|
Manatee Cannon posted:It's a separate site; I'm not talking about archived threads on the forum. I wasn't replying to you. I'm saying that the LP subforum, with the still on-going LP will be visible when the paywall rotates.
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 00:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 03:05 |
|
|
I wasent aware it was on a rotation! Before i got my account i could never get to any part of the forums whenever the paywall was up. Unless they changed how it works since then of course.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 02:35
|
|
|
Well, I know it rotated in and out of the paywall as of when I joined at least because I found this forum after googling up TenaCrane's shadow dragon lp looking for a guide to the game.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 03:47
|
|
|
Fionordequester posted:Hello Melth. Hey, on Serenes Forest, in a thread called "This puts things into perspective...", I posted your "Night of Farewells" update to prove your point that Night of Farewells does NOT have to require luck in order to beat. Fine with me, I've been doing that to show the LP to some friends of mine anyway. Oh and there's likely to be a few more days of delay before I can resume posting updates regularly. I'm having a busy week , plus Night of Farewells is proving tricky. I've beaten it a few times, but never really in a way I thought was optimal, so I keep restarting. My current best result is 11 turns ahead of schedule with all treasure but two enemies alive and no chest keys stolen. I think I can find a way to get 3 or maybe 4 chest keys, kill all enemies, and shave off another turn. Actually I KNOW I can do that easily, it's just a question of whether I can manage it without bringing any more promoted units. Additionally, there've been a lot of people calling for me to recruit Karla and Farina so I've been thinking about loading up the slot I saved on Crazed Beast for just that purposes and redoing things from there. Melth fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Mar 24, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 03:53
|
|
|
Melth posted:
If you want to do it as a side thing/post-completion project, I'm all for it, but I feel like it's sort of against the spirit of the thread to redo sections of the game in an intentionally more inefficient manner.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 08:40
|
|
|
GeneX posted:If you want to do it as a side thing/post-completion project, I'm all for it, but I feel like it's sort of against the spirit of the thread to redo sections of the game in an intentionally more inefficient manner. I would imagine they would be side updates, rather than redone sections.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 17:06
|
|
|
Synastren posted:I would imagine they would be side updates, rather than redone sections. I was thinking the old versions would be separated out and become side updates basically.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 20:55
|
|
|
Really? Are you positive that you couldn't just devote a War Room update to how you would use Farina and Karla if one decides to get them?
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 23:04
|
|
|
Really? Are you positive that you couldn't just devote a War Room update to how you would use Farina and Karla if one decides to get them? I mean, I'm all for recruting everyone, but it seems like an awful lot of unnecessary work to have to redo everything :\ ...
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 23:07
|
|
|
For what my opinion's worth, the "Okay, fine, here's how you cope with these anchors around your neck" updates fit better outside the main run. The keyword all this time has been optimizing, and deviating from that seems like a side thing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 24, 2015 23:48
|
|
|
Sorites posted:For what my opinion's worth, the "Okay, fine, here's how you cope with these anchors around your neck" updates fit better outside the main run. The keyword all this time has been optimizing, and deviating from that seems like a side thing. I feel like this too, since literally everything you've done so far is "how do I go about this the optimal way". Where do you draw the line on doing one suboptimal thing over a different one?
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:08
|
|
|
Sorites posted:For what my opinion's worth, the "Okay, fine, here's how you cope with these anchors around your neck" updates fit better outside the main run. The keyword all this time has been optimizing, and deviating from that seems like a side thing. I mean yeah, that's what I said at first, but there were enough people saying in their opinion the run doesn't count without getting all the characters (which is how I usually play anyway) that I think I should go back and demonstrate how to do it that way.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:12
|
|
|
Melth posted:I mean yeah, that's what I said at first, but there were enough people saying in their opinion the run doesn't count without getting all the characters (which is how I usually play anyway) that I think I should go back and demonstrate how to do it that way.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:15
|
|
|
I don't think Farina or Karla is worth spending much of your time on. I'd rather see the final chapters sooner.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:15
|
|
|
On the one hand, yes, they were definitely joking. On the other, they're still right.  But nah it's not a big deal if you don't get Farina and Karla.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:17
|
|
|
Well, shame on them for shifting the goalposts and then complaining about it. The goal of this play-through was clearly stated from the start: Get a maximum rank on Hector's Hard Mode. What makes this thread really great is that it also doubles as a strategy guide! Fire Emblem 7 is my favourite of the series, and the next time I go back to it I am going to apply the methods that Melth has taught and get my first maximum rank without using save states. Call me selfish, but I'm enjoying this thread so much that I don't want Melth to waste his time considering sub-optimal (and, let's face it, arbitrary) scenarios if it means slowing down his update speed.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 00:29
|
|
|
Melth posted:I was thinking the old versions would be separated out and become side updates basically. If you're going to do those chapters anyway, do them as bonus updates after you finish your run.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 01:19
|
|
|
Yeah, finish up the run as is because the idea is to do this as efficiently as possible, then you should go back and show how you can still max rank it while being a little more inefficient.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 01:28
|
|
|
I don't really have thoughts on when/where you would put the updates, but I do hope at some point the max recruitment goal, coupled with the a S rank alternative run does get done. Especially as it only requires to go back to Crazed Beast to do so. I had assumed Farina plus Batres Hero Crest would require going back further for some Arena trips for gold, considering the change of the objective. I understand that the goal of the thread is to be an outline to players to achieve best rank, especially as you have actually encouraged me to attempt this myself. (Beat Lungdren with a Sain somewhat comparable to yours, just to realise I had not unlocked HHM on my emulator yet... well I suppose a quick de rust on Normal won't hurt.) So with that in mind, I'd agree that skipping unneeded characters is the way to go for that. But all things considered it be a drat shame to not see how it would be done by someone so clearly capable with the, clearly somewhat popular, added restriction whilst this LP is still in full swing. e; That is I should say if it actually something you care about showing off pulling off Melth; I just read it as that you wouldn't mind. Paused fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Mar 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 01:37
|
|
|
I'd wager that doing the 0 turn sidequests is also pretty suboptimal, yet you're pulling that off. I can't even imagine what other conditions could be enforced if you recruit those bozos, so that'd be a perfect suboptimal run.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 02:21
|
|
|
Honestly I think you should stick with the goal posts you started with and have planned around. That said you should totally chunk bartre in the arena on battle preperations as he is now just to see if he can live, even if it isn't on a cannon run.
|
|
#
?
Mar 25, 2015 02:58
|
|
|
Kajeesus posted:I'd wager that doing the 0 turn sidequests is also pretty suboptimal, yet you're pulling that off. I can't even imagine what other conditions could be enforced if you recruit those bozos, so that'd be a perfect suboptimal run. Aren't the 0 turn sidequests also 0 exp/funds sidequests? I'm pretty sure the exp rank is a lot stricter than turns, so they're easily worth doing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2015 09:11
|
|
|
Staltran posted:Aren't the 0 turn sidequests also 0 exp/funds sidequests? I'm pretty sure the exp rank is a lot stricter than turns, so they're easily worth doing. It depends. 19xx in particular can take a lot of turns if you don't play it well and has very little XP available. If you don't know how to approach it right and don't have a good team for the job, 32x will instantly explode your tactics score but has like infinity XP available. On this run I demonstrated pretty much maximum turn saving that still got me all the XP and treasure without using Marcus or other promoted units heavily on nearly every chapter up till now and I still don't have THAT big a surplus built up. The sidequests in general are a mixed bag and depend a lot on difficulty mode. Genesis is amazing and should pretty much always be done. Night of Farewells is a good choice on hard mode but is absurdly difficult on normal (where turn limits are much tighter overall). Before beginning this max ranking run I had just done one of ENM and the difficulty was actually surprisingly comparable. Yeah ENM levels are much easier to just complete, but normal mode not only has much lower time limits, it also has no silver card and a massively increased number of items that must be stolen for you to succeed (and in Eliwood's story no 0 chapters to boost up your funds). I found that I could only promote 4 or 5 people by the end game having stolen EVERYTHING worth more than a vulnerary. And not being able to promote people hurts your late game XP score- albeit not enough to make up for normal mode's massive XP boost. I'm beginning to wonder if the hardest mode to max rank might actually be HNM. There you'd have the double whammy of numerous 0 chapters and normal mode's much lower turn limits in general. I would be about a dozen turns in the red with my current completion times on HNM, so I'd have had to really pick up the pace on a lot of levels. There'd also have been no silver card, so I couldn't buy gear efficiently and there'd have been a lot more stuff to steal- and consequently higher funds requirements on many chapters.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2015 13:54
|
|
|
This has been a super cool playthrough of one of my favorites. I remember beating HHM and being super happy about it. Never tried a ranked run. I would be interested in a LotR tactics let's play if you do decide to do that after this one. I've never heard of it before so it would be nice to see another SRPG. Are there any other SRPGs that were overlooked in your opinion Melth?
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2015 05:11
|
|
|
Consumptus posted:This has been a super cool playthrough of one of my favorites. I remember beating HHM and being super happy about it. Never tried a ranked run. Hm. Honestly, the SRPGs that impressed me the most in recent years were actually some flash games I ran across: Sonny 2 by Krin has absolutely tremendous tactical and strategic depth to it in a deceptively simple game, plus a story and art style that I think are pretty unique and interesting in their presentation, if not tremendously detailed. Loads of replayability too; I still haven't gotten tired of "Legendary" runs. I'm also a huge fan of the whole Monster's Den series. My favorite was actually Book of Dread, rather than Chronicles, but the latter was really great too. Legend of the Void 1 and 2 are possibly more popular but less polished and in my opinion less good than either of those two. Hard mode is an excellent level of difficulty, but in kind of an annoying way (especially in 2) where you end up in these reaaaaaaally long and slow paced battles that you either lose on like turn 3 or win on turn 40. This year I decided to try to find and play all the GBA strategy games I could find and honestly I must say I'm pretty disappointed with those I came across. Most of the famous ones are wildly overrated, and most of the obscure ones are obscure for good reason. Onimusha Tactics was the best obscure one I came across. I'd compare it to Shining Force and to Final Fantasy Tactics basically. It has the general system of FFT but the character progression and story style of Shining Force. I'd call it a pretty good game but no better than that. Certainly it was more challenging and interesting than any FFT title in my opinion, but I disliked that whole series. Oh and I hope to continue this LP fairly soon. I've been too busy traveling to make any progress in a long while and honestly I'm still waffling about whether to go back and redo things with Farina or not. Possibly as a compromise I'll continue from where I was but promote Bartre so I can recruit Karla and then try to save up a spare 40k in assets by the end to prove that I COULD have recruited Farina even with all the splurging on promotions that I did after deciding to not use her. I just can't decide what the best thing to do is.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2015 04:21
|
|
|
Melth, did you try Naruto: Konoha Senki? I thought it had a fair amount of depth and replayability, just unfortunately limited in maps.quote:Possibly as a compromise I'll continue from where I was but promote Bartre so I can recruit Karla and then try to save up a spare 40k in assets by the end to prove that I COULD have recruited Farina even with all the splurging on promotions that I did after deciding to not use her. I just can't decide what the best thing to do is. I like your compromise idea, and I think you should go for it. Like Farina is equivalent to 40k anyway since you were never going to use her. So going with the 40k in the end = restarting to get Fartina, only with the added bonus that you don't need to redo all the poo poo AND we get to see this awesome LP continue as is!
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2015 17:05
|
|
|
Melth posted:Hm. Honestly, the SRPGs that impressed me the most in recent years were actually some flash games I ran across: Sonny 2 by Krin has absolutely tremendous tactical and strategic depth to it in a deceptively simple game, plus a story and art style that I think are pretty unique and interesting in their presentation, if not tremendously detailed. Loads of replayability too; I still haven't gotten tired of "Legendary" runs. I'm also a huge fan of the whole Monster's Den series. My favorite was actually Book of Dread, rather than Chronicles, but the latter was really great too. Legend of the Void 1 and 2 are possibly more popular but less polished and in my opinion less good than either of those two. Hard mode is an excellent level of difficulty, but in kind of an annoying way (especially in 2) where you end up in these reaaaaaaally long and slow paced battles that you either lose on like turn 3 or win on turn 40. You said earlier that you were thinking of doing more LP's - have you considered LP'ing some of the flash games you listed? Sonny 2 is a fantastic game, and something I'd love to see a run of.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2015 08:08
|
|
|
hapa posted:You said earlier that you were thinking of doing more LP's - have you considered LP'ing some of the flash games you listed? Sonny 2 is a fantastic game, and something I'd love to see a run of. I did consider it but I assumed there would be no interest in a flash game LP, plus in the case of Sonny 2 in particular there's like 10000 step by step guides on it already. Also I don't know how to make a video LP and Sonny 2 would lend itself to that on Heroic I think. For now I'm getting increasingly psyched about Lotr: the Third Age though. Oh and I'm finally beginning to write up Night of Farewells and get this LP back underway again. It's a wretched chapter. I beat it 8 times this run, never feeling like I did good enough. At this point I'm pretty much giving up on brilliance and just settling for pretty good. Needing to switch Bartre in and promote him also caused some problems. But I finished 11 turns under time, only 2 enemies left alive, all treasure acquired, all stealables stolen (including ALL chest keys!). The irksome thing about it is that even when I accomplish every possible objective, it always looks completely clumsy and inelegant and ad hoc- and it is- so I'm never proud of the strategy and want to redo it endlessly.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2015 11:20
|
|
|
 One of my favorite chapter titles. This chapter is one of the biggest challenges in the game- and max ranking it well is a challenge on the level of anything from the harder FE titles. In many ways, it’s similar to my 3 favorite chapters: Whereabouts Unknown, Dragon’s Gate, and Battle Before Dawn. It’s a large, indoor map with a large number of secondary objectives to complete and requires unusual tactics and careful consideration. However, it’s a sidequest and so, though it’s a critically important chapter in Nino’s personal story, it doesn’t have the kind of epic feel that those major turning point chapters do. Further, the level revolves around a single gimmick (appearing and disappearing bridges) which doesn’t make much sense and doesn’t actually add much to the gameplay. Relatedly, this chapter completely lacks the dynamism and blazing speed of the aforementioned 3 great chapters. Those were FAST chapters. You had 4 turns to be ready to save Zephiel. You had 5 turns to be ready to steal the north thief’s lockpick in Whereabouts Unknown. You had something like that to recruit Legault and seize control of the map in Dragon’s Gate. I brought massive numbers of 7 and 8 move units to those chapters and had a lot of fun coming up with creative ways to use starting formation and rescue dropping and equipment to move across the map with absolute maximum speed. Those chapters were complicated, large, and sometimes had an intricate layout, but it was one you could move through quickly if you could clear the enemies efficiently. In contrast, Night of Farewells more or less locks you in position. Almost the entire map is water, so no one but air units can move across it. It’s not even Ocean or River type water which Dart or Hawkeye could at least cross in a turn or two, instead it’s the Lake variety so that they can barely move a square. And the bridges that appear to allow passage onward do so very slowly. Those chapters had no staff using enemies. Staff wielders are often a good element of the game, but they are not good in chapters where you can’t actually do anything about them but hope they miss or waste turn after turn restoring away their statuses. This chapter is nearly carpeted with staff wielders with absolutely massive range so that you can’t rush in and assassinate them and with water to prevent most of your troops from even trying to engage them. The upshot is that you’re just going to have to hope for lucky misses or waste a lot of time curing people. Those chapters put you in the driver’s seat and on the offensive. Yes, even the survival type chapter Battle Before Dawn. There were enemy reinforcements, but the standing forces were the bigger threat and the enemies (generally) came from predictable and even non-problematic directions. This meant that you knew what you were getting into and could plan accordingly and stay on the offensive. In Night of Farewells you rapidly come under attack by reinforcements in too many directions to defend against properly- particularly since most of the reinforcements are air units. Meanwhile you’re bombarded by staves, ballistae, and bolting. It’s often all you can do to just stay alive. Ultimately, this chapter seems designed to be slow paced and bog you down. There’s really no hurry and there are many, many factors keeping you from moving at the exhilarating speed of those 3 chapters. So instead of being an epic race to do 10 things in 5 turns, Night of Farewells becomes a slow and irritating slog as your formations are gradually destroyed by the terrible terrain and the need to counter reinforcements from too many directions and you gradually run the enemy out of long ranged ammo. In sum, I enjoy this chapter’s character development but I always find the gameplay to be unpleasant at best on HHM. Normal Eliwood mode at least is actually MUCH better. There are more valuable items to steal- diabolically including a blue gem on the right wyvern lord- and there are eighteen fewer turns to do everything in. The time limit is, in fact, absurdly low. Meanwhile, there are still a significant number of staff-wielders and the like, but their range is smaller so that they can actually sometimes be taken out pre-emptively and there are just not as many bogging your troops down in critical places. The result is a very fun and challenging chapter revolving around mass air-dropping of troops and other out of the box tactics. Chapter Summary: Shocked and horrified at the revelation that her own (supposed) mother Sonia hated her and tried to have her killed, Nino decides that she simply has to hear the truth first hand from Sonia herself. She sets out for the Black Fang’s last stronghold in the middle of the night, but is followed by first Jaffar and then the rest of the party. Their intervention saves Nino because Sonia decides to just murder her herself after killing Brendan Reed and most of the remaining black fang. Ultimately, Sonia is slain and the Black Fang is no more- save for a few scattered survivors and one last, baseless band led by Lloyd.  Nino is intercepted by Jaffar as she tries to slip away. Perhaps it’s just coincidence that this little town looks exactly the same as the little town Linus was walking through when Limstella ambushed and killed him. On the other hand, perhaps this is actually supposed to be the same town. In that case, this village seems to be within a mile or two of the Black Fang’s most secret lair. Further, it must be very close to the area Four Fanged Offense is fought in.  The sad theme Requiem plays again.  Nino explains to Jaffar why she must go back to the Fang’s lair even though Sonia will probably kill her  He ought to know.  I always find Jaffar’s personal devotion to Nino rather compelling. They’re two of my favorite characters.  And here’s three of my other favorite characters. Apparently Nino is terrible at sneaking around. That or everyone decided it was a good idea to keep an eye on Jaffar. There’s a brief debate about whether to follow them or not with Hector, who hates Jaffar, in favor of just letting them go.  And he puts on his angry face and makes a completely legitimate point.  But then he reveals he really doesn’t understand why Eliwood wants to help them. Hector just isn’t as compassionate as Eliwood and assumes Eliwood must want Jaffar for his fighting skill, rather than so he can have a chance at a life not dominated by Nergal.  I think this is really a great scene for these characters- though Lyn to a lesser extent since Eliwood pushes her out of the limelight during much of the Bern arc. She’ll be back. Hector grudgingly acquiesces and they give chase.  Meanwhile, the great What Comes From Darkness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_94fD5MR8Wg plays as Limstella teleports into the Black Fang’s ‘Water Temple’ to relay some orders to Sonia.  No doubt you’ve noticed that Sonia is clearly a morph- she looks almost exactly the same as Limstella and Ephidel and is similarly a puppet of Nergal’s. But as has been seen several times, she believes herself to be human and holds morphs in contempt. As has been noted, none of Nergal’s morphs really seem to be right in the mind, and Sonia’s denial of clear reality is a pretty interesting case of this. Did Nergal make her that way as a test? As a cruel joke of some sort? Or did she come to believe this herself? Why, in that case? Afterall, Nergal- who she seems genuinely loyal to- seems to consider morphs superior to humans. Limstella, a consummate professional, puts up with Sonia’s craziness and obnoxious tendencies as long as she does her job.  And that’s what she’s here about, to point out that Sonia has failed to kill Eliwood as ordered. Sonia, though, is not one to give up. She nearly had Eliwood at several points and decides that now that her existence is known (remember, she had every reason to think Eliwood and company didn’t know she existed, let alone her true power until Jaffar switched sides), she may as well take the field herself.  And Brendan arrives.  And sees Limstella. I’m not sure why that actually matters. Afterall, he knows Nergal- just not his real power or that Sonia serves him. Sonia could just pass Limstella off as a friend or acquaintance of Nergal’s. Of course, Brendan would be sure to notice that the two look very similar- but Sonia herself seems to be unaware of the clear resemblance, so she can’t see that as a problem. Perhaps Brendan would just be angry that she let a stranger into the fortress without permission? Still, one would think she could just smooth things over easily enough.  But apparently it does matter enough that now she has to kill him- though she wanted to anyway.  Unlike Limstella and Ephidel, Sonia is really cunning and also really likes to gloat and let people know just how thoroughly she’s outwitted them. She now explains to Brendan that she never loved him and was just using him to control the Fang from the beginning. His world has just been turned upside down.  And another bombshell, she’s gradually been replacing the Black Fang around them with ones loyal to her and Nergal, one by one.   This chapter really has this great horror kind of vibe to it as we see Sonia from the Black Fang’s perspective. She’s devoured the organization from the inside out without any of them realizing what was really going on and now reveals to them for the first time that there are beings other than humans in their tiny little world of noblemen and assassins.  Did you think that one up yourself or did you have help? Even now he doesn’t REALLY get it though; she just explained that she was never on his side to begin with.  We all wanted to say it.   Awesome. As I’ve said before, Sonia really manages to be a viscerally vile and awful person in a way many Fire Emblem villains don’t. She’s evil and petty and cruel in a personal way rather than just as some abstract force of badness.  And they fight.  And he apologizes to his sons, who he now realize suspected Sonia all along and who he probably also now suspects he got killed by trusting her.  And Limstella, with that same disinterested expression, walks up and harvests his quintessence.  Sonia is really desperate for Nergal’s approval- maybe almost as much so as Nino is for hers. There’s really a great irony there.  She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself as much as Limstella doesn’t she?  Limstella departs. The entirety of the Black Fang’ leadership except for Lloyd is now gone. Nergal has fed off everyone you killed and grown strong and replenished his armies.  And this poor sap, Jan, witnessed Sonia’s horrifying revelations and murder of Brendan. Remember, no one except a few scholars have ever heard of morphs or had any idea that there were any non-human beings in their world. I think they did a good job capturing the kind of reaction that would get.  He flees and runs into Nino coming the other way. Note that he’s not her real uncle of course, he was just friends with Brendan so she called him that.  He’s been flying in a panic and tries to warn her.  Oops.  Awesome. As I mentioned, there’s really this great horror vibe- half invasion of the body snatchers and half slasher movie- as these assassins realize they’re completely out of their league.  And he flees.  Sonia turns to Nino and jumps at the chance to twist the knife and rub some salt in the wounds by telling her daughter how much she hates her.  And another great reveal!  Sonia gleefully explains how she murdered Nino’s real parents and was going to kill Nino.  But Nergal decided she could be useful- much like Jaffar. Sonia herself just wanted to kill Nino and only grudgingly agreed to raise her instead. Note that it was Nino’s parents that Sonia and Nergal got the secret of the Dragon’s Gate from. This again stresses how recent and yet how quiet and stealthy much of his villainy has been.  Another great Jaffar line.  She didn’t see all his character development of course, all she saw was that he was “acting strangely” as she informed Ursula.   And more Jaffar awesomeness. As I’ve said before, he doesn’t speak often but most of what he says is great. The best part is he actually has a solid chance.  She, of course, has nothing but contempt for such sentiment.  Eliwood and the others arrive just in time.  Sorry, but that would wreak havoc on my survival score.  She floods the room and taunts us as battle is joined. Note once again that Nergal’s followers often talk about him in religious terms- though he himself interestingly never calls himself a god.  It sounds a bit melodramatic until you think a moment and realize Nergal and Sonia are actually behind like 50% of everything bad that has ever happened in Elibe and that Eliwood has figured this out. Then it’s awesome. The War Room, Part 29 Last chapter I acquired two very interesting and useful unique items: the Delphi Shield and the Boots. The latter are so valuable and useful that they deserve a War Room introduction of their own. As I’ve mentioned many times, Fire Emblem is full of stat boosting items like Angelic Robes and Energy Rings and the Boots. Each is worth a huge amount of gold- 8000- and that value is lost if they are used. None of the stat boosts are worth 8000 so none of these items should be used… except for the Boots. Boots increase movement by 2, in a game where the only other possible source of a movement increase is promotion (which usually just grants +1, if that). In a game where most people never get more than 6 movement, some never get more than 5, and the only people who get more usually have weaknesses like generally lower stats or vulnerability to certain weapons, +2 movement is a huge boost. But giving them to, say, Raven wouldn’t be worth 8000. No, the Boots have potentially game-changing power – but only in the hands of a few select units. The 3 best usual candidates are as follows:  Like giving the boots to Raven, but better. Hector is an absolutely phenomenal warrior and is required for every chapter. However, he’s hampered by terrible movement because he gains nothing upon promotion. This means he can have trouble keeping up with your army and get left behind when you move fast. That alone would make him a solid candidate for the boots, but there’s another factor to consider: Tactics. The speed at which you can complete most chapters depends entirely on how fast you can get Hector to the throne. Rescue-dropping him is not always really viable and is always at least somewhat trick to arrange and a waste of one or more unit’s turns. With the boots, he can get to the throne much faster and help you save valuable turns. This is especially valuable on Chapter 30, on which Hector must essentially do ALL the fighting and can’t be rescue-dropped. More movement can shave many turns off your time, very handy for your tactics score. On the other hand, Hector won’t be promoting till after Cog of Destiny so he won’t get to use his enhanced movement to fight on all the remaining chapters. And 30 is the only chapter on which it’s more or less totally infeasible to drop him around.  Another good candidate is Heath- or Farina or whoever your best flyer is. Usually your best flyer will be Heath though, especially on HHM. Why him rather than some superior warrior like Hector or Canas or whatever? Well, +2 move on a flyer is more squares than +2 move on a ground unit. Depending on the terrain in question, the boots might not add even one more square of movement for a ground unit- a complete waste that turn. But they’re ALWAYS fully effective for flyers. This can let Heath do things like dive in from outside Bolting or staff range to instant kill a problem enemy by giving him an effective attack range of 12 instead of his usual 10. Or it can let him rescue-drop other people around even more effectively, which in a certain sense is like ALL of your characters getting to use the Boots. And of course it lets one of your most effective units move more freely to the fights you need him in and so on. The big downside is this: units with higher movement tend to do more fighting- unless you just waste their movement. This results in the person you give the boots to hogging a lot of XP, which hurts your XP score. Worse yet, eventually he’ll hit 20. And it won’t take long. This level 8 Heath might be able to hit 20 by the end of Cog of Destiny if I overused him. And once he hits 20 you basically have to stop using him forever for the sake of your XP score. Not only are your boots no longer helping you, but you’ve now lost one of your best units! This is also pretty much the reason for not giving the boots to your best warrior in general. Chances are they’re already too high level and will just end up hitting 20 prematurely, and they don’t bring the added benefits of Bootsing a flyer in particular.  The third option is Ninian/Nils. This is a big change to the role Ninian/Nils can play in your army. Up till now they’ve been gradually falling behind as you moved across the map- not only because 5 move is now well below average for your army but also because people they dance for then typically move forward even further. With the boots, Ninian and Nils can essentially keep up with almost anyone in your army indefinitely. This not only ensures they’ll always be able to boost up whoever you need at any given time without you needing to slow down, but also can allow them to do things like boost the same unit as it runs for a destination multiple turns in a row, really increasing speed a lot. Most advanced strategies involve Ninian/Nils in some way, and giving them 7 movement can unlock new tactical options you didn’t even have before- much like giving them to Heath so that he can snipe Bolting enemies safely. On the other hand, they won’t be around for all the coming levels. In particular, you will not have them on 30 or 31 or 31x (not that that matters much). That’s a significant fraction of the remaining chapters. There are other good candidates to consider- like Canas for example, increasing your healing mobility and allowing your most powerful unit to keep up with your fastest ones. However, I generally believe these 3 to be the best for a max ranking run. I’ll let which one I went with remain a surprise for a little longer. Battle Preparations & The Map:  Oh yeah. It’s that kind of map. As I mentioned before, I usually love this kind of thing. But in this particular case the result just isn’t much fun. If it looks like there’s too much going on to keep track of, that’s because there’s too much going on to keep track of. My biggest problem with this chapter is that there are constant ‘gotcha’ situations where if you forget the exact range of any of like 10 threats, you lose and must restart. For starters, those wyvern lords are tremendously powerful and will slaughter any but your strongest anti-wyvern troops. Their wyvern rider allies are no slouches either, and they’re going to be aided almost immediately by vast hordes of bottom left wyvern reinforcements. This is an air map. This is an air map the likes of which the world has never seen, and the enemy has all the air units. For another, there are 3 chests in the top right and one in the bottom rightish of the middle (with a general standing on it). These items are valuable and there will NEVER be a bridge to the top right as far as I’m aware, so you pretty much have no choice but to rescue-drop a thief up there (or have a flyer go over with chest keys, but that’s less efficient). Furthermore, there are 2 very valuable items to steal from very problematic enemies: a blue gem and an angelic robe. And late in the map there will be 4 thieves with chest keys to steal. That’s a ton of treasure to acquire and the funds ranking for this chapter pretty much requires you to get absolutely all of it except the chest keys. Complicating this for no good reason, you cannot bring Merlinus to this chapter. Why? It’s never explained. You can bring him into all sorts of awful places, but not this one. This means that if you ever forget you’re carrying 5 items and loot a chest or kill an enemy who drops something good, you MUST throw something away. At that point, you pretty much have to restart the chapter. After almost the whole game of having Merlinus, that’s kind of hard to remember. This also means that your inventories will fill up a lot over the course of the chapter, making it increasingly hard to free up inventory space by trading for your thieves to use to steal. Honestly, that’s what I hate most about this chapter. I don’t know how many times over the years I’ve been doing great but then forgot to have a free space when killing Sonia and had to drop a flux or worse. It’s also important to remember that Jaffar CANNOT steal, but CAN open chests. On top of that, there’s a number of long-ranged enemies never seen before or after this chapter. There are 3 ballistae, some of which are operated by snipers. On a chapter where you must rely so heavily on air units, that’s a serious problem. Then there’s a whole island full of mages with bolting. All together. Ready to focus fire. It’s like those darned spirits in the ending of Radiant Dawn. They’re paired with a very strong sage with a Silence staff. If he silences one of your Restorers, you’re pretty much out of luck. Fortunately he’s not in a terribly important location (until bridges appear later) so you have some time to eliminate him. In the bottom right is perhaps the biggest threat, a druid with absolutely massive magic power (and thus range and accuracy) and a sleep staff. His range is so enormous that he can really surprise you if you’re not thinking about him carefully. To add insult to injury, he’s got an ever-perilous Luna tome to deal with. His main rivals are the two bishops, because they work as a tag team. On a max ranking run, it’s VERY difficult to have more than two restorers, so if they do something like Sleep one of your restorers you’re in deep trouble. Worse yet, even though their range is only moderately large, you can’t just rush in and snipe them with a flyer because one of them has an angelic robe that you have to steal. Plus, Sonia covers most of their island with her Bolting range. In comparison, she almost doesn’t seem like much of a threat, but she can still instant-kill most of your units, so you’d better watch out. One big problem with this map is that the AI is totally unpredictable in deciding its staff targets- or even whether to use its staves at all. Many times I’ve deliberately put a bait unit in range to begin running the enemy out of ammo, only for the enemy to stand passively by and not fire. On my 2nd run the Berserk bishop refused to Berserk Hector, for example despite 100% chance of success and just did nothing instead. On my 3rd run though, he jumped at the opportunity. That kind of thing makes it REALLY hard to strategize well since you can’t really predict when the enemy will actually be out of ammo. Now as you can see, this map is mostly just water. However, some bridges will appear as time goes on, linking the platforms. Other bridges will disappear over time. Basically, new bridges show up on every 5th turn and the pattern is fairly simple on HHM: a path gradually opens up across the top and then down close to Sonia to the bottom. And the early bridges gradually disappear, not that that should matter much if you’re moving at a reasonable pace. This severely limits your speed and your ability to deal with problem enemies on your own terms. Fortunately, the time limit is less strict than on normal mode and there are fewer things to steal, so you don’t have to do as many mass rescue-drops by air. Oh and there’s reinforcements everywhere of many kinds, but with a heavy number of air units. Now a few preparations before choosing formations:  Ninian eats the boots. I really want her boosted movement on this chapter and Cog of Destiny and Victory or Death. And Nils is central to my approach to Light too. The more mobile those two are, the better off I am. I rejected Heath pretty much immediately as already too high level to feed much more XP to. Hector was tempting- particularly because I think I might really have trouble beating 30 fast without him having 7 move- but I ultimately decided I might be able to save more turns with Ninian/Nils dancing on other chapters than he will on that one.  And Bartre promotes. This was not, of course, part of my original plan. He’s a lousy unit, and Karla is one of the worst in the game. But a lot of people want me to get Karla and to at least prove that I COULD have had enough funds to recruit Farina, so I’m making this last minute (and expensive) change. There’s not much time to train this guy up, so let’s get to it. That Def boost will be VERY handy on this chapter.  …yay? Now you don’t need luck to complete this chapter, but you do need luck to complete it efficiently. Too many units being hit by status staves can completely stall your progress, etc. There is so much going on in this chapter and the chaos so complete and the bridges and lack of defensive terrain so disruptive that your formations are basically going to collapse by turn 3 and never really reform properly and your army will be increasingly battered and disorganized as the battle goes on. By the end, I can’t even really call what I’m doing tactics- I just try to fight fires as they spring up with whatever injured units with 2 weapon uses remaining I happen to have in the area and hope for the best. Things start off really great with one of my cleverest formations and starting moves to date:  Objective: Seize the Throne Secondary Objective: Get the Fenrir from the left top right chest Secondary Objective: Get the Thor’s Ire from the middle top right chest Secondary Objective: Get the Recover staff from the right top right chest Secondary Objective: Get the Speedwings from the bottom rightish chest Secondary Objective: Steal the Blue Gem from the hero Secondary Objective: Steal the Angelic Robe from the bishop with the Berserk staff. Secondary Objective: Steal the Chest Key from the first thief. Secondary Objective: Steal the Chest Key from the second thief. Secondary Objective: Steal the Chest Key from the third thief. Secondary Objective: Steal the Chest Key from the four thief. Reinforcements: Tons. First many wyverns from the bottom left area, then assorted mounted units in the top middle area. Late in the map no less than 24 units pour out of the top left- pirates with varied weapons and Pegasus and falco knights of serious level. And in the last few turns a wide variety of units including some thieves spawn across the bottom stairs. Turn Limit: 28 (Amazingly generous, particularly compared to the impossibly short 10 turns on normal mode). No more enemies spawn after turn 16, so one should try to win by 17. Units Allowed: 9 + Hector + Nino + Jaffar. It sounds like a lot, but it’s really not. There’s just so many fronts to fight on and so many healers, thieves, flyers, etc. needed. This is enough, but not enough to be comfortable or to try anything fancy. With one more, it might be feasible to do something like drop someone off in the bottom area early and start sweeping the map from that direction too. Units Brought: 1) Hector. Required and a bit less useless than he has been recently. He’s finally fallen behind enough that he can not-quite kill many types of enemies, allowing him to feed kills to units in training 2) Nino. Required and a very good unit, but somewhat underleveled. This chapter is a great chance to level her, and just like Erk and Lucius before her she’s startlingly easy to train. 3) Jaffar. Required and somewhat handy. He’s way too high level to actually fight much with him and he’s too strong to feed kills to weak people, but at least he’s tough enough that you don’t need to worry about him. And he CAN pick locks if you give him a lockpick. He doesn’t start with one though; that would be too easy. 4) Ninian. Although she’s hit 20 so she no longer contributes XP, Ninian remains my unsung MVP. Since my number of Restore staff wielders is strictly limited, she’s particularly useful here for curing the huge number of status ailments I’ll run into. Plus of course she’s always fantastic for training weak people. 5) Matthew. It’s essential to bring a real thief since Jaffar cannot steal and there are 2 extremely precious items to seize here. Legault of course is better than Matthew, but Matthew is lower level. He’s EXTREMELY vulnerable though. Bolting can instant kill him, most staves have 100% chance to affect him, most enemies completely crush him in a fight, and the ballisticians can gun him down easily. It’s a real nuisance. 6) Kent. Mobility is very handy on this level- and I particularly need a mounted unit to carry people around in the early turns. Plus he’s one of my most usable low-level people, trainable even on this brutal level. 7) Canas. Good luck beating Sonia without him. My best healer, my best Physic user on a level where Physic will almost certainly be needed at least once, my best Restore user, and my best unit when I really need something dead. 8) Bartre. If I want to get Karla, I don’t have many chances to train this guy. He’s decently effective against Pegasus knights and wyverns, which this map is flooded with, so this chapter presents a good chance to train him against the reinforcements. Of course, he’s still, you know, Bartre, so you can expect him to completely fail at even killing pegasi without some healing. 9) Priscilla. I desperately need a second Restore user and healer. That’s pretty much essential. As usual, Priscilla is the only real option. Her mobility and rescue capacity is nice too. 10) Florina. You should bring every flyer you have to this chapter. No exceptions. I wish I had Farina for this really. 11) Fiora. Florina but better. 12) Heath. Fiora but better. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Oswin. Yeah, that’s right. My original plan was to have Oswin kill most of the flying reinforcements since he’s so low level at this point. He kind of sucks at that job and needs tons of expensive Physic support. Still, he CAN do it and got a ton of levels out of it and no other low level person can, so it’s probably worth it if one doesn’t need to suddenly use Bartre. 2) Eliwood. I already have too many promoted units. He’d be quite effective here though. 3) Pent. Man, I’d love to bring this guy. I really need more Restores and heals, but he’s too high level and I’m already bringing more promoted units than I want to. 4) Erk. Like Pent, except lower level but with no Restore staves. 5) Lucius. If I had another spot for a unit to train, I’d like to bring him. He’d be pretty easy to train here, just like Nino. 6) Legault. Of course he’s much better than Matthew so I’d really like to bring him instead. Trouble is, he’s nearly level 20 and I’m going to need to bring a thief who can take a hit and do a bit of fighting on 30, so I pretty much can’t use Legault until then. 7) Dart. Darn, I really planned on using him. But, though I tried not to get him too high level, I realize now that his 16 is just too high anyway. Furthermore, this water is like Lake terrain- meaning he actually doesn’t move through it fast enough to be usable anyway. Oh well. 8) Hawkeye. Like Dart but terrible, but capable of moving 2 squares through the water. I did actually consider him tanking the bottom reinforcements and then wading over to open up a second front in the bottom area but he’s waaaay too sucky. And too high level. 9) Serra. I could use another Restorer, but I only have 2 Restore staves (and I only have 2 because I ran out and bought a spare on the only chapter they were available). Plus she’s way too slow and fragile. 10) Lowen. Mine is now a bit less usable but higher level than my Kent, so he’s off the team again. It’s absolutely essential to get equipment right on this chapter since it’s difficult and you can’t bring Merlinus. It’s also important to have a really good starting formation and plan. You’ve really got to make your first couple of turns count big time since the chapter is going to get rough and the clock is ticking. That 28 turns sounds like a lot- and it is- but the trouble is that there are some really tight time limits and 2 more 0 chapters coming up, so there are not many more chances to build up surplus before the end of the game. In fact, it’s pretty much just this and Cog of Destiny. Make it count. Hector has an iron sword and lockpick for Jaffar- and a halberd for himself because he needs that to do just the right amount of damage to not quite kill some of these mounted units. Hector is the ideal person to trade with Jaffar on turn 1 because he has much less to do and needs to be carried to get into position anyway. Nino has my mostly broken Fire and Thunder tomes as well as an Elfire. Although it’s pricey, I’m going to be using the Elfire when possible to conserve uses of my Fire and Thunder for when I really need speed. Ninian needs relatively little gear, and I’m keeping as many of her inventory slots as possible open so she can trade to allow my thieves to steal more later. As usual, she’s positioned as close to the front as possible for maximum dancing mobility in future turns. Kent is only slightly further back because he needs to work with her on the initial rescuing to get people toward the front quickly and then get training. Similarly, Matthew himself will carry very little gear. There’s nothing to steal for a long time, so he doesn’t need to go close to the front. Canas is fully loaded with a Heal, a Physic, a Restore, a Flux, and a Luna. And he’ll need to use every one of them at least once. He’ll be rescued by a flyer, so his starting positon doesn’t matter much. Batre is loaded up with handaxes and iron axes and a vulnerary, and he’ll still nearly run out of weapons. He won’t be moving much for a while, so he can pretty much go whenever. Prisilla, like Canas, has a Heal and a Restore and a Physic but also saves space for a vulnerary just in case. Her position is precisely chosen for getting Nino exactly where I need her. The three flyers are all armed with javelins, iron lances, iron swords, and vulneraries of course. However, several practice runs convinced me that it was necessary to give Florina a silver lance, expensive though that is. Fiora carries the Delphi shield mostly because I don’t care much who has that this time. The details of their positions matter little as long as they’re near the bottom. The Characters:  “Die for me now, will you? Die for your beloved wife!”” –Sonia, Chapter 28x One of my favorite villains in not only FE but video games in general, Sonia is an awesome character. She’s a serious threat both as a warrior and a tactician, having nearly killed the party off several times with her actually fairly good plans and been several steps ahead of them all along. If it hadn’t been for Jaffar’s betrayal- which she actually had a pretty good countermeasure for- she would undoubtedly have succeeded in her goal. At no point does she do anything that’s really just stupid, like Ephidel did all the time. Plus her pettily cruel and self-deluded personality is interesting, and makes finally crushing her very satisfying. Yeah, just look at those stats. And she’s on a throne. Most people can’t scratch this lady, and she can retaliate with an instant kill on anyone with bad resistance. And she doubles many people too. One of the most problematic non-moving bosses in the game. This sounds like a job for Canas. For reasons no one seems certain of- probably just a typo when entering her stats- she’s now apparently tiny with a con of 4. In normal mode, she has 7- high average for an adult woman. This slows her down a bit actually, even including her HHM speed bonuses. Speaking of HHM bonuses, mine appears to have turned out better than she should have in most stats. Oh well, not a big problem.  Now THOSE are big problems. Bolting in her powerful hands is instant death to Priscilla and Matthew and Nino and Kent and nearly instant death to Hector among others. And she’s REALLY accurate too! Only Canas and Ninian can actually stand up to her blasts for long. Fimbulvetr is a magic never before seen, the strongest normal Anima spell. It hits even harder than Bolting and is much more accurate. At least it’s still heavy so she won’t be doubling.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 19:45
|
|
|
Playing Through: First things first, Florina takes down this sniper. The only possible way to do it is with a silver lance. Expensive, but worth it, since the alternative is to give the XP to the overleveled Heath (using an iron lance).  Ah, the joys of a lousy Florina. At least she’s pretty strong.  So Bartre moves down to this exact spot- that’s fairly important as you’ll see. Then Canas heals his promotion wound for easy XP.  Watch closely, you’re about to see a nice trick.  Heath moves to pin the left archer, then Fiora flies next to him and Florina and re-equips. I want both wielding iron swords to maximize dodge chance vs Bolting, but its also key that Fiora end up with the silver lance. Depending on the formation the mages take, this may be the only safe way to beat the sage.  Then she takes Canas…  And drops him onto this exact space. Dropping right would be much worse- Canas would have a higher chance of being silenced and Fiora would end up further from the action.  And she then finishes moving.  Well that silence staff range is massive, but Canas is in a good position to dodge it. More importantly, look how awesome this formation is: I took down the sniper with my lowest level flyer, completely shut down the whole archer island so that the survivors can’t do ANYTHING, got Canas in position to heal anyone who gets injured with bolting, put Canas as far from the Silence as possible so as to max his dodge chance, and put all 3 flyers in position to slaughter the mages or sage next turn. Plus, long term, Canas is where I need him for and physicing of Bartre or the top group and to be rescued and carried by the returning flyers.  Oh and here’s the Bolting range. As you can see, Bartre is juuuuust outside of it, but is in the range of many or most of the Pegasus knights as intended  He’s not an immediate problem, but this sleep staff shaman is important to pay attention to. That’s a giant range at 11. Critically, he can cover much of the mage and sage island, which will really complicate my plans to wipe them out.  Here’s Sonia’s supposed range. Of course, she doesn’t leave that throne so the real edge of her range is the square I’ve marked. She can cover most of the bishop island, and that will be a big problem later on.  And the bishop range while I’m at it. A mere 8. Much more manageable than that shaman’s.  The ballistae are much less of a problem but still dangerous to fragile people.  Alright, back to playing, Jaffar just runs up and Hector re-equips him. Critically, I do NOT let Jaffar keep his elixir. It’s key that he end up with 3 empty inventory spots so that he can loot all the top right chests with the lockpick I’ll give him.  That done, Kent moves by and rescue’s Hector.  7 move ftw, Ninian dances so Kent can move again and drop Hector right where I need him.  Which is on that particular staircase. He’s wielding his halberd and Kent has an iron lance because that pirate has a swordreaver.  Hector can not quite kill either of these guys with his Halberd, leaving them alive for Kent or Nino.  Speaking of Nino, this move and rescue looks pointless, right? After, the square Priscilla carrying Nino ends up in is the same one Nino could get to on her own, right?  Well, no. See, even though Matthew can’t do any fancy cavalier tricks like continuing to move after taking Nino, he can still just take and drop her immediately. She net gains 2 squares of movement from that. Plus Priscilla got to be further up than if Nino had just taken the spot she’s in. You should use rescue-dropping a lot for small movement advantages like this.  So as you can see, the north team advanced VERY far. Hector went 15 squares, Kent went 14 – dancing for units that have rescued someone is nicely double-effective like that- Nino has gone 7, and everyone is equipped and ready for some serious fighting. Meanwhile, the flyers + Canas completely dominated the archer island and are in position to wreck the enemy mages, while Bartre is ideally positioned for fighting the pegasi while staying out of Bolting range. Yeah, I think this is pretty much the best possible turn 1 ending formation really. It plays out like poetry in motion as they say. Of course, it’s all downhill from here. In 15 turns my army will be a broken wreck of people with 5 HP scattered randomly across the map.  I don’t know why they went for Florina instead of Heath. I mean, Heath has like10 less Res. On the other hand his dodge is higher, but it seems pretty clear the enemy doesn’t actually check dodge chance.  Bartre has an easy time vs the Pegasus knights. The falco knight is a different story really.  And the moment of truth. Even at the best range I could engineer and with Canas’s massive and blessed res, this guy still had a solid chance to silence him. There’s really no way you can get your staff avoid high enough on any unit to be safe on this chapter. Anyway, if Canas had been hit I’d have had to restart the chapter and do a different strategy instead.  Well, unexpectedly, no one got hit by Bolting so Canas has nothing to do but heal Florina’s level up injury while also stepping on the ballista.  Ugh, I have serious problems here. The enemy formation is basically the worst one imaginable for me. The sage for some reason moved away from me far enough that he’s now covered by the sleep staff not only at melee but at javelin range too. And by the wyvern lord for that matter. Meanwhile, the mages are blocking for him well too.  As I’ve said before, sometimes you should just make the obvious moves first so that the rest is easy to figure out. Having Florina, my rear flyer, attack one of these mages is a no brainer.  Ultimately I realized I just CAN’T take out that sage. Only the silver lance has the power, but the wielder of that will then get slugged by several wyverns. That would waste a lot of gold as well as probably result in death.  So the bottom situation is terrible. The 3 bolting mages are dead, but the silence sage is still alive. If he hits Canas, I have to restart. Fiora is on the very maximum edge of Sleep range, but that’s exactly what I want. She has great Res and with this distance, her dodge chance is good, so I can start wasting his ammo. Canas of course has blocked the ballista and the two nearby archers now have no choice but to 0 damage him and then die.  Back to the top, Matthew has to weaken this guy for Nino, though the Swordreaver means he’ll probably take a nasty hit.  Nino makes his risk worthwhile with a great level. Keep it up!  I need this paladin dead and I need him fed to someone low level. And I’ve got a plan!  This plan involves Hector in Berserk range. That’s alright. That’s good even. I mean, I don’t know if he’ll actually take the bait or not since from what I’ve seen the enemy is totally unpredictable in deciding to fire with a staff or not. But if he does, that’s one less Berserk for him, and I can restore Hector easily.  Kent gets the damage boost he’ll need.  And he moves in, giving Hector back his handaxe so that he can fight the incoming nomads.  Wow, that’s a sweet level!  Not much for Priscilla to do, so she just heals Nino.  On the enemy turn, Fiora scores a lucky critical and takes out this attacking wyvern.  Kent’s Fila’s Might continues to help him prepare another round of badly injured enemies to harvest.  Awesome! So with my highest Res unit at maximum possible range, I got this guy down to a 35% chance to hit. Not exactly rosy, but I have no choice but to take it.  Sweet, the berserk bishop went for it.  … darn it. I thought about restarting, but decided to see if I could get him cured instead.  It’s a status effect smorgasbord. Silence, Poison, Berserk. Only Sleep is missing. Well the night is still young. The end of my well-healed army is already coming to an end. Every turn spent Restoring is one not healing, and that quickly adds up into a bunch of injured guys.  Bartre continues to fight, injured, and now wyverns are showing up.  Finally I can take him down. Of course, I could have last turn, but then Fiora would have been killed by the wyvern lord.  But NOW she can be rescued out immediately afterward. Florina picks up Canas so he can be dropped off and cured later. You might be tempted to have your flyers just keep pushing through the south. Don’t fall for this. First of all, they’ll be trapped by wyverns. Second, you need them on the top area. Third, they’re probably too high level so you’ll be losing XP. Heath has a javelin ready. While holding Fiora he’s too slow to double anyone, giving me a chance to weaken these mercenaries without killing them.  Plenty of easy kills waiting, Nino gets this one.  Solid. Def is nice and she’s usually short on it.  Kent takes on one of the survivors.  Meh.  Priscilla fixes Hector up.  Except for Nino, pretty much all my characters get terrible levels on this chapter. This is pretty much typical Priscilla though.  Well, got to keep pressing forward (and block this bridge)  There’s a wyvern incoming, so Jaffar and Matthew haul Priscilla back a square or two.  Bad except I desperately need Def right now.  Hector is berserk again.  Even promoted, Bartre really can’t handle a few level 12 or so wyverns. Dart at level 10 was already mowing down swarms of them.  And Hector is restored.  After dropping Canas and having Ninian dance for Priscilla, so is Canas. Now I’ve got 2 restorers ready to go in one area.  Gotta keep training Nino. That’s pretty much 50% of what I do for the next 10 turns, just weaken stuff so Nino or Kent can kill it.  Another one for Kent for example.  So it’s the end of turn 4 now. As turn 5 begins, bridges will open to the two lower middle islands shown here, and I need to be ready. Hector and Kent are ready to keep injuring the cavalry, and possibly also agro some statuses from the bishops. The flyers and healers are pretty much just piled up wherever there was space. And Jaffar and Matthew have little to do till next turn.  Fiora gets a pretty bad level from being attacked. Oh well, she’s been good up till now most of the time.  And Florina is berserk. Darn. That was unexpected, since Hector should now be 100% or something since he’s closer.  One wave of wyverns put Bartre at 6 basically. Now he has nothing for it but to retreat, drink a vulnerary, and cross his fingers.  First things first, Mathew steals the gem. Now I can kill this guy and his lackeys. But there’s just too many enemies- particularly on the chokepoint- to deal with.  There’s no room to maneuver without having Fiora kill this guy first, also freeing a space for restoring Florina.  Done with that. There is now no more Berserk.  So she rushes out to kill the Sleep staffer before he can get to work. So the thing at this point is that I can’t make forward progress till turn 10. But I can’t even do that unless these enemies are all out of staff uses and bolting and ballista bolts by then. So I need to keep people positioned to keep all enemies firing at all times. This was a bad place for Florina who isn’t in Bolting range now.  The top group forces their way down that lane.  Well that’s no good.  Not much else to do and he’s getting pretty injured.  So Kent is now in range to agro 1 or both ballistae. The berserk and sleep and silence staff people are all gone, except the druid. He has 2 uses left. But I’ve already made my biggest mistake of the chapter: Florina can’t agro Sonia’s Bolting. That’s a problem and it will hurt me later since she’ll forever have 1 more ammo than everyone else I’m trying to run out.  Turn 6, Bartre is still injured and still busy trying to keep the wyverns off people. Their numbers just seem neverending.  Now I think I want Hector aggroing the ballista- and the wyvern rider too perhaps.  So I’m really having trouble with that hero and his mercs. I have no low level able to kill him, few available high level people and they’re at a choke point. At the very least, I have to carry Matthew out of there and then finally steal that last item.  Ninian can help.  Yes!  And Kent got shot, so Canas heals him.  So Florina can kill him at last. And now she can agggro the boltings too. But so can Matthew. And he’ll be instant killed. Can’t have that.  Well… not good, but better than almost anyone else is getting.  Fiora comes to save the day, killing the wyvern nearby.  Heath actually uses Rescue to Rescue someone. Meanwhile I’m basically just avoiding the mercenaries for now until I have some low level people without much to do.  Just isn’t as awesome as “Tell me… are you afraid to die?”  Darn. Oh and Sonia hits like a truck.  So suddenly, here’s this turn 7 crisis. Bartre is at 6 HP and out of help range, Florina is asleep, I’ve got a wyvern lord and a hero breathing down my neck, ballistae firing on me, bolting firing on me, and I need to KEEP everyone firing or the chapter will take too longer to complete.  Bartre just makes a run for it, drinking a vulnerary.  There’s really not that much to say anymore. I just keep throwing nearby units at the enemy, keeping Sonia and the ballistae firing, not putting vulnerable people in their range, and going out of my way to give more XP to Kent and Nino.  And healing.  Heath got hit hard, but luckily Canas can patch this up.  And I finally arranged for Nino to kill the wyvern lord.  Another pretty bad level.  Fiora weakens another one for Nino. I decided to leave Florina sleeping. It doesn’t change much here and no one can get in range.  Another easy kill.  I put Heath in sleep range last turn deliberately, hoping the druid would use his last charge. But… he didn’t. He just did nothing instead. So now I have to worry about him for another turn. Perhaps the enemy won’t use status staves on a character who’s holding someone? That would be an interesting discovery. On the other hand, he didn’t use it on Ninian either. When the AI is being so unpredictable it’s hard to tell why it does anything really.  At long last I can start killing theses pests.  Nice. This is a really good Kent. Though if I had to choose a stat for him to be blessed in it would be speed rather than Str. He can’t really double anything.  Florina has been taking heavy fire from bolting, ballistae, and that wyvern, but I’ve got to wake her up first of all.  Darn it! All my actually important characters are getting terrible levels this chapter, the only people doing well are Nino and Kent.  Speaking of Nino, another awesome one for her as she continues to kill every weakened enemy I can get my hands on.  After a dance, Canas heals Florina back up too.  So It’s turn 8. At first glance it looks like I’ve made really good progress and will have an easy ime from here on, but it’s not really true. The problem really is that Sonia has one more turn’s worth of Bolting ammo than I wanted because I didn’t get Florina in her range a turn earlier, which means I can’t really move when the bridge pops up on turn 10. Meanwhile, many people are poisoned and nearly everyone is badly injured and the bulk of the enemy reinforcements have yet to spawn. It’s going to be tricky to win by 16 at this point.  Another awful Bartre level.  Even Heath gets in one the terrible level action!  And Matthew, though at least he gained multiple bad stats.  Yes! That frees up Canas to heal her or something instead now.  Uh oh. Those bottom wyverns apparently don’t just wait around. Yeah, this is a huge problem and almost worth restarting over. Because he’s over the water, I can’t actually kill him preemptively. And that means I have to pull everyone who isn’t tough way back at a time when I need to be pressing forward. This is going to cost me turns. But it’s tough to see what I could really do about it. I could agro him while going for the mage island near the beginning, but even Heath can’t kill him efficiently and I need the flyers to return north promptly, and they’d have to fight him under the threat of that sleep staff. I could try to keep Heath further south in this part of the chapter to fly out and attack him now, but again Heath can’t actually kill him effectively and Heath would be killed by Bolting + the other wyverns + the wyvern lords counterattack. Or Florina or Fiora or whoever I sent in to finish off the lord would be.  I always ran Hector in here to begin forming a defensive line, forgetting that’s in Bolting range. There’s just so much stuff to keep track of on this chapter  Kent kills this last right wyvern while I think about what to do.  Definitely need Heath at full strength.  Huh, that’s… actually pretty good.  So I had Fiora rescue Hector back and then set up this defensive line with people who can take at least one hit from a wyvern lord. Note that I was careful to make sure that Canas stayed in Bolting range. I’ve got to keep her wasting her ammo.  Turn 10 now, Bartre continues fleeing from a pair of wyvern riders like someone who isn’t a promoted unit with weapon triangle advantage against them.  With some help from Jaffar, I can give this kill to Nino.  Darn.  Kent gets in on the action too and gets an actual level from another wyvern. This guy is getting quite strong.  I need to get that island cleared out as fast as possible because I need Heath to get back into the real action soon, but it needs to be made safe for Jaffar to loot. The problem is some of these archers have longbows and others will waste a whole turn dismounting from their now empty ballistae so they won’t attack Heath now and die.  Previous runs of this map showed me that I have to pull out the big guns here and use Canas. At this narrow chokepoint, the three generals can stalemate anyone else for like 4 turns.  An Fiora drops Hector closer to the action. He’s pretty good against Generals himself it I can find a spot for him.  So it’s turn 10 and I just have not made enough progress. I’d like Canas several spaces further down the bridge and everyone else piling on too, but the ill-timed attack of the wyvern lord screwed up my plans badly. At least every single long-ranged attacker is finally neutralized.  Turn 11, Heath grabs Jaffar and hurries back with him.  And the massive top left reinforcements begin. Bartre is going to have a terrible time with them because he can’t dodge and he has only mediocre Def, but he’s got to do it and I’ll have to physic him or something. First he’ll need to retreat more for a heal though.  Canas couldn’t even kill these guys quickly, so Nino finishes one. With Ninian I can kill another this turn while will make it a breeze to get by the final one next time. That’s fast enough since most of my group still isn’t ready to move along the bridge.  Nice. Everyone else may be doing awful but Nino isn’t disappointing.  Matthew will need carrying to get in position, so it’s time to pick him up and drop him near the chest. That will also give me a chance to agro some of the enemies south of the generals and begin thinning them out, which I really need to do if I’m going to go fast. Also notice that one pirate there. He’s been in the water pretty much all map long, running back and forth as he can’t make up his mind about what direction to go.  Fiora is now blocking the general, so Florina can drop Matthew safely.  Well Nino’s second general level isn’t exactly good, but magic power is handy to have.  Next turn, Heath drops off Jaffar and rushes back to the action.  Bartre moves to engage the first reinforcement wave.  And I had forgotten Jaffar was injured by the wyvern lord and am now forced to physic him. Darn.  Nino kills the last general and the path is cleared.  Florina rushes the pesky Luna druid who used to have Sleep. At least his crit chance is low. On the one hand, I’m running late and I really, really need to pick up the pace by having good units taken down the shamans and whatnot quickly so I can get Matthew ready to steal the chest keys. On the other hand, I don’t really have many good units left uninjured and my flyers are about to be busy and I don’t want them hogging the XP anyway.  So Fiora just weakens this guy for Nino instead of killing him with a javelin while blocking the south bridge.   Bartre actually does well against this falco knight, and kills it in one round. My Bartre is significantly behind on Str, so this has been a problem for him.  Oh look, another not that good level. I really need Def and Speed mostly, but at least the Str is nice.  Bartre is still up to his neck in dangerous enemies and will be for the foreseeable future.  Jaffar loots the Fenrir.  The big problem at this point is that I can’t actually use Canas, Hector, or some of my flyers to clear out the problem enemies. They have to fly and rescue drop Hector and Canas near Sonia or I won’t win on time. Meanwhile Bartre and Jaffar are elsewhere. That leaves my army severely understaffed as hordes of enemies appear.  Well Fiora will need a heal to stay in the fight.  These 4 reins per turn are going to keep spawning for a while. There’s no one counter to pirate + cavalier + nomad and the nomads in particular could pile up and then pose a major threat to my all-important flyers. Meanwhile there’s just too many people to slog through to get Matthew near the thieves. The really annoying thing is that I need to make sure I never completely block the path to the chest from now on or the thieves might just leave.  Meh, I’ll take it.  Well… Strength at least! Because I had that brief run of awesome levels, my Bartre is roughly average overall despite his terribleness this chapter. So he sucks, as average Bartre does on HHM. But he’s finally reached the required level 5 to fight Karla so I never have to use him again. For now he does need to fight the remaining reinforcements though.  The archers move to block the chests, So Jaffar has to kill them.  Bartre drinks a vulnerary, but it’s not nearly enough. He can’t dodge so he takes like 30 damage a turn.  Canas is dropped off in range to fight Sonia and Fiora is ready to drop Hector, but things are a mess. Fiora will be at like 8 HP after one of those wyverns hits her and Canas will be busy. And she’s poisoned. Florina is at bad HP and tied down trying to kill nomads as they spawn. Bartre is more than half dead. Jaffar is stuck on an island. That leaves me only Kent, Nino, and Ninian to kill several units per turn and allow Matthew to steal chest keys. It’s not looking rosy.  Well, I’ve got the first one now.  So here’s the situation at the end of turn 2. It’s only going to get messier until Heath and Fiora can return, but there’s only 2-3 turns left anyway.  Next turn, Canas has to heal Bartre while moving to engage Sonia. Mine didn’t gain any Mag this chapter, which is a shame. If he had, he could kill her in just 2 hits with Luna.  Jaffar acquires Thor’s Ire. This is the 3rd ring for Ninian and the first worthless one. It grants +10 crit to whoever it’s used on. Pass.  Florina edges away from that remaining wyvern but keeps killing nomads.  Matthew steals the second chest key after the others hack through some enemies for him. Problematically, Kent isn’t strong enough to 1-round kill those pirates, so they’re starting to pile up.  Sonia attacks and Canas smashes her. No crit to save me money, but oh well.  This archer wouldn’t move off the chest, so Jaffar has to kill him too. Darn. Now I can’t win by turn 16.  Next turn, Canas finishes Sonia and gets another awful level. If he keeps this up he’ll be average before long. Which is to say, still the best unit in the game.  Kent gets an awful level from a pirate.  Fiora is terribly injured but nets a decent level. She needs all the Str she can get.  I’m really running out of spare inventory space, nearly everyone is completely full. In this situation, I desperately needed Matthew able to steal but Ninian can’t quite reach him this turn so I had to have her take Florina’s stuff away instead and then have Florina trade with him.  That accomplished, I net the 3rd chest key.  Final turn! Matthew has already stolen the final chest key. Now it’s time for Florina to go for this thief.  And in the last tricky operation of the level, I’ve realized that I have NO people with inventory space left in the area. The only one on the whole team with free space is Hector and he’s elsewhere. So there’s no choice but to drop something to get the speedwings. With a trade chain, I got this 1 use javelin over to Matthew. I’ll throw that away as he loots the chest after Ninian dances.  Last chest!  Javelin discarded.  Yeah, I never had a chance to kill this pirate. He spent the WHOLE map just walking back and forth in the water never making it to land.  So here’s the scoreboard. That pirate and one archer on the treasure island remain alive, but they’re no big loss. It’s turn 17, so one turn after the ideal finish (mostly because of that incident with the wyvern lord and with Sonia not running out of Bolting at maximum speed. Honestly, I’ll take it. This is my 8th full play of the level and while I’ve managed to win on turn 16 before, I always had to leave more enemies alive and not steal one of the chest keys to manage it. And I’m absolutely sick of this chapter. Victory!  Outside, we retrieve this Jan fellow. He really is a coward, otherwise he’d join us and we’d finally have a brigand on the team. I could go for Gonzalez 2 right now. There’s even a perfect level for raining a brigand coming up.  He and Nino reflect on the late Brendan Reed.  And Jan reveals that Brendan already knew much of Sonia’s past… including that she’d murdered Nino’s parents and lied about it. Man. This just makes Brendan MORE of an idiot. He gives Ephidel a run for his money.  And they say their farewells.  As Requiem plays once again.  To Brendan, Sonia, Jan, and her old life.  Hector pulls Jaffar aside and tells him how much he hates him, but says he’ll agree to let Jaffar travel with them because Eliwood wants that.  And one of Hector’s best short speeches begins as he tells Jaffar that he will kill him if he ever does anything remotely suspicious, because Eliwood is too kind and trusting for his own good.  And an interesting moment. Limstella teleports back into the water temple to visit the dying Sonia. The latter still doesn’t admit to being a morph. Why DID we leave this woman alive though?  Yeah, usually we saw Limstella warp in and take the quintessence of that last boss we killed, but Sonia is a morph so she can’t do that? So what is she here for? Is the dispassionate and professional Limstella actually here to mock Sonia and rub it in her face that yes she really is a morph? Or is this perhaps just her cold way of saying goodbye?  Probably it’s the former. I guess Sonia’s taunting and jerkishness over the years must have really annoyed her.  And Limstella leaves her to die, still claiming to be human with her last breath. It’s finally over! Let’s review the outcome: I got every chest, stole every single item (including all 4 chest keys), finished 11 turns under time, killed all but 2 enemies, and got about 8 levels worth of XP more than required. It’s a resounding victory, and yet I still feel like I lost somehow. When I beat Whereabouts Unknown or Battle Before Dawn I felt like my strategies and cunning plans had carried me to victory and I was proud of the win, but on this chapter there’s just nothing to be proud of. There’s no way to maintain formations, there’s no way to really keep playing tactically as your army is forced to split up like 6 ways and deal with vast hordes of enemies. You just have to hope for misses with the status staves and rely on brute force and high level units you just throw around wherever there’s a problem to secure victory this time. And that makes the win feel hollow. Total Restarts: 33 (Yeah, I had to redo this chapter 12 times. Any time you screw up the slightest bit on this chapter someone gets killed and you have to restart. There’s no room for error and no room for mistakes and there are way too many moving parts to keep track of) Turn Surplus: 29 (Looking good! If I can add one or two on Cog of Destiny then I can really take my time and get maximum XP on 30, 32, and 32x) 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, 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 would have acquired if not for a stupid minor mistake on chapter 22, 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, and the confused pirate and final archer on Night of Farewells. Melth fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Apr 11, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 19:46
|
|
|
Interesting that Fiora and Kent are probably well above their strength average but well below their speed average. I guess if you're careful it makes it easier to weaken enemies for your other units to level up. I don't agree with your assessment of Limstella. I wouldn't call her a "consummate professional" or think she would do something as petty as to rub it in to Sonia that she isn't perfect as Limstella is largely emotionless. She's just wandering around sucking up any quintessence around the battlefield and checking to see if Sonia took anyone with her when she fell. Also, did you skip the scene where Sonia is weakened by Brendan Reed? He got in a shot before he fell, and if you didn't recruit Jaffar he actually kills her in this scene.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 20:17
|
|
|
Geez, what a tedious-looking battle. It's probably a lot easier without restricting yourself to getting Max Rank, but even still it looks like a nightmare. I never liked the differentiation between water-terrain types. It makes Dart so much less useful since Pirate bonus doesn't apply to Lake tiles for some reason. They should get that bonus on all types of water tiles.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 21:35
|
|
|
Krumbsthumbs posted:Interesting that Fiora and Kent are probably well above their strength average but well below their speed average. I guess if you're careful it makes it easier to weaken enemies for your other units to level up. Actually yeah, the Limstella is just looking for quintessence explanation makes a lot of sense. This was a major battle, expecting to find some isn't out of the question.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 21:57
|
|
|
Krumbsthumbs posted:I don't agree with your assessment of Limstella. I wouldn't call her a "consummate professional" or think she would do something as petty as to rub it in to Sonia that she isn't perfect as Limstella is largely emotionless. She's just wandering around sucking up any quintessence around the battlefield and checking to see if Sonia took anyone with her when she fell. We know she isn't truly emotionless though- she just tries to be or thinks she should be. For example, before Victory or Death Nergal remarks that the chance to die for him seems to be what she wants, making it clear that she's capable of wanting things- not just mindlessly serving. And when killed she comments “I am not human. This mind and body are constructs. Yes, as is this sorrow." So clearly she feels sorrow. She just dismisses it as not counting because she isn't human. The "Just checking the battlefield" argument doesn't work because in that case there'd be no need to talk to Sonia. She's dying and of no further use- as Limstella flat out states. But rather than just walking around taking the quintessence, Limstella goes up to Sonia in particular and TELLS her that she's a morph and therefore has no essence to harvest. What's more, she refers to Sonia as a 'puppet', you know, exactly the same insult Sonia kept using on Limstella. And then she tells Sonia that she is now useless before leaving her to die. It's clearly a taunt. So yes, she clearly has emotions, but she deliberately tries to be stoic and cold and professional, the better to serve Nergal.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 22:45
|
|
|
You didn't know you can't be targetted while rescuing? Okay yeah, the game wont target you for Berserk or Sleep while you have someone rescued. It's a fail safe because in the case of berserk, the game wouldn't know what to do, and it's an anti-frustration feature, as doing so would deny you the use of 2-3 units, the recued, the affected and the presumed rescuee. Regardless taking out 2 units for the price of 1 is not happening in the games data.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 23:47
|
|
|
Melth posted:We know she isn't truly emotionless though- she just tries to be or thinks she should be. For example, before Victory or Death Nergal remarks that the chance to die for him seems to be what she wants, making it clear that she's capable of wanting things- not just mindlessly serving. We're going to have to agree to disagree. We've seen Limstella skulking around multiple battlefields of the Black Fangs harvesting, it isn't unreasonable to check the Morph you left in charge in case she can be fixed. She couldn't be, so I see it more as a statement from a machine to another along the lines of "you're defective, and we have no more use for you" rather than a taunt to someone breathing their last. If you see that as a taunt, that's fair, but I do not see that as being professional.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2015 00:01
|
|
|
I always just assumed that Limstella was talking to herself while she worked because I'm one of those obnoxious people that does that. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2015 00:52
|
|
|
These levels are punishment for abandoning the spirit of maximum efficiency in favor of getting a completely useless, tedious to acquire side character.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2015 01:37
|
|
|
I feel like Night of Farewells is really hurt by the programming oversight that gave us 0-requirement chapters. If you didn't need to build up such a massive turn surplus, you could tackle this chapter at a more reasonable pace and have it feel less like clumsy juggling.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2015 04:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 03:05 |
|
|
Would it be worth it to burn a pure water or Barrier to make sure key people can't be statused?
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2015 05:10
|
|