Let's Play Monster Quest part 11

I've never really been clear why this chapter is named this. Is it a reference to a Japanese work? Is it somehow alluding to Eirika's short-lived "disguise" of claiming to be a traveling mercenary named Totally-Not-Eirika, looking for work?

Plot-wise, this mission has always bugged me a little, too. Before the mission starts, Eirika is looking for a ship to Rausten, but no ships are willing to go to sea because a "ghost ship" is attacking every ship that goes out. Immediately after this revelation, Binks and his fellow mercenaries recognize Eirika and attack. Okay, sure, fine, whatever.

Thing is, once we end the mission, a Pegasus Knight shows up to inform Eirika that Innes is under attack and needs help, and she rushes to save him. What was the point of the ghost ship causing problems here if Eirika is going to run south to rescue Innes anyway? Worse, the ghost ship is almost certainly intended to be the same ship Ephraim fights in his version of Chapter 10 on the other side of the continent. That's absurd and makes no sense.

Why not simply have Eirika go looking for a ship, Binks interrupts, and then the messenger interrupts before she can get on a ship? Maybe have ship captains stalling or the like and reveal that Pablo paid them to not help Eirika. It's cleaner, and it avoids this absurdity of implying the "ghost ship" is attacking ships on both sides of the continent at the same time.

Whatever, we're here: first mission of Eirika's route. This is kind of an odd mission, in that it's a fairly big jump in... not difficulty, exactly, because beating the mission isn't that hard, but if you want to get the goodies of the mission -and they're nice goodies- then you're dealing with a fairly tight challenge. Everything before this has been easy to win and easy to win perfectly, even in Monster Quest.

It took me several attempts to get this right, though only a few of them involved characters actually dying. Mostly it involved... well, I'll get to that when I get to it.



First and foremost: we've got a new character.

I screenshotted the Gargoyle description and her description because it's funny.

I am a MALIGNANT FIEND of FELL WINGS!
WHEEEEEE!

Comparing her stats to Pegasus Knight Tana, every stat has gone up except Luck (unchanged), Resist (Down a couple of points), Skill (Down a couple of points), and Move. (Down one point) I'm especially happy with her increased physical durability and her increased Constitution. Nothing hugely notable for Monster Quest, overall fairly similar to Vanessa, but still nice. Tana is another character I like using whose flaws can be aggravating, and it's nice to see her worst flaws -poor durability and awful Constitution- alleviated somewhat.

And of course, like Vanessa she's become a Gargoyle, keeping her as a Lance-wielding flyer.

(Specific stat modifications: +5 HP, +2 Strength, -2 Skill, +1 Speed, +3 Defense, -2 Resist, -1 Move, +2 Constitution)


Also, here's something interesting -in the regular game this Pirate carries an Ocean Seal he'll drop on his death. Here he's replaced it with a Juna Fruit, which is another item that's sitting in the code, unused, but fully functional.

I'll talk about it when we use it, but it's definitely a nice thing to be getting, probably nicer than an Ocean Seal would've been. Certainly more immediately relevant.


My choice of characters this mission and my starting formation. Note that I have Vanessa in the further west/south slot -this is really important, as I learned from failed runs.

Also note that I'm not bringing Ross. I'd intended to use him, but in my failed runs he was outright a handicap, in part due to his poor Speed, not sufficiently compensated elsewhere. Instead I brought Kyle, hoping his durability would make things smoother.



I start by moving Colm up to provide Support for Neimi attacking this Soldier, and then having Tana finish off the Soldier, getting us our first look at her. She looks nice enough, though nothing unexpected. Blue for her hair color, like Vanessa's green. I do like how the inside of her wings contrasts so strongly against the rest of her body.

(She has an Iron Lance because I pulled one out of Supply before the mission started)

On prior runs I tried to get Neimi the kill by using the Killer Bow, but it never, ever worked, so I gave up for this attempt, especially since I'd previously been trying to send Tana south and it hadn't been working out so well. So, I have Tana sticking with the main group.

Also note that Vanessa, Lute, and Artur are heading west over the water. This is critical.


This is how I end the turn looking. Joshua is placed to bait out the Juna Fruit Pirate. The idea is that he'll crit them to death, though really I don't have high hopes given Joshua's track record so far. Distracting the Pirate is worth doing regardless, as I want to visit the houses. The rewards are good this mission.


The surviving Soldier charges Neimi, and lands his hit. Not concerned though.


The Juna Fruit Pirate goes for Joshua, lands his hit, and is doubled without a crit occurring.

Joshua has better odds of getting a crit between his two attacks than this guy does of hitting with his one attack, come on.


The Archer goes for Tana, but Tana can tank it, and is too fast for them to double her. The Soldier who could maybe have finished her off has already been distracted by Neimi, and nobody else can reach her.


Lastly, to my surprise this Pirate decides to target Lute rather than Vanessa, and misses. That's... really convenient all around, and I have no idea why they ignored Vanessa.


Regardless, my turn comes and Colm tears apart the Archer while Neimi weakens the Soldier.



Artur and Lute finish off this Pirate without taking any damage, surprisingly.


Eirika finishes off the Soldier with her Iron Sword, laughing in the face of the weapon triangle.

Also note that Gilliam and Kyle have moved up far ahead. I'm counting on their durability to let me power through this part of the mission, which is necessary if I want to reach Amelia in time.


I have Tana fly south and heal, and I end turn like this -I want to have Joshua attack the Juna Fruit Pirate, but with his luck I anticipate him ending up dead on the enemy turn if I do it.


So, enemy turn: one of the Mercenaries chips Neimi, but can't double her.


Another Mercenary -the furthest back of the bunch- provokes Gilliam into ripping off more than half his health, because the AI is smart like that.

Still amused at 0 damage crit chance.


The final Mercenary targets Franz, chipping and being chipped in turn.



Meanwhile, this Killing Edge Myrmidon crits Vanessa down to one HP, aggravating me given his effective odds of a crit are something like 15%. (Because he has to hit to get a crit, and his odds are only a little better than a coin flip)

I've always hated this Myrmidon, because they're the single biggest factor in making a perfect run of this chapter into a luck-based mission. They're way more problematic in the regular game than in Monster Quest, too -Vanessa survived thanks to being Gargoyle Vanessa, she of the good HP and high Defense. Pegasus Knight Vanessa would require insane luck on level ups and/or a disproportionate amount of experience going her way and/or been gifted the Dragonshield and Angelic Robe to have a shot at surviving a crit from this jerk.

He's also the main reason I've got Lute and Artur following Vanessa -I need this guy dead so she can prevent the western village from being destroyed without, herself, dying in the process, and she can't stop to finish him herself or else she won't make it to the village in time. Also she'd be at high risk of dying if she tried.


Meanwhile, over with Joshua, things go pretty much exactly how I expect them to go with Joshua -in complete defiance of sensible results.

Not one crit, out of four attacks with 38% crit chance? Really? And the enemy hit both times on coin flip odds? Really?


Ugh, anyway, this Sniper comes running up and doubles Kyle, mauling him.

I don't like this Sniper. My attempts that were derailed by a character death always came down to this guy. He's fast and hard-hitting and your guys won't even get to retaliate against him most of the time and there's nothing you can do to take him down fast -nothing has a damage bonus against Snipers. (I guess I could try to bring Seth?)


Anyway, enemy reinforcements show up -the Mage and Mercenary at the top in the first shot, and the two Archers at the bottom of the second shot both showed up this turn.

I check them, but they're not anything interesting.


Lute comes over, trades her Elixir to Vanessa, and then chips the Myrmidon. Vanessa than flies directly west and uses the Elixir.


Then Artur follows up, and to my tremendous irritation misses the Myrmidon. Ugh.

Not a disaster, though, because-


-Tana swoops in and gets the kill, in spite of lowers odds of hitting and an extremely high risk of dying.


Meanwhile, up north I have Neimi break out her Killer Bow on this Mercenary. Crucially, she gets the crit needed to kill him -this mess would be essentially impossible to untangle if she hadn't.


I have Gilliam zip around to the west of the Sniper and chip them.

The real point is that I'm planning to physically block in the Sniper, but I might as well get in damage while I'm at it. Free experience.


Eirika moves up to kill this Mercenary, because she's fast enough and tough enough that even with the Mercenary chipping her, the Sniper can't kill her unassisted. She's my only character who can kill this Mercenary in relative safety -everybody else either can't pull off killing the Mercenary or is at too much risk of being killed by the Sniper, or both.


Colm and Franz complete the process of blocking in the Sniper and do damage while they're at it, Franz using his Iron Lance so he'll be at his best if the Mercenaries decide to target him.



Kyle moves to chip this other Mercenary, and I go for the Sharp Claw because the Poison Claw is actually only barely more accurate. Might as well go for better damage if I hit rather than a slightly higher chance of hitting. He gets a decent level out of it, rendering him immune to the Mercenary that just chipped him.

Nice.


Lastly, I have Joshua (That's his movement arrow) flee from his Pirate, leaving us looking like this. Note Vanessa's position -I'm trying to delay that Pirate and get her in reach of the house. This is why I had her in the southwest-most slot, running breakneck straight west. It's the only way for her to reach this Pirate in time. It's too bad I don't have an Axereaver yet.



The reinforcement Mercenary scratches Kyle's itching leg, and in exchange Kyle becomes an eldritch abomination of unimaginable horror, scaring off half the Mercenary's health.

Sounds like a fair deal to me.


The other Mercenary chips Neimi, but that's okay, she's not dead yet, and he can't double her.

It is nice having such a tough cast of characters.



To my pleasant surprise, the Pirate directly north of Vanessa decides to simply attack her, and even misses! She doubles him and misses one of her attempts, but that's okay. The important thing is that Vanessa can now visit the House, confident that she won't die no matter what.


The Sniper targets the only person in his reach -and Eirika's ludicrous Speed nets her a dodge. Excellent.


Lastly, the enemies get more reinforcements, this time a Mercenary and Soldier in the north and a pair of Fighters in the south. None of them have anything especially unusual.


First thing on my turn is Vanessa visiting the house, getting a Dragonshield out of it. Since she's full up and I don't see her getting use out of it, she sends it to the caravan.


Then I have Eirika break out her Iron Blade to murder this Mage exactly, netting her another amazing level -since Speed is capped, all she missed out on is Strength, in practice.

I'm amazed at how much use I'm getting out of this Iron Blade.



Instead of doing anything as silly as having Neimi and Joshua heal, I have Neimi break out her Killer Bow on this Mercenary, fail to crit, and then Joshua perfectly finishes the Mercenary off.

The level he gets out of it isn't that great, though I am at least glad he got Strength. He really needs more defensive stats, though.


Gilliam gets a free point of experience.


Colm chips the Sniper.


Franz follows in Gilliam's footsteps.

I'm a little annoyed at the delay here, because I really need Franz heading south soon, but it's not terrible.


Kyle finishes off this Mercenary, pleasantly surprising me.


Tana also misses the Sniper.

I'm mostly annoyed because, in retrospect, I should've sent her south, with-


-Lute and Artur head toward this House, which is under threat of piracy, ending the turn. Note that Lute -the more northern Mogall- is placed to lure out the more northern of the two Archers.


Enemy turn, and this Soldier chips Eirika and dodges one of her stabs. Eh, whatever.


The Mercenary joins in on the fun. Still not bothered.


Lute baits out the Archer successfully, is chipped a little, and gets an okay level out of retaliating.



Enemy turn ends and reinforcements arrive. The only notable points are that one of the Mage reinforcements has an Elfire for Lute, and that Amelia is here, so I really need to hurry up getting Franz down to her.

Speaking of Amelia.



She's a (melee) Bonewalker, which isn't a surprising choice. Nice to have another one, honestly, they're good stuff. Stat-wise, she's gained stats in everything except Resist (Down a point) and Skill (unchanged), but she's not a Trainee class, so that's misleading. Compared to level 10 Recruit Amelia (Ignoring the stat gains from promotion, in other words), she's basically on target for HP, behind by a point for Strength, behind by 3-4 points for Skill, behind a point for Speed, behind 5 points for Luck, behind 3 points for Resist, with only Constitution and Defense being ahead.

The Constitution point is misleading, as well, as promoting her to Cavalier would put her at 9 Constitution, and promoting her to Knight would put her at 10 Constitution.

Still, she's merely gone from a unit with absurd potential to something more average. I'll probably train her up just to see if she gets lucky with her growths. Or, given what Monster Quest has done, maybe she has absurd growths. That would work too.

(Her specific stat 'boosts' are: +5 HP, +2 Strength, +2 Speed, -1 Luck, +5 Defense, -2 Resist, +1 Move, +3 Constitution. Yes, she outright has stat penalties. Why?)

Her Slim Lance is odd, too, having a changed graphic and been turned into basically another Javelin variant. That's neat, though she's perfectly able to wield better so... eh. It does still have a bonus 5 crit, so it's a marginally critty (weak) Javelin, I guess? I appreciate the hack creating some variety -especially since none of the characters who would normally use a Slim Lance have any use for it in Monster Quest- but this seems sort of pointless.



Anyway, Franz starts his process of advancing toward Amelia (Unless the hack has changed things, we're on the clock here), taking a pot-shot at a Pirate along the way. He crit-kills the Pirate, and gets a nearly perfect level out of it.

Joshua, take notes.

Also, that's a fairly interesting-looking motion blur.



Joshua is given the Sniper kill, finally getting a first-strike crit -when it's redundant, and the Fiery Fang can't run out of weapon uses anyway.

He also gets an underwhelming level out of it.

I mean, it's nice he's gotten more Strength -he really needs it- but he really needs more good levels, especially since he insists on only getting crits when they're totally useless. Franz is currently basically superior to him, outside of Joshua's high crit chance... which is basically a lie, since Franz has been getting useful crit-kills more consistently than Joshua has, lower listed rate or no.


Anyway, Neimi finally gets around to healing with an Elixir grabbed from... I think Gilliam, but I forget.


Speaking of Gilliam, he tears apart the Soldier that dared harm her Dark Highness.


Incidentally, Kyle and Eirika both heal with Elixirs too.


And then Colm runs up and chips this Mercenary, incidentally ensuring they can't reach Joshua and so can't kill him.


Meanwhile, over with the Mogalls, Lute loots a Rapier for Eirika and Artur picks her up from a position where only one unit can attack him.

This is a bit risky, since I don't have anyone in reach to then pull Lute off of him, and so if anyone attacks him he'll have halved Speed, putting him at high risk of being doubled, which is why I say I probably should've had Tana come along earlier -she could've grabbed Lute and kept Artur safe. Rescue shenanigans of this sort also avoid the problem that normally crops up with Rescuing that the Rescued unit will miss a turn.


However, since Tana's too far away to help, I instead have her run up and throw her Javelin at the Mercenary Colm weakened. To my pleasant surprise she lands the hit, killing him, and getting an odd level in the process.


Over with Vanessa, she takes a bit of a risk by attacking this Mercenary who has a chance of critting her -if he did that here and on his turn, she'd die. The odds are well below 1 in a thousand, though, so I'm willing to take that risk. I really want to recruit Amelia, even if she's probably not going to be a godly unit in this hack.

This ends our turn, incidentally.


This Fighter lunges out and holy crap he could've killed Colm.

Fortunately, he missed.

Yikes.


In response Colm doubles him and gets a quirky level out of it. Not the stats I'd go for (Excepting Speed, of course), but eh.




Over with Vanessa, two Mercenaries target her -a Steel Sword fellow, who misses and is doubled for his trouble, and also the Mercenary that has a 1% chance of critting her, who does get his hit in.

Okay, so that was riskier than I'd been thinking, but it was still long odds of it going wrong.


The other northern Fighter takes his own shot at Colm, but Colm is unimpressed.


Lastly, the Archer Lute fought before goes after Artur. I'm glad for it, because he blocks off the Hand Axe Pirates, who hit harder -he doubles Artur, but it's impossible for him to kill Artur. I was much more concerned that Artur would get that 1% crit, killing the Archer and opening the way for a Pirate to finish off Artur.

It worked out though, thanks in no small part to the AI going through its units in a fixed order irrespective of the best order.


Anyway, Joshua starts our turn out by getting fully healed too.


Neimi kicks off the combat by chipping this Pirate and getting a perfect level out of it, holy crap.


Eirika finishes off the Pirate, dodging his retaliation and killing him.

That's not weird artifacting at the bottom, that's just the experience meter appearing or disappearing. Bad screenshot timing.


Colm finishes off the Steel Axe Fighter to ensure his own survival. Very slightly risky, though thanks to True Hit the risk is really low -1 in a thousand chance of missing on the first hit, and even if that happened he'd have good odds of dodging the retaliation, at which point he'd almost certainly land the second hit.


Tana heals a little bit, flying south to help Franz get to Amelia.


I have Kyle take a shot at this Hand Axe Fighter, and he takes chipping damage from the retaliation.


Lastly, I have Vanessa fly to out of reach of those Soldiers while helping avoid them ganging up on Franz.



Enemy turn, and the Steel Sword Mercenary charges Vanessa again. She dodges, crit-kills him on the first hit, and gets a mediocre level. Okay sure whatever. Would've liked Luck and/or Defense, so the other Mercenary wasn't in a position to potentially kill her.



Then the 1% crit chance Iron Sword guy comes up, misses, and dies -Vanessa's level means she doubles him now. That's a nice consolation prize..


The Hand Axe Fighter is still obsessed with Colm and still can't touch him.


Which makes it our turn now, and Gilliam starts by ripping one of the Soldiers in half. His level gains aren't ideal, though there's another +2 to HP. At least he's ludicrously durable, though it'd be nice if his Resist and Luck went up too. And Speed.



Anyway, Joshua finishes off this Fighter, failing to get the crit on the first hit, but dodging the retaliation and getting the (necessary) crit on the second hit. Could definitely be worse. We could be getting his usual performance of not critting unless it's completely useless.


Colm heads south and joins the healing party.


Franz continues south as fast as he can, taking a potshot at a Soldier with his Javelin and in the process setting himself up to retaliate against these Archers if they target him.



Tana joins in the fun, misses on her first throw, but lands the second one, scoring the kill.


Artur joins the healing party.


Vanessa hits this Soldier and, to my pleasant surprise, dodges the retaliation.


Then Lute zips up and finishes off the Soldier, positioned so that the Archers can't reach Vanessa, ending my turn.

I'm hoping to take advantage of the AI's obsessions here, in fact. My expectation is the northern Archer will target Tana -and she'll survive, because she's tough stuff- and then the other Archer will be unable to reach Tana himself and so target Franz or Lute. They could kill Lute if they ganged up on her, but that's not how the AI operates -it makes decisions entirely at the level of the individual unit, as it reaches each unit.



That's exactly what happens.

I think it'd be an interesting challenge to hold yourself to always issuing orders to your units in a fixed order, like the AI. Maybe someday I'll try that.

Nothing else of interest happens on the enemy turn -just general moving up.


Franz heads south, still rushing to reach Amelia, and gets another instant crit-kill on low odds!

That makes things a lot easier.



Joshua turns around to get the Juna Fruit Pirate that's been following us for a while now. He again fails to crit, dodges, and gets the kill anyway. Sure, why not. The Juna Fruit drops.

You'll see what this does later.



Lute kills one Archer and Artur softens up the other, getting a nearly perfect level out of it. Excellent, I'm especially glad for Luck. Maybe he won't need a Goddess Icon after all.



Vanessa moves to finish off the Archer Artur weakened. Annoyingly, he dodges in spite of his low odds of doing so, but she's doubling him and gets him on the second hit so it's all good.



Gilliam wanders down with his Rotten Claw and misses against all odds, taking a weak hit in exchange.

You know, that's fine, Franz got two unlikely crit-kills that have made all the world of difference. The game can have this, I don't care.


Tana heals out in the ocean, intending to finish off that Archer to the east next turn, and we end turn looking like this.



The Fighter predictably picks on Vanessa, and she mauls him in exchange for cutting it close on her own HP. That's fine. Even better, she gets a nearly perfect level, only lacking Skill, which isn't that high a priority. Awesome.



One of these Pirates finally reaches a target -they've spent so many turns being irrelevant!- but misses and gets stabbed for his trouble. Nice.


The Elfire Mage targets Franz, which could hurt, except he misses.

It seems to be a thing in this run that Franz just keeps dodging hits he doesn't have great odds of dodging. Weird. Convenient, though.


The Fire Mage isn't so unlucky, but its not good enough.


Lastly, Amelia plinks Franz for zero damage, and we get a look at her design for the first time.

I like it. Instead of orange, she's a demonic red skeleton in golden armor. (Presumably because of her yellow hair) She's fancy!

So is Amelia going to leave this turn?


She stayed! Hurray! I've recruited her!

That's all the hard stuff done. All that's left is clearing out the remaining enemies on the map. Even reinforcements are done, and only a few aggressive enemies are left.

Whew.



Kyle mauls this Pirate and then Colm finishes them off.


Tana effortlessly destroys this Archer and gets a decent level out of it.


Finger slipped and so I didn't get the screenshot of Neimi's pre-battle report, but I have her kill the Fighter in among our group.


See?

Gilliam takes on the Elfire Mage, and quite fortuitously dodges their retaliation. Excellent.


Artur finishes them off (Lute was too far away, unfortunately) and grabs their Elfire.


Vanessa and Lute advance and heal.


Lastly, I have Amelia move here -the Mage can't reach her there.


The Archer's buddy Archer comes for revenge, mauling Tana, but she's tough enough to take it.


One of the Pirates lobs a Hand Axe at Colm, but Colm takes it as a fancy hat.



The other one advances to melee and also misses, getting mauled for his trouble.

That... actually could've gotten Colm killed if I was unlucky. Need to be more careful/attentive.


Lastly, the surviving Mage chips Franz from safety. Eh.


My turn, and I open with Joshua finishing off the Pirate Colm weakened by being attacked.

Naturally, Joshua gets a completely redundant crit.



Tana flies away from the Archer and heals. Lute weakens the Mage, and then I bring in Eirika to finish off the Mage. The idea is that she'll crit-kill them before they attack. Instead she dodges and crits on the second hit. Ugh, wasted Killing Edge use.

I didn't think any other options were safe enough, though, since being here means being in reach of one of those Fighters, and a number of my guys are still low on health. In retrospect maybe Neimi would've made more sense, though? I was tired during this part, and actually went to bed a few turns from now and finished the mission the next day, so I wasn't at my best.


Franz backs away and heals, and we end turn looking like this, with Gilliam positioned to bait out more guys.



Fighter the first gets a lucky hit in on Eirika, and she critkills him on the second hit.

Stop that. Get crits on the first hit, come on. This isn't Thracia.


Fighter the second takes a Hand Axe to Eirika's face and hits on absurdly low odds.

Okay, annoyed. Whatever, it doesn't actually matter.


Lastly, the Pirate to the north lobs his Hand Axe at Joshua and misses. Awesome.


My turn, and Franz goes for the Hand Axe Fighter and dodges the retaliation.


Lute finishes off the Fighter and gets a decent level up.


I end the turn looking like this -I considered having Joshua attack the Pirate, but while they wouldn't kill him, he'd probably fail to get the double crit necessary to kill them and then they'd go out onto the water and delay things some more.

Note Tana and Vanessa's positions. They're going for the Archer.



Gilliam successfully baits out and mauls a Soldier, and even dodges their attack. Gilliam's use of the Rotten Claw here is deliberate -I'm hoping to feed some kills to Amelia.

Oh, and they have an Axereaver. That's neat, because they'll drop it.


Amelia successfully grabs the kill, looting the Axereaver in the process.


Tana and Vanessa gang up on the last aggressive Archer of the map to kill him.



Joshua goes for the Pirate this turn, and for once gets a crit on his first hit. He also gets hit by the retaliation and doesn't get a crit on his second hit, but that's fine.


A bunch of moving up happens, and I end the turn looking like this.


The Pirate misses Joshua this time. Cool. Unnecessary, but cool.


The Soldier can't even hurt Gilliam, ha.


The only Shaman on the map takes a shot at Tana, and misses. Well, that simplifies things a bit.


Amelia takes a shot at the Soldier.

She misses.

Well, that's annoying.


I have Artur grab the kill instead, because I don't feel like going through that much effort to get Amelia the kill.


Then Lute moves up and advances her Support with Artur, since I keep moving them as a pair anyway.

My supreme brilliance enlightens you, friend!
Relationships are two-way, you know.
Of course. Without a student, there is no teacher.
...


Joshua finishes off the Pirate, and nets an okay level out of it. He got Strength, that's the main thing that matters.


Tana effortlessly destroys the Shaman, because she's still behind everyone else in level and I'd like her to catch up. Fliers are useful.


A couple turns pass of no interest, and here we have Gilliam positioned to bait out a Mercenary.


Mercenary baited successfully. They double Gilliam, but even with a Steel Sword they're only doing 1 damage to him.


My turn, and Amelia takes a shot at the Mercenary for experience.

She misses. This is becoming silly.


Neimi breaks out her Killer Bow and gets the kill. Good.


I end the turn looking like this, with Gilliam positioned to bait out another Mercenary.


Second verse, same as the first.



This time Artur chips the Mercenary first.

Amelia misses again. Really?


Vanessa swoops in to save the day, handily destroying the Mercenary.


I end turn looking like this.

Binks (the boss) and those two Archers have defensive AI. They won't move from their spots, and Monster Quest hasn't changed that.



The Mercenary goes for Vanessa rather than Gilliam -and fair enough, because with Gilliam in the forest he'd probably do no damage at all to Gilliam, if he has the same damage as his buddies- and she doubles him in return. Awesome.


Amelia finally lands a hit. Would've liked for her to land it one of the times she'd get a kill, though...


Tana takes the kill, because she needs the experience and she can handle this guy, and gets a very nice level out of it.


I end the turn looking like this, trying to get close to the enemy formation without actually entering its range.


Colm mauls the northern Archer, Rescue shenanigans occur to pull him out, and then Tana finishes the Archer and Rescue shenanigans pull her out.


I end the turn.



I repeat this with the southern Archer, netting Tana another good level, one I like better even.


I end the turn looking like this, with Gilliam in Binks' reach, and he breaks out his Steel Axe to take a swing at Gilliam, missing.


I take a screenshot of Binks' stat screen because look at that Resist what the heck. I'd intended to have Lute and Artur chip him down, but Artur can't actually damage him at all and Lute only does 2 damage with Fire. She can do better damage with Elfire, but it's not worth it. It makes more sense to just hit him with physical attackers.

A quick check of Serenes Forest's boss data page shows that yeah, his stats have been buffed, particularly his Resist and Speed, both of which are normally 9. His Strength, Skill, HP, and Constitution are unchanged, but everything else is at least a point higher.

Okay then.


Regardless, I have Neimi go for the crit, and she obliges, unlike Joshua.



From there Lute softens him up with Elfire and Colm finishes him off, netting him an okay level. Critically, Speed is capped, so outside of Entombed it's no longer possible for an enemy to Steal something from me and be too fast for Colm to get it back. (Unless Monster Quest has changed things, Rogues never appear as enemy units) Excellent.

Talking ensues.


Seth being awesome.


This only happens if you visit both houses... which is odd, because it's Rennac giving it to you because he's so glad to be rid of L'arachel, no acknowledgment of the fact that you visited the two houses. No explanation for why he feels like gifting Eirika anything, either. Yeah, he's glad to be free of L'arachel, but what does Eirika have to do with that?

What? Don't look at me, I didn't write this.

Incidentally, this is why I was so adamant on getting the two houses -both of their rewards are very valuable, and the Angelic Robe is also very good to have. I actually considered skipping out on the western house, because of how much trouble I was having from Vanessa being slower than in the unmodified game, but losing out on a Dragonshield and an Angelic Robe... no, I really wanted those.


From the world map, I check the two shops in the mission. The Armory is mostly uninteresting, but this is huge -a Bow with a range of 1-2! I can set up Neimi to be able to retaliate against melee attacks now! Thanks, Monster Quest.


I buy one and give it to Neimi immediately.


The Shop is also mostly uninteresting, though I screenshotted it because... Unlock Staff with 25 uses? Why?

If the game doesn't throw one at me before Jehanna I'll probably turn around and buy this before starting on Jehanna -it could be useful there- but really, 25 uses for the Unlock Staff is silly. It only opens doors, and there's really not that many doors in the game. You'd be hard-pressed to use up the entire Staff if, like, Eirika were a Staff user and carrying one right from the start.


I poke around my characters and give Lute this new Angelic Robe and give Joshua the Dragonshield -he's one of my only characters whose Defense is actually lower than their Level, and I'm trying to use him, fool that I am. Admittedly, I'm in part hoping he'll be better after promotion; Gwyllgi seem likely to have a high critical hit bonus, so maybe he'll be more reliable and good after promotion.


After poking around for a while to figure out the best user, I give the Juna Fruit to Neimi -and you can see it lowered her level by 3. It actually lowers level by a random amount, as low as 1 level lost or as high as 5 levels, unless Monster Quest has changed that, but I didn't feel like savescumming it into being -5. (Which is totally something you could potentially do in the base game) Note that the Juna Fruit cannot be used on characters below level 9.

Now, in most games the Juna Fruit's effect here would be a bad thing, but in Fire Emblem level per se is mostly not a positive. In Sacred Stones, there's only three four things where an increased level is a positive -the Sniper has a percent chance derived from their level of triggering their auto-hit skill, the Wyvern Knight also has a percent chance derived from their level of ignoring enemy Defense, and you have to be at least level 10 to use a promotion item. (Well, not Eirika and Ephraim, apparently) In one case, increased level is actually a bad thing -the General's chance of triggering Great Shield is actually based on the enemy's level, 1% per level. And as has been pointed out to me, Summoner level factors into the level and thus resulting rolled stats of their summons, so four things in Sacred Stones, actually.

(Edited July 24th 2018; I forgot about Summoners)

Gaining levels is a good thing, as a level gained is a chance at stats earned. Being high level mostly isn't. So lowering a unit's level is actually a good thing, as it increases the number of times they get to roll for stat gains.

I picked Neimi because she was the character with the most evenly distributed stats out of all my troops, and therefore is the most likely to maximize the Juna Fruit's benefits. Other characters would probably rather shore up their weak areas with other stat boosters, especially since they'd partially "waste" level ups thanks to reaching stat caps -Colm's next eight levels are incapable of netting him Speed, and the game doesn't do anything to ensure a character's growths for capped stats are somehow put to use, so giving him 3 more levels to work with is sub-optimal compared to directly boosting his Strength, Defense, or Resistance. Yay, waste 11 Speed growth rolls? Neimi will probably cap Speed before she hits level 20, but even with the Juna Fruit she's unlikely to cap anything else before level 20.

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See you next mission.