FE9 Chapter Commentary (JP)

FIRE EMBLEM 9 CHAPTER-SPECIFIC COMMENTARY

First, read this - http://pastebin.com/nnNq25AL

PROLOGUE

Only thing to note are the settings, including fast movement, faster textboxes, disabled help text windows, and no auto-ending turns (important for FEP)

CHAPTER 1

The seraph robe is collected by Oscar which will be used on Marcia later

CHAPTER 2

Nothing to note. Ike can sometimes fail to double attack the other myrmidon but it doesn't matter much.

CHAPTER 3

The elixir is collected by Gatrie, which Ike will use in 17-3 as a safety net.

CHAPTER 4

There's a small chance the first soldier will attack Shinon instead of Rhys (this is much more common in the english version of the game). If this happens, the run is dead since Rhys will almost always get killed by the myrmidon, and another soldier will block Titania from being able to reach the boss on turn 2.

CHAPTER 5

The two archers are manipulated to go up front and attack Shinon, thanks to provoke and being unequipped. Then Shinon is moved out of the way, and the archers don't move so all the 1-range units can't reach Ike/Titania/Gatrie. This avoids all combat for the rest of the chapter.

CHAPTER 6

Fixed growths mode guarantees Titania will have enough strength to ORKO the boss here. This boss is also the reason for using a speedwing on Titania, since she fails to double him otherwise.

CHAPTER 7

This chapter is the most random chapter in the run, and has a huge time variance. Knights can arbitrarily have higher hp/def so Titania can occasionally fail to ORKO them, losing a lot of time. Gatrie's accuracy is also not reliable (generally displayed 70%ish), so him missing any of the units in the upper-left corner costs a lot of time. The worst is if Titania misses the thief, since the thief is a nonaggressive enemy unit and she has to waste an extra turn going out of her way to finish him off.

CHAPTER 8

Ike gets a lot of bonus experience since he needs more strength to reliably kill all the southern cavaliers in this chapter. This is important since he actually needs the experience from the cavaliers to hit stat benchmarks, and the cavaliers being left alive would also waste a lot of time since they can always hit-run by abusing canto.

Soren plays a role similar to Shinon in Chapter 5, being bait for an archer to go up front, so the left choke sees literally no more combat afterwards. On the right side, I leave an extra opening on turn 3 for a knight to fill a spot; this is to keep my units out of range of the longbow user, saving several seconds of animations.

CHAPTER 9

This is the first chapter where the forge crit underflow glitch is abused, to give Titania a slim lance with max might and 255 critical hit rate. Most bands are sold for 2k gold each since money is actually pretty tight in the japanese version of this game. I also unequip counter from Titania since it wastes time and doesn't benefit in any way.

Speaking of Counter, the boss of this chapter has a 6% chance of activating counter. When activated, he deals 18 damage back to Titania, then another 15 damage with the knight killer if he hits (about a 50% chance to hit). So with this strat, Titania faces around a ~3% chance of dying to this boss if she has 33 hp or less (which will almost always be the case).

Oh, Marcia joins too.

CHAPTER 10

This is a unique chapter in that it also acts as a stealth mission. The three soldiers that wander around will detect you if any blue/green unit is in their attack range at the start of enemy phase. I recruit Volke, then have Titania carry Ike and avoid getting seen a single time. Avoiding getting detected is important since I get 800 bonus experience from it.

I don't recruit any units here since none of them are useful for the speedrun.

CHAPTER 11

This is the first of many chapters where Marcia takes over the run. I dump all of my bonus experience into her until she promotes, then some more into Ike. If Ike's stats aren't high enough, there's a chance on turn 3 that a cavalier will canto in the wrong spot and block the path to the blue square, killing the run. Ike also equips the pegasus band for the rest of the run since it gives him about 2 extra points of resistance in the long run, which is important in lategame.

CHAPTER 12

Only thing to note is that the boss has both corrode (16%) and miracle (11%). Since Marcia attacks first and one-shots him, Corrode is only relevant if he activates Miracle. If he lands corrode on Marcia, she loses 5 uses of her slim forge, which wastes time in the long run.

CHAPTER 13

I dump some extra bonus experience into Marcia so she hits 20 strength. This is important since it lets her reliably kill most myrmidons in this chapter in one hit, saving forge uses. As a bonus, she gets two extra points in skill too, decreasing her chances of missing the chapter 14 boss by a bit.

While this is technically a 10 turn defense chapter, if there are no more enemy units on the map at the end of turn 7, the chapter automatically ends. There are three goals I have in this chapter:

1. Rescue all green units so they don't waste time
2. Defeat all enemy units on the map
3. Open all chests on the map

The reason for goal 3 is that after a few turns, the ravens will start looting the chests. However, they will immediately leave the map if all chests are opened. Marcia and Titania are carrying a chest key to help with this, though Volke does the majority of the work with opening chests. None of the chest items will ever be used in the run besides the Energy Drop (on Ike later).

From here on out, I try to avoid giving Titania kills whenever it doesn't really lose time. This is to avoid her getting an unnecessary level through midgame, as she won't be killing as much anymore nor need extra levels.

CHAPTER 14

Normally, Marcia can take 3 turns to blitz the boss. However, I take two extra turns to visit the village in the upper-left corner of the map and wave goodbye to Makalov, for the Vantage Scroll. This costs about 20 seconds to get, but saves (at minumum, worst-case scenario) 25 seconds in the long run, including the time cost of the vantage animation and getting the scroll itself.

CHAPTER 15

Volke plays an important role in getting the boots, since thieves have a 100% chance to find hidden items. I also don't want to kill any units on the map besides Muarim the boss, since I get bonus experience for every laguz that survives.

CHAPTER 16

Marcia uses the boots here to gain a whopping 11 movement. I also give her vantage here, since this is the first chapter where Vantage starts paying off. Finally, I cap Ike at level 20 to help with his durability and offensive stats, and dump the rest of my bonus experience into Marcia.

Titania and Volke play the important role of getting the Full Guard, which negatives effective damage when equipped. This is essentially in Chapter 23 (the bridge chapter), where there are ballista, bow users, and wind magic users everywhere that would slaughter Marcia. Unfortunately getting the full guard costs about a minute of time, but it's absolutely necessary to make chapter 23 have a realistic chance of finishing.

CHAPTER 17-1

I buy pure water for Ike and Marcia. Ike will be using 4 pure waters, Marcia will be using it once, and Geoffrey later on will use the last pure water use. Ike also uses the energy drop here since he's the only character that really benefits from it at this point in the run (Marcia has already capped strength).

I have Marcia target the left myrmidon since he has a venin edge. Getting poisoned costs a lot of time thanks to its animation, so it's best to eliminate the chance of getting poisoned completely. There's a chance of Marcia failing to OHKO some myrmidons on this map, which is important to note since her forge javelin usage is extremely tight in this route chapter, and it can break mid-attacking worst-case, losing a turn and a minute.

CHAPTER 17-2

Thank you based developers for putting those squares in the forest

CHAPTER 17-3

For story-reasons, Ike is now carrying Leanne permanently for this chapter and the next. As a result, his avoid goes down dramatically thanks to losing half of his speed. I use pure water here since Ike takes about 7-8 damage from the mages otherwise. Marcia targets the myrmidon and archer on the first two turns since they have venin weapons. Then she kills the two surviving mages, which saves significant time because their fire animation takes a lot of time. Then Ike just hides in a corner for the rest of this boring chapter, healing with the Chapter 3 elixir if necessary.

CHAPTER 17-4

Worst-case, Marcia typically has a ~95% displayed hitrate on Oliver, which can be scary since he has really high luck despite having low speed. Otherwise this is pretty self-explanatory

CHAPTER 18

Ike finally promotes! We also finally get Reyson and Tanith, who will both contribute significantly in the second half of the run. Marcia kills the majority of the enemies in this map. With Vantage, a +6 crit forge javelin, and Marcia's capped skill, she has around a 15-17% chance to outright kill a unit during enemy phase before it even attacks, which saves time (unless it's a mage, then she OHKOs them anyways).

Titania and Tanith are positioned in specific squares where reinforcements show up late in this chapter. Since they're blocking those two squares, they never appear, which saves time.

Tanith also gets a few kills that are normally fed to Titania. Again, this is to make sure Titania doesn't get an extra level in the run, saving a few seconds.

CHAPTER 19

Depending on biorhythm, Marcia has a small chance to miss this boss. The chapter is pretty self explanatory otherwise, featuring the best shove train in the run!

CHAPTER 20

Calill is recruited and given a forge thunder tome with 255 crit. Marcia delivers Ike right by the boss, so they can finish the chapter in 2 turns. Titania and Calill contribute to killing a few enemies to ensure Reyson survives (he survives the archer, since he technically isn't a flying unit when untransformed). Titania then visits the upper village to get the Smite scroll. Tanith faces a small chance of dying if she gets targetted and hit by two wyvern riders and the blizzard tome user; her role is to visit the bottom village for the Rescue staff, which Elincia uses in lategame.

CHAPTER 21

Tauroneo is recruited since he has an extra spear, and we also don't like him bothering Ike and Marcia in the last turn. He contributes in doing a cool take/drop strat to move Ike three extra squares immediately after getting recruited.

There's a sleep bishop in this chapter which doesn't try to put Ike/Marcia to sleep if their resistance is high enough, which is why I use pure water on both of them in this chapter.

Ena is a very bulky boss who (for some dumb reason) ALSO has miracle! She has a 14% chance of activating it, and if she activates it twice, that's a turn gone and a minute gone. This has happened several times in practice and killed two full runs. I hate this bitch.

CHAPTER 22

The fastest strategy for this chapter is to meteor the boss three times with Calill and Tormod. However, this is an extremely unreliable strategy, especially with Tormod's low hitrate. A more reliable strategy involves using Marcia, Titania, and Tanith to clear out a few priests, Calill to kill the priest next to the boss, then have Marcia blitz the boss with her forge slim lance. The only chance this strategy has to fail is if Tanith misses the sniper (around 80% displayed, which actually isn't run-ending), and the boss killing Marcia by hitting her (displayed 30%ish, or about 20% true hit), getting a crit (~25-30%), AND activating colossus (16%). Needless to say, the game absolutely hates you if it happens.

CHAPTER 23

This chapter is the reason for getting the full guard for Marcia. The gimmick behind this chapter is that there are several hidden pitfalls, but Marcia being a flying unit, those don't matter at all.

CHAPTER 24

We see a small shove train happening to push Reyson and Marcia just enough so Marcia can reach the arrive square on turn 3. Tanith is also used to fetch the Savior scroll. Ike is positioned alone, away from Muarim and Calill, so units attack him instead (he has a slim forge and those cavaliers have 1-range). I move Ike again on turn 2 so he's out of range of all other nearby units, so they never attack anyone.

Bastion and Lucia join on this map as well, but are never used. Conveniently enough, they spawn barely out of range of the units that attacked Tanith, so I can ignore them.

CHAPTER 25

This chapter features the last base in the run with any sort of inventory management. Marcia is given a laguzguard to help with survival later (she takes half damage from laguz attacks). Geoffrey is given Astrid's Knight Ward to improve his bulk for chapter 27.

The gimmick behind this chapter are the boulders that enemy units shove. If any of my units are within alignment of those boulder paths, the boulders will be shoved down, wasting time and dealing damage. The one exception is the upper-right swordmaster, who always shoves his boulder no matter what (I assume this is to demonstrate the gimmick of the chapter). Fortunately, Marcia slaughters almost all of the units at the top on turn 1. She uses the spear on turn 2 since it has one extra might over a forged javelin, and is actually needed since she barely ORKOs the wyvern lords with the spear.

Ike and Calill contribute to this chapter by killing a few units on the sides. Muarim smites Ike a few times to help him reach a few key units.

CHAPTER 26

Elincia joins in this chapter and takes the Rescue staff from Tanith. She immediately puts it to use to move Marcia an extra 3 squares from her starting position (Reyson COULD be used instead, but deploying and using Reyson costs more time, and keeping him safe is also more time-consuming than simply flying Elincia to safety).

Marcia faces a small chance of dying if she gets hit too often, especially from the tiger laguz (they're very powerful and accurate).

This chapter can be cleared a turn earlier more quickly, but unfortunately it requires the boss to miss Marcia with the runesword (around a 50% chance), which would kill the run if he did hit and heal himself. For reliability's sake, this strategy is used instead.

CHAPTER 27

Geoffrey is deployed to help clear an enemy out of the way for Marcia, and also get the Resolve Scroll. I use pure water on both Ike and Geoffrey as well, to help them tank the siege tomes if they fail to dodge.

The boss is very bulky, has a brave lance, and also has miracle! Making him a very annoying boss to deal with. This boss is the only reason that I forge extra hit on Ike's forge slim sword back in Chapter 17-1, because Ike faces a significant chance of missing the boss without the extra hitrate.

Enjoy the Black Knight fight!

CHAPTER 28

Self-explanatory chapter. Ike and Marcia are specifically positioned on turn 2 so all of the horse units canto out of the way, leaving an open path for Ike to seize on turn 3. This chapter also features the unfortunate death of Mordecai.

FINAL CHAPTER

Ike finally equips Wrath and Resolve, purely for the Ashnard fight. This is, by far, the fastest and "most reliable" method of killing Ashnard quickly. Ashnard has a trigger point that I have to cross with Marcia in order to make him move and attack (this is different between JP and NTSC versions, and also depends on the difficulty level).

First, Ike has to get hit by Ashnard. This varies depending on biorhythm, but Ashnard typically has around a ~60-70% displayed hitrate on Ike (or about a 1/3 chance to miss). If Ashnard misses, the run is completely dead and I lose a few minutes since Ike will not be in wrath/resolve health.

If Ashnard hits, Ike will double attack Ashnard. He has to land a 50% critical hit out of those two attacks for the quick kill, so he has around a 1/4 chance of not landing either crit. If Ike fails to crit, I lose about a minute, but Ike can finish off Ashnard in the next player phase since he will always hit Ashnard thanks to resolve.

Overall, there's around a 50% chance that the quick kill will fail. It's unfortunate that a runkiller this huge/significant is in the very last chapter, but it's also the only real runkiller that has a reasonable chance of happening.