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 Welcome to my attempt at making a SSLP of Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest! I assume everyone already knows about the Fire Emblem series (it makes up like half of the Smash Bros cast at this point), but Fire Emblem Fates is a turn-based strategy RPG for the 3DS, and the 14th entry in the Fire Emblem series. I've played this game about ten times by this point, and it's probably my favorite Fire Emblem game. I love just about everything about this game except for the story. I will be playing with an HD Fates texture pack, so the game will look considerably better than usual. Also, this is not going to be an ordinary run. I'm going to randomly select one class from every character's default classlist, and change them to that class as soon as possible. I will also be giving myself infinite and free access to heart seals, because the game doesn't provide enough of them early on for this run to work. I've done most of a playthrough like this before, and it was an interesting way to spice up the game. I'm pretty good at Conquest, and I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about its mechanics, so I think I'll be able to make this a fairly informative LP. That being said, I will be assuming that you are at least vaguely aware of how Fire Emblem works, so I won't be explaining the absolute basics. I will also be focusing exclusively on the gameplay, because the story of Fates is a mess that's not worth anyone's time. I'm not exactly sure how frequently I'll be able to update this because my semester just started, but I'll shoot for updates every 1-2 weeks. Rules of the run 1. No grinding or excessive stalling to gain extra experience or other resources 2. No class changing except to a character's randomly decided class or its unpromoted equivalent (which must be done immediately after the character's join chapter) 3. No path bonuses/rewards or DLC 4. No random My Castle events (except for the mess hall) 5. No partner/friendship seals 6. No captured units (though I'll probably still capture some of them for funsies) Audience participation is welcome If there are any particular units or pairings you guys would like to see me use, even if it's an objectively terrible idea, just let me know and I'll see what I can do. Just be aware that the late-game may be incredibly difficult if I end up with a horrible team composition. Table of contents Update 1 Update 2 Update 3 Update 4 Update 5 Update 6 Update 7 (Part 1) Update 7 (Part 2) Update 8 Update 9 Update 10 Update 11 Update 12 Update 13 Update 14 Update 15 Update 16 Update 17 Kmsorter fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Jun 6, 2023 21:35
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Update 1 - Half of the Pre-Route Split Because I can't change classes until after chapter 6, I'm going to have to play through the prologue like normal. I could just skip over this, but then I'd feel like the run was incomplete. If you're not interested in this, feel free to skip to whatever update has chapter 7.  I'll be playing on Lunatic mode, though I'm not above changing it to Hard after chapter 25 depending on my team composition. People who've played Conquest Lunatic know why.  I'm also playing on Classic, because I have self-respect.  This is the Corrin I made. I like his pink hair.  You may call him Marth. I can choose both his talent as well as his boon and bane. The talent will decide what his class change options are, and his boon and bane alter his base stats and growth rates. For the purpose of this run, I have to decide what his talent will be randomly. To do this, I looked up a list of every promoted class in the game (by my count there were 26 that Corrin can get through his talent), randomly generated a number, and scrolled down the list until I reached his class.  Ten makes him a Malig Knight, so I pick dragon as his talent, which gives him access to Wyvern Rider.  I pick quick as his boon, which gives him +2 base speed, as well as a 15% higher speed growth. It also raises luck and skill growths by 5% each. I pick unlucky as his bane because Luck is the worst stat, basically only affecting your chances of getting critical'd. This gives him -2 base luck, as well as -20% luck growth and, unfortunately, -5% to both strength and magic growths. I'm not too worried about this because that adds up to, on average, 2 points to each after leveling up 40 times, which is fairly negligible.   We start the prologue and skip the cutscenes. These first couple of chapters are purely tutorials, and they have very little interesting gameplay to show, so I'll run through them quickly.  We only control Marth here, and there's only one enemy to deal with. The rest of this map is irrelevant.   Marth attacks and kills him, earning some juicy experience.  Ryoma is over there showing off the Birthright experience™.  A lot of guys show up across the map, but like I said, we're only concerned with our tiny portion of it.  An enemy soldier and Takumi, who is on our army, appear.   I have Takumi chip so Marth can dip.  This ends the map.   This is a simple tutorial map, but it teaches players badly and I don't like it.   We move up and attack Xander. If he were to attack us on enemy phase like a regular boss, attacking first could get us killed, but this is a tutorial, so he doesn't do that.  I forgot to show Marth's stats last map, so here they are now. I suppose now is as good a time as any to properly discuss him as a unit. Growth rates HP - 45 Str - 40 Mag - 25 Skl - 45 Spd - 60 Lck - 30 Def - 35 Res - 25 Marth's growth rates vary depending on the boon and bane we chose earlier, and these are the base growth rates for mine. It's important to note that these are his personal growths, not his class growths. Each class has its own growths that are added onto a unit's personal growth rates. For example, the Nohr Prince class has a 10% speed growth, so Marth's actual speed growth at the moment is 70%. This means that the same unit's stats will likely turn out noticeably different depending on what class they spend most of their levels in. I'm generally not going to discuss class growths, because they're usually pretty low and constantly checking the numbers as we change classes and promote units would be way more trouble than it's worth, but I wanted to note it here. Moving on, Marth is one of the best units in the game, and aside from child characters, he is easily the most versatile unit in the game because you can choose what his class change options are. His personal skill, Supportive, is pretty good. It gives C+ support partners +10 hit, +2 damage dealt, and -2 damage received. His other skill, Nobility, is essentially a personal skill, too, because it comes from the Nohr Prince class that's only available to him and his child(ren). It gives him 20% more experience gain, which is significant enough to help him skyrocket ahead of the rest of the cast, at least for a while. I'll talk about Xander's stats and skills when we recruit him, which is a long ways off.   Xander damages Marth, so we retreat to the healtile he gives us to recover. Something interesting about this map is that you can suicide on Xander instead to get a dialogue where he's just like "really?" I think you need a -def Corrin to be frail enough though.  The numbers are better for us this time around because Xander's personal skill was giving him +2 damage dealt and -2 damage received because we were at full HP.  Marth gains his first level, and it's alright. I like the speed, but I'd trade the skill and luck for a point of almost any other stats.   We finish Xander off, and move on to the next map.  This map is the first actual map, though it's still not exactly a thrilling one. We do get Felicia (or Jakob if you picked Female Corrin) and Gunter, so I'll talk about them now.  Growth rates HP - 40 Str - 10 Mag - 35 Skl - 30 Spd - 40 Lck - 55 Def - 15 Res - 35 Felicia's growth rates are pretty good, especially that speed, but she's clearly more geared toward a magic class. Luckily Conquest gives you a Flame Shuriken in chapter 17 that instantly turns her into a glass cannon if you keep her as a maid, which would definitely be my preferred class for her. Her personal skill is Devoted Partner, which gives Corrin, and only Corrin, +2 damage dealt and -2 damage received when she supports him. This applies to attack stance supports as well, and it stacks with her other skill, Demoiselle, that provides -2 damage taken to male allies within 2 spaces. This makes her a fairly potent battery for Corrin throughout the early game, and between that and staves, she is able to contribute pretty well even before you get a Flame Shuriken.  We won't properly recruit Gunter for a while, but I'll mention his personal skill, Forceful Partner (oh my) right now. It's just like Devoted Partner except it gives Corrin +15 hit and +3 damage dealt. It can be stacked with both of Felicia's skills for great affect. Other than that, he's pretty tough, and he makes a good backpack for your other units because he gives a significant +4 defense when paired up.     The first thing we do is use the dragon vein to open up the healtile floor that restores 20% of a unit's HP at the start of the turn.  We then move forward. So do the enemies.  I start by placing Marth in this chokepoint. He's next to Gunter and Felicia, so he's getting a total of +15 hit, +5 damage dealt, and -4 damage taken right now. You can do some pretty crazy skill stacking in this game.    He gets chipped by the Kodachi samurai, and the oni savage throws himself onto Marth's sword. He gets an okay level out of it.  I forgot to screenshot it, but I moved Gunter to Kaze's chokepoint on player phase, and move Felicia below Marth to heal him.  Gunter takes some chip damage from Kaze and eats a shuriken debuff, which gives him -2 mag and -3 def/res, but he makes short work of the samurai.  On the other side, Marth gets Kodachi'd again.  But Rinkah decides to attack Felicia, who's dagger debuffs Rinkah's defenses even though the attack didn't actually do damage.  I have Marth kill Kaze with Gunter's support.  Gunter's 84% is vaguely concerning, but he connects it.  Gunter moves to attack Rinkah, who was conveniently debuffed by Felicia's counterattack.   Felicia finishes her off with Gunter's help. Once again, his 80% is a bit concerning, but he once again connects.  This Kodachi guy is the last enemy, and he's trying his best, okay? Don't judge him too harshly.   Marth goes in for the kill, and gets a very good level out of it. I knew he had it in him.   This is kind of the first actual map, and it's notable for having my third least favorite boss in the entire game, but we'll talk about that when we get there.  The northeastern group of enemies is technically beatable, but it requires so much more effort than I'm willing to put in, so we'll be ignoring them.   The game lets us pair up now, so I give Gunter to Marth and move him in range of both of these samurai. Felicia trails behind.   Marth takes no damage and oneshots them in return. The extra strength and defense from Gunter helps Marth out a lot, but I'm pretty sure these two are the weakest enemies on the map, which is why he so thoroughly eviscerated them. The free experience is always welcome, though.   Hans moves to commit suicide on these guys. You can very technically save him, but it requires a lot of effort and luck. Hilariously, if you do it, you're rewarded with him moving onto the gate we need to seize, which softlocks you.   I move everyone toward the dragon veins in the south while Hans gets murdered by a samurai.  You could use the northern dragon vein, but I prefer this one. It's a bit of a pain dealing with these archers on the more narrow bridge. This puts Marth in range of all three enemies.  The samurai attacks Marth, and it's not too threatening. This guy has Duelist's Blow, which raises his avoid by 30 when he initiates combat, which is why Marth's hit rate is so low.  Marth also gets a convenient yet unnecessary dodge against one of the archers.    Felicia moves to finish the samurai off, and gets a mediocre level for her troubles. The strength is kind of nice at this point of the game, especially since she may end up being a Hero or Bow Knight later.  I have Marth pass Gunter to Felicia so he can have her attack stance the archer with him.   But then the madman decides to crit so it doesn't really matter.  The last archer goes for Felicia even though Marth wouldn't have counterattacked, and I think this is because he has weapon triangle advantage against daggers combined with her low defense. She dodges and chips in return.   Marth finishes him off, and gets a solid level. I'd have liked strength, but really, any level with speed is fine with me. He'll have access to tomes later, so the magic should hopefully come in handy.  I spend a turn advancing everyone across the bridge.  I could attack the boss, but with the archers behind him, that's not a very good idea. Instead I have a Gunter-supported Felicia move past the boss to deal with these archers. Gunter gives her +1 move, which just barely lets her reach this particular tile, and the extra strength he gives lets her do actual damage.  She's just showing off at this point.  Marth is gonna wait just outside of range, where it's safe.   Felicia kills the damaged archer, and Gunter uses their guard gauge to block the other one.  These Sky Knights show up from the southern fort, but they're pretty weak. The only thing to note is that they have Darting Blow, which gives them +5 speed when they initiate combat.   Felicia finishes the last archer and gets a good level out of it. These are basically the only stats I care about for her at the moment.  I have Marth move here, which puts him in range of one Sky Knight and Felicia's Demoiselle for the -2 damage taken.   He fares pretty well.   Felicia gets to work on one of the healthy Sky Knights while Marth finishes the first one.   They mop up the last ones on player phase, and now it's time to deal with the boss, Omozu. Felicia can still take a hit from him, so I had her finish the last Sky Knight inside of his range.  This guy isn't too tough, but he's a Ninja, so he's got more avoid than I'd like. This would be fine if they hadn't put him on an old gate that gives him +20 avoid. I've had runs where he's dodged 2-3 times in a row, which kind of forces you to retreat and heal, which bogs down an already relatively uninteresting part of the game. This is definitely my least favorite of the first six chapters, and it's almost exclusively because of this guy.  I have Felicia with Gunter support start chipping him down on enemy phase which debuffs his defense.   On the next turn, I have Gunter supported by Marth go in for the kill. Gunter missed the first time, but he but he chips him down on enemy phase and finishes him off on player phase. I realize in hindsight that I should have screenshot the top screen here but oh well.  I got pretty lucky with the dodges here; if Gunter had missed a second time, I would have had to back off and heal. Anyway, we seize the gate and finish the map.  This map is essentially a big field of Faceless with mountains that can be destroyed using dragon veins. Ryoma joins us as a green unit, and he's going to move toward Sakura and Hinoka in the northwestern corner. Anything in his way gets deleted, as a general rule.    The main thing to watch out for on this map is these seal skills that some of these guys have. These will reduce a stat, in this case strength or defense, by 6 after combat. Losing 6 strength is more annoying than anything, but losing 6 defense could very well kill someone. The boss has both of them, which makes the group in the center pretty dangerous if you're not careful.   We also have Kaze and Rinkah for this map. I'm not going to discuss Kaze in depth here, because we won't properly recruit him for about ten chapters, but I'll say that he's very good, absurdly fast, and I'm gonna feed him a lot of experience over the next two maps. Rinkah we won't recruit at all, and I'll mostly be using her as a backpack. She's notable for being one of the only Birthright characters with a defense stat.  I have Marth  I have Kaze and Rinkah pair up, and then I have Kaze drop Rinkah in range of this Faceless. Between separating and transferring, you can squeeze a lot of extra mobility out of your characters in this game. It's one of my favorite things about it.  She gets hit and chips in return. I actually wanted her to take this hit, because her personal skill gives her +4 damage dealt when she's not at full HP.  Most of the Faceless on this map are moving towards Hinoka and Sakura, but they'll go for your units if you put them in range.   I pair Marth with Kaze, and have him move to the dragon vein before switching Marth to the front so he can use it. I just moved Marth seven spaces in one turn, which isn't even close to the limits of the mobility this game gives you.  I move Rinkah to this tiny safe tile, because I don't want her taking more damage.  Hinoka gets attacked, but she's perfectly capable of handling herself.    Meanwhile, Marth one rounds this faceless because Kaze is giving him enough extra speed to double.   I hope this Faceless had life insurance, because I'm pretty sure getting killed by Ryoma counts as an act of God.   I move everyone forward, and trade Kaze's vulnerary to Marth. He one rounds the Faceless on enemy phase.  I move everyone forward further, putting Marth in range of this Faceless while having him use the vulnerary.    Between the vulnerary and the guard gauge, Marth stays pretty healthy, but he's not quite able to one round this guy. He also gets a crappy level.  Ryoma finishes Marth's work for him.   We've killed everything in the immediate area, and I spend a turn moving everyone up, separating Marth to the north to squeeze out an extra tile of movement. I then had the idea to pair Rinkah and Marth and put them in range of another Faceless.  My logic on pairing Rinkah and Marth was "well, he needs more strength to one round," but now he doesn't double, which is honestly worse.   At this point, I decided to pair Rinkah with Kaze, and have him finish Marth's Faceless. Kaze is, I think, the fastest character in the game, so he has no trouble doubling on his own. He does, however, greatly appreciates the +4 strength that Rinkah gives him.    I forgot to screenshot it, but I move him toward the northern group, and he gets to work clearing them out on enemy phase. Hinoka also kills one of them.  The last guy in the north is about to get killed by Hinoka, so I have Kaze start dealing with the boss group while Marth moves north.    He hits both of those 67s, and finishes him off on enemy phase, taking no damage because of the guard gauge. He gets an alright level. It looks good at a glance because he got speed, but he has a 65% speed growth being boosted to 85% because of the ninja class, so that was basically a given.   He repeats this process on the next guy, while Marth moves to talk to Hinoka.   She gives us a concoction, which is a better vulnerary that restores 20 HP. This is potentially very handy, especially in the early game when max HP isn't much higher than that.   Kaze continues clearing this group out in style.  Now that it's just the boss, I drop Rinkah in range to chip because I don't want to get Kaze's strength sealed just yet.   She chips him down, and eats both of his seals. This is fine, because she just needs to be Kaze's backpack now.  I have Marth use the dragon vein to get rid of the boss's mountain just to reduce its avoid.     Now Kaze can pretty accurately kill the boss and finish the map. He gets an okay level, but I would honestly trade every one of these gains for a single point of strength. And with that, I think this update is getting kind of long, so I'll save the rest of the pre-route split for the next one. Next time we'll play chapter 5, which is my personal favorite of the pre-split maps.
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Jun 6, 2023 21:37
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theshim posted:One suggestion, though obviously it's not relevant yet: maybe save unit breakdowns for once we've moved them into their class for the run, or maybe revisit them then with their full growths, something like that. It would make it easier to keep track of thoughts on units once we know how they're going to play out for this particular run, since class hopping is off the table this time. Y'know, that makes a lot of sense. I'll start putting them at the end of the update from here on. Odd Wilson posted:I can't believe there's more Fates. And another pink dragonriding Corn? How does it happen? I suppose pink haired dragonrider Corrin was Fire Emblem Fated to be  . Awful jokes aside, yes, Conquest Lunatic is a much more well-balanced experience than Awakening's. While Awakening Lunatic relies on ridiculous stat inflation and basically forces you to use cheesy strategies to survive the early game, Conquest tends to rely on very tightly designed enemy formations and skill placements. In fact, the enemies often have the same stats as the ones in Hard, and when they have more, it's typically only a few extra points here and there. It feels like a fair challenge the whole way through, though the last couple of chapters have a pretty massive difficulty spike. I'll keep your offer about the transcripts in mind if I ever decide to do anything with the story.
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Jun 14, 2023 02:37
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), but if for whatever reason you did want the transcripts, I have them. I've got full transcripts for all routes already set with portraits and I've definitely not got much of a use for the ones that aren't Revelations.
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Update 2 - The Rest of the Pre-Route Split Moving on to chapter 5, which is the best map of the prologue, and the only one I genuinely enjoy playing. It gave a lot of people trouble when the game was new, but it's not so bad when you know how to play it. Ryoma is going to duel with the boss until one of them (almost always Ryoma) dies, but there's no reason to save him, even in Birthright. He retreats unharmed when he loses, but with some luck, he'll soften the boss up before he goes.   We also get to use Sakura and Azura for this map. Again, we aren't permanently recruiting either of them yet (or Sakura at all), so I won't talk about them in detail just yet. Both are valuable assets on this map, though. Azura is a Songstress (although I'm going to call her a dancer out of force of habit), so she can let other units move twice in one turn. The only things worth noting about Sakura are her personal skill, Quiet Strength, which gives allies within two spaces -2 damage taken, and her bloom festal, which is a heal staff with 1-2 range. And no, you can't keep the bloom festal in Conquest. I've tried passing it to Corrin before, and it disappears from your inventory after this map. The same goes for Rinkah's club.   Marth is, for story reasons that are utterly unimportant, currently strong enough to one shot every enemy except for the boss. The only thing that can threaten him is this duo of mercenaries with wyrmslayers. These are effective against dragons, and this triples the weapon's might against him. The wyrmslayer has 9 might, so it becomes 27 when they attack Marth. The mercenary on the right also has one, but Kaze will handle that one easily enough.  This guy drops an HP tonic, which raises max HP by 5 for one map. There's a reason they give this to you on this map.  Both of these Mercenaries have steel swords, which makes them effectively an HP tonic delivery service. I move Marth in range of both.    I have Kaze pair with Rinkah for the extra strength, have Azura dance him, and get him started on taking this mercenary out.    The boss attacks Ryoma and misses, and he gets a little chip damage in. Ideally, he'll bring the boss down low enough for Marth to finish with one hit.   Marth eats both of these guys as a snack, and gets the HP tonic as a reward.  The mercenary gets a solid hit on Kaze, but he finishes him off with his counterattack.   The mage attacks next, which would kill if it weren't for Kaze's guard gauge, so he softens the mage up for next turn.   Ryoma attacks and misses the boss, who also misses. I've gotta say, Ryoma's animations are pretty funny when you screenshot them like this. Seriously, it looks like he's about to look at the audience and go "yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got myself into this situation".  I have Marth use the HP tonic, because this lets him barely survive a wyrmslayer hit after healing. If he were just a bit bulkier this wouldn't be necessary, but they deal 22 damage, which is just enough to one shot without the tonic.   On the other side, I have Sakura heal Kaze up and move him in range of the southern mages while he finishes this guy off. I also dance for Sakura and have her move to heal Marth next turn.  You may as well have not leveled up.    Kaze unnecessarily dodges just to show off.  Baiting out the southern mages triggers the whole group, including the wyrmslayer bros. A mage also spawns in each corner of the map, but they're so far away that they won't be doing anything other than feeding Kaze more experience.    Sakura heals Marth, and he eats one of the wyrmslayer bros. He'll get hit by the last one next turn, but because he used the HP tonic, he'll be fine.  I dance for Sakura so she can get out of the mercenary's range.  Kaze finishes one of these mages off. He can only take one hit right now, but he's gonna build a guard gauge off of the first one to attack him. Pair up isn't as broken in this game as it was in Awakening, but it's still pretty crazy.    Ryoma finally gets hit, Marth eats the wyrmslayer hit before killing the mercenary, and Kaze tanks the first mage before using his guard gauge on the second.  He gains a strength level out of it.    Ryoma looks funny without his faceshield thing.  Marth moves down and eats the southwestern reinforcement mage.    Kaze finishes the last southern mage, and gets both danced and healed.   It's at this point that I noticed that Azura is in range of both of these reinforcement mages, so I move Kaze up to protect her. Although I'm pretty sure she just retreats if she dies, and that we'd still recruit her in chapter 9.  The southern mage almost kills Sakura, but barely alive is still alive.   Is... Is Ryoma gonna win? I've never seen him win. I'm pretty sure I've never seen him do this much damage, actually.    Kaze moves to kill the southern mage with a dance from Azura. Once again, he survives an otherwise lethal blow with a guard gauge. He gets an unimpressive level out of it.  Sakura heals Kaze while retreating to safety.   Ryoma, no! I was cheering for you!   I have Sakura heal Marth up, and because he can't quite reach the boss, I move him down and have Azura dance for him.  At this point, it's as simple as finishing the boss with Marth while Kaze mops up the last couple of mages.  Unlike what chapter 1 teaches you, I'm going to wait and finish him on the enemy phase. If I have him attack now, Marth missing would get him killed on enemy phase.  Kaze moves to this chokepoint to protect Azura and Sakura.  See, this is exactly why I didn't attack. Also, Kaze chips the last mage down, but I forgot to screenshot it. Meh, you've seen Kaze fight enough mages this chapter to know how the fight went.   I have Sakura heal Marth up, and between the healing and Sakura's personal skill, he's now able to take two hits. This means that it's safe to attack on player phase now.  That's more like it.   Kaze finishes the map along with the last mage.   On to the next chapter, we decide to Embrace the Dark.™ The route has technically split now, but I don't really consider this map a Conquest map. I think of the first 6 chapters as one long prologue to the actual game.   This chapter has an interesting objective to defeat 4 enemies, which is essentially the game letting you choose between killing Sakura and Ryoma. You can't see him in the screenshot but Xander is up north, and he'll be trying to chip Ryoma down. We have access to the entire Nohrian royal family for this chapter, but I'll once again wait until we actually recruit them to talk about them. They don't even gain experience on this chapter. One thing to note, however, is that Elise has a freeze staff that you can't take out of this map. This means that you can feel free to have her spam it or use it to reduce Ryoma's avoid if you'd like to kill him.   I put Leo on the edge of Hinoka and Takumi's range, which forces them to attack with Takumi against the weapon triangle because Hinoka doesn't have a ranged weapon. I honestly don't know why I paired him up with Elise. It wasn't the greatest idea, and I don't think it had any positive effect at any point. Everyone else just stays close.     Leo fares pretty well, and Marth finishes Takumi off. He gets a very good level for doing so. As long as he keeps leveling speed, I'm happy.   I have Camilla chip Hinoka so Felicia can finish her off. She's getting +3 damage dealt from Camilla's personal skill.  She gets the first level good enough to make me screenshot the bottom screen to fit all the stats.  Leo is damaged, but he's healthy enough to bait Yukimura out.  Xander tries to chip Ryoma, but it's not working out. I'd like to try to kill Ryoma, but if this doesn't work out, I won't bother resetting over it.  Leo's hit rate is a bit lower than I'd like because of the weapon triangle disadvantage.   But he hits and softens Yukimura up while Xander misses Ryoma again.  Unfortunately, Sakura heals Yukimura, so I have Camilla bring his health back down.   Because shurikens beat swords on the weapon triangle, the dragonstone is actually the most accurate option Marth has.   I decided that killing Ryoma is more trouble than it's worth, so we just kill Sakura and end the map. There's no particular reward for killing Ryoma, he just gives more experience than Sakura. Before I end this update, we'll move on to My Castle, where the run can properly begin!   I build a Marth statue during the building tutorial because it's funny. I like to think that he demanded it be absolutely shredded.  To make this run work properly, I need heart seals, and lots of them. The item shop won't have enough of them for quite a while, so I just hacked a bunch of them in. I'm going to use a random number generator to decide what class Felicia is gonna be. I'm counting the maid as 1, and her other class options from top to bottom as 2, 3, and 4.  An interesting thing about Felicia and Jakob is that the Maid and Butler classes are technically promoted, but their level cap is set to 40 and they grow at a normal rate for an unpromoted unit. This means that they have access to promoted classes and their skills right off the bat, without tanking their experience gain.  A 2 means she becomes a Hero. This is not ideal, and certainly not as good as Great Knight Jakob (a really strong early game option for him when playing with Female Corrin), but I should be able to make it work. When she hits C rank weapons I can get her a levin sword or a bolt axe that she should be able to do something with.  She's a touch frail, but she won't be getting one shot for a while, and she actually has more strength than Marth at the moment. I just wouldn't expect that to grow very much, because she only has a 25% strength growth even after changing to Hero. We'll see how she turns out in the long run, but in the short term, she's got very solid stats for the early game. I think she'll be extremely useful in the early game, but it wouldn't surprise me if she starts to fall off later on.  I also change Marth to a Wyvern Rider, because it was decided his final class would be Malig Knight. His stats are fairly average at the moment, and he's gonna need a little help to kill much of anything with a bronze axe. He should grow in time to be fast, strong, and physically tanky, so I'm expecting him to start snowballing pretty quickly.    I buy both a bronze sword and an axe for Felicia as well as another axe for Marth. Other than that, I got Marth and Felicia's C support, but that's all the My Castle stuff for now. Next time we'll take on Chapter 7, one of my favorite early game Fire Emblem maps.
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Jun 14, 2023 02:39
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Update 3 - The Real Chapter 1 Before we go into chapter 7, I'll reaffirm that the random weapons and items your units can give you in My Castle are forbidden for this run (unfortunately, this means I won't be able to shame bosses with the raider weapons). If I ever accidentally trigger one of these like this, I'll throw the item(s) out.    I did everything I wanted to in My Castle last time, so we'll move right into chapter 7. Like most maps from here on, it won't fit in a single screenshot, so expect to see me use multiple to show the map off in the future. I consider this to be the first "real" Conquest map, and I think it's a great introduction to Conquest's skill-heavy enemies. This map is a horde of Faceless from all directions, but they have a variety of dangerous skills to keep things interesting.  For starters, every single one of them has Grisly Wound, a skill that takes 20% of your foe's health after combat. This still works if their attack misses, or even if you're attacking from 2 range and they can't counter at all. Seriously, throwing a hand axe at one of these guys costs 20% of your unit's health. That being said, it only works if the Faceless lives through the combat, so if you one round them, it's not a problem.   These two in the back also have Poison Strike, which takes 20% of your health after combat if they initiate combat. If you let these guys survive after initiating on you, your unit is going to lose 40% of their health.   The most dangerous thing on this map, though, is these paired up Faceless with Seal Speed. This and Seal Defense are some of the most dangerous yet common skills in Conquest, and you'll pretty much always want to be on the lookout for them. You don't want your units getting unexpectedly doubled! There's two sets of these paired guys, one in the northeast, and one in the west.  Finally, we have the boss in the southwest, but he's only really a problem if you don't clear most of the others out before he gets to you. He's got Wary Fighter, which prevents both him and you from doubling anyone, which pretty much guarantees that you'll spend 2-3 rounds fighting him. He also has Savage Blow, which is an AOE Poison Strike that affects everyone within 2 spaces of his target. Ideally, neither of these will come into play because you'll finish the map shortly after he gets close to you.  I pair Felicia with Marth, who gets +4 speed on top of the extra damage and defense from Devoted Partner.  Then I have him move to this tile, which puts him in range of one of these Faceless.   Felicia gives him enough speed to double, and her personal skill boosts his damage enough that he'll be able to finish him off on player phase without taking a counterattack.  Grisly Wound activates, which chips his health down further. You really need to be careful when placing anyone in range of 2 or more enemies on this map.   I have Marth kill from the same tile.   And he gains a solid level, as well as the Strength +2 skill out of it.  This is the first Wyvern Rider skill, and it's not exactly a gamebreaker, but it's definitely appreciated in the early game.   The other Faceless attacks, and Marth gets a slightly convenient dodge. The extra strength he just got brings his damage against these guys up to 12, which is frustratingly close to one rounding. If only there were a way to boost his damage by 1 measly point  . Oh, would you look at that. Silas and Elise joined us from the east. The Faceless I've marked here also started moving on enemy phase.   Silas is a Cavalier, and he's pretty good right off the bat. He's able to 2 shot most of the Faceless, and we'll be putting him to work immediately. Elise is a healer, which is nice to have here considering the abundance of Grisly Wound. Her personal skill, Lily's Poise, gives adjacent allies +1 damage dealt and -3 damage taken, and it's also gonna come in handy right away. Someone suggested that I save the proper unit discussions for after we know what class they'll be, and I think that makes a lot of sense, so I'll be saving the detailed discussions for the end of the update from now on. This also keeps me from bogging the flow of the LP down, because early Conquest tends to dump several units on you at once.   I have Marth move west before finishing this guy so he can bait the next Faceless out using his guard gauge.  I don't want Elise in range of anything, so I have Silas carry her over here, with him staying in range of the Faceless.   This guy attacked from a woods tile that gives him extra defense and avoid, but it won't save him.   Silas chips his guy down, taking only 3 damage because of Lily's Poise. This would be pretty nice, but Grisly Wound more than makes up for it.  Arthur and Effie join us from the east, which is good, because the highlighted Faceless all started moving. Most notable is the Seal Speed pairs. Most maps in Conquest have some sort of incentive to not drag your feet, and this is it.   Arthur is mostly useful on this map as a backpack for either Effie or Silas. He can contribute himself, but his hit rates are kind of shaky. Effie is pretty good here, and I'm gonna have her start killing things right away.   Marth is officially tired, so I have Felicia finish this guy using the bronze sword for the extra accuracy it has over the axe. She'll get attacked by the Seal Speed guys next turn, but she's got enough speed to avoid being doubled even after that.   Meanwhile, Silas finishes this guy off from the right side so he can help Arthur out with the southern Faceless.    He takes advantage of the support to chip this guy for Effie.   And she lands her 84, clearing the only threat on this side for the turn.  Elise heals Silas because he needs it more than Arthur.    Felicia gets a nice dodge and builds a guard gauge.  These 2 in the north start moving just to make sure we have a steady flow of Faceless to deal with.  Now that the Seal Speed guys are in play, the map is about to get interesting. I have Felicia retreat because she'll need support to kill these guys.  Elise heals Arthur so he can be bait this turn.  I positioned Arthur, Effie, and Silas carefully so that both Arthur and Silas fight an enemy with Effie support on enemy phase.   The paired Faceless switched the healthy one to the front, so Felicia chips that one down, too.   Silas chips his guy down with help from Effie.   And Arthur does the same.  The western Poison Strike guys start moving, but if you can handle the Seal Speed guys, they shouldn't be a problem. We're kinda still working on that issue, though. I need to carefully clean up most of the weakened Faceless without exposing anyone to too many Faceless.  I pair Arthur and Silas, because Arthur gives him just enough speed to avoid getting doubled after being speed sealed.   Felicia moves to finish this guy, because she can still take a hit from the northern pair.  No, Felicia, it doesn't. She learns Good Fortune, the first Mercenary skill. It gives you a chance equal to your luck stat to restore 20% of your HP at the start of a turn. It's so unreliable it likely won't be useful very often, if ever.   Silas moves to kill one of the western Seal Speed bros. I had him use the bronze lance because I want him hitting D rank lances so he can use javelins.   Finally, Effie takes care of this guy.  I've positioned everyone in such a way that, because of the woods tiles that cost more to move through, no one can get attacked by more than one enemy.  There's even a safe tile for Elise to heal Silas from!    During the enemy phase, Silas gets rid of the remaining Seal Speed guy and gets a very good first level for his troubles.    Felicia starts working on the other Seal Speed pair.   While Effie chips this southern guy.  I forgot to screenshot it, but on player phase, I have Silas retreat and kill one of Felicia's Seal Speed guys. He's in range of a Poison Strike guy, but that's fine.   Both Marth and Effie are just shy of killing these guys, but I am a master tactician, so it's time for a 200 IQ strategy.  By placing Elise here...   We apply Lily's Poise to both of them! I can't stress enough how useful support skills like this can be in this game. I wish I could say I planned this out in advance, but I didn't.  Both of them succeed, Marth using his guard gauge to survive.  Effie gets a very Effie level. Now that we've taken care of the Seal Speed guys, we've pretty much won the map.   Silas chips this guy down on enemy phase, but he loses 40% of his health because this is one of the Poison Strike guys.   Silas finishes his guy off, and I keep him where he is so he'll start working on the northern Faceless using his guard gauge.  I'll need Effie to kill the last Poison Strike guy, but she can't reach, so I pair her with Elise.   Her hit rate is a little shaky, but it's not as bad as it looks. I won't get into the details, but the way the game generates random numbers means that hit rates above 50% are higher than they look. An 80% hit rate is actually a 90.14% hit chance. This applies to both your army and enemies, and it really helps characters like Arthur who struggle to get more than 80 displayed hit chance.   Felicia finishes him off, once again using the bronze sword for the extra hit.    Silas starts chipping on enemy phase, and he gets a decent level.    On player phase, Felicia finishes the guy Silas just chipped, gaining a good level out of it. She also learns Strong Riposte, the second Mercenary skill, which makes her deal +3 damage when counterattacking. It's pretty good.  Elise heals her up.   Because I can't kill this guy with only one unit, I decide to have Arthur throw a hand axe at him so someone can kill on enemy phase.  Unfortunately, Arthur had other ideas.   I just have Felicia finish for him.  Silas and Arthur built up a guard gauge, so I leave Silas in range of the boss.  Elise heals Felicia, since Silas is about to get hit with Grisly Wound and Savage Blow and I'd rather the HP not go to waste.     He gets a solid hit in. I should probably mention that his personal skill, Vow of Friendship, is giving him +3 damage dealt and -3 damage taken because Marth is below half health.    I have Silas finish what he started, which leaves just one Faceless on the map. Like I said, the boss isn't too dangerous on his own.  I move Elise into position to support Marth.    And he takes us home.  Strength and speed are exactly the stats I want him to get . And that's the map! Like I said earlier, I like this map a lot as the first proper map of the route. The turn-based aggro and sheer number of enemies incentivizes aggressive play, while the skills, particularly Seal Speed, teach the player that Conquest is a game where it's difficult to use Awakening-style juggernaut strategies where you place one strong pair out in front and watch them clear the horde. Overall, I think it's a really good, yet not-too-difficult introduction to Conquest's map design.  Back at My Castle, the first thing I do is grab Felicia and Marth's B support.  I also build the staff store.  And now it's time to find out what our new units' classes will be! Arthur can reclass to a Cavalier, but since he's not promoted, I can't see the order from top to bottom of his promoted reclassing options. I decided that in cases like this, a unit's base class promotion options would be assigned 1 and 2, and their secondary class promotions would be assigned 3 and 4. Within these categories, I order them alphabetically. In Arthur's case, from top to bottom, his final class options will be: Berserker (1), Hero (2), Great Knight (3), and Paladin (4). In hind sight, I maybe should done something a little less convoluted, but this is what we're doing for now.  I roll a 2, making Arthur a Hero. This is basically his 'intended' class, and since he promotes to Hero from Fighter, he gets to stay unchanged for now. I'll talk about him in detail at the end of the update.  Silas can reclass to Mercenary, so his 4 promoted options are Great Knight (1), Paladin (2), Bow Knight (3), and Hero (4).  I roll a 4, which makes Silas... another Hero. Great. I guess I shouldn't have bothered trying to raise his lance rank.   I change Silas to a Mercenary as the RNG Goddess commands. Goodbye, movement  . His stats are still fine though, and I certainly won't complain about the extra point of speed. Effie can reclass into a Troubadour, which promotes into the Strategist and the Maid. Her promoted options are General (1), Great Knight (2), Maid (3), and Strategist (4).  I roll a 1, making her a General. Just like with Arthur, this is also her "intended" class. I was really fine with anything but Strategist, which would completely waste Effie's absurd strength growth.  Elise can reclass into a Wyvern Rider, so her promotion options are Maid (1), Strategist (2), Malig Knight (3), and Wyvern Lord (4).  For our last class change of the update, I roll a 4, which makes Elise a Wyvern Lord. This actually isn't as bad as you'd initially expect. My biggest problem with it is that this means I have no healers for the moment, which means the vulnerary budget just expanded significantly.   Her strength is a touch low, and she's a little bit frail, but Lily's Poise on a flier is nice to have, and later on she'll be pretty decent with a bolt axe. New unit discussions  Silas Class: Hero Growth Rates HP - 40 Str - 45 Mag - 5 Skl - 50 Spd - 40 Lck - 40 Def - 40 Res - 25 Silas is an all-around nice guy, and he's got nice all-around growths aside from his magic. His personal skill, Vow of Friendship, is really good. It gives him +3 damage dealt and -3 damage taken when Marth is at 50% HP or lower. In a typical run, I usually make him a Paladin or Great Knight, but Hero should be usable. His growths are all so balanced that I've had runs where he turns out much better than he should be, as well as runs where he falls off much earlier than he should. In the early game, he's really good because of his mobility, his solid bulk, and he's got enough speed to double with support bonuses and tonics. The first Cavalier skill, Elbow Room, gives him +3 damage when he's on tile without terrain effects, which helps him even if he doesn't double. He really shines when boosted by Vow of Friendship, which further helps him deal big damage with one attack, or outright deleting his enemies if he's doubling. In the late game, I usually find it hard to justify deploying him because unless he turned out particularly great, he's so outperformed by Xander that it's not even funny (mostly because of Siegfried). Hero gives him a 5% higher speed growth than Paladin, as well as an extra base point of speed. More importantly, he'll get Strong Riposte from Mercenary, and Sol from Hero. Strong Riposte is another damage boosting skill that stacks with Vow of Friendship and Elbow Room, which will be much appreciated, and Sol has a skill% chance of healing 50% of damage dealt, which should somewhat help his bulk, even if it's pretty unreliable. Arthur Class: Hero Growth Rates HP - 50 Str - 45 Mag - 0 Skl - 55 Spd - 35 Lck - 5 Def - 45 Res - 20 As a character, I like Arthur a lot. As a unit, he's okay, which is unfortunately pretty bad by Conquest standards. He struggles somewhat with his hit rates, but he's pretty bulky and usually fast enough to avoid getting doubled, though he tends to struggle with actually doubling in my experience. His personal skill, Misfortunate, is hilarious but not particularly good outside of crit stacking builds. It reduces the critical avoid of enemies within 2 spaces by 15, but it also reduces his by 5. This, combined with his naturally awful luck, means that he's going to face a lot of single-digit crit rates, which is annoying but a problem that I think people overemphasize when talking about Arthur. He also comes with HP +5 from the Fighter class, which adds to his already high HP. Arthur isn't bad, and he's definitely a fun unit to use, but I don't usually use him long-term. The simplest (and arguably best) way to use him is primarily as a stat backpack in the early game. As we've seen, he gives a lot of strength and a fair amount of speed, and when needed, he can swap to the front for a turn or two because he's bulky enough to tank a hit or two. You can promote him to Berserker and he'll give even more strength and speed as a backpack. That being said, I personally think the most fun way to use him is as a crit-stacking Berserker, because he'll hit really hard and between the Berserker's innate 20% crit, a killer axe, and his personal skill, he ends up seing some pretty crazy critical rates. You could use him as a Paladin or Great Knight, but then he's basically a slightly bulkier Silas with a much worse personal skill. As a Hero, his stat spread is so similar to Silas that I expect him to be basically the same unit but with a worse personal skill and more HP. I'll probably use him long enough for him to marry someone before benching him, but we'll see how he performs before making any decisions. Elise Class: Wyvern Lord Growth Rates HP - 30 Str - 5 Mag - 65 Skl - 25 Spd - 55 Lck - 70 Def - 15 Res - 40 Elise is one of my favorite units in Conquest because of her sky-high magic, solid speed, and excellent personal skill. We've already made extensive use of Lily's Poise, which provides -3 damage taken and +1 damage dealt to adjacent allies, but I'll reiterate here that it's very strong. This, combined with being a 7 move staff user makes her a very potent support unit even without weapons. She also has Resistance +2 from the Troubadour class, which is really never going to matter. In a standard run, I like using her as a Strategist. She picks up Demoiselle from Troubadour before promotion, and after promotion she gets access to tomes, letting her make use of her great magic and high speed. Her hit rates are a little shaky because of her low skill, but they're not too bad if you stick to more accurate tomes, like fire. At level 15, she picks up Inspiration, which gives -2 damage taken and +2 damage dealt to allies within 2 spaces. This stacks with Lily's Poise and Demoiselle, letting her provide at least -5 damage taken and +3 damage dealt to adjacent allies, increased further to -7 damage taken if they're male. The other viable option is Malig Knight, which lets her use her magic and speed with flier movement, and it gives her solid bulk. If you promote her at level 10, she's essentially a magic using mini Camilla. Alternatively, you could make her a Maid so she can be a flame shuriken glass cannon, but why do that when Strategist does the same thing with more move and better hit rates? Her last class choice, and the one we rolled, is Wyvern Lord. It's basically Malig Knight Elise but without tome access, which drags her combat down until she hits C rank axes so she can use the bolt axe. The bolt axe's 65 hit means that even after we get it, she'll have to choose between doing less physical damage accurately or doing a lot of magical damage with pretty shaky hit rates. Early on, her damage output is gonna be on the low side, though between Strength +2 and ally support, she won't be too difficult to train. In the long run, I think she'll be pretty good, but depending on what I end up getting later on I may bench her. Effie Class: General Growth Rates HP - 35 Str - 60 Mag - 0 Skl - 35 Spd - 50 Lck - 50 Def - 35 Res - 30 Effie is tied with Keaton for the highest strength growth in Conquest (not counting child characters) at 60%, which means that after class growths are added, it's almost a given that she'll gain strength when leveling up. This is nice, because her personal skill, Puissance (which I think is French for "power"), gives her +3 damage dealt when her strength is at least 5 points higher than her opponent's. She also has a high speed growth at 50%, which means that with support, she can actually double if you change her to a faster class. Unfortunately, her default class options are all slow except for the Maid and Strategist, and the Strategist doesn't let her use her strength at all. I've never tried it, but Maid has a 10% strength and 15% speed growth, and much higher base speed, which should theoretically turn her into a fast yet strong dagger unit. There's also Strategist, but because of Effie's literally nonexistant magic growth, I think it's safe to say it's not ideal. Otherwise, you can choose between Great Knight or General. Great Knight is slightly faster, has more movement, gives +1 move to pair up partners, and has Luna. General has better defense and strength, less movement, and learns Wary Fighter. I've used Effie in both, and of the two, I prefer General. The lower movement doesn't really matter in a game where you have so many mobility options from pairing up, and the extra strength helps her reach more oneshotting thresholds, especially because it almost guarantees that Puissance is always active. The total lack of speed also becomes irrelevant once she learns Wary Fighter at level 5, and she ends up being a unit that can reliably facetank physical attacks who doesn't need to double because the one hit she gets will really hurt. Great Knight is totally serviceable, though, if that's your preference. Because she rolled General, I'll definitely be using her for quite a while. Next time, we
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Jun 21, 2023 02:23
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Update 4 - No Healer, No Problem Before we go to the actual map, I'm going to handle some things in My Castle.   First, I sell the Goddess Icon so I can buy a javelin for Effie. Non-magic, non-dagger 1-2 range weapons got nerfed pretty hard in this game, lowering your speed by 5 and preventing you from doubling at all when equipped, but they're still very useful. Considering my lack of healers, I'll probably need some vulneraries at some point, but I shouldn't need more than what we've got for this next map. I also did some trading to make sure everyone has a weapon they can use.  We could do Paralogue 1 right now, but I'd rather recruit the units from chapter 8 because I may want to use the paralogue to train them.  Chapter 8 isn't too difficult, but it's the first chapter to have a reward you have to play quickly to get.    The objective of this map is to defeat the boss, and its main gimmick is the 5 villages that can be visited by either your army or the enemy. You get gold at the end of the chapter for visiting them.   The highlighted Soldiers have only 3 move, and if they manage to visit any of the villages, they'll spawn a boatload of enemies. Flora is also there, and while she doesn't move, she does have a freeze staff. This is mostly just a nuisance, but it could prevent you from reaching the western villages in time if you're not careful.  There's also these dragon veins, which turn this lake to water for a turn. I won't be using them, but it's a nice option to have if you're being overwhelmed by the high volume of enemies this map throws at you. You can also use it to delay the northern Soldier on his journey to the northern village if you decide to go for that one for whatever reason.   This map is pretty light on the skills compared to Chapter 7. The enemies here don't have any major problem skills, and some of them don't even have skills. The HP +5 Fighters can be pretty difficult to one round. Some of the Fighters have Quick Draw, which makes them deal +4 damage when they initiate combat, but since they still shouldn't be one shotting or doubling anyone, it doesn't do much. Without a healer, there's not much functional difference between a unit with 8 HP and the same unit with 4 HP. The mages have either Heartseeker, which reduces adjacent foes' avoid by 10, or Malefic Aura, which makes enemies within 2 spaces take +2 damage from magical attacks. This map's challenge mostly comes from the number of enemies and how aggressively you have to play to get to the villages in time.  Flora is just here to freeze your units, and she's not too threatening in combat. She has Demoiselle and Resistance +2, but neither of these will come into play. Neither will her personal skill, Icy Blood, which deals whatever damage she takes on the foe when she takes a hit from 2 range or greater at less than full HP. It also inflicts skill and speed -3. It's so specific it kind of sounds like a Yugioh card effect, but becase we're only going to attack her at 1 range, we don't have to worry about it at all.  Finally, there's the boss, Kilma. I feel like there's a 'Kilma units' joke somewhere in there. Anyway, he's pretty dangerous if you're not careful, because he's got the very powerful Nosferatu/Vantage combo. Nosferatu restores his health, and Vantage lets him attack first even when being attacked when he's below 50% HP. Just be aware of this, because I've had runs where I forgot he had Vantage and he healed up enough from his attack to avoid dying when he was supposed to. He's also got Malefic Aura and Heartseeker, but these don't really do much for him.  At the end of the chapter, you get 1,000 gold for visiting only one village, 5,000 for visiting only two, and 10,000 for visiting at least three.  This is how I positioned my units during preparations. Essentially, my strategy for this map is to quickly push to the west, getting the starting village and both of the western villages before the enemy does. Having two fliers will help with this quite a bit.  Effie visits this first village, because everyone else has important things to do very quickly.   I separate everyone else while moving out to squeeze out extra movement.  Silas moves here, just on the edge of Effie's movement so he can pick her up next turn.  The only significant thing that happens on enemy phase is this northern Soldier visiting the village and spawning a huge group of reinforcements. Most of them won't move unless you enter their range, so it's not as bad as it looks. The 3 mages in the southeast also start advancing, but we'll take care of them shortly. On player phase, we get some new units!  Odin joins us! I like Odin a lot as a character, and as a unit, he's one of my favorites. For this reason, I'm using him regardless of what class he gets (please let it be Sorcerer).  Oh, we also got Niles. I'll save most of it for the end of the update, but both Odin and Niles are great units. On this map, Niles can one round mages without support, and with attack stance support, he can one round any Fighter that doesn't have HP +5. Odin is the most underrated unit in the game, and I think this is because he makes a pretty poor first impression on players by failing to one round anything on this map, even with support. In fact, he fails to two round anything without support. After this map, you can hand him a Nosferatu and place him in range of pretty much whatever you want and he'll probably survive. If you're willing to sell the Goddess Icon and spend literally all of your starting money on it, you can pass him a Nosferatu during this map if you really wanted to. I'd argue that he's, at worst, slightly worse than Camilla and Xander.   Effie pairs up with Silas so he can drop her in range of one of these central mages that she'll kill with a javelin on enemy phase.   Niles pairs up with Odin, and because the Outlaw class gives +1 move, it gives him just enough to reach this mage so he can switch to Niles for the kill. He's in range of one of the Fighters, but he'll survive, and I want to bait them out anyways.    Felicia pairs up with Marth, who can clear out the frontmost mage. I almost wish he had taken another point of damage because it would activate Vow of Friendship.  Arthur pairs up with Elise, who just barely has enough move to reach the last mage. If I hadn't had Arthur drop her to the left on turn 1, this wouldn't have worked.  She dodges, though it's absolutely unnecessary.  Uh-oh    And that's my main issue with Wyvern Elise. She's not bad, and having more fliers this early in the game opens up a lot of options, but her hit rates are shaky. My strategy on this map has very little room for misses.     That's more like it. I replayed the map using the exact same moves, and I'm pretty sure we're in the exact same situation, so I'll leave the death in. Elise gets a solid level, and learns Strength +2. This and raising her axe rank are pretty likely the only way she's going to get stronger until we get a bolt axe.  Flora freezes Niles on enemy phase, which at first seems odd because Elise has less resistance and she would have a higher hit rate against her. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the AI wants to reduce his avoid because he's in range of the Fighter, even though preventing Elise from going for the villages would be much more harmful. Regardless of why, I'll take it.    Effie takes a pretty significant hit, especially because I can't heal it up, but she kills with Silas' help before the mage can get his second hit in.  Niles also gets hit pretty hard, but that's all I'll need him to take, so it's fine. I should have taken a screenshot of it, but both central Fighters and the central Dark Mages moved out, and we'll have to deal with them pretty quickly so we don't get overwhelmed by the eastern group from the village.   On player phase, I pair Effie and Silas, and because Silas can take 2 hits from mages, I have him kill this guy. He's in range of one of the eastern mages, but he's just outside of the only aggressive eastern Fighter, so he'll live.   Next, I switch Felicia to the front so she can kill this Fighter. He's got HP +5, so Marth can't quite one round, and she needed the axe for the extra damage.   Because Niles can't move, I switch Odin to the front and have him attack this Fighter because his attack will finish a guard gauge. Seeing his performance on this map, I honestly can't blame people for thinking Odin is a bad unit. He makes an absolutely awful first impression; even with the extra speed Niles gives him, he can't double this Fighter, and it would take him 4 rounds to kill.  I move Elise over here and separate Arthur. This puts Arthur in range of the southern village, and Elise in range of the northern one, without either of them being exposed to Flora's freeze range.   Flora freezes Odin on enemy phase, and now it's his turn to get hit.  Silas takes a hit from the eastern mage, and by this point about half of my characters are low on health. Because I don't have healers, I'm pretty much making them take turns being the meatshield.   Health doesn't matter when you have guard gauges, though. Switching to Effie, she can finish building one by killing Odin's fighter for him while staying in range of the eastern mage.   It's not strictly necessary to kill Flora, but I want to. I have Felicia start attacking her, and because she'll prioritize fighting over freezing when given the choice, Felicia can secure the kill on enemy phase.   Arthur visits his village. Come on, old guy. Don't be rude. Does Arthur look like a guy who would kill innocents?   Elise, on the other hand, looks like she just might. With this, we've got 10,000 gold in the bag! It may not last as long as you'd think.  As long as there's a village left unvisited, this guy won't attack, so he's fine where he is for now.  I separate Odin to the north because it's about all Niles can do to move right now.    Enemy phase rolls around, and Effie chips this mage down.     Flora attacks Felicia, giving her the kill. She gave Felicia a solid 60-ish experience, and she got a great level out of it. She also learned Sol, which gives her a skill% chance to heal for 50% of the damage that she deals. I personally think this skill is overrated, but it's nice to have. Notably, it doesn't work with levin swords or bolt axes, which kind of hampers its usefulness.   Odin finishes Effie's mage from a position where he can support Niles against the Fighter.   Niles accepts the help and one rounds the Fighter. In contrast to Odin, Niles makes a very good first impression on the player.  Effie moves north and separates.    And Arthur chips so Elise can dip. This guy was going to attack either next turn or the one after that, depending on if he moved before or after the Soldier who's about to visit the last village.  I switch Marth to the front and have him bait out the mage near Kilma.  On enemy phase, the mage brings him down to 1 HP, which is fine because he's going to spend the rest of the map supporting Felicia against Kilma.  The Soldier also visits the last village, dropping a pile of units that are too far away to be relevant.   The mage plopped himself right in the way, so I have Elise chip him down with Marth support so that Arthur can finish him off with her support.   The hit rates against this guy were a little concerning. If Arthur had missed, It would slow the map down to the point where I'd have to worry about the reinforcements.  Felicia waits in front of Kilma, who is, incidentally, her dad. Awkward. Anyway, there's not much point in attacking first because he would just heal up with Nosferatu. She uses the bronze sword for the extra hit rate.  Everyone else just waits outside of the reinforcements' range.    Felicia survives with 1 HP, and because she built a guard gauge up during combat, she can safely finish Kilma next turn. He'll activate Vantage, but the attack will be harmlessly eaten by Marth.     Because this is the last turn, I don't have to worry about keeping my units alive through the enemy phase, so I throw caution to the wind and squeeze as much experience out of these guys as I can. Silas gets an alright level and Good Fortune. Meh.    It took a surprising amount of effort to set up a safe kill for Odin, but he got a level out of it. It's okay.     Kilma dad haha gottem  He drops a Talisman, which gives +2 resistance. I'm not sure who I'll give this to, so I'll hold on to it for a little while.  I could have stuck around to clear the rest of the enemies out for experience, but I feel like that breaks my "no excessive stalling" rule.   This is another map that I like quite a bit. Unlike Chapter 7, the enemies don't have much in the way of skills, but this map forces the player to play aggressively and engage more enemies at once by having you visit 3 of the villages. Unless they're willing to give up 5,000-9,000 gold. Flora is a nice introduction to status staves, and because you have to get at least one of the western villages (unless you freeze the northern Soldier on turn 1 or something), it forces the player to play around it. Kilma is also a pretty tough boss because of the Vantage/Nosferatu combo. Finally, this is the map where Odin joins you, making it an automatic 10/10.     Back at My Castle, we unlocked several supports during the map. Some of these will be pretty handy, but because I can't decide my classes, I really don't know what pairings I want yet. Also, we get to find out what Odin and Niles will be now.  Odin can reclass to Samurai, which makes his class options Dark Knight (1), Sorcerer (2), Master of Arms (3), and Swordmaster (4). He rolled a 3, which makes him a Master of Arms. I'm pretty sure this is the worst possible outcome for him, but I'll make it work. I'd have much preferred Sorcerer or even Dark Knight, because he could at least use Nosferatu before promotion.   Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Odin is criminally underrated as a unit, and I like him enough that I may actually use a separate save to show off how good he is as a Sorcerer in some bonus updates. We'll see. I've honestly only ever used Odin as a non-magic class briefly when I was having him pick up Vantage or other skills, so I don't fully know what to expect out of this, other than, perhaps, disappointment.  Niles can reclass to Dark Mage, so his class options are Adventurer (1), Bow Knight (2), Dark Knight (3), and Sorcerer (4). He rolls a 1, making him an Adventurer. Adventurer Niles is pretty good, especially because it means I'll have at least one staff user now. Depending on how things play out, I may promote him early so he can get staff access sooner.  Yes it would, Odin. Unfortunately, with E swords, all you can wield is this crappy bronze sword I bought you.  I also bought Niles a bronze bow, because it has more hit than the iron bow he's using. It's nice to have a more accurate option when you don't need the extra damage.  I use the dragon vein point we got from Chapter 8 to build the Mess Hall, which is one of the more important buildings because you can use it to get temporary stat boosts that stack with tonics.  This save file got meat as its food item, which is alright because it gives strength. I'll try to stick to just this, because I can't technically get any other ingredients without random events or visiting other castles, but I may cheat in some speed ingredients later in the game.  That's, uh, not a good sign. Sometimes if a meal comes out bad enough it can actually reduce your units' stats. I'll still eat this one, because if it's bad, I can just cook another one.   I don't know why the cook was worried, this meal is fine.  Flairs can modify a food's stat bonuses for certain characters or unit types. In this case, the dedicated flair gives Marth an extra point of strength and 2 extra points of magic.  At the moment, cooking only feeds half of your army at random, which kinda sucks if you ask me, but these 4 all appreciate the strength, so it's fine. Everyone on this list got strength +1 for the next map, except Marth, who got strength/magic +2. That's all the My Castle stuff for now, so it's time to discuss our new units. New unit discussions Odin Class: Master of Arms Growth Rates HP - 55 Str - 35 Mag - 30 Skl - 55 Spd - 35 Lck - 60 Def - 40 Res - 20 Odin is easily the most underrated unit in the game, and from what I can tell, it's because a lot of people saw that Nosferatu got heavily nerfed compared to its Awakening incarnation and decided it wasn't worth using. This is wrong, because Odin's bulk combined with Nosferatu's healing effect lets him tank hits like a champ, and at a certain point, you can just start throwing him at pretty much any number of enemies and he'll be fine. His personal skill, Aching Blood, boosts his critical rate by 10 when the weapon he's using has a custom name at least 12 characters long, which is hilarious but not particularly useful. You can't rename weapons without forging them to at least +1. All the cool weapons, like killer weapons, are in limited supply, and I can't justify merging 2 of them to give Odin +10 crit. Maybe if I end up having more killing edges than I know what to do with and no sword users. Anyway, you can promote him into either a Sorcerer or a Dark Knight. Sorcerer Odin lets you continue using him with Nosferatu, which is so much better than any of his other options it's not even funny. Dark Knight does give more move and better defensive stats at the cost of some magic and a point of speed, and it learns Lifetaker, which restores 50% of your health after successfully killing an enemy on player phase. It also learns Seal Magic, which is definitely one of the skills. Ultimately, you're choosing between a nigh-unkillable Sorcerer or a kinda-difficult-to-kill Dark Knight with more move and sword access. You really, really shouldn't, but you can technically go for physical Odin with either the Swordmaster or Master of Arms. Though I've never tried either except for a few levels to pick up skills, I think Swordmaster is his best option of the two. It fixes his speed issues and lets him use his decent strength, and once he gets C swords you can give him a levin sword so he can put his magic to good use. Swordmaster also gets Swordfaire at level 5, which boosts attack by 5 when equipped with a sword, which brings his damage up by a decent amount. Master of Arms is what he rolled for this run, and it's probably the worst option of the 4. Compared to Swordmaster, it's got slightly more strength and defense, but lower speed. Instead of Swordfaire, it gets Seal Strength at level 5, which is bad because it's typically better to just kill the enemy rather than sealing them, and unlike Seal Defense or Speed, it doesn't actually help you secure kills. At level 15, it learns Life and Death, which makes you deal and take +10 damage. It's an interesting skill, and I think it's pretty good, but it comes so late that it's hard to call it great. I'm going to use him, but I'm only expecting Master of Arms Odin to be okay at best. Niles Class: Adventurer Growth Rates HP - 40 Str - 35 Mag - 20 Skl - 40 Spd - 50 Lck - 30 Def - 30 Res - 40 Niles is a great unit, because archers are actually good in this game. He's got a ton of speed and enough strength to pack a serious punch against most enemy types. He'll frequently one round squishier units, like mages, and he's got a ton of resistance to boot. Bows let him one shot fliers, which is nice because this game has the occasional chapter with a lot of them. His personal skill, Kidnap, lets him capture enemy units if you've built a Prison in My Castle, which is a ton of fun and honestly an LP idea of its own. The Outlaw class gives him Locktouch, which is important because it lets you open chests without a key, and Movement +1 at level 10, which is really nice for literally everyone. It, as well as 3/4 of his promotion options, gives movement +1 to his pair up partners, which makes him a really nice utility unit as well. His best default class options are generally either Adventurer or Bow Knight, but he can be a Sorcerer or Dark Knight if you really want to go that route. I've never tried Sorcerer Niles, but it sounds like he'd be faster Odin with less bulk. If you give him all of the spirit dusts, I think he could be pretty good. Dark Knight is probably the better magical option, because I don't think he really has the bulk to use Nosferatu all that well, and it would let him use his decent strength with swords if you can ever get out of E rank. He'd also have 9 movement because of Movement +1, making him a good ferry for other units. His physical class options are generally better, especially because you can hand him a shining bow and he'll still have access to a magical option. Bow Knight is my personal favorite option for him, because it lets him keep doing what he does as an Outlaw but with 9 movement, and he's still got decent magic to use with the shining bow. It doesn't take away from the Outlaw's utility either, because he'll still give his pair up partners a lot of speed and an extra point of movement. Adventurer, which is what he'll be in this run, is pretty good, too. It's basically the Outlaw with more magic, letting him become a fairly potent magical attacker with the shining bow. It also gives him staff access, which is usually only kind of nice but becomes pretty important in this run because he's currently my only staff user. He'll be a great addition to the team. Next time, we'll take on Paralogue 1 and recruit Mozu, this game's villager. Kmsorter fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jun 28, 2023 |
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Jun 28, 2023 02:19
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Update 5 - Taking a Detour Before we move on to the next map, I make a quick stop at the item shop to buy Odin some tonics. A Dark Mage Odin with Nosferatu wouldn't need these, but Samurai Odin does.  We could move on to Chapter 9 right now, but if we put off Paralogue 1 for too much longer it won't give us as much experience, and Mozu becomes much, much harder to use because she falls even more behind the rest of the army.    Paralogue 1 is a really easy map, and that's because it's available on all 3 routes. Because of this, I like to use it to train up some of the early joiners who may not quite be up to snuff yet. For my purposes, the major goals here are to feed as much experience as possible to Odin, and to get Marth and Elise as close to D axes as I can.  Mozu is in the south, and she'll need rescuing eventually, but you can afford to take your time with it. She's pretty useless on this map, but it's a good opportunity to train her if you're planning to use her. I'll wait until I know what class she'll be before I decide on that, so she won't be seeing any action for the moment.  The Faceless on this map are Birthright Faceless, so they don't have any skills. Their stats are kind of decent if you do this map as soon as you can, but they shouldn't be a problem.  This is the boss. Would it have killed them to give these guys a skill or two in Conquest? The only notable thing about this boss is that he's pretty tough to double, and he's got quite a bit of bulk to him. He can't move though, and without a 1-2 range option, you can literally chip him down with any ranged option without letting him attack if you want to. I'm gonna try to feed him to Odin.  This is how I've got everyone positioned. Essentially, Odin and Effie are gonna take the vulneraries and take the northern half of the map by themselves, while everyone else heads south.  This is what Odin's stats look like with Effie support after tonics. He's honestly looking really good, and once he gets access to a decent weapon, he should be very usable.  Odin charges into the horde.   Arthur gives Niles enough strength to weaken this guy for someone else.   And that someone will be Elise, who desperately needs to get D axes so she can do actual damage. She's not too far, so I'm gonna try to get her there during this map.   I don't actually want Arthur paired with Niles, so I have Marth take and separate him.  Felicia and Silas pair up so they can move a bit farther before separating. The only ones in range are Marth and Elise, which means that one of them will get some axe experience on enemy phase.    Odin fights 2 Faceless on enemy phase, and his damage is pretty good when you use every strength-boosting method available at the same time.   He dodges the second one, which is nice because I think it saves a concoction use.   The southern Faceless attacks Elise because she has lower defense than Marth.  The only other thing to note this enemy phase is that this guy towards the back starts advancing toward Odin.  Odin took a lot of damage that turn, so I have him use a vulnerary.   Arthur starts the turn off strong by flubbing a hand axe chip. It's kind of his signature move.  He still got experience because of the attack stance, though. This is basically all of the stats he cares about, so this is a very strong level. Also, it's worth noting here that Elise still gets axe experience even though she was just supporting in an attack stance. Generally, setting up attack stances can be a good way to get your newly-reclassed units out of E rank weapons more quickly.    I have Silas trade Arthur's iron axe to his equip slot for the extra damage and accuracy before attacking. Arthur connects this time.   I pair up and separate the rest of the army, leaving Marth to bait the next group out with Elise support. This map is pretty simple and easy, so I'm just trying to optimize everyone's experience and weapon rank gains while we blow through it.    All of these Faceless are the same, so I'm just gonna show the highlights of Odin's fights here. He saves another vulnerary use by dodging.     Marth's fights are marginally more interesting, but because the Faceless aren't really a threat, there's not all that much strategy in play at the moment. I'm really just baiting and killing, in that order.  Odin ignores the Faceless he didn't kill on enemy phase so he can move forward to bait even more   We've got a nice little chunk of enemies here, so I have Arthur start us off by taking a pot shot with his hand axe.   But it was totally unnecessary, because Silas would have killed regardless.    Niles and Arthur chip the healthy Faceless down so Elise can finish him off. With her growths, I honestly can't be too disappointed with this level, even though it's pretty useless for now.   Felicia finishes the last of this group while Elise gets a little extra axe experience from helping out. It only takes 20 combats to go from E to D, so she should be reasonably close.  Is it, though, Felicia?  Marth moves toward Mozu so he can recruit her next turn.    Odin dodges yet again, saving us yet another vulnerary.   He gets a very nice level out of this kill, because what he really needs right now is more strength and speed. He also learns Duelist's Blow, the level 1 Samurai skill. It gives +30 avoid when he initiates combat, which is kind of nice but not something I generally want to rely on.    Effie gets a really good level from guarding Odin.   Because of the strength level, Odin can now finish these guys off on player phase without facing a counterattack.  I pair Silas with Marth so he can get to the front line sometime this year.   Marth recruits Mozu and separates Silas to the north so he can be the bait. Mozu is Fates' 'trainee' unit, but unlike many of them throughout the series, she's actually a solid unit who isn't too much trouble to get up to speed. Like any trainee, she'll take a while to get started but becomes quite powerful once she does. Unless you brought a heart seal and a bow, she'll have a hard time getting experience on this map.   Finally, I move everyone but Arthur toward the next group. Arthur stays behind to bait the southeastern guy, and Mozu is in position to pick him up next turn, since that's about all she can do without having kills spoonfed to her.    Arthur unnecessarily dodges his Faceless. I'm going to have him retreat to the west in a minute so I can give the kill to someone else.   Silas starts working on the next group with Marth support.  On player phase, Odin moves to bait both of the Faceless near the boss.   I have Elise drop Felicia here, which puts Silas in range of Lily's Poise and Demoiselle, while also letting Elise dual strike with him for axe experience.   Niles finishes this Faceless off because I couldn't think of a way to get Marth or Elise involved.  Arthur moves closer but stays in range of his Faceless.  And Silas moves here because he could only fight one Faceless per turn from his other tile because of the woods terrain, and I want to bring both of these guys in.  Lastly, Marth moves to support him from the north. I'm gonna have him fly Silas across the river next turn.    On enemy phase, Odin finally finally ends his dodge streak. Also, just like with Ryoma in the prologue, I think the Samurai animations look pretty silly when you screenshot them.   On enemy phase, he chips both of them down without a problem.    Arthur continues chipping his guy down.    Stacking all of these damage reduction skills has made Silas a very difficult man to kill. Unfortunately, Elise decided that she didn't want axe experience right now, which is a shame, because she's pretty close to D axes.    Elise, why?! With true hit, a 78% is actually an 88.21%, and she just missed two in a row. It doesn't affect the map's outcome at all, but she doesn't get axe experience unless the attack connects.  Anyway, the highlighted guys here also started moving on enemy phase.    Odin gets an okay level from killing one of his Faceless. His speed is probably his most dubious stat, so if he keeps getting it, I'm happy.    Felicia finishes this guy off, and Elise actually hits this time.   Niles chips this guy down for Elise.   And Elise finishes him off. She's also in position to bait another Faceless out.  Marth drops Silas across the river in range of one of the next couple of Faceless. I want some of my units other than Odin to start approaching the boss, because I don't want him to take too terribly long to kill.  Arthur is done chipping the southeastern Faceless down, so he and Mozu just leave it for someone else.    Odin finishes the last northern Faceless off on enemy phase.    Silas and Marth chip this guy down, though he takes a lot more damage without Elise and Felicia's skills.    Oh come on!  How hard is it to hit them, Elise?! I missed my chance to screenshot it, but Felicia activated Good Fortune at the start of player phase. It doesn't end up helping.   Odin starts the turn out by stealing Silas' kill.    Niles once again chips, this time getting a mediocre level out of it.   Unfortunately, because Elise missed on enemy phase, I couldn't find a safe way to feed this kill to her, so Felicia gets it instead.  Back in the north, Silas and Marth hide behind Odin because he's got a guard gauge.  Because we're nearly done with the non-boss enemies, I have everyone else start moving toward the boss, making sure to avoid this guy's range so he goes for Odin. Next turn, Arthur is going to pair up with Elise so she can fly him over the river. We're still managing to avoid the southeastern guy's range, but we'll clean him up on the next turn.   Odin chips this guy down on enemy phase.  Back on player phase, because he's able to finish this guy without Effie's help, I pass her to Marth so she can help with the boss this turn.   Odin finishes this guy off, leaving only 2 enemies counting the boss.  Arthur drops Elise as close to the boss as he can.   Because there's no way they'll make it to the boss in time, I pair Felicia and Niles before having Felicia kill the last non-boss Faceless.  Marth moves and switches Effie to the front, and because the boss doesn't have a 2 range option, she passes Marth to Silas so she can get dual strike support. We're not going to let this guy attack.   This guy is super tanky if you aren't doubling, and he's also pretty tough to double, especially if you do this map before Chapter 8. If he moved, he could have been a somewhat dangerous opponent.  Next turn, Elise and Arthur pull the same stunt as Marth and Effie so Arthur can get Silas to dual strike with him.   Typical  . At least Silas connected.  I'm starting to get sick of-    Oh. Okay then.   Silas may as well take us home after that performance.   You deserve this, buddy.  And that's the map. This is a map I'm not especially fond of, but it does provide a good opportunity to raise weaker units, which is nice. I think they should have changed it up a tad depending on the route, because it sticks out like a sore thumb in Conquest. Maybe throw some skills on the enemies in Conquest, and some obnoxious elevators or teleporters in Revelation.      Back at My Castle, the first order of business is grabbing supports. We didn't get anything too significant, but Odin will get more stats from Effie if I pair them up again, which is nice. The more exciting business is finding out what class Mozu gets!  She can reclass to Archer, so her promoted options are Master of Arms (1), Merchant (2), Sniper (3), and Kinshi Knight (4). If she rolls Sniper or Kinshi Knight, she'll be a very good addition to the team, becoming a fast, high-powered glass cannon that can one round most enemies. If she rolls Master of Arms or Merchant, she'll take a lot more work to get started, but she should still be pretty good, if we end up using her.  She rolled a 1, making her a Master of Arms. This is... not her worst option. Mostly because Merchant exists, but that's not a very high bar to clear. Unlike Sniper or Kinshi Knight, she has to stay as a Villager until at least level 10. While it's not as bad a class as it was in Awakening, it's not nearly as good as Archer, particularly for Mozu. Archer gives her Quick Draw, which really helps her damage output when she needs it the most, and helps push her past one rounding thresholds sooner. Villager leaves her stuck with lances which means she'll be taking a lot more counterattacks, which is bad because of her lack of bulk. The lack of Quick Draw also delays her becoming self-sufficient, which hurts her usability substantially. If I were playing on my own, I wouldn't use her, but because I think that using less-than-optimal units is in the spirit of the run, I'll leave the decision to use her or not up to a vote at the end of the update.  I don't think it's long enough to warrant its own update, so I'll take this opportunity to squeeze Invasion 1 into this update as well. There are 3 invasions in this game, and they're basically optional paralogues that use My Castle as a map. I think it's a pretty cool idea. Before we do that, we'll be doing some cooking.   Mozu is a pretty good cook, and her meal gets the Odin Seal of Approval™.   It's a good meal, and it affected a solid group of units.  On to Invasion 1!  This is how I've arranged my buildings for this map. Each building (not counting statues or certain other specialty structures) has a deployment slot during invasions. Certain buildings give boosts to your units' stats during battle. For example, the Private Quarters gives +3 damage dealt to all allies as long as it hasn't been destroyed yet. There are Wyvern Riders in the east, Cavaliers to the west, and 3 pairs of Mercenaries to the south. The boss is one of the Mercenaries.   The Wyverns and cavaliers aren't too dangerous, but they can destroy your buildings if you don't kill them quickly. Their stats are pretty high, but because of the Private Quarters and the Records Hall, all of our units get +3 damage dealt and -3 damage taken, so they go down a little easier than you'd think at first. We'll want to handle them quickly before the southern group gets too close.     The Mercenaries in the south are the real threat here. They're paired up, giving them enough speed to make them hard to double, and some of them have dangerous weapons, like armorslayers and killing edges.  The boss is, interestingly, in the back of his pair up. He's got Lunge, which lets him swap places with an opponent after initiating combat. This skill is common throughout Conquest, and it's genuinely one of the most dangerous skills in the game. It's not so dangerous here, though. I guess the idea is that it prevents you from camping on the throne. His most dangerous skill is Armored Blow, which gives him +10 defense when initiating combat. He's also got Good Fortune, which is never realistically going to be a problem. Lastly, he's equipped with a silver sword, which makes him hit pretty hard. Silver weapons debuff your strength by 2 every time you use one, so he'll get weaker every time he attacks until you either kill him or his attacks become comparable to beating you with a pool noodle.  In the west, I've got Felicia, Effie, Silas, and Marth to handle the cavalry.  In the east, it's Elise, Niles, Odin, and Arthur to deal with the wyverns. Mozu is guarding the throne because I'm not sure if we're using her yet. Don't worry, if you guys decide to make me use her, I shouldn't have too much trouble raising her even though I'm missing the best opportunities to get her up to speed.  Invasions require you to defend the throne. This isn't too difficult, though the AI is a bit unpredictable because sometimes they'll try to seize the throne rather than attacking your units.  I have Marth drop Silas here so that the two of them can dual strike on the next turn.   Because of the Records Hall, Effie is fine on her own, so I have her start chipping this javelin guy down.  Felicia moves here, equipped with the bronze axe. She's only in range of the javelin guy, who is pretty weak, so she'll be fine even if she gets hit.   Back in the west, Elise flies Niles in range to shoot down one of these Wyvern Riders.    With the extra strength from Arthur, the meal, and the Private Quarters boost, Odin is just able to one round these guys without a tonic.  On the enemy phase, the boss kills Lilith because I placed her fishbowl too close. Oops.   Effie chips a Cavalier down.  Niles takes an axe to the face.  And Felicia tanks the javelin guy.  The southern group is going to steadily move north until we take them on.  Most of the cavalry ignore Effie because they wouldn't be able to damage her.   That's fine, because Marth and particularly Silas will make short work of them. Go Silas!   Effie finishes her guy off.   While Felicia finishes the javelin guy.  Silas just waits so he and Marth can finish the last Cavalier off next turn.   Niles takes out the first of this Wyvern Rider pair.    And Odin takes out the last wyvern.  I sure hope so, because while the bulk is nice, you really need speed and strength.   On enemy phase, the Mercenaries keep moving north while the last Cavalier continues to ignore our units to go for our buildings. Also, Felicia activates Good Fortune again.   Marth chips the last Cavalier for Silas.   And Silas finishes him off. Now we can comfortably deal with the Mercenaries.  Felicia and Effie pair and separate towards the center of the map.  I have everyone else move towards the last group as well.  They continue to ignore me in their quest to take the throne.    Felicia moves to bait the boss, Odin moves to bait the easternmost pair, and Marth and Silas move closer to the middle pair.    Felicia gets attacked by the boss, who hits pretty hard and only takes 4 damage because of Armored Blow.  Felicia, haven't you already gotten this level before?  It's not particularly useful to him here, but he uses Lunge to swap places with Felicia. Enemies with Lunge will always use it, no matter how useless it may be.    Odin baits his guy out and chips him down. The middle pair just move north, toward the throne.   Niles finishes the first member of this pair.    Then Elise gets to work on the second one. This is the more dangerous one, because he has a killing edge. It's worth noting that killer weapons in this game deal x4 damage with crits instead of the usual x3. It doesn't matter here, because she would have barely survived it anyway.   Odin finishes the killing edge guy, who was probably the most dangerous enemy on the map.   Effie switches to the front and starts chipping the boss down with her javelin.  Lastly for this turn, I have Silas and Marth separate here because I might want both of them to attack this guy next turn.   The boss attacks Effie, and because of the silver sword's debuffing effect, he's only able to meaningfully damage frail characters now.    Silas trades blows with this pair, and it's a very one-sided fight.   We're really just cleaning up these last couple of enemies at this point.  Effie chucks a javelin at the boss to eat his guard gauge.  And because Odin has a guard gauge, it's time to have him start stealing the boss kill.  Because these two won't be able to contribute in the south next turn, I have Marth move here so he doesn't support Silas against this guy. It gets us another round of chip experience without extending the map.    On enemy phase, Odin chips the boss and gets D swords out of it. The relevant weapons that this unlocks are iron swords, armorslayers, and the 1-2 range Hoshidan kodachi that we won't be getting until Chapter 12.    Silas dodges unnecessarily and nearly oneshots the poor guy.    Marth steals the kill, mostly for axe experience, and gets a solid level out of it. I would have liked some speed, but strength and defense are pretty important, too.  He also gets Lunge! This is a skill that I'm sure is incredibly useful if you're a good enough player, but I generally forget about it and end up severely underutilizing it. Maybe I'll try to use more during this playthrough.    Odin finishes the boss for a mediocre level. Of course, my criteria for Odin levels is basically "no strength or speed = mediocre, strength or speed = solid, and strength and speed = great."  He does learn Vantage, which is pretty good. It's very good on Sorcerer Odin because it's not technically an offensive skill, so you can activate it while using Nosferatu. It's not as good on a Samurai, but it's still one of the better unpromoted class skills.  The boss also drops     I have Effie pass Felicia to Elise so that Elise can dual strike for some axe experience. As a bonus, Effie gets a decent level while leaving this guy barely alive for Elise to finish.   Elise finishes the map with a very nice level.  I think that the invasions were a fun little addition to the game. I kind of like building my own map, and because there's only 3 invasions in the game, I don't think it has enough time to get repetitive or annoying. The last one is kind of ridiculous, though. I'm pretty sure more than half of the total enemy count in that one are reinforcements, and all of them show up within the first 5 turns. Anyway, this update is getting pretty long, so I'll save the My Castle stuff for the next one. But before that, new unit discussions! New unit discussions Mozu Class: Master of Arms Growth Rates (adjusted for Aptitude) HP - 40 Str - 50 Mag - 15 Skl - 60 Spd - 65 Lck - 55 Def - 45 Res - 40 Mozu is a solid unit in Conquest in particular. In Birthright and Revelation, she doesn't really bring anything unique to the table, but in Conquest, she provides you with a very powerful delete button if you reclass her to Archer. Her personal skill, Forager, restores 20% of her HP at the start of player phase if she's standing on a mountain, woods, waste, or field terrain. It's not a bad personal skill, but she's not exactly a tank, so it's not exactly game changing. The Villager class is locked to her and her children, so the Villager skills are basically personal skills, too. Aptitude, the level 1 Villager skill, boosts all growth rates by 10%. It's pretty nice, but not as strong as it was in Awakening (where it was a 20% bonus in a game with generally higher growth rates). Underdog, the level 10 Villager skill, boosts hit and avoid by 15 if your opponent's level is higher than yours. This isn't particularly great, and it certainly doesn't make it worth keeping her a Villager until level 10. If you reclass her to Archer immediately, she's not that difficult to train because of her sky-high speed and solid strength. She becomes mostly self-sufficient pretty soon after learning Quick Draw. Her best promotion options are either Sniper or Kinshi Knight (my personal favorite). Sniper is Archer but better, turning her into a delete button that can eliminate 1 enemy per turn almost regardless of stats or skills. It learns Certain Blow at level 5, which boosts hit by 40 when initiating combat, and Bowfaire at level 15, which boosts damage dealt by 5 when using a bow. These skills make Sniper Mozu even better at deleting people on player phase. Kinshi Knight trades some bulk and more importantly, some damage, for more movement. It learns Air Superiority at level 5, boosting hit and avoid by 30 when your opponent is a flier, and Amaterasu at level 15, which restores 20% HP to allies within two spaces. Its skills are on the 'meh' side, but in my experience, Kinshi Knight Mozu is still able to one round most enemies, except now she can do it more easily with flier movement. Kinshi Knight also has the advantage of giving +1 move to pair up partners, providing her with a bit more utility that Sniper Mozu doesn't have. Her other options are a lot less appealing, mostly because they leave her stuck with lances for a much longer time, making her harder to raise. I can't say I've ever used Mozu in either of her other classes long term, so I'm not exactly sure how she does with them. Merchant is kind of neat, being a bulkier, slower class with bow access, but unless she ends up much bulkier than I'd expect, I'd say it's only good for gimmicky gold bar strategies. Master of Arms, which is what she rolled, has higher speed than Merchant, and I think she'd turn out to be somewhat bulky, very fast, and pretty strong. The only real problem I'd expect is that she'll take a while to get off the ground. Should I use Mozu? If so, who should I bench? But before I end this update, I'd like to gather opinions on using Mozu now that we've passed the deployment limit. Going forward, I'm not 100% certain how I'll be deciding on new characters, but in Mozu's case, she'll be pretty much unusable if I wait too much longer to start raising her. Odin is the only character that I'm not willing to bench; everyone else is fair game. Voting will end when I play the next chapter, probably on the weekend. Next time, Azura plays Metal Gear Solid.
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Jul 4, 2023 23:14
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Update 6 - Slow and Steady The first order of business in this update is Mozu. There was a tie in the voting, so I'll just flip a coin to decide. Heads for using Mozu, and tails for benching her.  Looks like we're using Mozu.  You guys also voted to promote Effie to Benchmaster (love you too, guys), so the team just got substantially worse. Mozu is the only one at this point who can use lances, so I gave all of Effie's stuff to her. This should make the run more interesting.   Next is supports. Marth and Silas is pretty nice, because now they can activate Supportive. Effie and Elise is pretty worthless now, though.  I build the prison, as well as the accessory shop and a Felicia statue. I won't be using captured units, but it gives some extra crit during invasions. Accessories only have an affect on the gameplay during invasions, so I might buy some for funsies. The accessory shop itself also gives extra avoid during invasions, though it'll be a while before the next one.    I also do a little shopping. Odin needs an iron sword, and I also get an iron axe for both Marth and Elise, and a hand axe for Elise. They can't use them yet, but they're close enough that they should reach D axes within the next map. I think Elise is literally one combat away.     I also cook another steak. It's a nice meal, and it went exclusively to characters that benefit from it, which is nice.   Finally, I give Odin health, strength, speed, and defense tonics. He'll be my main fighter throughout this next map.   Welcome to Chapter 9, one of my least favorite maps in the game. "least favorite" is relative when playing Conquest, because this map is still fun to play. My big problem with this map is that it kind of encourages slow play, because it's full of bulky Spear Fighters in a tight space where there's not much room to maneuver your units. The Archers in the middle further tighten the space, which is fine until the Enfeeble staff further worsens the problem. There's not even a thief or anything to encourage you to pick up the pace. The enemies are mostly Spear Fighters and Archers, which means lots of Seal Defense to deal with. The northern chest has a Rescue staff in it, which lets you warp a unit next to the user. It's incredibly useful, but it's so nice to have during the final map that I'll only use it if it's absolutely necessary. The eastern chest has a brass naginata, which is just there so Azura can get a weapon.   Thankfully, not every Spear Fighter has Seal Defense. In this front group, it's just the two I've highlighted.   Both of these paired Samurai have Vantage and Duelist's Blow, but they're kind of on their own, so they shouldn't be a problem.   These Archers in the center all have Underdog, and their level is low enough that it's gonna be active most of the time. This just serves to make them a little more accurate, which isn't too bad. One of them also has a shining bow that does magic damage, just in case you thought you could just have Effie deal with it using a javelin. The real problem is the amount of stuff that adds up to make them a pain to deal with. The boss has Rally Defense, which gives allies within 2 spaces +4 defense until the start of next turn. Because of this, these guys effectively have 12 defense.  Like this guy, for example. They have an Enfeeble staff, which debuffs all stats by 4, and has 4 uses. Anyone trying to handle the Archers is likely to struggle after taking this, especially without a healer, because no one on my team will be able to take more than one hit from them.   Every highlighted enemy in this screenshot has Seal Defense, including the supporters in the pair ups. Between the Enfeeble guy and the sheer number of enemies, it's very difficult to deal with the huge cluster in the east. Also, when you enter the rough area I drew in, the game drops reinforcements from all three stairways; a total of 9 enemies. I usually block off at least one staircase, because that's too much.  To make matters worse, the pair bonuses make them pretty difficult to double, which makes it hard to one round and avoid Seal Defense.  The last enemy to talk about is the boss, Haitaka. He's a pretty tough boss because he hits hard, he's pretty bulky, and he's on a throne, making him kind of dodgy too. The steel nageyari he's equipped with is an enemy-only weapon that's basically just a steel naginata with 1-2 range. He's also got Seal Defense and Strong Riposte, which both make him hit that much harder. He's also apparently a great unit if you capture him, but I've actually never bothered.  We're done talking about the enemies for now, so here's our new units for the map. First we have Nyx, who is honestly one of the worst units in Conquest. She's still pretty good, which really says something about how good the unit balance in this game is. She's not all that useful in this map, but she can contribute if you want her to.  Next we have Azura, who starts as a blue unit that we can control. She won't be doing much singing in this map, because her main use here is to do a sort of stealth mission to activate a dragon vein. She'll want to head north, avoiding the Samurai, grab the naginata from the chest, and activate the dragon vein.   This is probably the best attempt at a stealth mission in the series. Azura wants to head north, avoiding the Samurai until she grabs the naginata from the chest, and activate the dragon vein. It's a fun little side goal, and I think it's neat. The dragon vein brings several enemies to 1 HP, most notably the front half of the pairs, making the enemy cluster much easier to deal with.   Now that we're done thinking about the map, it's time to actually play the map. This is how I arranged my units. The only units on my army with a defense stat at the moment are Marth, Elise, Silas, and Odin. Of these, Marth and Elise are fliers, so they can't really bait the problem spots on this map. That leaves Silas and Odin, and even though Silas is probably the better choice, I decided to use Odin as the spearhead of the army. Because of all the stat boosts he's got, he'll be fine even though he's facing a lot of enemies.  Everyone else but Marth just kinda hangs out to clean up next turn. Felicia is positioned so that Odin can take advantage of Demoiselle, and Marth heads east to recruit Nyx.  Azura starts inching as close to her guard's range as she can without entering it.   Because of all the strength boosts Odin has right now, he's able to one round these Spear Fighters, which means they can't seal his defense.       I think he would actually been fine without the health or defense tonics, but they're affordable enough that I didn't feel like finding out.  Azura's guard starts patrolling the eastern portion of the map.   On player phase, we're left with a couple of Archers from the initial group. Silas starts chipping them down.   If you use attack stance well, Mozu isn't too difficult to raise. She currently gets just under 50 experience per kill, so she'll start getting some levels soon enough. Unfortunately, this isn't the easiest map to feed her kills in.    An Arthur-boosted Elise chips the second one down, and she finally gets D axes. Say hello to hand axe hit rates worse than Arthur's!    Niles finishes for one of the worst levels he's capable of getting.  Movement +1 more than makes up for it. It's easily one of the best skills in the game, and a solid choice to pass down to child characters.  Odin supports Felicia while she baits the Samurai pair.   And Marth recruits Nyx, who immediately starts smashing stuff.  Oh, and Azura inches forward a couple more spaces.    Felicia baits the Samurai pair out, but they get an obnoxious dodge. Her hit rate would have been 100% if it weren't for Duelist's Blow.   Niles isn't much more reliable, but he chips successfully.    Silas at this point provides a single massive, yet accurate, hit against pretty much anything. He finishes the first Samurai for a level that makes him better at doing that. I just wish he had gotten some speed.   I'd rather not take any more attacks from this guy, so I have Arthur take a pot shot at him with his hand axe, and it pays off nicely.    Now he's weak enough for Mozu to finish. I don't really care that he activated Vantage, because these are the only enemies on the map with it, and Mozu just won't attack unless she's getting the kill, so her health really doesn't matter. Unfortunately, there's not many more opportunities to feed her kills in this map, so this is about all she'll be doing for the moment.  Nyx moves into Enfeeble range so she can start wasting its charges. I don't plan to use her for several turns, so she won't mind the stat reduction.  Azura moves towards the chest, and everyone else just moves forward, staying out of enemy range. The problem at this point is that if putting someone in enemy range also puts them in enfeeble range, and I don't have any options to deal with both of these problems at the same time.  Literally nothing happens during enemy phase aside from Nyx getting Enfeebled, but Felicia activated Good Fortune on player phase, which is actually kind of nice right now.  I pair Elise and Silas, as well as Felicia and Niles, and have everyone inch closer to the enemy, staying just out of range. Odin uses a vulnerary, because he'll need the health to deal with the eastern horde. I usually take the southern route, but I couldn't see any way to survive all of that without taking even longer, so we'll use the northern route for this run. I'm just going to soak up every Enfeeble before taking on the group near the boss. This honestly might break my "no excessive stalling" rule, but I really couldn't think of a way to proceed without mostly waiting out the Enfeeble charges or using a lot of extra vulneraries to maybe save a couple of turns.  Azura opens the chest from the north, and though it's not a great one, she has a weapon now.  Once again, nothing happens on enemy phase except for Mozu eating an Enfeeble (it's not like her stats mattered right now anyway). Back on player phase, I move Silas and Elise north and have them break this wall.  Felicia and Niles move just behind him to provide Demoiselle support. This only puts her in range of the Archer.  Arthur lines up for his turn with the stat debuff.  I pair Nyx and Mozu, and everyone else inches forward, staying out of enemy range. Because of Arthur's low resistance, the Enfeeble would normally target him instead of everyone else. Unfortunately, Conquest AI is pretty smart, so it's going to target Silas instead because he's actually facing combat and will actually be affected by the debuff.  Azura gets just a touch closer to her dragon vein, but now that she has a weapon, she can stay in her guard's range to start fighting him on enemy phase.  You can't see it well in the screenshot, but this is Silas getting Enfeebled.    Thankfully, this guy doesn't have Seal Defense. Silas hits really hard even with -4 strength and weapon triangle disadvantage.  He does get chipped by the archer, but he's still fast enough to avoid doubles even through the -4 speed.   Elise cleans up the Spear Fighter. She's almost dealing double digit damage now!   Marth doubles and kills the Archer. He's become pretty great at this point, though these Archers are pretty slow, so it's not that impressive.  Felicia and Niles separate near the chest.  I'm content with Azura taking the Samurai on during enemy phase, and everyone else is literally just waiting on the Enfeeble to run out, so I just end the turn.  On enemy phase, Arthur takes the last Enfeeble for the team.    You may think it's a little strange that a dancer can have such an even fight with a Samurai, but this guy is pathetically weak. Like so pathetically weak that he may actually be the worst enemy in the entirety of Conquest. I guess they left the job of guarding the Hoshidan princess up to the new recruit.   On player phase, Azura drops acid on these enemies' heads. It only damaged the front member of these Spear Fighter pairs, so it's not as effective as it looks. They'll just switch before attacking unless you attack them first, which would trigger a lot of reinforcements.  Odin is ready enough for this next turn, so I have him pair up with Marth and break this wall down.  Niles grabs the Rescue staff, which is extremely useful in the endgame (and pretty much anywhere else, to be honest).  I want Elise alone in a bit, so she passes Silas to Felicia. For now, she's hanging out next to Odin so he benefits from Lily's Poise.  Felicia and Silas move west and separate, so they can help out against the Archers in the boss room.  And finally, we have Nyx and Mozu wait here to start properly fighting them.     On enemy phase, Odin starts us off by taking out this first Spear Fighter for a great level. More strength and speed!    Like I said, this pair here swapped the healthy guy to the front. It's not a huge problem, but if you were to trigger the reinforcements at the same time, it would be pretty difficult to deal with.    Azura continues her slapfight. She'll win eventually.    This is the most interesting fight this turn. Because this guy has a shining bow, he does magic damage, so Nyx's personal skill, Countercurse, deals half of his damage back at him. This usually won't matter because she'll two round without it, but it will help in a minute.  Mozu gets a pretty good level from blocking the dual strike, too. She desperately needs strength so she can actually start fighting things, so this is nice even though she didn't get speed.   Odin finishes the first of this pair.    And Elise kills the other one, for probably the single worst level you can get in this game. At least it can only get better from here!  We do get 3,000 gold out of it, which is nice.   Nyx backs off and uses Mozu's vulnerary.   This is where Countercurse helps us. Niles would still kill without the extra damage, but it lets him avoid a counter so he can soak up another hit on enemy phase.  Felicia is done over here, so she moves to provide Demoiselle support to Odin.  Azura finishes the turn by using a vulnerary.    She's almost got him! Any day now!    Odin kills the last Spear Fighter for the moment. In hind sight, a tonic-boosted Silas with Vow of Friendship active could probably have let me do this map much more quickly, but that's not what I ended up doing and I'm not willing to replay this map again.   Once again, if Niles had taken the counterattack from the first Archer, he'd have just barely died here. It's not much, but Countercurse did technically help here.  Back on player phase, Felicia activates Good Fortune again.  Niles has a guard gauge, so he moves forward while staying in the Archers' range.   Nyx finishes the second Archer off. Fimbulvetr is kind of inaccurate, especially in Nyx's hands, but it worked out, and that's all that matters.  Elise moves to provide Lily's Poise support so she doesn't die to the last Archer. She also trades Nyx's fire tome to the front so she hopefully won't miss on enemy phase.   She did it! It would technically have been safer to use another vulnerary, because if she had missed she would have died, but I'm a cheapskate and it was realistically not going to miss.  Odin uses a vulnerary without moving forward, because I'm not ready to trigger the reinforcements just yet.  I end the turn after Arthur moves forward.    Nyx barely survives and chips. I think this is the most I've ever had her contribute in this map.   She finishes this guy on player phase.  It's finally time to trigger those reinforcements, so Odin moves in and uses a vulnerary.  I move everyone in, making sure to block the northern stairs, because they'll spawn a whopping 4 Spear Fighters if I don't.    This is the other Spear Fighter pair. We'll take them out next turn.  These are the reinforcements I've been so afraid of. You can see how dealing with all of them, or even just the northern ones along with the Enfeeble staff and Spear Fighter pairs would be difficult, especially with such a sub-optimal army. I'm sure it could be done with this team, though.   Rare footage of Arthur having more than 80 hit with a hand axe.   Odin finishes the second member of the last pair because he's one of the only ones able to tank the reinforcements.  Azura decides it would be safer back in her hole in the north.   Elise commits a war crime by killing an unarmed medic for axe experience. Everyone else just waits around for the reinforcements to come closer.   Odin is in range of all three Archers, but there's only room for these two to attack, so he's totally fine.  It's really, really annoying that the third Archer went to the left. In my practice run, he went to the right which made them easy to take out. On the left like that, it forces me to enter the range of the southern group that was otherwise content to stay there. This is gonna add a couple of turns to what was already a pretty bad turn count, but I'm not willing to replay the map over it.    Marth kills one of the Archers and finally gets D axes. Hurray for hand axes!   Azura gains a decent level for refreshing him. She's actually got good speed and strength growths, which we just might put to use depending on what class she ends up as.   Before I use Marth, I decided to handle the western front because I wanted to keep him as an option. Nyx starts us off by chipping this Samurai.    I thought about this one for a minute, because Arthur was super inaccurate, but then I thought "oh, duh" and used Silas, who one shots this poor guy with Arthur's support. He would definitely have been a better choice of main fighter over Odin, but whatever.   Now that we've handled that, Marth can safely finish the other Archer off.   Felicia kills the other Archer, and because she healed up with Good Fortune, she can choke this point for a turn.  She will want a pair up partner, though. Elise will do nicely.  Niles just kind of hangs around because he can't really do anything at this point.    On enemy phase, Felicia chips a Samurai down.   She also facetanks an Archer.    Nyx finishes the weakened Samurai. Even though she's not a great unit, I won't complain about more 2 range options.   Silas cuts another guy in half. He's not even using tonics right now! He gets C swords after this, unlocking steel swords, levin swords, and killing edges. C swords also gives him +1 attack with swords, which is pretty nice.   This was supposed to set up a kill for Mozu!  She can still chip, so she pairs with Niles and has Azura refresh her so she can reach the Archer's other side.   It's not much extra experience, but every bit helps.  Odin has a guard gauge, so he moves into Haitaka's range to start us off. I also decided to have Silas trap the Archer so Mozu can safely chip him again next turn. It's kind of cheap, but it's not slowing me down, so I don't consider this "excessive stalling."    Vantage can kind of work against you with the guard gauge system. Odin wasn't going to take damage here regardless, and attacking while the gauge is full keeps him from filling it with that attack. Not that it matters here, though.    Mozu chips before Arthur heroically puts the poor guy out of his misery.  He gets a solid level for his heroism.  Azura refreshes him, and he moves to attack Haitaka.    His hit rate is pretty bad, but it's as good as I can get it because the boss is under the effect of Odin's Heartseeker. Something to note about Heartseeker is that it doesn't stack with itself, so Nyx and Odin can't drop his avoid by 40 together.    I have Elise chip him for experience.  I don't want to take any chances with this guy, so I have Marth wait patiently.    I hate this guy. He's not my least favorite boss, but he's pretty high on the "obnoxiously dodgy bosses on thrones" list. The throne even healed him on enemy phase!   At this point, I kind of said "screw this" and had Odin back off before using the concoction. Azura refreshes him so he can get back in there.   He dodges, but at this point it doesn't matter. It does make the concoction I had him use unnecessary, though.    Elise fails to chip him, which is pretty normal behavior for her. The funny part here is that this decision delays the map clear by a turn, because now I don't have enough people in range to seize the throne this turn.     Then I realized that Silas could finish him off accurately using Odin's bronze sword. In hind sight, he should already have had one of his own for situations like this.  I've still got a couple of these lying around, so this is pretty useless to me. I could sell it, but I don't think I will.  If I'm spending an extra turn here anyway, I might as well have Azura get some experience out of it.  This was... not my best work, to say the least. I really should have boosted Silas up with tonics and had him lead the charge, but this is one of my least favorite maps in the game, so I'll just keep this run.      Back at My Castle, these are the supports that we unlocked. I also built the Odin statue because of course I want a statue of Odin.  Because Nyx can reclass to Outlaw, her promoted options are Dark Knight (1), Sorcerer (2), Adventurer (3), and Bow Knight (4).  She rolls a 2, making her a Sorcerer. I honestly have no idea how good she is with Nosferatu, but I think we're going to find out in the next chapter or two. I don't generally use Nyx, so I don't really know what she's capable of.  Azura can reclass to Sky Knight, but because the Songstress is a class with no promotion options, she only has three final class options. These are Songstress (1), Falcon Knight (2), and Kinshi Knight (3).  She rolls another 2, which makes her a Falcon Knight. I can't really describe how big of a downgrade this is compared to Songstress.   She doesn't even have a second digit in her attack stat! But her strength growth is high enough to bring this up eventually, so she might end up being pretty good in the long run. Flier utility is never a bad thing either. I might have preferred Kinshi Knight for bow access, though.    I give Odin's old thunder tome to Nyx, and I buy a bronze lance for Azura as well as a hand axe for Marth. That's all of the My Castle stuff for now, so let's move on to the new unit discussions! New unit discussions Nyx Class: Sorcerer Growth Rates HP - 30 Str - 5 Mag - 50 Skl - 35 Spd - 50 Lck - 20 Def - 15 Res - 30 As I said earlier, Nyx is arguably the worst unit in Conquest. She's still solid in my limited experience, being a magical glass cannon with somewhat shaky hit rates. Unfortunately, that role is usually taken by Elise, and I don't typically want another one. It's been a long while since I last used her in the long term, so take this whole discussion with a grain of salt. Her personal skill, Countercurse, makes enemies take 50% of the damage they deal to her with magical attacks. It sounds better than it is; in my experience, it is only rarely useful because she won't generally be fighting mages. As a Dark Knight, she gets a little more bulk and more movement, which somewhat helps her out, but she's so naturally frail that I'd be surprised if that helps her out all that much. Lifetaker would probably help her bulk, but I doubt it would make her that much better. I hear that you can promote her immediately to Dark Knight and she becomes a prepromote of sorts, but I feel like there's better uses of your early heart seals than that. I've never used her as an Adventurer, but I'd guess that she's pretty good once she gets to C bows for the shining bow. Bows are pretty good in this game in general, so she might even be pretty good with physical weaponry, especially if you give her the strength drops (though there's quite a bit of competition for those and they're probably better used elsewhere). She'd definitely be able to contribute in Chapter 10 against the Sky Knights, which is never a bad thing. Bow Knight would probably be better because of the extra movement, because I doubt she'd really need the Adventurer's extra magic with her growths. I don't think there's really any skill she would particularly benefit from on the Outlaw side of things, other than maybe Shurikenbreaker. As a Sorcerer, I expect her to either be a speedy magic nuke or a Nosferatu tank that doesn't work as well as Odin. Maybe both? I don't really know, but maybe she'll surprise me by being really good. Azura Class: Falcon Knight Growth Rates HP - 25 Str - 50 Mag - 25 Skl - 60 Spd - 60 Lck - 40 Def - 15 Res - 35 Azura for some reason has similar offensive growths as Ike in Path of Radiance. Hers are actually slightly better, because she beats him out by 5% in speed. I think this was just so she could contribute during dual strikes, because she really shouldn't be fighting anything on her own. Her personal skill, Healing Descant, restores 10% HP to allies within 2 spaces at the start of player phase. It's just about all you could ask for on a pure support unit like Azura, though it's not generally going to make a huge difference. Currently, my healing options are limited, and I may find it more useful than usual. As a Songstress, Azura is easily one of the best units in the game because singing is just that good. The Songstress skills are Luck +4, which is generally garbage; Inspiring Song, which gives sing targets +3 speed, skill, and luck until the start of next turn; Voice of Peace, which makes the user take -2 damage from physical attacks from enemies within 2 spaces (the skill description is wrong when it implies that allied units get the bonus too, which I actually didn't know until just now); and Foreign Princess, which gives her +2 damage dealt and -2 damage taken from the invisible purple enemies. The only good skill here is Inspiring Song, but the class is so good that it could have literally no skills and it would still be her best option by far. Her other options are Falcon Knight and Kinshi Knight, which are both very similar. She'll be a very frail flying glass cannon in either class, but you're choosing betweeen staff access in Falcon Knight and bow access in Kinshi Knight. Darting Blow from the Sky Knight is pretty good, and will help her double early on before her speed starts really growing. Amaterasu from the Kinshi Knight stacks with her personal skill and lets her restore 30% HP to allies within 2 spaces, which is nice but not worth changing her class over. The best skill on the table is Rally Speed from the Falcon Knight, but in a normal run she should be singing, not rallying. In this run, she'll probably be the most frail unit on the army, but her damage output should be pretty good once she gets going if we use her in the long term. As nice as bow access would be for her combat, because it lets her avoid many counterattacks that she really doesn't have the bulk to survive, Rally Speed is easily the best rally and it's going to be very useful, so I think I like Falcon Knight better than Kinshi Knight for this run. The next map lets me bring everyone but Effie, so there's no bench voting for today. Next time, betrayal and pineapple stocks are both way up!
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Jul 12, 2023 06:11
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Update 7 (Part 1) - Betrayal is More Expensive than Anticipated It's time for what is easily the most anticipated chapter in the early game. After some preparations, that is. And by some preparations, I mean just cooking, because we did everything else I needed last update.   Personally, I think it's hilarious that Arthur manages to screw up his meal in such a way that he stumbles into a well-made Hoshidan variant of the dish.   "Fans of Hoshidan food" consists of just Odin and Azura at the moment. This meal could certainly have been better, but I'll take it.  It's also Odin's birthday today! Or it was on July 15th, when I played the map. I can't celebrate with him because it would violate my rules, unfortunately.  Conquest Chapter 10. Easily the most famous chapter in Fates, and for good reason. It's one of the hardest maps in the game, and it's thrown at you early enough that new players won't really have figured out how to play well just yet. It's a genuinely difficult map, and in my opinion, the model defense map. It's my personal favorite map in the series, and I don't think I've ever had two attempts go quite the same way. That being said, I'll save the details for when we actually play the map.   Ah crap, we've made pineapple boy angry.    See the enemy count in the bottom right? That's not even half of the enemies this map throws at you. Luckily, their skills generally aren't too threatening. Anyway, there's four villages, two of which are actually kind of difficult to get to. There's also a Fire Orb and a Ballista that we'll be making use of, as well as a second Ballista that's more there for the enemies to use if you let them.  These guys with Lunge are some of the most dangerous enemies on the map because they can take your units out of chokepoints, or just drag someone into range of several other enemies. Or both. There aren't too many of them, but they're placed carefully to make certain groups much more dangerous.  Some of these Sky Knights have Darting Blow, but their attack is generally low enough that it's not a problem. Though it does make them harder to one round on enemy phase.  A surprisingly small number of these Spear Fighters have Seal Defense, but it's always nasty if you let it hit you.  Takumi also brought his retainers, Hinata and Oboro. They're not too bad on their own, but it's pretty hard to get them alone considering the enemy count here. Hinata's personal skill, Triple Threat, is a kind of mini-Counter. If you drop his health to 50% or less with a sword, lance, or axe hit, you'll take 50% of the damage from that particular attack. It only works on the hit that brings him to that threshold, so it's not too dangerous. He also has Movement +1, increasing his threat range; Darting Blow, letting him actually double because even in Conquest he's too slow to double anything on his own; and Armored Blow, which kind of forces you to deal with him on player phase. He won't move right away, so he can be safely ignored for the moment.  Oboro is more dangerous than Hinata, especially because there's a village in her range, but we'll get a character who can make short work of her soon. Her personal skill, Nohr Emnity, lets her deal +3 damage to units in Nohrian classes. Unless you've reclassed Odin, this is everyone except for Azura and Mozu, both of whom are frail enough to die to Oboro anyways. She's also got Movement +1 like Hinata, as well as Seal Strength and Seal Defense. Unlike in Birthright, Hinata is actually the more dangerous of Takumi's retainers.  Takumi himself is here for the first of many fights against us. In this map, he's less a unit and more a map feature/optional challenge. His personal skill, Competetive, gives him +10 crit, +3 damage dealt, and -1 damage received when he's paired with a higher-levelled unit. It's obviously useless here, because he's alone. He's also got Quick Draw, which is kind of useless because he can't move so you'd have to let him initiate on you for it to work; Wary Fighter, which makes it difficult to kill him before he activates the dragon vein he's standing on; and Point Blank, which is a DLC skill that lets him counterattack at 1 range. You can go out of your way to kill him, but I'm not going to bother right now. I might go back and try it in a bonus update later, though.  This is how I've got everyone positioned for the map. Shockingly, I didn't see anwhere in my practice runs that a tonic would make a big difference, so I'm not using any.  If any enemy reaches one of the green tiles on top of the map, we lose. Unlike many defense maps, this is an actual threat for a couple of reasons, one of which being the high enemy count.   Here's what the fire orb and ballista ranges look like. They'll come in handy, but they don't apply your unit's stats to their might; the number on screen is the number you have. They'll hit up to 5 enemies in a "+" shape, though any of your units in the shot will take damage as well. The ballista is the most useful one by far. If you have a second archer, usually Mozu, you can technically use both of them, but I've never found the eastern one to be worth using.   Niles starts us off by chipping these two with the ballista.    Odin visits the northeastern village for a master seal, which is a pretty good reward for what is essentially a freebie village. I won't be using it for a chapter or two, though.  Arthur follows Odin. Their job is going to be handling the northeast and preventing the enemy from taking that ballista.  Marth is going to take on these Spear Fighters. Because they're weakened, he can finish them on enemy phase with Elise's help.  Azura moves here, mostly to heal Marth with her personal skill. It's not much, but it can make a difference.  Finally, Nyx and Mozu move northeast to get that village and take on the Oni Savages. Mozu, unfortunately, won't be getting all that much experience in this map. She should hopefully have a solid chance in Chapter 11, though!    Marth and Elise can only barely take care of these guys. If either of them were a point of strength weaker, I'd need a tonic to do this.   You have no idea how many times Elise missed one of these 71s when I was feeling out the map with this team. I could have recovered from one miss, though it would delay the village visit by a couple of turns.  Marth gets a very solid level.     Silas gets to work clearing these Oni Savages. His damage output is crazy because he's stacking Elbow Room and Strong Riposte for +6 damage dealt. And he gets a great level for his trouble, though I wish he'd realize that he can get strength and speed from the same level.   The second fight goes much the same as the first.  At the start of player phase, Azura heals Marth for 2 HP with Healing Descant. I won't be mentioning this often because it's going to happen a lot and I don't want to bring it up every time. Also, it's worth noting that every single enemy on this map aside from Hinata, Oboro, and Takumi are aggressive from turn 1.  Niles chips these Ninja with the ballista, turning them into experience bags.   Elise kills the first one with a hit rate that's actually pretty good by her standards.   Marth visits the southwestern village for, in my opinion, one of the most significant weapons in the route. The dual club is a Hoshidan weapon, so this is the only one we'll be getting. It inverts the weapon triangle and doubles its effect, letting axe users fight sword enemies very effectively. Although, there aren't as many enemy swords as you'd think in this game, so it's not as game changing as you might expect.     Azura finishes the second Ninja with Marth's help, and gets a kind of bad level. She wants strength more than anything. Darting Blow is solid, though, and she won't have much trouble doubling for the moment.   Nyx starts working on the northwestern Oni Savages while the wall they're trying to break is still up. Interestingly, there's a really tight window between the fireball connecting with the enemy and the experience bar appearing, which I've never noticed until trying to screenshot it.   Mozu visits the northwestern village and gets  Arthur and Odin move forward, but not too much because they'll be picking up some of the reinforcements that appear next turn.  Silas would kill this guy, but without Strong Riposte, he can't quite one round, so he just waits instead.   On enemy phase, the Ninja attacks him, but Felicia blocks it because of the guard gauge. This is nice, because I don't want him taking the shuriken debuff.    He kills the Oni Savage, and I've gotta mention here that it looks like he slipped on a banana peel when he dodged.  Niles gets hit by the Sky Knight, but he'll be fine.  These guys will break the wall next turn, but that's fine because Nyx is going to handle them before they become a problem.  Lastly, these Sky Knights appear from the south. This is the first of many waves of reinforcements in this map. These guys, and most of the reinforcement fliers have an interesting AI quirk where they'll ignore combat unless they can score a kill so they can move to the green tiles. This means that you can't enemy phase them and they put a lot of extra pressure on you as a result.  At the start of player phase, we get some very welcome reinforcements! Also, Silas activated Good Fortune.  Beruka is a very nice unit for this map, because she can hit hard, take a hit or two, and she provides more flier utility.  Camilla is really good in this map, and also in general. I'd argue that she's one of the best units in the series, especially relative to the difficulty of her game. She's easily the best unit in Conquest, and she's gonna be carrying more than her fair share of weight starting this turn.  Selena is another very nice addition to the map, but because she doesn't fly, she's a little far back to be useful unless you plan for her appearance like I did.    Pairing her with Arthur, we can get her right into the fray.    I pass Arthur to Odin so he doesn't get dual striked to death by Spear Fighters next turn before having him kill the other Archer.   Niles kills the Sky Knight that hit him earlier. His hit rate is a little shaky, but he can't quite kill with the bronze bow, so it's what I've got to work with.     It's kind of a convoluted maneuver, but I pair Camilla with Beruka so she can pass her to Elise so that Elise can take her to this Ninja. This is pretty much how Camilla performs in combat for the next 5 chapters or so, and she never stops being a very strong combat unit.  Silas moves here, which puts him in range of all three of these Oni Savages. If he hadn't activated Good Fortune, I think I'd have him use a vulnerary to be safe.     Nyx finishes her first enemy off with thunder. Most of her levels are going to look similar to this. Malefic Aura is more free damage, which is pretty nice.  There's a pretty large group approaching from the west, but we'll have to deal with that later. I don't really want to bait anything out with Marth because he'll just get debuffed if he does, so I just arrange him and Azura for maximum healing.    On enemy phase, Selena takes a pretty big hit from this guy. I don't mind that she doesn't one round because this guy doesn't have Seal Defense.     Odin one rounds his guy because of Arthur's support. The levels in this map continue to be generally solid.    Oboro moves in to dual strike against Silas, but it's not a problem because we were going to go for her soon anyways. Silas is getting another +3 damage dealt from Camilla's personal skill, Rose's Thorns.    I'm just showing the highlights of these fights, because they're all largely the same. The only difference is how badly the enemy loses.  Niles gets chipped by another Sky Knight.  And this guy finally takes down the wall.  Lastly, these highlighted guys are the reinforcements for the turn.     Passing Camilla an iron axe lets her double Oboro, something she can't do with the steel axe. That makes her pretty easy to deal with.   Nyx chips this guy down.   And Mozu gets her only kill for the map using a dual strike from Nyx. The hit rate was kind of shaky, but I don't think a more accurate spell would have quite secured the kill.   Niles shoots another Sky Knight down.   And Marth takes one of the reinforcements from a turn ago out with Silas's help.  I was kind of undecided on where I wanted Silas to go, so I swapped Felicia to the front for the extra movement and made sure she could reach the village if I wanted her to next turn.  That group from the west is officially becoming a problem, but it's one I'll have Azura and Beruka run away from for now. Azura is likely to get attacked by this Sky Knight though.   Selena finishes this guy off with Odin's help.   I pass Arthur to Selena before having Odin use a vulnerary. I honestly don't remember why I passed Arthur like that. Maybe so Selena could gain support with both of them?    Back on enemy phase, Azura does get attacked by this guy. She survives, but it means she can't take any more hits this map, which does limit my options a bit.  This group manages to break our wall, but that's fine.  These fliers are our reinforcements for the turn. The fliers in this map aren't that dangerous in a fight, but the fact that they ignore your units means that they're a constant drain on your player phase unit actions. That goes double for the pairs.  Selena activates Good Fortune on player phase.  Now that these guys are getting this close, I can't really ignore them any further. These Spear Fighters are pretty tanky, so I have Camilla use Lunge so she'll be in position to dual strike against the second one, letting someone else one round.   The steel axe sometimes provides the extra oomph you need to cross the one shot threshold. It also gives more power during dual strikes, where you can't double anyways.   For example, this wouldn't be a kill if she were using the iron axe.   These Ninja are a lot more frail than the Spear Fighters, so Camilla isn't strictly necessary to secure the kill. We'll just leave the last one alive, because I don't really have any good options available to kill him right now. Someone is just going to eat the debuff on enemy phase.    Felicia cleans this Sky Knight up, securing Azura's safety.   I would have just had Niles one shot with the iron bow, but he only has 85 hit with that, and this chip lets Azura get some experience anyways.   Even though her stats are comparable to Mozu's, Azura has flier movement that opens up a lot of options like this.  Back to the other fronts, I have Arthur wait in range of these Archers with a hand axe. Because of the 1 tile bridge, he can soften up one of these guys safely. Odin just hangs back where it's safe.  Sorcerer Odin would just stay here to deal with the Oni Savage reinforcements that are going to show up soon, but Nyx can't take them head on, so she and Mozu start retreating to use the Fire Orb.   On enemy phase, Marth eats the shuriken debuff, which kind of sucks, but at least the damage was negligible.    Arthur not only hits, he dodges. It's totally useless because this is about all the combat I intend to have him participate in directly, but he's trying his best to not get benched after this map.  That was all the combat we saw on enemy phase, but these highlighted guys are the new reinforcements. One of these guys in each group has Lunge, but it's only really relevant in the west because that's the only side with a good chokepoint that it can mess with. At this point, if it's your first playthrough of the game, you probably feel like you've more or less got it figured out, but that's about to change when Takumi uses his dragon vein on enemy phase.   These guys spawn in the perfect spot to chip them with the Fire Orb, but Nyx is still gonna need some more help to deal with them.  This Sky Knight is getting really close to the defense tiles, but it just can't quite reach, so it can wait another turn.   Selena finishes the guy Arthur chipped, and because she has a guard gauge, we'll deal with the others next turn.   Beruka and Marth take out the Ninja together.     While Camilla and Marth deal with this Sky Knight pair so they don't have a chance to slip by us later.  And now Felicia and Silas are going to go grab the last village.   In hind sight, I should probably have used Camilla to bait some of these western enemies this turn, but since I'm not doing that, I might as well take Elise from her so I have more viable fighters next turn.  Niles just chips this guy with the ballista. The northeastern Sky Knight is going to be right next to the defense tiles next turn, but because of Movement +1, he's just barely going to be able to reach him.   Mozu and Odin wait just outside of enemy range, where it's safe.   On enemy phase, Selena uses her guard gauge to tank this Archer. Thanks again to the narrow bridge that prevents multiple of them from attacking her.    This group is actually aggressive, they don't just beeline for the defense tiles.   This other one goes for Marth, who dodges before killing with his counterattack.  Oh boy, here it comes!    At the end of this enemy phase, Takumi activates the dragon vein and drains all of the water, turning water tiles into plain tiles that anyone can walk on. He's nearly turned the map into an open field, which forces you to quickly adapt to the still-high enemy count now that you've lost most of your chokepoints. It lets the enemies exert a lot more pressure on these last few turns, and they're usually pretty frantic as a result. Also, Hinata and Oboro will start approaching if they haven't already been dealt with. Obviously, if you've killed Takumi by this point, this doesn't happen.  There's also this massive wave of Sky Knights from the south which will divert a lot of your attention from the stronger but still threatening ground units.    It's always a touch scary when a miss would mean an instant loss, but Niles pulls it off and handles this guy. Of course, the RNG repays him with another awful level.   The Fire Orb tile is only in range of one Oni Savage with a throwing club, and Nyx can take the hit as long as she's not getting dual striked, so I pair her up with Mozu again before having her chip these guys in the south.   I want to take out as many of these guys as possible, and ideally Camilla ends the turn in Hinata's range while equipped with the dual club. Marth starts us off by killing this Sky Knight with a hand axe.    Because he attacked from 2 spaces, Beruka can trade the dual club off of him while still making use of his dual strike to kill this Spear Fighter.  Marth gets a very good level from helping out. It's pretty much everything I could ask for.   Camilla trades the dual club off of Beruka, and I'm going to have her use Lunge. Because Lunge works even if the target dies, she'll kill this guy and then move into his tile.    Because I really want her to fight Hinata on enemy phase, I have her use the dual club even though its accuracy is dubious.    Next, Elise passes Azura to Beruka so she can dual strike this guy, finishing the last of this group.    Pretty much everything but strength is a very Elise level. Lunge also opens up some options that I'll likely not notice.   We'll want this group moving towards the center to deal with the approaching horde, but for now we want to finish these Archers so they can't take the ballista. Selena kills the first one.   And Odin kills the second.   Felicia finally visits this last village for a dracoshield, which gives +2 defense. I don't know who I'll give this to yet, but I'll probably hand it out before the next map.    On enemy phase, Nyx kills the throwing club guy. She won't be taking any more hits this map.  Unfortunately, I forgot that Conquest's AI is actually smart, and Hinata simply ignored the awful matchup he would have had against Camilla, which screws up my entire plan. The highlighted guys are the last batch of reinforcements. Some of them, like the Archers in the east, are a little too far away to make it to the front line before our turn count is up. Also, you'll note that pretty much my entire army is pretty far from the northwestern enemies, and they're starting to get pretty close to the defense tiles. The southeastern enemies are less dangerous, because we can afford to run away from them if necessary.    I had to think about this one for a few minutes, but in the end, I decided to have Camilla pair up with Elise so she could choke this point for a turn.  This guy is going to win the map on enemy phase if I don't stop him, but Nyx can't take another hit, so she can't block him off or kill him without dying.  Luckily, Mozu is just barely able to survive a hit from him because he's only got an iron club, so we just put her in the way for now.  Silas falls back and heals so he can take on these Oni Savages on enemy phase.    Niles chips this lone Sky Knight down so Marth can kill without a dual strike.    Everyone else just starts falling back to deal with the more threatening western group. I separate everyone to keep my options open.    See, she's fine! This last screenshot is of this guy Lunging into Mozu's spot, which is fine.    Camilla kills one of this pair. She's going to continue choking this point for the moment, even though enemies can just walk around it to the north.      And Silas takes on a lot of Oni Savages. Nothing new here.  This is the state of the map at the start of player phase. The big problems are the huge group of enemies in the west, and the Sky Knights in the east.   Nyx finds a nice safe spot to kill this guy from. That's the most immediate threat handled.     Arthur pairs with Odin to give him some extra oomph, and he chips this throwing club guy.   Camilla chips the only Lunge guy in this entire group. Even though he's still alive, he'll die if he tries to use Lunge on her, and it won't work. Though I think she'd be fine even in the open.     Niles chips this guy for Azura just like earlier.  She gets a better level out of it this time!     I'm mostly content to let Hinata's group do what they want right now, so Beruka kills this other Sky Knight with Niles' help. She gets a very good level out of it. Aside from Niles, everyone has been on point with the levels this whole chapter. She also learns Lunge. I don't think I've ever had so many Lunge users in the same team before.   Now that we're done on that side, I'm confident that Marth can afford to help out over here, so he finishes the throwing club guy off.     Felicia chips the northernmost Sky Knight pair, getting a solid level.  I didn't quite catch it in the screenshot, but Selena sits here to slow the pair's advance down a bit and uses a vulnerary. I shouldn't have focused so much on the Oni Savage pair, considering that these guys are the biggest threat on this side by far.    On enemy phase, Camilla takes on a couple of Oni Savages. I was trying to change the camera angle to one that sucked less, but then I accidentally screenshot the wrong screen, so I don't have this part of enemy phase. Oh well, it's a lesson learned, I guess.    The leftover Oni Savage from eastern pair decides to attack Marth. Now he's under 50% of his health, which activates Silas' Vow of Friendship, which is nice.     Thankfully, I noticed my mistake with the screenshots before missing Hinata's turn to attack. This chip brings him low enough to finish with the dual club.  Here's the state of the map right now, at the start of turn 10. Both Hinata's group and the Sky Knights need to be taken care of right now, though the Sky Knights are a slightly less immediate problem.   Though they're also the easier problem to handle, so I start with those by having Odin finish this one.     Without the extra speed from their pair up, Felicia can double and one round these guys.     Niles softens this guy up so Selena can kill. Though she gets a kind of disappointing level out of it. Normally I'd be happy with speed, but she's one of the fastest units in Conquest, so this isn't that impressive for her.   Marth finishes the last one with Selena's help.  We'll have some trouble with these guys next turn, but for now, Camilla can block their path by sitting here like Mozu earlier.   Azura carries Beruka to the north so she'll be available to help out next turn.  Mozu and Nyx separate again, because I might want Mozu to ferry someone to the front lines next turn.    On enemy phase, Odin starts us off by killing this Oni Savage.   And Felicia eats a pretty big hit from this Archer.  I didn't take a screenshot of the way everyone moved on enemy phase, but you can kind of see it here. Hinata's group is now very close to the defense tiles, which means we have to take them out now or we'll lose. This is going to require a lot of dual strikes. I start by having Arthur pass Odin to Mozu so she can take him to the front lines.     He can't quite kill, but this is the best target of his available options.   Marth finishes the first enemy of the turn.   And Beruka can score a kill here with Camilla's help.    With Camilla's Rose's Thorns, Nyx and Odin can kill the other Oni Savage in one round. Now it's just Hinata that's threatening the defense tiles. Nyx also gets the most Nyx level imaginable.  Camilla attacks Hinata with the dual club. Either this attack connects, or we lose the map, because I don't have any options left to deal with him after this.   I really didn't want to replay the map after losing at the last second, so I'm really glad this connected.   At this point, it's just a matter of protecting my weakened characters, so I pass Selena to Azura, who carries her here so she can block off this Ninja pair.  I also passed Mozu to Niles and had him wait in range, just in case these guys decided they wanted to give him some free experience.  Finally, I had Silas use a vulnerary while standing in this chokepoint. He didn't need the healing at all, but at this point of the map, I wasn't taking any chances.   In the last enemy phase of the map, these Ninja go for Selena, as expected.     Silas kills an Oni Savage, getting a decent level for his trouble. He clearly wants to hit things really hard, which is fine by me.   Arthur dodges his second arrow of the map, and just like the first time, it doesn't matter.   And Silas takes us home using his guard gauge.  There we have it! Chapter 10 is one of the best defense maps in the series, and it's a strong contender for my favorite map in the game. It's got a strong incentive to play aggressively, and the villages all give good enough rewards to make grabbing them worthwhile. I don't really have much more to say about it that I haven't already said, but it's a great map. That being said, I've just about hit the character limit, so the post-battle stuff will be in a part 2.
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Jul 20, 2023 08:44
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Update 7 (Part 2) - Post-Map My Castle   These are the supports for the map. I didn't realize that Odin and Selena's support was so fast. Anyway, it's time to roll the dice on our new units!  Beruka can reclass to Fighter, so her options are Malig Knight (1), Wyvern Lord (2), Berserker (3), and Hero (4). Of these options, I'd definitely prefer a flying class.  Oh good, another Hero. That's 4 of them on the army now.   She's faster and stronger, but she's not fast enough to double without help. This is definitely worse than Wyvern Lord, but she's still much better than Arthur, so it shouldn't be too bad.  Selena can reclass to Sky Knight, so her options are Bow Knight (1), Hero (2), Falcon Knight (3), and Kinshi Knight (4). I don't really have a preference here. More flier utility is always nice, but she'll be a better combat unit on the ground.  She gets Kinshi Knight! This is kind of on the "ehh" side of things, because its strength tends to be pretty low. She won't have any trouble doubling things, though!   The strength loss hurts, but look at how fast she is! I think she'll be pretty good.  And now it's Camilla's turn. Her options are Malig Knight (1), Wyvern Lord (2), Dark Knight (3), and Sorcerer (4). The flying options are better by far, but also a lot more boring, so I'm fine either way.  Malig Knight is... Kinda bland. Very effective, but also a very uninteresting outcome.   Now that we're done with that, I buy a bronze lance for Selena and pass her Azura's naginata, because she has the bulk to potentially benefit from the +1 def/res it provides. New unit discussions  Beruka Class: Hero Growth Rates HP - 45 Str - 30 Mag - 10 Skl - 55 Spd - 30 Lck - 45 Def - 40 Res - 25 "Mom, can we have Camilla?" "No, we have Camilla at home." Beruka is a great unit in a standard run, mostly because she has access to the Wyvern classline without any extra investment, and she has the bases and growths to be a good one. Her speed is a little low, but a decent pair up can usually patch that up. Her personal skill, Opportunist, gives her +4 damage dealt when her enemy can't counterattack. Extra damage is always good, making this one of the better personal skills. Because her growths and bases are geared toward being a tanky unit with high strength and decent speed, she pretty much always wants to go into Wyvern Lord or Malig Knight (or both). Wyvern Lord is slightly stronger, faster, and physically tankier, so I think it's her best option. Malig Knight does give better magic and resistance, but because Beruka isn't inherently good at either of these things, it really doesn't do that much for her. It does give Trample at level 15, which boosts damage dealt to non-mounted enemies by 5, but it's learned so late that I don't consider it a great point in favor of it. I've never tried it, but she's probably pretty good as a Berserker. She'd still have some speed issues, but she'd hit like a truck and she has the defensive stats and HP to give her a lot of bulk. Her statline is pretty good for Hero, though maybe a little slow. That being said, Hero is so much worse as a class than Wyvern Lord that I wouldn't recommend it in a standard run. In the best case scenario, I'd expect her to turn out tankier and faster, but weaker than Wyvern Lord. The lost movement and flier utility hurts, but I think she'll perform just fine.  Camilla Class: Malig Knight Growth Rates HP - 40 Str - 50 Mag - 25 Skl - 50 Spd - 55 Lck - 25 Def - 35 Res - 45 Camilla is, in my opinion, the single best unit in the game, and one of the best units in the series. Her bases are fantastic for when she joins, her growths are solid, and being a flier gives her immense versatility as a support unit or frontline fighter. Additionally, her internal level is treated as if she had promoted at level 10, so she starts gaining more experience sooner than you'd expect. From the turn she joins to the end of the game, she can contribute as an absolute monster initially and later a solid combat unit with great support from her personal skill. She can even use magic to leave enemies alive for others to kill! Her personal skill, Rose's Thorns, provides adjacent allies with +3 damage dealt and -1 damage taken, which is pretty great, especially on a flier. As a Sorcerer, she's basically Odin but better without easy access to Vantage. As a Dark Knight, she's basically Leo but if he joined like 6 chapters earlier. Both of these are great, but they just aren't as good as keeping her on a wyvern. Like I said, Malig Knight and Wyvern Lord are pretty similar, so she'll perform about the same regardless of what you go for. Wyvern Lord would give her Rally Defense, which could help her out as a support unit when she stops standing out as much toward the end of the game, but honestly, she won't ever be worse than solid in combat, so she doesn't really need it.  Selena Class: Kinshi Knight Growth Rates HP - 40 Str - 30 Mag - 5 Skl - 25 Spd - 45 Lck - 30 Def - 45 Res - 30 Selena is a very solid unit because she's one of the fastest units in the route, and she's got solid bases that make her useful right out of the box. Her strength is a little lacking, but she's fast enough to use steel weapons most of the time, which helps patch that up quite nicely. She's also got solid defense, considering that she'll pretty much never get doubled. The only thing I don't like about her is her personal skill, Fierce Rival, which makes her get a guaranteed crit if she's the support unit in a dual strike and the lead unit gets one. I've only seen this activate once or twice ever, because not much survives the first crit. It's super unreliable, and when it does activate, it's generally not useful. I guess you could probably use it for boss killing with a crit build on someone like Arthur or Charlotte if you really wanted to. Anyway, as a Hero, she's fast and durable, essentially doing what she did in Chapter 10 but better. As a Bow Knight, she gets extra movement and speed at the cost of a little strength and durability, but I think that bow access makes up for it. Shurikenbreaker, which provides hit/avoid +50 against daggers, is learned at level 15. It's pretty great because of the sheer number of Ninja that Conquest throws at you, and it's particularly useful in Chapter 25. Otherwise, though I've never tried it, Selena can go the Sky Knight route to gain even more speed at the cost of more durability and strength. Falcon Knight is never a bad option because Rally Speed and staff access are both good to have. Kinshi Knight has the lowest strength of her class options, but flier movement and bow access are both good, and she'll definitely be fast enough to double most enemies. I expect her to be a little frail but generally solid in combat once she gets through E rank lances, and I'll never complain about having even more fliers. Benchmaster Voting  The next map has 11 deployment slots counting Marth's, so we'll have to pick two more units to leave behind. Odin is still off limits, but everyone else is fair game (including Camilla, for the sadists in the audience). Note that even if he gets benched, I'll make an exception and bring Niles to any map that has treasure because he has Locktouch. Unless there's enough chest keys to get everything without him, in which case he can stay behind. Here are our Benchmaster candidates for today:  Felicia is doing pretty well for the moment.  Now that she's got D rank axes, Elise is in a pretty good place.  He's a touch slow, but Silas is currently one of my best units, especially with a +speed pair up.  Arthur is alright, but he's starting to fall behind some of my other units, and it's not like I've got a shortage of axe units right now.  Niles is doing pretty well considering that he's gained 3 levels and they've all been pretty bad. The poor guy hasn't gained a single point of strength.  Mozu isn't doing so well right now, but I'm pretty sure she can gain at least a couple of levels in Chapter 11, so there's still hope.  Azura, on the other hand, is having a pretty easy time growing. I'm pretty happy with how she's turning out so far.  Nyx is so far turning out to be a typical Nyx: High magic and speed, but not much else. Standard, everyday Camilla. She's great, but it's not the most interesting thing to see in this run. Flier Selena is pretty interesting, though, and I'd personally like to see how she turns out. Beruka is literally better than Arthur in every stat except HP, and that's only because he has HP +5. If it weren't for that, they'd be tied in that. Once again, the voting will stay open until I play the next map. Next time, we realize that the real power was the exercise we got along the way. Kmsorter fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 08:46
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I've been pretty busy lately, so this next update is a little later than I'd have liked. The semester is winding down, so updates are likely to be a bit less frequent for the moment, especially because maps are getting larger.ApplesandOranges posted:Back to new units, Selena is the one I've had the most trouble training in my experience. Her main issue is that (like another upcoming unit) she joins at a time when you should already have a fair amount of swordies, and the next few maps aren't great for pure sword users. She's also very reliant on coin flips for Str and mine has failed more often on those than I'd like. A Steel Sword can carry her for a bit considering her Speed, but she needs to get lucky or she'll start falling behind the stronger and/or more mobile characters. Honestly, I've found that she can get by pretty well just using Arthur as a backpack, with the occasional strength tonic. Swords do have it kind of rough in the next couple of chapters, though. NeoRonTheNeuron posted:I vote to deploy in a way that lets us recruit all the children. I'm honestly not 100% sure how I want to handle pairings yet. At the very least I'll show off all of their paralogues, but any of the children that we recruit near the end of the run we wouldn't really be able to play around with. Once we're a little closer to our final team I'll probably do this or something similar. AweStriker posted:She’s basically what? Oops. I meant to take that out. I was going to say that she's basically bargain bin Camilla.
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Aug 3, 2023 07:30
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Update 8 - The Snake Oil Sage You guys overwhelmingly voted to bench Elise and, slightly less overwhelmingly, Arthur. I'm not gonna complain about losing my most inaccurate units, but I will miss Arthur's sweet, sweet, pair up bonuses.   Selena won't be needing these, so I redistribute them to others.  I also buy Silas a steel sword, which reduces spd by 3 for the purpose of doubling. It doesn't affect your speed defensively, though, so you won't get doubled more frequently for using it.  I also pass Elise and Arthur's stuff to Beruka, along with the concoction. She'll be one of our frontline fighters for this next map.   This is our meal for the map. It's alright. At this point, we've got too many units for me to bother mentioning the details of who was affected, so I won't be doing that from here on. I'll try to mention it if it's particularly relevant, though.  I also give Silas the dracoshield because he's one of my best units, and because he's already pretty tanky as it is. It's generally better to use stat boosters to improve units' strengths rather than trying to patch up their weaknesses (like if I had given it to Azura).   The last thing I want to do before this next map is promoting Niles so I can have a staff user. I'd normally wait until at least level 15 or so to promote, but in this case, I want a staff user because I don't have any. Though this does kind of mess up Niles' long-term potential, because now he's going to gain experience at the same rate as Camilla.  I give him both heal staves, but I'll leave the Rescue staff in the convoy. It's so valuable in the late game that I'd rather just restart a map than use it this early.  I think it's hilarious that the Rainbow Sage's power is your whole reason for coming here, and when you finally get to him, he just goes "the real power was the exercise you got climbing the mountain" and dies. But that's not what we're here to talk about, so let's move on to the map.    This is the map. It's divided into 6 major rooms, each of which contains a single group of enemies. The stairs separating them are basically teleporters, and the enemies aren't allowed to use them (though they can sometimes block them off). If you just take it one room at a time and avoid separating your army, this map shouldn't give you much trouble. In a normal run, I usually send Odin down one side on his own while the rest of the army handles the other, but that won't be possible in this run. Because I'm not a pansy, and because it makes this map a lot more interesting, I'll be splitting my army.   In the lower left room, you've got a bunch of Archers with Counter. They're not usually too difficult, especially on hard or normal mode, because you can just put a unit like Effie with high defense in there and watch them win.  This strategy is somewhat harder to use in lunatic because of the inclusion of this Diviner, who also has Counter. He's literally just here to make it harder to tank the whole room with one unit.  They're led by Setsuna, who is basically a slightly tougher, significantly faster Archer. "A slightly stronger version of every other enemy in the room" pretty much describes most of the minibosses in this map, and the only genuinely dangerous one is Azama. Anyway, Setsuna doesn't have Counter, but she does come equipped with a steel shortbow, an enemy-only 1-2 range steel bow. She has Strong Riposte and Certain Blow, which gives +40 hit when she initiates combat. Neither of these is likely to matter. Her personal skill, Optimist, makes her recover 50% more when being healed by a staff. This is useless for her right now, because there's no one available to heal her.   In the lower right room, we have a group of Oni Savages with Seal Resistance. They're pretty bulky, but Seal Resistance is really just there to weaken your units for the mages in the next room, so they're not too difficult on their own.  It also has this Ninja with Seal Speed that is a bit more threatening, but he's still mostly limited to sometimes keeping you from doubling the Oni Savages. As far as Seal Speed goes, this is one of the less-dangerous places for it.  The miniboss of this room is Rinkah, who has Seal Resistance and Warding Blow, which gives -20 magical damage taken when initiating combat. It's not all that useful, because at this point the only mage you would reasonably put here is Odin, who is better used in the lower left room. Her personal skill, Fiery Blood, giver her +4 damage dealt when she's not at full HP. As for how we'll handle this room, it's going to be a simple strategy involving Camilla leading the charge supported by Odin and Niles.   In the upper right room, we've got a bunch of Diviners with Miracle, giving them a % chance equal to their luck stat of surviving a lethal blow with 1 HP. This isn't too bad, but Miracle is really annoying because it could potentially screw up a run but it's not likely enough to do so that I actually bother planning around it.  It also has an Archer who's just there to prevent you from soloing the room using someone that has high resistance but low defense.  The real problem here is Azama, and more specifically his Hexing Rod, which reduces a unit's max HP by 50% for the remainder of the map. There's no way to cure it once it hits a unit, and it makes that unit much harder to use for the rest of the map. He's also got both Counter and Miracle, as well as his personal skill, Divine Retribution, which makes adjacent attackers take half the damage they deal, essentially acting as a second Counter. Both skills stack, so I don't recommend attacking him at one range unless it's a finishing blow.   In the upper left room, you have a bunch of Ninja with Lunge. If you don't one-shot them, any unit you place in here is going to have to tank every single one of them because they'll Lunge-chain them.  It also has this guy with a hammer, who is here to prevent you from just putting Effie in here without thinking about it.  The last miniboss in this map is Kaze, who is a slightly stronger Ninja to deal with. He has Heartseeker and Vantage, but neither is particularly dangerous. His personal skill, Miraculous Save, gives the lead unit Miracle when he's the support unit. Across all my playthroughs of every route in Fates, I think I've only seen this activate a couple of times. It's pretty much completely useless, and he effectively doesn't have a personal skill. We'll be handling this room the same way we're handling the Archer room, by having Beruka walk in and tank them with her face. This room also has a chest with a Spirit Dust, which gives +2 magic when used.   This middle room is the most dangerous one, because it's a pretty tightly-organized group. The highlighted pair here has Life and Death, so they'll deal and take +10 damage, which makes this room harder to enemy phase.   The pairs on either side are pretty well-placed Lungers who can draw you into the Life and Death pair (and the other enemies). They also have Armored blow and a lot of speed, which makes them hard to one-round on enemy phase, making it hard to avoid the Lunge. The Ninja and Diviner are just kind of there; they're not that significant.  The last room is pretty easy, just having Hinoka and a small group dedicated to supporting her.    Her support squad is a couple of Sky Knights with Camaraderie, which restores 10% of their HP at the start of their turn when there's an ally within 2 spaces; and Winged Shield, which nullifies their weakness to bows. I don't really know why they're here, but they are. Immediately behind Hinoka is this pair of Gentilhomme Samurai, giving her -2 damage taken. And in the back is a Sun Festal healer to heal her.  Hinoka herself is a pretty weak boss, and because she's at the front of the group, she's all you really need to deal with. Her personal skill, Rallying Cry, makes allies within 2 spaces deal +2 damage. She also has Inspiration, which makes allies within 2 spaces deal +2 damage and take -2 damage. She also has Darting Blow, but she's not going to get a chance to initiate combat, so it won't matter. Oh, she also has Winged Shield, which is kind of a given for a flier boss.    For this map, I'll want several tonics. Beruka gets def/res tonics, Camilla gets spd/def tonics, and Silas gets a spd tonic.  This is how I've got everyone positioned. Essentially, my strategy is going to involve Camilla, Odin, Niles, and Mozu going to the right while everyone else goes to the left.  These four take the stairs, and I have Camilla wait in range of 3 Oni Savages with only Mozu next to her. This way, Mozu can get 5 experience per Oni Savage from dual striking.    On the other side, I pair Marth and Beruka, and have her wait in range of 3 Archers with a hand axe. If she didn't have both the defense and resistance tonic, she'd die pretty consistently here.    Camilla starts the enemy phase off by killing an Oni Savage.   Next, she tanks this Ninja like a champ. It might not look it, but this is the most unreliable part of my strategy. If this misses, Camilla doesn't take the debuff, and the other 2 Oni Savages that she's supposed to fight won't attack because they won't do damage.      Beruka takes on a lot of Archers, and I'm only showing the highlights because showing essentially the same fight 3 times in a row feels like a waste of time.     Back on Camilla's side, she ends the enemy phase by killing another couple of Oni Savages. That's 3 now, or half of this room's enemies. This is where the speed tonic comes in handy, because she can't double through the Ninja's Seal Speed without it.   Back on player phase, Odin starts us off by killing this Ninja with Camilla's help.    Camilla chips Rinkah down, taking a pretty big hit in response.   Niles finishes her off, and this just leaves a single Oni Savage alive. He'll attack Niles next turn because of his low defense.  Mozu can't survive a hit from him, though, so she retreats down the stairs.   On the west side, we're going to kill every enemy on player phase. Felicia starts us off with this guy. I chose her because she doesn't need a dual strike to reliably kill, and attacking from this space keeps important tiles open for other units.   Silas one-shots this Diviner using the steel sword. He could have killed using the bronze sword and a dual strike, but he'd take Counter damage and he needs his HP for later.   Selena finishes this guy off on her own. She actually does quite a bit of damage considering she's using bronze.   Nyx of all people has the important job of dealing with Setsuna, though her hit rate is a little shaky as usual. She missed this quite a few times in my practice runs. Luckily, the lower hit rates are pretty frontloaded, so we're almost done gambling.    Azura takes down one of the Archers Beruka weakened. She technically took Counter damage, but she's so weak that it was only a point.    Marth finishes the last guy off, taking a lot of Counter damage. This is good, though, because it activates Vow of Friendship, which is going to be important for the last room.   Niles takes a pretty big hit from the last Oni Savage, but because of the extra HP from his promotion, he won't even need a vulnerary. This is also literally the only thing to happen on enemy phase.   Back on player phase, Odin holds back to chip this guy for Mozu.  She needs Niles' spot, so he moves and heals Camilla. It's pretty nice to actually have a healer.    Mozu gets her first kill of the map, and gets a really disappointing level out of it. What's the point of a growth unit if they're not going to grow the important stats?  Lastly for this side, Camilla advances toward the stairs.  Marth has a guard gauge ready, so he moves into Kaze's room and waits in range of the hammer guy. He doubles, so he'll kill and won't get Lunged into Kaze's squad.  Everyone else just waits outside the stairs so they can pounce when the time is right.    Now all that's left is a bunch of Ninja that are fairly easy to bait and clean up afterward, as long as you have a unit who can take a hit from all of them.  Marth also got some more speed out of the fight, which is nice.    I have everyone on the right advance to the next room, but I don't have them enter enemy range. The AI in this room won't advance until you enter the Hexing Rod's range, so they won't move forward just yet.  Beruka moves here and uses the last concoction. I'd like her to be closer to the stairs, but I've had them Lunge chain until someone blocks them off before, and I'd rather make sure that doesn't happen.  Everyone else just inches slightly closer.     Kaze starts the enemy phase off by attacking Beruka. This would be a lot worse if he had a Seal skill or a nastier shuriken debuff than his allies, but he doesn't.    Beruka gets a solid level out of the next one to attack. She's tanky enough that I actually care about her defense growth. She also learns HP +5, making her that much better than Arthur.    Because she's getting doubled by all of these guys, the extra defense is genuinely lifesaving here. It's only one point, but it adds up.    The next guy gives her C axes, which unlocks steel axes, bolt axes, and killer axes, as well as giving +5 hit with all axes. Not bad.     And she chips her fifth and final Ninja of the turn.   Everyone else is moving in just like they did for Setsuna's room. Felicia uses the bronze sword here because she's closer to D swords than D axes.   Silas finishes this guy off. I'm starting with the units who don't need support to reliably kill so they'll be in position to support the ones who do.   Nyx attacks at 1 range to take advantage of Heartseeker.    Azura gets Beruka's help to finish this guy, and she gets an okay level for her trouble. She literally just wants strength right now.    Kaze gives me a minor heart attack by activating Vantage before going down. That takes care of his room.  Niles and Camilla move here, with Niles just in range of two Diviners. Camilla can survive combat with them, but I'd rather her not get hit by the Hexing Rod and she can't one round them at 2 range like Niles anyway.  Niles gets his max HP cut in half.     But the extra resistance from his promotion makes that fine. It's a shame promotion can't fix his hit rate, though...    He does one-round the other one, though. I love the Adventurer's finishing animation, because they fire mid-backflip and it looks really cool.  Look, mom! I'm remembering that I have Lunge! Odin needs Camilla's help to one-round this Archer, and this lets her get a kill while getting in position.   The dual club is really nice here. It sees more use against mages than swords in this route.  Before Odin attacks, he passes his vulnerary to Camilla.   Thankfully, this guy didn't activate Miracle. That would have been a restart.  More strength!   We're not taking this last room on without Camilla, so everyone on this side gets into position.  Azama targets Odin because he's got lower resistance and is facing combat this turn.   But it's fine because he has a guard gauge.   He won't be taking any more hits this map, though.  Camilla can just barely reach the stairs, so she moves into the last room and uses a vulnerary.  Silas does the same, waiting on the stairs inside the room. The Lunge pair is going to block them off next turn, but he and Camilla are tough enough to survive a turn by themselves.  I don't really care if Niles gets this kill or not because he's not gaining much experience, so I try to capture this guy for funsies. Capture reduces his hit by 10 and prevents allies from dual striking, so it can be difficult sometimes.    I won't be using this guy; I just think it's fun to capture occasionally.    On enemy phase, Silas gets debuffed and Poison Striked by this Ninja. The Life and Death Samurai moved to support him, which effectively disarms the Lunge pair for the turn because this was the only threat that Lunge would put Silas or Camilla in range of.    These numbers look fairly ordinary until you remember that these guys have Armored Blow and they're only doing 4 damage to a debuffed Silas. He's currently getting -5 damage taken from Supportive and Vow of Friendship, as well as +8 damage dealt from Supportive, Vow of Friendship, and Strong Riposte. It's crazy.    Camilla chips the Lunge pair on this side.   The dual club is giving her double the usual weapon triangle bonuses, which is why her avoid is so high right now.  Back on player phase, Niles grabs the Enfeeble staff out of the eastern chest. It's a solid staff, though I tend to forget I have it.   Life and Death lets you hit some pretty incredible damage numbers against these guys.  Camilla is going to Lunge into this guy's spot, because it lets Silas benefit from Rose's Thorns during enemy phase.   And that's the last threatening enemy on the map. The rest is basically a non-issue.    But we still have a couple of enemy phases left. Camilla starts this one by getting Poison Striked.    Silas is currently under the effects of every damage boosting skill in our arsenal, giving him a total of +14 damage dealt and -6 damage taken, so he's almost one-shotting this guy through Armored Blow.   And Silas uses his guard gauge on this mage, though he would have survived without it.   There's quite a few enemies left, so we'll start this player phase by killing the Samurai pairs. The stairs aren't blocked anymore, so Selena and the rest can move in to clean up. Rose's Thorns continues to help us secure kills.   Felicia violently de-pairs the last pair.   And she gets a very good level out of it! Unfortunately, I don't think a raise is in the budget at the moment.   Nyx finishes this Samurai from this tile because it lets her apply Heartseeker to the Ninja.     This Diviner is the only enemy Azura can both one-round and survive a hit from, but she dodged it anyway.  Felicia finally reaches D swords! She'll appreciate the extra might iron swords give.   I almost feel bad for these guys. Silas isn't even using a forged weapon!    Beruka finishes the last enemy off with Silas' help. He gets an absolutely awful level out of it, but he's so good at this point that I really don't mind.  Odin and Niles elect to ignore Azama and the last Diviner because they don't drop anything, and end the turn by moving towards the other chest.  Of course, there's effectively no enemy phase this turn, so Niles pairs with Selena to reach the chest this turn. I honestly don't know who I should give this to. I usually feed Odin all of the Spirit Dusts.  Everyone else spends the turn moving into Hinoka's room.  On our last turn of the map, Marth pairs with Azura so he can stop blocking the stairs while keeping my options open.     Beruka and Odin pair up and start chipping Hinoka.  More speed is fine by me!  This isn't, though! Gamble increases crit by 10 and reduces hit by 10. This is only a worthwhile trade in the late game, and even then only if you've got a max-crit Berserker build going. At this point, it actively makes units who use the least accurate weapon type even less accurate, and should be removed at the earliest opportunity.    Camilla chips Hinoka, and at this point I can feed the kill to pretty much anyone.    A slight chance of death is worth it for a Mozu kill. The level she got out of it is kind of disappointing, though. She really needs to get some strength. Or some bulk.  And that's it for one of my least favorite maps in the route! It's not actively bad, which is more than I can say about some maps from the other routes, but the segmented nature of it means that there's absolutely no reason to move quickly. The stairs are used again later in the game, but the enemies are much stronger and more numerous, which makes just moving one unit in a bit harder. Here, Kaze's room and the last one are the most threatening ones because of Lunge, but it's only really the last room because Kaze's squad is too weak to actually prevent a unit from tanking all of them like I did. Anyway, it's time for the post-map My Castle!    Just the two supports this time, and the most useful one is Marth/Beruka.  Most importantly, we just recruited Kaze, so it's time to decide his fate. Also, notice that he lost 2 strength and 1 speed when he joined us. We must have sprained his ankle during the fight or something.  He can reclass to Samurai, making his final options Master Ninja (1), Mechanist (2), Master of Arms (3), and Swordmaster (4). The worst he could do here is Master of Arms, and he's such a good unit that he'd still be solid after getting out of E swords.  He rolled a 2, making him a Mechanist. I'm okay with this, though I think I'd have preferred Master Ninja. In theory, Mechanist alleviates Kaze's low strength and defense without sacrificing too much speed, but I find that he loses quite a bit of utility because the Mechanist pair up bonuses aren't as good as Master Ninja's.  Also, I'm not going to recruit him, but I thought I'd show off our new pet, Tamaki. He likes his new home. New unit discussions Kaze Class: Mechanist Growth rates HP - 55 Str - 40 Mag - 0 Skl - 45 Spd - 65 Lck - 20 Def - 20 Res - 35 Kaze is one of my favorite units in Fates, and easily my most used. He's Mr. Reliable, because no matter the route, he's going to join you and be faster than almost anyone else in your army. He also uses shurikens, which are the best weapon type because of their unpenalized 1-2 range and debuffs. Finally, because he's a Ninja, a class few have access to in Conquest, he gives a lot of speed to his pair up partners as well as +1 move. His strength is a little lacking, and he's physically a little frail, but neither of these is a huge problem when he doubles everything all the time while providing excellent utility. I mentioned it earlier, but his personal skill, Miraculous Save, gives his pair up partner Miracle while he's supporting them. In my opinion, it's the single worst personal skill in the game. As far as class options go, if you make him a Swordmaster or Master of Arms, he loses shuriken access, making him quite a bit less appealing despite still being crazy fast. I don't see any reason to take him to Swordmaster, because it's got a similar stat spread to Master Ninja but with a much worse weapon. Master of Arms would at least somewhat boost his strength and defense over Master Ninja, and his personal speed growth is enough that the loss wouldn't even be noticeable. That being said, it's utility isn't nearly as good as Master Ninja, which requires no extra investment or effort, especially if you trained him up in the prologue. He would at least appreciate Life and Death, but it's learned so late that he won't have that much time to benefit from it. Master Ninja is the simple and easy way to get Kaze but better, and it has no real downsides. He'll hit a bit harder, go a little faster, and be just a little tankier, but he'll largely be doing the same job he did before promoting. Mechanist is theoretically good for him because it gives him extra strength and movement, but I've always found myself a bit unsatisfied with it. The extra movement is sometimes offset by the cavalry movement penalties it gets, and I find myself missing the speedy pair up bonuses he provides as a Master Ninja. The really stand-out thing about the Mechanist is Replicate, learned at level 15. It lets you create a replica of your unit that shares its HP with the original, effectively letting them move twice per turn. It's a fantastic skill, but it's one that's learned so late in the game that I typically don't get to play around with it much. Overall, because of his inherently great speed, he'd be a great addition to the team. Benchmaster Voting  The next map has 11 deployment slots counting Marth, so we need to bench one person. Odin is, as usual, off-limits. Next time, we find out what happens when you mix lobster and pottery. Kmsorter fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 07:36
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Update 9 - Pot Boiled Lobster This time around, you guys voted to bench Mozu, which kind of invalidates the kills I fed her in the last map but that's okay because I'm not complaining about only having one disappointing Master of Arms on my team.  So we'll go ahead and redistribute her stuff.  Azura isn't particularly close to D lances yet, but she's the closest of our lance users, so I hand her the javelin and iron lance.  I pass Kaze Felicia's old iron dagger. It's a little more accurate than the steel shuriken, and it doesn't have the speed penalty, so it might come in handy.  Camilla gets the other hand axe that I had lying around.  And lastly, Beruka learned Gamble last map, so we need to take that off of her right away.  Here's our meal for the map. It didn't have any special effects, just strength +1 to half the army. It affected a pretty good batch of units, though.  I also build a fire orb, which is a thing we can do now. It's necessary to recruit a unit later in the game (no, I'm not joking).  With preparations out of the way, it's time to move on to chapter 12!    Chapter 12 is an interesting map, featuring all of these breakable pots. When you break one, it splashes every unit within two spaces with medicine or poison, buffing or debuffing them, healing or hurting, or even applying status effects like freeze or hex. The pots are labelled medicine or poison, but there's no way of knowing exactly what's inside a pot without breaking it. This isn't really as bad as it sounds, because the game only forces you to break one poison pot if you use the dragon vein, the rest can be avoided. The enemies don't break them either, so that's not anything to worry about. Other than this, the objective is to either have Marth escape by reaching any of the top three tiles behind Ryoma, or to kill Ryoma, which can be difficult. It should be doable, but if it doesn't work out, I'm not against ignoring him.    The enemies in this map aren't too threatening. These Ninja are fast, but they're so weak that it hardly matters. Only a few of the Spear Fighters have Seal Defense, and the Samurai are similarly lacking in dangerous skills, so they're pretty easy to deal with.  One thing to watch out for is some of these Apothecaries in the north who have Spendthrift, which lets them deal +10 and take -10 damage when initiating combat at the cost of one gold bar. If you let them initiate on you, it could get kind of nasty.   The only other dangerous enemies are some of the staff users. This one here has entrap, so they can warp a unit into a cage match against this Samurai pair. They have Odd Shaped, which gives them +4 damage dealt on odd-numbered turns, so if you aren't expecting the entrap, you could lose a unit to them. There's a similar Evenhanded (+4 damage dealt on even-numbered turns) pair in the northwestern corner, but there's no entrap mage on that side, so they aren't usually relevant.  This one in the middle has a silence staff, which prevents a unit from using magic (including staves) for a turn. It's kind of annoying, but because Nyx and Niles are the only magic units I care about, it's not a huge problem.  This lady with freeze can be kind of annoying when you're trying to clear things out to get to the chest, but they're mostly out of the way, so it won't be a big problem.   Next, we've got Saizo and Kagero paired up in the middle of the map. Saizo has a flame shuriken that he drops, and Kagero has a sting shuriken, which is effective against armored units. This is basically the game making sure you can't use Effie to solo them. Saizo has Seal Strength and Countermagic, which is Counter but for magic. His personal skill, Pyrotechnics, chips him and all units within two spaces for 20% of their HP after combat if he's below 50% health and initiates combat. It's not all that useful to him.  Kagero has the slightly better skill set with Vantage and Grisly Wound. Her personal skill, Shuriken Mastery, deals half the damage she takes from dagger or shuriken attacks to the attacker and also applies their debuff. Just keep it in mind if you have Kaze attack her for whatever reason. These two aren't too bad; usually I just throw Camilla at them.   Ryoma himself is a pretty genuinely tough opponent, which is why he's an optional boss. He's got sky-high strength and speed, unpenalized 1-2 range, and a ton of HP with enough defense to make him a pretty beefy guy, especially because you aren't likely to double him. He has Vantage, which will almost certainly come into play because of how much HP he's got. He also has Duelist's Blow, which makes chipping him down on enemy phase very unreliable, because your hit rates won't be that good before he gets the extra avoid. He even has Inspiration, a more supportive skill that gives allies within two spaces +2 damage dealt and -2 damage taken. Lastly, his personal skill, Bushido, gives him +10 crit, +2 damage dealt, and -2 damage taken when he's the lead in a pair. It obviously won't be doing anything here. If you're going to kill him, he makes a very good target for enfeeble or freeze, because either will make him more manageable. He drops a Secret Book for your trouble, so you're not missing much if you aren't able to kill him.  The last notable enemies are these guys next to Ryoma who have Kodachis, which are basic 1-2 range swords. This guy drops his, which is nice because there's no other way to get one in Conquest. I'll probably give it to Silas.   We also have a couple of new recruits! Laslow and Peri are both pretty good, though they do kind of struggle to really shine right off the bat. To compare them to units you already have at this point, Laslow is like Selena except he trades some speed in for more strength, and Peri is like Silas except she trades some defense in for more speed and strength. Laslow's personal skill, Fancy Footwork, is a +1 speed/strength rally that affects allies within two spaces. It's pretty good, essentially being an upgraded wait command. Peri's personal skill, Bloodthirst, gives her strength/magic/skill/speed +4 for the rest of the turn after she kills an opponent on player phase. It's pretty good, but because I don't have Songstress Azura, she'll only be able to use the extra stats on enemy phase.  Lastly, there's this dragon vein towards the center of the map that breaks every pot at the same time. Interestingly, this is one of (maybe the only? I can't remember) dragon veins that has its location changed depending on what difficulty you're playing on. On hard mode, it's several tiles lower, in Saizo and Kagero's room. That makes it a complete no-brainer to use, because you debuff most of the enemies and it doesn't even require you to endanger your units too much. On lunatic, however, it's placed in range of a hex pot that slashes your HP in half when you activate it. Because it's closer to the enemies, you basically have to clear most of them out to make sure your dragon vein activator doesn't get murdered.  This is how I've got my units arranged for this map. This pot next to Marth gives defense +4 for the whole map, so I'm going to have most of my fighters crowd around it. It does technically slow the map down a bit, but the turn limit is generous and the extra defense is gonna let me move much faster.    Like so. Kaze breaks the pot, and the defense it gives kind of trivializes many of the enemies in this map.   I have Camilla drop Laslow in range of these Samurai so he can enemy phase them.   And Marth kills this Ninja with Camilla's help.  Azura drops Odin closer to the action.  Selena and Niles just go around the eastern side. Nyx also moved up a bit.    On enemy phase, Laslow kills this first Samurai with Camilla's help. Her hit rate is pretty shaky, but it's nice that she killed at least one of them.   She didn't hit this second one, but that just means it's another kill for someone else on player phase.    And that someone is Azura. She got a great level out of it, too!    Niles heals Laslow and he starts moving northwest. I'm gonna have him break the poison pot and fight the two Samurai over there.  I want to get Beruka to fight Saizo on enemy phase, so I have Peri carry her north and pass her to Camilla.     I then pass her from Camilla to Selena, and finally to Marth, who switches her to the front. I'd have just had Camilla pass her directly rather than through Selena, but I want Camilla on that tile next turn for dual striking purposes, and I'd rather not waste her turn moving one space down.   Everyone else moves up. It won't take them all that long to catch up to the front line.  sir you blow yourself up     Even though the flame shuriken is magic, Beruka tanks it pretty well because of Marth's Supportive.  Pyrotechnics brings her down another 20%, but between Marth's pair up bonuses and the defense pot, she'll be fine.    Beruka can finish Saizo off and lunge past the pots to bait more enemies out. We also get the flame shuriken, which is really good on Maid Felicia, but since we don't have her, it'll have to be kind of meh on Kaze.  I need Selena to move so we can kill Kagero, so I move Nyx out of her way so she can pair up with Kaze.  "Okay!" - Peri, probably.    The steel lance is strong, but its hit rate is a bit shaky. A miss wouldn't have mattered though; Camilla is more than capable of cleaning up if necessary.  Also, it won't matter this turn, but Bloodthirst activated because Peri got a kill. The game treats it as a rally, so it doesn't stack with them as far as I know. Though Laslow's Fancy Footwork is its own thing, so it does stack with that.  Kaze waits here so he can fight these guys. They won't target Beruka at all because her defense is too high, and I want to start chipping them down before I break a pot next turn.   Laslow breaks this poison pot that deals 30% damage. Because of Niles' heal, he's still able to tank both Samurai. As a bonus, he can kill the weakened one on enemy phase now!    Since I'm not ready to move north just yet, Camilla doesn't have anything better to do, so she breaks this medicine pot. It gives defense +2, but it's displayed as a defense tonic so it stacks with the +4 pot at the start.   Azura breaks this pot just to get it out of the way. It gives skill/resistance +2. The resistance is totally useless because Saizo is the only enemy capable of dealing magic damage on this map.  And everyone else gathers around so they can move in next turn.    Kaze chips starts our enemy phase off by chipping these guys. They're really weak, especially after the defense pot.   He flexes his Ninja muscles by dodging.    And Laslow gets to work on these Samurai. He kills this first one and leaves the other on the brink of death.    Meanwhile, Beruka gets to work on these Spear Fighters from the east. She's almost got too much defense. If I had given her a defense tonic, this guy wouldn't have attacked her.  These highlighted guys also start moving out. We'll deal with them soon enough.    Beruka is so tanky that I'm just gonna have her keep lunging through the enemies. Her personal skill lets her really chip this guy.    Kaze passes Selena off so he can dual strike, and Felicia, in a very in-character moment, flubs a 94.     But I still trust her to hit two 85s! I used the sword instead of the axe because I want her to get C swords sooner rather than later.   Peri stabs another dude.   Nyx roasts Kaze's dude.  Nyx moment   Camilla bonks a guy from 2 range so Beruka can chip in for experience.  Azura breaks yet another pot just to get it out of the way. This one gives resistance +4, which is entirely useless. At least it wasn't a poison pot!   And Silas kills the last Ninja of the turn.  Niles heals Kaze instead of Beruka because if he enters the silence staff's range he'll get silenced.    Laslow finishes the player phase by finishing his Samurai. I could have fed the kill to Odin, but Laslow gets more experience because he's a lower level. It was worth it, too, because he got a very solid level (though I don't think it's enough to make the ladies riot).  The Samurai and Spear Fighters continue moving towards us, but the only other thing that happens on enemy phase is that Nyx gets silenced, but she wasn't gonna fight anything next turn anyway.    But that doesn't stop her from ferrying Kaze to the enemies! The extra movement he gives her lets him get just far enough to chip this guy. It's moments like this that make me prefer Master Ninja to Mechanist for him.   Azura can finish him off with his help, though she almost doesn't need it. She's still defensively comparable to wet paper, but offensively she's starting to turn out pretty well.   Kaze gets a great level from helping out! That point of strength is worth more to him than every single other stat he gained.   Silas chips this guy down for Laslow. This placement is also perfect for when we break the pots using the dragon vein.    Laslow passes Odin to Azura before finishing this guy.   Niles yoinks Marth from Beruka before healing her. Marth is gonna spend his next turn stuck to the dragon vein, and I'll need all hands on deck to deal with the horde of enemies it frees, so I'd rather have Niles stuck to him than Beruka.   Beruka chips this guy down. Without the extra stats from Marth, she's a bit weaker, but it's enough.    Unfortunately, Felicia needed to break out the axe to finish this guy.    I'm really glad this didn't miss. If this guy survives enemy phase, he could get in the way of someone important next turn.   I use Camilla to separate Odin from Azura.  On enemy phase, Niles gets silenced, but since he's not doing anything next turn that's okay.    I honestly thought this guy would go for Felicia, but I guess he didn't want to fight against the weapon triangle. This miss was only a matter of time with how much I've been using this steel lance, but it's fine because he happened to attack from within the area of a freeze pot.  We'll start the turn by activating the dragon vein, which is gonna mass debuff pretty much every enemy on the map.  So this is the situation after the dragon vein. Marth got his HP cut in half, but so did a lot of the enemies, so we'll be able to clear most of them out without too much trouble.  These guys were all frozen, so we'll ignore them for now. We basically need to kill everything else though or we'll lose someone.  Ryoma also has some significant debuffs, but they'll more or less have completely recovered by the time we're ready to kill him.    Beruka starts the massacre off by lunging into this guy's tile. The Samurai she's in range of won't move until we get closer.  She also gets an alright level out of it. She's good enough that her levels don't need to be exceptional.    Odin kills an Apothecary and takes his key. I can't think of any reason that you would ever want to go through either of these doors, though.   Silas kills another one.   Apothecaries are surprisingly physically tanky, so Nyx kills him instead of Kaze.   You'll notice that the guys who didn't get hexed are quite a bit harder to kill than the guys with 14 HP. Camilla chips this one down.   And Azura finishes him off with some help.    Felicia kills another Apothecary for a genuinely bad level. Great job.    That was the last guy who wasn't frozen, so Peri gets a head start on the frozen enemies by killing this one. This isn't a great level, but she does appreciate extra defense.  Laslow moves forward and rallies here. I want him adjacent to Silas and Odin so they can pick up whoever gets frozen on enemy phase.   Nyx dodges a silence and Odin gets frozen.  These reinforcements also show up, but they're too far away to catch up before we end the map. These guys are area-based, but I honestly don't know exactly what the trigger zone is. It's somewhere toward the middle of the map, but that's about all I know. I tried looking it up, but I'm pretty sure both fire emblem wikis are wrong about it. I know it's not turn-based because I did a test where I sat at the start of the map until time ran out and they didn't show up at all.  That aside, we've got a pretty large group of enemies to deal with here. Because they weren't hexed by pots, we'll need a little more time and effort to kill them than we did for last turn's enemies.   This corridor is three tiles wide, and I'm going to build a wall of units with Camilla at the center. She kills this guy while she's at it.   Silas will form the left tile of the wall, and he kills this Ninja with Camilla's help.   And Beruka completes the wall, killing this other Spear Fighter.  These kodachi guys are very reluctant to move from Ryoma's side, so they shouldn't get involved.    I want Nyx to help kill the last Apothecary, so I have Kaze pass her to Felicia while he kills this staff user. I'm pretty sure this counts as a war crime, but I think it's okay because we're playing the evil route.    It shouldn't be surprising that the speedy mage character can one round a slow enemy, but it is. Good job, Nyx!  I am just a little worried about Beruka and Silas if the kodachi guys get involved, so I pair Azura up with her for safety.    Marth passes Niles to Peri so they can advance, and he stays behind to kill this guy.   I pass Odin to Silas just to be on the safe side, and rally with Laslow.   Finally, I pass Peri to Laslow and heal him up. There shouldn't be any chance of anyone dying on enemy phase now. Although I think there was only a very distant chance without the extra caution.    Silas gets debuffed and Poison Striked on enemy phase. He also gets lightly chipped by the next guy.   And Laslow gets debuffed by the Ninja and frozen by the healer.    At this point, we just need to clean up the last few enemies, grab the chests, and kill Ryoma (or walk right past him). Marth cleans this Ninja up for a fantastic level.   Laslow passes Peri to Niles before rallying.    Silas passes Odin to Laslow so he can dual strike this Ninja to death. This wouldn't have been a kill without Laslow's rally.    Peri keeps the transfer conveyor belt going by passing Niles to Silas before missing this guy. Honestly, I'm not even mad; she hasn't missed anything extremely important yet.   Beruka is perfectly capable of picking up the slack.    Peri redeems herself by helping Camilla kill this guy. And we got a kodachi! This is a really nice 1-2 range option for sword users, and both Odin and Silas will appreciate having it.  Because Kaze has a guard gauge, I have him soften this guy up from within Ryoma's range. He won't get doubled, and if he could debuff Ryoma, that would be great.     Nyx kills the other kodachi guy, and gets a great level out of it! It makes up for the awful one she got earlier.  Kaze getting frozen in Ryoma's range on enemy phase kind of complicates things.     And if I had remembered Duelist's Blow, I wouldn't have wasted the guard gauge on this. Oops.  Niles grabs this armorslayer from the chest on the left. It's alright, but Hoshido doesn't have armored units, so it won't be seeing all that much use.    Odin begins his legendary battle against Ryoma! I want them adjacent to each other so Ryoma loses avoid to Heartseeker, and I decided the chip was worth risking the 3% crit.    Heartseeker brings Camilla to a very respectable 75% hit rate, and she actually has the HP to tank a crit. The bigger risk, in hind sight, was that she could have gotten a crit here and ended the map before I grabbed the other chest.   Beruka kills the obnoxious freeze lady.   Because Odin has the lowest defense and there's no weapon triangle disadvantage, Ryoma should go for him next turn, but I'd still like to get Kaze out of there. He drops Selena and Peri uses Shelter (which lets you pick up an adjacent ally) on him.  This lady heals Ryoma, which is annoying, but manageable.    This wasn't a very productive fight, was it?   On the our last turn in this map, we transfer Niles to Felicia so he can grab the 5,000 gold from this chest.    I'm kind of surprised there's not a boss conversation between these two. Considering that just last chapter Kaze betrayed his kingdom, I'd have expected Ryoma to say something. Anyway, this chip and debuff secures our victory.  I briefly considered feeding the kill to Selena, but I backed out when I saw that that would require relying on a 70% hit rate. So instead I move Camilla out of the way so Beruka can borrow the dual club.     This kills the lobster.  Meh. Like I said earlier, levels like this are fine as long as she keeps performing as well as she is.   And we got the Secret Book to end the map! This is a pretty gimmicky map, but I like it a lot. The turn limit is pretty generous, but it prevents you from completely turtling through the map. And the second half of the map encourages you to wipe out lots of enemies on player phase while they're debuffed by the pots, assuming you use the dragon vein. The chests are a bit simple to get, but they do take a turn or so to get, so they further incentivize a quick pace.       Lots of C supports this time! Soon, I'm gonna have to start deciding on S supports so we can start unlocking paralogues.  With two new units comes two new class choices. Laslow can reclass into Ninja, so his final options are Bow Knight (1), Hero (2), Master Ninja (3), and Mechanist (4). I think he works as any of these, so I'm honestly fine with whatever.  He rolls a 1, making him a Bow Knight. That's pretty good; if he can get Shurikenbreaker before chapter 25, he'll be a big help for a particularly nasty group of enemies.  Peri can go Dark Mage, and even though her hair looks really good on the Dark Mage sprite, its an awful outcome for her because she has almost no magic. Her final class options are Great Knight (1), Paladin (2), Dark Knight (3), and Sorcerer (4).  She rolls another 1, which makes her a Great Knight. I'd have preferred Paladin, but this is better than either Dark Mage promotion. New unit discussions Laslow Class: Bow Knight Growth rates HP - 50 Str - 45 Mag - 0 Skl - 45 Spd - 30 Lck - 55 Def - 35 Res - 25 Laslow is a solid unit, but he joins as a footlocked sword unit, which kind of holds him back for a couple of chapters. His stats are very middle-of-the-road, because everything except for his skill is kind of average. He's pretty decent, but by this point, you've likely got better units to deploy, especially if you've started getting child units already. His average stats make him pretty versatile though, so he can work reasonably well in any of his reclass options. Fancy Footwork is pretty good, because a +1 strength/speed rally can be surprisingly useful at times. As far as his class options go, he'd be decently bulky and fairly hard-hitting as a Hero, though I don't think he'd double all that much. Bow Knight, which is what he rolled, gives him more movement and slightly more speed at the cost of slightly lower strength and defense, but I think it's a worthwhile trade for bow access and the mobility. As I mentioned earlier, Shurikenbreaker is nice for chapter 25 all the way through endgame, and it's definitely more useful than the Hero's Axebreaker. Master Ninja is a fun choice, but his lackluster speed makes it annoying to go through E rank daggers (he might be a good candidate for the arms scroll you get in chapter 13). He hits harder than Kaze, but he won't double as often without a pair up. I hear great things about Master Ninjas with Sol, though I've never tried it myself because it sounds like too much investment to me. Finally, I don't think he'd be great as a Mechanist, but I also haven't tried because I generally don't like it as a class. I'd guess that he only rarely doubles, but he'd probably hit pretty hard with reasonable bulk. Overall, he's a good unit, but he's kind of overshadowed by better units. I still use him pretty regularly though. Peri Class: Great Knight Growth rates HP - 30 Str - 50 Mag - 5 Skl - 30 Spd - 50 Lck - 35 Def - 25 Res - 45 Peri is one of my less-used characters, so I can't talk about her with too much confidence. That being said, she's pretty fast, and though she's a bit frail, she should start doubling fairly often before too long, especially if you pair her with someone like Arthur. She's not as durable as someone like Silas, but because she won't be getting doubled much, she's still capable of surviving a hit or two. Her personal skill, Bloodthirst (which gives her +4 strength/magic/skill/speed for the turn after killing a unit) is situationally huge, because 4 extra speed and strength can make her a much more potent enemy phase unit. Once she gets going, she makes a good Paladin, because a fast yet strong unit with 8 movement is never a bad thing. Great Knight, which she rolled, is something I've never tried for her but I'd guess it tanks her speed while making her quite a bit bulkier. It's probably the worse of the two, but it should be workable. Her other options are Dark Knight and Sorcerer. Do you see that 5% magic growth? That's all that needs to be said about these options. She wouldn't complain about Heartseeker or Lifetaker, but I think it's safe to say she's pretty awful in either of these classes. Overall, Peri is pretty good, but she takes a little bit for her strength and speed to grow enough for her to start shining. Benchmaster Voting  We actually lose a deployment slot for the next map, and we just recruited two new units, so we'll need to bench three people this time. Around chapter 16 or so I might start deploying benched characters for pairings, so the people we bench for the moment will probably come back in some capacity later. I'm not completely decided on that yet, but I'm open to ideas if anyone has any! Next time, the forecast shows a mild chance of Betrayal™.
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Aug 19, 2023 05:12
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Blue Labrador posted:Also, I didn't expect Fighter Beruka to be such a beast already, I might make Beruka my next pet project my next CQ run. I'm surprised too; I thought she'd be decent at best, but she's been up there with Silas since chapter 11. ApplesandOranges posted:At least there's solace in that it's not remotely close to the worst reclass options in the game. Apothecary Orochi, urgh. It's really funny to me that both Orochi and Sakura are magically-oriented characters with reclass options that give bow access, but they're in the route that doesn't have the shining bow. Especially because Priestess Sakura is canon. But now I kind of want to try shining bow Merchant Orochi in my next playthrough of Revelation (if I actually do play it again).
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Aug 31, 2023 04:33
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Update 10 - Betrayal 2: Electric Boogaloo   You guys voted to bench Selena, Peri, and Laslow last time, so we'll go ahead and redistribute their stuff, as well as the loot from last chapter.  Silas gets the kodachi, as well as a vulnerary.  Odin gets the armorslayer and a steel sword because he's only one or two rounds of combat from C swords.  He won't get that much use out of it, but Kaze gets Saizo's flame shuriken.  Nyx gets an iron axe I had lying around. It's a surprise tool that may help us later  I also went ahead and gave Kaze the talisman we got all the way back in chapter 8.  Beruka gets this heavily-used vulnerary.   Beruka makes us a steak. It's a decent meal, but it mostly affected Benchmasters, which is disappointing.  Lastly, I hand out some tonics. Silas gets HP, defense, and strength tonics.  And Beruka gets HP and defense tonics. She and Silas are gonna be tanking some pretty hefty blows in a little bit.     Chapter 13 is alright. It's not exactly a map I look forward to, but I don't mind playing it. It's a rout map with 5 major groups of enemies and 4 villages to visit. There's not much incentive to move quickly here, because only one enemy group moves without you entering their range. A thief shows up eventually to take the villages, but he shows up pretty late, so we've got plenty of time. There's also not much in terms of skills on the regular enemies; it's limited to common stuff like Malefic Aura and Natural Cover.   Immediately to the west, we've got these mages led by Orochi. She has Seal Resistance and Elbow Room, neither of which is a huge problem. Her personal skill, Capture, is the same as Niles's. It's totally useless to her. Most notably, she has a calamity gate, which inverts the weapon triangle, so she'll give lance and shuriken users some trouble. This group is basically free experience for Kaze, because he's gonna one round almost everyone.   To the south, we have Reina and a bunch of Cavaliers. Her cavaliers are some of the most notable enemies on the map, because about half of them have beastkillers, which have triple might against cavalry and Sky Knights. That doesn't really affect me, though, because I don't have any cavalry. Reina has Certain Blow and Air Superiority, which gives her +30 hit/avoid when her opponent is a flier. It's basically there to make throwing Camilla at her less appealing. Her personal skill, Morbid Celebration, restores 20% of her HP when she initiates combat and kills a unit. She won't be getting a chance to activate it. Because she's a Kinshi Knight she has a pretty wide attack range, but that means that you can bait her out and take her down very early on if you want to.   To the east, good ol' Takumi has a bunch of Knights to fight us with. They're pretty tanky and they hit hard, so they can sometimes be hard to kill on the bridge chokepoint. Takumi himself was probably more dangerous in chapter 10, when he had Point Blank. In this map, he's just got Pass, which lets him pass through enemy units as if they were allies, and Natural Cover, giving -3 damage taken on any tile with a terrain effect. Another thing to note is his Fujin Yumi, which sets all terrain movement costs to 1, so he can sprint through rivers and mountains as if they were plains. He can be kind of a pain to deal with later in the map, especially because he has enough crit that he could feasibly just one shot someone, so I'd recommend taking him out early.   This next group to the south are the only enemies present right now that move towards you immediately. There aren't any dangerous skills in play, they're just here to fly over the river and harrass you while you fight enemies around the bridge chokepoints. They can be surprisingly problematic because these pairs can be extremely durable if you weren't prepared for them.   The last group of enemies is Scarlet's in the southwest. It's got a solid enemy composition featuring a Wyvern and Dark Mage pair that could be kind of difficult to deal with if they moved without you entering their range. But they won't. When you trigger them, they'll spawn reinforcements from the northwest and the south, so make sure you're ready before you try fighting them. Scarlet herself has Seal Magic, Death Blow (which gives +20 crit when she initiates combat), and Bowbreaker, just to make her hard to one round with Niles. Her personal skill, In Extremis, gives her +30 crit when her HP is below 25%, so don't let her hit you while it's active. You'll note that she doesn't have Air Superiority, so there's nothing stopping you from chipping her down with Camilla.  Anyway, that's everything about the map, so this is how I've positioned my units for it. Broadly speaking, Silas and the brunt of the army are going east to deal with Pineapple Hair and his Knights, and Kaze and Felicia are going west to eat Orochi's mages. Marth, Camilla, and Beruka are going to bait Reina's group out and then move ahead of everyone else to aggro Scarlets group.   I hate that the Knight art blocks your view of what I'm attacking here.   I honestly just wanted Silas here to support others and bait Takumi, but I won't complain about a fantastic level from the chip.   Nyx reliably one rounds this guy with Silas's support. She's not a great unit, but she's nice to have in a map with this many Knights.     Odin uses the armorslayer to delete this guy, but he takes a pretty big hit in the process.  He also gets C swords out of it, giving him +1 attack with swords and letting him use several swords we can't buy until after this chapter.     The armorslayer is really nice for dual strikes. Camilla could have one rounded this guy with her steel axe, but I wanted Odin to get the chip experience and support.  Marth drops Beruka in the river here, just barely in range of Reina. This requires a flier, because the tiles above and below the river are cliffs, which infantry can't walk on. Which also means that Beruka can't get out without help.  Lastly, Kaze sits in this forest tile and prepares to massacre like 5 mages on enemy phase.    This Knight starts us off by chipping Silas. I love the kodachi; having a reliable 1-2 range option is just what swords needed in the rest of the series. Of course, they got it in the game that nerfed all of the 1-2 range physical weapons, but I'll take what I can get.    Kaze is in a forest, he has weapon triangle advantage, and he's crazy fast, so he has a fair shot at dodging most of these attacks.    At least in theory. The RNG is gonna do whatever it feels like.   Mage number 3.    I see how it is; you can get a 7% crit, but you can't dodge any of these. Don't worry about it man, you do you.  Actually, do more of that. That was really good.     Takumi is able to move from his starting point into the river thanks to Fujin Yumi's effect, but it works out in our favor here because he's getting -10 avoid from the river. He hits like a truck though, and sometimes he'll just say "no" and crit you to death. Which is part of why I don't recommend saving him for later in the map.    This is the only genuinely threatening attack Kaze faces this turn, but because of the enemy move order, he consistently has a guard gauge ready for it.      That's Marth missing, not Beruka. Beruka missing would probably be a reset.  So this is what the map looks like after that enemy phase. Literally every enemy except for Scarlet's group is rushing right now, but it's surprisingly manageable with clever use of the river. Reina's Cavaliers can't move across the river, so they're all heading toward Silas right now. The biggest problem is the Wyvern/Knight pairs that can cross the river.    I think this 75 is the least reliable part of my strategy. I'd have reset if it had missed. I should also note that this doesn't kill without the strength tonic I gave Silas.  It really shouldn't, Camilla. That's a horrible level.   Silas needs to be ready to choke this point, so I have Nyx take Niles and switch so he can get some healing.  Of course, he's gonna need a pair up to survive the onslaught, so Odin passes Azura to him.     Silas is gonna take a beating, but he can safely choke this point for now. Can I just say how much I love guard gauges? They're the best.    Beruka kills Reina, taking out one of the most threatening enemies on the map.  Marth moves here to enemy phase one of the Wyvern/Knight pairs.   To end this player phase, Kaze takes a step backwards and kills this Cavalier.   It is kinda scary. If Kaze doesn't debuff her here, killing her gets a lot more complicated.   Luckily, he connects one of his hits, so Felicia can finish her off next turn.    Thanks to Elbow room and Strong Riposte, Silas can one round these Knights with a steel sword. He has no need for crutches like an armorslayer; he's got his muscles.   This is where those tonics I gave him start to come in handy.    "Why won't you die?!" "Guard gauges, son. They negate physical or magical trauma." - Silas, probably.   Man, we're getting some very nice levels this chapter.    This is a really nice enemy to use the guard gauge against. And Kaze flexes with a crit, too!    Hey, he actually dodged one!  He got B shurikens off of that one, which gives him +1 attack with shurikens/daggers, and lets him use silver daggers/shurikens. That's seriously it, the only other B rank shurikens are Jakob's Tray and the Caltrop, which are weapons I can't get during this run.    Marth chips this guy down, which will be relevant in a minute. I just wish he had taken a little more damage so we could activate Vow of Friendship.  Back on player phase, we get some new recruits!  This is Benny. If you look up "Armored Knight" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of him. He's got no speed, and all the defense. Sometimes too much defense; it's fairly common for enemies to not attack him at all because they won't deal damage. He's okay, but I don't generally use him.  This is Charlotte, and like Benny, if you look up "Axe Fighter" in the dictionary you'll see a picture of her. She's got boatloads of HP, strength, and speed, and hardly anything else. She's alright, but in my opinion, she's one of the most fun units in the game. It's a shame that she joins with Gamble and a steel axe, because they make her much worse in this map than if she had joined with an iron axe and no Gamble.  This is the current situation. Silas can keep choking that point, so the cavalry aren't really a problem, but the Wyverns are about to airdrop Knights directly behind our front lines, so we'll want to stop as much of that as we can.  A little healing, and Silas is good to go back into the fray.   Especially without this mage. Silas could have one shot with the iron sword, and that would have let him one round the Cavaliers, but he doesn't have the HP to tank all of them right now. With the steel sword, he won't double them, so he'll only face one.   Camilla is done in the east, so she flies west and kills this Wyvern Rider. These guys get quite a bit easier to deal with once you realize that a base Camilla one rounds them with thunder.  Because Knights can't stand on the cliff or river tiles, the leftover guy gets pushed to the nearest safe tile, which in this case is to the south. Now we won't have to deal with him for a while.    Beruka can't kill this guy alone, so I pair her with Marth. Between her personal skill and the buffs Marth gives her, Beruka is just barely able to finish this guy with a hand axe.  It's like she and Silas are competing to be the best unit on the army. Maybe I should pair them up to create the ultimate Sophie.     Without the Calamity Gate's effect, Orochi loses most of what made her threatening. Felicia does need her debuffed to kill her here though!   I want Nyx and Niles separate next turn so they can deal with the Wyverns and Knights, so Odin helps out. As a bonus, he's on a gate tile that's gonna heal him next turn!  Benny and Charlotte are going to help, too, so they move toward the rest of the army.    A full HP Sol activation. Thank you Felicia, very cool.  She's keeping the great level train going, though!    I love that Charlotte's dodge animation is just walking backwards.    One of the Wyvern Riders decided to attack Camilla, which is nice because that's one less flier to deal with.  Although because this Knight in the south is in the way, the closest safe tile for this one to drop is north.    It's interesting that Mercenary Silas is actually very nice in this situation, because he couldn't tank these guys if he were still on a horse.  Why would you phrase it like that?   Anyway, this guy has a measly three move, so it's gonna take him a while to get to any of those villages.  We need to deal with these Knights that found their way behind the river, so I'll have Nyx chip this guy down.  Seriously, Nyx?   Leave it to a real mage. Luckily, Odin can cast sword-to-the-face.  Well it had better not keep hiding, because this level certainly isn't it.   See, Benny has so much defense that he can go toe-to-toe with axe users and come out of it with barely a scratch. Which is a problem when going up against sword users who can't even do that much.    Charlotte grabs this axe off of Nyx, but it wouldn't quite do the job here, so she sticks with steel. By placing her here and killing the last flier, we've built a fleshy wall between the Knights and our squishy units.   Kaze chips this guy with the flame shuriken. Maid Felicia would have probably one rounded with it, just so you know.   Silas needs pretty much all of his HP to tank all of these Cavaliers, so I have Niles heal him on top of his vulnerary. Note that I equipped the iron sword before having him use that.   Beruka needs to get out of this river now, so she switches to Marth and he passes her to Camilla. He'll catch up next turn.  Beruka separates Camilla toward Scarlet to end the player phase. They might attract some attention from the northeast, but as long as Silas doesn't miss anything, most or all of that chunk of enemies should go for him.    Kaze starts the enemy phase of by guard gauge tanking this guy before finishing him.    Charlotte is apparently a dodgetank now, which is cool.    Silas kills the first of many Cavaliers for the turn. Because the rest of this enemy phase is essentially the same fight again and again I'm just going to quickly show the highlights of the massacre.      It takes three guard gauges and almost all of his HP, but he survives the onslaught and solidifies his status as the best unit on the army for now.  He's so good!  Back on player phase, Silas activates Good Fortune, which is kind of nice. We've killed everything on the map except for 2 Knights, the thief, and Scarlet's group. I want Silas moving south very soon to handle the reinforcements, so I have him get out of the way and separate Azura to the south. Next turn, he'll have Azura take him across the river.    Charlotte kills the northern Knight with Nyx's help. This is about what all of her levels will look like, but hopefully with more speed.   Nyx kills the last Knight, which clears the bridge so people can start moving south. Not too many people are going to take that route, though.     Marth has just enough movement to pair up with Camilla, and with his buffs, she can go ahead and bait out Scarlet's group with thunder. I avoided putting her in range of Scarlet though, because I don't want to chance a Death Blow crit.   Beruka moves north. She's just barely in range to take Silas from Azura next turn.  I heal Silas, because as usual, he's gonna be tanking several more hits.  Everyone else just repositions a bit since they won't be able to make it to the south before we end the map. Kaze is on a gate so he can get some healing.    On enemy phase, Camilla gets an unnecessary dodge and deletes this first guy.    I probably should have given Camilla a magic tonic so she could one round this guy, because he turned out to be a lot more annoying than you'd think.   Back on player phase, Silas activates Good Fortune again, and these reinforcements show up. There's no warning about them, and I personally think they're a bit much if you don't know they're going to appear.    Silas joins Azura, who passes him to Beruka, who finally carries him to this chokepoint so he can deal with these Cavaliers. He's not quite in Scarlet's range, which is good.  Camilla has a guard gauge ready, so she sits just inside Scarlet's range with a steel axe.  I send Niles and Charlotte south so they can either kill a unit or grab a village.   Nyx pairs with Benny, and he passes her to Kaze before separating from Felicia.  Then Kaze takes Nyx to the edge of this guy's reach. With the extra speed he gives her, she can double and one round these Wyverns.  Odin is kind of just here.     Camilla chips Scarlet down on enemy phase.    Honestly, even though Nyx isn't growing like I want her to, she's still better than Samurai Odin because she can one round enemies with help. This dodge is also unnecessary because she'll build a guard gauge before being attacked again.   Silas kills more Cavaliers.   Well except for this one, the javelin throwing coward.      He gets B swords out of these guys, which is a much-deserved reward. It gives him another +1 attack with swords, and lets him use silver swords.  Here's the map situation now. The thief is still a good several turns out from the village, so we're in no particular rush.     Silas finishes Scarlet off, and he gets another solid level out of it. He's pretty much ready for promotion now. The problem right now is that he's low on HP and he could die if that mage hits him.   Niles can fix that right up, though. But now he's in range of 2 Wyvern Riders, so we'll need to kill one of those.     But first, Camilla takes out this guy, which puts her in range of the southeastern village.  And Azura moves here, ready to grab one of the villages next turn.   This guy needs to die so he can't hit Niles. Nyx builds a guard gauge off of him, so she'll be fine through enemy phase.  Now he's in range of one Wyvern Rider and the mage, but he can take that.  Odin pairs with Felicia and waits on this gate, but in hind sight, these guys were always going to go for Nyx, so this was pointless.  Benny just goes back to guarding the wall.    With Kaze's extra speed, Nyx is actually putting in a lot of work here.     Silas takes a big hit from the mage, but he lived, so it's fine.   Niles also takes a big hit, but again, he lived, so it's fine.     At this point, I realized that I critically understaffed the lower half of the map, so Camilla had to turn around to pick up the slack.   She gets a very solid level out of it, though, so it's all good.   Bonk!  Whoops, that's the tomohawk guy. I didn't do this, I just took the screenshot to show why it wouldn't work.   So instead, we just chip with Charlotte. I was hoping she'd crit, but the RNG just wasn't on my side.   It should be fine, though, so Azura ignores that and grabs this village. It gives us a free master seal, saving us 2,000 gold. Nice!    Kaze is really close to leveling up, so I have him chip this guy down rather than having Nyx kill him. It was well worth it, because the level he got is fantastic. He's also pretty much ready to promote.   Felicia ends the player phase by finishing this guy off.   I guess it's a good thing Charlotte dodged those Knights earlier, because this wouldn't have worked if she were low on HP.   Back on player phase, Azura grabs the southeastern village, which gives us a blessed lance. It's effective against Faceless and Stoneborn (an enemy type we haven't seen yet), and it gives def/res -3 when equipped. It also restores 10 HP at the beginnning of your turn when equipped. It's okay, but mostly because of the healing effect. The lance itself is borderline useless because you don't fight all that many Faceless in this route, and Stoneborn are even rarer. When you do fight Stoneborn, this thing won't even be enough to get the job done.   Charlotte kills the last enemy aside from the thief, who won't ever attack. We've effectively won the map, but I'm going to grab the villages before killing him.   Beruka accepts tribute from the northwestern village, taking the gold from right under the thief's nose. Poor guy.   I can't get the last village this turn, so I have Niles heal Charlotte for experience before ending the turn.   Niles visits the last village for an arms scroll, which is a stat booster that increases every weapon rank that a unit currently has access to by 1. I'm not sure who I'm going to give this to. I might use it on Odin after promoting him to give him D swords and lances right out of the box. C'mon Charlotte, bring home the map!    Chapter 13 is good as far as rout maps go, and I generally enjoy playing it. The only complaints I have are that there should probably be another cavalier in Orochi's group, because I don't think I've ever not soloed her with Kaze or another shuriken user; and that I wish Scarlet's group would move on its own eventually, because there's nothing stopping you from taking your time once you've dealt with the thief. I also kind of wish the blessed lance village gave something better, because it tends to sit in someone's inventory unused for most of the game. Other than that, the enemy compositions are fairly threatening, and it's usually pretty fun to play.     Silas knows she's just trying to sell you Revelation for $20.     Lots of supports this time, but I still don't know who I'm pairing with who. I'll start figuring that out over the next few chapters.    After clearing chapter 13, we unlock several level two buildings. Most notably are the mess hall, the armory, and the staff shop. The level two mess hall lets you use two different ingredients, which is kind of useless to me but I upgraded it anyway. The level two armory and staff store unlock new items for sale that open up a lot of options. This is where the game really opens up, because you get access to plenty of seals, as well as a lot of new weapons to play around with.   The staff store has a bunch of new staves in stock, but because Niles can't use any of them, the only thing I care about are these master seals.  The armory is where it's at. We've unlocked silver weapons, all sorts of effective weapons, magic weapons, killer weapons, and even a gimmicky weapon or two.   The armory has sales on weapon types depending on who's running it. Because Kaze is running the shop today, there's a 5% discount on daggers. I'll do most of my shopping next update, but because of this sale, I went ahead and bought Kaze a silver dagger. Silver weapons are criminally underrated because people don't like that they drop your strength by 2 after using them, but sometimes you just need a little extra oomph to secure that one-round. They're also great for dual strikes, because supporting an ally with a silver weapon doesn't debuff you.  Anyway, we've got two new characters who need their class chosen. Benny can reclass to Fighter, so his final options are General (1), Great Knight (2), Berserker (3), and Hero (4).    He rolled a 3, which makes him a Berserker. I haven't tried Berserker Benny before, but it sounds potentially decent as long as his damage output doesn't suck too badly.  Charlotte can reclass to Troubadour, which makes her final options Berserker (1), Hero (2), Maid (3), and Strategist (4). Of these, I'm personally hoping for Berserker.    She rolled another 3, which makes her a Maid. It's no Berserker, but it's leagues better than Strategist, so I'll take it. I think she should still be putting out decent damage because of her high strength and speed growths, but the change to Troubadour kneecaps her growth potential. New unit discussions Benny Class: Berserker Growth rates HP - 50 Str - 40 Mag - 0 Skl - 50 Spd - 10 Lck - 35 Def - 55 Res - 45 Benny is pretty much the quintessential armored unit, having high HP and defense but very little speed. The only thing that really stands out is his solid resistance, which doesn't tend to matter much because late game mages hit like trains and he won't survive much combat against them anyway. He's definitely one of the better Knights the series has to offer, but that's more because of the game he's in than any actual stand-out qualities. His personal skill, Fierce Mien, inflicts avoid -10 on enemies within two spaces, which is actually really nice, especially if you can get a group of enemies to gather around him on enemy phase. His main use is to put him in front of a bunch of enemies before watching him bait them out and chip them down. For his class options, you can make him a General if you want a virtually-unkillable mobile brick wall. Physical units will hardly scratch him, and as soon as he gets Wary Fighter, he practically won't die ever unless you put him in range of a bunch of mages or something. Sometimes his defense is so high that the enemies just walk up to him rather than attacking because they aren't able to deal damage, meaning he won't chip them. In my experience, this isn't super common, but it's something to consider when choosing between General and Great Knight. Great Knight has slightly less defense, but the extra mobility more than makes up for it in Benny's case because he doesn't really need the extra bulk. I personally think it's his best class choice. His reclass options are Berserker and Hero. I've never tried either, but Hero Benny sounds like it has some potential for Sol tanking, but that's about the only merit I can think of for him. He doesn't really benefit from the extra speed (he's gonna get doubled by almost everything no matter what class you change him into), though he can manage with less defense thanks to his excellent personal defense growth. Berserker Benny, which is what he'll be, sounds to me like it has potential to somewhat boost his offensive power while not completely destroying his bulk. He'll still get doubled by everything, but he should have solid defense and HP, so if the one hit he gets in per fight is a good one, he might be able to contribute something good to the team. As a bonus, Fierce Mien compliments axes well because of their lowish hit. Charlotte Class: Maid Growth rates HP - 65 Str - 55 Mag - 0 Skl - 35 Spd - 50 Lck - 45 Def - 20 Res - 5 Charlotte is a unit who often gets tossed aside by players because she makes an awful first impression on the player during her join chapter, but she's actually pretty solid if you use her. Coming equipped with Gamble, a steel axe (both of which make her hit rates shaky at best, even with weapon triangle advantage), and joining underleveled at 10 make her incapable of doubling anything on the map, and she performs pretty poorly against the Knights she's likely to fight. If you use her, though, you'll find that her excellent strength and speed growths let her grow quickly into a fast and strong axe fighter with lots of HP. Her personal skill, Unmask, gives her +4 damage dealt and +20 crit when she's fighting a female opponent. It's a neat skill, but because generic enemy gender is decided by class in this game, it's not as useful as it could be because there's not that many female opponents. The enemies who are female are typically either bosses or units like Maids who are already pretty frail, so it doesn't exactly make a huge difference. It is, however, super fun when you get +20 crit on a critstacking build and she ends up with 80+ crit chance. As for her class options, you've got Berserker, which is my personal favorite way to use Charlotte. She'll be fast, strong, and surprisingly bulky because of how huge her HP pool is, and she enjoys the Berserker's innate +20 crit. If you give her a killer axe, she has a 45% crit chance before adding pair up bonuses and skills into the equation. She's pretty much the only unit that I'll actually use Gamble on, because watching her critical chance soar past 50% is a super fun time and I highly recommend trying her out on your next playthrough. Her other, less fun option is Hero, which I've never tried. I don't think it'd be bad though, she'd probably benefit from the extra defense, and Sol would be nice to have on a unit that has so much strength. Her third option is Strategist, which is a truly horrible choice for her because it doesn't let her use her strength stat at all. Her last option, Maid, sounded awful to me at first, but I think it has potential. Her naturally-high strength and speed should let her make good use of daggers, and... that's about it. Being able to use daggers with hopefully decent strength and speed is pretty impressive, if she can pull it off. She certainly wouldn't gain much from staff access, and though she'll still have a lot of HP, she'll probably be quite a bit more frail than usual. I don't know for sure, but I think she could be fun to use. Oh, and you could also just tape her to Xander. She gives him more than enough strength and speed to turn him from a really strong unit to a downright crazy strong unit. Benchmaster Voting We gain a deployment slot next map, but because we gained two units in this one, we'll still have to bench one person. As usual, everyone is on the table except Odin. Next time, groans of increasing discomfort.
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Aug 31, 2023 04:40
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Update 11 - Increasing Discomfort This time around, you guys decided to nix Nyx, which is honestly for the best, because she's clearly wanted this for a couple of chapters now.  She didn't have much to redistribute, but Camilla got her fire tome in case she needs a little more accuracy to secure a kill with magic. She probably won't ever use it.   In other news, Kaze wouldn't gain all that much from promoting 3 levels later, so I went ahead and promoted him.   He gets a whopping +4 strength promotion bonus, which is huge for someone who will almost always double. Though he actually loses a point of speed, which is disappointing. He's fast enough to eat the loss for now, but not gaining speed on promotion is probably going to hinder him later on.  That was the only master seal we had on hand, so I bought another one. They cost 2,000 gold in this game, which really isn't too bad.   Silas is our next promotion, though at this point it's kind of overkill.   He's better all around for now, but as good as he is, I wouldn't be surprised if he stops shining quite so brightly later on.   Our last promotion for today is Odin, because I'm getting tired of him just kind of being present for the map. Hopefully he'll be able to pull his own weight with this.   The extra defense and strength should help him a lot, but another less obvious benefit is that he gives generally better pair-up bonuses now.   It might be my Odin favoritism showing, but I decided to give him the arms scroll so he can use D rank lances and axes. He also gets another +1 attack with swords from B swords, as well as silver sword access, both of which could help him out.      After this, I did a little shopping to arm everyone with the weapon types they just unlocked.   Str/def +1 isn't bad, and it affected a solid group of units.  Chapter 14 is a fairly average map. It's pretty good, though I think it's got too many status staves.  "I have no idea who this woman is" - Corrin.  This is an actual image of me reading this game's story for the first time.    This is chapter 14. It's a kill boss map, and its defining feature to me is the sheer number of status staves present. This, combined with the restrictive layout for non-fliers, can make it pretty difficult to play quickly without flier-rushing the boss. There's also some reinforcements from behind once you cross the midpoint or so that can be extremely dangerous if you aren't expecting them.  The most disgusting one is this hexing rod in the north.  These two highlighted ladies have freeze staves, which are more annoying than threatening for the most part.  This one has an enfeeble staff, which is probably the most dangerous one of the bunch. It's a toss-up between this and the hexing rod, but I've certainly been screwed over by this one more.  And this last one has an entrap staff, which it intends to use to teleport your units next to the boss and his Archers. It's really easy to avoid, because it only covers the very corner of the map. I'm surprised that lunatic mode didn't move them a few tiles to the left, because as it is, you pretty much have to intentionally put someone in range of it.    The enemies here aren't that threatening, and their skills aren't either. Most of the fliers have Darting Blow, the Samurai in the front have Pass for some reason, and some of the Archers have Lunge.  Some of the fliers have threatening weapons, like this guy with a bolt naginata (which is basically a levin lance).  There's also this guy with a swordcatcher, which has tripled might against anyone using a sword. It's not too threatening as long as you don't forget about it and put a squishy swordie in their range.   The boss, Kumagera, is pretty easy to deal with. For his weapons, he's got a tiger spirit and a steel mace (1-2 range steel club). His skills are Countermagic (1-2 range Counter but for magic), Darting Blow, and Certain Blow. He's kind of a fun unit to capture, though.  Lastly, we've got two new units in this map. We have Leo from the start of the map, and he's a pretty great unit even though he doesn't quite compare to Camilla or Xander.  We've also got Keaton, who joins after talking to Corrin. He's about as good as a 1 range locked infantry unit can be, mostly because he can swap beaststones to choose between being fast and strong or slow and tanky.  This is how I've got everyone arranged. Generally speaking, Beruka, Niles, and Odin are going to go north to get the chest while everyone else moves to the east to clear the path to the boss.   To start us off, Niles moves Odin through the hexing rod's range while Beruka trails just behind.   Charlotte pairs up with Leo, who moves into range of the Samurai as well as the hexing rod. Camilla backs him up with Rose's Thorns.  Benny moves here, which blocks the only tile the Pass Samurai could reach, preventing him from passing through Leo to hit our backline.  Marth pairs up with Azura so he can reach this tile, and he drops Azura to the north. He's just barely in Keaton's range now, and because Keaton is one of the smartest green units in the series, he'll recruit himself on ally phase.  Felicia and Silas move behind Leo, while Kaze moves south to support Marth and Azura.  The hexing rod has trouble hitting targets with higher resistance, like Leo. He's got something around a 30-40% chance to get hit here, and he needs to dodge to consistently survive. I don't mind relying on a little bit of luck on the first turn.    Between Charlotte's pair up bonuses and Rose's Thorns, he's able to just barely oneshot these guys. I'm basically throwing experience away here, but I want these guys out of the way quickly.  Though one of them decided to support the others with dual strikes rather than attack, so he ony kills two of them.   Keaton starts equipped with the normal beaststone rather than the beastrune, so he takes quite a bit of damage from these guys.     Leo chips this pair down while taking minimal damage thanks to a guard gauge.  And Charlotte gets a solid level, though I wish she had gotten strength. Even though she's a Troubadour, she's still got a very solid 55% strength growth, so she just might end up being good.  She also gets Resistance +2. Meh.  Keaton recruits himself, which is nice because now he can act on player phase.   Back on player phase, Leo murders the last Samurai.  Camilla and Marth move here. They can't really move forward with so many status staves and Archers around, so they'll just enemy phase some of the fliers instead.   Silas kills the lead of this flier pair with the kodachi.  While Benny and Felicia just kind of chill for now. The narrow hallways in this map kind of limit your options.     Kaze puts his new bow to use against this Archer with Keaton's help. As a sidenote, I like the Mechanist's animations; they're fun. Especially how the puppet fires your weapons from its mouth. It reminds me of the puppet users from Naruto, which I've always thought were cool.   Azura pairs up with Keaton so he has enough speed to double, and he eats this guy.    Niles moves just outside of the enemy range, while Odin carries Beruka into it so she can take them on during enemy phase.  Back on enemy phase, Leo dodges the second hexing rod. It's nice that he did, but I don't think he strictly needed the dodge this time.    Beruka shows this guy how it's done.   She hasn't even promoted yet, but she's still pretty much unkillable.   One of the nice things about Keaton is his large HP pool, which lets him shrug off even pretty big hits like this.    Sometimes it's kind of nice that Leo can't one round everything; it lets him chip enemies like this for other units.   Meanwhile, Kaze takes this hit like a champ thanks to the extra defense Mechanist gives him.    With Rose's Thorns, Marth is able to one round these fliers with a dual strike from Camilla.    Keaton has Beastbane, which makes his attacks while using beaststones effective against beasts, so he hits these guys like a truck. He'd have one-shot if he had been using the beastrune.   Because of the cluttered nature of this map, some of the fliers are bound to get through to your backline like this. But we'll clean them up next turn.    Marth starts the player phase off with a very nice level.   Camilla deletes the last southern Archer.   Kaze cleans up this flier with Keaton's help. I used the dagger because I'd rather train his dagger rank than his bow rank.   Azura gets a juicy kill on this weakened flier. She's still getting something like 60 experience per kill right now, so it's always satisfying when she can steal them.   Silas kills this other flier with the kodachi. This was a minor misplay on my part; in hind sight, I should have paired him with Felicia and had her use the kodachi to get this kill. She would have gotten actual experience out of it.   Leo isn't quite able to oneshot the Shrine Maiden, so he opts to kill this Archer instead. He'll enemy phase the other one in a minute.   Beruka can kill this guy because of the extra damage Opportunist gives her.  And he gives her a solid level. She'll be that much harder to kill now.   Niles retreats to safety, and I'm content with where everyone else is, so I end the turn.   Leo finally gets hit by the hexing rod, but it doesn't really matter at this point. Also, Camilla gets frozen, which is only mildly annoying.    Leo kills the last northern Archer, clearing the way to the chest for our northern squad.   I should probably note that Beruka is currently getting some extra defense from Odin now that he's a Master of Arms, which is pushing her past the "I don't care about this attack" threshold.    More of the same.   Back on player phase, Beruka finishes another guy. She should be able to finish the last of them next turn.  Azura drops Keaton in range of these Oni Savages, as well as the freeze and enfeeble staves. He'll get frozen and debuffed, but he'll just pair up with Azura to get out of there.  Kaze waits next to Camilla so they can do the same thing next turn.   Leo waits here to be ready for the reinforcements that'll be showing up next turn. I also had Silas take Charlotte so she could heal Leo up.   Everyone else gets into position to deal with the reinforcements. If you kill the boss quickly enough, you won't have to actually deal with them, but I'm not smart enough to do this while grabbing both chests, so we'll be killing them.   Keaton gets frozen and enfeebled, but he's strong enough to survive the turn even with -4 to all stats.   Beruka clears out another Oni Savage.   And she chips the last one down a bit.    Enfeeble makes this a pretty nasty fight, but he's durable enough to survive.  At the end of enemy phase, these guys show up. They've got Kinshi Knights in the back of the pair that can be kind of difficult to deal with sometimes. They don't have any special skills or anything; they're only threatening because they have so much movement in such a cramped map that it can be hard to kill them all before they find a way to murder one of your squishies. If you're prepared for them, they aren't too bad.    But before we worry about them, Beruka needs to clean up this guy. I'm not even mad about the bad level; she can do what she wants at this point.  Niles is going to wait here so he can bait the northernmost pair out. He's on the very edge of their range, so they'll switch the Kinshi Knight to the front and attack from 2 range so he can counter. If you're careful with your placements, you can bait out all three Kinshi Knights and kill them off before they get a chance to do much of anything.   Camilla picks up Kaze and drops him just in range of the southernmost pair. He'll be chipping the Kinshi Knight down with his bow.  After moving a few people out of the way, Leo is able to sit on this tile here that's just barely in range of only the middle pair. With this setup, we'll be chipping all of the Kinshi Knights down on enemy phase.   Azura then airdrops Keaton next to Kaze, mostly so he doesn't get murdered by Oni Savages.   We really can't move forward with these fliers breathing down our necks, so Marth commits a war crime while he waits. Everyone else just hangs around to end the player phase.    I really wish Niles had more hit, but he connected and that's all that matters.  Speaking of more hit, he gets C rank bows, which gives him +5 hit with bows as well as unlocking shining bows, killer bows, steel bows, hunter's bows, and blessed bows. The only ones useful to Niles here are shining bows and hunter's bows.     Leo successfully chips his Kinshi Knight.    And Kaze nearly oneshots his.  Lastly, nearly every enemy on the map starts advancing. This is why it's important to deal with these reinforcements quickly, because otherwise you'll be sandwiched.    Even though Niles can kill, he dies if he misses, so Odin passes Beruka to him so she can finish instead.    Marth misses the potshot I had him take. It was worth a try. He'll be getting a ton of experience next map anyways.   Silas handles it instead. Because this is a promoted unit, he actually gains a pretty normal amount of experience.   And then Felicia chips the leftover Sky Knight.     With the extra strength Keaton provides, Azura is able to finish the southern Kinshi Knight off with a potshot for an okay level.   Kaze eats the leftovers. I love the way the puppet just goes  in this screenshot.  For our last fight of this player phase, Leo finishes the last of the middle pair.  Camilla ends the phase by waiting in range of the bolt naginata flier.     She chips them down nicely.     Odin handles his first, and at this rate only, combat of the map pretty well.   Beruka passes Niles to Odin before finishing the last of the reinforcements.  And the two of them move towards the northern chest. They probably won't be seeing any more combat this map.    Azura finishes the bolt naginata guy for another solid level. That point of defense won't be making much difference any time soon, though.  She also learns Camaraderie, which restores 10% of her HP at the start of player phase if she's within two spaces of an ally. It's almost completely useless on a glass cannon like her.   Silas kills the frontmost Archer while plugging up their path to my other units.   Camilla takes care of the swordcatcher guy with Leo's help. I want her in this tile so she can help with a dual strike in a second.   Felicia also borrows Leo to kill this Oni Savage.   And Marth deals with the last of the fliers with Camilla's help.   Leo picks up where Silas left off by killing more Archers.   And lastly, Kaze chips this guy down with his shuriken. This guy has a pike-ruin club, which has tripled might against lances. Even though he's got weapon triangle advantage, it doesn't work against shurikens, so Kaze is fine.  Back on enemy phase, Marth gets enfeebled. I was pretty much done using him for combat anyways.  please don't crit   thank you    Leo deletes the last Archer.    On player phase, he and Marth do a little sibling bonding over their shared love of killing defenseless healers.  Marth even gets C axes out of it, giving him +5 hit with axes as well as unlocking steel axes, bolt axes, and killer axes.    Camilla chips this guy down for Azura, who secures the kill by having Kaze do it for her.  She gets D lances out of it, so she can finally use iron lances and the javelin she's been carrying around for the past several maps. Offensive Azura is officially in business.  Niles grabs the seraph robe from the northern chest. It's a stat booster that gives +5 HP permanently.   On enemy phase, Marth and Silas get frozen, but not much else happens. There aren't a whole lot of enemies left.  Benny uses a chest key one of the enemies dropped to grab us 10,000 gold. It's a nice haul.   Felicia chips this healer for next turn.   Charlotte heals Leo while Camilla gets ready to carry him to the boss.   And Azura squeezes out another kill with Kaze's help.   Niles passes Beruka to Odin and heals him for experience, and the two of them move towards the boss.     Azura continues sating her bloodlust by stabbing the last freeze person. This is kind of a bad level, but at the same time, she should be starting to actually double things pretty soon.  There's nothing going on now, so I'm not showing most of my movements here. Silas is going to ride Marth to the boss.     He almost one-rounds him outright.  Marth gets a solid level from helping out.     I do some shenaniganery to get Beruka on Camilla's back, and she finishes the map for us, getting an okay level in the process.  We unlocked the Grim Yato, which would be a nice upgrade for Marth if he were able to use swords. Even though he can't, it still gives him +2 def/res when it's in his inventory, so it's still nice to have.         Lots of supports this time, but there's nothing hugely impactful.  Leo's reclass options are Dark Knight (1), Sorcerer (2), Butler (3), and Strategist (4). I think I'm okay with any of these but Butler, because he'd still be able to use tomes.  Which is why he rolled a 3, making him a Butler.    At least he looks handsome, and it kind of fixes his speed issues? If he can hit C daggers, he'll be pretty potent with the flame shuriken, but until then he'll be a bit on the weak side. I guess he's still kinda bulky, too.  Keaton, like Azura, is a special case where his starting class only has one promotion choice. Because of this, he only has three final class options; those being Wolfssegner (1), Berserker (2), and Hero (3). I think he could technically work fine in any of these, but Berserker and Hero make him suffer through E rank weapons for a while, which sucks.  He rolled a 2, so he'll be a Berserker.   His stats are pretty much the same, but now he doesn't get the beaststone bonuses, making him a lot weaker in the short term (and probably in the long term, too).  Also, we can upgrade the fire orb to level 2, so I went ahead and did that. And now, it's time to discuss Leo and Keaton. New unit discussions Leo Class: Butler Growth rates HP - 45 Str - 25 Mag - 55 Skl - 35 Spd - 45 Lck - 45 Def - 30 Res - 45 Leo is the best non-Odin mage in Conquest. And that's not just for lack of competition; he's a genuinely solid unit. He's got solid bulk, enough magic to two shot most enemies, and enough speed to double some enemies (especially with a speedy pair up). His only real problem is that he's often just short of doubling enemies without speed investment, and most of the time, Xander benefits more from the same investment. His personal tome, Brynhildr, gives him a skill% chance to reduce magical damage taken by 50%. It's pretty disappointing compared to literally every other personal weapon in the game. His personal skill, Pragmatic, gives him +3 damage dealt and -1 damage taken when his enemy's HP is not full at the start of battle. It can come in handy, but it's not usually relevant. His class options are mostly magical, so he can go Sorcerer to get Nosferatu access at the cost of his mount, or he can go Strategist for slightly more magic and speed at the cost of a lot of defense. I haven't tried it, but I'd guess that tanking his bulk makes Strategist worse than Dark Knight even though he gets a bit more speed. His last (and worst) option is Butler, which removes his ability to use his magic stat offensively until he hits C daggers. This is another option I've never tried, but I'd' guess that he'd appreciate the speed once he gets the flame shuriken, though it does cost him some of his bulk. The skills his classes have access to are generally unimpressive. The best one is the Sorcerer's Vengeance (which adds 50% of missing HP to his attack when it activates), which he has enough bulk to make use of even if he doesn't stay in Sorcerer for long. Otherwise, the Dark Knight's Lifetaker (which restores 50% of his HP after combat when he kills an enemy) is nice to have, as are the Sorcerer's Bowbreaker and the Butler's Tomebreaker. Keaton Class: Berserker Growth rates HP - 60 Str - 60 Mag - 0 Skl - 20 Spd - 35 Lck - 30 Def - 50 Res - 25 Keaton is an interesting unit because his stats are only decent, but they're pushed into the realm of "good" by beaststone bonuses. The fact that he has no 2 range options as a Wolfssegner drags him down quite a bit, but the fact that he can be both a fast, strong, unit and a slower, bulkier, unit makes him pretty versatile. His personal skill, Collector, gives him a luck% of obtaining 3 My Castle resources after moving for the first seven turns of a map. So he basically doesn't have a personal skill, because this is hot garbage. The Wolfssegner and Wolfskin are practically his personal classes, and their skills are Beastbane (which adds effective damage against beasts to beaststones), Odd-Shaped, Better Odds (which restores 50% of his HP at the start of odd-numbered turns), and Grisly Wound. They're all nice to have, but none of them exactly make or break him. Better Odds is nice because it compliments his mixed bulk and huge HP pool, and the free damage provided by his other skills is nice. His other class options are Berserker and Hero. I've honestly never tried reclassing Keaton, but I'd imagine that he's substantially worse as either of these. He's probably still fairly bulky, but having to suffer through E rank weapons is awful, and the final product is probably disappointing. He can get some pretty good skills from them, but it's probably not worth reclassing him unless you want to pass something down to Velouria. He'll be on the slow side, but he should still be able to take a few hits. And with the Berserker's 25% strength growth, he'll get strength on 85% of his levels. The one hit per battle he gets is gonna really hurt, so I think he could be pretty fun to use. Because the next map is special, I'll hold off on the benchmaster voting for now. Next time, we play probably the strangest map in the game.
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Sep 18, 2023 05:14
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ApplesandOranges posted:Leo's usable enough due to the scarcity of good magic units on Conquest, but he's rarely impressed for me. His main benefit is probably his range (horse + magic). Otherwise he usually ends up either really needing speed or magic (which Nyx can solve with pair-ups). He's alright, but of the Conquest royals I'd say he's the weakest. He's okay considering that he doesn't require any investment to do what he does, but yeah, he's not usually exceptional. Honestly, I wish Brynhildr had a better effect. Xander and Ryoma both get very solid stat boosts from their personal weapons on top of unpenalized 1-2 range they wouldn't normally have had, and Takumi's ability to sprint over mountains is situationally very useful. But Leo gets stuck with a crummy version of Aegis? I personally think Brynhildr should always cut magical damage in half (or reduce it by 25%, if 50% is unreasonable), because it would let him frontline more, especially against those late game mages with like 45 attack. It would give him a niche as the sort of mixed tank of the family. I might just dump every goddess icon and skill book on Keaton if he ends up seeing long-term use. Add in some skill and luck tonics, and he might be kind of reliable, especially if he gets to use the dual club with its doubled weapon triangle bonuses. FoolyCharged posted:The game wants you to have an army of maids and butlers. I live to serve. Blue Labrador posted:I can't decide if I like ch 14 or not. The Kinshi pincer is memorable and fun--as is how they serve as Exp pinatas--but how the map is split in two by the water makes it feel kinda sluggish outside of the ambush. To me, it kind of feels like they designed the northern portion for another route, and then felt obligated to use all of that space here even though they didn't really want to.
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Oct 3, 2023 05:40
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Update 12 - The Land that Shall not be Named Chapter 15 is weird, so no one got benched last map. Or maybe almost everyone got benched? Anyway, it's a pretty easy map, but it's got a cool gimmick that I personally enjoy.   I buy a bolt axe and a master seal for Marth. The magic weapons are more useful in Fates than in most other Fire Emblem games because of how heavily standard 1-2 range weapons were nerfed. Even though they can't crit or proc offensive skills, they can double, which makes them useful even for characters with lackluster magic.   This is a solid meal, and it affected Marth, which is good, because he's gonna be doing about 90% of the combat in this map. You might have noticed that I've mostly been having him support others for a couple of chapters now, and this is why. He'll blow past everyone else from all the experience he's gonna get here.   I also gave Marth the dual club, and Azura a used vulnerary.  Lastly, Marth gets the seraph robe we got last time, bringing his HP to a solid 29.     This is Chapter 15. It's divided into two halves, with the north side having generally weaker enemies, and the south side having a lot of droppable items on its enemies. You can either kill the boss in the south, or escape to the east with all your units. The boss drops a speedwing, though, so we'll absolutely be killing him.  We get Gunter now, and he's honestly pretty good. He's got genuinely awful growths, but his base stats are solid and he gives very solid pair up bonuses (especially to Corrin because of his personal skill). His biggest problem is that he can only support Corrin and Jakob, so if you're not pairing him with Female Corrin, he's pretty much relegated to being a filler unit when you have an extra deployment slot. He's mostly here to make sure you can win this map even if you didn't level Corrin up.     The enemies here aren't too threatening. The Villagers are surprisingly strong, and a couple of them have potentially dangerous weapons, but they aren't too bad. The Ninja are pretty weak, though some of them have Poison Strike, which can be a problem. Some of the fighters have Armored Blow, but that's hardly a problem because we have the bolt axe. And there's a couple of enemies in the south who have Seal Strength or Seal Defense, which can actually be kind of nasty.  Lastly, this is the boss. He's not too dangerous, but we won't have weapon triangle advantage, so our hit rates will be pretty shaky. Otherwise, he's not too bad.    Marth starts us off by having Gunter carry him here so he can whiff both of these attacks. At least he got guard gauge progress out of it.  And Azura activates this dragon vein, which...   Creates replicas in the southern half of the map. The replicas share everything, including experience points, HP, stat buffs and debuffs, as well as their inventories with the originals. This means that you've got to manage your units' HP pretty carefully, because they'll be losing HP on two fronts. The dragon vein also clears the rubble in the south and creates some healtiles, but they're pretty useless.   Replica Gunter and Marth pair up and move into enemy range, while Azura sits nearby to provide a little healing from her personal skill.    The northern Marth starts the enemy phase off strong by killing both of these Villagers, including the dual naginata guy.   While the southern one chips this soldier down. He's taking minimal damage, but it's enough to wear him down eventually.   Northern Marth moves to the north and wipes out another Villager. He'll take 0 damage from these Ninja because of the defense Gunter gives him.   Southern Marth moves behind enemy lines and chips this Fighter with the hand axe. Northern Marth gets equipped with the hand axe, too.  Azura follows pretty closely, just in case she gets a chance to steal a kill.   Northern Marth starts the enemy phase off by chipping this Ninja. Using the hand axe lets him two shot, which is nice.    And Southern Marth gets a very solid level out of his Ninja.     Back to Northern Marth, who chips the rest of his enemies. They're steadily chipping his HP down.    Southern Marth dodges and kills this soldier.    Yeowch, this guy hits hard. It turns out that dodge was necessary, so if that had connected, I'd just give Marth an HP tonic for the next attempt.     Back on player phase, Southern Marth kills the Fighter while Azura kills the Ninja with his help. Marth is in range of a Fighter, but he's got a full guard gauge.   Northern Marth kills this Villager. The leftover Ninja are weak enough that he'll be able to finish them with the bolt axe.  And Northern Azura just kind of trails behind because there's no safe way to bait one of these guys out.     Southern Marth chips his Fighter down for another very solid level. I do wish he'd gain some strength, though.    Northern Marth ends the enemy phase by clearing these guys out.    Southern Azura kills the Fighter with Marth's help, claiming a vulnerary for her trouble.   Speaking of vulneraries, Northern Marth uses one while Northern Azura waits in range of this Ninja who's been advancing alone for a while now.  Southern Marth needs more HP, so he also uses a vulnerary. This sort of double vulnerary play is one of the reasons that I like the replica gimmick.     Azura can survive this hit because this guy wasn't able to dual strike with anyone. And she gets a nice level out of the chip! She's steadily approaching downright solid damage output. Oh, this guy also has Poison Strike, but since she wasn't going to survive another hit anyway, so there's no functional difference between 3 HP and 1.    Southern Marth gets Poison Striked, which is kind of annoying. I'd like to have chipped this guy with the hand axe, but I wanted the bolt axe so we can take out the other enemies more quickly.    This guy has Seal Strength, but most of our damage output is coming from the bolt axe at the moment, so it's not a huge problem.   I wish the guard gauge had blocked the Fighter's attack instead of this one, but whatever.  Southern Marth takes out this guy with the hand axe so he'll be able to kill the Ninja more quickly.  And Northern Marth uses another vulnerary while running from their Ninja. Both Azuras are once again trailing a safe distance behind.   Back on enemy phase, Southern Marth chips his Ninja down. If it weren't for Seal Strength, this would have been a kill. Oh well, Marth can afford to eat more Poison Strike damage.  Gunter's only personal growths above 5% are his 15% growths in HP and luck, so this isn't that bad all things considered.   Southern Marth also clears this Soldier out.  Because of the Fighter's poor positioning, this guy didn't get a chance to attack.   Southern Marth moves forward while killing this guy with a hand axe.  And Northern Marth keeps him juiced up with more vulneraries. We'll deal with that Ninja eventually, but for now, Northern Azura keeps running away.    On enemy phase, Southern Marth chips this Ninja he just baited out for another very nice level. Gunter aside, the levels have been consistently solid this time around.  These Poison Strike guys are really chewing into my vulnerary stock. Luckily, this is the last one I'll bother fighting. That guy in the south can live; he doesn't have any loot for us.   This guy has Seal Defense, so Marth just got a lot more frail.    Luckily, guard gauges are always there for us.    Southern Marth kills this guy and takes his goddess icon, which I'll probably just sell later on.   Northern Marth finally finishes off the Ninja.  And Azura swaps both Marths' equipment to the bolt axe.    Southern Marth chips one javelin Soldier and kills another.    And another.    And he chips yet another.      Back on player phase, Southern Azura kills one Soldier for a spirit dust while Southern Marth kills the other.   And Northern Marth gets a free moment to kill another Villager because Southern Marth doesn't immediately need a vulnerary.  Then he chips the last northern Ninja down on enemy phase.    It's really nice that the Ninja attacked first, because that charged a guard gauge up for this much more dangerous attack.   Southern Marth moves forward and chips this Fighter down. These three are the last group between him and the boss.    Northern Marth chips so Azura can dip.   Marth gets B rank axes for helping her out, giving him an extra attack +1 compared to C axes, as well as unlocking silver axes and tomahawks. The Ninja also dropped a vulnerary.      Southern Marth kills the weakened Fighter and chips the other two on enemy phase.  And Northern Marth uses a vulnerary while Southern Marth gets to work on the boss.    At least, he tries to. This is a pretty bad miss, because as soon as he switches to the axe, our hit rates are gonna drop, so this was the only reliable hit we had. I was honestly hoping for a crit.   On enemy phase, Southern Marth gets chipped down by both Fighters. This was honestly a pretty bad misplay on my part; I had a brain fart and expected him to counterattack with the dual club.    Thank you, guard guages.  Oh, and these last two Fighters in the north started moving. I honestly don't know if it's because of the turn count or because we engaged the boss.     Either way, Azura chips for experience while Northern Marth kills for his last unpromoted level. It's a pretty anticlimactic one. At any rate, now I'll just have Southern Marth promote, and he should be able to handle the boss without too much trouble!  Or, uh, maybe not. Turns out the replica Marth doesn't have convoy access. Oops.  In that case, we'll have Gunter lead the charge with his javelin!     He enemy phases both of the Fighters for another level, as useless as it is.    The boss also dodges again, which is more annoying than problematic.   Northern Marth promotes, essentially turning him into a second Camilla.  And Southern Marth heals up to enemy phase the boss.    The promotion bonuses help, but our hit rate is still pretty low.   Northern Marth chips the last Fighter for experience.    On player phase, Southern Marth borrows Gunter's steel axe and gets a solid hit in.   Northern Azura chips the last Fighter for experience before Northern Marth finishes him off.  This is tempting, but I decided that it wasn't worth the risk.    And Southern Marth finishes the boss off on enemy phase, nabbing the speedwing and the map clear.  This is a neat map, because you don't get a whole lot of opportunities to play around with replicas, especially in Conquest. My main complaint is that it's pretty repetitive, and is usually a Corrin stomp because of the limited deployment.  Honestly, I'd have enjoyed a DLC where you play as Gunter surviving alone down here for a map or two.  Azura in a nutshell.  Back at My Castle, there's another character waiting for us!    It's Jakob! He's not great, and neither is Felicia if you recruit her at this point. We'll talk about him in a minute.   We get a couple of supports that probably won't matter in the long run.   Here's a quick comparison between Camilla and Marth. He's slightly faster and tankier than her, and slightly weaker both in strength and magic, but they'll function about the same. Anyway, it's time to roll classes for the new recruits!  Gunter has access to six classes for some reason, so his choices will be Great Knight (1), Paladin (2), Bow Knight (3), Hero (4), Malig Knight (5), and Wyvern Lord (6). I've never used him in the long term, and I've also never reclassed him, but I'd guess he functions about the same regardless. You're pretty much looking at his final stats when you change his class.  He rolls a 3, making him a Bow Knight. This is probably his worst option because it takes away all of his good weapon ranks, leaving him with D swords. He should still be somewhat usable as a backpack, though.   The big loss here is the defense, because he's trading his physical bulk for a little magical bulk, which really doesn't work out.  Jakob's class options are Butler (1), Strategist (2), Great Knight (3), and Paladin (4). He's honestly not going to perform particularly well in any of these at this point.  He rolls a 2, making him a Strategist.   He can be a decent staffbot since he's got C staves. We haven't used any of the status staves yet, so we've got quite the stock to play around with. New unit discussions Gunter Class: Bow Knight Growth rates HP - 15 Str - 5 Mag - 0 Skl - 5 Spd - 0 Lck - 15 Def - 5 Res - 5 In a game where being a support unit isn't viable, Gunter would be almost entirely useless just a few chapters after he joins, when you stop seeing unpromoted enemies. In Fates, though, it's totally okay to let someone be a stat backpack, and that's a job Gunter can do reasonably well for almost no cost, making him pretty decent. His personal growths are bad enough to make Fire Emblem 6 blush, but his base stats are enough for him to meaningfully contribute to combat for several chapters, and his class options generally give good pair up bonuses, letting him take on a supportive role any time. He starts with the basic Cavalier skills, most notably Shelter, which lets you pull off some crazy multi-refresh strategies with Azura. He also has Luna, which is nice but too unreliable to be all that useful, in my opinion. His personal skill, Forceful Partner, gives +15 hit and +3 damage dealt when he's supporting Corrin. It honestly doesn't matter what class he rolls, because he'll fall off pretty quickly as a combat unit regardless. For what it's worth, though, I think Bow Knight is his worst option because it drops his durability and doesn't let him make use of his axe or lance ranks. The unit quality in this game is among the best in the series, so I never find room to deploy him, no matter how temporarily capable he might be. I've only used him in the long-term once that I remember. He has more reclass options than most, which honestly doesn't help him all that much, but at least it's something. Because of his personal skill and the fact that he can't support anyone else, I think the best way to use him is to make him a stat backpack for Female Corrin. It's something he can do pretty well for literally no investment, which is good because investing in these growths is not a good idea. If you do invest anything into him, I think reclassing him to Wyvern Lord so he can pick up Rally Defense after 3 levels is about all I can recommend. Overall, I'd say that he's surprisingly solid, but probably not worth using.  Jakob (if you picked Male Corrin) Class: Strategist Growth rates HP - 50 Str - 30 Mag - 15 Skl - 40 Spd - 35 Lck - 45 Def - 25 Res - 25 Jakob is one of the best units in the game if you pick Female Corrin and recruit him at the start of the game, because he makes excellent use of an early heart seal to Great Knight. If you picked Male Corrin, though, he's pretty underwhelming because he joins so underleveled. Because that's the Jakob we have, that's the Jakob I'll be discussing here. He starts with Resistance +2, Gentilhomme (provides damage taken -2 to female allies within 2 spaces), and Live to Serve. His personal skill, Evasive Partner, gives avoid +15 and damage taken -3 when he's supporting Corrin. I honestly don't like it as much as Felicia's Devoted Partner. He can be a solid staffbot if you happen to want another one, but otherwise, he's generally not worth the effort it takes to get him up to speed because his damage output is just too low to secure kills. Especially because we'll be seeing a lot more promoted enemies starting next chapter. Reclassing him to Great Knight or Paladin helps his stats, but it also tanks his weapon ranks, so it's not helping all that much with his damage output. Reclassing him to Strategist at least lets him keep his staff ranks, and because there are a few chapters ahead that have low-resistance enemies, it wouldn't be too difficult to get his tome ranks up. For my part, I won't complain about being able to use the C rank and above staves I haven't been able to mess with so far. The best way to use Second Jakob, in my opinion, is to use him as a staffbot/debuffer until he gets married before promptly benching him after his child's paralogue. Benchmaster Voting  Because the next map has 12 deployment slots counting Marth's, we'll need to bench 3 characters this time. As usual, Odin is off-limits. Also, we're just about done recruiting the first generation units, so starting in chapter 17 or 18, I'll probably start deploying characters we've benched so I can pair them up to unlock their children. If you have any pairings you'd like to see, the next couple of updates would be the best time to let me know. Just note that Marth will be marrying either Flora (who we haven't recruited yet) or a second generation character, because if he marries anyone else, there won't be enough female characters to go around, and we'll miss out on a child unit. Next time, we fight to defend our doubloons!
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Oct 3, 2023 05:42
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Update 13 - Pirates of the Nohrian Sea Last time, you guys voted to bench Jakob, Leo, and Gunter, so I redistributed their stuff. I'll be deploying Jakob and Leo before too long for their children though, so we'll probably still end up  I bought a master seal for Beruka to carry around as well as a levin sword for Charlotte, for reasons you'll see in a minute.  This is a fantastic meal, because "adult" includes all first generation characters, including characters like Mozu and Elise.  Odin gets a speed tonic, but that's the only tonic we'll be using here.  Chapter 16 is solid map. It's the point where we start seeing a lot more promoted enemies, but the game also hands you Xander, so it evens out nicely. As cool as chapter 15 is, because it doesn't let you build support for most of your army, it's at this point that I always find myself thinking "Oh wow, I'm already this late in the game? I'm way behind on pairings!" so I'll start trying to build some of those now.    This is a kill boss map, but because the boss only shows up after you talk to all four of these green units, it usually ends up being pretty close to a rout map. We've got Sorcerers and Berserkers on the left, and Adventurers and Heroes on the right. The left side's enemies are more dangerous, but there's a couple of status staves on the right that balance it out somewhat. There's also an incentive to play quickly, because there's a 10,000 gold pot that gets 300 gold lighter every turn. It's not a huge incentive, but more money is always nice, so I'll try not to drag my feet too much. You can also see how I've got my units arranged here, which you should probably take note of because I apparently forgot to take a closer screenshot of it.   The Sorcerers have a lot of attack, so they'll pretty frequently two-shot your units, but they're not that durable, so you should be able to take them down pretty easily with someone like Kaze. The Berserkers are the most dangerous enemy type on the map because they've got a shipload of strength and an inherent 20% crit bonus, so there's pretty much always a small chance of them just deleting one of your units. Luckily, none of them have 2 range weapons, so it's pretty easy to not let them attack.  Also notable on this side is that several of the Dark Mages have Nosferatu, which you'll need to factor in when attacking them. It's not a fun surprise to realize that the one-round you were relying on is actually a two-round.   On the right side, we've got these Heroes. They're not as brutal as the Berserkers, but they're pretty durable and Darting Blow makes them pretty dangerous on enemy phase. Most of the Adventurers are stationary staffbots, but this one in particular is one of the most dangerous enemies on the map. He's fast and has a shining bow that deals magic damage, so he can be a nasty surprise for someone like Xander. He's also the only one with these Seal skills.   The unpromoted enemies on this side are made or broken by what skills they've got. If an Outlaw has Quick Draw, he's able to do significant damage, but otherwise they're not too dangerous. Likewise, if a Mercenary has Armored Blow, they're obnoxious to take down, but otherwise, they're relatively harmless.  We have control of Xander from the start of the map, and we'll be putting him to use immediately. He's got sky-high defense that's boosted further by his personal weapon, Siegfried, which gives him +4 defense when in his inventory. It also gives him unpenalized 1-2 range, which is one of the things that sets him ahead of your average high-defense wall.  On turn one, I move most of the army into position. Kaze and Azura are baiting out Dark Mages in the north, while Odin is baiting a Fighter out in the south. Beruka and Silas are charging southeast to start on that group. Broadly speaking, Kaze, Marth, and Camilla are going to lead the charge on the left, while Xander, Silas, and Beruka handle the right. Everyone else will scurry around to help out wherever they can.   Xander pairs with Charlotte and moves to bait the northeastern enemies out. He takes the levin sword from Charlotte, and passes Siegfried to her. I want him to soften these guys up for other units, and if he kept Siegfried in his inventory, the extra defense would make a couple of them deal 0 damage, so they wouldn't attack him. Everyone else is fine where they are, so I just end the turn.  I don't know why we don't get this money back after the map. I get that the pirates are taking it, but where? We're at sea! Are they throwing the gold overboard? Did they bring lifeboats? The world may never know.    Kaze starts the enemy phase off by murdering this Dark Mage from across the railing. These Berserkers are strong enough to one-shot with a crit even though they're only dual striking. Kaze died to this guy no less than 3 times during my practice attempts.     Azura baits out the only mage she's in range of. She gets a disappointing level out of it.   Kaze, you need to cool it with the crits! Save them for where it counts!    Odin kills his Fighter, but he takes a lot of damage in return.  And Felicia gets a solid level for helping him out. I'd have liked strength, but I'll take it.     Xander starts chipping his group down. Neither of these guys would have attacked him if he still had Siegfried on his person.   This Hero would have, and without the extra defense, he takes a couple of pretty solid hits. Or one solid hit, thanks to the guard gauge.   Silas is gonna take a lot of damage, but I'm really just having him chip things down for Beruka, so I don't really mind.  These Outlaws chip him down further.   This Hero was the main enemy I wanted Silas to chip. Beruka has enough defense to shrug off pretty much everything else, so now that he's within her kill range, she can safely start slaughtering some swordsmen with the dual club.  Here's the situation as of turn two. We've baited out a solid half or so of the enemies, and now we just have to survive the onslaught. Xander and Beruka are pretty much fine for the moment, so we're mostly worried about the left side of the map.   We can't afford to enter the red zone here just yet, which makes taking the back mage out slightly difficult. Camilla clears out the first one so we can reach him.     And Marth is able to finish him off thanks to Camilla's help. It's pretty important that you factor in the healing from Nosferatu when you attack these guys. I have very limited options to kill this particular guy, so if that had let him survive, it would very possibly have doomed the run.   Odin chips the last southwestern guy down, dodging his counterattack thanks to Duelist's Blow.   And Felicia finishes him off.     These guys are pretty slow, so Keaton can actually double them. Not that it matters here, but it's fun to see big number hit twice. He gets a fantastic level out of it, too! Literally all the stats he cares about! He also gets HP +5, bringing him to a ridiculous 41 max HP. If he keeps gaining speed, he could potentially end up being a very strong unit.   Kaze takes out the stronger of the two northwestern Fighters. This is one of those cases where silver weapons come in handy; he couldn't one-round without it, and the -2 strength will recover before it has a chance to matter.  A little healing from Niles, and Kaze is ready and willing to take a hand axe to the face if necessary. With he and Keaton forming a fleshy wall between this guy and the rest of our units, we can safely ignore him for now.   Beruka switches to the front and kills this Mercenary with the dual club. She would have killed the more dangerous Hero instead, but this guy had Armored Blow, which made him the priority because he can't really be enemy phased.   Xander moves to draw his enemies closer to the main army, while Azura and Benny find safe spaces to hang out for the turn.    On enemy phase, Niles nearly gets murdered by the axe guy, but he's fine. I'm pretty sure he's into that, anyway.     With weapon triangle advantage removing the enemies' weapon rank bonuses, Beruka takes negligible damage from the Mercenaries. She also two-shots all of them except for the Armored Blow guy, who we'll deal with on player phase.  The Outlaws deal pretty significant chip damage, too. This one especially, thanks to Quick Draw.    The Hero also does a good chunk, but unlike the Outlaws, he gets killed on enemy phase. This crit sure would have been nice against the Armored Blow guy!   Beruka adds another great level to the pile. Just out of curiosity, I checked what her average stats at level 19 are as a Fighter (counting her one level as a Wyvern Rider). I expected her to be significantly better than average, but she's actually pretty close to the everyday Beruka. She's ahead by ~3.5 defense and ~0.5 speed, but she's actually behind by ~2 strength. Her other stats don't matter as much, but there's no major outliers there either. Anyway, back to the gameplay, Xander continues chipping his guys down. This screenshot makes this look like a kill, but he lived with 1 HP, thanks to Xander losing his personal skill's damage boost because the enemy's health wasn't full at the start of battle.   Yeesh, when you take away the Siegfried bonus, Xander's defenses start to look a little more normal. Still crazy high, but he stops being totally unkillable and instead becomes nearly unkillable.  Here's the situation on player phase. We've cleared most of the initial onslaught, so things are starting to feel a little less constrained, but we'll have to start dealing with the horde of promoted units on the left and the status staves on the right. Also, the Outlaw Xander baited earlier went back to his spot because Xander left his range.   We've held Xander back long enough; it's time to have him start clearing out problem enemies. This was the Quick Draw guy, so it was definitely worth it to take him out now.   Look at those numbers! Keaton won't be doubling super often, so don't get used to this.   Benny's personal skill pushes his hit rate up enough that I'm comfortable having him steal this kill against the weapon triangle.     Odin can't quite reach on his own, so he has Azura carry him to this guy so he can steal a kill.    Kaze finishes Xander's Hero off for a great level. I would have liked to feed this to someone else, but everyone in range was either an axe user who couldn't reliably hit, or too puny to actually kill.    Marth pairs with Felicia and sits in range of this leftover Dark Mage. Niles heals him for another awful level. He's really trying for a Benchmaster promotion.  Camilla sits here to support Marth. Between Rose's Thorns and Devoted Partner, his damage is being pushed up enough to one round the Dark Mage even though he's using a magic weapon.  Beruka needs a pick-me-up, so she uses a vulnerary.   On enemy phase, Marth kills his Dark Mage as expected.  And Xander gets enfeeble'd. This is a bigger problem than I'd expected it to be.    I thought that with the defense boost from Siegfried, the enemies would opt to attack Beruka because they deal 4 damage instead of 3 to Xander, but because of the extra defense she got from her level up, they 3 damage to her, too. Because they don't have weapon triangle disadvantage against Xander, two of them decided to suicide into him instead. RIP like 20 experience points.  The Armored blow guy opted for her, though, I guess because she deals less damage than Xander.  Back on player phase, Xander deletes the other Outlaw.   Beruka bonks the last Armored Blow Mercenary.   With a little healing, Odin is just durable enough to bait out both of these Outlaws with the javelin.   Marth starts killing Berserkers on the left. It's mostly going to be him and Kaze leading the charge over here.  Kaze moves to bait out a Sorcerer while everyone else hangs around.   On enemy phase, Marth takes out the first of this Fighter pair. This guard gauge is pretty nice; even though they're not promoted, these guys still hit hard.    Kaze is able to pretty much completely ignore even promoted mages, at least for now. Camilla also gets B axes from helping out, which is nice. She provides a lot of dual strike support because of Rose's Thorns, so she'll probably get some mileage out of a silver axe.   And Xander finishes killing the Mercenaries in the south. I'd have preferred them going to someone else, but I'm not willing to replay the map over it. We'll just call it more Xander/Charlotte support grinding.    Odin, man, please try not to screw up the jobs I give you. I'm trying to enjoy using you as a non-Sorcerer, but you're making it difficult.   Vantage is actually a bad thing here, because Odin's guard gauge is full at the start of this battle, so it wastes an attack's worth of charge. Though because this Outlaw doesn't have Quick Draw, Odin would have survived this hit even without the gauge.   Back on player phase, Odin clears out the Quick Draw guy, this time attacking from 1 range to take advantage of Heartseeker.   Camilla separates from Kaze for now to kill the leftover Fighter with Marth's help.   Marth kills this Berserker and prepares to eat a hit from this Sorcerer. He won't kill with the counter, but he can take the hit without any problems.  Approaching this last group from the north requires you to bait out both a Berserker and a Sorcerer, and I'd rather not do that, so Kaze has Benny move him to the south.   All of our safe choices to handle the promoted units on this side are damaged, so Xander spends a turn getting a double shot of healing. He's definitely the safest option to lead the charge next turn.  Silas and Beruka end the turn by falling back. I left him in range to eat this Enfeeble use, just in case we don't kill the staff guy as quickly as I'd like.  This won't be all that relevant; Silas is mostly done fighting for the map.    Ragnarok is probably Conquest's favorite spell, and any Sorcerers equipped with it will hit pretty much any unit quite hard. Marth isn't gonna be able to take any more hits for the moment.   Odin ends the enemy phase by killing this guy with Vantage for an awful level. It's okay Odin, you get good when you feel ready to.  Marth talks to the first green unit, but even though he looked kind of sus, he wasn't the imposter.   Kaze takes this Sorcerer out, leaving a single Berserker and a group of mages to guard the second left side green unit.   Xander gets healed to full, pairs up with Charlotte, and moves into enemy range to bait the Hero/Adventurer pair.  Odin separates from Azura, and everyone else just hangs around nearby for the turn.  In hind sight, I should have moved Xander in and just one-shot the enfeeble guy, because he actually has been pretty obnoxious.   Xander dodges one of these, but I'm pretty sure it didn't matter. The important thing is that he chipped the Adventurer down. This was also the only thing to happen on enemy phase.  Kaze moves into range of as many mages as possible without being in the Berserker's range, while Marth separates from Camilla.  Azura pairs up with Keaton; their pair up bonuses compliment each other nicely, and they're already at C rank, so I figure they're as good a pairing as any. I also personally like their supports.   Beruka kills the Adventurer in the lead of this pair, which brings her much closer to level 20.   Xander chips the remaining Hero down. We need him dead this turn.     We'll need someone stronger than Odin or Keaton to finish him off though, so Odin has Niles carry him to Beruka, where he trades Niles for Silas before chucking a javelin at the Hero.     Keaton moves adjacent to Odin, grabs Silas and switches him to the front so he can finish off the Hero. I love transfer/switch tactics like this; they open up so many options that aren't always immediately obvious.  On enemy phase, Beruka gets debuffed. Meh.     Kaze kills a Dark Mage and a Sorcerer, getting a master seal in the process. He also gets a kind of disappointing level, especially because the extra resistance makes one of the Dark Mages change his mind about attacking this turn.  Lastly, Silas gets chipped down by this Outlaw pair.    There's only 3 enemies left on this side of the map, and Felicia takes out the first one with Kaze's help. I can't stress enough how important it is to make sure you factor in the Nosferatu healing against these guys. It's gotten me so many times in past playthroughs, though I'll admit that that's probably because I'm an idiot.    Marth kills the last Berserker for a decent level. I'd have liked strength or magic, though.   There's no surprises here, but Kaze kills this mage with ease.  Camilla finishes our business on this side by talking to the other green unit. This gimmick would be pretty obnoxious if the boss were actually picked at random, especially because he's an archer so you wouldn't be able to safely have a flier go ahead of everyone to talk to him.    There's not much space to attack these guys from that isn't inside of the freeze staff's range, so Beruka solves that problem by lunging into him.   Azura gratefully accepts the free experience, and with how everyone is positioned, this guy is pinned uselessly against the wall.  Xander moves forward to bait out the last two Mercenaries.   And Keaton chips the last Outlaw down for next turn.    Xander chips one Mercenary and misses the other. Imagine being this guy; you're fighting the crown prince of Nohr equipped with his legendary weapon, and you just casually backflip out of the way of his swing.  Everyone on the left moves forward on player phase.    Azura converts the last Outlaw into a very nice level. She's really starting to come into her own lately!     Xander chips this Adventurer down, and Charlotte gets an okay level out of blocking this 0 damage attack. I think it might be best to go ahead and promote her so she can start working on her dagger rank, so I might just do that next map. She also gets Demoiselle, which is kind of nice but it doesn't stack with itself, so it's not likely to be gamechanging at this point.   Berkua kills one of the last two Mercenaries.    Keaton ends the turn by flubbing this attack. Man, this guy looks cool with that cape. I kinda don't want to kill him now.    Keaton gets frozen before finishing the Adventurer on enemy phase.    BERUKA SMASH! Also she gets B axes. Nice!   Yet another heal and Xander is eager to sit in front of this last Adventurer. In hind sight, I got a little sidetracked and slowed the map down this run; I could have ignored these Adventurers and sent someone to talk to the northern green unit while Xander went for the eastern one, which would probably have shaved a turn or two off the map clear. It's too late now, though, and I wasn't willing to replay the map for a slightly better turn count.    At any rate, Xander chips him down and dodges unnecessarily, perhaps trying to make up for missing that Mercenary earlier.    And Beruka finishes him off on player phase for her final level as a Fighter.   Odin checks the third green unit while everyone else gets in position to deal with the boss once someone talks to him.   One final heal and Xander moves in to talk to the last green guy. Niles gets D rank staves out of this, which gives him access to Mend and Freeze. Maybe we'll get some mileage out of that later on.   May I just say that you, sir, are wearing some very fine boots. Footwear aside, Shura is kinda pathetic as far as bosses go, which is mostly because his stats are almost exactly the same as when you recruit him. The only difference is that the boss version has an extra 10 HP.    Even though he's not super dangerous, he does have Counter, which is a pretty nasty end-of-the-map surprise if you didn't check his skills. It's also about the only way he's gonna do significant damage with the mini bow. It's weaker than an iron bow, though it's interesting because it's a 1 range bow. Not a 1-2 range bow, a 1 range bow.     Charlotte heals Xander for support more than anything, while Silas finishes Shura off for one of the worst levels he could have gotten.  And that's it for Chapter 16! I like this chapter a lot as a sort of introduction to dealing with a lot of promoted units. The promoted enemies are mostly placed so that you can deal with them at your leisure, and they're also not as well-equipped as later enemies will be. You're also given Xander, who can pretty much handle whatever you throw at him for the moment. Add in the gold loss every turn to encourage faster play, and you've got yourself a solid mid-game map that nicely bridges the difficulty gap between the early game and the late game.  We got 6,700 gold from this clear. I could have finished this map faster, but I honestly don't care to do that for less than 1,000 gold.   In a standard run, I'd leave this decision up to a vote, but I think full recruitment is more in the spirit of this run, so that's what I'm doing. Welcome aboard, Shura!      The most relevant support here is Beruka/Silas, because I've decided to create the ultimate Sophie.    Beruka promotes, and here's a quick comparison between her and Silas. She's almost the same as him, though she has slightly higher defense as well as axe ranks instead of sword ranks. Both of them will continue to be useful for quite some time, I expect. And with that out of the way, it's time to see what Xander and Shura roll!  Xander's options are Great Knight (1), Paladin (2), Malig Knight (3), and Wyvern Lord (4). He'll keep his high defenses no matter what class he gets, so I honestly don't care too much what he rolls.  He rolled a 4, making him a Wyvern Lord. This is fine with me; he gets that sweet, sweet, flier movement, though he also loses Siegfried access and has to suffer through E axes. He has high enough defense to make axes work, and in the long run, it should end up being pretty good.   He's effectively got 30 defense when holding Siegfried, which is enough for the moment to shrug off pretty much any physical attacks. He could even tank a hit from an archer or two, I think.  Shura is another special character with access to 6 classes, so his options are Adventurer (1), Bow Knight (2), Berserker (3), Hero (4), Master Ninja (5), and Mechanist (6). I've only used him as an Adventurer or Mechanist, so I'm interested to see what he gets.  He rolled a 1, making him an Adventurer. As interesting as it would have been to try something like Berserker Shura, he's very solid as an Adventurer, so you won't hear me complaining.  Here's Shura's stats. As you can see, he's much better than Niles, though he can't support anyone but Marth. Anyway, that's all for this update, so it's time to discuss our new units! New unit discussions Xander Class: Wyvern Lord Growth rates HP - 45 Str - 50 Mag - 5 Skl - 40 Spd - 35 Lck - 60 Def - 40 Res - 15 Xander is pretty much the go-to guy for when you need a tile turned into a wall. His bases are fantastic for his join time, and his naturally high defenses are boosted further by Siegfried, even if he's in a class that can't use it. His personal skill, Chivalry, gives him damage dealt +2 and damage taken -2 when his opponent's HP is full at the start of battle, which shaves off a lot of extra damage and lets him tank even more enemies in a single turn. Having unpenalized 1-2 range is also great, because in addition to not dying to anything physical, he'll counter everything for a pretty big hit. Unfortunately, one hit is pretty much all he'll get without some help in the speed department, because he's kinda slow. Not unsalvageably so, but he'll need a speedwing or two and a good backpack if you want him to double a lot. If you reclass him to Great Knight, he gets some extra defense as well as Luna at the cost of a point of movement and some speed. Personally, I don't think it's quite worth the tradeoff because he's already got plenty of defense, and his speed is already his problem area, so making it worse for relatively little benefit is kind of a bad idea. You can also reclass him to Wyvern Lord, which has the benefits of better defense, flier movement, and axe access at the cost of not being able to use swords in combat. It's also slightly slower, which might make a difference in his case. I've only tried it once, but he performed very well, although not quite as well as he does in Paladin. Finally, you can make him a Malig Knight, but why would you do that when Wyvern Lord is an option? It's overall worse for him in every area except magic, which is something he's no good at. He would at least appreciate Trample (+5 damage to non-mounted enemies), especially because there's not that many mounted units in Conquest. Honestly, it's kind of bland, but I think Paladin is the way to go. Shura Class: Adventurer Growth rates HP - 30 Str - 25 Mag - 10 Skl - 20 Spd - 35 Lck - 30 Def - 15 Res - 35 Shura is one of the more underrated units in the game, mostly because of the opportunity cost of recruiting him. When weighed against the boots, I understand how it's tempting to throw the new guy away, but if you take Shura, he's pretty solid. That being said, I honestly haven't used him enough to talk too confidently about him, so take this one with a grain of salt. His bases are good enough to let him contribute from the moment he joins, and he has weapon triangle advantage against daggers, which we'll be seeing a lot of from here on out. He has a lot of speed and strength, as well as decent magic for a combat unit and a boatload of resistance. His personal skill, Highwayman, reduces the enemy's strength and speed by 3 after any battle they couldn't counterattack in. It's situationally good, but not super useful. It's also worth noting that he can only support Corrin, which does hinder him quite a bit. Oh, and he comes with a free killer bow and a mend staff, but neither of those compare to the boots so whatever. Shura has 6 classes to choose from, and of them, I've only used him as 2. As an adventurer, he's a solid combat unit as I've already discussed, but he also makes a decent staffbot. Bow Knight gives him more movement and strength, which is actually probably really good now that I think about it. Something to try next playthrough. Anyway, he's also got Berserker, which definitely makes use of his speed and strength if he can get out of E rank axes. Hero sounds kind of mediocre, because like the Berserker, it forces him into E rank weapons, but it has lower strength and speed. It would make him more durable though, and he has a lot of skill, so maybe he'd get some use out of Sol? And lastly, there's Master Ninja and Mechanist. Master Ninja is pretty good once he gets out of E rank daggers, because it makes him strong and fast, and Mechanist makes him similar to Mechanist Kaze but with more strength and less speed. You could take him through Hero to put Sol on either of these without any friendship seal shenaniganry, which sounds, at the very least, fun. I personally think his best option is probably Bow Knight because it lets him use his bow rank, keeps his movement-boosting pair up bonus, and it gives him more strength, which is always a good thing.  The next map actually has enough room for our new recruits, so this is the team we'll be bringing to it. After that, I'll start deploying people for support purposes, so it shouldn't be too long before we start getting child characters. Next time, Marth attends the annual Hoshidan Naruto Convention.
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Oct 21, 2023 07:58
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ApplesandOranges posted:We seem to be really picking up a lot of axes lately. Hopefully Keaton or Benny get some training in soon because otherwise I can see them really starting to lag behind. They've got a lot of weapon triangle advantage in the next couple of maps, so they shouldn't have too much trouble catching up. NeoRonTheNeuron posted:For Shura, you rolled between 1 and 4 instead of 1 and 6. Not a big deal, but you rolled 1 to 6 for Gunter. Whoops! I'm glad you noticed this now; I'll invalidate the first roll and re-roll between 1 and 6 at the start of the next update.
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Oct 22, 2023 03:06
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Blue Labrador posted:Out of curiosity, how are you gonna handle the classes for the child units? Are the parents gonna pass down their base classes, or their randomized ones? As I understand it, classes are passed down based on the parents' class sets, not what class they're using. I don't plan on putting much thought into building super-children, so they'll inherit whatever they inherit and I'll randomly select one from their class list.
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Nov 17, 2023 06:16
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Update 14 - Believe it! I'll start this update out with a correction. Someone pointed out that I rolled Shura's class between 1 and 4 rather than 1 and 6, so I'll rectify that right now by rerolling him.  Once again, his options are Adventurer (1), Bow Knight (2), Berserker (3), Hero (4), Master Ninja (5), and Mechanist (6). This 3 makes him a Berserker, which is certainly a more interesting choice than Adventurer! He should be pretty solid even with E rank axes because he's both faster and stronger than most of our units.    He's got a ton of strength and speed, as well as a bunch of bulk, so he's gonna be pretty useful. It's kind of a shame he'll probably get benched for support purposes, at least for a while, since he can't talk to anyone but Marth. He gets a bronze axe for now.   Now that that's been sorted out, it's time to do a little shopping. Beruka gets a silver axe that'll probably get passed around to several people over the course of the rest of the game, and Silas gets a silver sword. They mostly want these for dual strikes, but the extra damage will come in handy occasionally, particularly against faster opponents (I.E. almost every enemy in this next map).     I'm going ahead and promoting Charlotte because she really hasn't been doing much as a Troubadour, and I want her working on her dagger rank. Honestly, I should have promoted her before the last map, but hind sight is 20/20, I suppose. This should be implied, but I bought her a bronze dagger.    If we're gonna try to make Berserker Keaton happen, he's gonna want as much hit as he can get, so he gets all of the secret books and goddess icons from this point on. Luck may not matter as much as skill to the hit formula, but half of your luck stat is factored into it, so it's something. I also bought a master seal for him to carry around, just in case I want him to promote mid-battle.  There's a lot of units that would benefit from this speedwing, but of them, Silas has the highest speed cap at 32 (though this can be raised with upgraded statues), so he gets them for now. He'll make pretty good use of it, I think.  We still don't have any proper mages, but Marth has a somewhat decent magic stat and a bolt axe, so he makes as good a candidate for these spirit dusts as anyone.  It's Jakob in the mess hall today! He's one of the best cooks in the game, so this is a very good thing. Normally I try to give him a chef hat accessory, which makes him guaranteed to be the cook, but in this case I just got lucky.   Meal stats cap out at +2 to 2 stats, and Jakob is so good at cooking that he can make this happen with only one ingredient. Even better, it's strength/speed! It still only affects half of the army, though.  And last but certainly not least, Charlotte removes this terrible, terrible skill. I can honestly say I'd rather not learn a skill than be burdened with -10 hit for the rest of the map. Anyway, that's about it for preparations, so let's move on to the map!      Welcome to Chapter 17! It's commonly called Ninja Hell, and for good reason. There's a real lot of these guys here, and they're pretty dangerous. The map's main gimmick is the dragon veins that open and close doors throughout the map. If you plan your moves carefully, you can use them to control how many enemies you fight at a time, which is pretty important for keeping Saizo alive. If you're not careful, though, you'll probably screw up and trap one of your units in a room with 5 enemies and no support, or let several new enemies reach your squishy units. The other gimmick is the caltrop tiles you see scattered around. They have the movement cost of a forest tile, but they reduce defense by 3, avoid by 30, and they damage units for 30% of their HP at the start of the turn. The HP drain doesn't affect units with Locktouch, which is why every enemy in this map his it even though none of them go for your treasure. Speaking of treasure, there's 5,000 gold in the northern chest and a master seal in the southern chest. Units with Locktouch, including Saizo, can remove the caltrops instead of waiting, which isn't always a good idea if the extra movement cost is protecting you from enemies. There's also two batches of reinforcements; one when you cross into the second third of the map, and the other when you cross into the last fourth or so of the map.  Probably the most dangerous enemies on this map are these guys because of their high speed, relatively high attack, and the fact that they have the Poison Strike/Grisly Wound combo that's always nasty.  The unpromoted enemies on this map are pretty weak, but their high speed makes them hard to one round, which lets them make use of Poison Strike. Between the shuriken debuffs and the damage skills, this map can chew through your tankiest units pretty quickly if you're not careful.  There's also enemy Mechanists, but they're not too dangerous. They're a lot easier to double, though they're also a lot bulkier. They don't have much as far as skills go, so they aren't too bad on their own.  They tend to come with these Automata that are honestly kinda weak. Their saws are unique weapons that aren't in the weapon triangle, though, and they debuff both strength and magic, which can be kind of annoying.  There are also a few Lunge Swordmasters that are pretty well-placed to drag your units into more enemies, but they aren't anything special otherwise. This one has an armorslayer, though.   This particular Mechanist has Life and Death, which makes him pretty dangerous, especially if the nearby Swordmasters drag your unit into his range first.   This is the only staff enemy, and thankfully, she's not too dangerous. The wane festal is a long-range heal staff, and the silence staff isn't too hard to deal with considering that we don't have any mages. Even if we did, almost every enemy on this map has high resistance, so it still wouldn't affect things too much.   Finally, we have Kotaro. There are very few decisions in Conquest's map design that I consider to be objectively horrible, and this is one of them. I hope whoever decided to put a speedy Master Ninja boss on a throne steps on a Lego every time I play this map. He's fast, strong, has a flame shuriken for your high-defense units, and his skills are pretty nasty. He has trample, which gives him +5 damage dealt to non-mounted units, giving him some extra oomph that makes him genuinely dangerous. Grisly Wound is mostly there to soften your units up when they attack him on player phase. Lastly, he's got Duelist's Blow because one of the developers was having a bad day when designing this map, and they wanted to make sure you were, too. The enemies in his room are also unwilling to attack you unless they can Lunge your unit into Kotaro's range, which makes him hard to approach. I've got a strategy in mind to handle Kotaro with minimal risk, though, so I won't be relying much on luck.  We also have Saizo as a green unit, and he's pretty good as far as they go. He can handle quite a bit on his own because his stats are great, and he's got the Immune Status skill, which makes him immune to damage skills like Poison Strike as well as stat debuffs from Seal skills and daggers. It's not available to the player unfortunately, but it makes him surprisingly durable if you let him see combat. If he survives to the end of the map, he gives you a speedwing. He's your anti-turtle incentive.   I start by moving Marth and Charlotte into enemy range. Charlotte needs to work on her dagger rank so she can maybe start being a good combat unit.  Everyone else moves forward. Camilla and Marth are in range, but the enemies don't do enough damage to justify attacking them.     Charlotte eats a silence before fighting the Ninja. She doesn't perform particularly well, but she'll hopefully improve as she gains levels and weapon ranks.  On ally phase, Saizo picks up these caltrops. I'm not gonna let him do too much more than this.  Also, a lot of enemies start advancing. I lost track of which ones were actually moving, so just assume it's a lot of these guys.   Odin starts the next turn off with this kill, and Charlotte gets a little more dagger practice in. She'll be seeing quite a few dual strikes throughout this map!    Marth chips this guy down with Charlotte's help.   Xander chips this guy down. He's absurdly tanky on his wyvern, but that won't help all that much during this map because he doesn't have any 1-2 range options.     Positioning Marth and Xander first places them adjacent to Keaton, giving him as much extra hit as possible. The fact that he only has an 89% with a bronze weapon and all of this extra support is kind of embarrassing, but it gets the job done. It's also about the highest hit rate he'll see for the map, because he just learned Gamble. Both strength and speed is pretty much all I need from Keaton because he's bulky enough thanks to his HP, so I'm actually very happy with this level. Clearly, Keaton understands that it's about quality, not quantity.     Benny clears out this last guy for HP +5 and an out-of-character speed growth. He's actually got a 25% speed growth rate as a Fighter, so he's likely to see a few more of these before the end of the game! Not that they'll actually help him, but hey!   Lastly, Camilla advances with a hand axe to enemy phase this Master Ninja while everyone else trails behind.  On enemy phase, she eats the second silence. She certainly wasn't going to use magic on this map, so I'm okay with this!     I should note that I gave her a skill tonic because she has several somewhat shaky fights like this that are pretty important, and I wanted them to be as reliable as possible.   She gets a very nice level out of it! Although Grisly Wound leaves her worse for wear, so she'll need healing in a minute.  On ally phase, Saizo starts moving North. He'll have time to get comfortable with this room, because I'm gonna use the dragon veins to keep him trapped in this corner of the map for a while.    Marth Lunges this guy, which takes care of a threat and puts him in range of a Mechanist across the wall. Though I guess he could've just attacked from the tile to the right of Camilla... Oh well, Lunge tactics are fun!   Charlotte heals Camilla up while Camilla helps Marth equip the bolt axe. It'll let him double the Mechanist.   Silas and Beruka wait here. Silas is in range of two Ninja, while Beruka isn't in range of anything. Everyone else inches closer.    Because these guys are so fast, it's hard to double them, so I have to rely on dual strikes to one-round. One-rounding is pretty important here, because otherwise Poison Strike chews through Silas (or really any unit) pretty easily.    The shuriken debuffs make a pretty big difference here, and I'm pretty sure that a Poison Strike would have made this a lethal fight.    Some of the camera angles in these tight corridors are awful, so you can't actually see what's going on in them. But I trust that you, dear reader, are smart enough to figure it out because you can see it in the combat forecast.  We'll be activating this dragon vein this turn, but first, we need to move everyone out of Saizo's area or they'll have to waste time waiting a couple turns to move forward.  Shura disarms the caltrops, which I almost forgot he could do now that he's a Berserker. He's in position to dual strike the Master Ninja now, too!   Beruka one-rounds this guy with a silver axe and Shura's help. I think she could have used a steel axe for this, but she doesn't have one, so she'll just have to deal with the debuff.   Xander plugs this hole and chips this Ninja. Though the Lunge Swordmaster is gonna unplug it in a second, but it'll be fine because we'll block most of those enemies off with the dragon vein in a second.  Azura and Keaton separate so they can bait the Automaton out and dual strike it on enemy phase.   Camilla finishes this guy off, which places her in range of one of the Master Ninja in the central room.  Everyone else moves out of the starting room, with Kaze pairing up with Silas because he couldn't reach otherwise. Now that everyone is clear, Marth pops the dragon vein. Interestingly, Silas is currently on top of the pillar it's about to raise up; he'll be on top of it afterward, able to move either way. Saizo, on the other hand, will only be able to get out of the starting area through the door in the south, so he'll have to spend a couple of turns backtracking.   Anyway, he moves forward and lets Kaze kill this Automaton.  On enemy phase, Camilla soaks up another Silence use. Only one left, now!    This is another case where you can't see what's going on; Camilla's attack connected here. Also, the battle forecast is a bit misleading because this screenshot was taken after the Master Ninja's attack connected, so she has the guard gauge ready for the next fight.  Which is good, because she won't be able to take a hit after this damage.    Kaze chips this Automaton down rather than one-rounding because it's attacking from a pillar terrain tile that gives extra defense. The -4 strength from the saw is kind of annoying.    Keaton and Azura chip theirs down.   Kaze baits another Mechanist out, but the camera angle was bad again, so you'll have to use your imagination to visualize him connecting two attacks.   Xander gets Lunged by this Swordmaster.   And then he gets chipped down by this Master Ninja. But because we blocked the path off with the dragon vein, this is the last enemy that can reach him right now.  Saizo starts backtracking on ally phase.   Beruka chips this guy down, and Shura manages to land his 50% chip.   Charlotte smells the opportunity to steal a kill!   This is one of those shaky but important attacks I wanted Camilla to connect. If she had missed, it would have meant a reset.   Keaton finishes his Automaton off.   And even though Kaze's strength got debuffed, he can still one round this one with the silver dagger. This clears the way for the Master Ninja I want him to bait out on enemy phase.    Felicia pairs with Benny for support points while he finishes off this guy.    And Marth uses his help to finish off this Mechanist. He also gets a meh level.    Enemy phase rolls around, and unfortunately, Camilla whiffs this chip even though you can't see it.    Kaze chips his Master Ninja down, which costs him all of his HP after Grisly Wound.  And Saizo is about to get out, so we'll be using another dragon vein this turn. There are also a bunch of reinforcements from the south you can see here.  There are also more from the north, but these are kind of trapped behind the caltrops, so they aren't an immediate threat.   Benny and Felicia start the turn off by grouping up with the rest of the army. With them out of the way, everyone is more or less positioned well for a dragon vein, so Marth goes ahead and pops it.   Here's the situation post-dragon-vein. We'll be clearing out the northwestern reinforcements soon, but we'll mostly be focused on surviving the onslaught in the center.  Azura pairs with Keaton because I thought that would let me feed the Master Ninja to one of them.   Odin handles him instead when I realize that won't work.     Shura deletes this Automaton. Being limited to bronze axes doesn't hurt his performance much when he can double so many enemies.   Odin also gets a fantastic level from helping out! It's about time.  Kaze picks up 5,000 gold from the northern chest. I'll probably blow it on effective weaponry during the next couple of chapters.  In the south, I misclicked and placed Camilla here instead of one tile to the east. Oopsie!   I wanted Camilla to help out here so we wouldn't have to deal with Grisly Wound and shuriken debuffs, but it worked out without being too big of a problem.    In fact, it's kind of nice that I did that because Charlotte can steal a kill this way! She also helps Beruka equip the dual club so she can tank the Samurai on enemy phase.  She also gets an absolutely horrible level. Hopefully she can start getting some strength soon, because otherwise she'll end up being nothing more than a staffbot.  Azura and Keaton separate to end the turn.    Kaze starts chipping the last northern Master Ninja using his guard gauge, which gets him an alright level for his trouble.    That axe splitter is still kinda scary even through the dual club!    I guess Beruka is a dodgetank now?  This healer continues to be kind of annoying. We won't have to deal with them for too much longer, though.   Marth and Shura finish off Kaze's Master Ninja, which means we can focus on these reinforcements now.   Odin has Felicia carry him to the south so he can bait out this Mechanist. I'd like to take this group out pretty quickly so we can move on to the other half of the map.  Kaze and Silas separate so they can be available to help next turn.   Charlotte steals yet another kill. She'll get D rank daggers halfway through the next chapter at this rate!  I want Charlotte to chip in here, so Beruka can hold back a bit and use the iron axe. 82% is accurate enough for me!   Oh look, the consequences of my greed.   Nevermind, it's even better now because Azura can get another kill!   Camilla and Niles separate and I'm okay with everyone's placement, so I just end the turn.    Another turn, another Automaton for Shura.    Odin baits his Mechanist out with a convenient dodge.  Although the healer tries to undo his hard work.     Lastly, this moron stepped into Saizo's range, so he gets turned into an experience pińata. Thanks, Saizo!     Odin eviscerates his Mechanist by dodging yet again before getting a crit. He's finally revealing his true power!    Silas pairs up with Benny, but before I move him, I have him dual strike with Kaze for axe experience.   And Marth makes use of Kaze's help to kill this other Automaton.   And now Benny moves south to pass Silas to Camilla, who quickly passes him to Beruka.    Though because Camilla is in range of enemies, she needs a little extra juice to survive the turn. She gets healed to full health and Xander as a backpack, which should be more than enough.    Keaton uses Azura to reach and kill Saizo's Mechanist. This was kind of a risky move, because it would have been annoying if he had missed, but it was worth it for the experience.   If he keeps growing like this, he has the potential to outpace Silas and Beruka!  Beruka just uses a vulnerary. She'll be leading the charge against pretty much everything from this point on.  Since we've cleared out the reinforcements, everyone is gonna group up in the center before making a beeline for Kotaro.     Between the damage skills and the debuffs, Camilla takes quite the beating, but that's all of the enemies she was in range of. Good thing we healed her up!   She got an okay level, and learned Savage Blow, which is basically Poison Strike but it affects all enemies within two spaces instead of just the one.  I honestly thought we'd have killed this healer by now, but there just hasn't been an opportunity.  Saizo heals because he doesn't have anyone to attack, or any caltrops to disarm. He's not generally smart enough to prioritize his survival over either of these things in my experience.    These reinforcements are closing in on us, so Beruka Lunges into this guy. She's gonna choke this point for a little bit.   I need this Master Ninja dead, and Xander is happy to oblige.     Vantage hurts, but Charlotte gets some strength, which makes this a very good level! I just wish she had gotten speed.   Odin chips this guy down because I don't want anyone getting debuffed by the silver shuriken. The speed loss hurts pretty badly.   Marth finishes him off with the bolt axe. I have no regrets so far about giving him the spirit dusts.  We'll be using another dragon vein soon, so the rest of the turn is a lot of moving toward the center. Niles also heals Shura up.    Beruka gets another solid level off of this guy.  I think this is the last wane festal use. Either way, this lady dies next turn.  Saizo cleans up the battlefield. I like to think that picking up jacks was a big part of his childhood. It would explain his odd fascination with the caltrops.  Niles may kind of suck at healing, but the mend staff lets him heal Beruka nearly to full anyway.   Marth and Xander chip this guy down for someone else, but before we can finish him off, we'll need to clear some space. It's getting crowded in this room.   Azura finally kills this healer! Even though they were out of heals, they were still bodyblocking my units, so I don't think this one counts as a war crime.    It takes a little awkward unit shuffling, but we'll be able to feed most of these kills to people who need them.   One for Charlotte!    And one for Benny! This is one of the most Benny levels he could've gotten.  This accursed skill again!   Everyone is where they need to be for the next dragon vein, which is good because we'll be using it in just a second.  Saizo uses his turn to make a huge mistake. He's entered the Room of Shame™, where he'll be spending most of the rest of the map.  A little healing and unit rearranging later, and we're ready to activate the dragon vein.   Here, you see the elusive Green Saizo. They live on a diet primarily consisting of caltrops, though occasionally they'll venture into civilization to feast on stolen experience points. An endangered species after the Mokushujin people overhunted them, this is one of the last of its kind.   Don't you just love when the damage numbers come out perfectly like this? I mean, it doesn't really mean anything, but it's satisfying knowing that every point of strength was relevant at least this once.  That was pretty much all for this turn. I couldn't get anyone out to deal with the Life and Death guy aside from Marth, who'd very quickly melt if he tried to take those Swordmasters after the fact.    This guy chips Camilla down, but that's fine because she shouldn't need to take any hits next turn.    The high numbers you see with Life and Death never get old. Except for the ones the enemies get on you, those would get pretty old if this were a common enemy skill.  Wow, Marth got literally every stat I care about at the same time. Very nice!  Niles handles these caltrops, because he's certainly not about to contribute to the combat.    Beruka Lunges through the dual katana guy.   Benny equipped with Gamble has no right to ever have more than 40% hit against a Swordmaster, but because of the dual katana, he does! I always think it's funny when an enemy's dual weapon backfires on them like this. Thanks, moron!  Charlotte has Xander carry her so she can give Marth some much needed healing.   Camilla does a little cleanup.   And Kaze equips Beruka with the dual club so she doesn't get shredded by this Swordmaster.    It doesn't help Marth much, though. Oh well.   Kaze and Beruka finish off the Swordmaster with the classic unnecessary dual club crit.  Once again, it's too dangerous to advance further, so I gather everyone into a ball for the turn. It's not the most advanced strategy, but it works!  None of the enemies are advancing right now, so we go right into the next turn. Azura pops another dragon vein, and we're gonna go straight for Kotaro. The reinforcements and the master seal are both too much trouble to be worth dealing with.   The enemies in Kotaro's room won't leave the room, so we'll take these two out and gather everyone up to execute him.    Camilla grabs Beruka's dual club and whiffs the Swordmaster.  I honestly think Savage Blow would be better if it affected enemies within two spaces of the target, because of situations like these.   Benny steals one last kill before we end the map.   Kaze softens this last guy up, and... Is that a kill for Charlotte I smell?   It is! Camilla wasn't flubbing earlier, she missed deliberately so this could happen!  The rest of the turn is just forming everyone up for next turn.  Saizo picks up some final caltrops instead of doing literally anything to these reinforcements. Even though they'll murder him on their next turn. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he?   Now that we've crossed into the last fourth or so of the map, these guys show up. It's a lot of extra enemies, and while I could deal with them, it gives me a lot more chances to screw up for minimal reward. We'll be ending the map this turn, so they won't get a chance to do anything.  Time to deal with Kotaro. Kaze starts us off by removing the caltrops so other people can actually move in.  When I first played this game, I basically just threw all of my units at Kotaro and hoped for the best, which is a pretty shaky strategy because it tends to rely on a lot of sub-50 hit rates. The key to dealing with Kotaro reliably is to take advantage of as many avoid-dropping or hit-boosting skills as you can. Niles drops Benny here to take advantage of Fierce Mien, dropping Kotaro's avoid by 10.  Odin moves in next, and as much as I'd like to have him attack, he can't quite survive it right now, so he just waits to activate Heartseeker. It drops Kotaro's avoid by another 20, effectively cancelling the throne's avoid bonus.    Shura gets the first hit on him with a downright reasonable 85% hit chance. Also I think this is one of the cooler boss conversations in the series, which is odd considering how bad this game's story is. Saizo's boss conversation is even better than this one, and he even has a boss finisher conversation for when he lands the final blow. I guess I just like the "my name is Saizo, you killed my father, prepare to die" vibe both of these have going.  Silas passes Beruka to Marth, and she can just barely secure the kill with her silver axe.   But before that, we might as well squeeze as much as we can out of this turn.   At least Keaton got something out of it.   Beruka finishes the map with a nice, reliable 100% hit rate.  And that's Chapter 17! If Chapter 16 is a bridge between the early game and the late game, Chapter 17 is a massive sinkhole in the road immediately after crossing. It's a pretty clear point where the maps become significantly longer and more difficult, and if you haven't gotten the hang of the mechanics yet, you're likely to have a very difficult time with the rest of it. I've grown to like this map more the more I play it. Saizo's speedwing is a pretty good incentive to play quickly, and once you realize that dual strikes are the way to go, it's not too hard, especially because you've got Xander and Shura (right?) who can pull a lot of weight right out of the box. The dragon veins are pretty fun when you use them successfully, though you have to be pretty careful with them or you could accidentally end your attempt because you used one. I do think the second wave of reinforcements is a bit much, especially because the chest in that section only has a master seal. And there's obviously Kotaro, but those aside, I tend to have a pretty good time with it these days.  Apparently, if you skip the cutscene, you don't get the popup telling you about the speedwing Saizo gives you, but here it is. I'll probably end up giving it to Silas, but we'll see.   Every skill has its place, and Gamble's is in the garbage.       There's lots of supports this time, most notably Azura/Keaton's B support and Benny/Felicia's C support. I've pretty solidly decided to pair Azura/Keaton as well as Silas/Beruka, and I've tentatively decided on Charlotte/Xander, Benny/Felicia, and Niles/Camilla. If there's any pairings anyone wants to see, particularly involving currently benched characters, let me know or I'll just decide based on whatever makes building supports easier.  Lastly, Invasion 2 is available starting now. I probably won't do it just yet, partially because it can actually be pretty tough and partially because it can be used to catch a unit or two up, or to build a little quick support to unlock a paralogue. Next time, we attend an awkward Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family.
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Nov 17, 2023 06:17
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Update 15 - Dinner at Zola's We'll be doing Chapter 18 today, and because I'll be deploying people for support purposes, we'll be seeing a lot of old faces. A lot of them have fallen behind by this point, so we'll be buying some effective weaponry to help out.    Peri gets a Beast Killer, Arthur gets a Hammer, and Kaze gets a Hunter's Knife. The Beast Killer and Hunter's Knife (the knife especially) are gonna be very useful in Chapter 19, but they're also surprisingly handy here. The Hammer is pretty important for this map because we don't have a good mage, and there's a lot of chunky Generals to deal with. We're left with a measly 400 gold after these purchases, but there's 10,000 gold in this chapter we'll be grabbing soon, so I'm not too bothered by it.  Charlotte is our cook for today! Let's see how she did...  Oh. I bet she can do better than that; let's send this one back to the kitchen.   Much better!    Welcome to Chapter 18! It's the first map where every enemy is promoted, but by this point, your units should be more or less capable of handling them. If they aren't, it's a good thing that this is a breather map with a fairly lenient 20 turn time limit. There's 2 chests in this map; the northwestern one has a Master Seal, and the northeastern one has an Energy Drop. Lastly, you've got 3 bosses to kill; Zola in the north, and a pair of especially durable Generals in the south.   In the southwest, you've got a bunch of Generals. Most of them have Wary Fighter, which makes them extremely durable when you factor in their high HP and defense. There's also effective weaponry scattered throughout the map, so be careful with your cavalry and armored units!    In the southeast, it's a bunch of Paladins and a couple of Bow Knights. They're not too difficult to deal with, but a lot of them have grouped AI, so it's pretty easy to bait out more of them than you intended.   The south side also has these two Strategists with Freeze. The southeastern one is a little too out of the way to be a huge problem, but they can be kind of difficult to kill if you bother to do that.   The Maids in the north are equipped with much more dangerous Enfeeble staves that make the northern side generally harder to deal with than the south, even though the south has generally stronger enemies. In my experience, they're more manageable if you approach from the south, rather than from the sides.  The northwest has several Heroes that aren't too bad on their own, but they're pretty tightly packed and in range of an Enfeeble Maid, so they're actually the most dangerous group to tackle.    The northeast has Sorcerers equipped with a wide variety of tomes, some of which are dangerous. The Mjölnir guy especially; it's a Killer weapon, and in fates, they deal x4 damage with crits instead of the usual x3, so be careful letting him attack you! The Lightning guy is also notable; it's essentially a 1 might Brave weapon that has the Silver weapon stat penalty after use. A couple of these guys also have Seal Resistance, which stacks nicely with Lightning guy, letting him deal 12 extra damage instead of the usual 6. This group is also in range of an Enfeeble Maid.    The last of the regular enemies on the map right now are these pairs in Zola's room. They're pretty dangerous, but just like the enemies in Kotaro's room last chapter, they don't like to attack you unless they can score an easy kill, so we'll just ignore them by rushing Zola down.  Zola has a cool outfit and a fat wallet, but unfortunately for him, that does not mean he's a strong boss. He looks pretty dangerous at a glance because he's got the Nosferatu/Vengeance combo from Awakening until you remember that he can't proc Vengeance without using his other tome. It's a simple matter of outdamaging Nosferatu's healing and killing him before he has a chance to attack you. He's kind of bulky, but you can just dogpile on him and he should go down pretty easy.    In the south, you've got the real bosses of this map. The Silver General Bros are ridiculously durable thanks to Wary Fighter, and the one attack they'll get per battle is gonna be a big one. They've also got Warding Blow, which gives +20 resistance when they initiate combat (though it's not like we have any decent mages to use against them anyway). Because they'll tag out when their HP is low, you've gotta be able to two-shot them or they'll build up a guard gauge and extend the whole fight unnecesarily. They've even got a strong 1-2 range option, thanks to the enemy-only Silver Javelin and Silver Star Axe. Lastly, they're generic units, which means you can capture them. I once captured the axe guy (his name was Manfred) and he made a very durable brick wall of a unit.  Oh, and lastly, we've got the Hoshidan royal family in this prison in the south. They don't have any weapons or items, they don't move, and the enemy AI ignores them, so you don't have to worry about protecting them.  This is the team we're bringing. I did a bit of support planning, and the plan for the moment is as follows: Marth/Flora Silas/Beruka Keaton/Azura Odin/Peri Niles/Camilla Benny/Felicia Xander/Charlotte Kaze/Effie Laslow/Mozu Arthur/Selena Jakob/Elise Leo/Nyx I didn't put all that much effort into crafting super-children, partially because I just don't enjoy that aspect of the game all that much and partially because it's hard to plan a child out when you don't actually know what class they're gonna be. Some of these, like Leo/Nyx, I chose because their stats would theoretically create a half-decent child, and others, like Kaze/Effie, I chose because one or both of them appreciate the support bonuses they'll get. Anyway, it's pretty late in the game to start working on supports, so we'll need to hit them pretty hard to make sure we can get all the children. Which is why we're bringing so many underlevelled characters at the same time! But there's an extra deployment slot because we can't pair Marth up yet, so Shura gets to come along for another ride!   Basically, Kaze is going to handle the right half of the map while Azura and Keaton steal kills when they can, while everyone else charges the Generals in the south. After taking care of them, the whole army is gonna move north to grab the chests and kill Zola.  Marth and Leo are paired up on turn 1 because the extra magic he gets actually does matter. He moves south to bait as many Generals as possible with the Bolt Axe.  Kaze moves here, which puts him in range of just one Sorcerer. He can't get too much closer without getting hit by an Enfeeble, and I don't wanna do that quite so early. Everyone else just inches behind our frontliners.  Keaton found some floor milk! I'm not sure how safe it is to drink, but it's a speed ingredient, so it's actually a pretty nice find! Combining it with meat makes a guaranteed str/spd meal.  Selena is just too weak to damage anybody here, so she might as well eat an Enfeeble. I don't think it'll matter, though.   Kaze could have one-rounded with the Steel Shuriken, but leaving this guy alive leaves an extra kill for Azura or Keaton.  Marth eats a Freeze, which is completely fine. He wasn't gonna dodge any of this anyway, and he doesn't need to move next turn either.   The Bolt Axe is pretty good against these guys, but their resistance is high enough that it still doesn't two-shot.   Even though they can't double, Generals have so much strength that they'll chip just about anyone down in a couple rounds of combat. You'll also build guard gauges less quickly because your units aren't doubling, which makes them especially dangerous if you aren't careful. But this is the last guy who can reach Marth this turn, so he's fine.   Marth can't move, but he can still chip this guy down!   I love when the damage numbers line up just right like this. This is also why Marth needed Leo's support.   But you know what I don't love? Gambling.    Arthur is done with the Hammer for now, so Beruka uses it to bop this guy. These guys have Natural Cover, which makes taking the ones on the stairs down slightly more trouble. The -3 damage is relevant more often than you'd think! Also, placing her here will bait out a General from the center on enemy phase.  I'd be less okay with this level if she weren't one of our best units.    Nyx takes Leo and chips this guy down. I've always thought Spears were odd; why aren't you able to use it at 1 range? I guess they wanted something stronger than a Javelin that the player could use, but they thought that 12 might would be too much on a 1-2 range weapon. If they had put one in a chest somewhere, I'd probably get some use out of it, but making it essentially an overpriced bow makes it a really unappealing purchase, so I've never actually used one.   Regardless of the usability of the Spear, Odin finishes him off.  And Shura moves here to complete the fleshy wall that will protect Nyx.   This Paladin moved in to provide support to the Sorcerer that attacked Kaze, so he puts the Hunter's Knife to use and deletes the poor guy.    And Azura finishes the Sorcerer off with her Javelin. Strength and speed are the only stats she cares about, so I'd call this level a win!  On enemy phase, it's Beruka who eats the second freeze. We'll have to play around that a bit, but it's manageable.    The closest General understandably decides his best target is the guy who doesn't have an armorslaying weapon.   Beruka's General is one of the few here that doesn't have Wary Fighter, so he commits suicide-by-Hammer.   In hind sight, I should have had Azura switch Kaze's weapon out, but oh well.   Back on player phase, this General also lacks Wary Fighter, so Nyx can actually get a kill! It's kind of impressive that she's still almost decent at this point. She hasn't been deployed for what, 4 chapters? And she wasn't exactly good during those.   Peri deletes the Freeze Strategist with the Beast Killer. Despite being an objectively horrible person, I do like how cheerful she looks when she's on the winning side of a fight.  Everyone else moves forward, with Silas and Beruka separating for the moment.   If I had chipped this guy with the Silver Shuriken, this hit rate would be slightly higher because of the speed debuff. I went for this anyway because if Keaton misses, Kaze is perfectly capable of cleaning up for him.    Duelist's Blow keeps him from securing the kill, but at least he got axe experience from his chip on player phase!    Azura finishes this guy off for her future husband. More strength! There's gonna be reinforcements from the stairs in the east and west in a minute, so Kaze is just gonna chill where he is for now.    I want Silas and Beruka to bait out the cavalry next to the General Bros, so we'll need to ferry the two of them to their destination before transferring to pair them up again. This is the kind of Fates mobility shenanigans that I love!  Leo heals Marth while everyone else inches forwards.   Silas looks like he slipped on a banana peel or something in this one, which I think is pretty funny.    The Bow Knights aren't all that dangerous; they're just here to keep you from taking the group out with Camilla.    We want to clear all of these guys out this turn, and Peri gets us started. She gets a decent level for her trouble.     Odin finishes the Bow Knight for a fantastic level. More of these, please!   Shura can nearly one-round these guys on his own, so it's no trouble at all with help.    Beruka wipes up the last of this group with the Silver Axe. She's positioned so that she'll bring in the next couple of Paladins on enemy phase.  Leo heals her up after swapping the Silver Axe out. She'll want enough HP to take on the General Bros in a second.  Kaze and Azura are ready to deal with the reinforcements that'll show up on enemy phase.   Beruka, did you have to deny others the support and experience they'd have gotten from finishing this guy off? That's just rude.   These dudes show up on enemy phase, but they aren't too dangerous. I don't fully know what triggers them, though. I know it's not turns, but the bad wiki tells me they show up when you fight the General Bros (which we haven't done), and the better wiki tells me the same but that they also show up when you fight one of the guys in the group of four we finished off last turn (which didn't spawn them until now if that's what did it). Maybe they show up when you start fighting some of the southeastern guys? I'm curious, so if anyone knows for sure, let me know!  It's worth noting that this guy has Seal Defense. To me, it seems like an odd skill to put on a General, but it's still something to be aware of.   I tried to give Azura some chip experience from safety behind Kaze, but she decided to miss, so she gets nothing. Oh well.   These two came up the stairs only to be immediately turned into a paste by Kaze.   Despite this level being strength and nothing else of importance, I'm happy with it in Kaze's case. He also learned Golembane, which makes all of his attacks effective against Automata, Stoneborn (which we haven't seen yet), and other Mechanists. It would be pretty good if these were more common enemy types, but we won't be seeing too much of any of them for the remainder of the game.    With another heal from Leo, Beruka is more than ready to take care of the General Bros. No one else is really able to do any damage to them, so it'll be a fair and honorable tag team battle.   I don't want anyone else in range of the Generals, so spaces to attack this guy from are in short supply. Marth remedies this by Lunging into him.   Odin can clean up the rest without any trouble. We'll just let the reinforcements come to us, so there's no need to move anyone else this turn.    The frontline General Bro is low on health, so he tags good ol' Manfred in. He doesn't really fare any better than the first one, but if you're not two-shotting them, this tactic virtually guarantees that they'll build a guard gauge up before you can kill one of them, which is annoying at best.  It's okay, Beruka, you go when you want to.    Kaze takes a pretty big hit, but his counterattack vaporizes the second Paladin. One of the southern Paladins decided to join the fight, so he's got his next victim lined up already!   Once you take the first Bro out, the other should follow pretty easily without the extra defense the pair up gives.   In fact, with the +2 strength he gets from Peri, Odin is just barely able to take the kill for himself. He finishes the fight in style, of course.   It's just a shame he didn't make better use of all that boss experience. The essentially empty level aside, he learns Seal Strength, which is kind of nice. It's one of the worst Seal skills, and Master of Arms Odin really isn't bulky enough to make good use of it, but at least he can reduce enemy damage output by chipping with a Javelin now.  Killing the General Bros also opens Team Green's gate, but they don't move or get targeted either way, so it doesn't mean much. It doesn't even affect the time limit!   We don't have enough units left to deal with these two, so we're just gonna wait another turn.   Azura chips this last Paladin for experience before allowing Kaze to put him down. They'll be moving north to draw out some of the Sorcerers soon.   Enemy phase came and went, but these guys are the only ones actually moving right now. We have enough units that we can feed these kills to whoever, so Nyx starts us off.   There's been a lot of points in this map where the numbers work out juuust right, and I love it every time. Even though it doesn't really mean anything.   I bet this guy wishes he'd have just brought a Javelin instead of the Spear right about now.   Marth finishes him off. I kind of wanted to feed the kill to Arthur, but there wasn't a way to get the Hammer to him while still letting him attack.  Now that there's no more distractions, Kaze grabs a Vulnerary off of Effie and moves to bait the Sorcerers.  He immediately gets Enfeeble'd on enemy phase, which would be more of a problem if he were facing the Heroes on the other side.   Although he can't quite double with the Steel Shuriken now. Also, one of the Heroes decided to join in to provide support, which means that Kaze can't just sit here and kill them all next turn.    Even through the Enfeeble, this Lightning guy doesn't hit Kaze too hard, but he'd chew through everyone else pretty quickly.  For this player phase, Leo healed Marth, and everyone starts moving into position. Beruka is once again our choice of bait for the last General on the map.  Kaze and Azura back away, out of the Hero's range. He'll just be facing the Sorcerers now.     With the defense debuff from the Steel Shuriken, Kaze can finish these guys off this turn. He gets a solid level, too; it's really only missing strength.   Lightning's -2 magic debuff after use in combat has twice the impact of a Silver weapon's. It only has 1 might, so you can't rely on its stats to carry you through the debuff like you sometimes can with Silver.     Beruka also gets Enfeeble'd, but she's strong enough to kind of ignore it, so these numbers don't really look all that different.    Kaze chips his Hero down with the Silver Dagger, mostly for the -4 speed debuff.   But that ended up being pointless because after Poison Strike, Azura was able to finish him off in one hit anyway.    Selena may not be able to fight anything with her noodle arms, but she can still pass Arthur the Hammer!  Now that we've got enough people available for the job, it's time to start dealing with these Heroes.   Marth and Selena take the Enfeebles for this turn. Better Selena than Beruka again; she wasn't going to actually fight anything anyway.    Even debuffed, Marth is able to double these guys. Though I think that's because of the extra speed Shura gives him.   This is... not exactly the level you want to see out of a Berserker. The speed is good, and HP +5 is kind of nice, though it does mean that his next level will give him Gamble.    Amusingly, Peri gets exactly the level you want to see out of a Berserker!   Marth gets lucky and connects both of these 62s.   Which lets Odin swoop in for the kill.  Kaze heals up and positions himself to bait another Sorcerer.   Today's Enfeeble winners are Odin and Kaze!    I like the Ragnarok animation. The way the magic circle appears before kind of conjuring an explosion inside it just feels very "magic" to me.  At this point, we'll need to watch out for this area here. As I mentioned at the start of the map, these pairs don't like to move unless they can score a kill or if you attack them (or Zola). Once you trigger them, reinforcements spawn from the staircases here. We'll just avoid the whole area for now, and once we're ready, we'll push a couple of our stronger units past them to take out Zola, that way we won't have to deal with them at all.    Azura can barely survive this hit, thus validating every point of HP and resistance she's gained until now.  Her reward is an okay level. The defense likely won't ever come in handy because she's so frail.   Kaze chips down the Mjölnir guy. Even with the 4x damage, he could have tanked a crit, but he didn't need to thanks to his guard gauge.   It looks like Selena is gonna see combat after all! Because of the weapon triangle, Arthur wasn't able to reliably kill this guy, and I'm not risking a crit this late into the map.   She gets effectively +6 speed from this level, because I don't expect her to do any enemy phase combat.     This guy is a bit too far to kill, so Marth fixes that by Lunging into him.   Nyx chi- Oh. Nevermind. This is why we benched you, Nyx!   In that case, we'll want someone to provide some solid dual strikes, so Silas deletes the Maid with his Silver Sword.     And now Odin can take advantage of his placement, though it doesn't quite let him finish. He got a very solid level, though. He'll get some use out of the extra defense.   Peri can have this kill, as a snack.    The only enemy phase action this turn is Kaze being attacked by this Maid.   But because he needs to get the treasure, he moves up north while Marth finishes.  There's not much else to do until after we get the treasure, so everyone just inches forward a bit while staying out of Zola's group's range.   Marth passes Shura to Peri so she can carry him to the northwestern door.   And Silas moves through it to start working on this Hero.  Kaze opens the northwestern door, and everyone else either stays put or shuffles around slightly. They really can't do anything else until we get the treasure.    On enemy phase, Silas flubs the finishing blow against his Hero because he has Duelist's Blow, which is kind of unfortunate because now he'll have to stay up there another turn. Oh well.    Kaze easily dispatches the Nosferatu guy in the way of his chest. It turns out Nosferatu doesn't really help when you initiate combat at full health.    Silas redeems himself while Shura grabs the Master Seal. We'll probably use it before the next chapter.  Kaze grabs the Energy Drop, and I honestly don't know who to give this to just yet. It's definitely not optimal, but a part of me wants to feed it to Azura. Anyway, some of our boss killers have already moved, so we end the turn without doing anything else.   Kaze gets passed to Selena, who flies him up so he can thrash Zola.    Kilma in Chapter 8 is a pretty dangerous boss because it's so early in the game that you don't have as many tools to deal with Nosferatu (and because he has Vantage). It's not quite as dangerous when you've got a good dagger user on the team!   Odin and Peri can get the traditional last chip in before we finish Zola off.   Marth flies in and kills the little slimeball. I actually wish he had missed this attack so Kaze could get a little more chip experience in.    Hey, he got a good level! And he learned Savage Blow! The extra 10,000 gold is also very nice, considering that we're out of money.  And that was Chapter 18! It's definitely a breather map that I think was intended to kind of ease you into fighting exclusively promoted enemies. The only problem I have with this map is that the turn limit is a bit too lenient. I personally think somewhere around 14-16 turns on Lunatic would have been more appropriate, but what do I know? Otherwise, I think it's fine. The enemies are pretty powerful, but they aren't too difficult to deal with because you have so much control over how many you bait out at once. Anyway, lets check in on how dinner is going!   I guess that's about as well as it could be expected to go. Alright, on to My Castle!        We got a lot of useful supports this time! I just wish I'd gotten a Leo/Nyx support; that would have made this perfect.  We can finally max out the Fire Orb, which means we can recruit Flora. She'll pop up in My Castle after time passes there, either by doing another map or by waiting 6 real-life hours. Speaking of which, as I'm writing this, it's been over 6 hours...    I don't know how she got here, but I can definitely say that I'm glad she is. Now I can start making progress on Marth's S support!  Flora, I couldn't help but notice that you didn't bring a weapon. That's okay, though; you probably won't get to use daggers in your final class. Anyway, to summarize Flora as a unit quickly, she's a solid late-game staffbot that may be able to contribute occasionally in combat, but she's held back by her low speed and her near-total lack of supports that aren't with Corrin. But that's enough about her performance as a unit for now, let's find out what class she'll be! Like Shura, she has 6 classes to choose from, so her final class options are Maid (1), Strategist (2), Bow Knight (3), Hero (4), Dark Knight (5), and Sorcerer (6).  Rolling a 6 makes her a Sorcerer! I don't really know what I wanted from her because she's actually got solid strength and magic, and her speed is irredeemable regardless. Maybe we'll get to see Nosferatank Flora?   I think she looks pretty good in the Sorcerer outfit! It complements the blue hair, I think.  Holy wow that's a lot of resistance. And with 20 skill, she shouldn't be too inaccurate with tomes. 14 defense and 28 HP makes her kind of bulky, too. Now that I think about it, Nosferatu meshes really well with her personal skill, and I'm kind of excited to see how well she'll work.  Back to a less interesting topic, we can also build the Hot Spring, which is useless but when maxed out lets us recruit Izana after Chapter 23. There's not really anything else to spend dragon vein points on right now, so I'll do that.  Lastly, we remove Gamble yet again. It's like a hydra at this point: I remove it from one unit and it pops up on two more. New unit discussion Flora Class: Sorcerer Growth rates HP - 35 Str - 40 Mag - 20 Skl - 45 Spd - 30 Lck - 35 Def - 30 Res - 30 Flora joins so late in the game that she's usually either immediately benched or she becomes a last-minute staffbot to fill an extra deployment slot. That's how I typically use her, if I use her at all, and she's good at it because B rank staves is enough to use just about all of them and her stats are good enough that she can occasionally chip. Her combat potential is really held back by her low speed, because she'll have trouble doubling even relatively slow enemies, though her surprisingly high strength somewhat offsets this. Her personal skill, Icy Blood, deals the damage she takes to her opponent when she's being attacked by a nonadjacent enemy while her HP is not full. It also inflicts skill/speed -3 after combat. It's one of the most specific activation conditions in the game, but it's still pretty decent. It's also worth noting that if you put off maxing out the Fire Orb, she gains levels the later you recruit her, which can help her out in her role as an extra slot filler. For her reclass options, Flora can go into Bow Knight, Hero, Dark Knight, Strategist, and Sorcerer. I've never actually reclassed her, so take this section with a grain of salt! Flora's base strength is pretty high at 18 as a Maid, and if you reclass her to any physical class it gets even better. As a Hero she has 22 strength, which is more than everyone but Xander and Shura at the moment. Her speed is gonna hover around 14-16 no matter what class she uses, but the one hit she gets should be pretty solid. Sol meshes pretty well with Icy Blood if you take her through Hero, though bow access in Bow Knight lets her chip more easily. If she can get past E rank weapons, she should turn out at least decent in any physical class. The magical classes are pretty good, too. Her magic stat isn't super impressive, but because enemies tend to have lowish resistance, it's enough to make it work. Dark Knight lets her make use of her strength, which makes her versatile if not particularly impressive. Strategist lets her keep using staves without really taking anything away (other than Dagger access). And Sorcerer gives her more firepower and access to Nosferatu, which I think she'll be able to get some use out of. The best of these three is probably Strategist purely because staves are pretty handy to have around. All this being said, her best option is probably still Maid because it lets her keep her weapon ranks and Dagger access. There won't be any Benchmaster voting for now because we need to work on supports, so that's all for today. Next time, we go fox hunting!
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Dec 28, 2023 09:41
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Update 16 - Big Game Hunting It's time for Chapter 19, which is the first map in Conquest that's pretty much universally hated. I completely hated it and its gimmick when I first played it, but I've grown to kind of enjoy it over the years. Maybe it's just Stockholm Syndrome. Either way, we've got some preparations to make before we get to the map.   Silas gets the speedwing for the same reasons as last time. Although it won't really matter in this map; the enemies have speed around the mid 20s.   Honestly, Silas or Kaze are probably the best candidates for this energy drop, but I decided to give it to Azura because it's more fun.  Xander gets a defense tonic, which is the only tonic we'll be using this time. He's gonna be pulling more than his fair share of weight this time around.   Silas cooks up a decent steak for us. The luck gives us a slightly higher hit rate, so it's kind of nice to have. Because we already bought all the beastslaying weapons last time, that's all of our preparations for today.      Welcome to Chapter 19! At a glance, it's a fairly simple map because it's exclusively full of 1 range infantry units, but it becomes pretty obvious why people hate it when you start actually playing it.   This is the team we're bringing today. Keaton and Benny are staying because we'll be dealing with enough shaky hit rates as it is. We've got an extra slot available, so Shura gets to come along again! Otherwise, we're mostly trying to build up an A support or two if possible. Unfortunately, because this map is so player phase focused, it's not a great map to build a lot of support, unless your name is Xander. Oh, and none of the enemies in this map are capturable, which is kind of a shame. It would have been cool to use a Kitsune in Conquest.   A lot of these guys have Life and Death, which makes them dangerous but also pretty easy to oneshot. Oh, and every single one of these guys has Beastbane, which gives them a beastslaying effect.  Several of them also have Evenhanded, giving them +4 damage dealt on even-numbered turns.  Pass is another common skill here, and it meshes very well with the map gimmick that we'll get to in a minute.  The boss, Kaden, is a lovable cinnamon roll in Birthright. But here, he's pure evil thanks to his 76 avoid. At least he doesn't have a throne to sit on. Other than that, he's got Armored Blow and Even Better, which restores up to 40% of his health at the start of even-numbered turns.  This is a serviceable explanation of the illusion gimmick, but it doesn't quite explain the magnitude of it.  Basically, many of the enemies in this map have this little leaf icon next to them. When it's active, they can move but can't attack or be attacked. When it's not, they're regular ol' enemies. It appears and disappears at the end of player phase, which means that, if an enemy with the illusion effect has the leaf, you can't attack them this turn, but they'll be able to attack you on enemy phase. If it's not active, you'll be able to attack them, but they won't be able to attack you on their turn. If you know how this works, you can make some interesting plays around it.  As you can see here, we can't attack this guy right now. When we end the turn, he'll switch states and attack.  We may not be able to attack him, but because he doesn't have Pass, we can surround him.    I totally forgot to equip the Hunter's Knife, so this isn't the oneshot I meant for it to be. Oh well, it's more experience for someone else.    Between their low defense and Life and Death, it's very easy to oneshot these guys, though they're just as likely to blow up your squishy units if you're not careful.   Beruka starts the map off with a solid level. She also learns Sol, which has a lot of potential considering her solid skill stat.    Because this whole group has Life and Death, we're gonna clear them out right now. Even Noodle Arm Niles is able to deal pretty big damage here. Y'know, if he had hit. I was just using this battle for support points anyway, so it's fine.    Camilla finishes this one off for a solid level.  Do the Kitsune use money in their society? I wouldn't think they do, especially since it doesn't seem like they trade outside of their tribe. Was this just this guy's coin collection?   Effective weaponry can pretty reliably delete anyone with Life and Death. Assuming the attack connects, that is. 79% is pretty low all things considered, and it's certainly not the worst hit rate we'll be seeing today.  This is more or less a perfect level for Kaze, though!   Odin bops this guy with the Beastkiller.    And Xander takes it so he can kill this guy. I like how knightly he looks in the Wyvern Lord armor.    Silas kills the next one for an awful level. At least the extra hit might come in handy!   Because every enemy in this map has high resistance, Flora won't be able to do much other than support Marth, so she snatches this one up while she can.   Shura cleans up the last of this group. We just barely had enough units to not leave any of them alive, which is nice.    Silas chips one of these northeastern guys down on enemy phase. We'll be dealing with a lot of small critical chances like this throughout this map. I hate it but that's just how it's gonna be.  The highlighted guys charge you starting turn 1, but the other groups in the west only move when you enter their range. We'll clean out the enemies that are already moving, then work our way west.   I honestly didn't care if this attack connected; I was just using it for support. It's nice that it did, though!   Marth Lunges into this guy, mostly to bring him a bit closer to the group so we can get better hit rates.    Since he's not contributing anything meaningful combat-wise, Niles might as well chip this guy for support. He gets an okay level for his trouble, but he's so far beyond redemption at this point that it doesn't matter.   Odin finishes him off with a surprisingly accurate attack thanks to Heartseeker.   Xander can just barely oneshot Beastrune Ninetails, though with an uncomfortably low 74% hit rate. This map is short enough that I kind of just accept that I may have to replay it a time or two because of a badly-timed miss.   Beruka chips this guy down from 2 range so Shura can finish at 1 range in a minute.   I hate to rely on so many shaky hit rates like this, but this really is as good as it's gonna get without the map devolving into a Xander solo.   Berserker Shura continues to impress. He does decent chip damage to the non-Beastrune guys, and he doubles the Beastrune guys.    And Xander gets a great level for helping him out!  Enemy phase comes and goes, but there wasn't anyone left in range to attack us, so we're moving right into next turn. Because of the illusion gimmick, this northwestern group is the trickiest part of the map. the southwestern group's illusions are in sync, so you can wipe them all out at once, but this group forces you to deal with at least 5 of them that you couldn't chip or kill on enemy phase. Fought normally, it's probably gonna involve a lot of retreating to kill everything while keeping everyone alive. But if you have a unit with high defense and a beastslaying weapon, you can just put them in range and watch them work.  Xander happens to fit that description perfectly. He waits in this particular tile because it forces them to attack him from either water tiles, which lower avoid by 10, or a plains tile that gives no bonus.   Because of all the forest tiles, we can't reach this group with enough people to wipe it out yet, so we'll wait for them to come to us. A little healing and Kaze is ready to be the bait.    This is what Xander needed the defense tonic for. It shaves off a lot of the damage he'll be taking here.   This miss kind of sucks because now nothing else can attack him this turn, but he'll win eventually.    Man, these Beaststone+ guys hit hard. Good thing it doesn't raise their defense like the Beastrune.  Back on player phase, Xander retreats next to this breakable tree. By standing here, he's surrounded by water tiles that drop avoid, so he'll have at least a 75% hit rate against the rest of these guys, which is pretty solid.   Niles chips for support again.  This guy is on a forest tile and has a Beaststone+, so Odin waits next to him to bring his avoid down to a more reasonable number.   It still doesn't make it a guaranteed hit, but 87% against a Beaststone+ guy is very solid.     For this last guy, Marth and Silas chip n' dip. I'd like to note here that silver weapons also have good hit in addition to their high stats, making them particularly useful against evasive opponents like these.  While Xander clears out the northern group, the rest of the army is going to slowly move to take on the southwestern group.    Xander is now thoroughly soaked in fox blood, but he's still thirsty for more.   We do a little healing on player phase.  And some movement shenaniganery gets us more or less ready to deal with the last group. They're all illusion enemies, so it's important to bait them out when they have the leaf up so they can actually attack you on enemy phase.    Marth is making use of the river's -10 avoid. Also, Rose's Thorns is putting in some work here; without it, Marth would be doing a less useful 7 damage.    This hit rate is gross, but it wouldn't be a big deal if this had missed.    Xander continues his rampage for his second level of the map, where he learns Lunge. Having so many Lungers in the army gives me a lot more opportunities to use it, which is nice!    Charlotte gets a very Charlotte level from dual guard experience.    He's been beaten pretty badly, but thanks to the defense tonic, Xander is able to pull through the worst of it.    Because none of this group's enemies are able to attack us this enemy phase, we'll be throwing caution to the wind so we can clear out as many of them as possible. Odin starts us off and gets a solid level.    We're gonna prioritize the most dangerous enemies, like this Ninetails pair. Marth Lunges them into the water, which drops their avoid and brings them in range of more of our units.     Silas is in the way where he's standing, so he kills this one on the bridge. I just wish I could have had Beruka support him instead of Shura.    Kaze takes out the first of the pair with another concerningly low hit rate. This is an okay level, because while it's inevitable that he'll cap his speed because he's Kaze, he's not so fast that it's overkill yet.   Xander rejoins the main army to finish off the pair.    I'm honestly not sure why I had Beruka Lunge into this guy. I guess it was just to push her farther ahead?   Silas gains another solid level, and this one has Sol! I originally said that I hope Sophie doesn't roll Hero, because she wouldn't be able to inherit much from her parents, but when editing, I realized that she won't get Hero access from either of her parents. So she'll probably be inheriting Sol and Strong Riposte.    Camilla clears out another one for a very nice level.    Odin can just barely do Niles' job for him, netting us a Talisman. I'll probably give that to Kaze, or maybe Marth?    A turn later and we're ready to finish off these stragglers before moving on to the boss. Camilla Lunges into this guy so she can move an extra tile.   Since we've got a bit of time before the army gets into position, Flora can chip this guy for tome experience. It only takes 20 battles to get Nosferatu access, and I'm very interested in seeing if Nosferatank Flora works at all.   Charlotte can finish this guy off since we're taking it slow for a turn anyway, though in hindsight I think I could have cleared this map a turn faster if I hadn't done this. Whoopsie.   Niles does some healing while we get into position. There's a turn of literally nothing but moving, which bothers me because it feels inefficient, but I'll live with it.  Xander moves in to bait the rest out. The tile he's standing on is surrounded by plains tiles, which is important because Kaden is hard enough to hit without terrain bonuses.      Look at that disgusting 53% hit rate! The only thing keeping this guy from being worse than Kotaro is the fact that he only has 1 range. Armored Blow even lets him just barely survive this attack. If Xander had missed, I'd have just had everyone run away and try again, because I don't want to deal with trying to kill him without leaving any squishy units in range of the two illusioned guys.   This is another lucky hit, but it's a little less important than chipping Kaden down.   Xander gets a horrible level for his accomplishments, but he learns Rally Defense, which can be a great skill! It lets him rally instead of waiting, which gives +4 defense to allies within two spaces for a turn. It can make a huge difference when a unit is seeing a lot of combat in one enemy phase, though you've gotta be careful not to raise it so high that the enemy ignores you.    Marth Lunges into Kaden, so even though this missed, he at least pulls him toward Silas and Beruka.  Xander tries out his new skill, which I think I did because I had a different strategy planned and then changed my mind, making it kind of useless. Oops.     It took me a couple of minutes of thinking, but I eventually decided that the safest course of action was to have Beruka go for the kill. Silas could have attacked with a Bronze Sword for an 80ish% hit chance, but if he missed, he'd have absolutely died. This isn't all that much better, because I'm pretty sure a miss would have made me do some very risky stuff, but it worked out. With Kaden gone, we've pretty much won the map.   Niles gained a level from healing Kaze, but I accidentally skipped past it, so here's his stats instead. I'm pretty sure it was only 2 stat ups, and since it wasn't strength, I'm sure it won't be particularly relevant.  Everyone gathers as close as they can to the last couple of guys.    This is what you can expect when you let one of these guys enter a mountain tile. This hit rate is only above 50% because this guy has a Beastrune instead of a Beaststone.    If you bait Kaden's group out on a turn where these two attack you, things are much harder because then you've gotta deal with Kaden and his Beaststone+ guy for longer.  I mean, the magic is nice to have considering how much you've been using the Bolt Axe.  Niles heals one last time for more support points.   Silas clears out one of the last guys.     And we Lunge chain the last guy off the mountain and in range of more units.  Charlotte deals no damage for weapon experience, which I'm pretty sure you still get even if your attack does 0 damage.   Finally, Odin finishes the last one off. Good riddance.  That's Chapter 19! It's one of the most infamous maps in Conquest, and for good reason. What were they thinking making a map full of forest tiles and already-evasive enemies, and then throwing the illusion gimmick on top of it? Hit rates aside, I'm actually okay with the in-sync illusion groups because it incentivizes clearing them out all at once on player phase. But even though I kind of enjoy the map because one-shotting most of the enemies with beastslaying weapons is satisfying, the out-of-sync illusion groups completely ruin it for me from a design standpoint. Between Pass and the illusion gimmick, you can't safely clear these groups out using units who can't take at least 2-3 hits safely, which makes the second half of the map incentivize turtling and lowmanning. Though there are other maps like chapter 17 that have some parts I don't like, this is one of the only maps in the game that gets a solid thumbs down from me. I'm honestly not super happy with this clear, but I really can't be bothered to optimize it further considering how obnoxious this map is.      We didn't get as many useful supports as I'd have liked. It's really late in the game to not even have a single couple at A rank, let alone S rank. It should be fine though; once the paralogues start rolling in, things should go pretty smoothly. I think.  At long last, we can finally upgrade the Mess Hall! Now it'll affect the whole army instead of half of it at random!  Lastly, there's no point in letting these go to waste! I hacked these in, but they only provide benefits during battles in other players' castles, so they don't break any of my rules. Anyway, that's all for now. Next time, we have a one-way ticket to Mr. Fuga's Wild Ride!
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Feb 22, 2024 10:10
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Update 17 - That Map It's been a hot minute since the last update, and that's mostly because I really didn't feel like playing this map, especially with the funky units we've got going on. But now that I've finished it, I can honestly say that it was about as rough as I expected it to be. This is easily the most trouble Chapter 20 has ever given me, and that's including my first playthrough! Anyway, we've got some preparations to make before we get into it.    To start with, we do a little cooking. I lucked out and got Jakob as the chef this time, which is important because he's the best cook in the game. +2 to 3 major offensive stats is a lot, and that's exactly the kind of help we'll need on this map.    We also promote Selena because she'll need bow access to do anything meaningful from this point on. Her stats are still kind of pathetic, but with Arthur support, she might just be able to help out.    I hand out some tonics. Selena needs the speed to double, Kaze gets the skill because he has a couple of shaky hits he needs to connect or my plan falls apart, and Camilla gets the Tanking Special™, though I've since changed my strategy, making it largely irrelevant.  And Marth gets the Talisman because he's one of the two characters we have at the moment who are bulky enough to benefit from it. And that's all for the preparations, so let's get into everyone's least favorite map!      Welcome to Chapter 20, which I like to call Mr. Fuga's Wild Ride. It's got a wind gimmick that moves your units around that I'll explain in detail as we get into it. But despite the wind, this map is no breeze; out of all the maps in Conquest, it's the one I've spent the most time on, and not because I particularly enjoy it.   These are the units we're bringing, and how we're positioning them. You'll notice that we're bringing almost every flier we have, and that's because we desperately need the mobility. Elise is the only one staying, and that's because there's literally nothing on this map she or Jakob could feasibly damage.  This explanation is pretty good, but what the game defines "the nearest safe space" is a little unclear. There are some strange interactions here and there, and I'm pretty sure I've never played this map without at least one point where I thought "is it safe to do this?" because I wasn't sure what the wind would do. The wind only moves either up or down, and it has a six turn set pattern that's always the same, so with planning, you can use it to your advantage pretty well.  As far as enemies go, they're all pretty nasty in their own way. Spear Masters are shockingly bulky, and surprisingly hard to double, which makes their Seal skills especially likely to be a problem. They also hit like trucks, especially after you've been Seal Defense'd. To top it off, they've got +10 innate crit, which means that there's a solid chance that one of them just ends your run because screw you.  Great Masters have similar statlines to Spear Masters, but they trade a little (and I do mean a little) defense and strength for a lot of resistance. Some of them have Bolt Naginatas, and a lot of them have Seal Speed, which is the most dangerous Seal skill.   The fliers aren't too bad, but they're numerous, and they tend to put more pressure on you while you're dealing with other problems. The Falcon Knights are pretty hard to double though, and they're kind of bulky. Air Superiority and Axebreaker (which only a few have) are also particularly bad for us considering what options we've got available. Most of our best units are axe users, fliers, or both.   The Onmyoji are mostly not too bad, though they've got some pretty nasty skills. I've lost more runs to forgetting about Counter over the years than I'd like to admit. Kaze is gonna have to handle most of these, because they hit pretty hard and he's the only one who can shrug off their attacks while one-rounding them.      There's also a lot of staff users here. Freeze and Silence aren't too bad, but Enfeeble can be lethal, and Hayato's Hexing Rod is pure evil. They also have Wane Festals that they mostly use to heal up Spear Masters and other bulky units. Hayato himself is bulkier than he should be thanks to the Horse Spirit's +3 spd/skl/def/res, and he can be hard to kill without eating a Vantage attack that could proc Luna. But that Hexing Rod's gotta go, so we'll be rushing him down before he can do too much damage.  Mr. Fuga himself is a pretty durable guy, though he's not too dangerous on his own. He's got weapon triangle control, more Seal skills than one man should ever have, and Sol, along with a large HP pool to compliment it. He also has Armored Blow, which shouldn't be a problem because he shouldn't be getting an enemy phase to attack you with. Lastly, his personal skill, Wind Disciple, gives him Hit/Avoid +10 when his HP isn't full, making him slightly more dodgy after the first round of combat. He shouldn't be a huge problem, especially compared to the rest of the map.  There are also Dragon Veins you can use to activate the wind, moving both enemies and your own units. You can do some creative things with this, but in my experience it's really easy to make your situation worse by mistake. Use them at your own risk. Though it's important to note that you're just activating this turn's wind early; so if you use one, you won't be moved around on enemy phase that turn.  All of our flying pairs are gonna charge north over the gap. We're gonna take the brunt of the enemies on quickly and get over the hard part of the map.   Meanwhile, Silas and Beruka are gonna ride the wind to join the main army, while Kaze heads west to clear out these Onmyoji.   He fares pretty well against them, to say the least.   In contrast, Marth struggles to land a hit, so he's not likely to one-round them. Because he didn't, he gets his speed sealed, but that's okay.   He can technically kill both of these guys if he gets lucky against the first one, but I don't even care if he chips them down or not. All I wanted was to bait the group out.  I prefer these heals to go to squishy Onmyoji rather than Spear Masters, but honestly, they're more annoying than problematic. Also on enemy phase, some of the fliers in the north move closer, forming up around Hayato.  Azura gets blown 5 spaces north. Note that the wind blows after enemy phase is over, not before. Even if it blows someone across a reinforcements threshold, they won't show up until the next enemy phase.   Charlotte scores an easy kill.   Marth moves into range of Hayato's Falcon Knights and chips this Spear Master. This would have been a one-round without Seal Speed.   But with the Savage Blow chip and Rose's Thorns, Selena is just barely able to finish him off. As a side note, I love the Kinshi Knight bow animations. They're like flying Adventurers!    It's a little weird to see Azura not even getting two-shot, but I'm all for it!  Everyone else on that side just forms up outside of Hayato's range. Kaze moves here, which just barely keeps him in range of both southern Onmyoji, and lets him ride the wind across the gap above him to join the rest of the team.  Marth gets his HP cut in half, which is kind of bad because he's one of our tankier units, but he'll still be able to contribute a lot even if he's not able to take hits as well.   Kaze's back is gonna be sore from carrying the map with how much work he's about to put in.   These three Falcon Knights have Axebreaker, but again, we're just trying to draw them out right now. I don't care if they get chipped down or not.  The wind puts Kaze in the perfect position for this next turn.    He kills one of the Falcon Knights with the Hunter's Knife for a mediocre level. I like that pegasi are weak to beastkilling weaponry in this game; that's not always the case in this series, despite them literally being horses with wings. This also puts him in position to draw out the three Counter Onmyoji just to the north.     With the speed from Arthur's support, Jakob's meal, the speed tonic, and Darting Blow, Selena is just barely able to double the Falcon Knights. It's a shame she threw the experience points in the garbage. Camaraderie is also definitely a skill.    Charlotte chips the last Falcon Knight for a meh level, but Live to Serve is pretty nice on a unit with so much HP. She might get some mileage out of that later.   It put her in position to support Xander while he skewers the last one, too!  Kaze needs the extra damage from Rose's Thorns and the extra accuracy from the iron dagger to kill all three of these guys reliably.  The rest of the turn is spent separating the rest of our units so we have more people available next turn. You notice how the whole army is in that air current? It's time for Operation Drop the Whole Army on Hayato's Head.  Thank you Keaton, very cool.  This is absolutely clutch; Kaze dodged the Hexing Rod! I think things would have been doable without this miss, but Kaze having his usual bulk makes life a lot easier.  Camilla eats a Silence. The Silence guys are mostly just annoying, but I don't mind burning their uses like this.    This battle is why I gave Kaze the skill tonic; it only makes him a little more accurate, but if he doesn't kill this guy, we have to deal with Hayato, the flier group that's about to close in, and three Counter Onmyoji in the same turn, which is just too much.    The other two have normal weapons rather than a Calamity Gate, so he cleans them up very easily.  Uncle Fuga can't help you now, Hayato.   We crossed a reinforcement threshold last turn, which triggers the Onmyoji and the Falcon Knight/Spear Master pairs, but the Great Masters from our starting position show up after turn 3. But regardless of their source, the game just vomited 11 units of reinforcements on us at the same time. Luckily, they're pretty far away, so we have a little time to prepare for them.   Marth starts us off by chipping this Falcon Knight so Savage Blow damages Hayato.    Camilla finishes for the same reason. We've done 12 damage to Hayato without even attacking him.   Niles kills his first enemy in what feels like a long time.   And now that he's alone, it's time to murder my least favorite Fates character! (Sorry, Hayato fans. If it makes you feel any better, I've only used him on the one playthrough, so I haven't read most of his supports)    Honestly, if it weren't for the Hexing Rod, I think I'd have left him alone since he's stationary. Dealing with his Vantage + Luna combo can be tough while you're dealing with problems everywhere else.  This isn't exactly a bad level, but I'd really like to see more than two good stats on a level at some point.    Because he's got all his HP, Kaze can block off the northern path with a little healing.   It's nice to see Selena one-rounding enemies after her initial performance was so bad. Some more support ranks with Arthur and she might be useful against non-fliers sometime!  Keaton find shiny. Keaton take shiny.  We're not in any air currents, and Kaze has the northern enemies handled. Operation DWAHH was a success!   Camilla eats another Silence, and Kaze eats the much more consequential Enfeeble.    Yeah, -4 to all stats makes him a lot less potent. But he brings home the first really good level of the map!    The Seal skills don't stack with Enfeeble thankfully, so he really only loses two more points when a stat gets sealed.   If a lone Spear Master is obnoxiously durable, a pair of them are dangerously durable. Marth can chip him down low enough to finish him off, but it's gonna take several more people to clear this group out. Which means they're gonna have to ride the wind south, to where the reinforcements are gathering.   Flora finishes this guy off. I like how she still has the ice effect on her fire spell; it looks pretty cool.   This guy has a Dual Naginata, which is a problem for all of our axe users. Silas and Beruka chip him down. Beruka's accuracy is good because she's using the Dual Club, which inverts the inverted weapon triangle back to normal, which is always a fun weapon interaction.   Hey, that level up last turn gave Kaze enough speed to double this guy! That's neat.    With him out of the way, Xander can fly behind Mr. Dual here and Lunge into him. I tried to do this from the side at first but couldn't because you can't Lunge into a unit if they can't move onto the tile you're Lunging from.  We finish the turn out by putting Keaton in range of the Falcon Knight/Spear Master pairs. He's definitely got the bulk to take it.   Niles eats a Silence while Silas eats an Enfeeble.   Xander shrugs off his Spear Master with ease.      Keaton survives his fights, but just barely, thanks to Seal Defense. These Silver Naginata guys hit hard. The good thing is, because they attacked with the Spear Masters, these guys won't be able fly over to us on the next turn, which helps.  And we're out of the frying pan, and into... another frying pan. Cool.  Turn 6 is the end of the wind pattern, and it's the turn where the entire map is covered with north-facing wind. Which means we're going right back into the other frying pan after this turn. This map is exhausting.    The eastern enemies can be blocked off without too much trouble, but these Onmyoji have to die. Azura starts us off by one-rounding this one with the extra damage from Rose's Thorns. She gets a decent level for her trouble.    Camilla and Niles finish the next one off for another decent level. It makes her bulkier, which is nice.   Kaze deletes the last one from two spaces, which is relevant because this one, and only this one, has Counter. He's also in range of a Bolt Naginata Great Master that decided to go west instead of north with the rest of his group.  And Niles helps him get the extra oomph he'll need to get the job done.   Xander buffs everyone's defense, and Beruka blocks off the enemies, just barely staying out of the other Bolt Naginata guy's range.   Marth uses this down time to soften up one of the northern Spear Masters.  And here's how we're positioned by the end of the turn. Kaze and Beruka are the only ones seeing combat this enemy phase.   The enemies do their usual healing and staffing, but it's just Silence staves right now, so they're not all that dangerous.     Beruka decides not to take damage, and the Spear Masters have little say in the matter.   The extra bulk Great Masters have over Onmyoji isn't quite enough in the face of the Silver Dagger.  And we're back in the north!    Marth chips the healthier Spear Master for a genuinely great level.     While his future wife finishes him off for a much less impressive level. At least she gets Heartseeker!    Beruka Lunges into this guy to bring the remaining Falcon Knight into the open.   But it doesn't really matter since Xander can just delete her.    And Selena finishes the last of this group off for a very good level! If she keeps growing like this, she could be a good unit after all.   Kaze moves into position to bait out the ranged enemies from the south, and Niles heals him up. Camilla moves to support Kaze with Rose's Thorns, and we also separate Azura and Keaton to open up more options next turn.   Beruka eats another Enfeeble while Niles dodges another Silence. Other than that, it's just the enemies doing a little healing.  Ugghh, that's a disgusting 9% crit chance. Don't you dare!   Phew. It's at this point in the map where I started to get very scared of unlucky misses or crits, because I really didn't want to restart again.  Unfortunately, because of the Silver Dagger debuff, Kaze isn't quite able to one-round this guy.  Oh. I stand corrected. Man, if that RNG had been just a little different, this would have been Kaze getting murdered.    Beruka starts working on one of the Spear Masters who ran away for healing earlier.  And we get blown down yet again. Beruka and Silas getting stranded where they are wasn't planned; the Spear Master below them took their spot. We're past the worst of it now, though. After we clean up the last of the reinforcements, it'll be relatively smooth sailing, barring an unlucky crit or something.    Silas finishes off the last currently aggroed enemy in the north for another pathetic level. There's been a couple of good ones, but the levels so far have been generally bad. What gives, game?    Flora gets into position to support Marth, who eats one of the Spear Masters.   I decided that Camilla could get her stats sealed and it would be okay, so she chips this guy down.    Kaze finishes him off for an obnoxiously defensive level. You want strength, Kaze! Strength!    We heal up and start chipping this last guy down.    Keaton finishes him off for another solid level. I think he's gonna be really good after he promotes and gets D rank axes.  Oh yeah, this guy. I forgot about him because he stayed out of the way spamming Silence. Selena starts chipping him down.   Silas eats the last Enfeeble while Charlotte eats another Silence. That guy's really just gonna stand there and spam Silence until he dies, isn't he?  Selena's not complaining. It's free experience and bow practice.   Now it's time to start moving in on these chests. Camilla moves to bait the Great Masters guarding this one out, while everyone else gets positioned so they'll be more or less where I want them after the wind blows.     Camilla has plenty of mixed bulk, so she can mostly shrug off these guys.  After the wind moves everyone, we're ready to clear out the chest guards.    Marth chips one of them down for Selena.   I love guard gauges.   Xander cleans up this last guy.   Because of the wind, we've also been positioning our units to attack the northwestern group next turn, which is nice. Nothing happened on enemy phase aside from some healing.   After the wind moves everyone, Marth leads the charge by taking out this Guard Naginata guy. I'm honestly surprised he could one-round, but he's getting +5 magic from Flora, so it makes sense.    Kaze deletes another Onmyoji, and he gets A rank shurikens for his trouble! This gives him an extra +1 damage, which he'll definitely appreciate!    Camilla gets pretty lucky and lands both of these hits through Air Superiority. She also gets a very nice level!    Now that Camilla's Savage Blow softened him up, Azura can finish this guy off easily enough.    Beruka takes down the last one, and she gets a pretty good level for her trouble. I'd like more strength, but speed and defense make her bulkier, which is handy.  We heal Kaze and finish the turn by having Selena bait out this Bolt Naginata guy while she has a guard gauge.   She actually has good resistance, so she didn't even need the guard gauge.   Another magic weapon, another kill for Kaze.  Niles grabs the northwestern chest for a very nice 10,000 gold. This is gonna come in handy, especially because we unlock the level 3 armory and staff shop after this chapter, so we'll have plenty of new toys to spend the money on.  Xander starts working on the last Spear Master pair.  Everyone but Niles and Camilla moves toward Fuga's corner.   Xander won't be two-rounding since he got his strength sealed, unfortunately. Well, that and the healing.   Silas finishes this guy off before they could build a guard gauge. It's nice that they didn't switch the healthy one to the front, because we would have had to chew through their guard gauge.    Marth executes the leftovers for a solid level. More magic and bulk? Sign me up!  Now, it's important to note this Lunge trap outside Fuga's corner. Both of these Priestesses have Lunge, and if they pull someone into the room, you'll have to deal with a bunch of reinforcements. It's much easier to just ride the wind into Fuga, that way you can kill him without having to deal with those.   Oh yeah, this guy exists. Let's fix that.    More strength is really all Azura needs, so I like this one.  Beruka stands here to bait out the eastern group so we can get that treasure, while everyone but Camilla follows just behind.    Sorry sir, Beruka still doesn't feel like taking damage right now. Try again in the next life.   We get blown around a bit, but we're solidly in the cleanup phase so it's not a problem. Marth gets lucky and lands two 63s, killing one of the Kinshi Knights.     Xander and Selena aren't quite as lucky, but we've almost got this one surrounded, so even if the next one misses, they can't do anything.   But Azura doesn't leave survivors.  Meanwhile, Niles grabs the second and final Rescue staff that Conquest gives you. It's gonna be extremely useful later on.  We're just gonna wipe up the enemies between here and this chest, punch through Fuga, and get out of this horrible place.   Hey, Beruka activated Sol while not at full health! That's cool.   Marth is just barely able to punch through this guy's high resistance stat.  We've got a couple of our units next to the last chest now, and everyone else is about to fly up to join them using this wind.     Azura chips for her last unpromoted level. It's a great one, too! She also gets C lances, giving +1 damage. Her offensive stats are really starting to snowball; her only problem is that her still-measly 19 HP won't be enough to survive a hit from anything except maybe a mage at this point.   Marth cleans up another Spear Master.    Selena chips the last one for a fantastic level! I think she's actually gonna be usable!   And Xander takes out the last Spear Master. Good riddance.  Then Kaze grabs the Dragonstone+, which is likely to be completely useless in this run because Kana probably won't roll Nohr Noble. But on the off chance that she does, having a 25 might weapon won't hurt. Oh, and that wind won't be a problem for him. There's no floor tiles above the chest, so he won't get blown anywhere.  Everyone else moves closer to the now-empty chest, and Silas starts eating Freeze charges. Not that it'll matter, because we're finishing this map in the next couple of turns.   A turn of waiting, and the big wind is here to carry us to victory!   Mr. Fuga is pretty hard to kill, but he's not all that dangerous. Camilla starts us off.    Sol completely negated the first hit, but I just wanted the Savage Blow chip, so it's not too upsetting.    Kaze chips him a bit for the debuff, but hang on a second...  His puppet's clothes got blown off! I don't use Mechanists much, so I don't know if I've ever seen this before. Neat!  I wanna be absolutely certain here, so Flora stands menacingly next to him to activate Heartseeker.    Xander chips him down a bit more.    Finally, Beruka brings him down.  It's kind of insulting that they he drops a Secret Book. It's like the map's final "screw you" to the player as it goes down, leaving you with one of the worst stat boosters in the game.    Because this is a seize map, it's not actually over yet, so Silas and Keaton murder this lady before they miss the chance.   And Selena takes the throne, bringing this map to a close in 19 turns! I've done better in the past, but with this team, I'd say that's pretty good. I honestly think they were on to something with the wind gimmick, but the way it is, it can be hard to predict exactly how the units are going to move when you factor in blocked tiles and other shenaniganry, which usually means that at least a couple of attempts in a playthrough go by where someone gets killed because I did something stupid with it. You can somewhat counteract this by bringing a ridiculous amount of fliers, which also helps you avoid the narrow walkways that the map is made up of, but it's still a rough time. The big problem is that this is where the enemy quality really starts to spike. Everything is starting to get faster, bulkier, and harder to one round, which you really feel with all the Seal skills strewn about. Then while you're trying to deal with that, the wind limits your positioning options. The consequences for messing up are likely to be fatal, either because you strand a unit or because you accidentally cross a reinforcement threshold and the game vomits like 8-12 more guys on you. To top it off, the treasure that's spread all across the map is all very good (except arguably the Dragonstone+, which is a one-of-a-kind item), which makes just rushing Fuga and skipping the map kind of a gross option. All that being said, you can do some pretty cool things with the wind, like moving your entire army across a gap in one turn. It just takes a lot more thinking than pretty much any other map in the game, and you're harshly punished for screwing up. Overall, I think it was close to being a fun map, but because it's so difficult to utilize the wind, it's one of my least favorite maps in the route. I honestly think the wind would have worked better if it were limited to dragon veins that would affect just the one or two nearby sections of the map rather than the whole thing in a pattern. That would let the player have some more control over it, and then it's exclusively the player's fault when they don't utilize it well.  You and me both, Marth. You and me both.     We got some very nice supports this time! Two A ranks means that, theoretically, we could have a child paralogue by the end of the next chapter if I use Invasion 2 correctly.    Azura goes ahead and promotes to Falcon Knight. This is gonna help her out a lot, I think. But even if it doesn't make a huge difference, she can heal people, and she's a potentially good candidate for Rescue use later on, since it's an E rank staff in this game.  We also finally max out the armory and staff store, giving us a lot of fun weapons and staves to play around with, as well as infinite Master Seals! We'll definitely be making some purchases next time. But that's all for now. Next time, either stairs or another home invasion, whatever comes first!
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Apr 20, 2024 03:31
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