Rubenio mentioned 0% so it is time for me to make my entrance (again)
The backstory that nobody cares about (with spoilers)
While playtesting Hag last year I decided to run the game on 0% growths alongside another user in the same discord server we were in, and if you remember the Fruct propaganda I’ve been on, it’s pretty much because that user picked Scymerius first so I decided to try out Fructoseman as the first merc pick and I was left thoroughly convinced by how insanely good Provoke was that it’s absolutely worth playing the HP management game with Fruct.
So i finished the run, and that was that, I beat the game on 0 growths, but since this was in playtesting and before public patch I didn’t make any mention of it (who cares about dinky 0 growth runs when you can meme about LopezCoin???) I would however like to say that while there was a user here who posted about promoting every possible General here, they were not the first person to do such a run. As far as I’m aware, that person is actually me, because to make my 0% growths run more interesting I made two stipulations: saving Pheme with the NG+ requirements, and promoting every possible General (yes, even the big chin man himself). Reposition and Canto+ is a drug that I do not think I will ever get tired of LOL
Anyway so after the run I moved on to other endeavors like playing a certain thracia-inspired vtuber hack on 0 growths and then later ironmanning it half a year later because idk, but yeah most of my energy related to FE went to that certain game so I didn’t really touch hag much after it was publicly released. So about two weeks ago Rubenio mentioned about Dani Doyle’s 0% growths run in discord which I left a quick comment on following his remark:
Following which I also mentioned this:
Now what’s the deal with demeter you might ask? On paper, she seems very well poised as the ‘late-game carry’ for hag. She flies, she has magic, she has some of the best bases in the game, and I mean let’s be real:
are you beating the game with the saddest depressed excuse of a father, or are you going to beat the game with the literal personification of God?
the answer surprisingly, is mr depressed man himself. because of one thing i noticed:
it’s also only mentioned briefly, but in Hag, Voice of Peace works a bit too strong. It works exactly like a personal skill from Fates, which is where the name comes from, but it doesn’t work like the VOP from that game (Azura’s personal skill), but it is instead working like Izana’s personal skill aka Peacebringer. Which means Demeter also debuffs your own allies’ damage. Uh fucking oh. Add that to also one more thing I mentioned: I have a borderline irrational dislike for lances in hag. Lances are poopy, and Demeter happens to main them. Uh oh, again. Demeter joins however as a malig knight, so surely she has the magic coverage to work with her flight and 8 movement and good base right? Actually, nope, because her light is none other than light magic, in a game where the best light tomes are Apate-exclusive, and Demeter’s best weapon being the 20 use Aura tome that she comes with and you not getting another copy of it ever anywhere else. She can use Wrath in endgame, but like holy shit you may as well just let Apate hold that shit anyway because y’know
So anyway the tl;dr: I used demeter as my hyper lategame carry on my original 0% run and I hated it. She just could not fucking kill anything without Aura, shine and divine’s MT are so ass, and you don’t even get to buy Divine at endgame iirc because reminder this is the game where light magic is bad and evil. Obviously at this point she is not going to cut it. Enter Lord Moustache himself.
Things that these base ranks get you access to:
- Brave Sword
- Brave Axe
- Swordslayer
- Lancesplitter
- Combustion
- Earthquake
- Fimbulvetr
And that’s all you pretty much need. Oh and the statboosters and solar brace, obviously.
Anyway, you’ve seen me rant about everything in there. But there’s just one problem: I haven’t played Hag in 9 months at this point, and quite a lot of shit has changed since I played. Pluto got buffed, Agari’s early str gain was moved to defense, Bargain now works on the ch22 events if anyone was curious, I was the one who found out about that chapter 22 bug that has been fixed in v2.3 update, so yeah this run was on 2.2 and even The Stache God himself was literally buffed after a lot of playtesters were complaining about how mid he felt during testing (ironically enough, including yours truly). And now, we live with the consequences of our actions.
For posterity’s sake, I did this new run with the same restrictions as my old run, so to recap, Pheme is getting saved meaning I have to promote her to T2, and I am also getting every possible General in the game.
Cue, the units roll
I’m too lazy to write about everyone so I’ll just post the top 15 in wincount and then about any other unit I found interesting enough to write about.
(I think big chin man might have also been within top 15 for kills but I am too lazy to open up febuilder to check his BWL so uh, yeah, insert his crying face here i guess)
#1 - 160 kills
Let’s be real, Pericles may be the new god of this run, but nobody is dethroning our LopezCoin overlord. Many have talked in great detail about what he does, and by now, you should know what he does too.
#2 - 143 kills
alright, funny joke money making character is gone, now we can talk in greater detail about the Man. I originally wanted to use this guy because of the Combustion access, which lets you do unholy shit like
literally beating the hardest chapter 21 boss (yes I literally picked vasi for free vulns LOL that’s how little the 2nd merc pick matters) and
The other gem I found using Pericles is access to Earthquake. I did not realise this when I was making my theory shitposts, but this is lowkey an insanely stupid weapon. It is a similar price to the short spear and compact axe (when you can buy them), but EQ has double the uses, more hit than either weapon, and is the same mt as the compact axe while completely ignoring the weapon triangle. this means you can stick pericles in front of all those silly ass hoplites with triple reaver/slayer weaponry and then just laugh anyway because earthquake completely ignores the existence of the weapon triangle while being a 1-2 range physical weapon that is basically equivalent to the short spear having permanent weapon triangle advantage because holy shit we love anima magic. Combustion is as always Combustion, brave magic has been proven to be overpowered since the times of TLP.
Some other fun Pericles moments (spoilers obviously)
anyway tl;dr use pericles. he wins game.
#3 - 102 kills
Honestly with her availability, it’s almost natural that she’d be racking up a lot of kills along the course of the game. She does have decent enough stats to make work, and the bulk is sometimes surprisingly enough to tank a stray hit here or there if you can figure out a way to avoid getting doubled. Maelstrom is also a very silly PRF and pretty much all my repair hammers went into it because brave magic has been proven to be overpowered since the times of TLP.
#4 - 92 kills
Honestly she’s pretty much just Kyra but with bowrange+1 in exchange for maelstrom access. She also does like the same things as you’d expect any anti-flying unit would do in a game with a generous amount of flying enemies. The good thing about her is she doesn’t need any master seals to promote and pretty much has a RTA speedrun to S bows within a few chapters for extra reliability. Cleave Bows are also fantastic as the “I kill Everything” option, funnily enough. She good.
#5 - 49 kills
The first member of Axe Gang. I hate lances in hag. I love axes in hag. It should come as no surprise as to what this guy does. Very axe things. Very fun unit.
#6 - 47 kills
#8 - 43 kills
The next two members of Axe Gang. Never leave home without axes. Their ability to combo with Lopez for Group Hug autocrits is also very welcome. Lopez may benefit from being able to group hug enemies to death for reliable coin farming, but group hugging is crazy effective when the recipients are big double digit strength axe wielders.
The final member of Axe Gang is Jason, who unfortunately didn’t make it to top 15 kills due to his late join, but just remember: axe gang always has your back. Stan the axes. This message is sponsored by LopezCoin.
#7 - 45 kills
She unfortunately got in the way of my axe gang posting so I had to break sequence a bit. Fast speedy mage in a suit of armor is always Very Funny to use. Not much to talk about her, just overall a solid unit that could also break out the combustion tome when Pericles isn’t hogging it.
#9 - 43 kills
The honorary fifth member of Axe Gang, and of course it’s Potential Man himself. You know what he does. If not, watch that video from Alantropa. It is peak. You know it.
fwiw Fructuoso was also the only other unit to receive statboosters in this run, and purely because I ran out of room to actually feed Pericles an angelic robe so I fed it to Fruct instead. turns out it let him tank an endgame druid so uh investment well made?
#10 - 42 kills
I was told he got nerfed after public release. Honestly though, he was still kind of the same for me. Still the ol’ reliable as the midgame carry. Great weapon ranks, stats that are decent enough to work, and overall he’s a fucking funny ass unserious old man in the most serious game ever. Viva Alonso.
#11 - 41 kills
bet you didn’t see this coming. Hecate has a bizarre niche of having the highest usable mag base out of all your magic units for like half the game. This means her flux bombs will pretty much always dent a good amount in enemies right until the point where they stop being jokes and then you can replace her with beatrix or fazang. Before that though, she has surprisingly decent longevity just because of the fact that she does actual significant damage off her base magic. Whether it be picking up kills or softening enemies, she is there. She works. That’s good enough for me.
#12 - 38 kills
Big telephone man. He more or less replaces Alonso/Soter/Orlaith as the main tank when he joins, while also having pretty good weapon ranks… with one exception.
(for the record this was later deemed irrelevant because i forgot druids have tomebreaker but shh)
Honestly he’s just… neat. He does funny tank stuff. He has canto repo. He’s also pretty fucking handy to have in the fire puzzle hell that is chapter 16, which is neat. Can’t ask for more tbh.
#13 - 35 kills
it’s pheam
obviously she got this many kills only to promote to T2, but I must add that I found surprising utility for her in chapter 9 (the only map you can realistically use her as a promoted unit on if you spare Telemus) due to her ability to pick up Fructuoso, which frees up Agari and Wulfric for combat duties. Pheme’s combat herself is surprisingly solid which you might not expect, due to her getting Killer Bow access around the time you recruit Pluto and then being able to also use the Maelstrom as well to patch her damage, because brave magic has been proven to be broken since TLP. She got some use on her return map as well for the same rescue dropping utility, but with Xinyi’s presence for lategame mamluk utility she was obviously no longer necessary after.
#14 - 34 kills
being godly runs in the family it seems. While the old man was tearing it up lategame, Agari is tearing it up early on. Having access to all 4 of the effective weapons you get early on is fantastic, and she basically has the flexibility to do anything as long as she doesn’t get doubled by like fire brand myrm in chapter 7 lmao. Unfortunately she lost her early strength gain which is bleh…
#15 - 31 kills
abuse powerstaff and galeforce. you know it.
But in all seriousness, Apate’s real value is in chapter 16. With the right combination of juggling your passive equips, you can actually have Apate nostank her way to the boots village, and with some support to help her kill enemies that she has issues with (like the combustion witch that she pulls when she visits the boots village) she pretty much will be able to consistently get you the boots. The puzzle of doing so feels very rewarding since everything is so exact when done right. Thanks to her, I’ve also gained an appreciation for chapter 16 as a whole. The map where everything goes to hell while the rondo of swords bgm plays from preps into the map is just so powerful, while you consider that you have to make the best use of Kyra and Apate to get your fucking ass out alive. It’s honestly one of the best romhack maps I’ve played and the music choice by Rubenio really sells it
Anyway yeah it always feels good to pull the heist off. Hag good.
Some other crap to yap about:
great guy, king of supports, always good to deploy
this guy bums until chapter 24 then you find out everything is too fast without using him
the hidden jesus of endgame with all the tomes spam. fazang is a catch-all to everything. amazing role compression
he went unused on his join map until endgame lol after i literally invested all the money into him. i guess it’s cheaper than actually using boosters?
white_pool.exe with 25 mag luna chip and tsunami access sometimes it just works
it’s another stache god! probably the only good lance user in this entire game thanks to being able to turn into a 36 strength unit on demand with brave lance access LMAO
the fraud queen herself. now exposed. in all seriousness still good to have, but holy shit does using peri feel so GOOD
kinda nice to have midgame alongside Alonso/Soter
me when people use this guy for magic and think he is meh, and i use him as a 14 strength dude and think he is good
also his leitmotif is literally the theme of the final boss from ace attorney investigations 2 it’s great LOL
i was going to use her for some weird rescue dropping memes in chapter 16/17 (she joins at level 10 as pick 2) but i couldn’t really make her fit, so uh, RIP bozo i guess, thanks for the free vulns and letting me kill scymerius LOL
i couldnt find the slots to deploy him after 22 but since pericles was wrecking everyone’s face in it turns out i didn’t really need to