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fade5 posted:Bolting It costs 600 gold a use, has 5 uses, and that is literally the only Bolting in the entire game. Between having no good Purge users and Eclipse being absolute garbage, those 5 Bolting uses are his sole 4+ range attacks. If he's going to spend 600 gold an attack with an irreplaceable weapon, it better be for a drat good purpose rather than making a ride a little more comfortable. Especially since there's 10 guys with staves/siege tomes on this map and they can take 2-3 hits each depending on how their stats roll or are the boss. Basically it's not a very good solution and it takes too many resources at that.
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Jun 8, 2015 02:24
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fade5 posted:Bolting! Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:No Bolting! You're both right! I did consider using Bolting and checked the numbers on it (And you may recall me noting with annoyance on chapter 16 that they don't give you the handy tomes till the chapter is basically over). Bolting is indeed a powerful resource and can be helpful when dealing with long-ranged staves and purge-wielders and the like. However, it's not really a viable option yet. My Lilina, Mag blessed as she is, still barely beats the enemy bishops' massive Res. She'd need probably 3 hits to bring one down. Definitely not worth it when later on she might be able to fell one in two shots. But furthermore, Bolting is not as effective as it looks. It's fundamentally just not the best solution to staff or purge problems most of the time. There's several reasons for this. One is that it's fairly inaccurate. Not only does a miss waste an irreplaceable resource, but it also might result in a restart right then and there if you really needed that target dead. I generally prefer strategies without that kind of miss chance at a critical moment. Another is that it's not actually effective against the people you want to use it on. Bishops and other people who'll be wielding staves have massive Res, especially in HHM. That makes it hard to even 2-hit kill them. But the biggest problem Bolting has is that it's actually not the longest-ranged or the most damaging attack around. On any kind of remotely open map, any promoted flyer with a javelin has a 10 space range- the same as Bolting. That flyer boosted by a dancer might have something more like a 16 space range from the dancer's starting position. 18 with Boots on the dancer (where they belong). And (especially if it can finish with a silver lance instead of a javelin), it's probably going to dish out more hurt than Bolting anyway. ESPECIALLY against high Res units like a bishop. That kind of attack is borderline free, longer ranged, and more damaging than Bolting. Furthermore, the launched flyer can then keep fighting in future turns and possibly sweep away several problem enemies at once. This tactic has its own weaknesses of course (XP hogging, danger of death, doesn't work over walls), but is generally just a better option. And similarly but even stronger, there's Warp. The devastating power and range of a Warp attack can be amazing. And it doesn't cost much more than 2 Bolting shots either (and can be Hammerned MUCH more efficiently). Both of those attack methods, among others, give you better and more trustworthy results than Bolting most of the time.
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Jun 8, 2015 02:45
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Yeah, but they both risk leaving a unit for dead in the middle of enemy forces ready to kill them quick if the target is in a bad spot, and are completely useless if you've got a big ol' wall in the way like in this chapter for example. Not that Bolting is a solution on THIS map, but still, it's got some obvious advantages over the 'send a unit at it' solution. Bolting's advantage isn't in its damage nor range as such, but the fact that you can kill something with zero risk.
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Jun 8, 2015 03:00
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Insurrectionist posted:Yeah, but they both risk leaving a unit for dead in the middle of enemy forces ready to kill them quick if the target is in a bad spot, and are completely useless if you've got a big ol' wall in the way like in this chapter for example. Not that Bolting is a solution on THIS map, but still, it's got some obvious advantages over the 'send a unit at it' solution. Bolting's advantage isn't in its damage nor range as such, but the fact that you can kill something with zero risk. Warp works over walls. And even cruddy units like my healers have superior range with Warp. And then the unit can move potentially 8 more spaces and kill something. Furthermore, there is major risk with Bolting: you may miss. Lilina is not a unit with great skill and a lot of enemy staff users have serious avoid. And if you miss either attack, you've wasted serious resources and are going to get fried again by this problem enemy. Melth fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 03:13
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Do you like spreadsheets? I like spreadsheets. I haven't done a ranking status update since 12x, and a major chunk of the game has gone by since then. Plus every low-level character has joined the party. There are still a lot of chapters of game left, but basically no more characters. Just a handful of sucky pre-promotes who are often close to level 20 when they join. So it's time to examine how I'm doing on rankings. There is nothing to report on Survival and Power. Combat has seen a recent and critical turnaround back to the 5-star level. I believe i can maintain it there now because I've finally been able to field a large number of promoted magic users. That's the key really; they can 1-round kill enemies Gonzales can't and they can do it accurately and in response to both 1-ranged and 2-ranged enemies. Tactics took longer than I expected to finally climb back to 5-stars after my initial support grind fest, but is now very healthy with an 18 turn surplus and climbing. What about the more complicated XP and Funds? XP first as usual:  My surplus has grown even further and now stands at just over 10,000 XP. That's 100 more levels than I need. I only need to gain 75 more levels to complete this requirement outright. Over about 10 chapters, that's just 7.5 levels each. Sounds very easy. It's a good thing; because I'm running low on people to train. I mean, every healer is maxed out so staff XP is about to grind to a near-halt. Lalum isn't far from maxed herself. That will be the end of free XP. The enemy is also just not going to get higher level. So my promoted people are going to gain very, very little. If I can find a chance to train some really low level people like the archers/knights or the more palatable Ward or Sophia, I should definitely take it. Zeiss will certainly help a lot. Now onto funds:  My surplus has actually shrunk by quite a bit, but I now have enough funds to complete the whole requirement anyway. The reason for the drop is of course the massive number of promotions. On 12x I had promoted one person (Alan). Since then Lilina, Lugh, Ray, Miledy, Thany, Tate, Oujay, and Shin have been added to the list. That's 40,000 in capital right there. Oh and Hugh cost me another 10,000. Well there's relatively few people who I want to promote: Zeiss, Hugh, Gonzalez, and Lance I guess. So if I can save up about 20,000 more in surplus, I can promote those guys and still be good. The new silver card won't help as much as you'd think. See, I'm running really low on liquid assets. There are a few gems and a few stat boosters I can sell, but a lot of the rest of my money is tied up in things like a massive overstock of Aircaliburs. Anyway, it looks like things are pretty much in the bag at this point. Melth fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Aug 12, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 03:54
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This chapter is the one I remember most vividly as hating when I first played. Every time I think of how much I didn't enjoy this game, it's pretty much this one that comes to mind. Sure there may be other maps that are worse, but I just hated this one completely.
marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 03:59
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Melth posted:So I did a cursory check through the LPArchive and found no plays of Warcraft 3 there. Did I just miss them somehow or has no one actually done one on Something Awful before? I could have sworn there was another one at some point, but checking the forum archives I only found one thread from last year that didn't even make it past the first update and the current one that's only a few missions in.
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Jun 9, 2015 00:50
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 Perhaps the most brilliant and apt chapter name in the whole series. Poetic even. It’s something of a breather chapter, but not a boring one. It’s fairly fast-paced, has a few interesting tactical objectives to take care of (like ballisticians and purge bishops not hidden behind walls), and is a good place to train some weak people. I’m running low on weak people though. It’s partly because of that that I didn’t post this update earlier. I’d done a highly successful run with a much cooler strategy and everything was going well. Then on the final turn Geese got killed by outrageously bad luck and I had to restart- and come up with a second-best strategy to try instead, as per my usual promise. This is also where the plot finally gets some lasting momentum. We have at last come back to where we were on chapter 8x: allied with Etruria and ready to take the fight to Bern. Everything between then and now was filler and sidequests with maybe 2 important chapters. We made no progress toward beating Bern, we just tried to undo some major steps backward. It’s good to finally be moving forward. Chapter Summary: With the rebellion instantly defeated, the Etrurians and the Elimine church join Roy and he chases the fleeing Arcard into Ilia. Bern occupies that country at the moment, and Roy has decided to liberate it on the way to attacking Bern.  Or they flee to Sacae if Sue and Shin gained more levels than Thany and Tate. It would be cool if there was some reason for this, but there isn’t. Oh well.  Just in case you forgot, because you totally could have. Afterall, Bern took the country over offscreen before the beginning of the game. And that has affected absolutely nothing since then. I don’t think Zealot and the other Ilians even mention that Bern conquered their homeland. It would have been a much more gripping story if Bern had attacked Sacae and Ilia over the course of the game. Just so they’re doing something instead of sitting and waiting for us to finally get around to killing them.  Time for another country introduction.  Just like they did after 8x! We’ve finally made it back to where we were 12 chapters ago!  You would think they would consider just marching right through Lycia, perhaps joining forces with Eliwood’s reunited Lycian league, and attacking Bern directly without wearing themselves down first. I mean, there are definitely risks with that plan, like being flanked. But it’s at least worth a mention as to why they don’t do it. However, Lycia stopped existing a long time ago. On 11 Elphin said that Bern probably planned to attack Lycia while they were away. Bern never attacked Lycia. And I am fairly certain it has never been mentioned since. What’s more, I don’t think it’s mentioned again until the epilogue. This makes no sense.  And the Elimine Church is supporting us too.  Oh no, the legendary Murdock, strongest of the 3 wyvern generals! But… actually we don’t deal with him in Ilia. At all. He deliberately lets us win here to be spiteful and never does anything to stop us. Or even really fight us.  And more quisling factions to deal with. They end up being the only ones we actually fight.  And you lost the war. I mean, that was it right there. You were already getting clobbered by the Lycians and your plan depended on the support of the Etrurians. Now they’re both united to crush you. Game over. And it’s all the fault of these two twerps for deliberately letting Roy beat Narshen even though they were in position to help.  Ah, Gale is semi-reasonable at least. He recognizes that letting Roy liberate Etrurian and ally with them was probably not a good outcome. Murdock claims the king told him to let Narshen lose. That… actually seems really unlikely. If it’s true, it’s 100% out of character for Zephiel. He’s totally committed to winning this war, even if it costs his own life. It’s all he cares about! Why in the world would he order Murdock to ensure the war is lost like that? Given what we see of Murdock this chapter, it seems much more likely that Murdock just lied to Gale.  They went to Bern for help. They were darned useful allies really and did their jobs pretty well until the sudden end.  I think that’s the capital or something.  Yeah, it’s a complete suicide mission. They just barely got away from Roy and Zephiel is now telling him to stop and defend this unfamiliar land immediately.  Ok, so fortify it with actual troops or maybe actually launch an attack. Don’t just throw it away in order to spitefully kill a useful ally. This guy might be an even worse general than Narshen. Narshen just didn’t get it. Murdock is losing the war deliberately.  He's throwing away all of occupied Ilia and his whole army stationed there in fact. Gale should be in charge. Bern might have a chance then. But Zephiel just says it’s ok to let Arcard and Roartz die because they couldn’t clean up their own mess. But they DID their job. They did it really well. It was Bern that epic failed at working with them.  Yodel and Roy agree to keep learning what they can and comparing notes.  And he gives us this protip about the area. Since Murdock has had control of this area, he probably knew about it too. And he deliberately did not tell Arcard so as to let him be caught by surprise.  Who’s the fractactical genius around here?  Uh. Alright? What about us though? Battle Preparations & the Map:  Secondary Objective: Get Tina’s Staff from the village Secondary Objective: Steal the Elixir from the northwest paladin Secondary Objective: Steal the Elixir from the northeast paladin Secondary Objective: Steal the Elixir from the middle east paladin Secondary Objective: Do some shopping Reinforcements: Quite numerous and ALL have vulneraries. From turns 8-15 2 pegasi spawn with steel lances from the bottom right. Additionally, an archer with a steel bow spawns from the rightmost fort. A cavalier with a steel sword spawns from the fort near that one and one with a steel lance from the other one. Turn Limit: 20. Generous as usual, though getting past the rapid reinforcements to kill the boss promptly is occasionally messy. Another nice-looking outdoors map at last. Most of those maps are straightforward breather chapters, and this is no exception. It does have one important gimmick:  The tide goes out and this bridge pops up on turn 6, letting you open up a different front. That’s convenient because the terrain in the bottom right corner and the number of long-ranged weapons aimed at you along the bottom area would make it hard for your full army to make much progress there. Don’t worry, the enemy makes basically no attempt to use this land bridge. Oh and note that it’s WAY wider than it looks. Any tile that’s even partly land counts as a plain, so you can charge a huge group across at full speed. Anyway, there’s a couple of bishops on this map. One has Sleep (and doesn’t move) and the other has Purge and will start charging immediately. Critically, the Purge bishop will cover the right ballista, so you need to be careful as you take it out. And you really need to take those both out fast if you intend to march any kind of force down along the bottom area. One good flyer with a Delphi Shield should be able to handle it. The mages are very strong and have great gear (including one with the mighty Fimbulvetyr) and the enemy are very well equipped in general. Besides 3 paladins with elixirs, quite a number have vulneraries. That can cause trouble sometimes because enemies run in more or less random directions to use those things; possibly putting them somewhere inconvenient. Oh and the cavaliers tend to have rather good weaponry; the paladins are outright packing silver lances. Still, it’s pretty much just a fair brawl. And those are easy. Furthermore, the XP requirement is incredibly easy at 1500. Partially makes up for the enormous 2500 last time.  Units Allowed: 13 + Roy. That’s a ton for a map like this; you can really flex your muscles. Units Brought: 1) Roy. Required. He continues to not be good and is particularly so here where so many enemies have lances. The rapier has long since stopped being useful even against cavaliers anyway. 2) Zeiss. Easily my lowest level good person; it’s time to start training him- and building support with his sister. With the Delphi Shield and her support, he’s the best candidate for taking out the ballistae. 3) Miledy. Zeiss will need serious backup and Miledy is a dozen times better than Tate at that. 4) Lilina. I’ve decided to make Lilina the one I try to grind up to a respectable staff rank, so she’ll be my primary healer. She will probably need to fight when things get tough too of course. 5) Oujay. It’s proven weirdly hard to build his support with Lilina, but I’m still trying. He’ll be my main physical damage dealer. 6) Hugh. Hugh is ready to promote and will be the healer for the smaller top group. And those are all my promoted units really, everyone else is someone I’m trying to train. 7) Chad. Chad remains an offensively powerful but fragile swordfighter. I’d like to finally get him to level 20. Plus there are some elixirs to steal. 8) Cath. I need at least 2 thieves to steal everything efficiently. And I’d really like to train her, hard though that is. 9) Lance. For too long, Lance has lagged behind because he’s unpromoted. It’s time I finally got him up to the same tier as Alan. He just needs a little more XP. 10) Sophia. I so want to bench her, but I’m determined to really give her a completely serious try. This was the first chapter in a while where I have enough control to bring her out and train her in the safety she needs. 11) Geese. Another terrible unit I’m trying to train. Geese is really bad now. Everything doubles him and kills him in one round. And he’s less accurate AND less powerful than Sophia at higher level. Crazy. I am REALLY scraping the bottom of the barrel on people to train. 12) Clarine. I didn’t want to bring Clarine; she’s max level and really bad. On my first run of this chapter I actually went without a Restore user and succeeded, but for this new strategy I need someone to cure sleep. Clarine has the added edge of being able to carry people and I don’t need big magic power, so she’s the pick. 13) Lalum. Lalum is much happier here than she has been for the last couple of chapters. For some reason the purge bishop here seems to have much lower Mag, so she can actually survive a hit from him (albeit at very low HP). Useful as ever, and particularly for training pitiful people like Sophia or helping Lilina staff grind. 14) Merlinus. It’s a perfectly safe map if played right, so there’s not much risk in bringing him. I need to buy and sell a LOT of stuff at this store here, so he’s the man to take along. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Tate. Tate doesn’t stand up to ballista bolts the way Miledy does and I really don’t need 3 flyers for this map. You only need 2 to take down the ballistae; after that it’s a land map. 2) Alan. I’m really not bringing many promoted people. Lance would appreciate the support, but I’m confident I can win without it and get Lance promoted. 3) Ward. I actually considered him instead of Geese as the axe user to train, but he’s just too bad and he can’t wield a Brave Axe, which is required for this strategy. 4) Gonzalez. He’s all ready to promote, but this isn’t a particularly good map for him and I’m leaving most promoted people behind. 5) Sue. I brought her to train on my first run of the chapter and she did very well, but there’s not really room for her on the team now. 6) Saul & Ellen. Level 20 and I only need one restorer. 7) Cecilia. Would actually be a good alternative to Clarine since she can gain XP and attack, but she's too much slower and thus would be one-round killed by too many things. The party is going to split into 3 groups at first. Zeiss and Miledy are going to fly out into the lake and eliminate the ballistae (and possibly the purge bishop) ASAP. Both have fairly standard gear except that Zeiss has the Delphi Shield (because Miledy has higher Def and HP and thus doesn’t need it). Miledy has a spare javelin since her main one began to run low on my first run. Chad, Hugh, and Lance will be responsible for clearing the top. They’re a small but fairly strong group- or they will be once Hugh promotes. Chad will be stealing elixirs of course, but also doing some serious fighting. As such he has not only an iron sword but also a steel once and a lancereaver. Hugh has typical mage gear plus a Heal staff and a Guiding Ring. Lance has an iron lance, iron sword, javelin, Horseslayer, and knight crest. Merlinus will be traveling with that group as far as the store and has an iron axe for someone to give to Lance after he promotes. Zeiss will join the top group after his first mission is over while Miledy will join the bottom one. This is because the top group has lighter fighting to deal with and also lacks a really low level person to give most XP to. The bottom group will consist of Lilina (primary healer and a major damage dealer), Oujay (primary damage dealer), Roy (Just there to leech some XP), Sophia (the main person I’m training), Cath (Gotta steal an elixir), Geese (Who am I kidding, he can’t do anything), Clarine (Restores and healing Lilina), and Lalum (letting the others do their jobs well and possibly allowing the assassination of the purge Bishop). Gear for the bottom group is mostly standard save that Geese has the brave axe. The Characters:  I know I promised Cath a proper introduction when she joins, but I’ve seen her enough times now that there’s little else to say. Cath lived in a village that was destroyed by their ruthless Lycian ruler to prevent Bern from benefitting from conquering it. She has an entirely reasonable dislike of nobility and became a thief to steal only from them and give to peasants in need. Somehow she’s become incredibly accomplished in the… weeks? Weeks at best since her village was destroyed. She traipses all across the world, gets into the highest-security fortresses around, and basically always gets the better of thieves like Chad who SHOULD be more skilled. Among others. Roy is the only one who seems to ever get the better of her. She’s a fun character before she joins and a rare recognition by this series that rule by a hereditary nobility is an absolutely horrible system of government, but she’s kind of annoying in her supports once she’s in the party. And she’s useless. Chad was decent at fighting and available early; Astol was tough enough to take a hit. Cath is neither of those things. She has basically the worst stats of the thieves in this game, joins very late, and contributes nothing of value. It doesn’t help that my Cath was unlucky in basically every stat with her HM bonuses. I’d really like to train her anyway. Chad and Astol are both level 20 or close and thieves are great for your XP rank. But look at that Str.  And look at this gear. She does 8 damage. And she has an E in swords, so you CAN’T give her a heavier weapon. The result is that she can’t inflict even 1 damage on any enemy on the whole level except for the two mages! This means you can’t actually train her even if you wanted to.  We’ve seen him before, but here he really is at last! Arcard was apparently a really minor Etrurian noble who for some reason was put in charge of the mines on the western isles. He may be solely responsible for the horrible conditions there. Plus he’s been working with Roartz to sell Etruria to Bern. Although Roartz massively outranks him, the two of them actually seem to work more or less as partners. They might be a fun pair if there was a real Etrurian arc and we saw more of them. People say he’s weak, but actually this guy was the toughest boss since Ohtz for me. If not further back. He’s got really solid, well-balanced stats. His defenses are very hard on his gate, his strength is pretty massive too, and only a few of my characters can double him at all. Playing Through:  Lilina and Oujay wall up. Oujay and only Oujay is in range of the further back cavalier. He should leave it with just a few HP for Sophia. Lilina is in ballista range, but I’m confident the ballista won’t actually go for her when it has Miledy available.  With some rescue-drops, everyone else crowds in.  Merlinus backs up 1 square to safety for now.  Zeiss is going ballista hunting.  Hugh scores some very nice promotion gains.  The top group is spread out so they can’t be focus-fired. Miledy tries to weaken this one for Lance.  Well it didn’t go quite as hoped, but he should be able to finish it with his horseslayer. Also she just capped speed. That’s the problem wyvern riders traditionally have. Their stats are amazing but then their caps are terrible.  The enemy attacks. Hugh isn’t fast enough to double this guy, but you can see he’s a REALLY tough mage.  My turn. Unfortunately, the cavalier actually suicided to Miledy for some reason instead of Lance. That goes against everything I thought I knew about FE AI. Oh Well. Anyway, the first elixir is mine.  The horseslayer finishes the paladin easily.  Not exactly good, but acceptable.  So now it’s time to think about the other groups. First I need to know what ballista range is so I know the consequences if the guy survives.  I’ve decided to take a minor risk and hope Miledy hits exactly once here. Then Zeiss can get the kill easily.  When you want misses, you don’t get them.  I want that fighter gone promptly, so I’ll have Zeiss trade Miledy back her iron sword and stay out of the way.  So there’s the range on the other ballista; that tells me how much space I have.  I’m not giving up! And neither are you! And neither am I!  … we’ll try again later.  So the other range to worry about is purge. That’s the reason I want that fighter to die, actually. Sort of. See, if the fighter is only injured, the bishop will heal him instead of moving closer and purging. That would mean I can’t kill him as early.  That 20 speed cap is ruining her.  So everyone pretty much just moves forward via rescue-drops. Lalum was advanced as far as possible even though it means she’ll take some light fire (the ballista will go for Miledy) so she can more easily help other people reach the bishop.  Merlinus had an iron axe for Lance. Lance isn’t ready and doesn’t have space yet, but Chad can hold it for him.  Quite a few misses this turn; very nice.  And one notable hit on exactly the person I wanted. Now I know he’s in range.  Lance goes for the mage while Hugh covers healing. This mage just does not move no matter what.  Next turn, Miledy repeats the same tactic on the second ballistician and this time it works.  Welp. That’s a terrible Zeiss level for my considerable trouble.  Lalum launches Oujay at the hapless enemy.  Some really cruddy levels so far this chapter…  Argh, this mage is just too strong. Everyone either does no damage or is doubled and killed. I’ll have to use Lilina instead of feeding it to Cath as I’d hoped to somehow do.  And everyone else moves forward with some drops. All long-ranged attackers have been cleared, so it’s a much safer map.  Merlinus visits the village.  It’s the final anime character item. I still don’t get the reference at all. This is the only useful item of that set. It’s a staff in between Heal and Mend. So not really as good as either of them, but healing staves are pretty much always useful.  All the house people want to talk about the chapter’s gimmick.  Yes.  Zeiss is ready to join the top group, so he starts flying that way.  Now what? My army is too spread out to work together well, the enemy are too strong for me to just take them out with weak people, and I need to crowd in there but the terrain is awful.  Oujay takes one out and I managed to get a kill for Sophia (using Lalum when she inevitably missed the first time). Now I’m in a tight spot though. That mage is lethal. I’ll need to keep everyone else back and basically just have them rescue Sophia out. Leaving me in the same darned situation when next turn comes.  Only worse because I needed to steal this thing.  Uh oh. Now I’m going to be in trouble. I need to kill a lot of strong enemies and I don’t have many guys.  The first thing is to clear the dangerous enemies that I can.  Roy actually gets the kill on the injured mage.  So there we go. Safe.  Surprise! Now apparently the locals told them this happens but they’re still caught off guard? And all these troops here hadn’t been deployed here before, so they didn’t know.  They don’t actually do this. Though perhaps it was intended as a warning about the reinforcements who begin in a couple of turns? I guess that could make sense. It’s really not obvious as a warning though.  So everyone is all set to move onto the sandbar and I examine the enemy ranges.  Here’s a good spot for Zeiss with a javelin.  Miledy weakens this cavalier and moves to bait the bishop into wasting some ammo.  Darn, a critical.  Well I still managed to get a level on Sophia, and she finally gained some speed!  And the mage goes down. I don’t have much time to clear out of here. Everyone pretty much just crowds forward.  Well that’s a really unexpected target when Miledy was right there.  The last elixir is mine on the top front.  Once again, the horseslayer eliminates the paladin.  Zeiss then borrows it to kill another one while blocking for Chad.  He’s way better with it than Lance, of course.  I’ll take it!  So it’s turn 7 and I’ve got to get out of here. Fortunately there’s almost no resistance.  These folks are out.  Geese remains behind. And that’s the turn.  Much more expected. That’s pretty much it; every other enemy on that front is dead.  New turn for the top group. There’s just 2 guys left. And I really meant just 2 guys. There are basically no enemies left on the map. The reinforcements will soon change that.  Great!  Also great! No more cavaliers.  On the bottom front Clarine fixes Oujay.  Miledy zooms into the danger zone to take out the bishop right now.  Alright, I got far enough away from the southern forts and walled up.  So the pegasi start spawning and have no choice but to go for Geese. He’s on a forest and has weapon triangle advantage. And with this Brave Axe he can one-round kill them (barely). Lousy first level here though.  Lance moves in and promotes.  Then Hugh heals him again.  Oujay inflicts the perfect amount of damage on an enemy as their attack begins.  I’ve had time to give Lance his iron axe, so this poor fellow doesn’t stand a chance.  Miledy is a favorite target of the enemy where she stands as one of the blockers. Now that her speed has capped, this is about the best I can hope for.  The top group is ready to tank the next rein.  The bottom group gets into a bit of a routine of giving a kill to Sophia and then hauling her out.  Which leaves the enemy to break themselves on the walls of Miledy or Oujay.  Geese gets a better level as his anti-pegasus crusade continues.  Their hit chance is tiny, but he never dodges! Fortunately he’s ready with vulneraries.  Chad kills a rein and gets an amazing final level. Best Chad I’ve ever seen.  That group presses in more tightly bit by bit.  On this front I might need to pull back a bit…  Another bad Sophia level first. All that skill still isn’t making her even remotely accurate.  Ah ha! The reinforcements are now penned in!  Geese is doing well on Res. That’s about it.  Turn 12. So I’m trying to get the top group right of this fortress, but it’s proving hard.  This group is ready to get to work at least.  Merlinus is done selling things and goes shopping. Killer weapons are notably available here but rare elsewhere. Other than that, it’s a much needed chance to pick up on normal gear after a fairly long drought.  Murdock is trying to kill you! But yeah, Lilina moved into his range on purpose.  Ugh. Geese has been hit WAY too often. Nearly every peg does it despite awful odds. So he drinks a vulnerary every turn and is still slowly dying. If he dies and I have to restart on the last turn AGAIN, I’ll be rather miffed.  A new turn. I’m getting some misses that are making killing these guys as fast as they spawn hard.  Well that’s a lousy level.  Just barely managed to kill those 2 off.  Lance breaks through after I finally take out the left fort enemies.  Hit again!  And AGAIN!  Roy gets another bad level.  At long last, the top group has broken past that fortress.  Lilina just gets better and better as she starts weakening Arcard.  Sophia… ugh.  Roy has to heal himself to keep blocking this cavaier.  Well... a bit of speed at least?  And Roy gets a kill that wave too.  Finally a speed point for Geese!  Zeiss too.  Now what? It’s turn 16. This is it.  Well Oujay finishes Arcard with Durandal.  Pretty good!  Sophia gets the final kill.  Hugh gets the final heal and a good level up.  Turn 16 win! That’s the earliest possible turn to kill all enemies. Plus I stole all 3 elixirs. And I did it with a really underleveled party. Oh and I got more than 1000 more XP than required.  Huh? I mean, he died in battle and did REALLY well. He held his own against Lilina and could only be killed by one of the legendary weapons! That’s not really pathetic at all.  Good question!  Why are you just holding it?  Merlinus brings up totally irrelevant rumors that Zephiel killed his own father for the throne. Total Restarts: 16 (One really annoying one on the last turn) Turn Surplus: +22 (Another 4 turns scored) 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; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6. Melth fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Aug 13, 2015 |
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Jun 9, 2015 05:58
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so with the decompression and removal of the route splits, Arcard is no longer the boss of this chapter, instead he's been moved to what was 20A. Also his running away makes a bit more sense because he first (leading the army) attacks Roy in the new Etruria 1. Only fleeing when he sees how devastated the well trained Etrurian/Bern army is by Roy's crusaders. So him getting Roartz to flee is a case of "No. Seriously. We have to go right now or we're all going to die here." Just a bit more dignity for the dude and character. Same reason Slater is being promoted to one of Narshen's squad, not just some subordinate he throws out for death. Mostly it's trying to build up the villain base so they aren't just introduced to die or to be crazy. Simple changes like rather than ordering Narshen to look after Araphan and Narshen loving off to go try be a creep. Instead he's ordered to solidify the alliance with Erik (or kill him if it turns out to be an insurance plan by Hector) and Slater is just flat ordered to guard the castle. Small change, same end result, but at least it comes across as proper resource spreading and not stupidity. Though I totally have Roy planned to have a battle conversation with Narshen on what was 16 where Roy simply says he doesn't even recall him, infuriating Narshen because Roy essentially ruined his life.
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Jun 9, 2015 06:31
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Given the fact that Clarine is maxed level, would Cecilia have been a better pick for her slot? She can actually gain experience, plus she does low damage if you need her to try to chip them down. It tickles me pink that you're bringing Merlinus to maps to act exactly like a merchant shoulld.
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Jun 9, 2015 10:47
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Like anyone remembers Cecilia exists after the chapter she's forced on your party
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Jun 9, 2015 11:45
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Keldulas posted:Given the fact that Clarine is maxed level, would Cecilia have been a better pick for her slot? She can actually gain experience, plus she does low damage if you need her to try to chip them down. Not a bad idea and I did consider it. There's a few reasons I didn't go with that plan. One is that promoted staff users gain half staff XP anyway and I only intended to do 1-2 Restores with Clarine/Cecilia. So that's 10-20 XP given up by not bringing Cecilia. Not much really. The huge downside is basically that she's incredibly slow. A bunch of enemies who would not double Clarine (including the Purge bishop) would double her. I already had too many units along who could be OHKOed. On a chapter where I'm not bringing so many feeble people already, I might well have brought Cecilia instead.
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Jun 9, 2015 15:07
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When do you get to open back up and just bring out all of the big guns to make your life easier? I think you had posted earlier saying that you were well ahead in XP. I forgot if you already had your XP commitment for the run yet or not.
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Jun 9, 2015 16:52
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X_countryguy posted:When do you get to open back up and just bring out all of the big guns to make your life easier? I think you had posted earlier saying that you were well ahead in XP. I forgot if you already had your XP commitment for the run yet or not. I think I did that as much as I'm going to on 14x. After my smashing success last chapter I actually only need to gain 50 more levels over the course of the whole game. And I'm already done in funds, plus using stronger people will only boost my large tactics lead. So yeah, I've got the requirements in the bag now and could just switch to my god tier party and crush everything effortlessly from now on. However, the game is boringly easy enough for me as it is without making every chapter trivial by bringing only uber units. Furthermore, I'm never one to settle for the bare minimum. I want to finish with something like 10,000 extra XP, 80 extra turns, and hundreds of thousands of extra funds. And achieve every objective on every chapter, kill every enemy, and win in the minimum number of turns that allows that.
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Jun 9, 2015 17:17
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 This is the heart of the Ilian arc and, in my opinion, the best outdoor map in the game. Map design-wise it’s the kind of thing you might find somewhere in the early 20s of FE7. It’s got unusual terrain that encourages unusual tactics (in a way beyond just the typical air-mass that usually solves terrain problems). There are staff users and a purge-wielder, but instead of just needing to turtle up and cure their statuses, you can actually deal with them in interesting ways. And there’s lots of enemies which pose a moderate threat and use the map’s terrain to their advantage well, but which are manageable if you know what you’re doing. It’s- dare I say it- actually kind of fun. The script remains infuriatingly bad though. Chapter Summary:  They aren’t kidding.  Yet another lookalike bishop.  They found some kind of forgotten ancient uber-spell and think only she, their best dark wizard, may be able to cast it.  Wait, what? No you haven’t. I’m betting that’s a flub by the translation, not the original script. It’s pretty clear elsewhere she’s not even a century old.  Sound familiar? Maybe a bit like a spell that her son couldn't quite manage to cast the first time it was tried?  Well that’s one plan. As far as a way to use a single-use weather control uber-spell from the days of yore goes, it’s a pretty lame one.  Roy decides to directly ask Guinevere if it’s true that Zephiel murdered his father for the throne. That’s… pretty gauche.  “I’d rather split the story up into a bunch of tiny pieces at the end of the next several chapters for no reason.”  For the first time in forever, Merlinus actually has something useful to say. For Roy anyway. Not for us; we already know because of yet another enemy cutscene. I think the scene order should have been the other way around here. The War Room, Part 46 I’ve really begun running out of things to talk about, but one new one occurred to me recently. I’ve talked a bit about how to do good battle preparations in the War Room parts 14 (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3701153&pagenumber=5#post441877689) and 44 (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3716259&pagenumber=16#post445399226), as well as tangentially elsewhere. One thing I talked little about directly is how to actually pick out characters for a chapter. If you’re not doing a max ranking run, that’s usually pretty self-explanatory. Just bring your best people, maybe plus or minus a healer or a flyer. On max ranking runs- and especially on HHM in FE7 where the number of characters allowed was sharply decreased- it’s a much more important strategic decision. Even on the most straightforward chapters, you need to strike a good balance between strong people and low-level people, and the game’s more complex chapters are far trickier. On every chapter, some of your limited party slots must be devoted to some of the following: 1) Healers. Always an important role for keeping your party functioning, and good for your XP score too. 2) Restorers. Got to cure those statuses. 3) Thieves. Can’t steal or get many treasures without them. Or see in fog. 4) Flyers. There are so many things flying units are good at that it’s hard to know where to begin the list. Fighting in rough terrain, flanking tough enemies to finish them off, getting places with matchless speed, and blocking enemy flyers from flanking you are only a few. 5) Carriers. I’ve talked about this many times and I’ll talk about it many more. Good use of rescue-dropping is THE key to expert tactics in the GBA fire emblems and many of the others too. If you’re not using it, you’re not playing like an expert. One of its most critical roles is preventing your party from getting strung out while you fight. A party with only 4 people at the front and everyone else lagging behind is a party of only 4 people instead of 14. You can see the effects of that even on one of my own recent chapters: This was a really tough spot for me because I couldn’t bring most of my forces to bear. I struggled to even kill those 3 enemies, let alone give the kills to low level people. That would not have happened if I had a few more carriers along helping out to keep the slow people from falling behind. 6) Recruiters. When this isn’t your main lord, you’d better not forget to bring the person. 7) People who can kill stuff. Especially the boss. There’s nothing worse than clearing the chapter like a pro and then realizing you’re going to be stuck for 5 turns trying to down the boss because you can’t get past his huge def or avoid on that throne. Only after any of those needed roles are filled can you bring: 8) Low-level people. Staff-grind and dance all you want; sooner or later you MUST use a bunch of low-level people to get your max XP rank. 9) People who can not-quite kill stuff. Especially if you’re short on strong low-level people, this is a critical category for letting the low level people actually get XP. You’ll notice I don’t list “tanks” anywhere. You should never play so passively that you’re doing nothing but trying to survive with statistical brute force. Find ways to eliminate the threats or reduce their impact or to just barely survive with weaker people who can do more useful stuff. Don’t waste one of your precious slots on a person whose only job is to take hits. There is no GBA chapter so brutal that that’s required. The goal is to maximize the number of characters of type 8 (and maybe 9) while still completing all objectives quickly. That’s partly a matter of choosing your type 7s well. Pick characters who can crush all needed resistance without difficulty and rely on quality over quantity. If you use a unit who’s highly effective at the chapter, you don’t need to use 2 or 3 who are just generic good units. The most important thing though is finding ways to combine roles or do without. If you bring a sage, you can count that unit as both a healer and probably a person who can kill stuff when making your plans. If you find ways to let a thief get some kills, you make a tidy XP profit. By giving a strong unit a mix of very weak (Like slim weapons and javelins) and very powerful gear, you can perhaps have that person be both a killer and an almost-killer. If you bring a pegasus knight, that’s both a flyer and a carrier (some wyvern riders like Miledy and Vaida, not to mention Myrrh, are just not good carriers). And Dancers are amazing because you can kind of count them like a spare of every unit role you’re bringing. Another thing to become good at is finding ways to do without units who seem necessary. Thieves are one key starting point. Chest keys are hard to buy in FE7, but you should pick up many sets at the secret shop where they’re available. In FE6 there’s no excuse for not picking up half a dozen sets early on. As long as you maintain a good supply of door and chest keys, you can outright do without thieves on many chapters. On those that still have stuff to steal, you may still be able to bring fewer thieves if other people are opening the doors and chests in one part of the map. My runs of Battle Before Dawn and the recent chapter 16 are good examples of this:  There’s no thief in the right group of Battle Before Dawn, as you can see. Hector has the keys to those chests and other people have torches. That let me bring enough mounted units to move with the required speed. Another way to cut down on thieves is to use rescue-chaining to get a single thief quickly from one group of chests or stealable items to a distant one. It can be somewhat trickier to do without Restore users, but it IS viable on a lot of chapters. If the status-staff in question is just Silence or Sleep and it won’t be hitting you at a key phase of the map, you may be able to just ignore it. Even if it’s Berserk, you may be able to avoid bringing a Restore wielder if you can contrive a way to kill that staff-user early. This is often easily done with a flyer + a dancer even if the staff-user is rather high level and strong. If you can plan a party split where one group doesn’t need to go quickly, you might be able to bring fewer carriers. Alternately, you can just bring an all-cavalry kind of party where no one needs to be carried much, which is more efficient on some maps like Whereabouts Unknown in 7 and perhaps chapter 8 in this game. If you have a choice of recruiter characters, always bring the one who’ll be more useful and see if you can leave the other behind. For that matter, plan on using the recruited character. Have their recruiter or someone else carry gear to give for them. Perhaps if you’re recruiting a thief, you don’t need to bring a thief too. And then the trickiest but most essential way to save space for trainees is to find ways to let weak units do the work of strong ones. A lot of the time, you don’t actually need the high level people you think you need to complete a chapter as long as you have carefully chosen equipment and good tactics. If you can keep those tricks and principles in mind, you’ll be on your way to a party that’s better for both XP and tactics. Battle Preparations & the Map:  Secondary Objective: Get the Goddess Icon from the top left village Secondary Objective: Get the Guiding Ring from the top right village Secondary Objective: Get the Secret Book from the bottom right village Reinforcements: Tons. First, there are brigands with handaxes from a spot in the top middle and another in the mid right from turns 5 to 9. These will quickly destroy villages if you aren’t using flyers or Warp to get there. Just as problematically, a huge number of pegasi (44 total) will spawn from the top middle and middle right. They have a mix of javelins and steel lances. Turn Limit: 25. Easy even if you’re terrible at getting through the forests. What’s hard is winning just after killing all reinforcements. Unlike on Pale Flower of Darkness, the snow here is cosmetic and doesn’t slow you down. No, the heavy forests everywhere are what do that. And the rivers funneling you through chokepoint bridges. Critically, those rivers stop being a problem on turn 7...  ... on that turn they flash freeze and then can be crossed by all units just like plains. Very handy. But there’s a long time between now and turn 7 and a lot of distance to cross. In particular, you have till just turn 8 or so to reach the top right village before it’s destroyed. Flyers are key for moving on this map, but you can’t really rely on them exclusively. They can carry a few other people around, but you’ll also need to use some promoted infantry and mages to move with reasonable speed and also do some infantry rescue-dropping to gain a bit of extra distance. Most importantly, you need to plan your moves so people don’t get in each other’s way. Now the enemy is well-equipped to make use of the terrain here: they have extremely numerous flyers and also several staff users who can cause severe problems while you’re bogged down. Even the ballisticians can’t be ignored. You need many anti-air units (axe-users, other air units, aircalibur, and maybe even some bows). You also need a plan for dealing with the Berserk staff user in particular. In this rough terrain, it can be hard or impossible to reach his target and restore them. Wow, it's so refreshing to have a map that calls for serious strategy!  Oh and just an interesting oddity, you can place some of your units in illegal terrain like this cliff as a starting position.  Units Allowed: 14 + Roy. Wow, that’s generous. Units Brought: 1) Roy. Required. He’s terrible against pegasi and worse against mercenaries, but I need to train him up the last few levels to 20 before Chapter 21. I don’t want to be training him there. 2) Zeiss. It’s an air map. Additionally, this is a really good place to train him. 3) Miledy. Air map. 4) Tate. Air map. 5) Thany. Air map. She’s also useful for feeding kills to weak people because she can’t even one-round pegasus knights. 6) Oujay. My leading anti-mercenary man because with an iron sword he leaves them just barely alive. He’s highly effective in general of course. 7) Lilina. My primary healer since I’m trying very hard to raise her staff ranking. She should also build more supports with Oujay and Gonzalez. 8) Gonzalez. He’s ready to promote. As an axe user, he’s unusually strong here. He’s also capable of fording the rivers easily before they freeze. And he has support to build. 9) Hugh. A needed second healer because there must be a party split here. He’s also good at not quite killing things for weaker people. 10) Lot. Axe-wielders do quite well farming all the pegasi here. Lot in particular excels because he can double them. 11) Geese. Like Lot but terrible because of his lousy level ups last chapter. 12) Sue. My best low-level bow-user. This is a good chance to give her some easy XP. 13) Dorothy. A lousy, lower-level bow user. This may be my only chance to give her some easy XP. 14) Wolt. The worst unit in the game and one of my lowest-level units. This is the only chance to give him a bunch of easy XP. 15) Lalum. Critical for training weak people and dealing with the enemy staff users as well as for helping Lilina staff grind. And keeping everyone moving efficiently. Yeah, she’s amazingly good as usual. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Ward. He’s just TOO bad. I really wanted to take this chance to train him, but he can’t do it! Every pegasus knight will double him and kill him and his accuracy is worse than Sophia’s! At least the archers can stay back from their targets and deal super-effective damage. 2) Sophia. She’s doing just terribly and she’s incredibly bad against pegasus knights in particular. It would be really hard to keep her alive while using her here. 3) Saul, Clarine, Ellen, and Cecilia. All level 20 or just terrible- or both. Because the terrain is wide open for flyers and there’s only one low-level guy with Berserk, I think I can do without restores. 4) Fa. Unlike Myrrh, she doesn’t fly, so she’s pretty bad here. I might consider her if she could instant-kill pegasus knights, but she can’t quite do that. 5) Other strong units. This is actually a really manageable map if you play smart. I think I can keep all these weak people alive and train them well without bringing anyone else. 6) The armor knights. No. Most gear is fairly standard, though I’ve broken out some of the new stock of killer weapons. The Brave Axe is gone, so Geese isn’t wielding that anymore. Geese has the swordreaver because Lot won’t be fighting any sword units, and Gonzalez probably won’t either. I didn’t bother bringing most of the legendary weapons, though Oujay does have Durandal just in case. Dororthy and Wolt can’t use any good bows so they just have iron and steel. Sue has the longbow and a killer bow too. Gonzalez is ready to promote with his hero crest. Other than that, most gear is unremarkable. Now this formation was carefully chosen. In particular, it allows for one group led by Miledy and Zeiss to immediately set out east. The pegasi can carry someone slow across the river and north into the forests and then destroy the ballista on the next turn. Oujay can severely weaken the first mercenary for either Wolt or Sue. If Wolt gets the kill, Sue will help carry people into position instead. In short, it allows for very rapid deployment and elimination of important targets early on. The Characters:  A completely generic enemy bishop. Why he joined Bern when the Elimine church is now firmly on Roy’s side is a mystery. For that matter, why is a bishop a general of Bern anyway? Particularly when Zephiel doesn’t much like the church. He’s really not a big threat in a fight. Bosses have generally ceased to be hard to kill.  He IS pretty good with this dangerous Purge, but since he doesn’t move and isn’t in an important place, it’s not so bad. Playing Through:  Gonzales's promotion is a game changer for him; Brigand Gonzales and Berserker Gonzales are very different units. First of all, the massive increases in Skill and Def solve all his combat problems and cement his status as a true master on both offense and defense. Further, Berserker is one of the game’s best classes. He can now walk over not only peaks and mountains, but also rivers and oceans (and lakes to some extent). Oh and notice that his HP is immediately capped. In fact, he was supposed to gain 4 HP but already had too much. Crazy. However, it’s not all good news. He now has a constant +30 bonus to his crit chance. Critical hits are often terrible on a max ranking run. Furthermore, his +1 Con doesn’t really let him wield any new weapons but it DOES mean that no one can carry him anymore. Thus he has a bunch of new and improved capabilities, but also 2 serious new problems.  Anyway, Lilina heals him and everyone gets in position for the first round of rescues.  Miledy can't take Lot, so Zeiss does that while she carries Hugh instead. They fly at maximum speed and end up right on the edge of enemy range, just as planned.  Then Oujay charges the mercenary and leaves it barely alive.  Wolt finishes it. His hit chance was awful, but Sue could have done it if he failed. That’s a pretty good level for right now. It means I can hopefully use the iron bow instead of the steel one to finish things now and it also increases his hit odds.  Everyone gets ready for the next round of rescues.  Thany and Tate get the swordreaver-wielding Geese in position and prepare to deal with the ballista.  Lalum helps Sue carry Roy.  And turn 1 finish. That was the kind of cool, smooth turn where I accomplish all kinds of clever stuff that I did a lot of in 7 but that 6 never really encourages.  Turn 2 begins; here’s the all-important Berserk range (the Berserk-wielder moves). You can see that it doesn’t quite cover the ballistician.  So Thany and Tate take him out before he shoots at someone fragile like Wolt again. (Wolt survived with 1 HP, as I knew he would).  The first mercenary proves really hard to kill, but Sue and Roy manage to let Geese do the honors.  And Wolt gets the second one.  Which leaves the third contained. In order to speed things up, Lalum dances for Oujay and sends him after the third.  Uh oh. Now he might kill some of the more fragile mercenaries outright.  Lalum will bait the mercenary so that he’s available to feed to someone else. For now Dorothy visits a random house.  Yeah, so Martel apparently went through the village telling all the peasants that he had a secret weapon to use against us. What an idiot.  Turn 2 isn’t over! Here’s the right side group’s situation.  This setup isn’t quite ideal, but it should do. The land units are on forests, not everyone can reach Hugh to suicide to him, etc. So hopefully Zeiss and Lot can get some kills. That’s the turn.  Bad luck ensues as just about everyone is hit with just about everything this turn.  Bizarrely, about half the wyverns went after Hugh and half went after Zeiss. Even ones who could reach both were undecided.  So turn 3, here’s the new Berserk range. That guy is now well within striking distance.  Dorothy can’t actually finish the mercenary, so I have her visit a house again instead. This one blathers on with random rumors about some guy stronger than us somewhere called the “Sword Saint”. What does that have to do with anything?  Roy also has little to do, so he visits a house. I do try to visit all of them on every chapter as an unofficial bragging rights goal.  The plot thickens.  This fellow who Oujay double-missed is not the Berserk staff user. He’s just a guy with Physic that I wanted to weaken for someone else.  Tate ready for launch in 5, 4, 3, …  Well Tate killed the berserk priest easily, so Thany just helps Sue drop Lilina closer to the action.  And everyone weak is shielded from the dangerous falcokninght.  Now for the right side group.  Zeiss gets a bad level finishing one wyvern.  Hugh heals and Lot gets the other one with Miledy’s help. That’s the turn.  Tate has her killer lance out since I want most of these pegasi dead this turn. The situation isn’t controlled enough to train weak people on them safely. Oh and a bad level. Oh and I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but the enemy attack battle theme is one of the worst in the series (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z1lnbaUjmw). The audio quality in this game is weirdly terrible for the GBA in general, but the tunes themselves are nothing inspired either.  Thany gets one too. I expected more focus-firing from these enemies.  Hugh has been dodging ~5% silences on the right side, which is convenient but not necessary.  So turn 4. There’s more enemies than I’d like, but at least they’re in out of the way areas.  Lilina is doing a double heal nearly every turn. Tate flies back to safety to receive one of them.  Wolt finishes the falcoknight for a ton of XP and a decent level.  And Oujay and Lilina finally get their first support!  She pretty much just asks him about life as a peasant.  He doesn’t mind her prying.  And then she asks a bunch of stuff about his family.  Dorothy is having a hard time keeping up. I’ve wanted to give most kills to Wolt anyway, but I do need to get her in on the action. This is a situation where more carrier units would be good, but the flyers were busy until now.  Now the right side continues their own little campaign.  Lot finishes off the shaman.  There’s not a ton to do, so Miledy visits the village now.  The villagers don’t seem to like either side much.  So they give us amazingly valuable treasures.  And she moves to support Zeiss and get healed by Hugh. That’s the turn.  Lot gets even faster as one of a group of pegasi flies down alone to attack him.  I’ll shake things up by starting turn 5 with these guys.  Miledy gets a lousy level from the archer on the ballista.  This time Lot gives the shaman to Zeiss, while Hugh continues healing. They’ve broken through.  It’s a somewhat slow turn for the left group too, though that pegasus up the cliff is annoying.  Sue takes one down easily.  And Wolt gets the other.  Dorothy keeps slogging.  Thany and Tate dump Roy closer to the action.  Lalum gets a bad level as she lets Lilina keep healing. And that’s pretty much it.  This brigand spawns as the enemy’s turn begins. The right side will need to intercept him quickly.  … wow.  Not much to do but move in. Critically, Miledy DID get in range of the brigand, so the village is safe.  Now for turn 6 on the left side. More heals!  Sue kills the top mercenary for a cruddy level. She’s actually still doing really well from all those lucky Str gains before.  A critical runs my plans once again.  Alright, this is a transport puzzle now. I’ve got too many people lagging behind and it’s time I did something about that.  Gonzalez ferries Wolt right across the river.  Classic! Man, that’s funny. Remember how way back on chapter 6 this was all she ever got? That’s why I retired her immediately in the first place. Well anyway, that priest is finally dead.  And Geese picks her up. It’s not much of a rescue, but it will help.  Next turn, this is Martel’s true Purge range.  More heals. Two per turn whenever I can.  Geese and Sue chain Dorothy along and she actually gets to a spot near the front.  I’ve been trying to get Gonzalez and Oujay both next to Lilina at once all level, now I’ve finally managed it.  Lalum is transported over the river.  The right group is almost ready to rejoin them. More heals first though. That’s pretty much the turn.  Uh oh!  This may or may not be true. Possibly she’s just setting up plausible deniability for when she sabotages them.  And there she goes.  She claims doing the opposite of what he wanted was just an accident, but he doesn’t buy it. Why isn’t a spell to control nature Anima magic anyway? In any case, I doubt it’s a coincidence that 20 years ago her son died trying to learn to control a snowstorm and now she knows how to use this supposedly lost spell to control the weather.  No. We’re not doing that. Why would we? We already crossed all the rivers anyway, we can take our time now.  The snow affects nothing, man!  My turn. Sue carts Geese around.  The right group is basically done wiping out all standing enemy forces. Now there’s just a few brigands left.  The flyers fear no Purge, so they run right in to start weakening brigands for other people.  Wolt finally gets a good level as he kills off another enemy that was spoon-fed to him.  Dorothy kills the remaining priest.  Oujay waits here…  And then bam, Lalum gets Lilina into perfect support AND heal position.  So here’s the turn 9 situation.  Sue drops Geese and moves to claim the distant village now that the rivers are traversable.  ANOTHER plan to feed an enemy to someone weak ruined by a critical hit.  I do manage to give Roy another kill and he finally gets a good level.  The enemies have been cleared, but the reinforcements are coming soon, so I’m beginning to set up.  The penultimate right side brigand proved surprisingly tough to kill, but I got him. And that’s pretty much the turn.  On turn 10, MIledy visits the right village.  She figures this treasure came from a pegasus or wyvern flying overhead.  … It’s worth all the money. Why do we take this precious treasure from this little kid who doesn’t know what she’s giving up?  The cursor marks the threat range of one pegasus that will spawn this turn.  Here’s the other’s range.  Sue visits the final village.  There! Conclusive proof that you’re supposed to eat the things, like I said all along!  Dorothy gets to safety from the pegasi and kills the last brigand. She finally got a (slightly) different level!  So I THINK she’s safe there. It depends on if the higher of the two right-side pegasi uses javelins or steel lances. I’m almost sure it was steel lances.  Show of hands, is anyone surprised? She just capped her speed!  So Geese and Wolt and Zeiss and Lot are to lure the pegasi. Everyone else is just surviving purge hits, building support, and healing for now.  Of course. Geese starts things off by being hit again. He’s amazingly good at being hit by pegasus knights.  Sue rides back in and kills the leftmost one.  I was really hoping that early strength blessing would continue. She’s disappointing me.  Is that you, Dorothy? Wolt kills the second one.  My positions are going to be increasingly haphazard for a few turns here as I try to give the kills to weak people while not letting them get hit.  You know, I’m pretty sure that’s not the right name for that terrain.  Most people are paired off in their support-building formations as you can see.  Lot gets a cruddy level as he fights the right pegasi. At least he’s better at this than Geese.  Speaking of whom…  Classic Thany.  So I’m not good at predicting who they’ll attack, but I’m still managing to efficiently kill them off every turn and then set up a screen for the fragile people.  Martel is finally out of Purges.  Lot has been struggling with this final brigand for a while now, as you would expect from those accuracies.  But he finally kills him and gets a great level!  2 heals per turn continues. I’ve been doing this for several chapters now and she’s still not even at a D.  Wolt gets an awful level. This is actually a bad Wolt. And that’s saying something.  Lot has been falling behind on killing reinforcements since he had to finish that last brigand, so now there are pegasi everywhere. I’d better solve the problem fast.  More heals.  Zeiss finally picks up a solid level from one of the nearby pegasi. Also, look at that cool Ilian village background!  Wolt is finally capable of instant kills with a steel bow on weak pegasi if he’s lucky enough to hit.  This time he was. He just loves his one-stat level ups.  Lalum is getting close to level 20.  The group as a whole is making a slow advance turn by turn. I’ve got more than enough troops to kill 2 pegasi over there easily.  I’ve shifted Lot mostly out of the way and Zeiss gets most of the right side kills now. He’s finally starting to pick up. On the other hand, it’s Def I really want. He’s going to cap all the left side stuff rapidly anyway.  Lilina can’t be everywhere, so Hugh is still patching people up.  A pretty good level on Sue as the left group continues to move up.  These archers are REALLY hard to train. That’s the main reason I brought so many low level people to this chapter; I knew the archers would miss a lot.  This time Lilina has no one else to heal though so I had Lalum give Dorothy another shot. She finally got a good level! It includes the Dorothy classic of course.  On turn 17 the pegasi behaved rather differently for some reason, so I need to adapt my plans.  Lot gets one last kill and is now retired. Just like Fir. Except for great speed, he came out pretty much average or a bit below in some places.  Dorothy is actually starting to do sort of well, though she still has a long way to go. That 100% Str growth is getting impressive.  I’m beginning to form a pegasus pen. It’s hard due to all the woods.  I just can’t figure out who these pegasus knights are going to target; they’re completely inconsistent.  I keep trying to box the spawn points in.  Sue gets another Sue level.  It’s just too hard too close in quickly; the pen is unfinished for another turn.  Wolt has migrated over to the right since I realized the right group was running out of low-level people. And Miledy finally goes for the boss. I need to weaken him a bit so that I can finish him on 21.  She gets a cruddy level from him.  I’m finally ready to surround the spawnpoints.  Ooh, a good level on Geese at last.  Yes, everything is in order now. I can easily and safely feed the last few to Dorothy and Sue or Geese. And Lot has walked over to relieve someone of wall duty so they can help with the boss.  Finally some stats on Wolt.  And my previously lousy Zeiss is suddenly becoming fast.  Turn 20 dawns. Just one more reinforcement wave left.  Nice! That’ll be Sue’s last level of the chapter.  Ok, Dorothy and Sue were just warming up before. Now they’re finally ready to start getting real levels.  None for Wolt this time though. He’s too injured.  And turn 21 go! I’ve got to kill these last few targets, do as much healing as possible, kill the boss, and seize the throne.  Oh, I spoke too soon.  I’m not complaining after she capped her speed. Also she finally achieved a D in staves.  Miledy gets serious and takes the boss down hard.  You were out of your league.  Zeiss gets the very last kill.  And turn 21 win!  Niime asks to join us, surprising Roy. Merlinus doesn’t pop up to say he doesn’t trust her, surprising me. I guess that means she really IS up to no good.  Oh gee, I wonder what? Not like we already had 2 dark mages do exactly this.  Gasp. The game’s really lousy DRAMATIC EVENT music that we’ve heard many times before begins playing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xWjEtrBo24). As if it’s even remotely interesting or new that Bern has dragons at this point.  No. No it didn’t. We’ve been over this. Roy has been shocked to learn that Bern has dragons or that dragons aren’t the same as wyverns a dozen times now! We’ve already killed SIX of the things! And we HAVE a dragon in the party! And we’ve learned all about them and how they transform and everything! But somehow Roy is still amazed to learn that dragons even exist every few chapters anyway! I’m sick of it. Just shut up and get to something that we haven’t heard ten ti-  Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup  Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup  Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup  ShutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupSHUT UP! How doesn’t EVERYONE know this by now? It’s incredibly basic history, we’ve heard it over and over again, and everyone should know by now that the dragons are back even though Bern still seems to think they’re somehow secret.  No they aren’t. I just hate this script. It’s insipid. Ah, there we go. I knew I hadn’t used every synonym yet.  Ok, here’s something new. Sort of.  And Roy knows something for once.  What? No they aren’t. The Arcadians are amazed by even basic human technology in their supports.  She eventually moves back into why the Dark Dragon was important after finally giving us some details on the Scouring (Which the translators call the Dragon Human War in this one place). Apparently humans had only been winning due to superior numbers, so the Dark Dragon’s ability to create more of its kind was critical to the war effort.  Don’t let her join, Roy. Don’t do it. No! Darn it. Well besides that talk about whether dragons are the same as wyverns, that was a pretty good chapter. Fun, even. I used awful characters, got every village, killed every reinforcement and won on the earliest possible turn for doing that. The XP requirement was 1500 and I got, let’s see, 4200. 42 levels. Someone check my math on this, but I’m pretty sure I’m number one! Anyway, that’s basically the XP requirement for the whole rest of the game met there. Everything from now on is me doing victory laps. I also think it was more XP than I got on any chapter in either game. I managed 38 on Cog of Destiny. Total Restarts: 16 (None here) Turn Surplus: +26 (Another 4) 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; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6. Melth fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 21:37
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42 levels...that's pretty good to say the least  Anyway, I'm glad you pointed out the Ilian village background. For all the downgrades this game seems to be coming from its prequel, the backgrounds are still top-notch. It's yet another reason why the Ilia route is so much more preferable to Sacae.
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Jun 10, 2015 23:23
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For the most part, I REALLY enjoy your analysis on the story and everything else about FE6. But, surely you don't think the music is THAT bad, do you? For example, "Invisible Thread" sounds perfectly fine to me (those drums are awesome). And why is there no mention of the current map theme, "Within the Magnificent Nature"?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Aqyy-oknn8 Probably the 3rd-2nd best theme in the game, and it gets no mention? For shame  !!
Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 23:52
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Niime is the best Druid in the game, not sure where the hates coming from. she is by far its best staff user EDIT: Also berserker/swordmaster crit is +30, not +25 Onmi fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 01:07
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The music is one of the bright points. If not for Smash, this game would rightfully be forgotten. The plot is so bad.
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Jun 11, 2015 01:12
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Btb, out of curiosity, did you record this entire run before making the LP, or are you recording episodes as you go through the LP?
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Jun 11, 2015 01:13
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Fionordequester posted:Btb, out of curiosity, did you record this entire run before making the LP, or are you recording episodes as you go through the LP? As I go through. At least for my style, I don't think recording everything in advance would work at all. i81icu812 posted:The music is one of the bright points. I definitely disagree. I mean, the Fire Emblem series as a whole is justly well regarded for its music. I enjoy the music from even most FEs that I dislike. But FE6 not only doesn't match that standard; it's not even good for GBA games in general. The audio quality always sounds really poor and it also lacks either the majesty or the excitement of many tracks in FE games with better music. What's more, it doesn't feel well-matched with the game. Onmi posted:Niime is the best Druid in the game, not sure where the hates coming from. she is by far its best staff user Ah, you're right about the critical, I'll fix that. I disagree about Niime and I'll talk about why in the next update. In this case though the hate was coming from her being such a jerk rather than her badness as a unit.
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Jun 11, 2015 03:08
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I just wish Niime had enough HP to reliably survive an attack, that way you could chuck a Nosferatu on her (since you can just buy a bazillion of them on non-ranking runs) and she really would be the best staff-user around. Of course, you can do the same with an Angelic Robe or two but that's quite expensive. I still like her and find her useful, but the fact that many enemies can on-shot her is a huge knock against her for general play. Though that said, she's still more useful than she'd be in later games, simply because staff rank leveling in FE6 can go gently caress itself. It's good they changed that from 7 and on (although IIRC isn't even 5 more reasonable where Staves are concerned?). The fact that Restore is so important just makes it even worse.
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Jun 11, 2015 03:48
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Can anyone advise me about the kind of equipment and software I might need to do a video LP of Warcraft 3?
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Jun 11, 2015 20:04
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Melth posted:Can anyone advise me about the kind of equipment and software I might need to do a video LP of Warcraft 3? There's a stickied thread for technical help, and another one to post your first draft and get feedback before you make your thread.
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Jun 11, 2015 20:06
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Melth posted:The audio quality always sounds really poor and it also lacks either the majesty or the excitement of many tracks in FE games with better music. What's more, it doesn't feel well-matched with the game. I feel like FE6 had three good tracks. And happily, all three were remastered and put out on a music CD that didn't have to deal with being poorly compressed or whatever happened with the GBA. One of them even showed up in FE7 I think.
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Jun 11, 2015 20:20
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojbaZPzNJcM
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Jun 11, 2015 23:54
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So much better than the "Cath's Theme" version. Which... doesn't even play a bunch of the time when Cath is around.
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Jun 12, 2015 02:40
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Melth posted:
Well what else is there that is praiseworthy about 6? And Niime is a fine staffbot, staff leveling is the worst thing ever.
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Jun 12, 2015 05:42
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Melth posted:What's more, it doesn't feel well-matched with the game. This I'm actually curious about. From what I remember, the soundtrack has a very "war-like" feel to it, with a lot of really heavy drums and other bass instruments (like in Zephiel's theme, the 2nd and 3rd regular Player Phase themes), occasionally a very "grungy" feel to it (Scars of the Scouring, Enemy Attacks theme), and then sometimes switches to a more "pleasant and easygoing" feel (the 1st and 4th Player Phase theme)... Actually, you know what? If nothing else, the OST definitely IS kind of inconsistent. Sometimes it uses a lot of medieval sounding instruments, only to switch to more modern Japanese instruments (like the Regular Boss theme), and then sometimes just outright does guitar pieces (In the Name of Bern). Heck, even in the Player Map phases, it goes from pleasant with the 1st one, to more serious and actiony with the 2nd one, to really intense and intimidating with the 3rd one...aaand then goes through a really jarring tone shift as it changes right back to "pleasant and easygoing" in the 4th one (even on what could be the final boss!)... Well, nevermind then! I see your point! Fionordequester fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Jun 12, 2015 |
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Jun 12, 2015 06:32
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCW7kazmmj4 Ok so I'm cheating a bit with an arranged version and the fact that you only get to hear all of 5 seconds of it, but still
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Jun 12, 2015 20:11
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Terper posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCW7kazmmj4 Yeah, Shaman in the Dark is quite good. I'd say it's definitely better than Campaign of Fire and Return of the Demon King. I'd go so far as to say it's on par with The Prince's Despair, but not as good as Everything Into the Dark or To Challenge Ashnard. But it's a single tune which you hear 5 seconds of one time at the end of the game.
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Jun 12, 2015 22:18
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It's going to be a few more days on the next chapter probably. It's an annoying one so I haven't really gotten around to starting it yet. Plus I'm still thinking about how I can steal every single elixir and also harvest the scattered reinforcements while winning efficiently.
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Jun 16, 2015 07:02
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 Here’s where the Ilian route supposedly gets serious. It’s a fog of war chapter full of mountains and flyers. That’s nasty, but it’s really not as bad as it could be. For one thing, these are just pegasus knights. For another, they’re generally positioned to come at you head on rather than flank you. And while there are some reinforcement pegasus knights, they’re so late in the chapter that you could easily have won before they spawn. Still, fog of war is dangerous. And the Long Ballistae that appear on this chapter are too. Like most chapters of the Ilian route, there’s really not much story to this one. It’s just another battle on the way to the capital. Still, even story-less battles are better than inexplicably skipping right to the capital as happened with Etruria. Chapter Summary: Roy talks with Niime, fights a random battle with some pegasus knights who’ve joined Bern, and then talks with Guinevere as he makes his way toward Bern’s regional HQ.  Wow, we just walked right through the country without another fight or any mention of what it was like. Unlike in Sacae, we don’t really learn much about how Bern has been treating the conquered people.  An allegedly important enemy is introduced and then killed immediately. They don’t take the time to build up many interesting villains in this game.  Sigune is close to a rare exception though. Sure she only gets this one scene, but this one scene does establish her as somewhat interesting. It might have been nice to have seen her last chapter tasking that bishop at holding us at the river or something.  Finally, someone acknowledges that it would be smart to join us instead of fighting us when Bern is clearly bad for them.  But Sigune is darned right!  She doesn’t trust us, and why would she? The Etrurians are cruel and have turned other countries into colonies before. And why would she trust Roy? She’s perhaps a bit cynical, but she’s not being stupid to disbelieve his claims that he’s attacking them purely to set them free.  But this is where the logic completely breaks down. First of all, Bern has completely failed at pretty much everything they tried after Chapter 3. They’ve been defeated by ragged remnants of armies they thought they’d beaten, thrown out of country after country, lost one of their highest-ranking generals and many of their lower ones, and more. Bern is clearly losing this war, and the only success they had was done in the prologue and seems to have been built entirely on traitors and rogue factions in countries they attacked. But even besides the fact that Bern is clearly terrible at warfare, why would Ilians WANT to be under the thumb of people better at warfare? If she wants a free Ilia, which her women certainly do and she implies she does, then wouldn’t she want a weaker country to be ruling them? One they could throw off more easily?  She silences further dissent by pointing out that Roy is attacking them right now and must be dealt with.  Why aren’t you guys? Flying in a blizzard on a flimsy-winged pegasus that only absolutely tiny women can seemingly ride at all has got to be harder than walking through it. They should be falling, crashing into the mountains, having pegasi injure their wings left and right, etc.  Actually, you can see 5 squares or something. Which is right over whole ranges of mountains sometimes. The scale of these games is rarely clear. Generally the later titles handled it better than the GBA ones.  They turn the topic to the Dark Dragon and for once Roy says something about dragons that isn’t stupid I mean, not smart, but at least not as unfathomably stupid as how he seems to be surprised by their existence every few chapters. Anyway, every single dragon we’ve ever come across has been in human form and we were explicitly told that dragons can’t take dragon form easily anymore, so of course the Dark Dragon is probably in human form as well.  And back to stupid. We’ve been over this several times. Hasn’t he told you about the half-dozen dragons we fought and how they were all in human form? About what the Arcadians said? Hasn’t one of you talked to the two Arcadians?  Ah, time for some lore.  We heard this before. However, the Ending Winter was not brought up that time.  H-he KNOWS something! Whoah. The laws of nature have indeed been turned upside down! But yeah, they don’t say much about the winter, just that it was probably the dragons’ fault. Battle Preparations & the Map: As usual, if you want to see the map with no fog, this site has you covered: http://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe6/guiafe6/cap19B.htm However, the site is wrong about several things this time. In particular, the reinforcement spots on their map are wrong. I checked thoroughly and mine are correct.  Secondary Objective: Get the Aircalibur from the nearby village Secondary Objective: Get the Energy Ring from the distant village Secondary Objective: Steal the Elixir from the top left Falcoknight Secondary Objective: Steal the Elixir from the top middle Falcoknight Secondary Objective: Steal the Elixir from the bottom right Falcoknight Secondary Objective: Steal the Elixir from the top right Paladin Secondary Objective: Steal the Knight Crest from the bottom middle Paladin Secondary Objective: Do some shopping Reinforcements: Late, but inconveniently scattered and moderately numerous. First, two steel axe brigands per turn spawn in the southern peaks from turns 11-15. Then from 16-20 there are 3 pegasus knights from the marked points in the northern and southern peaks. The top left ones have javelins, the rest have iron or steel lances. Turn Limit: 25. Extremely generous. Most fighting could easily be finished by turn 5. Even going slowly to steal everything, the map is done by 10. It’s not a big map for this game, really; it’s just about the right size. Of course, most of it is empty space which you can’t even walk through with anything but a flyer, but still. Good, interesting map design. And for once the game makes good use of ballistae, makes them almost as frightening as Bolting or the like. These ballisticians are hidden, inaccessible, and on a map where you must use many air units to succeed. What’s more, the top right and top left ones are not normal ballistae but LONG ballistae. I couldn’t find their stats anywhere on most FE sites, but I finally realized serenes has them here: http://serenesforest.net/binding-blade/inventory/bows/ 12 Might and 60 Hit and 15 range? Yeah. Those things are ferocious. More Might than bolting, comparable accuracy, and vastly superior range. Now granted, a sage moving and THEN using bolting has an effective range of up to 16, but most Boltingers in this game either don’t move or have walls in the way that mean their range really is just 10 or so. Even your land units will be in some danger from these ballistae, and they might well be an instant-kill on a flyer. From massive range. Now in addition there are not 1 but 2 staff druids. The Sleep one is marked. The Silence one I did not know about, but he’s located on the fort nearish the bottom right. Both have no weapons but very high Mag. This level and those long-ranged enemies would be a lot harder to deal with if the blizzard was like snowstorms in FE7. Those cut your speed down to about 2 squares per turn. This snow is purely cosmetic or an explanation for the fog of war. Ultimately, things are easier than they sound because there are not many enemies and they’re not very strong in general. Even Long Ballistae can be dealt with; we now have the tools. Warp. Bolting. Strong, promoted flyers- wyverns in particular. The Delphi shield. Lalum. This is a problem that can be solved. The real trick is that there are tons of valuable items to steal. THAT is just not fair on a fog chapter. You can’t know what you need to be ready to take until you’ve already played through. Or where the items are. Or that the reinforcements don’t have any. And it’s entirely possible for an enemy who has a valuable item to just fly or ride up out of the fog and kill itself without you ever having a chance to see its items. Just not fair. It also doesn’t help that pegasus knights and ballistae are quite good at killing thieves.  Units Allowed: 12 + Roy + Niime. Plenty despite the need to bring several thieves and the like. Units Brought: 1) Roy. Required. He fights very badly against everything on the chapter. Still, the clock is ticking to give him his last level up. 2) Niime. Required. This is a good chapter for her. Her Physic staff is handy for reaching over the peaks and despite her terrible, terrible stats she’s tough enough that she dies in 2 hits from most things instead of 1. A Falcoknight or paladin coming out of the fog is death of course. 3) Astol. Fog and items to steal mean thieves are non-negotiable. 4) Cath. Terrible, but I definitely need a second thief to reveal more and steal more. She’ll be instant-killed by any attack, so she must be used carefully. 5) Miledy. My best flyer. Although there are ballistae everywhere, this is very much an air map. There are many peaks to cross and inaccessible foes to fight. 6) Tate. Not as good as Miledy, but the more flyers the better. 7) Thany. Not as good as Tate. It’s time to work on their support again too. 8) Gonzalez. Peaks and lances. Gonzalez is the best at dealing with both. 9) Shin. I need more muscle. This is not a map to take lightly; fog of war allows for no second chances, so every enemy must be dispatched immediately. Furthermore, the very terribleness of bows will help me a great deal here. With them, he can’t counterattack and accidentally kill the silver-lance wielding falcoknights with the elixirs. 10) Sue. This is a good chapter to train a bow-user; there’s almost nothing to fight but pegasus knights. 11) Lalum. Always good for air-drop operations and for tricky stunts like stealing from enemies who are dangerously strong. And for helping Lilina staff grind. 12) Lilina. My strongest unit, but mostly here to staff grind, as mentioned. 13) Hugh. Lilina can’t be everywhere. A second group requires a second healer. 14) Ray. Lilina herself may require healing, but Hugh won’t be there- and I’d rather use this guy than Niime. Ray is admittedly unnecessary though. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Zeiss. Zeiss is nearly level 20 and I have no Elysian whip for him. He’d definitely be very handy if he wasn’t already so close to max level. Another downside is that I have only one Delphi Shield and even Zeiss and Miledy can’t stand up to ballistae well without it. Bringing another flyer would mean I have 3 vulnerable ones instead of 2. 2) Dorothy. Ha. No. This map requires high movement and she’s turned out poorly. There’s no place for weaklings on a map like this where she can’t be protected either. Plus I want to give Sue the easy bow kills. 3) Wolt. Like Dorothy but even worse. 4) Geese. Too close to level 20 for the easy XP he can get here to count for much. 5) Ward. Still too terrible to train even against his natural prey! 6) Lugh. Would definitely be better than Ray, as usual, but he’s higher level and I don’t even really NEED Ray. 7) Chad. Level 20. 8) Restore users. All level 20. More to the point, I didn’t think there was an enemy on the chapter who would be able to status me. This formation is designed to be split into two groups so that I can progress efficiently. On a map like this with narrow hallways to get through and few enemies in one place, bringing all your troops in one pack would be a horrible waste even if I didn’t need to stop to do things like steal along the way. The two pegasi, sharing a horseslayer and a Delphi shield along between them, will carrying Astol over the cliff. Together, they’ll hold the line and start stealing while Gonzalez brings Hugh to join them. If need be, one will fly back and drop Hugh faster. Everyone else will head north, but Lalum and Shin will see to the enemy Sleep staff druid on turn 1, eliminating that threat and the need to bring along a Restore user. The thieves have torches, one weapon each, and many open inventory spaces. Each of the nomads has a wide assortment of bows as usual. Lilina has a Torch staff with which to do more staff grinding. Other than that, gear is fairly standard. The Characters:  Canas’s crazy and evil mother who watched dark magic destroy each of her children without caring a whit. And then abused Canas’s son, her only remaining descendant, and tried to force him into the same path to an inevitable, terrible fate. Oh and is willing to teach the dark arts to crazy, evil kids like Ray who say they’re willing to destroy the world to get power. Oh and is willing to murder a child for being a dragon. Oh and joined Bern and was willing to cast terrible and dangerous magics on their behalf just for a chance to learn more about dragons. Also she’s just kind of a jerk. Really it’s the whole Canas thing that makes me hate her though. People actually claim the old woman is a good unit. She’s not. She’s one of the worst prepromotes in the game- in the series, even. Level 18 promoted and random pegasus knights on this chapter will SLAUGHTER her. 25 HP as a level 38 unit? 5 def? She can be instant-killed by many things. Even her Res isn’t good for her level; she can be ripped to shreds by long-ranged magic. And that speed. It looks only moderately bad, but then you realize she’s slowed by even flux. Not that it matters much, but her growths are an absolute joke. HP is 25%. None of the others breaks 20%! Those are the worst growths in the GBA titles, and among the worst in the whole series. So she can’t double anything, she dies in one hit from most enemies - even unpromoted ones- she’s doubled by many, and she is already nearly max level and therefore siphons XP away from everyone else. The justly mocked and derided Sophia is far better than her as a druid. They do not even play in the same league. And Ray? They don’t play the same game. Ray isn’t even a very good unit! But, her defenders protest, she’s the best staff-user! Look at that Mag! Yes, indeed, look at that 21 Mag on a level 18 promoted unit. The horrible Ellen and Saul will match her or close to it. Clarine, whose suckiness in that stat defies belief, will only be a few points behind. And any of them could easily have been ground to her level by now. Consider that each of them got to level 20 on this run. If that XP had been funneled to just one, that person would have been 20/20 long ago. And each of them would completely outclass her. They can take hits. Clarine can move far further. They have actual support partners. They’re fast. Yes, even the horrid Ellen is faster. Look how they compare to her as level 20 unpromoted units despite generally unlucky levels:  Nearly as tough despite being the most fragile other person in the game.  Faster already, far dodgier, and tougher. Oh and faster moving with a great support network.  This is a really, really lousy Saul. Still just as quick when she’s wielding Flux and tougher against many attacks. You know what? Level 18 Cecilia would be better than Niime in many stats. Oh and she’s not even really the best absurdly high level, terrible, way too late in the game staff user. Yodel is coming. And he’s better overall too! With 18 more levels and promotion bonuses on top of these stats, any staff user in the game would be far superior. The only thing any of them would lack in- and some would not- is Mag. Mag is valuable for a healer, but it’s not that great. The only thing it REALLY helps with is boosting the range on Warp, Physic, and status staves. However, my lousy Saul when several levels lower had all the Warp Mag I needed for most purposes. Niime has a 0% chance to Silence or Sleep any enemy serious enemy staff user; they all have more Res than she has Mag. I suppose she’s better at statusing enemies who do not have staves or bolting or the like, but even Saul is already good enough to do that pretty well and that’s totally useless and not worth it anyway. The only thing more Mag really helps with is Physic, which is indeed a very powerful and handy staff. All this the tip of the iceberg! All of those units are horrible, necessary evils at best. You know who the true best staff user in the game is if you love Mag? Lilina. SHE has the best Mag. And if you wanted her to have an A in staves, it would be trivial by this point. I’ve only been seriously grinding her in staves for a little while now, having ensured every single one of my dedicated staff users hit 20 first, and she’s going to hit a C rank this very chapter. Once you hit even a D the going gets easier. You could promote Lugh after chapter 8 if you were really determined to have a great staff user ASAP. And most people are willing to use the arena. If you’re using the arena, there is no excuse for not having an A in staves on a real unit. In short: no.  Apparently the commander of the rogue pegasus knights? Or actually maybe the totally legitimate leader? No one really talks about her like she’s a traitor. Well, a commander of most of the pegasus knights at this point. Sigune is a canny and cynical woman trying to do what’s best for her country; but she just doesn’t know Roy well and she dies for it. One of the best villains in the game, if you ask me. She’s… basically on the level of Yogi.  She’s got a spear and good stats for a pegasus knight, but that blue lipstick is still scarier. Air bosses are basically always the weakest in this game since they can’t benefit from gates and thrones. If you can’t crush her, something is very wrong. Playing Through:  Geez, these people are dumb. They aren’t even sure of the same of their own capital.  Shin and Lalum were in position for this. However, order is critical on this turn. Shin can’t actually take his second turn yet.  Miledy and Sue drop Lalum back to safety.  Astol moves next to a pegasus and uses his torch. Remember, the torch will still be in full effect after he’s dropped somewhere else.  Like here. You can see I’m safe from all those cavaliers and in position to deal with the ballistician easily next turn.  Hugh has the silver card and stops by the vendor. They have good stock, so I pick up some Physics and other such things.  And that puts Hugh in position for Gonzalez to haul him.  Now Astol has revealed this distant druid, so Shin rides out and eliminates him immediately. Bam, the only status user I knew about is dead.  Cath uses another torch on that side.  Ballista warnings. Geez. We’re more than 20 chapters into the game and they’re still telling us about basic things like ballistae again and again. Well everyone else basically just moves in and that’s the turn.  Sue was positioned behind Miledy (who had a javelin) so that several enemies with javelins would suicide into her. It’s a generic Sue level.  Turn 2, Cath is ready to swipe the elixir from the first falcoknight.  Miledy flies up to take down a hard to reach enemy.  Sue drops the falcoknight.  Shin moves to be bait for the next one.  Lilina uses the Torch staff. It’s totally different in this game. Essentially, it is exactly the same as a Torch. It just boosts your vision by 4 squares, and the effect lessens every turn. Not at all like it was in 7 and way less useful. But it grants staff rank XP.  Down south, Tate instant-kills one cavalier.  The archer is dispatched, and Astol is safely walled off from harm.  Everyone else just slogs along really.  Shin gets a good level acting as bait but doesn’t dodge anything at all, so he’s badly hurt.  Miledy takes a ballista bolt.  Turn 3. The right group is ready.  Thany makes way and Astol gets the knight crest.  Tate finishes the paladin for a decent level.  The left group is having an easy time too. I just need to make my moves carefully.  I saw a chance to give Roy the last kill he needs. Slightly premature, but not needing to worry about making opportunities for him will make things much easier.  Shin gets out of the way and the second elixir is mine.  A lousy level for Sue finishing that falcoknight.  It was important that Cath steal from the left, not the bottom. Only that would reveal the ballistician for Miledy to kill. Problem solved.  Lalum helps Lilina double heal on most turns.  Oh my. This was, in truth, a test run of the chapter to learn about nasty things like this. I didn’t know there were long ballistae since they don’t really look different in fog, and I couldn’t find their stats anyway. However, Tate actually dodged. I decided not to restart and to see if there were any other surprises.  Well there was another one. There was no indication on the WoD site this time that the second druid had a status staff; they usually indicate that. And of course he has so much Mag that even the queen of Res here can’t dodge. I didn’t bring a Restore staff because I thought my clever plan was eliminating the only status threat on the chapter on turn 1.  Turn 4. I still didn’t restart. Partly because I wanted to find out about any other traps, and partly because I was thinking I might be able to complete this chapter properly anyway. The bottom group is stymied by that dodging troubadour, but they’re safe now and that’s what matters. It’s only turn 4 and I’m more than halfway done afterall.  Time for another torch use, the first had faded.  Ah ha! I thought there might be one still lurking.  Now I didn’t have the Long Ballista stats, but I knew this must be within range of the top right one. Tate had been this many squares away from the bottom one.  Eh, not bad I guess. She did cap speed already.  There’s really not much to say except that they all keep moving. Lilina is silenced, but I think if I play my cards right, that won’t matter at all. I’ve already done most of the fighting, you see, and the status will wear off with plenty of time to heal.  This north-south valley is one of the hardest parts of the map just because there are so many ballistae aimed at it. Any unit reduced to low HP is basically dead.  Stupid massive Mag enemy druids. Oh well, this matters even less.  Gonzalez finally drops Hugh.  I still don’t know the long ballista stats for sure, but I think this might be the maximum r nge and I plan based on that.  Astol gets his final level. He turned out slightly bad.  I’ve known the last big pegasus group was lurking just out of sight. Now it’s time to start luring them.  Everyone else moves in and the Silence culprit is revealed.  Miledy visits a village and hears a bizarre and pointless prophecy from this old man.  He really thinks this random item is actually important, doesn’t he?  Well, throw it on the pile. I’m wielding 2 of these this chapter and I already have at least 12 in storage, perhaps more.  Miledy levels from getting shot. Not very well.  Shin is finally learning to dodge.  Tate not so much. Better now than last time when she didn’t have the Delphi Shield.  So here’s the confluence at last, the two groups are ready to meet up again.  Shin killed the druid, though he already Silenced 3 guys.  Thany gets some ever-welcome Str.  And I finally lured in the last big packs of enemies.  The third elixir is mine.  Now who to give the kills to?  Sue gets another falcoknight and another bad level.  Shin kills the ballistician and takes the chokepoint fort.  And everyone else is high level, so I just move in, killing as I go.  Next turn, another torch.  Tate kills the long ballistician from out of paladin aggro range.  As I predicted, Lilina’s silence wore off at just the right moment and she begins healing again.  Everyone fires away to begin breaking through the chokepoint.  Turn 8 and the enemy is basically gone  Shin gets a level that would be pretty good on most people. I’m seeing a lot of speed and luck this chapter.  It’s time to deal with the last long ballistician.  I do NOT visit this village yet.  Astol seizes the very last Elixir. Yes!  Sue misses but finally gets a good level.  Which puts me in a terrible spot. I actually had to use Niime and give her this kill or I would lose because the paladin dodged everything else!  Another torch. I have dozens! Buy them!  Turn 10. The right side of the map is this boring and empty plain with nearly no enemies. I just walk across it and kill everything.  No more ballistae. Now look at those forts. They serve no possible purpose but to dump out reinforcements. Yet they do not. That’s one of the terrible problems with reins in this series and in this game in particular. You never know which forts you can stand on without losing XP and you never know which area you might be suddenly killed from in the stupid games (like this one and Awakening) where enemies move as they spawn. It makes it a game of guessing and luck or looking up guides rather than strategy.  The pegasus sisters fly off together.  Sue hopes for a critical.  No good.  Here come the brigand reinforcements. Now because I did NOT visit the right village, they’re going to go that way. Which lets me funnel them right to Cath.  Tate and Thany get a support. Thany continues to be a blockhead and kind of a crazy jerk.  You ARE, dummy!  Why is the crazy lady who wouldn’t switch sides to help her sister the sensible person in this relationship?  Ugh. I hate Thany.  Tate tries to calm her down the way Yuno used to and Thany responds to that with disdain too.  Supporting done, Tate injures this brigand. Hooray for iron swords.  And Cath is in range.  Lilina fires away with the torch staff every turn when there aren’t enough people to heal. More staff ranking experience.  The boss will be an easy kill at any time I wish.  Tate gets a lousy level up. Really, my stat gains have been very poor lately.  And Cath gets a kill at last! You may recall I’ve been trying to train her, but until now she couldn’t even scratch most enemies. She only does 8 damage and most people have more Def than that. These are specially weak brigands.  86 XP.  Not what I need to see. If I’m going to train Cath, she MUST gain Str. These are the only enemies I’ve found yet that she could scratch and hit accurately and not be definitely killed by.  There’s a partial reinforcement warning.  Sure would be if it happened suddenly. That effect is lost when the player is told about it.  I’m training Sue for the last few XP by chipping away at her.  Lady, we killed ALL of your troops. And defeated the blizzard. Why in the world do you think you have any chance of winning now?  Still no Str for Cath as the reinforcements keep walking up to her after injuring themselves on the pegs.  Lalum hits max level. She’s bad. She’s about as bad as Lalum can feasibly get.  Str at last!  And another level. I’m really just skimming over whole turns here. There’s nothing to say, it’s a completely mechanical and repetitive harvesting.  Lilina gets a heal level. Not bad.  Bad.  Geez. So many awful levels this chapter. Well at least she’s done. That early Str blessing kept her WAY above average all this time. Sue is a lousy character but mine turned out well.  This is a bad Cath. Why are all the units I try hardest to train turning out so horribly?  Pegasi show up now to spoil the fun, but she’s leveled enough to not be instant killed. In fact, she even does 1 damage. That’s all I need. That keeps the XP coming.  Bad level on Gonzalez too. He’s in place to kill the top right pegasi.  No other targets in range, so they’ll die immediately after spawning.  Miledy will get the others.  Yay! She has a lot of Res, but the only thing that matters now is Str. If her Str did not rise, I might never be able to level her again.  She just keeps chip damaging her way to level ups.  The last brigand is lured and ready for her.  Now we’re talking. She’s turned around pretty well actually. Still below average overall where it counts, but an extra point of Def is going to be very nice.  Yes!  So Ray kills Sigune after the last pegasus spawns.   … what?  Pretty good! Man my Ray is really fast.  TOO LATE! Astol now visits the village he’s been waiting outside.  And turn 21 win!  He reports what little he learned from Niime immediately.  Guinevere comes to deliver just a tiny snippet of the story Roy asked for a while ago. She’ll keep stringing him along like Scheherazade.  Why does she start with that? She knows it’s deliberately misleading.  He jumps to this supposedly hasty conclusion which actually is the one her last statement obviously pointed to.  And then this is supposed to be a twist. Why does no one know this though? The king was far from subtle.  Plot? I’d better jump in and awkwardly put a stop to that!  Same as every time you interrupt this story. Ugh.  They’re trying really hard to make us wonder so they can keep breaking the backstory up chunk by chunk. It’s really annoying because it’s not actually a very cool or interesting tale. Well tune in next episode and find out I suppose. Even though that was just a practice run to find out about nasty surprises like the long ballista and the silence druid, I actually did a really good run of the chapter. I finished every single reinforcement, won on the earliest turn, ground Lilina up to a new staff rank, gained about 600 XP more than I needed to, and stole every last item. Can’t really do much better than that, so I didn’t restart. Total Restarts: 16 (None here) Turn Surplus: +30 (Another 4) 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; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6. Melth fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Jun 18, 2015 10:12
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Some good points on Niime but totally disagree on staff leveling. 250 turns to get to A-rank is far more effort than I can be bothered with at least, and even 100 turns to Restore, while obviously simple before the end of the game, takes a few maps of constant staff-grinding. Of course, I usually go with the leveling a healer and promoting them approach rather than using the prepromotes, but still.
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Jun 18, 2015 11:50
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I forget--when did Arm Scrolls become a thing in this series?
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Jun 18, 2015 20:44
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Lotish posted:I forget--when did Arm Scrolls become a thing in this series? FE9
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Jun 18, 2015 21:09
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I usually advocate selling the arms scrolls. Awakening lunatic no grinding runs are the exception since they're very helpful when you have to Second Seal someone and javelins/handaxes are D weapons in that game.
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Jun 18, 2015 21:15
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Insurrectionist posted:Some good points on Niime but totally disagree on staff leveling. 250 turns to get to A-rank is far more effort than I can be bothered with at least, and even 100 turns to Restore, while obviously simple before the end of the game, takes a few maps of constant staff-grinding. Of course, I usually go with the leveling a healer and promoting them approach rather than using the prepromotes, but still. Completely agree, staff xp is the worst thing and Niime is perfectly adequate as a staffbot. Miserably grinding terrible units to lvl 20 is great for max rank runs but incredibly painful for normal play. Also heR children were clearly weak, Niime survived all of the terrible dark magic and retained her sanity. And saying she helped Bern is a bit of a stretch. :p i81icu812 fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jun 19, 2015 |
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Jun 19, 2015 06:19
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 This is one of the better maps of the game and the last conventional capital fight. Again, there’s very little to say about it in terms of story though. Chapter Summary: Roy and company reach Edessa, Bern’s regional capital right near the border. Bern has 0 troops there and makes absolutely no effort to prevent Roy from taking Edessa and liberating Ilia. Which then allows him to attack them with impunity..  This is Zealot’s castle and the capital of Ilia. There should really be a lot more talk about that and about how Ilia is governed and what will happen there now. But this game has almost no dialogue and no detail and no characters, so this great opportunity to build the setting and learn about Zealot and his family is almost completely wasted.  And yet none are fought here. At all. There is not even a SINGLE pegasus enemy in the capital of pegasus land. I guess we killed them all last chapter.  Why did he do this? He has lost all credibility as an enemy during this Ilian arc. All the lines spent building him up as Bern’s greatest general have been completely overturned.  I wonder if level ups and such are supposed to be a thing that actually happens in-universe. If so, asking whether he has a large enough number of troops is kind of foolish.  -are dead. We killed them last chapter; that was the point. Lots of them were flocking to Sigune and we killed those too. That’s ignored though and now the game acts like the Ilians just didn’t want to fight on Bern’s side to begin with and are choosing not to help.  It’s another hostage situation! And once again, absolutely nothing will come of it. This time there’s a semi-decent reason for that for once.  See, it turns out they don’t know Zealot has joined Roy!  Somehow the last thing they heard was that he was traveling around as a mercenary; they are unaware that he joined Roy. This despite the Bern-backed Ostian rebels knowing all about that. It’s reasonable to conclude that Bern just neglected to give them any useful intelligence as part of Murdock’s cowardly and stupid scheme to get them all killed. So in any case, they don’t know that Zealot is here and no one ever told Roy that Zealot is important anyway, so the family can’t be used.  He has a point, actually, he’s standing and fighting even though Bern has betrayed him and left him to die.  Here are the prisoners.  And Yuno’s only moment in the sun.  Perhaps the enemy might LEAVE?! What the heck are you talking about? This is the center of the occupation!  The occupying forces don’t know, so this woman doesn’t either.  …No. This is stupid. This is suddenly so stupid. Now there is absolutely no way these people should not know where Zealot is. Bern conquered Ilia before the game even began. By the time Zealot joined Roy, Edessa had fallen weeks ago and Yuno was already in enemy hands. No way would they not have intercepted that letter. Even if they chose to give it to a prisoner anyway for no reason, EVERYONE would know that Zealot had joined Roy. That’s important news.  Yep, it’s pretty close to the border. If this game weren’t stupid, Bern would make some kind of effort to prevent us from just taking it and liberating the whole country they’d conquered. But they don’t help at all.  Storytime again!  This is new to anyone who hasn’t played FE7 and fairly interesting.  Come to think of it, why were the other countries ok with an Etrurian princess marrying Bern’s king? We’ve been told several times that the balance of power between those two unfriendly countries was the only thing maintaining peace for the last thousand years. Europe had dozens of ferocious wars fought to prevent marriages that could upset the balance of power like that.  That, honestly, would make more sense than the whole jealousy thing.  She explains that that’s not the case though and that Zephiel was always trying to impress his father.  And that’s what made Desmond jealously hate him. But there’s a problem here. She’s saying Roy is wrong, and Desmond didn’t hate Zephiel for his parentage; he only hated Zephiel out of jealousy. But the reason Zephiel excelled was that he was always trying hard in order to not make his father hate him. But why would his father hate him before he’d accomplished anything if the hatred was born only of jealousy? The FE7 version makes way more sense.  Once again, they leave us with the question we’re supposed to be asking. Once again, the story just isn’t that gripping.  And cue the interruption so the story can be spread out even further. Battle Preparations & the Map:  Secondary Objective: Recruit Yuno with Zealot or Thany or Tate Secondary Objective: Steal the Lockpick from one top middle thief Secondary Objective: Steal the Lockpick from the other top middle thief Secondary Objective: Steal the Red Gem from the boss Secondary Objective: Steal the Red Gem from the Sleep staff druid Secondary Objective: Steal the Elysian Whip from the left ballistician using the Warp Staff Secondary Objective: Get all 8 chests Secondary Objective: Protect all green units to get an Angelic Robe Secondary Objective: Do some shopping Reinforcements: 2 thieves in the top on turn 10. 3 fighters every turn from turns 11-18 from the top left with steel axes. 2 mercenaries near the bottom right every turn from turns 11-18. Numerous, but not really in problematic areas or of dangerous types. Turn Limit: 25. Plenty of time. This is also the time limit for unlocking the sidequest (as far as I know, no reason is given for why there’s a time limit). Welcome to the Dragon’s Gate. Hope you like ballistae. This chapter isn’t really anywhere near as good as that one of course, but it’s similarly one of the best ones in this game and a major turning point in the story. Loads and loads of scattered objectives of all sorts, just the way I like it, in a castle level that’s actually well put together and not a gigantic empty waste of space. Furthermore, for once the enemies will actually put up a real fight. Instead of being scattered in 2s and 3s over an absurdly large emptiness, nearly all of them are concentrated near the gates. The downside of course is that there are really none anywhere else, so all the fighting is done by turn 5 and the rest is a slow and boring cleanup. Still, it’s refreshingly different. Now this is decidedly not an air map. The walls and lack of difficult terrain mean they have no mobility advantage, while the several strong ballistae and snipers leave them specially vulnerable. Nonetheless, some are needed to deal with the right flank properly and recruit Yuno. It’s also a good map to bring out special weaponry and staves like Warp and Bolting. Warp, indeed, is completely necessary if you want to acquire all items. Door and chest keys too. There are not many chapters left where they’ll be useful, so bring them out now. The sidequest here is easily unlocked- as long as Zealot didn’t die 15 chapters ago or something. If you didn’t know you needed him alive, then you’ve already lost. Kind of like on chapter 16, there’s really no reason or explanation at all why that character being alive is required to have access to the sidequest.  Units Allowed: 12+ Roy. Enough to complete things comfortably. Units Brought: 1) Roy. Required. Level 20 at last. His pitiful weakness is such that most enemies will one-round kill him despite him being the same level as them or higher. He can’t even recruit Yuno. 2) Tate. I really wish I didn’t need her, but Roy can’t recruit Yuno. She’s a good unit, but she’s perilously vulnerable to ballistae and just not that effective here. 3) Hugh. Fantastic. He’s already giving Lugh and Lilina a run for their money. Mages are excellent here for firing over the walls and dealing with mixed ranged and melee enemies. 4) Lugh. Still slightly better than Hugh on offense, but falling rapidly behind. That still makes him one of my top 5 units. 5) Dieck. It’s about time I got him and Rutger up to 20. They’ve long since ceased to be good, but they can hold their own when well armed. 6) Rutger. Currently slightly better than Dieck since the latter can no longer double much. 7) Cath. My sole remaining thief who isn’t level 20. A thief is 100% necessary here since there are items to steal. Since she got some Str last chapter, she’s a bit easier to train now too. 8) Lilina. My best unit, but now somewhat overleveled. I’ll try to keep her just healing mostly. She can now use Restore staves too, very helpful on this chapter. 9) Clarine. Since I’m bringing Dieck and Rutger, she’s a decent choice to bring as a spare healer. Critically, she can Restore. And she can Warp. I’ve decided I may as well promote her. 10) Miledy. She’s a flyer tough enough to stand up to ballistae and one of my best units. I also need people with 8 move to do one particular operation on this chapter. 11) Lalum. She’s now level 20 so she’s not creating free XP, but she’s not draining it either. And she remains amazingly useful. 12) Shin. A strong unit with a longbow is essential, plus he’s just a good unit. Though not great. 13) Zeiss. Not that good here, but he needs to hit 20 so I can promote him with the Elysian Whip I’m about to get. Notable Units Rejected: 1) Thany. Pegasus knights are bad here. I wish I didn’t need to bring Tate. 2) Niime. Far, far worse than Clarine here- as usual. She’d be slain in one shot by the long ballistae, she’d be doubled by the bishop with purge, and any enemy who got near her would one-round kill her. And Clarine has more than enough Mag to do any Warping I need. 3) Ellen. Worse than Niime at this point. Too slow, too fragile. 4) Saul. Clarine’s only real rival, but my Saul turned out awful. Also, he doesn’t support anyone I have. The convoy is getting really full. Every single character I didn’t bring (and most of those I did) is carrying 5 items, yet the convoy still has less than 30 slots left open. With all the 8 new chests here and shopping to do, I’m having severe space shortages. I just can’t seem to sell things fast enough even when I bring Merlinus. Dieck and Rutger will be sharing a wide variety of swords, as usual. Lugh has Forblaze. Lilina has a restore staff as well as her Heal. Unlock too in case I see a good chance to use that. Roy has a Killing Edge and the Light brand in case he needs to fight or weaken an enemy. He also carries the Silver Card for someone else and a Fire for Clarine. Lalum is loaded up with door and chest keys to trade to other people. Cath has nearly nothing; just an iron sword and a lockpick so she can steal more easily. Clarine has Mend, Physic, Restore, Warp, and a Guiding Ring. Other gear is mostly standard. The available starting positions here were annoyingly shaped, so there's kind of no good way to set up for what I'd like to do. This is the best of the messy options. The Characters:  Yuno is Thany and Tate’s responsible and reasonable older sister and did most of the work raising them. She was a respected pegasus commander but retired to marry Zealot or something like that. Which makes her sort of like the queen of Ilia or something. Anyway, she’s a horrible pre-promote and should never be used. I’ll send her shopping and have her carry some of Cath’s stolen goods to free up inventory space. That is the full extent of her usefulness. Even the vaunted Triangle Attack is a complete waste and a joke.  At long last, it’s time to fight the real villain of the game. It’s this fellow whose machinations and plans have ACTUALLY been the cause of many of these battles and have driven most of the plot since chapter 8. That says something about the terribleness of the pacing and the script and the generals of Bern really. He’s supposed to be a fairly minor villain who dies pitifully, but he’s more credible than Zephiel or Murdock or Narshen and is by far the most competent one of them. He's pretty sturdy, but something like half the bosses in the game have been knights or generals, so one can't have gone this far without getting good at killing them. Playing Through:  Lalum and Zeiss rush in as quickly as they can.  Zeiss persuades that ballistician to sit down and shut up. His long ballista could shoot just about any of my units at either gate, so he mustn’t be allowed to live past turn 1.  Miledy and Shin then carry Lalum out of range and put themselves in position instead. Oh and as a sidenote, THAT frozen lake can’t be walked onto. It’s surrounded by cliffs that kind of totally just look like lakeshore.  Tate gets ready for the weird 2 left mercenaries.  The two mages wall up. No one else can kill enough enemies this turn to cut me a path to the more important people.  They’re juuuust outside of Purge range. I don’t really want to deal with Purge in addition to heavy attack, plus I think I might try to lure him to just the edge of his range on a future turn and then lunge in and assassinate him.  Clarine promotes. Good bonuses, but not really distributed where she needs them.  Roy gives her Fire and Lilina heals the promotion wound.  Everyone else crowds in in such a way that the enemy can’t shoot anyone incapable of countering.  One reason I didn’t want to bring Tate (Gonzalez would actually have been my replacement) is that she can’t actually double the mercenaries, so she needed to hope for a critical.  Hugh gets some helpful speed. He’s decently fast, but he needs to get faster to double mercenaries.  When even a falcoknight at distant range has 0% chance to avoid the staff, the staff users have too much Mag.  Shin has no resistance. But that’s alright, I’m ready.  So! THIS is the big turn, turn 2. If you survive here, the map is over.  So Restore number 1. I’m glad Lilina can finally use it.  Not bad considering she’s capped Str and Speed already.  Yay, Def!  So the right enemy group is destroyed. Now there are still 2 promoted enemies and some others down there in that inside area, but killing this unpromoted group has completely taken the wind out of their sails.  Now here’s what I had to work with on the left side. Not too promising. Cath and Roy can’t do anything. Rutger and Dieck are outclassed too. And Lilina had to be used up on Tate.  So I pull out the big guns.  Nice! With the hero down, some softer targets are revealed for the others. I can’t kill everyone, but I can weaken them enough that they’re not a threat next turn.  Not very good. This is not what’s required to turn him around at this point.  That’s a good level.  Now that druid has the Sleep staff, so he won’t attack. However, that leaves the sniper and also the Purge bishop. If they both pick the same target and both hit (improbable), I’ll lose. Still, this is a pretty good situation.  Asleep again.  I’d be interested in learning how staff enemies choose their targets.  So it’s my turn. Time for more restores.  Shin is cured too and gets to work.  One miss and no crit. This is going to be a trend. I don’t think he actually got a crit with that bow all chapter and I used it nearly all the time.  The wyverns wall up.  But I’ve decided to send Shin in and take out the Sleep staffer.  And the left group moves in. The enemy are too spread out to deal with.  Not a bad level, but I REALLY wish I could have killed that Bishop. Of well. Hopefully it will make someone waste a turn staffing him.  Dieck gets the kill on the sniper.  An uneventful turn. I’m still in danger.  Whoah! I forgot about that ballista on the other edge of the map.  Well I survived, but the enemy is not in position for me to steal the Red Gem. So this is still a problematic turn. Worse, I can’t kill that Purge bishop.  Shin and his group can get to work though.  Nice, Def is good.  Lalum gave Shin a door key, and is now hurrying to join the left group.  I was surprised that the Berserk druid didn’t fire away last turn. It turns out he doesn’t move, so the cursor marks his true range.  Tate couldn’t be cured since she was too far off. But there’s another problem: the staff is all used up. That means that druid will now begin attacking. And the Purge druid is still alive, so I’m in danger again. Further, Tate is asleep in ballista range. I healed her up so she can’t be instant-killed, but I’m still depending on at least one dodge. Probability is on my side.  And it worked, Roy dodged the purge.  So the Red Gem is mine.  Tate is woken up.  The druid is killed. The purge Bishop STILL can’t be. He’s just too tough to instant kill.  Or so he thought. Offensive rescue and Forblaze!  Shin opens the door.  Zeiss gets an empty level. Darn it! This isn’t even his first one; he got some before capping his Str.  Support!  Miledy gets shot, but that 55 HP goes a long way.  Whoah, I miscounted by one square. Phew. It would have been tricky to get Clarine over to her.  Whoo! Capped Mag! Lilina keeps up the heals.  Off the wyverns go to wait for the reinforcements.  Shin runs right into the Berserk druid room. I’m hoping he’ll Berserk Shin and then Shin can rampage safely through the room.  Why her? Why is she the targeted one? There are other people with lower Res or more Str.  Lalum gave the keys to Lugh and I broke down the wall.  Berserk is cured. This is the last one, I believe.  Out of ammo.  More treasure. This is useless since there are no good light magic wielders.  There’s no more Berserk, so it’s time to smash into the throne room.  More treasure.  Got the red gem!  Rutger and Dieck are heading to the top right and Clarine is running into the left section.  I’d like more Str, but Shin is doing well.  Nice, nice.  Lalum opens the door for Tate.  Tate recruits Yuno.   These people have just terrible priorities. She’d apparently rather Tate stayed fighting on the wrong side and died or let her country be destroyed than switch sides to save Ilia.  Just insane. Look the whole stated point of the policy of Ilian mercenaries never betraying their employers is so that people will trust Ilian mercenaries, and therefore hire them, and therefore the mercenaries can bring gold back for the good of Ilia. None of that matters a whit if Ilia is destroyed by Bern.  The noose is tightening around Roartz.  The merc reins begin. Zeiss is level 20, so I just give them all to Miledy.  Hugh is doing pretty well against the druid and scores a nice level up.  The thieves have at last reached the castle. Cath takes a lockpick from one.  With Lalum and Tate to help, she then kills it and gets a fairly useless level.  Dieck and Rutger are a bit behind schedule as they run to meet the first wave of fighters. Not a problem.  Rutger kills one and gets another lucky Def plus.  And on turn 13 battle is really joined up there.  Dieck continues the string of disappointing levels that has left him useless for all but ineffectively fighting weak reinforcements.  Hugh has gone to work on the tough boss and I continue to create opportunities for Lilina to use staves.  I’ve allowed the other thief to live to open the door for me since that’s most efficient. Everyone is ready for when he does. Meanwhile the civilians who’d been locked with Yuno flee.  A loooooong fight ensues.  Yuno has taken the silver card and will now go shopping. Lugh is going to back Dieck and Rutger up. Partly because I think they’re going to hit level 20 before the fighters run out.  Welp.  They’re swimming upstream, bit by bit. I need to in order to finish on the minimum turn.  The lockpick is mine and I repeat the same procedure to give Cath the kill.  Nice. That’s what I like to see.  The shop has lots of magic, but little else. I am running a little short on Fire, so I picked a few of those up.  From bad to worse.  And even worse! At least she has the excuse of having capped some stuff.  Yuno visits the armory. I haven’t had a chance to buy iron weapons in forever, so I stock up. Swords especially have run short. I also buy a whoooole bunch of silver weapons.  Further upstream.  We continue breaking into rooms and plundering the castle we’re supposedly liberating. Sigune was right!  Cath is warped in, as planned. Shin shot that ballistician with his longbow several turns back.  So the whip is mine.  Nice! My sages never let me down. Except sometimes.  Yuno just kind of hangs around uselessly as the last few civilians escape.  More plunder. This is very handy. My only axereaver broke a long time ago and I’ve wanted another one ever since.  Cath finishes the weakened archer.  The boss has shrugged off everything so far. Let’s see how he likes Lilina.  Rutger is finished. He turned out to have AMAZING def but is fairly average for hard mode otherwise.  Dieck gets yet another single stat level. This one is good at least. He too is massively def blessed. In fact, he was luckier than Rutger overall. But he’s bad. I haven’t been able to bring him for like 10 chapters now. I just trained him on weak reinforcements like Dorothy or Sophia. Or Lott or something.  The three of them did pretty darned well, reaching level 20 at the right time and smashing quickly through the enemy.  I’m always healing with Lilina. Twice a turn usually.  Now THERE’S treasure. I have been nursing one longbow all game and even though I’ve dumped Sue and the archers, it will be very nice to have a backup.  And next turn I get the last chest.  TOO LATE!  Well I jinxed it by saying the sages never disappoint me.  So a complete victory on turn 19. Cath was left to freeze to death in that unreachable courtyard and never seen again.  Nope! No momentum! I smell a sidequest! They’re always at the absolute most inappropriate times. They should all be BEFORE the capital fights for better narrative structure.  And didn’t help! Why didn’t they help? Why did they stand by and watch us overrun their last line of defense? Why haven’t they destroyed the Divine Weapon in those ruins in the months and months they’ve held it? Is anything in this game ever going to make sense?  The saved peasants apparently find Guinevere before anyone else. Don’t we keep her under guard or something?  She explains that she did not, in fact, have anything at all to do with saving them.  They completely ignore her and hand her a priceless treasure. And that’s a wrap! Every treasure looted, all civilians saved, every possible rein defeated, I won 6 turns early, I trained some weak people (scoring 300 more XP than needed), and I stole EVERY treasure, including the one in the Warp room. Another perfect victory. And once again it was really boring. This chapter is pretty much the best this game has to offer, or close to it, and it’s just not fun. Also, I relied a bit too much on luck early on for it to be very satisfying. I mean, I made a really sloppy mistake and left Tate in ballista range that one time, for example. Total Restarts: 16 (None here) Turn Surplus: +36 (Got a pretty sweet 6 here) 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; and the top left mamkute using Oujay on chapter 16, turn 9; and Arcard using Oujay on chapter 17, turn 16. Forblaze slew the top right mamkute using Lugh on chapter 16, turn 6. Forblaze slew the left section hero using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 2. Forblaze slew the purge bishop using Lugh on chapter 20, turn 5. Melth fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Jun 19, 2015 07:39
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 21:43 |
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The Yuno/Juno thing is because Japanese is phonetic. They're spelt the same way and it's up to the translator to pick which ones correct. J is generally more natural to English speakers, Y is a more direct romanisation.
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Jun 19, 2015 08:00
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