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Dr Pepper posted:I had no idea Harken existed for years because I always got the Karel version of the stage. You can get both on either version of the stage, the conditions are just slightly different. For this one you have to unlock 4 doors before Turn 9 or something to get Karel, and for the other version of the chapter it's based on how many promoted magic users you've killed.
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Mar 19, 2015 04:38
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yeah i know you can get either but i only ever tripped the karel conditions on the other pale flower
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Mar 19, 2015 04:47
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Those Afa's Drops seem to be agreeing with Erk. That's the best I've ever seen him do.
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Mar 19, 2015 04:48
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I always remembered liking Sonia for whatever reason, but it is good to get a reminder as to how her character is. Playing through the game, I remember that she was really the only villian I liked, one main part because she gets a lot of screentime not hidden behind conditions to do her thing. Ephidel just did whatever the plot mandated necessary to keep dropping breadcrumbs, and Nergal is really boring without any of the additional backstory you see in the extra missions.
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Mar 19, 2015 05:21
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The good Fire Emblem villains are: Alvis Trabant The Black Knight, but only in Path of Radiance that's all, excluding some fun minor antagonists
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Mar 19, 2015 05:33
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I'd add Camus to that list. Awakening's entire Valm arc is in a weird limbo where it's bad but there's so much that could have been done to make it legit good and I can't keep canon and fanon straight any more. (The fanon versions are better)
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Mar 19, 2015 05:38
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I liked the guy with the mustache in Awakening. Cervantes or something.
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Mar 19, 2015 05:43
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Cake Attack posted:The good Fire Emblem villains are: Take note that both Alvis and Trabant are from FE4. Yeah, FE4 for lyfe.
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Mar 19, 2015 05:45
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Cake Attack posted:The good Fire Emblem villains are: Personally, I HATED the Black Knight. One of my least favorite characters in anything ever, and then they somehow made him worse in Radiant Dawn. You have to work darned hard to make a black knight lame, but they managed it somehow. For me, Lyon sold Sacred Stones. He was the only thing that made the plot good in my eyes. So I regard him pretty highly.
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Mar 19, 2015 05:46
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Manatee Cannon posted:I liked the guy with the mustache in Awakening. Cervantes or something. You don't have to kill him either. He's a subboss on a map where defeating Walhart wins the battle. I like to believe that if you leave Cervantes alive, he survives to live on, perfecting the best mustache in the world. I can skip out on the Dragonshield.
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Mar 19, 2015 05:52
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Melth posted:Personally, I HATED the Black Knight. One of my least favorite characters in anything ever, and then they somehow made him worse in Radiant Dawn. You have to work darned hard to make a black knight lame, but they managed it somehow. Aw, what makes you say that? I actually plan on voicing him in a fan dub if I can ever perfect the voice. Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 06:00
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Manatee Cannon posted:I liked the guy with the mustache in Awakening. Cervantes or something. yeah he was why i added the fun minor antagonists part, he owned but he wasn't a major villain or anything
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Mar 19, 2015 06:10
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David Corbett posted:Take note that both Alvis and Trabant are from FE4. also ishtar, not writing wise but mechanically because loving ishtar man charging you down the thorhammer like every other map
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Mar 19, 2015 06:11
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Melth posted:Personally, I HATED the Black Knight. One of my least favorite characters in anything ever, and then they somehow made him worse in Radiant Dawn. You have to work darned hard to make a black knight lame, but they managed it somehow. Why do you hate the Black Knight? For me he did exactly what he was supposed to do - make you crap your pants every time he showed up to fight. He's like Nemesis - you can't kill him. You can only run. However, I don't like the voice they gave him in the cutscenes. They gave him this raspy voice, when he should have had Jamison Price or someone else with a nice baritone voicing him.
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Mar 19, 2015 06:16
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So I was going to post Battle Before Dawn yesterday, but I thought I'd give it one more retry just to see if I could improve anything after I'd already finished and I got to tweaking my strategy here and there... And I think I've created possibly the ultimate BBD strategy. It actually has 0% chance of Zephiel even getting attacked period, let alone killed, 0% Nino death (and even prevents Nino from drinking her elixir and wasting money), lets me kill all reinforcements and Ursula, harvest all treasure, steal the earth seal, steal all four lockpicks, and everything. Oh and I'll be training a level 3 Kent while I do it. So... bear with me while I write it all up again.
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Mar 19, 2015 11:30
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Melth posted:And I think I've created possibly the ultimate BBD strategy. It actually has 0% chance of Zephiel even getting attacked period, let alone killed Alright, now this I have to see because from what I remember when I did the LP, that fighter gets there on something like Turn 5, and unless you do some ludicrous rescue dropping and dancing, it's just literally too far to go with too many enemies in the way.
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Mar 19, 2015 14:21
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I vaguely recall reading about someone using thief-torch vision to get eyes on that fighter and using the Sleep staff, but I may be misremembering some or all of that.
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Mar 19, 2015 16:05
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Wait people actually liked Lyon? I remember hating the constant cutscenes talking about what a nice kid he was.
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Mar 19, 2015 17:47
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I thought Lyon was a dull, generic cliche. Plot in Fire Emblem is never a strong point, though.
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Mar 19, 2015 17:53
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lyon is more interesting as ephraim but he's not great either way
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Mar 19, 2015 18:01
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Cake Attack posted:lyon is more interesting as ephraim but he's not great either way I dunno man, I don't think he'd do so well with a lance
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Mar 19, 2015 18:02
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Mar 19, 2015 18:04
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I regret nothing 
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Mar 19, 2015 18:08
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Lyon was a boring character. The demon king was hands down the best part of sacred stones plot though. Like the entire back half of the plot is just him dicking with Erika and Ephraim and pretending to be lyon, who he totally didn't devour years ago. Oh, you gave me your stone to save me? Thanks sucker.
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Mar 19, 2015 18:48
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 For some reason, I always call this chapter “Battle Before the Dawn” when saying it out loud. Although it gets a lot of hate, I regard it as one of the best chapters in the whole game. Second or third best after the Dragon’s Gate and Whereabouts Unknown. Not coincidentally, each of these chapters is either the end or the climax of the arcs they’re in, so they’re full of great story progress and character development. They’re also all fantastic strategic challenges in that they have huge numbers of scattered optional objectives that take a lot of planning to accomplish efficiently, while being pretty easy to just complete for novice players not looking for maximum challenge. This is probably the only chapter for which I think Fog of War is actually a good thing. Sadly, it’s the last Fog of War chapter in the game. I’d love to see more chapters like this one. Chapter Summary: Hector and the rest hurry after Jaffar and Nino but the latter have too much of a head start. Prince Zephiel is saved only by Nino’s kind heart and Jaffar’s newfound love for Nino. However, Sonia anticipated their treachery and sent Ursula in with a small army to kill the two of them and Zephiel too. As their battle begins, Hector arrives and they rush into the manor to try to save the prince, recruiting Nino and Jaffar along the way. The next morning, they meet with Queen Hellene at last and give her the Fire Emblem. However, when she is utterly unconcerned about her son’s near death the night before, Eliwood loses his patience for her scheming and the two part angrily- it’s all been for nothing. At that moment, Murdock, who the king tricked into leaving Zephiel alone that night so that he could be killed more easily, returns and quickly finds out the whole truth of what happened. He explains this to Queen Hellene and she realizes that the group she angrily dismissed had saved her son’s life and hurries to catch them, apologize, and give them not only the map to the Shrine of Seals but also all the help she can on their way  The king did his job of removing the guard very well.  Nino’s continuous babbling reveals she really is quite nervous.  Jaffar is such a buzzkill as he tried to shut her up. He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as her though.  And again, he could just as easily be trying to persuade himself as to warn her. I’m not entirely sure what to think he’s really going for in their conversations up until his big decision. Is he trying to convince himself just to go through with his mission? To try to warn her into realizing something is up and leaving on her own? Something else?  Nino is definitely trying to steel herself for the assassination, reminding herself that if she succeeds then her mother may finally accept her.  I think they do a good job of capturing the psychology of abusive relationships and dysfunctional families in this game. Nino is desperate for affection since her step father more or less ignores her, her step brothers are always busy on missions, and her mother is constantly cruel or callous toward her. And she blames herself and the fact that she’s not, at age 14 or whatever, an invincible death machine like Jaffar for the abuse she suffers.  They’ve arrived at the prince’s room and catch him praying.   Sounds familiar doesn’t it?  All he wants is for his cruel father to love him  And for his screwed up family to get along.  Jaffar breaks in easily and for some reason knocks Zephiel out instead of killing him.  Just what is he going for here? He talked repeatedly about how he didn’t want her screwing up his mission, so why does he choose to rely on her here when he has everything in the bag? My best interpretation is that he’s testing whether Nino is actually as kind as she lets on. I’m not sure what his plan is in either case at this point and that’s really part of what builds the tension of this scene so well.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzeLdRC7CmE Another of their great melancholy musical themes. Nino is really more right here than she could possibly know. Both she and Zephiel are kind, talented, and decent people growing up in absolutely horrible families and blaming themselves for the abuse they suffer. And both of them are about to be almost assassinated by their own parents- and more specifically by Jaffar.  And she explains to Jaffar why Zephiel’s prayer means so much to her.  Indeed, the only time Sonia even agreed to ever do so was when she knew Nino would be killed before she could return and cash in on the offer.  And she decides she’d just rather face the Black Fang’s punishment and be killed than kill a boy so much like her. This is really Nino’s best moment and redeems her of her previous willingness to kill people for hugs in my opinion.  Indeed, she’s essentially offering to die for him, though of course she must know that Jaffar is unlikely to spare him if he’d kill her.  A very different kind of “……” than we usually get from him. His ellipses are quite expressive at times.  Man, I remember I had no idea how things were going to go at this point the first time I played this game. It was an exciting moment.  And bam! They run into Ursula! And we see once again that Sonia is really clever and always one step ahead. Previously it looked like she was being stupid sending Nino on this mission, but then we found out the point was to let Jaffar kill her. Then it looked like she was ignoring the warning signs that Jaffar might betray them, but actually she just wasn’t letting on that she was on to him so that he wouldn’t expect this trap. Man I love Sonia.  Jaffar was about to bluff their way out of there when Nino idiotically blurts this out. Man, she’s new at this.  Well that’s a bomb shell for Nino and a dead giveaway that Jaffar has disobeyed his orders afterall.  It also really makes Ursula almost as nasty as Sonia herself, what with being ok with murdering children who aren’t even actually enemies of the Fang or anything and willing to kill anyone who disobeys orders to do so.  And Jaffar finally makes it clear exactly where he stands, to all three of them.  Yeah, this is big development for a guy who just said “…” and “Thy will be done” for most of the story. She hasn’t seen any of his private scenes with Nino that gradually built up to this.  Now this is interesting. We know she’s really devoted to Sonia and also relatively trusted by Sonia- hence she’s the one Sonia goes to when she might need Jaffar stopped. But to know about morphs implies she might really know a very great deal about what Nergal and Sonia are doing to the Fang.  She calls up Maxime, the most fabulous warrior in her retinue, and prepares to attack- being far too smart to actually just engage Jaffar herself immediately.  Jaffar doesn’t care a whit about Zephiel –or Jaffar- so he just hustles Nino to the exit.  But Nino has been growing fond of Jaffar too and won’t let him just die to buy her time.  Again, when Jaffar does say something other than “…” it’s almost always great and worth ten lines from most other people for developing him.  Meanwhile, the heroes have arrived and here Jaffar fighting Ursula’s men.  Let’s get to it then! Battle Preparations & the Map:  Here it is, one of the most fun chapters in the game! It’s absolutely HUGE and actually fairly open for an indoor map. It doesn’t rely on being a maze or absolutely full of locked doors, instead it’s the sheer size of it and a few carefully placed enemies that makes it hard to get around. This is the first “Protect the NPC” map where we don’t actually start near the person to protect, so the big challenge of the map is to get to him before he gets killed. After doing that, it’s much easier to complete the rest of the chapter. It’s essentially a giant race: can you cross the vast space and open the doors and cut through the enemies before the enemy gets to Zephiel? Almost everyone says no, there is a single enemy who WILL get to Zephiel before you do. For this reason, many people say that you cannot beat this chapter without luck- that you have to hope Zephiel dodges at least one attack. They’re wrong. Completely wrong in fact: not only can you intercept every enemy before any of them get to Zephiel, but it wouldn’t matter if that lead fighter did anyway- you could still keep him alive with 100% probability. Jaffar does have a chance- albeit a very small one- of getting killed before you can get to him, but again good strategy can save him from further danger starting by turn 4 or so. No matter how you play, Nino is perfectly safe EXCEPT that on rare occasions she will choose to walk the wrong direction to drink her elixir and therefore end up in bolting range, but once again you can completely guarantee this will never happen. In conclusion, there IS a very small chance of losing this chapter as a result of allied unit choices, but it’s smaller than the chance of failure every time you, say, fight a single druid with Luna. People saying you can’t win without luck just aren’t thinking things through and considering all the resources at their disposal. The key is Physic. You guaranteed have 1 physic staff and one person capable of using it at huge range (Pent). On a non-ranking run you could also easily have many more, better physic users. Even on a ranking run, I managed to get Canas the requisite B in staves (Why do you think I was grinding healing so hard with him for the last 8 chapters or whatever?) so I have 2 physic users. And regardless of run type, you should buy at least one spare physic staff from the secret store in Kinship’s Bond. Physic is one of the game’s god tier items. Pent can heal from 9 squares away with physic, and better people can use it from further away. You can easily have Pent in range to Physic Zephiel long before the fighter can get to him- and this position also allows you to heal Nino so that she never uses her elixir and therefore definitely stays safe. If you have a second Physic staff and user, you can send it down the left flank- ideally with a rescue drop- to help Jaffar out, but his odds of death before you can get there are tiny anyway- probably smaller than those of one of your units getting killed on the way. So yeah, don’t blame luck on this one barring a very rare turn 2 or 3 Jaffar death, just rethink your strategy a bit and employ all the resources at your disposal. With that out of the way, there are several other things to say about this map. First of all, you can’t rely on physic alone. Physic would only keep Zephiel alive as long as he’s fighting a single fighter at a time, it’s no use when he can be killed from full HP on one enemy turn, so you still need good tactics or Zephiel WILL die. But that’s 100% preventable by moving very fast. There’s a somewhat related secondary problem: similarly to Living Legend, you have an uber green unit here stealing all your XP. You can’t let him get away with that! Plus the enemy thieves will begin spawning very early on this chapter and will go for the left treasure immediately, so you’d better move fast to get to the Jaffar area as well as to Zephiel. That’s quite easy though. Look at the map and you should notice something immediately: the left side is nearly EMPTY. There’s no resistance on that side to a full speed charge except for Maxime himself. The right side is where all the action is and even on that side the enemy numbers are very limited, with only two enemies of note. This situation will actually reverse itself soon though. See, there are absolutely no right side reinforcements at all, before long you’ll have wiped out all of Ursula’s forces on the right. But on the left side hordes of mixed promoted and unpromoted enemies of various types will pour in from the bottom while a great many thieves and shamans come out of the stair case near Maxime. So you want to concentrate your forces on the right side initially, but have them come sweeping through to the left to join the battle there. Ursula is hidden away in the bottom right corner where she’s not actually much of a threat once you know her location. Her Bolting is absolutely devastating, but she won’t move (for most of the map that is) so its effective range is limited. So there are essentially 4 obstacles to saving Zephiel: Time. You must bring fast units and charge full speed ahead. As a backup/stopgap measure if you can’t manage to get to him properly, bring a physic. The second is Maxime, a very formidable enemy on hard mode. Bring anti-cavalry weapons and at least one very strong unit to deal with him. You do not want to get bogged down on the left front dealing with this violet villain. The third is that hero in the top right.  He’s actually quite comparable to Maxime in power and is one of the strongest enemies fought to date.  And his silver sword packs quite a punch. Fourth is his assistant:  That bishop has a physic staff. If you don’t kill the hero on turn 1, you WILL be fighting him for much longer than you want to thanks to this guy. So you need to come prepared to cut down Maxime on the left and the hero and bishop on the right and should bring either Pent or another physic user. And when I said you need to move full speed, I meant full speed. If a unit doesn’t have 7-8 movement and isn’t either Ninian, a thief, or your physic user, then don’t bring them. If you’re serious about max ranking HHM, you should have at least 2 and hopefully 3 promoted flyers ready for one thing, plus probably Sain. And if you absolutely have to, then break out Marcus and Isadora. If you promoted Rath, he’ll be great here. High level, unpromoted cavaliers and Priscilla are fairly handy too. But you must have several very good 8 movement characters, that’s non-negotiable. And be prepared to flexibly and intelligently rescue-drop your slower characters along as you go, particularly Ninian. I’m going to demonstrate roughly the bare minimum needed to completely ace this chapter, bringing along several weak units to train. If you actually go all out and bring a full set of 8-move great units, this chapter is much easier. Without further ado, here’s the formation I used. Your own formation must be carefully tailored to the units you have and their stats relative to the enemies’.  Objective: Protect Zephiel for 15 turns Secondary Objective: Recruit Nino with Hector or Eliwood Secondary Objective: Talk to Jaffar with Nino to unlock the sidequest Secondary Objective: Get the Boots from the leftmost chest Secondary Objective: Get the Brave Lance from the second chest from the left Secondary Objective: Get the Rescue staff from the second chest from the right Secondary Objective: Get the Delphi Shield from the rightmost chest Secondary Objective: Steal the Earth Seal from the bottom left druid Secondary Objective: Steal the Lockpick from the first thief Secondary Objective: Steal the Lockpick from the second thief Secondary Objective: Steal the Lockpick from the third thief Secondary Objective: Steal the Lockpick from the fourth thief Secondary Objective: Prevent Nino from using her Elixir to save money Secondary Objective: Prevent Jaffar from using his Elixir to save money Secondary Objective: Prevent Jaffar from killing many enemies Secondary Objective: Kill Ursula for honor and glory Reinforcements: Starting on turn 2, 4 thieves from the stairs near Maxime will go for the left treasure chests. After that, pretty much one shaman will spawn from those stairs every turn till 14. There will be many reinforcements of many types: mages, monks, shamans, knights, generals, archers, snipers, uber heroes, and more from the southwest area along a fairly broad front from about turn 4 to 10 or so. They’re hidden by the fog so the details are hard to make out. By the last few turns, nothing is spawning but one lonely mage per turn up till 14 from the bottom left corner. Turn Limit: 15 (It’s a survival type chapter, so you lose 1. For some reason, this chapter had a 20 turn limit in normal mode, so you actually gained turns. Not anymore) Units Allowed: 9 + Hector (This hurts, but it’s enough) Units Brought: 1) Hector. Required and useless except for recruiting Nino. He’s too slow for this map’s frenetic pace and should never see combat at all basically. Give him some keys and have him loot the right treasure room. 2) Kent. Yeah he’s level 3 and I’m taking him on the most intense mission in a long time. What about it? You cannot slack off on pumping your XP up. If you do, you will suddenly drop 2 stars after the final chapter and all your work will have been for nothing. It doesn’t matter how insanely hard the chapter is, bring people to train. Kent is decently well suited to this chapter in particular because of his great movement and because many of the fighters here have axereavers, which cripples them enough against his lance that he can avoid being hit very well. 3) Lowen. Same as Kent but higher level and slightly more usable, so he goes on the more dangerous right front. 4) Matthew. There are 5 valuable items to steal on this level so you must bring a thief. Originally I planned on bringing 2 thieves, but if you bring some chest keys for the right flank and work efficiently on the left one, then you don’t need a second one. Matthew is lower level than Legault by a decent margin and is also much weaker, which will help him feed fighters and shamans to Kent. 5) Priscilla. The left front needs a healer so Kent and Matthew can work to begin with and it has to be someone with massive mobility- and ideally a physic staff too, like she can wield. Priscilla will actually be my primary healer for both fronts eventually in this battle as you’ll see. 6) Canas. The reason is that Canas is pretty much my only character capable of taking down Ursula, so he needs to be sent off on his own during most of the later turns and can’t heal anyone else. Up until then he’ll definitely be healing and/or physicing the green units. His massive magic will let me use the torch staff to scout for the right flank instead of bringing a second thief. 7) Ninian. You need Ninian, as usual. Most advanced strategies depend on her and this is no exception. Unless your units are truly fantastically blessed, you can’t beat the top right hero on turn 1 without her, nor will the right flank be able to keep up the required breakneck pace as you charge to get to Nino and Zephiel. 8) Sain. Sain and Heath are my two biggest, baddest 8 movement champions. Which one to send to each front is a tricky question. Ultimately, I concluded that it had to be Sain on the left. Armed with a killer axe, he has a great chance to kill Maxime outright in a single round, and with Maxime’s broken HP cap and great defenses, that’s saying something. Either he or Heath could kill Maxime in two of course, but there are no other ways to feasibly beat Maxime in one. Even the halberd and horseslayer won’t do it because they’ll slow their bearers down too much. Maxime is fast. 9) Heath. Now Heath is in trouble because he’s just not quite strong enough to take down the top right hero with Filla’s Might. Sain could do that, but my Heath currently has below average Str despite his HHM bonuses. The big problem is that he can only attack at all with either a short spear or a javelin. The short spear would give him juuuuuust enough power, but it’s also slightly heavier than the javelin and would slow him down to just 1 point too slow to double. Darn. Fortunately, the filla’s might + javelin damage will reduce the hero to less than 5 HP, low enough that Lowen or Fiora will kill him when he attacks (which is before the bishop goes). 10) Fiora. The right flank needs more than one good 8 movement character, though it only needs one great one. Fiora will be just the kind of backup Heath and Lowen need. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Eliwood. He’s darned good here and in my first attempt of the chapter I did bring him and he was devastating, but just not quite fast enough. If my Sain and Heath weren’t as strong as they are, I’d probably have to kick Lowen or Kent off the team and bring Eliwood or Florina instead to beef my forces up. 2) Florina. Definitely great here, but I can juuuust get by without bringing her too. Fiora wins out over her because of her better defenses. 3) Pent. Canas is better. Of course Canas is better. 4) Legault. He’d be good to have, but I can get by without him and he’s very high level and much stronger than Matthew- so much so that he’d one-round kill some units I’d rather weaken for Kent. Anything you can get by without should be dumped on this chapter. 5) Rath. I’m probably not promoting anyone else (well maybe Nino). Rath would be awesome here, but I have my team ready to roll without him. 6) Dorcas, Guy, Lyn, and anyone else I’m possibly training. Too slow! 7) Serra. Has she ever NOT been a bad Priscilla? Too slow! 8) Dart. Too slow! And even more importantly, he’s nearly max level and I want to use him next chapter so I can’t give him any XP this time. 9) Marcus and Isadora. I do sometimes bring Marcus back for this chapter depending on how good or bad my other 8 movement people turned out. This time there’s no need for him. Bear in mind, he can’t actually fight worth a drat here and will be ignominiously torn to shreds by fighters and shamans if you try to actually have him do so. He’s mostly just to be used for carrying people around and maaaybe getting one or two unpromoted units off your real fighters for a turn or two. Proper gear is absolutely essential here. Canas has Flux and Luna and Heal of course, but he also has Physic and Torch staff. He’ll need a vulnerary before the end, so he’ll pass the torch to Merlinus and take one when I get to the part where he splits off. Without the torch, you can’t see on the right unless you waste one of your precious unit spots on Legault. Bring the torch. Without the physic, Nino will use her vulnerary- conceivably dying and definitely wasting money. And if you somehow get bogged down for a turn, the physic staff could save Zephiel’s bacon. Meanwhile Luna is absolutely essential for letting him deal with Ursula and he’ll need Flux for her personal guard. Priscilla is packing a heal, a physic, a vulnerary and nothing else. I need to have 5 empty inventory slots on the left in order to steal everything. She doesn’t have the mag to use Physic very well, but if it keeps her 20 HP away from an enemy and keeps someone important fighting, it’s worth it. Sain has a door key. He must have a door key. Don’t forget your door key. Did you buy door keys when I told you you should buy door keys? Door keys are the best, man. Buy them. He’s also brimming with weapons: an iron lance, an iron axe, a javelin (handaxes are too inaccurate, don’t get greedy to save 10 gold and miss a critical shot on a chapter like this), and most importantly Hawkeye’s Killer Axe with Maxime’s name on it. Kent is carrying a spare vulnerary to pass to Sain after Sain uses his key. He also has an iron sword, iron lance, javelin, and vulnerary for himself. He’d better have every possible option available if he’s going stay alive this time. Matthew has an iron sword, a torch, a vulnerary and nothing else. That makes a total of 5 empty inventory slots among the left party, just enough. Note that he doesn’t have a lockpick. I’ll steal more than I’ll ever use and the first enemy thief will be taking the lead anyway. Ninian has Ninis’s Grace, Filla’s Might, and a vulnerary and my remaining Fire and Thunder to trade to Nino. Ninian and Nino will be working closely together so she’s a logical person to give them too. Hector has an iron axe and handaxe in case I do need him to hit something as well as a vulnerary and a door key and a chest key so he can take care of the right chests. He too would be a good person to give Nino’s new gear too, but since I want him getting the chests and don’t know exactly how soon Merlinus will catch up to him, I decided not to do it that way. Fiora has another door key. This is important. Yes one drops on the right front early, but you can’t count on her getting it and you really want her opening the door. She also has a vulnerary, iron lance, iron sword, and javelin of course. Lowen has a vulnerary, iron lance, iron sword, and javelin. Don’t make the mistake of giving him the door key instead of Fiora. And Heath is on point with a javelin, iron lance, iron sword, vulnerary, and a heavy spear. You will want a heavy spear very badly by the end. Now this formation is optimized so that Sain can blow open the left door immediately and Priscilla and Kent can drop in a torching Matthew in a crowd behind him to push in as fast as possible. Sain will leave the other three behind as soon as that’s feasible to catch up to the enemy thieves and deal with maxime. Since Kent, Matthew, and Priscilla are all weaker than weak, they’ll have quite a time dealing with even these few enemies, but I believe they can manage it while Priscilla and Kent keep chaining Matthew along so that he doesn’t fall too far behind. Everyone else will be going right. Merlinus and Canas will scout for the group so that Fiora and Lowen can take out the nearby fighter. Then with Filla’s Might on him, Heath will immediately hit and deal massive damage to the top right hero, who will then attack either him or Lowen or Fiora or Canas and then die. Hector will come along behind them. Heath will be in position to immediately massacre the bishop and most of the remaining enemies next turn after Fiora opens the door. From there it’s a mad dash south, picking up and dropping Ninian as needed, to try to get Fiora or Heath to Zephiel as fast as possible. Canas will heal those he can and then make his way south alone to wear down Ursula’s Bolting and then take her out in the last turn. Hector will recruit Nino and then go for the treasure. The rest will move left as fast as they can to join the real battle once Zephiel is safe. The details of that battle will depend on exactly what Jaffar does and can’t really be planned in advance. Speaking of Jaffar, what are he and Nino like? The Characters:  “I'm truly sorry... I've been useless.” –Nino, Not Quite Death Quote What is it with Fire Emblem and female child soldiers who get married way too young? Ugh, well at least Nino isn’t as creepily fanservice-y as some similar characters in the series. And she’s an actual character and rather critical to her plot, getting a ton of development as her own person as well as an adopted family member or colleague of many other characters. All in all, I think that was well done and she’s one of the better female heroes in a Fire Emblem game. I’m especially glad that it’s her, rather than Jaffar, who drives the next chapter in particular. Nino is a sweet but willfully blind and naïve young girl who’s been raised by the cruel and abusive Sonia. She’s consequently illiterate, entirely self-taught in magic, and very insecure and desperate for affection with kind of a codependency type thing going on. She’s willing to do just about anything in hopes of finally winning her mother’s approval, but ultimately stops just short of murder despite having been raised to think it perfectly alright. In fact, she shows great courage in standing up to Jaffar- as well as Sonia and indirectly the whole Black Fang (including the few people who were ever kind to her: the Reeds) - by refusing to kill Prince Zephiel out of principle. Her simple kindness and steadfast belief in the goodness of other people eventually warms even Jaffar’s heart and so is monumentally important to the plot- even if she never fully understood how. The more I’ve played this game, the more I’ve come to think Nino is a really well done character. She also ties into several other characters rather well- and her support with Canas is golden while her one with Florina is one of the few times I’m not annoyed by the latter. And as everyone knows, she’s very strong. That horrible, horrible Con is still good enough for Fire and her speed is absurdly high anyway. Other than Lucius (man, I wish those two had a support), she has pretty much the best magic power around and her equally massive luck makes her dodge-y enough that she’s not really a glass cannon. Ultimately, Nino is a very strong character but you can’t really use her at all. By the time you’re done training her, the game is over. And she’s pretty useless on the final chapter. Plus she’s not THAT much better than, say, Erk and Lucius where it counts. Definitely worth training for the XP ranking bonus though. Much like Erk and Lucius, it’s really easy to get her rolling despite her low join level.  Better bring her some new equipment though, you don’t want her using this stuff.  “ I am a man.” –Jaffar, fighting Nergal Not really so different from Nino, Jaffar is a very young man (18 or so at the most if I recall) raised all his life by Nergal and Nergal’s henchmen because Nergal saw their great potential as fighters. Nergal apparently found him sleeping atop a pile of corpses as a child, though I’m not sure whether we’re supposed to think he killed the others or just survived something they didn’t. In any case, since then he was raised to be nothing but a mindless killer, doing only as Nergal directed with no regard for himself. His phenomenal skill and absolute dedication rapidly carried him to a position as one of the Black Fang’s four fangs and undoubtedly the most dangerous man in the organization, further solidifying Nergal’s hold on the group. He was entrusted with such critical duties as guarding Marquess Pherae and other prisoners Nergal would not have wanted the fang at large to ask questions about, and it was he who was often used for killing renegade Black Fang or anyone who threatened to be a problem for Nergal. But being treated as a human being rather than a tool by Nino ultimately led him to realize he really was one and to cast aside his life as Nergal’s slave to protect her instead. He’s a man of very few words, but almost everything he does say is very poignant or awesome. In universe, his amazing coolness is probably second only to Raven’s, but we see a lot more of him being vulnerable or inwardly wretched and broken than most people are aware of. Ultimately, the lords probably see him as really important because he was the one who really thwarted them at the Dragon’s Gate, but with the player’s omniscient perspective it’s clear he’s actually more a supporting character in Nino’s story. It’s refreshing to have a female character actually be the important one for once. Jaffar really is about as good as his hype, but the problem is that he’s not going to get any better. He’s massively high level and his growths are terrible. Still very usable, but not worth the XP cost. If he was actually capable of performing as a thief that would be something, but he’s not: assassins can use lockpicks but they can’t steal. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve forgotten that and had to restart Night of Farewells near the end because I came up with a brilliant plan to acquire all the treasure that happened to require him stealing an item.  On this chapter he’s geared up to look darned cool while he steals your XP. With that killing edge he can mow down enemies without difficulty and his elixir and awesome avoid will keep him fighting for a very long time barring some extremely bad luck. Generally speaking, a whole wave of enemies can’t kill him from full HP even if they did miraculously all hit due to his awesome Def, and the AI is pretty willing to use its elixir to keep him ready to fight. The only thing that can kill him is if one wave does juuuuust enough damage to him that he doesn’t use his elixir and then the next wave all get amazingly lucky.  “I’ve tried my best not to be an embarrassment to my father.” –Zephiel, Chapter 28 As Nino herself points out, the two of them are very similar, each blaming themselves for the cruelty of their parents and each a prodigy in their own fields. Zephiel is more or less 100% different in outlook and character in this one than he is in Sword of Seals with absolutely no bitterness at all at this point despite ample reason for it. He IS just as huge though. I mean, at 7 Con this guy is already as big as many adult men and he’s still really young. Does it make sense that he grows up to have 18 Con and thus be much, much bigger than Hawkeye? No, not really, but this at least does suggest he’s always been large. Oh and to his credit he does a surprisingly good job of defending himself from professional assassins despite having no combat experience at all and being really, really young. He’s what, 14 at this point? At the most? Cut him some slack.  It helps that he’s armed with the best and will employ fairly good tactics to defend himself, though not as good as could be hoped for.  “Yes, I’m here.” –Maxime, Chapter 28 Yeah, uh, that’s the only thing he says. At all. Ever. He’s the third and last of the paladin miniboss trio and while he lacks the awesomeness of Camerone or Damian, he’s still a fun addition to the chapter. All we really know about him is that he’s a loyal henchman of Ursula’s, which might mean all kinds of interesting things vis a vis Nergal and Sonia. But his secrets die with him. Look at those stats. Do you see something wrong? Yes you do, you see that he does not give a drat about your stat caps, he’ll have whatever HP he wants. Normal mode Maxime is nothing. Hard mode Maxime does not play by your wimpy little rules. He doesn’t have the normal hard mode bonuses, he has like +22 HP and +6 Str and +whatever the heck else he wants. His Luck is terrible, but this is otherwise by far the most dangerous paladin faced so far. He’s the toughest enemy yet due to that HP and his absolutely spectacular Res and solid Def and he’s way too fast for almost anyone to double him and he hits really hard.  With a silver lance. Don’t get hit by this guy. Although a miniboss, he’s probably more dangerous than any actual boss up to this point. We’re finally get into the tough chapters of the game. Much of my strategy is tailored specifically around finding the one way to beat him in a single round so that he doesn’t block me and ruin everything. That I eventually found a way does not make him less awesome.  “Tell me… are you afraid to die?” –Ursula, Chapter 28 The most enigmatic of the Four Fangs, Ursula is also the most devoted to Nergal and Sonia, apparently knowing not only that Nergal exists but that he’s now in control of the Fang and not minding at all. She can’t have been one of the Four Fangs for very long since she seems to have replaced Pascal to get the position, but we did see her one year ago in Lyn’s story. Whether she predates Nergal’s takeover or came in when he shook things up is not specified, but we do know that she’s been made privy to many secrets so apparently Sonia and Nergal trust her loyalty. Ursula generally maintains an air of cool professionalism and absolute obedience to the Fang’s code, but this mask occasionally slips to reveal an obsession with Sonia (who she hails as ‘perfection”) and a willingness to do anything- even betray the Fang to impress her. Since it was the post-Nergal Fang that was the most gung-ho about killing anyone who failed a mission, Ursula has embraced this tradition completely and more than once threatens her subordinates – or other fellow Fangs like Jaffar- with death. Ultimately, it’s clear that her supposed loyalty to the Black Fang itself is a charade and in truth she cares only for Sonia. Indeed, given her raving about how Sonia is “perfection” and her jealousy when Vaida momentarily caught Sonia’s attention among other things, I suspect we’re supposed to think she’s actually infatuated with Sonia. Whether this was all a part of Sonia’s plan to control her or not is unknown, but seems likely. Sporting one of the most epic boss battle quotes in the game, Ursula is a truly nasty surprise – the only one on the level really, it otherwise doesn’t really abuse fog much. Her stats are in a completely different league from anyone fought so far except possibly Maxime. This is a real boss. That speed Is absolutely amazing, fast enough to double ANYONE who isn’t my extremely lucky Sain or Heath and she’s completely immune to magic.  And she’s armed with a Bolting which deals enough damage to instant kill one of your weaker units or deal massive damage to just about anyone. What’s worse, she’s so fast- and has decent enough Con- that her speed is actually respectable while wielding it. She can double someone slow with Bolting. Crazy. The Elfire is much less impressive and does slow her down a little bit to 21 or so speed, still enough to double nearly anyone. Critically, she doesn’t move for most of the map. This means her effective bolting range is fairly small and there’s no risk of leading her to a much more dangerous position while trying to waste her charges. However, starting on turn 13, with no announcement, she will begin to move. If you have not run her bolting out and are not watching her, she will kill Zephiel on turn 14 with close to 90% odds since she can double him. But that’s kind of your fault for doing nothing at all to prepare to deal with the boss.
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Mar 20, 2015 02:03
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Playing Through: Many- but not all- fighters on this level have swordreavers or swordslayers. This is one of your most important advantages for purposes of training weak characters. Make sure you check who actually has a swordreaver and who just has an iron axe or the like though.  And Lowen gets the kill that Fiora handed him.  Nice! My Lowen is pretty good in Str and Def, though he’s not so special anywhere else.  And Canas uses the torch on that spot to scout the whole rest of the top right forces. Notice the exact spot that I used that on, it will turn out to matter later.  That’s what I’m up against. Not many real threats there once I kill that hero.  Speaking of which, Ninian buffs Heath for the fight.  If this hero was 1 speed slower I could be one round killing him with a short spear, and if Heath was average in Str I might be able to just kill him with this javelin now. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. See the hero goes before the bishop and he’ll be reduced to a mere 5 HP. Even Lowen with his javelin can actually deal that much damage, so he’s going to die.  Or that could happen. Ok, didn’t expect that one. Sorry Lowen, no kill for you.  NEVERMIND, LOWEN, I’M NOT SORRY!  So there’s my exact formation. Because one fighter has a hammer and one has a swordreaver, one of them will likely go for Fiora while the other will target Lowen. The mage has no choice but to attack someone armed with a javelin with the result that all of these enemies will be dead or badly injured for Lowen to finish off next time.  On the left side, Matthew uses his torch since I’m going to need vision and he’s going to be busy in many future turns.  Sain opens the door.  And Priscilla and Kent can grab and drop Matthew and crowd in behind Sain- after Kent gives Sain that vulnerary.  This is the entirety of the left side enemy forces I have to beat. Not too impressive is it? For some reason, that mage will actually begin heading south, the top fighter will go north, and the bottom one can’t make up his mind. Maxime stays put till you enter his range.  So Zephiel wakes up and makes a good strategic decision, claiming a pillar and not rushing out into the enemy horde in hopes of finding a way out.  The swordreaver fighters are the main threat to Jaffar, but even they only do something between 5 and 7 damage to him on average. He kills two of them this turn.  And at the beginning of turn 2, a thief spawns. That’s very fast. Catching up to those guys is one of the main challenges.  As planned, Lowen- assisted by Ninian- kills the mage and the fighter. He now has a sword equipped so that that swordreaver fighter will want to go for him next instead of Hector or the like.  Fiora opens the door and I COULD move her to this space, but that’s not necessarily a good idea. If she stays put then Canas can heal her and a few fewer enemies will aggro to her instead of Heath. Oh well, I’m going to chance it.  Heath easily kills the bishop. And wait, he can keep moving! That’s not supposed to happen in this game. Here’s why it works: that spot he’s on is the one I used the torch on. On Eliwood’s chapter 28 mounted units can keep moving after a kill if they’re on a lava tile and the same principle applies here. Doesn’t matter much but it’s interesting. Now I hadn’t known that would happen and it actually changes things, so I restarted and did things pretty much the same except I did park Fiora one space further back:   Kent attacks the swordreaver fighter. If this guy had an iron axe and Kent was using an iron sword or something Kent would have like 60% odds of taking 16 or so damage so this wouldn’t really be a winnable fight. If my Kent was a bit better, this would go much more easily.  And the others move in as best they can. I’d have preferred to just kill that fighter and move Sain full speed ahead, but I can put up with this slight delay in the interest of training. This formation will ensure the fighter keeps hitting Kent while Matthew and Priscilla move up safely.  And on the bottom front, Jaffar is as usual up against no real threat. Even if every single enemy hits him, he’ll survive.  As planned, the fighter attacks Lowen and Lowen gets a fairly meh level.  Sain charges in, reaching the edge of Maxime’s aggro range, and equips a killer axe.  I’d like to have Kent keep fighting till he gets this kill but he needs to keep moving, so Matthew will just weaken or kill the fighter now.  Darn, he got the kill. Oh well, I can still rescue drop Matthew in. This spot will keep him just out of the range of that fighter (since he’s at 5 HP) and then Kent can move further in to aggro the fighter himself.  On the right front, Heath wiped out pretty much every single enemy as planned, so Lowen finishes off this knight.  I could heal Heath here, but instead I’m going to physic Nino. Seems wasteful, right? Well it’s not. See, the enemy goes before Nino and will reduce her to 9 HP. She will drink her elixir if left at 9 HP or less. First of all, this costs 1000 instead of the 250 or so for a physic staff, so this is a good cost savings. Second, there’s a very slight (like 1% maybe depending on the monk’s exact skill level) chance of him critting and instant killing her if I don’t heal her. And third, she sometimes moves the wrong direction to drink her elixir and ends up in Bolting Range. So yeah, physic her. Now look at this picture again and you can see that Ninian was left way too far behind. If she moves into Canas’s space (after dancing for a nearby Hector maybe), then Fiora can grab her and move with her and then Heath can drop her much closer to the front. That’s absolutely critical. You MUST rescue drop her along at least once.  So yeah, I moved Ninian 16 squares that turn and Heath can keep right on going.  So this is my turn 3 formation and it’s the perfect one to have. Fiora can just kill the monk near Nino and then Ninian can barely dance for her, allowing her to get close enough to Zephiel to intercept all the enemies going for him with Heath not far behind.  Maxime didn’t know what hit him. There were about 50% even odds of this just killing Maxime in one round. If I didn’t kill him, I wouldn’t be able to get one of the lockpicks, so I would have restarted and brought someone good instead of Kent. That would completely solve the problem and make the left front trivial.  Priscilla heals Matthew so he can fight again and gets a pretty bad level.  Matthew is then used to attack the fighter and net a decent level as he weakens it for Kent.  Kent finishes it and gets his first non-terrible level of the game.  And then Sain carries Matthew out so he can drop him near the treasure room next turn. Now because Kent has a javelin, the enemy mage will actually go for Priscilla, but that’s still the desirable outcome in this case since I need the two of them not to take much damage for a little while here.  So Fiora kills the monk and Ninian dances for her, also aggroing the first of Ursula’s boltings.  See that fog square where the cursor is? There’s a fighter there (though he heads left for Jaffar with his swordreaver. Two squares right of him is the one with the iron axe who goes for Zephiel. As you can see, Fiora is now perfectly positioned on turn 4 to aggro them all. Bam, Zephiel is completely safe for the rest of the mission.  Lowen carries Hector so I can talk to Nino sooner and Canas heals Heath up.  So here’s my turn 4 right formation. Nino is safe, Zephiel is now safe, Fiora and Heath are in position to join the left side, Canas can head south, and Lowen and Ninian and Hector will be recruiting Nino next turn.  And on turn 4 Jaffar is, as usual, not threatened at all. Every enemy hitting him would still not kill him. And their hit odds are terrible.  Ursula fires away.  Ninian isn’t afraid.  The fighters suicide to Fiora and she gets a sweet level. My Fiora has been way behind on speed for most of the game, so I really wanted to gain more speed. And Def is great.  So turn 5 left front. The lead thief is going to steal the right chest with its brave lance. Under no circumstances can he be allowed to then steal the boots next turn. The square the cursor is on is the one Matthew needs to be able to reach to steal his lockpick and thereby stop him.  So Sain drops Matthew off just where he needs to go and then moves in to aggro as many of Jaffar’s enemies as possible. That’s pretty much 0 given Jaffar’s position, but I can rescue him next turn at least.  On the right side, Hector is dropped off here- as far forward as possible- so that Ninian can move as far forward while dancing for him.  Nice!  This huge amount of damage? Canas can heal that in one shot. Such a good healer.  And Hector begins talking to Nino to recruit her.  And Hector tells her everything.  This is the first she’s heard of this of course since she was raised to think the Black Fang was totally just. Come to think of it, what was her life like before she joined the Fang a year ago? They often talk like she was there her whole life.  Nino is smart enough to realize that his story does fit together- especially after finding out Jaffar and Ursula had been ordered to kill her by Sonia.  So she moves forward to this exact square- any further and she’d aggro a mercenary who I want to go for Ninian instead- and equips himself.  Leaving this as my turn 5 right formation. Fiora and Heath can reach the left group next turn, Canas is done healing so he can go for Ursula, and Hector and Lowen and Ninian can work on helping Nino get some XP.  And on the left Kent and Priscilla ignore the mage and keep moving in while Matthew gets ready to start screwing with the enemy thieves and Sain prepares to save Jaffar.  Jaffar is… still not threatened. Again, everyone hitting him will leave him alive and there’s like a 1% chance of that. The only danger to him ever is if one wave does about 14 damage to him but no more (if it was more, he heals himself) and then the next wave pretty much all hit. The probability is tiny.  Hector misses so Lowen injures this mercenary and then Nino opens fire. This positon is important so that Ninian can move forward and dance for her and then Nino can move backward to attack him from out of the range of the other mercenaries out there.  Merlinus can easily sponge one shot from Bolting even if he doesn’t dodge it, so he moves in with Canas and Canas re-equips.  No more need for a torch staff, but I might need a vulnerary if Canas is really unlucky and doesn’t dodge any boltings.  Matthew steals the first lockpick as the first shamans join the fray. They’re going to be a big problem actually.  Kent does manage to finally finish that mage for another good level, then Priscilla heals him again.  So here’s my tool kit for rescuing Jaffar. If my Heath’s strength was average for hard mode, he’d easily be able to kill that Sniper, but he’s weak and will leave it at 4 HP. Oh well.  Awesome, this is one of the best Heaths I ever saw.  That shaman is a problem, but not a huge one, so Fiora leaves it alive to kill the mage in the way so Sain can grab Jaffar. Now he’s safe and I can end my turn. If I weren’t trying to train some weak characters, the mission would pretty much be over at this point.  Next turn, Matthew takes another lockpick. It’s imperative that he stand here where the shamans can hit him rather than steal from the right because in this position he can block the treasure chest. This will make all the thieves that DO have lockpicks run elsewhere, but then they’ll return when he moves off the chest. Thus it’s crowd control.  Canas moves to engage Ursula while Merlinus lures off a mercenary to feed to Nino later. In this position her remaining mercenaries will suicide to him and she’ll keep wasting her boltings rather than switch to Elfire.  Nino had to break out Elfire to get this kill without Ninian’s help, which was worth it. Pretty good level up.  Instead, Ninian can dance for Lowen, which will let me get some much needed extra firepower on the left.  Priscilla keeps Kent in fighting shape, though she herself is getting fairly injured. This pillar should keep her pretty safe.  Lowen kills a weak enemy and then the badly injured Fiora begins a fighting retreat by killing this dangerous hero. Since she’s Fiora, no number of mages is a threat to her, but I’ll need to have Heath block for her.  Sain can kill the lockpickless thief to reclaim the brave lance and also aggro some enemies possibly.  So Heath moves to block all the dangerous enemies from getting to her and kills a shaman while he’s at it. Problematically, I’m nearly down one javelin at this point since Heath had to use most of his on that big group of top right soldiers.  Next turn, Canas and Ursula are alone. As you can see, she’s immune to magic. Even the extremely strong Canas wielding dark magic can barely scratch her due to weapon triangle advantage.  But Luna will completely own her. I won’t be doing this now of course because if she dies, I get no more reinforcements.  Hector opens the door to begin looting the treasure. Merlinuc continues to lure a mercenary, but Nino still has no time for it.  So things are a bit tense in the top left. The trouble is that my Matthew has no Res and neither does Kent so these shamans can 2 hit kill Kent or 3 hit kill Matthew and Kent can only 2 hit kill them and Matthew will take 3, meanwhile Matthew is really busy.  Hm, pretty good def bless Lowen is getting. He’s slowly fighting his way further left to help Kent in the future.  Meanwhile Matthew and Kent take down the lockpickless thief.  Well that’s pretty bad.  And Priscila keeps Matthew on his feet. Critically, there’s only 1 shaman in range of them now. That happened because of Matthew being in their range last turn. All part of the plan.  Sain, Heath, and Lowen form ranks to block in the bottom forces, then Fiora gives Heath her better javelin before taking Jaffar and pulling him out of there.  So this is a pretty good situation. Zephiel is 100% safe, so is Jaffar, Nino is recruited, almost all my forces are where they need to be, two lockpicks are already mine, and the top left front will soon be under control.  Next turn, Matthew takes another lockpick after trading with Kent to free up some inventory space  Canas has not dodged a single bolting so far, so he needs some healing. He also begins backing off so that I can delay Ursula moving up and suiciding to him for another turn.  Meanwhile Hector gets the Rescue staff. It’s like the game is taunting you with a staff you would love to have on this level.  Fiora drops Jaffar precisely here so that Nino can talk to him and then be at maximum Ninian range.  And this picture is actually from my first run when the formations were different, but the conversation is the same.  He tries to persuade her that he’s not worth saving and she should just flee while she can.  She won’t change her mind.  Alright, so back to this playthrough, she’s talked to him and now Ninian gets her into the action.  Pest control, I desperately need a shaman or two dead right now, XP be damned. There’s just way too many of them for Matthew and Kent.  Remember that heavy spear? Yeah, this is part of what you want it for.  Not bad, I think he’s about average on hard mode Str now.  And Lowen javelins down the injured sniper. This formation is pretty sparse and kind of weird, but it’s good enough to keep the enemy off Nino.  And Priscilla too as she heals Nino.  Boots stolen, just as planned.  Hector loots the Delphi shield. Now this is an awesome item. It makes bows not super effective against air units, perfect for Florina or Fiora. Of course, it does take up a valuable inventory space but it’s still excellent. I wish the game had more items like this.  More pest control, Sain takes down another shaman and prepares to aggro the next one.  I need all the healing I can get, so Ninian is usually dancing for Priscilla now.  I need Lowen to get the heavy spear to finish the general, but can’t just trade it in their current positions, so I set up a trade chain while Fiora gets back into the fray.  Another disappointing level for Fiora. She only got the one good one since getting promoted.  As you can see, now Lowen takes the heavy spear to finish the general.  Nice, he’s average in speed again and still good in Str and Def.  And Nino does a standard weapon switch trade from safety to give him back his javelin.  That frees up Heath because I think I might need to rescue chain Matthew back later. Further, in this spot Kent can take Heath’s vulnerary which he needs.  Kent has to drink a vulnerary to stay in the fight since those shamans hit so hard.  After drinking it he moves back onto her defensive position to prevent the shaman from going for Heath.  Next turn, Heath takes some of Matthew’s lockpicks so he can keep stealing.  He stole the final lockpick.  Ooh, that’s a pretty sweet level from that theft.  And Ninian dances for him so he gets the boots this turn too. That’s all the lockpicks and treasure. The boots are a really remarkable item as I’ll discuss later. And again, they’re the kind of thing you really wish you had on this chapter.  Nino finally has time to deal with that mercenary Merlnus has been pulling all this time.  Kent gets another surprisingly good level as he kills the thief. He’s still too slow to double anything.  Another trade chain (Plus healing).  That allows me to get the heavy spear to Fiora so that she can be slowed enough to not double this mage. I’ve said before that heavy weapons are great for this purpose.  And another kill for Lowen.  Same thing next turn allows Nino to get this kill.  Nice!  So all the newbs have been used this turn, now it’s time to decide what to do with the good characters.  It’s turn 12 and I keep moving Canas back so he’s in the spot I want when Ursula begins attacking.  Lowen moves to help Kent. There’s not going to be much more XP in the bottom left but there’s still some shamans for the two to share.  Priscilla keeps healing everything she can and gets a decent level this time.  Turn 13, the map is nearly over. Not much to do but just have Kent and Sain and Lowen hurry upwards to mop up the shamans while Matthew is taken to go for the earth seal and everyone else moves in to crowd control the spawning mages.  Ooh, that’s lucky. My Kent has gone from terrible to pretty average and even a point ahead in speed.  And the rest are moving in.  This druid has a stealable Earth Seal but he also has a Luna so he’s not easy to beat safely. Fortunately he doesn’t move.  Turn 13, Ursula charges.  Canas completely outclasses her with Luna even though she doubles him. Now I can kill her next turn. And critically there are never any reinforcements on turn 15, so killing her next turn doesn’t cost me anything.  Excellent! Ninian hits level 20 unfortunately, but at least she got a good level. This is a very good Ninian not that that matters much.  Turn 14, there are very few enemies left.  Kent takes out another shaman and Sain moves up to scout for Lowen.  And Lowen kills the one Sain revealed. There’s one last… shaman in the dark… so I can get another kill for Kent or Lowen next turn.  And I’m in position to kill the last mage and steal the earth seal on the final turn.  Canas kills Ursula for an excellent level. This is an uber Canas, easily the best I’ve seen. It’s too bad I can barely use him.  And Kent gets a decent level from the final shaman. He’s doing pretty well in Str.  No more shamans.  The earth seal is mine!  Heath can easily beat the druid, so every single enemy is dead. Priscilla keeps healing for maximum XP.  Nothing left anywhere! Bam!  I’m not sure who turned the lights back on actually, or how Maxime snuffed them to begin with.  At the exit, we’ve retrieved Jaffar and Nino and Jaffar begins trying to goad Hector into killing him.  You may recall Hector really hates Jaffar because he found out he was the one who killed Leila.  But Jaffar doesn’t defend himself.  Of course, he’s defended himself when not ordered to before, so it seems pretty clear he just kind of wants to die at this point since he has no idea what to do with his post-Nergal life.  Nino convinces Hector to not kill him.  He reluctantly agrees for now.  And Limstella harvests Ursula’s quintessence. Everyone we’ve been killing has only been feeding Nergal’s power and building up his army of morphs.  The next morning, Murdock finally returns from the king’s trumped up errand for him and realizes someone broke into the manse while he was gone, immediately putting two and two together.  While he talks to his men, we finally get our chance to talk to the queen.  Remember, the whole reason we needed the Fire Emblem was to give it to her so Zephiel could have his coronation ceremony as the heir to the throne as planned.  Eliwod is surprised that she seems not to be talking about the break in of a whole army of assassins into her house last night.  Assassins are trifles to her- she apparently has once again completely underestimated the king and did not realize that the Fire Emblem theft might not have been his only scheme against Zephiel.  Upon receiving the gem, she laughs maniacally and throws in an insult or two against Guinevere.  Eliwood has had enough of her self-centered scheming.  And her talking about Zephiel as just a pawn for spiting his father.  She of course is furious at her wrongdoing being pointed out.  Eliwood is not going to let the matter drop though.  She really, really just did not grasp that the target of those assassins was Zephiel.  Eliwood and the others leave without having received their reward since she’s so angry, so the whole Fire Emblem plotline looks like it was for nothing.  Then Murdock arrives, having had time to investigate, and explains the whole truth to her: including just who it was who saved her son.  Eliwood apologizes for having spoiled their plans.  And Louise reflects on how Hellene was much less bitter once.  And then the queen arrives, wearing a rather different expression. And she knows everyone’s names. They never told her. They were trying to travel in secret. Murdock must have been on to them- as one would expect considering how terribly they were going about being stealthy. So now the queen and Murdock both know that it was Eliwod of Pherae and his companions who saved Zephiel’s life. Notably, almost every lord can actually have some pretty good conversations with Zephiel on the previous level to tell him that they’ve come to protect him but can’t reveal their identities. One would think he’d have found out by the time FE6 rolls around since Queen Hellene and Murdock definitely know.  So she gives us our promised reward afterall.  And a heaven seal. This was the item that Pent had been searching for in Nabata, the whole reason for him having been there at the time we ran into him.  AND she gets Bern’s troops out of our way.  That was unexpectedly kind of her and Eliwood and company don’t know why she had that sudden change of heart.  Ah, she knows we saved Zephiel now.  This whole post- Battle Before Dawn section is one of my favorite parts of the game.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrTt7tuRLuU One of my favorite scenes. As usual, the music is perfect.  She’s realized that she’s had a major role in the bitter divide in their family with her constantly antagonizing the king.  And she’ll finally stop treating Guinivere like dirt.   And things end on a very hopeful note.  Indeed, the importance of family is a major theme in this game- it’s the driving force for both Lyn and Eliwood’s stories and at the heart of most of their character development, as well as being at the center of this Bern arc.  Outside, everyone is finally ready to get to the Shrine as Athos told us to.  Side quest accepted. Well that’s basically the end of the Bern arc. Now there are some liminal chapters resolving the story of the Black Fang before the final stretch of the game begins. It’s really a great set of chapters in my opinion and has a nice self-contained story to it. It was also refreshing to see the heroes working on a smaller scale than usual, just trying to help one family with its troubles and deal with some local political intrigue instead of running around dealing with dragons and dark wizards and 1000 year old legendary heroes. So let’s review the outcome of that chapter. I won and unlocked the side quest, prevented Zephiel from ever being attacked, let alone injured, prevented Nino from using even a single one of her elixirs (and prevented Jaffar from overusing his), got all the treasure, killed every single possible enemy, stole all 4 lockpicks, and stole the earth seal. And I trained two weak units while doing it, netting a total of 24 levels (waaaaay over the 12.6 or so per chapter I need). That’s pretty much the best possible outcome on Battle Before Dawn and this is pretty much the best possible approach for max ranking it. Total Restarts: 21 (I played through several complete times I refine things and also restarted once when I realized the Torch spot- continue moving phenomenon would change things). Turn Surplus: 18 (Yeah, there’s no way to not lose a turn here, oh well) 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. Melth fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Mar 20, 2015 |
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Mar 20, 2015 02:04
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Melth posted:
Nino can carry her weight as soon as she's promoted, which does not have to be at level 20. She can easily get to level 15+ by the end of this upcoming sidequest without sacrificing too much speed, and should be a sage going into the next chapter. That's for playthroughs on modes that aren't Hector Hard and at the breakneck speed you do things, though. 
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Mar 20, 2015 03:31
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Jaffar.  I love the way they introduce how Jaffar is in combat in this mission. He's surrounded by a horde of enemies, and generally you'll be playing on Normal the first time through. You think "Man, he's not going to last long." But no, Jaffar will kill each and every one of the assassins sent to deal with him. You get to see why he's called the Angel of Death and you very much want to recruit him.
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Mar 20, 2015 03:58
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There's one thing that could have improved Jaffar's demonstration. If there were some high-defence enemies he couldn't instant kill even with crits, just to show a first-time player how Lethality works. --- I've also been replaying FE9 and FE10 with a view to turn count. My rough objective is to get all the bonus EXP without sacrificing combat opportunities or treasure, so it's often fairly hectic. It's a really fun playstyle, I see why people try to push it further and further.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:23
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I like this map a lot, though it can be kind of bullshit since you have three people that you have no control over to account for. Jaffar usually won't kill himself, but it is possible. Kajeesus posted:Nino can carry her weight as soon as she's promoted, which does not have to be at level 20. She can easily get to level 15+ by the end of this upcoming sidequest without sacrificing too much speed, and should be a sage going into the next chapter. That's for playthroughs on modes that aren't Hector Hard and at the breakneck speed you do things, though. That is still for HHM, Nino can easily hit 20 and promote in the next chapter. The game throws enough easy kills her way in the forms of a bunch of wyvern riders.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:30
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Manatee Cannon posted:I like this map a lot, though it can be kind of bullshit since you have three people that you have no control over to account for. Jaffar usually won't kill himself, but it is possible. Yeah I mean, you can train her up pretty solidly on Battle Before Dawn itself if you dont need to worry about max ranking stuff. The problem on Night of Farewells is that I don't get a ton of guys to bring and I need to pack pretty much every single flyer, probably both thieves, Ninian, and at least one healer- and 2 would be better. This leaves me with very few people who can take time to babysit Nino and help her get her tricky early levels. It's almost effortless to get her to 20/10 or something on Cog of Destiny though. You just need a NInis's Grace or Filla's Might or two and you're golden. The trouble is, there still just isn't much game left after that. You can't bring her on The Berserker because you must have a thief to steal some really valuable stuff there. You can't bring her on The Value of Life because almost the whole map is an anti-magic field. Battle Preparations obviously doesn't count for anything. She's pretty bad on Light because she can't be good with staves really and that's what you need from your casters, plus Canas and Athos are going to massively outperform her at killing stuff. So Sands of Time and Victory or Death and maybe Cog of Destiny are really her only chapters. In a casual play of course she's much more viable.
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Mar 20, 2015 07:00
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Manatee Cannon posted:I like this map a lot, though it can be kind of bullshit since you have three people that you have no control over to account for. Jaffar usually won't kill himself, but it is possible. This is where basically every single frustration with Jaffar and healing happens in this chapter, it's because this dude does 41% damage to Jaffar's health if he hits, which starts the whole "I'm hurt but not going to use my Elixir" thing. Melth posted:
It's just so much fun watching Canas make absolute chumps out of so many high-level Black Fang members. Usually I do reinforcement farming wherever I can, but Ursula is a special "gently caress you, you die to Luna right now" exception.I assume you're going to have Canas kill Sonia too? Both because killing un-killable Anima users is Canas's  forte, and for JUSTICE and plot-related reasons. (The whole Canas is Nino's uncle thing, and goddamn is there anyone in this thread who doesn't already know that?)
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Mar 20, 2015 16:36
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quote:You used this image twice. Seeing how the whole Bern arc resolves itself, I really don't get how Zephiel turned out the way he did in FE6. And it's not like that was retconned, either, because this game came out after 6 and the devs knew perfectly well what happens later. I just finished this chapter myself, in Eliwood mode. I will not be using Nino.
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Mar 20, 2015 16:37
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Silver Falcon posted:Seeing how the whole Bern arc resolves itself, I really don't get how Zephiel turned out the way he did in FE6. And it's not like that was retconned, either, because this game came out after 6 and the devs knew perfectly well what happens later. The answer is that FE7 really has nothing to do with FE6 at all. Aside from a few "Hey, it's person X! You remember them from FE6 right?" moments (see Hector, Eliwood, Eric), the games are totally standalone, and it's pretty clear that they intended it to be that way from the start. Zephiel is one of the most egregious offenders in this regard, but he's far from the only one.
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Mar 20, 2015 16:48
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Silver Falcon posted:Seeing how the whole Bern arc resolves itself, I really don't get how Zephiel turned out the way he did in FE6. And it's not like that was retconned, either, because this game came out after 6 and the devs knew perfectly well what happens later. It's supposed to be tragic irony.
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Mar 20, 2015 16:57
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Sometimes happy endings and epiphanies don't last. All we see is one person saying things are totally gonna change. It's meant to be a gut punch to everyone who knows that they won't.
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Mar 20, 2015 17:21
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Yeah. For Japanese audiences who saw FE6 first, the plot twist isn't that Zephiel turns out bad; the plot twist is that Zephiel starts out good. It seems like it would work quite well. Then again, that's basically Kid Anakin Skywalker.
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Mar 20, 2015 17:44
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Yep, tragic irony. Though Zephiel being good isn't really a twist. Guinevere told us he used to be like this, it just seemed unbelievable then. One theory is that a future assassination attempt gave him slight brain damage, changing his personality. It's a known effect, but I really don't think the writers were deliberately going for that.
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Mar 20, 2015 18:19
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Also, the epiphany is on his mother's end; we don't know if she ever reached his father, who wants him dead out of pure jealousy as much as anything. I'm sure that continued.
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Mar 20, 2015 18:21
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Well, it wasn't really a twist in Star Wars either. I don't see any problem with Zephial being a good person here and then becoming the main antagonist of FE6, there's so much of a gap between the two games that anything could have happened.
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Mar 20, 2015 18:21
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