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InvdrZim13

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I don't know if you know this, but sometimes in 3x it will glitch and even after you beat Gilder the chapter won't end you'll just stay on the map with it saying 0 enemies left. As well as in certain positions I went to attack with Eirnen and Eirnen froze in place and I couldn't do anything with him.

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12 hours ago, Franp3 said:

Version 2.0 doesn't seem to be compatible with MyBoy for Android. When I open MyBoy and tap the v2.0 file, nothing happens. v1.7 works just fine, though.

Huh, we don't really test with mobile emulators so I'm not sure why it'd stop working.

You're sure you patched it over a fresh FE8(U) rom right?

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A few things, my apologies if you found them out already.

1. Risa is missing Formation and Deborah's missing Dominate

2. Shield Tactics has glitched description.

3. Dark Knights and Great Knights use the wrong map sprites but if you check the units in question, their stat screens use the right one.

I also can't help but wonder, if they're already in, when do the promoted classes learn their class skill?

Edited by FEAnon
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1 hour ago, FEAnon said:

A few things, my apologies if you found them out already.

1. Risa is missing Formation and Deborah's missing Dominate

2. Shield Tactics has glitched description.

3. Dark Knights and Great Knights use the wrong map sprites but if you check the units in question, their stat screens use the right one.

I also can't help but wonder, if they're already in, when do the promoted classes learn their class skill?

Formation and Dominate were missed when we set up the female classes.

Yeah the description is too long

We had those fixed and they broke again

Level 10 last I checked.

24 minutes ago, Toujours said:

I tried with two: Flips and NUPS

If you used NUPS it should be working assuming it's a clean ROM.

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39 minutes ago, This Is A Whatever said:

Wait, so I'm not entirely clear on how the supports work. Are they the same as how supports work in FE8 where you have to have two units who can support stand next to each other for however many turns it takes until they can support?

Yup

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8 hours ago, InvdrZim13 said:

Level 10 last I checked.

Thanks. Its rather late (still earlier than waiting until ??/15 like in the official games for some of the skills) but it would be really nice if there was a list of class skills out there, since it would kind of suck to wait until ??/10 for a skill that doesn't really benefit the character in question.

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17 hours ago, FEAnon said:

Thanks. Its rather late (still earlier than waiting until ??/15 like in the official games for some of the skills) but it would be really nice if there was a list of class skills out there, since it would kind of suck to wait until ??/10 for a skill that doesn't really benefit the character in question.

We'll be working on a list of class skills for the next update 

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I just finished up Sawyer's route after having done Owen's route first, and so I feel I am ready to give my thoughts on both sides. Be warned: spoilers ahead! Note on all character discussions: I did not use any stat boosting items on any units. 

Spoiler

Sawyer's route was a lot of fun, despite him getting completely magic-screwed (10 Magic at level 20 -__- ) .

Sawyer's 2-1 was a nice and easy one. And it featured an arena! A nice touch for a little bit of level-grinding while there was time. 

2-2 in Sawyer's route seemed pretty tame at first... up until a pirate destroyed the house in the southwest corner. At that point it took me multiple retries before I -finally- was able to get Kate into position fast enough to lob a Short Axe at the pirate at said pirate in time to save the house. Seriously, there's barely enough time to get over there, especially since you have to deal with the Arbalest that's in the way first in order for a flier to get over there. Also something to note is that Julia's death quote glitched out to be a conversation between two Belles and the dialogue being Kalvestra's letter. 

I especially enjoyed 2-3 and how it tested your ability to balance defending a town within a small area and going out of the town in order to hunt down the boss and get his Master Seal. In the end I had Grace and Stark go on a merry adventure together killing everything in their path (seriously, Grace's innate skill is amazing). The only supports I have are the B-support between Grace and Stark, the C-support between Grace and Nero, and the C-Support between Stark and Sofia. Makes me kinda wonder if any other supports have been implemented, but I suppose I'll find them in due time; it's not like I was actively hunting for them. The rest of the crew, including both healers and dancer, held down the fort, with Kate holding off the enemies to the southwest, Lily engaging the northwestern forces, and Charles basically holding the east gate on his own. Harold mostly sniped enemies to the east while they were stuck behind the Great Wall of Charles, and Horace ran around the whole town lending his bow wherever needed. 

I don't have much to say about Sawyer's 2-4. It was a fairly hectic chapter, but I thought it was well-designed. Also Sage-Mode Harold pretty much wrecked shop. One issue though is that in the ending dialogue, the left-most portraits are glitched out by a moving brigand. 

In hindsight I could have chosen my units based on who could have conversations with whom, but I instead picked based on my favorites. I hope it doesn't come back to bite me. 

As for the unique units in Sawyer's route:

Deborah's animation is bugged, so I didn't bother using her at all (yes I know I could have just turned off her animation separately, but whatever-- I tend to limit my use of prepromotes anyhow).

Julia is basically Grace on a pegasus. Which sounds great! Until you realize that, unlike Grace whose bonuses come from having her best friend Stark nearby, Julia's bonuses come from not moving very much. Which would be great if Julia had good defenses! Unfortunately she does not, and as a flier, she wants to be zipping around the battlefield anyway. Even so, she is by far the fastest flier in your army, and that makes her worth using. That said, I ended up benching her after 2-2 in favor of having both healers on board for 2-3 and 2-4 and my stubborn insistence of making a Swordmaster out of Sofia (which may not have been so good of an idea, seeing how Sofia turned out by the end). 

Boh was really underwhelming. In the chapter you find him in, he starts with the powerful Nosferatu tome as well as a Luna tome (which I later found has 0 might, meaning that it was rarely if ever a better option than Nosferatu despite the resistance-negation). His growths are middling across the board, with his best being Luck for some reason. I wasn't going to bank on his innate skill secretly doing something to make or break him depending on the map, so I ended up benching him right after his debut. On a side note, having a shaman with a focus on resistance over defense just feels weird to me for some reason. 

Horace, being a second bow user, was a welcome addition to the crew. Though his low strength growth hurts, he still found plenty of use picking off the various fliers that covered the maps of 2-3 and 2-4. He ended up getting so much use in 2-3 and 2-4 that he reached level 20 and got promoted to a Silver Knight. I wasn't sure if I should have picked that or Nomad Trooper, and I ended up choosing based on my relative shortage of lance-users compared to my ridiculously high amount of sword-wielders. One thing to note is that the longbow was incompatable with the nomad class, so I had to go without that particular boon. 

Deniel is the last to join the party, and when you recruit him he suffers the same exact problems as Kane before him: low hit rates. Deniel at least has a higher Skill stat, but even so his hit rates never got over 70% throughout the entire chapter. Moreover, aside from skill (and luck by 1 point) all of Kane's stats are higher than Deniel's, and Kane starts out 4 levels lower than Deniel does! I get it. With his innate skill, Deniel is supposed to be a crit monster. However, I value precision before critical hits (though I love crits too, hence why I'm training up Sofia). As such, I do not think I will be using him in the upcoming parts. 

 

 

One thing that I noticed about Sawyer's route in general is that its enemy count is a fair bit higher than in Owen's route. In Sawyer's route, I was able to get 8 different units to level 20 and promoted by the end (Sawyer, Grace, Stark, Charles, Lily, Kate, Harold, and Horace). This is opposed to Owen's route, where I was only able to get 6 to that point (Owen, Stark, Charles, Lily, Harold, and Edmund). It might have just been how I distributed the experience, however; I didn't actually count the enemies, so my observation may very well be incorrect.

 

 

Speaking of Owen's route...

I greatly enjoyed Owen's route, and not just because my Owen ended up being amazing. Let it be known that I have had many more low-percentage crits with Owen than I ever did with Sawyer. 

Owen's 2-1 proved to be a good introduction to the route, with a good balance to be struck between turtling and playing aggressively. Once the longbow class-compatibility issue is fixed I'm sure things will turn out for the better! 

Owen's 2-2 had a bit of a dissonance to it. If the dialogue was to be believed, this chapter would require you to play quickly and efficiently in order to wipe out all enemy soldiers before any escaped. However, the opposite is the case; in this chapter, there's absolutely no sense of urgency whatsoever. I was totally free to take as much time as I liked, and there was no danger of incurring penalties (or having any buildings destroyed by wayward brigands). Though the gameplay itself was fine (albeit a total bait-and-switch fest), I do find myself wishing that I was forced to move forward with more of a purpose than to simply clear the map. 

Owen's 2-3 route had its own interesting mechanic to it, in the form of chasing down a boss before she escapes. When I first saw this concept, I concluded that the map was going to be a balancing act where you want to go fast enough so that she doesn't escape, but slow enough so that you get all the collectibles that are available throughout the chapter. It is possible to end the chapter on turn 1 thanks to Charles and a dance-inspired Stark, but then you'd miss out on a bunch of goodies and the recruiting Lee. On one of my slower runs I was freaking out because I had taken too much time and thought the boss was going to escape. But then the rebel cavaliers showed up at the exit. I was relieved; at least they could buy me a turn or two, I thought. What I didn't expect to happen, however, is for the boss's AI to completely break once the cavaliers showed up. The boss didn't move after they appeared; nor did she attack anyone that strayed into her range. I think that once the AI for this chapter is fixed, it would be brilliant. As it stands, there's only a false sense of pressure (unless there's a secret chapter you get for killing the boss before the cavaliers show up or something). One other thing is the relatively low number of enemy units in this chapter, which I think contributed most to the level discrepancy between my Owen group and my Sawyer group. 

Owen's 2-4 route provides the only "fog" chapter in the game so far, complete with monsters galore. Despite the torches (and torch staff) available, it was still rife with apprehension and had a balance of careful and fast-paced advancement. The former so that you don't get killed by the enemies in front; the latter so that you don't get backstabbed by the ample reinforcements.The sheer number of enemies in this chapter coming from all sides is reminiscent of Sawyer's 2-3, though in this case your army is on the move rather than holding a stationary position. As a side note, I feel kinda bad about sidelining Grace for this one, since in Sawyer's route she's kept up with Stark in levels. I'll be sure to bring her back in going forward.

As for the unique units in Owen's route:

Sylvia is the prepromote of this route, and this prepromote proved to be very useful in 2-1 and 2-3 by virtue of the fact that she moves faster than every other unit in your army at this point. This made her good for rescue operations in case a squishy unit needed to be fed a kill and picked up, or in the case of chapter 2-3, sniping out a pesky Bolting mage with a short spear before it could rain hell down upon my units. 

Edmund is easily the best unit you get on this entire route, and an argument can be made for him being the best unit in the entire game so far, barring the lords. With excellent bases and great growths barring his luck and defense, Edmund is a good pick throughout the entire route. His speed is amazing for a knight, and he has an uncharacteristically high resistance stat, making him great in any situation. Even his innate skill is great, helping him shore up his low defense growth and making him ideal for holding choke points. In 2-4 he proved to be an invaluable asset, tearing through basically any monster that dared to attack him or came into his range. Being able to double with steel weapons is an incredible boon as well. 

Risa was a welcome addition to the team, especially since my Axel turned out poorly and I ended up benching him early on. While her base stats pass muster, her growths leave much to be desired, with Axel having higher strength, skill, and hp and Risa having higher speed, luck, and resistance. She ended up being benched in chapter 2-4 in favor of my other units, but because I generally love the Sentinel class, I may consider training her up later on. 

Lee never really saw use in my playthrough, though by the numbers she's a fairly decent unit that, going by growth rates, is essentially a worse Sawyer in the route without Sawyer in it (that being said, her base magic stat is significantly higher than Sawyer's magic stat ever got ;~; ). That being said, she does a much better Sawyer impression than Boh does an Owen impression, so that's nice. I didn't use her in 2-4, though in hindsight I probably should have given how many enemies with low resistance there were.  

Seyren is the second wyvern rider the party gets, and if his innate skill Stealth Flier actually worked properly, he'd be a great one. Unfortunately, either Stealth Flier doesn't work in this version or monsters count as mounted units. I'm not sure which. Whatever the case, the thing that's supposed to make up for his absolutely horrible speed stat isn't there. Even so, he did a good amount of work by banking on Killer Axe crits, so it wasn't a total loss. His inherent defensive stats were enough to pull him through despite him being doubled at every turn. Though the position of high-strength flier is already filled by Lily, it's always nice to have a bit of redundancy. 

 

And now for the new characters that both routes shared:

I tried Nero in Owen's 2-1, but I dropped him soon afterward in favor of Darius, since generals get that juicy skill that prevents doubling, and since Nero isn't likely going to be doubling anything I might as well go with the other blade-user. 

Due to my love of swordmasters, I tried my best to make Sofia work in both routes. I really did. However, due to her complete lack of defenses and low strength, I'd needed to baby her in every mission I brought her on. It was a similar issue with Marques, actually. Even now I'm not sure if it's worth using her or not, considering Grace with Stark supporting her is already a crit-monster in her own right. It doesn't help that Vantage doesn't work properly. I found that out in the fight against Seneca (on a side note, Calidor's effect of automatically doubling when below half hp doesn't work either). 

Kane trades the ability to reliably hit things for ridiculously high strength and speed. I'm not much of a gambler, so I opted out of using him in my runs, but if you're willing to invest a  Secret Book (or more if they appear in later parts), then I'm sure he can prove to be a very powerful character. Personally I didn't bother using any of my consumable stat boosting items, so I ended up benching him in favor of my more reliable other units. 

Nico is a dancer, and is incredibly hard-to-hit. Use him because he's a dancer, and dancers are useful. Also, feel free to let an enemy or two take a shot at him, despite what he says. He has a way of surviving. 

Leonid saw more use in the Sawyer route than he did in the Owen route, owing to the fact that the maps in Owen's route were tame enough for a single healer and dancer to handle on their own, whereas 2-3 and 2-4 in Sawyer's route required all hands on deck from me. In Owen's 2-3 I didn't even end up using a healer, owing to my initial assumption that every turn counted and I couldn't afford to spend even a single move on healing. I tend to value Aurora's speed gain on heal over Leonid's damage buff, but in the end it's up to you which of the two you prefer. Just looking at growth rates, Leonid seems to be the better of the two, however.

 

 

Chapter 2-3x was a nice change of pace, working with just a few powerful units to clear a town. Some strategy was involved, though admittedly I was more concerned with stacking as many items onto Oona as I could so that I could let items overflow into the Supply for Owen/Sawyer to make use of later on than with the actual enemies in the chapter. One thing that kept happening was a a glitch that occurred in the north-west corner when I tried to engage the hero with any unit. It wouldn't always happen, however. 

All in all, I thought both routes were well done! A few bugs here and there, but those can be fixed with time. Thanks to the entire Staff of Ages team for your work on this project, and keep up the great work! 

 

 

 

Edited by WhiteyMcFly
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13 hours ago, mirageknightx said:

Not sure if I missed something is Grace not supposed to accompany Sawyer? She doesn't show up on the unit selection screen when I select his route.

Restarting should fix that.

6 hours ago, WhiteyMcFly said:

-snip-

Hey, thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed it! This release showed us that we have a lot of ironing out to do (our issue/changes checklist is up to about 119, I think), and that's data we've collected from everyone who's played and reported issues or made comments so far. I'm confident that the next update (whenever it ends up being, since we've got a lot more to fix than we thought we did) will be significantly less buggy and see more units being viable! In particular we looked at units like Grace/Axel/Risa/Julia who seemed to be benched most often unless the player really liked the character, so they're receiving some nice buffs and changes to make them more appealing options.

Spoiler

 

For Julia, unless you had a terrible Kate and Lily, she didn't really have a niche, so we're giving her a unique class line, Nephilim (Anima) which promotes in to Harrier (Anima/Dark) or Deva (Anima/Light) and flies. And a different personal that doesn't punish her for doing her job as a flier.

Grace is seeing a buff to her personal, and some minor stat buffs as well as a different starting inventory.

Similarly, Axel's personal is changing, and he's received buffs to bases and growths, as well as a new inventory, Risa is being buffed in a similar manner.

Kate's been redesigned to be a tanky flier that focuses on Res, and her personal is changing too. Lily has been changed to be more of an Str nuke, having her speed nerfed but her Str has been buffed considerably. Dreamchaser's effects have also been flipped (+3 atk and +1 AS instead of +1 atk +3 AS) to highlight this change.

We're looking at Sofia but not entirely sure if we need to change anything for her yet.

Kane actually wasn't supposed to have that statline, we wanted to make him more defensive to contrast the two powerhouses you get in Sawyer route and to differentiate him from Elijah as well.

 

 

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Hello there, still loving this hack. I noticed some few things but most of them were addressed some pages ago (aurora bloom staff being stolen by thieves and the sprites of the dark and great knights) but I did not see anything on the belial effective damage.. Because it seems it doesn't affect the arbalist ( which screwed a bit of my strategy) while I think it should. Still, great job and thanks for the entertainment! 

Screenshot_20180906-181419.png

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24 minutes ago, Azoar said:

Because it seems it doesn't affect the arbalist ( which screwed a bit of my strategy) while I think it should. Still, great job and thanks for the entertainment! 

Yeah someone brought that to our attention so it'll be right next update.

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2 hours ago, InvdrZim13 said:

 

Hey, thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed it! This release showed us that we have a lot of ironing out to do (our issue/changes checklist is up to about 119, I think), and that's data we've collected from everyone who's played and reported issues or made comments so far. I'm confident that the next update (whenever it ends up being, since we've got a lot more to fix than we thought we did) will be significantly less buggy and see more units being viable! In particular we looked at units like Grace/Axel/Risa/Julia who seemed to be benched most often unless the player really liked the character, so they're receiving some nice buffs and changes to make them more appealing options.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

For Julia, unless you had a terrible Kate and Lily, she didn't really have a niche, so we're giving her a unique class line, Nephilim (Anima) which promotes in to Harrier (Anima/Dark) or Deva (Anima/Light) and flies. And a different personal that doesn't punish her for doing her job as a flier.

Grace is seeing a buff to her personal, and some minor stat buffs as well as a different starting inventory.

Similarly, Axel's personal is changing, and he's received buffs to bases and growths, as well as a new inventory, Risa is being buffed in a similar manner.

Kate's been redesigned to be a tanky flier that focuses on Res, and her personal is changing too. Lily has been changed to be more of an Str nuke, having her speed nerfed but her Str has been buffed considerably. Dreamchaser's effects have also been flipped (+3 atk and +1 AS instead of +1 atk +3 AS) to highlight this change.

We're looking at Sofia but not entirely sure if we need to change anything for her yet.

Kane actually wasn't supposed to have that statline, we wanted to make him more defensive to contrast the two powerhouses you get in Sawyer route and to differentiate him from Elijah as well.

 

 

Spoiler

Making Grace even more powerful? Awwww yeahhhh! Maybe I just got lucky with mine, but having her be even better is always welcome!

Making Lily even more of a strength nuke than she already is? Interesting. I hope that you do something about the strength cap of one of her promotions, then (I went with Wyvern Rider since it had the highest strength cap of the bunch, plus she needed the Con to wield steel lances without getting weighed down). Having super high strength is all well and good, but it feels terrible when it's in a class with a low strength cap. Either way, guess I know where I'm putting my speedwings! 

I'm glad that Axel's personal is changing; it felt strange having one ability that works when he's alone and another that works when he's next to allies. 

I'm glad that Kate is seeing changes as well. I don't know how others' Kates turned out, but mine ended up with stats that I would call "balanced but mediocre".13s in strength, skill, and speed at level 18 in Owen's route.  I still used her because flier, though. 

 

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10 hours ago, InvdrZim13 said:

Restarting should fix that.

Whoops! Wish I would have got on here sooner, I just completed Sawyer's route. Restarting from my save at that point fixed the issue.

Having that said, here's what I thought so far (TL;DR warning)

Spoiler

S1: I found this map to be really enjoyable. Being forced to sort of rush to the docks instead of taking my time to carefully dismantle enemy formations piece by piece was an interesting change of pace. I pushed to the bottom of the map reached the end of the dock at turn 12 which still gave me time to shop, reach the bottom right house, and get a few rounds in at the arena so I think 15 turns is more than reasonable. Sawyer's counterspell passive also helped me 1 round the boss with relative ease. (He had capped speed and 15 magic thanks to investing an energy ring into him). I think fielding flyers was almost a requirement for this map to deal with the enemy fliers at a reasonable pace. However, this wasn't too much of a problem. Despite the fact that my flyers had very minimal investment at this point, (I had not used Kate very much at this point and lily had received some very mediocre level ups) they were able to take on the enemy units with proper positioning and ground support.

S1 New Units:

Deborah: A really solid pre-promote with fantastic bases. She hits like a truck with steel weapons with her high strength and passive, massive HP pool and above average defenses, and most importantly she hits that sweet spot for speed where she is fast enough to avoid getting doubled but doesn't do too much doubling on her own. She put in work this chapter and in S2 to soften up units so I could feed kills to un-promoted units. Also having a female warrior in a GBA fire emblem game is pretty dope, looking forward to her animations being fixed in the future.

Julia: Did a great job helping out Kate and Lily clear out fliers this map. Her high speed and ability to use javelins without penalty helped her do good chip damage and flyer utility is always welcome. However 6 defense at this point in the game really prevented her from doing much else. Also her passive felt pretty un-synergistic with her class and her play style. She wants to making use of her high movement to compensate for her low defense. I ended up only using her in this chapter. Seeing the upcoming changes to Julia makes me happy. I think giving her a class that will compliment her high speed and hit and run play style will benefit her greatly.

Leonid: Fantastic unit, I only have positive things to say about this fine gentleman. Leonid has everything going for him that you want from a healer: good magic, soild speed, and most importantly he is level 10 already ready to promote! The biggest pain about getting healers half way through the game is that they are a pain in the ass to level (looking at you L'Arachel). Leonid comes straight out of the box ready to go. To top it off his passive was very nice in a pinch. I found myself surprised at the number of times that his passive turned 2 round kills into 1 round kills, or that his passive was just the push needed to get in those extra points of damage to secure a kill for a weaker unit. I promoted him to bishop after a couple levels and he quickly became a mainstay of the team.

Nico: Not much to say here about Nico as a unit. He's a dancer. Dancers are great because of the sheer utility they offer and not requiring combat EXP to contribute. Nico is no exception. In fact, I was surprised about how durable he was for a dancer (funnily enough, he has almost as much physical bulk as Julia). Naturally, I used him for the remainder of the hack. Love his character and his interactions too.

S2: The beginning part of this map was tricky. Managing the space you have while crossing the bridge, dealing with the fliers in the middle, and trying to save the town on the other side of the bridge is challenging but fun. Once I saved the village (which I was somewhat disappointed to find out that I would only be rewarded with a swordreaver) and crossed the bridge the rest of the map was pretty smooth sailing. I sent a small detachment to grab the master seal on the bottom right and go shopping, and by small detachment I mean exactly one unit: Eagle. This playthrough Eagle ended up being DISGUSTINGLY RNG blessed (attached image shows his stats right before he kills the S4 boss) on top of getting promoted first at level 18 during the end of part 1. The rest of the units went over to take out the boss without much trouble. 

Eagle.png.b6cf8b06e1eee6912c580ae714adad9c.png

 

S2 New Units:

Kane: Seeing as it was mentioned that Kane was not supposed to have the stat-line that he did I can't really comment on him in his current state. Having that said, I do love his personal passive and his character. I ended up not using him due to his shaky hit rates but I'm looking forward to what the future has in store for our drunken friend.

Boh: Boh is an interesting fellow. He has even growths and solid bases, there's nothing that stands out about him at a glance other than him being a dark mage. However, thanks to his incredibly high con (by mage standards at least) he can use the nosferatu tome with no speed penalty even when he is un-promoted. This makes him deceptively quick compared to other dark mages which are often weighed down to a crawl by their heavy tomes. I feel like with some investment he could turn out to a late game monster (assuming there are nosferatu tomes for sale at some point later on). I ended up putting him on the team mostly because I think dark mages are interesting units and I was a fan of his design. He dealt nice chunks of damage to soften up enemy units.

S3: Wow, I absolutely loved this map. In fact, this was probably my favorite map on Sawyer's route in general. S-3 was a survival map done right. Surrounded on all sides, loads of enemies both promoted and un-promoted, side objectives such as villages and dropable crests, and plenty of space to fight and position units. Managing all 4 fronts at the same time was both hectic and fun. Even my strongest units were pushed to their limits due to the nature of this map. Kudos to you on this one. Eagle ended up finding a break within the onslaught of forces and was able to take down the boss and his berserker buddy while everyone else focused on defense. The recently promoted Darius also did an excellent job chocking points and over-performed this map.

S3 New units: 

Horace: Speaking of over-performers, Horace was an excellent addition to the team. He has fantastic bases and great growths to boot. Sure his strength growth is a little on the low side but his nomad passive helps him make up for that. He was able to effectively use the terrain on the map to assist with the defense and picked up many kills over the course of the map. With the experience he gained on this map and his already high base level was I able to promote him to a marauder. After promotion he could even use steel axes without speed penalty thanks to gaining a massive +3 con which gave him a nice boost to damage when he needed to get into melee. Horace instantly made the cut for my team with minimal investment. I absolutely love his design too.

S4: After the town defense in S3, S4 felt like a walk in the park. My units had gained a massive amount of experience in the last map are absolutely tore through the left side of S4 in a mere 5 turns. I really don't have much to say here, it was a pretty straight shot to the boss. I felt as if the right side of the map was somewhat under-utilized. The unit density is lower on that side but the left side has so many great rewards (silver weapon armory, meteor tomes for sale, AND a free master seal from the village is really hard to pass up). Perhaps there should be some incentive to do something with the right side of the map? Or is it there simply to offer a safer route to the boss? 

S4 New units:

Deniel: Well for the short time I had Deniel he seemed like a pretty good unit. Every aspect of him screams "PROMOTE ME TO A BERSERKER" from his design to his stat spread. high hp, str, speed, okay skill and luck, and pretty poor stats everywhere else. With some investment I feel like he could hit exceptionally hard and be a top notch boss killer. His passive also helps him with boss killing as bosses tend to have high crit weapons and skills that augment their crit. Naturally I didn't have much of a chance to use him as the map only took 5 turns to complete. He struggled hitting enemies on defensive terrain but his skill growth isn't bad and his base isn't bad either so I feel like with some levels under his belt he won't have the same hit rate issues that plague many axe users. 

 

Misc thoughts: Overall I had a ton of fun playing through the new content but the old content as well. Skills really spice things up and made playing this hack a very memorable experience. The triple branching promotions are really cool and I like the direction that this hack is going with them. I do however think that waiting till level 10 to get the first promoted skill is a long time to wait, but if the skills are that powerful to warrant that wait then I understand. I hope Sawyer and Owen promote soon in the up coming chapters. Sawyer on my most recent play-through has been sitting at level 20 since S2. Granted, I used Sawyer probably more than most people. I just have a penchant for fast mages as they tend to shred enemies due to their low res even if his magic isn't the highest. And one last thing on the topic of promotions. I am really pleased with the number of crests available in the current game. It makes promotion less of a question of "who should I promote?" but rather "when should I promote this unit?" as in act 2 crests are abundant enough not to be a real commodity.

 

Other units I really enjoyed using: 

Nero (high strength, not reliant on doubling, does high damage on enemy phase due to strong riposte),

Darius (Durable as hell, a sword armor that isn't complete garbage, good for luring in physical units and helping dismantle enemy formations),

Kate (all around good flier, turned out great after investing in her at the beginning of S1 but I'm happy she is getting a more defined role)

Aurora (Fantastic healer and swift winds is amazing).

 

At any rate, thanks for taking your time to read my 2 cents and more importantly thank you and your team for your hard work on Staff of Ages. Its a fantastic hack and I've happily sunk many hours into it. 

 

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Completed Owen's route, so here's my experience with the stages

Spoiler

O-1

Fairly straightforward stage although Warriors not being able to use Longbows made the wall of knights at the back a joke since there's nothing to threaten you. Liked the part where you can use the ballista to take down the Arbalists to prevent them from harassing your frail backline. Sylvia, Leonid and Nico were useful, Kane had his utility with the personal.

O-2

Deployment was simply way too low on this chapter and it could really benefit from an extra 1 or 2 slots. The wall of units in the back were really annoying to deal with since it felt like there wasn't enough units to go around on this stage. Edmund was okay especially since you can instantly promote him into Great Knight and get rid of his biggest flaw, I don't like his personal however, its a lot more practical than a couple others.

O-3

Return to form with deployment since the first two stages don't let you play around with your own units although it means that the ones who didn't take part in O-1 and/or O-2 are behind experience wise. I liked the concept of the stage since you''re supposed to be chasing the boss across the map, but its just way too easy and I had to actively draw out the stage to get the villages and recruit Lee since Lily with dance support can easily one turn the boss and end it early. Neither Risa nor Lee get to do anything on this stage since you need to be chasing down the boss (who stops running after a while which was also disappointing) and in Lee's case, she simply joins way too late in the map to do anything. Also I feel like their personals are a little too impractical for general use

O-4

The fog was a nice idea and seeing the monsters was definitely interesting especially the Helhests. The boss was laughably easy (pretty much anyone who's promoted at this point can probably 1RKO or 2RKO him). Seyren didn't do anything in this stage as 5 base speed is complete garbage even if its intentional to keep his personal skill from getting overpowered. I was kind of disappointed that the demo ends where it did on Owen's route.

 

Overall, the stages were alright but the low deployment counts and the stage design made it hard for me to give the new characters a chance (didn't use a single one past their introductory stage)

 

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1 hour ago, FEAnon said:

The boss was laughably easy (pretty much anyone who's promoted at this point can probably 1RKO or 2RKO him).

This was noted, the boss should be significantly more threatening next update. O2-3 is a pain to work around since the boss uses thief AI and it's been proving time and again to be hot garbage. I'll have to look at the deploy slots for O2-2 and see if adding 1 or 2 is better for the map. Edmund's personal should be changing next update anyway as well.

I might move Lee closer to the starting area, to give her more use on the map. And Seyren's speed was an error, he should have 12, we had it set low to make sure his personal was working.

11 hours ago, mirageknightx said:

-snip-

Glad you enjoyed it so much! I've heard reports of S2-3 being a little bit too intense though, so that'll be tuned down a bit next update. We're also adjusting the timing for the S2-2 village, since it's a bit of a pain to save it right now.

We're also going to be redoing class promo gains, and class skills, with a focus on making the usual unappealing options more attractive.

Finally, here's a hint for what Boh's skill does:

Quote

 

On the first day, those who defended raised their wards against those who fought.

On the second day, the defenders struck back swiftly. 

On the third day, the defenders evaded notice from the wrath of those who fought. 

On the fourth day, the defenders struck again. 

On the fifth day, the defenders moved quickly in pursuit of their retreating foes.

On the sixth day, the defenders found themselves outmatched. They again avoided the wrath of those who fought and raised their wards in case. 

On the seventh day, the defenders struck with wrath, and quickly evaded further retaliation. 

On the eighth day, the defenders made themselves scarce. 

On the ninth day, the defenders struck wrathfully once again, preparing for their final moment. 

On the tenth day, the defenders fought with everything they had, and the day was won. 

The world then reset itself, and the defenders fought their advesaries again, spanning eternity.

 

 

Edited by InvdrZim13
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14 hours ago, DevilSlayr5836 said:

So i found a glitch on the Aftermath chapter. During the coronation when king Oberon appears the game locks up and refuses to continue. Luckily i can skip at the beginning of the chapter but it puts me right at the route split, so i miss out on a bunch of the story.

We've fixed the issue so it'll be good next update.

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