Toggle Background Color
Alright! My Three Houses itch is well and truly scratched (all four routes!), so let's get back to this.
First things first, Dew, despite his massive tankiness, was on about 4 HP after that suicidal charge forward. So Sigurd patches him up and reaches a level where he cannot promote. He doesn't need it, but can you imagine?
The newcomers get to rescuing what's left of those villages. Sylvia has Elite so she's gaining 20 EXP per Dance, and I intend to abuse this to its fullest. She'll never be combat viable, but it'll be fun.
Beowulf and Voltz get moving. It's my hope that they'll outpace their subordinates for easy isolation.
And we get a preview of Erin. The randomiser forces her into a flying class so her recruitment doesn't break horribly, so this is about as random as she gets unfortunately.
The former border guards are now red and have reached the units that were catching up after the initial charge. I finagle things to feed the commander to Lachesis. Her Neir-boosted DEF is going to be crazy if I can train her.
Cuan, being a unit who leaves me after the next chapter, picks up an astounding level. Because of course he does.
The last of the border guards falls, and I decide this little three-tile "chokepoint" is a good place to wait for the incoming.
Meanwhile, the Bargain Ring goes byebye. I don't know what it would have been, but it's probably something good like a Speed Ring.
Arden, having innate Pursuit in this universe, picks up a different ring instead.
While I'm shuffling my feet waiting for the next wave to get here, Lachesis gets an axe that's worse than her Brave one.
I settle on this formation to bait Voltz in. Dew is the bait with his tanky nature; Voltz has 21 Speed and Pursuit and can kill a surprising number of people.
He takes the bait...
...but also Dew's entire wallet.
He gains a level weakening him back, and I feed the kill to Ayra for no particular reason.
Arden won't make it back in time for the excitement, so I send him with the mage crew to the next objective.
Beowulf is now baited next turn, and hits Noish on some truly ludicrous odds.
A target rich environment presents itself. I'm going to try and dole out some exp to people who aren't Sigurd for once.
Deirdre is very good at hitting and running with that Light Brand.
Beowulf is recruited by Alec.
Ayra magically picking people's pockets by setting them aflame is somehow hilarious to me.
Everyone is very defensive in this run.
I reclaim my chokepoint. The bandits apparently separated themselves into two groups for some reason. There are more to come.
Noish is putting in good effort. I normally don't use him much, but he's one of the higher speed units I have this time around. Sigurd is Sigurd, and Sylvia is a Dancer, so... I don't know how many more Sylvia levels I'll bother showing.
Ayra rounds out the wave with a disappointment. Major Fala, no magic gain.
Next! Sylvia and Lewyn have united with the main group.
Even some of the mages are determined to tank.
Thanks for your wallet, charred corpse.
I'm not about to complain about the former two getting faster, and Sigurd is beyond being able to disappoint me right now.
This is the entire extent of the damage that wave was able to do. 4-way Dancing has improved my Alpha Strike capabilities a lot.
Here's the boss, in case you forgot. He has no ranged option, and no Pursuit despite the speed.
I have 10 units in the north, and 10 Warp Staff uses. There's only Macbeth left, so people start getting sent home. Beowulf picks up the other Brave Axe in the store...
And puts his Elite skill to good use in the Arena. He might not come out of this a Dew, but he'll level fast and be competent enough anyway.
It's a fairly long trek to the next objective.
Bosses with no ranged options are good training fodder for my mages. Time for a bit of a montage while they wear him down and Sigurd warps people home again.
(yoink!)
This pair manage to scrape some arena wins now that they couldn't before.
Sigurd capped magic a while ago and is now looking to start on RES and HP. That's fine, Forseti-Eldigan is coming.
Dew promotes, and it gives him the oomph needed to clear the final Arena fight.
62 HP on a mage. He can shrug off magic, but he'll still fall over if someone leans on him too hard.
I deem Aideen worthy of buying the Pursuit ring, so she goes to collect all the villages.
This is still happening.
The armorslayer is... an armorslayer. Groundbreaking.
Finally, the mage triangle manages to blow up Macbeth. Out, damned asshole.
Sigurd warps them home...
Lewyn goes through the arena for the first time. I'm worried about his Speed, and my lack of rings to fix it. Still, hitting things really hard once works for Ishtar.
Last one. Sorry buddy, no Return ring, so you have to hoof it. By which I mean, shoe it, because you don't have a horse.
Aideen reaches the requisite liquidity.
Seize! And...
The game shits itself.
Oh, right. I put these two here to pre-empt the Ballistician spawns, and the game doesn't adjust their spawn position if someone's standing on top of them. So when they try and attack, it just dies.
So they spawn properly this time, and immediately skewer Deirdre. Fortunately, she has Prayer, and so does not care for the rest of the turn. If I had been cleverer, I would've put her down in range of everything outside Mackily so she could soften them all up while functionally invincible.
These Ballisticians are basically atrophied husks.
Okay, let's see what we're actually dealing with!
The ground troops are Brave assholes. Of course. 128 Hit Brave Swords is not a fun thing to be staring down, thankfully there's only two.
Clement no longer has his annoying Sleep staff, but he does drop crap and have a ranged option.
Chagall's crew, meanwhile...
This group will beeline for us. I'm not especially bothered. 20 Atk can be shrugged off by a bunch of people, and I have enough mages to melt that general's entire armour set down into a set of commemorative coins.
The Archery group will also head right for us, but they're not too much to write home about either.
Augustria's stationary defenders are also sort of underwhelming. Their Ballisticians have succumbed to an even more crippling rot.
Chagall himself is- GIVE ME THAT PHYSIC STAFF YOU SMUG DICKHEAD
Finally, our new recruit! She's our third flier, but there's no triangle attack in this game. Innate Pursuit and nothing else is the bare minimum of useable that I'll accept. She needs a better spear. Deirdre has been carrying a Silver one, I'll palm it over to Cuan and she can have his Steel one.
They're fiiiiiiine. Alec and Deirdre take out on of the ballistas, and Deirdre creeps into the range shadow. Alec isn't actually weak to arrows.
Sigurd takes to the long and lonely road.
I'm hanging around waiting for the Augusty guys to get here, so the flying pair take out all the long range dudes. Dew has enough move to run forward, pop that mage, and Canto back to the same position.
I don't know if Erin's squad can get distracted, but I'm not risking it.
Wave one is nearly here.
Good time for a chat. Thanks Cuan. That's definitely comparable to a Brave lance.
He even already had one. So does Ayra.
I'm not sure how long I'll keep using Alec. He's a flier, but no Pursuit and Erin existing makes him not so attractive.
Careful, careful...
I cannot end my turn inside this radius. I have to kill everyone and Canto out. I don't want these two shitstorms coinciding.
Lachesis kills a squishy mage with her Brave axe and Cantos away for a chat that gives her STR, SKL+2 and DEF+1.
Okay I'm cutting these out from now on. Anyway, so ends the mage squad. Everyone gets out of the hot zone.
Noish manages to Astra his attacker in response.
I'm still drip feeding Lachesis exp, and it's paying off. Dew gets to shoot the commander because I can't be bothered with him while keeping out of range of the Mackily barbarians.
Both fronts are cleared. Erin could totally have attacked, but chose to just sit there and wait for Lewyn to say something instead.
One more to go!
Erin doesn't do too great at the Arena. She gets one entirely empty level and that's it.
Aideen has achieved her goal. Unfortunately she's way way far away.
Arden has baited the barbarians in. They pull hit rates of about 29 on him. This ends up being quite the close quarters clusterfuck.
It's reasonably profitable though!
You're all alone, Clement...
There's some random mage in the mountains. I send Erin after him because Deirdre broke her Light Brand in all the excitement.
Sigurd caps out patching people up. Our hero, folks!
Now remember he's getting Valflame in Chapter 5.
Clement is fed to axe users Beowulf chips, Lachesis kills.
Everyone shuffles up, and our final squad of assholes emerges.
Look at those Attack values. Look at them and laugh.
Oh. Any attack is good enough when you're on 1 HP...
STOP GIVING ME FIRE TOMES
As punishment, he is baited forward and slain by Lachesis. Who is not impressing me right now.
I'll be honest, I didn't want to truck with Hel, so I just used Sigurd with Nosferatu. It's okay, we can still salvage some exp!
Erin is impressive; Azel's Tornadoes are rapidly turning into gentle breezes. Beowulf might stay relevant on sheer force of early promo gains.
Lachesis deserves the honour of cleaving Chagall in half considering what's about to happen next chapter. Sure she'll have to sell that Physic to Sigurd, but he has capped money anyway.
And we're done!
NEXT TIME: Ohhh no. No spoiling it in the preview this time. It's too good. You have to experience it organically. SHIT HAPPENS, I assure you.