Replying to Berwick Saga

I've linked to the item locations and enemy data now, thanks for the work ^^

If you don't get a response for ages, you can try sending me a PM (in case I forget to check this board out).

I decided to try my hand at making a template for easier navigation, particularly in the enemy data pages, using some code borrowed from another wiki.

http://serenesforest...Saga_Enemy_Data

I intend to make more when I get the hang of it, but it seems like something went wrong here; does anyone know what? I also found that when I attempted to add the template to the page for first map, it got stuck to the table of stats; I couldn't find a way to get any spacing between them.

There's a story behind the order I chose to complete some of the pages in, but it'd take a while to explain. The pages linked to are all basically complete, although there are various stylistic changes I intend to make on almost all of them and some information that's missing; I'll be able to find some of that information myself, but not all of it.

Edit: Looks like I was able to fix all of that.

That said, Vincent, when you get around to adding a link to the enemy data to the site, I think it might be a good idea to just link to the template, not the page with the list. Actually, I'm considering taking down the list and links to it entirely when I can get everything else sorted out...

Edit2: Actually, if I expand it, that may not make sense... hrm. I'll think of something.

Item locations are up!

I intend to expand it to include all items eventually, and possibly organized better and in more detail, but that's a bit more of a ratio of work to usefulness than I feel like doing right now. So for this version, items included are chosen rather arbitrarily; I added a few less useful ones just because they were rare and therefore easy to add, but it should have pretty much anything someone would plausibly be looking for.

Not sure about all of the items marked unobtainable, and the wiki was less helpful for a few items (Javelin, Hatchet, the first four arrows, and most of the consumables), so I had to go by what I could find by poking around on Joll, which has more information and appears more accurate, but tends to be less organized. So I might have missed a few of those. I'm also not certain about all of the items I marked as unobtainable, so I'm hoping someone can verify this.

Edit: Berwick Saga appears to have fixed stats for all enemies, and Joll has them all listed, but they're a pain to dig up. I decided to do the enemy stats for Ch1 all as a single, more readable table here; I don't intend on doing this all at once, but it's good to have. I also decided to start recording weapon durabilities while I was at it, but that yellow is painful to look at; does anyone know of a good alternative?

Edit2: Compiled stats through Ch2. This isn't taking as long as I expected, but I'm sure other chapters won't stay that way.

Translator preference.

As I noted above, I'm going more for how an official translation might look than a perfectly literal one. I believe we're all familiar with how much official translations have changed names, and I feel that it would be overstepping my bounds to make changes quite that drastic, but regardless, I've had to make substantial changes to some things to make sense out of them. This hasn't been much of a problem for player characters (I found out after choosing the name Sylvia that Sylvis was actually a real name, but a much less known one), but bosses have been more of an issue. After watching arguments in the FE12 translation, where people held fast to the names they had first become familiar with, I'm wary of handing people a name like Semudariosu, the literal translation for the lategame Dark Knight boss I was discussing with YayMarsha earlier, considering the likelihood that people will hold fast to names like that and resist attempts to translate it as something similar with more of a basis in reality, such as Senderos. I've made similar judgment calls with a few weapon, class, and skill names, and probably other things as well, which may be more questionable (Bastard --> Hero, for an example), but I believe the edited versions will be substantially more appealing to your average FE player unfamiliar with literal details, and making Berwick Saga accessible to FE players is my highest priority with this project.

Now, I realize this doesn't necessarily extend to names where there is a decent or even good alternative, such as the noted alternatives of Lynette and Sylvis, as well as Dowd. I'm not concerned about duplicate names, as it's unavoidable anyway in both Saga games with both playable characters and bosses (Elbert, Dean, Olwen, Percival). That said, I stand by the names I've chosen.

On the subject of names and this is kind of trivial, but is there a specific reason for using Lanette over Lynette?

Also, I'm a bit wary of using Sylvia over Sylwiss, since you've changed two sounds (V and A) and there's already a Sylvia in FE4. However, I can't think of any other existing name that sounds similar to Sylwiss, but I guess you may get a made-up name every now and then.

EDIT 2: I've been checking some of the lists, and I think that some things aren't spelled correctly since they seem to be related to certain places, which can be seen written in the map during the main missions events and in the intro (however you spell everything else is unimportant for me, but these seem to have a proper way). For instance I'd say:
Wind -> Pallas Rihanna RIANA
Thunder -> Pallas Selenia SERENIA
Bow -> Serenia SELENIA Bow
Horses -> Chinon SINON, Riga LIGA, Isis ISHS
On horses one more thing, some of them don't increase strength but damage. This means that while mounting that type of horse you can't round your strength to reduce speed penalty due to weight. I checked this out with Czene, since daggers use no strength for the damage calculation (maybe it influences the alpha factor, but it doesn't affect damage directly). While she's mounted on Tico, she'll get +1 damage, but no extra strength.

Just saw this and updated the horse "strength" references. I also changed all references to "Chinon" on several pages to "Sinon".

For the others, while I appreciate the suggestions, I believe the translations I've used are more accurate to the meaning conveyed by the names, as well as what would be more likely to show up in an official English localization. Such an official localization will never happen, but I still intend to make my translation the closest thing possible. The romaji in which the names are spelled out in the Japanese game should not be mistaken for an official translation to be taken literally when not appropriate, and this is the policy the FE series has followed with its official translations. With a Google search of Ishs, I get 207,000 results, primarily or entirely as an acronym. With a Google search of Isis, I get 16,300,000 results, primarily as a reference to a famous name from Egyptian mythology. It seems clear which is more appropriate to use as a name.

I don't remember that name, but I assume you mean the Chaos clone? He's just there for kicks, so you can (and should, unless you're prepared) leave him alone.


I'm fairly sure that would be impossible. He already can't grab limited/rare items, but his level also needs to be higher than the equipment's rank. Since it's a rank 30 weapon, you obviously can't reach that level as early as Chapter 3. You might be able to do it in Chapter 15 instead, but I'm not sure if matching the rank is good enough.

By the way, about weapon skills, wouldn't it better to just wait for some tech-savvy person to come by and do all that emulator magic to figure it out? I have no clue about it myself, but I'm guessing it would be easier than trial-and-error. Especially considering the growth system is so freaking messed up.

Yeah, him.

I forgot about those two limits. Are rare and limited one group, or is it some exception to also apply to items like dragon breaths/scales? I've been referencing the wiki for a starting place on the items, and it doesn't list those, or a few other things, plus the breaths wouldn't make any sense to take anyway. In any case, the sword is a rare item, so there's no question about it.

You bring up a good point about weapon skills, especially since I'm at a bit of a roadblock. I'll explain what I've found so far in a mechanics guide or something when I get around to writing one and leave it at that.

No clue about weapon growth, but the very beginning of this page seems to touch on some of the details.

Good find. Looking through that, they seem to affirm most of the same stuff I had been thinking and include some extra stuff, but I don't think they have it all right, either.

Edit: Okay, here are my interpretations:

Initially, characters gain 20 WExp on a hit and 10 on a miss. When they reach 100 WExp, they can increase the weapon skill; when they reach 200 WExp, they can increase it twice at once. At 20 WLV, the WExp from missing disappears entirely; at 35 WLV and every 5 WLV afterward, WExp gains from hitting decrease according to certain percentages. Shields give 4x WExp, and characters start with 50 WExp.

A lot of things aren't clear, particularly the role growths play. My thought now is that growths may affect gaining WExp in the first place, and it may be those growths that are reduced as the characters increase their skill. This would explain almost everything, especially the things that had completely stumped me. The main issue is, it would mean the characters would automatically increase their WLV for every 100 WExp, so the thing about gaining multiple WLVs from one battle wouldn't apply except for long battles. However, Reese somehow increased his S Shield Skill multiple times in one battle, where he was only hit once, and therefore should only have gained 80 WExp. It may have had something to do with his personal shield being used, though.

Unless... it doesn't, and characters can wind up above 100 WExp without increasing it. Under this model, the characters have their chances of increasing their WExp to reach 100 or more, and while their WExp is between 100 and 200, they have their weapon growth rate % chance to burn 100 WExp and increase the skill, whereas if they go above 200, they automatically burn that 100 and increase the skill and have a chance to burn another 100 to increase the skill a second time. This fits perfectly with the test with Reese; he had like 150 WExp at the time. So if he hit with his shield, he had an 80% chance of gaining 80 WExp and moving up to 230, where he'd automatically gain an S Shield point and have an 80% chance of gaining another point, while if he missed, he'd be stuck at either 150 or 190 and have his 80% chance of getting one point no matter what. This would mean that he'd have a 64% chance of getting two points, but only if he hit. I tested him 6 times... both times he missed with the shield, he got one point; out of the four times he hit with it, he gained two points twice and gained one point the other two times, which fits the hypothesis perfectly.

If this is true, then we have all the basic stuff solved, although it's still damn confusing. I can start testing it immediately; hopefully I still have that save to crunch the numbers in more detail. If I'm right, they'll look like this:

Miss
80% chance of +1
20% chance of +0

Hit
64% chance of +2
32% chance of +1
4% chance of +0

Edit2: I don't, but it can't take too long to make a new one, especially if all these numbers are right.

Edit3: And now I do. I haven't tested it much yet, but with this system in mind, everything lines up perfectly. I'll continue testing it all out, then if it all checks out, add it to the Calculations page.

As far as I can tell, if this is right, the only things that remain to be checked are how healing spells impact WExp and what exactly is reduced by those percentages at higher levels (I'm guessing the points, not the chance, but it can't hurt to be sure). Those won't take long to verify, then I can add this to the site.

Edit4: After doing more testing, the WExp calculations from Vincent's link are definitely accurate, but I'm not sure about the chances. I was expecting 64/32/4 and 80/20 results, but instead, I got this:

Hit +2 14/31 - 45% (64%)
Hit +1 17/31 - 55% (32%)
Hit +0 0/31 - 0% (4%)

Miss +1 26/28 - 93% (80%)
Miss +0 2/28 - 7% (20%)

Parentheses are the chances I was expecting to get.

It seems like there's something particularly wrong with the chances of Reese not increasing his weapon skill at all. However, looking at those two instances compared to the entire test, they're about 3.5%, which fits if the chance of a +0 was 4% both times. This 4% chance would fit if Reese increasing his WExp to 170 (his WExp was 130 at the save before the test) forced him to increase his WLV, as if there's some minimum WExp around 150 that forces the point increase regardless of his growth rate, rather than being all the way back at 200. Based on this and some other tests, I'm under the impression that it's a minimum of 150, but that all three of the relevant minima - 100, 150, and 200 - are not inclusive.

I'm still confused about the other values, though. Reese should have gotten more +2s, unless it doesn't use the full growth rate or something.

No clue about weapon growth, but the very beginning of this page seems to touch on some of the details.

Does Senderos factor into anything, or is it just Rasputin?

I don't remember that name, but I assume you mean the Chaos clone? He's just there for kicks, so you can (and should, unless you're prepared) leave him alone.

Also, is there anything you know of keeping Axel from grabbing the Divine Sword Vajra with his Robbery skill in either chapter where Chaos appears?

I'm fairly sure that would be impossible. He already can't grab limited/rare items, but his level also needs to be higher than the equipment's rank. Since it's a rank 30 weapon, you obviously can't reach that level as early as Chapter 3. You might be able to do it in Chapter 15 instead, but I'm not sure if matching the rank is good enough.

By the way, about weapon skills, wouldn't it better to just wait for some tech-savvy person to come by and do all that emulator magic to figure it out? I have no clue about it myself, but I'm guessing it would be easier than trial-and-error. Especially considering the growth system is so freaking messed up.

I figured there was something like that with Olwen and Percival. Does Senderos factor into anything, or is it just Rasputin?

Also, is there anything you know of keeping Axel from grabbing the Divine Sword Vajra with his Robbery skill in either chapter where Chaos appears? I'm working on an Item Locations list (not uploaded yet); it could hypothetically include every item, but for now I'm just focusing on the ones that seem important enough to be worth the time of looking things up, and since the time required to look it up increases for common items, it seems like a good measure.

As for weapon skills, I'm really confused now. I've been able to get Chris to increase her Crossbow Skill on her fourth attack multiple times, but then couldn't replicate it afterwards. I don't know if it's really unlikely or dependent on hitting or killing or skill use or what, but something's up here.