The Enemy control glitch gives you the ability to control the enemy for one turn. This can be used to disarm them or harm them tactically in many other ways.
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade Glitch[]
Place a Mine anywhere on the field. When an enemy/NPC unit walks onto it, while they are taking damage, reset your game. When you continue your game, it shows the enemy/NPC being damaged again, and then you can control the enemy/NPC units. Use this to make them discard all of their items, retreat, or attack units that you want to level up, you can also get Dart to talk to Fargus for you in the chapter The Port of Badon in The Blazing Blade.
Enemy-exclusive items (such as Vaida's Uber Spear) can be obtained using this glitch by two methods. The first (and usually simplest) is to arrange for the item to be in the bottom inventory slot of an enemy which drops an item on death. The second is to transfer the item directly to Merlinus—as the AI is not programmed to use his Merch command, the designers didn't bother adding a requirement that a unit must be on his team to do so.
Notes on FE7[]
- On the Final Chapter of The Blazing Blade, Light, If Nergal's Ereshkigal is traded, some of the front pixels on his battle sprite will be cut off, and moved to the back of his sprite. This suggests that the Dark Druid animations are linked to the weapon. Furthermore, giving Nergal the Berserk staff, wielded by one of his Druids will result in him casting a spell with an animation that was not programmed, so his model will deform and change constantly. An enemy who holds Ereshkigal and cannot use Dark magic (the Sage, namely) can use Ereshkigal without a Dark Magic level.
- In The Blazing Blade, you can use this glitch to take Vaida's spear and give it to any lance wielding unit to provide a great stat boost.
- This glitch can also be used to acquire some of the poison weapons which are normally used only by enemy units.
- In Chapter 21 of Eliwood's story before recruiting Heath, the players can lure him or another enemy unit using the mine obtained from Hannah earlier in Chapter 13 to trigger this glitch by quickly shutting off the GBA console as the mine activates. Upon turning the system back on and gaining temporary control of the enemy team, the players can move the fighter holding the poison axe to a tile adjacent to Heath and use the trade mechanism to hand the axe over to him. Once Heath is recruited, the poison axe - now in his possession - can be used by any of the axe wielding units on the players' party. Also, since Heath comes with another mine, the players can use that one to later on acquire other types of poison weapons.
- In Chapter 27 of Eliwood's story and Chapter 29 of Hector's story, the players can use the glitch to acquire between one and four of the poison lances from the enemy reinforcements after Vaida enters the map. Just before recruiting her, the players can trigger the glitch to have any of the other enemy wyvern units possessing poison lances transfer them over to her. Once Vaida is recruited, the poison weapons transferred into her possessions can be used by her or any other units capable of wielding lances and spears in the players' party.
- The poison swords and poison bows can be acquired in Chapter 29 of Eliwood's story or Chapter 31 in Hector's story. Acquiring these poison weapons can be far more difficult than the former above weapons since the thieves who appear in this chapter have the ability to deactivate any traps when stepping over them while the archers and snipers may avoid them by attacking a space away from an ally unit coupled with the limited turns available in the chapter. In order for the player to pull this trick off, they would first have to allow one of the reinforcement thieves to pilfer any of the non-weapon chest items. The players would have to grab the brave axe from one of the chests before the thieves arrive. Once the non-weapon items are stolen, they can be dropped by the thief unit. But before killing that thief, the player needs to perform the glitch on any of the cavaliers from the southern stair case so that when they gain control of the thief holding the stolen item, they can switch the poison sword to the bottom using the trade mechanism via another nearby enemy unit, thus making the poison sword a droppable weapon. The players may want to steal the other stolen item before killing the thief and taking their poison sword. Alternatively, the players can have an enemy archer possessing a poison bow trade for the stolen item with the thief to take the bow instead.
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones Glitch[]
Start chapter, you may want to turn off animations; it is not completely necessary, but makes the glitch much easier to pull off. Place any character by an Action Tile in a way that an enemy unit will end their turn on that tile after attacking. Make sure that the unit cannot kill the enemy in one turn, or simply remove that unit's weapons. Then during the enemy phase, just before the attacking enemy fades to gray, after the battle and before another enemy moves, reset the game. Upon resuming the chapter, the enemies should have stopped moving, as if it were your turn. You will be able to move the cursor onto the enemy units and move them around. Now you can have them drop items/fight/move/access the Supply Convoy, in other words, they function just like a player's units.
The player can also acquire a copy of Naglfar and Wretched Air through this manner in Sacred Stone. After unlocking either one of the two doors below, the upper-left corner tile will inexplicably become an action tile. However, this tile can only be accessed by flying units; fortunately, there are Arch Mogall reinforcements in the map. The player will need to lure an Arch Mogall to that tile with two fliers armed with melee weapons (as the AI will always attack from a distance when possible). Once the Arch Mogall concludes combat on that tile, reset the game and the enemy should be controllable.
Action tiles for the purposes of the game include a tile affected by Torch (in maps with Fog of War), standing on makeshift wood bridges (in the maps where available) and fire tiles.
One particularly well-known exploit with the glitch is its ability to replicate Hammerne's effects. There are two variants of this glitch:
- The first, playable on any map, requires a monster to have the item in question to be repaired be dropped upon death. Send the monster towards the main lord and take one item from the Convoy.
- The second is only playable in Neleras Peak. Send the main lord towards a nearby Gorgon Egg, while using the fire tiles to initiate the glitch. The AI controls the healing of the Gorgon Eggs and they are never programmed to act until they hatch into Gorgons. Have the Gorgon Egg take items from the convoy - when controlled, the egg's inventory will consist of a "0", Demon Surge and possibly Stone and Shadowshot if available. Once an item is taken or deposited from the egg, this value is removed.
- The "0" prevents the egg from attacking and is normally discarded when the egg hatches into a Gorgon.
- Because this "0" was forcefully removed, the Gorgon will equip the next item, although the AI will prioritize moving other monsters and hatching eggs first. If the player is worried it may attack, simply place units with no weapons in its range. As a result, when the egg finally hatches, the Gorgon's first item is removed. Therefore, keep the Gorgon's weapons, or if those are being taken, put in a filler item and then place up to four items needing to be "repaired" behind it. When the Gorgon hatches, the first item is removed, but the remaining four will be fully restored. Repeat the glitch again and deposit the newly repaired items back into the convoy.
- The "0" prevents the egg from attacking and is normally discarded when the egg hatches into a Gorgon.
This makes the glitch extremely useful for legendary weapons, Myrrh's Dragonstone and even Hammerne staves themselves.
Notes on FE8[]
- In The Sacred Stones if the glitch is used to obtain monster weapons, they can be wielded by Myrrh. The Dark Magic Monster Weapons can be used by anyone. If the "Stone" magic is obtained this way, any character can train with Dark Magic. With enough use, they can build up the Weapon Rank to use standard Dark Magic.
- Only classes with magic animations function properly. Otherwise, the game defaults to turning the animations off. If a non-magic wielding character has a sufficient rank with Dark Magic, changing that character's class will not show the usual class-up animation (it will instead show a glitched screen with the character's name and health bar).
- If a non-magic wielding character with a sufficient rank in Dark Magic enters an Arena, animations will be off and a black screen will be displayed showing only the characters' health and sometimes, the characters themselves. Because of this, only one attack from each participant is used before the player regains control of their party.
- If Stone is used by a Sword, Axe, Bow, or Lance wielder, the character's Weapon and support Level screen will revert to a magic wielder's. Afterwards, certain weapons (such as using a sword) will glitch the character's battle animations.
- In the case of Tethys, her original dance animation is still done in its entirety before the Dark Magic attack is executed. However, if she attempts to attack twice, as almost always the case with her extremely high Speed stat, the game will go into a loop. Some of the music used in her Dance action is also not played.
- If Stone is used on Fomortiis, the game will crash. He was likely never programmed to have Petrify status. Using Wretched Air also crashes, likely due to not having a proper animation for it.
- If the player attempts to use a fire tile like the mine glitch, resetting when a unit is damaged by the flames, when the game is reset the Ally phase music plays instead of the Enemy Phase music. Enemy units will remain under their own control.
Notes on Both Games[]
- In both games enemies, most having no character portrait, display arrows and letters rather than a face during trades. After a boss has been selected, the Boss's face will appear with the colors glitched and a couple of the arrows cutting through the image.
- If the glitch is used on a map with Fog of War the player can still move all enemy units, but the player must search with the cursor if the enemy unit is not within the vision range of an ally.