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midnight lasagna
Oct 15, 2016

this pit is full of stat boosters
Paralogue 2: Spoiling the Victor



I talked a lot about how much I liked Chapter 6 and its multiple chokepoints and required use of your entire army, but unfortunately Chapter 7 is very much an enemy phase mosh pit type map. I want to put if off for as long as possible, both because I don't like playing it and also because if I can go in with a slightly higher leveled team then it should be easier to have them all contribute and spread the EXP around. I've attempted a lot of Lunatic runs of this game but only finished a very small number, and this map tends to be the earliest point at which I go "wait, why am I even trying to train up a full army of guys and spreading out my EXP when a single unit does more than all of them combined?".

Also it's called "Breakneck Pass". That sounds dangerous and scary! Let's not go there.



The Twin's Turf sounds much less threatening. Who are the twins? Are they nice? Maybe we can play some sports on their turf assuming it's not frozen over.

...actually this map is also a bit of a pain, and arguably it's easier when you have a second flier, which we will be getting in Chapter 7. But I'm fairly confident I should be able to figure out a way to beat it and get the reward from the village.



Chrom / Sully A

Now I've established what we're doing, let's not do it for a bit. Sully's compliments to Chrom's defense feel a bit more sincere than his compliments to her strength. It helps that Sully is one of my favourite characters from this game, but re-reading these supports have pretty firmly cemented her as my favourite partner for Chrom. I like Robin and Sumia too, but his supports with them are pretty lame.



Truck / Stahl C

Truck and Stahl grab a C support from the couple of maps where he's been her stat backpack. The extra stat boosts he'll give her from this will be nice... if I ever deploy him again. I'm not sure I'll ever have the deployment room, unfortunately! Sorry Stahl, you are a nice boy but I never seem to use you.



Vaike / Lissa B

Vaike and Lissa hit their B support. A shame it's basically never a good idea to pair them up, but they've both gotta get married to someone. At the very least they'll make a cool Owain!



Lon'qu / Vaike B

Now if only these two could get married instead. I'm still on the fence for my ultimate plan for Lon'qu, but now I'm wondering if I could reclass him to a Wyvern Lord so he provides better boosts to Cordelia. This could all be fixed by me just marrying him to Truck and Frederick to Cordelia but I don't wanna!!! Maybe I'll throw some random curveball and pair him with Olivia and then Cordelia with Libra, idk. They're both support units I'll likely be bringing to many maps that I have no current plans for...



Gaius's thoughtful gift of his sword won't be enough to help me sword out this army's sword deficit. I'm going to have to sell this Secret Book... It pains me to sell statboosters, but the only unit in my army who currently struggles with hit rates is Vaike and his skill will skyrocket the moment he promotes. I hope there's no state secrets in this book we found in the royal palace.



Speaking of promotion, Master Seal for whom? I've decided it's not going to Chrom, even though he's currently the only one eligible - he's already powerful enough to earn EXP on his own, and I want the EXP loss from being in a promoted class to be offset by the unit who promotes being made strong enough to get many more kills. I don't think promoting Chrom would make a big difference in how good he currently is.

Promoting Sully into Great Knight will help fix her bad strength and defense, in addition to making her provide arguably more useful stat boosts to Chrom. It'll also let her get a head start on her axe rank if I ever want to swap her into a wyvern class. It will however also tank her speed, but she's got Chrom to fix that. She could also go Paladin and it would still help her a lot, but I feel like she would prefer the extra power and bulk more. Plus the Defender skill's +1 to all stats isn't as helpful in this game as it is in Fates imo on account of stats generally being a lot higher across the board.

Hero's the only path I have in mind for Vaike. Not only will it give him access to the incredible Sol skill, it'll also patch up his bad speed while giving him enough skill to make accuracy a non issue. It won't increase his strength at all, but attacking twice per combat would help his damage output more than bigger damage numbers would anyway. The only downside is that the pair-up boosts he gives Lon'qu would become much worse, taking away all the strength increases for arguably useless skill and speed instead... But that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Regardless, neither of them can promote right now so I'll just wait until they can to make this choice.



So let's get them that EXP! It shouldn't be too hard... This chapter's side objective might be a mad rush to a village defended by a green unit with very little self preservation instinct, but the rest of the map will be easy food for whoever's not on village duty. Plus the alternative is a place called Breakneck Pass.



Okay nevermind it's all horrible. Can we go through the DLC gate into an easier game?



The (optional!) objective of this paralogue is to reach this village before the bandits do to win a nifty Physic staff. It's quite far away from our starting position, and there's some Archers to make flying over the river to reach it a potetially dangerous plan... The trick is knowing which enemies aggro when, and which of the various Barbarians will ignore your units to rush down the village instead.



Bravely defending the village is one of many Annas. Like Lucina, her stats have been increased on Lunatic mode. Not by a lot, but enough to help her survive. Rather than stand in front of the village, she'll run around ORKOing the closest bandit she can attack... Ignoring the surrounding Archers slowly chipping her to death. Without your intervention she'll likely die around turn 3, although I'm not sure what happens if she gets lucky and dodges enough hits. Can she take out every Barbarian by herself, or will one eventually sneak past her? I would rather not find out.

That said, you're not actually under any obligation to keep her alive - this is a different Anna from the one you eventually recruit, and there's no reward for saving her. Most likely the village she's guarding will get smashed the turn after she croaks it, but it would potentially be possible to swoop in and save it the turn after she dies... In fact, if you want to maximise your EXP from enemies that might even be the best play. Probably rather hard to reliably set up though. If only I could have that sword and that staff, I'm running low on both...



Making a return are series staple the camp gay & balding bandits, although this game decided to make them brothers for whatever reason. There's also only one of them here right now. Victor may seem scary until you realise that Berserkers get no innate bonuses to crit in this game, so he's only really got as much crit as a regular Barbarian with Gamble. Any pairing with a high enough support level shouldn't be facing any crit chance from him. He and his three cronies will stay put until either you purposefully attack one of them, or if the village is destroyed or visited.



These guys above your army's starting position will all start moving straight away, but the trees will slow them down. There's a lot of them but they should hopefully make for some easy EXP. If you don't care about the village then dealing with them is basicallty all you'll need to do for the first few turns.



Most of these Barbarians will all rush the village, besides one. Which one? I'm actually not sure, I just know it's one of them. The Mages will go after your units though, and they can be a thorn in the side of whichever fast swordie you might decide to send in to take out all the axe guys.



There's enough room in my deployment slots for the whole squad, plus Maribelle for support and Panne for filler. This rather crappy starting location won't help us reach the village... Like I said before, having Cordelia to help fly people out the forest would help a lot, but at least I've got Sumia to help. Why'd we stick ourselves in this random forest anyway? Was Chrom trying to set up an ambush?



Try not to kill them all? Well if the villains say to do that then obviously we should be doing the opposite and killing everyone.



Frederick's super hearing detects a citizen in trouble, so he hops atop his flying fortress to expedite himself to their position at once. I don't mind having him kill a few enemies along the way if it gets me to the village in time without having to rely on Anna dodging a load of arrows...



Sumia might have a higher movement of 8 compared to Frederick's 7 when she's in the lead, but she won't be doing that until it's safe for her to survive an enemy phase. Fred flies as far forward as he possibly can, using the Javelin to get him a single tile closer to his goal while also taking out this Mage.



1 extra damage from Luna! Totally worth a critical cut in. This skill becomes a little more useful once enemies start having actual defense stats...



You'd think leaving someone equipped with a lance in range of all of these axes would be a bad idea, but only one of them is actually going to attack him. I still don't know which one. I don't think I ever pay enough attention to find out?



That's one Mage down, but there's still two wizards stinking up this map. I want this guy lured and taken down turn 1, the less ranged attacks and damage types I have to worry about the easier it'll be to give kills to the deserving.



Truck hopes aboard her trusty bunny steed, and Lissa makes use of her rally for the first time ever to give her magic a little bit of an extra kick. I'll have Truck wait in a spot where she can take out the Mage with as little collateral damage as possible...



Sully rushes ahead with Chrom to make a start on thinning out the Barbarians, a task that's safer than it looks on account of most of them only caring about the village. This time she's got the Killing Edge, just in case Chrom doesn't come through with his dual strikes.



Poor Lon'qu, he'd be getting so much more EXP if his sword wasn't being passed around my better units. I think as of right now he's stuck with the iron one that got dropped all the way back in Chapter 2.



This is a very hostile environment for Maribelle, both in terms of enemies and in terms of terrain. As a random aside, don't you wish Troubadours in this game could promote straight into Falcon Knights? Mobile mounted healer -> even more mobile mounted healer makes sense to me, plus Maribelle has no business being a War Cleric besides funnies anyway. She can reclass into a Falcon Knight with a Second Seal, but it's a more roundabout method than just promoting into one.




Ow. It'll take 3 hits to kill Anna, which leaves a soft cap of two enemy phases she can safely survive before she starts having to roll the dice.



Which Brigand was it that attacked Fred? I have no idea, this CCTV footage is way too blurry. At least Sumia nullified it with the body of her sufficiently less armoured and more fragile mount.



Sully faces a potential hit from one of the Barbarians up at the north of the starting islands, but her avoid is good enough. She makes a kill and gets a level that's... Pretty okay! She does need strength after all.



One single Barbarian dies in Truck's attempt to lure out the Mage, one rounded thanks to the power of Panne's speed boost and Lissa's Rally Magic. An acceptable loss of EXP...



Wow, a clean 2HKO in retaliation! Wouldn't it be cool if I had calculated that on purpose? You don't know that I didn't.



Truck hits level 19 with exactly no EXP wasted, another masterfully planned accident on my part. A shame that magic will go to waste when she reclasses, but once she's got Armsthrift and Sol I can always have her swing back into Grandmaster. Or War Cleric, I'm still thinking that might be funny.



The rightmost enemies also start to make their way villagebound, but that last Barbarian on those mountain tiles will be taking his sweet time. I'm pretty sure he's all the way back there just to destroy the village after you forget about him.



The other Barbarians don't attack Fred even though they can end their turn next to him without any movement points being wasted. They're not being paid for combat, just pillage.



Anna positions herself in a forest tile to go after one of the attacking Barbarians. Personally if I were her I think I'd have gone for the Archer this turn and then spent the rest of the map on the village tile chugging Concoctions, but I'm sure she knows what she's doing.



9% is not a high hit rate, but had this enemy hit her she'd be dead next turn unless she got pretty lucky. In Lunatic+ mode I don't think there's any reliable way to save her besides either resetting over and over for favourable enemy skills or reaching her turn 1 with some lategame magic stat Rescue combos or movement shenanigans like Galeforce, because all it would take is for any of the Barbarians to have Counter and she'd murder herself against them.



Sumia and Fred are here to save the day! Sumia can wait out in front, none of the Archers are in range and the other enemies don't care. Plus she can grab this sparkly tile with no movement wasted. She's almost at a C rank now... That's the problem with not being able to do much besides steal kills, you get decent EXP but not many chances to swing your weapon and boost WEXP like a tankier unit could.



This Mage complicates the process of picking off the Barbarians somewhat, but we can step around him for now. Once I can start buying throwable weapons I shouldn't have to tiptoe around ranged enemies as much...



The village seems fairly under control right now, so the EXP buffet can begin! Tasty morsels for Vaike's axe, yum yum.



I don't think she needed to dodge that, but it was cool that she did. I have memories of trying Lunatic for the first time and resetting over and over in the hope that she'd dodge enough of these arrows to live.



She's still not going for the Archers though. Crits are cool. Violence is on sale today!



The market might become oversaturated with violence if this lasts another turn though, because once this guy gets in range she'll have to dodge two arrows at a time in order to live.



Oh no, almost! Sumia could make this kill had I given her a strength tonic... Now I wish I'd cut my losses and redid the entire map up to this point to make sure she had one. Such a crying shame.



Look, she helped! She's very helpful. And now she can use the Killer Lance, as soon as Sully stops hogging it!! I'm all in on Team Sumia now and I have no idea why.



The start of turn 3 and the village looks to be pretty much saved. Easier than I thought it would be... Turns out giving Frederick the power of flight is a pretty good solution to problems.



Lissa has spammed enough times to reach A rank. I'm a long way off of having the Fortify staff though, so all this does is give Lissa an extra point of HP healed per staff use which really does not mean a lot.



Although Vaike does have a lot of HP. The skill streak continues, and he even got speed too! This puts him at a high enough level to promote... I'm leaning pretty hard towards him right now for my one Master Seal. Sully can coast by on having WTA in combat with most enemies for a little while longer.



At level 10 Fighters unlock Zeal, a word that I otherwise only recognise from it being a stat in Chao Karate. It provides +5 crit which is... fine, I guess? Sometimes it's nice to have a slightly increased chance of killing an enemy instantly, unless you want to give the kill to someone else or if that enemy is the only thing between you and another enemy that then kills you. If Vaike ever gets more than 5 skills to his name I imagine Zeal would be the first to go.



Don't mind me, just showing off another low% crit. Vaike was stuck with Panne when I had to do some quick partner shuffling to get Truck slow enough to weaken a foe for Vaike to kill, meaning he also lost Lon'qu's higher support level to block crits. One of these days someone will die to a 1% crit and if I keep foreshadowing it like this it might be funny instead of infuriating when it finally happens.



Anna's still going ham on these bandits. Will she stop once I visit the village? I could find out, but I don't want to aggro the boss early.



Oh hey, speaking of low% crits! Sully's just jealous of Sumia's unlikely strength growth, that's why she's not letting her take this kill from her.



This is the type of level that I want Sully getting if she's going to become a Great Knight, so I don't mind the lack of physical power. I could also promote her now if I wanted, but I think I'm settled on Vaike.



Outdoor Fighter is nice when the majority of maps in this game are outdoors, especially since Sully's somewhat of a dodgetank already when paired with Chrom anyway. I'm still not certain on which tiles count as indoors or outdoors though. Perhaps I can do some empirical testing of my own.



Ah, but do I really want Lon'qu to lose this +6 strength by promoting Vaike? Chrom won't care if Sully's suddenly giving her more strength and defense in favour of speed... Lon'qu's hardly one of my main units though, it's not too big a deal if he misses out.



He's already getting a head start on that strength growth so he doesn't miss out. Looking at Serenes Forest, I never actually realised that Assassins grant a strength bonus when pairing up with someone... Could I promote him into one of those and have him be a potentially more useful partner to Cordelia? I do need someone who can shoot bows.



Got to grab support points between these two when I can. Vaike is quite strong, and if skill translates into tactical ability then perhaps he is also a genius.



With no more enemies nearby to set up kills against, Truck finally has a free turn to herself. Take one last look at her stats before they change... That's a lot of 13s! 3 in a row. I wonder if that's unlucky or not. I'll not explain everything when Serenes Forest can do it for me, but reclassing Truck back to level 1 in a different class will grant her an internal level of 11, meaning she will earn EXP as if she were a level 11 unpromoted unit. So she'll not be flying through the early levels unfortunately, but she will still earn EXP a little faster than she was.



Avatar units get to choose from every single available option when reclassing, with the exception of gender locked classes and unique ones like Lord or Villager. It still doesn't contribute as much to their brokeness as their 50% EXP from combat skill of Veteran, but it certainly helps them be as good as they are. It would be very funny to lean into Truck's slowness and make her a Knight, but let's not do that.



She stares into the contraption doodad and becomes... A Mercernary! Before she was working out of patriotic obligation, now she's just in it for the money. I have heard that Plegia is a very rich country...

I'm a big fan of the female Mercenary design in the 3DS games, and they were in fact the first FE games to allow for female Mercenaries ever since FE6 split the basic footlocked sword class into Mercenary and Myrmidon. Look at that hair flip! She is very cool.



I will miss her magic a fair bit, but this is only a temporary change. From here it'll be into Hero ASAP for Sol, and then Truck can do whatever she likes. Thankfully her physical defense remains unchanged, and she even gets extra HP and strength on top of more speed.

New Growths:
HP: 80%
STR: 55% (+5)
MAG: 35% (-15)
SKL: 50% (+10)
SPD: 60% (+10)
LCK: 60%
DEF: 45% (-5)
RES: 35%



Her new Armsthrift skill will help her not waste all the legspensive weapons I'll be buying for her. A 28% chance of not using up a weapon use per swing may not be reliable, but it is effectively a quarter reduction on weapon degredation, and it'll only get better as Truck gets stronger. Being able to forge powerful weapons and not have them break after a single chapter will be very nice once maps start getting denser. Unfortunately access to the Mercenary class is fairly limited, so I can't just give this skill to everybody.



Sumia finally gets a kill with a little help from Frederick, although she would have been able to 1 round that guy exactly regardless. Basically all enemies besides the bottom ones are routed now, I should have someone go visit the village and aggro the boss.



The villagers in Ylisse aren't as racist as the ones in Tellius, so Panne can go shake them down for loot no problem. Lissa should be able to get some pretty impressive range on this staff with her magic stat. If only the villager could have someone given this to us before we had to rush to Anna to bail her out...



Dealing with the boss and his 3 cronies all at once might be tricky, so let's see if I can't have Sumia split the party by approaching them from the right to confuse their AI.



It worked! Victor's promoted class movement and ranged weapon give him a much larger danger radius that normally covers the ranges of his allies entirely, so having him go the other way will make picking them off easier.



I can use the time this has afforded me to promote Vaike. Warrior I've always felt as being the "canon" promotion for Vaike, it suits his design more and boosts the stats he's already good in. That extra strength and absurd HP is nice, plus bows to shoot down fliers accurately would probably help him more than swords... But look at that speed! 11 speed just isn't going to cut it in these times we live in. Right now Vaike needs to be patching up his weaknesses, not playing to his strengths even more.



You all knew this was coming, especially now that Hero Vaike is now the well known meta. The power of the sun is already filling him and he's not even learned Sol yet.



Awakening's promotion gains may be very high, yet Vaike receives no strength at all from reclassing from Fighter to Hero. That's not so much of an issue when you see his other gains though, look at that +5 speed and +4 defense! And then there's the +6 skill, accelerating his already blessed skill stat to somewhat absurd heights. He definitely would not have gained anything meaningful from that Secret Book on top of all of this.

New Growths:
HP: 105%
STR: 70% (-5)
MAG: 10%
SKL: 70% (+5)
SPD: 55% (+5)
LCK: 45%
DEF: 50%
RES: 10%

Now Vaike's skill growth is as high as his strength growth. Suddenly Lon'qu's boosts to speed don't feel as necessary, his strength stat doesn't look nearly as impressive. It's not changed, but everything around it has.



Plus he can use swords now. Does he want to? Ehh, maybe. Having higher avoid against axe users is nice. I'll give him a Bronze Sword and let him boost his own rank whenever he can.



Vaike time is over, and oh right Berserkers can do that can't they. Well now he's standing on the river and ready to mess up everybody from his relatively safe position. How do I handle him?



Frederick can bait him out to where the rest of my guys can hit him. He's still a decent way aways from his cronies...



These are some rather sad bonuses Vaike is giving Lon'qu now. The defense is nice, and more speed won't make him worse, but look at all the strength he's missing... He'll just have to make do without.



I instead had Lonk pair up with Truck to make her fast enough that she could double the enemies and discourage them from suiciding on her, but sometimes it feels like the AI can tell who you want to get EXP and deliberately ignores them. Sully might not have killed them, I guess they wanted the certainty of death.



You're not winning anything with that 0% hit chance mate. Despite what you may here a crit chance higher than 0 cannot save a 0% hit chance, so Victor's effectively powerless in this position.



This guy's kind of a joke, actually. Is this the power of Outdoor Fighter? Sure he can very nearly OHKO Sully but he's never hitting her.



His Wrath skill gives him a slight boost to crit chance once he gets below half health, which is irrelevant so long as he does not hit. Sumia probably should not make this attack.



But what if she did anyway? It's a bad idea... I know it's a bad idea...



Just kidding, it's a great idea. That open field of flowers he sees is actually Chapter 24, Sumia killed him and sent him to hell.



Sure Sumia, you gain whatever stats you want to. So long as you're gaining strength then you're my goddess icon.

...I should probably sell this too, if I want crit avoid I can just pair people up. Plus it only gives +2 luck in Awakening and that's nothing.



13 turns, most of them spent repositioning after taking on the meat of the chapter. Seems to be a common theme! I think I'd reached Anna by turn 3. Good job, team.



I'm glad we risked all of our lives to prevent your turnips from going rotten or whatever. Just bury them in the snow! That's how they preserved stuff back in the day I think. This villager gave us no items for our efforts, so let's pretend the Shepards get to enjoy a nice meal of unspoiled goods tonight. Perhaps a tasty shepard's pie in their honour.



Buyable ranged weapons? As many as we'd like? Well the game's basically over now. They might be expensive but I want lots and lots of these. Perhaps one Goddess Icon in exchange for one of each...


Next time: A beloved character betrays the group

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Faillen Angel
Aug 30, 2018
For how high-power most of Awakening is, I'm always surprised its crit-related strategies are so weak. Enemies have real luck stats, so even killer weapons are dragged down a bit, Gamble is a paltry +10, even the almighty Wrath is a pitiful +20.

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.
Quiet map this one, it and the next paralogue are pretty unique in that neither give new characters and I think they're the only paralogues in the game like that.

ungulateman
Apr 18, 2012

pretentious fuckwit who isn't half as literate or insightful or clever as he thinks he is
crits are historically not good in fire emblem, which makes sense. it's a good idea to have your units be able to kill enemies in one round on a consistent basis (aka, without crits/activated skills), since that lets you make individual enemies threatening when they attack you, and therefore encourage proactive decision-making to kill them before they get a chance to do so, and that lets you design enemy formations and maps that make doing that interesting.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
On the other hand, crits and skills give me cool cut-ins and voice lines.

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.
Crits work a lot better post divine pulse / rewind being a mechanic.

In 3H and Engage when you crit you're both necessarily better able to take advantage of the extra space that crit has created or, if you want to, reverse time and burn the critical hit somewhere where it will be more effective. And if you unexpectedly don't hit a high chance crit you can adjust to those results a lot better as well.

It's unsurprising that crit builds in both those games end up being incredibly pivotal as a result, contrasted to here where they're nice, but can sometimes come and inconveniently mess up your strategy.

FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

Nah, crits are pretty good, and even in the games where you can't crit stack the odds of a doubling killer weapon getting a crit are usually high enough and they're stronger than your other options to make the crit fish the desirable choice even if it fails

Your Uncle Dracula
Apr 16, 2023
Pick a God and pray.

Keldulas
Mar 18, 2009
Crits are generally pretty bad here because you don't really got good critting 1-2 options. Hand Axes, Javelins, and Nosferatu all don't have crit increases.

Dance Officer
May 4, 2017

It would be awesome if we could dance!
I'm drawing a blank on crit 1-2 range weapons throughout the series except fe4 kill stacked weapons and fe5 grafcalibur.

In any case I'd argue that crits are generally pretty good in the games that I played (up to fe12) because killer weapon crits is one of the better ways of dealing with bosses in most games, even in the games where crit stacking isn't a thing.

And then there's fe4 where a crit stacked hero sword and light brand will hard carry you through most of the game.

FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

It's been pretty rare, but I think a handful of games had a killer tome, Mjolnir as well. At the very least, it was definitely in fates.

Ventadour
Feb 17, 2012

Such is the way of things, I fear. I shall consider it a miracle if mine armor is not stained crimson ere this conflict is ended.
I believe Thunder has had a small crit bonus in some titles, and Fates has a crit bonus knife and shuriken.

This paralogue is based on a section of the map in chapter 4 of FE4, I believe - Awakening's pulling references left and right.

fatsleepycat
Oct 2, 2021

Ventadour posted:

I believe Thunder has had a small crit bonus in some titles

The Tellius games come to mind, and maybe FE7 as well?

Artix
Apr 26, 2010

He's finally back,
to kick some tail!
And this time,
he's goin' to jail!

fatsleepycat posted:

The Tellius games come to mind, and maybe FE7 as well?

It has 5 crit in FE7 but it's the only Anima tome that does. The crit bonus is largely shunted over to light magic, with Aura having 20 but most of them having 5-10.

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
It's less a 'weapon' and more 'access to spells' but the Ice spells in 3H had higher crit chance in exchange for lower accuracy.

Fajita Queen
Jun 21, 2012

iirc Awakening had some decent crit tomes they were just overshadowed by how good nosferatu was.

midnight lasagna
Oct 15, 2016

this pit is full of stat boosters
I think my biggest problem with crits is low% ones - they're unreliable and sometimes even detrimental when your units get them, but when you're consistently facing low% crits from your opponents they occupy a weird kind of space where going out of your way to prevent them feels like you're just being overcautious, but when you do get hit by one it's rage inducing. Engage gave every steel weapon a +5 crit chance and I have no idea why, it makes the early/midgame somewhat infuriating to play sometimes. Using rallies/engraves etc. to avoid crits from enemies with killer weapons is fine, needing to do that to avoid a 3% chance of death from the majority of the enemies on the map not so much. As much as it feels against the fire emblem spirit I do sometimes wish the game would round down any crit chance lower than 5 or maybe 10 percent to 0. Maybe randomness as a mechanic in general just kind of clashes with the idea of trying to play Fire Emblem without deaths.

...crits are cool though. I've been screenshotting every single one I see for good reason!

Natural 20 posted:

Quiet map this one, it and the next paralogue are pretty unique in that neither give new characters and I think they're the only paralogues in the game like that.
Hmm, yeah. Paralogues like this are kind of nice actually, I never really thought about it but I do like the gameplay mechanic of being able to put off a challenge to go try a different one that your units might be more suited for. Being able to jump around the map at any time does make them hard to write into the actual plot but otherwise I do think I prefer how Awakening and all games after it handled optional maps.

Fajita Queen posted:

iirc Awakening had some decent crit tomes they were just overshadowed by how good nosferatu was.
Ruin is a dark tome in this game that has an absurd 50% crit chance but pretty terrible accuracy and might. But like you said it's not Nosferatu so it kind of gets forgotten about. Then there's also Waste, which is a brave tome that I also keep forgetting about.


Next update either tomorrow or next week.

NyoroEevee
May 21, 2020
Further notes on tomes: Celica's Gale exists for a non-Dark Brave Tome, and Wilderwind is basically the Glass Tome and also has Ruin's 50 Crit.

midnight lasagna
Oct 15, 2016

this pit is full of stat boosters
It's been 2 or 3 weeks since I last played and took these screenshots, mandatory overtime has been forcing me to spend hours becoming richer in cash when I could be taking pictures of video games and becoming richer in spirit. Do I remember at all what happened in them? I'm pretty sure the guy with the sword and blue hair was Ike...


Chapter 7: Hierarch and Goodbyerarch



Truck / Lon'qu C

Having lost the ability to cast spells in her current class, Truck must now resort to pelting distant foes with fruit. Because of her Armsthrift skill she might even be able to throw her figs and have them too. I think I'm fairly set on pairing Truck and Frederick now even if it's not optimal, but I'll keep building her ranks with Lon'qu when possible just in case.



Frederick / Sumia B

Good at pulling weeds, huh? Well obviously she must be, having the Knight class in her reclass set means she should be good at doing chores that increase armour rank. I bet Sumia as a 3 Houses character would have boons in Lances, Flying, Armour, and Faith, and banes in Swords and Bows. Feel free to argue about this in the comments below.



Vaike might have a luck stat of 5 but I feel as if the impact of 1250 gold far outweighs the benefit of giving him 2 extra luck. Maybe if the shopkeeper uses this it can make him luckier so he can get better deals and sell me more stuff.



Making good on my promise earlier, I buy one of each ranhged weapon. Sully gets a Javelin, Frederick gets a Hand Axe. Enemies with ranged weapons are only going to get more common as time goes on so when I've got the money spare I should try building a small stockpile of these.



One more battle until I unlock a Second Seal! Who wants it? Perhaps Lissa when she hits level 10, everybody else would rather promote than reclass. Although it could be fun to make Fred some sort of flying class.



Let's get this one over with. I'd joke that I was stalling for 3 weeks so I didn't have to play this map, but I already did! I just took forever to write about it.



Even Truck's starting to forget people it's been so long. Like that blonde Mercenary woman, I don't recognise her. But I am pretty sure that's Emmeryn in the middle there.



Oh no, we've been sold out!! And it could be any one of us who's done it. I suspect the merc girl, you know mercenaries are only ever in it for the money with no loyalty to their friends or countrymen.



Time to break our necks at Breakneck Pass. This map is a thin strip of navigable terrain between sheer unscalable cliffs to the north, and a huge chasm to the south. The middle is densely packed with enemies that will all aggro within quick succession of each other, while groups of Wyverns will slowly swoop in from the top and bottom to harass your units. I think the terrain on its own makes for an interesting challenge, but the map itself just ends up being somewhat of a moshpit.



The boss is nothing more than a big flying bundle of stats, but it is quite a big bundle. He also does not have a 1-2 range weapon for once, something I wish I'd paid attention to earlier. He'll start moving on turn 5 or if you enter the range of him or any of the 3 Wyverns in the southeast. Turn 5 is also when this map's reinforcements arrive, so if you aggro him early it is possible to complete the map before they show up... But if you've got someone strong enough to rush in and rout the map that early then you probably don't need to care about strategy anyway.




Large groups of fliers hover in waiting at the inaccessible areas at the top and bottom. The southeastern 3 move when the boss does, the two closest to your starting group and the one with the Concotion move immediately, the rest wait until turn 3. So basically, the closer they are the sooner they start moving. Don't rush ahead and aggro them all if you can't handle them!



The same also applies with the enemies in the middle. The ones closest to the boss are especially scary, as they're all packing silver weapons. Unlike when all the enemies upgraded to Steel in Chapter 2 this isn't a universal upgrade, so there's still going to be lots of generic goons running around with weaker ones for a while.


The enemies right at the front of the group will aggro immediately, all other ground units will start moving turn two. Combined with the Wyverns at the top and bottom of the map and the reinforcements that'll come from the left on turn 5, it's in your best interests to start clearing them out as soon as possible or else your weaker units will get swarmed.



Stahl's making a comeback!! I have a free deployment slot and Truck needs somebody to pair up with, so I may as well. While I could bring Ricken or Virion and have them sling some effective weapons around, I feel as if the difficulty of keeping them out of range of the flying enemies would outweigh the chip damage they contribute against them.



My strongest guys will take the front lines, smashing as many enemies as possible in the first turn or two to buy some time before the reinforcements arrive for my weaker units to run around getting kills. Truck could probably handle this all by herself, of course... She'd have to attack the ranged units herself on player phase, but otherwise I think she could sit on a forest and chug healing items until most of the enemies are dead without having to do anything herself.



Attempting to intimidate the enemy, our old and beloved friend the Hierarch boasts of being a warrior so powerful that even Grangrel has heard of him. Unfortunately the enemy calls his bluff and kills him instantly. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, Hierarch...

...seriously though I don't know what the point of this scene was. I guess they had to justify why the Plegian army knew Emmeryn wasn't in the capital, but inventing a character to exist for 5 seconds in order to betray the party and then die immediately after feels a little silly.



This one's another rout. The reinforcements coming from the left only have to be routed if you let them show up, but I don't think I'll be finishing things this fast. Or rather, I'll deliberately not finish things that fast so I can kill them for EXP.



Forward march! The huge amount of axe users means dodge tanking should be fairly reliable here. The enemies with their ranges highlighted in red won't be moving this turn unless provoked, so Sully rushes to this specific position to take out this Archer turn 1 while provoking as few of them as possible.



She's breaking out the Killing Edge just for the guaranteed kill. There's another one available in Chapter 8, I can waste this one...



You might think it would make sense to have Chrom out in front since he's got better stats, but Sully's Outdoor Fighter and Chrom's Charm skill means she gets +15% avoid that he wouldn't be getting if he were out in front. Plus she's also getting lots of speed and luck from being paired up with him, while she's not giving him as much avoid with her more balanced spread of pair up bonuses.




You can't see it because the screen isn't big enough, but these two Wyverns both just happen to fall a tile short of reaching her from this position. Convenient!



In what may seem like a very bad idea, Sumia takes Frederick and flies off for some lizard hunting. Despite her rather questionable bulk, Sumia can survive a single attack from a Wyvern, and potentially one round them in return with a crit from her Killer Lance or help from Fred. She's got a Concoction in her inventory to heal back up to full health, so if she manages to kill this one she can swoop in to kill another the turn after.



Vaike stays behind to lure a single enemy on his own. As much as I'd like to have him showing off his new promo gains on the front lines, he's not so good at killing stuff yet, and an enemy that attacks him instead of Sully is an enemy that's not dying.



The rest of the gang can hang about until things are less busy. I've got 4 turns before I need to move them out of the way...



The only downside of Sully's positioning is that every enemy that attacks her is going to do so from this forest. It probably won't help them dodge, but it will make them slightly bulkier.



Nobody with an axe is ever going to have a good hit rate against her. A displayed hit of 16% equals a true hit chance of about 5%, so I'm not worried.



This is acceptable. She needs strength, more luck means more avoid.



This is also acceptable! That's 1 extra might when Sully's using a sword. I don't think it's a good idea, but it would maybe be fun to make her a Swordmaster...



This Thief was the one enemy I was worried about. On his own he can't kill her, but if he and any other enemy managed to hit her she'd be dead.



Things did not go that way, as you can see. I don't know how he screwed this up, Sully's horse wasn't even facing the right direction!



Of course he doesn't drop the cool sword he was using, that would be too nice. Sully should be able to reliably get KOs with this, she can put the Killing Edge away for now.



This one Hammer guy exists as an attempt to stop you from stomping the map with Fred. Sully has nothing to fear from Hammers however, as you can see in this screenshot she is clearly a flying unit. I feel like if you did half the stuff you do with horses in this game IRL their ankles would explode after a single chapter.



Ow. This was all calculated, but it still feels ill-advised. Wyvern Riders getting weapon triangle advantage against Pegasus Knights feels especially cruel considering they're kinda just better in combat all around. What if wyverns used swords instead? That might be cool.



Go fly your mangy reptile thing somewhere else, these are Sumia's skies! This shouldn't have worked but it did.



A more fitting level for her than her previous ones. Magic is cool, she's going to need that eventually.



Vaike also takes on some dragons, slowly building up his sword rank in the process. He's not quite yet the unkillable powerhouse I'm hoping he'll become...



...but he can do this. Maybe Zeal isn't a completely useless skill.



The first wave of enemies has been almost entirely obliterated, and now things look much more manageable. Now I could have Sully rush in and take out the second Archer, but that might not be so hot an idea. I'll think on it.



Sumia however can push on forward a little. It's a shame she can't be in two places at once, I'd love to have her take on all the fliers herself.



Vaike failed to kill his foe with his crit earlier, but Lon'qu's there to clean up his messes. Crits make for very easy commentary, you just have to say "oh cool, a crit!" and that's it.



Ehh, why not? As the red range indicates, she can do it while not aggroing this boss. The Steel Sword, her strength gain, and that B rank all add up to let her make a clean kill without wasting any more Killing uses too.



More avoid, that's pretty cool... Not really the Sully I was seeing at the start of this run though. These levels are merely just okay.



Even if I did deploy Virion he doesn't even have the rank to use this. Should I sell it? I might start promoting people into bow classes eventually, but the extra money now might be worth more to me. I'll think on it.



Truck can do something too, she can weaken this enemy for someone else. Hopefully he'll see Lon'qu and throw himself to death against him.



Even these Thieves can't break 50% hit against Sully, she's gotten quite dodgy.



I'm going to be upset when we leave Plegia and every enemy stops being an axe guy who can't hit to save their own lives. Did you know that silver weapons are less accurate than steel in this game? I had to go back and edit myself claiming otherwise earlier this update. Maybe it's good there's so many Silver Axes running around.



Speaking of mistakes, this Archer and that Thief could have killed Sully had they both hit, and I don't know if I didn't see one of them or if I just was not paying attention. It was a risk that paid off, but it wasn't calculated!



The Wyvern Truck weakened did in fact decide to sit still, but he sat still to waste a use of his droppable Concoction healing himself back up. I might just have to kill him so he doesn't waste any more, I want it.



Mostly because I'm aware that my Sumia plan is wasting uses of the Concoction I currently have. Fred is attacking somewhere behind all those wings and dust clouds, but it's funnier to imagine Sumia closed her eyes and her enemy ceased to exist.



Oh no, don't put yourself down there, I can't hit you from there! I should have had somebody lure this guy over so he couldn't do this exact thing. Maribelle might be in trouble...



Cordelia's here to save the day? No chance at all, she's nowhere near as cool as my Sumia who gained way too much strength for some reason. She's not even wearing a Frederick.



Cordelia! Finally, a new unit who I'm actually planning on using, if only because the thread wanted me to. Cordelia's backstory is that she is the solve survivor of her squad of knights, and her personality is that she's perfect at everything which is bad somehow.


Cordelia
Skills: Speed + 2
Growths:
HP: 90%
STR: 60%
MAG: 20%
SKL: 60%
SPD: 60%
LCK: 45%
DEF: 45%
RES: 35%


Cordelia is the second Pegasus Knight who joins you in Awakening, and also, as much as it pains me to say it, the better one. She's significantly stronger and more physically bulky than Sumia is and while she is a little slower, the difference between Cordelia's and Sumia's speed is much smaller than the difference between their physical power. Sumia's always going to have issues killing and surviving unless you have Frederick glued to her, while Cordelia can become pretty self sufficient with a few levels while still being pretty fast.

Cordelia's other big benefit over Sumia is that she joins 6 levels higher with a C rank in lances and much better bases. My Sumia is also high level with a C rank in lances and quite good stats, but that's just because of how much investment I gave her.



Nah just kidding Cordelia sucks, look at how bad she is! Sumia would have wrecked this guy like she did the others. Ignore that when Sumia did that she had a Killer Lance and was paired up with Frederick and also had at least one perfect level up under her belt. Most Sumias do not look like this. Honestly, she's been leveling up as if she were Cordelia.

Anyway, this guy needs to die. How do I make that happen?



Unfortunately Lissa is just barely too far away to pull off a clutch Rescue. I might just have to pair Maribelle up with someone to get her to safety...



The larger and more powerful healer absorbs the smaller one to increase her power, as is the natural order of the world. Nature is beautiful and terrifying. I could have Lissa Rescue Sumia now with her extra magic, but Sumia's still on low health so she wouldn't be able to safely engage the Wyvern. Maybe that extra magic and speed will be enough for Lissa to go ham as a combst unit instead? Troubadours actually give pretty great bonuses, I had no idea. No other class would give me both magic and speed right now...



Panne pairs up with Cordelia to make her slightly more imposing when the Wyvern inevitably goes for her on enemy phase. Panne's the last of their species, Cordelia's the last of their squad, it makes sense that they would be friends! They even have a support chain I think. If this were the gay hack then they could get married and then the Taguel race would be stuck with Yarne and Severa as its only progenitors, probably dooming it even harder than if Panne had no children at all.



I've also got other issues on this side of the map, two of the enemies that attacked Sully are now standing at a point where if she moves into range to attack them it'll aggro the boss and his cronies early. And of course I only recently took away Truck's ability to attack at range...



This one Thief can die, I'll just have to let the rest live for an extra turn. I'd forgotten there was an enemy that dropped gold on this map - what do I spend it on? More swords?



You can die so you don't waste another use of my Concoction. I guess this is a bad level for Truck but does it even matter? Her stats are already so high and she's gonna level up so fast.



Thank you. I hope that guy didn't have any gross medieval diseases or anything. Did people know not to share drinks before the germ theory of disease was developed?



Enemy phase rolls around, and Cordelia immediately gets punked for nearly her entire HP bar. Her combat does look a lot better with bunny support at least! I guess she does need the speed, perhaps Lon'qu won't be such a bad partner after all.



Shameful. Sumia would never.



One ranged attacker has wandered out of boss overwatch range, but this other guy hasn't. Good thing I bought my Javelin! Let's see if Chrom wants to dual strike today.



He does! Hooray. I love it when melee units attack after a thrown weapon, it's like they're dogs playing fetch.



Woah there, watch where you stand! Don't you know there's fliers waiting in ambush?



See? Archers are a liability on this map, it's just too dangerous for them.



I was hoping Vaike could stay behind to distract the reinforcements, but these aren't particularly promosing numbers. There's going to be three of them just like tihis guy and if they all hit him he'll die. I guess he'll just have to move up with the rest of my team.



And for that reason this jerk lives to fight another turn rather than dying immediately. It's a good thing Cordelia can take a hit, even if it's just one!



Now there's nothing left but the boss's squad and the inevitable reinforcements. It would make sense to have someone fortify themselves in a forest tile, but the sparkly tile beckons...



Yeah it's all fine. It's Chrom, he's got the Falchion! They won't stand a chance against him.



Here they are. Just this one wave of three guys, thankfully. The game does do a pretty good job of telegraphing them, but it's still annoying not knowing exactly what tile they'll appear on and where is truly safe.



...but the real menace is the one that was very much telegraphed and hanging out on the map with all their stats and skills there for me to see. Not only did I forget that Chrom is not as dodgy as Sully, I also forgot that these Wyverns can have the Tantivy skill which makes them more accurate when they're not near their allies. Chrom is now facing signigicantly higher hitrates than the ones I didn't want Vaike risking...



Thankfully I once again manage to avoid punishment for my actions. They all would have had to hit him to kill him anyway, he was never in too much danger.



As a reward for their death defying stunts, Chrom gets a very underwhelming level and Sully gets this complete garbage. So this is where all my luck came from, it was siphoned from stats into crits and dodges.



I complained about not knowing exactly where the reinforcements will come from, but I did have the wiki open the whole time and left Vaike here on purpose. He can't fight many Wyverns at once, but he can take on one.



...unfortunately a new problem presents itself: enemies are everywhere and the map is now very red. The boss himself has done the smart thing and stuck himself where my units can't take him out because I didn't leave anybody in range to lure him, a mistake I already made like turn turns ago with a different enemy.



...I don't think the Javelin will save the day this time. I think I instinctively stayed out of his range before because I assumed he had a ranged weapon and I couldn't counterattack anyway, but for once this is not the case.



New plan: run from the boss, clean up the reinforcements to give myself space to retreat. If I did not know otherwise I would assume there were more to come, but it really is just the one wave.



Go Sumia!! Best unit in the game, my perfect angel, she can do no wrong.



Unlike STINKY Cordelia who could not hit the broad side of a barn.



Everybody is critting now, I don't understand it. I think crit rates just start rocketing once your support ranks get high enough.



...safe enough. All this red makes things look worse than they are, everybody in range can take the one hit they need to.



Do your worst, Truck's bulky enough that if she fell off of the canyon she'd survive, leaving a 10 foot deep person shaped hole like Wile E Coyote in the process.

...is there a silly ragdolls mod for any FE game? There should be.



That's the last reinforcement down. What a weird level for Lon'qu! I think he's only gotten two points of speed so far.



Oh drat, he's actually pretty fast. A promoted Chrom could have one-rounded him, but I made my choice.



I don't even remember why I blew a valuable use of a Physic staff like this. The filenames say "a waste" and "but exp" respectively, but surely I didn't do it just for that. Could I really not have just had Truck retreat and heal? It only would have cost me a turn.



A thing! The thread was just talking about crit tomes earlier. This is a crit tome.



High crit, effective against fliers, garbage might. If forged this could be very powerful, but it's also got only 5 uses. Not really sure if it's worth not selling.



Frederick attacks with his weakest weapon, and Truck makes a safe critless swing to bring Vasto down into killing range. I suppose I must have healed Truck to ensure she could do this but again, why did it have to be this turn? We'll never know.



Chrom makes the killing blow, leaving Vasto just alive enough to get his last words out. Running away sounds like good advice, I think we should take it.



Chrom is forgiven for that mediocre level earlier. Now why can't Sully get levels like these? Their growths are quite similar.



7 turns! It's hard to drag out maps like these were all the enemies will eventually aggro, that's probably the only reason my turn count isn't higher. I played it fast out of necessity, and even then I did let the boss live for a turn after he moved.



Yeah Cordelia, the boss already told us that. See, both sides agree we should run! It's a bipartisan solution.



Emmeryn then entrusts the Fire Emblem to Chrom and leaves to go get captured. This backfires horribly when Chrom retreats to Regna-Ferox and is immediately mugged of the emblem by Sumia because the only law in Ferox is the law of the jungle.



Next time: Probably not this paralogue I just unlocked

theshim
May 1, 2012

You think you can defeat ME, Ephraimcopter?!?

You couldn't even beat Assassincopter!!!
I will not stand for this anti cordelia bias :argh:

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.
Cordelia rules, possibly my favourite girl in gen 1 and I'll chat about her as a parent and prospective husbands later.

I generally think that on Lunatic this map is one of the more interesting. The reinforcements encourage a player to go deeper into the map and then the fliers come at you from all sides.

I think that generally encourages a player to learn something that isn't often discussed in Fire Emblem, but is critical at certain junctures in Awakening, which is formation.

By sitting units next to each other you can tactically minimise the exposure to the enemy that certain characters have on EP. So the corners of a rectangle will eat two attacks, where the sides can only eat one. And you can go even further by placing your healers centrally with others surrounding them to minimise the ability for an enemy to go after them.

Fire Emblem rarely, if ever, encourages this from a player but here I think it is a real consideration if you're not all in on one or two units.

Ventadour
Feb 17, 2012

Such is the way of things, I fear. I shall consider it a miracle if mine armor is not stained crimson ere this conflict is ended.
Sumia is probably my favourite girl in the first gen so she's always got a few levels by the time Cordelia joins, and then I never end up using Cordelia because she's behind and doesn't have a cool forged weapon. :shobon:

midnight lasagna
Oct 15, 2016

this pit is full of stat boosters

theshim posted:

I will not stand for this anti cordelia bias :argh:

Cordelia may be the better unit in my head but Sumia is the best one in my heart. Who's more relatable, a girl who's perfect at everything or the girl who's forever falling flat on her face?


Also I'm disappointed nobody took the bait on me theorycrafting boons and banes for a 3 Houses unit Sumia. That's the type of pointless thing I love to think about and then have incredibly strong feelings on when I see other people do not have the same ideas as me...

midnight lasagna
Oct 15, 2016

this pit is full of stat boosters
Chapter 8: The Heavy Update


Well it finally happened, and perhaps I deserved it. I was hoping the inevitable 1% crit would be this huge payoff to all the times I'd tempted fate earlier, but when failed attempts don't get posted anyway it's kind of just "oh this thing happened". It did happen, though! If only I were doing an ironman playthrough, then I'd have to deal with the consequences of my actions and maybe even learn something.



But that's just one of many potential timelines. In the actual timeline, Sully and Chrom are getting married! An S support already, wow. Chrom's just had his sister kidnapped and his capital city beseiged, he's got to have one little victory in his life.

...actually, what did the Plegian army do in Ylisse once they captured Emmeryn and the capital fell? Did they just take her and retreat? Does that make sense to do in a war? I don't know anything about military strategy or medieval warfare, I can't comment on that. But from now until the end of the Gangrel arc I don't think the plot touches upon Ylisse at all, so either you quietly reconquer it after defeating Gangrel or Plegia just kinda leaves it alone after that.




Chrom / Sully S

Given that this is the most important marriage of the cast and I do like Chrom and Sully's support chain quite a lot, I think this one deserves more than just a couple of screenshots. You can read the whole transcript in the link I've posted, of course...




I didn't remember much of what her support chain with Chrom was like before this, but now it's hard to imagine anybody but Sully as Chrom's wife. Lucina needs a tough mother if she's going to save her world from the brink of ruin after all. A shame Sully's attitude didn't rub off on her a little more though, I want a foul mouthed Lucina.



I've played so much Fates that I was a little thrown off by this S support not leading into a cutscene explaining how the newlyweds consumated their marriage in the hyberbolic time chamber and then left their newborn behind to be instantly microwaved into an adult via time dilation. Now I've got to think about what skill I want Lucina to inherit from Sully. I don't see much use in giving her a proc skill like Luna or Astra when she'd much rather be healing herself with a Rightful King boosted Aether, but there's not really much else Sully can reasonably attain before I hit Chapter 13. I guess Discipline or Outdoor Fighter wouldn't be terrible... Galeforce wouldn't be an option even if Sully could get learn it, I'd have to funnel way too much EXP into Lucina's mother to get that on time.

Two units with an S support will give each other 15 extra hit and 10 extra avoid, crit, and crit avoid before factoring in support bonuses from any other adjacent units. That's pretty nice!



Cordelia / Panne C
Cordelia and Panne aren't getting married, but if I decide to keep Panne around as her backpack a little while longer the boosts will be nice all the same. It's funnier to think that when Panne says "this animal" she's talking about herself in third person.



Doing 10 battles gives me another Second Seal from my renown rewards, but I don't actually know if I want to do anything with this right now. Who could I even reclass?



Frederick as a Wyvern Rider would be fun, but not very good. He can't swap to another promoted class until level 10, so his stats would take a massive hit from downgrading to an unpromoted class. I did this in my first ever Lunatic run and it was a big mistake!



Sully could also reclass into a Wyvern Rider, but she'd still rather promote and then reclass at level 10 or 15 promoted so she could enjoy her promotion gains sooner. The extra power and bulk of a Wyvern would suit her though.



Selling this Bullion gives a nifty 5000 gold, some of which will go into this new weapon to help Cordelia get some kills. Sumia and Sully don't need the extra power, even if their strength stats are still somewhat low. I calculated this so that would allow Cordelia to one round Dark Mages in this next map... Incorrectly calculated, I should specify. It does not actually let her do that, at least not without a support partner who boosts strength. Maybe Panne can be her friend over Lon'qu for a little while longer.



Time to face the obligatory evil dragon cult, a vital inclusion in the world of every FE game to make the plot and setting less nuanced or interesting. The Fire Emblem wiki lists the names of each chapter in every language, and apparently this one's original Japanese name literally translates to "Servants of the Evil Dragon", which I was very dissapointed to learn is just the name of this chapter and not also the name of the Grimleal.



Frederick gives all within earshot a tutorial on sand, perhaps expressing a little of his bitterness in not being reclassed and given a cool flying mount in the process. There's actually less sand in this map than you might first assume, so it's not a huge deal if you don't have either of those things.



Here w are at the desert. Pay attention to the bottom screen, becuase sand and road tiles can be annoyingly hard to distinguish from one another in the 3DS games, especially when the danger radius view is turned on. While the map might look like a desert, the middle part is mostly road, and that's where the majority of the fighting will take place. Most of these units will rush us up the path right from the getgo, but the sand tiles will slow them down so that they don't all arrive at once. There are also some villages to visit, but none of those are in any actual danger so there's no hurry. What will however be in danger however are two units rudely not shown on the map during battle prep...

Oh and there's no hidden treasure in this map, that awful Fire Emblem tradition died a well deserved death in this game and has not come back since. I'm sure somebody out there thinks the series is forever ruined because you don't need to waste lots of time having certain classes of units go out of their way to stand on certain tiles the location of which you have to look up online though.



The objective of this map is rout, and Charlard the boss will happily sit at the bottom and do nothing until you come kill him. The few enemies beside him will aggro when either attacked or if one of your units ends their turn in range of multiple enemies, but Charlard will stay put forever. As a Dark Mage his stats are pretty uninspiring, but it's his tome you have to worry about...



...because this is Lunatic mode and regular unforged weapons are no longer sufficient in making your day miserable enough. That's 4 extra might and 10 extra hit on his Nosferatu tome! He's not going to be all that dangerous with it, but he will be potentially difficult to kill quickly. The forges will only get worse from here on out, soon regular enemies will carry forged weapons and the forges the bosses have will break the boundaries of what you the player can legally obtain. And none of them will be droppable, of course.



Oh and this Myrmidon at the bottom carries a Killing Edge which can cause a reset if you're not paying attention. Thankfully he's not one of the enemies that immediately start to rush you.




In the middle left, top right, and bottom right of the desert are some villages that can be visited for goodies. Once again, no enemy units will make any move to destroy them, and there's no time limit on this map, so you can visit them at your own leisure. The bottom right one is however a little awkward in that any unit who visits it will aggro all the enemies at the bottom, which normally do not move until you enter the range of at least 2 of them.



Cordelia joining my roster means someone has to go, and there's not enough room for Maribelle to come along while also letting both Cordy and Vaike have a dedicated pair up partner. It's not too big a loss, Maribelle's horse would slow her down in the sand and Lissa can heal from halfway across the map with her Physic staff. Wasting that one use back in Chapter 7 has made me realise that I can just use it whenever I'd like. I'll get more!



Joining us this map are two new recruits spawning right in the middle of a gigantic swarm of enemies. My throat is also dry but my shoes are not full of sand and as far as I am aware nobody is trying to kill me, so I can only partly relate.



Chrom and cohorts might be on the opposite side of the desert, but with their telescopic vision and perfect hearing they can still participate in this unfair profiling and ridicule of poor Gregor who is only trying to help. Perhaps if he were to crouch down and hold out a sandwich he'd come off as more friendly.



Look at all that red! These two might be in some trouble. There's an obvious escape route for them to take, but failing to advance fast enough can leave them stuck between their persuers to the south and the enemies to the north if you don't take them out first. Are they capable of fighting their way out of this mess themselves? Let's take a look.



Nowi
Class Set: Manakete, Mage, Wyvern Rider
Skills: Even Rhythm (+10 hit and avoid during even numbered turns)
Growths:
HP: 120%
STR: 65%
MAG: 40%
SKL: 50%
SPD: 50%
LCK: 65%
DEF: 65%
RES: 50%

Look, I've got class sets listed now! My original logic was that I wanted these to be just a brief summary of the unit in question as they immediately perform and that I'd list them in a more detailed analysis later, but it doesn't really make sense not to include them here too. I'll go back and edit them into older updates at some point too... Probably at the same time I write all of the analyses in question, and update this LP's contents page too. So you can look forward to reading them when you too are 1,000 years old.

The Manakete class is effectively the same as the Taguel class except they get 1 more range on their weapons and the dragonslaying weapons they're weak too are much rarer than the beast killing ones Taguel are weak too. Nowi and Panne are however quite different as units, in that while Panne starts out with pretty great bases and gets worse as permenant 1 range and no promotion bonuses cease to cut it, Nowi is very much a growth unit who starts out needing to be babied but with enough investment can mow down fields of enemies on her own. She does however suffer from the same problem Donnel suffers from, which is that she's a growth unit in a sea of growth units who does require a lot more EXP and investment than the others around her in order to get going. With a partner to boost her speed and bulk (like Gregor, conviently enough) she can at least survive in combat unlike Donnel, but her growth rates aren't quite as good as his either.

Oh and Dragonstones won't be buyable until after Chapter 12 and the only droppable one before then comes from the boss of Chapter 11, so she's going to have to make those 50 uses last.



Gregor
Class Set: Mercenary, Myrmidon, Barbarian
Skills: Armsthrift (Luck*2% chance of not expending a weapon use when attacking), Patience (+10 hit and avoid during enemy phase combat)
HP: 105%
STR: 60%
MAG: 10%
SKL: 65%
SPD: 50%
LCK: 45%
DEF: 50%
RES: 15%

This character is large Russian-accented mercenary with an imposing mein and a talent for killing, but behind his poor English and gruesome occupation lie a wise, sensitive soul. Gregor's a unit I've never really used all that much, and I'm not sure why - I've always found Mercenary characters interesting because I started with the GBA games and they were rarer compared to Myrmidons there, and I like their balanced stats. I guess Gregor just joins a little too late for me? For that reason I've not really got much to say about him. As as a Mercenary he can give helpful speed boosts to slower characters (like Nowi, as the game clearly wants you to do), and joining at level 10 means you can instantly promote him with the Master Seal obtained in this map if you really want. But at the end of the day I've not used him much before and I'm not using him now, so all I can really do is throw my hands in the air and say that he exists! His bases are decent, his growths are adequate, Hero's a fine class.

Oh and if the internet is to be believed then Gregor's silly Russian accent shtick is an invention of the localisation. I guess they just wanted to spice up who they thought was a dull character. He's funny, at least! Both with the silly accent and just in general, he's actually quite witty in his supports.


If Nowi and Gregor's base stats look a little higher than what you're used to, that's because of Awakening's Hard + Lunatic mode bonuses. Both FE6 and FE7 gave recruitable enemy units the same increase to their base stats that generic enemies got on higher difficulties, possibly intentionally, possibly not. Awakening's boosts however are 100% intentional, and are given to later joining units to make sure the game's steep stat curve doesn't leave them behind. Every unit besides Olivia from now on will be joining with slightly higher stats than normal, but rather than making them better compared to their performance on Normal mode it just makes them less bad than they would normally be.



As Mr. Tutorial has already established, magic units receive no movement penalty in the desert, meaning they can start harassing our army long before the other enemies can reach us. In addition to that they also will attack from range, making them hard to kill on enemy phase. Isolating them and killing them with my fliers before they group up with the other enemies seems like the best idea.



Which is pretty easy for Sumia because carrying an armoured knight and his horse on her back inexplicably gives her extra movement. This guy should be dead even if Nosferatu does hit.



...which it does, unfortunately. At least Sumia's resistance is pretty decent! Getting rid of this guy should let Sully and Chrom speed down the middle path more safely.



The Dark Mages on the left side of the map aren't really in the way of anything yet, but Cordelia can take them out with some EXP. Panne's amazing bonuses help make up for my lance forging screw up, letting Cordelia more than cleanly ORKO this enemy in the corner.



She can't take him out without also being in range of the other Dark Mage, but a lucky dodge prevents me from needing to use a Physic staff on her. ...I think that's a dodge at least. She does look a little on fire?



This isn't a terrible first level, especially considering her job right now is just to kill mages. She is at some point needing to start hitting that speed growth though! She may be the slower Pegasus Knight of the two but a 60% growth is a 60% growth.



Sully takes Chrom and charges down the non-desert tile path in the middle, taking a Defense Tonic and swapping Chrom's weapon to a Rapier to make his dual strikes stronger against all the Cavaliers she'll be facing. I thought I was really clever doing this inventory management mid chapter instead of during combat preps to make it clearer to the viewer what I was doing, but you kind of can't see any of the actual map because all these menus are in the way.



Speaking of combat prep, I really hate how units don't automatically equip weapons you give them outside of battle sometimes!! My first attempt of this map had Lon'qu stand unarmed while a Fighter clobbered him, because he decided he was too good to use any of the cool weapons I gave him. The only reason he's got all of these cool swords is because Sully's got enough rank to use the Alm's Blade I found and Truck doesn't need stronger weapons because she's already nuts.



I should move these two out of danger before they die in a tragic case of "forgot they were on the map". A Nowi paired with Gregor or the other way around might be able to survive a round or two of combat together, but if you leave them unpaired they'll both die in a single round of combat each. Guess how I know that!



Those enemies between them and my army are going to have to die unless I want to burn a Rescue charge, but Sully's already getting started on murdering them. Nowi could use all of her 6 movement and get slightly further away from her pursuers via that sparkling tile, but I don't want her wasting it.



Sumia is now surprisingly tanky thanks to her high support level with Fred, but do I really want him constantly babysitting her if they're not even going to get married? His high stats are somewhat wasted being glued to another unit like this.



Sully without a def tonic would die to a hit from this Cavalier and the Myrmidon who was also in range, although that Myrm did go for Sumia anyway. She's not tanky enough to be facing all these silver weapons, but Chrom would have to face triangle advantage were he out in front...



It seems like they're having a great time on their honeymoon regardless of the circumstances.



That's a pretty cool wedding gift. Cordelia already came with her own Steel Lance, but I'll happily take this one too. I should also steal Gregor's Steel Sword while I'm at it...



The Dark Mage in the left corner who could have attacked Cordelia for some reason decides to die a noble and pointless death against Vaike instead, who continues to prove my dismissal of the Zeal skill wrong. I guess 5% extra might make a difference afater all?



All of these enemies I've highlighted in red will not aggro until approached, every other enemy is currently charging forward. The Dark Mages are currently leading the pack, but I could use their high movement against them...



Sticking a couple of ranged attackers on the edge of their range will lure them and hopefully take them out before the other enemies can reach my army, meaining I'll only have to deal with one type of damage at a time.



Sumia can handle one mage just fine with a little top up from Lissa. Lissa's combat stats look amazing right now... Considering that Vaike as a Hero gives mostly speed and defense and little strength, I think that if I wanted to I could have him serve as a dedicated support partner for Lissa while she roasts enemies with her high speed and magic on the front lines. Do I abandon my original plans to have her be a staff and rallybot and Vaike be a Sol spamming frontliner for that? Owain could always replace Vaike as a frontliner when he joins... Hmm.



The Javelins I bought with all my looted bandit money should be enough to take care of them, provided my dual strikers play ball. Nowi could also lure them and attack from a distance... But I don't really want to use her.



So she and Gregor can unpair here and go visit some villages while the rest of my units kill things. Gregor can pretend she is his daughter and the two of them can go trick-or-treating long past the age at which it will be appropriate.




Good job Sumia! That's one attacker taken down, and an incredibly nice level to boot. Magic is always nice to see.



Sully and Chrom aren't so lucky, even though their support level is higher and dual strikes are Chrom's entire deal. It's not the end of the world, somebody else can clean this mess up later.



...or perhaps not, because the surviving Dark Mage has all of his friends lined up right behind him just waiting to avenge his inevitable death. Only Frederick or Truck would be bulky enough to survive so many attacks in one turn and I'd rather not have them take all this EXP...



So I'm just going to waste a Rescue doing this. It's okay, I get another one this very chapter! I perhaps could have had Cordelia finish him off with a Javelin and be safe, but hindsight is 20/20. Now that the mage is gone, I can sit around another turn and let the enemies walk closer to me so they can be picked off.



There was also the issue of Truck being all the way up here, babysitting Lon'qu as he harvests this tiny morsel of EXP. This Fighter all the way up at the top of the map doesn't serve any purpose besides being killed for EXP, he's too stuck in the sand to do anything else.



My Cordelia stunt did serve one accidental purpose, this random Cavalier has decided to split from the group and go for an easier target, making himself an easy target in the process. Who brought Cavaliers to a desert map anyway? I guess they wanted to show off how mounts fare poorly in the sand...



Paralogue 3 has a lot of rather annoying Pegaus Knights and rough terrain, so getting EXP for my own fliers will be a big help in making it more bearable. I've been trying hard to get Sumia fighting by Sully as much as possible to increase their support rank, if for no other reason than I want to see their supports.



I've killed the weakness holding me back, "wasting staves" no longer exists as a combat to me. Why position healers correctly when I have staves that'll fix that for me? Plus it is rather good EXP.




Even with her naturally high bulk Cordelia is still quite fragile, but at least she's getting better... At the expense of her other stats. I guess speed doesn't really matter when her best friends right now are a Myrmidon and a bunny.



Hey look, this man isn't scared of Gregor! Possibly because his eyebrows have consumed his eyes. I guess these villagers on the border are a little more confident in expressing their distate for the evil dragon murder cult that is their country's official state religion, you probably couldn't get away with this in the capital.



Cool. There's a green unit in Chapter 9 who may want rescuing, so it's nice of them to give you this here. Rescue staves become buyable at some point in the next few maps, I'm not exactly sure when.



It was this exact enemy who killed Vaike with a crit last attempt, and the only reason he can't do it now is because with Lissa supporting him Vaike's crit avoid is higher. Swining a Bronze Sword here isn't at all optimal, I'd just like Vaike to have the option to use non-terrible swords eventually... I'm not sure he'll ever get use out of them, but E ranks offend me slightly.



And with that guy gone all that remains are enemies that won't move until provoked. Neither unit by this village will enter until you have someone in range of both of them, and the Dark Mage at the bottom carries a powerful wind tome just to mess with fliers.



But because they don't move I can waste as much time as I'd like. I'm pretty sure someone did lose this, although I've no idea how. Maybe reawakening a chaos god messed up reality in Tellius a bit and now people's weapons just sometimes fall out of space and time into different games.



Oh wow that's pretty good actually! 1 might stronger and 10 hit more accurate than a Steel Axe, in addition to having an extremely nice effect. Vaike obviously will love this. I assume the +10 hit/avoid on enemy phase thing is a reference to how you play Path of Radiance, by leaving Titania in the middle of a group of enemies, hitting end turn, and then stepping away from your gamecube for 30 minutes to make dinner while the game slowly plays itself.



No enemy aggro downtime also means levels for Lissa. She's completely popped off since I reclassed her to Sage, wow. My idea of making her a frontliner and demoting Vaike to her support seems more and more like the optimal way to play now. Perhaps I can do that as soon as he gets Sol to pass to his future son.



With no time pressure on finishing the remaining objectives, handling the village bodyguards is just a matter of finding out who can best survive a hit from both enemies and sending them in. Sully's levels are giving me grief... She never seems to be able to get more than one of strength, speed, or defense at the same time anymore.



This enemy didn't have to attack Sumia, but for whatever reason she was the more tempting target compared to Sully who could not counterttack, and he paid for his desire to do extra damage with his life. I'd call this a typical Sumia level but the levels she's actually been gaining have been all over the place in stats.



She hit level 10! What a relief. Relief is a nice way of keeping pegasi alive while they're off doing their own thing, and is much more useful for flying classes than what they get in Fates which requires them to be near an ally instead. Paired up partners don't count as another unit, thankfully.



Thank you for your family's treasure, guy who was in no danger! I'm sorry your family were all such scrubs who could never hit level 10. Sumia's just hit promotion level, do I promote her now...? I'm going to say no, Sully needs this more and I think Sumia can still stand to gain a few more levels while her EXP gain is faster, even if she will have to rely on Frederick to do so.



I leave Vaike in range of two different Dark Mages to satisfy their aggro conditions and... nothing happens. Did the wiki lie to me? It says "The southern one will not move until a unit is in range of at least two of the following—him, the nearby Fighter, the two nearby Myrmidons, or the nearby Dark Mage—or until one of them is fought; in either case, he begins moving.", that sounds like I just need someone in range of him and someone else!



Killing one of their friends makes them mad enough to start moving, which Sumia can conveniently do in complete safety from this one specific spot.



Vaike's got barely any res at all, but his high HP lets him survive two hits. Nowi's with him because... somebody had to, I guess? There's special dialogue if Nowi transforms on this map, but apparently she has to do it when she's the one in front because I didn't get it for this. Maybe everybody's just trying to pretend she doesn't exist.



Let's not risk attacking this guy at close range... Frederick is a ranged weapon btw.



He's also still pretty powerful, maybe I should save him from Sumia duty. I could promote her into a Dark Flier and independently work on her tome rank while Fred goes back to the front lines and sets up kills for others, perhaps? That 34 HP and 18 defense is too good to waste.



Thank you! Sully's got Alm's Blade, Lon'qu's got his old sword back, Truck and Chrom can fight over this one. Chrom probably deserves it more...



This sparkling tile didn't give her any support points either, lame. Also check out that big skeleton by the watering hole, drat. Where'd all of these come from, anyway? I know the big skeleton we'll see in future chapters is Grima, but what about this little one? Was it a divine dragon from the war 1,000 years ago? The slight continental drift between games makes it hard to figure out exact location matches, but this desert bordering Plegia and Ylisse appears to have once been Gra, which makes me think it's unlikely that this skeleton came from a dragon who died before the events of Marth's games.



I could have Vaike bonk this boss with his sword until his tome breaks to have him build up weapon rank, but that would be cheating. I might still have him do it a couple of times though!



Because's he's not gonna move and he'll heal himself up to full each time, it's free EXP. Ethically dubious, but free!



A couple of rounds of combat is all I allow, enough for him to make the jump to level 2. And look, he finally hit that double HP! All these other stats are nice too, although his luck is still painfully low. Perhaps it will never improve...



Oops, I almost forgot this last village. Good thing Panne can use her clone jitsu to reach it twice as fast....... I just realised, her classy line here is also an awful pun on reclassing. Boo! Set this village aflame.



I already have one of these that I'm not using, but eventually I'll be short on them so I won't sell it. Without renown or secret shops this is normally the first Second Seal you get.



Let's not drag this out, die fat charizard. Lon'qu looks like he's lost two arms and a leg in this screenshot and is headbutting the boss to death.



If Grima did not exist then humans would probably invent the concept of a god who steals the life force of others to power itself on their town, because the Nosferatu tome is just that good. I was hoping for some strength or defense from Lon'qu here, but it was not to be.



14 turns of mostly optimal EXP allocation, I call this a success. It didn't feel like any of my overleveled units went particularly ham here. Chapter 9 marks a slight difficulty spike and features some rather enemy dense map design, so I'll be putting off to grab more EXP in a side chapter instead. Cordelia was my last new recruit for a while, so for the next few chapters I want to focus on making as many units as possible self sufficient so they can all start snowballing together.



I have said before that I'm not using him, but I do like Gregor a lot. He may not be the most interesting unit and I did dismiss him as a boring character with a goofy accent gimmick when I first played, but if you read some of his supports he's actually quite charming, especially in his support with Cordelia! A shame I couldn't really find any room for him on my team. I mean, I could bench Lon'qu for him and have him support my Cordelia, but...

...oh I regret having that train of thought now because now I'm not sure I can think of a good reason not to ditch Lon'qu and have Gregor marry Cordelia instead. I've put EXP into Lon'qu, call it the sunk cost fallacy but I don't want to ditch him...



Lastly, some dragonfacts from Frederick. More resilient than most men, you say? What was Truck's boon stat again? Hmm...


Next time: Saving the world's dumbest green units to win a frying pan and a log

ApplesandOranges
Jun 22, 2012

Thankee kindly.
Consider that having Gregor marry Cordelia is the closest that Severa can get to her mother's hair colour without marrying Robin, I guess (Gaius is too orange compared to Cordelia's dark red, and Ricken leans too brown).

I've always considered the Plegian maps just a cruel jab at Maribelle; she already starts off kinda weaker than Lissa, but it's made worse by the fact that she's poorly equipped to handle the next few maps after she joins, too. Chapter 7 has everyone in kind of a ball formation since you get pincered (eventually) from multiple directions, so her high movement isn't very useful. And then you hit the desert maps where her horse becomes a detriment.

Your Uncle Dracula
Apr 16, 2023
Gregor Rules.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

midnight lasagna posted:

I bet Sumia as a 3 Houses character would have boons in Lances, Flying, Armour, and Faith, and banes in Swords and Bows. Feel free to argue about this in the comments below.

If you insist, I'll bite.

Armor and Faith are obvious picks due to her alternate classes, but given the more free-form nature of classes in 3H and Sumia being an animal lover, I'd probably make her boons Lances, Flying, Riding, and Faith, with Armor as a budding talent. Given what a bubblehead she tends to be, I'd instead put her banes as Reason and Leadership.

I think I'd just straight-up copy Relief for her personal trait, as there's nothing comparable in 3H.

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.
Oh oops, I never got to commenting on Cordelia's husband choices.

So before I become relevant to the LP, the best choice is MRobin. Now, yes, Robin is the best for literally every child in the game, but imo it's primarily due to the absolutely incredible support that Awakening has between the two.

Robin/Cordelia C-S

This is, to me, the singularly best romantic support written through Awakening and in contention for one of the best support chains in the series given the brevity with which it delivers a convincing romance whilst developing Cordelia's character in a way rarely seen through her other supports. I particularly love the symbolism of Cordelia's lance as a reflection of her past in this and also that it avoids the entire Chrom thing that can really annoy a lot of people with her character.

So when I play Awakening I will often just go super hard for this. (Also because I just love MRobin and Chrom as JD and Turk style best friends plotting to get their daughters married).

Anyway, in terms of writing Cordy benefits from the best support in the game and suffers from the worst, with Cordelia Frederick being downright loving depressing. So that's out on principal.

From there if we just look mechanically.

Cordy as a mother kinda already does everything a kid needs. She's just got a really strong class set, giving Merc for Armsthrift, Pegasus Knight for Galeforce and Dark Mage for all your wonderful Nos sorceror shenanigans. Sev can unironically do pretty much anything she wants to as a result of this, meaning her dad doesn't have to do much heavy lifting.

Vaike is real loving strong with her, he gives Sev access to a unique male skill and grants her Great Knight for Luna and the Thief line for Astra, alongside incredible bonuses to her Str, Skill and Speed.

Lon'qu is a favourite as well, losing strength to make her blazing fast, and losing Luna to give her Deliverer from the Griffon Rider line. Typically if you're going Dark Flier Sev he's preferred because it makes it easier for her to land quads and the extra 2 movement from deliverer really helps in her role.

Gregor as discussed here is basically just worse Vaike for her. Giving less class diversity and less optimised stat distribution.

(Mechanically Frederick is good but please please please don't condemn them to a loveless marriage, I beg you)

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Natural 20 posted:

Oh oops, I never got to commenting on Cordelia's husband choices.

So before I become relevant to the LP, the best choice is MRobin. Now, yes, Robin is the best for literally every child in the game, but imo it's primarily due to the absolutely incredible support that Awakening has between the two.

Robin/Cordelia C-S

This is, to me, the singularly best romantic support written through Awakening and in contention for one of the best support chains in the series given the brevity with which it delivers a convincing romance whilst developing Cordelia's character in a way rarely seen through her other supports. I particularly love the symbolism of Cordelia's lance as a reflection of her past in this and also that it avoids the entire Chrom thing that can really annoy a lot of people with her character.

So when I play Awakening I will often just go super hard for this. (Also because I just love MRobin and Chrom as JD and Turk style best friends plotting to get their daughters married).

Anyway, in terms of writing Cordy benefits from the best support in the game and suffers from the worst, with Cordelia Frederick being downright loving depressing. So that's out on principal.

From there if we just look mechanically.

Cordy as a mother kinda already does everything a kid needs. She's just got a really strong class set, giving Merc for Armsthrift, Pegasus Knight for Galeforce and Dark Mage for all your wonderful Nos sorceror shenanigans. Sev can unironically do pretty much anything she wants to as a result of this, meaning her dad doesn't have to do much heavy lifting.

Vaike is real loving strong with her, he gives Sev access to a unique male skill and grants her Great Knight for Luna and the Thief line for Astra, alongside incredible bonuses to her Str, Skill and Speed.

Lon'qu is a favourite as well, losing strength to make her blazing fast, and losing Luna to give her Deliverer from the Griffon Rider line. Typically if you're going Dark Flier Sev he's preferred because it makes it easier for her to land quads and the extra 2 movement from deliverer really helps in her role.

Gregor as discussed here is basically just worse Vaike for her. Giving less class diversity and less optimised stat distribution.

(Mechanically Frederick is good but please please please don't condemn them to a loveless marriage, I beg you)

Fittingly you forgot Kellam, my personal favorite pairing with Cordelia.

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.
Kellam and Stahl aren't particularly standout choices for Sev. (They do the same thing as Vaike but give irrelevant classes and worse stats) I would have excluded Gregor the same way but it came up in the last mission so it bore some discussion!

mycatscrimes
Jan 2, 2020

midnight lasagna posted:

Also I'm disappointed nobody took the bait on me theorycrafting boons and banes for a 3 Houses unit Sumia. That's the type of pointless thing I love to think about and then have incredibly strong feelings on when I see other people do not have the same ideas as me...

Ok, so let's start by assuming Sumia carries over her growths from Awakening.

Sumia's a pretty classic peg knight, so obviously she has a flying boon and a lance boon. Potentially also a Faith boon. I like that since it reflects the secondary Falcon Knight role in Awakening as staff wielders. She also has Knight as a reclass option, so I think it's funny to give her a Hidden Talent in Heavy Armor. What skill or ability does she unlock when you level it up?

I think adding Faith and Heavy armor to her list of boons reflects her two reclass options pretty well, so at four strengths, let's look for some weaknesses to balance her. We could pull inspiration from Awakening's gender locking system and say her bane is axes. I normally wouldn't like to do that, but I actually think there's a non gender based reason to do that as well: it differentiates her from the wyvern flier and pushes her towards the pegasus and falcon classes in 3H. So ok, Axes. Already people are posting about the oppurtunity cost of using her over Cordelia now, since the Axe weakness makes it harder for her to class into Wyvern for the Str boost. Sorry, Sumia.

I think in addition to axes, you could make an argument for a weakness in Authority, based on her characterization. She's a bit timid, scattered, and clumsy, which doesn't scream 'charismatic leader'. But I like Sumia too much to pile that on top of her Axe weakness. Instead, let's take a freebie, and give her a bane in Brawling. I don't really feel like I need to justify this.

Three strengths, a budding talent, and two banes is kind of average I think. Is there a third Bane you would add? I also imagine her having a secretly great support spell list but a underwhelming but adequate elemental magic list, creating a small community of people who swear by Dark Flier or Valkyrie for Sumia, the way Annette has a following of people that like to run her in Wyvern Lord.

What do you think her spell list would be? Would you give her a crest? Also moving her to 3H means she'd get access to a personal ability, we could speculate about that, too.

mycatscrimes fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Dec 13, 2023

Keldulas
Mar 18, 2009
Sumia would have to have Rescue as a Faith spell. That spell is so integral and spammable in Awakening, and I imagine a decent amount of people who went flying staves with her did that. Beyond that, just add Physic as the other spell that a spell user spams and that's her discretionary Faith list.

mycatscrimes
Jan 2, 2020
Rescue and Physic will make her a good white magic user in 3H.
I want to add more to really tempt players to try Magic Sumia. Everyone gets Heal, so a slot is taken by that. Fortify is probably best saved for Lissa. A favorite of mine from Marianne's spell list is Silence, and it's cool to have more fliers with access to that. Then I think to round out her support spells I'd give her Ward. Since Res is another classic pegasus knight stat, let's reflect that by letting her share her res stat with friends! Stat sharing is also very Awakening.

So Heal (D), Ward (D+), Physic (C), Silence (B) and Rescue (A)

Truthfully she'll still be mashing Rescue and Physic much of the time, so I think it still reflects the Awakening ethos.

Her offensive spell options will be underwhelming but not terrible, I'd give her Ignatz's Blizzard (D), Cutting gale (C) and Fimbuvelter (A). She'll make good but not amazing use of lightweight wind magic with her speed but low str.



I like Cythereal's idea of reflecting Relief in her personal, as well.

mycatscrimes fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Dec 13, 2023

mycatscrimes
Jan 2, 2020
I guess everyone in 3H gets Nosferatu at D+ Faith, but at Sumia's highschool Nostferatu was a dark magic spell, so she never learned it.

Faillen Angel
Aug 30, 2018
From my memory, Nowi's pretty likely to ram her speed cap, and dragonstones don't give much of it, so she's not likely to double. Kind of annoying, since Panne has issues with not having 1-2 range. If only their hypothetical child could use both stones, but it's not in the cards for Awakening's engine.

I think the illegal forges are handled kind of funky on the backend, too. I messed around with an "enemies have your convoy" code once and the forges would shift to different weapons on a per-map basis. It was kinda cool.

Keldulas
Mar 18, 2009
The reason why I only said Rescue and Physic is because of established patterns in 3 Houses. Non-main Faith casters rarely have a full set of 5 spells, and everyone has to get Heal and Nosferatu (which is a dumb pattern but that's what it is).

So Sumia's theoretical would be Heal (D), Nosferatu (D+), Physic (C), Rescue (B).

This alone is enough to tempt people to go Magical Sumia.

Round it out with a simple but effective Reason list like:

Wind (D), Thunder (D+), Thoron (C), Excalibur (A)

I'm being a bit nice to her by giving her Thoron, though I'm putting in the idea of Wind and Storms since she's like the first pegasus knight ever to get a real-rear end flying scene in FE.

mycatscrimes
Jan 2, 2020

Keldulas posted:

The reason why I only said Rescue and Physic is because of established patterns in 3 Houses. Non-main Faith casters rarely have a full set of 5 spells, and everyone has to get Heal and Nosferatu (which is a dumb pattern but that's what it is).

So Sumia's theoretical would be Heal (D), Nosferatu (D+), Physic (C), Rescue (B).

This alone is enough to tempt people to go Magical Sumia.

Round it out with a simple but effective Reason list like:

Wind (D), Thunder (D+), Thoron (C), Excalibur (A)

I'm being a bit nice to her by giving her Thoron, though I'm putting in the idea of Wind and Storms since she's like the first pegasus knight ever to get a real-rear end flying scene in FE.

I like your spell list quite a lot too! She'd make a great Dark Flier with Excalibur and Rescue, and the storm theme is quite cool. Though I'll still go to bat for swapping something else out for Nosferatu, as a nod to it not being white magic in Awakening.

theshim
May 1, 2012

You think you can defeat ME, Ephraimcopter?!?

You couldn't even beat Assassincopter!!!
I like Nowi a lot based almost wholly on her voice work. The character herself varies from okay to :yikes: but good voice work always sells me.

Gregor is on job and your jigging is up and I don't care if it was completely invented, as far as I'm concerned 8-4 should localize every Fire Emblem because they're always very very good.

Mechanically Nowi seems quite hard to train on Lunatic, and Gregor's kinda middling bases for his relatively high level aren't spectacular either, but you could definitely make them work if you wanted to.

mycatscrimes
Jan 2, 2020
I like the Awakening dragon design. The sea dragon inspired dragon form design is really cool and fun. I usually run Tiki because of Nowi's whole gimmick though. Also for nostalgia reasons.

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Shiny777
Oct 29, 2011

YAMI WO KIRISAKU
OH DESIRE


Never had much trouble getting Nowi going even on Lunatic, feeding her a good chunk of this map usually gets her functional and everything past that snowballs her into a murderbeast. Gregor on the other hand tends to end up feeling just a little below par across the board and gets benched once his kid is ready to be picked up. Great supports, but mechanically another tragic victim of Eliwood Syndrome.

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