Dunal

By the way, I'm thinking of doing something a bit crazy with magic. Bear with me on this one... but for now it will just be an experiment. Dark and Thunder magic are now only 1 range (but are buffed otherwise). Wind magic becomes 2-3 range. Fire and Light remain 1-2 range. Pretty crazy change, but I think it would be a really interesting one to not only further diversify magic types, but also to basically enable enemy magic users to be more common. Why? Because if they are all strictly 1-2, then I can't make enemy magic users too common without making them annoying. Having enemy casters who can only fight at 1 range means you have a much more likely chance to retaliating against them on enemy phase. Making them less... annoying. It also means I can create interesting stat changes for magic units. It's likely that Ilyana (and other tier 1 mages) will be given two magic types (So Ilyana can be given E fire or something) and I can increase her defence or HP even further (probably HP mainly). I may revert all this in the future depending on how people feel about it, but in practice it seems to work well (Ilyana is certainly unique now). And allows me to diversify enemy units a lot more. Mixing in a lot of Thunder magi or Druids won't be tedious for the player. So yay, the resistance stat becomes useful and relevant (not usually the case in the original game). Wind magic however... 3 range is going into fairly dangerous territory, but with the right tuning I think it can work out... and resulting in an interesting niche. Their MT is pretty bad as a result.

Yeah, they scale harder. 'El' tomes > 'Arc' tomes is a 4 MT difference between them. I don't think it was really an issue though since the MAG stat of pretty much any magic user was/is very high anyway. People comment on how "bad" tomes are but they're only ever going to ever be as good as the units who use them... or the RES of others. If the original RD had +10 MT on all tomes but each user has -10 magic not much would change... except effective damage. =o But making them scale to the point where using an upgraded tome actually means something was an clear improvement to be made. Before it was kinda lousy. Yay... 2 MT. Forging +4 MT on a tome gives you an Arc one, with better other stats. That is/was odd. It does mean that effective damage is going up. Arcthunder now has 39 MT on dracos. It probably balances out though since HP values are going way up. In fact, the whole reason why tome MT was so low to begin with probably was because of effective damage. So it's likely the developers just increased the base MAG of each unit instead.

Problem with Knights is that: A) Lengthier maps are not practical for them at all. FE6 is a good example of a game with a lot of these. B) Paladins/Heroes/Warriors etc... can usually "tank" just fine. C) Often have awful speed which just cancels out any durability advantage over the former. Or they either have mediocre offence (which can go hand in hand). One of the two. Put those together and they're usually redundant. Any of those are fixable though. And in some games/units they are. Effie doesn't seem to suffer from any of them and neither does FE10 Gatrie. Well. aside from 'B'. Plenty of units are 'tanky' in FE10, it's just that Gatrie just happens to have good offence too. And Tellius movement is kinder to armors than other games. But when enemies are stronger or have a lot of accuracy (so you can't "dodge tank" them) knights can be good. Assuming they also have stats. There's so much criteria for them to be good, thinking about it.

They'll still be capped at 120 HP, but their DEF and RES will just be higher. While for player units, or common enemies, HP is just going way up in favor of DEF/RES being a lot lower. It means that Armor knights would have say, 100HP and 28 DEF, which magi have 60 HP and 22 DEF. Instead of 65HP/35DEF and 45HP/20DEF. The former regulates damage numbers between each unit far better. While the latter makes armors almost invincible (and easy to heal) and mages die from a calm breeze (and harder to heal). Basically, tankiness being based around HP rather than DEF/RES is healthier (heh...) for the game. That's a fact. A unit being tanky to the point of taking 0-5 damage values is silly. But the opposite is also true (units being almost one-shot). It also has the function of making the more powerful healing items or staves less redundant. Yay for Concoctions! Dheginsea/Ashera will still have a ton of DEF/RES though. Hope that make sense. Mages are getting pretty much a flat out buff from this. But they need it. EDIT: *Invincible, not invisible. Callum isn't in this game. =p PS. Don't give 'Shade' to your Marshalls

Yeah, it's understandable to feel that way -- In that case I will just do this as a side release. I do plan to shift growths a bit further for the main version though (as in, bring them down a notch). And put a bit more emphasis on base HP as opposed to DEF/RES (as a means to control damage numbers better -- so magi aren't as squishy and tanks not as tanky). I am currently making a lot of changes to the Part 1 maps overall as well. Some more than others. Also, I'm currently making some heavy iterations on staff range. Heal/Mend now have 1-2 range, Recover and Barrier 1-3 range, Unlock 1-4 range etc... With staves being so expensive and healing items been so good, it felt necessary to make them more awesome. The downside is that ranks and WEXP will be harsher as a result. With HP going up and DEF/RES going down a bit, that's also another reason to give staves some love, since the actual healing values will be less powerful now (which is a good thing since it means staves like Recover have a valued purpose rather than Mend or even heal being good enough by themselves). Meg now has 38 base HP with base Laura healing only 16 with Heal. With 1-2 range this is now acceptable, and actually gives the player a strong reason to buy a Mend staff or Recover (which is available early). And yes... Some player classes will have around a 100 HP cap (Marshalls, Reavers and Tigers). Suddenly Archsages being stuck with only heal staves suddenly become a rather notable downside. You may actually have a strong reason to bring a Bishop now (They will now likely be the only class with AoE healing access as well, with the exception of Mist).

I'm not too concerned with skills. They were far more game-changing in FE4/5. The point of "classic" mode (or "number-scaling-reduction-mode", whatever you want to call it) is to have things simpler from a numbers standpoint and reduce scaling. Skills don't really tie into that. It's not so much making it like the older games for the sake of it, but to offer tighter numerical balancing that's very much like the old games, which can be seen as in improvement. And if it does appear to be a flat out improvement, it may well replace and become the ReDux hack altogether. That's why I'm releasing it as an experiment.

May I ask if there's any time frame for CH7x-12 Hard mode? As in, is it part of the FEE3 release or further ahead? Just asking in case It's worth waiting a bit to start another playthrough. If it's a couple months then I'll wait. I'd ask for Maniac too, but do feel free to spend all the time you need to make it as evil as possible >=o

Anything bar FE4. Although growths tend to consistently be in the 200-300% range which is also the case for this version. The dawn Brigade will likely all have 280-300% with say the Mercenaries having 240-260%. As opposed to FE4 bases and ~400% growths. Weapons and enemies would also be changing a lot. I mean, lowering bases doesn't actually change things practically -- it's just cleaner numbers and easier to track in relation to previous FEs. But lowering say, every unit's STR and DEF by 1 doesn't change anything. Changing growths however does have a dramatic effect on the game. Unit level advantages are less important, and underleveledness is less of an issue (as the base stat differentials are closer). It also means that pre-promotes like Sothe can be balanced to be weaker because everyone else's 15/1 or 20/1 stats will be worse when compared to their actual bases in tier 1, meaning Sothe can be closer towards them. Because growths are lower, a prepromote or higher leveled unit aren't going to need crazy bases to make sure they are not bad for their level. Logically, the higher growths are in a FE, the more unstable balance is. Higher growths = greater variance in expected gains and scaling as you move through the game, and can make the usability of a unit drastically more different with even just 5 levels or so. That doesn't mean though that all growths should be ~200% or lower, because that removes the sense of progression from the game. And no one likes 1 or 2 stat level ups nearly all the time. But older FEs had the right balance for the most part. Of course, it does matter on a stat-by-stat basis too. Having a really high HP/Luck growth is hardly gamechanging when it comes to scaling (so if they are really high to otherwise offset a 250-300% that's fine). But STR/DEF/SPD definitely is. Combined, those would rarely surpass 110% or so.

I'm fairly sure that's not the case. He may be able to equip the weapon -- but it's locked to Elincia. Unless it's the former fact you're strictly talking about. I don't think that it would be plausible to balance him around being able to use it either. It would mean that I would need to balance his stats around being able to use such an amazing weapon, which would make him worse when not using it. That concept applies to any unit with a powerful PRF weapon. For example, to look at it the other way, if Thani did not exist, I would need to buff Micaiah to least Ilyana's level for using just standard tomes (I say 'at least' since forced main characters should be allowed a bit of extra power budget). By the way, I'm actually thinking of releasing something purely experimental as part of the next release... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UShv1bGdSA&feature=youtu.be "Classic mode", where numbers, balancing and scaling are more in the vein of pre-FE9 Fire Emblems. With the exception of higher base HP and higher weapon MT (something I believe is excellent for balance and "feel" of the game -- Immortal Sword being an inspiration for this) as a means to balance STR/DEF/RES. How could this benefit gameplay? More familiarity and closeness to the older Fire Emblem games. Better emphasis in base stats over growths. Less harsher scaling, resulting in stronger balance in regards to units being under or overleveled. Less power-creep when it comes to the later stages of the game. This may well actually end up becoming the new "ReDux" if enough people like/prefer it. But I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this. Should this be an additional/separate project? Or replace the main project? Or do you feel it will be something unnecessary to begin with? Let me know.

Immortal Sword solves this issue pretty well: The stat colour indicates how blessed/screwed the unit is in that particular stat. If it's a colour very close to yellow then it means it is near its average. Green = blessed. Red = screwed. So even though it does not show growths when you immediately receive the unit, it allows the player to figure them out based on average stats.

I don't think this is necessary since it's easy enough to figure out growths by learning average stats based on the colour of stats at any particular level in the long run. For example if Uther's STR is yellow with 11 points at level 11, then it means you can work out that his STR growth is 50%. I think this is really cool, actually. A new unit is a mystery in regards to growths, but in the long run, you can work it out. A lot of the time you might be off by 5% but that's rather insignificant. It's good when a game gives you some clarity on something that is usually only found outside of the game. Yeah, I think it's good to have a difficulty mode for those who are not too skilled at FE and just want to experience the game. But I do wish that hard mode was added for the release. It makes make me optimistic for it, however. It's clear that the higher difficulties for this game isn't just a lazy "give x stats" to enemies. Otherwise there would be no reason hard mode isn't added yet if it were that simple. So they're obviously something more than that and based on the difficulty level of CH7!Hard, I expect the hard modes of the following maps to also be very challenging, and more than just stat upgrades. On that topic: would it be plausible to have separate balance for units and map terrain changes based on the difficulty? For example, if someone like Cybil or Leonard proves too weak in Maniac mode, could their base level/stat be upped a notch (basically, stats that would be too good for normal mode, but enough to keep them functional on maniac)? Even on Normal, Leonard for example has issues dealing damage without an effective weapon. On that note: I do think their 'knife' ability could only have the -3 MT penalty at 2 range. Currently there is rarely any reason for them to fight at 1 range.

That is indeed the case. I've now just finished CH12. Story-wise I enjoyed it a lot. In fact, everything non-gameplay related is great. That much is certain. I'll provide full feedback once I've played hard mode since I don't think it's a coincidence that I enjoyed the game up to CH7 more compared to the rest of the game. Past that your high mobility units just dominate and the maps don't really feel much different from each other. Start south (or north in the case of 7x) > charge upwards killing enemies along your way > kill boss. I was disappointed in that, but only because the mid section of the game (CH5 to CH7) was really strong (I had so much enjoyment out of those maps). But again, CH7 just so happens to be when hard mode ends currently. So if the later maps have far more nuance to them as a result of hard mode then my thoughts may change. It's not like it's bad to have one of those maps every once in a while, though. It's just that 7x to CH12 felt very same-y. I would repeat that CH6 is by far the most interesting map for reasons I've mentioned before (and I'd love to see more of that). It's tight and compact with multiple objectives. High mobility doesn't dominate. And huge incentive to split up your team (this is a big one!). Basically everything I like in a map. And maps I tend to dislike are those where you're just traversing your army from one side of the map to the other with little in-between. And as mentioned, I thought that the second half of the demo mostly amounted to that. Out of all those though I do predict that CH9 would be fine if it were just more difficult -- which is probably just a normal mode issue. And 7x has an interesting gimmick. But I'll refrain from being completely dead-set on my criticism until I've played hard mode. If CH12!hard ends up having lots of extra enemy pressure, or AI, or just being very smart/sneaky with reinforcements, staves, ballista, enemies chasing you behind, Elbert being hard to protect etc etc... It could well make the map far more interesting and I'll get a lot more enjoyment out of it. But if the map is just the same but with stronger enemy stats then I don't think my thoughts will change too much. Same with 7x or CH11.

Oh... really? There IS a map after CH11? That makes so much sense! I thought it ended really abruptly. You basically have a scene with the main cast going "We won!" "I don't think we've won yet...!" ...And then you get taken to trial map 1 as if it ended. =p And yeah Meredith and Issac destroyed almost 1/4 of the map, the rest of the NPCs about half of what's remaining from that. CH11 feels like you're on clean up duty with no other (meaningful/challenging) bonus objectives. There's not much feeling of involvement and no sense of urgency. You just kill a few dudes and then Richard at the end. And when I thought the game/part actually ended after that it felt extremely anti-climatic. But if CH11 is not the final map then I feel a lot better about it regardless. With tweaks to the NPCs and a perhaps an extra added bonus objective or complexity to the map (even if it's just a sub-boss added that moves after X turns). In fact, I think a dangerous sub-boss like what some of the other maps could make things more interesting. It's why I love CH6 so much. It has a sub-boss, a need to balance defense/offense in order to both protect the line and working towards killing the boss. And also the southern Ballista to kill for using the arena. There are 3 or 4 things you actually have to work towards. While CH11 is a) Kill some enemies as you make your way up. b) Kill boss.

I only really feel that the Prologue is now notably easier on hard mode which is fine because before it was silly. You had to turtle and not really use Isa/Harken because limited vulneraries and crazy strong soldiers. Other wise there are just fewer enemies. CH7 was fairly difficult and I imagine the hard mode versions following that are also challenging. And then there's maniac mode later on... But yeah I'm also quite disappointed in lack of hard modes for the later maps. CH11 feels fairly dull, possibly as a result (it's a bit unfocused/gimmicky, with NPCs doing most of everything for you, doesn't feel climatic at all). I'll go more in detail about that later. Although I almost don't want to judge it yet before hard mode is released for it. But as it stands, CH11 feels like a prelude to an immediate second more climatic battle, like the first of a 2-parter. Unless that is the case, but just not part of this release, or I'm missing something. Or judging too harshly. =L

Yes, Thunder has been buffed. Thunder/Elthunder/Arcthunder have 6/9/13 MT respectively for example. All magic scale better though now between ranks. 'Arc' tomes have 4 more MT compared to 'El' tomes for instance (rather than 2). Dark magic is also buffed and Available to Micaiah, Soren and Sanaki. Soren can't SS rank it though.

Game's been great overall so far (Just beat CH9). One thing I should point out though is that I don't really "get" 7x. Perhaps it's just I have a really really strong hate for narrow map design (where you funnel all of your units through a single corridor) but I killed the boss turn 3 and then the rest of the map wasn't... too engaging. The witches were a very minor annoyance and then you're fighting usually only two enemies at a time. And units like Magnus and Eiry become pretty bad due to the nature of the map also (it's just a long straight path). Maps like these kinda need close-reaching optional objectives where low movement units can be used -- there's no reason to have 10 deployed units all funnel through the same direction when it's not like all of them will have something to do (within context of map designs like these). The 'Slow' staff seems pretty bad -- very inaccurate and even if it does hit, is annoying at worst. Perhaps it should lower speed/skill or something. And the boss being kill-able on turn 3 seems like something that shouldn't be the case. In fact, I think on turn 3 the boss just didn't move -- so that could just be the issue. Although on hard mode, it may be different. I liked CH9 a lot. It's hard to fully rate it on normal mode since it's probably going to be easy regardless of design -- but if hard mode makes the turn count very tight I could see it being great. And CH7 is a good, challenging defense map. It would benefit though to have a far off optional objective -- like a village on the other side of the map or something (that is destroyed after X turns from a bandit). As an incentive to not completely turtle and sacrifice your defense (to a degree) and be rewarded for it. Of course, there is still an incentive to rush ahead to rout the map faster (for a better grade). Prologue still seems the hardest to S rank. That said, it has been improved a lot. I like the changes to it.

I don't think this matters nearly as much in this hack since the GM chapters are going to be much much more difficult -- and investment in Ilyana can be well worth it. Think of it as being similar regarding moving items to the GM. You invest EXP in a unit (likely 15/5 by the end of 1-F) who then becomes a very strong asset in the other maps she's in. There's notably going to be more dracoknights in part 3 and Soren can no longer use thunder (now uses dark instead). CH3-2 is most notable of this. But even with those stats you have on her -- I think she should still be a worthy deploy in a few maps in part 3 -- where dracos exist. Shame you didn't get the Arcthunder tome which has 39 MT on them. =p Then again, I'm guessing she hasn't reached A rank. Nolan having hit issues with the handaxe isn't uncommon. Pairing him with Meg or Edward is good for that I suppose.

Your Aran is definitely blessed (speed...) and your Ilyana is indeed rather underwhelming. But of course, everyone is going to vary. There is no way I'm buffing Ilyana more for instance -- on average she's great and will be so in part 3 (A mage with defense). It does seem like you're on the previous patch since it's impossible for Edward to have 18 STR unless you gave him the energy drop after promotion. As for Meg, one thing to note about her is that I do think she is the best support candidate for Leonardo. His longbows become amazingly accurate and Meg gets really tanky. She also has some great promotion bonuses. She also has the best Biorhythm out of any unit. Look at her curve. She also good movement regarding terrain now. I say this because the feedback for Meg hasn't been too great so far. But for the time being I'm going to avoid buffing her until people give her a chance since the recent changes. She has a lot going for her and also has the Promote / Bravesword / WoDuo combo available as well. I do think that Aran could use a tweak though. The last patch pushed him a little over the top. Bumping up his base level to 10 and capping his speed at 14 should be enough. Nolan I feel is fine. His +4 strength on promotion solidifies that, I should think.

Water affinity is pretty amazing I'll admit. Not quite as broken as earth in the original game but still very good. Double water is +6 DEF/RES and I imagine in the case of something like Brom/Mist it makes Brom ludicrously tanky. Which I think is fine since I plan to have more enemy magic users later in the game (relative to physical). And during mid/late part 3 expect to have all enemies in the 40-45 atk territory. They'll still 4RKO even someone like Brom with maxed supports if he gets doubled (likely the case TBH). And yeah, Leo/Eddie makes Eddie rather durable. Honestly, thinking about it, Water affinity makes Leo a better unit than you'd think. So while I did buff him a bit more recently I think he's fine otherwise. He's a great support unit and will no doubt be good in part 3. By the way, the reason why tier 1 caps are as low as they are is to promote er... promoting everyone at around level ~15. It almost completely deters the player from low-manning in conjunction with great promo bonuses. You get 10 master seals in total which is more than enough to promote everyone should you collect most of them. Considering that the entire dawn brigade is forced in Part 3 it makes sense to do things this way. Oh and Ilyana should be able to catch a break with the GM.

Ah, I've been looking forward to this! Will definitely be playing this a lot and will hopefully have a lot of feedback to share.

I've already released smaller patches. And I've also sent you a PM a while ago. For bonds I can take a look at changes. For Pain/Agony I think that would be a good idea for 'Maniac mode'. It's really not that crazy in practice -- simply based on the context of where ledges in the game. Is Meg now too good for being able to easily climb in 1-5 and 1-E? I really really doubt it. Otherwise I just look at it that armors just have enough training and strength in order to do so. Meg can lift a Cow... apparently. May be a tad silly but it's completely fair as far as balance goes. I like niches like this. Black Knight indeed has separate movement costs and his is a bit different. He has a 2 cost penalty for ledges for instance.

Ilyana isn't really nerfed at all. Her base level went down but her bases are overall better and and she gains more EXP from being lower. Also Bolting. Note the +4 base defence especially. =p Oh and Aran is indeed a boring guy, with boring stats and a completely flat Biorhythm. I think it suits him a lot. Also... Patch 1.3a Patch 1.3b CHANGELOG Part 1 1.3 Next patch will have map/difficulty tweaks. Once again, feel free to patch and resume playing as normal. I'm now updating the OP for the unit changes. EDIT: Done!

By the way, in the latest patch, there's an error where the Iron Axe is notably better than it should be (was likely caused by having identical stats to a specific Laguz weapon). I'll be releasing a fix for that later today along with some further tweaks to units. Also, resuming a save file after patching should result in any unit changes being automatically applied. So if I were to increase Micaiah's magic by 1, it'll be reflected when you resume playing. This doesn't occur for promotion bonuses however. That's a neat aspect compared to GBA hacks, at least. So any changes I make to units in the future shouldn't undermine your save file too much. This does give me more freedom to make moderate changes on occasion. Looking at Edward I've decided to nerf his promotion bonuses for the time being, as well as a couple of minor adjustments. Some further changes to other units too. I shall update the OP for that shortly. I'm also looking into some moderate adjustments to terrain, being far more favourable towards armor knights and actually giving them some movement niches (less movement cost in sand and water compared to other foot units, no penalty in brushes, and here's the kicker... No penalty when climbing ledges!). Oh and horses can cross water now. Good for them.

As noted in the FAQ, ppf-o-matic should be fine. Do try both patches and make sure to always keep a backup of the original ISO in order to re-patch.

Thanks for the constructive feedback. The 1.2 changes I think should be enough for Leo, Meg and Fiona stat wise. Leo might need a little more help but I'd like to see what others think. If it means giving him a brave bow or something then so be it. And so long as Fiona is perfectly usable in the maps she's in then that's fine. It would be really difficult to make her a pc in 1-6-2 considering that the event that changes her is linked to all the npcs as well. Adding a separate event for that would take forever to get working, unfortunately. What I could do for Meg/Armor knights is actually just outright remove movement penalties for thickets. That should give them a movement niche for say, 1-6 and 1-8. Possibly marsh too. The logic I suppose works in that they are so used to moving clunky that through their strength, the terrain shouldn't obstruct them. Tormod and co. should be usable assuming that Vika/Muarim are used in part 1 and Tormod is promoted and gains ridiculous promotion bonuses (which I think suits his desire to 'grow'). Vika/Muarim should be useful in part 4 by BEXP alone since they won't just proc HP/Luck all the time. And if used in part 1 will just have amazing bases for their level. Perhaps you are right with Edward. The problem with him is that he's reliant on doubling but when he does, coupled with high str/def/hp, makes his offence amazing while not being too bad defensively either. Although, without favouritism I don't find him particularly amazing. The intention was/is to make him more of a mercenary (to separate him more from other swordies) so perhaps I need to push him more in that direction in that he's less reliant on doubling but will do so less often. I think I could do with replacing the Brave Sword with a bow at least. That pushes Edward/Leo to more where they should be. Biorhythm indeed has been tweaked further. The intention is to just really lower avoid rates overall but still let the player reliably avoid on certain units at higher Biorhythm. I have definitely scaled back on the hit rate penalties however -- and made it even easier to hit if the enemy has lower Biorhythm. As for difficulty, part 1 is meant to be the easiest part so while I'll make some adjustments I'd want to keep it that way. I do think 1-6 or 1-E are especially at the level I'd want them to be though. Although I do plan to rework 1-E a bit. Part 2 is generally much harder. Killing Ludveck is going to take some work. EDIT: I was hoping that the (buffed) longbows that exist would give Leo an extra niche (such as attaching magi with no counter). Do you feel this is not the case? Also, you didn't mention Aran or Zihark. Thoughts on those?