The Pumpkin Mandomizer is a fun little set of rules I’ve made for myself in order to make my Hard Mode True Ending playthrough more interesting.
Basically, while I am free to use any unit I want at any time during the playthrough, I’ve randomly selected the above team, and am required to bring them into the final battle.
I hope you enjoy coming along with me for the ride, and feel free to give strategy suggestions in the comments below!
Chapter 4: The Alliance’s Collapse (ending)
Jesus Christ! This chapter was a pain and a half. I often find that Fire Emblem games’ early chapters (somewhat ironically) on harder modes tend to be the most challenging. I guess that makes some sense; in later chapters you’ve had more time to train the units you want, more opportunities to get good weapons, and the preparations phase allows you to change your units, their loadouts and their positions in order to give yourself the best chance possible, even if the enemies themselves are more difficult than earlier chapters.
Anyway, this took almost a full three hours this time; the fact that the cavaliers were about the same level as Allen and Lance but almost entirely better in every way was highly irritating. Nothing like trying to kill a single enemy and finding out your units can do approximately a third of their HP with a 70% chance of hitting, meaning that you take more damage in a turn than you can heal.
I ended up just chucking Marcus out there at the start with his Silver Lance to one-round most of the enemies, with everyone else cleaning up the leftovers. It ended up with only two uses left, but… meh. Gant’s Lance will have to do going forward. Shanna carried Chad over to the forts to block off the pirates (why does that one pirate show up next to the fort instead of on top of it?), so I didn’t have to worry about them at all. Even so, one thing I still had difficulty with was just getting people in position to hit the enemy–all too often they could only make it to the closest two sides of an enemy unit, and then they would block out other units from getting there. Plus, with the low accuracy most of the time, a couple unlucky misses meant that I had no way of taking someone out and they’d get free reign in attacking one of my vulnerable units.
Eventually, though, I managed to get myself in a pretty good position, but then… I misplaced Wolt and he got one-rounded. If I didn’t give myself a no-deaths rule, I swear to god I would’ve let that boy perish. Dude’s force-deployed for one more chapter and then he’ll be swiftly relegated to benchwarming duties as soon as I get access to the preparations screen.
A try or two after, however, I safely got everyone through the chapter, recruited Rutger, and closed out the chapter. Not before, however, making sure everyone was geared up properly. I made the mistake of ending the last chapter without having everyone trade around weapons, so annoyingly I had to start the chapter this time by trading Elen the Mend staff and Lot the Poleaxe…every single time. I bought some Fire tomes and Heal staves along with some Hand Axes and Iron weapons to make sure everyone was kitted out. Clarine got the Seraph robe; I’m favoring my Final Eight units big time, and probably won’t be giving stat raising items to anyone else.
Also, I just wanna say… DANG, Rutger is good! Just casually one-rounding everything as a level 4 myrmidon when my other units are struggling to do anything… hoo boy, I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do in the coming chapters. Hard Mode bonuses are a heck of a thing, I guess. Onward to the next chapter! Had time to read through the beginning of it, but that was it.
Clarine meets up with Roy, and joins his army for protection. She also persuades Rutger to join the army by mentioning that their fight is against Bern, with whom he has a grudge.
Roy and Guinivere lament the fact that it seems the path of peace is no longer possible, and Guinivere asks if she can stay with Roy’s group, which he allows.
Roy, fearing that Marquess Erik’s betrayal was only one of many, decides to take a seldomly-traveled old road through the mountains on the way back to Ostia. Little does he know, this will do little to keep him out of trouble…
Chapter 5: The Crest of Flames (beginning)
In an old castle in the mountains, the bandit boss, Dory, receives word that the remains of the Lycian League are heading his way. While perplexed as to why they’d be there of all places, he plans to take advantage of their precarious situation, and see if he can’t remove them of their valuables.
Meanwhile, Merlinus informs Roy of a local villager that wants to speak with him. Upon the Lycian League’s defeat at castle Araphen, the soldiers charged with protecting the villages from bandits have fled, and the villagers now live in constant fear of being attacked.
“Help us, Roy!” he begs. “You’re our only hope!”
Merlinus doesn’t want to waste any time or resources on a needless battle, but Roy won’t abandon a citizen in need. So, his army gears up to wipe out the bandits! Hoo-ahhh!
As I mentioned above, I haven’t started! Like, literally haven’t moved a single unit. I think I’m going to play this nice and slowly; no way I’m going to try to bum-rush the boss through the gate. In any case, Clarine will need to get up to S rank staves eventually, so I’m planning on having her spam heals as much as possible both to get her staff rank up and to get her as many levels as possible so she can have as many levelups as possible before she promotes.
See you next week, and as always, here’s the gameplay!