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Fire Emblem Dawn Brigade Remix


smgrinus
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Fire Emblem Dawn Brigade Remix

 

The main goal of this mod is to make Meg, Aran, Edward, Fiona, Leonardo, Lethe, Lyre, Viki, Nealuchi, Laura, Kyza more usable in normal, and hard difficulty modes by altering their stat additions and growth rates. I consider the mod complete now with revision 5 released. There may be more changes however later on if I feel it needs more changes.

Even though I found the Redux mod to be interesting and highly entertaining, it didn't address what this mod specifically was designed for. The changes are meant to not stand out and your experience should stay feeling vanilla while adjusting the above.

I am using the Nightmare editor to adjust these and requires the Wii Scrubber tool to utilize this modification for your ISO. This mod is only for use in the Dolphin emulator and the U.S.A version. Instructions are below.

 

Edward

image.png.cf184ea9f0a43aa2949e26a37c958d53.png

I'll use Edward, Leonardo, and Micaiah as an example of what has been altered.

(Adjusted Stats) HP:21 STR:9 MAG:0 SKL:12 SPD:13 LCK:9 DEF:7 RES:2

 

Leonardo

image.png.f64f09ed78a091a9b1bb592af36bef64.png

(Adjusted Stats) HP:19 STR:10 MAG:0 SKL:12 SPD:11 LCK:6 DEF:7 RES:5

 

Micaiah

image.png.cf4422b2b37b314e08c792ef3aa28cf9.png

(Adjusted Stats) HP:15 STR:2 MAG:7 SKL:8 SPD:7 LCK:10 DEF:2 RES:4

 

Base stats were not altered for Micaiah but her growth rate has been raised where I found them appropriate. You should see better level-ups.

Leonardo and Edward also received a similar growth rate change. 

I'm currently learning hex editing so I have some plans to alter other things but not as to change the game flow or as broad as the Redux mod changes but alterations that should balance out the game in a more positive manner. Due to computer problems, I'm currently experiencing, hex edits may come much later.

As for this modification, it is complete. I thought I would share this with like-minded folks who felt Meg, Aran, Edward, Leonardo, Lethe, Lyre, Vika, Nealuchi, Laura, and Kyza difficult to implement into their gameplay. 

 

Here is the Recompressed FE10data.cms file needed for using this mod. 

Revision 4 - Mostly overhaul of stat additions and growth rates for members of the Dawn Brigade and a number of Laguz.

Revision 5 - Complete rebalance of all stat adds and growth rates for all playable characters.

Revision 5.1 - Complete rebalance with further adjustments to Meg, Aran, Janaki, and Edward.

 

Instructions for applying the mod to your ISO using Wii Scrubber.

0. Backup your original FE RD ISO before proceeding.

1. Download Wii Scrubber and extract/unzip to a folder of your choosing.

2. Go to the directory, double click on MakeKeyBin executable. Let it create the key.bin file.

3. Double click Wii scrubber executable. Click on load ISO button. Find your Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn ISO and open.

4. Click the + on partition 1 and scroll down until you see fe10data.cms. Highlight and right-click using your mouse and choose to replace.

5. Navigate to recompressed fe10data.cms file. Open and let Wii Scrubber do its thing. 

6. Once finished, take the newly modified ISO and place into Dolphin game directory. Choose a new ISO in Dolphin and play.

You are welcome to leave constructive feedback. If you don't agree with my sentiments on what has been altered, be free to ignore this topic and move on.

 

 

 

Edited by grinus
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On 9/8/2019 at 6:45 AM, grinus said:

Viki

Vika's growths are fine (she has the third highest total growths in the game), it's her poor availability that's the problem. Unless your "remix" can solve that, it doesn't matter what her bases and growths are.

Edited by NinjaMonkey
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@NinjaMonkey Quite aware of her poor availability. I didn't focus on her growth as I didn't see the need for improvement but her stat additions were changed which gives her a much better base which should translate to actual usability when you get her back in Act 4. The adjustments were made with consideration for availability on those altered.

My main gripe was with Meg, and Fiona so all of the main testing has been focused on that thus far. Thanks for pointing out the autocorrect mistake BTW. The Grammarly tool can be pretty overzealous about changing words it doesn't know.

Edited by grinus
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30 minutes ago, grinus said:

@NinjaMonkey Quite aware of her poor availability. I didn't focus on her growth as I didn't see the need for improvement but her stat additions were changed which gives her a much better base which should translate to actual usability when you get her back in Act 4. The adjustments were made with consideration for availability on those altered.

You'd probably have to do the same for Tormod as well (Muarim should be okay as he is though).

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All the changes are not listed here but Tormod did get altered, well as the other characters that are absent for many scenarios. I'll add more details at some point.

I made this for myself so it won't be going through a lot of changes unless someone is using the mod and would like some changes. I've played through three times to test for stability and balancing. I may adjust more if I see something on the next playthrough but I'm pretty happy with where it's at.

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  • 4 months later...
On 9/9/2019 at 8:32 AM, NinjaMonkey said:

Vika's growths are fine (she has the third highest total growths in the game), it's her poor availability that's the problem. Unless your "remix" can solve that, it doesn't matter what her bases and growths are.

Yea if we're being very honest - this is the problem with most if not all of the Dawn Brigade. I think the issue is also exacerbated by people misunderstanding how growths work in Radiant Dawn. 

The "growths" you see aren't entirely honest. In Radiant Dawn it's impossible to get a 0 growth level up the way it is in say, Awakening or Fates. The game will always re-roll all of the stats if your character doesn't get a single stat to level up. Let's take Leonardo for example:

His growths are:

HP - 60%

Str - 40%

Mag - 15%

Skl - 75%

Spd - 35%

Lck - 65%

Def - 35%

Res - 55%

This means that with 0 stats capped there's a .4 * .6 * .85 * .25 * .65 * .35 * .65 * .45 chance that none of his stats level up and there's a reroll. With no stats capped, that number is going  to be extremely small and is likely not going to play much of a role.  When no stats are capped, you can for the most part use expected value to get an accurate idea of what their growths are like. For example, Leonardo starts at level 4 with 12 Skl, a 75% skill growth, and a 20 Skl cap. So around level 14 or 15 he should cap Skl. Now the chance of a reroll goes up to: .4 * .6 * .85  * .65 * .35 * .65 * .45. That's only 1.5% or so, which is still practically nothing. But let's say he caps Res around that time. His res growth is .55, *10 levels = 5.5. 5.5 + 4 base res = 9.5 which is nearly the 10 res cap for archers. Now the chance of the reroll is .4 * .6 * .85  * .65 * .35 * .65. Slightly higher, but nothing crazy. That's roughly 3%, meaning his Str growth is "actually" .4/.97  = 41.5% Unfortunately for Leonardo, as an archer those are likely his only caps. Eddy has a shot at capping Skl, Spd, HP, and Str. Strength is the shakiest of these, obviously, but you can give him the energy drop if you really want him to cap strength. I've never done that but it would help. If Eddy caps those 4,  he'll likely be around lvl 17  and the chance for a reroll on his stats is a full 25%. His .35% def growth? That's now .35/.75 = 47%. That's a crazy boost to all of his growths. This is even stronger when they  become tier 3 units because the Lck cap doesn't change by  unit  and by tier 3 they'll actually his that cap as well. Additionally, the difference in caps between tier 2 and tier 3 is much less as well, so units tend to hit their tier 3 caps at lower levels.

If you've ever looked at "average stats" per level for characters for Radiant Dawn, those numbers are going to be significantly lower than what the actual average stats at that level are. This is especially pronounced in units that hit a lot of caps and/or have very lopsided growths. Soren is hurt by this actually - He hits a lot of his tier 2 caps very quickly, which is actually a good thing because it boosts his other growths, but I see a lot of people complain that his magic cap is too low etc. and fail to see how this actually helps him in the long run. To find out a unit's "true" growth rates you absolutely CANNOT use expected value - it will underestimate the growth rates every time. You would have to run a simulation to create a sampling distribution to find out what the averages are - way more effort than i've ever seen anyone put into this. I did one time run a binomial test because I was unconvinced that Edward's 20/20/20 Res average was actually 17 as listed on Serenes. Based on my 6 playthroughs of Radiant Dawn where he ended with 23 or 24 res every time, I ran a binomial test based on how likely it was that on 6 separate occasions he'd end with a res stat of at least 20 if his "true" res growth rate was actually 20%. The p-value was wayyy lower than .05, meaning we can reject the null hypothesis that his res growth is 20%. In other words, his "true" res growth is either higher than 20% in practice or I happened to witness a one in a million event. 

Furthermore, you are able to use bonus experience to manipulate unit stats and hit caps. Bonus Exp in Radiant Dawn works differently than Path of Radiance and is set to always give 3 stats per level up. It's best to use it after a unit has hit a couple stats e.g. you could use it after Eddy has capped Skl/Spd/HP to ensure he hits his Str cap and perhaps patch up either his def or res. 

I should also make mention of the Blossom skill. The Blossom skill plays with this idea of the re-roll. Essentially, the Blossom skill guarantees that a unit with the skill will always get at least two stat level ups when equipped. I think a lot of people try out the skill and think it's useless and then discard it. And to be fair, if you were to slap the skill onto a unit with no skills capped then Blossom isn't going to make a huge difference. Also, it halves your exp, so it probably just hurts a unit with no caps in the long run. Like we saw with Leonardo, the chance of not a single stat going up is exceptionally low, and yes this would be higher if you need two stats to go up, but without any caps, it's not going to be super significant. With a few stats capped, Blossom is going to make an absolutely massive difference. 

The Dawn Brigade is a group of units that are much better than they are given credit for. If you really understand the systems at play in Radiant Dawn, your knowledge can take you very far, and I think that the Dawn Brigade are hurt slightly because units like Edward and Micaiah have lopsided stats and expect you to catch onto the fact that they are very BEXP-able or Blossom-able or even without that investment, have way higher growths that people realize. I've use Edward on Maniac and he's consistently one of my best units start to finish - even with the bexp nerf I find him better than Nephenee, Mia, Shinon, and Soren (out of the units I take to the tower). It's kinda crazy to me that people tell me that he takes too much effort to train and then in the same breath tell me that I have to give my Seraph Robe and my Energy Drop and my Dracoshield and Paragon to Jill ASAP. That's Fire Emblem I guess, we're all going to have our favorites. 

This is a very longwinded way of me trying to articulate a few different things. First, I'm not sure I really believe in "fixing" the Dawn Brigade. If we just keep it to the early game ones - Micaiah, Edward, Leonardo, Laura, Aran, Nolan - I think they are a lot better than people give them credit for and I think a lot of their bad rap comes from Radiant Dawn not being the best at explaining its underlying systems. You could give them all a bases boost and they would benefit, but what unit wouldn't benefit from higher bases? You could give them all a growths boost and they'd benefit, but again, what unit wouldn't? In all honesty though, Aran might need a higher res base or growth though. That dude is a liability. As units they also all get a bad rap because they're featured in the hardest part of the game. That's a bit of a chicken and the egg situation though - are they bad because their chapters are hard or are their chapters hard because they are bad? I tend to think their chapters are just harder. They throw a lot at you and you don't have things like BEXP or the armory available and once you get those things the chapters get significantly easier. 1-3 is the hardest chapter in the game IMO. Dawn Brigade is also really hurt by people playing the game with the expectation that you can train all of your units or that Radiant Dawn is your standard Fire Emblem game. Radiant Dawn is weird and you're often given a misfit set of units to use (at least until part 3) and so it's often about just playing with the pieces that you have. People seem to get really up in arms any time you suggest doing anything that revolve even remotely putting in any sort of investment into a Dawn Brigade character i.e. "they take too much effort," "you have to favorite that unit for them to be viable." But like, isn't that how Fire Emblem is played? You give kills to the units you want to use and you tend to neglect the ones that you don't need to use in the long run. The Dawn Brigade is just that idea stretched to the extreme. There's enough exp to go around for a few units, but not enough for everyone. You have to make tough decisions about the units you want to use way earlier than any other FE game (of those I've played). 

As for some of the other units on your list? They have way bigger issues than bases and growth rates. Meg is the one that would benefit the most from higher bases/growth rates, but shhe has other issues too. Meg's low movement is going to make it really hard to set up kills for her since she can't reach anything. She also has a high constitution so you can't really shove her to get her around the map more easily either. Fiona has terrible availability and if she were available in 1-6-2 and 1-8 as  well that'd go a long way towards helping her. But also she's a horse unit in the game that introduced ledges to nerf horse units. 1-10 is horrible to her. It's horrible for Meg's low movement too.

Every non-Royal Laguz (bar Giffca, maybe Skrimir) is going to be garbage no matter what their stats are. The meter kills them. The only way to fix them is with a massive overhaul of how Laguz work in Radiant Dawn. I mentioned Giffca because his stats are actually good, and he comes with Laguz Gems. He loses his action on the first turn and that's not great since that's arguably the most important turn, but RD is so enemy phase based that transforming him in front of a mob and leaving him there isn't the worst thing. Skrimir is salvageable with Laguz gems too. Every other Laguz has a horrible combination of terrible availability and being so goddamn annoying to train when they are around. 

Tormod has terrible availability and there'd have to be a massive overhaul of either a) how exp works in RD or b) his chapter availability. If he were around through part 3 (on either side, really) he'd be a lot more usable. But in part 1 whenever he kills anything he gains single digit exp so it's impossible to train him, and then when he rejoins his stats are just way too low. I have the same exact issue with Zihark, but I don't think y'all are ready for that conversation... Maybe if his level were coded to be like 10/5 instead of 20/5 (same bases) he'd be a bit better. 

Lucia.......................... terrible availability

Pelleas. Again, terrible availability. His growths are actually really good! But training him up with only 2 maps before endgame is rough, even if his second map is the grind map. You might run out of tomes lol. You'd also need to train both his Dark rank and his staff rank and I just don't see that happening.

Kurth and Ena are a lot less trash than the other Laguz because of the pool skills. That's probably their greatest utility so they don't really need to be trained, though Kurth has great stats if you do. But like, why are you training a unit when you already have Ike and your 10 best units. If you really wanted him to be a good combat unit you'd have to change his availability.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I made this modification for me and I'm pretty happy with the changes made. I decided to share it. You are welcome to try it like I said before. It does make the game more reasonable in the intro stages. As I explained in the description, As for this modification, it is complete. I thought I would share this with like-minded folks who felt Meg, Aran, Edward, Leonardo, Lethe, Lyre, Vika, Nealuchi, Laura, and Kyza difficult to implement into their gameplay. 

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