zahlman

w00t~! Oh, he will, I'm sure of it. Nagl... this was agonizing. I really hope this works out as I've planned. You've won the grand prize of Sain.

The thread title made me think "Truth, Despair and Hope". I am a bad person.

Fixed IMHO.

OTOH, there have been a couple of times where I found it rather nice that enemy Horseslayers aren't effective on Clarine. ("How did I manage to leave her there ")

I was more just amazed that you somehow managed not to crit at a 14% rate in so many opportunities. And/or trying to guess where exactly you were ending the cutscene :/ I tried it out a few times and found that if you try too hard to be totally safe against the initial enemies, the reinforcements catch up and you're basically unprepared for them. Breguet doesn't OHKO Eirika, so you can have her try on EP and back away if she fails. But the thing is you pretty much have to just go for it anyway, because Gilliam's hit rate is worse and he can barely scratch the guy anyway. If you happen to only hit once on that EP and decide to back off and heal, then you're left needing to hit him again twice anyway. So you might as well try to do it quickly and restart if it doesn't work, because going slowly and thus having to tank the reinforcements really just adds to the risk. (Although I guess it does simplify the question of how to keep Seth and Franz out of the way...) I was just saying, really. Snark not intended. The point was more that a team with a Franz might not have to double back to get the reinforcements (because with careful planning and a strong enough unit, you can finish everything on the EP of the same turn that you would trigger them), and a team with Vanessa could get back there faster, and a team with more than one early-game draft could have someone hang back to handle them. These are all tactical advantages that a team that aren't available to a team with only Gilliam at this point. I did a quick check of the Mogalls - there are 3 of them; two are right next to each other and have basically perfectly overlapping attack ranges so you'll have to take them at the same time. Gilliam needs 3 or 4 Str procs to OHKO them (since Steel Lances aren't available yet), which probably isn't too realistic, and he's going to be 4HKO'd by them (the other monsters are insignificant). So he needs to have a Javelin ready for the first two on EP, finish one off on the next PP (still using the Javelin), and then heal up before advancing for the third. You'd have to be suicidal/trying really hard to get the third one involved at the same time with a low-mov unit, agreed. So it's not a real problem to clear, but it does still force you to slow down in a few ways. Anyway, turncounts "blowing" is relative; you might be expecting to get stomped by your draft-mates from the get-go, but you can still try to surpass your own expectations. I'm mostly just trying to teach something here. That seems like a lot of words to say "PEMN"...

Edit: Merged posts.

Ohhh, right. Totally forgot about that guy. Yeah, I can see why that'd take a couple extra turns. :/ Technically, that Skill is further above average. She's procced it every time. Damn. Also, Res > Def is really weird for her. He's rather unlikely to hit caps either way, and the promotion bonuses don't seem to be that much different from each other... but Hero!Gerik also gets access to axes. A Hand Axe gives him 1-2 range which added to his durability and offense is the magic formula for monstrous EP.

Wait, one of the Ch 3 treasures is another Pure Water? (I worked out how to do 2 and 3 faster with Neimi instead of Moulder, but I didn't get any items beyond a couple that NPC!Colm steals. A 6th turn is probably required to get the Pure Water in Ch2. Also, Neimi makes Ch3 faster because she can contribute to smashing the walls. Pure Water is nice to have for Ch8 too, but maybe not strictly necessary.)

... >_> Yeah, I guess that must be how things are being seen here.

I figured it would really only have the full meaning to people who knew where it's from. The corresponding graphics and animation help a lot. It's from Phantasy Star 4. 1994 IIRC. Charming retro graphics of Dorin getting his lights fucking punched out. Wind-up and POW. (This is fairly near the start of the game and Alys is currently the leader of the party. She's kind of the RPG equivalent of a Jeigan, except the lack of growth actually matters because it's a long game and, without spoiling too much, she gets forcibly removed from the party not all that far in.)

... I guess you have to have played it.

... am I seriously reading this discussion? Can we get back on topic please? Or is there nothing left to say :/

You don't actually have to have Neimi recruit Colm btw. He joins automatically at end of chapter if he isn't dead. I must admit, I lol'd.

It only helps if he can get 10 Mag naturally (unless you want to give him more than one of them), which is at like 10/4 on average. I guess that's not infeasible with Slayer... Still, there are definitely things you can do with 6 Warp range that you can't with 5. Single-turning Final pt 1 isn't one of them of course :P WTF?!? If you start from a hard reset, skip all the cutscenes (by just hitting Start right away), and just have Eirika attack, she gets a crit on the first attack. If you start from a hard reset, play through all the cutscenes (including the enemy dialogue ones after the event where you get the Rapier), and have Eirika attack, she also gets a crit on the first attack. So she just sat there and waited for the aggro units to get to her? I really think you overestimate her frailness. Also I don't think anyone really cares about your attempt counts, although I guess it's kinda cool that you're trying to avoid restarting. Yes, that's what normally happens unless he dies. I guess you're fine as long as you don't try to tank all the Mogalls at once, and this game gives you lots of Vulneraries and Elixirs so yeah. Me. But you have to understand that by my standards, 10 turns is having trouble with this chapter. Although it's not really disproportionate to the rest of what you're doing, so I guess it wasn't really a problem for you. You know Joshua won't attack Natasha, right? If you can get her into that bush, she's very likely to survive even if she gets attacked by 3 non-Joshua enemies, since they'll have hitrates in the high 30s and none of them OHKOs her. Of course, if she does get hit once, protecting her and also having her recruit on that turn might be tricky. Getting all the villages also gets you a Guiding Ring as a bonus, which would be nice for Natasha but maybe not a necessity. The next one on Ephraim's route is in Chapter 12.

Well, let's see. I just set up a SOYO HHM draft with a crapload of extra requirements/restrictions/errands that's shaping up to be absolute hell for everybody to actually play through. So yeah, I can see how the actual drafting process (not to mention designing rules and ensuring they'd be fair and would entice people to indulge their masochistic tendencies) can be more fun than actually playing :)

Harpoon, you're really going to love my generosity here... have Pent. As strange as it might sound, this was actually a really easy decision for me

Holy shit Kishuna's guards. Good thing they still don't move :O Lol Oswin pushing Matt out of the way to finish Aion off.

Yes. This is an annoyance, and not really fair to someone encountering it for the first time (the first time I played through HHM, it took me dozens of retries to get something that worked, and then I kinda just derped around because I thought Ursula was totally optional on this map, and then she came out and pwned Zephiel with Bolting on the LAST TURN. Cool story bro, I know...). It's not hard to deal with; just send someone to dispatch her (Bolting is painful, but she's not exactly the toughest boss in the game). But it would be nice to have some kind of warning. Maybe an event cutscene partway through if she hasn't been defeated yet? Oh dear, that happened to you? :( I think it's like a 1% chance as is... no real point in the chance existing, though.

Wow, I can already tell this is going to be brutal, starting to wonder where I found this level of masochism within myself >_<

In b4 Mekkah trolls us all by putting Roy as #1.

Heh, I had a feeling Eliwood would go soon...

This should be interesting... You do know Assassins lose some thief abilities, right? AFAICT, they can't steal from enemies (although they can still use Lockpicks), and they don't automatically find things in the desert. This is the real reason I thought you should have gone with Rennac over Marisa. Dodge-tanking is cool, though. On second thought, if you're counting on Eirika and Innes doing a lot of work in the desert, having Moulder as well might be a very good idea. GL! If anyone can do this you can. (Well, or Horace or other people like that...) Have you thought about the allocation of stat boosters, or are you planning to just see what's needed to fix screwages? My Franz was frail early on and I ended up giving him the Angelic Robe, which I later would have really really liked to put on Myrrh instead. (Although I managed to work around her less than stellar HP buffer... I'm actually pretty impressed with the results)

Nagl, have fun recruiting Guy and then trying to find somewhere to train him.

The idea of Lowen stuttering through a carefully-worded battle cry amuses me. I say go for it.

ARRRRRCHERRRRRS-BALD Harpoon, I present you the thoroughly awesome gift of Lucius. That gives you one chapter of free Raven too! mayyyyyyybe