Viceroy

Nearly all promoted enemies after route join have baby stats. Level 20 shamans have better stats than level 5 druids. Also, the chapter where you defend Pontifax Mansel ends after only 3 turns. If you are still interested in this patch let me know and I'll give some more input.

High level of challenge is the most important. Most of Fire Emblem is easy when you can just take your best units and form an impassable wall against which all the mook enemies will kill themselves, then just clean up 1 turn later with heal staves and repeat until you kill the boss and seize the throne. Even worse is when you don't even HAVE to form a defensive line, because enemies are too few and far between, and they just come at your 12 unit army one at a time and you smash their shit with WTA in single turns. This is why I only play insanely difficult ROM edits these days.

I took a quick check at your version introduced yesterday, QE. I noticed that you gave Gilliam a lance with 60 uses that increases his defense by 5 as long as it is equipped. Although the slight buff was certainly needed, I do not feel that it was enough to balance him with the rest of your characters. What must be considered is the almost certain lethality he will be facing when he is getting attacked twice per combat round by 4/5 enemy units, and since some mobs will feature enemies of multiple weapon types and certainly magical attacks, it makes Gilliam terribly situational and not deserving of a deployment slot or experience points. I think the fix you have offered is both too shy and needlessly awkward in its implementation. My proposal is to drop the Prf weapon approach and do some serious editing to Gilliam's stats, until the advisable effect of his being turned into a near impenetrable wall (with skillful usage) with little combat effectiveness is achieved. I would suggest the following: Base: Str 9 -> 7 Skl 6 -> 3 Spd 3 -> 2 Def 9 -> 11 Res 3 -> 6 Growth rate: HP 90 -> 100 Str 45 -> 35 Def 55 -> 75 Res 20 -> 60 Stat max: HP 60 -> 80 Def 29/30 -> 34/39 This achieves what I view to be the most desirable effect of keeping Gilliam a highly defensible unit with little offensive prowess or maneuverability. He is fat enough to be stationed tactically to draw a mob, with the near guarantee of his survival, at the exchange of doing little offensively thus necessitating quicker killings from other units. In this way the player must choose whether to field Gilliam and exchange faster enemy mortality and positional momentum, perhaps hindering them from meeting time-sensitive goals, for more reliable and safer combat in general. In this way Gilliam achieves a unique niche which is excellent for flavor and variety. This is just one suggestion of character balance that would improve the game as a whole. I do hesitate to offer too much more critique in this specific area, as I am not certain whether you are ready or not to bother with character balance yet. All right; that might be enough. We'll see when I get there again. **Edit** Bayonet is NOT locked to Amelia in the version I first picked up. You may have changed it since then, but double-check if that's what you still intend to happen. I've never seen the "Flames" tome; is it supposed to spawn on Lute? **Edit** You should start assigning version numbers to the patches you release. It helps improve communication between everyone who wants to talk about your hack. Start with the one you most recently released, and then give a numeric notation to each subsequent release you make thereafter.

A few complaints: In Eirika's route the ocean seal appears on a pirate in her first chapter, both in vanilla and in yours. In Ephraim's it appears in a chest in Gheb's chapter, however it does not in yours. I think you may have forgotten to include an ocean seal in Ephraim's route. There are a lot of myrmidons beginning with the route split who come with nearly every stat maxed, sometimes with silver or killing swords. They are always extremely dangerous, and if accompanied by other enemies require RNG abuse in order to keep the lives of your units. Some chapters have several of these. Again, I'm not opposed to making the game difficult, but you may be going about it slightly wrong. First, why does only one class have super stats? Why not let other classes have the occasional super unit? Secondly, scratch what I just said and stop making such insanely difficult enemies! We want the game to be challenging; not theoretically impossible, and if an enemy cannot reliably be beaten without RNG abuse I think that's a bit too hard. The occasional "mini-boss" unit with super stats is fine with me, but make it so that his movement patterns don't cause him to come until the player is ready. That, or only have him approach you once most other enemies in the area are dispatched. Or, just lower their stats a little bit - there's no reason for them to be guaranteed to double everyone with high damage and chance to critical, AND THEN have maxed dodge, defenses, resistance and 45 HP (and did I mention the 6 move?) to be difficult to kill themselves. What I would do is this: think of the archetypal unit in each class. Mymidons specialize in speed and skill. Give the occasional super unit max speed and skill, perhaps with a nice weapon now and then, and 6 move. Don't ignore other classes though - give them the occasional miniboss unit as well. Mercenaries could have maxed skill and other stats higher than usual. Shaman could have max defense and strength, but minimal speed, perhaps as low as 0 for flavor. Cavaliers could serve as wild cards - one miniboss cav has maxed speed and a silver lance, one has maxed skill and strength, another may have 8 move and max def and res. Be creative. Another minor, non-urgent complaint is that of weapon vs price balance. One of the first things I noticed is that you made the Hatchet buyable. This is truly a blessing and I think it is for the best, but it should not cost the same (per use) as a hand axe. The hand axe is heavier and less accurate, and not getting weighed down by heavy weapons is extremely important in this game. So is accuracy. In fact the hatchet is SO GOOD that I don't even use an iron axe anymore - the hatchet has effectively replaced it, AND freed up a slot that would otherwise be allocated to a hand axe. The hatchet is far more useful than the hand axe, so it should only follow that it be more expensive. Some other similar balance neglect: The beacon bow costs less per use than the longbow, there are no buyable iron swords on the world map, the bayonet costs 250 per use brand new but the spear is still a whopping 9000, 600 per use, and its usefulness pales in comparison to that of the bayonet. No need to "trust you;" if you'll recall I had literally no choice but to restart the game after beating the first 4 chapters because I literally could not progress. How much we talkin' here? Needs to be a lot. But I promised I wouldn't comment too much on unit balance till you were ready. The PSP has its own operating system, so you can install emulators like VBA or no$ onto it. The rest, as they say, is history. **Edit** Another thing, while I'm at it - thanks partly to poor AI and partly to god-like enemy units, and majorly to the inability to progress more than 2 spaces per phase, Innes, Gerik and Tethys are statistically GUARANTEED to die before you are able to reach them in Eirika's route. Please do something to fix this!

And you think this is bad? "Any other cavalier" starts out with much lower bases than he does, and so are not nearly as useful through the early game as Seth. It's only right that their deployment should eventually be rewarded by catching up to and exceeding the unit who is basically the biggest reason you are able to SURVIVE chapter 5. This is common principle and it's absurd that you would challenge it. Queen Elincia, scratch what I said about nerfing/buffing certain units. To be honest I was shortsighted there, because I only spoke about a few and neglected to touch on the fact that, really, Sacred Stones vanilla is far from being balanced anyway. So if I only had you adjust 5 or so units it would be a little bit silly in light of the other 30 or so remaining untouched. Focus on other parts of the game for now. If/when you get around to wanting to balance units individually, let us know. Then I'll offer more input.

^ lol He has thief utility, which is already invaluable. Why should he be able to fight too? If anything he should be nerfed so that he's no more than a mobile support ward and chest looter. You realize thieves and assassins get extra experience, right?

Hey QE, just stopping by again to thank you for the great patch. You have a good grasp on balance and subtlety in aestheticism. I especially like the Bishop you added in 6x. Was lots of fun out-smarting that thing. Just a few small balance grips though: I think Gilliam might be useless. He doesn't have enough speed to avoid being doubled, and thanks to faster, stronger enemies he won't survive more than 2 rounds from anything. Give him a huge defense boost, or a small speed boost please, cuz right now there's no reason to use him. I would also give Forde and Kyle a bit of love. I didn't even have to use them in 6x; just gave Orson ~35 exp and Ephraim got the rest. Nerf Ephraim too. Seth was better balanced before you gave him back his growths. You see, the first 6 or so chapters are really hard and Seth is the only reason you're even able to SURVIVE chapter 5, much less get all the treasure. You had the right idea before by making him strong enough to help you get past the early game, but such little late-game potential that you should have to make a decision on using him or not instead of his deployment becoming a non-question. Keep up the great work.

I don't think it's possible to balance around "casual" play since everyone's "casual" style is subjective, dynamic, and inefficient. There's not really a rule that can be made to balance "casual" playing that can't be denounced as arbitrary or inconclusive. Otherwise, I agree, although I think that asking for all that at once might be a bit too much for just one guy, authoring such a young patch. I think that fixing it simply for S-ranking, and giving multiple difficulty levels (implemented using different patches if necessary) would be highly satisfactory for now. Catering to different FE players of different skill levels will overall make the game more accessible than re-balancing for two entirely different styles of play, one of which is very noticeably less popular than the other.

No, seriously, fix the bird hair. There is no reason for everyone's portrait to have bird hair.

For the most part I feel you are moving in the right direction, and I congratulate and thank you for taking the time and effort to make this patch. However, I must express my discontent in a few areas... For one thing, the changes you make for some units are too little to be of consequence - for instance, the "random 5% buffs/nerfs", mentioned earlier by someone else. To be frank, anything less than a change of 15% is too insubstantial to be noticed, especially for units that start at levels higher than 1. Assuming 38 level-ups across a 20/20 plane, a 5% nerf/buff is the mere difference of 1.9, or, ~2.0 in each given stat. Obviously this makes little difference at all, especially upon consideration that this is only reflected after all 38 levels have been achieved. The lack of consequence is especially reflected in your decision to nerf undisputed s-ranking goddess Clarine's Speed, Magic and Luck stats by 5% each - again, a step in the right direction, however, to be realistic it changes little. Practically speaking she will still be able to ORKO anything she wants to, as she is only losing out on a mere ~2.0 each in her Speed and Magic stat, this again only being seen AFTER 38 levels. You should try to make any changes more drastic than this. My only other major gripe is your neglect for improving late-joiners such as Cecilia and Klein, or, conversely, worsening early-joiners. The longer it takes for a unit to join, the more likely it is they are being outclassed by units that are already in your force. Concentrate more on balancing from this perspective.

Also that wasn't funny.

^ I think Serenes' database has some specific info on all of the requirements for s-ranking in each category.

All of their hair is bird.

I still say Eliwood is trash. If nothing else he should not be purported better than Lyn is. I said it before and I think one or two agreed with me here: Eliwood has NOTHING going for him. He has a terrible, risky enemy phase, not enough str OR spd to kill anything in the player phase, low bases and average growths. The only stat he has is Luck, which is useless unless you're an AVO-stacking dodge king like Guy, Raven or Serra. Put him in low-mid with the rest of the junk.