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Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!


The second additional chapter in Hector’s story (interestingly, the first additional chapter, Talon’s Alight, was precisely 10 main levels ago) is far easier than the first. It’s another breather chapter and quite fun, though it really doesn’t advance the plot in any way. On the other hand, it does tell us a fair amount more about the Black Fang.

People often say this chapter is sort of an homage to Genealogy of the Holy War’s style and chapters, though having played a few of those I wouldn’t say there’s really THAT much similarity. Yes, there are multiple castles on the map and you need to get a unit onto each one. That’s… about it. This is a very FE7 level in terms of actual design- relying more on difficult terrain and well-placed problem enemies than sheer size to create its pacing. And like on many FE7 maps as you’ve doubtless noticed, the air drop is king. Fittingly, this chapter presents your chance to get your 4th flying unit.


Chapter Summary:




Unlike Talons Alight, we definitely find out why this chapter only happens in Hector’s story- though the details are mostly revealed at the end. Hector began investigating the Fire Emblem’s location and believed an informant who was probably actually a Black Fang spy, while Eliwood distrusted the information and immediately suspected that the King or some other palace insider was probably responsible. Eliwood said they should just go directly to the royal palace, while Hector detoured south to this ambush.




Sonia is a darned competent adversary, unlike Ephidel. She knows we’re coming and she’s prepared a dangerous trap and she’ll dedicate any available resources to making sure it works. In this case, she seems to have either planted the false information to lead Hector here to begin with or got wind of where he planned to go and realized she could put together an ambush and possibly kill him.

And where Ephidel did things like throw away dozens of soldiers and refuse to commit the men and resources necessary to finish Eliwood while he had the chance, Sonia does things like free useful prisoners because they’re competent.




The man in question is a psycho named Pascal. He was the Count of Landskron in Bern until he apparently massacred all his villagers on a whim. Despite him being EXACTLY the kind of horrible noble the Black Fang likes to claim they oppose, Brendan Reed took him in and even made him one of the Four Fangs (Presumably, it is Ursula who eventually replaced him since we know the Reed Brothers were around from the beginning and Jaffar replaced Jerme) . But after he repeated his massacre the village to kill one target trick too many times, the Fang decided he was bringing them bad publicity or something and locked him up.




Pascal mocks the Fang’s supposed principles, seemingly recognizing that the Fang does not and never has actually abided by them.

And he’s quite willing to lead this ambush in exchange for his freedom.




Hector et al. have arrived, Lyn and Eliwood fairly confident that his information is wrong but willing to check just in case. And that’s when they realize they’ve been surrounded by most of a hundred warriors waiting in ambush.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again that the Black Fang demonstrates real competence on the intelligence, logistics, and propaganda fronts. As long as morons like Ephidel or Linus aren’t at the helm, they stay one step ahead of everyone- or even completely manipulate the whole party into a rather awesome ambush. And they do this despite three out of the four fangs having just been lost or incapacitated in a single day.

Shame they can’t fight worth a drat, but that’s exactly how Legault himself characterizes them: they’re assassins, not warriors, and they have to count on surprise or numbers.


The War Room, Part 27:

This is long overdue but I should finally explain what “HHM” bonuses are and how they work. To sum up, in Hector’s Hard Mode –and only Hector’s Hard Mode- every single enemy has bonuses to all of their stats. This obviously makes them more of a challenge without providing more XP (as upping the numbers or level of the enemy would do).

Like most things relating to stats in Fire Emblem, the bonuses are random. They are generated for every single unit when you first reach a new chapter (so you can’t alter them by just restarting, but you CAN alter them by saving in a different slot and restarting the previous chapter).

To understand how they work, you first need to understand how pre-bonus stats work. Essentially every (non-boss) enemy in the game has a base and a growth rate in every stat- just like your characters. However, these bases and growths are not unique for each enemy. Instead they’re the same for all members of any given class.

http://serenesforest.net/blazing-sword/classes/base-stats/
http://serenesforest.net/blazing-sword/classes/growth-rates/

Those two charts have the base stats and growth rates of every single class in the game. These apply to every enemy and ally who isn’t a named character since named characters have pre-defined stats.

The upshot is that even on, say, Eliwood’s normal mode no two enemy cavaliers necessarily have EXACTLY the same stats, but their stats are likely very similar.

If you know much about the growth rates of the actual characters, you’ll probably notice that the enemy ones suck in comparison. This is one reason that the game often becomes easier as it goes along.

So, on average, what might a level 11 male cavalier enemy have for stats normally? Well for each stat he has a base, plus he’s gained 10 levels, so on average he has his base + 10x his growth chances. The results:
27.5 HP, 8.5 Str, 6 Skill, 7.8 Speed, 3 Luck, 7.5 Def, 1.5 Res, and 9 Con.
Of course, enemies (other than bosses) actually pretty much always have 0 Luck regardless. Now here’s a level 11 Cavalier on HHM:




Well he has no luck (enemies pretty much never actually have luck apart from bosses), but he’s actually well above his averages- significantly so in many cases. Is that just a lucky cavalier? No, he has HHM bonuses! The simplified version is that his stats are 5 levels higher (the truth is more complicated, but pretty much the same on average). Just remember the 5 generic levels higher rule of thumb and you should be fine. So he has stats like a level 16 normal mode cavalier. Let’s check what those are supposed to look like:
31.25 HP, 10.25 Str, 8 Skill, 9.2 Speed, still actually 0 Luck, 8.25 Def, 2.25 Res.

As you’d expect, some of his stats are below that and some are above that. Enemies get RNG blessed or screwed same as your own characters. Here’s another HMM cavalier of the same level:




Different stats, but still similar to the averages. And something very similar happens to bosses. Note that each boss has their own predefined base stats for their level, but then they effectively gain 5 generic enemy levels for whatever their class is. Here’s the boss of this chapter to demonstrate:




He’s supposed to have 48 HP, 17 Str, 13 Skill, 10 Speed, 11 Luck, 13 Def, and 8 Res. His stats are higher than expected by just about the amount you’d expect for a guy gaining 5 generic paladin levels. Many guides and the Fire Emblem Wiki will list out HHM stats for various bosses and the like, but these are actually just averages and the real stats may- and probably will- vary. This rarely matters, but there are a few cases I noted- like Wire in chapter 11- where a single point more or less of a stat could actually completely alter the approach you need to take. Lastly, something similar applies to characters you recruit as enemies:




For example, this guy. On Normal mode he’s supposed to have 40 HP, 17 Str, 12 Skill, 13 Speed, 10 Luck, 11 Def, and 3 Res. You can see that mine is better by approximately the amount you’d expect for him gaining 5 generic warrior levels.

http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Geitz and you can see they list HHM stats for him which are similar to, but not quite the same as, mine.


So what does this mean? Besides that HHM is harder than the other modes, that is? Well actually it doesn’t really matter much at all beyond the early levels.

That +5 levels is pretty much a flat average bonus. Which means it makes up a decreasing % of the final stats of the people you face.

Early on, your people are underleveled and a point more of enemy speed might be enough to prevent them from doubling while 4 or 5 more points of enemy HP might well turn a convenient 2 hit kill into a more troublesome 3 hit kill. Later on you completely outclass most enemies, and a few more points makes no difference.

And it also means that characters you recruit as enemies like Guy, Raven, Heath, Geitz, Vaida, etc. are a bit better in HHM than in other modes. This is a small thing, but it does sometimes help. Guy in particular loves his potential 2 more Str and Heath benefits a ton from 1-2 more speed.


Now I mentioned earlier that the whole +5 levels thing is a simplification of the truth. I haven’t actually looked at the code to check the truth for myself, but I was told (and my cursory checks suggest it’s true) the following:
Each enemy unit does NOT use the exact same generic class growths for its HHM bonuses. Instead, each unit uses those growths x a random number from about .8 to about 1.2 (a different random number for each growth). Further, they don’t actually grow or not grow randomly for each level. Instead, the resulting randomized growth is multiplied by 5 and the unit just gets that- or gets 1 more point with the remaining fraction % chance. For example:

Maybe for cavalier 1 the random number is 1.1 for HP. That makes its ‘growth’ rate for the bonuses 82.5%. Multiply by 5 and you get 4.125 HP. So the cavalier DEFINITELY gets at least 4 HP over the normal mode amount and then it has a 12.5% chance to gain an additional 1 for a total of 5. If the random number was .8 then the ‘growth’ rate for HP would be .6. Multiply by 5 and you get a flat +3, so that cavalier definitely gains +3 HP.

So the upshot is that the bonuses only vary by about 2 or so at most, rather than the potential 5. Still, it's basically the same as the +5 levels simplification.


Battle Preparations & The Map:




Things are going well. I cannot stress enough that you should check this every single chapter. I certainly am, I just don’t redundantly post it again and again. You should also check after every single promotion and the like.

The stars alone don’t tell you that much though. So, you have to do some record keeping yourself.

For one thing, it’s imperative that you actually keep track of your turn budget for every chapter and your deficit or surplus, like I do.

Survival and Combat are generally non-worries of course.

For XP theoretically you just need to count up the total XP gained over the base level for every single one of your characters. So if my Bartre is level 6 with 74 XP and I know he joined at level 2, then he’s gained 474 XP. Needless to say, checking that for everyone is time consuming. A bigger problem is that XP gained in Lyn’s story doesn’t count, so you can’t get an accurate result unless you wrote down the exact level and XP each of your Lyn’s story characters ended at. Yeah, I don’t bother with that. Just assume that you’re always like 1 XP from disaster and do everything you can to gain more XP at all times. Unfortunately, this is often close to true.

Funds you should definitely check, though it’s a little tricky. Don’t do it the dumb way and actually total up the value of every door key and 2 use javelin in your item list and compare that to the total funds of each chapter you’ve done. No, let the game do the math for you. What you do is check that you have 5 stars, then use a promotion item, then check if you still have 5 stars. Repeat until you drop to 4. Restart the chapter without saving (or rewind if you’re on an emulator or whatever). Let’s say you used 5 normal promotion items with the last one dropping you to 4 stars. That means you’re between 40,000 and 49,999 in surplus.

If you need more accuracy, use 4 promotion items and then sell lockpicks (remember, each sale is -600 not -1200) until you drop to 4 stars. And then you can restart and continue that with cheaper and cheaper items.

Do remember to check the actual value of the items you’re selling, using, etc. You don’t want to get confused and think an angelic robe is actually worth 10,000 or forget that an Earth Seal is 20,000
And above all remember to restart or rewind without saving and undo all the wasted funds!

To demonstrate my technique (and in preparation for thinking about Farina), I executed it to nearly maximum accuracy this time.

I was able to use:
1 Earth Seal
5 stat boosters
And then sell:
1 stat booster
1 elixir
1 pure water
12 charges of vulneraries
And 7 charges of torches
That let me maintain 5 stars. One more door key dropped me to 4. The total value of that stuff is 61,900. So I’m somewhere between 61,900 and 61,924 over budget.

I worked hard and earned a lot of surplus, which means I can promote who I want - including being able to promote Eliwood. Still, I could lose that 60k edge in short order if I get sloppy and wasteful. Don’t make that mistake. Always reserve at least 10k of surplus- 20 is better.




Oh and Market is now a 6 star general.




Alright, alright, here’s the actual map. I was wrong last chapter about how rarely Lake terrain comes up, because that’s Lake too.

You can see that between the peaks and the rivers and the lake, the map is pretty much divided into three sections with one castle each.

To the southwest the ground is rough and everywhere you’ll need air units to get your troops around. The enemy doesn’t have much of an air force of their own, but they do have a whole battery of clustered ballistae. Even Heath will need to watch his step around that many.

While the real boss, Pascal is at the top left castle, the other two have well-equipped and leveled minibosses on them. That bishop’s purge is particularly troublesome.

Other than that, the enemy are quite weak and, even more helpfully, quite unvaried. There will pretty much only be pirates in the bottom left, pretty much only cavaliers in the top left, etc. So all you need to do is pick your hard counters to those unit types and let them go to town.

The only real surprises here are that a recruitable character will fly in on turn 5 and that the bosses move. This is pretty much unheard of for people who start on gates. Strangely, the bishop actually doesn’t seem to though, only Pascal and the Warrior. Perhaps the Bishop would too if not killed before its purge ran out.




So because that bishop doesn’t actually move, the true range of its purge is only out to the selected square. That’s much, much less troublesome.



Objective: Reach all 3 castles (Have any units you want wait on each gate)
Secondary Objective: Get the Elysian Whip from the village
Secondary Objective: Recruit Farina if funds aren’t a problem for you.
Secondary Objective: Do some shopping
Reinforcements: Many. There are some conventional early pirate spawns in the bottom right area to threaten the village and a few cavaliers from the top middle fortresses. Late in the map, 6 or so pegasus knights will spawn from the top right in pairs. Much more significantly though, gigantic swarms of units will be spawned out of the castles if one of your units gets close to them. 5 pirates will spawn at once from the bottom left castle, 4 monks for 5 turns from the top right castle, and 5 cavaliers for 5 turns from the top left castle. That’s about 50 reinforcements right there and they can easily swarm and overwhelm the unprepared- particularly if you don’t know that they’re triggered by proximity rather than time.
Turn Limit: 0 (It’s another 0 requirement chapter. This one is probably worth taking a decent number of turns on due to the vast amount of available XP)
Units Allowed: 10 + Hector. That’s more than enough, very generous of them.
Units Brought:
1) Hector. Required, but max level. He’d be highly effective against the cavaliers since almost all of them have lances, but plenty of other people can handle them too. There’s consequently not much for him to do but talk to Farina.
2) Canas. Primary healer and trouble-shooter.
3) Eliwood. The first lord promotion item is about to become available and I have enough funds that I can promote him if I want, so I’m going to get him the 30 XP he needs to hit level 20 on this chapter.
4) Raven. Essentially here for the same reason as Eliwood; he’s close to promotion and just needs a little more XP to get there. Plus training him a bit more will help me unlock Jerme’s version of chapter 27.
5) Erk. I gave Erk the Afa’s drops and now we’ll see if he can make good use of them. The huge horde of monks on the right flank is something he’s good at dealing with and that Bishop will be fairly ineffective against him too.
6) Guy. Yes, Guy is pretty bad and my particular Guy is terrible, but you see all those pirates and all those forests? THAT’S the kind of thing Guy is perfect for. He has the accuracy to guaranteed hit and the dodge to give the enemies 0 hit chance given forest bonuses and weapon triangle advantage. Plus only 1 pirate has a handaxe, so his inability to counter at range isn’t a problem. This is a great chapter to level him up 5 or 6 times to get more Jerme’s chapter XP.
7) Bartre. Yes, Bartre. Yeah he’s terrible, but he’s almost ok vs pegasus knights given some support. And, again with some support, he can take on those pirates in the lake one on one because they have enormous weapons that slow them down to just 1 point faster than him. Critically, the enemy is spread out enough and lacking enough in air power that he’ll never have to fight 2 or more at once if he takes beach guarding duty. And he’s extremely low level, so he’ll gain lots of Jerme’s chapter XP.
8) Florina. Recently promoted so I don’t want to use her much at all in combat, but with her shiny new 8 movement she’s now fantastic for rescue-dropping- and this chapter requires a lot of that.
9) Fiora. Like Florina only worse! But she gains slightly more XP than Florina so I will use her a bit and try to get her the rest of the way to level 20.
10) Heath. Better than every pegasus knight combined, my Heath is amazing. He’s also high level, so I won’t make a ton of use of him, but I will probably need him to efficiently beat the 30+ cavaliers in the top left because he has the perfect combination of stats to wipe them all out while taking minimal damage.
11) Ninian. Whenever you want to do mass rescue-dropping or train weak units, you should always bring Ninian. On this chapter she’s amazingly useful because Fila’s Might and Ninis’s Grace are absolutely perfect for dealing with vast hordes of one enemy type.
Notable Units Rejected:
1) Dart. It’s a trap! Remember, that’s not ocean- which Dart can move through well- that’s LAKE. He goes through it at 1 square per turn. It will take all map long for him to get anywhere. And he’s not much good vs monks to begin with. While he could be ok against the bottom left pirates or top left cavaliers, his glass cannon nature makes him poor at fighting such huge numbers too.
2) Dorcas. He wouldn’t gain as much XP as Bartre.
3) Priscilla & Serra. On this chapter, Canas alone can keep everyone in tip top shape pretty easily because most of my units won’t be taking damage at all. Priscilla also can’t really stand up to the ballista bolts that may be fired at Canas. And I don’t want either Priscilla or Serra gaining much XP at the moment since I need to make sure I get Jerme’s chapter.
4) Lyn. If I wasn’t trying to get Jerme’s chapter, she’d be great for the bottom left same as Guy and I could have sent her instead or along with him. But any XP she diverts from him would be a problem right now.
5) Legault and Matthew. They too could be good alternatives to Guy on the bottom left, but there’s nothing to steal so they’re not really worth bringing.
6) Rath. Almost no air units and the closed in terrain makes him not maneuverable enough to fight effectively. Plus, unlike last chapter, almost all the action will now be on the enemy turn.
Alright, I’m now flush with new equipment of all kinds. Everyone has a vulnerary again, everyone’s got plenty of iron weapons and javelins and the like. Merlinus is nearly overflowing, so several people are carrying gems and promotion items and the like.
Raven has a steel sword along with his iron one for when he just needs a bit more power, as does Eliwood and Eliwood also has a Longsword in case it helps with the army of cavaliers.
Since he’ll be fighting a long time alone against many enemies he takes several hits to kill, Erk has three or 4 anima tomes.

This formation is optimized for quickly getting my forces onto all 3 fronts at once. With 3 air units + Ninian I can drop 2 people wherever I want immediately. Heath and Ninian are positioned to drop Erk on the right and Florina and Fiora can drop Guy on the left- while also taking down a problem enemy for him as you’ll see.

I want Eliwood leveled before Raven just to make absolutely sure he does hit level 20, so he’s in the lead where he can immediately aggro the ballistae and start running them out of ammo, take down a pegasus knight, and provoke the top left reinforcements into spawning. Raven will come up behind him soon after, as will Canas, while Bartre deals with the pegasus knights and pirates one by one.




As the battle begins, Florina reminisces about her other sister. And… for some reason she’s standing light right behind Fiora while she does.
Fiora points out that Farina isn’t here so it’s kind of weird and pointless to bring her up right now when they have a battle to fight.


The Characters:




Another one of Florina’s sisters who doesn’t look like her, Farina is confident and skilled but greedy, kind of an irresponsible loner, and a bit of a black sheep in the family. She’s also kind of embittered against previous employers as a mercenary and expects to treated to be treated with contempt or as expendable.
Most of her supports consist largely of her being greedy and trying to trick or manipulate them out of money or treasure and assuming everyone else is the same. Honestly, she ends up looking like kind of a joke character all in all, though her supports with Hector do at least give her a motive.

A lot of people talk like Farina is by far the best pegasus knight, but really she’s not that different except in terms of much, much better Def. Her strength lead is small, though not insignificant, and she kind of lacks in speed compared to them but will still get plenty eventually. So overall yes she’s better, but not by that much.
She does compare favorably to non-HHM Heath defensively because while her HP is lower, their Def is comparable and her Dodge and Res are better. On offense she has some serious trouble competing with his massive str and ability to wield heavy weapons. And of course with his HHM bonuses and earlier join time, Heath will generally be much better than her. In fact, he’ll be faster than her when her iron lance penalties are factored in.
Ultimately, she is definitely worth using in non-ranking runs despite her late join time, but the trouble is that she charges you 20,000 to join. I’ll get into why that’s definitely not worth it as she arrives.




Called “The Beast” when he was one of the Four Fangs, Pascal is a vicious psychopath who massacres whole villages of people on a whim. So of course he fit right in with the rest of the Black Fang for a while- and this was back in the pre-Sonia days. Pascal is really the proof that the Black Fang was never not horrible and that everything they say to the contrary is just wishful thinking or propaganda. And he’s quite aware of that, and mocks the Fang hypocrisy.
He’s a pretty fun antagonist while he lasts and it’s a shame we don’t see more of him in my opinion.

Other than sucky Res, Pascal is a decent upgrade over Eubans, but really not as much as his +8 or whatever it was levels should get him. He’s pretty tough and hits reasonably hard, but is basically not a threat. Eubans was already easy to deal with and in the chapters since then, my characters have gotten a lot stronger.
That said, you need to know that he moves. If you don’t know that, he will ride right off his gate and run up and instant kill one of your weaker people




Even if they’re not in the front line thanks to that spear! But yes, being the only boss in the game who’ll move off a gate is a nifty trick. Lloyd will pull a similar but even more horrible version of this technique later on as you may see, but Pascal is the first to do anything remotely like this.

Playing Through:




First thing, I move Eliwood into range to get all 3 ballistae to fire at him. He has the Def to take it and I need them to run out of ammo ASAP. Once they do, my flyers will rule the skies. I also need him to immediately aggro and kill that pegasus knight so that she won’t threaten Bartre next turn.
Furthermore, in this square he’ll cause the massive cavalier reinforcements to begin spawning immediately. The sooner they finish spawning, the sooner I can finish the map and it’s a 0 chapter so speed matters a lot.




Those ballistae are a serious threat to Bartre, so I need to stay out of their way while letting that pegasus knight hit him.




I’ve said time and time again that it’s important to check the inventory of all enemies while deploying. One reason is so you notice any stealable goods. Another is so you notice all boltings and sleep staves and so on. And lastly you need to notice things like reaver weapons or super-effective weapons. Or worst of all, both! This pirate has a Swordslayer. This is an axe that is like a swordreaver axe except more accurate, cheaper, and super-effective vs mercenaries, myrmidons, etc. It’s a truly fantastic weapon and it will eat Guy alive if you send him out here and don’t know this pirate has it.

What I need to do is make him fight one of my lance-wielding pegasus knights and immediately die while still dropping Guy in range of the ones with normal axes. My formation was carefully designed to let me do that.




But that pegasus knight had better stay out of ballista range! This square right here is the sweet spot. No ballistae can fire on it, and the swordslayer pirate can reach it.




As I’ve said before, you should have your infantry who will be rescue-dropped start behind the cavalry and then move in front of them. That’s what I’m doing here.




So Florina carries Guy and then Fiora takes and drops him. He’s in range to trigger the pirate reinforcement spawns too, just as intended.




And since she’s a mounted unit, she can keep right on moving and get to this ideal square right here.




Now Erk. I need to use Ninian and Heath to drop him, but I need Ninian to stay out of the displayed pegasus range so that the pegasus goes for Bartre instead.




Erk is already positioned for Heath to pick up of course.




With Ninian’s help he reaches the spot next to the vendor (which will grant Erk a minor terrain bonus) and stops to re-equip both of them. In particular, I need Erk to have Thunder equipped instead for this particular round so he can 2-hit kill that pirate.




Heath gets out of range of all the enemies so they’ll go for Erk.




Even Guy can handle this one! It’s idiot proof!




Well decent. My Erk has had great Magic and Res but sucky speed so far. At the present, as he’s about to fight dozens of monks, that’s just what he needs.




Suddenly cavaliers!




And pirates! For some reason, every single one of them has a hammer. So… no threat to Guy AT ALL. Sweet.




Erk gets a Divine. Up till now I’d fought several enemies with them but could never have acquired one myself. It’s not really helpful at all though. Most non-lightning light tomes weigh WAY too much so they slow Lucius and Serra down horribly. It also costs an absurd 100 gold per shot and does very little bonus damage compared to lightning. Really, pretty much any tome that isn’t fire, thunder, flux, lightning, or luna is terrible.




Shamefully, Bartre is too weak to even 2-hit kill a pegasus knight. Oh well, this kind of thing is what Filla’s Might is for.




Actually pretty good. Bartre’s growths are quite nice, mine was just unlucky.




There isn’t much for Hector to do but move in to talk to Farina when she arrives.




Wow! My guy had gained 0 Str and Def up till now but how he got both at once.




Eliwood moves into a convenient forest JUST outside of Pascal’s range to take on the first few cavaliers. There’s really no ideal chokepoint on this level for dealing with them. You’re pretty much going to have to either use 2 people and have only 1 get terrain bonuses or get no terrain bonuses and fight enemies who have them or stand way further back than you want to.




Fiora and Florina are too high level to use much, so I can have the two of them do things like just repeatedly rescue-drop Guy around.




This location will let him aggro the bottom pirates sooner-otherwise he’d be boxed in by the ones near him for a while since he can’t kill them fast.




There’s the enemy purge range. Again, the bishop doesn’t move so the true max range is where I put the cursor. I’m going to want to waste those Purge shots so Erk doesn’t have to tank them, but unfortunately Heath is just short of being able to take 3 hits himself.




Sweet! This is a very unusual Erk.




Turn 3, I put together my wall and heal Eliwood up. Notably, Raven has an iron sword rather than a steel sword equipped. With the steel sword, he would kill the enemy cavaliers with his double attacks. This would allow like 10 of them to attack him in sequence, killing him. With his iron sword he stops just short of killing them so he only has to fight 1 (plus the ballistae). He can take that many hits just fine.




Ninian buffs Bartre to deal with the pirates, now I want to rescue-drop her back out of pirate range so that the pirates go for Bartre rather than her.




The enemy attacks and Bartre finally gets a proper Bartre level.




And suddenly Guy is amazing. Too late, man! After I get to Pale Flower of Darkness you will never again see the light of day!




Solid. It’s all the not-quite good stats but at least it’s all of them.
Compared to his level 20 averages, my Eliwood has:
+.8 HP, +.45 Str, +1.5 skill, +.4 speed, +4.45 luck, +2.3 Def, +4.45 Res
He’s actually above average in everything, though not by that much in some of the important stats. Oh well, pretty sweet all in all.




Did somebody order THIRTY CAVALIERS?
Actually it’s 23 or something but this is only turn 4 so there’s another 12 or so on the way. So this is the main challenge of this map really. That many cavaliers with steel lances could kill ANYBODY if the person had to fight them all at once. I can fight them just a few at a time at this chokepoint, but then it will take me like 30 turns to finish this map. Plus the enemy will reach the 50 unit cap and stop spawning anything so I’ll miss out on XP.

No, what I need is a way to make a character do the impossible and actually take on like 30 cavaliers at once and live.




Last turn Heath moved into Purge range both to start soaking up the enemy ammo and to finally begin the monk spawning. Now he needs to get back out of there since the Purge didn’t miss.




Well Eliwood reached max level so I don’t want him fighting anymore. Time to switch things up.




Eliwood pulls back and Raven takes his protected forest spot.




And Ninian gets an awesome level while allowing Heath to move into Raven’s old spot. He’ll have to take some ballista shots, but he can survive that.




After getting healed that is. Now critically, Heath can actually 2-hit kill those cavaliers with an iron lance and doubles them, so they would all go for him and he would die thanks to 30 iron lance hits and the 3 ballistae, except that they would much rather go for Raven who they can hit much harder.




Farina pops up.




Guy gets another great level. Suddenly he’s on a roll.




Did you think it was a lot of cavaliers last time? No, that wasn’t a lot of cavaliers. THIS is a lot of cavaliers. More on the way! Now it’s turn 5 and I don’t really have more time to kill, so I need to start thinning them out immediately. If you’ve been reading the previous logs carefully, you might already know what I’m going to do.




Man, even 2 cavaliers can really do a number on Raven if they hit. Better heal him up. Thanks to Canas’s awesome magic power, even a heal staff restores a lot of HP in his hands.




Heath actually gets out of there, rescue-dropping Canas with Florina’s help.
Now Eliwood moves up to this precise spot.




Raven pulls back a square to this one space semi-chokepoint and takes Eliwood’s more durable steel sword. This means that he’ll 2-hit kill those cavaliers, so he’ll have to fight every last one of them with each doing 12 damage.




Ash nazg gimbatul!




Well now that’s the Guy we all know again.




Raven gets just the kind of level up he needs right now.




Look at him taunting that poor sap who now does 0 damage to him!




13 cavaliers down. Unfortunately, he missed one of them on the forest earlier so he can’t continue fighting with his next steel sword. That was enough progress for 1 turn though.




Yeah, this is the weirdest Erk I’ve ever seen, but I like it.




So Farina tries to join up at the beginning of turn 6, charging an exorbitant 20,000. I don’t have that, so she decides to just loiter in the area in case I decide to sell my treasures and hire her.




Pegasus knights have begun spawning. They’re kind of a problem for Erk so I want to have one of my own flyers intercept them, but I can’t do that as long as the ballistae are still operational- which was why it was so important to start running them out of ammo early.




Ta-da! Just in time.




I still have a ton of cavaliers to kill and this longsword would save some time, which is why I brought it.




But I’ve got a better idea. Raven did ok, but now watch the master at work!




That warrior moves! I’d forgotten about that until I got to this point.




Fiora kills some enemy pegasus knights for a pretty solid level.




Heath meanwhile is invincibly killing ALL the cavaliers and gets another great level up. He’s really a speed demon isn’t he? With HHM bonuses he’s supposed to have about 14 now- still more than enough to double these guys, but much lower.




Fiora still really can’t handle enemy pegasus knights well so I have to pull her back after a single round and heal her.




And Ninian dances, so she can fly another sortie immediately. This will let me eat up more Purge as well as keep those darned pegasus knights off Erk. You may also have noticed that Bartre hasn’t been doing anything lately. That’s because those darned enemy pirates keep walking back and forth instead of getting to shore. I’d like to have him go for the cavaliers and finish a few of them instead, but I need him to stay where he is to lure those pirates back so he’s kind of stuck.




Another good level for Guy. He’s actually AHEAD of HHM Guy in Str now. Which still kind of sucks as you can see. Plus getting blessed so late in the game really is not helpful when he was a worthless load on my team earlier.




Man, my level ups on this chapter are pretty great in general. Erk finally starts getting some speed again.




Alright, so I could totally raise the cash to recruit Farina by selling these 2 spare hero crests and Erk’s white gem. Honestly, she’s worth 20,000 or so. It’s a high price to pay, but she’s a very valuable unit. What’s more, she’s fairly low level and easy to train so she’s great for your XP ranking- which is really the hard ranking to max most of the time.




But it’s a trap! You should NEVER recruit Farina on a max ranking run! A fair number of people make good arguments for why she’s worth 20,000 and they’re probably right. What’s they’re missing is that she actually costs 40,000! 20,000 in cash requires selling 40,000 worth of stuff to acquire. Or alternately put, you could use the silver card to buy 40,000 worth of assets with that 20,000. Nobody is worth 40,000 just to get on your team. That’s enough money to promote 4 other people who would otherwise have to be level 20 and uselessly unpromoted in the end game. The 50,000 total required to buy and then promote Farina is enough to pay for using DART and he’s way better but totally not worth that price!




There hasn’t been much to report about Erk other than that he continues to slowly fight the hordes of monks. It’s about time I tried to push through to that village though.




Hector delivers my message that we don’t have and are not going to acquire 20,000 so Farina storms off.




I’d rather Bartre fight that pirate who finally got to shore from here.




So Heath could kill this archer from here, but the trouble is that he’d then be attacked by the 2 archers AND a cavalier AND Pascal. That would kill him by 1 HP. Yeah, he’s tough. You know what he CAN survive though?




Yeah a total of 3 archer hits with steel bows is no problem for him. Now as I mentioned before, Pascal moves and with the cavaliers all dead, it’s time I aggroed him and prepared to end this.




…. Best Heath ever!




Best Erk ever! Granted he’s still slow and more fragile than he should be, but that’s an absurd amount of bonus magic power and resistance.




Guy finishes the warrior off.




And Florina and Erk prepare to get that village and then kill the bishop.




Meh, not so good. She turned out well though. As I mentioned in her early levels, her gains of strength and no speed at first were very bad back then but meant she would turn out very useful later.




Holy cow!




To take down Pascal, Raven needs some more damage.




And Heath finishes him off.




AWESOME!




Fiora doesn’t have a javelin because I don’t want her taking Erk’s kills here, so she takes the whip and then moves on up.




Guy takes the fortress. I think it’s turn 9 now.




So Erk took more hits to kill those monks than I expected since I didn’t actually have a chance to have anyone else help him and he actually broke or nearly broke all 3 of his anima tomes. I don’t have a silver card ready, but I am NOT going to repeat my stupid greedy mistake of not buying Canas fluxes.




Bartre gets another actually good level. Too bad it’s too late.




Nice! You know, these are pretty much the best level ups I’ve ever seen. Believe it or not, I actually had a reputation among my FE playing friends for winding up with amazingly terrible characters. Now almost my whole team is turning out great or at least average.




Now Raven is almost level 20, which is one reason I pulled him back and had Heath do most of the cavalier fighting. These last 2 kills should take him to 20.




Amazing.




Alright, now I could have won a turn or two ago but I’m delaying my win to get more XP.




Yay! There’s the speed Erk needs. Now he’s almost average in that stat.




With that done, Florina takes the second fortress.




And raven takes the last one. I couldn’t kill those 2 remaining pegasus knights because of Bartre suckage, but just 2 guys aren’t worth another turn- unlike the 5 o 6 guys I killed by waiting till this one. Unfortunately I don’t think I took a screen shot of what turn it actually is now. I think 11.




As usual, Lyn criticizes Hector.




As usual, she’s unjustified in doing so since she evidently didn’t realize this was a trap any sooner than he did. And as usual, Eliwood politely tells them to stop pointless arguing and get out of here before a second wave or something comes.


Total Restarts: 15 (On my first attempt I used Filla's Might and an iron sword for Raven vs the cavaliers while keeping him on the forest. It had about 70% odds of success- more cheaply and with more cavaliers dead too- but he died to the last cavalier)
Turn Surplus: 14 (I THINK. Actually I appear to have lost the screenshot where I checked what turn it was at the very end. This is the worst case estimate.)
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, the chance to finish shopping properly with my silver card on chapter 21, the armorslayer that I have acquired if not for a stupid minor mistake on chapter 22, and these 3 wyvern riders who decided they preferred a 0% chance to hit Isadaora and then 100% chance of death against her to fighting a low level Heath, those 2 pegasus knights at the end of Crazed Beast that I just didn’t have enough time to feed to Bartre.

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Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.
I will never not laugh at the Church of the Black Fang. The Pegasi, fine, Ilians who broke away and sought out the fang, the cavs and fighters? makes sense, the entire horde of Monks? Hilarious.

Sorites
Sep 10, 2012

Why is lake harder to traverse than ocean? I don't understand that at all. It's such a weird design decision.

Shiki Dan
Oct 27, 2010

If ya can move ya toes ya back's fine
Salt water being easier to float in?

But then again, the waves and currents still should make swimming in the ocean much harder.
Unless pirates/corsairs have a secret way of turning the currents their way to make sea travel faster (much like mages being able to magically move sand from their feet in deserts)?

Or maybe pirates are meant to actually WALK on water like in their battle animations and the waves help them go faster?

Sorites
Sep 10, 2012

Is anyone else shocked to learn how late into the game you can use low-level characters? I would never have imagined a Level 9 Guy dominating a segment of a map on Chapter 25, even with all circumstances rigged his way. That's one of the biggest surprises I've had this LP.

xxlicious
Feb 19, 2013
I'd be interested in the tabletop FE rules.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.

Sorites posted:

Is anyone else shocked to learn how late into the game you can use low-level characters? I would never have imagined a Level 9 Guy dominating a segment of a map on Chapter 25, even with all circumstances rigged his way. That's one of the biggest surprises I've had this LP.

In FE7 and 8? oh absolutely the enemies are complete pussies in this game.

Now FE6?



Not so much

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Onmi posted:

In FE7 and 8? oh absolutely the enemies are complete pussies in this game.

Now FE6?



Not so much

Not so much, but it's still true to some extent. As a general rule, it's easier to start using weak characters the LATER in the game you get as long as you have at least a few good characters to help them.

Enemies don't really scale up that well in most FEs but they start giving loads more XP. Meanwhile, you have much more gear and many more special abilities to choose from. And just as importantly, you have a more dominant position in general since you can have fleets of powerful air units and cavaliers or paladins or whatever on hand to drop people around or snipe problem enemies (like Fiora did with the swordslayer pirate in this case for example) and best of all often a dancer or heron or whatever.

The exception of course are chapters when the enemy has either masses of long-ranged spells or a huge mobility advantage due to fleets of wyvern riders on desert maps and the like.

Ephraim225
Oct 28, 2010

Melth posted:



This really is an FE4 shout-out. Look at how many Cavaliers there are! Now all we're missing is the surprise Wyvern floods.

Dr Pepper
Feb 4, 2012

Don't like it? well...

Sorry this run no longer counts.

You recruit everyone. :colbert:

Lord Ephraim
Feb 22, 2008

That's one way to get ahead in life, but nothing beats an axe to the face.

Dr Pepper posted:

Sorry this run no longer counts.

You recruit everyone. :colbert:

All characters recruited Hector Hard Mode Max Rank are the only runs taken seriously. Restart that chapter.

Also better start leveling up Bartre. :getin:

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Lord Ephraim posted:

All characters recruited Hector Hard Mode Max Rank are the only runs taken seriously. Restart that chapter.

Also better start leveling up Bartre. :getin:

It doesn't count unless you kill Vaida actually. All else is secondary.

Because my goal with this LP is to show people how they can do their own HHM max ranking run well, I'm not deliberately doing anything stupid like recruiting Farina (or killing Vaida)- and I said so much earlier in the thread. It IS quite possible to max rank HHM while getting Farina though and I've done it before. You can see from my funds calculations in fact that I easily have the margin of error to do it on this run. I'd just need to not promote Eliwood and probably Raven basically.

I saved my Unfulfilled Heart file in a separate slot for this reason though. When I've shown how to win this the smart way, I'll play through these last few chapters again with Farina recruited.

But don't worry, Bartre is getting his levels and I might well decide to go for recruiting Karla.

Melth fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Mar 15, 2015

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!


Yeah… I’m not actually sure just who this title is referring to. There are several candidates.

It’s the last chapter for a while that’s pretty much just a really huge battle without any fog of war or other craziness complicating it and it’s pretty epic. It’s also the first chance to promote a lord.


Chapter Summary:
Eliwood leads the way and the group splits up near the Bern palace, hiding while the three lords sneak in past the terrible security. In the palace gardens they witness some unpleasantness in the Bern royal family and then see King Desmond secretly meet Sonia, learning that she has indeed hidden the Fire Emblem on his orders in the black fang’s secret giant mountaintop fortress. As they’re leaving, the Black Fang locates Ninian and Nils and attacks the scattered group all at once. The leader of the Black Fang is one of Bern’s royal wyvern riders, empowered personally by Nergal. She turns out to be bored really easily and just leaves with her forces after a while, giving the others a chance to regroup and track her to the Black Fang fortress.




On with the plot!




But what about castle Ostia?! Their defenses are impenetrable!




Lyn is impressed enough with the supposedly impenetrable defenses that they’re about to have no problem with to decide Eliwood is probably right that the Kind arranged to have the Fire Emblem stolen himself.




For once this ISN’T an inexplicable enemy cutscene, Hector and Lyn and Eliwood are actually in some bushes 10 feet away watching this because the security in castle Bern really is amazingly terrible. Guinevere and Zephiel get along great and Zephiel stopped by against his father’s orders to give her a baby fox he found as a present. Which is… totally irresponsible. But she loves it.
Oh and does anyone know why the heck Murdock has Con TWENTY in FE6? Hawkeye only has 16 and he’s so huge that Hector mistakes his shadow for a patch of actual shade and can barely believe he’s human apparently.




She runs off to play with her new terrified and non-domesticated baby animal and then King Desmond chews Zephiel out for stopping by to see his half-sister.




With Zephiel gone, the king wonders why he hates Zephiel despite knowing he really is his son.




Unlike Ephidel, Sonia actually gets people. Perhaps Nergal made her think she’s human to encourage her not to just dismiss them like Ephidel did.




They discuss the exact plans for what she should do with the Fire Emblem and she assures him that it’s squirreled away in their secure, secret, giant, mountaintop fortress.




And then it comes out that King Desmond has hired the Fang for another mission, killing someone unnamed at the moment. But the two agree that they should not kill this mysterious someone’s bodyguard, Murdock. And Murdock is the bodyguard for the prince. And the person Murdock is guarding is the one the King wants killed. And he’s hired the Black Fang to kill the one he wants killed.
The heroes were perhaps too distracted by the last revelation to pay attention to this one, so they don’t catch on to the obvious fact that the Black Fang is going to try to kill Zephiel]/ on the king’s orders until next chapter.




And now we find out why Nergal’s Black Fang is doing all this for the king in the first place, they want him in their debt so Nergal can use him in his plans.




She leaves and Guinevere happens to leave the new fox Zephiel gave her with her dad and then runs off. Since he’s jealous that she loves Zephiel more than him, he orders some random soldier to kill the baby fox. Being a soldier in this country sounds really traumatic.




I know! The poor baby fox…
Oh, he meant that the Black Fang already seems to have got the king on their side.




Outside, Ninian and Nils – the two most important people to protect- have been left unguarded and they get to talking about Hector, perhaps the only person Nils says anything nice about other than Elbert. And really Ninian talked more about Elbert.




The two of them are really obvious to everyone but Hector it seems. Hector is a dyed in the wool Eliwood/Lyn shipper as established in 13x.




Foreshadowing. I like the siblings and their various secret conversations.




Ninian goes off to be alone and Nils is immediately attacked by a wyvern rider- he’s terrified that he couldn’t sense her approach like he usually can impending danger.




Lyn and Hector emerge from the palace at that moment and come running to challenge this attacker and she claims not to be Black Fang, but actually loyal to the royal house. Honestly, her behavior on this chapter is rather out of character for her given that.




"We're surrounded. That simplifies the problem!"

I guess this might sort of by the explanation for how they’ve avoided detection so far. They’ve actually been traveling spread out in small groups, but we just haven’t been actually told that.


Battle Preparations & The Map:




It’s time to promote my level 20 people. Bear in mind that you shouldn’t promote most people you get to level 20. Most you should just stop using forever. But I’m going to need all the full power flyers I can get later on.




Interestingly, promotion tends to give you whatever stats you DON’T already have. Pegasus knights gain huge HP and some def and str. Wyvern riders gain speed and resistance at the like. Regrettably, Heath is about to hit his speed cap, but at least his Str and Def are really great.




Raven is another special case since he’s the best infantryman in the game and benefits a ton from promotion. Being able to use handaxes is just amazing. Heck, even just iron axes are pretty sweet as long as we’re fighting mainly wyvern riders.




And here’s the map. It’s pretty huge and it’s REALLY mountainous so any of your non-air units will have trouble getting around. On a map this big and this busy, you probably shouldn’t count on being able to do many air drops. No, you’ve got to just get your formation right to begin with. Every corner is going to see significant enemy spawning so you’re going to end up with a three-four front battle as things stabilize.

Other than the initial forces, pretty much everything you fight on this chapter is going to be a wyvern rider. They haven’t leveled up much so they’ve gone from a huge menace that were like minibosses to fight to almost no threat to anyone but Lucius or other really low level defenseless people. Except these wyvern riders have iron lances, not steel, and that makes them WAY more accurate AND significantly faster. Yeah, these ones are upgraded significantly.

This map is actually a lot simpler than the Eliwood’s story version where there was important stuff to steal. Now you don’t have to worry about that and can just kill whatever you need to whenever you need to.

What’s key is getting the top group reinforced without depriving the bottom crews of forces they need. You have no control whatsoever over the top forces formation or characters and they can’t really handle the number of enemies they’ll be up against. You COULD just commit your flyers there immediately, but really what they need is more magic- preferably someone strong but unpromoted who can therefore still gain some XP.

Now the enemy attacks from everywhere, but they don’t attack from everywhere at once or very hard from anywhere. That makes this a surprisingly good chapter for training your weak characters on. That said, the sheer size of it means you’re going to need to bring a fair number of promoted units just to have one on every front in case of emergencies.




The biggest thing to watch out for is the boss’s range. Unless you’ve been seriously arena grinding AND were massively stat-blessed, she’ll kill just about anyone in two turns and there’s no escape from someone with 8 flying movement speed. Don’t aggro her without a reason.



Objective: Survive 11 turns.
Secondary Objective: Get the Hammerne from the bottom left village.
Secondary Objective: Kill Vaida for honor and glory.
Secondary Objective: Do some shopping
Reinforcements:.Dozens of wyvern riders in fairly irregular patterns, spawning from every corner of the map for the first 10 turns or so. Notably, almost all of the later reinforcements are from the bottom corners, but early on they’re coming from everywhere at least some of the time. There are also a pair of shamans from the top left around turn 4 or 5.
Turn Limit: 11 (And there’s no way to end it early, so as usual for survival chapters you take a -1 turn penalty to your tactics)
Units Allowed: 11 + Hector + Eliwood +Lyn +Pent +Louise (More than any chapter up till now!)
Units Brought:
1) Hector. Required, and actually fairly useful. You may remember from way back when I could actually use him that he was very good against wyvern riders and could kill the slow ones in one round. Well now they’re all faster and these ones finally have iron lances instead of steel, so now he just does really heavy, really accurate damage that definitely won’t kill them. Fantastic for training weak people!
2) Eliwood. Required and about to turn the corner and become the awesome unit he was born to be. He can finally be promoted as of now. Of course, as a promoted unit I don’t want to use him much, but he’s very hand here.
3) Lyn. Required and absolutely terrible for this level. However, the top group has NO ONE else good to give XP to, so you might as well find a way to use her.
4) Pent. Required and pretty great as usual. I’ll mostly be using him for healing duty so he doesn’t eat up any valuable XP that could go to someone else.
5) Louise. Terrible on a level that plays completely to her strengths. That’s about all you need to know about her really.
6) Erk. Wonderful now that he’s properly leveled, Erk is my only unpromoted character- and quite possibly my only character period other than Canas- who can one-round kill these wyvern riders. Mine got a huge enough Mag and Res blessing that he’ll be pretty good for dealing with those top left magic users too.
7) Raven. Now that he has axes, Raven completely dominates wyverns, though mine is one Str short of one round killing them. Which is perfect. With handaxes, he can also back up the bottom units against the nomads if those prove to be a problem for my weak characters.
8) Canas. Here as a primary healer and the only guy on the team who can definitely 1 round kill wyvern riders no matter what if need be.
9) Fiora. She’s much tougher than Florina but actually now has the same Str, so while she’s still no darned good against wyverns, she’s still better than her sister. I expect to need her to do the shopping and she can also reinforce the top group if they run into trouble.
10) Priscilla. With this many people, I definitely need a second healer. Mobility is nice here too. Of course, her being 1 hit from wyverny death at any time is a nuisance.
11) Heath. It’s an air map, he’s my best air unit. He’s also the only person I have who can tank Vaida- due to his insane speed actually. I’ll need him as a distraction for that alone.
12) Ninian. Actually less useful here than on other chapters since I just have so many guys running around and don’t have much rescue dropping to do, but I did still bring her. Always handy.
13) Rath. It’s a map of nothing but wyverns and some archers and such. Rath is quivering with anticipation.
14) Lucius. Mine is still juuuuust fragile enough due to his sub-par even for Lucius HP and Def gains that a wyvern with an iron lance can instant kill him, so he’ll be a bit harder to train than usual. Still, he’s fantastic on offense and this level will be good for training him.
15) Dart. Remember how an 8 level lower Dart took on like 20 wyverns solo? Yeah, he loves this chapter. It’s also my last good chance to train him up before Night of Farewells when I want him to be very good.
16) Bartre. Well he’s still not very good even after his last few level ups, but if he gains a single point more speed than these wyverns won’t be able to double him. Once that happens, he’ll be able to train up and significantly boost my XP score here. Plus that will make Jerme’s chapter a lock. Going into this chapter I only have a 300 XP lead toward it.
Notable Units Rejected:
1) Dorcas. I can finally train Bartre enough for him to pass Dorcas once and for all. And I don’t really have another slot for a weak person to train with so many already on the team.
2) Serra. No need for a third healer when Pent has the top covered.
3) Legault and Matthew. Horrible vs wyverns and there’s nothing to steal. Their day will come.
4) Wil and Rebecca. I actually did wonder if I could manage to use one of them here, but I ultimately decided there wasn’t space on the team and I already wanted to funnel most of the kills other people did the work for to someone else (Bartre). If your Bartre is already leveled, this is actually a fantastic level to pull one of them out and earn massive XP.
5) Guy. Even with his amazing luck last chapter, he doesn’t stand a chance against wyverns.
6) Florina. I already have way more promoted units than I want, no way was I bringing her too.
7) Kent. I did actually consider him as a great XP booster, but he’d be even less effective than Wil and Rebecca and I didn’t have space for either of them.
8) Sain. I already have enough promoted units and he’s overleveled. At this point, Raven is more useful anyway when I don’t need 8 movement. Sain’s day is coming too…

Now Pent and Louise both need some equipment traded to them pronto so they don’t have to use their Elfire and Physic and Silver Bow respectively. That means you have to give some kind of good bow, basic anima tome, and a heal staff to Lyn and Hector and Eliwood. But Hector needs 1 inventory slot open so he can immediately trade the Heaven Seal to Eliwood.
I gave Lyn a steel bow (Rath needs my only iron one) for Louise and gave Hector a Heal staff (leaving one space open) and Eliwood a thunder tome as well as an iron lance and a javelin. As you’ll see, this all works out perfectly.

Erk has a Guiding Ring (and a heal staff) in case he makes it all the way to 20 on this chapter. He’s positioned to make a run to the top left to take down the magic users and wyverns there since he’s the best unpromoted person for that job.

Rath as usual is loaded up with 4 different bows so he can customize his attack to be whatever level of damage I need.
Only the right group actually starts very near many enemies, so I put all my weak units who I want to train in that group and the promoted units that will be spreading out everywhere in the middle group far from the enemy.

No one has the silver card to start with since I don’t know who I’ll send shopping (if anyone) and I want to make sure I can change that on the fly as I found out.




You believe wrong, ma’am.




Pent finally hands the darned thing over. If only Hawkeye wasn’t an idiot we could have promoted Eliwood long ago.


The Characters:




“ I am Pent, Count Reglay of Etruria.” –Pent, Chapter 23x

At long last, the infamous green unit joins the team!
To be honest, I kind of feel like Pent is a bit of a Gary Stu and I’m not too fond of him. He’s an incredibly powerful wizard whose skills and fame apparently wow even Canas (not to mention win him the constant praise of his student Erk), is probably the second most powerful person in Etrutria after the king, is the only student Archsage Athos ever took, is universally respected and looked up to by his fellow noblemen despite being free-spirited and adventurous and non-traditional, and apparently pretty much every eligible woman in the country wanted to marry him, oh and Sain actually stops chasing his wife when he realizes she’s married to him. Pretty much everyone spends all their time being amazed by him and his knowledge and power and skill, even people who should really regard him as something like an equal- like Eliwood or Canas.

It’s hard not to agree with their assessment though. The guy really is as great as people say. Unlike most pre-promotes, he’s actually pretty much just better than most unpromoted people of the same class trained up to his level. He beats or matches Erk in pretty much every stat, particularly when one considers his much higher con. Lucius beats him in Mag and Res but that’s pretty much it and is WAY behind in many stats, including Con once again. Priscilla… yeah. She’s still Priscilla. Same with Serra. Don’t even bring up Renault.
He and Canas are basically the same unit, with their only significant stat differences being in things that don’t matter. Yeah, same stats as Canas. That says a lot doesn’t it? But Canas is still WAY better than him because Canas has dark magic instead of anima.




Pent does have the edge of being the best staff user in the game though. Seriously, he starts with an instant A and the magic power to use it. Ok, ok, Athos is better. But Athos doesn’t count! For his staff mastery alone, Pent will see a decent amount of use.
Also, note that he starts with an instant A support with his wife. This is actually one of his greatest weaknesses in a non-ranking run, but in a ranking run is only a boon –albeit a minor one.




Just to drive the point home, he even starts with one of the best staves in the game (This makes 3 total physics for me, which is pretty much the ideal number to have, just as planned).




“Despite what you may think, I shoot much better than I dance or sing.” –Louise, Chapter 26

Pent’s wife, Louise is a somewhat more interesting character. I’d say I liked her if she wasn’t so totally defined by her status as Pent’s wife most of the time. Still, she does have some pretty good supports with other people.


Her stats are terrible, her class is worse. She’s not even good at killing air units.




“Make this last awhile, will you? I want to enjoy this!!” –Vaida, Chapter 26

Vaida is probably the evilest person to eventually join your team in this game. She’s a murderous, brutal lunatic and really comes across as pretty much a female version of Valter from Sacred Stones a lot of the time.
She’s allegedly all about her loyalty to the king of Bern… but actually her actions constantly contradict that. I mean for starters, she voluntarily deserted and fought other soldiers of Bern rather than commit an atrocity (why the hell did she care when she kills people for fun?). Then she sorta joined the Black Fang, a group that definitely doesn’t have the king’s best interests at heart. Then, when she was finally doing a mission that benefitted the king, she abandoned it halfway through just because she was bored. Which might have had something to do with her just kind of sitting there watching other people fight instead of helping out herself. And then the KING tried to assassin Zephiel using the Black Fang, and she kind of should have known that since she was always talking to inner circle Black Fang members. So what does she do? She flies off to join the people who foiled the king’s plan as they go mucking about in an area of Bern outsiders are NEVER supposed to be allowed to reach alive.
For no adequately explained reason, she calls Heath a turncoat when she attacks him even though he was one of her men and they deserted together and in fact he only escaped alive because she stopped to hold off the other soldiers for him.
Honestly, Vaida is NEVER in character. She’s a complete mess and her role in the story is pretty pointless and annoying too.

But she’s a darned good unit! Wyvern riders are almost always the best or among the best units in their games and Vaida is no exception. Even though she’s a pre-promote, she actually looks pretty good next to Heath due to her tremendously high Def. Her slow speed and high Str make her perfect for injuring enemies without killing them while her massive Def and great HP and huge movement mean you can send her anywhere and she’ll come out alive. Ballista bolts just ping off this woman and she even has a great comment on the archer-filled chapter 31 to the effect that bowmen are nothing to her.

As a boss, she’s the most powerful thing in the game that isn’t a dragon. Look at those huge base stats and the enormous bonuses on top of them. She will double your fast units. She will kill anything you have in 2 hits. And she’s invulnerably tough.



And with this Spear equipped, there’s no way to get free hits on her or anything. (This spear is the “uberspear” of legend, the massive stat bonuses which in-story are from Nergal are actually from this supposedly normal spear. People who are cheating and making teams for multiplayer love to grab this spear off her using the mine glitch).

Anyway, you don’t need to fight Vaida but you CAN kill her. You can even do it without arena abusing and the like, though you’d have a lot of trouble on a max ranking run. The key essentially is to get at least one VERY strong and fast person (at least 20 speed she she can’t double him)and give him a handaxe or the like and put him on the fortresses in her range. As long as you can actually inflict damage every turn, you can wear her down. Dart is great for this kind of thing. Anyway, no one can beat her without healing (other than a very lucky Canas of course). But you can’t use any healers nearby or she’ll kill them instead. So what you have to do is use 1-2 people with Physic staves loitering outside her range. With Ninian dancing for them, just one will do. Anyway, start fighting her early since she can take a while to kill. With the fortress and the physic staff, you should be able to outlast her.
You could also put Filla’s Might on Canas, give him Luna, and pray for a lucky crit. That’s the simplest method.

But of course killing her is a bad idea. Don’t do it. If you do, you don’t get to recruit her later on.


Playing Through:




Alright, the first order of business is to kill these 3 enemeis with these 4 weak units + Ninian. There’s pretty much only 1 way I can do it, but it works great.




The archers have steel bows so Dart can wreck this one.




Thaaaaaaat’s Dart! Like Raven, he is a master of the left side of the screen.




Using the woods for cover, Rath weakens the archer.




Ninian gives Filla’s Might to Lucius. The myrmidon has a steel blade, so he’d instant kill Lucius in melee but Lucius can double him with lightning. With Filla’s Might he’ll now be able to kill him.




Not so good. Still, I think that extra 1 point of HP was all he needed to not be instant killed by most wyvern riders with their iron lances!




And Bartre finishes the archer for a good level.




Now to the top front. It’s just like old times! I can’t control the starting formation or even what units appear and no one has the right gear, so I’ve got 1 turn to trade things around to get my act together.




Lyn gets in position to lure that brigand, one of the few enemies on the level she can beat even with mine’s nice stat blessings. Then Louise takes her steel bow.




Next Hector takes the thunder tome in exchange for his new Heaven Seal. That means both items Pent needs now belong to one character, so Pent can take both at once.




I move Eliwood next to where Pent will go to trade and THEN promote him. Pretty good gains statistically, if nothing spectacular. The important thing is he now has access to lances and 7 movement. THAT’S sweet.




Pent re-equips.




And because I repositioned Eliwood, Pent can now heal him of his promotion-induced injuries. XP is XP.




Now to the middle group. Erk makes his run to the left. If I’m lucky, some of those casters will aggro to him instead of Lyn after the brigand blocks off the spot right to the left of Lyn.




Priscilla heals Heath’s promotion-induced injuries. I guess being struck like 20 times by lightning probably does hurt.




And Canas does the same for Raven as the two of them hurry to assist the weak units on the right.




Beginning of turn 2. Look at that cloud of wyverns! I can’t let them get near Lyn and Louise or I lose, so Eliwood is going to distract them immediately. I can reach that nearby fortress, but remember that that’s actually in Vaida’s range so it’s a no-go and I’ll gave to go without it. Eliwood could take on like 20 wyverns now no problem anyway though.




Lyn finishes off the brigand for a good level.




This mess is my turn 2 top formation. Pent is meant to lure in a couple of wyverns so that I have fewer to kill on turn 3. Hector doesn’t really have much to do, nor does Louise. Fiora has flown in to assist.




Heath meanwhile grabs the village before a brigand can get to it. Now he has plenty of time to get to wherever he’s needed. Ursula is almost as out of character here as Vaida is, willingly betraying the Black Fang out of petty jealousy of how much attention Vaida is getting from Sonia at the moment. She later demonstrates that she’s really a Black Fang true believer and even willing to let herself be killed because the Fang’s rules say she must. So… what the heck? She gives Heath a precious Hammerne staff and sends him on his merry way.




On the bottom front, I used the newbs to eliminate a few enemies. No one leveled up, but they’re pretty much all close again. But now they’re in trouble because Bartre or Lucius would each die to 1-2 attackers and there are 3 in range.




I check the enemy speeds and figure out that only one nomad can actually double Bartre with his steel bow, so Raven kills that one.




Canas blocks for Lucius and now everything is fine. Only the nomad can hit Bartre and he can’t double. Meanwhile, Priscilla acts as bait for this brigand so that he won’t get stuck attacking the invincibly dodge-y Merlinus and can instead by killed convenient.y




And enemy turn! Eliwood is looking pretty darned great now that he has a weapon other than swords.




Turn 3. Wow, there’s just wyverns everywhere!




Well Erk can hopefully bait 1 or 2 since he looks squishy but is actually monstrously powerful. On this fortress they don’t have a chance against him.




Yeah, even with a wyrmslayer and a forest Lyn isn’t good at killing wyvern riders who’ve already been injured. This is a very good Lyn. She’s still terrible.




So I had Hector weaken it and then let Lyn kill it with an iron sword instead. This mess is my new top formation. Getting ridiculous sprawls like this is close to unavoidable on this map where you keep having to take the offense in different directions every turn.




In the south, Bartre kills the knight who Raven just barely left alive with his handaxe for a fantastic level. Ladies and gentlemen, my Bartre has just come back from his awful starting levels and is now officially above average (if only slightly).




I really want to feed all the XP I can to him, so Ninian dances for him. There’s only 2 targets this turn, but due to the terrain and positioning it’s surprisingly hard to kill them both with weak units while also accomplishing my secondary goal of getting more heal XP.




Heath comes flying back.




Rath finishes the brigand after Lucius weakens it and gets a classic Rath level.




On the top left, Erk has to deal with a Luna shaman. Even in the hands of an unpromoted enemy fighting against a guy on a fortress this thing is deadly.




I was unable to actually kill that nomad (without just letting Dart get it) so I trapped it for Bartre to kill this turn. And poof, a bunch of bottom right wyverns spawn. There will be 2 of these pretty much forever.




Everyone, break left! Got to get out of wyvern range.




The lead wyvern actually has a javelin. Which means if I make Rath and Canas the only people in his range and put Rath at the edge, he’ll actually go for Rath and get shot heavily.




Are you surprised to know that there’s still dozens more wyverns up here? You shouldn’t be. Fortunately, the reinforcements are MOSTLY done there.




Everyone else pulls back and Eliwood tanks the swarm from the safe fortress.




Whoo, more wyverns!




I’ve decided that Fiora will do the shopping and Heath will do the luring away of Vaida, but Heath needs to bring Fiora the silver card and something to sell for cash first. Divine will work.




Canas cures the wound the brigand gave Priscilla earlier. Got to keep your fragile characters at tip top HP.




That’s an awesome level up for his trouble.




I’ve said before that one use remaining weapons are fantastic tools. In this case I’ll use one to feed a nomad to Bartre. Raven would kill the nomad in 2 hits with any weapon, but with this he’ll just guaranteed get it to low HP.




And it was well worth the trouble. Now my Bartre is actually fast! For a Bartre that is.




Rath and Lucius fought off the wyverns and a brigand, though another wave of wyverns is coming. A halberd is like a longspear or horseslayer but better because it’s an axe. I bought one from a secret shop back on Four Fanged Offense but two will be very nice to have.




Erk keeps pushing on. That sage will actually be his greatest challenge since it’s really high level and heavily armed with an Elfire.




Uh oh. This wave of wyverns decide to fly south instead of west as usual. They might be making a run for my weaker characters.




Yes, that’s something of a threat. Plus there’s the shamans now for the top group.




Erk finishes off the monk who attacked him, and you can see he was heavily injured by the safe last turn. He’ll PROBABLY still win this. That level will help a bit.




I was right! With that one point of HP earlier, Lucius is all grown up and can finally survive a single enemy attack.




Yeah I checked the numbers and because of that wyvern they’re not so good. He needs a physic to get out of this alive with more than 60% probability.




Not the kind of level ups I promoted you for, man.




Raven cleared a path for Dart to go over here alone while the really weak characters stay bunched up. Dart alone vs bunches of wyverns. I feel like we’ve seen this one somewhere before. But this Dart is much higher level.




I need to get Raven back in the action. Ninian gets another great Ninian level up.




I’m flying Heath in to intercept part of that wave that was going for my bottom characters.




Lyn kills a shaman for a bad level.




This is pretty much the plan for the ensuing 4 turns or so of 2 wyverns with iron lances. Bartre on a fortress will aggro and weaken them, then Lucus and Raven and Bartre will finish them off and Canas and Raven and Ninian and Priscilla will rescue drop the fragile people back out or the like.




Surprisingly, that one stupidly went for Raven when it had a perfect shot at Bartre. They just love to die.




And more wyverns on his side too. I’ll just keep chopping.




Heath finally reaches Fiora and gives her the silver card and Divine to sell.




Another solid level for Bartre as he finishes a nearby wyvern.




Not so good for Dart, but he already has what he needs.




MORE wyverns on turn 9! This is the last top spawn though.




Nice! Rath and Lucius and Bartre continue to kill the bottom wyverns as fast as they spawn.




What I’d like actually is for Bartre to get into that mountain Raven is on and pull everyone back a bit. Then there’d be no risk of other people aggroing the wyvyerns as they fired away. Unfortunately I don’t really have time to get him there. This turn I’ll just rescue-drop Ninian back out of range so my rhythm isn’t broken.




Turn 9, Heath moves to just outside Vaida’s range so he can lure her next time.




Pretty good, Lucius!




Pretty bad, Bartre! I was actually enjoying that 0 res.




Turn 10, that’s her range. I’d really like to step onto the fortress- which would normally be in her range. But two of her minions are currently blocking the spots she’d need to fire from and since she goes first, she wouldn’t be aggroed. I’ll need to be one square closer instead.




Erk is in a forest hoping to get some more wyvern fighting action while everyone else stays out of range of most of them and Fiora gets as close to the stores as she can this turn.




Vaida apparently forgets she deserted with him and was his commander at the time and she saved his life and meh whatever the woman is just nuts.




Turn 11, no more wyverns spawned so I can actually kill everything.




Because I couldn’t pull Vaida that 1 square further away, I can’t actually shop safely at the armory. The vendor is still fine because Fiora can keep moving after shopping, but at the armory that still leaves her in range.




Since window shopping takes no time, I still looked at the inventory. Pretty awesome stuff, but not for a max ranking run and I already have enough javelins and handaxes.




And nothing good I need here either. Darn. There have just been no door keys offered and now I really need some.




Well even if she’s not shopping, she can at least get some XP off the remaining wyverns.




BORED NOW! Yeah, she leaves even though she could totally win just because she’s bored. What an idiot. Also WHAT ground forces? All she has left are those 2 wyverns right there who started next to her and didn’t move till I’d lured her away.




Sure is a good thing Vaida is nearly as incompetent as Ephidel.




Ninian and Nils explain where her massive power came from –and why they couldn’t sense her presumably, Nergal is wise to their abilities and cloaked her from their powers it seems. Everyone realizes this means Nergal is nearly back to full strength. Uh oh.




Lyn proposes an excellent idea. We really need to get back to their fortress to find the fire emblem, and what better way than by tracking them?




And Lyn is a Sacaean, so she knows all about hunting and tracking, so she leads the way. That’s the end!


The last chapter wasn’t a stupid and pointless filler level, it was a fairly interesting and clever filler level that told us a fair amount about the black fang and was fun. THIS was a stupid and pointless filler battle. The dialogue and story advancement themselves were good, but the battle was utterly pointless and the villain was completely out of character and stupid. This game has no problem with massive numbers of cutscenes in a row in different places over the course of several days with no battles in between them at other points and it works well, they should have just done the same thing here and skipped this absurd and boring fight.


Oh, here’s an interesting house conversation though:







This woman met Market when she was traveling and down on her luck and took Market in for a while.




And apparently Market is already semi-legendary from leading some OTHER people’s group to awesome victory.




Most interesting of all, the conversation actually changes a bit if you go back a second time. Makes me wonder how many interesting changing house conversations I’ve missed out on. I also wonder if perhaps the woman’s assessment of Market’s skill in the first conversation would be different if I wasn’t doing so well. Maybe someone could check that.

I really do find Mark/Market to be a rather interesting character. Kind of like Hawkeye I appreciate the unresolved mystery of it in a gamethat really makes a recurring theme of mystery and the power –and problems- that knowledge brings.


Total Restarts: 15 (No problems here).
Turn Surplus: 13 (As always you lose 1 on survival chapters that don’t end if you kill the boss).
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, the chance to finish shopping properly with my silver card on chapter 21, the armorslayer that I have acquired if not for a stupid minor mistake on chapter 22, and these 3 wyvern riders who decided they preferred a 0% chance to hit Isadaora and then 100% chance of death against her to fighting a low level Heath, those 2 pegasus knights at the end of Crazed Beast that I just didn’t have enough time to feed to Bartre.

Cake Attack
Mar 26, 2010

"Despite what you may think, I shoot much better than I dance or sing.”

which raises the question of just how bad she is at singing and dancing

Krumbsthumbs
Oct 23, 2010

2nd Place.
1st Loser.

Cake Attack posted:

"Despite what you may think, I shoot much better than I dance or sing.”

which raises the question of just how bad she is at singing and dancing

So far the only person in the group who is a better archer than her is Geitz, and that's not by much. She's fairly competent, just overshadowed by her husband who actually lives up to his hype.

I wonder if Geitz can dance or sing better than she can.

MightyPretenders
Feb 21, 2014

Vaida vs Heath here is probably just her putting on a show for her men, so as to distance herself from her own history. It'd never work, but no one ever said she was smart.

And this chapter is the only hint we have as to what the tactician was up to in the year between campaigns. Considering Lyn first found them not far from the Sacae/Bern border (Considering how often Bernese bandits drop by) perhaps they were investigating something related to why they were there in the first place.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

Also, Heath left Bern and joined a mercenary company in a different kingdom, while Vaida stayed and joined the Black Fang, who are regarded heroically in her country. Even if she's just fooling herself, she's chosen the option that keeps her nearest what she holds dearest, given her choices.

Not sure how you explain a time limit in this scenario. Maybe Vaida felt the magic from Nergal's buff fading?

Arbitrary Coin
Feb 17, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
2nd Battalion
Regarding your comments about Pent I always got the impression he was super unpopular in court given his "loving off to other countries at the drop of a hat while being a top military general" but he's the magical combination of

A) being born into an ancient and prestigious noble family
B) honestly be that damned good

that no one can really do anything to him short of assassination, which wouldn't work since he'd just toast the assassins.

Though the entire drama around him marrying Louise never rang that true since you can have Eliwood and Hector marry random mercenaries or in Eliwood's case some random street dancer (as far as anyone else is concerned). Maybe Euturia is more uptight about that though.

Nihilarian
Oct 2, 2013


Arbitrary Coin posted:

Though the entire drama around him marrying Louise never rang that true since you can have Eliwood and Hector marry random mercenaries or in Eliwood's case some random street dancer (as far as anyone else is concerned). Maybe Euturia is more uptight about that though.
Priscilla is from Etruria as well (though she was born in Ostia), and 2 out of 3 of her paired endings end with her and her would-be beaux parting company because their stations are too far apart. So that's probably what they were going for.

Nihilarian fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Mar 15, 2015

Zulily Zoetrope
Jun 1, 2011

Muldoon

Arbitrary Coin posted:

Though the entire drama around him marrying Louise never rang that true since you can have Eliwood and Hector marry random mercenaries or in Eliwood's case some random street dancer (as far as anyone else is concerned). Maybe Euturia is more uptight about that though.

Priscilla is Etrurian as well, and her romances have an unhappy ending because she can't marry commoners. Except in Erk's case, who is just barely important enough thanks to being Pent's student.

Keldulas
Mar 18, 2009
I find it hilarious to have a side-by-side of Louise and Pent, because it just loving empathizes how bad the gap between the two prepromos is. Not only is it sage vs sniper, but Louise doesn't have ANY stats that are better than her husband's.

Granted, due to how useful Sage can be and the starting A in staves, I honestly think Pent would still be fully usable if they outright swapped stats, which doesn't help the power comparison here.

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.
Vaida was planned as Heath's sister, they changed that before final release. Not important to anything, just neat trivia. Heath also had a support with Wil that basically amounted to "Archers are awesome and dangerous and I'm totally more scared of them than Nomads"

i81icu812
Dec 5, 2006
Looking good!

No discussion about how the mine glitch actually works?

Aerdan
Apr 14, 2012

Not Dennis NEDry

i81icu812 posted:

No discussion about how the mine glitch actually works?

He's not planning to use it, per the OP, so why would he explain it?

Blaze Dragon
Aug 28, 2013
LOWTAX'S SPINE FUND

Onmi posted:

Vaida was planned as Heath's sister, they changed that before final release. Not important to anything, just neat trivia. Heath also had a support with Wil that basically amounted to "Archers are awesome and dangerous and I'm totally more scared of them than Nomads"

So he had a FE6 support, then they realized this was stupid and removed it. Thank god. We don't need another character whose supports all amount to "HEY YOU'RE WEAK TO ARCHERS".

alakasam
Sep 15, 2011
The mine glitch is pretty simple. All you have to do it lay a mine in the path you know an enemy will take, just as they step on it but before they take damage, so a soft reset. (l+r+a+b i think) When you load back into the game, the enemies will be under your control for a turn, allowing you to do things like have them trade away all their weapons or rescue each other.

Fionordequester
Dec 27, 2012

Actually, I respectfully disagree with you there. For as obviously flawed as this game is, there ARE a lot of really good things about it. The presentation and atmosphere, for example, are the most immediate things. No other Yu-Gi-Oh game goes out of the way to really make

alakasam posted:

The mine glitch is pretty simple. All you have to do it lay a mine in the path you know an enemy will take, just as they step on it but before they take damage, so a soft reset. (l+r+a+b i think) When you load back into the game, the enemies will be under your control for a turn, allowing you to do things like have them trade away all their weapons or rescue each other.

Or at least, that's the main, most commonly known form of the glitch. Turns out, we have recently found that this can ALSO be done with ANY tile that has a special effect, whether it's a lava spout tile, or even just a tile that you happened to use the Torch Staff on. Check it out, here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C_Tn5pXO_o

Bam! Now all of a sudden, Fog of War maps are a thousand times easier!

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Lotish posted:


Not sure how you explain a time limit in this scenario. Maybe Vaida felt the magic from Nergal's buff fading?

She just says "“Pah! I’ve had it with being pushed here and there! Withdraw!! Ground forces, pull back! And move quickly!!”"

So she pretty much just gets bored and leaves.




MightyPretenders posted:

Vaida vs Heath here is probably just her putting on a show for her men, so as to distance herself from her own history. It'd never work, but no one ever said she was smart.


Trouble is her men in this chapter are Black Fang, not Bern soldiers. So calling Heath a turncoat and such makes her sound like a Bern army loyalist to a group that isn't actually the army of Bern and probably don't want to be working with someone who isn't loyal to the Black Fang.

i81icu812
Dec 5, 2006

Aerdan posted:

He's not planning to use it, per the OP, so why would he explain it?
Need for more war room topics.

Also makes S rank funds a LOT easier.

Aerdan
Apr 14, 2012

Not Dennis NEDry

i81icu812 posted:

Need for more war room topics.

Also makes S rank funds a LOT easier.

Well, yes, but if you're cheating why not just give yourself infinite gold and be done with it?

Manatee Cannon
Aug 26, 2010



Krumbsthumbs posted:

So far the only person in the group who is a better archer than her is Geitz, and that's not by much. She's fairly competent, just overshadowed by her husband who actually lives up to his hype.

I wonder if Geitz can dance or sing better than she can.

As far as the admittedly low standards for archers go, she's probably the worst in the game.

weso12
Nov 19, 2014

Lurker, Sims 3 LPer, Bored College Student

Aerdan posted:

Well, yes, but if you're cheating why not just give yourself infinite gold and be done with it?

Theirs a difference between entering a cheat and exploiting a glitch, it's the reason that speedruns take advantage of glitches, but not cheat codes, while I can understand that taking advantage of exploits is less "pure", and I completely understand why Melth doesn't want to take advantage of the mine glitch, but you aren't actually modifying the systems in any way when you use the mine glitch just taking advantaging of the developers oversights.

Honestly considering the facts mines are basically worthless unless your using the mine glitch, and that you get so few mines, it honestly creates an interesting a strategic choice of the when to use your mines. (Though the torch staff thing kind of ruins that).

Also was the mine glitch well known when the game first came out? Because if it was known before FE8 came out, it's rather surprising that the developers didn't fix it for FE8, considering that the glitch is far more exploitable there (Everyone using dark magic, the ability to repair your weapons, Myrrh using monster weapons etc.). Actually now that I think about it I wouldn't be surprised if not only they did know about, but expected players to use it, after all what other reason is there for Stone giving weapon EXP, and giving 5 weapon exp for that matter.

MarquiseMindfang
Jan 6, 2013

vriska (vriska)

weso12 posted:

Actually now that I think about it I wouldn't be surprised if not only they did know about, but expected players to use it, after all what other reason is there for Stone giving weapon EXP, and giving 5 weapon exp for that matter.

I'd be more inclined to say that Stone was Dark Magic at some previous point in development. There's been an instance of a dark magic petrification spell before, in FE5, so it's not unheard of. Gorgons could have been supposed to be magic users at some previous point, like skeletons can use normal weapons.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

weso12 posted:


Also was the mine glitch well known when the game first came out? Because if it was known before FE8 came out, it's rather surprising that the developers didn't fix it for FE8, considering that the glitch is far more exploitable there (Everyone using dark magic, the ability to repair your weapons, Myrrh using monster weapons etc.). Actually now that I think about it I wouldn't be surprised if not only they did know about, but expected players to use it, after all what other reason is there for Stone giving weapon EXP, and giving 5 weapon exp for that matter.


I'd bet it's just a bit of sloppiness that would never matter without a glitch they didn't know about. They just didn't make weapon XP 0 for that one weapon because they didn't notice it wasn't 0 and why would it matter anyway?

You could just as easily argue that they meant for you to use the mine glitch in FE7 because why else would they make Ereshkigal wieldable by absolutely anyone including people like bards? It's just a little oversight or mistake that would never come up under circumstances they knew about.

Ryushikaze
Mar 5, 2013

Fionordequester posted:

Or at least, that's the main, most commonly known form of the glitch. Turns out, we have recently found that this can ALSO be done with ANY tile that has a special effect, whether it's a lava spout tile, or even just a tile that you happened to use the Torch Staff on. Check it out, here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C_Tn5pXO_o

Bam! Now all of a sudden, Fog of War maps are a thousand times easier!

Hah! PWASE lives on! I coined that just so I didn't have to type out something longer when writing out that FAQ.

The Torch Staff one is new by me, but I knew about the lava tiles long ago. I just thought everyone did.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Ryushikaze posted:

Hah! PWASE lives on! I coined that just so I didn't have to type out something longer when writing out that FAQ.

The Torch Staff one is new by me, but I knew about the lava tiles long ago. I just thought everyone did.

Oh, so you're the one who wrote that FAQ?

You know, a few years back I tried really hard for quite a while to get the glitch to work without a PWASE since that's supposed to be possible. Specifically I wanted a Wretched Air for a postgame Myrrh I believe.

I could never get it to work. I even used the emulator's frame by frame option and reset on every single frame one by one. No luck.

Aerdan
Apr 14, 2012

Not Dennis NEDry

Taking advantage of flaws in a game's programming to give yourself advantages the programmers didn't intend for you to have is cheating, whatever justification you try to make. The only difference between abusing glitches and using PAR (or GG or whatever) codes is that glitches can be used in-game. Speedruns may set whatever conditions they want, so it doesn't really matter, but trying to claim that abusing glitches isn't cheating is sophistry, plain and simple.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Aerdan posted:

Taking advantage of flaws in a game's programming to give yourself advantages the programmers didn't intend for you to have is cheating, whatever justification you try to make. The only difference between abusing glitches and using PAR (or GG or whatever) codes is that glitches can be used in-game. Speedruns may set whatever conditions they want, so it doesn't really matter, but trying to claim that abusing glitches isn't cheating is sophistry, plain and simple.

In what meaningful sense CAN you even cheat in a one-player game though? It's not like anyone else is unfairly disadvantaged. There's nothing wrong with using cheat devices or glitches or whatever you want if you like playing that way.

But I'm not writing a let's play about the optimal way to use glitches to win, nor am I doing one about how to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women via arena grinding or several other perfectly "allowed" in-game options for making things easier.

Manatee Cannon
Aug 26, 2010



This is more an argument of semantics than anything, really. Using a glitch in a single player game is still, by definition, cheating. To call it anything else is wrong. Whether or not cheating in a single player game matters is a completely different argument.

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weso12
Nov 19, 2014

Lurker, Sims 3 LPer, Bored College Student

Manatee Cannon posted:

This is more an argument of semantics than anything, really. Using a glitch in a single player game is still, by definition, cheating. To call it anything else is wrong. Whether or not cheating in a single player game matters is a completely different argument.

While I know I should drop the conversation, especially because I'm literally going into semantics right now I feel should point out that by the dictionary definition, act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination, glitches (or even cheat codes) in a single player experience aren't really cheating.

While exploiting glitches is certainly gaining an advantage, I'd argue you can't ever be "unfair" in a single player experience and your not lying or deceiving anyone when using glitches, I while I understand that glitches match some peoples definition of cheating, saying that glitches in a single player game match the dictionary definition is sophistry.

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