Augmented Antics

I want to ask something, though...did editing the game in Paragon give you any issues? When I try to edit anything and bring it into Citra to try it out, the game just takes me to some debug test map. Your mod didn't seem to do that.

Since you've added a speed penalty to longbows, I was thinking you could add speed penalties for other weapons to simulate weapon weight, like -3 speed on Steel Swords. It would offer more incentive to use different weapons instead of just strictly upgrading to higher tiers.

...in which it was initially going to be called "Stoner Emblem," but that was too on-the-nose. So, what exactly is this? Well, this is basically Conquest with one major difference: your army is a gang of Stoneborn! Using the power of Paragon by thane98, I cooked up this hack that turns almost every playable unit into the Stoneborn class. However, what makes this interesting is that your army isn't just a bunch of typical Stoneborn...they assume variants that are compatible with player usage. That means they have class growths, learnable skills, weapon variety, promotions, and subclasses! Note that this was tested for Hard mode and only partially tested for Lunatic mode. This was not at all made with Birthright and Revelation in mind. Features: 1. Subclasses separated from the actual Stoneborn enemy class, so the enemy class itself is untouched. 2. A variety of rock weapons, such as personal rock weapons in place of Regalia, rocks that have different ranges and combat utility, and Gleam/Shining rock weapons for magic Stoneborn classes. 3. Color-coded field sprites so you can immediately tell subclasses apart (was also going to color-code in-battle textures, but this turned out be a larger undertaking than I was willing to even put up with, so I left it alone). 4. Enemies that may drop skills that the player may want but may not have access to. 5. Subclass variants with their own class bases, growths, and skill lines. 6. Units aggressively asserting dominance all throughout the game. 7. Anything I may be forgetting at the moment, and I probably am. Special Notes/Known Issues: 1. Due to how the game handles Corrin during the prologue, they cannot start as a Stoneborn without causing issues. However, upon beginning Conquest, one of the first enemies that you fight will drop a Heart Seal along with their weapons. 2. Kaze and Velouria have proven themselves tirelessly troublesome. When Kaze rejoins after Chapter 11, he joins as a higher-leveled unit at the cost of the game seeing him as a different character from the prologue. To get around this, he needed to be forced into reverting back to how he was in the prologue at the cost of losing his levels. Velouria, for some reason, refuses to spawn during her paralogue despite her dialogue cutscene still playing with Keaton. As of right now, after racking my brain over it, I can't figure out why this happens. And quite frankly, I've gotten so annoyed at this that I can't be bothered to keep hacking away at it. So, no Velouria. 3. I can't quite figure out how to place items in cutscenes as of right now, so certain bosses will drop Corrin's upgraded Stone Yato at around the points they typically get it. Iago had to trade one of his staffs to make room for Corrin's final one, so they'd be guaranteed not to miss it. At least you have an opportunity to get it earlier than usual! 4. Some DLC items may not work or will be rendered incompatible, as the new rock weapons and items are borrowing their item slots. 5. Units can pair-up but they cannot enter Attack Stance, as this is an attempt to keep the outranging attacks from being terribly overpowered. Pairing up was initially going to be disabled, but this surprisingly made the game much harder than it needed to be. 6. Azura is unchanged, as players may rather have a Songstress anyway. 7. Units still keep their original joining skills. 8. Units can still reclass into other classes with Friendship and Partner Seals. Not quite sure how to stop that, however. 9. Any other issues I'm forgetting at the moment, and I probably am. Screenies: And now, the download itself! On 3DS, this is loaded like other typical Luma mods. On Citra, this can be placed in the game's Mods folder. Remember that the modded files need to be in the "romfs" subfolder. Since this hack reclasses units into typically unavailable classes, it may run the risk of getting you shadowbanned if connecting to Fates Internet. So in case you still care about that, don't connect to the Internet with it.

Am I doing something wrong, or is Chapter 3 really this much of a difficulty spike? For a point this early in the game, I don't think I've ever experienced such a jump in difficulty in any official game or ROM hack.

The description for Olwen's Windstorm is inaccurate. It says it has the Brave effect on it, but when using it in battle, it only attacks once.

No. I simply open WiiScrubber after the fact, load the ISO and it just eats up RAM for a few minutes until I get the error. And it only happens after patching the ROM, never before.

Unfortunately, opening the ROM in WiiScrubber gives me an "out of memory" error after doing the PPF patch.

I'm not sure if this is an issue with the hack or the skill system, but some skills seem to work under questionable conditions. Tana's personal skill says it negates critical attacks against her, but when going up against a Myrmidon with a Killing Edge, the skill only seemed to work on Player Phase. The same Myrmidon then had no problem critting her into oblivion on Enemy Phase.

Another bizarre thing is that while on the map where Tauroneo joins, his replacement squad starts as playable units (which I technically don't have a problem with since babysitting dumb green units isn't fun times), and three of yours are force deployed in return. Lehran, for some reason, is able to be removed from deployment.

Everything seems to be in working order now. Although this doesn't make the game unplayable, on escape maps, some units that aren't Micaiah's replacement end the map when they escape anyway. Nasir also counts as Laura on the third map, and characters will sometimes talk through other characters (Micaiah has a boss conversation on Chapter 2 despite Kurthnaga initiating combat).

Alright, it seems to have worked, but is this supposed to happen? Again, following instructions exactly, and this is how things turned out.

Trying to apply the patch following the instructions, but xdelta gives me checksum mismatches, and a patched game with PPF-o-matic either crashes or doesn't start up at all. I've tried multiple versions of the game and none of them work. Any suggestions?

Yes, it was that one.

Actually, I've gotten the Warp staff a number of times, and it works just fine.

Quick suggestion for FE4: to add the option of giving everyone (even enemies) Pursuit. As much as I'd like to give all or at least most of my units Pursuit, it'd be fair balancing to also apply it to common enemies so it's not always a one-sided advantage.

So, here's a big-brain scenario that I came across: in one of my more recent attempts, I buffed boss stats by 15 (before realizing this was way too high and started a new run). What this does is it gives "hard mode bonuses" to recruited units who are encountered as bosses, so Muarim ended up joining with insane bases. This may also happen with units that are recruited with increased enemy growths, but I haven't paid too much attention to them. Edit: looks like some weapons are still locked to specific classes, even though the unit theoretically should be able to use them. I have a Paladin Stefan who came with S bows, but he came with a Double Bow (an S bow) and he can't use it.

Well, here's an unfortunate one: on Chapter 12, the bird laguz can randomize into something that can be stuck outside the boat...certainly a dead end if you don't have the right means to fight whatever it is.

Alright, so I've got some good news, and I've got some bad news. The good news: I made it all the way to endgame without encountering any game-shattering issues other than what was mentioned above. The bad news: Ashnard. The other randomizer (I know I've brought this up a lot) modified Ashnard so you don't need to rely on Ragnell to damage him. Luckily for me, Ike was able to use Ragnell...but he only has an 8% Skill growth with only 8 Skill for the endgame. With a shaky hit rate, Ashnard's Renewal skill, and limited healing staves, I think boredom will kill me before Ashnard does. However, if Ike wasn't able to use Ragnell at all, this would have been GG. So as of right now, for anyone who doesn't have an Ike that can use swords and isn't willing to cheat if he's not exactly where he should be, there's no getting through Ashnard.

This actually had me wondering if it'd be possible to randomize capacity as well.

In my case, he came as prepromoted Paladin that uses lances and bows, and despite only having 20 capacity, he seems to have no issues wielding both skills. So far, he's procced Astra once, and he was using a bow. Even though the skill worked just fine, you have to sit through a painfully long sequence of him attacking 5 times. This also happened with non-swordmasters with the other randomizer, so I suppose that on actual swordmasters, they'll do the 5 rapid strikes instead.

Stefan's capacity is 30/20.

I believe the other randomizer would allow Rangers to promote. In my log file, Mist doesn't have any other skill besides the one she was given (in this case it was Paragon). I also have a Ranger Oscar that I wasn't using, so I used a BEXP code to quickly test him out. Sure enough, he can't promote either. As for Stefan, yes, he is over the skill capacity. In my case, he has Savior with 10 Capacity and Astra with 20, even though his max capacity is already 20. Edit: this time, I had a Sword Cavalier Brom who came with Smite. And on promotion, he lost it. So yeah, it seems the game doesn't want mounts to have that skill when they promote.

I was also thinking the same thing about Jill, since no one else seemed to have any problems. Also, even though Force Class Chance is checked, she still showed up as a Wyvern Knight (unless male Wyvern Knights count as a different class, and if so, never mind). Furthermore, three more things of note: 1. I think the Regal Sword is locked specifically to Ike. I had Mist come in as a Ranger and she brought a Regal Sword with her. She couldn't use it, but my Sword Cavalier Ike could. 2. Rangers that are not Ike just simply can't promote, huh? Mist was snowballing into one of my strongest units, but she stopped gaining experience at Level 20 and I currently haven't come across any Master Seals (using fully random rewards). I'm not even sure if she can use Master Seals, anyway. 3. Is Stefan always supposed to have Astra? He usually has it on top of what the randomizer gave him.

Well, I got a little farther in the game, and encountered a weird bug: so I got a Wyvern Knight Jill who came with Smite as her skill. However, when she promoted, she straight up lost her Smite like she never had it. She's the only one of my promoted units that got hit with this. Edit: I think Rolf may be broken in some way. I've done a few randomizations, and he always rolls his original class.

Regarding the key thing, the other randomizer didn't have a skill distribution option, so anyone could end up with the ability to open doors and chests without keys. Unfortunately, I think only thieves are allowed to steal, so they are still necessary for that. With the Shadow Ike, in my current playthrough, it's only happened to one of my units (that I know of), and it was an Axe Cavalier Sothe. His model was fine, but on promotion into Paladin, his model turned into the Shadow Ike. I still thought this was interesting because with the old randomizer, I would have had at least 10 Shadow Ike units by the point I made it to. Edit: another thing that happened is that some, but not all promoted units immediately S Rank all their weapon types.