FE11 H5 0% growths warpless LTC

[Gradivus.]

Welcome to this playthrough. If you remember dondon's 0% growths run of this game, you know how much the warp staff dominates LTCs and speedruns of this game. My goal is to LTC the game without using warp. That is a very tricky challenge because this game's units have very low base stats, while the enemies are very strong, and not having warp means that a lot of the lategame enemies can't be skipped and Marth has to move through the middle of the battlefield all the time. I will be playing with incomplete recruitment and player unit deaths allowed because I prefer that playstyle for LTCs. While I want to avoid sacrifices because I think they aren't necessary, I will not hesitate to use them if they are needed.

Rules:

- Warp is banned for all intents and purposes, including detecting the true Gharnef in Chapter 23. It will be treated as if it does not exist.

- The goal is to get the lowest turncount possible.

- Recruitment and survival of playable characters are optional.

- All growths for player units (class + personal) are set to 0%. Enemy class growths remain unchanged.

- Rigging is okay, but I will only do it from Chapter saves or Map saves. I will not use strategies that are too unreliable to rig manually within a reasonable timeframe.

- In the US version of Shadow Dragon, which I'm using, Thrones only cost one mov, as opposed to two as in the European (and I think Japanese) version/s. Taking advantage of that is fine.

Here is chapter 1:

Chapter 1 is done in 7 turns (7 total).

This chapter is extremely hard to LTC. The AI here behaves somewhat oddly, most importantly when it comes to Jagen. If he has a lance equipped, he takes 7 damage from the pirates and faces 1 crit. If you put a 7 Def unit like Cain or Abel within range, with a sword equipped, they only take 1 more point of damage than Jagen, but don't face any crit. That prompts them to attack Jagen. Meanwhile, if you equip a lance on that 7 Def unit, they take 2 more damage, and the pirates prefer to attack them. I take advantage of that on turn 3; Jagen switches Cain to a lance, which makes the last Pirate attack Cain, allowing Jagen to retain enough HP to survive an attack from Gazzak. The same phenomenon is used on turn 2, where Shiida (7 Def) attracts a Pirate with the Wing Spear equipped.

In this chapter, you face the first enemies using what I call the "extended range AI". They start moving once a player unit comes close enough that two full movements plus the weapon's range would be enough to attack that player unit. In my approach to the boss area, this allows Shiida to bait the left-most pirate away on turn 5 without being within enemy range and makes him irrelevant on turn 6.

This bosskill is the best you can get in an efficiency run, reliability-wise, having a 26.5% chance to connect all the hits. Gazzak is so strong that Jagen needs to be at high HP to survive one hit. If Gazzak rolls up on Str, Jagen needs to dodge one axe throughout the chapter, most probably on turn 5 (63.5% true hit). It can also happen on turn 1, at 98.8% true hit, and funnily enough it did end up happening on the successful attempt. If Gazzak rolls down (14 str), Jagen does not need to dodge anything.

The pirates coming across the water are pretty tricky to deal with aswell. Their timing is such that my characters haven't quite finished killing the pirates taking the land route when they can attack from behind, so I can't just run away with everyone and have Draug sit on a fort unequipped and tank them patiently. Instead, I had Cain distract one pirate while unequipped Draug tanks the other. Not facing weapon triangle disadvantage once is enough that Draug can take four hits without healing in between, as opposed to three.

On turn 2, Shiida got a crit. Normally, Marth and Abel would have finished her Pirate off. The only difference that this made is that Shiida got 20 exp more than usual, which I will compensate for at some point because I intend to promote her, making her exp gain extremely important. It did not change anything about the further course of the chapter because Marth would have kept 10 HP after attacking the pirate. When entering enemy range later in the chapter, he never gets attacked, and that does not change if he's at 10 HP instead of 18 because it is not low enough that the Pirates would be able to kill. I could already have remedied the exp difference by having her attack the Hunter first and feeding it to Jagen instead, but this clear was very luck-reliant, so I did not concentrate on details like that.

Besides the bosskill, this strategy was very unreliable aswell, mainly because you don't have a map save. Two Javelin hits are necessary (one against the Thief at WTA and one against the Pirate on turn 4), and one more if the Pirate Gordin, Draug and Cain kill on PP3 rolls up on HP, because then Draug needs to use a Javelin to deal 1 more damage. On top of that, the accuracy of iron lances, silver lances and steel bows is far from perfect aswell, at between 90 and 95 true hit. There are 8 of those hits that I need throughout the chapter, which accumulates for a very noticeable chance of failure. I also have to rig Gazzak's Spd, so he doesn't double Abel, and a specific Pirate's HP, so he is killed by 2x Cain with an iron weapon and a Javelin from Draug. The chance for the two stat rolls (which based on experimentation seem to be coinflips) are around 25%, the chance for the bosskill 26.47%, and that for everything in between is 15.77%. That makes for a total chance of 1.04%, and a chance of 4.18% for everything except the stat rolls (because they are at the start of the map and take a trivial amount of time).

I will use simplified stat boxes in this playthrough because you can easily research the characters' base stats. I'll simply note down exp gain on important (or potentially important) characters, some weapon rank data and distribution of items like stat boosters and master seals.

Stats:

Shiida: level 1.70 (20 unintended exp), D lances + 6 wexp

Jagen: B lances + 16 wexp

Edited January 30, 2018 by Gradivus.

[De Geso]

It'll be interesting to see how the strategies change with warp out of the picture, looking forward to more episodes!

[eclipse]

The only time the throne movement really matters is Chapter 19, but that's only the PAL version, IIRC.

Otherwise, this will be interesting.  It looks like you'll really have to take advantage of the forge!

[Reality]

I don't want to dampen enthusiastic for this, but I don't see how several later chapters can possibly avoid being turtlish (by LTC standards) with the no warp restriction in place.

I approve of accepting deaths and non-full recruitment, especially on stuff like Chapter 18.

 

[Gradivus.]

44 minutes ago, eclipse said:

The only time the throne movement really matters is Chapter 19, but that's only the PAL version, IIRC.

Otherwise, this will be interesting.  It looks like you'll really have to take advantage of the forge!

Don't worry, I just tested, my version does have the 1-mov throne. And yeah, the only place where it's likely to come in handy is C19.

18 minutes ago, Reality said:

I don't want to dampen enthusiastic for this, but I don't see how several later chapters can possibly avoid being turtlish (by LTC standards) with the no warp restriction in place.

I approve of accepting deaths and non-full recruitment, especially on stuff like Chapter 18.

I've done some planning for lategame already, it isn't that bad.

[eclipse]

Oh, right.

Does the Geosphere exist in this run?

[Gradivus.]

Yes, it does.

[Irysa]

Excited to see more of this, and you already saved a turn too!

Really curious as to what you'll be doing for Endgame, I theoried some of it for fun once without Warp on 0%, but obv I didn't have to think about expenses over a whole playthrough.

 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by Irysa

[ping]

Nice, I will be following this =) Not a LTC player myself (I'm too impatient for that) so I won't be able to comment anything of substance, but I really like watching how game mechanics are used to their limits.

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 2 is done in 5 turns (12 total).

My C2 strategy is a version of the one dondon151 used. However, I significantly changed the last few turns and killed all the Pirates near the village on turn 4. Instead of having 4 units beat up the boss, I only had Ogma and Jagen attack, either needing an Ogma crit + Jagen hit or a Jagen crit (6.13% chance after a map save). The overall strategy still isn't very reliable - much like in chapter 1, I needed a lot of hits between 60 and 80 displayed hit to connect.
One of the cavaliers had to roll down on Str so a healing from Wrys is enough to make sure Jagen does not die to a Pirate on turn 3. Aside from that, the stat rolls on the enemies didn't matter.
On EP2, Jagen critted both Cavaliers. That cost Shiida 30 exp, so the surplus from C1 is balanced out now. Normally, Hand Axe!Bord + Steel Axe!Darros would've killed the Cav that attacked Jagen from above, and Draug, Castor and Ogma would've surrounded the other so Shiida can kill him on turn 4. That Cavalier would've attacked Draug on EP3 in that case. Since Shiida wouldn't have been available to attack a Pirate for Barst then, Barst would finish his Pirate from EP3 off on his own, using a Steel Axe (or an Iron Axe, had Bord's Hand Axe not missed).

New units:
The axe users from this map are pretty useful for the next few chapters because they hit much harder than, for example, Abel and Cain. Castor is much like Gordin, but a little bit better; he can chip in with a Steel Bow and that's it.
In the long run, only Barst will be very useful, as his personal bases can carry him for a pretty long time. I plan on promoting him at some point. Ogma isn't worth investing into due to his low Str and swords facing WTD almost everywhere.

Stats:

Shiida: level 2.10, D lances + 10 wexp

Jagen: B lances + 26 wexp

Barst: level 3.50, D axes + 8 wexp

Edited February 1, 2018 by Gradivus.

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 3 is done in 5 turns (17 total).

Jagen has to dodge both axes on turn 2 while on the mountain. That's because the Hunters pull 3 crit against him and double. If he is hit once, the Hunters, who deal 5*2 damage, know they can kill him with a crit and choose to attack him, which is not the case if he is at full HP. They instead decide to attack Darros and Barst, making them come close enough that I can kill or surround them to make them harmless. If they can run around freely on EP3, they can easily kill Marth.
The bosskill used Navarre's Killing Edge to dent the boss strongly - normally, you would just use the Devil Axe with Barst to finish him off, but in a 5-turn, you cannot visit the village, so I instead had Cain dodge a Hand Axe at 59 hit so he can survive while attacking with a Steel Sword. Jagen then finished off with his own Steel Sword. The boss can also spawn with 41 HP, in which case I have to use Iron Sword + Silver Lance instead, and I should have made sure that it didn't happen at the start of the map because Silver Lance uses are important. The boss strategy has a chance of 8.36%, while the part after the first map save has a chance of 6.19%.

New units: Lena starts with C staves. This allows her to use Fortify as a Bishop after 45 staff uses and as a Cleric or Sage after 60 staff uses. She is the only unit who can reach A staves so easily, and I definitely need it in some later maps, so I'll be training her. Julian is a Thief, which is moderately useful in FE11, and Navarre can reclass to Cavalier, where he has C swords and 9 def, making him a noticeably better version of Cain for the next few maps.

Stats:

Shiida: 2.20, D lances + 12 wexp

Barst: 4.54, D axes + 18 wexp

Jagen: B lances + 26 wexp

Lena: 3.17, C staves + 2 wexp

Edited February 3, 2018 by Gradivus.

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 4 is done in 7 turns (24 total).

Preparations:

Forged +3 mt, +3 crit Wing Spear (-4480G), named Horacekiller.

Money remaining: 25520G.

I didn't try to do this in 6 turns because there's no way to do various maps later on without losing turns if you don't have Wendell or Excalibur. Jagen and Cain faced the Cavalier swarm on turn 2 so I can rout them on turn 3. The horsemen in the boss area are pretty weak individually, only having 14-15 atk, so units like Marth and Matthis don't get ORKOed. That allows me to put Marth in range and use low-luck baiting to make the first one attack Matthis while the second one can attack anyone without scoring a kill. For the bosskill, I planned to use Merric to deal chip damage, but Merric has to be on the tile of the Horsemen attacking Matthis on turn 6. Because of Navarre's Steel Sword miss against that Horseman, I ended up using an improvised strategy to do enough damage with ranged physical weapons so Shiida can kill.

New units: Matthis did something here, but he's still terrible. For some reason, the developers wanted to give you a cav with base stats worse than Abel's 3.5 chapters later. Merric will be useful for being an Excalibur user, which allows him to nuke fliers and chip enemies reliably in general.

Stats:

Shiida: 4.59, D lances + 22 wexp

Barst: 5.56, D axes + 30 wexp

Jagen: B lances + 34 wexp

Lena: 3.51, C staves + 2 wexp

Edited February 4, 2018 by Gradivus.

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 5 is done in 4 turns (28 total).

Preparations and Shopping:

Forged +3 mt, +17 hit Hand Axe, named FE6 (-3942G). Bought 1 Steel Lance, 2 Javelins and 1 Hand Axe (-3020G).

Money remaining: 18558G.

Jagen once again made use of his low Luck to make sure a Cav attacks him instead of Shiida. The Wolfguard members baited the enemies in the left half of the map towards the bottom-left corner, trivializing most of them. Shiida killed the boss with a Horacekiller crit and will do the same thing in a couple more chapters, which is why I forged crit on it.

From this chapter on, you'll see Merric and Bord being fielded very often. The goal of that is to build supports. Merric needs to build the support with Wendell and Bord needs to support Barst for later strategies. There are some more supports that are pretty trivial to obtain, so I won't list them under the stats. I'll point out when they come in handy (the first time was already in this chapter; if you look closely at Shiida's javelin hitrate, you'll see that she received +10 hit from the Marth support). Here are some more details about how the support system works: https://serenesforest.net/shadow-dragon/characters/support-bonus/

New units: Wendell is extremely good due to his personal base of 8. I'll mostly use him as a Dracoknight, where he has 15 speed, to make use of its mobility and defense, but in most other classes, he's very effective aswell. I'll have him use a staff 8 times throughout the game so he can use Physic as a Bishop. Hardin is pretty strong early on, having solid HP and access to Ridersbanes and Silver Lances. He isn't worth promoting because his speed is simply too bad for lategame usage. Wolf and Sedgar will be useful early on aswell because they have access to B-set promoted classes like General, and Vyland and Roshea are just two more Cavs with bad base stats.

Stats:

Shiida: 5.73, D lances + 30 wexp

Barst: 6.26, D axes + 36 wexp

Jagen: B lances + 38 wexp

Lena: 4.17, C staves + 8 wexp

Merric-Wendell support: 1 point

Bord-Barst support: 4 points

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 6 is done in 6 turns (34 in total).

Preparations and Shopping:

Forged +3 mt, +10 hit Javelin named Gungnir (-3750G).

Money remaining: 14808G.

This chapter is pretty tough to LTC. First, I had to make sure an Archer doesn't round up on both HP and Res, because then Sedgar and Merric would need a crit to kill him. The right Knight in the boss area has to roll down on Str so he doesn't OHKO Marth, and the two level 1 Knights I checked needed to roll down on Str so they don't OHKO Shiida. Most of those rolls are pretty likely on their own, I haven't checked the actual chances but the total chance that they all roll as I want them to is probably between 30 and 50%.

The Knights, Archers and Mages all hit very hard and you need some strong weapons to take down the Archers and Knights. The enemy density of the boss area is especially problematic, so you have to bait the Archer and the Mage through the wall and kill to approach the throne room quickly.

I used a variation of dondon's strat for that, Sedgar gets a Javelin and an Iron Bow, and depending on whether the Archer rolls 6 or 7 Def he chips him either with 2 Iron Bow hits or an Iron Bow and a Javelin hit. In either case, the archer is brought down to 16 or 15 HP, allowing Merric to finish off with Excalibur. It's important to be precise about the damage because if the Archer is below half HP, the Curate in the throne room will move towards him and use his Mend staff, ruining the strategy. Against the mage, Merric needed an Excalibur crit because it wasn't possible to dedicate anyone more reliable to killing him without losing out on units like Abel, Matthis and Navarre to collect treasure and kill some enemies.

The Gungnir allowed me to hit some damage quotas here, for example Jagen's kill against the Archer and Matthis damaging the Knight in the throne room (which is important if the Knight rolls up on Spd so he doesn't get doubled by Marth), and saved a lot of resets by improving the hitrate.

Shiida ended up killing the boss with a dodge, although I had originally planned to rig a crit. The only difference it made is that I now have 1 less Horacekiller use left. I'm pretty sure that's fine though, so I'll move on.

On this map, I got a lot of rare items: a Bullion (S), a Physic, an Armorslayer, an Angelic Robe and two Master Keys. The Physic is extremely important for some chapters later on and the 10000G the Bullion sells for are crucial to fund my forges. The armorslayer is pretty weak for most of the time and will probably be sold at some point, but for now I'll keep it since killing Knights isn't easy at all, especially when conserving weapons like Silver Lance, FE6 and Horaceslayer. The Master Keys allow non-Thief units to go on treasure hunts, which will come in handy. The Angelic Robe is necessary for a unit joining me later, so I cannot use it right now, even though units like Wendell, Shiida or Barst could benefit from it.

New units: Rickard is a worse Julian, but all that matters is that he's a Thief. There's a map later on where it's necessary to field both to get all the treasure needed.

Stats:

Shiida: 7.50, D lances + 40 wexp

Barst: 6.53, D axes + 38 wexp

Jagen: B lances + 48 wexp

Lena: 5.46, C staves + 20 wexp

Wendell: D staves + 32 wexp (Bishop), D lances + 6 wexp (Paladin / Draco)

Merric-Wendell support: 2 points

Bord-Barst support: 4 points

Edited February 14, 2018 by Gradivus.

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 7 is done in 6 turns (40 in total).

Preparations and Shopping:

Sold Bullion (S) (+10000G).

Money remaining: 24808G.

This map has two major threats: the generic fliers charging at you and the Cavalier reinforcements. The fliers are very fast, but Dracoknight!Wendell easily avoids getting doubled by them. With an axe, he could tank both Pegasus Knights and have enough HP left to survive the Dracoknight aswell (if both Pegasus Knights roll up on Str, which is relatively unlikely, he has to dodge one at 67 hit). The Dracoknight prefers to target Merric (+10 damage vs 2% crit against Wendell), barely failing to OHKO him and getting OHKOed in return.

To deal with the Cavalier reinforcements, I avoided entering their spawning zone ( http://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe11/guia/capitulo07.htm ) before turn 4. The two forts in the middle had to  be blocked entirely or the Cavs from there could've killed someone. The Ridersbane!Cavaliers (left-most fort) were held up using the chokepoint near their fort and the Steel Lance!Cavaliers are too far away to threaten my team directly, so I killed the first one as he arrived and ignored the second one. Shiida killed the boss with a Horacekiller crit, as usual.

Barst got some experience from "killing" two of the Whitewing sisters and Minerva, since fortunately defeating them here doesn't impede you at all later on.

I skipped the first character here, namely Bantu. He's a manakete who can't be used for combat because I skipped the C5 dragonstone and costs 4 turns to recruit by visiting the village. The other thing he does is recruit Tiki, which I now can't do anymore. Since I want to skip Chapter 24x, my only option for that is defeating Gharnef...

Stats:

Shiida: 9.05, C lances + 3 wexp

Barst: 7.80, D axes + 44 wexp

Jagen: B lances + 54 wexp

Lena: 6.46, C staves + 32 wexp

Wendell: D staves + 32 wexp (Bishop), D lances + 12 wexp (Paladin / Draco)

Merric-Wendell support: 3 points

Bord-Barst support: 5 points (+5 hit/avo)

Edited February 14, 2018 by Gradivus.

[Irysa]

I like how everyone makes these tiny little combat contributions and all Wolf does is meatshield for a turn or two despite the fact he was deployed as a Hero instead of a General.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Irysa

[Sturm]

Just got finished watching the first seven chapters, nice job so far, especially the Chapter 1 seven turn! That 17 hit on the Hand Axe triggered my OCD about having certain things in blocks of five though...

I was a bit surprised you skipped the Devil Axe, I would have expected it would be too valuable despite the turn it costs to get it but I guess you have more time to get other units into position to deal chip damage to compensate for not having it?

Also, is there any reason why you're using the Bord-Barst support and not Ogma-Barst, I would have thought the latter is more preferable seeing as it's slightly faster and Ogma is the better unit (I guess that's trivial if they're just being support bots but still) and also you would benefit from the Ogma-Shiida support that way as well.

On 12/02/2018 at 2:20 PM, Gradivus. said:

Since I want to skip Chapter 24x, my only option for that is defeating Gharnef...

0 luck, too strong, I guess.

For the endgame I'm hoping to see a huge Pachyderm forge being traded around by Jake, Beck and Beck!Xane with the Geosphere and just nuking everything in sight, not sure this will be a thing but I'd like to see that .

[Gradivus.]

2 hours ago, Sturm said:

Just got finished watching the first seven chapters, nice job so far, especially the Chapter 1 seven turn! That 17 hit on the Hand Axe triggered my OCD about having certain things in blocks of five though...

I was a bit surprised you skipped the Devil Axe, I would have expected it would be too valuable despite the turn it costs to get it but I guess you have more time to get other units into position to deal chip damage to compensate for not having it?

Also, is there any reason why you're using the Bord-Barst support and not Ogma-Barst, I would have thought the latter is more preferable seeing as it's slightly faster and Ogma is the better unit (I guess that's trivial if they're just being support bots but still) and also you would benefit from the Ogma-Shiida support that way as well.

0 luck, too strong, I guess.

For the endgame I'm hoping to see a huge Pachyderm forge being traded around by Jake, Beck and Beck!Xane with the Geosphere and just nuking everything in sight, not sure this will be a thing but I'd like to see that .

1) Thanks! Always nice to trigger other people's OCD.

2) Well, the Devil Axe only has +7 damage on a Steel Axe and most of the time that bonus is overkill. The only places where I was worried were C4's cav swarm and C6 in general. I did most of my earlygame planning assuming there probably is a C3 5-turn (although I wasn't sure yet), so I just went the safe way and planned without the Devil Axe. It's nice not getting tempted to use the Devil Axe, its backfire rate is worse than Steel Axe or Hammer miss rates most of the time.

3) There's a specific map later on where it helps to have Bord instead of Ogma as his support bot, you'll see it when it comes. Speeding it up by 1 chapter is pretty trivial, and in terms of unit quality there's not much of a difference between Bord and Ogma at this point. Shiida doesn't get any bonuses from Ogma since it's a one-way support. She only supports him.

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 8 is done in 5 turns (45 in total).

Preparations and Shopping:

Bought Heal, 2x Vulnerary and Wing Spear (-2640G)

Money remaining: 22168G.

Bought a new Wing Spear here because I need to conserve a few Horacekiller uses for some lategame strategies. I filled Caesar's inventory so he can convoy-drop it to get it into Shiida's hands immediately. The enemies I killed on turns 2 and 3 take a lot of offense to defeat, so I made a formation on turn 2 to deal as much damage as possible on EP. The generic Knight attacks Jagen due to low Luck - I had to make sure at the start of the map that he doesn't roll up on Str, or he would've OHKOed Shiida. The Cavaliers were then forced to spread out their attacks to Wendell, Hardin and Shiida so they can be finished off pretty easily.

I also pulled the Horsemen to kill them for exp while Wendell killed the boss with Excalibur. Using him for the bosskill was more reliable and saved a Horacekiller use compared to doing it with Shiida, so she got a Horseman kill instead. Intended to chip Shiida's Horseman with an Iron Bow, but I forgot to give one to Sedgar in the preparations, so I used the Gungnir instead.

New units: Caesar is a generic Mercenary, slightly worse than Ogma. Radd is totally terrible. Roger is pretty weak overall, but he has a personal base Spd of 5, which I need on a promoted B-set unit in a certain chapter, so I'll train him to promotion.

Stats:

Shiida: 9.83, C lances + 9 wexp

Barst: 8.43, C axes + 5 wexp

Roger: 6.33, D lances + 6 wexp

Lena: 7.40, C staves + 42 wexp

Wendell: D staves + 34 wexp (Bishop), D lances + 12 wexp (Paladin / Draco)

Jagen: B lances + 58 wexp

Merric-Wendell support: 4 points

Bord-Barst support: 6 points (+5 hit/avo)

[ping]

19 hours ago, Gradivus. said:

Roger is pretty weak overall, but he has a personal base Spd of 5, which I need on a promoted B-set unit in a certain chapter, so I'll train him to promotion.

I was wondering why you killed the second horseman on the final turn. ;) Interesting to see that a normally meh unit like Roger is going to be relevant in this kind of playthrough.

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 9 is done in 5 turns (50 in total).

No purchases or sellings.

Money remaining: 22168G.

This map features a lot of Pirates and sea tiles. There's a high enemy density right above the castle, so I had to make them move in different directions. Barst had to dodge one of the Pirates here and hit the Steel axe one with the FE6 (Bord's support came in handy). Combined with a lot of 80s on turns 2 and 3, the chance of success was around 15%, so I used the first map save on turn 1.

Marth and his group went towards the castle, led by Wendell, who went Sniper to improve hitrates against axe users and at range. It also allowed him to double Hunters if they proc 12 Spd. On turn 2, he just barely avoids the Devil Axe!Pirate's range, who would OHKO him after a hit from the Hunter. Jagen also did some positioning tricks, baiting a Pirate away on turn 1 and taking advantage of a Hunter's really goofy position to make him unable to attack on turn 4.

Shiida also did something crucial here: her position on turn 3 meant that there is a tile below the Pillar wall where a 2-range unit could attack her from, so the Hunter from the bottom-right corner that was headed towards the castle would suddenly go back to where he came from, instead of moving on towards the castle. That would be fatal because Jagen wouldn't be able to lock up the other Hunter on turn 4, meaning he could kill Marth on EP.

The boss here is a Manakete with 38 HP, 13 Def and 5 Res, and at 1-range he also ORKOes or OHKOes everyone who could do a reasonable amount of damage to him in 0% growths. The best way to kill him is obviously an Excalibur crit, which I still had to combine with Steel Lance!Jagen to get enough damage.

New units: Skipped Jeorge because he costs 4 turns. There's no way he'll ever pay off for that.

Stats:

Shiida: 10.21, C lances + 13 wexp

Barst: 8.62, C axes + 11 wexp

Roger: 6.90, D lances + 6 wexp

Lena: 8.42, C staves + 52 wexp

Wendell: D staves + 34 wexp (Bishop), D lances + 12 wexp (Paladin / Draco)

Jagen: A lances

Merric-Wendell support: 5 points (+5 hit/avo)

Bord-Barst support: 7 points (+5 hit/avo)

Edited February 16, 2018 by Gradivus.

[Irysa]

Skipping Jeorge and Merric not having the oomph to OHKO the boss with a crit for that juicy EXP

Feels Bad Man

[Refa]

I'm impressed that Jeigan is still putting in the work.  I mean, I thought he'd be killing things, just not bosses.

Also curious to see what you need Roger for.

[Mega Koopa]

Jeorge deserves death for his village being such a pain in the ass to reach.

[Gradivus.]

Chapter 10 is done in 8 turns (58 in total).

Preparations and Shopping:

Sold Bullion (M) (+15000G), bought Vulnerary and Pure Water (-960G).

Money remaining: 36208G.

From this chapter on, all enemies will have Silver weapons or Javelins etc. that are forged to be roughly as strong as Silver weapons. The average enemy now has 27 Atk with a Silver Lance or is slightly weaker, but very fast, such as Heroes and Snipers. That forces me to approach the maps with great caution from now on since it's rare that a player unit can survive 2 rounds against them.

This map has 2 groups of enemies charging at you; one of 4 Cavaliers and one of 4 fliers. The former are very close to the start, so you have to kill them pretty much immediately. By this point, most people would probably have forged a Ridersbane to kill Cavaliers in one hit, but I cannot afford to forge the current Ridersbane because it is down to 13 uses and would break too soon, forcing me to spend twice the money because I need a forged Ridersbane a lot in cavalry-heavy chapters like 16, 18 and 22. Thus, I used chip damage + Ridersbane / Wing Spear to kill three of the Cavaliers and used a series of attacks to chip away at the fourth one, with Marth finishing him off.

The fliers are pretty dangerous because they double most units, have high Atk like everyone else and the Dracoknights have high HP and Def on top of that, not even getting OHKOed by Excalibur. However, they have two options to reach the player units - going down and threatening Marth on his way to the castle, or going to the right and not interrupting him at all. Because I had Navarre run up on turn 1, they couldn't resist going to the right because he's ORKOed, allowing Marth to just take a small group of units towards the castle. By the time the fliers arrived at the castle, I could easily use the entrance as a chokepoint to make them a non-threat.

There are a lot of valuable items on this map. Most importantly, the Hero guarding the northern entrance to the castle drops the first Master Seal in the game, which is extremely useful, but he is so fast that only Wendell can survive a duel with him, so I had to chip him three times with Wendell so Hardin can kill him. The boss drops a Speedwing, which will be very useful, but much like the Seraph Robe from chapter 6, it's for a unit that joins later on, so it goes for the convoy for now. The chests contain a Levin Sword and a Physic, and the enemy Thief only takes the Levin Sword, so I took Julian along to get the Physic. The Sniper in the castle drops a Silver Bow, so I ganged up on him to get it while feeding Roger some exp.

Skipped Maria and Minerva. Minerva is pretty good, but she is not worth spending 4 extra turns on. Maria is a slightly better Wrys, being able to use Mend and Barrier at base.

Stats:

Shiida: 11.18, C lances + 17 wexp

Barst: 9.61, C axes + 23 wexp

Roger: 8.17, D lances + 6 wexp

Lena: 9.53, B staves + 8 wexp

Wendell: D staves + 34 wexp (Bishop), D lances + 22 wexp (Paladin / Draco)

Jagen: A lances

Merric-Wendell support: 6 points (+5 hit/avo)

Bord-Barst support: 7 points (+5 hit/avo)

Edited February 19, 2018 by Gradivus.