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Imma get that S rank! I hope...


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  • Chapter 27 - 15/18 turns (213/213 in total) - 1863/1550 XP (29014/20850 in total) - Funds: * * * *
    fielded: Hector, Matthew, Serra, Priscilla, Florina, Raven, Lucius, Ninian, Isadora, Heath, Farina, Pent + Harken
Spoiler

Got another one! I hadn't planned to finish this today - I just wanted to dick around a bit, try out how when to optimally aggro the enemy groups in order to get Harken and still finish quickly... But then I got a string of really good RNG (starting with Lucius dodgetanking three wyverns and a purge) and I thought I might as well capitalize on that :lol: As such, my notes are incredibly sparse and the turncount is too high by one or two, but the XP looks really good once again. It seems that a mostly unpromoted team at this point of the game is good for XP and bad for turncounts - who knew? :lol:

Another nice thing: This is a great opportunity to verify my turncount. The game indeed displays 5 Star Tactics, so I am definitely not worse than I have logged. And if the 213 is correct, I should drop back to four stars after BBD.

Anyway - as I said, I really didn't make too detailed notes, but the general strategy was to send everyone north except for Heath, Florina and Serra, who honestly didn't do much beyond self-improvement. It's weird how you can completely ignore a good chunk of the map (the center of the map no less) as soon as the Purge breaks. I try to outrun the general which mostly works - at some point, I have Isadora bodyblocking him for two or three turns (dicking around, remember? ;): ) to avoid killing him before turn 9. In hindsight, I should've just killed him, since I didn't aggro any of the other promoted enemies before Harken spawned.

Heath and Florina basically stall in front of the southern entry for as long as wyvern reinforcements spawn from the east. Heath kills the mage and a couple archers through the door (more like lameffective damage, amiright???) and at some point I feel safe enough for Serra to unlock the door in order to kill most of the enemies inside. As a result, Florina reaches level 20 and promotes, Serra reaches level 20 late enough into the chapter for me to postpone the decision about her promotion, and Heath reaches an awkward level 19.95. Guess he'll promote on turn 2 in BBD. ;):

Between the units in the main troop, I think I dodged three lethal Purges, including one by Kenneth himself with 75-ish displayed accuracy. :o I really don't deserve this clear, but I also really don't want to replay this map. Who the hell thought that FE7's weather mechanics are fun and engaging? Matthew also helps the Funds rank by stealing all four lockpicks (still * * * * though) and, obviously, getting all the treasure chests. Kenneth actually breaks his Purge tome before I get to engage him, which adds another scary moment because of its innate crit, but Raven kills him on EP with an Iron Blade crit instead. He's at 19.77 now, too, with capped Str/Skl (also base defense, though), so I might as well promote him before the start of BBD. It's not like the XP rank is what I have to fear at this point.

 

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  • Chapter 28 - 16/15 turns (229/228 in total) - 1251/1800 XP (30265/22650 in total) - Funds: * * * *
    fielded: Heath, Priscilla, Fiora, Ninian (going left) - Hector, Florina, Raven, Legault, Pent, Harken (going right) + Nino
Spoiler

Y'know, I love this chapter and I hate this chapter. Until now, the "hate" part was completely due to Jaffar's RNG-dependent survival, but the Ranked context of this clear made it especially annoying that you can't finish it early. Would've saved me four or five turns. :/
But still, I really like the sense of urgency in this chapter. How Nino is actually at a much smaller risk of dying than Jaffar, which makes sense because he is trying to save her. How you always have one guy reaching Zephiel, but he should be able to at least heal-stall him until you arrive (and that it is possible to reliably intercept the next batch of assassins, at least to my experience).

So as the XP count indicates, I have been going full reliability instead of optimization this round. I killed Ursula on T.7 - not without a bit of fucking up, first by just assuming that my speedscrewed Florina would be able to double her with a Silver Lance (which would have been a 2HKO), then (one round later because I didn't want to risk getting hit by her and all the mercs around her) by moving Torch!Legault before killing her, which means that Florina had to re-spot Ursula so that Harken could 3HKO her with the Brave Sword. OH WELL.

I'm aware that the early bosskill hurts my XP count since there's two Generals and a bunch of small fry that I prevented from spawning, but I honestly feel quite comfortable doing so at this point. As is, I only need to collect ~9500 XP in the remaining chapters, which seems quite doable. More importantly, I did collect all the treasure including the stealable Earth Seal, although I did not manage to get some more Lockpicks for my collection.

I don't think my strategy is particularly special for this map - three mounts go down the left path with Ninian boosting them while getting rescue/dropped as much as possible. I didn't really have an easy way to deal with Maxime - in the end, freshly promoted Heath almost 3HKO'ed him, so that Priscilla and Fiora had to chip in with some very minor damage rolls. Both girls barely survived a hit by Maxime, so there was no lethal danger involved, while iirc, Heath barely avoided a 2HKO. Tanky Flyers, man. <3 <3 <3

Jaffar broke his KE and drank two Elixir charges, but his inventory gets reset anyway, iirc. Interplay between RNG and his AI worked mostly in my favour - there was only one EP where he would have died if all enemies had hit, and I probably would have been able to prevent that if I had had a better way to deal with Maxime.

RHS went fairly well, all things considered. Harken (even disregarding the bosskill) probably did more work than he absolutely had to, but I didn't really have any tight spots on this side as a result. Florina rescued Hector on T4 and dropped on T5 so that he could recruit Nino T6 (the plan was to kill Ursula T6 as well, but, y'know, speedscrewed Florina), Harken then kills Ursula on T7.

After that, it's largly mop-up duty. Happy Music starts playing on T11 when I kill the last remaining thief and take the Brave Lance that he stole, and I take my time stealing the Earth Seal and pray that Luna doesn't crit me. So yeah, rout on T12, and that's despite me taking my time in the end. :/

 

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  • Chapter 28x - 14/28 turns (243/256 in total) - 2356/2250 XP (32621/24900 in total) - Funds: * * * *
    fielded: Hector, Priscilla, Florina, Raven, Fiora, Dart, Legault, Ninian, Heath, Pent + Nino, Jaffar
Spoiler

Finally! After all this time, I can finally promote Legault! He's going to be so awesome! ...but seriously, Thief -> Assassin has to be the worst promotion in the game, even if you ignore the huge hit to the Funds ranking. Shitty stat boosts, shitty Str cap, still swordlocked, they lose all their utility (chest keys are buyable, ffs), the latest not-mainlord promotion in the game... I guess they profit from the 0 Luck on all non-Bosses? And it's refreshing that Assassin is not the ultimate uber class for once. ;):

I did promoted Fiora, though, even though I really wanted to use Farina for a longer timespan. But I also really want another fast flyer - if I had benched Fiora, Heath would have been my speediest flyer, even disregarding the Con difference. :o Fiora might have some Str issues, but at least she capped Spd befoe promotion.

Strategy-wise, I mostly kept my team closely together, except of course the flyers who would start by killing the three bow users closest to the starting position, as well as the three Bolting mages SE of that platform. On turn 2, I let one Bolting mage live in favour of Heath one-rounding the boss - which, after the Enemy Phase put him at 3 HP and asleep, so Fiora had to rescue him north in order to get fixed up. The loneliest of wolves, however, was Dart, who used the peg squad and wyvern reinforcements to collect enough XP to reach level 20. He was never at a HUGE risk of dying, thanks to some Physic support and a Vulnerary in his inventory, but he did have quite a few "must dodge at least one out of three 35% hitchances" situations. Still, worth it, even though he capped a few turns before I seized, so he wasted three (?) kills on the Northern Peg knight reinforcements.

Speaking of XP dumps, Nino most certainly did her best - e.g. killing the Falcoknight that survived two of Dart's hand axes, or killing a paladin who survived two of Pent's Thunder spells - and gained a respectable 735 XP over the course of the map. :3 One of her kills was even helpful for the clear! And now she can cry in a corner because HHM does't build Knights and Generals into the Cog.

I'm actually very, very short on basic weapons, to the point where my very last Iron Lance broke during the course of the chapter, while Priscilla and Pent mostly ran around unarmed so that Nino could keep the only remaining Fire and Thunder tomes. Good thing CoD has an armory that sells iron weapons :lol:

Other than the XP feeding, the strategy was mostly "go with the map changes". Legault was in position to steal the Blue Gem right after the path to that platform opened on turn 5 and with the help of Ninian to boost him for a couple tiles, he was able to get the Angelic Robe on turn 6. He then gave one item to Raven (iirc) to make enough space for the three chest items in the NE, and after the archers and wyverns were mostly eradicated (Heath did most of the work here), he got to work over there, too. Maybe I could've been greedy and field Matthew for the 20 Steal XP, but I wanted the little bit of extra survivability on Legault to make things more reliable. (actually, now that I'm looking at Matt's stats, Sonia would have one-shot him, so I definitely made the right call here)

Bosskill went to Heath - he dropped Hector closely to the throne on turn 13, getting into position with the Brave Lance himself. He barely misses the 4HKO, so Florina chips on T4, landing a lucky Killer Lance crit, which allows Heath to use his Steel Lance for the coup de grâce instead. And, because I'm stupid and forgot to trade one of Heath's items to Hector, I had to discard a 6-use javelin. :/ That's 120 gold that I'll never se again!

And I guess it's time for another stat update: (I'll assume that everyone can guess which of Priscilla's weapon rank is an S)

Spoiler

		lv		HP  Str Skl Spd Lck Def Res	B/W	WRank
Hector		20.00		35  18  13  12  11  17  2	170/73	(A)
Nino		12.92		23  11  13  17  13  5   11	14/12	(C+.6)
Ninian		15.89		25  2   1   20  24  10  16	8/0	-
Priscilla	20.00/9.21	28  19  23  16  23  10  22	46/23	(S | D+.9)

Heath		20.00/6.85	48  22  22  20  9   19  8	110/71  (S | E)
Raven		19.77/3.76	47  22  21  23  8   8   7	98/56	(A+.7 | D+.3)
Florina		20.00/4.68	46  20  15  18  24  7   17	121/66	(A+.8 | D)	(both LHM boosters)
Pent		    */9.73	35  21  21  18  14  12  18	19/14	(An. A+.6 | St. S)

Legault		20.00		33  9   17  20  15  11  4	56/14	(B+.5)
Dart		20.00		43  20  11  16  6   8   1	85/55	(A)
Fiora		20.00/2.87	36  13  18  21  9   10  16	110/58  (S | E)
Farina		18.87		29  13  16  15  12  12  14	48/27	(A)

Harken		   */9.66	43  23  22  19  12  16  11	9/8	(B | B)
Serra		20.00		28  11  11  18  18  6   14	8/0	(A)
Matthew		19.73		31  6   10  20  12  5   3	93/29	(A)
Isadora		   */2.69	29  13  12  17  10  8   7	31/7	(A | B | D)

Lucius		17.74		25  17  13  17  3   3   15	74/43	(A)
Sain		16.29		33  16  9   13  11  8   4	85/47	(La. A | Sw. C)
Eliwood		15.58		31  14  14  13  13  9   10	86/49	(A)
Lyn		14.63		24  9   14  19  13  3   5	31/20	(A)

Wil		8.16		23  6   10  7   8   6   3	17/9	(D+.5)
Dorcas		16.99		40  16  10  8   6   9   1	101/36  (A)
Lowen		17.28		35  9   10  13  9   14  6	132/47	(La. A | Sw. C+.4)
Erk		14.35		26  10  10  13  8   4   8	42/30	(A)

Hawkeye		   */8.19	52  20  15  11  16  17  11	24/17	(A+.8)
Rath		18.34		34  13  16  15  8   9   6 	40/19	(A)
Louise		   */4.32	28  12  14  17  16  9   12	7/1	(A)
Jaffar		   */13.52	34  19  25  24  10  15  11	4/2	(A)


		lv.		B/W     last used
Canas		13.09		36/18   ch.22
Kent		11.62		31/13   ch.22
Guy		13.15		72/37   ch.22
Marcus		   */4.27	76/47	ch.20

Rebecca		5.83		25/11   ch.19
Oswin		12.96		51/19	ch.17
Bartre		5.96		25/8	ch.16

 

 

Edited by ping
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On 7/21/2018 at 5:41 AM, ping said:

(those are the most expensive item in 31x, right?)

I believe so, but if you aren't quite as pressed for time, there is the Victory or Death Secret Shop, Earth Seals and Ocean Seals alike are on sale there. As are Physics of course.

 

3 hours ago, ping said:

I'm actually very, very short on basic weapons, to the point where my very last Iron Lance broke during the course of the chapter, while Priscilla and Pent mostly ran around unarmed so that Nino could keep the only remaining Fire and Thunder tomes. Good thing CoD has an armory that sells iron weapons :lol:

 

Last time I ran through FE7, I recall almost entirely running out of Javelins and Hand Axes by the time I got to Sands of Time. Quite annoying given the sheer amount of 2 range there. I think the "Bern Arc" stretch of chapters are one of the best arguments against the old school "shop only in chapters with shops" approach of FE (not like anyone would argue in favor of it).

 

I was concerned about your turn counts, and I can see you skipping VoL at this point, but now it's your Funds which still haven't recovered. Will they ever? How much Arena use can you get out of Battle Preparations? The Arena generates free money, no selling or obtaining of items to get it. 

The Armads chapter being a 0 requirements one is going to hurt for turns, unless you're going to Warp it, might be the best use of it in this context. Although skipping the Wolf Beil in the top right chest might not be a good idea, since it has a Funds value of 6000. 

Then again, The Berserker has two stealable stat boosters, which could further help Funds, but to bring a Thief means having to take things more slowly since no Warp can then be brought.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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@Interdimensional Observer - I completely forgot about that final Secret Shop :lol: I never had any real reason to visit it in my regular playthoughs.

I'm cautiously optimistic about my Funds. I am about 46k below the five star requirement right now, though, so I do have make sure to look for some cash in every corner. ;) Things that'll improve my situation are

  • the Hammerne staff (rapier+brave bow is good for ~5000 gold each; I should probably reserve the last charge for the Brave Lance)
  • the Berserker, in which I would hopefully get the Wolfbeil (6k), the stat boosters (16k) and the elixir (3k)
  • potentially VoL, for the Fortify (8k), Runesword (3.3k) and Swordslayer (2k).

Hammerning and ch.30 alone would be good for 30000 gold, not counting weapon/staff uses, but it should be enough to get my deficit below the 30000 mark. However, I do not know how exactly requirements and potential treasure measure up against each other in the other chapters. There isn't all that much I can do to increase my income in those, either - outside of the Berserker stat boosters, there only seem to be 4 Lockpicks (i.e. 4800 gold) to steal in Sand of Time.

Turncount still shouldn't be a huge issue. I haven't touched CoD yet, but I'm hoping for another 7-8 turns here (putting me at -20 or -21), which should be enough to sqeeze in 32x. My other estimations are +10 for the Berserker, 2x +1 for SoT and BP (duh), and, hopefully, another -3 or -4 for VoD and Light. That would be 11-13 turns for 32x.

I might have to try and half-skip it - get the treasure chests, then warp someone  in to kill Kishuna in two rounds. Heath w/Brave Lance should 4HKO him through Throne regeneration if he reaches 24 Str.

Edited by ping
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  • Chapter 29 - 9/20 turns (252/276 in total) - 1357/3650 XP (33978/28550 in total)
    fielded: Hector, Ninian, Priscilla, Heath, Florina, Farina, Fiora, Pent, Raven, Harken + Vaida
Spoiler

The true boss of this chapter isn't that scrub sitting on the throne, or even the Valkyrie swarm that you unleash when you get close to the Shrine of Seals. It's the third wave of those goddamn wyvern riders. Any reinforcements on rout maps are the worst, but those fuckers are THE worst.

As such, my general strategy relies on the assumption that the XP rank won't be an issue. Honestly, that XP count isn't even as bad as I woud have thought. ;) But as you can see, the only unpromoted unit on the team was Farina, and she was mostly just an air taxi, gaining a mere 11 XP over the course of the chapter. Maybe I would have been able to do something silly like field Lucius over Harken - ultimately, all he did was deal with the Shamans to the west and Mages to the North, plus killing wyverns, and maybe Lucius would have been at least good enough to do that too. I'm not going to replay the chapter to find out, though. ;):

The first two successful (as in, just beating the chapter successful) runs were ruined by those wyverns - I really didn't want to blow Vaida's spear on them (9000 gold!) and without it, the Killing was just too slow. I think I beat Linus on T.11 and 10 on those runs, but those wyvern reinforcements would have survived until turn 14 in both tries.

So what I did was reduce the number of triggered reinforcements. First try, I just avoided the Valkyrie zone (for obvious reasons), but the Monk/Bishop reinforcements had Raven rather preoccupied and the Shaman/Druid ones slowed my advance towards the NW. So instead, I made sure to avoid the Monk/Bishop one as well - Heath with an initial Barrier boost and some Physic support to keep his HP high for a few turns was able to just fly past it and almost solo it - he would if it wasn't for those to Valkyries in the NE corner. It's not reliable, either, unfortunately, since he has to dodge one Berserk use before he can Brave Lance the Valk in question. On the plus side, if you position your troops right, he can kill the Purge bishop on turn 2.

But I still needed too much manpower to get through the Dark Magic swarm, so I was again not able to leave behind a sufficiently large group to quickly kill the wyverns. So - third time, I avoided all non-Vaida reinforcment zones by making ample use of the pegasus sisters as rescue bots. The only ones left behind are Pent (who can still Physic a few times), Harken, Hector, and Merlinus (lol), who later were able to kill the last wyvern on T.9 enemy phase. Good thing that they prioritize damage, though, because that made the ones that I couldn't kill on PP go for Pent.

The general tactic for the main squad: Put Raven on a forest and watch the carnage. Everyone else stayed mostly out of range, although I sometimes tried to have one or two enemies attack someone else to reduce Raven's chance of death. It still wasn't a reliable clear, though - I had to bank on enough status staves miss for Priscilla to keep up with her work, and when Farina got slept after visiting the vendor (FINALLY I have some iron weapons again), I had to have Fiora retreat from the action to go to the armory and the village. Also, Raven had to dodge like two out of five Valkyrie attacks on EP 5, but at least he was sitting on a Fort to do so. ;)

Boss strategy (if we accept Linus as the "official" boss): Raven w/ Brave Sword quadruples, and because he missed once to often, Florina secured the kill with an Iron Sword hit :lol:

 

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