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Well that's just obscene. She's mini-Athos with 8 move. Onmi you are being too kind to the player with these changes.
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May 31, 2015 17:18
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Well that's just obscene. As long as he didn't increase her growths, she won't be too powerful. Really, all she needed was a boost to her bases to be useful. I'd say having all the magic is just icing on the cake.
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May 31, 2015 17:22
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You're giving the players an 8 move magic user with starting access to Aircal, Nosferatu, Luna (if it is the FE7 Luna) and most staves. If she gets B staves she's set. God good, that is a monster in the making. Edit: What the hell are you throwing at the player that you need to give them that kind of power to fight?
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May 31, 2015 17:27
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Melth posted:Every game is Wyvern Emblem. Even games that aren't FE. All of the wyvern classes suck in Awakening because they get trash skills
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May 31, 2015 22:17
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Krumbsthumbs posted:You're giving the players an 8 move magic user with starting access to Aircal, Nosferatu, Luna (if it is the FE7 Luna) and most staves. If she gets B staves she's set. Eh, it really doesn't seem like THAT big of a deal to me. Seems more like she's kind of a "Jack-of-all-trades, Master of none" type deal in Omni's hack. She's good at all kinds of magic, but on the other hand, her bases and (presumably) growths are comparatively underwhelming compared to units you'd raise yourself. Plus, even FE7 had monsters like her in the form of HM Raven, HM Harken, Pent, and arguably Canas (Melth really likes him, but I think he gets off to kind of a slowish start compared to some of the other uber units). So basically, she's a crutch character. That awesome unit who comes in really late in the game, just in case you royally mucked up on your own party.
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May 31, 2015 22:26
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Manatee Cannon posted:All of the wyvern classes suck in Awakening because they get trash skills I mean, on a lunatic or lunatic+ no grinding & no children run you don't have a lot of time to waste in cruddy classes trying to get skills. Wyverns fight well and fly and can take hits from the absurd number of off-the-charts, custom-forged bows and wind tomes you go up against. That's all I need to dominate most maps. But for that matter, Tantivy and Quick Burn are both fantastic for my aggressive playstyle anyway; +23, 24, or 25 hit AND avoid on the turns that matter are sweet bonuses. Strength +2 may be bad in the endgame, but it's decent earlier on -or with handaxes- when it can actually net you some 1-round kills that would otherwise have left the enemy at 1-3 HP or something. And Swordbreaker lets them crush several unit types they might otherwise struggle to actually hit. So all of those skills except Str +2 later on are pretty respectable, even if they're not as dramatic as things like Galeforce or as great for utility as Locktouch or Despoil.
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May 31, 2015 23:15
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Fionordequester posted:Eh, it really doesn't seem like THAT big of a deal to me. Seems more like she's kind of a "Jack-of-all-trades, Master of none" type deal in Omni's hack. She's good at all kinds of magic, but on the other hand, her bases and (presumably) growths are comparatively underwhelming compared to units you'd raise yourself. Plus, even FE7 had monsters like her in the form of HM Raven, HM Harken, Pent, and arguably Canas (Melth really likes him, but I think he gets off to kind of a slowish start compared to some of the other uber units). The Pre-Promotes in my hack (for the moment, due to the increase in chapter sizes we may have to add a third tier, that'll obviously effect the balance, as this was pre-chapter addition) more follow the lines of say... Sirius. They are units who start with low bases and if you get them all the way to 20 they'll cap out looking like a 20/10 unit. Decently powerful but not winning any awards for the stat blocks. The addition of say, all magic types for Cecilia, is more because I like to give units unique things. I could always strip that from her now and make it a Mini-quest after all, with Cecilia unlocking the other magic types on other maps. Gives the players incentive to use her, but doesn't also say "Ignore Clarine and Erk" because Clarine will always statistically wind up stronger than Cecilia (and has better avaliability) and the same with Erk. Now will the changes I've made hold up for the final release? Probably not, I mean Wendy was given a statline change that wound up being changed because she was moved from chapter 8 to 1. And with the addition of so many new chapters I may have to rethink unit join times to pace them a bit better. Luckily I'm willing to pull back and playtest and say "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea anymore" instead of going "Lalalalalalalala this will be awesome shut your face"
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Jun 1, 2015 00:47
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 Alright, time for the third legendary weapon chapter. This is the first one to have a trap gimmick that’s actually semi-interesting. Much like in Night of Farewells (Chapter 28x of FE7), this chapter consists of floor tiles forming bridges in a room full of water. And just like in Night of Farewells, these bridges sometimes sink and are replaced by water tiles, while other bridges are created. Both are unpopular levels, but I liked them. And I actually think the whole water and bridges thing was done better in this chapter. The two chapters were actually quite different in implementing this “trap”. In NoF, you started with only a few bridges and more were revealed over time. This usually meant that all they did was slow you down. The ENM version had a more interesting progression, but was fundamentally the same as the HHM one. In this chapter, by contrast, you start off with basically all the bridges you need and then they gradually vanish and are never fully restored. So in NoF, the bridges served to slow you down and hold you back, but in this chapter the threat of the bridges vanishing makes you hurry. Critically, you actually CAN make it to the central island before running into any bridge trouble if you’re quick. So yeah, I think that aspect of the map is fairly good and lends itself to interesting strategies. Chapter Summary: 30 seconds after the last chapter ended, Roy and his group charge into the reservoir where the Béarnaise army is trying to destroy Forblaze. After defeating them and acquiring Forblaze, Roy meets the elder of Arcadia (who may have been a dragon in his wilder youth) who is completely useless and knows nothing about anything. Having uncovered 0 clues of any kind about how Bern ended up with dragons from the greatest repository of dragon lore in the world, they get back to the plot.  Dude, you’re the one standing on the altar. How don’t you know?  Maybe you should have had guards to hold them at the door- or better yet walked outside to double the strength of the army fighting Roy.  And that’s gg for Ohtz. If he was thinking straight, he would either have helped Randy crush the attackers or just tried to stall Roy while looking for a way to destroy the altar. Instead, he let Randy and his much stronger forces die and now decides to ignore his own actual objective to send his men to defeat a force that already crushed one more powerful than his own.  This is retconned in 7 where Athos found the village already here and then created the oasis for them. Apparently in this game they were already living somewhere else and then he led them here? Really the story and characterization of Arcadia are completely different, this is only one example.  Perhaps the only thing unchanged is this: Athos is awesome. Instead of just foolishly sealing his weapon away where no one could ever use it and it could easily be lost forever (as with Durandal and Armads in particular), he just found some people who COULDN’T abuse its power and gave it to them. And even in death, he defeats Bern easily by just making his magic box unopenable by anyone except the people to whom he willed it. Poor Ohtz is in way over his head dealing with the Archsage.  Why? I mean thanks for the tip, but could we have an explanation? This has always been weird. In Night of Farewells at least we’re told that Sonia is creating the bridges. Battle Preparations & the Map:  Again with the absolutely gigantic amounts of pointless empty space. Basically the whole right half of this map could be chopped off with no gameplay loss. Heck, the few enemies who are even there often don’t participate at all. Lousy, badly thought out map design as usual. It’s too bad since I like this chapter’s gimmick and it could be pretty fun if it wasn’t so huge and the enemies were concentrated enough to put up a real fight. Oh the color scheme is pretty, so that’s nice at least. I’m a sucker for pretty maps, and I tend to dislike games like the Sacred Stones or Radiant Dawn where the colors are ugly.  Secondary Objective None. There is nothing to do. It’s a really boring chapter that way. Just a straightforward, easy fight. Secondary Objective I don’t know, build some supports or something? I got tired of saying that every chapter. It was worth emphasizing for a while. Reinforcements: None. One reason these legendary weapon chapters are so easy is the lack of reins. As I’ve said before, this game relies really heavily on giant waves of surprise reinforcements to pretend to be difficult. The chapters without them are quite easy. Turn limit: 20. No problem. Since there’s nothing else going on that’s worth waiting for though, I’m going to try to beat this level really fast and finally get into a turn surplus. That will make things intense enough to be interesting and challenging. So pretty. And so empty. I mean, the throne is in the middle so there’s basically never any point to going right of there at all. Except for 1-2 guys who don’t get the memo to move unless you go to them. So I guess if you like walking 20 squares to get one kill, this is the map for you. Now it’s a map full of water, but the enemy has very few air units. What’s more, those 4 wyverns don’t even charge your position. Some of them might never go after you at all unless you deliberately seek them out. They’ve got a lot of pirates though, so that’s a problem, right?  Wrong. That’s LAKE terrain. Pirates can only move one square in it! These enemies are nearly immobile. Combine that with the completely lousy stats pirates have (worse than even brigands due to poor Con) and you have a really easy chapter. Even the Berserker is no threat because he’s wielding a devil axe. And one of the druids doesn’t have a weapon other than eclipse, so he’s just free XP. Also many of these enemies will not move unless you get quite close to them, thus they’re never organized and are pretty much always fought in small groups. Both the boss and the sage near him have bolting, but that sage doesn’t move (and neither does Ohtz of course). This makes his real threat range fairly small. But the edge of their range is close to your starting area, so you could probably have them both out of charges by turn 6 or so. Tate and Thany paired with just one healer could do it, though the healer would end up swimming. Speaking of which, there isn’t a really clear pattern to the bridge disappearances (and then re-appearances) after the first few turns, but the first few turns are all you need to know about. Basically the left side area is gradually eaten away at until by turn 5 or 6 or so the northern half of it no longer connects to your starting area. Chunks of the bottom leftish-middle bridge begin disappearing around the time the left one finishes. It too remains partly passable as it disappears bit by bit. After that, getting around gets much harder in general. But if you’re got fast units, it’s really easy to already be on the center island by the time the bridge there vanishes. Or, better yet, just bring air. I have absolutely no idea why so many people running this chapter don’t bring more of their flyers. It is clearly an air map.  Units Allowed: 9 + Roy. That we get so few guys is one of the few things making this chapter’s actual fighting even remotely challenging. However, more people would actually be something of a nuisance when the bridges get narrow anyway. Units Brought: 1) Roy. Required. On the one hand, slow units like him are punished by this map. On the other, the enemy are almost all axe users. So he balances out to no more or less useless than normal. 2) Thany. I’ve actually decided to promote her since I realized I already have 3 Elysian Whips and will get another. Also it’s just a great map for air. And if she can keep leveling, I can use Shin and Sue more freely. 3) Tate. Thany but way better. 4) Miledy. Tate but way better. The more air units, the better. 5) Lugh. My best character, arguably. He’s here to instant kill stuff for my combat ranking and to heal people. In that order actually. 6) Gonzalez. I really want to get him promoted soon. I want to be using Armads by chapter 16 if I can. And of course, he’s Gonzalez so he owns enough that he’s worth carrying around sometimes. 7) Lalum. On a chapter where you need to hustle and keep people from getting bogged down, there is no one better. Also I want to find a turn to have her eat the pair of boots she dug out of the sand last chapter. 8) Saul. He and Ellen are now about the same level (and Clarine is higher). And he’ll be better at surviving Bolting if I need him to. 9) Lilina. She’s getting into the part of the game where she starts paying off big time. She might actually be better than Lugh when I promote her. I’m also getting close to needing to retire my healers, so I’d better have some staff-capable people to replace them. 10) Oujay. After that brilliant performance last chapter, I can’t NOT promote him, can I? He’s now pretty much hands down my best swordsman- he definitely will be when I get his supports with Lilina going. His def isn’t the best admittedly, but he’s becoming extremely dodge-y. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Sophia. This is pretty much THE chapter to train her. However, she’s just too bad at it and slows you down too much. Plus I want to go really, really fast here and can’t afford the delay. 2) Fir. Has reached level 19 with like 75 XP. Her Str cap is terrible, so I’m not promoting her. And that means I’m probably never bringing her again. 3) Rutger. There is very little room for extra people on the team here and there isn’t time to build supports. He can’t do the jobs I need Oujay for and he can’t rescue people over water or fight as effectively as the mages, so he’d be useless. 4) Dieck. Same as Rutger basically. 5) Alan. Could be very handy but I think the 3 flyers will be enough rescuers. 6) Lance. Same as Alan but not as good. 7) Clarine. Still too high level and Rutger and Dieck aren’t coming. 8) Ellen. I don’t need another healer and Saul won’t get doubled by anyone’s bolting if it comes to that, unlike her. 9) Ray. I’d like to bring him to train, but I can’t afford to bring any more people who can’t fight extremely well. So many people are close to (or at) level 20 that nearly everyone is carrying a promotion item. You don’t want someone to get a bit more XP than you predicted and then get stuck and become unusable. People are carrying a fair amount of heavy weaponry too to make sure I can get plenty of OHKOs for my combat ranking. And of course Oujay has a handaxe and Lilina has a heal staff for when they promote. This formation is contrary to my usual advice of flyers out front for when doing rescue dropping, but in the case of this particular map I’d rather have a few infantry units who can fight leading the charge and the flyers carrying the weaker people just behind them. That’s why Lalum is near the front too of course. Sidenote, I hate this starting area. Your allowed unit positions are really annoyingly far back and spread out. The Characters:  By now you’ve probably noticed that a hero was the boss on the uber-hero Roland’s chapter, a berserker was the boss on the uber-berserker Durban/Armads’s chapter, and the clear pattern continues with Ohtz the sage guarding the uber-sage Athos’s weapon. In-universe this is weirdly coincidental. That hero was just a random bandit who didn’t even know the cave he’d set up in was special. And the berserker was some random bandit sprung from jail for no adequately explained reason to seal a cave that Bern could totally just have sealed themselves. This is the first time there’s been any reason for the pattern: it makes sense to send a wizard to deal with magical seals and traps. Of course, Ohtz ruins that by apparently paying no attention to the proceedings and not doing anything at all to help his men open the altar. Oh and at first glance, it seems kind of weird that Bern is trying to destroy or hide these weapons rather than use them. Afterall, they inexplicably believe that no one knows they have dragons. And even if people did know, not everyone apparently knows the legendary weapons are even effective against them- Roy sure didn’t. And even if people did know both of those things, the weapons would still be powerful enough in the hands of Bern’s greatest warriors that it would be worth the risk. I mean, a human wielding one of the things is more deadly than a dragon. However, when you think about it and know the whole plot; this is actually one of the few things Bern does that make sense. Afterall, Zephiel secretly plans to have the dragons exterminate his own nation along with all other humans everywhere. The last thing he wants is for his former generals to have access to dragonslaying weapons when he turns on them. It IS a little weird that none of his subordinates consider disobeying his orders for the good of the country though. Well to get back on track, Ohtz is another moron officer in Bern’s army with no personality or background. What he does have are stats. This guy is a one-man army who could go toe to toe with either of my very blessed sages and win. He’s a bizarre difficulty increase after this extremely easy chapter but is even problematic before you reach him…  ... because he’s wielding the true legendary anima tome. Bolting is WAY better in FE6 than in 7 and that’s saying something. First, it has a small, but significant, accuracy bonus. Combined with enemies having luck to help them aim in this game, that means it’s WAY harder to dodge. I can’t actually get this guy below 50% hit with ANY unit I have. But more importantly, it now only weighs 10 instead of 20! At 20 weight, no one would ever double with it and their avoid chance often sank into the single digits. Now it does still slow people by a significant amount, but not overwhelmingly. If you bring out the wrong unit (like Ellen, as I alluded to), she WILL be doubled and surely killed. Same if you equip a heavy weapon on the wrong person or rescue someone in his range. With Ohtz’s massive Mag and Speed, he can really slam you with this. It doesn’t help that his buddy has one too, though that guy isless powerful. No unit I have is currently capable of surviving a hit from both of them and their range overlaps a lot. Playing Through:  Sweet. Lilina just went from great to amazing. Promotion is a VERY big deal for a lot of this game’s magic users. Even a Lilina that wasn’t incredibly speed-blessed like mine (she’s a very good candidate for speedwings by the way, maybe the best) would quickly get fast enough to double a surprising number of enemies with this bonus.  These two were positioned so Lugh could the run out and heal her promotion wound immediately.  Tate picks up Roy and Lalum helps carry him a long way this turn.  In this spot, she can easily tank Ohtz’s bolting to start running him out of ammo. Meanwhile of course, Roy got to move a lot closer to where he needs to be. Never forget that with a dancer, you can have a single unit rescue and then drop another unit a very long distance in a single turn.  Time to carry Gonzalez out.  Oujay moves up and promotes. Some very nice bonuses there, the defense is particularly nice. He’s become a major dodge tank and is way above average in Str. So like Raven but not as cool.  You can see that even with a slim lance, Tate was very likely to be hit. I had 2 healers standing by for a reason. Alright, my turn.    Turn 2 win! One moment, I need to put on a pair of sunglasses. Alright, I’m now sufficiently cool to explain what I did here. As you know, I got the Warp staff last chapter. I explained in the War Room Part 33 (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3701153&pagenumber=27#post444413617) how that staff works in detail. In this game it’s the same but with +5 range, like all staves here. Now Warping a unit does NOT end that unit’s turn; it can still move if you didn’t use it already. That means that if you want to turn 2 win, you need someone who can kill Ohtz to already be in warp range of a tile in his room. The real reason I put Oujay in the front is that that square he could barely reach where I promoted him is the maximum distance away I could be (my warp range was 9 squares). That was also the reason for working so hard to drop Roy in particular so far along, rather than someone better. To turn 2 win I obviously need to warp Roy in ready to move too. Now to figure that out of course, you need to know your warp range. It’s ½ the wielder’s Mag +5 measured from the square of the warped unit. My Saul has average Mag for his level at 9, meaning he has range 4.5 + 5 = 9.5, rounded down to 9. So even a moderately sub-average Saul could do this, and an above average or higher level Saul could do it better. Promoted Sauls or Ellens or Clarines would have a WAY easier time. (If you’re wondering, the amount of Mag you would need to do a 1-turn win is a much less feasible 22). The real reason I brought Saul, rather than Ellen, is that for some reason my Ellen actually still has a B in staves whereas Saul has the needed A. You are basically guaranteed to have at least one staff user capable of using Warp though and probably from further than mine. What do you need to kill Ohtz in one fight? Well it pretty much has to be a physical unit; with the throne he’s just too tough to do more than scratch damage with magic. My Ohtz is basically average and with his throne bonus, you need to be capable of dealing 61 damage over 2 hits- so 31 damage per hit unless you want to rely on criticals. That’s quite accessible with serious weapons. Almost trivial for some characters. What’s a bit trickier is getting at least 21 speed (or 22 if he’s lucky with his HM bonuses) to double him. Even a level 1 promoted Rutger is basically guaranteed 21 speed and it’s really easy to have a higher level promoted Rutger by this point, so that’s one unit who can definitely double him. The tricky thing of course is that some of the weapons that give you enough damage might slow you down. For example, Durandal is the best choice for an average Rutger, but that slows him by 3. Obviously if yours is higher level, that’s no problem (and he might be able to get away with a silver sword- or definitely a killing edge if you count on a crit). My Oujay could double and kill him with the silver sword, but I could get significantly better accuracy with Durandal. However, I couldn’t double with that… when Ohtz had his full 17 speed. That was the point of flying someone into Bolting range even though I didn’t really intend to play long enough to run him out of ammo; that made him switch to Bolting. And that lowered his speed to a much more double-able 14. And dropped his avoid a bit too. A level 1 average Swordsage Rutger wielding Durandal can double him and easily kill him in 2 hits with high accuracy. And then of course all you have to do is have Lalum dance for your staff user, have Roy already in range (via rescue-drop on turn 1) and then warp him over to seize the throne. In short, you too can kill Ohtz and win on turn 2. No blessed units required if you play right. Well that solves my tactics ranking problem. Total Restarts: 5 (None here, though I thought about redoing it from the beginning in slow motion this time) Turn Surplus: +9 (Epic) Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill, two Chapter 12 fighters I couldn’t kill since I needed supports built elsewhere, and that one extra turn I could have saved on Chapter 14x if I’d only had a A level staff user with 22 Mag. Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: Durandal killed Ohtz using Oujay on chapter 14x, turn 2. Oh alright, I’ll take these shades off and get serious.  Battle Preparations & the Map: So here’s my real formation:  Same characters and same gear, but the order is different because I actually need my other units to be doing stuff this time, rather than pretending to do things so people don’t see the surprise coming. Now the reason I didn’t go into gear much previously has doubtless become clear, but it’s time I actually talked about it. Thany here is at level 19 with about 75 experience, so I want her to do only light fighting before she promotes. She’s got an Elysian Whip for that purpose, and she also has a slim lance ( boosting her avoid up when I need her to dodge a bolting is nice), an iron lance, a javelin, and a silver lance because I need her to instant kill some stuff. No vulnerary since there’s no space. Tate and Miledy have similar gear, except each has a vulnerary instead of a silver lance and Miledy has an axereaver instead of a slim lance. Lilina and Lugh both have fire, elfire (for when they need more damage for the OHKO), a heal staff, and a vulnerary. Standard gear for sages. Lilina also has a Guiding Ring of course. Gonzalez has his usual wide variety of axes (iron, hand, killer, and swordreaver) and a vulnerary. He’s still 4 levels from promoting. Oujay has his hero crest, iron sword, handaxe, vulnerary, and Durandal. Saul is carrying a heal staff, a physic, a barrier staff (good for dealing with boltings), warp, and a vulnerary. And Lalum has a vulnerary, a silver sword to trade to Oujay after he eats his hero crest, and a delicious-looking pair of boots for herself. The reason Thany, rather than Tate or Miledy, is in front is that she has the best chance of dodging Bolting and more Res anyway. And that’s the reason she has the silver lance; the person in the front will need to kill an enemy target on turn 2 while the others will not. Everyone else’s positions are irrelevant in their details. One thing I dislike about this starting area is that basically all 6 positions not filled by flyers are exactly the same distance from the path you want to take. That’s boring and a tripping hazard. (Really) Playing Through:  Thany flies maximum forward and equips the slim lance. Putting someone with 7+ move in the very front lets me get her just into Bolting range on turn 1.  Lilina runs forward and promotes.  Lugh heals her of course. Now Oujay actually stops one short on his move and then promotes.  That’s so both Saul and Lalum can reach him while moving full forward themselves. Saul buffs up his Res to respectable levels with the Barrier staff.  And Lalum gives him his silver sword before dancing.  Here’s the ideal spot to walk to now.  Order of operations is actually critical here. First Miledy picks up Lilina.  Gonzalez doesn’t move full forward, but picks up Lalum.  Then Roy drops her. That’s a square of bonus movement right there for her, which may prove helpful. And since their positions don’t matter much now, there was no real cost to me.  And this is why the order mattered; if Lilina was still standing in what is now the space west of Lalum, Tate could not have moved in there and rescued Gonzalez before moving on. She would have had to waste movement space.  Oh you have no idea how well we can do against you in particular. Also, he has the generic sage sprite with green hair. A bit lazy there. Also also, his battle quote here would make a heck of a lot more sense if he said it the first time you attacked him, rather than when he’s attacking you from across the map. Several bosses with long-ranged tomes have that kind of issue.  Convenient. That means Lugh can move full speed ahead instead of stopping to heal her. Alright, my turn.  Here’s where Thany needed that Silver Lance; it lets her kill a problematic archer immediately.  Well she wasn’t hurt, so Lugh can just charge south.  Time to send my favorite hero in again, this time with Barrier.  Bad Saul remains bad and yet only slightly below average.  Oujay wrecks Ohtz again, scoring a pretty respectable level. At the present, it’s more his right side stats that I care about. He’s probably going to cap Str and Speed regardless, but he does need more Def and more Luck would be fun too.  Now it’s time for rescue-drops. I did consider having Tate drop Gonzalez a few squares further north so she could fly back to Lalum, get a dance, and then fly in and attack someone, but it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth when I thought about the possibilities.  Instead Lalum dances for Miledy so that Miledy can just get a position I really want.  I waffled on whether to have Miledy stop here, trade with Thany to switch her away from the Silver Lance, and then drop Lilina right or fly one space further right and drop Lilina left. Ultimately I went left and traded. Now honestly, what I did here was a slight mistake either way. I was forgetting that that priest had a Physic and foolishly trying to block him from getting to the mercenary for that reason. Why that matters will soon be clear. Well, that’s the turn.  Lugh wrecks the two pirates. Now that I have some promoted people, I bet I can start turning my combat ranking around. You know, it's too bad (and a bit lazy) that this chapter doesn't have a cool unique battle background to go with its unique look.  Thany gets a bad final level.  1) The Eclipse druid, the priest, and the sage all have Physic staves  Ouch, a bit of bad luck I knew was a possibility there. It’s alright because…  2) Enemies who can use staves ALWAYS use staves instead of attacking.  3) QED, victory. That sage with the Bolting could have easily killed someone, but I knew he wouldn’t as long as at least one enemy was injured. He physiced a random pirate instead. That’s the reason I alluded to before that this guy isn’t hard to deal with at all. Just keep at least one guy in his range injured who the priest and druid can’t heal and he’ll never even try to Bolting you.  Well Oujay is on the throne now, so the tables have turned at long last! Let’s see how THEY like +30 avoid, +3 def, +5 res, and healing every turn. With both Boltingers down on turn 3, I just need to seize control of the situation for 1-2 dangerous turns here and then the map is in the bag. This landing party is huge enough to be able to wipe the enemy out if I play my cards right, starting with this hapless pirate.  Miledy gets a lousy level up.  Thany hit 20 so I pull an unusual stunt and have her fly over here and then promote.  Pretty good, pretty good. Could have done with less speed and skill and res and more str and def, but that HP in particular is very nice.  Saul heals her up and then Lalum dances so she can immediately get back in the action. You’ll notice that Lalum (and Roy) are in the water now; the bridge under them disappeared this turn. This really doesn’t affect them much at all. She’s not even trapped. You can move out of any terrain square at all, no matter how impassable, without any difficulty. It’s only moving INTO water that most units can’t do. This is a key part of why this chapter is quite easy to complete even with conventional tactics.  Pretty bad level there.  So the new and improved Thany flies back and cuts down the other archer immediately.  Now Lilina can fell the Berserker with ease.  There’s not a whole lot else to do since the problem enemies have been neutralized. Tate goes for an instant kill.  Meanwhile, Lugh is shredding the few remaining nearby enemies and moving as fast as he can toward the bottom area. That’s the turn.  On just about any other unit it would be a bad level, but it’s pretty nice on Tate.  Lalum finally has a moment to digest the boots and get the much-needed movement bonus.  Lugh needs to keep moving to reach all those lazy enemies. It’s important that he stand here in particular this turn rather than make the more efficient full right move.  Well last turn the bulk of the enemy threat was eliminated, so this turn is rapid mop up.  Clearing that enemy let Gonzalez kill the wyvern for a very nice level.  Lilina trades his handaxe back to the top of his inventory and then bakes the one to the right of her, thus ensuring that the one above her dies this round.  The left group and Tate prepare for rescues.  Miledy cleans up the last enemy in the area.  And Oujay has to move off the throne to kill the druid, but should be safe. That’s the turn.  And here’s why it mattered where I moved Lugh. If I had gone with the obvious move, he would have been completely trapped in the middle of the water. This is the only part of the bridge disappearances which is actually obnoxious; the part the smart player will travel through is the first to disappear and it does so in such a way that you may be completely trapped. Unless you have flyers ready to spend their turns getting you out, which you should.  Oujay is doing great as he wipes out a few more enemies.  I need to get Roy over there, so Thany picks him up and then moves so Lalum can dance for her.  Gonzalez and Lilina have little else to do, so they head right to pick off a few stragglers and get some support and heal XP.  Not a bad heal level. I mean, those aren’t good stats, but they’re stats she’s not already doing great in.  Miledy grabs Lalum but can’t quite fly back.  But Tate buzzes in, takes Lalum, drops her, and keeps moving. Smooth. Now everyone except Saul (who has a Physic anyway and thus doesn’t need to be there) has been relocated to the middle isle to quickly take down the last few enemies.  Longbows are annoying. There’s usually no way to kill them in just one round.  The suspense is killing me! Is she going to get hit?!  Pretty good. I want some more Def on this guy. His string of mediocre levels recently are sinking him back down much closer to average. Oh well, the boost was fun while it lasted.  These 3 guys are just too far off. I’m not going to be able to kill them all quickly because they’ve been so lazy.  Oujay runs away from the remaining foes.  Miledy and Lalum get Saul dropped in so I can get some heal XP without burning a Physic for it.  Gonzalez kills one last enemy.  Another chip heal, another bit of bonus XP.  Well the pirate never moved even with me trying to lure him, but at least one wyvern came in range.  And this turn you see that the reason Oujay ran was so Lilina could heal him.  Miledy kills the druid.  Saul does one last heal.  And Lalum, with her increased range, gets Roy onto the throne.  Turn 7 win! With only 2 enemies left alive and only 1 wound left to heal. That’s about as good as it gets. That was one of very few chapters in this game where interesting tactics were actually encouraged. Usually I’m just playing straightforward strats which are really boring to me after a lot of my creative ones in FE7. It’s the level design really. And that the tactics requirements are so easy that there’s no reason to find awesome ways to save time.  Sophia opens the altar, explaining why the invaders couldn’t get the tome within, but she can.  Now one thing just struck me. Just after finishing this chapter I thought about how weird and detrimental it was that Sophia doesn’t appear in the following conversation. But then I assumed that the game didn’t want to jump to the conclusion that she was alive after this chapter. However, she IS shown here in this conversation. So… apparently they just decided not to include her in the next one even though she should really be talking.  You know what? Let’s ask you the same questions. And for that matter, where were you during all of this? How did you get in here unguarded before we cleared out all the soldiers? How do you not already know who we are after we cut our way through Bern’s troops outside? Speaking of them, did they or did they not meet heavy resistance here?   That’s quite a conclusion to jump to.  What?  No seriously, what? Are you a dragon or not? He’s talking like being a dragon was some nickname he had in his college days.  Ugh, nevermind.  Ah yes, the big question! The central mystery of the game so far. But here we are at last, in a village populated continuously by dragons since the Scouring- if not before. The village where the most knowledgeable human hero of all time settled down. The village of the wisest race of dragons for that matter. And a place with libraries and archives that in the sequel are said to astound even Athos and Nergal.  … … … They parked right outside your village. Not to mention Sophia reported feeling them, as they will now discuss. And furthermore, the dragons were sent to attack the town. It’s reasonable to assume they did some of that before being redeployed to fight Roy, since Bern was in control of the town. Anyway, he knows absolutely nothing. Somehow. He really should know just about everything including 95% of the story of how Bern got their dragons. He should know all about Idoun and what she is from the lore of the divine dragons + Athos telling them his story and how Hartmut left her alive. He definitely should know about how the demon dragon’s powers work because the divine dragons understood the proposal to create one and rejected it. Not to mention they know how to cure Idoun later. But he is somehow, inexplicably, not even aware that Bern HAS dragons- like the ones that just attacked his village- let alone anything about how they got him. And it can’t be that he’s lying either, because Igrene or Sophia should know. Or at the very least, he would tell Igrene to stay because they don’t need to know more about this non-mystery and the village needs protecting (and Fa needs guarding) now more than ever.  Why doesn’t Sophia step in at any point in this long conversation about her, her abilities, and what exactly she felt and reported?  Sure, we’re always in need of more people to carry junk.  Now YOU’D be welco-  Dude, what? Ok first of all, Bern knows there are divine dragons here. And everyone knows about dragons in general not being myths now. Unless the game is STILL trying to claim they’re secret even as Bern deploys them for menial guard duty in foreign capitals. Second of all, what WOULD happen? You just claimed, nonsensically, that Fa is the only dragon here. That means if she leaves, this has become a more or less ordinary village. There are no more dragons who could be persecuted. Furthermore, the removal of Forblaze will cause the protective sandstorm to cease. These guys WILL be found regardless of whether Fa is here or not. And for that matter, Bern already located them, Sophia tells EVERYONE their location as an icebreaker, this whole army knows about it, etc. This game’s script is so full of nonsense that even the old man saying people used to call him a dragon but now he isn’t one doesn’t stand out as particularly weird.  Maybe after demanding she stay- and after Igrene heard her talk previously about being willing to be captured by Bern if she got to leave- they should have posted a guard or something?  At long last, a legendary weapon I can actually use when I receive it. Total Restarts: 7 (Once for the 2-turn win thing obviously and then once more when on turn 3 I got a ton of improbable criticals, which meant no enemies were left alive but injured, which meant the bolting sage had no one to heal, which meant he instead used Bolting and killed someone. Have I mentioned I don’t like how criticals work?) Turn Surplus: +4 (Positive at last! Saving 13 turns in one chapter is pretty awesome) Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill, two Chapter 12 fighters I couldn’t kill since I needed supports built elsewhere, a pirate and a wyvern rider on 14x who I didn’t have time to go after. Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: Durandal slew Ohtz using Oujay on chapter 14x, turn 2. Melth fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Aug 10, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 20:16
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Oats got 80th place on the character popularity poll, out of 80 characters. He is officially the least-liked person in all of Elibe. 
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Jun 2, 2015 21:08
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The elder not being a dragon "anymore" is probably the simplest to explain - his dragonstone broke ages ago. Without that, he's a regular human for most purposes. As for his surprise at Bern's dragons, none the manaketes in chapter 14 were actually inside city limits, and all the Arcadians were in hiding. Thinking about it, there's no way he could have seen them.
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Jun 2, 2015 22:59
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Oats got 80th place on the character popularity poll, out of 80 characters. I'm surprised, he's not a good character but that could be said of most bosses in FE overall, and perhaps especially FE7. And he has a bitching beard to pull in some extra points and elevate himself above his peers. Plus his good stats and gently caress-you introduction to Bolting (I think? DANGEROUS Bolting at least) in this game makes him somewhat memorable.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:56
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Insurrectionist posted:I'm surprised, he's not a good character but that could be said of most bosses in FE overall, and perhaps especially FE7. And he has a bitching beard to pull in some extra points and elevate himself above his peers. Plus his good stats and gently caress-you introduction to Bolting (I think? DANGEROUS Bolting at least) in this game makes him somewhat memorable.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:28
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The bottom of the list is him, other one-note throw-away bosses, and... Astol. At 75th. Ouch.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:43
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So Melth, out of curiosity, you're not planning on doing an FE4 Maxed Rank Run soon, are you? Because I was thinking I might if you aren't.
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Jun 3, 2015 07:42
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That would be really interesting to see, given all the potential pairings and all the janky busted mechanics to exploit in 4, but I'm pretty sure Melth's said he's never played it.
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Jun 3, 2015 08:09
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FE4 max ranking is all about the exp rank. Tactics isn't trivial but isn't hard either. The other wonky thing is that survival counts times you reset, so it's vitally important that on a bad turn, you reset before your character actually dies.
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Jun 3, 2015 08:12
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Last Celebration posted:That would be really interesting to see, given all the potential pairings and all the janky busted mechanics to exploit in 4, but I'm pretty sure Melth's said he's never played it. Yeah. He's never S-Ranked FE6 though either, and that's not stopping him  ! But yeah, if he doesn't, I definitely plan on doing it, as I've been working on what I consider to be the most optimally, efficiently played FE4 run for a while now, even after having max ranked it twice already.
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Jun 3, 2015 08:19
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cheetah7071 posted:FE4 max ranking is all about the exp rank. Tactics isn't trivial but isn't hard either. The other wonky thing is that survival counts times you reset, so it's vitally important that on a bad turn, you reset before your character actually dies. It usually involves grinding all your staff users to 30 by spamming Rescue/Warp and letting enemy bosses live so you can farm reinforcements. The arena and money management are pivotal, so you have to do a lot of careful budgeting. It's kinda dry, but Melth has been making spreadsheets for these runs already. FE5 isn't much better; it has a ridiculously tight tactics requirement that mandates warpskipping whenever possible. As janky as FE7's ranks are, they're probably the most well thought-out in the franchise. Maybe Fionordequester could do FE12 Lunatic LTC, which is supposed to be cool.
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Jun 3, 2015 08:28
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Dire Wombat posted:It usually involves grinding all your staff users to 30 by spamming Rescue/Warp and letting enemy bosses live so you can farm reinforcements. The arena and money management are pivotal, so you have to do a lot of careful budgeting. It's kinda dry, but Melth has been making spreadsheets for these runs already. FE5 isn't much better; it has a ridiculously tight tactics requirement that mandates warpskipping whenever possible. As janky as FE7's ranks are, they're probably the most well thought-out in the franchise. Maybe Fionordequester could do FE12 Lunatic LTC, which is supposed to be cool. Nah...I don't do LTC's. No sense in pushing myself if I don't have a clear benchmark of what exactly I'm shooting for (even if it's something as soft as FE9 and 10 BEXP system). Plus that's already been done anyways. But, I could do a FE12 Lunatic+ RTA! Now THAT might be worth looking in to! Because real time means a lot more to me than "turns" whenever we're talking about what's actually efficient. Now, back to FE4...there's some truth to what Dire Wombat says, however, there's a bit more to it than that I think. Plus, if I did such a playthrough, I wouldn't JUST be filling the requirements. I would also be figuring out the absolute fastest way to do it, without any of the tedium of RNG Abusing units through the Arena. Again, kind of like a Max Ranking RTA, you know? Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 08:37
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Dire Wombat posted:It usually involves grinding all your staff users to 30 by spamming Rescue/Warp and letting enemy bosses live so you can farm reinforcements. The arena and money management are pivotal, so you have to do a lot of careful budgeting. It's kinda dry, but Melth has been making spreadsheets for these runs already. FE5 isn't much better; it has a ridiculously tight tactics requirement that mandates warpskipping whenever possible. As janky as FE7's ranks are, they're probably the most well thought-out in the franchise. Maybe Fionordequester could do FE12 Lunatic LTC, which is supposed to be cool. FE5 max rank actually only checks two things: Your turn count, and number of people in your roster. So recruit everybody, don't let anybody die, and then LTC otherwise. Iirc, it's supposed to be almost impossible if your mounted units never proc their movement growths but I've never done it myself so I'm not sure.
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Jun 3, 2015 08:39
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:The bottom of the list is him, other one-note throw-away bosses, and... Astol. At 75th. Where can I see the result of this poll? I am really curious.
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Jun 3, 2015 10:02
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MightyPretenders posted:The elder not being a dragon "anymore" is probably the simplest to explain - his dragonstone broke ages ago. Without that, he's a regular human for most purposes. But he doesn't mention any of that stuff about dragonstones. Roy still doesn't know much about it till Jahn/Yahn tells him on the second-last chapter. Even Igrene doesn't seem to know about much dragonstones given some of her comments in chapter 15. Plus it's not like Ninian and Nils aren't dragons just because their dragonstones were stolen. They're still different from the humans, nearly unaging, and have special powers which the elder alludes to also having, etc. To say "They used to call me a dragon but now I'm not one" still doesn't make sense. The Arcadians may or may not have just been hiding. There's contradictory evidence there. Like from what Zephiel said in 13, there was serious fighting going on and Narshen needed to get there with reinforcements fast. Randy confirmed that. And yet then no villagers are seen anywhere for some reason and Bern already has control of the most important buildings in the town. If there was fighting, the dragons on Bern's side would definitely have been involved- that's what they were there to do. Even if there wasn't fighting, you would think they'd have been sent in just in case because again, they were sent to deal with possible resistance by the dragon villagers (and they had no reason to expect an attack from Roy). Plus at the very least they were walking around not far from town. If anyone in Arcadia was on sentry duty or whatever (which they must have been if they saw the army coming to hide), then they'd probably have seen those dragons. Fionordequester posted:So Melth, out of curiosity, you're not planning on doing an FE4 Maxed Rank Run soon, are you? Because I was thinking I might if you aren't. Go for it, I definitely won't. I haven't even played FE4 beyond the first 2 chapters before and I barely know how it works. Honestly so far it doesn't seem to lend itself to the kind of interesting tactics that these LPs are supposed to be about anyway. I probably will not do another FE Let's Play for a while at least; 7 was the only one I was really interested in doing. I've been thinking about what kind of Let's Play to do next. Although I really like LotR: the Third Age for the GBA, I've realized that it's very hard to get good screenshots of it and there wouldn't be a ton of interesting stuff to explain. It's a great game but it's not a great game to LP. I could do something like a 300 point S-rank run of AW 2 or Dual Strike (with maybe no skills and no dual strikes for challenge) or Days of Ruin. AW2 in particular is a challenging enough game that I'd have stuff to say. And Days of Ruin is decently challenging to S-rank some of the levels and also has story and characters and art that I love and could talk about. And of course I could branch out a bit. I don't really know how to make video LP's at the moment... at all. But having no idea what I was doing when I started with the screenshot LP for FE7 didn't stop me. I think I could do a really great LP about the first Majesty game. I'm also quite good at Warcraft 3 and a fan of both the original campaigns and several fan-made ones (including my own works in progress) for that game. I could perhaps LP those on hard mode. I can beat Age of Mythology and the Titans Expansion on titan difficulty too, though I find that game less interesting. Or to branch out even further, maybe Skyrim. I bet there's already a thousand LPs of that, but I'm pretty good at the game so I could play it on some kind of challenge run, and I think it's very fun and could talk about what makes it so great at length. Melth fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 10:12
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Advance Wars is cool and there should be more of it around as a general rule imo
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Jun 3, 2015 10:23
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So, took a bit of a break onto the next new chapter in the series Chapter 22: Aquleia So the purpose of this map is fairly simple, it's a rout map. I'm changing the palette on it to make it look more... regal? I mean it's Etruria's capital and it looks really like crap because limited tilesets. Now this is only part of the city, originally I was building this three tier monstrosity and scaled it way the hell down. This used to be Tier 1  This map came about because.... I realy disliked "Oh yeah Jodel convinced everyone to not let fighting go on in the city and THAT totally worked" so... capital city battle. You can't open that gate, but that show up there is actually fuctional. It is technically a Secret Shop, in that it contains items you wouldn't usually be able to get, but not in the sense that it's hidden. So it's staffed by like... Jake or something. And since I missed one, the second last of the new maps (besides the finale!)  This map was named 'Hells Gate' and the idea of it was that this is why Bern just couldn't march into Etruria in a big battle, because even if you take Aquleia good loving luck getting passed their army on terrain they entirely control, sheer cliffs you can't climb from the sea, Ballistae to shoot down the fliers and just, in short, the perfect defense formation. This map also underwent a lot of changes. First, the Prelim design I worked off  Pretty basic but the idea's pretty clear, progress through the corridors while getting pelted at, and after a few more iterations we wound up with...  This one, which I liked and was thinking that I was overall pleased with the map, this looked like a hellish maze that no sane man would try to march an army through. And you know what? I was right! Who the gently caress was going to want to play this map?! So not only did we wind up with the final design but as you can see from this picture  With the small part of the world map added in (And rotated) this actually resembles apart of the world map where the city could be located, and I love it when poo poo like that matches up! And that concludes the last of the wholecloth maps added for the game, any other map changes are... well changes to existing maps, including the finale. Which was a lot of fun (and pain) to construct. Back to regularly schedualed hack updates which are short and feature familiar things. EDIT: Oh right how the map PLAYS, well you aren't required to seize anything but the main castle, but the castle you first encounter is producing troops because it's one of the castles of the three generals. But hey, you can farm it for EXP and you can just move about it, why bother seizing? Especially since the other castles aren't doing so. Right. If you move around, then the other castles begin spawning a huge amount of troops and they area-spawn a huge amount of reinforcements catching you in a pincer that you'll have to bloodily fight your way out of. Seizing the castle as normal just makes the other castles spawn troopers. No trap. Regardless, I like the multi-seizing concept but people thought it wouldn't be all that fun so I decided to just say screw it and move on. Onmi fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 10:47
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So when you say the castle looks like crap because of limited tilesets, does that mean it's going to be changed, or...? Because, no offense, but you're right, it kinda does.
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Jun 3, 2015 10:56
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AlphaKretin posted:So when you say the castle looks like crap because of limited tilesets, does that mean it's going to be changed, or...? Because, no offense, but you're right, it kinda does. The town but... I'm going to change the palette, Custom Tilesets are not possible yet, we're working on it for hacking in general though!
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Jun 3, 2015 10:58
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CremePudding posted:Where can I see the result of this poll? I am really curious. Official website and someone else reporting the results because gently caress me how do I navigate this.
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Jun 3, 2015 13:45
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CremePudding posted:Where can I see the result of this poll? I am really curious. Sure! I took Beginning Japanese, and know my Katakana, so I'll translate, right now! quote:Character Results: Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 20:40
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How is Echidna only 34th, that's hosed up. Edit: Gonzales is 46th? There are people who actually voted for Garret or Rude? This poll sucks Nihilarian fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 21:03
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That list is poo poo IMO. Roy is about 79 places too high. Most of the high-placing women should be lower and vice versa, except Lilina and Fa. Sigune should be way higher for the bosses of course, Gonzales and Niime's positions are warcrimes, I could go on but I don't want to write a dissertation.
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Jun 3, 2015 21:17
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Melth posted:Or to branch out even further, maybe Skyrim. I bet there's already a thousand LPs of that, but I'm pretty good at the game so I could play it on some kind of challenge run, and I think it's very fun and could talk about what makes it so great at length. We don't see as many Bethesda LPs around here as you'd think, and most of the threads tend to be for Morrowind or New Vegas.
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Jun 3, 2015 22:15
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Wolt is 8th.
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Jun 3, 2015 22:21
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Well, now we know why IntSys keeps making characters like that. 
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Jun 3, 2015 23:32
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0th: Glass
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Jun 3, 2015 23:51
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Insurrectionist posted:That list is poo poo IMO. Roy is about 79 places too high. Most of the high-placing women should be lower and vice versa, except Lilina and Fa. Sigune should be way higher for the bosses of course, Gonzales and Niime's positions are warcrimes, I could go on but I don't want to write a dissertation. Well, I'm going to repeat that Gonzales and Niime's positions are warcrimes, because seriously 46th and 59th place respectively! What the hell Japan?  Oh yeah, on the topic of Gonzales, I sometimes like to give him the Boots since it lets him do something a little unique: with the boots giving him 8 move, Gonzales can walk across 2 peaks per turn instead of just 1, which allows for some interesting shenanigans on a couple of maps. Lalum is definitely still a good choice for the Boots though; giving your Dancer extra move is always extremely helpful, and a lot of the time it's what I'll usually end up doing. fade5 fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 01:14
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all I have to comment on is Gale and Brunya not being counted as villains for whatever reason. Other than that, Popular's gonna Pop.
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Jun 4, 2015 01:31
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Onmi posted:all I have to comment on is Gale and Brunya not being counted as villains for whatever reason. Other than that, Popular's gonna Pop. Honestly, I'd...chalk that up more to unintentional sexism on my part more than anything  ...anyways though, I fixed that. Merdock is now counted as a good guy too.
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Jun 4, 2015 01:54
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Onmi posted:all I have to comment on is Gale and Brunya not being counted as villains for whatever reason. Other than that, Popular's gonna Pop. Gale I can understand not really being seen as a villain. Brenya is horrible though. I hate her and her whole archetype, and she's one of the worst examples of it. Selena is worse yet though.
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Jun 4, 2015 02:26
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 A return to normality after the last two unusual chapters, this is a fairly straightforward brawl with some decently interesting terrain. It’s sort of a weird limbo level that doesn’t really advance the war-related plot at all and basically relates to nothing except Fa, the dragon girl introduced last chapter. It would have been a much better chapter (and a WAY better storyline overall, as I’ll get into next chapter) if this border castle was actually said to be important for winning the war, rather than so irrelevant that the enemy commander has no idea why you’re attacking. Chapter Summary: Fa inexplicably gets ahead of Roy while following him and is immediately captured by the enemy. Who don’t realize what she is. Roy kills them all and takes her back and then let’s her join him. Which tidily makes the whole running away story kind of pointless.  We’re turning toward Etruria to fight the actual enemy!  Oh good, a distraction. It would be terrible if we made some progress on the whole Etruria thing.  See, they have no idea she’s a dragon. Unlike Sophia, Fa is smart enough at age 4 not to blab all about that.  This chapter actually does have this really great dramatic irony thing going on.  The soldier shows her the dragon stone Fa carried as a reason not to release her immediately. And they both recognize it as a dragon stone and discuss how the war dragons carried them and used them to turn into dragon form.  But he still doesn’t put it together and doesn’t seem to even wonder why she came to have a stone like that.  The jerk brigade arrives on the scene on turn 1.  If Douglas can actually get to King Mordred’s side, all problems should be solved. Douglas and Douglas alone knows that Mildain is still alive. All he has to do is tell the king and the king will cheer up and start remembering what his job is. And if he can get to the king, he and his men could probably protect him from the coup forces (who are relying on the king cooperating with them to maintain their legitimacy and support). The only reason the coup has gotten this far is that Douglas has more or less willingly and knowingly cooperated with them in every way, doing everything possible to ensure the king remains at their mercy.    What? That must be a translation screwup. Percival IS the knight general! Douglas just said “This job can only be done by you. But they sent you to do it anyway! How evil of them!”  With good reason! If either of these guys turned against them at any point in the proceedings, the coup would have been stopped. These guys didn’t just not resist; they actively participated on the side of the coup- with Douglas going beyond even what was asked of him by working from the beginning to ensure the king was easy to control.  This man, worrying about hypocrites? Ha!  And then he goes, “Yeah I’m well aware that Etruria and the king are doomed. I’m not going to stop doing what I’m doing.”  Stay by his side and fight tooth and nail to ensure his downfall.  But he tells Percival to leave (and go where? Bern is going to rule the whole world).  And then Percival ignores him and just gets on with trying to murder Etruria’s only hope for no reason. There were absolutely no consequences when he disobeyed Roartz and just walked away from a critical battle before; and yet here is going above and beyond the call of duty to work with them again.  Offscreen Roy learned this from some peasants who saw her being taken apparently.  Igrene pops up and talks about dragon stones for a while. Her original point was that as long as the people who captured Fa don’t find her dragon stone, she’s probably fine. They found it and she’s still fine.   Wow. That conclusion took an Olympic long jump to reach. We never do find out the real reason for the soldiers deploying, but probably they just spotted us. Battle Preparations & the Map: First off, I checked in with the Prince of Jerkness to see how I’m doing on rankings:  Aw yeah! That means my combat ranking finally went back to the 5 star level after I massacred the enemy last chapter. Plus of course I got my tactics back into the 5 star zone too and the rest were already there. Things are looking good, though it’s waaaay too early to relax. A single bad chapter for combat will drop me back to 4 stars there.  Secondary Objective: Recruit Percival with Lalum Secondary Objective: Recruit Garret with Lilina Secondary Objective: Make sure Percival’s 4 cavaliers escape alive to get a Knight Crest Secondary Objective: Get the Divine tome from the nearby village Secondary Objective: Get the Hammerne staff from the mid right village Secondary Objective: Do some shopping Secondary Objective: Build some supports Reinforcements: Kind of annoying. On turn 3 there’s Garret and 2 brigands from the top right area. They’ll destroy the mid-right village on turn 5 or something. Then on turns 12-16 there are 2 cavaliers from some spots near the castle and also 2 from the top middle forts, all with mixed steel lances and javelins. Turn Limit: 20. Trivial. The map is only moderately too big, and almost every part of it actually does have some purpose. The terrain in general is quite well thought out here, and that’s pretty cool. I mean, you’ve got this annoying choice of a tight chokepoint north of the village or a move-wasting detour south around it as you try to get out of your starting area for one thing. And then there’s that block of forests which you’ll be dealing with during one of the biggest fights. Meanwhile the whole spiral map shape practically begs for an air-drop or warp to speed things along. Anyway, there’s a decent amount going on for a non-dungeon map. 2 characters to recruit in different areas, some villages (one of which you really must hurry to), a bunch of enemies including some rare Valkyries, and potentially some green units to protect. Nonetheless, it’s a fairly straightforward battle. Like most FE6 maps you fight a small number of enemies per turn since they’re really scattered. In this case, that actually somewhat interesting since it makes it harder to break through and save the village.  These pests are particularly troublesome. I don’t have anything at all that can double 18 speed, and in fact that’s enough to double most of my party. With solid luck and magic too, these people are very hard to hit and can dish out serious damage. Luckily, kind of like the bolting sage from last chapter, they have staves and will therefore use those instead of fighting a lot of the time.  Units Allowed: 11 + Roy + Igrene. Plenty. It’s nice to be able to bring a bunch of people again. Units Brought: 1) Roy. Required and pretty terrible, he can easily be instant-killed by many enemies at this point. It’s about time to start training him up a bit again. I don’t want to be trying to get him to 20 on chapter 21. 2) Igrene. Required. You know, Igrene surprised me by being fairly useful here. She’s got the right balance of good enough damage to kill at least some targets and bad enough damage to often let you feed kills to weaker people. And having a promoted unit’s 6 movement helps. 3) Lalum. Even more useful than ever now that she’s got the boots, and necessary to recruit Percival. 4) Lilina. One of my best and most versatile units, she’s also needed to recruit Garret. And I want to get back to support building. 5) Oujay. Speaking of which, Oujay is going to be her other support partner. The two of them work very well together and they’ve both grown into god-tier units after some major stat blesses. Oujay is here to make sure I have the firepower to take out Valkyries. When things get tough, he is ready to pull out Durandal on them. 6) Miledy. This map’s layout calls for air units. Miledy is one of my best characters, as usual, and perfect for leading a charge in there. I also want to promote her before next chapter and she’s really close. 7) Tate. Like Miledy but not as good. She’s also not quite as close to promotion. 8) Gonzalez. With all these peaks, it’s actually kind of tempting to have him try to get into the central area on foot, but instead I’ll have him stick with Lilina and try to build support. He’s level 16 or so now and I’m determined to get him to 20 and promote him so I have someone who can use Armads next chapter. 9) Lugh. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have another really strong attacker with the main group. Plus I want to build support with… 10) Ray. There hasn’t been room for him on the team recently, but there is again now. The more promoted magic users I have on the team, the better for my precious combat score. And he’s currently lowish enough level that he’s not bad for my XP score. 11) Sophia. Speaking of which, the much-derided Sophia is joining the team. Yes she’s bad, but if she’s leveled with careful attention she can grow to be mediocre. And she’s really good for my XP ranking, helping make up for how many promoted people I’m using. The other thing is that, unlike last chapter, this one is a really controlled environment. I have a lot of units, the enemy is really spread out, etc. In this situation I can engineer opportunities to safely give kills to her easily. 12) Ellen. I anticipate a party split, so 2 healers is the minimum. Ellen will be a comfortable third. And it’s safe enough to bring her instead of Saul. 13) Merlinus. Bet you never expected to see this loser on the field again! I certainly didn’t. But I have a fair amount of free party space this time, and I have a distinct lack of free inventory space. Nearly every chararacter is holding 5 items, yet storage was getting too full to put stuff in. And this despite not having had a chance to buy much basic gear in a while here. The only way to do something about that is to sell a ton of stuff all at once. And that’s impossible without Merlinus. It took something like half an hour of careful trading to finally get everything I wanted sold into storage, but I managed it and now Merlinus can dump all that junk. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Alan. It’s a good map for cavalry and I’d like to bring him to help train Roy. However, I can’t really find space for him in the current roster and he’s already promoted. 2) Lance. Really, it’s looking like it was a mistake to promote Alan when I wasn’t ready to promote Lance. I’ve kind of been stuck, unable to use either of them since then. 3) Geese. The large number of cavaliers made this sound like an appealing chapter to use him, and he probably would have made the cut if Merlinus and Sophia didn’t bump him out. An average Sophia is probably more useful overall simply by dint of having magic- when she catches up. And Lot and Gonzalez are now being joined by Alan, Oujay, and probably eventually Dieck in the axe department. That leaves little room for Geese. 4) Lot. I’d have probably brought the lower level Geese instead this time anyway, but he HAS been quite useful in dispatching cavaliers before. 5) Thany. I don’t really need 3 air units to stage an assault on the central area and I’d much rather promote the other two than give her any more levels right now. 6) Saul. Three healers should be plenty. 7) Clarine. Three healers should be plenty. 8) Rutger. It’s really not a good map for sword-specialists. Very few axe users, lots of lances, and it’s also just a map where more movement is good to have too. 9) Dieck. Rutger but not as good, as usual. I really spent a lot of time tweaking the formation here. Fundamentally, there isn’t really a good option. That mercenary is juuuuust out of reach for any units I’d want to train much, is too fast for anyone to one-round kill, is certain death for anyone fragile I want to get way out in the lead, etc. Plus I need to think about Percival closing in from behind and my plan to get the air units into the center area. With the mercenary ahead, the village in the way, and Percival behind I don’t really have any good options. This formation lets me make the best of the bad situation by rescue-dropping and making good use of the limited space, but it doesn’t really satisfactorily accomplish any of my goals. Lilina and Oujay are positioned to present a powerful front line, get to work on the merc, and start building support. Miledy and Oujay can get Sophia close enough to the front to maybe get a kill next turn while shielding her. Ray and Lugh will go around the bottom area because someone has to really. And since only one person can carry Gonzalez, Lalum and Tate will have to work together to transport him. Most people have fairly standard gear (notably including a swordreaver for Gonzalez). Lalum is carrying a pile of weapons for Percival and also an iron bow for Igrene. The Characters:  Hawkeye’s daughter and successor is apparently the sole warrior tasked with guarding Arcadia from its many foes. Statistically Hawkeye was garbage of course, but he was at least cool and imposing enough in story that you could buy him being tasked with defending Arcadia. Igrene really can’t fill his gigantic shoes. And she’s just not much of a character in her own right. She’s pretty much just there to be X’s former wife, Y’s surrogate mother, etc. She’s an archer, so she sucks. What, you want more detail? Well alright, she’s more or less the same as Klein statistically. A bit better to start. Both of them are inferior to Dorothy, but not by a ton. And none of them play the same game as Shin and Sue. Don’t use any of them; use Shin and Sue instead. Actually don’t even use those two that much, their good stats are severely undermined by the fact that bows are lousy and the game is full of good magic users. On this particular chapter where you have to bring her and thus might as well use her, she does alright. She’s good enough to weaken targets for low level people and doubles a few things. But that’s absolutely disgraceful for a promoted unit fighting level 15-17 enemies.  Etruria’s second-most important general, Percival is young but respected- unlike Cecilia. Also unlike Cecilia he’s callous and irresponsible. He implied that he was not in favor of helping Lycia- and he only did so because Cecilia convinced the king to order it. And he sides with the coup d’etat forces and watches Cecilia get cut down without any concern at all. He only leaves that battle because Bern’s subsequent behavior was “insulting”. And then in this chapter he ignores even Douglas’s order to leave for the good of the country to go try to kill Roy again for no reason. Anyway, he’s loyal above all to his beloved Prince Mildain who he thinks died. Douglas knows that and still doesn’t tell him that Mildain is alive. It cannot be repeated often enough that Douglas is an idiot, a jerk, and responsible for nearly everything bad that happened to his country. But Percival is nearly as bad. People rave about how AMAZINGLY powerful he is and how much better he is than the other cavaliers, but it’s really not true. His bases are indeed quite excellent, but his growths are bad. He’ll finish roughly on par with Alan and Lance- maybe a bit worse overall. But critically his support pool is awful and his support affinity is the very worst in the game. Meanwhile Alan and Lance have great affinities and amazing partners available. So they’re much better units unless you’re doing some kind of no support run or something.  Another ugly bandit guy who for some reason only Lilina can recruit. He makes an argument like Cath’s that its ok for him to make a living stealing because nobles are bad. But… unlike Cath he’s not stealing from nobles. He goes around destroying peasant villages and taking their stuff, forbidding only “unnecessary” killing in the process. In other words he’s a murderous savage who presents an absolutely absurd excuse that we’re apparently supposed to think is reasonable. He’s terrible. Like amazingly terrible. Never use him. I really don’t get the way hard mode bonuses work in this game. Up until now they’ve gradually been getting bigger chapter by chapter. But Percival and Garret’s bonuses are really small in comparison.  Another palette-swap idiot in the employ of Bern. He never understands until his dying breath that Fa is a dragon and that’s why she has a dragon stone and we’re fighting our way here. And he has terrible hair. It’s like a combover for a guy who isn’t even balding. Anyway, I kind of like that he and Roy are both wrong about what the other knows and thus fight a battle neither of them really wanted without either really understanding what was being fought over. Statistically, he’s so bad that even Garret could beat him. Let THAT sink in. This is the worst boss in forever. Playing Through:  The southern group is away. Not much for them to do.  Sophia is carried and dropped.  A minor rescue drop of Ellen by unimportant people.  Tate carries Gonzalez and then drops him.  After equipping his swordreaver of course.  So her support group is established and Lilina attacks. The mercenary will almost certainly die on its own turn since there’s no one here who can’t kill it.  The pursuers advance.  Now here’s a problem enemy. Very few people can fight it safely. And I can’t get anyone there safely.  Well the air units have other places to go. In this position, Miledy can aggro the enemy wyvern rider and then finish it next turn safely.  Igrene moves to take the bow before firing away, as planned.  And with her help, Sophia actually manages to kill this guy! I planned to have Lalum give her another chance in the probable event she missed.  She gained a whole 80 XP but a fairly bad level. Still, the skill is hard to turn down when her accuracy is so awful.  Oujay, Lilina, and Gonzalez wall up with ranged weapons at the ready  Wow my Ray is fast.  So with that archer down we’re safe at last.  The villagers want to help Fa so they give Merlinus the Divine tome.   This is never really elaborated on.  Somehow “Send an item to Merlinus” doesn’t seem like the appropriate phrase here.  Miledy scores an awful level from the other wyvern’s attack.  The Valkyries sure do dodge well.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7w8QnBAVwY This mediocre map theme from the beginning is still playing now, way too late in the game. FE6’s music is pretty bad compared to pretty much every subsequent- and some of the previous- FEs as I mentioned, and that they don’t even give us better map themes to ratchet up the drama later like FE7 and 8 do doesn’t help.  The flyers finish the wyvern and then prepare for battle.  There’s no time to stop; Lilina charges full speed ahead into the enemy lines.  Which gave Gonzalez the one point support damage bonus he needed to finish that cavalier off too.  Oujay moves in to draw fire with his handaxe.  And it’s ultimately Ray who finishes the Valkyrie.  Not a bad level for Ellen.  Lalum mostly works with the healer as usual. This is a good spot for her since she can talk to Percival after he moves. Or dance for anyone if that seems more important.  … keep telling yourself that.  Miledy doesn’t care about arrows.  I had bad luck overall this turn, Oujay double-missed here.  Alright, things are a little tense now. I absolutely cannot slow down or Garret will get that village, but those mercenaries are dangerous and Percival is coming up behind us quickly.  This punk has a killing edge. And since he’s in the backish area of the formation, it’s not really feasible to kill him.  If Lilina isn’t in position to talk to him on my next turn, this guy may attack the village.  Miledy and Tate take down the sniper.  And I’ve come up with a strategy here. First the people in the rear attack the targets they can reach. Unfortunately, my troops are so spread out that many rear people can’t attack at all.  Well that’s a lousy level.  Gonzalez gets a decent one though. I’m shredding these enemies as fast as I can.  Now to establish a line- and then blast another one. Gonzalez needs his swordreaver.  Sophia is really not gaining the stats I need.  We’re safe, barring a killing edge critical on Lugh.  Both of them are lucky enough to hit Lilina, but I knew they couldn’t kill her without an improbable crit.  Meanwhile, Tate gets a bad level from her own dangerous situation. The sniper is down but if absolutely every remaining enemy in the area hits, she’ll die.  They didn’t quite, but she was pretty unlucky. Now she’s at 6 HP and many enemies were missed. Worse, that Valkyrie and her minions came this way. I didn’t expect that really.  Well Merlinus does some house visits on his way.  This man talks about the rumors of bandits in the nearby mountains. He’s darned right.  Lalum goes to recruit Percival.  Because he’s a jerk, he was totally willing to ride down an unarmed girl. But at least he’s decent enough to listen to her.  He sorta vaguely recalls Douglas’s adopted daughter. A little.  Dun dun dun!  Yeah, that’s what Douglas told you.  A letter in his handwriting! Well that definitely proves that he was alive at some point in the past! Yeah this recruitment makes more sense if it’s actually Mildain here.  Because she’s crazy.  Lilina recruits another ugly dude with an axe.  You could. But it would be utterly absurd.   … Maybe you could try to make an honest living, like the people you’re killing. They’re doing just fine. Also? What options does destroying their village leave THEM with?  Unfortunately her next sentence isn’t “So die like the other murderous hypocrites we kill every day.” So I have to put up with this loser on the team.  He’s not convinced so she resorts to just standing there and letting him kill her if she wants. Very luckily he doesn’t.  And he inexplicably joins.  Lalum had to run pretty far back to recruit Percival, so he takes the stuff she has for him and then carries her.  I can’t win here with the Valkyrie coming and I can’t even kill this longbowman.  So Miledy carries Tate out and Oujay drops her for healing.  Sophia gets another kill.  I form a new wall, do some healing, and wait.  And apparently those guys stop moving and wait to be slaughtered by their former boss when Garret changes sides.  The Valkyrie has changed course, but its clear I need more firepower to take the middle. First, Lilina heals Tate.  Tate pulls out Gonzalez.  Miledy carries Lilina. And next turn they can drop them.  Another kill carefully prepared for Sophia.  An even worse level up for my trouble.  There is a long explanation of what the staff does. There is no explanation whatsoever of why this lady gives it to us.  ... Rumors? They split apart and then fought a whole civil war against each other! And the winning faction of the civil war is encamped in the castle right here! How stupid are you?  Lilina and Gonzalez are dropped in.  …  Well the Valkyrie is coming, so a wall is quickly deployed and Sophia is carried back to safety by Igrene and Roy after lunging out to get that kill.  The Valkyrie winds up with someone to heal instead.  Percival’s people all escape.  So it’s the beginning of turn 8 and you can see I’ve almost totally routed the enemy. There’s so little to do after the first few turns on this map that I’m skipping whole turns outright here.  Merlinus, having failed as a merchant and epic failed as an adviser, is trying his hand at being a sellsword.  Gonzalez and the crew wipe out the remaining middle enemies easily.  Tate flies back to bring more reinforcements.  Hm, now what? There’s that Valkyrie to worry about out of reach and a big fight here too.  … … …  The three baddest dudes wall off the Valkyrie as everyone else just barely has the firepower to take down the nearby enemies.  Terrible. It wasn’t easy arranging for Roy to get a kill either.  Well at least she gained Luck. She’s getting really close to that speed cap.  Geez!  Turn 9 there’s basically nothing left.  Merlinus keeps pulling junk out of the convoy and selling it.  Ray was lucky enough to snag the kill on the Valkyrie.  Classic useless Ellen gains. Look at that 0 def. Most enemies now can instant kill her. And that 9 speed. Most of them double her too. She’s so bad.  Tate has Roy now.  Ok, that’s pretty good actually. Nothing left alive in the middle.  Just several turns of slowly walking around and heals.  The map gives us a nice 2-turn warning here. Which is still not nearly as reasonable as a 1-turn warning and them not spawn moving. Especially since they do something almost unprecedented and spawn right out of the castle as well as from the forts here.  The spawnpoints are carefully arranged so that there really is no good way to control them. They cover each other just a little too well. Like Lilina isn’t safe here. There’s nowhere she’s safe. Unless I completely vacate the middle, I can’t feed all the kills to Gonzalez as I wanted. And I definitely can’t drop in Roy.  Even if you’re playing a run where you’re willing to use stat boosters, sell secret books and talismans and goddess icons. Use the cash and the silver card to buy real stat boosters instead. This pretty much applies in every game where you can do that.  So here’s my top left setup. The goal is to give most XP to Ray here and Gonzalez in the middle.  Gonzalez didn’t finish this guy, so Miledy does.  Good. She’s going to cap speed no matter what, but the def is very nice.  Ray is reasonably successful.  He’s apparently so absolutely unimportant that it couldn’t even just be that we want to secure this border and then move forward.  Ok, plan A isn’t working. I’m going to move Lilina here and surround her.  Miledy gets sweet promotion gains.  More speed for my remarkably speed Ray.  Gonzalez gets to work chipping down the boss.  I’m tired of people not attacking him, so Miledy and Tate pull most of the rest out.  Using Sophia here is tricky since she’ll need to be pulled back. And so will Garret.  Percival is exposed, but it worked other than that.  Just not going to gain skill, huh?  Well the reins have stopped, so Roy is dropped in.  Ooh, Skill!  This guy sure is slow. Maybe that hair is actually some kind of parasite that’s been eating away at his brain.  Got to finish on a sucky note. I guess he has capped speed (and he always caps Str). But still that’s, what, 6 1-stat level ups for me this chapter? More? And a bunch of other bad ones too. My levels were absolutely horrible overall this chapter, Sophia in particular. I mean, I was doing everything possible to feed her tons of kills and then she just got some of the worst levels I ever saw.  Merlinus is done selling things, so he buys some keys.  Ray and Lugh support again.  Ray is enough of a jerk to ditch even Lugh and just run off without warning.   Lugh always assumes the best.  And it’s never true. At all. Ray is a very bad guy. He’s rude but ultimately not that terrible to Lugh, but pretty much never even decent to anyone else.  You do that.  Turn 19 win. Not so good. 17 is the hypothetical best time. But the realities of how bad Roy is, plus wanting to feed the reinforcement XP to specific people, basically make that impossible.  We found Fa!  As she said last chapter.  Forget the confusion; people have died!  Wow, that’s abusive and wholly unnecessary. There’s nothing wrong with letting her walk around in town when it’s secret and guarded and surrounded by a sandstorm.  … we’re not even going to ask permission. Roy makes an entirely sensible case that it’s better to bring her with us than leave her behind. This was entirely sensible last chapter too though.  No. You didn’t. You guys ran off to the east for some reason. You never went anywhere near the castle. We did all the work.  Why can only these guys find it anyway? And only if all 4 of them live? Anyway, that’s the chapter. I just barely did better than the XP requirement- and only because I brought the level 2 Sophia and focused hard on training her. Total Restarts: 8 (I lost once to the killing edge mercenary) Turn Surplus: +5 (I wanted +7, but at least it’s the right direction) Things I Regret Missing: A couple of uses of Marcus’s silver lance on Rude, a Chapter 5 nomad Marcus had to kill, two Chapter 12 fighters I couldn’t kill since I needed supports built elsewhere, a pirate and a wyvern rider on 14x who I didn’t have time to go after. Legendary Weapon Scoreboard: Durandal slew Ohtz using Oujay on chapter 14x, turn 2. Melth fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Aug 11, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 02:46
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lol 11 speed on a promoted unit who's supposed to actually fight stuff instead of provide support?
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Jun 4, 2015 02:56
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