Thracia 776 Playthrough - Chapter 18

Chapter 18 - The Liberation of Leonster

Resets: 8 (59)
Turns: 19 (310)

Deploy:

Left: Leif, Nanna, Lara, Mareeta, Eda, Pan, Tina, Asbel
Right: Olwen, Safiya, Linoan, Dean, Halvan, Lithis, Dagdar, Sarah

This is one of the most infamous chapters of FE5. Up there along with Chapter 22 and 24x. The reason for this chapter being a complete and total headache is due to the "most difficult recruitment in FE (tm)" in the form of Xavier.

In order to recruit Xavier, you need to escort 8 NPC units held in a box on the left side of the map, and have them talk to 8 different enemy units in the center chamber, before talking to Xavier to recruit him. The Enemy units will turn to NPC units and start attacking each other, and since they have Hammers and Killer Lances, they can very easily kill each other. The NPC units can also get captured and otherwise delayed by spawning reinforcements and the entire processes is one massive mess, and if anyone gets killed that isn't supposed to, that's a reset.

For the most part, the rest of the map isn't too much to concern with. There's dark mages that spawn in the bottom stairwell that are important to contain otherwise they start using Rewarp to throw themselves into other parts of the map, and a few treasures and thieves to take care of on each side of the map. But recruiting Xavier is not fun. One annoying thing about this map is that your team starts off in two groups, and this is one of the maps where being unable to choose starting location ends up being a bit of an issue. Basically, in the order of units selected on the deploy screen, odd numbered units will start on the left and even number units start on the right. Ordering on the screen being a simple left-to-right, top-to-bottom, like reading a page.

01 02 03
04 05 06
07 08 09
10 11 12...
and so forth

Fortunately, I do remember one trick to help the recruitment process a lot easier. By warping in a character that cannot counter attack, it is possible to corral all the armors in the center room towards the bottom left corner area making it less of a walk for the NPC hostages to reach to the armors to talk to, and for me to pick off the Friege armors that are in the mix, so that by the time the civilians reach the room, they will have a clean path to start interacting with ther armors. The named Armors will not attack civlians or capture civilians, but they will attack each other if they defect. Fortunately, as long as they are talked to, they don't have to actually survive for me to be able to talk to and recruit Xavier. I just need to hope that an enemy doesn't miss and get counter attacked and dunked on by a Hammer. It also doesn't help that sometimes the civilians will body block each other delaying recruitment.

Had one reset early where I had the recruitment clause fulfilled, but got extremely careless and accidentally put someone in Xavier's attack range and got them killed. Which led to a string of additional resets from various other issues. I was starting to wonder if this was easier than I thought but no, this requirement is as dumb as I remember it being.

I start the map by using Thief staff on the chest on the right side of the map, saving me from having to rush to try to pick it up. I also put the Thief on the right side with all the dancers to sleep as well. From there the right side is pretty easily contained and handled by Olwen and Linoan, as Lithis and Dagdar pick up items from the dancers and the sleeping Thief. I have Safiya warp Halvan into the central room to lure in the armored units to the corner, and have Dean Sarah and Safiya head towards the bottom center to handle the Loptian mages. On the left side of the map, I have Eda, Mareeta and Tina head left to open the door with the civlians, and have everyone else move around to the right to catch up and steal from the Thief and then open the door to the center.

From there it is mostly a waiting game as I have the civilians move to talk to their respective armored units. Once they are all recruited, I have Leif talk to Xavier then go after the boss. I had Pan use the Body Ring I got from using Thief Staff, and this allowed him to steal Thoron, so I have him take Thoron and the Adept manual from the boss before finishing him off.

We manage to take Leonster castle, and Leif promotes to Prince as the rightful heir of Leonster. However, the ceremony is short lived Leif gets pressured into immediately marching back south down towards Alster to try to support their rebellion of the empire and liberate them. Both his advisors, Dorius and Augustus, advise against being too hasty, but Leif insists on helping those in need and not abandoning them. We have just taken this castle, against the odds, and now we're trying to fight the empire straight up? What could go wrong. Eventually it is agreed upon that Dorius would lead half the army as a vanguard for the fight for Alster and Leif would wait a day to rest before joining in the fight. This ties right into the events of Chapter 7 of FE4, and if you are familiar with that. A lot is about to go wrong.

Roster:
Leif - L18/1
Olwen - xx/12
Safiya - L11/7
Asbel - L20/6
Dean - xx/6
Nanna - L20/5
Pan - xx/4
Sarah - L20/4
Halvan - L20/3
Osian - L20
Karin - L17
Eda - L16
Mareeta - L16
Finn - L14
Fergus - L14
Linoan - L13
Lara - L5/7
Tina - L6

Shanam - xx/1
Tanya - L13
Shiva - L11
Salem - L7
Xavier - Lxx/6