Phantom Ship, hard mode

[Sikker]

I'm kinda stuck on this chapter now, I tried many different tactics, I tried rushing into the enemy ship but I usually end up getting killed, and when I tried staying on my own ship and letting them come, they just went for l'Arachel to kill her...

But the worst part has to be their flyers flying right past my armored melee units just to kill my weaker ones (Amalia, Neimi, Natasha) in 1/2 shots. I try to keep them safe but it's kinda hard when you have 11 units and more then half of their flyers have ranged attacks.

I don't have any promoted units (Don't use Seth), but plenty of them are around lvl 16-17 and have the option to promote, I just wanted to wait till they're lvl 20 but maybe its better to promote them now?

Edited November 1, 2011 by Sikker

[Integrity]

You HAVE to have Duessel by now, if you're on the Phantom Ship. Since you have to have Duessel, by God use him. He's a really, really solid unit for now and the rest of the game. You can also sling out Seth - even if he's base level - and he'll probably contribute more than your lesser units. Bringing squishies like Neimi to the Ship isn't a great idea anyway.

And a couple-level-early promotion won't hurt terribly for a whole lot of reasons.

[Lord Raven]

In Revan's HM patch I got Tana ~3-4 level ups through Creature Campaign and she was actually very good against the Mogalls. She also rescued L'Arachel and Dozla (Dozla can handle himself just fine). Was pretty good with a Javelin, and with a Slim Lance she could go against Gargoyles with some degree of success. But that's only to rescue L'Arachel. Cormag's definitely better for the fliers.

As already said though, Duessel and Seth almost trivialize the chapter.

[Integrity]

Dozla is *practically* invincible, thanks to his Elixir and the time limit.

Even L'Arachel has to be boned by some degree of bad luck to die, but she's obviously way squishier than Dozla.

[Lord Raven]

L'Arachel will die if you take too long to get to her, though...

[Integrity]

I've had L'Arachel survive the entire map without me ever setting foot on her ship on HM before.

It's not common - I'd say a coin toss at best - but she can survive depending mostly on Dozla's actions.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

I've had L'Arachel survive the entire map without me ever setting foot on her ship on HM before.

It's not common - I'd say a coin toss at best - but she can survive depending mostly on Dozla's actions.

i think it would depend on if Dolza misses with his clunky battle axe or not

[Integrity]

Also depends on where Dozla decides to throw himself. I've seen them work themselves around the pillars so that L'Arachel is between and Dozla is in front of her, so nobody can attack her. I've also seen them go north or south, still with Dozla parked, so that L'Arachel only has a single open flank and her chances of death become essentially zero - until Dozla decides to move. So it's not entirely dependent on Dozla's hit rate, but yeah.

[General Horace]

The monsters have the evasion of a rock so I doubt it.

L'arachel usually doesn't have survival issues, unless Dolza wanders off onto the middle ship or something.

Edited November 1, 2011 by General Horace

[Excellen Browning]

I once had a similar problem with a very similar team. In the end, my solution was to not deploy all the weak units (neimi, amelia, you get it) and promote the ones that are good. It's not like you are going to lose anything from promoting even at level 10, because this game is so easy and short your units will never get to 20/20 without severe arena and/or tower/ruins use.

[zahlman]

In addition to what everyone else said, have Tana and Cormag bust out the Pure Water and then take out the flying enemies to the north and south. You really don't want them joining the main battle later.

[Paper Jam]

In addition to what everyone else said, have Tana and Cormag bust out the Pure Water and then take out the flying enemies to the north and south. You really don't want them joining the main battle later.

Should Vanessa be deployed as well? Things on the boats will be a bit tight, I assume, so I would think it'd be ok to deploy all three fliers.

[Sikker]

I haven't leveled Vanessa so won't bother using her but the pure water for the other flyers works great, they won't die so fast anymore.

Only problem is the enemy flyers come from 4-5 sides so its kinda hard to get them all.

I was very close to victory and had most big enemies killed including the boss, but sadly l'Arachel died again before I could reach her, one javelin is enough to have her killed :(

and now I am actually using Neimi to block one of the "bridges" between the boats, she's great because she dodges almost all attacks and can't counterattack, so instead of killing them and freeing space for more enemies to come, there will just be a huge line of monsters standing there playing with themselves out of boredom.

I once had a similar problem with a very similar team. In the end, my solution was to not deploy all the weak units (neimi, amelia, you get it) and promote the ones that are good. It's not like you are going to lose anything from promoting even at level 10, because this game is so easy and short your units will never get to 20/20 without severe arena and/or tower/ruins use.

I intend to do the entire creature campaign on this file, possibly getting all secret characters, can I still do "premature promotions" or do I need 20/20 for the ruins?

Edited November 2, 2011 by Sikker

[Excellen Browning]

I intend to do the entire creature campaign on this file, possibly getting all secret characters, can I still do "premature promotions" or do I need 20/20 for the ruins?

Yup. You just have to be slightly more strategic about it than with 20/20 characters.

[Integrity]

I intend to do the entire creature campaign on this file, possibly getting all secret characters, can I still do "premature promotions" or do I need 20/20 for the ruins?

1: Enemies in the CC (yes, the entire thing. I did a writeup on this.) are essentially failures, with a bare few exceptions (dracozombies, dogs against the right units).

2: Infinite statboosters, mon ami. Don't skip the Cards and you'll have no problems with anything at all.

[Mekkah]

Use Torches and this to figure out where enemies are, so you can lure and kill them more easily. Let your strongest unit (if you don't want to use Seth or Duessel, then make it Gilliam or Franz or something) march on to the second ship ASAP so he can clear out most of the idiots there. If there's eyeballs floating nearby, make sure everyone in their range has 1-2 range equipped so they only bother you for one enemy phase.

I tend to let Cormag deal with the southern fliers, and Tana with the north. Make sure they have Javelin, Iron Lance, Pure Water and Vulnerary with them.

Stock up on things if you're low before entering this chapter if you haven't already, because you don't get to use the map screen between Ch11 and Ch12.

Edited November 2, 2011 by Mekkah

[Sikker]

Use Torches and this to figure out where enemies are, so you can lure and kill them more easily. Let your strongest unit (if you don't want to use Seth or Duessel, then make it Gilliam or Franz or something) march on to the second ship ASAP so he can clear out most of the idiots there. If there's eyeballs floating nearby, make sure everyone in their range has 1-2 range equipped so they only bother you for one enemy phase.

I tend to let Cormag deal with the southern fliers, and Tana with the north. Make sure they have Javelin, Iron Lance, Pure Water and Vulnerary with them.

Stock up on things if you're low before entering this chapter if you haven't already, because you don't get to use the map screen between Ch11 and Ch12.

I tried that attacking their ship first few times, Ephraim is probably my strongest unit (lvl 16 or 17 I think) but he just end up dying, same thing happened with Forde.

Edited November 2, 2011 by Sikker

[zahlman]

I tried that attacking their ship first few times, Ephraim is probably my strongest unit (lvl 16 or 17 I think) but he just end up dying, same thing happened with Forde.

Umm... Duessel? Seth? (like suggested earlier? Seriously, unless you're leaving Seth out for challenge... don't tell me you let Duessel die last chapter?) Try to keep your ground forces together, and flank weaker units with stronger ones.

Edited November 3, 2011 by zahlman

[General Horace]

I don't think it's possible for Duessel to even die, can any enemies aside from the boss even hurt him?

For the chapter, torches and the torch staff are your friend. It isn't hard if you see what you're fighting.

[Sikker]

Yeah I do have Duessel but I kinda don't want to use him...don't really like great knights. And Seth is weaker then Ephraim.

Anyway, I finally won :) I didn't do much different then the previous tries (except promoting Lute) but this time only a few eyeballs managed to reach l'Arachel and they don't really hurt her...

I guess it was about luck, near the end Tana's pure water was running out and she only had 2 HP left, but she managed to dodge an eyeball attack, which saved her life.

[chococoke]

I've had L'Arachel survive the entire map without me ever setting foot on her ship on HM before.

It's not common - I'd say a coin toss at best - but she can survive depending mostly on Dozla's actions.

This has happened every time I've played this level, perhaps I'm just lucky. That doesn't sound right. Dozla always raeps everything for me

[Sikker]

This has happened every time I've played this level, perhaps I'm just lucky. That doesn't sound right. Dozla always raeps everything for me

Well, Dozla starts a few spaces above l'Arachel so he usually goes for the flyers that come from the north, l'Arachel starts close to the other ship so they usually go for her, and as I said before, 1 javelin is enough to kill her.

During my tries I lost twice because of l'Arachel dying before I reached her (well technically I didn't lose, but I want to use her later so I restarted the battle)

[Paper Jam]

I had used Amelia quite a bit in the previous chapters, so by the time I got to Phantom Ship, she was already a level 10 knight.

I must have been particularly RNG-blessed, because she had pretty good Resistance as well as Defense. (11 Resistance and 10 Defense, to be exact... and enough Speed and Luck that she dodged pretty often too.) This proved to be crucial, as the horde of Mogalls in the upper right corner of the map concentrated their attacks on her, each hitting her for 2 damage, and she had one HP by the time they were through with her.

I don't think it's possible to win the map without luck and/or tampering with the RNG. On my first few tries, I had to figure out a set pattern to maximize critical hits for me on the first few turns.

[Smiley Jim]

I had relatively few issues with Chapter 11B.

What I did was use Tana with a Pure Water boost to remove the mogalls loitering northeast of my spawn point before they could reach my main force, same principle applied to having Cornmug kill the gargoyles to the southeast of my start point. After that, it was essentially 'use Ephraim, Gilliam, and Ross to cut down the hordes of monsters', since those three had the best durability out of my long-term units. I also made absolute damn sure that Ephraim could reach L'Arachel the moment she spawned, not that it mattered because Dozla is more than strong enough to kill these clowns(and with 43HP/11def/6res, he isn't dying anytime soon.)

Just remember to either watch where you put your defensively inept units or just not bring them altogether. As a bare-bones example, I actually ran into some issues when I did this map the first time and the enemies were positioned in a way where they could kill either Lute or Natasha on turn 7. Thank god I was playing on an emulator and had access to save states and easy RNG manipulation.

[Sikker]

I had used Amelia quite a bit in the previous chapters, so by the time I got to Phantom Ship, she was already a level 10 knight.

I must have been particularly RNG-blessed, because she had pretty good Resistance as well as Defense. (11 Resistance and 10 Defense, to be exact... and enough Speed and Luck that she dodged pretty often too.) This proved to be crucial, as the horde of Mogalls in the upper right corner of the map concentrated their attacks on her, each hitting her for 2 damage, and she had one HP by the time they were through with her.

I don't think it's possible to win the map without luck and/or tampering with the RNG. On my first few tries, I had to figure out a set pattern to maximize critical hits for me on the first few turns.

Hmm..did you use the tower or skirmishes to level Amelia? Because you get her like 2 chapters before this one? Pretty hard for me to level her without using the tower or skirmishes. She's only level 4 now :(