Tyranogre Posted September 7, 2019 Author Share Posted September 7, 2019 Chapter 8x: Dagdar's Mansion: Dark Moon From the previous save screen, it cuts straight to battle preparations. No world map, no plot stuff, nothing. This chapter has a rather strict deployment limit considering how many units I was hoping to level-up, but I think I'll manage. Wait, Dagdar owns a manor?! Being a bandit must be a really high-paying job. With the opening cutscene out of the way, I can't help but wonder: Why does this have to be a gaiden chapter? That scene with Rumaigh and Leif about accepting mercy from an enemy was great for Leif's character development and everything, but when you think about it, it doesn't really make any sense. Why did Rumaigh specifically have to tell us to enter this mansion that he was guarding? Even if the player did decide to kill Rumaigh, couldn't Leif have just said, "Hey, wait a minute! This is where Dagdar lives! We should head inside to see if he's home"? Our starting stats for this chapter. Good news: we re-gain control of Dagdar and Tanya. Bad news: It's another fog-of-war map. First thing we wanna do is move two bulky or agile units off to either side of the starting room and use Torches. This gives us a better look at what we're dealing with. Now that both of our healers are fatigue-free, it's time to break out the Master Seals! But what's this? Safiya still can't wield a Fire Tome? What gives? Alas, this isn't FE4. As such, the High Priestess class is restricted to only wielding Light Magic instead of having full access to the Anima triangle. Nanna, on the other hand, has a different problem: She can wield her weapons as a female Paladin just fine, but since this is an indoor map, she can't show off her horse's new look yet. With Safiya left wide open, Orsin steps in to take out that Brigand with a crit, netting a level-up. Next, we'll move Dagdar to this spot in the middle of the central hallway. Careful not to leave him too close to the walls, because these Hunters are packing Venin Bows, and we have no way to efficiently pass him an Antitoxin. Enemy phase, Dagdar does some dodging and countering, and Tanya gets a level-up from dodging. However, Dagdar is now trapped, and his Hammer has only one use left. Orsin and Lithis take out two Brigands with counterattacks, netting a level-up for the latter. Orsin and Lithis take out two more Brigands... ...well, Lithis tries to, anyway. Somehow he misses both swings of his sword with a hit rate of 93. Only in Thracia 776. So instead, Nanna gets to showcase the awesome-looking animation of her Earth Sword. This allows Lara to run ahead and prepare to dodge some more Brigands on enemy phase. Sacrificing the last use of his Hammer, Dagdar frees himself from the human cage. Tanya tries to help out, but her Strength is kind of shit. And now she's trapped! Hooray! Enemy phase, Dagdar somehow gets a level-up by swinging around his broken Hammer in self-defense... ...and Lara's Sword Rank increases. ...you know what? Fuck this. I'm resetting and trying a different strategy! This time, I add the Warp Staff that Cairpre gave us into Safiya's inventory. Once she promotes, she'll automatically gain the required Staff Rank in order to use it. I also have Orsin buy an extra Iron Axe. You'll see why in a bit. Except for a few minor changes, turn 1 is pretty much identical to last time. Turn 2, however, is vastly different. Safiya teleports Orsin into the middle of the Brigand orgy... ...allowing Dagdar to take the Iron Axe that we just bought, and kill one of the Brigands with a crit! Not one to be shown-up by a Jagen, Orsin crits another Brigand to death, re-gaining the level-up that he lost from my reset, as well as giving Tanya some more breathing room. There goes 20 EXP that I'm never going to see again. Lara's strength is even shittier than Tanya's, so instead of attacking the Brigand, she steps back and lets Lithis do all the hard work for her. This allows Nanna to attack the Hunter at melee range (the reason the second screenshot is on the map screen instead of the battle screen is because I accidentally hit fast-forward ). Enemy phase, Orsin gets another level-up and a half by taking out all but one of the Brigands that were closing in on Tanya and Dagdar. Lithis gets one, too. With the coast clear, Tanya moves as far up as she can, and uses her Torch. This reveals the location of an enemy Thief, with his sights set on swiping that treasure chest out from under our noses! As much as it breaks my heart to waste two uses of the Warp Staff in one chapter, we don't really have a choice. warp staff op plz nerf Not only can it teleport people practically anywhere on the map, but it also gives shitloads of EXP to the user, netting Safiya a level-up. While I could have Lara instantly unlock that chest before the Thief has a chance to touch it, I'd rather have things be a bit more suspenseful by stealing his Lockpick instead. Lithis kills another Brigand blocking the way forward... ...Leif takes out another Brigand through the wall... ...Orsin can have a lover's quarrel with Tanya... ...and Dagdar can kill the Hunter with another crit. On enemy phase, Orsin gets a level-up from killing Brigands... ...only to instantly lose it. As it turned out, by wasting his turn talking to Tanya, he blew his chance to use a Vulnerary. Reset! There we go. Now we're more-or-less back to where we were, level-ups notwithstanding. Lara dodges a fuckload of Hand Axes, but is now trapped. The good news is that since she stole the Lockpick, we no longer need to use the Warp Staff. Orsin kills another Brigand with a crit, and passes his Vulnerary to Tanya. Dagdar gets yet another crit, and re-gains the level-up that he lost. With nothing better to do, Safiya finally has a chance to use the Life Ring that I put in her inventory two chapters ago. Since the fatigue mechanic is based on her HP, she needs as much of it as she can get. Oh what the heck, Lara can steal the Slim Sword, too. Even with a crit, Lara can't kill these guys. All she can do is dodge. Lithis opens the door leading outside, but has no choice but to leave himself in the attack range of the Venin Bow-wielding Hunters. Now it's time to move everybody up to save Lara. Orsin just barely misses getting a level-up. Now, for the moment of truth: Can Lithis dodge a shot from a Venin Bow? ...yes he can! And he also gets a level-up from dodging a Hand Axe! Things are really starting to get crowded up there. Lithis takes a few steps outside and snags a Pure Water. Orsin gets the level-up that he missed last time. Dagdar kills a Hunter. Another uneventful turn of dodging. The Hunters are slightly more threatening than the Brigands because their Skill is "below average" rather than "shit". Leif tries to kill a Hunter through the wall, but misses. This means that Safiya can't move forward to heal our wounds without the risk of getting hit by a Venin arrow. If only Tanya had a Longbow, she could clear a path for Safiya. Alas, she doesn't, so she can beat up the unarmed Thief instead, getting a level-up. And another one for Nanna. With the death of the Brigand directly above Dagdar, Lara is now free. However, since the one blocking the doorway has only 2 HP left, I let her kill him instead. This time, I manage to capture Orsin mid-crit. One completely uneventful enemy phase later... Orsin kills the Brigand in the doorway... ...Dagdar fails to kill a Hunter... ...and our healers partake in some staff abuse. Enemy phase, Dagdar runs low on HP, but gets a level-up. On our next turn, Orsin and Dagdar remove the last two obstacles in Lara's path, allowing her to run over and claim her prize... ...the Leg Ring! Veterans of Genealogy know damn well what this baby does! Next, I have Leif equip his Light Brand, park him in the attack range of those Hunters, and end my turn. Enemy phase, both Hunters commit sudoku. Dagdar clears out the doorway... ...allowing Lithis to move in and help clear out the Brigand infestation. Also, Orsin increases his Axe Rank (not that he really needs anything but the Bhuj). And with that, Safiya is now safe to hide in that little corner, just out of the danger zone. Of our two healers, let's focus on Nanna, because Safiya has already maxed out her Staff Rank. Orsin and Lithis kill the last two Brigands, netting a level-up for the latter. Victory is near! But we've still got a few more errands to run before we fight the boss. First, I park Leif on this spot to repeat the trick from last turn. We're going to spend the next several turns going on a treasure hunt. Safiya takes a few items to clear out some space in Lara's inventory. Nanna gets a level-up, and a Staff Rank! She can now use the Physic Staff, but no way am I going to waste it when there's no reinforcements left. What's really annoying about fog-of-war maps is that you can't open a door or a treasure chest if you move to the spot where they are unless they were already visible beforehand. Hence, it helps to bring a buddy along for your Thief to help them see. On Lara's side, we get a Wrath Manual and a Devil Axe! We'll worry about who to give those to later. And on Lithis's side, we get a Hammer, and Neir's Scroll! We'll want to put that on one of our Thieves, as it increases the growth rates for Strength and Con. Also, Leif can have a conversation with Dagdar, though nothing comes out of it. Once we've moved everyone back into the boss room... ...Lara can swipe his Lockpick! Silly Warrior, Lockpicks are for Thieves! Does Gomez have a unique boss conversation with Dagdar? Guess not. Nice crit, though. Orsin is unable to lay a scratch on Gomez, but gets a level-up for trying. And another one for Safiya. Nanna gets a level-up from attacking Gomez with her Earth Sword, but isn't quite able to finish him off. Next turn, she succeeds, and gets yet another level-up. After seizing the throne, Leif gets his privelige checked, and we get to learn some interesting backstory stuff about Thracian politics. Some of this was briefly alluded to in FE4. Gonna try for another episode tonight. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 8, 2019 Author Share Posted September 8, 2019 Chapter 9: Family Reunion Short and to the point. Our party for this chapter. And with that, the episode's title has been fulfilled. Hooray, another escape map. Our starting stats for this chapter. Over by the escape point, we gain control of four new party members. Don't use them, they suck. However, Selphina's Master Seal will come in handy later. Starting off, Karin will fly over to the middle of the mountains and use her Master Seal. This promotes her into a Pegasus Knight! Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently, Falcon Knights don't exist in this game, so instead, her base class was Pegasus Rider. This also means that she can't use Staffs. Next, Nanna and Fergus will mount their horses as we move everybody south. Even though the Selphina Brigade sucks, we might as well use them for this one chapter before we bench them forever. Enemy phase, a whole bunch of Soldiers, Archers, Armor Knights, and Wyvern Riders advance towards our new friends. So, I'll send Karin over to assist them. The rest of us will move south towards those Armor Knights surrounding the Bishop. That's a fairly safe distance, so the Selphina Brigade can stay put for now. Enemy phase, Finn kills an Armor Knight with a crit from his Brave Lance... ...followed by a level-up from killing two Wyvern Riders. Callion becomes the first unit in the LP to actually get hit by a Meteor tome. Fortunately, he survives. Merloch flies toward our main battalion and throws a Javelin at Fergus. He is then promptly killed by Assblaster Asbel, netting him a level-up. It wasn't even a crit; Asbel just killed him in one hit. Karin is in the attack range of an Archer, so I have her scoot back a bit and throw a Javelin at a Wyvern Rider. She still needs to work on her strength. Next, we'll move Selphina and her lackeys back toward the escape point. Shiva is going to sit on this hill tile to intercept the Armor Knights... ...while Fergus takes the Flame Sword for a test drive. Unfortunately, Finn's movement range is exactly one tile too small to attempt capturing the Bishop, so instead I have Nanna heal Callion and Canto down next to Fergus to maybe intercept an Armor Knight with her Earth Sword. Callion and Finn can hide in these trees. Enemy phase, Karin takes out a Wyvern Rider... ...Callion gets a level-up by double-critting an Armor Knight... ...and Karin gets crat by a Killer Lance and dies. Re-load! This time, let's try actually using the Selphina Brigade. She kills one of the Wyvern Riders. ...while Kane, Alba, and Robert team up to kill a Soldier. Everything else plays out the same as last time. So all-in-all, not a bad turn. But can we survive an enemy phase? Let's find out! Selphina gets hit by a Wyvern Knight, but survives. Alba kills a Soldier with a crit, not quite getting a level-up. Selphina takes another hit, but is now safe, assuming that nobody can move over that hill tile right next to her. Here's the level-up that Alba missed. Whoops, turns out the Soldier can move over the hill tile. Good thing Selphina dodged. Callion gets his level-up back, but since he missed the first attack, the Armor Knight is still alive. Nanna counter-attacks another Armor Knight... ...aaaannd, Selphina gets hit by an arrow and dies. Re-load! Maybe if I have her use Kane and Alba as a human shield? Alba almost dies, but it worked! ...no it didn't. Re-load! Fuck everything. Retreat! Well, we survived, but now we're running out of space. On the other side, Shiva crat an Armor Knight to death and got a level-up. It's now or never! Selphina, Robert, and Karin kill the remaining Wyvern Riders. Kane and Alba move in to reduce the number of spaces the Soldiers can attack our Bow Knights from. Asbel and Fergus take out two Armor Knights (that second screenshot was taken a few seconds too early)... ...and finally, Finn captures the Bishop, earning a level-up! Nanna relieves the Bishop of his staffs, then Cantos over in the direction of the Selphina Brigade to help them out. Callion attacks the remaining Armor Knight, but falls just short of killing him. Leif takes the remains of the Bishop's inventory, then takes him off Finn's hands and releases him. Selphina took a hit, but survived. Nice work! Kane dodges a Soldier. Keep going! They're running out of spaces to attack her from! That's good! Alba fails to kill a Soldier, but that's good! That means that there's even fewer spaces! Come on, Selphina, you can do it! Now, for the moment of truth: If Selphina can dodge just two more attacks, then there will be no more spaces left for the Soldiers and Archers to attack from, and she will be safe! Can she do it?! Yes she can! And she even gets a level-up from countering! Aaaand, that's game! She managed to survive! Without missing a beat, Nanna rushes over, kills an Archer with her Earth Sword, and gets a level-up. Shiva gets one, too, by finishing off Callion's leftovers. Everyone else rushes over to the west side of the mountain range. Selphina kills a Soldier, gets a level-up, and Cantos the fuck outta there! Kane tries to attack another Soldier, but they both miss. Robert weakens another Archer, then falls back to join Selphina. Alba finishes off another Soldier, gets a level-up, and Cantos back to this spot to block protect his teammates. By throwing a Javelin from this spot, Karin is able to not only kill a Soldier, but also safely Canto out of the Archer's attack range. Enemy's turn! Alba does a lot of dodging, tanking, and countering. An Armor Knight goes after Nanna, only to get killed for his troubles. Two more Armor Knights are left alive for someone else to pick off later. One of the Archers has the bright idea to try attacking her at range. Things end about as well as you'd expect. The two remaining Archers do the exact same thing, giving her a level-up. As one of the Armor Knights gets Finn-ished off, Nanna uses a Physic Staff to help out Alba. With the death of the last Archer, Karin is now safe to move toward those three buildings to run some errands. Robert and Selphina do a drive-by shooting, netting a level-up for the former. Kane and Alba park themselves on opposite sides of that little hill tile. The rest of the group continues their journey to catch up. Enemy phase, Fergus takes out the last Armor Knight... ...while Kane and Alba do some dodging and countering. Finn throws a Javelin at a Soldier, allowing Kane to finish him off for a level-up. Kane took quite a beating, though, so he can retreat toward the escape point. Robert weakens another Soldier with another drive-by shooting. Alba tries to fuck it up, but finishes him off. Whoops, I got that backwards. But at least his Lance Rank increased! Looks like Karin's shopping trip will have to wait until later. Almost there! Enemy phase, Finn leaves the Armor Knights alive for other people to finish off. One for Fergus... ...one for Callion (also a level and rank up)... ...one for Asbel... ...and one for Shiva. And with that, we're done! No more reinforcements! It's now safe for Karin to do her little side-quest while Nanna does some staff abuse. Nothing good in the Armory. There are also three unique conversations we can view, all of which involve Selphina. Two of them don't offer anything other than some backstory stuff about Leif's childhood. The third, however, will grant us the Paragon Sword, which does exactly what it says on the tin! No idea if it stacks with the Paragon Manual, but despite what the conversation would imply, it's not locked to Callion. Anyone who can wield a sword can use it! And it just so happens that we have a certain facility nearby where we can put it to great use! By visiting the house next door to the convoy, we get Fjalar's Scroll, which boosts the growth rates for both Magic and Strength! Since Nanna can wield swords as well as staffs, why not give it to her before we start staff abusing? The Selphina Brigade has now outlived their usefulness. So, I give her Master Seal to Asbel and have them escape. Sure enough, the Vendor does indeed sell Stamina Drinks, but they're awfully expensive... Good thing we're about to make shitloads of money! One thing that I forgot to point out last time was that if you wait on this screen for long enough, you can hear an arrangement of the player phase theme from FE3 book 2. Assblaster Asbel is first in line so he can promote, becoming our third staff-user. As each unit hits level 20, I have them buy as many Stamina Drinks as they can carry before having them escape. Unfortunately, Nanna was unable to max out her Staff Rank, so she's going to have to waste some EXP. I'm fairly certain that I already showed off Callion's escape quote, but just in case I haven't, here it is. Hmm... maybe I could've gotten more money if I hadn't passed around the Paragon Sword? Oh well. From there, it suddenly cuts to the save screen. Guess that's it for this chapter. More tomorrow. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 8, 2019 Author Share Posted September 8, 2019 Chapter 10: Clash on the Small Bridges From battle preparations, I sell off all of our broken weapons to make room in the convoy for all the Stamina Drinks we bought last time. Our party for this chapter, featuring a few units that we haven't seen in a while. We'll get to that third way in just a second. Our party for this chapter. Notice how I brought Dalsin and Dagdar along? That ties into the aforementioned "third way". Let's start off by taking a look at the Ballisticians' attack range. First, I'll have Karin rescue Lara and move over to this spot, right out of the danger zone. Next, I'll move Asbel next to the bridge and have him attack the Armor Knight. Then, I'll have Dagdar rescue Asbel, removing him from the danger zone in exchange for taking his place. Finally, I'll move Dalsin right below Dagdar, so now they're both in the danger zone. After moving everyone else just outside the danger zone's perimeter, I end my turn. During enemy phase, the Ballistician to the far north fires two shots at Dagdar (which I fail to capture). Due to Dagdar's attack speed being reduced by carrying Asbel on his shoulders, the Ballistician wasted two shots instead of just one. If Dagdar can endure four more turns of this, the Ballistician will run out of ammo and become harmless. On our next turn, Karin drops Lara off on the other side of the river, then Cantos back out of Ballistician range. Dalsin captures the Armor Knight... ...allowing Fergus to swipe his belongings, including a Bridge Key and another Flame Sword. Followed by Brighton taking him off Fergus's hands and releasing him. Nanna heals Dagdar's wounds, but is unable to completely top him off. So I have Safiya finish the job, then have Callion rescue her and move back down. Oh, right, I forgot to have Orsin use the Luck Ring. Enemy phase, that Thief comes dangerously close to that house. Lara and Dagdar dodge and tank some Ballisticians respectively. It is then that I realize that I fucked up: by having Callion rescue Safiya, it is now impossible to save that house from the Thief. Luckily, I have a save-state from the previous turn. Nanna tops off Dagdar's HP with a double-Physic... ...which allows Safiya to sacrifice the last use of her Warp Staff to teleport Lithis over to the house, getting a level-up. But as it turns out, we ended up exchanging one stupidly-overpowered staff for another! Lithis also activated the music note, so I'll move him closer to that Ballistician. But as soon as I do that, this happens. For now, I'm going to move Brighton across this bridge to intercept those two Soldiers. Next, I'll move Dagdar onto the fort where the Armor Knight was stationed. Halvan and Callion can hide in these two trees. Enemy phase, our Thieves dodge some more Ballista shots. Uh-oh, Lithis took a hit (the blackness is due to an awkward screen transition whenever a Ballistician attacks somebody)! As if that weren't enough, he also has to deal with our old arch-nemesis, Michael Bolting! Having somehow survived that ordeal, Lithis moves to the tree right next to the Ballistician and chugs a Vulnerary. "Ensorcel"? Isn't that just the same as Barrier? Karin flies across the river, dismounts, and kills a Soldier with her Shortsword. Now she's not as vulnerable to Ballista shots. Brighton kills another Soldier and Cantos right below the Ballistician. He's now safe. Not right now, honey. I have a headache. Halvan doesn't quite kill the other Soldier with his Hand Axe, but allows Callion to finish him off. Fergus hides on this tree, and I end my turn. What the fuck?! No! She was standing on the house! She should've had an evasion boost! That's bullshit RNG and you know it! Re-load! After more-or-less the exact same turn, I have Lara hide in the trees instead of visiting the house. There we go! Much better. Lithis gets a level-up, and Lara aggros the boss, Dvorak, who doesn't have a battle quote for some reason. They're kind of hard to make out, but there are two bosses among the enemy ranks that we want to avoid: Olwen and Alfred. As such, we don't want to kill that Ballistician at the base of the mountains just yet. Instead, Lithis will kill the Ballistician on that little island surrounded by two waterfalls. Halvan takes out the Ballistician by the town, allowing Callion to see if there's anything interesting for sale. By parking Lara on this forest tile, she's only in the attack range of one Ballistician instead of two. Karin takes out one of the Soldiers in Dvorak's group. Karin gets a level-up from dodging another Ballista shot, also increasing her Move. Lara continues doing what she does best. With Alfred drawing ever-closer, we're forced to retreat. But with one of the Ballisticians gone, it's now safe for Dagdar to drop Asbel (which I probably could've done several turns ago). Speaking of stuff I should've done several turns ago, I have Lara use the Leg Ring. Karin takes out another Soldier with a crit. Lithis gets a level-up from dodging a Ballista shot. By throwing a Javelin at Lara, that Soldier made a costly mistake, because now there's a gaping hole right in front of the Ballistician, perfect for Karin to run in and kill him! ...after a few more turns, anyway. Strength Ring when? By the end of enemy phase, Alfred is breathing down our necks. Asbel gets a level-up from healing Halvan. However, there's no safe spot to escape Alfred's attack range! We're trapped! But just when all hope seems lost... ...Olwen gives the order for herself and Alfred to retreat! We're saved! Michael Bolting runs out of ammo, and is now harmless. Dvorak manages to land a hit on Lara, but she survives. With Alfred and Olwen out of the picture, Fergus moves to the fort and kills one of the Cavaliers with a Rapier. On enemy phase, he can take out any others who are stupid enough to attack him. Lithis dodges another Ballista shot and gets another level-up. If he doesn't get any fighting in soon, his Sword Rank will be shit by the time he hits level 20. So close, and yet so far. And then, just to add insult to injury, Michael Bolting heals him with a Physic Staff! Brighton tries to kill a Cavalier and get a level-up, but fucks both of them up. Karin gets a level-up from attacking the Ballistician, but doesn't gain any Strength. Nothing else we can do except move everybody around this bridge to hopefully cross it next turn. A montage of all the kills and dodges that happen during the following enemy phase. Olwen finally leaves. Michael Bolting tries to double-heal the Ballistician, but misses. Lara gets a crit and actually manages to damage Dvorak. It's not a lot of damage, but it's something. With Michael Bolting reduced to being a healslut, it's now safe for Lithis to move across these hills and take out the Ballistician (who might show up in a few of the following screenshots due to save-state-related fuckery). Next, Fergus uses his Flame Sword to weaken the Thief. Activating the music note, he uses his extra turn to capture the Thief, allowing Dalsin to swipe his belongings: a Rapier and another Stamina Drink! Brighton moves diagonally from Fergus and equips his Hammer to intercept some of the Armor Knights. Everyone else moves across the bridge. Karin and Michael Bolting continue their game of tug-o-war with the Ballistician's health bar, increasing her Sword Rank. Following an uneventful enemy phase, Lithis runs over and kills one of the Armor Knights with an Armorslayer. Brighton tries to kill another one, and actually doesn't fuck it up for once! He even gets a level-up out of it! Instead, Fergus is the one who fucks up killing an Armor Knight with his Flame Sword, missing both shots. I'm not even going to dignify that with a screenshot of the battle screen. As Lithis gets another level-up, Alfred escapes. We're almost in the clear. Assblaster Asbel takes out the Sword Armor next to the fort, clearing a path for Brighton and Fergus to finish off the Ballistician. As for the Bow Armors, we want to capture them, as they have Longbows, which are difficult to come by. Orsin and Halvan swipe the Longbows, then transfer-release the Armor Knights. Lithis kills one of the remaining Sword Armors, activates the music note, and kills the other. Michael Bolting uses the last of his Physic Staff, making Karin the winner of their tug-o-war game. However, Dvorak ignores Lara and instead captures Safiya! We can't let him get away with that! Assblaster Asbel to the rescue! Dvorak is disintegrated before he even has a chance to utter his death quote! The resulting level-up is well-earned! As Lithis fixes the broken bridge, everyone else moves forward toward the boss. Enemy phase, Lithis just barely misses getting a level-up. With Michael Bolting disarmed, Karin finally takes out the Ballistician, but as one final slap in the face, fails to procure a level-up. However, that's okay, because the only remaining Ballistician is out of ammo. Therefore, I'll let Brighton beat him up for free EXP. Getting real tired of your shit, Brighton. After spending Naga-knows-how-long targeting Lara, the lone Thunder Mage goes after Lithis instead, granting him a level-up. With all the Ballisticians either dead or disarmed, it's now safe for Karin to mount Hermes and capture this Thief! ...or not. But that's okay, because she actually gained Strength from this level-up! Moreover, capturing the Thief is unnecessary, as the only things worth swiping from him are light enough for Lara to steal. While we're at it, Lithis disarms the Mage so someone else can beat him up for EXP. Sadly, Michael Bolting has long since used up anything worth stealing, but hey, a free Heal Staff is a free Heal Staff. Before I forget, Karin re-acquires the Ensorcel Staff. Brighton kills the unarmed Mage, activates the music note, and weakens the last Soldier for Karin to finish off. Now it's time to fight the boss. Largo has some nice goodies that are worth capturing him for, but even if we can't, we'll definitely want to at least steal that Master Seal. Yoink! Yoink! That was easy. Now for the tricky part. Asbel starts out by weakening him. Brighton tries to capture him, fucks it up, and gets healed by Nanna. Attacking me with a bow? That's a paddlin'. Orsin weakens him a bit more. Dalsin is the only one with enough Con to realistically stand a chance of capturing him, but even with the weapon triangle advantage, he can't hit worth shit. After about fifteen minutes of failing to capture him, I ultimately decide to just kill him instead, netting Asbel a level-up. There will be other opportunities to get extra copies of his weapons. Sorry I kept you waiting, honey! And with that, all of our unpromoted units are at level 20! Nanna finally maxed out her Staff Rank, too! And more importantly... ...Orsin promotes into a Hero! Only 57 turns? That's unusually short for an arena abuse session... Next time: The source of a well-known meme! That's all for this weekend. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 10, 2019 Author Share Posted September 10, 2019 Chapter 11: Kempf's Trap (In America) Plot stuff, you've said the exact same thing about every fortress we've been to! They can't all have the most impregnable defenses in all of Thracia! Our party for this chapter. Time to break out some level 20 unpromotes. Right off the bat, we have the first of two noteworthy memes originating from an older version of the translation patch. Memes aside, Kempf is actually correct. He had a perfectly legitimate reason not to dispatch troops to assist Largo. Did Olwen expect him to abandon the fort just to chase some unknown enemy? Our starting stats for this chapter. Even though half of it takes place indoors, we're on a somewhat generous 30-turn time limit, so it might be a good idea to bring along some cavalry. Now that Nanna is at level 20/20, she no longer has any use for Fjalar's Scroll, so she gives it to Asbel instead. After careful consideration (read: googling "thracia 776 wrath manual"), I decide to give the Wrath Manual to Karin. Unfortunately, I can't do much else on the first turn because these goddamned trees are fucking up everyone's movement. But as soon as I end my turn... All Operation Portcullis consists of is these Armor Knights moving around a little bit. Thanks to Neir's Scroll, Lithis now has enough Con to swipe the Short Lances from these two Soldiers (with a little help from the music note). However, the game can't quite seem to make up its mind as to whether or not it wants Karin to be able to fly over walls. So instead, Dagdar crits one of the unarmed Soldiers to death. Karin frees up some space in Lithis's inventory, and Cantos away from the Archers. In a possibly-futile attempt to speed things up, I have Fergus rescue Orsin while moving everybody through the trees. Dagdar and Lithis both get level-ups from being attacked. That's enough, Lithis! Save that Armorslayer for later! These Archers actually have stuff worth stealing, so we want to capture them. We can get some more Longbows, and Killer Bows! If only we had an Archer that didn't suck ass... Assblaster Asbel takes out the Armor Knight and gains a level-up. He's already capped Skill and Speed! Alas, not even dismounting is enough to hasten our trip through the trees, so Fergus can just drop Orsin off on the other side. So much for my plan of bringing in our cavalry... Of course, Lara can move through just fine. I can't tell if it's one of the perks of being a Thief, or a side-effect of giving her the Leg Ring. Dagdar takes out a Soldier on enemy phase, barely holding on with his life. Macha takes the bows out of Lithis's inventory (which I forgot to capture for some reason), and weakens an Armor Knight for Asbel to finish off. The newly-promoted Orsin makes his grand debut by decapitating the other Armor Knight with a critical Bhuj. Despite Lithis's Con being quite high, it's not quite enough to capture the Archer. So instead, he attacks him for someone else to finish the job. I'll move Lara over here to see if the Archer goes after her. Enemy phase, the Armor Knights perform a weird mating dance, Lithis just barely misses a level-up, and the Archer gets healed by a Physic Bishop. Not much happens on the next player phase. Orsin captures the remaining Archer, Asbel heals Dagdar's wounds, and we all attempt to squeeze through the tight corridor. After a completely empty enemy phase, Macha uses her Flame Sword to kill the Armor Knight in front of Leif. This enables Fergus to move in and capture the next Armor Knight blocking the chokepoint... ...and Orsin to swipe the Door Key, then use the rest of his turn to kill the remaining Armor Knight with a crit. But you know what? It's been a long time since we've stolen any Vulneraries, so I'll let Leif help himself. Now I'll just have him wait, aaaaaannnnnnnd... THIS! This is it right here! In the older version of the translation patch, for reasons Naga only knows, Kempf's line here contained a reference to Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series: While it's completely understandable why they would want to remove such an out-of-place meme, but at the same time, it's kind of a sad loss. Anyway, two Ballisticians will spawn above the staircases, and multiple locked doors will appear in the narrow corridors. Any units left standing on the tiles where they appear will automatically be moved up or down. Since Leif actually introduced himself with his real name instead of a fake alias, Alfred paints himself green. Another requirement for the gaiden chapter is that we can't let him die. But we still haven't finished our turn yet. Karin picks Dalsin up from the outside of the locked door. This allows Lithis to unlock it, and Lara to unlock the next one. Next, I'll move Dagdar here as bait for the Ballisticians, and move everyone else up. One of the few instances where a green unit has their own boss quote. Even with an Armor Knight on his shoulders, Fergus has little trouble dodging Ballista shots. At first, I was worried that this guy might have had something valuable worth stealing, but then I remembered, "Oh, right, that's one of the unarmed Soldiers that Lithis robbed earlier". Orsin opens the door between Alfred and the Armor Knight... ...allowing Lithis to open the next door, activate the music note, move in, and steal the Armor Knight's Door Key, getting a level-up. The gang's almost here. Two wasted Ballista shots. Fuck, I forgot to re-equip the Armorslayer! Oh well. NPC phase, Alfred moves out of the Ballisticians' attack range. He's now safe, so now we've got 22 turns to seize the throne and unlock the next gaiden chapter. Orsin clears the northern corridor of the last Armor Knight... ...allowing Lithis and Lara to unlock the next two doors. Whoops, I miscalculated. Alfred wasn't in the clear quite yet. Good thing he dodged that second shot! Lithis gets attacked by the same Bishop who was healing the Archer earlier. Okay, now he's safe. Lithis and Shiva take out the last two enemies in the corridor. Having activated the music note, Lithis passes his Door Key to Orsin and moves over to unlock that door between the two Soldiers. Lara opens the other door, leading to the treasure chest. Almost there! Yawn. Fergus uses his Flame Sword to kill another Soldier. Orsin opens the door to the boss room, allowing Lithis to claim his prize: a Physic Staff! He also gets a level-up, capping Strength and Speed. On the opposite side, Lara opens the treasure chest, netting us a Torch Staff. Unlike ordinary Torches, this baby is also a source of free EXP for our healers! Shiva takes out the final Soldier by activating Sol... ...while Leif heads down to go after one of the Ballisticians. Kempf is guarded by three Armor Knights wielding Venin Axes. All three of them commit sudoku by attacking Lithis. Asbel barely misses a level-up from getting hit by a Ballista shot. Alfred escapes! We've got this in the bag. Now for the boss. Kempf has some very nice goodies in his inventory, but for the time being, all we can steal is his Thoron tome. This allows Orsin to attack him without fear of retaliation. Safiya gets a level-up from healing Asbel's wounds, capping Mag and Speed. Unless RNGesus really likes you, Kempf cannot be killed. The turn after you attack him, he will teleport away. Leif takes out one of the Ballisticians. A montage of all the level-ups we get from beating up Kempf's remaining guards. Just for lulz, I have Lithis open the final door so Karin can beat up the remaining Ballistician for EXP. We did it! And with 14 turns to spare! Shortest end-of-chapter cutscene ever. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 11, 2019 Author Share Posted September 11, 2019 Chapter 11x: Another God Damned Fog of War Chapter Once again, it just cuts straight to battle preparations from the previous save screen. No opening cutscene. The relatively low party cap turns out to be a blessing in disguise, as we can now focus on our units that have recently promoted. In earlier versions of the translation patch, "balistrariae" was translated as "murder hollace". Our secondary objective is to keep these children safe. However, unlike Manster, there's no escape point. We have to actually guard them until we clear the chapter if we want to claim the rewards for saving them. The opening cutscene actually took place in the opposite corner of the map from where we start. Our starting stats for this chapter. I'm a dumbass: it took me this long to notice that Leif was still holding Baldr's Scroll despite already hitting the level cap. So I gave it to Orsin instead. With the Bhuj having entered the single-digit durability range, we can't afford to throw it around like an ordinary Hand Axe, so we'll want to conserve it as much as possible. To avoid wasting uses of it on enemy phase, Orsin breaks out his Iron Sword instead. Being our only healer who has yet to cap their Staff Rank, I gave the Torch Staff to Asbel. This reveals the main gimmick of this chapter: a shitload of Archers and Mages blocked off by walls that can only be killed by projectiles. Fortunately, since Nanna's primary purpose is to be a healslut, her Earth Sword still has a decent amount of uses left, so she can take out this Soldier with it and be prepared to counter on enemy phase. The same cannot be said about Leif's Light Brand, which we'll also want to reserve for emergencies. Because I'm a dumbass, I have him attack the Soldier with an Iron Sword instead of the Blade, leaving him with one HP. There aren't any treasure chests in this chapter, but there are enough locked doors to warrant bringing our Thieves along. Lithis can sit here between Leif and Asbel. What follows is an excruciatingly boring enemy phase of dodging arrows, thunderbolts, and fireballs, with only Nanna able to do anything in retaliation. It's not all bad, though, as Orsin gets a level-up and increases his Move. He's also capped Skill and Luck. In the other corner, Olwen can only sit there while the Soldiers throw Javelins at her. But at the end of NPC phase, a familiar face appears directly above us. Thus, we automatically recruit Alfred. As prepromotes go, he's not terrible; just not as good as a leveled-up Callion. Until we come across some more Master Seals, we might as well make use of him. Fucking fog of war. Correctly using the Iron Blade this time, Leif takes out the next Soldier... ...allowing Orsin to take out the one after that... ...Lithis to try to take out the one after that, but fuck it up... ...and Asbel to finish what Lithis started, getting a level-up. Also, check out his Avoid. Karin, Lara, and Safiya bringing up the rear. Rather than take fifty billion more screenshots of our main group dodging arrows, I instead focus on Alfred trying out his Bolt Sword (or is it a Levin Sword?). Lithis takes out the final Soldier in the corridor... ...clearing a path for Asbel to use the Torch Staff again. This enables Alfred to safely move toward Olwen's cell without fear of being ambushed. Through a combination of the music note and the Leg Ring, Lara is able to sneak past the Armor Knight toward the door separating Alfred from the rest of the party. Since the Archers are packing Venin Bows, they actually pose somewhat of a threat, so I have Nanna take care of one. Enemy phase, the Armor that Lara ignored gets obliterated by Asbel. Lithis and Safiya both gain level-ups, capping their Strength and Magic respectively. Olwen barely manages to hold on. Lara opens the door for Asbel to kill the Soldier... ...allowing Alfred to open the jail cell, freeing the Green Units! Slowly but surely, we make our way out of the ballista... the balistrar... the bestiality... the narrow corridor with shooty things flying at us. Orsin kills two Armor Knights on enemy phase, gets a level-up, and caps his Skill. The boss, Oltoph, is one of Michael Bolting's groupies, but luckily has balls for accuracy. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOTS?! GET BACK IN YOUR CELL WHERE IT'S SAFE! Thus, we recruit Olwen, the first member of the Minerva archetype to be unable to fly! And more importantly, our second magic user after Asbel! Her personal weapon, made famous by her brother's appearance in Heroes, is basically the result of a Brave Sword and a Thunder Tome having sweaty, passionate sex. And right off the bat, she activates the music note, taking out yet another unfortunate victim. With nothing else to do, Karin uses her Torch, revealing the location of the boss's office. Borrowing Nanna's Physic Staff, Safiya heals Olwen of the wounds she received while she was still green. Well, might as well rescue the little twats before they do something stupid. Asbel kills the last soldier. Orsin parks right next to the Armor Knight to take him out on enemy phase. WHAT THE FUCK?! FUCK YOU, OLTOPH! YOU CAN'T CAST METEOR ON A CHILD! THAT'S CHEATING! GOD DAMNIT! RE-LOAD! This time, I recruit Olwen from a different angle, have her kill the Soldier, but instead of having Asbel kill the other Soldier, I prioritize rescuing the children within Oltoph's attack range. In addition to Bolting, Oltoph also has Meteor. That means that either we need to wait ten turns before the coast is clear, or that we're getting two long-range tomes as our prize for capturing him. Karin kills the remaining Soldier. Olwen tries to kill an Archer, but misses the second hit and leaves him with one HP instead. Leif can also talk to Olwen, but nothing comes out of it. Asbel attacks another Archer, and... leaves him alive? What the hell?! Oh, I forgot to transfer the kid to someone else. Whoops. Orsin can just chill here. Enemy phase, not only does Olwen fail to kill the Archer, but she also gets hit by a poison arrow. That's not good. Player phase, she and Asbel take out the remaining Archers. As Safiya gains another level-up, we end our turn looking like this. As Lithis dodges a gust of wind, Safiya actually gets hit by Bolting, but takes no damage. Upon closer inspection, I realize that the "Resistance" stat doesn't appear to exist in this game, having been combined with the Magic stat. It's basically like Pokemon Gen 1, where a single stat determines how much damage you both deal and receive from special/magic attacks. Lithis opens the door so Orsin can rush in and capture the Mages. Now that we have more than one tome user, it might be a good idea to procure some more. Safiya leveled-up from using Physic on Orsin, but all she gained was Strength. From the shadows, a group of Soldier reinforcements will come after us from behind. Two of Oltoph's bodyguards go after Orsin, but even with a Mage on his shoulders, he's capable of shrugging them off. Since Karin hasn't seen a lot of action this chapter, I leave her behind to deal with the reinforcements. She takes out the first Soldier with a crit. Orsin takes a free Wind tome, then releases the Mage. Nanna kills the third Armor Knight at range... ...clearing the path for Lara to sneak in and steal the remaining Wind tome. Olwen and Asbel both get level-ups from killing a few leftover Archers. Enemy phase, Karin crits another Soldier, getting a level-up. Jesus Christ, Karin! You're unstoppable! Is this the power of the Wrath Manual? Since Oltoph doesn't have any close-range weapons, Orsin is free to just walk right up and capture him. Alfred and Lithis take out the last two Armor Knights. Leif swipes most of Oltoph's belongings. Another level-up for Karin. After Lithis swipes Oltoph's door key, Orsin releases him, netting a unique quote. Now we're going to sit here and chill for a bit. Not only so Asbel can staff abuse off of Olwen's poison, but also so Karin can scout out the location of the stairs. As it turns out, I was wrong: there is an escape point for the children; I just couldn't see it because of the fog of war. Once the kids escape, we seize the throne. Gelbenritter, Panzerritter, Applefritter... what is it with Jugdral taking squads of knights and giving them names that end with "-ritter"? Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 13, 2019 Author Share Posted September 13, 2019 Chapter 12: Fuck, I Should've Used That Title For This One Damn it's dark out. What, you won't even let me look at the map? Fuck you too, game. One thing that's really annoying is that the unit selection screen doesn't move people around based on who you've most recently used. From here on out, it's going to take two screenshots just to show off which units I'm bringing with me into each chapter. 45 screenshots worth of plot stuff between the party selection and the start of the player's first turn! That's a new record! Our starting stats for this chapter. We really need to get some more Master Seals. We start off in the middle of so many trees that it's not even worth it to re-mount all our cavalry who participated in the previous chapter. Which is why I brought Karin along and gave her a torch. Pay close attention to the way these Brigands hold their axes. If the head of the axe is on the right side of the sprite, then they're just ordinary Brigands. But if the head is on the left, then they have the "Steal" command, and will attempt to rob you of your weapons. And unlike our own Thieves, they actually have decent Con, so they might actually succeed if you're not careful. As tempting as another Arena abuse session is, this chapter has a 20-turn limit to unlock the gaiden chapter, so we can't afford to max out everyone. For now, let's split into two groups: Leif, our Thieves, and units who have yet to hit the level cap will head north toward the town, while our units who are currently at level 20 will head south toward this house. The first enemy phase is sandwiched between this cutscene... ...and this one. Finally, after being teased throughout the entire game, we finally gain control of Hmph, better known as Mareeta! And if we have her visit the same house that she just came out of, we can get a Vulnerary. However, there's something else you can get that's even better, so I'm actually going to reset and play through the first turn again. This time, Karin is going to rescue Olwen. Annoyingly, using the "Rescue" command immediately after mounting will automatically end her turn. Asbel, Lithis, and Orsin each get a level-up from killing three left-handed Brigands. Lara activates the music note and pays a visit to the Vendor. With so many fog of war chapters, we could actually use a Torch or twenty. I'll send over someone with inventory space a bit later. For now, Lara cancels her action and visits this house instead. Thus, we get the Silence Staff! This should come in handy in case we ever run into Michael Bolting again. Macha takes out a Brigand with her Flame Sword. All right, Karin, let's see how well you can fight with Olwen on your shoulders. Not very well, apparently. Nanna can kill this guy just 'cause. Brief montage of enemy-phase counters, including a crit from Karin. Wrath was a good investment on her. Mareeta is approached by a few Brigands who can't quite reach her due to the trees. Karin flies to the middle of the black void, and uses her Torch. This reveals the location of our target, Salem. That Sleep Staff is incredibly dangerous because in this game, status ailments don't go away automatically; they need to be manually cured by the appropriate Staff. Safiya uses the last of her Physic Staff to heal Karin's wounds. Macha can visit this house here. I really like the running gag of having random villagers use the names of the Twelve Crusaders as puns on the phrase "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" That puts us at seven Crusader Scrolls out of twelve. Over halfway there! Mareeta's Blade has a built-in Brave effect, making it yet another awesome personal weapon that I want to avoid over-using out of fear of breaking it. Assblaster Asbel maxes out his Wind rank. Lara makes her way toward the broken bridge. Alas, since there's no place to hide, Lithis gets put to sleep. Yet another montage of enemy-phase counters, including a level-up and a half for Mareeta. Karin drops Olwen off on the house, and Cantos toward Salem. Lara takes a brief detour from the broken bridge to sneak up behind Colho and nab her prize: the Vantage Manual! Orsin, Asbel, and Alfred take out some more Brigands, netting a level-up for the latter. On enemy phase, Mareeta gets a level-up from killing a Brigand in self-defense. I hope she stops soon, because I want to put some Crusader Scrolls on her. Lara survives a round of combat with Colho, but gets poisoned in the process. If we have Olwen visit the house that Mareeta came out of... ...we get a Magic Ring! This is way better than some dinky Vulnerary! Lara unlocks the bridge, but Asbel's movement range is exactly one tile too small to take on Colho. Karin attempts to capture Salem, but due to her shit Strength, she fails. And now she's poisoned, too. Out of desperation, I have Mareeta take a crack at it. mareeta's blade op pls nerf ...oh, what the heck, I might as well do some Arena abuse while I'm here. On enemy phase, Lara increases her Sword Rank... ...and Mareeta gets a level-up from killing the last Brigand surrounding the manor. To prevent the poison from killing Karin, I dismount her, then mount Olwen and rescue her. Safiya gets a level-up from healing Orsin between rounds of Arena abuse. Assblaster Asbel kills Colho, gets a level-up, and increases his Move! Fuck yeah, Asbel! Nanna kills the Brigand in front of Lara so she can retreat and get rescued by Leif. At this rate, I might have to bench Nanna before she breaks her Earth Sword. Two more Brigands... ...aaaannnnd, we're done! Let's see... how are we doing on time... Thirteen turns worth of Arena abuse! I'll take it! In between rounds, I stock up on Torches and buy a few Fire Tomes for Asbel. Grafcalibur is in the single-digit range. I make an extra save state on turn 19 to try to squeeze out one more round of Arena abuse, but then this happens and some ominous music starts playing, which I assume means it's too late. So, I re-load and seize. For some reason, Salem doesn't appear during the post-chapter cutscene, but as long as I didn't release him, I should still be okay. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 15, 2019 Author Share Posted September 15, 2019 Chapter 12x: Pan's Labyrinth Once again, it cuts straight from the save screen to the map (which we're not allowed to look at). Before we start, I deposit any "valuable" weapons into the Convoy for safekeeping. Huh. Apparently it does move people around based on who you've most recently used. That's good to know. The length of the opening cutscene changes depending on whether you captured Salem in the previous chapter, and whether you bring Lithis or Lara with you. Our party for this chapter. Say hello to our new pal, Salem, the first playable character in the entire series to wield Dark Magic! Even if Etzel existed in the original Archanea games before the DS remakes, he still wouldn't have counted because those games only had Anima and Light tomes. Starting off, Asbel uses the Torch Staff, earning a level-up. Next, Olwen uses the Vantage Manual that we got last chapter. Even though she put Dire Thunder into the convoy for now, Vantage will compliment it quite nicely once she takes it back out. Over here is the reason why I deposited all of my valuable weapons: Tina's Thief Staff can affect anyone on the map, as long as they have a Mag stat of less than 3. That means Leif would've been in constant danger of losing his Light Brand. Lara isn't currently holding anything irreplaceable, but she might find something in one of the treasure chests, or steal it from an enemy. This is also the only time in the series where there are enemy Dancers (barring Olivia in other players' Streetpass Teams in Awakening, or Azura in their My Castle battles in Fates). And believe it or not, we actually want to keep them alive for at least 30 turns. Luckily, since they're hiding behind a wall and only have melee weapons, there's no risk of accidentally killing them on enemy phase. Good thing we captured Salem before he had the chance to break his Sleep Staff! That should put Tina out of the picture. However, these narrow corridors leave very little room to move around in. Enemy phase, a Thief steals something extremely valuable: a Fortify Staff! And he's literally right next to a staircase! We also get to see an enemy Dancer's dance animation. Wasting no time, Salem sacrifices the last use of his Sleep Staff to pacify the Fortify Thief. Asbel attempts to take out one of the Thieves below him, but leaves him alive with one HP. Fortunately, Lara is able to steal the other Thief's Chest Key. Olwen trades blows with an Archer, then gets healed by Safiya, netting a level-up for the latter. We end off our turn without a very clear view of the other treasure chests. Fortunately, instead of swiping the chest right below us, the Thief that Asbel attacked chooses to use a Vulnerary instead. However, we still need to hurry, because the Dancers enable the other Thieves to cover more ground. Asbel kills the Thief blocking Lara's path, allowing her to open the chest and get an Armorslayer. Lithis kills another Thief blocking the path forward. Salem comes with a Jormungand Tome, but sadly, it loses its poison effect when he's on our side. Not much else happens on enemy phase. Lithis and Leif clear out the way forward, netting a level-up for the former. Asbel breaks the Torch Staff, and gets a level-up. One of the chests has already been looted! And judging by the contents of this Thief's inventory, I think we know who the culprit is! Salem and Olwen both get level-ups from killing enemies through walls. Accost Manual? I don't know what that is, but it sounds important, so we'd better get it back! However, we have this guy blocking our path, whom we also need to keep alive. Now, we could simply steal his weapon thanks to Lithis holding Neir's Scroll for so long... ...but that doesn't actually remove him from our path. So instead, I re-load a save state and try capturing him instead. ...shit. All we can do is move the rest of our party forward. Fortunately, Trude moves out of our way to use a Vulnerary. However, the Thieves are able to get away. Re-load! This time, I try a different tactic: Leif will attack Trude to weaken him... Then, Safiya will use the Rescue Staff to move Leif out of the way (getting a level-up in the process)... ...allowing Lithis to run over and... ...miss. Welp, looks like this run is FUBAR'd. Not even save-states can salvage it. Time to reset the whole chapter! This time, I bring some more torches, and more importantly, Olwen's Dire Thunder Tome. First turn is similar to the failed run, with four key differences: First, Lara uses the Torch instead of Asbel. Second, Safiya uses the Silence Staff on Tina instead of Sleep. Third, Lithis steals the Thief's Chest Key instead of trying to take him out. Fourth, Salem uses the Sleep Staff on the Thief instead of Tina, ensuring that the Fortify Staff remains unstolen. Everything else is just moving through the narrow corridor. Pay no attention to that Archer about to get danced, and instead notice the Thief about to swipe the Armorslayer. Said Thief is now no longer a concern. These two Thieves right here don't have Chest Keys or Lockpicks, so they only serve as obstacles. Olwen kills the Archer with Dire Thunder... ...and Asbel weakens one of the Thieves for Lara to finish off. We end off the turn with a lot more progress under our belt than last time. Uh-oh, that's not good. Even without the enemy Dancers, the Thieves can activate the music note. Lara and Lithis both counter some Thieves, netting a level-up for the latter. Leif moves back towards the start of the map, and uses his Torch. This reveals that the Accost Scroll is still safe, and we still have a chance to recover the Shield Ring. Asbel kills one of the Thieves blocking the way forward, getting a level-up. And more importantly, clears the path Lithis to run in and... ...leave the Thief alive with 2 HP. More moving through narrow corridors. The Thief that Lithis failed to kill retreats to use a Vulnerary. Another Thief attacks Lithis, activates the music note, and retreats to use a Vulnerary. The Fortify Staff gets stolen (again), but we might be able to save it this time! One last Thief attacks Lithis, but isn't as lucky as his friends. Lithis promptly kills him, clearing the path for Lara to head toward Trude. Once again, Salem uses his Sleep Staff on the Fortify Thief, netting a level-up. Asbel uses the Torch Staff, revealing that the Accost Scroll is still safe (assuming there's no Thief hiding in the darkness). Lara aggros Trude, but neither of them are able to lay a finger on the other. More importantly, she also aggros the Thief that stole the Shield Ring. This allows Lara to simply re-steal it... ...Safiya to rescue Lara (getting a level-up)... ...Lithis to run in and steal Trude's weapon... ...then activate the music note and capture him. Olwen tries to kill the Thief, but fucks it up. So I feed the kill to Salem instead, netting a level-up. Assblaster Asbel gets another level-up from putting the 1-HP Thief out of his misery. Enemy phase, they do... absolutely nothing...? Something doesn't seem right here. We may not want to kill the Dancers, but maybe if we disarm them they'll move out of our way. Well, that's one way for Lithis to hit the level cap. Asbel breaks the Torch Staff, getting another level-up... ...and more importantly, revealing a single column of "plain" tiles on the other side of the walls. An Archer commits sudoku by attacking Asbel. And sure enough, the unarmed Dancer runs away! Let's follow her! She... borrowed a Slim Sword from the Thief?! That may seem mundane, but it's actually really cool! In all my years of playing Fire Emblem, this is the first time I've ever seen the enemy use the "trade" command! I didn't even know they could do that! Speaking of trading, let's have Lithis give one of his Chest Keys to Asbel, who heads off toward the Accost Manual. Lara opens the door, activates the music note, heads outside, and discovers a chest! Can't wait to see what's inside it! Salem tries to kill the Archer, but misses and gets doubled. Enemy phase, he survives the first hit... ...lands a Jormungand... ...and dies. Re-load! This time, instead of the Archer, Salem attacks the Thief at melee range. Somehow, despite being asleep, the Thief is still able to dodge. Olwen parks herself between the two Archers and kills one of them with Dire Thunder. Asbel swipes the Accost Manual! Let's find out what it does! Yes, I figured that, but what exactly is "Accost"? Eh, fuck it. I'll just Google it later. That's mildly better. Enemy phase, Olwen gets attacked by one of the Archers, but thanks to Vantage, kills her before she gets the chance to strike. Inside the outdoor chest is something we've desperately been craving: a Master Seal! Salem kills the sleeping Thief and gets a level-up. Now that we're closing in on the boss, Lithis is going to go back and loot the treasure chests that we left behind. Two archers will spawn in the same spots as the ones that Olwen just killed, but as long as we leave her there, they shouldn't be a problem. Not much else to do but keep moving toward the boss. A lone Myrmidon spawns in front of the door, so I have Leif weaken him and feed the kill to Salem, netting a level-up. Olwen gets a level-up from Vantage-ing one of the Archers, but gets doubled by the other after missing both Dire Thunders. Hey! You can't have that! That Armorslayer's been just like an Armorslayer to me! Olwen moves back a little bit so Safiya can move towards healing her. Two of the Thieves escape, but neither of them were holding anything irreplaceable. Unfortunately, the Fortify Staff is too heavy for Lara to steal. Enemy phase, Leif weakens another Myrmidon, while Olwen kills one Archer, but gets doubled by another. The Armorslayer gets away, but compared to some of the other stuff we got in this chapter, I can live without it. Safiya gets a level-up from healing Olwen's wounds. Salem fails to kill the Myrmidon. Wait, what? The Thief stole Lithis's Silver Sword? Well, that's okay, because he can just steal it right back. WHAT?! What happened to the "Steal" command?! And why is that Thief able to double him?! As it turns out, carrying Trude on his shoulders has taken a toll on Lithis's stats. Another level-up for Olwen. Enemy phase, a Myrmidon appears from the staircase by the Dancer and the Fortify Thief, only to promptly get killed by Asbel. The Thief steals Lithis's Vulnerary! How humiliating! Looks like I'll have to send Lara over to assist him. ...or not. One extremely-dull enemy phase later, Lara arrives at the chest that used to contain the Armorslayer. This group of enemies here can't move. Asbel has them trapped. So, that means we're free to sit here and chill for a few more turns before the reason that I avoided killing the Dancers shows up. ...I take it back. Let's kill this asshole first. For the next few turns, Lara and the Thief play tug-o-war with Lithis's belongings while Safiya and Olwen move over to help them out, until eventually, we manage to trap him between Olwen and Lara. Enemy phase, Olwen kills two Archers, and gets her Wind Tome stolen. At this point, the Thief only has stuff that can be easily replaced, so I ultimately decide to just kill him. And just in case any more of his buddies spawn, I send Safiya up to block the staircase. On the very next turn... ...we receive a visit from a special guest: a Dancer carrying another Master Seal! The trigger condition to get her to spawn is that you can't kill any of the other Dancers in this chapter. Lara frees up a spot in her inventory, and nabs her prize! Followed by freeing up some more inventory space... ...disarming the Dancer to get her to move... ...and then moving out of the way to give her some space. Alas, we're too late: because the staircase was blocked off at the end of Turn 30, we missed the chance for another Dancer to spawn, carrying a Warp Staff. While I am very saddened by this loss, we at least got the Master Seal, so let's just finish the chapter already. This also means that I have no reason to leave the other Dancers alive anymore. BEGONE, THOTS! (also a level-up for Asbel) Lithis spends the next several turns replacing his lost items by stealing from the sleeping Thief. Once that's done, Olwen takes him out, getting a level-up. Now it's finally boss time! Lara opens the door, allowing Safiya to run in and... ...not... talk to Tina...? Heh, I should've known better. It only makes sense that a unit inflicted with the "silence" status can't be spoken to. Time to reset the whole fucking chapter again! Here's what the Thief Staff's animation looks like. Now we're back at where we were, with five turns to spare before the Master Seal Dancer shows up. Off screen, I re-steal it. Then, on turn 30, the real prize shows up, but is too heavy for Lara to steal. So instead, I steal the Slim Sword, capture the Dancer, and trade it to Leif! As Leif and Lara go on their long, boring trip to the boss's office, Olwen kills the Dancer through the wall. Once Lara opens the door, there are three different conversations we can have to recruit Pan. First up is Salem's, with the final screenshot containing just the right amount of homo-erotic subtext. Amusingly, Lithis's recruitment conversation contradicts Salem's: in this one, Pan was already familiar with Leif's Liberation Army, whereas in the other, he had never heard of them. But the one that's "canon" to this playthrough is the one with Lara, as it allows her to promote into a Dancer! The joke here is that Safiya thought that by "terrible things", Tina meant that Pan molested her, only for it to turn out to be something trivial. However, you can't convince me that "big, hairy caterpillar" doesn't sound like a phallic euphemism. Either way, let's look at our new party members. Pan is a pre-promoted Rogue who comes with the Kingmaker, a Brave Sword with a built-in Charm effect. Whoever wields this weapon effectively gains a Leadership Star! Tina has been a very naughty girl. Not only did she steal items from us, but she also broke her Thief Staff! We could've used that! But at least we get our items back. Both Pan and Tina have a whopping five Movement Stars, which makes them extremely likely to activate the music note! If I wanted to, I could sit here for 200 more turns and grind Lara all the way up to level 20 by repeatedly having her dance. However, since we have so many Crusader Scrolls, I want to give her some of them before I do that. We could've recruited Trude by having Pan talk to him, but it's pretty much impossible to do that if you didn't come into this chapter with the Warp Staff intact. That might be all for this weekend. My dad is having a big party tomorrow. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 15, 2019 Author Share Posted September 15, 2019 Chapter 13: The Biggest Loser This is it, boys! We've finally reached Tahra! Our party for this chapter. As it turns out, Tina was an even naughtier girl than I thought: not only did she break her Thief Staff, but now she's forcing me to waste a Stamina Drink. Let's do this. Our starting stats for this chapter. There's a reason why I brought Selphina along. We'll get to that later. Across the map, we gain control of this episode's namesake, Glade, who holds the distinctive honor of being the least popular character in the entire series as of the launch of Heroes. At the end of the first Choose Your Legends poll, he came in dead last, with a mere 17 votes to his name. Right below him are three generic Lance Knights and two Bow Knights, whose only purpose is to serve as cannon fodder. They're basically like Green Units that we can control. They can gain EXP and level-up, but even if you keep them alive for the entire chapter, they won't join your party. Starting off, I move Karin to the bottom of the small plateau that the Ballistician is perched on, and have her mount Hermes. Next, I move Callion and Finn to two squares diagonal from Karin, and have them use our Master Seals. Ultimately, I decided to promote them because Callion has much-needed weapon versatility and better stats than pre-promote Alfred, while Finn has the Brave Lance. Sadly, unlike Silvia and Lene, Lara can only dance for one person at a time. Therefore, I choose Karin. This allows Karin to kill the Ballistician with a crit. Notice how she flies off-screen after landing the hit, but then spontaneously re-appears during the level-up screen. Her first objective complete, Karin Cantos away from the enemy Bow Knights. Finally, I end off the first turn by having Tina use the Paragon Manual, and everyone else move up across the bridge. Enemy phase, Lara gets hit by an arrow, dodges another, and gets a level-up. Note that promoting into a Dancer actually lowered her Speed, so I gave her a few Crusader Scrolls to help her re-cap it. Assblaster Asbel incinerates one of the Bow Knights at point-blank range. Callion utilizes the music note to kill two more Bow Knights. Before dancing for Finn, I make sure Lara has the Paragon Sword equipped so she can level-up faster. Finn takes out the last Bow Knight... ...clearing a path for Karin to fly over and kill the other Ballistician with a Javelin. Just to give an idea of how terrible Glade's generics are, it takes three of them just to kill one measly Soldier. The remaining two can just sit here. We don't want to move Glade from the castle because if it gets captured, we automatically lose. Each enemy phase, a Bow Knight will spawn from this spot on the far-east side of the map. After two rounds of combat... Generic Lance Knight has fallen! May he rest in peace. After dodging enough attacks to get a level-up... Generic Bow Knight has fallen! May he rest in peace. Lara dodges an arrow from the freshly-spawned Bow Knight, almost getting a level-up. Said Bow Knight is promptly taken out by Asbel. Thanks to the Paragon Manual, a single use of a vanilla Heal Staff grants Tina a whopping 60 EXP! Karin throws a Javelin at an Armor Knight and then Cantos right next to this house. Said Armor Knight is then taken out by Callion... ...while Finn throws a Javelin at his buddy. Here's the level-up that Lara missed last turn. Generic Lance Knight gets a level-up from attacking a Soldier, but isn't programmed to have any growth rates, so he gets nothing. Generic Lance Knight, Generic Lance Knight, and Generic Bow Knight have fallen! May they rest in peace. A Ballistician fails to hit Finn. With the deaths of his lackeys, Glade is surrounded! There's nowhere for him to run! Yet another example of Paragon in action: getting hit by an arrow gives Tina an entire level-up! And not just however much she needed, either; she gets exactly 100 EXP! The downside, of course, being that she'll die if you breathe on her wrong. The Armor Knight that Finn threw a Javelin at gets healed by a Physic. We can get a free Hammer for visiting this house, but we aren't currently deploying anyone who can use it. After picking it up, Karin Cantos toward the castle and lands on this little tree here. Asbel kills the freshly-spawned Bow Knight, increasing his Fire Rank. He then gets danced by Lara and heals Tina's wounds, getting a level-up. Here, I have Selphina and Leif briefly retreat to form a small blockade so that Tina can move farther away. That way, if another Bow Knight spawns, she won't be in his attack range. Finn kills an Armor Knight and Cantos toward Glade... ...while Callion weakens another one next to a Ballistician. Right at the start of enemy phase, that very same Armor Knight commits sudoku by attacking Callion. In his combat debut, Glade dodges an Axe Armor, and kills him with a crit. Finn does the same, then gets hit by a Ballista, and gets a level-up from dodging a Javelin. Leif kills the freshly-spawned Bow Knight, rendering it safe to move ahead without risk of anyone getting killed at the start of enemy phase. In the northwest corner of the map, Karin kills another Ballistician with a Javelin. Southeast of the castle, Callion does the same. As Finn moves in to help out Glade, I have him equip a Javelin so can counter any Archers on enemy phase. Glade takes a step off the castle, kills an Archer, and then Cantos back onto it. Another level-up for Lara. Slowly but surely, the rest of the gang makes their way over. Enemy phase, Finn, Callion, and Karin each take out an Armor Knight with a crit. Callion also gets a level-up from dodging a Ballista. Karin flies down and kills an Archer, but is left within the attack range of a Ballistician. All we can do is hope that she can dodge. Finn kills a Soldier and Cantos toward said Ballistician. This allows Glade to do another hit-and-run on the Archer. Asbel takes out another Armor Knight, but is left in the attack range of yet another Ballistician. Callion kills a Soldier and Cantos to this tree over here. Enemy phase, Finn kills an Armor Knight... ...and Karin gets hit by a Ballista and dies. Re-load! This time, instead of going after the Archer, Karin throws a Javelin at a Soldier and Cantos to safety. Everything else plays out more-or-less exactly the same as last time. Finn gets a level-up from dodging a Ballista shot... ...while Callion draws the attention of the boss, Liszt. While that Killer Lance looks mighty appetizing, we sadly can't capture him because his Con is maxed out. Finn throws his Javelin at the Ballistician, but falls just short of killing him. Asbel kills another Armor Knight from the safety of this tree. Karin kills an Archer with a crit. Since we're running low on Javelins, let's see if Glade can capture this guy. No? Oh well. Callion kills a Mage, gets a level-up, and Cantos back to his tree. Enemy phase, he dodges a few lightning bolts, while the Ballistician gets healed by a Physic. Liszt goes after Lara, but even with her lowered Speed, she's still able to avoid him. This proves to be his undoing, as he is now wide open to being taken out by As- -bel... fucking Pavise. Let's try this again. There we go, much better. Both Lara and Asbel get level-ups. Once again, Finn's Javelin is unable to kill the Ballistician. On the bright side, Karin is able to finish what Glade started. Selphina kills the Mage right next to Callion... ...and Callion kills the Archer, Cantos away, activates the music note, and moves in to capture a Priest. With no threats in the immediate vicinity, Glade moves out to get healed by Tina, granting her a level-up. The death of Liszt triggers some inconsistant behavior from the enemy AI. While some reinforcements spawn right on top of Karin, others will attempt to run away. Karin is able to activate Wrath, but due to being weighed down by the captured Soldier, she can't double. She can, however, dodge an arrow and get a level-up. Karin flies over next to Lara, takes a Javelin from her prisoner, and then lets him go. Tina heals Karin, and activates the music note. With no more Armor Knights forcing Finn to throw Javelins at the Ballistician, he is now able to kill him at melee range with his Brave Lance. Callion takes a Heal Staff from his prisoner, then lets him go. If Selphina talks to Glade, she can get a Brave Bow. No idea whether the conversation changes if you somehow kept the generic Lance/Bow Knights alive. While Asbel kills a Bow Knight that spawned several turns ago, Glade returns to the castle to resume guarding it. Once Lara dances for Karin, I move her to this spot one tile above the bridge. More enemy reinforcements. Callion captures another Priest, then Cantos over next to Tina. Finn captures another Mage... ...Glade takes the Mage's tome... ...and then transfers the Mage off of Finn's shoulders, releases him, and Cantos back onto the castle. Karin's movement range is just big enough to swoop in and kill the last Ballistician. ...or not. How the fuck can a Ballistician dodge, anyway? Tina takes the Heal Staffs from both Callion and his prisoner. Callion gets danced by Lara, then moves over to the castle to release his prisoner. Enemy phase, Callion kills an Armor Knight, and Finn gets a level-up from dodging a lightning bolt. After killing the Ballistician, Karin retreats, gives Lara a level-up, and Cantos exactly one tile away from this house. This puts her just outside the attack range of the Bishop who's been healing our enemies. After mugging another Mage, Finn gets healed by Tina, granting her a level-up. Callion takes out a Bow Armor. Glade tries to do the same, but fucks it up. He Cantos back to the castle in shame. As far as endless enemy reinforcements go, these ones are actually fairly manageable. Callion kills one of them and gets a level-up. Karin visits the house, gets an Armorslayer, and Cantos back toward Lara. However, even after getting danced, her movement range is just barely too small to go after the Bishop. Taking a stolen Thunder Tome from Selphina, Asbel hides in this tree over here to intercept some Armor Knights on enemy phase. Finn can also talk to Glade, but nothing comes out of it. Glade does another drive-by stabbing. Callion weakens another Armor Knight. A montage of enemy-phase dodges and counterattacks, including a level-up for Glade. The game can't seem to make up its mind as to whether having a long-range tome equipped counts as being "unarmed" for the sake of being captured. But whatever. A free level-up for Lara is a free level-up for Lara. But what's this? It looks like the Bishop was guarding a house. Asbel kills another Bow Armor at point-blank range. Unable to do another drive-by stabbing, Glade simply kills the Armor Knight instead. Finn captures another Mage, giving his Thunder Tome to Selphina. Callion tries to do the same, but fucks it up. Another kill for Asbel. Yawn. Inside the house is a continuation of a beloved running gag, and more importantly, another Master Seal! Before Dancing for Karin, Lara takes a few items off her hands to free up some inventory space so she can take her prisoner's belongings. She then transfers said prisoner to Selphina, and kills another Armor Knight. Instead of having to Canto over to Asbel, Callion is able to hand over the stolen Thunder Tome directly to him, allowing him to kill yet another Armor Knight. Another level-up for Tina. Just like Finn, Leif can also have a mostly-pointless conversation with Glade. As much as I'd love to stay here and grind for a while, we're starting to run a bit low on weapons. Therefore, we can only afford to do one more turn of Thunder Tome-stealing before we start escaping. After one last turn of grinding, Karin is the first to exit. Some escape quotes that we haven't seen before. We'll go over Linoan at a later date. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 21, 2019 Author Share Posted September 21, 2019 Chapter 14: Ten Turns in Five Days Due to a combination of work, stress, my Dad's massive party on Sunday night, and bullshit RNG, this episode was recorded over the course of an entire work-week. To give an idea of how pissed off I was, each new "day" of recording will be marked by a Spongebob time card. While cutting straight to battle preparations from the previous save screen is nothing new, this is the first time it happened in a "main" chapter rather than a gaiden one. Our party for this chapter, featuring the return of some old friends who've been sitting out for quite a while. After the prologue of an NTR doujin, we begin the first "defend" mission in the entire series! Technically speaking, every chapter of Genealogy had a home castle that you had to defend, but that was merely a side-objective to conquering every enemy castle. This is the first time where defending is the "main" goal. This chapter is also noteworthy for being the first time we get to hear this song, which some of you plebians might recognize from Heroes. Our starting stats for this chapter. You may have noticed that a lot of our units are carrying Rapiers, Hammers, and Armorslayers. There's a good reason for that. Right next to Leif, we gain control of Eda (no relation to House Edda of Grannvale, where Claude was from), an unpromoted Wyvern Kni--sorry, "Dracorider". If she joined any earlier than this chapter, I'm sure she would be a fantastic unit. Unfortunately, she joins at the exact same time as... ...her brother Dean (no relation to the Mercenary on Celica's route that everyone kills so they can recruit Sonya instead), a pre-promoted Wyvern Lo--sorry, "Dracoknight". Barring Luck, all of his stats that actually matter are superior to Eda's in every way, shape, and form. While Eda could hypothetically surpass him with sufficient training, why would you do that when there are so many other units fighting over any spare Master Seals you might come across? Not only that, but Dean also comes with the eighth Crusader Scroll! Let's see what it does... A chance to increase your Move?! Holy shit! We're definitely putting this on Lara! Nothing pisses me off more than putting an Arena in a chapter with a turn limit! Well, almost nothing, anyway. Right from the start, Olwen is able to kill one of the Ballisticians on the west side of the map with a single hit from her Bolting tome. With a little help from Lara, she's able to take out the other one, too! She also activates the music note, but her movement range is just barely too small to go after the ones on the east side. Having last been deployed in an indoor map, Nanna mounts her horse. The objective of this chapter is simple: defend the gate Leif starts in front of for ten turns. The requirement to unlock the gaiden chapter is equally simple: visit three of these houses with the red roofs (not orange, red). You can actually get better rewards if you visit more of them, but the minimum to unlock the gaiden chapter is three. Two down, one to go! Since Tina won't be hitting the level cap for quite some time, I decided to use the Master Seal on Fergus. Since he only uses swords regardless of whether he's mounted or not, his combat prowess will be unaffected by indoor maps. Having last been deployed in a map covered with movement-hindering trees, Alfred mounts his horse. Eda makes herself useful by checking out what the Armory and Vendor have on sale. Nothing too exciting in the Armory, but the Vendor has Stamina Drinks in stock! We might want to stock up on those before we finish this chapter. Her actual turn, however, is spent visiting this house. There! Now we've already fulfilled the requirement to unlock the gaiden chapter! Dean, however, decides to go the extra mile by visiting one more. Ending off turn 1, Safiya gets a level-up by using her Silence Staff on this Bishop in the southwest corner of the map. Said Bishop turns out to be none other than Michael Bolting, who has been pacified before he could waste any uses of his valuable cargo! Of course, you can't have a "defend" map without reinforcements. The enemies are able to break down the gates and cracked walls simply by walking up to them. Lithis gets his penultimate level-up by dodging a Ballista shot. Before the start of turn 2, this will happen. By having Nanna visit this house next door to the Arena... ...we recruit Homer, a Bard! Don't get too excited, though: he's not the kind of Bard that can give us extra turns; it's simply a different name for a Mage (Lewyn from Genealogy also started out in this class). More importantly, he also comes with a Light Tome, which he can give to Safiya if you want. However, considering that she's made it over halfway through her promoted class acting solely as a healslut, she probably wouldn't be able to meaningfully increase her proficiency in it by the time she hit the cap. While everyone else fights off the enemies, Mareeta is going to do some Arena abuse. Two more dead Ballisticians, and a level-up for Lara. Here's the reason why I brought so many Armorslayers and Hammers: because almost all the enemies here are Armor Knights, and they'll try to squeeze in through the openings they made by breaking down the walls. Instead of the Rapier, however, I have Fergus use the Flame Sword, so that way if either of these Mages go after him, he can retaliate. With nothing better to do, Eda visits this house. Dean makes his grand debut by killing this Mage, then Cantoing over to this tree to take cover from Ballista fire... ...is what I would say, if he didn't activate the music note, capture Michael Bolting, and then scooch over to where he's too close for the Ballistician to fire on! Asbel takes advantage of the opportunity to practice his Fire magic. We already have Olwen to use Bolting, so now we need someone who can use Meteor. Salem is going to be healing Mareeta between rounds of Arena abuse. During enemy phase, Dean gets hit by an Armor Knight. Can he make it? CAN HE MAKE IT?! No he can't. Re-load! New timeline is exactly the same as the last one, except this time Dean fails to activate the music note because I did things in a slightly different order. Fucking RNG. Whatever, at least he doesn't die this time. ...never mind, yes he does. Re-load! All right! This time he dodges both Armor Knights and crits them to death! Maybe this'll be the one? Fuck. Re-load! After some fucking around with the RNG, this time I have Safiya use her Rescue Staff immediately after capturing Michael Bolting. Now, can I PLEASE make it past the next enemy phase without something stupid happening? Good... (also a level-up for Orsin) Re-load. This time, I try making a save-state the moment I see the music note. Well, here goes nothing... Halle-fucking-lujah. After stripping Michael Bolting of his possessions, Dean releases him and trades them to Eda to free up inventory space. Before dancing for Dean, Lara makes sure to swipe Dain's Scroll for herself. Overcome with shame for what happened in the deleted timeline, Alfred attempts to give his Armorslayer to Callion, only to discover that Callion lacks the necessary Sword Rank to wield it. After Fergus clears the way, Asbel gets a level-up from killing an Armor Knight. He's almost maxed out! There's a very important treasure located far outside the town walls, but in order to reach it in time, it looks like we're going to have to take some drastic measures. With no more Ballisticians in range, Olwen instead turns her Bolting toward the boss, Baldach. She barely leaves him alive, and gains a level-up for her trouble. Lithis kills an Armor Knight... ...which allows Callion to run over aaaaannnnnd... ...get crat to death. Re-load! This time, I send Nanna to finish off Baldach with her Earth Sword. She gets hit by his Master Lance (basically a stronger Javelin), but her Earth Sword still has enough uses left to heal herself up off of anyone who attacks her. Alfred weakens an Armor Knight with his Bolt Sword, allowing Callion to finish him off for a level-up. Then he gets danced by Lara and kills another one with a crit. Please don't let something stupid happen... Please don't let something stupid happen... Fergus gets a level-up, but takes a hit. Good, Nanna healed herself up! As long as nothing stupid happens, she should be all set for the next part of our plan! Alfred takes a beating, but at least he didn't get crat this time. Spoke too soon. Re-load! Maybe if I move Leif next to Olwen, his leadership stars will allow her to crit with Bolting and kill Baldach in one hit? ...guess not. On the bright side, at least I might be able to force him to waste his turn chugging a Vulnerary. Put down that doughnut and help out, Homer! Even a crit can only leave the Armor Knight with one HP. The irony is that if I had attacked with Callion instead of having him wait, Homer could've killed him. Please? Just as predicted, Baldach wastes his turn using a Vulnerary. Montage of uneventful counterattacks. Instead of charging through the hole in the wall, these Armor Knights choose to gather around Baldach. Lithis finally hits the level cap! ...or not.Re-load! PERFECT! This is exactly what I need: a save-state where Olwen crat Baldach with Bolting! EAT A DICK! Olwen takes a well-earned level-up from that kill, on top of the previous level-up that she got from landing the first hit (which I've now had to sit through fifty billion times). More importantly, with Baldach's leadership stars now gone, the Armor Knights' Hit and Avoid rates are going down faster than a Welshman's pants at a petting zoo! I'm allowed to make jokes like that because my dad's side of the family is Welsh. Alfred kills an Armor Knight through a wall. Instead of buttering up the Armor Knight for Homer to finish off, Callion crits him to death and gets a level-up. He then Cantos over to this little intersection to protect our healsluts. Getting a little close there, Fergus. Lithis hits the cap again. Can he keep it this time? Fergus is one hit away from death! I can't watch! It's a miracle! If Orsin hadn't been there to draw the Mage's attention, he surely would've attacked Fergus and killed him! Callion crits an Armor Knight and leaves him with one HP. And that's it! We managed to survive for another turn! Let's see how we're doing... Nanna Warps Dean to this house here. However, with Paulus and his flier-killing Tornado Tome lurking one tile away, he won't be staying here for long. After another chapter of an NTR doujin, Altena will give Dean the Dragonpike! Now I'm a bit curious if something lulzy happens if you have Leif or Finn visit that house instead. With the Dragonpike in hand, it's time for Dean to GTFO! He Cantos away from the Ballistician and... ...activates the music note?! Thank you, RNGesus! That's worth a save-state, right there. From stealing Callion's kill, Homer gains exactly enough EXP to get his first level-up. Since Mareeta didn't take any hits during this turn's round of Arena abuse, Salem can lend a hand by reducing this Armor Knight's HP to 3. Fergus makes a hasty retreat to get healed and danced, granting level-ups to Safiya and Lara. He then goes back to his regularly-scheduled guard duty. Orsin and Alfred clear out the southwestern hole in the wall. Callion steals Salem's kill, then Cantos one space forward to keep him out of Javelin's reach. Let's see what Dean's Dragonpike actually does... A personal Brave Lance with a built-in Vantage effect?! Yes please! I hereby take back every positive thing I said about Eda. Don't use her, she sucks. After taking it for a test drive, Dean Cantos back into town. Assblaster Asbel takes out another Armor Knight, but at level 19, I'm not sure if he'll be able to wield Meteor Tomes by the time he caps out. As Olwen sacrifices the last use of her Bolting tome, both of the southern holes in the wall are now safe. Another level-up for Fergus as Lithis wastes five enemies worth of EXP. Shit, Fergus's Flame Sword is broken. Time to break out the Rapier. What's this?! I survived an enemy turn on my first try?! I'm on a roll tonight! Dean visits the second-to-last house on this map, and activates the music note. Homer and Salem both try to kill an Armor Knight, but fuck it up. Callion kills one of them, and Cantos outside the town walls. Dean accompanies him. Olwen kills a Mage through a wall. Lithis rescues Salem so Nanna can take him and heal Lithis's wounds. Leif takes all of Michael Bolting's former belongings off of Eda's hands, with the exception of the Bolting tome itself. With a little help from Lara, Eda delivers the Bolting Tome over to Olwen. Fergus utilizes the music note and kills two Armor Knights. Asbel kills the third. Once Alfred kills this Mage, the west side is now clear! Orsin retreats to get healed, giving Tina a level-up for missing. He then gets healed for real by Safiya. For once, I'm actually not scared to end my turn! Bring it on! Why did you guys attack Fergus? Asbel is right there, completely vulnerable! More wasted EXP. Fuck yeah, Vantage-Dire Thunder! Fuck no, missing both hits! I feel amazing! I might actually get this done tonight! Olwen takes out a Bow Armor at point-blank range. Callion does the same to a Mage. Dean has one more errand to run. Carefully avoiding that Bow Armor's attack range, he heads off toward that house to the southeast of the map. More EXP for Tina. I was planning on having Asbel take out this Bow Armor from the safety of this tree so he could get extra Avoid during enemy phase... ...but the music note had other plans. Fergus takes out the other Armor Knight, but falls just short of a level-up. Lara helps Orsin give Lithis a break. This time, Alfred doesn't kill the Mage with his Bolt Sword. But that's OK, because it means more EXP for Safiya. Lithis kills the Bow Armor, to hopefully encourage the melee-range Armor Knights to go after Orsin. I could have Homer attack this Bow Armor through the wall, but with that attack speed difference, it's too risky, so I just end my turn instead. Hey, no reinforcements this time! Callion crits an Armor Knight to death. Fergus gets a level-up from dodging a thunderbolt. ...and that's it. Dean visits the final house, getting a Nosferatu Tome! One more kill for Asbel... ...and a level-up for Tina. Trapping the Bow Armor in a human cage, Homer kills him at point-blank range, netting a level-up. Three more turns of this? Looks like I'm through the worst of it. It's quiet. Too quiet. Something stupid is bound to happen eventually. Dean captures a Priest and Cantos toward town. We can never have too many Heal Staffs! Olwen heads southwest and gets danced, giving a level-up to Lara. And then Lara activates the music note, allowing Olwen to go even farther! But not quite far enough to go after Paulus or the Ballistician, so instead, she can hide in this tree here. Capping off our turn, Eda heads over to the Vendor and buys as many Stamina Drinks as she can carry. HEY! How come a Ballista can shoot that far, but Bolting can't?! That's not fair! But what's this? Green units? We don't have to do another shitty escort mission, do we? Wait... what's happening? What's going on? WHAT THE FUCK?! NO! GREEN UNITS AREN'T ALLOWED TO ATTACK BLUE UNITS! On the bright side, they gave Olwen and Lara free level-ups. But seriously, what the actual flying fuck was that? Well, Mr. Funny Man... (that's a nice level-up, Lara, but I'm trying to do a monologue here) ...let's see how you like getting burned to death by a circle of red M&Ms! From the safety of this tree, Dean confiscates his prisoner's Heal Staff and releases him. Tina gets another level-up from trying to heal, but missing. She did not deserve that Staff Rank! Oh wow, some of the map animations actually look really cool. What's this? Tina left in McCloy's attack range?! Not if Homer has anything to say about it! Olwen attempts to take out McCloy, but both she and him miss. I don't what else I can do. Alfred and Fergus can try to rush over to join the fight, but they're still too far away. And now we've got Sorcerer reinforcements to deal with! No, not Loptian Mages; Sorcerers! Olwen barely dodges that Ballista shot with her life, earning a level-up. Either the Sorcerers have shitty Move, or they prioritize moving in formation over actually going after us. Either way, we've got a bit more breathing room then I thought. Olwen gets a level-up for killing a Dracoknight. Dean gets attacked by another, but it barely leaves a scatch. And then Olwen gets another level-up by killing McCloy too fast for me to capture his death on-screen. Poor guy didn't even have a death quote. This is it! The final turn! Olwen and Asbel takes out the final Ballistician and Dracoknight, respectively. As tempting as it is to try to capture these Sorcerers, since it's the final turn, we wouldn't be able to steal their Jormungand Tomes for Salem, so instead, we'll just kill them. Callion and Dean both get level-ups. It's okay, Orsin. You'll get your level-up next turn. With a little boost from Lara, Alfred dashes over to the Sorcerers annnd... ...gets crat to death. Re-load! This time, Olwen activates the music note after killing the Ballistician, so I make another save-state and see if she can take out Paulus. ...no? Oh well. Uh-oh, that's not good. Orsin got poisoned. So instead of Alfred, let's send Nanna over to heal him. Lithis has capped Speed, so maybe he can be a dodge-tank. Do your worst! Re-load. One more level-up for Dean. Fuck everything, let's just get the fuck out of here! This is actually some rather interesting development for Travant as an antagonist, along with tying back into the theme from chapter 8 about accepting mercy from an enemy. To the negative three people who read this, sorry for the delay. Next one shouldn't take as long. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 22, 2019 Author Share Posted September 22, 2019 Chapter 14x: Do the People Have to be Freedom Beef? HOORAY, another fucking fog of war escape map. Our party for this chapter. Our main priorities are Thieves and fliers. SIX HUNDRED FUCKING CIVILIANS?! JESUS CHRIST! Well, at least the plot stuff is short. Our starting stats for this chapter. We also gain control of Linoan. Despite being an unpromoted Cleric, she can already wield tomes, including the elusive Light Magic. Aside from that, she's also notable for a cringey romhack by MageKnight404 where he put her into the game so his self-insert character could romance her. Seriously, what kind of pathetic loser falls in love with a fictional character? Starting off, Dean trades the Light and Nosferatu Tomes over to his mistress, and Cantos into the dark abyss. Because my dumbass forgot to have Salem use the Magic Ring during last chapter's ten turns of being Mareeta's healslut, he can use it now. Karin uses her Torch, revealing a bunch of trees between two mountains, but no Civilians. While our main battalion heads north toward the escape point, Orsin is going to stay here for a little while. Lara gets a level-up by dancing for Salem. I didn't notice this before, but the battle background for forests at nighttime looks really pretty. She also activates the music note and dances for Lithis. Safiya is going to stay here and keep an eye on Orsin. Enemy phase, we encounter our main adversaries for this chapter: unpromoted Pegasus Riders, and Sorcerers wielding extremely valuable treasures: Rewarp Staffs! I'll go over them once it's our turn again. Lithis wastes EXP, while Safiya gets captured by a Pegasus Rider. Here's what the Rewarp Staff does: it allows the user to cast Warp on themselves! And it only has a weight of 6, making it a cinch for Lithis to steal! Coupled with the Jormungand Tomes for Salem, we definitely want to capture as many of these guys as we can! But first, we need to get our healslut back! Gotcha! Sorcerer was caught! Oh, and don't worry about the poison, either, because Linoan comes with a Restore Staff that not only cures it, but also gives her a whopping 80 EXP! Now I'll just have Safiya mug the Sorcerer and... Wait a minute! What happened to all those fancy Staffs she had on her at the start of the chapter? Shit, that Pegasus Rider must have stolen them. That's... not good. Reset! From battle preparations, I have Dean trade the Light Tome to Safiya. This way, she can't get captured. And to be extra safe, I build a human wall around her. This time, Tina gets captured instead. Reset! Safiya, armed! Casters, in forest! Tina, surrounded by human wall! Thank you! This time, I have Dean capture the Sorcerer instead of Orsin. Since the Dragonpike attacks twice in a row, the Sorcerer doesn't get a chance to poison him and force Linoan to waste her Restore Staff. As Leif clears the way forward, we continue north, making extra sure to keep Tina surrounded. Salem takes the Jormungand Tome from Dean's prisoner... ...and Orsin takes the Rewarp Staff, and releases him. What? Victory is near already? That can't be right! An awful lot of Pegaus Riders, but no Sorcerers. Linoan gets hit, misses a Nosferatu, and dodges the follow-up attack. She's lucky to be alive. Pan kills a horsebird with a crit. For each house we visited in the previous chapter (minus Homer's, Altena's, and Nosferatu's), a Civilian will appear from the bottom of the map and head toward the escape point. Since they don't carry anything valuable, it's not as big a deal if they get captured by Pegasus Riders, as long as we kill their captors in time. Presumably, the Sorcerers would try to to teleport in and kill them, but since using the Rewarp Staff wastes their turn, that would give us plenty of time to save them. Salem gets a level-up from healing Linoan's wounds. Orsin and Dean take out a horsebird each, netting a level-up and a move increase for the latter. Karin doesn't quite get a level-up, but at least now she doesn't need two hits to kill. While Tina and her personal guard continue north, the rest of us are going to stay here and wait for more Civilians to show up. Enemy's turn! Pan reduces a Pegasus Rider to one HP. ...and that's all. Tina gets a level-up for healing Pan's wounds. Just for lulz, I have Lithis steal this Pegasus Rider's Iron Lance before letting Pan finish her off. But since Tina is tapped, I don't want to risk her getting captured by moving, so I'll just end my turn. A Pegasus Rider captures the Civilian, just in time for another Civilian to spawn right next to her. Hey, buddy, that's my Civilian! Go find your own! Continuing north, Karin kills another Pegasus Rider, getting a level-up. She then Cantos a bit further ahead, and--hello, what have we here? Guess we'll find out! Yawn. Hurry up, you twats! I haven't got all day! Fort Tina moves forward toward the objective, but Pan is unable to cover Tina's right arm, so it looks l might need to wait one more turn. Or, Pan could activate the music note and go after one of the Sorcerers! Shit. That wasn't a very good idea. Karin, be a doll and help him out, would you? She may have gotten poisoned, but thanks to her amazing Mag, that poison will probably end up doing more damage to her than the Jormungand itself. OwO What's this?! The two bosses of this chapter, one of which is holding some very nice treats for Salem! Safiya uses her Silence Staff on Codha, getting a level-up. She then gets danced, giving Lara a level-up. Then she Rescues Pan, getting yet another level-up. And finally, Linoan heals Pan's wounds, but does not get a level-up, putting an end to our streak. What happens next? Even though Codha was the one that got Silenced, Arendt is the one who doesn't have a boss quote. Karin crits him, but he's still standing. Followed by another crit on the Sorcerer. Good thing he didn't have a Rewarp Staff. Shit. Well, let's see how far back we're re-loading to... Eh, that's not too bad. Lara gets a level-up from a dead Pegasus Rider. See this little spot here? This is exactly 11 spaces away from Codha's starting position, just out of reach of his Fenrir Tome. If we move Fort Tina over to this spot, we might stand a better chance of evading the other Sorcerers after Silencing him. Meanwhile, Linoan can use her Torch Staff to get a level-up, as well as give us a better view of the surrounding area to keep an eye out for more Pegasus Riders. Sweet, another Rewarp Staff! Uh-oh, looks like I miscalculated. Good thing Fenrir doesn't have a poison effect. Three Civilians down, three more to go. Dean captures the Sorcerer and Cantos to the middle of the mountain, out of Jormungand's reach. By moving Leif to this spot, we can reveal Codha's location... ...heal Leif's wounds... ...kill the Pegasus Rider... ...build a human wall around Tina... ...pacify Codha, re-gain one of Safiya's level-ups... ...and give a freebie to Lara. This is bad. Leif is poisoned. This is good. He didn't die. Somehow, I managed to get a screenshot of the Pegasus Rider capturing a Civilian exactly one frame before the Civilian's sprite disappears. Said Pegasus Rider is promptly decapitated by Orsin. Dean robs his prisoner, releases him, and Cantos further into the mountains. Lithis takes the Kingmaker for a test drive. Leif kills the Sorcerer. Tina gets a level-up from healing Leif's wounds. She's already halfway to promoting! Pan and Karin fill in the holes in the wall around Tina. The southern battalion spreads out to limit the Pegasus Rider's options for capturing a Civilian. Getting real tired of your shit, Pan. At least Karin knows how to not almost die. Somehow managing to avoid death, Pan gets a level-up. Aww, I took the screenshot too early this time. Eat a dick. Pan finishes off the Pegasus Rider, then gets healed by Tina, granting her another level-up. Dean kills a Sorcerer, then Cantos back to the foot of the mountain. Don't think I didn't see you back there, Codha! Uh-oh, Tina's ass is exposed. Lithis VS Arendt, let's see who wins! It's a draw! Sorry about the darkness on the second screenshot. Now that Lithis is capped out, I don't get the extra few seconds of EXP scrolling to hit "save screenshot". ANOTHER Rewarp Staff! This horsebird made the mistake of attacking Dean, and gave her life for it. Another turn, another captured civilian, another kill for Orsin, another level-up for Lara. Yoink! Damn, I'm starting to run out of space! Dean attempts to finish off Arendt, but fucks it up. Maybe Leif? Well, that wasn't very smart. Re-load! Oh, wow. I knew Lithis had a great Con from carrying Neir's Scroll for so long, but gawd dayum. Now we just need to block Arendt from being able to attack our wounded. More Staff abuse for Tina. Uh-oh, we might have a problem: there are more Pegasus Riders going after the Civilians than we have Orsins to stop them. And Orsin still needs to release the Sorcerer from last turn. Round 2! Lithis gets poisoned. What the hell was I worried about? He's motherfucking Orsin! He can kill those horsebirds even with a Sorcerer on his shoulders! He even gets a level-up from one of them. Yoink! Dean Captures Codha by gently breathing on him. After swiping Codha's belongings, I trap Arendt in a human cage and let Pan beat him up for EXP. ...or not. Re-load. This time, I have Lithis steal the Venin Sword first because the Killer Axe has balls for accuracy. Next, I'll have Linoan and Salem rescue some of the Civilians. From healing Leif's wounds, not only does Tina get a level-up, but she also increases her Move. After repeating the previous timeline in a slightly different order, we end our turn looking like this. Lithis and Arendt wave their dicks at each other... ...a Pegasus Rider gets crat to death by Karin... ...and a Civilian gets captured again (which you can't tell from the screenshot because the little green icon on the Pegasus Rider's sprite is currently between blink frames). Yoink! Eat a dick. The following enemy phase was so boring that I'm not even going to verify it with a screenshot. All that happened was that Arendt moved a few tiles away. One... two... three... four... Hey! We're missing a Civilian! After splitting Codha's possessions with Karin, Dean releases him, netting a unique quote. How he was able to speak it when he was Silenced is left unexplained. Pan has outlived his usefulness, so he can just escape. Ooh, that's a great level-up! Lara increased her Con! Fuck yeah, Neir's Scroll! Linoan and Lithis both use Torches to see if there's anywhere for Arendt to run off to. Another level-up for Tina. She's already capped her Luck. At this rate, it might be better to just carry the little twats all the way over to the escape point on piggyback. Lara gets hit by a Pegasus Rider, but takes zero damage! Fuck yeah, Neir's Scroll! Ah, there he is! The sixth and final Civilian. Since capturing the Civilians reduces their stats, the Pegasus Riders no longer have enough Mag to shrug off Salem's magic attacks. Yawn. Linoan, Safiya, and Salem rescue three of the Civilians because I can't trust them not to get captured for one six-billionth of an attosecond. But that still leaves three of them unaccounted for. Back at the escape point, we trap Arendt in a human cage and steal his Vulnerary, just to add insult to injury. Since the entire top five rows of the map are visible, we can safely park Tina here. That way, even if the Pegasus Riders do spawn, there's no way they'll have enough Move to capture her. Salem gets hit by one Pegasus Rider, but kills the other in one hit. There we go! Nobody got captured! Karin crits the Pegasus Rider to death, then immediately Cantos back to Arendt. Orsin rescues another Civilian, while Safiya gets danced, granting a level-up to Lara. This allows Safiya to move over and heal Salem's wounds... ...and Salem to finish off the Pegasus Rider! ...or not. Nice level-up, though. Ooh, fuck yes! Not only did another Sorcerer spawn in, but he just walked right over to attack Leif without wasting his Rewarp Staff! I'll just be taking that, thank you. At this rate, Orsin's going to max out his Sword Rank. I'm actually impressed at how well Salem can move with a Civilian on his shoulders. Linoan can't move worth shit. Lara has the Leg Ring, so it shouldn't be too much of a difference for her. All right, five more turns till the reinforcements stop spawning! Salem trades blows with a Pegasus Rider. ...and that's all. For once, Orsin doesn't kill the Pegasus Rider in one round! He actually needs Lara's help to finish her off! Safiya heals Salem's wounds, but doesn't quite get a level-up. Salem takes out the Pegasus Rider. Enemy phase, another one attacks Leif and gets crat to death. Believe it or not, this is actually the first time we've seen Safiya in combat! Unfortunately, she missed. She still got the level-up, though. Salem and Safiya take turns being healsluts for each other. Putting Lara one level away from the cap, Orsin kills the Pegasus Rider. Well, that was uneventful. After Orsin and Lara free that Civilian, Karin is going to fly down to rescue him. Taking Karin's place, Salem is going to practice his Dark Magic by repeatedly attacking Arendt. Having a Civilian on his shoulders is actually good, because his weapon rank can go up even if his attacks miss. We're going to try to grind him until he can wield the Fenrir Tome that we stole earlier. For once, a Civilian gets captured by a Sorcerer instead of a Pegasus Rider. Depressed over the loss of her job, said Pegasus rider commits suicide. That's all. Karin captures the Sorcerer that captured the Civilian, causing said Civilian to awkwardly spawn in on the tile that the Sorcerer was standing on. Bet you can't guess what happens next! Dean frees up some inventory space by dumping some stuff onto Leif, then Cantos back to the escape point. Speaking of Leif, since he's been poisoned for the past umpteen turns, now might be a good idea to heal him. Lara dances for Karin and comes this close to hitting the level cap. Her mission accomplished, Karin returns to the rest of the group. Enjoy this turn of Pegasus Riders capturing Civilians and then getting killed by Orsin, for it may very well be our last. Just like at the beginning of the chapter, Linoan gets into a catfight with a Pegasus Rider, earning a level-up. This is it! The final turn of reinforcements! Once we survive the next enemy phase, we're home free! For the final time, the Sorcerer surrenders his belongings and gets released. Karin flies down to the tile between Lara and the Pegasus Rider. Linoan and Orsin finish off two of the Pegasus Riders, netting a level-up for the former. Lara dances for Karin, finally hitting the level cap! We'll take a better look at her stats next time when she doesn't have a Civilian weighing her down. Karin rescues the final Civilian, ending our turn. Take a good look at that Pegasus Rider, for she's the final obstacle of this chapter. That's it! No more reinforcements! With the extinction of the reinforcements, Linoan is rewarded with one final level-up. Now it's finally safe to drop the Civilians and let them fend for themselves. For the next dozen turns or so, I'm going to have Tina staff abuse on Leif's poison. Uh-oh, I spoke too soon! I said "With the extinction of the reinforcements, Linoan is rewarded with one final level-up"! Conveniently, the Civilians are able to use the escape point even though Dean is sitting on it. Each of them will give you a Stamina Drink once they escape. Once Tina hits level 20, I have her trade the Crusader Scrolls over to Salem. Said scrolls are going to influence the outcome of Salem's level-ups as he boss abuses against Arendt. Unfortunately, the very next turn, Arendt is taken out by an accidental crit. If he had neither a battle quote nor a death quote, then what was the point of even making him a boss? Whatever. Time for some escape quotes. But just when you thought the plot stuff was over... ...a familiar face from Genealogy makes a brief cameo! More tomorrow. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 22, 2019 Author Share Posted September 22, 2019 Chapter 15: The Choice is Yours, and Yours Alone There are two blue arrows on opposite sides of the map, which we are going to completely ignore. From battle preparations, I sell off any non-unique weapons that are either broken, or in the single-digit range. Our party for this chapter. Anyone at the level cap is going to be benched for a little while. What's that, Binding Blade? You think you're the first game to have the story split off for a few chapters based on the player's decision and then merge back into a linear narrative? Sorry, but Thracia did it first! Of course, Fire Emblem just wouldn't be Fire Emblem without a group of Bandits whose only goal in life is to rape, pillage, and burn (especially the rape). Our starting stats for this chapter. Whoops, I accidentally left a broken Heal Staff in Leif's inventory. But I'm too lazy to reset and sell it, so he can just keep it for now. The objective of this chapter is to either pick one of the blue arrows, or have Leif visit this Church. We could theoretically have Dean or Karin rescue-drop him over the mountains and be done in two turns flat, but that would cause us to miss out on some valuable items. Starting off, our cavalry are going to head to the west, towards a dead end. Our fliers are going to zip right over the mountains. Well, Karin is, anyway. Dean activates the music note to see what the Vendor has on sale. Antitoxins might be nice. We might pick some up later. For now, though, he cancels out and visits this house, netting a continuation of the "Crushin' Crusaders" running gag, and a free Killer Lance. Asbel is going to accompany our cavalry to hopefully hit the level cap. Everyone else is going to head east, towards the gap in the mountains that leads to the church. Enemy reinforcements already! But they can't reach us yet. At the end of enemy phase, we get a cutscene accompanied by a very relaxing music track. Thus, we now have another objective: reach the three forts at the north end of the map before the green units steal our EXP! With a conveniently-timed music note, Dean and Karin form a rescue chain to drop the Hero over the mountain so Leif can talk to him. Thus, we recruit Ralph, a pre-promoted Hero who joins at a point where Orsin should be approaching the level cap. Don't use him, he sucks. Fergus activates the music note and kills two Brigands. Callion kills another, getting a level-up. Finn and Asbel bring up the rear to provide backup. On the opposite side, Salem kills a Brigand with a crit. Olwen follows suit, getting a level-up. She then activates the music note and kills another. Moving Linoan and Mareeta next to them, I end my turn. Montage of enemy phase counterattacks and kills, including a Luna-fueled crit from Mareeta. What Amalda means here is that she will no longer actively go after the Bandits. She will only attack them in self-defense. Karin kills the Brigand before he can destroy this house, allowing Dean to visit it and get a Skill Ring. He then Cantos onto the other house to block further Brigands from destroying it. Fergus kills the last Hunter and Cantos toward that house beneath the blue arrow. The coast clear, Asbel, Finn, and Callion start to head east to join the rest of the group. We've got a long road ahead. Despite our vulnerable fliers being left out in the open, the enemy Hunters decide to go after Amalda instead. The lone exception is this guy, who fails to hit Dean, giving him a level-up. Olwen lends our fliers a helping hand. Fergus visits the house, and obtains the ninth Crusader Scroll! Let's Canto toward the fort and see what it does! Skill, Speed, and Luck. This would've been good for a Fighter. Too bad it comes so late. Karin kills a Hunter and Cantos onto the church. I don't know whether the church can be destroyed by Brigands, but I'm not about to find out. Dean does the same, staying right on this house. Enemy phase, a Brigand spawns from the western fort and attacks Fergus, falling just short of giving him a level-up. Here, Fergus, let Karin show you how it's done. Amalda accidentally aggros the boss, but neither she nor Seil manage to hit each other due to the forest terrain. Fergus plugs up the western fort to prevent reinforcements from spawning. Dean kills a Hunter and Cantos backwards, allowing Karin to visit the house for a free Armorslayer. Don't worry, Amalda! Help is on the way! ...not that she needs it. Here's what happens if you visit the church with someone other than Leif. However, that wasn't a very productive use of Karin's turn. Re-load! Now THAT'S more like it, Karin! You too, Dean! Let's see if Olwen can get the boss kill! Almost, but not quite. On the bright side, at least using the Vulnerary means that Amalda can't steal our kill. Since having Bolting equipped leaves her vulnerable, Olwen kills a Brigand with an ordinary tome instead. After killing these Hunters, Karin and Dean want to plug up the left and right forts, but not the middle one. Dean gets a level-up, but just barely misses the right fort. Almost there! Dean leaves one Brigand alive, but kills another. He also gets hit by an Iron Bow, but has so much Defense that it's not quite as devastating as it could've been. Getting hit by Seil's Venin Bow, however, is bad. So, he takes a brief detour to get healed by Asbel, putting the latter this close to hitting the level cap. After moving everyone along, Karin ends our turn by killing a Hunter and Cantoing back to the left fort. Enemy phase, Mareeta and Orsin both get level-ups. Shit, this is bad. Not only because Karin almost died, but also because Sleil is now plugging up the middle fort, one turn before an important event is supposed to happen! We need to take him out, quick! When Bhuj fell below ten uses, I swore that I'd only use it in emergencies. I'd say this counts as an emergency. Dean tries to finish him off, but fucks it up. It's all up to you now, Olwen! Can she do it?! Yes she can! That level-up is well-earned! With Sleil's leadership stars gone, the remaining enemies are much easier to deal with. Karin kills a Brigand to prevent him from destroying the church. Yes, it can happen. I found out the hard way in a failed recording. Mareeta kills a Brigand with a crit. Dean gets hit by two arrows, but manages to survive. Being poisoned and being on a fort cancel each other out. Orsin kills a Hunter with his Iron Sword to prevent himself from wasting any more uses of the Bhuj. Healing Dean's wounds, Assblaster Asbel finally hits the level cap! Salem and Mareeta mop up a few Bandits, netting a level-up for the latter. Karin finishes off another Brigand, and Cantos toward Linoan to get healed. ...or not. Another level up for Dean... ...and some more kills for Salem and Mareeta. Okay, now Karin gets healed by Linoan. Enemy phase, a lone Swordmaster appears from the middle fort, but does not attack us. And if we talk to him with Mareeta... It then cuts to a scripted battle scene. Damnit, I failed to screenshot the little sparklies that appeared when Mareeta countered! And with that, Mareeta has learned one of the most powerful skills in the game: Astra! Following the end of the next enemy phase, "Shanan" will escape. Now, for the next dozen turns or so, I'm going to have Salem do some staff abuse from Dean's poison. Once he hits level 20, I trade the Crusader Scrolls over to Linoan and repeat the process. Then, once she hits level 20, I trade all of our broken Heal Staffs to Ralph so can sell them to the Vendor in exchange for Antitoxins. If Leif had selected one of the blue arrows, we wouldn't get the Restore Staff. Much like what @Reilly did in his Sacred Stones LP, I plan to cover both routes. However, since nobody else is reading this, I can't really make a poll to determine which route I would continue the rest of the game from. So instead, I'm going to choose for myself based on what units, items, or level-ups we get on either route that I find more useful. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 24, 2019 Author Share Posted September 24, 2019 Chapter 16A: Revenge of the Stupid Bitch No matter which option you pick, it cuts straight to the save screen. Our party for this chapter. Regardless of which route we're on, we're approaching the point where so many of our regulars are at the level cap that it's not worth it to train up new ones. Olwen provides a hint to her role in this battle. Our starting stats for this chapter. Well, more like the ending stats for four of them. Starting off, Dean gets danced by Lara, allowing him to visit this house and get a Pure Water. Next, we're going to split into two groups. Anyone who's above level 10 in their promoted class is going to move along the north half of the map. Anyone below level 10, or unpromoted, will move along the southern half. Each group will also take a healslut along for protection. Nanna weakens two Armor Knights, and Asbel dodges a Ballista shot. At the end of the first enemy phase, a brief cutscene will play. Karin finishes off one of the Armor Knights, and gets danced. This allows her to take out the Ballistician with a crit, then Canto to this little island in the middle of the river. Orsin finishes off the remaining Armor Knight. Nanna is going to sit on this tile here, right next to the bridge. Dean kills a Brigand, then plugs up the fort. At the beginning of enemy phase, this green-haired gentleman will lament his lot in life, then fail to hit Nanna with Bolting. His minions will follow him. Said minions are carrying some extremely valuable cargo: the Lance Knights carry Ridersbanes which would be useful for this particular map, while the Cavaliers carry something we've never seen before: Sleep Edges! But with a weight of 20, it's impossible to steal them unless Lithis got extremely lucky with Neir's Scroll. We're going to try to capture as many as we can! And that's not even getting into all the cool stuff that Ilios himself is packing! Lara dances for Orsin, aaaaaannnnd... Wait, what's this? Where's the "capture" command?! It was then that Ty learned an important lesson about capturing: horses are fat. Well then, that just means I have no reason to take you alive! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Karin visits the house to get a semi-useless Bridge Key, then Cantos across the river, out of range of these Bow Knights. Nanna is able to avoid the Ridersbanes... ...but gets hit by a Sleep Edge, causing her to automatically dismount. Despite being asleep, she can somehow dodge an arrow. She cannot, however, avoid getting captured. Lithis gets hit by a critical Bolting, but manages to survive. So, he retaliates by running over and stealing his prize: the Sol Manual! Then he gets danced and steals the Thoron Tome as well. If Olwen either died or never got recruited, Ilios would be recruitable. No explanation is ever given as to why he refuses to be in the same army as Olwen. He doesn't even have a unique boss conversation against her. Unfortunately, Olwen only manages to land one Dire Thunder hit out of four. Therefore, let's have Orsin finish him off. ...or not. Since Karin is the one who recruits Ilios if Olwen is missing, lets have her kill him for extra irony! ...no? Oh well. Nice level-up, though. Of course he gets killed by the one unit who can no longer gain EXP from the boss kill. Of course he does. Oh well, a music note is a music note, so he might as well kill one of the Bow Knights to make things safer for Karin. Leif kills one of the remaining Lance Knights. Before we free Nanna, let's see if we can steal her belongings back from her captor. With Ilios dead, his remaining minions will run off in opposite directions. Olwen kills one of them, earning a level-up. Before recovering Nanna's stolen goods, Lithis and Lara first steal her captor's weapons so she can't fight back. Followed by Dean sitting on the bridge to block her escape. The final Bow Knight is promptly incinerated by Assblaster Asbel. Some Pirates will spawn from the top of the map, but by the time we're done here, there won't be anything left to pillage. As we continue to recover Nanna's stolen goods, our northern battalion heads towards this bridge, but does not cross it. Meanwhile, our southern battalion has finally arrived at the promised land! And it's just outside the Ballisticians' attack range! Once Nanna's belongings are completely recovered, Dean grants her captor the sweet release of death. He then activates the music note and kills a Pirate. However, Nanna can't do a whole lot if she's asleep, and Lithis and Lara have things to do elsewhere, so it looks like Dean will have to stay here for a while to watch over her. Right next door to the Arena is a house containing a Master Seal! I bet you know what we want to do with this! Karin immediately flies over to begin the process of delivering it to Tina. Hey, Armor Knights! I've got a tasty delicious Leif here within your attack range! Come and get him! Alas, they're smarter than they look. After using the actually-not-completely-useless Bridge Key, Karin Cantos over to a convenient spot to rendezvous with Tina next turn. Next, we punch as big a hole as we can in the wall of enemies blocking the way forward. The Soldiers will try to attack us with Javelins, but will not move from their spot. Leif gets hit by two Ballista shots, but dodges the third. Now it's almost time to fulfill the episode's title! Right on cue, Karin trades the Master Seal over to Tina. Say hello to our newest promoted healslut! After clearing a path to the commander of these enemies... Olwen gives Kempf one helluva reason you suck speech. While waiting for his turn in the Arena, Callion takes out an Armor Knight. Thanks to a music note from Lara, Karin moves over to this tree here. Once this cutscene happens, Kempf's lackeys will start to actively go after us rather than hold their positions. But it does them no good, for they are all killed by our counterat-- --tacks... That was my fault. I forgot to heal him. I'm a dumbass. Re-load! As luck would have it, this time Tina activates the music note immediately after promoting! But what happens if we kill Kempf instead of talking to him? A rather pitiful amount of EXP for a boss kill, but a well-earned kill nonetheless. Kempf may have only been with us for three chapters, but he was still quite memorable, even without the memes. His pompous attitude, lack of actual skill, and overall douchebaggery would later serve as the inspiration for other memorable villains like Narcian, Valter, Petrine, and Gangrel. Since Tina doesn't have a weapon, she's prone to getting captured, so I'll have Leif rescue her. Now, let's see how the enemies react to their leader dying. If you guessed "run away like a bunch of pussies", you're absolutely right! Callion kills two more Armor Knights. To survive this turn, Leif needs to dodge four Ballista shots. One! Two! Three! Three and a half! Four! Great job, Leif! A Bishop comes after Callion, but is unable to hit him. Fergus promptly captures him, earning a level-up. Callion then does what we usually do with Bishops wielding Physic Staffs. Karin and Asbel take out an Archer and a Ballistician, respectively. And if we have Leif visit this house... We recruit Bragi's Scroll! Only two more to go! As for Schroff himself, I would normally say "don't use him, he sucks" because he's an unpromoted Priest who joins at a time when Tina and Safiya are both promoted. However, Staffs are extremely useful in this game, especially in the later chapters. Thus, Schroff's real shortcoming is that he only exists in one timeline, which may or may not be rendered obsolete by what we find on the other. Feeling a sense of uneasiness, I have Dean rescue the comatose Nanna and fly her over to the rest of the group, with a little help from Lara. By taking out that Soldier, Orsin allows Olwen to kill one of the Ballisticians. Only a few more to go! Despite Schroff being left wide open, two of the Ballisticians go after Lithis instead. This one's got the right idea, but still can't hit him. He does give a shitload of EXP, though. Mareeta takes out another Ballistician at point-blank range. Here you go, Nanna. You'll be safe at Master Seal's house. Once we take out the remainder of Kempf's troops... ...all that's left are these guys! Whichever ones don't run away in fear are impaled upon Lithis's Rapier. The boss has some nice stuff, but it's all too heavy to steal, and his Con is too high to be captured. Orsin and Brook wave their dicks at each other. Two Pirates will spawn during enemy phase, but one of them is promptly dealt with by Fergus, and the other is too far away to pose any threat. More importantly, Orsin utilizes a counter-crit to smash Brook's nuts with a Hammer, earning a level-up! We are now free to continue our Arena abuse in peace. GOD FUCKING DAMNIT! WHAT IS IT WITH ME AND HAVING MY ARENA ABUSE INTERRUPTED BY PEGASUS KNIGHTS?! Luckily, Finn is able to dodge their Ridersbane. These three dumb cunts had the audacity to try to interrupt my Arena abuse by attacking Pan inside the Arena, only to get flayed alive for their troubles. Catria put you up to this, didn't she? I've got a favor to ask of you three. When you see Catria in Hell... ...tell her: SHE'S STILL! A BITCH! THANK YOU! GOD DAMNIT, NOT AGAIN! Both Conomor and his lackeys have some nice stuff to steal: eleven Rapiers, and the Nihil Manual! Taking a Ridersbane from Callion, Dean and Lithis set out to intercept them. Now, if we equip the Ridersbane and have Dean wait across this bridge... ...the Cavaliers run right past him?! What gives?! One of them throws a Javelin at him, but misses. Shit, Lithis is running low on inventory space. Lara, send Orsin over to help us out! Dean kills the Cavalier that Lithis just robbed. Since Pan just finished his Arena abuse session, Karin can carry him over to help us out. NOW what are those idiots doing?! Taking Pan off of Karin's shoulders, Dean Cantos back toward Lara to get danced, and then drops Pan off next to the Cavaliers. WHAT?! They're getting away! After them! That's a nice level-up, Dean, but now's not the time! You'll have plenty of time for that later! Alas, Conomor has escaped, and taken the Nihil Manual with him. Bah, whatever. It's not like a lot of enemies in this game even have skills. More importantly, Lithis is able to block the escape route of the remaining Cavaliers by activating the music note. After we swipe the remaining Rapiers, we no longer have any reason to let the Cavaliers live. We may have lost the Nihil Scroll, but we're about to gain an even greater treasue! I... think I might have gone just a tiny bit overboard... Damn, I really need to get Photoshop on my new computer. MSPaint is terrible for making these. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 28, 2019 Author Share Posted September 28, 2019 Chapter 17A: Who Needs Warp-Skipping When You've Got Arena Abuse? Short and to the point. As if we weren't rich enough already, once again I clear out our convoy of broken weapons and staffs. Our party for this chapter. As the episode title suggests, this is one of the chapters that most players like to bypass by Warping Leif over to the boss and seizing the throne on turn one. I, on the other hand, will be tackling this like a real man! Our starting (and ending) stats for this chapter. Even though we're all at the cap, the Crusader Scrolls aren't completely useless: their secondary effect of preventing enemy crits is still useful for our units with sub-par Luck. Up on the cliff overlooking the two houses is the first mini-boss, Moore. His strategy is to use his Warp Staff to teleport his flunkies after us, then use Fenrir to snipe at us from afar. ...Which is why I brought along Safiya. With a boost from Lara, Dean flies over and instantly captures him. "But Ty," you might ask, "Now Dean is left completely vulnerable! With Moore weighing him down, those Sorcerers are going to tear him to shreds!" I prepared for that possibility, as well. As Callion and Lithis split Moore's belongings, Callion takes him off of Dean's shoulders and transfers him to Olwen to get released. I can't tell whether this is his actual release quote, or if it's just because he's Silenced. Karin kills a Soldier and Cantos toward the Sorcerers. Everyone else makes their way over to the bridge. The remaining Soldiers and Armor Knights move away from us... ...while the Pegasus Knights do absolutely nothing. Karin flies over and begins to pick off the Sorcerers. Dean visits one of the houses and gets a Magic Ring, which is now all-but-useless because all of our Tome users have already capped Mag. Annoyingly, much of the terrain on this tiny island in the river is covered with trees, making it difficult to traverse. As the Armor Knights begin running in circles, one of the Soldiers throws a Javelin at Mareeta. Karin dodges one of the sorcerers, then crits two of them that were stupid enough to attack her at melee range. The Pegasus Knights don't seem interested in attacking Karin. Instead, they trap her in a human cage. See, here's what I don't get: Genealogy also had "neutral" units that were neither on your side nor the enemy's, but they were color-coded to be yellow to distinguish them from the green units that were explicitly on your side. Why couldn't they just bring yellow units back instead of lumping them together with green units? Regardless, Dean releases Karin from the human cage so she can talk to the commander of the Pegasus Knights. Despite this, Misha won't join us yet. In order to recruit her, we need to capture her and hold onto her until the end of the chapter. However, as we learned last time, mounted units can't be captured. The only way to capture Misha is to force her to dismount by using the Sleep Staff... which I forgot to bring. Following a completely identical first two turns, Safiya uses her Hammerne Staff to repair the Sleep Staff. However, I still can't use it until Misha moves off of the "mountain" tile. Our only other option is to lure her away before she gets herself killed in self-defense. Remembering that wielding broken weapons gives a big stat penalty, I get an idea: if Asbel breaks his Fire Tome, maybe Misha will target him? Nope, that won't work. He automatically equips the next weapon down. But you know what else causes a stat penalty? Capturing! Maybe if Orsin captures this Soldier, Misha will target him? Callion and Fergus take out a few enemies. Maybe Pan can capture another Soldier and provide another target for Misha? No? Oh well. Fergus kills an Armor Knight, and Pan dodges a Javelin. A Pirate spawns from the northwest corner of the map. Just like Misha and friends, he's a "green" unit that can still attack and be attacked by the player. Well, my plan partially succeeded, but we got the wrong Pegasus Knight. Shit, this is bad! Misha went after Dean instead! Fuck. Re-load! Of course! Lara! If I leave her in range, Misha will attack her for sure! Once again, we got the wrong target. ...or not. That one was a crit. It might still be possible for Lara to not kill her. Also, since this is the most convenient time to talk about it, Dithorba (also known as Deetvar) appeared as a mini-boss in Chapter 4 of Genealogy, where she was indeed killed by ZIGLUDO-CHAN-SAN-SAMA-SENPAI-SAN-SAMA-SAN-SENPAI-CHAN, but not before leading Erinys's sister, Annand (aka Mahnya), to her death. Anyway, that's enough trivia. Re-load. Karin still needs to talk to Misha in order to make her recruitable. What happens if I move Dean away from the flock and leave Karin trapped in the human cage? They just... stay there. Karin frees herself from the human cage, and Cantos away from the cliff. Finn takes a Javelin from Orsin's prisoner, then releases him. After we clear the area of some enemies... ...Fergus tries the same trick by capturing an Armor Knight. All right, let's see if this works... Shit, I forgot that they had Ridersbanes! I did not deserve to survive that! Once Karin talks to Misha (again), it's time for Nanna to... be unable to target Misha, even though she's on a traversable tile? What gives? Ahh, here's the problem! Nanna's Mag is too low! Silly me. After a well-deserved heal from Asbel, Fergus confiscates the Armor Knight's Greatsword and releases him. With a little help from Lara, Dean flies over to help deal with the remaining Pegasus Knights. Wow, Thoron's overworld animation looks really cool in this game. Despite an abundance of cavalry that are prime targets for their Ridersbanes, all of the remaining Pegasus Knights try to throw their Javelins at Pan instead. While clearing out the remainder of the Sorcerers, Karin gets hit by a Jormungand. Even though she has enough Mag to take zero damage from it, she still gets poisoned by the secondary effect. Mopping up the rest of the Pegasus Knights. After that incident with Nanna and Misha, it looks like the Magic Ring isn't useless after all. Not much left to do but move toward those houses before the Pirates get to them. ...not that they have any chance of reaching them anytime within the next fifty billion years. After Dean and Karin finish off the remainder of the Sorcerers, the latter Cantos off the cliff to get Restored. ...and Mended for good measure. Next to the Pirates are two houses we can visit. One of them gives us another Rescue Staff, which I send to the convoy because we won't need it for the remainder of this chapter. Time to start aggroing the Ballisticians. Lithis gets hit by two of them, but Pan manages to dodge. That's an awful lot of Pirates. At the foot of the cliff that Moore was hanging out on, next door to the Magic Ring, is another house that gives us a Pure Water. But much more important is the church on top of the cliff. Along with an eerily beautiful music track, we also recruit a new party member, Sarah! Unlike Misha and Schroff, Sarah is recruitable no matter which path you chose at the end of Chapter 15. Like Linoan, she can already use Tomes despite being an unpromoted Cleric. And like Tina, she has a whopping five movement stars, which greatly increase her odds of activating the music note! Now, if only we didn't have to wait until next turn to get her off the cliff... Visiting the final house nets us a brand-new Warp Staff, which I'm also sending to the convoy. When I said I planned to do this chapter like a real man instead of Warp-skipping it like a pussy, I meant it! The rest of our army continues across the bridge... ...except Lithis, who takes a brief detour to get healed... ...and Mareeta, who's going to stay behind to deal with the Pirates. Pan dodges some Ballista shots. That's it. Taking Sarah onto his shoulders, Dean flies over to the rest of the group and hands her over to Nanna. He then gets danced by Lara so he can take out at least one of the Ballisticians. ...or not. Bah, whatever. At least only one of them can target him. And the two that can't go after Lithis instead. Dean gets hit by the remaining one, but manages to survive. He also dodges an attack from Michael Bolting, marking the second time this chapter that I've avoided something stupid happening despite leaving myself wide open for it. The Pirates also stop spawning. They'll be dead soon. Dean kills one of the Ballisticians, makes a brief pit stop to get danced and healed, then kills the other. But as we make our way forward, healing our wounded along the way... Yeah, about those Silessian mercenaries... Saias enters the battlefield! A "close friend" of Arvis... riiiiiiiiiight... Lube up your buttholes, folks, 'cause things are about to get real fucky! Dean gets hit by another Ballista shot, but fortunately, instead of finishing him off, Michael Bolting decides to go after Pan instead. Orsin, who was carrying Misha after she got put to sleep, is then put to sleep himself. How's that for irony? Those Pirates are so insignificant it's almost comical. Saias is equipped with two very useful staffs. But more importantly, he has ten leadership stars. Even if he can only directly harm us by putting us to sleep, simply being on the field is all he needs to be a royal pain in the ass. And if you try to attack him like a smartass... ...it's no good. Dean activated his crit animation, but Saias still dodged it. Just like Eyvel in chapters 1-5, the game will cheese the RNG to ensure that Saias doesn't die. Dean's turn has therefore been wasted. Re-load. After getting Physic'd by Nanna, Dean captures Michael Bolting, who was only able to dodge one hit from his Dragonpike. The last Ballistician is taken out by Pan. You know what? Fuck it! Let's put Michael Bolting's brother to sleep. The less long-range attacks we have to deal with, the better. Karin and Lara move into position! Finn passes the ball to Lithis! Lithis, to Karin! She shoots! She misses! Olwen fairs slightly better, landing one hit on the Armor Knight. I didn't capture it on-screen, but her Fire Rank went up, too. Callion moves to the center of the Armor Knight orgy, equips his Rapier, and goes to town. Now, let's see how many kills we can rack up on enemy phase! And the score is: Pan, two! Callion, six! Fergus, one and a half! Only seven Armor Knights remain! Alas, Finn gets put to sleep. He'll be sitting the rest of this one out. Dean gets hit by a same-turn Sorcerer reinforcement, but manages to survive. Fuck off, Pirates, I've got more important things to deal with. After mugging and releasing Michael Bolting, Dean gets Restored, healed, and danced. Karin tries to kill the Sorcerer, but fucks it up. Luckily, Pan is there to finish the job. Callion's Rapier is almost broken, but Fergus has a spare ready to trade at a moment's notice. After killing one of the Armor Knights, Fergus Cantos over to the front gate, instantly tearing it down. He also clears the way for Leif to get in on the action! ...well, some of the action, anyway. He still needs Olwen to finish some of them off. Just to make NPC phase shorter. At the area where we started from, this happens. Instead of Saias wasting his Fortify Staff, whichever Armor Knights got hurt will opt to use Vulneraries instead. The others will throw Javelins at Leif. Saias breaks his Sleep Staff on Lithis. From here on out, all he can do is heal. Pan gets hit by a Jormungand, while Salem is too far away to Restore him. Muller and his squad will begin to come after us, but we might have this in the bag by the time they get here. Yawn. Olwen kills one of the Armor Knights in Callion's way. Once Dean captures Michael Meteor... ...Callion breaks off the tip of his Rapier in another Armor Knight's esophagus, then Cantos over next to Fergus. Nanna and Asbel treat our wounded. Leif kills the second-to-last Armor Knight with a crit... ...then activates the music note and kills the last one. Karin kills the Sorcerer, then Cantos over the wall. Now, let's see if Fergus can take out Nicolov. Not quite, but pretty close. Now, I could have Fergus Canto away from Nicolov to ensure he doesn't get attacked next turn... ...but instead, I think I'll Physic him where he stands and go for an enemy-phase boss kill. Ooh, that freshly-spawned Sorcerer has a Rewarp Staff! Aaaannnd, he does it! Way to go, Fergus! Muller's gang is coming after us, but are slowed down by the foresty terrain. Callion confiscates Michael Meteor's belongings, then lets him go. Dean captures the Sorcerer, allowing Fergus to exchange his broken Rapier for the Rewarp Staff. Now, if we really wanted too, we could wait a few turns for Muller to catch up with us and try to swipe his goodies. However, since that would require another use of the Sleep Staff, coupled with the fact that we're running low on inventory space, I ultimately decide to just seize the gate and be done with this chapter. ...or not. Saias has left the battlefield, and taken his leadership stars with him! What few enemies remain will now have a much harder time hitting us! Sorry, Mr. Pirate. Mareeta can't put you out of your misery, so it looks like you'll have to spend the rest of your life with the knowledge that all of your friends are dead. Thus marks the end of route A. Next time, we fall into a dimensional vortex! Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 28, 2019 Author Share Posted September 28, 2019 Chapter 16B: Hot MIL(le)F(euille) Gets Pounded By Huge (Rine)Cock Short and to the point. Our party for this chapter. Up until now, I've made it a point to refer to the characters in my commentary by the same names that they're referred to in-game, irregardless of more well-known names from previous versions of the translation patch. However, for the sake of this episode title's pun that I'm way too proud of, I will refer to this boss by his previous name, "Rinecock". One thing that I already don't like about this route is that it reveals Sarah's identity too early. In the other route, she's just some random little girl that we kidnapped from a church. Our starting stats for this chapter. Note that in this timeline, we haven't ground everybody up in the Arena yet. Inside the house next to our starting point, we can get... ...absolutely nothing. Right off the bat, we send Dean over to capture Rinecock. He misses the first two hits and gets poisoned, but his third hit is a crit! That Berserk Staff is as good as... ...ours... How the fuck did a crit do that little damage?! Since Dean is now at the mercy of quite a lot of Sorcerers, let's send Karin to lower their numbers a bit. She then gets danced by Lara and tries to kill another Sorcerer, but fucks it up. Unlike Moore, we can't just Silence Rinecock because he's sitting on a gate. So instead, we'll Rescue Dean (netting an empty level-up for Safiya), then heal him up with Asbel. Not much else we can do but begin to move through the forest. Despite hyping up the Berserk Staff, Rinecock chooses not to use it against us. Instead, one of the Sorcerers reveals that they've got a Rewarp Staff that we want to steal. Since Lithis has the Kingmaker, I move him directly below Rinecock to see if the Charm effect will make capturing him any easier. Nope, but at least Dean didn't get hit this time. Maybe Karin can do it? Nope, she can't even damage him. Nice level-up, though. Olwen starts chipping away at the Berserkers near the southeast corner of the map. If you look really closely, you'll see that some of the trees are a slightly darker shade of green than the others. That's why Orsin can't just waltz on over and smack this Sorcerer upside the head. Believe it or not, Homer actually has an errand to run up north, so I'll have him lead the charge. After Sarah enters the battlefield, absolutely nothing happens on enemy phase. Let's see what happens if I just attack Rinecock without trying to capture him... Ooh, that's perfect, Dean! Leave him right... ...there... Eh, fuck it. There'll be other Berserk Staffs later in the game. After killing Rinecock, Dean Cantos over to the main group, gets danced, and forms a rescue-chain with Karin to get Leif onto the church that Rinecock was guarding. There's one Berserker down. Slowly but surely, we trudge on through the forest. Wait, how did Sarah do that?! She doesn't have a Rewarp Staff! Fuck! Not only did Leif get poisoned, but he also wasted two uses of the Light Brand! Dean got hit, too! Making sure that Leif has the Iron Blade equipped, I move him onto the church. Confusingly, there's no "visit" command. After some interesting backstory stuff about the fall of Alster... ...we recruit Miranda, an unpromoted, unarmed Mage who joins at a point in the game where you already have plenty of tome-users, and unlike Schroff, can't even use Staffs until after promotion. Don't use her, she sucks. Karin and Dean capture a Sorcerer each, with the latter Cantoing off to get healed. In addition to the teleport traps that the guy in the house warned us about, the main gimmick of this chapter is that Sarah will randomly warp around the map at the end of each player phase. What you're supposed to do is wait for her to appear somewhere convenient, then talk to her with Leif. Speaking of Leif, it's a good thing he managed to dodge both of those Jormungands, otherwise I would've had to re-load. Our fliers confiscate their prisoners' belongings, then release them. Leif uses a Vulnerary for the first time in what feels like forever. That's what happens when your healers start to hit the level cap. Dean gets danced and takes out the second-to-last Sorcerer, earning a level-up. Instead of continuing through the forest, I move Lithis to this spot here to lure out the enemies to the north. This time, Sarah teleports over by the Berserkers. Just as planned, the Sniper comes after Lithis, but his friends don't follow him. Dean gets hit again, but that'll be irrelevant soon. With the death of the last Sorcerer, it's now safe to use our Antitoxins without fear of immediately getting poisoned again. Karin takes out the Sniper, then Cantos back to the rest of the group to get danced. For the next several turns, Karin is going to employ a hit-and-run strategy against this Hero, who is carrying an extremely valuable Sleep Edge. At the start of enemy phase, a Sorcerer spawns in front of the church and captures Miranda. Sarah didn't even teleport this time. After killing said Sorcerer, I move Miranda onto the spot where he appeared from to prevent any more of his buddies from spawning. Thanks to a few music notes from Karin and Lara, the Sleep Edge is ours! Lithis takes our prize, then releases our prisoner. However, we still need to take out the other two Heroes before it's safe to move forward. Hence, why I left Karin within their attack range: so she could counter-crit them to death. Gotta love Wrath! Once Karin takes out that Dancer, the coast is clear. Homer takes a few steps forward, and gets danced by Lara. Thus, we recruit Shanam, an expy of Samto from FE3/12. His gimmick is that he pretends to be Shanan, but is inferior to the real deal in every way, shape, and form. Don't use him, he sucks. ...at fighting, anyway. He also has the Bargain skill, which cuts all shop prices in half. And since this route doesn't have an Arena, MONEY IS REALLY IMPORTANT, DAMNIT! Therefore, Shanam will be useful to have around if we come across a shop that sells rare items. But we're not out of the woods just yet (pun intended)! Each of these four enemies is holding something worth stealing. While flying over to try capturing them, Dean accidentally steps on a teleport trap. However, that worked out for the better, because now he's closer to a Berserker carrying an even better prize: an extra copy of the Bhuj! Immediately, he kills one of the Berserkers and Cantos to safety. While that's going on, Karin and Olwen form a rescue-chain to move Lithis over to Dean. At this point, there are so few enemies left, combined with such difficult terrain, that the only way anything will happen on enemy phase is if I leave somebody right in front of them. As Lithis is eventually dropped off next to the Berserkers, Pan moves forward a bit to draw aggro from the four swordsmen with the valuable treasures. Karin rescues Leif. He's also got an errand to run in that same area. Pan aggros the Hero with the Master Sword, and Dean dodges both arrows from the Warrior wielding the Master Bow. He then promptly kills said Warrior. Lithis and Leif move and are dropped into their respective positions for next turn. Since Pan isn't thicc enough to steal the Master Sword, he retreats a little bit so Orsin can try to capture the Hero instead. Unfortunately, Pan accidentally crat the Hero to death, earning a level-up. The Master Sword is lost. The Berserker wastes a use of the Bhuj. Yoink! I take it back. This is the only route where you learn anything about Sarah's backstory at all. She has the same starting stats regardless of which route you recruit her on, but on this route, we have a bit more time to train her. If you brought Salem with you to this chapter, she can also have a conversation with him, but I didn't bother since Tome-users aren't very useful for this map. The rest of our group continues toward the escape point. Karin beats up the unarmed Berserker for EXP. Yoink! Dean tries to capture the Hero wielding the Wind Sword, but fucks it up. He then activates the music note and gets a second chance, but fucks it up again. But that's okay. Karin can finish the job! ...or get crat to death. Re-load! This time, Karin attacks the Hero first, getting a level-up. This allows Dean to capture him, also getting a level-up. The Hero with the Poleaxe attacks Pan, and activates the music note. Followed by the Swordmaster who formerly held the Luna Manual, giving Pan a level-up. Both Pan and the Poleaxe Hero get hit, but they both survive. Once Lara confiscates the Wind Sword, Dean releases him. Barely holding on with her life, Karin finishes off the Luna Swordmaster. Orsin moves into position to intercept the Poleaxe Hero. Bah, whatever. It's just a Poleaxe. Who gives a shit? Once the coast is clear, we begin escaping, netting some unique quotes along the way. Much simpler than the other route, at the cost of losing our Arena abuse and our rematch with Kempf. We'll see if the next one has enough unique items to make up for it. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 29, 2019 Author Share Posted September 29, 2019 Chapter 17B: You've Seen One, You've Seen Amalda You know this chapter's going to be uninteresting when they don't even show anyone's portraits during the world map scene. Our party for this chapter. Ultimately, I decided to wait until the timelines merge before I start using Sarah. Let's do this shit. Our starting stats for this chapter. There's really not a whole lot to do on the first turn. Just make sure our fliers aren't in the Archers' attack range, and we're good. Enemy phase is equally uneventful. Callion gets hit by an arrow, and dodges two others. Orsin draws first blood. Olwen and Callion share a kill, gaining a level-up each. Finn and Pan both try to take out the next Archer, but end up accidentally trapping him in a human cage. This makes it safe for Karin to take out the should've-been-last one. Dean moves over to this tree next to the bridge, and... Ooh, that's nice! I was gonna have Lara dance for him to take out this Archer, but instead he activated the music note and did it by himself! So instead, Lara dances for Orsin, allowing him to move straight through the trees. Two Soldiers impale themselves upon Dean's Dragonpike. Followed by a few more Soldiers moving around... ...then an Armor Knight, another Soldier, and an Axe Knight. Dean has already wiped out half of the entire squad of enemies on the other side of the lake, all without taking a scratch! He also gets a level-up. The trapped Archer gets healed by a Physic Priest. Olwen finishes off the trapped Archer, and Cantos forward. While the rest of our main battalion charges forward, Orsin throws one of his Bhujes at an Armor Knight. Ahhhhh... I've missed that sound! After a boost from Lara, Olwen takes out another Armor Knight, increasing her Fire Rank. Karin lends Dean a hand by flying across the lake to take out a Soldier. With the Dragonpike now in the single-digit zone, it's time to "retire" it except for emergencies. Dean breaks out the Silver Lance instead. Good, both fliers are safely out of that Bow Knight's attack range. Slowly getting there. Finn gets attacked by an Armor Knight, but dodges. Karin kills another Soldier with a counter-crit. And here come the Ballista shots! Hilariously, Orsin's dodge animation makes it look like he whacked the bolt out of the way like a baseball. Karin kills the Bow Knight, clearing the way for Dean to visit the house. After that little waste of time, he Cantos down to the Armory to intercept that Armor Knight on enemy phase. After getting healed up, Leif heads over toward one of the houses (it doesn't matter which one). Mareeta effortlessly slaughters the Armor Knight with a crit. But if we park somebody in front of the gate... ...nothing happens. Hmmm... Just as planned, Dean kills the Armor Knight. Pan dodges three Ballista shots in a row. Shit, this is bad. Olwen can't survive another hit. I appreciate your baseball axe trick, Orsin, but this really isn't the time. Can she make it? ...no she can't. Re-load! This time, I have Dean kill the Armor Knight during player phase instead. I also have Olwen retreat to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the all the men who can actually dodge properly. Now THAT'S more like it! They all missed this time! Pan even got a level-up out of it! ...well, almost all of them. Still, six out of seven ain't half bad. Dean visits the little house on the cliff. This is actually a rather interesting deconstruction of the typical "gather an army to fight the evil empire" trope, as it shows that the most likely people to be interested in fighting the empire are thugs and criminals. Also note how they put the puzzle that requires a vast amount of money on the route where the player didn't have access to the Arena. No idea if this was a deliberate design decision, but if it was, Kaga's a sneaky bastard. Once the gate is down, it's time to make our power move! Lithis passes the Sleep Edge to Fergus! Fergus takes out one of the Ballisticians, earning a level-up! Lara dances Fergus into position! He shoots! HE SCORES! And the crowd goes wild! Orsin advances toward the west gate, while Finn moves in through the east gate to provide backup. We end off our turn with our healsluts bringing up the rear. Montage of Ballista shots and Javelins flying at us during enemy phase, including a level-up for Pan. Some of us are more successful at dodging than others. All of the Cavaliers that accompanied Amalda were carrying Rapiers, which are now ours for the taking. After robbing one of them, Olwen takes him out... ...allowing Nanna to kill one of the Ballisticians. Mareeta activates Astra to kill another, netting a level-up... ...and also clearing the way for Finn to take out another Ballistician. We can also open this gate by placing someone in front of it, but we don't want to go in there just yet. As Orsin arrives at his destination, Fergus blocks the eastern gate to prevent our healsluts from being abducted. And if we have Leif visit any of the houses (it doesn't matter which)... ...we're presented with yet another choice: we can either summon a bunch of green units to the field to serve as bait for the remaining Ballisticians, or decline their offer and get a free Master Seal at the end of the chapter. Since we also get the Master Seal for accepting the offer, but keeping all the green units alive, I opted to decline. Fuck green units. Another level-up for Pan. More Ballista shots. Fuck! Re-load. This time, I'm not a dumbass and don't leave Dean in Ballista range. Everything else plays out more-or-less identically. After stealing all of their Rapiers, we kill the remaining Cavaliers, netting a level-up for Mareeta. Callion and Lara then capture Amalda, take her belongings, and release her. Orsin takes out the Armor Knight in the middle. Finn takes out the Ballistician on the left. This allows Dean and Karin to take out the Ballisticians directly below the boss without leaving themselves in danger. The sole remaining Ballistician tries in vain to hit Lara... ...and then gets euthanized by Callion. Finn and Karin capture the two Clerics. Dean and Orsin take out the remaining Armor Knights. After confiscating the Physic and Silence Staffs, Orsin throws one of his Bhujes at the boss. He successfully kills Palman and earns a level-up... ...but not without a sacrifice. In loving memory of Bhuj the First: Chapter 1 - Chapter 17B. It is survived by its son, Bhuj the Second. May it rest in peace. All that's left is for Leif to slowly waddle over to the gate. Next episode: We merge the timelines back into one! Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted September 30, 2019 Author Share Posted September 30, 2019 Chapter 18: Untitled Gustav Game No matter which route you took for chapters 16 and 17, the world map scene for chapter 18 is the same. Now, before we continue, let's compare the two universes: In terms of experience and funds, Universe A is clearly superior, thanks to the Arena in the first chapter of the route split. However, there will be other Arenas later in the game for Universe B to catch up. We also have two exclusive units, Schroff and Misha, neither of which I plan on using. In contrast, Universe B has more items overall, not only in terms of worthless shit that we're never going to use, but also in terms of valuables that can't be bought in stores. Miranda and Shanam are both useless at fighting, but at least Shanam has a useful utility skill in the form of Bargain. Another factor is Tina. Due to the Master Seal being obtained in the same chapter as the Arena in Universe A, I already know what her final stats could look like at level 20/20. They're good, but not spectacular. She also failed to hit A-rank in Staffs, which are extremely useful late-game. In Universe B, on the other hand, she hasn't promoted yet, so we could potentially use that Master Seal on someone else. And if you compare her maxed-out level 20/20 stats with her unpromoted level 20 stats, the only meaningful difference is 4 points of Skill and improved Staff Rank. Don't get me wrong, she's still worth promoting in the long-term, but for the time being, I'd rather use that Master Seal on somebody else. It was a tough call, but in the end, I ultimately decided to go with Universe B. But that's enough blabbering. Our party for this chapter. This is going to suck. This time, it's not our starting stats that are important so much as our inventory. As you might have noticed, we're bringing along quite a few broken staffs. This chapter sucks. The game forces me to split my party in half, but doesn't let me pick which units to put in which party. As a result, two of my Thieves are together with Leif, while nobody in the other party even has a Door Key. All I can do is reset my emulator and trade my Door Key to someone in the other party. *sigh* Let's get this over with. Lithis takes out an Armor Knight with his Flame Sword. Asbel moves through the doorway and kills another. Leif tries to kill the third one, but fucks it up. We've done all we can over here, so let's go over to the other side. Callion uses the Door Key. Much like Sheena's chapter in FE3/12, we can get something nice if we leave all of the easily-killed Soldiers alive. And as it turns out, being captured and released still counts as "alive"! Just make sure you do not use a weapon that can counter from two spaces away. Lara dances for Callion, allowing him to capture another Soldier. Safiya uses her Hammerne Staff to repair Olwen's Bolting tome. Olwen then uses said tome against one of the Armor Knights in the boss room labeled "Friege", leaving him alive with one HP. Tina uses her unique Unlock Staff to nab her first prize: the eleventh Crusader Scroll! Ultimately, I decided to give the Master Seal to Salem, as he has the best chance of capping his Staff Rank. The Soldiers are only carrying Javelins, so as long as the only units left in their attack range are equipped with melee weapons, we should be fine. The Armor Knight that Olwen attacked uses a Vulnerary. Leif and the Armor Knight exchange blows. The Soldiers throw Javelins at Lara and Callion, netting a level-up for the latter. Some of the other Soldiers start randomly moving around. One of the enemy Dancers enables a Thief to open a locked door for us. There's also a pointless NPC phase, during which nothing happens because all of the green units are locked up in prison. Starting off our next turn, Tina uses her Unlock Staff to snatch a Body Ring right out from under that Thief's nose! We definitely want to give this to Lithis. After releasing our prisoners, Lara dances for Callion so he can capture another. ...or not. Olwen takes aim at yet another Friege Armor Knight. After finishing off the Armor Knight, Leif gets healed up by Asbel. Fergus moves in and takes out the jailer with a crit. Now, we're going to split up even more: Pan and Linoan are going to head toward the jail cell, while everyone else continues toward the boss room. A bunch of reinforcements spawn on enemy phase, including this Sorcerer who Rewarped right next to Olwen. Once again, the Friege Armor Knight uses a Vulnerary. If Olwen can't crit them to death, maybe she can at least force them to move away from the other Armor Knights that actually have names and faces. With Njorun's Scroll in our possession, one of the Thieves rage-quits. Don't worry about leaving Olwen in the range of the Soldiers. As long as she has Bolting equipped, she can't counterattack them. She does get a level-up, though. See this Soldier here? The one labeled "Friege"? As long as he's not labeled "Leonster", it's okay to kill him. But we don't want to release the green units just yet. First, we need to plug up that stairway to prevent any more reinforcements from spawning. Leif and the others continue to make their way toward the boss room. But who says only physical units get to have all the fun? Salem makes his debut as a Sorcerer by capturing a Leonster Soldier with a crit! Orsin then captures his buddy, not-quite getting a level-up. Two of these Dancers are carrying some valuable treasures. The other two are just carrying Pure Waters. With a little help from our own Dancer, Callion captures one of them. Safiya repairs her sister's Thief Staff, earning a level-up. Tina then uses said Thief Staff to swipe a Javelin from a Leonster Soldier. Not that we need any more Javelins... ...but rather so that Olwen can safely kill the Sorcerer without having to worry about accidentally killing the Leonster Soldier. MORE enemy reinforcements! This time the Sorcerer appears right next to the prison cell! Before we open that door, we need to plug up the staircase that the Sorcerers keep spawning from! It's a good thing that same-turn reinforcement was just a Friege Soldier instead of a Leonster one, or else I would've been very upset. Also, a level-up and a Move increase for Pan. One of the Leonster Soldiers throws a Javelin at Callion. Temporarily plugging up the staircase, Fergus gets a level-up by killing the Sorcerer with the Brave Sword that's been rotting in our inventory ever since we first recruited him all the way back in Chapter 4. Before taking Fergus's place as a designated staircase-plugger, Linoan gives Pan a much-needed heal. Lara and Callion steal the only noteworthy belongings of these Dancers: a Luck Ring and a Recover Staff. Callion and Salem then release their prisoners. After releasing his own prisoner, Orsin gets Warped over by these two treasure chests, allowing Safiya to hit the level cap. Olwen takes another potshot at a Friege Armor Knight. Tina moves to this spot to block the unarmed Leonster Soldier from attempting to borrow a Javelin from one of his buddies. Asbel and Lithis take out two Friege Soldiers. Activating the music note, Lithis temporarily plugs up another staircase. Only reinforcement this time is a now-pointless Thief. That's... actually kind of bad. The Armor Knight doesn't move as far away from Xavier's men as I would've liked before using his Vulnerary. As Olwen dodges a Javelin, the enemy Dancers begin to make their escape. See that staircase between the two treasure chests? That's where the Sorcerers have been spawning from. But before we can plug it up, we need to catch-and-release those three Leonster Soldiers. Orsin captures the first one, earning a level-up. Thanks to his fancy new promotion, Salem is now able to kill the Thieves in one hit, without having to double. This is good, because Dark Magic tomes are heavy, and his Con is kind of balls. This will likely be the last time Olwen gets to attack one of the Friege Armor Knights. If she breaks her Bolting, she will automatically equip a different tome, putting her in danger of accidentally killing one of the Leonster Soldiers. Speaking of which, Callion and Lara catch-and-release one of them. It's almost (but not quite) time to open the door to the boss room. We've still got a few things to take care of before we do that. All right, that works. The Armor Knight moves quite a fair distance from Xavier's men before using his Vulnerary. After a few Javelins, another Dancer escapes. Temporarily plugging up the staircase, Orsin releases his prisoner. Sara makes her combat debut. She can't double, but landing a single hit gives her 96 EXP. Therefore, I might leave her here to grind for a bit against the continuously-spawning Thieves. Callion and Lara capture another Leonster Soldier, but are unable to release him because Callion made a fucky-wucky. Looks like I was wrong. Not only can Olwen move to this spot out of Javelin range, but she also takes out the Friege Armor Knight with a crit. She then gets healed by Linoan. These next few turns are going to be a bit repetitive, so I'll just skip ahead to the point where all of the Leonster Soldiers outside the boss room have been released. It is now turn 25. The two remaining treasure chests have been claimed. All four of the staircases have been plugged up. Sarah has borrowed a few Crusader Scrolls from Olwen and killed enough respawning Thieves to hit level 16. Once preparations are complete, it's time to open the doors! Without missing a beat, Fergus, Lithis, and Orsin capture three of the remaining Leonster Soldiers. Leif releases Lithis's prisoner. However, Orsin is left within the attack range of one of Xavier's men. All we can do is hope that he doesn't go after him. Lithis counter-kills a Friege Armor Knight. Lithis gets crat by another, but survives long enough to get the kill. And now Xavier's men are coming after us, including the one whose attack range Orsin was left within. Can he survive? CAN HE SURVIVE?! ...no, he can't survive. Re-load! Let's try a different approach. This time, I only unlock the prison door and the western door, leaving the eastern one alone. After capturing one of the Leonster Soldiers, I end my turn. Just like last time, Fergus kills a Friege Armor Knight on enemy phase. It's working! Xavier's men are coming toward the western hallway, while the green units are moving toward them! Fergus equips his broken Rapier, and releases his prisoner. Everyone else runs like hell! From the safety of the plugged-up staircase, Tina uses her Thief Staff to disarm one of Xavier's men, with priority going to the ones wielding Hammers. It's working! The broken Rapier makes it less likely for Fergus to accidentally kill Xavier's men, while still being able to dodge Javelins from the Leonster Soldier! That level-up is well-earned! The red and green armies continue their march toward each other. Safiya sacrifices the last use of her Warp Staff to send Lara over to Tina... ...allowing her to disarm two of Xavier's men in one turn! Everyone else retreats to the corner to let Fergus do his thing. Ah, so even if he gets a crit, the broken Rapier will only do half damage to an Armor Knight. That'll make things slightly less stressful. He gets targeted by one of Xavier's men, but does not damage him. The ones that have been disarmed are now retreating back into the boss room. The Leonster Soldier throws a Javelin at Pan. Safiya uses her Rewarp Staff to teleport herself over to Tina's side. She then gets danced by Lara and uses Hammerne to repair the Thief Staff. That brings us to a total of four of Xavier's men disarmed. We're halfway there! Pan tries to capture the Leonster Soldier, but leaves him alive with one HP. Both he and Fergus get Physic'd. Once again, the Leonster Soldier throws a Javelin at Pan. Two Friege Armor Knights get crat by Fergus and Pan, taking one of them out of the picture. Immediately after, two of Xavier's men also get crat, but miraculously manage to survive. HURRY UP, YOU LITTLE TWATS! With all of the Hammer-wielders disarmed, I now prioritize disarming the ones who haven't already taken damage. That way, I'm hoping that the heavily-damaged ones will waste their turns to use Vulneraries, buying us some more time. By the way, have any of you ever seen somebody successfully capture someone with a broken Rapier? Neither have I. Right on cue, Xavier's man wastes his turn to chug a Vulnerary. Fergus takes out a Friege Armor Knight with a crit, earning a level-up. However, instead of using his Vulnerary, Charles commits sudoku. Re-load! This time, I make sure Charles is one of the guys that Tina disarms, increasing her Staff Rank. Even better, she also activates the music note... ...allowing us to disarm all three of them at once! Since we know that Marlon is going to prioritize healing, we no longer need to hold back! Fergus finally captures the elusive Leonster Soldier! Linoan also Physics Pan, increasing her Staff Rank. CHAAAAAAARGE! Everything's falling into place! We're almost there! Once Lithis steals Marlon's Killer Lance, we're pretty much home free! Fergus releases the Leonster Soldier as we move everyone into the boss room. With her current objective completed, Lara begins to move back toward the group that we left stranded at the eastern gate. Uh-oh, I wasn't expecting that. One of Xavier's men re-armed himself by borrowing his Master Axe. This... might be a problem. I was hoping it wouldn't have to come to this, but it looks like Xavier has left me with no choice but to waste four uses of the Hammerne Staff in a single chapter. Just because I'm an asshole. Ooh, not just because I'm an asshole, but also because it's a free level-up for Pan. We've done all we can. It's all in the hands of RNGesus now. There are still two Leonster Soldiers in this room that we need to catch-and-release. One of them throws a Javelin at Lithis. The other will perform a weird synchronized dance with Xavier's men. Xavier himself attacks Pan, but does not kill him. As you might have guessed, Xavier is a member of the Lorenz archetype: a late-game General that you need to jump through fuckloads of hoops in order to recruit. Each of his eight flunkies has a loved one being held hostage as a green unit, and in order to recruit Xavier, all eight of the green units need to talk to their own corresponding Armor Knight, with absolutely no way for the player to be able to tell which green unit corresponds to which Armor Knight. Upon speaking to their loved one, each Armor Knight will turn green himself, but it's still entirely possible for those that have turned green and those that haven't to kill each other. Once all eight Armor Knights have turned green, then, and only then, can you finally recruit Xavier by talking to him with Leif. Coupled with the other objective of keeping all of the Leonster Soldiers alive, and you're in for one of the most tedious, luck-based missions in the entire series. The only way I was able to make it this far was by following a guide, and even then, I made quite a few fuck-ups along the way. Handing his weapons over to Leif, Assblaster Asbel builds a human cage around Xavier, along with Fergus and Lithis. However, I then realize that a human cage is unnecessary: Xavier's only remaining weapon is light enough for Lithis to steal. So, I re-load my save state and re-play the last turn. Fergus captures the second-to-last Leonster Soldier, earning a level-up. Only one remains! After talking to their respective Armor Knight, the green units will make their way to an escape point. I swear to Naga, if the green Armor Knights escaping makes Xavier unrecruitable, I'm going to say the N-word. I'm creating a separate save state, just to be sure. Yoink! After Fergus releases his prisoner, Pan runs up and swipes a valuable treasure from Gustav: the Adept Manual! Lara also re-joins our eastern battalion and opens the door for them, but we might not need them anymore at this point. Pan dodges a Javelin from the final Leonster Soldier... ...but cannot survive a round of combat with Gustav. Re-load! This time, I open the door immediately after disarming Xavier, and leave Gustav alone. I really hope those Armor Knight don't block each other from being painted green. Borrowing the Brave Sword from Fergus, Lithis captures the final Leonster Soldier. That reward's as good as ours! With all of the remaining Armor Knights disarmed, we prepare to gang-rape Gustav with everything we've got! Since they talk about getting their loved ones out of here, I'm thinking that means that it's okay if the green Armor Knights escape. After freeing up some inventory space and releasing his prisoner, Lithis swipes the Adept Manual (again)! Now it's time for Olwen to get the boss kill! ...or not. Re-load! All right, all right! I'll use the damn Thief Staff! Jesus. But what's this? If I steal Thoron... ...he becomes completely harmless! Six down, two to go! Yoink! This is fun! Only one more to go! Aww, there's nothing left to steal... Aaaaannnnd, that's game! Thus, we finally recruit Xavier! Now, you may be expecting me to say "don't use him, he sucks". However, take a look at his weapon ranks. Do we have anyone else who's that good with a bow? I don't think so. On top of that, since we went through all that trouble to recruit him, we might as well make him worth the effort. But with Gustav disarmed, now's the time for some good old-fashioned boss abuse! Damnit, Mareeta, you ruined it! No idea if this scene changes if Finn is dead. There's probably a different scene if you took the A-route, but damned if I'm gonna spend three hours playing through this shithole of a chapter again. After an infodump from Tim Buckley... This is it... the moment we've been waiting for! Leif finally promotes into... ...a Prince. As it turns out, the Master Knight class is exclusive to Genealogy. But on the bright side, for keeping all of the Leonster Soldiers alive, we get the Member Card! This'll come in handy later. On 8/21/2019 at 7:10 PM, Ares' Bizarre Adventure said: xavier is already dead Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted October 5, 2019 Author Share Posted October 5, 2019 (edited) Apologies for the delay. My computer's been acting stupid. Chapter 19: The Empire Strikes Back This chapter has the highest number of deployable units in the entire game. With the exception of swapping out Miranda for Safiya, these are the units that I plan to focus on for the remainder of the LP. In an interesting take on the Arran and Samson archetype, Amalda and Conomor can only be recruited by units that are mutually-exclusive to the opposite paths of the route split. Our starting stats for this chapter. Just like last time, the game forces us to split our party into two groups: the northern group next to the escape point, and the southern group surrounding a bunch of Civilians. Also like last time, there's no way for the player to decide which units they want in which group. Since we took the B route, Conomor is the unit that we can recruit by talking to him with Miranda. Conveniently, he also appears really close to our southern battalion. Unfortunately, Miranda is in the northern battalion. It's also worth pointing out that despite his new promotion, Leif will lose one of his leadership stars when Dorius dies. We start things off by having those who sat out the last chapter rescue one of the Civilians and run as far north as they can. Unfortunately, Fergus and Nanna cannot "mount" and "rescue" on the same turn, so Lara has to waste hers dancing for one of them. I choose Fergus so he can also use the Adept Manual. Instead of rescuing a Civilian, Olwen uses her extra turn to use the Skill Ring that I left in her pocket. Everyone else runs like hell. Pan activates the music note, but falls one tile short of being able to take out that Thief. Back up north, Callion and Lithis each use one of their Skill/Stat items while crossing the bridge to the south of the castle. Dean rescues Miranda and begins to fly south. Three Brigands will spawn at the start of enemy phase, but they're the least of our worries. The bigger threat is these Paladins who can easily take out those who were left behind, weighed down by a Civilian because they had to waste their turn mounting. Like so. Reset! Time for a different strategy: our pre-mounted units can rescue the Civilians, while our unmounted ones prioritize getting the fuck out of here. This Civilian in particular is getting left behind just because I don't like his attitude. Those who never rode horses to begin with can just hide out in the woods. ...or activate the music note and visit a house. That works, too. I'm honestly not sure who to give this to. Whichever units we have that haven't already capped Speed are at a low enough level that some Crusader Scrolls should be all they need to catch up. I guess I'll save this for later. As for the northern battalion, things proceed identically to last time. Huh, that's interesting. Amalda's squad is splitting in half to go after Pan. And instead of kidnapping the Civilian, Conomor's squad focuses on Lara. As this third screenshot demonstrates, even the ones who can't reach Lara will simply park next to the Civilian and completely ignore him. Among Amalda's troops are Mage Knights packing Tornado tomes, the rarely-seen Wind counterpart to Thoron and Bolganone. Lara gets hit, and counters the Mage Knight with her Bolt Sword. Along with a Bow Knight for good measure. Orsin gets hit by an arrow, but shrugs it off. About halfway between our two parties, these two Thieves come a bit too close for comfort to that house. Shit, this is bad. Conomor activated the music note. Eh, she dodged the Master Lance. She'll be fine. ...fuck. I forgot that "Master" weapons have a Brave effect. Reset! That little fucky-wucky that I just made actually served a purpose: it showed that the enemies don't give a shit about the Civilians. Therefore, neither do I. Orsin crits a Paladin to death. See? What'd I tell ya? They just leave the Civilians alone. What are you running away from? Those enemies won't hurt you! Fergus moves to this spot diagonally from the tree, and gets danced. This allows him to take out one of the Thieves threatening those houses. However, one house is still vulnerable to the other Thief. Therefore, Nanna uses her Rewarp Staff to protect it. Xavier makes his grand debut by taking out a Thief. The rest of our units continue to rush north/south towards each other... ...with the exception of Dean, who takes a slight detour to visit this house. This is actually more valuable then you might think. Wind Tomes are quite rare in this game because most enemy Mages use Thunder or Fire. On top of that, they also have the lowest weight, which is nice because our own Mages have low Con. Pan visits another house, getting a Pure Water. ...Well, at least we got to see Thoron's cool attack animation! Re-load. New plan: Fuck the Civilians and the houses. Our main priority is to get as far away from Amalda and Conomor as possible. With a perfectly-timed music note, Pan is safely out of Thoron-range. There are two key differences between this attempt and the last: first, Xavier missed the Thief, so Olwen kills him instead, getting a level-up. Second, Dean activated the music note after getting the Wind Tome, allowing him to fly over and take out this other Thief. ...or not. Two Axe Knights and a Great Knight spawn at the bottom of the map. Luckily, we're far enough away to avoid most of them. Orsin dodges one Arrow, but gets crat by another. Miraculously, he survives. The Brigands start to move in the direction of the houses that Pan just abandoned. Shit, this is bad. Orsin is in Conomor's attack range. He dodges the first Master Lance hit, but there's no way he can dodge the second one. That's because he doesn't need to! He survives with 2 HP! Fuck yeah, Orsin! One of the Civilians runs to the north, while the other is trapped in a human cage. Dean drops Miranda off and activates the music note. We'll use his extra turn in a little bit. For now, what's important is that Lara dances for Miranda. And with that, half of the enemy cavalry will turn green! We also recruit Conomor, an okay-ish prepromote if you didn't bother to level up Callion, but joins at a bit too high a level to make good use of the Crusader Scrolls. To make things a bit safer, Sarah uses her Silence Staff on one of the Mage Knights. The eerie effect of the music stopping is somewhat ruined by the level-up jingle. Tina soon follows suit. If we drop the Civilians here, they should be able to make it to the escape point on their own. Finn and Karin have more important places to be right now. We still have plenty of Heal Staffs, so the REAL reward for visiting this house is the "Crushin' Crusaders" running gag. Now we use Dean's extra turn to attack one of the Troubadours. His massive girth completely negates her counterattack. No heal in the history of heals is as well-deserved as this one is. Fergus kills the Thief, gets a level-up, and Cantos onto the house to visit it next turn. Or he could activate the music note and visit it right now. That works, too. Two in one chapter! Out of all of them, I think "Hornswogglin' Hezul" might be my favorite one yet. Nanna visits the house that she warped to last turn, and just gets a boring old Killer Lance. Xavier makes up for his past mistake by killing the Thief again this time. Conomor grabs Miranda and runs for the hills. Orsin didn't get fully healed, so to be on the safe side, he can hide in this tree. With the Mage Knights incapacitated, it's now safer for Pan to head back toward the houses. Keyword: safer. There's still plenty of other dangerous foes to watch out for. Olwen will finish off our turn by forming a little square with Lara, Linoan, and a Civilian. Conomor's men will help take some of the burden off our shoulders by drawing aggro away from our own units. Ooh, this is actually really neat! Normally, when a Priest heals an enemy unit, you only get to see the overworld animations because having only a staff equipped counts as being "unarmed". However, since these Troubadours actually have swords equipped, we get to see their battle animation, which has its own unique music track! One green Mage Knight even gets to show off Tornado's map animation, shortly before getting his head smashed in. The two Mage Knights that we Silenced will re-arm themselves by borrowing swords from other enemies... including Amalda. In addition to being meatshields, Conomor's men can also help us out by taking care of the enemy Brig-- WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOTS?! CAPTURING THEM WILL ONLY MAKE YOU AN EASIER TARGET! The only ones who aren't stupid are the Bow Knights, and that's because they, by definition, are incapable of using the "capture" command. One of them even goes after Amalda, and due to getting robbed by her own underling, takes off about half her health! Yeah, the Civilians will be fine. Dean rather anti-climatically kills Amalda via a drive-by stabbing. As much as I would've liked to spare her life, that would've required putting her to sleep, and fuck if I'm going to waste a use of the Sleep Edge on an unarmed enemy. Orsin and Olwen kill a Troubadour and a half. Fergus gets danced and incapacitates one of the Mage Knights. On her way down to meet up with the rest of the gang, Sarah tops off Orsin's health with her Physic Staff. With nothing better to do, Linoan takes out another Troubadour. Pan continues to move toward the houses, but just to be safe, I'll let him hide in this tree. Everyone else continues their journey south. Despite being weighed down by Brigands, the green units still put up a fairly decent fight against Amalda's men, including the Mage Knight who stole her Master Sword. However, one of them captures one of the Civilians that they'd previously been ignoring (which I screenshot a few frames too early). Make up your damn mind, game. Shit, I can't tell whether or not they killed the Mage Knight with the Master Sword. Damnit, they did. Xavier and Nanna do a bit of cleaning up. Dean and Lara capture the sleeping Mage Knight, confiscate her Thoron Tome, and release her. With a Poleaxe, this Great Knight is somewhat dangerous since we have so many cavalry among our ranks. Therefore, I have Orsin take him out, earning a level-up. While not as dangerous as the Master Sword, a Killing Edge is still pretty dangerous, so I send Fergus over to put the silenced Mage Knight to sleep. Or he could waste a use of the Sleep Edge by killing him with a crit. That works, too. While that's going on, Pan re-acquires the Pure Water that we previously got a few re-loads ago. Another kill for Linoan. Some of the green Cavaliers fall, freeing the Brigands. We also get to hear more of the enemy-phase healing music. An Axe Knight and a half get killed by Lara. I should probably have her unequip that Bolt Sword at some point. Two more get crat to death by Orsin. And another wasted use of the Sleep Edge. Green unit-wise, all we have left are a Cavalier and two Bow Knights, who proceed to rob us of the EXP we could've gotten from finishing off the Brigands. Didn't we already get this a few timelines ago? I honestly can't remember. Orsin moves into Ballistician range to take out another Great Knight. Our northern battalion is now close enough for Karin to fly in and take out one of the Troubadours with her Javelin. ...or not. Dean kills a Troubadour, then Cantos into position to pass the freshly-stolen Thoron over to Olwen, who uses it to kill another Axe Knight. Finn rides down to kill another Troubadour, netting a level-up. Fergus takes out yet another, not only getting a level-up, but also preventing himself from wasting any more uses of the Sleep Edge. He then Cantos down to assist Orsin. Nanna takes out one of the Brigands who managed to escape the green units. Northern battalion continues their migration. Lara dances for Asbel so he can take out an Axe Knight... ...and also free up space for Xavier to kill another Troubadour. Linoan finishes off our turn with some more spawn-camping. One of the Brigands comes exactly one tile within range of destroying the last house. Fergus counter-kills two more Axe Knights. And here comes the artillery! Orsin hits the level cap by counter-killing a Mage Knight. More kill-stealing from the green units. One of the Civilians manages to reach the escape point. Asbel kills one of the Brigands, and activates the music note. Nanna rides down to kill the Brigand next to Fergus. What I was trying to do was clear a path for Fergus to take out the Brigand by the house, but it looks like his movement range is too low, so I guess I'll just let Asbel do it instead. I like it when we get little running gags like this between visiting houses in different chapters. No idea whether they were in the Japanese version or not. After Orsin kills another Poleaxe-wielding Great Knight, it's now safe for Finn to come down and help out. Lara dances for Orsin so he can kill a Lance Knight. Now I could have Fergus run down to take out that Lance Knight over by the boss, but that would leave him exposed to too many enemies. So instead, I'll let him take out this Bow Knight. With two Ballisticians on the loose, it's far too dangerous for Dean and Karin to join the fight, so they go after some Brigands instead, gaining a level-up each. Montage of enemy-phase dodges, counters, and close calls. We also get a glance at Blizzard, the rarely-seen Wind counterpart to Bolting, Fenrir, and Meteor. Speaking of Meteor, Wolfe is equipped with that tome. Oddly enough, he doesn't play the boss music, nor does he appear to have a battle quote. The green units chug a Vulnerary and kill-steal two more Brigands. Having outlived their usefulness, Miranda and Conomor exit the map. Lara took quite a beating last turn, so Nanna heals her up. Orsin takes out a Mage Knight... ...then gets danced and takes out a more important target: a Ballistician. Xavier and Olwen take out an Axe Knight each, netting the former his first level-up. Finn takes out a Lance Knight and Cantos onto this tree. This clears the way for Fergus to take out another Mage Knight, earning a level-up. Not wanting to take any risks, Orsin and Lara get Physic'd, netting a level-up for Sarah. More dead Brigands. Dodging two hits from a Poleaxe! Way to go, Xavier! Got hit by a Hammer? Well, the important thing is that you survived! Fuck. Re-load! This time, I have Xavier hide in this tree instead of attacking the Axe Knight. Also, Sarah activates the music note after Physicing Orsin, allowing her to hit the level cap by Physicing Lara. There we go! Much better. Don't think I didn't notice that level-up, Finn. Instead of helping us against the Brigands, the green units proceed to run away like a bunch of pussies. Bah, who needs them, anyway! Wait, what the fuck? Lara is asleep?! How the fuck did that happen? Ah. Now we have two targets that we want to capture. Finn kills the remaining Ballistician, gets a level-up, and Cantos two tiles to the left to plug up one of the enemy spawn points. It's at this point that the game's indecisiveness as to whether or not having a long-range tome equipped counts as being "unarmed" starts becoming a real pain in the ass, as Fergus falls just short of capturing one of the Blizzard Bishops. Orsin is able to cover for him, but he could've spent his turn going after Wolfe. Olwen attempts to take out one of the Generals in front of the boss. That wasn't very smart. Re-load! Via a rescue chain involving Olwen, Nanna, and Leif, Lara gets whisked away to safety to get healed and Restored, netting a level-up for Salem. After getting a level-up from killing one of the Brigands, Dean Cantos a few tiles south to plug up one of their spawn points. After Linoan clears the way, Karin does the same. There is now only one spot left for the Brigands to spawn from, and it's right in the middle of our two fliers. After spending the entirety of this chapter visiting houses and hiding in the woods, Pan finally gets some action by killing a Bow Knight. Followed by Asbel breaking his Fire Tome with a crit. After Sarah tops off Fergus's HP, now it's Lithis's turn to hide in the woods. Despite being weighed down by the Bishop, Orsin is still able to shrug off this many attacks, inlcuding a Blizzard, and two hits from the Master Lance! Fuck yeah, Orsin! Not wanting to be left out, Finn and Fergus also make it out unscathed, netting a level-up for the latter. Ah, so he does have a battle quote. Wolfe lands a hit on Orsin with Thoron, but gets hit by a double-crit from the Bhuj in retaliation! If Orsin hadn't captured the Bishop, Wolfe would be dead for sure. Two more Civilians reach the escape point. Only one more to go! Sacrificing two uses of his Brave Lance, Finn captures the remaining Bishop, gets a level-up, and Cantos back to his post. Minus the capturing part, Olwen does the same thing, plugging up another spawn point. Asbel is able to take out a Bow Knight and plug up a spawn point without needing Canto. Moving onto the tree directly below Wolfe, Orsin confiscates his prisoner's belongings, and lets him go. Now, can Fergus finish what Orsin started? YES HE CAN...'t... fucking Pavise. At this point the biggest threats are the Generals with Master Lances, but they refuse to move. Callion comes down to decapitate a Lance Knight, safely remaining out of their reach. Salem takes a few steps south and gives Orsin a well-deserved Physic... ...then gets danced and does the same for Fergus, earning a level-up. After Dean clears the way, Linoan tops off Orsin's health. By this time next turn, she'll be able to plug up the remaining spawn point for the Brigands. Aww yeah, now it's party time. Wolfe wastes his turn chugging a Vulnerary. Another enemy-phase combat montage, featuring not one, but two level-ups for Pan! The freshly-spawned Brigand doesn't even bother to try attacking us. He knows he's fucked. After confiscating the belongings of Finn's prisoner, Fergus lets him go. Conveniently, this also puts him on another enemy spawn point. Nanna and Callion soon follow, with the former healing up Pan with her Physic Staff. So close, and yet so far... With a perfectly-timed music note, Assblaster Asbel kills a Lance Knight and a Bow Knight without having to move from his current spawn-blocking position. Finn gets another level-up from a drive-by stabbing, but is unable to Canto back to his post. But that's okay, because even if an enemy did spawn from that empty spot, they would be trapped in a human cage. Salem gets a level-up from killing the last Master Lance General with a crit. Ditto for Xavier, re-earning his first level-up that he lost a few timelines ago. Now it's time for Lithis to move to this spot... ...get danced by Lara (activating the music note in the process)... ...aaaaannnnnd, yoink! Wolfe then gets taken out by a double-Thoron, putting Olwen at the level cap! She then Cantos next to Nanna to plug up the remaining spawn point. Lara dances for Xavier so he can weaken a Lance Knight for Pan to kill. Once Orsin plugs up the final spawn point, we've pretty much won. Which means that we spent the entire chapter moving these people down south for nothing. The two remaining Troubadours have only Heal Staffs on them, so all they can do is run in terror. I hope those green units disarmed their Brigands before bringing them into the house. Since Xavier is our newest recruit, I'm going to spend a few turns letting him beat up the Troubadours for EXP. By letting them heal each other, we can continue this process until their Heal Staffs break. Have I really resorted to boss abuse against a pair of unarmed Troubadours? Yes, yes I have. On the way back home, Leif discovers a house that we missed on our way down. The Pure Water is nothing special, but that's actually a rather sad song accompanied by Sarah's theme. Now, allow me to ruin it by pointing out that the lyrics also match up almost perfectly with the tune of the Cartoon Planet theme song. Before we hightail it out of here, we need to wait a few more turns for the reinforcements to stop trying to spawn. Salem manages to squeeze out enough Staff abuse for one last level-up. Okay, now it's safe to move off the spawn points. Here, have some unique escape quotes that I may or may not have shown off already. After a week of computer problems, we finally claim our reward: some character development for Leif, and a new look at the public's perception of the legacy of ZIGLUDO-CHAN-SAN-SAMA-SENPAI-SAN-SAMA-SAN-SENPAI-CHAN. For ensuring the four Civilians escaped, we get a free Master Seal. Unlike other rewards, the game doesn't bother to show us the icon of it being sent to our inventory. Edited September 6, 2020 by Tyranogre Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted October 7, 2019 Author Share Posted October 7, 2019 Chapter 20: Bharat: Cultural Learnings of Leonster for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Friege Our party for this chapter. Finn and our fliers are in time-out. Reinhardt finally makes his first on-screen appearance! If any of the names brought up in this conversation sound familiar (different translations notwithstanding), they should! This chapter takes place during Chapter 7 of Genealogy, when Seliph and pals fought their way through the desert to rescue our sorry asses. Let's do this. Our starting stats for this chapter. Here, I've tried to position four screenshots in a way that gives you an idea of what the overall map looks like. After two consecutive chapters of forcing us to split into two separate parties, now the game has scattered our entire army all over the place, without allowing us to have any input over who goes where. It's stupid, it sucks, and I don't like it. Right beneath the four above screenshots is the enemy party, composed entirely of Armor Knights and Generals. And as one final "fuck you" from Kaga, they also give us yet another Arena on a map with a 15-turn time limit. But fuck that noise. I'm resetting the game and giving Door Keys to anyone who spawns next to a door. ...or not. Our first turn is spent either opening doors, or moving people into position to open doors. Sacrificing the last use of her Unlock Staff, Tina not only increases her Staff Rank, but also nabs the contents of the only treasure chest on the map: a Master Seal! Speaking of which, Mareeta uses the one that we got last time. Nothing else we can do but have anyone adjacent to an open door move outside. What's up with these guys in the northeast corner? Are they prisoners? If so, why didn't Augustus confiscate their weapons? OH SHIT, THEY'VE GOT DOOR KEYS! RUN FOR IT! I was going to have Lara dance for Lithis so he could open that side door, but he activated the music note and did it himself. That's okay, she can dance for Leif instead... ...and then activate her own music note and end up dancing for Lithis anyway. This enables Fergus to exit the castle and mount his horse. Pan opens the door on the east side... ...then activates the music note and kills an Armor Knight. Orsin, Olwen, and Salem move into position. Tina catches up with her Universe A counterpart, and activates the music note again. We now only have two main party members that have yet to promote. The boss, Bharat, is holding the final Crusader Scroll, which we want to steal from him. But for some reason, the game won't let Tina use her Thief Staff on him. What gives? Tina's Mag is capped! Nanna uses her Rewarp Staff to teleport herself to this house on the other side of a locked door. With nothing better to do, Asbel kills one of the prisoners... that sounded a lot less like a war crime inside my head. We end off our turn with Mareeta and Callion still stuck. Errr... what are you guys doing? Can't you see the giant cracks in the walls? This guy at least tried to do something by attacking Orsin, but none of his friends seem to have gotten the memo. Nanna visits the house that she just teleported to, netting a Silence Staff. Lithis releases Callion and Mareeta, allowing the former to mount his horse and take out an Armor Knight. Fergus follows suit, and Cantos toward Bharat. With a little help from Lara, Mareeta makes her grand debut as a Swordmaster, killing an Armor Knight with an aerial uppercut! Orsin moves in to take out one of Bharat's guards, but not Bharat himself. Let's give the Bhuj a break for a while. Olwen exits the castle and mounts her horse. Now that I know we're running low on Door Keys, Pan activates the music note and steals two of them, netting a level-up and a Move increase. Asbel commits another war crime. At the start of enemy phase, a shitload of enemies will spawn. Fergus breaks his Rapier, resulting in him taking quite a beating. He manages to survive, though. This is why I had Orsin unequip the Bhuj. Pan's no slouch, either, leaving an Armor Knight alive with one HP in exchange for increasing his Sword Rank. Followed by a shitload more kills. But just as Salem is about to counterattack, my emulator crashes. Despite repeating the previous timeline down to individual button presses, the RNG still causes things to turn out slightly differently. For example: here, Salem dodged the Armor Knight's attack, whereas before, he got hit. Orsin is also completely unharmed by the time the Generals start throwing Master Lances at him, whereas before, he had taken a hit at some point. One of the enemy Bishops has a copy of Tina's Unlock Staff, which he attempts to use to free the prisoners, but misses. His brother, however, has another copy, and actually succeeds. Either way, we now have at least two targets that we want to capture. Salem heals Pan, maxing out his Staff Rank. Pan disarms the Bishop so he can be captured next turn. Fergus captures the other Bishop and Cantos back toward the group. Nanna has one more errand to run before she Rewarps back into the fray. Olwen kills a Priest. We have plenty of Heal Staffs already, and capturing them would just weigh us down. Moving diagonally from Bharat, Orsin takes out one of the Master Lance Generals... ...allowing Lithis to move over, get danced by Lara, aaaannnnd... Yoi-- --nk... fucking movement range. Callion takes out another Armor Knight, increasing his Sword Rank. Tina exchanges her broken Unlock Staff for a new one. She then activates the music note, allowing Linoan to get a refund with interest. Since the prisoners have been released, it's no longer a war crime for Asbel to kill them. Especially not if they fight back. Some of the unpromoted Armor Knights proceed to completely ignore us. Orsin decapitates yet another Master Lance General. What do you intend to gain from doing this? All you're doing is sparing Nanna a use of her Rewarp Staff. Orsin aggros the boss, taking one of the Master Axe's two hits. Okay, for real this time: Yoink! I'll also be taking that, thank you. There's only one remaining fog of war chapter left in the game, so I'll have Nanna buy us a few more Tor-- --ches... Alas, unlike other games, you can't send things directly to the convoy after buying them from the Vendor. After releasing his prisoner, Fergus activates the music note and takes out an Armor Knight. Believe it or not, this is Leif's grand debut in his promoted class. A single Priest is enough to send him over halfway to a level-up. Pan captures the Bishop, allowing Olwen to take the Unlock Staff. All right, Orsin, let's send Bharat back home to Kazakhstan! ...you didn't see that. Re-load! Let's try the Bhuj instead. Better, but still not a kill. Maybe Olwen can finish him off? *teleports behind u* *unzips katana* pssssh... nothin personnel kid. With Bharat and his leadership stars out of the picture, let's go nuts! Callion gets another level-up. Ultimately, I decide to have Nanna sell her Iron Sword and Heal Staff to make room for the Torches. Though, as I type this, I realize that I could've just sent her to the convoy next door instead. Oh well... But don't think we're done just yet. A shitload of Mages will spawn on enemy phase. We've still got nine more turns of this before we're out of here. With no more prisoners to kill, Asbel moves towards the exit to help us deal with the Mages. What follows is a Mage killing spree, featuring Leif's first promoted level-up. Also, one last Armor Knight. Moving safely out of capture range, Tina uses the Fortify Staff, earning her first promoted level-up (in this timeline, anyway). After robbing Pan's prisoner, Lithis lets him go. We've pretty much got this in the bag. While Olwen and Asbel deal with the Mages, everyone else is going to form a line along the bottom of the map to prevent any more from spawning. What the hell?! How can Ballisticians be reinforcements?! They can't even move! Whatever. At least now the Mages are dead. After a bit more Staff abuse from Salem, Mareeta, Fergus, and Pan take out the Ballisticians... ...which are soon replaced by more Ballisticians. After a brief fucky-wucky, I re-load and move Linoan up north out of Ballistician range. There we go, much better. After Salem gets healed, he, Fergus, and Pan take out the Ballisticians, netting level-ups for the latter two. For the remainder of the chapter, it just cuts straight from selecting "End" to "Player Phase". No idea whether this cutscene changes if Nanna is dead. Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted October 10, 2019 Author Share Posted October 10, 2019 Chapter 21: The Virgin Leif VS The Chad Seliph If you're familiar with FE4, you might recognize this event where King Blume was fought as a boss in Chapter 7, whereupon he did indeed retreat to Connaught (previously translated as "Conote"). Our party for this chapter. Anyone who's hit the level cap in their promoted class is sitting this one out, unless they're a Dancer or a healslut. Julia's brief cameo here provides a hint to a certain event that we can activate during this chapter if we bring along the appropriate party member. I'm sorry, what? Last I checked, Seliph can only have 19 units at this point in FE4. We currently have 44 units in our army, 4 of which are also in Seliph's. Nineteen is not ten times the size of fourty-four, Augustus. Considering that there's usually an entire separate cutscene consisting of the villains talking to each other, I can appreciate that this time it's only a screenshot and a half long. Our starting stats for this chapter. There's a reason why I brought Miranda along after storing her weapon. We'll get to that in a little bit. We also gain control of Dermott, formerly known as Delmud in previous translation patches, and officially "Diarmuid" according to FEH's CYL poll. But until he actually appears in that game, I'll just refer to him by the name that I see on the screen. Here he joins us as a pre-promoted Forest Knight, meaning that canonically, Seliph uses him in enough battles to get him promoted by the start of Chapter 8. Stat-wise, he's basically there to fill in a Fergus-shaped hole in your army in case he died or failed to level-up adequately. But what really sets him apart is his personal weapon, the Beo Blade, passed down from his father Beowulf from Genealogy. This baby bestows Vantage and Wrath on the wielder, condensing an already-awesome skill combo into one package! But what's really interesting is that despite being Dermott's sister, Nanna cannot wield it, but Fergus can. Hmmmm... Starting off, Linoan moves out of the crowd and gets rescued by Nanna. Nanna, in turn, gets danced by Lara and uses her Rewarp Staff to teleport over to the church that Julia was telling us about earlier. Unfortunately, she cannot use the "drop" command after using a staff, so I'll have her wait in this forest since it provides better Avoid than the church. Just south of our starting position, Karin visits this house and gets a Pure Water. After carefully scouting out the attack range of these Ballisticians, I move our four bulkiest units down south. Dean moves to this spot here, exactly out of Ballistician range, but still close enough to be able to take out one of them with a little help from Lara. Everyone else can stay put. Fuck, I forgot to have Nanna unequip the Earth Sword. It's gonna break at this rate. If you're wondering why Xavier has so many Crusader Scrolls on him, this is why: he's so slow that he gets doubled by Ballisticians. He needs to improve his Speed. At least his Defense is still pretty good. So is Fergus's. Unfortunately, Callion gets put to sleep. What are those Dracoknights doing? Didn't their boss just tell them not to move unless we got close? Hey, you! Yeah, you! The Priest guarding the castle! Knock that shit off! Thank you for the level-up. Dean and Karin take out two Ballisticians with their Javelins. Well, Dean does, anyway. Karin settles for Cantoing into position so that she has to dodge as few shots as possible. Remembering to unequip the Earth Sword this time, Nanna drops Linoan onto a forest tile and Cantos back onto her own. Salem Physic's Fergus, then gets danced by Lara to Restore Callion, earning a level-up. Annoyingly, this also means that Callion's movement range is lowered until he can re-mount. Fergus passes a Vulnerary to Xavier, and Cantos just far enough away so that Xavier can take Ullur's Scroll back next turn. As Finn heads south toward town, we once again end off our turn with a good chunk of our army left at the starting point. Finn, Dean, and Nanna kill a bunch of Armor Knights. Salem gets hit by a Ballistician. Karin and Linoan dodge. Dean survives getting hit, but is now poisoned. For once, it's not a flier who forces us to re-load by getting killed by a Ballista! Same idea, different execution. Ah, so even if Karin doesn't miss, she's not strong enough to 2-hit kill the Ballistician. That's good to know, at least. Borrowing the freshly-stolen Sleep Staff from Tina, Sarah prioritizes this Ballistician down here, as he has the longest range. Rather than putting Salem in danger by moving down to Restore Callion, I opt to have Fergus rescue-drop him instead. Conveniently, this also puts Lara just far enough away to avoid the Ballisticians, but close enough to be able to dance for Xavier or Finn next turn. Speaking of Xavier, moving Fergus out of Ballistician range means that Salem is free to Physic him instead, thus eliminating the need to temporarily replace Ullur's Scroll with a Vulnerary. All right, let's try this again. Xavier gets a level-up from dodging. This time, there are no survivors among the Armor Knights. Dean almost dies, but doesn't get poisoned, and also gets a level-up from pulling off one helluva dodge. The Ballistician that Karin left alive gets healed by a Physic Bishop. There's someone we'll want to capture later. The Dracoknights change their mind and go back to their starting positions... ...except for this guy, who flies toward Linoan and Nanna instead. As foreshadowed by Julia's brief cameo, we want to have Linoan visit this church. I have quite a few things to say about this scene. First of all, we get to hear the soothing church music again. Second of all, if we entered the church with someone other than Linoan, all we'd get is a measly Pure Water. Third of all, Naga is referred to with female pronouns despite being called the "Divine Dragon King" in FE4, though that could easily be chalked up to translation-related fuckery. Fourth of all, the existence of a separate branch of Naga's bloodline does create a minor plothole with Genealogy, as Manfroy should've been aware of it and tried to do something about them before he started his mind-controlled incest plot. Finally: What's that, Sothe? You think you're the first member of a generic class to have their promotion locked behind a plot-based event, even though the other playable member of that class can promote normally? Sorry, but Thracia did it first! But that's enough yammering. With the Iron Lance's increased Might, and a boost from Lara, Karin kills two Ballisticians and Cantos onto this little tree here. Dean kills another Ballistician via a drive-by stabbing (throwing?), and then Cantos the fuck outta there. Soon, it will be made clear why I brought Miranda along. But for now, Finn can hide in this tree. By having Xavier equip a bow, I'm hoping to lure the Dracoknights into attacking him with their Ridersbanes, which, unlike our cavalry, he isn't weak to. More level-ups for our healsluts. With the Ballisticians out of the picture, it's now safe to move south from our starting position. Just to be on the safe side, I'm making a separate save-state here to see if Karin can dodge that Ballistician on her own. If she can't, Nanna will have no choice but to waste her Earth Sword to kill him, and then break it in retaliation against the Armor Knights. But for now, she can kill the Ballistician directly beneath Linoan. Oh, good. Karin can dodge. The Earth Sword won't have to break just yet. Soldiers will spawn from these two forts at the foot of this cliff, and they're wielding Venin Lances. Yes, my plan is working! While Xavier's massive girth easily shrugs off the Ridersbanes, our cavalry are left alone! No idea what these guys are up to, though. Finn plugs up one of the forts and kills a Soldier at the same time. Xavier kills another Soldier from the safety of this tree. Karin kills a Ballistician and Cantos over to this tree between the Armor Knights and the Dracoknights. Nanna moves in to give Karin a hand. Linoan moves as far north as she can, out of Dracoknight range. Hey, Dracoknights! I've got a nice, juicy, unarmed Miranda here for you! Come and get her! After topping off Dean's HP, we move the rest of our party down to lie in wait. The two remaining Armor Knights commit sudoku by attacking Nanna. No idea what the Soldiers are trying to do. They just ignore us. One of the Dracoknights captures Miranda. Success! All will be made clear in due time. Xavier and Lara do some tanking and dodging, respectively. Nanna avoids the Ridersbanes, but is unable to finish the Dracoknights off. The boss, Seimetz, proceeds to lightly poke Xavier in the chest with a wooden spoon. Finn, Callion, and Dean take out a Dracoknight and a half. I try to feed the boss kill to Xavier, but he misses both shots from his Brave Bow. Giving Dean a mulligan, I make sure to have him attack from the tree that Xavier was just sitting on, that way the enemy can't use it. With so many Ridersbanes around, I have Fergus dismount before killing the Soldier, just to be on the safe side. Back at the church, Nanna finishes off one of the Dracoknights, then Cantos around the lake toward the castle. Karin tries to do the same, but fucks it up, prompting her to hide in this tree to cover her face in shame. We then move the rest of the party down, with our cavalry making sure to dismount. Salem tops off Xavier's HP, earning a level-up. Our healsluts move down, being careful not to land in Dracoknight range. Linoan moves back down to the forest tile next to the church. Instead of going after Linoan, the Dracoknight uses a Vulnerary. Lara and Xavier dodge and tank some more hits, netting a level-up for the latter. ...and that's all. Let's try this again. Fuck yeah, Xavier! A level-up would've been nice, though. Salem and a Dracoknight exchange blows. Finn kills a Soldier, gets a level-up, and Cantos back onto one of the forts. This allows Karin to plug up the other fort to prevent any more Soldiers from spawning. Nanna continues her journey toward the castle. Leif takes out a Soldier-- ...I said "Leif takes out a Soldier", earning a level-up. This allows Callion to move over, dismount, and take out a Dracoknight. ...or not. But at least he got a level-up! Dean cleans up Callion's leftovers, then Cantos over here next to Karin. Despite Mareeta activating Luna, this Dracoknight survives. Therefore, I let Fergus finish him off with an aerial backflip. With the Dracoknights and their Ridersbanes gone, it's now safe to ride horses again. Dermott makes his grand debut by killing the sleeping Ballistician. With a perfectly-timed music note, Pan sneaks through this little crevasse for a shortcut toward the castle. Linoan's movement range is just barely too small to take out the last Dracoknight, so I have her move down in Nanna's direction instead. Soon... On the far east side of the map, a bunch of assorted cavalry units will spawn at the start of enemy phase (which I failed to screencap), splitting into two groups to go after Nanna and Linoan. Linoan almost dies, but instantly recovers her HP with her Nosferatu Tome. Nanna makes short work of both the cavalry and the Armor Knights surrounding the castle, increasing her Sword Rank. Alas, we've still got four more Ballisticians to deal with before it's safe for our fliers to join the party. Also, Bow Knights. The Dracoknight has escaped, taking Miranda with him! Good riddance. I hated that bitch. But the other Dracoknight near the top of the map ignores Linoan. What's he planning on doing? Aww, shit. Nanna got hit by Blizzard and is now asleep. This is bad news bears. It's no good. She's too far away. We can't reach her. I do have a plan to save her, but it requires something fucky to happen. Linoan takes out the Dracoknight, earning her first level-up in her promoted class. Tina sacrifices the last use of her Thief Staff to prevent the boss from doing any more damage than he already has. She also gets a level-up. With nothing better to do, Sarah can visit this house and get a Silver Sword. Fergus mounts his horse and passes one of his Rapiers to Pan. Despite critting, Pan is unable to kill the Ballistician in one round. Fergus gets a boost from Lara, but it looks like it's too little, too late. Dermott takes this opportunity to stock up on Wind Tomes. I already explained earlier how useful they are. After carefully measuring the Ballistician's attack range, I move Dean to the edge of this cliff. He then activates the music note and finishes off the Ballistician! Fuck yeah, Dean! But now he's in trouble! Everyone, move in to draw Ballistician fire away from him! Xavier and Karin are a little beaten up, so they can rest on these forts for now until they recover. Well, here goes nothing... Not only do we get another wave of Cavalry from the east, but two Sorcerers will also spawn right under the "Enemy Phase" sign. One of the Armor Knights uses a Vulnerary. One of the Sorcerers tries to use a Rewarp Staff, but misses. His brother succeeds, though. And from here, you can see that Nanna got captured by that Paladin. Pan and Linoan take out some Armor and Axe Knights respectively. Linoan gets poisoned, but is able to take out the remaining Paladin, getting a level-up. All right, good. Dean dodged one of the Ballisticians. Pan got hit by the Venin one, but Salem is right behind him with the Restore Staff. He'll be fine. Fuck. Re-load! Now that we have Blizzard Tomes, the Sleep Staff becomes less valuable. Therefore, I have Sarah break it to incapacitate the Ballistician with the longest range. This time, Dean doesn't activate the music note, which means I don't get greedy, and therefore don't leave Dean in the middle of Ballistician range just to kill one guy with two HP. Instead of the Rapier, Fergus gives Pan the Sleep Edge, allowing him to incapacitate yet another Ballistician. After stealing the Blizzard Tome, Tina activates the music note and tops off Salem's HP, earning a level-up. Leif gets the Silver Sword instead of Sarah, while also activating the music note and moving over here next to Mareeta. After dancing for Finn, Lara also activates the music note! This allows Pan to tranquilize yet another Ballistician! With three Ballisticians asleep, and the boss without his Blizzard Tome, we now only have one ordinary Ballistician to worry about. This time, I'm able to screenshot the cavalry and the Sorcerers as they spawn. Once again, the Armor Knight uses the Vulnerary, and Nanna gets captured. Don't worry; this is all part of my plan. Aww, the Sorcerers didn't miss Rewarping this time. Pan wastes a use of the Sleep Edge on an Armor Knight that he could've easily killed if he'd had a Rapier equipped. Linoan comes out ahead, though. Here, she doubles one of the Axe Knights that she previously left alive with one HP. She also avoids getting poisoned. She ends up sparing one of the Axe Knights, though. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Everything else is pretty much the same, down to the same level-up. Pan gets hit by the remaining Ballistician, but doesn't get poisoned this time. Nanna's kidnapper gets healed by a Physic Bishop. Pan tranquilizes the final Ballistician. The coast is now clear! Here's where things start to get fucky. Karin flies over to the edge of a cliff, gets danced by Lara, and takes the Sleep Edge away from Pan. Just for the hell of it, she attacks an Armor Knight, too. Dean flies over to the edge of the lake and kills an Armor Knight with a Javelin. Our cavalry begin to move through the woods and dismount, except for Callion, who remains on his horse. Tina moves to this tree to keep an eye on the chaos below her. Everyone else brings up the rear. From the safety of this tree, Linoan kills a Bow Knight and gets another level-up. The sooner we can plug up these spawn points, the better. But not you, Sorcerers. We can never have too many Rewarp Staffs! ...unless you keep wasting them. Karin kills two Armor Knights with Wrath. Pan doesn't kill the Armor knight, but at least restores his HP by activating Sol, and gets a level-up. Gawd dayum, at this rate I might have to retire Nosferatu before she breaks it. Alas, she gets poisoned again. Another level-up! The enemy Mage Knights don't dare attack her. They're too scared. The Bow Knight, however, isn't as smart. Two level-ups on one enemy phase! MageKnight404 would be proud! Of course, as soon as we start celebrating, who should show up but Michael fucking Bolting? Well, on the bright side, Linoan is no longer poisoned! Re-load. This time, Pan kills the Armor Knight from the side, so that way he's not left within Fraus's attack range. Unfortunately, this means that Dean and Karin will have to wait until next turn. Tina uses the last of her Fortify Staff, getting a level-up. Don't worry, we'll be getting plenty more later. This means that Xavier is now in good enough shape to leave the fort and get in on the action. After an enemy phase that's so boring that I ended up fast-forwarding through it and missing the "Player Phase" screenshot, Pan once again puts the Ballistician to sleep. He then forms a chain with Karin to pass the Sleep Edge over to Dean. This enables Dean to tranquilize Nanna's kidnapper... ...and Karin to capture him! Mission complete! But he's not the only one with an arrest warrant! Not by a long shot! With Nanna's kidnapper in our custody, it's now safe to beat up the sleeping Ballisticians for EXP. Another dead Bow Knight, another level-up for Linoan. Linoan is pretty much invincible, so I'll ignore her for now unless she gets any level-ups. Instead, I'll focus on the Sorcerers, who are unable to poison us due to their shitty accuracy. Nanna gets captured again, but no longer has anything for her captor to steal. Now that Dean has the Sleep Edge, Pan is left with only a broken Rapier to defend himself with, which hits like a wet paper towel. DAMNIT, MICHAEL, STOP PICKING ON PAN! Finn and Fergus capture two more Sorcerers. Callion tries to capture a third, but fucks it up and gets poisoned. Dean mounts his Wyvern and kills an Armor Knight with a Javelin. He then gets danced and finishes what Callion started. Xavier takes Nanna's former captor off of Karin's shoulders. Mareeta kills the sleeping Armor Knight with a crit. Karin fails to capture a Sorcerer, but at least she didn't get poisoned. Instead of killing an enemy, Linoan uses her turn to heal Pan's wounds, getting a level-up. Pan moves in to lure the Sorcerers away from Callion. Capping off our turn, Tina puts an embargo on the sale of Michael Bolting's records, earning a level-up. Sure enough, both of the Sorcerers go after Pan, giving him a level-up. Oh, wow. I think that's the first time I've seen Lara kill someone with a crit. She's come a long way. Fraus uses a Fortify Staff, but the cool enemy healing music is replaced by the generic boss music. Thanks to Neir's Scroll, Pan now has enough Con to steal the Rewarp Staffs without having to capture the Sorcerers. He also gets danced, but doesn't use his extra turn just yet. Remembering to mount his horse this time, Callion fails to capture a Sorcerer, but at least doesn't get hit. He then activates the music note and captures him anyway! Fuck yeah, Callion! Finn confiscates his prisoner's belongings, and Cantos onto this tree next to the castle. Dermott captures another Sorcerer with a crit, earning his first level-up. Mareeta earns another level-up by killing the Sorcerer that Pan previously robbed. Karin then frees up some inventory space so Pan can rob the other. Leif then kills him, earning a level-up. Sarah recovers some of Nanna's stolen goods, while also getting rid of a few broken or almost-breaken staffs and tomes. With only one use of Safiya's Hammerne Staff remaining, it's not worth it to keep them in our inventory anymore. Speaking of inventory management, Dean flies over to the convoy to do some of that before robbing his prisoner. Once the coast is clear, everyone else will be joining him. Salem gets a level-up form curing Callion's poison. Fergus robs and releases his prisoner. Linoan ends our turn by attacking a Duke Knight. She then gains another level-up, and is now surrounded by Mage Knights who are too scared to attack her. We're at the point where the reinforcements finally stop spawning. Finn captures the Priest and Cantos next to the sleeping Ballistician. Taking a look at Fraus's inventory, I notice that his Tornado Tome has a weight of 10, compared to Pan's Con of 11. Therefore, I have Mareeta free up some inventory space... ...move Pan next to Fraus, aaaannnnnd... ...yoink! Double yoink! Thanks for the level-up! Karin kills Nanna's captor. After his little shopping trip, Dean releases his prisoner and Cantos back to the rest of the group. Leif and Salem do some cleaning up, netting a level-up for the former. With Fraus disarmed, the Ballistician asleep, and the Mage Knights too scared to attack Linoan, we're basically done here. Karin equips her Javelin to lure the Mage Knights away from Linoan, while Dean carries Salem across the lake to Restore her. Through Lara and the music note, Pan kills both the Ballistician and Fraus, the latter of which by pulling a Tana: killing him with multiple crits even though his regular attack is too weak to do any damage. The resulting level-up is well-earned. As for Nanna? We can just leave her here. No more enemies will spawn, and it would be a waste of a Restore Staff to wake her up. Now it's time to head back to town to clear out our inventories so we can confiscate our prisoners' belongings. Oh, wow. The Mage Knights won't attack Karin, either. Dean drops Salem off and Cantos onto this tree. Karin then kills one of the Mage Knights. Another level-up for Salem. Now that Linoan is no longer poisoned, she can finally stop wasting her Nosferatu tome. Once again, Karin flies away after critting the Mage Knight, only to awkwardly reappear for the level-up jingle. Once Dean kills the final Mage Knight, victory is near! As for inventory management, here's what I'm thinking: if more than one copy of a "rare" weapon or staff exists in the game, and the one that I have is broken, I sell it. As I mentioned before, we only have one remaining use of Safiya's Hammerne Staff. I also get rid of all "common" weapons with single-digit uses left, along with all of our Jormungand Tomes that aren't brand-new. Once we've done all that, and released all our prisoners... Am I up for some bloodsport? AM I UP FOR SOME BLOODSPORT?! All but one of my entire planned endgame party is freshly-promoted, and we have all twelve of the Crusader Scrolls! You're damned right I'm up for some fucking bloodsport! Our inventories are a mess, but it's worth it. Say hello to our fully-powered endgame team (minus the ones who sat this chapter out)! And now, for the reason why I brought Miranda along and purposely let her get captured: the requirement to reach Chaper 21x is that at least one of your units must have been captured at some point during the game. It doesn't matter who or when, as long as they weren't carrying any important items. What's that, Shadow Dragon? You think you're the first game to reward the player with a gaiden chapter for intentionally doing something stupid? Sorry, but Thracia did it first! Quote Link to comment
Tyranogre Posted October 13, 2019 Author Share Posted October 13, 2019 Chapter 21x: No Political Commentary Here, No Sir Hang on, what's this?! A gaiden chapter without fog of war? I like it! Our party for this chapter. Shortest start-of-chapter cutscene ever. You've already seen our starting stats for this chapter, as they're the same as our ending stats for the previous chapter. What I'm really showing off here are our inventories. Remember when I said that Chapter 19 had the highest number of deployable units? Well, that's only partially true. This is the chapter where it's possible to have the highest number of controllable units on the field at a time. Every unit that has ever been captured, and had their kidnapper escape, will be locked up in one of the prison cells scattered throughout this map. Hypothetically, if every single unit except Leif had gotten captured up to this point, you could have a total of 43 units "deployed". However, because all of their items would be gone, Leif would have to rescue them all single-handedly, and if you didn't have any Door Keys, you'd be SOL. In our case, we only have one unit to rescue. The boss, Zaun (or is it Zawn? I can't tell with that tiny text), is packing a Blizzard Tome, which, as we've previously established, is extremely dangerous. There are also three Priests in this cell that have Warp Staffs that we want to steal. But it's not just the Priests that have Warp Staffs. There are also two clones of Michael Bolting on either side of the boss. Starting off, Nanna uses her Silence Staff on Zaun, immediately neutralizing the biggest threat. Following that, Tina and Sarah Rewarp themselves onto the staircases on either side of the Priests. Lithis and Pan move toward the two doors on either side of the fortress. After getting danced, Pan opens the door, with his Armorslayer in hand. Leif and Callion then bring up the rear, with the latter unfortunately being forced to dismount. It's also a good idea to move Miranda to the corner of her cell, to avoid any projectiles. Two Soldiers will spawn from the staircases that aren't being plugged up by our healsluts. By throwing a Hand Axe at Pan, one of the Armor Knights forces his three friends to commit suicide by attacking him at melee range, getting an Armorslayer to the jugular for their troubles. Taking only a single point of damage from Thoron, Sarah slaughters one of the Mages with a crit. One of Michael Bolting's clones attempts to Warp a Hero into the Priests' cell, but misses. The other clone is only slightly less of a fuck-up, as despite being Warped, the Hero fails to hit Sarah, and gets crat to death. Tina uses her Unlock Staff to claim her first prize: a Master Seal! Now all we have to do is get Sarah to level 20, and our endgame party will be complete! Remember that Speed Ring we got a few chapters ago? After last chapter's Arena abuse session, Nanna was the member of our party with the lowest Speed. She is now tied with a buttload of other people for highest Speed. Why the fuck did Kaga lower the stat cap back down to 20 when Genealogy let it go up to 30 (potentially higher with certain holy weapons)? Lithis opens the door on the east side. Callion kills an Armor Knight, clearing the way for Pan to enter the fortress and open another door. He then activates the music note and moves toward the Priests' cell, being careful not to park in Thoron range. Leif and Lara then kill the Armor Knight lurking behind the door that Pan just opened. Lithis pulls off the same trick that Pan did with the Hand Axe Armor Knight and his buddies. He takes quite a bit of damage, however. A Hero and a Sniper get Warped over to attempt to kill Lithis, but he manages to escape with his life. I failed to screenshot the battle screen, so here's the Hero greyed-out, and the Sniper out of range. This is the first time I remember ever using Tina in combat. She kills one of the Mages with a crit. Sarah moves to the other staircase to prevent reinforcements from spawning. Leif activates the music note and unlocks the door to Miranda's cell. Callion and Lara take out two Soldiers. While not really a serious threat, they're still an annoyance, so I'm planning to have Callion plug up that staircase to stop them from spawning. Lithis breaks out his Flame Sword so he can counterattack on enemy phase. Since Nanna doesn't have any regular Heal Staffs on her right now, she wastes a use of her Fortify Staff to heal Lithis's wounds. Lithis moves into the attack range of these two Armor Knights, once again avoiding Thoron range. Miranda is technically free to go, but right now it's a bit too dangerous to move her out of her cell. Pan takes out the Armor Knight that doesn't throw a Hand Axe at him. Leif dodges the Hand Axes thrown at him by the Armor Knights guarding Miranda's cell. Lithis kills the Hero, but leaves the Soldier alive with one HP. Two Snipers get warped in, but are unable to move to a tile where they can attack Lithis. Once Tina kills the final Mage, it's now safe for Pan to kill the Armor Knight without having to worry about getting Thoron'd to death. As for Lithis? I'll just let him sit here. As long as there's an enemy two tiles above him, he'll only need to avoid one attack per turn. After killing another Soldier, Callion finally plugs up one of their spawn points. Nanna uses Fortify again to top off Lithis's health. Leif tries to kill an Armor Knight, but fucks it up. Said Armor Knight promptly uses a Vulnerary. Lithis kills two Soldiers, dodges two Boltings, and cuts a Sniper's HP in half, all without taking any damage! Fuck yeah, Lithis! And once again, only one Sniper is able to attack him. As Pan opens the door to the Priests' cell, Lara begins to move toward Leif to give him a hand with the Armor Knights. Now that's more like it, Leif! I think I'll end my turn early this time. Michael Bolting is no match for Lara's Speed! Lithis kills a Soldier and a Sniper, but takes heavy damage in the process. It's actually a good thing that his Flame Sword missed here, because if that Sniper had died, another one would've been able to attack, possibly killing him. Alas, both of Michael Bolting's clones have now broken their Warp Staffs, which means stealing them would be pointless. Pan attacks the Hero that just got Warped in, but only takes off about half of his health. With only two Snipers left, it's now safe for Nanna and Lithis to just kill them at melee range. Only a few Armor Knights remain before it's safe for Miranda to make her escape. Tina ends off our turn by giving Lithis a much-needed heal. No longer able to Warp in other units to do their dirty work, Michael Bolting's clones are reduced to attacking us themselves, to no success. Two Soldiers throw a Javelin at Nanna and get killed by Lithis. The Hero that just spawned from the staircase in the middle of the map tries in vain to throw a Hand Axe at Lara. The other Hero that Pan weakened gets crat to death by Sarah, granting her first level-up as a Sage. The second-to-last Armor Knight moves away from Leif to fail at hitting Lara... ...and is then killed by Leif. So is the last one. Pan is going to spend the next few turns capturing these Priests so Tina and Sarah can claim their staffs. While that's going on, the coast is almost clear for Miranda to make her escape. Leaving Nanna to take out the Soldiers, Lithis moves towards another door leading to the center of the map. I'm a dumbass. Re-load! This time, Leif activates the music note between killing the two Armor Knights, which leaves Lara free to spend her turn opening the door to the center. Instead of capturing the Priests and leaving Pan weighed down to get killed by Michael Bolting, I'll just have him steal the staffs one at a time and trade them to our healsluts. Speaking of which, Tina heals Lithis again, as he has a history of bad luck when it comes to long-ranged attacks. Good! Bad! Good! Moving Lara out of the way, Leif takes a swing at one of the Heroes that have been spawning from the center staircase for the past several turns. Don't worry, guys! Lithis is on the way! Fuck it! We might as well! Fire Emblem just wouldn't be Fire Emblem if it didn't have dodging massive thunderbolts of death, only to get hit by a Soldier throwing a pointy stick. Whatever, at least the Armor Knight is dead. And so is the Hero. Despite being silenced, Zaun is still able to speak his boss quote. Good thing Leif survived. Pan steals a Physic Staff from one of the Priests and immediately passes it to Tina. Tina then performs a double-heal, topping off Leif's HP. Lithis sacrifices the last use of his Flame Sword to kill one of Michael Bolting's clones. As for the other clone? He's out of ammo. If we want to steal Zaun's Warp Staff, we'll need to think strategically. Leif and Lara move to two spots where none of the enemies can reach them. Nanna uses her Rewarp Staff to re-plug the staircase that Tina stepped off of. Even though broken weapons can still be used, the Flame Sword sadly cannot perform ranged counterattacks in such a state. Carefully measuring Zoam's attack range, Lithis moves one tile out of it and equips his Rapier. Leif backs up into Miranda's cell to intercept the Heroes. Oh, wow. Leif doesn't even need to doge Hand Axes anymore. He takes zero damage. Our next plan is a little risky. Lithis kills the Hero with his Kingmaker, but is badly injured in the process. Leif kills the Hero blocking Miranda's cell. This enables Lara to dance for Lithis... ...which enables Lithis to re-equip his Rapier, move into position, aaaaaaannnnnd... ...yoink! Tina rewards Lithis with a well-deserved heal. Now that it's past turn 10, we no longer need to worry about Mages spawning from the staircases on either side of the Priests. Therefore, I'll move Lara into this corner to intercept those Soldiers. Fuck yeah, Lithis! If that Thoron had hit, my entire gambit would've failed! Sarah kills two Soldiers, but almost dies in the process. I tried giving her the Crusader Scrolls that increase Defense and HP, but she hasn't gotten enough level-ups for them to make any meaningful difference yet. And with that, Zaun is no more! Too bad we couldn't steal his Blizzard Tome because it had maxed-out weight. Tina borrows Sarah's Heal Staff and uses it on her. Once all three Priests have been robbed, Sarah can beat them up for free EXP. Lithis makes a risky move, but manages to kill the Hero. Leif then kills the remaining Michael Bolting clone. Before dancing for him, Lara passes Leif a new Silver Sword to replace the one that just broke. Now it's finally time for Miranda to get the fuck outta here! Following a completely empty enemy phase, Sarah kills a Soldier, earning a level-up. We still have a few treasures to swipe before we're ready to move on. Leif takes out one of the Heroes while standing on the staircase to prevent any more from spawning. Lithis is too injured to go after that third chest, so he and Lara begin their journey toward the escape point. Lara may be able to dodge that Hero's Hand Axe, but if we don't hurry up, soon we're going to be surrounded by Soldiers. On the other hand, this is an awfully nice place for Sarah to do some grinding... Inside the last two chests are another Unlock Staff, aaaaannnnnd... ...a dinky old Vulnerary. To the convoy with you! While Leif is busy critting the last Hero to death, Lara briefly takes his place plugging up the staircase to prevent any more from spawning. As much as I'd love to stay and grind Sarah up to level 20, there'll be plenty of time for that later. So instead, how about another comedic chase scene? Hit it, Benny! Wheeeeee! Wasn't that fun? This scene between Juilus and Ishtar is not only a call-forward to Chapter 10 of Genealogy, but may have also served as the inspiration behind Ishtar's appearance in the Splendid Soiree banner in Heroes. Quote Link to comment
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