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Welcome back! It's time to go back to Castle Renais and give Orson a piece of our mind.



Myrrh is here, too.



Aw, thanks, Ors-- oh you're not talking to me



Yes, and probably. I guess we'll see what kind of stats he ends up with.



I ended the last update on a shot of Myrrh's growths, so I'm going to open with them here again. Sure, having 0% growths in HP and defense is pretty unfortunate, but her other growths are pretty solid. Surely, she has good bases to complement those growths, right? Well... Yes, but not where it counts.



0 Skill and 0 Defense! And unlike Neimi, she doesn't have any hope of gaining Defense! That's a very impressive Resistance stat for Level 1, but there's 8 magic enemies out of the 30 or so on the map, so... yeah, I'm not going to be bothering with Myrrh.



I sold the extra Orion's Bolt to buy two Master Seals - one for Joshua, and one for Tana who's close to hitting the level cap herself.



As tempting as it was to go for Super Journeyman and get the crit boost, I'd rather have more weapon triangle coverage, so Hero it is!







Also! Like I mentioned last update, Kyle is getting the Guiding Ring. He's not Level 20, yes, but his magic is high enough, combined with Life and Death, that he can now make for an efficient fighter in addition to a healer.



I had originally wanted to go Valkyrie, but Light magic in this seed is... bad.

That was a good bit of setup, so let's dive right in.



Neimi hits the ground running,



with Joshua hot on her heels. This dude drops a Shamshir that he couldn't even have used, but it'll be good in Eirika's hands (Artur already has one).



Kyle and Ephraim spent enough time next to each other to start their support, so why not?



Oh yeah, there's another Bolting Asshole here. Fortunately, this is a regular, unpromoted Pupil, not the promoted version with Red Death Blow.



Moving on upppp



Kyle can finally make proper use of Life and Death. Just look at that damage output



If you'll remember, the Heavy Spear has 21 weight. The fact that Tana can double anything with it is a miracle in and of itself.



Really? You're gonna try your luck on Artur and not someone like Joshua?



Speaking of which...



Those Gargoyles don't move at all, so Joshua and Vanessa take the fight to them.



Then I get bored of all the enemies just standing there, so Joshua runs in the direction of the throne room and drags this Maelduin out to him. There's some Swordmasters that also come out to him, but they're not close enough to him.



A parade of Shamans... Shamen? and a Gorgon try to hex Ephraim with their dark magicks, but it backfires and just makes him faster.



Pfft, the Thief that's supposed to give you incentive to rush through the map for the treasure is now just a Cleric. She can't even open the door...



Ah, I should do something about all these promoted dudes that Joshua aggroed, huh.



Something... like this!



This is pretty good, too.



Also a fan of this.



This is a lot riskier, but Kyle makes it through.



Also because I don't think I properly showed it off yet, here's Luna. Amazing how it's better than in vanilla by virtue of being way lighter, and yet still bad because it still has 0 might.



Eirika and Ephraim start their support, as I brace for impact on the enemy phase.



See, the throne room looks something like this, and in taking out the enemies Joshua aggroed, I've now aggroed all of them. What am I up against?



Barricade+ and Pragmatic on the Swordmasters, plus Devil's Luck on the one on the right ( ),



a Sharp Claw Bael with the Strength to really make it count, plus Amaterasu in case it and the other enemies live along enough to get healed by it,



and Killing Machine on the Enemyphraim. But what's the worst that could happen?



Only the Swordmasters end up doing anything, and fortunately Devil's Luck doesn't go off on Kyle. Plus, it turns out Barricade+ really doesn't matter when you die in one hit. Joshua takes a hit, but he has enough HP and Defense now that he can kind of roll with it.



There's a squad of Archers, Heroes, and Deathgoyles coming from behind, but the only real threat here is the Deathgoyles. They, like the Archers, have Dazzle to block counterattacks, which is really annoying!



Can you believe we're already almost to the boss? Tana takes out the Arch Mogall, because Crimson Eye is so damn bad that Arch Mogalls are basically a nonissue.



The Elder Bael also goes down in one round to Kyle.



Yes, yes, we're all very impressed with your 70% Magic growth, please get other stats



And to complete the trifecta, Lute tries to take out the Enemyphraim, but whiffs on one of her hits.



The two Myrmidons in the corners make astonishingly bad life decisions.



Vanessa takes out this Journeyman guarding a treasure chest for an as-astonishingly bad level.



And Ross hits the level cap. Yay.



Through some Shove Shenanigans, Eirika takes out the Enemyphraim and caps Skill.

Since we're at the throne room, we might as well start dealing with Orson. Surely he can't be that-



uh



UHHHHH

Wow. Orson just might be the actual most threatening boss. Tirado was bad, the Chapter 11 Paladin was bad, but this is so much worse. Just look at those stats! While a lot of his skills don't really do much for him in terms of this fight (yes, he has two copies of Charm), his fourth skill, Strong Riposte, gives him a flat +3 damage when he counter-attacks, which means the best time to attack is to just let him fight us on his turn.

Or just beat the crap out of him from a distance where he can't hit back, whatever works.



He only has one weapon, but since we haven't seen the Axereaver in a while (except on Carlyle but he was such a joke that it didn't matter), here are its absurd stats again.



I will at least park Tana here because she's just one scuffle away from hitting Level 20. This is a really risky gamble (I forgot to note it, but the Arch Mogall also had Seal Defense), but if she dodges Orson's attack and lands her own, she'll hit Level 20. Even if she doesn't, Seal Skill will kick in in case it takes less than 6 turns to try this fight for real.



Yeesh. What happened to your nice sprite from Chapter 5x?



Well, that sure was worth it.



Dozla reaches the first treasure chest, and it's... okay.



Now then,



let's get your sprite fixed up. Tana having such high defenses and speed makes her a perfect candidate to become a Great Knight, even if she's gonna ram the speed cap way quicker.



She loses a point of movement too, but that's okay because Celerity means she's still able to move farther than the rest of the army (until Ephraim promotes, of course).



There's an Assassin blocking the way out of the treasure room, and she has quite the array of skills that would be pretty impressive on a player character. Lethality, as one would expect, Pavise, giving her a Skill% chance to no-sell a physical attack, Inspiration, making allies within 2 tiles deal/receive 2 more/less damage, and Lifetaker.



But unless she gets really lucky, she won't survive a round with Neimi.



Andddd I'd call that the opposite of lucky.







The reinforcements took their time getting here, but Joshua and friends are quick to bring the hammer down. The less I have to deal with Dazzle stalling, the better.







This archer has a Killer Bow, which could potentially be scary but uhhh she's the first one in line so Lute can just poke her and be done with it.



See? Just like that.



Even with Dazzle, unpromoted Archers are still unpromoted Archers.



Far more annoying is Dazzle on something with an Axereaver, but Tana is here for a reason.



Ah, that's so much easier on the eyes. Now that I think about it, she kinda looks like Shovel Knight now.







After declaring his love for a Gargoyle, Artur turns around and stabs an Archer to death.



Really have to say I'm not a fan of how almost any and all droppable items from enemies have become tiny bags of gold.



Joshua commits Hero on Hero Violence to get a bad level.



Whoa, another Tomahawk! Good thing he went for Artur and not Joshua.



He takes out a different Hero for this.



Tomahawk Man falls to Tana, and god is it satisfying seeing that 0/0/0.



These guys really aren't the best at priorities, huh?



This guy doesn't have Dazzle because it's only on the female archer class! Vanessa is on the male archer class, which is why she doesn't have it either.

And, uh, that's all the enemy combatants. The only enemies left are Orson and the one cleric that probably won't even reach the party by the time we're done here.







...Oh! This is a very nice surprise. I was beginning to worry I wouldn't get a Member Card at all this run. Unfortunately I can't revisit the secret shop in Jehanna Hall, so no buying Killer weapons or better Blades, but this will be good to have for Chapter 19.



And this would have been much nicer one chapter earlier, because now I have nobody to use this on. Oh well, it's another 5000 gold towards an actually relevant promotion item.



And now, Orson. Given he has no ranged options, Vanessa can safely use him as a pincushion in order to get her last level in, and you'd better believe I'm going to do just that. Not always with the Steel Bow, of course, I switch back to Iron after this.



And she even caps speed, very nice!



Now the Orson fight can begin in earnest. Lute pops Rally Speed, and Kyle gets to work.



What's life without a little risk taking? Neimi Repositions her out of the way after she does this, and then Ephraim nails Orson with a Short Spear.



Artur goes for two bosses killed in a row...



...and delivers in style.







That went so much better than I expected it to.



Ah, fun fact about the Lunar/Solar Braces, since this message box brought it up (though it was brought up a while ago in the thread by Jen X): They can promote Eirika and Ephraim even if they're already promoted. While this is obviously irrelevant for Ephraim, this means Eirika can promote twice.



This leaves me with a rather difficult decision. Do I take the plot promotion and miss out on my chance to show off the double promotion, or pass it up knowing that I might not actually get the Lunar Brace? After some deliberation, I go with the latter.



...and get another useless promotion item out of it. This is my third Elysian Whip when I have 2 Wyvern Riders.



I also say no to this on the grounds that I already have Ephraim's Solar Brace.



Can't I at least get a Hero Crest?



Instead of Siegmund is... uh



Well that's not very helpful! This is just the Light Rune from FE7, which went unused in this game. It still works as it does in that game, nothing too special.



And instead of Sieglinde is -- oh, now you're just mocking me!

NEXT TIME:


The lineup of playable characters doesn't exactly go out on a strong note.