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Vaike is continuing to earn his tenure I see. Fred is not the pick I'd go for in terms of max optimization, but I can also just respect it because he's cool and he's Fred. I married Virion because I could on my original Lunatic attempt, and also because I was impressed he was still around at Chapter 13. Any unit who gets some Second Seal time can become busted, the bases only really matter for how easy it is to get them levels. There's way too many enemies in the latter half of this game. The EXP is there, if you can focus feed it. Lon'qu is a guy whose stats fail and he ends up with noodle arms, or he does kind of decent. If there's anyone I early promote for the good of the team, he's got a good chance of being that person. The stat boosts from Assassin as pair-up are pretty strong at A support. midnight lasagna posted:
Harsh, but not undeserved. midnight lasagna posted:Nothing ever came of it, but after watching a load of those goofy piracy protection creepypasta videos I did once try to think of my own idea for Shadow Dragon. Besides forcing the player to start with the prologue the game would play normally, but once you reach the decoy Marth scene in the fourth chapter the map would immediately end, cutting to the perspective of the decoy. The player would be given full control of the decoy unit but could do nothing but futilely run around until they are ultimately killed by either Jiol or one of his soldiers, who would then examine the body and angrily declare that they had been fooled by a "fake copy of Marth." The game would then cut to a message telling you that if you want to continue the adventures of the real Prince Marth then you should buy a real copy of the game. I mean, I could believe that was actual piracy protection on it. You've got the event flags to pull something like that in the GBA games, I imagine they would've in the DS ones. As for Gay Fates, you've got time to catch up, don't worry. I estimate I'll only still be working on it in... 2026? Oh well, that's what I get for going on a coding bender and discovering a weird hobby in making script dumps for games I'll never have enough time to LP. EDIT: Update on last page.
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Oct 12, 2023 15:20
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| # ? May 6, 2024 06:02 |
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The canon for Lon'qu vs. Marth is that Lon has Marth soundly beat. And then realises that Marth isn't a guy and panics.  Anyway, Lucy here is trying to win to figure out where the Feroxi gemstone for the Fire Emblem is. Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Oct 12, 2023 |
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Oct 12, 2023 17:27
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Lissa being dressed in her class outfit for these cutscenes was hilarious for me when I reclassed her into the Pegasus tree. It does not look right for her to be wearing that in the cutscenes. Though admittedly the Sage outfit looks odd too here, to the point where I'm wondering if you did that on purpose.
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Oct 12, 2023 23:09
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Anyway, on gameplay. The armour knights is why I tend to recommend doing this second after the Donnel paralogue. When you've got the levels off that it's quite easy to take Marth down and trap an armour knight with your units. You then sit Donnel next to the knight and the knight will start beating on him for non-lethal damage, but this will give Donnel delicious experience and let Lissa heal him for her own experience as well. Other than that the map benefits quite a lot from strong siding, where you dump all your units on the left or right and the waves arrive piecemeal because of the difference in travel time between them. You get fewer downtime turns but your uptime turns are much more consistent.
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Oct 12, 2023 23:53
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There isn't a clear plot reason for Lucina to fight Chrom here, so it makes more sense to think about in thematic terms. What we've seen of Marth already implies a parallel with Chrom, and they erupt into the story through the same supernatural means that the Risen do - even before the time travel becomes explicit, we're dealing with a similar concept to films and series like Terminator 2, Aliens, Independence Day, Superman, Star Wars, etc., where a seemingly external, alien/future threat is a metaphor for what's happening here and now. The Risen don't fundamentally differ from Plegian bandits, they're an exaggerated, monstrous nightmare of what they represent. "The future has taken root in the present." (Put a pin in that for much later.) The story reiterates this connection by having Marth wield the same weapon as Chrom - a literal 'parallel falchion' - and has them fight the same way to underline their similarities. Unless things change, Chrom's going to end up just like Marth, locked in an endless war with zombie-bandits. Notably, the story interconnects Lucina revealing her identity to Chrom with her changing the course of events, but I won't get into that now because that quickly becomes Actual Spoilers rather than 'samus is a girl'.
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Oct 16, 2023 04:02
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Natural 20 posted:The canon for Lon'qu vs. Marth is that Lon has Marth soundly beat. Oh, cool. I'd heard people suggest this as a theory before but I had no idea the official manga actually went with it.
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Oct 18, 2023 22:27
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Paralogue 1: Donnel's First Blood Guess whose stats I forgot to post last update? That's what happens when you join inbetween maps, you sit at the bottom of the unit list and get forgotten about without every being deployed. Lon'qu is the obligatory edgy Killing Edge Myrmidon, except he's nice enough to join your team automatically without needing to be poached from the enemy army. Who was the last enemy recruit Myrmidon before Lon'qu in the series... Zihark? Yikes, his game is almost 20 years old! Lon'qu Skills: Avoid + 10 Growths: HP: 80% STR: 55% MAG: 20% SKL: 75% SPD: 75% LCK: 55% DEF: 30% RES: 25% Lonk's a Myrmidon, he goes fast and gets crits. While his bulk is pretty atrocious and his base strength certainly isn't impressive, his C rank in swords lets him use the very powerful Killing Edge, which is almost as strong as a Silver Sword in addition to having a high crit rate. His C rank also gives him an extra +1 might when using it, which is pretty neat. 13 speed isn't quite enough to double enemies in Lunatic, but he can get there with a little help from certain support partners... Or pair up with someone else to make them very fast instead. Sometimes surviving the first two turns of Chapter 5 is a game of "will Lon'qu dual attack or crit?" if you've got no better alternatives. My plan was always to have him serve as a support partner for Vaike and then get married off to whoever, and if the thread wants me to use Cordelia then she is available. Unfortunately she's also a pretty terrible match, as they both give each other large amounts of speed and not much else, which does not really benefit either of them all that much when they're quite fast to begin with.   A skirmish on the overworld disappears... and a new secret shop appears. With skirmishes being tough as they are (and fighting them being against the rules...) waiting a couple of days for them to despawn from the map is all I can do if they're blocking a shop on the world map that I really want to access.  Unfortunately I do not have enough money to buy any of this stuff from the newly spawned secret shop, and I doubt I will have any until it eventually despawns. A Second Seal could be nice, my current plan is to reclass Truck into a Mercenary when I get one so that she can grab Armsthrift and then go Hero to get Sol. Slower weapon degradation and the potential to steal HP from enemies are both very nice. Perhaps not the most original path for an avatar unit to take in this game, but maybe once I've gotten her the skills she needs I can reclass her into something goofy and fun?   Truck x Frederick B Truck and Frederick grab their B support, in which the former helps the latter learn to stomach bear meat. Fred's usually more fond of the twink/hunk side of the spectrum if his devotion to his leige lord is anything to go by.  Rescuing some snooty noblewoman can wait, there's a farm boy on some island somewhere who needs our help!! Sickle to Sword also describes Donnel's typical reclass path, if you can call a sickle a lance. I... don't think you can, actually. That joke seemed good until I thought about it for more than 5 seconds.   Why save Maribelle when we can save Ma? Out of curiosity I checked the game script online and both English translations have the bandits say Mum, it's not just an EU version thing. Nice of them to make the inexplicably Cockney bandits also use the correct English spelling I guess.  Making the player have to give the villager a level in order to recruit them is an interesting mechanic and a good way of showing the player firsthand that there might be more to a unit with crappy bases than meets the eye, but it feels like Chrom really wants to make this guy kill someone. Usually it's the opposite, the weak bystander wants to help but the brave heroes insist they stand back and keep themselves out of trouble.  This paralogue is a rather nice break from the long line of open fields we fought in in previous maps. The objective is to defeat the boss but he's hiding all the way in the corner over there so it's most likely that all his flunkies will die on the way to him regardless. And besides, do you really want to miss out on all that juicy EXP?  It's the same guy from the prologue! Not literally the same guy, but he's got the exact same portrait as Villageburner. He's also got the same Gamble skill... and a Silver Axe. Combined with his 19 strength he has an absolutely absurd might of 35, enough to most likely 1 shot 90% of my army. At least he can't use that Silver Axe from 2 range.  This also marks the first appearence of enemy Thieves. Besides being very fast they're not so great at combat. IIRC in every chapter of Fates but the infamous Ninja cave you could tell whether or not a Thief would go for the treasure or not based on if they had the Locktouch skill, but here all 3 Thieves have it. Only the topmost one next to the boss will actually try to loot anything though, and the game mercifully makes him only attempt to steal from one of them, ignoring the incredibly valuable Rescue staff. Thieves can also spawn with Underdog, a Villager exclusive skill that gives a hit and avoid bonus when fighting higher level enemies. Is this how Donnel could have ended up were we not here to save him?   The treasure room in the top left can be plundered by taking Door & Chest Keys from defeated enemies, but if you're not blitzing the map then you can always let the one moving Thief open up the room and the one chest he has eyes on before killing him for his loot. Keep an eye on that Archer who's conveniently backed himself into a corner - he is very trappable and makes easy food for a certain someone.  Always nice when the game gives me exactly as many deployment slots as I have guys I want to take. That does mean no Virion or Stahl to use as pair-up fodder, but I'll make it work.  Oh, I just realised the one big flaw Alm's Blade has - only 10 durability!! That's not a lot. I guess Frederick can use it only in emergencies.  Speaking of low durability weapons, I forgot I unlocked the Glass Sword! Exactly the same stats as a Silver Sword, just with 3 durability and an E rank requirement.  Sully and Chrom will both want to use it, and as they're both frequently paired up I can have one hold it so the other can take it. The low durability could potentially come in handy just in case I ever think of some big brained strategies where breaking it on player phase so I can swap to a different weapon on enemy phase could be helpful.  This starting area is a nice and fairly defensible position, but seeing as we're racing against that one Thief we won't be defending it for long. Donnel's here too - he just spawns in when the map starts.   I may have no intention of using Donnel this playthrough, but for some reason I just don't have it in me to not recruit him... it feels like the same as letting him die. Nice of the game to tell you the objective, at least! In Thracia you'd have to figure it out by trial and error. And also it would be the condition for unlocking a gaiden chapter that's your only way of recruiting some other unit that is borderline mandatory for being able to complete the game.  Here's Donny! Donny is, as you can probably guess, a unit of the Villager archetype, distinguished from the Est archetype by joining early in the game instead of later. Are there even enough characters like this to justify it as an archetype? Who knows, but the Fire Emblem community has made archetypes out of everything. Don't worry about it. Donnel Skills: Aptitude (raise all growth rates by +20%) Growths (with aptitude): HP: 105% STR: 75% MAG: 35% SKL: 65% SPD: 70% LCK: 100% DEF: 65% RES: 40% As you can see, Donnel's growths are pretty high! And his bases are pretty awful. His growths (and bases) will get even higher once you reclass him out of the terrible Villager class, a special class that cannot promote and only serves to hold Donny back from his true potential... Unfortunately while Donnel might turn into a monster with a lot of investment, he suffers from being a growth unit who requires babying in a sea of growth units who require babying - getting him all the EXP he needs to become useful will only take EXP from the rest of my army, and it'll take a lot of leveling before he does much besides deal 3HP in damage and die. Thankfully there's an easy and risk free method of getting him the experience he needs to gain the one level he needs to before I can bench him forever.  All the enemies I've highlighted here will aggro as soon as the map starts. The two chokepoints at the top and bottom of the map will help me hold them off, but they're not the only initial problem...  Because these jerks will also aggro right away, and there's no wall between them and us. Probably best to take them out first if possible.   Lon'qu's first contribution is to take a ride up on Frederick's horse. Fred needs a speed pairing if I want him to help clean up enemies for this initial turn, and even if she's not very useful in combat right now I'd rather keep Sumia free to steal a kill or two. I've given Lonk a crappy Bronze Sword so that he doesn't waste valuable Killing Edge uses from any dual strikes he makes.   This Barb is a little too close for comfort and nobody else can kill him this turn without then potentially dying to his two friends behind him. If I were more willing to reset for misses and dual strike procs I could have Chrom & Sully attempt this, but a little bit of reliability is nice.  Wow, Fred! You've not missed a single speed proc! He's almost as fast as he is strong now. I feel like he's going to end up benched or reduced to pair-up fodder eventually, but he might make it through at least half of the Valm arc before that eventually happens.  Luna is the level 5 Great Knight skill, it gives you a skill% chance of ignoring half of an enemy's defense or resistance. "How's Fred going to safely weaken enemies for my other units now?" I almost asked, but even on Lunatic mode enemy units in this game tend to have very low defense stats. Every Luna proc Frederick gets is only going to add like 2 or 3 damage per hit... It's their high HP and speed that makes enemies bulky.   Some of these initial goons carry both Steel Axes and slightly weaker 1-2 range Short Axes, so Truck needs her sword out to not die to a hit from both. She can stand here and not attack to reduce the amount of enemies that can attack her per turn. Vaike's just here to help her not die with the defense boost that Fighters rather inexplicably give.  Meanwhile Sully can stand here and lure away a single enemy that otherwise would happily die against Fred and his gargantuan stats. Chrom's still not fast enough to double most enemies...  These Thieves aren't meant for combat, they're no threat. They even live with 1HP so the kill can go to someone else! Someone else like Sumia perhaps? Donnel doesn't need it, I have plans for how he's getting that level.  ...or you can do that, Lonk. I really should have unequipped him... Did you know that certain classes give more EXP when you attack them? Thieves giving more is an FE tradition, but the Assassin, Trickster, and Conqueror classes all give the same bonus. Revenants and Entombed fought in skirmishes give even more, while Troubadours and Clerics/Priests give less. I don't think you can fight them outside of spotpass or streetpass battles though. The Deadlords fought in Chapter 22 and DLC maps also give bonus experience.   Sully takes a hit from an Archer... and then dodges a second hit that could have killed her. Despite all that stuff I said about consistency earlier, I'll confess I did this based on the assumption she'd dodge at least one of them. It's turn 1 and the second hit was pretty unlikely, it's fine!! Better than letting Fred eat another kill, anyway.  Unfortunately Chrom follows up on Sully's risky play by standing there and doing absolutely nothing. The sensible move with dual strikes and guards is to always assume the worst outcome and plan around it, I guess.   At least Vaike is helping out a little. Not being able to counterattack that Short Axe is frustrating, but Truck has to use her sword to survive. If only she had a Levin Sword.  Here comes the Thief to steal the Killer Lance. It'll be a few turns before he reaches it, and then he has to escape with it too.  Frederick has now reached the point where he can't even weaken enemies anymore, at least not with Lon'qu boosting his speed. Do I really want to have to feed this kill to him?   The answer to that is no, I don't. Sully can take the kill instead. It's a shame to waste the Glass Sword, but I can't have my cake and eat it too. ...I used to be really confused by that saying, generally when you "have" food you mean you eat it so I assumed that's what they meant by having the cake.  Oh dear, perhaps Fred deserved that kill after all. I can't really fault Sully for this, she's not gotten a bad level before... Everybody can have one bad day. But only one!!   The last surviving enemy from the north easily falls to a Sumia-boosted Chrom. I'm used to having Sumia as Chrom's wife which means I'm also not used to him failing to double with Sully as his partner. He'll appreciate her strength and defense boosts more than Sumia's extra speed once he's gained a few more levels and can double on his own.   If Chrom's affinity for unnecessarily brutal kills is what attracts Sumia to him then she won't be disappointed when she's eventually stuck marrying Henry, I guess!  Thanks to Lissa's increased speed and bulk, she can sit here to heal Truck and not immediately die the turn after when a bandit throws an axe at her face. Having a healer who can take a hit and attack back in return is pretty cool, it turns out.   Truck smacks her previous attacker in the face, killing in one hit thanks to Vaike's earlier contribution. This level is... okay this level is really really good but would you please just GAIN SPEED?? How do you expect to snowball if you refuse to gain speed!  Solidarity is the level 10 Tactician skill, it provides +10 crit and avoid to adjacent allies. Skills like this also provide their boosts to adjacent allies and your lead partner even when you're paired up with another unit, which is very handy! The actual boosts themselves are alright, although boosting crit can sometimes be a double-edged sword.   The starting area is now much more secure, but now I have a new problem: how do I get this guy out of the way? I'd like to leave this area sooner rather than later or else I might miss out on the cool loot. Fred could take the kill, but...  Whatever, I'll just hope Chrom one-rounds and if he doesn't no big deal. I did however do this on the assumption that one dual strike from Sumia would finish him off...  ...but she got two so my miscalculation was irrelevant. Good job, Sumia! A shame all of this effort isn't going to get you paired up with Chrom.  We can just ignore these two bozos for now, they're not moving unless someone gets in range of both at once. A good thing too, since one of them has a Hammer with which they could menace Fred a lot.  Speaking of, Fred should be able to lure these two without killing them if Lon'qu's not supporting him. My other units are a little far away, but they should be able to swoop in for the kill!   Lonk even manages to earn a tiny bit of EXP with a nonlethal Bronze Sword bap.  Sumia is the first to steal a kill, risking a very slightly lethal counterattack to bop this bandit. I mean, Chrom could have finished him off if Sumia missed her first hit. He wouldn't have, but he could have.   Sully takes Chrom back hoping for a dual strike to one round this Archer, and of course you know what the outcome is in advance. I guess he's just not feeling it today.   It's fine, I can fix this with some positioning. Fred could kill this Thief but instead chooses to sit still with a weaker weapon. Thanks to Underdog boosting avoid and the forest tile he's on, the kill wouldn't exactly be reliable anyway...   Vaike joins Lissa to gain support points and watches his future wife kill a man with fire, strengthening their bond together.  Then he watches Truck kill another man with thunder because apparently Vaike has a type and it's women who use their literacy for violent purposes. I may as well build support points between as many people as possible...  That's our treasure grabbed for us, time to intercept the delivery boy and tip him with the tip of our swords. I'm not exactly sure where the escape point is but I think it's to the south?  More speed! That extra 5% growth is doing her wonders. Lissa could probably start doubling and maybe even one-rounding people if she had a partner who could boost her magic and speed. A partner like Truck, maybe.   Lon'qu finishes off the southern Thief, building support with Vaike in the process. I guess cheerleading is his job today.  One chest has already been opened and the Archer holding the other one is standing right next to the remaining chest, so I guess this is just free money. Or potentially useful for opening a chest in another map, I suppose.   And here comes the Thief with the goods! I don't know where exactly he intends to escape from but he clearly has to go a long way to reach it.  Time to weaken him and... oh, okay. This game is teaching me many lessons on the reliability of dual strikes, maybe I should learn from them.  Sully can use this! It's not as strong as the Silver Lance but it's close to it. The 30% crit chance combined with Chrom's dual strike chance will mean even more RNG deciding the outcome of battles!!   Truck lures in a new set of enemies, with Fred in no weapon jail for his crimes. She gets... a level for her trouble. I can definitely complain about this one. And I will! Truck, you suck!! Get more speed!!!  But even if she is slow she's still very good. Look at her bulk now! Granted that's with Fred supporting her and weapon triangle advantage, but she's a far cry away from dying in 2 hits like she used to.  ...she was at E swords this entire time? I assumed she grew past that in like Chapter 1. A shame there's only one Iron Sword going around and it's Sully's.   Dropping from this sparkling tile is this comically crappy axe which cannot hit the broad side of a barn despite being as wide as one. It's a little weaker than a Silver Axe and only requires a D rank to use, which both Fred and Vaike have, but they are not hitting anything with this.   Or maybe Vaike could hit something with it, he's keeping on top of his skill growth. In fact I think this might be the exact same level he got last time. No strength is odd, but skill speed and defense? All nice.  Sully and Chrom can swing around to grab some EXP while the rest of my group slowly approach the main fort. Two attacks from these bandits could kill them, but with the fort they'll have plenty of avoid...  ...what was I saying earlier about trying to be reliable? Well surely the second one won't hit!  Uhh... Doesn't one of you have a ranged weapon? Why aren't you going for a potential kill?  Oh, the ranged guy went first and blocked his friend from doing anything by attacking at 1 range, even though the enemy AI specifically has them only move if both units can attack somebody. All according to plan???   It was poor teamwork that got these villains killed... drat, Chrom! You've gotten speed every level too! Less impressive than when Frederick does it, but still very good. Nice to see him finally hit his defense, too.  This can also be sold for a little extra cash. We'll get our first Thief in a couple of chapters time, but I have no plans on using him beyond opening stuff.   Donnel hitches a ride on Sumia's pegasus to move from beyond this Archer's range to right in front of him, pinning him to the wall. Any unit with 7 move could get Donnel this far, but only Sumia does so without increasing his strength and reducing the number of attacks he can potentially make before the Archer dies. And of course Sumia should be unequipped.  For Donnel must prove he has it in him to take a human life before the Shepards will accept him into their ranks. Can you look a man in the eye as he breathes his last, Donny?  ...it's gonna take a while for him to whittle that poor Archer to death. Not the fastest way of doing things, but by far the most reliable.  Having to wait for Donnel to do his thing means I can waste as much time as I want without shame. Truck can sit tight while Vaike and Lon'qu do a little bloodletting of their own.  I didn't have to grab this right now, but I did anyway. The Rescue staff will be incredibly useful in the next map, to the point I can say with near certainty it's intended to be used there. Doing Chapter 5 deathless isn't impossible without it, but it certainly makes it a lot easier...  Lon'qu's first level is looking a little out of character. I guess I haven't decided if I'm committing to using him or if he's just going to be pair-up fodder, so maybe this'll help me with my choice.  Vaike and Lissa then use the downtime to go grab a sparkling tile together in hopes for a support increase. No such luck, alas.  I can very slowly lure some more enemies in the meantime. That C rank means Chrom can massively increase his damage output with Lon'qu's Killing Edge. Might be useful...   EXP degradation is starting to kick in, Donny's getting less and less with each hit. Did I work this out right? Can he level up just from one guy? Now I'm not so sure...  Just in case, I'm going to have Frederick unequip all weapons and keep this Archer alive until I'm sure. Gotta unequip those crappy jeigans so my growth units can get EXP after all!!   Whew! It's all good. Donnel has done it. I was a little nervous there.  Well done Donnel! Together with your new friends you eradicated the enemy and became strong. HP. Strength. Speed Luck. EXP. Level. Every time a number increases, that feeling... ...is something you're never getting to experience again because it's bench time for you. Sorry!!  And yet everyone's a Donny before the insane might of Villageburner 2.0. Chrom would be one-shot if it were not for that last level he gained!!  And Sully would just straight up die! I can't wait for a few chapters from now when all the enemies will have silver weapons!  Even flat tire Truck can't safely engage thanks to her awful speed stat. I refuse to let this be another Fred kill, though.   Luckily Truck has a cunning plan, and it is to stand 1 tile away so the enemy has to use his weaker weapon.  Not killing him in one round also gives Lissa one last chance to heal someone for a very nice level. Magic and speed... It's a shame I'll have to reclass her out of Sage eventually when I want her to learn some different rally skills. I shouldn't be spamming heal so much now that she's capable of earning chip EXP through combat, but I couldn't resist this one extra level.  Both Chrom and Truck are in position to get the kill, so who should make it? On one hand I will be needing a powerful juggernaut to take a lot of hits in Chapter 5 and having Truck be that juggernaut would help redirect a lot of EXP that would otherwise be going to Fred... But on the other hand, Chrom's a significantly lower level and is but one point of speed away from doubling the boss of Chapter 5 with help from Sully. Who is more deserving?  Sorry, but it's gotta be Truck. Chrom's speed streak can't last forever! Plus I want to make sure Truck's good enough to handle things without Fred's help when Chapter 6 rolls around, it forces you to split your army and Fred can't be everywhere all at once.  This ain't where... what? Where you die? Where the other half of your body is meant to be? Where Truck's sword was supposed to go? We'll never know.  ... ... ... ...okay. I guess speed can be your flaw if you want it to be. Maybe it would be best if Truck married Lon'qu and Cordelia married Frederick instead? That would solve two of my problems.  23 turns of Donnel time. Realistically I think he added like 5 or 6 turns at most, but I would prefer to attribute my slowness to that.   Donnel has proven himself a man and can now take up arms to defend his homeland and countrymen. Or perhaps more accurately, we've traumatised this poor young boy and now he can no longer live in polite society and must make murder his living. Ah well, that's war!     ...I'd love to end this update on that stolen joke (image is a link to source btw) but just before I wrap up, I should buy this tonic before a Risen spawns on it and prevents me grabbing it in time for Chapter 5. I don't know if I'll need it, but if it turns out I do I'll be sorely upset. Truck's going to have to do a lot of point choking... Next time: Flying ambush spawns
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Oct 18, 2023 22:27
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Donnel does have one consistent use in my book: being a father for Nah who doesn't skeeve me out.
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Oct 18, 2023 22:57
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The point about you saying that Donnel is a growth unit in a sea of growth units is actually why I like using him. Simply put, it feels to me that he actually gets online more quickly than they do just due to much more stable leveling. Granted, I'm also known for some pretty horrendous FE luck when it comes to unit growing.
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Oct 18, 2023 23:12
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the 'trick' with villager units is that anybody can look that good if you take the time and effort to set up 10 (or more!) levels worth of experience for them and give them a useful resource or two (like a forged weapon or a good pair up partner). the dopamine rush of going from zero to hero is merely a pleasant illusion, but it sure is a pleasant one. donnel in particular has the issue of needing to reach level 10 in a Wimp Lo class, where he trains wrong on purpose as a joke, then needing a second seal, then needing to use a bronze sword (or bronze axe if you go fighter) for even longer. if you look at other villagers, mozu can start wielding bows fairly easily and bronze weapons are good in fates, jean can second seal right away and get levels using engage's class-growths-based version of aptitude without worrying about weapon ranks, and cyril isn't actually a villager.
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Oct 19, 2023 00:08
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Eh I pretty strongly disagree with that assessment for a few reasons. If you get Donnel early then your highest level (combat) units will be around 9-10 and your lower level ones will be 6-7. The "wasted" experience you give Donnel assuming no farm strats is minimal since he gets more for being lower level anyway. So it's a question of time and effort. The major opportunity cost for running Donnel is being weaker on the earlier maps but the return on his promotion is easily one of your better frontliners and by early midgame, far and away your best unit. For context Mercenary level 1 Donnel will pop out on average with 28 HP, 13 Str, and 14 Spd. This is stronger and faster and more durable than Chrom at 11. He gets armsthrift at Merc 5 as well, on a 100 luck growth which means 30% of the time he won't spend weapon durability, so you forge a bronze sword for basically 0 cost, give it to him and watch him go to town until he gets past E rank. In fact if your assessment is on experience "Wasted" as it were, the Donnel is probably one of the best units in the game, since his bang for a point of experience is notably higher than everyone else's. Additionally though there are a number of really trivial cheese strats to level up Donnel quickly and easily on Lunatic. I think the final note is that there's the idea of "Wasting" a second seal, but you get one for free in Chapter 8 and there's genuinely nobody better to spend that free second seal on at that point in the game.
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Oct 19, 2023 03:10
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Truck being incredibly slow is my favorite running gag from this LP so far 
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Oct 19, 2023 03:14
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The idea of wasting second seals is weird to me anyways because second sealing gets your dudes more stats anyways, any unit I want to use long-term usually gets one anyways due to the fact that only half of the visible level gets applied to the internal level. It wasn't uncommon for me to have people who I promoted without second sealing to just fall off and not have the stats to actually contribute well enough, so I've gotten used to the 2nd seal thing.
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Oct 19, 2023 03:26
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theshim posted:Truck being incredibly slow is my favorite running gag from this LP so far Well, it's not like they picked speed as their strength or anything. Who ever heard of a fast truck?
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Oct 19, 2023 05:04
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The chapter title makes me wonder if FE could manage a class that uses sickles as weapons... Maybe they could bring back druids with a complete reimagining. Even though I said the Galeforce grind is too much, on some level it pains me to see you're planning to dump both Donny and Gaius... Although I'd be quite happy if you stuck to the plan of putting Truck and Frederick together. I did that on my first playthrough 
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Oct 19, 2023 12:12
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You probably should've named your Robin Race Car, Jet Plane, something to that extent. Calling her Truck was setting yourself up for disaster.
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Oct 19, 2023 14:39
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Well at this rate I'm expecting the level that gives Truck speed to ONLY give speed. 'cause monkey's paw.
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Oct 19, 2023 18:04
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Chapter 5: Negative Reinforcements  Chrom / Sully B Chrom and Sully hit their B support, which does not grant them additional stat bonuses but will make them hopefully dual strike a little more. Chrom is definitely being ironic with that line because Sully has not been building up any strength at all.   Vaike / Lon'qu C Vaike almost becomes guilty of manslaughter against Lon'qu, causing them to become better friends. The stats from this one should help a lot - Lon'qu really wants that little bit of extra strength and defense, and Vaike appreciates the extra speed and luck. They do make a great pairing... If only they could get married!  Time to go sort out this diplomatic incident. I hope King Gangrel won't be offended that we took a detour to travel halfway across the country and grab a Rescue staff before meeting him.   Unwilling to spend money on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, Gangrel has instead kidnapped a foreign noblewoman to ransom in exchange for out of print GBA games. He can't pirate it because that class doesn't exist in this game.   Plegia might be a country of cartoon villains, but I do appreciate this backstory the game sets up between them and Ylise. It's a neat little bit of worldbuilding that makes me wish so much of the game's plot wasn't eaten up by Walhart adventures on a completely different continent. Don't worry though, the Plegian people are eventually granted reparations for the atrocities Chrom's dad committed against them! Just kidding, we take all their money and then Grima eats them.   Good thing we don't have to save Maribelle ourselves because the worst unit in the game is here to slowly rescue her for us while an endgame boss just kinda stands there and watches it happen. Aversa forgot her pegasus at home and it's really hard to run in those heels, she wasn't expecting to have to actually do anything at these negotiations. ...I'm not sure if Ricken is actually the worst unit in the game, but I've never liked him. That bandit must have had 14 or less HP and no resistance at all for Ricken to have KO'd him, unless Maribelle smacked him about a bit first.   While I'm applying game mechanics to cutscenes, I wonder how much damage Aversa would take from this? Assuming she has the same stats as she does when she briefly shows up in the battle prep for Chapter 9, Aversa has a resistance stat of 33. Ricken's 8 (+2) base magic combined with the might of his Elwind tome gives him 14 attack, but if you take Aversa's "w-wind magic?" reaction to infer that she's inherently weak to wind even when not ahorse then Elwind's might is increased to 22, giving Ricken 22 attack... Which is still not enough to damage her at all. I was going to be all like "boy I hope someone got fired for that blunder[/i] but upon watching it again I saw that Ricken's attack does indeed make a "no damage" tink noise and Aversa is pretty clearly blocking it, not getting hurt by it. So perhaps I should be fired for my blunder.  Anyway, Chapter 5 marks the first full on clash of armies of the game and it is quite a doozy. Look at all those wyvern riders! There's even more of them waiting in the forts... This map might appear to be a big slow climb up a mountainside, but since most of the enemies will be coming to us we'll mostly be hanging around at the bottom. Climbing too far ahead will only put my army in range of the ambush spawns faster. It is a rout and not all of the enemies move so I'll be sending my units up to get them eventually, but for most of it we'll be holding out at the bottom.  The Wyvern Rider is the most recent advancement in axe bandit technology, and now the throwing axe bosses can fly too. Orton's a lot bulkier than the last few axe fighter bosses, but he's also got a few weaknesses to keep him in check. At least he's not got Gamble to give him a kill you instantly crit chance, but the one skill he does have makes him more accurate instead of less. Wyvern Riders are weak to bows and wind magic but Orton's ability to counterattack at those ranges mean he'll most likely kill Ricken or Virion if they try to weaken him, so smacking him with Chrom's Falchion for effective damage is the best way to go,  The bandits fly now! Statwise they are basically just Barbarians but with extra bulk and accuracy in exchange for some exploitable weaknesses. While Chrom should be able to double and kill them fairly easily, these Wyvern Riders are made scary by the map's chokepointy cliff terrain which will limit the movement of my squishier units while not hampering the fliers at all. That said, it's really hard to take these guys seriously because of their weird mask things. They look like duck beaks... So if you see wyverns flying overhead, you'd better duck to avoid them! Dohoho.  This map also marks the first appearence of Dark Mages. Despite being infamously broken in this game thanks to their bulk and the powerful extra effects of dark magic, as enemies they're actually kind of awful. Low HP, low magic, low speed, and even low accuracy, although their class skills can help with the latter. Anathema is like Gamble but even more annoying, they'll make all nearby units both less evasive and more vulnerable to crits. Nosferatu restoring their health can also be irritating if they ever manage to hit you with it. So I guess maybe they aren't so awful after all?   The two immediate obstacles upon starting the map will be these guys to the left and these guys up top. Every single time I play this map I go with the exact same strategy - either Fred or my avatar go up top and block off the one tile chokepoint themselves, while the rest of my units bait out the units to the left and then slowly make their way left and up to start blocking off forts and get themselves in a good position to face the boss and his cronies when they start flying down. Is this the best way to approach things? I have no idea, I just started doing it one way and now it's the only way.  My deployment slots allow for one extra unit, so Virion gets one last chance before he's sent to warm the bench forever. He might die in a single round of combat to every single enemy type besides the Dark Mages, but he's just here to provide some chip damage against the Wyverns if necessary. Of course if any of them manage to attack him he'll die in either one hit or one round, so in an emergency he's getting paired up with someone else.  I'll also have Truck grab this tonic I bought last update. I haven't worked out if she'll need it or not, but honestly wasting 150 gold on a potentially superfluous buff is preferable to having to restart an entire map if it turns out she does need it after all. I just realised that I am for some reason using the American spelling of defense even when the game itself does not do that. I have no idea why... Maybe it just looks nicer? I guess with the number of Americans on the internet it's hard to escape from some US spellings. I'd never make it as a Camus type unit with this lack of devotion to my motherland.  And here we are! Ambush spawns, AKA same turn reinforcements, AKA rear end in a top hat reinforcements, AKA enemy phase reinforcements  Here's my crappy little diagram of where the reinforcements spawn in from. The bottom left fort spawns a Barbarian in on turn 3, and a Dark Mage on turn 5. The one above it spawns a Barb with a Hand Axe on turn 3 and a Myrmidon on turn 5. The middle fort spawns a Myrmidon on turn 3 and a Barbarian on turn 5, and the top left forts spawn in Wyvern Riders on turn 4 while all the top forts spawn them in on turn 5. It's easier to remember this all as "stand on the bottom forts, keep away from the upper forts", and that spawns start on turn 3 and stop after turn 5.  This too is a rout map, and for once that does actually impact how I'll be playing it since most likely the boss will be rushing in before I can wipe out the rest of his army. If it were defeat boss I could be missing out on EXP...  Not present on the prep screen for some bizarre reason are Ricken and Maribelle, who as you might be able to tell by this big sea of red danger zone tiles are in a lot of trouble right about now. If only I had some kind of long range staff with which I could rescue them... On Normal difficulty Ricken is entirely capable of fighting his own way out if you want, on Hard he can maybe handle an enemy or two to rendezvous with the rest of your army if you push forward fast enough, and in Lunatic mode the both of them are going to explode like the kid from I Wanna Be The Guy if any non-Dark Mage enemy so much as looks at them, necessitating either a first or second turn Rescue staff usage or an incredibly aggresive push from a souped up Frederick or avatar unit.  Ricken! This small child labourer is so weighed down by his dumb wizard hat that he only has 5 speed. His Elwind tome deals effective damage against Wyverns and can 2HKO them even on Lunatic mode, but he's not going to be defeating any of them without support from the rest of your army. Anybody else with a D rank in tomes will probably do much better against them in combat than he can, but as of right now he's the one with the book in his inventory so he may as well keep it. Ricken Skills: Magic + 2 Growths: HP: 80% STR: 20% MAG: 55% SKL: 50% SPD: 50% LCK: 65% DEF: 35% RES: 35% Ricken is... bad? Outside of child unit optimisation I feel like his only little niche is that he's got a slightly higher base level, magic, and tome rank than Miriel that makes him better at dealing chip damage if you never bothered giving Miriel any EXP or if she died. I know that is actually enough to give him some usage in this game's current low turn count record as a Rescue staff user, which I guess is pretty cool for him. Still though, outside of an incredibly specific environment where you're playing so fast that Miriel can't gain any EXP and you need a Mage promoted ASAP to get as many Rescue spammers as possible, he just seems not very good. Maybe I'm just mad that I looked at Ricken and thought "oh well he must be the high magic mage counterpart to Miriel's speedy mage" or something along those lines and his magic growth turned out to be worse than hers, if only by 5%.  Maribelle is also here, except she has a speed stat of 6 and that's 1 higher so I'm not going to start rambling about how awful she is. She will also die if anybody so much as looks at her, but since combat isn't her job that's not as big a deal. Maribelle Skills: Resistance + 2 Growths: HP: 65% STR: 20% MAG: 60% SKL: 50% SPD: 50% LCK: 80% DEF: 15% RES: 55% Maribelle is Lissa on a horse, which is pretty cool except that if you're playing as slowly as I am then you'll most likely have fed Lissa so much EXP that she'll be miles ahead of Maribelle statwise. A second healer is always appreciated, especially when they have 2 extra movement, but I've never really found her to be all that useful in the longterm... Perhaps if you choose to start putting all of your heal EXP into her instead of Lissa you'll end up with a super powerful overleveled Valkyrie, but otherwise Maribelle's going to do what she always does for me which is serve as a backup healer for a few maps until she is eventually replaced by Libra and Anna. Extra movement speed might be nice, but extra range on Rescue and Physic counts for more in this game!  Anyway, first order of business is to send Truck up top and hopefully clear out as many enemies as possible. She's very bulky now thanks the the combination of Frederick, her tonic, and all those levels she gained last map. Doubled by Myrmidons? Who cares!  The Barbarians are even less of a threat thanks to weapon triangle advantage. Truck's a little bulkier than a base level Frederick even before all of her pair-up bonuses now.   She can't counterattack magic with her sword though, so she's going to have to sling some inaccurate Thunders and hope Fred does his part with dual strikes. For once I actually wish he had killed here - my bad for trying to save weapon uses and only letting him attack with an Iron Lance...  This is what her stats look like with Fred's help now. Keep in mind that base level Fred has 28 HP and 14 defense... She's even got more strength than he would at base, she just has the problem of lacking any particularly strong weapons to hit with.   Vaike's C support with Lon'qu now gives him a whopping 6 speed when paired up, but neither he nor Lonk can double much regardless. I find myself relying on Killing Edge crits to clear out these bottom left enemies on most of my lunatic attempts.   Chrom can double and deal a lot more damage, but I'd rather have Sully up front to maximise movement. Nobody is actually going to attack any of these guys, they're instead going to sit barely in range and lure them over. 4 enemies is way too many to deal with on one enemy phase.  Thankfully their movement ranges work out quite nicely so that each pair may bait one enemy each. I will need to sweep up all the remaining ones by the next turn though, and that can be tricky.  Now that I know where my front line is, it's time for these two goobers to make themselves not dead. The game is nice enough to leave exactly one tile where the two of them can pair up and hide safely in on turn 1, but I'd rather just grab them ASAP.  Which is quite easy thanks to promoted Lissa's gargantuan Rescue range. Normally she needs to pair up with Miriel to get the magic to reach this far.  Rescue mission successful! Now can we go home? Exactly where the rescuee gets placed next to your rescuer changes slightly across various games in the series, but a general safe assumption to make is that if any possible position for your unit to be placed in could result in their death then that's where the game is going to put them. I think Awakening follows a formula of south > east > west > north when determining where to put someone, but don't take my word for it. If only the game let you select a tile to put them in after selecting which unit to grab...  Sometimes I wish attacks with this little accuracy were guaranteed to miss, so much FE earlygame is your sword users facing countless bandits that have like 20% hit against them. I'll confess this clear was my first attempt I didn't really have any strategy in mind when clearing out the left side, so this is all kinda just "lure them over and hope for the best". But if Lon'qu did get hit then I have two healers to heal him with now!  Truck's not doing so hot a job of killing all these guys, owing both to my poor choice of weapon on Fred and these jerks who can steal back the damage you deal to them if they hit you. Just a few more chapters and then the OP Nosferatu tome shall be mine!!! I only have plans to use one Dark Mage at present, but maybe I'll give up and make everybody one. It would be funny if I did that with Cordelia, if not at all sensible.  Some of these Wyverns move instantly, some wait for the boss to start their advance. Looking at the wiki, it says the boss doesn't move until provoked... He's always started moving after a few turns for me. Maybe I've been provoking him all this team without realising it?  Anyway, as you can see Truck's not done a very good job at cleaning up all this mess. She's taken quite a beating, too... I might have to have Lissa heal her.  Which might be a little dangerous with all these Wyverns hovering about. Chokepoints are a foreign concept to fliers. Truck still manages to block their movement a little, but it won't matter when they get closer next turn.  Neither Lon'qu nor Sully managed to get the requisite crits or dual strikes to defeat their assailants either, so the starting area is quite packed. How will I get myself out of this jam? I hope you weren't hoping for a calculated, trial and error honed clear like Chapter 2.   The high might of the Killing Edge combined with Vaike's huge strength boost makes Lon'qu the stronger one when attacking, which is pretty funny to see. Can I get a combination of crits, dual strikes, and misses that'll let him KO this Dark Mage?  Seems like it. Vaike did nothing and Lon'qu refused to crit, but the mage missed Nosferatu so it's all good.  Sully can safely take out this weakened Barbarian, leaving only a full HP Myrm and a nearly dead Barb left.  I think Lissa, Ricken, and Virion can all work together to take out this Myrmidon if they team up, so I'll have each of them- oh well done Lissa you've already screwed everything up.   ...is what I would say had I not masterfully planned for Lon'qu to dual strike and also crit. Perhaps I could have gone back and refined my strategy to make these first few turns a little more reliable.   That leaves Sumia to steal this last kill. She's both too weak and too inaccurate, maybe she should have gotten that forge after all. I do hope it's not too late for her to catch up...  Well she's certainly not going to catch up if she never gains speed. Don't get me wrong, Sumia hitting her bad strength growth twice is very cool, but I'm used to Sumia gaining only speed and never anything else. Even with Speed+2 she's still not doubling anything besides Dark Mages right now!  This area's all cleaned up, but at the end of next turn there's going to be a guy from this fort and another guy with a Hand Axe from the fort up top. The upper fort spawn comes with a droppable weapon I will want, but this lower fort should probably be blocked for good measure.  Unfortunately my Lissa improv strat means Truck's just stuck healing herself this turn. She should be able to stay alive another enemy phase, but those mages do scare me a bit.   The rare and endangered Lowtruck is unfortunately just as slow as the regular kind, but at least she's also now a little bulkier! Her magic is catching up somewhat too. That extra defense might just be enough to get her out of this jam.  These Myrms were never a huge problem, but it's satisfying to see them deal so little damage after that level all the same.  It's this I want to watch out for. Truck's resistance isn't bad, but 9 or 10 damage per hit is still scary when she's only got 30 or so HP. There's also the problem of me having to choose between her either dodging Barbarians with her sword or counterattacking magic with Thunder...  I really want those Mages gone ASAP. But how do I get rid of them? There's a lot of other units in the way.  But a more pressing issue right now is these Wyverns who have breached the bottom cliff. Thankfully this one was dumb enough to stand where Chrom could smack him for effective damage... I do actually like the gameplay design of these early Wyverns a lot, they're tough but they have exploitable weaknesses, one of which being one you're guaranteed to have thanks to Chrom's invincible Falchion.  Very, very satisfying. Why'd you give a big flying mount a weapon with such short reach anyway? Just gives the guy you're hitting a chance to hit back.   Both Chrom and Sully snag a level thanks to dual strike EXP. Chrom continues his amazing speed streak and makes up for his previous poor showing in defense gains, while Sully unfortunately appears to have entered her flop era.   I can think a little clearer now I've only one flier to worry about. A promoted Lissa can take a hit from a Wyvern and still live, so she's free to heal Truck up from where she's standing. Truck repays the favour by removing her weapon and blocking any mages from finishing off Lissa, ensuring she lives another turn but also not really fixing the problem of there being too many enemies.   This fort is now secure! Would ambush spawns be more bareable if you only had to stand on a fort tile once to prevent any reinforcements? Probably not, but for now Maribelle can claim this tiny little castle as Ylissean soil.  There he is, the first spawn of the run. A Dark Mage would have spawned south of him but Maribelle's blocking the front door with her horse and he's too anxious to ask her if she can move.  I am happy that they're not Wyverns, but it still feels a little rude that your introduction to enemy reinforcements are these 1-2 range attackers. That's a no-go area 7 tiles wide around the fort if you don't want to risk anybody getting hit!   Whew! Lissa didn't need to dodge this to survive or anything, but it's appreciated all the same. It means she'll be able to hang around this spot without being at risk at dying for a little longer at least.  Virion could help, but my overly cautious play put him a bit too far away from the front lines. Oops!   Truck's no weapon ploy managed to get her by with 0 damage last turn, so she and Lissa can safely take out their new friend together. I could have Wind magic right about now if I'd bought some, but it would be base level Wind with 1 might, and 1 x 3 is 3 which is exactly as strong as a Thunder tome.  Meanwhile, very far away from the flying units... Ricken could help chip people down but this one guy just happens to be capable of killing him in retaliation. Ironically Ricken would be a lot more useful here if I did want to raise him, because then he could use his actually pretty substantial damage output to finish off weakened enemies and not need to worry about them living to counter him.  Sumia would also die in one hit if she tried it, so Sully's gotta step in. Perhaps I could have had Ricken pair up with Lon'qu to get enough speed to not die so he could have weakened the Barb for Sumia, but hindsight is 20/20.  Thank you! Vaike can have this... next map, because I don't want to shuffle inventories around right now. Hand Axes are puny and weak in this game but that doesn't stop you from stacking stats and dual strike chances so high that they allow you to mow down enemies with them regardless. Vaike's more than a few levels away from doing that, though...  I might be planning on dropping Maribelle eventually, but there's no reason she can't be useful in the short term. I could also have her swap her Mend with Lissa's Heal so Lissa would earn more EXP, but then Mari would be healing guys for like 10 HP at a time.  Enemy phase rolls around, and the Truck EXP grind resumes. Now this is a level I can complain about... Mostly. It is nice to see her gain magic?   Oops, she's really getting clobbered over here. Should I have unequipped Frederick? Should I just leave him unequipped forever? Maybe.  In an emergency I could have them swap places, but then Frederick would be getting clobbered even harder. This incidentally is why I did not pick resistance as Truck's bane, because these Mages hurt!  Wyverns have spawned from the northwest forts and are now gunning down the sides. Chrom could take them on one at a time, but perhaps not all at once...  That said, he'll only face a 23% displayed hit chance if he sits on that fort and waits for them to come to him. Two hits would kill him, but this still seems fairly safe? There is also Sully's 10% extra chance to block a hit too.  I think it's my best option. Good luck, Chrom!  I can have Vaike stand here to hopefully be a more juicy target for one of them, and then he and his friends can pile on whoever gets lured.   Nosferatu finally bites the dust, meaining one less headache on this side. Truck's recent magic gains were the reason she was strong enough to take him out... I'd probably have switched to Fred and fixed things that way had she not gotten them, but it is nice when things happen to work out.  Wait, didn't I leave Chrom in range of only two Wyverns...? Looks like I didn't count tiles properly and there was actually a third one all the way up the top of the map.   And yet it's absolutely no big deal at all. This isn't a cutscene, the element of surprise does not allow you to trump gameplay mechanics.   It's probably quite hard to chop a guy with an axe when you're flying one of those things. Must be pretty awkward taking off after failing a lunge like that too, the weight of the axe would shift your center of balance towards the ground...  Here comes the boss! The wiki says his aggro condition is someone entering either his range or the range of one of the stationary Wyverns at top, and I must have had Chrom enter one of their ranges when he stood on that fort. So that explains why he always comes after me a few turns into the map! So going out of my way to block a fort and its potential ambush spawns was actually not so hot an idea after all.  Yikes! It's a real mess out here, Wyverns everywhere. What should I do?  Cleaning up the right side should be first prioirty. Fred's gotta kill fast, and that means he needs to use a weapon ironically named after someone who does not and can not do that.   You get outta here too.  Lissa might be in a little trouble next turn, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it... Hopefully Chrom lures most of the Wyverns over to his position, rather than them all chasing Truck.   Hooray, Virion did something useful! But Vaike can't finish the job even with his cool new weapon. He's been missing a lot of strength gains, he's actually kinda weak!   ...tough scales are kind of like armour. Wouldn't you like to see an armoured Wyvern class? I'd say that having Wyvern Lords count as armoured units would be a cool way of helping to nerf them a bit, but in all honestly I don't think it would achieve much. It's pretty easy to avoid effective damage when you can fly, and spamming enemies with armourslaying weapons everywhere would just make Generals instead. Still though, it'd be neat!! Imagine a big ironclad wyvern hitting the ground with a huge clang when you shoot it down.  There's that strength I was missing. And some luck, too! Shame to see no speed, but I can only ask so much of Vaike.  I feel lucky, Chrom can take all of this. And if he can't, well then it's the fault of RNG and not me. 23% displayed hit is like 10% true hit, he'll be fine. Plus it'll leave him close to the boss if I need to quickly sort him out next turn.  Oops, I didn't even see this guy! Looks like he didn't see Chrom either though, dohoho!   But now Truck is under fire from the Wyverns too. Would be nice if Fred helped out, but we can't have everything we want. But what we can have is... speed? Nice, Truck, you did it! You even got res too! A shame you killed everybody who uses magic already.  Truck's speed comes at a dark price however, and that is denying Chrom his 7 level speed streak. I do however see and appreciate his defense growth here.  Unfortunately Orton has placed himself in this very awkward middle spot... I was hoping he'd swing around to either Truck or Chrom's side, but now he's right in between all my guys.  Lissa may be in a spot of bother too. Perhaps I should have had her get a head start on running a few turns ago?  I could have Chrom rush in and try messing the boss up, but if Sully doesn't kill with a dual strike there's the real possibility that Orton could hit him once and then again on enemy phase, and I'm a lot less willing to gamble on 44% than I am 23...  This does appear to be a bit of a doozy. This red area represents the combined range of Orton and all the Wyverns to the right. What do I do?  Turns out the answer was to look at Orton's stats and realise that his Tomohawk is actually a little weaker than the Steel Axes of the other enemies, and that Lissa can just run into his range and stay outside the range of everyone else. I couldn't do any of this had I not grabbed that Master Seal from Anna a few chapters back ago. I guess secret shops do make this game more exciting.  Regardless, I'm ready for him. Virion is paired up with Lissa because... I dunno? Perhaps I didn't have faith in my calculations that Lissa could take a hit so I gave her some extra bulk, maybe I figured that since he couldn't survive a hit from Orton that he could try for a dual strike instead. They both sound plausible.  Meanwhile Truck chunks away at her remaining enemies, none of which can really hurt her thanks to their lack of magic. Hey look, there's speed again! I must admit I'm a little disappointed, I was starting to have fun complaining about how she never got any.   Ow. Wouldn't it be funny if he only had one of those and had to go pick it up after throwing it? I bet it's very difficult aiming a projectile from dragonback.  This doesn't look too difficult to clean up, although the overlap between the enemy ranges is a little annoying for whoever wants to attack the boss. Who deserves the Orton kill? Chrom's too far away to attack him, so it might go to Vaile.  ...I can dream. You know if this were Fates she could have a guaranteed dual strike from an adjacent Virion...  This is what Virion's combat looks like right now. He'd only ever be able to survive a single hit if he were paired with Kellam, and even then he'd still get doubled and die.  Maribelle heals back some of Lissa's damage and she goes another round. If only this were Radiant Dawn, then her magic would be effective! Not that I want him killed, I just want him weakened for someone else. I appreciate Virion's cool action shot pose here, it almost looks like he's about to-  This sure seems to happen to me a lot. I think that some part of me just refused to believe Virion could ever kill anything, even if that thing was a flier.  Congratulations Virion, that's the coolest thing you'll ever do in this LP. Silly Orton, war is already upon Virion's soil! That's why he fled his country and continent and wound up in Ylisse. gently caress wait I was going to make an Orton Antivirus joke and I forgot to do it. Hey can you get back up on your wyvern please? It'll only take a moment I swear  Well I hope Lissa enjoys this cool level she just stole. She's actually quite fast now! 14 speed is enough to double Fighters in Chapter 6, so she might be doing a lot more than just healing next map.  That's 5,000 gold in bar form, and because I'll never not have access to shops it may as well have been droppable money anyway. That's gold for an extra seal from a secret shop, or maybe a cool new forge for Sumia. I think she might need one of those...   That's not the end of the map though. First of all I've got to take down this straggler, losing Frederick's Eliwood's Blade in the process. Truck was the one who picked it up though, so perhaps it should be Truck's Frederick's Eliwood's Blade.  These three don't move until provoked so they're just kinda sat there waiting for me to kill them. I'll take my sweet time setting everybody up in the perfect position to do that, of course.   Grabbing this sparkling tile in the process. They're still at only a C support, but there's some time to grind up their rank yet.   That's one kill for Sumia, but not enough to grant her a second level. Hmm, do I want to forge her an Iron Lance or should I try holding out for her to reach C lances and forge her Sully's Killer Lance? Then Sully can take Fred's Silver Lance and he can use Alm's Blade.   Oh, these tiles can increase your weapon rank to a new level! I must correct myself from a few updates ago. I don't even have any C rank tomes, let alone B, but I do now have a D rank Elwind thanks to Ricken. Obviously he's not keeping it.   Boink. I've been trying to have Sully build support ranks with both Frederick and Sully just in case she needs a partner in the near future.   That's right, I've learned my lesson. This last kill is not going to Virion because of an untimely dual strike, I will ensure that.   It's going to the Vaike. 17 turns, and yet only like 6 or 7 of them were spent doing most of the fighting! The other 10 were all me repositioning my units to take on the last few guys. This clear was very touch and go... Ideally, I'd have had a much better strategy in mind than winging it. Maybe next map I might do a few trial attempts to help optimise the first few turns, both for reliability and for better EXP distribution. The randomness of dual strikes and guards does make that difficult though, and I don't want to constantly unequip my paired units just to prevent them.   Thanks Maribelle, your gratitude makes this whole ordeal worthwhile. Next time I'm leaving you to die!! If you'd like a random hot take, I think Maribelle is a worse written Lorenz from Three Houses. Or maybe Lorenz is a better written Maribelle from Awakening because her game came first. I won't explain or justify that.   The Plegian army marches... Their invasion forces could upon the Ylissean capital in days! We'd better hurry and OH poo poo AN OPTIONAL CHAPTER PACK YOUR BAGS WE'RE GOING TO REGNA-FEROX  ...I'm kidding, Paralogue 2 sucks. We're not doing that right now. Just like we're not buying anything from this secret shop that just spawned, I don't want any of this! Seeing as this was a pivotal chapter and the next one is going to be just as tricky, I think it's time I showed off everybody's stats again.  Chrom has certainly had a glowup, going from a guy who can survive a single hit and not much else to a guy who can still only survive a single hit but who can also double and deal a lot of damage in return. His reliance on dual strikes or effective weaponry for damage means he's not all that reliable, but as soon as he accumulates enough HP to start living two attacks per turn I can see him snowballing hard.  Truck is now firmly in the role of Second Frederick, surpassing or equal to his level 1 stats in everything. Even her poor speed got fixed a little thanks to her EXP windfall this map. All she really needs now is a better weapon... Perhaps instead of spending all my money on a Sumia forge I should go shopping for everyone instead.  Fred has definitely peaked, but he's still very useful right now. Not having to be Truck's babysitter will help him a lot, too... Plus he's still faster than she is. Maybe I can have him buy an axe and start working on that axe rank? It might be cool to have him as some kind of flying unit.  Sully's last two levels have unfortunately been quite bad, and she now pales somewhat significantly in comparison to Chrom. I'll have to try get her as many kills as I can in Chapter 6, which hopefully won't be too hard if she can get a little lucky with her Killer Lance.  Vaike's no longer getting doubled and killed, but besides that he's still firmly in the has to be fed EXP phase, and unfortunately he'll most likely stay like that until he can get his hands on the Chapter 8 Master Seal. That said, he's had some pretty solid levels so far.  Lissa's a genuinely great combat unit right now, and very handy to have around. With Truck's help she could certainly double and KO quite a few enemies if I really needed her to for whatever reason, and Truck could do the same with hers. Unfortunately going around pairing my one healer with other units isn't really a good use of my action economy.  Lon'qu got one level and it wasn't very good. Maybe his next level will be better? Honestly, it might decide if I use him in the long term or if I just bench him. He's good for helping Vaike with his stats, and he's not bad when being supported by Vaike himself, but he's really just one of many mouths who need feeding right now.  ...like this one. I'm still rooting for you, Sumia! You can do it! You'll steal so many kills next map and you'll get speed strength and defense in all of them and you'll show everybody!! Next time: John Chrommer in Terminator 2 Falchions
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Oct 26, 2023 23:41
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Well, so much for the slow Truck jokes. As for Maribelle, she gets a big jump in my books because her support with Gaius is one of my favorites in the whole series. Still absolutely terrible for combat, though.
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Oct 27, 2023 00:25
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I think Ricken is slightly better than Miriel in a theoretical optimized environment, since Miriel's classes, while better for practical use, don't offer her many interesting skills outside of like... Vengeance, Lifetaker, and Renewal, while Ricken can get things like Aegis and Luna. That said, though, he has to deal with the arduous process of getting to a point where he can actually get those skills, and for the time that takes you could have gotten multiple children.
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Oct 27, 2023 01:42
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Maribelle is cute and doesn't spend her time pestering uninterested women for dates, therefore she's automatically better than Lorenz in my book. I also enjoy her 'hidden depths' and ambitions a lot more than Lorenz's, which fell kind of flat for me.
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Oct 27, 2023 02:19
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my son is also named orton
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Oct 27, 2023 07:39
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And that right there is why I don't like Ricken either. He's so slow that he gets doubled and killed by the majority of crap. His counterpart Miriel has to worry about being one-shot, but that problem goes away by just slapping an Angelic Robe on her. Then you can actually use Miriel to counter-kill. The other problem is that like Faillen Angel said, he has interesting skill setups, but children are there by the time they'd come alone. So bad early, outclassed late. Great showing. I'm not fond of Maribelle either, though that comes down to healer stat problems. I've literally leveled her to 20 before, reclassed her to Mage, and she still had trouble hitting caps in her second class. It doesn't help that her kid is situated kind of badly too. I actually tend to buy a lot of Wind Tomes myself, this Fire Emblem still follows the general rule that enemies have iffy resistance. So the reduction in might kind of doesn't end up materially mattering. Plus the accuracy increase over even Fire is 10 hit, which is the equivalent of 5 skill, and it only loses the equivalent of 1 magic. It also has the fringe benefit of having the most uses and being the cheapest of the basic tomes.
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Oct 27, 2023 08:13
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Ricken definitely feels like a strong contender for the worst unit in this, yeah. Weirdly, every time I have tried to use him he ends up getting way more defense than he should with that 35% growth, but his speed stays garbage and he's still a mage with no access to Nostanking so it never really ends up giving him a niche.
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Oct 27, 2023 10:07
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Ricken also has really bizarre class choices too. Like okay, Cavalier gets him Luna... but why Archer? Could have at least given him Cleric so you can use that gimmick 30% Str growth rate on War Cleric if thou must.
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Oct 27, 2023 20:23
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mycatscrimes posted:Maribelle is cute and doesn't spend her time pestering uninterested women for dates, therefore she's automatically better than Lorenz in my book. I also enjoy her 'hidden depths' and ambitions a lot more than Lorenz's, which fell kind of flat for me. ApplesandOranges posted:Ricken also has really bizarre class choices too. Like okay, Cavalier gets him Luna... but why Archer? Could have at least given him Cleric so you can use that gimmick 30% Str growth rate on War Cleric if thou must. IIRC the reclass options characters get in both Awakening and Fates were picked based off of what would make sense for the character's personality rather than any gameplay balance reason, and Ricken gets those two because Chrom also gets them, and he looks up to Chrom as a big brother (despite not being able to support with him...). Cherche is in the same boat with her options all being magical staff users despite her being a physical attacker with huge strength and bad magic.
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Oct 27, 2023 21:04
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Maribelle at least is not saddled with any of Lorenz's awful haircuts. As much of a preening peacock as he is, you'd figure Lorenz would at least be able to afford a decent barber.
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Oct 27, 2023 21:06
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The only good noblesse oblige character is Ferdinand. (von Aegir)
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Oct 27, 2023 22:27
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Totally reasonable take imo!
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Oct 28, 2023 00:01
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Chapter 6: Marth Wins By Doing Absolutely Nothing  Two new secret shops! Now I did say I was going to forge a new lance for Sumia, but what if I spent all 5000 gold I'll be getting from selling my bullion on seals instead? A Steel Axe for Vaike could be nice too, but he's already got his own weapon. ...poor Sumia's never getting that lance, is she.  Considering the lack of ways to spend gold outside of the overworld I'm really not sure why gold drops in sellable item form rather than just going straight into your treasury. In earlier games you could argue there's a level of strategising needed to get the sellable loot items to the shops so you could convert them into cash, but here there's no purpose to bullions besides the satisfaction of hearing that money sound when you sell them. Explains why Fates did away with these items, I guess! I'd never even thought about it until now.  Speaking of Fates's mechanics, I was also so used to the random gimmick items having 0 monetary value to prevent you from farming them that I never even considered the possibility of trying to sell them in this game. Somehow I feel like this 35 hit axe is going to be more useful in money form than it is as an actual weapon. Alm's Blade and the Superior Axe both feel too valuable to sell though.  So if I just wanted to beat this game and be done with it, the best move here would be to give this Master Seal to Truck and promote her. Chapter 6 might force the player to defend at least two different chokepoints at once, but once you're past that there really is no mandatory map in Awakening that can stop you from juggernauting it with one overwhelmingly powerful unit, unless you're playing on Lunatic+ where said overpowered unit might kill themselves fighting all the enemies with Counter (and even then you can mitigate that with Noserfatu or Sol and a bit of luck...). A promoted truck would have no trouble snowballing through everything and everyone with her high stats and still reasonable EXP gain thanks to Veteran, and I could even marry her to Chrom and get a superpowered Lucina and Morgan in the process. That would be incredibly boring though, so I won't do that. Instead I'll probably give this to Chrom? None of my unpromoted units besides Truck have hit level 10 yet, but he's the closest.  The Second Seal is what Truck's gonna have. As a Mercenary she can get Armsthrift, making her weapons last a lot longer. She can then promote and get Sol, giving her the occassional heal from her own attacks... I'd probably have to reclass her into something goofy afterwards so she doesn't solo the entire game by herself. War Cleric Truck? Maybe.  The other consequence of my rampant spending is that I can no longer grab this Steel Sword from an earlier secret shop. Truck, Chrom, Lon'qu, and even Sully all would appreciate a slightly stronger weapon. I do have the Killing Edge, but only one guy can use that at a time.  Truck doesn't even have anything better than her starting Bronze Sword!! Or maybe Stahl's sword, I don't know which one is which. She might be strong enough that she can still hurt a lot when she's using it, but as hard to kill as she is she's surprisingly slow at killing things herself.   Actually, do you know what's cheaper than forged weapons? Tonics! I can always give Sumia a strength tonic if I really want her getting kills on a map. I did end up using neither of these during my successful clear of Chapter 6, but that's only because I didn't see any glaring need for any of them on my units. It's nice to have reserves, just in case... ...i'm gonna hang onto these until the end of time aren't i   Truck / Frederick A Units who've reached an A support with one another get yet another boost to the pair-up stats their class normally provides, meaning Truck would now be receiving a whopping +6 strength and defense from Fred. That said, I'll not actually be pairing them up next map - I'll need to be fighting on multiple fronts at once, and combining two of my best units together would be inefficient. "Freddy Bear" is a funny name for Fred. M!Robin calls him "Frederickson", which I guess they thought sounded like a more heterosexual nickname to tease someone with. Personally I like to call him "Breadstick", because it... sounds like Frederick? I think??? It's a good thing I've never called him that out loud before, people might think I was weird.   Frederick / Sumia C Frederick and Sumia also get their first support, something that again would be very nice if I were pairing them up next map. If Fred's breakfast is the source of his strength then maybe Sumia should try eating five dozen eggs, then she'd be roughly the size of a barge.  I think this might be my current record for number of non-chapter things I've done before the start of the next chapter. Maybe I should start splitting these up again... Anyway, here's Chapter Six: Foreseer, not to be confused with Chapter Four: Sixseer.   Chrom angsts a little in Ylisse's role in the current state of Plegia, a nice little bit of worldbuilding and nuance that again really makes me wish more of this game's plot focused on the war with Gangrel. Although it is a little hard to take this seriously when Plegia's name exists to make a nation full of people you call a word that's one letter away from "Plebians".  'sup Lucina. Wouldn't it be really funny if all along Lucina's plan was to travel back in time, make that secret shop spawn in at the end of chapter 3, and have me buy a Master Seal so I could promote Lissa into a class with the exact same outfit as Emmeryn, therefore causing the assassins to kill the wrong person? Maybe Lissa was a terrible aunt who never sent her any money on her birthday.   Now hold on a moment! Astutue viwers may note that Lucina traveled back in time to this moment to prevent Em's death, with Chrom merely sustaining an injury from this attack, and yet she claims she's "about to save his life". What's up with that? Well I was about to go on a little spiel about how the original Japanese script didn't say that, but unforunately I never bookmarked the page I learned that on and now I can't find it again, so I'm hesitant to say anything considering I'm both going off of memory and maybe also a dubious source in the first place. Regardless this scene is extremely cool so even if it is "technically inaccurate" who really cares. Plus I'm sure you can say that Lucina wanted to say something dramatic to make sure Chrom takes her seriously, or that in a roundabout way she is saving her life, or that distinguishing between preventing someone from being injured and preventing someone from dying in an attack by an assassin is not something you should feel the need to do when you're about two seconds away from fending off said assassin.   Thinking quickly, Lucina does a backflip for some reason and then her mask falls off and reveals to any player who did not have the volume turned on that she is in fact a girl disguising herself as Marth. Cool! Or perhaps Lucina's from a more progressive future and it is in fact not cool to assume that based off of her voice. Maybe if you did assume that then you're the reason FE games keep reimplementing gender-locked classes even though nobody likes them! Go home and think about that, you awful person.  This map is an easy candidate for my favourite in all of Awakening, which unfortunately means once it's done we're all downhill from here. Emmeryn is enclosed all the way up her little room at the top, and there's multiple enemies approaching from many corridors all out to get her. There may only be one entrance to her room right now, but any Thief can upon up that bottom door and make keeping her alive that much harder. Can you use the Rescue staff to change her position and make her potentially harder to reach? I... actually have no idea! I never even thought of that.  Emmeryn's stats are not at all good, so don't count on her surviving any attack at all besides maybe one round from the weakest Dark Mages on this map. Note that she has skills from the Mage rather than the Cleric class, which unfortunately are of no help at all when she's unarmed and deny her a potentially lucky save from Miracle.  Guarding one half of Emmeryn's double doors is Lucina, who is 3/4ths on the way through her journey from conspicuously absent on the map to red unit to green and then finally blue. In a surprising but kind maneuver from the game designers, her stats get scaled up with each difficulty so that she does not get mowed down instantly by the stronger enemies she'll be facing. She's still more in danger from individual enemies than she would be on normal or hard, but she's entirely capable of putting up a fight. There's no reward or failure condition based on Lucina's survival, so don't worry too much about keeping her alive unless your strategy depends on her holding the chokepoint. I find her usefulness varies depending on hit RNG - sometimes she stays alive the whole chapter and takes on swarms of enemies by herself, sometimes she gets two unlucky hits in against her from the initial wave of Fighters and dies basically instantly. She can use her Falchion to heal herself for 20HP, but that's still only just over half of her health. Of course, you must also consider this: any enemy Lucina defeats is one that your army does not, meaning you don't get the EXP. Now playing in such a way that she never sees combat would likely require aggressive play and some degree of overextending, but wouldn't it be nice if we managed to make it work?  At here at the bottom is Validar and his entourage. He's back once again, and this time he's got even more HP! All his other stats are lower than what they were in the premonition though. He's the first promoted boss we'll be facing, and he's a bit of a doozy - not only is magic rather hard to deal with at this stage of the game, but he's got a very deadly skill...  Vengeance's 26% chance of activating combined with Validar's high HP stat and ability to counterattack at 1 and 2 range means he can potentially reach a point where he can one-shot every unit you have with just one lucky skill proc. Plus he's got Anathema (or hex? idk they're both too similar) to reduce both your avoid and your crit avoid, and if he's lost any HP at all then a Vengeance boosted crit is certain to kill anybody in one shot. A good way to safely dispose of him would be to have him make the first attack, letting a ranged counterattack bring his health down to half so he can be killed in one shot from a heavy hitter like Frederick the next turn, denying him any chance to boost his damage output with Vengeance. He's a good case for not making your avatar have a luck or resistance bane! But he also won't be moving for a while, so let's forget about him for now.  I'm not sure why Validar thought this crowded indoor stealth mission would be the best place for Cavaliers to make their debut, but whatever. Cavaliers have high well rounded stats and movement, but at least they're weak to Chrom's Rapier. I always thought their helmets looked dumb as hell but apparently they're quite realistic in terms of design? Sure it might be hard seeing through those slots on the front, but seeing out of an eye with an arrow through it would be much harder. Their horses can steer them in the right direction.   Some Dark Mages have Nosferatu, some just have regular magic. When they use regular magic it becomes a lot more obvious how bad their stats are... This one is comically inaccurate, and has even less might than the Mages in the Prologue did with the same weapon. Magic still sucks to fight against and they are a little annoying to actually kill, but it's amusing to me nonetheless.  I've enough team slots for my full squad plus two extra, so Maribelle's here for heal support and Stahl will serve as Truck's dedicated pair-up partner. There's a reason I'm picking him and not Kellam, and it's all to do with movement. Truck also has a kitted out inventory with both Ricken's tome and a seal just in case I decide I want to reclass her. I'm not planning on having her reach level 20 before she reclasses, I just don't want her losing tome access just yet.  Chrom & Sully will be handling the leftmost side, while Truck and Stahl will go down the middle. I don't think Chrom or Sully will be enough to take all those enemies by themselves, but help will be coming... Maribelle's just here because Lissa wants to support Vaike on the other side. If anything, I think I'd rather have had Lissa and her combat helping out on this side instead. But hindsight is 20/20!  The others will handle the rightmost side, which is the more easily held of the two. As much as I'd love to glue Frederick to Sumia and have him boost her stats super high, he's going to be kept unpaired so he can help out as much as possible.   Validar outlines his plan to his closest associate, a Dark Mage with the Assassin class portrait. Unfortunately for Validar he only brought two actual Assassins to this assassination and they both died to Lucina's time travel sucker punch.   Not only do we have to deal with an assassination attempt, we also have to pick up this guy too. I've no plans to train him up or anything, but my 0 death policy demands I grab him regardless.  The objective says rout the enemy, but this is basically a defend map. Honestly, having a defend objective would make no difference at all to how it plays, it's all in the map design. Unlike most defend maps there's no reinforcements here - all the enemies you see on the map now are the ones you'll be fighting. And yet despite the lack of reinforcements and the fact that every enemy besides the boss immediately begins to move unprovoked, it still feels like you're fighting off waves and waves of reinforcements because of how they're placed and how they all reach your front line at different times. This is a good map! I like it!! I feel like I've got to make that clear because I've made so many little digs at this game already, I've got to throw it a bone when I can. Ignore Kellam at the top there, this was from a past attempt where I brought him instead of Stahl. But do I really need to tell you to ignore Kellam?  Gaius starts two turns worth of movement away from Chrom, making recruiting him a matter of letting him come to you. Or you could just kill him and get a tiny slither of EXP from him in addition to his droppable sword, but Thieves are nice to have so don't do that. Gaius Skills: Locktouch (allows unit to open doors and chests without the need for keys) Growths: HP: 85% STR: 60% MAG: 20% SKL: 70% SPD: 70% LCK: 35% DEF: 30% RES: 20% Gaius is a Thief who steals things. Basewise he's comparable to Lon'qu, with a little extra speed and strength, but his D rank in swords means he can't use that cool Killing Edge straight away. His base strength growth is deceptively high, meaning he'll pop off if you reclass him to a Fighter, but I've no idea if that's really worth it or not. Maybe I'll try it one day? Now I kind of wish I was using him, but I think it's too late to start swapping around team members now. Oh, and that line about not wanting to kill the Exalt and just being here for the treasure?   Don't let yourself make any assumptions based off of those words, because given the chance he will gladly pick a fight with the nearest and angriest woman on a horse to die a pointless death and force you to restart. So no leaving him be to let him make his way over to the treasure room while you clean up around him before swinging back over to recruit him.  At least I got this screencap out of it. I've got to keep this in my back pocket for the next time somebody gets a crappy +HP and nothing else level...   I'm still going to ignore Gaius for a short while, however. Chrom pairs up with Sully for stats and then heads over to dislodge this Fighter from the central chokepoint. I've given him Lon'qu's Killing Edge for now, which as you can see is enough to let him one round this guy.  ...it's only the first turn of the map though, so why waste weapon uses when I can just hope for some good luck? Sometimes dual strikers pull through.   With the obstruction removed, Truck hitches a ride off of Stahl and wedges herself firmly within this chokepoint, blocking off this middle part of the map entirely. Operation No EXP for Lucina is a go! I needed Stahl for this because only a 6 move unit or higher could get Truck to this point in one turn, and all my other mounted guys had better things they could be doing. Hopefully the small amount of defense he provides her will be enough.  He's certainly no Frederick after all. I think 32 HP and 17 defense will be fine...  Maribelle stands by for healing duties. The only ranged enemies on this map are all magic users, meaning my healers won't have to worry too much about being attacked over an ally's shoulder while healing them.   Fred takes the crappiest weapon I have and charges slightly ahead to soften up some dudes on enemy phase. Chrom has Lon'qu's Killing Edge and this Bronze Sword also used to be his, so now he has Sully's Iron Sword, meaning Sully has 1 use of her Glass Sword before she's stuck with nothing but lances. That's what happens when a nation of axe users declares war on you, you run out of swords! Maybe soon we'll start seeing some lance-using bandits when all the lance merchants turn to crime to feed their starving families because nobody is buying their weapons.  The vulture squad all advance slightly forward to circle around Frederick, drooling in anticipation of all the zero effort kills then can make when he's finished hacking the limbs off of these fools who dared enter this royal abode.  These Thieves did 0 damage to Fred during my first attempt where I had him rush in with an Iron Lance instead. Fred using lances against them robs them of both their +3 A rank swords bonus and an extra -1 penalty for triangle disadvantage. So that's 8 damage they deal instead of 0!  But he'd be hurting more from these Fighters if I didn't do things this way. Him doubling leaves them with exactly 1 HP remaining - if he activated Luna then they'd straight up die.   Truck's just as physically bulky as Fred is, but these mages are still a bit of a pain. She's got 3 vulnerary uses to see her through this assault, at least.  Here comes Gaius! He himself is no threat at all, but taking out the enemies around him will be tricky, and Chrom'll have to put himself out of formation to recruit him.  Most of the enemies line up in the middle for a slow death at the hands of Truck. Ideally as many of these kills as possible won't go to her, but even if they do it's better than Lucina getting them.  The enemies either side of Validar all begin to charge in too, only slightly slowed down by the trees outside. Those Cavaliers will reach the front lines pretty fast with their high movement...   Things may look somewhat hairy for our heroes, but here to save the day is: this person! Animal people showing up and joining you for little reason is somewhat of a theme in the 3DS games, but let us not look a gift bunny in the mouth. Did you know that rabbits have more in common with horses than they do rodents, biologically speaking?   Lucina says she's a friend though, so it's all cool- OH poo poo EMMERYN WATCH OUT Theoretically you could have Panne die this map, so Lucina's knowledge of her could just be from Chrom saying "did I ever tell you about that time your grandmother was assassinated and there was this one rabbit woman who showed up out of nowhere and then immediately died?", and up until this very moment she would have assumed he was just old and senile and making things up.  Panne is a bunny woman. Thanks to FF14 and that one anime people like large bunny women appear to have taken over the internet, causing an epidemic robbing many otherwise functional adults of their ability to spell "bunny" with the letters in that order. I don't know where Panne fits into that timeline exactly, but maybe she helped. Panne Skills: Even Rhythm (unit gets hit/avoid+10 during even numbered turns) Growths: HP: 100% STR: 60% MAG: 15% SKL: 70% SPD: 75% LCK: 40% DEF: 50% RES: 20% Wow, look at those growths! Beast units in this game suffer from being forced to use Beaststones in order to attack, which cannot be forged and are in somewhat short supply during the game's early chapters. In addition to that, they also cannot attack from range and have an innate weakness to beast-killing weapons, even when reclassed. For that reason they tend to make fairly mediocre mid to lategame units, but Panne's pretty great just with her base stats alone right now. Taguel are a special class that cannot promote, meaning she lacks any potential promotion gains but does come with some nice class bases and 6 movement, making her kind of like a prepromote herself. Just like Gaius I have no plans to use her longterm, but she'll do pretty nicely as filler in the short term. Plus she's got great pair-up bonuses too - 2 strength, 2 skill, and then 3 speed with an extra +1 on top of that thanks to her base speed of 10. A far cry from the new recruits in Chapters 1 and 2 who were good for very little besides dying.   Maybe Sumia would like a bunny friend to help her stats not be bad... Unfortunately Panne's all the way over on the opposite side of the map. So she'll just have to make these kills all by herself.  Wow! Incredible! Amazing! She really did it... She managed to hit her 75% speed growth! Hooray, Sumia! I knew she could do it, despite the odds!! Perhaps those other stats will also help her, idk.  I forgot that Fighters could also roll crit boosting skills, not just Barbarians. This extra crit is annoying - it means they have a tiny chance of one shotting Fred straight through his insane defenses.   Frederick prays to the gods for crit avoidance while also verbally encouraging his foe to do the same. One day these low% crit chances are going to get the better of me and when they do I'll be very upset about it.   I'm still not sure if it's worth commiting to raising Lon'qu, but Vaike's questionable hit rates against fast swordies force my hand. Do I really want to marry him to Cordelia? Problem is, I don't really want him marrying Truck either... Not because she wouldn't appreciate his extra speed, but because it's boring. I'm on the Truck x Fred train.  I suppose it could be worth it. That extra 1 point of speed has pushed him up just enough to double the Fighters on this map, but with Vaike giving him no extra speed of his own he won't be doubling much more. Gaius still outpaces him, actually. He has more max HP too!  Quite a mess here on the left side - I want that Fighter dead, Gaius recruited, and then somehow I've got to take out those two Dark Mages. Truck can't really move from her post, or else all those enemies beneath her will come pouring in...  Here's what I'll do. With everybody split up it maximises my actions next turn, even if Chrom is losing some extra stats from me doing this.   I really need this guy dead this turn, so I have Chrom equip the Killing Edge and Sully use her Glass Sword for maximum accuracy. It does only have one use left, but one use is kinda awkward to have to deal with anyway. He could have been guaranteed to 2HKO had they stayed paired up, but he needs Sully to be free for next turn.  Speed is out, and defense is in. Can Chrom keep these new streak up?  As Sully's Glass Sword shatters into a million pieces, inspiring her to learn how to wield actual swords that aren't dumb novelty piecees of garbage. Could you imagine the glass shattering and all the little shards going everywhere? Ew... Painful for your enemy, but maybe painful for you too.   Truck's just chipping away, getting more and more EXP. Of course now the game knows it's now bulk I'm looking for and not speed, so it queues up a good old "if you complain about this you'll look really ungrateful" type level just to spite me. Why don't I just go "oh geez truck you could really use more skill" and get a level that's perfect save for skill?  That resistance is however going the extra mile. 7's a less scary number than 8!  That's four enemies to kill plus Gaius to recruit on the left. Doesn't sound like a lot, but these overlapping ranges will be a huge pain to deal with. Perhaps having Truck block that center chokepoint was greedy after all... I would like her over here helping out instead.   The right side is so much easier to manage, so I sort it out first to put off untangling the left. Look at all these happy little units, getting their lovely little kills. C axes, wow! Very impressive. Perhaps Vaike won't lose his weapons so often now that he can see axes.  One Iron Lance, never worn. I could forge this 40 use lance for Sumia, giving it to Sully whenever she needs the extra boost as well. But I'm all out of gold and who knows what the next secret shop will bring?   No trouble dealing with Cavaliers over here. This isn't the Fred I know... Where's the speed? I suppose someone has to get a mediocre level this map. Incidentally I accidentally typoed mediocre as "midcore" and that like what the kids these days would call levels like these. Midcore and subparpilled.  Alright Gaius, time to convince you not to do evil. If any of those other guys loudly exclaimed "aw gee whiz ms. emmeryn's such a nice lady i'd oh so hate to have to murder her" too then I didn't hear them, probably because of those helmets they're all wearing.   Actually Gaius does drop his weapon when he dies, so that's not an exclusive or Chrom's giving him. Don't let his words fool you, he'd kill any of your units if he got the chance. Or himself, which is what he succeeded in doing on my first attempt.   Oh no, Lucina's time travel shenanigans have had a horrible side effect... They've made Gaius British!!! Candy over here generally refers to a specific kind of sweet, rather than being a catch all term. I'm not sure on the formal definition but generally if you call something a candy I assume it's a hard boiled sweet you're meant to suck on and let dissolve in your mouth. Calling any chocolate a candy just feels wrong to me... But then again, I'm not sure I'd call chocolates "sweets" either? Regardless, this PAL version Gaius eats only British confections, so I assume Chrom's buying his allegiance with a bag of Freddos. That's probably why Gaius had to resort to thievery, the price of a Freddo has gone up a lot in these past few years...  With Gaius now conscripted into our gang, Chrom does the ol' Kellam trick and immediately pairs up with him to give himself what is effectively an extra turn. Panne might be decently bulky and heavy hitting, but Gaius is only really good for utility purposes right now. I don't want him fighting anybody.  This mage really needs to die. There's a chance he heals himself back up with Nosferatu, but I've just got to hope that Chrom can either crit him, dodge his attack, or that Gaius chips in with a dual strike. All three things should combine together to create a decent chance of success...   Nosferatu hit, Chrom did not crit, but Gaius came through with the dual strike. Good to know he's the reliable sort!   Time for some quick thinking to turn this around. Maribelle heals Chrom, putting herself in range of a magic attack she can easily survive. She also rearranges his weapons, giving him his Rapier up front - Chrom can take one magic hit and one Cavalier attack, and with the Rapier he can KO his Cavalier attacker in return. That will leave only 2 enemies left to deal with at the beginning of the next phase.   Chrom's not looking happy, but this was all planned! It's weird to see him surviving 2 attacks in a row without being healed in between, but these Dark Mages are just that weak.  I don't think this is how you're meant to fight with a rapier, but don't tell anybody. Lucina has a proper fencer's stance, so Chrom does at least know enough to not teach his daughter wrong.  No rest for the wicked however, another mage is coming up the sides and there's still these two bozos to deal with. Whoever takes out that Cavalier will be left in magical attack range, and Chrom can't be healed twice in one turn, yet he's the only one who could survive two attacks...  Party in Em's room!! Aren't we supposed to be keeping these assassins away from her? I don't think I've ever had a playthrough of this map go this strangely. Perhaps a consequence of my refusal to let Lucina face a single enemy herself. She's the real defend objective as far as I'm concerned!  The right side's all under control, so watching them do their thing is good for keeping my stress levels down. Look, Vaike's actually doubling somebody! With Lon'qu's help, but still!  Validar will wait patiently for his assassination, but only for 4 turns. Now he's beginning his assault, and I would really like him to be the only enemy I must worry about by the time he reaches my army.  Look at all these enemies, the left hallway is a complete mess! C'mon guys, we gotta clean up before dad gets here.   All hands on deck for this last push forward. Rabbit's feet are meant to be lucky, so in a sense this Dark Mage hit the jackpot.  Chrom helped, so he gets EXP too. That's another defense level - he really is committing it now. I could promote him at level 10, and most likely I will, although there is the consequence that it will slow down his EXP gain. Is that worth keeping him weaker for longer and denying him an early start on raising his lance rank? Not really... Yet at the same time I do also think it might be wise to save my early seal for the likes of Sully or Vaike, both of which have glaring issues that would be immediately fixed with a promotion to Great Knight or Hero respectively.  Charm grants all allies within 3 spaces +5 hit and avoid. A small bonus, but never not appreciated. What's especially nice is that like all aura skills in Awakening it applies even when the unit is in the back of a pair-up formation and also to their partner, so Chrom can use it to boost Sully's stats while she's paired up with him.  Do I even want this? A tome with 3 might against fliers, wow. I suppose I could always forge it...  How magical. I don't care about Maribelle's levels, but healing with magic and being in range of magical attacks is pretty much all she's being doing and will be doing while she's deployed, so I suppose this is all I can really ask of her.  Gaius has been paired up all map, I should really let him go. I think letting him rob the vault is a fair exchange for him bailing out Chrom with that one dual strike.  Truck's all out of vulneraries and the left side needs help, I think it's time Fred took up the role of chokepoint holder. The rest of the right squad can hunt the stragglers on their own.  I can safely stop complaining about speed now I suppose. Honestly, if she were fast enough to double enemies here she'd only be putting herself in more danger from killing them so quickly.  He's a couple of turns away yet... I think I have enough time to sort things out. Perhaps even enough time to set up a fun boss kill? He's taking the left hand side up, but with most of the enemies wiped out it doesn't really matter how he approaches me.  That is the right side done, thank you Sumia! Now she and the rest can start to converge in the middle with the others.   Gaius would rob the exalt blind, he said so himself. But wait, isn't there a book on that desk? I bet Gaius took that and passed it off as the contents of this chest, pocketing the real goods for himself... A Secret Book means an increase of 2 skill, or it means 1250 gold. With growths as high across the board as they are in Awakening I don't feel too pressured to use these things, plus skill's not so great a stat anyway. Perhaps selling this for better weapons would be a more sensible idea. FYI an increase of 2 skill equals 3% more hit and 1% more crit, in addition to a 0.5% increase in dual strike chance. Every little does help, but does it help like 1250G would?  Woah, this bozo had a Silver Axe and I never even noticed until now. Truck's too weak to take a hit now and nobody's free to heal her up, but all she needs to do is weaken him for someone else to finish the job.   I don't know if Frederick can handle repeated assualts like Truck can, so he's gonna gameFAQs it so he eats as few counterattacks as possible. Plus there's time yet for Vaike to get those kills, or maybe even Sumia.  They are a bit far away though, and if either one tries to go the direct route they'll die to multiple attacks. I hope Validar can slow his assault just a bit while I set this up.  ...and what do you know, he's taking the slow route! Fred's just that scary, I guess. That's fine by me!   Nice find and replace job there Nintendo of Europe, nobody ever says "like taking sweets from a baby". Gaius does not need this EXP but nobody else had the time to kill to grab the sparkling tile so he's the one who gets it.   Hoorah, Sully lands a solid hit to end her flop era! Strength and speed, very nice. Chrom's very far ahead of her in the stat department now, she's got some catching up to do.  Fred's Bronze Sword broke when he was weakening enemies earlier in the map and now Truck's is almost gone too. She and Sully have to share, it's honestly kind of sad. I really should just buy more of these.  Look who's decided to show up! You know, I forgot he was here to kill Emmeryn. I guess we should probably maybe start getting in between her and him?  Now as tempting as it looks here to have Sully attack him and just barely survive in return, earning a little EXP for herself in the process, all it would take is 1 (or two, not sure if it rounds up or down) point and Validar's now got a 26% chance of killing her in one hit with his Vengeance skill. Somebody's got to weaken him, and that somebody should have a lot of HP.  But first I want him closer to the rest of my team, at least the ones who aren't so squishy. Break open the doors and reposition! I promise this will help stop Emmeryn's murder!!   There is also this one enemy left to kill. EXP for Vaike and support rank between him and Lissa, yes please! Perhaps not a very efficient usage of my promoted healer, pairing her up with him like this...  What a mess. I just wish there was a way to damage him outside of combat - Fates and Engage had so many ways of doing that. But if this were Fates he'd have like 3 other incredibly nasty skills to deal with and if this were Engage he'd have 3 more health bars, so perhaps I should be happy with what I have.   All under control! All under control...   Perhaps I am just wasting time in the hope of setting up a Sumia or Vaike kill. Speed, luck, resistance, no strength? Sumia's back to normal, thank god! She was freaking me out a bit with those past few levels.   Validar finally makes his move, and OH GOD NO CHROM'S GONNA DIE  ...just kidding, Vengeance does nothing when the user is at full HP. Scary, though.  ...it could happen. It won't, but it could! It would be so funny if it did. Unfortunately getting Validar to low HP really is now in my best interests.   Validar says he knows this person, but who does he know? A text box and then a load of fire are covering their face. I love this screenshot of Arcfire blending into the blue aura of Chrom's dual guard - these are movie poster or game box art colours.  Truck can survive a hit from full HP so long as Validar's HP doesn't get too low, so she's picking away at him with weaker attacks. How'd she get paired up with Lon'qu I don't remember, I just know I wanted them to start building supports just in case I do give up and marry them together.  The sensible move here would be to finish him off with Frederick risk free, but do I really want that...? He doesn't need the kill EXP, so many more of my units would prefer to have it.  And yet they cannot safely take it for themselves. Disappointing...  In my efforts to figure out a way to stall an extra turn I accidentally goof up and place Chrom right in danger, so now I've no choice but to risk a Vengeance proc that might kill him. Lissa can heal him back up to full health, but that won't save him from one.  Could Lissa safely chip down his health? Maybe, but not any better than Truck could.  Rally Magic grants +4 magic to all allies within 3 tiles when used. This was considered powerful enough that successive FE games kept nerfing its range. My aim is to have Lissa collect as many rally skills from promoted classes as possible, so now all she needs to do is reach level 10 as a Sage and she'll be able to reclass straight into another promoted class. I could have her grab Tomefaire on the way, but there wouldn't be much point with her constantly changing classes and weapons.  Fate smiles upon me and I am once again safe from the consequences of my own actions. I guess I could have had Lissa use Rescue on him...   Truck chips the barest slither of health off of Validar, getting him just weak enough that someone else might finish the job without endangering her life in the process.  Well I gotta go for this one. Vaike needed Fred to get him strong enough, but he just barely manages it!   Teach never got tenure in the original timeline, Validar never planned for this. I hope he's learned his lesson.  Yes Vaike it is very novel how you have surprisingly high skill for an earlygame Fighter but you've already shown class this level 3 times in a row now. At least he's not missing any of his boss snipes in the future...  Oh and Validar had this despite it not being a valid equip for him. Iago you ain't, son.  11 turns, 3 or 4 of which were spent running around like headless chickens while Validar did his slow walk up to the top of the map. 11 turns... and 0 kills from Lucina. I personally think this was a great success! Emmeryn also survived.   "Marth" did nothing, even Emmeryn knows that. Entirely because I went out of my way to ensure that...  There's also some stuff about Panne, who helped us due to some unspecified debt her people owe to Yllise, even though Ylisse kind of did a genocide against them. But Emmeryn feels very bad about it, even though she literally just learned that it happened, so all is forgiven even though she didn't actually do anything. This whole Taguel subplot feels very half baked and doesn't really exist outside of Panne herself... Just like the Tageul as a species! Hahaha... : ( Next time: Difficult Master Seal decisions! A chapter! I'm not sure which one yet!! midnight lasagna fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 11:41
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midnight lasagna posted:Just like Gaius I have no plans to use her longterm, but she'll do pretty nicely as filler in the short term. Plus she's got great pair-up bonuses too - 2 strength, 2 skill, and then 3 speed with an extra +1 on top of that thanks to her base speed of 10. A far cry from the new recruits in Chapters 1 and 2 who were good for very little besides dying. Panne has always been solid for me when reclassed. Thief -> assassin consistently works out for her in my experience. midnight lasagna posted:Do I really want to marry him to Cordelia? Problem is, I don't really want him marrying Truck either... Not because she wouldn't appreciate his extra speed, but because it's boring. I'm on the Truck x Fred train. I maintain that Kellam is Cordelia's best husband. Great support line and it makes Severa not half bad as a unit (no salvaging her personality in my eyes, unfortunately). I've never tried Lon'qu as Noire's father, perhaps that's an option?
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Nov 2, 2023 12:18
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I'll talk about Cody's husband when we get there, but Lon is a fairly popular choice for powergaming. Cythereal posted:(no salvaging her personality in my eyes, unfortunately). Can't fix perfection, it's true. Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Nov 2, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 13:00
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You wrote that Panne has Odd Rhythm, she actually has Even Rhythm.
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Nov 2, 2023 14:35
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Anyway, I like this map a lot as well! The defense you're forced into is interesting and the structure allows for more aggressive play if you want as we see here. I think there are better maps down the road, the climax of act 1 is a real highlight as is the Demon's ingle.
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Nov 2, 2023 15:40
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You know what would happen if you tried the "Why don't you just gain Skill Truck?" strategy? A few levels of just Luck. Also the image of the monkey paw flipping you off.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:13
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Very neatly handled and the jokes were great, another excellent post.midnight lasagna posted:Theoretically you could have Panne die this map, so Lucina's knowledge of her could just be from Chrom saying "did I ever tell you about that time your grandmother was assassinated and there was this one rabbit woman who showed up out of nowhere and then immediately died?", and up until this very moment she would have assumed he was just old and senile and making things up.
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Nov 2, 2023 19:32
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Reclassing Panne to wyvern also works really well in my experience. She ends up pretty comparable to Cherche but faster and several chapters earlier gets 1-2 range access fairly easily, and if promoted to Griffon (which feels much less weird to do than it does with Cherche when Minerva is like half her personality) even if her combat eventually falls off a little in the lategame having a 10 move flying taxi to carry a less mobile beatstick around is always useful. Lon'qu's definitely a pretty good dad for Severa, I went with that in my first couple runs while refining my pairings. Ended up settling on Vaike for my final iteration do everything file though, and after like 200 hours on that Severa is just blonde to me now.
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Nov 2, 2023 20:30
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Considering the nature of their supports, I can't help but marry Lon'qu off to Tharja or Cherche now. It gives him closure through their supports.
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Nov 2, 2023 20:34
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This chapter's cutscene grinding to a halt to hit you with "you're a GIRL?" really loudly for no real benefit is one of not many issues I have with this game's narrative. it's either the most important or least important element of lucina's character depending on how you look at it, so revealing it early while also making a huge deal out of it doesn't serve either perspective the progression goes like: - this character fell out of the sky - they have blue hair like the protagonist - oh poo poo they're called marth, like the hero king! - they have the same sword as the protagonist!! - they fight like the protagonist!!! - theyre a woman. - (later events that are open/obvious spoilers but i will not elaborate on) !!!! it sticks out, is what i'm saying. either don't make a note of it at all or integrate it into the later events where you can apply it better thematically. ungulateman fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Nov 3, 2023 |
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Nov 2, 2023 21:32
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ungulateman posted:This chapter's cutscene grinding to a halt to hit you with "you're a GIRL?" really loudly for no real benefit is one of not many issues I have with this game's narrative. it's either the most important or least important element of lucina's character depending on how you look at it, so revealing it early while also making a huge deal out of it doesn't serve either perspective I think this is because on release the idea was that this person *could* be Marth coming back somehow to help the new heroes. And everyone assumes that the person who took on Marth's identity is a guy, which is sort of the intent anyway.
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Nov 2, 2023 22:35
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