Part 19: Ep 18: Horse Shortage

Chapter 7: Passing the Desert Part 2



Last time we left Seliph and his companions, they were just done conquering the Yied desert shrine. Can we move forward, now?



Thank you most kindly.



The army Ishtore deploys to intercept our troops is a bit more dangerous than it used to be, with even a High Priest replacing the center Thunder Mage. Around him, the two clerics now pack Lightning and Physic staves, and further to the side, two row of armors were replaced by more mages and archers. Even Liza has changed class, from Thunder Mage to dismounted Mage Knight.



This, however, is my main focus right now. Delmud is going to take care of it.



As for Patty, she's going to have a chat with Seliph and entrust him with a small gift.



That line of dialogue was changed, by the way. Instead of saying "It's a Brave Sword... just for you!", she goes:

: It's a [?????]... please be careful. ❤

Seliph didn't reply with ellipsis in the regular game either.



Have you guessed what weapon it is, yet?



It's a Devil Sword! Because Binary dislikes the idea of giving you free Brave weapons.

Aside from the very entertaining self-damaging properties, it's actually better than the Devil Axe. It hits just as hard, but weighs 2 less and has 10 more Hit. Now I need to find someone with high Luck and HP to use it...



Fast-forwarding two turns or so, here's where our main groups stand. The Lenster guys will need to stay put around here for a little while, and will definitely need Fee's help for what is coming after I conquer Melgen.



And now, for something really stupid:

Personal thoughts at the time: "I guess I'll lure some of them while waiting for Seliph and friends. I've got all the time in the world, after all."



For that silly move, I get rewarded not only with a crummy level...



... but also with the whole army rushing at my little guys.



And since I'm a bit stubborn, I'm staying here to fight no matter what.



To be fair, the start is pretty encouraging.



The main problem is Liza. She used to be a pretty tame boss, but with her promoted stats and dangerously high magic, not anyone can just go and kill her now. Especially since I need a specific damage output to bypass her new Prayer. Her Shield Ring was replaced by a Lady's Sword, so she can still defend herself when silenced, although that shouldn't be any threat to anyone but Patty and Johalva.

And yet she has to die because she provides 25% Leadership. The ideal method would be to simply Silence her, but of course Lana was too busy lifting weights and didn't practice her magic enough.



Only one solution left: my designated boss killer, who is becoming surprisingly speed-screwed, for some reason.



Not that Ulster is setting much of an example on that front either. At least that High Priest is down too.



Oh, and somewhere in there, Delmud killed his Brigand for a great level. And just like his sister in the previous update, he somehow manages to miss his highest growth.



The resulting enemy phase is a bit scary, since most of my characters could easily die from focused fire. Thankfully, the FE4 AI tends to have some sort of attention disorder and just can't focus on a specific target.



Shanan cut a it very close, though.



As mentionned previously, there is also a triangle attack in gen 2. Our trio of Isaacian swordies benefits less from it than the three Chalphy knights, though. They didn't really have trouble killing things to begin with, and can't even use Canto to make positionning easier.



But if it allows Shanan to gain Strength, I guess I can't really complain.



I finish cleaning up the place, and watch my units reap a bunch of stats they really need.



Only ones left are two stray armors, the ballistae and mages around the castle, and Ishtore himself...



The armors and ballistae go down easy and we get some more uninspired levels. Of note: Ulster capped Skill at level 10. Major Odo, ladies and gentlemen.



Now for the difficult part, namely...



Ishtore's attacks.



Funnily enough, he didn't need to receive too many buffs to be a pain in the neck. 2 more levels, +6 HP, +2 Str/Mgc, the Vantage skill, and that's about it. At long-range, he does have a 6% chance to activate Adept, but what are the odds of that happenning? It's at close range where things get dirty, as he'll have a pretty good chance of insta-killing on his Vantage strike with either a critical (14%), or an Adept (17%).

They also added minor Fala blood to him, keeping with the game's canon (Hilda is his mother, and she has minor Fala).



The mages around him die easily, though. Delmud can even one-shot them with his trusty Devil Axe.



On the next turn, Ishtore turns his focus to Patty. As long as he can't one-round anything, all is well.



Areyoushittingme6%how?!



...

_{Don't ever do this to me again.}



Let's see, Ishtore... Weapon Triangle Advantage doesn't work, and neither does our good old Larcei. There really aren't that many options left.



Larcei may be great at destroying Dark Mages and Armors, but she just doesn't have the dodging abilities to face promoted mages yet. Shanan will be taking care of that task for now.



We hadn't seen one of those sliding Shoryukens in awhile. I can't wait for Larcei to promote.



Strength and Defense are nice, Shanan, but you'll probably need Speed sooner or later, too.



And that's Melgen conquered. Two more castles remain to seize, so let's keep going for a little longer.



Seizing Melgen causes more troops to spawn near Darna and Alster. The myrmidons around Darna are now two Mercenaries and a female Hero. The Magi Sisters, formerly Fire, Wind and Thunder Mages, are now dismounted Mage Knights. Same thing for the generics around Teeny: all dismounted Mage Knights.

Is it really that difficult to find horses in Freege, nowadays?



We've also got all the border guards from Darna turning red, and Alster sending more armors towards Lenster. If it worked very poorly the first time, try doing it again!



Now, this is where things get a little troublesome. The Magi Sisters, being promoted, all have one more Move than before.



They are supposed to walk towards Melgen, where most of my force is. But since they have a different movement range than the rest of their squad, they can break away from them and join the armors going towards Lenster. And it's precisely what they do.

This is all sorts of terrible, because nobody up there can do good damage against them aside from Finn, and even he can't take their magic abuse for more than one battle.



Small consolation, Ares joins the party.



He is exactly the same as before, except he doesn't come with an Iron Lance anymore. So he'll need to either refrain from killing things this chapter, or have to spend a ton of money to repair his sword.



Just a reminder, but the Mystletainn now drains HP, and has 10 Crit to compensate for the loss of its Critical ability. Keep in mind that Nanna and Delmud can also equip it (although with halved stat boosts). So we have three candidates for a health-draining Killer legendary sword. And all three of them have Vantage.



But for now, Ares is going to retreat and face Jabarro's squad along with Seliph's team.



Down south, Patty and Arthur are going to take advantage of the forests to kill the myrms and lure the mages over.



And it turns out greatly for him. Strength is so much more important for mages now.



As for Ares's squad, I think they're quite ready to tackle the Jabarro mercenaries.



Most of them have Steel weapons, but Binary just wouldn't be Binary without a few Killer weapons hidden in there.



Ensues a good old slaughter, where some of our units gained stats they quite needed.



Others, stats they didn't need all that much.



And some, all the stats they could find.



Now, Jabarro is quite tricky, and there aren't all that many characters able to safely engage him.



He's pretty much a Swordmaster on a horse, with a strong Attack Speed and annoyingly high hit and crit rates, thanks to his new Critical skill. He received +2~3 in most of his stats as well.

How do you fight crit-happy sword users? With better crit-happy sword users!



Fighting fire with fire, Ulster picks his Killing Edge and starts the lightshow and fireworks.



After that, it's clean-up time, and Ares manages to hit his low Skill growth of 20%.



Patty's helping in the south as well, going for the most essential stats.



And Ulster does the exact same.



With Jabarro's mercenaries routed, the next target is the Darna border guard. All of them sporting Killing Edges of course.



But Delmud is so damn tanky he just doesn't care about crits.



Oifey! Don't start doing like Finn, now!



While the main army is busy with giving the border myrms a taste of their own medicine, the new priority is to defeat Teeny's squad and recruit her.



Tanking them allows Arthur to become 33% less squishy.



I have to say, recruiting Teeny is quite more simple when you don't have to deal with the Magi Sisters. I'd certainly have needed a lot more units to take care of them.



Larcei starts clearing a path for Arthur. Looks like she's going to keep those Mgc/Res stats empty for a little while longer.



Patty does great too, thanks to the Beo Sword. It would almost make me forget she still only has a C rank.



And we recruit Teeny to our cause, at last.



She starts with extremely solid bases for a level 5 unit, but will probably remain a glass cannon throughout the game. Well, a glass cannon able to consistently heal itself, thanks to Sol. She'll have some trouble leveling up until promotion, but that's what siege tomes are for.


And that's all for this update. Next time... we break the FE5 canon once again and have Leif's army defeat the Magi Sisters just for the heck of it.