Part 53: Paralogue 4: Fight or Flight

By default these statues only increase the caps of the character they're named after, but with expensive upgrades they can upgrade the caps of their C or higher support partners and then finally the entire army. I don't generally bother - the upgrades are expensive unlike the initial purchase which is free. I could maybe spend some DVP upgrading important caps like speed but I'm saving it to recruit Flora and Izana just so I can show them off later.



Niles is being useful! And so's Mozu, by way of being so low leveled that the enemies she fights have barely any HP and can be one-shot by Niles. There's an accessory Mozu can wear to always be picked in the Arena that's worth investing in.



Time to make Elise a dragon again. She's capped speed now! It's possible she may also cap res but otherwise I imagine her growths are going to fall off massively now her big three stats can't go any higher.



Supports for the royal siblings! B for Azura / Elise, C for the other two. I wonder how many of these I can get.



These two get married and can now enjoy a nice honeymoon on the bench. I feel as if I have failed Leo somehow but no, it is he who has failed me.




Time to recruit another child soldier. Dwyer's paralogue might be the easiest of them all, even if you don't cheese it in such a way that you beat the boss and end the map on the first turn.



This is... kind of a defend chapter? Dwyer is at the top of the map under seige by various enemies. He has a few NPC bodyguards to protect him, but they'll get overwhelmed fairly quickly. You'll need to rush to them as quick as possible if you want to keep them all alive (or all but one alive) if you want the full reward.

The actual objective of the map is Defeat Boss though. As you might be able to tell from the minimap, said boss is very close to your starting position! An easy solution presents itself... Or at least it might, if you're not greedily squeezing out every last drop of EXP like I am.



Dwyer himself is a Troubadour and can only heal. He's got quite an arsenal here - Physic and the Sun Festal are both path-specific. Physic is buyable in CQ but always nice, the Sun Festal is a Hoshidan Mend staff equivalent that has 1-2 range in exchange for healing slightly less. Both of these staves are quite valuable and not letting Dwyer waste them before you can recruit him is a good incentive to hurry. Do this paralogue early enough and Dwyer won't have the staff rank to use Physic, which might matter if you really want all the staff uses you cna get.



His servants are bulky enough to survive the first enemy that comes for them, but they'll die shortly after without your help. They scale with the enemies and all have the same stats as each other. Incidentally they're all Generals (a Nohrian unit), while all the purple guys are Hoshidan units...



The boss is nothing special. There are two ways to kill him fast - open the door with Locktouch and rush him, or leave a unit in range of him and he'll rush to attack them over the fence. This chapter is easy even without doing this, but it is an option if you want. If you rush Jakob's S support really early in the story you might find yourself struggling against the promoted enemies so I guess it could be worth it then...



Leo and Felicia are off looking after their son, or so I'd like to pretend. They're benched for good unless I have spare deployment slots.



"Stay close" as in within one tile, please! Don't make Dwyer use his Physic staff.



Jakob he literally cannot use weapons. You raised this boy!!! (allegedly)



Camilla lets Jakob carpool on her wyvern to pick up his son from school, everyone else is going to engage the enemies nearby.



I could open this door turn 1, but I think I'll leave it closed to lure the Ninjas instead. Nina with Elise support and rallies will be fine on her own.



Or maybe she'll miss a 94% instead : /. This isn't the end of the world but it does mean only one enemy gets lured this turn.



The initial Swordmaster is just there to uselessly throw himself against the Generals, but subsequent enemies will be much deadlier. Dwyer's bodyguards won't hesitate to get themselves killed by attacking on their own turn as well...



Noooo Dwyer those staves are for named units! Not for "Other"s.



It occurs to me that Nina is my only unit capable of opening doors now. Silas doesn't have room in his skillset for Locktouch and Niles has been benched...



Doubling lategame Master Ninjas is basically impossible without stacking stats sky-high through pair-ups and various buffs. You'll have to gang up on them or use brave weapons instead.



The scary attack range of these Snipers separates my army from Dwyer. I don't know when they aggro, but when they do they'll shred his bodyguards.



Dwyer has about as much respect for his dad as his dad does for him. You don't need to recruit him here to get him but you may as well.



Dwyer's strength is naturally higher than his magic and he's very obviously meant to go Butler, but he doesn't make a bad Strategist either. I'd rather go Butler though, although to be honest I'm not convinced it's optimal.



His stats aren't spectacular but healers don't need great stats. He'll do better than Felicia and Jakob and that's what matters right now, although I might just run him alongside his father anyway.



Xander's level is too high and he earns like no EXP per kill, he's on Elise babysitting duty now. I do want to see their supports as well.



The Spear Masters are on the move and they will spell doom for the bodyguards. This guy has a capped stat! I can easily gang up on them with my army as it is now, but they are quite hard to take down if you try this paralogue early.



He's no match for a capped stats Elise with Axefaire though.



Now to fly around the left hand side and take out all the other enemies. The Bolt Axe is clearly her best weapon but I want her to gain tome EXP too.



Wow, and I was worried I'd start seeing nothing but blank levels from now on. Go Elise! With Trample now in her arsenal she'll do 10 more damage than normal to unmounted enemies when using the Bolt Axe...



These Snipers refuse to aggro as a group for some reason. I want to reach the boss but this guy is in the way!!!



Even with crit avoid reducing weapons it can be really hard to get enemies down to 0 crit sometimes. I'm not a fan of how much Fates nerfed luck's ability to reduce crit.



Azura you've already passed on your stats to your kids, why are you getting these levels now?

Foreign Princess works like an anti-Inspiration, but only on enemies you fight in multiplayer castle battles. Despite the confusing description it does not work on anybody else. It's not very useful.



That's Nina's strength capped. Niles has a strength cap modifier of -2, but child units get +1 to all caps so Nina's is effectively -1. Did you know that no unit who can only use magic in their base class has a negative strength modifier in this game? And that the worst negative magic modifiers (-3 and -2) belong to Azama and Jakob, two units who can use magic? The sum of positive and negative modifiers is equal for all units in this game, so I guess they didn't want units minmaxing their modifiers by putting their worst ones in stats they don't use.



Completely unrelated to anything, this game for some reason applies gravity to your unit's hair in battle so Peri's twintails flop up and down as she rides her wyvern. It is weirdly entrancing.



I keep waiting for these enemies to aggro but they won't. I guess I'll just have to walk allll the way over there...



Camilla is a physical unit now. She gains physical stats.



Lunge is a great skill but god help me I am too dumb to use it. Now even the weapon triangle cowers before Camilla!



Can't believe I have to move my units all the way over to the boss. This is an outrage.



Aw yeah! Nina won't equip this skill right now, but I will be using it in Chapter 25 to delete some problematic enemies. Unfortunately you cannot choose when and when not to expend a gold bar to use it so if any are in your inventory when you have the skill equipped they'll disappear rapidly.



splat



There are no swords next chapter I think so Peri doesn't need this just yet. Maybe I should swap Lunge back onto Camilla too?



Could have easily been one turn if I wanted. But EXP is nice.



Dwyer backhands a Master Ninja and instantly kills it, a technique I really wish he could use in battle. This line was just a generic "take this" in the original Japanese, slappyface was flair added in the localisation. I assume people have very strong opinions on this because I probably wouldn't know it otherwise.



Oh and I got this and a Partner Seal for keeping the guys alive. Xander may have it. Normally giving defensive boosters to units with almost nothing in that stat is a bit wasteful, but Xander's HP is high enough to let him tank a few magical units and make use of it.






Stats.


Next time: Dragon Herbs