What would happen if weapons "repaired" between battles?

[Renall]

By this I'm not specifically referring to the FE4-style repair of weapons for gold, although what I'm thinking of is around those lines. One of the interesting things about higher-rank weaponry in FE games is that they tend to have fewer uses before breaking. However, they very often have enough durability that the chance of them breaking in any given situation are fairly low. So here's a random thought I had about an alternative to the system, just to see what might happen to tactical options:

• Iron weapons have baseline stats and infinite durability; if all else fails, you can always use Iron. Every unit gets to equip an Iron weapon for free in a special slot that doesn't count as the rest of their inventory. They may carry additional Iron if they want (multiple weapon types, etc.), however, only one of a given item can be equipped at a time. If you have one Iron Sword, you can't carry another, and the same is true of any better weapons with limited uses.
  
• Steel weapons have better damage, less accuracy, and higher weight as usual. "Heavy" weapon types (Blade/Poleaxe/Greatlance) have more extreme variants of this, as do "Slim/Light" weapons the other way. Steel-tier has some moderate but not too high number of uses, say 10-15.
  
• Silver weapons have better damage, average accuracy, and low weight; in exchange, they have only 5 uses.
  
• Special weapons have about as many uses as Silver (possibly more in some cases). This includes Javelins/Hand Axes/Magic Swords, as well as Killers, Braves, etc. Braves attack twice for one expenditure of a weapon use, no matter how many times they hit (i.e. 5x Brave Sword uses means between 5-10 hits). If you don't need the second swing to finish an enemy, don't waste your Brave. Might not count if you whiff both hits.
  
• If forging exists, every additional forge added to an item reduces its uses by 1. This can be reverted at any time, but the forgings are lost. Forges would have to go to a notch/token system rather than free stat adjustment to do this but it's workable. This makes it risky to forge a Brave Sword, but trivial to forge a Steel Sword. Iron weapons can't be forged; they're baseline weapons and are supposed to behave like that.
  
• Staves follow similar rules; Heal has infinite uses, Mend 10-15, other staves 5 or less. Status staves or the Hammerne may only have 1-2, but they refresh like everything else. Hammerne can be slightly more common as it will refresh a weapon for the duration of the map only, and will refresh an absolute smaller number of uses. The Hammerne itself will also refresh of course.
  
• Magic would need weak baseline tomes (Fire/Thunder/Wind/Light/Whatever for Dark), and much stronger and more tactical alternatives. Siege tomes should be easier to use more often but their uses should be very limited (3 or less?). Area-effect or status-plus-damage tomes would have uses adjusted to the balance.
  
• It may or may not be possible to trade weapons under this system. There's good and bad to it (notably, I want to nerf Javelins, not encourage Javelin-trading chains).
  
• The crux of everything: After a battle, EVERY weapon refreshes to its maximum uses for the next battle.

Just looking at it, I think this changes a number of things.

• You have some reason not to use Steel-or-better if you don't need it. Iron is the infinite-use average and it's something you can always fall back on, but it's not ideally suited to certain enemies (who can be designed around this).
  
• Special weapons are balanced (by being tactical use items) while also allowing the player to make use of them. You don't need to "make that Killer Edge count" over 10 maps. You just need to "make it count" for the current one, but you can use it every time from the moment you get it.
  
• Bows are not completely marginalized. If a Javelin only works 5 times per map, that 15-use Steel Bow or infinite Iron Bow is suddenly a bit more useful to you. Archers still need to be balanced but at least now they can have a dizzying array of 2-range options nobody else can match, and are the only units that can counter a large horde of 2 range-user enemies without their weapon breaking on them.
  
• Using staves is a lot more free. No reason to "save" Berserk and Silence for another map if you only have one specific use for them on this map. They'll be back next time! Also, Warp (with a sane range restriction) becomes tactically useful again without breaking the game if it just has 1 use per map, yet is actually available more than in some games. Rescue could have maybe 2-3, so Warp-Rescue combos are viable but not something you can do too often.
  
• Early Silver users are better over the long term but not necessarily capable of just raping faces on a particular single map with the Silver only they can use. Still, there's an advantage to having a flatly better weapon only you can use, if only a couple times per map.
  
• The enemy obeys the same rules, so there might be incentive to use an Armor Knight to "wear out" the enemy's Silver Axe and force him to equip more manageable Iron. With a 20-use Silver this is extremely unlikely. At 5 uses, some of which may already be expended, it's feasible at least.

It's interesting. It might cut down on item clutter a bit, as you could give the player the Brave Sword instead of a Brave Sword, and assume the player's keeping it thereafter. Characters are then competing for limited resources, and a character who is "good with just Iron" becomes quite valuable even if he isn't necessarily the strongest character around.

I haven't fleshed this out a ton, just something that I thought about recently.

[13th]

Interesting...

I think I like it.

Maybe make it go with 20 Steel, 10 Hand/Jav (because ranged Weapon is commonly used on both sides), 10 Longbow, and then 5 Silver, Brave, and similar?

[Renall]

The exact number would be subject to change based on the number of enemies on the average map, of course. 10 Steel is too few if there's usually a ton of enemies around. 20 Steel is too much if there aren't that many. Of course you can have some smaller maps or even "duel" maps where the goal is to go hog-wild with your resources knowing there aren't that many times you'll need them, and some bigger maps where resource conservation is an essential part of beating it in decent time.

Limiting major staves to <5 uses seems prudent regardless of map size, however, provided that staves are strong enough to turn the tide of a battle by themselves.

[nabvfgsyeahuwdefgfue7huiwr]

This sounds very interesting. Just out of curiosity, I wonder if the FE hacking community could accomplish this with a hack (even theoretically).

[The_Purple_Knight]

It sounds intresting but I would more interested in fe4 system making a return it could have really worked in fe9 and 10 . I just really enjoyed how weapons could gain critcal.

[Frosty]

Oooh, this will likely be useful in my case where I resupply often for a regular basis.

[deranger]

This sounds very interesting. Just out of curiosity, I wonder if the FE hacking community could accomplish this with a hack (even theoretically).

For GBA, Nintenlord made a patch that replaced items placed in the convoy for a cost. Also, changing the uses an item has to infinite or a number (I think between 127 and 1) is just a simple nightmare edit.

[Geriba]

Not sure what to make of this just yet, but it's fascinating.

The exact number would be subject to change based on the number of enemies on the average map, of course. 10 Steel is too few if there's usually a ton of enemies around.

I feel the easiest way around this problem is increased deployment numbers, not variable weapon uses. A 5-use Silver Lance should remain that way over the course of the game, instead of tying it up with some cumbersome algorithm.

[deuxhero]

Could work, and would solve my inability to use anything but basic store bought items anywhere.

[Renall]

I feel the easiest way around this problem is increased deployment numbers, not variable weapon uses. A 5-use Silver Lance should remain that way over the course of the game, instead of tying it up with some cumbersome algorithm.

Not what I meant. If it's 5 uses, it stays at 5 uses all game. The issue is what the best ballpark usage value is.

If a map has, on average, 20 enemies on it, and Silver ORKOs with doubling, then you're looking at maybe two and a half enemy kills with your Silver on that map. Is that enough? Too much? Not enough? Does it depend how many "boss" enemies there are?

The major factor there would be balancing special weapons and Steel-tier stuff. Steel needs to be reliable enough to use often if you balance out the characters you're using, but break halfway through the map if you try to solo with one guy. The problem would be you'd have to identify what "halfway through" (or whatever metric you're using) is and ballpark usage accordingly. If 10 swings plows through half the enemies on most (but not all), then Steel etc. should get 10 uses. If 10 swings barely gets through 10% of the enemies on the map, maybe it should be bumped. Or maybe not; maybe you want to discourage that, and encourage spreading kills around. Depending on what values you assign, you can definitely do that.

Of course, we also want to encourage people to use stuff. So items like the Brave Sword or Killer Lance can't be so fragile that they barely see use against more than one enemy on the map. But they should be the "big stick" that you pull out to clear out a troublesome enemy or bring the battle to a boss character or unique leader unit, not something you whip out to massacre scrubs. Again, how many swings is sufficient to determine that will depend on how the game itself is designed. If maps have lots of uniques/bosses, then special weapons need slightly more uses so they're available to fight those guys. If they only have one boss per map and are filled mostly with wimps, it's not necessary. Of course nothing stops us from varying this up between maps in the same game to change the strategy employed. One map might throw you against 5 elite enemies for whom Silver is very important to use early and often, and another might throw you against 50 grunts for whom Silver use should be sparing and situational lest you waste all 5 uses on nobodies and get swarmed.

The ideal is to reward good play with "Whew, glad I saved that!" but punish "Aw crap, I knew I shouldn't have used that." But we want to make sure they are used, and not hoarded like they sometimes already are.

[dondon151]

Your idea has merits, but I don't like it for the following 3 reasons that you stated:

Special weapons are balanced (by being tactical use items) while also allowing the player to make use of them. You don't need to "make that Killer Edge count" over 10 maps. You just need to "make it count" for the current one, but you can use it every time from the moment you get it.

Using staves is a lot more free. No reason to "save" Berserk and Silence for another map if you only have one specific use for them on this map. They'll be back next time! Also, Warp (with a sane range restriction) becomes tactically useful again without breaking the game if it just has 1 use per map, yet is actually available more than in some games. Rescue could have maybe 2-3, so Warp-Rescue combos are viable but not something you can do too often.

Early Silver users are better over the long term but not necessarily capable of just raping faces on a particular single map with the Silver only they can use. Still, there's an advantage to having a flatly better weapon only you can use, if only a couple times per map.

There's a significant amount of planning that goes into properly allocating uses of certain weapons over a long span of chapters, and while that's a discouragement to casual players, I feel like it's also a vastly more strategic aspect of the game. There's less of a cost vs. benefit analysis that the player has to perform if he knows that he gets a free x uses per map out of each special item that he has.

I don't agree that getting free status staff uses every chapter is even remotely balanced. You'd end up getting significantly more total staff uses over the course of the game, and there's significant potential for abuse in that system.

If anything, the early silver user is even better than before, because he has more total silver uses to work with until he faces competition, and there are hardly any early maps where silver needs to be spammed. But if there's no penalty for using up all available silver uses per chapter, then there's no disincentive to use it as much as possible.

Edited February 1, 2012 by dondon151

[Renall]

Your points are well-taken, but in defense of the idea...

There's a significant amount of planning that goes into properly allocating uses of certain weapons over a long span of chapters, and while that's a discouragement to casual players, I feel like it's also a vastly more strategic aspect of the game. There's less of a cost vs. benefit analysis that the player has to perform if he knows that he gets a free x uses per map out of each special item that he has.

I find this argument somewhat disingenuous - not on your part specifically, but in general - because the planning to some extent requires foreknowledge. This is true of almost any RPG, and is what leads to the "I never used my 10 Megalixirs and I already beat the final boss" thing. In Fire Emblem, assuming you're playing the game for the first time in some fashion intended by the developers, you don't really know what's coming up next. In Radiant Dawn, are you expected to just know that Ike will be fighting the Black Knight, have access to Axes, and that BK will be weak to the Hammer? There's only two Hammers in the whole game, they come early, and there's a not-insignificant number of Armors in the game. If you played Path of Radiance, you might (wrongly) assume that only Ragnell will work on the Black Knight anyway.

What I'm saying here is, the Hammer is an excellent resource to expend in 4-E-2 to kill the Black Knight quickly. But how in the world are you supposed to know that back in 2-3, the last time you have the opportunity to snag a Hammer, unless you already know that's coming? In real strategic theaters, there's scouting and preplanning and foreknowledge. Fire Emblem rarely, if ever, offers you that kind of opportunity, and it also rarely offers you hints. You should be punished for giving the Hammer to the wrong unit, not for not having the Hammer anymore because you quite reasonably used it to kill Armor Knights in the previous 3/4ths of the game where you could do that.

And there's no reason a cost/benefit analysis can't be employed under a system like this, it simply requires different design. For example, you could have a miniboss who is an Armor Knight and a boss who is a Baron. Both weak to the Hammer, but the miniboss is in your face at the start of the map and the Baron is sitting on the throne. Even your best Hammer user can't squeeze enough out of however many uses the Hammer has to kill both of them with it. So, what do you do with it? Hit the miniboss hard at the start and get rid of him quick, or save it for the boss? There's your cost-benefit analysis. It's not the same kind of analysis, but it is there.

I don't agree that getting free status staff uses every chapter is even remotely balanced. You'd end up getting significantly more total staff uses over the course of the game, and there's significant potential for abuse in that system.

Of course you'd get more uses of the staff. The game can be balanced around the potential to silence one unit per chapter though, surely. I'm curious how you would abuse this, exactly? Let's say Berserk or Warp has one use, as does Hammerne. At best, by blowing the Hammerne for the map, you can Berserk or Warp twice. How is this any less powerful than Warp-Skipping already is? As long as Warp has a proper and appropriate range restriction tied to it, or Berserk doesn't work on bosses or what have you (and bosses are not so weak as to be killed by their own minions; wounding is fine, that's what Berserk is for!), what's the problem? How is this more abusive than "Well, I can use two zaps of my Berserk staff here to ease the chapter, since I so rarely use it anyway?" Because you have more absolute uses? That can be balanced.

There's also the fact that enemies could have them too, more frequently, making them a not-rare thing to deal with. And both you/the enemy can have Restore staves. If Restore has >1 charge, it's a hard counter to status staves.

If anything, the early silver user is even better than before, because he has more total silver uses to work with until he faces competition, and there are hardly any early maps where silver needs to be spammed. But if there's no penalty for using up all available silver uses per chapter, then there's no disincentive to use it as much as possible.

This is true, but it's also fixable easily enough: Just don't give out Silvers at the start of the game. The Jeigan can start with a Steel instead, or whatever. You just have to balance item drops such that "early silvers" give a measured and specific time advantage based on weapon rank progress you expect most units to have. So you give out the first Silver Lance around the time units that started at minimum Lance rank are a rank behind the Jeigans/prepromotes/guys with high base rank. Now, from map, say, 8 through 12, "early silver" users get a crack at the new weapon before the growth units have the necessary weapon rank to wield it. After map 12, most characters will be expected to be at sufficient Lance rank that they can now wield it too, and you have to decide whether to pass it on or keep it on the prepromote (who might, at this point, be slowing down in stats).

Again, this is a system that cannot just be imported whole cloth into the existing one. Map design would have to take it into account.

I just view it as a sort of shift from an "endurance" model (which, and this is just my opinion, I don't think works very well in FE unless you have foreknowledge, which I don't think is good game design) to an "encounter" model, where the challenge of a map is contained individually and solely within the parameters of the map itself. Like a shift from Dragon Warrior 2 or Final Fantasy I (where every Herb/Heal Potion counts) to Final Fantasy XIII or World of Warcraft (where you're expected to be at 100% resources for every encounter, and the encounter is balanced to require you use them all). It's a different, but not necessarily better design, and would have to be changed accordingly.

[Othin]

And if you get a second Hammer? Or, if there's only one in the game, if you miss it or lose it somehow? Or if you use your every-chapter Hammerne use on it?

There are merits to having some special weapons restore some durability between chapters, but applying it to every weapon and making them restore the durability all the way just has so many absurd implications, as dondon pointed out.

And all for what? So players don't have to deal with uncertainty, resource/risk management and the consequences of their actions? Fuck that. If a player uses up their Hammers early, they can fight the Black Knight with Ragnell just like how they're supposed to. Players shouldn't be able to do everything perfectly on their first playthrough without foreknowledge; bonus strategies like that are just that: bonuses.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Othin

[Renall]

And if you get a second Hammer? Or, if there's only one in the game, if you miss it or lose it somehow? Or if you use your every-chapter Hammerne use on it?

If you lose weapons in FE4, there's a chance to get them again off enemies in Generation 2. If the Hammer gets missed as a drop or chest in Map 8, have it reappear on an enemy in Map 14 or something (and not appear if you already have it). Just make it progressively harder to skip over each time: On a miniboss the first time, on a regular enemy near the boss the second time, wielded by a grunt right in your face the third time. You lose time for failing to get the item at the first opportunity, but you don't lose the item outright.

And all for what? So players don't have to deal with uncertainty, resource/risk management and the consequences of their actions? Fuck that. If a player uses up their Hammers early, they can fight the Black Knight with Ragnell just like how they're supposed to. Players shouldn't be able to do everything perfectly on their first playthrough without foreknowledge; bonus strategies like that are just that: bonuses.

You aren't really understanding the paradigmatic design shift that would result from this. The idea is to change consequential behavior and what is or is not rewarded/punished, not to remove it.

The notion that "removing long-term planning consequences = removing consequences" is false, and I think intuitively you know that. It's a change in consequences from a whole-game approach - which is arguably only intellectually possible on replays or with foreknowledge - to a series-of-challenges approach. The advantage to the latter is that it's not necessary that I know the Black Knight is coming up, which means I understand better with each map I play through the immediate consequences of my shorter-term decisions. Besides, there still are long-term decisions, like which characters to use.

The argument you've made can just as easily be turned on its head: Limited overall Hammer use? For what? So players can be arbitrarily punished for making apparently good strategic decisions with the resources they were given at an early stage in the game? Fuck that. If a player rationally uses his Hammers to kill the units they're designed for fighting quickly and efficiently, they're unable to use it against the Black Knight because there was no way to know he'd be weak to it. Players shouldn't have to finish the game or read spoilers just to know which tactically sound decisions are strategically foolish.

Of course, that's not the fullness of the argument by any means. But neither is your point, at least the way you phrased it.

[deuxhero]

Would this apply to "consumable" items. Vulnerary/Elixir wouldn't really matter as would, anti toxin or pure water likely wouldn't either, but more exotic thing like Olivi Grass, mines, keys/picks could be interesting (obviously stat items and promotion things would not be).

What if weapon trading was restricted to the pre-battle planning?

[Renall]

Would this apply to "consumable" items. Vulnerary/Elixir wouldn't really matter as would, anti toxin or pure water likely wouldn't either, but more exotic thing like Olivi Grass, mines, keys/picks could be interesting (obviously stat items and promotion things would not be).

What if weapon trading was restricted to the pre-battle planning?

Yeah I was thinking weapons are "assigned" rather than traded around. That would make it somewhat more meaningful who you give the Killer Axe to or whatever.

I think consumables could use the same system, but they'd have their uses considerably reduced. Vulneraries would drop from 3 uses to maybe just 1 (or stay at 2-3 if significantly weakened, with Concoctions or whatever having just 1). Elixirs and stat boosters might be true consumables, lost once used, to distinguish them a bit.

Honestly, under the circumstances, I'd probably just get rid of Lockpicks and let Thieves pick as a class skill, like in FE9/10. Just make getting at the treasure hard (tough guards, etc.). If Laguz were in, I'd say the Grass/Stones should be refreshed as well, but they might have considerably fewer uses than your average weapon. A Laguz Stone would almost certainly have just a single use. Grass maybe 3? It depends, as always, on what the map design and enemy placement is like, how Laguz Gauge works, etc.

[dondon151]

I find this argument somewhat disingenuous - not on your part specifically, but in general - because the planning to some extent requires foreknowledge. This is true of almost any RPG, and is what leads to the "I never used my 10 Megalixirs and I already beat the final boss" thing. In Fire Emblem, assuming you're playing the game for the first time in some fashion intended by the developers, you don't really know what's coming up next. In Radiant Dawn, are you expected to just know that Ike will be fighting the Black Knight, have access to Axes, and that BK will be weak to the Hammer? There's only two Hammers in the whole game, they come early, and there's a not-insignificant number of Armors in the game. If you played Path of Radiance, you might (wrongly) assume that only Ragnell will work on the Black Knight anyway.

I'm sure that the developers designed some aspects of the game with the assumption that the player has some sort of foreknowledge (hard modes and rankings come to mind). Whatever the case, it's rather absurd to assume that a game is designed assuming that the player always has no sort of foreknowledge whatsoever. A player might stumble through his first time with the game, but he'll be a lot smarter the second time around because he knows what he has to deal with. This is true with and without guides; even with the amount of planning that I put into my playthroughs, very often some of my initial estimations are wrong because I just don't have the previous experience of actually having played the game.

It would be nice to discourage hoarding in general, but this is really something that the player needs to learn to overcome, and not to have his hand held by the game.

You should be punished for giving the Hammer to the wrong unit, not for not having the Hammer anymore because you quite reasonably used it to kill Armor Knights in the previous 3/4ths of the game where you could do that.

But you are already punished for giving the Hammer to the wrong unit. If your Hammer toting unit winds up falling behind, or somehow ends up on the wrong end of the map, you've been punished quite adequately.

Of course you'd get more uses of the staff. The game can be balanced around the potential to silence one unit per chapter though, surely. I'm curious how you would abuse this, exactly? Let's say Berserk or Warp has one use, as does Hammerne. At best, by blowing the Hammerne for the map, you can Berserk or Warp twice. How is this any less powerful than Warp-Skipping already is? As long as Warp has a proper and appropriate range restriction tied to it, or Berserk doesn't work on bosses or what have you (and bosses are not so weak as to be killed by their own minions; wounding is fine, that's what Berserk is for!), what's the problem? How is this more abusive than "Well, I can use two zaps of my Berserk staff here to ease the chapter, since I so rarely use it anyway?" Because you have more absolute uses? That can be balanced.

I'm convinced that you haven't yet tried abusing status staves to their full potential in an FE6 playthrough. This is pretty much the equivalent of an automatic ranged KO on any tough unit that you'd like, and in the case of Berserk, it may be several ranged KOs. Assume that you only have 1 each of a Berserk, a Sleep, and a Silence. These 3 uses on any given chapter are probably already more than enough, but you are now no longer limited to having to figure out how to use 3 uses of Sleep across 9 different maps; now, you'd feel obligated to use Sleep on every map because you'd be wasting that use of Sleep otherwise.

This is true, but it's also fixable easily enough: Just don't give out Silvers at the start of the game. The Jeigan can start with a Steel instead, or whatever. You just have to balance item drops such that "early silvers" give a measured and specific time advantage based on weapon rank progress you expect most units to have. So you give out the first Silver Lance around the time units that started at minimum Lance rank are a rank behind the Jeigans/prepromotes/guys with high base rank. Now, from map, say, 8 through 12, "early silver" users get a crack at the new weapon before the growth units have the necessary weapon rank to wield it. After map 12, most characters will be expected to be at sufficient Lance rank that they can now wield it too, and you have to decide whether to pass it on or keep it on the prepromote (who might, at this point, be slowing down in stats).

This assumption is extremely inconsistent based on playstyle.

I just view it as a sort of shift from an "endurance" model (which, and this is just my opinion, I don't think works very well in FE unless you have foreknowledge, which I don't think is good game design) to an "encounter" model, where the challenge of a map is contained individually and solely within the parameters of the map itself.

Except, quite literally almost everything in Fire Emblem uses the "endurance" model. Resources that you give to a unit (EXP, WEXP, promotion items, stat boosters, supports, skills) cannot be ungiven at a later time. A huge part of Fire Emblem is about choosing an investment and figuring out how to maximize returns. There is a certain amount of skill involved at making a correct estimation (with or without prior knowledge) as to what resources you can use now and what resources you'd want to save for later, and how much that decision eases your ability to play through the game.

[CrashGordon94]

Well, to be fair the series seems to be taking at least one thing (Skills) towards that "encounter" model, going by early FE13 info.

As for the idea itself, it's interesting. Not sure I'd support it over the current system but it definitely has its merits and is interesting to think about. I might give the special weapons more uses than 5 though (particularly Braves, whose main strength is all about getting lots of hits in).

[Othin]

Crash is right; this system would mess so much with how weapons are used. You said Silver weapons would have like 5 uses. Say I give a Silver Sword to a Hero, have them attack something and kill it in two hits, then on the enemy phase, an enemy attacks, the Hero counters and kills in two hits, then a third enemy attacks... oh, whoops, out of hits. 5 hits, or 10 in the case of a Brave weapon, isn't much; it can disappear incredibly fast even as an incidental cost of just one time you actually want to use it - especially if other characters can't trade with them to make them unequip the weapon for enemy phase. Meanwhile, you're still getting to use the weapons a ridiculous number of times throughout the game, so increasing the uses per chapter isn't an option either. It's just not practical; with a system as simple as the weapons repairing themselves entirely each chapter and for free, there's no way to strike a balance for the good weapons between being used too little per chapter and too much overall.

If you want some sort of system for making weapons last, just take FE4's weapon repair system entirely, so the weapons can be used more often each time but it gets managed by the cost. Or use the mechanic Berwick Saga applied to a few personal weapons, where they regain 20% of their maximum durability each chapter, shown here. So applying it to other weapons, you could have Silver Swords get 10 uses but recover just 2 uses per chapter, which would manage the total number of uses you could get while still letting you use a decent number at once when you want to. I don't think I would favor a large-scale version of this, but it's certainly much more feasible.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Othin

[Anouleth]

The weapon repair system was cool, but it required a lot of other stuff to make it work, such as giving units personal money rather than a single huje shared pool. Perhaps in the base, the player can repair one weapon per chapter or something?

[The_Purple_Knight]

. Does berwick chronicles have any other repair mechanic ? The personal weapon thing sounds cool it would have worked really well in fe5 and even more so in tear ring saga .

Edited February 3, 2012 by The_Purple_Knight

[Othin]

Does berwick chronicles have any other repair mechanic ? The personal weapon thing sounds cool it would have worked really well in fe5 and even more so in tear ring saga .

Yeah, and it's an interesting one. Instead of a staff with a fixed number of uses, there are these items called Repair Stones you can get throughout the game; you can get three without much trouble, but the last two are a pain. (The final one is right at the end of the game anyway, so it's not too useful.) Each of them have 10 "uses", but consume a number of uses to repair a weapon based on the type of weapon and how much durability it's lost. The rarest weapons typically cost up to 7-8 points to fully repair, but partial repairs are also viable, so you can figure out how to distribute those uses to extend the use of various weapons. (Or just burn most of them on Reese's Lord Gram, an absolutely personal weapon the main character gets a few chapters into the game.)

There are some oddities, though. The Repair Stones won't work on magic, but the rare spells are generally the ones that self-repair over time anyway. Also, broken personal weapons stay in characters' inventories to be repaired like in FE3/4/5, but other weapons don't for some reason. And for some stranger reason, Reese's second personal sword, Succeed, won't stick around if it breaks at all. (It's also the only physical weapon that recovers durability on its own.)

[The_Purple_Knight]

Yeah, and it's an interesting one. Instead of a staff with a fixed number of uses, there are these items called Repair Stones you can get throughout the game; you can get three without much trouble, but the last two are a pain. (The final one is right at the end of the game anyway, so it's not too useful.) Each of them have 10 "uses", but consume a number of uses to repair a weapon based on the type of weapon and how much durability it's lost. The rarest weapons typically cost up to 7-8 points to fully repair, but partial repairs are also viable, so you can figure out how to distribute those uses to extend the use of various weapons. (Or just burn most of them on Reese's Lord Gram, an absolutely personal weapon the main character gets a few chapters into the game.)

There are some oddities, though. The Repair Stones won't work on magic, but the rare spells are generally the ones that self-repair over time anyway. Also, broken personal weapons stay in characters' inventories to be repaired like in FE3/4/5, but other weapons don't for some reason. And for some stranger reason, Reese's second personal sword, Succeed, won't stick around if it breaks at all. (It's also the only physical weapon that recovers durability on its own.)

Hmm interesting so repairing isn't is common is in f4 but isn't is rare is other fe games? You really should get around to making that lets play. I'd really like to see how this game compares to fire emblem titles , if it looks really interesting i might go through the hassle of emulating it.

Edited February 3, 2012 by The_Purple_Knight

[Othin]

Sort of. The amount of actual repairing you'll likely do is close to the amount in FE5 if you repair weapons instead of Warp staffs, but you can split the repairs to repair two weapons halfway instead of one all the way.

And yeah, I'll have to do that, although right now, I've been playing through TRS, and I want to get through it for once before proceeding with other things. I'm also likely going to need to set up a couple of things to upload the videos properly. And then there's finishing the last few maps of my current playthrough, on which I am resetting, and quite frequently in the beginning of Ch12 (Map #36 with my chosen progression)... I dread doing this map on a limited resets run.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Othin

[The_Purple_Knight]

Jezz my last post had a lot of typos I guess that's what happens when you type at 4am . Anyway its no bigge about the let's play just let me know when you've gotten started . The berwick saga videos on YouTube are lacking .