video LTCing FE Girls

[Espinosa]

Prologue to Chapter 4:

Back when my monitor died, I had to switch to a laptop until I was waiting if I could have it fixed / get a new one, and since there wasn't anything to LTC on that laptop, I downloaded this hack and did my LTCing there - felt pretty fresh with the multitude of changes they made to the original FE8 mechanics.

If anyone is curious, here is what my turn counts look like prior to chapter 5 (originally the map where you recruit Joshua, now altered to be a GBA replica of this map):

(now updated to reflect the present turn counts)

P  4 turns
1  6 turns
2  4 turns
3  5 turns
4  2 turns
5  4 turns
5x 16 turns
6  12 turns
7  3 turns

I have the videos of all that recorded, too, and could show it off sometime.

After getting a new monitor, I still kept coming back to this run whenever I got tired of playing FE6 RR LTC, but after reaching chapter 5 I realised I'd be stuck here for a little while.

First of all, the map is certainly longer and there is no clear way to do it right that is immediately clear or even figured out with some work. Two characters need to be recruited, also in a non-straightforward way considering the specifics of the map, and the terrain/may design severely complicates the movement of anyone who's not named Clarine (who is your Peg Knight if you haven't promoted "Peg Recruit" Guinevere, which is pretty hard to accomplish in LTC format before you have the option to do so with less restraints in the defence map coming up very soon). Then there's the boss who's a terribly bulky Armour Knight. He has WTA against Eirika (+3 atk/def, +20 hit/avo in this hack) and a "small" WTA against the recent joiner Lute (who doubles him with her Fire tome for 7x2/36 damage), and Rapier/Armourslayer have only a 1.5x effective multiplier, so their damage is absolute crap. If Fae (she is replacing Joshua) is in range when recruited, she can land a decent nuke on the boss, not doubling or being doubled, tearing off 10 or so HP, so she could team up for the bosskill with some of the other units.

So far, the bosskilling details are mostly just theoryFEing because I haven't been able to figure out how to efficiently move out of the forests where you start off and open the door (if I don't end up relying on Clarine to repeatedly carry my units above the gates, thus circumventing opening the door entirely, but that also takes more than just one turn, by no means helping my army advance towards the boss) - certainly, some solutions are more efficient than others but just about all of them piss me off with how inefficient they are. One thing that makes it problematic is not knowing raising which units I should focus on at this point, because, when you LTC with growths, expected longterm outcome should never be completely sacrificed to immediately accessible tools to meet the current objectives.

Combat also seems pretty hard in this chapter, with big crowds of reinforcements appearing, enemies proccing +1/+2 movement, making them as mobile as cavalry, and multiple weapon types being represented in the same map making lowmanning next to impossible unless Eirika whips out the Rapier and goes wild with that (she won't last forever either). Doesn't seem like there's a clever way around that, and I hear a lot of the maps in this hack are like this.

I compiled the units' base stats here. Some changes, possibly significant ones, could be revealed as I continue playing as this data is based on what appears to be an older version of the hack. For example, Fae turned out to have 5 mov and not 6 as she had in the original version (and her dragonstone is noticeably weaker too), so I extrapolated and changed the other manaketes' mov / con / aid values as well.

And which units are worth raising? The obvious ones would be:

Eirika - your only main Lord because Lyn's route doesn't exist so far (never will?). Has to grow strong because the first two maps rely on her frontlining and dodgetanking all the enemies and bosses, and since she gets pretty damn good as a result of that, it makes sense to continue killing bosses with her because nobody else can achieve the same for various reasons. Late promotion will surely make her a burden later on, but there will be ways to carry her without stat penalties shortly.

Clarine - early flier with SNES-style canto. Could promote to Falco to get swords (the weapon triangle is pretty important in this one) and (Heal) staves or go WK and have skl% Pierces (nerfed considerably). High AS lets her double durable enemies with heavier weapons and speedier ones with lighter equipment.

Priscilla - first Cav. Paladins get the Saviour skill in this hack, plus bows fwiw. Clarine's lancelock in maps filled with axewielding enemies made Priscilla a unit that I had to trust a lot not merely because of her high movement. Also has a surprisingly good bulk at base.

Ninian - dancer that replaces with Seth, now with staff access and her own promotion. Using staves instead of dancing allows her to gain experience faster (it's ~20 exp per Heal iirc), but the party is progressing absolutely nowhere in maps if we focus on this. Her best way to accelerate experience accumulation is probably being exposed to multiple enemies who all fail to KO her (you gain 5 exp per 'counterless' round of combat, or one in which you whiff all of your attacks), and I don't know how we could focus on that, as it's definitely not easy to.

More questionable candidates:

Guinevere - I think she's the only unit who can access the Wyvern Lord class, and this class is unique for letting you move 3 extra squares after ending your turn in any way besides choosing Wait, which could be useful in longer maps. However, she's just awful at base before the good level-ups kick in, just like you would imagine with vanilla Ross and Amelia, and she needs to gain at least 19 level-ups before she becomes a Wyvern Lord. It's not clear whether focusing on training her is a good idea, even in maps where there's hardly any rush like the chapter 6 defence map, since it robs other growth units of their exp. Her promotion to a Wyvern Knight is sure to grant the party a big advantage in another flying/mounted unit, and chapter 5 makes it all too apparent Clarine and Priscilla alone don't cut it.

Wendy - a Knight who's had some opportunities to level up. Her promotion to Great Knight could justify training her every now and then, but she's also pretty slow. I honestly don't know.

Sonia / Limstella - your two Thief Mages. Levelling them up into good combat units increases their speed, letting them steal weapons (yes) from the enemies you encounter. 5 unpromoted move, though...

Lute - Physically durable enemies and bosses are the bane of approaching this hack in a traditional LTC way of cav facerolling, so a proficient tome user would be nice to have, and Lute has +4/+6 mag over the thief mages. She has the Sage option before her to have a really solid cap (possibly a necessity because the endgame enemy stats are said to get absurd) or Mage Knight to not require an additional mounted unit for transportation. Sadly, none of her promotions can reach A staves because of the way weapon rank caps have been programmed in this hack.

Serra - replacing Moulder, she's an earlygame healer with instant C rank staves, and she gets 20 exp every time she heals somebody. Both Bishop and Valkyrie can reach S rank staves, and I presume Warp is A rank. However, I have absolutely no clue about Warp's availability and I haven't been able to find any info on that one online. Desert digging is the obvious guess since that's where you find it in vanilla FE8 and this game still copies the structure of the original, but the 'digging' thing has been greatly expanded since there are 'hidden items' distributed evenly across a ton of other maps. Not sure if this information is documented anywhere online, and I haven't been able to successfully locate a Japanese wiki of some sort yet. We have this however, which is what most of my knowledge of the game is based on right now since I haven't got terribly far into it yet.

If anyone who has played this could offer some tips so that I'm less disoriented, that'd be really appreciated, and I think general tips from LTCers would be welcome and find application too.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Espinosa

[Fateborn]

Lyn Route exists, they're actually intertwined together, you do eirika, then lyn, then eirika again, then lyn for finisher into desert chapter.

Edit: You can cheat and get free items from main menu.

Just enter and exit if the item isn't to your liking, and you can mass gain a particular item if it struck your fancy.

Ninian's promotion skill is doll summoning, basically phantom, but you can have maximum of five, and they can only use staff they come with.

Zephiel in the chapter with Cecilia recruit is entirely beatable.

Just have a Wyvern Knight beat him up, he can't heal.

You just gotta pray he doesn't crit.

(Be sure the wyvern knight is well leveled, with good stats distribution so she doesn't get OHKO or ORKO)

I have a LP you could look at for what's there.

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=51665

Hint: Zephiel vs Wyvern Knight is on page 6.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Fateborn

[Espinosa]

Ah, gotcha. Didn't know about your LP - though it's a little hard to process for finding particular pieces of information when you mostly screenshot level-ups and battle animations. Do you remember how you got Warp or know when to look up info on item locations in the hack?

It's cool that Zephiel can be defeated if you're lucky / have crazy high stats, but does it actually help complete the map earlier? It sounds tough to accomplish, and not terribly useful outside of novelty value.

I noticed you have one of the cavs reclassed as a Swordmaster - is that what a Knight Crown achieves? Is there only a limited number of classes you can change into, much like in Awakening, or endless? Cause I've been thinking that with the way stat caps work, reclassing is the way to have things like high-str SMs and speedy Generals.

I definitely don't plan to use the item cheat in this run though - you can have infinite stat boosters (including Swiftsole, which is 4 points of move), money and any equipment so easily this way. Defeats the purpose of an LTC run.

I wonder if this is even a suitable game for LTCing however. The first 5 maps sorta are, but from there it seems that it's made more with a turtlish sorta approach in mind. High enemy density and enemy proficiency leaving little room for a party to succeed in moving their full movement.

[Fateborn]

Ah, gotcha. Didn't know about your LP - though it's a little hard to process for finding particular pieces of information when you mostly screenshot level-ups and battle animations. Do you remember how you got Warp or know when to look up info on item locations in the hack?

It's cool that Zephiel can be defeated if you're lucky / have crazy high stats, but does it actually help complete the map earlier? It sounds tough to accomplish, and not terribly useful outside of novelty value.

I noticed you have one of the cavs reclassed as a Swordmaster - is that what a Knight Crown achieves? Is there only a limited number of classes you can change into, much like in Awakening, or endless? Cause I've been thinking that with the way stat caps work, reclassing is the way to have things like high-str SMs and speedy Generals.

I definitely don't plan to use the item cheat in this run though - you can have infinite stat boosters (including Swiftsole, which is 4 points of move), money and any equipment so easily this way. Defeats the purpose of an LTC run.

I wonder if this is even a suitable game for LTCing however. The first 5 maps sorta are, but from there it seems that it's made more with a turtlish sorta approach in mind. High enemy density and enemy proficiency leaving little room for a party to succeed in moving their full movement.

Zephiel appears when you cross a certain point, it's unavoidable when you go for seizing, so if you wanna seize, you gotta either kill zephiel or rush to boss and kill him quicker before he can faceroll your unlucky left behinders.

Knight Crown is Second Seal yes.

Ankh is something alike to that, but rather they reclass your non-special units to magic or physical depending on what they were, (level 20 cavalier or level 20 mage.)

Ankh for other just make them lv 1 with kept stats + promotion bonus.

I know it's hard to progress, but you can look at maps and key points where I had death, and make rough guess of good spot to avoid.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Fateborn

[dondon151]

I wonder if this is even a suitable game for LTCing however. The first 5 maps sorta are, but from there it seems that it's made more with a turtlish sorta approach in mind. High enemy density and enemy proficiency leaving little room for a party to succeed in moving their full movement.

probably not. there's a 99% chance that you have to RNG abuse level ups for LTC.

i also get the impression that there's huge stat inflation in this hack, which demands even more RNG abuse on level ups.

Edited May 21, 2015 by dondon151

[Espinosa]

Zephiel appears when you cross a certain point, it's unavoidable when you go for seizing, so if you wanna seize, you gotta either kill zephiel or rush to boss and kill him quicker before he can faceroll your unlucky left behinders.

Knight Crown is Second Seal yes.

Ankh is something alike to that, but rather they reclass your non-special units to magic or physical depending on what they were, (level 20 cavalier or level 20 mage.)

Ankh for other just make them lv 1 with kept stats + promotion bonus.

I know it's hard to progress, but you can look at maps and key points where I had death, and make rough guess of good spot to avoid.

Zephiel has shit move though, doesn't s/he? I'm sure I can avoid him; if not, I'll just summon dolls to block his way and/or distract him. Hardly a worry, and nobody is forcing me to have the inflated stats / procs needed to KO him.

So what is the range of demotions that the Knight Crown permits? You demoted a Paladin to a Myrmidon (I think), so what is the whole spectre of options available before you? Is it completely unlimited.

probably not. there's a 99% chance that you have to RNG abuse level ups for LTC.

i also get the impression that there's huge stat inflation in this hack, which demands even more RNG abuse on level ups.

I don't think so - 0% growths runs comprise a good deal more than 1% of the LTC runs done by all FE players. ;)

The enemy stats do get inflated towards the endgame apparently, but the party should be pretty strong by then, hopefully. Accelerated EXP gain should offer assistance in keeping the party strong with fast and productive levels.

Anyway, today I set down to play chapter 5 with a fresh brain, and managed to 4-turn the thing, recruiting Echidna and Fae, but not getting any of the villages. Torch (believe it's an item) and Armourslayer can go to hell tbqh, but the Secret Book could sell for nice money. Saying that the reliability of the last two turns was shaky would be a serious understatement, but it all worked out in the end and I got some fabulous level-ups out of it. Guinevere and Lute got their first level-ups in this map.

I guess I'll be updating the OP with my turn counts as I progress.

[Fateborn]

Knight Crown doesn't demote, it just switch you to another promoted within said's class tree.

It vary with each class, so you can cover every promoted class.

[Espinosa]

Wow, the chapter 5x turn count nearly doubled my total TC at this point. Don't think there's any way to shave off any turns though, even if Orson has to slow down for two turns because there's nobody to clear the enemy chokepoints. The only way I can think of is rigging a Mani Katti crit for Lyn (it has just 5 crit here, and weighs her down to the point when she stops doubling, too) and then rigging really accurate Javelin attacks from moribund Fiora and Priscilla from behind the wall (if they're not about to die, the enemies will attack Orson instead and form another chokepoint).

Also, it turns out the Great Knight class has 7 movement (now I'm even more certain Awakening has been stealing ideas from FE Girls lol), not to mention the Boon skill to recover status. Maybe it's not such a bad idea to promote Wendy at all... Cecilia joins as a lv. 10 Knight with already nice bases however, requiring no stealing exp from other fine units... I have a feeling the first Knight Crest will be used on Priscilla (already 10/0 right now) and Fiora (some really nice bases for her level), regardless, but still, promoting an armoured knight isn't such a bad idea.

[Celice]

I haven't played this except like for two chapters years and years ago when I shared it with the FE community--but I did want to mention that if you liked the FE Girls hack, you should check out the Green patch for FE8 also. I think it was by the same team. It has a lot of similarities--new custom stuff and maps, all characters are based on green-haired ones from the series, and is basically complete too. I think there's a buggy Eirika thing but I posted how to deal with her if it happens.

[Espinosa]

Anyone interested in me uploading videos of this runthrough? I've recorded everything I've cleared so far.

So far I'm up to chapter 7, and Guinevere promoted after the previous chapter, which was a key decision, as I'm going for full recruitment on this playthrough and Anna is pretty much impossible to recruit efficiently without a second flier. She's slower but bulkier than Clarine and, of course, being 10/1/0 gives her a lot of room to grow. dondon wasn't kidding about the stat inflation though - you can really feel it whenever you progress to the next chapter. Good thing the exp gain is really fast, too.

I haven't played this except like for two chapters years and years ago when I shared it with the FE community--but I did want to mention that if you liked the FE Girls hack, you should check out the Green patch for FE8 also. I think it was by the same team. It has a lot of similarities--new custom stuff and maps, all characters are based on green-haired ones from the series, and is basically complete too. I think there's a buggy Eirika thing but I posted how to deal with her if it happens.

Thanks for that! I did also come across this hack several years back, but didn't get too far into it until I couldn't continue my in-progress LTC runs anymore and felt like playing something new.

Do you know if it would be too hard to translate the menus of the Green patch? A simple translation of the basic things would really facilitate playing the hack.

[Celice]

I wouldn't know anything about it, but it would probably be something any one who messes with the GBA FE's text could figure out with a little time and effort. I'm sure several people at Serenes could easily do a basic menu hack if they were willing to help the community.

Personally, I don't have a problem navigating Japanese hacks as I'm already super familiar with the English releases, and the menus work exactly the same. I understand that a lot of people can be put off by moonrunes though.

Here's a download for the Green patch, for anyone interested.

http://ux.getuploader.com/FE4/download/96/%E7%B7%91%E3%83%91%E3%83%83%E3%83%81.zip

(I'd also be interested in some videos from this runthrough, but I'm not into LTC at all so would just be a curiosity piece)

Edited May 25, 2015 by Celice

[Espinosa]

Menus do look the same way, and a lot of the weapons are easily recognisable by their icons if you've been playing different games in the series a lot (not just Sacred Stones since both FE Girls and Green/Midori try to borrow a lot from other FE titles). It's so much easier, though, when you don't need to process any pictures or numbers to determine what a certain weapon is when you can just read it.

For FE Girls, wasn't it the original creator that also carried out the translation of the menus? So if there's no effort on that end then I assume that's the end of that.

[Espinosa]

A discovery about stat boosters in this hack: they can increase a unit's cap in its respective stat, but only as long as the cap has already been reached. So it's only preserving the boosters until later that you can go beyond the capped limit, but some boosters like Dracoshields or Angelic Robes could be used very early for an immediate gain and a higher chance in survival. That's just some of the information experimenting in the extras menu (that Fateborn brought up) can grant one.

And chapter 7 is proving to be way more difficult than I'd imagined. A 2-turn looked possible based on the mere counting of the squares, but with Anna's recruitment (playable Anna is yet another reason Awakening's creators may have had a good look at this hack), it can only be a 3-turn - Priscilla is literally one square of movement to drop Ninian to where she can dance Guinevere to just barely reach the village on turn 2, while both Clarine and Eirika are expected to magically survive the assault of an absurd amount of enemies with their poor bulk and facing rather high hit rates, and make sure the boss/throne are reachable to kill/seize on turn 2.

Since it could only possibly be a 3-turn, I envisaged making as much out of the map as I could. For example, drop the thief mage, Limstella, next to the boss so that she can steal a mage's Energy Ring (+3 str/mag seems like a really big deal, whether used early or late), but someone would also have to reduce the mage to below 25% HP for the steal to be possible... and Limstella would also have to gain a level of experience on the turn just beforehand, with a spd level-up, just to be fast enough to carry out the steal attempt. What really happens when you do this though, is that Limstella is nowhere near durable enough to face so much combat, even if dropped on a mountain for a big evasion/durability boost.

Even after dropping those unrealistic secondary objective, I'm still having a lot of difficulty in ensuring all the necessary characters are where they should be by turn 3, alive and ready to recruit Anna/kill the boss/seize (so far 'alive' is already hard enough).

I suppose my early doubt about whether this is an appropriate game to try LTCing had some ground in reality. Even all those +str level-ups on Clarine don't turn her into anything close to a ORKO machine, let alone a (dodge-)tank (dodging is way harder with a 1 RN system... and I suppose occasionally a little easier).

[Espinosa]

Uploaded a video of the game's first five maps (prologue to chapter 4) so that people can see what I've been rambling about in this topic all this time. Also had to be done because this thread's been moved to the LP/streams section and it contained nothing that would fit it under either umbrella. Not anymore though!

[Espinosa]

So if anyone is wondering what's up with this run. I 3-turned chapter 7 with a lot of difficulty, and the strat included recruiting Anna (she's obviously not based on the Awakening one AT ALL, so she's pretty awful), but not obtaining the Energy Ring at all, as you would guess - the enemies are way too strong to pull off these secondary objectives very well.

Chapter 8, on the other hand, really pissed me off with its "little surprise". Take a look at a portion of the map after you select 'Battle':

You can no longer get inside the throne room by using a door key and clear in 4-5 turns like you would in vanilla. You have to circle around the whole map, breaking the door on the way... but that's not it...

There's another coffin on the other side as well, so you have to go around YET AGAIN and BREAK ANOTHER WALL. I'm most definitely promoting Priscilla before this map for +1 movement as a Paladin, innate Saviour skill to carry Eirika I suppose, and Bronze Bow access is not as useless as you'd think.

So regardless of how you play, the turn count on this chapter is sure to be huge just like the two maps before C7. I'm sure having a rescuedroppable dancer can ease some pain, but it's actually going to be a PITA having Priscilla, Clarine and Guinevere succeed in carrying both Ninian AND Eirika, beat the moderately tough enemies on the way (some of the mercs/myrms have 17ish speed and tend to double YOU) and beat Tirado. I initially figured I'd need Lute to beat/help beat Tirado, but Lute's nowhere near usable yet, so Priscilla will have to do the bosskilling on her own and likely take several turns to achieve it. Her stats are really mediocre for a promoted unit even by vanilla standards - at least she gains experience at what seems to be comparable rates if contrasted to unpromoted exp gain (one of the good things about this hack).

Playing this on and off; I'll be sure to put up some more vids some time later.

[momogeek2141]

A little late for this, but wouldn't you want to focus on training Guin over Wendy? Because GK gets a specialty in axes, whereas Wendy uses lances. Plus, extra flyers never hurt.

[Espinosa]

Yeah, a second flier was essential to clearing chapter 7 efficiently, so the previous defence map compensated for the shortage of level-ups Guinevere had received earlier. There's really no time to be training Wendy even though I wouldn't mind a Great Knight right now. Flying Guin is obligatory to preserve turn counts, however.

I'm worried about Limstella/Sonia. The enemies are growing in power extremely fast, and they can no longer really steal from any of them (even from Soldiers... who are actually not that slow at all in this hack).

[Espinosa]

Uploaded another one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85GNH9FQmc

Chapters 5 and 5x in this vid. Some rather unreliable but difficult to produce strats here.

[Upside-DownFish]

Egads, that 5x turncount is something else. Spiraling castle designs where never really my favorite.

Glad this is still being worked on!

[Espinosa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGUC6EVVuv4

C6 defence map cleared in 12 turns, the lowest you can get. Not sure if you can clear in less turns, but Zephiel's stats are monstrous at this point, so you'd require to cheat a crapload of stat boosters and promotion/reclass items into your run to be able to even check.

Guinevere gets to lv. 10 at the end of the map, which is needed for a low-turn clear of the following map (as a "Peg Recruit", her branching promotions include two flier paths).

[momogeek2141]

Why does the last turn say "astTurnChang"?

[Espinosa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6pHw7-78Us

Finally got around to uploading chapter 7, which is all the progress I've made so far. Been procrastinating on doing the next map, which is, yet again, LONG unlike any maps known from the original FE8.