FE8 : Master Version

[BrightVega]

I don't know what else you are planning but, would it be possible to make Seth leave the player's party to go with the other party at ch.9 and come back at the Jehanna desert somewhere down the line?

I've no idea how to do that.

Also, as far as i know, Seth (when alive) appears in all scenes with some heavy dialogue.

If he would be "unavailable" in the unit rooster he would still be "alive" and thus appear in all "separate" scenes like he is following everyone.

But then again, I might be completely wrong lol.

[X-Naut]

I don't know what else you are planning but, would it be possible to make Seth leave the player's party to go with the other party at ch.9 and come back at the Jehanna desert somewhere down the line?

RIP any sort of efficiency in no-grind

[eclipse]

Got past the first surprise.

[spoiler=Chapter 13]While Pablo's group showing up earlier makes things slightly more interesting, I threw Franz at the problem instead of Seth, and the end result was the same (a lot of dead enemies). Wound up taking seven turns, most of which were getting Cormag into recruitment range. Boss died to Seth (Armorslayer) and Saleh (Elfire). Got the Hoplon Guard before leaving.

Moulder hit level 20, and is in danger of cap ramming Speed. . .I don't know how it happened, either. Forde's got a whopping seven strength at level 13, while Kyle still can't double. Unless I can feed them every last kill in the next chapter, I'll probably drop both of them.

This chapter will probably make me think harder on Hard mode. Then again, I'd probably bum-rush the boss on Hard, and skip Cormag.

EDIT: And continuing onwards.

[spoiler=Chapter 14]On one hand, I like the sheer number of Hoplon Guards. On the other hand, it doesn't justify Killer weapon spam. Managed to get through Chapter 14 because Franz and a Pure Water made life a lot easier. Managed to level Cormag on the reinforcements, because they couldn't really do much to him. L'Arachel got a bunch of levels because why the hell not. And Ewan's going to be a nuke when he promotes.

BTW, Ewan hasn't set foot inside the Tower of Valni, and I haven't done a single skirmish.

EDIT 2: And now for a bit of logic.

[spoiler=Chapter 14 part two]The thing about Killer weapons is their higher-than-normal crit rate. If the crit goes off, it'll hurt. If the crit doesn't go off, it'll hurt a lot less. There's three ways of negating that threat - a Hoplon Guard, a unit whose Defense is so high that they don't care if they eat a crit (because two damage multiplied by three probably won't be fatal), or a unit whose Luck/supports are so high that the crit chance is dropped down to zero. By negating the threat of a critical, the challenge is greatly reduced. Chapter 14 features chokepoints, and by utilizing a single one, I turned the reinforcement Cavaliers into fodder for Cormag (who has no business challenging the boss anyway).

Why do I bother mentioning this? Because Chapter 14 is a perfect example of adding difficulty in the wrong way. More enemies in the hall after the double doors was a good idea. Crit spam is not. Unfortunately, there's more crit spam than clever enemy placement.

Edited November 29, 2015 by eclipse

[BrightVega]

EDIT 2: And now for a bit of logic.

[spoiler=Chapter 14 part two]The thing about Killer weapons is their higher-than-normal crit rate. If the crit goes off, it'll hurt. If the crit doesn't go off, it'll hurt a lot less. There's three ways of negating that threat - a Hoplon Guard, a unit whose Defense is so high that they don't care if they eat a crit (because two damage multiplied by three probably won't be fatal), or a unit whose Luck/supports are so high that the crit chance is dropped down to zero. By negating the threat of a critical, the challenge is greatly reduced. Chapter 14 features chokepoints, and by utilizing a single one, I turned the reinforcement Cavaliers into fodder for Cormag (who has no business challenging the boss anyway).

Why do I bother mentioning this? Because Chapter 14 is a perfect example of adding difficulty in the wrong way. More enemies in the hall after the double doors was a good idea. Crit spam is not. Unfortunately, there's more crit spam than clever enemy placement.

Actually theres 1 more way to negate a critical: Reduce the Hit% as much as possible.

Even if you have 999Crt%, having a 0%Hit means you never crit.

Which brings the WT advantage as it grants you 15%~30% Hit% reduction.

The placement takes into consideration the Crt%.

You have to design your moves around low Hit%, not low Crt%.

Another way to handle high Crt% is to kill the enemy before he attacks

or without him having the chance to counter you (ex. Send an archer/mage vs a melee)

Finally, Ch14 serves as a filter about support bonus.

I've managed to go through it without any supports so I'm sure in Hard mode supports will elliminate the extra challenge.

This happens in Ch14 only.

I find it a good filter for the end of the 2nd story arc. After all the enemies there are weaker than they should.

[eclipse]

Actually theres 1 more way to negate a critical: Reduce the Hit% as much as possible.

Even if you have 999Crt%, having a 0%Hit means you never crit.

Which brings the WT advantage as it grants you 15%~30% Hit% reduction.

The placement takes into consideration the Crt%.

You have to design your moves around low Hit%, not low Crt%.

Another way to handle high Crt% is to kill the enemy before he attacks

or without him having the chance to counter you (ex. Send an archer/mage vs a melee)

Finally, Ch14 serves as a filter about support bonus.

I've managed to go through it without any supports so I'm sure in Hard mode supports will elliminate the extra challenge.

This happens in Ch14 only.

I find it a good filter for the end of the 2nd story arc. After all the enemies there are weaker than they should.

The only person who'd have a chance in hell with that is Franz, and I had him baiting staves. Everyone else is too slow, and the RNG really likes hitting me over the head with 20%ish things.

I didn't bother with that, and basically barreled through everyone as I normally did. For the boss, I rigged hits with Saleh, because I didn't have the patience or supplies to hope that he'd hit with a 51% chance of landing something. Meanwhile, the boss did pretty laughable damage in return.

My team's got quite a few unlucky people (Franz, Moulder, Cormag, and now Knoll), so using supports won't work. Thus, it's either Hoplon Guard things and completely negate the challenge, or rig not-crits on my guys. Hence why it's bad design.

Currently on Chapter 16. Promotions are going slowly but surely. Am still using Iron weapons (and Lightning, but that's Moulder's fault for having bad starting Light rank).

[BrightVega]

?

Staff proc Hit% is based on resistance, not avoid.

Also staff Hit% doesn't use the true hit system. Only normal attacks do.

Magic Swords at range go through RES not DEF and only their half Might is applied at range.

The "unlucky" units have more reason to have supports than the others. A 5% dodge increase simply by "C" supporting

in reality is around 10%. And supports give a lot faster Crt. Resistance than luck can give alone.

Hoplon users with a "Pure Water" can steamroll the map.

All mages (except Arthur) have high LUCK and good supports to elliminate killers.

Archers (Neimi-Innes) with killer bows can easily kill all enemies behind walls.

Send Moulder solo in the 1st Valni floor. He will finish in 2mins (closed animations) with C or B rank in light.

[Dyamond]

Got to the final chapter of Ephraim's Route, Hard Mode.

Did not foresee the sheer carnage I'd have to experience and didn't stock up properly. Now I'm gonna restart the whole thing. But honestly, I'll probably just play the Eirika route and be pleasantly surprised again at how fun this game is.

Couple of thoughts:

1) The decision to give promoted enemies (almost) every weapon type that their class allows for was truly sadistic genius. I've actually yet to play normal mode, but the sheer weapon triangle disadvantage makes the game already significantly more difficult than vanilla.

2) Some of the reinforcements seem to hold little value, other than trolling the player. Specifically, the ones that come out of absolutely nowhere, e.g. the first wave in the final chapter.

3) The ridiculous abundance of stat-boosters seems to be a little much. Why not just buff character bases/growths more? If it was done for flexibility in endgame character selection, I'd just buff the shit out of some classic useful-as-nipples-on-men characters (e.g. Dozla) and call it a day.

4) Chapter 17 is disgustingly difficult. The rescue staff is an almost must-have for the final few chapters, but it's such a pain to save all the citizens. Maybe give the enemy team a couple less fliers?

Edited November 30, 2015 by Dyamond

[BrightVega]

Got to the final chapter of Ephraim's Route, Hard Mode.

Did not foresee the sheer carnage I'd have to experience and didn't stock up properly. Now I'm gonna restart the whole thing. But honestly, I'll probably just play the Eirika route and be pleasantly surprised again at how fun this game is.

Wow, you did it EHM? It's New Mystery Maniac difficulty.

Eirika's mode is easier in various regards.

Ok let me see:

Couple of thoughts:

1) The decision to give promoted enemies (almost) every weapon type that their class allows for was truly sadistic genius. I've actually yet to play normal mode, but the sheer weapon triangle disadvantage makes the game already significantly more difficult than vanilla.

2) Some of the reinforcements seem to hold little value, other than trolling the player. Specifically, the ones that come out of absolutely nowhere, e.g. the first wave in the final chapter.

3) The ridiculous abundance of stat-boosters seems to be a little much. Why not just buff character bases/growths more? If it was done for flexibility in endgame character selection, I'd just buff the shit out of some classic useful-as-nipples-on-men characters (e.g. Dozla) and call it a day.

4) Chapter 17 is disgustingly difficult. The rescue staff is an almost must-have for the final few chapters, but it's such a pain to save all the citizens. Maybe give the enemy team a couple less fliers?

1) I know lol. I had to use the terrain and supports to full to counter that.

2)

Enemies can and know how to hide in forests, water bodies, cliffs, dark corners :P

But that's only a thing for emphraim route. Eirika is clear of such things.

3) The stat boosters are there to help for Hard Mode and reduce griding for the endgame.

The Growths and bases are updated for endgame.

Generally, I've calculated that 1 character needs 15~20 boosters on average for almost maxing his stats (not full max)

So 20boostersPerChar x 24 Units =480boosters x 1500G(Silver Card) = 720,000G

720,000 is a lot of cash already without counting the need for new weapons.

4) Funny thing is I had already nerfed the map and added a "Fortify" staff as drop :P. (And I think you should have 1 fortify staff as loot from a previous chapter)

What gave you trouble exactly?

The Dracos at the south? The West Zerker? Was the western lone Draco reinforcement? The reinforcements in general?

Did you use "Sleep" staves and Siege Tomes?

Edited November 30, 2015 by BrightVega

[Dyamond]

3) Yeah, you're right. I'll leave that to rest for now haha

4)

Fortify helps to keep your own characters alive; my issue lay with citizen protection.

The West Zerker (top-notch title) was probably the biggest point of grief, yeah. That and the bolting in the east.

To be fair, I only used one sleep staff because I tend to turn healers into more offensive units post-promotion (like Natasha). At the same time, it doesn't really resolve the bolting issue since most of the healers' RES stats weren't high enough to reliably silence them.

All in all, maybe I'm just being whiny because I got messed up since this game is so much harder than expected lol.

[Kaede Ryusaki]

Would it be alright if I lped this?

[eclipse]

?

Staff proc Hit% is based on resistance, not avoid.

Also staff Hit% doesn't use the true hit system. Only normal attacks do.

I've played the GBA games to death, so I'm familiar with the calculations. An enemy is more likely to target a unit with ~50% success than ~20% success (these numbers were pulled out of my rear).

Magic Swords at range go through RES not DEF and only their half Might is applied at range.

I had Saleh at two-range, poking away. He was still in some danger of dying, but it was something like a 4HKO.

The "unlucky" units have more reason to have supports than the others. A 5% dodge increase simply by "C" supporting

in reality is around 10%. And supports give a lot faster Crt. Resistance than luck can give alone.

Not really. Killer weapons boast enough crit such that I don't see the point. . .and that's what Chapter 14 was all about. Furthermore, not all affinities cover crit avoid. . .unfortunately, I am overly fond of one of them (Light).

Hoplon users with a "Pure Water" can steamroll the map.

All mages (except Arthur) have high LUCK and good supports to elliminate killers.

Archers (Neimi-Innes) with killer bows can easily kill all enemies behind walls.

My only bow unit will be Gerik. I kill units behind walls using Ross.

Send Moulder solo in the 1st Valni floor. He will finish in 2mins (closed animations) with C or B rank in light.

All experience will come from main campaign maps only. A truly well-designed hack should be beatable in this manner.

[BrightVega]

4)

Fortify helps to keep your own characters alive; my issue lay with citizen protection.

The West Zerker (top-notch title) was probably the biggest point of grief, yeah. That and the bolting in the east.

To be fair, I only used one sleep staff because I tend to turn healers into more offensive units post-promotion (like Natasha). At the same time, it doesn't really resolve the bolting issue since most of the healers' RES stats weren't high enough to reliably silence them.

All in all, maybe I'm just being whiny because I got messed up since this game is so much harder than expected lol.

Okay, I'll review this chapter again.

About the east mage:

did you try sending a pega/draco/wyv with fili shield? 1Siege Tome +1flier can solve that issue.

The enemy is so close to your starting positions that reaching him shouldn't be too hard...i think

All experience will come from main campaign maps only. A truly well-designed hack should be beatable in this manner.

Completely disagree with this. If anything, all tactics games have grinding as a core compenent in their gameplay.

And certainly I've made this hack with the ability to grind in mind.

Otherwise one can just play the originals.

Would it be alright if I lped this?

Sure go ahead. No need for permission.

[eclipse]

Completely disagree with this. If anything, all tactics games have grinding as a core compenent in their gameplay.

And certainly I've made this hack with the ability to grind in mind.

Otherwise one can just play the originals.

Yggdra Union wants a word with you.

I should be able to beat my current run without grinding, assuming that everything isn't OMG MAX STATS. Even if it means taking a six-person party into Endgame.

[X-Naut]

Completely disagree with this. If anything, all tactics games have grinding as a core compenent in their gameplay.

And certainly I've made this hack with the ability to grind in mind.

Won't stop us from trying.

Also, I'm currently playing Chapter 15 on Eirika HM and it's way too much of a difficulty spike from 14. Making the jump to all promoted enemies, all silvers, and one weapon for every rank is harsh enough given the stat gap between Tier 1/2 units. Having them aggro you from every angle on a small desert map with the same enemy density as before is overkill. I've also been playing no-grind and while I cleared the prior maps with reasonable difficulty and have a mostly filled-out team (L'Arachel is the one "weak link"), I've had to save-scum and RNG abuse to keep the enemy phases manageable. And grinding isn't going to save anyone who gets stuck here because you're stuck in Jehanna Hall between Chapters 14 and 15!

So I'm going to suggest breaking up the second difficulty spike between Chapters 15 and 16. I haven't played Ephraim's route yet, so I don't know if this is a problem there.

[BrightVega]

Yggdra Union wants a word with you.

I should be able to beat my current run without grinding, assuming that everything isn't OMG MAX STATS. Even if it means taking a six-person party into Endgame.

You can if you abuse Holy weapons.

You get 10 uses of hammerne before endgame.

Won't stop us from trying.

Also, I'm currently playing Chapter 15 on Eirika HM and it's way too much of a difficulty spike from 14. Making the jump to all promoted enemies, all silvers, and one weapon for every rank is harsh enough given the stat gap between Tier 1/2 units. Having them aggro you from every angle on a small desert map with the same enemy density as before is overkill. I've also been playing no-grind and while I cleared the prior maps with reasonable difficulty and have a mostly filled-out team (L'Arachel is the one "weak link"), I've had to save-scum and RNG abuse to keep the enemy phases manageable. And grinding isn't going to save anyone who gets stuck here because you're stuck in Jehanna Hall between Chapters 14 and 15!

So I'm going to suggest breaking up the second difficulty spike between Chapters 15 and 16. I haven't played Ephraim's route yet, so I don't know if this is a problem there.

If you cleared Ch14 then Ch15 is 100% possible.

I did my runs without grinding too and the exp from main chapter enemies was having my main team at 50~100% more levels than the enemy

(unless you fed Seth to much lol)

Anyway Ch.15:

South team with Ephraim should open an escape route for North team.

North team should press east.

Axe users can create a wall to decimate the Wyverns approaching

OR

bait the wyverns come close to you by being right outside their range and then ambuse them.

South team doesn't have much to do after the first 3 turns. You can send some of them up.

The south enemy team appears in turn 8 and 9. By then almost everyone should be on the south plains.

Just don't tell me that you are still using Iron Weapons in Hard mode :P

Supports, terrain, Killer weapons and tons of cash is available for the players. Use them.

[X-Naut]

My issue isn't that it's not possible, it's that it requires a lot more luck than you can reasonably get without rigging constant criticals and dodges.

Walling off the wyverns is easier said than done when there's ten of them, most of them have 9 unconditional movement and they're in the perfect vantage point come turn 2. You can't exactly get into formation either when your primary focus is killing the pre-existing enemies. Most of my axe users were in the south dealing with the three Paladins; only Gerik was up north and base Dozla wasn't worth it. (Besides, there are a lot of swordies up there.) I dealt with them by critting the Sage on the fort with Innes, then parking Alacalibur Artur (the only guy who can reach it) to dodgetank a bunch of low 40% hits and cut them down fast, plus Lancereaver Eirika to take off pressure and bring a few into the main group's range.

Of the south team I only sent Tana north to help out with the Falcoknights, I left the rest at the bottom to deal with Valter's remaining goons and later Valter himself. But yeah in hindsight I should've had them run into the desert to scatter the reinforcements...

Yeah I'm still using Iron weapons, mainly because I overstocked on them. :P But I'm only using them where I can crit, stronger weapons aren't needed, or when there's low pressure. The bulk of my offense has been Killers, Silvers, effective weapons and the Swordslayers. I should have more supports now, but I'm so used to playing faster than most supports grow that I only have a few.

With the reinforcements out of the way I'll have time to accumulate support points, staff-grind and chip Callaech while Rennac goes digging. And once I'm out I'm going to redo my inventory entirely, especially with the new shops. (RIP all the Hero and Knight Crests that I never used)

...

Honestly the biggest problem with the map is that you have a dozen promoted fliers breathing down your neck by turn 2 with little room to prepare for them. It boils down to either a Sage risking their neck against the swarm with an Alacalibur tome or scrambling into a defensive formation where even one unit lacking in defense/avoid results in death. The southwest reinforcements are rough but I'll grant you that staying away from them initially would've been far more bearable than my hunker-down approach.

[BrightVega]

-Ok, I'll rig them so only half of them (the nothern ones) will move.

Half of them will move on the 1st turn, the other half on the 2nd.

The south ones will enter the "hit enemies who get in range - don't pursue"

-For Ch14, the south cavalry reinforcement won't have killer weapons.

-Also, in Chapter 17 Ephraim's route, the North-East Zerker in the river has been relocated to an non-threatening spot.

Now there are only 3 iminent threats for the civilians and all 3 can be dealt on the 1st turn.

-The update is taking some time cause i want to add 2 novelty things more.

Already did some other very minor changes (like the pure waters thing).

If it takes too long, I'll just update those 3 changes.

But I promise to do them.

Edited December 1, 2015 by BrightVega

[CT075]

i'd argue that designing a game to be balanced around grinding is an inherently flawed design principle

if you make it really difficult and say "but you can just grind!", that turns off people who don't enjoy grinding (read: yours truly). furthermore, how much "accounting for grinding" is enough? turn up enemy stats to account for all units being 2 levels higher than they would reasonably be without grinding, i'll just grind them to be 10 levels. account for 10 levels? i'll grind 15. or, the flipside- account for 10 levels, now it's impossible without grinding. by that logic, i should just have all campaign enemies be endgame-level from the get-go, "you can just grind to get to their level". i have yet to actually encounter a single-player tactics game that actually required me to grind to clear the game, nor would i say that any of them have "grinding as a core component"

Edited December 1, 2015 by CT075

[BrightVega]

What can I say?

Tactis Ogre, FF SNES Tactics, FF GBA Tactics, FF12DS, Bahamut Lagoon, Kessen, Valkyria Chronicles

and Fire Emblem to an extend had me grinding for hours.

As for the amount of grinding, that's for the player to decide.

FE has always been about stats and gear, never about level. The level meter is just an indication.

The final battle stats only matter.

You enter a map and say "Shit i need better weapons. But i need money for that. Let's go get some money first"

or "I need 10 leveled units but i have 8. I'll train 2 more to be on par with the other 8."

This is why you would grind.

The enemies aren't strong. They have better equips and better positions.

Every Unit of your army is like a boss compared to grunts. That strong.

It's just that this patch doesn't follow the new mentality "Go yolo".

It's more old-school "You need to know what to do. Trial and Error".

And grinding is here to cover the "errors" someone will do on the first run.

Edited December 3, 2015 by BrightVega

[Kobazco]

I'm going to run this through the universal randomizer and see what kind of hell I will induce upon myself.

[Dyamond]

-Ok, I'll rig them so only half of them (the nothern ones) will move.

Half of them will move on the 1st turn, the other half on the 2nd.

The south ones will enter the "hit enemies who get in range - don't pursue"

Got to Chapter 15 Eirika Hard Mode. Ran into above issues. As a result, I found it to be even more disgustingly difficult than possibly every Ephraim Hard Mode chapter, maybe because the previous chapters were all such a breeze compared to the Ephraim chapters.

So I'm re-restarting the run and doing the Ephraim route (this time I'm gonna do it RIGHT)

r i p

s a d b o y z

[BrightVega]

Patch 1.05 is out and handles various issues reported.

Patch details below the "Extra details" section in the 1st post.

! Edit: Any other issue or criticism is welcome.

@ Dyamond:

Got to Chapter 15 Eirika Hard Mode. Ran into above issues. As a result, I found it to be even more disgustingly difficult than possibly every Ephraim Hard Mode chapter, maybe because the previous chapters were all such a breeze compared to the Ephraim chapters.

Copy-paste your ROM to make a back-up, apply patch 1.05 on the original copy and reload the Map15 on the newly patched ROM.

Tell me how things are now.

Edited December 3, 2015 by BrightVega

[Dyamond]

I did it, I finished Ephraim Hard Mode

At least now we know this game is beatable.

[BrightVega]

I did it, I finished Ephraim Hard Mode

At least now we know this game is beatable.

Congratz!

Still it should be easier than FE4 and Thracia, on par with the last chapter in the japanese FE7 HHM.

What was your Total Turn count and playtime?

Mine were 380~ for Eirika and 420~ for Ephraim with an average of 60+ hours for both.

[BrightVega]

OK Patch 1.10 is out and tested. What it does:

- Assassin (F) new animation
- New BG for chapter title
- Redesign of Main Menu BG

And with these i think the hack is complete.

From now on it's going to be balancing the gameplay depending on feedback (though so far it seems everything is going smoothly)