|
FoolyCharged posted:Debias, savior of eturia, bors, Gwendolyn, barthe, Dorothy, fir, Gonzales, Wade, lot, Sophia, Geese, shanna, marcus. Seconded
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2024 15:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 00:37 |
|
|
Marcus, Ogier, Lance, Geese, Alen, Sophia, Saul, Chad, Raigh (Only if you have a promotion item for him), Elffin, Fir, Gonzales, Lilina. Think that's 13. Counted it twice, at least. Mix of Marcus, unpromoted, and healers/bard/actual fog of war vision.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2024 16:04
|
|
|
FoolyCharged posted:Debias, savior of eturia, bors, Gwendolyn, barthe, Dorothy, fir, Gonzales, Wade, lot, Sophia, Geese, shanna, marcus. This sounds good to me as well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 6, 2024 21:25
|
|
|
Voting is closed! (slightly early, but whatever) Marcus: 8 Lilina: 5 Fir: 5 Sophia: 5 Geese: 5 Debias: 4 Bors: 4 Gwendolyn: 4 Barthe: 4 Dorothy: 4 Gonzalez: 4 Wade: 4 Lot: 4 Shanna: 4 Clarine: 3 Raigh: 3 Cecilia: 2 Sin: 2 Melady: 2 Chad: 2 Ogier: 2 Thea: 2 Alen: 2 Saul: 2 Astolfo: 2 Dieck: 2 Zeiss: 2 Elffin: 2 Perceval: 1 Sue: 1 Trec: 1 Klein: 1 Wolt: 1 Bartre: 1 Fae: 1 Rutger: 1 Noah: 1 Lance: 1 LPer's choice: 30 A huge thank you to the consistent bloc of straight ticket armor voters, without whom I'd probably be stuck with enough underleveled squishies to babysit that it might actually become a problem. I'm still gonna do a bit of tinkering here, though. As it stands, the cutoff point is somewhere in that mess of 4 vote getters, and I'd also like to get Raigh and Zeiss in there. Raigh because again, having him sitting there at 20 bugs me and it brings us up to two staffers, and Zeiss so he can get a fair shake. And of course we need to bump a thief up; I'm feeling more like Astolfo today. Accomplishing all of that while breaking all the ties is actually going to require pretty much all of my votes, because a big chunk of them are earmarked for either Fir or Rutger. (They're all going to Fir btw, she's already coming and I don't want to complicate things further.) That just leaves the question of who to cut. We need to come up with four, and the first three are easy: most of our underleveled units at least have reasonable stats for their level, but Wade, Lot, and Shanna are all doing pretty poorly even on that front. Shanna I'd maybe be willing to entertain for the flier utility, if this wasn't a fog map. For the fourth... I think I'm just gonna pick a general at random, and the fates rolled Barthe. That gives us a final team of: Roy, Douglas, Marcus, Lilina, Fir, Sophia, Geese, Debias, Bors, Gwendolyn, Dorothy, Gonzalez, Raigh, Astolfo, Zeiss
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2024 00:54
|
|
|
  This chapter actually did end up giving me a fair bit of trouble. Not so much because of who we brought, and more for the usual reason of "Sacae doesn't gently caress around." I did get it done in one attempt (sort of), but there were several extremely close calls.     Our main concern re: inventory management is that we have eight unpromoted units coming along, and no Fae, Elffin, or Merlinus to serve as pack mule for all the promotion items. Here's the compromise I end up with: Dorothy, Sophia, and Zeiss are low enough that they're almost certainly not hitting 20 until the end of map arena grind, if at all, so it's not a huge deal if they don't get to promote right away. As for the rest, Raigh, Gonzalez, and Geese are all carrying their own items, while Sophia is carting around Bors and Fir's.  Also, this isn't super important, but I like letting Douglas keep the runesword he gets at the end of the previous map. He's got the rank for it, and most of the primary sword users aren't really built for tanking.   And with that, we're ready to begin. Since we are in fact bringing Marcus, I need to send something else to the convoy instead of the olden lance.  We've got several things to check out before we start planning our strategy, though. First up, Lowen:    pre:Growths HP 85 Lck 50 Str 35 Def 40 Skl 35 Res 25 Spd 30  Next, Roy will...  ...talk to Douglas! If I'd been smarter, I would've set up everyone's starting positions such that he could do this and trade Marcus his lance at the same time. Oh well.   : Understood.Uhhhh sure? What exactly does that me-   OH! Oh, I see!  This is our real reward for saving Roach and his men. Talking to Douglas with Roy now spawns a bunch of free green units for us. And we get to do this for every chapter until the end of the game, as long as we, you know, deploy Douglas. These reinforcements will always include Roach, but otherwise are custom built for each individual chapter. Hence the thief over there giving us some extra vision range. (This is secretly the reason I was okay with bringing only one thief of our own.)       These soldiers admittedly don't make the strongest first impression, but later sets are surprisingly competent. I've even seen Roach's crew hold off waves of enemy reinforcements entirely on their own. And heck, even these guys are at least good for drawing enemy fire, since there's no penalty for letting them die. This is why it was so hard to talk about Douglas at first, since so much of his utility as a unit is wrapped up in his ability to spawn a bunch of extra dudes. How valuable that is to you... is going to depend heavily on your playstyle. If you're allergic to the idea of a green unit getting a kill, then it adds no value at all. But if you're alright with losing out on a bit of experience every now and again, I would seriously argue that Douglas is in the running for best unit in the game, held back only by the fact that he doesn't exist for the first two thirds of it. There's no good reason not to deploy him, quite frankly.   That just leaves one hanging thread: Roach. Because I sure did imply there was still a way to recruit him, didn't I? And there is! ...But you might not like it. If 16x was giving Thracia flashbacks, this is going to give Shadow Dragon flashbacks. Or just Thracia again I guess, since Eyrios exists. Yeah, uh, to recruit Roach permanently we need to kill Douglas.  There will be a vote on this, but not for a while, so just keep it in the back of your mind for now.Side note: All of this stuff surrounding Douglas and Roach is by far the most complex bit of eventing that Project Ember adds to the game, and there's a lot of nuance going on under the hood that we won't get to see. I don't really want to bog down the update with it, but if anyone's interested I can try to go into more detail in a separate post.  Anyway, before we go any further we should probably check out the enemies generic thief revealed for us. More mages!   These two are fairly notable. (The other sage just has a thunder tome iirc.)   There's also a barely visible horseslayer guy down south. Kind of a rude surprise, since you're probably sending all your cavs that way to avoid the forest.   In fact, he's the only enemy we can see down here so far, even with Astolfo using a torch.     Oh right, we have this to take care of too. Those sure are some stats alright.   At long last, we can start actually playing the map. Our first concern? There are more than enough enemies in range to absolutely murder our thief buddy, and I'd like to preserve that extra vision for as long as possible.   Unfortunately, our initial positioning is once again less than ideal, and Gwendolyn is the only one who can do anything at all about it. I was just gonna have her rescue him...   But if she does that, the sage doubles her, and then she dies.   Otherwise, all we can really do is kill this guy and hope for the best.   Maybe Zeiss and his garbage res can tempt the other mage into going for him instead? We'll see.   Everyone else advances in the general direction they'll be going, and we end turn.   More cavs emerge from the darkness.  He dodged!   I think that actually guarantees his survival this turn? That was the only space the valkyrie could attack from, so the sage is all that's left now.  Well, OK, that is an uncomfortable amount of crit, but he's alive, and that's what counts.   A third sage and a sniper enter the scene, and the recover guy undoes the thief's work.   You know, it's just occurred to me; our friend is up against a bunch of 1-2 range enemies. It's entirely likely he just kills himself on one of them anyway.   Luckily, movement order saves the day, and he's the one doing the killing instead.  It's a long road ahead though, and I'm not super high on his chances.   Of the newly visible enemies, this sage is the most interesting. She's a lady, she's the first Sacae affiliated enemy we've spotted, and she drops a pure water.   She's not the scariest, though. That award goes to this guy, holy poo poo. Comparing his stats to the other sages, he rolled extra high on magic and speed.  I think the play is to just blow him up with Lilina, it genuinely does more to keep the thief safe then healing him would.  Or at least it would, if she had hit!    Well, I suppose this is our next best option.  But with Gwendolyn already spoken for, Douglas pretty much has to get this crit for there to be any real hope for the thief.   Welp.   I guess this is what we're going with. No way in hell am I sending Zeiss into that death trap. So long thief, it was nice knowing you.     How about a palate cleanser? Let's check in with the other team.  Hmm, Astolfo's probably fine. Bors might be in trouble though.  There. Lowen shouldn't have any problems tanking a horseslayer.  Sophia and Dorothy are just here to get a head start on visiting/shopping/arenaing, they won't really be engaging with the rest of the map.  Raigh... was going to go south, but uh, I think the other group needs the help more.  That just leaves Roy and Marcus. Here you go, my good sir.  Well, he's got it equipped. Now what?  Oh. Huh. That's... neat, I guess. It's giving him +3 HP, even. The weapon's still garbage though, surely there must be more to it than this? Hell, it's only got one use, for crying out loud! ...Wait, one use? Hmm, I wonder...   O...K???  Wait, shouldn't he only have two points of movement left?  Surprise! The olden lance is actually a stat booster masquerading as a weapon. In addition to all the bonuses it had in weapon form, it also gives Marcus +1 to both move and con. The latter is whatever, but the former is pretty fuckin' cool. Now, this statline still isn't great for where we are in the game, but it's passable, and it puts Marcus solidly in the realm of "can be fixed by dumping a bunch of normal stat boosters on him too." And wouldn't you know it, I just so happen to have been hoarding a huge pile of stat boosters for the whole game. We can decide if we want to do anything with that later. Oh, by the way, this is actually route dependent. If we had gone to Ilia, we would be getting something for Zelot instead. Not exactly the same thing though, and not in chapter 17. I'm of the opinion that Marcus gets the better end of the deal here, so I guess this is point one in favor of "Sacae has better rewards to compensate for its difficulty."  Where were we? Right, the thief is about to die.  Or... is he? Apparently we did enough damage to trigger the valkyrie's healing AI.   This is that mage that appeared from the top right. He's gone now.   Holy poo poo, he's doing it!  lol  Go away Astolfo, you're not the thief we care about right now.  She goes for the soldier instead...  Still don't care.  ...and the last sage prioritizes healing over going for the kill! HE'S DONE IT! AGAINST ALL ODDS, THE THIEF HAS SURVIVED ANOTHER TURN! Ahem. In retrospect, Douglas not critting probably saved him here. Otherwise there'd be nobody for the sage to heal.   There's even a sniper he can attack safely this time! gently caress it, I'm invested now. Here's hoping our guy makes it all the way to the end of the chapter.  One of his friends in the south kills the sniper down there.  Oh. Yeah, I guess he could do that too. If it was something I actually cared about I'd be upset, but honestly it's too funny to get mad at.   Besides, now she drops the elfire instead, and that's still something. (I know I timed the screenshot badly, but trust me, there's a green glow on that text.)  Okay Geese, a crit here would be great.   That's fine, whatev-  gently caress.   In happier news, Douglas does land one this time, on significantly worse odds.     And the numbers just work out for Fir to clean up after Geese.   No more sages, we can finally relax a bit. The paladin reinforcement (that I never pointed out when he showed up, oops) isn't a threat to anyone he can reach, so all we need to worry about is the sniper.   Yeah, I wasn't really expecting that to work.   Luckily Zeiss gets the crit, so we don't need to spend any more actions on her.   That means we've actually got time to do some healing!   Back with the other team... huh. I just realized, horseslayer guy never moved. Weird.  Alright Astolfo, go scout ahead for us.   ...Nooooope, nope nope nope, gently caress that.   Fortunately Lowen has just enough movement to get out of range of everything except that first nomad. (Who, it should be noted, would one round Bors if not for that point of defense he just gained.)   Anyway, it's a good thing we checked, because I was considering sending Marcus down to kill this guy, and that would not have ended well.   Okay Marcus, go ahead and put him down-   For gently caress's sake. Fine, this is fine, those two can both take the hit, everything is fine.   Ugh, it's only turn three, why does it feel like we've been here forever?   Expected.  ...The gently caress is that sniper doing?   Also expected. That should be it, right?  OH poo poo OH gently caress, BOLTING IN THE FOG, BOLTING IN THE FOG!   ...OK, just breathe. Douglas didn't die, we're alright.   Nice crit. Shame it came at the cost of your life.  An A for effort.   So. We've got two options here with Lilina. Heal Douglas, or use the torch staff to hopefully locate bolting rear end in a top hat. As tempting as the latter is, it's also risky. Depending on where he is and whether he moves, Douglas might not be able to get out of range even with a full retreat. Not to mention leaving Lilina exposed like that. Yeah, healing seems like the smarter play here. ...Wait, what do you mean there's no confirmation prompt before using the torch staff?  Well, uh, I guess we found him.   Also this guy.  Aaaand this guy. IIRC Lilina would need to be at full health to tank even one wyvern, and currently she is not.  The one silver lining is that per the threat indicator, bolting rear end in a top hat does not move, so Douglas should be fine as long as he gets the hell out of there.   Speaking of getting the hell out of there...     Wow, it sure did take this entire team to kill one(1) paladin. (Gwendolyn probably could have done it on her own tbf.)   Move over Fir, Douglas needs that spot. In hindsight this was probably a mistake; I don't think the space below Zeiss is in range of anything either, and it gets him out of the forest.   Well OK, it's in range of this jerk, but he's about to die, so.   Pouring one out for the green unit, without whom this would not have been possible. Marcus even gets a pretty decent level in honor of his sacrifice.   ...Hey Lowen, you've got a vulnerary on you, right?   Yeah, I thought so.   Slooowly creeping forward. This puts us in range of the nomad troopers, but they don't have brave bows like the other guy, so they're not as scary. Plus they'll probably just go for the green unit.   Oh right, time for these two to start doing something.     drat, Dorothy! Making a strong case for yourself, I see.    : Probably thieves. You should tell the villagers before they get ransacked.I think this guy's just racist? There aren't any thieves or brigands on this map. Either that or Project Ember got rid of them, I guess.    Oops, guess I shouldn't have left the bow as the next thing in her inventory after the javelin broke.  Okay, seriously, what the gently caress is up with these snipers??   Never mind, having the bow equipped is fine after all.   This soldier is extra dead. Roach and the thief are the only green units left now.  Ow.   Speaking of Roach, apparently the forest slows him down so much that he actually reaches enemies sooner by turning around to head south.  From zero damage to one. Our boy is moving up in the world!   Even better, he moved far enough ahead that we have eyes on the bolting rear end in a top hat again. But also, I don't really feel like dealing with this yet. Let's start with the other team instead this time.   One nomad down...   Getting some deja vu here.   Fortunately all it changes is the weapon Marcus needs to use.  Here's the ballista's range, btw. If I had to guess, I'd say this is what's causing the snipers' AI to go wonky. They want to get on it, but don't know what to do when it's already manned.     We'll go ahead and get rid of the first sniper. That blocks the bridge off, which should give us enough breathing room. (Also nice level Debias.)   Back to this bullshit. Here's the problem: Zeiss is the only person who can reach this wyvern. This is the main area where bringing a bunch of unpromoted units is actually screwing us over a bit. Moving two spaces through the forest instead of three is kind of a big deal. Anyway, if Zeiss crits, great! But if he doesn't, bolting plus the wyvern kill him from full, not even including the counter he'd be taking. The good news is, Lilina is the only other character who's equally in danger. Gwendolyn and Raigh can tank both of them easily, and Douglas can do it if he has the runesword equipped (the wyvern doubles him). Fir dies if both attacks land, but thanks to the wyvern's axereaver she's only facing hit rates in the 35-40 range. Same goes for Geese and Gonzalez as long as they equip their own reaver weapons.   Admittedly those are kind of sketchy dodge chances to be gambling lives on, but that's where the thief comes in. He also dies to the bolting/wyvern combo, but he has slightly less avoid than those three. That makes him the easier kill, so theoretically the enemies should go for him instead. I don't love using our friend as bait, but it's either that or everyone sits around twiddling their thumbs this turn.     First order of business is killing the wyvern that we can reach.   After that, it's just a matter of forming enough of a wall that the other one can't get to Lilina.  Checking in with these two, it's time for some shopping.     Lots of stuff for sale. I know we need to stock up on bows, but otherwise we should be set on the basics. So probably just grab some more silvers and maybe a couple of the specialty weapons. Once we have more money, of course. I do get the bows now, though.   Haha, no thanks. But oops, now we don't have enough money to go back in! Guess we'll need to come up with some stuff I don't mind selling. Eh, there's no rush, these two are done until a healer gets down here anyway. In hindsight it would've made sense to give them some healing items to work through instead of weapons they're not using.       The thief lives! In fact, the only person that eats a hit is Marcus.  Nice crit! I think he kills in one more round of combat? (This is incorrect, disregard.) Which is good, because all of our units are still too far away.   Some suspicious camera panning before player phase starts. You know what that means? Reinforcements.   Presumably from these two forts. Joy.   Also another paladin up here, I guess. Look, in my defense, they're very boring.   Wyvern's dead.     Geese!   Eh, worth a shot.   Fine, whatever, Gwendolyn can fix it.   That's res capped. Be ready for Lilina's levels to get very sad very soon.  Don't remember why exactly I took this screenshot tbh, but let's all just take another moment to appreciate our friend the thief.   You're still cool too Astolfo, don't worry.   Hmm, OK. I think our best case scenario here is killing everything except the rear wyvern.   He does just enough damage to kill Bors, but everyone else should be fine. The question is, is there a way to arrange people that keeps him out of range?   I think the answer is yes, but we kind of need to fully commit from the get go. Here's hoping we don't get any more unfortunate misses!     So far so good.     Success!    : I've never met anyone who's been that far. I wonder if anyone still lives there.OK? What a weird thing to say. End turn.   Maybe I should be more concerned about all these crit chances, but honestly? There's been so many in this chapter that it barely even registers anymore.  Oh boy, more paladins.   He's fine.  Oh poo poo, where the gently caress did you come from?  No! NO! He came so far! He had so much to live for! We were so close! gently caress!     Oof, that's unfortunate. Looks like Roach is on his way out too.     You. You'll pay for this!       I looked at a bunch of ways to try and feed history's greatest monster to someone else, but ultimately Gwendolyn is the only reliable option. Rest easy brave thief, your death has been avenged.   Now though, we have a problem. Once Roach   Luckily things are finally calming down for both main squads, so we can afford to send in some backup. From this team, Douglas, Fir and Raigh are all turning around.  Down here, though, remains to be seen. I'd like to send both Bors and Marcus, but that's going to depend on what Astolfo reveals. At the very least, we can expect to see whatever reinforcements the other fort is spitting out.  Oh hey, that's not a paladin!  And those aren't silver weapons. poo poo.  Yeah, Astolfo very much cannot tank that.   Debias and Lowen can, though!   Roy maybe could've killed on his own with the brave sword, but this works too.   Bad growths? What bad growths?    One vulnerary use left.    : It was once used by the noble Lady Tiena...  After the lackluster Al's sword, Tiena's rod is a strong return to form for the manga tie-ins, and I'd even put it above Gant's lance. It's now literally a stronger physic, but E rank and with twice as many uses. Great for any freshly promoted magic users. *cough*Raigh*cough*  In fact, we're gonna hold on to it and send one of Dorothy's bows to the convoy instead.   Eh, who cares, he's no generic thief. Note that this is a fresh paladin, the first one retreated back towards the fort to heal.   : Sorry, General Douglas. I must retreat.Roach's retreat line, for posterity's sake.   I said Lowen could tank him, I didn't say he could do it particularly well.  And there's another one, of course.   The camera's still panning too, so there's even more waiting in the wings.   It won't be totally confirmed for a few more turns, but these reinforcements are actually all that's left besides the boss, and they keep going for a while. I'll show another turn and a half-ish, so you can get an idea of what dealing with them is like, and then we'll skip to a highlight reel of levels and stuff.   Over here is pretty simple. The paladins aren't super dangerous, and the forest gives us a lot of leeway as far as positioning goes. This guy's just gonna break himself on Raigh, for instance.   Although I do come dangerously close to putting Bors into the line of fire by mistake.   The great knights are trickier. Without any healers nearby, HP is a valuable resource, and now Lowen has spent his.   That means Debias is now the only one who can take a hit. Lilina will be making her way down here eventually, but it's gonna take a few turns.   Also Astolfo is basically only good for vision at this point, the great knights are too tanky for him to do any meaningful damage.     Raigh will be taking that HP right back, thank you.  He doesn't double though, so that paladin gets to live for now.   Debias the dodge master strikes again! This is extra nice, since it means one more combat round he can survive later.   The crit is just icing on the cake.   This turn, the two far forts take a break, but the ones in the middle start up again, with a nomad joining the paladin this time. Incidentally, next turn it's going to transition to just nomads.       Geese and Gonzalez will mostly be taking care of them, to varying degrees of success.     Fir's... also having trouble securing kills.    While all of this is happening, Zeiss visits the other village.  : What? The enemy is planning to attack our village? I'll make sure everyone knows... I must thank you for telling us. Please take this.  Our first tempest blade! Not quite as useful as you'd like it to be, since you're going to be at triangle disadvantage against the majority of flying enemies, but still nice to have around.  We also get our first look at Arcardo this turn!   He is by no means a pushover, but with two weaknesses to exploit he shouldn't be that hard to deal with.  Training montage, begin!     First, the two newly minted berserkers. Shoutout to Gonzalez for getting yet another point of skill at level 20!    And here's everyone else.    : What have I done to deserve such a fate?!Okay, that took a good 4-5 turns. Time to put Arcardo out of his misery.   No dodge, so that first hit gets undone.   Roy, however, gives no shits.  As a bonus, this leaves Arcardo low enough that we can pretty much feed him to whoever we want (that's nearby, at least).  Like Zeiss, for instance!  : I cannot... die... in a place such as this... Gah!  Gonna be honest here Zeiss, you haven't exactly been impressing with these level ups.  Cool. You just stay put for a while Roy, we've got some other business to take care of.   First of all, Lowen and Marcus have been hanging out together enough that they have a support ready. ...Oh right! I forgot to mention in his writeup: Lowen's support options are Marcus, Wolt, and [REDACTED]. Anyway, we're far enough in at this point that I'm just gonna go ahead and do these as I see them. Realistically, anyone that's only now unlocking C ranks isn't gonna be hitting the five support limit through normal gameplay.   : What are you doing away from Pherae?! Lord Eliwood needs you there to defend the castle! : Worry not, Sir Marcus. Pherae is safe.: I find that hard to believe when most of the Pheraen knights are here in this army. You'd better have a good explanation for this.: Lady Isadora and Sir Harken are leading the remaining knightss(sic) to defend the castle. In addition, since Lord Eliwood is leading the Lycian League, he diverted some extra troops from Laus to Pherae to keep it safe.: Hm? Why would he do that?I'm with Marcus here. What? : Er... He just thought that we could use some more manpower is all.: ......: O-oh, look! Some enemies are approaching! I must engage them at once!Not suspicious at all, no sir. Especially since there's literally no enemies left.   I know it's a relatively common fan theory that most of the Lycian characters from FE7 that don't show up in this game got killed in Bern's initial surprise attack from chapter 3, as a way to explain away their absence. It's nice to see that at least in the Project Ember universe, this is not the case.  Alright, arena time. I've sold off enough stuff that we can go back in now. Mostly weapons that we can just buy right back later, but also our remaining torch uses (both staff and item), since this is the last fog chapter in the game.   Here's the deal though. We have a grand total of 33 heal uses to work with, and no way to get more on the map. If those run out? That's it, we're done. I'm not wasting Tiena's rod uses on arena grinding, and I'm certainly not going to gently caress around with shuttling people to and from forts that are two turns away minimum. Also we're still using save states, because once again one of our grinding targets has garbage luck.     These two are quick. Note Fir's promotion gains. It came up briefly in the thread back when we first recruited her, but they are very strong (though some defenses wouldn't hurt). I suspect the logic here is similar to what it was for Lilina: it offers some RNG proofing so you can use her to recruit Karel without having her be dead weight for the rest of the chapter. Unlike Lilina though, I only see this as insurance against bad levels, not no levels. A 10/1 Lilina in chapter 15 can still contribute, as a staffbot if nothing else. A 10/1 Fir in chapter 23? That I'm much more skeptical on. Which is fair, I guess. If you know from the start that you're not planning on using Fir but still want to get Karel, you can just go B route for Bartre.  Zeiss also has only one level left to gain, and is starting to redeem himself.   Before moving on to the last two, we've unlocked another support: Raigh/Sophia!   : ...... : Hey! Are you deaf or are you just ignoring me?!: ...Uh... ...Me?: Is there anyone else here? You're a real idiot, aren't you?: ......: Anyway, I heard you use elder magic. Is that true?: ......: Let me see that spell tome. I've never see-- Ouch! What the...?! Did you just hit me?: ...Don't... touch me... please...: You've got guts, I'll give you that.: ......: Whatever. You win. But you better show me that spell tome next time!  Oh, uh... hm. I feel a little bad about activating that one, actually. gently caress off Raigh, you little poo poo. Also congrats to Sophia on continuing her streak of having an ellipsis in every line.               Anyway, here's Dorothy and Sophia, plus some healing levels for Raigh. And with nine heal uses to spare!  This is actually the second go around for them, because I got overly complacent and let Sophia die a couple bouts away from 20 the first time. I'm still a little salty about it, because personally I would've much rather had the original set of levels.   A look at what could have been.  No sense dwelling on the past, though. Time to spend some of that hard earned cash. In addition to the bows from earlier, I think I end up getting 3 of each silver weapon and a spare hammer and swordslayer.   Yep, that sure is a turncount. Let's get out of here.   : What a pathetic ending for one with so much power. : A year ago I myself never imagined I would be leading an army. Fate can be unpredictable... With any luck, the same will be true for Bern, too.Kind of a weird way of putting it, but sure.  : Lord Roy, what is that in your hand?: Oh, this? It's the Fire Emblem.: That tiny gemstone...?: Princess Guinivere wanted me to keep it. It seemed... difficult for her to give it to me... I think she still hoped to end the war with diplomacy...I guess? I feel like giving Roy the Fire Emblem doesn't mean much one way or the other on that front. : Hm... Perhaps she had faith in her brother. Even if that seems unlikely.: Why do you say that?: Because Zephiel is the treacherous king of Bern! It is said that he murdered his own father. I don't expect he would be moved by family trust... : Didn't you know, Lord Roy? Zephiel took the throne because his father, King Desmond, passed on. But because King Desmond's death was so sudden, there were rumors.: So they said...?: ...Yes, that Zephiel assassinated him.: ...Does Princess Guinivere know about this?: I'm sure she is at least aware of the rumors. She may even know the whole story.: ......Ah, it's been a while since we had a good old FE7 induced plothole. Merlinus witnessed enough of the dysfunction of Bern's royal family that he really shouldn't just be taking those rumors at face value. Whatever, Guinivere's infodump later will clear things up regardless.   Next time: This is the law of Sacae. Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Mar 11, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2024 00:39
|
|
|
Cattail Prophet posted:This is why it was so hard to talk about Douglas at first, since so much of his utility as a unit is wrapped up in his ability to spawn a bunch of extra dudes. How valuable that is to you... is going to depend heavily on your playstyle. If you're allergic to the idea of a green unit getting a kill, then it adds no value at all. But if you're alright with losing out on a bit of experience every now and again, I would seriously argue that Douglas is in the running for best unit in the game, held back only by the fact that he doesn't exist for the first two thirds of it. There's no good reason not to deploy him, quite frankly. But most importantly, he's an armor knight. E: also, Marcus is making a very good case for hoovering up all the stat boosters. Give all the boosters to marcus FoolyCharged fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jan 21, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2024 04:12
|
|
|
Oh wow, I'll always vote for deploying Douglas now. That fight to keep the green rogue alive was very entertaining!
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2024 13:47
|
|
|
I want to read about Douglas's scripting
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2024 17:41
|
|
|
Huh. Reworking Douglas to be similar to FE9 Tanith is certainly an interesting decision, but a welcome one.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2024 17:43
|
|
|
Chillgamesh posted:I want to read about Douglas's scripting Ask and you shall receive: Usual caveat before I start that I don't know poo poo about hacking in the grand scheme of things. This is just what I'm able to glean as a more or less casual observer. Huge credit to FEBuilder here for being an incredibly user friendly way to dip your toes into this sort of thing. Most of what I'm going to be talking about involves the end event for 16x. Here's what it looks like in vanilla:  Relatively simple, as these things go. And here's what it looks like in Project Ember:   Obviously there's a lot more going on here, with several branching paths depending on who is or isn't alive. Let's try and break it down a little bit:   I'm gonna go ahead and ignore the route split stuff at the bottom, it doesn't really matter for what we're talking about. Other than that, everything I've highlighted in yellow is what we saw when we played through the chapter, the best result where you've kept everyone alive. What we're most interested in is the part in the middle with Douglas and Roach, since it's what's original to Project Ember. We can see the two conversations that make up that part of the scene, all of the items that get added to Douglas's inventory, as well as a global flag that gets turned on. Global here just means that it persists between chapters. Keep that in mind for later. Also note that the end of this section is where Roach gets removed from our roster. The section in green is what you get if Douglas and Roach are both alive, but you didn't save all the generics. This answers my question from the end of that update: you do still get some rewards in this scenario. In blue is if Douglas dies during the chapter, but Roach survives. Here, Roach never leaves your roster in the first place, you just get to keep him as is. I don't really recommend doing this though, even if you are planning on using Roach. It also reveals a minor spoiler for if we do decide to kill Douglas eventually: Roach inherits the wishblade. Yes, this means we can scam an extra one by taking it away from Douglas before he dies. Presumably if Roach himself dies, you end up with a combination of flags that means you don't get any of these scenes. Finally, there's the sections in red, which you'll note also exist in the vanilla version of the event. I wasn't entirely sure what these were offhand, but I had my suspicions, and checking the text of those conversations confirmed it. They're an alternate version of the "finding Aureola" part of the scene, for if Douglas is dead. Moving on, the next event we're going to look at is Roy and Douglas's conversation from the most recent update:  The main thing I want to point out here is that the talk option technically exists regardless of what happens in 16x. My guess is that tying events themselves to global flags like the one that our yellow section from before turned on is either impossible or more trouble than it's worth, so the hack has to make do. Instead the flag in question determines the contents of the conversation. If it's on, then you see what we saw, and the reinforcements show up. If it's off, Roy and Douglas instead have a chat about how sad it was that those generic soldiers died.  Now, it's understandably a bit difficult to come up with something new for Roy and Douglas to talk about every single time, so in subsequent chapters you just get green units either way. They are, however, much worse than what you get if you actually did the side objective. Basically, imagine the soldiers we got this time, but instead of silver and killer lances they just have javelins, and it takes until the end of the route split for anything remotely more interesting to show up. You don't get Roach as part of the deal either. This makes a nice segue into the last thing I want to touch on, which is Roach's recruitment event:  This is a turn 1 event in every chapter from 18 until the end of the game. Again, it technically runs no matter what, but because it's not a talk that you choose to initiate, it can just use the flags to skip everything that happens in it without looking weird player side. How it works is that Douglas's death quote turns on the global flag named, appropriately enough, "Douglas Defeat after joining." Then in the next chapter after he dies, Roach shows up at the start and rejoins as a blue unit. Those other flags at the top cover all the other scenarios where it wouldn't make sense to get a Roach, so you don't just keep accumulating more copies of him every chapter. The first one is a flag that gets turned on in that blue section from 16x where he never leaves, the second one gets turned on by this event itself, and the last one is the same flag that governs whether you get reinforcements/which reinforcements you get, since if you failed the side objective Roach isn't around to be doing any avenging. That's all I got, I hope it was interesting/educational/whatever.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2024 01:32
|
|
|
That is an absolute shitload of modding work put in just to have Roach join that way. Incredible stuff, very cool
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2024 03:14
|
|
|
Finally caught back up after far too long being gone. Nice to see that going to Sacae won the vote, since my own path is taking me through Ilia. I kinda feel sad about missing out on the Olden Lance though. It would be fun to see Marcus having some fun again.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2024 07:08
|
|
|
  The Djute, the most powerful clan in Sacae, serve Bern unbendingly. All clans who have stood against these two joint forces have faced decimation. Nine out of ten people agree that jokes about the literal meaning of decimation have overstayed their welcome.   does lead a guerrilla resistance, but to disappointingly little effect.   This is the law of Sacae.   See?    : All according to the plan. Draw them closer. They will rue the day they crossed our path. Have the other clans been notified? : They have indeed. Some don't approve of our alliance with Bern, but it's the better alternative to an invasion from Etruria.Hrm. Something about using the same standard soldier portrait for a Sacaen doesn't quite sit right with me. : Good. ...The Etrurian Army will be an easier foe than the Silver Wolf. They don't know this land. They're unfamiliar with our ways.: The clans unite to fight against invaders.: Yes, such is the law of Sacae. None aided us against the Silver Wolf because it was a clan dispute. But this is different.He said the thing! : Now that we are allied with Bern we don't even need the other clans.: Exactly. There are some who don't like the idea of involving Bern in Sacaen matters.: I hear some clans have joined the Silver Wolf's guerrilla force.: He is a stubborn halfwit. His clan was defeated. He should know better than to oppose us. He knows what becomes of those who try to fight against Bern.: Bern has subdued even powerful cities like Bulgar with ease.: If a force cannot be beaten, one must join that force. Our path is that of common sense. The law of Sacae is unbreakable.I dunno Monke, you explained the law of Sacae at the beginning, and then said a whole bunch of stuff that sounds like the exact opposite of that. Just saying.    : We are approaching Bern's army. : ...Yes, I know.: As we get closer, we will clash with soldiers of Bern more and more. It will not be long before we are in full combat with Bern.: ......This feels kinda weird considering last chapter, but most of those enemies were still Etruria affiliated. Which is... also pretty weird, honestly. Like, I guess they're meant to be Arcardo's personal troops or whatever, but calling them Etrurian soldiers at that point feels incorrect. Regardless, I get the point they're going for here. Guinivere's concern is chiefly with actual citizens of Bern, and it's true that we've fought precious few of those so far. It's literally just been chapters 2 and 3, 14 and 14x, whatever wyvern formations happen to be on a map, and then occasionally a couple other random enemies. : I want to ask you something before that happens.: Go ahead.: I have heard rumors about King Zephiel... I heard that he killed his father, the previous king. : I could scarcely believe it myself. You believe in him so strongly that you cast away your own country. If King Zephiel is truly as mad as the rumors say, I'm sure you would not have done all that you have.Not sure how that follows, but go on. : ......: Princess Guinivere, I accepted the Fire Emblem not to use it in battle, but to find a way to end this war peacefully.: Roy...: I think I have a right to know the truth about the rumors...: I... I'm sorry. Please... give me some time.In other words, infodump incoming, but not just yet. On to the map:   We've got a wide open field, with pretty much nowhere to hide. I think there's also some kind of bullshit with semi-random reinforcements from that ring of houses? I dunno, it's been a while, I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Anyway, in true Sacae fashion, we're fighting mostly myrms and nomads, plus a few druids mixed in.   In fact, that's literally the entire map except for this one lonely sniper and Bern's usual contingent of wyverns.   Equipment loadouts are mostly the usual suspects. The only things really worth pointing out are an eclipse tome on the bottom druid, and the wyvern lord continuing the fine tradition of using a reaver weapon to double down.       Instead I want to draw attention to enemy statlines, because we're reaching a point where if there's a particular stat that a class excels in, you can generally expect that stat to be either capped or nearly so. The sniper has capped skill, one of the druids has capped magic, two of the swordmasters have capped speed, and the wyvern lord... doesn't have capped strength now, but he did the previous time I loaded up the map. The nomads are the only exception, with more well rounded offenses as well as somewhat lower total stats on account of the horse.   Oh, and here's Monke. Not necessarily that hard to kill, but very scary offensively. And just to illustrate how much Sacae has always hated your guts, other than getting rid of his luck stat this is pretty much just vanilla Monke. There's a few tweaks to the rest of his stats, but nothing major, and his inventory is identical. He's always had the double brave combo. Heck, even the broader gamewide changes that are relevant here are all in our favor. Between the aforementioned lack of luck stat and the toned down gates/thrones, he's significantly easier to hit, and nomads being properly weak to horseslaying weapons makes bursting him down a lot faster. Meanwhile all he's benefitting from is extra bow range, which isn't super important when you're talking about a stationary enemy. (Famous last words, I suppose. We've already seen one boss start moving unexpectedly, after all.) Anyway, uh, yeah. ...This is the law of Sacae. ________________________ Vote   Current Stats There's no recruits or anything on this map, and nothing noteworthy to steal, so we're free to bring whoever. I am, however, going to put Fae in for some training, mostly just to fill up a slot and make voting slightly easier. (This actually isn't a great map for her tbh.) Otherwise, a bit of advice: Don't let all the bows discourage you from picking a flier. Remember, we have a delphi shield now. Another reminder, since it hasn't come up in a while: our snipers (or future sniper, in Dorothy's case) have access to a bow that oneshots all of the non-Monke nomads. Technically Klein misses the kill by a couple points on one or two of the troopers, but eh, details. And Wolt has his prf too, so if we brought him plus another one, it'd give us two reliable counterkillers. That's all for deployment, but as promised, I also want to know whether or not we're going to make god Marcus. For reference, here's our current stock of stat boosters: 2 secret books 3 angelic robes 1 dragonshield 3 energy rings 2 speedwings 1 talisman and the power glove Of those, Marcus doesn't really need the secret books (or goddess icons, if we ever get any more), and there's several other characters who would make better use of them. The angelic robes... I would probably give one to him, one to Lilina, and keep one in reserve in case, I dunno, Elen sees a sudden resurgence in popularity or y'all make me bring Shanna again or something. Everything else I'd be fine feeding to Marcus, though. Well, except the power glove. He definitely doesn't need that. Frankly, there's very few characters in Project Ember who have bad enough con issues that I'd consider using it on them. It's pretty much just Fir and the peg knights. Maybe Sue, but bows are actually very light for the most part. Silver bows don't weigh her down at all after promotion, and killer bows only by one. Honestly, it might not be optimal, but imo the funnest use of the power glove is to give it to whoever your best potential longbow doubler is. So usually Gwendolyn. To be clear, even if Marcus wins this vote, my intent is not to give all these stat boosters to him immediately, for the simple reason that doing so essentially means sacrificing two whole deployment slots, one for Marcus, who would be spending basically the whole map eating boosters instead of contributing, and one for Merlinus, so he can get them out of the convoy. Honestly I'm not sure if there are any Sacae maps I feel comfortable making that sacrifice for. If not, then I'll definitely get it done by chapter 21 at the latest. That might sound like a long wait, but in Ilia Zelot doesn't get his equivalent upgrade until the end of chapter 20, so really it's only fair. Of course, if you want to force the issue sooner, there's always the option of voting both Marcus and Merlinus in through normal means. Maybe don't try that for this chapter specifically, though, because it sure would be awkward if it worked, only for Marcus to lose the stat booster vote and leave Merlinus without much to do. Oh, and if Marcus does lose, I'm just gonna start distributing boosters as I see fit, there's no other grand plan for them. Phew, that was a whole lot of words for what's ultimately a very simple vote. 14 deployment slots, a yes or no on Marcus, 48 hours, go!
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 00:37
|
|
|
Douglas, Bors, Debias, Gwendolyn, Barthe no god marcus
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 01:14
|
|
|
wolt, klein, debias, douglas, gwendolyn, miledy, marcus, merlinus, lowen, elen, cecilia, my brain died after that one but you know i'm all here for big man marcus the hugest dude with his huge power
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 01:56
|
|
|
Douglas, Lilina, Shanna x5, Rutger x5, Elffin. Final Vote is Marcus if yes God Marcus, Lowen if no God Marcus. PS, Yes God Marcus. This is more than likely the end of the line for Shanna and Rutger's hopes and dreams (per the "Anyone unpromoted by route split end is permabenched" decree), so I kinda wanna give them one last shot at redemption. Didn't exactly expect Fir to get all of 'em last time, but hey, I did say that was a valid choice.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 02:33
|
|
|
SMaster777 posted:This is more than likely the end of the line for Shanna and Rutger's hopes and dreams (per the "Anyone unpromoted by route split end is permabenched" decree), so I kinda wanna give them one last shot at redemption. Didn't exactly expect Fir to get all of 'em last time, but hey, I did say that was a valid choice. Listen, if you wanted the votes distributed so that both of them got in, you should have said so! (The secret is that while I'm totally cool with people using all their votes on one character, for votes that get given to me I do my best to assign them in a way that's consistent with one vote per character per person. So when I get instructions like that i'm almost certainly going to execute them in whatever way has the smallest effect on the final outcome.) FWIW though I genuinely did interpret your intent as wanting to make extra sure that one myrm made it in, not necessarily both of them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 03:07
|
|
|
I'll cast votes for Wolt, Tate, Lilina, Elffin, Douglas, Shin, and then throw the rest wherever you like. I'm not mean. No God Marcus. Think of who else you could feed that stuff people! Thread favorite Debias, for example.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 03:33
|
|
|
Cattail Prophet posted:Listen, if you wanted the votes distributed so that both of them got in, you should have said so! Yeah I was aiming for one swordmaster in general (GBA/Tellius era Swordmasters are a favorite class of mine), so even if Rutger's done after this, at least Fir's still around (and I generally forget Karel even exists in this game tbh). Just between the two I usually prefer Rutger, but, uh, he's faceplanted kinda badly this run, so I wanted to at least give the option of the one who hadn't done so.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 03:36
|
|
|
Geese, Lowen, Klein, Lilina, Fir, Barthe, Thea, Wolt, Garret, Elen, Melady, Trec, Elffin and Astolfo No God Marcus
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 03:44
|
|
|
Shanna can take on all the fuckin' Nomads everywhere (all votes for Shanna)
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 03:54
|
|
|
slink_bot posted:Geese, Lowen, Klein, Lilina, Fir, Barthe, Thea, Wolt, Garret, Elen, Melady, Trec, Elffin and Astolfo I'll jump on this boat. All boosters to Debias
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 04:07
|
|
|
Debias, the windwalker, bors, barthe, wendy, douglass, geese, gonzales, garret, marcus, merlinus, lowen, Sophia, bartre Make Marcus the linchpin of this army Kurgarra Queen posted:I'll cast votes for Wolt, Tate, Lilina, Elffin, Douglas, Shin, and then throw the rest wherever you like. Debias, champion of the plains, does not need Stat boosters to be awesome. Also, making Jeigans competent end game units outside of ltc nonsense is great.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 05:34
|
|
|
Kurgarra Queen posted:I'm not mean. No God Marcus. Think of who else you could feed that stuff people! Thread favorite Debias, for example. I have no particular interest in voting characters but I have to agree with this argument so No God Marcus.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2024 14:16
|
|
|
All votes to Lilina. No God Marcus.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2024 06:46
|
|
|
No God Marcus Voting to salvage the low-level characters, though I'm sure they won't all make it through. Elffin, Wade, Lot, Dieck, Alen, Shanna, Lugh, Lance, Ogier, Rutger, Noah For the remaining 3 votes, let's vote for the lowest-leveled archers. Dorothy, Wolt, Klein
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2024 08:50
|
|
|
Voting is closed! First, on the matter of Marcus and stat boosters: Yes: 3 No: 7 Gotta admit, I'm actually kind of surprised by this one. But fair enough, the people have spoken. If it's any consolation to the Marcus fans, I'll probably still give him one of the energy rings if he makes it back onto the field again. Most of the people we're using regularly don't really need any help on that front. As for deployment: Shanna: 20 Lilina: 18 Rutger: 6 Douglas: 5 Wolt: 5 Lowen: 5 Elffin: 5 Barthe: 4 Klein: 4 Debias: 3 Gwendolyn: 3 Melady: 3 Elen: 3 Thea: 3 Geese: 3 Garret: 3 Bors: 2 Marcus: 2 Merlinus: 2 Fir: 2 Trec: 2 Astolfo: 2 Cecilia: 1 Sin: 1 Gonzalez: 1 Sophia: 1 Bartre: 1 Wade: 1 Lot: 1 Dieck: 1 Alen: 1 Lugh: 1 Lance: 1 Ogier: 1 Noah: 1 Dorothy: 1 LPer's choice: 8 ...I mean, I've practically been daring people to vote for Shanna, really I have nobody to blame for this but myself. Congrats to Rutger on making a comeback too. Anyway, the cutoff point is in that 3 vote range, and I need to drop two people. I think I'm gonna go with Debias and Gwendolyn just for variety's sake. The nature of the map means trying to set up a defensive formation would be difficult, and most of their competition is either more important or more amusing to bring. (Garret made it in. Garret!) The team is: Roy, Fae, Shanna, Lilina, Rutger, Douglas, Wolt, Lowen, Elffin, Barthe, Klein, Melady, Elen, Thea, Geese, Garret Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Feb 3, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2024 00:51
|
|
|
You monster. But tossing Garret in makes it up, just a little.
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2024 04:06
|
|
|
I'm okay with dropping Debias as long as he achieves godhood eventually.
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2024 04:09
|
|
|
  ...Yay, Shanna's back. Also Rutger. And fun fact, with Garret making a reappearance, that currently makes Igrene the only character who hasn't been fielded after their debut chapter.   As promised, with Marcus off the table we're going to start working through our backlog of stat boosters. One angelic robe is for Lilina and one is for Elen, as is the speedwing. Not only is she one of the slowest units in the army at this point, it's also very immediately useful. Two extra speed takes her from getting doubled by literally every unpromoted nomad to almost none of them. The third angelic robe is theoretically for Shanna, but I'd rather not spend resources on her if I can avoid it. Which I realize is a weird thing to say when that elysian whip is sitting there too, but hear me out. Yes, the plan is to promote her early. Shanna's main problem right now, other than *gestures everywhere*, is that she is badly chafing against her speed cap. If she's not doubling, she's not contributing, and enemy speed is high enough across the board that 20 just doesn't cut it anymore. It'd be one thing if she could at least oneshot nomads with the wing spear, but *gestures at 8 strength*. And remember, we have enough whips to promote Zeiss too, so the only opportunity cost here is the cash we could've gotten from selling it instead. There is one obvious downside though: per my own conditions, this opens me up to potentially needing to continue bringing Shanna along all the way through endgame. But hey, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  At any rate, I do at least want to get her over the hump to level 15 before promoting her. As you can see, she's also holding the delphi shield today. Melady and Thea can both survive a hit from every bow other than Monke's brave bow, if only barely. Shanna... very much cannot. That said, there's certainly an argument to be made that she shouldn't be getting attacked at all, shield or no shield, and thus giving it to one of the other two makes more sense.  Now, for as much as I've been dunking on Shanna all game, I'm actually more worried about Rutger right now. Not that I think he's in a worse spot overall, but the specific way in which he's worse (his luck stat) is extremely significant on this map. Literally every enemy has a visible crit rate on him. This is also true of Shanna for a lot of the enemies, but there's a big difference between 4 luck and 9 in terms of how safe I feel. Early promoting him wouldn't even solve this problem, which is why we're not going to.  Final bit of inventory management: this marks the first time we're bringing a legendary weapon along! I don't necessarily plan on having Geese use Armads, but the extra defense might come in handy in case we need him to tank stuff on enemy phase.   On that note, let's jump in. Much like last chapter, we're going to be splitting into two groups, with one heading south and the other moving east. Each team gets a sniper, a berserker, a staffer, and two tanks, but after that the symmetry doesn't line up quite as nicely.   I'm not gonna buy anything until later, but we might as well take a peek at the shops since they're right next to us. We're not going through tomes fast enough to need more, so all we really care about here is buyable physic.     Meanwhile, this is mostly the same stuff we just saw last chapter, but with killer weapons added to the mix. It's also our first opportunity to buy recurve and hunting bows.   Speaking of bows, Wolt's going to kick things off by deleting the enemy sniper.   Then he does it again.  Now, this is my second-ish attempt, which I'm mentioning for a few reasons. The first is that Wolt is currently in range of these three nomads.     He survives without any help now, but on the first attempt the silver bow nomad rolled two more strength, which meant it was crucial that Wolt was standing on that forest for the extra defense. ...Yes, I'm complaining that the game got easier and I don't get to feel as clever.    Next we summon our green units. I should say, I won't always be doing this turn 1. There's potential strategic value in waiting until later in the map, if, say, there's reinforcements from the rear that you want them to handle. This... is not one of those maps.   Today's backup consists of Roach and three knights, one on each of the three bridges leading out of our starting area. Roach still just has his brave lance, but it occurs to me that I never mentioned last time that he autolevels from chapter to chapter. That might have been obvious, but I dunno, it never hurts to be explicit.   The knights are... kind of garbage, if I'm being honest? Like, in a vacuum they might be better than the soldiers from last chapter, but in the context of the enemies we're facing they're going to struggle to do much of anything. Use them to soak up hits for a turn or two, but that's about it. What I would've liked to see, and I was actually half expecting this when they first showed up, is for them to have stationary AI, giving you a sort of safe zone you can hide behind. Granted this still works on the turn you summon them, and realistically that's as long as they're going to last against a coordinated assault anyway. So maybe bulk them up a bit more at the same time? I'm just spitballing here.     Anyway, Elen uses the speedwing, and this team is good to go. Don't worry, everyone else in nomad range has significantly more bulk than Wolt.   For the other group, we're starting off with another change from attempt number one. Originally Lilina also ate a stat booster immediately, but I have other plans for her now. Bear with me a moment though, because I have to move a few more people before I can explain why.     Enemy stat rolls are continuing to be kind to us, by the way. All three of these enemies have lower strength now, which means Fae is completely safe here, whereas before she died if the swordmaster double crit and the nomads hit all of their attacks. And like, that's a risk I was comfortable taking, especially with the knight there to draw aggro, but the peace of mind is still nice to have.   Lilina's new job... is to use barrier on Shanna. Just trust me on this, OK? Hell, I didn't even bring barrier last time.   Nobody else can safely tank the swordmaster, so they're all just awkwardly crowding around the bridge.   ...Huh. She definitely just crit this guy into oblivion the first time around.   This ends up having some knock on effects that remove the game state even further from my expectations. For instance, this nomad now needs to finish the knight off instead of going for Fae.   This I'm... more confused about. I'm quite sure at least one of these guys originally went for Garret, and I don't really see what the difference is this time.   One thing hasn't changed though. Basically everyone aggroes immediately except for the wyverns and that southern pack of myrms.   Now for the bad news. Thanks to all the damage he took, this knight is now retreating. Where exactly I'm not sure, there's no forts and none of the green units have healing items, but either way he's not providing any chip damage for us.     Also these attacks all hit before. Roach doesn't even have the decency to die and free up the space for someone else to finish the job. Truly the RNG giveth, and the RNG taketh away.     The point I'm getting at is that my original plan was mostly sound and just needed a few tweaks to go more smoothly. Now though, the landscape is so different that it's all gone out the window and I need to reassess.  At least the one change I've already made is still relevant. Please draw your attention to this druid.   He oneshots unbuffed Shanna. He's also the only enemy up here that we can't kill reliably, so that barrier use gives us a lot more flexibility in terms of positioning people.  The biggest danger also hasn't changed. This swordmaster is slightly too far away for most of the southern team to reach, and can himself threaten either team.     The original original plan was to try and kill him, and all of the nomads down here, without help from Elffin, which would have more or less required a killer bow crit from Douglas. This, of course, didn't even happen the first time, but luckily I figured out that it was actually pretty easy to block him off with units that can tank the double crit, much like we're doing now.         Which is good, because without the extra chip from the knight, pulling off the sweep would have been an even taller order. Now we kinda need Elffin just to deal with the nomads.   I was hung up on having Elen attack twice for a bit, because she had to get the kill the first time, before realizing we can just send Roy instead.   This frees Elen up to grab her other stat booster.  Perfect. Don't worry about Wolt, that's just the edge of the eclipse druid's range.  Back up here, this swordmaster being alive is really pissing me off.   Killing her isn't so much the issue, it's just that there's no great options for us to feed the kill to. It's more experience than Shanna needs, and I'm not thrilled about her hit rate either. Rutger can't reach, and would probably have similar accuracy issues. And I'd rather advance with everyone else than have them stuck back here another turn.   Whatever, Lowen can do it. With the brave lance, just to make extra sure he hits.     Next, Lilina and Fae delete these two myrms. Technically this puts them in range of the other swordmaster, but the light brand can't crit at range and they both take virtually no damage from the druid, so it's fine.   Would you believe this was the only safe way to set up this kill for Shanna? I don't like it either.   Alright Shanna, this is your big chance to impress us before we promote you. What's it gonna be?   ...I don't know why I even asked.   Last myrm goes to Thea, unnecessary crit and all.  By the way, if you want the full experience of this chapter, imagine me scrolling over to double check nomad ranges after, like, every other action. Especially with three range bows, it's real easy to forget about them when they're offscreen, and then suddenly they're attacking you from halfway across the map. That's actually what ended the first attempt; Melady accidentally strayed too close to that trooper on the bottom of the screen.   Another turn done.   Nearly everyone that hadn't already aggroed does so now.  The druid goes for Thea.     And the swordmaster just embarrasses himself.   It's always scary when eclipse users target Barthe. He might actually get hit! Granted it'd be scarier if the druid hadn't moved last, but.   Yeah, that's more like it. Incidentally, this is the last thing the green units do that's worth showing.   So here's what we're dealing with this turn. I'm mostly only worried about the wyverns, everyone else should be fairly easy to clear out.  Klein hasn't gotten to delete a nomad yet, let's start with him! ...Oh right, I did say that during prep, didn't I?     Uhhh here, take the druid instead.   Again with the unnecessary crits, sheesh.     Our plan for the wyverns is to break out Armads after all. And yes, I ran the numbers to make sure Geese killed even before sending Lowen all the way out there.     I also ran these numbers. It's close, but Geese can in fact tank the other two. We will need to rescue Klein later, though.   Lilina completes her total and utter humiliation of this swordmaster.  That just leaves the nomad trooper. If Fae crits, great! If not, someone from the other team can finish the job.  She doesn't.   Putting off Shanna's promotion to do this rescue drop.   Barthe leads the charge down here, and... yeah, this was kind of a long shot.   It does however put him conveniently in range for Elen to take the kill instead.       Everything else is pretty routine, with an excellent level from Melady to cap things off.   We're spoiled for choice against the eclipse druid, so I go with Garret just for the novelty.   Not sure why this one myrmidon didn't aggro with the rest of them, he's no threat by himself. Eh, whatever.     The wyverns seem to have a death wish. They definitely could have survived a round against Lowen.     So uh, we're kind of almost done with the map already? This is literally all of the enemies. Depending on what the story is re: reinforcments, we could easily seize next turn. Heck, we could probably do it this turn, if we were alright with leaving that far myrmidon alive, and also not doing any shopping.   : Right into our trap!We're not going to, of course, but just for fun, let's try to kill Monke anyway.  Swing and a miss!   Direct hit!  : My trap... was... perfect......I'm sure that's nothing to worry about.   Garret making a convincing argument to continue using him.   Douglas_level.png     Speed!     So... we might not actually be promoting Shanna. Here's the plan: she's gonna head back up here to take care of the shopping. If there's still combat left after she's done, and she's able to participate, we can promote her then. Otherwise I've dodged the endgame Shanna bullet for now.     Anyway, this takes care of the last of the enemies we can reach.  We even have enough units left to visit all the houses afterwards!      : Such is the law of Sacae.Nope, not ominous at all, nosiree...   Look, I didn't want it to be true, but let's be real. On some level, we all knew these were going to be same turn reinforcements.        Incredibly, we manage to escape unscathed.   I don't think we can count on being so lucky a second time, though. So how are we going to handle this? Well, there are fifteen houses in total that reinforcements could come out of, and we have sixteen units on the field. In theory, we could plug them all up and still have Shanna available to go shopping. In practice though, we're not remotely in a position to make that happen. At most we could maybe get ten or so, and trying would leave a bunch of our squishy characters exposed.     So that's out, and a full retreat sounds like a good way to slowly get overwhelmed. But if those enemies are indicative of what we can expect from the reinforcements, then our four tankiest units should be able to hang out in the danger zone without too much trouble.  Garret is... borderline. True, he survived the previous turn while bearing the brunt of the enemies' attacks, but if those enemies had collectively rolled even one more strength, the nomad would've gone for him too and he'd be dead now. Still, he's too far in at this point to evacuate effectively, so we'll just have to hope he can make it through another round.       But yeah, that's the plan. We get rid of the leftover enemies, with me taking the opportunity for Rutger to do literally anything.     The healers heal.     And then we get the gently caress out of there.   It's not perfect, several of our other units could still potentially get attacked by an enemy or two. But it'll have to do.  And finally, the whole reason we're not just ending the map immediately. I load up on killer weapons and grab a spare of each of the specialty bows.  Hmm. This looks workable?     Yeah, we're fine. NGL, I kinda forgot that knight was still over here.   This is it, once Shanna moves over to the vendor we can seize. Now we just need to figure out who to feed these last four kills to.   Klein should at least get to delete one nomad.     These two are close to levels.   Barthe is close to a weapon level.   And uh, I guess Wolt can clean up.   One last little trickle of healing experience.  I wanna say I get three more physic staves? Should be enough to last us the rest of the game.     And now we seize. ...Yikes, I did not count those squares beforehand.    I've actually made another mistake here, did you notice? : But now we've hit our enemy in Sacae hard. I'm sure that's not the last of them, though. : They must be planning a retaliation.: Do you have any idea where they might be?: Actually, the spy I sent out earlier should be back by now. I will see if he's learned anything.That's right, hypothetical perceptive reader! I totally forgot to give Lilina the angelic robe! Oops!  : Is something wrong, Princess Guinivere? Anyway, infodump time. : ...You don't mind?: No... I want you to know before we enter Bern... I want you to know the tragedies that have occurred. You asked before if my brother murdered our father.: Yes...?: To be frank... he did.: King Zephiel killed his own father to seize the throne...Don't judge, Roy, you've killed a lot of people to seize a lot of thrones. And gates. And whatever the tile is that you're standing on right now.  : No?: Our father tried to kill Zephiel first.: What?! Then King Zephiel...: He couldn't bear the abuse he took from our father. So he...: What...? Why did-- Infodump over. For now. : We've located the enemy! They're still planning their attack! Hm? ...What is the matter?: It is nothing... Perhaps later... : No, it's fine. Where are they planning? : Bulgar... I've heard of it.: It's the largest city in Sacae, but it's under Bern's control now.: I understand. We'll move as soon as we can. Why indeed? Surely there's no way anyone in this army could possibly know anything about this.   Next time: You know, it's been a while since we've seen a light blade...
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2024 17:11
|
|
|
One of my favorite parts of Fire Emblem LP's is the level ups. Oh Shanna...never change
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 04:23
|
|
|
Don't forget Thea getting some sisterly bonding with her level. But most importantly, Garret sure made a name for himself there. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 04:46
|
|
|
Fire Shanna into the sun, you can not salvage her.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 05:29
|
|
|
All this Manaketing about is reminding me of when they were localized as Mamkutes :P
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 10:33
|
|
|
At least it isn't...
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2024 21:28
|
|
|
Shanna you had six stats that could have gone up, what the heck. I wanted to take you to endgame but not even feeding you all the stat boosters would help at this point. Give your pegasus to Lilina.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2024 09:40
|
|
|
Shei-kun posted:Shanna you had six stats that could have gone up, what the heck. This post is going to be really funny in... I dunno, maybe a year? Judging by my current glacial update pace.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2024 13:35
|
|
|
Shei-kun posted:Shanna you had six stats that could have gone up, what the heck. Imagine Dark Flier Lilina
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2024 00:54
|
|
|
Cattail Prophet posted:This post is going to be really funny in... I dunno, maybe a year? Judging by my current glacial update pace. BassMug posted:Imagine Dark Flier Lilina
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2024 02:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 00:37 |
|
|
I don't know if it ever got commented on, I just binged through this, but it's interesting that they replaced the enemy Manakete sprites with recolors of Myrrh's dragon sprite from FE8. Not sure how I feel about the change to the Crit formula? Yeah, it cuts down on early hostile crits, but it also cuts down on early potential *friendly* crits, and ultimately, really doesn't make a difference in the lategame. It's a difference of *maybe* five crit at the Turbo High End of Skill rates, and you have to get above 20 skill for it to start making any positive difference at all. All it really does is mostly remove crits from the early game. To some, that's safety. To others... it's boring. And oh god yeah, ban Shanna to the Bench Of Shame™.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 01:14
|
|