Part 42: Kitsune Lair

Rampant urbanisation and deforestation has yet to drive foxes into the cities of the world of Fates, so we must instead intrude on their habitats to see them. I can't say I'm too happy about the prospect.



Oh no! If only Garon had given us an army instead of like a handful of guys. If we can't handle a few thousand enemy soldiers I'm not sure why we even invaded in the first place.



Unfortunately the detour we took passes through the Kitsune village, and they are somewhat wary of outsiders thanks to the many poachers who hunt them for their fur. I wish we could have just dealt with the soldiers...



Because this chapter suuuuucks. It's a giant rout map in the mountains with lots of rough terrain and relatively few natural chokepoints. Every single enemy here is a Kitsune, all of which have high movement in rough terrain, so it's a lot harder to establish chokepoints across bridges and forests when they can move through them easily.

This map feels like they took the worst aspects of all 3 routes and combined them into one. It's got Birthright's wide open map design, Conquest's brutal enemy skills, and Revelation's stupid and irritating gimmicks.



The gimmick of this chapter revolves around their ability to create illusions. Enemies can choose to use their turn to create an illusion, causing them to be unable to be attacked until their next action. They can't do this twice in a row and they have to use their one action per turn to do so, but this does allow them to approach your units without any danger to themselves, allowing large groups to quickly surround you with nothing you can do in retaliation.

This is not the only reason why this chapter is such a nightmare, but it's one of them. There is counterplay, but it's counterplay that encourages you to play in the most boring way possible, and that is deploying an incredibly small (perhaps even only one unit plus a support partner) army that is barely threatened by the kitsune and can just end turn their way through the entire map.



Every single enemy (besides the one right at the start to teach you how illusions work) comes with the Beastbane skill, which doubles the might of their weapons against beast units... Which will include all the horse mounted units that the average player probably has a lot of.

Every single enemy in this little group at the top right of the map has the Life And Death skill, so they'll deal and take 10 extra damage in combat. So this one Nile-Tails has 42 effective might.



Meanwhile everyone here on the left has Pass. Guess what happens when you combine Pass, the ability to almost entirely negate the movement penalties of terrain, and the ability to create illusions? The answer is pain.



The boss himself is small potatoes all things considered. He's tucked away in the corner of the map and his stats aren't too much higher than everyone else's. He'll debuff himself with his Beaststone+ every time he attacks.



It took me a few tries to figure out how much exactly I wanted to cheese this chapter... As you'll soon see, the answer is "a lot". It is not worth doing properly, it is not fun.



I had to cook 5 meals in a row before Silas decided he wanted any. He gets +2 speed from the meal, as well as extra HP and def from the tonics I gave him. He'll need them...



Kaze also gets a much overdue promotion. He's not going to be entering combat, but going Master Ninja increases the quality of the pair-up bonuses he gives. I had 2 spare seals and probably should have done this earlier.



I am absolutely low-manning this chapter. When enemies can walk right through your allies and then turn themselves intangible with illusions, units who can't consistently tank hits become a liability. Fliers are the secret to this map - when flying above the peaks they can't be hit by anything, allowing them to take breaks to heal or tactically retreat to influence the movements of enemies.

One mistake I did make was not deploying healers - I could have easily brought both Jakob and Felicia and then paired them up with Camilla and Beruka so they could hide away in the mountains and fly down whenever my units needed a top up. Shigure's a great fit for this chapter if you've recruited him, he can fly, heal, and potentially rally speed if he's hit level 5.



All enemies on this map deal only physical damage. You could easily deploy someone like General Benny and tank the entire chapter, taking like 5 damage at most from the strongest attackers. Wyvern Lords are great here because they have high defense and can easily retreat to safety.

Peri's not using the Beast Killer here because I want to raise her axe rank above E. She might break it out if she needs it.



Some units from the left and right sides of the map will aggro instantly, but otherwise no group will approach until someone enters their range. None of this initial vanguard have Pass or LaD, so they're not too threatening.



It's a good strategy to deliberately not provoke any other group until they've been defeated. I feel no shame in doing this chapter the lamest way possible because this is the lamest chapter.



Silas can sit on the mountain tiles while Elise gives him bulk from the inaccessible peak tiles. The mountain tiles also have the bonus of boosting Silas's avoid...



The initial wave might be weak but I still don't want to fight them all at once. I'll split them up between my two combat units...



Not only do all the enemies have high skill and speed, the Nine-Tails also have innate class bonuses to crit and avoid. So you will both struggle to hit them and frequently face 2-5% crit chances against them. Bronze weapons are helpful if you want to not go insane.



Peri can safely retreat to these peaks whenever she's low on health. Unfortunately all she has to heal with is this one Concoction she's just used.



Corrin may be near useless in this map thanks to her beast weakness, but I have a cunning plan that requires her...



Which as you probably guessed involves Vow of Friendship. She just needs to take a single hit to drop her below half health, then she can swap back to Elise and retreat.



Waiting on peak tiles allows Peri to bait one unit at a time, but unfortunately peaks are surrounded by mountains that give +20% avoid to her attackers. It's quite hard for her to hit anything even with Heartseeker.



Putting Corrin in front for a turn meant that Elise had to eat an attack when they swapped. She might be good for providing boosts to Silas with her skill, but as a combat unit she's nearly useless here. High avoid and res means she can't hit anything and can barely hurt what she can hit.



Maybe Elise can't damage the enemies in combat, but she can hit them with Savage Blow.



Even this one group of enemies has been somewhat troublesome for my two units. Peri can at least move back and forth between peaks to bait enemies away from Silas to keep the heat off of him.



It was at this moment I realised I really should have brought a healer. Silas only has a single vulnerary, and there are no more in my convoy. My plan was for him to heal damage back with Sol, but he needs to actually learn that for my master plan to work.



At least he's slowly getting closer to unlocking it. Quick Riposte will help him cut through enemies a little faster so they can spend less turns harassing him.



My amazing screenshotting skills didn't quite capture it, but Good Fortune is actually useful here - a chance to heal 20% of his HP can save him from death. I can and will hit end turn multiple times in a row to cheese out heals until he gets Sol.

Shoutout to my last playthrough of this game where I spent almost 300 turns in this chapter building up axe rank for a Wyvern Lord Selena that very, very slowly healed her HP up with GF in between every single combat encounter.



Peri unfortunately has no such skill. This is why I should have brought a healer! With her health so low she's not going to be good for any more combat this chapter, which means no more axe rank : (



The initial wave is finally down, and I may have spent a very large number of turns waiting over and over to heal Silas back to full. These guys all have Pass but when Silas is the only unit they can attack anyway it doesn't matter.



All the modifiers he's got add up to an absolutely huge amount of damage. Unfortunately OHKOs don't build guard gauge as fast as doubling does.



Illusions in this situation do nothing but waste my time and allow Silas extra turns to proc GF, but they're still annoying. Kitsune won't bother with them if they can kill you, but if they can't hurt you they'll stall as much as they can.



At least they have a bunch of cool loot to drop. Corrin will like this.



This exact position is the best camping spot. Nobody can get Elise and she can be adjacent to Silas to buff him while also slinging spells at enemies to build tome rank and activate Savage Blow.



About time! Both the defense and Sol. Good Fortune is too helpful right now so I'll get rid of Shelter instead. I must remember to put it back at the end of the chapter...



I had to wait about 25 turns for the 3 procs I needed to heal Silas to full HP. His luck isn't high enough for a luck% heal to be very reliable...



But now I can lure the LaD squad. I absolutely would not want to face them without Sol to top me up.



Thankfully the unpromoted enemies don't hit very hard. For some reason this chapter has level 20 unpromoted units despite the last one having everything promoted - I guess they wanted to show off regular Kitsune as well as Nine-Tails?



Ohhh yes. Big damage + Sol = big slurp. Even Silas's slightly over 30% activation rate isn't quite reliable, but it is enough to keep him alive without much danger.



Unfortunately unpromoted enemies are worth 1 EXP to him at this point, and his sword rank over B won't carry over to MN thanks to lower caps. At least he's building support with Kaze.



Move Silas, hit end turn a bunch. Thrilling gameplay I know. This chapter sucks, it's not my fault!!!



But what if illusions made it even worse? What does this even achieve just attack me please



This is another perfectly safe spot to fish for SB procs. Turns out there's quite a few of these in this map.



72 turns and I am finally engaging the boss. I feel a little shame.



Peace.



Silas is now hugely overleveled. Kaze also managed to steal a quick level...



This could be a tragic and emotional moment were it not established multiple times before that we can bash an entire army with deadly weapons in the heat of battle and not actually kill them. Instead it just looks like Azura really hates foxes.



Well I completely failed in my quest to raise Peri's axe rank. At least Silas got Sol?


Next time: wind