Let's Play Monster Quest part 17
We cut straight to this mission from the last one, with no map time in between.
This is actually, in my opinion, the best-designed chapter of the entire game. Yes, desert missions are much-maligned by Fire Emblem fans, but I really do think this mission provides the right level of challenge, and specifically avoids creating "challenge" through idiotic luck-based missions, which is the most common way for the Fire Emblem games to make missions something other than mindlessly easy. Honestly, the desert isn't even that big a penalty to the player -mages and fliers have always been some of the best units in the series.
Showing off Excalibur, since we've already seen Audhulma in Carlyle's hands. Like Audhulma, it's been made unlimited use, Oddly, Monster Quest has also lowered its Might from an absurd 18 to a pedestrian 5, equal to a Fire Tome.
Hm. I'm half-expecting it to turn out to be Brave or something, now.
Lute's carrying it in the dim hope that she'll both promote and reach S rank this mission.
Valter has dumped the combination of Killer Lance and Spear for Vidofnir, which... really, it's all he needs, so fair enough. Pretty much all of his stats have jumped up by 2-3 points, except his Luck, which has jolted up from 4 to 13, an increase of 9 points, and his Move and Constitution. (Down 1, up 1, respectively)
For some reason he's also lost 4 levels. Unless Deathgoyles secretly have Pierce, this just means he's worth less experience when killed. Mildly annoying.
Vidofnir has turned into a range 1-2 unlimited use weapon. I'm starting to sense a pattern here... no stat changes to it, otherwise. Huh.
Caellach has switched from Silver Axe+Tomahawk to Garm. Note that his Attack is identical to his Strength -I think I already know what that means.
Like Valter, most of his stats have gone up 2-3 points, but in his case HP has gone up 7, Luck 7, Defense 5, Constitution 5... again, he's lost a point of Move. He's a menace in general, honestly, and gaining a big crit rate is annoying. This is much more threatening than the base game's Caellach. Like Valter, he's lost 4 levels, again meaning he's worth less experience in spite of the increased challenge. Irritating.
There's also the question of whether Stealing counts Garm's bonus Speed or not. If it doesn't, Colm can easily Steal his Hoplon Guard and trivialize his crit rate.
Garm follows the Sacred Twin trend of becoming 1-2 range and unlimited use. Its Might has dropped to 0 from a ridiculous 20... my guess? Like Luna, it ignores Defense. We'll see, though. Otherwise, its stats are unchanged.
Sleep Staff Troubadour. Annoying. Also they'll drop a Mend, but whatever.
You have no idea how glad I am that this guy won't move unless one of your people is in his reach.
I like the touch that he's standing amid Ruins, over by Valter. The obvious implication is he destroyed the Village off-screen, most likely on Valter's orders, because that's the kind of person Valter is.
This guy is notable more for the Guiding Ring I can Steal than for the Eclipse Tome -Eclipse is horribly inaccurate and can't actually kill units anyway. Actually, can Eclipse crit? Never thought about that possibility before. Huh.
Anyway, he doesn't move, so you just have to be patient. No worries about him rushing out to suicide on one of your ranged guys or anything.
Lootable Luna Tome.
Lastly, there's this Berserker over here. Like the other Berserker, I'm very glad he only moves if you're in his reach. It's pretty easy to end up looting his Dragon Axe, at least if you either are willing to take a risk or have someone with high enough Luck that the crit chance is neutered -just put someone in his Hand Axe reach and no closer, and then kill him.
My team for this mission and starting position.
I brought along Ewan in the expectation that Ross would probably be overly hampered by the sand, and another flier could be handy, and this might be one of the better opportunities to train Ewan in relative safety. In retrospect this was probably a dumb move, and I likely would have been better off bringing Cormag. It mostly worked out, though.
I only had a couple of restarts on this mission, and they both revolved around me being dumb. (And slightly unlucky in one case, but mostly I was being dumb)
To start with, L'arachel and Lute each take out a Mercenary. Even though Lute has to attack from close range, she dodges, so they both come out of it uninjured.
In the south, Tana and Vanessa take out a Mercenary in the dunes, with Tana dodging.
That is an amazing motion blur.
(Yes, I've said that a few times before. It bears repeating)
Lastly, a bunch of moving up, getting ready to bait out enemies.
First enemy action of note is a Mercenary smacking Marisa and then dying to her second attack being a crit. Works for me.
Over west we have Amelia being doubled by a Mercenary, though only one hit lands, and they're both pathetically weak regardless.
Something I hadn't properly anticipated was the walking lootable Luna Tome could actually reach Vanessa from his position. While it was tremendously unlikely, he could potentially have crit-killed her here. Oops. It worked out, though.
My turn, and I have Tana kill the Shaman, since her Luck actually is high enough to be completely safe. She dodges, big surprise. Off to the convoy the Luna Tome goes.
Slightly to the north, I have Colm chip the Mercenary that hit Amelia, primarily because he was close to leveling. He gets a pretty good level out of it, all things considered.
Amelia then kills the Mercenary.
Tethys gets another ridiculous Tethys level out of giving Amelia an extra move.
Amelia trades blows with the next Mercenary.
Followed by Neimi killing them. I want her promoted this mission.
Since Tana handled the Shaman on her lonesome, I have Vanessa go for this Mercenary. I botch catching her actual dodge, but she avoids taking any damage. Note that the Brigand can't reach her, thanks to the sand.
Honestly, the sand is almost entirely to the player's advantage. Most of the enemies on the map are either bogged down by it or not going to travel through it anyway.
Enemy turn, and the Mercenary goes for Vanessa for some reason. He dies, and she gets an okay level.
Further north, a Mercenary misses Colm against the odds.
Then it's my turn, and reinforcements arrive -a Falco Knight and Pegasus Knight for my enemies, and Ephraim and a couple of friends for myself.
Thankfully, Ephraim has been saved from whatever was wrong with him last time, and is capable of gaining experience again. I'd rather have leveled him myself, but this is considerably better than having him lose out on 10 levels outright. Compared to his average stats according to Serenes Forest, he's actually 2-4 points ahead on basically every stat for level 14, so he's doing fine.
Knoll is 4 levels ahead of where he should be, but is nonetheless actually hugely advantaged in stats -most of his stats are only 3 points ahead, but his Luck would normally be 0 starting out, his Defense 2, and his Speed 7, so even a supremely lucky Knoll in the base game would be 3 points behind in Luck, 5 points behind in Defense, and 3 points behind in Speed compared to Mogall-Knoll here. He's also gained a point of Constitution, which is nice given that Dark Tomes run heavy -Flux alone is 8, so Shaman Knoll is weighed down by his weakest weapon, where Mogall-Knoll is not. Knoll is still an unlucky glass cannon compared to most of my team, but he no longer has to fear a crit chance from literally every enemy in the game like Shaman-Knoll, which instantly makes him much better of a unit, and his Defense score is passable too. He's still the obvious guy to give the Hoplon Guard, but it's no longer basically a bare minimum necessity to have him usable at all.
He's also my first non-promoted user of Dark magic user, which kind of makes him my most likely choice to use Gleipnir, assuming I manage to cram him into my team successfully.
(Specific stat modification: +3 HP, +3 Magic, +3 Skill, +7 Speed, +7 Luck, +9 Defense, +3 Resist, +1 Constitution)
Duessel has gained around big boosts in most of his stats, specifically +6 HP, +5 Strength, +7 Skill, +8 Speed, +5 Luck, +2 Defense, +7 Resist, +2 Move, and admittedly -1 Constitution but 14 Constitution is still quite high. Only one pre-promote left for the game to awesomely improve -and I genuinely look forward to seeing how good Syrene is. I'm especially wondering if the
He's switched from being a master of the weapon triangle to being an Axe/Bow guy, as well, by virtue of being a Maelduin. Instead of a Silver Lance and a Silver Axe, he's brought a Poison Axe and a Silver Bow, as well, so that's nice.
This is a quite amazing Duessel, and Duessel was basically the only pre-promote I ever considered worth occasionally using in the original game. (Saleh just has too much competition, and Sage is an underwhelming class) Awesome.
Ephraim's group starts moving north to join up with Eirika -I already know there's going to be a large army of reinforcements behind them, and I want them away before it arrives. In the process, Knoll loots a Master Seal from the surviving Village. I make a mental note to check if Tethys can be promoted with this -it's the easiest way to see if she's been given a promotion by Monster Quest.
Tana helps clear a path by breaking out the Axereaver to easily slaughter this Brigand.
Ewan takes a potshot at this Fighter to generate some experience -I'd originally intended for him to get in hits on the Mercenaries earlier, but they all have 8 Resistance, so Ewan couldn't touch them. Not worth wasting a Fire tome use on generating one experience point, nor worth wasting the ten seconds of my life it takes.
Back to the desert for a moment, Vanessa goes to smack this Mercenary struggling through the desert. She dodges his retaliation, though unfortunately she can't quite double him. She'll have to wait for his turn to come for him to die on her Lance.
Back with the main group, we have Amelia not quite able to double this Fighter. She easily dodges the retaliation, though. The main point was to block him off from reaching Ewan, anyway.
Also note the other Mogalls in the north -they're trying to retreat from the flying enemies, because I'm not confident in my ability to avoid suffering a loss if I go aggressive. This is probably a poor decision.
Marisa goes to hit this Mercenary, and to my intense aggravation misses and takes the retaliation right on the face. Really?
Tethys heals her to keep her alive.
Eirika proceeds to also miss, though at least her odds were legitimately shaky.
Also getting real tired of these 17 Speed guys. No game, I'm not promoting people early! I want all the levels!
It occurs to me to briefly check the Shop, but the only thing of interest is
forty uses on the Restore Staff.
What?? Why? That's overkill.
Anyway, this Mercenary continues to just shrug and not get hit. Aaarrgh.
I decide against having Colm hit the Mercenary -he can't kill them, and it would potentially open the way for him to be killed on the enemy turn. I end turn instead.
Vanessa's Mercenary dodges like a pro while successfully hitting Vanessa himself.
This is getting ridiculous.
Amelia continues to be a dodging machine, though in this case the enemy literally had a 0% chance of hitting her so that's not unexpected or anything.
Dodging another Fighter, this being the one she barely couldn't double. They die now.
A third Fighter comes charging onto Amelia's blade, ignoring how it's covered in the blood of his fellows.
The Mercenary I decided to not have Colm attack himself attacks Colm, and finally someone is able to land a hit on the jerk.
A Myrmidon goes for Amelia, and to my amusement she dodges one of these too. She gets a fantastic level out of smacking them.
Note that the Myrmidon doubled her.
Over in the north, a Wyvern Rider smacks Lute and gets doubled in exchange, netting her a perfect level. Awesome.
Reinforcements arrive -more fliers, plus a pair of Cavaliers down here on the Forts. Note that Pegasus Knight right on top of my Mogall mob. It's a reinforcement, too, and I really should've remembered it before I decided to retreat over the lake.
First action of my turn is Eirika clearing out the Fighter in a Forest. A bit wasteful of experience, but whatever, I'm trying to clean up in preparation to greet the Pegasi.
Ewan landing an actual kill!
Artur getting a crit unexpectedly. That's... actually kind of useful.
Lute finishing off this Wyvern Rider from relative safety.
Followed by L'arachel completing my wall and weakening this Pegasus Knight.
I'd had a dim hope she'd critkill them, but no. This might've been a mistake, actually.
Amelia kills this Myrmidon.
Followed by Colm finishing off the Mercenary. Wanted to do this before I had Tethys heal him, just in case he missed again.
Back out in the desert, Vanessa finishes off this Mercenary finally -the Fighter can't reach her thanks to the sand.
Knoll shows himself off. Faster than Shaman-Knoll, but still not fast enough to double this Fighter.
I like his design, though like a lot of the Mogalls his skin looks shiny in a glitchy-looking way. Basic design is a faithful enough adaptation.
Anyway, Tana swoops in to finish them off, getting her a decent enough level. Knoll even actually contributed, since she didn't have to dodge an attack/use two uses of her Axereaver.
I finally get around to healing Colm and end turn.
I was annoyed that Neimi couldn't reach any of the fliers from her current position, not even with the Longbow.
First action of the enemy turn is the other northwest Myrmidon wasting his time on Amelia. He misses twice, which is funny, though not meaningfully helpful since she's too tough for him to scratch anyway.
Further north, a Pegasus Knight misses L'arachel... which is good, because yikes, they'd have taken off just slightly more than half her health.
Last of the northern Wyvern Riders shows that Lute isn't as safe as I was thinking she was, though he misses and couldn't have killed her regardless.
... also, what the heck is the Wyvern Rider standing on? His (Her? Honestly, Wyvern Riders have a miniskirt, a chesty piece of armor, and just generally look like they were intended to be feminine women, and in some of the games Pegasus Knights promote into Wyvern Lords...) feet are standing on thin air. The back one I can sort of pretend is on the Wyvern's back, but the front one I can't even pretend is sitting on the wing, as impractical as that would be.
Did some poor artist literally just draw the rider as a separate set of sprites that got layered over the Wyvern later? Because I can't think of any other reason why something so obviously, jarringly wrong would've made it into the game.
Amazing the things I'm noticing because I'm screenshotting.
Anyway, the first Falcoknight takes a shot at L'arachel, and hits -L'arachel could easily have died this turn. Yikes.
Even more reinforcements, same batch as last turn.
First move of my turn is going "Wait what" over how easily Duessel can get through this chunk of desert. Hmm. Maybe Tarvos/Maelduin have the Ranger movement type, inherited from the Nomads of the previous two games? The Ranger movement type is actually one of the most absurdly mobile movement types in the game in spite of being attached to a cavalry unit.
Tana goes over to slaughter the Fighter intent on attacking Vanessa. Handles them easily, though she can't actually double them. They'll kill themselves on her turn, it's all good.
Artur takes out this reinforcement Pegasus. I'm trying to back up still. He gets an okay level out of it, but he really needs more Speed. I'm glad he's slowly patching up his Luck, but his Speed is much more consistently a problem nowadays.
Marisa finishes off the Myrmidon that got himself mauled by Amelia.
Lute retreats and uses a Vulnerary to heal.
L'arachel retreats and gets healed by Tethys -really wishing I had a Physic Staff right about now- and I set up like this. I've got people hoping to bait out some Pegasus Knights away from the Mogalls, including Colm sitting on the Gate.
Fortunately, the first Pegasus Knight to go for L'arachel misses her. Her Lightning breaks, leaving her only with heavier Tomes to work with.
Back in the desert, Tana finishes off the Fighter she attacked.
L'arachel dodges another Pegasus Knight attack -she could easily have died here- and promptly crit-kills them, netting her a defensive level. Strangely, my only complaint is she didn't get HP -her offensive stats are liable to full-cap sometime after her promotion anyway, and with her Defense and HP so low, she really is quite fragile.
Pegasus Knight goes for Artur, and finally a 50/50 results in a hit on one of my units. He doubles them and kills them. Kind of wishing I'd bought more Lightnings at some point.
To my surprise and confusion, one of the Falcoknights goes to make a ranged attack on Vanessa. Huh? I mean, it's nice, but... huh? They miss anyway.
Lastly, the other Falcoknight misses Artur. (Though I missed the screenshot)
These Falcoknight+Pegasus Knight reinforcements caused both of my restarts. I knew they were coming, but I didn't really account for them properly. Even here it was luck, not planning, that got me through their assault.
Additionally, more reinforcements arrive, this time thankfully limited to a pair of Cavaliers down south. No more flyer reinforcements.
Neimi vaporizes the third Falcoknight because I'm tired of this crap and Neimi is too powerful for the non-promoted units to be a real threat to her.
L'arachel does 20 damage to this Falcoknight. I was kind of hoping for another critkill, but oh well.
I have Eirika break out her Lancereaver to take out this Falcoknight. It's been kind of hard to get Eirika experience lately, and my options for getting the kill were few -and since they're holding a Javelin, I couldn't simply take a pot-shot with Lute or whatever safely.
Colm takes out a Pegasus Knight -he does need the experience. It's only after the Pegasus Knight misses that it occurs to me how dangerous this could've been, as I wasn't entirely certain yet that I could pull off killing everybody around him.
Lute finishes off the last Falcoknight, so now I'm done with them.
I fly Tana out to bait out some Cavaliers.
Tethys re-moves Amelia, accidentally clicked through the pre-action report, so here's a screenshot of her preparing to give Amelia an extra move.
I find it interesting that Tethys using the Dance Command displays no equipped item for her in this screen.
This was so Amelia could walk up to and kill the last Pegasus Knight.
Followed by Artur finishing off the last Wyvern Rider.
Almost nothing else happens on my turn.
Two Cavaliers take the Tana bait. One hits, one misses. One gets hit twice, one gets missed twice. Weird.
My turn again, and I have Marisa take a shot at killing this Cavalier. She doesn't get a crit on either of her strikes, but she dodges their attack. Eh.
A bunch of moving around happens and Tethys heals Artur. End turn not looking very different from this.
Tana baits out a Steel Lance Cavalier, takes the hit. Aaargh.
Marisa gets attacked by her Cavalier, and naturally she now chooses to get a crit, when it's completely useless. She also gets hit. She gets a decent level considering two of her stats are capped. Still want more defenses on her.
Tana then baits out and gets hit again by another Cavalier, this one with a Javelin. She's holding her Bright Lance, so she doesn't retaliate.
Huh. I thought I'd gotten this screenshot properly. Apparently not. Well, the Troubadour is healing one of the Cavaliers. Eh.
Then reinforcements arrive -Shaman in the north, and a more mixed force down where Ephraim and company arrived. The latter is why I wanted him out of the area as fast as possible.
First action is having Amelia slaughter a Shaman. She takes a hit. Inconvenient.
Vanessa takes out the other northeast Shaman, and unlike Amelia she dodges the retaliation.
Tethys heals Amelia and I move around, prepping to both receive the further magic-user reinforcements I know are coming and also to mob and kill the Berserker.
End of a short turn.
Yet more Shaman reinforcements, like I knew.
L'arachel, Artur, and Lute gang up on the Berserker, with Lute landing the killing blow and getting a pretty nice level out of it. Would've liked Speed more than capping Magic, but oh well.
A bit of a waste to loot the Berserker's Hand Axe rather than his Dragon Axe, but I'm not really concerned about it. The Sacred Twins are so ridiculous that everything else pales in comparison in most situations anyway, and anti-Wyvern weaponry isn't really that important. There's... I think one mission remaining in which Wyverns are a part of the enemy force? Not even the most threatening part or anything.
It's not even like Valter is a Wyvern Knight in Monster Quest.
Anyway, Amelia promptly crit-kills one Shaman. I'm pretty sure this is a frame unique to the Bonewalker crit animation.
Ephraim kills the other, since I really should be catching him up to Eirika in experience.
Speaking of Eirika, down south she breaks out the Lancereaver to slaughter a Cavalier. Annoyingly, she promptly critkills them on a 5% chance completely gratuitously.
Whatever, Tethys heals Ephraim.
Neimi takes a potshot at a Cavalier with Colm's moral support using the Longbow so she can hit level 20 and I can finally promote her. Three stats capped for before-promotion ranges. Wow.
I have Colm Trade-manipulate her into holding a Short Bow to avoid wasting Longbow uses/dissuade the Cavaliers from attacking her at all and end turn looking like this -note that Marisa is moving to engage foes in the west.
Knoll takes a hit from a Cavalier and promptly misses on his retaliation. Irritating.
Another Cavalier takes a potshot at Eirika, misses. Free experience point.
Down south, the Troubadour again uses Physic to heal a Cavalier.
To my surprise, no reinforcements this turn.
Marisa retreats and gets a heal from Tethys when I realize I can't actually ensure that both Shaman die this turn.
Over to the east, Eirika continues earning experience. Hey! Another level with Strength!
Colm finishes off her target... with a completely gratuitous crit.
sigh
So here's Neimi's options. She can become a Wight and gain Swords and Lances, or she can become a Maelduin, pick up speed and Canto and Axes and also get her hair color back.
I like the color scheme either way. Looks good.
I choose Wight, and am rewarded with balanced, good stat boosts across the board. (Bar Luck, which is, if I recall correctly, always unaffected by promotion) The Constitution boost in particular is shockingly huge for a Constitution boost. I prefer footsoldier movement behavior and appreciate her ability to be basically immune to the weapon triangle this way.
Also I just think she looks better as a Wight than as a Maelduin, even if Maelduin has hair.
Ah, but here's what would happen if I did promote her to Maelduin -she'd be tougher and have slightly better Constitution in exchange for less Skill and Speed. 1 point more stats gained in total, in fact.
Anyway, enough promotion talk. I end turn looking like this.
Shaman misses Marisa. Nice.
Cavalier goes for Colm, lands the hit. Not so nice.
Other Cavalier misses Colm.
Had trouble getting the screenshot, but the Troubadour heals that greyed-out Cavalier on the Fort.
My turn again.
Marisa takes out one Shaman, getting no crits and not dodging their retaliation. Oh well.
Amelia goes through the same process, only she gains a level out of it. I'd like more Speed for her, but am otherwise completely happy with this level.
Ewan goes to earn some experience.
He misses.
With Tethys' assistance, he misses again, but since he started this turn at 98 experience, he levels up. It's a nearly perfect level, which if it had been his first level might have lulled me into thinking he'd have a shot at being a good unit. As-is, the only reason I'm doing this is because I want to show off all the combat graphics, including the promoted versions, eventually.
Well, that and a dim hope that he'll be so insanely lucky in his growths that he ends up passable anyway.
Lute and Neimi both murder a Cavalier. I was actually intending for Neimi to soften up the Cavalier so one of the Mogalls could finish it, but oh well.
Nothing of real interest happens after that on my turn, so now it's the enemy's turn.
Mage missing Eirika, free experience point.
Wyvern successfully baited out by Colm, Colm dodges with a smile.
And then it's my turn. Annoyingly, Ephraim misses this Mercenary and gets hit, very much against the odds.
Artur and Lute hitting Mages. Lute also incidentally finds the buried Wyrmslayer, and off it goes to the caravan.
Eirika softening up the Mage Artur already hit, and even dodging the retaliation.
Followed by L'arachel landing the finishing blow.
Then Tethys helps Artur kill the other Mage.
Making up for that bout of bad luck with Ephraim, Marisa comes along and finally gets a timely critical, one-shotting this Mercenary.
Neimi vaporizes the Wyvern Rider Colm baited out, and to no one's shock dodges the retaliation.
Ewan continues to infuriate me by missing this Cavalier.
This ends my turn.
The Cavalier promptly hits Colm, and in the process of mauling the Cavalier Colm gets a perfect level, given his Speed is capped. Awesome.
And then it's back to my turn and Ewan continuing to miss way more than his odds indicate he should.
With Tethys' assistance, Eirika comes along to finish off the Cavalier, because I'm under too much pressure to just keep stalling him while Ewan tries to gain experience.
More to the north, Marisa and Amelia work together to kill this Cavalier, and they even dodge the retaliations. This is convenient, though not necessary. The Paladin can't even reach them yet, due to the desert, and if the dodges hadn't happened Ephraim would've simply stepped into the Cavalier's position to protect Marisa.
Artur and Lute team up to take out one of these Fighters.
I end turn looking like this.
We're nearly done with the aggressive foes, so the rest of the mission, though it'll take me a while, won't present much of a challenge.
Poor screenshot timing on the hit, but this Cavalier wounds Marisa, and she gets no crits while doubling them.
The Paladin decides to take a potshot at Artur. My recollection is that somewhere in this area I concluded I clearly needed to go to bed, and interrupted play to continue it tomorrow. This wasn't a problematic mistake, but it's the kind of oversight that can cost you runs/characters, the kind I usually don't make.
Continuing to try to train Ewan, continuing to have him miss more than 50% of the time at more than 70% Accuracy.
This would be ridiculous if True Hit wasn't a thing.
Lute and Artur team up to finish off the Paladin, and Artur gets a nice level. I'd like him to have more Luck, but otherwise he's doing quite well, really.
Marisa fails to get a crit on either of her hits, Amelia gets a crit on a 1% chance.
Why.
I end turn looking like this.
A Fighter flails ineffectually at Neimi, who is here to wall him off so Ewan can try to train on him.
Ephraim successfully baits out this Mage, retaliating with his *Slim Lance to nearly kill them. Awesome.
My turn now, and I open with having Amelia land the finishing blow on said Mage.
More training of Ewan. Thankfully, he lands both of these hits.
I then made a pile of screenshots of training Ewan on this guy while nothing else happened at all, and only partway through realized this was a waste of time. Let's skip to the highlights.
Tethys gaining another excellent level.
Ewan gaining an actually pretty good level.
This wasn't actually intentional at all -I was just sending Amelia to heal up on this Fort, and she happened to find the Swiftsole.
A brief diversion to Lute murdering the other Mage escorting Caellach.
Finally, Ewan kills the Fighter and gains another solid level... though I really wanted him to gain more Magic.
Naturally, Ewan managed to miss twice more throughout this whole thing.
Anyway, we move on to new things after way too many turns! Specifically: baiting out these Wyvern Riders.
Amelia dodges one of them and brings the pain in response to both.
Then this Troubadour runs up to Physic one of them, annoying me.
My turn again, and we open with continuing to try to train Ewan.
Then Amelia finishes off that Wyvern Rider and takes a hit in the process. Eh.
Then Tethys helps Knoll get close enough to land a kill. I think I had vague plans to train Knoll since he's currently my only (good) dark magic user?
Incidentally, he was placed to bait the Eclipse-wielding Shaman into wasting a shot on him.
Meanwhile, up in the north, I've had people trying to loot this Silver Card for like 10 turns, and it finally actually happened.
Tethys healing Amelia. Mostly? I'm trying to train Tethys' Staff rank so she'll be able to actually use the Hammerne Staff I got last mission.
In the northwest, I finally attack Caellach. He looks pretty cool, honestly. I'm using Eirika because she's got weapon triangle advantage and is one of the safest options I have in general. She's dodgy enough that even though he hits hard and has a chance of one-shotting her with a crit, she probably won't die. This places her well ahead of literally everyone else in my army. They all have a chance of being critted to death by him. After all, Garm is ignoring defenses and Caellach has 22 Strength. It's not possible to have enough HP for this to not be a one-shot risk.
... I'll also admit that I just plain forget until the turn after this that Support bonuses might mean someone else in my army could push his crit chance down to zero.
Though in retrospect I'm not sure why I had her initiate under these conditions. If he'd hit her on this strike and then hit her on his turn, she'd have died without me having the chance to Rescue shenanigans her to safety. Plus he healed off all the damage.
More Knoll dodging Eclipses.
Meanwhile, Caellach again misses Eirika... and she misses him. ugh.
Tethys healing Marisa and gaining another excellent level out of it. I'd rather she got +2 HP on every level-up, but oh well.
I finally decide Eirika clearly isn't going to cut it and place Lute to handle the job.
Enemy turn, and Marisa baits out a Cavalier, and for once her numbers line up perfectly! A dodge, a hit, and the crit she needed to finish them off!
This in turn opens the way for another Cavalier to charge her, which she dodges as well, though she gets no crits. She does get a level-up, and it's honestly pretty okay all things considered. Two stats are capped, and she could still cap Strength before promotion as-is. Just needs more defensive stats.
Knoll dodges a third Eclipse.
Meanwhile, Caellach targets Lute. Her high Luck and her Support with Artur renders crits from Caellach impossible on her! Also, she smacks him once and levels up, and it has everything actually relevant to this little fight.
Anyway, back east Ewan continues to suck far more than his numbers say he should.
Tethys helps him get in a second try, and this time he actually lands it.
Followed by Knoll taking the kill.
So hey, let's look at Lute's options for promotion. She can turn into an Arch Mogall, or she can abandon the power of flight and become a Gorgon. I'm pretty sure I know what else these choices entail, but let's use savestates to check manually!
Promoting her into a Gorgon gives her Staves and no other "weapon", and provides fairly balanced stats, with a shockingly high Constitution increase. Interesting.
Promoting her into an Arch Mogall gives her the entire magical weapons triangle, like I was expecting, and has, strangely enough, a more defensively inclined distribution of stat gains, shunting a point from Skill and a point from Speed to Defense and Resist. It also just drops 3 of the Constitution points outright, not having them go anywhere else. That's somewhat unfortunate, but makes a kind of sense to me, as it actually emphasizes that the Arch Mogall is about diversity. The Gorgon's superior weight tolerances make it a better choice for wielding heavier Tomes, giving it a raw firepower advantage within its realm. So that's cool.
But I go with Arch Mogall in the end. I'm having way too much fun with having much of my army flying to sacrifice that just to give me a Staff user, especially since it's also been fairly interesting playing an army that has limited magical healing but is so tanky it can actually hold up without the stuff. It honestly makes me wish there was an official Fire Emblem game that played around with something like that.
Little else happens on my turn. I'm moving slowly and baiting enemies out, and I'm getting burned out by the mission. This mission can drag on even when you aren't taking screenshots constantly.
Marisa baiting out a Myrmidon and dodging the strike.
Knoll's fourth Eclipse dodge. Just one more to go.
Lastly, Caellach lands a hit on Lute, whom has been passed a Lightning Tome by Artur to speed this up. Her retaliation mauls him.
Then I have Lute heal herself with a Vulnerary, and she loots Warp from the sand. Convenient! (And this time actually intentional -Lute and Artur are placed where they are to loot the Warp)
... oh god another unlimited-use Staff that breaks the game.
Anyway, Ewan continues to try to train and continues to miss. At least this wasn't far off from a coin flip chance of success. Irritating, but much more plausible than what's gone prior.
Tethys-assisted try 2 doesn't go any better. Ewan's extremely high rate of misses in this mission is absurd.
Amelia comes along to weaken the Myrmidon, dodges the retaliation. She's so tough it's not even that important.
Lastly, Vanessa comes along to finish the Myrmidon, and unlike Ewan doesn't miss.
Enemy turn, and Amelia baits out the second Myrmidon. I missed the dodge screenshot, but she dodged this too.
Knoll dodging Eclipse for the final time. Huzzah!
Aaaand Caellach hitting Lute again. Aargh. Still, his HP is actually edging down now that Lute has Lightning, Fort healing or no. And a couple of extra points of Magic from promoting.
My turn again, and I start by having Ewan attack the Myrmidon. He finally lands a hit, and incidentally finds the Killer Bow. I honestly had forgotten there was an item in that area. To be fair, a Killer Bow is a somewhat underwhelming reward even in the base game, so it's not exactly memorable.
Then Amelia finishes off the Myrmidon and gets a somewhat underwhelming level. That's okay, her stats are actually pretty good overall -she's liable to cap everything except Resist by the time she reaches level 20 Promoted. That's solid.
Tethys giving Amelia another turn.
And that's about it -I move up and end the turn. This is largely mop-up at this point. Note that I've given up on trying to kill Caellach for the moment, though. I'll come back to him later.
Myrmidon going for Marisa, landing an unlikely blow, and then being promptly crit-killed. Sure, why not.
Lastly, the Ranger comes up and misses with their Bow shot. Lure successful.
Marisa softens up the Ranger, but fails to get a crit I was hoping for, followed by Tana outright missing. Annoying.
With Tethys' assistance, Ephraim moves up and vaporizes the Ranger with Reginleif, and gets an incredible level in the process.
Then I do a bunch of moving up and end my turn.
The other Ranger comes up, and I botch my screenshot -it's a pure white screen. So, they hit Ephraim. Annoying.
My turn again, and the first thing I do is double-check this Paladin's range -yes, they could've charged me last turn, but didn't. Apparently they're in a more passive AI mode at the moment. I'd been assuming they'd rush me the instant I was in range, but apparently not.
Tethys healing Lute. I took the second screenshot to make it clear I was using the Recover Staff, and thus this is a full heal.
The Ranger is then torn up by Marisa, Amelia, and Ephraim landing the finishing blow. He's my lowest-level long-term character, so even though he's powerful I'd rather divert experience to him.
This is how I end turn looking.
The closest Wyvern Rider is successfully baited out by Vanessa, and mises its hit and dodges one of her attacks. Works for me.
... and then the Paladin rushes Ephraim, giving me a heart attack, because apparently I crossed some magic line to change its behavior. I hate it when the game does that. Regardless, Ephraim survives the Silver Lance going through his face and retaliates lethally, while I'm sweating about the possibility that the northwest Wyvern Rider that hasn't moved might be able to reach Ephraim now and choose to do so.
Also Ephraim gets another great level, capping Skill and Speed. Now he just needs defensive stats.
The southwest Wyvern lobs a Javelin at Marisa and succeeds in spite of the odds. Annoying, but not concerning.
... and then it's my turn, to my surprise, and I open up with Tethys fixing up Ephraim.
Tana goes for a critkill on one Wyvern and to my pleasant surprise I finally have someone get a first-strike critkill. Perfect.
L'Arachel vaporizes another one.
I have Colm move to soften up the Javelin-throwing Wyvern Rider... and he takes a hit against the odds. That's getting annoying.
Vanessa moves in to cripple the Wyvern behind that Wyvern and accepts a blow in the process, but I'm not particularly surprised by that.
Amelia follows up to finish off that Wyvern Rider.
Marisa does what I always hope for her to do and rarely delivers on -doubles a target, dodges the retaliation, and gets a crit that actually mattered to turn the whole thing into a kill. Good job, Marisa.
She's certainly more reliable than Joshua.
I have Ephraim kill this Troubadour basically because I want them dead ASAP and he's my best option after everything else has been done.
Then moving up, ending looking like this.
Wyvern the first is baited out by Vanessa, so now she's been hit twice in a row by 49% odds attacks. Slightly aggravating, and rather worrying.
But it works out, because the Javelin thrower misses, saving the day.
Also, the other Troubadour tries to put Ephraim to sleep, fails. Their odds were poor. Kind of surprised they didn't heal the injured Wyvern Rider.
Getting Vanessa retreated and healed.
Artur wipes out the melee Wyvern Rider.
Tana goes for the critkill, but doesn't get it on either of her hits. Dodges the retaliation though, so that's something.
L'arachel nukes the Sleep Troubadour because I don't want anyone getting too close to that Berserker, and loots the Mend Staff off of them.
Marisa finishes off the last Wyvern Rider. No crit, but she dodges, so it's all good.
General moving up...
... but nothing happens, so on the next turn I plant Amelia in reach of the Berserker -she's Just That Tough.
By "Tough", I mean that she's standing in a Forest and holding an Axereaver and so the Berserker literally can't hit her. She promptly crit-kills him, which, uh, wasn't actually my intention. I'd intended to get Ewan some more experience and in general bombard the Berserker from a distance. I guess this works, though.
Also, the Berserker drops the Devil Axe, but I don't foresee myself using that... though. It's possible Monster Quest altered the Devil Axe's behavior? Man, I hate testing randomized stuff. It would be a world of difference for the backfire rate to be reduced by even 1% base, since a Luck-capped character could then use it safely, but determining that through testing would be a nightmare.
(Note from the future: I totally forget about this intention and sell it off. Oh well)
Anyway, Colm Steals the Guiding Ring on this Shaman, since he won't drop it on death and I want all the promotion items I can get.
Amelia follows up on her stunning success with the Berserker by easily killing the Shaman without even taking a hit.
A little bit later, I'm fighting Valter. Lute takes the shot with a Lightning Tome, and it's good.
She also takes a retaliation, which is not so good.
Promptly healed with some Rescue shenanigans to boot. I forget why I bothered with the Rescue shenanigans. I think Tethys couldn't reach her original position?
In any event, the following turn Lute takes another shot, and gets hit again. What is with this mission and 50%~ equaling 100% for the enemy?
L'arachel completes Valter's execution, because I was impatient and tired. Don't do this. (Unless you're willing to abuse savestates, in which case just make sure to abuse savestates when you do it)
She gets a nigh-perfect level in the process, and also grabs the Fili Shield from Valter's crumbling corpse. The Fili Shield is probably not going to be that significant in Monster Quest -many of my fliers aren't even weak to Bows anyway, and the ones that are weak to Bows are so tough I've had single-digit damage from Bows aimed at them. Still, might as well slap it onto Vanessa or Tana.
From here, it's time to march all the way back across the map to Caellach.
This is probably the only part of this mission I genuinely dislike -it's easy to end up having to march across the entire map to deal with whichever boss you saved for last, and it's just tedious. Oh well.
Along the way Tethys levels twice, Warp is tested (To see how much experience it's worth. Answer: a lot), Hammerne is used once Tethys reaches S rank, officially breaking the game forever, and also Ewan talks to Tethys, reaching C Support.
Because in spite of my better judgement I'm apparently still planning to actually try to use Ewan. I'm clearly stuck on the whole "the trainees are godly in the base game" thing.
Finally, I engage Caellach... with Lute again.
I didn't want to, but she's my only unit with enough Luck+crit protection from Supports that Caellach can't possibly crit her. I'd really wanted to give someone else the experience.
Regardless, a repetitive fight ensues with Lute attacking on my turn if Caellach misses on his turn and simply ending my turn after healing her if he lands his hit on his turn, up until I have Caellach low on health. At that point...
... I have Colm Steal his Hoplon Guard as some free experience, and then promptly slap myself for not doing that earlier. I could've just Rescued him right back out using Duessel's Canto! Aaaargh.
I was not at my best while doing this mission.
Then I have Eirika land the finishing blow, so she'll hit level 20, ready to promote. For my trouble she gets a pretty bad level, even considering that two of her stats are capped. Oh well.
Talking ensues.
Brother, how have things gone with crushing the forces of Grado in the heart of their land?
I killed everything that moved, and then heard you were in trouble somehow and hurried here as fast as I could to rescue you.... with just yourself, a single Maelduin and a single Mogall, when I have an entire army?
I don't see the problem.The logic is sound.... I'm just going to focus on being happy that we're apparently done with-Well.Oh, what is it now??
I worked for his Majesty, Spider-Emperor Vigarde. He was not himself. Lyon is behind everything. I don't really understand it myself...And because it's Lyon, you didn't kill him, of course.You wound me, sister! As if I could not strike down a foe simply because we were once friends.But-He showed up to taunt me and then teleported out.Oh. I hate it when he does that.So now we need to travel toward the Darkling Woods, where he is currently lairing for some reason.Could be worse. At least we won't be going to Rausten.
The only road to the Darkling Woods passes through my fair Rausten.... oh. Yay.Also, I st- borrowed two of Grado's sacred relics for our own use.------------
With the talking over, we get...
We've already seen Garm in Caellach's hands, and it's not any different in mine. Gleipnir is new, Its Might and Weight are both notably lower than in the normal game, and of course it has unlimited uses as is standard to Monster Quest's Sacred Twins, but I'll have to test it to see what it really does. Maybe its a Brave Tome? I'm also wondering if it's effective against monsters -in the base game, it isn't, but it wouldn't surprise me if Monster Quest changed that. I honestly hope it did, it's always bothered me that it didn't have that trait in the base game.
With Eirika at level 20, I promote her. It's a bit of a disappointing set of promotion gains; stats-wise, the default game's promotion bonuses are uniformly equal or higher. Even hitting S in Swords is normal for Eirika promoting, so long as she was A beforehand. In retrospect, it probably would've made more sense to take advantage of the plot-promotion, as Monster Quest's Readme indicates that the plot-promotion is unaltered.
I am wondering if there's some hidden benefit Monster Quest provided that I'm just overlooking, or if the creator genuinely just made the anytime promotion directly inferior to the usual promotion gains. Actually, what happens when I get to the plot-promotion event? Hmmm.
Anyway-
-I use the Swiftsole on Tethys. I spent a bit unsure who I should give it to, but ultimately what decided me was the point that Tethys can abuse Warp infinitely now to solve other people's mobility problems, but has no solution to her own travel woes and tends to fall behind a bit when I'm in a hurry.
See you next mission.
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