Sacrifice: Persephone Mission 4

For this mission, Persephone provides awesome stuff, specifically...


Gnome
1000 Mana, 2 Souls

Finally!

After having seen them all the way back in mission 1 and had Thestor following us around and so on, we've at last got the ability to summon them ourselves!

The Gnome's distinguishing quality is, as I've alluded to before, that it's a ranged attacker with a hitscan attack, with real range. Every other ranged unit either fires an actual projectile, which can at least be theoretically avoided, even if in some cases it's very impractical to do so, or is horribly short-ranged. The Gnome fires, and if its accuracy roll didn't cause it to fire somewhere nearby the target, the target has been hit. This makes groups of Gnomes spectacularly effective at dealing with even the zippiest of wizards, not to mention any other fast-moving target, because swerving doesn't matter to them. It also gives them more subtle advantages in other realms; for example, if two lines of ranged units are exchanging fire, normally it doesn't matter terribly much if one side fires a little earlier than the other, because by the time the projectile arrives the other side will have already gotten their own shots off. With Gnomes. getting the first shot in can lead to them outright preventing enemy ranged units from firing because they're dead.

Strictly speaking, Gnomes are the least accurate of the sniper class, but this is pretty clearly meant to offset their hitscan attack being hitscan. In real terms, Gnomes are the most reliable ranged attacker in the game if we ignore some much shorter-ranged attackers like Rhinoks and of course the other hitscan attackers. Gnomes also get overall more reliable as unit level and thus size climbs; they're genuinely a bit shaky at landing a hit on eg a Locust. Against a Hellmouth, you can basically assume every shot hits due to its sheer size.

Gnomes are a great unit, one of Persephone's best, and if you're wanting a 'generic' sniper they're clearly the best in class. Other snipers bring secondary advantages to the table, such as how Pyromaniacs and Deadeyes are better at punching through ranged resistance on eg ultimate units and Deadeyes have a crazy range, but no other unit in the game is so good as the Gnome is at straight-up killing things now at long range.


Rainbow
300 Mana

Rainbow is the ultimate in healing. It's as cheap as Healing, can be cast on the move like Healing, provides more overall healing, and it can heal up to 6 separate units without bothering with micromanagement on your part. Its cooldown is also short enough you can nearly spam it. A wizard with Rainbow is a wizard whose forces are much harder to kill, and which you're going to need either overwhelming amounts of splash damage or to focus-fire to offset the advantage Rainbow brings to the table. (This is, incidentally, the main bonus spell Hachimen frequently has that he both uses and that is actually a big boost to his effectiveness. Seerix can also have it, and it's the one stolen Persephone spell of note she uses)

Rainbow is also reasonably 'smart' in its targeting. It doesn't prioritize more badly wounded units -so you should try to target the initial bounce on whatever unit most needs healing- but it does ignore healthy units, and from what I can tell it, like eg Chain Lightning, doesn't like to bounce to the same target multiple times, so it's pretty good about distributing its healing in a useful manner.

It's also the big reason why Scarabs are a genuinely shaky pick. Scarabs don't cost your wizard in-combat casting time, but the soul cost is usually more burdensome than casting Rainbow is. Scarabs do have the advantage that Rainbow is competing with Animate Dead, which is probably the more ridiculous of the two, where Scarabs aren't competing with anything out-and-out amazing.

Regardless, Rainbow is fantastic, and in conjunction with Gnomes being fantastic this is probably one of Persephone's best levels outright. If you're going to grab just one level from Persephone, this is probably the one to take.

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The mission is a bit of a joke, and honestly pretty poorly constructed. Zyzyx won't have time to finish his speech about the Gnome if you charge forward because Marduk will hop in and interrupt it, the ambush with the Storm Giants I showed off is honestly pretty bafflingly pointless -it's only a threat if you activate Jadugarr first, and if you do activate Jadugarr you don't have much reason to go activate the Storm Giant ambush- and the Mutant thing is...

... the thing is, getting the Mutants to be friendly to you is how you get the Boon, and it also incidentally causes the game to gift you something like 20 souls worth of units that are two levels too early. If you've somehow gotten your entire army stolen before managing to get the Mutants on your side, you're probably still going to stomp Jadugarr into the dirt effortlessly. How do you get them to be friendly? Don't kill them. That's it. After a bit, the cinema kicks in and they're friendly. The very first time I did this mission, that happened on accident, because my forces hadn't caught up to me and so even though I was desperately trying to kill the Mutants it wasn't working.

On top of the absurdity of the Mutant situation, Jadugarr won't activate until either you attack his stuff or you go trip the cinema in which Eldred talks to him, leaving you free to set up Manaliths, steal the Storm Giant ambush's souls, and if you like even slaughter the Peasants for their souls, though that's frankly overkill and as you can see I didn't even bother.

The Mutants themselves show up in response to activating Jadugarr -this even applies if you activate him by attacking that one Manalith of his, it's actually pretty jarring to be abruptly surrounded by Mutants- so you're not going to, say, banish Jadugarr before the Mutants show up or anything of the sort.

You don't really need strategy for this mission, is what I'm saying.

Oh, and notice that Thestor is still following us around. Yes, him showing up in mission 3 wasn't a one-off thing. He's here for life, at least unless I get him killed again.

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Narratively, we're seeing Jadugarr imply he summoned Marduk but not outright state it, and talking about how he wants all the unjust gods of this world gone outright. This is something I'll be coming back to later.

We also get one of the only natural-feeling examples in the entire game of Persephone showing her soft side by recruiting the Mutants while feeling sorry for them. It'd be nice if it was clearer why she thinks they're 'poor things', but hey, it does work. It's literally the only moment I remembered on my own before starting these videos; the first mission is so cringe-y in how it's handled I'd forgotten how it was trying to sell you on Persephone's niceness, and other gods' routes are utterly laughable on that score.

It's also worth pointing out that we're in Urghaz, home of the Trolls, and Mutants look suspiciously similar to Trolls. After Pyro performed a raid and did horrifying experiments on the Trolls. Hmmmm.

Unfortunately, the game never really follows up on that thread.

Next time, we do another Persephone mission.