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


Alastor15243
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On 11/22/2019 at 3:07 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

Oh my god. That is HEARTBREAKING. Either this is new to the new translation or I just somehow never noticed it before, but Sylvia cried out Jamke's name and begged him to save her during her death quote, and... Jeeeeeeesus.

So ends the kingdom of Verdane.

On 11/22/2019 at 3:07 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

Not even on Monday. Fuck no. We're doing this tomorrow, folks.

I am way, WAY too excited to end things here for the weekend.

Oh boy, I missed a lot. I guess I better keep this quick as there is a lot to reply to. The tragedy of Sigurd is that he is blind to the political realities of the world he lives in. Sigurd tries to do the right thing, and act loyally as a knight, but this naivete leads him and the people he cares about to ruin. To give him more credit, when given good council he takes it to heart and tries to better himself (which makes it interest to compare him and FE5 Lief). We see this from his very first scene, where he tries to head out alone to keep his knights from harm, and they have to remind him of the disaster and dishonor that would result from letting him die without them. From protecting the innocent Isaachian prince, to following his heart, and even adding the west to the empire, his road to a fiery death was paved with the best of intentions. He reminds me a lot of Eddard Stark (or more accurately Eddard Stark reminds me of him as I both played Genealogy of the Holy War before reading a Game of Thrones, and Genealogy of the Holy War was released before a Game of Thrones).

 

On 11/23/2019 at 3:30 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

He knew, from the moment he left Braggi tower, that he and a ton of his friends were going to die, when and where, and that everything would be lost, and the world would descend into an era of unfathomable darkness. And he not only completely accepted this because “the gods” told him it was his “destiny”, but he made absolutely no effort to warn anyone else, or even to do anything to make it less awful.

Why did he even bother trying to talk to the king, knowing it wouldn't work? DID he even try to talk to the king, knowing it wouldn't work? Did he lie to Sigurd about trying to clear his name at all?

I like to thing his utter failure when trying to convince the court of this future broke his spirit, and made him resign himself to the fate he had seen.

On 11/23/2019 at 3:30 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Jesus, no WONDER Claude!Lester never trained to use the staff despite knowing his bloodline! The second he heard what his piece of shit father did to his mother, and his horrible reasons why, I can totally see him throwing away Valkyria in disgust and wanting nothing to do with his father's line of work OR his reprehensible religious beliefs. It wasn't exactly the smartest decision, but I can sure as hell imagine him doing it!

I actually kinda like this head canon.

On 11/23/2019 at 3:30 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Nihil is unfortunately not as awesome as it could be, as it only works on “sword skills” (Sol, Luna and Astra), critical hits and effective damage. Sol, Luna and Astra are pretty rare on enemies, and there's nothing that's super effective against swordfighters, so all that remains is critical hits that they're immune to, which I suppose will come up occasionally, but other than that, it's not nearly as useful as it could be due to how rarely it comes up.

Figured I would quote myself from somewhere else to emphasis how rarely Nihil actually affects things.

Quote

it only effects 13 enemies from the second Gen, specifically Riddell, Boyce, Meng, Bleng, Mabel, Bovis, Tigris, Anguilla, Equus, Simia, Canis, Porcus, and Julius (16 if you count killer bow wielders, which adds Maykov, Scorpio, and Draco, 17 for Bramsel's Horse slayer on the cavalry options, and 3 more if you include recruitables that start as enemies, and it theoretically might protects against the staggeringly unlikely triangle attacks).

 

On 11/23/2019 at 3:30 PM, Alastor15243 said:

If it worked on Adept or Miracle like the game's description suggests it would, it would be an unfathomable lifesaver.

You may have a point with adept, but Miracle is so rare on enemies in the second generation that it barely matters (only one enemy has it naturally, and the enemy that drops the miracle sword might not even use it, with all others that might have it are recruitable)

On 11/23/2019 at 3:30 PM, Alastor15243 said:

(to the point that I used to despise the fact that Seliph promoted to have a horse due to the silver sword crit quality drop)

Didn't know about the randomly Seliph only dismount option ?

 

On 11/23/2019 at 4:14 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Julius was born in the first place, and that was an insanely convoluted sequence of events that we can only assume the gods have to have had a hand in. Claude doesn't even express the slightest horror at the idea that the gods he worships orchestrated the birth of Dragon Satan, the oppression of the entire continent for more than a decade, and his own death, on purpose.

Loptous is as much a "god" as the rest of them, and if the "gods" can have a hand in these event his would be the most likely to ensure these events occur.

On 11/24/2019 at 3:29 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Everyone calls Seliph “Lord Seliph”. Is this actually correct, or is it just a sign of respect and recognizing his birthright in spite of the empire's lies? Would Seliph still be a lord despite his father dying in disgrace and having no castle anymore?

It is probably just a sign of respect, unless Granvale has adopted the distinctly British idea of peerage (my guess is this is their way of translating -sama for Seliph)

On 11/24/2019 at 3:29 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

I find it hilarious that even when Arthur's father is Lewyn, Arthur still refers to his mother as if she were the biggest magical name in his family. Despite knowing full well that it sure ain't her blood that's letting him use that kickass tome of his.

To be fair the Freeges are at their height, as vassal kings of the Manster district, while Lewyn's family was forced to bend the knee in disgrace.

 

On 11/24/2019 at 3:29 PM, Alastor15243 said:

I can only assume the translation team did that and it was originally Kashim or something.

Kashim was one of the popular translations (and alot closer to the original Japanese name) for Castor prior to Shadow Dragon giving us official translations of all the names. I am not sure if this is a trend Project Naga simply continued from the older translations, or if that is in the original Japanese as well.

On 11/24/2019 at 3:29 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

That's weird. Lewyn says it's been 15 years since Arvis conquered the world, but the opening narration said it was 17. I wonder what's going on here. Maybe the prologue was talking about Sigurd's death, and it took 2 years to make the whole empire?

Seeing as Leif is 15 in Thracia 776, and that takes place at absolute maximum a year prior (and it is easily argued that it starts at the same time), the 17 is either inaccurate, or measured from some different point in time.

 

 

On 11/24/2019 at 5:46 PM, Icelerate said:

It tries to takes that moment away from Travant in an attempt to give it Veld, in a way that falls flat in both games. As for the reddit post, despite it acting like this is the only way this could go down, there are plenty of places that it can be picked apart, and instead of filling this thread with quotes from a site I do not care to use, instead I will point out a plausible alternative. First Travant while witnessing the battle in chapter 3, noticed that Quan was among Sigurd's army, second that Quan presenting his new heirs before the court is made public (almost certainly the case unless king Kalf or Quan are trying to deny Altena and Lief their birthright), third that Leonster was unable to hide that their army is smaller than usual with half of it marching with Quan, and fourth that Travant was informed about Sigurd's rebellion when Arvis tries to hire him. From there it is not a far stretch to conclude that Travfant might think Quan took some of the army to help Sigurd, and basic geography tells him Quan must cross the Yied desert to help Sigurd. So he stations a scout hiding up among the clouds to give word when he sees the massive dust cloud of an army of horses trying to cross the desert, and takes Arvis's job in the event that Quan and Sigurd meet (as he might as well get something out of having to fight off Sigurd's army to get at Quan).

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ishore is a piece of work. Not for a casual player, for those most of the tim you can just rush him and it'll be fine, especially if you're using the save feature religiously. But for a ranked runner or an ironmanner... he can be a bitch and eleven tenths. He's got Bolting, which isn't too bad... but he's also got Adept. And there is the tiiiiiiiiniest percent of a chance that it'll activate, even with the 30 weight of Bolting slowing him down.

I still have some bad memories of him having a bolting adept proc, and he was honestly the first unit that came to mind when you mentioned having Nihil blocking Adept being useful.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And Arthur procs both Adept AND Critical, killing Ishtore before he even has a chance to lay a finger on Arthur. And I get...

...Isn't this Taillte's thoron? It's got four stars on it.

Why didn't she pass this down to Tinni?

Thoron is oddly enough requires too high of a thunder rank for anyone to inherit. Barring axe its the only other weapon that cannot be inherited.

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9 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

He reminds me a lot of Eddard Stark (or more accurately Eddard Stark reminds me of him as I both played Genealogy of the Holy War before reading a Game of Thrones, and Genealogy of the Holy War was released before a Game of Thrones).

 

It's funny how similar the set up of both series are. Genealogy of the Holy War and Game of Thrones were released within six months of each other. I guess dynastic struggles between houses is a general trope for fantasy, but the way they both lean into a false flag protagonist and a psychopathic prince etc is amusing on retrospect. 

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Day 25: Desert: Crossed.

Now then, before I forget, I found this absolutely awesome remix of this chapter's map theme that I really wanted to share:

Hearing this makes me think it might actually be possible to make “ablaze” versions of each of the map themes of this game, player and enemy. And really, I wish the remakes would do that. I've said for a while elsewhere that the “ablaze” system is a much better system than having repetitive battle themes. Obviously I don't want the battle theme to just disappear; the player phase and enemy phase battle themes could be repurposed as two of several boss themes the game uses. But I just don't want another instance of getting music as gorgeous as “What Lies at the End” and having to hear it constantly interrupted by “DANANA DANANA DAH DAH! DANANA DANANA DAH DAH! DAH DADAH DADAH DAH DAH! DAH DADAH DADAH DAH DAH!”

It gets old. Fast.

Now, we had just captured Melgen when we last left off, and now Darna's come to ambush us from behind. The game points out how terrible this boss was at doing that, since he waited too long and I already cleared the guys he was counted on me being flanked by. But that's just another instance of this game's extremely conscientious encounter design. While it may occasionally (okay, often) be unimaginative, it's never unfair.

Okay, so, the dialogue refreshes my memory about Ares's backstory, and now it makes even less sense that Ares was given this sophisticated, flowery vocabulary in this translation. He was found as a baby and raised by a crude mercenary. Why the hell would he talk like his father, who he can't possibly have any memories of? It would be kind of weird to spend time studying how to talk like a noble. Especially since he doesn't spend much time around people who do talk like that.

But curiously, this translation makes Jabarro even more of an asshole by changing his line about not getting too attached to women from “have your fun with 'em, but leave it at that!” to talking about having your fun with them, but then making sure to get out of there “before their lives come crashing down”. Implying there are a hell of a lot of single mothers out there raising his kids.

And he didn't even have the decency to leave them any skills.

THE BASTARD.

Anyway, I learned from my mistake in my previous run, the mounted-only one, and this time I have soldiers standing right next to the yellow myrmidons to the east of Melgen. If you don't have units close by, it's possible for the mage sisters to charge Leonster, which would be... unspeakably bad on so many levels.

And now we get Ares, or more importantly, his sword, Mystletainn! Not that Ares is bad. He's actually pretty good! In fact, in the past on another forum I made a lot out of how outrageously hard Eldigan's wife must have won the genetic lottery. Ares's resistance growth of 30 is absolutely unheard of without holy blood. There isn't a single male mounted unit in the entire first generation with more than 5%, meaning Grahnye (or as the translation later calls her, Grainne), Ares's mother, must have had a resistance growth of somewhere around FIFTY. And of course, she's responsible for all three of his skills: Pursuit, Adept and Vantage. Damned fortunate choice of a partner there, Eldigan. At least you showed more wisdom in what woman you pledged yourself to than what king.

You know, I don't think I like roads. They're an interesting concept, but in practice it makes it outrageously annoying to figure out how far you have to move back to stay in range of exactly one of the enemies charging you. Which, given the nature of this game... happens a lot. Of course, that issue would be rendered moot in a remake that had Three Houses' “update the enemy range highlighting before you finalize your move” feature, which was one feature in that game I really appreciated. It would be even more important and even more of a lifesaver here. But at any rate, I bring this up because I'm having Ares retreat a bit to get a few kills with his fancy sword while I position the others to pick more off.

Anyway, recruiting Tinni might be a bit scary, because you have to send someone to talk to her, and she's in front of the battalion and thus you can't realistically pick off the mages behind her first. My best option is to have Arthur talk to her and then rely on dodgetanking, but that's not a guaranteed thing unless I can get both Seliph and Dermott that deep into range, where the mages would easily gang up on them if they could. Plus, Tinni wouldn't be able to get away from the other mages' attack range if I recruit her out in the open and make her run away.

I'm gonna have to use the terrain to my advantage to make this work. And lo and behold, I find my solution: a 5 square long bottleneck created by a big long rock and a small ledge, just northeast of where those myrmidons had been. That's five spaces. Exactly what those mages' movement range is. Meaning if I can lure Tinni and the others up through it, she's guaranteed to spend at least one turn adjacent to one of those bottleneck spaces. Meaning I can have Arthur talk to her from a space that plugs up the bottleneck, allowing her to retreat behind him and have Seliph and Dermott support him safely from behind. If one of the mages winds up in front of her because the troop is going in a diagonal, Dermott will run in and pick off one of them before Arthur rushes in to talk to Tinni behind him.

Let's hope it works.

...It does not. At least not exactly as described. That formation I saw was just a shape it took to get through the bottleneck gate around the castle. Turns out Tinni's typically in the MIDDLE of the formation, surrounded by other soldiers. Thankfully, I managed to use the same general plan, took out everyone in front of her through standing just outside of her movement range, and lured her through the cliff pass to safely talk to her. Some of the three sisters took the other route around the cliff pass, but Julia made it over there and should be able to nostank them.

...I just killed Jabarro after his troops advanced quicker than expected and I had to player phase assault his remaining forces.

...Okay. Translators. Seriously. It's okay for Jabarro to say “Ares, you Dastard”, but Sigurd can't say it to Arvis? What gives!?

In fairness to the translators, I like how they at least tried to spruce up the three mage sisters' battle lines from what was previously something along the lines of “TAKE THIS! (insert El rank spell here)!”.

Things like “TASTE THE HOWLING GALES, BRIGAND!” and “TASTE THE RAGING FLAMES!” are way better.

...Oh fuck. I fucked up. I fucked up big time. I forgot how fast the wind user was, and thought having Seliph hero sword her would kill her exactly. It did not. And now he's in range of three different mages, and I only have three characters nearby who can back him up, because he's LITERALLY JUST ONE SPACE AWAY FROM BEING IN PHYSIC RANGE FROM LANA.

The best plan I can think of is to kill the fire sister with Arthur, since she has the three authority stars, have Julia heal up Seliph, and then pray that either the wind sister misses a 60% chance on Seliph, the thunder mook misses a 50% chance on Seliph, or the wind sister sees a more tempting target in Julia, who's technically closer to death than Seliph. I initially considered a desperation move to try and kill the wind sister with Dermott and Julia and hope Seliph dodged in his wounded state, but being fully healed and needing to fail two dodges to die is a lot better than, best case scenario, only needing to fail one dodge to die.

But now I have to leave it up to fate, because I got sloppy in a moment of weakness. Hopefully all will be well.

If not... well obviously I'm not ending my run here, but... there will have to be consequences to keep this ironman.

YES! YES! SELIPH DODGED! HE DODGED THEM BOTH! TAKE THAT FOLTA, YOU HOWLING GALE WHORE!

WHEW. Just finished them off and recruited Tinni with Arthur. Okay, lesson learned: whenever a life is at stake on a player phase assault, ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK ATTACK SPEED.

But anyway, quick aside about Tinni: She's... not good. I mean she's not good normally, what with her being woefully underleveled and impossible to make particularly impressive, but she really suffers for having Lewyn as her father. Arthur is amazing with Lewyn, obviously, but that's because he inherited Forseti and I let him have the Pursuit Band. Tinni has neither of these advantages and comes more than a whole chapter later. I have basically no intention to use her in any way whatsoever, and that's all I have to say about her.

After having Patty hack away at those swordfighters guarding Darna, I have Ares take out Bramsel. Ares can tank a hit from him even when Bramsel's using that horseslayer, so this seems fitting.

And at long last, Leif, now 11 levels stronger and with 33 total kills on his Light Brand from this chapter alone, faces off with the general who's been hounding him all day, and utterly obliterates him with a lucky critical hit before he reaches retreat threshold. I was hoping to keep it going a little longer, but oh well. I made a lot of progress with Leif's merry little band. Hell, Fee is close to promoting now! She probably will by the beginning of Chapter 8 at the latest, after a run through the arena!

Dermott's close to reuniting with Nanna, but he accidentally visited a village I merely wanted him to wait on for the evasion bonus.

Hope that wasn't the Barrier Blade village.

Speaking of which, we have Leylia now! Now, as a substitute child, she's obviously not statistically as good as anything Leen could have been. She's also not able to inherit any awesome equipment like Leen can. But for my purposes, none of that really matters at all, especially when there's no Knight Band to inherit.

Stats are almost entirely irrelevant for a dancer, and therefore Leylia is better than Leen for one simple reason: the developers saw fit to give her Charm. And with the addition of her and Nanna to my party, we now have a total of FIFTY PERCENT worth of boosts to hit and evade for anyone we want, and that's before anyone gets married! With this, almost anyone in my army can be made indestructible.

I'm getting Leylia every remaining village on this map (also to ensure I get the Barrier Blade), and then when Arthur promotes, he'll sell his leg ring, Leylia will buy it, and she'll be able to keep up with Nanna and Dermott and provide all kinds of crazy bonuses to whoever I need to buff up.

Anyway, time to take out the final castle. Funny how the Darna castle was entirely optional and mostly was just to get Leylia. But more importantly...

...The final obstacle is Blume. He's got four authority stars, but more importantly... Mjölnir. Arthur's thankfully good enough that he can tank a single hit from this guy, so he won't be a problem, but damn near anyone else would be fucked trying to fight this guy. The only guys I have who can tank even a single hit of 46 magic damage are Arthur, Ares, Oifey, Julia, Fee, and... funnily enough, Patty. Guess it's the double holy blood boosting her HP growth like mad. But I'm giving the kill to Arthur because he absolutely needs the experience. I wanna get him promoted asap.

Plus... y'know.

Revenge for his mother.

And to invent the legendary curse of Mjölnir. I intend for every single enemy to use it to die to Forseti. I want that to be a thing. I want the children of the bastards who dared to fuck with me to look at their own tome in pants-shitting horror, hiding it in the castle treasury unused. And whenever some new headstrong fool, full of beans and major Tordo holy blood dares to take it, I want their crying mother to tell them about the curse on the damned thing. That ever since the tome was raised against Sir Sigurd of Chalphy the Vindicated, EVERY SINGLE PERSON TO EVER CARRY THAT WRETCHED TOME INTO BATTLE HAS FALLEN IN SINGLE COMBAT TO THE MIGHTY FORSETI'S UNFORGIVING HOLY GALES.

...Well. So much for that. He doesn't die. Do I even fight him again? I hope so. I can't imagine why he wouldn't die unless we fight him again.

While Leylia gets the village gold and (hopefully, the Barrier Blade), Nanna, Leif and Finn try their hand in the arena for that precious 17,500 gold per chapter. This is a little over exactly enough to fully repair all of Nanna's weaponry and staves, so she's all set for next chapter. Leif also clears the arena with ease, fully repairing his Light Brand in the process with a good 3.5k to spare. Dermott also finishes the arena, something he couldn't do at the beginning of the chapter, and Finn eventually manages to get it done after getting stuck a few turns on a warrior, then...

...Oh my god. The new translation actually had Anna make a “deep cuts” joke in her conversation with Leylia.

It's so fucking dumb and out of place.

...I love it. Please keep it. Forever.

I wonder if Jake is gonna make an appearance in this game. Half the time Anna mentions him, he makes at least some kind of cameo.

Funny how they have the same old lady sprite give you the speed ring in both generations.

But anyway, that's the end of chapter 7! It took 90 turns, but it really didn't feel like it. After the Yied shrine, it was continuously engaging! So I think that's a pretty good mark in this chapter's favor. Now, let's seize and move on to chapter 8!

...Wait...

Oh shit...

I KNEW I FORGOT SOMETHING.

I FORGOT TO BUY THE RETURN STAFF!

NOOOOOO!

...Oh well. I still have the warp staff, and soon I'll have people who can use it from a mount. It's not the end of the world...

...But it still hurts.

Anyway, as the story progresses... it's kind of a shame how the plot's somewhat devolved into a generic “beat the evil empire” Fire Emblem story after how unique and insane the first half was, for all its faults. Still, the fact that there was so much buildup to this evil empire DEFINITELY makes this evil empire a lot more interesting, mainly because now it has so much more backstory that other games in the series struggle to cram in at the last conceivable minute it could be relevant.

Also, I definitely like Travant. He's an interesting villain. In fact, he and Thracia are so much like Garon and Nohr in (alleged, on Garon's part) motivations that I'm frankly amazed Fates did it so terribly when it practically had an instruction manual on how to do it.

...That's weird...

...I think the gold bonus for keeping castles safe is still in effect in Gen 2, going by my memory of what some of these guys' funds looked like at the end of last chapter. But that... that was being paid by Grannvale in Gen 2. And now we're still getting it, with no explanation for where it's now coming from instead?

...Bizarre.

Speaking of bizarre, I think I may have a blessed Claude!Fee.

Level 20 Falcon Knight, 43 HP, 14 strength, 17 magic, 18 skill, 24 speed, 18 luck, 17 defense, 24 resistance. While the strength doesn't seem that great, that defense in particular seems absurdly high for a pegasus knight with a mage for a dad. And that res! Well that's to be expected, but that's going to be insanely helpful! No status staff in the universe is going to stop her! And since Dermott has COMPLETELY failed to get a single magic proc in more than ten levels despite having Vala blood... fuck it, Fee, you're getting the fire sword now. Sell your paragon band for the money, you don't need that thing anymore. Go buy a bunch of Lana's staves. The Physic, Restore and Warp should do nicely. Excellent.

Meanwhile the gap beween Larcei and Ulster only continues to widen. After Fee sold the Paragon Band, I had Ulster and Larcei each borrow it for their turn in the arena. That's the great thing about Bargain; you can take and give things back to the pawn shop as you please without losing any money. Anyway, they each gained a bunch of levels, and...

Ulster: Level 15 myrmidon. 41 HP, 17 strength, 1 magic, 24+5 skill, 21 speed, 19 luck, 16 defense, 3 resistance.

Larcei: Level 16 myrmidon, 43 HP, 18 strength, 2 magic, 25+5 skill, 19 speed, 16 luck, 9 defense 4 resistance.

I realize that this doesn't look that bad except for defense, but that's a SEVEN POINT DIFFERENCE IN DEFENSE. Keep in mind that Larcei also got a +2 strength conversation with Shanan last chapter.

Also, just to give you an idea of how nuts this is, Larcei got a NO STAT LEVEL UP AT THE END OF THE ARENA.

However, as a comforting reminder that the dice have no memory in these trying Larcei times, Patty's defense has been skyrocketing since its meager beginnings. It's at 14, not counting her defense ring, and she's at level 18 after the arena, super close to promoting.

And also, some more good news: Looks like the stock from last chapter hasn't disappeared! I can still get the Return Staff for Nanna!

...The issue is that Nanna, Leif and Finn annoyingly start out away from the main castle for this chapter, Alster. They start at Leonster, which, again, is to the north. This means they can't visit the shops or anything else castle-related without using up their turn.

And I'm gonna have to think carefully about my opening gambit before proceeding, because this one... can get tricky. This actually has multiple things that need doing at once, and these things aren't isolated from each other like last chapter, so I actually have to debate who I send where! I'll have to give this some thought, which is good, because it's about time to stop for the day anyway.

But before I go, I have a question for everyone, now that the subject's come up in this installment: What do you think the penalty should be if I have to reload an autosave on this ironman run because Seliph dies?

Take care, guys!

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32 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

What do you think the penalty should be if I have to reload an autosave on this ironman run because Seliph dies?

Hmm... 

Seliph's lover is concerned that he may die on the battlefield, they have had dreams of it, and refuses to let him leave their side. Seliph henceforth must always end his turn adjacent to his would-be lover- except for the Wall of Edda and bagging Manfroy.

Furthermore, Seliph's fiancee is a natural woman and does not like jewelry, especially that representative of the two lower limbs of the human body.

 

-Or are you looking for something harsher or less tedious?

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4 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Hmm... 

Seliph's lover is concerned that he may die on the battlefield, they have had dreams of it, and refuses to let him leave their side. Seliph henceforth must always end his turn adjacent to his would-be lover- except for the Wall of Edda and bagging Manfroy.

Furthermore, Seliph's fiancee is a natural woman and does not like jewelry, especially that representative of the two lower limbs of the human body.

 

-Or are you looking for something harsher or less tedious?

Tedious would make a suitably punishy punishment, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it would be good for the health of this marathon if we make a habit out of that.

Edited by Alastor15243
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Well, the most iron-manny penalty would be to kill off another one of your active units, since Seliph(or other lords in later games) can't stay dead, either determined by RNG or some other criteria. Less harsh would be perhaps losing any items the lord was carrying, or being unable to allow said lord to see combat for the rest of the game(for games that are clearable with that criteria, anyway)

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28 minutes ago, Ether said:

Well, the most iron-manny penalty would be to kill off another one of your active units, since Seliph(or other lords in later games) can't stay dead, either determined by RNG or some other criteria. Less harsh would be perhaps losing any items the lord was carrying, or being unable to allow said lord to see combat for the rest of the game(for games that are clearable with that criteria, anyway)

Yeah, the "death roulette" was what I was thinking I'd use if nobody came up with an idea I liked better.

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4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

There isn't a single male mounted unit in the entire first generation with more than 5%, meaning Grahnye (or as the translation later calls her, Grainne), Ares's mother, must have had a resistance growth of somewhere around FIFTY. And of course, she's responsible for all three of his skills: Pursuit, Adept and Vantage. Damned fortunate choice of a partner there, Eldigan. At least you showed more wisdom in what woman you pledged yourself to than what king.

I always found it more reasonable to believe Eldigan simply had a resistance growth on par with the playable female characters (in which case 20% on both would get you there).

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I wonder if Jake is gonna make an appearance in this game. Half the time Anna mentions him, he makes at least some kind of cameo.

He does... if you have the substitute units for Arthur and Tinni, so not on this run.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, the "death roulette" was what I was thinking I'd use if nobody came up with an idea I liked better.

As an alternative you have to move the weapon with the highest kill count to be permanently placed in storage.

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11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And now we get Ares, or more importantly, his sword, Mystletainn! Not that Ares is bad. He's actually pretty good! In fact, in the past on another forum I made a lot out of how outrageously hard Eldigan's wife must have won the genetic lottery. Ares's resistance growth of 30 is absolutely unheard of without holy blood. There isn't a single male mounted unit in the entire first generation with more than 5%, meaning Grahnye (or as the translation later calls her, Grainne), Ares's mother, must have had a resistance growth of somewhere around FIFTY. And of course, she's responsible for all three of his skills: Pursuit, Adept and Vantage. Damned fortunate choice of a partner there, Eldigan. At least you showed more wisdom in what woman you pledged yourself to than what king.

Ouch. They really need a fodda on the 'a' there. Otherwise most people are going to think it's pronounced something similar to Grainy. The original translation is more phonetically correct even if it looks slightly ridiculous.

7 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I always found it more reasonable to believe Eldigan simply had a resistance growth on par with the playable female characters (in which case 20% on both would get you there).

 

He does... if you have the substitute units for Arthur and Tinni, so not on this run.

 

As an alternative you have to move the weapon with the highest kill count to be permanently placed in storage.

For those who haven't seen  Jake in Genealogy

Some of the substitute events are kind of cool. The Asaello one makes me bizarrely sad.

 

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1 hour ago, Espurrhoodie said:

How tf do you pronounce Grahnye?

It's like Gran-ya. With a longer 'a' sound on the first syllable. So to break up the phoneitc attempt by the first translators Gra (rhymes with raw)-hn (these two letters feel like they need a vowel in English, so imagine saying 'hin' without the 'i')-ye (like saying yeah).

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16 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's like Gran-ya. With a longer 'a' sound on the first syllable. So to break up the phoneitc attempt by the first translators Gra (rhymes with raw)-hn (these two letters feel like they need a vowel in English, so imagine saying 'hin' without the 'i')-ye (like saying yeah).

Oh! Thanks! I was off, I guess. I pronounced it like Gran-yay (rhyming with neigh).

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Genealogy Day 26: She is Beauty, She is Fear, She'll Obliterate your Rear

Alright, first thing I do is what I left myself on the pawn shop screen to remind myself about: sell Arthur's leg ring and give it to Leylia. It's a bit early, but only a bit. He won't need it much longer, while Leylia needs it immediately.

Speaking of which, Arthur has the bargain ring now, because of all the holy weapons, Forseti is going to see the most repairs.

I also give Seliph a speed ring because as last chapter reminded me, almost at the cost of his life, his speed stat is TERRIBLE. It's only a little screwed for his level and apparently he'll be close to capping anyway by level 30, but compared to the rest of my good units, 11 is pathetic.

Anyway, I start my opening gambit, but before I go into detail about that, I wanna talk about the conversation between Arthur and Fee. I don't get where this concept came from that Arthur was a selfish asshole with a reputation for only caring about himself, to the point that Fee is surprised and teases him when he expresses concern for her, and he doesn't even contest it, just says she's a “special case”. He's had like three conversations so far and in all of them he seemed like a pretty cool and chill guy. This conversation is... completely bizarre.

But anyway, I've mobilized. The top priority is getting all the necessary units over to stop the charging cavalry. I intend to make use of my shiny new auras to have Ulster and Leif block off the canyon by dodgetanking. Hopefully this will get Leif some nice experience.

And Muhammad is just as much the decapitation-happy immature asshole as his portraitsake, Chagall. Oh joy.

The northern front defensive maneuver worked perfectly. It was largely unnecessary though, as Ulster was able to take out a bunch of them safety before the aura network was even set up. But now we can safely score Leif a few more kills.

The bigger concern, it turns out, is the southern defensive front. Those armor knights are advancing on my position a bit too close for comfort, and the leader, Muhammad, a general with two separate brave weapons (one of them Finn's brave lance), has a dangerously high damage ceiling.

And this is one of the many reasons why I love ironman. Because if you, like so many other people, are a “I might need this later” item hoarder... well, suddenly you may find yourself in a situation where “I might need it later” becomes “there might not BE a later”. So you get to tell yourself: “Sure! Why not?”

I can probably manage this without it, but what with half of my star players and all of my auras up north (For an extremely good reason, wholly independent of my somewhat-botched plans to train Leif, as you will soon see), it never hurts to be cautious.

So I have Lana use the sleep staff on Muhammad. Good night, sweet prince. And with him out, Julia can easily nostank the rest if necessary, so we can just pick off the enemies as they come and then throw Julia at them if need be. Then Arthur will walk through the forests and take out Muhammad before he wakes up.

Awww... they were so close to doing something cool!

So basically, Faval showed up, and in the conversation, they mentioned that he's in desperate need of money to fund an orphanage, and that “his sister” has been “taking to stealing” the money they need. But then they just outright spell out that it's patty who is his sister. Granted, the player could have easily figured that out by Patty's inheritance, and I do appreciate that I am at least given the means to know what I'm going to do (much better than the opposite issue), but it seems like a waste to spell it out like that.

Amusingly enough, the remaining northern cavalry units, in defiance of the behavior of nearly every other enemy unit in the entire game, DO take the long way around when faced with a road block. Or rather they do that when cantoing away after attacking them. This will require some more advanced player phase strategies to deal with. Nothing too special, I just need to make sure I get Leylia to dance as many units as possible.

Oh shit. That was terrifying. That was a really nasty trick, giving the mage sisters leg rings and then making them march absurdly slowly. I completely lost any sense of how far they could run once I get in their range... until I looked at them and realized I parked Leylia literally a space shy of the first one's attack range during my complicated dancing maneuvers to player phase the remaining cavalry. Even that wouldn't have been lethal, as it turns out, as even after I sold her Barrier blade she has just enough resistance to survive, but still... seeing that massive attack range stop just shy of my dancer... was terrifying.

They were pretty easily taken out though, once I surveyed the situation and worked out how to best use Leylia. She's already turned out to be insanely useful both for offense and defense.

But then that act, that act of defeating the last of the mage sisters, prompts a cutscene, and who should turn up but the never-ceasing bane of my fucking existence...

One of the most terrifying enemy encounters in the entire goddamned series...

ISHTAR OF FRIEGE.

For those who haven't played the game... okay. So. Lemme show you the stats of Arthur with Forseti. You know. That unstoppable demigod badass I've been using to obliterate most of the toughest challenges in the game when I'm not using Ulster.

Here are his stats:

48 HP, 3 strength, 17 magic, 21+10 skill, 21+20 speed, 13 luck, 6 defense, 10 resistance.

47 attack, 152 hit, 85 avoid.

Now... here are Ishtar's stats with Mjölnir:

42 HP, 5 strength, 22 magic, 24+20 skill, 29+10 speed, 12 luck, 10 defense, 19 resistance.

FIFTY TWO ATTACK.

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT HIT.

SEVENTY AVOID.

Not scary enough for you?

...Then you need to get help immediately, because you're clearly high on something extremely lethal, but even so...

...She also has skills. Specifically, she has Adept and Vantage, the former of which she has a FORTY NINE PERCENT CHANCE TO PROC. I literally don't have a single character on my entire team capable of surviving two consecutive hits from her, and due to Mjölnir's absolutely psychotic hit rate combined with her own incredible skill, I don't have anyone who can reliably 100% dodgetank her either. Not even Arthur.

In short, I do not have anyone on my entire team capable of fighting her without risking death in some form.

She also has ambush, so if I somehow attack her but fail to kill her, it'll be a nightmare to finish the job. She'll get first hit on everyone who tries to attack her afterwards, unless I have her attack somebody on my team who's injured and has Vantage too.

Now, thankfully, Faval, once I recruit him, can one-shot her at base.

If he hits.

And at base his hit rate is exactly 100, against Ishtar's 70 avoid, meaning that even with all 50 points of hit bonuses on him, and even if I have Ishtar on a road...

...He'll still have a 10% chance to miss.

I may have to go with it though, unless I can get my other option running in time.

That other option is to have Arthur enemy phase her from a forest, while surrounded by all four of my aura users. That of course is going to be tricky and, depending on her movement patterns, impossible to set up, but I managed to do it last time, and this time I have Leylia too. If my calculations are correct, she'll need to hit a 3%, proc Adept, and hit another 3% in order to kill him. If he still had enough money left to buy a speed ring I could make it guaranteed, but alas I don't, and Patty does NOT have the time to give him the money to buy one before she'll arrive, especially not when she has to recruit Faval too. As it stands, this is by far the safest option I have, as if she doesn't kill him, she dies to his counter-attack, guaranteed.

But it's all going to depend on how I can set it up, and how quickly I can get Arthur over here. I'll need to use Fee.

Alright. So. First off. Recruiting Faval safely. The main issue of that is that due to my timing with killing the mage sisters... Istar is about a single turn's distance behind Faval, to the point that if I have Patty talk to him, she'll end her turn in Ishtar's range, and that distance will only narrow even further since she appears to be running full tilt and he's going at a slow march.

So I'm going to have Ulster switch to his iron blade and have him tank a shot from Yewfelle at the edge of his range, to force Faval to run his full distance rather than at a march. Patty will then run up thanks to Leylia helping her catch up, talk to him, then get warped away by Fee, who will then fly south to warp Arthur to Leonster as everyone rushes towards Leonster in the hopes of intercepting Ishtar by a forest to make our move.

In happier news in the midst of all of this chaos, Larcei and Shanan are married. How adorably fucked up.

Okay, while I have given this new translation a lot of shit, I do like how they wrote Patty. I'm not sure why, I just like her lines. But anyway, that's Patty's role in the plan done, so now it's time for Fee to warp her to Leonster and then fly down to do the same to Arthur.

...Done. I've got Arthur parked on a forest just southeast of Leonster. All four of my aura bonus users are in range of Arthur but not in range of Ishtar.

The plan has a .0441% chance of failure.

It's laughable.

It's miniscule.

AND YET I'M STILL TERRIFIED.


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

...Alright, so, as was clearly the most likely outcome, he dodges both and rips her to shreds. And then of course Julius arrives to save her, and... DEAR GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BANG OF HIS?

I know that Japan has come up with some really crazy hairstyles, but that fucking bang that looks like it's the length of Sephiroth's hair... for some reason that specifically comes across to me as exceptionally bizarre.

But moving on, I have Nanna send Patty and Ulster back to the castle, because Ulster can promote now! He gains some pretty good promotion bonuses, and now his stats are to the point where... okay lemme just show you them:

Ulster: Level 20, 46 HP, 25 strength, 4 magic, 27 skill, 25 speed, 21 luck, 21 defense, 7 resistance.

He's already capped skill, naturally, given his holy blood, and all of his physical stats are on track to cap if averages hold, save for luck, which will still get absurdly high, and technically could still cap if I'm absurdly lucky.

And one last thing before I wrap this up: I sent Faval to the arena, and he gained a ton of pretty good levels. His skill isn't exactly fantastic, but his strength's pretty great, and it's only going to get better when he promotes, which will happen soon thanks to Paragon. Lex x Bridget has worked out surprisingly well so far!

And with that, that's it for today. Tomorrow's plans are to get Arthur promoted as soon as possible, hopefully by tearing apart everything standing between him and Blume (who will now be a cakewalk without Mjölnir), then... after that, who knows? Well, I know some of it, for sure.

And part of it involves getting Ced.

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Now... here are Ishtar's stats with Mjölnir:

42 HP, 5 strength, 22 magic, 24+20 skill, 29+10 speed, 12 luck, 10 defense, 19 resistance.

FIFTY TWO ATTACK.

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT HIT.

SEVENTY AVOID.

Just out of curiosity, how would the current wielder of the brave sword have fared?

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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But then that act, that act of defeating the last of the mage sisters, prompts a cutscene, and who should turn up but the never-ceasing bane of my fucking existence...

One of the most terrifying enemy encounters in the entire goddamned series...

ISHTAR OF FRIEGE.

For those who haven't played the game... okay. So. Lemme show you the stats of Arthur with Forseti. You know. That unstoppable demigod badass I've been using to obliterate most of the toughest challenges in the game when I'm not using Ulster.

Here are his stats:

48 HP, 3 strength, 17 magic, 21+10 skill, 21+20 speed, 13 luck, 6 defense, 10 resistance.

47 attack, 152 hit, 85 avoid.

Now... here are Ishtar's stats with Mjölnir:

42 HP, 5 strength, 22 magic, 24+20 skill, 29+10 speed, 12 luck, 10 defense, 19 resistance.

FIFTY TWO ATTACK.

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT HIT.

SEVENTY AVOID.

Not scary enough for you?

...Then you need to get help immediately, because you're clearly high on something extremely lethal, but even so...

...She also has skills. Specifically, she has Adept and Vantage, the former of which she has a FORTY NINE PERCENT CHANCE TO PROC. I literally don't have a single character on my entire team capable of surviving two consecutive hits from her, and due to Mjölnir's absolutely psychotic hit rate combined with her own incredible skill, I don't have anyone who can reliably 100% dodgetank her either. Not even Arthur.

In short, I do not have anyone on my entire team capable of fighting her without risking death in some form.

She also has ambush, so if I somehow attack her but fail to kill her, it'll be a nightmare to finish the job. She'll get first hit on everyone who tries to attack her afterwards, unless I have her attack somebody on my team who's injured and has Vantage too.

Would I be correct in thinking everything in this video is your reaction?

 

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24 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Just out of curiosity, how would the current wielder of the brave sword have fared?

I will admit that hadn't quite crossed my mind. Though that's probably because both current wielders have the swords BECAUSE their attack power isn't all that great. And sure enough, as a result, it would have had a high risk of ending in failure.

I've got two brave swords, on Seliph and Fee. Seliph would have done a total of 38 damage, and Fee would have done worse, at 32.

However, there were two people on my team who would have been capable of one-rounding her if they had a brave sword at the time: Ulster and (just barely) Ares. Leif can now, but that's due to a talk with Finn that I didn't do immediately due to forgetting about it initially.

I don't have a full play-by-play recording of my moves, so I MIGHT have had time to get one of them to retreat and buy the brave sword off of Seliph and then use it on her after she appeared and I knew her stats, and that would have worked if I had all the auras in place. So yes, that was an option.

@Shadow Mir Preeeeeeety much. She's pretty scary even if you do know she's coming, and if you don't... holy shit.

Edited by Alastor15243
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Genealogy Day 27: Birth of a Mage Knight

Alright, let's get going. I'm sending Arthur over to take out the remaining forces at Connaught, with Fee at his side to both heal him and to gain support points. I really haven't been keeping these two together as much as I would have liked, since they've constantly had wholly separate jobs. But my dodgetank needs a wife who can keep up with the aura users, so there's no other option. Thankfully they have a conversation and some base love points, so by my calculations they should already have roughly 300. Early next chapter at the latest, they should be in love.

But before he leaves, I have him sell the brave lance to the pawn shop so that Finn can finally get the damned thing. And with it, he eventually clears the arena.

Patty gives Seliph her accumulated gold so he can buy the Paragon Band, because he's got some serious catching up to do. Hopefully with this he'll be promoted well before he gets Tyrfing.

Alright, so, due to not being able to trust enemy AI to not suddenly move when it becomes inconvenient for me no matter what their previous behavior was, I couldn't bring my aura users in to take out the general guarding the bridge with Forseti. This turned out to be wise, as once the general died, the knights immediately started moving. What wasn't wise, however, was that I forgot that Blume had bolting, and very nearly lost Fee when I moved her in to soften up the general for a counterattack-free one-hit kill from Arthur, and things came very close to the worst case scenario I thought I was prepared for. Thankfully she dodged just enough to survive. I'm literally just about to get Valkyria, so that wouldn't be the absolute end of the world, but it's always nice to not have to spend 30,000 gold.

Incidentally, holy shit. Fee doesn't even have the Defender anymore, and she's still easily my biggest all-around tank in the entire army. She has 24 resistance, and TWENTY DEFENSE. You know who has more defense than her in my army? Ulster. THAT'S IT. AND ONLY BY ONE POINT. Granted, Ulster's 5 levels behind her, but STILL. This is a PEGASUS KNIGHT. She's about as tanky as my last run's Lex!Fee, except with way, way better magic and resistance! And apparently this isn't too far above her average! With a growth of 40%, which is around 12 points by level 30, she should hit about 20 in general, which is... absolutely nuts. Okay, I'm pretty sure this is my new favorite pairing for Erin. I can't believe I never did this before.

I just sent Arthur and Fee back with Nanna's new return staff so Arthur can promote and Fee can keep following him back to the battle for support points. As soon as Connaught is captured, the two of them are going to advance southeast to take care of the remaining bandits who are going to strike around then.

Bizarrely though, while before enemies guarding castles with 1-2 range weapons insisted on “besieging” in melee rather than “attacking” at range, Blume's attacking Patty at 2 range.


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Blume laughs maniacally at the pathetic little girl in front of him, desperately slashing at him with a pathetic iron sword, leaving pathetic cuts that, to the thief's shock, close as quickly as they open. He laughs at the fools' obvious fear. The way they waited ages before even daring to approach. The way they now huddle together like rats, desperately trying to shield each other from the wrath of god he calls from the sky, trying to protect each other with what they no doubt think is the “power of friendship”. And after one final, futile cut, the thief walks away in defeat.

“How tragic”, Blume calls after her, “that the best this little resistance could offer was a little girl with an peasant's blade.”

But the thief glances back. A smile on her face and a wink in her eye.

“Oh I was just having some fun,” said the girl. “Waiting for the big guns to get here. And I can promote now! So thanks!”

And the girl skipped off, without a care in her heart for the lightning at Blume's command. And then he heard the stomping of hooves. And he turned. And his eyes opened wide.

A knight in jet black armor, upon a sorrel steed, rode forth to meet him. A purple shield and the blue reigns of a saddle in one hand. And a glowing green tome in the other, held upwards by the spine. His grip on the spine slackened. Gravity pulled the pages open wide. And howling green winds spilled forth, coating the fields around the castle with a layer of thick, swirling green fog. The sky darkened. But as he approached, by the tome's light he could see the knight's face.

It was... it was that boy from before. And the boy glared back, his purpose absolute and his resolve unshakeable. And in that single moment, all of Blume's arrogance was torn asunder. The rest of him would follow soon after.

For Arthur let out, in that moment, the last words Blume would ever hear from another living soul:

“HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON, OLD MAN!?”


 


 


 


 

So, yep! Arthur's promoted, and he just barely managed to get married to Fee in time (as did Patty/Ulster and Leylia/Ares), and HOLY SHIT I've always loved that color palette, with the black armor, blue saddle/feather/etc, and the purple shield. Unfortunately, the promotion's speed bonus is a measly 1, and that was all the extra speed Arthur is going to get. That's the cap, unfortunately. I'm gonna have to give him a speed ring, because 22 speed for a Forseti user... it's less than ideal, despite how awesome this guy is otherwise.

I just sent Patty to promote, and holy shit, she's actually pretty awesome. Even if I took the rings away she'd still be pretty great. I may actually wind up giving her Larcei's thunder sword due to Larcei's unfathomably screwed defense stat, let her focus on being a melee destroyer like her husband, and let Ulster and Patty become a 1-2 range fighter duo.

I gave the Power Ring to Faval, since he's easily going to be the party's biggest source of raw physical damage with Yewfelle, so I might as well maximize that since none of my fighters I find worth using are really having trouble dealing damage.

Also, Forseti's got 54 kills now! Holy shit, now it's going to become even more terrifying! Pity that kill count won't do much good against the final boss.

Alright, I seized Connaught, and now the dragon knights have come out of the woodwork to fight. As for the cutscene that came before that, I'm assuming the reason why Travant doesn't listen to Altena is because, obviously, attempting to make an alliance with the rebels would involve having to parley with Leif in some respect, which would... obviously crash and burn in several different, fascinating ways. At first I was a bit annoyed that his only response to that proposition was “shut up and do as I say”, but it makes sense, at least for him, if you think about it for a bit. He's in absolutely no position to negotiate on good terms with the rebels, especially after the bridges he burnt in killing Quan and Ethlyn, and obviously he can't explain much of this to Altena without admitting who her real parents are.

Also, I love the implication that, since Manster used to be red, Ced actually led a civilian uprising, a SUCCESSFUL civilian uprising, behind the scenes while the chapter was going on. I'd love to see some DLC of that in the remake. That would be super cool. Well, I know we run into him in FE5, so here's hoping what we see of him is cool!

Also, SWEET! MORE CIVILIANS TO RESCUE FOR 100 EXP EACH! SIX OF THEM! Enough to promote Leif, and then the rest can be given to Seliph to make absolutely sure he's promoted by chapter 10 at the latest!

Oh wow, the map animation for Light, the basic light magic spell Ced comes with, is just giving me all kinds of crazy Chrono Trigger vibes. And he's just SLAUGHTERING them. Even without Lewyn as his dad, Ced is a badass. And funny enough, it actually has a passable weight of 5! I think I might have him use this instead of the near-50-kill thunder tome I had Claude buy for him. He's just kicking so much ass.

As are Patty and Ulster, who just did their first real battle as a team, slaughtering the western flank of dracoknights before they could make any effort to attack a castle. There's only three left, and some of those tried to make a run for the castle, but that was because they weren't in range. I think Patty and Ulster can tempt them back to their deaths.

Altena's mutinying branch of dracoknights gets a bit too close to my squishies, but after a bit of player-phasing, they're swiftly dealt with, and Ced is finally recruited.

...Yeah, that does it, I don't think I'm ever pairing Erin with anyone but Claude ever again. Claude!Ced is absolutely fantastic. Four stats in the low twenties at level 14 (albeit already promoted), basically great at everything but strength and defense. And more importantly, he's a healer who can use Fortify and Valkyria. I'll be using it to bring back Lester just because it seems unthinkable that Seliph wouldn't do that, but Lester... yeah I don't think he's got any more of a future in his army.

...Also, I'm gonna give Lester a little bit of time to appreciate being alive before I tell him I'm gonna need his father's Brave Bow for Faval, who can put it to infinitely better use. I'm not gonna make him live the rest of his life thinking he only got brought back to life because we need his dad's bow.

Meanwhile Arthur makes quick work of that nasty gold-stealing, wing-slaying rogue (can't lay a finger on Arthur when he's in a forest) and secures the village with the thief bracelet. Which he's going to take, of course. With that and the Bargain Bracelet (hell, probably with just the Thief Bracelet) he'll basically be able to use Forseti forever. And that's just fine by me.

I just had Nanna talk to Ares, and I think it's cute that Ares finally gets to meet a member of his family and see a letter from his father. It's a shame I don't get to see him interact with Dermott in the same way, but it's still nice. Also, it gave Nanna 1 strength and 2 defense, which...

...Okay, both she and Leif have just promoted, and while her brother is turning out to be a bit of a dud, and the whole Azel X Lachesis pairing was a massive pain to get sorted out, Nanna is almost as good as Leif is. I don't know how it happened, considering her father's Azel, but her defense post-promotion at level 24 is a psychotic 23. I'm still not likely to do this pairing again, given the only real benefit is a magic growth for Nanna, which she barely even has any use for since Mend staves are so broken, but holy shit am I enjoying this iteration of her right now. She's somehow even better than her mother without even being a Master Knight! If I give her a magic sword, she can fight right alongside Leif!

...Wait. Okay, so I talked to the villagers by Manster... they think Altena is dead. Despite Travant not even changing Altena's name when he adopted her.

...Okay, what kind of a bubble has Travant been having her live in, that she not only doesn't realize she's not Travant's biological daughter, but that she has literally no idea which royal family the Gáe Bolg blongs to!?

Oh my god. Fee calls Ced Cedsy. I don't know why but that's fucking adorable. But apparently when you marry Erin and Claude, Claude is STILL an asshole who abandons his family despite not even dying.

Yep. That's pretty much cementing my headcanon that he only saw these women as a means to pass on his holy blood and nothing more. I wonder how and if the remake is going to tackle stuff like this.

Patty and Ulster take care of the remaining forces while I try and get Tinni to talk to Seliph before settling things up here for today by finishing this chapter.

Yep, I've just about finished up here. Got all the villages, giving most of them to Fee so she can repair the super expensive staves she has... even with arena gold she needs help with that. Then I had Patty finish off the rest of the enemies once all the dracoknights were gone. Ulster's Wind Sword is just 2 kills shy of maxing out at a +50% crit rate. Meanwhile Patty's reached 20 natural defense, her cap, and with the defense ring she's basically the physically tankiest unit in my army. At this rate, it's a coin toss if Ulster's going to cap his defense like he's capped his strength, speed and skill. It could go either way.

Anyway, yeah, Lewyn does another expodump, and I really hope they get rid of these and replace them with things that are more interesting. A lot more showing, a lot less telling. But I like the concept they're telling us at least, like I said before. Thracia and Travant are Garon and Nohr done right.

I'll do the prep work for chapter 9 and then I'll be done for today.

Okay. The title of this chapter, “For whose sake” never really made much sense before now, but now I get what they're referring to. I especially like how they title dropped it towards the end of the narration. Or maybe it was clear in the original as well and I just didn't notice or forgot.

Oh wow. For some reason, remembering that Finn is necessary in order to inform Leif that Altena is his sister, that... made my heart skip a beat. I'm not sure why, since he was never even remotely in any danger of dying in this run, but still... I had totally forgotten about that.

The music in this chapter, while not terrible, is probably the least memorable chapter theme on the soundtrack. Not that that's a particularly damning title to hold, mind. But I do genuinely not like it that much.

Anyway, Ced manages to kick the arena's ass, as expected/hoped. As does pretty much everyone, actually. Larcei's promoted, though she still only has 12 defense, which is utterly pathetic for a level 21 unit with a 40% defense growth. Seliph promoted too, which is fantastic, and Faval, Finn and Ares should be promoted by next chapter. We might actually get to see a Great Knight Johan by the end of this run too, come to think of it!

Dermott on the other hand is kind of stagnating, which is deeply unfortunate, given how important it is to bring him around places. So now that Seliph is promoted, it's time to give the Paragon Band to him.

Alright, lemme survey the situation and give you guys a sense of what's in store for us this weekend.

...Yeah, this MAY get nasty.

There are three major things that have to be done at the same time. Well, arguably two things, mostly because 1 and 2 are part of the same enemy offensiv. Basically, there are two recruitable characters set to assault our castle with two separate armies. First, Hannibal the general, whose son, the also recruitable Sharlow (Leylia's priest brother), can also be recruited, but only if we get to the castle behind Hannibal's castle without killing Hannibal. Second, Altena, Leif's sister, the rightful heir of the Gáe Bolg, who can be recruited if we talk to her with Leif. So basically:

1: We have to defend against Altena's forces without killing Altena

2: We have to defend against Hannibal's forces without killing Hannibal

3: We have to send Fee over across the mountains to the massive clumped up pile of villages with weird tile sprites, and rescue it from the bandit guarded by three heroes.

I have plans for all of these, but when it's been a while since playing this game, there's always a strong feeling of nervousness, a feeling that you might make a mistake anticipating the enemy AI and have to adjust your plan on the fly. Of course, that's what makes these games more fun, so...

...Here's to a hopefully awesome battle ahead!

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1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Blume laughs maniacally at the pathetic little girl in front of him, desperately slashing at him with a pathetic iron sword, leaving pathetic cuts that, to the thief's shock, close as quickly as they open. He laughs at the fools' obvious fear. The way they waited ages before even daring to approach. The way they now huddle together like rats, desperately trying to shield each other from the wrath of god he calls from the sky, trying to protect each other with what they no doubt think is the “power of friendship”. And after one final, futile cut, the thief walks away in defeat.

“How tragic”, Blume calls after her, “that the best this little resistance could offer was a little girl with an peasant's blade.”

But the thief glances back. A smile on her face and a wink in her eye.

“Oh I was just having some fun,” said the girl. “Waiting for the big guns to get here. And I can promote now! So thanks!”

And the girl skipped off, without a care in her heart for the lightning at Blume's command. And then he heard the stomping of hooves. And he turned. And his eyes opened wide.

A knight in jet black armor, upon a sorrel steed, rode forth to meet him. A purple shield and the blue reigns of a saddle in one hand. And a glowing green tome in the other, held upwards by the spine. His grip on the spine slackened. Gravity pulled the pages open wide. And howling green winds spilled forth, coating the fields around the castle with a layer of thick, swirling green fog. The sky darkened. But as he approached, by the tome's light he could see the knight's face.

It was... it was that boy from before. And the boy glared back, his purpose absolute and his resolve unshakeable. And in that single moment, all of Blume's arrogance was torn asunder. The rest of him would follow soon after.

For Arthur let out, in that moment, the last words Blume would ever hear from another living soul:

“HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON, OLD MAN!?”

Beautiful. So beautiful. This brought a tear to my eye.

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5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh wow, the map animation for Light, the basic light magic spell Ced comes with, is just giving me all kinds of crazy Chrono Trigger vibes.

Luminaire!

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh my god. Fee calls Ced Cedsy. I don't know why but that's fucking adorable. But apparently when you marry Erin and Claude, Claude is STILL an asshole who abandons his family despite not even dying.

I think Thracia 776 actually declared him dead. Not absolutely sure, but I thought the new translation said he died. Of course, Thracia is LewynxErinys canon, so Claud is extra-permitted to die. Claud dying with Ced as his son in FE4 makes less sense, not entirely though, it's feasible a son could go looking for his father who is actually dead.

How blind are you looking to play FE5 by the way? Are gaiden chapter requirements and character recruitments off limits to speak of?

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1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

How blind are you looking to play FE5 by the way? Are gaiden chapter requirements and character recruitments off limits to speak of?

I have no idea. Part of me wants to do it fully blind past the point I tried playing it before (can't remember how far I got. Shortly after Fatigue became a thing I think). Wants to see how fun the game is for a first time player and how well it lets you know what you need to do to win. But I've also heard rumors that the game is notoriously horrible at that and that if I play without a guide, the entire run will crash and burn.

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5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I have no idea. Part of me wants to do it fully blind past the point I tried playing it before (can't remember how far I got. Shortly after Fatigue became a thing I think). Wants to see how fun the game is for a first time player and how well it lets you know what you need to do to win. But I've also heard rumors that the game is notoriously horrible at that and that if I play without a guide, the entire run will crash and burn.

That's exaggerated a bit, I think. The game has a tonne of units who are very viable and killing enemies isn't difficult. It might make you rage if you go ironman, but you stand small chance of actually being unable to play the game outright. Enemies of generally weak quality and low stat caps of 20s+growth altering items means anyone can be trained up to capable levels even at later points in the game. Judging from your playstyle and what you like, I think you might enjoy Thracia blind (using enjoy here possibly in the masochistic sense). Although there is one section where if all your thieves are dead and you have no door keys it might be impossible to proceed further, but small chance of that happening I think.

Edited by Jotari
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24 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I have no idea. Part of me wants to do it fully blind past the point I tried playing it before (can't remember how far I got. Shortly after Fatigue became a thing I think). Wants to see how fun the game is for a first time player and how well it lets you know what you need to do to win. But I've also heard rumors that the game is notoriously horrible at that and that if I play without a guide, the entire run will crash and burn.

My advice is pick either ironman, or blind. It can be done blind (as long as you remember to buy some door keys), and the new translation isn't written in a way that might trick blind players into ruining their runs like the old one could, but not being able to reset a couple of moves in when you realize some key feature of the battle can lead to you having a very bad time. The game is very interesting to ironman, but a big part of that is you are never perfectly safe, and knowing what is coming makes that feel challenging, instead of punishing.

 

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Bizarrely though, while before enemies guarding castles with 1-2 range weapons insisted on “besieging” in melee rather than “attacking” at range, Blume's attacking Patty at 2 range.

If I were to speculate it might have something to do with the siege tome, perhaps they had to change the AI to allow them to attack at range to let them target melee opponents with siege weapons.

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Genealogy Day 28: Final recruitment

I completely forgot that I stopped the arena for Finn not because he was out of opponents, or even out of viable opponents, but because his money was overloaded. After having him do a few more anyway (repairing the brave lance after every battle, of course), he's finally promoted with one more battle to spare!

And I'm noticing a pattern that a hell of a lot of classes gain 5 strength on promotion.

Actually, when looking to check that, I noticed that the promotion gains from wind mage to mage fighter are really damned good. +4 to +6 in every stat except res, which is +3. That's almost as good as master knight, except master knight is great for sooooooooooo many more reasons than promotion gains. Of course, that class is locked to a pretty lame substitute unit, and the substitute for Arthur at that, so...

I resurrect Lester, as promised, and he's completely and utterly outclassed, as predicted. Level 7 just does not cut it anymore at all. On the plus side, Ced gains an almost perfect level up in the process.

But anyway, on to the issue at hand. The main issue is that if Hannibal or Altena decide to attack anyone, there's a good chance someone's going to die. So I have to make sure I never expose either of them to anyone they'd want to attack. The best way to do this will be to hold out in the castle for a bit, making sure Arthur is guarding the castle and thus has 129 evade. While thanks to Hannibal's insane five leadership stars (and Altena's more reasonable two) some of the enemies still have a hit rate on him, none of them realize that, so they won't try.

It'll be a few turns before they arrive, so I have time to give Fee a head start on the villages by dancing her with Leylia.

The main issue here is that I absolutely, positively HAVE to make sure that neither Hannibal nor Altena ends their turn blocking the castle doorway. If that happens, I'm fucked. I have to get Leif to talk to Altena as soon as possible to make sure this doesn't happen, and then beat away all of Hannibal's troops with castle-based hit-and-run tactics with my cavalry (though my foot soldiers can join in too for enemies within attacking range of the gate). I've sent Patty and Ulster out to get a head start on some of the dracoknights when they arrive, if that helps. I really, really, REALLY don't want to have to miss out on Altena.

It seems like the game's only going to make me deal with Altena first. Good to know. Hannibal's going to hold back. Pretty ballsy, considering his son's at stake and he doesn't even have a pragmatic excuse to justify it.

I decide, last minute, to have Nanna buy my second return ring, since she has the return staff. It would be nice to be able to return someone and then get her out of there too, especially since you can't canto after talking, so in this situation... that might be necessary. I don't want to have to deal with those sleep swords when my restore user is flying west at this very moment.

Feeling exceptionally paranoid about the prospect of having to either kill Altena or softlock my game until Fee can come back, I have Leif ride out to climb the mountains and try to talk to Altena right away. It looks like it'll work.

Okay, at first it looked like I may have fucked up. None of the dracoknights attacked Leif or Nanna, so I had to kill two of them to get them out of the way so Leif could talk to Altena. I couldn't remember if you could attack and then talk, and didn't want to risk it, so I had to kill those two enemies, in the mountains, using only Patty, Ulster and Nanna. The problem was there was only one viable space to kill one of them from, and Patty had to do it, and she wasn't guaranteed to succeed. I had to gamble and risk Patty getting creamed by, or creaming, Altena, come enemy phase.

...Except that I thought about it for a while, and who should I have ride to the rescue but...

...Lester. Lester, armed with his brave bow, and Dermott, armed with his silver blade, managed to obliterate two other dracoknights, opening up spaces for Ulster to join in on the action too, guaranteeing the death of those two other dracoknights so Leif could ride in.

So she talks to him and...

...Okay, I really hope they explain in the remake what the fuck she was told, that she thought that her wielding the Gáe Bolg wasn't a massive red flag about her parentage, or what she was even told the Gáe Bolg was.

I also hope they make the “look into my eyes” thing a bit less dumb in the remake too.

Okay wow, this entire scene is... I don't remember it being this much of a roller coaster of mood whiplash emotions. The whole “Altena confronts Travant” scene is just... wow. I hate it. I hate it a lot. It just escalates so quickly and expects us to be more invested in the characters than we could possibly hope to be.

That said, what happens immediately after Arion fakes Altena's death, when Travant goes on a suicide mission, without Gungnir...

I actually like this. Remember what I said about my guesses on Travant's unexplained reasons for not parleying with the liberation army? That it would be impossible to do without having to admit he killed Altena's real parents? Well now it feels like Travant's realized that now that the secret is out, and now that Altena is dead, most of his reasons for avoiding parley with the liberation army, along with most of his chances to defeat it, have vanished. And that the only obstacle to negotiation... is him. The liberation army will never parley with Thracia as long as Travant rules it, and he knows this. He's planning to die out there, to use himself as a scapegoat (not that this isn't justified) for Thracia's wrongdoing and improve the chances for peace. Granted, half of this is headcanon I'm extrapolating from what's gone unexplained, but my point here is that there's a ton of potential for “Shadows of Jugdral” to do something really interesting here.

You know what would be a really nice feature the remake could have? This might ruin the ability to listen to enemy phase music, but what if, when it came to marching battalions, every individual member of that battalion moved simultaneously, in formation, to save time having to watch every individual unit of a march act one after the other?

Also, Fee's almost done cleaning up with the village. I initially thought I'd need her to use the flame sword to take them out, but then I realized they can't actually damage her with ranged magic attacks, so she can just use her hero sword and they'll suicide into her at melee range!

...Nope, they attack her at range anyway. Despite not being able to touch her. Maybe the AI doesn't account for magic sword attack difference? Maybe it accidentally uses listed attack when calculating and doesn't realize it won't work?

Alright, the first village that would have been up for burning had a Barrier Ring. Fee has too much stuff so she can't keep it, and really doesn't need it. Note to self for later: MAKE SURE TO REMEMBER IT'S THERE AND SELL IT TO SOMEONE WHO CAN USE IT.

Fascinating! Looks like I had nothing to worry about regarding Altena hogging the entrance after all! It looks like enemies steer clear of the entryway if they don't think they can attack the guard.

Anyway, First up out the gate to take out the dracoknights is Faval, who's about to use Yewfell for some hilariously massive overkill on Travant, mostly because I want that leadership aura out of the way and I don't want him escaping to draw this out.

...He doesn't have a great hit rate though. Only 60 percent. But he'll have two shots, so might as well. After I double-check to make sure Travant doesn't have any skills that could put Faval in danger...

...He has Pursuit, Nihil and Vantage, none of which are relevant because he doesn't have a ranged weapon. But Nihil does mean that Faval barely lays a scratch on the bastard without effective damage.

...Wait, no, that sounds absurd. His defense isn't THAT good...

...I didn't attack with Yewfelle. How the fuck did I not notice that!?

Well that's embarrassing. I'll have to have Ares take care of this.

He does so with ease, due to Mystletainn's insane hit rate.

And with that, things are something of a cakewalk. But hey, cakewalks are fun, or people wouldn't do them! And actually, in all seriousness, there is something bizarrely satisfying about using hit and run player phase tactics to dart in and out of your castle to clear out all the enemies that have crowded around it. I wish this could somehow be incorporated into gameplay that's actually hard.

Okay, so now comes the reveal that Altena is alive (obviously), and Arion tells her to go join the liberation army, and... now I'm super confused. Why is Arion saying he would call for a truce if not for Travant's final words to him... when Travant's final words to Arion WERE IMPLYING HE SHOULD CALL FOR A TRUCE?

Yeah, that makes no sense, but what is interesting is that one of the villagers says that a Silesian knight who's “now among [us]” killed the father of a Grannvalian general who's coming in to provide reinforcements. That can only be Ced, Fee, or possibly Lewyn I suppose, depending on how far you stretch how well informed the villager is. It can't have happened in Gen 1 though, because there was nobody in that generation I had to kill with any specific character. Hopefully the general will clarify.

Those sleep edges a lot of enemies are using have me nervous. I don't want to find out what happens if you fall asleep on player phase on top of the home castle gate.

Alright, I managed to clear out half of the enemies and also wounded Hannibal in the hopes of forcing a retreat. The second he does, I'm having Arthur rush through to get to Luthecia castle and kill Distler. If I can get the rest of the mooks out of the way in time, I'll also send Seliph down too to seize.

Looks like Hannibal won't retreat until his army is gone. Oh well more experience for me.

Speaking of which, Dermott finally promoted, and that delicious +9 skill bonus means he's not going to have trouble hitting things with a silver blade ever again.

...Unless they're in the middle of a 5 star aura. Then... I guess it can't be helped.

But now that Hannibal's right next to the castle gate and all of the armor knights will be dead at the end of this turn, this means Seliph can just charge straight past him and rush towards Luthecia to rescue Hannibal's adopted son with no consequence. So... he does that. Immediately.

Unfortunately, this came at a slightly poor time, as Altena arrives and starts making a beeline for Seliph. Now, I know she wants to talk to him so she can join, given that Seliph can talk to her, but I'm still too paranoid to take the risk that she's still programmed to be hostile, so I have to end this turn out of her range. So I have Seliph keep running down the road towards Luthecia. I'm hoping next turn I'll be able to talk to her without being in Hannibal's range.

Nope, no good, it'll have to be the turn after. But there's no risk of things going wrong here, thankfully.

Alright, I recruit her, and when she and Seliph are trying to piece together Travant's motives... she says this:

“I've heard he once told my brother, Arion, that he sought to use the might of Leonster's holy lance, Gáe Bolg, as his own.”

...When... when did you hear this, Altena?

When did you hear this? Just now? Offscreen? In a part of that conversation between you and Arion that for some reason was seamlessly cut out from what we saw?

Did you hear it while you were unconscious and supposedly dead?

Or are you actually saying you knew all along that Gáe Bolg belonged to Leonster and yet STILL THOUGHT TRAVANT WAS YOUR BIOLOGICAL FATHER?

WHAT THE FUCK OTHER OPPORTUNITY DID SHE HAVE TO LEARN THIS WITHOUT LOOKING LIKE AN IDIOT?

...Jesus Christ, I love this story, but there are parts of it that are held together by spit and prayers.

But anyway, forget that, we've got Altena now! She's a dracoknight, soon to be a dragonmaster in 3 levels, who has 20 defense, the Gáe Bolg, and the ability to fly faster than Fee! Still, aside from Gae Bolg, she doesn't have much over Fee at this point. I didn't expect Fee to wind up so insanely good! But regardless, we have a second flier now, and one that can take a serious beating. She doesn't have pursuit yet, but since I just cleared the arena, she's only one level away.

I just cleared Luthecia and recruited Sharlow. Now all that remains is to find a way to get this absurdly fragile, woefully underleveled character to talk to Hannibal safely, and make sure we're prepared for whatever the hell event I just triggered. So I have Fee warp Sharlow back to base and then use her return ring. With her at base, we'll be able to send anyone we want to defend that castle if necessary. Also, before I forget, I can have her sell the barrier ring she really, really doesn't need.

Looks like recruiting Sharlow and capturing Luthecia didn't trigger anything. Fascinating. Alright, well, guess it's time to play the waiting game and take out a second round of Hannibal's forces so we can talk to him.

...Or I suppose we only need to clear a path to Hannibal and then have Nanna use her return staff after Sharlow talks to him...

...Sure, let's do that. Just in case they stop fighting once their leader defects.

Anyway, I noticed while scanning for conversations that Faval was ready to promote, so... he did.

His attack power with the Yewfelle is now SEVENTY FUCKING TWO.

Well, I didn't get a ton of green units, but recruiting Hannibal instantly turned his castle blue, making all of the red units disappear. So all of his forces either retreated... or died of shock that their leader is defecting. Either way, next turn, some shit's gonna start hitting some fans.

In the meantime, I send Altena and Arthur over to Luthecia in anticipation with Fee's warp staff and Leylia's dancing. Speaking of dancing to refresh staff users, I've been having Johan intentionally try futilely to beat the baron final boss of the arena in order to give Lana and Julia someone to heal so they can promote. They've been gaining 40 exp a turn.

The reinforcements from Grannvale arrive, as promised, but no hint as to what that “you killed my father” thing is about. And actually, I just checked the script, and there's no hint that there's any follow-up to that whatsoever. Damn it.

Anyway, the Grannvale troops are pretty damned strong, with attack powers in the 30-40 range, but the thing is that Patty and Ulster are essentially completely indestructible with 40 points of aura backing them up, so... it's a pretty massively one-sided slaughter.

Also, for some reason I thought the defense cap for heroes was 25. Turns out it's 22, and Ulster isn't gaining any more defense not because his luck for growth rates suddenly ran out at the final stretch, but because he had nothing more to gain. He's capped strength, skill, speed and defense.

And after a ton of tedious busywork involving moving 80% of my army to Luthecia, Julia and Lana promote. Julia gains an absolutely insane 8 speed from promotion, allowing her to actually reliably double with Nosferatu. Good. That's not gonna be relevant much longer, if at all, but it was important to get her promoted before the end of this chapter. I'll explain why for those who don't know at the beginning of the next one. Both she and Lana cleared out the arena with ease upon promotion, at least after Lana got her hands on Ced's wind tome.

Anyway, the next castle is just a pain in the ass. A ton of ballistae and a fenrir user. I decided to cheese it by having my best dodgetanks march towards it accompanied by Seliph, Dermott and Nanna. Only two of the siege enemies have a chance of hitting anyone.

So, after clearing that... Arion sends out a MASSIVE army of enemies... all of them dracoknights. Sent off to capture as many castles as they can. Now, while the complete lack of variety in the enemy forces is disappointing, I do appreciate what they're using them for: now I have to quickly defend EVERY CASTLE AT ONCE, with whatever means are available to me, while heading to the final confrontation with Arion.

I'm not too afraid of Arion. He caused me to ragequit during my mounted-only run due to my “no saving except between chapters” policy and all the tedious stuff I didn't want to repeat, he only killed me because I didn't sic Arthur on him, and I only didn't sic Arthur on him because I had kept him at the home castle for defense and I was impatient. Not this time though. This time, it's going to be two shots from Forseti and the fucker's going down.

I had Altena guard Kapathogia, Leif guarded Meath, and just for fun, I gave the job of guarding Luthecia to Faval, who's got 22 defense, 96 evade in the castle, and enough firepower to completely smoke the fuckers.

The team going in to take out Arion is Fee, Arthur, Leylia, Dermott, Nanna, Seliph, Patty and Ulster, and just for the heck of it, Ares, to see if he can get a bit more exp and maybe promote (also in case Mystletainn is useful).

While there was a slight hiccup where I forgot Patty was too tough to bait in the sleep sword users with her defense ring (I really should take that off her, she's plenty tanky with her 20 defense and 71 HP), I managed to have Ulster retreat far enough to try again with him without having to expose any of my less agile aura users to sleep swords, or having to expose him to Arion. I should kill enough of them that next turn I can player phase the rest, including Arion.

Aaaaand yeah, that's pretty much how it went. It was tough at first. I needed to get 30 points of aura boosts over to Arion before Forseti had a 100% hit rate, but once I got those over the rest of them dropped like flies. And then I had the last three talks of the map: Seliph and Hannibal, Sharlow and Leylia (who don't realize they're related), and Julia and Seliph, which adds 3 to his already great (for a physical unit) resistance, bringing him up to 13.

And with that, we're out of here!

So, the intro for chapter 10 explains the completely new surroundings (we've completely crossed the sea to Miletos, and this is one of like two maps in the game that doesn't have a common castle with the previous one) by saying we liberated the city of Perlucos offscreen. A little bit disappointing, but hey, we get completely new surroundings! And maybe the remake will add in a cool cutscene to show this in action.

And of course shortly after we get here, Manfroy kidnaps Julia like he kidnapped Dierdre, and this time he doesn't even need to wait for her to leave the castle walls! Looks like his magic's gotten better over the years!

And we finally get to see the infamous sack of shit Hilda. I... honestly don't remember much of her. And I have to say, so far, while she's clearly a villain, she hasn't done anything yet that explains her reputation for pure evil. I also think I was wrong when I said Lamia was a pallette swap of her. She looks a good deal older, with clear age marks, and she also has a much longer nose.

Oh. So she's just casually hunting children. I mean yeah, that's horrible, but it's kind of pedestrian for the Loptyr empire at this point. I'm hoping to see something even more despicable from her eventually.

Also, poor Riddell. He hates what the empire's up to now, but he's clearly in way over his head and has no other clear options but to fight for them. For some reason I'm more sympathetic to him than I am to Eldigan. Probably because Eldigan was genuinely loyal to an entitled manchild psychopath, whereas there's damn near nowhere else for Riddell to go besides the empire, so he has basically no options here.

That said, his introduction is fairly barebones and clumsy. I feel like a broken record, but I hope the remake expands on this guy.

Anyway, from the look and sound of things, tomorrow we're gonna have to get past a bunch of dark mages (some with sleep staves, which could be nasty) to get to a bunch of cornered children before Riddell's soldiers can.

And also, in comes everyone's favorite map theme in the game: Light and Dark. And I too adore it. The remixes demonstrate it can be given a lot more power, but the original's still pretty fun.

But enough of that. I'm gonna have to continue this another day, because it's getting super late. Until then, everyone!

Edited by Alastor15243
AHEM! Ulster, not Forrest.
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