Part 54: The Port of Badon
We join our heroes in the midst of bargaining with a pirate captain.
: What is it you wanted to see me about?
: I'm Hector. You're the pirate chief, Fargus, right?: Gwah ha ha! Tell me something, lad, where were you raised? Is that the tone you take when you're about to ask a favor?: You insolent...
: Peace, Hector!: Bah...don't worry. All right, I'm sorry, old man. OK? Listen, we need your help.: Hmph…You're an odd bird. You sure you're noble born? I'm Fargus, captain of the Davros. Now what do you want?: We want you to sail us to Valor.: How much will you pay?: Don't know the current rate. How much do you need?: 100,000 gold.: What!? 100,000 gold?! You're daft, old man!: Well, will you pay?: Very well. We don't have it with us. We'll get your gold and be back here as quickly as possible. Let's go, Eliwood.: Hector?
: Where do you plan on getting 100,000 gold?: I've got a plan.: A plan?: I've got to get back to Ostia.: Oh...you're going to ask Lord Uther for the gold.: Don't be stupid! I will not kneel at my brother's feet to beg for money!: Then why are you going to Ostia?: I've got some ceremonial garb, armor, helmet, books... I'll bring it all and sell it!: Hector... Are you sure about this?: Yes. My brother would be unwilling to part with that much money... Not without knowing the reason why. And we don't have time to waste! There's not much I can take freely, but it's a start. We'll take that money to the arena and raise 100,000 gold!: Good idea, Hector. I'm off to Pherae!
: Ahoy! Hold your ground, boys!: What now? We don't have the money yet.: Fool! Of course you don't! I know that. The captain's got a message for you.: A message?: All my mates in this village are going to attack you. If you can beat us all and get to the ship unharmed, he'll give you passage.: For free? No gold?: The captain's a tad off-kilter. He'd rather have a bit o' fun with you than take your gold. Smooth sailing to you.Smooth sailing, indeed. So, the Port of Badon hasn't really changed from Eliwood's story. It's still easy to do if you go around, and will curbstomp you for trying to plow through the middle.
...You know, I can't help but feel like we might be a little shorthanded here. You get 6 units to pull off a small miracle here. 5 if you're sane and brought a healer, but you'll pick up Canas, who is moderately useful on everyone not called Damian.
We are, of course, hoping beyond hope that Canas will have slightly better luck with... well, all his stats.
The pirates have brought a few more friends with them as well. They're all just Iron Axe pirates, but that's still 6 or 7 more sets of axes you have to put down.
The good news is that we've got lots of very awesome bonus-packing sword guys, but of course we don't want them to hog too much EXP... do we? And... well, let's just say there's a very good reason for not having the swordsmen do all the work here.
Dart definitely does get HHM bonuses for this chapter, but I don't think he gets to keep them for when he joins the party.
This is a shame, because Dat Speed™ etc
And Fargus is still here in case you feel like you've been making too many good decisions lately.
As usual, first order of business is to get Canas. Another free Secret Book, and more importantly another usable unit.
Raven is going north to clear out that area.
Oh yeah, welcome to HHM by the way. All of those extra pirates immediately charge your position (as will Damian, once he shows up), but thankfully the central murder crew stays put until you cross the line.
And thank god for that.
Indeed. If they really wanted to make this a Hard ModeTM map, all they needed to do was have them immediately come at you. You wouldn't even need to add a single enemy, or even give them extra stats. I wasn't expecting all the extras to immediately charge you, and when they did I thought for a second the central guys would too, and then I would have promptly said "Fuck this shit."
I like where this is going.
It seems counter-intuitive to have Oswin take the lower side, but the pirates closest to him have a Swordslayer and Halberd, the latter of which isn't very threatening, and the former of which you want nowhere near any of your swords. He and Canas set up way in the back of the choke point, and Guy heads all the way down by Merlinus. Hector and Kent get in position in the north alley.
Damian wastes no time joining in.
Pictured: Why Swordslayers are bad. That was one hit.
The main objective here is to get everyone out of range to draw Damian to Oswin. That Horseslayer Erik left us is going to get some use here.
3 HP, 1 Str, 1 Skl, 1 Spd, 1 Res. Goddamn, these bosses have been getting screwed lately. Damian's pulled an Erik and traded his legitimately dangerous Killing Edge for a pair of Steels.
Stop Press: Intelligent Systems Show Mercy
You bosses are such silly, predictable creatures.
Yup. Unless it's specifically programmed not to move, the AI will never not attack someone if it can attack someone. (it's possible that it may ignore people to whom it cannot deal damage, but 1 damage might as well be zero most of the time)
Oswin switches to his Horseslayer and uses a vulnerary, Priscilla heals up Hector, and Guy falls back a bit.
How timely, Oswin. He drops Damian to 9 HP with the horseslayer.
And now, we clean house. First, Canas drops down to kill the cavalier that attacked Guy. Guy follows up by killing the nomad. Hector kills the pirate weakened by Kent with his hand axe, and Kent criticals on the next one in line.
Finally, Oswin takes out the trash. Now all that's left in the main camp is the troubadour that came with Damian and three Iron Axe pirates.
Raven finishes the last pirate in the north as well.
Village #2.
Village #3.
Now, the murdersquad. This is the trickiest part of this fight. Raven heads back for the main camp, and Kent and Priscilla head over. The first place we want is right above the forest near the village, which is the farthest space that the mage can target.
Kent gets an oh-so-timely level after killing the Elfire Mage.
And Priscilla puts him back in fighting condition. This is the most dangerous part. Kent has to hop in the forest to draw the attention of the archer, but that also puts him in range of the Silver Axe pirate. The archer lands for 11, and the pirate misses as Kent retaliates. He switches to his sword and kills the pirate, and the archer misses on his second shot.
A second miss, and Kent's Javelin leaves him open for the kill next turn. This is probably where I got the luckiest over the entire mission, because this asshole has a Killer Bow.
That archer has 99 Hit and 36 Crit, and Kent, in a forest, has 32 base avoid plus 20 from the forest. So that's 47% chance of being hit, and each hit carries a 32% chance of being a crit (which Kent can't survive). Given that he's getting heals from Priscilla in between, regular hits won't be a problem for him (especially considering the Pirate's might-as-well-be-negligible hit odds), only a crit will kill him, and the odds of that are 15% (remembering that True Hit only applies to Hit and not Crit). At first glance, those are kinda-acceptable odds, but given that Kent got attacked three times here, and a crit on any one of those would be an instant reset... that's worse. If you do the numbers on that, the actual odds of Artix having to reset here were about 39% (I assumed 50% hit odds for simplicity). And that's a bit scarier.
Kent kills the archer, and this puts him in range of the Devil Axe pirate. For as dangerous as that is, Kent's sword and high speed will give him plenty of avoid, and the pirate's going to have a 25% or so chance of damn near killing himself anyway.
This looks like a pretty good field to trigger them on.
Guy runs over to the forest to set them off.
Canas takes the weakened pirate the next turn and gets the best level he's gotten in both playthroughs thus far.
I never stopped believing in you, Canas!
And Guy finishes cleaning up on a silly Nosferatu shaman. Game, set, and match, bitches.
Village #4.
Village #5.
And that's a wrap. Let's go sailing, shall we?
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Resets this chapter: 0
Total Resets: 5
it is in bold tags