Part 74: Endgame - Part 1

Alright, it's the end of the line, and there's nothing else to hoard for, so let's go on a little BEXP binge, shall we? I've still got like 2000 points here for chrissakes.









Good, good! Magic ticking on up, and some speed, and other stuff.



Bad!



Less bad!



Fine with this!



Less fine with this, but whatever. It's Volke.



Mmm.





Speed for Jill!



Eh.



Fuck you, Ranulf.



Fuck you, Ranulf.

It's also time to blindly hand out our remaining skills.



Adept and Gamble to Jill...



Nihil to Nephenee (I actually thought a bit about this one).



Parity to Astrid...



Guard and Smite to Ranulf...



Shade to Soren...



Miracle to Elincia...



And Provoke to Ike because .

Hmm... have I forgotten something else?

Oh! Right! Of course! I'm sitting on a massive pile of stat boosters, and, in accordance with Fire Emblem Tradition, have greedily hoarded them all throughout the game and am only now thinking to maybe use some of them. So let's do that!

Elincia gets a Seraph Robe, Energy Drop and Speedwing.

Mia gets a Seraph Robe, Energy Drop and Dracoshield.

Largo gets two Talismans.

Rolf gets a Secret Book.

Nephenee gets two Spirit Dusts.

Ranulf gets a Speedwing and Secret Book.

Jill gets an Ashera Icon.

And, of course, Ike gets the Boots. 9 move! 9!

Right. We're ready. Let's move out for the last time.

---





Yes. And you, my lord Ike?

No. I'm actually pretty calm, in a strange way... Now that we're finally here, I can focus on defeating King Daein. Nothing else seems to matter.

I wonder if we shall win...

We will win. I didn't come this far to lose. You've come all this way as well, so believe in yourself!

... You're right!



There are really three distinct... things... to this whole thing here.

Thing one: Largo, Rolf, Astrid, Ranulf and Elincia are going left to deal with the Paladins.



Thing two: Nephenee, Mia, Soren, Jill and Volke are going right to deal with the... guys... over there.



Thing three: Ike is going up the middle, solo.



First priority: fuck this guy.



A stray cat is hanging around in this little aisle here; Astrid and Elincia deal with it.



Largo, meanwhile, just picks up his Poleaxe and wanders on over.



Mia "accidentally" crits this here tiger.



Nephenee takes up her Flame Lance and prepares to deal with this crowd over here. She's using the Flame Lance because all but one of them are using ranged weapons, and some of them have pretty good defence.



And that's how we look on the right side. End turn!



Alright, then. Run past the squishy swordmaster, that's great.



Jill and Devdan put up quite a fight together.



Meanwhile, Ike's fun is beginning.



Some fool tiger immediately triggers Aether.



A second fool tiger survives a regular hit and then triggers Aether.



And with that, Ike hits the level cap. That's HP, strength, skill, speed, defence and resistance all capped.



The northern enemies generally make a show of shuffling forward. As you can see, there's a handy little chokepoint that Ike is going to be singlehandedly holding for the bulk of the fighting.



Now it's Nephenee's turn.



The roasting begins.





In occasional earnest.







It goes on a while.



Of note: this guy, who has Deadeye, which Nephenee handily cancels out. We wouldn't want to have to deal with Sleep on top of everything else this map tries to pull (its one saving grace is that it lacks the otherwise traditional Sleep/Silence assholes).

_{(I don't think this was ever mentioned in an actual update (as in, one that will be archived), so, for those that don't know, Deadeye is the Sniper class's Occult skill, and grants a passive +100% to Hit% and a [skill / 2]% chance of sending enemies to sleep for five turns.)}



And then suddenly all these guys are left on nearly no health (except the warrior there).



Largo's turn now.



There's one.



There's two.







And the rest all have ranged weapons so that's that, I guess. Largo ends the phase on 29 HP, ie, the happy side of Wrath-Time.



Pretty much every other enemy on the map moves forward.

Now, were you expecting to see some dialogue at this point? Perhaps Nasir yelling something about reinforcements? Well, too bad; we're playing on Hard Mode, and things have changed.



Oh, look. A dragon has come to meet Ike. Let's do something about that.



It's a somewhat more even exchange than Ike's gotten so far.



Mia cleans up the cat that hit Jill.







Now, we need to carefully choose targets here since there's more of them than there are us. First, Volke gets Deadeye-guy.



Jill deals with this here warrior (and gets reduced to 4 HP in the process).



Soren disposes of the remaining general.



And Nephenee moves ahead to greet our incoming friends to the north.



Thank you, Mist.



In Fire Emblem, four squares is a long way to attack.



I was hoping to feed this guy to Elincia but Rolf seemed to have other ideas.



Largo moves up to continue the offensive.



With help from Reyson, Mist heals Nephenee too, and that's another turn down.



So. The dragon.



Dealt with.



This, of course, opens the way for other units to come and hit Ike. Two cats and two generals are all slaughtered, and of course Ike gets three Aethers off in the process and gets all his HP back.



Meanwhile, these guys are being... weird. By which I mean, not suicidal. They're ignoring us! What the hell?!



Well, most of them are, anyway.



Alright, let's-



-uh oh.





Shit.



Shiiiit.



Shiiiiiiiit.

Well. That was three lethal attacks dodged in a row. Largo, ladies and gents.



Various enemies continue marching towards us, and even the wyverns from the back stairs have joined them. How nice. Everyone's just coming to us! Let's not keep them waiting!



Rolf opens the show with another Double Bow crit stealing a kill meant for Elincia. God damnit.



Instead Elincia heals Largo and gets a crap level.



Largo promptly avenges his hypothetical dead self.



Since Ranulf's here and transformed, he takes a crack at the Brave Sword guy. He conveniently dodges both counterattacks.



Another Reyson level!



Astrid deals with the guy for good.

Now, let's worry about Bryce.



Pictured is Ashnard's attack range. In Hard Mode, Ashnard will readily move to engage anyone who enters his range. You, generally speaking, don't want this to happen until you're ready.



Fortunately, Bryce's own range extends outside Ashnard's, so we can lure him (and all his friends) out.



These three assholes are trouble. They hit hard and they're fast, so they mostly can't be doubled. The solution here...



Is basically to run away and leave them to Nephenee, who's got the defence and HP to take hits and the Nihil skill to negate the chances of getting Astra'd.



Lovely. Soren caps magic and resistance.



Since we're running away anyway, let's also deal with these morons using Volke and Jill.



Beautiful. (speed cap)



Less beautiful.



Right, that's enough of Largo being in mortal danger. Let's get everyone moving into the middle now.



Know what's odd? Everyone's moving forward except that Fortify-toting priest. Well, whatever. It's fine by me.



We will not relinquish it so easily. But allow me to introduce myself as befits a warrior. I am Bryce of Daein.

And I am Ike of the Greil Mercenaries. Now... Let us begin!



Ah, crap. We'll see just what the hell that was in a sec.



Before that, though, two moron generals and Bryce have blocked up every space around Ike except the melee-range one, so here comes a procession of meat into the grinder.



Number one immediately trips Aether and gives Ike all his health back.



Brave Axe guy; two misses, then dead.



Killer Lance guy; does 4 damage, gets Aether'd.



Meanwhile, Nephenee is entertaining.



She successfully doesn't get critted...



And pretty much neutralizes Astra-guy.



Oh look, Nasir's transformed. We'll get him to the front next turn, but first...



Here's Bryce. He's pretty serious about his work. He's also carrying the S-Rank lance, which you can't legitimately obtain for yourself. It's quite powerful, ranged, and grants +3 to luck when equipped. He's also got a Speedwing. More annoyingly, he has Guard and Daunt for his skills, meaning he has an annoyingly high chance of cancelling your counterattacks.



Well, let's try again in earnest, shall we?



Better.



Right, let's clean up over here. Mia and Jill finish the swordmasters, while Nephenee cripples the wyvern.



Joy.

Physics are flung around, we end turn.



The generals either side of Ike decide to pick fights.



Fine by me. A crit and an Aether later...



Bryce comes around for another go, and this time doesn't cancel our counterattack.



Laters.



Your style of fencing... is unique... Who was your teacher?

My father. Greil.

I thought... I recognized that style. You truly are Gawain's... I see it... now... The resemblance... is strong...

Farewell, knight.



Sweet. Can't be bothered handing this to someone, though, so I guess Ike can just hang on to it.



The enemies are trying to run away again! What is this?



Anyway. We got dragons incoming. Let's get on that.



Recall; dragons hurt.



Also, this one survives a hit and an Aether.



So Nasir finishes it off.



Ike is healed and we've all moved up, but Mist is bored, so she goes to poke the other dragon with her Runesword.



Neat.



I think it's angry.



Yeah, it's easy to forget that Mist is reliant on her avoid stat keeping up. Here, it doesn't.



She does, however, manage to heal most of the damage back and cripple the dragon in the process. She is still a god-unit.



Nasir finishes that one too.



Oh good. It's nice to see someone is still getting good levels.



Well, it looks an awful lot like we've eliminated everyone except Ashnard and that Fortify guy (who, let's face it, hasn't been nearly as much of an asshole has he might have been).



Well, into the breach we go.







That's some nice "ultimate" light magic there, bud.



Now, let's remind ourselves what we're up against.

Ashnard is stupid powerful. He has as much defence as the Black Knight had and more attack; he's got the ranged weapon, and he's too fast to double. He's also got Daunt and Renewal for his skills, and he's got his annoying blessed armour, so only Ike and Nasir can damage him (and Nasir's about to run out of TP) despite the fact that like six people have battle dialogue with him.



Some last minute Physicing, and...



It begins.





So your father taught you swordplay, did he? How very happy that makes me.

Mad King Ashnard! I will cut you down with this blade and end your reign of terror!

You? Cut me down? Heee... Good. If you possess the strength to do so, then so be it. That process is the principle on which my ideal world operates.

What are you talking about?





Nice.



Well, we're off to a good start then.



Like a total asshole, Ashnard will retreat onto his little ledge after his attacks, if he's able. Which is actually kinda useful, since it means we have some leeway to keep healers in range of Ike. Mist and Soren can both hang around outside Ashnard's range but still be able to heal Ike, and Elincia can Physic 'n' run if she has to.



Anyway, here's the numbers screen vs Ashnard.



The drawback of having to fight the guy up a ledge is that we can't use Aether at range. Helpfully, Ashnard will always engage Ike at melee range, but every Aether speeds this fight up a lot.



And another miss. That's great. Still keeping Physicians on standby.







So, yeah, he will hit eventually, and it hurts.



And on the dance goes.



Until we finally get an Aether in.











Heh heh heh heh. You've done well to have grown so strong. At last, I have gained a foe worthy enough to test my sword. Excellent! Enjoy my might to your heart's content!



And that's how you beat the g-



-mmm.

Ggrrraaahh haarr haaarr haaaarrrhhh... GGGRRAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!! It's not over yet. I haven't seen all you are capable of.

What... are you doing?





Oh fuck.