Part 14: Update XIII - Ancient Mariners Not Included
Update XIII - Ancient Mariners Not Included
Alright, let's start the next chapter with some unit management before starting the mission. First of all, let's check out our new member.
Duessel - Great Knight:
STATS:
LV: 5 (-3)
HP: 50 (+9)
STR: 18 (+1)
SKL: 15 (+3)
SPD: 13 (+1)
LCK: 8
DEF: 19 (+2)
RES: 15 (+6)
MOV: 7 (+1)
CON: 15
GROWTHS:
HP: 75% (-10%)
STR: 50% (-5%)
SKL: 40%
SPD: 35% (+5%)
LCK: 20%
DEF: 45%
RES: 35% (+5%)
CAPS:
HP: 60
STR: 27 (-1)
SKL: 24
SPD: 25 (+1)
LCK: 30
DEF: 26 (-3)
RES: 24 (-1)
Sentinel:
- Reduce all types of incoming damage by 1
- Use of the "Rescue" command to rescue allies without the SKL or SPD penalty
- Modifies the AID stat to be CON - 1 instead of the usual formula
- Equipped weapon's Might x2 against Archers, Snipers and Skeleton/Legion Archers
Hoo boy. Duessel is still very good, especially since as of right now, he's our second promoted character next to Seth, and exceptionally solid, losing levels while still gaining stats. The resistance boost in particular is very welcomed - Duessel will be able to chokepoint for us for quite some time, and believe me, being able to chokepoint is going to be very useful for us.
But honestly, I think it's about time to start promoting. We're about to hit the ghost ship, and it doesn't fuck around even in vanilla, so we should respect that.
First of all, Franz gets promoted to Paladin. We've already seen the caps and skill for Paladin with Orson, so nothing new here.
Lute gets promoted to Sage.
CAPS:
HP: 60
MAG: 27 (-3)
SKL: 28
SPD: 29 (+3)
LCK: 30
DEF: 20 (-1)
RES: 24 (-1)
Mystic Rhythm:
- When equipped with Anima: +1 DMG, +5 HIT
- When equipped with Dark: +1 DMG, +5 CRT
- When equipped with Light: +5 HIT, +5 CRT
The main thing I see in Sage is that 29 speed cap. This will be very handy later on, let me tell you. The ability to use all three magic types at B level plus staves at C level is also going to be very useful for a long time.
CAPS:
HP: 60
MAG: 23 (-2)
SKL: 30 (+5)
SPD: 25 (-1)
LCK: 30
DEF: 21
RES: 30
Enlightenment:
- Weapon might vs. monsters is tripled.
- +25 CRT
- 5 DMG reduction from magic attacks.
Yes. +25 crit. With light magic already being the Crit Magic. Purge bishops are going to be a force to be reckoned with throughout the chapters, but our bishops can absolutely wreck monsters.
Amelia gets a secret book to fix some of those skill problems.
Vanessa gets an angelic robe to help her not die.
And Artur gets a goddess icon to help with his luck.
Now, let's get going. Let's see what we're dealing with.
Oh. Right. We're going to see exactly dick right now. Oh well, let's get going.
Natasha torching a bit gives us a view of some flying enemies out there.
And Lute helps out as well. I didn't think of it going into this map, but a large part of Lute's and Natasha's utility is going to be trading the torch staff between each other and dealing with the fog. There is a lot of room for enemies to really sneak up on you, so having two units around torching the place is going to be very helpful in preventing that.
OK, let's see what we're dealing with.
Oh my. That is a full ship.
And that looks like a pretty beefy boss. That Fell Contract promotes thieves and pirates, so Ross would've liked that, but honestly, I'm really not liking my chances at keeping Colm alive in this clusterfuck, so I'll just live with it.
Fliers and hand axers manage to take out most of the gargoyles flying around, but some will be able to get some hits in, so we set up a bit defensively to shield the magic users, and we'll just see what happens.
And of course I leave a hole open for Artur to get attacked. At least he had no chance of dying.
Vanessa levels on killing one of the eyes. She's probably ready to promote soon, but I might be limited in my promotion items with Tana and Cormag both doing well too.
And they board. I'm probably just going to plug these gaps with some tanky guys and let them deal with it. EXP comes a plenty in this hack, so no need to think about EXP thieves and such.
And of course, four eyes spawn in behind us, two at the top and two at the bottom.
There we go. Gilliam, Ephraim and Duessel should be more than enough to deal with these guys, and if not, Ross and Cormag are easily available to slot in. The rest deals with the enemies on our ship and hunkers down.
Also, Natasha status: Pretty good against monsters.
On enemy phase, we see what can make these monsters so dangerous: Most (all?) wield poison weapons. Remember: Poison is 5 damage every turn for 5 turns. While that can be dealt with fairly easily with vulneraries or healers, it does slow you down quite a bit. Not to mention that these enemies probably wouldn't have dealt any damage with iron or maybe even steel, so poison is a good play to deal some damage to the tanks you've likely placed on the blatant chokepoints. And if they could break through and tink half your army with poison, you'd probably end up with a lot of required healing from random enemies. All in all, I think the change to poison makes it a fair bit more dangerous and actually makes antitoxins something you might consider yourself happy to have in your convoy.
Ephraim gets a garbage level from the monster grinder. He's probably going to hit level 20 before the Vigarde chapter at this rate.
Some of the skeletons don't move, and the eyes didn't move either - I presume the eyes will move later at a less opportune time. We also get some reinforcements on the ship, and some invisible reinforcements back in the fog.
I also take the opportunity to outfit my chokepointers with javelins, which I really should've done earlier, given the amount of bow users lurking about.
The invisible reinforcements are revealed to be gargoyles and eyes thanks to some more torching. Both up top and below. We just continue to hunker down, showing that I've forgotten something important about this map.
The enemy phase is uneventful, just as expected, a few bony guys smashing up against my chokepoints and dying.
Oh. Right.
For some reason I forgot this was happening. Uh, L'Arachel, you might kinda die. This could get rough.
Oh well, best we can do now is push forward and see if we can get L'Arachel before some reinforcements in a bad spot get her killed, which would be, uh, suboptimal. But let's look at the units first.
Dozla - Berserker:
STATS:
LV: 1
HP: 43
STR: 17 (+1)
SKL: 12 (+1)
SPD: 15 (+6)
LCK: 8 (+4)
DEF: 11
RES: 6
MOV: 7 (+1)
CON: 14 (-2)
GROWTHS:
HP: 75% (-10%)
STR: 55% (+5%)
SKL: 35%
SPD: 55% (+15%)
LCK: 40% (+10%)
DEF: 30%
RES: 25%
CAPS:
HP: 60
STR: 30
SKL: 20 (-9)
SPD: 30 (+2)
LCK: 30
DEF: 22 (-1)
RES: 22
Frenzy:
- +5 DMG, +5 HIT, +25 CRT
Great Axe: Rank B. Range 1. Weight 15. Might 17. Hit 55. Crit 5. 50 uses.
So the berserker fits a certain theme a lot more. Garbage skill cap, so inaccurate, but maximum strength, speed and luck cap for maximum attacks with maximum crit. Giving them extra move was not required, but always welcome. Dozla got a lot speedier in particular and should be a pretty heavy hitter right out of the gate, currently not really hurt by his skill cap. Also note the "great" weapon - high might, high weight, low hit. Basically makes the berserker even more extreme.
L'Arachel - Troubadour:
STATS:
LV: 13 (+10)
HP: 28 (+10)
MAG: 9 (+3)
SKL: 10 (+4)
SPD: 14 (+4)
LCK: 15 (+3)
DEF: 7 (+2)
RES: 13 (+5)
MOV: 6
CON: 5
GROWTHS:
HP: 50% (+5%)
MAG: 40% (-10%)
SKL: 50% (+5%)
SPD: 50% (+5%)
LCK: 65%
DEF: 25% (+10%)
RES: 40% (-10%)
Yes, plus TEN levels. So her surviving might actually not be as big an issue, since she's gotten a bit more survivable with those levels, and she's even promotion ready from the start (though I'll definitely give her some more levels, since healers level faster here). L'Arachel will slot in perfectly as primary healer after Natasha's departure from that slot to take over as a combat unit with staff utility. Still, reinforcements might be a bit meaner here and still give L'Arachel some trouble.
Next, I'm torching this area. I fucking know that asshole boss monster comes from here and I want to fucking know when it spawns.
Gilliam gets a terrible level. Man, fucker's going to level cap soon, and I don't think I have a knight crest laying around I can use on him that wouldn't be better suited for a cav... well, a little birdie (namely my past experience) tells me there's a secret shop in Vigarde's chapter that sells promo items, so if I'm short, I can get some there for sure. I had to buy a fair few knight crests there on my first run since I was using all four available cavs that could've needed promo items there.
OK, good dodge, but I don't like those numbers.
And I don't like those additional guys flying in either. At least Dozla can deal with them well. Also, it was at this point I noticed the Boss Box - three archers defending the boss skeleton. At least they're fairly weak so you can take them out from a range and just get attacked back rather than eat an attack from the boss's javelin.
Also, the eyes start moving now. So I guess they were waiting for an ambush opportunity when we start moving towards L'Arachel to save her, breaking defensive formation on the ship. That's actually kind of clever.
Uh, Dozla? You might want to be killing those other guys near L'Arachel?
And of course, amongst other reinforcements, the other boss shows up.
He is pretty nasty. Note the crit - high tier eyeballs, high tier gargoyles and cyclopes get +15 innate crit. So, uh, we kinda need to deal with this guy. And we can't reach him right now except with Tana and Vanessa, who I don't trust to make this work.
The end result I come to is "let Natasha and Lute deal with his entourage, figure they can survive one round of combat, then have Natasha murder him".
We also set up Ross and Seth in a defensive formation to keep him away from our lesser units. This might get bad, but we'll see.
Duessel hustles to help out L'Arachel while Cormag, Ephraim and Gilliam keep cleaning up the center ship.
Ephraim levels up a bit better on enemy phase.
Things get a bit tight for Ross, the eyeballs did more damage than I anticipated, and there was a chance of death with a crit, but oh well, I feel like that would almost always be the case.
Dozla gets to dismantling the Boss Box on his own.
The poison does creep up on you. Some damage from an eyeball and suddenly two turns of poison add up.
Man, look at this shit. I guess we're just risking death.
Well, I hit, he missed, and we get this level. No crit, though.
So Lute has to finish the job. No chance of death here, so we're good.
And she gets this level on the kill. What garbage levels we have here.
I then make a critical mistake with Cormag - he whiffs the first attack here and leaves the eye alive, with no chance of anybody else killing it, and takes a hit too. So that's some juicy chance of death for enemy phase. Oh well. We'll just have to see how it goes.
Artur picks up an alright level cleaning up an eyeball somewhere else while Franz cleans out the last piece of the Boss Box, leaving the boss vulnerable.
Also, let's yoink Dozla. I don't need him attacking the boss. At the least he can wait until I recruit him because I want that EXP.
On enemy phase, the gargoyle attacks L'Arachel and continues to miss while both eyeballs hit and leave Cormag at exactly 1 HP. It's like I'm a regular Dondon.
And then L'Arachel heals on green phase. Never punished.
At this point I decide "fuck this" and just rescuedrop L'Arachel so I can recruit her.
And then she can recruit Dozla. Fun thing: Because Dozla was green when I dropped him he didn't have his move spent, so after recruiting him I can still use him this turn!
Showing Dozla the boss shows pretty well what berserkers are. Low chance to hit but boy if he hits.
But first... Natasha does some chip damage (alas no crit) and gets rescued out.
Dozla gets a hit.
And Garcia gets the kill. He could've died if things had gone horrendously wrong, but eh.
I still want to get him some levels and get him to Hero. I think he could be a solid contributor that way, and it's not like the hero crest has anybody else clamoring for it (shut up, Joshua, you don't count).
And since he was very close to leveling again, I gave him the last eyeball kill for this level.
That's it for this update! Next time, I get to pack out the degenerate strats again, because we're getting Ewan to level 10 right away. See you then!