Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume Part #59

Part 59: Chapter 3A (4)

The enemies are the same, but the fight is much harder than its equivalents in the other two routes. The enemies are clustered together and come at you right away, and Liese does the same. We don't have a chance to save after the last hard battle, too.

Once again, we fall back and let the enemies come to us.

Liese will spend her first few turns burning her AP on Guard Reinforcing her allies. This can be particularly tricky against the Daemons, which are already difficult to get Sin from.

Heugoe chips at the Living Armor, then we start bringing people in.

Just getting it down to low enough health for a followup. You really want to maximize Sin against the Living Armor since the Daemons are ridiculously hard to get max Sin from.

The easiest way to handle their tendency to block is to hit them from behind. Spells are unblockable, but you're unlikely to start with them unless it's Fire Storm (and then again, you shouldn't be using Fire Storm.) The other alternative are unblockable attacks - Gwendal and Heugoe both have them, and you can use them to hit the Armor, and have other characters join in after that before they recover. Ushio also has one, but Shadowslash is the last attack in his queue.

Heugoe is responsible for pretty much 40% of the Hit Count.

Everyone else starts crowding in, and it's a mess. At least we aren't getting attacked yet.

The Daemons are unfortunately resistant to Darkness. Whether or not this is detrimental to an equipped weapon is dependent on both the addition from the weapon and the target's resistance. So if an enemy is only 20% resistant to Darkness but a weapon has a 50% Darkness bonus, you'll still get a 30% damage boost from it. Spells are fully of one element, so they're only affected by weaknesses and resistances.

Well that's annoying. I had Ushio revive Mireille before the end of my phase, which could have been a colossal mistake - with four enemies on screen, I could lose all four members in one round. It might have been safer for Ushio to duck out of range.

To my relief, Lieselotte spends her turn on a Guard Reinforce instead.

Not that it means she'll be idle or anything.

Lieselotte always does her Soul Crush when she attacks or joins in an attack. It pretty much guarantees you're not surviving without Vali's Awakening or a Fire Talisman and Guard Reinforce.

Wylfred also falls, but I like catching this mid-animation sprite of Liese.

Fortunately, the last Daemon opts to 'try' to run away and not attack Heugoe or Ushio, saving us the use of a third Union Plume. So we revive everybody and set things up on the Daemon we've already hurt.

It'll have to do. The 200% Sin quota is 400, so it's still doable. There isn't really a shortcut to fully Overkilling Daemons outside of Pluming or using Vali's Awakening - they're vulnerable to Holy but have high RST, but regardless it just seems like they need lots of damage to fill up the Sin bar.

Better to be cautious this time than risk another Soul Crush, I think.

I'll happily take a menu spell over another crisp burning. She didn't even get a Paralysis off here.

Then again, this does happen.

Again, there is no simple way of getting around this map save using the Plume; you are going to end up burning a lot of Union Plumes since there's no easy way to lure and isolate enemies unless you get lucky with Freeze or Paralyze off spells.

Alright, two left!

Everyone in the party uses greaves, so the more I get of mail pieces the better.

I have a game plan for Liese and the last Daemon, but I need to wear it down first.

If pain you want, then more you'll have!

Leaving the enemy Fazed at the end of combos is always ideal to prevent them from attacking back.

Liese is out of AP, so she resorts to straight-on murdering.

Revive Mireille, and put our plan into action: Vali's Awakening.

So long, sucker.

We need 57 Sin from Liese for the full set of rewards. Sounds pretty manageable. I'm just really glad Vali's lasts two turns.

This'll come in handy.

And everyone levels up for a health restore!

Perhaps sensing danger, Liese buffs herself.

So in response, I chuck one of these onto Wylfred. I have five, so I can afford them. Might Potions don't give as much of a buff as Might Reinforce (20% as compared to 50%), but they're still a buff.