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

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

They still are. The Binding Shield still banishes them, though. Unfortunately, other dragons show up as well.

Chriiiiiist. And I was already feeling demoralized by losing all my post-prologue progress. All of this is making the endgame sound *ridiculous*.

Edited November 20, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

15 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Please tell me the ambush spawn earth dragons aren't still a thing.

I can't find any videos showing them spawning, but that might be either because they don't appear on enemy phase 1 or only appear when you're close to Medeus. And the general strategy seems to be kill Medeus in one turn using copious usage of the Again staff and the recover staff (so those four end game units actually end up contributing a lot funnily enough).

Edited November 20, 2020 by Jotari

[Shadow Mir]

23 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Chriiiiiist. And I was already feeling demoralized by losing all my post-prologue progress. All of this is making the endgame sound *ridiculous*.

Sounds about right. I even said earlier that Lunatic repeats most of the same crap that H5 did. Oh, and dragon breath has extra range on Lunatic.

Edited November 20, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[Alastor15243]

Okay, maybe this is the post-data-loss discouragement talking, but this miiiiiight be starting to sound like a bad idea. I still have the ironman file, so going back to that isn't entirely out of the question. And at least two people really seemed to want me to do that. Ugh, I just don't know what to do right now. I'm gonna get some sleep. Post your thoughts if you've got 'em.

[Jotari]

Well it's clearly not the way in which you enjoy playing Fire Emblem, and I wouldn't say Lunatic is even the intended way to blind play the game which is the way things will go if you get past legion, so I'd say resume the Iron Man run (though double check none of the lost characters barr you from getting the true ending. I don't think any characters are necessary to get star shards, though I don't know what happens to a character that dies holding one either). Loss of the only dancer will suck, but other than her everyone is replaceable, if they won't be immediately as strong.

[Alastor15243]

...Alright, sorry guys, but I'm gonna take the day off so I have the weekend to think about it and everyone else has time to give their thoughts. Sorry for the last few days being so hectic and indecisive!

Edited November 20, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Only Cecil, Marth, Dakota and Arran can take even a single hit from a silver axe barbarian.

That is one more unit than I had able to take a hit from them on the lunatic run I did. I had to reclass Draug to Fighter to get my fourth instead of Cecil.

 

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Since I have absolutely no intention of training Ryan long-term, I'm gonna reclass him to a curate so I can get some healing at the beginning of the map.

...Actually, also, I think I'm gonna make Luke a myrmidon so that he can get some much-needed speed levels (if the enemies get any faster they'll start doubling him), and Draug a mercenary so I have another guy who can double these barbarians.

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Guess I'll need some ranged chip damage. I'll make Draug a hunter and Rody a mage.

Interesting...I figured it would be similar, but the difference in the details is interesting to note. I ended up reclassing Cecil to healer, Arran to DracoKnight, Draug to Fighter, and myUnit to mage.

 

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...But anyway, I finally made it to turn 3, and the cave thief, who mercifully doesn't attack when he ambush spawns because apparently even these devs thought that would be madness, apparently has a forged levin sword. Thankfully my Arran is at full health due to me realizing he and Gordin could just barely take out a barbarian together without Arran eating a counter-attack. So he can provide the chip damage needed to take the thief out without him killing anyone with his ludicrous speed and def-piercing attack.

I will note that if you blocked his path to the village he would attack...

 

20 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

To me, Fire Emblem is about making decisions that have consequences. Risk assessment, deciding when you should take the shot and when you should retreat, when you're willing to risk a character's life and when it's not worth it, and generally just coming up with strategies and plans that have to work on a much longer timescale than a couple of turns, where the risk of death is ever-present and meaningful. Whether that be through ironmans or just chapter-to-chapter saving, the idea of having things go bad should be terrifying but exciting, with upsets in your plans prompting responses of “oh fuck, how am I gonna get myself out of this one?” and not “Welp, better rewind to last turn because that missed attack just exhausted my entire margin for error”.

When you don't restrict yourself to recruiting and keeping everyone alive, I think some of this decision making and consequences does return, but usually with the character's fate being more certain. This game has a massive cast, and some of them are expendable, how much they are worth to the long term, and whether its worth it to fully expend them to accomplish something in the short term are things that might be weighed as a way to get a slightly larger margin for error.

 

18 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...So my computer crashed in the process of editing that writeup, and while I didn't lose much data on the playlog, when I opened up my emulator to consider giving Chapter 3 a shot, it turns out I lost literally all of today's work in the actual game because it turns out that yes, emulators still don't actually write any of your save files until you close them, and no matter how many times you save, you'll still lose your data if you crash!

I'm back to chapter 1.

Ouch...I can relate to that kinda demoralizing loss of progress...

 

12 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Not sure what to say about it. Figured I'd wait to see if other people who had played the game responded to it first before looking anything up.

Sorry, should have gotten to my responses yesterday. Medeus has 30 speed and 60 attack, so the only way to survive a round of combat with him is to hit the 27 speed benchmark. The classes that can pull that off are Sword Master, Berserker, Sniper, Horseman, Thief, and Marth. The speed tonics and speed staff you can get from How's everybody, and Speed Bonds you get reliably from the third conversations of multiple supports can be used to reach that threshold (although they do not break caps). Marth is often seen as one of the better options for dealing with him, as the +2 to every stat from the binding shield lets him hits that threshold with capped speed, and he does effective damage with the Falchion (note the divine dragon stone no longer does). The 0% growth lunatic reverse no crit/avoid riggging run ends up reclassing Palla to Sword Master, with a heavily forged Levin Sword (and generous helping of stat boosers) to triangle attack him to death.

 

12 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

All of this is making the endgame sound *ridiculous*.

I will point out that the four maidens ends up giving you a massive overabundance of staff users on that maps, and by trade chaining the rescue and again staff uses remaining tend to make that chapter end very quicly. Lunatic mode does limit some of your resources, but there are still some powerful ones available to help you along if you ration them out carefully.

 

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Okay, maybe this is the post-data-loss discouragement talking, but this miiiiiight be starting to sound like a bad idea. I still have the ironman file, so going back to that isn't entirely out of the question. And at least two people really seemed to want me to do that. Ugh, I just don't know what to do right now. I'm gonna get some sleep. Post your thoughts if you've got 'em.

I would be fine seeing either run continue, and for different reasons. For the Lunatic run, comparing what you found noteworthy to what I remember of my own run, as well as the shift in perspective you were having were interesting to read, whereas for the ironman run I am curious if you can make it to the end while ironmanning blind, as it does have some things going for it in the ironmanning department (like the absurdly bloated reclassable cast, some excellent utility staves, and the trade chainable buffs of the star shards/sphere, etc.), but quite a few that will be hazardous to blind play.

 

[Alastor15243]

16 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Interesting...I figured it would be similar, but the difference in the details is interesting to note. I ended up reclassing Cecil to healer, Arran to DracoKnight, Draug to Fighter, and myUnit to mage.

Ah yes, I didn't explicitly say it (though I did mention him flying) but I did reclass Arran to Dracoknight too.

Thanks for the rest of your post too, I'll keep what you said in mind.

[Alastor15243]

So I've been clearing my head ironmanning Shadow Dragon H5, but I'm still not sure what to do. But I'm leaning towards just going back to the ironman based on feedback alone, because I haven't seen anyone actually say they'd rather I keep playing Lunatic than go back to the ironman.

[Vicious Sal]

I don't mind either, Ironmanning blind is a unique experience, though this game has given me more enjoyment the more I played it, probably because of prior knowledge. I don't think going on lunatic is going to make it better for you after your current ironman point though,  since you'd be mostly playing blind again. 

The way I play this game is without save points, moving as far as I can and often leaving units on 1 - 4 Hp because they had to enter threat ranges of enemies that were out of reach to kill stuff in front of me. Then, the next turn, I repeat the process, using positioning with the knowledge of the highest damage rule. It's not really a puzzle of turn by turn for me, more a chess game that I play in my mind before I start, and then when I know I have a Strat that clears the map safely, I start. Whenever I have a miss or something goes wrong, I have to adapt the premeditated Strat on the fly, and that's when you really get a thrill with fast paced problem solving. If someone dies, I keep going, though I always try to keep Malicia alive because she's just so valuable for the Hammerne. I also really enjoy planning maps in advance to see where I get optimal usage from my Rescue/Warp etc so that I can Ltc the game in real time. So no save scumming etc.

[Shadow Mir]

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I've been clearing my head ironmanning Shadow Dragon H5

How has that gone?

[Alastor15243]

10 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

How has that gone?

Just got to Chapter Six earlier. Officially decided that I prefer fighting the Ch3 boss to the Ch2 one. At least with Ch3 you have a killing edge and don't have to worry about pacing healing for afterwards.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Just got to Chapter Six earlier. Officially decided that I prefer fighting the Ch3 boss to the Ch2 one. At least with Ch3 you have a killing edge and don't have to worry about pacing healing for afterwards.

That all makes a lot of sense, yet for some reason the Chapter 3 boss is far more infamous than the Chapter 2 one. At least in my experience.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

That all makes a lot of sense, yet for some reason the Chapter 3 boss is far more infamous than the Chapter 2 one. At least in my experience.

I have to assume it's that 14 speed.

[Jotari]

54 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I have to assume it's that 14 speed.

Could also be the ridiculous name.

[Alastor15243]

New Mystery Day 21: Chapter 11

Well, after the shitshow that was most of last week, and after listening to the very torn and ambivalent things everyone had to say, I've ultimately decided that I'm going to go back to continuing the ironman. I think I've played enough of Lunatic to know that this style of difficulty just isn't for me, so that concern of judging a difficulty I don't understand isn't quite as pronounced anymore. I think I've seen enough of the higher difficulties to at least give my personal opinion on them.

And frankly now I'm kinda curious how this run is gonna go without Linde, Malicia or Feena. Of course, I'll have to make sure I didn't just lock myself out of the true ending (something that really feels like a dick move for ironmanning, not that this game is remotely new to ironmanning dick moves). I'm pretty sure that dead units' inventories go back to the convoy, so if my calculations are right, I should have ten star shards right now, even though Linde had some of them. I'll check when we get to convoy.

...Yeah, I'm not digging this mask. I totally forgot that I decided to try it out, and I'm not liking it that much. The scene is hilarious though, with Marth being weirded out by Dakota's deadpan decision to fight wearing this ridiculous mask.

Alright, time to do How's Everyone (I got nothing but exp) and check the star shards.

Ooh, apparently I actually have eleven of the star shards! The only one left is on a fire dragon in Chapter 12, next chapter. Good to know.

Well, thankfully this game does at least give you a ton of units to work with, so filling up the vacant unit slots isn't going to be a problem.

But I'm going to have to be extremely careful with unit placement from here on out, and also probably prepared to let some disposable units die in order to secure important treasure.

Speaking of treasure, this map has a whole bunch of it, and it's super easy to find since it's a 100% success rate, so I'll be getting it all and ohhhh holy fuck there are wyverns everywhere. I'm gonna have to use a lot of anti-flier magic and pray to holy hell that this game's linked AI setup isn't a fire breathing whore on hard mode.

I'm bringing all of my fliers to this map, as well as Merric and my two prepromoted mages, and obviously Yumina. I used the boots on Dakota, since he's the one guy I know will always be around and will always be able to make heavy use of it, but sadly in this sand and in his general class, they don't actually improve his movement range right now. I'm still keeping him in that class though, because I still wanna maximize his defense in case the endgame physical threats get really scary like they did last time.

Anyway, let's see the talks.

...Alright, so Palla and Dakota get their last support... which ends with her giving him headpats, which is... kind of adorable.

...And apparently Jake is in this chapter according to Caeda. Alright, I'll have to try and have her recruit him. Pity he's not a ballistician anymore. But I suppose a ballistician would really break this game compared to Shadow Dragon (where they were “just” really, really good), because Shadow Dragon has a lot more enemies rushing you from the get-go, constantly pursuing you, whereas this relies on a lot more reactive, “wait until approached” enemy formations it would be ridiculously easy to exploit with 10-range attacks, given that they stay still until you come to them or attack them.

I'm actually reminded of the contrast in design philosophies between Birthright and late-game Conquest, if I remember correctly. Though of course I feel Conquest did this style of map design much better. But christ, it's been more than a year since I've played those games at this point, so who knows?

Alright, I've been hesitating to start this for about an hour. Let's get this over with and hope I don't die horribly.

I am completely baffled that Marth asks “Where are we” at the beginning of this battle, as if he could've been brought this deep into the desert without asking that question already.

But now we're getting more backstory exposition delivered in this still amazingly clumsy way, and yeah, maybe I'm still just totally checked out on Fire Emblem writing, but I'm still standing by my opinion that Shadow Dragon probably deserves a better writing grade than this game.

...Oh right, forgot to mention, they got rid of the enemy-only sword-wielding “barbarian” class from FE3 that I think we only saw one of, and replaced that singular instance with a swordmaster. Pity, I thought that class looked cool. It would've been nice to see it come back.

...Shit, it would've been nice to add a single new playable class to this game.

I start off by baiting in the two closest wyverns with dragonpike Sirius and Excalibur Merric. And thank goodness, dragon breath doesn't pierce defense anymore. The description didn't say it would, and it would be a massive dick move to not tell the player that in the weapon info.

Anyway, enemies don't seem to have linked AI so far, so as long as we get away from the starting point in case there are ambush spawns pursuing us from behind, this should be a pretty straightforward chapter with tons of exp opportunities for my units.

Alright, spirit dust secure. We'll get an entire set of stat boosters here, and an elysian whip I'm eager to use on someone, though I haven't quite decided who yet.

...Shit, enemies are starting to move on their own. Either this is a timed thing or I stepped into some boundary box. Well, right now it's manageable.

Two wyverns decided to fly to basically the exact same southwestern spot from different directions, but my southwest group managed to just barely salvage it with some wind magic and a dragonpike. 12 movement on a fucking desert map. I ask you! Even when it's not throwing ambush spawns at you, this game still seems to throw things at you that you can't always realistically react to.

Alright, I've gotten all but the last four treasures. I also see a secret shop on the map by Jake, so after flying Caeda over to recruit him and hopefully thereby bait in the second-to-last wyvern who's refusing to move, I'll be sure to visit that before seizing.

Oh sure, Jake, you “lost” your ballista. Christ. A ballista would be so useful, even in a desert map.

Wyvern still refuses to move, so I'll just have to have Dakota get straight into the thick of things and get into multiple attack ranges. At any rate, gotta get rid of the wyvern quickly because because Marth's just barely not fast enough to avoid being doubled by these fucking things.

Well, did that, got the master sword, or as it's apparently officially called (at least for the Thracia incarnation), the Meisterschwert. Pretty cool weapon, I'll keep it around!

So the secret shop sells nothing but slayer weapons. Might as well get some, especially the dragon-killing ones. They're gonna be pretty dang important if the dragons get ridiculous later.

Alright, we've got everything but the elysian whip, and we're working on baiting out the last wyvern now.

Also, Merric just hit level 15, so I'm gonna promote him now.

And with that promotion, he's hit 17 speed, so yeah, I think he's good from here on out. Funny enough, that's exactly as much speed as Dakota has as a general.

Got the elysian whip, Aaaand I just beat the boss.

...Oh right, shit, that scene is in this chapter. Let's see what they do with it here.

...PFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh wow, this scene is still so awkward and dumb, but the fact that Dakota's first response when he sees Tiki, a tiny little girl, literally transform into a bishonen young man right before his eyes, is to yell out “a crossdresser!?”... just got me bursting into laughter. I remember this scene being more awkward and more overtly (and thus creepily) flirty in Book 2 though. “Tiki” didn't start acting obviously wrong until “her” very last line here. I was wondering how it would have played out with Dakota present if they had had that creepy shit last longer.

...Okay, I like how they tie in the fact that the mask would actually be useful to keep the sun out of Dakota's eyes (though would it? I think a black mask might have worked better for that from what I've heard).

Well... we're done then.

Looks like I've been managing so far, if just barely. But we'll see how it turns out.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Shadow Mir]

On 11/22/2020 at 5:00 PM, Alastor15243 said:

Just got to Chapter Six earlier. Officially decided that I prefer fighting the Ch3 boss to the Ch2 one. At least with Ch3 you have a killing edge and don't have to worry about pacing healing for afterwards.

Did you lose anyone yet? And what are your thoughts on H5?

[Eltosian Kadath]

13 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Two wyverns decided to fly to basically the exact same southwestern spot from different directions, but my southwest group managed to just barely salvage it with some wind magic and a dragonpike. 12 movement on a fucking desert map. I ask you! Even when it's not throwing ambush spawns at you, this game still seems to throw things at you that you can't always realistically react to.

Much as I like this game, my first experience with this map made me despise Wyverns with all of the fiery hate of a 1,000 suns...

 

[Vicious Sal]

At least on this difficulty, iirc, the dragons do not have 1-2 range right? 

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Vicious Sal said:

At least on this difficulty, iirc, the dragons do not have 1-2 range right? 

Can't speak as an expert, but I imagine 2 range wyverns are actually easier to deal with as you can bait them with a sniper at the edge of their range (which you're basically always going to be because they've such ridiculously high move) and kill them on enemy phase.

[Vicious Sal]

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Can't speak as an expert, but I imagine 2 range wyverns are actually easier to deal with as you can bait them with a sniper at the edge of their range (which you're basically always going to be because they've such ridiculously high move) and kill them on enemy phase.

 

I would rank them considerably harder actually. This is just me working from memory, but I recall comparing the range overlap between the wyverns and other units on the map and the extra range they get actually causes exact overlap in a lot of cases with the warriors and barbarians etc. Once again, this is if I recall this correctly. But it meant that EP you'd usually face the range of two wyverns + barbarian/warrior/swordmaster etc and the extra range also made certain Strats that work for PP that much harder since you'd be unable to use a sniper or so to kill a barbarian from afar, since he'd still be in range after that whereas with 1 range they'd be safe. 
I also find them more difficult because of lunatic reverse, since they always vantage counter in that case.

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Can't speak as an expert, but I imagine 2 range wyverns are actually easier to deal with as you can bait them with a sniper at the edge of their range (which you're basically always going to be because they've such ridiculously high move) and kill them on enemy phase.

Well you can already do that with excalibur, and given that mages can actually move in the desert...

Funny enough, I actually had three wind tomes, one for each of my mages, which helped a TON.

8 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Did you lose anyone yet? And what are your thoughts on H5?

Nobody I actually care about. In the beginning I had some of the filler units you get suicide to keep my other guys safe during some fairly scary enemy phases, but since then, no deaths yet.

I've noticed enemies have a lot more HP, or at least it feels like it, in H5 compared to H3-4. I had to do a lot of retreating and walling that I didn't have to do before, and training Sedgar and Wolf over that initial hump took is taking longer than I remember. Thankfully I at least got Sedgar to the proper defense level to sit on that fort in the Bantu chapter and he should have enough to handle the market chapter for me again.

I definitely feel a bigger jump between 4-5 than between 3-4. The latter was small enough that simply having foreknowledge made my H4 run more successful, not less.

Having fun so far, but I'm also finding myself scared to start chapters sometimes, causing me to have a much slower daily play speed than with H4, which I practically blazed through.

Edited November 24, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Punished Dayni]

19 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Okay, I like how they tie in the fact that the mask would actually be useful to keep the sun out of Dakota's eyes (though would it? I think a black mask might have worked better for that from what I've heard).

In colour yes, it's also in the thickness of the material. Wind helps too.

And yeah, Lunatic is not a fun difficulty to try blind. There is more shit going on and you won't have Warp.

[Alastor15243]

New Mystery Day 22: Chapter 12

Alright, last star shard should be here.

Time to deal with the fire area. Let's boot the game up and see what we're dealing with.

But actually, first, I had two reminders I left for myself yesterday for shit to bring up, let's see...

Oh yeah, that's right.

So, I didn't realize until afterwards, but, uh...

Dragonpikes work on wyverns.

That dragonpike was instrumental to killing some of those wyverns and I never noticed the weirdness that it works on them but not on dracoknights, who are presumably just wyverns with a mount. I'm now really curious to see what they do with the Macedon-Dolhr wyvern valley chapter's lore.

Also, sorry to anyone who was hoping I'd do more of Lunatic. I think this is just gonna be a better idea for the playlog. And as I said before, I think I've seen enough. Lunatic, I feel, pushes the difficulty of Fire Emblem far beyond what conventional Fire Emblem mechanics were built to withstand. And I really, really don't like that. Granted, I'm not the best Fire Emblem player out there, and in particular I doubt I'll ever be the type of person to LTC or do a 0% growth run. But I strongly, strongly suspect that that isn't the issue here. I don't think I could possibly get skilled enough at Lunatic to actually play it in a way I find fun, and perhaps more importantly, I don't care to spend the time to find out. Because as a few New Mystery fans have said in this thread, this game, and Lunatic in particular, are things that get more fun the more you play them. In theory, that's great. But that's when playing it more makes it even better, not when playing it makes it good, or in a theoretical worst case scenario, less awful. Otherwise, the game's just an “acquired taste” that I have absolutely no desire to acquire.

Damn it, those fucking wyverns are here again.

But thankfully I have several dragonpikes now, so I can take the fight to them with my fliers. I expect to promote both Caeda and Catria this chapter, judging by the crazy exp that I got from the wyverns last chapter. And thankfully these wyverns start far enough away that I can probably react to them before they arrive.

I'm gonna have to manage moving forward without Dakota, because his job is going to be to guard the rear from those back-fort ambush spawns in case the enemies are too strong and player-phasing them becomes damned near impossible.

But I'm not worried. With the exception of Yumina, every single last unit I've deployed, including Marth, is capable of using a slayer weapon for effective damage against these dragons.

That is, assuming blizzard works on fire dragons in this game. It didn't in Shadow Dragon, and I can't remember what I heard about what the remake did. Even so, Meric and Etzel will still be able to slaughter the fliers.

Alright, let's do the talks.

...The flying fuck is Minerva on about, saying pegasi have superior “mobility” to wyverns? The game would beg to differ.

Anyway, looks like I just got absurdly unlucky with which female supports I got first, because that song is happening way less often. In fact I got three all-female supports in a row that didn't have it.

...And here it is right back again with Yumina, but at this point, yeah, fair enough. I mean it's a good song, it was just kinda awkward how at one point it felt like it was just the song used for supports with female characters, and that felt weird.

...Oh wow, so apparently Yumina actually heard Dakota beg Marth to give him the word to save them as she and Yubello were being dragged away.

...I actually like this support. A tiny gesture, a line a lot of players probably forgot about, wound up unexpectedly, but understandably, having a massive impact on someone else who heard them. Just knowing that there were people who wanted to help her, even if they couldn't, apparently gave her strength when she was trapped in Lang's castle with Yubello. It made her feel less alone in, and hated by, the world.

Okay, so now the game's telling me the Anri Saga... in optional talk scenes... which kinda feels like where it should be... but I'm hoping this means they actually make the in-chapter dialogue more interesting.

I also couldn't help but notice Darros is recruitable here, but they don't mention him. I'm guessing I just have to recruit him with Marth then.

Alright, I think I'm ready.

...Shit, overestimated the number of dragonpikes I had. No matter, my fliers can just trade I suppose.

Let's go.

...Okay, so, Xane's scene here at the start is completely unchanged. He still says the dragon tribe stopped being able to bear children, which means that the writers of Awakening... just did not give a single shit about the lore of the game whose remake was the previous game they had made.

I'm not exactly a huge fan of this game's lore, but if you're gonna make a story in the same setting... you've gotta respect what came before. Or, bare minimum, your changes should be clearly deliberate intent, and not complete apathy to it. Awakening wasn't written by people who thought the original lore needed serious improvements. It was written by people who didn't give a shit about the original lore at all, and barely had cursory surface knowledge of it. In Awakening, dragons use stones to transform not because of a massive cataclysmic event that made the dragons infertile and slowly drove them to madness, they use stones “because that's how shifters work in Fire Emblem, right?”.

Speaking of... in all honesty, unless there was an identical shift of nature for the Taguel, or unless the Taguel have just always fucking been around since those times without anyone ever seeing them and they were affected by the same ancient magical shift...

...What the fuck reason is there for the Taguel to need to use stones to transform?

But anyway... this whole infertility thing does raise major questions about why wyverns are so plentiful if dragons can't have children anymore and wyverns are just feral flying dragons.

I wonder what they'll say about that.

Caeda is thankfully just barely bulky enough with her defense star shard to take a single hit from these fire dragons, allowing her to player-phase bait them in with her dragonpike, resulting in an instant level up and 2 more bulk from a lucky level that included HP and defense.

I still haven't decided who I'm gonna make the dracoknight and who the falcoknight.

We've got three wyverns headed our way from turn one that I didn't notice on the prep menu. Thankfully I've got fliers who can take them out even when they aren't in reach of land. I just need to retreat a bit and enemy-phase this approaching barbarian. And as I said, I'm doing this without Dakota, who's staying behind to hold off the inevitable reinforcements.

Strangely this time the wyverns had no inclination to keep to over the lava pits where they'd be harder to hit. I wonder what the AI behind pathing is. I'm sure it's gotta be predictable to some degree, but like... I dunno, that sounds like the kind of knowledge I wouldn't want to learn too well? Feels like it'd take some of the magic out of it.

And Caeda just got another level with an important stat: strength! Awesome.

Yep, just as expected, here come the fire dragons from the rear, but Dakota's got them covered.

...Blizzard is in fact not effective against fire dragons anymore. Shit.

Glad I got the rear covered, because the enemies up north have started advancing, and I don't want to have to think about what would've happened if my retreat had been blocked off.

...Though they don't show up every turn, so I guess there's that at least. Still, better to use this as a training opportunity for Dakota than to worry about it for the rest of the map.

…

…

…

Ambush spawn wyverns.

Holy fuck what is wrong with this game.

They're not in range of my army, but that barely matters because they're close enough that they'll cover basically everything after they move this enemy phase even if I retreat holy shit.

...Thankfully, enough of the guys with the appropriate slayer weapons were close enough that I could do an all-out player-phase gambit on this, and nobody has to die.

...Assuming, that is, that they don't spawn two turns in a row, which would be so evil as to beggar belief.

Okay, I think these back forts are only ever going to spawn one batch of reinforcements, so...

...I can't even say I made a bad call, because in the event of the worst case scenario where they kept coming that would have unquestionably been the best decision, but I definitely made an unlucky call.

I ultimately decided to promote Caeda into dracoknight and Catria into falcoknight. Caeda probably needs the bulk more in the long run, as well as the strength. While she's been getting unlucky with it and is about on par with Caeda, her growth means that she'll probably wind up getting more strength levels in the end.

Looks like the last wyverns are, just like last time, steadfastly refusing to move until you get way too deep in their range. Guess like I'll have to have Dakota help out here after all, to be safe. Thank goodness for those boots I gave him.

Alright, I've got the last star shard secured.

...I can't help but notice that the “wyverns” that the dracoknights are riding... have arms. Not just wings.

...Oh god, they did retcon that, didn't they?

Fuck, that was a cool plot point. I wonder what they're replacing it with.

Anyway though...

I promoted Yumina and Catria just now, so I've got a few more promoted units in my arsenal.

Yumina gained eight bulk from this promotion, and she still isn't tough enough to not be one-shot by dragons. Pity. I'm probably gonna want to give an angelic robe to her as soon as possible.

Especially considering I have two of them.

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AAAAAMBUSH SPAAAAAAAAAAAAWNS!

Fire dragons and barbarians from the three forts to the north, and two wyverns from the forts to the south. Etzel managed to save himself from being doubled to death by the right wyvern with a lucky crit with razor, and Darros managed to survive the enemies from the two unblocked fortresses up north, and Palla managed to one-shot the original northwestern wyvern when it came after her...

...but Sirius was unfortunately doubled to death by the left southern wyvern from his unfortunate spot near the rear of our little huddled-up group, and now I've lost one of my fliers. Admittedly the worst one I had, but still.

Also this means I can't save Nyna, which... ouch.

Also...

I'm pretty sure that ambush spawn wasn't in the original game.

And can we just take a second to appreciate just how badly this entire section would've ended if I didn't have someone who could tank multiple fire dragons a turn and one-round them without a slayer weapon? My units are sitting ducks hogging these forts in case there are more of those fuckers, and the charging fire dragons to the west are almost on us.

And that's to say nothing of what would have happened if Marth had been in the wrong place holy shit.

Seriously, do these people think it's fun, knowing that wyverns exist and that they could come flying out of any fort, on any map, at any time?

Because that is the fucking pandora's box that these units have opened by their mere existence in a game with ambush spawns.

Hell, I'm not so sure I'd be okay if these guys existed in a game without ambush spawns!

Also, uh... quick thought...

...How much stronger are these fire dragons in Lunatic and, more importantly, Lunatic Reverse?

Because I'm starting to wonder how the fuck you're supposed to player-phase these guys who nearly one-shot half my army on hard, have 1-2 range, and have permanent vantage.

...Ugh, let's move on.

...After promoting, and after using that angelic robe, Yumina's actually got comparable stats to Merric. I should probably give her a tome so she can fight.

...So I just beat the boss with minimal hassle, my entire army sitting on every nearby fort in case the game decided to fuck me again, because it's apparently decided that's fun.

Alright, so here Xane talks about the “newly-born” Tiki, sealed in the Fane of Raman after Naga stopped the earth dragons.

I would be very curious to know what the Japanese word they use for “newly born” was, because it doesn't feel right to interpret that as implying she was born after the infertility thing. Unless it was slow and she was just the last child to be born to the last dragons to lose their fertility.

My point is the rest of the text of this chapter makes it pretty clear that the dragon race is going extinct. That they can't have children anymore, and they're also slowly losing their minds, so the dragon race has been slowly dying out over thousands of years. If Tiki's birth is supposed to mean that infertility stopped being a thing, the rest of the context of that conversation just flies completely in the face of that. So I'm guessing the original Japanese text didn't literally say “newly born”. Probably more like “recently born”, and “recently” in a dragon's way of looking at things.

Also, I notice this translation explicitly uses “her” for Naga, so I'm assuming this translation patch came after Awakening.

The game isn't clear which stat is being tested here for yet another “your stat-dick is so big, Dakota-Sama” conversation, but it's probably either Dakota's defense or his HP (which he recently maxed at 60), because he's completely unphased by the heat.

They say “strength”, but like, he's already been tested on that I'm pretty sure.

And then...

...Belf... comes by?

This is completely out of nowhere. Who the fuck is this? Why is he here? This is... this has got to be the most completely pointless...

...Oh shit.

...These are sable knights.

Was Camus their superior, the one that they said told them to “protect the weak, regardless of their nationality”? Given Gaiden, the timeline doesn't really add up there, but...

...Did I miss dialogue because Sirius just died?

At any rate, having three new units, not one, but three, is kind of appreciated at this point. I have to assume these guys were added as filler units in what was originally a massive drought of new recruits. I'm assuming that's also why Darros and Jake were specifically put here, even though it meant having Darros go back to a life of banditry, which Marth called him out on. Seriously though, why would this be the best place for Darros to make a living if he felt forced to go back to crime? This molten wasteland!?

...But regardless, that's it for today.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'm pretty sure that ambush spawn wasn't in the original game.

They weren't. FE3 had reinforcements come out only of the three forts behind the starting position. I made a fun challenge for myself of getting to the throne between before the reinforcements could engage me. For FE12, the Fire Dragon Graveyard, or Flame Barrel, whatever you want to call it, became my personal crematoria.

I hate this chapter. Plain and simple.