FE7 Ironman part 4
Previously I slugged through many chapters and gained many powerful recruits – and now, it is time for me to move towards the endgame.
Chapter 27.
This map, despite looking complex due to the use of 3-10 range spell tomes by the opponent and a race towards the chests, is more or less a calm before the storm, especially considering how many broken units we have at our disposal right now. The only real issue is the awful movement speed due to the snowy weather.
On turn 4 Louise gets a very, very close call, dropping to 1 HP. Next turn, the weather clears up. setting me up to intercept enemy thieves.
On turn 9 I get a scare, because the boss can dish out INSANE damage with a siege tome. I think for a short moment about which unit is the best suited for this, and the end result is Pent taking all five hits of the tome to break it and let other units to come in.
On turn 10, the snow comes again, and Harken shows up as an enemy unit, whom I quickly manage to recruit. He has a Brave Sword, and a really fucking insane statline. At this point I am ready to ignore half of the enemies on this map – the only issue left is wasting all the Purge uses that the boss has, and to not forget to pilfer the chests. All signs seems to show that the unit best suited for this is Pent, with his high resistance, solid avoid and weapon triangle advantage. To kill the boss though, I will have to move in with my physical units, because the boss's resistance stat is too fucking high for even Pent to damage him. What's even worse, is that this boss has a motherfucking crit chance, so I have to slooooooowly bring Ninian to the fray to set up Ninis' Grace for safety. Sain with the +10 Res buff is able to break through, and after mostly non-exciting 24 turns, I move Hector to seize the throne.
As for the statboosters available on this map, I feed Speedwings to Sain, and Talisman to Hector.
Current army: Hector (lv20), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv4 pr.), Priscilla (lv3 pr.), Sain (lv13 pr.), Raven (lv7 pr.), Ninian (lv16), Isadora (lv2 pr.), Rath (lv1 pr.), Hawkeye (lv7 pr.), Pent (lv7 pr.), Louise (lv4 pr.), Harken (lv7 pr.)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn, Dart
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius, Heath, Farina, Fiora.
Missed: Wallace
Chapter 28
The infamous Battle Before Dawn. The goal is to reach Zephiel as fast as humanly possible, and not let him die. With some (read: a lot) of luck, there is a possiblity to recruit both Nino and Jaffar. But honestly? It is not worth risking the entire run to this. Furthermore, there is a way more important secondary objective – Boots. A stat boosting item granting +2 to the movement stat.
The army lineup I choose to go for this chapter is as follows: Hector, Matthew, Priscilla, Sain, Raven, Ninian, Hawkeye, Pent, Harken, and Oswin.
I immediately make my way through the left side of the map, taking into account the problem called Maxim, the secondary boss of the chapter who has jacked up stats to hell. Beating his ass took me one turn longer longer than it should though.
I manage to intercept the thieves without issue though, and I do obtain both a Brave Lance and the ever so broken Boots. I send Seth to extract Zephiel, then I give him to Oswin to have someone who can safely carry him before Ursula will start smacking him with Bolting.
On turn 9 Raven sadly fails to dodge twice and dies during the enemy phase.
I “fail” to rescue Nino. The word “fail” is in quotations for one simple reason – I didn't even fucking try. This locks me out of getting Jaffar, but who cares.
Around turn 12 I am in a proper place to just escape to the entrance with Zephiel held in arms. Yes, this does mean I give up on a few items – a Rescue staff, Delphi Shield and Earth Seal, but at least I won't fucking game over.
At the end Jaffar is left intact, so I assume he is alive, just on the run from... well, everyone, provided he handled the death of Nino fine.
Current army: Hector (lv20), Matthew (lv20), Oswin (lv4 pr.), Priscilla (lv4 pr.), Sain (lv13 pr.), Ninian (lv17), Isadora (lv2 pr.), Rath (lv1 pr.), Hawkeye (lv8 pr.), Pent (lv8 pr.), Louise (lv4 pr.), Harken (lv9 pr.)
Benched: Eliwood, Guy, Rebecca, Kent, Lyn, Dart
Deaths: Serra, Dorcas, Erk, Bartre, Lowen, Marcus, Wil, Florina, Lucius, Heath, Farina, Fiora, Raven, Nino
Missed: Wallace, Jaffar.
Chapter 29
After the infamously inconsistent chapter, it is time for a different kind of hell now. Ton of siege tomes, sleep staves, and silence staves are here to wreck my army. And it is a rout chapter to boot, so no janky “skip to boss” thing is available. I will have to grind my way through... and do so slowly to not get overwhelmed by statuses. It will be hell.
And hell it is, as evidenced by me losing Harken to the magical onslaught merely on turn 3. I “love” siege tomes. This is the moment where I realize that this may become the very end of this run. I go a bit YOLO to eliminate the threats as well as I humanly can, even exposing Hector – since any further death can be very much fatal the entire run. However, there were very little options for me to rescue myself from this, and ultimately, Hector dies to a powerful Bolting hit from a distant enemy Sage...
There is little to say here now. I didn't think to stock up on pure waters on the one chapter where I could safely do so – and this sealed the fate of my army. Even if Hector lived, I would need way too much luck to not have at the very least half of my army slaughtered.
The Fatal End
I tried my hardest to go through this mess of a run with way too little experience to handle it properly, but it was certainly fun... and I will certainly try again in the near future to go through this, with the experience I've gotten from this run. But for now, I think I will go for something calmer – like FE6 Normal mode Ironman challenge, or FE8 Difficult? Maybe I will also livepost my attempt now on the microblogging side of the Fediverse... probably not, but still.