|
all this time I was assuming the overlord was a unicorn, smh, false advertising
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 19:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 14:45 |
|
|
The real unicorn is the overlords we met along the way
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2024 20:13
|
|
|
 I think Tactical is a good, decently challenging difficulty and hell, I fit the bill here.  Call to Action Mk. 1       Well it looks like we’re holding our own pretty well–   reversal of fortune  Remember how one of the mooks who made it to the cathedral got owned when Scarlett bashed him with his staff and how the other one completely missed her?  Well uh poo poo went south fast! Zooming out to the stage…    They’re mercs, we can’t exactly outbid the empire for their services yet, and who’s to say that these particular mercs are even Cornian?   The cavalry has arrived! But we’re still in a deeply unfavorable position.  Yeah, best we regroup to Josef’s stronghold.   It’s certainly an answer to “why Scarlett”. But that can’t be all there is to it, right? This’ll be one of the early mysteries of the plot.    Guy’s got a way with words and with body language, gotta give him that  So the fort is due just east of those gates…  And the port town has fallen into enemy hands, and southwest, over the bridge, is…  Standard operating procedure for a UO stage. Now let’s deploy–    This is for the audience’s sake more than for my own, and hey, we have three new characters all from new classes, all raring to give their spiel.  The game even made quite a point of this via cutscenes!    But before we begin: we have six deployment slots and a roster of eight characters! Even with Scarlett having gotten damsel’d as soon as we made landfall, someone's still gotta sit this one out! Choose that someone here: https://strawpoll.com/eJnvvYmRxnv You have 36 hours from the time of this post to vote.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2024 02:30
|
|
|
Clive should sit this one out, vote the strawpoll for Clive. This whole situation is his fault for being slow, after all 
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2024 02:58
|
|
|
Goatse James Bond posted:all this time I was assuming the overlord was a unicorn, smh, false advertising Now I'm picturing Laharl with a horn on his head, covered in white fur, and being chased by a giggling Flonne
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2024 02:58
|
|
|
I say we sit out Josef, everyone else needs the experience. I personally either deploy him last or not at all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2024 03:18
|
|
|
I would like to remind you all that while Josef is nice to have as an emergency button, he is, in the end, a Jagen. That, and I'm confident in our LPr's ability to manage without him. Let's let the young'ns have some time to grow. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2024 03:22
|
|
|
I say Lex should sit the bench forever to reinforce his lovely little brother energy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 16, 2024 15:27
|
|
|
Yeah, Josef is kind of the obvious choice. When I played through this early bit, I just benched him until I had enough squads open to fit him, he then turned into my emergency unit to deal with my gently caress-ups.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2024 14:07
|
|
|
Josef it is! Will record after work.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2024 14:35
|
|
|
Interesting that you went from easily crushing enemies on the tutorial island to getting one hit knocked out on the mainland. Party composition request: pair up the big sturdy shield guy on the back row with the nimble thief dude on the front row to make an unhittable thief tank.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2024 20:14
|
|
|
A Call to Action: Fight! Josef’s out for the Liberation’s maiden battle and here are our units for this stage accordingly.  Now first things first, let’s take the town back. I’ll start by deploying Alain and Travis’ units.  That’s a ridiculously overkill forecast, let’s dig a bit deeper. After Alain and both the Housecarls move…  And that’s the Knight class’ gimmick: where Josef’s offensive skill gives him PP whenever he defeats an enemy, Clive’s offensive skills give him AP upon doing so. Which means…  Clive can keep chaining with Assaulting Lance until either all enemies have been defeated, or until he misses/fails to KO an enemy. After this battle, he then does the former with the other enemy Housecarl unit that had its eyes on our home base.  Now that our game over risk is eliminated, we can focus all our attention on the town. But there is a little something we have to worry about :  Once that red pawn gauge fills up, enemy-held towns/forts/tents will deploy reinforcement units.  You stop that gauge dead in its tracks by attacking the enemy stationed at the garrison.  Travis’ Passive Steal active is a two-hit attack that won’t be killing anything short of proccing two crits; its actual utility lies in stealing the enemy’s PP–well, so long as they don’t guard the skill’s first hit. So not only will this enemy Housecarl not be able to use Parting Blow at the end of the battle…  …it’s another PP for Travis to have to use his Evade passive, which forces an enemy miss for an attack that would otherwise have hit.  But against the surviving Housecarl’s Parting Blow, we get no Evade proc because he whiffed that 47% chance to hit.  The red pawn gauge has been reset and replaced by a green plus gauge, at the end of which the garrisoned unit’s surviving members will heal.  Needless to say, this is a very undesirable state to be in! Unless I have a shitload of stamina-restoring items on hand to brute force things, I can’t just have a single mega-unit juggernaut through an entire stage! luckily for me the two times a unit actually hit 0 stamina in this stage didn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things   You know what helps you avoid hitting 0 stamina and having to hit the rest button thereafter? Capturing enemy towns/forts/ruins, for which the arriving unit gets 2 stamina.    You shouldn’t be in danger of units getting knocked out in the earlygame, but hey, it’s nice to have just in case. And I’ll definitely be hoarding these as much as I can.  Anyway, now that the town is ours, I can use it as a launch base to deploy our third and last unit. I’ll be sending Lex and Chloe to capture the ruins.  Like so; per this forecast the enemy Soldiers fail to make anything stick to Alain, and since Clive is sitting in the back row and not in either their and Alain’s column he slips under their radar. But instead, I’ll have Travis’ unit attack twice and win.  Speaking of, I figure now’s a good time for Guarding 101. Everyone has a guard rate, and by default, guards decrease (physical) damage incurred by 25% when procced. Having a regular shield equipped like Alain, Lex, Josef or Clive means that guards decrease (physical) damage incurred by 50%; and if you have a greatshield like Hodrick, guards decrease (physical) damage incurred by 75% when procced. This is another thing which gives Hodrick such an edge in physical durability, whereas I really do not want Chloe or Travis, who cannot equip shields, to get hit. And since none of the enemies in this stage can equip shields, it’s another reason Travis can so easily steal all their PP with his active.  Anyway, we’ve beaten the enemy Soldier unit occupying the bridge and now we’re making a move on it. We’re getting close to the enemy command post…   We can do that by capturing and squatting on the bridge, which counts as a garrison (albeit one you don’t get any stamina or valor for capturing and which has no healing bonuses); any unit sitting on a garrison won’t lose stamina when they get into a fight. Anyway, once Lex starts approaching the ruins in the east…  Ruins are side objectives and more often than not well out of the way, but hey it’s worth sending someone over to have a look.  Both of the enemy soldier units bounce ineffectively off Travis’ unit, after which I have Alain’s unit go pick them off while they’re stuck in a waiting state.  Lex and Chloe need two rounds to eliminate the Housecarl unit garrisoned at the ruins; still, even if I had to hit the wait button afterward, no reinforcements were coming to gently caress them up anyway.  A stat-booster! This gives +1 Phys. ATK and was well worth the detour. Eventually, our other two units begin closing in on the enemy command post.  Aubin commands a unit of three (  ) and his unit is a real motherfucker of a boss for my current team. In particular, his axe grants him a skill, Crush, which inflicts stun on whoever gets hit–and whoever gets stunned is forced to skip turns, being unable to attack or to cover for allies. He’s also hiding in the back row while the two frontliners are Soldiers, who will heal themselves/each other at the end of the battle so long as they stand. Iffy physical durability or not, I’ll have to punch through both of them before getting to Aubin himself.  Needless to say, I won’t be making much headway as is, despite having Alain borrow Josef’s higher-might Templar’s Sword. it didn’t help any that Clive missed and the cav pain train didn’t get rolling as a result *one inconclusive battle later*  We had to burn one stamina impotently flailing against Aubin just to finally unlock this. After a certain point in long maps you’ll, hopefully, have most or all of your units deployed and more valor than you know what to do with. Which you will then use on these skills. Hell, some valor skills are of a nature where I’d use them over deploying an additional unit to kick off a stage.  The game maxes out our valor just so we can use this mechanic to bring down Aubin. And the first thing I’ll use it for is…   thanks man, every little bit helps  I made a few suboptimal decisions here: this boost, while nice, doesn’t stop Travis’ unit from losing to Aubin’s anyway, and after having Alain’s unit attack…  …we’re still in a situation where one enemy Soldier is standing and Aubin is still unscathed. Still, I have 6 valor left–enough for one use each of Alain and Clive’s valor skills.   Even with that damage reduction against garrisoned enemies…  12 damage is more than enough to finish off the surviving Soldier. And like with FE Engage and Sigurd’s Override skill, Clive and the others in his unit get EXP for using Wild Rush. Or hell, same with all the other offensive valor/assist skills we’ll be seeing down the pike.  Since I had set Wild Rush’s range to end right next to Aubin, Alain’s unit immediately chains right into a battle with him. Once his Soldier lackeys were finally out of the picture, Aubin himself went down pretty fast.    Anyway, we finish the map having gotten Alain and Clive to level 4, and plucked Aubin’s Vitality Talisman along with a nice chunk of gold.  A Call to Action Mk. 2  I mean hey what else was to be done, chasing after Renault and his cavalry with the rear unsecured?    Let’s see if Alain’s as good of a recruiter as the likes of Lilina or Caeda and if it’s enough to win over Aubin. Dude comes off as very cynical and very mercenary but hey, he doesn’t strike me as a bad person.  Holy poo poo it worked! Aubin’s officially one of ours now, with payment deferred until the end of the game to boot  Anyway, fort’s ours, the town has been secured, and we flipped the enemy CO. I think our guys have earned a good night’s rest. Fast forward to the next morning…    The cutscene ends by prompting me to choose heraldry and… you know what? I don’t feel much of a need to switch from the default. Anyway, with this stage finished, we have access to the overworld. There’s plenty of poo poo to do in the overworld! Which is why I’ll be dedicating the entire next update to showing it off. Units Joined  Hodrick Starting Class: Hoplite (Armored, Infantry) LV 2 Growth Type: Keen (+Accuracy) / Offensive (+Phys. ATK) Equipment slots: 1 Lance, 1 Shield, 1 Accessory Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 31 (B) Phys. ATK - 11 (D) Phys. DEF - 12 (S) Mag. ATK - 9 (E) Mag. DEF - 1 (F) Accuracy - 115 (D) Evasion - 3 (F) Crit. Rate - 7% (F) Guard Rate - 18% (S) Initiative - 4 (F) Remember what Hodrick looked like back in the prologue? He’s taken a demotion and a heavy level drop to the point you wonder if Zenoira had him spending most of the past ten years in a basement opening letters. Still, he does his job and he does it well–no-selling physical attacks and protecting his allies. Just keep him the hell away from enemy mages and other anti-armor classes. You can tell from a glance, but you generally don’t want him heading units since as an armor unit, designating him as unit leader will tank movement speed. Still, any character with rear end physical defense will appreciate his presence and his Valor Skill really comes in handy in maps with stage hazards or enemy assists that create damaging terrain. Fevrith Archive entry: A knight of the fallen kingdom of Cornia, and trusted aide to Queen Ilenia. While he fought at her side during the rebellion at Valmore’s hands, he was ultimately taken prisoner after they met with defeat. Subject to Zenoira’s magick of control, he was made to lead the Zenoiran Army’s clandestine army of Palevia. Upon his defeat, his mind was freed by Alain’s ring and he was returned at last to his former self.  Clive Starting Class: Knight (Cavalry) LV 2 Growth Type: Precise (+Crit) / Defensive (+Phys. DEF) Equipment slots: 1 Lance, 1 Shield, 1 Accessory Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 27 (C) Phys. ATK - 12 (B) Phys. DEF - 10 (B) Mag. ATK - 7 (D) Mag. DEF - 11 (C) Accuracy - 118 (E) Evasion - 8 (F) Crit. Rate - 11% (C) Guard Rate - 11% (C) Initiative - 16 (C) Fevrith Archive entry: A knight of the Province of the Ashen Blue, knighted at an early age due to his peerless aptitude and immense bravery. He and Josef have worked tirelessly in setting the stage for the Liberation Army’s eventual rise.  Travis Starting Class: Thief (Scout, Infantry) LV 2 Growth Type: Offensive (+Phys. ATK) / Go-Getter (+Initiative) Equipment slots: 1 Sword, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 18 (E) Phys. ATK - 9 (D) Phys. DEF - 3 (F) Mag. ATK - 10 (D) Mag. DEF - 10 (C) Accuracy - 126 (A) Evasion - 49 (S) Crit. Rate - 14% (A) Guard Rate - 2% (F) Initiative - 25 (S) Travis doesn’t hit particularly hard and he’s in for a world of hurt if he does get hit. Still, his schtick revolves around not getting hit, with a passive to ensure he dodges should that happen, and being as fast as he is means that he can rob a target of all their PP to start off a battle and keep using his passive when need be. His Valor Skill is also clutch this early on, since I am strapped for gold. He’s overall and particularly in this moment very useful–just so long as I watch out for Truestrike buffs, which will nail him right through his high evasion, and enemy archers and swordfighters, who have high accuracy and more than a few Truestrike-based skills. Fevrith Archive entry: A spy in the employ of Cornia’s Liberation Army. Though he spent years devoted to the art of gathering intelligence, he now finds himself thrust onto the field of battle with Alain and the others.  Aubin Starting Class: Housecarl (Infantry) LV 4 Growth Type: Precise (+Crit) / Offensive (+Phys. ATK) Equipment slots: 1 Axe, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 25 (D) Phys. ATK - 16 (A) Phys. DEF - 6 (C) Mag. ATK - 7 (F) Mag. DEF - 5 (E) Accuracy - 121 (D) Evasion - 19 (D) Crit. Rate - 7% (E) Guard Rate - 7% (D) Initiative - 19 (B) At least for the next several maps Aubin will have a niche as our only axe user, and that axe he came with is great early on with that skill attached to it. He’s decently fast and does a good amount of physical damage, even if he has mediocre durability. His biggest problem is that he’ll soon be getting competition from other axe-using infantry classes with their own particular niches. Fevrith Archive entry: The mercenary leader of a band called the Sand Scorpions, who were hired by Renault to cross blades with Alain as he pursued the kidnapped Scarlett. He held fast to his base at Fort Soligie, but was eventually defeated. Remained in the fort after his defeat in battle to buy time for his companions to escape. Once cornered, he took a liking to Alain and his lofty aims, and thus decided to join the Liberation’s ranks. Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Apr 21, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2024 21:14
|
|
|
I don't know about the plot, but the mechanics of this game look very interesting. They seem to allow space for quite a bit of strategy and tactical considerations.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2024 12:20
|
|
|
I specifically stuck Alain and Travis together for this chapter, cause it gives you the info to do that by mentioning suggested team combos. Travis to dodge all the damage and Alain to deal damage. It allowed me to breeze through the chapter and the next two. I also kept Lex and Chloe together and put Hodrick and Clive together. Chloe keeps Lex healthy and Hodrick takes hits while Clive kills.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2024 18:38
|
|
|
Intermission 1: The Overworld The stage we just fought in is the first area pacified, and thus the first land available to us to explore in the overworld. Each country in Fevrith has its own overworld themes! Case in point, Cornia's for day and for night. Same with battle themes, which we first actually heard on Palevia: one for the stage and one for battles.   We’ve a laundry list of tasks to do, and hey, expanding my unit capacity sounds like a pretty good place to start. Just gotta go to A fort.  New recruits will start rolling in before long and I only have so many honors to do either of the aforementioned. And hell, you saw it in Aubin’s boss fight–increasing unit capacity is a good way to get an edge on the enemy, and I’ll be locked in a constant arms race with the game to have as many 3, 4 or 5-man units as I can. I’ll be constantly wanting for honors to add new units or to increase capacity of my existing units–and this in addition to the other gameplay benefits I need honors for.   We don’t have the renown for it, but what about a 4-man unit? Oh well! It’ll be a bit of a while before we hit C renown–and mercifully, until we begin regularly seeing 4-man enemy units.   Every quest completed, whether it’s on the overworld or in battle, gets me some honors, renown, and maybe something else. For a lot of the quests that just opened up I get treatises, which give a lump sum of EXP (and thrice the base amount if you’re giving it to someone below a certain level). I’ll hold onto them for now–for the novice treatises, a certain abducted someone is the obvious choice to get them. But for the higher-level ones, I’ll ask the thread for someone to pump them all into.  Hey, that sounds familiar…    That’s UO’s incarnation of support conversations for you, as well as the associated gameplay benefits. Every character in a unit gains rapport for fighting battles and can go all the way up to A-level rapport, even if they don’t necessarily get a rapport conversation for doing so.  That kicks off another quest! We got a Vitality Talisman for defeating Aubin, and the quest’s condition is just to give it to someone.   For the purposes of the quest, letting Aubin have it back will do.   But as you can see, the option to station guards (and board a ship, if you’re at a harbor) is grayed out, and will remain so until we deliver the requested materials to restore the town. But first things first, we’re here to buy stuff. All the armories and shops in Cornia (and back on Palevia) have the same offerings–basic earlygame weapons and items–with a few other assorted special offerings.   I’ll start by buying this lance for Chloe. Not only is it stronger than her Bronze Lance, it also gives a boost to her accuracy and has a skill attached to it. What that “True” hit rate means is, it always connects–even against targets with high evasion, like thieves, and hit them despite their Evade skill. The other special here, the Runic Sword, has a magic active skill and has Phys. ATK of 8 and Mag. ATK of 14. For that, we’ll want a character who can use swords and has enough magic attack to make it not a meme. Finally, all the recruit weapons are slightly stronger than bronze weapons AND provide a slight boost to EXP gained. Still, I don’t have the gold on hand to just clear out the armorer’s stock.  For now, I’ll buy Healing Fonts, since there will be situations where I’ll want everyone in a unit to be healed a little less than I’d just want a single character to be healed with a regular Healing Tonic. The Smoked Nuts restore 1 stamina, and will come in handy in a pinch in battle. Draughts can come later, but you can chug them right before actually starting a battle to see if +20% in attack and defense stats will make a difference. You can also sell items, and the Buy Back menu lets you get these items back for the same price you sold them at if you have second thoughts. The items will go poof the moment you exit the store.    The Fevrith Archive tells us, among many other things, that Aubin and Travis are actually not from Cornia.  Anyway, you can infer from the map and from Josef’s dialogue that Scarlett’s being held deep in uncharted territory and deep behind enemy lines, and that we’ll have to fight for every inch of progress. Taking that ground from the empire will involve plenty of side quests, bring us plenty of new allies and make us (or you, the audience) make a fair few decisions. It’s also going to be a roundabout way to reach the main quest objective–to rendezvous with a Miriam, whoever she is. If it seems like I’m meandering and taking my sweet time to save Scarlett, please bear with me. Every step of our journey to eastern Cornia will be well worth it.  Across the overworld you can find these rays–they’re gathering spots.  That one I just grabbed yielded 3 Cornian Sardines, and the one Alain is now en route to yielded 3 Corvia Herbs. Now that I’ve gathered from them, I won’t be able to get any new materials from them for a good, long while, but they’ll eventually yield something for me again. Each separate nation of Fevrith has its own distinct saltwater fish, freshwater fish, ore, lumber and herb gatherables. So while these gatherables will be in high demand in the next few updates, they will be useless once we start venturing outside Cornia.  Here and there you’ll find ruins that look like temples, like this one we captured in the previous stage. You can press the A button to have a look, at which point Chloe will assist.  Hallowed Corne Ash can be used to give you 1 valor point, to revive a KO’d unit and deploy them again, or, worst case scenario, as a get-out-of-jail-free card from a game over. Thanks, Chloe!  The overworld also has these shining spots here and there. You get one of either two things from them:  An immediately and obviously useful item…  …or a Divine Shard, whose use case you’ll see after a few updates.  Going back to the town, we…need to patch things up here. Since this is our first restoration request period, we have one very easy ask.    But wait, that’s not all! We can now station a guard at Ouvrir Harbor.  What matters is having a warm body standing guard. For each town you have a guard stationed at, you get some gold and some gatherables whenever you finish a stage. Goes without saying that more gold is always nice, and more deliverables will help expedite the restoration of other towns.  Anyway, for rapport conversations–you can see that some of the hearts have a handshake interlaid in them while others don’t. To unpack, the graph means that Lex has rapport conversations with, among our current roster, Alain at C, B and A levels, only a C-level rapport conversation with Clive, and C and A (skipping over B) rapport conversations with Josef, Chloe and Hodrick. In addition, rapport conversations are tied to locations, and gatekept behind story progression since you don’t get to see rapport conversations in areas you haven’t yet A) found, and B) completed the corresponding stage for. It’ll take a while but hey, if you ask me, this model means that rapport conversations can (and often do) effectively account for the events of the story. I also get 2 honors for each rapport conversation I see, which is another incentive to actively seek them out.  Alain, of course, gets rapport conversations with everyone. You saw that his C conversation with Lex is theoretically available since we’ve taken the fort it takes place at. Now, to make a point of how rapport conversations being tied to locations means it’s gatekept behind story progression: Alain/Josef C is in Sudd Town, which is also in Cornia but in an area we haven’t been yet. Their B conversation is in a place called Rokkuros Town, and A in Burbury Town. The former is in Elheim and the latter is in mainland Albion, so it’ll be a long while before we can see Alain and Josef’s B and A rapport conversations.  Near forts, you’ll find generics with a yellow sword icon…  …which means they’re raring for a fight. They will give you a short spiel about their class and what it’s about, as well as one of their class’ signature skills.  You will then get the chance to engage their unit in a sparring match.  If you win, you get a few grand and maybe a hint from the generic about what bad match-ups their class has. Anyway, let’s see about unlocking new unit slots since we have more than enough honors for it…  that one’ll have to wait a bit. The more units you have on hand, the more honors you need to add new ones. Soon it’ll cost 15 honors a pop, and eventually it’ll be 20 or 25.…still, figured I might as well expand a second unit’s capacity to 3, since I should have more than enough to get a fourth unit by the time I hit D renown.  In addition to ruins that look like temples, the overworld also has ruins that look like towers. Here, Lex will poke around and get something nice for you.    Like this +HP stat-booster.  This is another quest! I didn’t really do many mock battles on my initial run, but just for the quest’s sake…  Well, Travis/Hodrick is a horrible matchup for Lex/Chloe, and I didn’t need to do a mock battle to know that. But a mock battle is a mock battle and I’ll take my renown and honors and go. Here’s the play by play if you’re really interested.  There were some quests in the vicinity of town telling me to use their features–restore the town, station a guard, etc–and I can pick up my rewards immediately since I already did them.   There’s something waiting for me once I’ve restored every town in Cornia (and the other countries to boot). Ouvrir Harbor is just the first town out of many, but you know what, I gotta start somewhere.  There will be far more towns to station guards at than you’ll have named characters, but another consideration for posting guards is which characters you want to give gifts to, and boost Alain's rapport with in doing so.  You bet! Though this isn’t one of the items Chloe really likes; Cut Flowers give Alain/[recipient] +30 rapport as a baseline, and for a character who does really likes that, will give double. As for what gifts the cast likes? That I have to google for; as far as I’m aware the game itself doesn’t give hints like “this character likes sweets and books” or “that character is a fitness nut” the way Three Houses did.  Any harbor town you’ve restored will also offer you a destination to sail off to. In Ouvrir’s case, we can go back to Palevia for a stint.   Thanks granny Anyway, Palevia had been, for reasons hitherto unrevealed, left untouched by war or by the empire for a whole decade. As such, its two towns do not need to be restored. That means I can just station guards here right off the bat, and indeed, I assign Lex and Chloe to the two of them.  The rich natural bounty of Palevia… and…chickens?   Every country in Fevrith has an overworld quest where a dude’s four chickens flew the coop and you have to roam the vicinity to catch them. There are two immediately due south and northeast of Palevia Town, but when I gun for the one to the south…  …thanks man. The chickens run when they see you coming, and will vanish from the overworld if you take too long. They will respawn once their spawn point is no longer on your screen, though.  Luckily, my misclick wasn’t serious enough for this one to vanish.  This one will run for the woods–be careful, or else…  yeah that’s nice Lex. Had to try again to nab this one.  Anyway, the last chicken is to the southwest. Once I catch them all, I can go back and claim my reward.  The Golden Egg is an accessory that can be equipped to a character to boost the gold their unit gains from battles, that can also be sold for 30k. Did I mention Palevia gets its own special overworld theme? Now, back to Cornia proper.  Whenever you see red on the edge of your screen, it means you’re about to enter hostile territory. There will be enemy units roaming and they’ll chase you if you enter their line of sight.  Like so- oh, well, uh, looks like poo poo’s about to go down here!             Well that’s a good segway into our next stage! Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Apr 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2024 19:23
|
|
|
There's a couple characters who can make okay use of the runic sword early on, but I stuck mine on Josef long term. His physickal attack is going to fall off hard and fast, but his magickal attack actually stays solid for quite a long time.
Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Apr 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2024 22:24
|
|
|
It's a segue, actually. I wish Vanillaware ported to PC, oh well. So far Cornia's naming theme is mostly French, I'm going to guess there's also England for Albion, Germany and Italy around, perhaps the one to the north will be Russia?
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 02:23
|
|
|
oh yeah that surprised me my first go around too. For the time being Josef's current active and Pursuit passive works well enough, but the Runic Sword's definitely a good way to--thread whims notwithstanding--make use of his magic attack stat and keep him relevant in the long run once stat differences become more pronounced and his physical attack really starts lagging.SIGSEGV posted:It's a segue, actually.  but yeah, you're right about England and very specifically England for Albion; the last three countries have German, Greek and Russian (or some other Slavic language? I can't really discern the differences in the Roman alphabet with what I'm given) naming schemes. Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Apr 22, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 02:39
|
|
|
I'm playing in German, so maybe there are differences, but I encountered a lot of Nordic/Germanic sounding names in Elheim, and zero Greek. I did find a funny error in Beastoria, where at one point the German translation confuses cats and goats
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 12:37
|
|
|
You have some shots of Chloe where there should be ones of Clive. Also never went back to Palevia, so I'll do that once I buy the game and can continue playing. 30K is nothing to sneeze at at this point.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 19:34
|
|
|
ChaosStar0 posted:You have some shots of Chloe where there should be ones of Clive. Also never went back to Palevia, so I'll do that once I buy the game and can continue playing. 30K is nothing to sneeze at at this point. Thanks for that, missed that after like three QC passes somehow. and mea culpa on Elheim; in the English version its residents have their own language, which I thought sounded vaguely Greek on first play, but when I actually dig into it... yeah, I can't make heads or tails out of what the hell it's supposed to be. anyway next update will be Wednesday around my lunchtime, and I'll have a poll to open at the end of said update. Stay tuned!
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2024 20:51
|
|
|
 The game is nice enough to let you know what the primary enemy types you’ll be facing on a stage are (though it is of course by no means an exhaustive list), as well as the recommended level. Now let’s get cracking.  A Solitary Resistance Mk. 1      So yeah, that’s this stage in a nutshell: recruit the green unit before he really steps into it, capture the enemy fort, check out those shining spots, beat the boss, and figure out how to deal with Travis’ class but as an enemy while doing so.  Did a little reorganization with this stage’s enemy mix in mind. Unit 1 now has Travis up front with Aubin and Lex in the back. Aubin is there to just (hopefully) hit things hard and Lex’s specific purpose in this unit is to shield Travis from enemy Hunters, who can otherwise nail him right through his Evade skill and high evasion. Unit 2 has Hodrick up front, with Chloe in the back to kill enemy thieves with her new lance’s Truestrike skill, and Josef along to play chaperone and mop up anything else. And Unit 3 is… well, Alain and Clive, between the two of them, don’t particularly need help killing the non-scout enemy units.  Alain is the one who’ll be recruiting Rolf. Josef’s unit will bear south to capture the enemy fort, and Travis’ unit will be accompanying Alain’s and nabbing gold from enemies as we build up our valor.  I also took the time to set conditions–or, in essence, to tell the AI for my guys what to do in battle. Since Passive Steal won’t steal the enemy’s PP if the enemy either dodges or guards its first hit, I set it to target the enemy with the lowest guard rate and/or lowest evasion.  Nothing particularly witty is needed with Aubin’s skills; Crush will stun the target so long as it connects, and ideally Parting Blow will be finishing off a straggler. And for Lex, I just transferred the Vitality Talisman to him.  Lean Edge heals extra if it finishes an enemy, and this condition will help ensure it picks off the lowest-hanging fruit.  You saw from the last stage that Assaulting Lance needs to connect and KO the target to get rolling, so these conditions will help with finding appropriate targets.  I set True Thrust to only activate if there are enemy scouts (so, Thieves) in the enemy unit, since it’s a bit weaker than Long Thrust and I would prefer Chloe use the latter in any other circumstance on this map. I should reset First Aid’s condition to Lowest HP, since Chloe is now in a unit of 3 and I might want to be more selective about who she prioritizes for healing; that having been said, in practice Hodrick was the only one taking any damage anyway during this stage.  Lastly, I want Josef’s Slice and Pursuit skills to target any weakened enemies the others in his unit couldn’t finish off.  No matter what, Rolf’s three-man will reach an enemy Thief before we can reach him. Luckily they’re in no particular danger against a singular Thief.   By design, Hunters serve as a hard check against Thieves–and other dodgetanks–by giving themselves Truestrike as they use their active skill. Just so long as a Fighter or a Hoplite doesn’t intercept the blow.  It sure is nice that I still get valor when NPC units kill enemies, as an aside.  Speaking of Truestrike! That’s why Chloe’s new toy is very valuable in this stage.  The enemy Thieves have no choice but to try and steal PP from Hodrick, whose high guard rate will (mostly, hopefully) prevent that. And since they’re neatly lined up in a column…  gently caress your dodge passive and gently caress your evasion stat   A Solitary Resistance Mk. 2 Luckily for me, Rolf’s unit decided to catch a breather after having eviscerated that lone Thief, allowing Alain’s unit to catch up.   I love that  sound effect that plays whenever we slap a blue coat of paint on a red or green unit. Anyway, Rolf isn’t quite one of ours yet; sure, he’s under our control, we can even send him back to the command post to withdraw, but we can’t fiddle with his equipment or reassign him to another unit (same with the generic Fighter and Hunter in his unit, of course). We’ll see what Rolf means once Josef’s unit reaches its target. But as they get close, Alain notes these shining spots on the stage–they’re another side objective.  Now, back to what Rolf was saying: right now, Josef’s unit is falling short of eliminating the enemy unit garrisoned at the fort. Chloe is in the right place to hit a full column, but it’s unlikely that her True Thrust will have the oomph to kill the Housecarl in the rear. And no matter how I shake it, I need for Josef or Hodrick to land A hit on the last Thief if I want this over in one round. Let’s see if hitting Y and having Rolf use his assist skill will shake things up.  Wow, the battle forecast turned from falling short into overkill! Let’s see how.  Units led by bow- and offensive magic-using classes can use assist skills. Their assists trigger at the start of the battle, and the more such units in range, the more assists you can call on. A single offensive assist will never be strong enough to actually kill enemies at full health, but it sure does weaken enemies–and reset the RNG, for better or worse.  The first enemy Thief was a goner no matter what, but Rolf’s assist skill provided the critical mass for True Thurst to put down the enemy Housecarl in the back row too. Now, I still need someone to kill the Thief who wasn’t in Chloe’s column.  Hodrick tries, but only forces him to burn his last PP…  Before Josef lands a 74% chance to hit to put him down for the count.   After the battle, whatever unit(s) used assist skills will gain EXP for doing so. It will also cost them 1 stamina unless they’re garrisoned, so…what, did you think it was just gonna be free damage, no strings attached?  Now that we have some valor to play around with, it’s time to start stealing some gold from the enemy units. After that lone enemy Thief suicided into Josef’s unit, I have them check out that shining spot Alain was talking about.  It doesn’t just yield us an item, but also some valor.  Even for a unit without any Truestrike or “gently caress you, I hit” skills on hand, it’s still possible to win a fight against enemy scout units. I just need for enough hits to, despite iffy hit rates, connect.  As such, with Aubin’s Parting Blow icing the win at the very last moment.  Lex’s voiced line for leveling up pairs quite nicely with Chloe’s “Take notes, Lex”. Still, she’s the one who’s almost single-handedly cleared out the southeast of the stage.  The second shining spot yields a Miracle Fruit, which gives a level. Definitely holding onto this, since right now levels are very easy to gain unless your name is Josef (and for whom an extra level makes no functional difference in combat performance). As for that blue circle around Rolf’s unit, that denotes the area within which he can provide assists. Same with any red or yellow or green circles for enemy/NPC units who can use assist skills.  That last shining spot can be tricky, because if you gently caress up the routing you can end up walking right into the enemy command post (and thus into Gammel’s unit) en route to it. Best case scenario, you get knocked back a bit and thrown off course, and end up having to fight him again until you correct course. Worst case scenario, you actually beat him and end the map prematurely and you don’t get to reach said shining spot.  Now to make a point of how assist skills can reset the RNG: judging by this battle forecast, Alain’s unit is projected to kill two of the Soldiers, but not the last, probably because Clive will whiff the last hit.  Now we’re getting a forecast where Alain’s unit is destroying the enemy Soldier unit! The first one did not account for the enemy Hunter unit being in range and chipping in with an assist skill, while this one does. The enemy AI is programmed to always use assist skills when able, even if it’s to the detriment of the unit actually fighting. And this time, the enemy assist rerolled the RNG to be very much in my (or rather Clive’s) favor. just watch out for when the shoe’s on the other foot–when you pick a target over an initially very favorable battle forecast before actually reaching it and finding out you’re getting hosed over by multiple enemy assists  And that’s the last of…seriously, Clive? He’d have had to botch a 92% hit rate for me to get an outcome where that one enemy Soldier was left standing in that original forecast. Whatever, a win’s a win. As for the enemy Hunter unit, it then got promptly stomped by Alain and Clive.  The third and final shining spot got me a draught. At this point, Gammel’s very close to summoning reinforcements; let’s put the kibosh on that.  Let’s have Rolf’s unit fire the opening salvo.  Gammel has a special sword, Viperfang, which confers this self-explanatory skill.  So when this poisoned Fighter is up, he loses a chunk of HP. It’s possible for someone at low enough HP to die from poison (or burn). Luckily for the Fighter, status effects don’t carry over between battles. Now, Rolf and the generic Hunter in his unit are both set to prioritize the back row, where Gammel is the only combatant…   What was Gammel saying again? Something like “well why don’t you make me”?   Gammel himself may have went down, but the frontline of his unit are still alive. So this stage ain’t quite over yet.  Yes, generics gain rapport (though it goes without saying, they don’t get any rapport conversations).  Anyway, we have just enough valor left to play around with some valor skills, and Travis had already plucked his few hundred gold from Gammel’s unit.  Arrow Rain hits every enemy within its area of effect, though by now Gammel’s unit is the last one standing.   …and it does some pretty respectable damage despite being less effective against garrisoned enemies. Still, I wanted to feed this kill to Travis’ unit, since Travis is now the lowest-level member of my army, and so I had to fire off Arrow Rain again to get my desired outcome.  High evasion can’t save dodgy squishies from offensive valor skills, so this last battle ended up just being Travis delivering the enemy Housecarl a coup de grace.   And as a spoil of war, we get Gammel’s sword.   D renown is so tantalizingly close now.  A Solitary Resistance Mk. 3   Gammel’s fate–and perhaps that of his sister by extension–is for you, thread, to decide! Show him mercy, or turn him in? https://strawpoll.com/NMnQ54Mmdn6 You have 24 hours from the time of this post to vote.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 20:30
|
|
|
Good lord the smell of bullshit on that story could knock out an elephant. That being said, somehow I doubt he isn't going to show up again; escaping the City Watch seems like it'd be one of his core professional skills.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 22:35
|
|
|
Voting for Free There might be a favor for us later from it. It also gives us a reputation for mercy and.. Well, this is a revolution. Beggars, choosers, and it doesn't hurt to have a few assassins/thieves that owe us favors. Plus there has to be plans for him down the line if he's a named character with a moral choice! In which case I tend to go with 'mercy' here. Particularly when the extension is about his sister as well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 01:18
|
|
|
I voted Mercy, not because I believe him, because that story is obvious bullshit, but because gently caress the
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 01:49
|
|
|
 By the graces of the thread, Gammel will be a free man; will post the follow-up over the weekend.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 20:50
|
|
|
I'm sure that our new pal Gammel wouldn't lie to us and that letting him go couldn't possibly result in anything bad.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 21:11
|
|
|
Yeah, I'd just propose playing optimally because, well, I'm not going to open gamefaqs and transcribe it in your thread, that'd just be rude.
SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Apr 25, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 21:18
|
|
|
Voted for letting gammel go as it seems like what alain would do.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 23:20
|
|
|
Probably as part of an early arc about responsibility and consequence.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2024 23:28
|
|
|
SIGSEGV posted:Yeah, I'd just propose playing optimally because, well, I'm not going to open gamefaqs and transcribe it in your thread, that'd just be rude. how do you mean?
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 01:49
|
|
|
Well, it'll likely have consequences and Goon LPs have had an habit of making bad decisions, so when it comes to votes, I often feel like looking up the guide is the best option and, well, since there is in fact a vote, as decreed by the OP, I simply don't vote. (But please don't leave the critical bits up to us.)
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 02:05
|
|
|
 A Solitary Resistance Mk. 4 Thread chose to free Gammel, so free Gammel Alain shall.   So yeah, you can beat up roaming enemies on the overworld for honors OR you can clear the stage they’re centered around, after which all the roaming enemies in the area go poof and you get all the honors you would have had you beaten them one by one. Right now we just get a piddly 1 honor per roaming enemy unit eliminated, but eventually that’ll be upped to 2 and ultimately 3 depending on our renown rank. And as Josef was saying, not only can we now walk around the area without getting chased down by roaming enemies, but now and only now can we visit the towns and fort that featured in the stage we just cleared.   THREE!! points away from D rank renown   Gammel then runs off. Had we chosen to turn him in, the town guard would have given us 10k gold as a reward. As for what would have become of Gammel, his gang would have broken him out of jail overnight, and he would still run off just like in the screenshot above, except instead of (maybe? hopefully?) turning over a new leaf, he’d be swearing that Alain and co. will get theirs someday. You can tell from that alternate scenario that this ain’t the last we’ve seen of Gammel, or of the Black Talons.   The refugees from the start of the mission are now happily back home. Even talking about how the town’s so much better now, even though we haven’t lifted a finger to restore it yet.  …looks like we’ll have to wait a bit to restore Coquillage Town in earnest.  With 22 honors on hand, we have more than enough to expand our last unit’s capacity (and it should be a good while before my roster outstrips my unit capacity again), and after the next side quest we will have enough honors to not just add a fourth unit, but to make it a three-man too. quote: Going north of town, running behind the mountain and hugging the shore, I can access that shining spot, which yielded me a Divine Shard.  Lastly, there’s a Hunter in the fort near Coquillage Town who wants a friendly throwdown. I’ll have to readjust my unit configurations if I want to win…  …because the battle is complicated by the presence of an enemy Gryphon Knight. They’re quite dodgy, hit fairly hard, and their actives are particularly specced to gently caress up cavalry. Still, much like in Fire Emblem, fliers in this game get destroyed by arrows, and all the evasion in the world can’t save them from Truestrike. And unlike pegasi, Gryphon Knights aren’t particularly speedy–hell, the one in Morris’ unit is outsped by everyone in my three-man unit above.  thanks for your 2k gold  Play-by-play, if you’re interested. We’ll be seeing a lot more enemy fliers in the next stage, due to the southwest–and the game’s just barely begun!  And hell, I barely even made it across the bridge going southwest before a NPC Housecarl started chasing me down. Units Joined  Rolf Starting Class: Hunter LV 3 Growth Type: Offensive (+Phys. ATK) / Guardian (+Guard Rate) Equipment slots: 1 Bow, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 25 (D) Phys. ATK - 13 (C) Phys. DEF - 4 (E) Mag. ATK - 10 (D) Mag. DEF - 12 (B) Accuracy - 137 (S) Evasion - 27 (C) Crit. Rate - 11% (B) Guard Rate - 8% (E) Initiative - 15 (C) Rolf is drat solid and thanks to his class, he checks a lot of problematic enemy types. Scouts and Swordfighters? Truestrike and nonetheless superlative accuracy go brrrr. Fliers? I’m sure flight instructors in Fevrith drill it into their students’ skulls to watch out for arrows. Mages? Surprisingly good matchup since Hunters actually have relatively high magic defense. Since his attacks are all ranged, you can have him single out squishies hiding in the back row. His valor skill also helps a lot with softening up enemy units and I can’t say no to more characters who can use assist skills. He does, of course, have weaknesses; he’ll die fast to physical attacks and gets shut down by enemy armors who can intercept and nullify his attacks. Still, he’s got a niche, excels in it, and I can very easily find something to do for him in most any stage. Fevrith Archive entry: A bowman who started a militia in western Cornia in order to resist Zenoiran rule. After thwarting the Black Talon Bandits outside Coquillage Town, he set his sights on reclaiming it for the good of its people. He bears not only a keen eye for hunting prey and the skill to hit his mark, but unshakeable courage on the field of battle. After working together to defeat the Black Talons, he close to formally enlist in the Liberation’s ranks.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 17:11
|
|
|
Do you get some sort of shared experience from the disappearing roaming enemies? Although going around taking them out one by one sounds miserable so I'll happily accept no experience since the important renown still gets cashed in. How much like classic Fire Emblem is the game? Is renown a finite resource? Is experience? Young Gammel there looks completely different than in his later years. I guess he also hasn't learned any magic yet. I'm referring to another Vanillaware game, Grim Grimoire, where the magic academy headmaster Dumbledore clone n° 454421 is named Gammel Dore
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 19:53
|
|
|
Omobono posted:Do you get some sort of shared experience from the disappearing roaming enemies? Although going around taking them out one by one sounds miserable so I'll happily accept no experience since the important renown still gets cashed in. No exp from overworld enemies, just honors. There is an opportunity later to grind exp on fairly small repeatable maps, and I think those maps give you small amounts of honors and renown as well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 20:14
|
|
|
fatsleepycat posted:No exp from overworld enemies, just honors. There is an opportunity later to grind exp on fairly small repeatable maps, and I think those maps give you small amounts of honors and renown as well. Yeah you get honors and renown each time you finish a stage, and that still applies to those repeatable stages, which also provide treatises for each clear. I'll go through them all as they appear on the overworld; I'm not going to abuse them by any means, but they're a good way to try and shore up lagging but still salvageable characters. They also scale in difficulty, with progressively higher enemy level and complexity.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 23:32
|
|
|
To clarify, even when you kill overworld enemies manually they don't give experience.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 23:47
|
|
|
Cattail Prophet posted:To clarify, even when you kill overworld enemies manually they don't give experience. And you have to beat them in one round, otherwise they fully heal.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2024 06:52
|
|
|
 The NPC Housecarl is of course not actually dangerous; he just wants a chat.  Not with Alain, who will be playing fly-on-a-wall.    Well, that’s a bit of Travis’ backstory, and the intro for our next side quest! Let’s ride.  As the Tricorns Ride Mk. 1     We have quite a bit of vertical distance to cover from our starting point all the way down to Bruno’s camp.  That, plus a harbor town and an enemy fort to capture along the way.  One of the enemy chokepoints, as well as the enemy fort, are being held by enemy Gryphon Knight units, which are a pain to deal with for my current roster.  Now, units for this map: I did some reconfiguration with Alain/Clive adding Aubin to the back row; Travis/Lex taking Josef in Aubin’s place; and Hodrick/Chloe adding Rolf to the back row and assigning him as leader. Chloe and Rolf can slam dodgetanks between the two of them…well, had I thought to remove the “don’t use unless scouts are present” condition from Chloe’s True Thrust skill  I deploy Alain and Travis’ units first, meaning to deploy Rolf’s from the harbor town once it’s fallen into my hands. They’re very quickly met with an enemy Gladiator unit. After Travis pockets some gold from them, Alain’s unit engages.  Alain lands a solid hit, albeit one that’s not quite strong enough to seal the deal…  …and that’s a feature of the Gladiator class: they have high HP and their Bulk Up passive reflexively heals them after they’ve taken a hit.  Still, their defenses suck and this Gladiator didn’t heal enough to avoid getting taken down by Aubin. Trash defenses, low guard rate, poor evasion and low initiative all meant the second Gladiator went down to Clive’s lance before even getting an attack in.  Moving along, Travis’ unit comes into contact with a three-man Soldier unit, which doesn’t have a prayer against Josef in particular.   Stat gains in this game are fixed and this level-up isn’t going to fix Lex’s fundamental problems, but, that many +1’s at once still looks good.  At this point, I decided to have Travis’ unit pick up the shining spot near that watermill and Alain’s unit gun for the Gladiator unit occupying Thulust Harbor. Once someone begins approaching the bridge (or the watermill)...   It’s possible to start this stage without having done Rolf’s first–as in, you can sneak past all the roaming enemies and cross over into Thulust to meet Travis’ erstwhile hatchet man–but on the other hand, why would you?  That’s a not insignificant sum of gold from the shining spot!  The two Gladiators up front have a pretty hefty amount of HP compared to the scrubs Alain’s unit beat up at the start of the stage, and what’s more, they’re backed up by a Soldier who can heal them on top of their self-healing passive at the end of the battle. With either Alain or Travis’ units, I’ll need one round to take out one of the Gladiators, and a second to take out the other (and hopefully the Soldier too).  And here’s the Gladiator’s active; as you can tell from the name, it hits an entire row. It has base 150 physical potency, with an additional 50 if the user is at full HP (and this one was), while all the physical actives I have on hand have base 100 potency at most. Still, this active has base 80% hit rate, and on top of that, Gladiators as a class have crap accuracy with which to use it. And hell, enemy skills that can hit a whole row look much less scary when all my units only have a single character holding down the front row.  My original game plan was to capture Thulust Harbor and then, from there, to deploy Rolf’s unit to destroy the Gryphon Knight unit holding the bridge, but I changed my mind when I got this forecast.  Now that we’ve stolen the Gryphon Knights’ lunch money, let’s see how Travis’ unit won. As it turns out, a groundbound unit with neither Truestrike skills nor bow wielders on hand CAN still kill two enemy Gryphon Knights.  I…  just…  needed…  for…  …a bunch of sub-50% hit rates to connect…  …and for the second Gryphon Rider to drop dead from poison after having procced a Guard against Josef. It’s by no means a reliable way to beat enemy Gryphon Knights, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth etc. etc.  Meanwhile in Thulust Harbor, it was a team effort to take down the second Gladiator, but once he went down, the enemy Soldier had just low enough HP for Clive to one shot him.  It’s in my best interests to have Alain and Clive wield recruit weapons, just so they can get that slight EXP boost.  At level 5, Alain gets a passive that lets him cover for allies like Hodrick and Lex can; it’s not really relevant for his current unit, but its most immediate use case would be to protect backrow squishies getting targeted by ranged attacks. Or heck, Clive from fliers, had I been possessed to have Alain’s unit try taking on Gryphon Knights in this stage.  Aubin on the other hand does not get a new skill at level 5, but he does grace me with his very cool level-up quote instead.  And almost simultaneously, Travis’ unit captures the first bridge and Alain’s unit arrives at Thulust town. We’re halfway there!   Well, I can’t say no to more of those.  So yeah, when one of my units garrisons and stays put, they also recover stamina in addition to HP. Even KO’d units get revived! It’s a good option if poo poo really gets dire and my hand is forced, though I prefer to keep things moving.  Now I deploy Rolf’s unit, even if I make one or two suboptimal decisions with them in this map.  Rolf himself can easily kill a single enemy Gryphon Knight, but Chloe and Hodrick lack the power or accuracy to take the second one down too in one round. With that, I then send Travis’ to squat on the southern bridge and Alain and Rolf’s units to Fort Mainteneaut.  Due to the sheer size of this map, I can’t stop either of the remaining enemy camps from deploying reinforcements. Still, I’m not particularly worried given the remaining stamina of my units.  The reinforcements from Bruno’s camp are all Gladiator units.  Given their poo poo guard rate and evasion, they’re sitting ducks for Travis to steal their PP and head off their self-healing passive in doing so. This one is a sitting duck for Josef’s Pursuit, and his buddy won’t survive three attacks+poison from Team Travis’ remaining AP pool.  Now that Travis’ unit has taken the bridge, they can tank Gladiator reinforcements all day long.   The other fort deploys Housecarl reinforcements, off which Chloe gets a level. And Rolf’s unit had eliminated that one just before…  …entering the bolstered assist skill range of this four-man enemy Hunter unit sitting on a watchtower. As for that Hunter unit’s gauge? Starting now, enemy units can also use valor skills and I would rather not be on the receiving end of them if I can help it.  Hold on, that’s not quite right…  There we go. While Clive has excellent killing power against regular infantry, I am quite reliant on the whims of the RNG to have Clive hit a bunch of enemies in a row to win battles in a single round.  And that’s that, with the only damage incurred being two arrows bouncing off Alain’s shield.   Anyway, now that Rolf has reached the enemy fort, it’s obvious what’s going on with this battle forecast: Rolf kills one Gryphon Knight, Chloe and Hodrick fail to hit the other one at all. Since I have 4 valor, I decide to have Rolf fire off Arrow Rain.  Now let's see if that’s enough to secure a KO…   gently caress it. One more Arrow Rain… …which eliminated the enemy Gryphon Knight unit.  Just before Rolf’s unit took the fort, Alain’s unit picked up this nifty item from the shining spot next to the watchtower. It’s a consumable that doubles gold gained after one battle. Full disclosure, I kept forgetting to use this during my first playthrough because it doesn’t actually move any damage numbers and made myself much poorer in the process! I sure as hell will try to correct for that this go-around. Now that we’ve captured this fort and hit up all of the shining spots, we can have Travis’ unit quit playing whack-a-mole with reinforcements and make a move on the enemy’s command post. Once they get close…   Alain might very well be onto something–we’ll see if he is after we defeat Bruno’s unit, of course.  Now, Bruno has a megaton of HP to burn through for a level 6 enemy, and his Gladiator buddy also has a beefy HP stat. Two rounds to take his unit out is the best I can hope for.   Among my roster, Travis is probably best equipped to take on Bruno’s unit, just by taking away his and the other Gladiator’s PP and thus their self-healing. The generic Gladiator then went down fast to Josef without his healing passive to mitigate damages.    Poison also helps negate some of Bruno’s Bulk Up, enough so that he doesn’t get the boost to Wide Smash from being at full HP. Still, I’ll need another round to finish the job.  Between Travis’ superlative evasion, outstanding PP to proc Evade, and Bruno’s…questionable…accuracy, it’s not like I needed to worry about Travis getting hit, let alone KO’d by a full-powered Wide Smash. With that, Travis’ unit made it out unscathed and ready to go for round two.   I was considering having Alain or Rolf’s units take out Bruno’s unit, but since Bruno has two PP as a boss and thus gets to use Bulk Up twice, it would not have been a particularly favorable outcome either way. So it fell on Travis’ unit to finish the job.   Two last levels for the road, with a very timely quote about Tricorn pride from Travis to go with it. And no, Bruno doesn’t have anything to say when he goes down.  And with that, we get a nice accessory for the earlygame to round out the mission.   loving finally  As the Tricorns Ride Mk. 2       Bruno’s deal was, in fact, exactly what Alain thought it was. Now for an actual conversation.         Recruitment unsuccessful, sounds like. Just as Travis and Alain agree that Bruno is intractable and turn around to leave…   Whodathunk that some good ol’ fashioned ribbing was what it would actually take to win the guy over?  Three roaming enemies in the stage’s area got me three extra honors for my clear. Can’t wait until our renown rank goes up again and that figure gets bumped up a bit.   Well all’s well that ends well. Now that we’re at D renown…  I can certainly hire generic mercenaries and may very well do so, although it will cost me honors. As for our roster, well, when all is said and done, I can have up to 12 units of up to 5 characters each, and the game has… over 60 non-generic playable characters. Depending on the whims of the thread, I’d definitely be open to hiring a generic for kicks. Now, as for adding more units? I’ll absolutely be doing that after we get through this last bit of cutscene. Meanwhile, in eastern Cornia…   I’ll be honest, I can’t parse this line. What persuasion? Galerius hasn’t even personally interacted with Scarlett yet and she’s here because Renault kidnapped her and took her to the other side of the country.  I feel bad for Scarlett, but no matter how I cut it, she’ll just have to wait. The Liberation will have to consolidate their forces and holdings while making their way to eastern Cornia.  Crossing the bridge from Bruno’s camp, there’s no stage or roaming enemies–just the southwestern rear end-end of Cornia (and I can even spot a roaming promoted enemy in Elheim, on the other side of the mountain range). It’s still got something for me, and something for Lex to go spelunking in.  This’ll be useful–the burn immunity part of it, especially, in the next stage I’m taking on.  A shining spot near Thulust Harbor got me this very neat item, which blocks all damage from enemy assists for a single battle.  Back at the fort, I act on Josef’s advice and make myself a 4th unit–and upgrade it to a three-man unit to boot. It feels so good to be able to finally do that again.  The additional 5 renown also nudges me along on my way to C rank renown, and the ability to make four-man units along with it.  Something’s waiting for us in the watermill! Let’s check it out.  The nice old lady gives us a small Revival Orb.  After gathering from the forests in the Thulust area and the cave near Coquillage Town, I have the materials on hand to restore the harbor town.   While stationing a guard at the freshly-restored Thulust Harbor, I noticed that the patch that dropped shortly before I recorded this stretch of the game updated Scarlett’s status from “abducted” to “unavailable”. We’ll have more to say about said patch once characters from classes affected by it join up.  All but a select handful of restored harbor towns, like Ouvrir Harbor ↔ Palevia Harbor, have ships bound for secluded shores, which have goodies waiting for you.  From Thulust Harbor I can access this islet south of Palevia. It has ruins that Chloe can procure some Hallowed Corne Ash from and a bevy of shining spots, which altogether yield three Divine Shards and a Dew of Vitality. And that’s all there is to this islet. I’ve taken the treasures and it has no conventional gathering spots, so there’s no reason to ever come back. Let’s go back to Thulust and do some shopping.  That’s a solid accessory and is well worth the 10k, and even late into the game someone is going to appreciate having a 10% boost to physical attack and critical hit rate on top of a flat +2 to physical attack.  This mission brought to you by Travis and this shopping spree financed in no small part by Travis. And holy poo poo was I glad I sank the gold to buy another two Healing Fonts come next mission. And that’s a wrap for this update. But you should get the gist of the gameplay loop by now: do stage, recruit new characters (hopefully), get more honors and renown to expand your unit capacity, find hidden goodies in the area you just fought in (hopefully), gather materials in the area you just fought in, use said materials to rebuild towns and get more honors and other goodies, station more guards to help get you more gold and materials after you beat a stage, and rinse and repeat as you make your way to the next story objective. Units Joined  Bruno Starting Class: Gladiator LV 6 Growth Type: Defensive (+Phys. DEF) / Precise (+Crit. Rate) Equipment slots: 1 Axe, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 52 (S) Phys. ATK - 14 (B) Phys. DEF - 5 (F) Mag. ATK - 1 (F) Mag. DEF - 7 (E) Accuracy - 113 (F) Evasion - 8 (F) Crit. Rate - 7% (E) Guard Rate - 8% (E) Initiative - 8 (F) Compared to Aubin, Bruno has a metric shitload of HP and a self-healing passive, and worse but still serviceable physical attack to use his active skill, which is quite strong and lets him slam an entire row right off the bat, even more so if he’s at full health. Right now, Chloe is the only other character in my roster who has skills that can hit multiple enemies, and hers are both weaker. But this comes with a price: Bruno’s other stats are all awful. Still, for all his flaws, he, alone, can hit entire rows, and that is a genuine advantage this early on. He can hop in last and wipe out a weakened row of enemies. But his main draw will start looking a lot less impressive once other characters start getting multi-target actives to play around with. Fevrith Archive entry: A Zenoiran general in command of the Thulust region. Originally a joint captain of the Tricorn Mercenaries, he was defeated and captured by Zenoira, who granted him a position within their ranks due to his immense ability. As a joint founder of the Tricorn Mercenaries, he grew close to Travis–younger brother of the group’s first captain. After Travis and his sister left the group, Bruno became the new captain, but struggled to find work for them. After the Tricorn Mercenaries fell to Zenoira, he was captured, subjected to their magick of control, and made their general in the Thulust region. Upon his defeat to the Liberation, his wits returned and he joined their ranks.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 20:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 14:45 |
|
|
Jerry Manderbilt posted:
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 22:55
|
|
