutely metal. Count me in. The only thing I disagree with is giving assassins 7 movement. This sets up some serious RNG induced rage quits. Just please, if you're going to give them 7 movement, don't give them killing edges too.

Let me know if you need any help. I'm not an artist but I think I'm a good map designer, should you need any help with that. Does your increased difficulty include map redesigns?

EDIT: Oh I forgot to mention, I second the L'Arachel side quest idea.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Strict_Gryphon90

[Diogenes]

Assassians, rougues, and dancers have the same type of move again as mounted units.

Edited August 29, 2015 by Diogenes

[eclipse]

What are you trying to accomplish with this hack? Some of them look interesting (promoted Eir/Eph weapon options and the Mystic class), but others look like they're thrown in for the sake of being thrown in.

If you're going for difficulty, take a good, long look at the chapters that are considered to be legitimately hard, and figure out what makes them hard. It's not just ridiculously high stats.

If you're going for balance, then give me a reason to use Falcoknights. Or Warriors.

[Diogenes]

I'm not just buffing stats, I'm adding healers and enemy reinforcements to positions that you advance to. Also if you see a dark mage check if it has eclipse. It very well might.

And I worry about making bows too OP, so warrior Garcia is a strong unit, especially before you get other promoted axe users.

I'll have added the new classes and finished rebalanceing Erika's route soon, so you'll be able to judge it properly.

If anyone can help me out with animations, I'd much appreciate the help. There is already an Ephraim sword animation, but I'm still looking for an Ephraim axe and Erika spear.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Diogenes

[eclipse]

If you want actual suggestions, you'll need to produce numbers/a patch. Otherwise, the best I can do is tell you what I see based off of your descriptions.

Also, I'd suggest giving that one S-Rank dark magic tome the sacred weapon bonus - it was nigh-useless in vanilla FE8.

[phobia]

i'd make gleipnir possible to double with without 6 body rings

the things that make the hard chapters hard are bullshit though like fog of war for phantom ship, tons of promoted units (ALSO FOG OF WAR) on 19, desert in 15, and berserk staves in 14

[Diogenes]

Now you can look forward to fog of war in 6, rain in 10 erika, ranged attacks in almost every chapter after 6!

[eclipse]

Chapter 13 Eir was bullshit if you didn't kill the boss on turn 1, and that didn't feature fog of war. So's Chapter 13 Eph (without the "kill boss on turn 1" thing).

IMO the hard parts occur when you're swarmed with reinforcements, and you can't force your way through. SS has a lot of chapters that can be rushed, but you miss out on a lot of stuff. Problem is, the stuff you miss isn't vital to finishing, because the core of your army is good enough without it. Thus, rushing is the best way to deal with most of Sacred Stones. Rain doesn't change this - all it does is halve movement rate for some amount of time. Now, putting the Swiftsole on an enemy with 21 Speed, on a map that's not a rout. . .

[Anouleth]

Rain is horrible. Please don't put rain in this hack.

[CT075]

rain doesn't really make anything more difficult, it just makes the map slow and kind of dumb to play through

[Diogenes]

To be fair, it's a chapter that takes place in a ruin, but has a path where you can go around outside it. Movement in the ruin is normal.

[Chocolate Kitty]

uhhh

what are you talking about

even if you're referring to chapter 11, terrible reasoning is still terrible.

[Diogenes]

Anyway guys, I thought I'd update you on some things. I run up against a wall, so to speak. I increased the difficultiy up until Ch. 17 in Erika's route, but now background scenes are corrupted. It seems strange to me since the only real messing around outside of nightmare I've been doing is adding animations to already existing classes. Also the wifi antenna on my laptop died, so I've been restricted to my desktop until I get a new one.

Anyway, since I have no idea where exactly I went wrong, I'm going to do it again from the top, and add extra items and classes before I do the chapter difficulty re-balances.

I'm still seeking animations for the new classes, Mystic and lancer (although I could just use generic necromancer and female soldier), and a spear animation for Erika and axe animation for Ephraim. If anyone would be willing to help me out with those then Please reply in this thread or PM me, and we can discuss compensation.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Diogenes

[Strict_Gryphon90]

Sorry to hear about your computer :'(

You might try posting about your hacking issue in the questions forum. Someone may know the answer and it would save you a lot of time. As for the animations, there's a forum for that too where people can post about things they need and others can accept the job. Most people won't work for free though; college and time and whatnot.

[Elieson]

I'm not just buffing stats, I'm adding healers and enemy reinforcements to positions that you advance to. Also if you see a dark mage check if it has eclipse. It very well might.

And I worry about making bows too OP, so warrior Gilliam is a strong unit, especially before you get other promoted axe users.

I'll have added the new classes and finished rebalanceing Erika's route soon, so you'll be able to judge it properly.

If anyone can help me out with animations, I'd much appreciate the help. There is already an Ephraim sword animation, but I'm still looking for an Ephraim axe and Erika spear.

more enemies means more exp for your units. be sure to scale the game according to the exp amount