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Kinda crazy how HP-averse your Mozu is. 30 hp at 20/15 is dire.
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Mar 4, 2022 20:26
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| # ? May 1, 2024 19:22 |
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Awakening -faires actually switched the bonus from Str to Mag if you swapped to a magic weapon. The only real change in their benefits is that with the stat bonus gone and all the staves having fixed ranges Tomefaire isn't a free bonus to healing + 2-3 extra squares of Physic/Rescue range anymore.
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Mar 4, 2022 22:14
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Hisame isn't very interesting in personality or stats, but I like his supports with Shigure at least. One time I gave him a DLC class to make him more unique and he was still boring. 
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Mar 5, 2022 08:21
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theshim posted:Kinda crazy how HP-averse your Mozu is. 30 hp at 20/15 is dire. Shiny777 posted:Awakening -faires actually switched the bonus from Str to Mag if you swapped to a magic weapon. The only real change in their benefits is that with the stat bonus gone and all the staves having fixed ranges Tomefaire isn't a free bonus to healing + 2-3 extra squares of Physic/Rescue range anymore.
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Mar 9, 2022 23:49
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  One last child to recruit! "Sweet Dreams" would be a really good name for one of the many Faceless paralogues that put me to sleep, but this map can actually be quite tricky so no oppurtunity for jokes there.  Seeing a little gold bauble really got my hopes up, but all this scroll is worth is the 1000 gold you get from selling it. If I hadn't sold my earlier Rabbit Scroll I maybe could have forged the two together to get a silver weapon that's maybe powerful enough to justify keeping around, but I really don't want my enemy phase juggernaut getting debuffed every time she attacks.  Here's a cool team up, and a weird angle you rarely get to see in the Arena. Dragon and dragon vs mere mortals, who will win?   Dragon Fang is an ability I don't think I ever got around to explaining on account of Kevin not being allowed to see combat and never learning it. It has a 0.75*Skill% chance of activating, and multiplies your attack by 1.5. That's the combined value of your strength/magic and your weapon's might plus any bonuses that gets multiplied, not the amount of damage displayed in the combat forecast. That's how Kana turned 4 damage into 20 damage.  Scarlet even managed to finish them off despite her flimsy hitrate. What a cool action shot! If only I could take these on purpose. I think some Let's Players record their footage and take screencaps afterwards, but I take them as I'm playing. It's probably not the best way to do things.  I'd really like Setsuna to get the Bowfaire skill, so she's going to dip into Sniper for a bit. You can potentially benefit from being able to fly in the next story chapter, but otherwise it's all indoor maps from here on out so all Setsuna would be missing is the extra movement. I still think I'm going to have her switch back though. I will be recruiting Setsuna's daughter this update, so ideally Setsuna will be able to pass on Bowfaire. This might backfire on me if Setsuna only learns one new skill, since she'll be passing on the much worse Certain Blow instead, but I'm not expecting Mitama to be very good anyway so if she's left with a suboptimal skill that's no big deal.   Do many sashimi recipes call for sugar...? Sweet sushi is definitely a thing, but that doesn't have any actual fish in it.  +1 skill is basically nothing, but if it's not a drawback I'll happily take it. Being salty doesn't make me more skilled though, it just makes me lose more and then consequently get even more annoyed.   Azama is a laughably bad parent, but he's actually got a point here - the village in which Mitama resides can be destroyed and you'll still recruit her in the end. Recruiting her early only changes her starting weapon, swapping her cheap and unimpressive Bloom Festal for a rarer and more valuable Wane Festal. Although if you do this paralogue early enough she won't have the staff rank to use it...  Here's a map that'll appeal more to Conquest fans, because it's almost entirely made out of corridors! Corridors you can shoot and fly over. The goal here is to rout the enemy, but if you reach the village in the center and have Azama visit it 3 times you'll recruit Mitama early as well as getting the Wane Festal. Otherwise nobody else can visit the village, and there's no consequence to it being destroyed besides her delayed recruitment and a slightly worse staff. The time frame within which you can visit it is iirc 5 or 6 turns, so if you want the better reward you'll need to move fairly quickly.  The boss of the map is a General blocking a bridge. He can easily be reached without crossing said bridge and he does not move, so you can easily ignore him until the map's almost over. In fact you may want to deliberately not kill him or one of the other stationary enemeis just so you don't accidentally rout the map before Azama can recruit his daughter.  Many of these level 20 Berserkers are also blocking various bridges. They don't move either, but they can crit you from a distance with their Tomohawks. Highlighting every stationary enemy at the start of the map isn't a bad idea, since otherwise you'll struggle to tell at a glance where is safe and where isn't.  Various dragon veins can also be activated to freeze portions of the map over. Useful if you're in a hurry or want your 1-2 range death machines to reach the enemies faster, but I personally would prefer as many chokepoints as possible. Although with the Berserkers blocking the bridges, you can use this to avoid having to deal with them until later in the map.  Reluctantly I must bring Hisame along, I did frequently complain about a lack of decent sword users. Fellow sword user Kana will be supporting him for stat boosts, and the only reason she's not in the lead is because she's honestly not very good. Hoshido Noble grants more physical alligned buffs, so she makes a better support partner for him than a Nohr Noble would! The Practice Katana I stole from Selena many chapters ago boosts a unit's speed by 5, but it is also fairly weak. Hisame might need it for some of the speedier enemies like the Berserkers...  Rhajat unfortunately most choose between the bulk of the Horse Spirit or one-rounding enemies with her forged Ox Spirit, but if she can kill them before they attack her it doesn't really matter. That's one bridge secured!   Hisame's combat is somewhat less impressive, but with Duelist's Blow his avoid is low enough for my comfort. If I had only made him a Swordmaster, then he might have crit...  Some units can walk over water and Setsuna as a Sniper is one of them. Physical comedy is already her schtick what with all the traps she keeps falling into, I assume she can do this for the purpose of later realising she's standing on water and falling into the river like a Looney Tunes character.  Snipers have insane skill and get an innate bonus to crit, Berserkers have terrible luck and get an innate penalty to crit avoid. Can you guess what happens when the two are combined?  Midori unfortunately refuses to crit or activate Lethality against anything. Do I have to cap her skill at 40 before she'll do anything cool?  I should enjoy these levels while they last, because once I'm back on the main story it's going to be 3 EXP per kill at most. This is a fairly typical level from Kaden, normally they've all been super good or super bad.  It's a good thing he got res because he'll be choking this point along with a few others. Birthright's generally lacking in point chokers compared to Conquest, but I've got enough bulky units keep things under control for now.  Rhajat meanwhile has gone right while the others have gone up, because... I don't actually know why. I guess I wanted to rout the map faster? The enemies will all aggro at some point, so maybe having her to thin them out a bit elsewhere was my plan.  Travelling with Caeldori means she can heal off the damage she takes, but it'll be an annoying process of unpairing the two and having Cael heal her the turn after. I always end up pairing the two together whenever there's not enough room for Orochi and Felicia to come along, but neither class really helps the other all that much. Falcon Knight mostly boosts speed and res which Rhajat already has, Basara boosts luck and res which honestly is pretty useless.  Mozu's combat is a foregone conclusion, but I need at least one of these per update just to hammer home the point. The poor hit rate of axes combined with 2x WTA effectiveness from the Dual Naginata really add up!   Oh hey, Setsuna managed to cap her speed a second time! Her speed will still be exactly the same as it was if she reclasses back to Kinshi however. Certain Blow grants +40 hit on player phase. It's arguably better than Awakening's Hit+20 skill on Snipers, since they'll usually be initiating attack rather than counterattacking. It is also a skill Conquest loves to slap on enemies just to make dodge tanking less viable.    No speed, just like his mother and father! It's unfortunate that Birthright doesn't give you any Killing Edges, I think your best option for stacking crit on sword users is the Dual Katana.  A reinforcement has appeared from the bottom left to smash the village. He's got some way to go, but in the turns after this one he'll be joined by friends from different points in the map.  Why does Rinkah look worried here? I guess 21 damage is over half of her health, but the other guy doesn't seem to have a worried portrait and he's way worse off. Or maybe purple ghost people don't get special combat forecast portraits?  There's another guy. This is turn 4, the last one was turn 3. There's still a few more turns before they become a problem...  Here's a nice example of what I meant by the map being more dangerous than it looks - tonnes of scary enemies on screen, only a small amount of them can actually move to attack. Depending on where you stand you're either only in the way of a single Paladin or Master Ninja and nothing else... The Sniper doesn't move either. I think he might be a Lunatic mode addition?   Azama really needs to get his hit rates sorted out. It's a good job he's got that Bolt Naginata so he can piggyback off of dual strikes...  Sure am glad Scarlet was there to sort things out, she's way cooler than Azama. I bet Azama wouldn't be a friend to the revolution.   At least with skill and luck he'll have better hit rates in the future. I'm also very glad to see Scarlet get speed, she's been needing a little more.  Rhajat's been quietly doing her thing too. Basaras normally cap magic at 30, but her cap must be at least 1 or 2 higher than that.  Quixotic is certainly an interesting skill. It boosts the hitrates of both you and your opponent by 30%, and skill activation by 15% for the both of you too. It's very rare for enemies to be packing skills in Birthright so the boost they recieve to that can be ignored almost entirely, but the 30% hit increase can be detrimental even for units who don't particularly rely on dodge tanking. I've never tried using it myself, but it could absolutely be a great skill for player phase units who don't fear retaliation, or bulky tanks who can tank many attacks or never had the speed to dodge in the first place. While Rhajat would appreciate the extra chance to activate Rend Heaven, she is also somewhat reliant on dodges for defense, especially against Berserkers. I am absolutely 100% going to forget to take it off of her though, so who knows, maybe I will get use out of it!!!  Uh oh, did everybody aggro? The units who couldn't move before won't start moving now because this isn't Three Houses, but this might make things tricky. Every other enemy besides the Adventurers wouldn't move until provoked...   Speaking of, here's two more of them. So long as I can reach the village by next turn they shouldn't be a problem...  I'm growing increasingly more confident that Rinkah's going to hit her defense cap. 29 strength on a Rinkah! Even with the Energy Drop I gave her that's impressive.   "My diagnosis? You're dead!" As I said before Lethality isn't particularly reliable, but it is extremely rad. I personally feel as if Awakening had a more satisfying and messier blood splatter effect, although the drops on the camera were a cool addition.   Unfortunately this is not the GBA games and Lethality procs don't grant extra EXP, but she was close enough to level up regardless. Cruelty earns you no extra credit... Shurikenfaire is great too. Midori sorely needs the extra power!  This is turn 5 and the Adventurers are closing in. They'll arrive by turn 6, but intercepting them should be no issue.  Oh hell yes, a perfect level! Is that the first one? I've not been keeping track... Figures it would take a literally perfect level for Mozu to gain any HP.    Not only was that a perfect level, it was the last perfect level Mozu could ever get. She's capped strength and defense and speed all at the same time... That's pretty cool! Even normal Mozus aren't this great.  Setsuna however has capped her one stat she is allowed to have a growth in, so she just gets this terrible level.  Bowfaire is rad though. Setsuna sorely needs the extra power, and this is what might allow her the strength to do something silly like KO the final boss...  Unfortunately capped speed and physical stats don't make Mozu invincible, and mages are still a major problem. If only I was not contractually obliged to give every defensive stat booster to Setsuna...  Seems like everyone's come over to Mitama's for a big party. Good thing her house is close enough to the stream to make a convenient chokepoint, there's a lot of enemies coming from the north!  I can't believe the child of two units who constantly got levels like this is constantly getting levels like this. At least he's strong? Hinata didn't even have that.  House successfully secured. That stationary General makes quite a nice wall, he doesn't do too much damage and unless Kaden crits him to death he'll stop any other units from attacking him at 1 range.  Scarlet finally got Nohrian on a butt! This was her last turn of Lucky Seven too, her hit rate won't have been this high the turn after.  Seems like Rhajat's stat cap is not 30! It might be 31, but I haven't checked. It's probably higher.  The boss doesn't have any skills, not even Wary Fighter. He does hit a little hard but Kaden with Rinkah's help and a Beastrune is bulky enough to not care.  And now enemy phase is over and he has outlived his usefulness. Byeee! Midori of course picked her "this might sting a little!" crit quote for this KO.   Azama has to visit his daughter 3 times before she'll finally acknowledge him. I don't blame her, I wouldn't want to see him either. She's probably happy to be in this deeprealm all to herself.  Scarlet's hit rates are very sad without Lucky Seven. Maybe I could buy her a second Dual Club?  Skill and luck! Now she can hit a little better. All that's left on this map are stationary Berserkers, and those are easier to hit.  Trample is an extremely rad skill that boosts damage done to unmounted enemies by 5. In its native Conquest this skill affects almost every single in Hoshido's army, but in Birthright you are unfortunately facing mostly cavalry and flying enemies. Still a great skill though.  Scarlet however does have many great skills, so something must be sacrificed. Goodbye, Savage Blow! Like many good skills I'm too dumb to use I often forgot you existed.  Here's the last intruder. Bravely Azama defends her daughter's abode from attackers... He'd do a better job if he stood nearer the door I think.   You tell him, Mitama! Azama was endearing back when he was useful, but now he keeps missing all of his targets and he's lost his liscense to be a jerk. This is of course how you'd expect someone raised by Azama to talk...  Here's the third and last attempt. I really just want to screenshot this entire conversation, it's hilarious.  She would have, too! At least I think enemies in this game bulldoze houses. They might just have shut the doors.  Mitama's gimmick is that she mostly speaks in Haiku. Fates's localisation may be of somewhat dubious quality, but these at least feel like they had a lot of care put into them... They must have been very annoying to write.  Here she is! Those stats sure don't look impressive, but keep in mind she is unpromoted and only a cleric. She's also got the Wane Festal, a C rank rod that she might be unable to unequip at a very low level. This can cause a PLOT HOLE later...   This is a slightly tough choice. The Priestess class is equal or superior to the Onmyoji class in terms of stats in every single way, but that's to make up for bows being a significantly worse weapon to use than tomes. I personally think it's a better balanced choice than Awakening's Sage or War Cleric, although I will admit War Clerics are cool as hell and that's a big point in their favour. The Shining Bow is unfortunately a Nohr exclusive, so you can't have a cool magic bow user attacking from their best stat... For Sakura I feel as if the obvious answer here is Onmyoji, but Mitama's strength is actually a little higher than her magic. She's also not at all bulky, so she'd struggle to take advantage of her bulk with 1-2 range anyway... Plus she's got Bowfaire from Mitama to make her a little stronger.  +12 speed! That's the power of Setsuna as a mum. She also gets a unique outfit in this class which is a nice little bonus. It's definitely intended as her canon class.  Daughter recruited, the last Berserker dies and the map ends. 10 turns is pretty good by my standards!  Mitama heals Kevin with her Wane Festal... a thing she might not be able to do if her staff rank was only D. Boy, I sure hope someone was fired for this blunder. ...although this doesn't remove any uses from the staff so maybe she just had this one spare. That makes more sense.  Good night to sleeping in a pocket dimension forever. I guess Mitama not wanting to come along makes it less bad that Azama abandoned her for all these years... Perhaps in a sense he is the best father???  Some supports to finish off this update. Azama has special star pupils, but you'll never get to see them.    Setsuna's probably the most common choice for Azama's wife, so it makes sense that she would get unique dialogue... I think it would be good to be a bug. Gregor Samsa didn't have to go to work!!!    Kana is going to challenge fairytype stereotypes by eating the knight who's come to slay her alive. I wouldn't be surprised if Hisame himself tastes of pickle brine... Although he hasn't actually mentioned pickles at all yet. Maybe soon.  Mitama Shrine Maiden (HS: Apothecary (Azama), Archer (Setsuna) A+ Support Partners: Caeldori (Sky Knight), Rhajat (Diviner), Kana (Wyvern Rider) Personal Skill: Haiku (If an ally is above and below Mitama at start of player phase, Mitama recovers 7 HP and allies recover 5 HP) Pair Up Stats (C B A S): Str Spd Def Skl + Spd Growths (With Default Class) [Base]: HP: 37.5% (37.5) [45] STR: 30% (35) [40] MAG: 17.5% (27.5) [35] SKL: 37.5% (47.5) [45] SPD: 55% (70) [50] LCK: 40% (55) [50] DEF: 22.5% (22.5) [30] RES: 30% (50) [20] Oh dear, look at those stats almost completely destroyed by Setsuna... At least she managed to make her a little faster. Mitama is a unit who's clearly meant to go Priestess, but she doesn't have to. Her strength and magic are actually fairly close, and you could just as easily pair her with a magic user to have her go Onmyoji. With Sakura as a mum she could go Falcon Knight... Potentially gaining bow rank upon promotion with an Offspring Seal at least lets her avoid being stuck with Brass Yumis like Sakura might. Haiku is a very funny skill that was clearly made for flavour before practical use. It's not awful, and I've heard it can be very useful in some of the DLC maps, but it does require rather specific positioning and doesn't heal a whole lot. I don't really have anything else to say so I'll give more pointless trivia. Mitama has the second highest growth total of any second generation unit, but since she's a mixed attacker that doesn't really mean a lot. I personally never thought she was particularly good for much, but I'm sure with the right mother she's fine. Orochi might not actually be a bad choice, it'll allow her to get Diviner skills from going Omnyoji and her naturally high speed will cancel out Orochi's slowness somewhat.
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Mar 9, 2022 23:49
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Mitama owns, I think I used her every single time I could. Physically strong moms are my go-to, usually, there's a lot of staff users on my usual teams so I go all in on bows. Her supports with Rhajat are good too.  Probably the best showing for Rhajat, really.
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Mar 10, 2022 07:20
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I've yet to have a good Mitama. Her growths always look good - my two games with her, her mother was Orochi and Beruka respectively - but she just never seems to pan out. And the star-shaped pupils are creepy as hell.
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Mar 10, 2022 13:13
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I made Mitama work by using one of those definitely not hacked online castles to put Life or Death on her dad to pass down, and set her to Dread Fighter which notably has an ability called Aggressor that gives +7 damage on player phase. Together, that's a +17 free, on a shuriken/high speed class. Should've paired Azura with Kagero to pass Shurikenfaire for +22. Bigg
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Mar 11, 2022 03:00
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At that point, it literally doesn't matter which character it was....
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Mar 11, 2022 03:20
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Yeah but she could do haikus
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Mar 11, 2022 12:46
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  Tears of a dragon? Now what could that mean? I hope it's not another entirely pointless plot death.   Simple flavour boosts the stats of all second generation units, which is very handy for Midori and Rhajat who will be tanking a lot of hits this chapter. It's all big open fields from here on out! Hayato cooked this but did not benefit from the extra buffs, therefore proving he is a full grown man. I bet he just didn't add any simple flavour to his own dish to protect his ego.  Despite all my spare Katanas I don't have any pearls with which to forge any of them, so Hisame gets a slightly improved Throwing Club instead. I could trade away some of my jade for pearls, but I do also want to save it for the mother of all Iron Yumi forges I'm hoping to pull off in time for endgame.  The latest secret tunnel appears to have led us to some kind of dragon S&M dungeon. Is that the dragon that's crying? Maybe if we used the Kia staff on it we could have a cool new party member.   Hans has receieved a promotion to captain of the Nohrian army, and is now in charge of training recruits. This does work as a plausible explanation as to why enemies in Birthright are so willing to try to attack enemies they have no chance of hitting at all, considering Hans's actions in Chapter 3.  Obviously this is going to lead to a big showdown. I hope the fact these guys are being trained means they're all incompetent new recruits... I wonder, did anybody ever question why this statue had a big door in it? Seems like it would be a great way to smuggle weapons out of the Nohrian armoury.   Good job Lilith's here to save the day with a Dual Guard... oh. Well it's one tier above being killed by a generic Faceless. I said this in my Conquest LP but Lilith really is more like an element of the UI then an actual character, this would be like if Anna from the options menu suddenly leapt out to save you. Although I guess that might be kind of cool.  You've done it now, Hans! Kevin has no choice but to ask his big strong wife to beat you up. Butlers can't even threateningly gesture their staves at enemies in cutscenes like Troubadours do, they just do this weird pose where they hold it by their side pointing downwards.  Here's a very geometric and symmetrical map. Thankfully this isn't FE4 so the 2x4 enemy formations we saw in the cutscene beforehand aren't actually how the map is laid out. Hans is hiding at the back with a crowd of Berserkers, with Sorcerers manning Fire Orbs to attack you from afar. Dealing with Sorcerers and Berserkers at the same time is never fun, but at least the map is structured in such a way that you can usually lure only one over at a time. Looking at the bottom screen you may notice that this is a Defeat Boss map, and that there is an unobstructed path to Hans from the sky on either side. If you're not content to cheese this map by throwing Ryoma at it, you could indeed use a flying unit to drop on Hans completely unopposed and kill him in a single round. Flying reinforcements will start appearing from the corners eventually, but it'll be a long while before they start showing up.  Hans would be scary if he moved, but he doesn't so he isn't. The Brave Axe can be deadly on a moving Berserker, but as its effect only works on player phase it is incredibly easy to avoid. The Silver Star axe is one of those cheaty enemy only 1-2 range weapons with 0 drawbacks beside the usual silver weapon ones, and if Hans had it equipped from the start he would be a little more deadly. Hans will go down easy if you pummel him from 2 range before he can swap his weapon on enemy phase, but thanks to Gamble and the innacuracy of his weapons it's unlikely he could hit the likes of Ryoma or Corrin anyway.  Chakram is the only S rank Shuriken in the game, which obviously Hans cannot use. Thanks to its high power and huge stat drops it will absolutely mulch individual enemies, but the huge defensive nerfs to the wielder make it not so great for tanking his on enemy phase. Given how fast ninjas are already you're unlikely to suffer from being weaker to follow ups, but it might help someone like Saizo double enemies he normally couldn't. This is all speculative of course, I'm not sure I've ever even used an S rank weapon in this game...  Behind your starting position is a Sorcerer with a Fire Orb, as well as a small group of armoured enemies for him to hide behind. If you're rushing to kill the boss ASAP you can easily ignore them, but if you're going to be taking more than a few turns it's nice not to have this jerk hitting you from behind at a distance. Plus he drops 10,000g.  Lastly there's one dragon vein corresponding to each corner of the map. This may seem entirely pointless and detrimental now, but after a few turns flying reinforcements will start to appear who you might want to slow down. You could snipe them with Kinshi Knights as they appear, but they'll be spawning in 4 at a time so it's probably best to slowly let them come to you or muscle them out with a tankier flier like Scarlet.  Mozu and Midori will make their way up the left and right sides respectively, the rest of my team will rush the bottom and then go wherever I need them to be. I feel as if this LP's premise of beating the game with bad units kind of fell apart when Mozu turned into a capped stats god and made Ryoma redundant... But juggernauting is really the only way to play Birthright's endgame chapters.  My original plan was that Rinkah would solo this bottom part of the map herself. She's very defensive and all but one enemy here is weak to the Hammer. A weapon I had to restart the chapter 3 times to get into Rinkah's inventory, the first because I forgot she didn't have it and the second because I gave her the Bolt Axe thinking it was a Hammer.   I thought enemies would always prefer to attack with a seige weapon at a distance than attack up close, and that assumption led to a fourth restart. At least all of this happened on turn 1!    A much better strategy was to rush them all at once, leaving only a single enemy left who couldn't kill anyone on their own. Unfortunately the enemies right at the back start just a little too far away for all of my units to reach, so one Great Knight got to live.   The Wane Festal was nice insurance just in case Scarlet didn't crit or dodge. 9 HP healed really is not a lot, but in this case it was just enough. This wouldn't fly in literally any other game where characters actually have HP growths.  The only strategy Mozu needs to employ at this point is swapping between the Guard and Dual Naginatas. All of those Heroes have swords, meaning Mozu can't safely lure them at the same time she lures a Berserker. Even with capped defense she can't really take more than one Berserker hit, and the Guard Naginata kills her avoid.  There's also these fire orb jerks who can take advantage of WTA when she's got the Dual Naginata equipped. I'm pretty sure seige weapons follow the weapon triangle in this game anyway. Between Ballistae, Launchers, and Fire Orbs you've got one of each colour.  Some of the Great Knights are on the move already. If you're not rushing Hans you could hang back near the start and wait for the enemies to come to you, but this chapter has a large number of reinforcements that will keep bothering you until turn 20 so I would rather end it quickly. Especially since they give so little EXP at this point in the game...   Kana and Caeldori are mostly on support duty now, they get their EXP from staves and participating in dual guards. 26 attack and speed is actually quite impressive on Kana, maybe Hisame should be the one supporting her? It's been a while since I last compared everybody's stats.   Sorcerers are officially no longer a problem now that Shurikenfaire lets Midori one-round them without needing crits or Lethality. Lethality is of course really cool so she should still activate it as much as possible. Midori might have less bulk than Mozu does, but having 9 more HP makes her a lot less at risk from failing to dodge too many times in a row.  Mozu is of course earning 1 EXP per kill, and none at all from damaging an enemy. At this point the WEXP she gets from attacking is more valuable, especially since she's not likely to get many stats at all from leveling now 3 of them are capped.  That's a one hit KO! Thank you Bowfaire. Do I really need to take Setsuna out of Sniper? I did go to all that trouble of raising her lance rank, and flying is cool, but I'm going to miss these crits and huge numbers. There is an S rank bow in Birthright that only Snipers can use, and it might even be strong enough that the Yume Nikki won't out-damage it.   Bowfaire and Setsuna's insane speed is even enough to let Midori one-round enemies with a little help in combat. I wasn't expecting her to be at all combat viable, this is a pleasant surprise! She's certainly better at damaging than she is healing.  A normal hit would have been 1 HP off of a OHKO here, but you cannot tell because Mozu decided to crit anyway. The pair-up boosts from a promoted Oboro would have been enough to make the difference... Maybe I should shell out for a Master Seal after all.  After that big montage of huge damage numbers the left side is almost entirely clear, save for one Sorcerer doing chip damage from his Fire Orb. Reinforcements are going to start pouring in from the left fairly soon, but as long as they're all the same type of enemy I should be able to leave one unit who counters them all in range to deal with them.  Not so much luck on the right side. Great Knights come with one of each type of weapon in the triangle, and nobody wants to stand in the range of all 3 of a Berserker, a Hero, and a Sorcerer. Good thing all the enemies on the left side are dead so I can fall back into the space they left behind.   Lucky Seven's 20% dodge bonus comes in handy once again. There are unfortunately only 2 types of Dragonstone in this game, the second being the Dragonstone+ which works like a silver weapon and gives exaggerated verions of the stat boosts and penalties the regular stone does. So there's no nimble stone that increases speed and decreases defense or whatever. I would like a dodgetank dragon...   Reinforcements are starting to pour in, but thankfully they're only coming from one side at a time. The Wyvern Lords might start tucked away in the corner of the map, but their range will quickly make them a problem...  But thanks to Kevin they can be a problem I don't have to deal with immediately. The whirlwind cuts their movement in half, although it doesn't seem as effective as the one back in Chapter 11? It does of course affect your own fliers as well, but that's not much of a problem.  May as well have Kana do the right side in preparation for the reinforcements that will eventually come from there too. Establishing no fly zones is a father daughter activity!  Speaking of father daughter teams, here's Azama helping and not missing. Mitama's lucky to have both of her parents around to help her.  He even got a nice level out of it. I think if Mozu hadn't turned out so great then Azama would have been my main frontliner, mediocre accuracy aside he does still have very high stats. He might end up capping strength if I'm lucky.  These Hero reinforcements are very quickly going to get annoying, so Mozu has to delay her advance slightly to take them all out. Ideally I'd have someone staying behind to do this while Mozu pushes onward, they're going to keep appearing for a while.  A Hero on the left had this. Thinking about it, all my units with a Wyrmslayer weakness are part of the same family... Wyverns are common enough that I could justify giving this to either Hisame or Kana. If they're going to paired together they can swap it between themselves.   Reinforcements are coming from the other sides of the map now. Mitama can keep the mages in check and my other units should be able to handle the GKs as a team.   That's Midori's skill capped at 39... I was hoping for 40. At least with a support partner she can still get that 10% Lethality activation rate!  The large number of Berserker reinforcements coming from the top would be a problem if Mozu weren't so good at killing them. Of course in any other playthrough I'd have Ryoma to cut through them all...   Midori can potentially kill Generals in a single round if she's lucky, they've also got decent hit rates on her and can kill her in two hits. Dealing with them feels a bit like a roulette...  I miss seeing Kevin get levels. I guess he'll never get to cap his skill with EXP gain this slow. Maybe if Scarlet fights more he can leech more EXP through dual guards...  No reinforcements this turn but oops, I forgot about all the wyverns and now they've escaped their little tornado prison. Suddenly they're now way closer to the rest of my units than before and they can move twice as far as they could.  The Hans hit squad are almost in position at the top of the map, which means the wyverns are going to be a problem for my weaker units because I don't want to constantly have to backpedal to deal with reinforcements.  Thankfully Scarlet with a Bolt Axe can handle them more than easily enough. If only this were a Tellius game, then the wyverns would be weak to lightning.  As you can see by the map the sudden edition of fliers using their full 8 move does complicate things somewhat. A crueler version of this map where flying reinforcements came in faster and more frequently could absolutely get hairy fast.  Having an extra axe user to pass the Hammer to makes dealing with these Great Knights so much easier. One thing I really like about Fates is that it gives effective weaponry very high accuracy which lowers when you use it against enemies not weak to them, which avoids the problem games like FE6 had where axe users in theory could defeat armoured units with hammers but in practice couldn't hit them at all.  Finally from the bottom right emerge the Malig Knights. They have tomes, which can make them either easier or harder to deal with depending on how you're fighting them. Thankfully Birthright doesn't seem to like giving them both axes and tomes all that often.  I think Rinkah's one of my few combat units who still earns decent EXP from killing things, but unfortunately this one level was not great. A more average Rinkah tends to get levels like this fairly frequently...   Hans is in sight, and that's good because the fliers are starting to get somewhat out of control. They're not tough on their own but they do like hiding out of range in the sky...  Oops! That wasn't the Dual Naginata. Sure is a good thing I'm immune to the consequences of my actions.  Unfortunately Scarlet's just one tile out of range, so Kevin won't get to see his cool wife murder his enemies for him. I suppose I'll just have this LP's real main character Setsuna do it for him.  Maybe standing still with a 1 range weapon that lowers your defense wasn't such a hot idea after all. In Revelation Setsuna joins just in time for you to face Hans for the final time, so clearly she's the character the game wants you to kill him with.    Hans dead, hooray. Nice to have a defeat boss after a few routs, especially when it's a guy who sucks as much as him. Fates does not have particilarly compelling characters but at least they made some villains you're grateful to see the back of!  Oh right Lilith got hit didn't she. RIP my source of gold bars and occassional bait in invasion challenges. Good thing she can still do both of those things as a ghost!  ...I have no idea who that is. More lore that barely gets touched upon I guess. Did you know Lilith is Corrin's half sister?  You know what, I'm tired of loss too. It's gotten a little stale. And I absolutely am saying that just because I couldn't get an edit of this background with the windows rearranged to be | || || |_ to look good enough. Next time: So many reinforcements the game hits the cap for units allowed on screen at a time
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Mar 13, 2022 18:48
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I think you should leave Setsuna as a Sniper. You said you aren't sure if you've ever even used an S rank weapon in this game, and Setsuna is our protagonist, so I feel she should be your first S rank weapon user. It'd only be fair.
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Mar 14, 2022 02:04
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Seconding leaving Setsuna in Sniper. She deserves an S rank weapon, especially with the bow being one of the ones where the drawbacks don't make it largely pointless.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:36
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And so Birthright continued to be really kind of bland. These maps were kind of killing my soul when I was playing through myself. I don't really understand why they even have the Lillith death scenes. She has no plot presence for the longest time before her death scene, and she dies in like the most casual manner ever, and never gets mentioned again after. In a game with generally atrocious writing and plotting, this still manages to stand out based on how baffling it is.
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Mar 14, 2022 10:48
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If Lilith's death contributed anything, it gave her Heroes incarnation the ability to warp to her support partner from anywhere on the map, a loving hysterical ability still not really replicated so far. Poorly aged post countdown begins now, I guess...
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Mar 14, 2022 11:58
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 It's been a while since I last did an inbetween update to show unit stats, so let's do that. Kana's B support with her mother features flowers for every character, and Scarlet gets blood red flowers on account of all the brutal killing she does. Or maybe because her name means "red".  You can raise the caps of multiple units at once if you upgrade character statues past level one, but I never really bother since after the free purchase the cost ramps up massively. Turns out I never built Midori's statue at all though, so if she does manage to reach her cap then she'll have one might point to grow now. I was kind of hoping for skill just so he could hit 40.  Mozu gets skill though, so I could upgrade hers. Apparently "close allies" just means anyone you have a C support with, which is a lot less exclusive than I thought. I don't know if you can increase the cap of a stat by more than one no matter how many statues you build though.  Lilith is dead but her hat still eats all the food we leave out. Feeding Lilith was something I only ever did for gold bars, her stats never really mattered at all. All I'm doing is selling them for a tiny amount of extra gold that arguably isn't worth the time spent sitting through this cutscene over and over.  Upgrading a facility allows you to use it again, so I upgraded the arena to repeatedly gamble the one pearl I got through ore swapping over and over to get enough to forge this. Obviously this is named after Hisame but Kana can steal it whenever she wants so long as she's paired up with him for easy access to his inventory. I feel like I'm doing Hisame a disservice with all these pickle jokes when he has not yet mentioned them once in his supports... If he can reach an A support with Kana without pickles coming up a single time I'll take them all back.              Did you miss these giant walls of images? I try to deliberately have everyone equip weapons that boost as few stats as possible for these screenshots but I don't always remember. I'd take off Kaden's beaststone but I'm worried I'd forget to give it back and send him into a field of enemies with nothing equipped in the next chapter. Kevin aside, my army's ranging from level 11-16 while the enemies I'll be fighting next chapter are 11-12 (except the Stoneborn, they're level 28 which counts as level 8 promoted). Fates is so stingy with its EXP that just being 4 or so levels ahead of your opponent cuts your EXP gain massively, so I doubt the likes of Mozu or Setsuna are going to get more than one level despite the absurd amount of enemies present. I guess they wanted to avoid Awakening's situation of being easily soloable if you fed all your EXP into a single combatant... Considering the existence of Ryoma I don't think they succeeded! He and to a lesser extent Xander both seem so at odds with the rest of the game's design philosophy with their no drawbacks 1-2 range swords, but I wouldn't want to play the last few chapters of Birthright if there wasn't someone I could throw at the huge numbers of Berserkers to make them die.
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Mar 14, 2022 21:59
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Ryoma and Xander are both antithetical to sensible game design. Their power is so far above the regular characters that they utterly warp map design to accommodate for them. Either you have maps that can only be done by them, or you get maps that get brushed aside by them trivially. There’s no good middle ground here.
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Mar 15, 2022 00:02
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I feel like Ryoma should be, like, a player phase behemoth, with a prf skill that gives him reduced damage taken on initiation and like, Galeforce, but have no 2-range options and even increased damage taken on enemy phase. then, like, Xander could be a big fuckoff wall, give him Conqueror from Awakening, make siegfried like +4 d/r and -3 spd. Probably want to make maps where you don't want to turtle too much on Conquest, and can't go hyper aggro on Birthright, to make sure they're not super powerful.
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Mar 15, 2022 01:20
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I've said it before, but both characters are fine without their special swords. They're still incredibly strong, but the stat boosts and infinite 1-2 range are what makes them broken. Take their special toys away and they're just a really good pre-promote. I often handicap myself by immediately reclassing them and taking their swords away.
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Mar 16, 2022 01:21
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Blaze Dragon posted:I think you should leave Setsuna as a Sniper. You said you aren't sure if you've ever even used an S rank weapon in this game, and Setsuna is our protagonist, so I feel she should be your first S rank weapon user. It'd only be fair. Faillen Angel posted:If Lilith's death contributed anything, it gave her Heroes incarnation the ability to warp to her support partner from anywhere on the map, a loving hysterical ability still not really replicated so far. Keldulas posted:And so Birthright continued to be really kind of bland. These maps were kind of killing my soul when I was playing through myself. Walla posted:I've said it before, but both characters are fine without their special swords. They're still incredibly strong, but the stat boosts and infinite 1-2 range are what makes them broken. Take their special toys away and they're just a really good pre-promote. I often handicap myself by immediately reclassing them and taking their swords away.
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Mar 18, 2022 23:03
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  Unfortunately Lilith was not the impostor this round so clearly someone else must be the traitor. That's right, the traitor subplot is still ongoing! It did not end when Flora set herself on fire for no reason. Who could it be?  Well Elise was the first person to appear onscreen after the title card so I think it's her. She lied about being a flower girl, what else could she be lying about?  Oh no... It was Elise the whole time! Elise, how could you!!!   It's not Elise. This is some very sound logic on Elise's part and Conquest would have been a lot easier if everyone else had just listened to her. Perhaps "everyone should stop fighting and be friends" isn't very helpful when fighting a war but "don't listen to the guy who is very obviously evil" is smart advice.   The real traitor is... Takumi! Turns out Azura never quite unpossessed him at the end of Chapter 10 and he's been secretly sending the Nohrians information on our plans and position by owl without knowing he's doing it. From just playing Birthright you'd think Takumi's possession was done entirely by Iago, but in Conquest he's fighting against the Nohrians and is being manipulated by Anankos specifically. I'm not entirely sure what's happening here to be honest. I guess if Anankos wants to destroy both kingdoms and kill Corrin so it would make sense for him to help whoever's losing and not on their side, but how did Iago take advantage of Takumi being possessed if Anankos was the one behind it?  Azura sings a song and the threat is instantly neutralised, hooray. This is the exact same solution Azura used last time and it clearly didn't stick then. Even after we kill Iago Takumi's probably still going to be under the influence of Anankos... Maybe he'll kill us all as soon as the credits rool.  Corrin never really gets to be this intense in the other two routes. This iteration of Corrin that isn't too dumb to instantly realise Garon is irredeemably evil and is generally much more willing to murder his enemies. Or heal his allies while they murder his enemies in this case.  Here's a new contender for worst chapter in all of Birthright. Chapters 17-22 were boring open fields without much challenge, but this map starts out with 48 promoted enemies and factoring in all reinforcements has a total number of over 100 enemies! This is just a different type of boring that is also really furstrating. Chapters 23 and 24 can be handled even if you don't have Ryoma level frontliners, but if you can't survive and defeat large numbers of opponents on enemy phase here then you are going to get overwhelmed very quickly, provided you don't skip the whole thing with Rescue chains or by baiting the enemy into Entrapping you all the way to the boss.  Defeating Iago is the objective here, and thankfully he's not his infinite use Hexing Rod high-crit Excalibur self from Conquest Lunatic. High HP and Vengenace is a scary combo but otherwise he's not all that different from the Sorcerers you've been fighting previously. Just make sure to factor in the damage from a Vengeance activation and don't get yourself killed when he's the last enemy on the map...  Iago has a small entourage of allies that don't move surrounding him, including a Stoneborn. But the most interesting of all is this Strategist with Entrap. Any of your units who get Entrapped will be within range of Iago's attacks, meaning they could defeat him on enemy phase...    ...and the map is filled with Entrap Strategists who could move you a significant way up the map in a single turn if they worked together. I'm not sure if the numbers work out so that a unit could be taken from the very bottom to the boss in a single turn, but skipping the entire map with a boss kill this way would be hilarious and 100% preferable to actually playing this map.   Just like in Chapter 22 there's Sorcerers and Maids to harass you from afar with Fire Orbs and Launchers. 30 damage and 120 hit can be somewhat deadly, and the launcher will debuff any unit it manages to hit.   There's also some chests on either side to be grabbed. Neither of them are in any danger but if you're rushing this map to avoid the absurd amount of enemy reinforcements than you might not be able to grab all of them.   Everything I've shown so far isn't so bad, but here's the reason why this map sucks: Your starting position is flanked on the left and right by 6 powerful promoted horseback units on either side, and they will start moving towards you as soon as they can. The Great Knights have all of the weapon triangle between them, and the Bow Knights and Dark Knights can attack from 1 and 2 range, making it very difficult to tank either group with a single unit. Dealing with 12 strong high move enemies at once is bad enough, but there are 30 more of these jerks coming in the first 5 turns of the map, with the Bow Knight group reappearing on turns 1 3 and 5 and the Dark Knight group on turns 2 and 4. I don't remember what exactly the upper limit for number of enemies on the map at a time was but you can quite easily reach it here. Even Ryoma struggles to take on these guys!    Obviously I'm going to want to stack my 1-2 range unit's defenses as high as possible. This is where Nosferatu and Sol would come in handy, but unfortunately the former is unavailable in Birthright and the latter is a lot harder to get in Birthright than it is in Conquest...  Seems like a good chance to break out the tonics too. I've been ignoring these for the most part to save money to waste on forges and tonics, but for this chapter alone I think it's worth it.   Mozu and Midori get HP, def, and res. The idea was that Midori would be able to tank a large number of Great Knights and ranged units all in one turn, but that didn't quite work out in practice.  Rhajat also got boosts to all of her defenses, as well as one to her magic. She's going to be tanking the entire right side of the starting room by herself with the Horse Spirit. Her defenses are just about good enough, but her magic needed just a little extra boost. The Horse Spirit is unfortunately not very powerful at all, and these enemies are quite bulky.  ...I also forgot to remove Quixotic until now. I don't actually remember when she learned it... If it was only in the last map then I guess it doesn't matter, but I have the feeling it might have been earlier. Dodging attacks is going to be a big factor in her survival! Although if Rhajat had inherited Sol like I had originally planned then Quixotic would work quite well for her, she'd have a 36% chance to activate it with each hit. Healing half of the damage she deals on around 1 in 3 hits would probably make up for not dodging attacks she normally might...  It took a few failed attempts for me to decide on this formation. My original plan was to send Midori to the left, Rhajat to the right, and have everyone else stay in the middle - ideally I'd have my whole army mopping up the reinforcements before they move, but given that most of my combat power is concentrated in a few units I don't think I'd have the resources to handle both half of the maps at the same time, and I wouldn't be able to reach the enemies on either side on turn 1 before new ones started spawning in anyway. So by sticking all my resources into my best 1-2 range attackers I could have the enemies eliminate themselves. The 1-2 range part unfortunately disqualified Mozu, who otherwise would be my best bet for surviving then. It turned out that no matter who was on which side, Midori did not have the bulk to take multiple lance or axe hits per turn and even with the Sting Shuriken she struggled to ORKO Great Knights consistently. Rhajat could just about handle the right side on her own though, so I decided instead that I was going to send my entire army to the left and just Rhajat to the right. That way I could defeat half of the enemies as soon as they spawned in and the other half would defeat themselves attacking the one unit I had who was capable of surviving the onslaught semi-consistently. Good thing this horrible gauntlet happens at the start of the chapter I guess! If I were more daring I could have tried to end the map in a few turns and just ran away from the reinforcements... Probably would have been more interesting at least. Maybe that's how I'll handle the first part of Chapter 27.  Getting rid of this jerk in the middle with Entrap was not part of that big wall of text but it makes things easier if I do it anyway. She and the Generals around her won't move, but they all have 1-2 range weapons so with some lucky crits I can have all 4 of them take themselves out against Midori. She can just about handle a few Spear hits with a dual guard.  Rhajat immediately moves into position. Those Berserkers at the top of the screen won't move until you enter their attack range. Fighting them is optional, but their range is large enough that having them be there is a little prohibitive to movement so I'm just going to lure and kill them all turn 1. They have a 30% or so chance to hit Rhajat and unlucky dice rolls can absolutely get her killed horribly, but this is only the first turn so a reset isn't a bit deal. The Great Knight with a Silver Lance is the biggest threat to her so it dies before it can attack. Once again this isn't quite a consistent strategy, but resetting in case of a miss isn't a big deal. Rhajat could at least tank a lance hit if things went wrong, but if the lance guy survived and enough Berserkers hit her then she would be toast.  The plan is to approach the left so I can spawn camp the reinforcements, but actually getting into position to do so will be tricky, especially because I have to deal with the enemies that are already there first. The Heroes have the same AI as the Berserkers and Mozu's going to lure them all out turn 1. While Mozu will easily survive all of the mounted units, the Bow Knights can attack her from range and will be left alive at the start of turn 2, which unfortunately means I'll have to deal with them in addition to the 6 new units that will spawn here. If only I had a Replicate Ryoma!!!  Good thing there's no Berserker reinforcements at the start and Rhajat only has to brave these odds on turn 1. She's going to be stuck handling reinforcements from the right for a few more turns!  The sword users aren't as deadly but they are still quite accurate. Dual Guards and high bulk both help but dodging at least a couple of these is ideal. At least the Dark Knights have weaker sword attacks...  I suppose more avoid is nice. Rhajat has an Elixir so she will be able to make use of that extra point of HP by healing to full next turn. I'm sure it'll make a world of difference to her survival! Maybe I should have made her an Oni to help her survival more.   Mozu's in no danger, but not defeating every enemy that attacks her allows them to build up. I have two player phases to get rid of all these before the next wave spawns in. My other units can help, but they have to get close first...  Kaden's tanky enough to rush in but nobody else really wants to. Mozu's debuffs do at least help make the enemies less scary.   Grisly Wound deals 20% of damage to an enemy after they engage you in combat, even if you never attacked them at all. Like all out of battle damage it cannot kill, but it does sort of allow otherwise 1 range locked beast units a form of ranged attack. Like a lot of skills in this game it's much more annoying in the opponent's hands than yours.  Oops! There's those shaky hit rates in action. All the Berserkers are gone though so taking a single lance hit isn't as dangerous as it could be, there's still less attacks she has to dodge than before.  At least the left side is finally clear. I had dreams of a Lucky Seven Scarlet handling entire swathes of enemies by herself as a Strategist when I was first planning out pairings... My magic Scarlet idea didn't really work out as well as I'd hoped. She's still pretty useful though! She's just not really one-rounding anything with magic.  Now I'm ready for the reinforcements as soon as they appear. I'd celebrate the free EXP but I'm going getting anything from 3-8 EXP per kill.  There's also a very slow trickle of enemies approaching from the top of the map. Reinforcements will start appearing from the top in greater numbers soon, but by the time they arrive I should be finished with the bottom of the map and ready to focus my attention entirely on them.   Here they are! The Berserkers and Generals from the top are somewhat irritating, but at least they were kind enough not to show up for the first few turns. As soon as the initial reinforcements dry up you'll be greeted with a few turns of these.  With the cavalry finally dealt with it's time to move up and fill the objective. The green danger area represents the range of the Entrap Strategists - I'd rather not have my units warped into range of a load of Berserkers until I'm more prepared to deal with them, so I'll be walking around it for now.  Rhajat can deal with Generals very easily so long as they've only got one type of weapon. Horse Spirit for axes, Calamity Gate for lances. She could have used this to fight the lance using Great Knights, but then the axe users would have clobbered her...  Reclassing Sniper was supposed to increase Setsuna's growth rates! Unfortunately all Setsuna sees is her +20% class growth in skill and decides she only wants to get that.  Time to lure and kill these Entrap Strategists one at a time. Mozu doesn't mind getting dropped into a crowd of Berserkers so much so long as she has the right weapon. If you don't want to deal with Entrap then you do have the Silence staff...   Unfortunately the Stragetist instead decides that she'd rather snipe Mozu with the Fire Orb than drop her into a crowd of her allies so she can murder them. At least Mozu could still lure some of the Berserkers over...  Now that Mozu's capped 3 of her stats she has no choice but to get HP. I could make her a Basara for extra HP and res if I wanted, but it would come at the cost of her other stats. Her defense would stay the same though so it would be a net increase in bulk!  The Strategist moving has now put everyone in Entrap range, so I'm going to have to double back and lure her over... I really wish I'd gone for the flashy rushing the boss method of ending this chapter instead of trying to rout it, this is really tedious.  At least Rhajat is now able to move forward to the treasure chests without fear of getting Entrapped. I don't actually know why she's doing this, she doesn't have Locktouch or a key. I guess I wanted to clear out the treasure rooms?  There's a dragon vein in the middle of the map I had completely forgotten about. I don't think I've ever used this? Perhaps it's useful if you're playing more aggressively.  Now the Strategist is willing to Entrap Mozu. Most of the enemies that would have been in range of Mozu are now dead but at least there's still some reinforcements from the top to try and surround her.  This guy moved from his orb which I wasn't expecting... At least now I can take him out and not have to get pelted by fireballs for the rest of the chapter.  Turn 12 marks the last turn of these annoying reinforcements. I really am so sick of Berserkers now... They're such an irritating enemy for how common they are. Birthright would be way less annoying if you replaced like 50% of the zerks with axe wielding Heroes instead.  Mitama's not at her speed cap yet. Setsuna's been a much more benefitial mother for her than I thought, Bowfaire plus insane speed really goes a long way.  This slightly different shade of red danger zone is what happens when staff and attack ranges perfectly overlap. It would be very easy to get someone killed here by not realising that.  Both treasure rooms are still guarded by the threat of getting Entrapped. They're going to be off limits until all the moving Strategists are gone. Scarlet could have flew in and grabbed them a while ago but she doesn't want to get dropped into Berserker land.  At least she can just barely lure the Sorcerer from safety. I just realised Scarlet's HP is actually quite bad... Still better than Mozu's at least.  More slowly inching forward, one Strategist at a time. I wish this game had a Warp staff.  Caeldori has mostly been downgraded to the rank of very mobile staffbot by now. She's still fairly good at tanking magic, I just have other units who can do it better.   Treasure time. The Pursuer is like the Chakram except that bow users don't really care about counterattacks or defense drops so the stat penalties feel like less of a detriment. Setsuna would like to have this, but she needs to reach S rank bows first! Kinshis cap their rank at A so she's only been able to earn WEXP since she reclassed to Sniper.  The Great Festal works like Fortify in that it heals a bunch of allies within a certain tile radius all at once. The amount it heals compared to a Fortify is fairly meager but it also has a larger range, as you would expect from a rod.  The last few enemies on this map mostly don't move and will instead wait for the also immobile Strategist to warp someone in for them to wail on. Stationary Stoneborn are not all that scary, someone could easily wait just outside of its range to rush Iago next turn.   Grinding Azura to S rank lances would never be optimal but I do wish she could use this weapon, it feels very fitting for her general aesthetic. The Waterwheel functions like a significantly stronger Guard Naginata, with the added bonus of extra crit avoid. The strength halving on every other attack is a big drawback, but considering how weak the Guard Naginata is it's still a big upgrade. I think out of all the S rank weapons this one is probably one of the best? If only anyone had the rank to use it, I don't even think Mozu is at S yet.  There's also a second pair of Boots. It's rare for an FE game to give you more than one pair but they only boost movement by 1 in Fates which is half as much as usual, so the net gain in movement is the same.   If you've ever played Awakening on difficulties above Normal then you probably hate this skill. It's not very useful on your units unfortunately, if you want to convert lost HP into damage then Vengeance does so much more efficiently. You don't even get EXP if you kill an enemy with Counter!  Time to kill this jerk and be done with this map. Did you know Iago has Bowbreaker? He's got a 50% boost to hit and avoid but you wouldn't think it from this combat forecast.  In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap is the primordial void mentioned in the Gylfaginning, the Eddaic text recording Norse cosmogony. I copied that straight from Wikipedia, I don't know what any of it means. But the spell looks pretty cool.   In Conquest Iago carries an S rank tome he'll try to kill you with, in Birthright he's got this sword he can't use instead. The Hagakure Blade seems pretty cool I guess, +20% avoid is quite the bonus. Although the one Swordmaster you have who's most likely to reach S rank is Ryoma and he's got his own way better sword.  That was tedious. At least the next chapter will be short and sweet! Unless I decide to rout it, which I might...  Leo really doesn't deserve to get to steal this kill on every route. What's Iago ever done to him? I think Kevin should get to beat him to death with a staff, it's a much more cruel and unusual punishment than this weird tree thing.   I suppose that's understandable. Maybe not obstructing you is the most you can ask out of someone re: killing their father, even if their father sucks. Although if Leo could convince anyone else not to fight us that would be nice...  Oh right Leo looked into Azura's magic crystal and he knows Garon's not actually himself but an evil slime monster instead. Sympathy rescinded, I'm mad at Leo for not helping us again. Next time: Someone we actually care about dies in a way that's not completely contrived I had to control-F and remove about 10-15 instances of "I guess" that I wrote while commentating this chapter. I guess I wasn't feeling very sure about my commentary!
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Mar 18, 2022 23:03
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I kinda liked that it was Takumi both routes? Like, just by picking the TRUE HOSHIDAN JUSTICE route, you don't clean up the very evident negative qualities Takumi possesses, he still doesn't trust you, he's still got a ton of complexes. and also gently caress takumi, little punkass
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Mar 18, 2022 23:16
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Obviously "Garon" told Iago about Takumi being possessed and about the backdoor access to magically use him as a camera. I kind of like how our heroes' reaction to this is, "Well, Takumi isn't doing it deliberately. We'll just need to fight so well that Garon knowing everything Takumi does won't make any difference."
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Mar 19, 2022 03:34
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midnight lasagna posted:In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap is the primordial void mentioned in the Gylfaginning, the Eddaic text recording Norse cosmogony. I copied that straight from Wikipedia, I don't know what any of it means. But the spell looks pretty cool. Essentially it was what existed before the universe started. It contained lands of fire and ice and them meeting was that started the universe! Allegedly. Also there was a hermaphroditic giant involved that birthed people from their armpits. Norse mythology is weird. What this has to do with the tome itself is anyone's guess.
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Mar 19, 2022 06:31
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Pulling stuff from Norse Mythology is cool, that's what. At least Heroes puts effort into its references.
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Mar 19, 2022 06:32
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Walla posted:I've said it before, but both characters are fine without their special swords. They're still incredibly strong, but the stat boosts and infinite 1-2 range are what makes them broken. Take their special toys away and they're just a really good pre-promote. I often handicap myself by immediately reclassing them and taking their swords away. The funny thing is that in Conquest, Xander ends up being better in Wyvern Lord than in a sword class for a stretch of about 4-6 chapters beginning with Kitsune Lair.
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Mar 19, 2022 07:00
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midnight lasagna posted:Perhaps one day I'll try a reclassed Xander and Ryoma, but I think I'd still keep their weapons in their inventory just for the stat boosts. Although I'd be more willing to take Ryoma's Rajinto away in a version of Birthright that's a bit less dense with enemies towards the end of the game. I wonder if they'd still be the best users of their respective weapons if they weren't locked to just them? They wouldn't be. Saizo or Silas would make better use of either weapon. How broken unrestricted 1-2 range really is begins to become apparent when you start messing with mods. The Hoshidan Conquest mod has Hinoka replace Camilla's recruitment, and she's given similar bases. She also has an Iron Nagiyari and is possibly better at soloing chapter 10 than Camilla herself. Zoran posted:The funny thing is that in Conquest, Xander ends up being better in Wyvern Lord than in a sword class for a stretch of about 4-6 chapters beginning with Kitsune Lair. There's really no reason to take Xander out of WL. Unrestricted Elbow Room is a decent trade for losing Siegfried and Trample is better than anything he'll get from the Cavalier line.
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Mar 20, 2022 05:48
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Elbow Room doesn't always activate if you're a flier. It specifically says it checks the tile you're on, rather than if you're receiving the benefits of it. Also Trample's a Malig Knight skill, not Wyvern Lord - Wyvern Lords get Rally Defense and Swordbreaker.
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Mar 20, 2022 06:36
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LiefKatano posted:Elbow Room doesn't always activate if you're a flier. It specifically says it checks the tile you're on, rather than if you're receiving the benefits of it. poo poo, I mixed my classes up. Still, 2 levels of Malig Knight is worth it, and Swordbreaker is still better than anything from Paladin or GK. Bad Video Games fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Mar 20, 2022 |
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Mar 20, 2022 07:28
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The last time I used Xander, I put him on a wyvern for that stretch of maps, then made him a Lodestar to patch up his speed. It was as ridiculous as you'd expect.
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Mar 21, 2022 04:22
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Also this is very late but the S-Rank weapons on this route feel... very thrown in. I guess Conquest had the excuse of Iago and Hans being evil anyways, so you could defeat Nohrians for the best Nohrian weapons... Hoshido is Pure and Good™ though so fighting Hoshidans using them wouldn't feel as right, story-wise (and with how max weapon ranks work you'd have to fight Hoshidans - or at least people with Hoshidan classes - unless you broke the rules like(ish) Staves Iago). Birthright at least lets you use them before the final two back-to-back maps of the game, at least?
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Mar 21, 2022 04:57
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Bogart posted:I kinda liked that it was Takumi both routes? Like, just by picking the TRUE HOSHIDAN JUSTICE route, you don't clean up the very evident negative qualities Takumi possesses, he still doesn't trust you, he's still got a ton of complexes. and also gently caress takumi, little punkass LiefKatano posted:Also this is very late but the S-Rank weapons on this route feel... very thrown in. I guess Conquest had the excuse of Iago and Hans being evil anyways, so you could defeat Nohrians for the best Nohrian weapons... Hoshido is Pure and Good™ though so fighting Hoshidans using them wouldn't feel as right, story-wise (and with how max weapon ranks work you'd have to fight Hoshidans - or at least people with Hoshidan classes - unless you broke the rules like(ish) Staves Iago).
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Mar 21, 2022 17:49
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  Here comes the Xander fight, one chapter later than its counterpart against Ryoma in Conquest. This map is a pretty short and simple one, so I'll do what I sometimes do and lump in the My Castle stuff at the start.   I wish you could rig the lottery, I've been having atrocious luck getting unique ingredients from this thing. I guess I can't complain too much because the two I do have boost defense and speed which are by far the most useful... Extra lapis is fine but I'm not sure I need any more naginatas forging.   There's actually two more units I haven't recruited yet, and they are Izana and Yukimura. Two characters that most people would assume were just NPCs if they didn't look it up online, because they require building specific buildings and upgrading them to level 3 before they join. They won't show up until time passes in your castle though, so I'll have to build the stuff and beat the next chapter to get them. This also reminds me I never did Shura's analysis... Just like most of the second gen units it's probably going to be nothing more than a big shrug. I've never used him or Izana in Birthright and they're not particularly noteworthy. There might be more to say about Yukimura I guess?  An entirely inconsequential support between these two. I was considering pairing them up when working out S supports at the start of this LP, but I'm glad I didn't. Kaden really needs Rinkah's support to function as well as he does, although I guess Setsuna doesn't benefit from her current partner much either and wouldn't be missing anything.  Once again giving my compliements to these haikus, they must have been a huge pain to write. I've not been counting syllables though so maybe the writers cheated with a few of them and I never noticed.   Mitama and Setsuna are the best arena team I've seen so far and even they couldn't reach the end of round 2 without taking a huge amount of damage. I don't remember ever having a unit win round 3 of the arena, they always take so much damage beforehand that I never want to risk entering them after the first 2 matches... Unlike 3 Houses the enemies always scale to your level, so your best units will fight equally strong opponents.  Kaden's slowly been shaking down his enemies with Salvage Blow for some basic weapons to forge. The number of weapons needed to increase a weapon's forge level gets multiplied by 2 each time, so the +3 Yume Nikki will need 8 Iron Yumis to reach +4.  I don't have that many but I do have enough to make this for Mitama. No funny name because it's only going to exist for a chapter before getting merged into Setsuna's. Also the character limit doesn't leave enough room for haikus!   Some tasty +def/spd/luck edibles from Midori. Kevin needs all the nutrition he can get for his fight against Xander! He might not be allowed to attack him but he may need to take a hit or two.   Xander's got dibs on that unnarmed healer EXP and refuses to let anyone face Kevin in combat but him. Unfortunately he's asking the second least reliable pair of retainers in Fates to make a promise for him.  If you had only played Birthright and not Awakening or the other two routes you'd have no idea that Laslow was a character from another game. I suppose that makes sense and trying to tie in all the Awakening & Anankos stuff into his character would confuse newer players, but Laslow's actions here don't mesh with his supposed motivation from the Hidden Truths DLC at all. He's supposed to be here to protect Kevin and here he is having to be forced not to fight him!   Xander and his horse are here waiting in a room that appears with be decorated with large elaborate coffins. I wonder who those are for? He can only kill Kevin once.   There is of course no convincing him, not even with Elise here. Xander styled his entire aesthetic around Camus, the sunken cost of doing that and then not dying pointlessly in battle against the heroes would simply be too high.  ...you do know Kevin doesn't have any weapons, right? Of course we ourselves have soldiers from Nohr within our ranks so Ryoma's excact wording is definitely open for some loopholes.  Elise you don't have a weapon either. But I guess you do probably have a Freeze staff. Just hit Xander with that every turn until Garon's dead! His avoid and resistance stats are both very low, it'll be easy!   Of course this cutscene would break if Kevin didn't do something, so for a brief moment this game is Radiant Dawn and Kevin can hit Xander with his staff. Much like Radiant Dawn it does 0 damage and is completely ineffective.  Azura and Ryoma have only ever fought enemies in cutscenes so they cannot be faulted for not understanding how combat works. Azura especially has a tendency to win fights in cutscenes that make 0 sense considering her own stats!  Unfortunately the Undertale strategy of not fighting back and just trying to find the right dialogue option doesn't seem to be working here. This is of course just a cutscene that would play out the same way no matter how your Corrin was built, but Xander wailing on a defenseless Kevin in a Butler suit does change the dynamic of this scene somewhat.   Oops. I think the point was Xander would stop swinging when Elise jumped in his way, but that sword is really heavy! All that momentum has to go somewhere.   Come on, Xander. Your dad is very obviously evil, all your siblings have either surrendered or are outright hanging out with the enemy, your capital is all but invaded and the end is in sight anyway, and you've literally just killed your youngest sister who died trying to convince you to give up. Surely all of that in a row is enough for you to realise how pointless this is, right? Right?  Nope. One unarmed younger sibling is never enough. Maybe if he just kills Kevin and also the other few 100 people storming the throne room right now he can still turn things around...  Nah this is absolutely something I would have done in Conquest if Xander needed 1 more EXP to reach level 5 and learn Defender. He's just optimising his gains.    Xander cannot control his retainers and does not want to admit the actual reason his youngest sister is now two half-sized non-identical twins, so now things are even worse than before and everybody must kill each other. Oops!  Time to settle this outside of a cutscene where everybody who isn't Kevin can do more than stand around uselessly. Despite all that I wrote I do genuinely like this scene, and contrived circumstances aside it does get a genuine emotional response out of me... Sure it's a pointless tragedy that could have been avoided, but unlike all the other deaths in Birthright the pointlessness of it makes it more tragic rather than just baffling. Poor Elise : ( The way I always thought of this map is that it's an inverse of Conquest's Ryoma duel, where instead of having to defeat Ryoma's retainers before he kills Corrin, you have to defeat Xander before his retainers kill the rest of your army. In practice it is incredibly easy to defeat Xander unless you want Corrin to get the kill for story purposes, so if the chapter lasts more than a single turn it does so because you wanted to draw it out. I am absolutely going to draw it out! It would be a waste of EXP not to. Reaching Xander is much easier than reaching Ryoma in Conquest, all you need to do is use Locktouch to open the door. You can also leave a unit with 1-2 range where he'll attack them, but Xander won't move unless attacked until turn 8.  Forget all those dialogue lines about how strong Xander's gotten since the last time you fought him, because he's actually weaker than his past self. There's a good plot justification though, despite his apparent eagerness to fight Kevin it's quite clear that Xander is throwing this duel so he can die and spare himself the guilt of all he's done. A bit of an anticlimax in terms of gameplay, but it does at least make sense. He's still strong and bulky enough that an untrained Corrin might struggle to take him down, but if you've gotten this far already then it's very unlikely you won't have 1 or 2 units who can enter the throne room to defeat him before the other enemies get a chance to move. Oh and for some reason Xander has less HP on Hard than he does on Normal. I don't think he's meant to? Lunatic's Xander is tougher than both of them though.   I said Laslow and Peri were the biggest threats here, but it's less them and more the armies under their command. Both of their stats are on par with or arguably worse than the enemies around them, and their brave weapons are more of a detriment than a help considering how low their strength stats are. Laslow for some reason has 2 more skills than Peri, one of which is the off-class Shurikenbreaker, but he's definitely the weaker of the two.   More immediately threatening are these 2 groups of enemies right next to your starting location. They have high stats and a mix of 1-2 range weapons, so if you don't have Ryoma to bait them and thin them out then they can quickly overwhelm you. Although if you managed to tank all the reinforcements at the start of Chapter 25 then this is arguably the same thing but easier...  Normally I don't have the patience to deal with any of this and just end the duel on turn 1, but this time I'll rout the map or at least take out the two retainers. The only reward for doing so is a single droppable Sun Festal from one of the Maids, so I don't think you're expected to do this... Birthright loves showering the player in free gear from enemies so you can probably take this as a sign you're not meant to stick around.  First call of business: get rid of these Dark Knights. Unfortunately standing close enough to fight them means being in range of more Dark Knights and potentially Berserkers, so you have to be careful.  Kaden has good bulk on either side, deals effective damage against beasts, and is inherently resistant to crits. He's turned into one of my better units... Although granted that is with the help of Rinkah, who is basically Birthright's Charlotte when it comes to suppot bonuses.   I was under the initial impression that defeating the Generals blocking the door would open it automatically, but apparently not! It doesn't matter though, Xander's going to wait patiently for his karmic defeat for another 8 turns.  I don't think I've ever had Kana unequip her dragonstone, so it's weird looking at her stats and seeing that without the bonuses it provides she's not actually all that bulky. If only she could use the Yato!  Defeating the enemies in range of your starting position generally means putting yourself in range of different enemies, so I didn't want to move too far outward... This is hardly a sound defensive wall but it'll have to do for turn 1.   It's okay, Scarlet can take a bit of a beating.  Midori's strength caps at the rather pitiful cap of 26. This is what happens when your dad has a -2 strength cap modifier! Kids get +1 to all of their caps automatically so hers isn't as bad, but it's still one lower than the Master Ninja's natural cap of 27.   A few of the units on the left side of the map move out at the end of turn 1. As long as they don't all rush at once it should be fairly easy to take them all out one by one...  Dark Knights are more vulnerable to Rend Heaven that most classes thanks to their mixed offenses. Rhajat wouldn't have made this kill otherwise! Maybe I should see if I can forge this Horse Spirit once or twice, it's not really cutting it damagewise anymore. Although if I were smarter I would have reclassed her to grab Tomefaire...  That's Kaden's speed capped. He can still go faster with the right beaststone though! Although even with Beastrune lowering his speed by 1 he still doubles just about everything.  Surviving the next few turns will be a lot easier, but those Malig Knights are still slightly annoying. Mozu ran ahead to take out the one with a Silver Axe to make sure my other frontliners only have to tank magical damage and nothing else.  Enemy move order means these Heroes won't wait for the Maligs to clear space and will happily attack Mozu at 1 range and die instead of chucking their Tomohawks. This is the type of thing you can deliberately take advantage of if you're super knowledgeable about the game, but whenever it happens to me it's never intentional on my end.  Now that's what I'd expect from Setsuna's daughter! Please don't get any more levels like that though.   It's been a while since all my units were last on the front lines together like this, I miss it. If the enemies were attacking on both sides I'd have my entire army hiding behind my 1-2 range juggernauts, but as it is everyone's able to chip in instead.   Here's Grisly Wound in action. Kaden heals units who heal him with his personal skill, maybe this is just that but for damage. He's just repaying his debts!  Laslow's on the move now, and every turn he'll rally his allies with Fancy Footwork. That's +1 to speed and strength. Not a lot, but enough to potentially get you killed if you're counting numbers but forget to factor it in.   Scarlet somehow picks a lock indoors from atop a flying mount and frees her husband so he doesn't have to break his vow of pacifism. Xander's just going to stand there and be sad until 8 turns are up.  All of Laslow's Hero squad have swords so Mozu can bait them all no problem. The Generals will be mildly annoying and chuck Spears at her from a distance, but after eating a single Seal Strength they'll stop being threatening.  Mozu would not have taken any damage were it for Fancy Footwork! Also I'm really fed up of these dark interiors. At least Conquest's endgame has nice bright colours to contrast the gloom and doom.  It really does feel like Mozu's begrudgingly getting HP because she's not allowed anything else. I'm very grateful all the same.  Yes! That's my first S rank this run. Notice how Mozu's been mowing down an entire army's worth of enemies each map and yet she's only just getting this now... Fates is absurdly stingy with its weapon EXP. The Waterwheel is a good enough weapon that Mozu might actually want to make use of it, so this S rank is worth more than just the +1 damage and +5% hit it gives.  I think Rhajat capped magic earlier? I can't honestly remember. None of her levels feel very consequential, but she's good all the same.  These Great Knights don't have axes so they're easier to tank than last chapter's. Although beast units like Kaden and Kana seem to be my best bet for fighting them anyway, they don't have any place in the weapon triangle so the GKs can't take advantage of their access to all 3 melee types.  Even Peri's waiting patiently for her revenge! She's going to have to be incredibly patient with that 16% hit chance though. Did you know Kaden and Peri can marry in Revelation?  These two can also marry, but everyone can marry Mozu. I guess Laslow has forgotten about or doesn't want to mention the entire reason he was sent here in the first place, which was protecting Kevin from Garon... Anankos would be disappointed if he could see this. Honestly the Hidden Truths DLC is barely even canon to any route.   My condolences if you married either Laslow or Olivia in Awakening! This did not have to happen and I did it anyway. I guess I feel a little bad. Laslow doesn't "retreat" like Odin or Selena, he's totally dead for real.   As is Peri, but I don't think anyone's going to mourn her. At least she seems happy!   At least Awakening gets to live on in the form of off-brand Morgan and Cordelia. Caeldori's stats are looking pretty good now, or maybe 20 just looks way bigger than 19 at a glance.  Kaden almost joined the dead for a second there. I forgot the Beaststone+ lowers his defenses even more than a regular one, and a Maid hit him with a knife debuff too... He needed to equip this to one-round a GK, I normally stay away from it.  The staff users won't move for a while and the remaining enemies have all fled to heal. I think I've caused enough pointless death today, let's just end things now.  Having Scarlet or Kana do this would be the closest to a Kevin kill I'm allowed, but these odds aren't particularly good. Hmm...   Just making things a little more fair! Who cares about honour at this point.  How annoying. I don't want to wait another turn...  gently caress it. Setsuna, get over here!  "I'm bored now!" yells Setsuna as Xander's continued existence ceases to amuse her. As this run's real main character I guess she can fill in for Kevin.   No it really was not. Blank levels like this can only happen when a unit has capped a stat... What happened here is that Setsuna only rolled speed but couldn't gain any more and therefore got nothing.  This must be the most turns I've ever taken doing this map. Was it worth it? Maybe. Mozu did hit S lances after all.  Canonically Xander throws the duel against Corrin. Presumably his stats would have been much higher were he actually trying... Now Kevin must deal with the trauma of losing two of his beloved foster sibilings in one day. Thanks, Xander!   He was however totally going to kill you until Elise intervened, so I guess her sacrifice did still help a little after all.   If only we ever got the chance to see what Garon was like before he became a comically evil cartoon villain, then Xander would be a little sympathetic here. As it stands, though... Well I do still feel a little sad what with the music and all. I do like Xander even if he sucks.  Oh god Kevin please do not under any circumstances be like your older brother Next time: Can I beat Invasion 3 with a single unit sat on a throne?
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Mar 21, 2022 17:49
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I'd argue there's one route that the Hidden Truths DLC is canon to: the Heirs of Fate DLC, simply due to them paying like 5-second lip service by proxy via Ophelia and Soleil, who both basically respond with a "What the heck are you talking about?" since apparently the generic weapons the two are carrying had some sort of magic rock embedded in them or some such carp...
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Mar 22, 2022 00:35
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 Are you excited to see how I deal with Invasion 3? No? Well neither am I honestly, by this point in the game I'm usually fed up with Birthright and just skip it. But maybe there's the potential for a funny cheese clear. Can I beat the entire thing with one pair of units who never leave the throne?  I don't usually care much for healing items in this game, but my Invasion 3 clear is likely going to involve a lot of sitting around in one place, so some healing would be nice. Concotions heal 20HP which for a majority of units in Birthright will be around 2/3rds of their max.   Oboro claims to be a better seamstress than chef, but if she had played Fantasy Life then she'd know that the two things are done via the exact same minigame and are therefore completely identical. The sweet flavouring combined with the two ingredients to make a speed/defense/luck meal, which is very handy for what I have in mind.  I'd still like just a little more surviviability though, so I buy HP speed luck defense and resistance tonics for the unit I'm going to be sticking on a throne to cheese this next map.  Invasion 3 unlocks right at the end of every route, although each route has you face different enemies. Conquest throws a variety of Lunge + Entrap users at you to stop you from camping the throne, but Birthright is much nicer. The boss has all the skills a normal level 18 Swordmaster would have but if you're on a throne he's got nothing to take you off of it, so he's less scary than any one enemy in Conquest's variant of this map. Camping the throne is a tried and true method of making defend maps trivial - if your defend map does not have side objectives or other ways to give you a Game Over then there's very little than can stop you from leaving your bulkiest unit on a throne and hitting end turn until the timer is up! This particular map also requires I KO all the enemies so technically it's a rout, but the point still stands.  Here's a list of all the enemies and their skills courtesy of the Fire Emblem wiki. There's no real point in showing off their formation, this map is a large open field and soon they're all be crowded around the throne anyway. Most of these skills just mean more damage and are mostly inconsequential to my strategy, but there's a couple of highlights - Vengeance could potentially mean a surprise KO if I leave a weakened unit alive, and the Stoneborn with Counter. The Stoneborn themselves are problematic as I'll have to leave the throne to defeat them, but Counter has the added annoyance of making them hard to kill with units who cannot attack at range.  Whichever unit I leave on the throne is going to have to deal with all of these enemy types at once. As you might recall Mozu can swap between the Guard and Dual Naginatas to deal with various enemies, but only when those enemy types are isolated into uniform groups... So the question is: who do I put here?  Mozu with the Waterwheel or Guard Naginata can tank a significant portion of the enemy types, but the Berserkers deal around 20 damage to her each with pretty meaty hitrates. She can swap to the Dual Naginata to fair better against them, but then all the Sorcerers and Onmoyis will have huge hit rates against her when targetting her weaker res. There's also the issue of Oboro being her best support partner, and I can't unpair Oboro to go after the Stoneborn once they're the only enemies left as she is very much untrained. I didn't try her, but Midori would also have the same problem as she's also a blue weapon user with even worse defenses than her mother. Her support partner Kaze's a little better in combat than Oboro would be, but not much.  Rhajat has a high resistance stat and can deal with Berserkers and mages alike, but her poor defense makes her not so great against most of the other enemies on the map. She's also got the same problem as Mozu in that her ideal support partner is pretty terrible in combat.  Rinkah can get WTA on Berserkers with tomes and has extremely high physical defense, but her poor resistance makes her an easy target for mages. She is especially vulnerable to Vengeance procs as she barely does any damage herself, giving damaged Sorcerers lots of times to get a lucky skill activation in against her.  ...which leads me to my ideal choice: Kaden. Even loaded with tonics and a Rinkah support Kaden's defense stat might not look very good here, but his lack of weapon triangle makes him by far my most reliable dodge tank. The throne and his Beaststone boost his avoid by a total of 40 even before factoring in his stats. The 103% you see here doesn't factor in terrain bonuses, so he has a whopping total of 133%! Most enemies won't even be able to touch him. He's also got the added bonus of a support partner who can be unpaired with and sent to fight on her own to deal with Stoneborn. Switching to Rinkah is how I'll have to deal with 2 range units, she can survive an enemy phase or two if I'm careful.  99% of my playtime here consists of looking at this screen. There are so many enemies and for a significant portion of the map they'll just be wandering around smashing stuff I don't care about, so I'd rather not waste time seeing whatever it is they're doing. Unfortunately this does also make it a little hard to tell what's going on at times, which makes it hard to tell what went wrong on failed attempts! At least it'll make the update short.  The first enemies to reach Kaden are these Strategists, who thanks to their weirdly terrible skill stats have no hit at all against him. I'd rather they die first so their allies cannot benefit from Inspiration, but Kaden can only target the ones that run right up to him. Normally enemies in Birthright will just throw themselves against any of your units that they can reach, but I think their preference to seize the throne before anything else makes them not want to waste their actions on futile attacks. So instead they... run into Kaden's melee range and do nothing.  Kaden might end up being my first level 20 unit from all this EXP. Dodging's what I need him to do, so luck is nice! He's already capped speed.  The normally deadly Swordmasters are not a threat at all here, but they are pretty accurate. You won't even get to see how the boss does against him since I think he died on an enemy phase I skipped.  Two hits from a Berserker is a Game Over... but they do have to hit. 3% hits are actually 3% hits in Fates, so considering the sheer number of enemies here it's not massively unlikely Kaden will eat at least one unlucky hit. So long as it's only one per enemy phase he can heal up and be fine.  The throne he's on restores 20% of his max HP per turn, and on even-numbered turns Even Better adds an extra 40%. He's also got two Concotions if he needs them, but I don't think he will.  Every single enemy here besides the boss and Stoneborn are using silver weapons, so with every attack they make they'll be nerfing their own stats. Any problematic enemies like Snipers who repeatedly live to get hits in will soon find themselves debuffed into uselessness.  Some units have higher hit than others... I'm not entirely sure why? It's not the silver weapon debuffs, nobody's living long enough to see this many of them. I think enemies can benefit from adjacency support bonuses much like your own units... Maybe this guy was surrounded by enough of his friends to become accurate enough to get this hit in. I don't like the idea of all these guys being friends, I want my enemies to die unloved and alone!  The Stoneborn are also here. I don't think the enemy bothers with buildings they can smash that don't get them closer to the throne, so only the Stoneborn are bothering to get rid of the statues because they can hit them from a long way away.   I was pretty down on Kaden before I did this LP, but I'm definitely coming around now. Turns out anybody can be good so long as you glue Rinkah to their side! I used to think he was one of the worst characters in Birthright.  Rinkah is also leeching EXP from the occassional dual guard. I think she's one or two points away from her defense cap now...  This invasion has a lot of reinforcements. I'd hate to be playing it legitimately, it would be extremely irritating to deal with them all...  Turn 7 marks the end of them spawning but the map is still very crowded at this point. I can only imagine how miserable this would be to sit through in a game like Path of Radiance where you can't skip phases and map animations are excurtiatingly slow.  That's level 20! Congratulations Kaden, you just barely hit the level cap. I think I had units in Conquest hit the level cap as early as Chapter 25 or so..  The enemy's bizarre throne-seizing AI has a very good upside - these Stoneborn are walking right up to Kaden and just standing there. This is very good in that it puts them in range of him, but not so great in that attacking them will force me to eat a Counter...  First of all I'll have Rinkah take out the ones that aren't adjacent to her. Counter doesn't just apply to physical attacks, magic attacks are also countered at 1 range!  She only gets 1 EXP from the Stoneborn, but the surviving Snipers are a little juicier. Will there be enough EXP in Chapter 27 and Endgame for her to cap defense?   Kaden can also eat a single Counter without too much risk. He's only capable of ORKOing without a crit with the Beaststone+, but after a stat drop or two he'll have to kill a few turns before he's capable of doing it again.   Eventually the map dwindles just to enemies who will run up to Kaden to die for lack of any better alternative. I sure am glad the AI does this, things would have been much more difficult if they did not.   23 turns of mashing the start button. All that practice in skipping Fates's cutscenes finally paid off!  Unfortunately Kaden did not cap his stone rank like I had been hoping, but he got pretty close. There are no S rank beast weapons in this game weirdly enough, it feels like a missed oppurtunity. A Bravestone or something like that would be fun. He still benefits from increased weapon rank due to the bonuses ranks C and above give to damage and hit at least. I'll post unit stats and everyone's Endgame inventories next update, but first here's something I've been putting off for a while. There's going to be no big analysis for these last few units, I'll show stats and maybe a couple of lines of what I think they're probably like and that's it. I have barely used any of these people! I'm sure they're fine.  Izana Onmyoji (from Monk) (HS: Samurai, Apothecary) A+ Support Partners: None Personal Skill: Peacebringer (All allies and enemies within 2 tiles deal 2 less damage) Pair-Up Stats (C B A S): Skl Mag Def Skl+Res Growths (With Default Class): HP: 45% (45) STR: 15% (15) MAG: 35% (55) SKL: 55% (65) SPD: 30% (45) LCK: 45% (45) DEF: 35% (35) RES: 35% (50) Izana's a staffbot with decent enough magical combat. In Conquest he has more of a unique niche in being able to access Rally Luck and Rally Magic which normally only Corrin with a certain talent can do, but Birthright has many Monks and Diviners who can access them. His high skill and staff rank probably makes him a pretty good user of offensive staves? His reclasses offer him semi decent skills but Izana really wants to be using his magic so he won't be very useful in any of them.  Shura Adventurer (HS: Ninja, Fighter) A+ Support Partners: None Personal Skill: Highwayman (If unit triggers battle and enemy cannot counterattack, debuff strength and speed by 3 at end of battle) Pair-Up Stats (C B A S): Spd Res Res Spd+Res Growths (With Default Class): HP: 30% (30) STR: 25% (35) MAG: 10% (15) SKL: 20% (30) SPD: 35% (55) LCK: 30% (30) DEF: 15% (15) RES: 35% (55) Much like Izana, Shura's niche is much more useful in Conquest where good bow users are rare and not many units get Locktouch by default. He starts at a much higher level with better stats in Birthright at least. He can also use staves but he's not very good at it. I guess he's okay if you need units to fill out your deployment slots? Being able to go Fighter makes him unique at Birthright but I doubt you'd have much use for an E rank Hero or Berserker this late in the game. He's probably fine as a Mechanist if you want 1-2 range, but once again he'll be stuck at E rank knives.  Yukimura Mechanist (from Apothecary) (HS: Samurai, Monk) A+ Support Partners: None Personal Skill: Perspicacious (All allies receive +5 hit) Pair-Up Stats (C B A S): Skl Skl Str Skl+Spd Growths (With Default Class): HP: 25% (45) STR: 25% (45) MAG: 5% (5) SKL: 40% (50) SPD: 15% (25) LCK: 30% (35) DEF: 25% (35) RES: 30% (35) Yukimura is a prepromote with solid stats and immediate access to reliable 1-2 range. His growths are garbage but his bases are good enough that he'll be useful from the get go. Having bow access without being bow-locked is rather nice, and there are a few fliers in the late game for him to shoot down. His bulk and speed are both good enough that he could make a decent frontline tank if you still need one. His personal skill also allows him to help out all of your other units just by existing, so if you've got spare deployment slots and you're not low manning then there's no reason not to bring him along. Of course this is still all speculative... I've never used him! You'd be forgiven for not even knowing he's playable, or forgetting that he exists at all. He's more relevant to the plot of Conquest than Birthright. Next time: My limited funds force me to make the choice between S rank bows Pursuer Setsuna or +4 or +5 forged Iron Yumi Setsuna
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Mar 23, 2022 09:10
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Yukimura is by no means exciting but in this game, given generally lower skill/luck growths, a flat +5 accuracy is nothing to mess with. Rhajat, etc wouldn’t mind having him around.
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Mar 23, 2022 13:04
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 Setsuna might be looking pretty good right now, but she is not yet Complete... for starters, her bow rank is only A. Weapon rank builds very slowly in Fates and she has only been able to earn bow rank since she reclassed to Sniper thanks to the Kinshi class capping at A... I can fix this with an Arms Scroll though, and thankfully the Staff Shop just happens to have a single one going spare.  I also forgot to give her these. At this point the Talisman is basically useless since Setsuna very rarely faces magical enemies and the ones she does face can't touch her so long as she's using the Dual Yumi, but I can't have this very nice avatar I was gifted and not give Setsuna all my goodies for no reason. There's still a few stat boosters left to buy in the shop, but they're going for 10,000 gold each and I'm not sure I'll be able to afford them all.  I've been stockpiling a lot of garbage with the idea that someday it might be useful, but now I'm at the end of the game it is safe for me to throw away anything that is not currently in my unit's inventories. The Sheep Spirits are for the most part worse Horse Spirits, but they do recover 10 HP if you end the turn with them equipped. In terms of availability they're kind of like the Hoshidan equivalent of the Nosferatu tome? They sort of serve the same function too, although obviously one is much better than the other. Regardless they sell for a lot and they're bad and I don't know why I have 2 of them.  Midori is only at B rank knives so anything that requires A or more is wortheless to me. Even in a world where weapon ranks built faster, all classes could reach S rank weapon ranks instead of a select few, and weapon forges didn't allow for regular weapons to reach power levels similar to S rank ones, I still think the oppurtunity cost of not selling S rank weapons would still limit their usefulness a little. 5000 gold is a lot!  I have no Swordmasters and no other class can reach S swords, not even the Hoshido Noble class. Kana and Nisame aren't getting above B rank and at this point they're not very useful in combat anyway. In a world where I had not benched Hana I could see her getting some use out of this weapon, 20 extra avoid combined with Duelist's Blow might have been enough for her to attack foes while facing 0 chance to be hit upon counterattack at all.  Most of this junk is getting sold but I would like to make a few final forges, just for the fun of it if nothing else. So I'm going to dip into the arena to gamble a few of my ores. I don't think I've ever seen Izana here but that's probably because I don't bother recruiting him most of the time.   I definitely have never heard any of his critical hit quotes. He did surprisingly well in this battle! Maybe he should drop this whole "peace" thing and take up a career in gladitorial combat.  Here's what I wanted the resources for. I sold two Steel Shurikens to buy an extra Iron to get Midori's +1 forge to +2. I could have forged the steels together to get a +1 forge that outdamages this one by a single point, but I'd rather have the slightly weaker one with 0 penalities in combat.  This will be my last purchase before I waste all my money on statboosters and/or Iron Yumis. Chapter 27 of Birthright is not very fun and if I can skip it with Rescue I would like to, although that is both somewhat difficult to do thanks to the strength of the boss and my lack of a Yato user to get through his damage reducing skill, and also a criticism that applies to most lategame maps in Birthright anyway.  My second forge is for the Horse Spirit. Scarlet wasn't getting much use out of hers so I figured it would be worth sacrificing it to soup up Rhajat's a little more. I don't think you can get enough Horse Spirits in this route without the lottery for a +2 forge...  I was going to forge all these katanas into stuff but then I realised I don't really care about them and I'm never going to use them anyway. Sure a +1 Kodachi or Steel Katana might have been neat, but Hisame's going to see like 1 or 2 combats more at most and Kana has her Dragonstone and nobody else can use these. I sure hope Hoshido doesn't have any conflicts after this fight with Garon because I am selling like 90% of this country's armoury to buy stuff for Setsuna.  Despite all my heal staff spamming, not a single unit of mine can use this. Azama and Mitama are kind of closs at B rank, but otherwise I'm a way off. Building staff ranks is expensive in Fates, it takes a lot of uses and the costs do at up!  My last forge is a cool Steel Club for Scarlet. I don't recall having 2 of these but apparently I did? I don't know why I didn't forge them earlier. As you can see I'm pretty terrible at inventory management!   Now for the question I asked at the end of last update: forged Iron Yumi or Pursuer? They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but selling the Pursuer would give me more cash with which to buy yumis. As you can see the Yumi Nikki has 15 might, 74 hit, and 1 crit, while Pursuer has 22 might, 80 hit, and 10 crit with a few drawbacks added on top of it. I was originally under the impression that a forged Iron Yumi could exceed 22 might, but I was actually wrong - a +7 forged Iron Yumi only reaches 20 might, and it would take 128 Yumis to create it. That's 128,000 gold's worth! A Steel Yumi could cap out at 23 might at +7 or draw with Pursuer at 22 with +6, but neither of those feel worth it either. So unfortunately my dreams of a stupidly high level forge just aren't as praticial an option compared to using the Pursuer...  One last option I could use to create Super Setsuna would be to give her an Eternal Seal or a few to allow her to level up beyond the 20/20 cap, but there really is not enough EXP for that to be possible. Plus she's not even level 20 right now. Honestly the Eternal Seal is a huge waste of money unless you really want to win online battles, Fates otherwise has no post-endgame content or challenging DLC that uses your own roster.   In the end I manage to acquire almost every single booster I can. Setsuna's speed is capped, she can't use her magic stat, and her resistance stat is probably her least useful out of all her other stats... But that one Talisman will still haunt me I think. I'll always know Setsuna's stats could be better.  Behold Mighty Setsuna! She's... well I guess she's pretty impressive? I do have the nagging feeling that literally any other unit given this much attention would be better. Maybe if I had given her more levels in Sniper for higher strength, or perhaps I should have married her to an Oni-talent Corrin to get her Death Blow... It's a shame that the nature of Birthright and Snipers means she can't delete entire maps by herself with these stats like they maybe could in 3 Houses. Even Rebecca can turn into an untouchable monster in FE7 with enough favouritism, and Snipers are complete garbage in that game. I don't regret training her though, it's been fun. A Setsuna who followed the class path mine did would have 33.3 HP, 20.6 STR, 0 MAG, 27.5 SKL, 36 SPD, 20.2 LCK, 14.2 DEF, 19.22 RES on average. So this Setsuna is at least way better than the average, although obviously that's not accounting for all the boosters I gave her. I will never see a Setsuna this good again! As I post one final list of unit stats I'm also going to share everyone's stat averages for their level, but for simplicity's sake I'm not going to factor in their exact stat path when I calculate them because that would require me to reread everything to see what I class changed them into and when. This caluclator is what I've been using to work these out, so thank you to whoever made it! So in whatever order my unit list spits them out, here's the final stats and inventory of all of my army before I go and kill Garon:  Kaden's 20/20 averages: 46.75 HP, 28.5 STR, 4.5 MAG, 25 SKL, 36 SPD, 30 LCK, 18.75 DEF, 33 RES I've said all of this before, but Kaden's a unit I really did not expect to turn out as useful as he did. Looking at his averages he's got quite a bit more HP than usual (probably from being a Blacksmith briefly), but otherwise he's about on par? Even with the Beastrune lowering his speed he was still great at dodging while being incredibly bulky... Perhaps he would have been just as mediocre as I remeber were he not constantly paired with Rinkah, but in any case he was a great help for this playthrough. Kitsune are more interesting than I thought, and the ability to swap around their stats with different stats is really cool. I hope at least one more game tries a similar style of unit to Fates's beast classes.  Rinkah's 20/17 averages: 32.2 HP, 25.4 STR, 14.8 MAG, 22 SKL, 27.6 SPD, 16.2 LCK, 33.8 DEF, 14.2 RES This run started out as the Rinkah show and could have easily continued being so if I hadn't gone all in on Setsuna and Mozu, or given away her Bolt Axe to Scarlet. Even with the boosters this is a very blessed Rinkah, and perhaps not very indicative of her normal performance in Birthright... Still though, I do maintain that Rinkah is a good unit who is considered much worse in the eyes of the fandom than she actually is. In fact she could have been a lot more useful had I given her a better support partner, besides the extra speed Kaden didn't really do much for her... With someone like Hayato or Orochi supporting her she could have been a terror with the Bolt Axe.  Mozu's 20/18 averages: 36.4 HP, 32.45 STR, 5.4 MAG, 34 SKL, 33 SPD, 28 LCK, 26.8 DEF, 18.7 RES This was the strangest Mozu I've ever trained. Bizarrely high magic, very blessed defense, kind of underwhelming HP. I'm a little disappointed I never made her a magic class despite joking about it so much, but I don't think she actually would have been all that good as one. Any pretense of this being a playthrough where I use mediocre units went out the window when Mozu turned into this monstrosity. It's very ironic her luck stat is so comparitively low considering everything else... But these stat averages aren't entirely accurate, I don't know when I made her a Spear Master so I had to guess.  Midori's 20/17 averages: 38.2 HP, 24.2 STR, 3.3 MAG, 37.2 SKL, 29.6 SPD, 25.5 LCK, 18.25 DEF, 19.55 RES These stat averages do not take into account Midori's base stat inheritence from her parents, so I think it's fairly safe to disregard them. I don't really know what to say about this Midori besides "aptitude is a good skill". I'm surprised she didn't break the game in half considering her 1-2 range weapon access, but I guess she just didn't have the bulk some of my other units did. Had all my stat boosters not gone to Setsuna she or Rhajat would have been the best recipient of my Dracoshields and Seraph Robes.  Kevin's 20/4 averages: 30.5 HP, 11.7 STR, 21 MAG, 22.2 SKL, 21.1 SPD, 18.55 LCK, 12.8 DEF, 12.2 RES Did anybody click on the Kevin Macleod music links I was posting at the start of each update? After a certain point I gave up trying to match them properly to the mood of the chapter I was playing or even making sure I wasn't using duplicates. Looking at Kevin's averages makes me think he was wasted in his role as a staff and pair-up bot, but rules are rules. Mostly I just regret not being able to cap his skill. I might want him to use the Hexing Rod on Garon still, he needs to be accurate!  Azama's 20/12 averages: 41.3 HP, 31.3 STR, 16.65 MAG, 21.45 SKL, 27.5 SPD, 26.2 LCK, 24.7 DEF, 18.5 RES Skill aside, this looks like a pretty okay Azama. He's another case of wasted potential - Azama can absolutely dominate in combat if you let him, but the combination of his support partner being separate from him most of the time and me ignoring him in favour of better units meant he never really got the chance to shine. It's easy to see him being a better Mozu though, his stats aren't even all that behind hers and he's got way more HP. Perhaps if I had married him to Oboro he could have gone Spear Master and filled the same role she did.  Caeldori's 20/14 averages: 36.35 HP, 19.9 STR, 17.5 MAG, 23.65 SKL, 25.775 SPD, 27.8 LCK, 16.9 DEF, 27.075 RES A strange stat distribution for a very strange unit. The unholy union between Subaki and Orochi made a unit who was very useful, at least for a while. If only Rhajat and Midori didn't do her job of taking out Sorcerers much better than she could, then she wouldn't have been demoted to staff botting. I don't think I ever got much use out of Rally Speed either, all of my units are really fast.  Scarlet's x/16 averages: 33.5 HP, 30.5 STR, 15.25 MAG, 21.25 SKL, 27 SPD, 17 LCK, 24.75 DEF, 15.8 RES Maybe my strange and unusual magic Scarlet build wasn't a very good way to show off her usefulness. Even with Kevin's Supportive skill boosting her combat skills she always felt merely Okay. I definitely could have optimised her Bolt Axe potential with a Corrin who had a Dark Mage or Diviner talent instead, or maybe even Mercenary for Strong Riposte... Regardless if you want a good Scarlet your best option is probably to leave her as a Wyvern Lord and just have her hit stuff with her already very good strength stat. Even as a Malig Knight it's twice as high as her magic!  Rhajat's 20/18 averages: 42.2 HP, 13.575 STR, 31.025 MAG, 15.1 SKL, 28.85 SPD, 25.525 LCK, 18.25 DEF, 30.15 RES Rhajat is a good unit and the Horse Spirit is a great spell, that's all I really have to say. Making her a Basara was a potentially odd move that turned out well in the end, she really appreciated the extra HP and defense and would not have been able to juggernaut as effectively as an Onmyoji. My one minor regret is not having her inherit Sol, but Strong Riposte did help boost the otherwise terrible damage the Horse Spirit saddled her with. And now the rest...    Mitama turned out surprisingly good for who her mother was. Bowfaire + high speed + the high might of yumis counterracts bad strength by a lot it turns out! I guess it's a good thing I put off her recruitment so late if it got her Bowfaire. Kana and Hisame didn't really get to do all that much besides tank a couple of hits and use some of the swords I had lying around. Unfortunately the juggernauty lategame maps of Birthright aren't a great place for deployment slot fillers like these. Maybe I should have recruited Hisame as soon as I could so I have a reliable sword user for longer...   Honourable mentions go to Kaze and Orochi who fulfilled their roles admirably and then fell off. Kaze's early promotion doomed him to eventually falling into obsoletion, but that was always the plan. Orochi I think I could have stuck with - I did use at least one stat booster on her, and her speed and defense were both surprisingly good... I think the combination of Rhajat stealing her thunder and some really poor levels after promotion put me off of her. Or at least I think they were poor? I just remember getting mad at her not getting magic on an 85% growth and benching her. I considered showing some of the other units I benched but I don't think this interlude needs to be any taller... Plus I still feel betrayed by Hana and I don't want to look at her face again. One day I'll train a Hana that consistently gets both strength and speed. Did I do a good job at using units people don't normally use? ...eh. Honestly I'm not really sure what units people do like using in this game besides the royals. I never deployed Ryoma and that's a win in my books. Next time: Garon
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Mar 24, 2022 23:01
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midnight lasagna posted:
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Mar 25, 2022 03:28
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theshim posted:I clicked on every one  Listened to them on repeat while reading the updates too. No regrets.
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Mar 25, 2022 04:06
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| # ? May 1, 2024 19:22 |
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theshim posted:I clicked on every one PizzaProwler posted:
Well that warms my heart to know . It also reminded me that I forgot to pick a song for this next update!!! What a tragedy it would have been if I had posted one without Kevin MacLeod.
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Mar 26, 2022 21:57
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