Part 27: Ep 26: Umbras and Shinies

Chapter 10: Light and Dark Part 2



Welcome back to Let's Play FE4 Binary. Today, we have an intense session as both Ishtar and Julius take the field, but they aren't alone!



A lot of Dark Mages have been replaced with Dark Bishops as well as a few Berserkers and Swordmasters. More importantly, there's a Baron, Mercenary and female Sniper around the super magic couple. They're going to start charging at us, so we'll see more of them later on.



Since they all deploy at the start of the enemies turn, they get the drop on the main army which stayed at the gate. Not that it helps them all that much.



Of course, that was without counting on the Swordmaster curse.



No axe magnetism today, though. All the axe users around here have powerful Devil Axes and Master Axes.



From a tactical point of view, this part of the map is a bit tricky. We have some pretty nasty enemies, but it's difficult to advance with all the Sleep mages running around. Our Charileadershipsma troop is still far away, and our flying units are going to lose a few turns on the remaining pirate. Rushing the sleep mages is even worse, as we have Ishtar and Julius lying in wait, ready to curbstomp anyone caught in their range. So yeah, we're kinda stuck in a difficult position for a while, and that's what makes this section of the map quite interesting.



We start things off with another nice level for Hannibal. Every little magic he can get is useful on the long run.



Welp, time to retaliate, taking down the main damage dealers in priority.



We also have these funny Swordmasters in the crowd. Sure, give a Darkness Sword to the guys with 2 magic.



These mages are the main problem around here. There's less than in vanilla FE4, but still enough Sleep to mess you up.



Not much to do about it, except blasting them from afar.



We're going to play it very defensive for a while, until our leadership stars arrive.



In case it wasn't obvious from all the Dark Mages, Darkness Swords and Devil Axes that this is the Forest of Evil 2.0, we also have a few mercs with Devil Swords.



Let the Sleep-fest commence! Corpul is going to have so much fun with that Restore staff. Only 6 uses though, so we need to hurry.



And he's still the weirdest armor around.



That's how you do magic swords, lady.



We need to keep the hell away from that Snipette until the reinforcements arrive, so progress is still very slow.



We also need to take care of the last Pirate. I'm pretty sure there weren't any turquoise boss recolors in FE3, so I guess it's supposed to be Gazzak or Reynard, since both have greenish palettes. He has a Leg Ring, of course he had to wield a Pugi with the Steal skill...

He's got pretty good stats and skills too. I wouldn't mind having a guy like that in the party.



So close from maxing Str, and yet so far... oh well, she had a good run with her levels. That Defense and Magic are just fantastic.



Not sure what this guy is rambling about... the second sentence is stolen directly from Dahl's (that white brigand from before) original battle quote, mentioning how we're terrible people for trespassing on his stealing business. The first sentence I do not know what it means.




So many status st- wait, hold on, you can dodge Silence, in this game? I thought the whole Mag>Res thing was surefire.

Color me very, very confused.



And with status ailment spam comes the Restore spam. What a beefy kid he is.



Speaking of kids, Hannibal is done devouring them (until the next batch comes up). He's pretty close from capping Skl and Spd, and is quite an amazing unit right now. Just gotta slowly drag him to the battles.



Our morale support has finally arrived! Seliph will be shining his King Sword for most of the chapter now that he's capped his levels.



Anyways, that Snipette from before? That's Funf (/Draco/Dark-Eyvel), one of Julius's Deadlords, come to give us a taste of how fun the final chapter will be. Stats capped, 20 Luck, minor Ulir, a Gatling Bow, her skills from vanilla plus Critical and Umbra. What a lovely little monster we have there. On the plus side, she does drop her Gatling Bow.



Sniper vs Snipette, a fight to the death!



Jesus H Christ, look at all these arrows.

For the record, that's 148 HP worth of damage she just sent flying at Lester. With the Gatling Bow, it stacks up extremely fast, so it's imperative to nullify her hit rates.



That bow is absolutely fantastic. For something that quadruples the number of attacks, it has quite a decent power and accuracy.

And do you want to know the best thing about it? Unlike the Brave weapons, it stacks with Adept. 16 attacks per round every time that happens.



There's also that Mercenary buddy of hers. Zwei (/Bovis/Dark-Galzus) has traded his Charge/Critical skills for the Astra/Luna he had in FE5, and Umbra because . Just like his companion, he's got all stats capped except for Luck, minor Odo blood as well as deadly Master weapons (the same he had in Thracia 776!) and a droppable Astra Manual.



Obviously, it's quite preferable to send a unit with high evade and Nihil to prevent him from unleashing hell on them. Remember that Astra can't be nullified because of the Manual, but it can be dodged!



Ulster activates Luna, but can't finish him off. What to do now...?



Fumbling about and taking down a few more staffholes is an option.



Who said Wyverns have poor Resistance...?



And Zwei gets a good clean shot of Blizzard for his trouble. Sleep tight, sweet Deadlord.



That wasn't meant to be taken literally, Ced. It's just adding insult to injury now.



Still no Mgc, but he's already one point away from capping Def.



Anyways, the last Manual is ours at last. Imagine all the possibilities... Astra Yormungand. Astra Blizzard. Astra Forseti.



There's one last big guy on the list before we attempt to go after Ishtar and Julius.



Eins (/Mus/Dark-Leidrick) is kind of a big meanie for not dropping anything. His whole deal is to be near invincible. Same stat pattern as the other two Deadlords, but with the Loptyr Sword to make him immune to everything that isn't the Blaggi Sword. As for new skills, he's got Umbra to mitigate the little damage he can take, and Vantage for uh... nothing much really. The sword can't attack at range, nor actually kill anything with that 20 weight.



If he can even hit, that is. Not that Fee's Killer Lance proved much more effective against him.



Attacking people with Vantage and a high crit rate? Still pretty risky.



Tricky part: not stepping into Julius's range until everyone is absolutely ready. Let's take revenge on the bastard by messing up his creations.



Props for managing to survive Larcei's assault until the very last hit.



A worthy end to her level streak. Impressive how she managed to firmly keep that 0 Magic through and through.



I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish by sending my fliers there. Oh well, Fee can't be damaged on that spot.



Because of Julius's Leg Ring, it's pretty difficult to find a tile to lure Ishtar without moving Julius too. The square two spaces left of Ares could work, but it's in the open and in range of a Sleep staff. The square of forest to Ares's top-right will bring forth Julius, but should be a bit more secure.



Here's what we are facing. Yes, the Loptyr stat boosts are stupid good in Binary. To think it used to be +5 Res... This Bizarro Julius is actually weaker than his Final Chapter incarnation, unlike in vanilla FE4 where he was nearly the same. He's lost a few stats here and there, but the new Loptyr tome still makes him much better, and he has Adept+Charisma now. However his HP is pretty low so you can make him drop the mighty Loptyr Sword.



But here's the catch: you can only kill one of the two lovebirds before they run away, and Ishtar drops Mjölnir. That means you have to leave behind one legendary/semi-legendary item. We're faced with the choice between a weapon that makes the user nearly invincible but ruins his offense, or one that increases a character's offense quite considerably, with no apparent drawbacks. I tend to stick to Mjölnir, since the Loptyr Sword is difficult to use, and only very few characters can wield it.

As for Ishtar, she's got much more HP/Str/Def than her vanilla counterpart, but a bit less Skl/Spd. She's as threatening as ever, but we've got Forseti now. She had a Barrier Ring in the original game that made her pretty hard to Silence. Here, she just seems to dodge every time I try to Silence her.



Also of note, Julius has minor Narga on top of his minor Fala. Although it's technically accurate to his lineage, there are never three holy bloods at once in the main game, so I'm not really sure how I feel about that.



Ced is going to be the one facing Ishtar and Julius's combined assault, with triple Charisma and leadership stars. Add the forest and that's a 60% Avoid boost.



Uhm, okay then. You do your silly stuff, Dark Bishop guy.



I guess I did manage to take down one of the two remaining Sleep assholes before both my fliers were sent to sleep.



Now, for the main course... please don't land a crit.



She doesn't. And Ced manages to activate neither Adept, nor Critical, nor Astra. Odd, but convenient.



Julius comes in to show off his big dragon, but can't do much against Forseti's sheer brokenness.


Oh right. Now that you can't even damage the guy, you decide to active Adept and Astra twice.



By the way, Loptyr also gives Great Shield. Just felt like I should mention it.



I can already hear Lewyn crying in pain at all the money it's going to cost to repair that tome.



Now, unlike in vanilla FE4 where killing Julius was very unlikely, we do have the Blaggi Sword here... though it's not actually necessary to beat the Loptyr effect. Don't believe me?







The Loptyr Sword can only be wielded by characters with more than 26 personal STR+MGC (out of 30 max), which only Seliph, Fee, and possibly Azel!Delmud can reasonably achieve. Even then, it's about as powerful as a Silver Lance, for almost twice the weight. Sure, you get a walking/flying tank, but a tank who can't do much anything.



However, there is a pretty horrifying section at the beginning of the next chapter which can be completely trivialized by giving Fee the Loptyr Sword. Mjölnir is still more multipurpose, though.



With that, Arthur steals his cousin's heirloom. I so love Sol's ability to completely bypass hit rates.



And with +10 Skl and +5 Spd, he's going to activate it even more often. Say hello to a new Arthur, an Arthur made of Solcrits.



Hey, don't you make fun of her, good sir. Even with your hax tome, you got spanked by a chick in a dress.



Now that the two scary mages are out of the picture, it's just 2 dark bishops and a Fortify bozo on his castle.



What. Why would you even.



Next time use your Sleep staff, moron.



So, we have this random Dark Bishop over here, guarding Miletos. What's his name again...? Zagam. He's not wearing the usual green Loptyr uniform and he's a major chump. +4~5 to every stat, and almost double the Defense, but at this point in the game stats just aren't enough anymore. Luna is barely threatening unless it crits, and Fortify helps nothing when all enemies die in one round. He's only got Adept as a new skill... he's so damn generic.



The perfect guinea pig to try out our new toy.

: Heheheh... Your misfortunes are cursed...

Okay, I take back what I said, he's not completely generic: he's unique for having a battle quote that makes no fucking sense.



I'm not gonna lie, I love using Mjölnir. It's unique, powerful, it gives good crits, and it just looks great with the Mage Fighter animation.

_{Also hey, unique Dark Bishop palette. I'd almost believe that was an important boss.}

: Archbishop Manfroy... Please forgive me...

That guy must have been the weird clingy goofball of the sect. No wonder Manfroy didn't even bother equipping him properly.



Well, with that out of the way, we've got a bunch of villages to visit, after which we'll be heading back to Chalphy to grab some more shinies.

Next time on FE4 Binary:



The gift that keeps on giving.