Toggle Background Color
Chapter 5: Thievery
Getting a lot of mileage out of that randomized fog setting, huh?
This is it, the patch killer. This specific chapter is where more than a few attempts at translating Thracia have ended.
See, when you want to insert text in this game, you have to locate all the individual little “chunks” of dialogue that appear in a chapter. Normally, this isn't too difficult, but chapter 5 is a bit particular. The dialogue is fragmented into 26 chunks, that the game assembles in various ways depending on a set of conditions.
When Mareeta appears, the text changes depending on whether Nanna is alive, or captured/dead.
When the pitfighting is interrupted by either Eyvel being captured, Mareeta being killed, or Mareeta being captured, the text accommodates each of these 3 scenarios.... sorry, 6 scenarios, since Nanna's fate also changes each of those text bits.
Finally, when Leif opens the door, there are 5 outcomes, depending on whether Eyvel has been petrified or not, and whether Nanna is alive, captured, or dead.
Everything else is normal, unconditional dialogue.
That means not only finding all 26 of these individual, disconnected chunks in the ROM, but also playtesting all of possible outcomes. And while scripting the dialogue, we also need to make sure all the chunks assemble nicely with each other.
Sure, in example dialogue sequence A → C, if Raydrick is in chunk C, but not in chunk A, we might need to spawn his face at the start of C. What then of sequence A → B → C, where Raydrik is present in chunk B? We can't spawn a second Raydrik in C, that'd be too much smug!
You can probably see why a lot of translation attempts kinda burned out at that point, which is a shame, since this is probably the strongest moment in the game. Cirosan's writing delivered it pretty well. And I was in charge of the whole “make sure the dialogue assembles nicely”. Took a whole afternoon. I had to make a map for portrait positioning and a bunch of diagrams and shit.
As for this randomized map, uh, this should be fun.
Eyvel is still the same, and way less of a threat with just an Iron Bow. She's still invincible though, and the pitfighters can't really capture her either.
Accompanying her is... a lot of potential, is what I'm seeing. She has a huge sword rank (I should have brought my Brave Sword!), some good combat skills, the always invaluable Steal skill (here, it's Adept that's the class skill for female Thieves), and she even comes with another cursed blade (never mind, who needs Brave Swords). She's just gonna have to beef up a bit, though.
I doubt Fergus will be able to do much but staff-botting in the future (not that it's a big deal in FE5) so let's get working on that staff rank.
These are mostly the same enemies we've seen, with female glorious pink male mages replacing priests. The bow knights are somewhat speedy and can sometimes double our mages, but the lack of movement really neuters them.
There's a dismounted Arch Knight inside the arena and mages outside, meaning we can't just have Eyvel and Nanna safely huddling in a corner. So yeah, we do have an actual time limit this time.
Our script makes it a bit more clear that Veld doesn't like Raydrik at all, and he's not having any of his shit. It's the usual “revealing the true villain in charge” mechanics at play, here.
The other pitfighters are a dismounted Pegasus Knight (hi, Misha) and a harmless High Priest. They aren't a big threat to Eyvel, but they can easily circle around to Nanna.
Unless she's the one circling around! It's a bit risky, but hey, it's the Shadow Sword.
Two cool things about thieves: they run faster in combat than any other class, and they gain a ton of EXP.
On Leif's side, it's the mage chipping brigade.
ft. Crit Brighton... Critton? Crighton.
Hmm... I can't say for sure, but I get the feeling that the Str/Mag split doesn't seem to be working, as far as growths are concerned. It might be that it only applies when growths are randomized, themselves, which is a bummer for all our physical-fighters-turned-mages.
Also, I'm going to stop screenshotting every single level up. There's a lot more fighting this chapter, and there's not much point in showing the progress of bad units I'm only using for chipping.
I'd skip Fergus too, but he's gaining Skill, and that's all I'm really asking from him right now.
Before ending my turn, I fill Leif's inventory with useless junk for absolutely no reason at all.
The brigands were too heavy to capture, but we grabbed the mage's fire tome, and threw it on the pile.
Because one of the pitfighters is already dead, this triggers Mareeta's arrival. She was announced in FE Heroes just around the time we were cleaning things up before our release. It... barely affected her dialogue here, since her lines in Heroes are either incredibly basic (“Kill all of you murder sword kill”) or very unrelated to this game.
: And then I stole it from her.
: Well, if that's how it is, I'm stealing shit from you too.
Mareeta's Shadow Sword is now a Thief staff, which is quite more evil, honestly. She will target units with the least Magic and steal their more valuable items. So Leif, and junk, respectively. Also I guess we never noticed we were missing menu text for stolen items. We should probably fix that in a patch update.
Nanna gets hit by a stray arrow that took off half of her health, but now she's beefier at least.
The High Priest really wants to say Hi. All he has is a healing staff.
I'm not getting close to Mareeta and leaving my little corner, but if I could see her, here's what she'd look like. She isn't going to be a threat to anyone in the arena, but she will be pestering Leif for 4 turns. Paragon will be nice for her later on, though.
Also yeah, I'm just going to completely ignore these two ladies. We're in a hurry.
Awesome. Two archer assholes to try and keep away from Nanna.
: Hey, I'm trying, okay? I'm one hit away from dying.
: Lachesis... 
Cutting it a little bit close as far as positionning.
Lots and lots of mages up here, but we should be able to block them off from attacking Nanna, now.
Also wow, Karin is going to kick ass when she gets her pegasus.
They all try to target Asbel, even though Lithis is right there.
I can't possibly fathom why they'd do that.
More skill for the boy! He's going to kick ass as a Berserker. 
Eyvel makes her last stand in front of the door, and Lara somehow manages to get a kill through the power of death by a thousand cuts four 1-damage attacks.
Mareeta uses her last charge being rude to Lara by forcing her to open the door instead of Leif. In total, she stole a Torch, two Antitoxins, and a Door Key. 
Right before opening the door, Nanna takes one last shot at the pitfighters.
I think this is only time in the series where an event forcefully displaces your units on the map like that. I'm guessing that's the command Super Thracia uses in its ch6 to teleport Leif in the middle of a horde of Berserkers.
I... don't think the cutscene engine was built to handle fog of war like this.
Setting that aside, here's our big, strong boy one rounding promoted units.
I'm so proud of him.
Lara is going to begin her long journey toward that one chest in the bottom-right corner. Thankfully, the trip is on the outside, so she can ride her pegasus.
There was a Sorcerer in the corner too, who didn't move. Lithis took his stuff, and gained some Strength in the process, too.
Another torch use, and we get to see the boss and his crew of brigands.
He's just another piñata-type boss. The abundance of Torch staves is really, really nice.
And these big-but-not-too-big guys have some axes I can capture.
Behold, the Magewall gambit.
I can't wait until enemies get better weapons so we can get out of poison hell. I get this shit at the start of every turn.
Macha tosses a couple of fireballs and... huh. You know, she's starting to look like my best mage, now that she's able to double 0 AS enemies. And she does have a decent (10%...) magic growth, compared to the others.
But these are all the wrong stats... 
Now that Karin is more busy with dancing, Nanna is going to start murdering a bunch of dudes.
No Strength, but this is still very good!
On enemy phase, she does take a bit of a beating, but dishes it right back.
Sssweet. I do need to be careful with where she moves though, since uh... I did leave two bow knights on the way she's going... 
You know, we're going to come out of this castle, and Karin will have a whole lot of stats and a badass sword, but then she'll just be on her pegasus and won't be able to do a damn thing, since we haven't seen a single spear since the accursed Javelin.
Which is why I'm training Nanna, so we at least have one good vessel for the Shadow Sword. She's turning into a little speed demon.
I probably shouldn't be surprised at this point, but everyone is still attacking Asbel.
Oh, right. That's because he's getting doubled by brigands. 
I was wondering what became of the troop of mages that would normally start circling around the map to charge us, but they've been turned into Bow Knights, so it's taking them awhile. Thanks, Eyvel, for keeping watch from over here, by the way.
Anyways, back to our regularly-scheduled program.
The boss gets captured, and we do more mage luring... ugh, I can't wait for this magic train to stop.
Yyyyoink.
There was a Meteor Bishop here. Now it's a Sorcerer with just a Heal and Restore staff. Turns out I didn't need to conserve Fergus's healing, huh.
And some more levels for Macha. Now that she's able to double some enemies with Fire, it's way easier to give her kills.
Time to bait more mages. They go for Asbel, our favorite thunder rod.
For that, they die extremely hard and fuel Nanna's extremely good level.
Stop the presses! Asbel did something cool!
Here's your reward, kid: Fergus ineffectively pointing his finger at you.
On the other side of the map, Lara gets her hands on something that was extremely worth the trip. It's A rank, so no teleporting shenanigans yet, but it's great to have for later.
These bow knights are still only just here. Life is hard with 2 Mov.
They all moved single-file to attack Asbel. 
Which is extremely profitable for picking them off and oh my god, this Nanna! 
Karin's stats are higher, and will get even more when she gets on her pegasus, but Nanna has skills, more movement on foot, and can actually use her weapons outside without tanking her movement.
Fergus's consistent inability to heal Asbel is getting really, really funny. Give the kid a break, dude.
Over on the left, we get a sneak peek at these two fellas guarding the chest room.
Another unthreatening Dracoknight, and a Sage who would be legitimately terrifying if only he actually had a weapon. Hey, Raydrik, can I trade you this guy for Fergus? I'm tired of his staves missing.
Brighton's Elfire crits never get tiring though.
Then Dalsin decides to not dodge anything until the last arrow that'd have killed him.
And then gets an empty level.
And then takes maximum poison damage, just to keep me in suspense. What a guy.
Fergus plays along, missing his first heal, before yelling “Psyche!”. And then all the remaining bow knights died.
Let's raid this treasure. Leif hasn't been damaged once in this whole map, and he's not going to let a 94%, 1-damage attack break his streak.
There's a promoted unit somewhere down there and I kinda want to know what it is. And of course, Fergus makes the impossible happen, just to prevent me from seeing it.
Like, I'm not exaggerating. Torch staff accuracy is set at 99%. This asshole just landed a 1% miss.
I guess it's up to Lithis to go scouting down there. He's got 9 defense, he'll be fine.
It's just a paladin. Hits moderately hard, but loses most of his HP from on Iron Axe hit..
Lithis completely no-sells it, dodges a few arrows, and keeps working on his crit rate for Berserker shenanigans.
Could be scary, but way too frail.
Onto the chopping block he goes. Macha is getting speedier and chonkier.
In the chests, we get... something benign, and something just kinda situational.
Accost is a one of the rare few Fire Emblem skills that never got officially localized. Previously known as Charge or Duel, Project Naga went with “Accost”, and so did we. Aethin's Tearring Saga translation preferred “Flurry”, which is farther from the JP name, but better describes what the skill does.
In Thracia 776, it guarantees a second round of combat as long as the user has more HP and Attack Speed. Ideally, you want it on a character with high HP and Speed, who can easily attack at range, so they gain more attacks, instead of more ouchies.
Macha fits the bill on all three accounts, so she gets that manual... uh, well, she'll get it in a bit. Right now, she's a bit busy.
There's still three remaining guys here.
They get beaten up a bunch, and Macha is doing all she can to redeem her poor base stats.
Anyways, while the rest of the crew finish mopping up, Leif and Lara go in a direction that's not the exit, because there's something I really want to do.
This unnamed terrain preventing us from reaching Eyvel (and the baddies, earlier) stops passage from all foot units.
It does not, however, block movement from fliers. And it has a movement of 1 for them, so they don't even get slowed down by it, like they would with the other indoors floor tiles.
Yes, that means you can have Eyvel come up to pester Veld and Raydrik, if she was randomized into a flier.
: We've nothing to fear now! There's no rescuing a block of stone!
: Hold my beer Stamina Drink.
Leif is just here to make sure Lara's pegasus doesn't have to do the entire trip back one tile at a time.
So uh... yeah, we did it, boys! We rescued Eyvel! 
Skipping tedious backtracking, Macha finally gets her new toy.
Nah, she's fine. We'll probably find the Kaia staff in a random village.
A good thing we can do when leaving an indoors map and going outside, is to remount right before leaving. All-Terrain Movement, again giving us all the cool new speedrunning tricks.
And speaking of speedrunning tricks...
Next t- oh, hey, thanks!
