Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Honestly, quick-assembly weaponry would explain how your units can walk around with as many as five weapons at a time. The "I" in IKEA must stand for "Inventory".

Inventory

Knights

Everywhere

Appreciate

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...I totally forgot. I hope it wasn't something important.

Reminder that chests feel like exist in 3H b/c tradition, and little more IMO. The fact they randomly tossed them on some outdoor maps, and made the error of 1 key too few for non-CF C13, makes me think KT wasn't thinking them through.

 

35 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

It could also be an IKEA-ller Lance, with the blade disassembled from the shaft but can be reattached in like five seconds. Thus doesn't need that much space for its full length, if only a little less.

Having played FFXIII recently, Vanille's staffs have collapsible segmented shafts, allowing her to carry them on her waist without it being awkward. When it's time for battle, everything unfolds and the staff snaps back into in its full length. It might work just as well for a spear.

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Having played FFXIII recently, Vanille's staffs have collapsible segmented shafts, allowing her to carry them on her waist without it being awkward. When it's time for battle, everything unfolds and the staff snaps back into in its full length. It might work just as well for a spear.

'Course in real life segmented designs often drastically reduce the structural integrity... which... would explain why FE weapons break so easily.

[Shadow Mir]

12 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But we get a week of instruction, weirdly, before our first free time. I think that's a first, or at least it hasn't happened in ages.

iirc, this is the only time it happens.

12 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Yeah, it looks like only enemies get the morale boost buff from hitting a kill threshold. Which, naturally, because this is Three Houses, can – and most likely will – happen on enemy-phase.

I would add that this is especially concerning on Maddening, as they can boost three times.  And the first threshold is only three KOs.

[Jotari]

11 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yeah, this would've been great. Presumably, then, your player army would get handed some generics, like the other two houses get. I would generally keep the three armies where they are in the Blue Lions version, except how about giving the Lions control over the central hill to start things off?

I think to maintain gameplay challenge the central hill should always be controlled by one of the enemy armies.

 

[Alastor15243]

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I would add that this is especially concerning on Maddening, as they can boost three times.  And the first threshold is only three KOs.

...Of course.

[Shadow Mir]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Of course.

On Hard, they only boost twice; once at 5, and again at 8 KOs.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I think to maintain gameplay challenge the central hill should always be controlled by one of the enemy armies.

Ah, but in this case, the challenge would be to keep the hill in the face of enemies from three sides. If you don't want the assigned unit to face imminent defeat, you'll have to either reinforce them, or have them retreat.

[Interdimensional Observer]

13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

'Course in real life segmented designs often drastically reduce the structural integrity... which... would explain why FE weapons break so easily.

Then again, when I had to read Le Morte d'Artur, I distinctly remember it being stated during a few duels between two knights that they rode at each other on horseback, their spears shattered, and then they dismounted and drew their swords. -But that's a mid-late 1400s work of fiction, likely intended to entertain, though it was incredibly dry to me.

 

24 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Ah, but in this case, the challenge would be to keep the hill in the face of enemies from three sides. If you don't want the assigned unit to face imminent defeat, you'll have to either reinforce them, or have them retreat.

And if you wanted to go a step further, have the AI prioritize placing a unit on the ballista tile. If an enemy army does take it, then one of those morale/stat boosts is doled out for the first time they take it.

Call me overly cautious, but I ditched the hill fight altogether on my later runs of 3H. I funneled my entire army west, though it be slow-going, to destroy the army there first. There is safety in numbers. I saw no need to take a useless wooden hill with movement penalties and which would later be set on fire. And both enemy armies head for the hill, leaving their flanks exposed. What incentive exists to seize Mt. Wicker Man? Other than trying to keep the kill count morale boosts from happening by driving a wedge between the two enemy armies?

[Shadow Mir]

24 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Call me overly cautious, but I ditched the hill fight altogether on my later runs of 3H. I funneled my entire army west, though it be slow-going, to destroy the army there first. There is safety in numbers. I saw no need to take a useless wooden hill with movement penalties and which would later be set on fire. And both enemy armies head for the hill, leaving their flanks exposed. What incentive exists to seize Mt. Wicker Man? Other than trying to keep the kill count morale boosts from happening by driving a wedge between the two enemy armies?

The fire trap only comes into play in part 2.

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 32: Chapter 8 Week 1

God damn but there are a lot of quests this month. Okay, let's see how this goes...

Okay, much-appreciated bit of worldbuilding from Manuela, with her explaining the difference between what healing magic can handle and what needs actual medicine to fix. Apparently healing magic can only close wounds and raise a body's “vital energy” and things of that sort, while medicine is more focused on handling infections and curing diseases. Seems faith magic can at least handle poisons, though.

Alright, I've got my gardening done, time to bribe the shit out of Rhea.

Rhea... is a total bitch and taunts Professr about whether or not she misses her old life as a mercenary, knowing full well it's her fault she can't do that anymore.

But yeah, eight flowers later, and the C support is unlocked. But where am I supposed to go on the map to... is it not available yet? Let's click on it and see why I can't do it...

...Or clicking on it could... actually do it for once... that works too.

...Wow. Okay. So why is it light blue? I thought that's what that meant.

Aaaaanyway... Rhea tells us about Jeralt when he was younger. And apparently he pulled a Professr and jumped in the way of an attack meant for Rhea. He was then saved by a different sort of divine intervention, by way of a Nabatean blood infusion.

...No, wait, was that what happened here? That's what I remember hearing, but if so, she's being tight-lipped about it. I mean, I'd get why, but I wonder where it's confirmed...

Yeah, uh, as has been said elsewhere, this relationship with Rhea is astonishingly creepy. She's an authoritarian tyrant coated in honeyed words who created your mom as an artificial human made from her own DNA meant to bear the second coming of Dragon God... who is her mom.

It's like dating a milfed-up religious Dolores Umbridge who's simultaneously your mother, grandmother, and daughter.

It's like they were trying to one-up the nope factor of dating Peri.

And after giving her literally every flower I had, I managed to unlock the B support.

...This was mostly her fishing for information about how Professr's body is reacting to the Sword of the Creator. Not much of interesting happened beyond that. But alright, paralogue secured!

Oh damn it, it's this fucking two-toned whetstone thing. It's this ridiculous chain of trading with a bunch of random items that are all supremely vague references to multiple games in the series.

...Uh... Seteth has a quest for me to find information on a missing student... and the objective... is to find... a missing student poster... that someone already put up. So that's yet another quest where my objective is simply to retrieve information that someone else painstakingly compiled and then promptly lost.

...I don't have clue fucking one why Hanneman had the medieval equivalent of Hunk Rump magazine to trade for my book of crestological whatever. I can only assume it's something he's kept up his sleeve as leverage against Manuela in some critical moment.

...Because sure enough, Manuela is in fact the one who wants the Tome of Comely Saints.

Then the fire amulet goes to Cyril...

...the glowing stone goes to Mercedes...

...the “Path of Dawn” goes to Marianne... who's on the second floor of the dorms, which is incidentally the one place in the entire Academy you seem to be able to warp to without having ever been there before...

...the medicinal eyedrops go to Linhardt...

...and now I have the two-toned whetstone. I'm giving it to Shamir because hunter's volley.

And while we're at it...

...I can apparently recruit Shamir. She's level 15, but she's still a sniper, which means hunter's volley, which is going to be nuts once I get her to master it. Bai bai, Ashe!

We get yet another two-sentence love letter we're tasked with delivering in gleeful disregard of Murphy's law of school sitcom writing, this time to Rhea. Woo.

If they were gonna do something this stupid, couldn't they have at least, y'know, given the recipients voiced reactions and not the generic “thanks for the gift” comment?

And, uh... I've... apparently been challenged to a duel... by a student who doesn't like how close I am to my students.

...I wonder if she actually shows up as an opponent. I'll look out for a girl with brownish-red hair.

...Oh, it's a whole custom tournament.

...I can't help but notice these are all girls.

...Are they implying they're all just jealous of Professr being too popular with the boys or something?

...Aaaand, there's a freakishly strong and fast level 24 assassin in the quarterfinals, and I won't be able to beat her until she stops doubling me. So that mission is on hold for now.

So, I spend most of the rest of my free time restoring my students' motivation with food and also getting Shamir up.

Which means it's time for lessons.

...Nobody but Ashe got anything of real value.

Which means I'm done for the day.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Jotari]

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

It's like dating a milfed-up religious Dolores Umbridge who's simultaneously your mother, grandmother, and daughter.

 

Fates was deemed to not contain enough incest, so they decided to let you commit up to three generations of incest at once XD

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

..Aaaand, there's a freakishly strong and fast level 24 assassin in the quarterfinals, and I won't be able to beat her until she stops doubling me. So that mission is on hold for now.

And you can't partake in any other tournaments until you manage to defeat this one with Byleth (or possibly until Part 2 if it vanishes with the time skip). Which kind of sucks if you don't  have a good Byleth. Would have been nice if you could pick from a list of different tournaments per month.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

And you can't partake in any other tournaments until you manage to defeat this one with Byleth (or possibly until Part 2 if it vanishes with the time skip). Which kind of sucks if you don't  have a good Byleth. Would have been nice if you could pick from a list of different tournaments per month.

Could've sworn I saw the option to cycle through with ZL and ZR.

[Jotari]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

Could've sworn I saw the option to cycle through with ZL and ZR.

Oh...well it is possible that's there and I just missed it (damn ZL and ZR, that's how you check promotion levels while tutoring too XD )

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Could've sworn I saw the option to cycle through with ZL and ZR.

Yep it's possible to switch them around.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Which means it's time for lessons.

...Nobody but Ashe got anything of real value.

Obviously, he felt the pressure of being replaced by Shamir, and is performing to justify his continued usage.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

It's like dating a milfed-up religious Dolores Umbridge who's simultaneously your mother, grandmother, and daughter.

It's like they were trying to one-up the nope factor of dating Peri.

That character summary is... not totally wrong. Excepting that Rhea appears capable of some manifestation of kindness, should the mood strike her.

As for relationships, it's more like the "nope" of dating Azura, or any of the Royals (where the squick comes from a pre-existing familial connection), rather than that of dating Peri (where she just has an awful personality).

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Yeah, uh, as has been said elsewhere, this relationship with Rhea is astonishingly creepy. She's an authoritarian tyrant coated in honeyed words who created your mom as an artificial human made from her own DNA meant to bear the second coming of Dragon God... who is her mom.

It's like dating a milfed-up religious Dolores Umbridge who's simultaneously your mother, grandmother, and daughter.

Rhea's got some real mommy issues...

...sorry, everything about romancing Rhea is really gross, and I feel kinda gross for even joking about it.

[Etrurian emperor]

Dating Rhea is gross. But its also completely hilarious. 

[Samz707]

21 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Reminder that chests feel like exist in 3H b/c tradition, and little more IMO. The fact they randomly tossed them on some outdoor maps, and made the error of 1 key too few for non-CF C13, makes me think KT wasn't thinking them through.

 

Assuming you mean just pick-up keys, if there were enough free keys for every chest, would sorta make buying keys/the Thief class redundant.

 

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Rhea's got some real mommy issues...

...sorry, everything about romancing Rhea is really gross, and I feel kinda gross for even joking about it.

Well, Sothis can seemingly feel what Byleth feels since they got sick when Byleth was sick.....

 

Also what's this stuff about a Morale boost? I'm confused. (Since Alastor  mentions enemies getting it so is it not class motivation?)

Edited September 21, 2021 by Samz707

[Alastor15243]

6 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Also what's this stuff about a Morale boost? I'm confused. (Since Alastor  mentions enemies getting it so is it not class motivation?)

Enemy classes in the Battle of the Eagle and Lion all get a +2 to str, mag, def and res whenever their class scores enough kills.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Samz707 said:

Assuming you mean just pick-up keys, if there were enough free keys for every chest, would sorta make buying keys/the Thief class redundant.

Except...

• Chest keys are infinitely buyable all the time in 3H and are cheaper than chicken feed.
  • If the purchase of chest keys is a significant cost enough to amount to a "strategic" decision, you must've given away 95% of your money at the secret gambling hall accessible via a hidden door in the janitor's closet.
• Thus, Lockpick is a rather worthless ability unless you're that concerned about wasting inventory spaces.

The only time chest keys notably aren't buyable, is Dawn Breaks. Which makes the shortage in that chapter strange. It is true you could buy Chest Keys in some prior FEs, 6-8, 10, but the number of chapters where you could was limited in the first two of those games, and all buyable chest keys did, was undermine the value of Thieves, relegating them to the more niche stealing duty, and to keyless door-opening. (And on doors, I say good riddance and give me Tellius door-smashing again. Let us develop Thieves as lean mean Steal machines instead. )

[AnonymousSpeed]

There are a few stealables, but not a ton. There's, like...the Fili Shield replacement? A couple master seals?

[Sunwoo]

I get the weird feeling that a lot of the writers for FE don't understand how familial relationships work at all.

Every time it feels like they couldn't possibly 1-up the creepiness factor on the avatar's dating options, they find a way to make it weirder.

[Shadow Mir]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...This was mostly her fishing for information about how Professr's body is reacting to the Sword of the Creator. Not much of interesting happened beyond that. But alright, paralogue secured!

You only needed a C to unlock it iirc.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

We get yet another two-sentence love letter we're tasked with delivering in gleeful disregard of Murphy's law of school sitcom writing, this time to Rhea. Woo.

I cannot help but wonder "how the hell do these students get the idea to do this? Are they that bored?" Also, I seriously think this could be scandalous.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh damn it, it's this fucking two-toned whetstone thing. It's this ridiculous chain of trading with a bunch of random items that are all supremely vague references to multiple games in the series.

...Uh... Seteth has a quest for me to find information on a missing student... and the objective... is to find... a missing student poster... that someone already put up. So that's yet another quest where my objective is simply to retrieve information that someone else painstakingly compiled and then promptly lost.

...I don't have clue fucking one why Hanneman had the medieval equivalent of Hunk Rump magazine to trade for my book of crestological whatever. I can only assume it's something he's kept up his sleeve as leverage against Manuela in some critical moment.

...Because sure enough, Manuela is in fact the one who wants the Tome of Comely Saints.

Then the fire amulet goes to Cyril...

...the glowing stone goes to Mercedes...

...the “Path of Dawn” goes to Marianne... who's on the second floor of the dorms, which is incidentally the one place in the entire Academy you seem to be able to warp to without having ever been there before...

...the medicinal eyedrops go to Linhardt...

...and now I have the two-toned whetstone. I'm giving it to Shamir because hunter's volley.

XD

Anyways, I thought something was up with this myself - I was thinking to myself "why does this feel like they're making shout-outs to past games?" - something that I only thought was more the case because of the mutually exclusive quests.

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses Day 33: Chapter 8 Week 2-3

Quick update's all I've got time for today. Had to move a lot of luggage around, but... I think I can at least do an update on my month prep.

...God fucking damn it, how many paralogues are in this game? Four more just showed up! I might be able to do one of them and a skirmish tomorrow, we'll see.

Right now though, I want to do the sauna and some faculty training.

...And then of course next week is my last free time event of the month...

...This month feels a lot shorter than usual for some reason...

...Fuck it, I'll speed things along now and worry about the paralogues next chapter. I'll do two exploration days for today's update.

My planted pale-blue flowers netted me a speed carrot. Awesome, I'll put that on Professr and plant some blue ones in its place with the seeds I got from that harvest.

...And I'm just about out of the defense fish. Looks like I have to go fishing again. I'll do that “off-screen” while listening to an audiobook. Gimme a few minutes...

...Roughly half an hour later, it's suddenly sank in how crazy it is that this fishing pond is crawling with fish from every corner of Fodlan. They're talking about all these lakes and rivers they're from, and like... what... they can't all be plentifully breeding in this tiny pond, can they? If these are being continuously imported in... for the purpose of using them for food... then why are we then proceeding to make the teachers fish them back out again to prepare meals for their students?

Okay, I just spent forty minutes fishing with two months worth of bait. Time to actually cook for my students and do the sauna.

...Nah, not the sauna. The lessons have already started anyway, and all the major hurdles I wanted to get over seem to be in good shape right now. So... I'll just teach Professr some more about how to fly.

...Okay, the ludonarrative dissonance in the fact that Jeralt can't teach Professr about swordplay and fistfighting, when presumably she learned those things directly from him... is kind of hilarious.

Alright, time for lessons...

I got a couple of combat arts and skills that didn't really appeal to me. I'm hoping that by the end of this month I'll be able to try to reclass Felix into a brigand for death blow. That plus gauntlets will be fucking ridiculous.

Let's finish that up, shall we? Next week it is.

Okay, got a life fruit from the blue flowers, so now to plant some green ones.

Ohp, Flayn support unlocked!

...Okay, while I absolutely despise almost everything about how Flayn is written and voiced... there are occasional flashes where she's amazing.

Flayn: Why, when I got to the market – alone – I even haggle!

The way she delivers that line is priceless.

But she continues on her sea metaphor to say that Professr is like a particular sea she was taken to when she was little, in that as mysterious as Professr is, she feels vaguely familiar to Flayn anyway.

...Interesting... it seems her comments about what Rhea might be capable of imply that Flayn knows nothing about Rhea's efforts to create the artificial second coming of Sothis. She seems to just vaguely be suspecting this through their conversation.

...Unfortunately I forgot there were no lessons after this free time event, and thus Felix still can't get brigand unlocked. Damn it. Well, guess that means I'll do supports tomorrow and then maybe the chapter if I have time.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Shadow Mir]

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Roughly half an hour later, it's suddenly sank in how crazy it is that this fishing pond is crawling with fish from every corner of Fodlan. They're talking about all these lakes and rivers they're from, and like... what... they can't all be plentifully breeding in this tiny pond, can they? If these are being continuously imported in... for the purpose of using them for food... then why are we then proceeding to make the teachers fish them back out again to prepare meals for their students?

What's your professor level like now? Chapter 9 is the second fistfuls of fish event.