Let's Play Fire Emblem 4

[Narga_Rocks]

I could only save two out of three of them, sadly. They followed her around the whole map though, which was pretty neat.

Then you missed out on something, sorry.

[Tables]

Let's talk about more awesome gameplay things!

[spoiler=Repairs]As you've probably noticed, the cost of repairs is proportional to the amount of repairs needed. Also, if you can't fully afford some repairs, you can partially repair something with your money (e.g. the Killer Bow in the second segment of Ch2)

[spoiler=Swords & blades]You might have worked this out as well, but there's swords and blades. Swords have 80 hit to blades 60, and 3 wt to blades 6 wt. Blades are of course a lot more powerful (I can't remember exact figures...) and they all have A ranks compared to swords C, B and A. They also cost twice as much as the respective type of sword

[spoiler=Pawn Shop]Items sold to the pawn shop will get you half it's value in gold, but it costs its full price to buy back. You can also only buy items you can use.(as you've noticed anyway). Also, for referece, Iron weapons cost 1K, Steel cost 3K and Silver cost 5K, and blades are double that.

[spoiler=Yet more arena information]The game/translation confusingly calls each opponent level 1-7, while their combat levels are actually a lot higher. Ranged units generally have an easier time in the arena because they fight mostly opponents with Javelins and Hand axes, which have awful hit rates. The fastest unit goes first, so units like Diedre who have something like -8AS will generally go second.

[spoiler=Broken Weapons]Strangely, after a weapon breaks it can still be used, and it has 30wt, 30 hit and 0 mt. So apparently bits chipping off a sword make it ten times heavier .

[spoiler=Weapon weight and doubling (again)]AS = Speed - wt. So don't expect lance users to double sword users (even Knights might avoid doubling, since swords weigh 9 less than lances) or unarmed units like priests

[riariadne]

HEY BAL THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

BEFORE YOU FINISH CHAPTER 3 MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AIDEEN/EDEN/WHATEVER YOUR PATCH CALLS HER TALK WITH BRIGGID, THE SNIPER YOU RECRUIT IN THIS CHAPTER. It gives you the Ichival, which is an insanely awesome bow, and it makes Briggid epic. Like, she can OHKO most enemies epic. At her base level, she has 60 ATTACK with it. So make sure you have Briggid and Aideen talk :)

[Balcerzak]

I finished Chapter 3 late last night actually already.

And please for the respect of the nature of the run. DO NOT TELL ME THIS KIND OF STUFF!

(It ends up not mattering, because I already took care of all that jazz, and had her take her fancy bow for a spin in the Arena, but please...)

Edit: Videos haven't been finished being making, but when I'm done recording and mixing them, and uploading them, I'll post them.

Also, thanks Tables. It must have been Sword Armours then that just threw me off, as I expected my lancers to have no trouble with an Armour regardless its speed. Broken Weapons and Partial!Repair are very interesting to know.

I can't use broken staves though... :(

A lot of what you mentioned wrt to Pawn Shop I figured out on my own. Knowing who attacks first in the Arena is great though! That was really bugging me.

Edited June 23, 2010 by Balcerzak

[riariadne]

Sorry. Couldn't control my bow-fan there.

You might've noticed that Holy Weapons cost a lot to repair too... it's 1000 gold per use. Kinda painful but worth it.

Also. Do you know abut getting Holsety with Levin? It's a really good thing to know...

[spoiler= getting Holsety]]Just visit Silesia castle with him after you seize. Holsety rocks.

... And I'm going to pray you know about the whole generation system. If you don't, well... that'll be quite a rude awakening for you come Chapter 6.

[Ansem]

I didnt get Ichival on my first play through either

Its not a must

Holsety on the other hand........

[BEST TRYNDAMERE PLAYER]

I didnt get Ichival on my first play through either

Its not a must

Ichival is a must unless you want Faval to pretty much perform at low-tier level.

[Ansem]

It was my first Playthrough

Faval wasnt that bad without it

I only had trouble with the Falco knights but yeah that was about it.

[Aquilae]

Meh, Brigid / Faval sucks anyway. If you don't get Ichival you might as well not waste time pairing her, unless you want to use Patty seriously (@_@)

[Marthur]

[spoiler=@Lightning & Kai]

You guys stop throwing spoilers at Balcerzak or tempting him already.

I mean, I didn't get Holsety in my first playthrough nor did I get Narga. I also killed Ayra and several other recruitable characters. I didn't know about conversations either (trying to kill Eltosian was so much fun and painful at the same time) nor did I know about the lover system. Hell, I didn't even know about promoting back then and despite all that and other things I won't mention (because I don't want to risk spoiling Balcerzak), managed just fine.

Balcerzak said he's doing a completely blind playthrough, so even though you might think you're helping him, it's totally uncalled for and disrespectful.

Edited June 24, 2010 by Marthur

[Tables]

What Marthur said.

Also for people not called Balcerzak:

[spoiler=Holsety]Holsety is fairly easy to find anyway. Sigurd quite directly tells Levin to go visit Silesia castle in a conversation.

Anyway, Ch 2 was good. I'm amazed you managed to save all of the villages on your first run, that's really impressive. I'm wondering if there's anything in particular you've missed yet, but I can't think of anything that wasn't mentioned, except the pursuit ring. That's obviously really useful (it gives someone the pursuit skill), but you have to have Ardan wait at a certain place on Chapter 2 that you wouldn't find if you didn't know. Kinda like the Hero Axe.

One more hint you might want to know but since you've done Chapter 3 might know already anyway:

[spoiler=Promotion]Characters can promote any time after they hit level 20. Their level isn't reset and they can keep levelling to 30 (in other words, promoting as soon as possible is beneficial). You can only promote at the home castle though, so consider the benefits and drawbacks of sending people back.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

From now on, any discussion that involves future chapters which Balcerzak has not done will be warned as unmarked spoilers and/or trolling.

@Balcerzak: I suggest you link this to the beginning of your first post as well as changing the subtitle to say which chapter you've completed whenever you update. If you can't, just call for the edit.

[Renall]

The Pursuit Ring's no big deal. It's great, but good pairings make it less important later anyway (if you plan a non-Pursuit pairing it's a good idea, but the easiest pairings will have it anyhow). I often forget about it because the place where Ardan has to wait makes pretty much no sense at all.

[Sophius]

Did you get the wind sword and Gae Bolg in ch. 3?

[Tables]

I'm going to say no and yes if earlier chapters are anything to judge by. Wind sword is completely out of the way and you wouldn't think "Hey, I'm gonna spend 15 turns sending DEW to that tower to loot it!", while the Gae Bolg is a conversation and Bal seems quite conversation happy.

Still, we'll have to wait until he's posted the videos to be sure. It's not even like getting the Gae Bolg matters at all at this point, anyway.

[spoiler=Don't read this bit Bal]Doesn't Cuan have the Gae Bolg in Ch. 5 anyway? And Altenna comes with it anyway?

[Renall]

[spoiler=Don't read this bit Bal]Doesn't Cuan have the Gae Bolg in Ch. 5 anyway? And Altenna comes with it anyway?

Yes.[spoiler=Don't read this either!]The Gae Bolg is part of Altenna's starting inventory. She can't ever not have it. Since it's part of the story and all. If he didn't get it before, Cuan is presumed to have been given it by Ethlin before they rode out in ch5, and from there it passes to Altenna through Trabant. Altenna's not a fixed character though, so she will inherit anything else Cuan happened to have. But all spears you have should be on Fin or Fury at the end of Gen1 anyway other than the Gae Bolg.

[Tables]

How's the processing/uploading going? I'm eager to see chapter 3 .

[Balcerzak]

Anyway, Ch 2 was good. I'm amazed you managed to save all of the villages on your first run, that's really impressive. I'm wondering if there's anything in particular you've missed yet, but I can't think of anything that wasn't mentioned, except the pursuit ring. That's obviously really useful (it gives someone the pursuit skill), but you have to have Ardan wait at a certain place on Chapter 2 that you wouldn't find if you didn't know. Kinda like the Hero Axe.

I was trying really hard to save villages. Only a couple of lucky skill activations on Levin made it possible. I really needed to have done a better job in the first section of the chapter IMO, to have really felt comfortable with my progress, but I'm glad you found it impressive nonetheless.

Did you get the wind sword and Gae Bolg in ch. 3?

Gae Bolg, yes. Wind sword, no. Unless you meant Thunder sword, in which case, I don't think you can not get it, as it's droppable off a required-to-proceed boss. So I'm assuming it's different, and I just lacked insight.

I'm going to say no and yes if earlier chapters are anything to judge by. Wind sword is completely out of the way and you wouldn't think "Hey, I'm gonna spend 15 turns sending DEW to that tower to loot it!", while the Gae Bolg is a conversation and Bal seems quite conversation happy.

Still, we'll have to wait until he's posted the videos to be sure. It's not even like getting the Gae Bolg matters at all at this point, anyway.

I am indeed very conversation happy. If you give me an option for conversation, I will always try to take it, even if it's unnecessary (cf. in FE7 Pent/Louise 'support' conversations in Event Data, sending in the Lord to Talk at Zephiel, etc.). I messed up and missed two in the Prologue, but I'm trying to collect them all.

Gae Bolg mattered! :( (Tries to console himself about the sudden bullshit plot disappearance of several of his favorite units with the fact that Cuan did take a dip in the Arena with it in Ch3.)

How's the processing/uploading going? I'm eager to see chapter 3 .

All the processing is done, for some reason the uploading is going incredibly slow, I started it after getting back from work, and it looks like it will have to run entirely over night.

I guess I should give a word about how I'm doing things:

1. Fire up Audacity, and Emulator.
   
2. Record voice file, and an emulator movie file, while playing through chapter
   
3. Finish chapter, having fun.
   
4. Ponder getting around to loading up Camtasia and screen recording while emulator plays back the emulator movie.
   
5. Put it off a bit, because recording is boring in comparison to playing or doing other things.
   
6. Finally get around to it, try to make sure I get close to the right positioning of where my voice track reasonably matches the actual playback.
   
7. Upload to Youtube.
   
8. Watch videos on Youtube, make sure nothing got screwed when sending all the bits across the wires, while also adding small one-liners about content, so you know vaguely what to expect in any given video.

This understandably, when coupled with work and life, etc. leads to a fair amount of delay. Sorry for holding up my loyal viewers, but Chapter 3 can now be viewed (

) [well, at least, as soon as uploads finish and I move them to the playlist, if I fall asleep before that happens, just head to my channel and find them manually, I guess, though that's tedious and lame]. I'm also uploading turn 1 of Chapter 4 (all I managed to get completed before I had to call it quits, so as long as I was producing videos... I went ahead and got 'er done.) See a sneak peak of things to come (link when uploads are finished).

Completion time for Chapter 3 is 31 turns.

Highlights:

Strategy for clearing up the initial mobs of enemies went off nicely, I thought.

Fury gets +3 strength from a village. Rock on!

Holyn and Ayra standing in kind of an amusing location when Deirdre's plot event goes off.

Effective use of Return and dancing to get Lachesis to talk to her brother.

Getting annoyed when Fury cannot cross the invisible plot wall and go romping around on the northern island.

Aideen warping like a fiend, then going off and promoting.

Screwing up a couple of times as I approach the very end and getting Fury and Azel killed in relatively quick succession. Good old reset button.

A touching sisterly reunion.

While I'm decent at predicting some things, I was entirely blindsided by other things, and (temporarily?) lose out on that Restore staff and Silver Blade Fin was carrying around at chapter end.

Pairings:

Azel and Aideen are still adorable.

Holyn and Ayra join together.

Beowulf x Lachesis are so close I can taste it.

Cannot decide between AlecxSlyvia or LevinxSlyvia. It will probably come down to accident.

No idea for Fury at the moment.

Tiltyu x Claude seems easy, convenient, and potentially amusing.

Briggid... yeah. I dunno? Jamka maybe?

[spoiler=Stats at end of Ch3]

Name: Lv.XP MHP STR MAG SKL SPD LCK DEF RES
Sigurd:  21.21 54 20  5 23 21 15 13  9
Noish:   12.92 41 14  0 10  9  5 13  0
Alec:    12.09 36 13  0 11 11  7 13  2
Ardan:    6.14 39 15  0  5  4  4 13  0
Azel:     9.87 35  2 14  9 12  4  3  7
Lex:     19.14 45 14  0 13 17 11 17  0
Cuan:    19.89 49 33  0 25 17  6 27  4
Fin:     19.14 47 19  2 16 12 19 16  0
Ethlin:  20.84 37 12 10 17 19 13  8 10
Midir:   14.82 38 11  1 11 14  5 12  1
Aideen:  20.65 41  3 21 12 14 20  4 11
Dew:      6.51 31  6  1  7 17 15  2  0
Aira:    15.41 39 12  0 21 20  4 14  2
Jamka:   17.53 46 15  0 14 19  7 10  1
Deirdre:  8.91 28  1 18 10 12  6  3 20 MIA
Holyn:   17.35 45 21  0 20 17  2 11  1
Lachesis:11.11 33 13  8 11 14 10  9 10
Levin:   14.55 42  1 13 14 23  8  8 10
Sylvie:   5.50 28  4  1  4 12  6  1  5
Beowulf: 20.96 49 19  0 15 16  6 13  2
Fury:    12.47 34 15  2 13 19  8 12  9
Brigid:  17.24 43 30  1 23 32 10 16 10
Tiltyu:   7.01 29  0 10 19 11 12  1  9
Claude:  21.70 35  0 21 14 15  9  5 21

Edited June 28, 2010 by Balcerzak

[AstraLunaSol]

Pairings:

Azel and Aideen are still adorable.

Holyn and Ayra join together.

Beowulf x Lachesis are so close I can taste it.

Cannot decide between AlecxSlyvia or LevinxSlyvia. It will probably come down to accident.

No idea for Fury at the moment.

Tiltyu x Claude seems easy, convenient, and potentially amusing.

Briggid... yeah. I dunno? Jamka maybe?

Not a bad pairing....and yet, not exactly a good pairing, perfectly usable though.

I remember when I did this pairing on my first run, Gen 2 was so damn fun. 8D

Nice pairing.

Sylvia is accident prone always anyway.

.....errrrrrr[spoiler=Possible working pairings]Noish?

Easy, check, Convenient, check, Amusing? Definitely.

Pairing works.

Also, Gaebolg, awesome, y/n?

I also hated it when Cuan, Fin, and Ethlin left. >>

[BEST TRYNDAMERE PLAYER]

Pairings:

Azel and Aideen are still adorable.

Holyn and Ayra join together.

Beowulf x Lachesis are so close I can taste it.

Cannot decide between AlecxSlyvia or LevinxSlyvia. It will probably come down to accident.

No idea for Fury at the moment.

Tiltyu x Claude seems easy, convenient, and potentially amusing.

Briggid... yeah. I dunno? Jamka maybe?

[spoiler=read this if you want pairing advice but if you think it'll somewhat ruin your blind run, don't, as I actually go in-depth with these]-That pairing gives a good daughter seeing as she's a cleric but the son of that pairing is a bow-knight, he will be seriously gimped.

-Good pairing, although Lex makes a better husband

-Good one too, recommended pairing for first timers as well

-Might be a better idea to keep Sylvia single, the substitutes you get for keeping her single are actually better than her children, no matter what. Because the replacement son gets a Berserk staff while the replacement daughter has Charisma, Sylvia's children will never get neither of these. Also, pairing her with Levin pretty much wastes Holsety.

-Levin's good, although Noish, Claude, and Lex are nice as well.

-Decent pairing, nothing too special but nothing too bad either. FYI Levin's her best husband and gives you a Holsety user for nearly the entire second gen

-That works, just make sure she's paired with somebody, her son will most likely turn out good no matter what. If Lex is still single, use him

Also, even though this is totally your call, it's usually recommended for FE LP's that you generally cut out base/battle preparations although I suppose people could skip those episodes/parts if they wanted to. But then also you waste less time by not having to upload the 3-4 episodes you do by just sitting in the base.

Edited June 29, 2010 by Joey

[Marthur]

Just finished chapter 3. Well what can I say...

You noticed that Sylvia can dance for 4 people which is good. Just so you know, she can also dance for everyone in the castle, which have might been useful on your first turn after the arena. Knowing this is pretty much useless now that you have the Reserve Staff though.

Also the minimum damage one unit can do is 1, not 0. You probably noticed it after Deu's attack, but I just wanted to make it clear.

Talking about Deu, well if you don't know what to do about him, Mountain Thieves and Pirates always carry 5000G, so you might want to send him with someone else to rescue the villages.

Oh and Sylvia probably has a better chance than Deu to beat an enemy in the arena if Prayer kicks in. It's thanks to this skill that she survived the Cross Knights and another army (don't remember which one) as it dramatically increases her evade the closer her HP are to 0. (Beware as it only works for one turn. You'll have to heal her in order for it to activate again.)

And as someone said previously, you missed the Wind Sword which is no surprise. (Obtained by having Deu visit the Blagi Tower.)

Also, I guess you could have use the Return Staff on Tiltyu in order for her to gain some more exp and money, but oh well...

[PuffPuff]

If we're going to tell Bal how Levin's pairings stack up, you should just leave it at this. LevinxTiltyu is better, while LevinxFury is much easier to make, so it's probably better for your first playthrough(hurf durf i'm tiltyu i have 30 hit on wind mages levin come stand next to me the entire chapter and be useless), and LevinxFury is canon.

Yeah, and making sure that he's careful with the LevinXTiltyu pairing since Sylvia can easily screw it up in Chapter 4. You also want to kill off Sylvia anyway for a better "certain unit" later in the game.

Deciding I can't possibly be arsed to remember Midir is a man. In my Fanon she's female, and will be continued to be referred to as such.

Really, your not alone I thought that both Azel and Midir were female in my first playthrough too.

Yes, by pressing the B button, you're given the choices to either switch weapons and resume the battle or quit it. This might prove quite useful if you don't know what enemy you'll be facing and later in the game when you'll get the sleep sword.

You don't lose money even if you lose, except from the cost for repairing the weapons you used.

Not to mention also useful for changing the RNG in the arenas if your character gets luckily killed by your opponent.

I could only save two out of three of them, sadly. They followed her around the whole map though, which was pretty neat.

Next time keep Lachesis out of combat situations so that you can get an item.

[spoiler=Pawn Shop]Items sold to the pawn shop will get you half it's value in gold, but it costs its full price to buy back. You can also only buy items you can use.(as you've noticed anyway). Also, for referece, Iron weapons cost 1K, Steel cost 3K and Silver cost 5K, and blades are double that.

Yeah keeping in mind not to sell the weapons at the store as they will be gone for good if you do.

Meh, Brigid / Faval sucks anyway. If you don't get Ichival you might as well not waste time pairing her, unless you want to use Patty seriously (@_@)

(Don't Read)

WHAAA.... =O

How can you say that. >_> Faval is possibly the only character in the game that can cap in HP.

Pairings:

Azel and Aideen are still adorable.

Holyn and Ayra join together.

Beowulf x Lachesis are so close I can taste it.

Cannot decide between AlecxSlyvia or LevinxSlyvia. It will probably come down to accident.

No idea for Fury at the moment.

Tiltyu x Claude seems easy, convenient, and potentially amusing.

Briggid... yeah. I dunno? Jamka maybe?

You really don't have to pair up Sylvia at all unless with Claude that is. For Briggid...I'd recommend Dew. =]

Edited June 29, 2010 by Ayanami

[Balcerzak]

Also, even though this is totally your call, it's usually recommended for FE LP's that you generally cut out base/battle preparations although I suppose people could skip those episodes/parts if they wanted to. But then also you waste less time by not having to upload the 3-4 episodes you do by just sitting in the base.

Ahhh. You know, that's probably a valid point. I didn't watch many Let's Plays previously, only the more technical demonstrations, like 0% growths, or low-turning, which understandably wouldn't bother with preparations menu type stuff. I figured in a Let's Play though, things should maybe be more or less full continuity.

At this point, I've been including them this far, and it's actually vaguely useful since trading items is much less easily reversible, and the issues with the Arena will make understanding why half of my cast is starting the level at 1 HP, so I'll probably just continue to do so. I will continue to try to mark them as potentially boring in the one-liner descriptions in youtube though.

Just finished chapter 3. Well what can I say...

You noticed that Sylvia can dance for 4 people which is good. Just so you know, she can also dance for everyone in the castle, which have might been useful on your first turn after the arena. Knowing this is pretty much useless now that you have the Reserve Staff though.

I'll probably find myself trying to conserve Reserve uses for emergencies actually. Nobody has money issues except for my staff users, but the staff users, why they're really crunched for cash.

Also the minimum damage one unit can do is 1, not 0. You probably noticed it after Deu's attack, but I just wanted to make it clear.

Talking about Deu, well if you don't know what to do about him, Mountain Thieves and Pirates always carry 5000G, so you might want to send him with someone else to rescue the villages.

Actually, I must not have been paying that close of attention. Minimum damage of 1 is good to know. Also, yeah, now that I've noticed that Pirates are loaded, I know exactly what to do with Dew, and might even abuse the Thief sword too.

Oh and Sylvia probably has a better chance than Deu to beat an enemy in the arena if Prayer kicks in. It's thanks to this skill that she survived the Cross Knights and another army (don't remember which one) as it dramatically increases her evade the closer her HP are to 0. (Beware as it only works for one turn. You'll have to heal her in order for it to activate again.)

I totally forgot about her skill. Here I was chalking it up to Charisma nearby in both instances, and just getting really lucky after the first unlucky hit. Prayer actually makes both of those instances much more understandable. And I probably will wind up throwing her in the Arena if I get around to it again. Good to know it's not a constantly active thing, so having her walk around with 6HP or whatever isn't a free +X avoid.

And as someone said previously, you missed the Wind Sword which is no surprise. (Obtained by having Deu visit the Blagi Tower.)

Also, I guess you could have use the Return Staff on Tiltyu in order for her to gain some more exp and money, but oh well...

That's odd. I was actually thinking it might have been someone with Blagi blood should maybe go there, it felt kind of Chekov's Gun to me, but isn't Dew bloodless? Yeah, never would have guessed.

I realized this when I was producing the videos. I think I was just in a hurry to clear the chapter at the time, and forgot she hadn't existed when I did my beginning of chapter "everyone once through".

@Astra and Ayanami: Thanks for following along with this! I don't have any more specific replies at the moment, but maybe after I finish Gen 1, I will finally go and read all of the pairings suggestions in more detail.

[riariadne]

You're doing so much better than me at this game, especially turncount wise. I'm horrible there (70 something turns on Ch. 3) ;_;

My pairings are

AideenXJamka

AyraXLex

LachesisXBeowulf

SylviaXAzel (Haters gonna hate on pairing Sylvia)

FuryXClaude

TltyuXLevin

BriggidXDew ( Faval)

This game's so much more difficult than American FEs. ;_;

Edited June 29, 2010 by Lightning

[Psych]

I did:

AideenXJamka

AyraXDew

LachesisXBeowulf

SylviaXClaude

FuryXLevin

TiltyuXAzel

BriggidXHolyn

I checked the site for all the events and things, so I ended up not missing anything.

But my turn counts sucked, and I had trouble against the large armies early on.