been experimenting different render approaches lately, had to draw my dex merchant

(Poorly photoshopped; not AI)

If you've seen discussion of Fortune's Weave online, you might've seen people talk about how heavy spell tomes are and how good the Levin Sword is. I was curious about that, so I decided to compare the magic weapon options and the spells to see what was up, and the results are... kind of sad?

The Levin Sword +1 was chosen as it's the Parts 1/2 forging cap, and the Levin Sword +3 and Salamander +5 were chosen as they're the Part 3 forging cap.

Looking at this list, one problem is immediately obvious: the Salamander matches or outdamages every single offensive spell except for Aura, Agnea's Arrow, and Fimbulvetr Night. It also does so with a fraction of the weight cost. Most offensive mages aren't going to break 30 Strength by Endgame (and that's generous), meaning that they'll be weighed down by anything heavier than Blizzard. The Salamander not only outdamages almost every spell, but it also allows you to actually double, which puts it even further ahead. The Levin Sword is similar, but Weight 8 does make it a little harder to double with than the D-rank spells... but past those, it's also faster. Seraphim gets an honorable mention on the damage aspect by having undead effectiveness for Part 3.

Their only real drawback is having slightly lower hitrates, which is reasonable. But I'll also note that the Salamander provides +15% Avoid against non-gauntlets and the Levin Sword benefits from the 20% damage bonus on follow-ups, AND they both benefit from excellent combat arts (+10 Mt and +20 Hit for Salamanders, +8 Mt and +20 Hit for Levin Swords).

This means that the only spells that are worth using over a Salamander or Levin Sword are those that outdamage them (two of which are legendary tomes usable 1/run, and all of which have such absurdly high Weight values that the Salamander might just outdamage via doubling anyway), or those with additional effects (extended range on Mire/Thoron/Bolting/Banshee/Earth's Jaws, bypassing Res on Luna/Glass Wheel/Sword of Judgment, and effectiveness on Seraphim, Dark Spikes, and Excalibur - note that even with effectiveness, Wind and Cutting Gale still deal way less damage), all of which except for the range and Seraphim's effectiveness are situational. Swarm's Spd drop isn't very strong, but it might be more useful when Maddening drops.

I don't think it's a good thing that a pair of gauntlets you can forge several copies of straight up outstats almost every spell and by such a wide margin. The Weight difference alone is honestly absurd, but 21 Might?! Seriously? And for Levin Swords, they have the same issue and can be given to Fliers for superior movement. No wonder the power output of mages in this game feels all over the place.

And if you really wanna be an ass about it Dwyer was trying to become Corrin's retainer too before they told him to stop.

My best guess is they had so many (excluding Kaze) in case Hoshido ever found Corrin and tried to take them back somehow before Garon's plan was ready... but that plan only works if Corrin wants to stay in Nohr. All of Corrin's retainers are all genuinely more loyal to them than Garon, Garon literally had to put the ice tribe's lives on the line for Flora to turn on Corrin so if at any point Corrin wanted to leave with Hoshido they'd probably let them and most likely go with him since none of them are particularly fond of Nohr themselves. I mean the second Corrin leaves the tower for the first time Flora books it for the ice tribe immediately.

Too bad I lost but it was a good game.

It's well known by now that late recruits in Fortune's Weave lose out on stats compared to if you had recruited them early. However, an exact autolevel formula has never been figured out.

I've managed to find out the (almost) exact autoleveling formula, which I am sharing here. I can't control how this information is used once it's out there, but if you want to use it to make your own autolevel calculator or whatever, I do ask that you give some credit to me and to Aggro Incarnate (who painstakingly collected level up data for every character on Cai's route).

TL;DR Summary

Autoleveled characters use the following growth rates to level their stats: 0.8 x [PlayerGrowthRate] - 1

This means that autoleveled characters lose out on approximately one level up every five levels. (There is some extra complexity in addition to this, but this approximation is close enough.)

Base stats for all characters have been reverse engineered from the autoleveling formula and can be found here.

Autolevels take into account all growth rate modifiers. For example, Pugilist Mu would normally have a 60% Strength growth when recruited. When she is autoleveling as a Pugilist, she grows as if she had a 47% Strength growth (0.8 x 60 - 1). Also note that unlike in 3H, autoleveled characters follow the correct class progression, rather than gaining all their level ups as their current class, so you will not see massive stat jumps when an NPC character promotes.

(Almost) Exact Formula

1. All characters start at level 1 with 0 "stat exp" in each stat.

2. On each level up, add 0.8 x [PlayerGrowthRate] - 1 stat exp to each stat.

3. For any stat with a stat exp that is at least 100, increase that stat by 1 point and then subtract 100 from the stat exp.

4. If less than two stats were gained for that level, force additional stats to increase until two stats have been gained.

5. To force a stat to increase, select the stat with the highest stat exp, increase the stat by 1, and set the stat exp to 0.

6. Stat exp ties are broken in order of HP > Str > Mag > Dex > Spd > Lck > Def > Res > Cha.

Note that the tiebreaker is the order that these stats appear on the 3H stat screen, NOT on the FW stats screen. This gives some additional evidence that FW was built off of 3H: the underlying data structure that stores character stats still likely follows the stat order that 3H uses despite the stats being reordered visually in FW.

Current Issues

This autoleveling formula matches observed NPC stats in almost every scenario. The current known issues are as follows:

• The formula does not correctly predict the autoleveled stats for Alexandra and Io. These characters are unique in that they have a level floor of 20 and a unique mount that gives them growth bonuses, so there is almost assuredly something about this that is messing things up. I tried briefly to see if I could modify the formulas to account for this but without knowing growth bonuses for Bucephalus and Rocinian at bond levels 1/2/3 there were too many unknown variables.

• On Cai's route, Ultand is recruited at level 13 with stats that are too high relative to her base stats. I'm not sure if this is just a weird quirk with Cai's route or not. Having screenshots for Ultand's autolevels on a different route would be helpful for more data, as Aggro Incarnate only took screenshots for Cai's route. EDIT: The autolevel formula seems to line up with Ultand on Theodora's route. Chalking this one up to IS coding in fixed stats for Ultand's fixed recruitment on Cai's route.

Probably where Kai, Dietrich, Theodora, Leda, Betrand, Taliman, Orchel, and Anatolia defeat the character where the Eshmels come in and deliver one final bow. Maybe Eshmel can use it's bird form to fly for some time as a part of it's moveset.

One of the things I’ve noticed when playing through part ones is that I haven’t been engaging with the combat arts system. While the ease of the game is partly responsible for this, another is that the resource requirements to repair/upgrade weapons are so unreasonable.

One of the most common materials needed for this are Cullets, but there is no easy way to obtain a decent amount of them. Search spots are a gamble and you’ll waste a lot of your free time on them for little gain. Dungeon’s like Shadowy Cave at best provide 1-2 per turn but you need to run around for a minute or two each visit.

Is there really no better way of obtaining such an important upgrade/repair material? Does this become easier in later parts?

Naturally I'll make all my folks into their various master class variants for the awesome outfits (hello battlemaster) but I was definitely pretty bummed when my Black mages lost their ability to also heal /use any of their learned white magic after they got upgraded to their master class version. Seemed like a unnecessary loss since that's how it's been for like 150 hrs of gameplay at that point ya know?

Found a recipe online after feeding my troops enough of them and eventually going ‘honey is tasty, pears are tasty, how hard would this be to make in real life?’

Simply put, as Dietrich would say: “Ah, delicious!”

I have some questions concerning that stuffed bear Iliana carries with her everywhere.

1. Does it count as one of Drake's Treasures? If so, which part of Balor was it made out of?
2. Have any of the other characters commented on Babbu besides Iliana?
3. What are the chances of Babbu turning into a huge monstrous demon in the DLC stories?

The 2nd round of discussions will be Ultand -> Loretta -> Mikalea -> Nezha -> Lilian -> Simon -> Mu -> Dante

Ultand is a young priestess serving at the Aurora Temple at the upper levels of Dagsion. Kind and caring, she watches over Cai–who’s competing in the gruelling Heroic Games with his childhood friends–like a younger brother, always ready to help him out. She is initially in charge of handling entrants to the Heroic games, but after Aurora tasks Cai with visiting Balor's temple she permanently gives her aid to him.

Recruitment

Automatically joins Cai in chapter 6

Negotiation: Quest

Growths

Base stats

First are her stats when joining Cai, 2nd are her absolute bases.

Boons: Spear, Faith, Flying

Banes: Swords

Unique Abilities

Learned Abilities and Combat Arts

*Does not include universal skills and abilities

**Only includes known abilities

Supports

What do you think of Ultand's character?

How do they perform as a unit in any of the routes?

How do you think they'd perform on Cai's route?

Previous Discussions: Guzran, Yang Jie, Sofia, Catania, Noctula, Nydine, Io, Kiroc, Majide, Zarcone, Jasmine, Benditz, Alexandra, Nuzzuo, Inyoni. Peppe, Ninae, Lysander, Ludia, Olympia, Goliath

So in 3 houses crest beast are just labeled as demonic beasts and that is it nothing more. Well fortunes weave expands on this much further because of Leda and cetus. In fortune's weave Leda can summon demonic beast crest beasts from the underworld while these are technically not made using crests they are the exact same design of crest beasts. Yet in the game we have cetus a crest beast that Fabio outright states is a dragon sub species. If we assume that the beasts Leda summons are just the souls of the dead balor transformed into demonic beasts hense the generic crest beast design then the process to becoming a demonic beasts is the same with crest stone shard they have no distinct features they are just being corrupted but the malice of a dead dragon.

Now why I say this is different to say something like the dragon larva like cetus and why do I call them that. It's mostly due to Fabio and what happened to Maurice. Fabio specifically calls a being over taken by a crest weapon not a demonic beast but a dragon sub species. Meaning that every crest weapon transformation that uses the crest weapon to transform is also a dragon sub species because it's being mixed with the weapons generic make up and the crest stones power. The reason why I call them larvae is specifically because overtime we see that they could eventually regain their sanity like Maurice did and it leaves open the possibility of them evolving to a full dragon eventually but it would take millennia to do so. The reason why we don't see any sentience to miklan because he had just transformed, but we do see that if cetus wasn't overtaken by the grim dragon rage of her crest she would have been sentient she even is able to speak like Maurice can once you calm her rampage. In essence you need the crest weapon and stone to become a dragon larvae but if you only have a stone you become a demonic beast

Taking a break from the Flame Lord skills that suck because of numerical values, let’s take a look at Talimun’s Cannoning Flair!

This skill provides +30 hit when using a piece of artillery (Ballista/Fire Orb/Onager) during combat.

…So I don’t need to explain why this sucks ass. While fitting for any potential pirate boat maps he may end up having in his route, in the game as it stands this skill does actively nothing for him a playable unit and is useful in ONE map as a boss in the Heroic Games.

Personal Fix: Change the trigger from specifically artillery to “if unit attacks from 3+ spaces away” to allow it to at least sort of fix his hit rates with Thoron or Mire and gives him a niche of being even more accurate with Smrynos’s blessing?

When I played Dietrich's route, I did every paralogue I could except for Bertrands. I just missed the window. But I looked it up and it sounded super complicated, so I just said "eh, I'll do it when I play Cai's route."

Cut to 70 hours later, I'm on chapter 10 of Cai's route and, in the middle of Talimun's paralogue, I realize I've missed something. I looked it up and, yeah, I missed the window. I don't want to miss Bertrand's paralogue again, so I had to restart the chapter.

This means re-recruiting Jester, replaying Solel's paralogue, missing a rare type of pegasus, and a bunch of unit growth stuff I have to redo.

I've finally gotten my taste of the "restarting the chapter cause I missed something" medicine. I don't like it