Part 20: Ep 19: Cliffhangers

Chapter 7: Passing the Desert Part 3



When we last left off, Seliph's army was right at Darna's doors.



And they sure are going in with a bang.



Though I could certainly do without Oifey's criticals.



The three promoted sword users around Darna are surprisingly tame, with Bramsel barely giving them any leadership. The only slightly difficult part is that the central Hero has a Brave Sword.



And now, for the most difficult part of the map. Remember when the sisters attacked Lenster in FE5?

quote:

: They have already reached the Thracian peninsula. Coen's Twelfth Legion is defending against them along with the Vampa sisters and Lady Teeny's mage army. However, even Lady Liza fell before the Isaac Army... It will be a tough battle.

Yeah, me neither. And here's why:



Would you look at those offensive buffs. +8 Str and +7 Mgc for maximum wreckage power. The sisters are also a bit closer in their stats than they used to be.

Instead of all having a Life Ring, they come with an assortment of different rings that they'll drop if they weren't inherited: the Knight Ring, the Paragon Ring...



And the Critical Guard on Vampa. All three wear the Renewal skill directly on themselves, and they obviously have Adept to screw you over.



First things first, Finn goes in to weaken Vampa and her Leadership stars. This is generally the point where a Binary player would feel really sorry for not training Finn, or worse, making him a father.



The first kill goes to Fee. Remember the Magi Sisters do not die on this chapter, but warp away after defeat. Our Pegasus now has more Defense than Strength...



And now, for a pair of lucky breaks. First, Fetra somehow thinks that she can triangle-attack with her sister out of the map, and attacks Finn directly, giving him a free shot at her.



The second lucky break comes from Eliu jumping on my bait, and attacking Leif from the sidelines, away from everyone else.



Would you look at that. That was Binary triggering an Adept just to tell me it can fuck me over whenever it wants, no matter what happens. It didn't hit, but it could have.



Back down, there are a few more horseless mages for my magic squad to finish.



Magic tank, forward ho! Since she couldn't double with Nosferatu, I figured I'd show off her Yormungand. It's not all that common to use it in any of the Jugdral games.



Unlike that level, which is as common as they get, with Julia.



As for Teeny's very first fight, she manages to activate both a crit and a Sol. A nice first taste of things to come.



Meanwhile, Patty just keeps getting all the Strength in the world. Strength Thieves are the best Thieves.



Oh, and in Darna, we easily take down the castle garrison. Look at it: Delmud is taking only 1 damage from that Brave Sword.



All right, enough with the cliffhanger. Let's take down those sisters in one swift motion.



Nanna finishes the one Finn had weakened.



Finn softens the one all the way to the left, and narrowly dodges another of those sneaky Adept shots.



And speaking of cliffhangers... Leif crashes down from a cliff on the last sister below, for extreme prejudice and a nice Mgc stat point for his Light Sword.



After that, it's just the dismounted mage and the host of armors. And I still love that critical animation.



I do hope Fee will start gaining a bit more Strength soon. That Killer Lance is heavy.



It's okay, Leif can survive one armor hit.



That, however, I did not expect. I'll never get used to the movement boost these roads give.



The number of close calls I've had on this map is quite astounding. Are my Arena levels going to be abysmal next chapter, or what?



Back in Darna, Oifey just keeps doing his thing. The one thing I don't want him to do.



At least his starts are turning out quite well. With all that stolen experience, he should even be able to promote next chapter.



Bramsel still stands on Darna though, and can hit most of our units extremely hard with his Halberd.

Because, what best but to put an anti-cavalry weapon on the Castle of Backtracking™ ?



Bramsel has gained one level, +2~3 in his offensive stats, +5 Def, +4 Res, and an incredibly annoying +16 Lck. Why would you even...

He has a new Steel Bow, so you can't just boss abuse him from a distance, as well as the Bargain skill. Why Bargain? Because he's a former merchant, and Binary like attention to details!



I honestly didn't think Delmud's Master Axe would work that well on him, though. 4 hits on 42%. Bramsel would be dead if not for one Great Shield activation.



That makes it an easy kill for Ares, who can thus work on his stats without using the Mystletainn too much.



And now, everyone goes back down! Ahhh, the beauty of smooth map design.



In the meantime, Larcei is going to rush north, to grab the attention of a new batch of armors that popped out of Alster. The Lenster guys could use less enemies to fight right about now.



Then again, they are pretty well equipped to specifically deal with Armors. There's Leif's Light Sword.



Fee also has her own magic Sword, and Nanna her mother's fancy Rapier.



Next turn, Seliph finally manages to conquer Darna. That took way longer than necessary for a filler castle.



Meanwhile, Nanna just keeps doing her thing. She may have obtained middling levels lately, but at least she's growing fast with Lex's Paragon.



It's so nice when my plans come to fruition. You'd think these guys would be mildly scared of Larcei's Blaggi Sword.



Back in Darna, Ares recruits us the last playable character on the map. It's nice to at least have a Dancer to help while everyone is moving back south.



A lot of players chose to leave Sylvia unpaired in vanilla FE4, so they can get the Barrier Sword and an additional Charisma bot. But since items are so damn expensive and scattered about in Binary, having the Leg/Knight Ring right away takes priority for me. Being Claude's daughter, she gets the Renewal skill, which probably won't help very often, but works really well with Prayer in an emergency. She doesn't start with anything aside from Sylvia's items.



While Ares is in Darna, I guess I should show this off: 6 uses of the Mystletainn = 30 uses of the Rapier, which isn't quite a cheap weapon either.

I mean, I understand the Mystletainn is pretty broken and shouldn't be abused, but at this point in the game it's almost all of Ares's money.



And with said Rapier, Ares enters the Arena.



He's getting some really nice levels from it. Keep that Skill up, boy!



The last opponent falls prey to a vicious critical, and the Arena is cleared on a whimper.



Back in Alster, it's also training time. Patty takes care of the Armors in the forest while Teeny gets the Generals in the south.



I swear, Patty is the weirdest thief...



That's only two Generals left, and Bloom himself.



Leif's chances of defeating him are almost comical.



With some more Blizzard tenderizing, Arthur nets himself one of his best levels yet. He sure is working on that Defense.



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Oh hey, Defense, that's pretty rare.



Really, at this point, it's just everyone having a nice meet-again party, and the healers running around to patch people up.



Once all that is done, it's time to face Bloom. And he's... pretty underwhelming, actually. His stats barely increased by 1~2 and he has no personal skills, but I guess his high chances to critical are what makes him dangerous. He's also got a new Silver Blade in case your healers have actually been working on their Magic and can Silence him.



But since he's an armored boss, Larcei can tear him to pieces. She's also fallen for Johan right before turn 50. They'll be murder buddies once he promotes.



Did someone order a gross overkill? That's a fresh 93 damage for you.



That's skill capped as well. And finally she's starting to work on her Speed again.



Bloom then returns to Conote. We're going to do something similar, and have Nanna Return all the ones who haven't done the Arena back to Rivough, including herself.



And she made great use of the levels she got from staff-abusing. Hurray for Paragon healers!



There are quite a lot of people there, but they all have at least one trick up their sleeve to make short work of the Arena.



For instace, Patty and Leen can use the Sleep sword, then change to a cheaper weapon to hack away for 10 minutes.



: Arena Completed, Gained 1 level, +2 HP, +1 Skl, +1 Spd, +1 Lck

: Arena Completed, Gained 2 levels, +2 HP, +2 Skl, +2 Lck

Well, at least that was well coordinated.

: Arena Completed, Gained 3 levels, +3 HP, +3 Str, +2 Skl, +2 Spd, +3 Def

I do not care about Thracia 776. Leif is simply amazing.

: Arena Completed, Gained 2 levels, +2 HP, +2 Str, +1 Mgc, +3 Spd, +1 Lck, +2 Def

: Arena Completed, Gained 1 level, +1 Skl, +1 Def

Not Finn's best display of excellency, but that's skill capped.

: Arena Completed, Gained 3 levels, +2 HP, +1 Str, +2 Mgc, +1 Skl, +3 Spd, +3 Lck, +1 Res

: Arena Completed, Gained 3 levels, +1 Str, +3 Mgc, +1 Spd, +1 Def, +3 Res



After that, I just spread the village money so that most everyone can buy the Paragon Ring next chapter. Shanan gets the Barrier Ring so I can keep sending him against mage bosses.



And that's the end of chapter 8. Things went surprisingly well despite the numerous jumpscares the game threw at me.



Next time, we finally go back to more linear maps, and face the Goddess of Thunder



Oh, and we also meet the God of Sleep himself.