Part 62: Living Legend
Ah, Living Legend. Ever a pain in the ass, and we all know what HHM does to maps that weren't a pain in the ass, let alone ones that already were.
Even among Asshole Chapters, this one is special, for reasons you can no doubt pretend to be surprised by very soon.
We've relocated to the southeast corner this time, which is very convenient given that this is where Hawkeye shows up and the Ocean Seal is buried. We're limited to 8 units, and we have to scrounge up 700 exp to get to Genesis. Considering that we're mostly using promoted units and the really easy sources of experience are already maxed out (ie our healers and Ninian), we're going to have to get creative. Lyn came along in an attempt to have a good unit to dump exp on, but as you'll see, she... underperforms a bit.
I often wonder if they put this arcane EXP requirement in to screw over people who arena abuse. Doesn't seem so crazy, does it?
I suppose, but even with a team of high level unpromoted units, you'd still hurting for experience here. Guy is getting 8 exp a battle, and most of the promoted units are only get 5 or 6, so it wouldn't be that much more helpful.
Jasmine is the farther of the two bosses from us. He's traded his Guiding Ring for a White Gem that I totally forget to steal before killing him. His bonuses are 4 HP, 2 Str, 2 Skl, 1 Spd, 1 Res, but like I said in New Resolve, we've got our own promoted units now and their bonuses are becoming more and more insignificant compared to their original stats, so it really doesn't matter.
White Gem? Bah. It's only 10,000G. Who needs money, anyway? What is this, Hector Hard Mode or something?
4 HP, 3 Str, 1 Skl, 1 Spd, 1 Def, 1 Res. Paul is still the more dangerous of the two here, but not by a whole lot. The extra strength will make his critical hurt that much more, but only if he can land it in the first place. Also, as an extra "Fuck you" from HHM, Paul has been dropped from L8 to L5 and Jasmine from L9 to L4, which can significantly decrease the amount of experience you get from killing them depending on who does the deed.
More! More dick moves! Moooore!
Jasmine's Guiding Ring has been relocated to this mage, and it still has to be stolen.
Pent himself has relocated to the far side of the desert, which complicates things a lot. You need to get someone over there as fast as possible, because unlike ENM, every drop of experience is precious in this map, and the more of it he sucks up, the longer you're going to be here spamming staves and other stuff. Of course, the only choices you really have for doing that job are Fiora and Florina, neither of which are particularly sturdy, and the desert is littered with wyverns and archers.
All in all, very HHM.
Now let's get this started.
Oh, one other thing. There's also a sandstorm rolling through, so on top of all this other stuff, it's now a Fog of War map. Now we can get started.
OK, I was kidding before. That's enough dick moves.
Here's our proper starting position. Our first priority is to knock out Paul and Jasmine, because we really don't need the bosses wandering around in the dark where we might accidentally bump into them. Fiora is going straight to Pent, and Raven is going to head north and ultimately cut to the west after cleaning out the northeast corner. Pretty much everyone else is going to be hanging out at our base camp and slowly working their way west.
This is the first (but certainly not the last) time I end up just rolling the dice. Fiora is pretty dodgy, but I didn't remember just how many wyverns were around, and I was counting her to easily dodge Paul/Jasmine if they turned on her.
Something she fails to do even with her Iron Sword equipped, most likely due to the support bonuses. That Hand Axe had to have the power of bullshit on its side.
Fortunately for Fiora, the wyverns decide they'd rather go after Lyn. She dodges the first, but the second leaves her at 1 HP with a mage yet to move in range. He misses, thankfully.
And on his first turn, Pent drops 7 enemies with barely a scratch on him.
OK, one last dick move: the Fucking Fire Emblem AI™. Because most enemies will never not attack someone when they can attack someone, any enemy who's in range of Pent but not in range of your guys will swarm right into the grinder. Pent himself will continue to charge towards more enemies, and...
Well, you did ask for more. Be careful what you wish for next time, Fedule.
Here comes Hawkeye. He and Hector have a quick chat this turn.
: ...Huh? Shade...
: ...: Hm! Waaa! Who... Who are you?!?: I'm Hawkeye, defender of this desert.: You're with them? You've got some nerve threatening me!: I will drive the bandits away. Guests need not fight.: ...Huh? He-Hey! What's going on?
Now we have a bit of a clusterfuck of units here. Lyn is at 1 HP, and a single hit from either wyvern will do her in, so her safety is our main concern. Physic would do nicely, but Priscilla is one space too far to get her with it, so that's not an option. At the same time, the incoming mage has the Guiding Ring, so I can't position anything where his only option is to attack Canas, because then we're restarting the map. So Legault kills the closest mage, and Canas kills the archer behind the Guiding Ring mage. Guy follows by killing a wyvern, and Hawkeye simply rescues Lyn for the time being.
The remaining wyvern finds Merlinus too tempting a target and wastes his turn. No complaints from me, I suppose. Hector offs him next turn.
The sand makes it quite obnoxious to read at times, but Raven continues to prove how awesome he is.
Now we can set up to finish Paul. Hawkeye kills one of the mages, and Legault lifts the Guiding Ring from the other. Canas deals 30 damage to Paul on two hits of Flux, and Guy comes in to take out the trash.
The desert tiles give a small boost to avoid, and Guy isn't exactly a slouch in the Spd/Luck department, so Paul is pretty much hopeless here.
Fucking beautiful.
Never. Gets. Old.
In other news, Fiora has now reached Pent and can siphon some of that experience back to us. Rescuing him would be ideal, but there's too many wyverns around to do that safely.
Fiora gets a rather underwhelming level helping out Pent.
And look who just couldn't help himself and had to come by. But first, Legault drops that Guiding Ring with Priscilla.
Finally, a screen without that irritating "sandstorm" layer.
Anyway, Jasmine is too fast for Canas to double, so he switches over to Luna and nukes one of the supporting mages. Guy moves up next to Jasmine and takes out the other mage. He dodges Jasmine's hand axe in the enemy phase.
...and because I can't count, my video that was supposed to continue from here was overwritten. No problem though. Guy and Canas attack Jasmine next turn and Guy finishes him off the turn after. I immediately realize I forgot about his White Gem, but I have something like 75k gold, so money's not really a problem.
Guess who totally looked at the level up screen before doing this and actually tried to mimic the sprite
You crazy, crazy, fool.
Guy caps skill for his efforts. After dealing with Paul and Jasmine, we slowly work our way west and pick up treasure as we go. Legault in particular gets harried by a pair of shamans, but neither of them can actually hit him, so we let them go for now.
After finishing up grabbing treasure, all that's left is to end the chapter. One problem. We don't have 700 exp yet.
So we might as well milk this asshole for all he's worth. Something I figured out far too late into his 45 Flux uses was that for whatever reason, the game refused to let him attack without moving at least one square, so rather than sit there and attack Hawkeye, he decided to go back and forth attacking Hawkeye, then Guy, then Hawkeye, etc. This is quite unfortunate, because after saddling Hawkeye with the Devil Axe for extra avoid penalties, he was getting hit almost every turn, which was a free 5 or 6 experience for Canas or Priscilla to heal up.
...Fuck. Well, we do have a Barrier staff or two just lying around with Merlinus...
Between healing up Hawkeye when he got hit and Barrier-spam, we're finally above the threshold we need. Now let's get the fuck out of here. I don't ever want to see this chapter again.
Canas still doing OK there. Massively ahead in magic and skill, and pretty good otherwise.
Do your worst, game. I'm already getting desensitized to all this sidequest bullshit.
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Resets this chapter: 0
for certain values of "reset"
point taken, but it doesn't mean I give a damn
Total Resets: 30