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


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2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Also, incidentally, Caeda is now my sturdiest fighter. For some reason, defense growths are really low in this game, and the best anyone who can promote can hope for is 20%.

Whilst not as low, I have noticed that Def growth tends to be significantly lower than Str (Mag for mages)/Skl/Spd/Lck on the whole. This is not just an Archanean thing.:

  • Thracia 776:
    • Only 5 units: Marty, Brighton, Kain, Alfred, and Ralph for Def growth > 30.
    • For physical units only 7 units Eyvel and Dagda (bad growths everywhere), Marty, Ronan, Lara, Nanna, and Selphina have Str growth < 30.
    • For Skl, it's 7 units E&D, Orsin, Halvan, Marty, Brighton, and Lithis who have Skl < 30.
    • Only 5 units: E&D, Marty, Ralph, Dalsin, have Spd < 30.
    • There are 10 units: Eyvel, Ralph, Ronan, Safiya, Brighton, Dalsin, Alfred, Lithis, Salem, Schroff, Conomor, have Luck < 30. 
  • Binding Blade:
    • Only 5 units: Bors, Lott, Barthe, Fae and Karel (big exceptions these two!) have Def growth > 30.
    • Only 9 units: Marcus, Merlinus (exception!), Zelot, Fir, Larum and Elffin (exceptions!), Niime, Dayan, and Juno have Str < 30.
    • 14 units: Marcus, Zelot, Lilina, Barthe, Gonzalez, Larum and Elffin (exceptions again), Bartre, Perceval, Igrene, Garret, Sophia, Niime, and Dayan, have Skl < 30.
    • Only 9 units: Marcus, Ellen, Wade, Zelot, Barthe, Cecilia, Garret, Niime, and Dayan, have Spd < 30.
    • 19 units: Marcus and Zelot (you know, they seems like exceptions everywhere), Saul, Astolfo, Barthe, Sin, Echidna, Bartre, Raigh, Melady, Sophia, Cecilia, Igrene, Garret, Hugh, Zeiss, Douglas, Niime and Dayan (exception severywhere), have Lck < 30.
  • Blazing Blade:
    • Only 4 units: Hector, Lowen, Oswin, Wallace, have Def growth > 30.
    • Only 5 units: Merlinus and Ninian/Nils (don't really count), Legault, Jaffar, and Karla, have Str < 30.
    • Only 4 units: Dorcas, Marcus, Hawkeye, Wallace, have Spd < 30.
    • Only 7 units: Kent, Lucius, Canas, Heath, Harken, Jaffar, Renault, have Lck < 30.
  • Sacred Stones:
    • I count only 6 units: Seth, Gilliam, Ephraim, Gerik, Duessel, and Myrrh (but doesn't really count with 150) as main game units with Def growth > 30.
    • Only Garcia has Spd growth that is < 30.
    • Only Rennac and Tethys (doesn't count) with Str < 30.
    • Only Natasha, Saleh, and Tethys Skl < 30.
    • Only 7 units: Seth, Moulder, Artur, Kyle, Rennac, Duessel, and Knoll Lck < 30.
  • Eyeballing it, the Def growth vs. other non-HP (always higher) or Res (generally lower not on mages, but ) gap remains in PoR. But it appears to shrink a little, with some higher Def growths while Str/Skl/Spd doesn't increase as much to keep the gap the same. And the Lck-Def gap disappears.
  • RD I can't get a read on, but it seems if anything the gap growths again, though the minimums if not the average on Spd growth, seems to go down.
  • SD brings back the Def gap in full force, being a remake with generally more or less the same growths for most units.
  • New Mystery has the Def gap, but I think there are more units as a percentage of the pie who punch above that 30 growth soft ceiling than in SD.
  • Even Awakening has the Def gap regarding Skl/Spd vs. Def. And it disappeared again in Lck, and for the first time is almost gone in Str.
  • I don't think the Skl/Spd vs. Def gap goes away until Fates, more so for Conquest than Birthright. The Str vs. Def gap is pretty much gone in both too, but it reappears in some measure in Lck. And for once, the HP vs. Def gap is much much smaller.
  • SoV's growths are very uniform outside of Res, and OG Gaiden isn't much different. I'd say the gaps don't exist here.

 

This begs the question why Def tended to be so down, and other growths so high? Some thoughts and musings:

  • Str is how you hurt things, having it high means you can kill things faster. Higher Skl makes your attacks more accurate. Higher growths here speeds up FE play, by making you defeat enemies faster with fewer whiffs of frustration.
  • Higher Spd does create problems in the GBA and Tellius eras with dodgetanking, but for Archanea and less so Thracia, that doesn't work. So excess Spd does little, once you can double everything with the weapons you want to use, more Spd only marginally improves survival.
  • Lck has a minor effect on things on the whole. It blocks crits, which isn't usually too bad since enemies usually have no Killers, crit bonuses, or high Skl. And the secondary boosts to Hit and Evade are only that, secondary. No character can be broken with high Lck alone. A higher growth here does nothing crazy.
  • Def is low I'd say, because it means you can't mindlessly tank everything? High HP can be plummeted quickly if not backed with good Def or dodging, so keeping that stat high is fine for balancing the durability of units. A 25 HP-0 Spd-20 Def unit on the other hand, will normally die much slower in FE than 40 HP-15 Spd-13 Def, to conceive of a hypothetical.
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24 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

 

  • Def is low I'd say, because it means you can't mindlessly tank everything? High HP can be plummeted quickly if not backed with good Def or dodging, so keeping that stat high is fine for balancing the durability of units. A 25 HP-0 Spd-20 Def unit on the other hand, will normally die much slower in FE than 40 HP-15 Spd-13 Def, to conceive of a hypothetical.

Yes, they really don't want you to have too much defense, this is why i want much more magical enemies, and i think enemies that target either def or res, wichever is lower, should be considered too. As it is defense allow to solo map with no effort if it gets Ahead of the curve

 it's one of the reason armors are crippled with 4 different weaknesses(low mov, low speed, low res, anti armor weapon existing), to make up for the fact that they can take 0 damage (the other reason is that they don't want to make the fight againist the obligatory general that sits on a throne a 10 turn slugfest.)

I think they really need to eventually adress it in some way because if a stats can't be allowed to be high or else it break the game then we have a problem.

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@Interdimensional Observer

@Flere210

Really, the stats have a pretty big value inequality problem in general, especially skill and luck. I don't know why, but when they remade Shadow Dragon with its outdated one-for-one hit formula, they seemed to get it in their heads this was an improvement, and have been nerfing the hit and evasion formulas into the ground ever since. But really, they had it backwards. To make 5 points of skill as valuable as 5 points of defense, they need to make hit and evade triple your skill and speed, maybe even more. Instead it's been 1.5 times in the 3DS games and even straight back to one-for-one in Three Houses, which... I don't even know what they were thinking there, given they had to double the stat bonus of rally dex and other such dex boosting skills to make them even worth the slot.

As for Defense, really if they want to make it harder to stonewall, they don't have to make worse defense growths. They just need to boost weapon damage.

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3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Instead it's been 1.5 times in the 3DS games and even straight back to one-for-one in Three Houses, which... I don't even know what they were thinking there,

What?

I don't have 3H yet, but this was totally uncalled for.

Awakening was fine concerning dodgetanking, thanks to the 2 RN hit formula, I don't recall it being broken or underpowered there. Pair Up unit snowballing and Nostanking did the gamebreaking, not Lon'qu on his lonesome. 

Fates and SoV on the other hand greatly curtailed dodgetanking with the 1 RN hit formula, to the point where it was thoroughly situational. A Swordmaster could possibly dodgetank in Fates, but only against certain enemy types- Axes and Bows with a regular katana, Lances and Daggers with a Dual Katana- and generally always Tomes, but generally never Swords. An SM could never dodgetank against everything at once, so you had to carefully pick which enemies to fight with it; or so things were in my experience. SoV limits dodgetanking to its massively avoid-providing terrain, and not against magic.

I can see how dodgetanking isn't something the developers want to be commonplace. Higher Def/Res only reduces the damage you take from attacks targeted at the corresponding stat. Dodgetanking nullifies attacks altogether, regardless of whether it is physical or magical.

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5 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

What?

I don't have 3H yet, but this was totally uncalled for.

Yeah, while the actual hit and evade stats are roughly comparable to, say, Fates, at least for certain characters, it's mostly due to skills. Which, of course, makes the skill stat (now called dex) borderline useless and rallies now have to boost the stat by eight. This game doesn't even add luck to your hit or evade in any capacity unless I'm somehow very much mistaken. It literally uses the exact same hit and evade formulas as Fire Emblem 1. For the NES. The game I am currently playing.

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When dodgetanking is good we get Forseti. All defensive stats became too strong if the player get them to a large enought number , but  the way it's handled is asinine. For speed they could employ disgaea's "nick" a middle ground between hit and miss that deal greatly reduced damage, while for defense, they can replace the armor effectiveness of armorslayers and hammers with a luna effect, or a "ignore x point of defense" if halving is too much. Wich imo is better than more might because you don't get enemies that can oneshot the whole army just so they can be a threat to Oswin.

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Dark Dragon Day 3 : Chapter 4

So now we’ve gotten to the combat preparation menu! And I don’t see any options for item trading, so I’m going to be keeping a few units I wouldn’t normally use just to empty out their inventories into the storage. Which means that, of the dead weight I still have to take with me, the ones I’m bringing are the ones I have no desire to ever use again, those being Bord, Cord and Darros.

…Curious that the game seems to give no indication whatsoever about where your units start. Normally a big empty space would be a clue, but… this game has multiple of them. Per map. Thankfully I do already know where you start on this one. Also, the fact that you can’t control where units go on the field, at least not in any clear and intuitive way, is annoying, but we already know this game is getting an F in usability, so really it’s just a question of observing how much that would help and if the game was designed with this limitation in mind.

Well, for one thing, having more of my units in range of that thief near the start who I think is planning to burn what I think is Merric’s village to the ground. would have been nice, but at least I got two who could chase him and had more than one turn to intercept him.

It’s interesting how a lot of enemies don’t start at the places they’re going to stay put and guard. They spend the first turn moving there, and then wait until you arrive. Curious design choice, and I wonder why they did it, since it seems to serve no practical purpose at the moment.

I’m noticing that there still isn’t a “shop” on the map, though I think that’s the arena I see up there. Since I’m pretty sure I get Merric this map, I hope I don’t have to waste his excalibur to train him for too long, especially since in this game, magic attack is entirely dependent on the power of your spellbooks. But also, I’m just curious if this game even has “shops”, or if it’s just that armories sell a lot of different things.

Okay, so turns out the unit menu lets you double-check to make sure everyone’s moved, so there is that.

And here we have my first instance of screwing up and only surviving due to dumb luck. I forgot that archers and knights have the exact same movement range in this game, and accidentally got Abel in range of the knight guarding the bridge in addition to the archers. I checked and, sure enough, had Abel not dodged, he would have taken just enough damage to die. Gotta be more careful from now on.

Also, yes, that building was in fact an arena. Won’t be using it because at this stage in the level it’s too risky, even if I am curious how it works in this game.

I’m getting a shitton of gold in this game, without anything really pricey to spend it on except those awesome bowguns in the first few maps. I’m wondering if it’s a trap and I’ll have to pace myself during a gold drought. At any rate, since there’s nothing to buy, I’m not buying much except stocking up on basics so I’m not caught off-guard by low supplies.

Turns out my fears about wasting Merric’s excalibur were unnecessary, since he starts with a “freeze” tome too. Time to test him out on the boss, who he can just barely double at base with freeze!

…Interesting. Seems that spells don’t waste uses when they miss in this game.

Well, after giving Merric the kill, I’ve won the map! unfortunately the silver sword I got went straight into storage because this game doesn’t let you choose which item gets stored when you get too many. But with that, chapter 4 is done!

Day 3 bonus: Chapter 5

Yeah, screw it, I’m still having fun, even if it is a bit slow right now.

As Glennstavos helpfully explained (and as I’ve kinda noticed is a pattern in FE games), the newcomers in this chapter have significantly reduced my deployment slots, to the point that this time I actually have to leave useful people behind. Bord, Cord and Darros are benched pretty much forever now, successfully unloaded of their equipment last chapter. But I wound up having to ditch Navarre in order to bring Merric, and unfortunately not everyone in this chapter is going to be as useful as Navarre.

While Nyna looked like a stronger, more impressive regal figure in the remake, I think she looks pretty great here. Definitely one of the better portraits.

I just re-checked growth rates, and apparently Cain and Abel’s growths are the opposite of their bases, with Cain having better speed growth and Abel better strength. Which is weird, because Cain’s gotten way more strength and Abel’s gotten slightly more speed. Anyway, Hardin seems like the only one of these new characters I’m getting who’ll be worth using, so as soon as there’s a lull in the action, these guys are dumping their gear in storage or on someone who can use it, and then they’re benched.

Okay, I’m looking at Wendell, and holy cow are his bases insane. I don’t think I gave this guy a second look in the remake, but here, considering that the caps in each non-HP stat are 20... 10 wpn lvl, 8 defense and 14 speed is really, really good. Especially since he’s a healer who can actually level up like a normal unit. His base defense is on par with my main physical fighters for this point in the game. His growths are pretty lame except for wpn lvl, but given his high bases, the low caps, and the low statistical demand of magic in general, I think this guy might be a mainstay for a long, long time.

Alright, so now we’re getting to the part of the game where enemy encounters are starting to get dangerous. I could easily get Hardin out of this by using the others as meatshields, but I want to get all the characters I can for the sake of it and see if I can go through this with no deaths. As such I had a tiny bit of a fight on my hands getting the cavaliers out of the forested mountain pass between them and the main army, given that there were a bunch of thieves, archers and a knight close by. I managed to kill enough to guarantee survival for all involved, barring criticals, thanks to chip damage from Sedgar, a kill by Hardin, and Abel (who’s turning out to be far less useful than Cain right now) just barely managing to one-round an archer.

Meanwhile, Wendell’s insane attack speed and magic has made it difficult to take care of the reinforcements with him. I managed to clear most, but a cavalier and pegasus were safely inside Wendell’s covering fire by the time it was my turn, so I had to let the units traveling in between the eastern and western flanks take a hit to keep moving forward.

Unfortunately, it looks like Marth can’t recruit Wendell. Either I have to wait for Wendell to recruit himself, or I’m mis-remembering and it needs to be Merric. Guess we’ll find out at the end of this turn, but thankfully he can only do 12 damage at most.

Aaaand yes, he does recruit himself.

Anyway, turns out the shops still aren’t selling any spellbooks, but they are selling javelins and bowguns again! I’ll be buying more of them just in case because I’m rolling in money.

…The castle guards move. Or at least the unnamed one does. That could have been bad if I had been counting on his immobility to keep Abel alive. Hell, it could have been bad if he had a different weapon.

Honestly, it is getting to be a serious time sponge that only Marth can visit villages. Seven movement never felt so slow.

I was just finishing up after killing the boss and having Marth make his way from the village to the storage unit (for the dragonstone so he can give it to Bantu) and then to the castle when suddenly: ambush spawns! Hooraaaaaaayyyyy…. Thankfully nobody was in range, but still… this is going to be even less fun than in Shadow Dragon, given how slow gameplay goes. Still, the reinforcement unit isn’t very powerful, so it seems like as long as I approach forts with a good, sturdy, full-health unit, I should be fine.

Aaand I beat the level. There’s something funny, again, about the cheerful bluntless of some of these lines. “Welcome, Marth! Princess Nyna will be with us shortly, but while we wait, can you please clear this place out of the enemies that have taken over?” NEXT STORY.

Alright, now I’m starting to get the first few warning signs that I’m not gonna have as much fun with this game later down the line. But at least for now, spirits are reasonably high. Tune in tomorrow for Chapter 6!

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Dark Dragon Day 4: Chapter 6

So, first red flag for this level: in a game where apparently stolen items can’t be retrieved from thieves, all of my cavalry wound up, due to the luck of the draw I suppose, in the back row of my army. Guess I’m going to have to finally break out that warp staff, probably multiple times.

I first warped Cain, who currently has the best combined strength, speed and defense of my three main cavaliers (and in fact isn’t beaten by Hardin or Abel in any one of those stats), to the upper area with the knights and archers, and had him take out the healer on player phase with a javelin so he could counter and hopefully kill the archers on enemy phase and at least damage the general. This didn’t entirely work since he missed one attack on the first archer, but it worked well enough that he can retreat to cover the northeastern entrance the cavaliers are barreling down and intercept the northeastern thief while still getting out of the archers and knight’s way so that Barts can come in and finish them off with a hand axe. Unfortunately if he tries one-rounding the cavalry they’re going to kill him since one of them has a silver lance. So I have to have him stall for time with an iron sword before calling in reinforcements with a third warp. But for now…

My second use of the warp staff is that I have Caeda intercept the lower thieves, and while she amazingly has enough speed to double thieves with a javelin, she unfortunately is one power short of one-rounding them. She could have done it with an iron or silver lance, but due to the way the thieves moved, she had to do it at range to still guard the chest from the other thief. Thankfully though, that was enough to make him retreat for healing.

I got absurdly lucky on enemy phase. Cain both dodged and critted, meaning he got to reap the benefits of both playing it safe and risking death to save time. Unfortunately his level up was pretty mediocre. Still my best cavalier though.

After having Caeda distract the knights with her bizarre bulk (not something I would ever say a lady has in real life) while the rest of my army finally catches up to the remaining thieves and intercepts them, I’ve managed to secure all of the chests, and I’ve started to enjoy the contents.

First of all, 10,000 more gold. And still nothing cool to buy with it, and yet again, no magic for sale. Out of curiosity I checked the shop lists on serenes forest and discovered vendors don’t appear until chapter 8. Thankfully I’ve been conserving Merric’s magic use by only having him finish off enemies or fight things only he can do real damage to (like knights). One thing I also noticed is that this game awards non-kill XP based exactly on how much damage you do in a round of combat, which is curious. And actually means that prepromotes gain just as much exp from chip damage as other units, sometimes even more given that they’re stronger. I just realized I haven’t actually given a prepromote kill exp yet. I’ll have to give it to Wendell at some point to compare.

Funny enough, just a sudden observation, nothing’s screwed Gordin over more than his slow movement speed. He’s almost always been lagging too far behind to get in on the action. The few times I’ve been able to use him for something he’s actually been useful, mainly because Bowguns are really great.

Update on that prepromote experience thing: turns out that tier 2 units seem to get exactly the same amount of exp per kill as tier 1s. Interesting, but I’m not keen on using that as an excuse to promote early. In my experience that’s never a good idea so much as it’s sometimes a bad idea you can get away with for the sake of efficiency. Not here though. I’m just trying to do things right the first time, and I need all the stats I can get for that.

Caeda held out just long enough on knight-tanking duty for Jagen to take over for her as Merric arrives to take out the knights from behind his cover.

It occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve seen Jagen fight. Paladin attack animations are pretty cool, actually. I’m reminded a lot of the GBA games, which I liked the most when it came to attack animations.

The second chest had a physic, which will be really useful, and the third had an armorslayer, which isn’t quite as useful since we already have one, but is still nice.

Ricardo, just like in the remake, has no lockpick of his own. But I have still been able to use him to shave a little bit of time off the chest clearing by positioning himself to do a sort of bucket brigade with the lockpick to dart towards the next chest.

So I finish up the map and the last few chests have a killing edge and angelic robe. The boss had Ricardo’s lockpick apparently, which unfortunately I have to store. I am not walking Ricardo all the way back to the start of the map to get it out, so looks like I’ll have to use him next map just to make sure he has a lockpick on him right away next time I have to use him to raid some chests.

But with that, the map’s over! The beginnings of these maps are still pretty fun. It’s really just that they slow down a lot towards the end because they take so long to navigate and there’s not a lot to do after the initial burst. I know I’m practically asking for reinforcements by saying this, which I know this game won’t do well, but I am glad that later games at least figure out how to keep the map consistently engaging.

Yet again this translation tickles me. The end chapter dialogue can basically be summed up as. “Hi, I’m Nyna. My country’s job is to protect the world from evil, but we tried it and we sucked. Please do it instead."

And now I’m given the Fire Emblem, which in this game lets me unlock any chest in the game for free. Which, I have to admit, is one of the more useful things the Fire Emblem’s done in gameplay.

So, the game’s a bit slow, but honestly, at one chapter a day, I still really, really don’t mind playing this, and that’s a very good sign for this journey, because in general the games, for the most part, only get better from here.

Edited by Alastor15243
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3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

So, first red flag for this level: in a game where apparently stolen items can’t be retrieved from thieves, all of my cavalry wound up, due to the luck of the draw I suppose, in the back row of my army. Guess I’m going to have to finally break out that warp staff, probably multiple times.

I'm not sure if it applies here, but maybe the FE3 positioning manipulation applies here?

First, note how everyone is positioned in the deployment menu. Then, note where they show up when the battle starts. Afterwards, compare the two sets of data. If Cain was third not-Marth character in the deployment menu, and appeared in the lower leftmost spot, mark that as "deployment spot three" on a piece of paper. Similarly Barst is seventh not-Marth deployed on the list and shows up just to the right of center, mark that as the 7th deployment spot. Do this with everyone.

After doing all that, unselect everyone, and then leave the deployment menu. Enter it again and select who you want for slot 1. Leave the menu after choosing them, and then enter again and select your choice for spot 2. Repeat until everyone is where you want them to be.

Again, I don't know if it'll work. But you could try. It'd be slow if it did, but better than nothing.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Update on that prepromote experience thing: turns out that tier 2 units seem to get exactly the same amount of exp per kill as tier 1s. Interesting, but I’m not keen on using that as an excuse to promote early. In my experience that’s never a good idea so much as it’s sometimes a bad idea you can get away with for the sake of efficiency. Not here though. I’m just trying to do things right the first time, and I need all the stats I can get for that.

Correct on experience earned being the same between promoted and un-promoted units, or any units regardless of level. In fact, if you check an enemies' stats, you will see how much exp points you earn for the kill. I can also see you've discovered that battle experience equates to how much damage was dealt in that round. That light bulb didn't flick for me until at least halfway through the game lol. So if you want to squeeze the most exp possible out of enemies in FE1, the tentative strat is to have somebody be just shy of one rounding an enemy while somebody else swoops in for the kill. An enemy with 20 HP that grants 32 exp upon death will have given your party up to 51 total points of exp.

As for how FE1 fits into the discussion of "should I promote early?" It's a little silly. There's no promotion bonuses besides movement. Mercenaries in fact don't even gain that much. Only an easier time crossing river tiles. And a lot of your units will have no choice but to wait for level 20 since the game is in no hurry to give you those promotion items. Two of the five varieties won't appear until the final quarter of the game, in fact.

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I'm not sure if it applies here, but maybe the FE3 positioning manipulation applies here?

I would hazard a guess this works in FE1 also, though I don't recall ever successfully using it. I just too the game's placements of my units as Naga's will. In FE1, no units are preselected, you manually must highlight the units you want from the roster, so I wouldn't be surprised if your first choice was placed on the same tile each time, and so on so forth for choices 2, 3, onward.

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10 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

There's no promotion bonuses besides movement.

Actually, I think there are, from what I've heard. But, it's like SoV, it raises the stats to the promoted class's bases, otherwise you get nothing. But those bases are really low, and growths aren't so much.

And there is apparently a Bantu glitch, where using any promotion item with him causes his stats to skyrocket.

 

10 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

so I wouldn't be surprised if your first choice was placed on the same tile each time, and so on so forth for choices 2, 3, onward.

Even if that were the case, if you were flexible with who you fielded, you could still get a little unit placement manipulation. Swapping Abel for Midia could maybe move Lena to a more favorable starting position, if Midia was "below" her on the unit roster, and Abel was "above" Lena.

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15 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Correct on experience earned being the same between promoted and un-promoted units, or any units regardless of level. In fact, if you check an enemies' stats, you will see how much exp points you earn for the kill.

That’s what it means? That’s actually really cool. I thought it was just some kind of weird thing like I’ve seen in a couple of old strategy rpgs where enemies still gain exp for some reason.

Dark Dragon Day 5: Chapter 7

Oh goodness does Minerva look awesome. I can’t wait to get my hands on her, she’s going to be great. Honestly, I don’t think any game has made me gravitate to mounted units more than this one, simply because of the pacing issues. I think I may be using every pegasus knight the game throws at me depending on how things turn out.

Looks like the enemy AI is even more dated than I thought. Either these archers are programmed not to move, or the game doesn’t care that they could attack Merric from one particular space, because the mercenary decided to move into that space first.

I brought Gordin into this mission against my better judgment because he’s an archer and I don’t remember (or technically just don’t know, since the remake might have done this differently even if I did remember right) if all of the fliers retreat when Minerva and the pegasisters do.

…Turns out they don’t, and Lena sees her first round of combat against a motherfucking dragon rider. Thankfully she survives, but that could have been disastrous. Shame on me for putting too much faith in my memory of a remake though, that wasn’t really the game’s fault. If I had been playing this blind I would have tried to set up a defensive formation and just been relieved when I only had to fight her three mooks.

Caeda’s getting to the point where she’s just barely one-rounding enemies with a silver lance. She’s still definitely in the top half of my most useful units though. And hopefully she’ll get a bit better eventually, especially once she’s a dragon rider.

Gordin at last managed to make himself useful by eviscerating a dragon rider. …With help from Wendell. Speaking of whom, I finally decided to split the healing staves between him and Lena so that I have more options and so they can heal each other.

The Thieves are getting surprisingly bulky at this stage. And I’m getting nervous because the place where I’m fighting them is giving me flashbacks to the ambush spawns in Shadow Dragon, and the ages of wondering “is it over?” before I could finally proceed. And apparently if you ask that question in this game, the answer is no. They’re never over. Because ambush spawns are infinite in this game. Jesus. Well, I’ll just have to use Caeda to help plug up the fort across the mountain. Good thing she got some lucky defense level ups, because I think this is going to be a regular job for her.

Okay now the game’s just fucking with me. The reinforcements aren’t showing up when I approach. Which means if they're going to show up at all, it's going to be when I'm well and truly deep into their territory. I have to just plug up these fortresses and proceed with caution.

Okay now that’s weird. I just got Bantu, and when he got his fire stone back and equipped it, suddenly that made the music change from normal to “victory is near” mode.

The victory is near song, speaking of which, is really starting to get on my nerves, because half the instruments cut out half the time due to sound effect overload, and it sounds way worse while playing than the normal map theme does.

But back to Bantu. It's my understanding that the remakes really, really, obscenely nerfed the guy by making his dragonstone have only about 30 uses rather than the infinite uses it has here. So I’m actually looking forward to giving him a shot if I have the chance.

Okay, I just learned, by accident, that you can use healing staves on units with full HP. Damn it, I was trying to save those until we got to a shop!

If this map does have reinforcements like it did in Shadow Dragon, I never saw them, because I plugged up each fort as soon as I could, except for the one in the bottom left corner.

Yet another minor interface thing I didn’t know used to be an issue: staves don’t change order when recently used. So I’ll have to do some complicated item sorting if I don’t want to risk accidentally having Wendell use his barrier staff every time he wants to heal someone. Thankfully that hasn’t happened yet, but…

And the award for first broken weapon in my playthrough goes to Merric’s freeze tome. It just quickly tells you it broke in the middle of battle, no signature “wah-wah for you” riff.

…Aaaaaand the reinforcements came out after I killed the boss. With anti-cavalry lances. If it weren’t for the fact that I plugged up all but one of the forts and the one that did pop out gravitated to Marth, who had literally just arrived, somebody might have died. Jesus Christ, fuck you game.

Well I won. What jolly merriment does the ending cinematic have for me today?

“Sire, today I’ll tell you the story of the manakete tribe.”

Oh really? Is that just something you do, person I can only assume is Malledus? Is this my fucking bedtime story?

Hmmm… that said however… So that’s why it’s called the Naga tribe. I definitely noticed the connection before, that nagas are a reptilian fantasy race/creature, but it never occurred to me that the other two tribes were similarly themed with names like Basilisk and Salamander. What the hell, franchise, why didn’t this ever catch on? Why have none of the evil dragons in the entire series been named Basilisk!? That’s an awesome name!

Anyway, still going strong, and I can only hope that the next time ambush spawns... well, spawn... it doesn't bring the fun to a screeching halt.

 

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2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hmmm… that said however… So that’s why it’s called the Naga tribe. I definitely noticed the connection before, that nagas are a reptilian fantasy race/creature, but it never occurred to me that the other two tribes were similarly themed with names like Basilisk and Salamander. What the hell, franchise, why didn’t this ever catch on? Why have none of the evil dragons in the entire series been named Basilisk!? That’s an awesome name!

Salamand was later reused as the name of the unseen dragon who visited Jugdral with Naga prior to sending the Miracle of Darna. According to outside sources that is.

Gaia is an unused name in the FE1's data too, it appears among those three dragon names. So it might have been another group, maybe the Earth Dragons, which would make the Mage Dragons "Basilisk" then.

Found in the data too are unused Manakete weapons named Wyvern, Gargoyle, Neptune, Salamander, Shenron, and Dark Dragon.

There also was a Telescope, which increases Vision by 5 when used, suggesting Fog of War was going to exist at some point. A Helarn Staff with 22 uses that makes weapons have infinite uses. And Dark Orb and a Time Orb (but no Life Orb).

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11 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Salamand was later reused as the name of the unseen dragon who visited Jugdral with Naga prior to sending the Miracle of Darna. According to outside sources that is.

Gaia is an unused name in the FE1's data too, it appears among those three dragon names. So it might have been another group, maybe the Earth Dragons, which would make the Mage Dragons "Basilisk" then.

Found in the data too are unused Manakete weapons named Wyvern, Gargoyle, Neptune, Salamander, Shenron, and Dark Dragon.

There also was a Telescope, which increases Vision by 5 when used, suggesting Fog of War was going to exist at some point. A Helarn Staff with 22 uses that makes weapons have infinite uses. And Dark Orb and a Time Orb (but no Life Orb).

Interesting. Thanks for the info! Honestly though, playing several games ironman has caused me to be much, much less enthusiastic about things like fog of war, so I'm kinda glad that got cut.

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I'm pretty sure the Mage Dragons are the Basilisk Tribe, yeah. It might be in FE3 somewhere? 

And good lord, that Helarn staff sounds broken as all hell, even if it was say single-use. 

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2 minutes ago, 0 Def Cleric said:

I'm pretty sure the Mage Dragons are the Basilisk Tribe, yeah. It might be in FE3 somewhere? 

And good lord, that Helarn staff sounds broken as all hell, even if it was say single-use. 

Maybe, but apparently hammerne doesn't work on any of the good stuff, like excalibur or the regalia, so if this were the same it probably wouldn't be too nuts.

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Just now, Alastor15243 said:

Maybe, but apparently hammerne doesn't work on any of the good stuff, like excalibur or the regalia, so if this were the same it probably wouldn't be too nuts.

True. Money also pours out of the woodwork in FE1, so it's not even really a super helpful money saving measure. 

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26 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Salamand was later reused as the name of the unseen dragon who visited Jugdral with Naga prior to sending the Miracle of Darna. According to outside sources that is.

Maybe (s)he was the dragon that gave his/her blood to Fjallar? Salamanders are commonly associated with fire.

Actually, how many dragons at the Miracle of Darna have known names other than Naga and Forseti?

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Just now, Espurrhoodie said:

Maybe (s)he was the dragon that gave his/her blood to Fjallar? Salamanders are commonly associated with fire.

Actually, how many dragons at the Miracle of Darna have known names other than Naga and Forseti?

I'm pretty sure that's the context where they were mentioned, yeah. (Giving their blood to Fjalar and all.) 

And I think it's just those two and Salamand. I wish we'd gotten more, I would like to know if there were any Ice/Mage/Earth dragons that were on the Nagacrew's side at the time. 

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28 minutes ago, Kruggov said:

Are you are going to play spin-offs (Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Warriors)?

Unfortunately no, since I don't have a WiiU. And they'd be graded on an entirely different system since they're different genres, so ranking them would be weird.

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Dark Dragon Day 6: Chapter 8


First major alarm bell of this map: all but two of the bow users on this map, horsemen and archers, have bowguns, which have 20 crit and really good hit. Thankfully they aren’t that strong, so crits should be meaningless if I park my tanks in front. Still, this could be tricky. I wonder if plugging up the mountain pass will work as well as it did in Shadow Dragon.

On the plus side, this map has shops galore, including vendors for the first time, which means staves and magic! This map also has a feature the other maps really should have had: a storage tent right by the boss! This will make after-battle inventory sorting a lot more convenient, rather than something I wish I could do but have no patience for.

I got two new mercenaries on this map, and I’m barely getting enough use out of the first two to justify the deployment slots, so these guys are out as soon as this map is over. They’ll be helping Jagen out with shopping duty.

Honestly, I think the biggest challenge of this map is going to be recruiting Roger, the new armor knight, without getting Caeda riddled with arrows. But I’m fairly certain Bantu is going to be key to it. Let’s try him out.

Curious how “Lalabel’s shop ♥” doesn’t have its own music. It just keeps playing the upbeat map theme music, which is fine by me because it’s the fucking best.

…It does, however, restart the music when you leave for some reason.

…Also both the vendors sell the exact same shit. …Why.

Now, as for what magic to buy, fire is much cheaper than thunder, has 100 hit instead of 90, but does 1 less damage. Now, ordinarily this would make fire the obvious choice, but in this game, how much damage you do with magic is entirely determined by what tome you’re using, so initially I was actually planning on getting lots of thunder because of this. But it’s only one extra damage in exchange for a 10% failure rate every time, so honestly I think I’m going for the cheap stuff here. Besides, I hear there’s some crazy stuff you can buy at the end of the game if you save up. Speaking of which…

…I use the angel robe on Marth and gain 9 HP. Yes, apparently the stat boosting items in this game are what we in the professional business like to refer to as “stonk bonkers” and all increase even non-HP stats by anything from 3 to 7 rather than the later tradition of 2. Considering everything but HP caps out at 20 in this game, this is kinda nuts, and I’m probably going to be using as many as I can on Marth since he’s the one who’s going to have to fight the final boss. But I may wind up having enough money left over at the end of the game to be able to buy enough to max out more than him. Assuming I can find the secret shops. I’m going to try to figure that out on my own if I can.

Anyway, seems that it’s not just the two vendors that sell the same things. It’s also the three armories. Disappointing, but the selection is still nice. Including, and here’s a shocker (except I heard about this ages ago), rapiers. Yes, you can buy rapiers in this game. I’ll definitely be getting some of those, and probably a few silver lances to make Caeda more useful.

But the first thing I do is have Jeigan get two fire tomes for Merric and Wendell each so he can ride off after them before Merric has to use more of his excalibur tome to help out with these incoming enemies.

It really looks like the best option for this map is to park someone at that mountain pass and then pick off the archers one by one. The only problem there is that depending on enemy AI, I’ll probably wind up killing Roger if I use Bant-

…Except no, because enemies retreat to forts to heal up if they’re wounded. GENIUS! Alright, so I’ll just have to make sure the cavs stall for time until Bantu can arrive. Maybe soften them up a bit if possible.

…Curious. I just bought two fire tomes, but they didn’t go to the bottom of Jagen’s inventory. He had two iron swords, and now his inventory went from

Iron Sword/40
Iron Sword/42

to

Iron Sword/40
Fire/25
Iron Sword/42
Fire/25

I must admit I am quite curious what the hell caused that to happen, even if it doesn’t have any gameplay relevance whatsoever.

Also, I think I broke the computer’s brain. So when I had Cain plug up the mountain pass, the horsemen moved in first, and I thought Cain might be in trouble because the horsemen both double and did one more damage than I thought they did (which wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t make the difference betwen a lucky critical doing 3 damage and a lucky critical doing 6 damage). But not only did the other horsemen not manage any crits after that, but one of the horsemen just moved right into one of the two open melee spaces next to Cain and did nothing, seemingly out of a desire to get as close to Marth as possible, rather than let a cavalier use that space to fight Cain. Seems that they move the enemies in a specific order regardless of sense, and that order doesn’t even seem to be “all the horsemen and then all the cavalry”, because then one of the cavalry did move into the one remaining space rather than have a horseman plug that up too. But then all of the remaining cavalry, archers and knights just… froze. The computer did nothing for what felt like eight solid seconds, long enough for me to worry that the game froze, and then poof, it was my turn again.

At any rate, hopefully Cain’s replacement for mountain-pass-blocking duty, Hardin, can hold down the fort long enough to get Bantu in position. In the meantime I get ready to ease some of the pressure by baiting some of the horsemen and archers to attack Merric, freshly handed his new fire tome thanks to a Jagen-Ogma relay, from the village you can shoot from over the peaks.

And now Bantu is safely in position. Let’s hope I can take care of these archers in time to save Roger, just in case I’m wrong about his retreat plans.

Now as much as it initially felt like it would be an issue to have a mage who can never really reach one-rounding potential late game, something tells me that defense-AND-evasion-ignoring magic attacks that can result in as much as a guaranteed minimum of 26 damage in one attack is probably going to have its uses the whole game.

…My storage is pretty much full. I may have gone overboard with my shopping, considering I’ve only used up a single weapon so far. Though that’s starting to approach not being the case at this point at least.

…Curious. Apparently the enemies are smart enough to not fight enemies they know they can’t damage, so there’s no danger of Bantu killing Roger at all. The enemy’s just stalling whenever the one space from which Merric can be attacked isn’t available. Score! Cheap and probably slow, but fuck it, it means I don’t have to do this map over! And really, I can use the time to sort out and freshen up my party’s inventory.

Marich has consistently been leveling speed, wpn lvl and HP and not much else, though he did proc one defense at one point. This is actually pretty good, as it means at level 8 he’s one wpn lvl away from being able to use every goddamned magic tome in the entire game. Some of these wpn lvl requirements proooobably should have been a bit higher, in all honestly.

…Curious. Yet again. Seems that the enemy AI, even if already triggered in chase mode, won’t recognize that there’s something it can attack outside of its movement range if it’s been stalemated. Or rather, after further experimentation, it seems that putting them in that deadlock cancels their march and puts them into “wait for approach” mode, as the archers haven’t budged an inch since the deadlock.

Merric’s burning through these fire tomes (pardon the pun) pretty fast, so I should probably get a lot of them if I plan to use him much. Which I do. But now that the critical archers are gone, time to have the cavaliers and Caeda use up their remaining javelin uses so they can pick up fresh ones and make some room in the storage!

Just got Roger. And yes, I was wondering about this, but it turns out that Caeda was always suddenly a stone-cold manipulative mastermind for this one scene. I always found it hilarious, but kind of out of place. But yeah, with that out of the way, the rest of this map should be a breeze.

Marth leveled defense no fewer than three times in this chapter. He’s getting really good in this run, and he's officially my tankiest non-armor and non-dragon. His power, speed and defense all hit 11 at level 8.

Scratch those theorycrafts you saw above about enemy AI, Something I did, not sure what, caused the archers to start marching again. Pity, that’s gonna be inconvenient, but I can still have Caeda take potshots from the mountain range if I kill the enemy, because then I can plug up the one area to attack her from with Bantu because I don’t want to rely too heavily on Marth’s AI magnet powers in case there proves to be some exception or limit to them. Meanwhile Marth covers the main mountain range and becomes even more beastly by the minute.

And now reinforcements are coming. Looks like I’m gonna have to go on the offensive now because apparently they’re never going to let up.

Okay now that’s really weird. You know how I said that staves didn’t reorder upon use for Wendell? Well apparently they do for Lena, meaning I can only assume it’s a glitch that happens when you have a weapon equipped.

That’s funny. Reinforcements showed up from another fort and I barely noticed because for some reason they didn’t move the turn they showed up. But at any rate, I’m gonna plug the other canyon pass with Roger to keep those horsemen from catching up to my squishier and slower troops and finish this map quickly.

Unfortunately my efforts to use up the last uses of the mounted brigade’s javelins failed, so they’ll have to just discard them and get new ones.

And the end battle dialogue. No real gems except that it just ends really abruptly, like it should have had one more sentence.

“Sire, it’s dangerous to go that way. But it’s dangerous because there are rumors the king is part dragon. But we must go.” CUE VICTORY MUSIC.

I’m not sure how I feel about this chapter. On one hand, it gave me a lot of questions and answers about the game’s AI, but I only really saw all of that because of how open to abuse this map design is. And really it almost gave off the impression that what I did was how the map was meant to be played, given the massive groups of enemies it would be unlikely to take out in a single turn or successfully tank with anyone but Bantu or a knight. And while setting up a defensive formation and cheesing it was kinda fun in its own way, it also wasn’t very hard, and pretty poor map design. We’ll have to see if anything else like that happens later. For now, however, I still haven’t lost anyone!

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Dark Dragon Day 7: Chapter 9

Looks like this map’s gonna start us off with yet another ultra-tight race to the treasure chests. I’m gonna see if there’s any way to manage it without the warp staff, but I’m still going to leave that open as an option as I advance. I'm bringing both thieves this time, and I’m glad I made sure to set up Ricardo’s lockpicking in advance. Actually, I just looked it up, I totally forgot his English name is Rickard. Alright, I’ll be using that from now on.

Alright, opening “cinematic” proooobably should have had some exclamantion points with all the death threats and the commands to burn and become tribute to the salamander tribe. Just sayin’. Ain’t complainin’, just sayin’.

Shoot, forgot that Julian had a “reblow” staff on him. Best I can do to make sure that gets to Lena now is to pass it to Bantu and have him double back. I hate not being able to organize items or even just adjust positioning, but I will admit that I have managed to get some enjoyment out of finding workarounds. Not enough for it to be worth the inconvenience though. But anyway, for now, time to race to beat the thieves to the plunder.

One thing I really like is that the Fire Emblem isn’t an inventory item, it’s just a thing Marth has that lets him open chests for free.

The only mounted unit I remotely managed to get near the front was Jagen, so I had him blaze a path down the northeastern road just in case Marth doesn’t make it to the village in time.

It occurs to me that in the panic of the storage crisis last chapter I didn’t buy nearly enough fire tomes and healing staves. Unless I left a bunch in those two mercenaries’ inventories.

Curious. For some reason the thieves aren’t moving just because I blocked the village with Jagen. They’re not even moving towards the completely wide open treasure chest to the southeast. Between this and last chapter, it seems really easy to confuse this AI, but I still haven’t fully worked out what the rules are with any confidence.

Anyway, I got a goddess icon from the first of the two main chests. It’s amazing how much faster this is going with two thieves.

Merric is surprisingly tanky, with really high HP stat of 28 and a passable 6 defense. I’m using him to bait in the incoming enemies.

Aaaand Caeda died. Holy shit was I not expecting that. It’s a perpetual danger when tricks are few and far between and checking for them gets too tedious, but I failed a spot check with enemy inventory. I put Caeda in range of a pirate hoping to take him out with a silver lance when I watched as her ENTIRE HEALTH BAR WENT DOWN IN ONE SHOT BECAUSE THAT PIRATE HAD A DEVIL AXE.

And this, people, is why usability is so important to me that I made it its own category. It’s not just a matter of convenience or QOL. The more obstacles you put between the player and the knowledge they need to figure out what they’re up against (not to mention the less consistently you ask them to do it), the more you subtly invite the player to stop paying attention and make assumptions to save time. And while punishing these assumptions makes it still technically the player’s fault, and thus I won’t go so far as to use the frequently-misused term “bullshit” to describe this challenge, the point is that playing the game so as to avoid these traps isn’t hard, it’s tedious. The way this game is designed, the way enemies are balanced and the way they’ve been armed, I had slowly been conditioned to the point where I found it inconceivable that any single pirate could one-shot one of my better units without effective damage, and it didn’t even trigger in my mind to spend the time to open the menu, do the math and check. Hence Caeda died due to it being a trap.

That wouldn’t have happened in Conquest. In Conquest, not only would the information necessary to know that enemy is dangerous be immediately available at a glance, but you’d be continuously encouraged to look for it, because it's not that the game sets traps for you so much as it fully integrates skills and gimmicks into the game at every opportunity as a way to augment and diversify the difficulty. Noticing that an enemy has a dangerous skill or weapon is never the challenge. That’s the setup, and Conquest makes it trivially easy to get to that realization. The challenge is then how to deal with that dangerous skill or weapon, and that pretty much always proves to be way more fun and interesting.

All that being said… time to restart and move on.

Turns out the other chest in the first area had yet another massive pile of gold. Man, this game just really piles it on, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I had Marth take care of the devil axe pirate this time. And upon re-checking, Caeda was just barely one-shot. If she had even one more HP, that would have been nothing more than a hilarious scare.

And in that village I almost got to last time is Jeorge! I think I’ll be using him, mostly because accurate ranged chip damage has its place in this game since it’s nearly impossible to reach 100% accuracy with javelins, though I must admit since I haven’t taken out the devil axe guy, he’s gonna have to earn his keep right away or he’ll be in trouble.

Unfortunately he failed to KO because I used the steel bow like a cheap bastard instead of the silver one and missed once, and Caeda risked death yet again to try javelining him to no avail, but thankfully Jagen managed a solid hit with an iron lance. And now the second devil axe is ours. Not that I’m likely to ever use it unless Barst caps luck and it’s an emergency.

Speaking of Barst, he’s gained quite a few levels so far, up to level 9 now, and hasn’t proc’d defense once despite allegedly having a 50% defense growth. Bad luck I have to assume because those numbers are usually right.

I’ve almost beaten the boss, and I’m suddenly made uncomfortably, acutely aware of how many fucking forts there are on islands. If this game starts throwing hordes of pegasus knights at me until I get Marth’s ass across the map if I beat this boss…

…Nope, looks like the ambush spawns are pirates. And they just came out eventually on their own without any gameplay trigger. Seems like it has to do with how many turns you spend. Which is kind of ridiculous, since there’s no way to make it from the village to the castle in time to not see those things, so it’s hardly an incentive to hurry up.

Alright, I managed to make it to the castle and get all the chests before things got too crazy, and the last one had a dragon sword. If I didn’t have two great mages, that might have been necessary to beat this.

And who should be at the castle but Catria! Well then, looks like I’m getting more fliers tomorrow!

Well, devil axe gripe aside, at least since the maps are so frontloaded with enemies it wasn’t a very big restart. It would have been way more dickish if they put them on the ambush spawns like those fucking knight killer lances on those cavalry that one time. Still though, definitely a problem.

But looks like tomorrow we’ll finally get to chapter 10 and get Minerva!

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Dark Dragon Day 8: Chapter 10

Ogma and Navarre are getting really close to being dropped from my team. They really haven’t been useful for much of anything lately, and this chapter I have no room for them because I need thieves. By this point I really don’t remember much about reinforcements, so I’m just going to rush into the building as fast as I can, secure everyone inside, get Maria, and then recruit Minerva asap.

First though, I brought Jagen along because his 10 move is always handy for errands, and his first job is to stop by the storage area and grab some bowguns for Jeorge. He does so, and Jeorge goes just barely shy of his full movement to make sure Jagen can reach him next turn and give them to him.

That’s odd… I wonder why Minerva is actively on the prowl. And heading towards an entrance she can’t even open. Well, if anything weird happens, I do still have the warp staff to fix stuff. But this has me rather worried.

At any rate, now that Jeorge has two bowguns, he has a reliable option for when I really don’t want to see a repeat of his terrible luck last chapter.

I used the goddess icon on Marth, and that might have been a waste, because now his luck is capped at 20 and I don’t even remember what it was before. Oh well, if I die I’ll check, but it’s not worth restarting for.

Oh no, Looks like Minerva and her fliers are chasing me from behind. They weren't headed for the door, they were headed for the cliffs beyond it. I’ll have to move quickly. As a matter of fact, given their insane movement range and the fact that I have to double back, I think this calls for warping. So I warp Marth right into Maria’s cell and recruit her. I’ll be warping in Julian to open the door and let them out next turn, so we can hurry over to get Minerva.

Meanwhile, Cain and Abel both gain really good level ups, each proccing strength, speed and defense among other things.

Seems I was wrong, and Minerva plans on just waiting by the cliffside. Maybe it’s because I recruited Maria? At any rate, I’m going to go through the front door to talk to Minerva to get her faster.

Caeda’s capped speed at level 10 and only has 5 power. She relies on silver lances to do anything useful, which is… annoying. On the plus side, Dragon Rider guarantees her a minimum of nine strength (and 14 defense!), so if I get really unlucky with that, promotion will probably help her out a lot.

And speaking of which, I finally got Minerva. But now that I’ve looked up the dragon rider bases, she really isn’t that impressive, since her stats are basically those plus two luck. That said, her growths are passable, and those bases, even if she doesn’t surpass them in any way, are still pretty good, apart from speed.

And in the chests we got a thunder sword (along with the one Minerva came with) and a second “reblow” staff. I also got a hero crest from a mercenary, but the bases of hero are pretty lame so it hardly feels like more of an incentive to use them.

Jeeeeesus Chriiiiiiist is this map long. it’s just so winding and massive that it’s taking ages to complete, long after there was any doubt I would win.

And the boss had a speedwing.

And then we just up and get it dropped on us that Linde was sold into slavery. Fun.

This map was pretty slow towards the end. Lots of empty space and lots of mindlessly commanding units to cross the map. Not the best. But now I have Minerva, and the whitewings aren’t far behind!

Edited by Alastor15243
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6 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Seems I was wrong, and Minerva plans on just waiting by the cliffside. Maybe it’s because I recruited Maria? At any rate, I’m going to go through the front door to talk to Minerva to get her faster.

From what I remember of SD and Old Mystery B1, that was Minerva's AI. She moves herself into a waiting position in the north, and then comes once Maria is recruited to speak with Marth. She doesn't offensively come at you. Which from a story perspective makes sense, she summoned you here to save her little sister.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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