Xenomata

Near the end of Book IV in Fire Emblem: Heroes, the King of Ljósálfheimr and brother to Freya met his end in order to weaken her. Now he has awakened from his eternal slumber once more. Dream Horn's trigger condition is for Freyr to be above 25% of his max HP. When this condition is met, he inflicts a penalty onto his foes equal to 50% of the highest total bonuses among himself and nearby allies plus 6. On average, this will usually mean a -12 penalty from his own skills. He also gains a Guaranteed Follow-Up and reduces all incoming damage by 30%. He will also have the new Beast Cav transformation effect while in his transformed state, inflicting a further penalty equal to the number of spaces traveled by the initiator of combat +3, and then reduces the damage of his foes first attack by 30% if more than two spaces were traveled. Dream Deliverer triggers if there is an ally within 2 spaces of him. When it does, any penalties that would have been inflicted on allies within 2 spaces of himself (or himself) will be neutralized, and then once his own turn starts he will grant Def/Res +6 and the Resonance: Shields to himself and those same nearby allies (Res: Shields granting Def/Res +4 and denying the follow-up attack of the first foe to attack him in either phase). If he is within 3 spaces of an ally when he enters combat, Freyr also gains Def/Res +4 and Guard effects. Freyr's Special of choice is Ignis, adding 80% of his Def stat as damage on triggering, and frankly he is going to be dealing a LOT of damage when this triggers. Atk/Def Clash 4 scales based on how many spaces were moved by the initiator of combat, and adds an Atk/Def penalty neutralization effect to Freyr if the number of spaces moved is 2 or more. Lull Atk/Def 4 inflicts a penalty onto his enemies Atk and Def equal to 4 plus the number of Bonus effects (excluding stat bonuses) currently granted to his foe, as well as neutralizing boosts to his opponents Atk and Def. On Abyssal, attacks from Tome wielders are not going to be quite as effective with the Deflect Magic sacred seal decreasing the damage of attacks from the second onward by a whopping 80%. Freyr is no longer unarmed. He means to absorb every attack you throw at him and threaten you with his own. Isolate him from his allies and he loses some of that bulk, but keep an eye on how many spaces you need to move when initiating.

Don't the units released in the buildup to the CYL banner usually vary wildly from obvious pre-CYL bait to safe skips that probably only the stupidly lucky or whales will get without feeling bad about their orb spending habits? I feel like Freyr is leaning more toward the safe skip side of things. Aside from him, the only notable units on the banner for me are the newly-summonable Male Alear (purely because he's summonable now) and Rearmed Ingrid with her good Speedy-Arcane weapon. I think I'll stick to summoning from the current Engage banner.

A +Spd +10 +25 Resp. Bonus Nephenee ends up with a statline along the lines of 48/42/49/45/31, which honestly doesn't seem that bad. Her biggest problem to overcome is her lack of a really good weapon to wield, considering her Dauntless Lance only offers Slaying, Armor effectiveness, and Steady Posture for effects. One could try going for a high-Damage Reduction build with Hare's Lance, Vital Astra, a Dodge skill, and Time's Pulse to stack damage reduction up, though no Slaying effect means at best she has VA fully charged with the Quickened Pulse seal when combat begins, or at 1 charge without it. ...yes Arcane Weapons are an option, but when they aren't you have to look through all your other options, and Spring Michalis's weapon looks pretty good in that regard.

That is... incredibly dumb, but I see it now thanks. Wasn't even aware the announcement did anything other than explain what a Hall of Forms event is...

On the note of using Alcryst in Engage, I only really did because he was better than Etie... and then a different archer appeared (mounted no less) and I decided to drop Al for them. Not naming names just in case it's a spoiler, but if you know you know.

I... can't find anything like that on the english twitter, the image I showed you was the most recent one in regards to HoF skill additions. Probably one of the things that got axed in the wake of the mess twitter seems proud of itself for making... didn't see anything like that on the english facebook either. Where was this announcement made exactly? Either way, it's pretty doubtful that any new skill additions will be made this coming HoF in that case, and I'm pretty sure it takes 2 months between the release of skills and their addition to the HoF skillpool, so again probably next month.

In the classic tale of "Assholes bring rise to a greater power in the hopes of getting in on said power" it can be more or less assumed that said greater power is definitely not interested in sharing, and more often than not murder is the best way to go about making sure they don't need to share without leaving behind people who might turn against them. Of course, since he literally JUST flipped, we don't really know what Njordr's motives are. He could be a religious nutjob who thinks bringing about a groundhog-day apocalypse is cool, he could be one of those "the ends justifies the means" people, maybe he's being controlled by whatever higher being can be considered the true form of Gullveig. Regardless, I think we can agree it isn't old age that'll be burying the old man...

For some reason they insist on bringing back the original format specifically for Forging Bonds with new games. They did it with Three Houses too. I guess to avoid possible spoilers for their newest game, but I think we can all agree talking to a faceless brick wall is lame...

So to sum up the events of the latest chapter: Seidhr does not want to become Gullveig Heidhr succumbs to the curse further, and runs away The old man appears and confirms the curse got worse, and that Heidhr needs to be put down. Seidhr reflects on the relationship between herself and her sister. By the final map Heidhr becomes a multi-headed snake monster (though retains her G.Tome Infantry status) The old man reveals his true colors, and that by killing Heidhr, Seidhr is now cursed with the Golden Seer's curse and is on the way to becoming Gullveig. ...well then, his life expectancy has been upgraded from carnival goldfish living in a blender... to carnival goldfish living in a blender owned by a paranoid nutter who thinks the goldfish killed his family, because now his death, or rather his murder, is all but confirmed guaranteed. Now the only question that remains, is he going to be the final boss ala Eitr, or is he going to "outlive his usefulness" and be slaughtered by Gullveig?

Datamined info about the next Hall of Forms units: It also turns out the new transformation effect on refined Beast Cav weapons will exist as new refinable versions of each weapon, rather than outright replacing the new effect. You can choose between the Clash or Impact versions on refining. It is currently not known what this will mean for future Beast Cavalry weapon refines.

With the coming update that will add new heroes to the game, all refined Beast Cavalry weapons will be given an updated transformation effect to match the new inheritable Beast Cav weapon Arcane Nihility. The new effect is a Clash effect that inflicts Atk/Def-X on the enemey. X is the number of spaces moved by the unit who initiates combat +3, with a maximum possible value of 6. If X is 5 or more, then the Beast Cav will also gain 30% damage reduction on their foes first attack. Compared to the original effect (if the Beast Cav initiates combat, inflicts Atk/Def -4 on the enemy and foe cannot make a follow-up attack), this lets Beast Cavs have an effect on both phases as well as some potential added bulk instead of just PP at the cost of dropping the enemy follow-up denial. I have to question if that effect will be missed, since NFU is an exceedingly common effect for many units.

It actually specifically says including stat bonuses in the trailer. With her base kit alone, she'd be giving Guaranteed Follow-Up Blow, the aerobatics effect, and Atk/Res +6 to any allies after these effects trigger on herself.

In fairness, there's really no way to even give her the Pathfinder effect at the start of the turn. I also can't think of any way a Ranged Infantry unit could have gotten the Move +1 effect at the start of turn (if she were melee she could have packed both Tempest skills). The fact that they specify such skills despite, again, no real way for either effect to be given at the start of turn (to Citrinne at least) makes me wonder why they'd specifically deny such now...

Does anyone else find it ironic that Alcryst is the Rearmed Hero, he specifically tells you to get rid of him, yet he is a unit type who literally can't be gotten rid of without purposefully getting rid of him? As in, you'd have to SPECIFICALLY DECIDE TO GET RID OF HIM VIA GRINDING HIM INTO FEATHERS/BOOKS. Even merging him up would still leave you with another Alcryst. I find that kind of funny, not gonna lie. Otherwise everything looks good. Diamant is gonna be a pain to battle, Citrinne might just be the best support unit if given the right support herself, everything about Alcryst looks good, Eitr has some fun-looking toys in her arsenal (including a way for cav beasts to get damage reduction!), I'm looking forward to having a second unit who can give the Charge effect to a support ally, and damnit I don't care if this is pre-CYL bait I'm summoning. ...now to pray Engage doesn't become the new Fodlan. It's already not looking good with Ivy being more or less shoehorned into a summer banner she didn't have any solid reason to be a part of...

There is also the Hall of Forms, where no units gain any SP whatsoever, meaning the SP "stat" never goes up. I feel it's actually very rare that you'll ever see the high gains quote from HoF units, especially if they're a unit with lower growth rates like ranged cavalry or dancers.

One of the character comics from the Life of Heroes character/manga book has Hrid and Chrom discussing little sisters. Maybe not Chrom specifically, but any other character with "lively" younger sisters/siblings could make a Harmonic duo with him, see Corrin, Ryoma, Alfred, maybe even Diamund or one of the male second gen characters from Genealogy. Hell, maybe make him backup for someone like Morgan or Kana to make his older brother instincts come out. Making a Duo hero would be harder, but he could probably be backup to the very-prominent Alfonse. Doesn't have to specifically be from Book 2 after all.

They could make him the backup of a Duo/Harmonic hero. Yeah he won't technically be summonable as a summer hero, but that'd be a way to let him be on a summer banner without "taking" a slot.

Huh... thought Fliers could use Rouse? Shows how much I use those skills...

Escape Route 4 technically also offers "permanent" Canto since Naesala only needs to lose 1 HP to be able to trigger Canto, and all that'd require to achieve is combat against a Melee/CC unit who doesn't die in one hit (and with how common damage reduction or methods of greatly lowering the enemies Atk has become, that's becoming a much easier task to achieve) It's also just Canto [1] instead of the slightly more valuable Canto [Rem. +1], but I can't think of many cases where the difference matters. You could also get the Canto [1] effect from Alarm skills, though I assume Alarm AtkSpd is not in the HoF pool yet if you didn't bring it up as a possible option.

Ooh Seer's Snare is coming back tomorrow! That's good, actually liked that mode a fair bit.

Assuming you'd use Naesala and not just get him for novelty, I'd still get Clash 4 on him just because DasS doesn't have much of any good place on him. We're talking about a skill whose primary effect is DC with a statboost that's on the same level as Tier 3 skills. Clash 4 is more common, but at least does something for a PP unit like Naesala and pairs well with having a near-permanent 3-move, plus the statboost is always going to be a few points higher than DasS. This is also assuming you don't already have Surge Sparrow on him. Plus most of the units with ASclash4 on them already have other skills that might be considered worth fodderable on them, and without NY!Panne you'll be forced to fully inherit Clash4 onto them without any other skills. If just for novelty though, then yeah DasS is perfectly fine to get on him.

I meant in the context of the Harvest Festival dialogue (the guys in the army talking about who has the boingiest bits being why Tharja and Nowi are talking in the first place), unless the term was used in the japanese conversation as well. Nowi shows some hints of maturity in her english dialogue, but otherwise it does seem kind of out of place in hindsight, especially considering she then asks if she can touch Tharja's boingy bits... why dodge around it if you're gonna ask to feel her up in the next line. And then proceed to feel her up while she sleeps. ...maybe we should have gotten the version of that conversation where they're talking about Tharja's hair...

I know it doesn't have to mean sex appeal by default (especially if it's only specifying a feminine physique which I didn't even realize the Japanese language had a specific term for it), but I think the implication is still there if the Shepherds are out comparing who among the women have the biggest boingy bits. Not that I claim to know how the Harvest Scramble conversation between Tharja and Nowi goes, but I can't imagine it's that far off-base if it got translated to that in english... Tiki is about the next "boingiest"

*uncomfortable cough* Her Japanese roster entry is also explicitly "Has the nicest body in the army". So maybe it's not the curviest, but it's still the sexiest body among the Shepherds. Not to say that artists aren't prone to exaggeration... but the fact she's stated to be sexy in-game probably didn't help matters much.