video H5 Warpskipping LTC - Take 2

[ruadath]

As you might have seen from recent posts on the old 55 turn playthrough thread, I'm thinking of starting this up again, aiming for a 51 or 52 turn clear of Shadow Dragon on H5! This playthrough will involve significantly more RNG abuse than the previous one, and will perhaps be slightly less interesting to watch (besides Jagen during the early game, pretty much only Marth and Caeda are ever going to do any useful combat).

On one hand, this makes guessing the correct answers to the topic poll questions a little bit more interesting, but it does have the potential to make the playthrough become even more bland than it already is, since there won't be any interesting Jake or Hardin shenanigans to watch. Anyway, tentative turn counts for the 51 turn playthrough are posted below:

[spoiler=Expected Turn Counts]Chapter 1 (5 turns)
Chapter 2 (4 turns)
Chapter 3 (5 turns)
Chapter 4 (2 turns)
Chapter 5 (4 turns)
Chapter 6 (2 turns)
Chapter 7 (2 turns)
Chapter 8 (2 turns)
Chapter 9 (1 turn)
Chapter 10 (2 turns)
Chapter 11 (1 turn)
Chapter 12 (2 turns)
Chapter 13 (2 turns)
Chapter 14 (2 turns)
Chapter 15 (2 turns)
Chapter 16 (1 turn)
Chapter 17 (1 turn)
Chapter 18 (1 turn)
Chapter 19 (1 turn)
Chapter 20 (3 turns)
Chapter 21 (1 turn)
Chapter 22 (1 turn)
Chapter 23 (1 turn)
Chapter 24 (1 turn)
Chapter 24x (1 turn)

Endgame (1 turn)

I'm probably not going to actually start work on this for some time, but feel free to post comments, questions, advice, or anything you think I might find useful during the planning stages of this run. I have some tentative strategies for most of the chapters at this point in time, so if you want to ask about forges, character recruitment, or general strategy, I can probably answer most questions that you may have.

Hope you guys will enjoy!

Edited February 2, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

I have some tentative strategies for most of the chapters at this point in time, so if you want to ask about forges, character recruitment, or general strategy, I can probably answer most questions that you may have.

I was reflecting a bit further on this, and the one thing I'm not sure about actually is Chapter 5. Since I'm going to be feeding most of the early game kills (and indeed, just normal combat) to Marth, pretty much everyone else (besides Caeda) is going to be at base stats. I need to figure out what this means for the context of this strategy, since my usual cav rush won't quite work.

Marth will be pretty tanky at this point (assuming the Ch. 4 2-turn works out, I wouldn't be surprised if he was level 6-7 at minimum), but I don't think he can solo it. Thankfully, I think my staff-training plan for Jagen has enough room that he can go DK for this chapter, and Caeda/Hardin should be able to help out too. It shouldn't be too difficult to get Barst and Bord to man the other front and kill Wendell (with Lena healing as necessary), but I suppose we'll see how that goes when we get there.

[SSJDennis]

I was reflecting a bit further on this, and the one thing I'm not sure about actually is Chapter 5. Since I'm going to be feeding most of the early game kills (and indeed, just normal combat) to Marth, pretty much everyone else (besides Caeda) is going to be at base stats. I need to figure out what this means for the context of this strategy, since my usual cav rush won't quite work.

Uhhh Dondon does that chapter in 5turns, WITHOUT growth. He also gets Wendell, which will cost a turn to recruit. Meaning you should be able to rush, just like you did before. Sure, maybe a bit riskier. But you should be able to let SOME units gain a level, right?

Chapter 1 should have crazy crits on your side. If so, Marth can just walk all across the map, while Cain / Abel get the kills for EXP. They should reach level 2, maybe level 3 before you get to chapter 5. How about Ogma / Barst at base? I think chapter 3 might be (much) trickier then chapter 5.

How "lucky" do you need to be for a 2turn clear on chapter4? You never really posted that 3turn clear...

Also NOT recruiting Jake seems like a bad idea to me. You showed before (to a bigger extend then expected) how broken his range is. There will be no way that you get the Boots and reach the boss AND have enough Warps to save turns.

IF anything, you should look for a way to get Wendell. He gets a good base staff, perfectly for Warp later. He makes a great Dracoknight, no need to promote or train Hardin. Also his magic is there if you need a magic crit. Not sure how getting him would be possible though...

[ruadath]

Chapter 1 should have crazy crits on your side. If so, Marth can just walk all across the map, while Cain / Abel get the kills for EXP. They should reach level 2, maybe level 3 before you get to chapter 5. How about Ogma / Barst at base? I think chapter 3 might be (much) trickier then chapter 5.

This will essentially be the idea for Chapter 1, but you're missing a little bit. As far as I'm concerned for the moment, I'm not going to have Cain or Abel do anything (besides maybe sit on some houses). Jagen will be positioned every turn in such a manner that he aggros enemies to spots where Marth will be able to nail a crit-kill every turn on the PP (and hopefully some on the EP, I'd like to get him to level 3 by the end of the chapter). This might be a little tricky, since I'm going to need to conserve Rapier uses, so Marth will have to rely on Iron Sword crits (fine on the PP, but annoying to rig + dodges on EPs). Caeda will follows behind and pick off stragglers (maybe even the boss kill if I can set it up via a Jagen Iron Sword crit + dodge and Wing Spear crit, but not sure that is enough).

The good thing though is that there are a ton of houses right at the beginning of the map, so I should be able to rig something like 2 PP actions per turn, plus the EP. Things will be quite annoying for Marth levels, since I'm probably looking at rigging near perfect levels for him (HP+Def for durability, Spd+Luck for dodge, Str+Skl for combat, and believe it or not Marth also needs Mag) which is already terribly unlikely with Marth's 6% Mag growth. (EDIT: This may not be necessary depending on what I figure out for Jake) Not to mention, he probably is going to level on crit-kills too.

Note that (if my calculations are correct) a level 3 Marth is capable of OHKOing the pirates in Chapter 2 with Steel Sword (taken from Ogma) crits.

How "lucky" do you need to be for a 2turn clear on chapter4? You never really posted that 3turn clear...

The 3 turn clear is reasonably safe. I'm at least very certain that I can do it. The 2-turn clear, on the other hand, is going to be a nightmare. The idea is to get a super buff Marth so that the horsemen don't bother him (at level 5, assuming perfect or near perfect levels, the horsemen don't double him and do like 3 damage a piece. The problem, however, will be that Marth gets charged by a bunch of cavs (I don't know the exact number) who will sit on the throne if they don't die. So he gets an uber-forged Rapier so he can kill all of them without a crit, but he still needs to make a good number of dodges while facing WTD. Painful, but if I can get Marth to level 6 or 7, I'll feel confident that it is doable.

Also NOT recruiting Jake seems like a bad idea to me. You showed before (to a bigger extend then expected) how broken his range is. There will be no way that you get the Boots and reach the boss AND have enough Warps to save turns.

So here is the deal with Jake. He costs an extra turn to recruit, and if you want him to be able to 1-turn Chapter 16, he needs the Energy Drop from his chapter, which means that you need to 3 turn Chapter 10 for the Master Seal.

This is not necessarily true; I forgot about the WiFi Shop. Assuming that I can get Hardin to level 10 in before Chapter 11 even while shaving turns off Chapters 7 and 10 (should be possible with ridiculous RNG abuse), I can "buy" a Master Seal from the WiFi Shop and promote Hardin to get the energy drop. Then I won't have to pick up the Boots and Marth doesn't have to rig Mag growths (plus Chapter 20, in fact the entire playthrough after Chapter 10, becomes sane again).

The alternative that I originally had in mind was to shave the a turn off of Chapter 10 and 11 by not recruiting Jake and not getting the Master Seal, at the cost of a loss of a turn in Chapter 13 because I need an extra Warp use for Chapter 12 to pick up the Boots. Note that you can 2-turn Chapter 12 with Boots and 2 Warp uses as follows:

Turn 1, get Warp staff and convoy, Lena warps Marth with forged Levin Sword to boss area. Marth kills Volzhin from a space away with Levin Sword. On EP, he crit kills Sniper who moves onto the throne (needs 17 Atk to do so, i.e. needs some Mag procs + forging), as well as the mage who drops the Bolganone tome probably. Then on turn 2, warp thief to pick up boots, and Marth seizes. But this may prove entirely unnecessary.

EDIT: Actually, one major problem with recruiting Jake may be running out of money. Depending on how much Marth's forged Rapier costs, there is a decent chance that I won't have enough for the Stonehoist forge. I'll need to make some detailed calculations out at a later point in time and decide whether or not this is viable.

Assuming I get Marth to level 7 before Chapter 4, he actually only needs a +4 Mt Rapier (in the previous playthrough I gave him a +3 Mt Rapier). Jagen will probably need a +2 Mt Silver Lance (if not +3, instead of the +1 Mt last time) and I need to buy a Master Seal for Hardin, so I should nominally have enough money left for Jake if I play my cards right. But we'll have to see about that.

EDIT 2: Perhaps money will not be a problem at all! Since I can burn RNs on the Arena ending scene, I can actually perform an infinite number of battles to get infinite cash/EXP for 1 character...

Edited February 4, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

Oh, I almost forgot: one additional point in favor of Boots!Caeda and not recruiting Jake is that this allows for a 2 turn clear of Chapter 20 with the clone glitch (assuming it works how I think it does and that you can also trade with Marth's clone). This could be really cool, since it potentially allows for a 50 turn completion of the game!

EDIT: I'll add a poll option to see what people think about this.

Edited February 2, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

I haven't thought about this in a long time, but I just had the realization that the online shop for this game actually has Blizzard tomes! I haven't yet done any calculations about if/where this will shave off turns, but perhaps sub-50 is in fact possible!

EDIT: Nvm, Blizzard isn't a long range tome in this game... sorry for the false alarm.

Edited March 18, 2016 by ruadath

[SSJDennis]

I haven't thought about this in a long time, but I just had the realization that the online shop for this game actually has Blizzard tomes! I haven't yet done any calculations about if/where this will shave off turns, but perhaps sub-50 is in fact possible!

EDIT: Nvm, Blizzard isn't a long range tome in this game... sorry for the false alarm.

LOL. If that would've been the chase, don't you this that DD151 would've used it?

Also, I get the feeling you will never play this game again XD