Part 13: My Castle (Chapter 9)

Aw yeah, Berries. Berries increase magic when cooked into a dish. The lottery will be one of my only ways of obtaining ingredients not native to my castle, so bronze tier rewards are actually what I want the most.



Actually capturing enemy units requires a place to put them in, so we must build a Prison. I'd say it's less cruel to capture enemy soldiers than to kill them, but in this game we don't actually kill anybody half the time. So we're just collecting soldiers like they're Pokemon because we can.



The EXP gained from using staves is dependent on the level different between who you're healing and who's doing the healing. Spamming heal staves to level up units stops being particularly effective at higher levels and heal staves are expensive so I'm going to try and not waste them when I don't need to.



Okay fine I'll use my statboosters. Niles's luck is quite low but this should keep away those nasty 1 or 2% crits he tends to face in the early game. Given Niles's irreverent nature and status as the army's main pervert it's best not to think about what he's going to do with said icon.




B support for Corrin & Silas, C support for everyone else. I wanted to make a joke about a particularly buggy FE game for that first screenshot, but honestly I think this series is pretty bug free. I guess the GBA games have the mine glitch?




Here's the stats of every unit in the army to have leveled up so far. On the whole, I feel like my units are doing better than average? I think my Corrin is a little slow and my Silas is a little physically fragile but they seem to be doing well in every other area.




Not included with them are the stats of Mozu, who is not getting used but is getting an analysis:

Mozu
Villager (HS: Archer)
Heart Seal Classes: Effie (Knight), Nyx (Dark Mage)
Personal Skill: Forager (Recover 20% of max HP at start of turn if on Woods, Mountain, Waste, or Field terrain)
Growths* (With Base Class):
HP: 40% (50)
STR: 50% (60)
MAG: 15% (15)
SKL: 60% (70)
SPD: 65% (75)
LCK: 55% (75)
DEF: 45% (55)
RES: 40% (40)
*With Aptitude's 10% boost

Mozu is this game's villager/trainee archetype, which is to say a helpless child with atrocious base stats who when forced to fight will grow stronger at an incredibly fast pace. Or well I guess she might not be a child? The localisation of Fates aged every character up an adult, I'm not sure how old she was originally.

If you've ever played Awakening then don't expect Mozu to function much like Donnel. Villager is an actual class in this game with competent bases and promotion options, rather than a joke option you're meant to reclass out of the instant you can. This means you can keep Mozu as one all the way up to level 20 and promote her into an actually good class that uses lances, but it also means that unlike Donnel Mozu won't suddenly become great the moment you reclass her. She is also unlike Donnel in that even with her high growths she's still got the stats of a glass cannon, so unless you reclass her into something bulky she'll always be strong and fast yet fragile, unlike Donnel who will soon turn into a giant ball of capped stats.

I still think she's way better than Donnel is though, at least in Conquest! Donnel is a unit that starts off bad and ends up good in a game where every unit ends up good but most don't start off bad, but in CQ Mozu has a proper niche of her own thanks to her access to four different Hoshidan classes. As an Archer she'll quickly grow into a unit with amazing power and speed when attacking on player phase, and even passable enemy phase thanks to Conquest's love of tight maps full of corridors to attack over. She'll definitely outclass Niles in terms of raw stats once she gets going, although she does have to actually get going which is easier said than done. She can promote into either a Sniper for more sheer power and excellent skills, or a Kinshi Knight for flying mobility and the ability to use lances in exchange for slightly underwhelming stats and a bow weakness. If you keep her as a Villager she can eventually promote into a Merchant to gain access to the Profiteer skill, which gives her a luck% chance of finding Gold Bars at the end of the first 7 turns of a map. Given her high luck stat she's likely to find at least one or two per map, which is helpful in a game with otherwise limited funds. She can also combine the Quick Draw, Bowfaire, Spendthrift, and Life and Death skills from all across her class tree to make a build that does absolutely insane damage in certain situations and straight up one round or one shot bosses if you have the EXP and resources to swap around her class a bunch.

Mozu's biggest problem is, as hinted by her paralogue, her Tragic Start. Her bases are awful and her best class option requires spending a Heart Seal on her, something you won't have a lot of for a while. She'll need some combination of tonics, forges, and support partners to do any real damage on her own, and even with a bow to attack safely from a distance she's not going to have an easy time killing anything. Her joining chapter isn't a bad place to feed her EXP considering how little EXP anyone else will get from defeating the underleveled enemies there, but even if you don't care about turncounts or anything it's still a lot of time and effort. But a Mozu who's been chipping away at enemies with her bow should start to come into her own in Chapter 10, conveniently one of the game's hardest chapters where bow users are most appreciated. And even a level 1 Mozu can one shot Pegasus Knights with a forged Bronze Bow and maybe a tonic or a good support partner, so if nothing else you can use that chapter to train her up.

As for her reclasses, Knight is very fun if you want a bulkier Mozu, and Dark Mage sucks. Although I did make her one once when I did a silly reclasses run on Normal mode. She wasn't very good but I had a great time using her, and that's the real battle.

Oh and Forager is a skill that exists I guess? Situational healing skills are never great, especially on a squishy unit like her, but it's better than nothing.

TL;DR:

Pros

• Amazing growths make her very useful in the endgame
  
• Unique access to many different Hoshidan classes, all of which provide her with great skills
  
• One of the few units in CQ able to learn the Profiteer skill
  
• Likely to be your strongest bow user once she escapes from her bad bases
  
• A great mother for any non-magical child thanks to Aptitude
  
• Passes the Archer class to her husband or Effie (or Nyx but why would you do that...)
  

Cons

• Atrocious bases, requires babying or forged weapons & tonics to become self sufficient
  
• Needs a Heart Seal to be properly useful
  
• Terrible pair-up stats in her base class and bad dual attacks make it somewhat annoying to raise her support level if you're not using her as a combat unit
  
• Unlikely to be very good defensively even in lategame
  

My Rating: You're a good apple!