Thracia 776 Playthrough - Chapter 16

Chapter 16 - The Mirage Forest

Resets: 5 (51)
Turns: 18 (280)

Deploy:
Leif, Safiya, Linoan, Karin, Eda, Dean, Osian, Halvan, Homer, Pan, Lara, Asbel

We decide to go down to the forest. The Loptian Order has a base of operations in the forest, and have apparently held someone hostage in the castle. The map is densly packed with both forest and impassable thicket tiles. And to make things worse, there are trap tiles that will warp characters to other places of the map. Of which, since this is my first time playing the map, I don't actually know where all the trap tiles are.

The boss is in the center of the map and has a Berserk Staff, which is generally a pain to deal with. He also appears to be unkillable for the first few turns of the map until Sarah shows up, so I kind of just have to endure harassment from the Berserk Staff usage, which he almost always targets Halvan so I at least know who should always be beside a healer at the start of the map.

There are a number of valuable items in this map throughout the map from capturable enemies including a spare Vogue, a Luna Skill manual, Sleep Sword, Silver Swords, and a Wind Blade. So it would be nice if I can find some time to pick up these items.

Basically, flying units work overtime on this map, as they more or less do everything. I start the map off by focusing on clearing the enemies in the center of the map. Sarah shows up on the second turn on the right edge of the Castle, so I want to try to make sure to get Leif up over there safely in order to recruit her before she starts warping around all over the map aimlessly. Once I do that, I then ferry Asbel over to Grafcalibur KO the boss, then pick up Leif and drop him at the castle to free Miranda from captivity.

In the mean time, Halvan, Osian, and Safiya head counter clockwise up to where the Berserkers are. I'm able to capture and take the spare Vogue by letting them pick up someone while they are at low HP, then finish them off, they continue their trek up the right side, and use similar tactics to be able to capture and obtain the Wind Sword, the Meisterschwert and the Luna manual while my other units do their own thing.

I have my fliers ferry my other units up to try to handle the top left area so that I can have Homer recruit Shanam. The area is a bit tricky because there is a dancer with 5 movement stars beside the enemies which can lead to volatile situations. I play it overly cautionsly, but in the end I eventually find out that the enemies don't move unless I get into their individual ranges, and I take advantage of intentional captures to weight them down to take some more items, namely the Sleep Sword.

It takes a few resets at the start of the map, to figure out what I am doing and because I lost a couple runs due to Jormungandr counter crits. The map was relatively uneventful after the initial rush to recruit Sarah. I did need to burn a Rescue staff useage because one of the trap tiles near the ending will warp a unit right back to the beginning of the map and it would take forever to get back there to pick them up.

Roster:
Leif - L17
Olwen - xx/9
Asbel - L20/4
Dean - xx/4
Safiya - L11/4
Pan - xx/4
Nanna - L20/3
Shanam - xx/1
Halvan - L18
Osian - L18
Karin - L16
Finn - L14
Tanya - L13
Eda - L14
Fergus - L14
Sarah - L12
Mareeta - L12
Shiva - L11
Lara - L5/6
Linoan - L9
Salem - L7
Tina - L2

Miranda - L5

Miranda is benched because she's way too far behind in level and stats, it doesn't help that also just got Sarah in this chapter who is both required in the end game, and way way better as a unit. Shanam is to be benched, but he does have the use of the fact that he has Bargain as a skill, allowing him to be a shopping mule.