Nice Hat Guy knows how to make the most of a bad situation.
...And he also doesn’t sound like someone I’d want to be on the bad side of.
I think the game might be setting us up for something here.
--CHAPTER START--
Hel-
lo.
And generous too!
A Dragonshield will raise a unit’s defence by 2. There are two main options with these stat-boosting items. 1) use them immediately or 2) hoard them until the endgame and then make some randomer
even more awesome. Personally, I prefer to use them right away. Oh, you can also sell them, I guess.
Everyone else gets moved around...
Enemy turn! Gilliam missed on his attack, so he’s off to a good start.
Sigh, bandits. Imaginative as ever.
Keep being awesome, Ross.
Gilliam attacked that Fighter, which I missed somehow, then Natasha did some healing with Mend. It heals more HP, so it glows more. Logic!
Vanessa left this guy with 2 HP. One more Str and she’d be one-rounding these guys. ;-;
DAMMIT GILLIAM!
DAMMIT COLM!
Eirika does just fine, thankfully.
More healan.
Ross kills this guy, doesn’t level.
DAMMIT LUTE!
Thank you, Neimi.
DAMMIT EIRIKA! At least she killed him, I guess. Even if the level up was pretty crappy.
Vanessa shows her how it’s done.
THIS IS JUST GETTING RIDICULOUS NOW.
Neimi duels
at dawn with another archer.
On our turn, Ross does a bit of damage and doesn’t level up like I thought he would. Neimi finishes off.
Gilliam finally kills this guy.
Natasha runs away to heal someone else.
Enemy phase! Eirika damages some guy.
Gilliam took 8 damage from another Fighter and criticalled to kill him. I take back everything, Gilliam’s awesome.
...Can I take back my take back?
I missed the pretty fire again :( Oh and Lute killed a dude I guess. Not the worst level up I’ve ever seen.
More healing! Natasha does an awful lot of this in this chapter.
TAKE UP MY SWORD, LANCE-WIELDING PEGASUS CHICK!
It’s also ridiculously heavy and most sword users usually have low Con. SO YEAH. Might come in handy later though.
Enemy phase! ...A
really boring enemy phase!
ALSO THOSE REINFORCEMENTS ARRIVED TOO SOON I’M NOT READY
I missed the pretty fire
again!
Enemy phase, stuff happens to Gilliam. Note that he actually doubles that Soldier, even if he did miss one of his attacks. Yes, that’s right.
Grado Soldiers are as slow as god damn zombies.
TIME TO LIVE DANGEROUSLY
Nothing gets past this girl.
“Yeah, Grado’s paying the bill.
This will make her feel better when she’s dead.
Extinguish all light from our lands isn’t relevant to your interests? No?
...She’s a
cleric.
That’s cold, Nice Hat Guy. That’s cold.
CHARACTER GET!
Nice Hat Guy, aka Joshua. He’s a swordsman with an actual Con, which makes him pretty good to start off with. Like all myrmidons, Josh has excellent speed and skill, which means he’ll double a lot and critical pretty often. His strength is normally also decent, but his luck tends to be mediocre at best and his defences otherwise are poor. He’ll still dodge a ton, though.
He comes with a Killing Edge, which gives +30 to critical. This is only semi-reliable now, but when/if he promotes to Swordmaster, he gets +15 as a class bonus, +10-5 from his good skill, +more from supports... it quickly adds up. Even if we don’t use this guy, though, we’ll be using his sword. It’s probably one of the best offensive weapons in the game, especially early on. (Critical: the gift that keeps on giving.)
Joshua is pretty laid back personality wise, but he’s not kidding about that love for gambling. With some characters this is interesting. With others, it becomes funny.
Levelling up happens! That concludes Ross’ time as a Journeyman. Chapter 6: promotion to pirate!
DAMMIT EIRIKA!
Joshua gets a critical. Myrmidon critical is pretty darn epic, I must say.
With how Eirika’s been dodging I don’t trust that bandit to miss her... I’ll have to have Seth take him out after Vanessa gets some exp from him.
Stole this off Franz, thought I might as well. And bandit gets deaded.
Gilliam kills a guy. GET SOME DEFENCE, MAN.
More bandit reinforcements. These are the last ones though.
Vanessa and Eirika blocking the way, healing. Also giving up that Armourslayer to the convoy.
Aaand I’m actually glad Eirika doesn’t kill this guy. Her dying would be upsetting after all the work I put in here. ;-;
I’m not sure why I screencapped this at the beginning of the fight... meh, Soldier missed and Vanessa didn’t.
Gilliam finishes off that archer.
Ross visits the house. This is another stat boosting item. This one gives skill, which effects accuracy and critical. Like the Dragonshield, we can use this a little later.
Neimi gets a good level, Lute doesn’t get one at all.
Probably should’ve given him an iron sword, now that I think about it...
THANK YOU EIRIKA -- you even got me some Def as well as Str, how nice.
Good job he missed on our turn, because enemy phase -_-
She only had one use of the Slim Lance left, so there’s no x2. I thought I might as well use it up.
And... huh. I must have missed the enemy phase for this mercenary. Another mediocre level for Colm.
I FINALLY CAPPED THE PRETTY FIRE oh wait what level up. Yeah, that’s decent.
Vanessa steals things from small girls. Shame on her. This is Amelia, by the way. We’ll see her again later.
Natasha levels up after much background healing.
Since someone wanted to see Seth get some levels...
WAIT WHAT NONONONONO Berserkers get +15 crit boost I’m not risking that.
In the Arena, the more money you wager, the stronger an opponent you get given and the more likely you are to die. Arena death is just as permanent as any other death, so yeah, we probably want to avoid betting lots of gold.
Unfortunately it took Quote about 5 turns to remember this and so we lost a fair amount of money to start off with. >.<
750 sounds oka-- WAIT WHAT ARGH
This one didn’t turn out well either.
NICE! Assume Natasha’s healing between all of these bouts.
This only wagered about 640G, I believe, but fights against magic units are generally easy for physical units to win.
Like so! Pretty decent level up, really.
Another magic user. Slowly recovering monies.
...Sigh.
I took a bit of a risk here (by my standards, I’m paranoid about the Arena), but it paid off. ^^
WAIT WHAT AAAAH CRAP BACK BACK BACK
I was too busy panicking to cap it but these are guys you don’t generally want to fight in the arena. Druids are powerful and they use dark magic, which is more power on top of that. To put it in perspective, Seth did 13 damage to this guy’s
18.
Let’s take a break before Quote’s heart gives out.
{Quit laughing at me!
I’m not laughing! You just haven’t changed much. You still exaggerate a lot.}
... :3 These two are cute~
B SUPPORT GET
Lance vs. sword could’ve turned out badly, but it didn’t. Seth got a good level out of it.
And so did Natasha!
I decided to quit while I was ahead with regards to the arena, so Vanessa did some weakening of the boss to level her up. Pretty decent one here.
Lute killed him but was unfortunately 6 exp off a level. :(
What?!
I...Is there something wrong?
Oh, I’m sorry. Just... another cute blonde from Grado. I’m keeping count.
...Maybe you should just share your story, Sister.
Mentor Occupational Hazard strikes again.
They executed him.”
What... sort of method of execution was this, exactly? You were that close by?
...Artistic licence.
Big Bad’s plan revealed in Chapter 5... huh, not bad.
Yeah, so we’ve heard.
Um, hello? I’m standing right here.
What? No, of course n--
To be fair, you did virtually the same thing in front of me and Neimi.
Shut up.
What a jerk. :(
Actually, dehumanisation has proven quite expedient in maximising enemy casualties whilst minimising psychological damage. It’s a common war tactic.
Do you even know what those words mean?
Duh! I’m a prodigy.
*sniff* It’s so sad...
Oh
nice one, mage lady.
Please, you must go quickly.”
Well this merry band of ours numbers about fourteen, so you may be waiting a while.
Shut up! Negativity is for
wusses!
PRESENTS!!
[This can be used to promote a magic unit later -- Lute or Natasha, in our case.]
...Should we have said something during that discussion?
No. I’m fairly sure all this talking is a Renais thing.