Fire Emblem romhacking is an art form with a very storied history, one that evolves and pushes boundaries both in hacking tools and hacking content year after year after year. Tools that were the standard one year can suddenly become obselete the next, which inherently makes time capsules out of any attempts to write a tutorial. Such was the case for the original Ultimate Tutorial v2, which was so dated to be completely unhelpful for new or experienced hackers.
That motivates this modernization. A link called the "Ultimate Tutorial" deserves to be a comprehensive and up-to-date resource for hacking. However, in the years since the original UT2, many up-to-date hacking tutorials have been provided across forum posts on GitHub repositories, and I wouldn't be here now without them. In this website if I discuss a specific topic, I will link to an appropriate specialized tutorial on it if appropriate.
If you’re reading this, you are probably an aspiring rom hacker who thinks it would be really cool to make a Fire Emblem game. Maybe you’re a bit intimidated by how much there is to learn, but you’ve decided to give it a shot anyway. Lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place. FE hacking is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding hobbies I’ve come across, and the community is friendly, welcoming, and filled with amazingly talented people.
The original Ultimate Tutorial by Blazer was a fantastic resource for anyone who wants to get into Fire Emblem romhacking. However, it has not been updated since 2013 and is primarily aimed at FE7 hacking. Since then, there have been significant advances in rom hacking. The hacking process is very different from what it used to be, both in terms of tools required and also how projects are managed. FE8 is now the standard basis for Fire Emblem hacks, and the two most common hacking methods are FEBuilder and buildfiles. FEBuilder has a large and dedicated userbase that aims to make the software as accessible as possible, while buildfile resources are comparatively much more spread out. As such this guide assumes you are hacking FE8 with buildfiles.
If you have questions that are not covered by this guide or Google, please visit Fire Emblem Universe.