Part 70: Night of Farewells
Is it ever explained why this water, and the rest of the map is purple? I mean, if your non amphibious/flying characters get stuck in it they just stay there, no damage or anything, so it’s not “evil” water. Your units are just stuck on a tile they normally can’t enter surrounded by tiles they normally can’t enter/move through. This level would have probably looked a lot nicer if they just made it use the normal castle pallet.
Magic torches, probably.
Time for an awkward jump to the confrontation with Sonia, right before she brings down all the bridges.
: Lyn! Look out! This way!*bridges disappear*
: Ha ha ha... You are the sinners who hurt my Lord Nergal. I will not let you die swiftly.: Whoa! This place is filling with water!
: The path vanished... This water prevents us from moving forward or back.
: Nino! Jaffar! Are you all right?
: Yeah! We're fine!
: ...
: Uh?: Th-Thank you. For...helping.: Mm... Did you get wet?: ...I'm fine.: That's good.: Hector... Why are you being so nice all of a sudden? Are you feeling OK?
Anyway, Night of Farewells. This chapter is such a disappointment after Battle Before Dawn. Regardless, we now have a little girl with crippling mommy and abandonment issues to turn into a murdering machine, so let's start with that.
First thing is to stuff her with the Afa's drops so we can see no real benefit from doing so by the end of the chapter. We're also giving her a Body Ring to help that abysmal constitution a little bit. She's still weighed down a little by the Thunder tome, but she's essentially starting with an extra 2 speed because of it, and she needs all the help she can get.
Thank you Japan for never letting me look at stuff like this without getting at least a bit suspicious about the original writers and/or the translators. Artix explained to me what “increasing her maturity” does (+5% to each stat’s growth), but the fact that you made a little girl more “mature” and used a “Body Ring” on her to up her stats just makes me go
.It’s possible you may be reading a bit far in to this...
...Just a little bit, yes. And even if you weren’t, Nino’s 14, and most of the cast is written as being somewhere between 15 and their early 20’s, so it’s not that bad.
And he's not coming on this map, but we'll go ahead and promote Eliwood too.
Now then, something new.
It's so much easier to talk about strategies and enemies when you can see the entire map. Damn I wish I had this program earlier in the LP.
Damn I wish I could use that program in MY LP. Stupid horrendous pseudo-3D maps.
Stupid reasonably OK-looking actual-3D maps...
As you will probably note, there are a couple Ballistas hanging around, and it's in our best interests to at least keep the snipers off of them. To that end, Farina has the Delphi Shield and she'll be cleaning out the island immediately to our east, and eventually she and Fiora will make their way up to the northeast corner. Fiora will be holding off the pegasi in the southwest corner, and everyone else will be making their way around to get to Sonia. It's going to be slow going, since we're going to be training Nino up as much as possible along the way.
I think I can see one behind the Hero on the island of swordsmen to the direct right of the start. At least I think that’s what that brown smudge of pixels on the horrendous purple background is.
Enemies of note include the island with mages, who all have Bolting except for the sage (who has a Silence staff), the island with Bishops who have a Sleep and Berserk staff (and the stealable Angelic Robe is back, but fuck that noise), the Druid in the southeast corner has Luna and a Sleep staff, and of course Sonia still has Bolting.
It’s a return to regular Fire Emblem Bullshit. As was said, a nice break after Battle Before Dawn. But still very much requiring caution.
Sonia is still pretty rough, but having a competent Canas will go a long way in our favor this time. 2 HP, 2 Mag, 2 Skl, 1 Spd, 2 Res, and her Con has inexplicably dropped from 7 to 4. This means she has 0 AS when she's using Bolting, and even Fimbulvetr will drop her to about 11 AS. She's sturdy, but that's about all she has going for her here.
I would very much like to hear the explanation for this. Not that I’d complain about it, all things considered, but it’s pretty weird.
Farina starts us off strong by critting on the sniper, and Fiora follows up by killing the southern falcoknight. A very meh level, but she's now only one off the skill cap.
Being weak to arrows don’t mean shit when there’s no archers alive to fire back on the next turn! That and letting a Sniper use the ballista he’s standing on sounds like a bad idea even to someone like me who’s barely versed in Fire Emblem.
Bartre what are you doing, how do you have so much resistance?
He's actually on his averages for everything else, but ahead by 2 Res.The spectre of the useless Res blessing has once again returned to haunt this playthrough.
And Farina levels up by the power of "Not getting hit by Bolting." Pretty much the best possible level for only two or three stat-ups, though.
For how annoying his lack of speed and such usually is, Bartre is really convenient here. Basically anyone that hits him directly will be left just barely alive, and Nino can easily clean up behind him. Take this guy, for example.
Free experience for your weaker characters is never a bad thing in any RPG. And besides, this is Japan. The younger the kid, the more competent and deadly, therefore we must get young Nino leveled up, stat!
Hehe. “Stat”. Remember that I said this. It’ll be much funnier later than it is now.
Like so. Not amazing, but that's certainly not a bad first level.
And then, our three-man front keeps her out of the firing line. It's not the fastest moving, but it keeps us moving forward.
Meanwhile, Farina gets to work on the mage island. Kent and Fiora keep themselves busy by killing wyverns coming from the southwest corner.
Kent, what is your aversion to good levels?
Raven makes an unfortunate decision to take a nap.
Another Bartre-Nino combo resulting in a mostly terrible level.
Some Magic’d be nice, kid.
Silly mages, you can't even hurt Farina! And now she can stab things even better.
This bishop displays excellent decision making skills and berserks...Nino. Yes, the little girl who can barely even hold the tomes she's using.
The other bishop misses Jaffar with the sleep staff.Does a berserked unit still gain experience when slapping his or her friends around? And do your units counter-attack? Because that would be a wonderful dick move for screwing over Nino getting experience, or a great way to get your weak, squishy, low level mage killed by having her attack one of your big, beefy death machines like Bartre.
No and no, fortunately. This will be demonstrated.
Specifically, a berserk unit gets no experience for attacking a friendly, and said friendly does not counter-attack. Should a berserk unit attack an enemy, then everything plays out normally.
Oh, you asshole, hiding just outside of Fiora's range. Guess we'll have to do this the hard way (well, relatively speaking, at any rate).
This ought to do the trick. If even one of them crits, the berserk bishop is dead, and if neither one does, Bartre can hit him with a longbow. The second hit crits, and Canas Lunas his friend to death.
Oh no, I think I might have to restart the chapter, this is so debilitating.
Annoyingly, she can still run through units, so I do have to heal up Hector after a turn or two.
Bridges appear to the south, so it's time to move forward once again.
The biggest problem I can see with this map (other than the fact that whoever designed it really had a thing for lavender tilesets) is that it’s mostly an exercise in waiting, especially if you managed to lose your flyers. Kill everyone, wait a turn or two, kill the next set, bitch that you can’t get your healer next to the unit you need it due to the one-tile-wide paths, wait a turn or two, repeat. The last mission made you dash ahead in a panic, this one makes you sit there and wait at the DMV for your driver’s license.
Given what we know about IntSys, this fits right in, honestly
Oh boy.
Pegasi and pirates from behind, so our flyers head back for the pegasi, and the pirates can come to us for Nino.
Good god, a Priscilla level without luck? How did that happen?
Guy and Canas have wandered into Sonia's Bolting range. This is in no way intentional, no sir.
Jaffar takes a nap at a fairly inconvenient time, what with the generals marching up here. Also, black bar image again, but it's really obvious what's going on here and I don't really care enough to replace it.
Canas physics Fiora for an alright level.
God knows she could use some magic, but this is fucking embarrassing.
Thankfully that's the last of his sleep staff charges, but Bartre takes a snooze regardless.
Another level of exactly what Farina needs to keep on the active roster.
Nice to see someone’s getting the levels they need, at least.
Bastard. Nothing I can really do to get close enough and stop him from getting the treasure, but he doesn't even have a set of lockpicks I can get mad about not having Legault with me to steal.
Nino's final level of the chapter is pretty good. It looks worse than it is, she's actually on all her averages but behind by 3 HP and ahead by 2 Res. Let's hope that changes in the next chapter.
The red squares represent our friendly Luna druid, and we all know how to deal with Luna druids.
Did you guess "sparklies"? Because if not, you haven't been paying much attention to the LP. Guy is also a single point off of his strength cap now, as well.
God-Unit status confirmed, if it wasn’t already. Cemented, perhaps.
Actually killing druids is best done with an axe to the face, however. Another bad level for Bartre.
And...fuck. Guess we're going to have to hang out for a turn or two.
On the other end, our peg sisters are going to clean out the corner. Farina's doing most of the heavy lifting since she has the Delphi shield, but they have to actually hit Fiora before they're a danger to her.
The archers all have ~90 Hit, and Fiora has 58 base Avoid. Plus a tad more if she’s supported with Farina.
She is, but it’s only a C so you can add an extra 2 avoid for 60 total.
More mediocre levels from Prissy.
Bleh. She didn't even manage to kill the sniper.
I’ve been saving all the laughter at bad levels for Fedule, but damn. Even I can’t let three 1-stat level ups in a mission go uncommented on.
And I’ve been mostly restraining myself out of some misguided sense of sympathy, but yeah. This is pretty... bad.
Bridges are back, but Hector and Nino are still stranded until another bridge appears or Fiora and Farina get back.
And a few turns later, it's time to put an end to this. We know exactly how to deal with resistance-heavy mages. Fortunately, Luna does not crit. Both Raven and Fiora are within 10 exp, and if Fiora attacks with her javelin outside of support range, she'll leave Sonia alive, letting Raven come in to get the killing blow, and both should get the level.
So, of course, Fiora ends up critting with her first javelin.
Very nice level, though. We hang out a little to let Canas and Nino get their C support, and get the hell out of here.On one hand she’s a kill-stealing bitch. On the other hand, well, at least it’s not another 1-point stat up.
Though, I don't think we've really gotten it through that Hector doesn't like Jaffar. We should have another conversation for that.
: ...: Dunno how you feel about it, but I want you to know that I don't trust you. Every time I see your face I want to smash it in. I'm not like the others. Especially not Eliwood... He's softhearted to a fault. He believes you. But if he says you're one of us, then that's that.: ...: I've got one thing to say. You will NOT betray Eliwood. If you do anything even remotely suspicious, for any reason whatsoever, I will cut you down where you stand. Remember that.: ...: ...Look at those ellipses. So much “tension”, so little actually said, so many abused and wasted periods...
I’unno. I think that, for once, the ellipses here are actually put to pretty good use. For once.
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Resets this chapter: 0
Total resets: 37
Next time: There's a reason this chapter was basically a breather. The bullshit train rolls on!