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Seafarer

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Everything posted by Seafarer

  1. Is that the same Japanese name as the Divine Speed skill in Engage? Seems weird that they didn't just use that translation here, too.
  2. I almost thought the Three Houses dominance was over after last year, but nope. Three Houses still holds *nearly half the CYL places since its release, which is insane. EDIT: Whoops, forgot CYL6 only had one TH winner. I think the point still holds, though.
  3. I'm not familiar with the modern Lunatic+ strats, but Awakening is otherwise by far the most Enemy-Phase game in the series. The dominant Lunatic trivialisations are Nos- or Sol-tanking, to the point where Galeforce is more useful for getting into position to EP a bunch of enemies in a rout map than anything else, and even Apotheosis-secret is readily beaten by Vantage-Vengeance strats (that's the Limit Breaker-less strat). *** As for Heroes, I think it's hard to say about the game as a whole. I haven't played the PvP or pseudo-PvP modes in a bit, but I had a mixed-phase build on my Nino right to the end, and she worked fine. Other parts of FEH's history have centred around EP units. Compare that to New Mystery, where there's one single way to reasonably live multiple combat rounds in a single EP, and it's locked to female mages. You just can't send a unit into a pack of enemies in New Mystery and expect them to come out alive (at least on any real difficulty mode), whereas there have been units in FEH where you could very much do exactly that. So I'd say FEH can't really claim the top place, just because it contains multitudes, not all of which are PP-focused. I do think that XRay has the right idea that true PvP modes are always majorly skewed towards PP, because you can't rely on a human opponent to throw units away by attacking into combats they can't win. On the other hand, I find that post-game content tends towards EP strats, because the player's units continue to get stronger, while enemies don't really scale up with them, and EP focus tends to correlate with lower enemy quality compared to player units (the only exception here is Apotheosis, which scales beyond Lunatic+'s Endgame, but that can still be Enemy-Phased).
  4. Nope, not true. Staves stop checking for accuracy completely when you reach 10 Skill; they're not capped at 99 hit like attacks in combat.
  5. For the bold: I assumed she was addressing Gullveig, not Seiðr, since that's who replies to her. Actually, I wonder when Gullveig got all her memories back, because she seems to remember being Kvasir... I did look at the Seer's Snare intro, but I didn't think it was relevant, given that a) it's still Gullveig speaking, so it's subject to the possibility of her memory being incomplete and b) she just calls herself a paradox, which she is: a bootstrap paradox; but a bootstrap paradox can have an origin in the context of multiple timelines; it's only observing a single timeline externally that causes it to be paradoxical. In other words, it's possible for there to be an "original" timeline that did not have the time loop, but in which events transpired to set up the time loop that is all we can observe from our vantage point. The Alfaðör thing was just a bit of wild mass guessing, lol. But it's a possibility that could be confirmed well before the TT story, given that I'm fairly sure Book 8 is going to be Asgard, and I drew the connection because Kvasir also mentions Asgard in her lines (which I forgot to mention in that post... whoops!)
  6. There are three quotes that I think are relevant to this, and I think you're picking one of them and reading too much into it. First, there's her summoning quote, which includes "...I was not created—I simply am." The second one is the one you're leaning hard on: "I was born from a flaw in time. Without it, I would not be." The third one, though, is from her friend greeting: "Where I came from is unknown to me..." And that, I think, provides enough doubt that we can't completely discard theories where she has an origin that she's simply forgotten. Also, there's one line in the book's ending that I find interesting: Kvasir says "But there is one part of my memory I've lost... But I believe you know what's missing." I propose that that may refer to her origin, and is intended to be the hook for the eventual Book 7 TT+ story. This line also casts doubt on some of Gullveig's statements about herself, given that she may not remember all that she claims to; plus she tends to claim she has no beginning in the same breath as she claims she has no end (see 13-1 and 4-2), and we've definitively proven the latter claim to be false. I wonder whether the Japanese is any more explicit? Probably not, but it might be worth a look if someone speaks Japanese. EDIT: Ooh, alternative hypothesis that fits both "Kvasir has an origin she can't remember" and "Njörðr is and always was a patsy": Alfaðör created her as Kvasir with false memories of having already done what he wanted her to do. He's been described as having unlimited power after all, and I believe that Freyja's warning of Alfonse ceasing to exist at his will was a reference to Gullveig's actions at the end of chapter 13, strengthening the link between this book and Book 4.
  7. I think you're over-extrapolating to suit conclusions you've already come to. Kvasir wasn't born or made, but the curse itself is an entity separate from its host, and it is not part of her while she's in the Kvasir phase. So it's still entirely possible (though obviously not certain) that Njörðr had a hand in the curse's origin (and Gullveig's quotes don't shed any time on the matter...).
  8. She manipulated the Njörðr that we see, but it makes no sense for her to have manipulated the original Njörðr, because she didn't have knowledge of how the timeline would play out back then. My theory is that the original timeline involved Njörðr hatching his plan and infecting the original Kvasir with the curse, then, for subsequent timelines, she shows up to tell him that previous-him executed the plan that he's starting to conceive for himself, so he goes along with what she says because she obviously led to his desire for the end of the mortal world in previous timelines. So, by the timeline that we see, Gullveig's the one with the plan, but only because she knows how what was originally Njörðr's plan is meant to go and has the power to make sure it goes that way. Looks like a classic Dragon Ascendant thing, right down to Njörðr outliving his usefulness.
  9. This is something that I brought up to my friend after Chapter 12, too. I assume, since the curse gets powered up each time it infects Seiðr once she's recovered Njörðr's Ár, that it was originally his plan and the curse was made from his power, but that's obviously speculation. I guess they had to leave something unresolved for the eventual Book 7 TT+ storyline, and since Gullveig is available inside Seiðr's mind, she might be able to fill in some of the gaps.
  10. Does anyone know what, if any, personal skills count as Rally Assists for the purposes of weapons like Spy's Shuriken? I'm looking at Gold Serpent in particular, but I'd like to know if there are any others. EDIT: I guess there's also Harsh Command(+) that I'm not certain of.
  11. The point is the chapters are numbered in external time, while we got them in the order of the characters' personal experience.
  12. Don't worry, you're correct. I wonder whether Thracia is going to get a banner soon enough to play back-and-forth with Engage on my "highest percent of playable characters missing from FEH" list, or if Engage has already overtaken it for good. I appreciate a good Isadora, but Thracia needs a banner soon.
  13. Welp, pack it in everyone, nothing's ever going to be more impressive than this. (Now someone just needs to record Lunatic+ Awakening and flawless 0% runs will have been done in every game's top difficulty... which is nuts)
  14. Either way, her having S Light isn't what's preventing her from getting an S in her other weapons, which is what I inferred Ice Dragon believed based on his wording.
  15. Minor correction, but: no it doesn't. Binding Blade lets you S multiple weapon types.
  16. CYL voters presumably lean more towards being FEH players these days, and all the really super-popular characters from older games have already won. On the other hand, Engage-sweep seems fairly likely for CYL8, so you'll probably end up not having to scream. 😛
  17. Well, that answers all my concerns. Gullveig goes back after she's "won" because her - or rather the curse's - end goal is increasing its own power forever, and we can break the loop because Gullveig didn't expect Nerþuz's plan to work on account of having seen it fail untold times before. I now want to know why we need to kill Kvasir, who isn't all-powerful and probably can't force the timeline back onto the Gullveig path on her own, but this is overall a much more satisfying ending than I was expecting.
  18. I... am now confused about everyone's motivations here. What does Gullveig want? She's not Njörðr's mindless tool, though that much was obvious the whole time. She wins - destroys the world - then... decides to un-win by going back into the timestream as Kvasir? Why? Is she destroying alternate worlds each time? Like, every time an Askr gets past Hel, she pops in in time to manipulate that Askr down this timeline? She seems to be able to exist outside of time, after all, unless I've misunderstood something about her domain. But, one way or another, the whole thing is only a loop for her, and only because she chooses it to be. So what does she want? What's important enough to go back and risk losing this time every time she wins? ...and how are we going to fix her? Obviously, our Seiðr is going to be cured by goat auntie ex machina, but is that enough to write Gullveig out of our timeline? What's going to happen in Chapter 1? Still kill Njörðr? Kill Kvasir? Something else? And why did no previous iteration of Askr figure out what we're going to do (beyond narrative causality, obviously)? What's different this time that Gullveig has missed? I'm so lost...
  19. I've been playing Path of Radiance a bit recently, and I was wondering what the general consensus on this question is. Obviously Maniac mode has higher enemy stats and density, plus it lacks the critical bonus on a couple of classes, but the international Hard mode has some extra restrictions on forge and (iirc) shop availabilities, plus it lacks the glitch-forge option, and the critical bonus could be seen as not particularly relevant given how bad the classes that get it are. Obviously I expect Maniac to be considered harder, but I figured I'd ask just in case anyone has Thoughts on the situation.
  20. Astra kinda has to be rolled before anything else, because it's a chance to turn one attack into 5. Each of the 5 attacks has a separate chance of hitting or critting, and it'd be a bit weird if the first attack always hit because you had to hit before you could proc Astra.
  21. So... if I'm understanding this correctly, we need to change history at a point earlier than full-powered Gullveig has ever travelled to, because otherwise her personal history is intersecting with world history at some point and she therefore still exists? Anyway, I don't think it's a time loop at all, now that I think about it. It's just... the history of Midgard. And we're trying to change it, while Gullveig is trying to keep it the same. But I did think of a way to make the ending make sense to me, and it involves us setting up an actual time loop where Seiðr comes to us when she did and takes us back to kill Njörðr (having taken his power as Kvasir when we defeat him), before bringing us back to the present. Anyway, I feel a bit better about the story now. Thanks for discussing it with me!
  22. Permanent death has always seemed to me to be a narrative mechanic, rather than one that's meant to work if you artificially isolate the gameplay from the complete context of the game. It's there to make you feel like every bit unit you use is a person, and pushes you to be sad when they die. Thing is, IntSys abandoned that theme a while ago. Ever since probably GBAFE, the units have been designed more and more to be characters, which adds weight to their imagined lives, but also adds an expectation that they'll react appropriately to the story developing around them. That's grown out of hand over the years, to the point where, in modern games, there are tons of player units who don't die when they are killed, and permanent death has more or less lost all meaning. At this point, Classic Mode exists as a concession to the people who expect it of FE; it's completely divorced from its old place as a key part of the games' theming and story-gameplay integration. Honestly, Casual Mode is more or less the default now, and permanent death should really be considered to be an optional challenge, not part of the series's identity.
  23. @Mercakete Yeah, I see where you're coming from, and I'm sure you're right about where IntSys is headed, but that's still thoroughly unsatisfying to me, and that's because of how changes to the past propagate. There are two common versions of it, right? Either changes to the past alter the future, erasing anything from that future, or changes cause a new timeline to split off. If we take us killing Njörðr in the past as the victory condition, what happens? If it's a future-altering event, we erase everything of the old future with Gullveig, including our motivation to kill Njörðr in the past and our ability to time travel to do it. That's a paradox - killing Njörðr leads to us being unable to kill him, leading to us needing to go back and kill him, and so on forever. So what if we make a new timeline? Well, now there's nothing to stop Gullveig travelling from the old timeline in an attempt to put our new timeline back on her schedule. If we can do it, so can she. So we either need super time powers on our side to smooth out the paradox and allow us to continue to exist into the future of the altered timeline (which would kinda be a deus ex machina at this point, since paradoxes haven't been discussed throughout this entire time-travelling Book), or Gullveig needs to be convinced to stop. Or some other explanation of temporal propagation would be needed. One crack theory that I had after seeing Fionorde's post is that Njörðr is in fact trying to break the time loop by encouraging Seiðr to make Heiðr before Seiðr gets cursed, so Heiðr is also never cursed and cannot infect Seiðr. He's turned "evil" because he needs to convince Gullveig that he's on her side and his only hope now is to loop again and have another go at convincing Seiðr. In that case, he could be convinced to pull a Freyr and sacrifice his past self to prevent his Ár being used to create Gullveig, leaving us to kill Kvasir in the past in order to erase Gullveig completely (and we could have Njörðr's time powers on our side to break the paradox there, in theory). But that's pretty far out, and I don't expect it to happen (and it also either erases Seiðr or leaves her cursed).
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