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This patch allows you to play through the prologue of Shadow Dragon on higher difficulties. Enemies will scale up to your difficulty of choice for the prologue's duration. This also allows you to choose the sacrifice and (potentially) obtain Norne on higher difficulties. Changes have been made to Prologue 1 and 2 to help accommodate higher difficulties, such as placing a vulnerary in Marth's inventory, having certain enemies drop vulneraries, and changing the class and equipment of certain enemy units. Script edits have also been made to make the intro cinematic always load the normal difficulty version - the one that ends with, "Thus Marth applied himself to the ways of the pen and sword, until one day..." instead of summarizing the prologue - even when you pick hard modes. Text editing has also been used to make the help text say that you get the prologue on all difficulties, rather than hard modes still saying that no prologue is included. The Gaiden Requirements Removal Patch, made by Robert of Normandy a.k.a. RobertTheSable, has been incorporated into this patch. If you want to use the Gaiden Requirements Removal with this patch, use FE11HardPrologueWithGaiden.xelda. If you want the regular game with no changes other than being able to play through the prologue on higher difficulties, use FE11HardModePrologue.xdelta. USE ONLY ONE VERSION OF THE PATCH, NOT BOTH. This patch also fixes the long-standing Ymir movement bug associated with the Gaiden Requirements Removal Patch. As part of the fix, Ymir will now actively move during Chapter 20x (instead of being stationary, as he is in the unmodded game), and his dialogue has been slightly altered to reflect this. This was made using the US version of FE11, so you should use an .nds file from that region. Please note you'll have to acquire a copy of the FE11 .nds legally; only the patch is included in the download. Installation: 1. If you have not already, download the Delta Patcher utility here: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/704/ 2. Extract DeltaPatcherLite.exe, your unmodified .nds file of FE11, and EITHER FE11HardPrologueWithGaiden.xdelta OR FE11HardModePrologue.xdelta to the same folder. DO NOT USE BOTH .xdelta FILES; CHOOSE ONLY ONE. The difference is explained above. 3. Open DeltaPatcherLite.exe. 4. Click the "Open" button for the "Original file" box and select the unmodified .nds file of FE11. 5. Click the "Open" button for the "XDelta patch" box and select EITHER FE11HardPrologueWithGaiden.xdelta OR FE11HardModePrologue.xdelta. 6. Click the "Apply Patch" button. Users with older PCs may have to wait a few moments. 7. Your previously unmodified file, which you selected in step 3 as the "Original file", is the patched ROM you should now use. (Optional) To confirm that the patch applied correctly, double-check that the checksum, MD5, and SHA-1 values match up with the ones listed on the below RH.net page. If you don't know what those are, use a utility like this one to see what your patched ROM's values are. If they're different, you probably used an .nds file from the wrong region - you need to use a US ROM. Download here Download DeltaPatcher from here (you need this to apply the patch to your ROM) Credits and Acknowledgments: - Robert of Normandy a.k.a. RobertTheSable for their Gaiden Requirements Removal Patch. Permission was given to incorporate this patch into other hacks here: https://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/topic/51430-fe-shadow-dragon-gaiden-requirements-removal-patch/&do=findComment&comment=3665588 - Blazer for their suite of Shadow Dragon hacking tools, which can be found here: http://www.feshrine.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=422&p=85130 - Mariode for their update to said suite of tools, which can be found here: https://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/topic/66930-fe-shadow-dragon-unit-disposition-editor-modules-itemclass-editor-update/ - SadNES cITy Translations for their Delta Patcher tool, which can be found here: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/704/ - Nuthingdude for providing a save file at Chapter 20 for use in bugtesting the Ymir fix - Will and Sam for their inexplicably continued friendship

I do miss being able to actually walk around the towns in the style of other RPGs. I get why they did it - fully modelling a town in the same fashion as a dungeon would take considerably more time and effort, but I feel like something is lost by everything being still backgrounds with NPCs on top of them. Even something as simple as the castle in Fates, where you just ran around as your unit sprite, would have been preferable, in my opinion.

Browser lagged out; forgive the accidental double post.

Hopefully you're all still doing well. Count me among the chorus of voices cheering you on - keep on keepin' on, and if you have to take a break to avoid burn-out, don't hesitate.

Looks like you're off to a promising start. I do have two questions, though: Which game's script are you going to make use of - Shadow Dragon's, or the fan translations of the original FE1? In addition, are you going to be incorporating some of Shadow Dragon's added content, like the gaiden chapters and the prologue?

Kefka is probably the gold standard for psychopath villains, and Kreia (from KotOR 2) the gold standard for sympathetic villains. Both have their advantages, but I prefer my villains to be sympathetic. Psychopath villains tend to be boring whenever they show up on screen - Kefka is a notable exception, but too many, like that Ramsey guy on Game of Thrones, are one-note forces of destruction and suffering that turn up whenever the author/designer needs something bad to happen. Sympathetic villains can also be done wrong, mind, but I'd prefer the flawed execution of a sympathetic villain to the flawed execution of a psychopathic one.

I can't begin to imagine the amount of work that went into this. Regardless of whether or not you continue work on the patch, know that everyone involved has done stellar work. You should all be proud.

Pardon the necroposting, but this topic is still pinned - does this mean there will be more of these events in the future? There hasn't been much activity in this thread for nearly a year.

I'm working on a hack for Shadow Dragon to allow you to play the prologue in higher difficulties. It's almost ready for release - every difficulty loads into the prologue maps just fine, enemies scale up, and substantial changes have been made to Prologue 1 and 2 to accommodate for the low party size (in P1's case, you only have Marth). H1-H4 can consistently complete P1 and P2 without needing too much luck; H5 needs a bit of luck to get through P1. Essentially, Marth will be attacked about 9-10 times, and every attack has a 30% chance of missing. At least one of those attacks needs to miss for you to be able to progress. The chances are pretty good (in the player's favor), obviously, but it is nevertheless possible to be screwed by the RNG. Script edits have also been made to make the intro cinematic always load the normal difficulty version - the one that ends with, "Thus Marth applied himself to the ways of the pen and sword, until one day..." instead of summarizing the prologue - even when you pick hard modes. Text editing has also been used to make the help text say that you get the prologue on all difficulties, rather than hard modes still saying that no prologue is included. With this hack, it's possible to choose your sacrifice on a hard mode playthrough and potentially recruit Norne as well. For obvious reasons, I imagine H4 and H5 players will be much more likely to meet Norne. This is hard to preview because all I really have is a screenshot of the Load Game menu saying there's an H4 save in P2 and P3. I suppose I could throw in a shot of a Gra soldier in P1 with H5 beefed-up stats, too. Anyways, I hope to be able to release it soon - more playtesting is definitely needed for the prologue on H4 and H5 to see if it's too difficult in certain areas.

I don't know if the creators of this patch still keep an eye on this thread, but just in case they do, I want to say thank you. I'm playing through FE6 now for the first time, and the updated translation patch feels like an industry-quality localization.

This looks very promising. Fates' writing was generally lackluster and simplistic, as you noted, and from everything I've seen, your changes look to be a vast improvement. When I get around to trying Conquest again (I lost interest around chapter 8), I'll install your mod and start a new game. Good luck with your planned rewrites to Revelations, too.

If I may, I'd like to offer my help with any raw text editing/review that still needs to be done. With more and more elements of FE3/12 being localized via Heroes, the work is likely getting more intensive. I've dabbled in FE12 dialogue editing before (hello world screenshot) and have enough of a background in writing that I would feel comfortable helping with any alterations or revisions that you feel need to be made. I likely wouldn't be much help with the graphics editing, however, which is what it seems like you need. Still, if you're interested, I'm willing to lend you a hand. I know I'm not very established in the FE modding community, but I'm an experienced modder of other games, and have collaborated with people on text-heavy projects before.