The Let's Play Archive

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest

by midnight_lasagna

Part 15: Invasion 1


We are fucking under attack!!!

To allow every player to experience battles in their castle even if they don't have friends or an internet connection, Fates gives you 3 optional "invasions" that you will unlock as you progress through the game. Each invasion is a battle in which you must defend your castle's throne from a variety of enemies, although what enemies you'll face in each one depends on the route you're playing. Not surprisingly, Conquest gives you the hardest ones.

Normally castle battles are worth 0 EXP in Conquest, but because there's a set amount of these invasions and they can't be farmed for EXP, the game lets you gain EXP from defeating enemies as normal. The first invasion is basically a free win and a great chance to build supports and feed kills to your weaker units. But the second two...



Anyway who cares about that because we got some Cabbages!!! Cabbages boost Resistance when cooked in the Mess Hall. They're also good for you, which is why they don't taste particularly exciting.



In prepartion for this invasion I shall try to arrange my castle a little more defensively. There's not really a lot you can do in the first place since enemies can easily destroy any buildings you place in their way, but it's at the very least handy to put in some effort since the location of buildings will determine where your units can be placed.



Haitaka won't join our army unless we give him some jewelry and a steak dinner. My only other option is to constantly attempt to persuade him between chapters. I don't really care about actually using him so I'll just yell at him until he joins and then bench him.



Silas & Jakob get a C support, Arthur and Elise get an A one. I'm not transcribing these supports but some of them are genuinely good. Elise and Arthur's was very sweet! I bet their eventual S support will completely ruin that sweetness.



Oh I didn't mention this before, but Naginata weapons (Hoshidan lances) provide +1 def and res to the user, at the cost of being a little weaker than Nohrian lances. Mozu's Brass Naginata has gone to Silas in case he ever needs to sacrifice power for more bulk.



Time for the invasion. At the bottom we have a bunch of paired up Mercenaries. The boss is slightly stronger than his cohorts and is carrying a Goddess Icon, which may or may not go to Niles again.



On the left and on the right are some generally unimpressive mounted units. As a general rule, the enemies at the left and right of an invasion will be much less weaker than the ones at the bottom, but they will also be closer to the throne.



Oh and here's Lilith, positioned in the middle. She won't move but she will attack enemies with her long-range breath. If this were Birthright she would have a long-range heal, and if this were Rev she would have both. I've been giving her all my Malk between missions so she's full of Vitamin R.



Every building is a deployment slot, which means you'll need to have placed at least 10 units to bring the maximum amount of people. Which is just enough to leave Effie behind...

I've piled all my buildings at the left and right, so I can immediately handle the invaders on either side and then have my army meet in the middle to handle the boss and his cronies.



Some buildings will boost the stats of your units so long as they're intact, so you might see some big damage numbers that don't quite make sense. A smart player can position those buildings as far away from the enemies as possible to ensure they last throughout the whole fight, but I kinda just placed them wherever.



Maybe I should skip some of these levels. I like posting them as they happen to give a sense of the flow of the battle, but I'm already out of commentary for Azura.



The problem with having your deployment slots scattered everywhere is sometimes you forget people are even there. Jakob... can go find someone to heal.



Behold, OHKOs! Odin Dark's true power is revealed...!

(he's got +6 attack from nyx & the treehouse building and wyverns have terrible res)



Property damage! The prison is destroyed, and all my captives get sweet, sweet freedom!!!

Nah just kidding it'll be back when the map is over. Enemies will destroy buildings if they can, generally prefering to do so over attacking your units. But sometimes they won't? Honestly, the AI's unpredictability makes me not like these battles. Sometimes they'll ignore both targets and rush straight for your throne.



Here's an example of the AI's weird behaviour. I guess these Mercs wanted to avoid Lilith's range so they go to the right for some reason. How annoying.



The demise of my damage-boosting treehouse makes everybody suddenly stop being so OP. This is fine, it means two people can get combat experience from this enemy!



GO UP NOT RIGHT YOU'RE INVADING WRONG!!! I swear, medieval invaders have had hot oil dumped on them for less.



Oh, I... might have blocked off these bridges by placing this building in the wrong place. I blame the contractors, my designs were perfect!



Hmm, Azura levels up pretty fast. Much faster than dancers normally do!



All is now right in the world, the invaders are coming back up the middle. All my army is gathered to take down and Lilith can take potshots at them.



bap

If only I could bring her on missions : (



I forgot to mention this earlier, but this is a big part of how Conquest makes invasions tricky. You place your unit on the throne to defend it, the enemy Lunges themselves into your position and then captures it the next turn. Any invasion without a Lunge or an Entrap unit can just be cheesed by putting your best tank on the throne and not deploying anyone else.



Bye bye boss. Corrin and Silas form a chokepoint on a two tile bridge and everybody else attacks over it.



Aw yeah. I hadn't mentioned it before, but Corrin's doing really will with HP. Most units in this game have pretty awful HP growths but she seems to be proccing it a lot.



Noooo, he missed strength!!! I guess that streak couldn't last forever. Good job on everything else though.



This guy has an Armourslayer as well as the Steel Sword he's got equipped. That's the type of thing that can trip you up and get someone killed, although I didn't actually bring anyone vulnerable to it.



Having helpfully chipped a couple of enemies, Lilith gracefully exits the map. Don't worry, she'll come back. She respawns just like buildings do.



An important thing to note in this game is that the multiplier for Killer weapon crits is actually x4, not x3! So a crit from this guy would have killed Odin, had he the chance to hit him in the first place. I once got a unit killed by a killer weapon crit from an attack that would have otherwise done 1 damage when my own unit had 4 HP left. It was humiliating.



Odin really wants to be a good unit this run. Who am I to stop him?



Niles becomes more Nileslike. Yay Niles.



Oh I forgot to screencap the end slate but I think that was 12 turns? I also got two DVP which means I can afford two buildings! Invasions give 2 and a half DVP as a reward for completing them which is very cool.


...invasions are short and the next update will likely be quite long so I'm getting a load of castle stuff out of the way here.




Silas x Corrin A, Niles x Mozu & Odin x Niles B, everyone else C. All of these conversations were genuinely interesting, I'm a little sad I'm not posting them. You can probably find them pretty easily if you search though.





Am I ready for Chapter 10? Maybe... I'll definitely be buying a tonic or two before then.




Azura
Songstress (HS: Sky Knight)
A+ Support Classes: Elise (Troubadour)
Personal Skill: Healing Descant (Allies within 2 tiles recover up to 10% of their HP at the start of player phase)
Growths (With Default Class):
HP: 25% (25)
STR: 50% (60)
MAG: 25% (25)
SKL: 60% (70)
SPD: 60% (70)
LCK: 40% (60)
DEF: 15% (15)
RES: 35% (35)

Azura is this game's Dancer unit, although what she actually does is sing. There is no FE game in which a Dancer is not, at the very least, one of your best units. Letting one of your units move again is just a really really useful thing! It lets you move units farther than they normally could in a turn, it allows your best combatant to attack twice, it lets you fix positioning errors... No matter how you play the game, you're always going to want to make room in your army for your dancer.

Azura however is special in that the mechanics of Fates are really kind to her. There are three things she has going for her that most other dancers don't, and those are: Special Dance, Dual Attacks, and the Shelter skill.

Special Dance is a skill that Azura gets at level 10 that boosts the Skill, Luck, and Speed stats of the unit she dances by 3 points for a turn. Thanks to her early join time and the high rate at which she earns EXP, she'll probably unlock it quite soon. Dual Attacks allow Azura to make use of her weirdly high strength growth without ever initating combat herself, something a dancer pretty much never wants to do. It also lets her contribute to combat without ever getting hit, something that would otherwise spell doom for her. Lastly, the Shelter skill can let her dance more than a single term per turn, although it takes some setup and isn't easy to pull off. An unpaired Azura dances a unit, another unit Shelters her, a third unit swaps Azura from the Shelter unit's formation to their own and then swaps their formation, putting Azura in front so she can dance again. She won't be able to move from where she is without ending her turn, but if you plan carefully you can absolutely do some neat tricks with two dances in a turn regardless.

Combatwise, Azura hits fast and hard and dies if anything ever hits her back. Some Dancers can be weirdly tanky when fed EXP, Azura is not one of them. She's also quite viable as a combat unit, especially as a Kinshi Knight where she can take advantage of high mobility and ranged weapons to strike without being hit, but the waste of her refresh ability is absolutely not worth the cost unless you're just messing around. If you want then you can grind Azura to level 40 in Chapter 5 if you have like 3 hours spare to get a briefly monstrous combat unit, but you should never do this.

Azura's growths matter more when considering her as a mother. Her kids will be fast and strong and not impacted too hard in the magic department if they're meant to be magical attackers, but they will be a bit squishy. Regardless of husband she will always have a unique child of her own, Shigure, so you will need to consider the stats of her husband when marrying her off if you want to optimise your child units.

Friendship sealing her with Elise is absolutely not worth it so don't bother unless you really don't want a Dancer. I guess Azura could make use of some of the class's passive abilities, but even then you'd be depriving yourself of refreshes for at least a chapter...

TL;DR:
Pros
Cons
My Rating: Should maybe consider learning a second song to sing


Nyx
Dark Mage (HS: Outlaw)
A+ Support Classes: Mozu (Archer), Effie (Knight), Charlotte (Fighter)
Personal Skill: Countercurse (Enemies receive half the magical damage they inflict on enemy phase)
Growths (With Default Class):
HP: 30% (30)
STR: 5% (15)
MAG: 50% (70)
SKL: 35% (35)
SPD: 50% (60)
LCK: 20% (20)
DEF: 15% (20)
RES: 30% (40)

Oh boy, it's time for the worst unit in Conquest...? Second worst, perhaps? Maybe third or fourth? I think there's some not so good prepromotes and kids with awkward recruitment chapters that you could say are less useful. If you don't consider pair-up stats to be part of a unit's useabiliy then I think you could argue she's better than Charlotte...? Maybe Benny too if you're super into good turncounts?

Anyway. Nyx has exactly two good stats, magic and speed. And they are both pretty good, although I don't think a natural 50% in two good stats is enough to justify a complete lack of growths anywhere else. She hits fast and hard and can do so with relative safety. Odin, who is otherwise a great Nosferatu tank, struggles a little in the "actually dealing magical damage" department, so she's definitely got that over him. Elise requires a Master Seal in order to make use of her great offensive stats, Camilla's magic is pretty bad, and Leo won't be showing up for a while, so Nyx does have some time as the best user of tomes to deal actual damage. Otherwise... she's not very good.

Nyx's absolute non-existant bulk makes her rather hard to use. Her HP and defense will rise once in a blue moon, and her average resistance fails to tank much when her HP is so low. Countercurse, while a cool ability in theory, does not do very well when the target barely has any HP to countercurse with in the first place. Nyx will die if anybody so much as thinks mean thoughts in her direction. Her skill and luck are also atrocious so she's going to have trouble hitting a lot, and be in danger of getting crit to death by any attack that isn't already one-shotting her. Her bad accuracy can be fixed somehwhat by Heartseeker, but standing right next to an enemy more often than not means eating a counterattack she really can't afford to face. It is safe to say that she will really struggle tanking with Nosferatu without tonics or a great support partner.

Otherwise, Nyx is mostly there for her utility. As a support partner she gives magic and speed, making her a great wife for Odin or Leo. Her stats mean any kid she has will be fast and magical, although even glass cannons like Ophelia don't appreciate Nyx making their defenses even worse. As an Outlaw she can open locks and shoot enemies from far away with the Shining Bow, and maybe even kill some flying units with regular ones if her weapon is good enough. Adventurer Nyx can make use of her magic stat to heal, too. A Nyx who's going to be a support partner and nothing else is a good candidate for early promotion, something she'll only need to earn a single level to qualify for. As a Dark Knight or Sorcerer she can even contribute fairly well to early game combat before eventually turning into a stat backpack.

Nyx is definitely an underwhelming unit, but even she has ways to contribute even without seeing any combat at all. I think that makes her better than a lot of other games's bad characters. That's pretty cool! And if you really want, you can give her a good support partner, some statboosters, and maybe a tonic or two, and she'll be a cool offensive mage who can last into the lategame. She's certainly not unusable!

Friendship seal wise, Nyx can potentially appreciate the Archer class. It'll make her more accurate and give her some cool skills she can take back into classes that suit her more. She can also get HP + 5 from Fighter if you really want...? And if you really, really want, you can make her a General and slap a Bolt Axe on her. I'm sure that would at the very least be pretty funny.

TL;DR:
Pros
Cons
My Rating: The third best girl in Hades?


Next time: Camilla.