Part 59: Paralogue 19: Great Heroism
Time to finally pick Percy up from school. He was the first child I unlocked... does that mean he's going to be the oldest? Are we going to go visit his deeprealm to find a 90 year old man???
But first it's time for a yoghurt break. I still can't believe I don't have wheat to make defense boosting food without relying on the RNG yet. I can combine milk and berries to make berry pudding but I can't even make bread, it's a literal "let them eat cake" situaton in Nohr right now.
Poor Arthur's screwed this up more than anyone... Although Elise is also to blame here. I keep forgetting these children have more than one parent responsible for them.
Gazak coincidentally enough is the name of the bandit we'll be fighting in Forrest's paralogue. He looks nothing like Arthur. You can capture him and then bring him to this paralogue, but it doesn't actually do anything.
Time for some great heroism. There's a lot of enemies in this chapter, but there's also no reinforcements to watch out for. The enemies move in 3 waves - the bottom set will move on turn 2, the middle from turn 5, and the rest on turn 10. They will also start moving if anybody else from their group is provoked...
This is one of the earliest paralogues you can unlock and it's a good source of money, so it's not a bad idea to do it early. Doing it around chapters 10/11 or so will mean you've got Camilla to help you out, and she'll be way ahead of the enemies in terms of stats at that point in the game. I do however have an army full of overleveled units with excellent 1-2 range so I'm not particularly afraid, but this map can be quite scary.
Percy is here as an enemy. This is a rout map and you can't recruit him, so you'll have to defeat him here. Keep in mind that he'll inherit whatever skills his parents had at the end of the map, not the ones they have at the start. As an opponent he's not at all threatening if you do this map late enough for your army to be promoted, since he doesn't promote with the rest of the enemies. I gave him Rally Strength and he will use it, but I don't think it should make too much of a difference.
Incidentally despite being the boss of this chapter he doesn't actually have boss music. That honour goes to... some random heroes scattered about the map. I have no idea why this is the case or if it was even intentional.
Now here's an enemy type you don't see often. Lancers are this game's equivalent of Soldiers, they can't promote but they do get a high level cap to make up for it. They (and many other enemies in this map) have a lot of skills like Lunge and Seal Defense that can mess with you, and a lot of them will be packing 1-2 range weapons too. It's part of what makes this map so annoying, there's so many enemies that are hard to counter on enemy phase but will inconvenience you greatly if they survive combat to activate their skills.
You'll also have to watch out if you're weak to just about anything, because there's effective weapons for days. Keep in mind that Wyrmslayers are effective against Corrin and their offspring in any class, not just Nohr Noble!
This chapter's gimmick are these dragon veins - use one and every enemy in range will not only leave the map, they'll also give you 500 gold each. The range of these isn't particularly high so it's tricky to get them in there, but they can not only boost your funds but also delete large numbers of problematic enemies at once if you use them well. Unfortunately the large number of lunge and seal skill users make baiting them in range somewhat risky to do.
I'll be bringing as many 1-2 range juggernauts as I can. I'd like to bring Midori too, but Ophelia is so close to S ranking Seigbert that I'd rather bring him for support.
It's been a long while since I did this paralogue so I don't really know what to expect... Hopefully it goes well? I've never been good at maximising monetary gains in this map but I'll try to get at least some gold.
Stacking buffs on your best units and then send them at the enemies is a timeless strategy, I'm sure it'll work. One-rounding everything will mean no survivors to convert into cash, but I'd rather not be saddled with debuffs.
Elise takes the Paladins, Ophelia takes the north Lancers, Corrin takes the east. Hopefully I can get Corrin's HP low enough to get VoF on Silas, he's safer to use on account of having no Wyrmslayer weakness.
Before this playthrough I never really understood what all the fuss about Ophelia was for. I see now the error of my ways.
The combination of rallies and meal buffs really adds up. I might overestimated how much damage these enemies could deal to Corrin, I was hoping she'd at least get close to VoF range from tanking these hits.
Or maybe Lancers just aren't very good. They don't get to promote so unlike the other enemies on this map they won't be benefitting from higher class bases... Silver weapons and Elbow Room also add up to deal a lot of damage...
Oops, I killed everyone too hard and now there's not many people left to turn into money. Somehow I can never fit more than a single guy into these things.
All these veins do is make the ground purple. It has no effect on terrain or anything, it just lets the enemies know we're royalty and there will be big trouble if they continue fighting us.
Now everything looks like the creature stage from Spore. Just need some spice geysters and glowing animal skeletons...
It's sometimes hard to notice the range of wyverns amongst all the other enemies, but you really do need to pay attention... Just baiting one can aggro an entire wave of enemies against you. The range of one guy alone covers nearly a quarter of the entire map!
I really don't understand why Corrin gets the levels she does. I won't complain, but I don't get it! Where's all this resistance coming from? Why's her strength so high? Why get speed now when she so rarely did as a Swordmaster?
Considering how often I want Corrin to drop below half HP and then pair up with someone else, this really is the ideal skill for her. I don't want it right now, but if I can remember I can take it on and off between maps depending on how I feel.
Seems like the middle group has aggro'd. The foot units are easy to backpedal away from, but the flying ones are a bit scarier.
And there sure are a lot of them all of a sudden. Ophelia could Nosferatu tank them all, but then not killing the enemies on counterattack would mean they get to activate thier skills. An Ophelia with Elise as a mum could do that and bait them all onto a single dragon vein...
At least on this side I can convince these Heroes to walk into range without having to fight them at all.
Opting to dodge tank instead of nos-tank might have been a risky move, but it was a risk that paid off. In a 2RN game I'd have felt much more comfortable about doing this, but less so with Fates's weird hybrid system that defaults to 1RN with hits like these.
Maybe I will buy that last Spirit Dust for Ophelia, just because I can. Or well I can't right now but there's a few chests with money coming up...
I think all the Heroes in this chapter have boss music. I have no idea why but it is a very good way to give the player a heart sttack when boss music starts playing for no reason.
Exactly one guy managed to hit Ophelia, and he had WTA on his side. In an alternate universe where Lissa married a Taguel, Ophelia would have taken a huge amount of effective damage and died.
That's two more enemies turned into solid gold. I really could be doing better here, the map's half over already!
In fact I think Nina's making me more money than the dragon veins are. I should really start selling these, there's no way I'll need more than like 5 of them for Spendthrift.
Oh hey, Sun Festal's finally being useful! You do only have 15 uses of this thing but it's not worth hoarding them. A Strategist Dwyer might however have had the movement to reach Ophelia and use Mend instead...
Oops, I may have overextended and lured a single enemy that's part of the "don't move until turn 10" group... and therefore the entire map. As you can probably tell I am kind of bumbling through this map with no plan in mind.
And I still can't get more than 1 guy at a time with these things. It's okay, 500 gold is still nice.
It is at least better to have accidentally provoked the enemies by overextending than it would have been to have been surprised by them suddenly aggroing on turn 10. Being far up the map gives me lots of space to backpedal away while luring the frontline enemies to their deaths one or two at a time.
I have one vein that would let me convert 3 guys into cash and someone is standing on it > : (. This absolutely counts as trespassing on royal property in my book.
Oops, it seems I had a little less room to backpedal than I thought. Running away from fliers that can use their full movement every turn is tricky!
These enemies can't hurt Xander much, but him not being able to ORKO is a problem. Thankfully as a Hero he's not weak to anything...
I can't keep them out of range of everyone, but I can at least run away from the non-mounted units. Azura pairs up with Shigure who flies her to safety and gives everyone a helpful rally.
Helping my enemies is not what heroes do, Percy
Xander was never in any trouble to begin with, I'm not sure what I was worried about.
Silas however was - he doesn't like strong axe hits and he can't deal enough damage with knives to one-round and avoid the Lune in retaliation. Thankfully I never managed to get Corrin below half health so she was free to take his place. Funny how things work out.
Now is just a matter of cleaning up. Fliers make the best support units, not only because they can reach their allies faster, but because they can escort your other units to safety when necessary.
Shurikenbreaker is nice, no speed is less nice. I think Nina's going to need a lot of support to get her speed up enough to double the Master Ninjas I want her to in Chapter 25.
Just Percy left now. As you can see he hits about as hard as his mother does with physical weapons.
I'm going to lure him over to a dragon vein just to see what happens. Will he run away and give me his pocket money? Maybe.
...oh right he has Lunge. Now he's standing on it and I can't use it! I wanted to see what would happen...
Percy your mother and father are very disappointed in you.
I guess that could have gone worse. I wish I'd done this chapter earlier - both to have gotten the funds when I needed them and so I could have shown off a more interesting strategy than "put good unit in range of enemy and hit end turn". I think I managed to get a total of 2000 gold?
Haha nope, the next paralogue is going to be exactly that. At least unlike Ryoma these dads do realise their mistakes and apologise for them.
I doubt I'll be using Percy for much besides rallies and the passive effect of his personal skill. He's a lot bulkier than Elise, but his offenses are more than mediocre on both fronts... He's not bad, he's just not really good either. Perhaps I overestimated the power of mixed attacker Percy.
His high luck gimmick cannot survive the combined assault of Malig Knight's terrible caps and Arthur's genetics. 24 is a pretty sad cap.
Next time: The world's lamest stealth mission