Dorter 2 (many resets, yes)
Dorter 2 is not supposed to be a hard fight. You have two swordskillers with mid-Ch2 heavy armor on them that basically duo this fight in their sleep in vanilla. This made me 'appreciate' just how much Thieves and Archers were buffed relative to their former incarnations.
First off, Andrew is buff as all hell. He has a Platina Dagger in one hand and a Green Beret, so he's just all up in ganktown, nearly 2HKOing Gaffy (his physical is like 96 or something) and just flat out oneshotting us as squishy Chemist and Priest if he ever gets in range. The other Thief isn't quite as bad but still hits quite hard. There's a longbow archer up top being just annoying enough to force out damage each turn to threaten any other enemy unit on the map killing in one action. The crossbow archer can load with strong enough Charges to OHKO even from full sometimes if she gets close enough. And anyone getting hasted on the enemy side is bad news, multiple units being horrible news, and that can definitely happen.
Honestly most of our wipes come from underestimating the sheer amount of offense being thrown at us and trying to find a way to attrition through it anyway. Fights boiled down to Gaffy not surviving getting stabbed a billion times or eating a particularly hard crossbow bolt to the face. This is with a setup with two healers where we're healing him every opportunity or even charging Cure between charge resolutions to try to keep him up. It doesn't work, he's too old. Agrias mostly gets ignored, but the swordskillers are typically 3HKOing enemy units and that's just not nearly fast enough to staunch the bleeding. And once a guest goes down the enemy units turn their attention to us, and we have half their HP and no parasitic healing. Yeah.
So I go Knight to run up and draw fire (spoilers that's a running theme for this run when we're having difficulty), and with the offense split between me and Gaffy things go way better. Andrew and the other thief get shanked relatively quickly, and even after getting back up from enemy Raises they don't quite threaten hard enough to score a kill. mc does eventually draw enough fire to get unavoidably killed but since I'm a strong independent Knight who don't need no Potions I came in with Guts and thus have revival.
The longbow Archer is a nuisance because she fucks up AI and Gaffy and Agrias waffle around indecisively as they struggle how to navigate to hit her (they CAN, but they don't know that since they're incapable of walking up there due to Jump 4 or height ignoring movements being necessary to close to melee range). And mc is actually almost out of MP. Fortunately I have STONES and mc had picked up MP Restore as a super budget reaction at some point, and it actually procs, letting her blast the remaining enemy unit to smithereens.
Andy did not drop his hat. Stingy bastard. IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE GROUND BUT NOT FOR US
Araguay Woods
Boco runs to you on turn 1 now, yay 7 move!
Anyway Ice Bow just came out and mc is an ice mage, uh yeah this isn't a fight. We friendly fire the guests for giggles but the goblins die so fast we don't even have time to troll around for more JP, rip.
Zerekile Falls (1 reset)
mc insists on leaving Gaffy with a Power Wrist set in Priest because she wants to see him fist or something. My objections were ignored.
Anyway I've been on Chemist with a bow for a while, and in a fight with five Knights my damage is going to be anemic, so I convince mc to pick up Zombie as her first spell in Oracle. The results are about as hilarious as you expect. The wipe came not actually from being threatened at any point in the fight ever but because Ovelia got her shit broken and didn't run up to the waterfall, but instead came back down into the open arms of enemy Knights. A reenactment of one of Long Live the Queen's endings followed.
Next run she doesn't do that, and instead comes to us while charging Mbarrier with Gaffy and his two knight buddies in range to punish. Fortunately one of them takes the bait when I run up to present a target and the princess lives.
Fort Zaland City (3 resets)
Saving Musty is the only appropriate choice of course, so we do it and prepare for poor life decisions.
This fight is kinda noteworthy in that you really want to use Spike Shoes here (Izlude being another honorable mention). We do so, and quickly getting up to the wall turns out to be crucial in all of our attempts.
mc grabbed Silence Song from the JP earned in the previous fight and it predictably turns out to be a godsend, completely neutering the enemy Wizards which would otherwise be horribly destroying us with their level 3/4 spells and summons. There are some situations where we are forced to silence the one targeting Mustadio to avoid an immediate wipe, which causes one of us to take massive (but usually not fatal) damage.
The Knight that loads with Item is of course as irritating as he always is, but once again zombification effectively neutralizes the carefree tossing of X-Potions.
On one run Musty just straight up gets nuked without us being able to do too much about it (silence missed or something). On another things are going well but Musty walks in a bit too far and both of us forgot about the oracle with a stick and Two Hands was sitting next to him and uh rip. Finally we avoid him getting waxed by being overly paranoid about keeping him topped off.
As a sidenote Agrias getting Power Broken causes her swordskills to do like 9 damage to Knights. We taught her Crush Punch explicitly to get around this issue and it ends up going 0/4. Dammit Agrias.
Barius Hill (2 resets)
Prior to the fight, mc and I have a friendly debate on whether vanilla Archers or LFT Geomancers are more threatening units, with her saying she fears just straight up damage more and me having sour memories of Hell Ivy proccing causing instant wipes, with not-too-far behind damage and aoe potential on top of that. My fears do in fact come true as Stop lands and we just sort of lose right there. Trying again, both of us are just far too squishy, the Summoners stepping close kill her in one hit and Elemental chips just enough that Geo or Lancer physicals quickly finish us off, and there's again not so much room to walk around that it's easy to avoid it.
With enough fancy footwork and maybe Musty not instantly dying at the start there's the potential to control the fight, but I just say fuck it and roll Knight again (with a crossbow), and predictably that swings things totally around, mc getting easy Shivas off to wipe the battlefield, Agrias advancing forward to lure the remaining units to their icy doom.
The highlight was one Summoner at the start running out and charges something painful, and I sat there agonizing about the best course of action, trying to see where I could position myself, which unit to hit to gain maximum efficiency to deal with the upcoming set of turns, why is this tree in the way, etc. for a minute when mc pointed out I could walk up and just shoot her in the face for OHKO damage. Oh. Well. Yeah. The fight was pretty steamrolley after that.
Zigolis Swamp (1 reset)
"Musty's just gonna smoke everyone with Seal Evil, it will be ez pz, we can get some jp"
"oh ok"
Back to Chemist for me, since I'm gunning eventually for Auto-Potion (grabbing Phoenix Down for Zombie synergy slowed me down a bit; I know that I'm a dirty dirty person for daring to get Phoenix Down in Item. mc comments several times about how aghast I seemed at bothering to use Phoenix Down for revival instead of comboing it with Undead, like how dare I use for its intended purpose!!). Obviously it's great to be a Chemist in this fight.
So what happens is that Musty refuses to Seal Evil anything, he loves his 36 damage gunshots, I walk forward to score an easy kill on a Ghost because 56 Brave MP Switch don't scare me, then I get shot by a 2HKO soul and run away whimpering, the ghost comes up and is like 'sup' and Shadow Stitches me, mc gets murdered when she gets caught offguard by skeletons' improved Soul ranges, Musty runs around like a chicken with his head cut off, we get ghost trained.
Okay that was just a fluke right? We go again and Musty actually petrifies shit this time (guess it wasn't good odds last run and that's why he didn't try it due to zodiac compat). This time the Flotiball wanders in and I'm like 'yeah that thing has auto reflect so not much to be done about it' (she's in Time Mage with Black).
Then it's time that mc learned about 'Difference' (spoilers, it deals damage equal to your MP), so rip her. I run frantically away from ghosts and pick her back up while Musty carries our asses and I too learn about 'Difference' but fortunately being a scrub tier Chemist it's far from killing me. There is a bit of tension at the end when she's on a timer and I'm almost dead too, opting again to chance a risk at failing to break through MP Switch by pdowning a ghost, but fortunately it works; I drop afterwards but Musty is up to the task and kills the remaining enemy unit.
Pigfear did not spawn on either attempts.
Goug Machine City (many resets)
First fight without (real) guests, and yeah it's a hard one. This is the fight mc predicted would be our first real roadblock. Musty of course spawns next to two Thieves, and unless he loads with Arm Aim, lands it successfully, AND has bad compat with the other Thief, he never survives to see another turn. He didn't on any of our runs. I've seen it happen once but that's astronomically low odds.
mc comes in as a Wizard with Summon, the idea being that we're totally not going to win without landing some money Shivas and taking out multiple baddies at once. There's two opposing Summoners, a longbow and crossbow Archer each, and the Musty-murdering Thieves. The Archers very frequently load with Concentrate, making our newly acquired Leather and Wizard Mantles feel a bit underwhelming, though sometimes they didn't (on the winning run evading crossbow shots was very crucial to victory).
There's some variance in how the enemy units end up positioning themselves at the start. For starters Musty can stay up on the level where he is before getting killed or run down on his turn, the latter of which nicely positions the Thieves to be bunched up to be immediately taken out (or put to critical) by Shiva by mc while remaining out of enemy summon range. Sometimes the archers/summoners also bunch up such that it's an open question whether it's worth it for her to step out in the open to land a money shot, the success of these attempts varying and involving a lot of math to figure out exactly how much damage is being dealt. This is very important because the longbow Archer comes pre-loaded with Item, and not-quite-fatal hits (which happen a lot) are converted from effectively neutralizing the unit to just a trade for one turn of critical AI and said archer using a potion on them, which is a lot less desirable.
The summoners are summoners, being threatening as always with massive 9 tile reach (3 move + 4 range + 2 aoe), typically doing a high 2HKO barring compat nonsense if we step too close. The xbow archer's threat value ranges greatly depending on compat and what level of Charges he has available to him. I give up quickly on trying to play anything but Knight here and even then he's managed to project as high as 105 damage on me. The Thieves aren't too bad, but sometimes they break equipment and it's awful, not even because of the gil loss (gil is pretty irrelevant on a 2 unit playthrough) but because they permanently reduce my max HP, which is a big deal because my whole role here is damage magnet trying to survive through full rounds of enemy attacks (being 1 speed lower due to Knight doesn't help) and occasionally taking calculated risks to finish off enemy units to avoid the Item-using Archer to bringing him back to life. Oh yeah and sometimes he can pdown too of course.
Eventually another nice opening Shiva on the summoners and me charging into the fray takes them out nicely, and it eventually becomes a stickling point that mc moves forward to sack the Item Archer even though it means exposing herself. She dies, but without the enemy team having access to revival or healing I can soak up enough damage and reset her counter enough by haxxing out enough dodges from the remaining archer/thief combo, though it does require a fair degree of luck to pull it off. Our timers are never conveniently synced for the longest time so it takes a good long while for her to actually get an action when she's revived, but eventually she does and that finally concludes the fight by killing one of the remaining units.
Barius Valley (6-7 resets)
This is a fight that kind of caught us off-guard, as the damage output from enemies here isn't terribly high but Agrias still doesn't last forever, and the enemy Priests come with absolute buckets of healing, dragging the fight on forever by healing or raising units, and Agrias just doesn't do enough that keeping her alive as a damage engine is a viable strategy.
mc alternates between trying Time Mage and Oracle here (on the winning run Oracle is used), while I stick to Chemist, using my newfound gun and completely mastered Battle Skill (turns out I had to play Knight a lot in this playthrough) to break stuff, which ends up often being more efficient than any damage dealing action even on other setups. (Head/Armor Break often score 50-60 damage when used first, which is a winning trade on enemy Knights, and breaking their weapons seriously slows down their ability to kill Agrias.)
So there are some hitches. For starters, there's a Knight with Talk Skill here, and he tends to alternate between Negotiate (high odds of ST stop, kills your evade, absolutely murder if it lands on Agrias because without her shield and the ability to move she becomes a pincushion, if it lands on either of us it's probably a wipe too), and Death Sentence (not... quite so bad, but if it lands on me, mc has no revival, and this is a fight with multiple Priests and Knights, so it doesn't end anytime soon, ever). I actually momentarily equipped DS protection just to avoid this mishap when it caused an early wipe, although ultimately I settled for a mantle and zoning out that knight carefully (he can also come in with Persuade, which does low odds CT->0 and is vastly preferable to the other two).
The Oracles can threaten some damage with Bolt (heavy rain is in play), some status that can be really annoying (confusion typically caused us to wipe, Silence on mc completely neutralizes her, one can come with a BOOK that actually inflicted berserk on me and Agrias on separate attempts and ultimately caused turns to spiral out of control into unwinnable situations.)
The Priests just make the fight drag on really hard and drain resources, making it hard to keep stuff permanently down. Their spells are semi random but they usually come with some high powered Cures and often Raise. Yet they're still relatively low priority targets because they start far back and are hard to hit, out of range of mc's spells and I don't get great mileage out of hitting them since breaking their equipment is less potent than hitting Knights and without good compat and hitting midcharge both they just typically shrug off damage.
Wipes typically happened with Agrias dying, albeit there were some situations where we got statused out and just became incapable of doing anything, but typically we didn't die to damage. With that in mind it was becoming too hard to keep her alive while simultaneously neutralizing the enemies effectively enough to actually get progress on winning. We got good progress on a run when we decided to try to pull out Zombie again, which would shut off Priest healing and let us combo with pdown for a 2-action kill on enemy units (read: Knights), but the Knights start closest so what happened was that while they were taken out quickly, the fight still dragged on long enough that they lucked out on reanimation at a crucial moment and caused us to wipe.
Eventually it got to the point where we concluded that it was just not possible to stick back and we needed to get up there to draw fire away from Agrias and cause units to line up for Bolt and Stasis Sword. mc also opted to switch out of using a rod for a stick, which helped tremendously by giving her an option to gank casters mid-charge that was just not possible before with spells (Oracle casting silence? 100+ stick to face, plz), and swapped out of Black Magic completely for Item (revival, and since we were sticking to the Zombie strat throwing pdowns would be fine as an offensive option).
Things were looking better, Agrias even landing Stop on a caster or two to turn the tide in our favor when the Talk Skill Knight walked up and landed Death Sentence on both of us. That was the first crisis. Since mc happened to be ahead on CT we had her consistently act without moving to speed up her turns while I did full move-acts even when it wasn't the most pragmatic action under normal circumstances to try to speed up her turns, such that DS would kill her off before I got my last action. We edged it out barely, a single clocktick all that separated us from causing that turn lap to happen.
Pdowns get exchanged; I revive her, I die, she revives me immediately afterwards, but of course enemy units are still in our face and since we're squishy and casually sitting around at 1-20 hp they ignore Agrias and go after us. mc goes down pretty much immediately again, and I'm surrounded from all sides and thinking, there's no way in hell I can evade all of this, since I'm in Chemist and stupidly forgot to pick up Equip Shield, so all I have is a Small Mantle (18% evade). Three attacks (an enemy spell, a knight punch and an oracle physical) fail to connect thrice in succession and we're freaking out. I heal up and gtfo, Agrias closes in to wax one of them and eventually I find the turn to get mc back up for us to get the fight back under control. It's STILL scary because Agrias is sitting around 50 hp, but I broke the enemy Knights' swords at the start of the fight and she manages to deflect a hit here and there so it turns out okay.
The second crisis is at the end, when all that's left is one enemy Oracle at 30 HP, all of us healthy and Agrias closing in for the kill with several units lying around the battlefield about to crystallize. I look at mc and the conversation goes like this...
"We should probably get that crystal shouldn't we? We've had serious issues finding opportunities to get JP."
"Yeah... probably. I mean, I don't think we can lose this fight in this position"
"And those are Oracle crystals, probably good chances of having what you want"
"Yeah... so Agrias is gonna kill that Oracle and end the fight, we need to stop her from doing that"
"I'll just potion the Oracle, that'll bring him up to 60 and stop Stasis Sword from being lethal"
"Sounds good... wait, Agrias is in range of that crystal isn't she? We don't want her to pick it up"
"Eh, she's at full HP. She's poisoned though. Will that cause the AI to grab the crystal? The poison tick comes at the end, so it shouldn't, right?"
"Hmm... not sure."
"Wait, we can pdown this knight here instead. That way there are 2 units left on the battlefield, both at low HP and she can kill only one. And she'll definitely choose to secure a kill, so that should work"
"Are we seriously advocating reviving an enemy unit on this fight at the end with victory so close after all the wipes we've had"
"Yes"
"Yes?"
"Yes."
"What the fuck."
So I pdown the knight and I'm not even paying attention since our plan is failproof and of course the knight has enough CT that he gets an action. But it's FINE because we're all healthy, including Agrias, so it's like... whatever, he hits one of us, right? He runs around behind mc and breaks her weapon. Okay, annoying, but not the end of the world.
Agrias moves up and kills the oracle. mc's turn comes around.
"Okay, get the crystal"
"Sure... wait... I'm not in range"
"Wait, what?"
"The knight's bodyblocking me"
"Oh fuck are you serious"
We agonize over it for a minute trying to figure out the best course of action, and then...
"Wait, we're overthinking this. He's at 6 HP, I can just kill him and move through his corpse to get the crystal"
"Oh duh, right, that's obvious. Well, you have to get through his front evade, that might be annoying"
"Yeah but it's still probably our best shot... wait, what? 1 damage?"
"Oh... uh..."
We remember he broke her weapon.
"Well fuck"
Next turn Agrias rolls her eyes at all of us, walks in to take the crystal and kills the Knight, ending the fight.
rip our dreams
