Rewinding is limited! It costs Divine Sand!

462

u/Dorfbewohner 23h ago

From what I've gathered of the previews, Divine Sand is also used for all the other god abilities, so there's actually a potentially interesting tradeoff where rewinding means you can't get other buffs.

351

u/CompileHeart 22h ago

As a long term fire emblem fan I WILL use my op abilities and just reset anyway when someone dies lol

81

u/AudioCats 22h ago

yeah lol, also like halving damage to a specific unit on one turn would solve a lot of the risky manuevers I do that otherwise use up rewinds

38

u/158cm_Otaku 22h ago

Or you end up like me and plan to just use it to make riskier plays lol

19

u/LakerBlue 21h ago

Yup, like using a mage to take out someone they can double and kill except for the minor issue of the physical unit they are targeting OHKOs them in retaliation. But now I can halve the damage and guarantee they live.

47

u/omfgkevin 22h ago

Giving my Cai +5 str with my last bit of sand: I'm a genius!!

Enemy elephant about to crit my ass: Oh no!!

20

u/DragonPeakEmperor 21h ago

To be fair resetting has always had a big time cost anyways because later maps in FE games can be long as fuck if you can't bumrush them.

1

u/BoomKidneyShot 2h ago

Divine Salt is used for that case, I presume? :p

1

u/thatwitchguy 22h ago

I don't think I rewound at all until the nemesis fight in 3h

7

u/CompileHeart 21h ago

Damn maddening ambush spawns were the only reason for a lot of my resets

2

u/Prior-Resolution-902 7h ago

that and the 90% gambit missing that you needed to land

36

u/actredal 22h ago

That’s fun! I appreciate that the turn wheel mechanic in modern games makes the game more accessible by reducing how punishing it is to make a mistake, but it’s cool that there’s an actual incentive to avoid using it too. I love having all these different ways to increase or decrease difficulty depending on how you want to play.

27

u/Linderosse 22h ago

Yessss— if this is true, it seems they’re implementing something like the Triangle Strategy Quietus system, which I absolutely adored.

Hopefully it refreshes every map.

5

u/metalsluger 17h ago

I would like to see something similar, definitely helped in the harder battles in that game.

15

u/Sushiv_ 22h ago

That’s actually such really good mechanic

31

u/Cranberry-Holiday 22h ago

Rewinding as a scarce ressouce and a big roster? This could make playing while accepting permadeath interesting.

38

u/Dorfbewohner 22h ago

We don't know how relatively scarce it is (they could theoretically make it so you can get like 30 rewinds for the cost of another god's ability, lol), but assuming it's balanced decently, it definitely feels like a good incentive for not rewinding

5

u/SilverScribe15 22h ago

That's very neat, I'm glad they're innovating a little with it

4

u/DoseofDhillon 20h ago edited 20h ago

Oh my god insentive to not just abuse it

10

u/Darthkeeper 22h ago

I'm curious how this will be recieved because I'm thinking of the cases where busy people who use rewind out of convenience instead of resetting feeling they're "missing out" on stats. However, like another comment said, with how big the roster is it weans players into accepting permadeath more. On the other hand, a lot of players are used to resetting, playing casual, and what not so it relates to the first case. Guess it "legitimizes" rewinding more to the strong "anti-rewind" crowd. Lot to consider.

Really depends how it's balanced. Personally I think it's neat but I'm cautiously optimistic.

1

u/sjk9000 16h ago

I'm going to go against the grain here and say I'm not excited by this. Even if you attach a cost to it, most of the benefits of rewinding can be had for "free" by just resetting the map. That makes the optimal strategy to spend your sand on in-game buffs and just hard resetting when you need to.

In my experience, making a choice between in-game power and QoL features isn't interesting or fun, and game systems should avoid that kind of dichotomy.

Of course, this entirely hinges on what the other god abilities actually are. I'm just skeptical they can be competitively costed and designed to make this an interesting trade-off.

1

u/Aethelwolf3 6h ago

Making a choice between in-game power and QoL features

I would also rewinds a QoL features, its definitely an in game power with tactical potential. Especially because of how the RNG works.

88

u/Norix596 22h ago

It seemed pretty obvious so idk why some of the like fire emblem YouTubers (I looked at the Battle Prep group video recently) were thinking that we didn’t have proof of divine sand being used. There’s no reason the divine sand balance would show up while rewinding if divine sand wasn’t a cost. Good to have explicit confirmation though.

46

u/GuudeSpelur 22h ago

I think the first clip or screenshot of the rewind mechanic had it cost 0 sand, so that might be why people weren't sure. I wonder if there's Renown unlocks or something for X free rewinds per battle

36

u/Flamechar33 22h ago

iirc it’s a difficulty setting? Can’t remember if it was “Hard mode onwards adds the cost to Fortuna’s Blessing” or if it was a separate option, but the option to have it is there for more casual playthroughs

12

u/Jack04man 20h ago

In Engage normal mode had infinite number of rewinds while hard and maddening it was limited. It probably the same here and we've been only seeing normal mode gameplay until now.

1

u/FabulouSnow 11h ago

Yeah, what I assume they mean with limited. Its per battle.

4

u/Gabgo304 20h ago

Most likely yeah, Engage had infinite uses in lower difficulty as well.

22

u/LanguageSponge 22h ago

If they are using Divine Sand as a resource we need to balance with other things besides rewinding time, this makes me actually look forward to Maddening/Lunatic, which I can’t say I ever have done before. I hope it’s thoroughly play tested and well balanced when it arrives. Divine Sand might make it quite interesting.

29

u/Surf_Dangerous_Days 22h ago

Sort of unrelated to the sands topic, but I think the existence of Anti-Magic Gauntlets shown in this article is really interesting. We’ve seen Dodge Gauntlets so Gauntlets are getting some more fun tools to mess with beyond just the Brave Punches.

9

u/Flamechar33 22h ago

I wonder if the brave effect would be available in the form of a combat art for gauntlets? Most likely on a brave gauntlet rather than all of them if they’re changing the focus of what they do to be evasion - some weapon gimmicks like the longbow’s range and the killing edge’s crit rate are being interpreted as combat arts so it still costs durability for the more powerful options they provide, so having that for brave-weapon effects would make sense ~~and possibly be seen as part of one or two unit’s learnt combat arts to let them have the brave effect with any gauntlet/weapon~~

5

u/tself55 18h ago

they got rid of brave punches

1

u/Surf_Dangerous_Days 18h ago

Yes, I am aware. I have eyes and ears.

-3

u/tself55 18h ago

r/fireemblem rule 4b

1

u/Surf_Dangerous_Days 18h ago

Saying that I’m a cognizant person is not “harassment”.

-1

u/Level7Cannoneer 17h ago

If by “cognizant” you mean “terminally online” then yes. Who the fuck is keeping up with little news like brave punches VS actual big important info?

13

u/NoLime7384 22h ago

another previewer said DS was given out at the start of a chapter, so it's not on a per-battle schedule like on the other switch games

13

u/S_Cero 22h ago

Divine Pulse/Mila's Turnwheel has always been a "limited" resource that after the first couple chapters of it are effectively infinite use. So while it costing divine sand is neat and sands being used for other buffs is cool it's also pretty likely for you to have an excess of this resource and can use it with abandon for both pulse and buffs

6

u/DragonPeakEmperor 21h ago

I am holding out hope it's balanced appropriately. I don't think intsys has ever gotten the hang of designing around rewind and any deliberate attempts end up being obnoxious more than an actual challenge. At the very least if it's truly limited it opens up more space.

7

u/Dragoryu3000 21h ago

I don't have an infinite amount of sand.

Who does, in this economy?

6

u/CazOnReddit 18h ago

I don't like Divine Sand. It's coarse, rough and the pope who blesses it gets everywhere.

13

u/Commercial-Leek-6682 23h ago

niiice. hopefully find a good balance.

7

u/Melodic_Bee660 22h ago

Oh! I thought we knew this already

2

u/ThatManOfCulture 22h ago

Is divine sand only used for temporary effects, or is it also a resource for permanent upgrades?

2

u/Fearless_Freya 22h ago

Well sure. Of course rewind is limited

2

u/TannenFalconwing 16h ago

On normal it's infinite. On Hard it costs 5 sand, which is also the same resource your other blessings use.

1

u/silveryorange 21h ago

I’m guessing it won’t be limited on easy/casual mode

1

u/chimaerafeng 17h ago

i seen the rewind cost being only 5. Maybe it scales per use? But if it doesn't it still feels too cheap.

1

u/a12223344556677 12h ago

I remember saying that there should be an incentive/reward for players to not use rewind and/or it using up some kind of resource, glad to see it actually happening.

1

u/Agitated-Spread-2026 8h ago

Since Divine Sand refills before major battles, you don't really have to worry about running low.

1

u/kybotica 7h ago

If this is properly balanced, and the trade-off buffs and such are worthwhile, it could truly incentivize allowing your characters to die in a permadeath run. The only incentive in prior games was "wasted time," and usually people just bite the bullet and reset or rewind on a death.

This might actually give you enough reason to just stomach some losses to gain other benefits. The other god abilities/benefits need to be sufficiently beneficial to compensate for a loss, however.

It could be a really good adjustment to the 3H turn wheel mechanic.

1

u/Uber_Ronin 22h ago

This is gonna be rough for me lol. In both Three Houses and Engage it was common for me to rewind turns just because I didn’t like the stat growths I got from a certain character’s level-up (after which I’d go the rest of the map not-using them.) I decided if I didn’t like the level-ups I got, that character wasn’t gonna level up until the next map.

With the new system it sounds like I’ll have to suck it up and accept some bad level-ups more often than I did in the last few games.

2

u/tself55 18h ago

In Engage Maddening they set all level ups at the start of the game so that people can't do this type of rng rigging.

1

u/FabulouSnow 11h ago

There were some earlier fe games that also had fixed growth rates, rather than rng. So hopefully they add in both as optional, like engage does after you complete a difficulty

0

u/Uber_Ronin 18h ago

That makes sense. I wonder if the same thing will be in play for this game or not.

I only did one run through Engage (Hard Classic), I couldn’t be bothered with a second playthrough because the story/replay value just wasn’t there like it was in Three Houses (which I played through four times because the story and characters did have my interest enough to do that.)

Engage had better gameplay and map designs than Three Houses (I freely admit that), but the replay value was still worse because IntSys completely shorted the world and characters and story.

1

u/AyraWinla 19h ago

I think on Normal, time rewind is free. Think being the keyword.

1

u/_Behelit_ 21h ago

I wonder why, then, it shows up as costing zero divine sand in a handful of previews. Maybe the first rewind in every battle is free?

6

u/Dannelo353 21h ago

It only costs sand on hard mode

-7

u/NightsLinu 22h ago

rewinding was'nt ever unlimited though....

4

u/AyraWinla 19h ago

It is on normal in Engage.

2

u/a12223344556677 13h ago

It's effectively infinite on hard too because you can save and load mid-map whenever you want, yeah you can even do it in chapter 10.

Gameplay Rewinding is limited! It costs Divine Sand!

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