Effortposts Around Units We Like (From Custom Campaigns)

Okay, I was supposed to do this earlier but better late then never. Today I would like to talk about a swordmaster dear to my heart. Francis from Lords of the Seas( Which you should play).

Francis, is quite the lopsided guy. He joins in chapter 14, where his speed is completely overkill at this point in the game. Now, his strength is enough to do the job but LOTS enemies can be quite bulky.
Francis also shows up with this lovely little prf. You can get a second one but the 10 is more then enough, I like to use it every other map about its a nice cherry on top.

What makes Francis such a standout for me is his skill, which behind the scenes is a series of flags or some eventing I imagine but thats besides the point.


Pretty much every map after this has one visit house, with each one having a distinct mini boss who drops an item after you defeat them. Now these aren’t just generic enemies, No were talking hilarious generics with distinct statlines. Such as

the big man himself, or

a super fast sage who will make you wanna cry a little. Now, I could post the about 10 other mini bosses but you’ll have to see them yourself. Often, these houses are on parts of the map you dont really need to go to, they serve as an optional side objectives that can change how you approach a map. The rewards are more then worth it, brave lances, gems, statboosters. Most of the time you want to kill the boss the turn they spawn but even still it serves as a test of your planning to have the resources to progress the map and kill a well statted boss in the middle of it. Francis himself is a solid combat unit, though his strength can leave you wanting later in the game not to mention a swift breeze knocks him over.

Now, we look towards the game’s systems and items. The miracle charm ,as the name applies grants the skill system variant of miracle. So, if you’re over 50% hp you get knocked to 1 if you would die. This is a great tool on francis, giving him a little more wiggle room in case he misses a crit. We also look to an A rank sword that most units you have deployed probably wont have the rank for, besides francis. The kingmaker, a 3might 20 crit brave weapon which gives charisma aura. With his fat skill base and +20 crit as SM he will be quadding and critting ALOT. The kingmaker itself has 40 uses so it’s more then enough to use it liberally. Now, 3 might doesnt hold up against bulkier enemies but he has other tools to use like Tier 2 Killer weapons and effectives. Overall, Francis is a very focused combat solver in 1 on 1 situations while bringing an awesome side quest almost every mid to late game map with his skill. Character wise, Francis is a longtime arena fighter who like the rest of us has some regrets. I won’t dive into too much but he’s a straightforward guy who I found endearing. So, that’s about it. Awesome swordmaster man rules, play his game and use him people! Along with, quite a few other LOTS units I absolutely adore.

10 Likes

While this technically doesn’t count as a campaign, Embrace of the Fog does have a story so it kind of counts? It’s a really fun hack with a lot of really fun and unique units, any of whom would likely warrant a whole effortpost. However, I wanted to shine a special spotlight on one of my personal favorites to use: Belle.

At first, she’s a bit unassuming. She’s got low Strength, Magic, and Defense, but pretty good Speed and Skill alongside a decent Resistance stat. She seems like the archetypical fast-but-doesn’t-do-much damage archetype that can sorta counter mages, but she also doesn’t come with any standard weapons (I’ll get into that) and her kit seems to lean on the supportive side. The many changes EotF makes to the FE formula, though, give her the potential to be a jack of all trades, master of almost everything. She’s got a lot of mechanics, but they all mesh together to form an extremely fun character to use that rewards you for taking the time to learn how to use her properly and any investment you put into her.

For a bit of important context for those who haven’t played the hack, EotF is a rouguelite take on the traditional FE formula that’s built on Lex Talionis, and there are three relevant changes for why Belle works so well. The first of which is that units are obtained via gacha, so any unit can be obtained at any point during a given run, including being deployed at the beginning of a run as one of your starting characters. This means that Belle (and any other unit) does not have a specified join time, and because she can be chosen as a starting character once you get her for the first time, she technically has perfect availability if the player picks her. Also, due to her utility, she can be useful regardless of when you get her because she doesn’t require a lot of investment to do well. The second is that HP does not recover naturally between maps, which will be relevant later, and finally, the game introduces a new weapon type: guns.

Guns are a type of weapon that can be used by any unit and do not have an associated weapon rank. They all have a cooldown (usually only being able to be used once every other turn turn) but there’s at least one method that I know of to reduce this. They also do true damage, but they don’t scale with Strength or Magic. Whatever their might is is how much damage they deal. However, they do work with Speed when it comes to doubling and the other stats when it comes to hit and crit rate. They fit solidly as a decent option to deal with enemies with high defense or resistance (and are pretty strong in the early game where enemy HP isn’t that high), but they admittedly fall off a little due to their inability to scale into the late game to match higher enemy HP thresholds. They can also work as a way to give certain units access to 1-2 range, since typically weapons are either only 1 range or only 2 range, similar to FEH. 1-2 range is extremely uncommon in EotF, so this is one of the only methods to get access to it consistently.

The reason I go into all of this is because Belle is a character built around guns. It’s the only weapon type she can use before she promotes (as she doesn’t have any standard weapon ranks before then), she starts with one, and she’s got two skills that revolve around them (one of them requiring you to upgrade her in the hub world). She’s also got 2 more skills that give her a lot of utility, which I’ll get into later.

Her first skill is Quickdraw, which allows her to use guns without using up her turn.

This is extremely good for burst damage, especially early on, as whenever she has a gun that’s off cooldown, she can use it for free, which can allow her to use several in one turn. This lets you potentially kill multiple enemies in one turn or do a significant amount of damage to a single target. She’s also minmaxed to use them, since her strength and magic are low but guns ignore those stats anyway so she doesn’t need them in the first place. Additionally, the fact that they do true damage allows her to use her high Spd to double most enemies and do flat damage to them, and her ability to use more than one allows her to do significant amounts of damage to any target, regardless of their Def and Res. She struggles a bit with high HP bosses, but she’s excellent for dealing with lower HP enemies, especially if you’re able to reduce the cooldown of her guns during your run (although this is definitely not required for her to perform well). You do need to pick up more guns for her, as she only starts with one (or two, if she’s upgraded), but it’s not a super high investment and you’re likely to find several of them over the course of a run. It is favoritism, but you also don’t get THAT many units in a single run of EotF, so if you have her you’re probably investing in her at least a little, and she doesn’t need that much love in order to pop off (especially compared to a few other units in the game). Additionally, once she promotes, she gets access to knives, which gives her a regular damaging option that she can use to do even more damage alongside her guns (and let her boost her guns’ damage with the debuffs knives can inflict, although it’s a bit awkward because you usually have to use the guns first).

The second skill is a lot simpler, it’s something you have to unlock, but it allows you to take one of her guns and make it into an ability for her.

What this does in practice is give her an extra inventory spot specifically for a gun of your choice. This is useful, as a unit’s inventory is split. Instead of 5 slots for whatever you want, units have 3 spots for weapons/active items, and 2 for passive accessories. This means that instead of 3 guns, she can potentially have up to 4, which further boosts her damage potential. Alternatively, this also frees up a slot for an active item, as several of them are very good and she also has synergy with them.

This synergy is her third skill: Bombmaker.

Basically, she can use the skill once per map as an action, which gives her a component. When she uses the skill with 3 components, she gives the player a consumable, giving the player 3 random options to choose from (the pool seems to be limited to attack items though, healing items like vulneraries will not show up). In practice, this skill’s effect is that every 4 maps, she gives you one consumable. These are typically very utility-focused, inflicting debuffs on enemies. This combines with her starting accessory: the Potion Belt.

It basically takes any consumable items a unit has at the end of the map and puts it into the belt, essentially putting any consumables in a single accessory slot rather than taking up spots where weapons could go. Granted, it’ll exist in those spots before the end of the map, but afterwards it’s all in a single slot, which allows Belle to slowly stockpile items through Bombmaker until they start becoming necessary in the mid/late game. Additionally, because guns are a free action for Belle, she can attack and use items in a single turn, which allows her to be both a damage dealer and a utility unit, especially since these items typically have more than one durability. She can do things like reduce enemy accuracy and increase the damage they take in combat, which is super helpful for the whole team.

Her final skill is probably my favorite: Trap Master.

She can use it twice a map, and each use creates two mines on the field, which will stop and damage any unit that steps on them. This includes allies, but it shows the location of where you placed them so you don’t have to remember, and typically you can put it in spots that won’t inconvenience you but will hurt enemies. This can be extremely useful, as one of the big quirks of EotF is that you do not automatically heal after combat. You have to either find a specific spot to heal or use the (very limited durability) healing items/staves. This makes enemy phase fairly dangerous, and sometimes the game forces you to put yourself in a position where you have to take multiple attacks at once during enemy phase. Belle can significantly reduce the danger of this, as enemies who step on her traps can’t attack, so she can allow your squishier units to safely bait enemies or protect yourself from reinforcements that catch you off guard. It’s pretty versatile and likely her most useful skill, and it’s one of the main reasons I really like using her. Additionally, while it does take an action, guns are free actions for her thanks to her first skill, so she’s able to attack AND defend at the same time.

In essence, thanks to her extremely varied skillset, Belle can essentially do it all. She’s definitely not a combat god, but she’s able to do pretty much anything you need her to with minimal investment. Even if you don’t invest into her skill with guns, she’s almost always useful at any point in a run due to her ability to make enemy phase significantly safer and her varied utility. She can do heavy burst damage to basically any enemy, attack multiple enemies in one turn, provide various useful items for free, and even protect your squishier units on enemy phase. There’s no situation where she’s not at least somewhat useful, and she does a lot more than just combat. Overall, she’s a great unit that always has a place on any team. She’s definitely not the strongest unit for combat, but she’s extremely good at it with enough investment and her other utility makes her useful even without investment and more than makes up for her lack of late-game scaling. Her damage isn’t always high, but it’s also extremely consistent, which makes her extremely good at dealing chip damage to tanky enemies if she doesn’t outright kill them, and she’s also capable of attacking multiple enemies in one turn which isn’t super common. She’s definitely complex but she returns the effort you put into learning how to use her in spades.

12 Likes

Bronwyn (FE Homecoming)

There are few words that accurately translate my adoration for this character, from how she interacts with the people around her, to narritive importance to the story she’s apart of. She’s a fish out of water, from living in a cage for a majority of her life to being suddenly swung away to travel to her homeland to succeed the throne, or to simply establish some kind of lasting peace, being the arranged marriage she was raised to participate in to bridge two opposing kingdoms together.

She’s so unfamiliar with everything around her, yet she pushes on regardless since she’s both needed and seeks to be useful to those who came for her for reasons she has to grasp in mere moments. She’s told that she’s of most importantance and that she needs to both realize this and take command of those who came to aid her retrieval, both a heavy burden and a sucker punch of responsibility to her, but she’s way too polite to question it at length so she accepts with a stuttering tone to boot.

On that same topic, her dialouge seems to be one of the most endearing things about her. Her stammers humanize her to me, something that usually would sound like an annoying or eye-rolling trait for a character, a main character in this case, to have and could be really detrimental to thier overall screentime. Yet Bronwyn succeeds in both making it feel natural while not making it it’s there for simple fluff. It’s clear she’s capable as both a leader and a tactiction, yet she’s inexperienced with this stuff and is learning more and more as she goes on through battle and several social situations, nothing beats learning from real time experience. When given the chance to express herself she comes off very forward, yet not rude, and gets her points across with little difficulty if not for the slight hesitation in some words. Other situations that challenge her are those that put her off-balance, things she’s either un-familiar handling or simply being talked over, stomped under-foot, and she can’t get her piece in without feeling like her words might come off as inturuptive to the conversation when in reality her words have the same input as the person she’s speaking to. She’s nice like that and some self-confidence would do fantastic for her.

In some texts, Bronwyn’s appearence is described as Chubby or fuller then most. Looking at her actual portrait spells it out perfectly, she looks REALLY non-threatening. I don’t know why, but she just makes me feel comfy??? Everytime I look at her portraint in-game I always grow a slight smile since she’s just staring off, not a evil thoight in her head as she simply exists with no malice, no hate, just a expression of neutrality, it’s some good stuff. Best example I could give is Kirby, a smiling, rounded design that evokes joy or some other positive emotion I can’t think of. I really like her design, it’s awsome.

Her promoted alt really amplifies these traits while introducing some more elements that Could clash with her overall theme, but don’t. Her new garb matches those before her from her Grandmother, Mother, and now her, a sinsiter outfit with a theme of dark-ish colors with a webbing decor around her head. It almost seems unatural on her compared to her predecessors, yet it’s that very same reason it works so well! Browyn is not her grandmother, a cruel, cold, powerful Ruler who brought the world to its knees, or her mother who shares the same overall look with her Grandma, yet lacks the power. Bronwyn is kind, idealistic, and wishes the best for her people while seeking the best solution in her mind to end a conflict she was thrusted into, changed drastically as she continued on, and found the resolve to keep going despite it all. Bronwyn might never live up to what her Grandmother was, and that’s a good thing, Bronwyn herself is more then enough to fill her own shoes and lead her people into a golden age where she rules with a warm heart and her people’s best interests in mind.

With all that said, GO PLAY FE HOMECOMING! It’s a fantastic experience and 12 chapters are already out and more is soon to come, just gotta wait for it.

Need something good to munch on in those free hours? Play this dang game with this fantastic main character, it’ll be something worth anyone’s while. Parrhesia cooked with this one.

12 Likes

Fire Emblem is an inherently ensemble cast-focused game by its fundamental nature. The gameplay makes it difficult to center the story around one individual character without either completely warping game balance around them or keeping deployment slots extremely low. Sure, an individual unit’s writing might be really interesting or compelling, but at the end of the day they are just one tool in your belt of 7-15 that will always be at the forefront of the spotlight. In the greater scheme, that one shining star will rarely if ever be representative of the hack’s gameplay as a whole, nor how fun the game is to actually play. This is a big part of why I think overall cast cohesion and quality is so vital in FEs—a cast that feels good all around will be a lot stronger and more satisfying to play in the SRPG medium compared to one or two all-star characters carrying a bunch of duds on their shoulders.

So seeing a hack whose centerpoint is one amazing unit is generally unheard of, right? Well, yes. But at the same time there’s one unit I can think of that gets pretty damn close¹.

Alvaro (Embers Entwined)

Embers Entwined is what I would call a pure test of patience and a filter for those who quit hacks early. Others recommended it to me citing that the writing was good and there were some cool villains—and I was uncertain at first. But when I finally dipped my feet in and started going through the chapters, my uncertainty shifted into disbelief.

Out of the first nine chapters of Embers Entwined, I’d say there were only two that I actually enjoyed: Chapter 3 and Chapter 6. Even then, Chapter 6 is in a weird space where I didn’t enjoy it on my first go-around until the very end of it (though I found a lot more appreciation for it on a rerun). But as a whole, the first half of Embers Entwined is aggressively unmemorable and boring. Plot points are cluttered, maps feel fillerish and pointless, and there isn’t really any cohesive through line for the chapters to follow. It’s just a huge ugly mess all around.

Now, I don’t think that a hack’s early chapters are necessarily a good representation of their quality, especially when the story needs to set things up before it can actually do interesting stuff with it. I can’t think of a single hack earlygame that I found gripping outside of Shackled Power—hell, DLATMOL is one of my #1 favorite hacks ever and I didn’t get hooked on it until Chapter 10 on my first go. So it takes a hell of a lot for me to drop a hack if its story sucks early on.

And after the first nine chapters of EE, I was definitely kind of at the end of my patience and wanted to drop it. There was just so little to grasp onto, and it felt like the hack was going nowhere. I guess there was a scene where Petra leaves a village to burn after murdering her childhood friend, and this plot about the main villain Forben being connected to Liam and studying necromancy and then getting killed by another villain who wants to become God, and Liam’s and Forben’s wise tutor actually being WOOOO EVIL, and Diego’s father dying but his mom is still alive out there somewhere, and this new plot thread about a villain called the Lord of Dance that just came out… but these elements didn’t come together to create a comprehensible picture in the slightest.

And then came Chapter 10

Chapter 10 starts right after Diego and the gang’s first encounter with the Lord of Dance’s servants. An emissary of the Lord of Dance contacts the group asking to parley, and this is where the Lord of Dance first shows his face. Turns out he’s a dead man brought back to life—not quite necromancy, but rather through absorbing the souls of the dead. He captures Diego’s mom and uses her as leverage over the party: he wants to make another specimen like him, but needs one more soul to do so, so he demands that the party either hand over one of their own to be that soul, or he’ll use Diego’s mom instead.

But then an unexpected savior arrives: Diego’s father Alvaro, thought to be dead since Chapter 3. The Lord of Dance is thrown completely off guard by this and retreats deeper into his hideout, and the map begins for real.

Alvaro himself joins the party on turn 1, and his stats are… rather unimpressive for a prepromote, to say the least. He can hit hard with magic and that’s just about it. All things considered, on paper he seems a bit underwhelming…

…until you select him and see what his action menu looks like.

Alvaro’s unique Necromancy command allows him to summon, but it’s not quite like the phantom-summoning that you might be used to in FE8. Rather, he can summon dead bosses from previous chapters to the field, and they join your party as blue units to bolster your army.

Each boss has a Resistance cost to summon, and Alvaro loses Resistance whenever he calls down a boss. You can have as many bosses on the field as you have Resistance to call them—and while Alvaro’s initial Resistance can only handle two, maybe three bosses at a time, you get enough Talismans (including one in Chapter 10) that you can easily upgrade his cap so he can handle more corpses.

As for the bosses themselves, while they have fixed stats and are usually below the curve of your units’ current power, they still have some pretty distinct utility regardless. Beatrix has an extremely high Res and Luna so she can easily magetank, and Hellwolf has unique ranged utility that no other unit can match for quite a while until the first Arbalest drops. Ephesio and Blake have the most well-rounded statline of the bunch, being comparable to the weaker members of your currently deployed units, and while Burnie is the worst of them he essentially functions as a mini Alvaro who can provide magic chip damage.

What this means is that deploying Alvaro is essentially deploying three or four auxiliary units that might not be able to handle difficult situations on their own, but can easily turn the tides either through their combined power or through supporting your main units in pivotal scenarios. It means Alvaro has a significantly wider breadth of influence on a map compared to most units in FE; through his necromancy he can be in multiple places on the map at once in a support position.

I am not kidding when I say that Alvaro’s appearance led to a drastic spike in my enjoyment of the gameplay. I mentioned before that cast cohesion is something that’s really important to me, and EE really lacks that as a whole. But Alvaro is well-written enough that he’s more fun to play than any other unit in the game, and while he often can’t stand on his own or solo entire sides of the map with his corpses, he’s still impactful enough on maps that he makes every map in the game more fun from that point on. While EE’s quality goes up past this point, there are still a few dud maps—but I still found those maps fun and engaging to play because of how influential Alvaro was on each of them.

Necromancy is also extremely interesting from a story vacuum, too. Sure, you see deadlords all the time in FE, but rarely are they sentient. In bringing the bosses back to life, Alvaro opens the doors for a ton of cool interactions that you almost never get to see in other FE games. Rarely do you get to see how dead earlygame bosses would react to their deaths or the circumstances that follow: Petra’s childhood friend gets a chance to confront her for abandoning her village, for one. And this kind of characterization really goes a long way for the bosses. Some of them are definitely more comic relief than others, but I think all their future dialogues do a lot in helping make the world and characters feel a bit more realized and fleshed out.

Alvaro is also singlehandedly responsible for completely changing the outcome of Embers Entwined—his presence and Chapter 10 simultaneously answers a bunch of questions while presenting other new ones (why does he have a talk conversation with Liam, a character who he practically never interacts with before dying, but not his own son?). Some of these questions are answered by the end of Chapter 10, and all of them draw together the various open plot threads of the first nine chapters in a way that retroactively makes them feel a lot less like pointless clutter (as much as you can in a teleshack, anyways). Through Alvaro, Chapter 10 is where Embers Entwined finally begins to find a distinct through line for its story, and as a result the second half’s chapters are all generally stronger than the first half because that through line has been established clearly. And Alvaro himself gets cool stuff later too, including an especially memorable scene that made me audibly gasp with excitement when I first saw it.

In some ways, this doubles as a chapter effortpost about EE10, huh. whoops

Embers Entwined is a really bumpy experience with some high highs and low lows—and Chapter 10 is probably its highest high, to the point where it’s one of my favorite chapters in any romhack. But despite its many issues I still recommend it for the utterly unique whiplash experience of “aggressively boring first half → HOLY SHIT I LOVE THIS”. Alvaro, despite his unassuming initial impression as lord’s not-so-dead dad with okayish stats, is unironically the cornerstone of the game in a way that other “one single unit with banger writing and gameplay” hacks struggle to match. He is an essential ingredient to EE’s identity as a hack, as he singlehandedly reshapes the game’s bland first half and completely redirects the trajectory of the hack. And best of all, he enables lots of fun minor boss interactions… and anyone who knows me knows I adore those to pieces.

19 Likes

Hi welcome back I’m doing another one of these, this time for The Unbroken Thread. I picked up the hack on a whim, and it changes a lot of the FE formula while still maintaining the same general vibe. One unit immediately caught my eye (mostly due to me liking his design), the Jagen of this game: Luther.

Luther is really, really interesting in my opinion because he’s sort of a natural teacher of a lot of the game’s unique mechanics. First of all, Str, Mag, Def, and Res are all either removed or completely reworked, so all damage is true damage outside of having very specific skills that give you damage reduction (Luther’s starting skill, Armored Blow, being one of them, reducing damage taken by 2 when he initiates). This means that a lot of Luther’s stats go into his health, so he can still function as a tanky member of the army. However, he doesn’t actually hit that hard, doing either similar damage to the rest of your army or much worse. However, his personal weapon heavily interacts with one of the game’s main mechanics: stagger.

Basically, the game introduces a second HP bar called Poise. When your poise hits zero, you become staggered.


While staggered, the next hit you take is a guaranteed critical hit and has a much higher hit rate (though it is possible to miss if the opponent’s accuracy is really bad). Alternatively, if you don’t take another hit, you instead can’t act until your next turn. Luther’s main claim to fame is being one of the premier stagger damage dealers, as he has a Prf that does an ungodly amount of it (listed as Stg in the weapon stats).

Stagger damage is also influenced by the weapon triangle, so you’ve basically got a guy that can likely stagger lance enemies in one attack, and also probably a lot of archers, mages, and other similarly frail units. This allows one of your other units to swoop in and get a guaranteed crit, which will likely kill the opponent. This allows Luther to set up kills for other units without taking any EXP you don’t want him getting, since typically he’s the one attacking first.

As a result, Luther maintains relevance for a large part of the game as long as a stagger damage dealer is a role you want for the map. He does fall off, though, because his growths are basically nonexistant.


These are his stats at level 12 (I’ve been investing in him), and he has not naturally leveled up Con a single time. I used an item that increases it when held and a stat booster and the issue is that Con is pretty necessary in order to scale. Higher level weapons require a high Con stat before you can start using them, and forging weapons further increases the Con requirement, which means that unless you heavily invest in him with stat boosters, he’s going to perform about the same at every point in the game, which is admittedly a little disappointing.

One major thing he gets later in the game, though, is a personal skill from his personal paralogue. The map itself gives you several nice items, including a Master Seal (which are fairly uncommon), but the final reward is something that helps Luther lean further into his role as a stagger bot:


HP is one of the only stats that Luther actually tends to level, so he’s likely to have more HP than almost every enemy in the game when he’s at 100% HP. This lets him do almost 20 or more stagger damage in a single hit which can be allow you to take out enemies or at least put them out of commission for a turn. He struggles heavily against sword units, but he performs solidly against pretty much everyone else, and also he’s one of the only units that can semi-reliably tank during enemy phase, as he has high enough HP and Poise to not immediately die after taking more than 2 attacks in one turn. He’s always at least semi-viable, and while his scaling is non-existant, his role is fairly valuable and not one that many other characters that I’ve seen can match.

For some other considerations, I’m going to discuss some extra investment that he makes particularly good use of. First of all, you get access to this skill, Agile Fighter, fairly early:


While not really necessary to give him, I’d argue that Luther is one of the best users of it. As shown earlier, his Dex is pretty damn high, and his Spd is awful. Not many units have a similar stat profile (most high dex units also have high speed), and this allows him to both take less doubles and double a lot himself if you give him another weapon (since his Prf weighs him down by a LOT). Basically, he’s one of the best candidates for this skill, since there’s not many characters that have good dex and also don’t have a workable speed stat.

Another thing you can potentially do (which I’m considering but haven’t yet committed to) is to make him your dancer. Similarly to FE3H, this game lets you choose your dancer, but instead of making it your class, it is instead a teachable skill (shown on Luther just to demonstrate but I haven’t actually committed to it yet):


As you can see, he’s still a Great Knight with 7 Mov, but can also dance. This is impactful because not a lot of units are mounted in this game, so Luther has some of the most consistent movement in the game. So far, I’ve only seen one flier, and while he would also likely be a good candidate to be a dancer on the merit of being a flier and having more movement, he is way more geared towards player phase combat and are prone to getting staggered, so he may struggle to make good use of the skill. Luther, on the other hand, doesn’t always have turns where he can do much, and he’s still fairly mobile (even if he’s not a flier). Additionally, his high HP and Poise allows him to take a lot of hits and be directly in the middle of the action without needing to worry as much about getting nuked from orbit like most dancers. It’s definitely not something unique, but it’s something to consider that can help him maintain relevancy after the party starts getting better weapons that he’s not able to use.

Overall, I really like Luther. He’s definitely not the best unit in the game, but he’s incredible early on, can maintain relevancy for a pretty long period of the game due to his specialization, and he can make use of several pieces of investment if you want to keep him relevant in the long term. Also, I just really like his design tbh, haha

9 Likes

López (Hag in White)

“Now, RandomWizard,” I hear you saying, “Hag in White (which is a very cool and cool hack that everyone should play) just released like thirty seconds ago. How do you have a whole effortpost written up about it already?” The answer there is that I got a pre-release patch, already beat the hack as of posting this, and fell in love with López along the way. I wrote this beforehand, too.

Anyway, onto what y’all actually came here for.


Maybe the real Hag in White was the friends we made along the way.

The first couple chapters of Hag in White, as with so many other FE games, pit our plucky heroes against a gang of bandits. Predictably, this goes poorly for the bandits, and our heroes throw the lot of them in jail. Soon afterwards, though, the party has to break out of that very same jail, and can recruit the first three maps’ bandit bosses along the way - including the subject of our discussion today.

Even before López joins, he has a notable presence in the story. Of the three named members of Begoña’s gang, he’s very clearly the runt of the litter. You don’t even need to fight him in Chapter 1 - just a few threatening words from the main character are enough to get him to surrender. Still, he’s got that Fire Emblem early-game bandit dawg in him, with an evil laugh, a face only a mother could love, and a squad of weak brigands under his command against which you can learn the ropes of the game.

At first glance, the playable version of López really doesn’t look like much. His bases and growths are frankly abysmal, and his starting Poison Sword can barely damage even the weakest of foes. He looks like the sort of unit who you only use for lockpicking, and bench immediately once you stop seeing doors and chests or once a better thief comes along. And I have to imagine that for a lot of players, he will be - that is, unless they see the potential he has to contribute to the team.

Very few units in Hag in White have personal skills - even relatively minor ones, like the main lord having Acrobat, are very much unit-defining traits. There are some class skills, but they tend not to be incredibly impactful (though we’ll touch on that later). López, however, begins the game with a whopping three skills. One is completely useless, and one is just Locktouch, but the third one on the list is a neat little thing called Despoil.


I feel like Stink is self-explanatory.

Despoil is, really, the highlight of López’s kit. At first glance, 150 gold per kill is almost comically little - that’s not even enough to buy an iron weapon! The thing is, though, that it’s 150 gold for each kill, guaranteed. Once López gets a few levels, or the rank to use a better weapon, he can start securing finishing blows (or even one-rounds against frail enemies) relatively easily, and rack up massive quantities of Coins with it. Even moderate usage of López can end up securing over 1,000 extra gold on each and every chapter.

Those Coins are even more valuable than they sound, too. Money in Hag in White is fairly scarce, with gem rewards throughout the campaign being rare and shops stocking lots of good gear. Having López grease your economic wheels lets you afford a lot of stronger equipment in general, thus strengthening your entire team. In combination with that, you can recruit a unit with Bargain fairly early on (who deserves an effortpost of his own, really), so López’s plunder can go twice as far as it initially looks.

The nice thing about that, too, is that Despoil and López’s combat feed into each other. Using Despoil to get Coins requires you to get kills with López; as such, he’ll likely be getting a lot of experience points, and thus leveling up to increase his stats and get better at combat. And he needs that better combat to use Despoil in the first place, so you’re incentivized to make sure he’s contributing to combat to be worth the deploy slot.

Hag in White has a unique class tree, where a lot of classes have strange branches or weapon types they wouldn’t normally get. Warriors can use anima tomes, for instance, and the two types of armor knight both have magic access by default. As a Thief (the only unpromoted Thief in the game, even), López’s options are Assassin and Artificer. You can get pre-promoted units of both classes later on - plus, dark mages also get Artificer as a branch - so you won’t be losing out on a class for your endgame team based on López alone.

Let’s be honest - there’s no way you’re promoting López to Artificer (outside of comedy purposes). He has no real use for dark magic or Poison Strike, since he wants to be the one getting kills. Assassin, by contrast, gives him better offensive stats, access to bows for taking out flyers and attacking at range, the Assassinate skill to take advantage of his great Speed and increase his offensive power, and an additional point of movement. The last is especially important because maps in Hag in White tend to be pretty big, and enemies tend to start far away from you on Turn 1 - extra movement is great for closing the gap and picking off the enemy’s first wave.

Promoting to Assassin is a powerful payoff for anyone putting in the effort to train López. If you gave him enough experience points to reach that Master Seal, he’ll pay you back by no longer being dependent on your team. Other units don’t need to set up kills for López anymore. Now, he’s the one getting one-round kills to clear a path for them. It makes sense narratively, too - where he began as a lowly crook who was helpless on his own, he’s learned to stand up for himself and rely on those around him to make his own performance even stronger.

On top of all that, López has the power of friendship on his side! Remember the trio of bandit bosses I mentioned earlier? Well, all of them join, and they have some very potent support ranks with each other. If you’re deploying Fango or Begoña (both solid units in their own right), then López being nearby will make them stronger. In turn, they make López stronger, too - and thus help him secure kills to activate Despoil and grow in power. Everyone wins! (Except for the enemies.)

Supports aren’t the only benefit López gets from his bandit buddies, though. The three of them also have access to a powerful Triangle Attack. Positioning with Fango and Begoña can be difficult, since they’re both 1-range offensive powerhouses in their own right. If they’re willing to set up for López, though, then he gets a whole new tool in his arsenal. Early on, the automatic critical hit from the Triangle Attack lets López deal heavy damage to foes he’d otherwise barely scratch, opening up new avenues for triggering Despoil. A trained lategame López, though? When he’s getting kills even before allies come into play? There, the power boost of a Triangle Attack can make him into a monster.

Hag in White’s whole cast is full of incredible characters and units - I could just as easily write a whole post about Apate or Polonius or Vasiliki - but López in particular sticks out as perhaps my favorite. His unique gameplay utility and hilarious narrative role combine into making this unassuming little early-game Thief a deeply compelling unit and character.

Part of what makes López so great is his training arc. For a player willing to look past his bases, his portrait, and his terrible smell, they can watch him grow over the course of the campaign, from a helpless thief rifling through the pockets of slain jail guards to a master swordsman who’s… still rifling through pockets, but now those of the game’s main antagonists and the strongest warriors in the land.

image
I’d laugh were it not true.

I’ve never quite known how to end things when writing - my past posts in this thread have had a tidy concluding paragraph, but that doesn’t seem quite right here. Perhaps I’ll leave you all in the same way López leaves his enemies:

23 Likes

Fructuoso (Hag in White)

Meet my friend, Fructuoso! He’s going to be with me for a good, long time–


Shit.

Let’s rewind.

So a few chapters into Hag, you wind up at a roadside stop. For frankly incredible reasons, you wind up hiring a mercenary, with a choice of three. Of these, the correct choice is Fructuoso, henceforth ‘Fructi’.

He is a law-abiding citizen trying to make some coin. But, wait! you point out. His story is, in fact, extremely flimsy! He is clearly a brigand! Oh, you got me. But he is at least trying to make a new start, cosplaying as a knight even if he doesn’t quite fit the part.

Even his initial pitch isn’t the most convincing. I mean, he does open with a lie (albeit a laughably shitty one), and he admits his main motivation is that it’s really hard to find work as a former brigand. But over the course of the game, he really will start to live up to his newfound ideals, and finds a place for himself in the company. If you’ll give him a chance, he’ll take it with both hands.

And this dovetails perfectly with his design.

Fructuoso arrives with this statline and two skills. The first is Provoke. Provoke is 100% reliable. Enemies will ALWAYS go for him if they can, passing up lethal blows just to deck him in the face. Now units like this are notoriously very powerful, as you’d imagine. Harold made Deity Device’s enemy waves approachable at times.

The second is that his poorly-fitting armour falls apart under the slightest pressure, and at the end of every combat, he takes 4 damage. It won’t kill him, but unlike FEH Fury, it has no benefits. It’s just there as a check.

And his speed is poor – though he won’t generally be doubled, and you can get him a Wary Fighter item down the track – and his resistance is, notably, fucking horrific. This is not a guy who can take on enemy waves by himself. This is a guy who can peel off just a guy or two from the front, sending them on a snipe hunt. When it comes to physical units – or, hell, one mage at a time – he can take the heat.

Yes! THAT TLP anim!

So Fructi walked into the team and never left. He wasn’t a slouch or a gimmick unit, either. His strength and skill are high, and he does a decent job just slugging it out with enemies. He feels like a real unit, not just a gimmick. And it fits in with Hag’s unit design philosophy. You get a lot of units who offer support as part of their toolkit; Lopez, above, of course, being a prime example. And, because he has very clear limitations, he doesn’t warp the game around him. He just makes some engagements easier.

So long as you’re very, very sure of your calculations.

Fructuoso in his natural HP habitat.

I played Hag as an ironman run, which it was perfectly suited to. I missed some lines but found others. So, Fructi was constantly walking a tightrope. He could hook one, two, sometimes even three guys off the front, but if the damage stacked up, he was fucked.

He had a few narrow escapes, but when I was caught in a pincer attack, I memory holed a sage. You will note his resistance is fucking dogshit; with the exception of a wyvern knight, every other unit I fielded was in double digit Res, usually by a distance. Pegasi chipped him down, just as I planned… then the sage finished him off.

Still, without his help, I’m sure far, far more would have died. He might not have reached his epilogue. I might not have seen a punchy little paragraph extolling his new life. But he was clear about what he sought. He wanted redemption. I think he found it.

15 Likes

Kairos (Hag In White)

Kairos joins you in chapter 1 of Hag in White at the start of turn 2, from the church. He automatically has a conversation with Soter, who is near his starting position.

Soter protests that the good priest is joining them in combat, for it would be a sin to allow harm to come to a man of god. Kairos insists that it’s his own sin to bear. He could not be dissuaded. He joins you.

Typically, you’d expect the priest to be a healer. This is Hag in White, however, and that’d be against the premise. Perhaps, a mage?

Well, not quite.

Nah, a Myrmidon.

Well, ok, that’s not exactly accurate, they’re rebranded as “Magic Blade” in this game and are often hybrid attackers, but, at this stage, he’ll be using only swords.

Here’s his bases, and they’re distributed fairly close to how he grows–fast as hell, solid magic, and quite a bit better res than def. With these bases, he immediately ORKOs the enemies close to his start on Hard Mode for a fantastic first showing.

In the following chapter, Kyra expresses her surprise at Kairos fighting and Kairos’s perfectly happy to see more action. For a priest, he sure is fight happy–but that isn’t all there is to his character. Kairos is a man who subverts many expectations and has a wide range of interactions with various members of the cast. On occasion, he’d refer to himself as a ‘bad priest’, though not particularly seriously, given his tendencies to behave in ways priest often are not meant to, but his actions prove that he’s the best kind of priest. I won’t get into too much detail, because I want you to read his dialogue for yourself but, everything from him is a gem.

Combat-wise, Kairos’s offense is absolute top notch in Hag, and has incredible staying power even when he lowrolls his stats. Mine turned out really well, but many others during playtesting who got below-average Kairoses, or even on 0%, Kairos had remarkable staying power with little to no stat ups on his Fire Brand combat. You don’t have to be too stingy with it either–another one drops pretty soon after his join time.

While his offense is undisputedly stellar, he’s not a unit without drawbacks–or I wouldn’t be here talking about his combat nuances if he’s just as simple as hold forward and win. He does make you win! But he’s quite physically squishy. You do have to be careful with some of his matchups early on–it’s not common for him to get oneshot, but it can sometimes happen. Fortunately, things that can oneshot him are all melee-only weapons, so check your positioning and it should be no real issue. Magic swords also don’t build sword rank at ranged, so to reach enough rank for the higher tier magic swords and Lancesplitter later on, he should attack at melee range or with physical swords when appropriate. This gives a layer of complexity in optimizing his positioning and weapon choice for each given combat, rather than spam Fire Brand at ranged as the solution to everything. Fire Brand isn’t terribly expensive at 950 a pop, but 950 isn’t trivial earlier on, so he really appreciates an investment into $LOPEZ outlined by RandomWizard’s post above.

Kairos promotes into Spellsword or Swordmaster.

Spellsword is a nobrainer good option–since Kairos is mag > str, it gives him access to tomes and ends his dependence on magic swords. He still has access to swords anyway, and if you did build his sword rank, he’ll have access to the fun higher level swords. Opportunist gives him additional damage if the enemy can’t hit back, and with tome access, this is pretty common.

But, I do think Kairos is one of the cases where both promo options have value and it’s less skewed than it may first appear.

Because I went Swordmaster myself.

Part of the reason is that I think Kairos would have wanted to be promoted to Swordmaster, from his characterization PoV. The stars did align, and I rolled well on his strength, so that made SM quite a bit more enticing than if I had lowrolled, since it wasn’t painful to use physical swords with him. As I used him more in SM, however, I did notice a pattern of play I tend to do with him.

So Hag uses a reduced avoid formula, and player avo numbers on aggregate aren’t super high, but swordmaster on terrain against a berserker is still reasonably reliable. Between higher con, promo bonuses, and cap, Kairos reaches more reliable avo numbers as SM than as Spellblade, especially since he does need to use a sword for the weapon triangle advantage.

Now Kairos gets pretty solid Res. Pure waters are an excellent item to have in this game in general due to limited healing, and Magic pods are not uncommon. A strat I often did in Hag was have Kairos sit in a forest and pop a pure water in the range of a berserker and some other spellswords, and with one robe he can tank them all because the spellblades do little to no damage to him in this configuration. He doesn’t always dodge the Zerk, but he won’t die if the zerk does connect, and in most cases he’ll dodge, and that means Apate’s healing can go to someone else instead of him. So despite how frail he looks, I’ve successfully used him in a lot of enemy phase strats.


So anyway, endgame Kairos. This is with 2 robes, but one of the robes is so lategame I just gave it to him as a flex more than anything. He also ate a dracoshield but mine is notably horrendously def-screwed. His defense isn’t good on average but mine is actually “levelled once the entire 17/20 I’ve used him for” and despite that, I could use this to strategically push lines based on enemy composition.

Extremely fun unit, wonderfully written character.

Anyway I drew fanart I think that’s pretty effort


something something using fire brand must get hot, right

25 Likes

It’s been 3 days and nobody has written a lengthy recommendation for the Hag in White. Frankly I’m disappointed. Time to fill that gap here. Now, then:

Tiresias (Hag in White)


When I play Fire Emblem, staff utility is an extended game of chicken. In games with reclassing and mixed offense like Fates and Engage, it’s a rush to get my staffers out of healing roles and into Malig Knight/Mage Knight as fast as humanly possible. And even in games where reclassing doesn’t exist or offensive magic and healing comes as a set, I find ways to minimize staff usage as much as I can.

My dislike of staffers comes from a few different places:

  1. It’s very difficult to differentiate staff units. The only stats that matter for staff utility are magic, staff rank, and movement, and sometimes those differences aren’t meaningful. Even a middling-magic staffer can coast off the high might of Mend, and high staff rank isn’t as impressive as it looks if status/positioning staves have poor availability.
  2. Staves are usually boring. They heal, higher rank staves heal more. The staves with powerful effects like the aforementioned status/positioning staves are often so restricted in availability that the player can almost never take advantage of having units with a high staff rank. Torch and Unlock are practical jokes on the hacker by taking up two precious item slots. Barrier is the most interesting one in the roster in my opinion, and I wish staff design leaned into that niche more.
  3. Combat is more satisfying than staffing. Combat will almost always give more exp per action than staffing, letting healers get outpaced in efficient play (and even non-efficient play!). For something more subjective, the feeling of training up a combat unit to the point of hitting one-round thresholds will always be better to me than ranking up in staves to heal an ally better.

It’s not impossible for me to like staff units - two of my favorite hack units are Wren Do5 and Avan TMGC - but my enjoyment of them is completely divorced from their staff utility. I had kind of resigned myself to that being the high water mark for staff units in hacks since coding new staff effects is difficult and few hackers want to experiment with hybrid staff classes.

Then Hag came around and smacked me across the face. “Oh, you find staffers boring and use them as little as possible in favor of offensive magic? Here’s Apate. Have fun!”

There’s a lot to say about Hag’s central conceit of one staff user, but this effortpost isn’t about Apate. This effortpost is about when it breaks that conceit.




Everyone, meet Tiresias. He shows up on turn 1 of Chapter 16 with stats like this. This is when the vast majority of your army should be promoted or right at level 20, by the way. His abysmal bases and ranks alongside Paragon and Discipline firmly place him as Hag’s Est.

And of course, there’s the elephant in the weapon ranks.

It cannot be overstated how much Tiresias’s presence greases your action economy. In earlier chapters if a unit got injured they’d have to rely on Apate for a bailout or chug a vulnerary. But Apate can’t be everywhere at once and vulneraries are weak and expensive, leading to many turns where I had to take a strong combat unit out of the action to heal themselves or cower in the backline queuing up for Apate’s service. Tiresias, at base, offers a free heal that’s stronger than a vulnerary (6 Mag + 7 mt from the Makeshift Rod) and doesn’t consume the target’s action. Technically this is what all staff units do, but it wasn’t until Tiresias (and Apate, obviously) that made me aware of just how much momentum they provide even when using basic heals.

A lot of Hag’s maps involve a split army, and the side without Apate is always going to be noticeably much sluggish than the one who can take advantage of her healing. Having Tiresias around to cover Apate’s blind spots, even if he is unilaterally worse than her, is so immensely useful and his presence in the roster is basically uncontested even for those that dislike raising Ests.

So that’s that, then. My feeling at seeing Tiresias and using him throughout the mid-lategame of Hag made me finally appreciate the importance of staff utility and how healing can be just as hype as combat in the right contexts. We can all go home now.

Oh, you thought I was done?

I’M JUST GETTING STARTED.

So, as much as I just praised the way Tiresias’s staff access provides him exclusive utility and how his presence is a godsend for the hack’s action economy, I also think it’s the least interesting thing about him.

Tiresias has a very unique stat spread. As an Est with Paragon, most of his oomph comes from his growths, which are unimpressive at a glance. 50% Magic and 45% Speed are high, but it will take a long time to grow out of his poor bases. 15% Resistance is outright horrendous, especially in a campaign like Hag’s where enemy magic users are extremely common. 35% Strength and 30% Defense are, while low in absolute terms, very high for what’s supposed to be a magical unit. His 0% Skill growth speaks for itself.

These odd growths interact with his class set in interesting ways. He can promote to either Bishop or General: Bishop grants +1 movement, crit boost, and a lot of Light and Staff exp; General grants Reposition, Canto+, Lance and Axe access, and enormous bonuses to physical stats. There are so many benefits and drawbacks to each choice with different ways to patch up their weaknesses and optimize their strengths.

Let’s start with Bishop. Bishop is the more traditional of the two choices, doubling down on Tiresias’s staff utility. He gains a huge boost to magic, allowing him to heal more even with the Makeshift Rod or Heal, and the extra point of movement lets him maneuver adjacent to allies to heal them more easily.

The main weakness of Bishop is its lack of offense. 4 magic on promo, while amazing on paper, isn’t quite enough to make up for the low might of Light tomes. +15 crit, similarly, isn’t accomplishing much with 0 skill.

However, there are ways to patch up this weakness in offense. High-ranked Light magic has innate crit and Tiresias’s Dark affinity gives 2.5 crit per level, so he can crit stack with support partners while lacking any skill.

Then there’s General. General is monstrous. The boosts to physical stats turn him into a reliable frontliner and gaining access to new weapon types lets him cast off the shackles of Light magic. Canto+ and Reposition open up another dimension of movement for him while keeping the low movement identity of the class.

Despite all these shiny new toys, General has weaknesses that Bishop lacks. 5 movement hurts, especially when he has to get adjacent to an ally to heal them, and less magic and staff rank on promo means he’ll be worse at it than if he took Bishop. The addition of new weapon types also means that Tiresias no longer has the crutch of Light’s sky-high hit rates.

But just like there are ways to fix Bishop’s lacking offense, you can fix General’s horrid hit rates. Tiresias comes with a pre-built A support with a unit named Wulfric. Both of their affinities provide hit, so Tiresias can gain +15 hit just by being within 3 spaces of Wulfric. Wulfric is also an excellent unit in his own right who excels at being on the front lines, which synergizes even better with this choice of promotion for Tiresias.

Hm. A pre-built support, huh?

I’m going to close this writeup with praising Tiresias’s characterization, as I find it just as exceptional as his gameplay.

Even though Tiresias is recruited at the start of Chapter 16, he’s been present in the story for a good while by that point, albeit in a background role. He first appears in a cutscene in Chapter 5 and several aspects of his character become apparent almost immediately.




First of all, he’s blind! Disabled characters are a rarity in Fire Emblem, and including visible disabilities in hacks is especially difficult due to unique asset requirements. Tiresias can luckily share the standard Bishop animations, but his blindness is excellently shown in his portrait’s lack of pupils (and 0 skill as a unit! I love ludonarrative consonance). His blindness is handled deftly within the narrative as well: in this one introductory cutscene he’s shown to rely on Wulfric to help him navigate his surroundings via touch, a routine Wulfric seems intimately familiar with.

Second of all, he’s gay! Yeah there’s no beating around the bush that Tiresias and Wulfric are in a romantic relationship with each other. They’ve been together for some time now by the start of Hag’s story (represented by their pre-built A support) and consistently characterized as extremely devoted to each other. Rubenio lampshades this a bit with Tiresias’s line in the convo, but I believe it coming from Wulfric.

I’m not going to harp on this too much, but having gay disabled representation in hacks is extremely meaningful to me. I adore Tiresias and Wulfric dearly and every interaction between them is so wonderfully written. I did cry when writing this, you all should know.

Even outside of his blindness and relationship with Wulfric, Tiresias is an extremely strong character. Wulfric is recruited into the player’s army in Chapter 7 while Tiresias hangs back at the base camp. He’ll have something new to say every chapter, sometimes reminiscing with Wulfric, sometimes furthering his research into Light magic, and sometimes enthusiastically discussing the finer details of weaponry with the blacksmith Hestia.

Underlying each of these interactions is a deep sense of tranquility, curiosity, and zest for life. The world of Hag is deeply melancholy: Tartaros is oppressed by a corrupt theocracy, Glamorgan is ruled by scheming margraves, and the little guys are just trying to get through each day one at a time. Nothing about the world is romantic to its inhabitants. Even the more outwardly chipper members of the army have a wrinkle to their happiness: Vasiliki fakes her optimism, Kairos masks his crisis of faith, Delilah delights in cruelty, and Alonso and Polonius retreat into a larger-than-life character. But sincere optimism pours out of Tiresias’s mouth in every conversation, and that optimism stands out like a shining beacon.

Hence why Tiresias choosing to join the army at the lowest point in the story is such an effective choice. I won’t spoil the details here, but up until this point Tiresias had wanted to join the fight but acquiesced to everyone else’s requests that he stay safe at camp. Him finally choosing to take a stand marks a tonal turning point in Hag, and I think it works wonders.

I’ve spoken long enough about Hag without a call to action. If you haven’t played it yet, play it. No matter what your taste in hacks is, if you like hacks you’re going to like Hag. Thank you so much for reading.

16 Likes

Effortposts Around Units We Like (From Hag In White)

10 Likes

And now I, too, shall take this opportunity to talk about my favorite unit in Hag in White, Phe-

Okay, not really. At risk of having internet tomatoes thrown at me for a combo breaker, I want to give a shout out to a unit from what I was playing up until this week hit me with a wombo combo of Todd Howard getting me to buy games again and trying a shiny new thing everyone’s talking about. It’s a project I intend to return to soon yet left off on a good point for this post since while the story was ramping towards its finale, the unit I wish to talk about had a nice moment in the story and was particularly useful the past few chapters which had been a bit stressful for reasons I’ll go into with a spoiler warning ahead.

Without further ado, lemme introduce Danielle (Illuminated).

Yeah, she’s a bit different. Or rather, indifferent.

And that’s part of why I’m here to Stan her. Illuminated is also a bit different, in its case it uses FE more as an engine to be an SRPG around a core cast that grows in size and develops over time. It’s not until past Chapter 10 or so that you’re using above 10 units across the cast. They’re all deployable on every map, and often have a line or two at least every other chapter or so within the main story, or a couple conversations in dedicated shop chapters that occur every 4-5 chapters like the one above.

Danielle is an early joiner amongst the cast. She’s also one of the few bulkier units you’ll get early on, with most of the cast being better at 2-range or not threatened at all on Lunatic. She’s a unit you can pick up at the same time as the party’s dedicated healer and thief (a neat combination, that) who I could just as easily give her own write up along with the game’s secondary protagonist. So why Danielle, then?

This was my midgame Danielle. She has 4 skills by then, and the first is deceptively good, giving her +3 Attack Speed so long as she’s carrying 3 items or less. For most of the game, she can easily make due with just a Steel Spear, a Javelin, and maybe something else or one of the game’s statbooster items you can hold onto to likely double most enemies even on Lunatic.

It’s a skill that has a beauty in simplicity, much like Danielle here, with her stone faced gaze and a head that’s in the clouds while some other people are asking themselves if they’re doing the right thing in the moment, and then she’s just like “Dude…these lances are heavy. Can I just stick to one?”

Anyway, you could theoretically just ignore this and load her up with five items anyway. For me, it does get kind of tedious to worry about shuffling through inventories and being efficient with my weapon uses so having a unit dedicated to not doing so is nice.

Then there’s reposition and rally strength, two good options for positioning or buffing in case of a dead turn or a good use case even if your Danielle turns out a bit stat screwed. And lastly Comraderie, which heals her for 20% of her hp any time she has 2 or more allies nearby her.

In a hack based around a tight cast, where early often there’s only 1 true healer that last one is very, very important. There’s not a single map where that free heal didn’t make a difference early on. And then when you get 10+ units its something that’s very easy to proc even as maps grow in size in turn.

Danielle’s 5th skill slot depends on her promotion. I never saw one with Halberdier beyond Axe access, but the two more likely choices would be between General (+1 Hit/Avo per turn up to +15 bonus / Swords,Axes,Bows access) and Dragoon (+20 Crit on initiation).

Now, I could certainly make a case for General.

But honestly…

With Danielle’s sky high skill stat, you’ll be seeing this often.

And The Spoilers

Of course there’s a concept that maybe a rambly post like this could use that writers often have to be aware of, where having too many characters or ideas can bloat the narrative. Or worse, stagnate it. In series like The Walking Dead it’s more like an ironman where it’s more a question of how long they’ll go and what their exit will mean for the experience. The longer a character sticks around, the more important it is for them to add something to the others in some way, especially if they are a static character that doesn’t really have their own arc.

Danielle is one such character. One that, as I write this, I could not imagine Illuminated without.

In the screenshot I introduced her with, she’s speaking to one of the characters you get in the midgame whose had a rather troubled life and is trying to reform himself. In the process of this scene, not only do you see a side of his life before it took a turn for the worse, he also offers to teach her how to make weapons from ores (a gameplay mechanic you can use with both of them, yay!). It’s a scene that jumps out to me because it also shows there’s a side of her that wants to learn more how to do things even if she isn’t one to outright ask.

Particularly what I appreciate about her is she doesn’t do this in any loud way. Sometimes, it’s almost exclusively on a main character to pull everyone together through sheer purpose or charisma.

On the other hand—especially at the story moment I left off at—Danielle is one of many acting forces acting within the party where another character would’ve likely left if not for just that one small part.

But there’s one more spoiler that I purposefully highlighted her first skill for because it’s important here. Partway in the game, the party is imprisoned. Your equipment is taken away, and until you complete a few maps you have zero access to your convoy, which means even if you pick up an extra item in this period you must discard it.

It’s on those maps Danielle served as glue for me not just in story, but in gameplay. Having a unit who not only functioned, but thrived in a low inventory, limited healing environment is a fantastically planned move where even if I wasn’t fully enjoying those chapters, I was locked in for the entire experience.

6 Likes
ok this ended up being larger than i thought and i dont wanna clog up the thread too much

Sometimes you die. Tragically, death is one of humanity’s constants, and, for some, it dooms every day of our lives. Others, choose not to think about the consequences, and go all in on enjoying life. That is fine, but what if there was a third type? One that wanted the truth to come early, one that wanted to die…s. And here is where I inform you that this intro was me being edgy for the sake of an awkward segway into the game (and unit) I will be talking about today.

Welcome to Dies Emblem, made by Sigma"BigMood"Raven. In case you, dear reader, are not already familiar with it’s premise, let me clear it up for you: in the Dies thread, Feu forum users could submit themselves to die, and be reincarnated into another world. This ended up exploding in popularity, and now we have over 153 submitters (82 in game at the time of writing), of which several of them are worth effortposts of their own.

It’s no secret that Dies is a hard game. And the unit I will talk about in this post, makes it possible to beat. So, NOW without further ado, I present.

Krim - Dies Emblem

Krim joins on the third turn of chapter 1, together with ComputerHead.

wait this isn’t krim. who is this guy and wh-


oh.

For real now, here is Dies Krim:

As you can see, he is literally Weiss from Berwick Saga.
His inventory is pretty good too: the Estoc is universally a good weapon, allowing to pierce the ARM of enemies (in Dies, damage is reduced using ARM + WIL, and most classes do not have base ARM, only getting it from their gear).

Encounter weapons have their uses refreshed at the start of each chapter.
It also allows him to use his third skill:

Magical enemies are Nonexistent for most of the current build of the game, so this becomes even more valuable, and thats not counting his fourth skill:

You might be wondering where the axebane is. Axes aren’t real and they can’t hurt you.
This makes him one of the VERY few units who can actually dodgetank, IF he doesn’t just kill before the enemy can attack. Because, yes, this man was also given Vantage.

Reach is tag of sorts that a lot of lances have, and it gives them Vantage. Krim does not care, and is currently the only unit who can ignore Reach without the use of a very limited weapon (in availability, it’s unbreakable), or another Reach weapon.
I’ve gone over a decent chunk of his kit, but the most important part, and what elevates him to mandatory to even complete the game, is his second skill:

In Dies, human units gain Trauma when killing other humans, if they dont have any Mandates of Heaven. While there’s ways to circumvent this, like auto-mercy weapons, or a certain status effect, those are rare, weak, or limited to a single unit (at the time of writing). Moreover, you cannot let any non-player forum members die, or else it’s a gameover. You CAN’T kill them, you have to subdue almost all of them with Mercy, and wouldn’t you know, Krim is the only unit in the game who starts with a Mercy skill without side effects (the others cant double and get -20 hit). While there ARE Mercy scrolls, those are ALSO rare. While Mercy doesnt activate in the enemy phase, it’s not a long shot to consider it the best skill in the game.
His fifth and last skill is also pretty good: Imbue.

Now, you may be thinking “But Doot, that’s just 10 Hp! It barely matters!”. I laugh at you. You fool. This is Dies Emblem. The only healing you get it Eric’s Judica staff (10 Hp, up to twice per map), or healing item (while vulns heal 20 Hp, they cost money and occupy one of your precious 4 non-gear slots). Krim doesn’t need either of those to heal, and it ALSO gives him exp (even if his level ups are basically blank).
The last part that can be considered his kit, is what gear he comes with: the Cool Jacket.

Which is one of the best gears in the game. Weight in Dies is the sum of your ENTIRE inventory’s weight, and you lose 2 AGI and 1 move per point above your strength.

Now that I’ve gone over each and every part of his inventory and kit (at base), let’s see how he does against the enemies near where he appears.

Fangs are brave, and Piercing Claws ignore ARM. Reminder, his starting inventory has a brave weapon, and he always strikes first if he can counter.
So, while everyone else either can’t one-round any of the monsters (Eric), gets shredded by spiders (Computer), or cannot counter at 1 range (Gold), Krim ORKOS all of them, before they can even attack.

However, despite all of this, he isn’t without his weaknesses: if you clicked on the above link, and watched for a minute or so, you would’ve noticed something very curious: Weiss is defeated by a measly archer in one shot. Krim has this extreme weakness to bows translated pretty well: they have guaranteed hit and crit on him (Dies crit is like Fe4 crit, doubles attack before defenses), and, if both units survive after the battle, Krim is captured. You can’t complete escape maps while one of your units is captured, and the first map with bows, chapter 2, is an escape map. No, Parry does not work on bows. Perish.

Thank you Sigma.
Also, Mercy doesn’t work on enemy phase, but that’s not that big of an issue, considering he’s never going to lose Mandates on player phase.

Now, only 15 uses of a weapon per map gets kind of tight when you’re doing as much as Krim is, but don’t worry! Chapter 4’s boss drops a weapon perfect for him, a Brave Sword.

While lacking Estoc’s ARM piercing, and being unable to Parry, this weapon is perfect for Krim. Especially since, by this point, he should be reaching S swords (weapon rank goes up to SSS), and will be the only sword unit with it for a while who can also enemy phase.

Now, to talk about his performance as of the latest chapter of the public build.

Here’s my Krim. As you can see, got a lucky (early) AGI level up, and 2 MND. MND increases Crit Avoid by 1, and Avoid, and Crit by 0.5 per point. Krim has an event in 14x that gives him +15.

Not that bad of a performance, considering he’s barely leveled up any stats, and these enemies are abnormally buffed for… reasons. While his accuracy is iffy, its workable enough to warrant bringing him, even though you do have units with technically better combat, who dont share his bow weakness.

Now, I’ve talked extensively about Krim from Dies Emblem, his eternal place as the single best unit in the game, and even explained a bit of (maybe unnecessary) information about Dies as a project. All i have to add, are a couple closing statements from Zappy and Krim himself.

image
Thank you Zappy


Thank you Krim.

With this, my effortpost comes to an end. Stay epic, and remember…

13 Likes

Now that you’ve been informed about funny mechanics against your will: Play Berwick Saga

9 Likes

Interrupting your regularly scheduled Hag in White praise (it deserves it), I bring you the Codger in Crimson from The Eligor’s Spear, Kaarlo.

Him


This is Kaarlo. Kaarlo is a unit recruited two-thirds of the way through Eligor’s Spear. From a first glance, Kaarlo looks quite unimpressive. For comparison, here’s an enemy Druid (I used FE Builder to find one nearly the same level as him).

But Kaarlo has a few tricks up his sleeve to help him. For one, his growths are quite interesting; 60% Mag and 40% Spd means he becomes quite powerful offensively, and 40% Def & 25% Res makes him your classic hackrom bulky shaman (when I played a while ago, he had 50% Mag and 40% Res, but I doubt it changes much given his bases are the main appeal).
His starting inventory, whilst good, isn’t particularly relevant, so let’s skip to his weapon ranks.

Yup! Kaarlo is an anima focused Druid. Anima access is (theoretically) quite common in Eligor’s Spear, and it is very powerful given the anima tomes available (multiple free Boltings and Fimbulvetres, a legendary tome, etc). However, most users of anima magic have issues. Francis leaves for several chapters*, and mine struggled to grow afterwards, whilst Yvonne, Olberich and Nelarca would rather promote into other classes than get a D in anima. Kaarlo’s anima rank allowed him to act as a stand-in for Francis, whilst C in dark and an emphasis on bulk over HP allowed him to do some funny Nosferatu tanking.

*This is untrue, in my run I actually got him killed off and forgot. Still, he is the only other dedicated anima wielder in the route, and it is very possible for him to get stat screwed/killed off.

Kaarlo represents a really important aspect of unit design that I hadn’t quite understood before, that being the importance of replacement units. Kaarlo’s stats might be relatively mediocre, but he arrived at just the time I needed an anima mage, whilst having some unique factors to set him apart from his competition. In my run, he mainly acted as a frontline Fimbulvetr and Nosferatu user, shifting to using the Ilmatar for the strong monsters in Endgame, but he can equally as easily be fit in as a staff bot (with some pretty good support partners to boot) or seige-tome abuser with the Boltings.

Or you can just bench him! He’s a random guy who shows up and joins your army with okay stats. Some players won’t need help filling up holes in their team composition. Unlike someone like FE7 Pent, who makes training the other mages feel a waste of time, or Isadora, who feels outclassed without a niche, Kaarlo pretty perfectly exists as just another option if you need or want it.

Overall, I think Kaarlo is a good example as to what makes a mid-late game pre-promote enjoyable, and I am not biased because mine got stat blessed. The end.

6 Likes

This thread has a severe lack of Sun God’s Wrath, so that is where I’ll be focusing my effort(posting) today.

Unfortunately, however, the unit I’ll be talking about comes with spoilers for the entire game, and those spoilers are quite severe. The unit joins in Chapter 25, which is just before the endgame. For that reason, if you don’t want to get spoiled on the entirety of SGW’s story, you’ll have to skip this one.

With that out of the way, let’s get started.

The effortpost

The unit I’d like to discuss is Donovan from Sun God’s Wrath.

Donovan is a unit with an inherently unique position in the world of hacking. Not just because Sun God’s Wrath is a rather… special hack by most estimations, but because it is a sequel. And because it is a sequel, it can bring back characters from the previous game in the series, should it want to.

Indeed, Sun God’s Wrath does very much want to.

Basically the entire cast is comprised of either characters from the previous game, Corrupt Theocracy (which the hacker himself advises you not to play), or their descendants. This doesn’t really impact enjoyment or comprehension - I was able to play through the entirety of SGW without having played CT before and I didn’t feel like I was missing crucial information. The worldbuilding and story explained most of the things I felt I needed to understand.

What SGW doesn’t tell the players, however, is that Donovan was the protagonist of Corrupt Theocracy. Instead, it builds up his mystique in a variety of different ways.

  • He appears in Chapter 3 and absolutely destroys the boss of the map with his special weapon, the Aura Blade.
  • He is described as a hero of the World War, the main worldwide conflict that preceded the current one by twenty-five years.
  • He allegedly explored the distant lands beyond and only recently returned to the continent.
  • He had a child with the current queen of Ryu. You recruit that child – Daedalus – later in the story, and he becomes one of the main characters.
  • Some of the primary villains of SGW know him personally, including Mandrake and Larry.

But at the same time, a subplot is introduced. Something seems odd about this new Donovan, and the oddities pile up over time.

  • He doesn’t recognize Janet, a woman you recruit who he had an extended romantic relationship with.
  • Instead, he wanders around with someone else he calls Janet, who looks similar to the player’s Janet, but isn’t quite the same. He claims to have only ever known that Janet.
  • He doesn’t seem to remember certain other individuals he should remember.

The subplot, like many of the game’s other subplots, continues in the background, and you anxiously await its resolution. Eventually, it seems to be resolved… in an unexpected way.

In Chapter 21, you get a scene where Donovan’s Janet is killed by bandits. Ren, a character who you previously used as a powerful temporary unit, is also present. Donovan grieves, but then, Baine shows up. Baine had been an armored knight with a hidden face who periodically showed up to help the player’s army – yet now, he appears in front of Donovan, and he is presented as the leader of the bandits who killed “Janet.”

And the scene progressively becomes more confusing. Donovan attacks Baine as revenge, but his Aura Blade – which you’d always been told is a mighty weapon – passes right through Baine without dealing damage. Ren warns him that he cannot use this weapon against “him,” referring to Baine. But her warning amounts to nothing. Astrea, and the other protagonists, appear just in time to see Donovan slain by Baine, who calls him pathetic as he dies.

Baine then proceeds to accuse Ren of lying about something, and Ren tries to attack him. Based on gameplay experience, you’d expect her to at least make a dent, because she has massive stats while she’s controllable and she basically serves as her map’s delete button. But that doesn’t happen. She deals no damage, and Baine one-shots her in return.

Not only did this Baine just kill the hero Donovan, but he also slew one of the most powerful temporary units in the game in one blow.

But why did he do it, and who is he?

As it turns out, he is the real Donovan, forced to serve Zalmoxis, another of the game’s antagonists. And that is why the Aura Blade had no effect on him. Because it was his weapon to begin with.

And in that moment, you understand that the person you thought was Donovan does not hold a candle to the real thing. That general he one-shot in Chapter 3? That wasn’t Donovan. That was a pretender. The real Donovan wipes the floor with the pretender, one-shots units you thought were excellent, and laughs at them as they die. You also had the opportunity to see Baine on a map several times, helping you under a fake identity, and he is basically invincible on those maps.

But he cannot join you. Because he is trapped. He is doomed to serve Zalmoxis, for reasons I won’t get into in this post. Play SGW. Even in this truncated version, I find myself struggling to properly explain the context of every event.

Donovan reappears later, in Chapter 25, which is my favorite map in the game. This time, he appears as himself. Not as Baine. There is no reason to hide anymore.

The premise of the map is that only two of Astrea (the protagonist), Daedalus (a deuteragonist, and Donovan’s son), and Donovan are “needed” by the main villain. One of them needs to die here.

As such, the map only has two deployment slots, both of which are occupied by force-deployed Astrea and Daedalus.

Donovan shows up with a Light Brand. Not the Aura Blade. Not any other strong weapon. A Light Brand.

You probably know where this is going.

When Donovan enters combat with Daedalus, Daedalus cannot take him seriously. He knows Donovan is not trying to win. If he did, Astrea and Daedalus couldn’t stop him.

Daedalus talks to him. Donovan claims he must obey the villain.

Astrea talks to him. They have a brief exchange about the power of gods, and how each god’s power counters the power of a different god. Donovan refuses to say which god’s power counters the power of Zalmoxis, the god whose pawn he became. He implies he cannot.

But Astrea figures it out.

She talks to Daedalus. She has a pendant of Mila. As she remembers, her power should counter the power of Zalmoxis. She just has to put the pendant on him… but the pendant is what keeps her alive, so if she does that, she’ll be risking death.

They go through with the plan anyway.

It works. Barely. Donovan snaps out of Zalmoxis’s control. He quickly gives Astrea her pendant back, before she dies. He then turns to the overseer of this battle, claiming that Zalmoxis no longer has any power over him.

The rest of the map is a formality. The overseer appears to fight, but you wipe the floor with him. You finally get to use Donovan, after all, and… he pulls out the Aura Blade, which he had all along. This just confirms he had no intention of winning while he was still a pawn. But now, he pulls out all the stops.

You can test out his combat against the boss of the map, and it is ridiculous.

And the next chapter is Endgame, which Donovan is available for.

Let me get into Donovan as a unit now.

He gained some EXP on the previous map for me.

He has big stats, as you would expect from a Gotoh. And those stats are made even bigger by the Aura Blade, which is his personal weapon.

He is basically impervious to magical attacks. He has permanent, unbreakable 1-2 Range, and his effective 27 Spd is high enough to double basically everything on the map. He hits like a truck, and he even offers two leadership stars.

His skillset is amazing. Renewal and Aether keep him alive without the need for healing and allow him to one-round whatever his natural stats don’t. Nihil prevents him from having to care about the bosses’ skills (and bosses in SGW have many skills). As if 60 effective Res wasn’t overkill enough, he even has Aegis, a Skl% chance to negate an oncoming magical attack - and he effectively has 54 Skl, so those procs will be occurring more often than not. When initiating at 1 Range, he also has +14 Hit/Crit from Arcane Blade, which is just the cherry on top. Of course, he also has an S-rank in swords, and he even has an A-rank in lances, so he doesn’t have to use the Aura Blade - but why wouldn’t he?

Donovan can do basically everything, from baiting enemies without a chance of death to fighting the bosses competently and supporting your army wherever you put him. Most importantly, however, as Donovan himself tells you, his Aura Blade is by far one of the best tools against Zalmoxis, the ultimate final boss. In fact, Donovan is the intended method of beating that boss. He with the Aura Blade deals by far the most damage and is by far the most reliable at killing him. Not using Donovan isn’t a softlock – and in fact, his recruitment is optional, because you can just kill him in Chapter 25 and he’ll be replaced by a different Gotoh – but he sure does make the fight a lot easier, and it’s just narratively poignant for him to kill the god who enslaved him to begin with. Everything comes full circle, in a way. The protagonist of Corrupt Theocracy kills the final boss of the sequel.

The fact Donovan is the best tool against the final boss, and that using him makes you feel very powerful, is reminiscent to the status of Athos from FE7 in my eyes, and that is a good thing. Apart from that, however, I find he’s handled rather competently by the narrative, which is why I had to go over it at least briefly. He’s appropriately built up as a legend, his fake appears early on, then he himself appears in disguise, then once he reveals himself, he quickly makes it known just how powerful he really is. His recruitment is a cool narrative moment in my opinion, and in a way, he brings the two halves of the duology (if you can call it that) together by potentially killing the final boss.

I think Donovan uniquely benefits from SGW being a sequel, even though it’s disconnected enough that someone who hadn’t played CT (like me) can still understand everything. He receives the appropriate buildup the protagonist of the previous game would deserve, and once you do get to use him, it certainly feels like you’re using someone who’s been trained throughout an entire Fire Emblem game before.

Oh, and he has a personal class. This is frankly a footnote, but it aligns him with several other Gotohs in hacks and mainline games, including Athos. And it makes him feel more unique. That always counts.

Play SGW. The hack’s story is wild, but surprisingly coherent by the end, and it has a lot of diverse units. I could easily make some effortposts about its other characters from a gameplay-focused perspective - for example, about Nicole. Maybe that’ll be my next contribution to this thread.

See you next time.

7 Likes

Oh, it’s the fourth Hag in White post in the span of two weeks. Oh well, guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Nicaea (Hag in White)

Please pardon me for not taking screenshots. Everything will be written out as best I can.

Bases, Growths, Promo bonuses and other reference material

Bases
HP: 27
STR: 10
MAG: 5
SKL: 11
SPD: 15
LCK: 4
DEF: 6
RES: 9
CON: 8
MOV: 7
WLV: 71-Lances (C-Lances)

Growths
HP: 65
STR: 40
MAG: 30
SKL: 45
SPD: 60
LCK: 15
DEF: 15
RES: 25

Promo options: Falcon Knight, Malig Knight
Falcon Knight promo gains:
HP: 2
STR: 2
MAG: 0
SKL: 2
SPD: 3
DEF: 1
RES: 2
CON: 1
MOV: 1
WLV: D-Swords, +40-Lances

Malig Knight promo gains:
HP: 3
STR: 1
MAG: 2
SKL: 2
SPD: 2
DEF: 1
RES: 1
CON: 2
MOV: 1

Nicaea is the second recruitable flier in Hag in White, joining at Chapter 15, or roughly halfway through the game. She is the game’s Catria, being the middle of three sisters who all happen to be pegasus knights. So why is the average midgame flier better than you know, the flier that joined earlier? Well…

Chapter 1: Out-flying the competition

Nicaea’s main competition is the earlygame flier Teresa, a Wyvern Rider who joined in Chapter 9. However, Teresa can’t really stack up against Nicaea, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Teresa has a base Res of 0, and a paltry 15% growth. The importance of Res is at an all-time high as enemy magic users are everywhere. Armor knights get magic. Paladins get magic. Rouges get magic. Warriors get magic. Swordsmen frequently have magic swords on them. And then there’s the actual magic-using classes like Mages, Shamans and Mage Knights on top. Having a magic allergy means Teresa dies to two hits from these units, and with 8 base Def and a 25% growth, even physical attackers will bring her down in 3-4 hits. Of the 6 maps in which Teresa is playable on but Nicaea is not, only two have difficult terrain as a substantial obstacle, being Chapters 11 and 13. However, Chapter 11 is loaded to the absolute brim with Archers, magic-attackers and hard-hitting Wyverns that will punch a hole through Teresa’s horrible Defense, preventing her from doing much of anything, while Chapter 13’s layout makes flierdropping a very bad idea due to Conan and Dahl’s positioning and being a Berserker and Halberdier respectively, both with Killer weapons. Vulneraries and Pure Water are both expensive at 300/use, and money is tight. Teresa can’t do much of anything notable during Nicaea’s absence, and even when scaled up to or even past Nicaea’s join level, still has a major issue dealing with the magic users that are absolutely everywhere; Nicaea’s 9 base Res, while not on the level of full-blown Res-tanks like Eupraxia and Hecate, is more than adequate in ensuring that she gets 3-4HKO’d up until the extreme late-game.

Her other two sources of flier competition are both late-joiners.

Glaucus needs to be sent away in a base camp event to fulfill his secret promotion, which sees him return in Chapter 20 as a Wyvern Lord. However, Chapter 20 is quite the late time to join, and even then, Glaucus’ return bases, while containing solid durability, is held back by a base 17 Speed that barely manages to double middling-speed enemies like Paladins. He also struggles to one-shot them even with a Reginleif or Wolf Beil, so his offenses just don’t hold up at that point in the game.

Demeter, a Malig Knight, appears at the end of a 4-part sidequest chain that started in Chapter 9 and had to be kept up throughout Chapters 13, 17 and finally 21. If you manage to get her, her base stats are genuinely excellent, befitting the first of the game’s 3 Gotohs; 21 Speed to double everything and deceptively good durability due to Voice of Peace. Make no mistake; Demeter will give Nicaea a run for her money in terms of durability and being able to hit both Def and Res competently, though this again is not that much of a point against Nicaea; Demeter’s recruitment location is very out-of-the-way, behind a large peak with the only land route being through several mountain tiles, as well as being guarded by 6-7 flying enemies; the only units who can quickly recruit Demeter so she can help you are your fliers, and neither Teresa nor Glaucus are up to that task. Demeter’s offenses are also on the lower end, and she particularly struggles to ORKO enemies without effective damage; her magic attacks almost never reach ORKO power without some help. Even after Demeter gets recruited, Ch21 is so flier-heavy that both Demeter and Nicaea will need to work overtime unless you want fliers slamming into your ground units, and having 2 good fliers is better than having 1 good flier.

Chapter 2: Mid stats on paper are good in practice

Taking a look at Nicaea’s base stats, they seem to be quite shaky on paper. Doesn’t she get 2HKO’d by physical enemies with 27 HP and 6 Def? Or face crit from everything with that 4 Lck?

Well yes, but they aren’t nearly as bad of a problem as they’re made out to be.

Firstly, while she does take a lot of physical damage, she’s also very good at avoiding the same physical damage, and even then, it’s not her job to be a tank, or to be thrown into a horde of enemies and told to clean up. Firstly, Axereavers are freely purchasable on her join map, giving enemy Axe users low hit rates against her. Secondly, her primary role is to be an offensive nuke that takes enemies down reliably, while having good mobility; she shouldn’t be fighting a large horde at the same time. Her offense is excellent; 40% Str and 60% Spd growths will ensure she can keep up with enemy durability, and her Str and Spd will cap after promotion, which is important as this allows her to keep with ORKO thresholds in the endgame.

Secondly, Lck issues are almost non-existent and very fixable.

Consider how Crt/CrtAvo is calculated; base Crt is equal to Skl/2, rounded down, while base CrtAvo is equal to Lck; this means a Lck stat of X will allow a unit to face 0 crit against an enemy with 2X+1 Skl, when weapon/skill crit is taken out of the equation. In practice, this means that Nicaea is the only unit in the entire game who has even a remote problem with facing enemy Crt, because basically every other unit in the game outscales enemy CrtAvo without issue, and the two that don’t (Plato and Jason) join 4 maps after Nicaea. But this is not a bad thing for Nicaea, because it means she has virtually no competition for either the Hoplon Guard of the Mother Icon from Chapter 1; giving Nicaea the Mother Icon on join instantly buffs her Lck to 6, which is more than sufficient, given that Ch15’s promoted enemies in ordinarily higher-Skl classes like Hero (Hoplite) do not reach 14 Skl without needing a serious highroll. Enemy Skl doesn’t scale particularly fast either; by the Endgame, the average enemy only has about 19-20 Skl, so roughly 9-10 Lck is sufficient, and despite her 15% growth, Nicaea can fill this out without too much trouble (reaching 9 Lck at roughly promoted Lv15 with one Mother Icon, and much sooner if given the 2nd Mother Icon which barely has any competition for). On the other hand, having barely enough Lck is also not a detriment, because player units can essentially be categorized into two tiers: those that face Crit from high-Crt enemies (almost entirely Swordmasters/Berserkers/Halberdiers that have Crit+15), and a handful of very high-Lck units that don’t (Agari, Delilah, Vasiliki…). And Nicaea scraping the bottom of the first category is no issue, because 80% of the cast is in the same CrtAvo tier; luring high-Crt units is a job reserved to the designated CrtAvo units (or super-tanks that can wall the Crit).

Now, consider Nicaea’s offenses. They’re excellent.

Firstly, with 15 base Speed and a 60% growth, Nicaea will double everything. This automatically ensures her a decent, if not good, damage output. She will have no issue filling Falcon Knight’s Spd cap of 28, and while generic enemies are slow (with a conspicuously small population of enemy Swordmasters), a few speedy bosses like Scymerius 3 or Marina are out of doubling range for the middling-Spd tier units, and Nicaea can kill them quickly and reliably, especially as kill boss maps become increasingly common in the late game.

Secondly, her physical damage output is great. 10 Str and 40% growth is absolutely fine, because simply giving her a good weapon can go very far. Her Reginleif is 10x3 Might against Cavs and Armors, and both her join chapter and the map that follows are filled to the brim with either Cavs or Armors, all of which also out-level her in the short term, so she has no issue quickly getting EXP. While the Reginleif can’t be abused forever due to it’s low-ish durability, for the rest of the game, she can do perfectly fine; using the Axecrusher to nuke Ch19 Berserkers into oblivion or just plain doubling with a Steel or Killer Lance against Snipers or Magic users. If necessary, there is a Brave Lance on her join chapter which upon reaching B-Lances is an easy ORKO on almost any non-Armor enemy.

Even outside flier-only objectives or terrain-heavy maps, these offenses are comparable if not better than most of the cast, with only other fast attackers having equivalent if not better offenses. Even then, several of the ground maps have forest terrain that greatly hinders the ability of ground units to advance. By the late-game, where extremely-durable Warriors become commonplace, Nicaea becomes one of the only units capable of one-rounding them at both 1-2 range (using the Wing Shield to tank bow hits), due to her good Strength scaling and the S-ranked Lust being the first S-ranked weapon to be obtained.

All in all, NIcaea is primiarly defined by her excellent offenses for a flier, in addition to having passable durability, particuarly when dealing with enemy magic damage, which is commonplace. She is able to crucially have ORKO power while also being able to fly, while retaining ORKO power against some of the bulkier enemies in the lategame.

Chapter 3: Character Story (contains massive spoilers)

Part of what makes Nicaea so well written is how her recruitment and story arc are carried out, in that they throw a massive, unpredictable curveball on the usual FE formula.

Nicaea joins in Chapter 15, but the sequence in which you recruit her already began one map earlier, in Chapter 14. There, Aura, the youngest of the sisters, appears as an enemy, and is tasked with scouting the presence of your army.

Chapter 14’s opening dialogue flat out says that Aura’s job is just to confirm that your army is there, and sure enough, after entering combat with any of your units, she begins running away to escape the map, where she will show up again in Chapter 15.

In Chapter 15, Aura appears as an enemy again, tasked by the chapter boss to attack your forces for real. However, this time, if you visit the lower village, you will find Nicaea (then-unnamed), who will tell you the following, seemingly to get Aura off the battlefield alive so she can be recruited later:

Dialogue

Nicaea: …Hmmmm… It’s you. The enemy.

Visitor: …

Nicaea: Say… There is a pegasus knight out on the field. Her name is Aura. She looks a little like me. Would you kindly send her my way? I doubt she’ll stop to listen to a heretic, but if you clip her wings, she’ll likely flee here. Hmm? Oh, don’t worry, You won’t kill her. She’s got a talent for escaping tough spots. Just do what I ask and come back later. I’ll make it worth your while.


This is very convincing that Aura’s yet-unnamed sister cares a lot about her and wants to get her off the battlefield before she dies trying to fight you. Especially as she flat out states that it is OK to reduce her to 0 HP, hinting at a future recruitment, especially as she promises you a reward. This scene, combined with the usual pegasus sisters archetype, does such a good job selling the narrative that they’ll join later, that upon bringing Aura down to 0 HP as requested, it’s a massive shock that this happens:

Dialogue

(Immediatley upon Aura reaching 0 HP)

Aura flies into the lower Village

Aura: Khh… Urgh…

Nicaea: Rather nasty gash you got there, Aura.

Aura: Ah, there you are, Nicaea. Thank the Mother! I need you to relieve me. I must tend to my injuries. Here, take this lance and strike them from behind!

Nicaea: Ah, you would let me have your treasured spear?

Aura (smiling): I treasure your safety more than any weapon, Nicaea. Make sure you exercise proper caution, all right? As soon as I’ve bandaged this, I’ll arm myself and catch up. Go on, don’t be shy. Pick the lance up.

Nicaea (smiling): Thank you, Aura. That makes everything a lot simpler.

Aura (smiling): Good luck out there, sis–

Nicaea suddenly runs up to Aura and stabs her to death.


What. The. Fuck.

Aura just got brutally murdered by her own sister. This game already had great plot twists like offing the trainee or having a starting party member turn coat on you, but this is something else. But having the pegasus sisters kill each other is even more shocking than any of the main story reveals, especially the incredibly well-executed sequence of making it look like you are taking steps to recruit Aura later.

Still, you were promised a reward for doing this, and if you go back to the village, whoever does the visiting will stumble into the aftermath:

Dialogue

Visitor: …!

Nicaea: There you are. You took your time. You know, I had expected revenge to feel more… Well, more anything, really. I feel completely… empty. Spite has long driven me, and it has led me nowhere. What will I do now? Should I even do anything at all? Perhaps I shall simply replace spite with spite. To oblivion with the Mother and Her church. I would join you and see them all put in the dirt. Of course, I cannot force you to accept me, but… You aren’t exactly drowning in warriors of the skies, right? I promise I am not truly the duplicitous sort. Let me buy your trust with plentiful inquisitorial blood.


And just like that, Nicaea joins you. With the same weapon that Aura was using as an enemy. If you send her up against the boss of the chapter, the boss conversation does explain some of Nicaea’s motives, but if you don’t you’ll just have to put up with, this murderer, in your party until a base conversation in Ch17 that explains her motives.

Turns out, Aura, well she had it coming. Her parents committed the heresy of finding a Lifewringer to cure her terminal illness, and Aura decided the best way to repay them, is to report them to the Church, getting her own parents killed (in front of a terrified Nicaea, no less). She then proceeds to treat this as a positive thing, and according to Nicaea, Aura treated this as one of her proudest moments in life.

Despite all of this, however, the rest of her character arc has her realize that revenge is empty. Her own friend Agari calls her out on attempting to justify her actions to herself, and that simply saying that Aura would’ve gotten herself killed against your army regardless isn’t an excuse to kill her off. Fittingly, she has no supports with anyone else, as not even Agari will talk to her after their one conversation. In fact, after her older sister Cybele inevitably dies as a boss (due to being excessively and blindly loyal to the Church as expected), Nicaea ends up depressed and contemplating her own death, although her ending will reveal that she managed to get out of this mindset. All in all, a well written character that does a very, very good job of shaking up the formula, and then deconstructing the ramifications afterwards.

10 Likes
**A look at Eligor Spear's trio and why Avanni is GOAT**

So I’ve been looking for a chance to write up a post in this thread for a long time, but never found any units interesting enough to write about. However I think Eligor’s spear’s lord finally piqued my interest. So lets take look at them individually aight

Thief Lord Skylar

We open at a look at Skylar the thief lord of Eligor’s spear. Let’s start with the pros:

~ Skylar’s a thief lord which means you have steal utility for every map in this game. Now the best loot in the game in my personal opinion are droppables but nontheless his ability to steal is a nice addition to get more items to help out and also sell.
~ High move, which is very nice since a lot of maps (at least in the grismond route) are pretty big and careful positioning is important
~ High speed and decent strength, This will be relevant with the two other lords in Eligor’s spear but in short I find the meta in eligor to be very “the best defense is offense”. Skylar has only decent strength but with the help of effective weapons or crits he can very much keep up offense wise especially against axe enemies.
~ High dodge, against axe enemies it’s very rare that the enemies can hit him reliably

Now the cons:
~ Low defense, against lance enemies and sword enemies he’s very liable to die after 1 or 2 hits, further compounded by:
~ Triangle lock, Skylar’s only access to triangle control is limited to reavers and lancereavers are some of the most rare types so far as I’ve played, this means you’ll likely to count on him dodging something at 60-70 ish hit rates for survival 2/3 of the time

Overall I would say skylar’s a 4/5 stars unit. He’s really good as utility and against axe units but struggles against his counters

Pirate Camian

My least favorite of the three, let’s start with the pros tho:

~High Hp & Decent Defense, You could probably frontline a few slower enemies with Camian (not always tho, explained later)
~Access to bows as warrior, Bows are the BEST weapon type in eligor in my opinion. Not every bow unit is good but every unit that can use bows can usually get some milage out of it
~Uh…can recruit some units? yea scrapping the barrel rn

The cons tho, plenty of that going on:
~The lowest move of the three, despite having access to bows Camian’s low move means it’s harder for him to get into position and kill stuff. He’s certainly no Skylar/Avanni
~Low Spd, Now in general strong slow units in this hack is probably the worst they can be in a fire emblem hack. The “meta” is very much not designed for slow units to prosper, one hit even from an effective weapons usually doesn’t kill and a lot of enemies have high enough speed to double and enough might to do damage even with high defense, this pretty much negates the pros of having higher defense.
~Low Res, Magic enemies in eligor are deadly, a lot of your cast can’t handle even 2 rounds with them and the same goes for poor camian, even with bow advantage he won’t fair well against them
~Middling Offense, Camian’s lack of speed is not only bad for his defenses but his offenses too, whilst skylar and avanni can often one round an enemy because they double things. I could probably count the number of times camian has doubled something on 1 hand.

2/5 unit

Now to the queen, Boom!

Sniper Goddess Avanni

Now this is a unit, and it’s particularly interesting because bows have often been the worst or at best a middling weapon type, but in eligor? They’re the best. Here’s Avanni’s pros:

~ High Spd & Good Str, As mentioned before, doubling and killing is enemies is essential for survival in eligor. Now Avanni’s not as fast as Skylar but she’s fast enough to double basically any enemy anyways.

~ Flier Effectiveness, If there’s another group of enemies as deadly as mages, it’s fliers, these guys can swoop in and screw you up, luckly enough Avanni can very easily one shot or 2 shot them, with the long bow this can be done from 3 range where she stay safe from attacks

~ Magic Triangle, In Eligor, every magic type is weak to bows, which means bow units gets a huge 30 hit/dodge against them, this is especially good for avanni who can double them unlike most other bow units available to you

~ Bow Variations, Bows are very much loved in this game, The longbow is probably the best early game bow, it has the most might and 3 range, The ghost bow is a magic bow that can knock out high defense enemies (what’s suppose to be the usual counters to archers) and the anti magic bow downright gives you effectiveness vs mages

Cons:

~Low defense, Now Avanni’s amazing against fliers and mages but if you put her in front of an assasin then yea she’ll die though it’s hard to find moments where she will be front lining

7.5/5 unit

What makes this analysis interesting is more how Eligor’s Spear’s meta is the direct reason why these units are good/bad. Camian could very well be the best of the three in an enemy phase focused hack and avanni the worst but because of how deadly the enemies in Eligor are the offensive “tanks” are often better than the pure defensive tank. Dodging is a huge component of surviving in this hack which really emphasize triangle control. Despite lacking skills, Eligor’s Spear manage to shake up the usual FE meta by making bows way better than like every physical weapon type.

6 Likes
Flight of the Bamboo Cutter ~ Lunatic Princess

How do replacement conscripts end up so overpowered, even outdoing Byakuren of the last hour?

How do they emerge victorious from the grinder, leave behind nothing but Sleep Staves, charges fired?

Yo, turns out @Rye_on_Speed didn’t check twice, an immortal, eternal and immune to RNG’s blights

Physic, Sleep, Silence, name it, she’ll do it, that map’s due to give; everyone give it up for Tezuka’s favorite Lunar fugitive!

KAGUYA

She's taking your lads by the twelve, pay up or she dwells, your choice man--

For those not in the know: Touhou Emblem 1 has this neat…dare I say, funny little feature that Rye implemented post-launch.

Replacement characters, they are; units that are acquired after a certain number of units die in the run during certain chapters.

These replacements vary from usefulness; for example, Eirin, joining in the same chapter as our titular KAGUYA, comes with middling stats despite her great weapon ranks and staff access; Shizuha, known mostly for her comically high HP and various changes throughout Rye’s many iterations of THE1, is ultimately just a mediocre Bishop who have above-average enemy phase ability; these two are just brief examples to name a few.

Kaguya, on the other hand, stands out amidst the rabble and riffraff without even lifting a finger.


Joining at the end of Chapter 14 if 12 or more units have died, she comes with a great Magic base stat, reasonable bulk, Renewal, prepromote status (which means she doesn’t use up a 10k gold Master Seal), wonderful weapon ranks, 12 whole chapters’ worth of use; I could go on. But I think I’ll let her growths speak for me instead.
image
100% Magic Growth. On a prepromote who can use powerful staves such as Physic and Sleep at base, thus making her EXP gain a non-issue. You will easily rake up those 8 levels even if you don’t let her see a single combat – and while this is powerful in just about any ROMhack, there’s something particularly unique about Touhou Emblem 1 that makes her stand out even more than the competition.


the economy’s broken lmao

750 gold sleep staves after bargain (which only costs 10k gold in the form of a recruitable character that comes with her own Master Seal, this screenshot is from a draft where I didn’t get to field said character), by the time that you probably have up to 100k gold saved up – hell, even 50k.

I don’t think I need to explain just how I ended up using her in all of my playthroughs of this game.

KAGUYA

And she's never gonna stop, look, two--no, ten have dropped, her Sleeps' all spent, onto the next ten, she's

There won’t be any screenshots here, because – there’s. there’s no need to. By the time you get to the Sleep Staff Shop chapter, you’ve already amassed at least half a dozen of competent users; Kaguya standing as top dog among the bunch. If you don’t eliminate whatever stands in your advance with Nosferatu!Hina and/or Nosferatu!Marisa, you’re already neutralizing them with your array of tactical homing sedatives.

However I feel like I should probably mention that while a very large cast of potential Sleep Staffers require 10k investment in Master Seals, exp that can’t even guarantee them those sacred magic levels; Kaguya casually comes in with a perfect growth rate and refuses to fall off. Eight levels are comically easy to farm on a staff unit; and frankly even at base she’s already relevant for either chip damage, 11-range physics or just serving as a side tank thanks to her Renewal and surprisingly viable bulk.

Even when endgame comes and Byakuren arrives, she still stands her own ground; while she may lack a prf or other stats necessary to deal with Yukari or other such threats…you still need to remember that she’s a staffbot. A (very likely to have 30 magic) staffbot who can use Warp and Rescue. Even if she doesn’t drop ten men with Sleep, she can just as easily warp a roided Marisa into range to obliterate and survive any potential threat with the overwhelming might of 28 magic 32 speed Nosferatu.

All this is to say:

KAGUYA

Watch her break wide open, render broken, make nerfs roll in, she's

Honestly the entire review was done by Chapter 2 but I do just want to mention that due to my… Honestly quite persistent use and glazing of Kaguya she ended up getting slashes to her staff rank when Rye was still working on THE1 Redux lmao

KAGUYA

She’s outta staves, how tricky–

KAGUYA

–just like that, there’s fifty.
Of Sleeps. And so the princess sweeps…

We rendezvous with Byakuren, sell off all of her gifts.

We can end this skit with just this, call all this a day, but… for this to be peak, there is someone else we seek…

You mean—

A Maiden's Illusory Funeral ~ Necro-Fantasy

YAKUMO

Ran, your jagen, a staffbot on horseback with stats and growths that never run short, I mean-




A jagen staffbot who joins at Chapter 1, bearing a Light Brand and a Heal Staff. You will switch her to Marisa’s Fire tome at your earliest convenience and save that Light Brand for special occasions; keep her on magic, since physical is mostly a meme with her. Thanks to her wonderful bases and reasonable growths alongside her ability to use staff to keep up her EXP gain even when she’s not serving as the party’s main tank outside of Suika, she keeps up without difficulty in the earlier chapters and if you invest the one Dracoshield the game gives you into her — she keeps up and remains relevant all the way until Endgame.

YAKUMO

Ran, you're gonna have to use her later or now, what's she gonna do on the bench, break down?

i don’t have anything else for this all i had to say for her was in the first segment

however i must commit to the bit of this and so let me remind you that ran made it into the state of the1 meme as seen below

YAKUMO

No one has more resilience or matches her perfect attendance and brilliance!

I don’t know what to tell you. This segment is here so I can mirror the structure of the Kaguya glaze, but I’ve already done all the contextual establishment that is necessary for you to understand that Touhou Emblem 1 is a comically easy experience, and that’s all because of the oversights and tools that @Rye_on_Speed put into the player’s hands as he threw shit to the wall and watched them stick. She’s a Seth. Not just a Seth, a magic Seth with staff utility and mounted rescue utility and Canto and I. Can. Keep. On. Going.

But all good things must come to an end. Fortunately, Ran isn’t good; she’s perfect.

At least until the Yuuka writeup gets done, but that’s for another time wwwww

YAKUMO

You wanna make this post real peak?

YAKUMO

You take Ran off bench seat.

Yeah, get ya Ran off bench seat.
You know you gotta get ya Ran off bench seat.
I mean you gotta put some thought into each play made but it’ll all end in checkmate when Ran is off that bench seat.

Yakumo Ran, my beloved.
Chen’s out waiting in the fields for you.
If you join us right now, together we can turn the tide.
Oh, Yakumo Ran, my beloved.
I have staffbots that will yield to you.
If we manage to get you back
It’ll be solved just like Fluid Sac
The world, will never be the same,

Yakumo Ran.

3 Likes



Today I’m doing a trio of units from Lord of The Seas
I’d like to give the title of this break down:

How Lord of the Seas teacher us to spice up out healers!

As with my previous post, I really love these hacks where a certain weapon type or class is elevated not just because of itself but considering its environment and hack mechanics itself. Avanni isn’t great because she’s just a stat giants but because the game she exists in makes bows good.

Lord of The Seas is a recently completed hack by captainfisting. If there is one word that can describe this hack is that it is “experimental” There’s so many tools, new concepts like for example naval combat that gives the fe experience a new life but which is still simple enough for the average fe player to understand.

In particular I’d like to highlight how this hack manages to fix 2 things which I’ve spent a lot of time thinkin about:

  1. How to make daggers work in a hack
  2. How to make healers interesting

We’ll start with 2 since healers are more common than daggers. Healers… are boring. Lets face it how many generic cleric have we seen in fe? and how many more do we really remember? Fe early clerics are very hard to make interesting because not only are they foot locked, their exp growth is severly lacking. Grinding lvls with staff use sucks lets face it and because they are staff locked they usually don’t have impressive stats anyways before promoting.
The usual cleric promo line to bishop is fine for the most part but I wouldn’t call it spicy, the most interesting thing about the class is them getting slayer in fe8, which gives them a niche for the endgame maps of that game. However this would of course hinge on the context that there are enough monster enemies to “slay”

Now problem 1, When asked about what daggers should do often the answer is they should debuff enemies, but while this worked okay in fates I feel as if this is a lacking niche for daggers in the gba meta. The problem is that most enemies in hacks will almost always die in a hit or two so these debuffs feel quite unimpactful. The worst case scenario for daggers are that they are lower might swords, which I personally think is the most basic way they can work but not excel, like a basic tuna sandwich, it will fill you up but you won’t think it’d great.

So what happens when you give your healers and thieves daggers? Well you get LOTS healers. Now I should clarify, while daggers do give debuffs here I personally don’t think it’s their main appeal, what makes the a viable weapon type is the fact that they pierce defense. Essentially your dagger units have luna always on their attacks.

This fixes both problems with daggers and healers, the piercing damage will mean that your healers can always contribute in not only healing but also damage and daggers become this reliable damage source from 1-2 range. Plus they have the chance to level up through combat exp, making feeding kills to them plausible.

But DAT that would be OP!! and you would be right my friend IF it weren’t for LOTS’s great balancing for this. In general every dagger class has very low str caps. When have we ever seen caps used as a balancing tool? and every dagger unit has very little str growth. Now you might think this would hinder the viability of daggers but for people like me I saw this as a challenge, these low growths (15-30) min to max means that you get a shot of dopamine everytime your dagger unit gets str. Here’s a short interaction between me and captain fisting in LOTS’s thread:

As you can see the dream is indeed real, this is the first ever cleric I have ever lvl 20 promoted and she hit her cap of 10 str before, In short eat yer heart out captain fisting!!

TL/DR: Daggers are cool, give your healers ways to contribute outside of healing, level caps and growths can be a niche balancing tool for cool stuff

6 Likes

William (Lords of the Seas)

I just finished my second playthrough of LotS today. This run was sparked by William the armor knight, a unit I used for a bit on my first run but ultimately dropped pretty quick. But he was so interesting that I wanted to play the game again just to give him a shot long term, and I was not disappointed at all.

William here is an earlygame axe armor knight with very atypical stats. You actually get a much more standard axe armor, Jules, a few maps before him, making the contrast even stronger. William’s only good growths are magic, skill, luck, and HP. Everything else is pretty low. To play into his stats, he comes with a personal weapon, the Bolt Axe. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that William’s stats were designed specifically around using the Bolt Axe. This thing is a high Mt high accuracy 1-2 range magic axe that freezes enemies on hit. Combat ends when an enemy gets statused during a fight, so as long as he has this equipped and doesn’t miss (which is very rare), he can never be doubled. That already helps supplement his just okay bulk and really bad speed. But the Bolt Axe isn’t entirely defensive either, since with how strong it is and how good his magic growth is, William can one shot things with it, which is very satisfying and helps get him growing more.

On promotion, William gains C anima, which is perfect and fits really well into the context of this game. The Misprint tome is a very powerful brave/killer/reaver/devil tome that you get kinda early. His luck is already solid, but there’s also a shop that sells goddess icons in the midgame too, so you can get his luck above 31 and make the Misprint never backfire. The misprint itself also gives +3 luck when equipped, and there are two +5 luck hold items available as well, so you got options. A brave tome with high magic is unsurprisingly very strong, and lets him secure kills he otherwise would miss when just going from one shots.

Additionally, having anima is great for interacting with one of the main elements of LotS: ships! Ships (and ballistae) are weak to all fire attacks, including fire magic like Elfire which he can use at base. And if you train up his anima rank enough, he can use the siege tome Eruption to take out ships/ballistae from range, and even kill them on counterattacks. He’s better suited to this than other anima users due to his bulk being better than the average mage, even if it’s lower than the average armor knight.

But that’s not all, since William also has a secret third tier promotion!.. He doesn’t actually have that, but he kinda does. Yet another big element of LotS is support bonuses. Supports do not give stat boosts when standing near allies, but instead give a variety of effects when you get the support. These can range from handing you items, to giving flat exp amounts, to stat boosts on the spot. William gets perhaps the most powerful support effect in the game from his Edmund A support, as you can see here.

Even a base William will get boosted up to 15 speed, which will prevent him from getting doubled by a lot of things. Or you can toss him some speedwings to make him even faster. LotS enemy speed has a very wide range on account of some enemies using really heavy weapons, so 15 speed can still double some things in late game.

Overall, I’m extremely happy that I did this second run to use William, since he ended up being one of the most fun armor knights I’ve ever used. Here’s him killing the penultimate boss of the game by himself while tanking an effective cannon hit (he crit three times out of four and won). He’s got so much crit because he’s also holding a crit boost item. And his final stats in that run below too.

12 Likes