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

[Alastor15243]

34 minutes ago, lenticular said:

More or less what I said. Now, somewhat in the games defence, I was trying to play on Lunatic for my first playthrough, which was almost certainly a bad idea and I probably would have had a less frustrating time if I'd stuck to hard and saved Lunatic for potential replays (hello hubris, my old friend...). Also, I wasn't ironmanning, but was doing reset-when-anyone-dies. So take everything here with those things in mind. Also, my memory is awful so this is all to the best of my recollection. Which means it probably has inaccuracies and holes. But it is the best I can manage.

Basically, I started the level, looked at the units I had, looked at how thinly they'd be spread trying to defend all the possible entrances to my position, and wasn't sure how the hell it was even going to be possible. But I split them up as best I could and set about doing the level. And I was basically right. My units wouldn' have beent enough to complete the level, except that Camilla and friends showed up on turn 3. So I started trying to reposition everyone to best make use of my reinforcements, but the way I'd deployed  initially meant I was always going to be screwed. I can't remember for sure, but I think that maybe I'd let the north east get overrun and the enemy had reached that balista. Regardless. Someone got killed, I reset, and I was left with the feeling that it wasn't my fault. (It probably was at least partially my fault. I'm sure my play wasn't perfect. But playing with incomplete knowledge was definitely a big contributing factor.)

So, I started again, formulated a new plan that I actually thought might work this time... and then died again. But that one was totally my fault. Which was fine. I expected that I'd have a fair few resets due to my own errors and wouldn't have picked Lunatic for my first time through if I wasn't OK with that.

So I started again. And my tactic was basically to Have Effie and Camilla stand in the two gaps in the barricade south of the starting position. They were tanking for me (each in guard stance with a pair-up partner though I forget who), and everyone else's job was to deal with the two flanks and with any fliers who could bypass the choke point. And it was working decently well up until the point when Takumi uses the Dragon Vein, all the units that had been piling up at the choke point had a path to come and swarm me, and that was reset number 3 and the second one that didn't feel as if it was my fault.

For attempt four, I had to completely change up my approach and be more aggressive, but again, I made some sort of mistake and got someone killed and I reset. And normally, I'd say, "that's fine, my fault, I don't mind resetting". Except that by that point, I had completely lost patience with the chapter, wasn't having fun any more, and changed difficulty down to hard. My logic was that if the game was going to throw unfair situations, then a. an easier difficulty level would mean I'd have more chance of dealing with them, and b. if I was having fewer fair deaths alongside them, it'd be easier to keep my patience with them.

I have a theory (which I might get around to writing up in full one day) about good deaths and bad deaths in Fire Emblem. Basically (in the context of a resetting run; an ironman run would obviously define things differently), a good death is one where, when it happens, you're excited to start the level over and try to do it again, to improve your strategy, to learn from your mistakes. A bad death is one that leaves you deflated at the prospect of having to do the level again. Unfair deaths are generally bad deaths, since there's nothing to improve or to learn from other than "this time I will expect the thing I couldn't possibly have expected". Deaths due to carelessness are also typically bad deaths, since they mostly lead to "I'll do exactly the same thing as I did before but then not make the one boneheaded blunder at the end". Deaths due to underlying errors of strategy and tactics are good deaths. They're the ones where you genuinely are encourage to try something new or to tighten up your play. And honestly, these sorts of death can be among the most rewarding experiences in Fire Emblem.

But the problem with good deaths is that they can be tainted by bad deaths. For me at least, if I'm frustrated by bad deaths, then I'm not going to be in the right mindset to appreciate the good deaths when they happen. Which is what frustrates me about this level. It's a good level that absolutely did not need the surprise element to be both interesting and challenging. As evidenced by your experience here when you knew exactly what was going to happen and prepared very heavily for it. All the surprise really does is risk screwing people over. Not everyone is going to be screwed over, of course. Some people will have chosen an initial strategy that can easily be adapted to the changing circumstances. But that's not going to apply to everyone.

So yeah. For me, it was a frustrating level. It should have been a fun level, but it wasn't.

Just curious, before I respond, are you used to playing games on lunatic for the first try?

[lenticular]

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Just curious, before I respond, are you used to playing games on lunatic for the first try?

Nope! And I've no idea why I decided to try it that way, honestly.

[Alastor15243]

12 hours ago, lenticular said:

Nope! And I've no idea why I decided to try it that way, honestly.

Well, I know you conceded that, but I think the fact that you did this on Lunatic is really where your problems with this map began and ended. I've been looking at the map in hard mode and just as I remembered, it's really, really flexible compared to Lunatic. Fewer enemies, for one thing. The whole "I need more units to even do this" thing really doesn't remotely look like it would have happened to you on hard, nor would you have felt that intense pressure to perfectly coordinate your army's actions with the incoming ally reinforcements. They would have just been seen as a nice bonus to deal with the new enemies. I remember doing this map on Hard and my strategies were far less than optimal, but I still managed to pull through without a single death by thinking carefully about my moves and working with whoever I wound up sending places. I'm sorry your impression of this map was so soured by circumstance, but I do not remotely feel it's fair to blame it on the level design. The surprises the game throws at you give you more than enough elbow room on hard to give you a fighting chance if your strategies are good enough.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Venger_06]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I know she's a disposable generic, but she's also the only healer I have, and I don't want to fight next map without a staff user. That would eat into my funds so much.

I did both maps without healers. AMA.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, on to Elise and Odin's A support.

Brace yourselves, people. It's almost here.

It's not really bad.

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

A ninja annoyingly showed up with the last batch of oni savages to the west, but thankfully Odin has a full dual guard gauge, so he'll completely shrug it off, and honestly, his nostanking has him so far away from death it's kind of hilarious.

Odin is actually top tier. He can even kill Takumi.

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

I did both maps without healers. AMA.

10 and 11? Judging by what Zoran's done, I can believe it. What was your specific strategy?

[Jotari]

12 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So yeah, now we confront Takumi, and he's... yeah, remember that thing that Azura was supposed to get out of him? Well... she didn't. And now it's going to grow and fester and get... pretty damned nasty by the end of the game.

...Which makes it all the more annoying that, like with the lethality of Azura's song, Revelation just completely sidesteps this issue.

 

Well Revalation does address it in sofar as Ananokos possesses Gunther instead of Takumi...why in the world this happens to be different between the routes I have absolutely no idea. Corrin rescues Gunther from Valla long before they encounter Takumi in the other routes, if anything it should be the other way round in Revealation.  But I guess this entire Takumi lead coastal invasion of Nohr that never remotely happens in Birthright makes it pretty clear that they had absolutely no concern about maintaining logical consistency between the routes.

10 hours ago, lenticular said:

What I wish they did instead is have Takumi start on the other side of the map from the Dragon Vein, move towards it and then activate it when he reaches it. Not only would that get rid of the nasty surprise, but it would also make him seem less like a blithering idiot who should never be put in charge of a lemon, let alone other humans.

While I like the idea of Takumi having to physically access the dragon vein, another easy solve here would be to just let it so you can see what Dragonveins do even when there's a unit standing on them. Or just have Takumi moved off the dragon vein one square and then move onto it the turn (or the turn before) he activates. If he's off the dragon vein you're allowed to highlight it and where it does. He does start the map right on top of the Dragonvein, right?

Edited March 24, 2021 by Jotari

[Eltosian Kadath]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Shit. I totally miscalculated the movement of these spear fighters somehow. They'll be supplying the archers dual strikes, which could get outrageously nasty. Thankfully Niles has really good avoid and every attack needs to land in order for Niles to die, but still, that was a mistake on my part. I should've had Camilla or maybe Beruka (Can't remember if she was in range) fly in to pair up with him rather than standing by out of the archers' ranges.

Alright, Niles lives. He dodged both of the first archer's attacks. Lesson learned. That could've made my job a whole lot harder and locked me out of a paralogue I really want to see.

Yikes, that was close...glad he made it through that, as I find that people tend to underrate him.

Also fun fact about Nina's paralogue, it you face it before the auto-scaling makes all enemies promoted, there will be an armored knight that is unable to attack because its only weapon is an axe, which it can only wield after it promotes. I have probably mentioned this before, but I still find that fact kinda funny...

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Still, make no mistake, that was intense the whole way through. Holy shit. What an awesome map. And now that it's over... I'm pretty happy with myself. Especially since I did it without Azura this time.

Well done, not having access to a dancer must make this chapter trickier, so congrats.

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Which makes it all the more annoying that, like with the lethality of Azura's song, Revelation just completely sidesteps this issue.

It really is strange how the "true" route is the one which eschews so many of the key story points the other two routes share. No convenience orb, no Lilith sacrifice, no Azura singing herself to death, no mind controlled Takumi, not even Azura causing Garon pain with the power of dance. They should have found a way to include them, but with the heroes finding more favorable outcomes...

 

8 hours ago, lenticular said:

...I completely disagree with this. Being given a turn to react is better thannot being given that turn, but it can also be completely inadequate and irrelevant. Depending on where your units are, it's very easy to be in a position where one turn to react just isn't enough time to salvage the utter disaster that the game has dropped on top of you. Giving the player time to react can mitigate bullshit, but it isn't a get out of bullshit free card. In the specific case of this map, if you approach it very defensively, rely heavily on the choke points and don't care about thinning down enemy numbers -- which seems like a completely viable strategy -- then the surprise dragon vein will get you swarmed and I have no clue how it's possible to survive it without very heavy casualties, if at all.

I will note that this map is encouraging you to go on the offensive and push past the choke points in the center with the pair of visit-able houses past them. Admittedly those are side objectives, but it is a way for the developers to encourage the kind of play they want with a reward.

 

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

 

So I started again. And my tactic was basically to Have Effie and Camilla stand in the two gaps in the barricade south of the starting position. They were tanking for me (each in guard stance with a pair-up partner though I forget who), and everyone else's job was to deal with the two flanks and with any fliers who could bypass the choke point. And it was working decently well up until the point when Takumi uses the Dragon Vein, all the units that had been piling up at the choke point had a path to come and swarm me, and that was reset number 3 and the second one that didn't feel as if it was my fault.

I was going to argue more about this chapter giving you the time you need to respond, but odd as this sounds, hearing that this disaster came about due to a strategy that center around guard stance makes this critique make a lot more sense to me. While guard stance has its uses, it comes at the cost of flexibility. Those boosts cost one of the unit's action every turn they stay paired, on top of some added difficulty in arranging attack stances to get the most out of a shift to the offensive, the loss of a segment of movement if you want that unit to take advantage of a transfer chain, not being able to involve a unit in shelter strats, not to mention the additional action cost to separate them out to get that action back for the next turn. With some key offensive units like Camilla and Effie tied down like that I can see how its not enough time to respond.

[lenticular]

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Well, I know you conceded that, but I think the fact that you did this on Lunatic is really where your problems with this map began and ended. I've been looking at the map in hard mode and just as I remembered, it's really, really flexible compared to Lunatic. Fewer enemies, for one thing. The whole "I need more units to even do this" thing really doesn't remotely look like it would have happened to you on hard, nor would you have felt that intense pressure to perfectly coordinate your arm's actions with the incoming ally reinforcements. They would have just been seen as a nice bonus to deal with the new enemies. I remember doing this map on Hard and my strategies were far less than optimal, but I still managed to pull through without a single death by thinking carefully about my moves and working with whoever I wound up sending places. I'm sorry your impression of this map was so soured by circumstance, but I do not remotely feel it's fair to blame it on the level design. The surprises the game throws at you give you more than enough elbow room on hard to give you a fighting chance if your strategies are good enough.

First off, thanks for taking the time to go and check the differences between the map on Hard and Lunatic. Honestly, based on that, I'm happy to concede that it's not an inherent map design problem but rather a "why were you on Lunatic?" problem. That said, I've been thinking some more about that exact question and what it actually was that motivated me to choose Lunatic in the first place, and I think there are two big reasons there other than just "lenticular is a ridiculous human being who makes bad decisions".

First is that while Conquest is a game in itself, it is also a route within Fates or even a DLC for Birthright. And for any new game (Fire Emblem or otherwise), there are two parts to learning the game: the mechanics and the levels. Going from Birthright to Conquest is less like going from Path of Radiance to Radiant Dawn and more like going from Eirika's Route to Ephraim's route, or from Azure Moon to Crimson Flower. You already know the game mechanics at that point, and the only surprises will be from individual level design. In that circumstance, I don't think it's unreasonable to wonder whether moving up a difficulty level is a good idea.

The second is something that I've complained about before, which is how Fates lets you change difficulty level downwards but not upwards. For anyone who has any doubt at all about which difficulty level is right for them, they absolutely should choose the harder one initially. If they choose too hard, they can rectify the mistake; if they choose to easy, they can't. (Admitedly, this is better than most FE games where you can't change either way.)

So, yeah. Overall, I still think that I was reacting reasonably to what the game gave me.

5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I will note that this map is encouraging you to go on the offensive and push past the choke points in the center with the pair of visit-able houses past them. Admittedly those are side objectives, but it is a way for the developers to encourage the kind of play they want with a reward.

The problem with this is that most side objectives are more along the lines of "get a reward for playing the level in a more difficult way". It is usually harder to reach the village, stop the thief or save the npc than it is to just ignore them. It's been reinforced in me over the years that if I'm having difficulty in a Fire Emblem map, I can make it easier on myself by ignoring side objectives. I don't think it was unreasonable for me to interpret the level as "it's a defend map, so you can take the easier option and just defend the choke points, or you can do the difficult option where you go on the offensive past the choke points, and get the reward from the visits". Basically, they ended up discouraging me instead of encouraging me.

[Venger_06]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

10 and 11? Judging by what Zoran's done, I can believe it. What was your specific strategy?

I'll start by saying that I've been using My Castle items and a Dread Fighter avatar. In chapter 10, I sent Odin with Elise as his backpack (so I was without healers) with Nosferatu to the left and Effie and Bowzu to the right. The rest were defending the center, and Jakob paired with the avatar went for Oboro. When the reinforcements arrived, I sent Beruka to help Silas, Niles and Percy (who I accidentally screwed up the skill inheritance) at the center while Selena went to help Effie (Selena can one-round the archers that are coming). Camilla flies across the map killing what others cannot kill. I managed to get rid of Hinata and Oboro, but unfortunately I couldn't kill Takumi before he activated Dragon Vein.

In chapter 11, I sent Odin (with Elise as his backpack) to the left side and he soloed Setsuna's room. Then he went to the right side with the rest of the army. I had to be very careful with Azama, but I was a bit lucky in that part. I baited the enemies at the center room one by one (and I probably wasted a huge amount of time on it; didn't say my strategy was practical). When everyone was dead, I went to the Kaze room from behind and attacked him. With the secured chests, we only had to deal with Hinoka, which is no big deal.

[Alastor15243]

Conquest Day 8: Chapter 11

Right, so, let's check out the story and who we're allowed to field before doing any battle preps with our new windfall.

Waaaaiiiiiit...

...so the plot is that the Hoshidans kidnapped the Rainbow Sage... and brought him to Mount Sagesse? What, were they told about his bullshit ruse in the other routes where he hangs around town, since Ryoma already knows what he looks like?

Aw, they had Camilla say the Hoshidans would pay “tenfold” for Dakota's suffering. Why didn't she say sevenfold?

Okay, so this game really makes me feel that enemy levels are purely a gameplay thing, and that the enemies we fight at the start of the game, storywise, aren't that much stronger than the ones we fight at the end of the game. Because Hinoka is expressing outright shock that my army managed to make it up to the top of the sanctuary... when her army just did the same. Implying this is supposed to be some elite troop of powerful units hand-picked to be able to survive the journey, and yet we're going to kick their ass at level 10 ish.

Okay, this map seems pretty straightforward. Like I've alluded to in previous versions of the Sevenfold Sanctuary map, this version spices up the whole “enemies in rooms” thing by giving them skills and rather scary formations. The central room right before the boss room, in particular, has some pretty damned terrifying skills, namely some armored blow lunge samurai on the sides and two life and death samurai in the center. That means they take and deal 10 more damage. Obviously my best bet is going to be to nosferatu tank it with Odin (especially since he can one-shot the life and death samurai), but I have some concerns about Odin's hit rate against those 30-evade Samurai. His hit rate is way better in melee thanks to heartseeker, but one of them has a kodachi...

...at any rate, I got a great defensive meal that also boosts magic, and Odin was one of the ones who ate it, so that's good.

One thing I don't like about this map is that a some of these formations are so nasty as to really benefit from using your whole team... and there's no pressure whatsoever not to do that. Absolutely none of the enemies on this level will come to you until you approach them first, so you can just lug your whole army around wherever you please and throw them at every problem, backtracking to tackle the other rooms across the branching path. Since there's no ranking system in this game, this is objectively the best way to tackle this map. It also, however, has a lot of boring backtracking. But I'm ironmanning, and I don't want my ironman to be ruined because I got reckless here. So yeah, we're doing it the boring way.

That being said, the actual challenges themselves are pretty cool, at least for this point in the game. They did a pretty good job with one of the worst map gimmicks the devs came up with.

Alright, I tonic'd Odin up to boost his bulk a bit for nostanking, and buffed Arthur and Mozu's attack power a bit to ensure they can one-shot certain enemies with dual strikes, and... I think that's all the prep we'll need.

Silas is sitting this chapter out so I can bring Selena. I'm gonna need to train her up some for next chapter, because her husband-to-be is gonna show up then and I'm gonna need to start using them together a lot in order to get Laslow falcon knight by the time he starts getting experience after his early promotion. Which means Effie is gonna borrow the Deshi Deshi for a chapter.

Alright, let's go.

...Fuck. Okay, this may be a problem. I underestimated the accidentally-brilliant stupidity of the AI, and one of the three oni savages (including Rinkah) that I chose to nostank from out of the range of the ninja... attacked from the only space the other generic could attack from.

Meaning that only one of these enemies is wounded (not counting Rinkah who only took one damage due to warding blow). I have to kill six enemies in one turn with 8 units. I can't just retreat, because Odin's path out of here is being blocked by the advancing enemies.

So, I have to one-round four of them, and the remaining two it's okay to fell in two hits. Lemme think about this...

Mozu can one-round the oni savages with ease thanks to her ability to double them, and she can take out the ninja with dual strike assistance. Jakob, with Dakota's help, can kill absolutely anyone here without consequences except for Rinkah. Odin can't one-round anyone, not even with the StripperTwister, but he can do heavy damage to Rinkah, who nobody can one-round.

Severa can't one-round anyone, and in fact she's pretty dang pathetically weak against oni savages. Her ability to double would be more useful if I could get her Camilla's aura, but alas, I didn't think that far ahead, and had Severa standing on the stairs with Camilla and Niles behind her, figuring that her inferior movement meant she needed the extra distance more. But she can kill the one oni savage Odin wounded last turn, provided I can get the two blocking her path to them out of the way.

Niles can one-round with Camilla's help, but otherwise, not happening.

Okay. Here's what I'll do. Mozu and Jakob will take out the first two oni savages. With the path therefore having opened up, Selena will rush in to take out the wounded one, and then Odin will rush in to the spot the wounded oni savage was in to attack Rinkah from close range and heartseeker her. That leaves three left: a wounded Finkah, a healthy ninja, and a healthy oni savage. And I have four units left: Camilla, Niles, Effie and Arthur.

Camilla will take out the oni savage, giving Effie the opportunity to rush in and hopefully one-shot the ninja. Niles will go to where Odin currently is standing and thus get dual strikes with him and take out Rinkah guaranteed. That leaves Arthur left as a mulligan if anything goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Alright.

Sounds like a plan.

Let's do this.

Mission accomplished. Everything went according to plan. Better, actually. I had more dual-striking opportunities than I expected thanks to Jakob's placement, so I didn't have to risk a miss with Camilla and instead had Effie attack the ninja with Jakob's help before Camilla arrived, thus allowing Effie to support Camilla.

Alright, Odin is the only one who got the res nerf, but while we wait for it to wear off anyway, let's tackle the other side with the archers.

So, this time we have a bunch of archers with counter. Counter archers are infuriating at this stage of the game, but I've made sure this time that no matter what I do, as long as I bait in the first one with Odin, he can easily escape if things go wrong, and if they go right, I can nostank the whole lot of them and leave them so wounded that counter won't help them as I sweep the lot of them on player phase.

I can't believe there was a time in my life when I didn't appreciate the majesty that is Odin.

Still think he's garbage, Mir?

Anyway, that takes care of that room. All that remains is to take out the oni savage at the top of the next room in one round, probably with Jakob, so I can then come back around to that room later and enemy-phase bum rush the whole lot of them from the back stairwell rather than constantly enemy-phase them one at a time and wait for the debuffs to wear off.

Thank goodness lunge only activates if the user is still alive after the attack.

Alright, next room. Second room on the east side.

Biggest pain of this part is that at least one unit is gonna have to bite the bullet and suffer that hexing rod debuff for the rest of the map. Hexing rods are terrifying. However, I think I'm just gonna have Niles take care of this room with an Effie backup. It'll take some time and some retreating back into cover, but we should be fine. Especially since I have both Camilla and Elise to back him up with for +4 to both offense and defense. Who needs half their HP when you have that an the ability to retreat after one hit?

Oops. Forgot about Conquest AI. I'll have to retreat and try again, because I made Niles too tough for that one enemy with auras.

Miracle procced on the second attempt at the rat spirit diviner. Man, if I had to do this all in one shot, those miracle skills they've got would be a massive dick move. Thankfully I can retreat and try again next turn, so they're just really really annoying.

Unfortunately now I can't use Camilla or Elise to support Niles without getting in range of that damned hexing rod, but thankfully Niles leveled up and got enough bulk to survive that damned steel bow archer even with halved HP. If that didn't happen, I'd probably have had Elise take a hexing rod since she's mostly gonna be a backpack for this map.

Alright, now all that's left is Azama, the hexing rod user. And honestly, I love this. This is just the perfect fucking skill loadout to give to Azama. It's so fitting that Azama, the resident asshole who loves getting a rise out of people, has a totally trollish skillset. He's got counter, which combined with his personal skill lets him deal back 150% of the damage he takes in melee. If this were in Birthright or Revelation I'd probably be pissed, but by this point I've been pretty well trained to check for skills. Also, I love his conversation with the avatar where at the end he's smiling like an asshole while he goes “If you're really prepared to attack an unarmed monk, be my guest!”

Niles, however, is not a melee fighter, so we're fine here.

Alright. So. Big center room. Life and death, armored blow, and the diviner and ninja. I've calculated that it's basically impossible for Odin to die if he goes in and stands on the stairs. The turns after that might be messy depending on whether he hits or misses, but I don't want to stand here all day thinking of a better strategy when I've got a busy day, so I'm gonna give it a shot, and if it goes horribly wrong and getting trapped by that double-decker lunge samurai means Odin's going to die, I'll rescue him out.

Okay, awesome, he killed the first life and death samurai, the one with the kodachi.

And the second one went down on player phase. He's in range of the ninja with poison strike, but with dual guards I've determined he can survive this. I don't need to use the rescue rod.

Interestingly, lunge has a higher priority than shuriken. The lunge samurai gave him the run around before the ninja attacked and debuffed him. Interesting.

Now, this is actually pretty damned dicey for Odin. But do I use the rescue staff? No! Instead, I'm going to advance in to the final room, where none of the enemies move, and use his vulneraries to heal up!

With that done, the room is now clear enough that the rest of my guys can come in through the staircase and take the rest out! Now that the enemies have returned to their original positions.

Awesome. Made it out of that without having to use a rescue staff! Now then, to take on the ninja in the northwest room.

Alright. Jakob with a Dakota support is guaranteed to kill this first ninja by jumping through the staircase to the rear, and that's the only one I need a guarantee on. As long as I kill the first one, I have room to push the advantage and open up the rest of the room to the rest of my army, and I have more than enough firepower to take out the whole lot of them, especially since they're all so close to the stairs.

Man, there is precious little in this game that's more satisfying than player-phase slaughtering a bunch of ninja with well-placed dual strikes without getting any debuffs.

Also, while it's not quite on topic, comparing Hard to Lunatic last night made me think about this... it's really, really great that this game doesn't really change stats between hard and lunatic. What makes that so awesome is that the stat balance of the enemies is already pretty great, so making enemy stats higher would just make certain characters less useful, either by making slower characters way more easily doubled, or by making previous speedsters incapable of doubling, and that changes so much about the metagame that I honestly don't consider it a good way to make the game harder once you've worked out a good stat balance. Of course, increasing enemy quantity instead has its own problems and generally turns things into an enemy-phase fest. Which is why giving enemies skills, really giving them skills, is such a great idea, one I really wish we'll see more of in the future for making difficulties harder.

Oh yeah, we got the enfeeble staff and the spirit dust. Great. Now then...

...On to fight Hinoka.

All the fliers have winged shield, so we can't really exploit our bow users, but still, she's stationary, so there's only so much she can do to be dangerous. I'll just have Mozu pair up with Effie and have Camilla and Elise support her with their auras, and that should be more than enough. Ordinarily I'd also fight the enemies accompanying her, but without Azura that's probably more trouble than it's worth.

Oh man, You of the Light is such a great song. I love it. Initially I liked You of the Dark more, but You of the Light has grown on me a lot, and I think it captures a lot more of the emotion of fighting someone you don't want to, while You of the Dark is just cool and action-y. Doesn't have the same impact.

Mozu's HP is still shockingly low, but her other stats have been coming along nicely. Hopefully she won't have to do much enemy-phasing. But yeah, that's the end of the map.

Ah yes, we apparently magically managed to win this fight not only without killing anyone, but somehow without leaving anyone too wounded to walk.

They explicitly say this. How the fuck did we get them to stop fighting then!?

Yeah, they have Dakota be all bullshit noble using her magical hippie powers, and then Kaze is so impressed by Dakota's childish ideals that he just outright betrays Hoshido and joins us, having overheard our conversation.

...Honestly, I... kinda like what Dakota says here.

“At first I returned because I couldn't bring myself to betray my Nohrian siblings. But I soon realized that being a Nohrian princess granted me certain opportunities. As a Nohrian, I can change things from the inside, stop the death and destruction. Without me, the Nohrian army would keep slaughtering the Hoshidan army... And the Hoshidans would keep retaliating. A never-ending cycle of hate and death. Since I chose to side with Nohr, it's my responsibility to end that cycle.

Like, if this actually were about “changing Nohr from within”, and this eventually wound up turning into “dethrone Garon because fucking look at the fucker”, and the avatar got the rest of the Nohrian siblings to side with them... this would've been a pretty fun story. Probably not when written by these writers, but a political thriller of cunning subterfuge and tough decisions would be really cool to see in a Fire Emblem game.

I wound up doing that in Dakota's War Journal, though the quality of what I wrote is honestly pretty hit or miss. I will, however, stand by the fact that I wrote a better story than Conquest, and I'm confident in saying that because Fates' writing is just that terrible.

And... yeah, we meet the Rainbow Sage, but don't get the upgrade. They've decided it's a tad too early for that, so we won't be getting it until Leo shows up. Mr. RS just primed it for us so that it'll activate on its own when Leo joins us.

It's funny that Dakota doesn't notice the Rainbow Sage's knowledge about her until she hears him call her by name and mention her Yato. Even before that, he called her a dragon.

But yeah, then Iago shows up and tells Dakota to kill the Rainbow Sage, and she just outright refuses, and Rainbow Sage... pulls an Emmeryn, killing himself so she doesn't have to sully her soul with the guilt of the decision. Christ. I hate it when characters act like martyrs or do the dirty work for a character to keep them morally pure. And now she's crying about the senseless sacrifice, and I just want to vomit. But I won't, because there's precious tech around me. And also vomiting sucks.

Alright, one support, and then we're out of here.

Niles just tells Odin that they need some weapons named, and everyone's contributing their ideas. He's weirdly having some trouble naming them though.

I doubt I'll be seeing more of this, sadly, but oh well.

Alright, that's it for today.

No wait, I also got a support with Effie due to giving her an accessory (fox tail).

...Effie eats enough food for twelve people. Christ. I'm not even going to dignify the rest of this support with comment. They run this eating joke into the ground, and it wasn't even funny to begin with.

Well, I guess tomorrow we'll be tackling my least favorite chapter in the game: Chapter 12.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Shadow Mir]

36 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I can't believe there was a time in my life when I didn't appreciate the majesty that is Odin.

Still think he's garbage, Mir?

Yes, because unlike certain people here, I know better than to buy into the hype.

[Alastor15243]

9 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Yes, because unlike certain people here, I know better than to buy into the hype.

You are trying to argue what can't be done in spite of, and to, people who have done it.

[Venger_06]

47 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

But yeah, then Iago shows up and tells Dakota to kill the Rainbow Sage, and she just outright refuses, and Rainbow Sage... pulls an Emmeryn, killing himself so she doesn't have to sully her soul with the guilt of the decision. Christ. I hate it when characters act like martyrs or do the dirty work for a character to keep them morally pure. And now she's crying about the senseless sacrifice, and I just want to vomit. But I won't, because there's precious tech around me. And also vomiting sucks.

I look forward to seeing your reaction to chapter 25.

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Obviously my best bet is going to be to nosferatu tank it with Odin (especially since he can one-shot the life and death samurai), but I have some concerns about Odin's hit rate against those 30-evade Samurai. His hit rate is way better in melee thanks to heartseeker, but one of them has a kodachi...

A freeze use helps a lot with that room. On my no guard stance on the defense run (no prepromoted royal, and only 10 units deployed...ok there were a lot of restrictions placed on my first Lunatic run...), I froze the lunger and approached from the Ninja room entrance,which let me face only physical enemies, so I could draw them in with a physical tank and wipe them out safely on player phase...

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

“At first I returned because I couldn't bring myself to betray my Nohrian siblings. But I soon realized that being a Nohrian princess granted me certain opportunities. As a Nohrian, I can change things from the inside, stop the death and destruction. Without me, the Nohrian army would keep slaughtering the Hoshidan army... And the Hoshidans would keep retaliating. A never-ending cycle of hate and death. Since I chose to side with Nohr, it's my responsibility to end that cycle.

Like, if this actually were about “changing Nohr from within”, and this eventually wound up turning into “dethrone Garon because fucking look at the fucker”, and the avatar got the rest of the Nohrian siblings to side with them... this would've been a pretty fun story. Probably not when written by these writers, but a political thriller of cunning subterfuge and tough decisions would be really cool to see in a Fire Emblem game.

Its moments like this, where they accidentally show off that Fate's story once had potential, which makes its terrible writing so much more tragic, and frustrating

 

[Jotari]

 

16 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

“At first I returned because I couldn't bring myself to betray my Nohrian siblings. But I soon realized that being a Nohrian princess granted me certain opportunities. As a Nohrian, I can change things from the inside, stop the death and destruction. Without me, the Nohrian army would keep slaughtering the Hoshidan army... And the Hoshidans would keep retaliating. A never-ending cycle of hate and death. Since I chose to side with Nohr, it's my responsibility to end that cycle.

Like, if this actually were about “changing Nohr from within”, and this eventually wound up turning into “dethrone Garon because fucking look at the fucker”, and the avatar got the rest of the Nohrian siblings to side with them... this would've been a pretty fun story. Probably not when written by these writers, but a political thriller of cunning subterfuge and tough decisions would be really cool to see in a Fire Emblem game.

 

 

Indeed, Conquest would have served very well if it were about breaking the idea of the Camus. Instead the royal family only ever end up siding with Corrin because they realize Garon is wrong, but because they realize Garon isn't Garon. As if all his crimes suddenly become bad because he's a slime monster, but would have been fine had he been human.

[Alastor15243]

Conquest Day 9: Chapter 12

Alright, well, we picked a pretty great day to do this chapter. I have plenty of time today due to some canceled stuff at work. I've finished castle maintenance, so let's check out the story and then prep for the chapter proper.

So yeah, apparently according to Garon, Anankos wants Dakota kept alive and “primed” for what's to come, “like a calf fattened for slaughter”. Does, uh... anything come of this? Though weirdly, I think I did make something come of this in Dakota's War Journal, as a completely unintended consequence of other writing choices, and despite not including this line in the story.

So, it sounds like Iago's arranging this whole battle in Macarath. Which makes me hate him even more. But it's unclear if he magically made Elise sick, (there's a reasonable explanation given for how Elise might have contracted the disease in Notre Sagesse), or if the only thing he was responsible for was... helping Ryoma and a huge Hoshidan battalion get into Macarath.

This is an idea that Iago came up with on his own.

Alright, so, I think the illness really was unrelated. Iago's inviting Dakota to Macarath as a “treat” that coincidentally happens to already help the party.

Yep, now we run into Ryoma. And while he initially picks a fight with Dakota, when he hears Elise is sick, he takes advantage of this to offer to withdraw if Dakota comes with him.

Y'know, the way the avatar is characterized, I could totally see the avatar saying yes to this and then having the decision taken out of her hands by outside forces. But nope, she turns him down.

And then Laslow and Peri come in to save the day, and they have a pretty cool, if brief, tag-team fight against Ryoma. But yeah, uh...

...I think I've made my opinions about Peri plain. She is a horrible, horrible character who brings down anyone who has to interact with her thanks to the mandatory requirement that supports have to end in acceptance without anyone needing to significantly change.

Dakota: (Sheesh, where do my siblings find these crazy retainers, anyway?)

She says that, but Laslow, at least in this cutscene, is by far the most normal retainer of the bunch.

...Okay. We're at the prep screen.

Okay, I wouldn't say I hate this map, exactly. I don't really think it's possible for me to hate a map that has Conquest's design philosophy. But boooooooy is it my least favorite in the route, and it's easily the biggest slump in my motivation to play the game. And the main reason is the gimmick.

It's easily the least-transparent gimmick in the entire route.

Basically, you're in a courtyard that's absolutely covered in giant jars filled with either poison or medicine. Now, I know what you're thinking when you hear that after I say “least transparent”, and no, the game does in fact tell you which is which. That's not the problem. The non-transparent part is that poison and medicine can have one of many different effects, and while the effects are fixed for each jar and will be the same on every attempt in every playthrough, the game doesn't tell you what the specific effects are for each specific jar, and they can range from inconsequential to absolutely massive. The medicine jars can heal you and do things like massively buff specific stats for the rest of the map, whether surge-style or tonic-style. Poisons can do anything from status staff effects to flat HP damage to fucking hexing rods. And you have to be in range of their effects in order to break them, and tons of them are placed such that you have to break them to proceed. That makes the consequences of breaking jars absolutely unpredictable without looking up a guide that says what each effect is.

Oh, and did I mention that this mission is timed? You have to either defeat the boss or escape in 16 turns.

And the boss is Ryoma.

Thankfully, however, there are some bright sides. Not the least of which is that the medicine jar at the start of the map that the game very clearly directs you towards (since it's the only non-poisonous jar nearby) gives everyone within 2 spaces of it a surge of defense (+4 for the rest of the map).

Alright, I got a +spd/def meal, which is awesome because Camilla's gonna need that to take out Ryoma, which I ideally want to do in order to get the treasure with minimal complications.

I'm gonna have to plan out my route very carefully, because we only have 12 turns to get to the opposite side of this map, work our way around those damned jars, get the chests, and get to Ryoma.

(Proofreading note: no, that is not a typo. I somehow managed to forget the time limit was 16 turns despite writing it correctly previously. I am leaving this here despite how weird it reads only a few lines after I wrote it correctly because this is supposed to be a record of my genuine thought process. I'm embarrassed, but not nearly as embarrassed as I'd have been if I mistook the turn limit for being longer than it actually was.)

Oh and like the last Macarath map, the sick character isn't deployable, in this case Elise. Which means no Lily's Poise.

Yeah, so, here's the thing: the only way to get from the southern part of the map to the northern part without breaking a poison jar is through Saizo and Kagero, who are accompanied not just by three ninja, but also by two samurai and two spear fighters waiting in the wings to punish any player-phase gambits. I do not have the confidence that I can get my way through there in any timely fashion. So, new plan: we'll go in through the east side, and we'll be having Peri have fun smashing all the noxious jars in our way. She'll be out dedicated jar-smasher, which is a great job for her because of her high movement score and shelter-based utility outside of combat no matter what the jars wind up doing to her stats. We'll push our entire army through the east side rather than splitting them up, because the treasures are actually really dang close to each other and there's no reason to fight both sides separately when fighting through one will practically get us in arm's reach of the other.

I'm not bringing Effie on this map. Four move is just too much of a liability with a 12-turn-limit chapter.

We're going to be skipping a lot of enemies on this map using this method, but I really don't care. I've been planning for ages, and any way I look at it, the experience to be offered here is going to be way more trouble than it's worth. I'm using my strongest units, and I'm smashing through this as quickly as possible. And if it turns out I'm too underleveled for Chapter 13? I'll use either Kana or Dwyer's paralogue.

Alright, I've forged a +1 bronze bow for Selena called For Noire (another Dakota's War Journal reference), but Laslow's gonna use it for the time being since he's the one early-promoting. I also upgraded the Trashtaker and the Deshi Deshi from a +1 to a +2 each.

Jakob and Camilla are likely going to do the majority of the combat this map, especially since all the apothecaries are going to be locked up behind jars and I'll be going around them (though there is the matter of the reinforcements from the rear, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it).

I'm scared out of my wits, but there's not much more I can do to prepare. So I'm just gonna press start and hope for the best.

Alright, so, I deliberately got as many units as I could around the defense jar before breaking it, with the notable exception of Jakob, whose defense I need to keep low enough to actually bait in enemies for combat when paired up with Dakota. Camilla got the full medicine because she's going to be using her dual club to fight Ryoma with a Kaze pair-up, and she needs the bulk to tank two consecutive critical hits if worst comes to worst. And now... she does. After a tonic and meal, of course. She's also fast enough to double Ryoma thanks to her Kaze pair-up, a speed meal, and a surge I apparently forgot she got sometime yesterday.

Unfortunately, it turns out I remembered wrong and the back units are not included in the defense surge. But thankfully I prepared for the chance that I remembered wrong and put the units I most wanted to give defense to in front.

Laslow promoted right on schedule, and lured in some enemies to get them out of the way without having to worry about their AI.

Alright. Okay. We're making good time. I had Jakob ferry Peri (heh, rhyming) as far as he could take her on turn one, taking advantage of the fact that since he didn't want the defense boost, he neither had to take up prime real estate starting in front of the jars or waste his turn getting in front of them. Having done that, he ripped through the three spear fighters in our path on the first half of the map, and Peri managed to break the poison jar with just enough movement to spare, giving Jakob an opening to take out the latter two.

Next step is to get myself into the room with the entrap staff shrine maiden. The plan is to have Niles unlock the door, and then Peri will shelter him out of the range of those damned apothecaries who animate like they're outright cowards but who hit like a cyclone threw a semi. Then Jakob and Camilla rush in, Camilla to kill one of the samurai, Jakob to kill the shrine maiden.

The central shrine maiden silences Camilla, but I don't give a single shit. She doesn't need magic on this map.

Speaking of apothecaries, more show up from the rear, and Odin teams up with Silas to hold them off while my slower units make a run for it. “FLEE, MY FRIENDS! I CAN PROTECT YOU FROM THE BOWMEN, BUT GODS KNOW HOW LONG I CAN PROTECT YOU FROM MYSELF!”

...Huh. For some reason I could've sworn the map said I had 12 turns. It's turn 8 and I finally notice it actually says 16 turns. And I'm literally in attacking range of Ryoma.

So I have plenty of time. Let's see what I can do with it.

I used Jakob to break into the central chamber with Ryoma, careful not to get the attention of the apothecaries who could move towards me if they wanted to. I'm having him fight the remaining enemies now. He's had his defense sealed by that dang javelin spear fighter, but he's still doing fine thanks to dual guards he can rely on with a bronze weapon, Dakota's support bonuses, and Rose's Thorns.

However, despite not having 0 move, the two samurai in front of Ryoma refuse to budge an inch for some reason.

Oh, now the samurai moves. Maybe killing one of them did it? Glad I didn't abuse his immobility to do something reckless. But his decision to move out of the protection of Ryoma's range simplifies things drastically.

Okay, so, apparently the freeze potion lasts more than one turn, which I guess makes sense because if it only lasted one turn, then whoever activated it would only suffer the evasion penalty. Probably means it's like the silence dragon vein in Velouria's paralogue. Thankfully, I have a lot of units close together in the east wing, and so I can have Niles pair up with the also-frozen Peri, who then passes him off to Suzume, who then passes him off to bow knight Laslow so he can take Niles to the chest. Which has an armorslayer.

That and the 5000 gold have now been obtained, and Camilla is ready to start fighting Ryoma.

Man, I am so glad it's a 16 turn time limit, because even with the insane breakneck pace I took to get there, I still only have a couple more turns to take out Ryoma. The freeze staff is helping immensely with this, getting Camilla's accuracy to acceptable levels with the dual club.

AND RYOMA IS DOWN AT THE END OF TURN 13! ONLY TOOK ONE FREEZE USE!

Alright, cue ending story scene.

Aw, that's sweet. The scariest thing to Elise about all of this, the thing foremost on her mind, wasn't the risk of dying, but the danger that Dakota would go back to Hoshido in order to save her.

Also, yet again the sick person says something plot-significant while drifting in and out of consciousness, this time that she saw Gunter. Oh, so now the non-dead can visit people in their near-death dreams?

Alright, support time.

Arthur and Mozu reached A, and in this one, Arthur's luck is so fantastically, pardon the term, “shitty”... that he wound up getting the field bombed by dragon dung. But, surprise surprise, dragon shit is extremely expensive fertilizer, and his bad luck just covered the whole field in the stuff. And Mozu even hopes that keeping him around will cause it to happen again.

...I'm really gonna have to see how dumb the S support is. I've totally wiped it from my memory.

Alright, Selena and Laslow's supports. Let's go.

Yeah, yeah, this is basically a repeat of their Awakening C support, with the added bite of “you haven't changed in all these years”.

Ooh, Camilla and Kaze got one! I'll have to see how this looks. They won't be getting married or anything, but...

So... Camilla basically invites him to a tea party with a bunch of ladies after expressing her curiosity about his chick magnet reputation. I'm... quite curious what exactly she has planned here.

...Alright, I suppose that's it for the day. Finally, that chapter is over. It wasn't quite as painful in practice as I expected it to be, but then again, I did avoid a good number of the enemies (though not as many as I expected to, just the two central groups).

...Shit, Saizo had a flame shuriken, didn't he?

...Oh well, I wasn't planning on using Felicia anyway.

Speaking of, though, we still can't upgrade the armory to get the bolt axe, which is a shame. Elise got the ability to use it ages ago.

Laslow's running the dairy today, and I can't help but just wonder how outrageously creepy it would sound if Laslow said what Soleil says when she has dairy duty.

I'd tell you what it is, but there's a good chance we'll see it.

...Also, when looking at Elise, who's at the way bottom of my deployment screen due to being locked out of last chapter, I realize that all of the bond units I have were given randomized names that are color-themed. Or at least color-themed enough to be character names in RWBY. God I wish that show didn't turn out so terrible. It had so much potential.

...I got interrupted in my sign-off.

Well, now that's really it for today. It wasn't my favorite chapter, but once I got through the immense trepidation it was still better than anything in Revelation or Birthright. Tune in tomorrow when we check out Chapter 13, something of a breather chapter in comparison.

Stay safe, everyone!

[Punished Dayni]

On 3/24/2021 at 4:17 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Aw, they had Camilla say the Hoshidans would pay “tenfold” for Dakota's suffering. Why didn't she say sevenfold?

Because saying tenfold's a thing and nobody saw the chance to say sevenfold for a lark?

On 3/24/2021 at 4:17 PM, Alastor15243 said:

That being said, the actual challenges themselves are pretty cool, at least for this point in the game. They did a pretty good job with one of the worst map gimmicks the devs came up with.

So bad that you can softlock skirmishes.

No joke, that happened to me.

On 3/24/2021 at 4:17 PM, Alastor15243 said:

So, this time we have a bunch of archers with counter. Counter archers are infuriating at this stage of the game, but I've made sure this time that no matter what I do, as long as I bait in the first one with Odin, he can easily escape if things go wrong, and if they go right, I can nostank the whole lot of them and leave them so wounded that counter won't help them as I sweep the lot of them on player phase.

Odin without Myrm diversion working out well.

Neat.

On 3/24/2021 at 4:54 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Yes, because unlike certain people here, I know better than to buy into the hype.

You know what, I've been curious about this for years, because I see you mention more than a few units being utter garbage.

What units do you consider good out of this game?

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So, it sounds like Iago's arranging this whole battle in Macarath. Which makes me hate him even more. But it's unclear if he magically made Elise sick, (there's a reasonable explanation given for how Elise might have contracted the disease in Notre Sagesse), or if the only thing he was responsible for was... helping Ryoma and a huge Hoshidan battalion get into Macarath.

This is an idea that Iago came up with on his own.

So he brought a foreign adversary into a palace inside Nohr, running amok free to do as they please in there and could be alleged to make a princess of Nohr sick. All to get at an adoptive child of his king...

Excuse me, I'm linking this for me.

Edited March 25, 2021 by Dayni

[Eltosian Kadath]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

So yeah, apparently according to Garon, Anankos wants Dakota kept alive and “primed” for what's to come, “like a calf fattened for slaughter”. Does, uh... anything come of this? Though weirdly, I think I did make something come of this in Dakota's War Journal, as a completely unintended consequence of other writing choices, and despite not including this line in the story.

Nothing comes of it at all, although that line Anankos has about making Corrin/Dakota his vessel would make a fair bit of sense as a potential motive here...

 

10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Okay, I wouldn't say I hate this map, exactly. I don't really think it's possible for me to hate a map that has Conquest's design philosophy. But boooooooy is it my least favorite in the route, and it's easily the biggest slump in my motivation to play the game. And the main reason is the gimmick.

Its my least favorite map as well, and a part of that is the need to look up the pot placement, or face the pot lottery, plus keeping me from using Elise is very irritating. Also the way the Dragon Vein was moved in the Lunatic version was a particularly cruel change to the map...

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Yeah, so, here's the thing: the only way to get from the southern part of the map to the northern part without breaking a poison jar is through Saizo and Kagero, who are accompanied not just by three ninja, but also by two samurai and two spear fighters waiting in the wings to punish any player-phase gambits. I do not have the confidence that I can get my way through there in any timely fashion. So, new plan: we'll go in through the east side, and we'll be having Peri have fun smashing all the noxious jars in our way.

You will be missing out on the Flame Shuriken by avoiding them...hopefully thing don't go so badly that Felicia becomes a tempting option for a unit to deploy, as the Flame Shuriken really helps her function without burning a seal on her.

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

I'm not bringing Effie on this map. Four move is just too much of a liability with a 12-turn-limit chapter.

Ouch, that miss reading of the objective did end up skewing your preparations a lot didn't it.

If you knew about the actual time limit the whole time, would you have gone through the named Ninja in the center?

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Arthur and Mozu reached A, and in this one, Arthur's luck is so fantastically, pardon the term, “shitty”... that he wound up getting the field bombed by dragon dung. But, surprise surprise, dragon shit is extremely expensive fertilizer, and his bad luck just covered the whole field in the stuff. And Mozu even hopes that keeping him around will cause it to happen again.

Is that how Percey gets Ace in this pairing, his parents introduce him to their incidental crop-duster?

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Also, when looking at Elise, who's at the way bottom of my deployment screen due to being locked out of last chapter, I realize that all of the bond units I have were given randomized names that are color-themed. Or at least color-themed enough to be character names in RWBY. God I wish that show didn't turn out so terrible. It had so much potential.

I am reminded very much of this Hbomberguy video about how disappointing RWBY was....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81fdKWOHrdE

 

 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Y'know, the way the avatar is characterized, I could totally see the avatar saying yes to this and then having the decision taken out of her hands by outside forces. But nope, she turns him down.

This could have been a great "your choices really matter" moment, where you pick either "Surrender" or "Resist"... but then the chapter still happens as normal. Because if you surrender, Ryoma "knows you're lying", and that he must "bring you back by force".

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Man, I am so glad it's a 16 turn time limit, because even with the insane breakneck pace I took to get there, I still only have a couple more turns to take out Ryoma. The freeze staff is helping immensely with this, getting Camilla's accuracy to acceptable levels with the dual club.

Somehow, I totally forgot that the Freeze staff reduces the target's avoid rate. Or else, I was never aware. I may have to abuse this in the future.

12 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Dakota: (Sheesh, where do my siblings find these crazy retainers, anyway?)

She says that, but Laslow, at least in this cutscene, is by far the most normal retainer of the bunch.

I have to wonder - who were their retainers before the Awakening trio showed up? Did Laslow get one of Xander's old bodyguards fired? It seems weird, how close they're able to get to the royal family, despite being (as Seteth would say) "so lacking in traceable history". I'd complain, moreover, that the trio takes the place of characters who could have a backstory within tje world of Fates... but let's face it, most characters' backgrounds are paper-thin as it is.

[Alastor15243]

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

I have to wonder - who were their retainers before the Awakening trio showed up? Did Laslow get one of Xander's old bodyguards fired? It seems weird, how close they're able to get to the royal family, despite being (as Seteth would say) "so lacking in traceable history". I'd complain, moreover, that the trio takes the place of characters who could have a backstory within tje world of Fates... but let's face it, most characters' backgrounds are paper-thin as it is.

Xander and Laslow's support, I'm fairly sure, says the old ones died and Laslow and Peri were replacements.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Xander and Laslow's support, I'm fairly sure, says the old ones died and Laslow and Peri were replacements.

Peri being included there makes that seem far more suspicious than it ought to be.

[Alastor15243]

9 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Ouch, that miss reading of the objective did end up skewing your preparations a lot didn't it.

If you knew about the actual time limit the whole time, would you have gone through the named Ninja in the center?

Not really. The main problem was more that I didn't have the manpower to take them out on player-phase, and I haaaaaaate dealing with ninja debuffs. My favorite thing about enemy ninja is how heavily they encourage you to use player-phase tactics, but those samurai and spear fighters just fucked up the equation. My army would've been so vulnerable that if I were going to take them out, it would have to be from behind after having already gone through the sides.

[Alastor15243]

Conquest Day 10: Chapter 13

Peri seems to like animals.

Peri: I milked some cows! They were nice, too, so don't go chopping them into steaks!

So, I'm looking at Kaze, and he comes with a steel shuriken instead of an iron one or anything. Pity, the extra speed of shuriken would be nice to have available.

Hey, I heard someone say a while back that the steel shuriken was accidentally given the steel dagger model, but while it is indeed not a “shuriken”, it could very easily be a kunai. I can't check for myself because I don't want to spend 2k of my precious resources on a steel dagger, but can anyone else confirm if this was just something someone assumed because it wasn't a shuriken?

Anyway, I just built the einherjar shop, and I suppose I should talk about it. It's, uh... weird. Basically, at its base level, it can be used to spend a couple thousand gold (at least that's the price right now) to buy copies of your existing units that will fight for you, but who can't support or any of that jazz.

They seem a bit outdated though. Jakob's still a butler, for one thing.

Oh yeah, I guess I might as well get the hot spring, even though its only practical purpose is to get Izana or Fuga. Basically, you go in, and one of three things can happen:

1: It's the men's time in the hot spring and you're a man, or it's the women's time in the hot spring and you're a woman, in which case you relax a bit making dumb smalltalk with whoever's in there before getting out.

2: It's the women's time in the hot spring and you're a man, in which case they usually flip the fuck out except for the really horny ones, screaming at you and scandalized at the idea of you seeing them in their swimsuits, and in some cases chasing you out with a critical cut-in.

3: It's the men's time in the hot spring and you're a woman, in which case the men will get incredibly embarrassed and sometimes apologize to you, and you'll awkwardly run out apologizing for coming in at the wrong time.

...I got none of the above. Apparently there's also...

4: You just built the hot spring and nobody's been put on hot spring “duty” yet, and thus you just chill by yourself.

As far as I can tell, the only conceivable way to know whether it's men or women in the hot spring is to take stock of who in your army is in every other building and outside and thus work out who's left to be in the hot spring. There's no actual schedule, there's no sign, it's entirely a crapshoot designed for dumb fanservice, and I hate its stupid, greasy, bloody guts. I'd maybe forgive it a little more if even one guy violently chased a female avatar out, because that would be hilarious. The mental image I have, even though this isn't really in his character:

Azama: Ah! Dakota! Fascinating! I had no idea you were so eager to die!

(Smiling critical cut-in)

Alright, anyway, Chapter 13. As usual, let's check out the story then work out what we need to do to prepare.

Oh wow yeah, I just realized when Dakota brought it up: this is the first time Azura's been back since being rescued. Weird, it's felt a bit long for that.

Oh yes, Hans is back. And after an amusingly awkward conversation with the man who tried to kill us...

...well, now we're in Cheve, and Takumi shows up.

...I love how even though Camilla's supposedly rushing to protect Dakota from further arrowfire, her animation is still her slow, ara ara sexy walk.

Oh yes, and here comes the infamous moment where, if you haven't reclassed anyone, Takumi commits a major war crime by shooting an unarmed medic just because she talked back at him.

Yeah, I hear this moment made a lot of people despise Takumi, and I get why, especially since it's unclear how much of this is the whole possession thing and how much of it is just... Takumi being an edgy shithead shooting little girls who annoy him.

Woooooooooow are our deployment slots limited here. That's... a problem. But thankfully, after deciding who to deploy (Camilla, Jakob, Dakota, Arthur, Mozu, Odin, Elise, Selena, Laslow and Suzume), the meal I cooked wound up boosting the strength and speed of a lot of them.

I may be beyond occupancy with my deployment list from here on out, or this may be a low-deployment chapter. For now, I'm just gonna focus on striking a balance between powerful units who can get the job done, and weaker units with potential I want to bring out.

Man, I'm still bringing Suzume with me, which is kinda hilarious. Especially since, of the characters I'm training up, only Niles is likely to become a healer any time soon. So she's probably gonna be in the party for a while.

Alright, so, since Selena's attack power leaves... something to be desired, shall we say, I've forged her a +2 iron sword called the Tsunderblade. That should help her with scoring kills. But my biggest concern on this map, by far, is that team of wyvern riders with knights in their pockets down south. They'll be rushing our location immediately, and it doesn't matter who's in front, they'll still have 19 defense. Jakob and Camilla thankfully have the attack power to liquefy them, so I'm thinking that'll be the plan. They'll intercept them over the water before they can become a nightmare for my troops. There are thankfully some spaces outside of Reina's range where we can do that. That'll leave us with just the four knights to deal with, who will be dumped on one side of the lake or the other depending on what the game's space priority says.

Yeah, honestly, this is probably the best Jakob I've ever had. At level 15 his strength is better than Camilla's. As are his skill, luck, and (once you take his skills into account) resistance. He's significantly worse in speed and defense sadly, but in this game the latter can be to your advantage sometimes, and he's still fast enough to double most normal enemies with his Dakota support.

...Unfortunately, looking at his average stats, my Jakob is basically entirely blessed. The stats he's worse at are normal for him, but every stat he's great at is blessed by a whopping 3 or so points. Still, even with 3 less attack, he'd still be ridiculously useful for my purposes at this point in the game, and he's got one hell of a retirement plan ahead of him provided Dakota turns out okay. And it's only one more level before he gets trample, and his attack power would go right back to being better than Camilla's even if his strength were on his averages.

Alright, I've been sitting on the deployment screen a lot, but I'm just going to go ahead and do this chapter.

...Okay, we've go a bit of a problem. The way the wyvern riders moved means my plan to intercept them over the river from outside Reina's range isn't gonna work. They're gonna stay in Reina's range until they arrive. So I'll have to just go with another plan: have Odin nostank the west side enough to get us some breathing room, have my weaker units flee to the northwest corner, and then have Jakob and Camilla take out the wyverns on land in a place where my main units can then pounce in to take them out. Then I'll try to make some headway down south to make it to the villages before the outlaw who's soon to arrive can slowly make his way to them.

Ah yes, and now we meet Charlotte and Benny. Charlotte's... amusing. She's basically a vulgar tomboyish asshole who acts like an absolute sweetheart around anyone she thinks can elevate her social status, usually rich men. It's... I'm sorry, I just can't talk about this, my mind is overflowing with a rather nasty issue.

You see, I just realized... now that we can't fight the wyvern riders over the water, that means they can switch to the knights. Who have... significantly higher attack power, especially once they're up in front and get a +3 boost from their wyvern friends. Jakob, as it turns out, can't actually handle them. He'd die in two hits just barely. So instead, I'll be having Odin handle the two western ones, while Camilla teams up with Benny to handle the eastern two.

Alright, that worked. My next job is to defeat 7 enemies in one turn without getting anyone fragile into the range of the two eastern wyvern riders covering the western wyvern-rider-and-knight combos. If I can do that, I can have Odin plug up the bridge to stop the last two diviners from getting to anyone.

I just barely have enough units if everyone kills, with Odin as a possible mulligan if I leave the wounded cavalier for last.

Success. Now the western bridge is clear for me to rush in, fight Reina, and save the villages from that slowpoke outlaw.

And Jakob just got trample! Against any foot soldier, his attack power when paired up with Dakota is now a whopping 43. Pity there are precious few non-mounted enemies left on the map, because holy shit.

I actually found a use for Laslow's un-augmented personal rally, by making Odin just fast enough to avoid being doubled by Reina as he baits her in.

I managed to then salvage a really dicey situation after a freak miss from Camilla forced me to kill 6 enemies with 6 units, when one of the enemies was Reina, and one of the units was the notoriously inaccurate, steel-axe-using, gamble-equipped Charlotte. Thankfully I managed to put her in a position where she didn't have to hit, she could rely on the 100% chance of Arthur's dual strike. Now as long as this outlaw isn't programmed to attack...

...he isn't. That wouldn't have been a game over, but it would've been really nasty to have to fight Scarlet's forces right away. Now then, to take out the outlaw and heal up now that I finally have some breathing space to bait in Takumi and Scarlet's forces.

It's funny how visiting the same houses as in Birthright Chapter 13 suddenly has you meet people sympathetic to Nohr, not the rebellion.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but this may be the only time in the entire series where duplicated maps happen in the same chapter number.

So we got some gold, an arms scroll, and a blessed lance. The gold is nice, and fittingly that's the first one the outlaw was gunning towards, but the other two are of... limited value. But there's one more, blocked by Takumi's forces.

Takumi's crit rate is nasty, but thankfully due to my abundance of bronzes I have some units who can tank an attack from him with no risk of death. I'm gonna have Selena do it, with Laslow supporting her.

However, even though I saw the “natural cover” skill, I was only thinking about that in the context of “good, this doesn't boost his damage”, and I had a really nasty fight on my hands the turn after making sure all the enemies died, because when he attacked from the forest (unavoidable if I wanted to aura Selena up), he became a tank. But I managed thanks to some clutch teamwork from my three dragon riders. With the help of Jakob's savage blow and Camilla's personal skill, even Elise could do her part and one-round a knight! Takumi wound up getting taken out by a combination of Odin doing some heavy magic damage and nerfing his evasion, and then Charlotte (not counting on it, this was just the only way she could attack, so I figured I might as well try it and see if it improves my options) and Selena finishing the job.

There. And I got the master seal too. All that's left is Scarlet's group. Time to heal up and prepare to face it.

Scarlet apparently has death blow on Lunatic mode, which means that going into her range on enemy phase is completely out of the question. I have no option but to bait the group in from the absolute edge. Which means I should probably pair Odin up with Benny and have Elise aura-support him with Camilla instead. That way he can be tough enough to use the StripperTwister instead of nosferatu and kill two of the five enemies instead of merely wounding them.

...Except that Scarlet moves in to assist with a dual strike before tomahawk wyvern can attack for some reason, meaning I only kill one of them. Damn it. I've lost count of how many times I've had my plans foiled due to underestimating the AI's sheer stupidity.

SHIT! I TOTALLY FORGOT! THE REINFORCEMENTS!

Thank goodness they don't come anywhere remotely in range of the main forces (great design there), except for that paired-up wyvern rider and diviner who went around a house into cavalry range. I'll have to have Jakob and Camilla take care of those. But first, Scarlet and company.

Mozu is so psychotically accurate that she has a decent hit rate against Scarlet... who has bowbreaker. Do note: this is before she has certain blow. Man, forged bronze bows are amazing.

...I think that was two levels for Jakob of skill, luck and resistance in a row. Damn it. I seem to get those all the fucking time with Jakob. Good thing he's got so much else going for him now.

Meanwhile, Dakota finishes off the last few enemies and gets strength, speed and defense, easily my favorite three-stat level up.

Weird, I didn't notice this before, but it seems like in both Birthright and Conquest we have the “born in one and raised in the other” sibling that grew up with the enemy little brother exposit to us that he's different from the way he used to be.

Ah, so Takumi was “kind” even though he “never accepted [Azura] as his sister like the others”. As much as that would give credence to his explanation for his behavior in Takumi and Azura's S support, I call bullshit. we saw him act like a complete douchenozzle to Azura even before Mikoto died or he got possessed.

Oh yes, and now the scene where, after we did all the dirty work, the Nohrian army comes in do do the “fun” part: executing the traitors (and even just civilians too for good measure) after we non-lethally stabbed them and non-lethally sucked their souls out with dark magic.

We also get a really freaky but also kinda hilarious zoom-in of Hans's face, his eyes pure white with madness.

Camilla doesn't clearly say how they killed Scarlet, but the Japanese version apparently explicitly says they chopped off her head from what I've heard.

God, and now Dakota's whinging philosophically about the horrible atrocities of the big bad evil people around her whose job it is to make bad things happen on her watch while she sides with the bad guys without her actually doing anything directly, and yet again I feel my eyes tracing the room for the nearest thing to throw up in.

But Camilla's response makes it sound like she only obeys Garon out of fear, not out of genuine love. And this and the next chapter's ending had me hoping things might get interesting, but then...

...hoo boy, we get Chapter 15, and everything goes to shit forever.

I'm gonna have stuff to say, folks.

But that'll have to wait until Tuesday at the latest.

Let's finish up.

…

...Oh dear.

Brace yourself, people.

Odin and Elise got their S support.

Oh my god this is the dumbest shit ever. Basically nasty rumors are going around about him exposing her to evil magic, and Elise wonders how they can keep spending time together without people getting the wrong idea. Odin jokingly suggests they get married, because, of course, that's way less creepy than doing chuunibyou LARPing.

And of course, since this is an S support, Elise starts saying she wants to do that.

Odin: Everyone will oppose. EVERYONE.

AS WELL THEY FUCKING SHOULD, ODIN.

God, this is so uncomfortable. But yeah, now Elise is a 12-year-old mother and Lissa is a 16-year-old grandma.

Moving on, because there's nothing I could say about this that you don't already know.

Camilla got a support with both Jakob and Benny.

...Camilla and Jakob's is a grotesquely short support, to the point of feeling incomplete, where Camilla tells Jakob that she'll be tending to all of Dakota's needs from now on and that he needs to stay away from Dakota.

The fact that she is saying this to Dakota's husband just raises all manner of psychotically creepy red flags about how exactly she intends to “provide for” Dakota.

As for with Benny, Camilla asks him to take care of a bear wandering the forest. When I first saw this I thought the “bear” was him, given his massive size, but if memory serves that isn't what happens. He just deals with the genuine bear peacefully, which surprises Camilla in the B support. I think.

Oh right, and we got upgrades to the mess hall, lottery, and the shops. Awesome, that means we can finally buy a bolt axe for Elise! We finally have another strong magic user! And she can double too, with the help of meals and tonics!

Oh we're going to have so much fun with this.

But not today.

We'll pick things up on Monday.

Stay safe, everyone!

[Shadow Mir]

On 3/25/2021 at 11:02 AM, Alastor15243 said:

So, it sounds like Iago's arranging this whole battle in Macarath. Which makes me hate him even more. But it's unclear if he magically made Elise sick, (there's a reasonable explanation given for how Elise might have contracted the disease in Notre Sagesse), or if the only thing he was responsible for was... helping Ryoma and a huge Hoshidan battalion get into Macarath.

This is an idea that Iago came up with on his own.

 

21 hours ago, Dayni said:

So he brought a foreign adversary into a palace inside Nohr, running amok free to do as they please in there and could be alleged to make a princess of Nohr sick. All to get at an adoptive child of his king...

Excuse me, I'm linking this for me.

This sounds like treason to me - and that's pretty serious. Especially considering that FEA had an NPC who sold out his country... only to get killed instead (by the people who he sold out to, no less). Which makes me think Ryoma should've just gutted Iago.

21 hours ago, Dayni said:

You know what, I've been curious about this for years, because I see you mention more than a few units being utter garbage.

What units do you consider good out of this game?

The royals, Effie, Corrin, Felicia (hey, I play as a male, so sue me; I'm not a fan of female Corrin's design, so that's automatically off the table, even if it's not the absolute abomination that is female Byleth's design), Keaton, Flora, Selena, and various children. Long story short, I'm not going to bank on someone like Odin who I cannot trust to be good, especially knowing both his bases and growths are unimpressive, and especially with this game being as unforgiving as it is.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Oh yeah, I guess I might as well get the hot spring, even though its only practical purpose is to get Izana or Fuga. Basically, you go in, and one of three things can happen:

1: It's the men's time in the hot spring and you're a man, or it's the women's time in the hot spring and you're a woman, in which case you relax a bit making dumb smalltalk with whoever's in there before getting out.

2: It's the women's time in the hot spring and you're a man, in which case they usually flip the fuck out except for the really horny ones, screaming at you and scandalized at the idea of you seeing them in their swimsuits, and in some cases chasing you out with a critical cut-in.

3: It's the men's time in the hot spring and you're a woman, in which case the men will get incredibly embarrassed and sometimes apologize to you, and you'll awkwardly run out apologizing for coming in at the wrong time.

...I got none of the above. Apparently there's also...

4: You just built the hot spring and nobody's been put on hot spring “duty” yet, and thus you just chill by yourself.

Technically you can also run into your spouse in the hot-spring and the two of you have some small talk in there. Also option 4 sounds similar to what happens if you enter the hot-spring more than once before it restocks with new people, but it is hard to tell based on your description...

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Man, I'm still bringing Suzume with me, which is kinda hilarious. Especially since, of the characters I'm training up, only Niles is likely to become a healer any time soon. So she's probably gonna be in the party for a while.

If you don't make some Shura skin boots, he is a solid healer prepromote you get in a few chapters time.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

one of the units was the notoriously inaccurate, steel-axe-using, gamble-equipped Charlotte. Thankfully I managed to put her in a position where she didn't have to hit, she could rely on the 100% chance of Arthur's dual strike. Now as long as this outlaw isn't programmed to attack...

I mean you could have brought and traded a more accurate Axe onto her...

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

So we got some gold, an arms scroll, and a blessed lance. The gold is nice, and fittingly that's the first one the outlaw was gunning towards, but the other two are of... limited value. But there's one more, blocked by Takumi's forces.

Don't be dismissing the value of that arms scroll now.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Camilla and Jakob's is a grotesquely short support, to the point of feeling incomplete, where Camilla tells Jakob that she'll be tending to all of Dakota's needs from now on and that he needs to stay away from Dakota.

The fact that she is saying this to Dakota's husband just raises all manner of psychotically creepy red flags about how exactly she intends to “provide for” Dakota.

...sigh...Fates just can't do anything right can it...

 

Just out of curiosity, do you plan on doing the Ophelia paralogue next, or going for the next story map?