Part 18: Rainbow Sage

Time to visit the Rainbow Sage. This is something that happens in every route, and every time there's a different gimmick. In Birthright, you face a bunch of enemies that have one stat capped and one at 0, with some really weird setups like a capped res no defense General. In Revelation, the gimmick is... there isn't a gimmick, unlike every other map in that route.



Awesome.



Sorry Selena & Beruka, I have no plans to use either of you... besides as support partners, maybe. Camilla's coming along since even if she won't be earning much EXP, she will help me not die.



This is a very strange map even before you get into the weird gimmicks it has. It consists of 6 different rooms, each linked by flights of stairs. Your units can warp between rooms using the stair tiles, which is a free action that costs no movement and doesn't end your turn. You can even use any excess movement you had left over when you entered the stairs. The left and righthand rooms are each separate paths that branch off of the starting room and meet back in the middle.

While normally a little tricky, this map is very easy to turtle your way through thanks to the amazing defensive utility of stairs and the complete lack of any sort of time pressure. The enemies in each room cannot use the stairs and will only aggro if one of your units enters a room or enters their range, and will walk back to their starting positions if you leave. Lunatic mode however throws a few curveballs...



The lunge ninja room now has an Oni with a Hammer. He's meant to make it a lot harder to beat this room with Effie and a Javelin, who takes little damage and can potentially one-shot a Ninja before it can Lunge her.



The room with the Hexing Rod and all the miracle Diviners now has an Archer. Camilla cheeses this room really easily and barely minds the Hexing Rod at all, but this Archer can easily kill her.



The room with all the Onis has a Seal Speed Ninja to slow down any speedy sword or tome user you were planning on beating the room with. Normally you could throw Corrin or Selena or Odin into this room and be fine.



Lastly, the Counter Archer room has a Diviner to, uhh... well I'll be honest he doesn't really do much of anything. I guess he's there to be able to attack Niles without being counterattacked, but Niles barely fears him at all. He's just there to complete the pattern.



Oh and the Samurai room has a Diviner and a Ninja to mess with your physically defensive units. This room is the deadliest of all, and also the only one that's non-optional. Fun!



There's no real need to split your army, but it makes things go a little faster. Corrin is going with the right gang but can't change her starting position. Camilla, Jakob, and Azura really want to be on both sides, but they're going on the right since I think they'll be more useful there. There's also a chest to grab on both sides but with no time limit Niles can swing by to grab both when the chapter's nearly over.



Nosferatu Odin is a no brain strat that clears out this room easily. Almost every unit here has Counter, but unlike Awakening it does not trigger on enemy phase, meaning the enemy cannot run straight at you to kill you with it. If it did work like that then the Diviner would be a lot harder to deal with!




Corrin and Silas wait just outside the Ninja's range. Unfortunately this also puts them in range of Rinkah, who hits hard and attacks at a distance.



Odin's brief streak of glory is over. Back to these types of levels...



Vow of Friendship activates to allow Silas to absolutely annihilate this ninja. Once again, the best way to deal with debuffs is to one-shot the unit that gives them.



Jakob and Camilla were standing here as backup but they can easily escape back up the stairs now they're not needed.



When Azura's got nothing else to do she should ideally be building supports with someone, who in this case is Jakob. Both of them are support units who don't contribute much to combat, so they have a lot in common!



Who needs careful positioning when you have Nosferatu? This Archer has counter but you can't counter when you're dead.



Oh and Setsuna is here too. She does not have counter, but she does have a special bow that lets her attack at either range, as well as Quick Riposte. Much like her playable self in Birthright she's not very threatening here.



Can't let Odin get all the EXP. Heartseeker lowers Setsuna's avoid so Elise doesn't miss her and get turned into a fine red mist in retaliation.



Decent.



Camilla will spoon feed her sister kills by heckling the enemy from a distance. Clubs are weaker than Axes but have higher crit rates, but Camilla doesn't care even if she does get crit.



...immediately I regret this because Camilla eats a -6 res debuff. All the Onis have Seal Resistance to soften up your units for the next room. You can just wait 6 turns for the buffs to go away though.



I do wish Rinkah would join you after this chapter, if only so someone else could grab her cool class. What's Hoshido ever done for her?



Time to not heal Corrin because I'm saving VoF for later. I must be vigilant and not heal her reflexively whenever I see her low HP bar.



This room looks a little challenging. If you can one-round the Oni then he can't Lunge you and he poses no threat. But I don't think I can...



Elise could just about reach the threshold with a Steel Axe, but if she misses (and she'd have a pretty good chance to) then she'd be toast. Odin meanwhile is nowhere near fast enough to double.



Unless...?



Niles's support gives him exactly enough speed to double the Oni. Of course that's entirely unnecessary if he's just going to do this.



Meanwhile, Camilla needs to be able to one-shot this Archer and double him to dispose of him with no danger of Miracle activating. It's merely a 4% chance for this unit, but that's still a 4% chance of Camilla getting arrow'd.



Nobody here will move unless you enter their range, so I can move my units forward while I figure it out.



This jerk comes with a Hexing Rod, a Hoshidan staff that cuts a unit's max HP in half... for the rest of the chapter. It does not wear off and you cannot restore it with an item or skill. You either need to take out the wielder quickly or find some bait who doesn't mind getting their HP cut in half.

Of course Azama is very resistant to being taken out quickly, thanks to his good bulk and plethora of skills that make rushing him a bad idea. He's got Counter, Miracle, and a personal skill that acts as a slightly worse counter but only when he's unequipped. Said skill is completely useless for him as a playable character but will ruin your day when he's an enemy.



Or I could just... not put her in range of the Archer and lure all the Diviners over instead. I'll wait for her res to recover before I do that though.



Meanwhile nobody I have on the left side wants to be in the ninja room, so progress on that front is going to have to wait.



Azura gets a lot of EXP when you're just waiting around for debuffs to go away.



Then I remembered that Jakob exists and would do a better job of luring the mages than Camilla would. He also doesn't mind eating a hex rod use at all, but that doesn't matter when it misses him anyway!



This is nice. Can't double even with Corrin's help though...



Begone, foul Archer. Miracle can't save him if he takes a hit at 1 HP!



This time Azama manages to hit his target, dropping Jakob's HP to almost nothing. Thankfully he'd still need to get hit 13 times by this mage before he dies.



Incidentally, Miracle proc'd twice here. It's only a 10% chance, but it's a 10% chance that will screw you if you rely on it not happening!



Oh you are so not defenseless. You're also a big jerk so you get no sympathy from me, even if your supports are kind of funny!



This is the divine retribution you get when you strike down a servant of the gods.



Okay, so. If I have Silas use his massive power to eliminate one dangerous enemy in this formation, I should be able to have him survive the enemy phase... Unfortunately there's a Poison Strike Ninja here, so I'm going to have to do some calculations in my head. Even if he can't damage Silas, he'll take 5 HP off at the end of combat, and lower his defense by 4...



I stalled three extra turns for this vital part of my plan: Inspiring Song (and not special dance like I called it in my analysis...). It will make Silas just fast enough to avoid being doubled by a Samurai with Life and Death, a deadly skill that increases damage dealt by both parties in combat by 10. Of course Silas would be strong enough to one shot him in retaliation, so in practice he wouldn't get to double, but...

...but I guess this skill was pointless after all? Oops.



Yeah that was definitely pointless. Whoopsie.



Here goes nothing. Those Samurai pairs wouldn't be a problem normally, but thanks to the Ninja debuffs they'll hurt Silas a decent amount. They also come with Lunge which means any attempt to lure the enemies over would instead have them drag my unit in range of everyone else.


I've done the calculations, Silas can survive! I hope. Dual guards and defense drops and poison strikes make my head hurt.



You'd think I couldn't complain about this, but even 1 extra point of bulk would really help right about now.



Yep, they were correct. Silas is alive, and everyone is softened up a bit and out of formation. Now this should be easy to clean up!



Now I just need to... escape somehow... Hmm.

Don't worry, this is a teaching moment! It is important to plan more than one phase in advance sometimes. The enemy is minus one Diviner but Silas cannot reach the stairs, and thanks to my VoF strategy both he and Corrin are on death's door, and all the healing I have is a Vulnerary.



Camilla grabs Jakob, gets Inspired by Azura, and doubles this Ninja. Inspiring Song saved me after all!



I switch to Corrin, she grabs Jakob, and stands next to Camilla and chugs a Vulnerary. All of this gives her as much bulk as physically possible. I deliberated on this a while and I think this was my best option...



Everybody decides to pile on Camilla instead, which I didn't really expect. I'm glad Azama missed her with a Hex earlier, but she still would be alive without the extra HP...



Unfortunately Corrin still can't escape, but she can kill this guy to make things easier...



And then Camilla can take back Jakob, make Corrin equip her Dragonstone, and use her speed to take out the lone Samurai. That's one enemy pair taken down...



Okay yep she definitely needed that Hexing Rod miss. I sure am glad things worked out the way they did.



Corrin still cannot escape, but Camilla flies down the stairs to be danced back up and put Jakob into position to give her a passive defense boost from the safety of this corner.



The reduced damage is greatly appreciated, even if it's only a small reduction.



Ohhhh my god that took like 20 minutes of panic thinking. But everyone is safe, and now they can be healed back up to full. I maybe could have planned that better, but I also could have planned that much worse!



A quick breather while everyone heals...



DIE



Well that fiasco extended the chapter by like 12 turns, and I still haven't found out how to beat the Ninja room with these clowns. Time to cheese it.



It's Kaze! And he's level 12. He joins at level 9 normally if he didn't get any EXP in the prologue chapters... Does this mean he'll be worth more EXP because I leveled him up a lot?

He's got Vantage and Heartseeker to mess you up a little, but otherwise he's just a slightly scarier Ninja than the rest of the ones in his room. I don't think his personal (Miracle but for units next to him, not himself) works when he's an enemy himself.



Pretty much all of these rooms are a lot easier if you cheat and do them from behind. If Camilla had gone down the left side instead I'd have done this with her...



I pressed start to skip the animation and I missed a crit... And everybody else missed their EXP! Nice job, Niles.



Time to rob the Rainbow Sage of his personal possessions. The Spirit Dust boosts magic, and the Enfeeble staff will be very useful for a boss next chapter...



Now to disentangle this mess. None of these fliers can actually move, but they've all got annoying skills. In addition to her own personal skill boosting her ally's attack by 2, she's also got Inspiration adding a further +2 to attack and defense. Not only that, but she's got an enemy/DLC only skill that makes her immune to anti-flier weapons and allows her to take advantage of terrain effects. So basically there's no point to her being a flier at all...



The jerks to the left and right of her have Bolt Naginatas. They don't hit hard, but they can surprise you.



Thankfully Hinoka's reluctance to move makes her and her friends easy to gang up on. Silas gets a boost from Camilla to one round this generic.



Silas is standing next to two royal princesses and is paired up with a third, he is invincible!



Silas,



Hinoka's personal cleric heals her back up. She's got an entire army to herself tucked away behind her...



Including these Samurai with Gentilihomme. They are mostly there for moral support.



Azura getting lots of levels is generally a sign I'm not playing very fast...



Only Wyvern Riders are allowed to be Corrin's sister.



How did this even happen? That's her worst growth! This place is cursed.



Well that could have been faster. I also could have been dead, so I'll accept it.



I'd say that's a complete lie, but Corrin's miraculous ability to not kill people by hitting them with a sword seems to be unique to Conquest.



Now we have a Ninja! His stats were better when we fought him just a second ago...


Next time: Pottery is disrespected.