TAS - FE9 - Maniac Mode - WIP 5 (Ch. 14 to 17)
16Slight edit to the end of chapter 13 since Marcia somehow will need even more stats soon and it's the only chapter where I will have leeway to manipulate the end of chapter rng. I let Marcia 5 xp away from level up because I couldn't and didn't need to get another very good level up, and it will prevent her to level up at an awful timing in chapter 16.
Chapter 14 is a fog of war kill boss map but I must make a detour to get the extremely important Vantage scroll. The path I took dodged almost all enemy phase animations in a minimal amout of turns. I could clear it one turn sooner by taking 2 enemy phase attacks, but it was overall slower since the turns are so fast anyway. Since the boss kill is guaranteed as long as he doesn't crit Marcia, it was a good moment to get a level up.
Next is the desert chapter, and as expected it uses the same rng than everything else like FE8, and not a different secondary rng like FE6 and FE7, so I can very easilly get the items I want, namely the boots and the Guard scroll. For a very minor time cost, Marcia also had the opportunity to get the Silver Blade, the highest raw damage non forged weapon Ike (and Tanith) will have access to until the Ragnell, though only once promoted and with A-rank sword.
Chapter 16 is finally the time to give Marcia Vatage and Guard, as well as my third forge. A max Mt and Crit Javelin will allow her to barely kill some enemies without a crit, in particular the 17-4 boss, and the extra crit is always nice when I have several enemies to crit in a row, or if Marcia is carrying Ike since she will have 0 displayed crit with a regular Javelin. For chapter 16, I only used it on turn 2 to cleanly OHKO the mages and setting up a nice level up, as the previous Bexp distribution allowed me to not have to manipulate it along the 55% hit 9% crit attack on the soldier. For the last enemy phase, I had to kill all the 3 knights, else the priest would have healed one of them, wasting time.
It is highly preferable to only deploy Ike and Marcia in chapter 17-1 in order to save a lot of time in chapter 17-2. I could deploy 2 more units if I had another flyer, but sadly the game didn't give me anything like that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. After turn 2, reinforcements start to appear left and right and are annoying to deal with, so finishing in 2 turns was my aim. It wasn't certain whether or not I could do it with this enemy density and Ike's inability to counter at 2 range, but Marcia can move just far enough on turn 1 to be within range of the most annoying one, while still being able to kill the longbow archer and the faraway enemies on turn 2. A big ~4.5s RNs burn was done to get the extremely unlikely enemy phase 1 where it only took 3 extra attacks (2 against the sniper and 1 for Ike against the myrmidon) than the theoretical minimum to kill everyone.
As I said, with only Ike and Marcia, I can hide the first two turns of 17-2 in the forest, to dodge a ~30s enemy phase each time. Speaking of interactive FE9 gameplay, 17-3 is yet another defense map where the optimal strategy is to hide in a chokepoint and to wait. The 8 turns with only 1 enemy attacking once each time took more than 3 minutes...
Finally chapter 19-4, where I just have to kill the boss. For some reason he has 35 LCK, preventing Marcia from having a crit chance against him from 2 range. With max attack and a max Mt forged Javelin, she can barely ORKO him, preventing any counterattack with Guard.
0:00 End of chapter 13
0:18 Chapter 14
1:49 Chapter 15
2:49 Chapter 16
5:49 Chapter 17-1
8:59 Chapter 17-2
10:08 Chapter 17-3
15:07 Chapter 17-4