Sacred Stones SG

[Katon]

Fenn's Natasha introduction reads depressingly prophetically now . . .

Serenes Forest thinks that the reward for saving all the civilians would've been the only free Orion's Bolt, so Neimi's path to promotion just got a bit rockier. Still, we can also buy them from a secret shop, and it looks like we'll have a few spare promotion items we can sell to raise the cash .

The next couple of maps should be more straightforward between no time pressure and no fog of war, so hopefully we can still set ourselves up fairly well for the route split and the nastier Ephraim mode maps.

[Fenn]

Moulder was doing so well, too...Natasha has a chance to shine now, at least.

The next map is really easy and straightforward, so the report should go up tomorrow.

[Jowy]

As a silver lining, more open endgame slots for your other units? (Alright, I got nothing. RIP.)

For future reference, pegasi/other fliers don't get bonus defense/avoid from terrain. If that weren't intuitive enough, they do heal in forts, but don't get the bonuses :3.

Oh. Good to know.

Fenn's Natasha introduction reads depressingly prophetically now . . .

Serenes Forest thinks that the reward for saving all the civilians would've been the only free Orion's Bolt, so Neimi's path to promotion just got a bit rockier. Still, we can also buy them from a secret shop, and it looks like we'll have a few spare promotion items we can sell to raise the cash .

The next couple of maps should be more straightforward between no time pressure and no fog of war, so hopefully we can still set ourselves up fairly well for the route split and the nastier Ephraim mode maps.

Right. Speaking of Neimi, she needs to be fed some levels if we want to use her. She's more of a burden than an asset at the moment.

[Jowy]

I finished the game on normal difficulty!
I'll know what to expect. Somewhat.

Artur and Garcia ended up being my super units and got the most kills.

I liked the story. It reminds me of my favorite game, Suikoden 2.

All in all the game was pretty easy. Chapter 6 (the one I just reported in our SG) and Ephraim's early chapters were the hardest.

There was one map that caught me completely off-guard later in the game:



Those 9 enemies on the left all just spawned in behind my back rank of weak units.
We won't be playing the SG blind like I was here, but I think it's a good example of the tricks the game will pull on you the first time you play it.

[Fenn]

Interesting thing about Normal mode: generic enemies receive a certain amount of invisible levels depending on their displayed level and whether or not they're promoted. Promoted generic enemies in Normal receive 27 fewer levels than they do on Hard, which makes them worse than their unpromoted counterparts!

Chapter 7: Waterside Renvall

Chapter 7 is the definition of a breather: there are no reinforcements, no time-sensitive goals, or anything that can trip you up. It's an opportunity for our weaker units to get some much-needed xp.

The Mage marked with an "A" can have an Energy Ring stolen from him, which is about the most exciting part of this chapter.


Here's the team I brought, or: "Everybody except Garcia and Seth". Lute and Neimi will head northwest and secure the ballista; Colm, Vanessa and Franz will cooperate to steal the Energy Ring, and everyone else will just pile eastward.


But first, the stealing. Franz picks up Colm, and Vanessa drops him in the river. When the mage heads over to take a potshot at Colm, he'll be close enough to steal from.


Meanwhile Gilliam stabs Soldiers and continues to refuse to gain Speed. Him and the rest of the group are clearing out the various archers, fighters, and mercenaries scattered around, none of which are a real threat.


Back to the Mage. Colm takes a hard hit, but he'll live; thanks to his high Luck he doesn't even face a crit chance from the Mage, which does my heart good. The Energy Ring's going to Vanessa - her Strength is a black mark in her otherwise great stat spread, hopefully the +2 will make her more effective.

In the northwest, I belatedly realize that the Fighter and Mage can kill Lute if they both hit. Fortunately we have a Pure Water in storage, so Franz can pick one up from Eirika and give it to Neimi:

Who then gives it to Lute for her to use. This way, the Mage will tink her, letting Lute go a few rounds safely with the Fighter.


Other than that little issue, there's nothing of note going on, just killing dudes for levels. It's quite like Chapter 5x, except with more units. Imagine about seven more level up screens like these spread out between our units.


Here's Lute after taking a hit from the Fighter. She can pop a Vulnerary while Neimi chips the Fighter, and finish him off on enemy phase. She ends up getting (another) bad level from it, HP/LCK or something.


Anyway eventually we reach the boss, who's a little worse than Franz. He's kind of tough, but Eirika can one-round him with her Rapier so he isn't really tough.

Save (Chapter 8)

[Jkaen]

You getting close to a stat review over/under review?

[Jowy]

You getting close to a stat review over/under review?

This is as good a time as any. One stat review coming up!

[Jowy]

Stat Growths!
Our stats compared to averages from here
Green: Above average
Orange: Average
Red: Below average



Eirika - Lord - Lvl11
HP 24 - 23
STR 8 - 8
SKL 15 - 14
SPD 14 - 15
LCK 12 - 11
DEF 5 - 6
RES 5 - 4




Artur - Monk - Lvl8
HP 23 - 22
MAG 7 - 9 Thankfully Bishops are awesome, 2x dmg to monsters will make up for lack of magic.
SKL 10 - 9
SPD 10 - 10
LCK 2 - 3
DEF 3 - 2
RES 10 - 9




Franz - Cavalier - Lvl9
HP 26 - 26
STR 10 - 10
SKL 10 - 8
SPD 11 - 11
LCK 4 - 5
DEF 6 - 8 Cavaliers ride ahead of the pack and take hits.. They need def!
RES 4 - 2




Gilliam - Knight - Lvl11
HP 31 - 31
STR 13 - 12
SKL 7 - 8
SPD 3 - 5 Would be bad on anyone else.. (See: Ross' death). But Gilliam's high DEF means they just hit for 0 twice. Keep him out of magic range!
LCK 7 - 5
DEF 14 - 12
RES 3 - 4




Vanessa - Pegasus Knight - Lvl7
HP 19 - 20
STR 7 - 7
SKL 11 - 10
SPD 15 - 14
LCK 8 - 7
DEF 6 - 7
RES 7 - 6




Lute - Mage - Lvl7
HP 18 - 19
MAG 8 - 9
SPD 10 - 9
LCK 9 - 10
DEF 3 - 3
RES 9 - 7




Neimi - Archer - Lvl6
HP 20 - 19
STR 5 - 6
SKL 7 - 7
SPD 10 - 9
LCK 6 - 6
DEF 6 - 3 Wil reborn?
RES 2 - 3




Colm - Thief - Lvl3
HP 19 - 18
STR 4 - 4
SKL 5 - 4
SPD 11 - 10
LCK 9 - 8
DEF 3 - 3
RES 1 - 1




Joshua - Myrmidon - Lvl7
HP 25 - 25
STR 9 - 8
SKL 15 - 14
SPD 16 - 15
LCK 7 - 7
DEF 6 - 5
RES 2 - 2




Natasha - Cleric - Lvl2
HP 18 - 18
MAG 3 - 2
SKL 4 - 4
SPD 9 - 8
LCK 6 - 6
DEF 2 - 2
RES 7 - 6




Garcia - Fighter - Lvl6
HP 30 - 29
STR 8 - 9
SKL 8 - 7
SPD 7 - 7
LCK 4 - 3
DEF 6 - 5
RES 1 - 1



Not a huge amount of variance yet one way or another. Colm is borderline unusable, not because of his growths, but because of his low level. Natasha is also low, but she's a healer so her level doesn't matter as much. Ideally she won't ever see combat. Ephraim, Kyle and Forde are split from the group so I can't get their stats yet.

[Katon]

Time for the climactic map of the first part of the game. After this, Ephraim and Eirika head off to different parts of the world and the player chooses which to follow, dragging the rest of the party along with them. We'll be following Ephraim into the closest thing this game has to a hard run of maps. I skipped most of the level-up screens expecting to do a status update with the route split and then it turned out Jowy had already done one, so I'll follow this with a mini-update covering Ephraim, Forde, Kyle, and the people who got multiple levels.

Chapter 8: It's a Trap!

Story-wise this is the same castle as 5x, and if you look closely you can see that the throne room and the two-chest room are actually the same rooms as in 5x, just with a slightly different subset of the surrounding corridors. Ephraim, Forde, and Kyle will join turn 2 where they're shown, with a couple of enemy cavaliers following three turns later. Entering the green zone triggers two mages up top and a thief on the stairs. Other than that, what you see is what you get. We have to leave two units behind not counting Seth; I decide to leave Franz, who can afford to skip a map and is redundant with forced Forde and Kyle, and Joshua, because this is not a good map to be sword-only and I'm already stuck with Eirika and Colm. Neimi and Garcia need to pull something out of their hats here, they're both having trouble keeping up in levels.

I start out by feeding the nearby soldiers to our two stragglers and positioning the rest of the party so that the only unit who can get swarmed is Gilliam, who won't particularly care. Sure enough, after the mercenary hits him for 2x0, the enemy archer decides to go not-quite-kill Lute instead (pic below). Natasha patches her up and by using the party's stronger units to soften the enemy up we can feed the kills to Colm, Vanessa, and Garcia without taking damage. Colm's level is good, Garcia's unfortunately isn't. Team Ephraim shows up and promptly starts killing their way though the corridor one unit at a time.



The next actual challenge is, for Team Ephraim, the three cavaliers who come in behind them in a group; and for Team Eirika, opening the way into the room of five knights. Ephraim sets himself up to trade javelins with the one javelin-equipped cav, while Forde rests on a pillar after killing an enemy mage. Meanwhile Colm unlocks the door, Vanessa drags him out of the way, and Garcia gets ready to draw out the first armor. If Garcia had moved ahead of Colm, multiple armors could reach him, which could be problematic if the RNG hated him even though they're all inaccurate as hell and on the wrong side of the weapons triangle. This way, he can only be hit by one armor and multiple units can heal or shoot from behind him.



Garcia's dodge luck is in, so with the chokepoint's help he manages to slaughter his way through the knights one at a time and get an appalling level – he's leveled twice so far, and has 2 HP and 1 Str to show for it. Similarly, the lance mob can pull up inside that doorway to make sure they're only fighting cavaliers one at a time, and between Ephraim's stats and his anti-horse personal lance, that's a winning battle. After that, it's back to being able to fight units one by one for a while. Colm nabs an Angelic Robe, which I didn't use; I suspect it wants to go on Lute or Natasha.



Vanessa lures out the thief, while Gilliam draws out the soldiers and knight at the front of the throne room – I've given up on Garcia, and Gilliam is slow enough that Neimi can finish his kills. Artur and Lute head up to kill the mage in that narrow corridor and the one in the throne room, Vanessa, Neimi, and Colm finish off everyone who tried for Gilliam (Garcia also gets a counter-kill after softening up the knight for Neimi), and the lance trio clear out everything short of the locked door.

At this point all that's left is one shaman, two chests, and the boss. Colm unlocks the door to the shaman, Artur finishes him, Natasha heals everyone back to full, and then we take the boss down. Between his high stats and the defence/evade/healing from the throne he's standing on, he can take a ton of punishment, but his standing next to a bunch of pillars lets us position our attackers so that they can survive a single hit, and Eirika winds up finishing him on his turn.

Next time: we start what I think is the hardest three-map stretch of the game and (hopefully) pick up our second trainee.

[Katon]

We need status updates for Team Ephraim. I also pushed Lute, Neimi, and Garcia fairly hard that map, so I'll throw in the three of them

Lute – Mage – level 10
HP: 19 – 21.05
Mag: 11 – 11.85
Skl: 9 – 8.7
Spd: 13 – 11.05
Lck: 9 – 12.05
Def: 3 – 4.35
Res: 10 – 8.6

Being more of a glass cannon than the average Lute is an impressive achievement, but ours seems to be pulling it off nicely.

Neimi – Archer – level 9
HP: 22 – 21.6
Str: 5 – 7.6
Skl: 9 – 9
Spd: 11 – 10.8
Lck: 8 – 8
Def: 6 – 4.2
Res: 3 – 4.8

I caught her up on levels, and she's quite survivable, but I think that's now seven levels in a row with no strength. Her growth is 45%, for those who're curious. We don't get another archer til Chapter 15 and fliers are going to start showing up that we'll want to shoot, so she's got a little time to turn that stat around, but it is definitely a problem.

Garcia – Fighter – level 8
HP: 32 – 31.2
Str: 9 – 10.6
Skl: 8 – 8.6
Spd: 7 – 7.8
Lck: 4– 4.6
Def: 6 – 6
Res: 1 – 1.6

Well, I gave him his chance after Ross' death and he completely fluffed it. He's only a little below average now, but there is absolutely no reason to use a below-average Garcia once other axe-users show up, and the best axe prepromote is joining in two chapters.

Ephraim – Lord – level 11
HP: 29 – 28.6
Str: 12– 11.85
Skl: 13 – 12.85
Spd: 13 – 14.15
Lck: 11– 11.5
Def: 10 – 9.45
Res: 4 – 3.75

The maps might be harder, but there is one very nice advantage to going with Ephraim. You can see from the expected stats that he hasn't been getting ridiculously good levels, he actually is this good.

Forde – Cavalier – level 12
HP: 28 – 29.1
Str: 8 – 9.4
Skl: 11 – 11
Spd: 12 – 10.7
Lck: 8 – 9.1
Def: 9 – 9.2
Res: 6 – 3.5

Between the resistance and the strength, Forde has apparently decided that he's a peg knight. Note the level; he's got the most balanced stats of our three cavs, but is currently on track to come out worst. Not that he'll be unusable by any means.

Kyle – Cavalier – level 10
HP: 30 – 29.5
Str: 12 – 11.5
Skl: 10 – 8
Spd: 9 – 9
Lck: 7 – 7
Def: 9 – 10.25
Res: 1 – 2

The extra skill is nice, his being behind on defence like Franz is annoying, but basically Kyle's being Kyle.