Part 57: The Baron in Black - Part 1

Towering before him stood Castle Manster, the "Palace of Evil."

Though in the past having had to escape from this ominous castle, Leaf now stood ready to breach its walls. To reclaim a long-lost treasure...and to cut open the path for a new age...

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Whoops. I've been changing his name to Redric in the text dumps because I thought that's how the patch spelled it. Damn inconsistent translations.

Don't make promises you can't keep. It is obvious that the rebels have the upper hand...
......
Pity...I would have expected you to do better than this. This is it, Reidric. I am finished with you.
B-Bishop Berdo, please... Without you, we would all be...
Then do your best... Here, I shall give you a squad of the Schwarze Rosen to aid you. I wish you luck...

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Reidric's soldiers are all but decimated, but there are still a large number of mercenaries waiting inside the castle. There is one particularly dangerous swordsman that you should be careful of... His name is Galzus.
Galzus... What should we do about him?
We're going to have to lure him out and attack him with my Holsety. But I frankly don't know if that will be enough...

Ahahah sure it won't. Don't be so modest Sety. If we chose Cyas, he'll mostly have interchangeable dialogue with Sety, but instead of referencing Holsety he'll say:

I cannot be sure, but if we have a girl named Mareeta among us, she may be able to do something. I understand Galzus has some sort of connection with her...

So yeah, guess what's going to go on here. Back to reality.

We don't have enough men... August, why did you divide our troops into three squads?

And more importantly, why did do you suck at dividing troops? Yes, one side totally should be nothing but healers

One squad is to rescue the children. The second is to capture the Lopto bishops. These two tasks need immediate attention, so I sent the first two groups in earlier.
I understand rescuing the children, but what's so important about the Lopto bishops?
There is a group of bishops stationed at the Lopto altar in the eastern corner of the castle. They will use the Berserk and Sleep staves, so they must be taken out first.
I see... So fighting Reidric is up to us, the third squad?
Yes. We won't have time to reunite with the other groups.
Lord Leaf, this will be a tough battle. I'll take care of the enemies in the front. You need to focus on killing Reidric!
Yes! I swear I will defeat him!

If you have Cyas, instead of saying he'll "take care of the enemies in the front" like Sety, he just says "I will do what I can". Oh Cyas. If by some miracle you've killed Galzus already, the dialogue will just skip over him.

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The circled Bishops are the ones who can cast status effects on you.

August gives a pretty good run down of what we're up against, so there's not that much to say. What August doesn't mention though is just how important rescuing the children are. You want all of them to stay alive if you want to go to Chapter 24x, which we do. He also doesn't mention how annoying splitting our units three ways is, because even if you have three thieves you may not have three lockpicks left.



The man of the hour. Reidric's stats kind of suck, but as the game hammered into us last chapter, he also has a gimmick. He halves your attack before his defense is applied, functionally giving him 32 defense and 56 magic. However, Leaf's shiny new Blade of Blagi not only nullifies this gimmick, but is also effective against armors. In short, it'll fuck him right up. Despite this utility, the Blade of Blagi is one of the worst Lord weapons in the series. It's one mt stronger then a Silver Sword, but 5 hit less accurate and 4 wt heavier. It also gives the Prayer Skill, but still. Worse stats then a Silver Sword.

If you don't want to use Leaf for whatever reason (even a level 1 Leaf should be able to kill him easily enough if he was raised somewhat in Tier 1), you still have options. Give Marita or Galzus (spoiler alert!) an armorslayer, and let Luna and crits brute-force their way through his defenses. Oh, and for those who've played the game  I know other characters can use the Blade of Blagi, it'll come up in the update proper  

It's actually possible to steal his sword if you so desire. While it's supposed to be impossible (it has 20 wt so thieves can't take it, and Reidric has 28 magic so Tina can't steal it) you can get around this. If you use a thief to give Redric a bow, and force him to equip his bow by putting a character in bow range, he'll lose the magic boost since he no longer has the Lopto Sword equipped, and so the Thief staff will be able to steal it. It's not actually usable by anyone, but it's a neat trick. If Reidric were at all hard to kill, you could use the thief trick to unequip his sword and get around him halving your attack, but



Galzus is the game's second crutch character. He's great by any standard, so enjoy. Recruiting him is easy for once, just talk to him with Marita. Admittedly, Marita does need to be in the right part of the map.



Galzus is flanked by a group of rather powerful Mercenaries with good weapons. This is just one example, the others have different, but equally powerful, weapons.

Next, let's take a look at the group of Lopto Bishops August was worried about.



Yup



Fun



Super fun







Just so that they can be better at hitting you.



And to make hitting them with status-effects harder.  Can you spot the obvious workaround here? 

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Looks like a good time. Sety forces his way into our party, and we're also going to deploy Lara, Sara, Seram, Linoan, Tina, Marita and Shanam, so choose 10 characters from: Fergus, Marty, Nanna, Othin, Shiva, Havan, Fin, Carion, Xavier, Ronan, Delmud, Olwen, Makua, Dashin, Asvel and Homer. Stats page.

Fatigue Counter:

Fergus: 11/45
Marty: 20/63
Nanna: 15/40
Othin: 19/49
Shiva: 14/41
Havan: 10/42
Fin: 6/39
Carion: 1/54
Tina: 16/21
Sara: 21/42
Xavier: 1/39
Ronan: 3/36
Dean: 4/40
Delmud: 9/39

Karin: Fatigued

Since we're indoors all the time from now on, stay tuned for a look at what our mounted units are like from now on.