ping

Writing "no offense" doesn't really make a statement more or less offensive than it would be otherwise. But yeah, in this case the statement isn't particularly hurtful, imho. Otherwise the sheer existence of homosexual women and heterosexual men should trigger me and neither of those does. [Disclaimer: This post may contain silliness.] I can imagine! I already have a few nephews and nieces of my own, but I happily restrict myself to the 1% that is neither poop-related nor trying to calm a screaming baby. ;)

It's not pointless to promote at Lv.20 - the XP gain of a promoted unit is the same no matter when you promote (and much slower than before promotion), so holding the promotion until max level will net you more level-ups and thus more stats over the course of the game, even though you probably won't hit Lv.20 after promotion. However, that long-term gain usually isn't big enough to not take the immediate promotional gains sooner. Rutger, for example, will want the Swordmaster promotion to reliably kill the asshole that is the boss in chapter 7x, but he'll never even come close to Lv.20 before that. Milady's base stats are just so monstrous that she doesn't really need the additional level-ups from Lv10 to Lv.20 before promotion (although I think she would appreciate a Speedwing). Your healer(s) will want to promote ASAP to be able to gain XP through battle, since staffs don't net that much experience. Other than that, I'd just promote a character as soon as he _needs_ the immediate boost to stay useful, but definitely as soon as s/he hits a stat cap. If a specific chapter gives you trouble, ponder if promoting a unit will help your clear and act accordingly. Or just use Gradivus' rule of thumb because those numbers seem reasonable. ;)

There is little point in comparing (FE6)Marcus' base stats to other promoted characters if you don't have access to any of those. His competition at the start of the game are a bunch of unpromoted units and at that point he completely outclasses anyone on your team. Of course, that changes over time (and nobody here will try to convince you that Marcus is endgame material), but for a long period of time, including one of the hardest chapters in the game (ch.7), ignoring/benching Marcus makes the game much, much harder that benching anyone else would. And I think someone already pointed out that Marcus and Zealot remain decent during the Western Isles arc, so they're relevant for about half the game. And that's good, in case you were wondering. @topic: Thany is probably the most useful all around, due to the lack of competition until Tate and especially Milady show up. But on HM (and if I had to choose between them), I'd probably bench Thany for her sister and both Pegs for Zeiss. Despite the first paragraph, I tend to overvalue potential over immediate use, but I think that at least training Zeiss would be more worthwhile than keeping Thany and Tate on the team. Tate vs. Thany is probably questionable, though.

Same here. I do like the archetype of a seemingly docile character with a strong will, so I was very disappointed that in RD she only fawned over some irredeemable douche. Speaking of which... Does the great will-power actually show up in any of his supports or dialogues? To me, he always seemed to be a guy who will always take the easiest possible way and only rarely feels any guilt about the consequences of his actions. Also, while he does seem to have some sort of development in his PoR supports, RD puts his behaviour right back to the initial point, making the second part of that quote questionable at best.

Wait, Roulette can actually hit an enemy? I never saw that happening and assumed that the RNG is rigged if an opponent uses that move.

I'm sure having a small child will somewhat desensitize you against faecal matters over time anyways. ;) All the best wishes to you and the baby girl!

You can actually spare the vigilantes (or whatever they were called) that way if you get the timing right. Just don't recruit Zihark until you're able to finish the chapter on the same turn - that way you can visit the house in the NE with Zihark and since you're instantly ending the map, the vigilantes can't suicide into him. Jill doesn't move unless you leave someone in her attack range, so mark her range to make sure you don't kill her by accident. The BK behaves differently on Normal and Hard. On NM, he only moves (and will kill) if someone's in range. It's possible to find a spot outside his range to reach Zihark on the next turn with a transformed Laguz. On Hard, he does move as Sophie already mentioned. You could try to bait him south by placing Marcia just outside his range to make sure he doesn't block the northern route towards Zihark. On both modes, you might want to either bring both Lethe and Mordecai or give your Laguz of choice the Laguz Stone to make sure you have a transformed Laguz ready to get Zihark. Finally, none of the items you can get is absolutely crucial for the rest of the game. It's great if you can get them (Dracoshield, Elwind and Killer Lance is a nice loot, after all), but while the +2 Defense is nice, both your mages and lance users will do just fine with forged weapons anyway (and Elwind is even available in the shop later). So if you just can't do all the side objectives, you should probably just let it slide for the sake of your sanity. ;) But really, it would be a shame if you had to put this game down just because of this one chapter. Good Luck!

Well, I guess the two strength level ups won't do her any harm. I probably would have benched her after ch.9 because Deke and Rutger would call dibs on the first two Crests and I'm not sure if promoting her later than that would be worth it. Yeah, and Tate isn't too bad either. Her bases on NM are pretty terrible (6 Str, 11 Spd...) and the HM bonuses make her a lot more viable. Too bad they also make both wyvern riders blow her and Thany out of the water. In general, the character balancing needed quite a few tweaks. I like how FE6 gives different characters different roles - Marcus is my favourite Jeigan in the series and I quite like how most of the prepromotes work in this game. But it's a bit painful that some characters are just plain worse than any of their competition. :/ Looking forward to see if you can save both the archers and the peg knights :D The latter part always screws me over.

The multilingual parents that I know (German/French and German/Chinese) talked to their kids in their respective language since the birth. In general, the children talk German to everyone else, but as far as I can tell they all speak their mother's/father's language fairly well.

Yeah, Ewen uses Ninjutsu: [spoiler=it's shown on the top screen] I guess increased growths for a boss do make sense, especially if they don't give the bosses' stats any special treatment otherwise (or do they? I dunno). Fuck that mission. -.- I think the number of turns is RNG dependant and I haven't found a way to beat the 2-turn. Maybe a tinker with the Haste coinflip? Or the fastest moogle class with the tinker skillset as secondary to get the haste boost in earlier? Or is there a auto-haste item? Anyway, fuck that mission.

He sure looks like someone with impressively painted abs. So... if the Nightfall uses the same skillset as ninjas (assuming it's a diffrent skillset with the same name) and seems to use the same weeb-swords as ninjas, why did they have to give Ewen a custom class? I didn't notice until now that he isn't just a ninja with a paintjob, but a ninja with a paintjob of another name.

But surely personal autonomy weighs more than the potential harm done by cheating in a video game? And honestly, you can't just assume that a cheat-free experience is better per se. As a personal example, when I first played FE6, I started to use 1 savestate per chapter after some ambush spawns murdered some of my units (I think it was Rutgers gang) to save me some of the frustration of having to restart the whole chapter. I don't have the direct comparision of beating the whole game legit, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even have finished NM if it wasn't for my cheating. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but that's enough to prove that it's possible for some people to improve their first-play experience by cheating. If you aren't one of them, that's fine, but you can't condemn cheating in general just through your personal experience.

Person A goes to a game store, buys Game B. He loves it. A year later, Person A thinks to himself, 'Man, Game B was amazing' and a quick google search tells him that Game B2 has been published. So he buys it because he loved the predecessor so much. Back home, he realizes that Game B2 has basically the same gameplay, just with slightly improved graphics and a different storyline. So A is sorely disappointed, because instead of wasting 60 bucks, he just could have replayed Game B. Sure, you can go ahead and argue that B2 is objectively better than B1, thanks to its superior graphics. But for most people who have bought B1, the sequel is still a bitter disappointment, simply because the added value just isn't worth the buying price. Good luck re-eating the same sandwich (not a comparable one) after you already devoured it one year ago.

To add an argument against the Sandwich Theory of Video Gaming: Sandwiches are consumed and afterwards, you have to buy/make another one if you want to experience the flavour of sandwiches. Videogames have varying replay value, but they don't just disappear when you've beaten the final boss. If you crave that particular game, you can just pick it up again. So you can't compare a nearly identical sequel to a new sandwich - it's more like a drop of mustard on an existing one. However, the waiter will still charge you for a second sandwich, even though the additional value for you is miniscule at best. (I haven't played the games in question myself, so I can't say anything about them in particular. But the analogy doesn't work anyways.)

There's only one right answer to that poll. By the way, does invisibility wear off after any kind of action? If it allowed healing or buffing without breaking, it might be useful on such a unit, but if it only lasts until the next turn (which I always thought it would), it's a really crappy spell. :/

[spoiler=Update 4]And back we are! Before getting into the combat mechanisms of this game, I'll start with a little summary of the more peaceful stuff that's going on right now. Some random, unguarded monster lair nets us the weaker of the two artifact-creating spells. Artifacts are the third and last reason (next to more bonuses through XP and to special abilities) why heroes have more potential than normally recruited units. They can be enchanted to give the wearer increased stats and/or the effect of a magic spell without paying maintenance or risking a Dispel. Creating an artifact can get extremely expensive, though, if you want its effects to be meaningful. And since you can find some really good items in monster lairs, I rarely create any even in the lategame. Our future military production city is still slowly building up its infrastructure. I want it to get its hammers up through population growth (and maybe a Sawmill afterwards) before getting the necessary stuff to produce mythril Slingers. The cap starts building a Shrine, the first of four religious buildings. All of them only pacify one rebel, but their mana gain (more accurate: power base gain that can be refined into mana, science or skill) goes up for the more advanced buildings. Halfling cities can build all of the religious buildings, producing up to 13 mana power per turn. It's their biggest conomical strength by far, fully developed Halfling cities will be comparatively weak in science and hammers. Back to fighting: My military forces are now ready to start clearing out some of the more dangerous monster lairs or, in this case magic node. The Phantom Warriors waiting at the first Sorcery nodes right outside our capital one of the two most basic monsters of the realm. A wizard can only summon them during combat as a disposable unit that disappears after battle anyway. They're extremely frail (no defense whatsoever and only one HP per figure), but if they manage to get into melee range unharmed, they can deal quite decent damage for a rather low mana cost. Their big selling point is the Illusion ability, allowing them to deal their damage (on average 5.4 damage if all 6 figures are alive) fully regardless of the opponent's armor. When fighting on Sorcery nodes, they suddenly get significantly more dangerous. Every type of node (there are Nature, Chaos and Sorcery nodes in the game) will boost the attack, armor and magic resistance of every unit of its realm by two points. This increases their average damage to 9 points, easily one-shotting unexperienced units and even Elite troops if the RNG wills it so. For completionist's sake: Their other new ability (the immunities still do exactly what you'd expect) is completely useless in combat unless City Walls are involved. The movement bonus only applies to the world map. Phantom Warriors' biggest weakness are ranged units, which is why I built two Slingers (and cast Heroism on one of them) before entering the node. And since I now have all three attack types on my team, this is a good time to go through the (in my opinion less than great) battle mechanisms. I'll actually start with magical ranged attacks because they're actually the easiest to go through. Basically, every point of attack strength has a base 30% chance to connect. Reywind here has 5 Attack right now, so he'll deal 5*0.3=1.5 damage on average, but the damage actually dealt is hugely RNG dependant, sometimes making a fight between two equally strong units completely one-sided. Physical ranged attacks basically work the same, but the chance To Hit gets reduced by 10% for every three full tiles of distance. However, there are much more ways to improve physical attacks (Mithril for example doesn't affect magical attacks), especially on normal units, easily balancing out that disadvantage. By the way, remember all the "30% damage boosts" I mentioned earlier? This is what I was talking about. ;) "+1 To Hit" for some reason is code for "+10% to hit" and for yet another reason, not all +x To Hit bonuses are displayed. My Halflings, for example, are at displayed +3 To Hit as Ultra Elite troops (the screen is from my swordsmen, but it's the same for all Hobbit units), when it should be at +4 (+2 via XP, +1 via Lucky, +1 via Magic weapons / Alchemy trait). Anyways, those To Hit bonuses are especially valuable on ranged units to counteract the weakened accuracy on large distances. Shown: Proof. And finally, Melee combat. Mechanically, it's not too different, either, but two points are worth mentioning. One: Attacker and defender will strike simultaniously. So even if an attack is fatal, the attacker will still get hit back by all the figures he attacked. Two: While ranged units use up all remaining movement points, melee attacks only cost half of your maximal movement, allowing any stationary unit to attack twice a turn. This makes 3 points of movement (or more) pretty strong, as it allows the unit to attack twice after moving; to attack, move to the next target and attack again; or to move in, attack once and move out again. Reaching ranged units before they unload their whole ammo on you can be a real lifesaver, too. There are a lot of special abilities that may change these rules, but as usual, I'll cover them as they show up. All three of these attack types go against the Armor score of the defender - and this is where calculating average damage rolls stops being an option. (By the way - War Bears are the weakest Nature realm summon. They suck pretty hard because they only have two figures per unit, so I just give them this passing notice) Things remain rather rather tame as long as a single-figure unit attacks another single-figure unit: The amount of blocked damage is determined exactly the same way. If Reywind attacked this lonely War Bear (his buddy already died. It was very, very sad), he'd deal 5*0.3=1.5 points of damage on average; the Bear would block 3*0.3=0.9 damage on average, so Rey's lucky if his attack even gets through. However, let's assume the 2nd War Bear would still be kicking with one remaining HP. The way the game works, all damage taken gets focussed on one figure, so if Reywind is lucky and deals 3 damage while the War Bear doesn't block anything, the first Bear dies, while the remaining 2 damage get relocated on the remaining Bear. That Bear then rolls for defense again, potentially taking only one or even zero damage. This means that a multi-figure unit is more bulky than a single-figure unit with the same stats and the same total HP - but it will lose offensive power as its figures die. Remaining is how the game handles multi-figure units on the offense. This is easier - every figure's attack is calculated seperately, so when Slingers attack a target, all eight of them have to overcome its defense on their own. This hasn't been an issue until now, but (unboosted) Slingers do struggle against high-defense unit because of that. Useless trivia: The manual explains the defensive part of multi-figure units right, but not the seperate attacks. In an otherwise very detailed combat illustration, it very consequently adds up some Elven Lord's damage rolls before subtracting their target's defense. Moving on! Melding a Magic or Guardian Sprit with the node lets you extract its magical power. The amount varies depending on the beaten defenders' strength (well, technically it's the other way around). This node nets 8 Power a turn, which is quite a lot at this stage, but still a rather weak node. It's helpful to always keep at least a token unit on guard on your nodes. I'm pretty sure the AI registers unprotected nodes even if it hasn't explored the area yet, so it will send some spirit to claim it. I'm not too keen to meet another wizard that way because I wouldn't know where his lands are and if he's feeling like it, he'd cast harmful spells on my cities or lands (I'm also pretty sure that the AI cheats with city visibility). I use the additional mana per turn from the node mostly to cast Endurance on my troops (note the boots symbol on the right). It'll be helpful to clear the lairs on my island faster, but during combat, it'll also allow the slingers to kite slow melee units and to get another shoot in before 2-move or 3-move enemies can reach them. The initial distance in combat is 5 tiles, so they can move back and shoot to gain another turn. The next monster we encounter is the Basilisk, a mid-tier unit from the Nature realm. It's not super powerful (15 Atk isn't that impressive when my slingers are at 8*4), but it is fairly bulky and has the ability to petrify its enemies by looking at them. Gaze attacks in general deal additional damage during a melee fight. They're applied before the actual exchange of punches, so if it kills some of the enemies, their damage will be reduced accordingly. The Stoning Gaze is a resist-or-die attack and as such the first good occasion to explain the Resistance stat in this game. It works different (and simpler) than the physical Armor: A unit has a (10*Resist)% chance to block an incoming spell that checks Resistance (Magical Ranged Attacks do not, neither do directly damaging spells). Many spells and special attacks (including the Basilisk's Stoning Gaze) reduce the Resistance by increments of 10% before rolling against it, so two Basilisk facing each other would have a chance of 70%-10% = 60% to petrify one another. Multi-target units have to roll for every single fighter, so it's theoretically possible that a Basilisk petrifies a whole Slingers corps without taking any retaliation. However, Hobbits have a +3 bonus to Resistance (including one point by being Lucky) and Ultra Elite Hobbit troops reach 11 Resistance, making them completely immune to this particular special trait. In general, Slingers can beat Basilisks quire reliably, assuming they aren't terribly outnumbered. Heck, even the melee units do pretty good here. Once again, Hobbits prove their superiority! (No, seriously, between their high resistance and their Lucky trait, they do much, much better against monsters with these insta-death abilities than most other fighters) Next up, the other two Sorcery nodes close to the cap. Both have Phantom Beasts as their known defender, those basically being upgraded Phantom Warriors. The first one has one pair of Nagas supporting the three phantom beasts... ...which is the other lowest-tier Sorcery summon. They do have two special abilities, but compared to the Phantom Warriors, they're bulkier, but very harmless offensively. First Strike would be an amazing ability on a unit with actual offensive strength. It only works when attacking, but then it allows the unit to strike (and hopefully kill at least a few figures) before the defender can retaliate. It's mostly wasted on the Naga, but many mounted units also have this ability and can make much better use of it. Poison sucks. It's another ability that activates in melee combat and goes against resistance, but instead of killing, it just deals one point of damage if the (unmodified) resistance roll fails. Nagas make their target roll four times, but since unmodified Resistance tends to be around 7 or higher, especially as the game progresses, the additional damage is too small to make a difference. Poison damage is dealt during the melee combat, not before, so it only reduces retaliation when First Striking. (Thinking about it that way, this combination isn't terrible, although "unmodified Resistance roll" still makes it situational at best) In Sorcery nodes, the Phantom Beast doesn't deal much more damage than one group of warriors (25*0.4=10 vs. 30*0.3=9), but it doesn't die as fast, it will reach your ranged units faster and it doesn't get weaker when its HP go down. Quite decent, all things considered. The general strategy, surprisingly enough, is to shoot them until they die... ...and, because that doesn't work quite fast enough (it takes all three ranged attackers to kill one Beast in one turn), run away. It works! Once again, cowardice saves the day. To make it even better, at 2 tiles distance ranged attacks keep their full accuracy. Finishing the battle nets us the first artifact for our heroes to equip... ...and it's a pretty good one! Flight on a ranged hero can break the combat system pretty hard, because (grounded) melee units have literally no option to defend themselves until the hero runs out of ammo. And since heroes with magical attacks use their mana to attack (3 points per shot, while normal units and physical ranged attackers usually have 4-8 ammo per battle), they can keep shooting for a long time as soon as they've collected some XP. The three symbols next to the portraits are the slots for artifacts. Every hero can equip one weapon (a bow or a melee weapon for B'Shan; a staff or a melee weapon for Reywind) and either two accessories (for pure mages) or one piece of armor and one accessory. Lookin' ...eh, not great, but decent! The remaining Sorcery node is a bit more heavily guarded, so that even after backing up, one Phantom Beast comes close enough to attack the swordsman. But luckily, the MoM AI tends to be rather single-mindedly (and stupidly) persue ranged units. I mean, in a way it's sensible, but very often, enemy units will just try to walk past melee units even if they can't attack any ranged unit in the same turn. It's quite abusable, so even though our swordsmen and even more so our spearmen aren't really needed as fighters, they still make decent meatshields. This fight, I actually do run out of ammo/mana, so the slingers have to do some knifework. Note the additional point of melee strength on the slingers - that's Reywind's Leadership at work. It goes up to a +3 bonus and half of it gets applied to physical ranged attacks as well. Rounded down, unfortunately, so it doesn't help at all right now and won't give a second point of ranged attack ever. Our loot is another great weapon, although it only boosts Reywind's less important physical attack. It does so by quite the margin, however (Giant Strength is a basic Nature spell that adds yet another point of attack) and gives Rey a bit more mana to spend on spells or ranged attacks. insert Elibe joke here Anyway, I think this is a decent point to end this update with another infrastructure update. Jafar's old capital has constructed few buildings, but interrupts its SimCity for a bit to produce a few Engineers, just to get our road network rolling. Our gold and mana income looks pretty good as well (it's actually 16 mana per turn, the display just doesn't update immediately after melding with a node), so I feel pretty good about... ...well find me in the alps.

So the one case reminds you of the other one why exactly? Because they're both allegations of sexual assault? In that case I could easily find another case in which the defendant was found guilty and say that the media's response to the allegations against Trump reminds of that. Please point out where anyone in this thread wrote that Trump should be jailed. I couldn't find any post suggesting that.

I didn't know of that case beforehand. Did Mr Ghomeshi also brag how he was able to get away with sexual assault while being recorded?

So how is that not a contradiction? So you're implying that Trump succeeding was all because of a Democrat conspiracy? Sorry, but if anyone needed to hear that Billy Bush talk to recognize what a horrible person Trump is, it's their own fucking fault. If that's not what you're saying, I'm sorry that I don't see any point whatsoever in bringing up the timing of those allegations.

If someone's commenting over recorded and edited footage, I highly prefer if they don't show multiple attempts of the same segment of the game. It's fine if they want to point out how tough one opponent was by showing a failed attempt or if the failure is particularly entertaining, but in general, I'm perfectly fine if they just show the successful play. Watching someone bonk their head repeatedly into the wall can only carry a video for so long. ;) A LP doesn't have to have that 'peeking over the player's shoulder' feeling. It's a valid approach too, but not the only one. If someone plays a Nuzlocke or a classical jRPG, I sure as hell don't want to watch 4 hours worth of footage of the player grinding their Pokemon / characters to a reasonable level. To me, it's the same with (especially multiple) failed attempts. It's nice if I know that they've been there, but I don't need the videos to prove it.

I'd say Jill and Nolan are the best units in the DB to focus on. Other then that, I'd say one additional unpromoted unit of youf choice shouldn't be to big of a problem, but spreading out your XP thinner than that will make your game quite a bit harder during the DB segments. The DB has quite a few prepromotes at their disposal, so don't worry about having too few units to deploy.

They do tend to avoid to declare any pairings canon or non-canon, so I wouldn't expect it. OTOH, Tellius is the oddball in the newer entries (FE6 and following) in that it doesn't have multiple romantic options for any characters unless you count Ranulf and Soren, so who knows? And to be honest, I think that their infatuation is shown quite explicitly in RD. By the way, I can't get over how young Bastian (and to a lesser extent) Lucia are supposed to be. I guess, her being 25 by the time RD rolls in is reasonable, but I always pictured Bastian as a man in his thirties and I guess I internally adjusted Lucia's age to that. I mean, dude's basically Crimea's spymaster and I would think that establishing the necessary connections for that would take some time. He sure looks young ;) I know that I contradict myself, but 39 in a jRPG is old enough to look for a nursery home!

From the low weight probably not. Weight is mostly an issue at the start of the game because sooner or later, most units will be able to wield every weapon just fine. The only exception are the mages, or at least Soren (if he wants to use something else than a Wind tome) as well as post-promo Rhys and Mist. But really, that just means you spent a bit more gold than necessary. The lance doesn't get worse from the lower weight, either, so there's really no reason to worry at all.

Aw, that looks like a Fir-less playthrough approaching. Too bad! And that's why I don't think HM bonuses are a good mechanism. :/ They just widen the gap between good and bad units so badly. I mean, your Sue is quite blessed right now and still can't quite catch up to Shin's increased base stats despite being 4 levels ahead. It's even worse in this game because most units that get a bonus would have been at least decent, anyway... Jerrot really got screwed by the RN Goddess there. :D Oh well, he's not as crucial to the game as Marcus was, anyway. Your christmas cavs do seem fine by now.

Reducing weight on Gatrie's lance wasn't necessary - your speed gets reduced for every point of weight above your strength. For example, Mist actually gained 2 effective speed through the Energy Ring when using a Sonic Sword (9 weight), but only one speed when wielding an Iron sword (7 weight - so it would have slowed her down one point if she only had 6 strength). Or put differently, a weak unit gets slowed down by heavy weapons, but a strong unit doesn't get faster when using light weapons. Yes, you can forge the basic tomes. That's why I don't think the A-Rank tomes (Bolganone, Tornado, Thoron) aren't that important; if you put +5 Might on a basic tome, it'll have around the same power as the A-Rank tome. Mist with the Sonic Sword is just so much fun :) Still very squishy, but overkilling wyverns is amazing.