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[FE13] Fates: Meyneth Rebalancing Project


MeynethWilder
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Hi! I've been working for some time on a Fates rebalancing project, and it's finally ready for sharing. Quick warning, I don't usually have to write English, it isn't my first language so I apologize for any gramatical or redaction mistakes along the way, specially since this is gonna be a long post. Now , I want to get a few things out of the way:

What is this Project about?

This is a rebalancing project for Fire Emblem Fates which aims to bring up to the same level of power the different elements of gameplay which the player interacts with. This includes:

  • Base Stats
  • Growths Rates
  • Maximum Stats
  • Pair Up Bonuses
  • Skills
  • Weapon Triangle Dynamics
  • Weapon Stats
  • Some Promotion Paths

These changed apply for both Classes and Characters. Every single Class and Character has changed at least a little bit and for some classes like Master at Arms everything, including the name of the class, has changed. Things that haven't changed are Maps, units and objectives, and things such as scripts and recruitment conditions. That might come at some other point in time but I'd have to plan it beforehand. Now:

Why Fire Emblem: Fates?

Now, I have to be honest right now and say that Fates isn't my favourite Fire Emblem, and that's hardly a hot take. However, the gameplay this game has to offer is extremelyitneresting and one of my favourites in the franchise. The weapon variety and interactions are great, the maps are fairly fun, the classes all have great appeal, and the characters have a lot of potential. The story is a waste of time, but must of you know this. As such, I wanted to grab the potential this game has already and patch it in a way I believe makes it more appealing to play,

I can't deny as well that a good reason of why I'm modding Fates is that there are powerful and noob-friendly tools to do it. This is something I've wanted to do for a while and finding there was an actual way I could do it was honestly incredible.

So what changed and for which reason?

Base stats, Growth Rates, and Maximum Stats for Classes all have changed. Except for HP and Luck, every stat total is the same for every class, for the most part every base class has a Base Stat total of 35, and all promoted ones of 52, except for classes that have some mixed offense which get 1 or 3 more points respectively. The same logic applies for Growths and Stat Caps, same total except for Hp and Luck, and a little bit Higher for mixed offensive classes, so Dark Knight would have a higher Stat Total than Sniper, but not by much. General is also an exception to compensate for their lower Movement.

Characters all have the same 300-305% Growth Rate total, spread out on their 8 stats, Modifiers all range between +2 and +3, (the Shapeshifters have +4), and their Pair Up Bonuses have changed. This is again to bring some parity to the game, and make the janky units like Rinkah and Odin a little bit better, probably a lot in some cases. It's for the best that they'll never reveal why everyones Mods and Growths are the way they are because the discussion around it in 2016-2017 was really engaging but cases like Rinkah, Hinata, and Beruka are just absurd and needed a boost.

I'd like to use Hinata as a quick example, as well as his Base Class and intended Promoted Class Master at Arms (now called Fencer).

Hinata
Base Stats 28 11 4 13 15 11 9 8
Growth Rates 60% 40% 15% 35% 35% 45% 45% 25%
Modifiers 0 1 0 0 -1 0 2 0
                 
Samurai
Base Stats 20 5 2 7 9 5 4 4
Growth Rates 20% 15% 0% 20% 25% 15% 5% 10%
Maximum Stats 50 25 22 27 28 26 24 24
                 
Fencer
Base Stats 25 10 2 9 9 7 8 7
Growth Rates 30% 20% 0% 15% 15% 15% 10% 5%
Maximum Stats 65 33 25 34 32 32 30 28

 

So, while I always thought that Hinatas bases were just fine, his growths always were a coin toss, and bizzarre for a Samurai. But, you always had the chance to promote to Master at Arms and take advantage of higher Str and Def to complement his growths, and probably his Modifiers if you decided to use him. Why would you, though, when Ryoma and Hana are better Samurai, and Swordmasters, and even Masters at Arms, and Oboro is easier to use, and Spear Master is so good? 

And this is what this mod is mostly about, to hopefully make you try characters you proviously ignored, or cringed at how bad they were when you did. This is gonna be unappealing to a lot of you reading this, I know. There are arguments to be made about how promoted recruits should have low growths, either because they're given to you early, or because they're meant to be used only if you lost enought units in your run, etc. But to be fair, this game has been around for long enough that we've all soloed Birthright with Ryoma enough times, and Fire Emblem is such a versatile franchise that there are endless challenges to be attempted, modded or not. This is just one that strives for fairness.

Now, I won't explain all of them, but some other Important changes include:

  • A lot of Classes have changed names.
  • The Spear Fighter class set is now: Sentinel (Spear Master) < Halberdier (Spear Fighter) > Fencer (Master at Arms. Some skills have also changed.
  • The Ninja and Diviner class sets are now: Assassin (Master Ninja) < Ninja > Summoner (Basara) < Mage (Diviner) > Sage (Onmyoji). Some skills have also changed.
  • Puppeteer (Mechanist) no longer promotes from Ninja and has different skills.
  • The Oni Chieftain and Villager class sets are now: Warrior (Blacksmith) < Barbarian (Oni Savage) > Chieftain (Oni Chieftain) < Villager > Merchant. Skills have also changed a little bit.
  • It's important to mention that Kitsune and Nine-tails have gained +1 Movement.
  • Two separate Weapon Triangles. Sword > Axes > Lances   /    Bow > Tomes > Daggers. These two don't interact with each other. There's now something to be gained from having Swords, and Tomes in the same class, or Axe and Bows, to have different advantages, or neutralities.
  • A lot, if not all, of the Luck% trigger Skills have increased to 2XLuck.
  • A lot of Skills have changed classes. As an example: Summoner (Basara) learns Quixotic, and Replicate. 
  • You know how all of the S Rank Classes have Innate stat bonuses? All clases have those, but not in the same amount. Berserkers still have +20 Crit, Falcon Knight have +5 Avoid, and +5 Dodge. These were meant to be completely unique innate skills, but unfortunately I have not the knowledge to code those on my own. These bonuses intend to make up for that, accentuating the strengths of each class.
  • There are no S rank weapons anymore, but there are still S ranks. I think there's more to be gained that way, you get to use a cool weapon in a less restrictive setting, but you still gain the Damage and Hit Rate bonus for achieving S rank. It's a compromise, but a fun one, I think, AND probably mostly irrelevant.
  • Grandmaster is now available as a female class (Credits to Moonling, but more on that later).

On opinions and taste.

I just want to make a quick statement on the nature of this patch. A lot of the changes made here reflect my own opinion of what makes a good Fire Emblem game: That I can play any character I want and they'll turn out fine. That level ups feel rewarding by not being incredibly or pointless like Resistance growths tend to be in some entries. That by the end of my run, some units will have Capped at least one Stat, it makes it feel like you progressed something. That no class feels like an afterthought or just there for flavour (except for Merchant, what are you even?). 

I do enjoy every other kind of Fire Emblem, but this is what I always look for in the series. That's why Awakening is so high on the list for me, it gives me a huge cast of Characters, a huge list of Classes, and there's one way or another in which they're all usable in any given chapter, the games allows you to and that's awesome to me. When the game gives me Henry, I can use him, train, reclass him, and he'll be good, maybe even great.

So yeah, Hisame is a pickle simp, and Merchant is a weird class, but if I want my Merchant Hisame to kill Anankos, i'll do it god-dammit. So yeah, that's a big part this project ended up the way it did. Now for future instances:

A GBA-like version.

So yeah, I've already thought about doing a version of this game with GBA-like numbers. This means Caps for promoted stats in the 20-30's, lower growth rates (about 5% less in every growth, and 10% less in HP), and such. Again, I like Awakening's Caps, and Growths range, but that suits that games progression, amount of chapters, and such, but Fates could use a GBA distribution and work out great, so yeah, this'll probably happen in the next months, after this version gets updated I correct any errors if there are any.

Some extras included on this mod, and credits to their authors.

These are unrelated to gameplay and I will not list them here, BUT this mod includes a Moonling's "Fates Icon Project", and "Female Grandmaster" mods, and parts of the "FE Fates Promotion Textures Patch Redux" project. These will change your weapon Icons, they make the Female Grandmaster possible, and the Textures mainly enhance the experience. These don't of course affect the changed I made, but add tremendously to the experience and I want to give credit to their creators, tell me please if I'm missing someone:

Moonling, whose work you should absolutely check out. He created the guides which allowed me to make this project in the first place, and was always really patient with my questions.

YiannisG and Mathcat, and who made an amazing work on the Promotion Textures Project, and deserve a ton of praise for it.

Here's a link to the mods included on this project, ALL CREDIT GOES TO THE CREATORS MENTIONED ABOVE:

FE FATES PROMOTION TEXTURES PATCH REDUX

FATES ICON PROJECT

FEMALE GRANDMASTER

The Info

INTEGRATED CHARACTER INFORMATION Contains information about characters, in an integrated manner.

INTEGRATED CLASS INFORMATION Contains information about classes, in an integrated manner.

CLASS INFO Contains information about classes, by categories: Base Stats, Growths, Max Stats, on separated images.

CHARACTER INFO Contains information about characters, by categories:  Base Stats, Growths, Modifiers, on separated images.

ITEMS Information about items. Pretty simple

What's the difference between the Integrated and non-integrated info? For the Integrated Info you'll see everything about that Character or Class all together. For the other one, you'll see every class Base Stats, or Growths, all together, like this.

INTEGRATED

Spoiler

 

image.thumb.png.90be9964e4dbf0a40ac6d8f2373a7f31.png

image.thumb.png.2f58a054c0c9663f3ee387a2b23b46da.png

NON-INTEGRATED.

Spoiler

image.thumb.png.63877a5ef1505506c09c7bcbbbcaabaf.png

  

So there's the difference, one shows you all you need to know about a class or character, the other one, all you need to know about a categories: bases, growths, etc. On the download link for the mod, I'll attach all the images as well. I'll probably never share the spreadsheets for this, mostly of compatibility issues between the fonts I use and other devices. If there are any problems with how I'm sharing this info, maybe the image quality is too bad for you too understand, or whatever, please let me now. 

PROJECT LINK

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mhU2K6Hdk-sPJ6gOVEtVAh8x9fruKvpH?usp=sharing

Help me make this better!

If you have any suggestion, comment, or feedback on this project, please by all means, let me know.

As I've said, I don't trust my english redaction 100%, which might prove true for the class descriptions I wrote for the Class Info as well, so therer's bound to be a mistake here or there. Same this for the project itself. There might be an error somewhere, if you catch it let me know! I've seen these numbers on a spreadsheet for so long that it's become hard for me to notice them. I know for sure the Items section could've been put together better but it'll do for now.

And thank you to everyone who actually is brave enough to play this, it's be tremendously rewarding to me if anyone actually enjoyed it. This was a project meant for myself, but I've had so much fun trying custom FE games that I've wanted to give it a try, hope you won't be dissapointed!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by MWilder
Spoiler images correction
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  • 2 weeks later...

I'll say I find a lot of stuff here interesting, and will probably use it for my next playthrough since it definitely seems like a good way to encourage me to at least switch up my class choices.

But the main reason I'm commenting is a question about the data, Corrin's growths and caps in the documentation match a +mag-lck build, did you mean to include those modifiers in? Also, the photo for Pegasus Knight and Falcon Knight still show a lance being used, but the skill set on the right says they use bows now?

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  • 3 months later...

Hey what's up!

I'm interested in trying your take on Fates as I've kinda burned out from all the GBA hackroms but I'm kinda clueless as to how I should go about using the files you've provided (and 3DS emulation in general). Can you give me some pointers?

Thanks a lot!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been playing this rebalance lately and I like it so far, though I have been running into some issues here and there on Lunatic difficulty. For one, Chapter 5 in the prologue of the game is impossible because of the changes made to Kaze's base stats. He lost upwards of 5 points of resistance and enough speed to the point where he can no longer double the enemy mages in that chapter while paired with Rinkah. I even got some good RNG on leveling him up where I could, but it still wasn't enough to make it past the onslaught of mages near the boss without getting Corrin or someone else killed. This is strictly a problem of base stats being reduced, as even 0% Growth runs on Lunatic don't encounter this issue. I'd recommend taking another look at the base stats on characters and making sure there are no issues that can prevent progression, or that make a character unhelpful in the chapter they join in.

Looking forward to future updates!

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On 6/22/2021 at 1:12 PM, xikarra said:

Hey what's up!

I'm interested in trying your take on Fates as I've kinda burned out from all the GBA hackroms but I'm kinda clueless as to how I should go about using the files you've provided (and 3DS emulation in general). Can you give me some pointers?

Thanks a lot!

I'm assuming you're emulating on Citra here, but from what I gather the process is relatively the same on Luma.

You'll need a few things to get started, first you'll need your rom of Fates. (obviously)

You also need to decrypt your rom as well if it hasn't already been decrypted, which you can do by using the Batch CIA 3DS Decryptor found here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/batch-cia-3ds-decryptor-a-simple-batch-file-to-decrypt-cia-3ds.512385/

The instructions to using it are listed in the post, and once your game has been decrypted, you can extract the files from the rom and begin modding using the DotNet3DSToolkit found here: https://github.com/evandixon/DotNet3dsToolkit/releases (scroll down to the bottom of this github for the actual download, you don't need the source code files)

To use DotNet3DSToolkit, extract the files into a folder of your choice and open ToolkitForm.exe. Then, select your Fates rom to extract, and make a new folder containing your rom dump. Click Extract, and it should dump your files correctly. If an error appears, you likely didn't decrypt your rom. From here, I'd recommend making a copy of this folder just in case you mess up in the modding process.

From there, go into your newly dumped folder, click on the "RomFS" folder, and move the files from the Meyneth Project folder into this folder. When you're done, open DotNet3DSToolkit back up, and click on the Build tab. Select your dump folder as the Source Directory, and then save a new output rom, which will become your modded game. (Name it whatever you like and click Save.) Hit the Build button, wait for it to finish, and congrats! You've now installed a mod for Fates!

There's a lot more mods out there for Fates on sites such as Gamebanana, and most of them follow similar modding instructions. When installing a new mod, be sure to rebuild your game files into a rom with DotNet3DSToolkit. Be wary of any conflicting files breaking other mods, particularly the GameData files as they are commonly shared between large projects and could break certain features of these mods. One mod I would recommend off the bat that doesn't break your game is the Fates Ghosting Shader Fix by Moonling (https://gamebanana.com/mods/51424), which removes the weird shader effect that makes the game look awful when upscaled to higher resolutions. It's really just a cheat code you can plug into the Cheats section of Citra with no issues and no need to rebuild your rom.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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