Part 38: Chapter 27 (part 2)

Playing Through:




As you can see, the snow falling hampers movement significantly.




So as planned, Fiora and Ninian cooperate to get Erk where he needs to go.




Distant Travels is still playing. It’s still awesome.




Legault moves up to Heath, so Heath can pick him up.




Like all non-nomad cavalrymen, Eliwood’s movement is particularly hampered.




Rath is relatively well off. There’s not a ton to do this turn but just move everyone else in.




Erk’s final unpromoted level is another very good one.




So next turn, Fiora moves back to clear a space for Bartre to finish the wyvern lord from and to make her key available for someone else to use.




I’m still adjusting my plans for who’ll use the key, but Eliwood seems like a good candidate.




Bartre kills the wyvern lord and gets another amazing level.




And Erk moves out of the way and promotes, getting some much needed Def.
Remember how good my Canas is? Other than Def, Erk is now pretty comparable to him.




And there’s the real reason for promotion.




Yeah there was a 2% chance or so of him dying here, but that’s worth it.




You know how whenever it’s going to stop or start snowing the world flashes completely white? Well apparently it does.




So at the beginning of turn 3 this nomadic trooper is suddenly a much bigger threat.




Canas heals Erk up.




While I consider the best way to feed that nomadic trooper to someone low level, Legault prepares to fight the brigands and Heath takes out the nearby shaman- also blocking the other one from getting next to Legault.




The best I could come up with was to have Erk and Fiora weaken this guy for Bartre to take this shot. Nomadic Troopers are darned hard to deal with because of their solid defenses and massive speed.




Ultimately, it looks like it will be best to not use the door key on this one. That way Eliwood and Rath are both available to charge in and deal with the enemies within.




OH GOD HE HAS BOLTING! Yeah, if you don’t know this is coming it’s quite possibly a restart inducer. Fortuntely, I did know, so I had Eliwood and Rath kill him immediately.




The most efficient way to weaken the enemy for someone else to kill them is to do it on the enemy turn. That falcoknight should go before the pegasus knight, so if I put Canas in the right spot, the falcoknight should attack him (and barely survive due to its poor Res) and he shouldn’t get any kills.




Swordreaver vs Mountain!




A door key drops. There are like 5 door keys on this chapter. Just in time since none have been offered from stores in forever.




Well things didn’t go quite as planned since for some reason the pegasus knight actually went before the falcoknight. Still, the rest went well. And Canas gets the first S rank with a weapon of any of my characters I believe.

Each character can only get 1 S rank, and they can’t get that until they’re promoted. Unlike previous weapon ranks from E to A, this one actually has an effect other than letting the unit use more advanced weapons of that type. An S Rank also gives a bonus of +5 to hit and +5 to crit. Small, but occasionally useful (particularly the crit bonus).




For some reason, the magic users in the unlocked room didn’t try to focus fire anyone. Only this shaman went for Rath, who netted a fairly bad but not terrible level.




Another went for Bartre, who got a level that would be bad on most people but great for Bartre.




Some nomads are now making their way here.




Legault gets a pretty great level as he continues to fight those brigands.




There isn’t much for Erk to do yet since Legault is busy so the top left door is staying closed, so he just heals Bartre.




Lucius finishes off the falcoknight that Canas weakened for a solid level.




Fiora is extremely vulnerable to that nomadic trooper, so this is as close as she can move in safely. With this formation, the nomadic trooper and nomad will go for Bartre (with his handaxe) and thus be injured badly but not killed as they would be if they went for Canas.




My next turn. Agh, more nomads! I need to cut them off at that chokepoint right now and Canas is the man for the job.




Worth the cost.




Everyone keeps moving in while Canas moves to block the nomads and Bartre can go for the other path.




Turns out that that paladin and those cavaliers apparently don’t move. That’s good, because I expected the nomadic trooper to stay in its position so I hadn’t planned on Canas fighting them. He’d survive because he’s Canas and Canas is tough as nails, but it would cost me XP.




Erk and Heath and Legault move in. It’s going to be a rough fight when that door opens, so I need everyone at full strength.




Rath kills the nomadic trooper and gets a pretty nice level. Finally some Res.




And Canas heals Bartre up to full for an amazing level now that I don’t need him blocking anymore.




Matthew goes for the door since there’s not much else to do.




Treasure time!




Awesome! More skill at last! Ninian now has above average skill, hooray!
Anyway, with only one healer in this area I need her dancing for Canas a fair amount.




Fiora moves in to aggro and weaken the enemy and also ensure I don’t get blocked in as those falcoknights advance.




The enemy attacks and she gets a level up including all the stats I don’t care about.




And the snow is back.




And with the snow come some wyverns out of the top left. That Wyvern Lord is not to be messed with. But for now I have some time to get inside and do the fighting I need to in there.




OH GOD THEY HAVE LUNA! Yeah, that’s a serious problem. There’s just no good way to deal with Luna. You can’t dodge it, you can’t instant kill those druids, and nothing and no one can tank it. You just have to kill them as fast as possible and hope they don’t crit. If they crit, you restart.




Like I did on my previous attempt at this chapter. You’d need to break the HP cap to survive that attack.




Well while I think about what approach to make there, Hector uses one of my many chest keys to start looting.

You can see that a monk from the first opened room has been following me since it didn’t get killed immediately and I had no one with the time to spare to go back for it. Now no one has the movement to get back to it in the snow. I’m hoping I can have Merlinus finally lure it to the front when I have more time.




More falcoknights have spawned, but the snow makes them much less threat than they could be.




Bartre helps Fiora fight the swarm of mages and falcoknights and gets another sweet level.




This time, I did things differently (last time Heath and Legault were alone and I had him rescue Legault out and then go back on his own), and the druid happened to not crit Heath. I will gladly take a mediocre level to not have to restart again.
There’s still a risk of course because it was impossible to kill both druids this turn since I had to kill a shaman first.




As you can see, I’ve begun spreading my troops out. Canas will go hurry to the south area next turn, probably with help from Ninian, as will Matthew. Bartre will do most of the fighting though.




Legault was unlucky and got hit by the surviving shaman, but lucked out and didn’t get hit by the druid. And he even got a nice level.




Crazy. And awesome. Soon he’ll actually be fast enough to be usable!




Next turn, Hector gets the Bolting.




The third Druid has Nosferatu, which makes it very dangerous to Legault, but it wasn’t much of a problem for Heath. The trickiest part of the chapter is now over. There’s just no good way to deal with that. No matter what you do, you have to face a 10% or so chance of death two times at least and unless you can commit more than 3 very good units + Legault for that one fight when they’re really needed elsewhere, it’s going to be more than two.




Again, worth the price. Sometimes you just need to deal a lot of damage or get a crit more than you need 70 gold per shot of a good weapon.




Pretty solid. More speed doesn’t hurt.




Serious wyvern reinforcements are moving in and can’t be ignored anymore.




And more nomads have popped up too, plus there’s still those cavaliers and myrmidons to deal with. The cavaliers/paladin were completely inconsistent in whether they moved or not. Some turns none of them would move, other times some of them did for some reason.




And wow, that’s a lot of falcoknights. But if I can defeat the waves I just showed you, the map is pretty close to over.




Although it’s snowing outside, you can move full speed indoors. Legault will actually not go that far s that Erk can heal him though.




Now the problem is that Erk got hit badly by one druid, so he’s at terrible HP and I can’t do anything about that other than spend several terms and several hundred gold using vulneraries. I’ll probably have Heath do all the fighting instead.




On that forest, Rath can actually stand up to these enemies pretty well. And Lucius moves in as far as he safely can.




Canas was busy, so Fiora had to drink a vulnerary to survive the next turn.




Ok, finally a not-good level on Bartre as the falcoknights attack him.




I’ll never turn down Def and avoid on a pegasus knight, so this is pretty nice.




And Harken pops up, apparently now using the royal we to refer to himself.




Might as well get the free XP from this heal before the fighting starts.




The snow turns off and more reinforcements spawn. This is the last wave of nomads and with the snow off and my troops in the open, it’ll be a little tricky to deal with them.




Eliwood recruits Harken.




Rath finishes off an injured nomadic trooper for a great level up.




Ninian uses Ninis’s Grace on the fragile Lucius so that he can get in there and fight.




I didn’t really plan on leveling Matthew any, but you’ve got to take the chances you get to feed kills to your weakest units.




Pretty good.




I happen to know what’s in that room and that Fiora can tank it well, so I’ll just open it with her this turn.




That Hero is pretty dangerous actually, but a Falcoknight is a good counter to heroes who don’t have axes.




Protected by Ninis’s Grace, Lucius gets some kills but nothing good when he levels. Oh well.




It’s only turn 11 out of my massive time limit! Of course, there’s still a decent number of turns left since the snow makes everything slow, but I’m making very good progress. If I really wanted to, I could probably have finished this by turn 12 or something. But the promoted Reins are worth a lot of XP.




So the top left group is in a little bit of trouble but can probably handle it.




The bottom right group isn’t really in trouble, but it’s going to be tricky to keep feeding the kills mainly to Bartre while also moving fast- I have a whole other building to get through.




On the top right all is well, nothing but mop up left to do. You can see of course that that one cavalier did decide to move last turn after ignoring all enemies up till now.




So the top left’s real problem is that Erk was hit before and there’s no way to heal him. That means I have to have Heath do all the fighting, but Heath isn’t very effective against these wyvern riders. The wyvern lords are really though so even though he’s extremely strong, it will take him 5 or so hits to kill them and at least 3 or 4 for the wyvern riders. That means he needs to survive a LOT of fairly inaccurate but powerful steel lance hits.




Erk could kill that one wyvern lord safely though and does, getting more useful Mag.




I decide to skip the treasure for now and position Legault with his wyrmslayer (not the lancereaver since I want to encourage them to attack him over here. If he can lower the pressure on Heath just a little bit it will help boost Heath’s odds of victory from like 75% closer to 100%.




Another pretty bad level for Bartre, but I can’t complain after his middle levels were so amazing.




Darn, a critical ruined my chance to feed this guy to a low level character.




Meanwhile on the bottom front, I want Matthew to kill this monk but he’ll take 2 turns to do it and he’s at low HP, so I’d rather not leave the forest. Merlinus should hopefully lure the monk into attacking from next to Matthew and his forest.




Heath gets a sweet level up as he fights the wyverns. The more Def the better, you can see that their onslaught has really worn him down.




Darn, the monk didn’t go for Merlinus. Instead I’ll move Merlinus in here so that Matthew can step up, take a steel sword out, and kill the monk in one round with that instead.




It worked, though the resulting level was nothing special.




Fiora and Canas move in to deal with the remaining building. Bartre will follow them and let the remaining mage suicide to him on his way.




No wyverns decided to go for Legault, so he goes back for the Talisman instead. Now he might as well help out the top right group and get as much XP as he can.




Erk moves out of wyvern range again, but stays close enough that he could easily heal Heath if Heath had to pull back.




With Harken recruited and the snow off, I can have Eliwood (with Ninian’s help) move down here.




Next turn, the first wave of cavaliers and paladins spawns.




They’re armed with reaver weapons. Pretty dangerous, but counterable.




And Matthew opens the door to reveal a gang of monks and a bishop. No real threat to most characters.




Looks dangerous right? But I can just pull Canas back to that forest to heal him.




Like so. Which puts him EXACTLY where I need him for a rescue chain! Which is why I put Eliwood down there in the first place.




Fiora moves in to block this bishop and weaken him for Bartre to finish on the enemy turn.




And another rescue chain begins.




Hector drops Canas off and Ninian dances for him.




Rath is badly injured, but finishes off a paladin Harken weakened with Eliwood’s iron sword and finally gets some Def.




So Canas heals him. Many people on the top front were in bad health since they’d had no healer around.




The wyverns dealt with at last, I can have Erk move in and heal Heath before the next wave arrives.




Lucius gets a handy crit, but I probably would have been fine regardless.




Lucius has not been leveling too well this chapter.




And snow starts as another wave arrives, but now that everyone is up there and ready things will be much easier.




And with the snow comes a third wave of wyverns.




I had a 1-use handaxe with Merlinus for just this occasion. See Bartre is at like 11 HP (and those monks deal 10) and only 4 or 5 XP from level 20. With a 1 use handaxe, a monk will damage but not kill him and then he’ll damage but not kill it and hit level 20.




Healed up, Heath prepares to fight.




Yes, Bartre is now safe because of his almost broken weapon.




Harken is great for not quite killing these paladins for other people to finish.




Rath’s iron bow has broken, so I’ll need to fight these last few enemies a bit more expensively. Oh well, it lets him kill them without help at least.




You know, Bartre has had terrible stat gains overall this chapter, but he’s at least gained a bunch of speed. And his levels last chapter were amazing.




It’s still only turn 15.




And the next group of wyverns has already arrived.




I need to start fighting Jerme and his men so that I can kill him when I need to, so Eliwood opens the door with his javelin ready.




So due to that druid crit before, I didn’t actually open this door on my scouting run. I knew to expect myrmidons, but I didn’t know each of those guys had a lancereaver. Oh well, shouldn’t be a problem.




And Heath has capped his speed. Wow that’s early. This is a ludicrously fast Heath even for HHM. He’s actually behind on Str, but still fine.




Matthew killed a monk, but now he goes for the chest.




Another decent level on Rath, but nothing special.




Turn 16, I’m trying to move in on the boss room. I could end this pretty much any time, but there’s still some reinforcements to harvest so I’m going to wait until turn 19.




With the snow up, this is a fine spot for Erk to heal from for now.




Eliwood gets a pretty bad level, but Def is very nice. This guy is so… balanced.




Last chest unlocked.




And the snow stopped so Erk gets the heck out of there.




Canas heals Eliwood up and then Ninian dances him out so I can hack my way further in with someone else.




Like Legault, who needed his lancereaver to get the kill and this worthless level. Because Jerme will moronically attack at long range instead of up close where his damage is actually dangerous, Legault will be fine in here.




More Def is pretty awesome. More important than more Str at this point. You can see that that wyvern lord is crazy though that.




Fiora is done on the bottom, so she comes flying up.




Thieves really gain XP fast. It’s really easy to kill these cavaliers and paladins as fast as they spawn.




And it’s turn 19, time to win this.




One last wave of mounted units.




Legault finishes one cavalier for a sucky level.




And Rath finishes the paladin and gets another meh level, perhaps his final one.




Canas has been doing a LOT of healing since he promoted. This isn’t even his first staff.




It’s some kind of tradition that all his healing level ups are amazing.




Everything else is dead, so Eliwood just kills Jerme.




Eliwood is now behind on Str and Speed since he suddenly stopped gaining them, but everything else is doing great.

And that’s a win!




And that’s a Fire Emblem!




No wait, we could totally go to the Shrine of Seals and grab the Sword of Seals with that gem instead!




And we’re pretty much too late. While we were stuck, the teleporting people reached the outskirts of the Manse. Or maybe they just walked actually. From the fact that Eliwood and everyone get there just a little bit later, apparently the imperial Manse is just a few hours away from the Black Fang stronghold actually. I never noticed that and thought about how weird it was before.

Also, it’s an all new mountain background! They could have just used their old mountain background, but that’s not how this game does things.

Anyway, we see here that Nino is really nervous about her chances of surviving her dangerous first mission and also that her mother Sonia has always treated her really coldly.







She’s never done any of this before, see.




Well with being hugged for the first time ever on the line she’s got to succeed.




Whoah, that changes everything. It’s at this moment that you realize Sonia is 1) really, really awful and 2) really clever. See, now suddenly we see both why she agreed to hug Nino when she succeeds- she’s going to make sure Nino doesn’t come back alive to begin with. And we also begin to realize why she ignored Brendan and Jaffar to send her on this mission she’s unqualified for to begin with.




And there’s the reason. They want someone dead on the scene who can immediately be blamed for Zephiel’s death but who’s totally expendable and who can’t reveal the truth. Who better than a Black Fang member Sonia hates who actually WAS part of the assassination team.




We would NOT have seen any of this kind of talk from Jaffar 6 or 7 chapters ago. The game does a pretty good job of developing him over time in my opinion.




Sonia is really a great villain because, besides being actually competent, she’s evil in a petty and vicious and visceral sort of way, rather than just the impersonal sort of threat that Nergal usually is.




Almost everyone line Sonia gets is pretty great. She’s one of my favorite villains in just about anything.




She seems to have taught the hints that Jaffar is not happy with killing Nino and warns him that he’ll be killed if he doesn’t go through with this.




And back at the fortress (I kind of feel like this conversation should have come first) is a Hector only bit where he asks Oswin if Uther has had anything to say. Just how Uther’s messengers would find them when they’re undercover in a foreign country that they were pretty much teleported into I’m unsure, but Ostia’s spies ARE pretty great.




You may recall several people remarked about that.




Kind of like Eliwood and Marcus, it’s clear Oswin handles a lot of Hector’s business and basic upkeep of the army- like taking messages for him.




Lord Uther being twerpish as usual. And with that, the chapter ends.


Total Restarts: 17 (2 more here. Accursed Luna druids!)
Turn Surplus: 19 (I could have saved another 6 or so turns, but my surplus was doing fine and I needed the reinforcement XP)
Things I Regret Missing: The lockpick on chapter 11, that darned archer on chapter 11, this one brigand who attacked Marcus on chapter 12, 2 more brigands who ignored everyone else to attack Marcus on chapter 13x, and 2 archers who ignored Hector and Dorcas (DORCAS!) to attack Marcus on chapter 14, like 10 more enemies I could have killed if Hector could have survived one more turn on chapter18, and Uhai who decided to take a 100% chance of death to Sain over a free hit on Hector, the chance to finish shopping properly with my silver card on chapter 21, the armorslayer that I have acquired if not for a stupid minor mistake on chapter 22, and these 3 wyvern riders who decided they preferred a 0% chance to hit Isadaora and then 100% chance of death against her to fighting a low level Heath, those 2 pegasus knights at the end of Crazed Beast that I just didn’t have enough time to feed to Bartre.