Lurker > MalcolmMasher

You can still climb in the rain, if you try hard enough. You start to get a feel for when the Slipping occurs, and if you do a Dash Upward right before the Slip, you don't lose any progress, and now you can do ~3 more seconds of climbing before the next Slip.

In other words, rain doesn't make climbing impossible, it makes climbing tedious.

Would it help if I pointed out that they're probably in the castle to entice players into not putting off the whole castle until endgame? <_<

It's a wash. If I recall correctly, while Knoll does technically join Ephraim first, it's the difference between "joins after Act 2 has finished" and "joins at the start of Act 3."

Theoretically I could bring a whole bunch of D rank light magic into a map with an arena and savescum Saul....

You can cheese the FE6 arena with support bonuses. Though I don't think even that can truly protect Saul from +30 crit Swordmasters.

If Thany/Tate have gained more levels than Sue/Shin, you go to Ilia instead of Sacae. Since it's full of derpy burdened Peg Knights instead of fast accurate ranged Nomads with +10 crit Short Bows, it is generally considered to be much easier. (Also Sacae has a few BS gimmicks and the super-evasive Swordmaster On A Gate boss.)

FE6 promotion items are, shall we say, poorly distributed. If you're thoroughly vexed, there is a Secret Shop which can help...

Once you close the level gap - apparently not a concern for UshiromiyaEva - Rutger struggles to average a full point of Strength over Fir. So, I wouldn't expect that to be a deal breaker. (Unless the RNG is particularly unkind to her, of course.)

GBA FEs have randomized enemy stats. There's some kind of filter on it that keeps them from drifting too far from their averages, mind.

I am just having a HELL of a time beating boss units. I feel like 90% of my Arsenal goes 0-2 damage, and they can OHKO most units.

Did you get the Light Brand from, I think it's Chapter 8? In FE6, its ranged attack does a fixed 10 damage per hit, which is pretty useful against tanky bosses.

Edit: Another helpful trick is Rescue/Drop. Like, if the boss has a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, snipe at them with mages/etc when they have the melee weapon out, then Rescue your frail units to get them out of range and Take/Drop them so they can do the same next turn. If there's no one in range to hit, the boss won't change weapons, so you can keep plinking away.

I would assume you reset the map and the enemy rerolled higher Defense.

Wendy/Gwendolyn (Knight) - If you put in the painstaking effort to catch Wendy up on levels and promote her, then she does wind up with decent stats. Objectively not worth the effort, but you are under no obligation to play objectively, and whether you can tolerate babying units or not is your call. There is one amusing mechanic to note: Bors, Wendy, and the third Knight have a Triangle Attack.

Sophia (Shaman) - I seem to recall that someone on the 3H board did a "Bad Units Only" run where they dumped all their stat boosters into Sophia, enabling her to go crazy with Nosferatu. If the idea amuses you, start stockpiling them boosters, 'cause Sophia ain't gonna redeem herself.

FE6 has the largest cast of any of the GBA games. So you don't need to worry too much about fresh blood. On the other hand, if it is a requirement that your new characters be good... well, if even Dieck doesn't meet your standards, then you may have trouble filling out a team.

Julian > Rickard in pretty much every way. I think the idea is that Julian is the good Thief, and if players screw up and get him killed, being stuck with Rickard the bad Thief is their punishment. That's why FE1 has so many objectively useless units: the original expectation was that players take a lot of casualties and be okay with it.

Of course, by the time FE11 was made, FEs no longer expected that. FE11 tried to shake things up (in addition to obvious things like the mandatory sacrifice in the prologue, I believe it's the first Fire Emblem where a dead character's inventory is returned to the convoy, rather than lost forever), but it didn't really take, so... lots of pointless units in Shadow Dragon.

Although a few of the early filler twerps are diamonds in the rough. Specifically, Wolf and Sedgar have bizarrely high stat growth.

Time to begin the Bartz - Lenna - Galuf - Faris - Tyro vs Torment Gilgamesh Eternal Autobattle!

Wait I can just...reclass....whenever now?

Yep. FE11 reclassing is completely free. There is a cap on how many units can be in a given class line at once (as I recall it is "# of units in that class line a player could theoretically have recruited by this chapter, +1 free slot") but that's all.

'Course, if you keep shuffling some poor character to a different class every chapter, they may be stuck with E-rank weapons for a while!

Yeah, there's a ton of largely pointless units in Shadow Dragon. If you want to get the "less than 15 units" gaiden chapters you have to deliberately march dozens of people into a meat grinder.

IIRC Barst is pretty good. Bord and Cord, less so. This also applies to their personalities, what little there is at least.

You can turn Cord into a passable Dark Mage, at least. Draug is another interesting unit to reclass; his personal Spd is amazing and his personal Def nonexistent, so he develops into a glass cannon outside of Knight. (Well, I guess you do need to make him a Fighter/Pirate or Dark Mage in order to get the damage part of "glass cannon".)

Democrats changed the process to allow nominations for federal positions to pass with 51 votes in 2013, and Republicans expanded that to include the Supreme Court in 2017.

And if I recall correctly, the Democrats changed those rules because the Republicans were broadly filibustering nominations, in a change to Senate precedent where sub-Cabinet/Supreme Court nominations were typically not contentious.

Basically what I'm saying is, I find it hard to believe that any particular line is too far for McConnell to cross. If he thinks abolishing the filibuster will give Republicans an advantage in the long run (not merely "through the next election") then he'll do it.

Didn't he remove the filibuster (of Supreme Court nominees) as soon as it stood between him and filling a Supreme Court seat?

I guess maybe the problem is infusion, since I don't have any syncs and I assume he's diffusing me.

Yeah, you get diffused multiple times in every Argent Odin fight. I think it's, at, like, 80%, 40%, and 30%? If you have the lenses, consider buying some Glints for cheap access to en-element. (A few characters even have en-element on Uniques.)

FFXI Bahamut is down. This fight sucked. This realm sucks. All hail God-Mog.

I would rather rearrange my life to minimize automobile usage, and then deal with the remaining chicken encounters, than get killed by an orangutan.

1) Do said animals just magically appear

Also, do they -disappear-? Because if the chickens leave actual corpses, that's gross and disgusting, but "learn how to prepare and cook dead chickens" sounds much more appealing than "be disassembled by more muscular primates."

I have now cleared all Transcendent bosses, primarily thanks to power creep. The last one was Long Gui, which I would have said was the hardest to power creep, except that Dyads deal an -absurd- amount of damage to staggered Long Gui. Next goal is to clear the FFXI Dragonking before the end of festival; if I'm not able to do that I might end up picking a FFXI Sync as my stamp reward.

Also I did the Long Gui fight on Crappy Wait Mode because it was still better than trying to select the right Soul Break before the next character finishes charging their Soul Break. Certainly, there are some parts of FFRK I will not miss.

Lucky Draw Sync got me _seven_ syncs: Rufus, Quistis, Maria, Strago, Penelo, and Thancred twice. All were new, except Thancred obviously. 'Tis a good last lucky to have.

But, if it is an option of Trump vs Biden, it becomes a question of who is worse.

Biden won the 2020 election; Trump refused to accept this, and told his supporters not to accept it either. Trump gathered a number of his supporters in Washington D.C. on January 6th, spoke to them, roused them, and told them to march to the Capitol. Once there, they attacked it, disrupting the United States government, which had been in the process of certifying that Biden had won the election.

It was an attempt by United States citizens to disrupt the functioning of the United States government; it was an insurrection. It was an attempt to coerce the United States government into certifying a "winner" that had actually lost the election and was therefore due to be replaced; it was a coup. The fact that the government recovered, and that many of our representatives and senators returned to partisan politics shortly thereafter does not mean that it was not a coup. It was a failed coup. But that's what it was. Trump told us before the 2016 election that he would only respect the outcome if he won; we should not be surprised that he was not, in fact, joking.

So I don't care about economics when we talk about potentially Biden vs Trump. In the election of X vs Trump, if X has not encouraged their supporters - is that too direct, would you prefer titillated their supporters? - into attempting to overthrow the United States government, I am voting for X. I am hoping the Democrats run someone besides Biden; I am hoping the Republicans run someone besides Trump. (I have, unfortunately, given up hope that the Republicans will run someone willing to condemn Trump for his role in January 6th.) But if it does come down to Biden vs Trump, I'm a lock for Biden, because I believe that the United States of America, the democracy that I was lucky enough to be born into and which, for all our flaws, I am proudly a citizen of, will survive four more years of Biden.

But Trump sees American democracy not as something to be honored and respected, but something to be used for his own personal benefit when possible, and cast aside otherwise. I do not have confidence that our great experiment will survive four more years of Trump.

Quite frankly when was it never though?

I think you'd want to look at the 1930s (FDR) through 1970s (Nixon). Basically, back during the 19th century, the Democrats were the party of (former) slave states, and the Republicans were the party of Union states, right? My understanding is that started to change under FDR, who didn't care what color your skin was as long as you voted for him, and more or less reached its culmination under Nixon, with the "Southern Strategy".

If I was designing a game and put a shield that resisted Ice into it, I'd be more inclined to call it the Ice Shield than the Fire Shield. (I might conceivably go with "Shield of Warmth" or something, but not "Fire Shield.")

08 3* Magicite
08 4* Magicite
16 5* Magicite
16 6* Magicite (eight sets of phy/mag)
01 Dark Odin (nine possible scripts, but only one fight)
17 Argent Odins (eight sets of phy/mag, plus bio)
-----------------
66 total fights

Yup. Every last one of them.

Hilda does have a "chance for weak party heal after Bard" LM2, and her HA is a Bard ability with a fixed HP restore. ...But a guaranteed Medica chase would be better.

I dream'd mog's AASB2 this morning and have gotten 5 new DKs.

I honed Mog AASB2 today and it actually pushed me to a clear of D650 Tiamat! ...But trying to do hard fights on Speed 1 instead of Wait Mode 2 is just ugh.

Around halfway through the final trial - I believe it was when Layton denied that magic existed, and then explained that no one can see the people faking the spells because they're wearing invisibility cloaks - I ceased to try to make sense of things, and laughed at the farcical developments instead. Which, don't get me wrong, was still entertaining! But I do wish there was another 'real' Witch Trial.

Although I guess PW games technically started out as four cases per game, anyhow, it's just that the English releases were expanded remakes/ports/whatevers.

Side note: the concept of a lightning bolt that seems to spawn a tower into existence in a pillar of fire is neat enough to partially justify the ridiculous contrivances needed to explain how it could happen in a world where magic isn't real. (Some people can talk to animals, and some people can channel the spirits of the dead, but ixnay on the agicmay.)

I can't remember, why does Maya call Phoenix Nick, again?

Isn't it just, like, Phoenix is pronounced Fee-nicks which she cuts down to Nick? If there's a more elaborate rationale I don't know it.

Revelation is the worst of the three. I would still recommend it to Fire Emblem fans; given, however, that Fates has been out for six years and you haven't gotten around to playing it, I do not believe that purchasing Revelation would be a good investment for you.

Watched Sonic 2 just now in a near-empty theater, and had a good time. I quite enjoyed all the references I caught to the games, and this topic has pointed out several that I didn't catch! Human characters besides Robotnik were decidedly meh, though.

One more voice for "Weapons event is way better than Spiraling Stairs" here. Weapons event was fun and different, Spiraling Stairs was generic battles repeated far too many times.

Also, now-useless pro tip, but you can auto battle the easier Weapon fights; just turn Soul Breaks off, and check back in a couple minutes to click the Mako Cannon button.

also how do I make faris do more damage. I have her sync and awakening and I want her to contribute more to my ffv team because her awakening is full break but god damn that lady hits like a noodle.

Do you have her LM2 set? That should be giving you +30% damage against a target with five lowered stats (such as a target that has just ben hit by Faris AASB2.) She also gets +12% damage with a bow equipped, so getting a realm bow for her should have a notable impact.

If you're already doing those things, I got nothin'.

Cleared Diamond Weapon with a holy magic team, 1 minute 18 seconds left on the timer! Phew.

Broadly, in earlier attempts at the fight, I either brought one healer and didn't have enough healing, or brought two and didn't have enough damage. Holy magic let me bring characters who could cover both DPS and healing; not with equal proficiency, of course, but well enough. The trickiest thing to plan around was that, as I am far too miserly to actually spend Lv4 Anima Lenses, I was relying on Minwu CSB - which is one of the "free to cast, but only once per battle" types. The lion's share of my damage had to get crammed into that one chain. Fortunately, Hope Dual Awakening is happy to triplecast his "4/6/8 hits and damage cap +10k" Sync Command 1, and this fest provided me with Rem AASB2 to accompany her Sync and AASB1. They were up to the challenge. Build up SB until Hope's ready to go, activate SBs, drop chain, blitz Diamond while facetanking damage... and then, once the attackers are exhausted, flee to the Shinra Building.

These battles were a cool concept, and I enjoyed playing them.

I didnt have a junk level 99 wind magicite for Dr. Mogs homework, so I was forced to finally make a defensive Valefor (with health/healing)

You can use your real level 99 magicite for these missions. Inherit some random piece of fodder into it, choose not to change anything, done. You still get credit.

Galarian Weezing. So dapper.

The notion that we can discourage war by excluding aggressors from the global economy is an attractive one. I don't know if I have much faith that it'll work, but I do hope enough corporations refuse to do business with/in Russia that we can answer the question more conclusively.

With that said, even in a best-case scenario where Russia's invasion fails due to the corporate backlash, I have to say that I'm not thrilled about a world in which corporations are becoming even more influential.

I nominate Tropius.

I nominate Octillery.