I Have Made The Most Insane FE3 File Ever

[Randoman]

So I've started working on the most insane FE3 file ever since April 18. And now it's done.

What's so special about it? Well, words can't do it justice. Just check out save files 1 and 2 in the attachment, and check them very thoroughly, It'll be clear as to what's so insane about those files. Also, no cheats were used whatsoever on that file.

Feel free to download it and have fun with all the fruits of my labour.

Fire Emblem - Monshou no Nazo.srm

[Topaz Light]

Honestly it just looks like everyone is almost completely maxed out with strong equipment.

Is there something I'm missing, or...?

[Randoman]

On 6/9/2017 at 11:41 PM, Topaz Light said:

Honestly it just looks like everyone is almost completely maxed out with strong equipment.

Weeeeellll... yeah. That's essentially the gist of it. Though I did it using no cheats whatsoever.

Essentially, I feel like its always been silently and anonymously agreed upon that it's impossible to train all playable character in an FE game (where skirmishes/EXP DLC don't exist) to a level where they'll be able hold their own in the final chapter, let alone max them out. Out of curiosity, and due to me really liking the Archanea FE cast, I thought I'd challenge that notion, and see if I could disprove it. It took a lot of planning and strategizing, especially in regards to planning ahead for Book 1 Promotion Item distributions and squeezing out Star Orb abuse in FE3 Book 1 as much as I could while still getting the Falchion and Starlight, but I was able to do it. And sadly in FE3 Book 1, I wasn't able to max out everyone's HP with Angel Robes, due to money maxing out at 655350 gold and even with buying high priced items to sell later to get around the money cap, the item storage didn't cooperate too well.

Even without all that, with FE3 being my first FE and one of my favourites, I thought I should make a really special file for both Book 1 and Book 2 to pay tribute to how much I like it. I thought about making a "canon team" playthrough using all the characters that are commonly shown in Archanea promotion items/images (like Caeda, Abel, Cain, Merric, Linde, and everyone who's commonly shown with Marth in FE Cipher pics or the FE Artbooks), but since I was stuck on if characters like Hardin and Lena were canon, I decided "why don't I use and train everyone instead?"

[Topaz Light]

Ohhhh, huh.

Well, it still is pretty cool! I guess I was just expecting it to be, like, some weird glitched will with all sorts of bizarre impossible stuff in it.

It's really cool that you managed to train up everybody to max, though! Even if universal caps ended up making a lot of them indistinguishable from each other, gameplay-wise, hehe~

[Julius Nepos]

Huh, this is pretty neat. 

I'm assuming you also arena abused a lot for this?

[Randoman]

On 7/4/2017 at 2:36 PM, Hattusili I said:

Huh, this is pretty neat. 

I'm assuming you also arena abused a lot for this?

Yep. I only abused arenas in chapters that had the Star Orb, and skipped all arenas in chapters that didn't have it.

The arenas I did use though, I milked them like crazy, in regards to making sure all 15 characters (barring Marth for FE3 Book 2's Chapter 19 arena, since he was already maxed out from Chapter 15's arena) I brought into that chapter used the arena until they maxed out. Est in FE3 Book 1 was an exception though, due to only having access to 1 Dragon Whip in chapter 16, and I had to choose between promoting and maxing Caeda or Est first (I did Star Orb abuse Est to level 20, though she wasn't completely maxed out at that point). Since Est has much better growths than Caeda, I chose the latter for the first Dragon Whip. Est did eventually get maxed out (except for resistance) in chapter 19.

I also did a lot of boss abuse type tactics in chapters 15 and 17 of FE3 Book 1. Since arenas aren't available in those levels, and if you get Falchion, you only have 3 chapters to use the Star Orb in FE3 Book 1, I didn't have much of a choice if I wanted to max out everyone. In chapter 15 of FE3 Book 1, I even had to lure the Sniper onto the throne and boss abuse from there, since boss abusing with an enemy Tiki is less than ideal. Let me tell you, purposely luring a generic enemy onto the boss' throne is the weirdest feeling ever.

Unit slots from chapter 15-17 and 19 in FE3 Book 1 were very tight, the latter since that was the chapter where everyone who still needed purchasable stat-boosters would get it and the former due to those being chapters with the Star Orb and trying to ensure as many people as possible could use it. Radd and Elice sadly missed out on Star Orb usage (Elice due to it being impossible for her to use the Star Orb while still getting Falchion and Radd because even with ensuring maximum Star Orb usage among the cast while getting Falchion, it'd end with one unit getting left out. I chose Radd due to his good growths making him max out everything but resistance with savestates easy enough. I would've chosen Est, but with Est being obtained in chapter 16, it wouldn't have freed up a slot for Radd. Thankfully, despite not having access to the Star Orb, Elice and Radd were able to max out their stats without requiring statboosters at all).

Another small (but crucial) fact I needed to consider was ensuring all units were maxed out while unmounted. Since units with mounts have higher stats while mounted compared to when they're unmounted, and the final chapter in both books unmount all units, I needed to unmount units and level them up that way (at least once their stats started maxing out) so that their stats would be maxed out in both a mounted and unmounted state. I already made that mistake during a previous FE3 playthrough, so I thankfully didn't make it this time. On a similar note, Bantu and Tiki have a similar problem with their transformed and untransformed states, and them actually losing speed when going from human to dragon. I'm really glad that I decided to check that early and account for that (by using speed rings while they're in their dragon form), because otherwise their dragon forms wouldn't have max speed in that file and I would've messed myself over. Then again, I did make a backup save ram after every chapter, so it would've have been "start all over again" levels of bad in regards to fixing the file.

So yeah, there was a lot more planning that went into that file than meets the eye. I'm really glad I didn't overlook anything crucial and end up falling short in my attempts to max out everyone.

[FionordeQuester]

I'd actually be interested in hearing the full details on all that planning, actually.  I'd never want to ATTEMPT to do something like that...but reading about it sounds like it'd be fun!

[MariIsHere]

congrats dude

that must have taken a ton effort to pull off

[Ziggy McDougal]

> implying this isn't how people play FE3 normally

I basically did the same thing in my first run of Book 2 (though this was around the time I thought Linde was the best mage in the game and Castor was the best bow user so lol)

 

[Randoman]

21 hours ago, Ziggy McDougal said:

> implying this isn't how people play FE3 normally

I basically did the same thing in my first run of Book 2 (though this was around the time I thought Linde was the best mage in the game and Castor was the best bow user so lol)

It's common to Star Orb abuse like crazy? Well, good to know I'm not alone.

Another thing I should mention: in my 2nd FE3 Book 2 Playthrough I maxed out around 2/3rds of the character cast using the Star Orb heavily (I didn't know about the 30% boosted growths that the Star Orb gave on my 1st playthrough, so I took full advantage of it in my 2nd playthrough), and when I looked at how there were only 6 or 7 characters that still needed maxing out (in Ch. 19 of that playthrough, with most of my team being maxed out, I figured I might as well Star Orb/Arena abuse as many unused characters as I could to fully make use of the Star Orb and arenas, leaving only those ~6/7 characters unused), I realized it was very feasible to max out all FE3 Book 2 characters if I only rotated out my main team and made sure everyone had a chance at Star Orb abuse (and enough promotion items to max out everyone).

On 8/8/2017 at 0:19 PM, MariIsHere said:

congrats dude

that must have taken a ton effort to pull off

Thanks!!

It did take a lot of effort. Though once the planning was out of the way, it was mostly just a matter of patience, slowly but surely arena/boss abusing characters with the Star Orb, and being tolerant of reloading after unideal level ups. I did have to account for certain oversights on the go (like Bantu and Tiki losing speed going from human to dragon) but thankfully I addressed and planned for all the major ones before I started.

On 8/5/2017 at 3:03 AM, FionordeQuester said:

I'd actually be interested in hearing the full details on all that planning, actually.  I'd never want to ATTEMPT to do something like that...but reading about it sounds like it'd be fun!

Alright, as for how the planning all started. it started with defining the goal: max out all playable characters in both Book 1 and Book 2. The 4 sisters at the end of Book 2 couldn't be maxed out feasibly. Even if I had enough statboosters carried over from the previous chapter and money to buy those statboosters with, something about using a mid-chapter save (which is easily deleted. I mean, even looking at the maxed characters in the FE3 Book 1 file would delete the mid-chapter save file!!) to show off max stats for the 4 sisters didn't sit well with me, so I didn't bother. Since resistance was really hard to get for most characters (I didn't want to constantly rig the 3% resistance growths, so that left me with Star Orb abuse and the 1 Talisman you get in each book. Sadly, the statbooster secret shops don't sell Talismans, and even if they did, I could only bring 15 characters to the statbooster secret shop due to chapter deployment limits), I just tried to max out resistance for everyone I could, and for everyone else I just accepted the fact that I couldn't max out their resistance. As for maxing HP (at 52 HP), it was possible in Book 2 due to enough of the cast being able to promote (as in, they're not a prepromote and they're not a Lord/Thief/Freelancer/Mamkute/etc.) and being able to get enough HP procs from level ups as a result. Book 1... that wasn't the case since Book 1 has a lot more characters that are unable to promote compared to Book 2 (Barts, Saji, Maji, Boah, Wolf, Zagaro, the list goes on). With most of the characters that were unable to promote, they really relied on statboosters due to having less level ups to gain stats and unpromotable characters (which include both prepromotes and Lords/Thieves/etc.) having a hard time maxing out HP. I actually ran out of money trying to max out the HP of everyone I was able to bring in that chapter. Money in FE3 maxes out at 655350, which I capped out at. Even trying to surpass that by buying lots of Silver Swords to sell for later (while having enough Silver Swords left so that every playable sword user got 1 Silver Sword) wasn't enough to be able to pay for the amount of Angel Robes I needed.

A crucial fact I needed to consider is that only 15 characters (with Marth being forced as one of them) would be able to take advantage of the statbooster secret shops in both Books, due to those chapters' deployment limits. As I mentioned before, Book 2 having less unpromotable characters made that constraint not as much of a problem due to having around 12-13 characters who needed statboosters at that point. Book 1, there were around 17. So what I had to do to alleviate that was after Star Orb abusing everyone I could, in Chapter 18 of FE3 Book 1 I brought in characters that could be maxed out (barring HP and resistance) with the current statboosters I had on hand. For example:

Maji:
Level 20
HP: 24
Str: 20
Skl: 15
Spd: 20
Lck: 20
WLv: 20
Def: 17
Res: 13

This was the Maji I had in FE3 Book 1 by chapter 18, 1 chapter before the statbooster secret shop chapter (Ch. 19). Maxing out everything for him aside from HP and resistance would only take 1 Skill Book (+5 Skill) and 1 Dragonshield (+3 Def) and I had both of those statboosters on hand before Ch. 19, so that would take care of him and make it so that he doesn't even need to be brought to the statbooster secret shop chapter (on a side note, I did give him 2 Angel Robes that I obtained before the statbooster secret shop, since 24 HP is quite bad, even with everything else but Resistance maxed out). There were around 3 or 4 other characters I was able to max out like this, freeing up slots for Ch. 19. Fun fact, I even accounted for doing this in advance and purposely made it so their stats would (as much as possible) be perfectly accounted for by statboosters, instead of having excess stat boosts be wasted. For example, a skill of 17 on a level 20 Maji would be kind of a waste if I used one skill book on him (it's +5 Skill, so 2 Skill would go to waste since stat caps are 20), so I made it 15 so it'd edge out perfectly and I could rig a level up that would normally get him Skill a different stat, like Strength or Luck. So essentially, for unpromotable units, I'd either try to max out their stat at 20 with Star Orb abuse, or if I couldn't, raise their stat as high as I could while keeping it at a value where statboosters wouldn't be in excess and wasted if used on them. In FE3, level ups happen to follow certain sets (eg: Strength, Speed, Weapon Level, and HP are usually always gotten all at once in the same level up, while Skill and Luck are usually obtained in the same level up), so manipulating the level up sets through savestates was crucial, in regards to sticking to the "max out at 20" or "keep stat at a value that won't create for excess and wasted stat boosts from statboosting items". Doing this mainly applied to unpromotable characters only, since the extra 20 levels (with Star Orb abuse) that promotable characters were able to gain made them not need statboosters at all. On another note, unpromotable characters didn't get any level ups at all until the Star Orb was obtained (in order to get the most out of their level ups). That means Marth/Barts/Julian/etc. was at base level for the majority of the game until the Star Orb was finally obtained. 

Another major factor to consider was the team I used before getting the Star Orb. I really needed to make sure all team members pre-Star Orb obtaining had good stat growths, since if they didn't I wouldn't be able to max them out and they'd take up deployment slots in the statbooster secret shop chapter, which were already in short supply. As a result, I used Kain, Abel, Sheeda, Castor, Roshea, and Merric a lot on Book 1 and Luke, Rody, Ryan, Linde, Katua, and Paola a lot in Book 2 (I may have missed some characters). Sadly, characters like Gordon, Hardin, and Cecil were rather unideal in regards to using them before getting the Star Orb, due to their low HP growths and them needing 33 Max HP before promotion in order to max out HP without statboosters (since after promotion, they need 19 HP procs to reach the max 52. 33 + 19 = 52). For those 3, it eventually became really frustrating to keep rigging HP procs during their level ups, and even when I got them, their other stats started to fall behind, so I ditched them until after I got the Star Orb. Another rule similar to the "33 Max HP at level 20 unpromoted" rule that I made as a safeguard is that all promotable characters should have 10 or higher in each stat (barring Resistance) by level 20. With the way level ups having stat boost sets (like Strength and Speed usually being gotten in the same level up and Skill and Luck usually being gotten in the same level up), I thought I should account for that to make sure certain stats don't fall short of the max 20 mark once level 20 is reached. For resistance, I really needed to make sure that my main team pre-Star Orb obtaining wasn't too levelled up since characters practically required the Star Orb to max out their resistance at 20. If a character was already promoted at level 20 without gaining resistance, they'd have no way of maxing out their resistance, especially if it was a unit that was forced to dismount indoors (eg: Paladin, Dragon Knight since even though they get -3 resistance, they still have +3 resistance compared to when they're dismounted). Sadly, the resistance promotion gains from mounted units aren't applied at all when they're dismounted, and with both final chapters from both Books dismounting everyone, that's a crucial factor to take into account.

So now for the chapters that give you the Star Orb. For Book 2, you've got around 1/4 of the game with the Star Orb, and with 2 arenas to abuse during that time and 6 chapters (7 if you leave the dragons in Tiki's chapter and only defeat them after getting the Star Orb, which I actually did except for defeating 2 or 3 of them), maxing out everyone with arena and Star Orb abuse, and defeating enemies with the Star Orb regularly is easy enough (I won't get into any further detail with FE3 Book 2 deployment slots and Star Orb abuse, since the game gives you more than enough leeway in that regard). Book 1 however was a completely different story. I wanted to get the Falchion since that was considered "canon" and I wanted the file to be perfect in regards to FE canon and max stats. That only left 3 chapters to Star Orb abuse with if I wanted to get the Falchion (due to the Star Orb being required for the Starlight spell and Starlight being required to defeat Garnef and get Falchion). So there's 45 characters in all that needed maxing out (for our purposes, we're counting Alan/Samson as one character since they only take up one character slot due to picking one of the other. I chose Samson by the way, due to the great abundance of Social Knights/Paladins), and the chapter deployment slots for those 3 chapters are 12, 15, and 15, which is 42 total (meaning we can Star Orb abuse 42 of the 45 characters in FE3 Book 1, but we need to account for a few more factors first). However, Marth is forced in all chapters, so we subtract 2 and bring it to 40 since that's 2 less character slots for Star Orb abusing purposes (Marth does need Star Orb abuse, but he'd technically only need 1 chapter for it. The 2 other chapters with the Star Orb that he's forced in is redundant, hence, why we subtract the deployment slots by 2 bringing it to 40). But, when looking at those 3 chapters, we get Tiki, Lawrence, and Est in those chapters, meaning we can Star Orb abuse them without them taking up deployment slots. So that's 43 out of the 45 FE3 Book 1 characters taken care of. Unfortunately, that leaves 2 characters that cannot be Star Orb abused without compromising Falchion. Ellis is one of them, due to not having the Star Orb by the time she is recruited when getting Falchion (though with her high growths, it wasn't so bad). The other, I had to choose someone myself. Ideally, that character had to be someone who could easily max out everything but resistance due to having high enough growths. Est definitely would've been a contender, since Est and her archetype is synonymous with high growths. However, since Est is automatically recruited, you can't really compromise her since she doesn't take up a deployment slot. The next best character I could find in regards to really good growths that likely wouldn't need the Star Orb was Raddy. With a potential 39 level ups to take advantage of and his high growths, he was among the best characters to pick for skipping out on Star Orb abuse. I'll admit, his defense was quite frustrating to rig and I strangely had an easier time getting him resistance procs than defense procs (which I didn't settle for and savestate loaded). I did eventually get his defense maxed out, and all of his other stats cooperated well in terms of getting procs.

One thing I should really mention is that Bantu and Chiki were pretty frustrating to max out and deal with. They're not allowed to use arenas at all, FE3 Book 1 doesn't allow you to buy Dragon Stones, and the Star Orb doesn't preserve Dragon Stone uses. Even if I did max them out with Star Orb abuse in FE3 Book 1, I was afraid that Bantu and Chiki would have little to no Dragon Stone uses left, rendering their maxed stats pointless due to having little to nothing to attack with. As a result, I didn't even level them at all in FE3 Book 1 and instead, took them from base stats/level and maxed them out in FE3 Book 1's statbooster secret shop chapter (Ch. 19). And as I mentioned before in a previous post, I had to account for them being maxed out in both their human and dragon states. I didn't even know that Bantu and Chiki lost speed when they transformed, but thankfully, after my previous experience of maxing out Est in a previous playthrough and realizing that dismounting lowered stats (so my Est only had 17 skill and speed dismounted in the final chapter), I felt suspicious about a similar thing happening with Bantu and Chiki, tested it out, realized I was right, and accomodated for it (by giving them speed rings in their dragon form). Another fun fact: in human form Bantu and Chiki can only go up to 26 HP max even when you use Angel Robes, but when they transform into dragons, their max HP doubles. In regards to FE3 Book 2, there's thankfully a secret shop that sells Dragon Stones, so I was able to buy a Fire Dragon Stone, let Bantu and Chiki level up with it holding the Star Orb, and get them quite good stats (for Chiki, Bantu's stat gains weren't really that good even with the Star Orb) so that not as many statboosters and money needed to be spent on them. Also, for FE3 Book 1, before you say I could've compromised Bantu and Chiki's deployment slot for Raddy, that's not the case since Bantu is required to recruit Chiki and that'll take up a deployment slot, regardless of whether I Star Orb abuse him or not. Chiki is recruited within a chapter that allows for Star Orb abuse, and doesn't take up a deployment slot for Star Orb abuse, so I couldn't really "free up a slot" by compromising Chiki and giving the slot to Radd.

Promotion item limitations were another crucial factor to take into account. FE3 Book 2 wasn't as bad since there's a secret shop that sells promotion items 2 chapters before you lose the Star Orb (leaving you with 3 chapters to Star Orb/arena abuse everyone who still isn't promoted). FE3 Book 1, you have to buy all the remaining promotion items you need and give up the Star Orb (for Starlight and Falchion) on the same chapter, giving you a lot less leeway. In particular, Sheeda and Est need to be Star Orb abused in Camus' chapter, Ch. 16 (Sheeda since she recruits Lawrence in that chapter and Est because she's automatically recruited in that chapter, and using a deployment slot for them in another Star Orb abusing chapter would be wasteful), but there's only one Dragon Whip available at that point. Due to Est's better growths, I gave the Dragon Whip to Sheeda in Ch. 16, got another Dragon Whip for Est where she'd promote in Ch. 18 (when the Star Orb was no longer available), and maxed Est out in that chaper. Another frustrating problem I had to account for is there only being one Bishop Ring available before chapter 17, and 4 people that need it for promotion at that point (Rena, Merric, Maria, and Linde). So essentially, I had to pick one of them to promote before Ch. 17, and bring the other 3 to Ch. 17 where I'd buy them a Bishop Ring and Star Orb abuse and promote them in that chapter. Similar problems arose for all of the promotion items:

Only 2 Hero Proofs before Ch. 17, 4 Needed Overall (Oguma, Navarre, Caesar, and Radd)
Only 1 Dragon Whip before Ch. 17, 4 Needed Overall (Sheeda, Paola, Katua, and Est)
Only 2 Orion Bolts before Ch. 17, 3 Needed Overall (Gordon, Kashim, Thomas)
Only 3 Knight Crests before Ch. 17, 9 Needed Overall (Kain, Abel, Draug, Matthis, Hardin, Roshea, Biraku, Tomth, and Macellan)

Thankfully, the amount of characters that needed purchasable promotion items in Ch. 17 happened to fall within the deployment limit slots.

Bishop Ring: 4-1=3
Hero Proof in Ch. 17: 4-2=2
Dragon Whip: 4-3=2 (-1 since I Star Orb abused Est without promoting her, then maxed her out except for resistance later without the Star Orb) = 1
Orion Bolt: 3-2=1
Knight Crest: 9-3=6

3+2+1+1+6=13

The deployment limit for Ch. 17 is 15 characters. 13 < 15 so we're good. Even accounting for Marth being forced, 13 < 14 so it still works.

I know I could've brought in Est for Ch. 17, but as I said before, I really didn't want to have the same character twice in the "Star Orb abusing chapters" (barring Marth's who's forced and I can't do anything about), especially since I was already compromising Radd due to there not being enough deployment slots.

So yeah, with all the details/explanations in my previous posts and the details/explanations in this post, that covers a lot of my planning and strategizing for my "Max Stat Playthroughs" of FE3 Book 1 and 2. There was also this thread that I made to clarify some things about FE3 before I actually started.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Randoman