Fire Emblem: Dream of Five

[NobodiePichu]

i won't get anymore progress till the end of the week though

yum... Angus steak. [the rng is going to gobble him right up isn't it...]

[Ansem]

Knowing DoF, Angus will probably turn into an enemy and attack your army

And then Kolbane will roflstomp him

But still man thats not cool

[Wayward Winds]

Knowing DoF, Angus will probably turn into an enemy and attack your army.

Yeah, he was somewhat aggressive back in Ch. 6 wasn't he? And one of my more persistent niggles for the revealed Ch. 17 screenshots happens to be "how many greenies?". It sets the alarm bells ringing.

...Meh, we'll find out when we find out. I think we've already established Astra's a master of revealing things without actually clearing plot related stuff up (and that's a good thing).

[eclipse]

i won't get anymore progress till the end of the week though

This is partially my fault. . .sorry. Still sick. . .

[cyron]

This is partially my fault. . .sorry. Still sick. . .

oh thats too bad, hope you get better soon

[X-Naut]

Knowing DoF, Angus will probably turn into an enemy and attack your army

Or have suicidal AI and a reward for keeping him alive attached.

[charlie_]

Does not getting a game over count as a reward?

[riariadne]

Does not getting a game over count as a reward?

Does not coming in last count as winning if there's more than 2 places?

excluding first place

Edited October 29, 2013 by Goldberg

[Trepanation]

A few problems with lances...

*Enemy composition has lots of lances and swords
--*Swordlocks are triangle-null and liable for enemy phase (because stats and equipment, see below)

*Many lance users are mounted

*Many lance users can also use swords

*Javelin

*Lance users have excellent stats for enemy phase

For reference illustrating the uselessness of swords, note the weapon ranks of these units:

Nerf lances or lance users. Bring more axes or reversers in. Make Javelin prohibitively expensive.

[spoiler=gameplay]

there are more thieves in A route, which means more lockpicks to be stolen. For b-route you have to buy door keys to get all treasure. Not a problem because door keys are inexpensive, but they are redundant for a-route.

Staff users max their level very quickly

[spoiler=individual balance thoughts]

Dancer/bard are (still) obvious deploys

Venom tome is expensive and useless.

Arcus is overpowered

Enjolras>=Gabriel>Amelia>Piss>River, considering Maythunder, mandatory deploys, and large skill/speed advantage over Amelia/Gabriel respectively. Gabriel has the toolkit to bully most magic users but Enjo has the tools to do everything else. There is not often opportunity to tank waves of magic where Gabriel could shine. Don't forget Enjo is mandatory. River is an obvious bench

Lia>Karen>/Melissa>Snails>Asher for promos. Latter 3 get 1 extra level of light magic but all this does is get you a tome with 1 more damage, 5 less acc, and costs more. Lia has horse, notable MAG advantage over Melissa. A bit less SPD than Karen but this only matters in combat and only some of that time as well. Other stats are higher as well. Horse utility too much to pass on for the statistical 1.5 speed difference. Asher is too slow and that tiny def advantage means very little.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Trepanation

[X-Naut]

A few problems with lances...

reasons

Nerf lances or lance users. Bring more axes or reversers in. Make Javelin prohibitively expensive.

I don't see why Javelins need to be prohibitively expensive when their power is so bad. It takes a lot of Str to ORKO low-Def enemies with Javelins and some are impossible without crits. I agree both routes could do with more axes or Karayamis though, especially Musain.

Enjolras>=Gabriel>Amelia>Piss>River

River is not worthless, she's a better magic wall than Gabriel and destroys everything she doubles (and it doesn't take long to get going). Joining the latest holds her back, yes, but that doesn't automatically disqualify her as a unit.

Lia>Karen>/Melissa>Snails>Asher

Disagree, at this point it's Lia>Asher>Karen>>Melissa. Asher's speed is hardly a problem considering how little priests fight and he has enough to not get doubled by the more dangerous enemy types (lance users and archers). He also has the best Magic after Lia and the strongest Light chip out of all of them. Karen has early Physic but joins underleveled and at times I've preferred Asher's higher Mag. Melissa has weapon ranks but her poor Mag and no high-level staves negate those advantages.

[Trepanation]

I don't see why Javelins need to be prohibitively expensive when their power is so bad. It takes a lot of Str to ORKO low-Def enemies with Javelins and some are impossible without crits. I agree both routes could do with more axes or Kamayaris* though, especially Musain.

Their power being bad means more rounds of combat means more exp. It also means safer and more efficient damaging of enemies when they have a lot of ranged attackers. Especially if they are magic it is important they be dealt with quickly. If you want to kill melees during enemy phase in 1 round you risk being killed by follow-up attackers, and you have to hold heavier and more expensive weapons. It is best to tank and wound enemies with your durables during enemy phase and kill them during player phase, and Javelins and to a lesser extent Hurlbats have a monopolous sweet spot here.

Just think about how seriously you consider the question against an enemy mob with ranged attackers, Should I equip a 1-2 range weapon or stick with a melee? Even when you're aggroing a lone enemy, if he has a ranged attack you will elect to meet him during enemy phase with it instead of a melee.

Any obvious choice is not a good one. Nerf hurlbats and javs.

River is not worthless, she's a better magic wall than Gabriel and destroys everything she doubles (and it doesn't take long to get going). Joining the latest holds her back, yes, but that doesn't automatically disqualify her as a unit.

She has more res yeah but this gets redundant considering you never really face a magic mob with enough firepower to kill either of you. It's useful some of the time but not nearly so often as, say, a more accurate and less expensive tome might. At 20, Gabe has 4 hp, 1 mag, 1 def on River. Overall this makes him an equally safe pick as her. Though River has an admittedly significant 4 speed (and 4 res) advantage over Gabe, this is only after they've both reached 20, and remember that leveling is slooooow in this game because enemy levels don't increase. The chance that you've been using Gabe up to this point and his level at this point will put him a good 10 levels ahead of her.

So yes, she does have conditional advantages over him but I really think she needs more in order to be considered even. Perhaps a lower starting level, to make her more of a trainee/nino type, which would cause her to grow faster and see a higher peak. This would be enough to make her very different from Gabe but also useful.

Disagree, at this point it's Lia>Asher>Karen>>Melissa. Asher's speed is hardly a problem considering how little priests fight and he has enough to not get doubled by the more dangerous enemy types (lance users and archers). He also has the best Magic after Lia and the strongest Light chip out of all of them. Karen has early Physic but joins underleveled and at times I've preferred Asher's higher Mag. Melissa has weapon ranks but her poor Mag and no high-level staves negate those advantages.

(Be careful giving Karen points for coming with physic staff counting as an advantage over anyone but Melissa, as she is a mandatory deploy and anyone can use the staff)

If it's true Asher has enough speed to avoid being doubled then this is good. But Karen has fully 4 points of SPD. She loses out on <2 MAG, but that 4 speed will go further offensively (AND defensively: avo and doubles) than 2 mag, and that little bit of MAG makes no difference for staves because Mend. 4 speed is a lot.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Trepanation

[CT075]

tbh i pretty much never used javelins on my clears and i've been LTC on every map

there's something to be said for making things a bit more balanced towards more standard play, but in the situation you describe (attacking a 1-2 range enemy) i would far rather go for the stronger 1-range option and trade it away if there's too much danger on the following enemy phase; equipping the weaker 1-2 range weapon could make me lose out on crucial 1 range kills (or, more detrimental, could cause me to fail to kill the enemy in question in the first place, which would compromise my turncount even further)

EDIT

exp gain has also been changed pretty significantly now that we know how to fix the formula

Edited October 31, 2013 by CT075

[Trepanation]

What did you do?

[CT075]

you no longer get a disproportionate amount of exp for killing higher leveled enemies so enemy level scaling is gonna be better

[Trepanation]

Aren't all enemies except bosses level 1-3? Does this mean you are lowering exp for boss units and raising it for mooks? Is the net result going to be the same?

[AstraLunaSol]

No

how does 100 exp from a boss even equate to 15 exp per unit

[CT075]

it's more like instead of gaining 10 exp for a mook kill and 80 for a boss it'll be closer to 30 for a mook and 85 for a boss

[FalconVegeta1986]

You've probably mentioned this before, but what caused the exp formula to break in the first place?

[AstraLunaSol]

intelligent systems not being intelligent

[Agro]

You've probably mentioned this before, but what caused the exp formula to break in the first place?

It was never "broken", it's just that the game has a weird formula whereby if an enemy is at a low enough level, it gives substantially more EXP than an enemy that was, say, 1 level higher. It only occurs in any Normal mode of the game. If you examine the Calculations page carefully you'll see why.

[Trepanation]

it's more like instead of gaining 10 exp for a mook kill and 80 for a boss it'll be closer to 30 for a mook and 85 for a boss

Is there going to be an increase in enemy stats along with their levels, in order to increase the difficulty? This will be important. Growth is quick in this patch in comparison to the availability of promotion items. Will be frustrating to have core force at level 20 even sooner now, with enemies being the same strength. Please make sure enemies are more difficult if you are increasing experience.

[Thor Odinson]

Astra just annonced difficulty increases across the board like

last week, lol

[AstraLunaSol]

like

weapons and stats

+1-2 str +1-2 spd -1-2 def

improve hit, improve damage on weapons

oh and short spear wyverns are bigger assholes

[Agro]

so it's basically DoF Inflation?

[eclipse]

That reply color is painfully bright. Can you use something a bit darker in the future, to make it easier to read what you wrote?

River is not worthless, she's a better magic wall than Gabriel and destroys everything she doubles (and it doesn't take long to get going). Joining the latest holds her back, yes, but that doesn't automatically disqualify her as a unit.

She has more res yeah but this gets redundant considering you never really face a magic mob with enough firepower to kill either of you. It's useful some of the time but not nearly so often as, say, a more accurate and less expensive tome might. At 20, Gabe has 4 hp, 1 mag, 1 def on River. Overall this makes him an equally safe pick as her. Though River has an admittedly significant 4 speed (and 4 res) advantage over Gabe, this is only after they've both reached 20, and remember that leveling is slooooow in this game because enemy levels don't increase. The chance that you've been using Gabe up to this point and his level at this point will put him a good 10 levels ahead of her.

So yes, she does have conditional advantages over him but I really think she needs more in order to be considered even. Perhaps a lower starting level, to make her more of a trainee/nino type, which would cause her to grow faster and see a higher peak. This would be enough to make her very different from Gabe but also useful.

Disagree, at this point it's Lia>Asher>Karen>>Melissa. Asher's speed is hardly a problem considering how little priests fight and he has enough to not get doubled by the more dangerous enemy types (lance users and archers). He also has the best Magic after Lia and the strongest Light chip out of all of them. Karen has early Physic but joins underleveled and at times I've preferred Asher's higher Mag. Melissa has weapon ranks but her poor Mag and no high-level staves negate those advantages.

(Be careful giving Karen points for coming with physic staff counting as an advantage over anyone but Melissa, as she is a mandatory deploy and anyone can use the staff)

If it's true Asher has enough speed to avoid being doubled then this is good. But Karen has fully 4 points of SPD. She loses out on <2 MAG, but that 4 speed will go further offensively (AND defensively: avo and doubles) than 2 mag, and that little bit of MAG makes no difference for staves because Mend. 4 speed is a lot.

Gabriel has availability and supports on River. . .she's pretty good offensively, and can easily take over his spot if he gets unnecessarily screwed (especially in Speed). Also, why aren't you giving River as much credit for her Speed as Karen?