Part 28: Ep 27: Crossfire!
Chapter 10: Light and Dark Part 3
Welcome back to Let's Play FE4 Binary, where we find ourselves in the middle of a family dispute.
And this is probably why I shouldn't have been worrying so much about Fee's Strength. +5 is pretty much guaranteed to max it.
Oifey also grabbed some more HP for his tanking pool while I had my army backtrack to repair some of their weapons.
And this is where all that Forseti wasting comes to bite Ced in the ass.
I'm actually going to leave the villages for a little later, since none of them have anything essential for us right now. So onwards to Chalphy!
Arvis sends Palmark away with the kids and the Tyrfing, and so it will be up to Fee and Altenna to intercept the dark mages that were sent after them.
Let the magic fest begin! We'll be fighting 3 waves of rather powerful foes here. On the front row, armors with either Master Lances or Master Swords/Bows, and the first generic Baron in the game to lead them. Behind them, the measly Fire Mages and Clerics were turned into powerful Mage Fighters. The males pack Meteor tomes and the females can heal. Behind their Bishop leader, the previous army of physical cavaliers has been replaced with Fire/Physic Valkyries, Silver/Fire Sword Paladins, Elfire/Silver Sword Mage Knights. There's even a female Master Knight way behind!
From now on, all generic enemies will have basic personal skills, like Adept and Pursuit for fighters, Renewal for healers, and Charge for long-range casters.
They charge at us right after deploying, soon breaking their impreccable formation. I originally had Arthur Mjölnir-tanking here, but the enemies suddenly refused to attack him. I wonder why.
All those armors from the Roten Ritter have been given a nifty red palette as well as a custom shield. I do believe that's a first for this game.
For some reason, most of the long-range guys went for the tankiest guy in my team, perhaps to have an easier time activating Charge. It didn't work all that well, though.
This part of the chapter is rather short, but pretty intense and with a good variety of battles. A large brawl near the bridge which can't simply be ended in one turn, a perilous rescue mission with limited numbers, then dealing with a fortified, leadershipped defensive force around the castle, and finally Arvis himself who is... well, he certainly is something, let's just say that.
The bridge area is a bit difficult to handle, so the heavy-hitters will be going first, and hopefully survive enemy phase.
Leif, for instance, who will be taking on the first mini-boss.
In pure Binary tradition of giving FE5 recolored portraits to mini-bosses, we have a red-cape Largo on our hands now. Amusingly enough, he's got almost the same stats as the one we thought back in Chapter 5. His skills are a bit more threatening (another goddamn Vantage armor?), and he's got a rather high chance to crit, but he's still pretty easy.
As Leif promptly demonstrates with his mighty Dragon Lance. Two can play the Critical game.
Pretty sure that's just a way to say "Impressive..." I miss the time where those guys were quoting random Kubrick movies while dying.
He could have gotten more HP in 29 levels, I suppose, but hey, that Magic is pretty good at least.
These foolish long-range mages probably should have stayed farther away. Now they shall taste the mighty power of love!
The Gatling Bow also does a formidable job at taking them down. And since it has a full 50 uses, it's not incredibly expensive to repair either.
This whole chapter has been Faval's mad rush to cap HP and Luck, and yet he fell just short of reaching his goal. If only he could get just one more level...
And there goes the last of the long-range mages. Now to take care of the pesky Bishop mini-boss.
Fire EmblemWiki posted:
Macbeth, along with Lamia and Ovo, is one of the only enemies in the game whose portrait is never reused.
Well hey, not anymore. Blue Macbeth is a reminder from the game that it can use your own dirty tactics against you: Wrath+Vantage, and Adept for good measure. You also want to get rid of him quick for his 5 Leadership stars and his Sleep staff.
He also hits really hard with his Volcanon, so it's better to either send a Nihil user or a high-res unit at him.
In the latter case, better pray for Adept activations on your side and not his.
"Sonna bakana"? Hey, I know this one! It means "This cannot be!" I knew watching anime would prove useful someday.
Huh. Looks I forgot one of the mages. Their obsession to stop Hannibal makes me wonder whether these people aren't actually the parents of the kids Hannibal is going to "rescue"... maybe we're the real monsters here.
Most of the firey enemies went for the guy with a Res-boosting sword on enemy phase, but those who didn't made a pretty nasty mess of Ulster.
Slowly getting there...
The female Mage Fighters are surprisingly good. Nice speed plus Pursuit means they'll rarely be doubled, and might even be the one doubling from time to time.
Speaking of Mage Fighters, no more speed loss from Elthunder for Teeny. She's turned out quite nicely.
Johan is a bit more into min-maxing, but at least he's working on his rather deficient HP.
After we're done cleaning up, it's time to finish that mysterious female Master Knight who's... wait, 28 defense?
Say hello to... a genderbent Saias? It's Amalda's portrait, but Saias' color scheme. She doesn't have his long-range Leadership bullshit, although 6 Binary stars + a King Sword is already a good +40%, so 10% more than Saias. With Vantage, Critical and Adept, not a whole lot of people can approach her safely. And with that Dracoshield she's only really vulnerable to sword skills and super weapons.
Meaning Larcei and Lester's Gatling Bow can do some pretty good damage to her. She activated Adept twice on the latter, so if he didn't have all that evade, he'd be dead already.
There is only one King fit to use this sword, and Seliph intends to prove it.
"It's....over, huh?". Yes it is. And that Dracoshield is now mine.
This is the point of the game where I'm going to pimp the fuck out of Seliph. Great Shield, immunity to criticals and effective damage, and +5 Def/Res should provide him with the stats and skills that he dreadfully lacks to fight bosses. And there's more to come.
Blessed be Recover's ability to full-heal regardless of the user's magic. Now, how are our fliers doing in the east?
Pretty dang well, it seems.
Although I did put Fee in kind of a dangerous range. Pegasus knights aren't as magic-tanky as they are in later instalments.
She does manage to survive the Dark Mage assault and gets hit only once. At least all that Speed did its job.
She gets a little help from her Life Ring, and then it's back to killing mages.
Let's all pause for a second and think about this poor mage who must be feeling very lonely right now...
As well as for Ced, who is never going to max out his Magic.
: Sir, they're all stationned in line right outside our range. Maybe we should move a inch or two to the left and attack them...? No? Fine, whatever.
Well, while everyone is playing the waiting game, the last mage goes down, and we can start checking on Palmark and friends.
He's been stepping up his game. 8 more levels, +2~3 in every stats, and a Lightning and Fortify instead of a simple Mend. He's a pretty swell healer overall, what with that infinite healing NPCs have. I could even lure him over to assist during the Arvis fight if I really needed the additional healing.
Time to assault Chalphy's last defense. All the guys around here have Critical. The Sages and Iron Mages have Volcanon/Meteor as weapons, and Pursuit as a personnal skill.
The High Priest himself acts as a super Palmark, with a Fortfy staff, and Nihil/Renewal for durability.
They're pretty tough, and it takes quite a few units to take them down. Thankfully, there's little of them.
Johan gets the honor of finishing the last one. Wrath is still the best thing ever.
Well, that leaves only Arvis. Time for phase 1 of this map's cleanup.
Seliph goes to grab the Tyrfing, gaining yet a few more stat boosts as well as Prayer whenever he uses it. Its 16 Weight does remove a bit of that Speed boost, though.
Not many more units who need to cap their levels... these three should be able to do it in the next chapter's Arena without resorting to the Paragon Ring.
: Sunshine for everybody!
On to Arvis! Believe it or not, those stats are actually slightly weaker than the ones he had in vanilla FE4. -3 HP, -4 Str but +6 Lck, he also has Vantage (surprise?) and Pursuit. All in all, he's about as dangerous as he was in vanilla FE4, only now you have to be careful not to send a unit that he might be able to double with Pursuit.
Oh, also, if you went the Loptyr Sword route and thought you could cheese this boss? Yeah that's not happenning, he's got a Blaggi Sword just in case.
+40% Evade for the leadership, +30% from the Castle, and with all those +10 Def/Res... even with our own Blaggi Sword, it takes a long while to chip Arvis down.
Just like his Roten Ritter, Arvis was granted a pretty spiffy red coloration instead of a boring old grey.
Larcei and Seliph do all they can to speed up the process, but it's pretty much guarranteed that Arvis will require 4 or 5 turns.
At least Mjölnir hits him reasonnably hard, and much more consistently.
The whole thing is made even more complicated by the fact I really want to give Teeny the kill for the Valflame he drops. And she only deals 3 Damage to him with Volcanon.
We shall always remember Arvis every time Teeny attacks with the power of a thousand suns. It boosts her Mgc/Def/Res by 5 which helps her low durability, and boosts her Silence staff usage to Resistances up to 32.
And since Seliph has fought Arvis at least once, he can now collect waitwhat
... I was supposed to kill him with Seliph, wasn't I?
Fuck you Arvis, making your niece waste her money like that.
Thankfully, there's always sunbro Palmark to cheer me up. Maybe his very presence is the reason why this is the only bright map in gen 2.
And for bringing Seliph close to a water tile after defeating Arvis, we get not a lousy Life Ring, but the second non-weapon semi-legendary.
Naga's Grace is a very, very nice item which grants Renewal (just like the regular Life Ring), but also negates the Loptyr effect for the wielder.
That's right, we can actually have Seliph go and fight Julius seriously now. The hero of our story won't need to repeatedly poke the main villain for a stupid 2 damage per turn, or resort to borrowing Larcei's blade.
Before we end this chapter, there's still one conversation and a few villages to visit.
First off, Corpul can have a chat with Altenna to boost her already pretty high Res.
Then there's this village which has unchanged dialogue, but directly hands us another semi-legendary if we saved it from that Pirate guy. This here is the Again staff, and just like in FE3, it allows the user to "Dance" a unit from far away. It's very circumstantial and only has two uses before it needs repair, but it fits right into Lana's whole inventory of staves that help move people around. It is equippable by units with capped Magic, or of Blaggi heritage
The lady down in the southmost village gives very different lines about giving us some sort of medicine as thanks for saving her village.
We get a nice HP bonus from it, which wasn't present in the original game. Now Johan is finally in the 60+ HP range.
The rest of the money is shared between Ced, Altenna and Teeny, who will need to to buy the Valflame next chapter.
The western village also gives her a Magic Ring, extending her Silencing powers to 37 Res targets and above when equipped with the Valflame.
37 may sound grossly unnecessary, but just you wait until next chapter...
Well, let's not keep the suspense going any longer. Onwardo to the Epilogue: The Last Holy War!
Next time on FE4 Binary:
What the fuck am I even looking at?