Efficient Playthrough Log

[Interceptor]

As threatened promised, the rest of the DB's Part 3 chapters.

Chapter 3-12:

Battle prep: Silver Poleaxes for Jill and Nolan, Jill took Adept, Nolan took Paragon/Vantage, nothing else of note.

Strategy here was to send Jill off directly into the thick of things ASAP, and bulldog as many enemies as her durability allowed (this lasted for a mere two turns), before falling back to fight near Nolan. Meanwhile, Nolan worked with the NPCs (I left them on Roam) to battle his way down the ramp, while most everyone else stayed back and Laura/Micaiah kept things going with Physic. Tauroneo and Sothe took care of the western ramp, racking up kills just to end the chapter quickly. Zihark fell to a Sniper crit.

Turns (chapter/total): 7/220

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Micaiah  2.79  23 8  18 13 11 22 9  17  A Sothe
Sothe    7.59  37 22 4  26 25 20 14 11  A Micaiah
Volug   16.41  50 12 2  12 13 14 9  5   C Aran
Nolan   13.79  46 22 5  26 21 21 19 13  C Jill
Jill    18.07  47 25 5  22 25 29 24 14  C Nolan
Laura    8.70  18 5  13 8  10 11 3  13
Zihark   x.xx  killed in action

Chapter 3-13:

Battle prep: Picked up the second Physic, a Daemon Card, Blizzard/Storm Sword (for Part 4), and sold some more crap I don't care about, bringing my total reserves to 14,443. For this chapter, Nolan will have Paragon/Parity and Jill will take Beastfoe/Vantage. Established a C between Leonardo and Meg. Alas, still no B support for Team Hax, they fight apart too often. But first, BEXP and a Master Crown:

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Nolan   14.00  47 23 5  26 22 21 19 13  C Jill
Jill     1.00  53 29 9  26 27 30 27 18  C Nolan

Time to start. I'll be blocking all ledges and the bottom of the stairs with scrubs units that I don't care about. The loss of Zihark is kind of a bummer, since even at base he can be left at 2HP when getting hit by a tiger, but I have enough people. The leftmost ledge never gets attacked, the rightmost ledge only gets attacked by a lone Hawk, and only two of the three positions at the bottom of the stairs will get attacked by ground laguz. Tauroneo and Sothe will suffice for the stairs, untransformed Volug for the right ledge (Meg beside him), Aran for the left, and Nolan + Jill will prevent anyone from coming up the center spot between T and Sothe.

For the most part, I leave allies on Halt, except when I need 3-13 Archer to shoot down a Hawk on Ally Phase (in which case I'll give them the green light). This also allows you to use various NPCs as blockers if you have Fiona put them into position. Or, move them out of the way, in the case of the right-side ballista, where I place Leonardo since he has better accuracy than the NPC does (due to Meg support). Laura and Micaiah heal whomever is in range, otherwise people self-heal with Vulneraries and Concoctions.

The winning strategy here, as detailed, will be to end the chapter with a boss kill by having Jill card Ike to death, while getting as much CEXP for Nolan as humanly possible. Jill OHKOs everything here, while getting tinked or hit for 1 damage by cats, and 4-5HKOed by tigers. Nolan 2HKOs cats while 3HKOing tigers (2RKO, since doubling now) with Tarvos, and gets hit by cats for 5 damage (10RKO, no longer getting doubled), and by tigers for 15-17 damage (a 3-4HKO). In short, Jill is almost unkillable in a single phase of combat, and Nolan is OK as long as he doesn't face 3-4+ enemies with too many tigers mixed in.

Long story short: Jill easily handles the majority of the bottom floor laguz on Turn 1, freeing up Nolan to jump down for Turn 2+ to safely farm up CEXP from the diminished population while Jill chips away at Ike. Note: the tigers in Triforce formation above Ike do not appear to move. By the way, I can safely get Laura down to Ike, thanks to how effective Jill/Nolan are at cleaning house, unfortunately with her at Worst and Ike at Good, she has a 58 displayed HIT with Sleep.

Anyway, I choose to end on Turn 6 since Nolan is nearly level 19, and I want those last two levels to be BEXP. Nolan opens with a nice 100% Parity + Tarvos, gets doubled for lol damage by Ike, and Jill closes the deal with a forged Axe to the face (man I am glad that I put +25 HIT on it back in 1-E).

Turns (chapter/total): 6/226

BEXP (chapter/current): 4307/4438

Funds: 14,443

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Micaiah  3.89  23 8  19 13 11 22 10 18  A Sothe
Nolan   18.94  51 24 5  26 24 24 22 13  C Jill
Jill     2.38  54 30 9  26 28 30 27 19  C Nolan

Nolan is still SPD-screwed, but I have two levels of BEXP to go, and I got plenty from this chapter. I'll plow him full of Ashera icons to cap his LCK if I have to, to get him to at least 28 promoted SPD. This Nolan is aggravating, he's even below average for STR at this point, and barely on par for DEF. He'd better deliver in Part 4.

Edited March 22, 2010 by Interceptor

[-Cynthia-]

WRT healing, I also find it pretty superfluous in the GM chapters. Team durability becomes pretty ridiculous after like 3-2, and using a Vulenary/Concoction tends to slow us down less than having to protect Mist/Rhys.

[Narga_Rocks]

So, did you kill one of the rooted tigers? I can't figure out how else to do get two 1 range axe attacks in on Ike. Well, you could kill Soren, I suppose.

So I guess you gave Ike a few Daemon card hits and then "Nolan opens" was on your killing phase?

Also, lol damage? Isn't it like 10x2 with a wind edge? (I think you said Ike has wind edge equipped).

Did Jill have 100% hit with her forge?

Also, how reliant on bio were the hit rates?

And yeah, level 18.94 is pretty optimal for Nolan given what you need for him. Also, I suppose that you do in fact have 3 ashera icons that you can dump on him since I suppose even if you make some silver forges in 4-2 money isn't a huge issue for you right now.

[Interceptor]

I killed all three of the rooted tigers, actually. It was a bloodbath down there. Once I figured out that the tigers didn't move, I didn't include them in my calculations for Enemy Phase and I was able to be much more aggressive with Nolan than I was expecting. At one point, I intentionally put Nolan next to two of them just so that they would attack him along with the other laguz in the area. Tarvos is so godly in this chapter that I think if I had to replay this run, I would use the bowgun when it was safe in 3-6, just to conserve uses for here.

At the end, there was just Ike and some far-flung reinforcements on the sides when I chose to end it. Initially I needed to make a hole for Jill to get in, but since she can't reach Ike on Turn 2 without being able to get away afterwards, I used her to 2-range the left-side Triforce and left her in range of Soren (who proceeded to kill himself on Enemy Phase). That freed things up for all sorts of shenanigans.

And yes, for a finisher I Carded Ike twice with Jill (took him to 24 HP), Nolan hit him with Tarvos for 16 HP (down to 8 now), and then Jill had a choice of Card, double 70% listed with Brave, or 90% listed with her Steel forge. I went with the forge, since 90% listed is better than 2x70%, and there's no battle animation of Ike getting killed if I used the card. >.>

The hit rates on Ike weren't too bad with the Card at the start, we're talking 70%-ish listed while the bios line up. I think that I had nearly the worst case scenario, since Jill starts the chapter at the peak of her wave (aka she's doing poorly HIT-wise during the times she fights Ike, since by Turn 3 she's already -5 HIT), and Ike started on Turn 14 of his wave (meaning he's Best for Turns 2, 3, 4, and 5, only dropping to Good for Turn 6 when I finished). Under ordinary circumstances, the hit rates would be better than this, I just had bad luck.

loldamage was Ike's 33mt hitting Nolan's 27 effective DEF for 2x6. Although even if Ike had busted out Ragnell, Nolan would have been fine, he's still 2RKO'ed.

And yeah, money is really not an issue. Between both armies I think that I'm looking at 66,000+ gold in 4-P (though I have some forges to make in 3-E), and that's without going through and selling useless shit like Steel Lances that I've been banking forever. I can go pretty wild spending-wise due to the 20,000 gold coming in 4-5, and if I don't need the laguz gem that's another score for the last set of forges.

[Narga_Rocks]

loldamage was Ike's 33mt hitting Nolan's 27 effective DEF for 2x6. Although even if Ike had busted out Ragnell, Nolan would have been fine, he's still 2RKO'ed.

Yeah, I was looking at his starting 19 def instead of his ending 22 def for some reason, and I didn't know whether to include the Jill support.

45 mt with Ragnell vs. 27 def. Also with a dead Soren Ike has just 20 crit, so Nolan's 24 luck is more than enough to prevent getting criticalled.

Nolan takes 36 damage from two Ragnell hits. 12 damage from the wind edge's double. Looks like Nolan doesn't even need to get healed even if Jill or Nolan had missed, since you said there weren't any laguz in range anymore. It's a safe clear, and a turn 7 clear would have been pretty easy had one of your units missed, I suppose. What with Nolan doing 11 damage with a massive hit rate due to Parity and Tarvos' 100 hit. 176 hit vs. Ike's 77 avo. If bio is even slightly on your side... (and even if not)

[Interceptor]

Chapter 3-Endgame:

Battle prep: Since this chapter is partially outside of my control in terms of turn count, and I want to maintain maximum flexibility for Part 4, I'm peeling off all non-essential non-freebie skills and banking them in the Convoy (including Mercy, Parity, Renewal, etc). Also, since this is the last time that I'll have forge access until 4-2, I'm taking the time to stock a bunch of forged Hand Axes (5x of +5mt/+10HIT) for Titania/Haar/Jill/Nolan (unconcerned about Steel forges, because silver is buyable in Part 4). Picked up a couple of grasses for insurance, plus Restore for Mist. Established C support for Tanith/Sigrun, B for Ulki/Janaff.

Strategy here is a one-liner: kill as many units as I can while I get Heather over to the Rescue staff. Go the staff on first try, and wiped the floor in five turns.

Turns (chapter/total): 5/231

BEXP (chapter/current): 7841/33,955

Funds: 31,759

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Ike     20.00  50 27 3  30 30 17 26 8   A Mia
Titania  3.00  45 31 14 29 29 20 26 20  A Mist
Mist     7.45  31 10 16 17 18 21 8  18  A Titania
Shinon   1.86  49 28 14 32 28 17 26 20  A Nephenee
Mia      2.21  45 26 10 32 32 22 21 16  A Ike
Neph     3.67  51 29 13 29 31 24 25 22  A Shinon
Haar     6.24  53 32 6  32 27 17 32 13  C Heather

I recruited Jill with Haar. She still had Beastfoe equipped, and she was close to Nailah. Just out of curiosity, I wandered over... Jill would do serious non-fatal damage, but only with a Brave Axe, and at awful (54%) listed HIT. Yeesh, Nailah is one tough customer.

I'm making a master save at this point, so that I can come back to the army selection screen if I have some need to do Part 4 again, since I suspect I'm looking at a significant chance to muss things up in terms of deployment or skills distribution.

EDIT: Here's what I'm using for optional distribution, not including the terrible units I will never use:

Silver: Manith, Nolan, Jill, Haar, Janaff, Ulki, Laura, Volug

Greil: Mia, Heather

Hawk: Nephenee, Shinon, Calill

I may be overdoing it by sending Ulki/Janaff to Silver. We'll see what happens in Greil's army, which is probably going to have the most trouble (only good fighters are Mia, Ike, Titania, and Nailah).

Edited March 22, 2010 by Interceptor

[grandjackal]

Doin' pretty good there. *Thumbs up* I'll make sure to reference this for my GM part 3, since personally I can't stand being with the GMs for too long. Their parts aren't hard, but I hate how big of showstealers they are in this game.

However, I wanna go back to 3-13 for a bit. The card deal is a solution, but it also seems like quite an annoying one. So I have to ask what you think of the following idea...

...WrathxResolve nuking Ike. Bypasses the speed issue, critical striking sounds like it would work quite a bit better than the old fashion way (or carding him to death)...You'd need at least 23 speed (to double under Resolve, increasing your Wrath chances) and the capacity to hold both skills to do it though, and of course there's then the problem of avoiding death...

[Narga_Rocks]

Doin' pretty good there. *Thumbs up* I'll make sure to reference this for my GM part 3, since personally I can't stand being with the GMs for too long. Their parts aren't hard, but I hate how big of showstealers they are in this game.

However, I wanna go back to 3-13 for a bit. The card deal is a solution, but it also seems like quite an annoying one. So I have to ask what you think of the following idea...

...WrathxResolve nuking Ike. Bypasses the speed issue, critical striking sounds like it would work quite a bit better than the old fashion way (or carding him to death)...You'd need at least 23 speed (to double under Resolve, increasing your Wrath chances) and the capacity to hold both skills to do it though, and of course there's then the problem of avoiding death...

There are two units in the entire DB that can actually do this, though. Well, and tier 3 Nolan/Leo, but let's ignore them.

Volug (once you remove halfshift) has 30 capacity available. Ed (if you never removed Wrath) has 25 available in tier 2. Ed needs just 15, Volug needs exactly what he has available. Isn't it nice that level 15 to 29 laguz have 35 capacity instead of merely 30?

What you want here is to have a unit that can take an Ike hit while at wrath hp. Being brought down to resolve hp by Ike's hit is utterly useless as a result of the way the game works Resolve. You won't double. Simple as that. So in the event that wrath + resolve doesn't actually give you a crit (quite likely, even with killers, though killer sword on Ed does a lot less than caladbolg, and thus the killer is a pointless idea), you want to be able to take a 30 mt shot from a bronze sword. I'm not sure Ed can do this.

Also, I'm still not sure that Resolve actually works on laguz. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work on halfshift laguz, anyway. I didn't do much testing with this theory, though, so maybe Resolve works on laguz whether under halfshift or fullshift.

Volug, though, would probably be able to take a shot from 30 mt Ike.

Oh, on enemy phase if Ike's attack brings you down to Resolve hp you would actually double on enemy phase, so yay.

[grandjackal]

All I know is that this is something I have to try out, if simply just for the lulz.

Thing is, I could probably just take a forge and shave off acc rather than give hima bronze, and have a Tiger or something put him in WrathxResolve (As I can also have Eddie equipped with Cancel at the same time, which certainly helps).

It's too bad I have a screwed Eddie. Depending on what level I get him to by Ike, I could measure him out by average for a more accurate show of how he'd perform then than on my game. If it's possible to get Eddie to high enough levels, it's possible that Eddie could be a proper Ike nuke himself simply out of Resolve avoid with Nolan (showing that no matter what, Nolan's always gonna be the centerpiece of the DB).

Nice that Volug could do it too, as I'm aware he has the skill capacity. He certainly would have the speed down. Not sure about the might though. S strike with Volug procing a strength is still just Eddie without the fancy crit and 1 less might, and Eddie could crown for 2 more Str and additional Astra proc.

[Interceptor]

Part 4, here we go. I thought about it some more, and decided to send Ulki/Janaff to the Greil army. Insight will be helpful in 4-1, and so will 9MV Canto indoors in 4-4.

Chapter 4-P:

Battle prep: I set Laura up with Hammerne, passed out some fresh forges to my Axe crew, Horseslayers to Haar/Jill, and filled Naesala's inventory with garbage. JillxNolan is upgraded to B. Next, Nolan is BEXP'ed to 20, and given my last crown. He got SPD twice, and STR once, so that's good enough for me. I leave Paragon on Nolan, and put Provoke on Jill, but most everything else gets convoy'ed.

On this map, I send Nolan north, and Jill east, while Haar/Naesala help clear a couple of the nearby starting enemies and hang back to assist. Anyway, this chapter was completely hilarious, because all of Nolan, Jill, and Haar are ORKO on basically everything and don't know how to die. Not only did I not seriously have to heal anyone, but Leanne just sat in a corner since I didn't even need Vigor. Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous it was, Nolan went from level 1.00 to level 7.30 by the end of the second Enemy Phase.

Naesala's only other task here was to grab Hammerne, find the Arms Scroll, and send the staff to the convoy, which he pulled off.

I couldn't grab the final levels/stats of people because I ended the chapter on Enemy Phase (hard not to, with reinforcements galore), but I got the last Player Phase worth of stats, at any rate.

Turns (chapter/total): 5/236

BEXP (chapter/current): 1500/35,765

Funds: 45,002

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Nolan   12.20  62 33 9  36 33 30 28 20  B Jill
Jill     6.46  55 32 10 29 30 31 28 20  B Nolan
Haar     7.10  53 33 6  33 27 17 33 13  

You know, I don't even know why I bothered supporting Jill and Nolan, they are never in range of each other. And, it looks like I may very well be using a Speedwing on Haar after all.

Chapter 4-1:

Battle prep: Ulki, Janaff, and Mia all get Adept. Mia's inventory gets stuffed with 1-2 range swords and a Silver Blade, while Titania loads up on axes. I am not using Paragon for this army, I figure there's enough CEXP to go around that Neph/Shinon can double up (I'll send one to 4-4 if it seems otherwise).

Have I mentioned that I hate Fog of War maps? For this one, I did a standard clear: Nailah handles the east, IkexMia handle the south to southeast, and Titania and the Hawks (with help from Rafiel) handle the northwest to southwest. Definitely glad that I decided to bring the hawks to this place, they are quite handy, even though they only have A Strike. Adept helps considerably.

Turns (chapter/total): 6/242

BEXP (chapter/current): 1875/37,640

Funds: 45,002

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Ike      5.21  57 30 8  35 35 18 31 14  A Mia
Mia      5.88  48 27 11 34 34 23 23 16  A Ike
Titania  5.98  47 33 14 31 31 20 27 20  A Mist
Mist     9.17  33 11 17 17 18 22 9  18  A Titania
Janaff  29.77
Ulki    28.36

Edited March 22, 2010 by Interceptor

[Narga_Rocks]

Part 4, here we go. I thought about it some more, and decided to send Ulki/Janaff to the Greil army. Insight will be helpful in 4-1, and so will 9MV Canto indoors in 4-4.

Chapter 4-P:

Battle prep: I set Laura up with Hammerne, passed out some fresh forges to my Axe crew, Horseslayers to Haar/Jill, and filled Naesala's inventory with garbage. JillxNolan is upgraded to B. Next, Nolan is BEXP'ed to 20, and given my last crown. He got SPD twice, and STR once, so that's good enough for me. I leave Paragon on Nolan, and put Provoke on Jill, but most everything else gets convoy'ed.

On this map, I send Nolan north, and Jill east, while Haar/Naesala help clear a couple of the nearby starting enemies and hang back to assist. Anyway, this chapter was completely hilarious, because all of Nolan, Jill, and Haar are ORKO on basically everything and don't know how to die. Not only did I not seriously have to heal anyone, but Leanne just sat in a corner since I didn't even need Vigor. Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous it was, Nolan went from level 1.00 to level 7.30 by the end of the second Enemy Phase.

Naesala's only other task here was to grab Hammerne, find the Arms Scroll, and send the staff to the convoy, which he pulled off.

I couldn't grab the final levels/stats of people because I ended the chapter on Enemy Phase (hard not to, with reinforcements galore), but I got the last Player Phase worth of stats, at any rate.

Turns (chapter/total): 5/201

BEXP (chapter/current): 1500/35,765

Funds: 45,002

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Nolan   12.20  62 33 9  36 33 30 28 20  B Jill
Jill     6.46  55 32 10 29 30 31 28 20  B Nolan
Haar     7.10  53 33 6  33 27 17 33 13  

You know, I don't even know why I bothered supporting Jill and Nolan, they are never in range of each other. And, it looks like I may very well be using a Speedwing on Haar after all.

It's like my Elincia in 4-2! Only, she takes more turns to do it since she starts the map not anywhere near as powerful and even when she starts ORKOing everything on the map she still can't take on 5+ enemies at once.

Still, level 11+ is pretty easy with paragon and killing most of the map.

And your Haar is getting a tad speed screwed. 6 levels and only 1 point. Okay, not a lot speed screwed, when you consider on average he gets 1.8 from that, but speed screwed nevertheless.

If only he was like my crazy Ilyana in 4-5 that got speed on 4 out of 5 levels. Probability of that is greater than 1%, but not by a whole lot. It's under 4%, anyway. I did a rough estimate of the calculation once so I'm not entirely certain. I checked on feplanet and it's right, though.

[Interceptor]

It would be nice if I could get Elincia to do that, but I don't think it's in the cards, as you're about to see.

Chapter 4-2:

Battle prep: Put Paragon and Shinon/Nephenee, and Cancel/Imbue on Elincia. Due to how reinforcements work here, I loaded up a bunch of scrub CRKs with some basic weapons, and gave Lucia a Silver Blade. Also, I passed out Brave weapons here, sold some more random junk, and forged another set of Hand Axes (it's nice that four of them only cost ~10k gold), plus another javelin forge for Nephenee.

This chapter sucks. I an undermanned, and Tibarn is going to have to do a lot of work, since I only have two real fighters other than him, and Shinon's Enemy Phase is terrible. I did the best I could with sending Nephenee alone to the south, wrapping around west, with a team of scrubs to handle the lone northeast reinforcements, and a huge cadre of people (including Raisin) following Shinon and getting him as many kills as possible. Somehow, I ended it on Turn seven, with Neph and Shinon finishing it up on Enemy Phase (this Enemy Phase Rout clear is happening a lot in these armies, I'm 3/3 now), so the unit stats are for the final Player Phase.

Turns (chapter/total): 7/249

BEXP (chapter/current): 2250/39,890

Funds: 32,061

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Neph    10.55  53 32 13 35 34 26 26 24  A Shinon
Shinon   8.92  52 30 15 38 33 18 31 21  A Nephenee

The real casualties here are my unit levels. They both did level-up on Enemy Phase, but realistically this is as far as they got, even with Paragon, and 4-5 is going to be over in a flash. At least their SPD is OK for Endgame, I guess I'll be leaning on BEXP pretty heavily now.

Chapter 4-3:

Battle prep: Paragon to Jill, Celerity to Nolan, forged Hand Axes for all. Haar gets the Speedwing, Nolan gets BEXP'ed to 13 (HP/STR/SPD).

Hate this chapter. My goal here is to spread out and cover as much ground as possible, while Sothe and Micaiah make their way to goodies and Stefan. First turn I pick up Nolan with Jill, Vigor, and air-drop him in the southeast. With Celerity, he has 3 MV in the desert, so he and Jill raise hell. Haar takes the east/northeast, and Naesala takes south/southwest. Meanwhile, Manith and Sigrun take Sothe and Micaiah for a world tour of Shit To Pick Up<tm>.

Haar did fairly well here, 29 SPD was enough to double sufficient numbers of things, and the Brave Axe with his monster STR largely took care of the rest. I took a few shots at the Laguz Gem with Jill, but it just wasn't happening and I didn't feel like dragging out the chapter to get Sothe there. I did, at least, pick up Stefan, White Gem, Baselard, and Dragonfoe, though. BK shows up on turn 5 and does jack squat, the only kill he might have taken I gave to Sanaki instead (side note: Team Skrimir + Sanaki is the shit in this chapter). Oh, and Jill killed Lekain, I wasn't even aware that was actually possible. Gogo two boss kills in one chapter.

Turns (chapter/total): 6/255

BEXP (chapter/current): 2625/39,449

Funds: 30,261

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Jill    15.20  55 35 10 35 35 35 29 22  B Nolan
Nolan   15.87  63 34 10 36 35 30 29 20  B Jill
Haar    10.94  54 36 6  36 29 20 35 14
Micaiah  4.33  23 8  20 13 12 23 10 19  A Sothe

As you can see, Jill is basically "done" at this point, she just needs a little SKL and some DEF. Nolan needs +STR on all of his upcoming levels in order to still fail to cap STR, so I may just throw the Energy Drop on him, since having 40/35 STR/SPD on someone with axes would be pretty amazing.

Edited March 22, 2010 by Interceptor

[Interceptor]

I updated the 4-1 post with the levels/stats of the GMs at the end of the chapter (aka the beginning of 4-4). Be in awe of an Ike with more SPD than a same-level Mia.

Chapter 4-4:

Battle prep: First thing is that I start the chapter and go back to base, so that I can mess around the with LEA's gear. Chests keys get passed around to various people, I give the Boots to Rafiel, Titania stuffs her inventory full of forged Hand Axes, Mia has all of the good swords now, Tormod has 10-range door-breaker Meteor, Ike preps for Hammertime, and Janaff/Ulki have Laguz Stones. For skills, Titania takes Imbue (she'll be off on her own now), Mia goes with Cancel/Adept, Ike has Daunt/Renewal, Nailah has Pass, Mist takes Provoke, Janaff gets BEXP'ed to 30 and takes Adept/Tear, Ulki goes with plain Adept, and Maurim gets Resolve/Wrath. The UlkixJanaff support is upgraded to A rank.

I hate this chapter perhaps even more than 4-3, because of the general sturdiness of enemy units and the placement of reinforcements. I am in a lot of trouble if this chapter goes longer than 8-9 turns. The plan here is to send Titania east along the main corridor, and have her basically solo the entire east side by herself (Imbue and the odd Sol means she can survive). Meanwhile MiaxIke mow their way towards Oliver as quickly as possible, with help from Rafiel/Nailah/Janaff/Maurim and being trailed by Heather. Vika and Tormod will mostly shove people around and block ledges. Ulki solos the west chest room (he can take his time, so it's no problem). Mist is unpromoted and can climb the ledges here, so she'll be breaking away from Titania and staffing.

I kind of wished that I had the ability to record this chapter, because it was epic. I used absolutely everyone, including the LEA, and it ended with a final Enemy Phase Rout (stats below based on final Player Phase). I even picked up all of the treasure.

Turns (chapter/total): 8/263

BEXP (chapter/current): 3000/41,498

Funds: 25,461

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Ike      9.31  60 33 8  37 25 18 31 14  A Mia
Mia     10.48  50 29 12 36 38 23 25 17  A Ike
Titania 10.03  52 34 14 34 31 21 28 23  A Mist
Muarim  21.75  wtf

Highlights: Tormod using Meteor to break open the north room door, so that Nailah could Pass through the General and blick a mage inside. Mist using her Crown once she was up top and level 10, so that she could have Canto. Vika shoving people all over the place and opening chests. Muarim the ass-kicker, who doubled and critted a few hard targets with Wrath + Resolve.

Chapter 4-5:

Battle prep: Paragon/Beastfoe on Shinon, Paragon/Vantage on Nephenee, Pass on Tibarn (removed Pavise), and Resolve on Caill. Shinon BEXP'ed to level 10 for +HP/SKL/DEF (DEF is now capped). With an A support, Shinon can now ignore cats entirely, and gets 5HKOed by tigers.. not that any of them can hit his 121 avoid to begin with. And with Beastfoe, he OHKOs with his crossbow. Gave Meteor to Bastian.

Since this is a Boss Kill, I'm going to end it as quickly as safely possible. The strategy here is to assassinate one of the laguz protecting Izuka in order for Tibarn to get in and ORKO him. While Elincia recruits Volke, Raisin uses a Stone, and the squishes hide in a corner, Shinon/Nephenee/Tibarn easily kill of the nearby-starting Laguz by Turn 2. On Player Phase, everyone moves forward, helped by Raisin, while Shinon sets up another death-trap for the incoming northeast laguz, and Nephenee gets in position for the western ones. During Enemy Phase, another shitload of laguz dies, and Calill gets put into Resolve HP by a cat (this is for SKL, not SPD, if you're wondering).

Turn 3, time to win. Bastian runs up, and Meteors one of Izuka's guardian laguz. Tibarn flies over and gets into Vigor position. Vigor happens. Bastian finishes of the laguz he injures, Tibarn flies in for the kill. Calill is here as a backup siege tome user (someone can shove Bastian into the swamp so that she can trade and get another shot in), and Elincia is also a good finisher, but on this run they were not required.

Turns (chapter/total): 3/266

BEXP (chapter/current): 3750/43,974

Funds: 25,461

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Elincia  4.32  37 21 18 24 25 31 18 24
Shinon  13.66  57 32 15 40 34 20 32 21  A Nephenee
Neph    13.95  56 33 13 35 34 27 26 25  A Shinon

Edited March 22, 2010 by Interceptor

[Mekkah]

The real casualties here are my unit levels. They both did level-up on Enemy Phase, but realistically this is as far as they got, even with Paragon, and 4-5 is going to be over in a flash. At least their SPD is OK for Endgame, I guess I'll be leaning on BEXP pretty heavily now.

Unit    Lvl    HP ST MG SK SP LK DF RS  Support

Neph    10.55  53 32 13 35 34 26 26 24  A Shinon
Shinon   8.92  52 30 15 38 33 18 31 21  A Nephenee

Where's the problem? Neph is 2 from capping str, and most of her kills in 4-E-1 rely on her mastery/crit anyhow. Shinon gets 55 mt with Double Bow - he's borderline ORKOing 4-E-1 Generals. He gets the 50 hp/30 def ones already, and +1 str allows him to get those with either 31 def or 52 hp, another would get him ones with both, etc.

[Interceptor]

This is it, the end.

Chapter 4-Endgame-1:

Battle prep: Before I choose my army, I strip everyone's skills and dump everything into the convoy. This takes approximately an eternity. Next is my unit line-up. Forced: Ike, Micaiah, Sothe, Sanaki, Kurthnagam, Ena. Optionals: Jill, Nolan, Nailah, Mia, Tibarn, Nephenee, Shinon, Caineghis, Naesala, Haar. I doubt I will need a second healer.

Now I put skills and gear on the people I intend to use, which also takes forever.

Micaiah -- eats two Arms Scrolls (second one post-promotion) to get to S staves, and I load her up with Hammerne, Rescue, Fortify, Sleep, and Physic staves.

Sanaki -- all of my remaining Siege tomes

Kurth/Ena -- Grass/Stones

Jill -- Urvan, Tomahawks, forged Hand Axes.

Nolan -- Hammer, Hand Axes, Tarvos

Mia -- Brave Sword, Tempest Blade, Wyrmslayer, Vague Katti

Nephenee -- Forged silver lance with max mt/HIT/crit (used my Axe card for +2 mt), called "Wishblade Jr". Forged 1-2 range weapons, Brave Lance, etc.

Shinon -- Brave Bow

Haar -- Hammer, Brave Axe, forged Hand Axes, Killer Axe.

Supports: NailahxRafiel upgraded to B, JillxNolan upgraded to A, established C-rank NaesalaxHaar.

Funds: after selling useless shit, I have 123,280 gold. Well, I should say, after I got tired of selling useless shit, because once I hit 6 digits I figure it doesn't even matter anymore. Still had a ton of SS rank stuff I was never going to use, and a bunch of misc items to sell.

BEXP and stat-up time. Anyone who needs something capped, gets it capped now, if at all possible. I have almost 44k BEXP, and I can't be afraid to use it at this point.

• Jill -- Literally everything but SKL and DEF is capped. Suck it up, no BEXP for you. Gave her my Secret Book.
  
• Nolan -- 34 STR, 29 DEF, all else is capped except HP. I give him an Energy Drop, a Seraph Robe, and finish off a level for +STR/DEF. Now HP and DEF are capped, too. Nolan will get forced STR on his next three level-ups, which will cap him out on everything.
  
• Nephenee -- SKL/SPD are capped, and she's at 33 STR. I use two Icons on her, then BEXP to 14, she hits +STR and caps it.
  
• Shinon -- Needs 36 STR. I BEXP him to level 17, and he hits the cap.
  
• Mia/Ike -- not enough stuff capped because their army didn't have Paragon. I will BEXP them after 4-E-1, when they have a little more time to grow.
  
• Haar -- nothing capped, can't do much for him. Finished off a level so that he could get STR/SKL/LCK.
  
• Royals -- most don't need it, and it's too expensive anyway.
  

Heron: Rafiel

Time for 4-E-1. I got the Double Bow on the first turn as usual. The sleep staves really piss me off in this chapter, so I killed both Hetzel and the sleep bishop on the first turn (Celerity Jill and Pass Nolan respectively). I cleared on Turn 4, which is undoubtedly 1-2 turns slower than I could go, but I want to finish this playthrough already.

Turns (chapter/total): 4/270

BEXP (chapter/current): 3000/27,392

Chapter 4-Endgame-2:

Battle prep: Ike gets a Hammer, and BEXP'ed to 14 to cap his STR. Mia BEXP'ed to push her SPD a little higher. Go.

Just for variety: Sanaki and Shinon combo to take out Levail, Ike uses Parity and ORKO's the BK with a Hammer on Turn 1.

Turns (chapter/total): 1/271

BEXP (chapter/current): 3750/21,578

Chapter 4-Endgame-3:

Battle prep: Everyone equips their best weapons. I'm blessing Ragnell, Rexaura, Peshkatz (...), Meteor, Urvan, Tarvos, Brave Axe, Vague Katti, Wishblade, and Double Bow.

One-turned. Ike with Dragonfoe blasts north and ORKOs the dragon blocking the ramp. Cain, Nephenee and Ena get into a diamond south of him. Rafiel w/Celerity gets shoved and Vigors them all. Ena goes south of D, Ike/Nephenee/Cain all take a piece out of him. Micaiah uses her max MV, and uses the Rescue staff on Shinon. Shinon moves up and finishes D off, with 6 extra damage to spare.

Turns (chapter/total): 1/272

BEXP (chapter/current): 6000/27,578

Chapter 4-Endgame-4:

Battle prep: Put Parity on Shinon/Mia, Pass on Naesala/Tibarn.

Strategy here is to have Ike make an opening with Ragnell, Rafiel Vigors Tibarn/Cain/Naesala/Nasir to move them forward. Bird kings each shove a spirit out of the way, Nasir combos with a siege tome to kill another spirit, Cain injures Sephiran, Micaiah warps Mia in to finish him off with Parity + Vague Katti. There was probably an easier way to do it, but this worked.

Turns (chapter/total): 1/273

BEXP (chapter/current): 7500/35,078

Chapter 4-Endgame-5:

Battle prep: is this game over yet? BEXP'ed Nailah's SPD to 20(40) so that she can double, and BEXP'ed Cain STR to the 24 cap.

Mia + Tibarn combo perfectly on corner auras, so I use them for that. Cain can ORKO side Auras with both tides, so he does that. Etc. I can't one-turn this one as far as I know, but I did manage to kill all but two auras on the first Turn, so that's fine. Topped people off with a Fortify. Rafiel died on Enemy Phase, but he already did what he needed to do. Turn 2, finished Ashera off. Fin, game over.

Turns (chapter/total): 2/275

Well, that's a lie, since apparently I've been adding incorrectly since Part 1. I'll fix the totals at some point, but for now I'll post the real count below.

Top 6 units (name/wins):

#6 Ike -- 91

#5 Nephenee -- 93

#4 Mia -- 103

#3 Jill -- 110

#2 Haar -- 132

#1 Nolan -- 146

I made it top six since it seems a little weird to not have Ike there...

Anyway, The game's turn counter for this playthrough was: 276. Not bad at all, a personal record for Hard Mode. I expect that I could shave turns here and there, but without RNG abuse it'd be hard for me to do significantly better.

Edited March 22, 2010 by Interceptor

[-Cynthia-]

I didn't know you could use Arms Scrolls to gain staff levels. I guess that limitation was just for PoR.

[Narga_Rocks]

I didn't know you could use Arms Scrolls to gain staff levels. I guess that limitation was just for PoR.

Well, you can equip them now, so that likely makes the difference.

[Interceptor]

It's a good thing that you can use them on her, at least for a normal playthrough, since her tier 2 Staff rank cap is A, not S. Micaiah can't use Fortify in Endgame until you get that WEXP somehow. With the speed that I was going, though, even if I had Discipline it wasn't happening.

Although, Fortify was never very important, not even in 4-E-5, all that it did was allow me to use Lehran to hit something instead of healing (granted, he's really awesome at fighting and Micaiah is terrible).

Edited March 22, 2010 by Interceptor

[dondon151]

Congratulations on finishing, sir. Did you pinpoint the error behind your turn miscalculation?

[Interceptor]

Congratulations on finishing, sir. Did you pinpoint the error behind your turn miscalculation?

Thanks, it was fun (up until Part 4 anyway, where it got tedious and annoying).

I did find the error, credit to Grandjackal for pointing it out. Somewhere in Part 1, two or three times, when I was copying the post format for new chapters, I copied the total turn count and it didn't get updated. Since I always relied on the last turn count to add the chapter clear, eventually this resulted in being over 30 turns off. I just went through all of my previous posts, re-added the turn counts manually, and updated the totals to be correct.

I am still off by one turn, for some reason. The total I am getting is 275, but the game reports 276 when I go into the Extras menu and look at the battle history. I may have miscalculated a chapter somewhere by 1 turn, perhaps one of the Part 4 ones (all of the Routs ended on Enemy Phase, after all), or a Defend chapter or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter, I am OK with it. I'll post my updated counts in the OP so that people can see them all at once.

Where's the problem? Neph is 2 from capping str, and most of her kills in 4-E-1 rely on her mastery/crit anyhow. Shinon gets 55 mt with Double Bow - he's borderline ORKOing 4-E-1 Generals. He gets the 50 hp/30 def ones already, and +1 str allows him to get those with either 31 def or 52 hp, another would get him ones with both, etc.

I am just obsessive about capping STR/SPD, I guess. In the end it turned out not to matter, partly because of BEXP in 4-E's base, and partly because Endgame is a joke and the stat differences would not have mattered anyway. Shinon did manage clean ORKOs on Generals in 4-E-1, and Nephenee was proccing Impale and crits all over the place with her forged lance, so it was a complete non-issue.

[Silith]

I don't have chapter by chapter data. But I still have 2 "efficient" playthroughs on the epilogue. 273 and 280 turns respectively so yours is in between them.

Oh and for the lost turn. For some reason sometimes chapter 3-7 gives 12 turns instead of 11. I have no clue what seems to trigger this but it happened to me before.

Edited April 9, 2010 by Silith

[Interceptor]

Maybe it has something to do with killing Micaiah (the boss, technically), but I recorded 13 turns for that chapter anyway so I don't think it's my issue. I could figure it out if I beat 4-E-5 again and watched the credits, but I don't care to at this point since the total turn count under Extras is good enough for me.

Thanks for the data on the Hard mode clears, it's good to have a reference point. I could surely shave off more turns even without RNG abuse, based on some of the things that I learned in this run, but I think it was pretty efficient and your experience validates that.

[General Spoon]

I apologize for necroing this thread, but I noticed something that I wanted to bring up. Why did you give Mist Provoke in 4-4? The first thing that immediately jumps to my mind would be to let her be a sacrificial lamb, but I'd like to hear you say what it was for.

[Interceptor]

The point of giving Provoke to Mist was to have the Sleep staff Bishop target her, since she'd just heal herself the next turn with a Restore staff.

[Narga_Rocks]

Why couldn't you just PM? Now I have to do work.