FE7 Ironman part 3
Previously, I have struggled through the early part of this run, losing plenty of units, and more importantly, plenty of weapons. Furthermore, it seems like I forgot to buy some weapons, which will make things, well, interesting to say the least.
Chapter 17
The first thing we see is Merlinus joining our band, providing us with a convoy capabilities. Sadly we can't just buy some iron weapons from him for us to just get by for now.
Step one of the master plan – figure out who can we even bring to fight. By this I don't exactly mean who can survive – I mean more something like who can I give enough weapons to even get by. I would love to use Kent now for example – but I just can't give him enough items to make it work.
Ultimately, I decide on this lineup: Hector, Oswin, Matthew, Priscilla, Sain, Lyn and Wil. If I had more weapons, I would bench Lyn for safety, yet here we are.
Hector, Sain and Matthew will spearhead the assault, Oswin will guard the rear, and the other two... well, they will do something, I guess?
I try to move out quickly to secure at least some of the good items and not let the two recruitable characters to die. I manage to handle things just enough to get the bottom two chests, containing Unlock staff and a Hero Crest. Sadly, I do screw up things a bit and lose Wil by letting him fight a tiny teensy bit too much on the enemy phase. Apparently he wasn't that good at dodging.
The top chests sadly got pilfered, so I won't be able to promote Oswin just yet, and losing a silver sword does suck ass. I also fuck up a yet another side objective – that is keeping at least one green soldier alive – which locks me off a gaiden chapter. I get to properly recruit Raven and Lucius though, so it isn't THAT big of a deal.
After a certain point, I have to send Oswin back to the entrance, to hold off Cavaliers and Nomads. They all dealt no damage to him, which gave me the opportunity to do a bit of a degenerate grinding strategy, by letting the enemy Nomads to simply break their weapons on Oswin. Afterwards, I stepped in with Raven to mop up the remaining enemies and safely feed him some XP. In the meantime, I set up Sain to dodge tank the javelin hits from the boss, to provide him with some extra XP for free.
Due to this strategies
Current army: Hector (lv13), Matthew (lv17), Oswin (lv17), Priscilla (lv6), Lyn (lv6), Florina (lv8), Kent (lv6), Sain (lv4 pr.), Raven (lv7), Lucius (lv4)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil
Chapter 18
Time for a battle on top of a ship. Primary objective: Survive.
Secondary objectives: Steal Elysian Whip and buy a truckload of weapons, mostly iron ones. I am really struggling to properly equip my army after all, and thankfully there is a very accessible armory here, so...
Teritiary objective: Steal Guiding Ring from the boss of this chapter. I am not sure if it is even possible for me to do so considering the current state of my army and shitton of reinforcements to care about, but if I'll manage to do so, I will happily take it – then use it on Priscilla later on, since she definitely needs the extra stats, and some ability to defend herself will also aid her utility.
I bring Hector, Oswin, Matthew, Priscilla, Sain, Florina, Raven and L
To set up some funds in a proper way, I sell the Unlock staff, as well as Eliwood's still unused Rapier, netting me extra 3750 gold to spend on cheap weapons.
I begin the map, set up a decent formation, then the Pegasus Knight holding the Elysian Whip crashes on Raven for some reason instead of attacking weaponless Oswin. Fucking hell.
I manage to survive the onslaught for the mandated 11 turns, killing most of the enemies with my strongest units.
Current army: Hector (lv14), Matthew (lv18), Oswin (lv17), Priscilla (lv7), Florina (lv9), Sain (lv5 pr.), Raven (lv7), Lucius (lv5)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil
Chapter 19
Finally something that looks a bit calmer. From the get go, we get Dartz, a Pirate, and we can also recruit Fiora here.
Generally there isn't much to talk about this map, except for the fact that it is a fog of war map, and the boss is a pretty darn tough bastard.
Speaking of the boss, I hoped to weaken him with Florina. End result? She got doubled and died. Fuck. One of my favourite characters dead due to me being an utter fucking idiot.
Still the map has been completed within 15 turns, which allows me to go onto a gaiden chapter. Now, the question is, whether or not do I want to go there. I check what do I have to gain from this, and I decide to not accept the side quest. Silver card sure is powerful, but I do still need to manage my weapon count nothenless.
Current army: Hector (lv14), Matthew (lv19), Oswin (lv18), Priscilla (lv7), Sain (lv6 pr.), Raven (lv9), Lucius (lv5), Dart (lv9)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina
Chapter 20
Oh god oh no I have to bring Eliwood and Lyn aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Eliwood is currently completely and utterly useless. The plan is to hide him in some kind of a safe space, then work my way through while hopefully not losing the Guiding Ring on this chapter... yeah, right, I have no clue how do I get to it in any reasonable time. Granted, the goal is to recruit Legault here, but intercepting him in time will be a massive undertaking. I prepare Raven to promote in this chapter, hopefully he will get one more level under his belt and gain the power to use Axes.
I move Eliwood back for safety, and assault the entrance corridor with Sain. Sadly, I am forced to move back before I will get wrecked, meaning that getting Legault is pretty much not possible. During the tactical retreat, I lose Lucius in a stupid way.
Counting in reinforcements, the amount of enemies is absolutely staggering. I manage to promote Raven at level 10 during the fight, getting me a new solid frontliner.
I manage to get a blue gem and brave bow from chests, with rest of the items failling victim to enemy thieves.
Around turn 18 I manage to finally approach the actual boss of the chapter. I defeat him in two turns with Sain.
Current army: Hector (lv16), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv19), Priscilla (lv8), Sain (lv8 pr.), Raven (lv1 pr.), Dart (lv9), Fiora (lv7)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius
Chapter 21
Another fog of war map. Yay. There is an arena here, which is an interesting sight to be honest. A high risk, high reward gambling machine. With some effort I will be able to level up most of my army to obscene levels, which is amazing.
I also finally get Ninian the Dancer, who gets the stats of Nils from Lyn mode.
After getting rid of reinforcements and any other enemy that could threaten my arena abuse masterplan, I get to working. I am using the fact that there is a glitch where Ninis's Grace buff does not wear off when the unit is rescued, so I can just keep on going into the arena with the obscene +10 to both Str and Res. I also go for wagers below 750 gold, so that the enemies will be weaker – ergo, safe enough for ironman setting.
Since I've had to field him, I bring Eliwood to level 10 so he won't be a total liability for chapters such as this one. He's still crappy, but at least he will be able to be promoted to a mounted unit later in the game – and the promotion bonuses he gets are pretty darn solid all things considered. I also level up Fiora to level 12 and promote her with the Elysian Whip available in this chapter, to get a solid enough flying unit after I lost Florina 😢. Fiora also has really good resistance stat, which will be extremely important against magic units. All the dancing and healing also provided Priscilla and Ninian with a decent chunk of XP.
You may ask why not go all the way through up to level 20 here. And the answer is simple – too much time and too much risk. Arena abuse is tedious, and most of my non-benched units don't really need that extra exp much – and the higher you go, the more you risk fighting against enemies with silver weapons, while you are forced to roll with just iron ones. And as for money, I will get more on the way through.
After this, I get a close call with Sain because I forget that the boss of this chapter has a motherfucking Killer Axe. Merry Critmas. I manage to setup a steal of a Hero Crest in response, and finish the boss with Raven.
Current army: Hector (lv16), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv20), Priscilla (lv12), Sain (lv9 pr.), Raven (lv3 pr.), Ninian (lv12), Fiora (lv1 pr.)
Benched: Eliwood (yes, he is still very benchable), Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn, Dart
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius
Chapter 22
After lots of plot development, we are thrown right into a yet another defense chapter. This time, we have three recruitable units available to us. Isadora, a Paladin, joins us from the start, which means we have a yet another strong unit to use – even if not as overpowered as Sain. There is also Rath, the Nomad from the Lyn mode, that I forgot whether I can promote yet or not, and Heath, an enemy Wyvern Rider, who is another solid unit thanks to the hard mode bonuses.
I can also get a Knight Crest, which means I will finally have a chance to promote Oswin into a General... provided I won't fuck up anything on the way. I will also have to try and reach the chest with Brave Axe in time... tho knowing life, it is a hard ask. Isadora comes in with an Angelic Robe, which I immediately use on Hector.
After a short while, Heath comes in range of Hector's Talk command, and so I recruit him. Next turn, Heath is dead. This is the moment where I realized that I am an utter idiot to not stock up on Pure Waters. Still, I at least manage to bring Rath home, and I find an opening for Sain to bumrush the boss of this chapter to rob him off the very important Knight Crest, while the rest of the army went into a turtle formation.
On turn 7 I manage to both intercept the enemy Thief, netting me the Brave Axe, and to kill the boss, getting the promotion item and and finishing the chapter early. That felt gooooooood.
Current army: Hector (lv16), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv20), Priscilla (lv13), Sain (lv11 pr.), Raven (lv3 pr.), Ninian (lv12), Fiora (lv1 pr.), Isadora (lv1 pr.), Rath (lv8)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn, Dart
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius, Heath.
Chapter 23
It is time for a desert chapter. Or in other words... pain. Most of your army will walk extremely slow, with only mages and fliers being more or less unaffected, and cavalry units are slowed times four instead of just times 2 that you would expect from most units. Not only that but as soon as one starts this map on Hector Hard Mode, fog of war comes in. And we have to rout every enemy while also attempting to find some hidden items and hopefully steal a valuable Guiding Ring to finally promote Priscilla. The only saving grace is that there is only 8 turns of reinforcements to deal with.
Other than routing the enemy, we also “need” to protect Pent... but the thing is that he is insanely powerful by himself, and as such we don't really have to be scared about him. We also can recruit Hawkeye here, who is a Berserker.
Bosses on this map are somewhat scary – Killer Axe can oneshot most of my units with a crit.
As for the Guiding Ring... well, Pent murdered that guy who had the ring. Yay. Another Guiding Ring missed.
At the end of this chapter we get Afa's Drops, which can increase the growth rates of one unit. I use them on Raven.
Current army: Hector (lv17), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv1 pr.), Priscilla (lv13), Sain (lv11 pr.), Raven (lv4 pr.), Ninian (lv13), Fiora (lv1 pr.), Isadora (lv1 pr.), Rath (lv8), Hawkeye (lv5 pr.)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn, Dart
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius, Heath.
Chapter 24
Can we fucking stop with the fucking fog of war already????
Anyway, we can recruit Wallace here. I don't think I exactly want to, especially considering I have a beefy Oswin available to me, but I guess I can. The more important thing though is a village with an Earth Seal to save – a promotion item that works for nearly any single class... including Troubadour, and Priscilla REALLY needs to get promoted ASAP.
There is an Arena on this chapter, which can allow me to boost Rath to respectable levels and promote him, but I am not entirely sure that this is worth the effort. He is a little bit too behind, and soon I will get Louise as an bow user – and she has some pretty solid stats and can also use Brave Bow.
On the first turn, I rush to the Earth Seal village with Sain, to prevent reinforcement brigands from wrecking it. I also manage to buy some steel weapons and a couple of Swordreavers for future use.
On turn 3, I move Oswin too far forward, which activates Lloyd too early, putting me on a very tight clock for reaching the village. As soon as I will kill Lloyd, the map will be over, and the Earth Seal will be gone.
Lloyd is a problematic boss. He has a magic sword, which means that he is targetting Resistance, and he has a high crit rate, so my units are at a severe risk of dying. Granted, at a two range, there is no chance of crit, but that doesn't mean he isn't dishing a truckload of damage and doubling most of my army nothenless. I have to play risky and eventually I deal the last hit with Matthew. It was pretty darn stressful.
As for Wallace, noone recruited him, but he didn't die, so he doesn't count as a death I think? I'll mark him as missed I guess.
Current army: Hector (lv17), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv1 pr.), Priscilla (lv14), Sain (lv11 pr.), Raven (lv4 pr.), Ninian (lv14), Fiora (lv1 pr.), Isadora (lv2 pr.), Rath (lv8), Hawkeye (lv5 pr.)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn, Dart
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius, Heath.
Missed: Wallace
Chapter 25
A seize chapter... except we are to seize three forts. FE4 anyone?
During battle preparations, I immediately use an Earth Seal on Priscilla, because as I've said multiple times, she needed that for quite a while already.
I can recruit Farina here for a small sum of TWENTY THOUSAND GOLD. I guess she is a yet another flyer, and she can promote from the get go... provided I will get that Elysian Whip from this village, which does not seem like an easy task on this layout to be completely honest. My best option seems to be intercepting pirate reinforcements with Fiora it seems, and this works far more briliantly than I thought it would.
By turn 5, I have already seized one of the castles and obtained an Elysian Whip for future use. On this turn, Farina has spawned, and then I've realized I don't have enough money to recruit her. Happens.
I am advancing really, really smoothly too. There is little standing in my way that can survive my attacks, or even damage my units in the first place. That is, until I get into the aggro range of the boss, who dishes huge damage and will be really hard to fell, forcing me to fall back for a moment. With combined efforts of Hector, Oswin and Hawkeye, he dies on turn 8, leaving nothing much other than weak generic enemies.
Farina eventually dies trying to navigate to Hector, which is mildly unfortunate. For her, not for me, she did kill a few enemies on the way and I didn't have money to hire her anyway.
Fiora is able to singlehandedly destroy a huge regiment of monks on the right side of the map, making handling this way easier than it should be.
Eventually I get past all the enemies and capture second fort, and then the third one falls soon after.
Current army: Hector (lv19), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv2 pr.), Priscilla (lv1 pr.), Sain (lv12 pr.), Raven (lv6 pr.), Ninian (lv14), Fiora (lv3 pr.), Isadora (lv2 pr.), Rath (lv10), Hawkeye (lv6 pr.)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn, Dart
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius, Heath, Farina
Missed: Wallace
Chapter 26
Time for a very scary chapter – I am forced to field both Eliwood and Lyn, and they are both very much out of position. Furthermore, my army is split into three regiments. On a more positive note, I get to use Pent and Louise now, who are both really fucking good. The village here has a Hammerne staff, but I don't think it is exactly feasible for me to go for it.
During battle prep, I promote Rath to give him a little bit extra power and utility
The turn one plan is simple – promote Eliwood ASAP, then get Lyn to safety using Fiora.
I have made an attempt to use fiora to get Eliwood to safety... but the end result was Fiora dying to a nomad. Didn't check the ranges correctly, and the end result was fatal. This is pretty darn painful, cause lack of a flying unit hurts a whole fucking lot.
At turn 8, I am getting overwhelmed due to being spread so thin. It is really hard to defend against so many flying units. Rath gets close to dying, but thankfully Pent comes with a Physic Staff, allowing me to heal him. Ultimately, I manage to survive for all these 11 turns without any further casualities.
Current army: Hector (lv20), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv3 pr.), Priscilla (lv2 pr.), Sain (lv12 pr.), Raven (lv6 pr.), Ninian (lv15), Isadora (lv2 pr.), Rath (lv1 pr.), Hawkeye (lv6 pr.), Pent (lv7 pr.), Louise (lv4 pr.)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn, Dart
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius, Heath, Farina, Fiora.
Missed: Wallace
This is as good time as any to finish this blogpost. We are nearing the endgame, and I am excited to see if I will prevail against the remaining few chapters... Including the infamous Battle Before Dawn.