Part 8: Battle: Schrodinger's Frey

Part 6: Schrodinger's Frey (Battle)

Alright, time for the actual map. If you're really OCD and love checking the Lpix URLs, you might notice it jumps from like Capture88 to Capture150. I had to retry this one a lot. It wasn't super hard, I just totally fucked up a pretty simple mechanic. You'll see what I mean.

As soon as we enter the map, Cain starts talking again.







The guy loves his dramatic pauses that I already spoiled in the last update.



Oh, hey, I have something else to say about Draug! At the end of the Shadow Dragon prologue, Jagen talks to Marth as they're escaping Altea. If Jagen died in the prologue, sacrifice or otherwise, Draug talks to him instead.

The lines are exactly the same.

Shadow Dragon!



Finally, Steve might be able to do a significant amount more to the boss than the others.

Suddenly, another cavalier appears...



It's the new recruit Katarina mentioned.







You can just imagine Steve shrugging at the camera and rolling her eyes under the hair.



They do not actually talk after the battle. This is Steve's way of getting out of awkward talks.



Altea is currently under sanctions for WMD production.



This will prove more tedious than necessary.



So, here's Cecille. As a unit, she's got great skill and speed, but she's totally made of paper. Her base stats are pretty awful as well. With time, Cecille can grow into a decent unit, but there's really not much reason to use her when the game just tossed two better Cavaliers at us.

I think reclassing her into a myrmidon or Peg. Knight would be a good way to take advantage of her growths, but it doesn't fix her defensive issues.

What's more interesting to us is her inventory. She's got Steel Weapons, D rank items that are an upgrade to our current stuff. We'll want to distribute those, but Trading does take up a turn.



So, looking at the enemies on this map, Draug is the greatest threat, but the mage and archer can wreak havoc on Not-Caeda and Caeda respectively.

There's a safe zone from the mage for Wrys in that bottom corner, so I swap him down there, while using Caeda to lure the mage.



Trading with Cecille gets Steve Elfire, the next upgrade in magic. Should help her deal more damage against some of these guys, at a cost of a little accuracy.



Ryan trades for a Steel Bow and one of the Steel Swords...



Which I hand off to Luke.



So, hopefully this works out. The most important thing here is not to aggro Draug by stepping in his range. That's what fucked me up on previous attempts.



The archer goes for Luke, which is fine with me, he can take it.



That is substantially more worrying (And I forgot to equip Elfire), but the positioning of my units makes it so no other enemies can hit Steve right now, so she'll live.



She also retaliates, because Steve is an easily angered person and stabbing her in "mock combat" is a good way to be lit aflame.



WRYYSSSSSS!

He's okay. Like Steve, I laid it out so he could only be hit by one enemy, forcing the mage to go after...



Caeda, who he does the least damage to out of anyone on our team.



So here's how things look at the start of the second turn. Most of these enemies can be killed in one hit now, except by Wrys. Which presents a bit of a problem, but I'll get back to that.

Unfortunately, the archer is going to take 2 hits, and stepping in melee range will pull Draug, meaning I want to use two ranged characters.





Like these two!

The soldier that rushed Luke is low on HP, so I send Cecille to clean him up.





Meanwhile, Caeda's speed makes her able to double and kill the mage from full health.



Not bad. I wanted Def here, for a reason you'll see in a second, but it didn't end up mattering.



We now have the problem of that soldier having too much HP for Luke to kill on his own, and Wrys being useless in combat. Luckily, there's a solution. I'm going to form a HUMAN BOX



The idea of the HUMAN BOX is that all the units surrounding the soldier block his movement, and force him to attack one of them. So if they can all survive one hit, I'll be able to make it to next turn. For this reason, Wrys has to down a Vulnerary.



As suspected, he goes for Wrys.



Now I can use the ranged characters to empty his health bar.



Pictured: The last fleeting health point of a man burning to death. Steve laughs.



I have Wrys heal up Luke, because it's time to take on Draug.



The Lure strategy never fails us.





Draug is bulky, but slow, giving Luke a double hit on him. That damage is no joke though, so we'll want to finish him quickly.



Ryan is able to chunk him down to 12 HP...



And gets another solid level off of it. I'm really appreciating Ryan in this run.



I heal Caeda with Wrys, just for XP.



Steve, true to promise, gets to finish Draug off.



More like boiled you inside of it, but I guess so.



I am convinced that Strength level is there just to spite me.



Uh. I dunno what happened here. But Steve got a Vulnerary. Also the map ended. Just trust me on this. Let me see if I can...here we go:

MAP CLEAR





Nobody tell him we just cheesed him with the bait trick.





And with that rather little fanfare, the chapter is done and we move on to a short scene.







: I... I'd like be a Royal Guard, if you're in with me



Katarina just wants a life where she isn't in the same platoon as Luke.



There's a choice here, but the bottom screen got cropped. But come on, why would we be dicks to our best friend?

Well, Wrys isn't here, but Katarina's pretty cool too I guess.





: Well, this is a little awkward... I should get to bed. Good night, Steve. Good luck for tomorrow.

Huh. Well, I suppose that's as non-jilted and straightforward of a goodbye as we can get out of Katarina.

That concludes this part. Next time, we'll be encountering our final test as junior knights in Part 7: Graduation Day.