FE3H - Maddening Blue Lions Chapter 13
Chapter 13 - Reunion at Dawn
We go to the Monastery, and we see Dimitri, who despite the years destroying his sanity and turning him into a murderous mad man, still kept his promise to meet back at the Monastery. It looks like he wants to go Thief hunting, but I already know that we won't be having all that much fun with it in Maddening.
Battle: Hunting by Daybreak
This is a chapter that is notorious for difficulty on Maddening. You do not get to choose who you bring to this map, as you are forced to bring be using your House's main students in the map as they show up for the 5 year reunion. If you do not prepare accordingly, and save after clearing Chapter 12, it is possible that this map can just end your entire file as it will be impossible to save some of your allies, or even survive a couple turns for your allies to even show up, and there is no way to change equipment or battalion or skills because there is no prep screen before entering this battle.
The enemies density in this map is extreme high in the initial area, and they aren't slouches either. All the enemies have at worst 24 AS, and usually about 37-44 Atk. I have Dimitri and he fortunately has a ton of durability, but since his Battalion is automatically changed to his custom King of Lions Infantry for this map, he doesn't nearly have the durability as he would normally have when using the Duscur Soldiers. He is mortal. The Mercs and Thieves don't do too much to him, but damage can add up significantly if he lets enemy Snipers have open season on him. The bigger issue is trying to keep Rikka alive.
There are a lot of Thieves and Assassins on the map, and since they all have Pass on Maddening, Dimitri cannot really stop them from running past him and attacking Rikka. Theives also easily 2x hit her and do about 95% of her HP, leaving her vulnerable from a follow up fron an Archer/Sniper to deal the killing blow. Assassins straight up kill her.
I entered into this map fairly well prepared for what I would have to fight against, but the opening few turns of this map are still brutal. Remember the Kingdom Archers Battalion that I equipped last chapter? The Gambit it provides is Retribution, allowing Rikka to provide Distant Counter to Dimitri. The enemies on the map are far too bulky for him to one-shot, but being able to counter attack against the Archers and Snipers would be helpful in order to control the area.
I tried putting Dimitri on the first intersection in front of the starting location, but things just did not go as planned. The enemy Thieves that attacked into him stalled for time using thier held healing items which just delayed and worsened the threat of them walking past Dimitri and attacking Rikka, and the positioning of enemies made it difficult to easily catch a large group of them with Dimitri's Wave Attack Gambit. Brawlers and Grapplers also ended up standing in a position that completely suppressed the location where Mercedes and Annette arrive in the bottom left, which forced less optimal placements of my two Wave Attacks. Eventually Dimitri was out of gambits, and still surrounded by enemies, and after a few of Divine Pulses to try to salvage the situation I was decided to call it quits on that attempt. This causes my first hard reset of the game, as I didn't want to take the chance of the spent Divine Pulse charges being a decider that costs me a run.
The retry went a lot better. I stood Dimitri a bit back from the intersection, having him instead just barely be in range of the Sniper. This drew in a few less enemies, and improved my general positioning on the following turns. The Sniper, and the Mercenary and Thief closest to the starting position move in to attack and some of the enemies in the bottom-middle also start to move in.
On my turn, I use Rikka to KO the enemy in front of Dimitri, then walked Dimitri forward and used a Wave Attack on the remaining two enemies. This allowed me to lock the Sniper in place and force him to attack into Dimitri and kill himself. What we end up with is a enemy formation that lines itself up perfectly for a second Wave Attack, killing one enemy and stunning another 6. I use a Sublime Heaven to take out the Assassin while it is still rattled.
Ashe and Gilbert appear from the Top-Left corner of the map, but for the most part they are held in place in order to not aggrivate enemy units standing near the area. Annette and Mercedes show up at the same time in the lower left corner of the map. Unlike in my first attempt, where there was a Grappler a few squares below Dimitri who was able to threaten my two mages, most of the enemies in the fray were now stunned by a Gambit, or on the northern side allowing Annette and Mercedes to move a bit more freely. Annette having the Thyrsus on hand on Time Skip is extremely important as there is one Brawler who is standing just outside of her attack range normally who would otherwise prevent Mercedes and Annette from escaping from the corner. Annette's sky high magic stat, and library of high-accuracy spells allows her to simply walk out of the corner, equip the Thyrsus, and easily one-shot the Brawler with accuracy in the 90s, through Tomebreaker.
By escaping out from the corner, Mercedes and Annette can help clean up the enemy group surrounding Rikka and Dimitri, and once I am able to do that, the map becomes a lot more under control. Once we are finally out of the initial starting position, I can get to clearing enemies out in order to let Ashe and Gilbert move out from the corner. From here, I have Ashe move in towards the top side of the map, picking enemies off with Hunters Volley, while Dimitri and the remaining forces go through the center and fight their way through the enemies in the middle. Dimitri gets the enemy to approach, while Annette and Rikka provide some strong offense to thin out their numbers.
Sylvain, Ingrid, and Felix show up, and they work to take out a few units from there end, then have Felix go and pick up the treasure boxes. Once I'm done collecting boxes and clearing out enemies, I deal with the boss. And the I deal with the boss that shows up after killing the boss.
Resets: 1 (1)
Divine Pulses: 2 (25)
Roster:
Rikka - L28
Dimitri - L30
Annette - L29
Ashe - L28
Sylvain - L27
Ingrid - L26
Mercedes - L26
Gilbert - L26
Felix - L25
With this, I can breathe easy, as I'm now past "The Gatekeeper".
