The Hag in White [COMPLETE]

[SaintRubenio]

Well! Delighted to have met your expectations. I keep getting compared to titans of the hacking scene, this is going to end up getting to my head.

Further thoughts with spoilerini

lmao at the gripe with Redbeard. Nah, yeah, I totally get you. I didn’t have romance in my mind for every character in the hack, and with how often I find myself writing old man yaoi these days I wanted to tackle the opposite gender this time around. With regards to the Relevant Old Man Trio in particular I ended up focusing more on their relationships with their (surrogate) children than with one another.

That being said, anything goes. I didn’t set anything in stone for them. Any headcanon is good, and I do appreciate they have good chemistry. Although personally I’d ship Ed with Barlowe and let Pericles and Lorenzo find their place in this world together. But that’s just my opinion, don’t take that as Word of God.

Alonso is a little unfortunate because his primary source of interaction outside of Teresa is Polonius, so if you miss him (and admittedly he is easy to miss) Alonso ends up piping up less than most. Heck, his chapter 14 convo with Teresa was a fairly last minute addition!

Did you happen to recruit anyone in chapter 20 (the one with the two gates), by the by? You may’ve been missing one component, so to speak, when it comes to figuring out the full Beatrix/Scymerius/Alastor backstory.

Lorenzo’s kind of the culmination of my fascination with giving generics an arc. After all these years, it’s all led up to this. Personally, I’m content with the result, haha.

Conan is funny because most people under regular circumstances don’t give him a second glance, but then Shiina did a 0% growths run and Conan ended up in the top 5. Dude’s deceptively good.

[pengwin]

So

I did recruit Ziying, but I must admit it was kind of a happy accident. I didn’t realize the girl was hinting at him because I saw there was a special conversation between her and the male Mamluk (whose name escapes me rn, sorry) so I interpreted it as her having met him while they were traveling through Tartaros. Luckily, I chipped Ziying with Fiadh after bringing the girl home.

From what I understand of the whole Alastor subplot, he took on a number of orphans as his comrades-in-arms after setting fire to their orphanage. Not sure if Alastor lived there too (seems likely, he looks the same age as them). I’m not sure what Scymerius or Beatrix’s involvement with them is, especially Scymerius (didn’t recruit them though, so it makes sense). I assume they were also orphans who lived in the orphanage but drifted apart somehow.

The two pairings you mentioned definitely make the most sense (or rather, Ed/Barlowe makes the most sense). It’s also awfully convenient that Barlowe has a surrogate daughter to make up for any succession issues a male partner could result in.
I like Ed/Peri too bc they spend some time alone and later on the run with Elias, but they don’t end up near each other, unlike Peri/Lorenzo and (sorta) Ed/Barlowe.
I’m just a sucker for daughters trying to set their single dads up. It happens in a fic I’m writing, and it’s generally a trope I really enjoy, but it would’ve also helped me get more invested in Agari by giving her more screentime. Kyra could’ve also played along (I’m picturing another “series” of base conversations).

I don’t think Polonius is that hard to miss in hindsight, but I should’ve noticed that the “revenants” don’t attack you. I did notice it in the throne room, but was perfectly content to murder them for EXP and Lópezcoin. Unfortunately, I failed to realize Ofelia’s explanation was a hint and just thought he would show up later, until I figured that either he was a 2nd playthrough only character, or I had failed to meet his recruitment conditions.

[SaintRubenio]

Yeag

The kids setting up the old dudes together… That’s a fun idea. Ah, well. Food for fanfic thought

The Alastor subplot is deliberately fairly vague. Without fully spelling it out, at one point Beatrix herself hints at the exact role she played in the whole shindig. You can look to figure it out for yourself next run, haha.

[Alexmonster99]

I after seeing how everyone makes Fango a warrior. Am I the only one that made him a bounty hunter to fix his accuracy? Fango also has low magic so I don’t know how outside Earthquake can he benefit from anima. I guess it is due to bows mainly and reckless is a higher attack buff.

[SAGBLZ]

Teresa moment

Why, Teresa? Why don’t you grow in speed?!!! She has only gained a single point of speed since I promoted her at level 17, and she has a Speedwings on her, so her real speed is only 13. She should have around 19 with the Speedwings

[ArvisLordOfValflame]

I think I found out yet another favorite hack, my goodness. I don’t usually feel so happy after playing a game, few made me feel that way.

The plot was marvelous, even the most funny and unusual characters had something to add to the story, and everyone there have lots of their own personal stories to share. They developed so well through the adventure that they felt like friends of mine (Maybe I even received support bonus from them lmao). The story got me off guard a lot of times, it was a rollercoaster of emotions all the way through. Everything felt so natural and easy to engage with, ended turning off my critical mind for a bit and allowed me to enjoy such incredible experience.

I hardly have words to express how much I liked your hack, Rubenio, truly. You created a masterpiece, something hard to find in the FE hacking scene.

[Dragon_of_Vale]

I did promote Fango to Bounty Hunter too, mainly because, at first, I saw Bounty Hunter as the equivalence to Hero class in this game due to both Hero and Bounty Hunter can use Sword and Axe. Hero is one of my favorite classes, and I always use one in the FE games. I didn’t use Phobos, so I got Fango and promote him to Bounty Hunter instead. (Warrior is also one of my least favorite class that I tend to not use anyway.)

[Shiina]

since i was mentioned…

conan glazing

from experience playing Hag (both in growths and in 0%), magic is basically fully neutral against physical weapons in terms of WT, and there are a LOT of effective weapons and enemies weak to such weapons (e.g. weapon-slayers, hammers, halberds, etc, those kind). because of that, the game actually has a slight bias to axes in general because they have the best MT out of these effective weapons, and effectiveness is a multiplier on weapon MT so the more the better. when you fight for example, an armor, you can either armorslayer, heavy spear or hammer. however, if you consider all the possible weapons they can run:
lances - ideally, you use hammer > heavy spear > armorslayer (because WT)
axes - armorslayer > hammer > heavy spear
magic - hammer > heavy spear > armorslayer (because might, since magic doesn’t interact with the weapon triangle)

more or less, most of the time, the axe is going to come out on top. while this isn’t necessarily meaning axes are the most dominant weapon type, the way the game is designed makes axes have an inherent advantage. it also kinda doesn’t hurt that lances are probably the most common enemy weapon type in this game after tomes lol

conan, being a berserker, is pretty much in position where he can actually make use of these advantages. dahl, his counterpart, has a 1 base str advantage over him, but dahl also uses lances whereas conan has axes, which effectively nullifies any real damage advantage dahl has over conan while conan also benefits from higher speed and CON, meaning he barely loses speed over wielding stronger weapons. conan only loses 1 AS from equipping the hammer, while dahl loses 3 AS from equipping heavy spear, in addition to the heavy spear being a weaker weapon than the hammer.
consider:
dahl - 15 str, 11 mt heavy spear, 15 speed, loses 3 from heavy spear = 26 atk, 48 if effective, 12 AS
conan - 14 str, 13 mt hammer, 16 speed, loses 1 from hammer = 27 atk, 53 if effective, 15 AS
this is also completely discounting conan having a very notable bulk advantage over dahl with 40HP/13DEF/4RES vs 36HP/10DEF/8RES so he can much more effectively frontline lmao

conan additionally has 1 extra advantage that dahl doesn’t have - the berserker class has the innate property to scale terrain, which provides advantages on maps such as
ch 14 - conan can walk into a mountain or peak to basically turn the pegs from annoying to pretty much free if you are lucky he just critkills Aura so you dont have to bother with killing her in chapter 15 and then backtracking to the village for Nicaea
ch 20 - conan can scale across the river on the left to clear out the GKs and wyverns early: this is something dahl literally cannot do, and conan additionally gets WTA against most of the enemies here because there’re only two sword dragoons on that side of the map
ch 21 - this map is chock full of mountains that conan can easily park his ass on and also just tank fliers for nearly free

it’s very possible that people on growths might find their own units outclassing conan, which i think is an entirely reasonable take. on 0%, your early joiners are obviously not going to have good stats by the time conan joins, and conan’s base performance is actually solid enough to be used all the way up to endgame.

anecdotes of 0% conan:

the beginning of conan saga

conan in position to critkill the ch19 arbalest sniper, dahl could never because he can’t swim LOL

conan oneshots the ch19 boss with solar brace swordslayer

conan critkills a ch21 flier (i forgot if this crit was necessary but it was really funny when it happened)

conan OHKOes a chapter 22 hoplite with the swordslayer

[RNGSOMEONE]

I’d argue that Bounty Hunter is META for any unit who can class into it.

Let’s analyze this statistically.

Bounty Hunter’s promo gains are +3 HP, +4 Strength, +1 Skill, +2 Speed, +2 Defense, +1 Resistance, +0 Magic. Its class skill is Thunderstorm, granting +3 damage, +20 Hit and +10 Crit as long as the user’s weapon out-weighs the foe’s weapon.

The two classes that feed into Bounty Hunter are Mercenary and Fighter.

Mercenary’s alternative to Bounty Hunter is Hoplite, which has promo gains of: 4 HP, 2 Strength, 3 Skill, 2 Speed, 2 Defense, 2 Resistance, 1 Magic. Its class skill is Triangle Adept, doubling WT bonuses and penalties.

Fighter’s alternative to Bounty Hunter is Warrior, which has promo gains of: 5 HP, 3 Strength, 3 Skill, 2 Speed, 1 Defense, 1 Resistance, 1 Magic. Its class skill is Reckless, granting +4 damage if the foe can counterattack.

First of all, Thunderstorm is very easy to use. Steel Blades and Steel Axes weigh 14, and both are fairly easy to acquire; however, few other weapons weigh 14 or more (Brave Lance, Brave Axe, Hammer, Battle Axe, Heavy Spear, Greatlance, Greed, Arbalest and Siege weapons). This means that in almost all relevant circumstances, Thunderstorm is active; the only weapons on the 14+ WT list that are encountered among enemy forces with reasonable frequency are the Steel Axe, Greatlance and Battle Axe, and the Bounty Hunter class has options to WTA these weapons regardless. As such, Thunderstorm effectively has 100% uptime, as the only cases where it isn’t active are cases where it is already winning regardless.

Thus, when Thunderstorm is factored into Bounty Hunter’s promo gains, it effectively has a Strength boost of +7. This is monstrous. OHKOs are a lot more commonplace now, and +20 Hit means that with a decent Skill stat, which many of the Mercenaries/Fighters in the game have, Bounty Hunters are in contention for the single most accurate class in the game, making them good at dealing with enemies on terrain or when Sandraudiga is on the map with her 10 Authority.

When compared up against Warrior, Bounty Hunter simply does what Warrior does, which is have a massive Attack stat, but better. Both effectively give +7 damage between their stat boosts and class skill, but Bounty Hunter does so more efficiently, in addition to offering extra accuracy and crit. Additionally, Bounty Hunter offers WT flexibility, whereas Warrior gains bows, which have limited use, and tomes, despite most Fighter-line units having inferior magic that stops them from using them particularly effectively.

When compared up against Hoplite, Bounty Hunter holds up despite Hoplite being meant to be the bulkier option. Despite Hoplite seemingly being meant to tank, Bounty Hunter is only behind by 1 HP and 1 Resistance, neither of which are particularly large losses. Additionally, Hoplite’s advantage in Skill is effectively moot because Thunderstorm does way more than 2 extra points of Skill will ever do, considering Thunderstorm is effectively 100% active. Furthermore, Hoplite’s Triangle Adept usually hurts it more than it helps. Doubling WT modifiers means that winning WT just means taking an already won matchup and making it slightly better; anyone can win a winning matchup so there’s no particular need to double down. On the flip side, suffering double WTD penalties is very dangerous, as it leaves your unit as a sitting duck to take huge damage; in the late-game, enemies in classes that offer full WT coverage like Hoplite and Great Knight often come with full WT coverage, meaning that your Hoplite is automatically losing any matchup against them; even those without full WT coverage will often run coverage for both or all of their weapon options, to severely limit what Hoplite can do.

Even in terms of caps for postgame, Bounty Hunter is still better. Aside from Hoplite being completely crippled in the caps department (with 26 Strength/Speed), its supposed physical bulk in 25 Defense is not of any value, because Bounty Hunter also caps at 25. Bounty Hunter meanwhile has only slightly less Skill than Hoplite (27 to Hoplite’s 28), but has +3 Strength for a cap of 29. Against Warrior, their caps are more or less the same; Bounty Hunter is behind by 1 Strength (29 against 30) but has +1 Skill to compensate (27 against 26), and +1 Defense (25 to 24) in exchange for -4 Magic (21 against 25), but Magic never mattered to begin with.

The conclusion? Bounty Hunter is very, very strong. It is the META for any unit who can class into it, because the alternative are just a whole lot worse. Phobos, Fango, Jane, Hestia, Fructouso, and to an extent, Fighter-line Pheme, should always promote into Bounty Hunter whenever possible. The class is just that good, with Thunderstorm being a large chunk of what makes it good.

[Alexmonster99]

I would argue that Phobos prefers Hoplite because his con is bad for bounty hunter good weapons. And I guess Earthquake exists for physical warrios which gives amazing 1-2 range and has a strength cap of 30 instead of 29. But that accuracy is so neccesary with Fanga (Hestia at least has an actual skill stat). And my main issue with Warrior is that reckless doesn’t synergy well with bows. And the only type if enemies where this matter are mages, which axes can benefit and can oneshot and bows units which 1 range is safe, and in case of mounted bow users halberd and wolf beil are better.

And I am considering doing a class tier list when I end this

[MisoSoup247]

very important question, how big is David??

Chapter 9

[SaintRubenio]

Big enough that people describe him as a giant. Even his unit description does! Alas, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

[Skullgoblin]

Can Pheme be saved at all like Kaze or is she always doomed to meet her end? Was pretty devastated losing her honestly.

[Liemile]

From what I was told, yes, but only in subsequent playthroughs, by having her promoted before “The moment”

[cb1052]

no. get cleave bow’d

[Alexmonster99]

But any bow unit can usa that well, even Lopez and it is very limited and Kyra is always force deployed. And wolf beil, hammer and halberd do more damage than the Cleave bow.

[UltraxBlade]

There’s a big difference between Cleave Bow and those others. Well, multiple really, 2 range is great in a game where avoiding counterattacks is especially valuable due to limited healing and being able to snipe fliers as well as cavs and armors is nice, but more importantly: Cleave Bow is buyable. Chapter 11 armory sells them, right after you can potentially have recruited a unit with Bargain. So that “any bow unit can use that”? How about “every bow unit can use that”.

[Alexmonster99]

If a warrior/bounty hunter isn’t one shotting a cav or a knight with reckless and a hammer or a halberd, that warrior has an issue, outside sword cavs because accuracy and the very lategame generals that can survive a hammer hit. Also cleave bow has the utility of killing generals with 2-3 range super effectiveness in Snipers which helps a lot because a lot of them have 1-2 range and the combustion ones are specially dangerous. If my strength screwed Begoña could one shot them by a big part of the game with a hammer a warrior should do it too. And the game gives you a prepromote sniper so she can abuse cleave bow amd that weapon has 20 uses and you are one shotting the relevant ones so you need 2 uses for each enemy so each bow defeats only 10 of them. Even if you can buy them with Polonius, the game economy becomes huge after that map because when flying spam starts suddenly promoted Lopez can kill shit (which I don’t include because he does more damage with assassinate effective swords).

And now talking about bouting hunter again. It fixes Fango accuracy issues which is more relevant than the bows especially because the first brave weapon is the axe which with thuderweight has more accuracy than a steel sword, the halberd has the same and the hammer only 5 less and he oneshots mages and archers in both classes anyway so that doesn’t matter.
And cleave bow has 15 less might than hammer (18/19 considering thunderweight and reckless if the bow can’t proc reckless) which makes the one shot way harder. And like I said there are way more bow users besides warrior, Kyra, Faidh, the dark riders, the dark knights if you promote them to black dragoon, Pluto and Vasikili if you want to use them, the prepromotes in 18, the 2 assassins (even when in them they aren’t worth too) and not everyone is going to use cleave bows.

[RNGSOMEONE]

Bounty Hunter is 13 CON at base. Your speed loss with even the heavier weapons is minimal. Even Phobos, who is -1 CON, favors Bounty Hunter over Hoplite due to better overall combat performance and not being crippled whenever facing WTD.

[MegiDolaDyne]

Yeah I’m on team Warrior > Bounty Hunter. Cleave Bow is cracked, longbows are cracked, and in a game whose gimmick is that healing is kind of hard to get, being able to avoid counters is a huge deal.