Blaze Dragon posted:That was, uh...that sure was a map. The stationary monster walls were a design choice no doubt. Yup. Honestly, I've learnt to appreciate the times when there aren't hordes of enemies barreling down at you. Because the hack won't be that generous for long.
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May 17, 2021 10:05
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 22:29 |
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New video! Map 7! Split army is the name of the game here, and as a result, we're slogging a bit.
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May 19, 2021 16:52
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Wow this mod really makes use of that maximum unit cap huh? I don't think I recall any of the maps from Vanilla Sacred Stones having actually capped out the unit capacity.
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May 19, 2021 19:42
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You say this will take some time, but it honestly felt faster than other maps. I guess due to allowing you to play more aggressively instead of having you move one unit at a time.
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May 19, 2021 22:22
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New video! Map 8! The final map, which seems to be intended to be some sort of big showdown, but eh.
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May 26, 2021 16:55
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Ismaire, despite not having worthwhile stats, technically has one thing going for her - she's the only way to see the old long-haired female Sage sprites (since Lute now gets new ones in Sage). The bonus characters will eventually start getting more interesting, although This map is a lot harder if, like me, you have some kind of hangup about using legendary weapons (I don't think I'd internalised just yet how easy it is to get more); I relied heavily on Natasha and Moulder here, and I think I did eventually have to break out Siegmund and/or Myrrh by the end. Selling Hammernes isn't crazy, but I think you technically get a minor savings if you use them to repair legendary weapons versus buying new ones. (Also, I liked having them in the convoy for emergencies, I tend to think of them as a 'wildcard' that can replace any legendary weapon, so they're more space-efficient than carrying extra copies of everything.) The Latona thing you were speculating about definitely works, it'll give its bonus to any unit regardless of whether they can use it. It's not usually worth it past this point though, there are better stat-boosting accessories you can buy. Thank goodness they don't make you run the tower three times to get Selena any more, that would be extremely tedious (a rare moment of "respecting the player's time" from a hack that otherwise doesn't). Weirdly, I got very shy with the "Arm Bracers" and never ended up using them, despite the fact they can make a huge difference, a lot of characters do take speed penalties from the good class/legendary weapons. I didn't get to the point of going "gently caress it, infinite money" until after finishing the ruins, but I absolutely approve of doing that, this hack wants you to waste so much time grinding that it gets ridiculous. And the third postgame area doesn't even deserve being engaged with "legitimately", I took one look at it and said gently caress no. It's hard even with infinite money and capped-stat characters.
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May 26, 2021 17:55
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New video! Now that we've beaten the tower, we need to take a step back and reassess our army. I've specifically been holding off on supports just to be able to plan it all out here specifically for the hard part of the postgame.
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Jun 2, 2021 16:41
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re: Ephraim and seize objectives. Floor 1 of the tower is technically a rout map with optional seize objective that ends it early, so if you leave Ephraim behind you can still just win it by routing. I don't think there are any other seize maps, so you absolutely can leave him behind but why would you? I'm liking your approach to the supports so far - prioritising accuracy for Myrrh is a very good idea, and something I probably should have done if I hadn't been too attached to my preexisting team to make it work (forcing in Dozla and Saleh here is a great idea so she's not wasting Ephraim's support). Unsupported Myrrh can do her job fine but it was definitely one of the bigger flaws of my team. It was actually really interesting watching you all work this out! The Ephraim-Eirika-L'Arachel triangle is awesome, I relied on that so much and it never failed me. On the whole Paladin versus GK debate I personally think Paladin is just better? It has a better overall stat total, even disregarding the movement disparity. That said, I'm biased against Cavaliers in general, and therefore you may not want to take what I say about them too seriously regardless. Similarly, I'm not fond of Snipers in this hack, despite everything. I'm curious to see how that ends up working out for you; the 25 speed cap (versus 30 for Rangers) just kills them for me and I don't think Icarus Bow/Ballista makes up for it, especially when you consider Ranger also gets more Con. Nidhogg is one of the better legendary weapons, but you can buy a second copy and therefore I'd rather be able to double with it than have the utility of Icarus Bow. (Edited to add: once you're buying everyone multiple copies of legendary weapons, Audhulma fills the 1-2 niche for Rangers and therefore I argue Sniper is fully outclassed) Good luck! Explopyro fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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Jun 2, 2021 18:32
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I can't believe I watched someone work on a spreadsheet for 46 minutes and I didn't get paid for it. I can believe even less that it was actually interesting!
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Jun 2, 2021 22:10
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New video! Before we put our planned army into action, we still have one special skirmish left. Melkaen Coast, the postgame-only skirmish. And us awaits a very special guest...
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Jun 9, 2021 12:28
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The slog is wild. Half of the difficulty seems to come from just forcing you to concentrate for ages as an endless parade of idiots walks into range where they might one shot any of the 90% of units you are trying to keep out of the way.
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Jun 9, 2021 14:05
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On the subject of Oracles and Valkyries: Natasha can promote to Valkyrie instead of Bishop, if you want L'Arachel to be an Oracle. I didn't want to do this either, because I don't see a whole lot of benefit in it outside of novelty, but it's certainly a thing you can do. Holy Decree boosts ATK rather than STR; it's a minor distinction (you can see it on the character screen). I was going to say it could matter for certain skills, but then I went through all the skills and it turns out none of them actually use STR for anything (I thought some did but it turns out I was thinking of FE Girls). Sanctuary stacks with all other defence bonuses, including Barrier. So if you ever want to have +17 RES from buffs, you can do that. (Now that I'm thinking about it... I genuinely don't know if Sanctuary works against defence-piercing attacks like Hellfire/Hel etc, that could be worth testing at some point.) The stat accessories are so ludicrous in this thing, and completely change how you play. I didn't let myself buy them until after the Ruins, IIRC (or maybe I bought some in the secret shops partway through Ruins?), but honestly, gently caress that, it wasn't worth it. You can get really absurd with them, although the inventory slot limitations really do start mattering, you really want every character carrying 1-2 weapons at most (and honestly, I hate this, it goes against a lot of what makes FE gameplay fun). ...the portrait and skill change to you-know-who are new to me, I definitely played a version where he still had Lethality. (I also saw but didn't play the version where he was replaced with a whole bunch of "CENSORED LOL" images, because there was some kind of community dispute over IP rights to the character and/or his sprites? I don't know, I didn't look into it that far.) I'm genuinely not sure if the skill change is better or worse; considering most of the strategies for fighting him more or less required using something that nulls criticals anyway, it seems like a spiteful buff disguised as a nerf. (Also, ugh, the engrish gets worse when he's involved. I genuinely don't understand why this hacker loves this character so much.) Did you know he's recruitable? FFS. If you complete Postgame #3 and then enter any map, he joins you as the final bonus character, dumb indestructible OP sword included. Then you can make him fight himself, because this map is infinitely replayable. On the subject of the Etherites. The three variations seem to be STR/DEF/LUK, SKL/SPD/LUK, SPD/RES/LUK; I'm not sure why those specifically (the first two made perfect sense to me as mirror images of each other, the third feels incongruous by comparison). If so desired (if you're a masochist), you can keep replaying this map to get as many as you want. Or, for that matter, reroll the map until a variant spawns that you like. The speed ones are infuriating, too, because of course Mr rear end in a top hat gets the bonus and they make him even more terrifying. This map messed with me a lot strategy-wise, because suddenly instead of the 20 units the hack expects you to bring elsewhere, the cap is 12. It's manageable, but it messed with my support chains in a way that was tricky to adjust to. I find it a bit weird given everything else in the hack, but most of the skirmishes still have 12 unit cap so I'm wondering if that was a technical limitation.
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Jun 9, 2021 15:33
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I haven't actually gotten around to watching any of the postgame videos yet, but I just took a quick peek because I knew deep in my bones who the special guest was going to be. I was not disappointed.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:35
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I'm sorry but you've gotta be way cooler than Kelik to be called the Fairy King and have it seem imposing at all.
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Jun 10, 2021 23:26
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An explanation of who Kelik is may be useful for those who aren't well-versed in Fire Emblem hack lore. I vaguely remember the guy so I could use the info too.
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Jun 11, 2021 00:10
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Blaze Dragon posted:An explanation of who Kelik is may be useful for those who aren't well-versed in Fire Emblem hack lore. I vaguely remember the guy so I could use the info too. funny you should say this because my girlfriend shows up in the next video and she goes 'what the hell are you talking about' and so i give her a rundown of the last promise lore. the tl;dr is he's one of the protagonists of a relatively early full-game fe7 hack called the last promise who is a colossal edgelord whose theme song is literally his world from sonic 2006 bitcrushed into the gba soundfont and also he's the leader of the legend mercenaries
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Jun 11, 2021 07:33
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Blaze Dragon posted:An explanation of who Kelik is may be useful for those who aren't well-versed in Fire Emblem hack lore. I vaguely remember the guy so I could use the info too. In addition to what we will go over in the next video, you can check out Blastinus's LP of The Last Promise for all the Kelik you can ever need.
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Jun 12, 2021 17:05
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New video! Alas, Melkaen Coast turned out to be too tough a nut to crack in a single attempt. And thus, we bring you the true Sacred War Experience.
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Jun 16, 2021 08:55
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... oh god all of these Kelik animations were added after the version I played, apparently. I did not see any of that coming. 
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Jun 16, 2021 11:14
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Explopyro posted:... oh god all of these Kelik animations were added after the version I played, apparently. I did not see any of that coming. Yeah, it was exactly the same with me and Icon. Both of us had played an earlier version that did not have the portrait and animation changes. As a result, it made for, uh, quite the moment.
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Jun 17, 2021 10:48
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The sheer glee at Kelik pulling out a gun made all the suffering to get to that worth it, I imagine. You people definitely sounded like you were having the time of your life with that.
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Jun 17, 2021 13:16
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Blaze Dragon posted:The sheer glee at Kelik pulling out a gun made all the suffering to get to that worth it, I imagine. You people definitely sounded like you were having the time of your life with that. i was unironically about to have an asthma attack from pure glee
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Jun 18, 2021 00:53
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Sorry about the dogs barking, muted discord but not my mic. Oops!
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Jun 18, 2021 21:11
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The first time I saw Kelik's combat screen I misread his weapon's name as "Aristocrats". I'm not entirely sure that's wrong.
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Jun 18, 2021 23:32
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New video! Alright, I've done a bit of off-screen grinding. As a result, our units are a wee bit more powerful than when we last saw them, and the early levels of this second postgame dungeon can't quite keep up yet. Don't worry, that won't last. The Rift (yes, it's officially called The Rift, I switch between "rift" and "ruins" frequently though) doesn't mess around. Also, on account of things happening, Kinu won't be around until the fifth level of this dungeon, so it'll just be me and Icon for a while.
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Jun 23, 2021 13:05
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It's pretty nice to see you play so aggressively after you had to turtle through the previous postgame dungeon. I know it won't last, but it's nice now.
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Jun 23, 2021 14:04
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Blaze Dragon posted:It's pretty nice to see you play so aggressively after you had to turtle through the previous postgame dungeon. I know it won't last, but it's nice now. I'm generally a pretty passive player, mostly because I've been burned too many times that when I go aggressive, units start dying. So it's a rare situation where I'm mostly sure I'll be fine and go balls out.
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Jun 24, 2021 12:43
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New video! This map still doesn't put up too much of a fight, but we're starting to get ideas of how the hack is blasting past stat caps.
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Jun 30, 2021 09:23
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I hope the bad habits born from being so overpowered won't bite you in the rear end once the enemies get stronger.
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Jun 30, 2021 15:18
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Honestly, while it makes zero sense, I do quite enjoy the boss reuse and theming of these battles. It's pretty neat, and makes them at least a bit more interesting than the "oh look more monsters" of the original Ruins (not that that's hard). The enemy stat boosters were not stealable in the version I played; they're definitely reskinned weapons somehow. You wouldn't really want to steal them anyway, they're strictly worse than the ones you can buy. There are definitely moving bosses on some of these levels, but for better or worse I don't remember which ones. (On this level, I have to admit it's pretty fun to snipe the boss in the lower right corner over that convenient wall...) I don't remember this map being all that interesting even with non-maxed characters. You have to take it more carefully and approach slowly, drawing in the enemies in small groups, but it's not all that challenging really. The one thing I really don't like about the difficulty scaling in the "Rift" is that these early maps really give you no indication of how hard the later ones will be, so you can't tell if your party is well-prepared by how they do on the maps that are easily accessible. If you need to do more grinding/buy better equipment/etc, you won't know until backing out to do so means you'll lose significant progress.
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Jun 30, 2021 16:28
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New video! Things are starting to get tougher. The map is generally unfriendly in its terrain, and the bosses are rough and require some fiddling to deal with safely, even in our overpowered state.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:07
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That's a lot of damage tiles.
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Jul 7, 2021 23:16
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New video! God, gently caress this map. I hated this map so much my first time through, so I was very glad to find that we can beat it a lot quicker now.
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Jul 14, 2021 10:05
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Warp cheese is certainly one way to deal with this map! I certainly didn't think of it, I'm impressed that it worked so well. I barely remember this map at all. I definitely think I had a few resets here, but IIRC the trap wasn't quite as bad for me because I had so many flying units (though it still becomes a slog, I think I ended up having to chokepoint in a few places and just wait everything out). It's a neat design idea, even if it's more frustrating than interesting in practice (as are a lot of Sacred War's ideas, for better or worse).
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Jul 14, 2021 17:26
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Explopyro posted:Warp cheese is certainly one way to deal with this map! I certainly didn't think of it, I'm impressed that it worked so well. This map was when I seriously knew I was in big, big trouble in my first playthrough. I hunkered down at the top, where you theoretically have the bridge as a chokepoint (until the berserkers show up and just run over the river and shank your healers), and some of the reinforcements include fliers that just spawn in right there, which was one of those special rear end in a top hat tightening moments where you're pretty sure you're going to reset but maybe not? From this map on, my first playthrough had a quick descent into agony, though the real shitshow won't come until a few maps later. This loving hack has not yet begun to be a dick. And I was so glad when I realized I could warp cheese. Since all these loving maps are rout maps, warp is mostly useless for making maps easier, so getting to use it was great.
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Jul 15, 2021 21:03
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Warp fuckery is my favourite kind of FE cheapness, honestly.
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Jul 15, 2021 22:22
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New video! This is one of those map gimmicks that will absolutely cause a reset your first time through because it will super catch you off guard. Thankfully, I know of it already. Doesn't mean this map will be reset-less, though. Also, Kinu returns!
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Jul 21, 2021 13:12
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New video! Things are really starting to get out of hand now. The bosses now have legendary weapons, and the map's a wide open clusterfuck. It ain't getting better.
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Jul 28, 2021 13:20
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Aias is from Chapter 13 on Eirika's route (I had to look up the number), he's always been a Great Knight. It's the Survive map where you recruit Cormag on that path, Aias is sort of an optional boss (the map ends early if you kill him and he'll say something like "Renais' tactician has earned my highest regards"). If you don't kill him, Caellach kills him in a cutscene afterward. Honestly, for all I also prefer Ephraim's route, that map is pretty great. I think I remember reading that his name was mistranslated and was supposed to have been Ajax, which would have made a bit more sense. Anyway, this map is definitely where the hack takes most of the rest of the gloves off (though if anyone thinks it's going to stop escalating... oh god). The bosses having legendary weapons on top of their capped+ stats is such a dick move, and it's the norm for the rest of the hack. (I kind of don't like it for how mundane it makes them feel, especially when the hack will actually try to do plot stuff regarding the legendary weapons in the next postgame area. It's dumb.) I think this was the point that I gave up on my instinct to use legendary weapons as little as possible, and realised the game was going to force me if I wanted to keep parity. The maps themselves are kind of cool (and I even like the reuse of story characters for theming, it's interesting) but they're a painful slog to play through and aren't much fun.
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Jul 28, 2021 18:05
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I am so glad I determined before starting the postgame that I was giving this hack zero benefit of the doubt and just went largely all out on what I could have with the unlimited cash and capped stats on everybody. It's made things so much more comfortable. Since I started outright cheating pretty soon on my first playthrough, I thought the third postgame dungeon was just completely insane and impossible to do legit, but it does seem like if you take everything the hack gives you, there are ways around things. Which is also why we're doing pretty good in this dungeon with the resets - the first time around, I was resetting constantly on pretty much every map, and here I have more maps we beat resetless than maps we had to reset on, and there was no map where we got outright stuck, there was always some sort of solution around. Recording wise, we've started on the third postgame dungeon, and things are going to be interesting.
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Jul 29, 2021 10:18
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