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I think Lyn Mode being nominally optional and Hector Mode being nominally secret does a lot to influence this. There's this stock idea in fantasy that the main hero uses a sword, ideally a magic or legendary sword. Lyn and Eliwood are the protagonists of the two standard stories, so they get swords and upgrade to special swords. I suspect that if Lyn Mode was mandatory on every playthrough, and especially if the game used a Lyn -> Eliwood -> Hector three-act progression, Eliwood might have a lance from his outset.
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Feb 28, 2015 20:01
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Manatee Cannon posted:A bow lord would be awful because archers are awful. Tempted to emptyquote. But yeah, we could definitely do with more non-swordie lords. Hell, even if they are awful, a bow lord could be kind of interesting since you'd have to find a use for them instead of permabenching them like you would any other archer  ...I wonder if people would like Hector as much if he came with bows instead of axes...
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Feb 28, 2015 20:05
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Maybe if they fixed bow users to do something useful and unique. Make their base attack range the same as siege magic! Now that would be something awesome.
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Feb 28, 2015 20:17
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The biggest problem with archers is that their stats suck because IS seems to think avoiding counters is way more powerful then it is.
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Feb 28, 2015 20:24
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vilkacis posted:Tempted to emptyquote. If he retained his amazing growths and got another weapon out of the plot-promotion then by all means yes. I'd imagine he'd gain axes, he'd be like a reverse Fighter.
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Feb 28, 2015 20:33
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Lyn as a Nomad lord would have been neat.
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Feb 28, 2015 20:47
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Dr Pepper posted:The biggest problem with archers is that their stats suck because IS seems to think avoiding counters is way more powerful then it is. I never thought about it before, but in Sacred Stones (not sure about other entries in the series) I just noticed iron and steel bows are twice the price of axes of the same varieties. They're the most expensive weapon type to start. WTH?
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Feb 28, 2015 21:18
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vilkacis posted:Tempted to emptyquote. Virion is technically the closest we've ever gotten for a bow lord. Chrom could respec to Archer, but why would you really outside of Apotheosis builds.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:24
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Silver Falcon posted:You know, why is it that you get two sword lords in this game and one who uses axes? It's a bit redundant. Wouldn't it make more sense if either Lynn or Eliwood used a different weapon? Sacae is all about the bows, so Lynn could use bows (and even gains them on promotion)! Or Eliwood is basically a Paladin without a horse anyway so have him use lances, maybe? 
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Feb 28, 2015 21:31
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I think one reason sword lords are such a big thing in the series is that swords are an aristocrat's weapon. In many times and places they were a symbol of the nobility - or at least of the professional warrior. One example that springs immediately to mind is that in France the old, landed nobility were distinguished from new nobles who had bought or in any way actually earned their position by being called the "noblesse d'épée" or "nobles of the sword." Heck, sometimes laws were passed forbidding non-nobles from owning swords in particular, though as far as I'm aware that was fairly rare. Some reasons for that association of swords with the old nobility include that they were generally expensive and difficult to forge and, perhaps more importantly, that they had absolutely no peacetime use and were therefore worthless to commoners. Not to mention they took a fair amount of specialized training to be effective with. Most peasants owned an axe and those could be sharpened and strengthened for battle if need be. Most peasants owned a variety of long-handled farm implements, and those were the origins of many polearms. Quite a few would own a bow or crossbow for hunting. But a sword would have been useless and expensive, only worth owning for someone with a lot of money and not much else to do but fight and train to fight. So that's perhaps one reason lords almost always get swords. And you'll note it's often the rougher and less noble-ish ones like Hector and Ephraim (who wishes he could just pass the throne to his sister and go be a mercenary at one point) who get weapons other than swords to start. Perhaps another -not entirely unrelated- reason, as someone pointed out, is that the heroes using swords is a really common trope in modern fantasy. Probably that can be traced back at least partly to pretty much everyone in the Lord of the Rings using swords. Even people with absolutely no combat training or experience like the hobbits at the start. And all the super, magic, ancient weapons are swords. To be fair, the trope is older than that (and connected with the sword-nobility tie I brought up). In Arthurian legend, for example. Arthur and many of his knights have named swords (Excalibur, Alondite, etc) and are pretty much never described as using any of the other weapons knights would have had. And in the Song of Roland (which this game draws many of its names from) Roland and the other knights again have named swords. Like Roland's Durandal. And in terms of gameplay reasons for nobles having swords, I think there are several. First, swords make the wielder accurate but weak. This prevents the lord from being an early game powerhouse but does ensure they don't frustratingly miss and then get counterattacked and killed all the time. This encourages you to have your Jeigans or other units feed kills to them. It also puts them in a generally good position against most infantry units (the exceptions being soldiers, which are amazingly weak in most games, and knights which are fairly rare except as bosses) since most infantry have swords and axes. But it makes them very vulnerable to cavalry and flyers, forcing you to treat those high-mobility enemies with some respect. Having to be careful fighting mounted units is a bit more tactically interesting than having to be careful fighting infantry that you can just outrun or walk around or whatnot.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:47
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Lotish posted:I never thought about it before, but in Sacred Stones (not sure about other entries in the series) I just noticed iron and steel bows are twice the price of axes of the same varieties. They're the most expensive weapon type to start. WTH? Let's compare an Iron Bow to the other ranged weapons. An Iron Bow costs 540 gold for 45 uses. A Hand Axe 300 for 20 uses. A Javelin costs 400 for 20 uses. Let's divide this to cost per attack. Iron Bow: 12 gold per attack Hand Axe: 15 gold per attack Javelin: 20 gold per attack
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Feb 28, 2015 21:48
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Dr Pepper posted:Hahahah you're right. But is a bow even going to be used 45 times? In fact I think archers are the only class that you can just give a better-than-steel weapon and just forget about it.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:10
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I think the the main effort to make bow actually worth a drat came in TearRing Saga, which was made by the creator of Fire Emblem after he left the company. There were crazy bow that could do 5 attacks at once and other crazy poo poo. It even had a Bow Lord!
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Feb 28, 2015 22:34
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Erwin the German posted:Having blundered my way through FE7 and 8, this is a pretty fascinating LP. Wouldn't mind seeing you do a more casual run-through without all the rating nonsense, but that aspect of it does make it pretty interesting in itself. Having not read through the thread, is Sacred Stones on the agenda after this? http://lparchive.org/Fire-Emblem-Blazing-Sword/ He also did an LP of FE6: http://lparchive.org/Fire-Emblem-Sword-of-Seals/ Pretty much every single FE game got an LP in last two years or so in what is now known as "Fire Emblem Appreciation Season". That's actually why I'm here, I joined for the FE5 LP, and stuck around ever since. Kishuna's really weird, and I've always though it would have been cool if other games in the series had weird poo poo like a Magic Seal. I've also wondered how differently the game would play if you could actually recruit someone like Kishuna; even if whoever you recruited only nullified magic in range of like 5 spaces instead of 10, it would really change up the game's tactics. Also, Kishuna has a battle sprite in the game, but it's not used for whatever reason:  You can see it in the class roll in the intro screen of the game (and in battle in a couple hacks, I think). quote:
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Feb 28, 2015 22:35
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Lotish posted:I never thought about it before, but in Sacred Stones (not sure about other entries in the series) I just noticed iron and steel bows are twice the price of axes of the same varieties. They're the most expensive weapon type to start. WTH? Yeah, it's pretty much true across the GBA titles- and some other ones too. Way back in the War Room part 3 I talked a lot about weapon stats and remarked that the following general patterns hold with some exceptions: Weight: Anima Magic < Bows < Swords < Light Magic < Dark Magic = Lances < Axes Might: Light Magic < Anima Magic = Swords < Bows < Dark Magic = Lances < Axes Hit: Axes < Lances = Dark Magic < Bows < Swords = Anima Magic < Light Magic Cost per Use: Axes < Lances < Swords < Bows < Anima Magic < Light Magic < Dark Magic We've had 13 FEs now without Intelligent Systems grasping that being locked to bows is horrible - or for that matter that myrmidons < mercenaries or any of the other recurring balance issues. Some of those haven't been around as long as bows, but still. Melth fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 23:08
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Ya'll made good points. I still think it would be more interesting from a gameplay perspective if Eliwood used Lances instead of swords. Oh well. We still got Ephraim I guess. And Hector is still awesome. I feel I should note that I picked this game back up again. I left off a little farther than the LP is right now, on Eliwood mode. Not giving a poo poo about rankings of course, but I'll play along a bit.
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Feb 28, 2015 23:31
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Ironically in the last Fire Emblem thing IntSys has done, the Apotheosis DLC for Awakening, has seen archers become the most powerful class available to you. It's really all down to design and proves that they can be good if the game allows for it.
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Feb 28, 2015 23:43
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Manatee Cannon posted:Ironically in the last Fire Emblem thing IntSys has done, the Apotheosis DLC for Awakening, has seen archers become the most powerful class available to you. It's really all down to design and proves that they can be good if the game allows for it. yeah but that's like saying "Archers are the most powerful class if you play Lunatic + in FE12" while true, that's not a point in game designs favor since Lunatic + is by definition stupidly difficult bullshit.
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Mar 1, 2015 00:00
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Apotheosis is really well designed, though. Except for the timed bits. I hated timed stuff.
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Mar 1, 2015 00:02
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Manatee Cannon posted:Ironically in the last Fire Emblem thing IntSys has done, the Apotheosis DLC for Awakening, has seen archers become the most powerful class available to you. It's really all down to design and proves that they can be good if the game allows for it. I haven't played any of Awakening's DLCs so I can't comment on that one. I can think of 2 other cases where archers were decent though. One was Shinon in FE10. People were always raving about him and greatly overstated his usefulness, but it was true that his stats were pretty good and it was definitely true that the Double Bow was an awesome weapon. Of course, it was awesome because it was basically a super javelin and not a bow at all. And it wasn't actually available till the final chapter. So for most of the game he still kind of sucked, but I'll still acknowledge that with that weapon he was pretty formidable. A better example is Dorothy or Shin in FE6's hard mode. Because their stats were pretty solid and because that game was absolutely full of major nuisance enemies like guys with Bolting or Berserk that could only be killed with a longbow, there were actually some uses for them. Still lowish tier characters all in all, but at least they actually had a semi-important role to play that mages couldn't just do better.
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Mar 1, 2015 00:02
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So people have been talking about which of my units are above or below average lately and I’d planned on doing some kind of across the board stats comparison post sooner or later. I’ve finished 19xx and am still writing that up, but here’s what everyone’s stats are like going into the climactic battle of the Dragon’s Gate (In alphabetical order):  -.55 HP, -1.5 Str, -1.05 Skill, -1.2 Spd, +.1 Luck, +.1 Def, -.75 Res. Total = 4.85 points behind. Bartre starts off either your worst or second worst unit after Rebecca but he’s supposed to have good growths. Mine… didn’t. He’s pretty much worse than expected across the board and that made him quickly go from hard to use to impossible to use as the difficulty ramped up.  -.2 HP, +1.3 Mag, +.6 Skil, +1.9 Spd -1.5 Luck, +.5 Def, +1.3 Res. Total = 3.9 points ahead. It’s not a huge blessing overall but it’s pretty much exactly where I want it and that matters way more than just having more points overall. The early speed bonus in particular is the best imaginable boost for Canas to get early. Plus more Mag will make his Luna all the more powerful as he really comes into his own. Critically, he can now double mages, his ‘natural prey’ and therefore has gotten even easier to train.  Hasn’t actually leveled. I can’t quite fit him onto my team on any chapter so far.  -.4 HP, +1.2 Str, +.8 Skl, +.4 Spd, -.2 Luck, +.25 Def, -.45 Res. Total = +1.6. A small but respectable blessing and pretty much the only time I’ve ever had any luck with Dorcas. Still not very good, but he did his job.  +.4 HP, +1.6 Str, +0 Skil, +1.2 Speed, +3.6 Luck, +1.4 Def, +1.8 Res. Total = +10! A huge total boost, he’s better than average at EVERYTHING. But he’s still not very good because of competition from the unstoppable Raven and because his excellent all-rounder stats really start to pay off late game, but for now speed is king and even with his blessing he doesn’t have enough of that for a level 13 unit. This really helps illustrate what I was saying before: it’s more how the blessing is distributed than the total amount of points that matters. Luck is nice and all, but even something lime +5 points of it wouldn’t make much difference. I’d gladly trade in the +3.6 luck to bring that speed up to 14 or the like. Or even to boost Str. Still, Eliwood is looking good enough that I’m actually beginning to consider promoting him even though it costs double. He is required on the final chapter afterall and almost no one wrecks things as efficiently as a promoted Eliwood.  +.45 HP, +1.2 Mag, +.2 Skill, -1.5 Spd, -1.1 Luck, +.6 Def, +1.2 Res. Total = +1.05. About average and not well distributed. Erk is supposed to be fast and mine is not.  -.1 HP, -.05 Str, +1.2 Skill, -1.5 Speed, -.9 Luck, +.4 Def, +.5 Res. Total = -.45. Very close to average and with the only bonus and the only penalty of size in areas that don’t really matter for Pegasus knights.  +.2 HP, +1.8 Str, -.5 Skl, +1.85 Spd, -1.5 Luck, -1.95 Def -1.55 Res. Total = -2.15. Below average by a small amount and in a way I’m not sure is actually bad all in all. True, low Def hurts badly on a Pegasus knight and it kind of undoes most of the benefit of the angelic robe. On the other hand, the other penalties don’t much matter and the big plus to Str is a nice help.  +1.25 HP, -1.5 Str, +1.5 Skl, -1.5 Speed, +.75 Luck, -.75 Def, -1.25 Res (Not counting his hard mode bonuses). Total = -1.5. And the bonuses are in the worst areas while the penalties are in spots that hurt. This is a bad Guy. And even an average Guy is bad.  -.3 HP, +.8 Str, +1.35 Skill, +2.05 Speed, -.1 Luck, -2.5 Def, -1.25 Res. Total = +.05. So pretty much exactly average overall, but he’s actually very unusual. That’s terrible Def and great speed for Hector. It’s also worth noting that his early levels were unbelievably good and then his middle levels were horrible and that’s how he came to be balanced. And that’s a much better order than the reverse, so for much of the game I had a truly great Hector. He’s about to hit his level cap and cease to be usable, but he was fun while he lasted.  +.3 HP, +.2 Str, -.9 Spd, -.4 Luck, -.5 Def, -.5 Res. Total = -1.8. Pretty bad, though he wasn’t used much. At this point he pretty much never will be again.  -.3 HP, +.9 Str, +.9 Skill, -.1 Spd, -.5 Luck, +.2 Def, -.1 Res. Total = +1. So pretty much average. I’ve never before realized just how bad Lowen actually is in HHM. I’ve been trying really hard to use him and mine is pretty much average and he still can’t do anything.  -1.1 HP, +.8 Str, +1 Skil, +1.2 Spd, +.4 Lck, -.2 Def, +.8 Res. Total = +2.3. Pretty good and the bonuses are where it counts. It’s a shame I can’t use this pretty badass more right now, but I’ve got to try to level Raven and company past my mages.  +.3 HP, +.6 Str, +.4 Skill, +.4 Speed, +1.95 Luck, +1.8 Def, +3.7 Res. Total = +9.15. Giving Eliwood a run for her money, Lyn is also quite blessed and yet quite useless because the blessings are in areas that don’t much help. The Def is nice, but she can’t kill anything so she doesn’t belong on the front lines anyway. Still, I’ve got to keep using her for now.  +.35 HP, +.7 Str, -.5 Skl, -.25 Spd, +.7 Luck, -.15 Def, -.35 Res. Total = +.5. About average and he hasn’t seen combat since Chapter 17 and hopefully never will again. 16 kills is way more than I wanted him to get – and he only got that many because loads of enemies suicided to him when there were much better targets to shoot instead. Usually I can keep Marcus to about 8 kills roughly and I think that’s probably ideal. I think I’ve demonstrated pretty well so far that any talk about using him extensively being a must for HHM max ranking is completely false.  +1.75 HP, +.7 Str, -1.4 Skil, -1.7 Spd, -.5 Luck, -2.75 Def, -.2 Res. Total = -4.1. Wow, my Matthew is bad. His main plus is HP, which is completely useless considering he has an even bigger minus to the much more important Def. Last level up he got +1 Str which put him over average again there which is nice. My Matthew has long since ceased to be the front line godsend he was around 13x, but he’s still good enough at his actual job that it doesn’t matter.  -.6 HP, +.8 Skil, +.2 Speed, +.6 Def, -.2 Res. Total = +.8. Nice except .8 of that comes from Skill, which he can’t actually use for anything under any circumstances. So 0 really.  -.7 HP, +.8 Str, +1.1 Skill, +1.1 Speed, -1.05 Luck, -.65 Def, +.1 Res. Total = +.7. A bit above average and with the bonuses in areas that are nice. But I never again intend to use Oswin so, who cares?  +.65 HP, +.8 Mag, -.5 Skil, -1.2 Speed, +1.05 Luck, -.45 Def, -.5 Res. Total = -.1. So pretty much average. Her stats don’t much matter anyway.  +.6 HP, +1.8 Str, +.4 Skil, +.2 Speed, +1.6 Luck, -1 Def, -.6 Res. Total = +3. Solid, though the only thing that helps is the +1.6 Str since he doesn’t really need any of the others much. His Str is going to cap fast regardless, as is his Speed, so what I really want at this point is more Def.  -.2 HP, +1.2 Str, -1 Skil, +.8 Speed, -.3 Def, +.4 Res. Total = +.9. Slightly above average and with the bonuses in areas that matter. But she’s still terrible and will never be fielded again.  +1.8 HP, +1.6 Str, +.6 Skil, +6.4 Speed, -1.5 Luck, +1.2 Def, +1.2 Res. Total = +11.3. Sain is beyond any doubt the luckiest character I have seen in 12 years of playing Fire Emblem. He’s already usable in the endgame like this, so I want to really cut back on using him ASAP. You’ll notice that he’s already slammed into his Str cap and is about to run into his speed cap. To a significant extent, this means his era of incredible awesome is coming to an end. From now on he’ll gradually become more and more normal. But wow, just wow.  +.5 HP, -.5 Mag, -.9 Skil, +.8 Speed, +.2 Luck, -.45 Def, -.65 Res. Total = -1. A bit below average, but it doesn’t really matter.  Never leveled, so he’s average. All in all, I’ve got 3 characters with massive blessings (Sain, Eliwood, and Lyn). And 2 characters who were blessed in ways that actually help a lot (Sain and Canas). I have quite a few slightly below average characters and some significantly below average, but most of those are people I never wanted to use anyway. All in all, I’m inclined to say I’ve been fairly lucky so far. While I’m at it, here’s how I’m shaping up with regard to getting Linus’s and Jerme’s chapters: I have to gain 7 more levels total for Eliwood, Lyn, and Hector in the next 5 chapters. That looks quite feasible at first glance, but Hector has almost hit his cap and Lyn and Eliwood have nearly broken their special weapons and some of those chapters don’t make them easy to use. It’s going to be a stretch. Currently the Jerme crew has gained a total of 334 (Dorcas) + 374 (Bartre) + 532 (Guy) +478 (Raven = 1718 XP. The Kenneth group have gained a total of 310 (Serra) + 391 (Priscilla) + 727 (Erk) + 274 (Lucius) = 1702 XP. So by working fairly hard I managed to get the Jerme group juuuuuust past the Kenneth group. But since I kind of need Serra and Priscilla in many cases and Erk and Lucius are both quite solid while only Raven is even really usable on the Kenneth side, keeping this up will be tricky. Especially on the nabata level. I’m hoping that I can get Raven to his growth singularity, get him promoted, and have him start running over everything soon.
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Mar 1, 2015 00:52
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You know, it's kind of funny: In FE4, Kaga originally meant for Jamka to be an axe user but decided he liked him, so he gave him bows to make him more powerful.
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Mar 1, 2015 04:23
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I really get the sense the FE devs think it's all about Player Phase, with maybe one or two counter attacks per unit on Enemy Phase. Bows certainly aren't balanced around an understanding that they're only useful for a fifth of all combats.
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Mar 1, 2015 04:26
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Lotish posted:You know, it's kind of funny: In FE4, Kaga originally meant for Jamka to be an axe user but decided he liked him, so he gave him bows to make him more powerful. Well Kaga also made a bow lord in one of the Saga games.
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Mar 1, 2015 04:28
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ApplesandOranges posted:Virion is technically the closest we've ever gotten for a bow lord.  Also your Sain will never not be wonderful to see, Melth. Such an early beautiful green number and he'll get another and Str/Spd of all things. I want that Sain. Please give me your Sain luck forever.
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Mar 1, 2015 04:36
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Blaze Dragon posted:
Well that capped Str isn't actually that early, Sain is expected to cap it in about 2 levels. His Str growth is awesome and his cap is bad. The speed is the fantastic part, but the trouble is once he caps that it stagnates, so the average Sain will get closer and closer to him as they both go to 20. So yeah he's fantastic and that's great, but he's going to look a lot less fantastic in 10 chapters. This is the peak of his relative power is what I'm saying.
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Mar 1, 2015 05:00
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Onmi posted:Well Kaga also made a bow lord in one of the Saga games. Going from what I remember of it, part of what saves Holmes in that game is he gets a lot of maps with walls dividing you from attackers and he also has the picklock skill so he can do some thievery on the side, so the map and mission design kind of help him out. He's also pretty drat beefy, learns some significant skills, promotes into swords, and as people mentioned there are several bows that automatically multi-attack (one by x4!), while only one kind of sword, axe or spear does the same (at best by x2). So depending on the map he is getting a lot of counter attacks for significant damage. Magic is still ludicrous in that game, though. I love the one spellbook that increases the user's defense by 10. This is a game where stats cap in the high teens, low 20s, so out of the gate it more than doubles the character's defense value and lets him survive poo poo that would kill dedicated tanks.
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Mar 1, 2015 06:43
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I think the complaints that bows suck are a little overblown. You can just field like one archer or whatever at most, you don't need to bring like all four archers/snipers in say, FE6 to achieve anything. They're pretty good for filling a slot sometimes since you aren't going to have every unit eating counter attacks for xp every turn so having someone with good ranged weapons can be pretty helpful. Unfortunately all the archers in FE7 kind of suck as units so there's no point.
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Mar 1, 2015 07:38
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So assuming archers were actually worth a drat in FE7, is Rath the only one that'll shape up decently? Out of the early-game archers, I've heard that Rebecca gains a lot of speed and luck, but Wil gains more power in the long-run of things. To clarify I am basically asking who the best archer is.
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Mar 1, 2015 07:46
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Lotish posted:You know, it's kind of funny: In FE4, Kaga originally meant for Jamka to be an axe user but decided he liked him, so he gave him bows to make him more powerful. To be fair in FE4 Axes where PRETTY bad, they weighted a ton of bricks and neither con (which didn't exist yet), nor strength reduced weight penalties, you could not use an Iron Axe without taking an 18 AS penalty (The Brave Axe was 12 weight but the only Brave Axe in Gen 1 can not reasonably be gotten unless you have a walkthrough, and Lex had a monoply on because he's mounted and you can't trade easily, FE4 has weird mechanics). And in FE4 the AI was REALLY stupid in that Enemy archers will attack player archers over pegasus knights for some reason, so Jamka probably is better off as an Archer than a Fighter honestly.
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Mar 1, 2015 07:53
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Seiren posted:So assuming archers were actually worth a drat in FE7, is Rath the only one that'll shape up decently? Out of the early-game archers, I've heard that Rebecca gains a lot of speed and luck, but Wil gains more power in the long-run of things. Rebecca, but none of them are particularly that great if you are playing for ranking/ are playing HHM. The most intersting things you can do with Rebecca/Wil/Dart is set up a support triangle and give them all ridiculous amounts of crit. I even managed to let my Dart hit like 80 crit at one point in the final chapter.
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Mar 1, 2015 07:54
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How Rude posted:Rebecca, but none of them are particularly that great if you are playing for ranking/ are playing HHM. The most intersting things you can do with Rebecca/Wil/Dart is set up a support triangle and give them all ridiculous amounts of crit. I even managed to let my Dart hit like 80 crit at one point in the final chapter. I went over my analysis of Wil, Rebecca, and Rath as the characters were introduced, but I'll summarize some of the relevant bits again now (and I'll add in Louise even though we haven't gotten there): 1) First of all, I'm just going to remove Louise from this comparison by pointing out that Rebecca is strictly better except for minor Def and Res differences and that Louise is only available in the last bits of the game. 2) Rath has a very nice advantage of also being able to use swords upon promotion. That's enormously useful really and outweighs everything else for lategame viability. He also has a massive movement advantage. And he has a GREAT movement type. Nomads/nomadic troopers can do several things better than cavaliers on top of just having massive movement. Oh and Rath is one of the best rescuers in the game. Lowish Con for a man and being on a horse gives him 16 Aid when he's been promoted, enough to pick up anyone. 3) Rath is tougher than or about the same toughness of the others. Comparing him to Rebecca at 20/20, he has +10 HP, +2.5 or so Def and about 12 less dodge, which hurts but not that badly. Compared to Wil, rather has about 3 more HP, about 4 more dodge, and about 1 less defense. 4) Rath is functionally faster than the others. First off, he's just flat out faster than Wil and not by a small amount. Rebecca starts a little slower than him but will grow a little bit past him by game's end. The thing is though, Rath has 9 Con to finish with. Wil has 7. Rebecca has 6. If Rebecca wants to use, say, a longbow- which is one of the handiest bows and one of the few really unique features of bow users compared to mages- then she has to eat a penalty of 4 to her speed as a sniper. A crippling 5 as an archer. For Rath it's just 1 if promoted and 2 if not. Steel bows are almost as bad. Brave bows are worse. if you only intend to ever use Iron or silver weapons though then Rebecca is slightly faster in the final levels, true. 5) Rath hits harder than the others. First of all, Rebecca's strength is just horrible until she promotes. If it wasn't for a hefty promotion gain, she wouldn't even break 20 at 20/20. Wil and Rath are pretty much neck and neck with Wil .5 ahead until they promote and Rath .5 after they promote. Both will hit a respectable 25 Str cap. But again, Rath has the Con to use big weapons without being slowed. Wil and Rebecca don't. So to recap so far: Rath gets swords, Rath has better movement, Rath can rescue, Rath is as tough as the others if not tougher, Rath is outright faster than Wil, tied in speed with Rebecca until the last few levels, and still faster than her if she tries to wield anything like a steel bow or long bow, and his strength is equal to Wil's and much better than Rebecca's while his superior con lets him freely use heavier and more damaging weapons. Rath does have one major weakpoint though: he joins late. This is only partly mitigated by the fact that you can train him up pretty well in Lyn's story if you want to. Essentially, it might be fair to call him an Est in comparison to the other archers. He joins at potentially a good deal lower level than them (unless you invest in him in Lyn's story) but then he'll outgrow them and be much better overall by the end. All in all, there's no doubt in my mind that he's better than them even including that disadvantage. The only reason I don't use Rath myself is that Heath joins at the same chapter and Heath is just too good to pass up, so all the easy XP goes to him. But maybe Seiren meant which actual archer class character is best, not which primary bow user. Well in that case, Wil is a ton tougher and he hits harder, but Rebecca completely outclasses him in speed. The question is: does this matter? See, most enemies in this game are slow. Even on HHM. Wil will still be doubling most things except for bosses. I'd say Rebecca is maybe a little better than him statistically, but it's a choice of tougher and stronger vs just faster, which doesn't always have a clear right or wrong. And Wil definitely has Rebecca beat for trainability. If you want to use an archer, you can be training Wil up for nearly all of Lyn's story and have him massively high level by the time Eliwood or Hector's begins. And he'll rejoin the party quite quickly. Rebecca joins at level 1 at a time when you have a ton of other low level people who also need a lot of XP. So yeah, that about concludes my thoughts on comparing the archers and bow users. Louise is just awful. Wil and Rebecca each have strengths and weaknesses. Rebecca is probably better on raw stats, but Wil is easier to train. And Rath beats the heck out of everyone in pretty much every way and even compares well to some sword users once he promotes, but he rejoins the party rather late. But at the end of the day, they're all terrible for a ranking run. Or even just for HHM in general. In Normal mode you have spare unit slots to waste on people who only get 1 attack per turn, but on Hard mode everyone needs to pull their weight. And mages/shamans/monks/ANYONE with a javelin or handaxe just do their job better. Melth fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 09:07
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Melth posted:I went over my analysis of Wil, Rebecca, and Rath as the characters were introduced, but I'll summarize some of the relevant bits again now (and I'll add in Louise even though we haven't gotten there): I'll probably go with Rebecca unless Wil ends up really good by the time I finish Lyn-mode. I may end up not using any of them at all, but it's all at the whim of RNG gains!
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Mar 1, 2015 09:49
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 19x Part 2 a.k.a. 19xx is the secretest of secret chapters! And one of the most dreaded for largely unjustified reasons. This chapter changes everything and really brings out a ton of depth that isn’t apparent on Eliwood’s version of the story. And just how it does that can only really be appreciated after beating the game once, so it’s totally appropriate that it’s only available on Hector’s story. On the other hand, the other requirements for unlocking it are absurd. Killing Kishuna didn’t unlock anything on Eliwood’s story and it’s not clear why that would affect unlocking this chapter anyway. But needing to play Hector’s story, unlock 19x, and then kill Kishuna pale in comparison to the final requirement: raising Nils to level 7 or higher in Lyn’s story. At no point is this hinted at in any way, shape, or form, nor is there any indication if you do unlock 19xx that that’s why. If you try to S-rank Lyn’s story, you WILL fail to unlock this chapter. If you try keep Nils low level for pumping your XP ranking in Hector’s story, you WILL fail to unlock this chapter. It’s worse than any other secret level requirement I can think of in any FE. The only thing that can even rival it is unlocking The Pinnacle of Light in FE6. The only saving grace of this sidequest’s ludicrous requirements is that the game is still satisfying without it and still reaches the same conclusion. But you miss out on a great reveal that really adds a lot of pathos to a certain otherwise fairly bland villain and to the story as a whole. And to a lot of background secrets and plot threads all being resolved. Here There Be Spoilers! If you haven’t played through the game before, this chapter contains MASSIVE spoilers I can spoiler tag the text but not the images so far as I’m aware. And the images give just about everything away whether my text is covered or not, so I won’t be tagging the text. So if you want to avoid spoilers you should probably stop reading now and skip this chapter entirely (the story basically picks up as normal next level) and perhaps come back to it after the end of the game. Final warning, right here. If you finish reading this last sentence, it won’t tell you anything. Chapter Summary: Hector and company arrive at the Dragon’s Gate but leave Ninian unattended and she slips away. They chase her into the woods and catch up to her as she wanders, confused, into another ancient ruin. There they meet a “traveler” named Teodor. He explains that the ruins were the abode of a dark sorcerer 1000 years ago and the still-intact library is a treasure trove of ancient magical knowledge which he’s studying. And he explains the nature of Dark Magic and the terrible sacrifices it requires of its practitioners before revealing himself to be a Black Fang leader and attacking. After defeating him, Hector retrieves Ninian- finding her staring at a picture of a man standing next to a dragon- and they return to the Dragon’s Gate.  We’ve really come a long way. It’s time to rescue Marquess Pherae and finish Nergal!  Oops. Missing once again. This is all Hector’s fault somehow.  Ninian arrives and we see a vision of the past. This was back before color was invented.  A man ushers his two young children into the ruins and tells them why he’s leaving.  Who these bad men are remains something of a mystery. From what we’re told, this scene happens during (or soon after) the Scouring, My best guess is that they’re actually the forces of the 8 Legends currently waging their war against the dragons. From the perspective of a man who married a dragon, those would indeed be bad men. This also explains what happens to the dragon woman (named Aenir by the way, there’s some ambiguity in the English translation about this). The armies of the scouring might well have just killed her soon after capturing her. But what husband would face that likelihood when there’s still any chance she could be saved?  He leaves them some supplies and instructions to go through the Dragon’s Gate if he doesn’t return within 10 days.  Agh, the dramatic irony of it. Having already beaten Eliwood’s story and knowing how Ninian and Nils were lured back to this world to be captured, this is just awful. They must have thought Nergal was still the father they knew, returning at last after many years. Come to think of it, it looks as though time might pass differently on each side of the Dragon’s Gate. If time is the same, then Ninian and Nils are 1000+ years old. But Sophia, like them, is a half-dragon and looks like a teenager at age 100 or so. Nils still looks a good deal younger than her, so it seems a fair bet that he’s 100 or less in terms of time on the other side of the Dragon’s Gate. On the other hand, maybe half-dragon children of different types of dragons age differently; we don’t know enough to be sure.  The flashback ends as Lyn arrives and asks Ninian what she’s doing here. And Ninian drops the first really big hint that she was the girl in that scene.  Excellent question! Well besides the fact that she’s been a prisoner here several times and Hector should already know or suspect that to be true.  Oh no, it’s a red enemy unit teleporting in! Again, having the unit start off red kind of spoils that he’s secretly an enemy.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISi5kUe9vVY The excellent Silent Grounds makes a reappearance for (I think) the first time since Chapter 4. Maybe I’m forgetting one. It’s really a pretty piece of music. And it seems to fit the mood so well here. Except for that guy clearly being an enemy due to his red clothes…  Teodor drops other clues for the player. There are pretty much two candidates for people who could have studied here: Nergal and Bramimond, and it will later be revealed that it was definitely Nergal. However, Teodor himself speaks of Bramimond with some reverence and knows that Bramimond studied the ultimate dark magics on Valor during the Scouring. He makes no mention of Nergal by name. To me it looks as though Teodor might think this was Bramimond’s residence; at the very least it looks probable that he doesn’t know that the modern Nergal is the one who studied in this building 1000 years ago.  And he segues into talking about the way to acquire dark magic. This, along with Canas’s supports with Pent and others, are absolutely critical to understanding both Bramimond and Nergal and how they came to lose themselves.  Many of the details remain a bit unclear though.  Really the more you think about this conversation and Canas’s supports, the more it looks like even beginning to study dark magic is often a fate worse than death. Canas, an otherwise reasonable person with no interest in power, talks of how tempting it is to just submit to the darkness and be lost forever like his brothers were and how he can’t stop studying even though he knows it will destroy him. It’s probably a mercy that his life is suddenly cut short by a blizzard in the epilogue so he didn’t live to become everything he opposed like Nergal or a drooling vegetable like his brothers or some inhuman and incomprehensible being like Bramimond.  Teodor describes the case of Bramimond in particular and how he was completely lost in the process of learning the ultimate dark magic (he was completely ripped off; Luna is better anyway).  Eliwood asks the obvious question, completely dumbfounded at the idea that anyone would ever study dark magic when it destroys you.  Teodor gives a superficially reasonable answer: that just about everyone will at least once want something so badly that they’d give anything for it and that studying dark magic can give you the power to get or become or do whatever it is you want so badly. The problem with his reasoning isn’t the “at any cost” part so much as the “I” part. He’s just finished talking about how people who study dark magic too deeply completely lose themselves and even forget why they wanted the power to begin with- becoming mindless vessels for dark power. So… you don’t actually get the thing you wanted. You cease to exist or become someone totally different as the memories and goals and personality that made you what you are are destroyed. Quite possibly what you wanted never comes about because now that you have the power to achieve your goal, you no longer want to. And even if what’s left of you brings about what you wanted, you’re still not properly around to appreciate that. Really, you’d have to be crazy to take a deal like that. Crazy or trying to help someone else at the cost of your own soul.  Bam! If the red robes didn’t give away that he wasn’t just a traveler, this sure does.  We don’t really know exactly whether Teodor is part of the pre or post-Nergal Black Fang. I would guess pre and that he doesn’t know much of anything about Nergal because he seems to have no awareness that this is Nergal’s house he’s standing in and Nergal’s library he wants to read through.  And he turns it into a fog of war level! Truly, he is our most evil enemy thusfar.  This kind of thing is refreshing after Eliwood going on about Uhai and what a great guy he was throughout his version of the story. Battle Preparations & the Map  It’s always especially prudent to check in on your rankings before and after a zero chapter like this. Things are looking good as long as I finish this one quickly enough that I don’t lose my built up turn surplus.  Scanning the map, it’s covered in thieves. And they’re level 15-20 and consequently have 20 speed, which is more than my Matthew.  This chapter is the first appearance of poison weapons, enemy-exclusive gear that you wouldn’t want anyway. The stats on the things are just terrible (-15 hit and -4 Mt compared to an iron lance). But if you get hit by one of them, you get the Poisoned condition for 4 turns (and unlike most conditions, this one can be re-inflicted upon you, which resets the turn counter). This makes your unit take about 1d4 damage at the beginning of your turn, ignoring defense and resistance. The things are pretty much no threat, and what’s more they’re great for training your staff users up since they provide 1 very small wound per turn.  The map is too big and too full of enemies for me to reveal all of it at once, but the bulk of the enemy force is shown here (after eliminating one thief who stood nearby in order to get a better torch spot) The enemy standing forces don’t actually present that much of a conventional threat, but they have a lot of nuisance tactics available courtesy of their thieves, troubadours, and of course the fog itself. I'm going to go over the problems posed by the Sleep and Silence staves in some detail in the future. To summarize here, the Silence staff in the bottom right is no threat if you don’t send someone who uses magic that way in the first place, but the Sleep Staff troubadour could take out one of your best soldiers for most of the rest of the fight- possibly several if she’s not killed promptly. Because she has 7 movement and is hidden by fog and there’s no way to have a restore staff yet, there’s really no better way to deal with her than to hope she misses her first shot and then ensure you kill her ASAP. These thieves are actually a very different kind of problem from the normal variety due to their huge level and stats: 20 speed is actually enough to double pretty much all of my units - even Raven and Florina (while she has an iron lance). Thief damage is low enough that that’s not a huge problem for most people, but it does mean I need to take them seriously. They also have enough HP and dodge chance that I can’t count on killing them in less than 3 hits or so from most units. Besides this modest combat threat they pose, the biggest trouble with them is that with 20 speed they can steal from literally any soldier in my army other than Sain. So if I give anyone any kind of item that isn’t a weapon, I should expect to lose it. Fortunately, most of the thieves on this map don’t actually have lockpicks- or keys of any kind. So most of them are completely incapable of looting the treasure on the map before I can get there. And it gets better! Remember that I said every thief AI is different? Well the AI on this chapter is almost friendly. The details were a little difficult to figure out given the fog, but I did learn a fair amount on the test-run where I tried to reveal the map to screenshot it: For one thing, only the thief with the lockpick in the right middle area actually goes for any treasure in any way- even the nearby guy with the chest key is only interested in fighting. The thief with the lockpick will loot the chests in the bottom right on turns 2 and 3 and then begins behaving erratically. It never flees the map, but does make its way toward Teodor’s room, pausing several times and picking fights with anything that gets near it after it leaves the treasure room. Critically, that lockpick thief is actually fairly low level and has about 15 speed- less than Matthew. Just as critically, it steals the Dragon Shield BEFORE the Eclipse tome. This means that if you steal the Dragon Shield first, you can then kill the thief for the Eclipse Tome and get all the bottom right treasure easily. The only difficulty is ensuring the thief doesn’t suicide to one of your soldiers before you can bring Matthew nearby. Although there are actually several thieves in the top treasure room, neither of them has any kind of key. Further, they don’t even try to fight you. If you open the door and get out of their way, they will begin making their way to the top right staircase and then leave. Under no circumstances will they attack one of your units of their own volition. They won’t even move if there isn’t a path to the stairs open. In short, the thieves on this map look impossible to beat to the treasure, but actually most of them won’t even try to take it and the one who does is so nice about it that he’s practically doing your work for you. The only really nasty surprise other than the sleep staff troubadour is that Teodor has several wyvern riders in his room and they love to fly out of the fog to kill people by surprise. Wyvern riders are probably the most powerful and dangerous enemy unit type in the game overall so these 2 should not be taken lightly. Really, a quick glance at the starting forces and the fact that there are no enemy reinforcements whatsoever should tell you immediately that this is an easy chapter in terms of fighting. The only question is how to beat it quickly and with maximum treasure.  Units Allowed: 8 Units Brought: 1) Hector. Required and great anyway, as always. 2) Matthew. There’s absolutely no way to acquire the top left Talisman without him. Not to mention that without him you can get either the Dragon Shield or the Eclipse but not both. The enemy thieves will only do some of your work for you on this level. 3) Sain. Partly Sain is here in case Teodor, hidden in the fog, proves more dangerous than expected. But really the main reason to bring him is that he’s the only person capable of tackling that hallway to the bottom right, so giving him the XP there isn’t any kind of loss. Pegasus knights couldn’t handle the archers or snipers. Canas or another mage couldn’t handle the sniper + the longbow, Dorcas or Bartre don’t have a chance. Lowen can’t handle the mages. Hector is needed in the top right ASAP. No, it’s really Sain (or maybe Oswin or Marcus, but that’s even worse) or no one. 4) Florina. Other than the one ballista, this map is pretty good for Pegasus knights. They’re particularly good at dealing with the enemy thieves and are fairly respectable vs knights and mages and the like as well. Plus I’m going to want all the rescue-chaining power available to get Matthew around efficiently on the last turns. 5) Fiora. Same as Florina but not as good. 6) Mages. Knights. Thieves. These are all things Canas deals with quite well. And I can’t afford to bring any other magic user at the moment. 7) Raven. Raven is one of my few units capable of accurately hitting thieves for high damage and he’s also decently effective against knights due to his high Str. And I need to train him to get Jerme’s level. 8) Dorcas. Ugh. Dorcas is bad, but with a hammer he can actually take on the Knights on this level. And I need to take every opportunity available to train him, Bartre, and Guy to ensure I get Jerme’s chapter. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Priscilla. As I mentioned, the actual fighting on this level is incredibly easy. If you lose a unit, you did something very wrong. Even without healing, you should take little enough damage to still have many battle-ready units at the map’s end. And I don’t want to give her more XP than I need to right now. 2) Same as Priscilla but with 2 less movement. 3) Guy. There’s nothing on this level he can kill, so he can’t really be trained here. 4) Lyn. Same as Guy. Her Mani Katti is nearly broken so she’s no longer effective against knights. 5) Eliwood. Only a little better off than Lyn and Key. 6) Lowen. As usual, Lowen can’t beat knights and this level is full of them so he can’t really help much. He’d be good against thieves, but not as good as the Pegasus knights. 7) Dart. I would DEFINITELY rather be using Dart than Dorcas, but Dorcas needs XP for me to get Jerme’s chapter and Dart doesn’t. 8) Erk. Would be highly effective here, but I don’t really need him and I need to avoid giving him too much XP. Objective: Seize the throne Secondary Objective: Get the Talisman from the top left chest Secondary Objective: Get the Dragon Shield from the bottom right chest Secondary Objective: Get the Eclipse from the bottom right chest Secondary Objective: Steal the Lockpick from the thief who opens the bottom right chests Secondary Objective: Steal the chest key from the thief nearby in the bottom hallway (Impossible without 20 speed) Reinforcements: None. Yeah, you read that right. Have I mentioned this chapter is really easy? Turns Allowed: 0. Ouch, but by this point there’s been plenty of time to build up a nice surplus. In terms of gear, Dorcas has a hammer and Florina has a heavy spear in case knights prove troublesome. To my surprise, I don’t yet have an armorslayer so Raven couldn’t be given one of those. Critically, NO ONE is given a vulnerary. If they had vulneraries, the enemy would steal them. No one has any items at all except that Matthew has a Torch with only 2 uses remaining and my most worn-out lockpick. And I intend to keep him out of reach of those enemy thieves. The idea with this formation here is that Sain is at the furthest point back where he can still javelin down the bottom hallway thief. This will let him efficiently take down the other enemies in or near that hallway and thus reach the bottom right chests around the same time the thief finishes there. Sain can then keep a watch on him if need be, but really he’s done for the chapter since I don’t want him doing more fighting than absolutely necessary. Matthew is close to the hallway just so that he gives Sain vision of the thief. The Pegasus knights + Raven are situated to quickly take down the other nearby thief and prepare to deal with the enemies who will soon come through the left door. Canas, Hector, and Dorcas will just be backing them up. From there, that group of everyone but Sain will fan out through the building, taking out the troubadour and the other enemies and having Hector beat Teodor as Matthew with Pegasus knight assistance opens up the top area and gets the treasure. The idea is for Matthew to finish up there around the same time the lockpick thief returns to the main chamber. Then that thief can be lured to attack someone like Dorcas or an unarmed Matthew so that Matthew has time to steal both his lockpick and his dragon shield before he’s killed for the eclipse. The Characters:  “ ‘I must have it at any cost.’ I believe every living soul has felt such desire. I know I have.” –Teodor, Chapter 19xx If there’s one Black Fang I’d like to know more about, it’s Teodor. The game almost seems to be teasing you with all the information about him that they aren’t giving you even as this chapter reveals all sorts of other secrets. Although much about Teodor remains shrouded in mystery, what we do learn is fairly intriguing: For one thing, he has his own agenda: seeking greater dark magic power in order to accomplish or acquire something that he’d give anything for. He also seems very knowledgeable about dark magic and the history of Valor- though perhaps not so much so as he thinks, since he seems possibly unaware that this ruin was Nergal’s home. It’s possible that much like Nergal himself, Teodor is just using the Black Fang. He describes Uhai and Aion’s deaths as “Convenient” because they give him a chance at the prestige of killing Eliwood himself. So evidently he cares little for his fellow Fangs, but does care about his status in the organization. And it also seems clear that, unlike some other Fangs, Teodor is not after Eliwood because he believes lies that Eliwood is actually evil. No, Teodor walked right up to Eliwood and started talking to him, counting on Eliwood’s decency to protect him. Were Eliwood more suspicious or less polite, he would have just attacked or captured Teodor on the assumption that he’s one of the Black Fang or one of their spies. In fact, the two have a long, fairly friendly conversation before Teodor suddenly reveals that he’s a Black Fang and attacks. Besides apparently being able to create clouds of black fog and teleport around, Teodor is pretty formidable in combat with or without his HHM bonuses (though absolutely terrible for a 17th level Druid). He’s impervious to magic and his fairly high defense and throne protect him well from physical attacks too.  Much like Aion though, he’s screwed by his gear. 8 Con isn’t bad for a mage, but Eclipse weighs 20 and Nosferatu weighs 14, slowing him to a much less problematic 7 speed. And Eclipse is the worst spell in the game. Much like Bolting it has 3-10 range, but it has 30 less accuracy than the already inaccurate Bolting and it doesn’t deal damage normally. Instead it ignores its wielder’s magic and the defender’s resistance and just halves the opponent’s current HP. That wouldn’t even be that threatening if he could hit with it, but his odds are always <30% or so. Further weakening Eclipse, he doesn’t really have many troops around him (other than 2 wyvern riders) who could finish you off. In sum, his Eclipse is not at all threatening. And it slows him to speed 1 and dodge 5 (plus his throne), making him incredibly easy to kill. Make sure you kill him while he has that equipped. Eclipse is a joke but Nosferatu is one of the greatest weapons in the game. Not only will it more or less fully heal him if he hits, its Mt of 10 + his enormous magic power and your units’ lousy Res might let him instant kill one of your soldiers. Still, he’s slow with poor accuracy when he wields it. And you could just pop back out of Nosferatu range to make him equip Eclipse again. Playing Through:  You can’t hit an enemy you can’t see, so the first thing to do on any fog map is to use a torch with a thief.  As planned, Sain rides out and kills the enemy thief. With his javelin he’ll be able to wipe out that knight and all the archers/sniper except for the one with the longbow. From there it’s pretty much smooth sailing for him.  I don’t want this mage suiciding to Sain and I do want Florina in position to deal with the enemy ballista next turn, so it’s prudent to take it down immediately. This does reduce my chance of killing the nearby enemy thief, but that’s a lower priority- especially since it will probably get itself killed by someone’s counterattack anyway.  As expected, Raven hit but Canas’s odds aren’t good. Fiora could throw a javelin from his spot with more accuracy, but she wouldn’t have the damage to kill the thief anyway so I might as well just go for it with Canas.  Meh, he missed, but it’s not important. What IS important is making sure Matthew doesn’t take a lance to the face after the thief with the door key opens this door. Dorcas and Fiora don’t have much to do but just move up toward the front.  Of course. That enemy sniper was worth pretty good XP and as I mentioned, no one else could really fight it effectively, so I don’t mind giving it to Sain.  I lucked out here. This more than makes up for missing the thief. There was pretty much nothing I could do to prevent that troubadour getting a shot at someone at least once. That it missed will let me finish the rest of the level much more efficiently.  Alright, it’s the second turn, which as I’ve said before is the roughest turn on most maps. Here I think you can already see it’s in my favor before I even start moving. That thief was missed by Florina, but it’s no threat to her. If I can destroy the ballista, beat the northern thief, and kill the troubadour then I’ll have accomplished pretty much every tactical objective standing between me and easily clearing the whole rest of the place out. And I’ve got 7 units to do that with.  First let’s see the kind of firepower I need to beat that Troubadour. Ouch, she’s level 15, so she’s actually somewhat tough. Lots of speed and enough HP to take at least one hit from nearly anyone.  Sometimes it helps to just make the most obvious or definitely necessary moves first so you have less to think about and distract you. Sain can’t help on the main front and isn’t meant to anyway, so I just send him east as planned. There’s one more troubadour there I can kill next turn.  This thief wasn’t on a forest, so Canas hit him much more easily. Since Fiora was near the back, she was the obvious choice for killing the nearby enemy. Remember my tactical advice to strike with the rear units first and the front units last as a general rule.  Solid!  So Hector can’t actually kill the troubadour without his Wolf Beil (and I don’t have enough of that left to want to use it), so I considered what would happen if I had Matthew weaken the troubadour and Hector attack with his handaxe. The odds are pretty good since Matthew only needs to hit once for Hector to be able to finish it. If Matthew misses both times, I’m out of luck, but I can at least clear out every other enemy in the area so it doesn’t matter that much if someone is asleep. I think the risk is worth the certainty of conserving the Wolf Beil.  What I’m more worried about is this ballista shooting a pegasus knight who then gets attacked by an enemy knight. As I suspected, Fiora is in range. I could rescue her out, but that’s probably not as good as just killing both nearby knights.  To calculate how much damage a ballista will do to a flyer, look at this number. Then subtract the archer’s strength. Then double the result (because the result is the ballista’s Might). Then add the strength back in, and lastly subtract your unit’s Def. In this case, the Ballista can’t kill Fiora from full, so all I need to do is make sure no knight can hit her.  The hammer is so great that even an un-leveled Dorcas can still wreck knights with it on 19xx. And if you’re wondering how he got injured, I believe he was actually shot by the ballista last turn. I hope it goes for him again since he can take it more easily than a flyer.  Not a bad level for Dorcas- he has absolutely terrible Speed growth.  And Hector managed to kill the troubadour! Some good luck there, but at this point in the map having someone fall asleep wouldn’t be so devastating anyway.  I checked the numbers and while Florina could kill the ballistician, she’d probably die to the nearby swarm of knights. So I used her to finish off the nearby thief instead. She’ll still be in range to finish the ballista next turn but now other people will be able to help kill the knights beforehand. And another offensive level for her!  As I mentioned, I already know the thief will never flee the map. It’s just doing my work for me.  The enemy accomplishes nothing of note on their turn, so Hector kills one knight. That lets Florina kill the ballista safely.  So standing here in particular will force the longbow archer to move close to Sain, letting him move back and finally kill it without needing to go back further than necessary.  Ballisticians are always easy kills. Florina has been wrecking them since Chapter 8.  No nearby knight has a javelin, so I’d rather Hector equip his iron axe now, so Matthew trades to make that happen.  Fiora and Raven advance as close as possible while staying out of range. They’re injured and can’t be healed so I want Hector to tank for them. You’ll note that Matthew is exactly in range to open the northern door once the knight dies and then Raven and Florina can rescue-drop him out of the way.  On the enemy turn, the enemy takes the Eclipse as expected.  It’s not much XP, but it’s worth it.  I know Teodor has Eclipse and is on that throne, so it’s easy to figure out that this is the edge of his attack range. Eclipse isn’t really dangerous usually, but I do want to know what squares can be hit.  With a handaxe, Hector can beat the attacking archer as well as the wyvern riders who’ll come lunging out of Teodor’s room.  Taking this guy out with a javelin is more expensive than with the iron lance but less than the heavy spear- and it lets Florina avoid taking damage.  Matthew is close enough to reveal the wyvern riders. You can see that those stats are not messing around. Hector can handle it though.  Only Hector is in wyvern range. However, if I go through with my plan to rescue-drop Matthew out of the door area to make the enemy thieves run out, I need to be careful to avoid dropping into the nearby one’s range.  This position and dropping Matthew up should work.  Eclipse time! In all the excitement, Teodor seems to have forgotten that he’s actually the Shadow Hawk. Kenneth is the Shrike.  If this was Bolting, that would be a 58% chance of 27 or so damage.  Counting spaces, this is where the enemy thief with the treasure should now be. But I want to avoid Sain ending up in its range, because that thief would love to suicidally attack him and thereby deny me his Dragonshield.  Meanwhile, here’s the top right area. Other than Teodor and the thief with the treasure, these are the only remaining enemies.  Dorcas finishes a wyvern rider who Hector injured.  And another good level for him.  With the wyverns down, Hector moves to reveal Teodor without getting into Nosferatu range.  Yeah. There are a couple of translation typos and minor mix-ups in this level including Teodor getting his title wrong and the ambiguous way Nergal refers to Aenir as if she was a place. One gets the impression that they checked the script of the secretest of levels slightly less thoroughly than the ones most people would ever actually learn existed.  So Matthew goes for the treasure and Fiora follows behind so she can rescue him next turn. Raven will help with that. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the people or the time to put a proper rescue chain together this time, but this one should be good enough. And Dorcas is positioned so as to be able to lure the enemy thief with the treasure into the main chamber shortly.  Raven will need to be on hand to help with getting Matthew back into the main chamber, as will Florina (who missed with her Javelin) but there’s no reason for him not to try to weaken these guys as they make their getaway. Since the door is currently blocked, they won’t even be moving this turn though. In fact, nothing visible but another Eclipse miss is going to happen on the enemy turn at all (in the fog, the thief with the treasure will be advancing though).  My turn, the Talisman is mine.  Hector attacks Teodor with his iron axe and gets a fantastic level. Unfortunately, Teodor is still alive and well and next turn he’ll be using Nosferatu instead of Eclipse so things are going to get trickier.  Fiora, Florina, and Raven cooperate to get Matthew back as far as possible. Because I didn’t have much time this level to set things up, I couldn’t really do a good rescue chain. Still, these 6 spaces are critical because they’re going to let Matthew reach the treasure thief next turn with Dorcas as bait.  There’s the enemy attack range. Sain had better stay out. I want the only person in it to be Dorcas (and him on the top left edge) so I can be certain that the thief will attack Dorcas and therefore enter Matthew’s steal range.  Canas needs to get out of the way too, so he takes a potshot at an unimportant thief and misses. Oh well.  Phew, that makes things easier. The tome is still so heavy that Hector doubles him of course. If Hector doesn’t kill him right now, I can just pull back to Eclipse range for 1 turn and then finish him next time. Or have Sain assist since he’s about to arrive. Or just trust to luck and attack again and risk being Nosferatued, but I want to avoid that.  He’d still have been crippled by Eclipse. That’s what really did Teodor in.  Sweet! Hector is finally not 4 points or so behind in defense, though his mammoth speed edge is beginning to disappear.  Bait taken! The enemy thief badly injures Dorcas as expected, but now he’s in Matthew’s range.  So it’s now turn 7. I can finish this now after stealing from and then killing the thief or I can wait till turn 8 and get the guy’s Lockpick too, plus kill the other thieves.  Here’s the situation. There’s a hidden thief where my cursor is and he’s level 20, same as the one near Hector. I can’t kill either this turn, but I can kill both next turn if Hector stands on the staircase and therefore prevents them from fleeing. That’ll delay my win till turn 8 but let me kill those guys, plus steal the lockpick from the treasure-taking thief. 1 turn for 1200 gold and some XP seems like a good sell.  So first, Dorcas gets out before he dies.  Then Matthew takes the Dragonshield. I’ve decided to get the lockpick too and wait for turn 8, but there’s a problem: that enemy thief is badly injured and suicidally reckless. I need to make sure there’s a target nearby who can’t kill him.  So the solution is to take Matthew’s sword away. Since he’s unarmed, the enemy thief will want to target him. And he won’t be able to kill the enemy thief, so I’ll be able to steal the lockpick.  Hector blocks the stairs.  Canas kills one thief and nets a pretty solid level. More magic power is quite nice.  The enemy thief behaved exactly as expected! He attacked Matthew and therefore didn’t die, so now his lockpick is mine.  Fiora kills him for his Eclipse. I got all the treasure!  Florina injures the enemy thief.  And Canas lucks out and finishes it. I couldn’t have killed it without him getting lucky, but fighting high level thieves is pretty much always like that.  So now it’s turn 8 and I’m about to win.  She slipped away right before battle was joined- and note that unlike Uhai for example, Teodor seems to have had no knowledge she was here or orders to retrieve her. He was just after the prestige of killing Eliwood and the knowledge in this ancient library.  Lyn found her enraptured by a painting in one of the back rooms.   Everyone immediately assumes this is a picture of the Scouring- and that really tells you a lot about their culture. The very notion that one could do anything with dragons other than kill them is unknown at this point. It seems fairly clear that most people in Elibe don’t actually know- or at least think much about- the time of coexistence before the Scouring.  Lyn explains that no, it’s just one human and one dragon, not fighting. We don’t see this picture now, but 15 or so chapters later it will be the ending picture if you complete this level. Which is pretty awesome.  Eliwood recalls Teodor’s explanation of what these ruins are.  That is a very, very good question. Unfortunately, none of them ever find out the answer- let alone that that magic user was Nergal.  That’s the assumption we’ve been making, but actually Uhai and several others have said that that will not be enough: Nergal is far too powerful to be defeated. Hector and Eliwood have been pressing on ignoring those warnings.  Just after Eliwood leaves, Nergal arrives, apparently teleporting here by accident when he meant to go to the Dragon’s Gate. And he reveals that this was HIS home. That’s a huge twist the first time you play this level since it really sounds like it might have been Bramimond’s up till then. And it sheds new light on everything before and after this moment.  Yep, he confirms it. To be honest, I think it’s strange that the game makes no mention of Nergal and Bramimond knowing each other. Both of them studied the ultimate secrets of dark magic in the same place at the same time and Nergal went on to befriend Bramimond’s companion, Athos. Yet Nergal makes no mention of Bramimond or vice versa at any time and there’s no indication that they canonically interacted in any way at any point. To me it seems fairly likely that Nergal at least knew of Bramimond since they were practically neighbors and might have tried to follow in Bramimond’s recent example when he needed more power. But there’s no evidence either way for that.  This part is just perfect.    And then he leaves, mumbling about ‘power’ a few more times. This chapter is amazing. Fire Emblem 7 at its peak, even despite the infamous Aenir ambiguity. I mean, most of you veteran players probably read about these revelations long ago so they’ve ceased to impress. But think back to the way the game looked on your first time through Eliwood’s story. And then think about how this chapter completely changes everything we know about Nergal. Sure Nergal was a cool and threatening sort of villain, but there wasn’t much to him. He was just evil. People like Sonia were more interesting. As Athos explains things, Nergal more or less came out of nowhere as an incredibly powerful magician the match of Athos 500 years ago and then became evil in Arcadia and then completely inexplicably managed to lure Ninian and Nils through the dragon’s gate. But this is at best half the story. And think about that. The man’s greatest friend and greatest foe – who is also the wisest and most knowledgeable man in the world- doesn’t know anything about Nergal’s origins. Neither do his children. And neither does he. No one knows the contents of this chapter. No one: not Eliwood, not Canas, not Athos, not Nils, not even Nergal himself knows where Nergal came from- or what happened to the man he used to be. There’s something very sad about that. And it really gets worse when you consider what happened to him. To save his wife and protect his family, he willingly destroyed himself. But he didn’t get any of the things he bargained for. His wife was, so far as we know, never seen again- he probably forgot to even rescue her. He didn’t return for his children and they assumed he died and passed through the gate, now orphans. And a thousand years later when they were reunited, he was so warped and changed that neither of them recognized the other. He had, in fact, tried to murder his own children to steal their life force without even knowing it. And when that plan failed, he made them pawns in his scheme to do the same to other dragons. He tried to protect a dragon and save his family and in doing so became the greatest danger ever to his children and to all dragonkind- as well as the greatest source of evil in his own world. And somehow worst of all, that didn’t happen to him instantly. When he opened himself to dark magic 1000 years ago, he didn’t instantly become the nearly mindless, power-hungry Nergal we fight in this game. No, he was for at least 500 years still a reasonable sort of dark wizard- maybe he even thought he was the same person. He’d just lost all memory of his family and his own life without knowing it. And all grasp that he’d once had a purpose for the power he now wielded pointlessly. Poor guy. Total Restarts: 11 (I restarted this chapter once to figure out the enemy thief AI and get a good screenshot of most of the middle revealed) Turn Surplus: 0 (Could have made it with 1 left, but that lockpick was worth the wait). I’ve got plenty of time to build up for the next 0 chapter now. Things I Regret Missing: The lockpick on chapter 11, that darned archer on chapter 11, this one brigand who attacked Marcus on chapter 12, 2 more brigands who ignored everyone else to attack Marcus on chapter 13x, and 2 archers who ignored Hector and Dorcas (DORCAS!) to attack Marcus on chapter 14, like 10 more enemies I could have killed if Hector could have survived one more turn on chapter18, and Uhai who decided to take a 100% chance of death to Sain over a free hit on Hector Melth fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Mar 1, 2015 11:01
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You had one broken image tag and you used the "If only I had more power" shot twice, instead of Hector's level up. Still, good stuff! Also, after making it to that chapter last night, I have concluded that I'm probably never going to see the not-Guding Ring version of it. I like magic too much, Dorcas sucks, Bartre is just OK, and Guy NEVER seems to work out well for me.
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Mar 1, 2015 16:38
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About archers: Don't forget Lyn, Dorcas and Bartre!
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Mar 1, 2015 17:39
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You forgot Geitz.
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Mar 1, 2015 17:41
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Manatee Cannon posted:You forgot Geitz.
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Mar 1, 2015 20:05
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I think your assessment of people vs. dark magic is a little naive. Nobody ever looks at a hopeless crack addict and goes, "that is definitely going to be me in three years, but I'm totally okay with that." No, they're absolutely convinced that they can stay on top of it. They'll just take enough crack/learn enough dark magic to have a little fun/accomplish their goal. They can absolutely exercise moderation and keep from turning into a drooling collection of physical drives with no intellect or personality like all those other crackheads/shamans. In fact, as far as I can see, aside from the "limitless arcane power" part the only real difference between dark magic and actual literal crack cocaine is that Canas is self-aware enough to know that it's going to destroy him eventually and make peace with it since he doesn't have the willpower to stop. Also, Canas gets a pass on bad decision-making; according to one of his supports, his mother started teaching he and his brothers dark magic when they were around two and had basically no say in the matter. The fact that his own kid is absolutely terrified of the grimoires at the same age is weird to him because he was raised in an environment where "learn ancient secrets of magic that will warp your mind into a twisted parody of itself" is just a normal part of growing up.
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Mar 1, 2015 22:34
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Dr. Buttass posted:I think your assessment of people vs. dark magic is a little naive. Nobody ever looks at a hopeless crack addict and goes, "that is definitely going to be me in three years, but I'm totally okay with that." No, they're absolutely convinced that they can stay on top of it. They'll just take enough crack/learn enough dark magic to have a little fun/accomplish their goal. They can absolutely exercise moderation and keep from turning into a drooling collection of physical drives with no intellect or personality like all those other crackheads/shamans. In fact, as far as I can see, aside from the "limitless arcane power" part the only real difference between dark magic and actual literal crack cocaine is that Canas is self-aware enough to know that it's going to destroy him eventually and make peace with it since he doesn't have the willpower to stop. I think what you're missing though is that Teodor is deliberately letting dark magic destroy him. That's not a possible side effect that surely wouldn't happen to him; it's a step he regards as entirely necessary and not a big deal. He out and out says that "One's self is a small and insignificant sacrifice." And from what we know, it sounds like Bramimond might have had a similar attitude. Nergal was the only one who seems to have thought "It won't happen to me". Or at least not badly enough that he'd forget the people he was trying to save. The other issue is that as far as we're aware, studying Anima magic 1) is easier 2) is more respectable 3) is just as effective for achieving ultimate cosmic power 4) doesn't inevitably lead to death or worse. But yeah, Canas's mother is a psycho and Canas always thought that was normal until Nino pointed out that 2 years old way way too young to make one's son start studying dark magic.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:41
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