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Sumia would clearly have a brawling hidden talent. She's not tripping, she's going for the throat
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Dec 13, 2023 06:21
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| # ? May 6, 2024 09:55 |
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Everybody else is giving justifications for their own Sumia takes, so I should probably try to justify mine first. Lance and flying is obvious, as I think pretty much everybody agrees. Faith and armour again are pretty clear choices thanks to her reclass options (faith especially since she can also use staves as a Falcon Knight), but armour feels more "off brand" so I'd have it as a budding talent, especially since fighting in heavy armour doesn't feel like something Sumia would try on her own. Thinking about the rest of her reclass options, she can also use axes (War Cleric, General, Great Knight), tomes (Dark Flier), and Swords (Great Knight). While I don't think axes suit her as a talent, it feels wrong to have it as a flaw when she can use them in so many of her classes, and when all armoured classes in 3 Houses use them anyway. Reason could fit her considering her higher magic stat compared to Cordelia arguably makes her more suited to Dark Flier, but I see it fitting Cordelia (who can go Dark Mage) more. Even if she can use swords in one of her classes, I had them as a flaw to go with her clumsy personality, and then bows too following the same logic. Plus bows are the enemy of fliers after all. As for the other talents, riding does make a lot of sense considering her love of animals, I just kind of forgot about it. Brawling would be very funny, especially considering that scene where she accidentally punches Chrom... Plus it would make it easier for her to go War Cleric. Maybe she could also have one or both of those, but then her list of boons might look a little busy. As for authority, I don't really feel as she fits the pattern of units who have that as her bane, since they all seem to be more loner or anti authoritarian types, with the just plain lazy Hilda as an exception. quote:What do you think her spell list would be? Would you give her a crest? Also moving her to 3H means she'd get access to a personal ability, we could speculate about that, too. Well the minimum number of faith spells learned per character in 3H is 3, with more magically inclined units (and Claude and Dimitri...) getting 4 and faith specialists getting 5, so if Sumia's got a faith talent then 5 makes sense. I agree that Physic and Rescue both make sense considering their prominence in Awakening, so that's a spell list of Heal/Nosferatu/Physic/Rescue already decided. For her fifth I personally like Seraphim - not only does the feather motif fit a Pegasus Knight, but it's also effective against monsters, something Sumia fights a lot of if you count the Risen. Ward could potentially work too, but I personally would not go with either Silence or Restore as neither spell exists as a staff in Ylisse. Reason spell lists tend to be a little more anemic, with 2 being the minimum and even some units with magic budding talents only getting 2 or 3. To distinguis her from Cordelia (who would most likely have a reason talent and a larger spell list) I'd just go with 3 spells. Personally I could see her going with wind and ice magic while Cordelia uses fire and thunder (and maybe even dark?), so a list like Wind/Blizzard/Fimbulvetr could do me. Crests and personal skills I'm not sure I can be bothered with but I will say that I think she'd get Frozen Lance as a combat art? ...oh and Cordelia gets Sword/Lance/Bow/Reason/Flying with no flaws or budding talents. Natural 20 posted:Oh oops, I never got to commenting on Cordelia's husband choices. Lon'qu unfortunately isn't going to get very much combat experience and is kind of a filler unit, so he's probably going to struggle to get anything particularly good for Severa to inherit off of him, and in terms of pair up stats there's the issue of him giving Cordelia lots of extra speed she doesn't really need while she also does the same for him. I could maybe try and get him into a Wyvern class for Deliverer or Quick Burn (or Lancebreaker?), but right now the easiest path seems like Swordmaster for Swordfaire to give to Severa or Assassin for the better pair up bonuses. Severa probably wouldn't appreciate Lethality all that much, but it would at least be funny. I hadn't really considered the effect of his growths on Severa's though, I just kinda assumed that as a sword unit she would be fast and that Lon'qu's speed would be overkill. I mostly mentioned Gregor as a preferable option since he'd give Cordelia less speed and more strength or defense, something she'd like more of in the short term, and because looking as his stats vs my Lon'qu's current stats he also just kinda seems like the better unit to train. In terms of class access he does seem pretty underwhelming, but Severa's likely going to join late on account of her difficult paralogue so I imagine she'll end up going the path of least resistance into Hero if I use her much at all, so class access won't matter much... But regardless, I think I'll stick with Lon'qu.
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Dec 13, 2023 14:38
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And for the Three Hopes take on Sumia, her favored class line is obviously Soldier/Pegasus Knight/Paladin/Falcon Knight. What master tier class should hide her bonus ability is trickier, but with her clumsiness and ability to charm the pants off male main characters I'd go with Dancer, which is a regular master tier class anyone can learn in Three Hopes (and works pretty differently in that game as you'd expect). If you don't count Dancer because it only unlocks late in the game or in NG+, Trickster for similar reasons. Three Hopes giving everyone three separate personal skills, though, is a bit trickier. I think for Sumia I might do something like this, bearing in mind that personal skills in Hopes have three tiers: Active Skill: Daring Flight. After making a dodge, Sumia gains 50% damage reduction for an additional 1/2/3 seconds. Support Skill: Exquisite Taste. Slightly/moderately/greatly increases the beneficial effects of the last meal eaten before battle for Sumia. Tactical Skill: Nick of Time. When ordered to defend, increases damage dealt by 10/20/30%.
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Dec 13, 2023 14:46
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I personally like Gregor as Cordelia's husband, mostly just because I find their support chain to be kind of sweet. Plus I like the idea of Gregor being the kind of father who would drive Severa up the wall with relentless terrible dad jokes.
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Dec 14, 2023 07:56
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Paralogue 3: Saving the Suicide Squad  Sumia / Frederick A Sumia and Fred get their A support, in which Frederick marvels in fear and awe at the brutal interrogation tactics Sumia used to convince a captured Plegian soldier to tell her where Emmeryn is being held. Even followers of the Grimleal fear Sumia, who's barbaric methods of tortue can send a man to hell before he dies. ...there's a link to their support dialogue above if you want to read what actually happened. The plan is still for Frederick to marry Truck in the end, but reaching A rank will help him give Sumia a little more of a boost to her strength and defense. Eventually she'll stop needing to rely on him to be effective in combat, but this combo is too effective not to use right now.   Vaike / Lissa A Vaike and Lissa also manage to grab their A support. My original plan was for Vaike to mostly rely on other partners in combat, maybe using Falcon Knight!Lissa for a speed boost when he needed it, but now I think I am set on going the other way around and turning Lissa into a frontliner with Vaike there to give her boosts instead. That'll probably have to wait until I recruit Libra and Anna and they can do staff support while she's busting heads though. Before factoring in Vaike's own stats, a level A support from a Hero gives their partner 5 skill, 5 speed, and 4 defense. Lissa doesn't really need the skill, but that speed and defense will help her a lot!   Vaike / Nowi C Vaike and Nowi also managed to grab a C support somehow, which is surprising when Lon'qu and Cordelia still haven't managed that yet. Possibly because the two of them have never interacted... Nowi's fears here are entirely legitimate because I am benching her from this point forward. I don't even think she's met Truck or Chrom, does it count as abandonment when you never knew someone in the first place?  It's going to be a little while before my next renown reward, unfortunately. Realistically I think all the rewards shown here are the only ones I'm ever going to get, since every battle gives 10 renown and I have no other way to access it. So I'll look forward to using that Energy Drop right at the end of the game... Or maybe never, because what if I needed it later? Speaking of, I think the boss of the last map dropped a drop which I've yet to use.   Cordelia and Lon'qu strike me as the units most in need of one, since Sully's going to promote very soon and Sumia will hopefully switch to magic when she promotes too. Cordelia might get more use out of it since Lon'qu's generally stuck in a support role, but her strength and base are also higher...  Giving it to Lon'qu will get his strength to double digits, therefore providing Cordelia with an extra point of strength if he's paired up with her. There, everybody wins! Maybe not the most efficient use of this, but 2 stat points don't mean much in Awakening and if I don't use it now I'll never use it ever.   Great Knight or Paladin is the question for Sully, who I'm going to need to promote if I want her to stay on the front lines. I could have also used this on Chrom, but a promoted Sully will give him excellent stat boosts as a GK, while a promoted Chrom will just make a fast but weak Sully even faster but still weak. Great Knight seems like the definite best option, although Sully will lose a single point of speed while also not gaining any movement. She will also gain an extra weakness, but armour slaying weapons aren't super common. Plus with her Discipline skill she'll shoot through her axe ranks super fast, and I kind of need an extra axe user.   8 extra HP! 7 extra defense! 5 strength! That's all her problems fixed in one fell swoop. She's not the only Great Knight I have though - how does she compare to Frederick? As a GK, her new growths are: HP: 90% (+5) STR: 60% (+5) MAG: 20% SKL: 55% (-5) SPD: 55% (-5) LCK: 60% DEF: 50% (+5) RES: 25%   Decently, despite some questionable stat gains in her levels. She has him soundly beat in HP and luck, but Fred's ahead in a lot of other ways, including weapon ranks. Most strangely of all he's significantly ahead of her in speed, but with Sully being 6 levels behind I think she'll easily catch up to him in time.   I could have also used that Master Seal to promote Gregor instantly. I don't think it would have been a good idea, but I could have! Do you know what's depressing? Compare Bow Knight bases to Hero bases, and see how they're worse in every way but HP and movement. You might argue that extra movement is a good tradeoff for all those other stats, ignoring how much better a weapon type axes are than bows, but then compare the stats of the Sniper class to Bow Knight:  That extra defense you can't use in combat definitely outweights having less movement and no access to swords, as well as less strength and speed. Intelligent Systems hate bow users, I dunno. Random tangent over!  Saving Emmeryn can once again wait, there's a Peaceful Village to loot. Things sure do seem to be going wrong in Regna-Ferox, there's 3 different paralogues there.  Well this doesn't sound very peaceful at all. If it's strangled, will there be choke points? I like those.     Seems like there's some serious gatekeeping going on up here. I'd like to think Frederick was just out of earshot for this entire conversation and is saying that line with 100% sincerity. It's established that the Risen are the walking dead, and they pretty clearly look and move like zombies anyway, but this game never really does much with this information, they're kind of just monsters to fight that can be present whenever the story requires it. The only time you ever see Risen appear is when they all come out of that portal in Chapter 1. Is the dead coming back to life a serious problem in Ylisse? Are people burning corpses and staying clear of graveyards now? Is every battlefield in this war a potential source of new Risen? Not every element of a story needs thousands of paragraphs of lore behind it but I never really stopped and thought about the Risen and now I'm wondering what their deal even is. Are there any Risen in Valm? Much like a lot of the other things in the world of Awakening, the only game to explain anything about them was for some reason the remake of Gaiden.  This map is not a village defense map, because as established earlier they've got their gates sealed up tight. Or at least sealed up tight for green and red units, those gates look quite open to me. Maybe the villagers are colourblind? As you can see by the bottom screen, the enemies here are arranged in a very vaguely ring shaped formation. They're soon going to start moving in pursuit of a target, which is neither us nor the village...  ...but instead these headless chickens. The game is nice enough to scale up their stats in Lunatic mode, and they're even capable of surviving a single hit from any enemy not too fast to double them. They can't fight back though, despite their map sprites showing them with weapons. Besides the river and forest between us, you'd think it would be a simple task to reach them and create a wall between them and the enemies...  ...but it's not, because these three idiots have their sights dead set on reaching this one tile in the bottom left corner of the map. Why? Who the hell knows, because they don't do anything once they reach it. They don't even escape off of the map! But in between their current position and this one remote tile are lots of enemies who want to kill them dead, so you'd better get moving quickly to not only save them from their immediate predicament, but also to clear a safe path ahead of them. Keeping them alive isn't mandatory though. In fact you only need to keep any one of them alive to get the stat booster reward, villagers 2 and 3 just give joke items that sell for barely anything. It's an odd way of doing things, but I guess it makes the side objective slightly less painful.  Most detrimental to their continued survival are these zombie Pegasus Knights, who unlike the other enemies can easily double and kill them. Unlike most enemies on this map who aggro immediately, they won't move until an enemy enters their attack range, but the villagers will gladly enter their attack radius on their own. Someone's going to have to swoop in and take them out ASAP.  Oh and in the corner is this Soldier boss who's stuck on some mountain tiles that massively impede his movement. He doesn't begin moving until turn 3, and doesn't really serve much purpose at all besides making the map slightly harder to rout.   Cleaning out enemies as fast as possible is the MO here, so once again Maribelle hits the bench to make room for more combat oriented allies. Kellam is a special guest who after some trial and error I decided was necessary to get Vaike to be able to survive against the enemies he needs to fight.  All other things aside, this is just another rout. Killing all the enemies is a surefire way to stop them from killing the villagers first. Let's go!   First order of business is to give Vaike some armour to wear over his bare torso as he goes to smash this Knight. See that 0% crit chance against him? He wouldn't have that normally...   I was so fed up of Vaike constantly facing crit chances that I caved and bought him a tonic for this map. While I could have given him a partner like Lon'qu or Lissa to lower the crit chances against him with their support level, they were needed elsewhere, and they didn't give him the defense boosts he needed anyway.   But I only made the decision after he finally died in one of my practice attempts. I had him visit the village not realising he was in range of an enemy, thought "wouldn't it be funny if he died to a crit here?", and then he died to a crit there. Was it funny? Not really...   ...but it would be very funny if this Knight died to a crit here, so he does. There's such great foley on 3DS armoured units hitting the floor, I love killing them with hammers so much.   Sumia once again takes Frederick under her wing and flies over to take out this Archer, except this time Fred's doing the killing. There's too many units here on the right, and taking out the ones who won't kill themselves with counterattacks feels like the best option.  Turns out this Frederick guy is pretty good in combat! Huh, who knew. I should have him fight more often.   Lissa also makes a move to take out this guy who starts right next to her. I needed a tonic for this too unfortunately, and there was no room for a magic pair-up partner to help her out.   I did have to stop by the capital to go buy it though. Everything seemed fine! No Plegian soldiers, I don't even think people knew Emmeryn was gone.  Unfortunately this Knight still lives to attack one of the villagers, but he can't kill any of them on turn 1 so it's no big deal. The Short Spear Knight Vaike took out would also have been able to make an attack, but thankfully not on the same one.   Lon'qu moves to partner up with Truck, who sits on a forest tile to await enemy combat. He's not really providing much here besides activating her Veteran skill, unfortunately... Somebody had to go deal with these enemies in the top left corner and Truck due the short straw by virtue of having lots of bulk but no movement. Which does mean that Cordelia once again cannot interact with who's meant to be her future husband. Perhaps she's pursuing Lon'qu the same way she's pursuing Chrom.  Chrom hops atop his wife's powerful steed to go kill some Pegasus Knights before they start killing villagers. "Show sully stats" I helpfully wrote as the title for this image, that'd be a lot easier if they were on the dang screen!!  By sitting her she puts herself in range of all 3, hopefully to kill them all on enemy phase. Trial and error from past attempts has taught me that things can be salvaged so long as at least 1 of them dies. If 2 survive then Cordelia can change course and help finish one off while Sully goes for the other, but if all 3 live then the last one who doesn't get mopped up the turn after will go for a villager and kill them.  Friendless and alone, Cordelia flies downwards to a sparkling tile to mope. Ideally she'd have someone to fight with, but I really can't spare anybody with these limited deployment slots.   Must have been pretty hard to lose a bow this big. An annoying thing about attempting the same map over and over is that the sparkling tiles are never consistent, meaning I can't make plans based on what I get. I was hoping she would get EXP from one of these instead...   Oh no! Have no fear, this was all calculated! Do not worry citizen for I have done the numbers and you can easily survive being stabbed at least once, your attacker will only strain himself unnecessarily with that first swing.   Vaike's hurting a little here, which is what Kellam was for... And he's still facing crit chances too, thanks to Zeal and the high skill of Mercenaries. Unfortunately there's not much I can do about that besides regretting selling that Goddess Icon.  At least he's getting in some good swings in return. Does he deal effective damage if he attacks the enemy's pauldrons? That's gotta shatter their shoulders if he does.  Frederick easily dispatches the one enemy who goes for him instead of Vaike, but unfortunately he does take a hit in return. Lissa can touch up anybody's health from across the map with Physic, but this still might be a problem...  Truck's not so bulky without her future husband or some rando like Stahl glued to her, but at least Lon'qu makes her dodgy. I feel as if we haven't seen much of her lately, it's a shame and a waste of her cool class outfit.   ...alright. Cool! Thanks, Lonk, she couldn't double and kill him on her own.   But let's not pretend that EXP bar isn't the real reason he's here. No speed or bulk, c'mon... Why are you still getting magic? At least she's hitting like a truck with that strength stat.  This Archer has to stick around a turn longer, because Truck can't kill him from a distance. Perhaps Armsthrift wasn't worth losing access to magic after all...   Here come the fliers. Only one of them needs to die in order for them to not overwhelm me and start killing villagers, but one has already not died...   But Chrom plays ball for two and three and kills them both. The only reason I know I need 2 dead is because in a past attempt all 3 of them did live, and only because Chrom somehow managed to dual strike and miss.  Most enemies start moving turn 1, save for the boss and a couple of ones in the corner. The Pegasus Knights wouldn't have moved had I not aggro'd them either, but if I didn't start killing them now they'd only start doing it later when the villagers were closer to them.  And here come the three stooges, moving left into even more danger. They'd be safer if they stayed put. This map is so much more frustrating when you're playing it for the first time with no idea where or how the villagers are going to start moving.  The extra damage Fred took from that unlucky hit he took earlier means that if he takes another hit here he'll have to have Lissa heal him or potentially die from enemies next turn. Here's hoping he dodges.   He did, but I correctly thought a Luna activation was much more interesting to show. Not as big a boost as you would think however, these Knights have only 13 defense. Not that I'm complaining, inflating enemy bulk is a terrible way to increase difficulty...   Standing in that one tile also gave him a little wEXP boost, which at this point just gives him a tiny bit more axe rank since his other two weapon ranks are maxed. Is there even any point to raising his axe rank? He's doing fine with what he currently has.  The boss is still a way away from reaching anybody, but Fred's also got some more enemies to fight over the bridge. These will start to chase the villagers from behind unless someone does something, so I guess he has to.   But Fred's also in danger of being attacked from the enemies Vaike failed to kill, so Vaike's gotta fix his own mistake.   Sully's S support, Chrom's Dual Strike+ skill, and their combined skill stats all contribute to their dual strike chances. A 78% chance is pretty high, which was why I had my turn 1 strategy rely on Chrom getting at least one. His attacks are less important than Sully's those, who I want swining around that Bronze Axe to escape from E rank as soon as possible.   Cordelia's gotta do something, so she can distract this guy I guess. She's... helping.   Up top, Lon'qu slices an Archer's bowstrings while Lissa helps her future husband not be a future late husband. Healtouch is another reason why Lissa's so much better than Maribelle, even with the same magic stat Mari would be healing 10 HP less.  Sully rushing as far ahead as she did has put her in range of a few more enemies, all of whom help me out a lot by dying to her now instead of becoming a problem later. Her stats are high enough that she fights as if she had weapon triangle advantage even when she doesn't.  Vaike's also still pretty accurate with his super good skill and forged axe. Missing's more of a problem in some games than others, after a certain point it kinda ceases to be an issue in Awakening.  Enemy phase is over, and the villagers exit their T-block of safety to try and get themselves killed again. This time only one of them is in danger, but from two different enemies...  Unfortunately my units are currently a bit far away. I could have Lissa zap one of them out with her Rescue staff, but that feels like cheating and/or admitting defeat.   I'll keep it in my back pocket just in case. Both of these enemies could kill a villager if they teamed up, but neither one on their own could do it without a crit. It makes sense to take out the Fighter with Zeal who's got both a higher crit rate and a position that would keep Sully closer to the other enemies if she were to attack him, but she's also not guaranteed to be able to finish him off without some luck.   But fishing for luck is what having that Rescue staff in reserve lets me do, and oh look it worked! She even got to be better at lances for her efforts. She could steal Fred's Silver Lance now if she so desired.   No enemies left up here, time to visit the village that killed Vaike last time. Chrom's got special dialogue where he judges the village for their crimes, but Vaike's neutral on the whole affair.   The Blessed Bow is a stronger but less accurate Steel Bow that also provides passive healing when equipped. It's good against a certain type of Risen enemy too, but that enemy type only shows up in paid DLC and skirmish maps, neither of which I'll be attempting. This game isn't nice like Engage, you don't get monster effectiveness against enemies just because they have glowing red eyes. But of course my only bow user is Virion so this weapon is worthless to me right now. Just like Virion is!  I should also show off the Towering Bow, a Longbow with more accuracy and a lower weapon requirement but significantly worse might. Virion could use this, if I ever deployed him again. Which I won't. Nobody bit the bullet and requested I make Severa Miku, so his one purpose in life is defunct.  With nothing better to do, Cordelia chugs some Vulnerary and gets back to distracting this Mercenary so he doesn't target anybody else. A mostly thankless job, but maybe she'll get a level out of it?  OOOOPS not only did I put Vaike in range of the exact same Archer who killed him last time, he's still facing a crit chance! Wouldn't it be funny if it killed him!!  Wouldn't it be funny if- no, it wouldn't. I am using my IRL luck stat to surpress any further 1% crits.  Here they go, wandering into what would be pegasi range if they weren't all dead. Maybe it's a good thing that village didn't let them in, they'd probably just stand on the gate tiles and not move so they could never be closed.  That's them blocked from this side. Soon I'll have this corner nice and clean for you so you can all stand in it in shame.  There will be no arrows in the back either.  This I don't need to do, but it's EXP. I said I want to use Lissa as a combat unit, so she'd best get to levelling!  With an escape route established, it's now possible for me to wait for the remaining enemies to come over here, dragging themselves through the trees to be slowly picked off for EXP. The boss looks like an especially juicy target, what with his lack of ranged weapon.    What's interesting about enemies in Awakening's Lunatic mode is that despite their obscenely high bases and good weapons, they otherwise do not actually scale all that fast statwise in the game's early chapters. Compare the stats of this Knight to one from their debut in Chapter 3... Only a point or two in all stats besides HP at most. Of course the ones back then had steel weapons while these have silvers so the later enemies do hit significantly harder, but it's nice thinking about how much trouble they gave me back then and seeing how they crumple to Sully now. The enemy stat scaling will however shoot up rapidly when they start to promote...   One last brave suicide attempt by the green units as Sully mops up the last enemy on the left hand side.  ...actually no, let's have Sully wait and not attack, because there's a slim chance she fails to kill, eats a hit, and then dies when he attacks again. I don't want Sully to commit suicide either! Nobody commit suicide please!!!  Lissa slowly tops up my units as I wait for the remaining enemies to approach. I'll have more interesting insights on every individual level she gets once she starts fighting on the front lines.  ...it's gonna be a while, this guy is quite slow. But moving my units one by one through the forest will be even slower, real time wise. What low turn count tryhards fail to account for is that sometimes the low turn route is also a high effort one. Going through menus is tiring...  As the pins march in formation to be bowled over, I realise that this might be the first oppurtunity for Lon'qu and Cordelia to interact. Will it be love at first sight?   ...maybe, but she can farm chip EXP and make better friends with Sumia first by doing this. Wow, strength and speed! Pretty cool! Sully could never, maybe she has a chance with Chrom after all!  She also hits promotion level, although I don't have any Master Seals. Sumia's higher up in priority regardless...  Oh and there's Lon'qu too. Magic again I see... Does he want to be a Trickster?  Oh right, Vantage! Not a hugely useful skill on a unit locked to 1 range, but perhaps Severa could appreciate inheriting this if she promoted into a Hero with Sol, or maybe even if I tried some silly Nosferatu strats with her.   Lissa participates in a couple's exercise and finally gets that D rank, letting her use Ricken's Elwind tome. She will appreciate it for when Wyverns start showing up en masse.  Meanwhile, the pilgrims finally reach their holy corner. They don't even leave the map... It wouldn't make any gameplay difference if they did, but it would at least make this all feel a little less pointless. It's not really an escape if they don't... escape.  Ooops! The boss is finally here and his forged Silver Lance hurts. It would have been embarrassing has I not paid attention and let him attack Sumia, she'd have been killed instantly. His Underdog skill gives him extra accuracy against her, and her less accuracy against him.  But with Lissa topping up her health, Sumia can survive a hit and weaken him for the others to make a kill.  Weaken him... for...  My plans have been ruined so many times in the past by unwanted yet entirely preventable crits or dual strikes, and yet I refuse to learn. New information bounces off of my mighty brain like it's made of the densest rubber.  Cool, I guess. Could have gotten a little more EXP on my other units...   And Sully was 1 combat away from D rank axes too! At least I have this Elixir with which I can drown my sorrows.  Not if we burn it to the ground. They gave me a crappy bow I can't even use!   As much as I hate these losers, this line does make me feel a little good about my fictional heroism. Something about the line "I didn't think people like you still existed", I dunno, it warms my heart a little. Will videogames teach me how to be a good person? Also, look at the texture on that mountain directly right of the villager's portrait. It looks like a face with an eye and an eyebrow almost identical to his! It's uncanncy, I can't help but see it.  Any villager surviving nets you this reward, which equals a cool 5 HP when used. Why did the game that massively inflated stat growths decide the HP increasing stat booster needed to be nerfed? I have no idea. Realistically, you're bett3r off only caring about one villager and grabbing this for less effort.   ...because the Log and Ladle are joke items worse than the Bronze Lance and Bronze Axe respectively in every single way. I suppose you can use them if you want either to weaken enemies and not kill them, or if you want to forge extra hit onto something for as cheap as possible?  I'd wrap this update up right here but what's this, Master Seal? Gotta scrounge up that extra gold as fast as I can, go go go!!!   I got these from being a hero, buy them from me! For 50g you can fry yourself up a tasty Hot Log.  I'm also not using this tome, it's only dealing significant damage when forged and I'm not forging a weapon with 5 uses.  Yes please! I guess I'd better decide who to promote. But first, a look at everybody's stats? It's been a short while, and the next map will be somewhat challenging.  Chrom's not seen much action lately, he's been too busy being a wife guy. Regardless, his stats are very good, and now he'll have Sully's excellent class bonuses backing them up. While giving him the Master Seal would turn him into a monster, he doesn't really need it yet... Plus he's at 91 EXP and I don't want to waste that 91 EXP.  Truck too has been on the back seat while those around her gain EXP, but she's still a monster. 15 speed at that level though, that's not so good... Chapter 9's a challenging one, perhaps she'll be earning EXP on the front lines there? Preferably with Frederick at her side.  Frederick too hasn't been fighting much - how'd all these people get to the front of my unit list? He's still capable of kicking rear end when needed though, as this chapter proved. Really he just needs to stop babysitting Sumia, something Sumia won't need if she does use the Master Seal I got. His bulk is still his best asset, it's nice to have somebody who does not need to rely on dodges to live. Not much progress on that axe rank of his though.  Sully has more growing potential, but considering her poor levels she's actually been doing quite badly. Her insane promotion gains and Chrom's support can definitely carry her despite those, however. As soon as she hits D rank axes I might have her take a back seat to help out Chrom more, especially since he's got more longterm potential. Sully's great now but she might drop once I start recruiting the second gen units.  I think I'm firmly set on my plans to have Vaike eventually take a backseat to support his wife as a frontliner, but he's still decent in combat with his promo gains. Maybe trying to raise his sword rank is a bad idea - he's not going to use swords much anyway, and his attack is pretty terrible with one. Also, that luck stat is causing me issues...  Lissa though, what a glow up. Her bulk leaves something to be desired, but Vaike can fix that. I'm hoping to have her start kicking rear end and taking names in Chapter 9, where she'll have lots of desert to glide through and Wyverns to mangle with her D rank Elwind tome. Tharja will be joining with a D rank Elthunder tome too, which I can forge and use as a more powerful weapon for Lissa.  Lon'qu is still deployment slot filler, but he's slowly becoming quite good at killing enemies in one round. I'd forgotten about Vantage - now I think I do want to pass that onto Severa, at least if he can't reach Swordfaire in time. He's definitely going to suffer once we arrive in Valm and axes stop being so common, unfortunately.  Cordelia's the same too, which is an unfortunate side effect of not being in my initial plan for this playthrough. She's building up speed though, despite the relative lack of attention I've been giving her she's still a good unit. My plan for her is to have her go Falcon Knight, where even if she falls off as a combat unit she can still provide support with staves.  And lastly, Sumia! Saved for the very end because right now she's my likely choice for promotion, but I'll hear arguments for Chrom, Cordelia, or Lon'qu if there are any. Her bulk is still awful, but the Angelic Robe I got can fix that. My plan for her is to go Dark Flier, which benefits from her getting the chance to start building tome rank and raising her magic stat as soon as possible, and having tomes will give her a niche that lets her be useful without Frederick glued to her 24/7.   But that's a decision for the future, most likely after the new year. How will Ylisse fare in the year 2024? Next time: A long walk off a short cliff midnight lasagna fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Dec 21, 2023 01:06
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I think you should promote Virion, so you have someone that can use all those cool bows you just got!
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Dec 21, 2023 14:43
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I'm down for promoting Sumia now, it's not like she has long-term potential anyways!!!!!
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Dec 21, 2023 15:24
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This isn't an update, I'm just coming back to correct a horrible, inexcusable mistake I made in an earlier update... ...which was that I included this line from Lissa's C support with the Avatar and forgot to share this pointless piece of trivia: did you know that this line differs between the PAL and US localisations? In the US version she says "Risen! Wolves! Risen riding wolves!", but this support can be unlocked as early as Chapter 1, which is before the Risen are granted their name in story, so the PAL version changed "Risen" to "bandits". This still means you can claim Lissa predicted Engage according to either localisation, because you also get zombie bandits riding wolves in that game.
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Jan 5, 2024 22:56
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Fast Dark flier on Sumia would be interesting for sure. Who knows you could maybe hit 15 before Cynthia with a huge, huge amount of favoritism.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:09
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Natural 20 posted:Fast Dark flier on Sumia would be interesting for sure. Who knows you could maybe hit 15 before Cynthia with a huge, huge amount of favoritism. She's got to marry Henry before I can unlock Cynthia, I think it's manageable. I don't think the Awakening experience would be complete without a Galeforce Sorcerer kid...
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Jan 12, 2024 13:06
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Chapter 9: Happy Armistice Day To The Ground Looks like there's mercifully few supports this time - I say mercifully few only because I have to post a screenshot and a link for every single one, and do you know how much effort that is? It's barely any effort at all, honestly. I am just incredibly lazy when it comes to that sort of thing. It's the biggest hurdle towards me doing an Echoes LP, the game's so dialogue dense that it deserves a high effort documentation and IIRC nobody's ever completed an LP of it before, but there's just so many words, and you have to do all those little miniature portraits too!   Truck / Lon'qu B Hammering home just how much I've been failing to support Lon'qu and Cordelia, Truck somehow manages to reach a B support with Lonk before Cordelia can even reach C with him.  I presented multiple options for promotion at the end of the last chapter, but there was like a 99% chance it was going to be Sumia, and a 100% chance she was going to go Dark Flier. She's going to be marrying Henry after all, she's got to do something with all that magic he'll give her.  Awakening's most infamous class, the Dark Flier! Galeforce, magic, flying... What more could you want? How about "the ability to take a hit", because the unfortunate answer to the question of "why don't you just give everybody galeforce" is because this class's bulk and weakness to certain weapons is quite crippling, and makes them awkward to train to level 15 in a game where you want your combat units mowing down hordes of enemies at a time. Sumia's been doing quite well though, I think she'll get it just fine. Her new growths as a Dark Flier are: HP: 75% STR: 40% (-5) MAG: 35% (+10) SKL: 65% (-5) SPD: 65% (-5) LCK: 60% DEF: 30% RES: 40% Not as impressive as other classes get, her growth total has actually gone down. 35% magic isn't great for what I'm hoping will be a dedicated magic user, but she will be getting a magic increasing support partner soon! In Chapter 13!!! Maybe that's not so soon.  As for the Seraph Robe, I could give it to Lissa to celebrate her promotion to frontline unit... But if I'm going to train up Sumia's tome rank and get her Galeforce then I think it's got to go to her. With Frederick backing her up as well as her newfound promotion gains she should be quite bulky.   I'll need a little more cash for the last of the prep I want to do. Who's going to use these bows, Virion? Please. It'll be a loooong time before I get anybody to a C rank in bows, or possibly not even ever.  I want Lissa and Sumia to hit certain ORKO thresholds for this map, which means they need extra oomph that their support partners won't give them. Thankfully no Risen have decided to stand on this one shop that sells them, so I can buy one for each of them.  This Wind tome is the only E rank tome I had with all of its uses intact, and E rank tomes are all Sumia can use. The base level wind tome's awful might makes its effectiveness against flying units barely noticeable, but adding one extra point of damage to it equals 3 extra damage against Wyverns, which combined with a tonic is exactly enough for Sumia to be able to KO them cleanly in two attacks. Plus they're super cheap to forge too.  Lissa also gets a single point of damage added to her Elwind tome, but this is just to let her ORKO Soldiers. Elwind is the strongest tome I have that she can wield, but I will at least be getting the much stronger Elthunder tome when a certain unit joins me in this upcoming map.  And that's all the preperation I need. Let's go save Emmeryn! Her name is the title of the chapter, I think that bodes well for her continued existence.   The chapter begins with Aversa killing her messengers for giving her bad news, because she is Evil and that's what you do when you are bad. Could she resurrect him as a much more competent Risen, I wonder? Can anybody but Grima create Risen?   The plot's not important, but I do this incredibly cool execution setup the Plegians have right next to their capital. Getting to throw people to death off of the literal corpse of your own god must be a pretty great way to put the fear of Grima in people, minus the part where Grima is visibly dead and also a skeleton. Actually, do the Plegians know these are the remains of Grima? Are these the remains of Grima? I demand more skeleton lore.  Time to save Emmeryn, whose executioner shall wait patiently for us to rout this map before he begins his assault. I'd have expected this map to be a defeat boss one honestly, but a rout works fine for me. Our army must quickly muscle through this big gauntlet of enemies in sandy terrain, with the threat of a green unit in trouble and enemy reinforcements coming from the rear hovering over.  And then after that there's another corridor with more enemies, one of which is recruitable and two of which will emerge from those forts near the boss. Despite what you may think judging from the visuals, the only sandy terrain on this map is at the beginning. The sand is visually distinct from the road terrain, but to me I just see yellow terrain in a desert and assume sand...  At the end of all this sits the boss, who marks the point from which all chapter bosses will now be in promoted classes. Despite his scary looking stats, he's really not a big deal - he can't move and armoured units have very exploitable units, so you can just bonk him with a Hammer or blast him with magic at your leisure once the rest of the enemies are routed. Perhaps killing him on time could be an issue if you were trying to rush through the map as fast as possible, I don't know.  Mr. Calamari does however come with the level 15 General skill Pavise, one of those annoying skills that's never reliable enough to help the player but always seems to slow things down when the enemy has it. Yet after playing some of the older games again recently all I can say is that I'm glad they never brought back Great Shield after FE8. Getting completely no-selled by the RNG with absolutely 0 way to play around it really isn't fun!  Taunting us with their presence in the corner are Gangrel and Aversa, who will bail on this map like it's Binding Blade as soon as it starts, but present the player with a chance to peek at their stats and perhaps infer some things about when they might actually be fought. How do their combat stats look?   Gangrel's a level 5 Trickster, a promoted class 4 levels higher than Campari, the actual boss of this map. There's only two maps from here until now before we have to fight him, but that speed of his is very scary - even with optimal pair ups, I think he's capable of doubling my entire army. He's also carrying a Dragonstone because spoiler, he's the Fell Dragon Grima in human form!!! Actually he's just carrying that now so he can drop it later. Who among us has not picked up and kept a cool rock they found on the ground? Also if you take a peak at his bio you'll notice a gaffe unique to his early appearence here, which is that he's been given the text he's meant to have as a special recruitable endgame unit in the Spotpass DLC. Boy I sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder.   Aversa's stats are... a little higher than Gangrel's. A little higher in the sense that she could double and kill him in a single round of combat. Perhaps a slight giveaway as to how long Gangrel's going to remain plot relevant compared to her... She's even got the all important Galeforce skill! She's been mistakenly given her Spotpass DLC bio too, except unlike Gangrel's it doesn't contain any plot-contradictory information. Bizarrely enough her playable character bio calls her a Plegian officer while her enemy bio just calls her a "sultry vixen", which feels somewhat backwards to me given she's only working for Plegia when you fight her.  Also hanging out in the desert is Tharja, an enemy recruitable with Chrom and not your avatar character despite her entire personality revolving around them. She has somewhat inconveniently been deployed in the middle of a large group of enemies who will all aggro at once and she aggros along with them, but her relative lack of movement and ability to attack at 2 range and therefore not kill herself on your units as easily means recruiting her won't be too hard.  Last but not least is Libra, the last surviving member of the church's own bungled attempt to save Emmeryn. He can take care of himself in this little corner of the desert for a few turns, but getting Chrom to his side can be a little tricky without the help of a flier to give him a lift.   This is a big plot important chapter so lots of units get to come along for once. Maribelle's not just here as a second healer, she's got important business with the Rescue staff. Stahl once again has left the bench to support with Truck, something he will unfortunately struggle to do on account of a lack of space meaning he has to start quite far away from her, with lots of sand in between the two. Ricken too has been rescued from the bench - Maribelle needs just a little bit of help increasing her Rescue range, and once she's done the one thing I brought her for, he can help speed her through the desert and away from the ambush spawns that'll appear behind our starting position. It was actually a huge pain finding out where I wanted everybody at the start of this map, it might have taken a double digit amount of attempts to get the first turn right. Most likely due to my incompetence rather than it being a particularly difficult solution to come up with, but...   Gangrel announces the map's objective and then leaves to go be the boss at a more appropriate point in this game's stat curve. If this were Engage then he or Aversa would be the boss of every single map until we left Plegia.   Six Wyverns will appear behind our army at the start of turn 5, so it makes sense to speed through this initial crowd ASAP. Unfortunately there's a lot of enemies in the way, and my newly promoted Sumia's got some Archers she needs to worry about.   Thankfully it's pretty trivial to have her attack from outside of their range. With all those boosts I gave her she can just barely 1 round this first enemy. Frederick doesn't actually benefit her offensively here, but it's not like he could accomplish much else on his own on account of being an armoured horse in the desert.  The unfortunate side effect of Sumia's promotion is that her EXP gains are now looking a little sad. That's 5 kills she has to make just to get one level, but at least she's better at killing.   I threatened to make frontliner Lissa so many times and now my dream has finally come true. She can punch through these Soldiers on the left side, which is otherwise way too sandy for any of my non fliers or mages to get through at any decent speed.   ...I did forge that Elwind tome specifically to make this one clean kill, but I guess I needn't have bothered. All that pent up frustration she's built up as a support unit is finally being released...   This one singular Mage represents a slight issue in that he's got 2 range is not slowed down by the sand at all, making it difficult to keep him away from my lower res guys. Cordelia swoops in and takes him out easily, but she's not exactly put herself in a good spot...   ...which is what I brought Maribelle and Ricken for. I love these plentiful E rank Rescue staves, they make positioning so much easier! Now it's safe to send my more physically bulky but magically weak units downward.   Maribelle even gets this bizarrely tanky level out of it, which would be cool if I had any interest in deploying her in any map past this one.   That marvelous display of flight and magic does unfortunately mark the end of my masterful planning, from here on out it's just a case of throwing my bulky units at the enemy and hoping for the best. Sully's 7 movement is just barely not enough to get her in physical attacking range of this Wyvern, and her Javelin attacks aren't exactly strong. With just one extra point of axe rank she would be able to use Hand Axes...   Well I hoped for two dual strikes and Chrom didn't deliver, but that's okay. I'll just have to hope Sully dodges a couple of fairly inaccurate hits to survive this turn, something that's acceptable enough to gamble on on turn 1.  ...ehhh. It's not like speed is bad to gain, I suppose. Promoting to Great Knight did only increase her strength and defense growths by 5 points each.   My plan for Truck is for her to remain by the starting point and await the reinforcements, so she can hang around and bait an enemy or two away from Sully while she waits for them to show up. She's also got to wait for Stahl, who probably wishes he could ride a camel in this terrain.   Enemy phase begins and Tharja shouts "HELLO I AM A RECRUITABLE CHARACTER" into her megaphone tome for all to hear. She doesn't sound all that much like she's not evil to me, but who am I to say?   My Truck distraction ploy appears to have worked, meaning Sully has to take one less Silver Lance hit. She's too slow to double in retaliation without a partner to back her up though.  Lissa easily disposes of her attacker on the left side of the map, facilitating a nice camera shot of the inside of the big dragon skeleton in the process. Are those structures inside of the skull buildings? They look almost like houses.  These enemies are providing me with a regular supply of weapons, which is nice because I am now very skint. Sully's going to be throwing a lot of these.  Now for the rest of the enemies to pile themselves up on Sully. Her chances of survival are pretty good, I think! But they could be better if she had an axe.   The worst case scenario was that every attack hit, but she's dodging all of them anyway. She does have to rely on Chrom to finish off each kill for her, but at least he's playing ball this time.  Very nice... But I'd prefer it if he and his wife swapped levels, because what Chrom needs right now is speed. Sully's only giving him one point now, he's got to make up the difference himself.  Libra's also in a tiny bit of danger, but I don't think he can die until turn 3. Unless you somehow manage to aggro others towards him, he's only got these 3 enemies to worry about.   He could be doing a lot worse. 3 damage? Get outta here.   Seeing that his cohorts have thoroughly failed to put Sully in potential KO range, this Wyvern decides to suicide against Sumia instead. Thanks to the Seraph Robe she ate she now no longer gets 2HKO'd by them, and she easily dispatches them in return.   Libra also shouts to the heavens at the start of his turn, just in case you didn't spot him during battle preps. He's smart enough to heal himself instead of going for potential kills.   Now I could have Sully rush in towards Tharja so I could try recruiting her ASAP... The right side of the map is entirely sand free, so she'd have no issue manuveuring around there.  But every enemy (besides the boss) that I've highlighted the range of will aggro immediately if any of your units put themselves in range of more than 2 of them at a time, which could potentially spell bad news for the continued survival of my army. Otherwise they'll all start moving at the start of turn 5.  Her one purpose fulfilled, I've now got to get Maribelle to safety. I kind of forgot to give her anything besides the Rescue staff, so she can't even heal my units to make herself useful. Whoops!   But Stahl can make himself useful by letting Truck be just strong enough to finish off this Soldier. Maybe that's a Plegian church we're seeing in the background? Having the seat of your religion be located in the literal mouth of your god would be badass.  Cordelia handily disposes of the other Soldier Sully failed to kill, leaving the starting area almost entirely clear of enemies. Lon'qu's with her, so maybe they'll reach S rank sometime within the next century?  All this space to move lets Ricken take Maribelle downwards towards safety. She can sit somewhere around here for the rest of the chapter.  Pushing on with Sully into the red area will aggro the entire rest of the map, which I don't think I want to do. Unfortunately Chrom is the only one who can recruit Libra, which means unless I have them separate and Chrom hitch a ride with a flier then I have to wait a little while before I can snag him.   Sumia to the rescue! Get those arrows out of here, please. Do dark pegasi fly as well in the desert as white ones? Their feathers must absorb the heat instead of reflecting it...   The rest of these nasty little corner boys aren't a threat to Libra or Sumia. Once they're all disposed of, Libra will make his way to Chrom on his own.   Sensing things have gone south, the remaining Dark Mage decides he'd rather die by Sully's hand than futilly attack the closer, higher res enemies. Cool.  The boss warns of the oncoming reinforcements with heartily voice acted "drat YOU!!!". They'll be showing up on turn 5, two turns from now. Incidentally, Campari is also the name of a type of Italian liqueur. This compliments Aversa's name, which according to the wiki is derived from the Italian word "avversiera", meaning female devil. I'm not sure what to do with the knowledge that Plegia might be Italy.  Reinforcements will also come from each of these forts by the boss. They emerge at the same time all these enemies aggro, giving a slight incentive for the player to aggro them early and reduce the number of enemies approaching at once if possible.  Even when right up against the border of the enemy's aggro range, Sully still can't move far enough through the sand to reach Libra without ending a turn inside of it. Maybe I'll just have her aggro them and kill as many as possible before Chrom recruits him.   But it seems like he's more interested in staying up while he keeps himself alive. That's fine! I'll just come over to him after everybody else is dead.   He's just out of range of Lissa's Rescue, so that one other option is out. It's killing time! Lissa can heal Sully if she fails to dodge this shot.   ...but that won't be necessary. The rules of this LP prevent me from using this Reeking Box, so there's nothing to do but sell it. Not that I'd want to use it anyway, I imagine a skirmish at this level would be borderline impossible. Perhaps I should go check one out on the map after this, just for fun?   Cordelia can steal Truck's job of taking the heat off of Sully while she goes all the way to the top of the map to intercept the incoming dragons. Knowing exactly how enemy aggro works and when and where every reinforcement will come from makes for a very different experience, playing these games with the wiki open in a background tab sure does make them quite a bit easier.   The enemy takes the bait! Although I would have been a little happier had Cordelia not whiffed one of her attacks. Regardless, that's one less attack Sully needs to worry about this turn.  Strength and speed, nice nice. With the maps getting denser and the rest of my units getting stronger however it's getting harder to find chances for Cordelia to get EXP like this, I might have to dial my expectations for her back to just getting an S support and a kid and then functioning just a flying staff support unit.   That is a little scary, actually! But there's only so much you can do against killer weapons. Perhaps if I had more foresight (and cash) I'd have bought Sully a defense tonic to make this just a little bit more reliable.   But otherwise she's holding out fine enough with the fort to boost her evasion. Although once again I do have to point out that with just one single extra axe swing in the last map she could have been using a Hand Axe here and facing even lower hit rates against her.  Chrom's also not getting many kills besides the ones he can steal from his wife, I really need to let him be a frontliner at some point. I think the Master Seal I get in the next chapter might have to go to him, lest he fall behind.  Not all of the enemies approaching can reach my army this turn. Reinforcements will be coming from those forts at the start of the next phase, so advancing forward to take them all out would be risky. Perhaps we should fall back?   Oops, here comes Libra. It's okay, Chrom can still recruit him while retreating slightly.   What if somebody mistook a man for a woman? What if a woman wasn't very good at cooking? Every day Japanese writers push new boundaries of gender with these innovative and subsersive jokes. Once day somebody will find a way to combine the two and then anime will be solved forever.  Anyway, here's Libra. He's a healer with a big axe, amputating the limbs of friends and foes alike. Libra Class Set: Priest, Mage, Dark Mage Skills: Miracle (Luck% chance to survive a lethal hit with 1 HP if current HP > 1), Healtouch (heal 10 more HP when using staves) Growths: HP: 90% STR: 40% MAG: 50% SKL: 55% SPD: 50% LCK: 45% DEF: 35% RES: 40% Libra marks one of two prepromoted staff units the game throws at you towards the end of the Plegia arc, and he's pretty great. Maybe not so much as a head-busting juggernaut, but having a high staff rank and strong heals alongside not dying to any enemy that looks at you funny is a great assest in Awakening's crowded maps, and if nothing else he makes for great deployment slot filler if you've got the space. If you've not grinded one of Lissa or Maribelle to an absurdly high level with constant staff spamming then he's almost certainly going to be replacing one of them. I've never actually tried using him as a longterm combat unit - maybe he'd do well if you gave him a good partner? I don't think a 40% strength growth or a 35% defense growth would carry him all that far, but he could swap to Sage and use his superior magic stat instead... At the cost of even more of his defenses. All I know is that he heals well and doesn't die. I've got no plans to pair him with anybody, but he should stick around for a while. Also his class set makes me very mad. The Mage class gives him access to no promoted classes that Priest and Dark Mage don't give him already, so unless you really want to increase his staff range with Magic + 2 there's no reason to ever make him one. I've not read enough of his supports to be versed in his backstory, but I am aware that he's meant to be stronger than he looks and has some kind of dark and troubled past - surely he could have had the Fighter or Barbarian class as an option instead? Oh and that Ward staff of his can be used to increase the resistance of your allies to make fighting a certain Tricker a lot easier two chapters from now... Or it can be spammed multiple times for EXP and support rank. Either use is fine.   Making a retreat will require some of these closer enemies to not be following me, which Cordelia helps facilitate. I'm glad I forged that spear for her, she's been getting good use out of it.   She even had time to loot her enemy's corpse before getting yoinked back by Lissa. I guess I'll probably just sell this...  Lissa's high enough level that using staves is much better for her EXP wise than actual combat. I said Libra's bulk might get in the way of his functionality as a combat unit, but Lissa's doing fine and hers is way worse - I bet a Libra solo would be entirely viable after all. Especially since he can reclass into a Dark Mage...   Libra also comes with a Mend staff, which is handy because Maribelle forgot hers. Chrom can take the Wyverns who will attack him this turn, and then everybody can pile up on the surviving enemies the turn after.  Two reinforcements make their appearence, but they're too far away to catch anybody out. Thankfully none of the other forts have any.  Chrom tanks the Wyvern Riders well enough, but without Sully's Cavalier class stat boosts he cannot actually double them in return. That's a little concerning...  But Sumia can, which is good because one of them decided for some reason that it would go for her.  Hello! There's that drat wyvern brigade.   But can the wyvern brigade stand up to the Trucker's convoy? There's 3 enemies with Silver Axes here, and if all three of them did hit Truck she'd be killed - once again, probably something I should have packed a defense tonic for.  This is all very good EXP for her. Ah, Truck, you'll be slow forever... Big and bulky, but so so slow.  The other 3 Wyverns come with ranged weapons, which are just a little bit weaker than the silvers. Truck doesn't care about them.   Oh! She got speed! And everything else, just about. Cool.  The other 3 enemies don't die to a counterattack, but she can walk over to them and swat them one at a time. They're not smart enough to give up and try attacking somebody else.  Tharja walks over and puts herself in recruitment range, her friends now mostly dead. Time for her to make some new ones!   Cool! Chrom your sister is about 5 minutes away from jumping off of a cliff, she might not be the best role model. I'm not the first one to make this remark, and I'm pretty sure I made it earlier this update, but I do think it's a shame that Truck can't recruit Tharja too, since Tharja spends most of her time stalking and obsessing over your avatar character. Having your forced deployed main character be able to recruit everybody in the game is convenient, but it's fun when there's more than one option to recruit an enemy unit too.   Now to test Tharja's loyalty by killing her former friends in the same breath as recruiting her. I am so very thankful for whichever Fire Emblem game made talking a free action, even if you can't move after doing it.  Meet Tharja, Fire Emblem's rather successful attempt to take advantage of every nerd's innate desire to have a big titty goth girl ruin their lives. She's a Dark Mage, she comes with Nosferatu, LP over! Thank you for reading. Tharja Class Set: Dark Mage, Knight, Archer Skills: Hex (-15 avoid to all adjacent enemies), Anathema (-10 avoid and crit avoid to all enemies within 3 tiles) Growths: HP: 90% STR: 30% MAG: 60% SKL: 40% SPD: 60% LCK: 40% DEF: 45% RES: 30% Magic units in FE games have generally been given terrible physical bulk to counteract their huge advantage of being able to attack from 1 and 2 range while hitting what is usually an enemy's far weaker defensive stat. Dark Mages subvert this weakness entirely by not only having significantly higher bulk, but also access to the infinitely buyable and forgeable Nosferatu tome to recover health back every time they attack. They're pretty broken! Tharja is a Dark Mage, so she is also pretty good. That said, Tharja also joins relatively late compared to your other units so chances are you have some established juggernauts already, plus by this point you could have already reclassed your avatar into a Dark Mage themselves. Regardless, Tharja is fast, powerful, and bulky, only being let down by her comically terrible skill and luck, and yet the downsides of them are also mitigated by her Hex and Anathema skills (which still work even when she's not the paired unit in front!). Her combat might start out a little rocky, but with a partner to get her speed up to doubling point and some support ranks to boost her crit avoid, she'll soon be snowballing hard. ...I'm not using her though, I've got too many units already. Plus I've got plans to use Henry, the cooler Dark Mage. Cooler and worse. Significantly worse...   Now it's just a case of mopping up on the way to the boss. I'd like an Arcwind tome, but this game is very stingy with the higher rank tomes.  Oops, and there goes another sword. Whatever weapon Frederick used was just a formality at this point, Sumia could handle enemies fine on her own. Perhaps I should have given him Vaike's Iron Axe so he could have been building axe rank all this time.   I'm feeling pretty vindicated in my decision to forge Lissa's tome too, these ORKOs are very convenient. Since I'm not using Tharja, she could steal her Elthunder tome - it'll be the strongest tome I get for a while, and unlike Tharja, Lissa actually has a skill stat to hit with it.   That's everybody dealt with, and thanks to some pair-up shuffling I even got Lon'qu to get a kill the same turn that Cordelia did. With Truck handling the reinforcements on her own, it's now just a case of taking out the boss when everybody's freshened up.   Truck's doing a pretty good job of that btw. All my complaining has paid off, she's gotten speed twice in a row.   Cordelia and Lon'qu acknowledge one another for the first time. Fiction has taught me that when people are rude to one another that means they're in love, so I think this is going well!  Campari's been slow cooking in his armour the whole time, let's put him out of his misery. With no time limit of any kind I could farm him for as much EXP as I desire, but I'll have Chrom use the Rapier just to speed things up a little.  Sumia can blast him for tome rank too while she's at it. The scarcity of higher rank tomes means I'm not too bothered about trying to grind it up, but extra tome rank at higher levels does mean more might even with the same weapons.   Chrom'll never save his sister on time, exemplified by the loud "NO" sound Frederick's Hand Axe makes as it impotently clanks off of Campari's armour. He was only throwing them to increase weapon rank in the first place, it's fine.  Woah, Sumia! This is everything but HP and luck, it's like the opposite of the archetypical bad level. Even with reduced growths she's still amazing.   Sully also joins in on futiliy beaning the boss over the head with her axe, finally getting that D rank in the process. Sure it doesn't do any damage but it probably makes his armour ring and gives him a really bad headache.   Down he goes, felled by Chrom and his Rapier that I don't think anyone's ever taught him how to properly use.   To the victor go the spoils of yet another level without speed and a Dracoshield. The general strategy for defense boosting items is to give them to somebody already decently bulky, but I feel like Lissa or Sumia could make use of this regardless?  Anyway, that's Chapter 9 gone in 8 turns. I was worried about this map but it went down very easily, I'm glad. That opening rush through the desert can be hellish if you don't have strong enough dudes.  Has any FE game ever done "take out every enemy of this type" as a victory condition? I could see it being interesting, honestly. It wouldn't make a difference to how I'm playing seeing as I just rout every map anyway, but not everybody plays like that.  Choices matter!! Back when Awakening was the newest game and Fates and Engage's stories didn't exist to absorb all plot criticisms, I remember the pointlessness of this choice and a few one of the ones after it were often made fun of. It never bothered me too much, lots of games like to do this, although it is a little silly to give you the choice at all.   Because Chrom will veto killing his sister regardless. Fair enough I suppose, I can imagine why he wouldn't want to do that! Although you know Gangrel's going to kill her and take the emblem regardless.   And then Emmeryn jumps to her death! What a perfect time to unlock an optional paralogue to break up and completely kill the pacing and tone of Emmeryn's death and the chapter following it. Next time: A terrible day for rain midnight lasagna fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Jan 12, 2024 |
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Jan 12, 2024 13:06
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midnight lasagna posted:I've not read enough of his supports to be versed in his backstory, but I am aware that he's meant to be stronger than he looks and has some kind of dark and troubled past - surely he could have had the Fighter or Barbarian class as an option instead? Libra's dark and troubled past doesn't suggest any alternative class in particular. Libra's parents were intensely superstitious and believed he was possessed by demons as a child due to them seeing bad omens at the time of his birth. They threw him out into the wilderness to die, but he was saved by a passing priest who brought him to a church-run orphanage. Guy's had major trust issues ever since, along with a growing and severe case of survivor's guilt from being the back-rank healer who survives while the dedicated fighters march forth and suffer and die.
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Jan 12, 2024 13:33
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I was definitely tempted to LP Echoes, honestly, it's probably got less dialogue than the game I'm currently LPing (if I even finish that one...)
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Jan 12, 2024 17:07
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midnight lasagna posted:And then Emmeryn jumps to her death! What a perfect time to unlock an optional paralogue to break up and complete kill the pacing and tone of Emmeryn's death and the chapter following it.
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Jan 12, 2024 20:33
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theshim posted:One thing I give credit to Engage for is for actually doing a couple sets of "You must do these battles back-to-back". There's just a lot of times the series really needs to do this and I hope it becomes more of a fixture going forward. They also gave you a warning before starting a two-partner and let you back out and load your save from before you attempted part 1 if you get stuck on part 2, which was very generous of them!
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Jan 14, 2024 20:28
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I'm a bit ehhh on the forewarning part on the basis that it's kind of telegraphing plot developments. Allowing people to rewind to before the map set is great though. Admittedly, not wanting to spoil the player would require the story to be in any way good, so Engage has no worries there!
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Jan 16, 2024 09:43
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oh, be nice. the two times Engage does the back-to-back chapters are the (only) good parts of the plot
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Jan 16, 2024 10:44
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tbh games should just have an invisible autosave file that gets used or something before moments like that. Anyway Emmeryn's jump is basically where I felt that this game had ascended beyond just a cool tactics game that I was enjoying into something really special.
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Jan 16, 2024 10:44
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Speaking of, I'm surprised that there's been no attempts at let's playing Engage yet, unless there has been and I've missed them?
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Jan 24, 2024 11:39
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[/u]Chapter 10: Mourning Rain[/u]  Truck / Stahl B Emmeryn just died, but that's not going to stop the Shepards from hanging out and falling in love. If Stahl can read faces, can he tell from Truck's expression that he's only ever going to get deployed as a stat backpack and that he's getting benched the instant I no longer need him? Not that that's really any cause for him to complain, it means he gets to hang out but also never be in any danger. Stahl calls himself boring, and the game often calls him perfectly average, but is that mechanically true? Sure his personality is relatively subdued compared to the rest of the cast, but his stats might say otherwise. Especially since he's one half of a Cavalier duo - even if his stats were very average, he's still going to get compared to the faster and more fragile Sully, making him stand out by comparison. I calculated the average growths of every first generation unit, minus the Avatar and all the DLC characters, so I could compare them to Stahl...  Looks like his HP and luck are pretty close to average, not so much his other stats. In addition to him leaning rather significantly more towards physical stats than the average Shepard, he's also noticeably slow and bulky too. How fascinating. Of course if I were being more mathematically thorough I would then compare how much every Shepard deviates from the average on average, so I could compare that to Stahl's deviation from the average... But that's a bit too much work for this random tangent. Also I got an E grade on my A level exam for statistics, so I don't really know anything about numbers in the first place. I'm still not convinced Monty and his goat problem isn't witchcraft.   Lon'qu / Cordelia C Hey, look who's speaking to who for the first time ever! Look at those sparks fly. Maybe they'll reach first base sometime before we defeat Grima? Given how difficult Cordelia's child paralogue is, I'd probably be putting it off for a while even if I did unlock it early...   The second S support of the run! It's going to take more than one significant other for Chrom to fill the void left in his sister's passing, so I hope Sully doesn't mind sharing. How will having 3 parents affect Lucina's stats?   Lissa / Vaike S Just kidding, Ylisse hasn't legalised gay marriage or polyarmory yet. So congratulations instead to The Vaike and Dr. Mrs. The Vaike. Funny to think that my original plan was to only pair them long enough to reach an S support and then have Vaike pair up with someone who gives him better combat stats while Lissa staffbotted on her own, but now the plan is for Lissa to blast fools with magic while her husband acts as a human shield. I'm not sure if Lissa's bulk will be sufficient to hold up in the long term even with the huge boost to defense Vaike's giving her, but I'm happy to try it out all the same.  But there will be no wedding bells for Frederick, who won't get to marry Sumia despite being glued to her. Wait, wasn't he supposed to be marrying Truck? I should probably get on making that happen... As soon as I stop needing to glue him to Sumia.   As funny as it would be to bail on Emmeryn's death and go play Anna adventures on the opposite side of the continent, there's some loot I really want to grab in this map before I go off on a diversion. This chapter takes place in an area called the Midmire, which sounds like a really fun word to disdainfully describe things as if you're a critic or other form of hater.   There's nothing much to comment on in this introductory cutscene, just people standing around being sad while sad music plays. Sad music titled very helpfully titled "....." to annoy anybody trying to search for it.  The song continues into the combat preparation theme, setting the mood to make you feel sad. It's quite effective! I'll be honest, I never really felt much of anything about the Emmeryn death scene, but the power of sad piano works on me here even when I'm skipping every cutscene. This chapter's a lot more open than the last one, with many different paths to the boss. For once it's not a rout, so there's no obligation to go down all of them... But then again there's no real reason not to, because nothing's stopping you from routing the whole thing. This map feels kind of odd, like they originally planned for it to be an escape objective or for you to have some incentive to not want to take out every single enemy along the away. Regardless, there's a big bunch of enemies blocking our path - the ones close to the starting area will move immediately, the ones close to the boss won't start moving until you're in range of at least two of them, and the rest will begin to move on turn 5 if not provoked early.  Reinforcements will harass your party starting from turn 5 through turn 7. Every fort besides the one the boss is standing on can produce reinforcements, but these forts inaccessible by any method but air can be especially annoying, spawning Wyverns that can descend on your grounded units in cramped corridors.  The map's objective is Mustafa, a big buff guy who won't move off of his fort. Compared to other games, the Berserker class in Awakening really isn't all that scary, the class has no innate bonus to their critical hit rate but they still have the same terrible accuracy as always. Mustafa's Gamble skill only makes his accuracy worse, and with his mediocre skill stat his crit rate isn't so high that it can't be negated by any combination of paired units with a decent support rank. He does hit hard, especially with Axefaire, but he's gotta actually hit first.  Mustafa is also the only nice guy in all of Plegia. Berserker seems like an odd job for a pacifist, but maybe the threat of axe violence is usually an effective deterent. I never really thought about it until I looked at his Heroes art since it's not as obvious from his portrait, but it's funny to think that this unusually sympathetic and reasonable commander is also a huge beefcake dressed in leather and bone bondage gear swinging around a gigantic axe.    Just because Mustafa's a pacifist doesn't mean he and his men aren't going to kill you with weapons, and from this point forward all enemies are swinging around silver gear if they're not using powerful 1-2 range Short Axes or Spears. The upside of this is that they'll all have terrible accuracy like their boss because of it.   Finally, this map contains four Thieves scattered around in various places that'll all try to escape to the north west. Above and to the left of the starting area is one with a Wyrmslayer, and to the corridor right of him is another one with a Bullion. I'll be killing all of them for their loot anyway, but the money's definitely a higher priority.   Immediately to the left of the starting area are these two Thieves. The rightmost one can just barely be reached turn 1 by a mounted unit and drops a Master Seal. The furthest left one is all the way on the opposite side of the map, but he won't start moving until turn 2. Both the items they drop are very nice, but I want that Master Seal especially.   13 deployment slots! How unlucky. Libra's going to be a fixture of my team from now on so long as I have the space to bring him. Maribelle joins as my now inferior backup healer, Stahl tags along to ride Truck's coattails once again, and Tharja is here to provide a little bit of supporting chip to help my squad push through the enemies to rout the Thieves ASAP.  And before I forget, a Dracoshield for Sumia who will be zooming across the map to deal with Thieves. I originally wanted to give this to Lissa, but Sumia's the one who's going to be putting herself in danger this map. Lissa can have the robe instead.   Don't speak her name! That's the name of the song playing all throughout this map, replacing the battle themes. The pattern of having at least one map per game have its song play throughout the entire battle uninterrupted began here, and it's always pretty cool when it happens.    Emmeryn's sacrifice appears to have had an effect on the Plegian's will to fight, as exemplified in the gameplay by the objective being Defeat Boss instead of Rout. Although as I said before, there's nothing in the map itself really discouraging you from routing the map anyway... But it's not as if that problem is unique to this game.   First order of business is to kill these Thieves. It's what Emmeryn would have wanted! Sumia speeds over to the left with Frederick in tow, attacking from one tile away to avoid being attacked by all of his nearby friends on enemy phase.   With a full inventory she can send it straight to the convoy, for anybody to pick up later at their leisure. I do still have units that need promoting.   The leftmost Thief is too far away for anybody to reach on turn 1, so the rest of my army's efforts go towards clearing a path above the starting area to get at the remaining two who are in range. Tharja fulfills the sole purpose I deployed her for by slinging a Fire spell with Libra adjacent to make her accuracy not garbo.   Weakening this Barbarian enough that Lon'qu can one-round him without having to rely on a dual strike from Cordelia or a crit from his Killing Edge.   This frees up space for Lissa to run up and clear out another Barbarian slightly above him, with Vaike there to provide some unnecessary but nonetheless appreciated assistance.  Chrom once again pairs up with Sully. Out of all of my units, I think he needs the Master Seal the most - he's not really in his EXP grinding phase like Cordelia or Lon'qu are, but he is starting to fall behind in terms of stats. I'll see if I can grab him one more level before he takes it from the convoy and promotes himself with it.   But that will unfortunately have to wait, because I need Sully to OHKO this Thief and then dodge some Wyverns on enemy phase. I'm going to miss Alm's Blade, it's been very useful!   Money! And just barely not enough EXP. 5,000 gold from an M Bullion is enough to buy an extra Master Seal, if one were to turn up in a secret shop.  That's the easternmost corridor cleared... mostly. Everybody here can survive a hit from this Soldier, he can live another turn. Everybody except Tharja, who's terrible luck stat means she could die to a low% crit. That's why Libra's there to bodyblock.   Truck hitches a ride from Discount Frederick to swat the northwest Thief, a kill she can make in a single hit with just her Iron Sword. As a consequence she is going to mow down all of her attackers this turn and take all of their precious EXP for herself, but ehh.   Wyvern-slaying properties aside, a Wyrmslayer is just a slightly less accurate Steel Sword... Which isn't a bad thing to be, because we're still living in a bit of a sword defecit right now. This chapter is very definitely full of Wyverns.  I have no plans for Maribelle, so she can just hang out somewhere safe. I guess it's nice to have enough deployment slots that I can just deploy random spares and hope they'll be useful!   Thief, singular! I killed the other 3. This is just the game telling you "hey there are thieves here", but considering all that's happened it feels a little silly to worry about guys stealing from a battlefield. ...although I guess it's only us priorising Thieves over all other enemies, not Mustafa, so maybe we're the ones not heeding Emmeryn's message of avoiding needless bloodshed. Oops!   Lon'qu trades blows with the surviving Soldier on enemy phase, getting an okay level in the process. That's the fourth time he's proc'd that 20% magic growth now - Levin Sword Trickster Lon'qu??? Probably not.   All past transgressions are forgiven, Truck is once again my best unit. Ironically I might appreciate it if she had less speed, then these kills could go do someone else. There's always something to complain about.   She's just mowing 'em down and taking hits like a champ. It's actually the speed boost she gets from Stahl that's pushing her to make these doubles, with Frederick as her partner she wouldn't be killing them.   Entering the range of the topmost Thief puts whoever killed him in range of all these Wyverns, but Sully doesn't care. Alm's Blade is so strong that it even outdamages Chrom's boosted Falchion.  Every single level Sully got when I was planning the first few turns of this chapter was amazing, yet on my one actual attempt she gets this garbage instead. Or well maybe a four stat level isn't garbage, but it's not really what I want. Her combat might seem amazing now, but her EXP gain has slowed rather rapidly ever since she promoted and her good combat might not last.  And there goes Sully's Alm's Blade. Thank you for your service! You will be sorely missed.   The Thief in the corner always stays still on turn 1, positioning himself to give an almost entirely safe area for Sumia to occupy and kill him from. He's not gonna live to see enemy phase on turn 2.    I'll be taking this, please and thank you! That's all four Thieves dead, and with them any incentive to go fast. Now I can switch from speeding through the map to turtling up safely and awaiting the reinforcements.   The 3D nature of these maps can make it sometimes a little difficult to tell what tile you have to stand on to engage a foe at melee range. It looks like Sully is one tile down from her enemy, but they're actually on the same Y level.   Geez Chrom, you're slow! You shouldn't have to rely on dual strikes to double enemies with only 12 speed. I've got to get him that level so he can promote. Of course he could promote now, but promoting a unit who's halfway between levels and wasting EXP makes me sad.  This isn't speed, but it does equal 1 extra might when attacking with swords. Cool! Now he can use all of those A rank swords that I don't have.  Speaking of dual strikes making kills, I'm just going to go out and say that the reason why this constantly happens to me when I don't want it is because I don't like unequipping dual strike partners, because I know I'll forget to reequip them after, and that would be even more embarrassing than making a kill I didn't mean to. Enjoy your accidental kill, team Tharja Libra.   Sumia might have secured the last of the treasure, but if someone doesn't take the heat off of her then she's going to be surrounded by like 6 different enemies at the start of her next turn. Maybe Truck can spare some of these attackers, at least the ones who will attack her from range.   If I were not so concerned with getting as much EXP as I could, I would maybe spare the lives of some of these fictional video game soldiers... Grinding EXP for 10 turns on a boss on a throne is unethical to me, but extending combat unnecessarily to farm kills is apparently fine. I was about to go all "wouldn't it be cool if this game rewarded you for sparing enemy soldiers like bonus experience like in the Tellius games?", but then I remembered that I absolutely hated all the side objectives that rewarded you for doing that and never bothered with them. All the Toha Vigilantes are dead and in hell by my hand.   I wonder, would the Plegian soldiers be saying the same thing if they had a commander like Orton or Vasto from chapters 5 or 7? Mustafa's a cool and interesting character, but it does feel a little like cheating to introduce the one sympathetic commander in all of Plegia for the one chapter that wants you to feel sad for them. Plegia is somewhat of a nation of cartoon villains outside of this one map. I think if I were to change something about Mustafa was handled, I'd introduce him earlier, through a cutscene or something - you'd see his express his reservations about the purpose of Gangrel's war in private, but then he'd come out and rally his troops just like everybody else, talking about revenge and reparations for Ylisse's past aggression against Plegia. Otherwise it kinda just feels like the Plegians are only ever really human for this one map, and then after it's done you just kinda forget about them again. You're told the army is deserting en masse in Chapter 11, but you don't see anybody doing it, and the enemies who stay behind are just like the ones you've been fighting before. And then after that you take all their gold, leave their country to collapse, and don't think about them until after the Walhart arc where they reappear as just evil dragon cult land full of comically evil dragon cultists.   ...but that's all plot and that's not the point of this LP, so no more on that. Truck's bait is successful, luring all enemies near Sumia away besides the one who could attack her from where he was standing. That's her second non-HP stat to exceed 20 now...   Sumia disposes of her sole attacker very effectively. OHKOing with a single Javelin toss is extremely impressive considering how Sumia started out, even if she did do this with a crit.  I'd rather be building her tome rank if at all possible, but she can't consistently make the necessary 2HKOs with her magic right now. Perhaps once I sell the Bullion I got earlier I can afford to forge her a better tome than a Wind with +1 might.  Now the rest of the map is a case of lure enemies over, kill them with my weaker guys, rinse and repeat while avoiding reinforcements. Thankfully Truck can bait over ranged attackers without murdering them in the process.   ...but annoyingly there are also a load of ranged attackers up top that Chrom can't lure over and fight at the same time. This won't be a problem once he promotes and grinds up his lance rank!   Chrom makes up for his inability to double with a cool crit, snagging some speed in the process. Did you know that in 3 Houses, certain chapters put the game in a "serious" mode where characters won't say their usual quotes for critical hits or gaining levels? The battle against Lonato in Chapter 3 is one of them. The constant "die, scum!" and "hooray, I love killing people!" whenever you land a crit and explode someone for 100 damage does undermine the somber tone this chapter is going for just a little.  Reinforcements begin to emerge at on turn 5's enemy phase, with the first wave being Wyvern Riders from the western forts. With no time-senstive objectives to chase after it'll be fairly easy to avoid them, although I will probably have to block at least one fort to create a safe space for my army to wait in.   Just gotta kill more dudes while I wait. I'd forgotten all about leveling Vaike, honestly. A shame I probably won't get a real chance to show off the snowballing power of Sol Hero Vaike, but apparently that's no longer secret knowledge anyway.  Combat Sage Lissa is the new meta I want to show off. Even a cleric like her can be good if you spam the Heal staff like 30 times per chapter, and give her an early Master Seal from a secret shop, and pair her up with somebody tha gives her like 6 extra speed and defense...   Ready your lance, Chrom! It's time you became a master. Back in the old days lords had to either promote when the story told them they could, or never promote at all. If Chrom's promotion were to be story locked, I think it would happen at the end of this chapter anyway... Or possibly the one after.   Now he's wearing the Fire Emblem as a shield, inviting Gangrel to pry it from his cold dead hands if he so dares. The increase to Chrom's strength and bulk is more significant than the increase to his speed, but I appreciate the +2 nonetheless.   Oh and Truck's still killing stuff too. I don't even care about the quality of her levels anymore, do you see that shiny green number??? That's a capped stat, baby. Call her Optimus Prime.   Splitting Lissa from her husband to spread EXP around reminds me that without him, she's still pretty fragile. I'm hoping the Seraph Robe she gets will fix that a little.  Turn 5 approaches, and the first wave of reinforcements arrive. Some of the enemies further away from your starting area also start to aggro after turn 5, but I think I've killed most of them.   They're no problem for me when I know they're coming. I could have Sumia fly up to one of the forts and block it off, but I'd rather she just kill whoever emerges from them immediately.  ...I should point out that your average Sumia probably won't be as good as this. I don't know where this defense is coming from, but I won't complain!   One singular reinforcement manages to catch me off guard... Oh no, will Truck be okay?  I think she'll be fine : )   Hmm, that's the first mediocre level I've seen from Lissa in a while. Were I working to my original plan for her, she'd reclass to either War Cleric or Valkyrie now, and start earning EXP in either one to unlock a second rally skill. But with her as an offensive frontliner it makes much more sense to level up in Sage until she unlocks Tomefaire at level 15 before I think about reclassing her into anything else.   The last wave of reinforcements is on turn 7, so let's sit tight until then.  Chrom's back! And he's good again. 7 might, 7% accuracy? I think you should consider using your 7 move in the opposite direction.   Tasty Wyvern for all to enjoy. These guys are never hitting anybody so long as they have a sword and are standing on a fort.   ...these kills are certainly a lot less free for Cordelia, who faces weapon triangle disadvantage and cannot benefit from terrain bonuses as a flying unit, but I want her getting kills all the same. Strength and speed makes me very happy, but I can't help but think that she's meant to be the bulkier peg.  But this is cool. Perhaps she can use the Silver Lance now?  Once turn 7 comes and goes, all that's left is Mustafa and his cohorts. None of which have ranged weapons, so Chrom can walk right in with a Bronze Lance equipped and earn tasty weapon EXP as they all rush and bounce right off of him.  Chrom's newfound bulk combined with help from Great Knight Sully is making him all but invincible. He still can't double, but I'm sure a level or two will fix that!  Oh, there go the axe guys! I was hoping they'd fight Chrom... I guess they can fight Lon'qu on his fort instead.  This is... less threatening than I expected for a Berserker with WTA, honestly. Perhaps I'm too used to FE6.   Gamble really isn't doing him any favours... I think the odds of winning our lives are pretty good!  Oh, and this whole time Fred's been throwing axes around to boost up his axe rank a little. With the Discipline skill he can do it pretty fast!   And there he goes! Mustafa not being recruitable was definitely the right call, but maybe it would have been nice if he had turned up as one of the DLC chars. Maybe instead of Yen'fay. I've always considered those recruitments to be non-canon, so it wouldn't have ruined anything for me.  Yeah I uh... Will do that... ...some of the reinforcements didn't spawn because the forts they came from were unoccupied...? Those guys didn't die...   Speed for Chrom, A swords for Sully. Things are looking pretty good!  Oh and Mustafa has this for some reason. Mustafa... Or Mufasa? Was he a lion Taguel this whole time??? Perhaps that ravine Mufasa fell down was a portal to another world, just like the Bottomless Canyon in Fates.   12 turns, but the map was mostly done when I killed that last Thief on turn 2. But with Olivia here, I'll be able to complete maps even faster! ...unfortunately she joins at the start of Chapter 11, not at the end of Chapter 10, so I can't use her until I progress the story more even if she is supposed to be in my army now.   The sad times are over, it's time to make the enemy cry instead! After a brief diversion to pick up a certain lockpicking merchant, because the next chapter has chests and my one Thief would die if any enemy looked at him. Next time: We make an investment in violence
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Jan 24, 2024 11:40
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Mustafa has always felt as an insincere character, the writers just attempting to stuff in the Camus archetype in.
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Jan 25, 2024 02:43
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Paralogue 4: Premium Conscription I feel like dating this LP for no particular reason, so how about those CYL 8 results huh? And how about that direct rumoured to happen on the 15th? Are we finally getting an FE4 remake? ...I'm just wasting time talking about all this because this upcoming paralogue and therefore this update aren't very interesting.   Chrom / Lissa C No advances on the marriage front this time, these supports are all entirely platonic ones. Chrom and Lissa is one of the rare male/female support conversations that cannot result in a marriage, on account of them being siblings and Shouzou Kaga not having been involved in Fire Emblem's development for over 10 years. I don't think I'm ever going to be in a situation where I have the two of them paired up to support one another, but maybe if they somehow end up adjacent in combat then the C support can help.   Chrom / Vaike C Also supporting Chrom is Vaike! I guess I did send Chrom & Sully up north with Lissa and Vaike last chapter, they must have gotten some points then. I always find myself looking forward to the platonic supports in the 3DS games, a large chunk of the game's support lists are taken up by M/F pairings that are only written so that every male first gen unit can pair with every female first gen, which makes the platonic supports stand out as they're actually written because the writers thought the characters could have interesting interactions with one another rather than just existing to fill a quota. Given the problems I was having with Chrom's inability to double consistently last chapter, I feel as if he might prefer being paired with Vaike more than Sully...   Time to do something with the loot from last map. Chrom's already eaten the Master Seal, the Wyrmslayer's going to whoever needs a powerful sword at the time, but I still need to sell the bullion and use the robe. Lissa can have it, seeing as her bulk is still somewhat subpar.   I've expressed concerns about Sully's rather mediocre levels in the past, but this comparison between her and Chrom unfortunately confirms it - she's not been doing very well. Chrom has however been doing very well so maybe this is an unfair comparison, but as you can see he's got her pretty soundly beat in every stat besides HP and magic, the latter of which does not matter at all. I'm still going to be using Sully, she's still quite useful, but I feel as though she's going to get dropped as soon as I start recruiting second generation units and deployment slots start getting tight.  Time to go grab an Anna. Paralogue 4 is the last paralogue we'll be unlocking through standard story progression for a while. I was about to call it the last, but I straight up forgot about Tiki's one that unlocks sometime near the end of the Valm arc. Perhaps I'll actually be able to do that one for a change?   Straight to the point! Thank you nameless villager. Anna - or at least an Anna - is in trouble, and we have to save her. On Normal and Hard difficulties she's mostly able to fend for herself, on Lunatic mode she's got a not insignificant chance of dying on turn 1 and it'll only get worse from there. A little more structured than your standard Awakening map, this one is a maze of walls and doors and forest tiles, with some Archers and Mages amongst the other bandits to attack your units over the walls and generally get in your way if your best enemy phase units can't attack from a distance. There's also some loot to grab, with a new recruit who's able to grab it.   The boss is Vincent, the other half of the bandit twins and yet another inaccurate Berserker. He and his cronies will aggro all at once when you're in enough of their ranges. Vincent's not all that threatening on his own, but he does have a large number of allies around to finish you off if he gets a lucky hit in.   This Thief in the corner is also here to add a little extra pressure on top of the pressing need to save Anna, although thankfully he'll only steal from the one chest before leaving. That chest is of course the one to the left of the one I've got the cursor resting on, but I don't want to go back and get a slightly more indicative screenshot. Normally I let him steal the Arms Scroll and leave, but this time I'm not letting him get away.  One less deployment slot than last time means that Tharja doesn't get to tag along, because once again Stahl is reprising his role as Truck's chauffeur.   Normally I complain about Awakening's map design encouraging the player to low-man with a tiny number of super powerful units, but this map's initial deployment pattern throws a wrench in that strategy by spreading out deployment slots across the entirity of the map's horizontal length, with large groups of enemies immediately in front of them. Any unit I deploy here is going to have to either take out an enemy immediately or run away, or else they will be in range of lots of different attackers come enemy phase. Normally the solution to this would just be to not deploy anybody but my strongest units, but then I would struggle to reach Anna in time, on account of her being some distance away with a decent amount of enemies between my units and her. I could use a Rescue staff to grab her turn 1, but then both her and the unit rescuing her will be vulnerable to being attacked by the enemies near the start instead. So it's going to be a bit of a puzzle figuring out where to put everybody and what they'll need to do on this first turn.  ...I guess I'll still be juggernauting a bit, just with more than one unit. I keep saying Sully's falling off and yet her high movement and good bulk still make her one of my best frontliners! But she's going to need a lot of tonics if she's going to be pushing forward fast enough to grab that Arms Scroll before the Thief makes off with it. The only defensive tonic she's not getting is a HP tonic, because I can't buy those yet.  Lissa's also got a single speed tonic to let her double Myrmidons and one-round them reliably. I played this map a while ago so I'm not super fresh on what precisely everybody was doing, but basically all my effort strategising went into surviving the first turn.   We killed this guy's twin brother a while back, but Anna's getting the blame for it. It never occured to be until now, but this whole thing is a battle of the reoccuring Fire Emblem characters with suspiciously similar looking relatives. I'm still holding out for the day we get an FE game where you can recruit one of the campy bandit twins for yourself (and they're an actual character, not a capturable Fates boss).  If he has any more twin brothers amongst these guys then we're gonna kill them too. The objective being defeat boss and not rout means it's harder to bypass the boss's huge group of cronies by just killing him before he can move, but it does also mean it's easier to not accidentally end the map before grabbing all of the treasure.   Anna is many tiles away surrounded by enemies, how could we possibly reach her in time...? The answer is pretty easy as it turns out. On lower difficulties you can leave her alone for multiple turns and watch her mow down hordes of bandits by herself, but that's not so viable here. Doing this also means I don't have to send Chrom off to go chase her down.  Libra gets his first level from his daring rescue attempt. It's pretty good, although extra bulk isn't exactly what I want out of him.   The exact positioning of Libra as he does this dumps Anna on a specific tile that allows Chrom to talk to her and then pair with Sully in the same turn, effectively making her recruitment a free action for him. He's going to be accompanying Sully on her rush to the treasure, so I don't want him slowed down by even a turn.  ...this dialogue feels a little out of place for a turn 1 recruitment. It also doesn't quite fit with her performance in combat on Lunatic mode, but you'll have to take my word for it.   A Thief! Very cool, because mine's not gotten any levels at all. Sure you don't need experience or stats to open chests, but it's a little easier to do it when you're not dying in one hit to any enemy between you and the loot. Anna is a Trickster, a new class introduced in Awakening that combines the utility of a Thief and a Cleric into one unit. Conceptually they're very cool, and Anna works very well as one, but just like Libra she might make you overestimate the usefullness of the class somewhat on account of actually having both a strength and a magic stat, as well as the weapon ranks to use them. Promoting Gaius into one of these isn't going to make him suddenly start being good at magic. Anna Trickster Skills: Movment + 1, Locktouch (allows unit to open adjacent doors and chests without needing a key) Growths: HP: 80% STR: 40% MAG: 45% SKL: 60% SPD: 55% LCK: 80% DEF: 35% RES: 40% Anna opens chests and heals your allies, and she does so with 1 more movement than your other units thanks to her Move + 1 skill. Her base movement is as high as Maribelle's, giving you even more incentive to bench her if you didn't already do that when Libra joined. She can earn not a single point of experience from combat and still be useful for most of the game based on her utility alone, but she's not too bad in combat either, although she is somwhat reliant on her high avoid to not die. The trick to make the most of Anna as a combat unit however is not to keep her as a Trickster, but to reclass her into Sage - not only will she keep her stealing and healing abilities, but she'll actually gain extra bulk instead of losing it, something that generally doesn't happen to units who reclass into Sage. Using tomes and not having to rely on limited use Levin Swords will make her much more effective at magical combat too, and she'll eventually get the Tomefaire skill to increase her staff range as well as making her magic more potent. She's pretty good! The one big thing holding her back is that like all prepromotes who will join from now on, she cannot S support any character besides your Avatar, and her list of platonic support partners is very small too. Support bonuses go a long way to making a unit effective in combat, so she'll never have that advantage compared to your other units unless you pair her with your Avatar... Or Tiki, who won't be joining for a long time.  Oh and if you don't care about any of that you can always just slap her on whoever for these very nice pair-up bonuses. Extra movement is cool!   Anna may have been rescued, but the contents of that chest in the upper right corner must also be liberated. There's more than a few enemies in the way, so let's get a start on removing those.  Securing the starting area is also a major priority. Sumia and Lissa make a wall out of themselves to block off these enemies, and Lissa takes advantage of her speed tonic to take out one of the caged bandits.   ...Vaike didn't need to have his Killer Axe equipped for this, but wasting that one single use isn't so bad if it helps him with his weapon rank I guess.  Not needing to defeat the enemies around Anna means Sully can start on a more direct route to the loot, but this is slightly risky - she's going to be in range of a lot of Mages this turn, and if they do manage to hit her they can put the hurt on her. All the tonics she chugged should help with reliability a lot, but there is still a small chance of this going horribly wrong for her.  ...I also meant to use her Hand Axe for this, not her Javelin. Oh well! Chrom meanwhile wants to make as many dual strikes as he can to get his lance rank to D.  Plugging this gap does a lot to secure the starting area, although as you can see Sully will be facing a lot of enemies this turn. Her target next turn is that door to her right.  Truck hopefully will take a little bit of the heat off of her by waiting down here. All the other units I had deployed on the right side either fled to the middle for safety, or they paired up with someone else to get them out of range.   Lon'qu waits in a forest on the far left to handle the enemies on that side, and otherwise everybody waits in the middle. Surviving this first turn will be the hardest part of this paralogue, once that's done everything else should be easy!   He'll be fine... So long as he dodges one more <50% hit after this one. He's only got the Wyrmslayer equipped because it lets him make ORKOs that an Iron Sword couldn't, there are no dragons on this map. That I know of.......  That's the one dodge I needed him to make. Good job!   Sully's also dodging a lot this turn. These physical hits don't really bother her though. Even if Chrom did have D lances and could throw Javelins, I wouldn't have him out in front because despite his superior stats his avoid is worse on account of not benefitting from any of the skills Sully does.  Oh and she got A lances from my mistake of not having her hold a Hand Axe. Cool, I guess!  These magical attacks could 3HKO her if they all hit, which is unlikely but a little menacing all the same. Where are these Mages getting these C rank tomes? I want some.  This level is... actually pretty good by her current standards! But would you believe that she got a perfect level on one of my many trial attampets to figure out this first turn? Try a map enough turns and you'll see basically every combination of levels a unit could get, and you'll only ever be disappointed by what could have been.  There's one last attack to establish that despite my incredible luck, things are a little riskier for her than they might seem. This is mostly a consequence of me wanting to get all the treasure - if I didn't care about that Arms Scroll I could play much safer. I guess I could have also put off this map until everybody was stronger.  The looter starts moving, and IIRC he'll leave the map with the loot by the end of turn 6. At least he's only after the one thing, although considering all enemies start with maxed weapon ranks on this difficulty I'm not sure what he even wants it for.   I did literally just recruit Anna, but it's easier just to open this door with a key Sully brought from home. There are even more enemies behind this one, but if Sully survived all those ones at the start then she can handle these too.  ...a lot more, actually. Somehow I just keep giving her EXP! Maybe she is doing good and I'm just being a hater.   Now that the initial push is done, everybody else can just kinda hang out and do what they want. So Sully's charge aside, everybody is free to distribute kills to those who need them most.   Sumia can help clean up some stragglers to help Sully reach her destination in time, so long as she can reach them. The lack of urgency means she can grind up her tome rank instead of using Javelins for the guaranteed kill.   Sumia gets a level that is simultaneously good but also kinda misses everything I want from her, while Frederick pretends he's a Dark Flier.  Now she can use Elthunder instead of that crappy Wind tome I forged her! Nice.   Here they go, paving the way for the newlyweds. Out of the way please!  The range of the boss and his cronies extends pretty far - the moment any of my units spring open one of those chests in the top right corner they are going to get mobbed, unless I have somebody Rescue them first. I'll probably just do that.  Sully ould kill this guy and then kill all the units who would aggro on her immediately after, but then there would be the real risk of the map ending before I could grab everything. So I shall be patient.  Anna meanwhile is taking her sweet time robbing the place, partly because I have not been very efficient with my movement. Perhaps Gaius should have come along instead of Maribelle, she's not really doing much.   Decent. So long as she can keep getting more than one of strength, speed, or defense per level then perhaps she'll be fine?   Luna! And Javelins for Chrom. Enemies will start having to grow a defense stat before Luna really does much, though.  ...why is this door even here? Why bother locking it? It's impressive that the doors in these ruins have somehow survived longer than the stone structures around them. It's like Ozymandias. Ozymandooras?   There's no benefit to a couple stepping on a sparkling tile and increasing in support rank, but isn't this cute? I think it's nice that this married couple don't want either one of them to die.  The Thief retirves his arms from the chest, meaning it's time to initiate my Rescue swoop stratagem. I don't want Sully rushing in and taking all that EXP.   Nothin personnel, kid...... Do I even want this Arms Scroll? Mostly I just don't want him to have it.   An Arms Scroll boosts the weapon rank of all weapons a unit's class can let them use by one. It's more effective the more weapons a unit can use and the higher their weapon ranks, in terms of weapon experience gained... In practice however I think I would prefer to use it to make somebody not have to go through the painful process of escaping from E rank, like so many of my units have already had to do.  This loot however I plundered fair and sqaure. Money is important! What silly forges can I spend this on?   Helping Anna with the looting is Cordelia, who kills a Mage who with his last breath curses her with this bad level. Boo.  This game sure gives you a lot of these. A shame this Anna couldn't also come with one, like the last one we saved.  Now to somehow get Anna to that chest and mop up the rest of the bandits. I should be able to take most of them out in a single turn...   It'll save a single Rescue use, anyway. Also Mend, really? Healing staves are nice, but this is not most distant corner of the map level loot.   Surprise! Die. That's a snowy mountain in the background, not the sky. For a second I thought Ylisse was undergoing some kind of meteorological calamity.   Killing Edges are common enough that I can have everybody swing them to their hearts content now. I'll admit I've not really thought this through - I'm just kinda hoping everybody here is enough to take everybody out safely.  Nice! Chrom sure is strong. A little speed however would be appreciated...  That's all but 3 people left. I think we're all good here? I doubt the boss will be able to hit anybody with that big axe of his anyway.  OH OOPS things aren't so fine actually! Perhaps I got a little cocky after seeing Sully barrel through everybody.   Let's just forget that happened. No dialogue for Anna against the boss, really? Feels like a missed oppurtunity.   That'll be the last axe boss for a little while. I imagine this line as him literally seeing his own face, because your killing blow detached it from his own head. That's really horrible actually, I don't want to imagine that any more.   There goes Paralogue number 4! Who wants this Talisman? I have no idea. It's hard to imagine 2 extra res making much of a difference. Generally a unit either doesn't care about magic attacks or dies to two hits from one.  But Anna's what we really came for. Anna's been a recurring character in this series from the very beginning, but Awakening started the tradition of having her show up as an optional recruit. Some people are a big fan of her as a character! I will be as soon as they can think up a second personality trait for her to have besides money. Next time: Gangrel's gotta go
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Feb 8, 2024 20:00
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Anna's ridiculously statted, and goes a long way to making Libra look bad. They have largely the same growths, so it's a fight between their bases and abilities. Libra has Cleric ones (woo-hoo.....) whereas Anna has Thief ones. And I'll take Mov +1 and Locktouch any day. And they even have largely the same growths too (except Luck, of course) so their stat disparities visible here won't be changing, she'll always have an advantage on an equal level. She'll always be your Swiss Army Knife of utility, and even boasts reasonable combat early on with a Killing Edge or Levin Sword. Falls off combat wise pretty hard, and not worth it to try making her a combat unit, but a zero investment unit of her competence and aid is always welcome. It is true though that she is functionally the only Trickster you could really use, by virtue of getting to skip the awkward phases. They definitely hadn't made dual-stat setups worth it though, even Anna prefers to just Levin Sword + Staff and largely ignore physical weapons.
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Feb 9, 2024 01:01
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Owain could probably make a decent Trickster if Lissa marries Gaius, actually?
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Feb 9, 2024 03:42
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Awakening is the peak Anna design.
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Feb 9, 2024 08:15
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Dual stat characters that really work are basically limited to a speed fathered Owain and a magic fathered Severa. But also if you're going Dual stat and you're a dude, then Dread Fighter was essentially made entirely for you. Similarly either of the flier lines for girls.
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Feb 9, 2024 13:27
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Well, Morgan also works. Brady actually does have decent mixed growths at base, Maribelle just kinda kills his bulk in the process. But he can do something along those lines.
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Feb 9, 2024 16:30
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