Making Your First Mod

Note

This page will cover the initial setup for modding Fire Emblem Engage using the modding tool Astra

• "Modding" in this context will refer to mod creation, and not mod installation.
• It assumes you have CFW installed on your Switch, And Cobalt installed on whichever platform you choose to use.

What you need

Note

This page will cover Ryujinx only.

• A download of Astra [https://github.com/thane98/Astra/releases/latest]
  • Ensure you download the compiled exe release and not the source code!

CFW

• A dumped romfs (ROM File System) of your Fire Emblem Engage ROM v2.0.0, either through a cart or through a digital install.
  • info on dumping your game's romfs can be found here [https://dardel.codeberg.page/nxdumpguide/romfs_guide/]
  • Fire Emblem Engage's titleid is 0100a6301214e000

Emulator

• A dumped ROM of Fire Emblem Engage and title updates up to 2.0.0 via CFW
  • info on dumping your game's ROM can be found here [https://dardel.codeberg.page/nxdumpguide/emulator_guide/]
• A dumped romfs (ROM File System) from your extracted ROM.

Dumping your romfs through Ryujinx

First, ensure that you've set your dumped Fire Emblem Engage copy to appear in Ryujinx's game list.

Point it to your dumped game.

After you've done that, right click on Engage in Ryujinx, and extract the romfs

• Make sure to install your dumped title updates up to 2.0.0. In Ryujinx, dumping the game's romfs with title updates installed will include them in the dump. 2.0.0 files are required to make Cobalt mods.

This may take a while depending on your machine. Be patient!

Setting up Astra

Astra is a powerful GUI tool for organizing Engage's romfs file data, allowing smooth editing of them, and automatically saves your edits in a Cobalt-compatible fashion.

To start, unzip the downloaded folder and launch the executable inside it.

Click new on the top bar of the application

It will open up a screen that looks like this

Enter a name for your project, then in the Extracted ROMFS Data Folder line, link your dumped romfs folder.

• Navigate to the Data\StreamingAssets\aa\Switch\ directory

Then, in the Cobalt Path line, link your Cobalt modloading location (typically \folders\Ryujinx\sdcard\engage\mods\)

In the end, it should look akin to this

Once you specify the region and language you wish to modify files for (this mainly affects message/text files) you can press save and begin playing with the game's data!

Note

While making initial mods with a few changes is well and good for getting to know the ins and outs, it's never bad to try new things! Engage is a powerful, flexible engine, so don't be afraid to be ambitious!