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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:I think he's referring to Hodrick here. It sounds like his plan was to wait for Hodrick to come back and then betray him, swipe Scarlett, and steal the reward. He's confused about how Hodrick "persuaded" Scarlett to come with him because he didn't stick around long enough to realize that Hodrick changed allegiance. goddammit that actually checks out completely
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May 2, 2024 02:16
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Are there any situations, like Gammel's, where there's an objectively right and wrong decision(in the sense that one gets you something and the other loses you something) or are they all about gaining one thing or gaining another thing?
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May 2, 2024 02:35
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PurpleXVI posted:Are there any situations, like Gammel's, where there's an objectively right and wrong decision(in the sense that one gets you something and the other loses you something) or are they all about gaining one thing or gaining another thing? I will have more to say about that at the end of the next update (am working on it, should have it out Sunday, can say it will end with a decision).
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May 2, 2024 03:00
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:goddammit that actually checks out completely  But when Hodrick actually gets a line during Scarlett's abduction he says Jerry Manderbilt posted:
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May 2, 2024 06:22
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Bruno is honestly one of my favorite characters in the game and I'll say that gladiators get a lot better later on when combined with some other classes and accessories. Two gameplay things that'll come in handy: You can actually switch tactics and equipment mid battle as much as you like (and you even can switch squad leaders for different leader bonuses by spending a valor point) And I recommend taking another look at the liquid fortune item for a pleasant surprise.
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May 4, 2024 18:36
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Gladiators are in kind of an awkward position this early where they have skills that incentivize letting them take hits, but don't quite have the tanking potential to be usable as a solo frontline. There's several classes like this (I'd argue both Alain and knights fall into the category somewhat, though they can coast on shield access for a while), and generally they tend to get better once you're a bit further in, have higher unit size caps, and it starts to become more viable to build a unit formation with three okay-ish tanks up front instead of one excellent tank. Gladiator's problem is that you don't get to start playing around with most of those other classes until you're already at that point anyway, while Bruno has plenty of time to leave a bad impression if you go in expecting him to stand up to a prolonged assault. I also tend to find that even later on, keeping a gladiator alive can be an exercise in frustration compared to similar options.
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May 5, 2024 03:45
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Bruno with a dedicated healer behind has done fine for me as a primary tank to about the midpoint of the game, but I'm only playing on Tactical and he wound up with some high-Initiative damagers so he doesn't have to take too many hits.
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May 5, 2024 05:18
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 Let’s go back to the fort that served as home base back when we hit the mainland and see what’s up to the north.   We’ve got the resources and personnel to take on this quote unquote great sorcerer. Let’s forge ahead.    Travis provided us a nice overview of the stage we’re about to take on (though since this is all still the overworld and not the actual stage, it’s missing some critical elements). Archers we have indeed, and I would not dare tackle this side quest without Rolf.  The Self-Effacing Sorcerer Mk. 1    I like that Housecarl’s reaction. Like, what are you even supposed to say when the boss goes on unprompted about his mommy issues, right?      So there’s the stage–Auch is in the Thilde Ruins, on the other side of the river. There’s only one bridge in the west of the stage, meaning we’ll have to take the scenic route to reach him. En route we have one fort and three enemy watchtowers to neutralize. There’s also a total of three shining spots to hit up. And boy howdy are there a lot of enemy Wizard units crawling about. It’s rather smaller than the previous stage, but also far denser in its early stretch.  Units for this map. Josef is flying solo and will see no combat; I’ll just have him run around to visit the shining spots. I use my 3 valor to deploy the rest of my units.  That’s a lot of overlapping assist skill ranges! The enemy fort is held down by a Wizard unit, flanked by two watchtowers in close proximity. I can’t even engage the first Wizard unit close to my command post without eating an assist attack from the first watchtower, I can’t even take the first watchtower without eating an assist attack from the Wizard unit at the fort, and I will be in range of the second watchtower if I gun for the fort without neutralizing that one first. And I need to be careful of all of this, since damage from their assists won’t be factored in until I actually enter their range and fight.  Rolf’s unit ditched Hodrick for Travis, who can hold down the front line and dodge/not get murdered by enemy magic. They take that first Wizard unit within striking distance of our command post.  And assist damage? It adds up, fast, on this stage. Wizards are also the first enemies we encounter who use magic. Magic actives/passives cannot be guarded against, meaning they’ll hit for full damage, always. They’ll hurt almost everyone on my roster right now. Moreover, since Wizards’ skills are all ranged, they can target the backrow (though the enemy Wizards here mercifully did not).    Luckily for me, Wizards also have poor initiative and no physical durability to speak of, so if my whole unit can outspeed them–as is true of Travis, Rolf and Chloe–then I can, as Hodrick was suggesting, take them out before they get a chance to attack.  Healing items aside, Chloe’s First Aid is also the only source of mitigation against assist attack damage I have on hand right now, and boy howdy will Rolf’s unit appreciate it.   That’s the Watchman’s Lantern from the previous update. It ended up not seeing any use, since the Wizards all targeted the frontline (as in Alain) anyway.  Alain, Aubin and Clive all also outspeed Wizards, so they’re another good choice to take on the enemy Wizard units. Still, there’s four of them in this unit occupying the eastern watchtower and my trio only have single-target actives, so someone’ll have to eat a conventional attack after our turn’s up.  As in, a few fireballs to the face. The Wizard active is a three-hit, single-target attack, and just one hit is enough to inflict burn. If he’d targeted Clive, then Clive would have eaten some burn damage just before shoving his lance down his throat.   Auch deploys reinforcement units independent from his reinforcement gauge filling up when the first watchtower falls.  Of my three currently active units, Lex’s unit is probably the closest to dead weight.  Everyone in it has particularly bad magic defense and Bruno and Hodrick are also slow as hell to the point they would both move after enemy Wizards, after which they’d probably have taken Lex down. So the melee enemies are the only ones I can have this unit take on, as long as I keep an eye on how much assist damage they’ve incurred.  Even though Bruno is going to attack at full power approximately never in this stage due to the heavy prevalence of enemy assists, it’s still drat satisfying to see him wipe out an entire row in one stroke.  Rolf is occupying the first watchtower, Alain is moving to take the fort, and Lex is taking the last roaming enemy unit in the area.  And now that Rolf is occupying the first watchtower… lol, lmao, his critical hit assist was actually able to kill an enemy Wizard. Giving Rolf the Warrior’s Medallion is already paying dividends.  Just two magic assists is enough to take Hodrick down to 50% HP.  Still, Hodrick fears magic, not Housecarls. And that was a very appreciated cover, since my very heavily weakened Lex would not have survived getting attacked by both of the Housecarls.  Hodrick is the lowest-leveled character in my roster and this is a bad stage for him to try and catch up, which is why I’ll take what I can get with him.  There goes my first Healing Font; it comes in handy in cases just like this, where multiple members of a unit are somewhere between seriously hurt and on death’s door.  Now let’s make a move on the fort.  Aubin’s life flashes before my eyes as it’s his turn to eat a crit assist. Good thing the enemy Wizards were not smart enough to try and target him after the fact. Alain and Aubin tag teamed the Fighter while Clive took out both of the Wizards.  That’s two down the hatch in as many battles. Now it’s time to have Rolf move on, since there’s no more enemies left for him to snipe from the tower.  Fort’s ours, time to deploy Josef to run errands and chase shining spots.  The stage’s biggest pain point and highest density of enemy assists is finally behind me, so I’ll take out the second watchtower before its Wizard unit can fire off a valor skill.  Alain channeling his inner Alm upon a level up.   It is a nice touch that Auch progressively loses his poo poo the more ground we take, even if he throws another two reinforcement units at us for it. And that second reinforcement unit he deployed is in the woods–it won’t matter for this map because said unit will move in my direction anyway, but enemy ground units are invisible while in the woods.  Meanwhile, the first wave of reinforcements from Auch’s camp is about to reach the bridge–and tightly clustered as they are, I’d be remiss to not mercilessly punish that with an Arrow Rain.  That came within an inch of completely eliminating the enemy Wizard unit, and the other two are also significantly weakened. Will still have to worry about the Wizard unit’s assists, even though it has a single survivor, but this wave of enemies will be easy to roll for my three units.  From the first shining spot I get this consumable, which boosts accuracy and visibility–as in, it exposes enemies hiding in woods.    The first onslaught of reinforcements is over with, and I got these level-ups for it. Crossing the bridge and honing in on Auch’s home turf…   Another cluster of enemy reinforcements eats another Arrow Rain. Still, clearing out this wave will take a higher toll on my units since they’re covered by the assist range of the final enemy watchtower.  3/4 Healing Fonts used after an assist skill brought Lex down to 10HP. Might have suffered a unit wipeout with Lex’s crew had I not bought more of them at the end of the last update.  As an aside, this is me learning the hard way to not have Bruno hold down the front line on his own.  He was already weakened a bit by the enemy assist, and being a slow mofo with little evasion, two of the three Soldiers (the first having been blocked by Hodrick) got hits in on him before he could move. Ah well, Soldiers have mediocre physical durability, at least he doesn’t need a full-powered Wide Smash to kill-  Aaaaaaaaand he missed a 69%. Hodrick please kill the straggler.  Thank you. Also did not have “Hodrick actually kills an enemy” on my bingo card for this LP.  Travis kills one Wizard, Chloe takes out another column of two, and Rolf kills the last before Chloe heals Travis to have the unit overall end up with more HP than they started the battle with.   And that’s the last watchtower neutralized. No Auch meltdown over this one, though.  Shining spot number two, between the enemy command post and the last watchtower. Now that we’ve closed in on Auch himself…  Can’t forget to shake him down!  Or blast him and his last reinforcement unit with Arrow Rain before actually engaging.  ow. Even an enemy unit on the down and out can really lay the hurt on a slow unit with a low-defense front line.  Even with the Vitality Talisman to make him an even bigger sack of HP, Bruno is already down to just over 50% of his HP after taking Auch’s assist and two lances to the face, and this is after his Bulk Up healed him for 24HP.  At least this time he finished the job after Lex took out a first enemy Soldier. Still should have just had Hodrick take the reins in the frontline from Lex, though.  And Lex gains a level.  The last shining spot can be easy to overlook. It’s nestled in the woods and is well out of the way. And now that it’s been taken, I’ve no further cause to hold off on beating up Auch and his boys.  it is funny that he’s saying this only now, as one of my units actually engages his in combat, and not before when we blasted him with arrows and jacked all his money  Due to the relatively high enemy density, I’ve been running on incredibly tight stamina economy for this stage. But it all worked out–after all is said and done, my useful units for this map have just enough stamina to take out the boss. Alain’s unit shall engage, while Rolf’s will get some EXP by chipping in with an assist.   Even with Rolf’s assist and valor skills both…   The enemy Soldier up front is just sturdy enough that he needs to be tagged teamed by Alain and Aubin. After Clive takes down the generic Wizard…  It goes without saying that Auch hits a lot harder than his lackeys and would have shaved off over half of Alain’s HP had all three of his Fireball’s hits landed. But Clive has another AP gained through Assaulting Lance, and Auch sure as hell ain’t dodging or surviving a taste of his lance.    Hey, that’s a first for this LP–Alain and Clive have hit C rapport!  That’ll do nicely, Alain.  Well, we can’t say that the boys haven’t earned some R&R.  As loot we get this nifty staff, which comes with a skill that’ll test whether you know how to set conditions.  I sure am loving the 1.2x score multiplier from D rank renown, which pushes my score for this stage to six digits.  Same, of course, with the commensurately larger rewards, though it stings a bit that 110k points and thus the threshold for 11 honors was so close, yet so far.  The Self-Effacing Sorcerer Mk. 2  So this is the first of multiple “try and recruit stage boss OR end them?” prompts the game will throw at us. Some of the stage bosses you can do this with are, like Gammel was, a bit on the dodgier side; others are of a nature where you’ll think to yourself, “wwwwwwwwwhy would I ever want to off this person”. Just so it doesn’t come down to whether you vibe with the stage boss or not, I’ll note the obvious cost for hitting the kill button: while you can recruit a generic mercenary from the stage boss’ class to replace them, said generic will have no rapport conversations–meaning that you will, at the very least, lose out on all the honors you could have gotten for seeing the stage boss’ rapport conversations. I’ll also note that whenever the game presents you with this choice, it will offer some payoff if you do choose to kill–in the same vein as how I’d have gotten 10k gold had you chosen to send Gammel to the slammer. With that, the Wizard Auch: shall Alain show him mercy and try to recruit him, OR put him out of his misery? https://strawpoll.com/poy9W96rpgJ You have 24 hours from the time of this post to vote. Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 18:46 on May 5, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 16:30
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I believe Lex’s unit leader perk only blunts damage received from physical damage assists, it’s Josef who reduces magical ones.
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May 5, 2024 16:53
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every time I see more than one housecarl my brain goes to this: Any time there's one housecarl it goes to this: /Images/1-xY1STXD.png)
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May 5, 2024 18:35
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Mzbundifund posted:I believe Lex’s unit leader perk only blunts damage received from physical damage assists, it’s Josef who reduces magical ones. you are correct FeyerbrandX posted:every time I see more than one housecarl my brain goes to this: haha that's great
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May 5, 2024 18:45
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 This guy seems to want an end to his mommy derived misery
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May 5, 2024 20:06
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As much as I'd ordinarily love to just get rid of such a whiner, I have a feeling the (maternal) love triangle is gonna be some good drama. 
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May 5, 2024 20:24
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 lol drat it was almost unanimous, Auch shall get the chance to prove himself
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May 6, 2024 16:41
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I don't expect to really see any executions or rejections of recruitment, you're basically asking "Miss content? Y/N"
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May 7, 2024 01:17
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bewilderment posted:I don't expect to really see any executions or rejections of recruitment, you're basically asking yeah after two polls like this I'm tempted to just make this a mercy run, and only reopen polls once I gotta bench a few guys again
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May 7, 2024 01:50
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I mean if it is down to just "do you want to see the content" ...this is an LP. Yes we want to see the content.
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May 7, 2024 02:11
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One thing I do appreciate about how the "recruit this character y/n?" choices are handled is that the game is mostly pretty consistent about giving any particularly slimy characters (e.g. Gammel) nonlethal option B's, so I don't have to feel conflicted between "gently caress off, I don't want this rear end in a top hat in my army" and "killing someone after they've surrendered doesn't sit right with me."
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May 7, 2024 02:41
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 The Self-Effacing Sorcerer Mk. 3 Thread almost unanimously chose for Auch to live so as of now this is a  playthrough. My thread sure does, buddy.   Positive reinforcement! It works, people! Anyway, had the thread chosen to kill Auch, I would have gotten a Lapis Pendant–an accessory which bestows +1PP onto its wielder. That’s pretty nifty! Except, Auch just so happens to be one of a number of characters who can do things on the overworld. There are certain ruins in Cornia that neither Lex nor Chloe will explore, but which Auch will, and one of the items he can procure from said ruins is… a Lapis Pendant. I can delay gratification on getting one of those.  Five enemies dispatched in the vicinity of the ruins–and we will go no further north, as across the bridge there will be a substantial power spike and the enemies will be out of our league.  +15 renown, so we’re now sitting at 210.    And next up for notifications: we have to go to this location on the overworld to see Alain and Clive’s C-rank rapport conversation. Unfortunately, we can’t actually access it yet since said location still lies well behind enemy lines.  As for the ruins, they contained Hallowed Corne Ash. The shining spot immediately northwest of the ruins yielded a Divine Shard (same with the two along the coast). And since we’re in a woodland area, we can hit up the gathering spots at the trees for Cornut Lumber, in the grass for Corvia Herb, and…  Freshwater for Cornian Trout (and that cave will get me some Iron Ore). We’ve finally got the materials needed for the restoration of Coquillage Town.  The fort we took has generic Wizards for hire, as Travis had surmised before we did this stage. The Wizard units in Auch’s stage weren’t clever to fight; I just had to outspeed them, had support from assists and valor skills when they were guarded by a frontliner, and I was gold. I don’t have that in this sparring match, and this unit had enemy Hoplite in the frontline, so it had to go like this: Josef tanks a few fireballs (and avoids getting burned courtesy of his passive), Auch melts the Hoplite in the frontline, and Bruno jumps in at the end to wipe out the Wizards in the backrow. Now, when we first came to this region, we came by way of a fork in the road; what about the path leading east?   Yeah, let’s… turn back. This area is actually in the vicinity of Gran Corinne and this (level 40 promoted) enemy is guarding one of the paths to the capital. We’ll forget we ever talked to him for now, but we’ll definitely be coming for him someday.  Flames go brrr, +2000 gold  And while I’m at it, I gave Auch the staff we got from the end of his stage since it’s tailor-made for his kit. It bestows a passive which hits one enemy at the end of a battle, or ALL enemies if the target is burning; that latter condition needs a bit of fine-tuning to work, but for now these conditions will let it hit a burning enemy (and thus all enemies) or, in the absence thereof, just activate normally.  This would have been a much cleaner victory had I had Rolf target scouts (and thus KO a Thief first), but enough hits landed that I could get my 2000 gold from this generic at last.  I think I can indulge by getting the Runic Sword; I have more than enough cash on hand to do that and raid Palevia Town’s stores and restock my depleted medicine reserves. Now, we’ve kept the good people of Coquillage Town waiting long enough…    It only feels right to station Rolf here as a guard.  One last 2 grand for the road. We’ll be heading east from here for the next update.  From now on, I’ll be showing the map at the end of updates. Everything that’s entered our line of sight counts as traversed and hey, this map also shows how much ground we’ve clawed back after each stage and how much ground is left to cover before reaching the next main story objective. Units Joined  Auch Starting Class: Wizard LV 7 Growth Type: Precise (+Crit) / Lucky (+Evasion) Equipment slots: 1 Staff, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 21 (D) Phys. ATK - 2 (F) Phys. DEF - 5 (E) Mag. ATK - 17 (A) Mag. DEF - 17 (A) Accuracy - 116 (E) Evasion - 23 (D) Crit. Rate - 5% (F) Guard Rate - 1% (F) Initiative - 10 (E) Auch is our first pure mage, Scarlett notwithstanding. Mages in this game are all some degree of slow and have some degree of high magical defense. Compared to Scarlett and characters from other mage classes, Auch has a decidedly offensive bent. His actives are all going to be offensive and his first passive is a reactive, magical counter against anyone who hits him (though you can tell from his statline that his odds of surviving physical attacks are very slim). His other passives will also tie back to dealing damage in some way. So long as we keep him safely hidden in the backrow, he’ll be doing great damage since most classes are rather wanting in magic defense, and if we time the conditions for his active and weapon-tied passive right, he can have a powerful AoE attack to finish battles off. Fevrith Archive entry: Upon falling to the Liberation in battle, Auch was offered a spot amongst their ranks due to his passion for research–and agreed to join in hopes of earning his late mother’s praise. Born the second son of Cornia’s esteemed House Aubrey–known best as a family of sorcerers–he was trained in the magickal arts from a young age. His father and brother yet live, but his mother died of illness years past. Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 21:25 on May 28, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 20:19
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hold the gently caress up, so it's not just mommy issues, but loving unresolvable mommy issues as she's dead???
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May 8, 2024 20:53
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Wouldnt rule out necromancing the dead Mother to gain her approval later on .
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May 8, 2024 22:24
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Don’t know why anyone would turn away Auch. He’s hilarious and the mission you just did has you getting beat up by wizards the entire way, why would you give up the chance to now get one of your own?
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May 9, 2024 14:43
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 The Winged Knight Mk. 1      So much for decorum    That enemy level is rather lower than that of the stage we just did. The game… doesn’t expect you to go for Auch before this or the next few stages to follow.     Our groundbound units have no way of reaching that watchtower. Luckily, we have a guest unit with wings.   Our goal is to bear northeast and reach Mandrin.  Anyway, Ochlys is a Feathersword and is classified as a promoted unit, hence having two AP/PP and four equipment slots. She’s supported by a Fighter to block arrows for her and a Soldier who can provide some healing at the end of battles. Her skills are based around self-buffs and…I’d say stall tanking, but since she has 2AP/PP and such an advantage in action economy over the enemies here, she won’t be “tanking”. I’ll send her to the shining spot to the north before having her take out the first enemy watchtower.  Units for this map. Since there’s quite a few enemy Thief units lined up in columns so close to my starting position, I moved Chloe to Alain’s unit so she can fell them in one swoop with True Thrust.  This stage has a bit of (apparent) dead space directly east of our command post that’s got (apparently) nothing but a shining spot. Josef takes Rolf and bolts for the shining spot in the east, but you’ll see why I’m sending those two, specifically, there.  Travis takes Auch and Bruno for his unit.  Now that I’ve reached the enemy, I’m going to be hassled for a while by the first watchtower. Fliers in this game don’t get faster movement speed like cavalry do, but they do ignore terrain and can cross mountains, albeit with a heavy movement penalty.  There’s a consequence for doing things out of sequence: Alain, having reached level 7, is considered overleveled for this stage and his EXP gain has crawled to a standstill accordingly.  Still, another goal of this unit is to help Chloe get some more levels faster.  Shortly after the first Thief unit was dispatched, Josef’s unit picks up a nice 3k from the shining spot. We’ll have him and Rolf hang around here for a bit.  Clive joins the overleveled-for-this-stage club after Alain’s unit takes out the next Thief unit.   It’d be easy to have Alain’s unit take the enemy Soldier trio too, but I’d rather spread the EXP around and not expend his unit’s stamina that fast. But Travis’ unit is missing a je-ne-sais-quoi for this battle.  So Travis’ unit chugs an Empowering Draught…  And now they have the firepower to seal the deal. Though I’d rather have held onto the draughts as long as possible, I’d like to see how this one was fought.  It can very well be the case that +20% attack doesn’t tip the scales because the problem was that someone didn’t land a hit when they needed to, and it almost looked like that was the case here. After Bruno whiffs a hit, we’re all out of AP…   …and Auch’s passive activates at the end of the battle to take out the straggler. “How am I going to active its AoE condition if Auch just kills his target with Fireball?” is a question I was asking myself for a bit.  Speaking of Auch, since Rolf is behind Josef and Josef’s unit is screwing around near the starting point for the time being, I am going to have to burn a valor point to make him the leader of his unit since I want assist skills to play around with.   While Josef and Rolf are heading back their way, Ochlys grabs this from the first shining spot. As for her target…  Without anything to augment her movement speed, she was not going to make it to the first watchtower before the Hunter unit could blast her with Arrow Rain.  Ochlys is alive, but I’d best use a Healing Font on her unit.  Meanwhile, Alain reaches the first fort, with Auch chipping in with an assist.     Auch’s assist provided the critical mass for Alain to beat one of the frontline Fighters with a crit and for Clive to dispatch the other…  …while Chloe ices the win by killing the Hunter.  And so the unit ended this battle with more HP than they had going in.  And that’s why I had Josef and Rolf hanging around: these two thieves will use Plunder on the first of our units they can get their hands on. The thieves will try to flee the map once they’ve jacked our gold, and Josef as unit leader can reach them quickly so that Rolf can dispatch them.  Lex CAN do that with his valor skill, Provoke, but otoh he’s not even deployed and even if he was, his unit isn’t exactly spec’d to take them out.  This one, however, very much is.  Now that Ochlys has finally reached her target, let’s see her in action.  More evasion is nice, even if it won’t help against Truestrike. Luckily for Ochlys…   Her unit has a Fighter to no-sell one arrow for her, and since she got targeted, her passive activates to buff her even further all the same. The Fighter then takes out the Hunter to win the battle.   Meanwhile on the southern front: gently caress you, give us back our gold.  Just as Auch’s unit reached the second watchtower, I realized that this unit had neither Lex nor Hodrick in it. Much to my horror after Travis killed one of the Hunters…  That happened. poo poo.  I’d have also lost Auch had the last Hunter thought to target him, but luckily for me, he went for Bruno instead??  That quote sure sounds appropriate here now that he’s back at full HP. And since Bruno’s back at full HP…    Auch does just enough damage with his end-of-battle passive to knock the last Hunter out.  Praise well-earned. And as inadvertently demonstrated from this battle, KO’d characters gain halved EXP.  Anyway, that was embarrassing! Let’s revive Travis and get him back to full HP.  I still have Aubin’s unit left to deploy, and you know what I can do since there’s an enemy unit at the fringe of my deployment range?  Deploy my last unit at a spot where they can immediately engage, of course. AND win.  drat, Aubin has a  af victory roar when he’s unit leader.  ow. Three assists from Mandrin himself, a reinforcement Hunter unit, and the watchtower is rude as hell.  Now that’s more like it. Still, it’ll be a bit of a bottleneck as we punch through this high concentration of enemy assists.  Now that Josef and Rolf have finished their duties in the south of the map, I have them withdraw at the command post…  …so I can redeploy them from the fort for a piece of the action at the end.  Ochlys reaching the last shining spot is my cue to put the screws on Mandrin. Let’s set that up now.  Aubin’s unit will kill the Hunter unit at the last watchtower so that Auch can take it over. Travis will then steal 933 gold from Mandrin’s unit.   Rolf will then soften Mandrin up, while Alain uses Valorous Order to give Aubin’s unit First Strike and a buff to attack and defense.  Lastly, after my assist skill users are in position, I have Aubin chug a Liquid Fortune.   After the two assists almost completely decimated Mandrin’s unit, Aubin poked the frontline Soldier to death while Lex and Hodrick tag teamed Mandrin to seal the win.   The boost to EXP gain from Liquid Fortune is delicious.  So much that this is the first time I’ve seen someone gain two levels after one battle all LP long.    When a unit that has accelerated EXP gain wins a battle, units who chipped in with assist skills will also get a commensurate boost to EXP gained afterward.  And that’s Mandrin’s bow, though we precluded him from actually getting to use it this map.    The Winged Knight Mk. 2 Ochlys has resting bitchface, but drat if she doesn’t look like she’s going  to Mandrin’s plea.  I’ll just come out and say that if you let Gammel go, you might as well do the same for Mandrin.  Look it’s a mercy run now. With that, it’s time for Mandrin to gently caress off so we can finish our objective here: to rescue the friend of Ochlys that the Black Talons were holding captive.    There is really no reason to turn down Sharon. I’d get a staff if I did, but Ochlys said it–Sharon’s a dedicated healer and I don’t have one of those yet, and I’ll lose out on much more than Sharon herself if I say no.  +4 honors from the dispatched roaming enemies in the area, and an additional +15 renown for doing the quest. We’re less than 200 away from the threshold for C renown now.      Anyway, now that that last bit of cutscene is over with, we can do things on the overworld. Ochlys wants a word.   Hell yeah, because…  Ochlys also gives us 3 each of Dews of Strength and Dews of Protection. Now that we have a fair few statboosters, I should note that any unit can use statboosters up to 5 stat for the stat being boosted. That means if I’ve given, say, Travis 5 Dews of Strength, I can give him a Dew of Protection to boost his physical defense, but the game will block me from giving him any further Dews of Strength.   With that, Ochlys (or once she’s joined us, other angels) will hook us up with some good poo poo, and will do so for us at any church on the overworld. This is her immediate inventory–Hallowed Corne Ash, a few statboosters, Templar weapons, and a few Lapis Pendants…  …and eventually, we can buy endgame-tier equipment, the +all stats statsbooster, and Fevrite, the last of whose use case won’t come into play until lategame.  I start by buying a Lapis Pendant–the thing I’d have gotten had I decided to off Auch–for 10 divine shards. Ochlys will expand her inventory with this and she’ll want me to buy 30 divine shards’ worth of wares before she joins my party. On that note, had I chosen to let Ochlys kill Mandrin, I’d have been rewarded with 15 divine shards; by letting Mandrin go, I’ve effectively doubled the requirement for Ochlys’ recruitment. Still, I can more than make do without her for the time being, even if she did make a good showing during her one battle, and I’ll get my 30 divine shards and then some just by organically interacting with the overworld. And whenever I do get Ochlys, her level, skills and stats will scale to my party’s current strength, so there’s no downside at all to keeping her waiting. Ochlys’ future recruitment is also tied to her very good friend Sharon; if you turn Sharon down, then Ochlys won’t join you. Now, as for Sharon…  Yet another reason to let her join: she does something on the overworld.   Each country on Fevrith has five cemeteries to visit, with rewards from Sharon once she’s done her thing at all five in Cornia, and then in Drakenhold, and then in etc. etc.   Alain and Sharon also gain 10 rapport for each cemetery visited.  I give Sharon a staff with a higher magic attack stat because her healing will scale off her magic attack stat, but… holy lol, of all the things for a healer to come with. I’ll be passing this accessory along to Travis because Sharon shouldn’t be getting attacked under any circumstances anyway, but won’t rule out giving Sharon +critical accessories anyway because heals can crit and a healer who keeps firing off critical heals would be funny.  We’ve been dancing around that burg directly north of Rondmort Church, but will finally get to it next update. Units Joined  Sharon Starting Class: Cleric LV 4 Growth Type: Lucky (+Evasion) / Guardian (+Guard Rate) Equipment slots: 1 Staff, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 23 (D) Phys. ATK - 4 (F) Phys. DEF - 6 (E) Mag. ATK - 10 (C) Mag. DEF - 18 (S) Accuracy - 122 (C) Evasion - 33 (B) Crit. Rate - 2% (F) Guard Rate - 6% (F) Initiative - 8 (E) Finally, a dedicated healer! There isn’t much to be said about Sharon since it’s obvious what she does. Just bearing in mind that since she has absolutely no offensive capabilities, I’ll have to be careful what unit I stick her in. Given the unit sizes I have available, she could genuinely tank my firepower. I’ll also, absolutely, have to revise her tactics so that she doesn’t waste her Quick Heal passive healing scratches and can target her active Heal for whoever’s sustained the most damage. Sharon also can use assist skills, although hers heals. That…would have been a nice source of mitigation against enemy assists in this past stage, as well as in Auch’s. Fevrith Archive entry: A cleric of the Palevian Orthodoxy and nurse at Rondmort Church, she was taken hostage when the Black Talons attacked. She is devout and amiable, which endears her to humans and angels alike–her friend Ochlys most of all. Freed from captivity when the Black Talons were beaten, she realized that a life of prayer would not rid the world of conflict and asked to join the Liberation’s ranks as a healer.   The lore that’s hidden away in the Fevrith Archive that goes unmentioned in conversation. Josef sure has some way of gathering information for this archive.
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May 11, 2024 23:35
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Very Good Friends, indeed. The approach you're taking definitely makes more sense for the purposes of an LP, but it's worth noting that if you're extremely thorough (and willing to do a lot of sneaking past overworld enemies), it's possible to collect enough divine shards to recruit Ochlys immediately.
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May 12, 2024 04:20
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The way they use French for toponyms is... not really how toponyms work in French, but they can certainly try if they wan to.
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May 12, 2024 12:39
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Cattail Prophet posted:Very Good Friends, indeed. Oh yeah definitely; and hell, I'll note that everything after the first stage on the mainland so far has been technically optional, since it's possible to stealth your way to Miriam's position on the overworld and rendezvous with her to trigger the rescue Scarlett mission. Incidentally, I recorded up to the point where I ran out of deployment slots, and the point I got my 30 shards was... literally right after rescuing Scarlett.
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May 12, 2024 17:28
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The Gays have arrived. Clerics are a godsend in the early game. It's amazing how much a dedicated healer can help in the face of assist spam. (I'll save my fun little tidbit for Ochlys til we actually recruit her) Also, if you're taking suggestions for equipment purchases could we grab a pair of glasses for Bruno? My poor boy can't hit anything right now.
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May 13, 2024 15:51
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Greenking77 posted:The Gays have arrived. I can say that Bruno will eventually have a pair of glasses.
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May 13, 2024 20:41
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So if I have been following this correctly, we could kill off all the named enemies who have not joined outright, denied the archer, turned away this helpful healer, and in turn, be refused from getting a (specific) angel from joining our team? But we could eventually hire all these specialized classes with generic counterparts instead? I imagine that would make the early game a lot more difficult, and the whole game more expensive what with needing to (probably) buy more healing items and also hire more soldiers. I know this game is pretty new, but I wonder if there are challenge runners who are trying to beat this with minimum soldiers?
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May 13, 2024 22:42
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CzarChasm posted:So if I have been following this correctly, we could kill off all the named enemies who have not joined outright, denied the archer, turned away this helpful healer, and in turn, be refused from getting a (specific) angel from joining our team? But we could eventually hire all these specialized classes with generic counterparts instead? You're correct (although Rolf will join you at the end of his stage if you didn't talk to him during), and you are correct; forts with generics from their respective classes tend to be made available as soon as you complete their stages. It'd also cost you a lot more honors, since that's the currency you use to hire mercenaries, and even though honors are a common reward for turning down/executing certain characters, you also lose out on a lot of honors by not being able to access their rapport conversations. And yeah there's definitely someone out there doing an all-mercenaries and/or executioner run, and someone who tried doing the final map on the hardest difficulty without rescuing Scarlett first (yes it's possible, no do not post about it itt), which looked absolutely miserable.
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May 14, 2024 02:04
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:And yeah there's definitely someone out there doing an all-mercenaries and/or executioner run, and someone who tried doing the final map on the hardest difficulty without rescuing Scarlett first (yes it's possible, no do not post about it itt), which looked absolutely miserable. While it's totally unnecessary to do so except for purposes of painting whole map blue (which of course means everyone wants to do it) this does lead to two things: 1. If you want to Station a Guard at every possible place it is possible to do so, you will have to occasionally hire generics - there are fewer named characters than there are random towns. 2. If you want to Station a Guard everywhere as above, and you're doing an "only generics" run, you'll actually run up against the unit cap before you manage to station someone in every town. Some generics come earlier than you can get their 'named' representative, some later. For example, even though we've just met Ochlys, there's no generic Featherswords available for a good long while. On the flipside, there's two earlygame-ish units I can think of that you can reasonably hire the generics for for a few missions before their named rep. Some classes are also totally unique to named story characters - like Alain as a lord, for example. Scarlett as a Priestess is also unique - Sharon is a Cleric.
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May 15, 2024 04:09
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TBH even if I were doing a generics only run I would have no qualms whatsoever about using story characters as guards. Dunno if there's enough "required" characters to make up the difference, though.
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May 15, 2024 04:26
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 The Battle for Barbatimo Mk. 1     And this is our first liberation quest! That cutscene would make a lot more sense if, after having finished the first stage upon making landfall, you kept going east until Hodrick warned you about how this is Mordon’s turf and you’re not ready to take him on yet. But by now, we have more than enough characters and tools at our hand to win this thing.    We will be doing no such thing  The game alerts you to the Return to Overworld option if you find out you’ve bitten off more than you can chew at this point. Anyway, we’re charging the gates from the south, though you can tell that the stage is literally just the walled city and its very immediate environs.  Units for this… well, liberation quest stages are almost all very small and it’s very unlikely you’ll get to deploy more than like 3 units. So it’s go time for Alain, Rolf and Sharon’s units.  The Hoplite units aren’t just blocking the way to the nonoperational gates, but they’re also garrisoned in Mantlets. It’ll be rude while I’m trying to break through them, but I’ll get to enjoy a bit of using them before this stage is over with.  Rolf’s unit will be taking out the enemy Housecarl units while Alain’s goes for the Hoplites.   The Runic Sword sure was a good investment.  And that was a one-shot! Still, this battle wasn’t over in one go because Clive failed to OHKO the Soldier in the frontline, Auch finished her off, and then Auch’s end-of-battle passive only hit the enemy Hunter for 3HKO-range damage.  That end-of-battle heal was strictly unnecessary but hey, it’s a nice way for Sharon’s unit to scrounge out a bit of EXP and I can be generous with their assist skill usage.  And much like when you try to attack enemy garrisons, you get knocked back if you attack an enemy Mantlet and fail to completely eliminate the unit. But since that unit only has a weakened Hunter left in it, Travis’ unit can clean him up.  After Travis’ unit kills the second enemy Housecarl unit, there’s nothing stopping me from entering the city.  With that, the two enemy Hoplite units abandon their Mantlets and move to intercept our units.    Just to make a point of it, here’s a battle forecast showing an outcome of One Very Obviously Dead Hodrick. Mordon’s active skill completely ignores the physical defense stat of armored targets, and his passive grants him Guard Seal when he attacks–meaning that even if Hodrick somehow survived getting whacked, he’d be unable to guard and would probably be easy pickings for the next enemy in line.  Having Auch target the enemy with the highest resistance to his attacks? You might think this is a galaxy brain condition, but now that Alain’s unit has been intercepted by an enemy Hoplite unit–the Hoplite himself Alain will OHKO anyway–let’s switch things up.  Let’s see how this goes, knowing Sharon’s unit won’t consume any stamina because they’re garrisoned at a Mantlet. It starts the same as the first engagement in this stage: Alain OHKOs Hoplite, Clive fails to OHKO Soldier…  And Auch targets the Hunter, who survives and is burned. This fulfills the condition for…  …well, Fire Burst would have done a clean sweep had it hit the Hunter. But Travis’ unit can finish him off no problem. (And steal 688 gold from Mordon’s unit since he’s in range.)  Alain’s unit attacks Mordon’s to stop him from summoning reinforcements.  After Alain one-shots the Hoplite in the front with Magick Attack…  Clive lands a critical on Mordon. Now it’s Mordon’s turn.  There’s something about the male Warrior’s running animation I find amusing, and the Warrior active is literally  . I like that. Auch’s Fireball missing one of his three hits, funnily enough, left Mordon with just enough HP for Fire Burst’s AoE to activate.   After this point, it’s a formality: Alain’s unit one-rounds the Hoplite unit to Mordon’s right, Rolf’s cleans up the one to his left, and then Alain finishes off Mordon’s unit with Rolf providing an assist for EXP.  Can’t forget to swap out the Runic Sword for the Recruit’s Shortsword so that Alain can get boosted EXP though.   One last level up and loot for the road.   It is what it is with a small stage like this, but the rewards really feel like a pittance compared to those of the side quests we’ve been doing.  The Battle for Barbatimo Mk. 2 No really, there’s something amusing about this running animation.     Mordon made a not so great first impression, but… you know what, it sounds like he’s a beloved local fixture here. And his class is great and I can’t turn down another option to deal with enemy armors.   Well hey, the way he put it, we know he means it.  +10 renown, and no roaming enemies dispatched.  aaaaand we’ll be getting to Mordon’s handiwork later this update. Can you imagine how this poor girl’s heart would have been broken had we opted to execute Mordon? Is 30 honors worth that?  Anyway, we’ll get back to the Walled City of Barbatimo in a bit. First, let’s push a bit further east into enemy territory.  Generic Fighter-kun then issues a challenge, and…  Another liberation quest!  Barbatimo had cutscenes, a recruitable stage boss and something resembling event sequencing. Most liberation quests…do not. They’ll have no dialogue, small stages like Barbatimo, tight time and deployment limits, a generic boss, and consist of nothing but a straight shot to generic boss. Given how little content your baseline liberation quest has, I’ll be rolling them into other updates–like I’m doing with this one–unless we come across the rare exception to the rule. And hell, since the Battle for Paradis is so short, might as well link.  For Paradis, beware of this Thief unit–he’ll use Plunder on you and then high tail for the southwest.  So I start by killing them dead with Arrow Rain and then having Clive bolt back to the command post to withdraw, giving me a valor point to deploy Alain backed up by Clive and Chloe.  Clive gets a level-up as the unit rolls the enemy Hunter unit at the watchtower, giving me the valor to redeploy Rolf’s unit again. I’d say watch out for Arrow Rain, but the watchtower is so close to your command post that you should be able to reach it before you get hit.  The other thing to watch out for here is the enemy Knight unit. It WILL use Wild Rush, which will straight up KO squishier characters.  And as happens with Wild Rush, it chains right into a battle. While Chloe was maimed, she ultimately still lived to fight.  After Chloe snipes the column, Clive guns for the surviving Knight and… as it turns out, Knights are actually pretty bad at going after each other. You can see here that their passive auto-guards against one hit, meaning that unless they have low single-digit HP, they will survive Assaulting Lance and thus that said skill won’t be chaining into an end-of-battle sweep.  A singular Knight vulnerable to first strike is easy to clean up and once he goes down, all that’s left is the boss; it takes two rounds to take his unit down. With this formation, Alain having the Runic Sword and no conditions on Clive’s Assaulting Lance, round one ends with the Knight in the back getting KO’d by a Chloe crit and the frontline both being reduced to 10HP each. Alain then reequips the Recruit’s Shortsword for the coup de grace.   The boss is so generic he has no quote for when he’s defeated; he just utters the standard death grunt when he goes down.    +10 renown and 5 honors from dispatched roaming enemies.  Foraging and exploring Fort Paradis’ environs: further south is a town that’s part of a very large side quest stage, to the north is a path to the capital guarded by an enemy from the class Mordon promotes into, and on the other side of the river… we won’t be able to go there until late/endgame, but we’ll cross paths with that green character before long. Going back to the broken bridge east of Ouvrir Harbor and Fort Thessalon…   We do not have anywhere close to 30 Corsite and will have to put this one on the burner. Bridges on the overworld all require 30 of whatever their national stone is to be repaired, and even aside from quest rewards and renown, they offer access to somewhere nice for your trouble and some rapport for Alain and Mordon (or a to-be-introduced female Warrior if you don’t have him). this bridge will grant an entry point to the final stage, which is not where we want to be right now. Now, let’s go back to Barbatimo. It’s special compared to the other locales we’ve liberated.  The armory here is much better-stocked than in towns and villages and has quite a few rare offerings. The Azure Crest Shield grants an additional PP to whoever equips it, the Dove Plume increases Initiative by 10, and there’s the first tier of accuracy, evasion, guard rate and critical hit-boosting accessories, all of which raise their respective stats by 20 each. (I bought the Dove Plume, two Blue Spectacles, and the Pursuant’s Bracelet, which grants Pursuit to its equipper.)  The provisioner also has an expanded inventory with plenty of goodies.  Now, walled cities have three stars and thus, when they need to be restored, three sets of delivery requests. The first set of deliveries will allow you access to the tavern, and the third will allow you to station a guard.   And that’s 3 for 3. Let’s station Mordon here as a guard since he’s a local hero of sorts.  You can also do anything at a walled city you could at a fort. Like making a fifth 3-man unit.  The moment the tavern opens, a generic Gladiator right outside the city gates has a quest for us pertaining thereto.  In the tavern, you pick one of three meals with variable levels of rapport gain and participants. You can have any combination of characters partaking.  I have one free meal ticket, which I will use for the childhood friend trio. They’ll all gain 70 rapport with each other for this.  Wanna hear what the Liberation sounds like when chowing down? Well look no further.  And with that, Alain and Lex both hit C rapport with Chloe.  And with that, my reward for this quest is 3 more meal tickets to grind more rapport (and thus honors) free of charge! And since I can easily grind rapport now, most updates that don’t have a Part 1 tacked after them will finish with quite a few of those from now on. Now that we have rapport conversations we can actually access: I’ll transcribe them all and also link a video to ALL rapports viewed at the end of each update with timestamps for each. Rapport conversations are not voice-acted, but they are quite a bit more animated than 3DS-era FE support conversations and make use of the overworld and overworld spriting. With that,  here are all the rapport conversations this update Alain/Mordon C - near Fort Paradis     And there it is; I’ll be swimming in honors by the time I’m through with all this. Clive/Josef C (3:14) - near Fort Paradis   Hodrick/Josef C (6:04) - Thulust Harbor   Alain/Travis C (7:58) - Thulust Harbor   By the way, you have an easy way of grinding rapport for Alain: giving gifts to characters stationed as guards on the overworld. Case with point in Travis, whom Alain gifted the Palevian Scriptures we got as a reward from the Battle for Paradis:   Base +60 rapport x2 because Travis likes books > +120 rapport and instant C rank. Travis/Josef C (10:33) - Fort Mainteneaut     Not a rapport, but more goodies well-hidden on the overworld. This one gives a small Camping Set, which restores some stamina and HP to all units in range when used. Chloe/Travis C (12:53) - Tent south of Thulust   Lex/Josef C (15:21) - Palevia Harbor   …and that’s it with the map sprites’ sparring.    Lex/Clive C (18:33) - Western Palevia    Chloe/Josef C (20:56) - Fort Rimitz  (this is not a misnomer, characters can and often do make guest appearances in other pairs’ rapport conversations)    Alain/Lex C (24:30) - Fort Soligie      And now that that’s all out of the way: our current holdings. We will be going back to the starting point of Ochlys’ stage and take the path heading to that fort to the east/southeast for the next update. Units Joined  Mordon Starting Class: Warrior LV 6 Growth Type: Offensive (+Phys. ATK) / Offensive (yes, they can stack) Equipment slots: 1 Axe, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 34 (C) Phys. ATK - 22 (S) Phys. DEF - 8 (B) Mag. ATK - 8 (F) Mag. DEF - 10 (C) Accuracy - 115 (D) Evasion - 20 (D) Crit. Rate - 2% (F) Guard Rate - 11% (C) Initiative - 16 (C) Of all the axe infantry classes in the game, I think I like the Warrior line the best. This early on, Mordon has an immediately obvious and obviously useful niche in blowing up enemy armors (and being significantly faster than all my mages in doing so!) and even in the absence thereof, crippling enemy defenses with a nice, hearty and a Guard Seal affliction. At level 10 he basically gets the Knight class’ active but even better–as in, it’s unguardable and gives +1AP if it kills. My biggest knocks against him are that his accuracy sucks–which can be remedied now that I can buy accuracy-boosting accessories, and his primary targets have approximately zero evasion anyway–and that he’s got poor evasion and not great durability, which aren’t problems so long as he stays in the back row. When that’s the worst I can say, you know he and his class have it good. His class also has a very handy valor skill which will be demonstrated in the next update.Fevrith Archive entry: Captain of the Iron Helm Mercenaries, who were hired by Zenoira to watch over the Walled City of Barbatimo due to its rich deposits of iron ore. Under his rule, the city has repelled any and all potential assailants. After his defeat, he fully expected to be put to the sword, but was spared after a local girl told Alain about what he’s done for their city. He then agreed to join the Liberation’s ranks.
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May 15, 2024 20:38
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Ah Mordon, one of the mvps for my first run. He was in Alain's squad for almost the whole run serving as the main dps thanks to chain killing off Assaulting Blow, especially after unlocking a certain passive later on. He legitimately had the most personal boss kills out of any unit in my army.
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May 15, 2024 21:15
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 Warriors also have semi-exclusive access to the hammer subtype of weapons! It's not super important, but there are some nice ones to have around. Mordon starts with one that boosts his guard rate, iirc?
Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 23:22 on May 15, 2024 |
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May 15, 2024 22:45
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Cattail Prophet posted:
That is correct! He comes with a Warhammer, which gives +5HP and +10% guard rate. quote:(or a to-be-introduced female Warrior if you don’t have him) And hell, this girl will also come with a hammer.
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May 16, 2024 02:22
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 The Ravaged Swamp Mk. 1  That sounds bad. Let’s investigate.     Even if you’re playing this blind, Yahna’s body language and the way she deliberates when stating her relationship to the court sorceress should pique your attention. Hodrick, my guy, I know you mean well and want to honor the old court sorceress, but it’s at least a wee bit tactless to put down this place that she retired to.  A main quest! And one that isn’t related to saving Scarlett! And another one that I’ve done out of sequence.     There will be things to be said about Beaumont later, but the way his eyebrows twitch while he’s grinning and stroking his chin really accentuate his sleaziness.     So yeah, the map isn’t very large on paper, but the walkways have plenty of wetland terrain which literally my entire army will be taking movement penalties from. The path leading straight to Beaumont is much better fortified than the one leading to the southwestern hamlet. Both will have time to deploy reinforcements due to the swamps bogging me down. In retrospect, the game probably expects Yahna to be your first full-time mage and that you’ll have done this stage before Barbatimo. This means that once again, we’ve got plenty of overleveled characters.  Units for this map. Aside from Yahna’s guest unit (herself and a generic Witch protected by a generic Fighter), all my anti-armor firepower is concentrated in Alain’s unit.  Now there’s something new complicating the path leading straight to Beaumont: barricades, droppable obstacles which knock back anyone who walks into them. They’ll go poof after someone walks into them enough times, but–you know what, gently caress that noise, did you know that by for the cost of just one valor point, a Warrior can make them go away?   Aside from flattening barricades and other droppable obstacles, Heavy Swing also knocks back all enemies caught in its area of effect. It may not have killing power, but it can create some space between my guys and the enemy in a pinch. And having cleared the southeastern path of the barricades, Alain/Auch/Mordon will be switching gears and heading southwest.  In that direction, Yahna’s unit engages two Hoplites.  Now, much like Wizards, Witches are rather slow–slow enough that generic Fighter gets the first action.  And just as he’s about to use his active…  The Witch class’ passive adds 50 magical, non-elemental potency to the offensive active skill of whoever’s up. That magic component cannot be guarded against and still does a number on armors, hence generic Fighter actually doing respectable damage to the Hoplite.   As for the Witch’s active, well, that Hoplite would have been frozen had he survived, meaning he wouldn’t get to move or dodge any incoming attacks until he the next time he got hit, which would have thawed him. Generic Witch then finishes off the second Hoplite.  With that victory, I have the valor to deploy Rolf’s unit.  Alain and Rolf’s units will be headed southwest, while Sharon and Yahna’s units will go southeast.  The enemy Soldiers were already weakened from Mordon’s valor skill, but would have been OHKO’d all the same in one stroke.  Rolf’s unit picks this up from the first shining spot, and now they’ll have to let Alain’s unit handle things since Rolf, Chloe and Travis won’t be able to do much to that Hoplite unit coming their way.  And on the other path, we get an Empowering Draught from that shining spot–and not a moment too soon since the Hunter unit at the watchtower is charging up an Arrow Rain.  And one nice thing about enemies squatting on watchtowers is, they still get knocked into waiting states when they lose a battle.  Eventually, Alain and Rolf’s units come within striking distance of the southwestern hamlet, and have to deal with this as a nuisance–a Hunter unit who was there all along and a Witch reinforcement unit.  At least the Witch unit is easy to delete!  Once both are out of the way, well, this generic Hoplite unit occupying the western hamlet is doomed against the concentration of magical firepower plus Mordon. Alain kills one with the Runic Sword, Mordon smashes the other, and Auch cleans up the backrow.    As our team in the southeast is finally getting past the wetland, Clive picks up some Hallowed Corne Ash from the last shining spot on the map.   That’s a neat item that can let the user teleport to any garrison we’ve captured, including watchtowers or bridges. I’d use it to have Alain’s unit get closer to the action, but they’re mostly overleveled as is and can sit the rest of this one out.   Aubin joins the overleveled for stage club as Clive’s unit eliminates the second watchtower, clearing out the last thing that could complicate our assault on the enemy command post.  Now that we’ve reached Beaumont’s unit, they’ll need some work since Beaumont is a sack of HP and Yahna’s unit doesn’t have the firepower to burn through him, the generic Hoplite, and Batiste in one go.   Hoplites being Hoplites, Beaumont will use Heavy Cover to protect the frontline Hoplite…  …who will do the same for him despite being very weak to magic, and get frozen for his trouble.  Yahna hops onto the watchtower and blasts the enemies with her assist, Bruno smash against the frontline, Hodrick picks off the rear for our first Sharon level of the game.   With round two, both Hoplites fall.  I’m almost impressed Beaumont could say that despite being frozen. With him and the other Hoplite down, Batiste is the last enemy to dispatch, and Rolf and Travis finish the job.    And since we’re not going to see this setpiece in battle again, let’s just say that it sure is a vibe.  A lot of earlygame bosses or sub-bosses have a Carnelian/Lapis Pendant or something else which lets them have 2 AP/PP despite being unpromoted. Case in point, Beaumont drops this greatshield which granted him an extra PP. It’s handy for Hodrick to cover for an ally again, and hell, he has literally no competition for it right now.    The Ravaged Swamp Mk. 2  That is one swank study/witch’s atelier.    Well hey, good for us (and definitely good for the Liberation) that Yahna didn’t have any mishaps and end up like BOTW!Purah. Elsewhere in the swamp, we have some fugitives from the battle.   As much of a piece of poo poo Beaumont is, gotta hand his voice actor credit for his performance. I feel like any second he’s about to yell “ARE YA READY LADS?!” and his generic subordinate might just reply with “Aye aye Captain!” I really, really don’t like the sound of that. But I can say for now that although Beaumont and his generic subordinate are getting the gently caress out of Cornia, this won’t be the last we’ve seen of them.  +8 honors from 8 dispatched roaming enemies, +20 renown.  Fun fact: the two settlements in the witches’ swamp are the only two in all of Fevrith designated as hamlets.  It was not part of the stage or indeed of any stage, but don’t forget to go west, since in this secluded valley you have… well, each country has a set of carvings and an overworld quest pertaining thereto. We’ll get back to this eventually.  There’s also a very well-hidden divine shard here. Now going back to Bellum Ghoria Hamlet, the easternmost of the two:  We might have been able to get a glimpse in Elheim over the steep, impassable mountains separating it from the southwestern rear end-end of Cornia after As the Tricorns Ride, but the witches’ swamp is the closest we’ve gotten to an actual border crossing so far. This Winding Wood, without saying too much for now, connects Cornia and Elheim. What happens when we draw near?  So yeah, the game blocks us from even trying to leave Cornia (or Palevia) until after we’ve rescued Scarlett. Alain would say the same were we to approach the border checkpoint with Drakenhold to the southeast or, were we to do a lot of stealthing and try punching way above our weight, with Bastorias to the north.   We only have the materials on hand to restore Bellum Ghoria Hamlet in the east, but we are inching ever closer to 450 renown and thus C-rank–which we will cross in the next update. But before we do the next update, we have rapports! Starting with Alain/Chloe C, which I overlooked from the last update! Today in rapports: Chloe tries to coach Alain on how to decorum, Alain wants Yahna to test a spell on him, Hodrick is one awkward motherfucker around Yahna, and Josef is also an awkward motherfucker around Yahna but for entirely different reasons. Alain/Chloe C - Barbatimo     Alain/Yahna C (2:43) - Lebouge Hamlet   Hodrick/Yahna C (5:53) - Bellum Ghoria Hamlet   Yahna/Josef C (8:08) - Bellum Ghoria Hamlet      With the witches’ swamp secured, these are our current holdings. We will be heading east of the witches’ swamp for the next update.  Indeed, once we leave, we get flagged down by a green unit. Units Joined  Yahna Starting Class: Witch LV 5 Growth Type: Offensive / Offensive Equipment slots: 1 Staff, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 22 (E) Phys. ATK - 5 (F) Phys. DEF - 2 (E) Mag. ATK - 17 (B) Mag. DEF - 15 (S) Accuracy - 118 (D) Evasion - 24 (C) Crit. Rate - 4% (F) Guard Rate - 2% (F) Initiative - 9 (E) Going into this stage, you may have been wondering what’s the difference between Yahna and Auch. As Yahna demonstrated during her stint with her guest unit, where Auch is all DPS all the time, she in contrast provides a mix between offensive and supportive magic. For now, she’s an obvious candidate for a Lapis Pendant to use her Magick Conferral passive twice per battle, and she’ll get a more valuable passive later on. Her two valor skills are also great–one creates a gravity well which slows enemy movement to a crawl, and the other lets her unit teleport to the side of an allied unit or garrison. There’s also a popular build with her promoted class using some of the endgame equipment we can buy with divine shards, though that won’t come into play until much later. But for now, and unless I sink in the resources to go for the aforementioned build, she’ll at least have solid DPS and great support options. Fevrith Archive entry: A young witch from the witches’ swamp in Cornia. When Zenoira invaded and began rounding up her peers, she escaped by taking the form of a cat. After meeting Alain, she asked for his help in freeing her village. In truth, Yahna is the old court sorceress of Cornia’s royal family–and hid from Zenoira with a spell that restored her youth, though it also dampened her magick. After her home was freed, she agreed to join the Liberation.
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May 19, 2024 19:18
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Beaumont sucks so much, I love him.
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May 19, 2024 20:43
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I wouldn't so much say that Vanillaware expected people to get Yahna first - Auch is just too close to your starting location for them not to have anticipating people going for him very quickly - so much that they stuck the tutorial here since anyone willing to go for the extra challenge of Auch early was probably already putting in work on learning the mechanics anyways.
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May 19, 2024 21:07
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Auch also has the weird thing where even triggering his stage requires you to actively choose to harass an overworld enemy. Given that there's another example of this right next door to him that's Obvious Endgame poo poo, it's easy to assume that he's a much harder fight than he actually is. I know I personally put him off longer than I needed to for that reason.
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May 19, 2024 22:19
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