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 What Is This? Project Ember is a graphical and mechanical overhaul romhack of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (the one with Roy in it) by the user Brunhilda on FE Universe. (Be warned that there are some mild spoilers in that link if you want to go into the LP completely blind.) While it could technically be considered a difficulty hack, in the sense that all of the changes are designed with the original game's hard mode in mind, in practice it's, if not necessarily easier, certainly a less frustrating experience than vanilla FE6 on hard. Hit rates have been increased across the board, and there are no more unusably bad units. Enemies are more dangerous in a vacuum, but you also have a lot more tools to deal with them. There's also a separate patch for an extra hard maniac difficulty, as well as several wild and wacky alternate modes. With any luck I might even get to show some of them off! Ideally the plan is to finish three playthroughs in total by the end of the LP, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Spoilers? This LP is generally going to assume that the reader is already familiar with base FE6. While for various reasons I intend to cover the story more or less in full, everything about the original game, plot or gameplay, is fair game to discuss. Sophia sucks, Perceval is OP, Roy will eventually acquire the titular Binding Blade and, in the best ending, use it to restore the Demon Dragon's soul. As for the hack itself, talking about its overall design ethos is fine, but I ask that you refrain from discussing any specific changes the hack makes until they come up in the LP. For example: "I like how a lot of the underappreciated characters have new Prfs to give them a fun niche" is OK, "Character X's Prf is so cool! it does Y" is not. Audience Participation? That's the plan! It's maybe a bit of a Fire Emblem LP cliche at this point, but now that the entire cast is viable, it would be a shame if I didn't let you, the viewers, decide which of our new and improved friends we bring with us into battle. That's actually one of the reasons I still want to cover the story; having plot updates gives me a decent excuse to hold deployment votes without completely wrecking the pacing of the LP. Also, there might be a super secret vote happening even before we get to chapters that have a prep screen.  Is Roy our boy? You bet your rear end he is. ________________________ Table Of Contents Chapter 1: These Boots Were Made For Seizing Chapter 2: The Hero Crest's Journey Chapter 3: Chad Ember VS. The Virgin IntSys Chapter 4: The One With Floyd In It Chapter 5: I Gant Believe It's Not Silver Chapter 6: Your Princess Is In Another (Room In The) Castle Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 7: How To Make Ostia Not Suck, Act I: On Green Units Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 8: How To Make Ostia Not Suck, Act II: On Spirals Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 8x: A More Durable Durandal Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 9: Choose Your Own Island Adventure Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 10B: 100% Daily Value Of Zinque Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Chapter 11B: When All You Have Is A Hammer... Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 12: Ein, Drache Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 12x: Insert Joke About Our Mods Here Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 13: Solar Flaer Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Chapter 14: The Rude Sandstorm Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 14x: Forblaze? More Like Forbidden Island Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 15: Three Basic rear end Prepromotes Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 16: I'm Gonna Buy So Many Guiding Rings, You Guys Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Chapter 16x: Project Ember 776 Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 17B: Uncharted Territory Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 18B: No More Nomads? No, More Nomads! Part 1 | Part 2 Chapter 19B: Lean Mean Kel-ling Machine Part 1 Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Mar 8, 2024 |
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Unit Stats (Current As Of: Chapter 19)(May Contain Spoilers)
Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Mar 8, 2024 |
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Sep 2, 2022 06:33
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 Oh poo poo, I've been transported back to 2002? I have so much to warn people about...  You know, I think this might be the first time I've actually watched this intro.  I'm fairly certain the old translation patch didn't touch this, and I haven't played vanilla FE6 since the new one was released.  And I've definitely just skipped past it every other time I've started up Project Ember. Reading it now, it's... honestly kinda weird?  Like, I know Binding Blade is just a remix of the first game in a lot of ways, but this genuinely feels like it's describing Shadow Dragon's backstory more than this game's.  It's a very... generous interpretation of the Scouring, and the idea of gods never really comes up in Elibe beyond whatever vague deity the church of St. Elimine worships. Heck, Elibe is one of the few settings in the series that doesn't characterize dragons themselves as gods!  And this doesn't make any sense at all. I guess it's meant to be sort of a meta thing, i.e. every iteration of the Fire Emblem across the series is actually the same entity?  Whatever, I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it.  After that, we fade to black...  ...followed by several flashes of lightning...  ...before we get a very brief glimpse of Idunn that I was able to capture because I'm just that good, and definitely not because I paused the emulator and went through one frame at a time. I like this art a lot, actually. It's much more threatening looking than her goofy battle sprite.  It's the title screen! This time unblemished by my low effort graffiti.   While hard mode is the intended experience, from what I've heard normal mode is still entirely functional. I'm guessing the enemy setups are mostly unchanged from the base game, though, so it'd likely be a bit of a cakewalk.  Upon starting a new game, we're greeted with... another text crawl! Pretty sure I've never read this one before either. A great war now known as the Scouring was fought for dominion of the land. Losses were tremendous for both sides, and in this war the very laws of nature itself were twisted and distorted, bringing chaos and unease... Defeated and humbled, the dragons disappeared from the realm. Mankind then began to rebuild and repopulate their newly won land. A millennium has passed since then... Very bold of the game to just bluntly state that humans are the assholes here. I always thought that Jahn's endgame monologue mostly just ended up making the dragons look worse than they did to start with, but knowing now that the game straight up opens by telling you that humans were the aggressors, dragon war crimes are literally the only new revelations that he has to offer, at least to the player.  culture and civilization to the farthest reaches of the continent. FE6, in all its extravagance, has seen fit to have not one, not two, but three intro narrations. Honestly you could probably cut the first two and let all of that stuff come up organically in game without losing much.  possess the most refined culture in all of Elibe.  is located on the other side of the continent in the east. These are the two most powerful nations in Elibe with the weaker nations situated between them. These smaller lands are...  by a number of marquesses that are bound by a vow of allegiance;  become mercenaries to earn money and survive;  Poor Sacae only gets a single text box.  Although there were occasional clashes between these nations, the majority of the people of Elibe lived in peace. That peace, however, was not to last...   Now, Bern is mounting a merciless invasion into Lycia.  Pherae's Lord Roy was in Ostia, Lycia's largest territory, when the invasion began.   has sent for Roy to return to lead Pherae's soldiers in defending against Bern.  At the same time Eliwood sent for Roy,  who is Marquess Ostia's long-time friend and confidant.     Look alive, people, the game is starting for real now.  We open on the exterior of Castle Pherae.  Oh no!   : They've all hidden themselves inside the castle! : Hee hee hee... You were right when you said there wouldn't be many soldiers. They're all getting ready to defend against Bern! : Of course I was right. I'm always right, you fool. But reinforcements could be here any minute.: All right, you curs, listen up! Kill everyone in the castle while we still got time! Then we can waltz outta here with all the loot! Okay, so they do have one(1) bandit.   : Let's go ransack the villages and take everything they got! And so he does. RIP all those people, I guess. Meanwhile, inside the castle...   : We're under attack by bandits from Mount Bolm!  : Blast it! Were I not in this pitiful state, I would take care of them all myself...!Everyone likes to give Eliwood poo poo for this line because of how mediocre he is in his own game, but FE6 Eliwood is a promoted unit and everything. I think he'd be fine. Marcus could certainly solo this map if I let him. Also, how the heck are ellipsis and an exclamation point at the same time supposed to work?  : Lilina, you must hide yourself. This castle is going to become a war zone. I like the little hop forward Lilina does here, she's so determined not to just sit idly by. : Don't be absurd. I couldn't face Hector if something happened to you in my own castle. : My father? But...: It's going to be all right. Roy should be here any moment, so we just need to hold our own until then. He'll drive off these dastards.Did you know that there are people in this world who think Fire Emblem's love of the word dastard is "bad" or "cringe"? Can you even imagine?  : Send a messenger to Roy to let him know the current situation! We need his help!: Y-yes, Milord!  Suddenly, even more dudes appear!  Including our dudes.  Hark! A lone rider approaches!   : Why are you in such a hurry? : Lord Roy! Bandits have appeared and are attacking the castle as we speak! : He's inside, defending against the bandits' attack. But I don't know how long he can last with his illness...!There it is again...!  : You must be a knight of Ostia. Lady Lilina is in the castle. She should be all right. She's with Lord Eliwood after all, but he can't last forever.You know, Lance probably ranks pretty high among FE6 characters as far as amount of dialogue goes just on the back of this intro cutscene. He's had more lines than Roy so far!  : I shouldn't have let Lilina go to the castle before me.  : Yes, you're right. This is no time to despair.By the way, if these portraits look a little different to you, it's because they are! Virtually every battle sprite and portrait in the game has had tweaks made to its color palette, and many have had other adjustments made as well. A few characters even have brand new portraits entirely! Conveniently, the hack download includes a folder with all the new assets, so making talking heads was really easy! No need to crop screenshots or extract them from the rom myself.  : Our target is the castle! We must rescue everyone! This was supposed to be the player phase banner popping up, but uh, obviously I didn't do a very good job. If you look closely at the top right, you can just barely see the spinny squares finishing their fadeout. But anyway, gameplay! First things first: Most of the map palettes have also been changed. Here's a side by side comparison for reference (vanilla is on the right):  _01.png) But that's not really why we're here, is it? So let's take a look at our ragtag band of heroes:  _03.png)  _04.png)  _05.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 85 80 Str 55 40 Skl 50 50 Spd 60 40 Lck 60 60 Def 30 25 Res 30 30 As far as his other changes go, Roy has always had a relatively high resistance growth for the game he's in, and now that he has a real base stat to go with it, he's actually reasonably OK at tanking mages for a physical unit. The extra sword rank is kinda whatever, he'll be hitting A rank long before he really needs it anyway, but starting with an iron sword is nice for not having to waste rapier uses on these early enemies. The rapier itself has also seen some improvements, but we'll get to that in a bit.  _06.png)  _07.png)  _08.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 65 60 Str 30 25 Skl 50 20 Spd 30 25 Lck 30 20 Def 20 15 Res 40 20  _09.png)  _10.png)  _11.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 85 85 Str 60 45 Skl 40 40 Spd 45 45 Lck 35 40 Def 30 25 Res 15 10  _18.png)  _19.png)  _20.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 75 80 Str 40 40 Skl 60 45 Spd 60 50 Lck 20 35 Def 20 20 Res 20 15 Those with a keen eye will have noticed their new class name, which kind of gives the game away re: the mystery of the missing axe rank. Yes, there are now two separate cavalier class lines, though it'll be a bit before we see the other one. (Spoilers, they have axes.)  _12.png)  _13.png)  _14.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 90 90 Str 50 30 Skl 45 30 Spd 40 40 Lck 45 50 Def 35 35 Res 20 10  _15.png)  _16.png)  _17.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 90 80 Str 45 40 Skl 65 50 Spd 45 40 Lck 45 40 Def 25 20 Res 15 10 Last thing before we get started, a quick comparison of weapon stats:  _21.png)  _22.png)  _23.png)  _24.png)  _46.png)  _25.png) (Please ignore the random Shanna) Hit boosts all around, as you can see, especially on the lances, though the javelin is weaker to compensate. Gone are the days of whiffing against bosses for turns on end. Roy's rapier also has two more might, which becomes a respectable six extra damage against its intended targets. Now then, to battle!   That extra move is paying dividends already. Roy and Bors can now both reach the enemy on turn one.  We'll go ahead and have Bors start things off. Thanks to his steel axe weighing him down, this fighter sometimes spawns with low enough speed that Bors can double and ORKO him, but alas, it was not to be this time around.   First blood! And a dodge for good measure.  You can see here how careful we have to be with Roy; one stray hit would put him dangerously low on HP. Not that this fighter will get the chance.   Wolt and Alen tag team the other enemy that's in range.  Ooh, right in the face!  Lance is going to stand right here to both protect Roy's flank and lure over that mercenary in the corner.   He'd actually be pretty scary in the base game, capable of doubling nearly our entire army. Now, though, he can only manage it against Bors and Alen, and Bors wouldn't even take any damage with his lance equipped.  Might as well visit the house while we're here, too. This man is here to remind us about the harsh truths of our capitalist hellscape.  : If you don't have any, you won't be able to replace your broken weapons! And you can't fight without weapons!Sadly, it would be ten more games before the lost art of punching your enemies was rediscovered.  It looks a little silly, but thanks to the forest blocking the enemies' path, Wolt is just as safe this way as if I had plugged up the chokepoint properly. As a bonus, this spot puts Marcus just within range to pull down the archer at the top.  At the start of the enemy phase, the boss moves onto the gate. : But they'll have to go through me to get into the castle!I assume this dialogue is automatic, but I suppose it's possible that it only triggers if you've already engaged in combat. Has anyone ever tried just huddling in the corner instead?  Well... at least you can see the words this time?   Roy kicks things off with some good old fashioned axe magnetism. Lance, on the other hand, has no respect for tradition.  I'm pretty sure those enemies could have ganged up on Lance and killed him if they had all hit, but apparently Roy is just too enticing a target.   The archer and remaining fighter both go after Marcus, and here we see another change; surviving a round of combat without attacking gives you three experience instead of just one. Good news for insane people who want to try to level up Merlinus, I guess.   Next turn, our first order of business is to get rid of this mercenary. Unfortunately, he's annoyingly hard to finish off, and I'd rather not have to dedicate two of my guys to him.   Seems like as good an excuse as any to break out the silver lance. Amusingly, Marcus got just as much exp from not attacking as he did from getting this kill.  There's a lot of enemies waiting up north, so I have to be careful who I leave in range. That brigand is particularly worrisome.   Here's how he compares to all the fighters on the map. At higher levels the lower skill might be relevant, but as is he's basically just stronger and faster with no drawbacks.   Marcus is otherwise occupied, and Bors is the only other one I trust not to eat poo poo. Everyone wish him luck!   Wolt finishes the archer off, but takes a hit in the process.  Unfortunately, nobody can ORKO the hand axe fighter, so I'm going to have to leave him alive another turn. This is awkward, because Roy can't afford to take another hit right now. Using the javelin here would let me put up enough of a defensive wall that Roy could dispatch his fighter safely, freeing up Alen to start chipping away at Hand Axe Guy. I don't really feel like gambling on hitting two 70s, though.   No, I'll just have both cavs finish them off instead, giving Roy a chance to heal.  Here's the numbers Roy would be looking at, incidentally. Not an impossible dodge by any means, but I've taken that risk before and gotten burned every time. Maybe if there was a forest he could attack from I'd have more confidence in him.   Speaking of which, that forest on the other side of Hand Axe Guy looks like a good spot to stand on while he heals, just out of range of the northern enemies. Vulneraries have been upgraded to 15 HP, so this takes Roy back up to full.    Bors exceeds my expectations, dodging the brigand's first attack as well as one of the fighters, leaving the last one with nowhere to attack from.  The only other action this enemy phase is Wolt getting beaten within an inch of his life. Walk it off, buddy!  Now that he's available, Marcus could ORKO Hand Axe guy, and I briefly consider having him do it. However, part of the reason I sent him all the way down to the bottom was because it left him well positioned to visit the village this turn, and ultimately I decide to stay the course.   That won't be until the end of the turn, though. For now, have Alen and Lance cleaning up Bors's mess.   Meanwhile, Bors continues to advance, pulling off yet another dodge!   The power of three range bows in action: vanilla Wolt wouldn't be able to get his revenge on Hand Axe Guy without risking death on the counterattack. Granted, vanilla Wolt would also be plinking him for single digit damage, once, but still.   That leaves Roy to go in for the kill. Rest in peace, Hand Axe Guy, you got to initiate combat twice.   Now for that village visit I promised you.  : I know this isn't much... But please accept this money on behalf of all of us. Use it well!  It's a good thing that other guy told us money was important, otherwise I'd have no idea what to do with this! Oh, and canto works the same as normal, in case you were wondering.   The most notable thing to happen on enemy phase is that Bors finally took another hit. Also Lance counterkilled a guy, I guess.  The enemies on screen now are all that's left. The end is in sight!   Everyone in range would have to hit, but Bors is at least theoretically in danger of dying now and heals up accordingly.  As for the dude he left behind, I really wanted Roy to get this kill, but he comes up just short.     Nobody else can help whittle the enemy down for him, either, and I end up giving it to Alen.    Everyone else moves up, with Wolt taking the opportunity to heal.  Now that he's got some time to kill, Marcus is going to visit the rest of these houses.   : If you wanna do well in battle you'd better use terrain wisely. For example, if you're in a forest the trees will cover you! That'll teach your enemies who they're dealing with.Imagining going up to the most senior knight in Pherae, with multiple campaigns under his belt, and explaining basic combat facts to him like he's a child playing their first strategy game.    The results of enemy phase. Roy's half dead again, and Bors finally found a fighter he can double. Sadly, he had too much HP to pull off the ORKO.  Ideally I'd like to clear out everyone except the boss this turn, but that's probably not gonna happen. Speaking of, now that we're close enough to engage, let's take a closer look:   Damas isn't really that much scarier than his underlings, mostly he's just going to take longer to kill.   Thanks to the ruins of the village getting in the way, it's actually completely safe for Wolt to stand here and finish this guy off.  Here's where things get tricky. I'd still like to get Roy a kill here, because he's pretty close to leveling up. As mentioned, though, he's half dead already, so his only real option for a safe kill is the fighter off to the right. This would be fine if I had planned my positioning better, but the only spot he can reach right now to attack from is the forest that Lance is standing in. Lance, likewise, is one space too far away to engage the archer at melee range.   I could have him throw his javelin, but that seems like a bad idea if I want him to not die.   Roy moves in for the kill, and you know what that means...   First level of the LP! It's a very Roy level.     Bors and Alen team up to take out the archer, and Alen levels up too!   In comparison, this is a very un-Alen level. I won't complain about speed though.   Last house!  : Soldiers from Bern have crossed the border... They laid an awful attack. And even if the allied lords strike back, Lord Eliwood... He can't even stand anymore...This feels off relative to Lance's report at the start of the chapter, which seemed to imply that Eliwood could hold his own for at least a little while. There's a few possible explanations for the discrepancy, but my favorite idea is that Eliwood is planning to pull a Princess Bride and bluff his way through any confrontation if the bandits manage to get inside.  Thanks to the power of canto, Marcus is already basically caught up with the rest of the army.  One of these days I will get the timing right for this, but it's not today. Poor Bors is getting sucked into the void!  Both remaining enemies are going to go for Lance. The archer's up first, but the joke's on him, because...   Lance was exactly three experience away from leveling up! Trap sprung! Honestly, this level is better than it looks, considering how much of a problem area luck is for him.   I'd like to think that extra point of luck is what saved him from death here.     Wolt finishes off the fighter with style and a farewell wave, putting him agonizingly close to leveling up. I'll have him take a potshot at the boss later.   Now that all the axes are gone, I can finally have Alen start training up his lance rank.  For some reason I decide it's a good idea to check this too? I think my thought process was that it'd be nice to get him up to C sooner than later, and there'd be plenty of opportunities to raise his sword rank as it is, but honestly there's really only one more early chapter in FE6 that's super axe heavy.   At any rate, I think better of it and have him just take the kill instead.   Here's how Bors fares against Damas. Obviously I don't actually pull the trigger on this, but he is going to stand here to get attacked on enemy phase.  Everyone's huddled up in a nice little ball now. Gotta start racking up those support points!  ...You know what? I'll take it. Probably about as good as it's going to get.  : You can't take down a few pathetic knights?! I'll give him this, he did a better job of hitting Bors than most of his underlings.   My general philosophy wrt boss abuse is that I try not to be too egregious about it, but will usually top off people who are close to leveling if I can. I wouldn't really call this boss abuse, though; that was a genuinely useful amount of chip!   Strength AND speed? Wolt, you're spoiling me.  I thought about having Bors heal again and go a few more rounds to hopefully level up, but I think Damas would have died first unless I deliberately stalled a few extra turns, and that did feel too egregious. I could have just given him the boss kill, of course, but I kind of wanted Marcus to get it just in case we end up trying to invest in him.     The only problem, at least if I want to finish on this turn, is that Marcus can't actually pull off the kill, and everyone else either does pull it off or risks dying themselves.    This is when I remember trading exists. Alen hands Marcus his steel sword, and now the damage numbers work out!   Wait, Marcus, what are you-   So of course Marcus decides to make all that careful planning irrelevant and crit Damas to death instead.  He is!  You may have noticed that Marcus was actually the only unit to have a crit rate all chapter. That's because the formula has been changed to skill-10, which helps cut down on stray crits from early game enemies while also making high skill more impactful late game. It can't go negative, though, so if Roy had ever attacked with his rapier he still would have displayed its full 10 crit. Huh... that wasn't as much exp as I was really hoping for. The only Jeigan I've deliberately fed bosskills to before was Titania, so that's probably distorting my perception of its value a bit. I think PoR's experience formula gives you a flat 30 exp bonus on bosskills no matter what.  Oh well, lessons learned, time to seize.    : I'm so glad to see you both! Thank goodness you're unharmed. I'm not sure why, but for some reason it feels weird to me that Lilina moves offscreen here. She's definitely still in the room. : Of course, Father. How is your health?: Well enough. I've some life in me yet. But Roy, do you know why I called you back here?: I'm to take over your role by leading the soldiers of Pherae. We must join the rest of the Lycian Army to defend our people.I don't think I agree with the decision to capitalize army in this context. It evokes a sense of formal military organization that doesn't quite ring true to the political reality in Lycia, imo. : Exactly. As you know, Bern has commenced an invasion of Lycia. We are honorbound to follow the ancient vows of our allegiance. Lycia needs every lord's army, and we must oblige.: Of course.: I'm truly sorry to interrupt your studies and force you into this war, but I'm not well... I'm in no condition to lead an army.: Father... See? She clearly heard that whole conversation. : My father leads Lycia's largest army. And I'm certain my magic will be of help to Roy...': No, Lilina. You must return to Ostia. Roy disappearing doesn't bother me nearly as much, though? Maybe it's because Lilina switched sides at the same time. : With Hector preparing for battle, there is no one sitting on the throne of Ostia. It must be an uneasy feeling for the people not to have a sitting lord. As the daughter of the marquess, you must take the throne until Hector returns. That will put the people at ease. Do you have any objections?: ...No, my lord. : You are to meet them at the border to Bern. Merlinus will accompany you. He is knowledgable and experienced and should be of great help.Merlinus is strong and real and my friend.  : Thank you for everything, Father.: Don't worry, my son. I have absolute faith in you! Fight bravely, and show everyone who the next marquess of Pherae is!: Yes, Father! I think this is supposed to be a different room now, but I'm not certain.  : You needn't ask, milady. I will accompany Lord Roy in his travels and protect him with my very life.: Thank you, Bors. : I will. You too, Lilina.  Next time: The monomyth.
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Sep 2, 2022 06:33
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Blaze Dragon posted:Yay, more FE! Always can use more FE. Also I've been interested in this one for a while now because it comes up a lot in the FE thread so I'm looking forward to seeing the changes in the game. As it is, I really like the new colour palette. It's definitely not the main event, but the palettes are really nice, yeah. Apparently the goal was to more closely match the official character artwork. It's subtle enough when you're just playing the hack that you hardly notice, so I was surprised putting them side by side just how different they really were. I never knew how much I hated Roy's hair before! Jerry Manderbilt posted:i've heard this plays very, very differently from vanilla FE6 (to various people's chagrin or joy), and am interested to see where this ride goes It's not for everyone, I'll admit. Supposedly the overall feel of combat is modeled after New Mystery, but it's been long enough since I've played 12 that I can't really speak to how well it achieved that.
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Sep 3, 2022 02:37
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Just uploaded the chapter 2 screenshots, here's a sneak peek:
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Sep 3, 2022 05:02
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Booky posted:oh ho nice!! i'm still only a few chapters in myself iirc there are some new backgrounds for cutscenes and such, but I don't know offhand if that includes any of the battle backgrounds.
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Sep 3, 2022 18:41
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  Okay but why though? Like, obviously it has to happen this way or there'll be no plot, but setting the rendezvous point so close to enemy territory seems like a huge unnecessary risk.  At the time Roy reaches the village, the castle is in an outright panic. Roy has yet to realize that this confusion going on in the castle will spread, engulfing the entire continent of Elibe in chaos...   I feel like Guinivere is severely underutilized in the story. She's basically just a pair of hands to deliver the Fire Emblem to Roy when it comes down to it.   Don't mind us, just gonna step outside of this castle to have a conversation, you know, as you do.  : Y-yes, Captain Melady... I'm certain she was in her room this morning, but she simply vanished...  : I don't want excuses! Are you so incompetent you can't understand that?! Lol, this guy is so hosed. : Our forces are mobilizing to begin a full-scale war with Lycia. How are we to focus on the battle if the princess is missing?! Naturally, you will take full responsibility for her disappearance.: ......: I never should have let Her Highness come to the border to begin with. I will return to Bern and inform the king of this matter. I'll try not to cause a panic, but I can't promise your life if the princess isn't found. I trust you'll take every measure to locate her as soon as possible.: Yes, Captain! No, Melady, come back! You should stay and join our army, I'm sure it would be totally fair and balanced.  Wait, he was telling lies? I'm shocked.   : Yes, Commander. She's under constant surveillance in the cellar.: Good. Don't let her escape.: But Commander... Are you sure this is a good idea?: Of course I'm sure! The younger sister of King Zephiel... We're sure to get a hefty sum turning her over to one of Bern's enemies.Actually... maybe Roy doesn't need to be here for the plot to happen. Ruud's whole plan is to ransom Guinivere off to a Lycian lord, which is exactly where she ends up anyway, albeit under friendlier circumstances. Hell, if Ruud wasn't such an rear end in a top hat, maybe we wouldn't even need to fight him. : ......: Loyalty to one's king. Bah. What a worthless notion. The world is ruled by neither king nor queen. It's ruled by gold!Ah, I see you've been talking to the man from the house in Chapter 1! : Yes, indubitably, Commander. ...But there has been a snag, shall we say.: Hm? What do you mean?: I just received a report... It seems that Princess Guinivere's lady-in-waiting has escaped...: What?! You lout, why didn't you say so earlier? Find her this instant! Don't let her get away!  That's... actually kind of a lot of enemies. Eh, we'll probably be fine.  : This is where we're supposed to meet the mercenaries?: Yes, though it seems they aren't here yet.: Wait, who's that? Somebody's coming this way...   : Oh, forgive me, I'm in such a hurry...Wait, I've heard about these! This is one of those "meet cutes," isn't it? : No need for apologies. Are you hurt?: No, I'm fine. Thank you, good sir.: Farewell, then.: ...Are you from Lycia, by chance?: I am. I am the son of Marquess Pherae.: Oh, Saint Elimine! Thank you for guiding me to this boy!Oh, so now he's a boy, instead of a good sir? : Pardon? : What happened?: My name is Elen. I am a cleric of Saint Elimine. My mistress and I came from Bern to seek an audience with the lords of Lycia. However, Commander Ruud of the castle east of here trapped us. We were captured, imprisoned by our own countrymen.That does sound pretty rude, but what's his name?   : We must avoid unnecessary entanglements with Bern!Again, maybe you should have thought about that before agreeing to meet right next to the border. : But we can't neglect a noble of Bern who wants to speak with the lords of Lycia. ...Then again, we can't simply charge into enemy territory either...: Wait, who's there?! : Over here, boys! Get the girl! Our orders say dead or alive!  Well poo poo.  : You wouldn't listen even if we did, I'm sure. But no matter. Let me witness all you've learned about tactics in Ostia.: All right, everyone! We're going to charge the castle! Sister Elen, you should find a place to hide... : I cannot fight, but I can heal wounded allies.: But...: I'm the one that got you tangled up in this mess. Please let me do what I can to help.: OK, but just stay behind us so you aren't hurt.Sound advice, as we'll see in a moment. : Certainly. Thank you for the concern. So, we've got three main groups of enemies to worry about.  There's a wave of soldiers and fighters down here...  ...a big formationless blob off to the right...  ...and these two trying to sneak up on us from behind. The plan is to have Marcus cover Merlinus while he tours the village and have everyone else advance south. Dieck's crew are going to end up doing the lion's share of the work in the east once they show up, so our starting guys won't be seeing a whole lot of action this time around. Before all that though, we have two new units:  _27.png)  _28.png)  _29.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 50 45 Mag 80 50 Skl 30 30 Spd 30 20 Lck 105 70 Def 15 5 Res 70 60  _26.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 200 100 Str 0 0 Skl 50 50 Spd 60 50 Lck 150 100 Def 40 20 Res 20 5   Now back to the map. I'd like Marcus to be finished up here sooner than later, so he breaks out the silver lance again to soften up this mercenary.   Okay, so I kinda lied when I said that everyone else was going to head south. Alen here would like his steel sword back. Why didn't I do this before moving Marcus, you ask?  Because I also wanted to shuffle his inventory around so that he has the iron sword equipped for enemy phase. I ran the numbers beforehand and this leaves Marcus with just enough attack to still finish off the merc on the counter. I'll warn you right now, convoluted trading shenanigans are probably my favorite thing about high level Fire Emblem play, so expect to see a lot of them going forward.  This did put Alen in range of that pegasus, but I'm not worried.   Some things haven't changed, and enemy peg knights having their threat neutered by the weight of their weapons is one of them.   Here's the vendor, just for posterity's sake. They only have vulneraries, and I don't buy any.   Instead, Merlinus visits this house.  : Remember, swords best axes, axes best lances, and lances best swords! Keep this in mind and things will be much easier for you!This is as good a time as any to mention that the effects of the weapon triangle have been increased from 1 damage and 10 hit to 2 and 15, respectively.   Down south, these fighters are going to set the limit for how far I feel comfortable advancing.   Bors leads us off again. The positioning isn't great as far as setting him up to take hits, but this is the only soldier he can one-round.     Lance starts wearing in his javelin to help Roy take out another soldier. Now that I have a healer I can finally let Roy eat counters every once in a while!   Wolt takes a solid chunk out this one, and we have our defensive line, such as it is. It's not exactly pretty, but this does ensure that everyone is getting attacked at most once.  Incidentally, I could have had Elen plug up that hole if I really wanted to. This is the soldier that Wolt just attacked, and he's both the only enemy that can reach that space and the only one that doesn't OHKO her.   Sweet healing! The power of most staves has been unchanged, but they have had their experience gains adjusted. I don't remember to grab a screenshot until later, but a single use of heal now grants 16 exp.     Marcus is the only one to dodge an attack on enemy phase. What I wouldn't give for the enemies to move in a different order so that Roy was the one getting that lucky miss.    The fighters move up, and the eastern blob does some weird shuffling around. Honestly I think there's something funky going on with their AI, this isn't the last confusing thing they'll do.  At the start of turn 2, help arrives!   : Sure!  : House Pherae, one of the noble families of Lycia. The marquess's son is going to join the other armies of the Lycian League. : Looks that way.  Wait, I just realized: Shanna already knew who she was looking for, but Wade didn't have a clue. Does Dieck not bother to keep everyone in the loop, or is Wade just that slow on the uptake?   : But it looks like they're already caught up in a skirmish.: What? The fighting's started already? Let's get a move on then. Time to earn our pay!More units! More!  _30.png)  _31.png)  _32.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 105 90 Str 45 40 Skl 50 40 Spd 35 30 Lck 30 35 Def 30 20 Res 10 15  _33.png)  _34.png)  _35.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 65 45 Str 35 30 Skl 55 55 Spd 85 60 Lck 50 60 Def 15 10 Res 35 25  So yeah, a bunch of characters have Prfs now. In Shadow Dragon, the wing spear was powerful enough to make Caeda the second best unit in the game, can it do the same for Shanna here? Ehhh, not so much. At least in my opinion, Shanna is still probably worse than basically every other flier in the game. Her speed growth is way overkill and she's still incredibly prone to getting screwed on stats that she really needs. What the wing spear does do, though, is offer a nice bit of temporary RNG proofing. It keeps her combat just relevant enough that you can field even an underperforming Shanna for the flying utility without feeling like you're pulling teeth, for just long enough to power through until you can replace her with her sister. But who knows, maybe she'll actually turn out this run. Oh, and female mounted units aren't stuck with an arbitrarily worse aid formula anymore, so that's nice.  _36.png)  _37.png)  _38.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 110 75 Str 70 50 Skl 45 45 Spd 35 20 Lck 40 45 Def 30 30 Res 15 5  _39.png)  _40.png)  _41.png) pre:Growths: PE OG HP 75 80 Str 40 30 Skl 50 30 Spd 55 35 Lck 20 30 Def 55 40 Res 30 15 This is probably the last set of characters that I'm going to do full side-by-sides with their original versions for. The comparisons are going to get less and less relevant as the game goes on and the context they exist in continues to diverge, and there's only so many ways for me to say "yep, this character sure did gain a bunch of levels." Plus, just as a practical matter, I don't really want to do a full run of the vanilla game in parallel with this one just to get a bunch of stat screens. I'll still call out any particularly notable differences, but for the most part I'll be sticking to evaluating units in the context of the game we're actually playing. With that out of the way, Marcus is going to finish thwarting the enemy's attempt to flank us.   I swear I don't know where he keeps pulling these sick dodges from.   Alen rides down to rejoin the rest of our forces, and Merlinus hits up the village.   : But some weapons, like this sword, can pierce their armor. I'm sure you can get better use out of it than us. Please, take it. Handy, but not as crucial to finishing this chapter now that we've got other viable ways of dealing with the boss.     Down south, things are going... OK. I would've liked if either Lance or Bors could get this kill, freeing up Wolt to go after one of the fighters instead. I really need to get Lance a better, uh, lance.   I heal up Roy again and send him on the attack. He should be safe on the fort, right?   See, no problem!   Lance has just enough attack to finish him off. He even hits on the first try!   Bors is going to continue to not tank hits, because I am good at strategy.   He does level up, though!  Bors, no! I guess he used up his supply of luck dodging all those axes last chapter.  Switching over to Dieck and friends. You know how I said Shanna still wasn't very good? Yeah... she's not going to have much to do this chapter.   Instead, she's going to skillfully avoid any and all combat while flying north through the mountains to eventually ferry Marcus across. The hacking community figured out a while ago how to implement the danger area function from later games in GBA FE, and this hack makes use of it. It's sort of clunky to use, but it's better than nothing.     More than anything else so far, I think the weirdest feeling coming from vanilla FE6 is seeing Wade one-round an enemy while dodging.  Dieck takes up a defensive position on the other fort, and we end turn.  You see that grayed out fighter at the top of the screen? So, uh, he just moved north. I don't know either.   Wade is coming under heavy fire!   Yeah, nope, still weird. Oh god oh gently caress there's still another fighter left to attack him I regret everything I-   Listen I swear Roy really is a good unit you guys.   Well. Putting that little near catastrophe aside, who likes weapons?   No axes, unfortunately, so Wade and Lot will have to keep sharing the one hand axe. I buy a spare iron sword, enough javelins for everyone, and an iron lance for... Lance.   Specifically in that order, mind, so that the lance and one of the javelins get sent to storage.   Which means it's time for more sick trading action! Merlinus pulls them both out of storage...   ...and hands everything off to Alen, who in turn can get them all into the hands of people who need them.   Time for some cleanup. Roy stays on the fort another turn to take advantage of the free healing.   He also levels up again! Not bad, not bad at all.   Wolt gets his wounds tended to, and you can see now that Elen is already halfway to a level.   Now that we've made room, Alen is ready to make his deliveries. But there's something I haven't told you yet.   That's right, you can now freely trade with everyone adjacent to you all in one turn. How's that for sick trading action?     Last enemy taken care of, and Marcus will be ready to get picked up next turn. It's all starting to come together.   Dieck comes just short of ORKOing this soldier, but luckily Wade can cover for him... is a sentence that has not once in the history of FE6 been uttered before.  All these dodges have been low key really important. There's no way we'd be able to extend past the forts this quickly without them.   Even unpromoted, Dieck is barely getting more experience per kill than Marcus right now.     I never said we'd be extending very far past the forts, though; these two will be our limit for the time being. A reaver weapon, in chapter 2? It's more likely than you think.   So I've clearly entered a bizarro universe where fighters and knights are somehow my most consistently evasive units.    Everyone gangs up on Wade again during enemy phase. If any one of those earlier misses had hit, he'd probably be dead right now!  Roy's almost back up to full already, that's nice.    : If you're in a fort, you can defend and even dodge more easily. On top of that, your wounds will heal slowly over time.SEE YOU'D LIKE TO THINK THAT WOULDN'T YOU- ahem.     Healing for Alen, everyone advances, and the airdrop is in position.   With most of the soldiers gone now, Dieck can safely pull those two down from the corner.  Frustratingly, Wade could get a clean kill on this guy with the hand axe while staying out of danger, but with the way he and Lot are positioned, there's no way for Lot to give it to him while also finishing off the fighter.   So Wade will just have to do it himself. At least he got a level out of it.   Ew, I take it back. Apparently I'm allowed to have either dodges or good levels, not both.   If that's true, it doesn't bode well for Lot's long term success.  This guy really really wants to kill Wade, but just isn't making any progress. I can't even feel good about this one, he was perfectly safe and he's gonna get healed up before he sees more combat anyway.     Ha ha! Bet you wish you hadn't brought that reaver weapon now, jerk.  Things are starting to wind down now, and Merlinus is almost out of ways to kill time. I've surprised myself at how well I've been able to come up with vaguely relevant commentary about these tutorial houses, can I keep it going?   : But woe to any rider who finds herself against an archer. An arrow can take a pegasus down in a single hit!Uhhh... uhhh... watch out for arrows?   Lot finally puts this poor man out of his misery.     Everyone's just kind of milling around at this point. Elen ekes out some more healing exp and Wade retreats onto the fort.   I suppose I could have had Dieck burn an elixir use here and lure the fighter over too, but meh. It's not like it would have made the map end any faster.   I guess I'll drop Marcus here? I don't want him so close that he pulls the fighter, and maybe after the archer comes for him, Marcus can soften him up enough for Shanna to see at least a little bit of combat. I also don't feel like having him take unnecessary hits from the boss.   Here's what he looks like, by the way. He remembered to pack a ranged attack at least, but otherwise he's not that threatening.   Just kidding! The archer decided not to move at all, Marcus must be too scary. The fighter stayed put too, for that matter, so literally all that happened on enemy phase was this mercenary-off.   Another heal puts Elen on the brink of leveling up.   Speaking of leveling up...  Nice, very nice! He even hit his luck growth again!  I know I said Ruud wasn't that scary, but he still 2HKOs Shanna. Not that it'd be safe for her to engage yet anyway, I was mostly just checking to see if it'd be feasible to feed her the bosskill when the time comes.   Now that Roy has finally caught up, he and Dieck can have a little chat. : Who is it that's asking?: Name's Dieck. You should've heard about me from an older man named Merlinus.: So you're the leader of the mercenary band?: Just a small company, really. Sorry we're late. Didn't think the fighting would start so soon.: Well... There was a complication...: Don't take it the wrong way. We don't blame you. Actually, quite the contrary. My boys are excited for a chance to show off their skills.: Brilliant. It sounds like you're just the caliber of fighters we need.: Enough chitchat then. Let's wrap things up.Way ahead of you there, Dieck.   The end result of moving everyone up. Dieck's staying put so Elen can get to him next turn.   The fighter throws himself futilely against Alen, and the archer... still doesn't move. I seriously have no idea what's going on with the AI right now.   He's not hardcoded to be stationary, I can tell you that much. The danger zone indicator takes that into account.   Whatever. Here, have Elen gaining her first level instead.   Any Elen level that includes HP is a good one as far as I'm concerned, and this one has a bunch of other stats besides!   I don't really have any good options for weakening but not killing Ruud, so Shanna's going to have to do all the work herself if she wants the credit.    Before that though, we need to watch out for arrows. Marcus is almost halfway to a level by now, in case you were curious.    Now we just get Marcus out of the way, and we're good to go!   : Just when I thought things had finally turned my way...  Okay, well, a dodge would have been ideal just for the sake of my sanity, but I can work with this.  That's what, less than 5% chance of failure after true hit, plus I'd have to lose a coinflip afterwards? I'll take those odds!   Boy, I'd have looked pretty stupid if Shanna had died here, huh? : Greed can only... bring you... an ill fate... Not quite enough for a level, but she's close!      One more heal for the road and some last minute inventory shuffling, and we're ready to get out of here.  : There was a woman locked in the cellar!: That must be Elen's mistress. Bring her here.: Yes, milord.  : Elen! I'm so relieved you're well. You put yourself in such danger running off like you did... I worried myself sick about you.: I am sorry, Your Highness, but I couldn't leave you in that dank cellar...: Don't worry yourself, Elen. It's thanks to you I am safe now. : I am Roy, son of Eliwood, Marquess Pherae.: It's a pleasure... As for myself... Elen, you've literally called her "Your Highness" three times already, I don't think you have room to speak about secrecy. : Yes, Elen. It is fine. : Guinivere?!Metal Gear?! It even has the same cadence to it. : That's the name of the princess of Bern!: Yes, that is I. : This was a trap, wasn't it?!...How? A trap would be if there was no hostage at all and instead there were more soldiers waiting for you. You were expecting a Bernese noble and that's what you got. Knowing that she's the princess gives you more leverage, not her. : Merlinus, hold.Yeah, what he said! : I beg your pardon, Lord Roy, but...: I wish to hear her out. Give her a chance, will you?: Tsk. As you will... : Yes, truly. I cannot blame you for doubting me, however.: Maybe you are the princess of Bern, and maybe you aren't. I can see from your actions and dress that you are at least of high status.This isn't the first (or last) example of this, but I appreciate that the script repeatedly makes clear that though he is young and inexperienced, Roy is very well educated, particularly in the inner workings of the nobility. : If you are indeed Princess Guinivere, however, there's one thing I don't understand. Elen told me you intended to meet the lords of the Lycian League.: Yes, that is correct.: Why, if you are the sister of the king of Bern?: I want to find a peaceful way to end the war. If I can speak to the Lycian council, I'm certain we can come to a solution.: Your brother instigated this war. Is it in your power to stop it?: At the very least, I wish to do everything I can. No, I MUST do everything I can.: ...I see. For the time being, come with us to meet the Lycian League armies. I want to see what Lord Hector thinks of this affair.Um, about that... : You will allow me to accompany you?: Yes. If there is any possibility to avoid further bloodshed, we must try. It matters not how small the chance.: Thank you! I truly am in your debt...  Next time: Hector saves the day and absolutely nothing tragic happens whatsoever.
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Sep 6, 2022 01:59
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Adventure is calling. Accept/Reject? Should Dieck heed the call to adventure and become a true Hero? Or should he turn away for now and remain a mere Mercenary? Only you can decide! If it matters, Project Ember does add several more promotion items throughout the game, so we shouldn't be too limited by them once it's time for people to start promoting normally. You have until, uh, whenever I decide to play through Chapter 3 to cast your votes. Probably a few days, at least?
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Sep 6, 2022 02:00
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theshim posted:promoting before 20 is a (Obviously this isn't an actual vote, I just couldn't help myself.) Also, stupid question, does anyone know how to do the thing where you link to a specific post and it shows only that post? E: Delphisage posted:Please don't go promoting Dieck at the first opportunity. To be fair, at least as I understand it the original release version of the base hack predates maniac and the other side modes by a lot, they weren't developed concurrently (and iirc from skimming the FE Universe thread, they're not necessarily at version parity even now). So it's less a matter of lowering the difficulty for hard as it is raising it for maniac. Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Sep 6, 2022 |
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Sep 6, 2022 14:42
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Rigged Death Trap posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?action=showpost&noseen=1&postid=526053617 Thanks for this, now the OP has a proper table of contents.
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Sep 6, 2022 15:32
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Honestly I doubt the hacker put that much thought into Merlinus's stats one way or the other. It's not like he's leveling up anyway. The big spreadsheet that lists everyone's growth rates didn't even include him, I had to go digging in the rom myself for those. And yeah, skill does literally nothing for him, but vanilla Merlinus has a skill stat too, so 
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Sep 6, 2022 18:56
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Probably gonna call it after I get home from work unless a bunch of votes to promote suddenly come out of the woodwork. E: Voting is closed! Promote Dieck? Yes: 4 No: 10 Can't say I'm not a little relieved, but then again there is something to be said for being forced out of your comfort zone every once in a while. Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Sep 7, 2022 |
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Sep 7, 2022 15:39
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 The armies of Lycia had gathered here to make preparations to strike back at Bern.  a messenger brings them shocking news they can scarcely believe. Native to Bern are savage flying reptilian creatures known as wyverns. Leading Bern's army is a trio of elite commanders known as the Wyvern Generals, named so for their combat prowess, which is said to be comparable to the wyverns.  virtually decimating the Lycian Army while it was little prepared. You know, this translation may be heaps better than the old one, but the word choice and sentence construction can still be a little funky sometimes. I maybe would've gone with "ill prepared" here as a turn of phrase that flows more naturally.  both to see it for himself and, hopefully, find and aid any survivors...   It occurs to me that it's possible someone might've taken the teaser from last time seriously and thought that the hack adds a way for you to save and recruit Hector. If that's you, I sincerely apologize; this is not the case. Hector is going to be as dead as Her Maj soon enough.  His Maj, however, will be loving off to fight another day.  : Good. Bring him before me.  : Black-hearted fiend...!: Ah, Lord Hector. You have my highest praise for lasting so long against two of my Wyvern Generals. I suppose Ostia's reputation as the most powerful house in Lycia is well-earned. The strongest of a pile of worms is hardly a match for my boot, however. Your end is nigh. If you've any last words, I suggest you spit them out.: Just tell me... Why...?: What was that?: Bern and Lycia... We were always on good terms with each other... Even when you took the throne, we always paid our respects to Bern...Huh, I never noticed the subtle foreshadowing here for Guinivere's lategame exposition about the messy succession. : Respect? Pah. Don't make me laugh. The whole continent shall be my domain. Only then can the world be liberated. I lack the time to concern myself with such trivial matters as "respect.": You mean to liberate... the world? What do you speak of...?: Pay it no heed. You won't live to see it anyway.: You there! Take him away! : Yes, Your Majesty! : Yes, be on your way. : ...One matter before I leave, Your Majesty. If you will allow my opinion, I would not place so much trust in that... woman.: Do you speak of Idunn?: Yes, Your Majesty. The men call her the "Dark Priestess" and find her presence... disturbing. I understand that she is a shaman of great power, but-: Brunnya, do you doubt my judgment?: Ah...! No, of course not, Your Majesty! I just think-: Your duty is not to think. Your duty is to follow orders. Is that clear?: ...Yes, Your Majesty. Your will shall be done. : Dear me, the words that come out of my mouth sometimes...And then Brunnya disappeared from the plot for almost the entire game.    : Yeah, probably. I saw some of Bern's soldiers take him into the castle.I'm sorry, I just really love Chad's delivery here. : Chad, was it? Do you know the inside of Castle Araphen well?: I guess so. ...Wait, are you guys going to try to save Lord Hector? Sounds like a bad idea to me. Most of Bern's forces are gone, but there are still plenty of soldiers in the castle. Marching in would be suicide.: Perhaps. But you said most of their army is already gone. We can't afford to lose Lord Hector. If we have a chance, we must take it.: Really, now...? I'll come with you then. I can show you around the castle.Spoilers: Chad will in fact be one of the last people to enter the castle. : What? You don't have to do that. Please, just explain what the interior of the castle is like.: I've got a bone to pick with Bern. Please, let me go with you!: If you insist, we're happy to have you. I think your skills will be an asset.: Yeah, I can pick any locked doors or chests! : I didn't think the invasion would pick up so quickly...: Princess, you're not responsible for this. Please don't blame yourself. Besides, Lycia is still united....Yeaahhh, suurrre. : We just need Lord Hector to lead our army so we can fight! We must retake Castle Araphen for all of Lycia... and for Lilina...: ......: Let's move out!  This map is chock full of firsts. Up here we have the first enemy mage, guarding the village where we recruit our first mage.   He's not playing around either, that's enough to take a solid chunk out of anybody.  Just below our dangerous friend we have the first instance of a change in the map design itself. There's a door here now, which will be a godsend for getting Lugh and whoever else we send up here back into the action more quickly.   In the rightmost edges of the map you can find cavaliers in both light and heavy varieties.     As the name might suggest, heavy cavaliers tend a bit more towards strength and bulk as opposed to skill and speed.   By the way, while these ones may only be carrying axes, heavy cavaliers do retain lance access as well.     They're also throwing a promoted unit at us already, though aside from the higher defense he's not really much different from all the unpromoted knights running around. We'll make sure to have Chad yoink his vulnerary, since he'll be passing through here anyway to get to the chests. And speaking of Chad:     pre:Growths HP 75 Lck 80 Str 40 Def 25 Skl 50 Res 25 Spd 60  One last thing before we start, I want to call your attention to this archer's attack range. The first time I played, I made the mistake of baiting him to the left instead of down. Once he's up against the wall, he can threaten almost that entire exterior area, leaving only a one tile wide path to avoid him. This is the sort of thing that people who dislike 3 range bows are talking about. One extra range may not seem like much, but when you're dealing with narrow corridors, it can mean the difference between having somewhere safe to stand or not. That said, this is the only time I can remember it really bugging me personally.   I'd say we're moving on to the action now, but this first turn won't exactly be action-packed; the soldier here is the only enemy we can actually reach. We'll have Lot take a crack at him.   He's not in enough danger yet that the dodge really matters, but it's still nice to see.   Chad, Wade, and Marcus are heading north to deal with those enemies and recruit Lugh. This spot in particular will let Marcus bait and weaken one of the soldiers.  The rest of our mounted units will intercept the enemy cavalry in the southeast before visiting the other village.   Everyone else is going to advance into the castle, making sure that the squishies are at least somewhat protected.     ...Wait, did I run the numbers to make sure Dieck could actually survive?  No, no I did not. Welp, looks like that's a res-  -pectable dodge you just pulled off there! Maybe he tapped into the power of the alternate universe where we promoted him and he was able to tank both hits no problem.   Before turn 2 starts, the game directs our attention over to the village.  : Of course. The St. Elimine Church will take good care of the orphans. And what will you do, Lugh? : I'm going to stay here. I have some things to take care of.: Is that so...? Please be safe.: Yes, you too.  : You're not coming with us, Lugh?: I'm going to wait for Chad. We'll catch up with you later... : Yay! Chad's coming too?: Of course.: I want Raigh back too!: Yes... If Raigh would come back we could all be together again.  : Don't take too long.: Yes, yes. Hurry along now...  ...Why does the boy look like a mini Lugh? Does Nino have a third child???   Here's the current situation. We should be fine down south, but the western trio may have bitten off more than they can chew.   In my head I was using this as a sort of test to see if I trust Wade to survive, but it doesn't actually matter. He can still take the hit from the mage after this, and if the mage and the knight both hit then he'd be dead even if he'd dodged it.   At any rate, I've already had one close call. Better not to tempt fate a second time. Luckily Marcus has just enough movement to get totally out of range of the weakened soldier, ensuring that Chad gets the counterkill.   I do need to check that he isn't in range of the other enemies, though. Pretty sure they both straight up one shot him.   Back down south, Alen sets up a kill for Shanna that doesn't require her to spend wing spear uses.   Cool, cool, so this is going to be one of those Shannas.  Now to make sure that Alen doesn't die, which means it's time for Merlinus to embrace his role as bait.   Lance completes the defensive formation while switching Shanna to the wing spear, just in case the cavalier decides to go after her instead for some reason.   Lot and Elen erase a soldier and my tactical error, respectively.     We clean up the rest, and move on to enemy phase.   In a stroke of genius, I actually remember to let the knight take hits.   Huh, I wasn't expecting us to have reached the point where Merlinus gets ORKOed already. Sorry, buddy!   Check it out, nearly half a level just for killing a measly soldier!  Don't mind me, just double checking whether or not Merlinus's sacrifice was actually necessary (it was).    A demonstration of the difference the wing spear makes. With the exception of chapter 5, everything up until Ostia is going to have plenty of horses for her to pick off even if she never gains a point of strength.     Lance and Alen tag team the other cavalier, and Alen gets a level for his troubles. It's pretty good!     Marcus sets things up so that Wade can at least theoretically counterkill the knight without the mage being able to attack him. The knight almost certainly won't be stupid enough to actually go for it, but it's the thought that counts.    Chad, in turn, hides behind Wade and commandeers his vulnerary.   Things are slowing down a lot for the main force. This is the only enemy we can reach, and that other soldier is the only one that's going to be able to attack anybody on enemy phase.  Roy does hit B swords from this, though. We haven't even seen any C rank swords yet!   We patch Roy up, and everyone enters the castle proper. Okay, time for enemy pha-   Geez, so many interruptions!  : What's left of the enemy are likely putting up one last fight.   : ...... : Send the dragons back to Bern as planned.: Yes, Your Majesty. As you will.  : Narcian, I leave Lycia in your hands.: ...What shall I do with the remnants of the Lycian Army?: Kill all who stand against you.: ...What of women and children?I get the distinct sense that Narcian is asking for permission here more than clarification. : Was I unclear? Kill all who stand against you. Grind them to dust. Ensure no others dare dream of opposing us.: Of course, Your Majesty. Hm hm hm...  And so the revolving door begins...  : Well, I think it's time I left as well. Slater, I entrust the castle to you.Lol, he couldn't even wait five seconds, a true master of delegation.  : Might I inquire where you're going, sire?: A marquess who turned against Lycia has a special gift for me. He says it's a girl of Etrurian nobility... Hm hm hm...You know, I don't think it ever comes up, but it's likely that Erik's treachery is the reason that Bern knew where to strike for this surprise attack. Also, obligatory ewww. I'm pretty sure this game came soon enough after Kaga left that parts of it are still pieced together from his leftover notes, so I guess this shouldn't be surprising. : Etrurian nobility? She must be quite a catch!Ew. : Yes, the marquess tells me she's a beautiful thing.Ew. : You must be looking forward to it, sire. Please be careful on your way there.: You be careful too, Slater. Don't let these scattered remnants defeat you. Should you fail, I personally will order your evisceration. : Ha ha ha ha...!  Some cavalier reinforcements take Narcian's place as he leaves. There'll be more coming later.   Okay, now we can start enemy phase. As expected, the knight goes for the unit that can't hurt him at all over the one that kills him in one hit.   By the way, Marcus gets the world's most useless crit on the counter. Stop hogging all the good RNs, other people need them!   What did I JUST say?! For real though, this is a convenient dodge, since there's no healer with this group and all three of them are sharing the one vulnerary.  Especially since those heavy cavs are rapidly closing in. I would've liked to be able to grab Lugh before having to deal with them, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.   Now that we can see into the boss room, we can take a look at what we're in for. Quite frankly, Slater is nearly indistinguishable from any of the generic knights in this chapter; the real boss is the throne he's sitting on.   That's still a ways off, however. For now it's time to reassure the citizenry. : Here, take this and go quickly. We may be occupied by Bern, but we're still Lycians at heart! Neat! It's a bit overkill for Elen at the moment, but we are about to pick up some less magically inclined healers.  Heavily wounded and with nothing left for them down here, this group starts to rejoin the rest of the army.  Meanwhile, the knight and mage are just close enough that we can finally get rid of them. We need to do things in a very specific order for the best results, though. First Chad takes out the mage.   I was right earlier about him getting one shot, but it doesn't matter now. That's an 89 on the experience bar, by the way.    Next, Marcus takes the vulnerary and heads north to meet the cavs.   That frees up his spot for Wade to come in and deliver the final blow.   Things will be picking up inside the castle soon, but this turn is still rather uneventful. If Bors was at full health or Lot was the one leading the pack, I'd feel more comfortable drawing out the knight too, but instead I settle for just the fighter.     Roy finishes the weakened soldier for a mediocre level, and Wolt and Lot team up against the full health one.   I have Dieck move before getting healed so Elen doesn't get left too far behind, and we're ready to end turn.   Literally the only combat on enemy phase. Sadly we're mostly past the point where Bors can double things unless his speed growth decides to kick in.   It was close, and I had to think for a bit to make sure there was a safe way to do it, but Marcus can in fact get to Lugh this turn. : Please, let me fight with you! I don't have any useful information, but I can use a bit of magic! I'm sure I can help you!  Marcus has just enough move to get back to this tile, and between him and the forest there's enough of a barrier to keep Lugh out of harm's way.     pre:Growths HP 70 Lck 50 Mag 40 Def 20 Skl 60 Res 30 Spd 60   He should be safe here, and conveniently it also puts him in range for Chad to talk to him.  : Lugh?! What are you doing here?: We were hiding here.: Oh... Where's everybody else? Are they all right?: Yeah, the St. Elimine Church is going to watch over them.: And what about you?: What?: Why are you still here?: ...The same reason as you.Lugh's got a point, Chad doesn't have much room to talk here. : What?! Lugh, you're not thinking of...!: I can use some magic! Remember I borrowed that fire tome from Poppa's room?What was Lucius even doing with that? He uses light, not anima. : Lugh, you can't. You're incapable of harming others.: But...: I'm going to avenge Poppa. You stay with the others, Lugh.: I'm not going to hide anymore! I'm tired of everyone leaving me...! Poppa, you, and even Raigh... I want to fight to protect the people that I care for. I can't let others die for me my whole life!: Lugh... Fine. Once we finish Bern we can go back and see everyone again!: Yeah!  Wade awkwardly intrudes on that touching reunion while Shanna and the cavs continue their advance. Elen might get around to healing them. Eventually.   Sorry if it feels like I'm showing Roy too much favoritism, by the way. He's actually still lower level than everyone except Shanna and the new recruits.   Time for another trading chain! I want Dieck to end up with this armorslayer.   That's... C bows? I think? Again, there hasn't even been a steel bow to give him yet.     These two have a sword and a javelin, neither of which are any real threat to Bors, so it should be safe to put him here.   Lot and Dieck finish out the chain, leaving the knight with no good options for avoiding damage.   Okay fine, I guess Shanna can get healed. The hack does mess with WEXP values, and I think I remember reading somewhere that base staff ranks in particular had to go through a few rounds of adjustments to compensate balancewise. It's probably the reason that Elen started halfway to C rank.     Annoyingly, the knight picked the space to Bors's right, blocking the sword cav from attacking when we could've used the chip from the counter. Also, I guess Marcus didn't need that vulnerary after all.  Number one priority this turn is to get that door open, which means Chad is unavailable to help deal with the cavaliers.  Number two priority is to break up this logjam. It's gonna be all hands on deck!    Wolt starts by sniping a cav through the wall, picking up another above average level. He's looking really solid, you guys!     Wade and Lugh finish clearing the way for Chad. I haven't been pointing out sprite changes much, mostly because there's so many little tweaks here and there that it's hard to keep track, but notice that Lugh has ditched the hood, making him much less banana-y looking. Whether this is a good or bad change I leave as an exercise to the reader.  And voila! Door open.   It may seem counterintuitive to just axe this guy to death instead of using one of our effective weapons, but Roy and Dieck are both needed elsewhere.   Our boy takes out the javelin cav, and finally he's the one getting a lucky miss to go his way.     Bors claims the sword cav with an assist from Marcus, and Dieck clears the field.    These guys are still putzing along back here, and Elen gets a level from continuing to heal them. More HP is nice, but otherwise this is basically Elen.png.  Nobody's in range to attack us on enemy phase, but this pair of cavaliers spawned in a couple turns ago and have arrived to replace the set we just killed.   I'm pretty sure this knight doesn't move, and the fighter behind him only has a hand axe, so we can afford to play a little aggressively right now. He also has weirdly low stats for some reason? Maybe they forgot to give him hard mode bonuses.       Between the three of them, Roy, Bors and Dieck easily dispatch the second wave of cavs. They even all level up! Kinda sorta, anyway.     After that, it's just a lot of unexciting forward movement, plus a little healing.  Oh, here's something mildly interesting. Rather than double back to the door, I decide to have Marcus keep going around the outside. No idea if it's actually faster, but it cuts down on congestion at least.  Don't let the halo fool you, Roy is very much alive! I was right, by the way; the knight didn't move.   I guess Dieck will just have to move him for us, then. He's so weak that he gets OHKOed outright by the armorslayer even after weapon triangle disadvantage.    Dieck also manages to nickel and dime his way to a level finally. It's... sparse, but I wouldn't call it bad. He needs to do better than "not bad" if he wants to keep up, though.   Bors and Roy take care of the fighter in what turns out to be a bit of a mistake. It's not super serious, mostly just kind of annoying.  Lot gets ready to bait out the last generic knight on the map. Can you spot the problem yet?    Lance passes that mend staff on to Elen, who returns the favor, and everyone else moves on up.     On enemy phase, Lot picks up his first level and Roy flirts with danger.  Here's the issue: because the archer couldn't resist the sweet siren call of juicy protagonist and moved out of his corner, nobody except our own archer can attack him through the wall, and Wolt is a space too far to reach. Thanks to the fresh wave of reinforcements, it's not safe for Roy to go down and deal with the problem himself, either.  We could just kill Slater and seize now, but then we'd be missing out on treasure. Plus, while I'm not one to deliberately wait out all the reinforcements, I do generally like the map to be empty when I seize.   Instead we'll have to do a little shuffle to get Roy to safety and try to coax the archer back over.     Retreat isn't the only order of the day, though. Roy hands Bors a vulnerary so he can heal up while keeping the pressure on.   Elen deals with our game over waiting to happen while Alen finishes off the knight. Huh, I just noticed that their names are only one letter off from each other, weird.     Lot moves out of the way so we can set up a rescue chain to get Lugh in position. He's going to burn down our heavily armored friend guarding the treasure vault.  Chad heads down there too, of course, but he won't be much help as far as dealing damage goes.  Marcus's flanking operation is almost complete!   : ...What awaits me... is a fate worse than death...!!Good news, you won't have to worry about that, because we're just going to kill you ourselves.   NO DAMA    In other news, the archer took the bait, and Marcus apparently makes for a more tempting target than Bors. For those keeping track, he still hasn't taken any damage since using that vulnerary way back on turn... 4? I'd hate to have wasted it...  Like I said, no damage. That's okay though, because...     ...it means the general will definitely target him over Lugh, putting him over the top for a level.   It's a good thing he doesn't start with the hand axe equipped, that would complicate the process significantly,   The one saving grace of enemy archers is that their stats are usually pretty bad, so they're easy to kill once you get them cornered.     Bors and Marcus clear out the cavs and- okay this is just getting silly.   Everyone piles into the boss room. It's getting a little crowded in here...     Ha, just as planned! Not exactly the strongest start, though. Hopefully he'll get more chances to contribute once there aren't quite so many lances running around.  Wade will remember that.  Some more replacement cavaliers showed up at the end of the enemy phase, but more importantly, it's finally time to start looting!   He does need to gain some magic eventually, but this is still a good level.  First chest just has some gold in it. I know for a fact that some of the contents of chests have been changed, but uh, please don't expect me to have intimate enough knowledge of what's in the vanilla chests to be able to tell you whether or not any individual chest has something new.   The streak has ended! Still not enough damage to justify that vulnerary use, though.  But hey, check out that experience bar. Everyone get hype!   Alen finishes the job, and the plan was to have Roy take care of the other one, until I noticed that this puts him too far away to seize next turn. There aren't enough other people in range to rescue-drop him, either.     We can't just do nothing, though, or else Alen might die, so he's getting rescue-dropped instead.   I told you Wade would remember that.  Slater is so unremarkable that his death quote only takes up a single text box.   I've been having the weirdest luck with resistance growths. Alen's hit his twice already!  There's some other shuffling around, but none of it really matters. Those forests are putting in a lot of work to limit the enemy's potential targets.   Okay Marcus, we get it, you've made your point.   The other chest has a halberd, just in time for Erik and his many horses.     Lance and Alen complete the rout, with a decent level for the latter.     Elen squeezes in one last (bad) level, and we're out of here.  : We found Lord Hector in the dungeon!...Where is the dungeon, anyway? That castle didn't have any stairs in it.  : He's gravely wounded...  Hector and I must have different ideas of what constitutes a good meeting. : We must get you help! Here, lean on my shoulder...: Don't worry yourself... I'm done for...: Lord Hector...: We were taken by surprise... We'd have never supposed that Bern had summoned dragons...!: Dragons?!Metal Ge- oh wait I already did that joke. : Yes... The same dragons that humans fought against in the Scouring...: The Scouring? I learned of that in my studies. Eons ago, dragon and human each had dominion of one half of Elibe. The Scouring was a war for total control of the continent...: Very good, lad... The Eight Legends... defeated the dragons and led the humans to... victory...: How did Bern summon dragons...?By spending orbs, I assume. That's how I summon dragons at least. : I... haven't the faintest... But... Bern was once the dragons' domain... Hartmut, one of the Eight Legends... was the founder of Bern... Perhaps... the reason... lies there...I'll forgive Hector all these ellipsis, since he's literally dying and all. : Lord Hector!: Roy... Go to Ostia... You must... lead what remains of the Lycian Army... in my place...: Me...? But...: Fear not... in Ostia... is a weapon... that... can take down a dragon...: A weapon?I've never even played a Metal Gear game. : Lilina can tell you more... Please take care of her... She... may act strong... But she is still a child... Please... don't let... her... d...: ...I promise you, I won't.: ...Lilina... Let me... see you... just... once more... Hrk...!!  RIP to a real one.    Next time: Marcus levels up! Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Sep 14, 2022 |
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Sep 13, 2022 23:06
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Blaze Dragon posted:While I know you've said you won't do the comparison images with the normal FE6 anymore and that's fine, I feel it may be a good idea to at least put the stat and growth numbers to compare them with the changed ones, since here you make allusions to how they were changed but never show how they were originally. All of that can be gotten from Fire Emblem Wiki or another existing LP, so it shouldn't be too big an effort and it'd make it easier to see how things were changed, character-wise. It's a fair point, and if it becomes a recurring issue I'll definitely consider changing course, but for now I'm sticking to my guns on this. There's very few characters I can think of offhand where I plan on referencing their vanilla stats at all, let alone in a way where the specific numbers matter. You're absolutely right in this case, though, so what I will probably do is edit Chad's writeup itself to be more specific on the details of his growth changes. Junpei posted:Good to hear that Assassin has been backported from 7. At least that's what I assume Thieves promote into. You'll just have to wait and see~ But maybe not as long as you think.
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Sep 14, 2022 01:09
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Welp, just ate my first reset, not due to anything that the game threw at me, I just had a huge tactical brainfart.
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Sep 15, 2022 21:00
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There's definitely at least a few characters that I'm going to have Words about when we get to them, don't you worry. Also I ate poo poo again for being dumb and I'm actually kind of pissed off about it this time. The first reset erased an HP only level for Roy, but this time Shanna got a level with strength AND defense!
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Sep 16, 2022 06:40
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    At a glance, Laus is a peaceful territory with vast meadows and clear streams. Beneath this beauty, however, lies treachery and great skullduggery... So a new Fire Emblem got announced right as I was putting the finishing touches on the previous update.   Hopefully you haven't been holding your breath for any jokes about Toothpaste-Chan, because I'm fresh out of material.   Great. These assholes.  : Lord Erik. I don't think I've yet praised your wisdom in joining Bern. : Thank you, sire. Ancient vows and traditions are nothing more than a burden anyway.: You, my friend, are wise beyond your years. Now, where is that gift you promised me? She does not seem to be here.: Ah, yes! She is in her quarters. She is exceedingly naive, you see. When I told her she could meet her brother, she cooperated without question.  : Welcome, Lady Clarine. : Who might you be?: I am Narcian, one of Bern's three Wyvern Generals. My lovely little lass, I think you will enjoy my company more than your brother's... :Kaga: : Heh... Ha ha ha!: What? Why do you laugh?    I'll give Clarine this: She never would have reacted like this in Kaga's day. I also really enjoy the effect of having to advance the dialogue separately for every single one of those lines.  : Oh, heavens no. I would sooner compare you to a filthy, disease-ridden mutt! : I'll see you suffer! : What?! Impossible! What of Slater? : Err... His whereabouts are unknown, sire.The enemy is reported to be Roy, son of Marquess Pherae. : Accursed interruptions! Lord Erik, lock the girl in a cell. I will give her the pleasure of my company when I return!But where are you going? All the way back to Bern for reinforcements, I guess? That's going to take you five whole chapters, when you could easily defeat us here and now if you stay. I'm starting to think Narcian isn't very good at his job. : You, blockade the highroad from Ostia. This Roy might just pass by. I want his head!    The enemy mobilizes, Narcian fucks off again, and... that's it. No more preamble, just straight into gameplay. It's actually a little weird, you'd think Roy would have something to say about fighting his own countrymen. And he does, but only at the end of the chapter. Whatever.  Our army is starting to look fairly substantial!    Erik's is no slouch either, though. I wasn't kidding when I said he'd have a lot of cavalry; except for a handful of archers and knights, every single enemy here is on a horse, for now at least. And- what's this? Has the Marquess himself received a promotion?    Nah, that's just some rando paladin sitting on the gate. Erik's right below him.   He's still the more dangerous of the two, though. That silver sword is scary, and he moves! We really want to bait out the javelin if at all possible.  The rest of the enemies are sporting incredibly boring loadouts; iron and steel across the board with not a ranged option in sight, bows notwithstanding. The most notable it gets is this one cavalier who brought a blade rather than a normal sword.   He also happens to be the only enemy we can actually reach, and Wolt is the only one who can do it. Leaving him that exposed would be a terrible idea, though, he'd almost certainly get murdered.   Or would he? Marcus may not be able to reach the enemy, but he can reach Wolt.       One rescue chain later, and things look much more reasonable. Say what you will about the wide open field school of FE map design, but when your units aren't all unstoppable juggernauts it can present its own unique challenges as far as trying to maintain a defensive line.  Merlinus is on village duty again today. I'd like to try and put him to more use, but if the game insists on putting villages behind our starting area that need to be doubled back to, he's always going to be the first choice.   Wade and Lot will be taking point on the southern bridges. It's crucial early on that at least one of them uses their full movement every turn.   Chad hands Wade the halberd that he liberated last time around.      Shanna makes sure to stay out of danger, the rest of the army falls in behind the vanguard, and that's the turn.   Part of the back line is riding out to meet us. Luckily they're far enough away that we can focus on the first wave without leaving ourselves in their range.   On one of my failed attempts this cavalier rolled low enough on his speed that Wade could have doubled and ORKOed him... had I not also forgotten to swap Wade off of his hammer on that run.   That attempt also saw this guy break himself against Marcus instead of Bors for some reason. I assume he rolled particularly low strength and decided the damage wasn't worth it.  The heavy cav isn't quite close enough to reach anyone, so this is the last bit of enemy phase action.    These nomads make ideal targets for Shanna. They're fast enough that most of the army can't double them, and frail enough that she only needs to spend one use of the wing spear.     I'm gonna be trying my best to set up some kills for Chad on this map. His experience gains don't look quite as impressive now, but that's because these enemies are actually lower level than last chapter's for the most part. Everyone else is only getting about 20 exp per kill!   I also decide it's worth risking this unnecessary counter to get Lugh some support points with him. Triggering conversations is likely going to wait until we have a better idea of who we're using long term, but it never hurts to get a head start.   Elen could heal him back up immediately, but he's not in any danger right now and Wade needs it more.     Movin' on up. Annoyingly, that front cav has a sword; whichever of Wade or Lot gets attacked is just gonna have to deal with it.   These three are going to snake past the village up here. Wolt's range should help make sure they don't get too bogged down from advancing single file.  I was all set to call out Project Ember for adding nomads where it makes no sense for them to be until I got to this house and realized they were here in vanilla too. Like I said, it's been a while since I've actually played through base FE6.    : Only thieves can use lockpicks. But I have something called a door key, which will open any door. Anyone can use it. You can have it.Hey look, it's mini-Lugh! I sort of assumed that the hack added a bunch of extra palette swaps of the NPC portraits for variety, so it was pretty jarring to see a pair of duplicates so close together. The guy in the house Alen visited has shown up before already, too. Went digging and, sure enough, there aren't actually any more than in the base game.   I'll be buying some more of these when I get a chance, I'd rather not have to make Chad open all the doors in chapter 6.   Wade is the lucky winner, so to speak. At least he manages to connect with his counterattack?   If this had been my first attempt, I would have been surprised by how many enemies Marcus was able to lure towards him. Instead I will just have to act surprised.   Oh no, a spooky disembodied voice! : Who's there?!  : I refuse to meet with such churlish people. : Let go! You will regret this! Have you any idea who I am?! : ......: Let go, I say!I feel like this scene could have used a bit at the start with Rutger talking to a guard, giving a clear reason for him not to explain what's going on so he comes off as less of a jerk. Then again, maybe that's kind of the point?   Anyway, that was our warning that things are about to start happening by the castle, so we'd better get ourselves positioned to handle them. Marcus and Wolt start by eliminating the other nomad.   After a heal, Alen should be able to take both this hit and the archer. ...What's that, the village? Oh, uh, we won't have a chance to visit it for a while yet.     Lance and Shanna set up another kill for Chad. I had misses on hit rates almost this high on multiple previous runs, so I was actually a little nervous about attacking with him.   Lugh and Roy take care of the last available enemy, and we can shift up our front line.   But first, healing! ...for Wade again. I promise Lugh and Chad will get patched up soon.    Here's why it was so important to keep the fighters moving. This is Erik's attack range, and they can just barely reach the edge of it. If nobody baits him out this turn, we'll be stuck holding this same line next turn for fear of the silver sword, and that puts us behind schedule to deal with Clarine and Rutger relatively painlessly. In theory there's a few other characters you could do this with, but you'd have to play pretty recklessly and none of them can use the hand axe.   More advancing, and Merlinus completes his tour of the starting area.   : Once they loot a town, there's nothing left. Visit the towns quickly and they might just share something good!Not sure why the game felt the need to tutorialize at us about this when it already introduced the concept organically back in chapter 1. It's called "show don't tell," not "show then tell later."   : Allow me to teach you the way of the world!He took the bait!   I'd say you're the fool here for falling for this obvious ruse.   Alen takes a beating, then it's time for an update on the impromptu escape plan.  : Keep it down. You won't be able to make a clean escape making all that noise.: Escape?! Then you're...: I prepared a horse for you out back under a tree. Take it and go, while everyone's distracted.Okay, maybe not entirely impromptu, he's clearly put at least a little thought into this.   : With all your soul?Even Clarine is asking herself how this guy can possibly be so dramatic. : ...Never mind. Forget it.  : ......  : A proper gentleman would escort a lady to her mansion! Well, it's hardly of concern now. Sigh, I only came here to see my brother, and now look at the mess I'm in... What am I to do now?  With Roy's extra move, it wouldn't be that hard to get him in range for Clarine to recruit herself immediately, but I refer you back to what I said earlier about playing recklessly. ...But wait, there's more!   I'm not sure why that one pirate spawns next to the fort instead of on it. Does that happen in vanilla too? I forget.   : 'Course, you'll hear no complaints from us. Turmoil's how we make a living. Heh heh heh...   So there's actually been a slight script change here to account for Erik not being on the gate. (And maybe even dead? I'm not sure how you'd manage it this quickly, but with enough boss abuse I suppose anything is possible.) He'd normally be the one giving Rutger these orders, but instead we get this generic. : We need some backup. Take some troops and prepare for battle.  : I heard you. I'll leave when I'm ready. : If his sword arm is as skilled as the rumors say, though, then it's no matter. Honestly all of that together was probably still shorter than the villain conference last chapter.   Wade with an effective weapon really is a great early bosskiller. We didn't even need Lot's hand axe hit, but hey, no reason to turn down free experience.     Blah. He can't not gain HP, so really this is just a luck level.  He does get this at least, though.   Wolt unjams the northern chokepoint.     Marcus and Alen tag team the other cavalier. That level is so close I can almost taste it.   Bors and Roy finish up this turn's combat. Now it's just a matter of preparing for the coming onslaught.   Afaik this chapter still has the special enemy AI that won't target Clarine, but I've never been super clear on how it works and would rather not take any chances.     Shanna and friends (minus Elen) are going to break southward to secure the village and eventually keep the pirates occupied. These two enemies have perfectly overlapping ranges, so we need to make sure to put her in a spot where they'll get in each other's way.  No wing spear this time, counterkilling her attacker would defeat the purpose.   Between the four of them, they have most of our remaining vulnerary uses, so they should be able to hold out on their own for a while.   At this rate, Merlinus is going to end up having to visit that village too. Oh well, time for enemy phase.   The brigand and pirates advance, but we're on the ball enough that the villages aren't in any real danger.   Bors takes enough of a hit that he's going to need healing soon.   Shanna dodged that on all of my failed runs, so maybe this is actually a good omen? Also I captured a genuine NO DAMAG.     I'm not too worried about Roy's offenses in the long run, so I'm willing to call this a genuinely great level. In my original playthrough I think Roy was still sitting at 7 defense by the time he promoted.   I'm surprised that requiring the new recruit to initiate the conversation isn't a well that the series goes back to more often. The only other instance I can think of is Oliver, and he occupies a very different design space conceptually.   : Do you see anyone else? You are the leader of this little group, are you not? : I am.: Most convenient. Very well then. You will protect me. : Hard of hearing? I said that you will protect me from harm. Petition to make Merlinus able to teleport in gameplay, too. : Away with you, peasant. I was not addressing you.Is Merlinus a peasant? In FE7, certainly, but in this game he's an important enough advisor that it's plausible Eliwood has granted him some form of peerage. Not that that matters to Clarine if he doesn't look and act the part.   : It looks like she's being pursued by the castle's soldiers. That's why she wants us to guard her. Right?: Um, yes! That is correct...  Whoa there, Merlinus, you've got a right to be upset, but maybe slow your roll a bit?  : And I am not useless! I can use staves to heal wounded allies. : ...If that's what it takes! I suppose I can't simply demand protection without any kind of payment.: Thanks, we appreciate it! Our enemy is Bern, so we need everyone we can get. I'm Roy. Pleased to meet you, Lady Clarine.  Why does she get so flustered all of a sudden?    Also Rutger and co are here now. Note that he showed up right before player phase. Same turn reinforcements are mostly a thing of the past. Project Ember breaks them out every once in a while for special occasions, but this is not one of those times. I believe this is actually a turn earlier than Rutger shows up normally, so functionally he still becomes an active threat at the same time, you just have a chance to flip him before that happens. And for as much as I've been emphasizing urgency, you don't actually have to play the map this aggressively. It's perfectly reasonable to hang back and let the enemies (and Clarine) come to you, in which case you likely won't be in position to recruit Rutger for a few more turns at least. But I digress; we have a new unit!    pre:Growths HP 60 Lck 50 Mag 35 Def 15 Skl 40 Res 30 Spd 75  Anyway, it's a huge clusterfuck up here right now and frankly I don't feel like dealing with it yet. Let's check in down south instead!     Lugh helps Shanna take out the knight that she lured over, and she gets this very weird level. I guess it's good?     Lance picks up a fresh heal staff since Elen has nearly exhausted hers, then moves to get the heavy cav's attention.   Chad's going to start up a training montage against the pirates. It's going to take longer than I'd like; pirates have the same speedy statline as brigands, so Chad can't actually double them unless their weapons are weighing them down.  Okay, so the way I figure it, if we can keep most of our army out of range of this knight, we should probably be alright.   First things first, let's recruit edgy boy. That should shift the balance significantly in our favor.  : What? You're still here? : You abandoned me in the middle of a battlefield! How can you have the nerve to say that?! I could have been killed!: I guess you're lucky you're still alive then. Did you want something or can I go now?: Just a moment! I shan't allow you to abandon me twice. A gentleman must take responsibility for his actions.: Responsibility? For what? I saved you from that twisted sadist.: If a gentleman rescues a lady, he must also escort her to her mansion! In what fairy tale does some barf of a man abandon his princess?See, I was right there with you until just now, Clarine. Your mansion is literally halfway across the continent, that's a bit of a tall ask. : ...What in the world are you on about?: Besides, you said you "despise Bern with all your soul." If you ask me, you'd be better off joining us. We'll be fighting Bern, you know.I'm not sure if Rutger originally entered Erik's employ prior to his betrayal or if it was a "keep your enemies closer" sort of deal, but yeah, joining an army with whom you share a common foe does make more sense than the opposite, doesn't it? : What? Wait! Is that true? Is that army you're in really going to challenge Bern?  : Yes?  : My protection is more important than fighting Bern! Come back!  Thanks to the power of canto, she can even retreat to safety afterward.     pre:Growths HP 85 Lck 30 Str 35 Def 25 Skl 60 Res 20 Spd 55 We've got some other enemies to get out of the way before we can take him for a proper spin, though, so let's get to it.    Incidentally, Rutger's former colleagues all brought vulneraries that Chad could steal if he was anywhere nearby. It's fine though, there'll be plenty more where they came from.     Hmm. Well this is awkward. We don't exactly have a lot of room for error here.   This part's easy to figure out at least. Alen is in no state to be getting attacked, so finishing this guy off is his only real option.     Wolt gets assigned to clean up Wade's mess. He's gained enough stats already that I'm not too upset by this, plus speed is speed.   This feels like a waste of a staff use, but we really need Lot at full health right now.   He's one of the units we're going to have to leave in the danger zone, and he'd come up just short of surviving otherwise.   Dieck bashes in the knight at great cost to his own health. He's in KO range from the archer under the gate now, so we'll need to block him off somehow.   Rutger crits immediately. Triple the myrmidons means triple the damage, that's just math!     Because now I have to move Bors a space further down than I wanted to. At full health Roy barely survives both archers attacking him, but not anymore. Why is this a problem, you ask?  It puts Bors in range of the cavalier that Lance is supposed to be baiting, that's why. Forgetting about him ended two of my earlier attempts. All of the enemies collectively do exactly enough damage to kill Bors... with his lance equipped. With a sword, though, he goes from neutral against the knight and disadvantage against the cav to disadvantage and advantage, respectively, letting him hang on with 2 hp.   That said, putting him there also gets Dieck out of harm's way, which leaves Marcus free to soften up the top archer.     Well? Did it live up to the hype? Four stats is an above average level for him no matter which ones they are, and this one included speed.   Phew. That turn was the high point of the whole chapter, everything after this is just extended cleanup.   Chad's training montage isn't starting off well.     Of course, now that he can't secure a kill, the cav doesn't bother with Bors and sticks to the original plan.  A fresh wave of assorted bandits also spawns in. There's one more after this, I think?   Fortunately for Chad, they're spaced out enough that he'll never be dealing with too many at once, plus he's about to get some help.     We could take the fight to the brigand now, but it's not a very good idea. While thrones and gates have had their avoid bonuses nerfed, mountains and peaks are as much of a pain as ever. Better to let him come to us, where by us I mean Rutger.   Roy snags this kill for what will likely be the last combat he sees this map.   That one space the cavalier moved is enough to let us deal with the rest of the enemies safely. (I'll be leaving him alive another turn so Lance can visit the village instead.)       We finish clearing them out, and our units are still gaining weapon levels faster than actual weapons to use with them. We've also got enough points for Wade and Lot to support if we decide we want that.   Dieck gives Rutger one of his swords so he's not wasting more killing edge uses on the brigand.       Some rearranging so our healers have something to do.   Oh yeah, Merlinus is close enough to reach the village this turn.  : We're not about to abandon the land in which we were born. Please take this sword. It was given to us generations ago. A gift from the marquess.  How many generations back do you think you'd have to go to find a non-lovely Marquess Laus? We know Darin was an rear end in a top hat too, so.   Holy poo poo, is every NPC in this chapter a repeat? Maybe it's actually the same dude, and all balding men with mustaches can teleport, not just Merlinus. : We'll all suffer under Bern's iron-fisted rule. But you just might be able to stop them. Here is something that will help you fight a little longer. Think carefully before using it.  Some of the stat boosters have had their numbers adjusted based on the relative value of the stats iirc. I forgot to check, but I believe this only gives 5 HP, while the energy ring Clarine starts with is still 2 strength/magic.  Lance is going to start heading back east to help with the pirates now.     More shopping! I buy a hand axe for Wade, a javelin because Marcus has already gone through half of his, and a spare iron sword and lance.  Shanna's got just enough move left to hide behind the cliff, out of reach of the cavalier.   Chad's nowhere close to killing the pirate yet, so we set up Lugh to take a bigger chunk out while Chad heals. As a bonus, this also puts him in range to potentially steal the cavalier from Lance.     It works too! I mean, except for the part where he gets hit again, and also the level is bad. I know I talked you up before, Chad, but your fast level ups aren't worth anything if you don't use them to actually gain stats!    As a matter of fact, Chad is the only one of our units that gets hit this enemy phase.   Last house.  : Some weapons completely reverse the weapon triangle! For instance, you might find an axe that will work well against swords.This hits a little different when we've literally already encountered a reaver weapon.   Alen's close to leveling, so Rutger moves out of the way for him to get the kill.   Did a bunch of you conspire before the map started to only get bad bulk focused levels? It's getting a little old.   This is also just for a level.   AHHHHH     You're lucky I don't just let you die for that, but at least it's a good excuse to show off the mend staff. It gives a whole one extra experience over heal.   We could try and get Wade the kill now, but if they both attack and Wade misses, there won't be anyone left to pull him to safety.   In hindsight, we could've just healed him instead like I'm about to do anyway, but whatever.   It may just be Elen.png, but after the streak of levels before it I'm certainly not complaining.   At this point, just assume that anyone not helping fight the boss* is getting into position to start grinding support points. *not actually the boss   Chad still can't kill the pirate, so Lance has to do it for him. At least someone still knows how to get decent levels.       Chad sets up to bait the next pirate, and Shanna doubles back to the armory again because I happened to notice that Wolt has gone through nearly his entire bow. That would have been embarrassing later.     On enemy phase, Wade makes such an enticing target that the paladin is even willing to risk another halberd hit. To be fair, it is a lot of damage.  Wait, that's it? What about Chad?  Oh, the steel axe pirate moved first. Rude.   As you can see, Wade needs to be at basically full health to go another round, plus I'd like to get Clarine a level and burn through the rest of Elen's heal staff before we leave.     Luckily he doesn't need to roll the dice on the halberd again. It'd be nice if Wade gained some defense soon, but otherwise his prospects look good; I'm especially happy with how well his speed is coming along.     Now all that's left are the reinforcements, including the set that just showed up. We're going to send Clarine and Marcus to help with the pirates, since apparently Chad can't dodge for poo poo.       Rutger and Alen get ready to repeat their one-two punch against the brigand while Merlinus starts distributing our purchases.   It's amazing how much faster this goes when you're dealing twice as much damage and not eating counterattacks.     Oh hey, a weapon level increase that's actually relevant!  Shanna's still hurting from her encounter with the knight way back before Rutger showed up, so she scoots over a space to get healed by Clarine next turn.            Riveting gameplay, I know. Honestly I should have bought stuff in a different order, I'm probably going to end up giving that lance back to Shanna eventually.   I'll have more to say next turn, but for now have these levels Chad and Lugh got from taking out another pirate together.   Okay, so all of those pirates are still at full health, but I have a plan that lets us get rid of both of the ones we can reach.   First Clarine patches Lugh up after a hit he took last turn.   Then Chad and Lance team up against the first pirate.   Thanks to leveling up and this guy rolling low on speed, Lugh is able to double him for most of his HP.  Here's where things get risky. We only need Shanna to hit once, but if she doesn't and the pirate does then we're in trouble. If Lugh had dodged it'd be fine, but we only have Marcus left to move and he can't rescue both of them.  Strike one!  Strike two!  But Shanna comes through in the end!   Really though it was kind of a pointless endeavor, because we still have to sit around twiddling our thumbs for a turn until the last enemy comes ashore.  We've got another support ready to pop, by the way.   Thanks Chad, you're a real pal.   At long last, the map is empty.     Conveniently, I also hit both of my healer goals this turn, so we can go ahead and seize.  ...Which ones? I don't even mean it in a "ha ha, the game doesn't expect you to treat everything as a rout map" kind of way. The bandits, sure, but I genuinely don't see how the average player finishes this chapter without defeating every Laus aligned enemy. : Thank you. Tell everyone to get some rest.  : I never would have thought that Lord Erik would turn on Lycia. I thought the Lycian League's bond was stronger than this. Cowardly Bern! Underhanded tactics!Roy's perspective is ahistorical now that we have FE7 to look back on. Maybe everything about the assassination plot got hushed up after the fact?  : Oh... I'm sorry. I wasn't even thinking about you... : We'll now proceed west towards Ostia. But now we know that even the other marquesses can't be trusted. With Lord Hector gone, I fear there may be no peaceful end for this war. Princess, do you plan on returning to Bern? If you need anything--   : My brother is wrong. He is pulling the dragons into a human war. If he thinks this is how he can free the world, I must stop him. : Yes, he has always been obsessed with "liberating the world." He said that's the purpose of this war. : I do not know... My brother is not so power-hungry that he would attempt to conquer the world. I'm sure he believes strongly in what he's done to Elibe. Regardless, that doesn't excuse the violence he has caused... You know, I never really thought about it before, but Zephiel's plans and motivations are very similar to Lehran's in the Tellius games.   Next time: More bandits or something I guess? Idk, it's still a pretty fillery chapter.
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Sep 22, 2022 22:07
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Shei-kun posted:I see Fire Emblem LP Tradition has returned with the bad and unusual levels It's also an interesting insight into how our brains work, because in reality, Bors is the only one doing that badly overall. Even Shanna lagging so far behind on total stats gained isn't that big a deal, because I would absolutely trade two regular Shanna levels for a point of defense. And yet, the bad levels still stick out in our minds more than the levels that are good but not exceptional.
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Sep 23, 2022 15:59
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I mean, maybe? I'm probably not gonna go too far out of my way to unlock stuff, but once we're out of the early game if I've got something available I'll probably do a quick informal poll of "should we pull the trigger on this y/n?". Not sure what that has to do with the post you quoted tho. E: Also, in regards to your other post, I'm not sure why you're so attached to the old translation patch's names when ~95% of these characters have official localizations now, and on its own I don't really have a problem with it, but I'd appreciate it if you weren't a dick about "correcting" other people's spelling itt. Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Sep 23, 2022 |
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Sep 23, 2022 22:05
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Yeah, I don't necessarily disagree with any of that. Other than the early promotion I think we're mostly saying the same thing, even if it seems like I'm making GBS threads on her a lot. I'll also admit to being a bit biased on that front; my first Shanna was pretty bad: Although now that I look at it, if it weren't for the HP and strength she'd actually be right on her averages, and even a little ahead in resistance.
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Sep 24, 2022 23:53
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That's gonna be hard when the only saves left where that Shanna exists are after being locked into endgame. You can thank the link arena for that screenshot.
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Sep 25, 2022 01:06
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Cool, cool, Rutger just missed a 93 and then a turn later he got hit by two ~30s and died. The run was probably over at that point anyway. If not him, then someone else. I've got a new plan that's going to generate more resets upfront, but should leave me in a much better spot once it works. E: 
Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Sep 26, 2022 |
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Sep 25, 2022 23:08
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I haven't been calling a lot of attention to it, but it's definitely A Thing with the increased hit rates that you really want high luck to go with your speed in order to dodgetank consistently. Anyway, the game did cooperate eventually, so an update should be coming hopefully either tomorrow or Friday.
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Sep 28, 2022 18:43
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     I know it's not the real reason for the chapter title, but it's amusing to think that fighting off random bandits is, like, the platonic ideal of Fire Emblem. Also the enemy starts out already deployed this time around, that's neat.  : Our boys just got back from scouting the village. : Then let's go get our tribute.: But Boss, something's different today. There's an army stationed real close to us! They say it looks like the Lycian Army.: Lycia? Then there's nothing to worry about. They were almost wiped out by Bern. We can handle a few battered soldiers.Wow, rude much? Dory must've heard about all the bad levels we got last time. : You're right, Boss!: They've probably got some valuables on them too! Still, don't get careless. : Ready then? Let's mop up these losers, boys!  : Hey, you, wait just a second... Alright, this guy is definitely just following us around at this point. : Yes. How may I help you?: Milord, I beg you! Please, rid us of the bandits terrorizing our village!: Bandits?: There's a group of bandits that made their base in the castle near the cliffs.: Where are the castle guards?: They fled once they heard that the Lycian Army was defeated by Bern... We villagers were left on our own. Our days are spent in fear of bandit attacks.It's often hard to get a good read on the passage of time in these games, but this seems to suggest that it's already been at least a few weeks since the events of chapter 3. Long enough for the bandits to have made themselves at home, anyway. : ......: We have no one else we can ask. Please, help us!: Lord Roy, we must keep our pace towards Ostia...: Yes, I know. But we can't simply ignore people in need of help!  You're not fooling anybody, Merlinus, you knew exactly how this was going to go down from the very start. : Please use the gate to the west. It'll take you right to the castle.: Thank you.: I'll arrange for the gate to be opened when you give the signal.  Is OK Boomer totally dated by now? This feels like it merits an OK Boomer.   So! We've got brigands in the south...  ...fighters in the north...  ...and this guy right next to our starting formation for some reason. I guess he's one of those scouts the bandits were talking about?  Waiting on either of the two spaces that these cavaliers are guarding will trigger the gate to open, but we don't want to do that until we're absolutely sure we're ready. Doing so also spawns a bunch of extra enemies around the castle, and it's easy to get overwhelmed if the chokepoint isn't 100% secure.  Three range lets these nomads shoot us through the gate without us tripping it, but it's actually kind of a good thing? If they can shoot us, Wolt can shoot them, and the more enemies we can eliminate beforehand, the better.   Not too much to worry about as far as equipment goes; unlike the chapter 3 mage, these guys are only packing basic fire tomes.   There is one nasty surprise waiting for us near the castle, though. We've seen worse in terms of raw attack, but the speed stat it's attached to could be an issue.   As for Dory himself, he's another lesson in getting the boss to switch to his ranged weapon. 31 attack with a fat crit rate? No thanks.   First thing before I forget, let's get this to Shanna just in case she needs something slightly stronger without resorting to the wing spear. (she will not)   Honestly, the safest way to approach this map is probably to ignore the gate entirely and just send everyone the long way around in one big death blob, but where's the fun in that? Marcus and Wolt team up to take out the first guard, with the former in position to hopefully lure over one of the nomads.   No one's in range to deal with the other guard, so we set up a wall around Wolt instead. This is the entirety of team chokepoint, it consists of most of our tankier units and ranged specialists... and also Roy and Shanna. And yes, I remembered to have Elen grab the fresh heal staff that Lance has been carrying around.     Brigands are still annoyingly fast. Not enough that we're at risk of getting doubled ourselves, but enough that we'll usually have to devote multiple units to burning through their large HP pools.   So here's the deal: Wade is the only one that starts close enough to the forts to reach them on turn 1, and thanks to his speed gains he actually one rounds almost every fighter on the map. There's a wrinkle though; these two together just barely do enough damage to kill him, so he needs to dodge at least one of them. Not unlikely thanks to the fort's bonus, but by no means guaranteed.   Ignore this cavalier, by the way, he doesn't actually matter. Wade can take a hit from him and either one of the fighters and survive.   Anyway, obviously you wouldn't be seeing this if the plan failed, but please pretend to be impressed when Wade succeeds.   The rest of the squad advances, and we're ready to roll the dice.     Oh. Well that was easy!  One weird quirk of this map is that around half of the enemies all aggro immediately. It's actually kind of a pain; we're going to be stuck at those forts for a while before it's safe to advance any further.   Clearly Wade is hogging all of the dodging energy for the turn.   Not quite enough to pull this off, though. It's fine, the fort will undo some of it.  Also on the list of enemies that start moving right away: these two brigands. So much for baiting a nomad, but at least this way Marcus doesn't get shot at.  Speaking of nomads, one of them also advances... north.   Oh right, there's something vaguely resembling plot happening in this chapter.  : I will, Father Yoder. : How am I supposed to guard him if he keeps disappearing?And now for a brief peek behind the curtain, in more ways than one. Remember back in the first update when I said that there was a folder with all the new portraits? Well that was only mostly true. There are a handful of spritesheets not included in it that I've had to extract myself, mostly generic enemies like soldiers and the bandit from the start of this chapter, but also Dorothy's. Oh, there's a Dorothy portrait in there, but it's not the one that's actually in the game. From what I've been able to gather, one of the more recent updates to the hack debuted a brand new custom portrait for her, which then received a lot of backlash for, uh, taking too much creative license with her design. A subsequent update reverted it back to a previous version, but apparently they forgot to change it in the assets folder. Here's the portrait in question, incidentally:  Personally I'd agree that if we're assuming a consistent artstyle across all characters, this looks a bit too different from vanilla Dorothy, though it's a perfectly fine portrait on its own merits. We now return to your regularly scheduled womanizing priest.   : Come now, don't be like that. We can sit by the fire in the dark of night as I soothe you with my calming sermons... : Wonderful. Dorothy... : I'll take my leave now. : Oh my... Look what you've done now, Dorothy. That expression on your face scared her away. : Saul, you can't try to woo every girl you meet.: You make it sound like a bad thing! I simply offer my helping hand to any poor souls in need.FE6 characterizations are thin enough that it's hard to really judge where Saul falls in the grand scheme of Fire Emblem philanderers. I feel confident saying that he's less lovely about it than Sylvain, at least.   : Did you have some reason for interrupting my good work?: Oh, right. The Lycian Army is apparently somewhere around here.: Truly?! Is Princess Guinivere still with them?: Yes, if the reports from the St. Elimine Church are accurate.Has Elen been snitching on us?  : Then we must make haste! Let us join them.: ......: What's the matter, Dorothy?: You only want to join them because Princess Guinivere is said to be so beautiful.: Don't be ridiculous... Come now, hurry along.: Yes, let's go! Somehow they leave in this direction while completely ignoring the battle and our army. In a meta sense, I assume this is because Saul has more plot stuff to do at the end of the chapter, and if we could recruit him now they'd have to account for his potential death. I don't think IntSys had come up with the concept of "retreat" quotes yet.   Look at all the enemies up here! This turn we will be defeating *checks notes* two of them.   Here's why. We can't reach far enough to take out the whole group, and there's too many ranged enemies to put together much of a defensive line.   Rutger definitely did not get hit by this and then proceed to eat a 17% from an axe and die, nosirree!   It's so nice to be able to hit things with hammers now, they solve a lot of problems.   Literally everyone else up here (except Chad) is going to be part of a huge rescue chain to get Wade out of danger. It's not safe to keep Lance there either, so the chain needs a whole second set of steps.   Here's the end result. I think Rutger just barely survives if both the fighter and mercenary hit him, so even a sudden bout of axe magnetism won't be able to ruin this.   Down here, Shanna could finish off the cav, but I have other plans for her. We'll give Roy the honors instead. He also hits A swords from this. I know I've been harping on it a lot, but it's probably one of my few big criticisms about Project Ember's design. Outside of freshly promoted units, weapon levels feel almost entirely vestigial as a mechanic. Nobody likes being stuck stuck at E and D for ages, of course, but the pendulum seems to have swung too far in the other direction.   We're nowhere near ready to open the gate yet, which means we have a lot of time to kill. Might as well rapid fire all these houses in one go.   : The wyvern riders of Bern were terrifying enough... But then a dragon engulfed the Lycian Army in flame... Oh Elimine, please tell me it was a dream...Huh, this guy literally is following us around. Or we're following him around, I guess? Fun fact: we have actually seen this portrait before, but it wasn't in chapter 3.    : That'll stop enemy reinforcements from showing up!  : They can cross mountains and a bandit on a peak is a force to be reckoned with. Dreadful. Just dreadful...Now see, this is better timing for tutorials. Both of these are things that we technically could've observed last chapter, but we weren't really in a position to do anything with the information. The forts were unreachable by anyone but Shanna, and the brigand had no reason to stay on the mountain unless we gave him one.   Wolt takes a free potshot. Hopefully once this guy moves again the nomad will fill in his spot.   Shanna gets healed before taking off into the mountains to make a nuisance of herself.   No reason to move Bors, so let's go ahead and end turn.   Yeah, I'm pretty sure Rutger was completely safe, since the fighter isn't even bothering to try to go for the kill.   Strength!  And also this. I guess we could have him take Rutger's killing edge now, so it isn't completely irrelevant.   See, now this I'm fine with, since the odds technically weren't in his favor.  The brigands have moved into the mountains now, which means trying to hit them with any more chip damage is going to be a tall order, but also...   Wolt's actually, like, fast? But also these nomads are just kind of bad. Sucks that he can't quite pull off the ORKO, though.  Is this the turn we open the gate??? Haha, no. Maybe after those brigands are dealt with.   There is good news, though. They've moved far enough east that Shanna can sneak past them to harass this mage.   She can't actually go two rounds against him, though, so they're just going to sit here and plink at each other for a few turns while she burns through her vulnerary.   Lugh and Wolt are the only ones we can bait these brigands with and have it be worthwhile, since we don't have any ranged swords down here and lol javelins. Lugh moves into position to do that while Wolt finishes off the nomad for another level in bows.   The only other notable thing that happens with team chokepoint is this level that Elen gets healing Wolt back up. Oh, and Roy has a support ready with him.  That other nomad has nearly reached our team up north, and is the new problem unit keeping us from advancing.   This mage really needs to die now, though, so we'll have to set up another rescue chain for Rutger.   It really is just the worst feeling, isn't it?   These mercenaries take too much effort to kill. That's three whole units I've had to devote to him, if you include Rutger's counterattack.     Thankfully, now that we're close enough for our mounted units to cross over the forts and back again, these rescue chains don't need to be quite so convoluted.   Lot can one round some of the fighters too, but he has to break out the steel axe to do it, which slows him down just enough that he misses out on a few doubles that Wade doesn't, not to mention the shakier hit rates.     I opt to have Clarine prioritize healing Rutger over getting Lance back on the battlefield. My hope is that leaving Merlinus with a passenger is enough to entice this fighter to target him, if he wasn't already going to.   Enemy phase! Chad's combat is starting to approach... well, not good exactly, but passable enough that we don't have to specifically set up ways for him to contribute.   The plan worked, and Merlinus even survived! Now he just needs to do that 33 more times in order to level up.     Lugh achieves the best possible result, while Shanna achieves the expected one.  Finally, the nomad makes another futile attempt to take a chunk out out of Chad. I guess he learned his lesson from last chapter and figured out how to dodge, unlike some other speedy swordsman that I could name.       Lugh and Wolt both fail to finish off the brigand, which is unfortunate, because now they're at risk of dying and we need to do some unit shuffling to fix it.       I'd have preferred that Roy dropped Wolt instead of Elen, but he's too heavy for Roy to carry. In retrospect, if I'd switched up the move order I could've had Bors available to drop him instead. Oh well.  Two uses remaining.  This is our new ranged threat up here for this turn, but for once we can eliminate enough of the other enemies that he won't be a problem.   After all the >90s I've managed to miss both on- and offscreen, trusting in even less reliable hit rates is probably gonna make me nervous for a while.     Our fastbois take out two more fighters. Rutger doesn't pull out a crit to conserve uses, but he does get his first level! It's got all the important stuff, though some luck would be nice.     Wade, on the other hand, is not rewarded quite as well for his efforts.   Alen chips the nomad while getting into position for something very silly.   We patch Merlinus up for another round of dubious tanking.    (Also, not sure why I dropped Lance so far back. He would've been fine in the space Merlinus dropped him from.)  Okay, so clearly this plan isn't working.  Thanks Lugh, that's very helpful.   Now he only has to do it 32 more times!   Even though we're just killing time, it's nice that Shanna hasn't flubbed any of these javelin throws. And that's the one hit that Clarine's allowed to take.   I think we've let the other brigand hide on his mountain long enough. Let's give Lugh an easier target to hit, shall we?  Lugh!   It's fine though, it's not like we're lacking in warm bodies to finish the job.     Healing, and setting up some more reliable bait.  One use remaining.  Job done, Merlinus returns to his usual village and shopping duty.   Sorry (not sorry) about blocking you in, Mr. Nomad, how does a spear to the groin sound?   This is... not turning out like my first Chad did. He was ridiculously blessed and somehow ended up as one of both the strongest and tankiest units I had available for the next map.     Now that all the aggroed enemies are dealt with, we can finally relax up here a little. Perfect timing, because things are about to get real hectic for the other team. That's right: we're opening the gate next turn.   So uh, apparently that mercenary doesn't move, because this is the only action Alen saw on enemy phase.     Meanwhile, Wolt trades blows for another solid level.   Shanna has chipped the mage down enough that she could theoretically go in for the kill, but she won't get the chance for a while.  We'll let these guys stew a bit while we check in with the northern squad.   Hmm, that's not great. We'd better hope the mercenary really doesn't move, because I did not budget for Alen leaving this archer alive.   Somehow, despite being one of the lowest leveled members of our army, Lance also has some of the best overall stats. Probably because he refused to participate in that streak of awful levels last time.   Merlinus may not be seeing any more combat, but it's still nice to heal him just as a common courtesy. Think of it as Clarine apologizing for the way she treated him in her recruitment.   : It was once wielded by a knight called Sir Gant. The stories say he bested many a foe with this lance! Gant's lance, huh? I wonder if it's been changed at all-   Holy poo poo! Yeah, the manga tie-ins all got a huge glowup. Gant's lance in vanilla was basically just a midpoint between iron and steel, now it's functionally identical to silver, except with over twice the uses and only at D rank. This ought to be great for helping weaker units *cough*Shanna*cough* punch above their weight.   Everyone else forms a wall, because I still don't entirely trust the merc not to move and Alen at least has a reasonable shot at dodging enough attacks to survive.   After some thought, Roy is probably the best choice to trigger the gate. He's too squishy to hold the chokepoint and can't shoot from behind it, so this is his way of contributing.   : Cunning little weaklings......What did you think that was? A weird looking mountain?  That's... a lot.     If we were to let the enemy have their choice of attackers, we'd be sunk; there's just too many different threats to prepare for. Luckily we can get all up in their grill to force favorable matchups. Neither Marcus nor Bors are in any real danger from these mercenaries, and they'll do solid damage in return while leaving them alive to block other enemies from attacking.     Lugh can't do anything to help without throwing a wrench in that plan, but Wolt can pick off one of the nomads in relative safety.   Unfortunately, the other one is still lurking, which means Shanna has to get the hell out of dodge. This specific move was probably a mistake; it would have made more sense to have her rejoin the main force to help maneuver people around.  Moment of truth.   All according to plan so far...     Alen's safe, by the way, the other merc did in fact stay put. Although I don't think I realized at the time that even after that he still needed to pull off a dodge to not die.   The protagonist flag continues to paint a target on Roy's back, and that's all for now. Thanks to the movement order, none of the mages got to attack despite Bors being in range, but you won't see me complaining.  Believe it or not, if it wasn't for this one full health merc (he's the one with the silver sword, in case you forgot), we'd actually be able to clear out the whole pack except for the brigands while also keeping everyone safe.  Instead we'll have to execute a full retreat. We can't pull the same trick as last time, because now the mercs will die, and moving the chokepoint left a space leaves us too exposed.   We do have enough wiggle room to let Wolt do his thing again, though. With any luck, he'll be dominating archer duels for a long time to come.   Here's what retreating looks like, with Bors positioned to finish off both wounded mercs. I realized immediately after that this heal was actually unnecessary; I was expecting him to have to tank two mages, but with the way they're positioned only one can reach him.  Then we do with Shanna what we should have done in the first place.   Looks good to me. With that squared away, let's check back up north.  It's starting to feel a little empty up here, though that fort is looking rather conspicuous right about now... At any rate, let's see how much progress we can make.   Lot isn't exactly off to an inspiring start.   Rutger and Chad team up against Mr. Refuses-to-move-for-no-reason. Seriously, most stationary enemies are at least guarding a chokepoint or something, but not this guy.   Unfortunately we can't kill both remaining enemies, so Alen has to pull back to get healed. Lance takes his spot to at least finish off one of them.     Healing and shopping to end the turn. We buy three door keys and one of everything else. Including the one we already have, that's enough for one whole side of the next map, saving Chad from needing to backtrack.     If not for the numbers being different, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was just the same screenshot twice. Also Bors can steal Marcus's silver lance now.   Some mismatched ranges. I meant to have someone swap Lot off of his hand axe but forgot, and Bors could have equipped his javelin to get some chip in on the mage while still killing the mercs.   FIghters are going to start appearing from both forts at the end of every turn, but they're really not much of a threat compared to everything else we've had to deal with this chapter.     Speaking of things we've already had to deal with, Shanna can finally tie up this loose end, and wow, clearly I need to complain about Shanna in the thread more often if these are the kinds of levels she gets in response.   Silver weapons are no joke! Even Bors takes almost half his max HP in damage going a round against this guy.     Marcus and Lugh clean up after him, and once again we have a unit stuck on 99 EXP.   Wolt breaks his bow deleting one of the mages. Part of it's that he hasn't had anything else to use, but it still says something that Wolt of all people is our first unit to have consistently seen enough combat to go through an entire weapon.   It's finally time to consider luring out these brigands, but we still can't get too careless. Reminder that there's double digit speed backing up that attack stat, so just parking Bors in front of them isn't going to cut it.     Roy's a solid choice (and also the only choice right now). He's even improving himself in preparation!   I genuinely barely remember what rank this is. B, maybe?  That's all for, uh, I guess I can't really call them team chokepoint anymore, since we sort of abandoned it and all.   To reiterate: this guy? Not a concern. But we can't kill him yet and I don't want to accidentally block his replacement and lose out on experience, so we'll give him some space anyway.   Chad's high enough level now that I sometimes want him setting up kills rather than the other way around.     Both cavaliers are doing really well, honestly. It's actually weirdly disappointing in a way, since they'd be the main stars of the show at this point in vanilla, too. Give other people a chance to shine, will you?   Uhhhh sure Clarine, whatever you want. Just as long as this isn't leading to a repeat of last chapter.   I'm gonna be indecisive about moving these guys for the next few turns as the balance of reinforcements shifts around a bit, but for now they're going south.     Really we could've initiated on him and he'd be dead now anyway, but it's fine, there's no rush.   I refuse to be surprised by this anymore, it's just how things are going to be from now on.   Pew pew!     Really Lugh, again? At least you still leveled up, even if it wasn't very good.   Roy will just have to pick up the slack, I guess.   I'm glad Dieck got the chance to one round a fighter just like his subordinates.      He absolutely can't handle the brigand right now, though, so we'll need to send in someone to cover for him. Marcus can do the job, after he gets healed anyway.  Shanna's feeling a little aimless now that there's only axe users left. Maybe there'll be something for her to do later?     Seriously, these fighters aren't much more than experience pinatas, and it's not even a lot of experience!   Rutger could in theory reach the boss this turn and is still probably the unit best suited to dealing with him, but I'd rather not risk it while the other brigand is still in play.   I dunno, just hide behind the castle I guess?   Axe magnetism seems to have worn off for now, hopefully it never comes back.     The fighters have been joined by a pair of cavaliers this time around. They're awfully far away, but maybe this can be a job for Shanna?     We'll have Alen and Lance head that way too, just in case. Wade and Lot can take their place to help out Chad.     I'd really like to give Bors and Dieck one last chance to impress us before they have to contend with deployment limits, so we'll be feeding them these last few kills.   : Hey, you. Wanna see why?I don't doubt it, that's why we're trying to get you to unequip it!   Don't be fooled by the animation by the way, the wind edge still targets defense.   Wait, was the sword glowing the first time?  Oh. Well then. Maybe we don't actually need Dory to switch off of the killer axe?  Yeah, this seems safe enough. (I say, knowing full well that there's been multiple instances in this attempt alone that would suggest otherwise.)   : No... I don't wanna... die...Never a doubt!   He got speed again at least?     Dieck's not in any danger, this is just to make sure he doesn't steal kills from Bors.   Good, there's literally nobody else for the fighter to attack. Now to let nature run its course.       I'll admit I was a little worried those cavaliers would decide to approach from the south instead, but everything worked out.     Hmm, we might actually be able to finish on this turn. Apologies to Shanna for wasting her time; she still can't reach anyone.     The Christmas cavs can, but sadly Lance comes up short of ORKOing either of them.   Maybe if we gave him a stronger sword though...     Jackpot!     This is Chad's best level yet. Maybe I shouldn't have been so dismissive of his res growth, he's hitting it an awful lot.   Only the southern enemies left. It won't be long now...   This is also Bors's best level, but that's not saying much.       One last kill, some healing for the road, and we're done here. We actually cleared this one turn faster than both of the previous chapters, who'd have thought?  : A priest from the St. Elimine Church wants an audience with you... and Princess Guinivere!Dun dun duuuun! : He knew that Princess Guinivere was with us?: Yes. I can't imagine how.: Me neither... I'll see him alone.Roy showing a bit of his pragmatic side here.  : Princess?: Tensions between my brother and the church have worsened as of late. I do not believe that they would attempt anything underhanded.Not sure what those statements have to do with each other, but OK. : I see. Merlinus, allow this priest in. : I am Saul, an acolyte of the St. Elimine Church. : Oh... And you must be Princess Guinivere! You are as beautiful as the rumors say!: Pardon me...?: Ahem... Forgive me. Your Highness, I wish to know the location of the Fire Emblem. You have it with you, do you not? : Bern's head church tells us the Fire Emblem disappeared from the Shrine of Seals. And you also went missing at exactly the same time.: ......Still doesn't explain how you knew where to find her. I'm sticking with my "Elen is an informant" theory. : I was sent by the church to confirm the truth. Why did you take the Fire Emblem?: ...I wished to stop my brother.: Your brother... Zephiel, the king of Bern.: Yes.We know who he is! : Do you know what the Fire Emblem is used for?: ...It's the key that awakens a sword that was used to slay the dragons long ago. That was what my father told me anyway.Not the whole story, of course, but Desmond wasn't wrong per say. : I am unsure how exactly the Fire Emblem or the sword work. My brother seemed to worry about the Fire Emblem falling into enemy hands. ...Extraordinarily so.: So you took the Fire Emblem to make the king believe it fell into enemy hands? All in an attempt to stop his conquest?: Yes... but the war continued anyway.: And what will you do now?: ...Must I reveal my plan at this moment?: Ah, so Your Highness has a plan.: Yes. I have not given up hope of settling this war without further bloodshed.: I see. In that case, I will accompany you on your journey.: If Roy allows it.Oh right, Roy's still here. He's been awfully quiet this whole time.   : Of course, Princess.  Next time: A prep screen! Wow!
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Sep 30, 2022 23:21
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Hey, so I'm planning on putting an up to date roster in the second post as a quick reference for deployment votes, and I've got a couple questions: - Is just the stats page enough, or do people really want to see inventories and weapon ranks/supports too? Obviously weapons can just be traded around, but as we collect more Prfs, it could be helpful to keep track of who has them, maybe? I don't mind being thorough, but I don't want to add a bunch of unnecessary clutter if nobody actually cares. - I'm either gonna put all the screenshots behind black bars or do the whole thing in the test poster and link to that instead, to avoid accidentally spoiling newcomers. Is there a preference one way or the other?
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Oct 1, 2022 22:33
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I already said I don't give a poo poo about spoiling FE6, I meant more as in spoilers for the LP itself, stuff like who does and doesn't end up getting used. Unless your argument is that the thread has already attracted as much of an audience as it's likely ever going to, which, fair I guess.
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Oct 2, 2022 19:45
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mandatory lesbian posted:Sorry! No i meant more that this is a pretty niche subject matter so most likely everyone who cares is already here. I dont mean to be...like negative of you or your content! Just like, i dont think anyone downloading ember is gonna be all that caring of if gameplay is spoiled since most of us downloading it like the additional info! Nah you're fine, I didn't actually think you meant it that way. Honestly using the test poster will be extra convenient anyway because it means I can just link to it again in voting posts themselves without taking up thread real estate.
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Oct 2, 2022 21:08
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  Thria is governed by Lord Orun, Hector's half brother. Orun's home castle seems a safe place to stay. There's some debate as to how exactly Orun is related to Hector iirc. I'm not sure if the original JP script is actually ambiguous about it or if it's just retroactive confusion caused by FE7.  However, even Thria is within Bern's influence...   Technically this comes after the prep screen, but I won't tell if you won't.  Why Cath, what a fancy new portrait you have!  : Hmm, looks like the north hall has all the valuables, but with that security-- ...Are those footsteps? : Yes, milord, the soldiers are stationed all around the castle. : Once they're inside and have their guard down, ambush them, just as with Lord Orun.: Yes, milord.Orun seems like he was kind of bad at being in charge, tbh. Not only was he employing an advisor that practically screams  , said advisor seems to have easily turned all of his rank and file soldiers against him.: I want Princess Guinivere alive. The rest you can do with as you wish. Now go. : First the Silver Wolf's granddaughter, and now Princess Guinivere... With so much to offer, Bern is certain to allow us to join them.  : I wonder. That man said he was Lord Orun's advisor...: Wagner? Did something seem wrong with him?Oh you know, just his clothes, face, general demeanor... : He seemed to be in control of everything, as if he were the lord. And Lord Orun is so ill he can't even meet his guests? It all seems strange...: Now that you mention it, you have a point. : There seem to be an awful lot of soldiers patrolling the castle. : What? No... Sounds like Dorothy's been practicing her ventriloquism!   Oh wait, never mind, it's just you. : And... who might you be?: Aw, I'm not one to talk about myself. I overheard that Wagner guy in the main hall though. He said they're gonna ambush you guys.: Lord Orun would never do that!: Oh yeah, he's dead, I think. Wagner assassinated him or something.: What?!Not sure why Roy's acting so incredulous now when he was literally just talking about how shady the situation is. : He wants to capture you all and turn you over to Bern. : We can't trust her word so easily!: It's up to you whether you trust me or not. But don't say I didn't warn ya! : Let's spring his trap. We'll pretend like we're leaving. If Wagner is after us, he'll try to persuade us to stay.: If you wanna get out, go through the north hall! That'll bring you to the courtyard, so you'll be outta here in no time. Good luck!Lol, I just realized that Cath is totally setting us up. She already knows the north hall is the most heavily defended part of the castle, the only reason to send us that way is as a distraction so she can get to the loot.   : I will escort you back into the castle, so please follow me.: My apologies, Sir Wagner. I have just received a report of grave importance. Please excuse us, but we must take our leave now.: Surely you would appreciate a warm bed after being in the field for so long. Lord Orun would be furious with me if you left without accepting our hospitality.: Don't worry, I shall tell Lord Orun myself that you are not to blame. I ought to at least offer him a greeting anyway. Please show us to his room.: As I said, milord, Lord Orun is ill and cannot accept guests.: If we cannot see him, then we must be off. : ......: You leave me no choice then! Guards! Attack! Kill them all, but leave Princess Guinivere alive!  : If we go this way, we'll be leaving our rear open to attack!Cath!!  : Then we'll seize the whole castle! Everyone, follow my lead!  Before that, though...   There isn't really anything different about the preparations screen. Now that we've got a chance to check out the convoy, though, I need to issue a correction regarding a previous update. The angelic robe is in fact still worth 7 HP, and also I might have been talking completely out of my rear end about stat boosters getting changed at all, at least mechanics-wise. Oops.  \At any rate, here's what we're dealing with, minus Saul and Dorothy spawning in once the map starts. Lots of rooms that we can't see into.     Last chapter's enemies were still kind of underleveled, but that's done now. With the exception of these two knights guarding the side entrances, every enemy on the map is level 7 minimum.     Mages are also back to carrying around more advanced tomes, and most of them have vulneraries, too. Probably not gonna have time for Chad to steal all of them, but we might be able to snag a few.   The only other regular enemy to specifically watch out for is this soldier, who's going to make sending any of our cavalry up the center a risky proposition.   Wagner's another boss who's more just annoying to kill than actually dangerous, outside of targeting the weaker defensive stat on most of our army.   Also, now that we have a dark tome to look at, we can see how the magic schools compare. Thunder is still slightly better on the whole, but the reason anima is so dominant in base FE6 is that dark is arbitrarily way heavier (and light magic may as well not exist), and that's no longer the case here. Vanilla thunder only has 2 weight. 2! That's all I've got for now, which means it's time to: ________________________ Vote   Current Stats There's room for 12, including Roy, and we need to bring Chad for doors and chests, which means you can pick 10 other units. Reminder that Merlinus is a valid option if you want. Also, while it might be tempting to immediately dump some of our more... underperforming characters, this chapter is a bit of a difficulty spike from prior experience, and we're still not exactly swimming in units that can take hits. Voting will be open for 48 hours, plus however long it takes me to check the thread afterwards. (So probably close to another 8 unless I'm up extra late for some reason.)
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Oct 4, 2022 08:06
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I have to imagine it's a solved issue in the hacking community by now, and thus a deliberate choice on the dev's part, but FE6 isn't nearly as well documented as 7 or 8, so who knows. If it is intentional, I can't say I necessarily agree with the decision, but I can at least respect that it makes the player consider their actions carefully, both in terms of devoting inventory slots to stat boosters before the battle, and finding a free turn to use them once the battle starts.
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Oct 4, 2022 14:32
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Voting is closed! Rutger: 10 Clarine: 8 Alen: 7 Lance: 7 Shanna: 7 Bors: 6 Wolt: 6 Wade: 6 Elen: 5 Dieck: 5 Lugh: 5 Marcus: 3 Merlinus: 3 Lot: 3 LPer's choice: 33 As it is, Elen, Dieck, and Lugh are all on the bubble, but I've got enough floating votes to produce nearly any result I want. I'll try not to subvert democracy too much; for now I'm gonna use them to tip the scales towards characters that didn't get as much love my first time through, so let's pull all three of them out of the bubble and leave behind... Wolt instead. He's ahead enough on stats that missing one chapter shouldn't hurt him too badly, plus there's going to be two other bow users running around already. That makes the team: Roy, Chad, Rutger, Clarine, Alen, Lance, Shanna, Bors, Wade, Elen, Dieck, Lugh Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Oct 6, 2022 |
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Oct 6, 2022 13:53
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 Here's our squad for today. Three healers (once Saul joins) might be a bit much when there's still no real opportunity cost to bringing vulneraries along, but it's fine.    Other than passing out door keys, I haven't done a lot of inventory shuffling. Shanna has a pseudo silver lance now and Bors commandeered the real thing from Marcus. Lugh is also loaded up with some gifts for our new recruits.  Without further ado, let's get into it... after we check out Saul and Dorothy, of course.    pre:Growths HP 85 Lck 15 Mag 45 Def 35 Skl 40 Res 25 Spd 50     pre:Growths HP 75 Lck 35 Str 70 Def 15 Skl 35 Res 35 Spd 65   Our first task is to break through these two roadblocks so we can access the rest of the map. Shanna opts to show off and crit this guy to death.   Wade gets the other one. Now that Lot's not hogging the steel axe, he doesn't really need the hammer to one round knights anymore, but I choose to save on uses anyway. Occasionally this knight rolled low enough on bulk that he could do it with just the iron axe, which changed the decision calculus.   It's time to split off into teams. Roy has to go left to recruit Sue, and he's taking all our mounted units and door keys with him. We've also got another potential support to add to the pile.   The rest of our sword infantry (and Elen) will be heading to the right. This is the path Cath will take when left to her own devices, so we can have Chad steal her lockpick before funneling her back towards Roy.   That leaves Bors, Lugh, and the newcomers to go up the center. The former two will each be baiting one of these mages.   Before Lugh advances, though, we need to offload the extra equipment he brought.   And that's the turn! It might seem weird that we sent the fewest units where the most enemies are, but... well, you'll see.    : A battle? What is going on out there?It's nice of the game to at least telegraph which of these mystery doors the new unit is hiding behind, even if it doesn't make opening them any less of a slog.   Most of the map aggros right away, but it won't be as much of a problem as last time. Soldiers are really easy to kill, so the numbers work out better for us.   Mercs are still kind of a pain, though. Dieck pulls out a dodge at least, but it mostly just means Elen has nothing to do next turn.   Last up are the mages. Lugh's fast enough to double nearly everyone here.   The big blob of enemies may look intimidating, but after we clean up the mages this soldier is the only one with a ranged option, so we should be safe as long as we don't overextend.   And so we do just that. Technically that one solder that didn't move has a javelin too, but there's enough congestion that he probably won't have room to attack.   Saul can handle at least one turn on the front lines, which is good, since Lugh is a javelin throw away from death right now.   Rather than attack any of the enemies in front of her, Dorothy finishes off one of the mercenaries so the right team can advance more quickly.     Here's what they're up to. It occurred to me later that Dieck could have handled that by himself with the steel blade, but whatever, Rutger needs the experience more anyway.   As tempting as it might be to open this door right now, it's really not a good idea. Chad will just have to sit tight.   On the other side, Shanna is going right back to disappointing me.  I did have a plan to lure over and counterkill this shaman, but thanks to her fuckup it'll have to wait.   I told you soldiers would be easy to kill! Alen also hits D lances here.   I'm warning you now, the levels this time might actually be worse than chapter 4's. This won't be the last time we see HP and nothing else.   A heal for Alen, and we're ready for enemy phase.   Unexpected, but not unappreciated!   These soldiers are weighed down so much by their weapons that even Bors doubles most of them.   Thanks to movement order, neither of the knights take the soldier's place, so this is all the rest of the action.   : Time to pilfer what I can now that security's busy.Also Cath is here, the little poo poo.  She's so sneaky she can even spawn on tiles that aren't traversible, and- wait, that's not the thief sprite!   Sorry assassin fans, but Project Ember thieves promote to rogue. Unlike the other GBA games, they even gain a point of move for doing so, though they lack FE8 rogues' ability to forgo lockpicks. Whether it's too much of a pain to import into FE6 or just a deliberate choice on the hack's part, I couldn't say. Anyway, here's a sneak peek of Cath's stats. Amusingly, Chad is already faster than her. Not that it matters right now; there's still no stat check for stealing.   We'll worry about her later though. For now, the enemies up here have thinned out enough that Bors can go beyond the chokepoint. That dodge from Saul was actually very convenient; it means he can tank for another turn before we need to regroup.   Lugh can't attack without putting himself in danger, so he borrows a vulnerary to heal instead.   Dorothy whips out a crit... on the second attack.   Okay, now let's unlock the door- poo poo poo poo ABORT ABORT.     Yeah, the bottom pair of rooms is rude as gently caress. You basically need a full squad of mounted units right next to the door if you want to deal with the enemies proactively, and there's a diverse enough range of threats that there's no real good option for tanking.  Wade is probably our least bad option, because he forces the enemy to choose between getting WTA and leaving space for everyone to reach him. He does still need to dodge something in order to survive, though.   Dieck eliminates the only other nearby threat.     This is basically the same plan I was going to do on the other side last turn. These shamans are slow and frail enough that some of our units can ORKO them even with their weaker ranged options.   Unfortunately, it does mean we need to leave Dieck unhealed to avoid blocking Cath's route. He'll live.   Here's the reason this side is all mounted units: opening doors is a canto compatible action, letting Shanna retreat out of danger.   This room also has a second axe cav instead of a lance, making it a slightly easier set of enemies to plan for.   Hey look, a full squad of mounted units right next to the door. Lance and Roy are going to take out an enemy each. Ideally they'd be swapping targets, but the numbers didn't work out this run.   Oh gently caress off.   Lance needs to dodge this for the plan to go smoothly. There's potential contingencies, but they're not without risk.   Luckily he doesn't crack under the pressure.   Clarine deliberately puts herself in harm's way to try and coax the nomad out of the room.     Unable to counterkill this shaman, we have to settle for regular killing him.   It's okay I guess, but I'd really like something with more wow factor to counteract the previous levels.     Sadly, Saul is not lucky enough to dodge a second time, so we'll have to adjust our defensive formation next turn.   That's not great, but there's more coinflips on the way.  This is that one soldier that hung back earlier. Bors... doesn't really give a poo poo about javelins.     How you can dodge giant orbs of energy by leaning slightly to one side will forever remain a mystery.   Clarine's gambit didn't work out. Roy's protagonist aura is just too strong, it seems. Despite the kill still being in reach, the right nomad ignores Wade to go after Chad instead??? Honestly I think the AI sometimes just doesn't know how to handle three range bows, I remember weird things like this happening in my first playthrough too.   The other two enemies even win their coinflips.  Finally, Cath- wait. Cath, where are you going?   So it turns out that these two doors are actually equidistant from Cath's starting point.  Which means blocking this door was enough for her to decide to veer left. Luckily she's still closer to the right side overall, so we just need to unblock it for her to come back.   My kingdom for a four stat level.     I spent way too long figuring out a way to arrange these four that protects Saul while letting the others all get attacks in.   This is half just moving Chad out of the way, half hoping to get lucky with that 4% crit chance. No dice there, I'm afraid.   That lets Rutger slide in to continue pissing me off.   A rank swords for Dieck from this.   Elen can take a hit. Sometimes. Enough to squeeze in and heal Wade, at least.     Roy gets in one last kill before Lance lifts him out of there. Partly for his safety, partly to expedite Sue's recruitment.   Might as well start opening doors as long as we've got some downtime. You may have noticed a fatal flaw in the plan to avoid having Chad run all over the map: all the door keys in the world don't do us any good without chest keys to go with them.     Love to get a stat that she can't even do anything with yet.     Last action of the turn is to get Roy in position to open Sue's cell next turn.     It's a quiet enemy phase. Makes sense, given that most of the enemies are dead.   Lugh gets ready to bait this mage while finishing off the last of the initial pack of enemies.   Shuffling and healing. This team's job is basically done for now.   Lockpick acquired!     We could just let Cath go now, but, I mean, she does still have a vulnerary Chad could steal... Might as well box her in for one more turn. Rutger will guard the entrance into the room. Why not just kill the cav instead? Uhhhh no reason.     Just some cleanup on this side. Sue is now within our sights!     Gonna set up a quick rescue chain for Shanna here. Again, no particular reason, just don't want her to get left too far behind. Now for enemy pha-  Um.  UMMM.  So yeah, this is one of those "special" occasions where rear end in a top hat reinforcements make a glorious return. As if these rooms didn't hate you enough, you have exactly two turns to deal with the enemies inside them before they spit out a new set to ruin your day. Honestly, if you know what's coming you can make this chapter way easier by just never opening the bottom rooms at all, but that's the coward's way out, I say. Anyway, let's see if we can survive the onslaught.   I'm not super concerned about the left side. They were able to retreat far enough that only a couple enemies can actually reach them. Rutger, on the other hand...   I have no idea how much danger he was actually in, but this is an incredibly clutch dodge. Not super jazzed about wasting those wind edge uses, though.     The rest of enemy phase is almost anticlimactic in comparison.   Just in case you were wondering if Sue moves on her own now, she does not.   Let's switch things up and start on the right this turn. First on the agenda: relieving Cath of the rest of her belongings. That'll teach her to send us straight into a trap.   Second: borrow the armorslayer to punish this knight for daring to stand in front of Rutger.  While making ourselves invisible, of course. (He's in the process of critting, you see.)     Now we just eliminate enough other enemies that we're in the clear. It's tight, but Dieck can tank both the soldier and the cav.   The middle team is gonna be hanging out by those stairs for a while. These two mages have vulneraries I'd maybe like to steal, and even then, we specifically need to blockade the bottom of the intersection and not the top in order to corral Cath properly.   We get to see Dorothy's first level, though! And also that she faces visible crit rates from thunder tomes, yikes.   Here's the arrangement for now.   Sue may have missed most of the excitement, but better late than never, right? : What's a girl doing in here?That's not an answer to her question, Roy. : You aren't with the castle?: My name is Roy. Who are you?: I am Sue. Are you the one causing that noise outside?: Noise?She probably heard me complaining about all the bad levels. : The noise of a battle.Or that. : Oh, I guess so. We're fighting the castle guards. It's a bit of a long story...: I see. Then I will join your side.: You will? Why?: The soldiers of this castle have done me wrong.: What? What do you mean...?Roy's denseness in this chapter feels almost out of character imo. They did a coup and she's literally been locked up, how much more explanation do you need, dude? : I've kept a bow hidden in this cell with me. I will fight with you.   pre:Growths HP 60 Lck 60 Str 40 Def 10 Skl 50 Res 25 Spd 55   Sue's just close enough that we can have her pretend to contribute right away.   Saving Shanna a lance use isn't nothing, I guess?   This level might as well be, though.   Lance takes out the archer while Clarine gets Alen ready to reenter the fray.   Turns out he didn't actually need the help. (That's a lie, the other soldier would still kill him at 5 hp.)     Enemy phase is pretty boring unless you like the novelty of seeing Elen dodge.   Oh! Also Wade was at 97 EXP. More speed is nice, and I'm glad you decided to start gaining skill, but please Wade, defense.   Cath is on the move, and we're back in control.   Cleanup on the right. This is another crit, I think.     No rude surprises behind this door, unless you count the extra turns we'll have to spend opening the chests.   This side's done, now for the left.   Only one enemy remaining here; Sue and Shanna deliver a one-two punch.   Roy still needs to intercept Cath, but everyone else can start heading north now.   Saul gets a bad level healing chip damage, and we end turn.   Cath is literally the only enemy moving at the moment. There is a new set of reinforcements from the top, though.   We could open this door, but there's more enemies behind it and the archers can reach pretty far into the room, too. Plus, Chad has to come this way eventually anyway.   Nope, this turn will be entirely combat free. We're just gonna have a nice friendly chat and move all our dudes around. : Oops...: Wait!: Hey, cut it out! Let go of my arm! Ow! That hurts!: Oh, I'm sorry. But what are you doing here?: Well, uh, you know, this and that. I'm a busy girl. Ha ha ha...Don't play dumb, Cath, we literally nicked a lockpick off of you. You're carrying a suspicious key in your portrait! : Here? In a battlefield?: Oh yes, precisely BECAUSE this is a battlefield-- Whoops, better watch my tongue...: Do you have some ulterior motive?: Uh...: Wait, is that why you told us the escape route?I'm curious if the scene changes at all if you don't talk to Cath the first time until one of her later appearances. This line still sorta works as Roy referring to a past event, but it'd feel a little weird, I think. : Um, what? Sorry, I'm a little deaf in this ear!: Just who are you?: Don't worry about it! Forget you saw me. Gotta go. Cheers! At least now we can stop worrying about which hallways are and aren't blocked off.     Here's some quick highlights for the rest of the turn.   Throne room's looking awfully crowded now...   It's time to play a game of "How many rescue chains can we do while staying out of range of the mages?" I've mostly given up on the idea of stealing their vulneraries, but I'd still rather not aggro them with so many other enemies running around.         Looks like the answer is two.       Wait no, three!   There's even room to fit in some healing.   I feel bad that Chad has seen so little combat this chapter, but it is what it is.   Bors was still in that archer's range, but he can take it.   We've piled so much of our army into the right corner that the enemy made this goofy line formation.   Shanna, one rounding an enemy without the wing spear? And dodging, no less? Will wonders never cease?     She still needs to get pulled back out, though.   Dorothy could have handled this by herself with the killer bow, and she honestly probably should've.  I overestimated how many rescue chains we could manage, so Bors is going to be stuck holding onto Sue for a turn.     Lugh!  That doesn't make it better!   Here's what things look like after we finish the rest of the rescue chains. Now to let Bors get beat up on some more-   For gently caress's sake, more same turn reinforcements? At least you have to be slacking pretty hard to get caught out by them.   Yes, this is the first four stat level of the whole map.   Ow.   Another benefit of our forces being so lopsided: we actually got the enemy to split up. Also we keep forcing Cath to go back and forth and it's very amusing.     That's the end of the reinforcements up here.       Doors, chests, busywork, etc.   So I flubbed an input, and what the gently caress? You can press A on a rescuer's stat screen to switch to the rescuee?! I assume this has always been a thing in the GBA games and isn't new to the hack?   That's the enemy cavalier's range, Bors is going to get in some counter damage on him. This is also the point where I officially decide that I don't care about the vulneraries anymore.     One problem though: I totally forgot about these knights and have no idea if they move or not. Bors is fine but the others still need to leave.  Wade is heading down to meet the enemies that broke off from the pack, he can handle them easily enough.   We've got so many supports ready to go that I'm starting to worry I'll pop one by accident.   Preparing Bors for more tanking to end the turn.     I'd like to say this was all according to plan, but I didn't even think to check if the cavalier doubled him.   lol   So I've got a plan that eliminates every enemy except one of the soldiers on the right. There's a chance we'll have to leave someone alive in the middle too, but that's okay.     That's right, we're doing yet another big trading chain with the armorslayer!     Here's where we need to take a chance. If Dorothy crits, we have enough actions left to kill the knight, otherwise he gets to live.  Ah well, it was worth a shot.     Lance is still gonna take the armorslayer from her, though. We'll swap him to it for enemy phase in a second.     There, now the knight is going to eat an effective weapon to the face no matter who he tries to attack.     The plan on the right doesn't feel nearly as clever in comparison. We maybe could've swung the other soldier too if Chad had helped out, but like hell am I making this chapter any longer than it already is.     Here's where we are at the end of the turn. Still not sure if those knights move, the mage was blocking the only space they could attack from.     Guess not.     I'm glad the bad levels seem to be well and truly behind us.   And that's every enemy not in the throne room or named Cath.   This mage has elfire, not thunder, so it's safe for Dorothy to bait him.       Just rearranging a bunch of units to avoid wasting healing power, you know, as you do. Clarine also gets a staff rank there.   I decide to take pity on Cath and actually give her a clear path out.  We've already seen most of the units that really struggle with luck, but there's also someone else coming up that we could maybe give these to if we wanted to do something silly.   Ouch. I should mention, afaik Project Ember doesn't use any custom spell animations. (Understandable, they're a huge pain to deal with.) Even characters with prf tomes just reuse existing ones.     And that takes care of that. Now everyone's just gonna crowd around the locked room to alpha strike the enemies inside once Chad opens it.  Well, almost everyone. Some of the mounted units are getting in place for a rescue chain to help get Chad around quicker.   Bye Cath! I sort of wonder if finishing the map with her still on it messes up her recruitment at all. Not enough to test it, though.   After the nightmare of the bottom rooms, this is hardly even a speed bump.       See? Easy. Also what the hell kind of level is that, Sue? I guess it's still got speed too, so it's not completely backwards.     Chad's ferry service is operating smoothly, and we're ready to repeat the process.   This room has yet another chest we need to open. Hooray.   I may have slightly overcommitted to the first room; we're a little short on people who can actually reach these enemies.     As such, we'll need to leave that mage alive for now.     Three chests, three more turns until we can finally get out of here.     In the meantime, let's start working on Wagner and his entourage.   Lugh's been carrying around this one use fire tome for like five turns now.     I half expected the other knight to start moving after his friend got killed, but apparently not.   Saul's 2 for 2 on his defense growth so far, not bad.     My god, a five stat level!     Honestly, as long as Lugh keeps gaining magic I'm happy.   Here's a quick look at lightning, since it'll be a while yet before we can use it. ...Huh, I never noticed before that hovering over a weapon on this screen changes the unit's displayed stats even if they can't equip it.   : Witness my magic... and bow down before its power! Magic? What magic? You just stood there.    We could finish him now if everyone helped out, but it wouldn't let us seize any faster and I'd like to have Dieck get a swing in and level up.     Missing out on bad-level-palooza is doing a lot of work to keep him relevant.     Bullying magic users might just be my favorite thing about three range bows.   Now this is a Sue level that makes sense.       Elen's close enough that I pushed her over the edge, but otherwise we're in a spot now where I care more about conserving staff uses than maximizing healer exp, so let's just sit tight until Chad finishes.     Only one of those turns was spent doing nothing but opening chests, but imagine how much time we could have saved if Chad had been able to contribute to combat instead, to say nothing of ferrying him around. I really think the chapter would benefit from making a chest key available somewhere by now. Supposedly there actually is one in vanilla... in this same chapter... on an enemy you have to steal from... so you still need to spend one of Chad's actions. It's better than nothing, I guess? No idea why it was removed. Good riddance, you tedious, tedious map.   : My grandfather is the strongest warrior in Sacae. People call him the Silver Wolf.While I've looked at Dayan's stats, I've only played through Ilia and can't attest to how accurate this is. : The Silver Wolf... I've heard tales of him. But what are you doing in Lycia? This is a long way from Sacae.: Bern invaded Sacae, so the Kutolah clan decided to take up arms. Grandfather had the women and children escape to Lucia, but...: But?: There was a traitor. The Djute clan, who turned to Bern's side, ambushed us.: ......: We were all separated. I found my way into this land and I was rescued by Lord Orun. But Wagner, his advisor, assassinated Lord Orun and took over the castle.In retrospect it's a little weird that Sue doesn't have any boss dialogue with him. : And that's when you were captured...: Is your army fighting Bern?: Yes, we will fight for as long as it takes.: Then let me join you. Fighting Bern may lead me to Grandfather. Lord Orun deserves vengeance as well.: We're headed for Ostia, in the west. Sacae is in the east, the opposite direction. Is that all right?: I don't mind. No matter where we are, Mother Earth and Father Sky watch over me.Huh. There's not that much to the end of this chapter if Sue is dead/unrecruited, the next scene is really short.  : He says that Ostia is in a state of anarchy! : There's been a rebellion among those who want to surrender to Bern.: Is Lilina safe?: The spy says that she has been taken hostage. The rebels already took over Castle Ostia and are fighting the loyalist soldiers. I do find it funny that Roy's excuse for springing Wagner's trap was an urgent report, and now there actually is one.   Next time: A new challenger approaches!
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Oct 14, 2022 02:31
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Mysticblade posted:Anyway, those levels don't seem too bad? Sure, some people got hp or lck levels but at least Lance seems determined to do everything. Oh for sure, as much as it sucked in the moment, the dud levels were all spread out enough that no single unit got screwed too badly. Eeepies posted:On my own playthrough, I saw that Cath was a pre-promote Rogue and decided to use her, benching Chad. The plan is to vote on it, yeah, since there's a decent argument either way now.
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Oct 14, 2022 12:30
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It won't be any less of a spoiler when we actually need to make the choice and I'll be explaining at that point anyway, so in this specific case I don't care that much. Yes, she autolevels the longer you wait, with better stat gains than she's likely to get naturally. More importantly, though, if you wait until the last possible opportunity, she joins with a prf. To be clear, this is not carte blanche to talk more about the prf itself. I think vanilla Cath technically scales slightly too, but A) the bonuses are really tiny and unintended, just a consequence of how hard mode bonuses work, and B) lol @ caring about thief stats in vanilla FE6.
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Oct 15, 2022 19:46
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    I've always found it a little weird that Legance has a palette swap later. It's not a shortcut that FE6 actually pulls all that often with its boss portraits, and he seems important enough from a plot standpoint that you'd think they'd try to avoid it for him. Hell, Debias has a unique portrait, and he's literally Legance's subordinate.  Ostia, the largest and most populous city in Lycia, is to become a battlefield...     Why is there a throne immediately inside the castle gate, anyway?   : Yes, sire. The townspeople are no trouble. But the Ilian mercenaries that Hector hired still refuse to join us. : What more do they want? We already said we'd pay more!: Ilia's mercenary knights are famously loyal. : But General Narcian will arrive soon! If we don't have Ostia under our control by then, he'll never take us seriously!If it helps, I already don't take you seriously. Or Narcian, for that matter. : Y-yes, sire.: Lilina may make for a valuable bargaining chip with the mercenaries... If her life is in danger, they should surrender. But that must be a last resort. First we must attempt to beat them into submission. The wyvern riders Bern sent us should prove invaluable!There's actually only one wyvern on the map right now, but Project Ember still does that thing where the game silently adds more enemies in between the prep screen and the start of the chapter. : Debias, I want the mercenaries pacified and the castle gate secured. I will be inside the castle readying our defenses.  See, there they are!   : Quite a large majority, I'm afraid. They've forgotten their fealty to Lord Hector. They all simply gave in to Bern because they're afraid. It's a disgrace, I tell you.: Is that so...: But it's not all bad news, Lord Roy! There's a band of mercenaries from Ilia that wish to join us to stop the rebels. Uh, hi? Should you... be here right now? We're out in the open in the middle of the city, anyone could see you. : Oh, yes. They signed a contract with Lord Hector to fight Bern alongside Ostia.: They could be a great help. But do they know Lord Hector has passed away? Isn't their contract void now that he's gone?: I would have thought so, too, Lord Roy. They told me themselves however that they heard of Lord Hector's passing. They're still eager to fight with us.It's amazing the things you notice transcribing dialogue that you otherwise wouldn't have given a second thought. I assumed Merlinus was getting all this information secondhand from another spy he sent, but no, he's already spoken with Zelot and co personally. : They're only mercenaries. Why would they go so far?: Ilia is a frozen land with a harsh climate so the land is very infertile. And so, mercenary contracts are a major source of income in Ilia. Ilian mercenaries are said to never betray their employers, no matter what. It seems that's true indeed.: Then they should be powerful allies.: I agree! Fortune is still with us! But... the mercenary I spoke to also had some bad news. He said one of the three Wyvern Generals is headed here with a legion of wyvern riders. Should they aid the rebels, our chance of victory will slip trough our fingers.In a game that was more interested in developing its supporting cast, Clarine and Rutger would probably have something to say here, since they've already met Narcian and even know that he left to get reinforcements. : Roy... What are you going to do?: ...The Kingdom of Etruria might help us.: Etruria?! Is it possible?: General Cecilia, Mage General of Etruria, was my teacher in tactics at Ostia. I feel she may join forces with us if we ask.I think it's neat that this gets used as a framing device for the tutorial if you bother to play through it. : I object, Lord Roy! If we have Etruria solve this Lycian matter, they will never take us seriously again!: Yes, I know that might happen... But this is a matter of life or death for Lycia. We must ask for help, for if we don't, Lycia as we know it may become just a memory.I mean, half of the noble families are gone, barring any unmentioned children. Seems like the ship has already sailed on the "as we know it" part. : ...Lord Roy.: But we must act quickly! I've already penned a letter to General Cecilia. Merlinus, I need you to send the letter to her right away.: ...Yes, Lord Roy! You are probably right. I shall send it this instant.: With any luck, she'll make it in time. Get ready for combat, soldiers! We will retake Ostia!  First, some good news: I wasn't totally off base before, goddess icons are good for an extra point of luck now.  Yep, that sure is Ostia alright. Lots of houses to visit.  I guess in theory this guy could be a threat to them, but you'd have to be playing pretty sloppy for him to become a problem.   Here's the one wyvern rider we can see from the prep screen. He's appropriately scary, and also showing off one of Project Ember's more puzzling changes. For whatever reason, all of the gems have been replaced with bullion equivalents a la the modern games. I guess in theory they make it easier to parse the hierarchy at a glance, but I find it hard to imagine that anyone getting into GBA hacks doesn't already know that it goes red -> blue -> white.     Other notable enemies include this aircalibur mage, and every fighter on the map is carrying some fancy weaponry.   We've also got our first enemy healers, one of whom is breaking out a physic staff right off the bat.   Unlike previous bosses, Debias has finally wised up and packed a ranged option that doesn't completely neuter his damage output, plus he's tanky enough that plinking at him with bows forever isn't really a viable strategy. It's also worth noting that up to now, enemy knights have been playing by vanilla rules, lances only, but Debias bucks that trend.   In case you were wondering, the hack doesn't backport the ability to preview shop inventories from the prep screen, we'll have to wait and see for those. ________________________ Vote   Current Stats 15 slots total. Roy is Roy, Chad is still our only thief, and I'm also requiring Bors for Reasons. Vote for up to 12 people. Oh, and don't worry too much about having to bail out the Ilians when you make your picks. Trust me when I say they'll be able to handle themselves. 48 hours seemed to work well enough last time, so we'll stick with that.
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Oct 17, 2022 00:33
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Voting is closed! Sue: 10 Clarine: 9 Rutger: 8 Shanna: 8 Lugh: 6 Dorothy: 6 Wade: 6 Marcus: 5 Lot: 5 Alen: 4 Dieck: 4 Lance: 3 Saul: 3 Elen: 3 Wolt: 2 Merlinus: 2 LPer's choice: 46 Clarine, Rutger, and Shanna are still thread favorites, but Sue put in a strong first showing as well. People have also cooled on the cavaliers a lot, I assume to avoid stealing the Ilians' thunder. Anyway, as funny as it'd be to force Merlinus in just to visit houses the whole time, this result looks fine to me, so I'll just break the tie. Sorry Lance, but I don't really feel like running a solo healer. Final lineup is: Roy, Chad, Bors, Sue, Clarine, Rutger, Shanna, Lugh, Dorothy, Wade, Marcus, Lot, Alen, Dieck, Elen
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Oct 19, 2022 00:32
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    Marcus makes his glorious return! We can even give him back his silver lance thanks to picking up a fresh one last time. I also move the killer bow over to Sue, since she needs more help offensively, but it never ends up getting used.       Now that the chapter's started properly, we can take a look at the rest of these wyverns. That killer lance is especially concerning.     There's also some extra cavaliers above the arena as well as fighters and knights in among the houses. The fighters both have silver axes, naturally.   The plan is to split into two-ish groups. These guys will cover the right hand side.   : I helped him out, and he gave me this sword. Really strange person, but kind... Hm? This is the sword. You can have it! Take good care of it.  I won't have much to say about most of these houses, but this one is interesting, because it occurs to me that the dying man is likely meant to retroactively be Jaffar.   The left side sees the only combat we'll be initiating this turn. Alen could reach that soldier, but I have other plans.     Wade wasn't exactly in danger, but there's a mercenary just offscreen and I'd rather he attack someone who's more likely to hit on the counter.   There's enough enemies in range of Alen that he'd be at risk of dying if not for the forests restricting their avenues of attack.   I'm still a little salty about missing out on all those vulneraries last time, so I made a point of putting Chad somewhere that he could do this on turn one.   As a bonus, it blocks off the soldier from attacking Clarine, and I've also made sure that everyone he can reach has a ranged weapon equipped.   : If you're in fog, you can't attack anything you can't see. This should be helpful if you ever find yourself in that situation.  ...You know, only the first fog of war chapter actually takes place in literal fog. This dialogue is a little odd with that in mind. Meh, time for enemy phase.   I think that's the first smear frame I've managed to capture? Most of my combat shots have been pretty samey.     Huh, that's the opposite of how things went on both previous attempts. Marcus also gets a sword rank there.   The attempt before this one ended because Lot missed a 90+ hit rate on that archer, so turnabout is fair play as far as I'm concerned.     Javelins  Oh boy, here comes the idiot brigade.   The... blue... idiot brigade?  : Let's join them and quell this shameful little rebellion! : Uh-huh.: Wait, where's Noah?: Uhhh, I think he went to the arena a little while ago. He said he's coaching some girl in swordplay.: Noah, a coach? That's not like him... Has he made a little girlfriend, I wonder? Ha ha. Well, no matter. He can catch up with us later.: Uh-huh.: Time for action. Move out.  Project Ember's solution to the Ilian problem is very simple: just have them start out already recruited. Let's take a closer look:    pre:Growths HP 85 Lck 20 Str 35 Def 35 Skl 30 Res 25 Spd 25    pre:Growths HP 90 Lck 50 Str 55 Def 55 Skl 50 Res 30 Spd 40  We'll take them for a spin in a bit, but first we need to figure out what's going on down here. Because Rutger ate a hit instead of Marcus, the knight didn't go where I expected him to, and our strategy will have to adjust accordingly.   The first step is the same at least. Dieck's been putting in a lot of work, and that iron blade is starting to look worse for wear, but luckily we've got a chance to do some shopping this map.  Oh right, you could actually die now. Hmm...   Maybe Lot can pull off a crit?   Oh well, it was worth a shot.     My intent was for Roy to visit that house at the top of the screen, but it seems it's not in the cards this turn.   I briefly consider retreating with Marcus and letting Lot get the counterkill, but Elen's going to have enough to do without needing to patch up a hit from the silver axe.   Now back to these two. Thankfully the wyverns haven't moved yet, so we can easily steer clear as long as Zelot doesn't just stand still.   Trec snags the crit on his second attack.     Parking Zelot here lets him lure over both the cavalier and the mage, while also blocking off the knight from anyone else.   Moving over to the other side, we've got six enemies in the immediate vicinity and six combat capable units. Everyone can get a kill... except Chad. Technically he could if we moved Alen out of the way first and also healed him, but that introduces too many other problems. Equipping Alen with the iron lance last turn would have worked too, but then we miss out on the chip to both the soldier and cav.   None of it matters anyway, because anyone attacking the knight has to contend with the brigand afterwards, and brigands are still a huge pain in the rear end.       Lugh breaks out aircalibur to save on uses. There's also a lance level for Shanna in there, so she can maybe pass Gant's lance on to someone else eventually.   Chad swerves right to steal the bullion later, and that's the turn.   Most of this is going to be Zelot giving no fucks, but Shanna does pull off a convenient dodge.   No Fucks (also that mage is dead now).   Maybe like, half a gently caress?   Zelot casually dodges an attack that would have done no damage anyway, that's how few fucks he gives.  Some of the wyverns are advancing now. Those are ones with the killer lance and the steel lance/javelin.   I would've prioritized the cav, but hey, you do you.   Hello new friend and future friend.  : I need to get going, Fir. : Thank you for helping me, Sir Noah.: Of course. I sure was surprised when you came up to me though. Not many people would challenge someone to a match so quickly like that.: I-I'm sorry, Sir Noah. I'd never fought in the arena before...: If you'd asked anyone else, you'd be dead now. You need to look your opponent over carefully before choosing a fight.: And I must have the humility to surrender if it appears I'll lose.: Exactly. You can always get your money back, but don't throw your life away.: You're right! Thank you!That was mostly a good arena tutorial, except for the part where you're already locked in by the time it shows you your opponent. : What will you do now? Will you stay here and continue practicing the sword?: No. I'm going to the Western Isles.: The Western Isles? Why?: They're constructing a new mine, so there are many new workers headed there. Miners are strong, so it's no doubt an ideal place to find new opponents to challenge. And besides...: Yes?: The Western Isles is where my mother first met my father. She's passed on, but at my age she traveled around the world training herself.I can never remember if FE7 retcons this or if Bartre and Karla had already met before her recruitment chapter. : So that's it... You surprise me again.: Why?: I thought all you wanted was to become strong. I didn't realize you were following in your mother's footsteps. You do have a cute side after all!: ...Sir Noah! Please don't tease me!: Ha ha ha ha!  Bye Fir! Try not to get tricked by bandits!  Noah is already painted blue too, of course, though for him it's more a matter of convenience than necessity.    pre:Growths HP 80 Lck 30 Str 40 Def 25 Skl 50 Res 25 Spd 45     By the way, as far as I can tell the hack hasn't touched any of these talk chains, which leads to a bit of weirdness. Because the game doesn't expect you to be able to control the Ilians yet, Roy has to be the one to initiate the talks that involve him, but at the same time, the Ilians can all talk to each other as if they've already spoken to Roy. We'll do some experimenting once one of them has a free turn.   Last thing before we start actually moving units again: I just want to emphasize that nobody has any business staying in range of the killer lance wyvern. Zelot and Trec can barely tank a crit... from full HP, which neither of them have right now.   Chad's going to start the turn not with more theft, but by grabbing this kill that Zelot so helpfully set up.   He's actually not that far off his averages, except for being way behind in skill of all things.   Lot and Dorothy team up against the knight.   Trec borrows a weapon from his commander to avoid wasting killer axe uses.   Sue can always double this wyvern, but the ones with lighter weapons sometimes roll high enough speed that she misses out. I think we got lucky this time, though.   Speaking of, Zelot's going to lure down the bullion wyvern now, which means he has time to have a chat.  : OK, I guess.: Not the most enthusiastic response. You don't like the idea?: Wha? No, it's fine.: Oh, well, all right then. Get to it then.: Lycia, huh...? Eh, it should all work out. Huh, that one mostly makes sense still. I'm not sure about the others, but if Noah "recruits" Zelot, he explicitly mentions having spoken to Roy.     It also seems to have disabled all the rest of the talks. I assume there's a line of code in the events that properly checks everyone's current allegiance and deflags other conversations accordingly. There is a separate chat that Roy and a recruited Zelot can have, but I'm guessing that flag gets turned on specifically by the Noah->Zelot and Trec->Zelot talks, neither of which we can do now.  At any rate, Roy doesn't have much else to do and I don't forsee him entering any more combat today, so let's send him towards the arena to test his luck.   It's time to start knocking out the rest of these houses. Marcus can't quite reach, unfortunately, but Rutger and Dieck both can.    : Here's a staff that can heal injuries from a distance! If Lady Lilina's hurt, please heal her...   : What did you say? You're out to restore our former glory? Then please, take this gold bullion... It'll fetch a high price at any store! Just use the money to help Ostia! Handy. That does it for this half of the map. Now to check in with the crew on the left.   I've got a plan that eliminates all the enemies, visits the house, and puts Shanna in position to lure down that last wyvern, but to pull it off Lugh is going to have to spend more aircalibur uses and risk a counterattack.   Well, that solves one of those problems.     Bors levels up getting some chip in on the brigand, allowing Alen to finish the job.   That's... annoying, but the plan isn't sunk yet.   It just means Noah has to do all the work himself.   And there we go! Now for the house.   : It fires arrows much harder than a normal bow! I bet it could even pierce through tough armor. You can have it. I want it to go to good use.  ...It's just a steel bow, dude, you're not that impressive.   Come at me, wyverns, I'm not afraid of you!   Ow.   Whatever, Lugh's just gonna blow him away next turn anyway.     Before you ask: Yes, I actually ran the numbers to make sure they'd survive.   We're making good progress; it's only turn four and this is nearly all the enemies on the map, for now at least.   Better do this first before we forget.       That takes care of everyone except the mage and the priests.   I cannot overstate enough that almost anyone else would be dead after the beating Trec took, and he only gets better from here.    : He had all who resisted him killed... I escaped, though. Please take this. It's a Hero crest. Give this to an experienced hero, and fight to save Ostia...    Is this a bad idea? Maybe. But I trust Roy to survive one round, at least, and then we can pull him out if need be.   To the best of my knowledge nothing has changed about the way the arena generates opponents, other than using the new enemy bases and growths. I suppose that's why it thinks a level 5 brigand is a suitable match, since they have such abnormally high stats relative to most classes.   This fight was impossible for Roy to lose, but he still manages to eat a 25% in the process. Thanks, pal.   I was hoping he'd level up, but I guess that's what happens when your foe is level 5. We'll just have to try again next turn.     Whoosh!   It's not a big deal, but in retrospect I wish I'd had Clarine heal Roy instead.       The goal of this rescue chain was to get Lugh in range for some free hits on the fighter stuck behind the wall.     Time for some shopping! That shine tome is particularly interesting. Project Ember puts quite a bit of effort into making magic duels something you might actually want to do sometimes. Honestly there's still usually a better option, but at least they tried? We buy one each of the anima tomes, a shine, two heals and a mend, and... I wanna say three door keys, a chest key, and two torches.     And that's the turn. For some reason I completely forgot that the mage could attack from melee range and was expecting Sue to counterkill him.    Okay, now this is literally all of the enemies.     Might as well relieve these priests of their belongings before we get to the war crimes.       Smooth sailing, and a respectable first level from Trec.   A quick trading chain to get the other bullion into Sue's hands, and...     We can finally graduate to steel weapons for most of the army! I buy two each of those and one of everything else. Those screenshots aren't out of order by the way; all of that comes out to exactly 6000 gold, matching what we sold the bullions for perfectly.     : This lance is incredibly effective against such soldiers. There are many horsemen in the rebel army, so use this against them!  I'm actually going to have Marcus hold onto this and send the iron lance to storage instead.       I dunno why I'm even bothering with this, it's not like we can do anything about Debias until Chad makes it back over to take his knight crest. At least it lets Bors clean up after Lugh?   Clarine can't reach Roy from where she's standing, so his next bout is going to have to wait another turn.     When are those reinforcements supposed to show up again? I'm getting bored.       Well, they'll be here eventually, we should probably start preparing. That guy did mention horses, after all.     Same as before, we get two each of the steel weapons and one of everything else.   : The recipe is top secret... Don't ask, because I'm not telling! What's that? You don't want any? Here, I'll give you a free sample! You won't be disappointed.  That's the last house.   And that's the last non-Debias enemy.     Uhhh this might be okay as long as Roy doesn't get doubled?     Haha of course he does, gently caress that poo poo, I'm out.   Good news is we can heal him back up right away this time.   Lugh, Wade, and Bors are going to be our boss crew later, but in the meantime there's a few reinforcements that come from inside the castle too, so it's best not to ignore this part of the map entirely.   Also, I briefly mentioned this way back in chapter 2, but haven't had a good opportunity to show it off properly. Unlike inspecting individual units, the new danger zone function correctly accounts for enemy AI! Here's what it looks like when we select Debias specifically...   ...and here's what it looks like when we pick the range option from the menu. Neat!   Everyone's more or less in position to meet the reinforcements. They can putz around in the arena some more while we wait.   : Heh heh... I want to see the look on their faces when they get hit from behind!Fuckin' finally. You'll be getting mild irritation at best, Debias.   I guess we could at least start chipping away at him while we wait for Chad. That's not a great trade, though. Maybe Bors will fare better?  ...Excuse me?  You know what? Sure, why not.  : Causing a rebellion after Lord Hector's death?! That is inexcusable!Hell yeah, read him the riot act! : P-please wait! I can explain!: If you want to be spared, help us save Lady Lilina. She'll listen to your miserable excuses!...That can't possibly be where this is going. : Ergh...: Debias!: Fine! I'll help you save the young lady. It's better than standing here waiting for you to kill me at least!  Huh, I guess it was. Surprise! Debias is the first of several new playable characters that have been added for Project Ember. I promise that most of the picks aren't quite as... out there as he is. My best guess is that it's supposed to be a reference to Oliver in RD, since they look vaguely similar if you squint. The real question, though, is how he plays:    pre:Growths HP 80 Lck 20 Str 40 Def 30 Skl 50 Res 10 Spd 30   The boss may be neutralized, but I'm still expecting reinforcements up here. Debias can keep the throne warm for Roy.   I also kinda remember some enemies spawning in next to the treasure room, so we'll give Chad some bodyguards too. By the way, between Debias being recruitable and the buyable chest key, we actually could have left him behind and only been out the bullion.   Third time's the charm?   Yep. Enemy peg knights still garbage, news at 11.     Elen got defense!    Alen's been waiting on this level for like four turns now.   And that's that. Bring on the reinforcements!   They're honestly nothing too special aside from the paladin.   He's a real rear end in a top hat though. That speed stat is especially a problem.   Still nothing going on anywhere else, so we can give them all of our attention.  The good news is that with the huge forest in the middle of town and the enemy all being on horses, we can actually set up something resembling chokepoints.   I had Trec borrow this steel axe, but then stupidly forgot to actually equip it, oops.   One of the cavs has a javelin, which Lot is set up to bait out. Everyone else will be staying just out of range for now.   Dorothy's turn! Her level is sparse, but those are good stats for her to gain.     Roy's on his way to seize, and we end turn.     Nice! That's a strong start, keep it up.     Chest number one. Barrier is still pretty niche tbh, but I can think of at least one scenario where it comes in handy. I also decide that Chad is safe enough now and send Sue back down towards the action.     Yeah, this guy doubles most of the army, and is way too dodgy against anything that isn't an axe. He also has an annoying habit of going exactly where you don't want him to. Zelot with the halberd is by far our most powerful tool against him, but he's a space too far to reach.   We'll start by chipping him down as much as we can from range. Lot really needs to pick up the pace now that he's got actual competition for tanking duty.          Well gee Marcus, if I'd known you were going to pull a crit out of your rear end, I wouldn't have bothered with everyone else.  He even gets decent experience for it! A fitting sendoff, in the event that he doesn't make it back on the team again.     The rest feels a bit anticlimactic in comparison. I did get this goofy shot of Shanna though. I'm not sure if it's technically a smear frame, but it definitely feels like one.   There's even someone left to take the arena for another spin. Noah wins this easily.   Some healing to finish out the turn.     So, uh, there's still no more reinforcements. Either I blazed through this chapter much faster than on my original playthrough, or recruiting Debias actually turns them off, which is a cool interaction. Anyway, there's the other chest; a spare rapier is always useful.     We could seize now, but the arena's not going anywhere and there's a few more characters I'd like to get levels for. Well, maybe not Shanna, I don't think I trust her to kill things when she's stuck with an iron lance.   We only had to sit around one extra turn for these, but I'm not sure it was worth it.   At least we put another heal staff out of its misery. Oh well, time to go.    : We still need to break down the castle gate. : Speaking of Lady Lilina... What do you think of what Lord Hector said?: You mean about the dragons?A bit of a leap to connect that to Lilina, but I'll allow it. : They were real, not just myth... Lord Hector was one of the greatest tacticians in Lycia. And yet his army was defeated in the blink of an eye...: Bern's army is perhaps the strongest in Elibe. I say, those wyvern riders were indeed very formidable opponents.: Of course the wyvern riders must have been difficult enough. But the dragons... I can't even conceive how powerful they must be. Lord Hector mentioned a weapon that is effective against dragons... I wonder where it's hidden.: I presume it must be one of the legendary weapons.Imagine if Hector was actually just talking about a plain old wyrmslayer. : If we can obtain those, we might have a fighting chance against the dragons. But I do wonder what a legendary weapon is doing in Ostia.: Perhaps Lady Lilina knows the answer. I'm curious as well.The game's generally pretty good about hinting at characters that you need to keep alive to unlock gaiden chapters. You'd think that they'd go the extra mile and give those characters dialogue in the gaidens themselves, but iirc the only times that really happens are Elffin and Douglas. : Ah! Lord Roy, our men have finished knocking down the gate. We can enter now! : Rescue Lilina, no matter the cost! Next time: Wait, where's the save screen?  Well this certainly wasn't here in vanilla.  Hold on, I know this map! This is chapter 16. What are we doing in Etruria?   Oh hey Douglas, we were just talking about you!   Everyone, meet Roach, our resident OC. Think of him as essentially Douglas's right hand man.  : No, General. I haven't gotten a single hint. : Blast... Oh good, it's either Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dracula. I can never keep track of which is which.  : What does the Great General find himself doing at the royal palace? Tweedle Dee it is then. : Oh, her? She's in the middle of a heated dialogue with the king.: The king? Is he alright?: He's no worse than he has been. Which reminds me... Why do you bear loyalty to such a decrepit old fool? I should remind you that as Etruria's high chancellor, you'll want to place yourself in good standing with me before it's too late. : I don't care what kind of chancellor you think you are, it gives you no excuse to talk like that!: Silence, insect! Are all of our soldiers this lacking in discipline?Haha, get it? Insect? Because his name is Roach? ...I'll see myself out.  : Cecilia clearly had something very urgent to discuss. Do you know what that might have been?: I had overheard discussion of the Lycian League. She said she has some 'major concern' to raise, but I doubt the king will be listening to her.  : Cecilia, for the last time, no. We don't need to be involved with Bern any more than we currently are. : Avoiding this conflict now may seem ideal, but if we don't go to Lycia's aid, soon enough Bern will have eliminated them and will be at our doorstep next!: Cecilia, I am ordering you to remain silent about this. Mordred's kind of a nonentity in FE6, so it's neat to see him more fleshed out, if only a little. I bet you didn't even know that was his name!  : To my great chagrin, yes.: ...We will go and see the king now.: I'm sorry, but I cannot allow it. The king shouldn't be seeing anyone in his current state. I had planned on stopping that Cecilia, but I did not act quickly enough. After her, no one else will be seeing him.  : Nothing you need worry yourself over, Roach. ...... Well...: What is it?: Roartz does seem to be up to something. But let him be for now. As long as you and I remain loyal to the king, there will be no cause for concern. Well. That was interesting. To my recollection, this is by far the most extensive scene that the hack adds in terms of expanding the plot, so don't expect too much more on that front.   Next time: Probably my favorite character glowups in the game.
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Oct 31, 2022 23:19
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Bad was maybe too strong a word. I still think Debias is perfectly usable, he just doesn't have any real selling points over the other knights imo. Someone who puts more stock into his weapon ranks than I do will easily reach a different conclusion. Also, to be clear, I absolutely think he's in a better spot than our Bors at the moment, but our Bors is also significantly RNG screwed and I'm trying not to let things like that influence how I evaluate other units.Delphisage posted:Barth's always been decently servicable for his niche with his high defense and guaranteed HP levelups, mainly held back by the usual bad speed plus a lower resistance stat than even most FE3 units. I guess I wasn't clear enough last time and that's on me: Please don't change other people's quotes to use your preferred name spellings, at all. It comes off as passive aggressive and rude.
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Nov 1, 2022 08:05
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Tism the Dragon Tickler posted:when enemies start having decent luck I assume you meant skill here, but for the record, this is never going to happen. Enemies literally do not have a luck growth, all generics are ever going to have is the handful of points they get from hard mode bonuses.
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Nov 1, 2022 17:17
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 With them, Castle Ostia has always been famously secure. For never actually appearing in person, they sure do get a lot of mileage out of that uninjured Hector portrait.   only does so for the castle's own protection...   Bold of the chapter title to assume players won't find a way to get Lilina killed before Roy can reach her.   : How could Debias have failed against them?! Were those Ilian mercenaries that skilled? ...Or was the Lycian Army larger than we expected...? Whatever the case, they have broken into the impregnable Castle Ostia!Sadly, it seems the plot isn't going to acknowledge that we turned Debias. Maybe there's a unique boss convo if we send him up against Legance?  : You over there! Is this the same soldier that just reported in, or a different one? : Have the troops take defensive positions throughout the castle! Particularly around the throne room! We must not allow the Lycian Army any further into the castle!: Of course, sire! : I want you to have Lilina quietly assassinated during the battle.Oh hell no.  : I felt she might make a valuable hostage. But many of our rebel soldiers still swear loyalty to her. If we openly use her as a hostage, those soldiers may turn.: If that's the case, sire, would they not also turn if we assassinate her?: That's why I said to do it quietly, isn't it?! Kill her discreetly, and say that she was hit by a stray arrow. We can hold the enemy responsible! Now go!: Yes, sire...In retrospect it's kinda hosed up that we spared one of the ringleaders of this whole operation but are still cutting down the rank and file to a man, when many of them are likely just as if not more persuadable.   Hi Lilina! We'll check in with you in a bit.    : No, no. I'm on your side. My name is Astolfo. I used to work here in the service of the marquess. : You certainly aren't dressed like a servant...: A bit nosy, don't you think, old man? I'm a spy, see. I gather information, steal things, check on people... Things like that.: That explains it.For once I think Merlinus could stand to be a little more suspicious. Obviously we know Astolfo is on the up and up, but his story is kinda sketchy absent any other evidence.  : I've been running around Lycia gathering intelligence for about a month now. When I heard about Araphen, I got back as quickly as my legs would allow. And what do I find but those muttonheads Legance and Debias inciting rebellion! I couldn't save Lord Hector, but I won't let them take Lady Lilina.: Then you'll join us? Do you know where Lilina is?: Of course. Finding that stuff out is my job. Lady Lilina is locked in a small room in the heart of the castle. And Legance is sitting on the throne like he owns the place.: We have to hurry then. We must defeat the rebels and save Lilina before Narcian arrives from Bern!  Oh hey, green units! Also it literally isn't, Ogier, use your eyes.   : Looks like conflict with the enemy is unavoidable. : I have a pretty good idea of where she might be. I've known this castle for a long time. I do wonder what's causing all the noise, though.The room Lilina's in is rather conspicuous. Why does it even exist?  : The Lycian Army, perhaps? My brother must be with them...: ...We can't be sure he's still alive. You had best keep your hopes low.: Ah... Yes, you're right.It's a valid concern, Bors in particular has had multiple close calls already.   : Bors is Gwendolyn's only brother.: We must always stand firmly in reality.: But-- : As a knight of Ostia, you must always remain calm. It matters not how grave the situation. Understood, Gwendolyn?: ...Yes, sir. While Project Ember uses the most up to date translation patch as a base, there's apparently at least one instance of hack original dialogue falling through the cracks when it comes to name consistency. : Then it's time for us to fight. Let's show them what us true Ostian knights are made of!  (Yes, I know, I'll get to it in a second.) : I wish I could see outside this chamber...This room explicitly has no windows, archers shooting through walls is canon.    Speaking of walls and putting things through them, Castle Ostia has undergone significant renovations to make it less of a tedious slog to navigate.   These two changes we've gotten a glimpse of already. There's now a door leading directly to Lilina's room, and the top left corner has been opened up entirely, allowing the Ostians to get in on the action right away. To that end, they've also been given a pair of NPCs to help them out.  There's also a new crack in the wall here, granting us easier access to the treasure room, as well as a backdoor route to the boss.   That's the good news, now for the bad: the kid gloves are officially off. Only promoted bosses from here on out, and Legance has come loaded to bear. Full control of the weapon triangle, a powerful ranged option, and an extra special gently caress you to our cavalry.           The rest of the map isn't much friendlier. We're rapidly approaching a point where trying to highlight individual enemies is going to be a waste of my time. drat near every formation has someone with either silver or some kind of specialty weaponry.     It's irrelevant for now, but take note that in addition to its beefy might, fimbulvetr is also effective against dragons. Keep in mind that that's manaketes specifically, wyverns don't give a poo poo.     The game does grant us one small mercy: the two archers near Lilina's cell only have short bows, so there's still a safe place for her to hide. That tile is in range of the fighters guarding the door, but I think they're flagged to ignore her? I don't recall having to do any weird shenanigans to keep her alive, anyway.         There's also several enemies with stealable keys scattered around the map, for some reason? I probably won't get all of them, those two near where Barthe and co start are nearly impossible to keep alive long enough.   Lastly, I want to call attention to the mercenary guarding this treasure room. He's kind of the odd man out: other than Legance and one of the great knights, he's literally the only sword user on the entire map. All he's got is a steel sword, but he's also by far the fastest enemy here, so it'd be wise not to underestimate him regardless. ________________________ Vote   Current Stats Our roster's grown large enough that we actually need to leave a significant number of people behind this time. With Astolfo joining up, we can finally give Chad a break, though there's enough doors and chests to open that two thieves wouldn't be the worst idea. I am, however, requiring Wolt; there's some extra content in this chapter involving him. Also, while he's not mandatory, keep in mind that if you want to see A Triangle AttackTM, voting for Bors right now is the easiest way to make that happen. All told, that gives you 11 slots to work with. Voting will stay open for 48 hours.
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Nov 3, 2022 23:52
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 14:45 |
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Kinu Nishimura posted:Debias, Lot, Lance, Sue, Astolfo, Chad, Shanna, Saul, Trec, Lugh, Wade To clarify, the game force deploys Astolfo no matter what, if you want to pick someone else.
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Nov 4, 2022 00:08
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