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


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11 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

According to @Glennstavos here or someone else, Xane's untransformed level is supposedly used in the Arena. As he doesn't gain EXP from fighting while transformed, you can have him copy some level 20 capped stats unit and clear Arena battles with ease. -Supposedly.

He always has the nicer stuff though, carrying two weapons to Samson's one. Statwise though, Samson is much better:

Samson: HP 24 Str 10 Skl 14 WpnLvl 10 Spd 15 Lck 7 Def 9

Redundant with Astram, but he is better. Similarly, Arran does outdo Midia. 

Huh. Useful info! Unfortunately I have little interest in arena abuse, and really the bar for non-mounted units to get into my army is pretty damned high at this point, so I think I chose better.

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23 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

According to @Glennstavos here or someone else, Xane's untransformed level is supposedly used in the Arena. As he doesn't gain EXP from fighting while transformed, you can have him copy some level 20 capped stats unit and clear Arena battles with ease. -Supposedly.

Yes. There are many ways to abuse the arena in FE1 that take advantage of the game only tracking a unit's current level. If you promote a unit and they become a level 1 paladin, the game will once again feed them level 1 unpromoted enemies. Manaketes also have an easy time at the arena. They will often be doubled, but the defense they gain from their dragon stones (which bypasses the 20 defense cap) lets them be indestructible. At least until a mage appears.

But overall Xane is your surest bet if you want 100% success rate at the arena. In FE1 you cannot surrender once a match has started. Another problematic situation is your weapon may break, which causes your unit to stand around waiting to die, so make sure the weapon you take with you has a suitable amount of uses.

 

 

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Dark Dragon Day 15: Chapter 17

Alright guys. Time to do some SERIOUS spring cleaning. I’m ditching Caeda, Merric, Barst, Hardin and Jeorge from my mainstays, and I’m instead bringing five of those characters I short-sightedly made dump their inventory into the storage and sit on the bench. Seriously, when I started this game I had no idea that my inventory situation wouldn’t resemble resource management so much as “Hoarders: The Official Licensed Game”. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have made everyone I didn’t use dump their inventory into my precious storage. I’m going to have them go in there, hunt for anything I really, really don’t need, and just dump it. With five of them, they’ll be able to do a continuous down-the-line loop of take four, drop, drop, drop, drop. That is if a single session of it isn’t enough. Once I’ve gotten rid of all the real trash, we should be fine. If not, then I’ll next have them fill up their inventories with “shit I might need later but don’t need in the storage right now”.

I chose to ditch Hardin rather than Abel because Abel has a bunch of slayer weapons, which will probably be useful considering all the dragons. And I ditched Merric because he’s level 20 and has no room to grow until I find a bishop ring, which if I remember correctly isn’t until next chapter.

Oh shit. Judging by the house dialogue, I think the first secret shop is in this chapter. I wonder if I’ll be able to find it before I decide it isn’t worth it? This one sells Thoron I think, so I really, really want to get it. Also, all the more reason to clean my storage the hell out.

I was a bit worried when we started inside, but no, looks like my choice to use two horsemen for Operation: Spring Cleaning means we’ll be able to get started next turn, with no interruptions to the chain. One new member, at minimum, will get within range each turn after this one.

Curious. Okay, so I sent Marth in to a big mass of enemies to make sure the thieves didn’t beat me to the treasure, and I noticed something odd. Marth has too much defense for this one knight to do damage to him, so the Marth magnet failed and he picked a different target. Here’s the thing though: that knight then proceeded to attack Minerva, who ALSO was too tough for him to damage, AND who had no viable 2-range spaces, so if he wanted to attack her he’d have to do it at point blank range where she could counter. That is… utterly bizarre. It’s almost as if Marth completely falls off the priority list if he’s not first seen as a viable target, even if he’s technically the MOST viable target the enemy has. They’ll attack literally anyone else if they can’t damage him.

…Okay. So it seems like Xane can’t copy Marth’s ability to use rapiers. Looks like that’s locked to his character, and not his class like I assumed.

The race to the chest is obscenely ruthless. I rushed in literally as fast as I could, with my strongest character, and I STILL wound up being too late to stop the thieves without a warp staff. Which I used. Now I just hope I didn’t send Marth in over his head.

…Nope, but I sure as hell sent Minerva in over hers. I thought her defense would save her from the sniper, but I forgot it was a silver bow and that she wasn’t at full HP. Fuck. Okay, restart. But before that, one final note from my initial efforts at spring cleaning: apparently the game still lets you use promotion items even if you aren’t the right class, it just gives you an error message and ends your turn. Lame.

Alright then. TAKE TWO.

I start by warping Marth into the treasure room to take out the mages right away, starting with the strongest one, but unfortunately that one crits and immediately takes Marth down to 3 HP. Just when he gets an awesome level up boosting his defense and power by 1 each. According to my calculations, at his new stats, he should just barely survive one round of combat as long as I use Physic on Marth with Lena, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep the momentum going after a crushing blow like that. Let’s find out.

At any rate, let’s talk about that spring cleaning again. I didn’t mention this in my notes before, but one of the big things I’m cleaning out of my stores is the iron lance. I have a lot of those, and I barely use them because of that tough-to-mitigate 20% fail rate. I’ve found myself gravitating towards 100% hit weapons a lot more in this game given how insanely hard it is to bring weapons to 100% accuracy if they aren’t already there. So lances need to do something special, like have a lot of hit or do effective damage or something, before I’m willing to use them. And so I have my “cleaners” toss them haphazardly on the ground all over the fields of this lovely tiny little hamlet.

I’m also getting rid of those hero’s crests, because I have no intention of using any heroes and as far as I can tell I can’t sell the damned things.

And it occurs to me that I forgot to bring a thief this time. I really hope that shop has keys, because I don’t want to have to restart after a power/defense level.

Make that TWO power/defense levels for Marth. Plus speed and HP! Yeah no way I’m resetting this one.

Seems I forgot you can drop multiple things in a turn, so there was no need for so many spring cleaners. Oh well, at least I can use them for “might need this” storage. Speaking of which… Okay I’m just going to take some of the insane number of rapiers I bought a while back and put them with one of the horsemen. The horsemen because that way if I need to take them to a future map to give them to him, there’s a better chance they can do it turn one before Marth even moves and not slow anyone down.

Thank goodness, the shop has door keys. I suppose they wouldn’t make it impossible to beat the game without a thief and a lockpick, given you can lose all of both.

That was really close. I nearly lost Catria when trying to deal with that swarm of powerful enemies in that tight hallway. I went on the offensive a bit too soon, and if I hadn’t gotten Marth over to distract most of the heavy hitters, she would have been done for.

Palla gained power and defense. This is an insanely lucky run, I hope nothing happens to screw it up!

This chapter has a bunch of chests, which is mildly undermining spring cleaning, but thankfully I managed to get a lot done in that regard. I also got my second knight crest, so Hardin will probably be ready to promote soon.

…The devil sword. I may wind up giving this to Marth, given that his 20 luck will give it a mere 1% chance of backfiring. But I’m not sure.

…As I prepare to fight the boss, deal with the reinforcements, and find the secret shop, another potential problem occurs to me that makes me really, really, REALLY glad I grabbed those extra guys I technically didn’t need: to make full use of the secret shop, you need to have a member card AND a silver card. That leaves 2 slots left. Assuming they’re unarmed. In a game where you can’t buy straight to storage. Normally that isn’t an issue because stores are always near storage… but this is a secret shop. Putting a big tent nearby would give it away. Which means I have to be able to carry everything I buy.

This is going to be tedious no matter what, but it would be even worse if I didn’t have a ton of dead weight with me to carry the excess shit my shop-bot buys.

…And I forgot that demon dragons are immune to magic. Shit. That… is a problem. Looks like I’ll have to send Cain in with a dragon slayer because otherwise this is going to be a mess.

…Okay. The boss didn’t have the member card. Which means either it’s with one of those enemies all the way in the back of that winding tunnel full of reinforcements… or this isn’t the map. Of course I’m going to KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM, as da kids say, (dear fucking god it’s going to take months before I understand the context of that meme) just to be sure I didn’t miss it, but I’m hoping at least that the reinforcements will dry up now that the boss is dead.

The answer is no. No they did not. And Wendel nearly died because I had him use Thoron to try and kill the sniper from across the wall in the hopes that he had it. He did not, and then every damned horseman in the area, including the new ambush spawns, took a shot at him, only to die and make room for the next, wasting a shitload of thoron charges that I really, really, REAAAAAALLLLLY hope I’m going to be able to replace this chapter.

Those fucking fucks. THOSE FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING FUCKING FUCKS. THEY ACTUALLY STUFFED THE MEMBERSHIP CARD BEHIND A TUNNEL OF INFINITE FUCKING REINFORC-

…Okay. In fairness. That was a challenge. And given that this is a SECRET shop… It is reasonable that getting it would be secret and tricky. I do not contest this. But in all honesty this wasn’t nearly as difficult as it was annoying. Marth and his stunt double Xane managed to mow through them eventually and assassinate the healer hiding at the end with the member card, it just took a while. But… I did eventually do it. And now I suppose it’s time to reap the rewards.

If I can find them.

And I BETTER.

As I scour the land for the secret shop tile, I head back to the shop to buy a second door key. I have a sneaking feeling that door placed oddly behind the throne can be opened, and that that might be where the secret shop is.

Also, just to make sure that I can examine EVERY space, I pushed my way further in and plugged up the spawn points.

But it turns out to not be necessary besides giving us a very handy fortify staff. It turns out I was right, it was in the conspicuous door space right behind the throne.

And holy shit they went to the trouble of giving the secret shop its own music. The same one we always associate with Anna’s shops! Awesome! Now I can buy all the thorons and physics and lockpicks I can carry!

And after spending half an hour, half my total money, and who the fuck knows how many turns, JUST TO DO THE SHOPPING, mind you, My total haul was:

2 Barriers
4 Physics
15 Thorons
1 Lockpick

And now I can finally end this fucking chapter.

Huh. “Starlord Marth”. I’m assuming that this is what Awakening translated into Lodestar?

…And yet again this game continues its incredible knack for abruptly ending cutscenes right when it feels like we have like five more lines to go. I think the abrupt music change intensifies this feeling, but I swear the dialogue is doing most of the work here.

…Now then… on to the elephant in the room…

…While most of the pain of this chapter was TECHNICALLY self-inflicted, that was the single worst interaction with a Fire Emblem user interface I think I have ever experienced in my fucking life. And if I hadn’t remembered that I could double my buying speed by giving the goods to one person and the cards to another so that they could go right in and buy again, it would have taken TWICE AS LONG. And that’s to say NOTHING of how long it would have taken me if I hadn’t brought a bunch of dead weight and if I had to go back and forth between the shop and the storage every time I bought TWO ITEMS.

I would love to just take a peek back at this magical time where people could playtest this and actually think this was good game design. …But at any rate... the map is over. And with any luck, this will leave me set for the rest of the game in terms of awesome magic for all of my mages. Hopefully. HOPEFULLY.

Tune in next time for… …A map that’s so outrageously blocky and simplistic that I instantly recognized which Fire Emblem Heroes map it inspired.

TDmv02N.png

 

latest?cb=20120909043330

Oh goodie.

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Hey, might do this alongside you as well I wanted to try this out for a while and now that three houses is out and turned out to be a total piece of cake, (also as enjoyable as cake) I needed a real challenge, and playing every game in the series in max difficulty seems like an awesome one at that. Debating the quality of each one will be pretty fun as well. I only really dread reverse lunatic and worse of all Revelations « gimmicks » aside from that it could be a lot of fun.

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Chiasmir still has twice the amount of effort put into than half of Gaiden's maps.

But honestly, it is filler-ish. So I can see why FE3 chose to cut it of all fights, the same for the first Macedon and first Aurelis. Although, Chiasmir being cut was odd for one reason. Pyrathi and the Wooden Cavalry were the two good chapters that were lost in the cutting I'd say.

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Huh. “Starlord Marth”. I’m assuming that this is what Awakening translated into Lodestar?

Correct. Lodestar sounds less like just combining two words, albeit few readily understand what "lodestar" means. I didn't even. It means "a star by which one navigates/is guided". So calling Marth a Lodestar is calling him a literal guiding light, that which leads others, and at the same time shines brightly.

Lodestar was first used in Awakening. Shadow Dragon translated this same phrase as "Star and Savior". It's wordier, but has a certain elegance.

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And holy shit they went to the trouble of giving the secret shop its own music. The same one we always associate with Anna’s shops! Awesome!

It's not my first pick for an NES soundtrack, but FE1 does have some good chiptunes. Being so barebones means the core composition has to be rock solid, it can't rely on orchestrated flairs.

The Secret Shop music is good,  the Fire Emblem Theme, Together We Ride, and what SD calls "Trouble!" (the thing that plays when a chapter's story opening is dire) all hold up to me.

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1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

It's not my first pick for an NES soundtrack, but FE1 does have some good chiptunes. Being so barebones means the core composition has to be rock solid, it can't rely on orchestrated flairs.

The Secret Shop music is good,  the Fire Emblem Theme, Together We Ride, and what SD calls "Trouble!" (the thing that plays when a chapter's story opening is dire) all hold up to me.

Don't forget the player phase theme that I'm still amazingly not getting annoyed by! I still hate that both remakes replaced it with that other version.

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5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Those fucking fucks. THOSE FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING FUCKING FUCKS. THEY ACTUALLY STUFFED THE MEMBERSHIP CARD BEHIND A TUNNEL OF INFINITE FUCKING REINFORC-

As much as I dislike FE1's infinite spawning ambush spawns, I did get a laugh at how precision engineered this map was to mess with players hoping to take advantage of that secret shop. Since those aren't forts that they spawn from, the player doesn't rush to plug those holes and instead spends their first turns securing the treasure room safely. In terms of acknowledging the player's head space, this may be the best designed map in the game. In terms of any other criteria, probably not.

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11 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Don't forget the player phase theme that I'm still amazingly not getting annoyed by! I still hate that both remakes replaced it with that other version.

Just listening to the two other renditions of it, FE3's and FE11's, I'd say FE11 has the worst. FE3's is still in a way light and refreshing. Not quite sure what'd criticize about FE11's though. A little too busy and poor instrumentation?

But FE3 does have the best main battle theme rendition. -Which is negated by a Together We Ride which I recommend earplugs for, or a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. Though you are mercifully spared from that for a few months.

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6 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Chiasmir still has twice the amount of effort put into than half of Gaiden's maps.

But honestly, it is filler-ish. So I can see why FE3 chose to cut it of all fights, the same for the first Macedon and first Aurelis. Although, Chiasmir being cut was odd for one reason. Pyrathi and the Wooden Cavalry were the two good chapters that were lost in the cutting I'd say.

 

Correct. Lodestar sounds less like just combining two words, albeit few readily understand what "lodestar" means. I didn't even. It means "a star by which one navigates/is guided". So calling Marth a Lodestar is calling him a literal guiding light, that which leads others, and at the same time shines brightly.

Lodestar was first used in Awakening. Shadow Dragon translated this same phrase as "Star and Savior". It's wordier, but has a certain elegance.

 

It's not my first pick for an NES soundtrack, but FE1 does have some good chiptunes. Being so barebones means the core composition has to be rock solid, it can't rely on orchestrated flairs.

The Secret Shop music is good,  the Fire Emblem Theme, Together We Ride, and what SD calls "Trouble!" (the thing that plays when a chapter's story opening is dire) all hold up to me.

Let the awesomeness of Medeus's theme song never be forgotten.

(this is not a joke).

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3 hours ago, Jotari said:

(this is not a joke).

Someone pointed this out to me last year on SF. I was actually thinking of a way to reference it, but couldn't figure out how to "naturally" incorporate it.

-I guess this is a remix the Medeus battle theme. But it deviates so much that I can't quite pin it down, although it could be final map themes too, since that is sadly the only place Medeus shows up. Though other compositions like "Camus's Theme" on the same OST are readily recognizable.

And the choice of instrumentation is really random, sure some of the OST gets modernized, but "Marth's" and "Minerva's" themes are 100% classical. 

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13 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

But FE3 does have the best main battle theme rendition. -Which is negated by a Together We Ride which I recommend earplugs for, or a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. Though you are mercifully spared from that for a few months.

Given that the FE3 one is quite obviously the version that inspired the absolutely orgasmic Melee one (exhibit A: the horns) I consider it immune to criticism.

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Dark Dragon Day 16: Chapter 18

Looks like I’ll be getting a new party member this map, given that I can only take 15. But I scanned the enemies and didn’t find one, and there are no villages either. On the plus side, that makes this rather straightforward. At any rate, spring cleaning… was basically a total failure, due to the haul I got from the secret shop. So now I need to send at least one junk unit with my group to make sure I don’t have to drop any unexpected items the enemies give me. And I pick one of the cavs, Matthis, for this job.

And this map, like so many others, places me far, far away from the first wave of enemies. Now, obviously, moving as many as 16 units across the map with nothing to do besides wait… isn’t fun. At all. But I suppose when creating the entire core combat system takes up the vast majority of your time, damn near everything else is kind of an afterthought.

Anyway, Marth’s first move, after letting Xane copy him, was to run all the way to that fort by the bridge and plug it. Juuuuust in case the game plans to be an asshole.

Oh goodie. Fighting cavalry on a series of two-space bottlenecks. Will the magic and wonder of this game’s combat system ever cease?

At any rate, I think my goal this chapter will be to feed as much as I can to Hardin to get my second paladin now that I have that second knight crest.

It would appear that the answer to “where is my new unit coming from” is the same answer that question had last time I asked it: I’m getting a new whitewing as a reinforcement, which means I now have Est. Awesome! And given this game’s obscenely generous bases, she’s not even all that unviable at the moment! And now my five unit airforce is complete! I can’t wait to get the secret shop that lets me make all of them dragon riders!

…Actually something just occurred to me. Marth and Xane are standing right next to each other. …How does she know which one to talk to?

Est: Marth! I’ve come here to join-
Xane: Yow! It’s an enemy ambush!

…Or does Xane have some blatantly obvious visual tell I’m not seeing due to the game’s graphics? Does Xane have ditto eyes? Or are his copies actually secretly total shit? Is he just copying Marth’s skills and then wearing a bag over his head with Marth’s face on it!? INQUIRING MINDS NEED TO KNOW, GAME!

At any rate, this obviously did not become an issue, and Est recruited herself. Giving Marth Mercurius just in time for me to be totally unable to make use of its apparent ability to double your stat gains 25% of the time when equipped. Shame.

Looks like we’re getting a bunch of silver weapon cavalry reinforcements. In case these are infinite too, I’m going to have my air force on standby to rush in and plug up all of the forts they’re spawning from.

My air force.

I have an air force now.

I HAVE AN AIR FORCE HOLY SHIT.

And Est got her first level up, which increased Power, Skill, Wpn Lvl, Luck and Hp. Five stats. Very promising start, even if it only had one of the big three.

…And apparently knight killers don’t work on paladins. Only cavaliers. That… I don’t even know why I’m surprised anymore.

But on the plus side, I finally got Hardin to paladin! He’s still not nearly as good as Cain, but with 13 power, 16 speed, 9 defense and 10 move, he was definitely worth the knight crest at least. Unfortunately his HP, I just recently realized, is somehow utterly laughable compared to Cain’s. Hardin has 26, Cain has… 42!? And he’s only 10 levels higher!?

Anyway, Hardin beat the boss with a critical hit, and this got us a THIRD knight crest. Guess I’ll be keeping Abel around after all probably.

And next map, the boss is… Tiki! And holy crap is she adorable. Look at her in that hood that’s way, way too big for that precious face! Oh my god… Alright. Well. Good thing Bantu’s still so good, because he’s coming with me, no debate whatsoever.

But until then, this is me signing off!

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54 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

…Actually something just occurred to me. Marth and Xane are standing right next to each other. …How does she know which one to talk to?

Est: Marth! I’ve come here to join-
Xane: Yow! It’s an enemy ambush!

…Or does Xane have some blatantly obvious visual tell I’m not seeing due to the game’s graphics? Does Xane have ditto eyes? Or are his copies actually secretly total shit? Is he just copying Marth’s skills and then wearing a bag over his head with Marth’s face on it!? INQUIRING MINDS NEED TO KNOW, GAME!

If New Mystery is to be believed, his copy abilities are enough to fool Marth... until he opens his mouth, as he just can't help himself from playing a prank on all those gullible humans.

 

57 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And Est got her first level up, which increased Power, Skill, Wpn Lvl, Luck and Hp. Five stats. Very promising start, even if it only had one of the big three.

Estus is Bestus.

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I wouldn't care about growths at all this late in the game. You have basically infinite money and soon you'll be hitting secret shops that sell endless stat boosters which are super broken.

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2 hours ago, Jotari said:

I wouldn't care about growths at all this late in the game. You have basically infinite money and soon you'll be hitting secret shops that sell endless stat boosters which are super broken.

Assuming I can find them without looking it up.

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Dark Dragon Day 17: Chapter 19

Either I’m getting a lot of new units today besides Tiki, or they actually meant it at the end of last chapter when Marth said only a select group would be going inside. I only get to bring in 12.

If I remember correctly, this is the map where I get both my first bishop ring and my first dragon whip. I must say I’m excited. Finally I can have Merric fight again without wasting exp, and I’ll have another healer!

This map is shockingly straightforward. Narrow hallway full of mercenaries, and a bunch of locked rooms containing chests… including one that’s already open. Huh. I wonder if that will be brought up at all.

Given that Marth and his stunt double can basically take out anything at this point, and given the closed, bottlenecked terrain, there’s really no reason to bring all of my heavy hitters. So I leave my paladins behind, along with Minerva, and use this as an opportunity to train my pegasus knights.

And literally at the end of turn one, Est gets hit by a killing edge mercenary Marth failed to take out due to a freak 1% miss. Restart. Now on one hand, this was kinda my fault because I saw him fail to kill the guy and had my pegs move in to his range anyway to fight the steel sword mercenary, but on the other hand… killing the killing edge guy would hardly have guaranteed that wouldn’t happen, because literally every enemy on the map can do that to me. At any time. Because that’s what happens when the game doesn’t have crit avoid.

Apparently there’s a cap of 20 exp you can gain in a single combat round from doing damage to an enemy you don’t kill. Wendell did 26 damage with thoron (because that’s how much damage you always do when you double and don’t crit) and only gained 20 exp.

Shit, I have to remind myself to put the member card and silver card back on my main team. It’s still on the mules I used on chapter 17.

I thought I’d multitask by having Wendell heal a pegasus knight while getting himself in range of a hunter, but then I remembered that using healing items as a priest unequips your tome. Fuck.

On the plus side, literally the first treasure room had the bishop ring! Priest Merric, here we come!

Also, once he’s promoted, I’m going to boost him up with a talisman, dracoshield and secret book, because I need a mage who can handle enemy phase and fight other mages, and he’s easily the best candidate.

And after all of those bonuses, his new stats are…

HP: 36
Power: 3
Skill: 14
Wpn Lvl: 20
Speed: 16
Luck: 10
Defense: 11
Movement: 6
Resistance: 7.

Oh, this is gonna be FUN. In fact, due to the high number of mages involved in the final room, I think I’m just going to leave the rest of the map to him.

…Oh wait. Those aren't mages. Those are thieves. And they haven’t. Done. Anything. All. Map.

I also need to keep in mind that one of them has a fucking devil sword. Gonna need to find a way to get the drop on that fucker. Probably gonna have to use Marth or Xane.

 

...Or I suppose I could just risk the potential one shot like I have to do pretty much all the time now. Jesus christ that frustrates me.

Speaking of Xane and devil swords, I got him some new equipment he can actually use. He was doing really well with an iron sword, but that’s about run out, so I gave him a steel sword, a killing edge… and a devil sword. When he’s Marth, his luck is so high that only has a 1% chance of backfiring, because Marth has 20 in every levelable stat but skill and wpn lvl.

Beyond the Bishop ring, the haul’s been pretty huge. 30,000 gold, the earth orb, a pure water, a bolganone tome, an orion’s bolt… which is totally useless at this point… in fact… didn’t we already get one of these? What the hell would I need a second one for, wasn’t there only one archer? Or wait… was there an archer or two among those prisoners? Yeah, I think there was…

But yeah, there was also an angelic robe, the devil sword thief had the light orb, then we finally got the dragon whip! I’m gonna see if I can get Caeda to level 20 so she can promote this chapter. Even if she needs it the least, 1, she can reach level 20 this chapter, and 2, this way I can tell Caeda and the whitewings apart. For now.

And NOW the thieves start moving. Well too bad for them, they’re meat for Caeda’s slaughter, so I pen them in with Xane. Just block the path to the treasure and they just give up on life entirely.

And I finally found out what happens when you try to store something when the convoy is full: it gives you an untranslated error message and then makes you select something to drop. Glad I guessed that’s what it was telling me. That’s a hell of a thing to leave untranslated. I got rid of one of Marth’s spare rapiers. Looks like I’m replacing some of my army’s weapons early. Gotta make room.

Sheeda is already absolutely ridiculous. All this promotion is going to do is give her one more power and 2 more defense, and those are pretty much the only stats she hasn’t capped. Seriously, as clunky as the game is, I love this game’s fliers.

Scratch that, her last level up got her 1 power and 1 defense, so the grand total of benefit my Caeda got from the insane promotion bonuses of the dragon rider class is…

…Actually okay it’s not just one defense, apparently I got the bases wrong for the dragon rider class, and apparently she gained 1 defense AND one power. She now has…

9 Power
18 Skill
20 Wpn Lvl
20 Speed
20 Luck
14 Defense
10 Movement.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Anyway, Bantu recruits Tiki, and now we have a divine dragon! According to my notes, her stone gives more defense and is more accurate than Bantu’s, and is also lighter. Not that that makes much of a difference with her abysmal speed… but maybe it might be worth it to make sure she doubles other dragons by giving her the speedwing I just got? Hmm… or I could give it to Minerva… decisions decisions…

Holy shit Tiki is a black dragon! What the hell!? That’s weird but also kinda badass!

…I forgot you need to select “chest” when using the lockpick to open chests. Got another error message. It’s weird that all of the “That shit won’t work” messages weren’t translated. But anyway, got all the orbs and killed all the enemies, so it’s time to seize!

And with that, the level ends, and the ending dialogue is…

Buckle up your buttcheeks, buckos.

It’s time.

Edited by Alastor15243
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Dark Dragon Day 18: Chapter 20

Looks like I was right, and that was in fact Camus in that village who gave me that thoron a few chapters back.

Jeeesus he looks tough. He’s got 34 might, 15 defense, 1-2 range, an AS of 13, and scariest of all… a 6%, irreducible critical rate. Whenever I fight him, I have to be prepared for him to do FORTY TWO DAMAGE, even if I’m using someone with 20 defense. Which I will, because even if it weren’t the best call, it’s super thematically appropriate… as far as this game can be said to inspire that kind of investment.

Also, except for the healers, every unit on the map is either promoted or has no promotion. So this is time to bring out the big guns. I’ll still be trying to train the pegasus knights when I can, but I’m concerned that safe opportunities might be limited.

Thanks to a reminder I set on my phone, I remember to bring… “Saji”, whichever of the two that is, onto the map so I can get the silver and member cards back into my main army’s circulation.

I’m also taking Julian just so I can deal with that bridge and not have to take an annoying, roundabout detour. Other than that, we’re bringing the big guns: Marth, Xane, Caeda, Lena, Wendel, Palla, Catria, Est, Merric, Tiki, Minerva, Hardin, and Cain. And if you’re counting, you may notice that once you add in “Saji” and Julian… that’s 15.

We’re getting another ally this chapter. Well, I’ll just have to check around to see who it is. But first…

Oh goodie. A spelling error in the translation. Well, it isn’t professional, but still… the translation was at least grammatically correct before, but this, combined with the broken English in Bantu’s conversation with Tiki, makes it feel like the “quality” is slipping here.

…Marth doesn’t have enough HP to survive a single critical from Camus.

…Yet. Maybe if I use that angelic robe I got… yep, that should do it. Unless the robe only gives one. Which would be juuuust sufficiently nonsensical and excruciatingly dumb that the game just might do it.

The shopping cards are safely in the hands of our dragon again, but this time it’s Tiki.

Aaaaaand the cavalry are just marching right over the fucking mountains. I totally forgot they could do that.

Turns out the angelic robe increases HP by 9, so yes, Marth is now fully capable of surviving a single critical hit from Camus.

Honestly, enemy attack power is getting scary enough at times that I generally find myself defaulting to using my mega heavy hitters to solve all problems, because you can do that in this game. I probably don’t even need to train up the whitewings, I’d just like to for the sake of it. It doesn’t help that the defense on a lot of these enemies is absolutely obscene and makes damaging them with anyone who isn’t a mage or one of my few high-power units really tough.

So the knight killer isn’t effective against paladins, but the armor slayer is effective against generals? And for that matter, the rapier IS effective against paladins?

…Fuck it, I’m not even shocked anymore.

I’ve decided that if and when I get more dragon whips, I’m giving them to the whitewings right away, because they need the bulk boost and it’s way too late in the game for them to have any hope of gaining 38 total levels. Plus, in this game promoting early doesn’t even put you behind the experience curve, so if you can’t reach 20/20 then it’s less than pointless.

Merric got a lucky defense level up, bringing his defense up to an incredibly respectable 12. Though at this point in the game that doesn’t exactly make him a tank… but it’s still super useful.

Speaking of super useful… WE GOT HAMMERNE! FINALLY! Now I can have Cain use javelins again!

Est got power, speed, luck and defense. Atta girl!

Minerva got a level that was almost as good. Honestly she’d be pretty great at this point if I gave her that speedwing. So I think I'm gonna do that.

Anyway, looks like our new ally is this old general guy. Given his abysmal movement and speed, I don’t think we’ll have any use for him. Damage is getting hard enough to deal as it is for units that CAN double, after all. But I’ll still recruit him for the hell of it.

The speedwing increases speed by 6. What the fuck. And now Minerva’s actually good. Previously she was like a dragon rider who had never spent any time whatsoever as a pegasus knight, but now she’s awesome!

…And Lawrence doesn’t recruit himself by talking to Marth. And I can’t have Marth talk to him. He just up and one-shot Lena instead because I misjudged the terrain and his movement ability.

FUCK. THIS WAS ONE OF THE ONES YOU HAVE TO USE CAEDA FOR.

DAMN IT. No matter how fragile Lena is at this point, there’s no way I’m playing the rest of the game without that Hammerne staff.

RESTART.

Honestly, it's a mixed bag of blame going around here. Yes, I could have avoided that if I remembered to check if Caeda could talk to him, and yes, it only resulted in Lena's death because of my poor judgment, but all the same, having no visual difference between red units that recruit themselves and red units that will kill you until you recruit them is still super annoying.

And I had to restart again, twice in a row for the first time ever in this game, because I didn’t realize paladins here are faster than Est and one of them obliterated her. Again, on the one hand, my fault I didn’t check, but on the other, checking is such a gigantic pain in the ass in this game that it keeps slipping further from my mind the more I play without a restart because the game’s UI is so tedious and the gameplay is so mindless by modern standards that I just can’t bring myself to give a shit.

I’m almost tempted to play the games ironman from now on, if only because I always play way, way, WAY better when I do ironman due to paying more attention. Except that several games in the series are so outrageously hostile to ironman runs that it would probably be incredibly foolish and ultimately waste more time by forcing me to restart entire games rather than levels. And since changing the run rules between games would compromise the metrics I'm using somewhat... let's just keep going reset classic.

I think we’ve officially reached the lowest point of playing one of the weaker games in a marathon. The “Christ i just want this to be over” phase. This really isn’t fun anymore. This game is incredibly strategically undemanding, and all you really need to do to avoid losing anyone is some really clunky, slow and awkward math.

Buckle down, soldier. Just one more week of this and it’s on to (hopefully) greener Gaiden pastures.

THIRD. RESTART. Looks like for whatever fucking reason, the paladins who could damage Marth didn’t want to attack him and instead killed Julian. So I officially have no fucking clue how the Marth magnet works, literally everything I observed about it until now is called into question, and I can’t rely on it anymore. FUCKING FANTASTIC.

Alright. Fourth time’s the charm. I’ve finally gotten back to the point where I was last time, and now I have Lawrence. Who apparently in the proper translation is Lorenz.

…Yeah that’s not going to matter from here on out, he ain’t doin’ shit.

…Hammerne doesn’t let you choose which weapon you restore. It automatically restores the equipped weapon. I wasted use one on an iron sword.

…Fuck it, let’s just keep going, I am not doing a take five. I’m going to rush the boss with Marth.

Reinforcements come from behind, but they’re just armor knights, so I have my whitewings use them as target practice for their armorslayers.

Suddenly realizing that I haven’t been using the starsphere and lightsphere, I put them in Marth’s inventory before having him fight Camus.

And suddenly “just armor knights” becomes a huge mass of cavalry that includes bow knights. Right, let’s pick up the pace in evacuating.

Now that Marth has the spheres, he can use Mercurius as much as he wants. It’s a shame he can’t milk this for stat gains. Or it would be if his stats weren’t already damn near perfect.

In clearing out some of the remaining stat boosters from storage, I give the manual to Lena because she’s the only one who could make any use out of having more weapon level. Because now she can use any staff in the game, including fortify.

At first I thought I was getting a crazy series of crits, but no, apparently Mercurius has its own unique attack animation. Nothing super flashy, but nice to see.

Fun fact I just learned: two non-crit attacks of thoron do just enough damage to take out one full health bar. Awesome.

Alright. It’s time at long last. If Clash of Two Virtues had an 8 bit remix anywhere online that I could find, I’d post it here, but alas, no such luck. What a shame. But no matter. Camus vs. Marth. Gradivus vs Mercurius. Let’s go.

It was an absolute slaughter. He did a hefty bit of damage to Marth, but Marth then brutalized him, and even got a critical hit he didn’t even need.

Huh. That just made me realize that Camus is basically the only boss in the entire game I’ve fought so far who actually has a death quote.

And with that, Camus is gone, and this chapter that caused me way more frustration than it probably should have is finally over. And with that…

…We keep going, because I’ve decided I wanna get done with this as soon as possible. We’re buckling down and playing the rest of the weekend if we have to, I wanna get to Gaiden ASAP.


Day 18 Bonus: Chapter 21

My team starts out quite scattered, with all of my most vulnerable and least mobile units lumped on the eastern flank.

This is Awakening levels of simplistic map design. Me on one side, and a huge number of promoted enemies on the other, with nary a wall or obstacle between us save for scattered forests. Yeah, I think a lot of my units have ceased to be feasibly viable right now, and honestly, it might be best to just rush the next two maps with Marth and his stunt double, get the promotion items and such from the secret shops, and then see what we can do about making the weaker half of my group non-frustrating to use. This just isn’t a fun game to do complicated player-phase tactics on at this stage. And hey, if I can get away with doing that, that’s good to know to mark down the game’s balance.

This seems like a very wise idea, because I just learned that my eastern reinforcements physically can’t make it to the main group before the dragon riders get them, so I’ll have to send Marth and Xane in via warp staves to cut those dragon riders off.

Yep, warping them both to the forts succeeded spectacularly in saving my main front from the reinforcements. Even the ones that couldn't do any damage at all still just swarmed around them. Time to take these guys down.

Alright, now time to make sure I kill all of the initial units just in case any are holding NOOOOOOOOPE that is a shitton of ambush spawns I am killing the boss and getting the FUH-HUUUUUCK out of here!


Well… that was…

 

 

 

 


…quick.

….

 

 

 

 

 

Day 18 Bonus Bonus: Chapter 22

…The opening text crawl totally gives me the mental image of a Michalis who’s just such a dragon fanboy that he sides in favor of the anti-human fascist dragons over the human race and against the wishes of literally everyone in his kingdom.

I’m calling it right now, Michalis fucks his wyvern. That’s canon now.

Right then! Now this is the chapter where I have to give up Marth’s infinite Mercurius in order to get Starlight so Merric can get Marth his Falchion. Which isn’t nearly as good as Mercurius against anything non-dragon, but thankfully Marth’s stats are so batshit insane that that hardly matters.

This map seems mindlessly simple too. It’s just a bunch of enemies in a walled-off city and a village north of it. Seems utterly mindless.

SO LET’S WARP CHEESE IT AGAIN!

Yep, Marth’s now straight in front of the village and now has starlight. Meanwhile right after turning into him before he warped away, Xane gets warped straight into the lion’s den.

Everyone: …
Xane: Sup?

Okay I changed my mind. I’m totally having fun with this stupid, stupid game again.

Dear god, Michalis’s old portrait. This is the first time I've seen him in this game, and I'm so used to looking at his bishie modern design... but this...

Portrait_michalis_fe01.png

he actually seriously does look like somebody who would fuck his dragon horse.

Alas, these enemies aren’t nearly as strong and don’t kill themselves on the altar of Marth, and thus since they can only clear one space around them that is then promptly refilled, I can’t actually reunite Marth and Xane in time to refresh Xane’s transformation. So looks like I have to warp in Cain to help. And for his heroism, Cain gains a fantastic power+def+etc level up!

And Michalis dropped a dracoshield, which should be handy.

At any rate, that devil sword has been insanely handy. Really, in the grand scheme of things, a 1% failure rate isn’t that bad.

And now we have our second dragon whip! That one’s going to Catria. She doesn’t need any more levels in peg, the only stats she needs won’t pass dragon rider’s bases by the time she hits level 20.

And with that, the map is over!

…Okay, given that this next one is a map with actual treasure, I think I’m gonna have to skip on warp skipping here. for now. Especially since it’s a secret shop map. So, for now, yes, I’m finally signing off.

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54 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I think we’ve officially reached the lowest point of playing one of the weaker games in a marathon. The “Christ i just want this to be over” phase. This really isn’t fun anymore. This game is incredibly strategically undemanding, and all you really need to do to avoid losing anyone is some really clunky, slow and awkward math.

Quote

Alright, now time to make sure I kill all of the initial units just in case any are holding NOOOOOOOOPE that is a shitton of ambush spawns I am killing the boss and getting the FUH-HUUUUUCK out of here!

Quote

Yep, Marth’s now straight in front of the village and now has starlight. Meanwhile right after turning into him before he warped away, Xane gets warped straight into the lion’s den.

Everyone: …
Xane: Sup?

Okay I changed my mind. I’m totally having fun with this stupid, stupid game again.

An FE1 story in three comments.

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46 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Which isn’t nearly as good as Mercurius against anything non-dragon, but thankfully Marth’s stats are so batshit insane that that hardly matters.

I mean the Falchion literally makes Marth immune to all melee damage that doesn't come from Dragons, so in some ways it is better against non-dragon in this game. That being said there aren't many non-dragon melee threats left.

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1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I mean the Falchion literally makes Marth immune to all melee damage that doesn't come from Dragons, so in some ways it is better against non-dragon in this game. That being said there aren't many non-dragon melee threats left.

Oh shit, that's right! I never put that in my text file because I wanted to keep it all on one line. Awesome!

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9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

We’re buckling down and playing the rest of the weekend if we have to, I wanna get to Gaiden ASAP.

Oh wow, we really are at that point where you just want to be done already. 😛

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

…The opening text crawl totally gives me the mental image of a Michalis who’s just such a dragon fanboy that he sides in favor of the anti-human fascist dragons over the human race and against the wishes of literally everyone in his kingdom.

I’m calling it right now, Michalis fucks his wyvern. That’s canon now.

This implies Michalis fucks.

I cannot seriously believe he would care about things like that. Even with his DD face.

Also, three in a row, we were really blessed there.

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Falchion is amazing for all of the two chapters you have it in this game. In subsequent games, it's a very disappointing unbreakable Wyrmslayer. It's literally weaker and heavier than a Silver Sword. And the fact that it's unbreakable is a small bonus as there's still only two chapters left where durability ceases to be a pressing concern. It doesn't even give Marth a unique combat animation in the DS games! Gharnef can have Falchion. Keeping the Light and Star Spheres is war more preferable when  it comes to gameplay.

Edited by Jotari
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12 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Falchion is amazing for all of the two chapters you have it in this game. In subsequent games, it's a very disappointing unbreakable Wyrmslayer. It's literally weaker and heavier than a Silver Sword. And the fact that it's unbreakable is a small bonus as there's still only two chapters left where durability ceases to be a pressing concern. It doesn't even give Marth a unique combat animation in the DS games! Gharnef can have Falchion. Keeping the Light and Star Spheres is war more preferable when  it comes to gameplay.

I can't remember, does not getting the true falchion make the ending worse? I only ever did it on my "Marth solo so I can see all the gaiden chapters" run, and I got a bad ending there, but it seemed to be mostly because Caeda died.

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Just now, Alastor15243 said:

I can't remember, does not getting the true falchion make the ending worse? I only ever did it on my "Marth solo so I can see all the gaiden chapters" run, and I got a bad ending there, but it seemed to be mostly because Caeda died.

Nope. Nothing changes in any of the games. Though in this one Medeus is almost invincible without Falchion. Obviously canonically Marth does acquire the Falchion and use it to defeat Medeus, but the game barely acknowledges it if you go off script.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Though in this one Medeus is almost invincible without Falchion.

To be precise...:

Spoiler

Medeus:

  • 12 base Def
  • 23 Def from Earth Dragonstone
  • Negates magic?

35 Def total

0 Attack Speed due to 10 Spd - 10 Wt. Doubling Medeus is all but guaranteed.

 

Player weapon options that break 35 Atk with 20 Str:

  • Fire Dragonstone- 36 Atk
  • Devil Sword- 37 Atk
  • Parthia- 37 Atk
  • Mercurius- 38 Atk
  • Pachyderm- 38 Atk
  • Gradivus- 40 Atk
  • Devil Axe- 40 Atk
  • Falchion- 50 Atk

 

So Marth with just 5 Str procs (10 Str) on a 50% growth is able to match the Devil Axe with 5x2. At max, he cleanly and exactly kills Medeus on the count of three, or one amazing Crit.

Medeus is still hard to scratch in Mystery, since Atk-halving does that. Atk-halving is so strong, that its readily apparently why FE dumped it after Thracia, settling on high Def alone, or in the case of Awakening-Fates, damage-halving.

In SD and NM make it much easier to hurt Medeus. He only has 27 Def in both remakes with the Throne's +2. And, they raised stat caps on the player side, so it's possible to negate that entire 27 with just Str alone. SD Medeus is the worst with base Tikicide being a viable avenue to victory. Though he is still menacing on the offense.

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