Part 17: Lacryma Episode 8 Chapter 4 - Defense war pt.2

Lacryma Episode 7 Chapter 4 pt.2


Fighting Zakuro again. The objective is not giving us the whole story here, since we have to kill everything, not just the thieves.


Our party isn't looking too good at the moment. A Miles and Behead really isn't gonna cut it for this part and since last mission
was a fake mission and we didn't have Troy, we've lost out on some experience. But that's okey, Troy doesn't need levels to be badass.


Zakuro understands that indirect firepower can be a valuable thing. Of course Zakuro is a little stupid so we get a situation like this...


A shit ton of Morderes. A unit that can only wear D rank helmets and cannot counter attack.
The more astute of you will notice that he does not have any Shadow types either. I could take advantage of
that. I really should have, but I like to keep my options open by having a diverse cast.


Suspicously, Zakuro also placed these two Shadow Golems off to the side here.
Let's take a closer look on these Golems.


The Golems are kind of terrible. They are supposedly a step up from the Beheads, but they really aren't.
They face a defense handicap, due to not being able to wear armor or boots, so the B rank armor stat is wasted on them.
They also have a worse elemental defense than their Shadow Behead brethren. I mean look at that 10 Wind resistance.
Here's the Shadow Behead stats to compare.


This is the Shadow Behead I created for this mission. I've done some shenanigans with it so it's not entirely to be trusted.
Normally a Behead has a D Armor rank. But I'll get more into my phantom creation later. For now, notice that it also has a 5 Speed advantage over the
Shadow Golem. Because the Shadow Golem's Iron Helmet have a -5 speed penalty. It's not much, but the Shadow Behead is objectively better.

It's largely, because a better defense means a better offense. A higher Armor stat governs potentially 3 item slots, over a Weapon stat that only governs 1 item slot.
Having more HP also means you do more damage and more consistently, than a high damage low defense unit. This goes especially so for Phantoms since their only
damage output is from normal attacks.

A phantom that lives longer can also take more hits that would have hit your humans instead. Who can then unleash world destroying
magic. Except if you're Kun. Then you're just a glorified Phantom. But at least you have an exploding sword.


Alright time for some Phantom Creation shenanigans. First of all, we will never need our Miles again. So he gets deleted. Our Behead was made by Rimzan and is thus
shitty as all hell.


With 6 open slots, we have some room to make us a short term army/meat shields.


So this is the Common Behead at it's base, I'm not actually paying attention to it's speed stat. The pointer was just on the screen and I didn't notice until too late.
Anyways we have a few options to manipulate it's stats before creation.
It takes 2 Kartia slots to create the Behead, that leaves us with another 2 slots since it's Troy who is creating and he has a Kartia stat of 4.


If we add a "Stone" Text to the Behead it will get +1 in Armor Rank. Like so.


We could get it to a B rank. But don't actually have access to B rank equipment yet.


Instead of getting B rank, I'll add "Fast" which if you remember from Chapter 2 gives the phantoms +1 movement. Which is pretty good.


The end result will look like this. I make a Behead of all types with this configuration. We don't even need to use any Mithril to create these "Super" Beheads. It's all silk so far.


But I did get 100 of each Kartia and it's kind of burning a hole in my pocket, so let's get some Mordere action in here too.
They also get +1 movement and a C rank in Armor. This is in my opinion the best setup for a general attacking Mordere.
I also create a Mordere of each type.

I am pretty limited in what I can do to customize my phantoms.
So far I can chose between these:
+15 to one of the elemental resistances.
+1 Armor rank.
+1 Weapon rank.
+10 Speed.
+1 Movement
For each Kartia I use.

It also depends on the Texts I use. I can't use the same Text twice, but some Texts have duplicate effects.
"Goblin" and "Hard" both grant +1 Armor rank. So I could give my Phantoms +2 Armor rank if I wanted to.
On the other hand I only have 1 Text that gives +1 Movement, so I can't give my phantoms +2 Movement.
Not until I get another text that grants +1 Movement.


Right, so that was phantom creation. Time to create some more stuff!
Honestly, this is a pretty bad time to update your equipment. If you're playing along, wait until the next mission to burn through your Kartia to update your equipment.
But I figured I had a ton of Kartia laying around. I needed to create some stuff for my Phantoms anyways. And hey, why not trivialize Zakuro when we can, right?*
So the Stone Armor that Kun have been running around with is actually pretty good. A full set of Iron armor +2 will only increase his defense by 3 points total.
So it's really not worth it to upgrade here. But I do it anyways.

*_{Zakuro won't actually be trivialized.}


Troy has a shitty Stone Knife and honestly I shouldn't have bothered to upgrade his weaponry anyways, as he should spend every single turn casting magic.
On one of my runs after the play through I realized I could have made a full set of +3 Wood equipment for him and Lacryma, and they would have sported a respectable 16 Defense each.

I could have done this since the beginning of the game. But what can I say, the game has been pretty easy so far, so doing that would have been kind of overkill. My human characters
haven't even been close to death yet. Also I'm incompetent.


Phantoms start off with pretty shitty equipment when you create them. They should start off with nothing, since you don't spend the extra Kartia on creating the Wood Katana's for them.
Time to get my Pokeymans some bling bling.


When you create equipment you actually get a little picture of each item that you make.
I've been negligent in showing this off. I'll do a bonus update with all the stuff we can create and update it as new stuff become available.
Unfortunately as I cannot create the Fire Arm, there isn't any art work for that.

This is a Dark Katana +2. I make a few of these for my Beheads.


Iron Helmet +2


Iron Armor +2


Iron Boots +2


Now that everyone is all geared and fitted, let's get this shit on the road.


Step 1: Kun will just straight up murder this Mordere. Why is that? Well...


Common Morderes have a crippling 2 Fire resistance.


Normally Fierce Fire only has a 1-2 range, but due to being +2 it can explode people a little further.


It's actually pretty stupid to burn 3 Silk and 1 Mithril like this, when I needed to use two characters to kill it anyways. I could have used Fire +2 saving me a Mithril and a Silk.
Don't play like I do. I'm a certified idiot.




Let's continue to show off how inept I am at this game. I could have moved the Behead two squares down next to the Mordere and attack it instead of here. It would
bring my Behead closer so it would be in range to attack something else next turn.


The same thing with this Mordere, could be moved 1 square further down and still kill the enemy Mordere.




I move my Doll phantoms towards the Shadow Golems. The Doll Phantoms won't really help against Common and other Doll phantoms so instead of being killed I'd rather they do something constructive.*

*_{They don't actually do much of consequence.}


Zakuro will be spending his turns creating new Phantoms... Wait. Haven't I seen this behavioral pattern before somewhere else? Somewhere recent?


He will create anything between a Kyau and a Golem. In this case, he created another Shadow Golem


You know you should be suspicious when the AI is in no rush to try and murder you. Well actually it might be a
ranged unit subroutine. Since the Morderes don't have any unit they can attack and moving closer would bring them into my range,
they simply won't move.


A rare look at Kun actually using magic.


Facing a group of indirect attackers and magic casters I heal Lacryma up to full as she had taken some damage.
I also sacrifice my Mordere and Behead by acting as bait.






The AI also really likes to clump up together. Now unlike Toxa's battle there are no treasure chests. So we won't be getting any Text in battle.
As such I can't use Wide Quake yet.


But I can use Quick Quake. It's largely ineffectual, but it's really good experience if you hit alot of targets. Troy is a bit behind so he needs the XP.


Missed the explosion. *sigh*




Strong Quake is an "Advanced" spell. Spells can be divided into several categories.
There are the Grammar Spells, which will automatically update on our list of spells as long as we have the appropriate Grammar and Text.
Of Grammar, there is Basic, Advanced and Unlimited. We only have the Basic Grammar.

The thing is, as long as you have the text and input it yourself, you can cast Advanced spells even though you don't have the Grammar for it.
The last category is "secret" spells. These spells will never be on your spell list, no matter what kind of Grammar you have. So you always have to manually
input the text yourself. Quick Quake is a secret spell for example.


It hit's in a 3x3 area, so not as wide as Quick Quake. But it deals more damage.


Oh remember the Shadow Golems? Well when my Doll phantoms got close they started to retreat. Very odd.


At this point there are several injured enemies. The AI is rather easy to manipulate.
It will always prioritize healing if it can. It would have been dangerous if the thief and all the Morderes focused a single target like Troy or Lacryma.








If the Thief had cast a Fierce Fire or Stone Fire on Kun, I'd be in trouble.
Or if they had focused Lacryma or Troy. The AI can be very forgiving.


Here's Troy getting smacked in the face by a Golem. You might be the best character so far Troy, but you're still a jerk and deserve 100% of this.


Being able to heal himself, is what makes Kun straight up better than any Phantom.


In his last desperate attempt to avoid getting Swordsploded in the face, Zakuro creates a Kyau... Really?


As Zakuro's turn ends, this happens.

"Alana, you came!"
"Of course! You're in danger."

Not even remotely Alana.

"The guys at the market are having a hard time!"
"Don't worry. We'll send some people there."

What do you mean "Will send"? You already split up with Toxa before coming here.

"Duran went to the market... Now we can concentrate on the battle."

You... haven't so far? Oh well more people to help murder Zakuro. So that's fine with me. Oh and Alana should be wielding another Fire Arm, since that's what she had equipped when she split from Toxa, right?


Noooooooooope. Still she is cheating, wielding a Silver Sword before we can create it.
So how does Zakuro react to seeing his already shitty situation take a turn for the worse?


Which he then does... Leaving me having to clean up all the phantoms who is just running away wasting my time.
ZAKURO!!!!!! I'm just gonna leave the clean up out and nothing of value was lost.


"Of course."

Not... Really. No matter what happens here Alana will be of minimal help in this mission. But we'll cover that later.

"You helped out a lot. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"But you guys were fast."
"Misty warned us of the attack. But I did all the work."

Sure, Misty did warn them. But they didn't actually leave until Duran got a message from Kainas. So Misty warning them saved them absolutely no time.

"What are you talking about? And who's Misty?"
"Hey! I saved your butt!"
"She's right Troy."
"She's claiming she saved my life. What the hell is she talking about?"
"What!?"
"Stop it, all of you!"
"Yeah, yeah..."
"It's not my fault."
"Why don't we go back? The battle's over."
"You're right. Let's go back to Headquarters."
"Ok."





And that's a wrap. We get a ton of Text, which will be very exciting I am sure.

Now I'm sure some of you might be wondering, can you kill Zakuro before he retreats?

The short answer? I couldn't.

The long answer is that, Zakuro will retreat right after Alana shows up. She only shows up when you get close to Zakuro.
The closest I've come to Zakuro is landing a single Twisting Lightning on him with Troy.


Given how the AI works, and how defensive Zakuro is. I'd say it's pretty much impossible to kill him here.
If any of you guys can kill him, feel free to do an update in doing so.

Next time, we will be seeing a scene, we've already seen before with a few different perspectives being thrown in.
I am also holding a Vote right now on whether you want to see more of Toxa or Lacryma.
Bold your votes. Let's say the first to reach 3 votes wins. If no one wins, I'll just flip a coin.

Lacryma Episode 7 Chapter 4 pt.2 END