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Hello everyone, and welcome to the first LP I've ever posted here. I had the opportunity to join this fun, random, likely very difficult, semi-draft thing and I just couldn't say no. Does that make me a masochist? Probably. By virtue of being online at the right time, I had the second pick in the draft and went with the Strength Without Power team because it contains 3 of my favourite characters from FE8, especially the lovely lady L'Arachel. After choosing, Klok gave me the following cryptic message: "And your pick is fairly interesting. It actually has TWO really good units, so we'll see how you fare. Endgame might be a bit of a bitch though." Intriguing! There's no good way to know what to expect until we see it, so let's dive on in. We'll be playing on Normal Mode, Eirika Route as this is what the hack was balanced for and I don't want to make things any more difficult on myself than they already are. Let's jump on in! WARNING: I do show off stats and information about units, so if you're one of the other LPers playing this game, read through at your own risk if you don't want to get spoiled! [spoiler=Prologue - Kicking off the journey of our Pretty, Pretty Princess] We get a nice introduction to the Sacred Stones story. tl;dr: Grado is a dick and invades Renais so King Fado sends his loving daughter, Princess Joshua, to escape the castle with her vassal, Swordmaster Myrrh, and make for Frelia where they can hopefully survive and live in peace. Aren't random recruitment, randomized class runs fun? I must admit that Joshua makes for a very pretty princess. In the opening scenes, we also get to see that Valter is one of those axe-wielding centaur guys, and Franz seems to have stayed a Cav if his map sprite is any indication (which it should be), though I didn't happen to catch anyone else yet. And now the map finally opens. Let's take a look at our star players, shall we? Here's a guide for growth colours: Grey = Fucking terrible White/Light Red = Pretty bad Orange = Average Blue = Pretty great Glowing green = 100%+ Yay for Princess Joshua Knight Lord! Str is green, so we'll be getting at least 1 point there every level up, which is handy. Blue Def makes sense for a Knight, and yellowy average Skl. Poor Spd kinda sucks, but we get a +5 Spd bonus from the equipped weapon (Slim Lance), so we'll have to keep that in mind. Shit Res, ohwell.jpg. Starting weapons are the aforementioned Slim Lance as well as the Rapier we got from Myrrh which we can't wield; I guess I'll save that for whichever character rolls the F!Lord class, assuming I can use them anyway. Since everyone has 9 Mov, the Knight class shouldn't be as shit as it is usually for anyone not named Oswin, so we'll see how it goes, but I'm optimistic. Swordmaster Myrrh is our !Seth Jagen. She's actually very impressive with capped Str and green Res. Average Spd and poor Skl growths, but great bases in both (and for HP/Res, too), and Lck/Def... well, what else would you expect from a SM? She comes with a Steel Sword and a Killing Edge, though I haven't noticed what the "extra" boosts are to those yet. With those amazing bases, she's certainly a fitting replacement for one the most powerful Jagen archetypes in FE history, though I'm concerned about her fragility in the long term. Relying on dodgetanking will only get you so far, though she'll be safe against mages. Now let's get onto the battle! Opening scene, ought to look familiar. I check out the stats of the mooks and the boss, and although I apparently forgot to screencap the boss (has a Killer Lance, no obvious boosts), both of the fighters looked more or less like this: The Iron Axe gives them a +5 Res bonus which is... completely fucking useless this chapter, but we'll keep it in mind. In the meantime, WTA isn't enough to stop Princess Joshua from being able to kick both their asses so I send her in to choke the point. She does miss 1 70-something% hit during EP, but otherwise does some nice damage and tanks admirably. She sweeps up the fighters during the next EP and moves in towards the boss.... ... yeah, I think we're going to need Myrrh for this one. Much better! We hope for the crit, and... *sigh* Thankfully we make the dodge and score a regular hit on the rebound, but there's still EP to worry about... Woohoo! \o/ And then she scores a pointless crit for the kill. Story of my life. [spoiler=Chapter 1 - Fun with Weapon Spading] This title has never made much sense to me. We're killing dudes, not running away. Whatever. Ohshi- Grado's attacking Frelia too. I definitely didn't see this coming. Starting formation. Let's take a look at our enemies. The fighters are basically the same as before. The soldiers are very defensive and wield iron lances, no visible benefit. Cap'n Baguette also has an iron lance; he actually seems quite a bit less impressive than the previous boss with the killer lance, but he does get gate benefits. Even Cap'n Baguette recognizes Joshua's sexy princess flair from afar. Joshua moves forward to tank on the fort. While jabbing at oddly-defensive soldiers (she does 2-3 damage to each one with her slim lance), she eventually gets her first level up, a rather impressive one! Meanwhile on a forest tile a bit more to the northeast, Myrrh wields her steel sword... ... and spades that it has a devil effect. Useful! Myrrh's Lck is shit, both growth and base, so that is... definitely unhandy. Meanwhile, !Franz and !Gilliam move in from the north, while reinforcements from the sack of Renais move in from the south. So, back to PP, let's take a look at our new units! !Franz is actually Cavalier Gilliam... who looks like a lot like Franz, go figure. Got some very nice bases for a Lv. 1 Cav and godly Str growth... but those poor Skl/Spd/Def growths are worrisome. He's neither forced nor banned, so we'll use him for a while and see how he holds up. He comes with both an iron lance and an iron sword, no visible effects. !Gilliam is Duessel, who's one of my non-draft units so I can't use him. Not that it seems like I'm missing out on too much anyway. He does, however, come with a Metis Tome, which has been buffed in this hack to give 25% to all growths. I'll have to find a good use for that. We move Myrrh up to the fort and use a vuln to recover from that devil steel sword hit, then bring Gilliam down next to her. Testing out weapons, it appears as if the iron sword has a reaver effect. Handy! We score a few hits here. During the next EP, everyone seems to want to go after Princess Joshua. She doesn't do much damage to the soldiers, but she holds her own admirably against them. Testing the iron sword and it seems like the reaver effect is only against lances, giving it double WTA against both lances and swords. That's... really useful. Suspiciously useful. I wonder what the downside is... Downside found! The iron sword also has a devil effect like it's older, steel brother. Potentially dangerous, especially since poor Gilliam has 0 Lck. I think he ought to stick to Lances. And speaking of devil effects, I forgot to unequip Myrrh's KE when I moved her up to the fort, and she injures herself again badly in EP. Which apparently gives the AI the wonderful idea to rush at her in hopes of provoking her to suicide. They succeed. RIP Myrrh, Death #1. Let's try this again! Opening strat is more or less the same, but Myrrh equips the KE instead of the steel sword. As much as I'd not like to waste the KE, I'd like her to kill herself much less. Princess Joshua gets his first level all over again, and misses the Skl/Res points she got in her previous life, but beggers can't be choosers; still a pretty nice level. Gilliam tanks a 4% crit from a soldier but manages to survive, even with devil sword. Princess Joshua gets another level. Not too bad! Gilliam's level reflects his mediocre growths, but he's not doing poorly. Eventually we finish sweeping up guys and move in towards the boss. Neither Gilliam nor Princess Joshua can do even a single point in damage to him, so Myrrh swoops in for the kill. Afterwards, we finally make it safely to Frelia where we meet up with !Tana and King Hayden. Princess Joshua hears stories about her wonderful brother, !Ephraim, performing guerrilla warfare inside Grado and she vows to follow after to help him. Hayden makes a token gesture of keeping her safe in Frelia, but is secretly happy to get her out of his hair. He lets both Gilliam and Duessel accompany us and also sends some additional retainers to help us out, Gerik and Tana! Gerik's another non-drafted unit, so we won't be using him; he's mostly shown here for posterity. He does come with an unlimited use "Fiendcleaver", which is an E rank axe effective against monsters, as well as a Swordslayer. I guess we'll save those for someone else. Myrmidon Tana is our first drafted pick that shows up. I guess she got demoted from bring the Princess of Frelia to one of its expendable retainers. As is befitting the team name "Strength Without Power", her Str growth is shit, but high Lck and "average" Skl/Spd/Def/Res. I don't really know exactly what number growths the colours refer to, but it makes me fear she'll be something of a coin flip unit. I'm definitely strongly considering using the Metis Tome on her to boost those average growths into something more reliable, especially since she's one of my 3 forced units. She comes with an unlimited use Armorslayer, which is potentially handy. High Lck growth means she'll be one of my better units for dealing with these pesky devil-effect weapons, anyway. And thus, our first official chapter comes to an end. Current Team: Princess Joshua - Lv. 3 Knight Squishy Jagen Myrrh - Lv. 10 Swordmaster Tanky Cav Gilliam - Lv. 2 Cavalier Demoted Tana - Lv. 3 Myrmidon Known/Suspected Weapon Effects: Iron Sword - devil effect, reaver against lances (?) Steel Sword - devil effect Armorslayer - unlimited use Slim Lance - Spd +5 Iron Axe - Res +5 Fiendcleaver - unlimited use Player Notes & Thoughts: Well, the good news is that the opening wasn't as crushingly difficult as I feared. I guess that's one nice thing about high expectations. I would have beaten C1 on the first try, too, if I hadn't gotten rather unlucky with those devil effect rolls. Devil effect is going to be a bane to me this game, I can tell already. I almost never use the devil weapons in regular games because I'm afraid of them backfiring on me. Myrrh having such high Str and low Lck with those too is hilarious; I can't even give her the iron sword since it's the same thing. Princess Joshua is doing rather well. It's really amazing how much more effective Knights can be when suddenly they can actually move around. I'm trying to save Myrrh for bosses until we can get her some weapons that won't kill her, or that I'd prefer to save for more important circumstances. Gilliam's been okay so far; we'll see how he lasts. And even with even move, Canto is still useful. Tana's intriguing but untested. Half of my usable units so far are Myrms; not sure what to make of that. Big decision before next chapter is really if I want to use that Metis Tome on Tana on not. I'm leaning towards it though; she'd get some good use out of it, and she's forced, so the better stats she has, the more useful she'll be to me over all. I'm honestly not sure how recruits are handled in this game, so I guess we'll see if !Ross may be one of those classes or he may just be something normal. I fully expect one of him or Garcia to be a non-draft unit from one of the other teams and the other to be a free unit, so we'll see if that ends up being true or not. Lack of flyer may be annoying for C2, but that's a problem for future Kirie. All in all, I'm pleasantly pleased and surprised by this hack so far. I haven't really gotten very far in it, but the early part has had enough of a difficulty boost where it's not a cakewalk but neither is it frustratingly difficult. The random recruitment/classes adds a new layer of fun to a game I otherwise know rather well. Looking forward to continuing!