Three Houses - Glitchless Challenge

Three Houses Glitchless Challenge

Three Houses is a very beloved game and by far my favorite fire emblem - but unfortunately, it is a very spaghetti incomplete game riddled with spaghetti code, glitches, oversights, and so on. I can basically guarantee you that literally every person who has played the game has undoubtedly failed this challenge whether they liked it or not.

For the purpose of this challenge, I've defined a "glitch" to be as lenient as possible, meaning the actual challenge rules are as restrictive as possible - so, if there is even a small argument to be made for something to be a glitch/oversight, then it counts and must be avoided.

I define it this way because if a ruleset is overly restrictive, there is no debate that it is still glitchless even if someone argues that a rule isn't really a glitch, because it's not like it matters if it's avoided anyways. Whereas if a ruleset is too lenient and allows something that has even a small chance to be argued as a glitch/oversight, then the entire challenge can be argued to not be valid.


CLASS RESTRICTIONS

1. Never Canto

All other fire emblem games with canto, including the SNES games, calculate your remaining movement as if you drew the smallest path possible - in other words, you never have to worry about drawing a "longer path than needed" with a mounted class. However, three houses doesn't - it calculates remaining move based off of the path you drew, not the shortest possible path. As this is a literal downgrade of QoL from previous FE games, this can be argued an oversight/glitch.

For example, in other FE games, with a 7 move cavalier, going 1 down 4 right 1 up, trade, would let you canto with 3 more remaining tiles because you can still make that move with 4 tiles despite drawing a 6 tile path. But in three houses, you can only canto 1 tile.

Using mounted classes is fine - just never use canto. Make sure you dismount any time you ever use a mounted class.


2. No mastering Pegasus Knight

Technically banned by restriction #1, but this is also funny to include.

If a unit has mastered the pegasus knight class and learned triangle attack, then even without it equipped, if you select a target with a bow and cycle through the combat artes with X/Y, then the triangle attack is incorrectly selectable. This is not only unintended behavior in the first place, but can also crash the game depending on various circumstances. Technically mastering this class doesn't have to be banned, but for the sake of a simpler ruleset, it's easiest to just outright ban mastering this class, so no darting blow for you!


3. No Rally-ing a Trickster

Rally incorrectly fails to stack with a Trickster's Lucky Seven ability. So this is banned. This could be argued to be an intentional design choice, but given that Ward and Rally Resistance can stack, it is very likely an oversight, so this is banned.


MECHANICAL RESTRICTIONS

1. No Linked Attacks / Gambit Boosts

Can NOT position any units in a way that gives any linked attack buffs nor gambit boosts.

Before the wave 2 update, if a unit did NOT support an attacker/gambiter, they still gave a +3 hit +3 avoid buff in their linked attack / gambit boost. After the update, this was inexplicably reduced to 0 - yet, they still take up a linked attack / gambit boost slot, literally nerfing you. This is a reason why deploying Anna is arguably a nerf to your entire party, as she takes up that slot that someone else could with a linked attack / gambit boost. The priority of linked attacks is decided by deployment order, not by support level. This could be an intentional design choice, but it's very fucking stupid and outright harms the player, so it could be argued as a bug/oversight.


2. No Silence

This spell doesn't work - it hits when it misses, and sometimes it misses when it hits, or whatever the fuck it does, maybe it's somehow affected by miracle?!??!?!?!!? How did they code this?!?!?!! What the fuck!?!?!


3. No Magic Combat Artes

If you use a magic combat arte with a physical weapon (such as Lysithea's Soulblade with an Iron Sword), then the hitrate is calculated incorrectly.

What the hitrate SHOULD to be: (attacker's magic hit) -  (target's magic avoid)
What the hitrate ACTUALLY is:  (attacker's physical hit) - (target's magic avoid)

Even if one were to argue that a magic arte with a physical weapon is intended to use the physical hit formula, it should at least be compared to the target's physical avoid rather than magic avoid - this inconsistency is undeniably an oversight and thus counts for this challenge.

And yes, magic hit/avoid are calculated differently from physical hit/avoid - the formulas are just taken from echoes:SoV


4. No carrying any accessories

If a weapon has an accessory in the inventory slot right above it, equipping that weapon will automatically equip the above accessory. This will also happen if that weapon is used to attack, and will show in the combat forecast. The fact that simply carrying the accessory bugs out the combat forecast (even without equipping/using it) means that carrying any accessories at all is a bug.


5. No bow gambits at 3 range, no targeting bow users with anything ranged

The bow-penalty icon incorrectly displays in two situations:
- If you ever target a bow user with anything at 3-range or higher, even if they can't counter. This includes your own units, and includes meteor, bolting, physic, rescue, and gambits.
- If you ever use a bow-based gambit at 3-range. Gambits don't have a hit penalty, yet the icon still incorrectly shows.

The bug can be avoided by never targeting bow users with anything at range. Bow gambits at 3 range are banned.

The following are Bow-based gambits and are banned: Ashes and Dust, Fusillade, Poisoned Arrows.
Flash-fire Arrows is fine since it's a 1-range gambit and thus cannot trigger this bug - I think.


6. No autobattle with a dancer deployed

The game sets a cap on how much experience your dancer gains based off of the turncount, but this is reset if you do a single autobattle, allowing you to grind your dancer for 99 turns. This is clearly an exploit, as it's a workaround of a clearly intentional mechanic to avoid abuse of it, so this is banned.


7. No Gambit-ing a breakable wall

Gambit-ing a breakable wall that happens to destroy a monster's barriers crashes the game. Best to just not allow this, period.


8. No Reversal Gambit

The wave 2 dlc update broke the reversal gambit and it was never fixed. Basically if you land the gambit and can swap with an enemy but don't kill them, then you incorrectly rattle the unit 2 north of yourself (instead of 2 forward). North is apparently the default direction, and they somehow reset that but of course never fixed it.

As an example:

A
-
B C D

Intended behavior: B uses Reversal on C: B swaps with C, D becomes rattled.
Current behavior:  B uses Reversal on C: B swaps with C, A becomes rattled.


9. Cannot skip to the chapter mission if it's on a Monday

Known as the monday mission bug, and actually impacts the speedrun negatively. If a chapter map is on a Monday, and you skip straight to it, then the previous week of instructs will be skipped as if it never happened, losing you tutoring experience. Chapter 3 is the first such example, where the mission is on a 06/30 but skipping to it will treat the instruct on 06/23 as if it never happened.




CHARACTER/ROUTE RESTRICTIONS

1. Never have Raphael ever deployed

Raphael's Goodie Basket ability is fucking bugged and burns random numbers in a really convoluted way - it is expected to give a luck% chance to heal 10% of his health at the start of a turn - it SHOULD roll one random number. However, what it does is:

Raphael at full hp - burns 1 RN
Raphael at not full hp but does NOT activate goody basket - burns 2 RNs
Raphael at not full hp and activates goody basket - burns 4 RNs

Since simply deploying raphael leads to improper behavior with the RNG, he can not be deployed. Ever.

This leads to a LOT of convoluted rules that this challenge requires:
- Verdant Wind must NEVER deploy Raphael.
- Verdant Wind must clear Hunting by Daybreak before turn 5, so Raphael doesn't show up.
- Crimson Flower / Silver Snow must either recruit or request mission assistance from Raphael on/before Ch07, so he doesn't show up in the battle of eagle and lion.
- Azure Moon must also recruit Raphael before Ch07, not only for the same reason as CF/SS, but also so he doesn't show up in Ch17.


2. Never recruit Petra in Azure Moon / Verdant Wind

In Chapter 17, war on gronder field, killing Petra's replacement can trigger Edelgard in repeating her dialogue when setting the center of the map on fire. It isn't entirely known what causes this to happen, but never recruiting Petra guarantees avoiding this bug. One can also require "never kill Petra's replacement" or "never trigger setting the map on fire" instead of "never require Petra", but banning Petra simplifies this rule a lot and also makes it funny.


3. No supportive spells by Lorenz/Annette/Lysithea/Constance

These units have a crest that activate for "offensive spells", but this actually means "not healing spell" because lol. This means their crests will incorrectly burn a random number to a roll chance of activating if these units ever use ward, warp, rescue, or restore - so all of these spells cannot be used since they lead to improper behavior with the RNG.

By extension, anyone who carries the NG+ crest items of dominic/noa/gloucester is not allowed to use supportive spells either.


4. No Ingrid nor Annette/Gilbert Paralogues

The crest symbols on the Luin and Crusher (rewards for these paralogues) are incorrectly swapped - likely because the Crest of Daphnel and Dominic start with D. So unlocking these weapons is a bug.


5. No Marianne nor Linhardt/Leonie Paralogues

Fog of war maps with monsters are banned because you can incorrectly hover your cursor over an invisible tile and still see a monster barrier tile, when you're not supposed to be able to see it. This can be avoided by playing these paralogues and never hovering your cursor over them, but it's easiest to just never allow these paralogues to prevent the player from accidentally doing this.


6. No Sylvain's Paralogue

Sometimes, an enemy stepping on an escape tile (even if not a thief) will just disappear, even if they're not trying to escape. This counts against your rewards - i.e. if a mage tried to attack from an escape tile then disappeared, then you kill every thief on the map, then you will be incorrectly rewarded as if one thief escaped.


7. Do not let any thieves escape in Chapter 10

Same bug as rule #6 - if a thief without a crest stone escapes, it counts as if you lost a crest stone and you miss out on the rewards. This is possible if you immobilize a thief on turn 1, since they only bother trying to steal crest stones on turn 1.


8. No Silver Snow

A silver snow playthrough is bugged if it ever unlocked Bernie/Petra or Hilda/Cyril's paralogues, because the expiration date on their paralogues is 05/26, which is NOT the last available weekend of month 5 (05/24). This happens because silver snow skips month 4, and the last available weekend happens to be 04/26 - in other words, it somehow calculates the expiration date of these paralogues based off of month 4 despite being month 5.

Technically speaking, a silver snow playthrough could avoid this bug by never recruiting Hilda AND permanently killing off bernie or petra before part 2 - but the ruleset is already a shitshow to begin with, so for simplicity sake, silver snow is banned.


9. Edelgard/Hubert/Dimitri/Claude must have EXACTLY 0 auth exp before their timeskip autolevelling
In Ch13 timeskip for most routes (Ch12 for Crimson Flower), if these units authority ranks are below C, then they get bumped up to C.

Hilariously, all auth experience that they gained towards their next rank is also reset to 0, even if their auth is above C. For example, if Dimitri has B rank authority with 50 auth exp towards B+ (or 230 left towards B+), then at Ch13, this is reset to B rank authority with 0 auth exp towards B+ (or 280 left).

This was likely a low-effort implementation of bumping their authority up without bothering to check the actual auth exp towards the next rank, and this is harmful behavior as one can actually lose like 500 auth exp (though realistically it won't matter casually since they're likely well past A authority anyways), so this is a glitch. The only way to "avoid" it is to have them at EXACTLY zero auth exp towards the next rank. One can argued this is intended behavior since timeskip can make units lose abilities/experience for lore purposes, but this argument doesn't work because Edelgard/Hubert lose authority rank before timeskip in Ch12, so this is just an oversight/low-effort implementation.


10. No Ashen Wolves

When an ashen wolves student dies with english voices, the game uses their japanese death screams, not english - yes the english death screams are still in the game, just unused. Technically, this rule can be revised to "no ashen wolves deaths", but it's safer to just outright ban using any ashen wolves at all, in case the player lets them die.



QUALITY OF LIFE RESTRICTIONS

1. No soft resetting

Soft resetting doesn't reset the game's state properly - technically it's only proven to cause a bug/issue if you soft reset in the middle of a preps trade menu, but for the sake of this challenge, it's easiest to just outright ban soft resetting to help avoid maybe some other issues not known at the time.


2. No undocking/docking the switch during animated cutscenes

Undocking/docking your switch during an animated cutscene will cause the game to stop detecting any controller input - it only takes screenshot and home menu. Redocking/re-undocking fixes it, but it's a really bad bug to lose detection of your controller, so docking/undocking is banned.


3. No animations

Yeah uh animations don't work for this game a lot of times. Just trust me on this. ESPECIALLY on monsters. ESPECIALLY with attack adjutants.



CORNER CASES GLITCHES THAT YOU HAVE TO GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO DO, SO DON'T WORRY ABOUT THEM BUT KNOW THEY EXIST


1. No Calendar Loop Glitch

This is one of very few glitches that you have to go out of your way to do, so I don't think this one's a problem, but I have it listed here anyways. You can infinitely loop around a calendar - obviously banned.


2. No Abyss Renown Underflow Bug

There's an underflow bug that allows you to spend way less renown than you need to buy stuff from the shop, because lol underflow bugs in a 2019 game. You sorta have to go out of your way to do it though, so again one doesn't have to worry about it - just don't spend more than 65536 renown at once.