Part 24: Update XXII - Fucking Hell This Map Is Big
Update XXII - Fucking Hell This Map Is Big
Alright, pardon me for a second, gotta rearrange a whole bunch of weapons and shit.
There we go. Took me like five minutes just swapping weapons around.
Fuck me, I'm already this close to finishing the regular campaign. Somehow that went far faster than I thought.
Not gonna lie, this map was a fucking slog. The next one too, but this one took me the most turns out of any map in the regular campaign. 83 fucking turns. You'll see why soon. There's gonna be a lot of abridging going on. Let's go.
Natasha picks up the first level of many in this map.
And Ephraim gets one too. We need to clear out this group of six first of all.
Even Rennac gets one because some bad misses left me in a bad position. At least the archer isn't going anywhere now, even if he can get a shot off.
As for what some other units are doing: Ross and Cormag are heading out to deal with those berserk gorgons. I want those dead ASAP. Also, Duessel is going to hang out at the bottom because there's some reinforcement demon dogs showing up there eventually and he takes no damage from them, so he'll just deal with all of them.
Oh, wait, never mind, I just took a cheap shot.
Also, I don't know if I'm getting it across, but the phantom is really good. REALLY good. In particular the next chapter really showed me how fucking good it can be. I don't think I had a summoner on my first playthrough or I never really used Knoll (I know Ewan was a sage for me in my first playthrough and he was super good as that too), because this was new to me for this playthrough. Like, with the stat boosts, the phantom doesn't just serve a role as a distraction, but can absolutely take out a dangerous target that you don't want to take on with one of your regular units because of crit chance.
Then this happens. So that's not really good. We'll have to see if we can deal with that, because I think I have only one restore staff.
Knoll gets the staff from L'Arachel and heals Ross.
Then Tana grabs the staff, Cantos to a spot close to Cormag, and then Lute can come in, take the staff and heal Cormag.
Vanessa levels taking out one of the eyes. Thankfully the four eyes on the mountaintops don't move, else we might have a problem.
Absolutely worth it burning a Purge to get rid of one of those gorgons.
We start getting some reinforcements. Duessel is blocking one of the dogs. These reinforcements will be coming for a while.
And Lute gets to heal Vanessa. I don't know what these gorgons' hit rates are, but they seem pretty good to me. At least Ross gets to take out the second one and we're now done with berserk.
I wonder how many levels Knoll has gotten just from summoning and staff duty.
And yeah, phantom putting in work. Phantom can take out eyes, and that's really good.
Gerik also putting in work and getting levels with these eyes.
As you can see, Duessel has this well in hand. Might take forever, but there's no risk.
OK, could've been a better level there.
That's better.
And here come the reinforcements that did me in twice, as you will see in the resets. In fact, let's have them now, since I brought it up.
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RESETS:
I thought Garcia would be dodgy enough sitting in a forest. I was wrong. That's a pretty cool 57 - 40 - 41 hit chain, so with true hit that's like... 63.45% * 32.40% * 34.03% = 7% chance of death discounting crits.
Resets: 14
And then this one was just dumb. I left Natasha exposed and equipped with Purge of all things. So of course she got slaughtered after I tanked her AS like that.
Resets:
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Amelia, Franz and the phantom will be trying to cover the retreat for everybody else. We're gonna fall back a bit and turtle out these reinforcements.
Thankfully, these axes aren't too accurate.
OK, that just got my asshole crushing coal to diamonds again. That was some bullshit. 1% chance of that happening.
And that's of course not all the reinforcements! So yeah, we kinda need to bail on this.
A phantom and Ewan take turtling duty here. Ewan's got some great avoid and the phantom is disposable. Our two paladins make a emergency line.
Things get kinda clogged.
We get everybody else out of there and set up dodge tank L'Arachel as a second enemy magnet.
Ewan gets a level.
Also, I think I might've forgotten to set him up with enough tomes. He's kinda running out.
Another level for Ewan.
Another one.
With Ewan having chewed through most of the reinforcements, we start ferrying over Rennac and Natasha to deal with this chest. This is a mimic. It can use dark magic and holds stealable loot.
Also, I burn a Purge use just to get this moving eye out of the way because it was actually in range of Vanessa and probably could've murdered her, since she's currently carrying somebody.
And of course the moment we get moving again some more reinforcements show up. At least the gorgons only have Demon Surge and no staves. I'm gonna set Lute up for that.
And then Ewan runs out of tomes. I think Tethys might have a 16 use fire tome he can use, but otherwise we're running pretty low. I'm kinda running out of stuff and notice it only when it is too late. Like, spoilers, but I legit almost run out of javelins. That is not something you should run out of.
Lute levels fighting the gorgons.
Rennac steals a stat booster from the mimic. The gem is droppable, so we don't need to steal that as well.
And Natasha deals with the mimic.
Big shoutouts to this centaur fucking up that phantom with a 3 crit on a 47 hit.
Ross gets a level. I've set him up to deal with the gorgons because he can just hop on a peak tile and get that sweet sweet avoid for single digit hit rates on those gorgons.
Big level for Ame fighting those gargoyles.
The forest right under this boss centaur is pretty handy to get that dodge. So even if Franz is gonna be chipping for a while, this could be a good way to take him out.
But then I get lazy and just throw the Siegmund out for a one-shot.
And then the phantom knocks the snag...
...which blocks the river and clears the way forward.
And now we're gonna let Cormag fly forward a bit.
And a bit more, because...
...there we go. Yeah, if you just rush in, those reinforcements are nasty. And I ain't gonna deal with them straight up.
At this point, I'm still kinda trying to figure out how exactly I want to deal with these guys, because spoilers, that's not the only wave. I know Duessel's gonna be a part of it for sure, but other than that it's still a bit up in the air.
And there's the next wave.
So I just decide "fuck this" and go on a 2-wide turtle zone.
Another summoning level.
I also set up Cormag on a peak tile for some distraction and so we might get through these quicker.
Duessel picks up a defensive level.
So for now the plan is Duessel, Ross and Cormag.
Very nice level for Cormag. I think that's STR and DEF capped now. And now I'm just gonna skip over some stuff. Because these reinforcements come for a while.
And here's all the levels we gained grinding those skeletons down.
We move forward and take out the skeleton boss, who really isn't a big problem now that all his crew is cleared out. I presume he's supposed to be a roadblock so you can't just run past the big reinforcement blast.
Another Amelia level fighting an eye. She is so fast.
And because I sent forward Cormag again, here come the next reinforcements.
We get an Ephraim level, and believe me, there's gonna be a few of those coming up, because he's gonna be the designated chokepoint turtle king for this reinforcement crew.
So yeah, once again, everybody gets pulled back. Soon, Ephraim's gonna park his royal ass on that fort for a single tile chokepoint, and he's gonna run through most of our fucking javelin supply killing these reinforcements for a while.
And here's a bunch of levels Ephraim got from that.
So to start off, we're kinda just moving units into forests and kinda foresthopping our way forward.
And then we get some eyes showing up, which is really bad. Like, those eyes are really annoying, because when they come in like that, anybody with bad RES is in serious trouble. Thankfully, we can fall back, let them come out, and then kill them on the next player phase. We also have like two skeletons spawning per turn and moving towards us, but that's not really an issue.
They spawn some more eyes, and I have to push the Myrrh nuke button.
Cormag gets a level too, and I end up blocking the spawn spots just in case.
We get to do some turtling again because this mimic up at the top has Shadowshot. So we'll sit that out real quick.
Ross gets a level dealing with the reinforcement skeletons.
And then another dealing with that horde of skeleton archers. Almost done!
See, the thing now is that I need to deal with those cyclopes, but I don't like those odds this late into the map. I really, REALLY don't want to fucking reset now. Though in the end, I do go with Ross for one - I guess I could've gone with Duessel, he would've been able to tank, but eh.
And the other one I just nuke. Fucking Myrrh, man. Delivers every time.
Then, the same play. Rennac steals stat booster...
...Natasha nukes the mimic. Now all that's left is the bosses.
+29 HP, +4 MAG, +5 SKL, +2 SPD, +9 LCK, +5 DEF, +5 RES compared to vanilla hard mode. That's a lot of boosts. Note: Riev was also carrying a silence staff, but he burned through it already.
So I let a barrier'd Ewan deal some damage to Riev, with the added bonus of taking out one of the dracozombies on enemy phase because scared weapons slaughter monsters...
...and then let Ephraim finish the job. Sacred weapons: Pretty good!
Ewan then blasts another dracozombie, leaving only Morva.
Ah, shit, Serenes doesn't have the boosted stats for me to compare. Let's just check Blast's LP then. So... that's +24 HP, -2 STR, +4 SKL, +6 SPD, +12 LCK, +1 DEF and +7 RES. And the most important part I'm seeing is that all the factors that changed come together, boosting his avoid from 36 in vanilla hard mode to 80 here. That's a dodgy boy. At least Wretched Air isn't guaranteed damage anymore.
Knoll gets a level summoning one more phantom for this map. I checked, and he actually gets doubled trying to attack Morva with Gleipnir, so that's bad.
Instead, Ame gets to ground pound him.
And that's it for this chapter! Next time, the final chapter of the regular campaign!