Part 14: We're in the (Byzantian) Army Now: The Battle With Kingshome
Update 14: We're in the (Byzantian) Army Now: The Battle with KingshomeAll right, now it's time to take on those Kingshomers!
...Almost.
There's no rush to get to the battle. The war will wait for us. Let's get ourselves ready first. There are three "shops" in this courtyard, including the Town Healer:
Bart's Weaponsmithing:
And finally, Malik's Armory:
There's not much to get here, but we have just enough to buy this Long Mace for Louie:
The Long Mace gives +1 AV, does better damage than the Barbed Flail, and can hit from 20'. This isn't necessary for the next fight, but it's always nice to upgrade when we have the chance.
Note that we can't actually leave Byzanople right now. More on that later. For now, we go back to the hidden passageway.
The passageway actually takes us to an isolated section of Siege Camp. Clever way to avoid making an extra map for this event.
Before the showdown, Madrick casts Cloak Arcane to give us an AC boost. Again, this isn't really needed, but we might as well be prepared for the big fight, which is literally right around the corner...
That's thirty-seven enemies. Including new enemy types with new art of a guy with blood dripping off of his axe. This is one of those times when you know you're in for a serious fight.
Fortunately, we have good reasons to keep a cool head about this. (Yeah, I crack myself up.)
Our strategy for Round 1: Piers and Kali cast Fire Blast on the Mercenaries. Since they're in melee range, they can hit us, we want to get rid of them as fast as possible. Madrick casts Big Chill. Since he has low Dexterity, his turn will come up after the Guards advance into 30' range, and he'll get to damage a whopping 30 enemies with Chill. Dolph will cast Mithras' Bless to increase our party DV, the others will just attack.
The round starts with the enemy units advancing, and Dolph casting Mithras' Bless. We will probably never cast it again for the rest of the game, so here's a screenshot:
They have no ranged units, which is fantastic. Only the Mercenaries can touch us for the first couple of turns, and...
..they never do more than 1 damage. I'm not sure if that's because we have so much armor on our front-liners, or because Mercenaries just suck, but it's fortunate. They take a couple more shots before we start rolling out the damage spells:
So there goes the first batch of 15. That leaves 22, and Madrick already put in some damage on those Guards.
Round 2: Piers uses a Dragon Stone, Kali casts Fire Blast, Madrick casts another Big Chill. Everyone else dodges.
Just like the Guards did, the Royal Guards walk right into range for us.
We roll reasonable damage and take out 11, so the other 11 are left.
Round 3: Piers casts Fire Blast on the Royal Guards, Madrick casts Elvar's Fire on the Royal Guards to clean up what's left, everyone else attacks the Guards.
Madrick never even has a chance to cast that Elvar's, saving some MP.
Round 4: We melee the remaining guards.
They go down in one round, leaving us with the two Kingshomer Captains.
We'll let them advance into range, and then it's time for Valar & Dolph to do their thing. These Captains take a ton of damage, so we're going to use powered-up Sun Stroke to take care of them.
They also hit for a good amount:
Have I mentioned that ranged weapons suck in this game?
Because ranged weapons suck in this game.
Sun Stroke doesn't suck though. And that's all of them! Look at all of that experience and gold. No level gains though. What else do we get?
We get... the Prince's eternal gratitude. That's nice, I guess.
And we can now leave Byzanople. This is one of the cooler and more interesting sidequests to play, but we don't actually get anything for it, other than the loot we find in the dungeon. Still, just getting Big Chill is great for us.
Still, we don't get much for winning the war. What if we don't win the war?
Next Update: The many ways to NOT win the war against Kingshome!