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Let’s Play Fire Emblem Heroes! - Myrmidons Only!


Parrhesia
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RATIONALE
Fire Emblem Heroes is a gacha game in which you recruit from an All-Star cast of Fire Emblem characters, and Florina, and take them into battle to acquire more rewards to get more heroes. I installed at launch, though it took me a few months down the line to really get into daily play - the Black Knight Tempest Trial was my first real landmark memory.

It is a very good mobile game, and extremely Free to Play friendly. That’s useful, because I don’t plan to spend a Goddamn cent while doing this LP. I figured it would be good for my experience of the game to play from the top, seee what the experience was like for a new player (in terms of resources), even go through the story 

Except that would be boring.

So fuck it. What’s FE all about? Myrmidons. Edgy ones, friendly ones, level 5 ones with Killing Edges who are your introduction to enemy recruitment. I performatively disliked the class as a tiny baby; this is my redemption arc.

We’re going to beat FEH - all Story Maps, and the Heroic Path achievements-for-beginners system - using nobody but infantry swords.

THE IMMUTABLE RULES
1. Only infantry may move or use support skills.
2. Only swordsmen may fight or use support skills.
3. Where possible, deploy only infantry swordsmen. 
Non-myrmidons can be deployed for quests, but not fight for them; e. g. Sharena can stand around as three people clear a GHB, but can’t fulfil the quest for killing the boss. They can also stand around as bonuses for the purposes of Arena, but not take part in the Defence.
4. The account may not buy orbs or subscribe to FEH Pass. If a new starter pack drops and it’s got like Christmas Altina for $6, sure. Most likely, this will be a pure F2P account, but exceptional circumstances may remain.
5. In Voting Gauntlets, I may only support my fellow myrmidons.
6. Using allied units in relevant units is permitted, so long as they are also infantry swordsmen.
Falcata's Friend Code is 4490187395; be mindful it's going to be a good long while before her fronted unit is interesting. That said, if your in-game name isn't clearly mapped to your SF name, let me know; I'll accept anyone following the thread, and reject randoms, so if I snub you it's a mistake.
7. Above rules may be broken only where impossible to avoid, or made flexible if the alternative is more interesting. Tactics Trials, most obviously. But also at some point Sharena and Anna will have to clear their Heroic Ordeals.
8. For the thread: no backseating. Please do comment, but don't tell me what to do, and certainly don't assume I don't know what to do. I have been playing for years, I clear Abyssal LHBs and get thrones in AR, I don’t need your help unless I explicitly ask for it.

Let’s do this.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACT 1 - THE ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH
There's an accounting coming, Alfonse, and you know I'm right. Emblan hordes descending. Now what are you doing to insulate yourself and your Order? You think you're rich. You've no idea what "rich" means. "Rich" is merging a +2 Mareeta because you don't need the NFU. It's an Armoursmasher on Sabre and another on Kris. So that's action item one, the accumulation of wealth, and I mean wealth, not orbs.

Scene 1: The Pitfalls of Austerity
Scene 2: Failing Inexorably Upwards

Scene 3: Rewriting History
Scene 4: Book-ends by Way of Meta Armour

Edited by Parrhesia
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Act I - The Accumulation of Wealth
There's an accounting coming, Alfonse, and you know I'm right. Emblan hordes descending. Now what are you doing to insulate yourself and your Order? You think you're rich. You've no idea what "rich" means. "Rich" is merging a +2 Mareeta because you don't need the NFU. It's an Armoursmasher on Sabre and another on Kris. So that's action item one, the accumulation of wealth, and I mean wealth, not orbs.

Scene 1: The Pitfalls of Austerity
 

Spoiler

 

So we have an issue.

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Just like the old days, FEH forces you through a couple maps of tutorial. Here is Anna. She is a law-abiding citizen.

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Here is Anna, about to break the fucking law

So our first kill is an illicit one. A hatchet in the back of an honest citizen, who deserved to be scythed down by a God-fearing myrmidon. Anna exits the tutorial Level 4, and will serve as an eternal reminder of my shame.

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Ugh. Ugh. Look at this shit! I can't work with this, Anna! Matthew's almost got a sword. He used to have a sword. But he's useless to me, too.

Fortunately, FEH provides a Goddamn Monty Haul upon account creation. It's not nearly so overwhelming as in a couple other gachas I've dabbled with, which... is a good thing, is my take. Yes, catch-up mechanics are good, but you don't want your player to be overwhelmed in New Shit. You want to scaffold. Build them up to things.

Fortunately, I know what I need.

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New players can still pick free units from the two most recent CYLs. I become the first person in the world to pick Alm from CYL 3. He is a Very Good Fighter. This makes him very dull in comparison to many of his competition on the banner - CYL Micaiah's a staple on my main account - but unlike all of them, well, he can actually fight for me, so. With no myrmidons in sight, I pick Edelgard from CYL4. We're going to need someone to lure and kill blue wizards; they're going to want Distant Ward and Joint Drive Resistance to give them as much chance of not eating shit as possible.

Yes, I have a candidate in mind. We'll get to that.

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If you haven't played FEH since the first year, you'll have no idea what we're looking at. Grails were implemented so you could get guaranteed instances of characters who you can't pull, but have to earn through beating maps or being present for seasonal events or whatever. Given the mercurial nature of pulling, there's no guarantee when we'll manage to get a fully merged unit, so it's important to pick the right cornerstone.

The first 11 here are all myrmidons. Several of them are terrible and outdated. You can make almost any unit good in FEH. Marisa is the first name on the teamsheet, on my main file. But we need every edge we can get, and also, our resources of skill fodder are going to be very limited, at least at first. I narrow it down to Astram or Nemesis - do you want your tank with pace or with resistance? - and wind up with the former.

It's going to be a good long while until he's truly relevant, though, let alone a fearsome fighter. We're going to be leaning on premium units for the start, and most likely throughout; it's going to take time and luck for our weaker units with higher ceilings (through merges and favouritism) to break through. Jagens and Ests.

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The what?

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Don't know what he's so worried about.

There's a shitton of banners around, and the first pull of every one is free. Our first five pulls are all bronze units. Our next two are golds who, gallingly, I don't have on my main and aren't myrmidons - flying Nino, on her own banner, and Echoes Catria, on... Echoes Palla's banner. Fortunately, we pick up silver copies of Athena and Marth, so there's something we can use.

I don't plan to do a deep dive on unit analysis, because the first chunk of the run is just going to be effortlessly slaughtering everything in our path. Alm and Athena do roughly equivalent amounts of Killing Everything, and it's only in the future that Athena's extensive shortcomings as a unit will hold her back.

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For now, she's doing her best.

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The completionist side of me is going to be a little mad at the amount of quests we can't do. Oh, look, kill men with archers for six orbs... ha ha, don't mind missing out on that one...

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We revamp the Castle a bit, something long-term players probably forgot they ever had to do. Making the castle prettier costs orbs, but boosts XP gain. Realistically you want to pump this up at the start, when you have a shitload of orbs, and then never think about it again. That's especially so given that we don't have anything yet enticing us to pull on it.

Fortunately, you can de-prettify your castle and keep the benefits. There's nicer-looking options than this, but how can I avoid rolling out the red carpet?

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We dip into the Arena, where we fight teams put together by enemy players. Bizarrely, we fight the same guy twice in a row on the same map - note Athena's and Alfonse's HP totals, these aren't duplicate screenshots! But there probably aren't many Arena teams out there that qualify as a Beginner challenge for four lowbies. I'm almost surprised we didn't just find a team of one level 40 guy who just dumpstered everyone.

We're probably going to have struggles with Arena later in the run, when it gets more competitive. But it's not something we actually have to succeed at, in order to beat the Story.

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Another such competitive mode is Resonant Battles... and again we're not going to do well, or need to do well. It's a great mode, one that rewards hard-hitting, mobile units. It does not reward... us, but hey, we still get an orb for participation, even if Alfonse gets pasted by Ylgr towards the end.

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We cull the stable a bit. Fodder is going to be very scarce, so I'm extra-conservative with eating units... but like, we also need the feathers, so we can probably live without meaningless dogshit fodder like Glowing Ember (we'll have Tiki for Bonfire and Henry for Ignis), whatever Matthew has, or Close Counter.

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Fun fact: even if you did not participate in the Forma event at all, you can still look at the heroes and, i guess, hypothetically spend real money on getting a vanilla level 10.
If this Forma was running, we'd be able to... well... see how far we could go with a Mareeta solo.

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Another fun fact: you can actually lose the Auto-Dispatches on Aether Raids if your team sucks badly enough lmao

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But the final and most enticing freebie is this: another guaranteed 5* myrmidon! Vanguard Ike's a powerful fighter who can beat up archers and wizards. He's just kind of a jack of all trades, but he'll be a strong, serviceable addition to our forces for a good long while.

That'll do for now, but that's basically what we're up to in the start of the run: getting as much shit with as little fuss as possible, as we slowly and steadily clear our way through the faceroll section of the story. Next time: advancement, taking stock, and the least likely of roadblocks.

 

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8 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

If this Forma was running, we'd be able to... well... see how far we could go with a Mareeta solo.

pretty far fyi i made it to the last eight? or so floors on an almost pure larcei solo in the previous one

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ahahaha I love, love the hilarious commentary, not to mention the generous screenshots. I realize that must've taken a while to set up, so thank you, for however long you're entertained by this. ❤️

Interesting that you categorize Ike and Alm as myrmidons when I'd categorize them personally separately as Lords - but that'd also probably make the challenge hard to a point of it being truly un-fun.

Here's to you getting powerhouses like Shannan and Mareeta soon!

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Using FEH's overwhelming amount of sword infantry units I see. That's pretty hilarious, and possible Astram usage is pretty cool as well. I hope you have fun! And good luck with tanky blue units! Although now that I think about it, who was the last sword infantry unit introduced? I have a pretty bad memory.

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5 hours ago, kradeelav said:

ahahaha I love, love the hilarious commentary, not to mention the generous screenshots. I realize that must've taken a while to set up, so thank you, for however long you're entertained by this. ❤️

Interesting that you categorize Ike and Alm as myrmidons when I'd categorize them personally separately as Lords - but that'd also probably make the challenge hard to a point of it being truly un-fun.

Here's to you getting powerhouses like Shannan and Mareeta soon!

Appreciated. Yeah, I'm just using 'myrmidon' as shorthand for Infantry Sword (TM); Seliph and Ogma count, legendary Eirika and Hana's ninja alt don't.

5 hours ago, FlyingKitsune said:

Using FEH's overwhelming amount of sword infantry units I see. That's pretty hilarious, and possible Astram usage is pretty cool as well. I hope you have fun! And good luck with tanky blue units! Although now that I think about it, who was the last sword infantry unit introduced? I have a pretty bad memory.

Thanks. The last one introduced was the Eph / Eir Twins; the last grail was Nemesis, the last true non-seasonal drop was...

...

...

. . .

jesus christ, it was silvia

3 hours ago, Specta said:

hey op are you gonna use tobin

I would, but we aren't gonna have nearly enough grails, sadly; I'm not even sure how long it's gonna take for the 3700 we're gonna need for the +10 Astram.

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Scene 2: Failing Inexorably Upwards

Spoiler

I'd always wondered about the Auto-Dispatch feature of Aether Raids. Yes, it's basically just there for 'guaranteed mediocre gain if you can't be bothered to play out the map', but it does always play out. My theory had always been that it rerolls everything if you lose anyone on the Dispatch. Just starts over.

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So I learned something from this LP already.

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Here's another thing: apparently there are... well, this many people minus one, who have ever touched AR.

That feels low. You could narrowly squeeze FEH's player base into the old terraced Maracana. But it's also very possible I don't know anything about how many people actually do anything.

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We've started going through the story maps. Book 1 doesn't really have a story; the whole grand Nordic melodrama hasn't yet really opened up. We'll be evaluating that when it starts - with Book 2, and with the FE7 Valentine's paralogue.

For now, we're still yet to really see... gameplay. My very strong men walk up and kill everything they see.

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Levelling up... who? Whom've? Don't test me, IS.

Anyway, so the Heroes' Path is this sort of 'tutorial' system that guides you through the first steps of setting up an account, and gradually shepherds the player into the midgame. It's a good system, and gives you a lot of good pointers about the game and a lot of units who are completely useless to me. Well, not completely useless. A gold Xander represents a thousand feathers, after all!

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Study the what?

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RtJiC3s.png?????

Okay, so the Tactics Trials are another tutorial system... and one we're going to have to blithely power through. They're largely built around there being a single path to success which makes maximum use of your skills, with no movement to spare.

As a result, while mandatory to get progress through the Heroes' Path and that all-important tick over Story Completion, I won't be discussing them. They are, essentially, just an orb / feather pinata I will gradually destroy over the course of the challenge.

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Another level down, another two orbs to throw on the hoard. We flirt with Athena, but Fir needs the stats more long-term. And we need her, more. Athena might still get some really nice shit, and is a candidate for +10ing; not because she's particularly good (she's not) but because I like her and her weird, stylised art, which works a lot better for her than the other guys her artist painted.

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One of the Arena teams we faceroll through is a fun vintage. For more recent / non-players: 2* (as you can tell because of the iron weapon) Virion was the original Tutorial Archer (the Askrs originally came in at 2* themselves). He was replaced some way down the line by a 4* Takumi, and the Askr trio promoted too. For existing players, you got a shitload of feathers to compensate. I think I know someone who kept the trio at 2* for swag, though.

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We're still basically just... pushing the envelope. Poking at every mode we can, seeing what we can get to fall out. Here, our noble summoner bolts on a handful of skills and murders a pile of underlevelled dross at the gates. Easy rewards, even if our ranking is obviously pathetic.

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If you've ever wanted to just play FEH with a fully randomised squad, go into AR with an empty barracks. We're lucky enough to roll two myrmidons, and powerful ones at that... but they're eventually overwhelmed and defeated. So, even level 30 RD's offlimits until we start getting some strong units of our own and finding some friends.

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Alm is grotesquely overpowered by the standards of these lowbie maps. By and large, we're auto-battling, and unstoppable.

It will be important to remember this moment when I'm desperately trying to murder CYL Dimitri with a firesweeping Soleil on the final map of a 10-CC.

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With the addition of a 5* Ninian to go with my 5* Reinhardt from the path, I've now sent home more gold units than I ever did on my main. That, incidentally, was a Lilina, back when pulling 5* Lilina was, you know, a thing. Played one map, heard her voice, shuddered, made the call. Funny thing is the VA adjusted it later on... playing a five-year old version of Lilina.

Anyway, I know it's been kind of a weird update, but really at this stage, it is just... poking at things. Prodding at things. Accumulation. We'll have something more to talk about soon enough, though.

Next time: the dam bursts, a girlboss is identified, the monkey's paw curls.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Scene 3: Rewriting history

Spoiler

So it's been a while. You probably thought the LP was dead!

Sensibly. But for better or worse, I have been plugging away at this, during the final embers of the semester. Now I just have to look back at whatever I was thinking about back when I only had one degree and try and align about five hundred screenshots into something coherent!

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I do vividly remember what I was thinking here, though. Specifically, 'remember how they stopped putting this map in the procedural pool because it fucking sucks?' It doesn't get better with four 2-move swordsmen, two of whom still have silver swords.

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The Level 6 quests want you to pick up your goddamn freebies, already. We already skipped ahead to pick Vike up, but we're being encouraged to grab Attack/Defence Unity, too.

Poor Fjorm. She was genuinely good at release, but all four of her stats were just enough to be useful at the time. Now that just means she's bad at everything. I'll take the skill, though!

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Suffice to say that we aren't Arena Assault ready, yet. But participation means feathers, and that's our major roadblock.

But this does expose another issue: we just... do not have enough guys. We're basically doing the Pelleas Guy Run, minus six years of free pulls. We have a handful of units, and can't even outfit them properly.

My standards for a banner I'm willing to throw everything at have lowered.

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Gunnthra bitches me out for not picking up Attack/Defence Unity yet, so we go do that.

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FEH throws us a bone. The sheer distance we are away from quest completion is going to hurt - stuff like the Three Heroes all being archers - so I'll take what wins I can!

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Surrounding an invulnerable Celica while T-posing, we glide to the end of Act 1.

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We'll get to you next time, Anna.

...

And you, Loki, I guess.

Still, that should be the last of the sequence-breaking we'll have to--

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fucks

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sake

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even the guilt-trips are sequence-breaking

I'll get to you in time. But they only offer me orbs, and orbs are useless. I'm after a far rarer and more valuable currency.

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Fucking badges.

NEXT TIME: the girlboss I assume I meant at the end of last update is actually identified, needless impatience, myrmidons vs. meta

 

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Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about the breakable wall map!  I think that's the last time it appears.  Or rather, I hope it is, because that's gotta be hell for a bunch of melee units.

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Ah, badges. I can't remember the last time I've ever needed badges. If I remember correctly, they were super valuable at launch, but are hardly worth anything now.

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Scene 4: Book-ends by Way of Meta Armour

Spoiler

We need to talk about Surtr.

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'Do we?' you ask, and for good reason. Surtr sucks.

I'm a little warmer on him with time, I guess. Mostly for how his unit plays out. Surtr marches slowly and inexorably down the battlefield, mirroring the steady advance of bushfire his armies march throughout the land. Unless, of course, your hapless opponent gave him Armoured Boots. He's not very good today, where you will have swordsmen good enough to just stonewall him, but you saw a lot of him back in the day.

The issue with Surtr is these three lines... are Surtr. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Villains are usually static characters, at least within the frame of the story. Surtr has this kind of Ancient Era mentality of 'the strong must conquer because it is the way of things', okay, but it's just kind of dull. We see a lot of Surtr and he pretty much only ever says shit like this.

Anyway, we're entering Book 2, now. This is the part where IS are like, 'hey, let's try actually making a story!'

It's fine. It doesn't have to be good, it's never going to be ground-breaking. All it has to be is a melodrama with interesting characters you can nod along to, and because I am a sad enough loser to have a degree in literary analysis, we'll be talking about it as we go along. Also because the accumulation of wealth phase is kind of empty, otherwise.

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Early Book 2 does a decent job setting the scene. Surtr hasn't become sourly repetitive yet, there's new faces showing up, and there's clear visuals. Fire vs. Ice! It's great! But we don't really get a particular character study of anyone, yet; it'll be a while before they decide to really lean in on a particular character and give you a great idea of who they are so that you can spend hundreds of dollars simping for them down the line.

We'll get to Laegjarn.

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I'm levelling new units basically by autobattling through fresh maps on Normal and Hard. It simply doesn't make sense to actually use the tower or training maps when we can get experience and harvest orbs. Still, you do run into situations sometimes where some big fucker like Oboro or Subaki just eats whoever they're matched up against. Fir never stood a chance.

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Poor Ryoma, though. He just wanted an honest duel only to get fucking annihilated by a unit from four years of BST creep in the future.

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I try to pull on red when all else is equal; even when there's no red focus, if there isn't decent fodder available I'll still go for red. The game doesn't always give me the chance, though.

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Let's try AR! We'll need to get to tier 15 anyway, and there's no time like the present!

There is absolutely no way that we will ever be remotely competitive in AR. For non- / old players, AR is basically the new and improved PvP (even though the old Arena still exists) system, where you fight a proper enemy setup. It's fun except for the fact that a lot of players decide to lean into dull meta strats instead of just showcasing faves; it's still fun if you get to the top, though, and the pressure is off. I got to Tier 21 when that was the aim with just an Eir three miles through the snow barefoot with a backpack walking uphill both ways so have nothing left to prove and just sort of fuck around. But against coherent enemy setups, and with well-built enemy blues, and without the ability to use any Mythics who contribute to score and buff your units...

... Anyway, there will come a point at which I just auto-dispatch three times a week and leave AR alone.

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... But not now, though, because I guess they added a catch-up mechanic and all my units are fucking immense.

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I don't actually know where these maps are from anymore, but the point is presumably that we're now reaching heights in Arena and PvE where our units can't simply steamroll the enemy, anymore.

But I have a plan.

See, here's the thing. Fir is a really fucking bad unit. She has very nice art by launch standards - still quite nice today - and is Fir, a fundamentally nice thing to be. Her statspread is rare and interesting for a myrmidon, with high speed and resistance ... and absolutely no attack or defence.

But she does have high resistance.

We have a lot of guys who can counter from range, but male Byleth and the Ikes - and many of the rest we have or will pull - have low resistance. I'm going to need, at some point, someone I can feel reasonably confident luring out a blue mage.

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And that is why I took the free Edelgard.

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Despite quests occasionally fucking us, we're making steady progress. Badges are going to stop being a problem, soon; there's a Forging Bonds that it turns out drops them like candy. But the silver coins are an actual adult resource that limits real players. It will take time to accumulate these. I get impatient and boost the basically worthless HP 4 just to get the quest done.

Let's vent some of our frustrations in AR, shall we? I'm sure our hyper-boosted units with +20 in every stat will clean house.

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hahahahahahahhahaha

Next time: Aether Rank Reward: #171,527, Veronica appears (Xander came too), Zhuge Laegjarn

 

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Scene 5: And who's that? Oh! It's Mr. MVP ...

Spoiler

There's this scene in the Sopranos. Early on, before James Gandolfini takes on the dimensions of the Ever Given. They're discussing a vasectomy, a procedure my own father underwent to ensure I would grow up marginalised and erratic, because they already have two children. Unfortunately, the only male is a fucking useless dipshit.

So they're having this argument in the living room when they hear this crash from the kitchen. Aforementioned useless dipshit AJ is there, having tried to reheat an entire fruit pie in a microwave and promptly dropped it. And it's like midnight and this kid wants to eat four servings of fruit and pastry, and can't even do that right.

So James Gandolfini turns back to his wife, points at AJ and exclaims, "YOU WANT ME TO GET SNIPPED WHEN THIS IS MY MALE HEIR?"

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Anyway, this is Fir, my SummSupp. She's a bit of a fixer-upper.

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Limited Hero Battles are one of the best modes in FEH. You get to fight one of the challenge maps with a squad selected solely from one game or world; can you assemble a squad of Jugdral natives to take on this threat?

I'm saying 'you' as in 'the audience'. It's going to be a while before I can take these on.

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We can, however, slug our way through the monty haul that is Forging Bonds. This mostly solves our badge problem, and also kicks out a fuckton of feathers. And gets us some free pulls! All these things are better uses of our stamina than orbs, right now.

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how

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We are so good at PvP, guys.

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The PvP circuit is interesting, because even normally weak blue units become serious threats with good defence.

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When we finally get enough dew for a refine, Vike's is boring, but effective, making him better at everything. Unfortunately, we're pretty skint, and the Heroic Path wants us to refine something ... and pretty much all our guys have Prfs, not + weapons.

Around now I also pull a Subaki (!!!!) - this is fantastic, because it means I can hand off a Subaki special, Swap and QR2, to Vike. Vike is now set forever.

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AR is still in the faceroll stage, of course.

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Ultimately I say fuck it and just give Athena a refined Wo Dao just to get this out of the way. Not like we're using the rocks for anything else, and she has the SP to float while I dither on how much favouritism I want to give her.

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The HoF is a veritable pinata of resources that... yep, we are not going to be able to take advantage of.

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For arena progress, it works out best to bring Anna and push her off to the side, but it's sufficiently uncompetitive that we can make progress with her.

Let's get some orbs.

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In Book 2, they make exciting decisions like 'trying to have characters with personality'. This isn't really Alfonse's time to shine, yet; Sharena moreso gets hers in the Paralogues and Act 4, Anna doesn't get one at all.

I guess they'll try?

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Book 2 is also the debut of them consistently doing the 'enemy heroes announce themselves' before the map. I'm not actually a big fan of this; it tends to break any real tension, especially late on in the Acts.

SURTR: "I will destroy everything you love!"
FJORM: "noooo"
NINA: "I want boys to FUCK!"

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In the Askr trio, while Alfonse is resolute and will do What Is Right above all, Sharena is the human heart of the operation. She's dumb as rocks, but hey, shit needs done, she'll do it.

This sets up Anna to be the brains of the operation, and maybe someday they'll write up something to make her look intelligent or good at her job or as though she has any business sticking around.

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It's kind of jarring that Xander's still here as Veronica's bodyguard or whatever. They try to draw a line between Productive Evil and Salted Earth, and it's an interesting idea in theory, just... why the fuck is Xander there?

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The plan actually winds up being Alfonse's, from memory; distract the big army and give the village they're fighting over time to escape. It's a good plan, and begins to give Alfonse some credentials. He'll put himself in harm's way for whatever; he has a slightly unhealthy desire to martyr himself, and this strain will carry through his characterisation to date.

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Laevatein's... a pretty dull character, partly by design. She largely exists, in the meta, for Laegjarn's sake. That's honestly kind of fine, though. There isn't exactly the time to make everyone a rounded character.

So we're being chased by the Firemen. Fortunately, Anna, our master tactician, has a plan!

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Seems solid at the outset! Make them think the Order's going west, then go east. Sure!

relentless simping in 3 ...

2 ...

1 ...

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So this is Laegjarn.

For the first time, the probably single writer decides, 'let's give a character Multiple Dimensions'. Surtr wants to burn the world because he is a very strong man and thinks that follows. Laevatein wants to Do The Job, we don't really know why but we can sense it's probably because she wants to be Valued. In any case the picture we have of Muspell is, thus far, single-minded destroyers.

So here's Laegjarn immediately comforting Laevatein. Laeva is afraid she has Failed, because the fake trail was a dead end and also she got pulverised in combat for the like third time. Laegjarn cares about Laevatein's feelings. Laegjarn, the head general of Muspell, who have to date been monolithic war criminals.

Well, at least Anna's made sure we can shake her trail, right--

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oh

Laegjarn has a nurturing side, but she's also got credentials. Unlike the BBC Sherlock, which is terrible, Laegj makes a deduction in the original Conan Doyle series sense - an incisive observation that an audience can nod along to and follow the logical conclusion. She's nurturing, she's clever ...

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Oh, and she's genuinely looking forward to impaling us.

Look, this obviously isn't amazing writing. But it's a legitimately strong introduction to a character who they've been trying and largely failing to write for 30 years. The writing isn't just letting Laevatein say 'Oh, my smart sister Laegjarn ... !', but showing it... compare and contrast to Anna, our great tactician who is only ever seen agonising over money in ways that don't actually change the story.

Honestly, I feel like there's room for Anna to at least be funny. Let her need to cut costs manifest in everyone having shit weapons that rust through. That at least puts some reason behind every third paralogue just being a get-rich-quick scheme... but then, there's a reason I'm not looking too hard at the Paralogues.

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lol i remember this map being hard

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So obviously she catches up.

It's a great moment for Laegj. It's not so great for Anna, who is now 0/1 on schemes. Laegj puts out her fourth trait; honour. She wants to win this the right way, she wants to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, and we have no reason to think she wouldn't be true to her word here. She's not this many thousand layered character, sure, but in the space of like three maps we've successfully established a personality.

It's neat. Tidy.

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This is going back to telling, though. It feels like Alfonse is staring at the camera; THIS IS THE CAMUS, DO YOU GET IT, SHE IS THIS GAME'S CAMUS

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Anyway, she'll be back.

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We're in a good state. It's raining feathers, and we've got a good stash of orbs.

Let's spend some of them!

Next time: the rule of pairs, the monkey's paw curls (again), carrots

 

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7 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

SURTR: "I will destroy everything you love!"
FJORM: "noooo"
NINA: "I want boys to FUCK!"

damn i like your nina more than the real one

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Scene 6: "I'm eager to brandish my carrot in battle"

Spoiler

For a long time, we've been accumulating and accumulating. Here, we finally let loose.

... Uh, I assume.

Okay, confession time: around this point, two key banners drop.

One has Mareeta. From memory, this basically ran from a day; I panicked and dropped everything I could get on it, and duly arrived a +Spd/-Def Mareeta.

Then comes a double special; Altina (yay!) and Sturdy Stance 3. I think this is what I'm throwing the following orbs at.

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In any case, Alm gets a friend! Cylica is a massive boon. She gets consistent minutes on my main, mostly as an undroppable Rokkr Besieger; she'll be a welcome player phase beast here.

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Mareeta's off impressing the rest of the troops. This one time when I was a kid I had a rather Seussian experience with fried eggs, and that was the story of how I didn't eat McDonald's for another decade.

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Anna continues to be our hood ornament as we cruise through Arena. Occasionally, we do run into something that can harm us, but between Vike's DC and sustain, Alm's ability to punch people in the fucking head and Byleth's being Byleth, we make steady progress. In large part because progressing through the early phases of Arena are really, really easy. Even on Beginner, even with the occasional death, we're going up!

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heh

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At some point, Alfonse becomes my first 5*. I asked Rae, secretly hoping she'd say Astram ... but a 5* Alfonse will be useful imminently, regardless.

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Forging Bonds gives a lot of feathers through two ways; one is that it drops them directly, but it also gives a motherlode of HM, and that means a fuckton of feathers. Also great for grinding supports, fittingly! Though i haven't been bothering with that, yet...

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Mareeta's finally got the levels to be sifted into play. This in particular is a Blessing Garden; they have a ton of orbs and feathers, and the Heroic Path is starting to mandate them.

Blessing Grounds I anticipate to be one of the final bosses of the run, but the one-shot maps are honestly relatively forgiving, if you have the foresight to bring units from three years in the future.

It's already becoming clear that Mareeta is going to become one of my most important units. FEH has something of an epidemic of myrmidons that just sort of have a minor essay stapled to their swords which means Fuck You, You Die. All Mareeta wants is to be a lone wolf ... and then she absolutely thunderfucks whoever she's fighting.

On Mareeta, that makes sense. She has the credentials. I mean... she's got black hair and is from Jugdral, of course she has the credentials. It's when shitters like Karla, who canonically cannot beat a perpetually concussed Bartre in a fight and then dies of backstory angst between games, also have Thunderfuck Essays backing them up...

Anyway, I'm not going to complain about any edge. Mareeta is fast, tough, mean and vicious. And she's mine.

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Somewhere in the rain of feathers, 40k get spent on Fir. She's now +attack. She needs it, badly.

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The weirdness of Arena scoring means that a lot of our opponents are doing the same 'three legit units and some rando' that we are. This poor guy probably just promoted a Barst and hasn't yet poured in any levels... and probably has 'display nature' turned off.

Anyway, it's looking like just about nothing can stop us. But cast your mind back... back five years.

Picture a spear.

Picture a spear with a fucking beefcake defence stat.

Picture a single man holding firm against a wave of swords clattering feebly against a...

... a carrot... ?

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wait what the fuck aren't you a literal joke unit

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FUCK--

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Anyway, we now have more established L40 heroes! Mareeta kills everything she fights, Cylica has a vicious punch and the potential to quad (and is high priority for a refine), Fir is like my other DC guys but way worse and Athena came, too.

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And aren't we lucky?

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Here's the full troupe as it stands. I'm apparently fucking myself by not fronting my own Marisa, but that's okay, because Ayra's here.

Why do we need a brigade we patently aren't deep enough to handle, you ask? Well, uh... there is one PvP mode we aren't likely to make serious headway in...

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oh.

oh dear.

yes, the mode built entirely around making combinations between different movement and weapon types

and we're

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So you've probably never touched Beginner before, but fun fact: they actually don't trust you to figh--

Well, correction. You probably touched Beginner that week that the mode was just bugged and you had to. (I got my Gold pawn that week!) Why did Beginner work? AI-set teams. Though it does seem they get updated with time... but their combos are badly nerfed.

Actually, the recent changes to PoL means that I can rack up the 40k points and big orb with just three or four runs. But are we going to go far? Nnnnnno. Especially with completely naked and terrible level 1s clogging up the barracks.

Oh hey, that's a neat new banner. Let's use up our free pull--

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So, fun fact. Gerik is one of my favourite units in the series. Like, top ten. FE8 was the first game I played myself, and being terrible at FE when I was 13 or whenever Gerik was one of the few units who was simply too good for even me to somehow kill off. And he's a great guy, brimming with personality, given fantastic female-gaze art by Suekane Kumiko, and a slightly weird but unique skillset.

My main never pulled him.

My alt fucking free-pulled him.

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With his perfect nature.

In terms of units my main lacks, my alt has now pulled: Igrene (another series favourite! fuck!), Flying Nino, Echoes Catria, Mareeta, Idunn... and there will be at least two more to come that I can think of thus far.

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So we're just not going to ask about where Fir got her B-skill. Deal? Deal.

Next time: Mareeta kills everyone, a red wedding, setbacks, triumphs and twins

 

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Of course. If anybody can stop the oncoming storm of a thousand myrms, it's Spring Xander, his unbreakable body, and his phallic, Freudian carrot that dashes a thousand dreams like bugs to a newspaper.

Can't wait to see you pull FEdel next time and have Athena end up with Atk/Def Ideal.

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Scene 7: Finding the smallest Everest possible

Spoiler

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Allegiance Battles is another of those ones where we're basically doing it wrong, as a joke.

Anyway, our doctrine as a squad is starting to settle into place. If it's a brigade map, we let Ayra kill everyone. Ayra would kill my entire barracks.

If it's not a brigade map, there's two options:

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Possibility 1: we lack the range to pre-emptively strike the enemy. Mareeta walks into fire and kills everyone.

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Possibility 2: we can pre-emptively strike, in which case we hurl Mareeta forward so she can kill everyone.

These are probably Blessing Gardens, and they're going down surprisingly fast... at least on the team with Mareeta on it.

It comes to a culmination when it comes time to fulfil our Heroic obligation. It's time for another dogshit lancer who would be maimed by any competent green, blue or grey to get in the way.

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WHAT

Mareeta can't kill her! Then ... then what do I...

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So here's the issue: we're outside the joke maps in which we'll basically win any fight, and now we have to try and pick intelligent battles. The issue is that the most decisive way to pick intelligent battles in FEH is to go with the weapon triangle, which is far more influential than in any mainline FE (which is a good design move). Robbed of that, well... we're starting to stress-test our units. Byleth has been crushing everything in his path, sure, but against a halfway decent wizard it becomes apparent he has no goddamn resistance. As does... I mean, that's also an issue with all our DCmen but Fir, that's the reason we have Fir. Vike has the sustain to pull it off regardless. Meanwhile, Alfonse basically has no strengths with his base kit and no refine. He can punch greens in the head and two-round them reliably. Well done, Fonz.

Not that this is a particularly difficult map. It just actually does qualify as a map, and takes a couple attempts to get right.

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This team is fortunate in that it has two copies of Reposition - Byleth and CYL Alm - which allows us to sandbag the enemy, pulling everyone out of Charlotte's range until It's Time. Time comes in the form of Alm, who has a fuckload of sheer power that allows him to carve up pretty much anything... that we've seen so far.

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I decide to not fuck myself over and front my own +10 myrmidon. She's a Steady Posture 5 pacetank. Ran Carrot Cudgel for a while, but her Prf's getting the job done nicely. Every time I see a challenge on this run I think about how Marisa would end the issue by ending turn in their teeth.

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Our water blessing run grinds to a halt I call 'I can't be bothered to deal with a flying thunder mage right now'.

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Remember 2017 when this map was hard because you had to lure out !!multiple!! overlapping enemies?

It's 2017 all over again. Their devious plots such as 'punching Byleth in the face' or 'shooting through mountains' function perfectly. What's really fucking us is the lack of mobility, though then this map doesn't... really deal well with mobility regardless.

... This map is all fucking terrain, actually.

Anyway, there's a chance we may end up shifting around blessings just to clear all the Grounds, but I want to get all the Gardens out of the way with my current 'fuck it' theory of hurling blessings around.

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no

go away

give me more fucking severas!!

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Or that.

That works.

So now our 'apply Mareeta to the issue' solution just got twice as viable. Sort of. Munster Escape Mareeta isn't nearly as strong, though she still has a lot to recommend her. She misses Mareeta's dodge-tanking, but has her NFU, so she can still combat-trick her way to victory in a few situations. Also, like her later vanilla counterpart, she has really nice art with vibrant colours.

she's also another unit my main doesn't have, this is getting weird

Anyway, what's Heroic Path want us to fight next? Ah, an Infernal GHB. Now, the easiest of the rotating HBs are Lloyd and Navarre

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It's a complete anticlimax. Everyone runs into Subaki Special Vike, who kills them all and makes his HP back. Alm punches the spearman's lights out.

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Xander sucks as a fighter. A child could beat him. Maybe not Fir, but a child.

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300 feathers! Oh, and we're done with Path 11.

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Path 12 really kind of expects AR to be a big deal. In fact, new accounts are recommended only to start poking it after reaching Path 12. Point is we do all this shit instantly.

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Ah. Yes. Actually making progress in those modes.

Well, we're still in the faceroll phase on those, at least. Realistically, we're still a while off me having to consistently pay attention... but we have, at last, reached true gameplay.

Next time: YOU LOSE, Guy of the Tiger, the one thing you'd think we'd be able to handle, Send Home? 1000 feathers

 

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I LIKE Fallen Mareeta!  She's hilarious if you can get the stars to align. . .now pretend that the stars are already half-aligned!

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Scene 8: The Book of Judges

Spoiler

I have a confession to make.

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I HAVE FAILED YOU ALL.

I went into some tiny lowbie map with Anna, for some reason, forgot to strip her of her weapon, and autobattled. Improbably, she didn't die.

Naturally we must forfeit the map. Eventually I'll have to crystal Anna and Sharena to level 20 anyway, so they can clear their ordeals, but I'd like to leave it as late as possible. I'm actually saving the orbs up for when / if they become scarce; we'll only be able to get the monthly 'kill something with those units' once, after all.

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Our units are lightly terrible, still, and when the Deeds call us to fight later content - even on easy difficulties - we can still run into strife.

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fir, please.

There's a few screenshots here of fighting more easy content, but let's focus on something new and novel; eight-mans.

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The easy difficulties are, uh, still pretty trivial. Even our under-skilled and mono-red guys can just roll over them with their superior numbers.

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We lean on our loaned units - winter Altina, Ryoma, Hellica and my own main's Marisa - to force our way through the more difficult difficulties, but there's a glass ceiling apparent. Four camps makes this a particularly tough map, but the real kicker is the ease of chokepoints.

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I'm assuming this is the top difficulty, it's certainly one of the top two. The enemy is tough enough, this time, to significantly gum up the works, and without cavalry, fliers or ranged units, we can't open up multiple angles to attack the camps. Every unit we need to beat Mordecai's head in is a unit not breaking the camp he's on, and we need a lot of units to beat Mordecai's head in. Also, our non-loan units - Mareeta aside - are still pretty bad. We're basically a boom-era Chinese Super League squad; 3+1 foreigners are mint, and, uh, the locals are here too, we suppose.

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Not all blues are created equal, at least. I believe we're able to get the feathers, but not the dew.

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Our excellence in AR continues to shine through.

Hey, it's Tempest Trial time!

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'Try this'? Try that? Bah. Who do they take us for?

Obviously we go for the highest difficulty.

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This is the most serious challenge we've taken on yet. Highest-tier Tempest Trials may be giving all our units big bonuses (at least for the first couple attempts a day), but the enemy get big boosts. Our 16 units need to prove equal to their 28, and that's no easy task when our best player phase guys attacking a fragile ranged unit bounce off hard.

This is kind of a nightmarish composition.

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In the end, we just have to let Petra punch us in the head. This gets Mareeta angry.

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This gets Mareeta really angry.

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... Which just about dents Altena. Okay! Time to run the fuck away!

Unhelpfully, none of these units have reposition or draw back; we haven't been flush with Selenas. There's a lot of Swap around, and Mareeta has Smite; I don't actually think Cylica has anything.

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Fir may be an appallingly weak unit, but Glacies can do a lot. Unfortunately, though, this squad's on its last legs.

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The B-list isn't too much of a step down. Vike's tough and, critically, regenerates; Alm punches through hard targets and thunderfucks dragons. Byleth's quite good, and Athena's ... well, Athena's there, too. Unfortunately, Alm's health gets knocked down hard with every fight; we try and take as many hits on Vike as we can.

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oops

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The next map, shorn of our tank, is unforgiving. Dark Forgan is one of the tankiest units in the game, but hey, we're literally allr eds, it'll be fine. Robin is easily the weakest unit on the map, but, uh...

Well, at least Guinivere's fragile.

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are you fucking kidding me

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Our C-List includes two 4* units, Hana and Laslow. Ike and Alfonse aren't very good. It's fairly clear we're about to run out of steam.

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ouch.

The penalty for losing a Trial is fairly severe, and the fact we didn't come close illustrates just how weak our squad depth presently is. We should still be able to beat the second highest, though.

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Of course we immediately run into her again.

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With true control, we do beat it fairly trivially. Of course, the way TTs work, the day-to-day will be autobattling; it simply isn't viable to get high rank with more than 0-2 manual battles a day (the bonuses, if any). A welcome recent change does reward going for higher difficulties once, but it looks like it'll be beyond us... for now.

Also making things easier is the arrival of a 4* Summer Leonie, who is immediately stripped of her weapon and used as a totem pole for increased Number.

So why are we doing all this? Ah, we finally have something to pull for in the form of Winter Altina, though she shares her banner with a Dheginsea who is only useful to us for Sturdy Stance 3. The banner throws a few monkey's paws at us; we get two Mirandas in one circle (a unit my main is +10ing), before the final insult of a Python - who my main still had not, at the time of playing, pulled enough copies of to +10. A couple 5*s do drop, in the end; a +Res -Spd Lyn. This was one of the first 5*s my main pulled - with that exact nature! - and she was feeble even in 2017. I'm genuinely considering turning her into Galeforce. A young Tiki is immediately converted into 1000 feathers. Fortunately, our pity does finally get broken, after our 6% pity has ballooned to 9%; unfortunately, it's Dheginsea. Ah, well.

Next time: Thracia 76 Speed, Leo Nidas, the blessed banner

 

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