Let's Play Monster Quest part 5
Welcome back to-
-wait, that's not the chapter start screen.
Whoops. I apparently didn't screenshot it.
Well, the mission's named Ancient Horrors, and here we have Eirika afraid that we're fighting the dread humans.
No Eirika, that's been the last four missions. This mission you're killing real people, ones just like your friends.
Artur shows up and gets his silly scripted fight in which he kills an enemy Mogall and it doesn't fight back even though it should be able to. I can't decide if he looks nifty or terrible. The skin of the eyelids looks wrong, though at least the tentacles/nerve stem look decent.
Oh yeah, this is also the mission in which we finally get access to the pre-mission stuff. I leave out Seth and Garcia, even though really I'd like to leave Moulder out of this and bring Garcia instead. I tend to feel like a healer is mandatory.
So here's our new friend, hilariously wrong description and all. He's actually got a couple less HP and one less Resist than Monk Artur does, but otherwise all his stats are the same or higher, including that he's gained a point of Constitution. And yes, though I didn't screenshot his weapon ranks screen, he can use Light Tomes. Just Light Tomes.
(Specific stat modifications: -2 HP, +1 Magic, +1 Skill, +1 Speed, +2 Defense, -1 Resist, +1 Constitution)
The enemy Mogalls are still using Evil Eye and have ranks in Dark Magic, for reference. I'm surprised, and wondering what the hacker did -I'd always thought weapon ranks were hard-coded to be attached to class per se. Maybe Artur is simply a separate Mogall class that has no visible difference aside from the Light Magic usage?
Or maybe I'm wrong and class actually has nothing to do with weapon ranks in code terms.
... actually, now that I think about it, I shouldn't be surprised by this. I'm already aware of a glitch that lets you use the "Stone" item to train Dark Magic ranks on anyone -it provides Dark Weapon Experience, but it doesn't actually require a rank in Dark Magic to use, and characters with 0 experience in Dark will instantly jump to E rank Dark by using Stone, even non-magical characters. (Though they'll have to spam Stone a bunch more times to be a functional Dark mage -Flux's D rank is the lowest one normally found in Dark magic) Ergo, yes, weapon ranks are not some fixed quality of classes.
At a guess, the technical behavior is that 0 Weapon Experience in a weapon type results "weapon rank=dash symbol", and the fact that you can't use weapons of a given class is simply a consequence of the fact that even the lowest-ranking weapons still require E rank in a weapon. The key is in the safe, basically, and promotion just sets you to a specific weapon experience in a given weapon to get you started.
In that case, the hack would just need to set Artur's Weapon Experience in Dark to 0 -assuming that's even a separate step in the first place- and give him some Light Weapon Experience.
Start of the map. There's more to the south, but it's not very interesting. I check all the enemies as is traditional at this point, but none of them is carrying anything unusual.
I have Neimi attack the nearest Revenant to start with.
... she misses, though. (He's on a Mountain tile, though it's hard to see in either screenshot)
Note how the Beacon Bows's graphic is oddly washed out in this shot. Its monster effectiveness applies! Hence why Neimi would one-shot this guy if she'd hit him. Alas, his great big yawn protects him. I guess Neimi can't bring herself to hit a sleepy target.
I check Gilliam's ability to kill the Revenant with either of his Claws, but he won't kill them even if he hits, and he's not liable to hit, so I change my mind.
Instead I have Vanessa fly south and attack a Bonewalker. I want her to recruit Lute. I'm curious as to whether Lute will be another Light Mogall or still wielding her usual Anima.
Unsurprisingly, Vanessa one-shots the Bonewalker on her first hit, her Bright Lance melting it from the inside-out with the light of the sun. She also gets a really good level out it.
So hey you can see how the Lightning Tome's graphic looks a bit washed out in this second screenshot. It was glowing in the scripted fight, and it's glowing here too. (I just somehow managed to twice catch it looking normal in the scripted fight) In other words: Lightning is effective against monsters! Or Artur is a Bishop Mogall!
... I actually already know the answer: the readme explicitly says that all Light Magic is now effective against monsters.
Honestly, Artur's always been one of the units I liked most, and now he's flying and murders monsters. Admittedly he's also weak to monster-slaying weapons...
... you might think he's weak to Bows, as well, but I'm pretty sure he isn't. I'll make sure to test this later, but in the unmodded game Mogalls are, oddly enough, not considered to be flying units for the purposes of being weak to Bows and Wind Blades.
Also, holy crap that Revenant is fast. Normally the player can expect everyone except, like, Gilliam to double pretty much everything on this map, but not in this hack.
I have Ross finish off Artur's Revenant, which puts him in range of the two enemy Mogalls. I have no idea why, but at the time I somehow thought he was in reach of just one of them, and the other could only reach Artur.
He gets an okay level for his trouble.
Gilliam takes a crack at the Revenant Neimi missed earlier after all, and also misses. At least it can't do anything to him.
General moving up occurs, with Franz positioned to bait the Revenant by the Snag and Eirika ready to help in any fight. Also Moulder is going to loot the village next turn.
Enemy turn.
CRAP
GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER
... oh wait the other one does one less damage for whatever reason, Ross is safe, never mind.
... and it missed him anyway, against all odds. Also? Ross crits it to death.
Okay then.
... crap.
I already knew Revenants could steal items -not only is it an obvious guess since Colm is a Revenant-Thief, but the readme explicitly has as part of its FAQ that this includes enemy Revenants are thieves- but I hadn't quite put 2 and 2 together.
To be fair, I'm also used to all these Revenants having, like, literally 0 Speed. Can't steal anything with 0 Speed.
So never mind "it can't do anything to Gilliam". Also technically I succeeded in baiting out the Snag Revenant.
But it's okay, I can have Colm steal them back!
So here we are at the start of turn two, and a batch of three Bonewalkers has spawned in to the southeast. This is normal for this mission.
They're not carrying anything of interest.
Vanessa uses the power of the sun to vaporize another Bonewalker, because I'm being cautious. My expectation is that Lute will be a Mogall, but if she isn't, recruiting her might get her killed by the two Bonewalkers and one Revenant.
Colm steals back Gilliam's stolen Vulnerary. Free experience!
It occurs to me here that you could do an idiotic infinite experience loop with a Thief, an enemy Thief, and an ally who's slow enough to be stolen from by the enemy Thief -simply steal back the item and then give it to your ally.
I'm not going to do it, but somehow it had never occurred to me that this is a fairly major hole in the design of Sacred Stones. (And several other Fire Emblem games, too)
Neimi takes another one-shot-one-kill shot at the Revenant.
She misses.
Moulder visits the village and gets an Iron Axe. Ah, excellent, a proper melee weapon for Ross.
I consider having Eirika attack this Revenant, but she won't kill it without getting lucky, so I hold off and look around at other options. Mostly I took this screenshot as an illustration of why it matters whether Eirika gets early Strength level-ups or not -just one more Strength and she'd one-round this Revenant.
Instead I have Franz attack the Revenant that stole his Vulnerary, because I don't really expect to get it back given that I'm way outnumbered by thieves. It would be incredibly tedious to try to get them all back, and I'd probably not get them all anyway, because they'd start suiciding themselves onto my guys.
Franz gets a completely gratuitous crit.
... in retrospect I'm not sure why I moved him to the forest to the Revenant's west, given that most of the fighting is to his east and he's in basically no danger of dying.
I have Gilliam break out his Rotten Claw to try to hit the Revenant -this screenshot is right after he missed. The Revenant hits him twice for no damage.
I have Artur finish off the Mogall that Ross didn't kill. I don't bother to screenshot the fight, because yeah, it's dead.
I come back to the idea of having Eirika attack the Revenant, but switch over to her Iron Sword so she's not wasting Rapier uses at least. She misses on a hit chance of 94. Well, okay. That's annoying.
Oh, did I say she missed once? No, I meant she missed twice. (Hence the Revenant being completely unharmed) The odds against this are absurd -thanks to true hit her actual chance of hitting the Revenant on a given strike is 99.34%. Missing twice is literally a less than 1 in a thousand event. Her crit chance of 4% was hundreds of times more likely than this.
What the heck.
I have Ross move over to the west and heal, and then it's the enemy turn. One Bonewalker targets Artur, and does severe damage. Artur isn't fast enough to double it, either. I have a moment of worry that the Revenant is going to kill him.
Oh, right. Never mind, Artur's safe.
Meanwhile Vanessa is le gasp actually attacked by a Revenant, and promptly... um... what is she doing there? That's not how you use a spear, Vanessa, the pointy ends goes inside them, what is this, are you trying to exfoliate the Revenant to death or something?
Well, it worked, didn't it?
ANYWAY, she gets a solid level out of... exfoliating the Revenant to death...
Then, before the enemy turn fully ends, we get a sneak peak at some later recruits. I am utterly unsurprised that Dozla is a Cyclops and Rennac is an Entombed, but more puzzled at L'arachel the Mogall. If L'arachel is going to be a Staff Mogall, why didn't the hack make Moulder a Staff Mogall?...
So now we're at the start of turn 3 and four Revenants have shown up in the northwest corner. I'm more annoyed than concerned at this point. The only thing of interest is that the one I have my cursor over is carrying a Vulnerary for whatever reason, and not one it's planning on dropping. That's vaguely annoying, given I'm busy stealing back my Vulneraries. I don't think that Revenant has a Vulnerary in the unmodded game, either.
I have Gilliam take back his own Vulneraries from Colm instead of attacking anything, in part in the expectation that it will prevent the Revenants from attacking -the AI priorities thievery over combat very consistently, and I'm actually a little worried about Colm possibly dying if the Revenants decide to gang up on him.
Neimi promptly vaporizes one of the new Revenants without leaving her safe Forest tile/Support grinding with Colm position.
... I think this is Colm stealing another Vulnerary? I'm not actually sure. Bad screenshot timing, Past Me.
Franz, meanwhile, vaporizes yet another Revenant and gains another good level out of it, though I was really hoping for Speed all things considered.
Artur softens up a Bonewalker from complete safety. There's still a Mogall to the south, but it's passive. None of the map's aggressive enemies can reach Artur from here.
Ross finishes off the Bonewalker that attacked Artur earlier and gains a level. Speed's good, anyway.
Vanessa recruits Lute, and now I wish I'd used Colm for the job, impractical as it would be.
Yes Lute, the giant green gargoyle is not a rotting human corpse. I am awed by your insight.
So here's our new Mogall, still with entirely ironic description.
As is typical of this hack, her stats are overall better -lost a point of Skill, but that's fine- and in particular her Constitution has doubled. This is a big deal, as it's often a pain point for Mage Lute that she doesn't even have enough Constitution to wield a Fire Tome without penalty prior to promotion. Mogall Lute can wield Thunder Tomes comfortably, which is great stuff. I've always been a fan of Lute, and Mogall Lute's only notable trade-off is a weakness to monster-slaying gear, while she flies and has way better Constitution now.
This does admittedly include the obnoxious point that she's weak to Light Magic even though she has the weapon triangle advantage. That's going to hurt her utility a bit. We'll see what her promotion options look like, though.
(Specific stat modifications: +1 Magic, -1 Skill, +1 Speed, +1 Resist, +3 Constitution)
I promptly have her attack the southern Bonewalker to show off how she looks, and... well, like Artur, the eyelid skin looks off, even more so than with Artur. Otherwise she looks good, but it's really distracting having glitchy-looking skin.
Not for a genius like me.
ANYWAY, Eirika breaks out her Rapier in a dim hope she'll crit the Revenant and preserve some of my Vulneraries, but now the RNG feels like doing sane things and refuses.
I'd really rather not have Moulder waste kill experience, and (s)he's trapped here. Moulder sits in the village, I assume playing with small children to pass the time.
The closer Bonewalker decides to commit suicide on Franz.
The far south Bonewalker suicides on Vanessa and doesn't even injure her.
Mass Vulnerary theft occurs.
Jerks.
uuugh Colm why are you so hideous
One Revenant, unable to find anything to steal, decides to target Colm. Against all prior trends, they both hit each other successfully.
... and then another Vulnerary is stolen by a different Revenant.
Meanwhile, the final Revenant, I guess unable to find anything it can steal, attacks Eirika to little effect.
So it's my turn now, and time for Franz to vapor-
-sigh.
Ross pulls through with his Iron Axe, acquired from Moulder... sometime earlier... anyway, he finishes off the Revenant Eirika weakened instead of critting a bit back.
Artur weakens the last Bonewalker of the map.
Colm steals back one of my stolen Vulneraries. Might as well, it's free experience.
Neimi cripples a Revenant and then Eirika finishes it off with her Iron Sword.
Gilliam takes back his Vulneraries from Colm again to restart the cycle of theft.
Lute moves up as far as she can in hopes of contributing to the fight -well, more like interrupt the stealfest.
I finally have Moulder heal someone, begrudgingly, and the turn ends.
The Bonewalker suicides on Ross.
Another Vulnerary-
WAIT WHAT
NO
GIVE THAT BACK
Also more Vulneraries are stolen, but seriously, give me back my Lockpicks how did you even take those??
And the last Revenant bows down to the Dark Princess of Renais in hopes of getting mercy.
Eirika shoves the pointy end of her metal stick into him twice for daring to touch her boot with his disgusting appendages. He survives, but barely.
Colm steals back his Lockpicks. Hopefully he'll keep them this time.
I've never understood why Thieves don't automatically set stolen items to "dropped on kill" status, like they do when they loot a chest. This is really grating.
The RNG finally decides it's okay for Neimi to land a one-shot-one-kill hit, and she gets a really good level out it.
Franz vapories another Revenant. Your Lockpicks are almost safe, Colm!
Ross finishes off the Revenant to the east and gets a decent level out of it.
Gilliam weakens the Revenant and laughs at it doubling him.
Vanessa finishes-
-dangit.
Artur takes a Vulnerary from Eirika so he's reasonably safe flying around away from healers in the future and Moulder heals him in preparation for fighting the one Mogall left on the map.
I check this Revenant's range and drop Lute inside of its range to provoke an attack.
The savvier audience members already know where this is going.
Oh come on, not again!
Of course the surviving Revenant is fast enough to steal from Colm.
Oh well, I'll just take it back.
....
Where's the Steal command?
... I seem to have lost the relevant screenshots, but a check of Colm and the Revenant's Speed shows that this particular Revenant -and only this one- happens to be exactly one point faster than Colm.
Great. Wonderful. Gonna need to get new Lockpicks.
Naturally, giving Colm the kill nets him the Speed he'd need to be able to steal back his Lockpicks. At least it's a good level overall.
At this point we're basically in mop-up mode -there's one Revenant, one Mogall, and the Entombed boss left to kill, and they're all passive.
I have Lute snipe the Revenant I'd intended to bait into attacking her, carefully keeping her out of reach of the Mogall and the Entombed.
A bunch of moving up occurs.
Lute's Revenant-
Bows down before my superior genius.
It's my turn again, and Lute finishes off her Revenant.
Then I move up generally and set things up so that Artur is in reach of the enemy Mogall and nobody else is.
Artur gets an overkill crit on his second hit, being fast enough to double the enemy Mogall. You can just barely see how the eyeball has changed colors, which is the Mogall crit animation. Artur looks mad in this shot.
The unclean must burn!
He gets a mediocre level for his trouble.
Just showing off that apparently Baels can walk on water, at least in this hack. I'd thought they could only cross Peaks?
Some more shuffling later, and I've got Ross in reach of the Entombed. I can never remember if this boss is willing to move or not, so I'm being cautious.
It moves.
Also, holy crap this could have gone badly. I really need to start checking enemy crit chances, or somebody is going to die to a crit one day.
Also, I'm pretty sure the Entombed has +15 to crit as an ability, like a Swordmaster or Berserker. 6 Skill should only provide 3 crit, and it's got... exactly 15 more than that.
Something for Colm to look forward to, anyway.
Neimi softens up the Entombed because now I really don't want anyone in melee combat with it, and Lute closes us out with a somewhat disappointing level.
Talking ensues.
mumble grumble stupid disloyal bandit monsters mutter anger
I'd like to come with you and burn the unclean.
You'll need my genius to survive.
Ah yes, loyal citizens of Renais, your Dark Princess welcomes you to the fold! Weirdos. Couldn't possibly be anybody weirder-
Don't pay me any mind even though I'm conspicuous and bizarre. I can't possibly be important, and my name most certainly isn't L'arachel, Princess of Rausten.
Wait, what was that?
Nothing! Goodbye!
-----
See you next mission.
-wait, that's not the chapter start screen.
Whoops. I apparently didn't screenshot it.
Well, the mission's named Ancient Horrors, and here we have Eirika afraid that we're fighting the dread humans.
No Eirika, that's been the last four missions. This mission you're killing real people, ones just like your friends.
Artur shows up and gets his silly scripted fight in which he kills an enemy Mogall and it doesn't fight back even though it should be able to. I can't decide if he looks nifty or terrible. The skin of the eyelids looks wrong, though at least the tentacles/nerve stem look decent.
Oh yeah, this is also the mission in which we finally get access to the pre-mission stuff. I leave out Seth and Garcia, even though really I'd like to leave Moulder out of this and bring Garcia instead. I tend to feel like a healer is mandatory.
So here's our new friend, hilariously wrong description and all. He's actually got a couple less HP and one less Resist than Monk Artur does, but otherwise all his stats are the same or higher, including that he's gained a point of Constitution. And yes, though I didn't screenshot his weapon ranks screen, he can use Light Tomes. Just Light Tomes.
(Specific stat modifications: -2 HP, +1 Magic, +1 Skill, +1 Speed, +2 Defense, -1 Resist, +1 Constitution)
The enemy Mogalls are still using Evil Eye and have ranks in Dark Magic, for reference. I'm surprised, and wondering what the hacker did -I'd always thought weapon ranks were hard-coded to be attached to class per se. Maybe Artur is simply a separate Mogall class that has no visible difference aside from the Light Magic usage?
Or maybe I'm wrong and class actually has nothing to do with weapon ranks in code terms.
... actually, now that I think about it, I shouldn't be surprised by this. I'm already aware of a glitch that lets you use the "Stone" item to train Dark Magic ranks on anyone -it provides Dark Weapon Experience, but it doesn't actually require a rank in Dark Magic to use, and characters with 0 experience in Dark will instantly jump to E rank Dark by using Stone, even non-magical characters. (Though they'll have to spam Stone a bunch more times to be a functional Dark mage -Flux's D rank is the lowest one normally found in Dark magic) Ergo, yes, weapon ranks are not some fixed quality of classes.
At a guess, the technical behavior is that 0 Weapon Experience in a weapon type results "weapon rank=dash symbol", and the fact that you can't use weapons of a given class is simply a consequence of the fact that even the lowest-ranking weapons still require E rank in a weapon. The key is in the safe, basically, and promotion just sets you to a specific weapon experience in a given weapon to get you started.
In that case, the hack would just need to set Artur's Weapon Experience in Dark to 0 -assuming that's even a separate step in the first place- and give him some Light Weapon Experience.
Start of the map. There's more to the south, but it's not very interesting. I check all the enemies as is traditional at this point, but none of them is carrying anything unusual.
I have Neimi attack the nearest Revenant to start with.
... she misses, though. (He's on a Mountain tile, though it's hard to see in either screenshot)
Note how the Beacon Bows's graphic is oddly washed out in this shot. Its monster effectiveness applies! Hence why Neimi would one-shot this guy if she'd hit him. Alas, his great big yawn protects him. I guess Neimi can't bring herself to hit a sleepy target.
I check Gilliam's ability to kill the Revenant with either of his Claws, but he won't kill them even if he hits, and he's not liable to hit, so I change my mind.
Instead I have Vanessa fly south and attack a Bonewalker. I want her to recruit Lute. I'm curious as to whether Lute will be another Light Mogall or still wielding her usual Anima.
Unsurprisingly, Vanessa one-shots the Bonewalker on her first hit, her Bright Lance melting it from the inside-out with the light of the sun. She also gets a really good level out it.
So hey you can see how the Lightning Tome's graphic looks a bit washed out in this second screenshot. It was glowing in the scripted fight, and it's glowing here too. (I just somehow managed to twice catch it looking normal in the scripted fight) In other words: Lightning is effective against monsters! Or Artur is a Bishop Mogall!
... I actually already know the answer: the readme explicitly says that all Light Magic is now effective against monsters.
Honestly, Artur's always been one of the units I liked most, and now he's flying and murders monsters. Admittedly he's also weak to monster-slaying weapons...
... you might think he's weak to Bows, as well, but I'm pretty sure he isn't. I'll make sure to test this later, but in the unmodded game Mogalls are, oddly enough, not considered to be flying units for the purposes of being weak to Bows and Wind Blades.
Also, holy crap that Revenant is fast. Normally the player can expect everyone except, like, Gilliam to double pretty much everything on this map, but not in this hack.
I have Ross finish off Artur's Revenant, which puts him in range of the two enemy Mogalls. I have no idea why, but at the time I somehow thought he was in reach of just one of them, and the other could only reach Artur.
He gets an okay level for his trouble.
Gilliam takes a crack at the Revenant Neimi missed earlier after all, and also misses. At least it can't do anything to him.
General moving up occurs, with Franz positioned to bait the Revenant by the Snag and Eirika ready to help in any fight. Also Moulder is going to loot the village next turn.
Enemy turn.
CRAP
GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER
... oh wait the other one does one less damage for whatever reason, Ross is safe, never mind.
... and it missed him anyway, against all odds. Also? Ross crits it to death.
Okay then.
... crap.
I already knew Revenants could steal items -not only is it an obvious guess since Colm is a Revenant-Thief, but the readme explicitly has as part of its FAQ that this includes enemy Revenants are thieves- but I hadn't quite put 2 and 2 together.
To be fair, I'm also used to all these Revenants having, like, literally 0 Speed. Can't steal anything with 0 Speed.
So never mind "it can't do anything to Gilliam". Also technically I succeeded in baiting out the Snag Revenant.
But it's okay, I can have Colm steal them back!
So here we are at the start of turn two, and a batch of three Bonewalkers has spawned in to the southeast. This is normal for this mission.
They're not carrying anything of interest.
Vanessa uses the power of the sun to vaporize another Bonewalker, because I'm being cautious. My expectation is that Lute will be a Mogall, but if she isn't, recruiting her might get her killed by the two Bonewalkers and one Revenant.
Colm steals back Gilliam's stolen Vulnerary. Free experience!
It occurs to me here that you could do an idiotic infinite experience loop with a Thief, an enemy Thief, and an ally who's slow enough to be stolen from by the enemy Thief -simply steal back the item and then give it to your ally.
I'm not going to do it, but somehow it had never occurred to me that this is a fairly major hole in the design of Sacred Stones. (And several other Fire Emblem games, too)
Neimi takes another one-shot-one-kill shot at the Revenant.
She misses.
Moulder visits the village and gets an Iron Axe. Ah, excellent, a proper melee weapon for Ross.
I consider having Eirika attack this Revenant, but she won't kill it without getting lucky, so I hold off and look around at other options. Mostly I took this screenshot as an illustration of why it matters whether Eirika gets early Strength level-ups or not -just one more Strength and she'd one-round this Revenant.
Instead I have Franz attack the Revenant that stole his Vulnerary, because I don't really expect to get it back given that I'm way outnumbered by thieves. It would be incredibly tedious to try to get them all back, and I'd probably not get them all anyway, because they'd start suiciding themselves onto my guys.
Franz gets a completely gratuitous crit.
... in retrospect I'm not sure why I moved him to the forest to the Revenant's west, given that most of the fighting is to his east and he's in basically no danger of dying.
I have Gilliam break out his Rotten Claw to try to hit the Revenant -this screenshot is right after he missed. The Revenant hits him twice for no damage.
I have Artur finish off the Mogall that Ross didn't kill. I don't bother to screenshot the fight, because yeah, it's dead.
I come back to the idea of having Eirika attack the Revenant, but switch over to her Iron Sword so she's not wasting Rapier uses at least. She misses on a hit chance of 94. Well, okay. That's annoying.
Oh, did I say she missed once? No, I meant she missed twice. (Hence the Revenant being completely unharmed) The odds against this are absurd -thanks to true hit her actual chance of hitting the Revenant on a given strike is 99.34%. Missing twice is literally a less than 1 in a thousand event. Her crit chance of 4% was hundreds of times more likely than this.
What the heck.
I have Ross move over to the west and heal, and then it's the enemy turn. One Bonewalker targets Artur, and does severe damage. Artur isn't fast enough to double it, either. I have a moment of worry that the Revenant is going to kill him.
Oh, right. Never mind, Artur's safe.
Meanwhile Vanessa is le gasp actually attacked by a Revenant, and promptly... um... what is she doing there? That's not how you use a spear, Vanessa, the pointy ends goes inside them, what is this, are you trying to exfoliate the Revenant to death or something?
Well, it worked, didn't it?ANYWAY, she gets a solid level out of... exfoliating the Revenant to death...
Then, before the enemy turn fully ends, we get a sneak peak at some later recruits. I am utterly unsurprised that Dozla is a Cyclops and Rennac is an Entombed, but more puzzled at L'arachel the Mogall. If L'arachel is going to be a Staff Mogall, why didn't the hack make Moulder a Staff Mogall?...
So now we're at the start of turn 3 and four Revenants have shown up in the northwest corner. I'm more annoyed than concerned at this point. The only thing of interest is that the one I have my cursor over is carrying a Vulnerary for whatever reason, and not one it's planning on dropping. That's vaguely annoying, given I'm busy stealing back my Vulneraries. I don't think that Revenant has a Vulnerary in the unmodded game, either.
I have Gilliam take back his own Vulneraries from Colm instead of attacking anything, in part in the expectation that it will prevent the Revenants from attacking -the AI priorities thievery over combat very consistently, and I'm actually a little worried about Colm possibly dying if the Revenants decide to gang up on him.
Neimi promptly vaporizes one of the new Revenants without leaving her safe Forest tile/Support grinding with Colm position.
... I think this is Colm stealing another Vulnerary? I'm not actually sure. Bad screenshot timing, Past Me.
Franz, meanwhile, vaporizes yet another Revenant and gains another good level out of it, though I was really hoping for Speed all things considered.
Artur softens up a Bonewalker from complete safety. There's still a Mogall to the south, but it's passive. None of the map's aggressive enemies can reach Artur from here.
Ross finishes off the Bonewalker that attacked Artur earlier and gains a level. Speed's good, anyway.
Vanessa recruits Lute, and now I wish I'd used Colm for the job, impractical as it would be.
Yes Lute, the giant green gargoyle is not a rotting human corpse. I am awed by your insight.
So here's our new Mogall, still with entirely ironic description.
As is typical of this hack, her stats are overall better -lost a point of Skill, but that's fine- and in particular her Constitution has doubled. This is a big deal, as it's often a pain point for Mage Lute that she doesn't even have enough Constitution to wield a Fire Tome without penalty prior to promotion. Mogall Lute can wield Thunder Tomes comfortably, which is great stuff. I've always been a fan of Lute, and Mogall Lute's only notable trade-off is a weakness to monster-slaying gear, while she flies and has way better Constitution now.
This does admittedly include the obnoxious point that she's weak to Light Magic even though she has the weapon triangle advantage. That's going to hurt her utility a bit. We'll see what her promotion options look like, though.
(Specific stat modifications: +1 Magic, -1 Skill, +1 Speed, +1 Resist, +3 Constitution)
I promptly have her attack the southern Bonewalker to show off how she looks, and... well, like Artur, the eyelid skin looks off, even more so than with Artur. Otherwise she looks good, but it's really distracting having glitchy-looking skin.
Not for a genius like me.
ANYWAY, Eirika breaks out her Rapier in a dim hope she'll crit the Revenant and preserve some of my Vulneraries, but now the RNG feels like doing sane things and refuses.
I'd really rather not have Moulder waste kill experience, and (s)he's trapped here. Moulder sits in the village, I assume playing with small children to pass the time.
The closer Bonewalker decides to commit suicide on Franz.
The far south Bonewalker suicides on Vanessa and doesn't even injure her.
Mass Vulnerary theft occurs.
Jerks.
uuugh Colm why are you so hideous
One Revenant, unable to find anything to steal, decides to target Colm. Against all prior trends, they both hit each other successfully.
... and then another Vulnerary is stolen by a different Revenant.
Meanwhile, the final Revenant, I guess unable to find anything it can steal, attacks Eirika to little effect.
So it's my turn now, and time for Franz to vapor-
-sigh.
Ross pulls through with his Iron Axe, acquired from Moulder... sometime earlier... anyway, he finishes off the Revenant Eirika weakened instead of critting a bit back.
Artur weakens the last Bonewalker of the map.
Colm steals back one of my stolen Vulneraries. Might as well, it's free experience.
Neimi cripples a Revenant and then Eirika finishes it off with her Iron Sword.
Gilliam takes back his Vulneraries from Colm again to restart the cycle of theft.
Lute moves up as far as she can in hopes of contributing to the fight -well, more like interrupt the stealfest.
I finally have Moulder heal someone, begrudgingly, and the turn ends.
The Bonewalker suicides on Ross.
Another Vulnerary-
WAIT WHAT
NO
GIVE THAT BACK
Also more Vulneraries are stolen, but seriously, give me back my Lockpicks how did you even take those??
And the last Revenant bows down to the Dark Princess of Renais in hopes of getting mercy.
Eirika shoves the pointy end of her metal stick into him twice for daring to touch her boot with his disgusting appendages. He survives, but barely.
Colm steals back his Lockpicks. Hopefully he'll keep them this time.
I've never understood why Thieves don't automatically set stolen items to "dropped on kill" status, like they do when they loot a chest. This is really grating.
The RNG finally decides it's okay for Neimi to land a one-shot-one-kill hit, and she gets a really good level out it.
Franz vapories another Revenant. Your Lockpicks are almost safe, Colm!
Ross finishes off the Revenant to the east and gets a decent level out of it.
Gilliam weakens the Revenant and laughs at it doubling him.
Vanessa finishes-
-dangit.
Artur takes a Vulnerary from Eirika so he's reasonably safe flying around away from healers in the future and Moulder heals him in preparation for fighting the one Mogall left on the map.
I check this Revenant's range and drop Lute inside of its range to provoke an attack.
The savvier audience members already know where this is going.
Oh come on, not again!
Of course the surviving Revenant is fast enough to steal from Colm.
Oh well, I'll just take it back.
....
Where's the Steal command?
... I seem to have lost the relevant screenshots, but a check of Colm and the Revenant's Speed shows that this particular Revenant -and only this one- happens to be exactly one point faster than Colm.
Great. Wonderful. Gonna need to get new Lockpicks.
Naturally, giving Colm the kill nets him the Speed he'd need to be able to steal back his Lockpicks. At least it's a good level overall.
At this point we're basically in mop-up mode -there's one Revenant, one Mogall, and the Entombed boss left to kill, and they're all passive.
I have Lute snipe the Revenant I'd intended to bait into attacking her, carefully keeping her out of reach of the Mogall and the Entombed.
A bunch of moving up occurs.
Lute's Revenant-
Bows down before my superior genius.
It's my turn again, and Lute finishes off her Revenant.
Then I move up generally and set things up so that Artur is in reach of the enemy Mogall and nobody else is.
Artur gets an overkill crit on his second hit, being fast enough to double the enemy Mogall. You can just barely see how the eyeball has changed colors, which is the Mogall crit animation. Artur looks mad in this shot.
The unclean must burn!
He gets a mediocre level for his trouble.
Just showing off that apparently Baels can walk on water, at least in this hack. I'd thought they could only cross Peaks?
Some more shuffling later, and I've got Ross in reach of the Entombed. I can never remember if this boss is willing to move or not, so I'm being cautious.
It moves.
Also, holy crap this could have gone badly. I really need to start checking enemy crit chances, or somebody is going to die to a crit one day.
Also, I'm pretty sure the Entombed has +15 to crit as an ability, like a Swordmaster or Berserker. 6 Skill should only provide 3 crit, and it's got... exactly 15 more than that.
Something for Colm to look forward to, anyway.
Neimi softens up the Entombed because now I really don't want anyone in melee combat with it, and Lute closes us out with a somewhat disappointing level.
Talking ensues.
mumble grumble stupid disloyal bandit monsters mutter angerI'd like to come with you and burn the unclean.You'll need my genius to survive.Ah yes, loyal citizens of Renais, your Dark Princess welcomes you to the fold! Weirdos. Couldn't possibly be anybody weirder-Don't pay me any mind even though I'm conspicuous and bizarre. I can't possibly be important, and my name most certainly isn't L'arachel, Princess of Rausten.Wait, what was that?Nothing! Goodbye!-----
See you next mission.
I like the guide: D follow with pleasure I read it
ReplyDelete