Edelgard Route Ch. 17 Mission Battle (Spoilers)

[MegaGax]

Does anyone have any advice for this particular mission battle? I had been having an easy enough time on Hard Classic thus far, and this map shows up and completely slaps me in the face.

The soldiers turning one by one into beasts was bad enough, because I couldn't get to them in enough time to prevent the change, but Dedue turning, and getting flanked by Rhea completely destroyed me, I had to use all my pulses and it still wasn't enough to overcome.

Anyone have a solid strat for dealing with this? I really don't want to turn the difficulty down if I can help it.

[soarta]

That's pretty funny. I've been searching everywhere on here and on reddit for a thread where people discussed this chapter.
Luckily, I beat it today, albeit having to use DP to go back to square one and rethink my gameplan for this a dozen times.

The best advice I could give you, would be to deal with that Bolting-mage first and foremost. Whether it's by using stride on Byleth/Edelgard on the left or using Warp to get a unit with high Res to that spot, the mage has to go.
Secondly, you should split your army into two groups. A dancer with stride to rush up top and kill the Priest that's standing on the healing tile in the top left corner, while having Edel/Byleth take care of the soldiers that turn into beasts eventually. Your second group should poke the soldiers with crest stones on the right, and I'd advice to leaving Sylvain alone for the time being. He won't move anyway, not even when you kill Dimitri.
The group that dealt with the right hand side should stay on the island where you initially spawned, due to the reinforcements coming in (it'll buy you some time when Rhea pops up because she has a long way to go at this point).

Now, that's how far I've come last night, and I thought "damn, this is actually pretty easy". On my first two attempts, I had Dedue turn into a beast at turn 16-19, which was fairly late, but I also had 4 other soldier beasts on the field at that time.

Listen carefully when I say that you should get to Dedue ASAP when you dealt with the regular soldiers. I had to cheese with Edelgards Combat Art and Amyr to swing my way to him, and I was at Turn 7 at that time. Notice the discrepancy here? The game probably checks for soldiers to transform, and if you deal with them early on, it's like "fuck it, might as well have Dedue go nuts super early".

TL;DR
Split your party into two groups, use warp/a flying unit to take care of the Bolting mage, rush for the top left and poke away the soldiers on the right.
After that, it's just making the right choices. Edelgard nabbed MVP because of the Amyr-shenanigans, but Felix was super good for me during that chapter, as well as Ingrid.

Hope you'll get it done eventually. That chapter was a real pain in the ass.

Edited August 6, 2019 by soarta

[Tribute]

When you kill Rhea, all the reinforcements she brought will go away. I used Bow Knight!Shamir to gank the bishop in the corner who drops a shell. And then piled Rhea with myself and Edl (double check kill math, she has a built in Sol).

Snipe the bolting mage with a flier on turn 2, or 1 if possible. Retreat and then pick them off with curved shots on the way over.

Personally I pushed it as a single group and just let the monsters come one at a time. Dedue is a shitter. I had to warp+thoron him. I used all my pulses the first time he transformed. I'm sure its doable if you have better non mage gambits.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Tribute

[MegaGax]

10 minutes ago, soarta said:

That's pretty funny. I've been searching everywhere on here and on reddit for a thread where people discussed this chapter.
Luckily, I beat it today, albeit having to use DP to go back to square one and rethink my gameplan for this a dozen times.

The best advice I could give you, would be to deal with that Bolting-mage first and foremost. Whether it's by using stride on Byleth/Edelgard on the left or using Warp to get a unit with high Res to that spot, the mage has to go.
Secondly, you should split your army into two groups. A dancer with stride to rush up top and kill the Priest that's standing on the healing tile in the top left corner, while having Edel/Byleth take care of the soldiers that turn into beasts eventually. Your second group should poke the soldiers with crest stones on the right, and I'd advice to leaving Sylvain alone for the time being. He won't move anyway, not even when you kill Dimitri.
The group that dealt with the right hand side should stay on the island where you initially spawned, due to the reinforcements coming in (it'll buy you some time when Rhea pops up because she has a long way to go at this point).

Now, that's how far I've come last night, and I thought "damn, this is actually pretty easy". On my first two attempts, I had Dedue turn into a beast at turn 16-19, which was fairly late, but I also had 4 other soldier beasts on the field at that time.

Listen carefully when I say that you should get to Dedue ASAP when you dealt with the regular soldiers. I had to cheese with Edelgards Combat Art and Amyr to swing my way to him, and I was at Turn 7 at that time. Notice the discrepancy here? The game probably checks for soldiers to transform, and if you deal with them early on, it's like "fuck it, might as well have Dedue go nuts super early".

TL;DR
Split your party into two groups, use warp/a flying unit to take care of the Bolting mage, rush for the top left and poke away the soldiers on the right.
After that, it's just making the right choices. Edelgard nabbed MVP because of the Amyr-shenanigans, but Felix was super good for me during that chapter, as well as Ingrid.

Hope you'll get it done eventually. That chapter was a real pain in the ass.

I'll agree, this map was a huge pain. I was not at all prepared for the sudden uptick in difficulty, going in blind made it even worse.

I usually like to turtle which was how I dealt with the bolting mage the first time around, I set Hubert in range and just tanked the hits until the mage ran out. That was a HUGE mistake, because I didn't know the soldiers were gonna turn into beasts, and by the time the mage ran outta uses, all of them had turned.

The funny part is Dedue wouldn't have been an issue at all if it weren't for his transformation, he would be a sitting duck for any decent mage. But he ends up being the worst out of all of them, if you can bring down his 2 HP bars, he has 151 HP in the last skirmish, insane.

Sadly I didn't get to recruit Ingrid on this file (Petra is mostly my flier), but I do have Felix. But I didn't train him in authority so I dunno if it's worth even sticking a battalion on him at this point.

[soarta]

Just now, MegaGax said:

I usually like to turtle which was how I dealt with the bolting mage the first time around, I set Hubert in range and just tanked the hits until the mage ran out. That was a HUGE mistake, because I didn't know the soldiers were gonna turn into beasts, and by the time the mage ran outta uses, all of them had turned.

I mean.. we're awfully similar with how we approach this game by the looks of it. I was breezing through the BE route on hard/classic until this chapter came up, and I was mildly annoyed by all the mechanics they decide to throw at you.

Hubert kind of foreshadows that you'll have to deal with reinforcements anyway, and in case you played the Petra/Bernadetta Prologue.. you just laugh at reinforcements and shake them off when you survived that one.
Seeing that one soldier on the right in front of Sylvain transform is kind of fucked up, but my jaw dropped when Dedue decided to pop a pill and go ham out of nowhere.
Kind of bummed out that I had to resort to Warp/Stride tactics for this, but it can't be helped. They just had to amp up the amount of curveballs that late into the game. 

[Armagon]

This is honestly one of the worst maps in the game. I already have a problem with Demonic Beasts but the Bolting mage is definitely the biggest problem. The Bolting mage is also surrounded by like 7 Dark Mages so if you warp someone there, they need to have high Res.

I also can't figure out if the Demonic Beast transformations are proximity based or turn based.

But as others have mentioned, definitely get rid of the Bolting mage first. The dudes that transform into Demonic Beasts also don't move so if you have some high movement folks, you might be able to take them out before they have a chance to transform.

[MegaGax]

3 minutes ago, soarta said:

I mean.. we're awfully similar with how we approach this game by the looks of it. I was breezing through the BE route on hard/classic until this chapter came up, and I was mildly annoyed by all the mechanics they decide to throw at you.

Hubert kind of foreshadows that you'll have to deal with reinforcements anyway, and in case you played the Petra/Bernadetta Prologue.. you just laugh at reinforcements and shake them off when you survived that one.
Seeing that one soldier on the right in front of Sylvain transform is kind of fucked up, but my jaw dropped when Dedue decided to pop a pill and go ham out of nowhere.
Kind of bummed out that I had to resort to Warp/Stride tactics for this, but it can't be helped. They just had to amp up the amount of curveballs that late into the game. 

I had just played that paralogue before the mission battle, so I was already frustrated by that particular occurrence, I somehow managed to get through that with no casualties at all, despite having my more squishy characters right in the line of fire. But this? This was just sooo much more to overcome.

I'm a bit terrified of the curveballs that may come in chapter 18 when I finally get past this.

[soarta]

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

I also can't figure out if the Demonic Beast transformations are proximity based or turn based.

My guess would be that it's turn based, but perhaps proximity enables them to turn way before they are meant to. Unless you interfere with that specific order by killing them prior to them turning, the game ticks off what's required for Dedue to turn as well.
I tried the turtle-approach and went all-out after that. I don't recall proximity being that important though, but there may be more to it.

[MegaGax]

6 minutes ago, Armagon said:

This is honestly one of the worst maps in the game. I already have a problem with Demonic Beasts but the Bolting mage is definitely the biggest problem. The Bolting mage is also surrounded by like 7 Dark Mages so if you warp someone there, they need to have high Res.

Speaking of those mages.. they kept healing the damage I had done to the beasts already, it was quite the irritating set up.

[Chocolate Kitty]

it's actually... super easy to handle that initial bolting mage, use a bow on a flier; brave bow boom dead. bow fliers in general destroy all of the starting dark mages around the bolting one

for the second one, i used warp to just get someone there to murk them before they could do anything

SEIROS wasn't as bad as I initially thought if you just gambit her to get her out of the way (or you'll have a lot of reinforcements you don't want to deal with), I personally just went all left to handle her and dedue and ignored most of the demonic beats in the middle and sent someone to deal with the lovely mercedes after handling dimi

 

for real though, that was... horrible. idk who to be madder at, dedue or the soldiers themselves. shit was crazy and then dedue went off and i literally screamed WHAT THE FUCK

Edited August 6, 2019 by Chocolate Kitty

[Tribute]

2 minutes ago, MegaGax said:

I had just played that paralogue before the mission battle, so I was already frustrated by that particular occurrence, I somehow managed to get through that with no casualties at all, despite having my more squishy characters right in the line of fire. But this? This was just sooo much more to overcome.

I'm a bit terrified of the curveballs that may come in chapter 18 when I finally get past this.

Theres some unique things, but there are no mid map curveballs that you haven't seen.

 

At least none that I triggered.

[MegaGax]

1 minute ago, Tribute said:

Theres some unique things, but there are no mid map curveballs that you haven't seen.

 

At least none that I triggered.

Well, that's a bit of a solace, for now at least..

[Florete]

Reading this is...interesting. This map was a good challenge, but certainly not as hard for me as it apparently was for others.

The first bolting mage was a complete non-factor. I just had Dorothea dance for Petra, who shot it down with a bow and then retreated to safety. I had to tank a hit from the second, but then I warped Petra over there and the same thing happened.

I took out some soldiers before they could transform, but the ones that did I was able to get rid of without much trouble. I did end up having to lead Rhea over to the left where Byleth and Edelgard were, but I had gotten rid of all major threats at that point.

Dedue didn't transform until after all that, when I had my entire party nearby, so I cleaned him up pretty easily.

I'm seeing people mention other characters on this map but I guess I recruited them all because Dimitri, Dedue, and Rhea were the only named enemies on the map for me.

[MegaGax]

5 minutes ago, Florete said:

Reading this is...interesting. This map was a good challenge, but certainly not as hard for me as it apparently was for others.

The first bolting mage was a complete non-factor. I just had Dorothea dance for Petra, who shot it down with a bow and then retreated to safety. I had to tank a hit from the second, but then I warped Petra over there and the same thing happened.

I took out some soldiers before they could transform, but the ones that did I was able to get rid of without much trouble. I did end up having to lead Rhea over to the left where Byleth and Edelgard were, but I had gotten rid of all major threats at that point.

Dedue didn't transform until after all that, when I had my entire party nearby, so I cleaned him up pretty easily.

I'm seeing people mention other characters on this map but I guess I recruited them all because Dimitri, Dedue, and Rhea were the only named enemies on the map for me.

Sylvain and Mercedes are enemies if you didn't recruit them. Without defeating Mercedes Peg knights will infinitely spawn in the top left corner. I cleared it up a lot better after getting the initial blind side run of it done, only one Managed to transform, and I made sure to kill Dedue w/ Dorothea using Meteor, wasn't dealing with that nonsense.

Edited August 7, 2019 by MegaGax

[Florete]

Just now, MegaGax said:

Sylvain and Mercedes are enemies if you didn't recruit them. Without defeating Mercedes Peg knights will infinitely spawn in the top left corner.

I see. Mercedes was just replaced by a generic Bishop, then.

[MegaGax]

Happy to report that I successfully completed this mission. Odd though, when I saw a let's player complete this they had some other dialogue than what I got. Wonder if that means if certain events are done in it, that it changes things?

[Ether]

You can actually skip Dedue's transformation. I don't know exactly what the trigger is, but attacking him while he's still human and ORKOing him just takes him off of the map, and you can definitely get close enough to do so without the use of Stride or anything(although Stride would make it much easier). Video below to show I'm not talking out of my ass here.

 

[soarta]

12 minutes ago, MegaGax said:

Happy to report that I successfully completed this mission. Odd though, when I saw a let's player complete this they had some other dialogue than what I got. Wonder if that means if certain events are done in it, that it changes things?

Glad to hear that you managed to beat it. Are you talking about the dialogue after you finish off all the commanders? Because if so.. could this be tied to how many people you recruited from BL? That'd be kind of weird though, because the only person that made in appearance in Ch. 17 that I recruited was Mercedes, and I accidentally left Sylvain hanging at his usual spot (I finished off Dimitri and forgot about him, yikes). His reaction was kind of heartbreaking, on another note.

 

 

12 minutes ago, Ether said:

you can definitely get close enough to do so without the use of Stride or anything(although Stride would make it much easier). Video below to show I'm not talking out of my ass here.

You're on a timer once all of the soldiers with crest stones are dealt with. I don't know if it's 1 turn or 2 turns until Dedue transforms, but it's a small timeframe for you to get to him. I've sent 5 units over to the mages, and still had to Amyr-cheese over to him. Granted I did not predict that Dedue would transform that quickly, so I took my sweet time there. 

[MegaGax]

2 minutes ago, soarta said:

Glad to hear that you managed to beat it. Are you talking about the dialogue after you finish off all the commanders? Because if so.. could this be tied to how many people you recruited from BL? That'd be kind of weird though, because the only person that made in appearance in Ch. 17 that I recruited was Mercedes, and I accidentally left Sylvain hanging at his usual spot (I finished off Dimitri and forgot about him, yikes). His reaction was kind of heartbreaking, on another note.

Nah it's the dialogue after the battle is over. In the video I saw Edelgard and Dimitri had a conversation before she axes him, however in my playthrough, Dedue and Dimitri spoke before the latter kicked the bucket. There was a Graphic involved with the former, of Edelgard holding Aymr above a kneeling Dimitri.

Edited August 7, 2019 by MegaGax

[soarta]

7 minutes ago, MegaGax said:

Nah it's the dialogue after the battle is over. In the video I saw Edelgard and Dimitri had a conversation before she axes him, however in my playthrough, Dedue and Dimitri spoke before the latter kicked the bucket. There was a Graphic involved with the former, of Edelgard holding Aymr above a kneeling Dimitri.

I probably worded my initial response poorly, but I was indeed refering to the post-battle dialogue.

That sounds.. awfully different from what I got. In fact, I got the same exact cinematic as the person in the video that @Ether posted.
Kind of a longshot, but did you finish Dimitri off with Amyr? If not, I've got no clue what you did to get these scenes.

/edit: in case you made a screenshot for whatever reason, I'd like to see that picture.

Edited August 7, 2019 by soarta

[MegaGax]

6 minutes ago, soarta said:

I probably worded my initial response poorly, but I was indeed refering to the post-battle dialogue.

That sounds.. awfully different from what I got. In fact, I got the same exact cinematic as the person in the video that @Ether posted.
Kind of a longshot, but did you finish Dimitri off with Amyr? If not, I've got no clue what you did to get these scenes.

Oh, well yes that was what I meant.

I didn't finish Dimitri off with Amyr either (I used the sword of the creator) But, I did attack Dimitri with Edelgard. I can post the video of where I saw the scene, I think it's still in my history. Honestly I think it depends on if Dedue transformed or not.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited August 7, 2019 by MegaGax

[soarta]

4 minutes ago, MegaGax said:

Honestly I think it depends on if Dedue transformed or not.

Mhm. Upon reviewing the video and based on the fact that the person in the video finished Dimitri off with Byleth - that does seem like a valid assumption.
It bears the question, why does it matter if Dedue is transformed or not in the context of the conversation they had? 
I suppose Dimitri would never know that Dedue kept a crest stone for himself if he's killed prior to transforming. A neat detail that you could easily miss out on, and I love the fact that Dimitri called her El. Quite a powerful scene if you think about it, beyond the visual representation.

[MegaGax]

Just now, soarta said:

 A neat detail that you could easily miss out on, and I love the fact that Dimitri called her El. Quite a powerful scene if you think about it, beyond the visual representation.

Agreed! I thought it was a powerful scene, I'm a bit disappointed I missed it since I killed Dedue while he was still human. I guess it matters since when Dedue transforms and subsequently dies, he's no longer capable of having that conversation? Both are pretty nice in their own ways.

[Armagon]

3 hours ago, MegaGax said:

Happy to report that I successfully completed this mission. Odd though, when I saw a let's player complete this they had some other dialogue than what I got. Wonder if that means if certain events are done in it, that it changes things?

Yeah, if Crimson Flower is anything to go by, bits of the game change depending on how a battle plays out.

In Ch.15, if you were to defear Seteth before defeating Flayn, the former actually dies and the latter will then die as well (though oddly enough she doesn't have a death quote). Rewinding a bit, i decided to defeat Flayn first and she simply retreated and when Seteth is defeated, he also retreats (and this is acknowledged in the post battle cutscene).

I did do that with Byleth and i'm not sure if he is the one whose supposed to defeat those two in order to spare both Seteth and Flayn.

[soarta]

11 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I did do that with Byleth and i'm not sure if he is the one whose supposed to defeat those two in order to spare both Seteth and Flayn.

You have to defeat Flayn with Byleth, so that way both of them are spared, and they go into hiding. It doesn't matter who you use to finish off Seteth after doing this.

If you defeat Flayn with anyone but Byleth, she gets a death quote. 

Canonically it makes sense because Flayn wants to avoid any kind of confrontation with Byleth at all cost, and it's safe to say that the feeling is mutual here.

Edited August 7, 2019 by soarta