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    Home Unlabelled Fire Emblem Sylvain not dancing alone after getting rejected by all the girls at the Academy

    Fire Emblem Sylvain not dancing alone after getting rejected by all the girls at the Academy

    January 14, 2021

    Fire Emblem Sylvain not dancing alone after getting rejected by all the girls at the Academy

    Sylvain not dancing alone after getting rejected by all the girls at the Academy

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 02:00 PM PST

    ghosts (art by me)

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 09:15 AM PST

    My fanart of dimitri

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:22 AM PST

    (OC) Idunn fanart. Hello! I was commissioned to draw Idunn and I though it would be nice to post it here.

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 10:26 AM PST

    #BUNNYEMBLEM is alive and well! Next up is the SFW version of Bunny Annette, who won my Patreon poll!

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 12:30 AM PST

    An Unwanted Crest

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 12:27 PM PST

    I sketched Hapi!

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 12:51 PM PST

    Sothis in my own style

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 05:42 PM PST

    How it started �� How it's going: Julian (FE3) Edition!

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 09:30 AM PST

    Three Houses's Unused and Datamined Content, and its Implications (POTENTIAL SPOILERS)

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 07:08 PM PST

    I've been contributing to Three Houses's page on The Cutting Room Floor for quite a while, and the sheer amount of stuff I have documented in it about scrapped stuff is quite impressive honestly. Something which isn't discussed often however is what some of the stuff found there implies for the game's development, which is kind of the reason why I wanna talk about it here.

    Full disclosure: The info I'll speak about has been found and corroborated with people like DeathChaos and the fedatamine.com team, who have hacked and datamined the game. The only thing I've done myself is reporting the unused content they've uncovered in places like TCRF and NIWA's Fire Emblem wiki, and analyzed the internal number of the game's voice clips based on a rip someone did of the game's files some time ago.

    Without futher ado, let's get to the nitty gritty:

    1. Thales, the sword-wielding priest???

    In the game's files there's an unused agarthan sword called Ridill, whose description flat out states it was meant to be Thales's signature weapon before Quake Σ took it's place. While it's currently unknown if the weapon has a unique model (or if it works at all), it's interesting to note the description calls Thales a priest, rather than a guru as his class's description does.

    I checked the japanese script to see if the sword's english description happened to be a mistranslation, and it turns out that is not the case! In japanese, the characters used are "祭司", which can be literally translated as "priest" or "seer". By contrast, Thales's Agastya class calls him a "導師", which more or less means "a sage/mage with high authority", thus it can be translated in far more ways than simply "priest" (wizard, sage, etc.).

    So yeah, this bit is quite tame overall given it's mostly about semantics.

    2. Quests would have unlocked everything, even scrapped features

    There is an insane amount of unused quests, and a bunch of them were meant for features which are either already available by default, were changed in the game or are simply scrapped. Want to tutor a student? You had to do a quest first. Exchange travelers? Hear the game's soundtrack in Manuela's office? Allow your students to do Certification Exams? Repair weapons? Same thing, and this also applies for scrapped features like riding horses, trading items + getting books through it, unlocking new personal info about your students, etc.

    3. Many story scenarios and set pieces were likely planned in advance, way before their conditions were even implemented.

    The internal order of the characters's voice clips are fascinating to analyze, as it might shred light on the order some stuff was implemented into the game.

    For example, Edelgard's coronation scene is internally right next to the "prelude to the holy tomb" scenes the Blue Lions and Golden Deer routes have and BEs lack (suggesting Edel's coronation is likely meant to serve as a counterpart for those). Caspar and Linhardt lines as enemies on Fort Merceus on Verdant Wind actually originate from Silver Snow as their voice clips are located in the area where their Church route clips are located (which also doubles as leftovers of a scrapped features in which the Black Eagles could've defected there). Dedue's return in Azure Moon was also planned way before his paralogue was made, and that includes Felix & Annette's scrapped potential defection as their clips are located in the area of their Blue Lions lines. Lastly, Lorenz's scrapped defection on Verdant Wind has his battle clips against Claude in both the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind's version of Chapter 16, while the monastery exploration clips where the Hilda, Raphael and Marianne acknowledge his demise exist only for Verdant Wind.

    Of course, this also begs the question: what scenarios were added late in development then? The short answer is everything related to paralogues, including the Death Knight/Jeritza's unlockable death scene in Azure Moon, which in my opinion is quite intriguing given it corroborates what a previous developer interview said about his relationship with Mercedes:

    "How did you go about creating each house and its students?"

    "Kusakihara: We started by using the rough drafts for each character as a base and expanded upon them from there. Depending on the character, some of the more prevalent details had been decided upon in advance. Take, for instance, Mercedes' background: she bears the crest of a family that no longer exists… That kind of thing. From there, we could expand upon and flesh out other concepts like her older brother, Emile. Following that process would lead to how things ended up looking in the final product."

    4. Gronder Field 2? In Silver Snow? It's more likely than you think.

    Anyone who has played the Silver Snow route knows that its story conveniently skips the Gronder Field 2 battle and the whole month in which happens because of reasons. In spite of this, there is actual circumstantial evidence suggesting the devs briefly considered giving said route their own version of that chapter:

    a. One of the two unused maps in the game is set to load Gronder Field 2 as the battleground, is internally called as a Chapter 17 of some undefined route, and only contains enemy and deployment placeholders only for the Black Eagles slot, while the other 2 slots for Azure Moon and Verdant Wind are empty (in case anyone wonders, both Silver Snow and Crimson Flower share the same slot internally when loading a specific map, meaning it's entirely possible though hacking to load any map from SS into CF and make it work with mostly no issues).

    b. A specific map having data for only one route is a quirk which only exist for route-exclusive missions like the ones from Crimson Flower and Azure Moon, while everything else which is shared between 2 or more routes (like most of part 1 & 2, + the chapters shared between the Church and Claude's routes) have data filled in their 2/3 slots respectively.

    c. In the monastery exploration script, there is one empty slot between the Silver Snow and Azure Moon routes. Had a proper Chapter 17 been added into into SS, the only data which would've needed to be repointed to preserve a consistent order would've been only the stuff concerning Silver Snow's lategame exploration.

    d. There is an awkward difficulty spike between Silver Snow's Chapter 16 and 17 where the enemy's levels go up by 4 instead of 2. This issue doesn't exist in Azure Moon and Verdant Wind as the Gronder Field 2 battle makes sure the transition between each chapter is slightly more smooth stat-wise.

    e. 10 Placeholder event slots exist between the story and paralogue stuff, so adding more story scenes to Silver Snow without messing up anything afterwards would've been possible (there are also 16 more placeholders between the paralogues and Cindered Shadows, but I don't know if those existed prior to the release of the DLC).

    5. "Wait, one of the two unused maps? What's the other one about?"

    The second unused map has the same enemy and deployment data as the first one, with the difference it loads Fort Merceus as a battle location and it internally calls itself as a Chapter 18 of a non-defined route.

    Unfortunately, there's very little evidence suggesting plans for that one. If I had to make a guess though, I dare say the Fort Merceus infiltrations for Silver Snow and Verdant Wind were planned to be far more distinct at first before both maps where combined into one spot. This is 100% conjecture from my part though, so there's a good chance I might be wrong.

    6. "What about Crimson Flower? Could have Gronder 2 or Fort Merceus been planned for that route?"

    Location wise, the battle script of Crimson Flower's maps (Chapter 12-18) is all gathered together after Verdant Wind and before the paralogues. Meanwhile, CF's exploration script comes after Part 1 but before Silver Snow, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind's, so overall I find very unlikely those unused maps could have been planned for Edelgard's route.

    7. Crimson Flower was likely left for last (before the paralogues) and thus rushed, NOT unfinished.

    Before getting into this, I think it's important to clarify the distinction between the words rushed and unfinished, as they have different implications in spite of being used interchangeably by many. Rushed means some action/object was made hastily and under a low interval of time. Unfinished meanwhile, more or less indicates some action, product or something was never finished or given any conclusion of sorts.

    With that out of the way, let's talk about the 2 points which suggests Crimson Flower fits the former description rather than the latter.

    a. Scrapped class sprites of Rhea and Dimitri sporting their unique appearances in CF is the only thing left unused for that route, and Jeritza as a whole was more or less left as a huge blank both story and data wise before the post launch DLC happened. By contrast, the other 3 routes have quite the amount of unused story, battle dialogue and scrapped defection situations.

    b. While most story events are internally listed in chronological order for Silver Snow, Azure Moon and Verdant Wind (sort of, it kinda jumps at the middle of each one before wrapping them up later), Crimson Flower instead has its own not only listed after all three, but also has its very last event listed in the data be the scene in which Rhea attacks Byleth and kickstarts the time skip. This in itself has huge implications given how the route's well known for lacking animated cutscenes besides the ending.

    So…yeah. If I had to describe this game's development with a few words, I dare say Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo tried to bite far, far more than they could chew with this one. I mean, it's well known the game was delayed twice so...

    (Also there's still far more unused stuff I didn't cover here. The iceberg goes deep folks!)

    submitted by /u/Dakress23
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    Drew Nowi today!

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 02:50 PM PST

    TBH, My Castle is legit some of the most fun I've had with a hub menu in a video game, especially in retrospect.

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 07:32 AM PST

    Fire Emblem Fates is perhaps one of the most divisive FEs to have ever come out, and while the story, characters and such-and-such remain a constant point of debate among long-time fans (and really, a matter of subjectivity), I've seen nothing but praise for a lot of Fates' gameplay, especially in Conquest where it has some of the best maps in the series + really well-designed gameplay balance that is fun regardless of your skill level. But something I feel like isn't really talked about much about it is My Castle, which IMO is literally one of the most fun hub menus I've ever seen in a game like FE, and while there's a lot that could be better about it, I wonder partially why a lot of what made it work didn't carry over to 3H's design philosophy.

    Now for those who don't know, My Castle is the unilateral "hub world" between maps and missions of Fire Emblem Fates, that you end up going into between missions to restock on items, create a castle through prop and building placement, and generally act as the menu to which to tweak with your inventory as much as possible. It comes up as early as Chapter 3 of Fates before the route split, and while I agree the in-universe reasoning is dumb, I feel it's easily made up by the fact that My Castle is completely out of the way to the main story and really there to encourage you to use it either as a base of operations or choosing to engage in it's many mechanics... of which there are a lot.

    Feeding your units to give stat boosts, lottery, betting items in the arena, buying and registering Einherjar cards, dressing up your units in accessories, inviting your troops into your quarters... it's really not emphasized a lot, but due to Fates' My Castle updating based on the time of day, I suddenly find myself logging in to see what I missed and sinking in a ton of hours getting sidetracked by the numerous updates I soon find myself registering, and it really begins adding up overall. I have as a whole 551 hours in Fire Emblem Fates total, and a lot of it was from this mode alone.

    But what truly made it fun was twofold: one, the ability to visit other castles as part of the game's socialization mechanics. Being able to harvest items you'd normally not have, bet the local units on arena resources, challenging the local castle to invasions of their map, recruiting their soldiers as einherjar... not only did it spawn an entire challenge run of playing Fates as a result (My Unit runs, where you recruit soldiers to fight instead of the units the game gives you), it also really compounded with the general mechanics of Fates as a whole and made it ridiculously addictive. Like I said, I've put 551 hours into this game for My Castle alone, and it's some of the most goddamned fun I've had with what's basically a glorified hub menu in quite a while.

    But the best part is was that it respected your interest gauged in the system by making it completely optional. You don't care about the other stuff and seek to use it simply to upgrade weapons and move onto the next map? By all means, go ahead! You moreso interested in tailoring and perfecting your castle and invading others all the time? Go for it! Want to dress up your Avatar in swag and make them look cooler? Go ahead! What truly sold Fates for me is how much so much of the content wasn't stuff that you needed to do to complete the game, but was there to reward the player for investing into it as a result. That's a major reason why I love the game; it felt like it respected the players' initiative by letting them engage with the mechanics when they wanted to at the pace they wanted to than making it mandatory, and thus liable to have a lot of the fun seeped from the mechanics as a whole.

    Now, could My Castle be improved? 100%. It could've used a much better story justification for why it exists, and it could've always benefited from a Info menu to expand on the characters like in the Tellius games, so in terms of that it isn't the best hub menu in the series. However, even given that, I'd still argue My Castle as the most fun hub menu in the series, and of a lot of games I've played; it's not forcing players to go through it to experience the most of the game, but is exceptionally rewarding to those who are interested in it, and believe me, I genuinely do think FE could learn a lot of Fates' design philosophy in making a fun and mechanically-interesting hub menu.

    submitted by /u/Wanderer2691
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    [FE5 English] Version 1.07 of Lil' Manster has been released! (mini update)

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 06:54 PM PST

    SF thread: https://forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/90189-fe5-lil-manster-pe-based-english-translation-translations-to-es-fr-de-it-tr/

    Hello everyone. We've released a small update to our Thracia 776 translation patch, because we simply couldn't let those sweet new Heroes go to waste. Here's the new stuff we've added:

    • Said sweet new Heroes stuff. Sara and her Kia staff, the soft boi of Hrest, the neglected princess of Ulster, the other soft boi of Iz and some dude's Petrify tome all joined FE Heroes earlier this week.
    • A bigger shop window, so at long last Njörun's Scroll will stop breaking our windows.
    • A couple incredibly important tidbits like how it's supposed to be 1–2 range, not 1~2 range.
    • The Sound Room has all the correct sounds now.
    • What? This was supposed to be the final patch? Nonsense! Who said that? I said that I just wanted to get this out first tho

    That's about it. You can find the download link in the Serenes Forest post, as well as more info on the patch.

    submitted by /u/Miacis
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    I'm in a spicy mood today. These are my favorite to least favorite Fire Emblem Fates characters-wise (not gameplay-wise!), ranked via tier list. AMA!

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 03:58 PM PST

    If Byleth were a defined (non avatar) character, they’d have a chance to be my favorite lord. (3H spoilers all routes)

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 10:01 AM PST

    i will default to 'he' since it's what I'm used to, but I'm NOT by any means trying to say Byleth would definitely be male. Not sure which they'd use, that's another topic

    Byleth's journey is honestly strong. In some ways he already fails as being a pure avatar.

    He has an emotional connection. He has a father but no mother. He's from a town and he cares somewhat about it. He's something none of us could ever be.

    But all those things could be stronger. We find out Byleth was stillborn, and the child of a golem plus human, obviously making him a half golem. And he's got the heart of a goddess.

    A defined character could still have the cold 'stoic and strong' demeanor. He could even be a man of few words. Like in supports, we sometimes get one option. He could just elaborate on those traits.

    We could learn how his origins affect him. See him bond with Aelfric over his mother before the betrayal. See him mourn his father in more than just one line and hanging his head low. See him respond to the house lord he leads; and actually take charge instead of Seteth being the true leader of route 4.

    And if he was a set character; we could learn about Ramire village and his connections to it.

    Since he was purposefully raised away from the church, he'd still be an outsider, so we would learn about the church and customs through him regardless.

    Aside from picking a gender, I just can't understand why Byleth doesn't just have lines and defined relationships. All the work was put in, and like the title says, he could have been my favorite or one of the best.

    Now the last game without an avatar main character (remakes aside) is probably going to be awakening. Ironically, Chrom is my favorite lord.

    submitted by /u/UnusualSentences
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    Potemkin from Guilty Gear as a GBAFE Halfbody Portrait!

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 11:13 AM PST

    Edelgard getting ready for class

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 12:42 PM PST

    Thracia 776 is a mixed bag for me

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 02:56 PM PST

    I think Thracia is an absolutely brilliant game from a narrative perspective. It's got brilliant characters, an awesome story, and some of the best ludonarrative integration in the series. It's also a beautiful game, the best looking 2D Fire Emblem in my opinion. But for me, the gameplay of the title fell short, in multiple ways. Now this is all just personal opinion of course, there's nothing objectively wrong with the way Thracia plays, it just doesn't fit my preferred style in almost any way whatsoever.

    First, the ratio of miserable chapters to fun chapters is weighted far too heavily in the miserable chapters favour, particularly early game. Chapters 1 and 2 are gucci, zero issues there.

    But then you hit Chapter 2x, and barely an hour into the game you have to deal with the worst fog of war the series has to offer, narrow corridors, and hindered movement. The THIRD chapter.

    Then we hit Chapter 3, which is better, but ain't great, and it's the best the game's gonna be for the next 6 chapters. Ferrying the children from the cell to the houses is a chore. It's not hard, it's just annoying.

    Then we hit Chapter 4, which is definitely one of the most miserable chapters I've ever played in Fire Emblem. You have a group of barely functional units facing weapon triangle disadvantage against every enemy (thank goodness the penalty isn't larger) while you escort thieves everywhere to unlock cells and chests. It's slow. It's tedious. It's a major pain in the ass. Thankfully you can block the reinforcements by placing a unit on their spawn point, but it's like putting a band-aid on a mortal wound. The near requirement of using guides on Thracia's maps being another story mind you. And then before you're finished you're greeted with the hellish room up top full of enemies, complete with a recruitment so you can't entirely just run past it. Fail there? Have fun doing the first part of the map again.

    After Chapter 4 we arrive at 4x, another damn fog of war chapter already. The first turn for this map might as well me entirely up to luck if you aren't very experienced with Thracia. It's not fun, it's not satisfying, it's lame. Thankfully it's short. But oh, that won't last long, because then we hit Chapter 5. Again, I must reiterate this. Narratively? A masterpiece. But playing Chapter 5 is an awful experience I dread every time. Who thought putting that chest out there was a good idea? I thought we were done with long painful circle maps after Chapter 3 of Mystery? Apparently not, because this one is a slog and a half. And once more after finishing the chapter I'm not left satisfied. I just breathe a sigh of relief that it's finally over with.

    But there's no real break because next up is Chapter 6. This is probably the second best of the miserable arc, after Chapter 3. But visiting all the houses again feels more like a chore than anything else. You have Karin finally on her pegasus to help out, but honestly if you couldn't cheese the top units by dodge tanking them with Asbel this map would be down with the worst of them for me. Again, ludonarratively brilliant. Not fun.

    And finally we reach Chapter 7, the last chapter of the miserable start to Thracia 776. This one isn't so bad, but they somehow managed to make your first steps out of Munster still somehow feel claustrophobic, which is almost impressive.

    But then thank goodness we reach Chapter 8, and are at long last given access to the prep menu. Because oh yeah, for the ENTIRE FIRST 9 CHAPTERS OF THE GAME THERE WAS NO PREP MENU. Maybe it's just the type of person I am, but I hate not being able to be organized before tackling a map, and that Thracia leaves you without that ability for so long, while simultaneously putting you through a gauntlet of miserable maps, is a bad combination. Even thinking of starting a new playthrough of Thracia is headache inducing because I know I'll have to deal with back to back to back to back to back to back to back unfun chapters.

    But the misery doesn't end there, no of course not. Chapter 8x is yet another claustrophobic fog of war map because those are just such a joy to play.

    Chapter 11 is downright inexcusable. I can understand somebody liking every single chapter I've just complained about, but to excuse Chapter 11's design is where I'll draw the line. Literally who thought it was a good idea to make it so easy to lose Fred because the game won't let you heal him and he won't heal himself until he's one hit away from dying. It's ridiculous.

    But you do it, hooray, and what are greeted with in 11x? You guessed it. A claustrophobic fog of war chapter. Why oh why? Oh yeah there's also artillery magic that can reach and one shot the children on the top of the map if you don't kill him or drain his magic first. So enjoy discovering that fun fact if you aren't already aware of it.

    Ah but don't worry, I'm sure the next chapter will be fi-oh look a black screen again. Okay to be fair this map isn't actually bad at all...if you got Safy to A staves that is and can warp somebody to Salem on turn 1, which requires knowledge of the map from either prior playthroughs or a guide. So still bad design if you ask me, but playing it at least isn't really that unfun.

    12x is of course a claustrophobic fog of war map because Thracia's favourite pass time is draining you of all hope and mentally fatiguing you to the furthest extent possible. Another map that's either fine or hell depending on how much knowledge you have going in.

    After this point I start to enjoy Thracia much more. There's still some problem maps here and there...but on my first playthrough finishing 12x was the point where I went from struggling to pick up the controller to play, to being unable to put the game down until I beat it.

    While I'm here I should add that the maps aren't the only part of Thracia's gameplay that I didn't really love. I also really dislike the capture mechanic. I really dislike how it effects the pacing of the game. Again, if we're talking gameplay and story integration capture makes perfect sense, but it personally didn't add to my enjoyment of the story, and I would have preferred a traditional weapon economy for the game. Through its map design, Thracia already makes you think very differently compared to most Fire Emblem games. Capture just adds an additional stressor on top of that which lessens my enjoyment of the game.

    I do love Thracia, truly and sincerely, as much as this post might make it seem otherwise. I mostly just think the beginning (into middle) of the game is an absolute disaster to play. I do really wish I could enjoy playing the game more, because there's so much to love about it, but unfortunately I might be waiting however many years it'll be until we get a remake for a Thracia experience I can enjoy without reservations.

    submitted by /u/PsiYoshi
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    I made a version of FE6 with doubled HMB. Then I ironmanned it.

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 06:20 PM PST

    Hi everyone. You might remember me as that crazy guy who beat FE6 using only Sophias. That run inspired me to try some more FE6 challenges, and the first thing that came to mind was fixing two prominent bugs in FE6.

    First off is the fact that for the first five chapters of FE6, enemies which start on the map get hard mode bonuses applied twice, causing them to have unusually high stats on hard mode. The bug is related to the lack of a prep screen for a first five chapters, although I don't understand the details. This bug leads to a significant drop in enemy quality in chapter 6, where the enemies are suddenly getting 6 fewer bonus levels than they were in the previous chapter, and the hard mode bonuses don't actually get back to the same level as in chapter 5 until all the way in chapter 17. To help the difficulty curve of the game be a bit less frontloaded, I doubled the hard mode bonuses for chapters 6-24.

    Now doubled hard mode bonuses would normally make some of the best units in the game even better. In particular, Milady and Perceval would be even more busted than usual. But the fact that playable characters get HMB in the first place is actually another bug. The game has a list of units who aren't supposed to get HMB, and it includes all recruitable characters who show up as enemies. Unfortunately the game only checks this list at the start of a chapter, so it only works on units who aren't reinforcements, which is just Raigh, Hugh, and Douglas. So for my second change, I fixed this obvious bug by making it so recruitable units don't get any HMB at all, they all have their normal mode stats (this was implemented in the rather hacky fashion of having them spawn as green units that immediately turn red). In this way, the game would be strictly harder than vanilla FE6, there would be some encouragement to use different units than usual, and it would hopefully be challenging enough to make an ironman actually feel dangerous again, even for someone very familiar with FE6.

    My first couple of attempts I tried to play like in a regular HM ironman and play through the maps fairly efficiently, without worrying too much about things like XP distribution or supports. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past chapter 7. With 2xHMB the wyverns had 12 spd, 15 def and 40 HP, along with nearly capped strength, which meant that nobody could double them, and only Marcus, Lugh, and the archers could do halfway reasonable damage to them (and even Lugh + Marcus + Sue wasn't enough to kill one). Also, as soon as they dropped below half health the physic priests would heal them. My first run I actually had a total party kill where Roy perished only after watching every single one of his friends get murdered in front of him.

    After that, I started a third run where I threw the rules of efficient play out the window and prepared hardcore for chapter 7. This time around instead of clearing maps before the final sets of reinforcements showed up, we stuck around to fight them. Instead of blocking the forts in chapter 5, we waited beside them itching for a fight. Instead of ignoring the trapped doors in chapter 6, we opened them just so we'd have more people to kill. We also built a bunch of supports and weapon ranks. I did stop short of boss abuse, because that's actually unlimited and just feels too much like cheating (whereas FE6 reinforcements are always finite except for in the final chapter, and support points per chapter are capped).

    By the time chapter 7 rolled around, we had already lost Wade, Bors, Deke, and Lot (I rushed chapter 4 a bit too much after playing it for the third time in a week, and then the chapter 5 reinforcements got a bit overwhelming), but we had a full support triangle between our cavs (Lance/Allen A supporting each other and each B supporting Marcus) including a very buff level 15 Lance who was ready to fight some wyverns and a Marcus who could use the killer axe to take out more than half of a wyverns HP. We also had an A support between Rutger and Clarine (this Rutger isn't going to be facing crit, no matter how awful his luck is), a Shanna who could smack stuff with Silver lances (Who needs strength when your weapon has 14 might?), and an Elen with B staves for the chapter 7 physic. We also had a (very turtlely) plan for dealing with the wyverns, based on a deep dive into the enemy army's AI.

    The left and right wyverns in chapter 7 are triggered to start moving when you get within two movements of them (while the middle one only moves when you get within his attack range). It's pretty much impossible to avoid immediately triggering the right wyvern if you want to recruit Zealot and Treck, but it is possible to not activate the left one as long as you avoid attacking the left armor knight on turn 1 and just send everyone right instead. In this way, I made sure that we only had to deal with one wyvern at the start of the chapter. Furthermore, I deployed Merlinus, specifically to bait that one wyvern into attacking with a steel lance (instead of a javalen) from a spot where all my strong units could gang up on him to kill him in one turn. After the wyvern was dead, it was a matter of walling off the rest of the charging enemies with my busted cavs while everyone else hid in the village to the right. We didn't actually need it, but Elen was ready to heal the cavs from a safe distance if necessary. Once the charging enemies were dead, instead of baiting the other wyverns, we parked Halberd Marcus on a forest and waited out all of the reinforcements from behind, because wyverns were going to require our full attention. Then, to make thing even safer, we baited out the physic priests by luring an armor knight down to the south side of the map and getting the priests to chase after him to spots where we could kill them without triggering the wyverns. Finally, with everyone else on the map dead (except Debais) I baited the last two wyverns, one by one and murdered them with the whole squad. In the end, the only chapter 7 death was Treck, who doesn't matter at all in the long term. This was probably the most I've ever planned for a Fire Emblem chapter, and it was really satisfying to see everything work out cleanly after getting wrecked by this chapter on the previous runs.

    After chapter 7, things were a good bit easier. The enemies were still super buff and hardly anybody could double, but no other class has stats as scary as wyverns, and no other map is as open and hard to stay safe in as chapter 7's. Barthe died in chapter 8 when we got sandwitched by the reinforcements there, but otherwise things went smoothly. Thanks to Rutger having only his NM strength, and the enemy bosses having crazy defense values, Lugh actually got to hold the title of main bosskiller in this run, murdering the significant majority of the bosses. He was also just a really solid combat unit in general. Since enemies have much lower res growths than def growths, Lugh's damage got hurt less than everyone else's by 2xHMB, particularly since he was one of the few people still doubling. Lilina was also way more useful than in ordinary FE6. With Shanna, Rutger, Lance, and Lugh as my only units consistently doubling in chapters 8-15, Lilina was in good company with her inability to hit anything twice. Res targeting and a good magic stat also meant she did more chip damage than someone like Sue or Shin, and the high accuracy of fire was useful against enemies that were dodgier than usual (she was still pretty much a strictly worse Lugh, but Lugh was S-tier in this format).

    I went B route through the isles, since it seemed like Echidna would just have too high a chance of dying to the enemies that ambush spawn with her and Bartre's high strength would definitely not be overkill here. I actually ended up training NM Thea, because her high speed potential was appealing when enemy mercs and myrms were already capping speed and I knew that by endgame the wyverns would be too. She was probably not worth the effort (we went very slow through 12x to feed a bunch of kills to a peg who spent 10 turns killing a single thief), but she did turn out to be a very useful unit eventually (after we also fed her a bunch of kills in 14x).

    Chapter 13 gave us Milady, who was pretty bad and got benched after chapter 14 (where flier utility is super great). Her bad speed meant that even with an instant promotion, she'd be getting doubled by a lot of enemies, and her speed cap of 23 meant she'd have some trouble doubling in endgame even with all of the speedwings. Her bad luck meant that literally every enemy had crit on her (because by chapter 13, nobody had less than 12 skill). This could eventually be fixed with a support, but none of her options are all that great (Supporting with Lugh or Elen significantly reduces her mobility, supporting with Zeiss requires using another not great flier and waiting until chapter 16).

    Chapter 14 featured the first death since chapter 8, when poor level 6 Saul sacrificed himself to bodyblock for Shanna. This chapter was another reason that Lugh was S tier for me. At this point he had just enough bulk to tank a hit from a capped strength silver lance wyvern lord (which is what he was up against), and with the power of aircalibur he could still ORKO even the super buff wyverns (these guys were already stronger than the chapter 23 wyverns in regular HM). Lugh and Lilina were also very useful against the chapter 14 mercs, were already capping the offensive trifectica (str, skl, and spd), making them rather annoying to hit. To help ensure our mages would be useful for chapters to come, we bought a lot of Aircaliburs here, and used Sophia's guiding ring to promote Lilina.

    Chapter 15 featured capped speed Valkyries with enough magic to hit rather hard. Thanks to those being almost impossible to kill, we missed out on Hammerne, which sucked, and thanks to me playing stupidly, we got Elffin killed, which sucked even more. Fortunately, we'd already recruited Percival, who actually had enough speed at base to never get doubled by non-promoted enemies, even if he couldn't actually double all of his own cavs. Percival was never a huge damage dealer, but having another high move unit who could take a hit was definitely useful. Since the charging enemies took so long to deal with here, we ended up having to fight all of the reinforcements this chapter, something we hadn't done since chapter 9. These reinforcements were actually pretty scary, because they spawn four at a time and half of them have javelins, making them difficult to EP, and none of my physical units could deal good damage to them with javalin's/hand axes. In the end our solution was to stick Lugh on a forest and having him face tank 20 cavs. With aircalibur he was still getting ORKO's, and with his 24 speed their hit rates were pretty bad.

    Chapters 16, 16x, and 17I went smoothly with no deaths. The bolting sage in 16x would actually ORKO Fae, but Elen was a perfectly acceptable substitute res tank. Chapter 18I should have been smooth as well, but I got a bit overly ambitious and decided to rush down the boss instead of waiting out the reinforcements (just because it's satisfying to clear chapters efficiently). Milady was deployed here to help grab ferry people around and to grab a village, and I accidentally left her in range of Martel, forgetting that wyvern lord Milady would get doubled by purge. Martel didn't forget, and he ORKO'd my wyvern, which was sad, because RIP true end. Marcus also died here, although at this point he was basically just a support bot for Lance (who had capped speed and strength) so I didn't mind too much.

    Chapter 20I ended up being quite a rush. At this point almost all of the enemies were capping strength/magic, which made fighting under balistas very dangerous. I ended up slowly baiting out the balistas, staff, and purge, but this led to not killing Rortz until turn 25, the very last turn for the gaiden.

    Chapter 20xI is probably the best grinding chapter in all of FE6, with all of the enemies boxed in so that you can fight them in nice manageable chunks. After trying to go fast had gotten Milady killed, I decided I would make sure that I was very prepared for endgame here. I gave Thea and Rutger some extra levels to help make sure they were ready to fight endgame enemies, and got Lilina to A staves here (giving her like 5 levels in the process) by repeatedly letting people get shot by longbows and then healing them. Unsurprisingly, at some point in this long process, I messed up, and Cecilia paid the price. The only thing she had over Clarine was her anima rank, so this wasn't a huge loss. Thanks to this training, we had a 20 range warp/physic user for the last few chapters, and thanks to a couple speedwings, she was even fast enough to double wyverns with aircalibur. In the end, she would have been fine without the staff rank or the levels, but A staves Lilina is a fun thing to have at least once in your life.

    By chapter 21, wyverns could be capping str, skl, spd, and def (I don't think I saw any wyvern capping all four at once, but each of those was capped by some wyvern). We generally avoided fighting them. Lugh and Lilina were a great help in murdering the ones that charged our initial group, and Lance did a great job of baiting them and taking hits. Garret tried to do the "beserker on a peak" thing, but on the EP after I stuck him there, he proceeded to immediately get hit twice by a steel lance wyvern with 12 displayed hit and die. At least he tried. We carefully avoided triggering any of the reinforcement zones until we were ready to have Lilina warp armorslayer Lance into Murdock's throne room, and she kept him topped up with physic while he took out the general and everyone else fought off the newly spawning wyverns.

    Chapter 22 went pretty smoothly. Lance had eaten a bunch of dracoshields from the secret shop, so he feared no beserker crits, and thanks to boots we were able to mop up Zephiel's throne room and block the stairs very quickly. We also waited to go until there until the physic bishops had stopped spawning at turn 40, because I am a coward. Zephiel himself only got +2 HP from the extra HMB (lol King class growths).

    Just for fun, I hacked myself an Apocalypse tome so that I could play the last three chapters, and nobody died there either. Chapter 23 wyverns were pretty much the same as chapter 21 ones (capped str, skl, spd, and def), and manaketes were capping str, skl, and HP. The fact that they have no def growth meant that they generally still got ORKO'd by divine weapons, though, so despite only having wielders for Durandal, Maltet, and Forblaze (and the Binding Blade), chapter 24 was no trouble. Poor Idunn gets nothing at all from HMB (her only growth is in HP, and her HP is capped at base), so Roy was able to cleanly ORKO her and secure the (unearned) good end.

    In conclusion, when you make FE6 enemies super buff, earlygame mages become super good, ALance become better than Percy, supports become a lot more important, and the game is still very beatable even in an ironman.

    At some point I'd like to try this again with an extra restriction to enforce somewhat fast play (I'll probably release that version someday as like "FE6 Lunatic Mode"). I did not expect when I started that I'd beat this run with only 12 deaths, and I think now that I know what I'm doing more, I could ironman the game on 2xHMB without support or gaiden grinding. For now, though, I'm ready for a run without mega-inflated stats, so my next challenge is going to be a random deployment ironman (look for an after-action report in a few months :P).

    submitted by /u/Wezkor
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    Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 - Leif’s Army in Search of Victory ~ Base | Orc...

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 07:07 PM PST

    My Fire Emblem collection (UK)

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 02:52 AM PST

    Some tweaks to Radiant Dawn to make Elincia a full fledged lord if she wasn't already

    Posted: 14 Jan 2021 01:33 PM PST

    Introduction

    There is a divide in the fanbase when it comes to whether Elincia can be classified as a lord or not. Lord basically refers to a main protagonist. Irrespective of your opinion on whether she is one or not, I believe there are a few tweaks when it comes to gameplay and story that makes her important enough in the story to be considered a lord by more people than currently.

    Chapters where Elincia leads

    One aspect she's lacking as a lord is the lack of chapters where she leads the army. She leads the army in chapter 2-P and chapter 2-E. The problem with this is that even lords that are deemed irrelevant by the fanbase, such as Lyn, get to lead the army in 11 chapters. RD is a weird game where other characters such as Nephenee, Geoffrey, Lucia and Tibarn also act as the leader of the army which is not true of other FE titles where the leader of the army is always a main protagonist so Elincia leading the army twice is not really sufficient to be a lord imo. Although you could argue that since Geoffrey and Lucia are subordinates of Elincia, their leadership represents Elincia by proxy and thus the chapters where they lead count towards Elincia being the head of the army for the chapter. Lucia leads the army in chapter 2-2, Geoffrey leads the army in chapter 2-3 and chapter 3-9. Now that Elincia leads the army in 5 chapters, a stronger case can be made of her being a protagonist but we can do better than 5.

    I also think Elincia's army should be the playable army in chapter 3-10 because the whole point of that chapter is that Elincia's gambit managed to split the Begnion Central Army into two camps so she's the one who shows the leadership here, not Ike who was more of a bystander. Right now, Elincia and Geoffrey stupidly charge into the enemy forcing the player, who commands Ike's army, to rescue her, which turns her into a stupid damsel in distress if we don't apply gameplay-story segregation. However, gameplay-story integration is always preferred over segregation unless it is impractical. Furthermore, I think giving the Crimean Royal Knights an extra chapter of EXP would benefit the gameplay so that Greil Mercenaries don't hog all the EXP so in this case both the story and the gameplay become better if we give the player control of Elincia, not Ike. Now Elincia leads in 6 chapters.

    I also think making Elincia the leader in Tibarn's two part 4 chapters makes more sense too. Elincia is one of the few characters other than Ike that can unite beorc and laguz imo.

    Tibarn also ends up praising Elincia's leadership and says he respects her just like Ike. Tibarn giving this much respect to a beorc is rare so I think him coming under Elincia's command would be fitting just like how he came under Ike's command when Ike became the leader of the Apostle Army.

    Tibarn: ...Ha... Hahahahaha! [turns back to the laguz army] Ike, I thought you were the craziest beorc I'd ever met, but you have some serious competition! Crimea's queen is one tough woman... Your Majesty, I like your style! Skrimir! I can't let such a pretty woman down. Let's get out of here.

    Sanaki: Zelgius returned to the empire by himself to rescue Prime Minister Sephiran. Our army consists of the troops he left behind, as well as the armies of Crimea, Gallia, and Phoenicis. Ike, you're probably the only person on the face of Tellius who commands respect from all four countries represented here.

    When you take all the above into consideration, Elincia basically leads in 8 whole chapters which is a pretty respectable amount and enough to classify her as a lord from a gameplay perspective even if Lyn has a few more chapters because Lyn's chapters are a lot smaller.

    Late part 3 story role

    Unfortunately, after Ike becomes the leader of the Apostle's Army, Elincia ends up taking a backseat in the story. It makes sense that now Ike is the commander of the Apostle's Army, he should take the lead but I believe Elincia could play a bigger role in the story. Her current story role is to find Bastian, act as an exposition bot to Ike and help Ena and Kurthnaga for the first ceasefire after chapter 3-13.

    Elincia: "No, that wasn't the case. Prince Kurthnaga and I ran into each other on our way here."

    Lucia: "We are actually in Daein to look for Count Bastian of Fayre."

    Ike: "Lucia! You're here, too?"

    Lucia: "Of course. I cannot let Her Majesty out of my sight. You know that."

    Elincia: "Bastian… He'd been so good about sending me reports until recently."

    Ike: "He was searching for the Black Knight, right?"

    Elincia: "After the Mad King's War, Begnion sent an envoy to investigate war crimes committed during Ashnard's reign. The Black Knight had already left Daein before the empire's observer arrived. Where he went remains a mystery. That was the last piece of information we received from Bastian. Then he sent word saying that something more important had come up with regards to Crimea. He's been missing ever since. I haven't heard a single word from him."

    Ike: "Bastian likes to keep his secrets. He's probably just laying low somewhere."

    Lucia: "I'm not so sure. He must've found something important, some new piece of information that he had to pursue."

    Elincia: "I ordered Geoffrey to watch over Crimea, and came here to begin a search for Bastian."

    Finally in chapter 3-E, Ike simply tells Elincia to stay back in case an opportunity for peace talks emerges but nothing comes out of it other than the acknowledgement that Elincia is the best candidate to mediate a peace talk between Daein and the Apostle's Army.

    Ike: "Elincia, please stay back. If a chance for a peace talk arises, I want you to mediate the whole show."

    Elincia: "I understand. Please be safe."

    When you take into account the fact that Ena actually knows why Kurthnaga started fighting as well as the fact Ena and Elincia appeared together to call for a ceasefire in chapter 3-13, I think Elincia managing to get some details from Ena could work.

    Ena: "He has a good reason to side with them, but… I'm afraid I cannot tell you why."

    This could allow Elincia to go directly to the leaders of Daein and talk about the blood pact. This could happen during the battle as there were a lot of events happening in chapter 3-F so it shouldn't detract from the gameplay to accommodate this.

    I think Elincia getting the idea to annex Daein and then convince Micaiah and/or Pelleas to do so officially so that Daein no longer exists as an entity and hence no longer something that the blood pact can affect could be pretty interesting as it would show how politically savvy she is. Of course by the time the deal is made, the judgement happens and it is too late to make sure the plot isn't significantly changed.

    It could also be good characterization for Micaiah because she has already accepted that she'll be hated by enemies of Daein but now she's going even further and doing a deal that will jeopardize her popularity in Daein, which she has come to enjoy. After all, the ordinary citizen of Daein will be disgusted that their hero who allowed them to be free will hand over the country to an enemy. Micaiah having to fight the fear of loneliness and hatred could be a great character conflict for her.

    Micaiah: I was touched by their kindness. Now, I'm scared to lose it. Very scared.

    Micaiah: Sothe, after all those soldiers cheering... I feel like I'm doing real good here...

    Conclusion

    When you combine Elincia's efforts previously where she managed to divide the Begnion Central Army and now managed to get rid of Daein as an asset for the Senate, Elincia ends up playing a major role in part 3 to the same extent as Ike and Micaiah. She also will end up playing a similar role to Ike and Micaiah in part 4. At this point, she'd be a fully fledged lord just like them.

    submitted by /u/lcelerate
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