Samias

If you deploy Meg to the right maps then her movement is less of an issue than it was in PoR. She can make due in chapters like 4-5 or 4-E since mounts get penalties to movement and ledges give infantry shortcuts. It is just that every DB chapter makes armor knights and horse-mounts bad by design and Tauroneo only overcomes that by being completely unflappable by the enemy while Meg does not.

I think Oscar and Boyd are two of the best characters in the game in PoR. Oscar is on a horse with lances and earth affinity and a free weapon choice on promotion, which is pretty much a recipe for greatness. Boyd has great strength and speed and is good for shoving others (namely Ike) into favourable positions. Rolf is not great considering he's locked to bows and they don't do as much damage here, even if his stats grow to be solid he just falls behind too much from lack of offense on enemy phases.

I think Micaiah's proportions are off due to the angle attempted. Considering Senri Kita also did a Cypher card and it looks fine, I don't think they were trying to drastically redesign Micaiah, they just went off model and a lot of people don't really care as long as it looks nice (see: Most Cypher cards...) But I agree Micaiah is looking a little chunkier all around while her original artwork makes her quite slim. It's not like she got a costume change. The relationship chart seems to have forgotten that Calill and Largo adopted Amy. It also doesn't take into account any endings that could possibly have occured from supports, just the relationships we know from the beginning of the game. So Astrid's love is still one-sided, Micaiah and Sothe aren't married, Mist is lacking a connection to Boyd entirely, etc.

Poor Tormod... absolutely murdered by availability and also hammered with a pretty sad growth rate in magic compared to other mages. You could train him in Easy mode, but he comes back so late that the only real contribution he could have after he leaves is in the tower, with a minor training montage in 4-4. If you do use him, you'd have to go back to base when he rejoins, slap on Paragon, and let him arcfire and meteor some chumps from afar but chances are if you want to use a fire magic user, you'd be better off with Calill since she has better mage growths anyway and more availability to actually get her SS rank in tomes. At least in part 1 he's really, really good and I generally replace Ilyana with him since neither of them are going anywhere in the long term. Muarim's bases are so beastly it actually doesn't matter that he just ups and disappears for as long as Tormod and Vika. Whereas Tormod is a pain and Vika is nearly unusable, Muarim is still taking big chunks of out people while transformed. Great on the DBs, still good in the endgame, though he will still probably hit the bench in favour of the units you've been training this whole time. He's no royal, after all.

Tauroneo is very useful the entire time he's on the DBs. However he's fairly immobile and his class makes long term use a bad idea. His availability in part 1 is also somewhat spotty. Nothing about him is really bad otherwise, but since he can't really grow throughout the DB chapters he always starts part 4 underleveled. Still, with a javelin you can toss him into the fray without much worry. However, with the way DB maps are designed, general is truly a terrible class to be. Fiona. If armor knights have it rough, the lone cavalier might have it even worse. She comes underleveled, with poor bases, a weapon that weighs her down, and has some of the worst availability in the entire game so she doesn't even have time to grow. In some maps where she can be deployed, she can't enter half the tiles! On paper it would seem she could be good, being blessed with Imbue and Savior, a great defensive affinity, and what is normally regarded as a good class, but in practice she's nearly impossible to use until part 4. How exactly you train her for part 4 is a herculean task. She is pretty much unusable and a waste of time outside of Easy mode, and even then she's very unimpressive though she turns out better than Meg in the far, far future. However that's not anything to brag about. IMO the only unit worse than Fiona is Lyre.

Yeah, Micaiah's second knuckle is exposed in her brand reveal but shows nothing on the one where she has the hand covering. I don't think much thought was put into it. Either that, or like the OP said Yune somehow removed it while she possessed Micaiah's body. The result of the "final" ending of RD is to put an end to the mistreatment of Branded by laguz and beorc alike.

Micaiah's brand touches her knuckles. I chalk it up to inconsistency on the part of the artists, since the brand painted onto her exposed hand seems like they hastily imposed it on. Also I don't know what reason there is to question the PoR book on Petrine's heritage. Yes, it makes mistakes, but we know the brands somewhat resemble the tribe they represent. Soren's brand resembles a dragon, Micaiah and Zelgius have brands that resemble birds (iirc Zelgius is raven branded). We don't get a clear look at Petrine's brand but it's safe to assume it doesn't resemble any of the existing brands, and that dragon, lion and heron laguz Branded are exceedingly rare. Micaiah's brand is the result of Altina and Lehran, two of the greatest figures in all of Tellius's history. Stefan's name is Soanvolke, because he is the descendant of the hero Soan. Soren is the only dragon branded as Almehda is the only dragon to have ever left Goldoa since the country's formation. Meanwhile cat and tiger laguz are the most common laguz, so it would be incredibly weird if none of the characters in the game were the result of a much more common potential combination. Herons only lived in a small segment of Begnion, but beast tribe laguz has propagated nearly everywhere, considering how many are fought even in Daein. We also know Brands have an impact on age, which make Soren and Micaiah look relatively childlike and Zelgius had to leave the Begnion army and carve a new identity for himself before coming back to serve Lehran, whereas we know Petrine only became a general when Ashnard rose to power and has seemingly not had to do anything to conceal her age or lowborn status. Edit: On Almedha leaving Goldoa, I did forget all the dragons who came after her after she left. So I guess there could be more, but for the most part other than Ena, Nasir and Rajaion the rest were likely under Deghinsea's leave and befell some misfortune later on.

Sure, just added you. I'll leave my 3DS online to trade so I'll keep an eye out for requests. My IGN is Jojo. Edit: Thanks for the trade!

I'd love a Cottonee with prankster without a terrible nature. Everyone on GTS keeps sending me Jolly ones u_U and whimsicott is also one of my favourites. Though I don't have anything really good to trade yet.

Jill is ridiculous. After a bit of a rough time with her bases (and no trouble at all with transfers, which is easy because Jill also is awesome in PoR), she becomes the great savior of the DBs. All of their chapters are heavy on terrain, all of which Jill can ignore. Give her paragon and her brave axe and she can sweep up 3-6 for a massive boost in EXP. Axes in general are a great weapon type. Her only weakness is the rare thunder mage, because for some reason they removed the arrow weakness of dragon riders. At endgame she even gets the magic 34 speed. Seriously a great unit and a must-train for the DBs. 10/10 unit in my eyes, basically Haar lite only on and manages to surpass him by part 4 (but then you can pair them up in the desert and that's great too). Zihark: Prepromote swordmaster. Kind of suspect durability for his level starting out but he's got a good affinity and is a welcome offensive presense who doesn't require much investment compared to the tier 1s who came before him. I would call him pretty good but not essential in the way Sothe/Volug/Nolan/Jill are.

Based on experience trying to catch a Slowbro, the SOS appearance rate of Slowbro is also pretty bad. Not Politoed levels of bad, but not really recommended. Razor claws are actually significantly easier to farm.

If you've cleared the main game, you can go to Poni Island and the wild Hariyama who appear in the rustling grass in Poni Plains (I think?) can carry King's Rocks as well. Considering all they call are other Hariyamas, it's much easier to get a King's Rock from them than anywhere else. Edit: I'm also willing to trade back and forth for Pokedex completion since i have Slowking and Politoed. Just no Drizzle Politoed despite farming Poliwags for so long...

[spoiler=Ilyana stuff] I don't count Pent, Saleh, Calill and Leo as mages, as they are already promoted and not mages anymore. However Lugh, Erk, Lucius, Canas, and Tharja are all not tanky when you recruit them. Even if they can take an extra hit, they aren't one-rounding their opponent back either. And you conveniently did not mention Lilina, Soren, PoR Ilyana, Miriel or Ricken. RD Ilyana is definitely more of a threat than base Lugh or Erk. If you factor in transfers, and I didn't, her offense is ridiculous. 17 MT on chapter 3 is damn strong. Erk has 10 MT on chapter 14 (4, 5 if you count the side chapter). Both are attacking enemies who still have negligible res. Both have abysmal starting durability. The only difference that makes Erk look better is that he's pitted against complete scrubs for the first few turns so you can actually recruit him without him dying and then the rest of the game doesn't scale up nearly as hard. Also yes, when it comes to rigging crits I do mean resets. But since there's one tiger on the other side of the wall and Ilyana has roughly 18 crit to work with when she uses Elthunder, it's easy to just do it and then move on with the rest of the chapter. I don't religious employ that strategy, but it's also not a total crapshoot if you were to do it. Meg: Ughhhh. She's an armor knight with myrmidon stats and growths. She's underleveled although her bases are strong for a level 3. The amount of work it takes to get her up to speed is much higher than average, only for her to continually lag behind the group and deal underwhelming damage. Coming a chapter after Aran and being less tanky, slower and less skillful than him is a terrible position to be in. Volug: He is extremely strong in part 1 and shrugs off nearly all physical attacks, despite being halfshifted. However, his continued use relies on reaching S strike during part 1 or else his offense drops off pretty hard. He has an OK guage to deal with once part 3 rolls around, making him the kind of unit the cats wish they could be. He's just great during some of the most trying parts of the game and can keep up the entire time if you want him to be an army mainstay.

Finishing up my precious elezen friends from Heavensward :O I ran out of time to do some other stuff I wanted to do but I might rush it tomorrow because I also wanted to do more Pokemon things.

Most starting mages are 2HKOed by physical attacks. The difference is, Ilyana has pretty jacked offensive bases otherwise. You can also rig some easy crits for her to basically delete some tigers off the map that no one else aside from Sothe could feasibly handle. She does what you need her to early on. If you read the rest of the paragraph I mentioned she's good for 3 chapters only to drop off hard in usefulness anyway, since 1-6 is the first map that is hard to funnel enemies around on. But she is not utter crap when she joins.

Ilyana is really good when she joins. Legitimately one of the better mages in the series. However she is totally let down in the long run by her growths being way too slanted towards strength and skill and Thunder magic being weak and inaccurate. The fact is, Tormod replaces her halfway through the DB chapters by being completely more capable than her in every way, and that she leaves the DBs to join the GMs as a woefully underleveled character with a bad growth spread. After about 3 chapters she is suddenly one of the worst characters in the game despite having a good run on her bases. Aran's growths are pretty good but his weak HP really kills his tankiness early on since he isn't exactly getting tinked. He's kind of like Edward that he will turn out decently with investment, but he is by no means amazing. I don't really like him that much since he doesn't have the same offensive presense that Edward has when given equal investment, and he doesn't get any special weapon of his own. However I don't think he's awful. He comes with a javelin so he can chip tigers from a safe distance with some measure of accuracy, at least, since his strength and skill is so high.

For whatever reason I made the colouring style on this one different arghhh

Unity is actually pretty hard to port to the Wii U and 3DS. It's possible, but it's not optimal. Especially with the way the lighting passes are being done in Yooka-Laylee, I actually don't find it hard to believe the Wii U was struggling. That system is on par with the PS3 in power, and that's a nearly a 10 year old system at this point. People made porting efforts when the Wii U first came out to mixed success. EA gave up quickly while Activision and Ubisoft stuck around a little longer. Even Square Enix gave up after porting their "best" edition of Deus Ex Human Revolution. SE has instead faithfully supported the much more popular 3DS instead. However all those companies have looked at the Switch as a platform to port to and we know with nvidia on board that it will be easier than ever before. Even Bethesda, who have notoriously avoided Nintendo for something like 4 console generations, to bring their most popular game to the Switch as a potential launch title. On the other hand, Stardew Valley was not made in Unity and probably would have been an easier port job, but they mentioned it was just not financially viable to release a Wii U version because the Switch would be out on the market by then. With Yooka-Laylee having technical problems with the Wii U and potentially releasing in April if rumours are to be believed, that game would also drop in April and the Wii U would essentially be dead to anyone who doesn't already own one. You might as well shoot for their primo shelf space instead of wallowing in the dead space that is the Wii U section.

Sothe is a part 1 god, capable of picking up all sorts of loot while also being untouchable in combat. However his low caps keep him from being useful long term, and he's forced. The longer the game goes on, the greater a liability he is to field. His promotion is also absurdly late. However he is strong in the most tedious part of the game so I don't fault him too much. He is really important throughout the early DB chapters. Laura: Typical healer. Once you get a physic in her hand she is really good, but in part 1 she is troublesome to deploy when herbs and vulneraries are strong healing items with many uses. With favouritism she can take a chunk out of Ike with Purge, though, which is a fun and safe way to end that chapter. However she is ultimately eclipsed by Micaiah who gets a high staff rank for free, while Laura only promotes into E tomes. However I would rather have the heal battery around compared to some of the other DBs who join after.

Yooka-Laylee likely got cancelled because the Wii U is a huge effort to port games to. Nintendo had been running with Power PC architecture for ages, but the Switch will finally be something more standard compared to the rest of the industry. While Mighty No 9 was not a good game, the Wii U port was by far the worst version of the game. The Wii U does not play nice with Unreal Engine or Unity. Meanwhile the Vita was designed to have compatibility with the PS4 for remote play. Despite poor market penetration, a port for the system is not a significant extra expense if it's already on the PS4. It sucks that a lot of Wii U games are being cancelled but the system is not popular enough to justify the abnormal difficulty of creating a port for the system.

Thanks~ Somehow I managed to make it through another week at work, I had some intense action scene that went through approved without revisions... I'm so happy about it. I guess in a year and a bit I can show it off if I remember it... Anyway, new art... this is just a snippet from some FF14 button series I'm working on.

Nolan easily and accurately oneshots a tiger with beastfoe crossbow usage. He doesn't need a forge. I'd rather stick paragon on Jill and let her go to town with a brave axe and feed some exp into her to snowball into a monster, since once she promotes she has little to fear from anything.

Leo's only real good point is that he has a monopoly on a set of amazing bows. So even if you barely train him, at least he has some chip going for him. His growths are in all the wrong places but at least he isn't a frontline unit. Technically he can pull off Beastbane+crossbows but he's not really defensive enough to make that strategy work, and having a limited EP otherwise makes him a poor candidate for this EXP dump. The DBs get a few defend chapters for Leo to contribute a little bit but he's easily the worst of the three archers even with one of the best bows in the game to his name. Nolan, on the other hand, has pretty much everything going for him except a bad starting weapon. His unusual growths for a fighter work in his favour, as he can tank things out and deal some hefty damage back with the best weapon type in the game. At level 9 he doesn't take the same large hit to part 1 exp like the prepromotes do, so he's closer to promotion than most of the tier 1 DBs with decent availability. With Beastfoe and a crossbow, he's one of the few units who can take a few hits from a tiger and one-shot them in return. He's one of the few first tier units who can handily promote into third tier by part 4 without much babying at all. Definitely an MVP unit alongside Jill for the entirety of the DB chapters, while Sothe and Volug struggle begin to struggle after part 1 ends.

[spoiler=Shiny Vikavolt] Shiny Grubbin caught, only to have the worst possible nature.... grumble grumble ;_;

Nailah definitely has her "evil eye" as a prominent ability in game. It just has a terrible hit rate but it permanently, non lethally renders a target useless. Great for sacrificing kills to weaker units.