Fire Emblem lets play-like posts (Read 1,184 times)

[Aeon]

pictured: lunatic red users discussing fire emblem

today i bring to you: a classic forum-type of thread. we all know em. post-by-post lets play
although i figure we can all just gaming in the same thread since there is no fire emblem subforum
and i'm just gonna give sparse notes anyway right not making an essay on every chapter
i probably will not say anything about the story so any are welcome to read! however i am liable to change this if someone says something funny or extremely based

so i tried playing path of radiance again, ya see
looked around for my old copy, it wasnt there, what is a guy to do when his save file is gone huh
redownloaded, set up dolphin controls, and then it was time to start chapter -1

CHAPTER -1: WHAT MODS DO I GET
well this is fairly difficult. nobody is makin mods for this game. is it really that much harder to mod gamecube games? i mean i know its 3d instead of 2d but the data structure should be similar enough, and simple in that its just a numbers game, that i thought there would be something
i guess its just not as accessible, not as popular, who knows. it does certainly take more effort to boot up a gamecube game compared to a gba game that i could run on my phone

basically the only thing i could find was a port of the translation to the japanese copy of the game
now what could that poooossibly have at all (its here)
a couple bug unfixes, a couple unbalancing bits,
and lo! what bounties does it bear but "maniac mode"! those evil developers took it away from us because they think we are bad!
i do like my lunatic and i do very much hate easy fire emblem so i start searching for a japanese rom
although then i realize: what if it sucks. i complained about how easy three houses was but i wasn't even on the hardest difficulty whats up with that
well: they say it sucks. stupid enemy density, forcing you to use certain classes, possible to softlock even without any dead units, what a pain!
i do my research and turns out maniac mode is the same way. massive shame, massive shame. i will just do my best

chapter -1 kinda sucked so next is prologue



that was easy (obviously)

chapter one


i die four times
am i bad? no, my friend, i am simply prejudiced
chapter one deals you ike, boyd, oscar, and titania. ike is awesome, axe animations are cool in this game so boyd is awesome, titania is just cool, but oscar
oscar is a lame-looking cavalier
it takes a lot to make me use any cavalier but hes just a bit too green, ya see. dont like it
so i made sure he would not deal any damage this entire chapter. titania is cool but she also isn't allowed to deal damage because its simply a waste. luckily boyd very much appreciates the steel axe
took a bit of trouble i will admit but i got out of here with ike at level four and boyd at like 3.8 and all it cost was a few extra vulnerary uses

chapter two:



ike is pretty cool huh
this one goes much better, no losses while still maintaining the only ike and boyd attack rule (i use titania once)
rhys appears here, i think he is cool, so i trap the boss in a hell cycle of dealing ten damage to ike, who does not counterattack, and then rhys heals him for ten. i let this happen for about 20 turns. rhys gains two levels and ike gains one extra just from the 1 exp you get from entering combat
at the end of this i think ike ended up at level six, and boyd was like 5.8

and then i stopped playing! how convenient, i'm out of attachments. also homework and code to be done
does my playstyle disgust you? i know it does. share your complaints in the comments section below. did you know that 0.0% of my average viewership is following my profile? it would really help me out if you hit follow on aeon and rang the bell (metaphorical bell)

also if you wanna make your own lets playing here go for it. there will surely be no confusion to the average lurker

[spongelevator]

I also began to PoR a few days ago (lol imagine playing sequels) during openings where I can evade the law and access el not shit computero though it will take a long ass time because no 10 hour days :(
or well I did the prologue and spent half an hour trying to get controller working and then did not touch it since
might be able to do some tomorrow instead of the cave's story lolmaomg epicly smartphowned and utterly demolished
already watched all the tutorials (useless) and also got some sort of strange dolphin error when opening the fog of war tutorial ha ha ha

do gamecube games even typically have mods
I know GBA games of any series are typically packed with mods and wii games also have a good amount of stuff at times (like the entire rebalanced mario kart wii or whatever) but I don't think I've seen a single gamecube game mod at any point
maybe the smashed bro has that actually but if not I don't even know of one

I have also heard maniac mode is absolute garbage
honestly not sure if radiant dawn hard's removal of weapon triangle and enemy ranges makes it worse than what people say about maniac mode but eh at least you don't gotta put in work to get that I guess lol
worst part is people say tellius is some of the easiest in the series regardless of whether you choose to tolerate that garbage so there is zero reason to bother with maniac PoR or hard RD anyway
what were they thinking??????? it is a mystery
well at least assuming you picked 'murican hard we gonna do the same difficulty (though sadly we lose out on 255 crit thunders)

hey man oscar has gatorface AND is colored like those rare slightly greener-than-usual-green crayons!!!!
honestly though only reason I would use him is because after taking a look PoR has less than 20 units I would be willing to use ever (maybe 15-16) and one of those guys is a cavalier that looks like a clown and that's the only reason I even considered using him
apparently he's an asshole but eh I'll take clown over weird catgirl or red christmas cavalier that comes 7 chapters late
two of those units are also thieves and one of them is just a guy who shows up when you walk in the wrong direction
game's got competition with awakening man look what happenin
speaking of not using units:
no titania?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

(there seriously was no better picture than this one in any way I'm not joking this is pre-3ds emblem at least it fits the idea she eat piza)
man aint feeding chapter bosses to maintain jeigan status for as long as possible?????? (apparently titania is an "oifaye" though which means she is still usable throughout the entire game if leveled up because whoever named that archetype didn't play 2nd gen)

ok good rhys is the epic spiritual yet full-haired successor of riff aka "wrys" (thanks localization) and next in line of the "eh okay" earlygame healer that promotes into a light magic using bishop
that means he is definitely worth keep is gud

that is pretty much the same shit I do where I feed the units I want to use (you know those guys who stand on the ground with their feet and their shirt) and spend 15 turns on the boss getting my earlygame healer to B staves in one chapter while everyone else sits back and waits to go home
there is one complaint I have though: jeigan neglect
not treating your jeigan/sigurd(lol)/oifay/finn/marcus/marcus(purple)/titania/freddy/gunter(lol) properly is a serious crime and punishable by demotion and negative growths

be wary of your gameplay good sir

(you have been likked and suscribbled by spongelev
ator)

[Aeon]

it will probably take me a longass time to finish too due to perpetual business
due to convenient circumstances though today and yesterday are business-prohibited days so i do a bit of fire embleming

speaking of MODS and CAVE STORY im pretty sure i remember you sayin you were not on cs+ so you are LIKELY on freeware vanilla. there are shitbillion mods of cave story but highly recommended is 60fps exe. tsun says "its weird" but every other version of the game runs like that and it is simply more pleasant! and slightly more difficult but not very much
i have attached it in case you want to play my awesome caev story modz!!! just threw it together myself because i cant find a decent standalone download so theres a chance it doesnt work because i did it with boosters lab and it autopatches other things so i crossmodded with cave editor to make it go back to pbm and whatever whatever

i did pick murican hard it is going well so far

titania is great and i am now giving her some levels but mm i also have lv 15 ike in chapter like 6 so i think it was worth it

my favorite guys are the ones on the ground with feet and shirts dude. not too much shirt though then you get armor knights! i would rather use a horsey
it is okay though titania has finally reached level two in chapter 6

by the way i made it to chapter six: here is the gaming
3 gives you two new units, one is an armor knight that might leave eventually and the other is an archer i know will leave eventually. boyd and rhys aren't here, so the map is completed solely by ike

after that soren appears! my little boy
boyd isn't here again, so those two get all the exp. it got a bit tight at parts but i only died once and got through with some absolutely incredible levels outta soren, three points of magic and three points of speed

chapter five this one i remembered had an optional bossman that i just barely failed to take care of the last time i played. did not make the same mistake, and i got him and won without any resets. this happened to one of my little boys though! hate ta see it


chapter six, what even is there to SAY. it was basically free, no resets again, and hell by the end of it i was just messing around taking screenshots. i went ahead and bound it to a button on my controller so i could use the dolphin screenshot function instead of win+shift+s. high quality lets plays only
so then i took a screenshot
and
hold on lemme open len'en 4 and beat extra real fast
i think i'll go hooaka/suzumi/i dunno shion sure
not abex though then i'd have to go turn on all my upgrades

alrighty its going well

oh god damn it they dont say the line on shitodo route

posting this hooak,a
at least i almost had no deaths.,.,..up until the impostor revealed themselves


anyway what was this a fire emblem thread?
the punchline is that i routed the entire chapter and then it crashed when i tried to take a screenshot. could not find the funny i was looking for even after ex+alpha
i will now do the chapter with animations off gamespeed up and savestates while listening to "brilliant pagoda or haze castle" ost

thanks for the subscribe. this is now a parasocial relationship and i am an influencer. to combat this terrible truth, i have sbubscribed back

[spongelevator]

literally the only games I have ever played that run at 60fps are GBA fire emblems and 2hus (unless SNES stuff or pikmin 3 or something secretly is 60fps) so that will probably cause my eyes to burn and my soul to evaporate
luckily though your attachment did not work and also I am on 2ds (not the ass-looking "cave story 3d" just the normal 3ds one) so if I tried to somehow make that work it would result in battery leakage and third degree burns and these events would prevent my timely completion of the game

does ike uhhh
well this is still in the not-3ds era right
does he promote via story event or just normal

ohohoh you are so fucked

luckily most of the units in this game that don't seem like ass stand on the ground with their shirt and their stick
we got thief guys on floor, medico on floor, green helmet girl on floor, mage guys on floor, master memedon on floor, uhhhhhhhhh
ok well that's more than the guys not on the floor so I count this as a win
too many shirts and you get borrrrrrs, destroyer of worlds and familiar of RNGod
too bad all the armors in this game are not cool and so yeah in this case honse>amor (osWIN my amor~)
good thing titania be gettin them levels to make up for all the shit armors and honestly not particularly cool cavvies 

if ch3 is a red archer guy and some other armor guy I heard they both leave but I don't care because soon afterwards is definitely-not-wolt as the not-as-cool-as-wolt replacement for this red haired man and it will be fun to bench him immediately
wait boyd and rhys aint there what the hell
ok yeah they are not there 
I guess it's titania time
where is boyd in chapter 4
man I actually wanted to level boyd up what goin on what is this
ok I saw he is back now that is good

boyd gettin that binding blade level up doe

I have absolutely no idea what this next part means so


haha crash means you must do it again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(savestate for perfect rhys level ups and get bulky bishop)

ok we are gonna get so many suscbibblers dude so many lieks and scribes
high quality screenshots make production value go through the ROOF we gonn get so many shout outs from the pew die pie bro!!!!!!


on a completely unrelated note
I found thany
fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Thani

[TSUN]

oh my gosh hey this is a great idea! absolutely incomprehensible for anyone besides you and spongey-chan and i, but still great!

sadly i dont wish to be spoilered for Path of Radiance and therefore cannot view your lets play

but i have started a lets play of my own!

TSUN's Semi-Blind Bad Girls Run!

A Normal run of Binding Blade where we use bad boys and bad girls. Mediocre girls can sometimes be allowed, but good boys are disqualified entirely. The only thing disqualified units can do is act as meat shields, and they cannot have a weapon equipped while doing so. If there's a scripted scene where a non-bad male unit absolutely has to do stuff, then I guess that'll have to slide. Reset whenever someone dies, even the meat shields. No savestates allowed. If theres too many units for a given map, then the deployment priority will go [mediocre girls < bad boys <<< bad girls]

As of now, the list of usable units is:
Roy & Wolt & Bores, Thany & Elen & Wade, Chad & Lugh, Clarine, Dorothy, Sue, Trek and Noah, Oujay & Barf & Wendy & Lilina, Fear, Titty, Lalum, Cath, Cecilia & Sophia, Fa, Yuuno
Yeah, that's a wide margin for error right there. Some of them are probably gonna end up being not-terrible, especially since they're getting fed EXP. Also, that's 25 units! That's like 10 over the standard deployment limit! There's no way you're gonna use them all, right?

OH YOU BET I AM!
LET'S DO SOME FATIGUE, BABY!
We keep track of how many levelups a unit has gotten. A unit can keep going until they level up a certain number of times, at which point they can't be deployed in the next chapter. This counter resets after they've sat out for a chapter. Fatigued units that have to be present for a recruitable character can be deployed, but they're treated as a disqualified unit, and they must sit out for the following chapter.
How many levelups they can have before getting fatigued depends on how good they are. For example (actual numbers are WIP) someone like Thany or Fear will only take 2 level ups to get fatigued, while someone like Dorothy or Bors will need 5. And Sophia will be force-deployed in every chapter, because...

Lalum is totally exempt because she's more like a mechanic than a unit. And (maybe) Lilina, just because she's the Sheeda of this game and I dont wanna lose her bosskilling niche. And (maybe) Thany won't have fatigue until chapter 10 or 11, when Titty comes in. After that, Titty can fill in whenever Thany is gone.
Oh yeah, and Fatigue only starts to apply when deployment selection is unlocked. This also means the first chapter to have deployment selection should have almost everyone be undeployable. Fun times!
Yes, this will result in almost everyone being underleveled. That's half the point.

Also you see how we have Yuuno? You think we're not going to Sacae?
WE ARE GOING TO SACAE

I don't care how much hacking must be involved

WE ARE USING YUUNO AND WE ARE GOING TO SACAE
preferably have Yuuno recruited before Sacae

It'll probably involve splitting the army into teams. One goes to Ilia, the other goes to Sacae. It'd cover both of the routes without danger of overleveling.

okay so the first 3 chapters dont have screenshots
i'll make sure to do those in later play sessions

chapter 1

pretty standard; feels like fe1 chapter 1, without a peggy. i really miss games giving you a flier in chapter 1. getting used to using Good Units as shields. roy and bors had some weirdly good level-ups. wolt also hit pretty often.

(also oh my gosh the cursor movement in this game is like butter)

chapter 2

very simple, kinda chokepointy map. was almost in trouble of getting elen killed, but made it out. wade took out like 5 guys from the fort, while dieck was a shield. i got greedy and tried to give thany some of that exp, which required some healing and tight hits.

chapter 3

i quite like it. very straightforward introduction to indoor chapters (even though a majority of the combat took place outside the building). the village at the top has Lugh, and it's kinda annoyingly far away from everything else. i guess the devs really don't want him to be able to help with the soldiers that rush at you at the start.



ACTUALLY OH MY GOSH I JUST REALIZED
theoretically you could have a couple units go to the village, recruit lugh, and then have lugh and his new buddies go all the way around the building and take out the boss around the same time the rest of your team gets to the throne
or heck you could just have your entire army take the backdoor route
NEVERMIND THAT VILLAGE IS AWESOME I WAS JUST TOO DUMB TO REALIZE IT

lance almost died like 3 times here. gotta keep the shields alive!

wolt is actually hitting things, cuz he's got a B support with Roy now (i am grinding for supports every chapter). bors is already feeling really slow. actually in general, everyone's really slow. like MOV wise. roy has 5, peggies have 7, armors have 4. im shaking in my boots at the idea of having 3 armor knights force deployed in almost every chapter.

training chad as a combat unit. he has not gotten +strength yet.

also Lugh

he's considered a good unit overall, but he's really at the mercy of his growth rates. we almost didn't use him, but decided that "if he gets magic more than once in like 4 level ups, he gets benched". he got speed and luck in this chapter, so he's not verboten yet.

wade defeated the boss with a hammer. it's fun seeing him miss like 5 times in a row with a 30% chance. actually coming from thracia 776, that's kinda surreal. same with seeing Thany hit so often with like an 80% chance. 2RN is very silly.

more shall continue later when spongey-chan is present

oh yeah i forgot to mention yeah spongey-chan will be watching me play and doing a bit of backseat gaming

very fun

[spongelevator]

alright it is time for the spingebinge special 
the same 'murican hard mode with a side of "imagine using cavaliers"

after taking fifteen minutes to take in the fact that like every damn fire emblem I've played in the past month and a half uses different control schemes and enemy range display systems and whatever the hell and also the fact that buttons on a playstation system and buttons on a nintendo system aren't in the same spots or have the same purpose and whatever the hell else "why does every single configuration feel wrong" things I began chapter one


ike may have prepared for the worst but it really wasn't too bad
my only game over was on the enemy phase of turn 1 where I did not take the time to look at the fact that the enemies do, indeed, attack with weapons and do damage that is lethal when repeatedly sustained

second time around I just had boyd bop the left guy and ike sits in front of the right guy so he doesn't die on enemy phase or something like that I forgot
sent titania to the top right to get the village and two (2) guys suicided against her and almost died two times over
she got two (2) exp from the ordeal
also gave her the bosskill
literally forgot to use oscar so all he got was a singular hit on some mercenary on the top right so boyd could kill but otherwise not too bad


after this point I think I decided I didn't give enough a shit to use oscar and promptly erased his name from my "top 15 units that stepped off the bench and never looked back" list

ch2 now
easier than ch1
for some reason boyd doubles the fighters and lol I have absolutely no idea why that is considering he didn't double the ch1 fighters or get speed
so I literally just threw ike in the left corner and boyd in the right corner and made sure to not attack if they'd die on enemy phase afterward and bam half the chapter is dead
boyd got an epic crit and saved rhys one heal (aka saved him one levelup because he was one heal from a level at the end of the chapter) and then I accidentally had boyd kill the boss because the boss began to move and titania is sad now :(
boyd got good level ups every single level and now it's boyd's game


or at least, that's what I WOULD have said, but then the party got split up and now it's just ike
fun

ch3 gives an armor who waits in the middle because nobody even cares enough about him to attack him and a sniper who takes hits very well and made pirates come to him like moths to a flame
so for like fifteen turns I just had the sniper guy sitting there taking hits from pirates in every direction while ike killed them all very slowly (2RKO) and broke one of his four legendary iron swords and then on the ship nobody moved until ike was in range so I didn't even have to do that
titania got bosskill 


somehow each one of these just gets easier and easier I don't know if it gets harder later but this is literally easier than binding blade normal and that's not hard either
aint complaining though I really do not care as long as it's not like awakening maps or some shit




it was at this point the law caught up with your ol pal spoinkexeggutor and I accidentally loaded state when meaning to save state and thought I lost many hours of progress
but nah dolpheen has "undo load state" so things go fine

anyway so yes I play gaem and in soviet tellius game plays me

binding blade run is very epic it will be epic these lets plays is epic
come back for some more t'mor'w maybe

[spongelevator]

do not want to doublepost but I gotta do what I gotta do

ch4 is indeed a fire emblem: awakening map
I wanted to feed soren but then half the damn map moved at me immediately and now I had no idea what to do there
after seven turns of the exact same shit (archerman stands in trees while everyone else slowly kills the enemies) I decided to drop soren into range of an enemy because the results of this chapter did not matter anymore
and it turns out that one enemy was actually two enemy and soren is ded

I genuinely do not know how to play awakening maps 
perhaps I lack some sort of vital skill
or there could be some misunderstanding in how these should be played

either way though next time around I just like
archerguy goes in a tree with six vulneraries, everyone else goes into the corner until it's over
rhys is rescued so gatrie won't double and soren is fed nearly every kill
past a certain point I was able to have them become a mobile army and shit went real good
shinon got ~75exp from dodging or taking three damage

memories of sacae...

and after this titania killed the boss to get the shittest level of anyone in the chapter despite these growths

these are growth unit growths 

levels

nice other than the very fun skill titania

now chappuh 5
fog of war
by the end of the very first turn

gangbang

I could tell I was at absolutely no risk here after the hammer fighter died and the archers didn't attack soren on enemy phase because he can fight back so I decided to do a funny
I know there's a boss down there somewhere and titania could sure use some exp! golly! 
so I sent her down there with a hand axe and she killed literally almost everything including the boss 
but then died to an iron blade memedon
yeah that's right
titania died

japes were had and I had to restart but

anyway after giving her the angelic robe it was time for round two
shit went way better and she was not even close to dying this time 
killed the boss, used up 3/4 the hand axe and

ohhhhh!!!!!!
good!!!!
one luck!!!! luck build!!!!

see that 80% hp there? maybe that 60% skill or 50% speed, other 45% strength and res?
we aint doing ANY of that! nah, nahhh!!!
don't need em!
one luck! luck (1)!
jeigan, you know! falls off! yep! bad growths, bad levels, not enough exp!
it's normal! it's fiiiine!

levels

could have had an entire chapter of good levels if not for the ol luck build but alas, tis reality...

ch
uh
chapter... seven?
six
chapter six
this one actually does that "hide in the trees then surprise attack" gimmick... except it's just a standard rout map in disguise
it basically gives more freedom in positioning but I found the best way to position yourself is to just move for one single turn and then go out and kill everything (I don't actually know if this is the best way but when trying to go the other way it took seven turns to get there at all and I decided to just reset by that point for the juicy 20 BEXP I'd probably miss out on)
it was on this chapter I realized that for some reason attack speed is not speed-(con-weapon weight) but rather speed-(strength-weapon weight)?????
so before soren got that 5% strength he was literally getting weighed down by wind
this man could not read a book without physical strain
memories of nino...

anyway after routing the rout map and soren almost running out of wind (he had 3 wind uses left) and titania and boyd having less than 10 iron axe uses left I began to realize how much it sucks not having a convoy early on because rhys has to carry three of ike's iron swords so that I don't have to dump weapons 

levels

two shitties but otherwise good stuff

chapter 7
the real chapter seven: ike and the faces of evil
other than having to rush to kill the thief it's just rout
soren got one last wind crit to make sure shit died and then became the unit that gets rescued by other units for 2/3 the chapter
also hi mia!!!!! welcome to bench

it was here I realized the game really isn't going to give me anyone new for a long ass time and oscar was unremoved from the team

after a big gangbang I noticed two things:
mage who drops fire is nearby and soren will be back in business
and this game actually accounts for the "shooting arrows over the castle walls" thing
you know how in these games you can somehow shoot an arrow through the wall and throw a javelin or hand axe over the wall (and also this applies to magic though that makes a tiny bit more sense but still doesn't make sense)
well in this one you can't do any of that
it didn't actually matter or anything but
100% realism flame badge game series (epic)

weapons have been plucked off shinon and gatrie and chapter is done

levels

decent enough I suppose 
best levels of course went to the guys who are going to leave in about five minutes and it seems ike is learning bad lessons from titania with her once again terrible levels

after this was a story cutscene where I could not understand half of the words said at all 
apparently an armor knight talking should sound not like a human in armor but rather bees stuck in a jar

now weapons can finally be purchased, an actual convoy exists so rhys and soren can drop off their iron swords and lances, and bonus exp can be distributed though that doesn't really matter yet
also supports and unequipping that one skill that makes boyd hit about as well as wade

the shop didn't have wind yet (chapter 9 has them) but I could "forge" a wind that is the exact same as normal and for the same price so I did that
#lyfehaxx

this next chapter is a defend map where you are slightly more at risk than the other one but it's still a path of radiance defend map
only real threat is cavaliers at the bottom but I just slapped speedwing on titania (no idea if this was necessary but eh didn't care enough to check) then gave her hand axe and bam 
wanted to feed soren but the only way to do that is either take away boyd's exp or reach like two cavaliers in the entire map with their supercanto
made it work well enough though I forgot how but he got two levels somehow
ended up having to sacrifice the red gem because I unequipped titania's weapon on turn 2 to try and give soren some more kills and the choice was either to kill the boss or kill the red gem priest

ilyana joins on this map and confirms that magic in every non-3ds game is, indeed, wicked cool 
soren is cool but I wasn't sure if it was just him and yeah it's not just him
the mages in this game feel kinda like the sages in GBA where they don't even have to act swag anymore they know they're hot shit
but the crit returns to the roots with posing and then a spin
by the way she's like soren except has like 10% less magic, skill, AND speed growths and she also can't hit for shit already but she crit like half of the enemies I had her attack on this map so I aint complaining
maybe her 25% strength will make her able to use stuff without being weighed down but that can't save crummy speed

after soren is racist (epic style) chapter is over


levels

pretty damn nice
mag-blessed ike has four more magic than typical at lv14, whatever that's worth...
and then there's titania

these are her average stats at lv5
currently my titania is -1hp, -1str, -1mag, +1 skill, -1 speed, -1 def, -1 res
guess all my favorable RNG went into ike's mag and this is the result 

also here's whatever this is

(ok turns out there is one of these every time after this chapter so I will only bother putting this one)

after finding out mordecai is not one of those "big formal polite" type characters but rather the type that does not fluently speak english I decided to replace clown guy with mordecai to have one (1) laguz team member

anyway other than fire emblem awakening chapter four everything was pretty damn easy
though I do not have a problem with that
it aint "end turn and win" easy but rather "you don't have to play this chapter 3 times unless you do something very stupid as a joke" easy so I like it just fine this way

come back next time for the adventures of magike and hit-by-a-shuriken-stats titania

[TSUN]

"I genuinely do not know how to play awakening maps"

yeah uguu

frickin most of gaiden's early-midgame is either awakening maps or chokepoint maps

and even earlygame awakening maps almost feel harder than a lot of the stuff i've had to deal with in better games

maybe it's because these maps are so barren and feel like they have no strategy, so i don't bother to apply much strategy to them

but like what are you supposed to do in maps like these? it feels like huddling into a ball of death with armor knights as meatshields is the only way to properly clear these things.

"this one actually does that "hide in the trees then surprise attack" gimmick... except it's just a standard rout map in disguise"

ah so it's like that one map from gaiden

except ya know

in gaiden you dont have any freedom on where you put your units

so it's just death for whichever group happens to have the squishy guys

okay binding blade time
(also hopefully the images show up properly and stay the whole time because catbox dot moe is down and this "imgbb" website looks very silly)

in chapter 4, our resident asshole on a dragon Narcian has captured Clarine the Troubadour.

Clarine is awesome.

Clarine is funny.

Clarine is the most pompous, stuck-up, obnoxious bitch I've seen in a Fire Emblem game.
I love Clarine.

the chapter went pretty smoothly until Rutger
Spongey-chan told me that "rutger is seen as the go-to example for why same turn reinforcements suck, but he's actually not that bad because there's like 3 cutscenes telling you exactly when and where he's gonna appear" and i was like "okay yeah that makes sense" so i carefully positioned my units so that he wouldn't be able to reach any of my squishier guys if he walked out of the castle



and then pressed end turn, and...

attempt number two of this chapter went much better, except Lugh got magic twice in a row, so he's now verboten. Sorry! No magic users until chapter 8 now!

chapter 5 sucks. forest area, same-turn-reinforcement bandits every turn for like 10 turns, and a boss with a killer axe that sits on a throne and you gotta chip damage him at 2 range but Lugh is gone so everyone has a 0.0001% chance of hitting him

(imagine this 20 times in a row)
after a while i got tired of boss abuse and took a gamble

wow
Loy be good?

other than that uhh
two guys who have been benched since chapter 2 have a conversation

this support was built by accident and used up all of the possible support points for the remainder of the map

jeigans don't steal xp, they steal support points

this is the first time i've really paid much attention to level ups, and it's making me realize that growth rates as a mechanic are really whack. we got lots of cool level ups and then we got like 5 +1HP ones happening in the same chapter. and somehow, not a single character has leveled up Constitution even once!

anyways chapter 6

this chapter would probably be a breeze if we brought in like 10 guys. unfortunately, the deployment selection is available starting in this chapter, so almost everyone is fatigued and unable to fight in this map. this is our team:

thank god Thany and Chad are immune to fatigue for the time being. we also got a new usable unit: Dorothy! she's...

bad.

we also got Saul, who occassionally acted as a meat shield despite having no defense at all.

anyways this map SUUUUUUUUUCKS
and its kinda hard to convey how much it sucks with that screenshot
but basically you cannot see inside any of the rooms until you open them
the top rooms have enemies and the bottom rooms spawn reinforcements if you unlock them
it's all just japes

Thany actually became the team's tank for most of it. she only has 7 defense, but everyone else has like 4 defense so we got no choice. she also onerounded almost everything she came across, which made positioning her a little tricky. also Chad is awesome. too bad theives cant promote

also, cath the thief shows up here

look at dat smugfucker piece of shit grin you frickin looove to screw me over you asshole
she shows up and steals all the treasure in the map until either her inventory is full or until Roy talks to her, at which point she pisses off
we took the right path and planned on Cath following, since she spawns on the right side. but nope! how about we go to the left instead!
and so Cath stole 8000 gold. sadtimes
we ended up successfully stealing her lockpick and having Roy talk to her
it was just a long road of hardship full of everyone being close to dying the entire time

chapter 7 was very slow because of course it was.

also it made me realize how much archers suck. it took Wolt and Dorothy and Sue all hitting one generic mercenary to kill him. but hey there is an arena in this map and savestates are allowed for maps with arenas! i dont care if its cheating i dont feel like restarting the map when the arena CHEATS and gives your opponents SILVER LANCES while you are forced to use dinky iron stuff
so we grinded up the archers a little bit. it helped a bit, and we got back all the gold Cath stole and then some!

and then BORRRRRRRS
the epic Bors the armor knight
can use silver lances now
so he tanked against the enemy reinforcements while the rest of us rushed to the boss

now for chapter 8

this is the big one

i hate this chapter so much
you gotta rush to the area with Lilina and the chests before Cath shows up and steals it all

and then once you get there, 20 guys pop out of the woodworks, and the best strategy is shoving everyone in the room with the chests and putting Bors in the doorway while archers and Lilina snipe for like 10 turns

it is pain

also introduced here is THE SHITTER SQUAD

now we are going to use all of these guys because they SUCK
but our most important one is Wendy

Wendy is going to be force-deployed in every chapter

after like 5 attempts we were finally able to get to the lilina area before cath could raid the chests
so we have roy talk to cath and he goes STEALING IS BAD and she goes "come on dude im only stealing from the rich"
she talks about the whole fricked up peasant/noble dynamic full of nobles exploiting the common people, and how it's even worse when there's a war going on, bringing up that one of the nobles on roy's side burned down her whole village "to prepare for bern's attack"

then she pisses off

okay so despite being a pain in the ass Cath is very ased but im 99% sure the game is just gonna have roy go "cool story but my guys dont burn down villages so you should join us" and cath go "ok"
dont you love it when fire emblem games explicitly contest the whole ridiculous royalty/knights/nobles system, whether by having a character say "this is bullshit" or having the whole plot focus on showing how volitile and destructive a system with such an arbitrary imbalance of power is, and then completely avoid a resolution to that conflict and just say "well THIS overly powerful divine-right-to-rule king happens to be a good guy so this system is totally fine!"

frickin i would love a short little fangame where you play as cath and her merry band of theif friends
you infiltrate places during big battles and steal as much as you can while the armies are distracted
it'd need a lot of new mechanics but it'd be cool as heck

anyways we read several conversations between characters (fun fact: Wendy was knighted literally yesterday) and got support levels for Loy and Ririna up

speaking of Lilina, she's kinda like a reverse Lugh

the most important thing for her is that 30% speed growth
if she hits that +1 speed enough times, she becomes amazing
the guy who sat on the throne had 1 range, so i spent an hour hitting him with Lilina. she went from level 1 to level 13 and has an A rank in Anima on her join chapter. it was incredibly boring besides the mini heart attack when i misinput and left her in range of the boss.

as for her level ups
this is what a lv13 Lilina is like on average

and well
lets just say she stole Lugh's growths

anyways chapter complete the end
it might not have come across in this post but literally every chapter past 3 has been such pain and suffering. my successful attempt at ch8 took 3 hours. spongey-chan was begging for me to savestate the whole time, but by this point the horrible experience had rolled back around into top-tier CBT, and being at risk of losing 3 hours of your life at any moment was just a part of the charm.

chapter 8x feels so incredibly out of place and contrived storywise. just like "hey there just happens to be a legendary sword in a volcano right next to the castle you just seized. and theres bandits or something"

also it was surprisingly tolerable. just a long boring road of axe bros and mercs. also there's a gimmick where fire randomly erupts from the floor and hurts you, which is very stupid and just makes everything take slightly longer. but while this map sucks, it ended up as a great place for the Shitter Squad to level up. we did a lot of triangle attacks here.

Wendy will carry this run.

[Aeon]

good evening
ladies,
gentlemen

i am a bit behind (ongoing touhou jam)
TSUN
very surprised you are even leaving disqualified units as meat shields and not benching them entirely. in 3ds that would be nothing but a good thing since free pairup fodder but you gotta keep em alive! troubling
at least youll have their starting gear to redistribute or sell

i hope you have some decent tally for fatigue because that will get hard to keep track of fast

havent played the game dont have much to say good luck!!!

spongelevator
while researching maniac mode i found out why ike starts with four swords. apparently its a us-exclusive glitch that vaguely sometimes happens when you have tutorials turned off. unfortunately i ended up having to toss one or two of them due to not having a convoy for a while but nice to have
you are getting some fat boyd levels, even the one thats nothing but speed really helps an axe-user

undo load state is insane i did not know about that
have fun in "rpg game field of battle"
i am insane at awakening so i simply already know where to go. its comical how easy it is (bodyblocking at the top and letting some arrows get through)

fog of war also known as "fog of night" also known as "darkness" blows but luckily that map is pretty passive and father dearest takes care of the rightmost zone
i got really close to throwing trying to kill the boss but rng and being able to bullshit my way outta anything worked out in the end and i got my useless ass goddess icon

mans sayin "use your titania" until he uses his titania huh

treemap is funny (basically free)
my soren only went in with 5 uses since i was giving him literally every single kill i could so he had to wait in a corner for a bit

benching mia !
cmon man we got a miracle for the lass. she comes with vantage+ she aint thaaaat bad

i did realize that you cant shoot straight through walls anymore. it has helped me more than it has hurt me so far so im not complaining

illyana im not sure if im gonna use just because man these lil dudes are squishy. trying my best with bonus exp. relevant warning: bonus exp goes away if you dont use it. i missed out on six levels lmao

TSUN hi
same turn reinforcements huh. hate to see it. three houses has em in droves but i get my fancy rewind

growth rates as a mechanic ARE wack and i think they are kinda dumb. i would say: let things level up in noninteger amounts and always give you growthrate/100 in each stat
or maybe do your growth rate level and then give the player one stat to choose to level up if it didnt already
i know im about to do some bonus exp trickery since you can save whenever you want at base

i dont know who this cath kid is but she is truly based as you describe. thieves are great

three hour maps! shits insane. i know i told you multiple times to start using turn saves in genealogy for the massive maps but not using savestates here is truly respectable. in it for the long haul. plus everything goes faster your second time so probably noooot even a big deal. if you keep doing it you will feel the pain eventually. congrats to all your units i dont know the names of

entirely unrelated: if anybody finds instances of magic being used automatically under conditions determined by the caster long after it was set up/while they are very far away ASIDE from healtiles (or if you have any insight as to what the hell healtiles are (fates information is not helpful) that would be great) please report them to me posthaste as i just remembered a document i was compiling about the topic (namely how it basically never happens)


alright my gaming
going great lemme get it up

okay so something about this game yeah
weirdly deterministic
i can save/load state right before doing something and the result wont change no matter what i do. i can take different actions inbetween, i can wait, i can do a bunch of random inputs, still a miss
its almost like its either thoroughly seeded or totally broken. the only thing that can change an event's outcome is restarting the game, maybe it's setting the initial seed based on system time or something
this is all to say, me now doing my bonus exp trickery, not going so well. id say im on attempt eight even after figuring out you need a hard reset without mia getting a single str. she gets magic almost every time (30%) but never a str (40%)! even though i have guaranteed that it is actually rolling differently (see: empty level)


okay i finally got it
anyway i got mia last time i played
soren got a tome again and wasted half of the map, mia did what she could, and boyd was invincible. things went well. in my previous run i also gave miracle to mia which i am heavily considering doing again
especially since as a myrmidon she has pretty good skill
sure alright its done
i'll probably have to drop it later for (assumed) astra from swordmaster but pretty good for now
illyana gets some of the rest of the bonus exp

okay i mighta gone a bit overboard on that mia str thing now she has 12 str (ike has 10) and i made her a prf



can you believe what i go through to make high quality images for you guys i hope you appreciate it (font here)
okay its been about 40 minutes and ive been in menus lets actually do some math huh

gameplay catgirl and big man. they are yellow. not green? whatever, they cant get exp so ill try to not let em kill anyone

mist and rolf are also here. mist? do whatever you want, i could take another healer
but i have gotten this far before
and i know rolf is not going anywhere. ill hold onto this longbow for just a while more while he sits and hangs out
oh shit he has a prf
a pretty good one.,.,...,
whatever whatever i dont need him

pegasussy knight is here too. its a party and all people of all nationalities and classes (NOT DAEIN OR HORSES) are invited

heres a picture of soren soloing five axedudes i accidentially left him next to. it crashed when i took this. i hope. it was. worth it.
likewise with the last time it crashed taking a screenshot (this time i took it normally it just crashed anyway) i will now be using savestates, although ill never get that almost perfect mia level back

it is complete
i am much the richer man
i like ike and all of our new and old friends except oscar. soren too even though he is racist

OBJECTIVE UNIT GAMEPLAY COMPETENCE ANALYSIS:
lethe is annoying and i would prefer to minimize my child soldier count so i will not be using rolf and probably not marcia either. mist, well, sorry kid. i am racist so i will probably only use one of these two laguz. oscar is still gone. i want rally speed

[spongelevator]

ok it is time for the continuation of magike and shitania

chaptuh nine
son of a beach
seriously though
come on now
the beach is sand obviously, and you know what sand does
both titania and boyd missed a hand axe and both villages died
didn't reset because ilyana got speed and god knows she needs all of the speed she can get
at that point I just went "well okay I guess I'm leaving then" EXCEPT reinforcement pirates up the ass
now you know ilyana right? ol pal ilyana, thunder mage who mages the thunder
she's only got 80% accuracy on all these pirates and I'm both trying to feed her and trying to survive
but she missed three of four 80% hits and got me into a situation where if boyd missed a 71% I'd have to restart
he did not miss because boyd is reliable
thank you boyd

after that and the recruitment of bench peggy, ike and friends sat there for about seven turns until everyone could get out from the beach and ilyana missed a few more 85%s 
she went from tons of crits to missing over 2/3 of her attacks and got many less levels than she could have if she hit the damn target
otherwise it's just a map I guess a map with enemies on it and trees and grass and stuff
also check the levels very closely there is something new this time

levels

yeah that's right
no luck or skill this time :)

chpaperter ten

hahahaha holy fuck
I will leave this one as an exercise to the reader
(I got the bonus EXP
are you a bad enough dude to scoop it up?
forty turns, take it or leave it)

level (one)

well she got res I'll take it

qapter eleven
well before that I decided to slap on some bonus exp
I can tell this is probably the most save scummable shit but I literally do not care if I get like
+1hp
RNGesus himself would be stopping me here and I know better than to mess with him


good

now babter 11
this is an "arrive" chapter
you "arrive" at the "arrive point" and once you have "arrived" at the "arrive point" you are "done" and "finished"
remember escape? this is the version where ANYONE reaching the point counts as a win
absolutely nothing is stopping you from sending titania directly towards the boss after recruiting memedon edgemaster on turn 2
there's even a path in between the map where you can get to the boss and fight less than maybe eight enemies? and almost all of them are ORKO'd on enemy phase with hand axe
honestly now that I'm thinking of it I wish I did this
but I just routed the map
there's an objective to keep the vigilantes alive but they're so damn weak they accidentally suicided into nephenee and brom and ike and boyd and titania and mordecai and soren and oscar haha oops

the boss actually looked a little threatening but he decided to use the iron bow on ike for some seven damage and bow locked himself
so I took this opportunity to let everyone get a hit in for ~15 exp a hit and then fed to titania lmao

after this the black knight came out of a house and menacingly walked two spaces per turn in my general direction but too bad because titania is about to step on this yellow square and that means you have to leave now good sir

also remember stealing lockpicks from thieves so they just give up and go home?
well now you can steal HEAL FROM PRIESTS haha yes and then they just stand there
they don't even try to leave or anything they just wait until someone kills them or hope nobody cares enough to even do that I guess

I finished this in some ~20 turns but got not a single speck of BEXP so I dunno if the wiki's information is wrong but it says you should have like
300-30 per turn past seven or something and I got 0
sucks because that's gonna make things more annoying later on (well kinda) but whatever

levels

titania good
also holy shit nephenee and volke
ilyana almost leveled so bonus exps and she got a boyd level

anyway that is all this time titania was not shit no more and ike is still mag blessed though oh god lv15 on chapter 9 that is not very good I should have used oscar more man



reply to other posts reply section 

ok I am going to mash everything together as per usual because I know how to do the name thing but nahhhh man I probably forgot how to do it by now 

yeah I am assuming what I did is what both of you mean
it just looked like this

for about twenty turns
I hope dearly this is not genuinely how they expect the game to be played because good god at that point just put soren in a tank and he'll use thunder and fire and explosives and waiiit a minute


I have no idea how that level works and whatever I found sounds like it's just an awakening map but I mean the enemies straight up do not detect you until you leave the trees
you can be three spaces away and they won't do anything until the turn one of your units exits the trees
probably these two maps work almost the same though I mean to say "they did the thing but did it like shit"

when I speak of rutger and the game shows all the cutscenes I interpret it as "stay as far away from the castle as possible" 
STRs work in a way where there really is no "safe" considering you can't check their stats/exact spawn point or time so the best precaution is to just not be anywhere near the castle which is why I did not get japed

dory funny dory funny

ok I gonna respond to the aeon part of the growths thing here because lolazy 
oh but first you can't level con it's just there for when you promote and it shows the con going up
I don't know why it does that considering it doesn't have move there and move always goes up on promotion too but eh it's there
anyway growths
yeah they are some weird shit
I like em though sometimes you get utter shit and go "man what the hell" and other times you create god
they make replays have more value because you never know what you're gonna get 
it's like a dollar store grab bag sometimes you get half a bag of lollipops and other times you get a broken wind up dinosaur or a bar of soap with a bite taken out of it
I know a ton of games with static statboosts per level or ones that let you allocate some/all of your stats but nothing ever ends up as entertaining as growths
maybe you'll get the ol fun lugh

or this ririna

(yeah that's right)
there is stuff like "average stats" patches for GBA games where you get the exact same thing every time or berwick saga where I have heard the levels work in a way where every unit will be guaranteed near the average with small deviation to prevent stat screwing/blessing but with that every run is gonna feel similar and there will never be the opportunity to pick up a new shitter who just got three god levels in a row
adding +1 to any nonleveled stat would probably make anyone that joins before midgame look like demifiend and the minmaxing would reach game-turns-into-awakening tier because you can guarantee any one stat will be capped by unpromoted lv20

also when playing 3ds and fe6/1 I noticed the games seem to have ways around the variability of growths
3ds just made them higher and added pairup/tonics/whatever else to make up for the much smaller casts so you'd have to be really unlucky for someone to turn out fully screwed and unusable
fe6 has good ass promotion bonuses that can patch up weak points like ririna's +3 speed on promotion to help her 30% growth 
and fe1 is generally bases>growths but gives insane statboosters just in case (statboosters in general help with minor deficits in a stat throughout the series)
aint saying it's a flawless system but I think it's a neat one that spices things up after mixmaxing luck and agility for optimal funny and it seems like most of the games have things you can do in the case of screwage whether it's replacing the unit, slapping on meal+tonic+pairup+rally (actually holy shit fates you crazy that some good shit), or anything in between
dunno why this part is so long but the next one will be too!!!!!! yeah

cath part
oh cath
hoo boy
fe6 does stuff with corrupt nobles but I don't think any of them including this one were ever actually allied with pherae or anything considering eliwood's portrayal as the ever so unique "completely morally good" and roy being his son
western isles has roy directly going against corrupt nobles and such

I'm not sure if that is a 99% miss there and if it is that means you will get to enjoy one more cath recruitment conversation
but the bad news is those conversations are basically the best cath ever gets
I don't know if this next part counts as spoilers considering four of the five units she supports are verboten but I aint gonna go into the chad one 

cath is pretty uhh
not a good person in the supports
she says she "steals from the rich and gives from the poor" but in four out of five supports she's stealing from the so very obviously not rich chad/hugh/geese/bartre and she even swindles money from hugh by claiming she's gonna give it to the poor and then proceeds to take it for herself
so she's less a robinhood thief and more a self-proclaimed dubious robinhood thief
it honestly feels weird that she constantly says she only steals from the rich and gives to the poor and yet immediately in all four supports this is proven false
but here's the thing: her ending says it's true...? so which is it? she says she only steals from the rich and gives to the poor, yet her supports show this isn't true, and her ending says it is???
she's also the only "lawbreaker" (thieves, pirates, bandits, ect) in the game who seems fine with her actions and I always found that strange because she felt out of place and less like an actual person and a line or two in her supports have me thinking she only says she's fine with it because she doesn't want to compare herself to bandits and such
but if this is the case then why does she steal if she is one of two thieves who doesn't have to steal at all???????? (other is astol who gave up thievery to be a spy for hector)
the one good cath support (good as in cath development and not "cath is here so someone else can get development") is the one with bartre and it's actually quite nice but you've already seen half of it by the time you recruit her so I really don't get what the writers were trying to do with cath if anything at all
maybe she's supposed to be some sort of comic relief character I guess because she has a humorous theme (also reused for serra and merlinus) but the other characters feel like snippets from the lives of actual people and as a result cath is widely regarded as one of the weakest fe6 cast members as a result second to only oujay and wendy who are barely characters in the first place
also chad does a similar thing to her "steal from the rich and give to the poor" except with an actual properly and repeatedly explained motive which is he wants to help the other children from the orphanage as they don't have enough food or clothing and such and is a thief solely for this purpose (I actually quite like chad/lugh/raigh and their supports with each other and other units but eh aint about to dump another five paragraphs like that)
basically I do not know what's up with cath but her character and writing is about as good as she is as a unit
this is probably too much shit but I never thought I would see the day someone gave a shit about fe6's cast and I got to talk about a part of it (sadly it had to be this way)

ok now is chapter 8x I am sorry but I must do it again
the volcano is away from the castle on the outskirts of ostia and ririna knows the location so she led roy's army there
they were trying to get away from bern who was rapidly approaching and decided to get durandal before bern could reach it (and bern actually caught up with roy's army at the end of the chapter)

it has its reasons for existing and if ririna dies in chapter 8 you don't go to get durandal because she can't lead you there as she has perished and instead you just leave or something I guess??? never seen what happens
same thing goes for most of the other gaidens like if elphin dies before 12x or sophia dies (lol) or whatever
I don't know exactly why the cave is full of dumbass bandits who sit in one spot and never move but they don't know durandal is in there or anything
in ch12x there's bandits in the armads cave and they're looking for treasure (they don't know armads is there) so it's probably just that 
not the most amazing cave drama but eh gotta have enemies in the earlygame gaidens

thank you wendy
please carry this run with your 10 con

ok now that the way too long response is done it is time for singular sentences scribbles with spoge

gotta bring titania this is the only opportunity for rare axe jeigan (also lamo supercanto)

I sold miracle to buy more hand axes for titania sorrey :))))))))))))))))))))

I do not know if something is wrong with your bonus exp but my bonus exp stayed I still have like 1k bonus exp from all the previous chapters

gotta save the state for the speedy ririna man usually I would not recommend the use of such things (well I used em in fe1 and I do it at the beginning of every chapter in PoR so I don't gotta reset if things go like throwing a battery into the fireplace) but in this situation gotta do it 
good thing genealogy has built in savestates :)))))))) oh I already did that like two sentences ago

I do not know what that magic thing means which game does that apply to
is it just a fates thing
I have no idea if you mean "what specifically are healtiles" or "what are healtiles at all" but if it's the latter ok I know you're not asking for that but I'll say it anyway
here we go
the glowy things you stand on and recover some hp in the handful of chapters and the my castles it shows up in
haha I did not help anyway what do you mean by this do you have an example or something

I japed around with savestates to see what would happen after seeing that part
and it aint really particularly special for me
in most games if I savestate and then do something and load the save the same thing happens again and I used this to get a recording of an ilyana crit to show the crit animation (I failed to upload this to the utoob channel I'll do it next time I swear)
I was able to get stuff to change by uhhh
I don't know which of these it was because I did multiple of them at the same time and made no attempt to test each one
but either entering a round of combat, selecting and unselecting a unit, wiggling the cursor at the end of a unit's movement range, using an item, or just literally none of these at all was able to get me different results pretty consistently
resetting changes the RNG yeah this is also true for GBA
after doing a singular googel search and seeing what this person says (I cannot confirm the accuracy of this)
forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/68112-tellius-rng-solved/
it seems pretty similar to the really shitty GBA RNG where everything can be manipulated easily and if you memorize certain ways of doing things you can guarantee crits and misses and whatever every time (this is done in speedruns and such) so loading a save won't change anything
in GBA all of the things I mentioned will advance the RNG and I have no idea if wiggling the cursor and shit still burns RNs but eh try it out maybe it'll end funny
since you're asking for bonus exp cheese though there isn't really the ability to do any of that in the menu so I dunno if anything can be done there everyone seems to just reset from what I see

aint a memedon man but I know one thing about miracle from babby sakura and it's that miracle is based on luck and not skill
in every non-jugdral game it's just luck% activation 
since it always comes earlygame and is replaced lategame though it's gonna end up with like 10% activation rate and then be replaced with astra/rally whatever/literally anything else so eh I just pawn it off for twenty bucks because for some reason you can't take the skill off and put it onto someone else after using it
you been japed by the luck build gods with their uhhh
the one fates skill where you get the money with luck% or whatever
ok I don't know where I was going with this never mind

epic missile without the tainn bro I tried to forge a wind with 3 might instead of 2 and it went from 500 gold to 2000 gold so I just bought six hand axes instead

the saddest part about rolf's PRF is when I found out I couldn't sell it to buy a steel sword or something
he will forever be the guy who bailed ilyana out of two (2) 85% misses and then sat on a bench for the rest of his life

ok I do not know what wrong with your screenshots but savestate before you screenshot just in case because I want to see soren kill those piryot for what they did

I like oscar I forgot to use him for many chapters so now he can poke things with a stick and get 30exp from it
I wonder what will happen if he pokes a boss with a stick
also mordecai is the prime guy to get poked with a stick by an enemy because for some reason before transforming he just stands there and everyone goes for him
I thought he would just be weak for five turns or something but nah he just stands there and gets poked with sticks
considering he looks like a fridge I don't get why he doesn't just punch them in the face or something that would be good I remember when hector did that

he does say he doesn't like fighting though maybe he just stands there because he doesn't want to fighting


god it has been three hours ok I am going to press the post button now
maybe more later I do not know

[Aeon]

spongelevator
you are catching up my guy, i am not gonna have much new stuff for ya soon

ilyana i was ready to ditch at any time but shes actually doing fairly good and sometimes doubling even with elthunder
your titania is whole ass level seven though huh. how much is she EATING man i barely got her near three and a half

i am so happy you did not have to deal with the black knight. he is funny

i forgot about steal! thanks for tellin me about using it on heal because i didnt realize that. enemy healers are kinda afk anyway though i see them literally just stand still no matter how many wounded pals they have nearby

your diagram? perfectly reasonable. but in reality: soren was frontlining
he one rounds everything and can take exactly one hit from any attack before dying (this is usually enough). he has more speed than mag and tomes are light lil books so he is dodging pretty well too

i think there is a good element of randomness in growth values but just getting screwed over repeatedly is simply lame and since the game takes [double digits] of hours i cant simply reset whenever i feel like it as if it were a roguelike. hey they should make a

high growths i generally like since paying attention to every single time any particular stat goes up is kinda annoying and makes me feel like a pitiful little man who begs for literal ones
i am a big buffing man though i like takin my stats much higher than they are supposed to be. once wrote up a plot to get one hundred res in awakening (untested i lost my cart)

big fan of destroying the aristocracy. i do like using swords but lord as the protagonist class every single time cmon guys. as far as i know byleth is the only exception because they arent from the ruling class but are instead directly descended from the shadow organization that controls all governments (different). three houses and fates' playable cast are almost entirely composed of noblebirths or those directly affiliated with them and mo
of course the stories usually involve politics pretty heavily so a bunch of commoners dont usually have anything useful to contribute, and i would rather a wordy noble than a guy that stays silent since recruitment. troubling
anyway too bad cath is an asshole. hating rich people does not immediately make you awesome. at least we got chad

my mans SOLD miracle though god damn!! i looked it up and there are no skill scroll copies so no more miracle. also i kinda forgot it was luck insteada skill lmao. the skill descriptions in path of radiance are complete garbage, if i didn't know (or forgot) what everything does from 3ds i would have no idea what ""under certain conditions"" means

magic question was just out of any fire emblem if you find an instance of magic that isnt like instant use. the "what are healtiles" i meant like canonically what are these big marble chunks that make you not die when standing on them and who put them there

thank you for the thorough tellius rng description and link i will use fruitlessly it in the future past (events described later in this post)

vaguely about luck: i found an occult scroll and remembered that you need those to get the cool skills so i probably wont have to replace miracle (there are only four occult scrolls in the entire game). kinda lame but they are all very good so whatever

mordecai is busted he has EIGHTEEN BUILD. he is part of the gang now (big fan of smite)


alright my own posting:

there was the like
prison chapter
i freed the conspicuously well-informed man with dragonskin and he just waited in his cell anyway for the rest of the map. we got a horse guy   and an armor guy  and nephenee
shes kinda dumb lookin and bad at talking, but since she is a bit funny i made her a prf weapon. basically just missile but a lance

she very quickly became stronger than ike, being the third person to do so (he still has ten str at lv 19). that regal sword is kinda falling off so maybe i need to make that guy his own prf. as if two wasnt enough

next chapter. shit gets real
so this is where i stopped playing on my old save so i remember it pretty well. somehow i was dying like multiple times here back then but here it was a clean sweep, eight chapters of everything going my way
and then i

ha ha ha thats funny, i thought he showed up later. its nice to see you again mr black knight
oh whats that? you want a turn? well sir i understand your frustration but we simply cant have that, you showed up quite unannounced and my dear squishy magicdudes are here
hm. looks like he cant hear me. hes taking aim at rhys and oh boy oh god thats a slaughter, thats brutal, i didnt know he had two range, god damn. well thats some bullllllshit im just gonna load state. i have been saving pretty frequently and whenever i take a screenshot, thank you spnogelevator for the idea on that it is very good to have the security
so ill just load state

ah.

dont even WORRY dont even WORRY i can call in an old contrived sequence favor
[*you remember the words of the wisened sage...]

Apr 13, 2022 4:01:46 GMT spongelevator said:

it was at this point the law caught up with your ol pal spoinkexeggutor and I accidentally loaded state when meaning to save state and thought I lost many hours of progress
but nah dolpheen has "undo load state" so things go fine

thank you flashback sequence
perhaps there is an equivalent feature? undo save state? there is! brilliant, absolutely brilliant
undo save state, load state, and boom, we got some lenience
as soon as i end the turn he will show up though, gotta be really careful
the only real problem is that soren has already waited in the position you see above
the present nearby untapped units are ike, rhys, volke, titania, and ilyana. i did a lot of math here and tried just about everything
first thing i did was ike dodgebuild but it wasnt happening, even with his incredible capped 20 speed. obviously the knight will aim for soren if he can so i thought i had to jam the passage with ike, but i figured out i could use volke's shade to redirect him downwards, to where titania is. ilyana cant escape his range but also is safe because of the same skill. obvious solution: titania tanks a hit.
problem: a couple things.
shes down there unequipped to keep jill busy, who i have on good authority will become a lot friendlier if we dont kill her this chapter. luckily we can exploit two ai quirks here, the fact that jill prefers attacking unequipeed people and the fact that the black knight prefers to not attack ike, but not as much as he would not prefer to attack someone with shade
comically, titania is a single point of defense away from being able endure one hit from the black knight, and she doesn't get doubled. luckily! there is a single bush nearby which makes it up. i take ike down, unequip sword, jill hits ike, titania goes in the bush, and takes
all of her hp in damage from the black knight
well that cant be right
and to be honest i just realized what was happened while making this post, at the time i thought it was just being funny for the sake of it
its because she had an AXE and he uses a SWORD
hilarious. even if i deequiped it, the woulda been finished off by jill, unfortunately.
so i've been doing this for like forty minutes, loading state to the turn before every time because its just a chess puzzle by this point
and despite all my efforts, it was impossible. nobody dodged, nobody could take a hit, and there was no way to get soren out. i dont blame the poor guy
BUT with that titania shit i felt like i won so i just put on a cheat code LMAO. same turn reinforcement superbosses huh
perpetual player turn. i thought this would prevent the black knight from spawning but he actually did the next turn, after i turned the cheat off. thats moddability, baby. well done nintendo programmer
nephenee sweeped house and it was over


last post i said i included a picture of soren fighting five axedudes and then i didnt and i deleted the screenshot. sorry i lied

next chapter: is the smallest chapter id ever seen. literally less units than awakening chapter one while i just sit on a boat and wait for jill (now a friend) to repeatedly miss 75s

found a typo. i take it all back, nintendo programmer oh my god how did you miss it, literally unplayable and genuinely embarrassing

then there was a bigger boat chapter. new horsey (bow knights are good horses), too bad she blows and got a blank level. paragon really workin out huh
gatrie shows up here and he is even more annoying! i took his shit and had him tank and he was still in the way
whatever, cool laguz around these parts at least

very interesting cutscene after this chapter, spoilers and stuff but little girl is trolling around and ike calls her out on it. usually people get away with just being quirky in stuff like this but he wasnt fuckin around. even more surprising is that he got proper scolded for it when usually when you talk back to assholes in anime and stuff everybody is just like "omg good job you are such a hero"

cool
i might mess around and do another chapter today since i just finished jamming

[spongelevator]

feed titania boss get many level
too bad almost every one of the levels was utter shit but hey at least it aint fe1 jeigan levels

eh miracle is ass I don't think any of my units have more than ~15 luck and if they get put into miracle range that means I'm not gonna get the win regardless
better put to use stocking up on another three or four hand axes for the hard times (well it don't even sell enough for that it sells 500)
when will hand axes go back into stock why are they gone anyway where did the merchant guy put them how does he run out of infinite hand axes
I don't think I was aware the game slaps you in the face with 20k gold but eh miracle honestly went to better use in its second life as a hand axe anyway
if there is one thing I'd take miracle over though it's counter which is absolutely best sold for two hand axes or even a singular iron blade (disgustan)

ok I do not know about that magic stuff then
I don't remember enough times healtiles showed up (if you don't mean forts/thrones/heal bush/whatever) other than in my castle but almost nothing about my castle ever gets explained and I don't even know if it's canon because it doesn't make sense within the story so I would not be surprised if no such explanation exists
not exactly sure how healing is supposed to canonically work in the first place because you get stuff like "this blue shit will let you fully recover from third degree burns and twelve arrows to the chest" and "this staff can bring anyone who died in this battle back to life" but then why do you get stuff like seth apparently having the injury he got in the prologue for the entire sacred stones even if you heal off the damage he took

after shove and smite I just wonder why these mechanics are generally not kept
the good shit ones I can think of right now are rescue/shove/pair up and all of these have their own thing yet shove/pair up got dumped after the "era" they were introduced in ended
fates has pair up and brought back shove as a skill (I have no idea how to get it) and kiiinda rescue but it doesn't work the same
all I can say here is
more reasons not to play three houses (more like one house ha get it because nobody wants to play it more than once funny)

I am pretty sure I somehow thought the regal sword needed to be preserved because I have used it less than 10 times total
my ike may have good strength but he's just chip damage these days so someone else can kill
god forbid he caps level too soon no no no
guess ike is filling the hector role of "very good earlygame and then average midgame and then shit lategame" or something

ok wait wait wait doesn't the black knight only show up after you defeat the boss he was like four turns from reaching anyone for me because I routed 2/3 the map in like three turns and then turtled the absolute shit out of that last 1/3 to train nephenee with her fun javelin misses before fighting him
also doesn't jill not move unless you piss her off at the bottom right corner of the map
wat happen
the biggest mistake is however:
no short spear titania??????????
oscar is sitting on his horse who is standing on the bench short spear is 100% free titania weapon (or free selling weapon but after I got that 20k I didn't bother)
gotta put short spear on titania weapon triangle is the paladin's specialty
do it come on now short spear titania it's like halberd marcus (except not at all) gotta do it

I did not play the yumi nikki or the yumi (ni)kki yet (ok I probably will not play those) maybe I do this one latre

also if the growths thing is about 10 strength ike at lv19 (if not then disregard) he might not be good currently but for the like
two occasions where it matters (BK and final boss) it's still possible to recover from this and have a good chance at even capping strength for these battles
ike gets +3 strength on promotion and with the two energy drops (nobody else really needs them outside of RD transfer bonuses) that turns into +7
cap is at 26 strength so to cap he'd need 9 strength over 21 levels with a 50% growth which is likely
if that doesn't happen you can still beat burger king with three aethers if you have 23 or maybe a little less strength? which would be 6 strength over 21 levels with the coin flip growth
I believe if your ike somehow gets screwed exactly the same way with 5 strength over 20 levels for a total of 22 strength (probably won't happen) three aethers is still enough to defeat BK if mist can stop the priests
recovers 6hp per turn and you'd be doing 6+24 with aether each time at 22 strength (honestly capping skill is probably more important)
I have no idea how to calculate the probability of failing to get at least 5 strength over 21 levels with a 50% chance each level but in the situation where the stars align specifically to fuck this up there's always that base bonus exp cheesing shit and ten chapters in between ch17 promotion and the ch27 fight for worst case scenario (actually worst case scenario is just not fighting burger king at all so worst case scenario for if the fight shall be done)
apparently the final boss is also stupid in that without wrath+resolve and trained not-screwed ike it just sucks but eh it sounds like less an issue with growths and more an issue with poorly designed final boss kinda like no-falchion mediuth in fe1 or julius without trained julia in fe4 (take a look at fe6 where base roy can 3RKO idunn and fe7 which gives athos to fight the dragon very cool)

ok now is the part where I put the too many images and the words and the stuff

chapter twelve
god damn birds
I have no idea what this chapter wants
it's just a bunch of birds that go to the ship and fuck you up
this is kinda like the one rev gimmick except the entire chapter is that (and honestly that makes it better than the rev gimmick)
kinda felt like a gambling chapter
everyone had their 70% hit on these asshole birds everyone who is not volke or titania seems to get doubled
lucky for me though
brom got a ~5% crit
and titania got not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR 8% crits in this map and saved my ass every time from these god damn birds on the god damn ship
also here comes jill
oh snap she gettin racist (epic style)

look at that fuckin wyvern model
I didn't get an image actually but
he's all squatty and crusty and does not look like something I would want to ride


after getting all the reinforcement birds with their statboosters I boxed this asshole in
that's right man 
jill even crit him to uhhh
to do her thing

levels

ok you can kinda see wyvern there
looks all nasty and stuff
combine that with flier animations looking like ass in this game and bam it's suddenly funny

titania gettin better level than oscar
honestly I think oscar was already supposed to become a paladin by now he does what he's supposed to do but he is no god
ike's level is getting concerningly high because there are still five chapters left until promotion

ok I forgot about the bonus exps so I have to make another ms paint for them

everyone other than mist was close to leveling and I just slapped mist in the face with 100exp because I am not waiting for that shit
rhys promoted because I aint waiting for that shit neither
and volke got the ol 5% mag I guess

plapter thirteen
boat defend map
now first time around I have absolutely no idea what I did but I somehow let the enemy reach the seize point on turn fucking one
second time went much better I slapped jill onto the seize point and every turn she'd just come out and throw a javelin at some unsuspecting fellow and supercanto back onto the stairs
got far in and then ravens started stealing shit
fuck you ravens why do you make every map awful to deal with
I assumed they would drop both items upon death because this game is generous and allows one dropped item upon death but I was wrong and rip one of two speedwings in the entire game
also they took the killer bow and elfire and all I could do is shake my fist at them as they fucked right off on turn 10
I hate ravens so god damn much

levels

titania epic again
brom almost leveled so I gave him the level

after this you meet peggy lady who is sadly only recruitable in radiant dawn and not this
she appears to be the juno of the game as in objectively worse than the other two peggies despite being the highest in rank (also RD already looks to have some of the worst balancing and availability for tons of characters out of all the games I've seen so not good)

what makes this even worse is one less flier for a certain almost surely godawful map coming up soon

caper 14
fog of war
this is the part where I find out there are only two fog of war maps in the game after buying ten torch staves to spam with mist and hoping I would be able to get soren to C staves for physic
should have checked first but I did not
this is also where you recruit clown man who was going to be on the team until I realized I don't want that shit
clown man is now on "visit house" duty so he can get vantage for nephenee and then be benched until the end of time (though it seems like he'd actually prefer it this way)
deployment limits are starting to suck like in binding blade because I have three or four more team members than deployment slots and in this game it's especially ass because no promotion items other than three master seals who are certainly going towards healers and then the vendor
this and the other fog of war chapters have been pretty stupidly easy I am pretty sure every game with fog of war either has a method to let you break it over your knee or doesn't even bother making it hard enough for that to be worthwhile all you've got is thracia which is less "fog" and more "new prescription needed"
boss had a killer axe and yes he crit but he crit mordecai so lol he doesn't give a shit 
after mordecai punched the guy in the face titania got one of her famous bosskills 

since I thought there would be more fog of wars I didn't bring a single torch staff (volke and titania had torches and use them better) so I actually got my 240 BEXP this time around and since most of that shit goes to mist anyway it was completely pointless in almost every way
torch staves were promptly sold right back to the merchant guys at a loss of what, 5000 gold?
that could have been 10 hand axes instead :(
or even that unholy forged wind and TWO of them

levels

astrid is like an est except "growth units are bad"
she can shoot one bandit and get 30exp and one kill is a level for her
probably she'll promote before oscar anyway at this rate lmao
speaking of oscar nephenee is almost straight up better than oscar at this point

didn't even give enough an ass to check for bonus exp at this point I'll do it fokin latre

now, that next chapter I was talking about...

[Aeon]

hows it goin everybody

@spongo
miracle: it has saved me from a bad rng shot one time and thats good enough for me
counter yeah it is less useful as a triggerable skill but id still say its better to have it than another hand axe

canon healing i have no idea its kinda boul shit since it never exists in cutscenes
i can have my white magic specialized byleth with 20 mag hold their dying dad for about a minute of exposition and they do nothing. it can take a man from 1 hp to 80 in half a second in gameplay but dont try that shit if anybody is making enough of a sound to bring up a dialogue box

it would be cool if there were more unit archetypes that were maybe specialized to certain mechanics between games instead of dropping them. tellius keeps canto but adds shove to the ground guys so theyre more different than just varying stats and mov
not saying you gotta divy up all the mechanics and keep all of them since it would get cumbersome but theres gotta be a way to not drop things every game
just another thing i will be throwing in aeon's fire emblem engine!! nintendo cant do shit

regal sword i was holding onto for a while but now ive just benched it at 2 durability. its not much better than a forged iron sword aside from looking cool

black knight maybe thats how he spawned i never made the connection

my guys were in the bottom right when jill spawned and just being near her gang is enough to get em angry. i forget why it was some dumb shit though. no short spear? yeah shes only been on axes this whole time. spears are nephenee's job and i forgor

alright im seein your logic on ike str and i think i will be fine regardless, i just took a peek at ragnell's stats and the speed is lookin a bit more important
also aether! just got it myself. nice stuff.

yeah the wyvern model is hilarious. just a green man. animation is she flies away and then back into the same spot and jabs

mans got seized on boats! i also have no idea how that happens, i never got close and a green dude was always on top of it. maybe enemy crit or somethin
dont know why they did not drop the stuff when you killed them, worked out fine for me

deployment limit yeah thats starting to hurt even for me who likes using few units
they give you so many guys and most of them are neat enough to work with for a bit until you realize you have no space


alright here i go
first thing: durability kinda pointless here
ike, mia, and soren had the exact same weapons for 9 whole ass chapters. shit takes gameplay time genuinely hours to break
ive gotten so much free stuff i just leave in the convoy since im not even really concerned since i can forge a perfect weapon once a chapter that lasts a third of the game
eventually i stopped caring about that too! made this axe for fun


anyway onto the chapters:
chapter makalov: i did the same thing you did. boss has a killer axe or something so i played carefully but i swear these ai are the dumbest bricks in the world. each one of them is the guy in overwatch who is mad at the rest of the team so he throws by just running up to reinhardt (nephenee) as a lucio (myrmidon) and *tink* NO DAMAGE like what do you want from me dude chillll

shove is pretty great. im just usin it more and more to move guys around, especially soren and illyana with their weak ass mov. another reason horseys blow! conversely mordecai is great at it

chapter sand: i looked at a wiki for all the loot locations ha ha ha but it ended up being unnecessary! my strategy for the very easy and short map already included mordecai standing at 26, 2 where there is one enemy (its a defeat boss map)
and i am rewarded with stefan, a true hero! very aesthetically challenged man with a sword i will give to mia later. if i was concerned about anything i may use him on the team but i already have aforementioned mia and zihark. i also have it on good authority another swordmaster will grace my presence in the near future
also in the sand is a bunch of weapons and items and whatever. again i have really not been looking at the convoy much but i know i can just drop a couple stat boosters on whoever i want and they will become good immediately

continuing the trend of incredibly easy chapters that contain obtuse recruitables and a bunch of loot for almost no danger is "the atonement". by this point im just divvying up exp so everybody can get to 20 so i can use master seals on all of them. you know i do wonder when those will be available. soren is already lv 20 but he can still get exp. hm. troubling
is it perchance that there were only two master seals in the whole game and i have already used them all? surely, not. i clear the entire chapter and get devdan, whose utility is superceded by nephenee's. thanks for the spear buddy

hm alright where are we now
ah yes chapter seventeen. i've heard of this one before, ya know. this is where you get RAGNELL and ike PROMOTES and its TWO PARTS. innovative, slightly. the first part is not terribly scary aside from the man speaking in cursive enchantment table. i reset a few times because i decide to use my weaker guys instead of the ones at lv 20 because i just need more master seals for em anyway. jill rejoins the party and boyd, soren, and mia leave
really easy stuff though. this map is really big honestly it doesnt look like we will even get to it all if we only do one quarter of it in the first part. maybe there will be some gimmick!
part two i let mia and boyd in on the action but i do kinda rush the goal since i want my sword. reinforcement mechanic is neat
after that a woman shows up and ike becomes slightly more useless than he already was. i know the games still easy but im still not gonna see capped level units get kills if i can avoid it. simply bad practice
i do like the actually gameplay implementing of story event though! good on ya guys keep it up dont go back on all your progress more and more in the next 7 games
but whats goin on hm this is "Day Breaks" part three. ((THERE ARE FOUR))
so remember what i said about durability before? yeah well i had already been thinking like that before starting this chapter and since i thought "only two parts" i was like yeah. soren. you go ahead and carry that two durability fire six durability wind. ike cmon dont even worry 6 durability iron blade 5 durability regal sword. zihark? that one hit left on the killing edge? its all GOOD man dont WORRY
and many other tactical misplays of this nature
i let soren be the sole reinforcement of this part, by the way. i realized i could have given him equipment to bring for us but just didnt because lmao whatever nephenee and mia are doing fine (nephenee and mia are invincible)
i cleared it with 4 turns left by tactically deploying invincible mia and using rescue seriously for the first time. soren helped in the upper left. a bit too much though. he got another level past twenty. damn when are those master seals coming anyway
just KIDDING thats HOW you promote woulda been GOOD to know. very convenient. now i will no longer die in poverty having to buy master seals (i am incredibly rich)
i get to pick between giving him staves and knives. a stupid ass choice since theres not a chance in hell any mage is gonna have enough str to keep up with the teeny, teeny power of knives. volke already deals 5s and 6s and he has been a melee unit for like ten levels. anyway i gave ilyana knives when she promoted

part four. i had already decided i was doing all this in one sitting so when i see five armors and six horses i consider straight up end turn turtling but whatever ill play along because i know
ike is getting doubled even with capped speed, deals shit for damage, and all of his shit will break in ten seconds. just need. ragnell. thats what its all for baby. in those ruins. right there.

so i do it you know easy stuff record time 100% optimal exp distribution
the guy who cant get a hold of himself shows up (green) and sulks for two or three turns before i just clear
he and the others get incredibly less racist immediately, they go up to the ruins, 3d cutscene starts, two herons sing next to a box, thats cool they will open it and the sword will be inside just like three houses, they sing next to a box, and the cutscene ends
ah i gotcha. i get it from sanaki. no prob i can wait. she gives me the promotion and i swear ike gained an inch or two

but i uh
dont see the sword
cmon man ike chapter seventeen right its just like roy right you get the sword you promote
did i do something wrong
was i not undertale enough
i tried talking to those damnable exp stealing birds (i am racist) but none of them wanted to
so whatever i dont care ill make my own


thanks for playing everybody

[spongelevator]

ok this is gonna be long because this was gonna be two posts before but now it is one

I honestly would not say counter is worth more than even just one hand axe (even though it sells for almost three)
axes are damn good in this game while counter is a skill/2% trigger rate to do half the damage you took back
anyone who takes enough damage to make that worthwhile shouldn't be getting hit in the first place so they rarely have a chance to use it
the one exception I can think of for this is boyd who has high HP and pretty low defense but boyd is also the guy who uses a certain thing called hand axes that make him able to attack at 1-2 range and his skill is not high so his activation is gonna be like 7% chance and with the attack stat of most enemies compared to his defense he'd probably do like 10 damage with a counter in the very rare situation it activates which isn't particularly stellar
anyone who tanks hits a lot because of high defenses and HP (gatrie, brom, titania who comes with counter) will deal back like three damage with it on the single-digit chance they activate it at all
a hand axe consistently deals good damage at 1-2 range as opposed to the extremely unreliable chip damage of counter
titania's counter activated less than ten times before I replaced it with sol
compare this to the guaranteed 25 uses of a hand axe that does actual damage and it's clear which is the big winner chicken dinner
miracle has a low percent chance to do something useful when fucking up which is why it's typically not kept for long
but counter has an even lower percent chance to do something not useful
it's like a low percent crit except the crit does 1/10th of a normal hit instead of 3x and by the time a unit's skill is high enough to get double digit chances to activate counter (we're talking 10%) it's gonna get replaced because it takes up skill slots that could be used on actually good skills that have skill% activation (or literally just anything that isn't counter honestly)
miracle might be alright on ike or something I guess anyone with a decent luck stat but counter is crummy at best and a liability at worst because it takes up inventory space and keeping/using it means you lose access to purchasing a few more weapons with its 1k gold value
the highest percentage activation you could ever get for counter is 20% if you cap a hawk's skill (literally impossible because the two playable hawks come at lv7/8 with 14/15 skill and you get three secret books) but since most enemies never go above ~30 attack that capped cheese hawk will likely counter back a maximum of ten damage untransformed if they never get defense past base and closer to 5 realistically on average
basically counter is such ass that selling it for money you won't use is better because it takes up 0.5% of the convoy's space and if you want to buy 160 hand axes counter might get in the way of that dream
perhaps you think of 3ds counter which does an equal amount of damage back to the attacker if at 1-range and has 100% activation but this is like that except halve the damage and also divide the activation by 20 and make it cost 1/4 of your skill slots and get in the way of mastery skills

yeah it is weird healing just doesn't exist in cutscenes
I just remembered a few supports where healing was brought up (in a very minor form but still)

it's literally like two sentences but it shows vulneraries and staves do indeed heal actual wounds (it is obvious but next part is what makes it kinda weird)

"stayed with me until my wounds were healed"
so apparently healing staves don't immediately heal wounds and rather it just uhhh
well
I don't really know
and if I am interpreting "if it wasn't for your good work, I wouldn't have been able to use an axe anymore!" correctly it seems that shit can be comparable to real life where certain doctors are more skillful at doctoring than other doctors (unless this is just referring to the magic stat or by "good work" she is just referring to him helping at all)
so it seems like healing through staves/vulneraries isn't a thing in cutscenes at all, yet it canonically exists for the purpose of treating the injured in whatever fire emblem worlds but not to the extent of how it works in gameplay?????
all I know is brom can consistently be stabbed in the face ten times in a row and then a little girl who learned how to use a staff two weeks ago waves a wand at him and he's good as new

RD also has ledges where your non-mounted units can go up with terrain penalties but it sometimes allows them to go further than mounted units can
as usual this fucks over armor knights and favors fliers the most but tellius seems to have done many things to try and make foot units not objectively inferior which is nice (though path of radiance is still another horse emblem fuk)
honestly not sure why they didn't keep most of this stuff but then added tons of it back to fates  (as well as new stuff) which doesn't have con so neither shove nor rescue work the same way (also as skills so not everyone can use)
good that they are acknowledged but weird that it was done like that

yeah your ike won't get doubled in like two speed points so it is good he capped speed
skill also lookin good
technically because 30+5 defense I suppose the very least strength could be 18 to do a whopping like
one damage per hit and 1+19 with aether (funny)

I went to see if the wyverns look better in radiant dawn because they really should

and we went from this crusty fucker

to this?????????????????
ugh god how did it get worse
I think they're pullin japes on us
also yeah what are those animations
the crit animation looks like it should have been the normal one (well minus the part where they are just gone at the end of the battle) why even be on a flying dragon if you're just gonna fly up and then go directly back onto the ground to attack
they even come to a full stop first so it's not like they want momentum it looks more like the wyverns are bees and can only fly for a little while 
haha wyvern bees

deployment limits :(((((((( rhys not seen use in like ten chapters

I dunno if I was doin something wrong but my weapons on the main guys usually break in two or three chapters
I don't forge nothing because I'd rather buy 33 hand axes (also I don't get how forging is even supposed to work outside of fates am I actually supposed to be making 20 might steel lances for 10000 gold)

but I see your rhys has been reclassed into a berserker
he has given up his life as a holy man to wield the legendary Not help! and gamble to get 6 crit and 20 hit on a generic fighter

eventually since I had titania/oscar/jill/astrid I got a nice mix of rescue and shove to make shit go good
game feels very nice to play and lets us do a lot of shit I just wish the difficulties weren't lol->piss easy->easy->garbage but eh is still good anyway

>very easy and short map

y-you didn't kill the laguz, did you...?

stefan epic he green and purple ha ha ha 

if that other mememaster you speak of is the relative of EIRIKA and EPHRAIM from sacred stones (not really) she kinda joins nine chapters later than stefan (not close) with much worse bases and only three and a half chapters until the game is done
I considered mememaster duo but it just wasn't happening she doesn't even have S swords what were they thinking (they weren't)
if their join times were switched it would work but nah it is just dumb as hell
funnily enough a similar situation happens with the sageman who joins in the same chapter
worse bases than prepromote sage who joins four chapters earlier and with only three and a half chapters left to underperform
two units who I would have used if the game did not hate them (oh also deployment limits)

man did not read the anna tutorials to see that you gotta 20+1 instead of using gross and nasty and repulsive master seals (laughs in three guiding rings and nine candidates across 27 chapters)


did you give ilyana knives so she could eat her food more easily? how generous! (why did they give her this gimmick)

nah only reason roy promotes and gets binding blade at the same time is because probably the developers forgot to promote roy because they gave so little a shit about him
didn't even give him a unique sprite on promotion
so they gave him the legendary sword right before the "final map" (last for bad ending also last good map) and then realized "oh wait shit uhhhhh we forgot to make the red guy not suck ass" so they gave him bigass promotion bonuses (he's still shit after) and then a high ass power sword (breaks in 20 uses and he's still shit after)
also by the way if you want him at 20/20 the only way to do this is grind against the infinite manaketes in ch24 except if the binding blade breaks you lose out on the good ending
so you'd have to grind him to S swords with the binding blade using hammernes or by beating chapters 22 and 23 entirely with just roy (unpromoted units are capped at A) and then give him durandal
that would probably end up being enough for 20/20 but you have to not use hammerne on warp ever or suffer through using iron swords or something

ragnell is the same situation (before important lategame boss fight) except john radiance remembered to change ike's model at a reasonable time so he can actually reach 20/20 easily and not be utter garbage
by the way, a little spoilie:
did you know ike had ragnell since chapter eight?
he has it right now (I guess your ike found the bootleg version, Яagnell)
took it with him after the cutscene
he just doesn't take it out until 27-2
that's right
he isn't GIVEN the sword, he just doesn't use it until burger king tells him "hey bro can't touch this LAMO oh yeah you can use that sword from earlier I guess"

ok now I do
chapper fifteen

fun

two new team members this chapter and I am actually using a mememaster this run which is a not common occasion (only other time is fates due to two conquest-exclusive not great mercenaries)
also this shit made me learn how the laguz gauges actually work and also made me wonder "why the hell do they not show the full ranges"
it's only AFTER they transform you can check the ranges but they transform and act on the same turn
so because of this I had to basically go check the full movement ranges of each of them after transformation
but there's another factor: sand
so I had to basically just sit and wait for a bunch of turns to see what the modified ranges actually are before resetting and getting to play the map for real
four for cats and tigers (I think) and eight for ravens and hawks

some but not all of them move before/after transformation
half of the ones to the right tend to move even if I'm not in range and the one to the left always moves untransformed 
this map is just ass
chapter 10 at least was forty turns of just waiting and moving into safe spots because the guards always followed a pattern
but in this map you're on your own and if you want to get most/all of the treasure and also keep all the laguz alive you will see true hell

had a thing going for about an hour and then sothe died
so past this point I just decided to use the damn savestates because I can't be assed to spend another four hours on such an ass map
the way I did this was having volke and sothe get every reasonable treasure they can reach and then have jill drop mordecai to recruit stefan
everyone else huddled in the corner with no weapons and twelve vulnerary uses each to trap the raven laguz and bait the tigers away from marcia because she is lv5 and only here due to fly

stefan has 63 crit so dropping him near the boss isn't safe
laguz will suicide into him unless they have someone better to attack 
usually a few hit jill and two suicide into stefan because he astra crits them into chicken nuggets
I was hoping mordecai would pick up the white gem every turn and luckily he got it eventually due to the amount of attempts he had
after the endless eight attempts of stefan's blade training I saw marcia was just barely in range to bait out the hawk and that would allow me to drop stefan and jill would be attacked by the three nearby laguz and nobody would die
the boss doesn't attack stefan which was really annoying earlier but this time it was actually to my benefit
because marcia had to drop sothe just barely out of range of the hawk to not get doubled
and this allowed me to get shine with sothe
ended up fucking with RNG until I got the silver blade with marcia's epic 8% chance to pick it up

(marcia is fun)
and then stefan killed the boss with his 17 attack and 52 crit per hit
got everything but statue frag, a coin, and boots (fuk)

don't mind that 18900 moneys that was me buying a shitton of elwinds because this game's weapon ranks are so god damn slow it's not fates level slow (1 wexp per fight for all weapons regardless of which weapon or doubling/killing make man cry) but christ it's still slow as hell
actually I think it's just because only GBA has wexp kill bonuses and that's why I actually get to see ranks above B in those games
bad


take a look at my epic bell pepper

levels

since I had over 2.3k bonus exp I slapped mist in the face with that shit and I was lucky to get strength because now she too can hit stuff with a stick
dunno why they made her an fe4 troubadour because now she can only use sonic sword with its whopping 25 uses (do note however that her stats are almost better than oscar's)

clapter 16
epic 11 deployment slots fun yes good
because of this boyd could not promote this chapter
anyway so tormod's first level was blank
until it turned out on that same enemy phase he was in range of an archer I ignored (god I gotta stop thinking enemies near the boss won't move) and he died immediately

on second attempt it was much easier
boss enemies and reinforcements came out so devdan or danved or whatever he is called here became human shield along with titania while the mages got them exp from behind
also thief to the left almost caused problems but shove exists so not anymore
another moment in which we thank shove for saving 

levels

tormod is kinda like hugh in that he comes midgame with a pretty big cost (10k gold for hugh to not suck and like 600 BEXP for tormod to not be unpromoted forever) and average bases with "eh" growths, typically to be an "eh" unit


and yet they end up the best mage/sage with actual defensive stats and con (or strength for PoR)
I dunno what's with the epic midgame mage that is widely ignored but ends up good shit when I use em but is gud

now ch17 part 1
unlike those dumbass endgame maps that don't let you save in between, this one lets you save in each part BUT it doesn't let you reposition or access the convoy
convoy I get because they're going into the forest and all but what is the logic in being able to reposition at the start but not in the next three parts
I have no idea why they did it like this but

anyway this part is just a rout
I forgot if it's actually a rout or if I meant "that's all you do here" but either way it's just a rout

levels


part 2
it's arrive and this is definitely the kind of chapter you could finish in like three turns without even particularly trying to skip it
but I just routed that shit because I knew I wasn't gonna get the bonus exp here anyway
jill died because I forgot you have to equip the delphi shield thing and then next restart was no problems
oh also astrid went from an ilyana-like missing 80-90% hits half the time back a few chapters ago to generally not missing anymore BUT she missed a 90 and then 94 same enemy phase on 2RN so I laugh at her now
hahaha
laugh is over now

levels


part three
survive
there's uhh
there's not really any risk of not surviving here though
I guess the bottom part is kinda risky if all of your units are made of paper mache or perhaps are ice sculptures but otherwise it's just a rout in disguise

levels

boyd finally promote
also at this rate astrid is promoting before oscar lamo

part 4 (final(no more(done)))

this is where not being able to reposition really sucks
there's a meteor mage but I won't be able to get over there to steal it quickly now because of the current positioning
instant gangbang because nobody could reach the bottom when half of the foot units are in the back of the formation
but after dealing with that shit

oho yeah

after the rest of the map was routed (very slowly because needing to rescue four greenies so they don't kill themselves or kill all my shit) oliver immediately died to titania and it was done
herons spoke in spaghetti so I went and sereneforest'd that shit (the website not the location) and then ike promoted into a tropical bird
I will not put a picture of a macaw but if you go look up macaw and compare the colors to ike 
yeahhhhh

levels

everyone near promotion
also what's up with ikes anyway

he's actually supposed to be capping or almost capping three or four of his stats on average if you have him reach 20/20 (and the first 8 chapters have like 5 units so of course he will)
shiet and then they give him 18 might 1-2 range unbreakable PRF
well whatever it is ike's game now

ok also ilyana crit
throwin in extra ike aether for the wait

it is not the most amazing thing ever created but I'm pretty sure I said I would do it like two weeks ago so now it is here

[Aeon]

okay alright maybe you have a point maybe its not the best skill and maybe even though titania has had it the whole game and has almost always been deployed it has in total done less than 20 damage but cool hit on skill%! you are right im just used to it being awesome
still cant see where youre gettin so much outta hand axes though ive got two axe users and i dropped boyd a while ago, so just titania. and she is no nephenee
miracle has now saved me twice total so ill still take it. also only costs 5 and i cant do anything else with 5 other than shade which i don't really want

it is so hard to tell how staves are supposed to work. is it surgery that can fix long-standing conditions or gaping wounds or is it a magic bandaid that is only good in instant combat until you go home and find a doctor doctor. i've never seen a doctor doctor in fire emblem
magic as a whole is also largely inarticulated but there are bits and pieces and fireball hurting people makes a lot more sense

ledges that sounds pretty neat. sucks to be you, armor knights

forging is pretty good
no reason to increase might, no idea why they even let you make weapons worse
but you can just crank up all the stats as high (low for weight) as they let you and come out with a damn good weapon every single chapter. you get so much money i've been doing it for the last like ten chapters and havent even come close to running out of cash
you could even be getting a better hand axe!

wait does killing the laguz matter? i genuinely did not know
i still got the two guys and stefan at the end of the chapter and they did not seem super mad at me so i didn't even think that there was something wrong. oops

okay thanks for the warning about blue swordmaster
by the time i am making this post i had already given up on using her since there is not much deployment and i simply dont think you can improve upon mia
and no i watched none of the tutorials this time

ragnell my little 20 weight boy can you believe this shit
alright well whatever im making aagnell 2 (Aagne11)
every single chapter theyre like "hey ike check this shit out" but its never my sword its just like "heres my little keychain oops nasir the impostor took it!" or "heres a bunch of moon runes on the wall" or "AAAAAAGHG GREIL KILLED YOUR MOTHER"

i am sorry to hear about the trouble on desertmap i just destroyed the entire thing

bonus exp huh you can take mist or anybody straight to promotion if you wanted
its cool that you can just decide "you are strong now" although considering im sitting on 2k now myself it might be a bit busted

day breaks part two i didnt skip but i just walked toward the exit. theres some swamptiles in the way so its slower than youd expect unfortunately

congrats on the meteor steal, i tried a shitload in the following chapter to steal a siege tome but they just refused to deequip it before using the whole damn thing up so i just let it go. for the meteor guy in day breaks i just used bolting to get rid of him lmao
even then i still have two boltings and a meteor now so im not super concerned (((this shit is busted)))

illyana crit is hilarious when shes promoted since she do a lil dance. unfortunately i have just replaced her with callil because she was getting annoying and callil can support with nephenee

i see your video has a clip from 6 chapters past where your post goes so i think i am a bit behind but thats OKAY i'm making distance. heres where we are at
first: the chapter after day breaks. eighteen. holy shitballs bro. its so fouckin easy. i walk straight through and ferry rolf so i can get shinon the now-incompetent racist back. as mentioned before: i failed at grabbing all the seige tomes
its so easy in fact i actually get multiple kills with Not help!

like are you joking this shit has 4 power 40 hit 20 weight and im still DOUBLING for 18 on AXES

next chapter: why dont you entrust yourself to some bitches
i made this image

i was gonna make the friendship restored part because you can very easily have reyson spare naesala but then i realized hey, hey. why even bother? the guy doesnt even attack on enemy phase after ulki says hi. basically free
i popped a savestate just incase it turned out i was throwing but no it was actually not very strict
the rest of the map was not very challenging. so not challenging that i thought that i probably could have done it with nephenee and mia alone. i feel like i already said somewhere that was gonna do a chapter with ike mia nephenee volke but i cant find it in the thread so: thats what i did next

unrelated:
really like how it shows your last team in on-map cutscenes in the next stage. thats simply cool. lotta that kinda stuff in this game

chapter 20: real shit
so i finally use most of my stat boosters and some more skill things. mia gets gamble, nephenee gets vantage, volke gets lethality. nephenee also gets another seraph robe. you can probably guess how her build works: def + hp + wrath + vantage + javelin hopefully means that nothing can kill her once shes at less than half hp! incredible. i also put the provoke from this chapter on her later
although there is actually a major problem with this strategy i will be getting to

so theres the up house and the main route. i decide i dedicate one unit to the top and the others go right. mia does some dodging? alright thatll do

i try this a few times but it ends up not working. she survives a few more turns after this screenshot and gets a lot of crits but its unsustainable for the entire chapter

and yeah ya hear that? a few times. turns out its not a great idea to only use ike mia nephenee volke but it was the first time in a long time it felt like an actual video game since i did not get it for entirely free
of course. such a state could only be temporary.
instead of sending mia up there, i sent nephenee
and reminder: there are more than that many units in the screenshot up there, at least like two guys are mages, and like ten wyvern reinforcements
so nephenee goes up there, i give her an elixir and two vulneraries, i wanna really stay in that wrath hp zone i know itll be tough with taking like 5 enemy attacks on their phase, but it cant be that tough
i was absolutely wrong. there was a zero percent chance that that strategy was ever gonna happen. mia coulda pulled that off if she had wrath but nephenee just was not ready
she was not ready to take NEARLY enough damage to get to wrath
i she you not she took 9 en eye en e damage the entire chapter
we do not need mia. she still did great and was fantastic on main route, but i am very confident in saying that nephenee can solo the entire rest of the game

ike did good. a lotta aethers
volke did good. a fair amount of lethalities. more than i was expecting honestly its actually pretty decent in this game

chapter after that i used everyone except mia and nephenee
it worked well enough. ike was mandatory deployment and volke was needed for chests so i still had them but likeee whatever
slow chapter
i figured out you could recruit cool mustache dude accidentally after almost killing him. i decided, you know, i could use an armor knight or too if this guy is gonna be so classy about it
he is also capable of doubling with his skill which reminds me of nephenee. and i have this extra wrath lying around.............
the dragon is a one range boss with no mov. scary.
the most interesting thing that happens is that i forge a slim sword for mia. i dont use it until next chapter since she isn't here but it looks a little something like this on gamble (i am out of attachment space now the image is big)


after that is HELLTAKER
well you don't need to tell me twice i know about helltaker
with mordecai's help i complete the rock pushing puzzle with zero (faithful) casualties. nobody deals any damage, and the only threat is that a priest will kill themselves on callil
hammerne shows up. i genuinely do not know what i will use it for since i can buy a new the arm every chapter or make something better than a silver weapon whenever i want but its cool to have

then we have bridge
nephenee is at the front of the fight the entire map and takes two damage total. in the interest of balancing my team, after the map, i give her a fully forged javelin and petrine's flame lance. i also reclass mia from swordmaster to grandmaster by giving her the sonic sword and two spirit dust
the only challenge in the map is making sure jill who i have not used in a while does not die while recruiting haar, a cool-looking guy that comes with a cool-looking axe. i don't know if he will join the rapidly-shrinking deployed gang but i will consider it
there are potholes which are never telegraphed and would be genuinely painful in a game in which anyone was in danger but here im just holing and they walk up to me and kill themselves by attacking at one range for no reason even though they are an elthunder and i am The Arm.
general petrine does not even land one hit before ike pops an aether and nukes her immediately. so much for all her buildup huh

i am not doing radiant dawn anytime soon but im gonna have to ironman or something because this is just a stomp! i still die sometimes but its always because i just stopped counting how many enemies there were
it is endlessly more pleasant than similarly easy three houses which is evidenced by the fact that i still have it installed. maps are shorter. skills are cooler. monastery doesnt take eight years. also i dont hate the entire cast and the vast majority of them are not nearly as annoying and much more eloquent than most of the three houses cast. similar comparison for genealogy except i am not forced to use horses and holy blood units

tl;dr: i HATE fire emblem D:<
but i like ike