Couple Questions on Berwick Saga

[Dirtfall]

Started playing the Berwick Saga patch and am very much enjoying it. I had a couple mechanics questions regarding gameplay:

 

Is there any way to switch horses other than Christine's Swap skill during combat? Is there a way to redistribute horses or anything like that in town or in the stables?

In the Kingfisher Pavilion, seems as though there are only 8 people that show up in the restaurant and then they are locked there. When I hire new mercenaries, they won't be in the restaurant if 8 people are already there. Is there any way to switch who shows up in the restaurant? Am I missing something about the number of people who can be there?

 

Thanks for giving this a look - Aethin is doing a great job on explaining the game, but the Berwick has a ton of subtle mechanics to it that I'm still catching up on.

[Aggro Incarnate]

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Is there any way to switch horses other than Christine's Swap skill during combat? Is there a way to redistribute horses or anything like that in town or in the stables?

You cannot switch horses without Christine's Swap Horse skill. You can give a unit a new horse in the Stables, but that replaces the original horse instead of swapping, meaning that the original horse is gone forever. This makes it such that if you want to keep both horses while putting them in different units you need to field Christine, giving her an irreplaceable niche of sorts. In the earlygame this isn't too much of a big deal, but as the game progresses and you get some special horses that gives stat bonuses like +1 Mov that you want to swap around, Christine's Swap Horse utility becomes much more coveted.  

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In the Kingfisher Pavilion, seems as though there are only 8 people that show up in the restaurant and then they are locked there. When I hire new mercenaries, they won't be in the restaurant if 8 people are already there. Is there any way to switch who shows up in the restaurant? Am I missing something about the number of people who can be there?

You can't change who shows up in the Kingfisher Pavilion after Reese + all remaining 8 seats have been set. That said, there are a few subtleties that the player can take advantage of. Firstly, the roster for the Kingfisher Pavilion for a given chapter becomes fixed the moment you enter the Pavilion. Secondly, only characters in the Active List can be seated. This means you can control which units get to take advantage of food, at the cost (or benefit, depending on your perspective) of guaranteeing a spot for Ward, by putting the units you want to be fed in the Active Lists while the ones you don't want out of it before you enter the Pavilion for the first time for the chapter. Thirdly, if the full 8 seats have not been filled when you first enter the Pavilion for a given chapter (due to there being not enough units in the Active List), you can fill the rest of those seats later. This means if you have, say, a mercenary unit that you don't want to field in the main mission but later for sidequests, you can keep a few seats empty the first time you enter, before the main mission, then after completing the main mission and getting a sidequest, add that other mercenary unit you want to feed food in the Active List then enter the Pavilion again. These details allows the player to finely control which units get food bonuses.

[Dirtfall]

Thanks Aggro! That helps clear up some stumbling blocks for me. I've been reading through your and Aethin's guides, they've helped me get a much better sense of the flow of the game. It should say something about Berwick's complexity that after all that, there's still systems regarding something as detailed as horses for the player to figure out.