Part 52: Chapter 32 (part 2)
Back to Playing Through:I also changed my movement pattern for the 2 flyers last time, putting Fiora 1 space less far out actually. This made it possible to have a better drop pattern on this turn. Now I can actually surround the swordmaster completely.
Hector kills the hero with a steel blade for maximum sword rank gain.
Pretty meh, but he has been behind on defense- or he was last I checked.
The swordmaster is now completely surrounded, Pent is in position to lure a wyvern lord next turn, Fiora has an iron sword so that the nearby bandit cant kill her with a crit from the swordmaster, and Eliwood gets started on killing the guy.
Every bit of XP counts. For glory if not for ranking. Alright, thats the turn.
A taste of your own medicine! Fiora crits him on the counterattack.
Nino gets a lucky crit and I decided to have her use Fire instead of Elfire this time. Elfire didnt kill enough people faster and did decrease her dodge chance by 12% or so. Shell 3-hit kill most things without it anyway.
Remember those 2 groups of wyverns? They dont behave as expected, charging straight in one direction to engage your forces immediately. No, instead they do something cool. Something tactical. The two groups fly towards each other and meet up. THEN they all fly directly toward you. So you dont fight 5 wyverns in two places you planned for them, you fight 10 wyverns in one place where you didnt.
And the best part is its not even a cheap shot or anything. You have 1-2 whole turns to see the groups merging to come up with a countermeasure. This is way cool. Its like the enemy has a strategy for once.
Fire Emblem should have more of this kind of surprise and more of this kind of play by the enemy.
As I mentioned though, pent was in position so that that last wyvern lord could hit him, so it breaks formation to do so. Which helps a ton since now I only have to wall off one wyvern lord in the middle of that crowd in a turn or two.
Nino gets a fantastic level.
Ooh and then S rank with anima. More crits.
Heath crits down a hero.
Awesome!
As expected.
Florina now has an iron sword for maximum dodge and isnt carrying anyone.
My turn. A little puzzle turn on the left side, but pretty easy. This time I track that bishop. The thing is, I might or might not be able to spare a unit to kill him in the middle area. So Im thinking I should reverse my usual policy and handle the more complicated (middle) front first and see how that affects the left this time.
But the left front is almost all clear already and I actually have a lot of movement room to avoid the berserk range regardless.
So I just went with the obvious safe move. Sain kills the hero, Erk does some XP healing, and Heath moves in to agro the next enemy.
Time to start clearing the bottom. If I could get Florina in here it would be awesome, but shes terrible. Those 2 mages? Could kill her. Bolting + 1 hit from anything else? Death. 2 hits from anything at all actually? Death. And she cant even kill most things.
Im going to take a minor but important risk here. She can be hit by Bolting and one paladin. If both hit she dies. But the bolting has <30% chance to hit and the paladin has < 40% before even looking at true hit. And this will let me kill that paladin a turn early, which is critical for letting me move Nino off that forest.
Alright, the middle has some problems. This is one of the trickiest turns of the level actually.
And long range alert, that sage and those ballisticians can actually hit me here if I advance too recklessly- by targeting the Berserk bishop say.
Except from this one spot.
Not bad, not bad. Shes very strong, though not to the extent that shes slow. But her defenses are good so I cant complain.
Canas restores Vaida. The exact order and position is very important here. I also need to heal Pent you see and then to get Priscilla, the healer, back out. This is pretty much the goal way to accomplish all my goals.
Vaida is the only person with nothing critical to do, so she just runs over to attack one of the many wyverns. A lot of them have killer weapons, very dangerous.
Now that Vaidas spot is open, Priscilla uses it to heal Pent.
Bartre rescues her out.
Eliwood drops her immediately.
And then continues his move to occupy one of those forts with a javelin.
Pent occupies the other fort, attacking for a decent level.
And now that Eliwood is out of the way, Hector can kill the wyvern lord.
Which allows Nils to wall off the wyvern riders from reaching Priscilla, while staying totally safe in a forest himself.
While Bartre advances and extends the wall, making it harder for wyverns to swarm Pent (because the monks block his front squares.
That operation went like clockwork. The berserk bishop is dead, the monks and wyverns are all blocked from any important targets, and I even got some healing done.
As expected, many wyvern riders go for Bartre. This is good because hes not a soft target. There just arent any better ones.
Only a very few go for Nils. This is because not many can reach with the semi-wall and because his defenses are better than Bartres by far anyway.
The guys with the axereavers dont go for Bartre though, they go for Canas. This man dies a morons death.
And, for some reason, the wyvern lord squares off one on one against Vaida. Who has never been trained. And has an iron lance. And is still much better than him. Shes a great unit. One of the best pre-promotes, she can even rival Heath.
Fiora is scratched by the purge bishop up top. This is as Id hoped, now she can fly up and kill him.
Florina got hit by the paladin but dodges the bolting.
Turn 4, the enemy ranks have been thinned a lot.
More XP heals because I can.
So, the top area problem. Heath cant quite kill this sniper and would actually take heavy damage from that silver bow. Then theres the purge guy standing by. If Fiora killed him, the sniper would kill her.
And this guy makes that aggressive plan an outright no go. Its nice that the range checker includes the ability for archers to grab ballistae.
So instead Heath visits this village.
Renault gives us a few lies and joins up.
This is an accurate assessment. This is also, sadly, the last time the awesome Together We Ride recruitment theme will play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERQqvP0598
Probably the most famous song in FE and with good reason. I hum this a lot.
This spot right here is the place to be. Just outside of ballista range.
At this point I realized that while I do have a spare heal staff, I forgot to have anyone bring a Lightning for Renault. Its not THAT important since I dont really want him fighting anyway, but it is a silly mistake.
Oh well, he takes the heal staff and heals Erk while I consider a way to solve the problem.
On the bottom front I decide to take another risk and have Florina kill this sage. The odds of both remaining mages hitting her are low. Looking at it now I suddenly see that this was a bad move, though it turned out alright. What I should have done was have Raven move south of the ruin and handaxe this sage while Florina killed the injured mage. That would trap the cavalier, leaving only one unit free to hurt Florina, so no risk at all. Oh well.
And she got a bad level too!
So this is what I did instead. Decent, but not as clever as just leaving this guy to suicide on his turn where hes trapped. Youll note that I WAS smart enough to use his iron axe instead of a handaxe so as to encourage the mages to go for him.
And Nino of course kills the paladin.
I will not turn down Def on a mage.
Turn 4 middle situation. Theres a lot of enemies, but a lot of my guys. Things are pretty under control as long as I dont break formation.
First, Eliwood dispatches the bishop. (Not Pent because I think Ill have him heal Fiora after she javelins the wyvern rider from next to him)
Pretty nice! Hes stopped being above average in everything, but remains amazing in Def and Res which rounds him out from a mere great cavalier to an amazing tank.
The monks can rot, its the wyverns who need to die so my back line stays safe and I can advance next turn.
She took some hard hits but Pent gets her ready to go again. And I move Merlinus up. I have a plan.
That leaves me 5 targets, 4 attackers, and Nils. Sounds promising.
Hector kills one easily. Canas is the only one who can fell this wyvern lord, so he does that.
And with Nils, Hector takes one of the remaining tough ones down.
For a sweet level!
5 attackers, 5 targets. But 2 of those attackers were Vaida and Bartre. And it turns out neither of them can beat a half HP wyvern rider in one round. Darn it, guys!
They do kill the back one together, imperfectly walling the front one. And Bartre gets an awful level.
So because I couldnt down every wyvern no matter what, I was actually in trouble. Those 2 who had remained both had killer lances. Which meant there was a risk of Bartre dying. A higher risk, actually than if I let the guy attack Priscilla since she has better luck and avoid. So she runs in and heals.
Works out nicely.
Poor brigand never had a chance, I could easily have visited every village last turn if I wanted to.
Pent dominates at the fort, sweeping away most of the remaining monks.
The bishop moves forward to hit Sain. This is unexpected but great. Because this means hes 10 spaces away. Which means Sain can move forward and kill him while Heath does something else.
I hadnt noticed that sniper advancing, but hes no threat.
The sniper attacks and is critted. That means the top is clear. Over. Done with. In the bag.
Because as I said, Sain can kill this one.
And then everyone else can just advance and heal. The top group has no more real resistance between me and that sniper. Heath stays just out of range so hell walk forward and shoot Sain, which will let Sain kill him next turn.
Bottom front also done.
So no sense in wasting more time here. Nino heals Florina.
And I check what I believe to be the long range attacker line.
And Florina evacs Nino to drop off near the future wyvern spawn.
While Raven visits the village.
Sophia is an idiot. What is she even doing here? How did she get here? Why did she think the Archsage would be here? What?
Interestingly, many different characters have different dialogue with her. Most are pretty much the same but a few (like Serra whos worried about finding a ghost in the ruins before seeing her and then spends the rest of the conversation screaming and ignoring everything Sophia says) are unique.
Perhaps I just dont remember, but Im pretty sure she doesnt talk with all these shy ellipses and whatnot in 6.
You know, thats actually a decent gift to give before we fight Nergal and his elite morphs like Limstella. But how did Sophia get here? And why?
And the middle front is also basically done with for a while.
Another unimportant level for Priscilla from some healing.
And my plan goes into motion. Merlinus moves up so Fiora can access him in place.
Fiora takes out a Lightning.
And she flies to the remaining village to wait.
The others advance, using rescues to help people keep up.
Eliwood is juuuuust in range to lure 2 powerful enemies.
Canas doesnt say no to free XP either.
So everyone is safe at this point. Fiora can only be hit by 1 ballista, and no one else remotely vulnerable is in range of anything at all. Turn over.
Heres the druid about to attack Eliwood. Hell drop whichever tome he isnt currently using. Nosferatu is much better but worth much less, so I want to find a way to get him to switch to Nosferatu. Im hoping hell just do it on his own for the much better hit chance and speed.
The last two mages give Raven a good level.
Sweet!
I entered the final spawn zone and the spawned shamans split up for some reason.
Im surprised its not hit chance 0.
Gah! How did that happen? I checked the ballista range of the nearest ballista and the sage and she was safe! Good thing she had the Delphi shield.
Sain gets hit too, but that was part of the plan.
And the plan in question is ready to go.
First, Fiora visits the village. This is the final ring for Nils. It is quite literally worthless. 0 gold value and absolutely terrible, far worse under all circumstances than just doing a normal dance.
And Fiora flies up into just the right position for Renault to trade with her and use her lightning tome to kill that brigand.
Heath clears the last obstacle
And Hector kills the ballistician, just as planned. And the yellow ones are killer ballistae, as I thought.
The stats arent easily found, so I reverse engineered them from this guys stats now that hes using one. 12 Might, 65 Hit, 10 Crit, 8 range. Hits pretty hard and the crit chance is annoying but not that important. Short range.
LImstellas true range limit since she doesnt move is marked by the cursor.
The level Sain gets from the ballistician isnt bad.
On the other front, Raven gets in the ideal position for fighting the Valkyries. Here he can have terrain bonuses and they never can.
So it was this guy who hit Florina. Because that ballista, which was gray so I thought it was normal, is not normal. No, its an iron ballista.
13 Might, 60 Hit, 0 Crit, 15 range. 15! And it hits harder than a silver bow I believe. Thats a serious weapon.
This sage is pretty powerful too while Im checking long ranged weaponry.
So Im going to focus on these guys before figuring out what to do with Florina now that that ballistician changed my plans.
Even Vaida doesnt like those ballistae, so Im going to heal her.
Yes, this should work. It slows my plans a little, but it works.
Canas Physics Florina so she doesnt die and gets a nice level.
And then Nils lets Canas move to heal Nino.
There, everyone is good to go again.
Except Priscilla, whos badly injured. On this fort lots of ranged enemies will go for her but all have about a 10% chance before true hit. Ill take it since it will make things easier next turn to not have anyone else actually hurt.
So as turn 6 ends and the reinforcements are about to begin, Ive more or less completely swept 2 fronts and moved everyone in on the final corner. The enemy accomplishes nothing on their turn.
Valkyries!
Shamans!
This group is actually pretty dangerous now, every single shaman has nosferatu so they hit very hard.
I charge in anyway, I need to be aggressive now so things will be safer later. Heath gets a bad level.
A druid and two shamans bite the dust and the group is just short of ballista range. Still in double bolting range.
Just checking the stats here before canceling back to the forest.
Darn it! Eliwood and Hector (I checked with rescue dropping him just to see and then rewound) cant go into rivers anymore! Thats unfortunate, Id kind of counted on that.
You know what? That means Hectors post-promotion movement is actually worse than before promoting.
Well the small brigand crew are easily swept up.
I need those ballisticians and the sage dead. But storming that corner is really hard actually. Between 2 boltings, 3 ballistae, and a bunch of nosferatu shamans, its just too dangerous. Even double-teaming this guy with Eliwood is a risk. Fortunately I think most of the enemy fire will be distracted by Sain whose Res is just a bit lower.
I really want to keep the pressure on the enemy so their 8 reinforcements per turn dont build up. But I just cant take the risk leaving Vaida exposed.
Limstella opens fire.
I got lazy trusting on his huge speed. He was in more danger here than I should have allowed.
Since Hector rescued Vaida, the shamans all run down to try to attack him.
Yeah, Sain had a very high chance of death there and that was totally avoidable.
Raven gets off to an unlucky start.
And 8 more guys. Attacking this corner is just really difficult. Its well fortified and it has an endless stream of dangerous reinforcements. And I dont have time to waste running out the ballistae.
More Valkyries.
Reins up here start next turn, Erk moves closer to position.
Renault heals Sain. That my top front was so effective and fast was key to my strategy. As I said, I had to be aggressive and risky last turn, but now I can make things much safer.
Florina tries to weaken this important ballista but crits it instead. Handy.
Thats Limstellas true bolting range.
Heath flies down to slay the last ballistician.
And Fiora cuts off the shaman swarm. As you can see, if I attack this Druid there is a 50% chance that he survives and I take damage for nothing. But if I dont attack him and he attacks Fiora instead, he dies with 100% probability. Thats just the peculiarity of dealing with Nosferatu.
So she kills this one instead.
Ive absolutely got to get over that bridge right now no matter the cost. Otherwise the shamans could move south and block it. These woods take too long to get through and most of my air units are too vulnerable to just rescue people over it into shaman land.
But everyone makes for the bridge as best they can.
The druid obligingly kills himself.
Theres no focus fire anymore, as I hoped with that bait.
More of them.
For one frame wyverns appear before the camera jumps across the map. They beat Nino to her mountain, oops.
And massive top reins.
Oh and some knights.
Well backup plan time.
Almost as good.
Erk will completely own these guys, as expected.
And new problem. The game knows that if youre fast, youll be trying to cross this bridge into a corner covered in boltings, nosferatus, and ballistae and get stuck in the woods. So NOW they suddenly break out their mass of air units. Im in an unusually tight spot because Im moving very fast here, so I already have some people over the bridge, so I can have my army divided in two.
But first things first, Florina clears a path with Eliwood.
There we go!
And now Sain is free to ride into battle.
And Fiora takes up the last position to completely shield Florina.
Ive got to get more firepower in there, Nils gets Hector over the bridge.
No way Priscilla can get over, so she retreats instead.
Ouch.
No one went for Nino. Darn it.
Erk is invincible.
Raven gets another classic Raven level.
Turn 10. Ive at least controlled the swarming. Thats key. Let them get a little out of hand one turn and theyll be a lot out of hand the next.
Erk gets a good level.
The wyvern situation is problematic. Ive moved Nino out in the open to get the rest of them to attack her. She can almost certainly take it.
Hector kills a general for a great level.
No one is safe! Not even generals on fortresses!
Sain opens the bridge once again.
Vaida rescues Priscilla and waits out of bolting range.
A disappointing level.
And Renault keeps people healed.
End of turn 10, the enemy took a huge beating.
And Limstellas area is mine!
Looks great, but shes missing two of the 3 important things.
This Pent is turning out speedy but not gaining much else.
Turn 11, you can see theyre down 7 net from last time. Thats the right direction.
And Raven is just finished. Nothing to do.
The generals and knights have been replaced by cavaliers which are much easier to kill.
Priscilla is safely dropped off.
I cleared a path so Canas could take a shot while Limstella still has 0 AS or so, but it turns out to have a much too high chance of just killing her.
So he uses flux and does good damage and then is rescued out so shell finish with bolting.
Nice!
Not so nice! But at least the wyverns have been going for her, and now shes back on her forest.
The circle is now complete. When he met them he was but the learner; now Erk is the master.
Eliwood starts chipping down Limstella for an awesome level. Pile those defenses high!
More magic is good!
Its a complete slaughter.
Turn 13, secret shop time.
Money well spent, I purchase a barrier and 2 earth seals with the silver card. That leaves 113 gold. Which means that I could have gained at most 113 more gold with slightly less selling of items basically. A complete triviality. Worst case scenario, I lost one drink of a vulnerary for all those gems and such I sold starting on New Resolve to buy whatever I wanted. Definitely worthwhile.
Nothing to do but mass heal.
Canas completely dominates and could have crushed her with Flux in a straight fight. Fimbulvetyr is BAD.
Unnecessary critical!
Limstella is sad. This is more interesting than it sounds. Afterall, didnt she want to die for Nergal? Perhaps not. Perhaps shed rather have lived. Or perhaps shes only sad she couldnt have served him better. Either way, shes spent her whole life pretending her feelings dont matter and continues to now.
Turn 13. A few random cavaliers spawn right near the starting zone in these last few turns which are not worth going for. And there will be almost no more reinforcements till turn 20, so nows the time to end it.
And yet really easy.
Nils is blaming the right person for Ninians death now. They were only ever in danger because of Nergal and would never had any chance at a free life again without Eliwood.
Athos isnt here so they dont want to just charge in. Instead they hang back and ask Nils to finally explain whats been going on.
He agrees, saying he wants them to know the secret hes been carrying.
Its a picture from the prelude!
Now we finally learn the nature and purpose of the Dragons Gate explicitly. Of course, that was mentioned in a Glimpse In Time, but you cant do that level on your first play.
From his description, it sounds like the dragons might have basically just crushed the humans in this other world. This would fit with Yahns explanation of draconic ruthlessness.
Look, its (probably) Ninian and Nils! Nils is just as adorable as a dragon.
And now we begin to learn why it was Ninian and Nils in particular who came here. And why was Ninian the medium? Probably because shes half human dark wizard and that likely results in some unusual abilities.
They managed the gate, and one day they heard a voice calling to them.
Nils distorts the much sadder truth that it was the voice of their (they think) dead father.
A pretty great painting of them at Nergals mercy after coming through the gate. They really look rather beaten and helpless. And theres Limstella, the one whos always at Nergals side.
And now we learn why he didnt drain them. They lost most of their quintessence coming through the gate so they had little left to take. Possibly because theyre just kids. Or half-humans.
But he did take their dragonstone. Perhaps not as recently as Id speculated or perhaps so- they might have gotten it back during one of their escapes.
They quickly realized just how badly theyd screwed up and that they might have doomed both worlds.
Fantastic picture, I love this one.
And Lyn realizes that Nergal was hunting for them for this reason even when she first met them. And that they must have been recaptured just after leaving Caelin- which is probably why they disappeared so suddenly.
Since escape wasnt an option, they wondered if they should kill themselves to stop Nergals plan.
And when things were at their darkest, they met Elbert.
He didnt blame them for what they did falling for Nergals trick. Possibly they even told him the true story that they thought they heard their fathers voice.
He really must have too. And this, we now realize, is what they meant when they said Elberts stories saved them. They were going to kill themselves until he gave them hope.
Not a bad guess really. I mean, he WAS likely to go looking for Elbert.
So now we see why Eliwood meant so much to Ninian and Nils and why they were so ashamed of their part in Elberts death.
And why even now, when Eliwoods carelessness cost Ninians life, Nils will stand by him.
Unshakeable Faith plays once again!
And then sidequest happens! And its totally inappropriate both in terms of story and dramatic buildup. The sidequest should have been before Victory or Death, not after it.
Its nice to just have a big, simple, clean fight from time to time. But it would be boring if there was more than one in pretty much the whole game. One major problem I have with many of the later titles is that they have waaaay too many chapters like Victory or Death. Like the entire final third of 9 is just one really big, fairly pointless, increasingly boring fight after another. Almost no interesting maps, no interesting tactics to consider, and almost no important story developments. Just auto-attacking battle after battle. We dont even get any level gimmicks beyond the really, really stupid boulders thing and the one chapter where the fight is absolutely pointless and nonsensical where you have to shove like 3 priests to get the best possible ending.
Total Restarts: 38 (That one critical and the berserk thing)
Turn Surplus: 16 (Earned 2 more. That should put me in a more comfortable position)
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, 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 would have acquired if not for a stupid minor mistake on chapter 22, 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 didnt have enough time to feed to Bartre, the confused pirate and final archer on Night of Farewells, like 5 charges of Filas Might and a Luna tome I should have Hammerned on Cog of Destiny, the Pure Water on The Berserker, and the 2 or 3 Victory or Death Valkyries who only lived because Erks Elfire broke just before the last turn.