Thracia 776 Playthrough - Chapter 10

Chapter 10 - Nowell Valley

Resets: 12 (32)
Turns: 14 (179)

Deploy
Leif, Nanna, Finn, Dagdar, Lithis, Ronan, Tanya, Asbel, Fergus, Carrion, Karin, Halvan, Selphina, Shiva

As we cross the mountains we reach Nowell Valley, a border fort between Southern Thracia and the Empire controlled north. This map is a pretty annoying. There is a lot of terrain to deal with, a narrow path through the center full of enemies I have to pass through, and the map is littered with Ballistas, which hit hard and are way more accurate than I would like them to be. Ballista attack strength is largely through their 15 mt weapon  meaning that a Ballista is effectively 45 mt vs a flier. Naturally, that means Karin will get cleanly OHKO'd if she's on her pegasi and attacked by one.

Unfortunately, in order to push forward quickly on this map, and visit houses before they are raided by Thieves, I have to take some risks with Karin being shot at. For better or worse, she is my highest evade unit, so accuracy against her is about 30%. But she'll be taking a lot of those shots so I expect a number of resets.

The enemy movement AI on this map is also pretty annoying. There is a midboss Wyvern who flies towards me, and he has a chance of moving twice. But he also has a chance of just passing his turn completely making it difficult to predict his actions, the thieves moving towards the houses also random pass up their turn, which can be a good thing as it gives some extra time to have someone get over to visit a house. None of the enemy armors on the map move at all, but it also means that they'll sit around in the heart of ballista cover range making them a bit difficult to approach to take out.

After getting to about the middle of the map and attacking any of the enemies around there, Olwen and Alfred sortie into the battle. They are here as a result of menial patrols assigned to them as a result of Kempf venting his frustrations about his inferiority complex with Olwen's brother Reinhardt. They stay for about 3 Turns upon triggering the event, and generally make it so advancing further in the map pointless because IIRC, they cannot be killed and Olwen will kill anybody she attacks with Dire Thunder. After 3 turns Olwen and Alfred start to retreat as they were only planning to engage for a brief moment before retreating to alert Kempf for reinforcements to the area.

 It takes a number of tries to get to figure out a good flow of movement for my units for the opening turns, then a few additional tries to try to catch a break with avoiding 30-50% accurate ballista shots in order to secure victory. Leading to double-digit resets.

For the opening turn, I have my units advance forward. I have Callion move in front of the armor while unarmored in order to be intentionally captured. Karin flies upwards to attack the Soldiers and to move into position to go visit the top side house. The Slim Lance I purchased in Chapter 9 come in handy as they allow Karin to not have her evade heavily reduced due to weapon weight.

On the following turn, I have Shiva move upwards and use a Flame Sword to take out the top side Ballista, Karin flies over the water to approach the house, but keep herself outside of Ballista range. I capture the Armor on the fort in order to take his Flame Sword, then have the rest of my units continue advancing into the valley. We pick up the Rescue Staff from the house, and KO one of the center Ballistas, spawning Olwen and Alfred onto the map so that their timer can count down.

I have Dagdar and Lithis head south, giving Dagdar a Bridge key, so that they can head towards taking the house in the south, while my units wait around a bit for Olwen and Alfred to start to retreat. I have Nanna sit on the fort for a turn to clean out some of the armors on Turn 4, before retreating back on Turn 5.

Once Olwen and Alfred start to leave, we can start to make our advance towards the other side of the map. For this run, Dvorak, the Wyvern Knight, chose not to move much at all for the first few turns and only started moving a bit once I started to push past the center of the map. I am easily able to take him out by having him attack into Finn, who quickly dispatches him with a crit Brave Lance.

Fergus deals with the Cavs by standing in some forests while holding a Rapier. The Thieves on this map hold S Drinks so I take the time to try to capture or steal from them to take these from them. From this point on the rest of the map falls into place, and I just need to ensure caution with my units as they walk past the Ballistas that still exist at the bottom of the map.

The boss is kind of strong. He has high Luck and some decent speed making him pretty difficult to hit. I kind of mismanaged with having Lithis stuck at the bottom of the map, so I am unable to steal the Master Seal off of him. I tried to go for a capture, but it proved difficult due to the low accuracy and his high defense. So he just gets taken out and we move on with the map.

Augustus advises Leif that the Empire has likely been alerted about their attack, as a result of Olwen and Alfred retreating from their reconnaisance mission, and that they will likely be ready for their attack by the time Leif reaches their local stronghold, Fort Dundrum. However, since there is no other way to get through to Tahra quickly without passing through this fort, Leif steels his resolve for the task at hand.

Roster:
Leif - L12
Dagdar - xx/9
Asbel - L12
Osian - L12
Karin - L12
Halvan - L12
Nanna - L12
Finn - L12
Fergus - L11
Dalsin - L9
Tanya - L9
Lithis - L9
Shiva - L6
Brighton - L8
Selphina - L8
Macha - L7
Safiya - L6
Lara - L5
Callion - L2