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

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Zemuria said:

That's not what I meant. 

I assume you have not finished this chapter, but regardless, you have to deploy Lara for this map.

Since I have not read this name in the post, I just want to inform you. 

Thanks, though I wonder if they've ever given any hint at all that they have any connection.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Unfortunately there is only a hint about their connection once the chapter has been started and has been deployed. There are not any information given before which means this event is an automatic miss for a blind player. 

Edited January 4, 2020 by Zemuria

[Shrimpica]

12 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Thanks, though I wonder if they've ever given any hint at all that they have any connection.

>Kaga
>giving hints

[Alastor15243]

Honestly, I wouldn't mind this sheer number of hidden secret goodies if they didn't amount to a massive, massive power scale difference between going in blind and going in with foreknowledge. If they were less major, they could be fun bonuses to add replay value to the game. But looking at the sheer scale of difference it makes when you know what's coming, all I can think is: "why the hell would I want a game with no super-hard mode to get this much easier after I've beaten it?"

Edited January 5, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

9 hours ago, Zemuria said:

I cannot remember chapter 21x being bad since it was not even FoW. Chapter 24x is a pain in the ass, but it is somehow required not to get screwed against the final boss. 

  Hide contents

Although pure water / barrier and thief staff can prevent the issue. 

 

Anyways I am excited of your reaction for chapter 12x.

  Hide contents

If you know about the gimmick, you have nothing to do aside of opening chests and recruiting one or two people. 

 

A handy warp staff suffices also.

 

 

Huh, so Tina has only three magic. That alters a lot of why I thought this map is terrible to do legitimately.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Huh, so Tina has only three magic. That alters a lot of why I thought this map is terrible to do legitimately.

What did you remember it being?

[Jotari]

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

What did you remember it being?

Well I just remembered her using the thief staff on me. And since the player wants that Thief staff and can't afford for its precious uses to be wasted, the very fact that she uses it means the chapter massively encourages warp skipping. Of course it still does for a huge number of other reasons which I'm sure you'll soon see.

[Alastor15243]

Thracia Day 20: Chapter 12x

So, now comes the task of setting up a new team comprised exclusively of units with 3 or more magic. Shouldn't be too hard.

The exception, however, is Lara. She doesn't have 3 magic (or any magic, or even any strength), but I've gotta bring her, so I'll be sending her in empty-handed so I don't have to warp-skip in order to get that thief staff. The map doesn't have any doors, so I'll be using chest keys on my other units to get the loot. It's utterly ludicrous how broken chest keys are in this game. Who the fuck decided they should have twenty uses?

One thing that's making team assembly annoying is that when I'm on the combat preparation menu, I can't just go to the unit stat screen and then press right or R or anything to shift to the next one in line to quickly see which ones have 3 or more magic. For some reason this game doesn't have that feature on the preparation menu, and I have to go in and out of the stat screen for each individual one.

Alright, time to start. I'm really curious as to why the fuck, after establishing Pan as a relatively decent person, they decide to show him being a total jackass to Tina.

Ooh! Interesting, so they do say something about Pan and Lara having a connection, as long as you bring her to battle. So at least it's something you'll eventually find out on your own as long as you're experimenting with using different units.

Salem... appears to be hot garbage for the moment. He hits hard, but he has 0 attack speed and pretty mediocre accuracy. Not to mention he only has 20 attacks at the moment because I haven't stolen any dark tomes so far. Thankfully, he does have decent staff utility...

...And the ability to use all other magic at D rank.

Meaning the bigger issue that I've only just realized is that all of my good capture units can't be used due to their poor magic or only being good at capturing while mounted, and I'd like to capture Trude if possible, if only out of curiosity about how if at all it impacts the story. Mareeta is probably the only myrmidon I'm going to be using in this playthrough.

Thankfully, I do have one option available to me: Leif with a brave sword, after softening Trude up with an attack from someone else. Unfortunately softening enemies up is always a gamble due to the insane crit rates in this game, but Salem might be able to handle it.

Another thing I have to keep in mind is that those thieves have a hell of a lot of speed and con, so only my serious speed demons should be getting close to them. Unfortunately, only Mareeta and Asbel have the speed and magic necessary to avoid both thieves and the thief staff.

...Holy shit. These thieves are a well-oiled fucking machine. Not only do some of them have movement stars (which I couldn't confirm if they used because they activated in the dark), but the dancers are also speeding them along, trying to get them to evacuate as soon as possible. That...

...That...

...I can't capture any of these fuckers with my current team. They have twelve con. Any chests they get to are gone for good.

...Which means I literally have to warp skip if I want to get the treasures of any of these thieves, and due to how fucking many of them there are, I'd have to do it multiple times!

...And that's literally all this map is! A blind scramble through narrow corridors to get to treasure before the enemies do, when the only way to possibly get all of the treasure is...

...Fuck, I don't even know what the only way to get all of the treasure is!

...Alright, fuck it. This map doesn't even remotely sound fun, so I saved myself some time finding information I could easily (if time-consumingly) obtain through trial and error, looked up what all the treasures are, and now I'm going to decide which specific treasures I feel are sufficiently worth saving to use a warp staff to get to them. And in the process of looking up what the treasures are, I noticed the guide say that apparently, if you stick around for 25 and 30 turns without killing a single dancer, two dancers will show up, one on each of those turns, one carrying a master seal and the other carrying a warp staff respectively.

What!?

...I would love to see what went through the designers' heads when they thought of this chapter. What part of dealing with these thieves without killing a single dancer when the only way to get past dancers is to capture them, and then waiting around for 30 fucking turns to get two more items, sounded fun!?

...Alright. So, I do have one unit I can reliably capture with who has 3 magic. And that's Callion. Even when dismounted, his stats are so nuts that he can handle the task. I might, might be able to get literally all of the treasures, very, very tediously... but it all comes down to one thing: how the enemy behaves.

If I'm reading this guide right, all of the thieves retreat through one staircase, a staircase that's really, really close to my starting location. I may be able to cut off the thieves entirely before they make it there and slowly capture them and steal their shit.

...Nope. They do not. They all retreat in different directions, and the only one I can feasibly reach without warping has the worst treasure: the armorslayer. Alright, lemme think about this some more...

…Fuck it. The only one of those I really wanted to keep was the defense ring. But I was planning on giving it to Asbel (I'm hoping to bring his defense up to snuff with scrolls once he promotes, and he's the only one whose defense seemed to be at any risk of still sucking even with scroll abuse), and he got a lucky defense level up this map anyway. So restarting and using a warp staff use in order to get a net 1 defense increase for Asbel seems... insanely idiotic. I'm just gonna see if I can get that warp staff and master seal and then be done with this fucking map.

...Salem gets his first level up, and gets literally nothing. Actually, what the hell are his growths?

...They aren't very good. Not “naturally he didn't get anything” bad, but not impressive. He will cap magic, skill and speed by 20/20 eventually though.

…

…

...I forgot to bring a door key.

I forgot. To bring. A fucking door key.

And this map needs one.

...Fuck it. I'm not redoing this fucking map. Not when there's so little to do in it, and when I got such good defense growths for Azel and Mareeta. I'm gonna steal that second warp staff, I'm gonna capture Trude, and I'm gonna look for a door key, but if I can't find one, I'm gonna use a warp use to have Lara talk to Pan and then have him what the fuck do you mean Pan doesn't come with a fucking lockpick!? ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT WITHOUT THAT DOOR KEY I'M GONNA HAVE TO USE TWO WARP USES JUST TO GET TINA SO SHE CAN USE ONE OF HER PRECIOUS UNLOCK STAFF USES TO FUCKING-

...Alright. I'm calm.

...I don't like this level. Thanks to the relatively realistic methods of bypassing the thief staff, it's not the worst thing in the world, but it is pretty fucking dumb. My main issue is that it almost conclusively demonstrates that the developers were fully aware of how broken the warp staff is, but that its broken qualities were an intended part of gameplay. It actually makes me to believe that “just cheese it with one of the overpowered staves” is actually the developer-intended solution to multiple puzzles, which for a first-time player who doesn't know where all the warp staves are or even how many uses they're going to be able to get normally, is absolutely asinine. When a broken super-weapon is the intended solution to a problem, and not a limited use “use this if you can't figure out the real solution, but use it wisely because you can't use it on everything” panic button, then... I mean that's just fucking boring.

...I could use the sleep staff to freeze someone in place, but given that I have no idea if I even get another one outside of abusing warp to steal it from enemies, that probably seems like a stupid price to pay for these treasures when none of them seem particularly cool.

Fuck it, looks like I'm letting them all go and just using this as an opportunity to train Mareeta. But I've gotta restart and give up those three defense levels on Mareeta in order to get a fucking door key because I totally forgot I'd need one if I left Lara totally unequipped.

...I... don't... have... a... door... key... in... my... inventory.

...So now I have to do some complicated bullshit with letting someone hold on to Lara's lockpick until she gets to the door, and then trading it back.

...Okay. Fine game. Sure. Let's do that.

Alright, quick update, funny little thing to note in the midst of all of this idiocy, I managed to at least get the armorslayer, and learned that you can release enemies and they'll sometimes walk straight into walls.

...Not so fun thing to note: capturing counts as killing when it comes to letting the dancers spawn. So by capturing the one with the knight crest before the one with the warp staff arrived, I ruined my chances of getting the one thing I absolutely need to get out of this level. Which means my plan of hanging around in this part of the level for 30 fucking turns in order to get that staff is the intended way to get it, because there's no way to get past the dancers in these narrow hallways without capturing or killing them.

And thus I have to restart again.

I also noticed the dancers don't move if they don't have a clear path to the exit, and might not even move if someone they can fight is in the way. So I'll have to make sure that whole hallway to the escape staircase is temporarily clear for one turn so the first one can be lured away from the staircase to let the second one show up without having to remove her by force.

YES! IT WORKED! SHE SHOWED UP! NOW WE CAN GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS FUCKING MAP.

…

Oh no.

OH NO, I FORGOT ABOUT TRUDE. I FORGOT ABOUT-

...Oh thank goodness, Mareeta somehow managed to not proc a crit with her insane PCC of FIVE. He ran off to heal, and before I could take any more chances with this fucking map, I had Salem sleep staff him.

...And miss.

Thankfully, Safiya was right by him and could trade for it to use it herself.

...Which did work. So now I can capture him and his fancy silver sword at my leisure.

...And then I remembered, much to my chagrin, that capturing people drops your stats, and that every turn I have either Leif or Callion capture Trude, they're open to Tina's thief staff if her Two-Face AI frowns upon me.

Which it finally did, and thanks to dancing and a fucking movement star proc, she uses the damned thing three fucking times in one turn.

...Miraculously, however, her abysmal skill stat of 1 means it only managed to work one of those times, and so she only wasted one use, and I can salvage his if I get that thief staff off of her this round. Which means I'm done playing around. I'm not redoing this map again, not now that I know that it's impossible for me to capture Trude without risking the wrath of Tina. I got absurdly lucky there, probably more than I'm likely to get again. I'm using my shiny new warp staff to warp Lara in to talk to Pan after I give her her lockpick that Asbel was carrying, and then I'll have him take Tina's thief staff until I can get Safiya to talk to her.

Aaaaand this is my first time seeing the promotion screen of Thracia! Funny thing how that happens. It's pretty okay. I like the slowly building music, but beyond that, it's a SNES promotion screen. Not much you can say.

And now that Tina's been neutralized, time to get into that room!

...OH! HEY! The knight crest wasn't stolen for some reason! Glad I noticed that! Let's grab that before we leave!

I just recruited Tina, and while I still think that child abuse doesn't really reflect well on Pan, like, at all, learning that all he did was just put a hairy caterpillar on her head at least makes it several steps behind irredeemably vile, and in fairness, it was pretty damned funny hearing her reveal that was what her punishment was.

...It's not just Pan. Tina has 5 movement stars too. Well, that explains that insane attempted triple steal. I can't count on that, like, at all, but holy shit is that gonna be fun when it happens. Alright missy, give the prince back his light brand.

Actually that's kind of hilarious to think about now that the game just revealed she has a childish crush on him.

FINALLY. FINALLY THIS FUCKING CHAPTER IS OVER.

This is really fresh in my memory, so I can't really trust any judgments I have about how far this goes in the “worst maps ever” thing. It did reach comparable levels of “I don't want to fucking play this” as basically every late-game chapter in Dark Dragon before I started warp-skipping, so that's... a pretty disgraceful achievement right there. But worst chapter ever? ...Well, that I'll have to think some on. No part of it inspired the level of pants-shitting volcanic rage I felt when I discovered that Foreign Land and Sky had decided to reduce the fucking mission objectives to a cheap “gotcha” trap, but in fairness to that chapter, as Mephistophelianly vile as that decision was, and however much I want to slap the person responsible in the face and give them a ten-hour-long lecture on basic game designing ethics... Foreign Land and Sky is only ever going to be horrible for me once. Meanwhile, this map is going to be every bit as disgustingly tedious and terrifying every time I play it, and I know this because I had a fucking guide in front of me telling me what was in every chest and when and for how long the reinforcements would show up. And it was still agonizing.

...However! I place a great amount of value in the magic of the first playthrough, and anything that ruins that experience, even if it doesn't ruin anything else, is going to earn my unforgivable ire. Especially when that first playthrough can run upwards of seventy consecutive fucking hours. So I think on principle this map just baaaaaarely fails to beat Foreign Land and Sky for me as the single worst map in Fire Emblem history. That map singlehandedly shattered my ability to trust Three Houses and turned the rest of my blind ironman run into an excruciating exercise in paranoia and tedium. I will go into more detail about this much, much later when the time comes, but suffice to say, I am going to have a lot to say about that map when I play Three Houses, and I can't bring myself to hate this map as much as I hated that one.

But make no mistake. That is not a statement in this map's defense. This was baaaaaaaad. Oh holy shit was this bad. I almost refuse to even dignify this monstrosity with the title of map. It's not so much that it's hard, or that it's hard in unfair ways, but that it actively encourages playing the map in ways that aren't fun, and it's generally just a bizarre combination of tedious and terrifying, where you have this constant feeling that you could have to restart at any moment and it would be out of your hands. That's one of my least favorite ways to feel while playing Fire Emblem.

Next time, we'll finally, finally be back to chapter 13, and hopefully back to things being more fun.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Abosikay]

Huh. Fun. That map was actually one of my favorites. I'm gonna step up and defend it real quick. I think the challenge in the map comes from how much you prepared for it. Clearly you didn't prepare for this chapter much in advance, which going in blind, yeah this chapter is gonna screw you over. But this map can become an absolute breeze if you do just a little planning. Just have someone like Salem use a torch staff to illuminate enough area so that you can see the throne room, then warp Lara to Pan and have them talk. The earlier you do this, the better. Then, all you had to do was put Troude to sleep or capture him before he runs away. Once Pan is a good guy, everyone else just runs away. Pan can steal Tina's thief staff until Safy comes and talks to her. Then, just have a thief like Lifis sweep through and reap the rewards. Now, going in blind, I understand that this map can suck. But honestly, this map is very unique for a fire emblem map. Most enemies are thieves who book it to the chests. There are actual enemy dancers who dance for the enemies. Fog of War. Tina is constantly trying to steal your stuff. The boss turns one of your thieves into a thief/dancer. You get a dark mage, which was the first playable one in the series. And this map has so many ways of playing it. You could cheese it. Or you could do it your way. And the rewards for the chapter are great. You get Salem, who can easily reach A rank staves and, with some investment, gain A rank dark magic and use Fenrir, a siege tome most end game enemies have. You get Tina with the thief and Unlock staves which are also amazing. Pan has 5 movement stars, a fucc of 5,  and comes with the best weapon in the game, the Kingmaker, which is basically a brave sword with charm built in, at C rank. Almost everyone has the potential to use it. Troude is nothing special since you already have Mareeta and Shiva, but he's essentially a free silver sword, which is rare in this game. That isn't even considering the chests. So overall, this chapter is as hard as you make it, and comes with some insane rewards.

[Alastor15243]

6 minutes ago, Abosikay said:

Huh. Fun. That map was actually one of my favorites. I'm gonna step up and defend it real quick. I think the challenge in the map comes from how much you prepared for it. Clearly you didn't prepare for this chapter much in advance, which going in blind, yeah this chapter is gonna screw you over. But this map can become an absolute breeze if you do just a little planning. Just have someone like Salem use a torch staff to illuminate enough area so that you can see the throne room, then warp Lara to Pan and have them talk. The earlier you do this, the better. Then, all you had to do was put Troude to sleep or capture him before he runs away. Once Pan is a good guy, everyone else just runs away. Pan can steal Tina's thief staff until Safy comes and talks to her. Then, just have a thief like Lifis sweep through and reap the rewards. Now, going in blind, I understand that this map can suck. But honestly, this map is very unique for a fire emblem map. Most enemies are thieves who book it to the chests. There are actual enemy dancers who dance for the enemies. Fog of War. Tina is constantly trying to steal your stuff. The boss turns one of your thieves into a thief/dancer. You get a dark mage, which was the first playable one in the series. And this map has so many ways of playing it. You could cheese it. Or you could do it your way. And the rewards for the chapter are great. You get Salem, who can easily reach A rank staves and, with some investment, gain A rank dark magic and use Fenrir, a siege tome most end game enemies have. You get Tina with the thief and Unlock staves which are also amazing. Pan has 5 movement stars, a fucc of 5,  and comes with the best weapon in the game, the Kingmaker, which is basically a brave sword with charm built in, at C rank. Almost everyone has the potential to use it. Troude is nothing special since you already have Mareeta and Shiva, but he's essentially a free silver sword, which is rare in this game. That isn't even considering the chests. So overall, this chapter is as hard as you make it, and comes with some insane rewards.

...Are you telling me that if you warp-skip it, the thieves stop stealing from the chests?

...That never even occurred to me. I just assumed that since they were already programmed to run away, everyone being globally told to run away wouldn't do anything.

...Well, I do know that the extra warp staff I got was something I couldn't have gotten if I had cheesed it, since they don't show up if Pan's been recruited apparently. So at least I got 2 more warp uses out of this.

Mind you, this information changes nothing. Something is horribly, horribly wrong when warp-skipping a chapter is the intended solution, and so I think this map is still pretty damned lame. I agree you get a lot of cool stuff in it, but you get a lot of cool stuff in Rev chapter 10. Doesn't mean it isn't trash.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Ooh! Interesting, so they do say something about Pan and Lara having a connection, as long as you bring her to battle. So at least it's something you'll eventually find out on your own as long as you're experimenting with using different units.

Lifis, whom can also recruit Pan, also has a pre-battle quote hinting at Pan having basically been Lifis's childhood bully.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

(which I couldn't confirm if they used because they activated in the dark),

I think you still hear the audio cue for movement stars even if they trigger in the dark.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...I... don't... have... a... door... key... in... my... inventory.

Might want to buy some of those when you get the chance, just to have a few on hand for situations like this.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

My main issue is that it almost conclusively demonstrates that the developers were fully aware of how broken the warp staff is, but that its broken qualities were an intended part of gameplay

That is the lesson Thracia is trying to teach here, that warp is a part of your arsenal, and to keep it in mind as one of the ways to deal with some challenges. I actually kinda like that about Thracia, and that is what I think is good about this map, that it goes out of its way to teach you that lesson. In latter and earlier games Warp just feels like the I don't want to deal with this chapter's challenges staff, whereas a lot of the Warp uses I have in Thracia feels like a part of the challenges. Even here where it feels the most like a skip, it wasn't Lief (or someone carrying Lief) that was warped to sieze, it was to let you recruit a character while making it easier to get the loot you wanted, a way of accomplishing a side object rather than the main one.

 

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Well, I do know that the extra warp staff I got was something I couldn't have gotten if I had cheesed it, since they don't show up if Pan's been recruited apparently. So at least I got 2 more warp uses out of this.

They can show up after Pan recruits. They immediately start moving to the nearest escape point that they didn't spawn from, which gives you enough time to steal or capture from them.

 

Side note I did get further on my Thracia Ironman during New Years eve. I was a bit tipsy and lost Trude to a silly mis-click releasing him while trying to have the one holding him trade, which was the first "death" from that play session...

[Alastor15243]

25 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

They can show up after Pan recruits. They immediately start moving to the nearest escape point that they didn't spawn from, which gives you enough time to steal or capture from them.

....Ffffuck. The grammar of the guide I read was extremely ambiguous and made it sound like they were talking about the dancers too when they mentioned the reinforcements that stop. So I basically just lost a defense ring, Accost manual and Fortify staff.

25 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

That is the lesson Thracia is trying to teach here, that warp is a part of your arsenal, and to keep it in mind as one of the ways to deal with some challenges. I actually kinda like that about Thracia, and that is what I think is good about this map, that it goes out of its way to teach you that lesson. In latter and earlier games Warp just feels like the I don't want to deal with this chapter's challenges staff, whereas a lot of the Warp uses I have in Thracia feels like a part of the challenges. Even here where it feels the most like a skip, it wasn't Lief (or someone carrying Lief) that was warped to sieze, it was to let you recruit a character while making it easier to get the loot you wanted, a way of accomplishing a side object rather than the main one. 

I cannot disagree more strongly that that was something to like about the mission. They recognized how overpowered warp is and took entirely the wrong conclusion from it. Instead of looking at Warp and going "wow, this is really, ridiculously powerful, we should seriously tone this down so it doesn't totally undermine the entire game", they went "wow, this is really, ridiculously powerful, we should make entire maps so psychotically unfair that warp-cheesing is the only solution".

When you make something this ludicrously overpowered necessary, then the map ceases to be a map at all, it just becomes a glorified point and click adventure game puzzle if you know the answer or an exercise in tedium if you don't. And apparently every other endgame map is like this, if I heard correctly? If so, I'm not looking forward to that.

Also, like I said, when you have something as broken as Warp, it should be a panic button when you're struggling to find the right way to do a challenge. It shouldn't be said "right way" to do the challenge.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

20 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

When you make something this ludicrously overpowered necessary, then the map ceases to be a map at all, it just becomes a glorified point and click adventure game puzzle if you know the answer or an exercise in tedium if you don't.

Even here it is only necessary if you want the items, you can complete the chapter and recruit everyone just fine without it.

 

6 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And apparently every other endgame map is like this, if I heard correctly? If so, I'm not looking forward to that.

Not really like this chapter, as by the time you are later into the game you have other options to deal with the sort of threats you might want to use warp to deal with like restore staves, the rescue or capture command, using a flyer or high move unit, a siege tome use, a thief staff use, an unlock staff use, a status staff use etc. but there are places where it is probably the best tool at your disposal (as it opens up the opportunity to capture full inventories, or remove leadership stars faster, or block reinforcements faster, or it could be more action efficient to send in someone powerful to kill a bunch of threats, or not needing to ensorcel/pure water before using a staff etc.)

 

[Alastor15243]

 

3 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Even here it is only necessary if you want the items, you can complete the chapter and recruit everyone just fine without it.

I guess I'm kind of a perfectionist for feeling this way, but I feel that beating a map without getting all the treasures is a bit like beating a map without keeping everyone alive. So to me this is almost like a map that contrives it so someone has to die unless you warp skip.

Plus, again, it's such a stupid and un-satisfying solution. I made this point in my Castlevania retrospective, but Glyph Unions in Order of Ecclesia are basically super moves you can use to get past certain obstacles if they're giving you a hard time, because a lot of the obstacles hard mode throws at you can be pretty tricky to figure out, so figuring out most of them and then glyph-unioning the rest is still a reasonable and satisfying challenge. But the glyph union is never necessary. Not to win, not even to get certain treasures, aside from one puzzle revolving around destroying as many blocks as you can quickly (and even then there might be some normal attacks that can do it, I haven't tested them). There is always a solution to get past every challenge unscathed if you're good enough. And I think Ecclesia would be a markedly worse game if it had ever designed any challenges to actually be impossible without those special moves. Because that's not a challenge. That's just recognizing when the game expects you to give up and then giving up.

[Jotari]

12 hours ago, Abosikay said:

Huh. Fun. That map was actually one of my favorites. I'm gonna step up and defend it real quick. I think the challenge in the map comes from how much you prepared for it. Clearly you didn't prepare for this chapter much in advance, which going in blind, yeah this chapter is gonna screw you over. But this map can become an absolute breeze if you do just a little planning. Just have someone like Salem use a torch staff to illuminate enough area so that you can see the throne room, then warp Lara to Pan and have them talk. The earlier you do this, the better. Then, all you had to do was put Troude to sleep or capture him before he runs away. Once Pan is a good guy, everyone else just runs away. Pan can steal Tina's thief staff until Safy comes and talks to her. Then, just have a thief like Lifis sweep through and reap the rewards. Now, going in blind, I understand that this map can suck. But honestly, this map is very unique for a fire emblem map. Most enemies are thieves who book it to the chests. There are actual enemy dancers who dance for the enemies. Fog of War. Tina is constantly trying to steal your stuff. The boss turns one of your thieves into a thief/dancer. You get a dark mage, which was the first playable one in the series. And this map has so many ways of playing it. You could cheese it. Or you could do it your way. And the rewards for the chapter are great. You get Salem, who can easily reach A rank staves and, with some investment, gain A rank dark magic and use Fenrir, a siege tome most end game enemies have. You get Tina with the thief and Unlock staves which are also amazing. Pan has 5 movement stars, a fucc of 5,  and comes with the best weapon in the game, the Kingmaker, which is basically a brave sword with charm built in, at C rank. Almost everyone has the potential to use it. Troude is nothing special since you already have Mareeta and Shiva, but he's essentially a free silver sword, which is rare in this game. That isn't even considering the chests. So overall, this chapter is as hard as you make it, and comes with some insane rewards.

This is exactly what makes it a poorly designed chapter. Everything about the chapter encourages you to not actually play the game. Cheesing it is the only sane way of approaching the chapter and the game makes it ridiculously easy to cheese. It's not that it isn't fun to cheese (because it kind of is), it's that the chapter basically discourages its own existence. Here's a link to my diatribe about it.

 

12 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

....Ffffuck. The grammar of the guide I read was extremely ambiguous and made it sound like they were talking about the dancers too when they mentioned the reinforcements that stop. So I basically just lost a defense ring, Accost manual and Fortify staff.

I cannot disagree more strongly that that was something to like about the mission. They recognized how overpowered warp is and took entirely the wrong conclusion from it. Instead of looking at Warp and going "wow, this is really, ridiculously powerful, we should seriously tone this down so it doesn't totally undermine the entire game", they went "wow, this is really, ridiculously powerful, we should make entire maps so psychotically unfair that warp-cheesing is the only solution".

When you make something this ludicrously overpowered necessary, then the map ceases to be a map at all, it just becomes a glorified point and click adventure game puzzle if you know the answer or an exercise in tedium if you don't. And apparently every other endgame map is like this, if I heard correctly? If so, I'm not looking forward to that.

Also, like I said, when you have something as broken as Warp, it should be a panic button when you're struggling to find the right way to do a challenge. It shouldn't be said "right way" to do the challenge.

This is the most egregious case of warp skip in the game, but Thracia does manage to provide some fun useage of warp in later maps where you basically try to maintain a profit on your warp staves by warping to enemy warp holders. I think the final map in particular makes for fun useage of warp given how open it is. A lot of other chapters start with your units scattered where warp plays well. Something that would widely be considered bad map game design normally (the fact that you can't freely position your units upon deployment) actually benefits in this regard.

Also because Salem has a good staff rank, he's immediately amazing precisely for this reason.

[Shrimpica]

17 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

if you stick around for 25 and 30 turns

And this is one of my problems with Thracia.

Some maps discourage efficient play by making stuff appear so fucking late. It should be the other way around.

Stuff like that happens multipe times in the game, where i cleared the map and i am just sitcking around/not finishing for stuff that happens to come late, just clicking wait.

Also, for all that is loveable in this world, DO NOT GO B ROUTE. Don't do that if you don't wanna end up hating everything Fire Emblem.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Shrimperor

[Alastor15243]

39 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

And this is one of my problems with Thracia.

Some maps discourage efficient play by making stuff appear so fucking late. It should be the other way around.

It's especially egregious since apparently the ideal way they want you to beat the level if you want to get all the goodies is to literally just wait around for 30 fucking turns after you neutralized every single threat on turn 1.

[Alastor15243]

Thracia Day 21: Chapter 13

Alright. Now we're finally back to where we once were, about to rescue Tahra from Friege. This is yet another “defend the escape point” map, which... really, the way this game's been doing them lately, escape maps are basically “seize maps, but we give you a chance to completely ruin your run at the last minute by escaping with Leif early”. Actually, it honestly feels like escape maps were invented less to create an actual feel of “escaping” and more to just invent maps the player can't warp cheese. And that... honestly feels like a serious waste.

Every escape map in the game should have some reason why it would be a challenge to eventually get everyone to the escape point, otherwise it's just tedious. In my opinion the best escape map in the series was Chapter 21 of Conquest, thanks to the brilliant idea of adding in infinite reinforcements that don't give you exp. Though in terms of the principle of “we need to get the fuck out of here”, chapter 4x of this game came fairly close, even if only for how the end of it turns out. But yeah, ideally every escape chapter should have infinite, no-exp-gain reinforcements, to actually make it feel substantially different from seizing. That said, the fact that this is a defense map at least makes it more interesting than that.

Alright, so, the battle starts, and judging by all the shit-talking Glade and co are doing about Shannan, I have to assume that this is the jackass impostor people are talking about.

...OH! Wait! Someone told me Tahra is supposed to be that clump of villages in chapter 9 of Genealogy! Isn't that where you're supposed to be able to find Shanan in a secret event? Nice continuity there!

...Oh!

...Holy shit, I get a handful of green units!

Except the green units are blue! I have full control over them!

They're all pretty shit, but it's a pretty damned novel concept, and I love it! Controllable generic units! But yeah, again, like in Chapter 9, the idea of keeping all of these units on the field and fighting back the enemy force long enough for Leif to arrive seems... laughable. Especially since these generics are even worse by the looks of it than the already-shitty guys I got in chapter 9. It seems once again, I'll have to have everyone but the one unit guarding the castle escape, and then hope for the best, because this time getting Karin over to ferry supplies (namely an anti-crit scroll) seems... extremely unlikely, at least for a while. The ballistae yet again are strong enough that most of my army can't handle being in range of 2 at once, and Karin in particular is basically on lockdown because of them, incapable of surviving any of them. And yet I have to bring her if I want all the treasure on this map, due to that village that's apparently trapped behind a cliff and a body of water.

Okay. So. I'm going to see if I can do this slowly, and if Glade can survive on the castle if the generics all dump their inventories on him and then bail. Shame, I wanted to have some fun using them, but just looking at what I'm dealing with here it's pretty clear it would be insane. Nanna has physic staves, so we should be able to bail him out at least until Karin can ferry over some vulneraries. And I'll try and get Lithis promoted and hopefully to 10 con or maybe beyond.

After a few resets for the optimal starting position and loadout I managed to manipulate the AI to buy myself infinite time by clogging up the Tahra cliffs. At least assuming I don't get a series of devastating crits against Glade. By dismounting while holding nothing but lances and bows and having more con than the one guy sitting on the one spot where he can be attacked in melee, I've made it so that Glade doesn't even have to fight back and can keep fighting that same enemy forever. That way the crowd blocking the mages and most of the archers from attacking him is never going to go away. So I should have time to do this without just rushing the whole thing and rolling the dice like a buffoon.

Meanwhile Lithis is grinding away against the ballistae while holding most of the scrolls I have.

...Lithis just promoted. And he appears to be gaining more exp at level 1 promoted than he was at level 19 unpromoted. Is this one of those games with a non-plus-20 promotion formula or...?

...Yeah, it looks like due to how the “being in combat” experience formula works (31 minus level divided by class power), a level 1 rogue gains more experience than a level 19 thief. Basically, thieves get 31 experience minus level, and then divide the result by 2. Thief fighters get 21 minus level, and then divide the result by 3. So at level 19, Lithis was getting 6 exp per fight (12 with the paragon sword), while now he's getting 10 per fight (20 with the paragon sword). Right. If I wen't holding out for the Dain scroll for most of the units who are ready to promote, that would be a sign that this is a game where promoting at least a little early is a good idea, with the exact ideal time for continuous level gain varying depending on class.

Of course, that also depends on how much exp it's feasible to get in the long run. Which I can't know until I've played the game a few times.

Giving Nanna the Heim scroll is paying off already, as she gains 1 magic on her first level of the map.

Alright! Two of six of the ballistae have been neutralized, with no sign of Glade's blockade faltering any time soon!

I finally remembered to have Olwen use the Vantage manual I put in her inventory a while back for the next time I deployed her. She has Vantage now, and thus Dire Thunder gets even more powerful, as long as I can rely on its accuracy. Not that I'll be likely to vantage-tank much, but attacking first is only useful if that one attack has a good chance to kill, so she's pretty much the best candidate.

The armors along the ballista-ridden path to Tahra seem to be just like the last time they did this: they don't move at all. But I'm not going to take any potentially-lethal risks when restarting would be insanely tedious. Thankfully, I don't seem to have to take any such risks this time, since the armors are much more sparse here, and I can easily capture them for their javelins.

Glade is holding out insanely well. He's only been hit once, and it did trivial chip damage. And even if the armor knight crits with that battle axe, he'll survive since no one else is even trying to attack him due to his gate defense. That said, in the event that the armor knight somehow burns through all 19 remaining uses of that axe, I'm not sure how he'll respond when there isn't an item shop nearby. I'll have to mount him just in case.

Lithis is now at 10 con, and we've gotten all but two of the ballistae taken down, with the only ones left being the ones on the other side of Tahra. Time to start dealing with Glade's little “the entire Friegian army” problem.

I've decided to take the opportunity to train Olwen a little against these bow knights, loaded with almost every scroll I have. I think her level was pretty below-average given what I loaded her up with, but it was still a pretty okay level up.

And now chip level ups have made Glade so tanky that the axe armor in front of him won't even try to fight anymore. Meaning he can mount again without killing the axe armor, eliminating the risk that he'll be captured as units shift around as I work through the pile! Score!

I fortunately did this just in time, or perhaps mounting is what prompted this, but whatever the reason, the axe armor walked away the very, very next turn, and a mage and then the boss moved in to take his place. Thankfully, Glade is now so tough that even a critical from the boss's killer lance won't be a problem. I may need to use a physic charge or two, but I'll be fine. But I will be hurrying things up a bit as a result of this change of situation.

Glade just defeated the boss with his silver lance, so everything's good. We're all in the clear now.

Wow, looks like they're all running away now that their leader is gone. I hope that doesn't include the bolting mage. I really wanted to finally get my hands on a siege tome my army can use.

...The fuck am I saying? Of course he isn't running away! That asshole can't go anywhere! He's trapped like a rat!

And apparently the ballisticians, while they can't retreat, refuse to fire anymore. It would be nice if they would give some indication of that so I can actually trust it, but oh well. I can deal with this.

The siege tome user hasn't surrendered though, unfortunately, and isn't willing to give up his tomes without a fight.

And I have Selphina talk to Glade and get the brave bow! Awesome! I'll be making some good use out of this thing!

I managed to salvage all but one use of both the bolting and physic on that guy guarding the last house (knight crest), though it was a pain since Karin is a bit underleveled and she was the only one who could fight him. But it's done, and now we can get the hell out of here!

...Ahhhh... I just gave Bolting to Olwen. Oh, the sweet satisfaction of having a siege tome in your inventory and having that insane attack range. Hell, I think this is the first time I've ever gotten my hands on a siege tome and had it on a mount! I may be mis-remembering, but in my early FE playing days, mounted mages and getting siege tomes were rare things in my army.

Anyway, I'm finished, so let's take a look at the ending cutscene.

...Really nothing to speak about. Nothing really exciting.

But you know what is exciting?

...I hope?

The next chapter! A defense chapter apparently! I'm hoping this is gonna be where the game starts getting fun again, because the last three consecutive levels have been constipation-inducing levels of continuous pure cheese.

I really didn't like this chapter. At all. Yet again the game seems to expect me to dive headlong into ballistafire, despite this risking the life of 90% of my army. And I'm talking about the guys I've been training. I genuinely can't tell whether the way I just did this chapter is the intended way (which would be ridiculous), or if the intended way was to just rush headlong towards Tahra like an idiot, putting all of my units in range of multiple ballistae at a time, and just pray they all miss (which would also be ridiculous).

Given that this game scores you based on your turn count... I have to assume the latter. But if that's true, and if I'm not missing something major that allows you to reliably finish this chapter quickly without repeatedly having to Pick A God And Pray, then that's just... horrible map design. So far every single mission with ballistae has seemed to either be a grind or a luck-based mission, and I despise that. I despise it a lot.

The only thing I can really think of is that maybe you're supposed to warp your strongest unit to team up with Glade and bring over supplies, but even then that seems like a massive gamble, and less practical than just parking Glade on the gate. Which really ruins the fun of these defense-escape maps, the fact that the units they give you to fight the advancing army are almost always better off escaping.

But enough of that. This extremely time-consuming level is finally behind me, so on to the next one!

...The next level.

...Not the next extremely time-consuming level.

...I hope.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Shrimpica]

yeah @Alastor15243definetly don't do B route. It has Ballista spam from Hell map (like 10 of those or something) + a big ass forest map that has warp tiles that makes Petra/Bernie Paralogue look good.

Also, chapter 14 is fun. Really well designed. Except for one small aspect in turn 8.

19 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

The ballistae yet again are strong enough that most of my army can't handle being in range of 2 at once, and Karin in particular is basically on lockdown because of them

On those Ballista chapters i usually had dismounted Karin + Fergus on forest tiles until i reach them. The Ballista can't hit them that way. They support each other, and both are very fast. Nanna's charm and Leif supporting the majority of the army also helps. Never had trouble with Ballista thanks to that.

Also, usually try to take out bosses fast if possible. Reducing enemy leadership stars always helps, alot. That will help alot with ch14, too.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Shrimperor

[Interdimensional Observer]

I thought Chapter 13 was actually quite fun!

You drained the first two ballistae of their ammo instead of moving past them? Ya didn't have to that you dunderhead. 😛

There are three spaces next to the ballista nearest to your starting position that you can range 2 attack it from. Kill that ballista and you only have one of them to deal with, assuming you fielded Nanna as your healer, if she has the Paragon Sword, she might be able to survive a hit from the unreachable second ballistae, if not, just dismount and rescue her until you're past it. Everyone else not Lara or unmounted mages/staffers (and you don't really want to bring them here b/c escape on a big map) should be able to survive one ballistae hit. So just having to ferry Nanna isn't a big deal, bring some plentiful Vulneraries if you need the healingin the meantime.

Sure, there is the initial Bow Knights too, but they're no big deal. After you kill the first three, it's only one a turn if you don't block their spawn space. Surely you should have someone able to take on Ballistae + Bow Knight hit.

The third ballista is out in the open, how can you not destroy it with ease? I think Karin after dismounting should've dealt with the ballista over the mountains which overlaps with the third ballista by the time you get there. If she hasn't, well it shouldn't take much longer. Since she will be sitting on a hill, she should be able to dodgetank the third ballista.

 

As for Glade's generic blues, you don't get anything for keeping them alive. After passing one of their Steel Lances to Glade so he wouldn't have to waste the Silver, I had all of them head to take out the northwest ballista. The armors don't move I think, so your Steel Bow Bow Knights if they live can pick them off with hit and run, just hope the ballistae aim at you Lance Knights instead. They killed the northwest one, and I think they even managed to take out the southwest ballista afterwards! One or two of these guys despite this managed to survive to the end of the fight, one even leveled up, getting absolutely no stat points (I guess they have 0 growths then). They proved useful.

I was also fond the constant stream of fairly strong reinforcements this map had coming in from the north later on. Did you even encounter them?

Edited January 7, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Shrimpica]

5 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I was also fond the constant stream of fairly strong reinforcements this map had coming in from the north later on. Did you even encounter them?

I don't remember them being strong, at all xD

I remember just boxing them in and abusing the hell out of them to get items and exp xD

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

I don't remember them being strong, at all xD

I remember just boxing them in and abusing the hell out of them to get items and exp xD

TBF, I'm someone who thinks people underrate the strength of Thracia's enemies. They aren't FE11 and beyond highest difficulty nasties, but I do think that their Atk is threatening enough. I recall I actually had a 20 Def (I think), Osian who got killed trying to play Chapter 22 sans 'skip. The reinforcements had enough Atk over 20 to reduce him to nothing no probs.

Chapter 15 is where I farm weapons, so many easy swwwwwwwwwords! Must. Collect. Them. Allllllll! So few swords are present elsewhere, I was practically out of them by that point.

[Alastor15243]

22 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I thought Chapter 13 was actually quite fun!

You drained the first two ballistae of their ammo instead of moving past them? Ya didn't have to that you dunderhead. 😛

There are three spaces next to the ballista nearest to your starting position that you can range 2 attack it from. Kill that ballista and you only have one of them to deal with, assuming you fielded Nanna as your healer, if she has the Paragon Sword, she might be able to survive a hit from the unreachable second ballistae, if not, just dismount and rescue her until you're past it. Everyone else not Lara or unmounted mages/staffers (and you don't really want to bring them here b/c escape on a big map) should be able to survive one ballistae hit. So just having to ferry Nanna isn't a big deal, bring some plentiful Vulneraries if you need the healingin the meantime.

Sure, there is the initial Bow Knights too, but they're no big deal. After you kill the first three, it's only one a turn if you don't block their spawn space. Surely you should have someone able to take on Ballistae + Bow Knight hit.

The third ballista is out in the open, how can you not destroy it with ease? I think Karin after dismounting should've dealt with the ballista over the mountains which overlaps with the third ballista by the time you get there. If she hasn't, well it shouldn't take much longer. Since she will be sitting on a hill, she should be able to dodgetank the third ballista.

 

As for Glade's generic blues, you don't get anything for keeping them alive. After passing one of their Steel Lances to Glade so he wouldn't have to waste the Silver, I had all of them head to take out the northwest ballista. The armors don't move I think, so your Steel Bow Bow Knights if they live can pick them off with hit and run, just hope the ballistae aim at you Lance Knights instead. They killed the northwest one, and I think they even managed to take out the southwest ballista afterwards! One or two of these guys despite this managed to survive to the end of the fight, one even leveled up, getting absolutely no stat points (I guess they have 0 growths then). They proved useful.

I was also fond the constant stream of fairly strong reinforcements this map had coming in from the north later on. Did you even encounter them?

I did think of neutralizing the ballistae and advancing quickly, but once I discovered the Glade cheese strategy, I realized there was literally no need to, and I was mostly just going carefully to make absolutely sure I wouldn't have to redo the map, and also because it was a good opportunity to train some of my weaker units.

But you're right, I may have phrased things unfairly/inaccurately. The fact that it took me five hours to beat the level is, true, not the game's fault. What is the game's fault is that all of this ridiculous trivializing bullshit worked, and in fact was the smartest way to go about it when ignoring ranked score. I really wish they actually bothered to make a defense map here, and not a "sit Glade down on a defense tile and wait to be rescued" map. Also, I wish the reinforcements actually showed up in places that threatened my army.

That said, putting mid-range units around those constantly-spawning bow knights seemed exceedingly risky, so I did feel the need to at least wait those out for the sake of my main army. However, beyond those two, I drained them purely for Lithis exp.

As for the powerful armor knights, I did notice them, but they had almost no impact on the battle because none of them could reach Glade. All they really did was threaten Olwen a little as she worked her way through the pile-up before the boss died.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

29 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

They're all pretty shit, but it's a pretty damned novel concept, and I love it! Controllable generic units! But yeah, again, like in Chapter 9, the idea of keeping all of these units on the field and fighting back the enemy force long enough for Leif to arrive seems... laughable. Especially since these generics are even worse by the looks of it than the already-shitty guys I got in chapter 9. It seems once again, I'll have to have everyone but the one unit guarding the castle escape, and then hope for the best, because this time getting Karin over to ferry supplies (namely an anti-crit scroll) seems... extremely unlikely, at least for a while.

My favorite use of those generics is to having them take down the Ballista right next to the bridge, as they have enough fire power to deal with that before they get overwhelmed.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Every escape map in the game should have some reason why it would be a challenge to eventually get everyone to the escape point, otherwise it's just tedious. In my opinion the best escape map in the series was Chapter 21 of Conquest, thanks to the brilliant idea of adding in infinite reinforcements that don't give you exp. Though in terms of the principle of “we need to get the fuck out of here”, chapter 4x of this game came fairly close, even if only for how the end of it turns out. But yeah, ideally every escape chapter should have infinite, no-exp-gain reinforcements, to actually make it feel substantially different from seizing. That said, the fact that this is a defense map at least makes it more interesting than that.

I suspect you took this chapter too slow to see this, but normally after the boss dies, fresh enemy reinforcements start spawning from the north, 3 armor knights and a mage, which keep coming every turn until somewhere in 30s of turns, which are tough enough to pressure players into hurrying up with whatever they are doing.

 

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

I really didn't like this chapter. At all. Yet again the game seems to expect me to dive headlong into ballistafire, despite this risking the life of 90% of my army. And I'm talking about the guys I've been training. I genuinely can't tell whether the way I just did this chapter is the intended way (which would be ridiculous), or if the intended way was to just rush headlong towards Tahra like an idiot, putting all of my units in range of multiple ballistae at a time, and just pray they all miss (which would also be ridiculous).

The generic blue units can take out the one near the bridge before anyone important shows up, the nearest one can be killed from range (probably from some mounted range attacker that start in range of only one before attacking), the other three past the bridges have ranges that let you completely ignore them (both villages can be gotten and cantoed out of range assuming the boss didn't die before it was an issue, and the approach to the bolting mage has a diagonal that is outside ballista coverage to let you approach) leaving only one you have to bypass, and Karin can carry anyone too squishy to take a single ballista hit past him (or you could disarm it with a thief staff or sleep staff use if you are feeling extravagant, or if you have promoted or gotten a move level of Karin she can kill him without entering his range).

My tipsy ironman run through this deployed all mounted units, and followed this strategy just fine. The only issue came around when I got greedy and sent Karin after the bolting bishop and forgot to give her a scroll before the approach, and she died to a bolting crit.

 

[Shrimpica]

13 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

but I do think that their Atk is threatening enough.

The ones that do have high Atk usually low hit rates though. I mean, the whole final Map i am facing enemies with 1-30 hit rate (mostly around 10), with everyone and not just my speedsters, which shouldn't be a thing, imo.

Yeah, T776's RNG can be tricky, but unless you are super unlucky, those 'strong' enemies will never hit you.

13 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Chapter 22

Spoiler

pretty much my experience with chapter 22. once 

Spoiler

Saias is gone, the enemies have 1 hit except for Bosses

 

5 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

What is the game's fault is that all of this ridiculous trivializing bullshit worked

That's Thrcaia xD

You face bullshit with your own bullshit, which can be fun in it's own way.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Shrimperor