Seafarer

Permanent death has always seemed to me to be a narrative mechanic, rather than one that's meant to work if you artificially isolate the gameplay from the complete context of the game. It's there to make you feel like every bit unit you use is a person, and pushes you to be sad when they die. Thing is, IntSys abandoned that theme a while ago. Ever since probably GBAFE, the units have been designed more and more to be characters, which adds weight to their imagined lives, but also adds an expectation that they'll react appropriately to the story developing around them. That's grown out of hand over the years, to the point where, in modern games, there are tons of player units who don't die when they are killed, and permanent death has more or less lost all meaning. At this point, Classic Mode exists as a concession to the people who expect it of FE; it's completely divorced from its old place as a key part of the games' theming and story-gameplay integration. Honestly, Casual Mode is more or less the default now, and permanent death should really be considered to be an optional challenge, not part of the series's identity.

@Mercakete Yeah, I see where you're coming from, and I'm sure you're right about where IntSys is headed, but that's still thoroughly unsatisfying to me, and that's because of how changes to the past propagate. There are two common versions of it, right? Either changes to the past alter the future, erasing anything from that future, or changes cause a new timeline to split off. If we take us killing Njörðr in the past as the victory condition, what happens? If it's a future-altering event, we erase everything of the old future with Gullveig, including our motivation to kill Njörðr in the past and our ability to time travel to do it. That's a paradox - killing Njörðr leads to us being unable to kill him, leading to us needing to go back and kill him, and so on forever. So what if we make a new timeline? Well, now there's nothing to stop Gullveig travelling from the old timeline in an attempt to put our new timeline back on her schedule. If we can do it, so can she. So we either need super time powers on our side to smooth out the paradox and allow us to continue to exist into the future of the altered timeline (which would kinda be a deus ex machina at this point, since paradoxes haven't been discussed throughout this entire time-travelling Book), or Gullveig needs to be convinced to stop. Or some other explanation of temporal propagation would be needed. One crack theory that I had after seeing Fionorde's post is that Njörðr is in fact trying to break the time loop by encouraging Seiðr to make Heiðr before Seiðr gets cursed, so Heiðr is also never cursed and cannot infect Seiðr. He's turned "evil" because he needs to convince Gullveig that he's on her side and his only hope now is to loop again and have another go at convincing Seiðr. In that case, he could be convinced to pull a Freyr and sacrifice his past self to prevent his Ár being used to create Gullveig, leaving us to kill Kvasir in the past in order to erase Gullveig completely (and we could have Njörðr's time powers on our side to break the paradox there, in theory). But that's pretty far out, and I don't expect it to happen (and it also either erases Seiðr or leaves her cursed).

@Mercakete I guess it kinda makes sense if you assume Gullveig has no agency, but why would defeating Njörðr cause her to stop? From her perspective, surely he's only one time rewind from being back again, and his instructions still exist in her brain. I still think that, in the case that she lacks agency, the only reasonable ways to end her threat are to 1) get Njörðr to change his instructions to her or b) snap her out of the despairing inevitability mindset that caused her to abandon her agency in the first place. Oh, and you say that she's loyal to Njörðr in all her forms, but I don't think, as Seiðr, she's blindly so. I read her as being obedient to his will because she had no reason not to trust him, as the chief god of Vanaheimr. I wouldn't expect that to stick now that he's revealed himself as the cause of her transformation into Gullveig. ...and now I'm wondering whether we should've agreed to have a baby with Seiðr, to make a Heiðr born free of the golden curse.

The more I think about it, the less I trust that this book is going to have a really satisfying ending. Gullveig was introduced as being able to see all of time, so I don't think anyone she's relying on betraying her is likely to be her undoing - she should see it, and it should only further her overall scheme. Same with whatever Nerþuz has going on - that has to be part of Gullveig's plan, because she can see everything. I think the way this has to go is that we need to prevent Seiðr's despair from happening in the first place, so we're going to have to save Heiðr from ever being cursed somehow, retconning the recent chapter out of existence, so Seiðr never becomes infected or gives in to despair. But still, how are we going to do that when Gullveig should be capable of seeing it happening? Unless we do something that causes Gullveig herself to see a way out of her inevitability mindset, and she just lets us do it to save her past self from losing Heiðr? Honestly, I think that Gullveig is just too overwhelming a villain for any option for defeating her to hold up against her established powers. Anyone want to try and convince me otherwise?

I saw a post on Reddit a while back about this, and the conclusion there, after testing, was that yes, a unit being broken disables their Bonded Shield.

With respect to Ótr, IntSys seems to consistently give non-human FEH characters a free pass to Mythic eligibility. That aside, I think the dvergar and jötnar are about as mythic as Elimine is. There's nothing inherently godlike about Elimine either - she and the other Divine Generals just wielded super-powerful weapons, kinda like the seiðjárn that the dvergar use. If Elimine is eligible under the "godlike power" criterion, Ótr and Reginn should be too. The other thing is that eligibility to be a Mythic doesn't guarantee Mythic status. Nifl and Múspell are non-human FEH characters, and they aren't Mythic. Nemesis clearly qualifies, but he's not Mythic either. So Eitri qualifying for Mythic status doesn't mean she should be a Mythic (and she's a legendary figure from Niðavellir's history, so Legendary seems fair). And by the same token, Freyr is by no means guaranteed to be a Mythic just because he obviously qualifies to be one.

how could you forget Lara? 😢

According to Palla Emblem, it's seeded the same way at the start of every new game, and its state is stored in the save file. So yes, you can plan turns or maps by loading a save, checking how your strat plays out, then reloading and trying for better results by varying the order of actions and stuff like that. Or you can use save states and arena matches to get a result you want, note down what it took to get there, then restart the map from the beginning so you don't need save states while you're actually doing the clear (might be helpful for ranked runs).

oh no, not again

What's the difference between what we got and having the class group effects being explicit skills? It's good that infantry and armoured units finally have something to match up to the advantages that horses and fliers have had for ages, but I agree that they could have been more experimental with it, especially with personal classes. Ike'e Emblem class is an Armoured type without an armour weakness, for instance. Why can't Diamant have that instead of another generic Backup sword infantry? Or cut half the flying classes and replace them with a series of Coverts that use swords/lances/axes. Could've been a spellsword class that uses physical weapon types but was Mystical. There's so much they could have experimented with, and I'm worried that class group is going to be one of the things that doesn't make it into future games. At least Engage is pretty accessible for modding.

It looks like the Anankos from the final map of Heirs of Fate, which is the only time he fought in his human form. The mythic would likely use the dragon form from Revelation.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OjFkZVNOHtXbJn2HzVoYSDFJdl0wucZl/view?usp=sharing Well, here's Nino and the usual suspects dealing with a goat queen. Shout-outs to using a Chill skill in 2023, lol. And I'd like to thank Rearmed Tana for showing up promptly so Azura could grab Guidance 4.

Yes, they have the hit rates they would have if the backup unit was solo (so no pair-up stat bonuses, though I think support bonuses still apply).

After the double trouble of Fomortiis and Gotoh and then the immovable wall that is M!Robin, Yuri was very easy to handle, though it was funny to see Cordelia fail to kill a red unit in one round.

Well, I'm *counts* three and a half years late on this, but... here you go: The worst part is that I tweeted this over two years ago and still didn't come back to answer this immediately (and this screenshot is from a different run, too).

Duo Ephraim is actually the only Duo in the regular summoning pool, dating from when they added him to the 4-star special pool.

I'm now further into my Maddening run, and I'd like to add my practical experiences with Dire Thunder to the mix. Firstly, I could afford to forge my first Thunder to +3 as soon as I got it, even after forging Libération up to make Alear good. There's no way I could have forged it up to a +3 Thoron (because of the high Silver cost), meaning Great Thunder is just straight-up worse than Dire Thunder after the two chapters where thunder tomes exist and Dire Thunder doesn't. When I got Leif's ring, Dire Thunder cost me 3000 bond fragments and less than ten minutes to get. I gave it and the +3 Thunder to Citrinne, and she immediately became my "delete enemy" button. Every point of Mag she got turned into two extra damage, and the brave effect amplified the effect of Alear's personal and the Spur Atk skill from the Alfonse ring. Sure, I could have used a unit who doubled to also get that extra damage, but brave 1-3 range means you're only risking a counter if the enemy has 1-3 range and doesn't get ORKOed. Dire Thunder is a godsend in C11. This is the main thing that it has over Emblem Rings - it doesn't stop existing when you really need it. I switched to the Radiance engraving once I got Ike, and Citrinne has basically deleted everything I need her to since then. She occasionally doesn't ORKO, but I can usually get extra Atk on her with one of the support skills, or just let her chunk an enemy for another unit to take the kill on. Because she's so good at killing, Citrinne is snowballing pretty hard, which just keeps making Dire Thunder better. I'm in C16 right now, and she's ORKOing Mauvier with either Alear or Spur Atk support (not both) - I don't think you're likely to pull that off with Great Thunder Thoron. She was also pretty essential to clearing the Ike paralogue. Side note: paralogue enemies are way stronger than main story enemies near their unlock time. Citrinne was ORKOing everything in C15, but only non-magical units in Ike's paralogue beforehand. Thus far, I've never once thought that Citrinne needs an Emblem Ring instead, and not spending Silver on Thoron has let me do a bunch of other strong forges. We'll see how lategame goes, but right now, I think Olwen S is inarguably the best bond ring in the game. (DLC Emblems obviously change the picture somewhat, but I think there'd still be room for Dire Thunder on a mage from C11 through to maybe C14. Besides, DLC Emblems change so much about the game's balance (read: make it significantly easier), and I don't think anyone's saying the nuking power of Dire Thunder is a strict improvement over an Emblem Ring's versatility.) tl;dr: Dire Thunder is cheap, doesn't vanish during the rough patches where you lose your Emblem Rings, lets a mage snowball hard, kills a bunch of enemy types and chunks the rest without risk of a counterattack, and nearly doubles any Mag investment you may give its user compared to other 1-3 range options. It is in no way overrated in either the earlygame (where it doesn't exist) or the midgame, at least as far as I have seen in discussions around it. I might come back to this thread again once I get close to the end.

Do we know what the enemy growth rates are for skills like Sink Below? I'm wanting to disentangle the bonuses granted by the Dark Roy emblem from those granted by the 3 extra levels the skill provides.

I feel like Obama needs to pause more, and AI!Trump is far too coherent. Still amusing, though.

Damage with +3 Radiance Thunder + Olwen S ring: 2 × (11 + Mag - Res) = 22 + 2(Mag - Res) Damage with +3 Radiance Thoron + Mae S ring: 1.2 × (24 + Mag - Res) = 28.8 + 1.2(Mag - Res) So let's check when the former is higher than the latter, shall we? 22 + 2D > 28.8 + 1.2D 0.8D > 6.8 D > 8.5 In other words, Dire Thunder out-damages Great Thunder Thoron as long as your Magic is at least 9 above the enemy's Res. I'm... not actually sure how likely that is, since I've only played through the game once on Normal mode (just starting Maddening now), but hopefully you all can use this to settle the debate (or at least further it). Also, investing more in Might helps Dire Thunder more, since that extra power gets used twice.

Cool, thanks. Do they get Hit/Avo bonuses on Maddening, like in New Mystery Lunatic? Or is it just a Normal mode thing?

Has anyone else noticed that enemies on Normal mode have less hit than they should? I first saw it in Chapter 26, when I realised everyone had 10 less hit than they should according to the stats on Serenes, and just now I've checked Lyn's paralogue, and enemies there seem to have 20 less than they should. Is this a known thing? Are there other hit manipulations going on in the higher difficulties?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JiGlunwa1Bt1MZi9EC5iN9yEUkCBhUUM/view?usp=sharing Okay, this map was expensive in terms of inheritance. Azura got her second ever inherited skill, Wings of Mercy; Cordelia picked up Even Tempest as her first premium C-skill; and Nino needed Blazing Light, Windsweep, and Drive Atk (and Blazing Wind, but that was a mistake). This map hammered home my distaste for all these new armour skills - those Assault Troop assholes were way too good at controlling space in conjunction with the two bosses with more durability than they have any right to, and of course Saves continue to be horrible. IMO, the Infernal version of this map is on par with or harder than the majority of older Abyssals. I really don't know how I'm going to keep up if they continue to make units with effects like Nightmare...

They did two Mythics before, with Freyja and Triandra. But yes, they're probably trying to scramble through candidates from older games because the rest of the Mythic schedule is taken up with Book 7 and Engage characters.

*Six years old. CYLx happens at the start of the xth year of FEH's lifetime.