Dondon warned us that we were being too optimistic with Thany’s levelling, so I testran chapters 9-14 with continuity in Roy and Thany’s levels in order to get a more realistic picture of future chapters. Fortunately, Thany caps str around C16, and by then her stats are no longer a concern.
Chapter 9 (Thany unpromoted)
Turn 2: Thany can either opt to trade her weapons to Roy in order to avoid countering the merc, or get 1-2 Wexp towards her sword rank.
Turn 3: By positioning Thany differently, Roy can crit a merc for an extra 2 Wexp.
Turn 4: An iron sword double crit can be manipulated rather quickly, and Thany gains only 93 exp, meaning we don’t have to worry about compounding the bosskill manipulation with a level-up manipulation.
Overall notes: This approach is obviously superior to promoting Thany in C8.
Chapter 10
Turn 1: To my surprise, repositioning Thany doesn’t help reduce the turncount at all. The 4 spaces she gains are lost when a shaman blocks Roy in a 1 square wide corridor.
Turn 6: Thany must use a lance to 1HKO the boss.
Chapter 11
Overall notes: Over 1600 frames are lost manipulating a slim lance double crit on the boss, and this isn’t even factoring in getting a good level-up for Thany. There are a few good alternatives to this time-wasting double crit. First, if Thany is 11/2 or 10/3, she will have just enough str to be able to kill the boss with a crit + regular hit. Another option is to get her lance rank high enough to use a silver lance, which is a natural 1RKO.
Chapter 12
Turn 1: I’m operating on the assumption Roy has achieved C rank in swords now, so I don’t need him to combat the fighters for that purpose. Instead, I have Thany use the slim sword to gain 9 Wexp towards her D rank.
Turn 4: Out of laziness I didn’t feel like manipulating a missed hit on the archer compounded with the warrior crit, so I killed the warrior next turn. Thus 10 exp should be deducted from her exp gain in this chapter.
Turn 7: I don’t drop Roy directly in front of the door because the sleep staff priest goes for him.
Turn 8: Thany gets 2 Wexp.
Turn 10: Roy needs to be lv 9 in order to naturally 1RKO the boss (I have him at lv 7). Unfortunately he has nowhere near the 16 skill required for a crit rate. Technically Thany could also 1RKO the boss with a silver lance double crit, but that just takes way too long. Also, deduct 83 exp from Thany’s exp gain.
Turn 11: Thany and Roy are moved in such a way that they are adjacent (ie building a support), but also ready to block the reinforcement stairs in 1 move.
Chapter 13 *New*
Turn 5: Both Thany and Miledy must crit the wyverns they face if Miledy wants to avoid being attacked by Percival (he doubles and 2HKOes her).
Turn 7: A paladin blocks Miledy’s path to the armory. Had I landed Thany’s turn 5 crit the logistics should work out to allow Miledy to reach the armory.
Overall notes: Roy needs to be lv 10 in order to double the boss. Just as in C12, he doesn’t have a critrate either. Also, Thany needs 19 str for her slim lance ORKOes, fortunately she has that at 11/4.
Chapter 14 *New*
Turn 2: Thany gets 6 Wexp.
Overall notes: I simply hexed my older test run to make Thany and Roy’s stats more realistic. Everything still checks out.
Chapters 15-16: Nothing changes
Chapter 17: I was messing with Thany and Roy’s stats to see if enemy attack priority would change. I inadvertently found out that it’s quite possible to use an aggressive strat without Roy having to attack any enemies. This means Thany gets to kill 2 armors, which gives her 6 Wexp towards her sword rank.
Chapters 18-22: Nothing changes
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General Conclusions:
-Promote Thany at lv 11. This helps her not only against the C11 boss, but also for the entirety of C13.
-Roy needs to be at least lv 9 to achieve his C12-13 wyrmslayer bosskills
-There are now enough up-to-date testruns to conclusively determine the required amount of weapon purchases for the rest of the game. I’ll tally the weapon uses later.
Note that I have updated the
list of test runs.
The speedwings is pretty far, it would take a thief or mage 2-3 turns to reach it. There’s no boss in the game named Douglas, though he’s a playable character you get in one of the gaidens. Another thing, Miledy’s speed cap is 23, so she would have 11 AS with Roy rescued. There’s very little she’ll double while holding Roy at any point in the game.
My intuition tells me the speedwings isn’t necessary. There’s no rush to promote Miledy, as 9 move is not much different than 10 move, and in most cases will not result in turn loss. And, as I said before, she levels up very fast when unpromoted. The only thing I wonder is, is it faster to give her a speedwings or to net her 2 extra levels for the same speed gain?
Speedwings
-Character has to move 2-3 turns, may be attacked
-The “speedwing acquired” screen takes a while
-Miledy must get the speedwings through a trade
-Using the speedwing costs a bit of time
Leveling
-2 level-up screens use up a fair bit of time
-Possibly delayed promotion/extra enemies attacked (moot point if her speed ends up being overkill)
I suppose the bigger issue is she can have enough spd to double common enemies but not the boss. So let’s revisit some boss killing requirements.
C14: Randy (light brand): 40 hp/11 def/16 AS
24 atk required to 1HKO. Miledy (killer lance) needs 1 level-up
C15: Reis (spear): 40 hp/13 def/8 AS
Miledy needs 2 level-ups in order to double or 3 levels to 1HKO
C16: Narshen (runesword): 46 hp/20 def/16 AS
35 atk required to 1HKO. Miledy needs to be 20/3 in order to 1HKO, likely going to be a 2 round.
C17: Alucard (silver axe, javelin): 48 hp/16 def/13 AS
33 atk required to 1HKO. It’s more likely Miledy will 1RKO through doubling, which requires 7 level-ups
C18: Martel (purge, divine): 45 hp/12 def/11 AS
Hahaha
C19: Sigurney (spear): 44 hp/12 def/18 AS
Only 5 levels needed for a killer lance OHKO
C20: Roartz (spear): 50 hp/20 def/12 AS
Only 7 levels needed for a ORKO (2 killer lance crits)
C21: Murdoch (tomahawk): 62 hp/25 def/12 AS (also 12 luck)
If Miledy maxes out her skill she’ll have 1 crit on him with any weapon choice. That requires 9 level-ups + promotion. Otherwise she doesn’t have a chance in hell at a ORKO. Actually, an axereaver has 5 crit and would work well on him, but it might not be realistic to acquire one.
C22: Zephiel (eckesachs): 70 hp/22 def/14 AS (also 15 luck)
Good chance Alan will attack the boss instead of Roy because you can warp him to the door in one shot. If Alan uses a swordreaver, he can ORKO with a double crit (96 damage). He would have 4 crit, and manipulating a 0.16% chance is surely faster than watching another forced battle animation.
If we concede a 2 round on Narshen (or get Alan there before her somehow), Miledy actually doesn’t need much levelling. 5 level-ups + a promotion has her covered up until she reaches Murdoch, and by then she should have gotten enough levels from bosskills, promoted enemy kills and accumulated bits of experience from fighting swarms of enemies to have that skill stat maxed out. You can pretty much just get her to a point where she doubles most enemies, then promote her and she’ll be fine for the rest of the game.
Tl;dr, don’t get the speedwings
Move Miledy to square highlighted (ensures a better distance warp).
Place Niime here.
In all likelihood Miledy’s role will be swapped with that of a higher stat paladin. That’s of course fine since this is an indoors map and thus no benefit to flight.
Btw you can still find all the test run vbms gathered here.
