Let's Play Sword of Seals Ironman Mode: Start-of-Phase reinforcements of doom

[Nonevah]

This will not be an in-depth let's play. I'm basically just going to do run overs of particularly notable incidents during my game. Warning: there is probably going to be a bit of cursing here, as what I see as notable moments tend to be the rage-inducing ones.

So, I've finally started playing Sword of Seals. For lulz, I decided to play Ironman, and try and insulate myself from as many character and plot spoilers as possible (this character is good, this character sucks, etc.) And I've come to a conclusion. I hate enemy reinforcements that move the turn they come in. The 1 accuracy rng (as opposed to the 2-number in later games) is a bit of an annoyance, but that can be dealt with, I just need to include more redundancy in my plans. But these reinforcements… these reinforcements.

I've had three character losses this run.

First two were Wolt and Lugh, on Ch 4, Crumbling Alliance. Everything had been running smoothly. I saw Rutger say that he and his men were going to go out, but for some odd reason I didn't connect that with the fact that that means dangerous reinforcements and I should either back away from Castle Laus or create a half-decent defensive formation. Next turn, Rutger's unit shows up, while my units are in total disarray split between advancing towards Erik and finishing off the pirates. Rutger doubles and kills Wolt, one of his fighters and one of his archers kill off Lugh. I'm not a big fan of foot archers (weak enemy-phase game,) and I've heard bad things about Lugh (also, he reminds me of Ricken, who was not very good for me.), so thankfully I wasn't planning on using them.

The real screw-over, though, came on Chapter 6, in Thria. First off, MAPS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO HAVE THAT MANY DIFFERENT DOORS AND TREASURE CHESTS. I'd been running all over the castle, trying to pick all the chests with Chad. I first picked the bottom-right door, the one with the staircase. Thankfully, my units had been moving quickly (to try and secure the castle as much as possible against enemy thieves,) so the surprise reinforcements didn't achieve much. Later, Cath came. She starts out on the right, so I figure she would go for that side first, and I did a rescue chain to try and get Roy over there. WRONG. She heads left instead, and I have to rescue chain Roy back to get the talk. I think she picked the bottom-left door, or maybe Chad did it later. Roy talks to her, she heads right, so I now I think she'll just keep trying to steal the treasure unless I take her lockpicks. I think I'd rescue-chained Chad over earlier, for some reason, maybe to try and steal her lock picks at the same time. Try to set up another chain to get to her. The matter that there'd probably be reinforcements spilling out of the stairs in the bottom-left room totally slips my mind. Archer and a few soldiers charge out. A soldier manages a hit on Shanna, who'd been carrying Chad as part of the chain, and then the archer kills her after, even though he could have just one-shotted her to begin with. I had planned on using Shanna, had fed her levels, given her some weapons and a vulnery, had some attachment to the character. I raged so hard, I stopped playing there for a few days. UGH. And to top it all off, Cath ran all the way through the right side, then escaped through the staircase behind Wagner. What. A. Troll.

And, really, the rest of the game isn't that hard, it's just those reinforcements. I guess I had something of a warning both times, and missed it, but… I guess I'll just have to get used to it. Although I hear reinforcements get even worse later in the game.

Also, how do you unlock the support viewer? I want to be able to see which characters can support without spoiling myself to recruitable characters on sites.

I'm currently preparing for Chapter 7, will update on anything that catches my on.

[Rainbow Skittles]

Fe6 has true hit...

[Nonevah]

Fe6 has true hit...

Yeah, that's what I meant by one-number RNG. The two-number RNG is kinder to you, as the player tends to have above 50 hit chances and the enemies frequently have below 50 hit chances.

Also, the next update

Rutger died on chapter 7: The Ostian Revolt. I just had overextended him while I was trying to steal items and cover Chad, he died. Oops. Also, Clarine came way too close to being one-shotted by a wyvern knight (I think he had about 64 percent chance to hit,) and Allen got too close to comfort because I tried to use him and lance to reach a far-away village that I really probably shouldn’t have gone for.

Ogier died on chapter 8. Not sure on what I did wrong there, I think I might have put him in front of a formation, thinking the enemies would attack Wendy and not realizing how weak his defense was.

Chapter 8x, casualty free. For me, anyhow, not so much for the bandits.

Incidentally, unorganized bandit trash has never defeated one of my units. While in in-game terms, they tend to be on par with actual soldiers, story-wise and kill wise match up.

Chapter 11: Hero of the Western Isles. Team: Roy, Lilina, Lance, Allen, Treck, Noah, Sue, Shin, Clarine, Deke, Fir, Gonzales. As you can tell, I was planning to go for a cavalry-themed run, thought it would be fun. Paladins, so overpowered, although I guess I’m gonna have serious weaknesses to halberds. Sue and Sin would be good for picking off the halberds, though, so… Did I mention that, before this, despite deaths, I’d been doing quite fine with treasure, picking all chests and saving all villages. Yeah, didn’t happen today. I sent Allen, Lance, Sue, Shin through the left downward path towards the outer houses, and everyone else through the main path through the village. I may have misjudged Roy’s durability and sent him to kill a bandit that could have killed him in one blow, but thankfully the bandit missed the 25. Klein pops up, I manage to get him with some clever wall-breaking and usage of Lalum, though a few of his archers die. Then, Ordo calls in the bandits. The bandits are way beyond my range, just impossible to get to, given that I had just turned the corner into the western portion of the village I guess that breakable wall in the north existed for a reason. I just, eh, thought that was for sequence breaking or something, I prefer just killing everything to dancing around my opponents, the former tends to give more rewards. Oops, there goes the western portion of the village. Why did Ordo even do that, he’s ruining his tax base, idiot. Guess he figured that we would requisition all the supplies anyway. Of course, there’s maybe one house that I can save if I really hurry, so I do an all-out charge. Sue’s in a bit of danger, but I figure she’ll survive unless the opponents get really lucky. And then, Echinda pops up. Followed by about 5 fighters chasing her. Who then proceed to totally ignore Echinda to attack Sue. Long story short: Sue dies. And then I take a stupid risk fighting a fighter (attacked the fighter when he had 34 percent chance to hit and could kill Shin in two hits. The fighter probably couldn’t have killed anyone else otherwise, so, extra stupid), oh god, Shin dies, that was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, goddamn. And then there goes echinda by the killer bow, goddamn goddamn goddamn. And, in the top-left village is a… Speedwing!

Holy hell, fuck EVERYTHING. I lost a shitty unit and two decent ones for that bloody thing. Admittedly, that was probably the best I could expect, but… jesus christ, just so unfair…

So, the enemy cavalry arrives. I have Gonzales in the alleyway next to the red house to try and funnel the cavaliers against him. Meanwhile, the brigands are trying to swing around the side, so I have to kill them and avoid having Gonzales get attacked from behind. Allen and Lance hold space above the red house, Noah and Trec right of the brown house right above, with Roy, Lilina, and Fir behind them, holding their backs against the brigands. One of the cavaliers splits off to attack Lance, have to kill that guy, and the brigands coming below are mixed in, so eventually I end up advancing to the bottleneck 1 tile above and 1 right of the Red house, Lance on the left, Treck on the right. There is a killer lance cavalier among the enemy number. I forgot about the bandit’s ability to cross mountains, so one advances onto a peak and scores a hit on the lance-wielding Treck. The killer lance comes forwards, spins his lance around… well, there’s the sleep you always wanted, Treck.

Ch 12.

Pretty much everything went fine here, except for the fact that I messed around fighting reinforcements and got jumped by that 20 turn limit for chapter 12x. I mean, roy was literally sitting on the throne, I coulda gone to 12x if I'd just hit seize instead of wait the turn before.

Chapter 13:

Fir is the first of my units to promote.

I’d sent Tate over to grab the northern village, she succeeded.

Noah dies on the small island. On enemy phase, enemy axereaver cavalier dies to his sword, then he gets charged by that silver lance Paladin, that I probably could have killed on my turn if I’d healed Gonzales with a Mend instead of a Heal allowing him to killer axe the Paladin. Ugh… And then, Lalum gets attacked by a Wyvern Knight with Javelin, and she dies. Fucker.

Came within 43 percent chance of losing Lance to a Horseslayer Wyvern Knight. Jesus christ, I need to be more cautious. Clarine also promotes, near the village. I think I’m gonna use Percival in the future, love paladins. Also, I may have done a bit of looking at the wiki accidentally, and noted that the silver card turns up next level. I may or may not need extra money to buy promotion items from the Ch. 16 shop (with silver card, buying promotion items isn’t a waste, as buying one means I can sell another for an equal amount of cash,) and if possible I’d like to be really well equipped late game instead of running any risk of running out of cash. In other news, I really, really wish that they’d invented the inventory management system from Awakening earlier. Infinite storage is nice so I don’t have to mess around with stuffing items on non-used characters, and the ability to transfer weapon uses is incredibly nice, so you don’t have to make that irritating choice on whether to have a character bring a weapon on its last uses into battle and either bring a spare of that weapon that takes up space, or risk just not having that weapon for the later part of the battle; or to sell the weapon and lose money on its last uses. I mean, this was also a problem in FE7, but…

Oh, and I come across the fact that Lalum is necessary for recruiting Percival. Now that's just mean, having to preserve such a weak character like that to recruit such a boss.

[dondon151]

Yeah, that's what I meant by one-number RNG. The two-number RNG is kinder to you, as the player tends to have above 50 hit chances and the enemies frequently have below 50 hit chances.

what rainbow skittles meant is that FE6 calculates hit with 2 RNs.

[Tables]

Yeah, that's what I meant by one-number RNG. The two-number RNG is kinder to you, as the player tends to have above 50 hit chances and the enemies frequently have below 50 hit chances.

"True Hit" refers to the system of using 2RNs. FE6 has a 2RN hit system, although considering how many times I missed with >85% in FE6 compared to a normal FE7-8 playthrough (it was a lot, I think possibly over 15 times), I'm kinda not sure the RNG is as, uh, random as in later games (not that they aren't completely random either, but I mean I think there's a higher occurence of >50 RNs being followed by >50 RNs than there should be and so on).

[dondon151]

this is easy to test for. i used rngdisplay.lua while loading FE6, FE7, and FE8 and all of them used the same RN seed (8, 56, 21 when the values are converted to usable hit values) and generated the same first 17 RNs.

[CT075]

i have looked at the function in the game code that checks whether an attack connects in fe6 compared to fe7 and they are identical (fe7 demonstratably uses a 2RN system)

[Nonevah]

First off, thanks for that explanation on the RNG. While the curve definitely felt less steep than in the other FE's I've played, I did notice that my hits around 75-90 were hitting a bit more than 75-90 percent of the time. Out of curiosity, how exactly does FE create RNGs? I've heard its from some massive list, or something?

Onto the commentary.

Well, long story short… Chapter 13 went perfect, grabbed all the desert items, everyone survived, Gaiden chapter unlocked. Wanted to use Sophia, but I was only able to get her two levels, and I figure it isn't worth the effort to train her. And then… Ch. 13x. I was smart enough not to charge out onto the tiles immediately, hanging back until the early paths stopped collapsing. Roy took an unlucky hit somewhere or another (might have been bad luck with a pirate.) We advanced, and turns out, he was standing on one of the two tiles exposed to enemy bolting sages near the start. All my healers had already used up their turns, Roy was 10 hp down. I tried rescuing him with Tate, but owing to her position, she could only get him from a place that ended up put hem both in range of both the grunt and the boss sage. Boss hit on a 88 against Tate, flunky hit on a 47, doing 19 damage to an 18 HP Roy.

You might notice I'm cursing less than last time. I think the idea that my run is over hasn't quite sunken through my head yet.

I think that next time, I may try either rushing Roy to Level 20 as fast as possible, or stuffing him with almost every stat booster I get. (except maybe that Seraph robe, the seraph robe is pretty much required to make clarine useful.) And maybe, I'll try doing either a video LP or a screenshotted one. Thoughts?

[Tables]

First off, thanks for that explanation on the RNG. While the curve definitely felt less steep than in the other FE's I've played, I did notice that my hits around 75-90 were hitting a bit more than 75-90 percent of the time. Out of curiosity, how exactly does FE create RNGs? I've heard its from some massive list, or something?

It has some method, which I don't know the exact details of, but I do know it's based on the last three RNs that were rolled. In other words, if you know those three RNs, you can predict every future RN - and there is an LUA script you can use that does just that, reading the RNs and telling you what the next RNs are.

[dondon151]

I think the idea that my run is over hasn't quite sunken through my head yet.

I think that next time, I may try either rushing Roy to Level 20 as fast as possible, or stuffing him with almost every stat booster I get. (except maybe that Seraph robe, the seraph robe is pretty much required to make clarine useful.) And maybe, I'll try doing either a video LP or a screenshotted one. Thoughts?

roy loves that first robe. if you want to stuff EXP into roy early on, giving him the +7 HP makes it that much easier.

clarine, on the other hand, should not be getting into combat at all.

[CT075]

it's a psuedorandomly generated rng string; it's *almost* just drawing from a big list (and it may as well be- there's a portion of it loaded into memory at all times for easy access)

i didn't bother actually reading the generation algorithm because it's long and not super interesting (if you look up "psuedorandom generation algorithms" or something similar you could probably get a good guess as to what exactly it does) but i can confirm that it does take the three previous RNs as parameters

[Nonevah]

roy loves that first robe. if you want to stuff EXP into roy early on, giving him the +7 HP makes it that much easier.

clarine, on the other hand, should not be getting into combat at all.

True, I guess. But its an ironman run, things can go wrong. Also, useful for when she promotes, as post-promotion clarine is a crazy dodger. Guess I will just feed the cloak to roy next time. Along with most other stat boosters.

[dondon151]

yes, but keep in mind that the one unit who is guaranteed not to die (since your run would otherwise be over) is roy. so i think it's in your best interest to do everything possible to keep him alive.

[Nonevah]

You know, there's just one thing I've been wondering about. Is it just me, or do statuses (sleep, poison, etc) not tick down while units are being rescued? I think I've seen that before, so I don't rescue sleeping units (I mean, I don't rescue them just to keep them up with the rest of the army.) I don't really want to test it, because no-restart run. Is this correct?

[chococoke]

It's that way in FE7, so I'd assume it to be true for FE6, too

[Nonevah]

So, it's a bit since I updated.

I'm currently on my 3rd run-through, about to finally start the attack on Bern, right after I grab Maltet.

Should I start trying to feed Fae levels right about now? I think it might be time to, with all my losses. Anyway, here's the bloody tragedy that brought me to this point.

2nd run.

Dorthy dies on Ch 6. Only tears are for the steel bow she was carrying.

Ch 7: FUCK! Allen died. Everything had been going fine, my units were to the right of the arena on around turn 6, and then… those f***ng wyvern knights. One of them came over the wall at a bad time. I advanced forward a bit, and Lance ended up in the range of both. He had 26 hp. They did 13 damage each, and had exactly 50 percent chance to hit. Of course, both suceed. God. Damnit. I am so pissed right now…

And he probably would have had a better chance of surviving if I’d gone through with a plan to use him as bait to lure one of the wyvern knights over the turn earlier, or had charged Trec out as bait.

Tried to all-out attack the wyvern knights… I was unable to kill em in one turn, they did serious damage and prevented my healers from reaching the people they needed to hid. A mage sniped Chad. And then, I counterattacked the mage with Lugh, who had already been hurt by the wyverns. Lugh did not do enough damage to kill the mage. The mage did enough to kill him. God. Damnnit. Now that, that wasn’t just an ordenary fuckup. That was just failing FE 101.

Ch 9. The misty Isles.

Misplaced Lilina trying to level up Shin and Fir. A archer hits for 10, an archer hits for 10. God. Damn. It.

Fighting Scott. Had Rutger attack him, first taunting him into using his hand-axe, then going in to attack, using rescue chains to avoid him switching to the killer axe. The numbers were something like 15 to hit, 28 percent crit for Scott. On the third fight, Scott hit. God. Damn. It.

Lemme just run some numbers here… Assuming truly random number generation, Scott had 1.3 % chance of killing Rutger. Horse. Shit. Is what that it, that is horse. Shit. Over 3 fights… that’s 3.8 percent chance. I then proceeded to panic that I had no one else who probably wouldn’t get murderized by Scott, given the high defense and that freaking crit chance. And then I noticed Trec’s defense, which was just enough to absorb a critical hand axe. And an attack high enough to break through Scott’s defenses faster than he could be healed by the gate. Aww yeah. I wish I’d thought of this earlier… Although it probably would have taken 40 turns to kill scott, at that rate.

And fir just died, two 15 percent hits that I could have avoided If I’d just stayed in the forest. Fuck. Everything.

Ch 11 went perfectly. I got absolutely everything. Amazing.

Ch 12, Ch 12. Things went along pretty solidly. Except for one minor problem.

TRECK FUCKING DIED. He was pretty much my best unit, or close to. That fucking warrior in the hallway. That warrior musta slept with the RNG goddess or something. He dodged 2 80 percent hits and a 65 percent hit on my part and if a priest had missed on a 50 percent sleep, Shin could have saved Treck, and the bastard hit on at least three 25 or so percent hits. I mighta saved Treck if I hadn’t had him attack for the last blow, but I didn’t think of that at the time, I thought that some more fragile and less able to dodge axes units were in danger. Turns out, they coulda survived, even if Treck hadn’t attacked. I remember… Treck attacked, had one hit, he coulda killed the guy in a single 82 percent or so blow. The guy dodges, then hits on a 26. Treck goes down to exactly 1 hp. Next turn, another sucessful 26. I… just… fuck. He was at level 19, so close to promotion. He would have been a boss Paladin. And now, he’s pushing up fucking daises. Fuck. Everything. And maybe the whole thing would have turned out fine, if I hadn’t forgotten the restore staves, coulda healed Shin and he coulda sniped the Warrior. Ugh… So angry. On the bright side, I didn’t dally around long enough for Armads to get blocked off, so there’s that. Roy with a Wyrmslayer killed the dragon in 3 hits, pretty nice. Deke with Durandal probably would have done it in one, if it weren’t for that fuckign sleep stave.

Note to self: Next time, bring sturdier units for Ch. 12x. Because seriously, fuck that Beserker boss. I lost Cath and Lalum on the way to him, and I just didn’t have anyone tough enough to take on that meathead. Over the course of around 60 turns or so, I managed to beat him down to around 15 hp before I ran out of swords.

Run 3:

For the reference, this run is also a casual LTC run, just to kinda add an extra bit of... something. I guess something to measure myself by, besides just victory and survival rates, a solid scale that doesn't involve tragedy.

Everything has been going incredibly well. Getting all the villages and chests, 2 coversations with Cath, etc. Had to kill Gonzales in chapter 10, though, he’d threatened a kill on Clarine. And then, chapter 11 again.

Ch. 11. I had Alan, Lance, Roy, Shin, and Clarine run through the southern route, and Dieck, Rutger, Lugh, Ellen, Geese, Marcus, Shanna, and Lalum went West. I planned on using Marcus and Shanna to airlift my units over into the city, with Lalum helping with dances. A few things went wrong with my brilliant plan of adapting modern manuverability tactics to a medieval fantasy setting. First, Geese was the first unit over, maybe not the smartest idea. Second, I probably should have moved Thany back a bit with her canto, so Lalum could dance for her on the first turn. Third, Deke was the second, also not the smartest, because Rutger might have done a better job dodging and Deke’s high con would have been helpful with the airlifting. Fourth, on the Second turn I accidentally sent Lalum south to help Roy, who I’d accidentally kept north, forgetting my group assignments twice. This meant that Lalum did not help with the airlift until the 3^rd turn. Rutger and Lugh went over on turn 3, but on that enemy phase, it appears that the enemies in the middle of the map caught wise and started moving towards my units. Gulp. First time, have Deke take out some of their light units in the front. After enemy phase four, 2 enemy fighters are down, but there are still quite a few enemy units remaining. Deke and Rutger are the only units who can really reliably dodge axes, still only they and Geese were in range of the enemies, and I wanted to rush for that hero crest and angelic robe (for Roy). Deke and rutger took out the enemy hand axe fighters without a scratch, leaving a flux shaman, a killer bow archer, an iron axe fighter, and a steel axe fighter. Yeah… with my lack of units, I just couldn’t hope to take everything out. I just had to hope that the fighters would all miss (pretty much guaranteed to miss Rutger, hand axe and steel axe had 22 on Deke, iron axe had 37,) and that the Killer Bow wouldn’t crit. Steel axe goes up to fight Deke, misses and dies. Iron axe runs in as well, he—hits, before of course falling as well before Deke’s awesome. Fuck. Archer and Shaman have pretty good chances to hit, he would be dead on hits from both. Not content on making this go down to the wire, the Killer Bow attack Deke, and fucking crits. The Shaman runs around and hits Geese, and leaves him at 10 hp. I manage to off the shaman and the archer, charge forward, and are lucky enough to beat them.

Highlights of the rest of the level include: A) A bandit deciding to commit suicide-by-Rutger instead of sacking the angelic robe village. B) When I manage to have Thany NPC Tate and her unit, they continue going East, away from Klein’s attempts to recruit them. I think they’re going to go through the alley, and have Rutger rescue Tate to make sure she doesn’t leave, which also serves to prevent Rutger from fighting the boss. And then, most of Tate’s unit suicides themselves on the boss instead of escaping. Bluh. Rutger drops Tate, Klein recruits, and the last pegasus knight in her unit goes through the alley. Hmm, I guess they only escape when Tate is properly recruited. Actually, kinda makes sense, Klein would relay the order for the pegasus knights to stand down so we could take care of things.

Ch 12x. Dropped the last 2 chests, because I didn’t want to waste the turns.

Next death: Ch 14. I was progressing quite fast, grabbed the silver card with a flier relay while having baited out the wyverns earlier so the thief wouldn’t get killed, and everyone else moved East quick. There was a bit of a close call with a wyvern lord I didn’t expect to attack coming out of the sandstorm and having a 39 percent chance to one-hit kill Shanna, but she dodged. And then… those Mercs. I had Shanna and Miledy go up to fight the 2 Heroes and 4 Mercs up north, and… why are they so speedy? Why do they have such good defenses? Why do they have pretty decent attack? And why did that one of the Heroes get a Killing edge? Basically, 3 successful hits from the mercs would kill Shanna. Miledy only got maybe 4 or so damage a hit from them, but the Killing edge hero doubled her, and would kill if he critted on either one of his hits. So, Shanna and Miledy end up fighting a retreating action, eventually backing up all the way to the place where the ridge bends. The rest of my army had gotten a bit ahead, but then backed off so the heroes wouldn’t kill them. I used some clever maneuvering, the heroes had gotten a fair bit ahead of their mercenary support, and I had taken down the killing edge at range. And then, while backing various units off, I moved ellen down… right down to where the steel sword Hero could run around and attack her, two strikes on 63 percent hit chance. Both connected.

Ch. 14x. Went fairly well, although the bridge to the center island went down before I could arrive, forcing me to use slower airlifting tactics. Also, had a close call where a Druid had 38 percent chance to kill Roy.

Ch 16. Hugh went on the right path, instead of the left (why? I thought he was supposed to move towards Roy? Why do the game developers put him to move the opposite way from Roy?) Well, I just stole his member card, and… left him alive to check if he’d run towards Roy and ignore fighting. He… fights. Attacks Shin for 20 damage (hits on… maybe a 65?,) then the Purge bishop attacks, and misses Shin on a 58 percent hit chance. I, of course, then proceed to steal his elixir and murder the **** out of Hugh. Sorry, Canas, it was for the greater good.

Also, did I mention how blessed my Lugh is?
From averages for a level 2 sage Lugh, he has -3 hp, +4 mag (!!!), -1 skl, +3 spd, +2 lck, -2 def, and +4 res. I mean, it’s unfortunate that his physical defense is a bit below average, but otherwise he’s insanely powerful. And I heard Lugh was supposed to have a bit of trouble with magic… Also, I wish that mages had a lower skill cap and a higher speed cap.

Ch. 16x.

Siege tomes are horrible. They are just horrible. At the beginning of the chapter, I charged forward, trying to gain exp for Zeiss, and I kinda forgot about that lower bolting sage. I overextended him and then rescued Ziess away with Miledy, and then Miledy… was in range of an elfire mage, and the bolting sage. Elfire did 19 on a 60 percent hit, Bolting did 24 on a 70 percent hit, goodbye Miledy. FUCK!!!!!! That was total bullshit… And I did fairly well on the rest of the stage, now that I was paranoid about the siege tomes, and there was no real big cluster of enemies with siege support. Ugh… And she was so good… and she had an elysian whip on her… why? Fuck. Everything.

Ch. 20. Misplaced Astohl, accidentally let him be in range of a killing edge Merc that was supposed to go for Alan. The RNG was not in my favor today. Why can’t we promote thieves in this game… The funny thing, the misplacement occurred because of a rescue chain, that I meant to get him to the treasure faster. Welp, now it’s going to take forever and a day, for Chad to grab everything, and meanwhile all that Astohl had is lost.

…

Near the end, accidentally put Shanna right on the edge of the range of the lower ballista, for once she didn’t dodge on a 40.

At this point, I think I had a bit of a rage aneurysm, and I don’t think I may have gone with the optimal strategy right after. This is because on both on fireemblem.wikia and Serenes forest, it is claimed that Shanna and Tate must both survive to get to chapter 20x, which thankfully is just wrong. On the other hand, she was holding my Silver Card.

And then… Fucking druid berserks Chad… and then Clarine is out of range… and then Perceval is in range of the Druid… and he gets berserked. Clarine restores him, first priority, and I move him up to block off Chad in the treasure room. And then Chad runs through Perceval (I forgot about that part of berserking.) and doubles Clarine (who’d been holding a civilian.) And the funniest thing is, only the thiefs arrived before I ended the chapter, the civilians would have been fine if I hadn't rescued them.

God. Damn. it… I guess fragile Niime is going to have to take over as restore user. For this chapter anyway, I think I might use Jodel for the rest to try and get it so I can use Aureola. Why is Niime so high tiered anyway, she has the defenses of tissue paper.

I didn't really feel like bothering to grab the chests after all that bullshit.

Thankfully, the internet lies, you do not need Shanna alive to get to 20x. Hopefully, it’s also lying about Miledy being needed for 21x.

[Nonevah]

Ch 21. And I heard this was so hard. I had all my units go on one path, first down on the left side, then going past the village, then going down towards the Shrine on the right path, taking the left side of the Shrine to get in. 2 easy….

Party: Roy, Lance, Alan, Percival, Shin, Zeiss, Rutger, Geese, Fa, Lugh, Raigh, Chad, Niime, Igrene, Garret, Douglas, Juno, Echinda, and of course Jodel.

I should not have said that.

So, what I did, is, when the Paladin and Wyvern reinforcments showed up, I had Geese stand on a peak, and the rest of the army run away (it was a close call, the most forward of the Bernese units did make it to my army.) The Paladins and Wyverns were totally annihilated. So, I went with things as planned, and then the second wave of reinforcements showed up in that pincer formation, that you get when you just get to the area around the Shrine of Seals. I realized that the area to the right of the Shrine of Seals would be easier defended, so I tried to rush for there. But I didn’t quite make it in time. Jodel(who, thankfully, had had Murgleis traded to Shin at the start of the level, and the goddess staff traded to Allen when I realized that Jodel was almost certain to die), Douglas (who I’d actually split off as a decoy. On second thoughts, not so smart, he would have been better guarding the backside of my retreating soldiers,) Echinda, Igrene, and Chad all didn’t manage to make it behind the barrier I formed in time, and Juno ended up forming part of the initial barrier. They should have all died. However, for once, the RNG Goddess decided to be somewhat kind to me, for once. Igrene, Chad, and Juno all managed to escape the bloodthirsty wyverns. Meanwhile, Gale and his unit went to try and fight Geese, and suffered the same fate as their less elite but more numerous counterparts earlier. Lance and Alan held the line against the rest of the wyverns, and a combo of Roy with a rapier and Rutger with Durandal managed to take out Murdock.

The funny thing was, I was using a guide to help me out. That Wars of Dragons site has full reinforcement lists for the chapters of SoS, unlike the Wiki which is just wrong (the reinforcements are based on when your unit enter a certain area, not turns, for christ’s sake.), or Serenes Forest which has no chapter guides. Unfortunately, WoD is in Spanish, and I only just completed Spanish 1 in school. Thankfully, that Spanish 1 is just enough to guess out the meaning, in the reinforcement lists at least. The area where you get the second wave of reinforcements, I should have moved my troops along the top of the cliff and then rushed them into the gap between the SoS and the edge of the map. Unfortunately, I only thought of the idea of using that cover once I’d blundered down into the main area. Oops. Maybe I should have just stuck out in the open and tried to use my tougher units to protect the filler.

But anyhow, once Murdock went down and Roy took the throne, someone started talking about the Sword of Seals and then Roy took it out. Without that 21x happening in-between. Fuck. Double Fuck. Triple Fuck. Fuck. Everything.

Ch 22.

Team: Roy, Lugh, Geese, Shin, Raigh, Zeiss, Allen, Lance, Chad, Perceval, Rutger, Fae, Igrene, Juno, Jerrot, and Garret.

To top off the fact that I’m getting the bad end, did I mention that Jodel was holding my only remaining Restore stave? (I did not realize that the Ch 21 shop would not have Restore staves.) And then there’s that Druid with a berserk stave. As you can imagine, I panicked for a while. I had even almost started to do a run of the chapter with only Roy (Binding blade for heals, and then 3 silver swords and a killing edge to take out the enemies) And then, I realized… there was one tile exactly 10 tiles away from the Druid within range of the western starting area. And my bolting tome was full. One fried Druid, coming up! Admittedly, it was a bit of a gamble, Lugh needed to hit both hits of an 81 percent double, which is… 13.57 odds of a miss, not the nicest odds for a potentially game losing scenario. Ahahaha. But well, Lugh succeeded. I had Raigh, Shin, Zeiss, Percival, Juno, and Jerrot take the left (high move units to rush to the far-away switch) and everyone else on the right, with Roy, Lance, and Allen going for the switch while everyone else just headed straight for the throne room. The enemies in this chapter are a total joke. Seriously, this was supposed to be a climactic battle, but aside from that panic-Druid that I managed to neutralize by finally getting to turn the artillery tomes back on the enemy, this chapter had 0 difficulty, aside from just trying to move as fast as possible. I had to wait one turn at the throne room entrance while Lance, Zeiss, and Juno finished off the last bits of resistance for the left switch. The enemies inside the throne room were equally easy, and Zephiel… I heard Zephiel was hard. Roy was first to go up, scoring a crit on the second hit with the Sword of Seals, and then Lance finished the king off with a blow of Maltet. That was… disappointing.

And then, for that final bit of extra hilarity, reinforcements pop out of the stairs in the throne room, and manage to kill Fae before I seize the throne. Come on now, you’re just being sore losers.

…I really wanted to make screenshots of my endgame characters, but VBA’s screenshots won’t work. Aww. I don’t feel like spending a ton of time copying all the info from their proflies onto here, so, no.

I will list supports, though.

Roy B Allen A Lance B Roy

Chad C Lugh B Raigh

I had built a few other supports over the course of the game, but the participants kinda got a bit killed. Off the top of my head, Clarine B Rutger, Shanna B Deke, and Ellen B Lugh. Ehehehe.

You know, now I want to find out how, exactly, Elibe was united under one banner. But I guess that obvious sequel hook will never be cashed in on.

… They didn’t do the total turncount. Now I’m going to have to go back through the whole epilogue and count up the turncounts for the individual chapters.

Wow, this character epilogue list is really lacklustre. Only a sentence per character, and a really generic one at that. Even Shadow Dragon had more detailed endings, and those characters were little more than faces! Also, Saul, became a missionary? You have to wonder, where to.

I usually always wait till my characters hit 20 to promote. I’ve heard on the forums about how it’s often better to promote early, as the immediate bonuses in the hard early parts of the game can outweigh the faster growth overall (I’m starting to think that the whole “hitting level cap” isn’t much of a problem, because really, how often do your units reach even 20/15?)… and now, I think I’m starting to agree. Because, really, the units in the later parts of the game were total jokes. I mean, really? Unpromoted troops, in the potentially final battle? Note that I didn't get any stat boosters from secret shops, because that felt cheap to me. The late-game difficulty comes from all the long-range attacks and status staves, and better stats help less with those issues than they do with the comparative raw power in early game. But who knows, I’m in normal mode, it probably completely changes with the kind of hard mode playthroughs the forum regulars do.

Final Deathlist (from epilogue)

Deke: Ch 11

Elen: Ch 14

Miledy: Ch 16x

Lalum: Ch 18

Astore: Ch 20

Clarine: Ch 20

Shanna: Ch 20

Douglas: Ch 21

Echinda: Ch 21

Niime: Ch 21

Fae: Ch 22

Other Deaths (failed to recruit, did not show up in the epilogue):

Gonzales

Hugh

For some odd reason, in the descriptions, after it says the chapter where they died, it says “title 1”. What does that mean?

Turncounts:

Ch 1: 12 turns

Ch 2: 10 turns

Ch 3: 13 turns

Ch 4: 10 turns

Ch 5: 10 turns

Ch 6: 19 turns

Ch 7: 11 turns

Ch 8: 26 turns

Ch 8x: 17 turns

Lycia Turncount: 128 turns

Lycian Arc Turncount: 128 turns

Ch 9: 16 turns

Ch 10: 11 turns

Ch 11: 12 turns

Ch 12: 12 turns

Ch 12x: 15 turns

Western Isles Turncount: 66 turns

Ch 13: 12 turns

Ch 14: 20 turns

Ch 14x: 21 turns

Missur Turncount: 53 turns

Ch 15: 17 turns

Ch 16: 20 turns (should have been faster, but was held up by wall.)

Ch 16x: 16 turns

Etruria Proper Turncount: 53 turns

Etrurian Arc Turncount: 172 turns

Ch 17: 12 turns

Ch 18: 10 turns

Ch 19: 12 turns

Ch 20: 11 turns

Ch 20x: 11 turns

Illian Turncount: 56 turns

Ch 21: 16 turns

Ch 22: 13 turns.

Bern Turncount: 29 turns

Invasion Arc Turncount: 85 turns

Total Turncount: 385 turns.

Somehow, I get the feeling that that is not a very low turncount, despite the game claiming it to be an A.

Rankings:

Tactics: A

Combat: A

Survival: E

Exp: D (why? I got quite a bit of exp, probably more than average what with dead characters resulting in exp needing to be funneled to other characters. Maybe it doesn’t count the EXP from dead characters, or something?)

Funds: A

Power: C

Total: B

Play time: 37 hours, 57 minutes.

And that’s not counting my earlier games, ahahahaha. In total, I wouldn’t be surprised if my total playtime, in hours, was somewhere in the 70s.

And I think this took a month or two, to actually play. Overall… hmm. Real disappointed not to see the real end, though, but I really don’t feel like playing normal mode another goddamn time. I think it can wait till I beat a few more other games.

So, I have to ask. First: how entertaining was this LP? I know it's pretty barebones, but, well, I just don't really know how to work screenshots into the text, and then the screenshots stopped working when I updated to Mavericks. (The saves also stopped working at that time, but thankfully I was able to go on the internet and find a few lines of code to type into Terminal that magically made those work again. No idea how it worked, I think it was something to do with file placement. I imagine the same thing happened to the screenshots, but I don't think that anyone's worried enough about those on Mac to find the problem and make a fix for it.)

Second: How did I do, for a... first timer? Maybe second timer (the first two failed runs seem to count for about half of one between them.)