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Chapter 4: Ancient Horrors (feat. Alkydere)



Chapter 4. Chapter fucking 4. Pretend for a moment that the game's difficulty curve is a meal. The 12-speed bandits in Chapter 3? Fucking appetizers. The main dish is about to arrive. All your front-liners should be using those monster-effective weapons if you can, because you're going to need them.



Here's your before image. Maybe add a point or two to everything for hard mode bonuses. This is what Vanilla FE8 will throw at you.





Welcome to hell, population me. The Mogalls in particular are nasty motherfuckers, being able to fly and attacking with magic. If you want to get out of this map with no casualties, you have to take things ludicrously slow and carefully because you will get your shit wrecked if you don't.

They wouldn?t be that bad...if there weren?t a million of them. This is one of the few FE missions I?ve played. Sure, the numbers don?t look so bad at first until you realize that this mission has easily two to three times the enemies that the previous missions did, and it?s won via rout. The best part is that experience is run off of level/enemy, not stats. So all that risk and hard work but no reward.



On the plus side, Lucius Artur has joined up to help us smite these fuckers. Ignore the experience, I forgot to get a shot of him until about halfway through the chapter. And speaking of Lucius, he claims to be some hot-shot monk charged with cleansing the forest all by himself.



I'm not exactly sure what he did, but I'm pretty sure it's cheating, so we're going to keep him on the down-low for now.

It wouldn't be so bad if he was a cheater if he didn?t lose the ability to cheat as soon as he joined you. And to think I thought the previous scripted kill was bad. At least that nearly killed the target.



So here's how we start. Eirika is bait for the revenant under "left" in the objective box, Lyn is out by the far west revenant, and Seth is going to take a hit from the skeleton and revenant by the snag. The rest of the crew is bunched up to stay out of range of the Mogalls and keep the revenants on target.







It is really important to note speed in this chapter. For example, Seth can't double the sword-wielding skeletons, so you can?t just have him tank on the enemy phase to get these guys in kill range.



If you can get through the first couple turns, you're probably good to make it through the rest. We're about to be rushed by those three skeletons in the east, and the closer mogall is on his way over too.

Still looks nasty, but at least you have breathing room. You can at least make a front line to hide your squishy or hurt soldiers behind. Well, at least until this mission?s surprise reinforcements happen.



First up, we need to clear out behind us. With a little help from Seth, we've at least cleaned up the east side.



Pent kills the center revenant for a garbage level.



Eirika moves in to kill the mogall. Regardless of if she dodges this mogall, she's in range of another one and a skeleton, and the two together will kill her. So after killing the oversized eyeball, Priscilla goes in and rescues her.



Now we're set up to deal with the incoming skeletons and mogall.



Priscilla gets to work on the mogall, and we retreat to deal with the skeletons.



Seth once again acts as the bait. He is goddamn fantastic at it, and I'm not even sure how you would be able to finish the chapter if you didn't use him or Karel.



As I mentioned, it's very important to plan around the skeletons' weapons. Seth can double the lance carriers, but not the undead swordsmen.







Looking back, I'd have been better off having Pent kill this one, but Neimi gets the job done and picks up a pretty nice level.

Hey, who cares if your experience gain is sub-optimal if you luck out with decent levels out of them.



Seth being able to double the lance skeletons lets me set up an easy kill here, which Lucius is happy to take.



Lucius will eat a hit from the revenant, but he'll easily survive it. The skeleton only has the option of attacking Seth, and the mogall can go after Seth or Priscilla, both of whom can survive the hit.





Okay, hard part's over. Now we have a chance to heal up and wait for the the north reinforcements. If you can make it here with no deaths, you're probably in the clear.



Prissy grabs her javelin and waits for the last mogall.



In the meantime, Neimi gives Lucius the boot for picking off this revenant. He's trying, but 5 damage twice just isn't going to cut it when these guys have ~36 HP.



The mogall took the bait, so Guy deals with him. The level is nothing special.



Seth pops his first elixir and heads for the village. Neimi is following behind for some easy experience.



Reinforcements come in from the north. The only one that's really dangerous is the one in the corner, who has a Fetid Claw instead of a Rotten one.



Erk gets a pretty fantastic level from patching up Guy. Neimi's is decidedly less so.





The revenants are nice enough to line up for us, so I take them up on the offer.



Lyn even gets a mostly-bad level to celebrate the occasion.

At least she got speed, so not completely bad.



Seth finally finishes his job of tanking skeletons and other enemies. He's the goddamn MVP of the chapter, considering he got basically all of that experience by chip experience, ~4 at a time.



We're almost home now. Prissy is in position to kill that last revenant, and then it's just the boss.



You really know how to make my day, Priscilla.

Jeeze. These are NOT FE8 levels.



At last, Seth gets down to the village.

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Anyways, I thought I remembered that Little Miss Mage ran out onto the field on her own, but then again FE is not my game series. Glad you have to trigger her instead of having ?get to the village by turn x? or I doubt Artix would have made it out of this chapter with a full roster. Or sane.



Nino Lute is about the same as she ever is, and it'll be nice to have a mage with a decent speed growth since Pent is stuck with Gilliam's.



Entombed are basically "promoted" revenants, but this one's actually weaker than most of the revenants wandering around this chapter. He sort of makes up for it by having a Fetid Claw, but he's still not strong enough to one-shot anyone or anything.

Gotta love the ROMhack creator giving all those stats to the generics, and then giving you a break on the boss. This is the second time he?s done it.



I don't remember if this is from hard mode or the hack, but the boss moves now and it caught me by surprise.



Lucius picks up a level from chip experience, and after another volley from Pent and Nino, the boss goes down. Chapter complete, and good fucking riddance. I think I need a drink after that one.

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Level 2 Monk
Light - E, Affinity - Ice
Equipment - Lightning, Vulnerary

HP: 19 (+2) (55%)
Magic: 6 (+4) (50%)
Skill: 6 (+4) (50%)
Speed: 8 (+4) (40%)
Luck: 2 (25%)
Defense: 2 (+4) (15%)
Resistance: 6 (+4) (55%)
Con: 6

Yay, Lucius! Artur gets kicked to the curb in what is probably the smoothest change in the hack. As usual, Light magic isn't very good and it isn't helped by the hack giving everything a healthy Res boost. Still, once he promotes to Bishop the ass-kicking can begin, and he's probably the best choice to do so with (maybe second to the unit we get next chapter).

And just because I find it funny, Artur is a scarily close fit to Lucius's growths. Compared to Artur's growths, Lucius is +10% Mag, -5% Luck, -5% Def, +5% Res. I almost feel like I need to congratulate the author for managing to get a switch right.



Level 1 Mage
Anima - C, Affinity - Anima
Equipment - Fire, Vulnerary

HP: 17 (+4) (45%)
Magic: 6 (+4) (65%)
Skill: 6 (+4) (30%)
Speed: 7 (+4) (45%)
Luck: 8 (45%)
Defense: 3 (+4) (15%)
Resistance: 5 (+4) (40%)
Con: 3

Another one that actually fits pretty well? It didn't start raining blood or some other Revelation-style prophecy when I wasn't looking, did it? Nino may have focused a little more on speed than Lute, but again, this is pretty close. Lute is pretty awesome in Vanilla FE8 aside from the atrocious Con, and the hack misses yet another opportunity to provide a meaningful buff, opting to go with another generic +4 across the board. That said, it's hard to go wrong with her, unless you absolutely have to see Pent max defense.