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

[Alastor15243]

Day 19 Continued: Chapter 10x, Take 2

NOTE: Just a clarificarion to anyone who just clicked for the latest post: This isn't the beginning of my entry today. SF wouldn't let me post it in one piece for some reason, so the first entry got stuck on the previous page.

I got some more “How's everyone” stuff, including a defense potion and a “Ryan's bow”, neither of which I will be using until next chapter for the sake of working out how I could have done this with what I had yesterday.

What I understand is that apparently, according to Fire Emblem WOD, these guys won't respawn when killed on turn 1, so if I rush the two by the entrance with Dakota and Palla, I should have just the opening I need to get everyone safely inside the central chamber for Horace to protect them while Dakota and Palla rush the back rooms.

Oh, also, I just remembered something: I saw some of that 0% growths run by Dondon, and while yes, he did demonstrate a few chapters were a lot easier than the time I had with them, a lot of the strategies, as I suspected, are banking on trial-and-error knowledge. While there were numerous strategies I noticed that wouldn't have worked if he didn't have intimate knowledge of what order the enemies moved in, a more specific example is that he made it clear that Chapter 5, which frustrated me to no end, is actually really straightforward...

...as long as you already know that the snipers to the northeast aren't provoked just by getting into their range.

I did not, and I could not, know that by playing blind. Even though I had already been told that this was the case in the original Mystery of the Emblem, I couldn't trust this game not to do that when I had already been informed that enemy AI behaviors are subject to change depending on difficulty. Also, like I've said previously in multiple games, programming enemies to not move but still labeling them as being mobile is a serious dick move that does nothing but encourage players to be overly-cautious and then feel like an idiot when the enemies don't do anything.

Also, according to Dondon, on higher difficulties the game does have those snipers move when you get anywhere near their range. Which just opens up a whole fucking other can of worms, doesn't it? Like, what does that suggest about the design philosophy at play here? They didn't change anything visible. They changed their invisible behavior. In order for this to change anything about the strategies of someone taking on these higher difficulties for the first time after having previously done the easier ones... they'd have to have already known that the attack ranges of those snipers are practically lying to you, something you can only learn through recklessly charging into their attack ranges and hoping for the best, or by learning it from someone who did.

...It's almost like the expected way to play his game for the first time... is to not notice those enemy snipers and charge forward blindly, thereby discovering that said terrible decision has no consequences. And then the fact that suddenly this action does have consequences later is supposed to be a surprise.

I just... I can't even wrap my head around that design philosophy. Is “don't rush headlong into the attack range of a bunch of silver bow snipers who can easily kill you and might all aggro at once” supposed to be advanced strategy?

But anyway, the other reason why I want to bring that playthrough up is because I watched the preparations for 10x (I didn't watch the actual attempt because I quickly realized I should wait until I've worked this one out for myself), and... I saw him just... buying stat boosters from the base armory? The hell? I've looked both on the wiki and on the Serenes Forest resource library for this game, and I see nothing about that being a thing. Item locations doesn't say you can buy stat boosters anywhere other than a late-game secret shop, the online shop doesn't list stat boosters among its list of merchandise, and the item locations section of the dracoshield page of the Fire Emblem wiki I checked doesn't say anything about anything like what I saw.

What was he doing there? I just really want to know how to use this method of buying stat boosters that is presumably available to me, because I just checked the base shop, and no, those stat boosters aren't there.

Hey, this is future me, proofreading this later and taking another shot at answering this question, and I found it. Apparently this is a new game plus thing if you've beaten the game on Lunatic before. The prep shop just lets you buy three of each stat booster. Alright, good to know, guess that can't help me then.

Moving on...

I could turn Dakota back to a hero, but no, I'd like to keep him as a general. Once the initial wave of hammer users is gone, then as a general he'll no longer have anything to fear from these enemies, so I'd like to take this chance to get him some more defense levels to make him really good as a hero later.

Alright. Pretty straightforward. With the front two Legions dead, I've got all of my fragile units in position to escape into the central room and hide there behind Horace until Dakota can find the boss and kill him. I hear there's apparently some way to find out the real one using the L button, I'm assuming to use L cycling to work out which enemy is the first/last on the list or something, but I'm not gonna be using that, because it feels like cheating and I wanna see if my strategy is sustainable.

Now let's see if those Legions stay dead for just one turn.

NOPE! THEY DO NOT! WORLD OF DRAGONS LIED TO ME! THEY COME BACK ON EVERY SINGLE GODDAMNED ENEMY PHASE.

And this time it was Feena and Yumina who were the ones to die, and I also discover that their attack power is so psychotic that I'm not even sure they'd have survived if I'd promoted them.

So the moral of this story is just don't bring anyone more fragile than a Sherman tank, something that I could not possibly have known just by looking at the map on the prep screen.

Which, incidentally, is another reason why ambush spawns suck: they make fragile units a perpetual liability, and sometimes, as this chapter handily demonstrates, that's still the case even if you know when and where the ambush spawns happen. Because any unit who can't tank at least two hits of thirty damage each has just disqualified themselves from being capable of even setting foot inside this building. Meanwhile, Elise could probably be one-rounded by a stiff breeze, and yet I never had any problems keeping her alive.

Fuck it. New plan.

I gave Dakota the cancer shard again so that he could tank all four hammer Legions at once while standing in front of the door to Horace's chamber. Then I used this opportunity to have Horace race towards the entrance from his end-of-turn-one position right behind Dakota and form a wall with Palla and Sirius (who I've deployed and reclassed to dracoknight now that I have no reason to use Arran anymore). Now I'll just use my healers to keep this wall healthy while I have Dakota slowly pick off the bosses in back.

OH HEY! LOOK AT THAT!

I TOTALLY FORGOT!

THESE GUYS HAVE CRIT RATES!

So I have to have units strong enough to take a hit but also lucky enough to not get crit by a berserker.

Okay, left one was a swing and a miss. Let's try the middle one while praying the enemy doesn't score a crit on us.

Aaaand after a lucky crit from me, I discover it's not the middle one this time either.

Dakota's gotten crazy luck with this defense levels. As a general, he's currently at 27, damned near capping. Looks like it'll be time to send him back to hero soon. Maybe fighter so he can more easily train his axe rank.

Aaaaand right at the last possible moment, the enemy scores a crit on Sirius, the unluckiest link in the chain, opening a doorway through which the others pour, managing to kill... miraculously just Yumina, while Malicia survives due to two of them having their devil axes backfire, one on Yumina and one on her.

Alright, back to the drawing board... do I actually have enough units to create a stable wall against these guys? I need three units with a little over 30 bulk and 15 luck.

...NOPE! NOT A FUCKING ONE! Other than Dakota, I don't have a single unit who meets both of those criteria!

...Not without reclassing, anyway.

Let's see what I can scrounge up with reclassing.

Okay.

Here's what I came up with.

By reclassing Caeda and Linde to cavaliers, I've managed to give them just barely enough physical bulk that they can survive a single hit from those damned devil axes. If I use the 2-wide sides of the outdoor part of the map instead of the 3-wide entrance, that should be enough. I'll stock them up with vulneraries, have Malicia and Yumina heal them continuously from behind cover, and have Dakota march over to the back and hunt down the real Legion.

Assuming, of course, that Horace doesn't get critted to death on turn 2.

Also, I have to low-man this by one so that I have enough spaces to fit everyone behind my tiny, tiny wall.

Let's see how it works.

…

…

…

…

…

Aha.

AHA.

AHA.

So, uh, hey, guys.

Remember when I said the only way this could go wrong was if Horace got critted on turn two?

You won't believe what happened, readers.

Yes, that's right.

Legion critted Horace in that one singular turn in which he was vulnerable.

I mean I actually love that that happened. It's just the cherry on top that really fully demonstrates the totality of this map's categorical failure to be a map.

But at long last, I finally have achieved stability. With the exception of Dakota, all of my units, including a seasoned, armored veteran of war, are currently cowering behind their valiant protectors: a bookworm, and a pega-pony-princess.

The absurdity of this situation is beyond beautiful.

But as long as the vulneraries hold, which is more than enough time for Dakota to find the real Legion, nobody's going to die.

And in the five or so restarts and ten or so Dakota levels I've had to go through to get to this point, amazingly, Dakota hasn't missed a defense level once.

...Or once procced speed, amusingly enough.

And Dakota gets his final level up of this shitshow, in which he finally fails to proc defense. He's still 4 away from capping. At promoted level 7.

What was that about him struggling with defense before?

...Alright. So, I just saved. Non-ironman is the first slot, ironman is the second.

Time to do some serious thinking about which one I want to continue with.

Because holy shit.

Actually, real quick, before we finish up, let's watch that Dondon 0% growths run of this chapter and see what he did.

Ah, yes. One-turning it by save-scumming until the real Legion shows up in the right place and using the L button trick to determine which one it is.

Not knocking that, just not surprised. That honestly was what I suspected the most “reasonable” method of beating this chapter was going to turn out to be.

...Alright guys, I think that'll be it for today.

Stay safe, everyone.

Stay safer than the fragile labyrinth of my mind.

Edited February 13, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

30 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Actually, real quick, before we finish up, let's watch that Dondon 0% growths run of this chapter and see what he did.

Ah, yes. One-turning it by save-scumming until the real Legion shows up in the right place and using the L button trick to determine which one it is.

Not knocking that, just not surprised. That honestly was what I suspected the most “reasonable” method of beating this chapter was going to turn out to be.

...Alright guys, I think that'll be it for today.

Stay safe, everyone.

Stay safer than the fragile labyrinth of my mind.

The less LTC 1-turn cheese safe strat is to make sure all you units can take a single hit from the hammer Roro, don't stubbornly keep one of your units vulnerable to version of Roro with the weaker weapon, built two three units walls where only one Roro can attack each unit (makes sure none of them kill one too early and draw in a second attack, unequipping if you have to), while your best kill unit heads directly for the back Roros, then move you troops into the central choke point with you tankiest unit holding the point, while your assassin unit takes out the potential bosses. If you want to deploy a healer too squishy to survive a Roro hit you can even delay sending your assassin off to have them be part of the two human walls that let the healer reach that central room.

 

47 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Alright. So, I just saved. Non-ironman is the first slot, ironman is the second.

Time to do some serious thinking about which one I want to continue with.

Figured this was some information that might help you decide, you can get the warp staff in chapter 14, and an extra rescue staff in chapter 16.

 

[Alastor15243]

19 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The less LTC 1-turn cheese safe strat is to make sure all you units can take a single hit from the hammer Roro, don't stubbornly keep one of your units vulnerable to version of Roro with the weaker weapon, built two three units walls where only one Roro can attack each unit (makes sure none of them kill one too early and draw in a second attack, unequipping if you have to), while your best kill unit heads directly for the back Roros, then move you troops into the central choke point with you tankiest unit holding the point, while your assassin unit takes out the potential bosses. If you want to deploy a healer too squishy to survive a Roro hit you can even delay sending your assassin off to have them be part of the two human walls that let the healer reach that central room.

The might difference between hammers and devil axes did occur to me after posting this. I probably would have tried exploiting that if I had thought of it sooner, though what you're suggesting I'm pretty sure also ideally assumes you have six units, including Marth, who have passed the 15 luck benchmark. I think I have like four, and Marth isn't one of them.

Incidentally, watching the Dondon stuff made me realize that this game really loves making you exploit the FE3 SNES AI, doesn't it? The fact that enemies prioritize individual damage and not killing. It's suddenly made me realize I can't actually remember which games are and aren't like that. Also, I find it so funny that they'd build difficulty around exploiting that part of the AI when apparently the harder difficulties get rid of every other way to abuse it.

Oh, and to be clear, if my Dakota weren't bulky enough to tank four hammer blows (which it turned out he was with shards), I wouldn't have kept him in general. I had actually considered doing it earlier until it turned out unnecessary for my plans.

Edited November 18, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Incidentally, watching the Dondon stuff made me realize that this game really loves making you exploit the FE3 SNES AI, doesn't it? The fact that enemies prioritize individual damage and not killing. It's suddenly made me realize I can't actually remember which games are and aren't like that. Also, I find it so funny that they'd build difficulty around exploiting that part of the AI when apparently the harder difficulties get rid of every other way to abuse it.

Some games are like this I guess. Exploiting stupidity becomes the only way to overcome stupidly strong enemies. This came to mind recently:

Somehow, you're supposed to be able to sink a 9 unit navy, with only 2 naval units of your own, and maybe a little help from the Rocket and Artillery. This should not be possible, it just shouldn't. Bad Advance Wars AI is what makes it possible. Similarly, from what I've read (which I only played like 3 maps of, too evil) of Advance Campaign, all missions if you aim for a maximum Speed score, consists of suicide rushes to the HQ that relies on AI exploitation. 

[Eltosian Kadath]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

The might difference between hammers and devil axes did occur to me after posting this. I probably would have tried exploiting that if I had thought of it sooner, though what you're suggesting I'm pretty sure also ideally assumes you have six units, including Marth, who have passed the 15 luck benchmark. I think I have like four, and Marth isn't one of them.

Just out of curiosity, is that factoring in the +2 luck shard, or could that bring it up to 5?

 

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Oh, and to be clear, if my Dakota weren't bulky enough to tank four hammer blows (which it turned out he was with shards), I wouldn't have kept him in general. I had actually considered doing it earlier until it turned out unnecessary for my plans.

Ah I see, I figured Dakota needing help surviving the effective damage was why you were killing the hammer ones so early.

Also figured I would note how odd it is that the two Roro maps encourage actively avoiding killing enemies other than the bosses...

[Alastor15243]

15 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Ah I see, I figured Dakota needing help surviving the effective damage was why you were killing the hammer ones so early.

Nah, that was me trying to get Horace an opening to escape and stop the charging guys in back from ending the turn too close to my units for safety. I only had one guy who could attack them while standing in the building after all.

I was killing then with Dakota. Standing right in front of Horace's door let's him enemy-phase all of them. In hindsight not even Horace gets one-shot by the hammer though, I think, though a hammer and devil axe might do it, don't have his stats right in front of me.

Also, hearing all of this, if this is true, if this is a puzzle where the solution is to realize keeping the original Legions alive is in your best interest...

...Then the map is even worse than I thought, because that means the map was designed to be almost physically impossible to beat blind without casualties. You can't know the replacements are more dangerous until you've actually seen the replacements. You can't come up with a stable strategy until you've already failed it once.

That's... I honestly have to ask myself if I hate that more than literally lying about the objective.

15 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Just out of curiosity, is that factoring in the +2 luck shard, or could that bring it up to 5?

I'd have to check. That was just me ball parking, because I'm away from my computer.

Edited November 18, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Eltosian Kadath]

3 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Then the map is even worse than I thought, because that means the map was designed to be almost physically impossible to beat blind without casualties. You can't know the replacements are more dangerous until you've actually seen the replacements. You can't come up with a stable strategy until you've already failed it once.

To give it some credit, its a lesson you learn like two turns in at most on a small map, so its only the blindest of ironman runs that would have that issue. Plus Roro does hint at how pointless killing them is in his goofy dialogue, its just a counter intuitive strategy from how most people play Fire Emblem.

[Jotari]

There is an answer as to what is up with Erimiah. Not a particularly satisfying one in my book though.

[Alastor15243]

Day 19 Bonus: ???

I've uh...

...I've made my decision with regards to what I'm going to do with the rest of this playthrough.

Whether to keep going with the cursed ironman file or finish this run as a resetting peasant.

Here's my answer:

Neither.

I've decided to go with Plan C.

And yes, before you can ask, the C does stand for “Crazy”.

The events of the past two days have made it painfully apparent that this game has nothing but an almost deliberate contempt for my desire to ironman it blind, to a degree that I have not seen since my initial playthrough of Three Houses during July of last year.

This does not automatically make New Mystery a bad game.

It does, however, make me highly inclined to hate it.

I'm worried I won't be able to properly put the why of that into words until we get to Fates. The gist of it, however, is that a blind ironman is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for any given game in the series. I was introduced to the concept with a game that proved, conclusively, that it's possible to create a genuinely difficult game without in any way making a blind ironman impossible or even unrealistic. And after having played that gold standard, I can't help but be extremely disappointed when a game, deliberately or otherwise, makes a blind ironman borderline impossible, or at least impossible to be fun. No ironman should ever end for something that isn't the player's fault.

Because a challenge designed to not be beatable on the first attempt regardless of how skilled the player is... isn't a challenge. It's a cutscene.

So, naturally, this game gets a big ol' fat F from me in the ironmannability department. I'll come right out and say it. This is going below everything but Thracia, and there's only one game left in the entire series that has a chance of going below either of those games.

However... this leaves me with a dilemma.

Because every time I've given up on an ironman, it's made the playlog drastically less interesting and less fun. Especially since I often deliberately pick lower difficulties in order to make the ironman not crash and burn from the outset, and then when the ironman does crash and burn, well, I'm stuck grading a lower difficulty without the extra challenge that justified picking it, and leaving myself with an incomplete grasp of what this game's difficulty is like.

And... yeah, that's not happening here. Not with this. Not with a game with map design that tons of people seem to deeply respect, even if it's for reasons that are completely beyond me.

If I'm going to hate this game's difficulty, I'm going to hate it properly, after giving it the proper chance to show me that its way of doing things has merit.

So... so be it.

I'll play the game its way.

Not just with resets.

But with save points.

I'm going to replay the game on lunatic, the way everyone else who plays it on lunatic plays it, and see what the damned fuss is about.

Because playing it conventionally on hard isn't fair to the game, and given that the game has basically shit in my eyes while roaring “You can blind ironman in Hell!”... ironmanning it on hard isn't fair to me either.

This might take a while, but the alternative is insulting this game while remaining ill-informed about what the true depths of the game's difficulty are even like. So I'm going to do my best to get back to where we were as quickly as possible, with minimal comments on anything that hasn't changed. And I certainly won't be doing just one chapter a day.

In fact...

...Let's do the whole damned prologue tonight.

Prologue I Notes

I made the same avatar, same appearance, same stat modifiers... except this time I made him start out as a knight instead of a mercenary, because mercenary just had too much DPS and too little bulk for its own good, and that was on hard. And from what I've heard and seen, knight seems to be the way to go for higher difficulties.

...So, after a mis-click due to forgetting that “classic” attacking isn't on by default and pressing A one too many times, the result was me dying to Jagen. Also, apparently the base speed of the avatar while in the knight class, without the speed modifier I gave him, is one. But after a quick reset...

...And then three more resets at the first prologue because I got nothing but HP and luck three times in a row...

...I finally settled for one where I at least got defense, if little else, even though really I should be hoping for speed. Hopefully once we're out of the prologue and I can reclass him back to mercenary he'll get some speed levels back.

Prologue II Notes

Really, really boring. Absurdly mindless. I just had Dakota slowly chip away at Luke's HP while Luke in term kept hacking away at Ryan despite still telling Ryan to stay out of it and that only Dakota is a worthy opponent for him. And then I had Ryan and Dakota heal up to full on forts like early-game Shadow Dragon. But I wound up liking that game in spite of that nonsense, so whatever. After that, Rody was a cakewalk.

Prologue III Notes

I mimicked the strategy I saw Dondon use to avoid aggroing the easternmost fighter right away, exploited enemy AI via walling, and beat it without incident. Apart from the nearly inescapable 1-2% crit rates on damned near every enemy, there weren't many complications.

Healing up between waves is still a pain though. And I'm running out of vulneraries.

Also, I'm depending on some pretty shaky hit rates here at times.

...Fuck, I accidentally picked the dialogue option that gives you Gordin instead of Athena, and I want Athena. Alright. Guess I'm redoing it then.

It's really dumb that this shit is tied to unrelated, arbitrary questions.

But on the plus side, Caeda's boss quote based on Dakota's class is actually more varied than I rather cynically assumed during the first time through. The entire thing changes depending on what he is, not just two words.

And also on the plus side, I finally got a +spd level up for Dakota on the retry, and it was a pretty good level up in general!

Prologue IV Notes

Thanks to Dakota being much tougher here, I managed to have him wall off that little starting area. Ryan baited in the archer to keep him from getting too close to anything fragile that can't fight back, like, say, Wrys, and then the rest was pretty simple.

Dakota got a fantastic level up. Two HP, and then strength, skill, speed and defense.

Prologue V Notes

Alright, here's where things look like they're gonna start getting complicated. I wind up retreating a bit, same as usual, and I have Athena bait one of the two bandits in while Dakota baits in the other.

Let's see what the Lunatic AI does here on turn one.

...Right, the hunters advance, so I've gotta do something about that, because on turn two they basically have complete map coverage.

Ugh, I almost got it. I came up with a great strategy in a spur of the moment reaction to having Dakota go into multiple enemy ranges to see what would happen (because apparently that's how you're supposed to play this game). I wound up setting everyone up perfectly to take them out on enemy phase and then use Wrys to distract the remaining hunter from going after Athena when I sent her into a bandit range to kill a hunter... but then I failed to notice that apparently Ryan gets doubled by these hunters, so he went down. Now, of course, I could always just let him die, because it's Ryan, but no, I'm gonna see if I can do this perfectly.

...Well it looks like that was just bad luck, because now the hunter isn't fast enough to double Ryan. Yaaaaaaay.

...But then I missed a crucial attack. So now I have to restart because the player-phase part of the strategy won't work.

The hunter got 8 speed again, but this time I placed Ryan better so he was hidden behind my lines.

Dakota got everything but magic, skill, res, and his potential second HP point...

Alright, now everyone else rushes. Let's see what I can do here...

...Aaaaaand the game decided not to fuck me! The thief was tricky, since he could double most of my units, including several ones who couldn't be effectively used for any other task, but thankfully I had enough firepower to bring him into one-shotting territory between Ryan and Merric, and the game didn't make me miss any of the attacks in this potentially-disastrous player-phase gambit.

After that, the boss was pretty mindless.

...Ugh, I accidentally picked Draug instead of Ogma because the game didn't register my right input but did register my A input.

I think I'm going to regret this, but... I'm not restarting for this. There were too many places where this could go wrong if I tried it again.

...No, fuck it, I'll just write this to a different save file and keep going. I don't need both of the other saves anymore. I'll overwrite the non-ironman one because that's easier to replace if I change my mind about this before posting it. And if you're reading this, I guess I didn't.

Prologue VI Notes

First deployment menu. I bring Dakota, Luke, Wrys, Merric and Athena. I'll have everyone form a defensive line out of range of the enemy's ranged attackers, with Dakota the only one exposing two facings to the enemy, and wait for them to approach.

...And then Cecil shows up on turn one. Shit, I forgot that was turn one. Alright. Well, it doesn't change much. She'll just huddle up in the corner where only one soldier can hit her. But I might as well restart anyway to give Dakota Rody's iron lance. Dakota's only got one more use on his.

After that, this chapter's basically nothing compared to the last one. I bait in the mage and slaughter him, exploit the enemy AI to send Draug one way and the archer the other, then beat them both.

Prologue VII Notes

Alright, so, we've got a support conversation I haven't seen before, between Athena and Dakota. Let's check that out real quick and then get back to dialogue-skipping warp speed with this.

Weird how they talk about having a “war council” while they're still just knights in training. This doesn't feel appropriately vague for something that could happen either during training or actual war.

Also, incidentally, since I haven't gotten a chance to talk about Athena yet... I really like her. Seeing Petra in action made me really appreciate when foreign characters are actually shown with an accent in addition to their trouble speaking the native language, instead of just... talking like Starfire, who at least had the excuse of magically absorbing the language out of another human being.

Anyway... okay, I think I've played enough of this to conclude that yes, I am enjoying this game more by playing it this way. I can't say how much more, but no longer trying to play this game in a way that the game aggressively discourages with every fiber of its being... does seem to be improving the experience.

That is not to say, however, that I'm having more fun here than I had with Shadow Dragon. Ohohohohoho nooooooot remotely.

This might just be the short prologue chapters talking (though given my decision to use save points, proooobably not), but I feel like I'm playing a sequence of tiny micropuzzles, like something out of Professor Layton, more than a strategy game. It doesn't really allow for any of the moments I love about Fire Emblem. Like, at all. But I'll see if it grows on me.

Alright, Prologue VII, same team as last time, let's go.

...Aaand everything went fine until the pegasus ambush spawn attacked. Fuck. Well, gotta work out how to deal with that nonsense.

Right, so, Caeda's gonna park on that fort the pegasus knight came out of. She's out of range of the archer as long as Merric distracts him from heading east. I seem to remember this causing a problem last time, but it'll take me longer to look up what happened last time than it would take to find out by just dying.

Christ, I hate how complacent this is making me about how horrific ambush spawns are.

...Nope, we're fine, the archer ambush spawn showed up only in range of Merric, who I just healed up.

Merric got a great level up: magic, skill, speed and luck. Good. I'll be needing him, especially if Linde doesn't turn out as great this time.

Aaaand clear. Final stretch incoming!

Prologue VIII Notes

Well, no sense in fussing too much about prep, let's just fumble through the first turn and see what happens. I'll have Merric damage the left thief so Dakota can kill him, simultaneously blocking the bandit from attacking Merric. Merric can take one of the thieves. I just have to be careful, because holy shit are these thieves fast.

Dakota's been getting absurdly lucky with his speed growths. 11 levels and he's gained 6, with a 35% growth. He'll be in good shape when he reclasses, no doubt about that.

Yeeeaaaaah, that plan of mine doesn't work, the enemies are waaaaay too aggressive. I got swarmed by damned near half the map.

...Looks like that was a linked AI thing with baiting in that group further down. Cowering in the corner and turtling wound up bringing in a far more manageable group of enemies.

Man, Athena's ability to one-round hunters even on lunatic is insanely useful. I can't believe anyone thought Gordin was a fair trade for this woman. Why wouldn't they let us use Jeorge!?

Alright, let's see what happens if we just let the ambush spawns come to us and wait them out before continuing.

Oh yeah, also, I switched out Luke for Cain simply because we needed more turn-1 tanks and Luke's speed is dangerously slow for those thieves.

Oh wow, Dakota just capped defense. Better switch him out of knight before he just starts wasting levels. Thankfully reclassing is right after this. And the hard part is done now, because the reinforcements have subsided and I'm allllmost at the save point.

Alright, so, I know that these next enemies have linked AI with the mages. But I think I can handle them if I just heal up and do a lot of damage with Dakota on enemy-phase.

...Actually, I don't know for sure that it's all of these enemies. It could just be the silver-axe one in the center.

Sure, let's just bait in the hunter and bandit, see if that makes things easier.

...It does indeed. Only the silver axe bandit aggros the mages. So that's two fewer enemies I have to deal with all at once.

...So, maybe I should further elaborate why this playstyle doesn't appeal to me.

This is less about thinking on your feet and adapting to a constantly-changing situation... so much as it's a puzzle that you can only learn the rules of by having it blow up in your face repeatedly. Cranking up the difficulty and having it take place over much smaller intervals between save points turns it from a high-stakes adventure... to a low-stakes puzzle.

I mean, no joke, I just started playing Professor Layton a couple of days ago (not counting the Ace Attorney crossover I played a while back), and it is uncanny how similar my emotional state is between playing these two DS games. I suppose you could say I'm still entertained, but... it's just lost that “Fire Emblem” feel to me.

But anyway, I'm about to get to the save point. My first save point of the marathon.

Yaaaay.

The silver axe wave looked pretty intense at first, but doubling back to wall them in the corner wound up working just fine, especially when I let Merric get some chip damage against one of the mages by running off to the east. Everyone was set up to be taken down on player phase, with the only real obstacle being the full-HP elfire mage Merric didn't bait in. But even then, it just took a quick scan of my options, and Caeda made quick work of him.

And just as I was thinking how pathetic it was that Cecil's getting one-shot by enemies this quickly after her deployment, she goes and gets a perfect level up. Someone's putting up a fight on her trip to the bench.

I begin the slightly-annoying task of healing everyone to full before using the save tile, because I sure as hell don't want to have to do that again if I have to restart.

Ooof. Those thieves have silver swords and levin swords. The latter will rip through Dakota. It won't one-round him, but daaaamn. Well, I was already trying to avoid doing too much with him anyway. Thankfully they didn't put the silver sword thief closer to sync their ranges or anything like that.

...Ah yes, that's right, they won't move until you get in range of multiple of them. Right, let's see...

...Let's try baiting in the silver sword thief with Merric and the levin sword thief with Dakota, to make sure neither one takes both.

And the levin sword thief decides to be an ignoramus and block the space the silver sword thief could've attacked from.

Yeah, that's a no-go, we could've done way more damage if I just sent Dakota in. I misread how much damage the silver sword thief would have done.

Almost got it, but I didn't have enough room to place Wrys to heal Athena after she killed Katarina, and the remaining levin sword thief finished her off. So I'll have to work out how to fix that.

Being aware of needing that and placing Wrys closer was all it took, but I didn't even need it because Athena got a lucky crit against Katarina on her first attack, and down she went.

And now that the remaining levin sword thief can't kill anyone on the following enemy phase...

...Cecil gets the kill, and gets speed and defense, along with HP and luck. Score!

...Well.

I will concede that took me way less time than I thought it would.

Hell, I'm starting to think I could probably get us back up to pace by Monday if I play through the weekend.

...Uh...

...I guess we'll see, won't we?

Stay safe, everyone!

Edited November 19, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

If you feel like you're getting too much New Mystery, take another break if it'll help.

[Eltosian Kadath]

Well that is a dramatic change, and hopefully it makes it more fun to playthrough. I am kinda curious what you end up doing with class changing to make it out of chapter 1. I know I ended up making two major class changes to survive it (three if you count switching my MC out of Myrmidon due to capping speed).

[Jotari]

So I probably should have spoken up before but I was in favour of continuing the Iron Man run. At least one thing in this game's favour for Iron Man is that you'll never come close to running out of units with you gaining like two every chapter.

[Alastor15243]

New Mystery Day 20: Catchup Day 2

Well, I didn't get much sleep last night because my body just didn't feel like it for some reason, but sure, let's keep going.

Chapter 1 Notes

It seems the game has officially stopped doing the fucking around that it was apparently doing that whole time without me realizing.

Every single enemy on the entire map has a silver weapon.

Well, looks like I'll be baiting enemies in with Dakota and having others finish them off. Dakota's just barely fast enough as a fighter to double everyone on the map, so I'm gonna reclass him to that to see if I can get him some axe training so he can use hand axes. My end goal for his class is still hero though.

...Oh, right, he's so ridiculously powerful that now that he can double, he just one-rounds shit. Bad for training, but I've got a feeling I'm gonna need it.

I suspect that the fact that Dakota capped defense in knight means that by the time he promotes, spending time in general isn't going to do him any good for buffing his defense levels for other classes. But we'll see. At any rate, I'm much happier with how this Dakota turned out compared to the last one, at least by this point in the game.

It's weird how we've had a convoy for ages, but the game hasn't let us send stuff there when our inventories are too full until now.

Alright, enough minor smalltalk, I'm trying to blaze through these things. I'm just gonna brute force the first attempt and then work out what to do based on how that goes.

...Nope, one thing's too blindingly obvious to ignore:

Until I get across this field to that village, I'm not gonna have any healers. That is... completely unacceptable given what I'm up against.

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.

Alright, that's enough to start with. Time to flail around like a dying fish to figure out the rules of the puzzle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaL5o9JPGs0

Here's some fitting music, if you like.

...Well, so much for Draug being able to double the barbarians as a mercenary.

I mean he can, but now he's no longer bulky enough to take even a single hit from them.

That's actually the case for most of my army here, so I've gotta be careful. Only Cecil, Marth, Dakota and Arran can take even a single hit from a silver axe barbarian.

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

...Alright, I got the first turn to work, but then Dakota went and got a shitty level, nothing but HP and skill. And since we're right at the start and I've just gotten so used to resetting when things go wrong... yeah, sure, why not? Let's reset for a better level.

Man, the sheer level and stat disparity between Dakota and everyone else is utterly staggering. I feel like I'm playing Awakening Lunatic+ and Dakota is my Robin. Of course Dakota can't make two more of himself in this game, so I've gotta make sure to train up some other units fast.

Yeah, it's pretty clear that this difficulty mode doesn't give a shit about being reliable. Enemy crit rates, generally shaky hit rates... this mode was made to be reset on.

And that's actually kind of unnerving.

So, I think I've said elsewhere that I noticed that Three Houses took the completely overkill save-scumming mechanic from the game that came before it... and then added in a bunch of ridiculous gimmicks and design choices seemingly with the sole purpose of making that overkill save-scumming mechanic necessary.

And it honestly feels like New Mystery did something alarmingly similar with the mostly-superfluous save tile system of Shadow Dragon. In Shadow Dragon it was an unnecessary and weird curiosity that technically didn't affect you unless you were inexperienced enough to benefit from it... but now here, they've done everything in their power to make it a part of high level play.

Well, on the plus side, this means that we've had the series try to make save-scumming a core part of gameplay before, and it didn't stick that time. After that, they made save-scumming just a standard part of casual mode instead and we heard no more of it. So maybe the next game won't have divine pulse, just like Awakening didn't have save tiles. Or maybe they'll make it exclusive to casual mode or something. And then eventually we'll go back to gameplay that doesn't assume the player has unfettered mastery of space and time. Who knows? Not me. And honestly, I'm trying to keep my expectations low, because I can't remember the last time I got excited for an upcoming Fire Emblem game and wasn't let down.

...Alright, I think I've worked out how to do this. Most of the enemies aggro immediately, but I can juuuust barely take them all out as long as I don't need to heal Arran on player phase and still have him survive attacking one of the approaching barbarians. That way I can send Dakota into the red zone to melee the fourth barbarian and he won't be killed by the silver bow hunter because Ryan was able to heal him instead.

So I'll have Marth enemy-phase the eastern barbarian instead of Arran.

I got everything absolutely perfect, and got a near perfect level up for Dakota in the process...

...and then Arran whiffed an 81% silver lance hit and I just barely couldn't kill everyone. Then Marth died banking on a last-ditch rapier crit attempt.

Back to turn one.

…

…

…

…

I...

...have been inputting...

...the exact same character placement commands...

...for so many times that I have completely lost count. Every single time the first turn is exactly the same.

I know how to win. I'm just waiting for the game to stop telling me “Anna says no”.

Move Cecil into the range of the western barbarian, a knight's move south-southeast of the house.

Move Ryan as far as he can get from the barbarians while still being in range to heal Dakota on turn 2.

Put Gordin in that little pocket between the two attack ranges of the closest barbarians I'm baiting in so that his 5 mov doesn't stop him from reaching the further enemies.

Send Luke to hide near Cecil.

Send Draug to hide near Cecil.

Send Rody to hide near Cecil.

Fly Arran over to the little lake to the southeast.

Move Marth just barely in range of the southeast barbarian, just to the east of Gordin.

Don't move Dakota at all because he's in the perfect spot right where he is to bait the barbarian who's a little deeper in.

This exact same sequence of moves.

Repeatedly.

To the point that I just recited it from memory.

Granted, this is partially self-inflicted due to me resetting the shitty levels Dakota gets on turn one, but still, this tedium... is sounding eerily familiar.

I haven't experienced it much myself, but I have heard countless other people talk about it.

Specifically some of the people who tried to convince me that Mila's Turnwheel “doesn't actually affect difficulty at all”.

And I'm starting to actually understand where they're coming from...

...in the sense that I think the reason they feel that way is because they think that Fire Emblem is meant to be played like this.

Where the merest basic task of surviving two turns is a herculean brain-bender, and the challenge is merely finding the one or two combinations that will allow for that if Anna doesn't arbitrarily step on your balls, and once you've figured that out, there's no more challenge left because everything else is just waiting for the game to let your plan work, or constantly repeating the moves you already made so you can get back to the point where you don't know what to do next. So the game might as well give you everything you've done once for free.

...Now...

...I understand that this is almost definitely how a lot of people like to play these games, and that certain crazy challenge runs like LTCs and 0% growths almost inevitably turn into this sort of thing by their very nature...

...But as someone who has played the entire rest of the series before this in a row, and hasn't once run into a game that plays like this in normal play...

I have to strongly disagree with the idea that this is in any way the essence of Fire Emblem.

I don't completely hate it, but Fire Emblem this nonsense is decidedly not.

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”.

I can't really put into works just how wrong it feels to be playing the game this way. Even at the hardest that games I didn't ironman have gotten, even in Binding Blade and Thracia, playing hasn't felt anywhere near this rigid and puzzle-like. In previous games in the marathon, even when not ironmanning, and even with the easiest games in the series, on some level the games made me feel like a general making strategies with my army's lives on the line.

Here... I'm an immortal god solving what's basically just a crossword puzzle to me, with stakes about as high as a Lilliputian's picket fence.

I said before that I have my doubts as to whether or not Awakening can even properly be graded on my ranking system. But I'm starting to think the same about New Mystery for completely different reasons.

...Also, Christ, I'm gonna have to play Three Houses on maddening with divine pulses, aren't I?

Fuuuuuuuck. That was not part of my plan, but the decision to do this all but demands it now.

And here my plan was to take you all into my personal hell by trying to ironman Azure Moon blind on hard, so I could document exactly what that game does to you if you even try to play it with any kind of stakes. Try to show you, as close as possible, just what my original Crimson Flower run was like.

...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.

Meanwhile Luke and Cecil take out the bow user who Dakota was forced to aggro last turn.

And with that... we finally have a moment of peace to get that bullion in the cave and heal up all of my gravely wounded units before fighting the last barbarian to the east and getting Malicia.

...Christ, I just realized that Lunatic Reverse would make so much of my army completely unusable right now, holy shit.

Alright, I just healed everyone up and got to the save point.

And... wow look how many pages this is.

...Yeah I just have way too much to say about this chapter, wow, I just can't be as brief as I thought I could. Lunatic just changes so much about the experience, and I have so much to say.

Aaaaand yeah, everyone charges once you aggro in the first two. I'm gonna have to do some hit and run tactics in order to have room to fight everyone. Gotta make the 5-mov units back up so the barbarians don't catch up to them. The plan is to put Draug at the edge of the hand axe user's range, and then Dakota in front of him, so that Draug can hit and run the hand axe user, while the silver axe user will go for Dakota and die. Then he'll bait in another one while backing up, and Draug will get healed up and bait the hand axe one deeper in so we can player-phase them all.

Luke's first level up as a Myrmidon gets him everything physical but defense. Awesome start at salvaging yourself, even if you're still in one-shotting range from basically everyone.

...But yet again my strategy fucks up because Arran misses a crucial attack. Damn it.

Gordin also whiffs a pretty important attack on my next attempt, but before I can even work out if I can still salvage it, Marth makes up for it with a crit. Alright.

...Last time Luke got everything but defense...

...and this time he almost gets nothing but defense. Defense and HP. Well, that's 2 more physical bulk to survive melee counterattacks, so I guess it's appreciated at this stage of the game. But doubling would be nice, dude.

...And after killing all the enemies, I'm treated to the absurdity of a woman in Grust living on the other side of the mountains we've been doing all of the fighting across... talking about how she briefly saw Arran, an Altean knight...

...and she's saying all of this to Arran.

Let's just move on.

Chapter 2 Notes

So I got an immortal axe from How's Everyone, which seems pretty useful, especially on Dakota. It's basically a 15 use vulnerary that's also a pretty powerful axe.

Christ. Hopefully getting that lady sword isn't gonna be too much of a pain this time around.

...Thankfully, and weirdly, none of the enemies in this chapter are nearly as powerful as the ones in the last one. Luke can actually take some hits from a lot of these guys even without that +2 bulk he got!

Looks like the devs had the decency to not give the basic soldier enemies enough attack power or speed to one-shot or one-round Bord. Cool.

Let's mess around with this and see what happens.

...Alright, looks like the first few turns are gonna be pretty similar to how they went in the hard ironman, with me sending Dakota and my fliers west and everyone else east, and having Bord run northeast to bait in the hunter on turn one. But I'm gonna need to make Dakota a mercenary again to give him the movement to take out the western hunter in the forest so I can send Arran and Catria in safely to recruit Warren and kill the lady sword thief. The thief will go down turn two just like before, and my right flank still has an opening to take out this hunter before the soldiers arrive, just like before.

Alright, I thought I was fucked for a second, that my weaker army to the east had taken too much damage from hit-and-runs on the soldiers. But by using vulneraries and using Luke's inferior defense to bait away the wounded one in front who would've kept me from walling properly unless I unequipped... I managed to wall with Cecil and Marth, and then up north have Catria and Arran get the cavalry away from them. The eastern team should be able to take care of the rest come next turn.

Luke yet again fails to get speed as a myrmidon, but he got 2 more bulk again, and also strength, so... yay? I really want him to start doubling though, seriously.

These shaky hit rates really start scaring me the further I get from a save point. But thankfully this is the last turn before I'll be able to access it.

...And apparently I didn't notice that my west flank had access to a save tile this whole time, so I could've been save-scumming that bit with the soldiers and cavs. Well thankfully that wasn't necessary. Man, I've gotta start training myself to look out for those things, I haven't given a shit about where they were before.

…

…

…

...Alright, so apparently all five of these dracoknights aggro at once.

Looks like I'm gonna have to have Dakota enemy-phase multiple of them to get in some chip damage.

...Aaand done. Let's get out of here. What's the next chapter agaiii...?

...Oh. Right.

Ring around the mountain.

And the save points... aren't until you get all the way around to the other side.

...Yeaaaaah I'm not tackling this today. Sure, Palla starts near one of the save points, but also...

...Fuck this chapter. I'm not keen on tackling this tedium on lunatic right now.

Maybe I'll play more tonight, but probably not.

Stay safe, everyone.

[Shadow Mir]

Spoiler alert: You WILL need a capped speed Marth and a mage with most of their stats capped if you want to have a ghost of a chance of bating the hellhole you've gotten yourself into. 

[Alastor15243]

...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.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Until I get across this field to that village, I'm not gonna have any healers. That is... completely unacceptable given what I'm up against.

 

Glad this line came up as it allows me to voice an opinion I wanted to earlier but just didn't. Which is that they should have just let you keep the characters from the prologue. At least the plot unimportant ones like Athena and Wyrs. Not only would you have a healer from the start without having to reclass anyone, but it would make it easier in future chapters to bring more characters into the plot as they wouldn't have had to double up and recrecruit the likes of Wrys again. The person being attacked in that Gaiden could have been a different ally. I've voiced in the past my issue with the game just randomly giving you characters with little justification (and you didn't quite get to the point where it becomes really annoying in your first playthrough) so it bothers me a bit that they ignored opportunities. A lot of the tier 1 characters not in Book 2 could have been implemented in the prologue. Instead some of them are and then are just ditched for like five or six more chapters. I can see why they did it, as they want Chapter 1 to be a recreation of Book 2's chapter 1 with all the same units+Kris. But this isn't actually chapter 1. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the New Mystery Prologue isn't like the Shadow Dragon prologue. It's not skippable. It's always part of the game experience and the levels you gain in it always carry over to Chapter 1. So Chapter 1 isn't really Chapter 1. It's really Chapter 9. And by Chapter 9 I think it's perfectly serviceable if Wrys, Athena, Norne etc are all already part of your army.

[Shadow Mir]

6 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. Also, no response to my spoiler alert??

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Ouch. Also, no response to my spoiler alert??

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.

12 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Glad this line came up as it allows me to voice an opinion I wanted to earlier but just didn't. Which is that they should have just let you keep the characters from the prologue. At least the plot unimportant ones like Athena and Wyrs. Not only would you have a healer from the start without having to reclass anyone, but it would make it easier in future chapters to bring more characters into the plot as they wouldn't have had to double up and recrecruit the likes of Wrys again. The person being attacked in that Gaiden could have been a different ally. I've voiced in the past my issue with the game just randomly giving you characters with little justification (and you didn't quite get to the point where it becomes really annoying in your first playthrough) so it bothers me a bit that they ignored opportunities. A lot of the tier 1 characters not in Book 2 could have been implemented in the prologue. Instead some of them are and then are just ditched for like five or six more chapters. I can see why they did it, as they want Chapter 1 to be a recreation of Book 2's chapter 1 with all the same units+Kris. But this isn't actually chapter 1. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the New Mystery Prologue isn't like the Shadow Dragon prologue. It's not skippable. It's always part of the game experience and the levels you gain in it always carry over to Chapter 1. So Chapter 1 isn't really Chapter 1. It's really Chapter 9. And by Chapter 9 I think it's perfectly serviceable if Wrys, Athena, Norne etc are all already part of your army.

Certain units like Athena would probably have to have their joining level reduced given that she's practically the same level at base as your avatar becomes by the end, but I generally agree with this.

[Jotari]

8 minutes 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.

I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned here a few times already. Medeus's Lunatic speed stat is so high only certain capped classes can survive a round of combat with him.

[Hello72207]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned here a few times already. Medeus's Lunatic speed stat is so high only certain capped classes can survive a round of combat with him.

Hey look, it's H5 all over again.

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Hello72207 said:

Hey look, it's H5 all over again.

It's actually the same stat too, 30 speed. Though I think it's also harsher in New Mystery due to Medeus being stronger in other stats meaning even naturally fast characters can't survive one hit from him. Meaning reclassing to hit speed and defensive benchmarks is mandatory. Course I haven't played Lunatic New Mystery so I'm just vaguely going off of what I heard other people mention earlier.

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned here a few times already. Medeus's Lunatic speed stat is so high only certain capped classes can survive a round of combat with him.

I remember that mentioned a lot in Shadow Dragon but I don't remember anyone bringing that up for New Mystery.

[Jotari]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

I remember that mentioned a lot in Shadow Dragon but I don't remember anyone bringing that up for New Mystery.

Well maybe I am misremembering and conflating the two, but taking a glance at Medeus's lunatic stats, he seems like an absolute beast. Way stronger than Shadow Dragon H5 Medeus. Of course Stat inflation between the two games is a thing, but Shadow Dragon (as in his class) Medeus is ten points higher in almost every category. And almost 40 points higher in HP.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Jotari said:

Well maybe I am misremembering and conflating the two, but taking a glance at Medeus's lunatic stats, he seems like an absolute beast. Way stronger than Shadow Dragon H5 Medeus. Of course Stat inflation between the two games is a thing, but Shadow Dragon (as in his class) Medeus is ten points higher in almost every category. And almost 40 points higher in HP.

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

[Shadow Mir]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

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

They still are. The Binding Shield still banishes them, though. Unfortunately, other dragons show up as well. Even worse, on Lunatic their breath has increased range.

Edited November 20, 2020 by Shadow Mir