Monk SCC chapter 3 continued.
Grog Hill: 0 resets.
Yardow Fort City: 1 reset.
The summoners are actually a problem as I am faster than them with no way of becoming slower, and they often have stuff like Odin. Used smarter position the second time so that fewer people were getting hit by opening summons, and then prioritized killing them over the ninjas or malak (both of whom in theory could get their turn cancelled by hammedo). We're well into the earth clothes part of the game now, so earth slash bad here, but charging forward towards summoners means that I use spin fist quite a bit actually.
Worth noting, it wasn't an option my first attempt, but jumping Ramza up onto the wall is actually a pretty good idea. The summoners ignored him cause they couldn't catch him in an AoE with any other unit. There's only one spot to jump up onto the wall near the starting location, though, and the ninjas can block it.
Yugo woods: 0 resets.
Bracers are out now. They are heavily nerfed in LFT (+2 PA instead of +3 PA) but they will probably still get used quite a bit.
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At this point, I'm around levels 16-18, and I decide that there's a high likelihood that I will need to grind to higher levels for at least one of the fights in Riovanes, and I don't want to go through a few hours of attempts on some fight in that dungeon just to find out that, say, on the roof I need more levels due to the assassins absorbing earth or something. (Turns out they don't absorb earth, but neither me nor Laggy could remember if they did).
So I grind up to level 23 (some of the party was level 22 for gate of riovanes, but everyone was 23 by velius). That got me the 8 speed point, and also the next PA point (which is a bit more minor since it is an odd PA point).
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Gate of Riovanes: 1 reset
So a fight with Knights and Archers after grinding +6 levels and getting bracers, should be a stomp right? Well...no not really, cause all of the knights are status spammers, and I can't easily get to the Archers (Jump+3 doesn't let me jump up from the gate--10 height jump; I have 7 jump). Also, hitting the 8 speed point means the Archers are landing big charges on me. The Knights...one of them's a talkskill knight, another one has elemental with nasty statuses on this map, and the third one has martial arts, which means they spam secret fist (stigma magic cures don't move but not death sentence). It's non-trivial to meaningfully cut down on the enemy offence quickly--the Knights are knights, and the archers are out of reach. First attempt, the battle was starting to get under control, then Ramza died on a panel that's not reachable with Revive, and couldn't finish the fight fast enough.
I won the second attempt cause two archers decided it would be a good idea to use their ignore height to jump down to ground level, and were thus easy kills.
The one other interesting note is that I did get good value out of Secret Fist this fight. Like...normally I just pile on damage to knights, and they end up dead before secret fist kills them anyway, but in this fight, Secret Fisting the two knights in the water while the rest of the party was dealing with problems elsewhere worked reasonably well.
Inside Riovanes: 6-8 resets
So...weird surprise. In vanilla, Velius is 8 speed, but in LFT, Velius is 7 speed. Like...demons were actually acting before him. I had previously grinded up to the level 8 speed point, which basically meant I just wasted my turn 1.
Anyway, strategy for wiegraf was to run forward, earth slash him, strip off MP switch, he lightning stabs, not quite enough to knock me to HP restore range, so I run away and chakra, then he screams once, and now his lightning stab will knock me into HP restore range (if I am at full, which I am not). I chakra again to get back to full so I can take the hit. HP restore. Two Earth Slashes make him run. But you know, stuff can still go wrong--HP restore can fail to go off. Wiegraf can crit and kill. Ramza can get zombied (which should get stigma magiced as it will shut down revive during Velius).
Velius...I was genuinely wondering if I didn't grind enough, but after enough attempts, yeah, 23 is high enough. In LFT you basically always need to kill the demons, and I was roughly two-shotting demons with wave fist (133 wave fists) so...a doable level range. A lot of my resets were due to revive failing. 89% success chance so maybe bad luck, but the fight does involve a lot of reviving, and pretty much any early revive miss is a fight loss. Once the demons are dead it should be almost impossible to lose, but the demons do have collectively around 800 HP, and it can be easy to get stuck just reviving over and over. Obviously multiple heights are highly encouraged so that only one person gets hit by giga flare. The LFT buff on revive to have vert 1 was heavily exploited to keep everyone on different heights.
Earth Slash was quite bad in this fight--at least a couple of my early resets were because I was trying an earth clothes earth healing setup, but the staircase just has too much vertical. Know what wasn't bad in this fight, though? Spin Fist. Charging forward isn't so bad when you have revival and it naturally spreads out the party and puts people on different heights. Getting damage on Velius is absolutely fine for this SCC. Like...I would much rather he be using Spark than Cyclops.
The fight I won I had one Monk just perfectly surviving Cyclops at HP restore range, and landing every HP restore, so that obviously helped too. Velius was about to get a crystal and heal to full, but I probably would have still won even if he did--once all the demons are dead, chain revives are very good against him.
Roof of Riovanes: 0 resets
I thought there was going to be an issue where one assassin would be ultra tanky, and the other absorbed earth and had insane evade or something. Yeah, no, none of that happened. Assassins charged Ultima (on Ramza cause he has way less HP than Rafa). I killed in two earth slashes--two of my characters didn't even get a turn, and I could have double redirected two Ultimas if necessary. Just...way more damage than I actually needed.
Doguola Pass: 0 resets
Laggy was joking that he was ready for Doguola to be harder than any of the fights in Riovanes. It was...pretty trivial honestly. My big decision point was earth slashing a teammate on round 1 to get rid of confusion that was added by Elemental. But like...both monks ran forward and died quite fast. Priests and Samurai died pretty fast too. Which only left two lancers with Protect and Defence Up. I couldn't really kill them any time soon. But like...I had five characters with revival, and they're singletarget. Also, I forgot to take off Hammedo, and occasionally they walked into that.
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Miscellaneous equipment thoughts
Earth Clothes have not impressed me so far. I tried to pull them out for Velius and they just seemed bad. They're a notable damage loss, including making Earth Slash itself deal less damage (at least at this level). I know from a recent LFT playthrough that there's lots of earth clothes in Chapter 4, so I'm not expecting to be spamming Earth Slash too often this chapter either.
Picked up Judo Outfits at the start of Chapter 4. I'm at an odd PA point, so they do represent +30 HP for very little damage loss. Used them in Dugola pass. Despite all my grinding to higher levels, monk HP is still pretty bad (level 24 and 182 HP with power sleeve) so 30 HP is enticing.
Leather mantles still had some relevance even after bracer came out. Used them in Gate of Riovanes since once again, I'm at an odd PA point. And also gate of riovanes is an unusually good map for evasion, being nighttime with archers. I do suspect that the odd PA point gear of choice will usually be Judo Outfits and not leather mantle in chapter 4, but maybe I'll pull them out again for some fight where evaison is good.
PA boosting accessories like Bracers, while heavily nerfed in LFT are probably still just correct outside of maybe status blocking for specific fights. Bracer right now represents about a 40% damage boost. Swapping it out for Leather Mantle is obviously possible when PA is odd, but I'm skeptical about swapping it out for, say, Angel Rings.
Bracer over something like angel ring also represents 3% more hitrate on Revive, which I do unironically care about. Dropping from 88% to 85%...that's not nothing. Thinking of it in terms of failure chances, 12% chance to fail, or 15% chance to fail.
Move+1 gear, so like feather boots, when it was a viable choice thanks to even PA did feel quite nice. I don't think such luxuries can really be justified after Bracer, though.