Update time!
So, battle time.
The bigass mountain on this map is actually impassable to all units, even those with the 'high sky' flying trait.
We use it to our advantage to set up a really kickass formation. Even the dragon can only be hit from 2 hexes.
That could potentially big ugly. But for now I'm not too worried.
As usual, they start off with an annoying poke from an archer.
Technically I could blast their unicorn from here, but I opt to save the MP instead.
Finally they send something into melee. They seem to be fairly intent on killing Miguel.
It's funny how the enemy won't attack some units in fear of counter attacks, but other times they treat units as if they're going to expire when the battle ends or something.
40 damage vs 192. Not the best trade they could have made.
They just got plain unlucky here.
Comte starting to get in trouble.
Well thats about it for his involvement in this battle.
I choose to have Dryst power up the dragon instead of attacking or using curse.
This won't earn him much xp, but it'll be way more effective.
Scotty earns herself a level by cursing an enemy. Spells grant xp equal to their MP cost, in addition to some bonus for dealing damage, so units with high cost spells like demons and angels can level up easily even if they aren't getting kills. Not that it's hard for them to do so.
Azira lays the smack down on their uppity paralyzed bird.
CARE BEAR STARE!!!!!!
You're lucky I'm not actually a weeaboo or there'd be so many god damned anime references to giant laser beam attacks right now.
Anyways, ~300 damage to 5 enemies = we pretty much won the battle right here.
But just to add insult to injury...
Or, well, death to injury.
Yeah thats gonna kill some shit.
And this is how we gain massive amounts of xp very early on while the computer dicks around getting on or two kills per battle.
Camden's stat gain is kinda lackluster. But he's just in this class for the priest spells anyways.
Gnidrologist picks off the gryphon that barely survived, earning an easy level or two.
Miguel gets patched up by a brony so that he can't be wiped out in one turn by their casters.
If course, they choose to bail anyways, just because they lost half their army in two attacks. Pussies.
We have time to take some potshots before they finish retreating though, since their levels are pretty spread out.
Unfortunately, with that fenrir in the way we can't bring in enough guys to take Ivan down before his turn, so we're basically just attacking for the free xp.
Kaiserin can at least pull off a kill.
Wyvern should net us some decent xp.
Not too shabby.
Demons are such a pain to level up though, since you have to baby them and pick their spell uses carefully. Dragons go slower but using them is a no brainer.
One last parting shot.
We were so damned close too.
I have Comte pick up some free xp poking at their centaur. Hopefully they don't kill him before retreating.
Ivan send his guys out for some blood before leaving.
But thats not going to be enough.
Really? You want to fuck with the knight?
Critical.
Pwnage.
Miguel looking pretty badass right now.
Ivan bails.
And so does Esclados. Without murdering Comte (which would have been easy in retrospect, that hydra had power, all he had to do was move the hellhound and send it in.
But he ran like a little girl and we reaped the free xp.
Free levels for everyone!
Well not everyone, but lots of people.
If he survives a few more battles he might be useful as more than cannon fodder soon.
Castle GET.
This castle gets fought over a lot, since it's between esgares, norgard and new almekia. Though sometimes it's just norgard and almekia, depending on who is winning up there.
The computers seem to thrash eachother pretty hard in their fights. Although they lose a lot of units this way, they get a lot of kills too, just like we do. So they usually accumulate a lot of level 5-12 units, but they generally don't live past that.
Sweet. We wanted these guys to fight but couldn't because someone had just been moved.
They're on the offense, which makes it easier for us. And that hydra isn't getting out of those woods any time soon.
They actually start pretty close to the castle, but we're forming a line right on top of it to utilize it's defensive bonuses.
First contact.
Wyvern not doing so hot.
Annoying prick.
Djinn attacks are physical so they're great for fucking up casters if you don't mind risking your squishy unit on the front line.
That hydra isn't keeping up with them very well. They're all way too stretched out instead of attacking in one big wave.
We have Ulster fire off the satelite laser to soften up that Wyvern.
Bizzarely, however, they send their Bishop in for a melee attack.
Bishops are the complete pussies offensive mages are, but they're still not exactly front line material.
Their demon wastes a turn casting venom on one of our many cannon fodder plants. Things are looking good for us.
Bit of a gamble to make this attack, since Wyverns are agile fuckers.
But it pays off.
Inching towards thats promotion.
We send a centaur to fuck up their foolishly placed healer.
But I remember to send the other one after that stupid Djinn and finish it off.
Bye bye Bannedhaira.
Our formation isn't looking so great now, they're basically avoiding like half our troops by going after the guys up top.
They did, however, leave Cai open to some brazen Roc attacking.
Kind of risky since the bird can be completely surrounded now and is right next to some dangerous casters.
But a petrify would have made it so worthwhile. But no dice.
I'd love to send in Draq to enhance this beatdown, but he's even more vulnerable than the Roc would be with that blue element.
We throw a protect spell on the ballsy bird before the turn ends.
Castles heal units standing in them at the start of each turn. This time we're getting good use out of that fact.
I try to paralyze their healer but don't get any luck.
Uh-oh.
Ow.
Cassidy is pretty much fucked despite being the same element as the spell, since he's got terrible int and low hp.
The level 1 giant can shrug it off easily though.
Level 1 Enchantress, not so much.
The lizards have a better hp pool but still are getting hit rather hard.
They finish off our sacrificial plant.
it did a fine job of luring them into a bad formation for us.
They send some more guys in to fight but don't have their best guys in position really.
I decide to burn a halo spell on our golem. I kind of wanted to use it to finish off Beau Arte, but he's got too many hp left, since all we've got up there are plants and centaurs.
He lands a deathblow on a shitty ghoul instead.
At least it gives decent xp thanks to the Halo buff.
Golem are a real pain to level thanks to their shit agility and movement.
Sweet.
Our centaurs land some nice hits too.
Thats pretty dangerously low there buddy.
A pity we couldn't halo up for this attack.
Our giant lands the hit anyways though.
Man that'd be such a nice chunk of xp to boost. :sigh:
Oh joy.
We send our other giant to fuck up Cai. Cai's melee attack is called 'Word of Magic'
But all he does is club the enemy with his book
Maybe they had something different planned but never animated it? Cai doesn't even get a special crit animation.
Miguel uses his turn to patch up Cortina so she's not 1 spell away from death any more.
Fucking jackpot!
With Cai dead and unable to retreat, and their only healer gone, we can now stick around and kill every last enemy here to milk the xp. Draq starts with the paralyzed dragon.
Fucking pixie bitch silenced Cortina! I was gonna get her crazy levels by finishing shit off too.
Our tentacle rape counter offensive gets punished rather harshly. You know how unicorns get a special ciritcal attack? Pixies do too, but it only triggers on their counter attacks. And unlike the unicorn's crit, this one fucking HURTS.
Well, for a pixie anyways. 125 damage isn't going to scare us off.
Ulster's shitty MP is just enough to cure that silence status. If I'd known where things were going I'd have saved those halo spells for Cai and Beau Arte.
Well, I didn't want Cortina to gain too many levels anyways. She just needs to hit level 6.
I wonder if I should make Ulster dual class into melee instead of a caster. His MP is so shitty anyways, at least if he were in melee he'd be in a good position for a lot of things.
Our brofister lands a nigh impossible shot on that pixie bitch.
Not quite enough though.
But the pixe's not lucking out either. No crit this this time.
Schutleis dices some lizard for breakfast.
A chance to clean up an entire set of monsters, especially a large set like what a leader can carry, is a huge boon for us. We're gaining a ton of levels here, this one battle will shift this time from weak to a viable invasion force.
Cortina finishes off the mini bitch with a spell, since that can't miss.
Yeah I think maybe that'd do the trick.
We're on our way.
Their dragon finally broke free of the paralysis.
Fortunately we didn't have anything too weak near it. And the unlucky fucker got himself paralyzed again right away.
We squish it with our awesome golem.
This guy has so earned his name. Awesome performance this battle.
I cast a Fog spell here because it's the only thing Cortina can do to the hydra, and I'm still kinda worried it might fuck something up with a big crit.
I send Kz3ro in first.
He didn't manage to kill it, which is pretty much what I expected.
But they Hydra whiffs the counter. But it probably couldn't have gotten a kill even with a crit, thanks to the elemental factor.
This is a lot riskier. Draq had to move out of the rune area to make this attack. The Hydra might actually be able to kill him with a crit thanks to the lower defense.
But Draq proves he's king of the scalies.
Sweet sweet xp.
He's been getting especially good level ups too. The stat gains are random but he always seems to net str or agi, often both or 2 points in one.
We send Volly in for a feeble attack just for the free xp. Technically with everything dead I could sit here forever and feed him the kill, granting massive xp for an extremely hard to level unit. But fuck, I hate Volly. Screw that.
Target locked.
Missiles away.
Destruction confirmed.
Rather vocal for a dead statue.
Much
occured thanks to this. But man, it could have been over 2k with Halo.
Off to our other battles.
This one first.
This is a really interesting territory to fight in. Unfortunately, it's almost never fought in since it's the border between the only 2 allied countries in the game. And even if you backstab your buddy, it's probably unguarded so you get to take it without a fight.
Anyways, not having aquatic or flying units ia a bit of a pain here, but we only sent one knight with a few troops, so it's not as annoying as it could be.
We don't get to set up our attack the way I'd like, and get bogged down with their monsters before we can pounce on a knight.
Iria isn't going to fall very easily though.
Hmm, she's not in range for a curse...
Well, luckily it's black magic, so it should have a lowever success rate.
Right?
I wonder if defjam ahs ever played in the tomb of horrors?
Stupid bullshit spell never works for me. But when the ENEMY casts it...
Well, it's not as bad as it looks.
Dimension actually warps the target away to a random tile. defjam only ended up a little ways to the east and is already near us again inside the rune area. Though that fucking bird is in the way.
I resolve to try taking out the scrawny spellcaster.
We should be able to pull it off.
Especially with luck like this.
Too fucking perfect.
Nice. Those are probably the most important 4 MP we'll gain all game long. The difference between 180 and 184 is pretty huge for Iria.
Time to get our first tier 2 dragon I think.
of Jarlfrank. Not an attack I wanted to miss.
We don't have anything else in range, so our turn ends. Jarlfrank scrapes a level by counter attacking their lizardman.
Lame.
Well, at least we got it.
Now for the capital.
Again, obnoxious water in our way.
But they bolt as we get near and don't even put up a fight.
Well, free xp for us.
Getting close.
Him too. Though dragons take a lot more, so he'll need kills instead of just won battles.
Even our plant is getting up there.
Daffy wins yet another rabbit quest. Lucky guy. Actually, I think it was a different one but I don't feel like copypasting that stuff this time.
Lucia gets a rabbit quest too. However...
... (same as before)
The talking Rabbit then hopped into the forest. Something touched Lucia's arm as Lucia went into the hole.
Rabbit: That's what you get, you idiot!
The Rabbit should have hidden while it taunted Lucia. Lucia tried to catch the rabbit, but passed out before anything could happen.
The Rabbit's laughter echoed inside Lucia's ear... Lucia barely survived and is required to rest for a month.
This item is actually rather nice. Rune area perks are hard to come by, and are very useful, especially for casters trying to stay in the back, whom often have shitty 3 rune area.
Draq earned himself some further incline.
Nice bonuses across ATK, DEF, and MOV.
And he's all stylish now too.
Look at this fag's stats by comparison: Draq could kick his fucking ass in melee. He's on par with a dragon thanks to the class change and all those lucky stat gains.
Cortina makes an upgrade as well. Enchantress class is now mastered, so gaining further levels in it would be pointless. However, the upgraded version of that path isn't available until level 10.
So we switch her to cleric, giving her more spells. (And more ATK and DEF, since Clerics are just better fighters for some reason. Though she'd still probably lose to a ghoul.
We dole out some names to our newly leveled bros.
If you want a named monster and haven't gotten one yet let me know. I've tried naming stuff after everyone following the thread, but there were a lot of posters and muddling through all those screenshots is a bitch.
Some serious incline of our country for a single turn.
Budget is looking good now too. We'll be mana capped in no time.
And our territory puts even Esgares to shame. If I can just get it extended to Norgard now I'll have met my challenge.
