lucathia

Happy New Year, everyone! Guess this is my last post of the decade~. My first posts in 2020 should be my Yuletide fic and year in fic review.


(pictured in the order I finished merging them~)

I've still been playing FEH a lot (more than console games, haha), and recently finished my 13th merge project, Ike! :D First 5* exclusive +10. When he was released in January 2018, I (sadly) kicked young Ike off the team so that I could merge Legendary Ike, who powercrept himself and was also a Legendary unit, which was useful in several modes. He would also return in Legendary banners, making it easier to predict when to save orbs. Now, at the end of 2019, he's no longer as strong of a unit, nor all that useful as a legendary with all the new modes, but he's still quite good, especially with Special Spiral. But most importantly, he's Ike. I finished merging Ike! (Now, please demote young Ike so I can merge him too...)

Ike was supposed to return in October/November (I forget which month) but was pushed back to December. I ended up spending orbs on other new units because of it, but I resolved not to collect any orbs from Feh until Ike's return just in case. By the time December's legendary banner rolled about, I had 141 orbs on me, and 101 orbs I collected from Feh, making my stash come out to 242 orbs to try for three merges to get my +7 Ike to +10. Ike shared the red focus with Hrid (who I don't have) and Roy (who I already have). 242 orbs is pretty close to the most I've ever had saved up, but it still didn't seem like it would be enough. It took me 200 orbs to get one Altina on the previous legendary! I like summoning too much to save more than this... XD;;

Anyway, I decided to wait for Christmas to pull. On Christmas, with the hotpot simmering, my brother and I both opened our games and began the summoning session.

I collected my orbs from Feh. 242 orbs, let's go! I used up all the first summoning tickets. Nothing. Dipped below 200 orbs. Nothing. DDD:

Then at 165 orbs left, Ike#1 arrived! Phew! First Ike took 77 orbs. Not bad!

No red focus: Edelgard. Fine, there was no pity rate in any case.

At 115 orbs left, Ike#2 showed up! 50 orbs for another Ike! By this point, I was going aklsdjfal;sfja??? ANOTHER IKE? MAYBE THIS IS POSSIBLE??? I mean, Ike showed up instead of Hrid or Roy. What were the odds??? +9 Ike time! One Ike left to go!

Then, at 98 orbs left, Ike#3 showed up! AHHHHHHHHHH. In only 17 orbs, the final Ike decided to join my barracks. It was a surreal moment. I couldn't believe my eyes. It only took 144 orbs for me to get my final three Ike merges, and no other red focus came to crash the party. What were the odds?????

It was totally a Christmas miracle~. I nearly didn't even have to use any of the orbs I kept safe with Feh, but cashing them out was probably what decided my luck!

And so, Ike joins the other finished merged projects as the 13th member~. I don't know if I'll try to merge any more 5* exclusives. XD;; They'd have to be someone that I know will return on banners a lot... or someone that I like a lot and is also decent (if not superb) meta wise. (Lugh refine, when?)

And now, to add even more to this already very wordy post... all of my finished merge projects so far~

( finished merge projects )

My game arrived! \o\ Thought I was getting it on July 30th, but it arrived much earlier than that, only one day after the game's release~

I'm so excited about it~. Have been watching a lot of trailers, from feeling somewhat indifferent about the school setting to being sold on the concept with the time skip, as probably what a bunch of other people felt too, from reactions I've seen. I'll have to see if the game lives up to expectations after playing it though! Gonna go with Blue Lions first. Dimitri intrigues me.

Got myself the Seasons of Warfare special edition. o/ Gamestop was out, so I had to order it elsewhere, or else I really wanted the freebie pins from Gamestop for preordering there. The special edition comes with a steelbook, an artbook, a soundtrack, and a calendar. The calendar seemed strange to include, but there's a pretty involved calendar system in the game, so it all makes sense!

( more pics )

I got to Tier 21 in Aether Raids~ \o\ (Now, I'll probably sit back and... relax more with this mode now ahaha)



So, I forgot to upgrade my Aether Amphorae to 250 capacity before the season started. Began the season with 200 aether and hoped that the extra match the 50 aether could have gotten me wouldn't matter. It probably wouldn't, since I doubted I could get to Tier 21. (One single extra match isn't going to matter, I thought. Oh, how naive I was) So, I played pretty recklessly on my first two matches and lost several units, whoops. Also got a -80 in defense right off the bat. Oh dear.

I played a bit more carefully after that, and also got some -40 in defense lift loss instead of -80. So, things were looking up~

By Saturday, after I finished playing my matches, I was at 10,280 lift, while I needed to be at 11,000 lift to reach Tier 21. I was still quite a ways off, but I decided to do some math. The most I could get from winning each match was 140 lift, with one Eir and 4 light blessed heroes. I would have 180 aether with the next reset, while the reset after would give me another 70 aether, with a total of 250 aether over the final 2 days of the season. That would net me 5 more matches, as it costs 50 aether per match. If I won every single one of those 5 matches with no units lost, I could get 700 lift max. That'd bring me to 10,980 lift at the most, a mere 20 lift away from Tier 21. At that moment, I went, omg, I think I can reach Tier 21? But no, no way, I can't lose a single unit... and somehow I need to get a final, 6th match. Can I really do that? After all, I'd been losing units left and right and also missing the aether structures.

In order to get that final match, I would need to successfully destroy the aether fountains and amphorae in each of those 5 matches, to get 10 aether back per match for a total of 50 aether over 5 matches. A highly difficult task, as I'd often skip destroying the aether structures to guarantee survival of my team instead. If I got the 6th match, I could get 140 lift max from it, bringing me to 11,120 lift at the maximum. There were still two more times I could lose in defense, with a total of -160 lift possible. So, I would not be able to remain in Tier 21 if I got double -80 defense losses.

So my winning conditions were:
*Win all 5 matches with no units lost
*Destroy both aether structures in all matches to regain 50 aether for a 6th match
*Win the 6th match with no units lost (no aether structures needed anymore)
*Get no more than -120 in defense lift loss over two matches, meaning my defense team had to kill at least two units.

( The rest of the journey )

Ultimate Fanfic Trope Showdown from ellimists. (Thanks suzume!)

( results )

Now for some recent anime I caught up with.

( Black Clover, Run with the Wind, The Morose Mononokean, My Roommate is a Cat )

Also! SEASONAL SOREN ALT. VALENTINE SOREN ALT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I never thought this would happen? I mean, I thought that Ike might be the person on the right in this teaser silhouette, or maybe it'd be his father Greil. But even though it wasn't Ike on the right, it was still Ike on the banner. With Soren!!! Seasonal Tellius banner with Soren, ahhhhhh. I had a bunch of orbs saved up to pull for more Legendary Ike merges from January's Legendary/Mythic banner, but I ended up spending them all on the Radiant Dawn Laguz banner, since I really wanted Reyson (who I never got from that banner, but did get later on as a 4* that I promoted right away). I figured I'd only go all in with my orbs with characters that I really liked, and Reyson was one of them. Even though there was a high chance he would be demoted, I still wanted a copy just in case. Anyway, now that he has been demoted to 4*, he's definitely a +10 project.

I also figured that there was very little chance that someone I liked would be on the next seasonal, as IS seems to keep releasing Fate seasonals, who I could do without, and I hoped that we'd get plenty of orbs for the anniversary, which we kind of didn't. So now here we are, with the seasonal I want most of all from this game, and I have no orbs left. OTL I'm sorry, I have failed you Soren. Hoping that orbs from the Tempest Trials will be enough to pull either Soren, or Ike, or both... I'll have to give up on Greil and Mist. ;__; I really wanted to collect all the Tellius seasonals (so far, I've succeeded with having 1 copy each of bridal Sanaki, Halloween Mia, Festival Elincia, and Festival Micaiah). But with a whole banner of Tellius seasonals and no orbs, this is an unlikely feat, haha. So far, my pulls have given me an Adrift Camilla (why, Camilla, you're on plenty of seasonals already. You don't need to show up here!) and a Ninian, who has been merged into my previous Ninian to remove her -atk bane. But eh, her attack is still low even with the merge, so pretty pointless.

This is when I wish Soren were a Tempest Trial unit so I could +10 him with grails, but I feel like ever since the grail system started, they're only putting units they think will be the most enticing as the Tempest Trial rewards, for more incentive to play Aether Raids, I bet. So I doubt we'll be seeing very many guys as the rewards now. Who am I supposed to spend the grails on now?? Eh, for now, I'm probably going with Naesala unless someone else I like better comes along.

I'm also still in disbelief that Soren and Ike showed up together on a Valentine seasonal banner, of all banners. XDDDD

I'll probably cosplay this outfit of Soren's too. :3

I am surprised that I'm actually doing pretty well in Aether Raids! :3 Top 3k this time! Got myself a throne of each color! \o\ I got lucky last week that I (just barely) made it to the next tier, which allowed me to start a tier above a lot of other players this week, since the points reset to the beginning of the tier each time.

Still, I find that I always leave the AR matches until right before the daily reset, so I guess I'm not liking the mode that much. Too much pressure. :'D And people get to watch replays of my team against theirs!! OTL It feels so terrible when I let my offense team get wiped out... and my defense team needs a lot of work. I'm just going to focus on offense for now...

3.0 is dropping tomorrow. It'll probably bring some changes to AR? No idea. But hey, I got my thrones, I'm good even if I never make it to top 3k again, haha. Before this new mode, I was very focused on Arena, but now not so much because it's been a hassle switching my units' skills back and forth for AR and Arena. Now they're just stuck with their Aether Raids skills. I'll probably try again for a better ranking in Arena when I have easier bonus units to use. At least, I got several crowns already~

I also currently have no orbs. I am not ready for new Tellius banners. (But please, do give us a another Soren!!) I guess I still have my emergency stash with all the maps I haven't beaten yet for whenever a unit I really want shows up. :'D

As for Smash, my progress in unlocking new characters is slow going. I'm dying so much. XD; But hey, I got several Fire Emblem spirits already~, including Lilina, Julius, and Navarre. I'm hoping I'll run into Soren soon! World of Light has been hard since I'm limited to a small roster still. Haven't unlocked my main (Ness) in that mode yet.

So, this fic about the vice-captains taking care of their captains after they shrink is now around 9k and still not done. :'D Um, hello, Lucathia, isn't this a side chapter to so we can get to know you and A Vice-Captain's Tale? At this rate, the side story might end up the same length as the main fic.

But eh, the main story has an actual story line, while this story is just rambling and snippets.

I've mostly finished writing the story though, so I'm hopeful it won't grow that much. But there's a ton of editing to do, and scenes to flesh out. Maybe it'll be 10k-11k by the time I'm done.

4thewords got an update, but my writing streak broke around then because of a timezone thing. =/ Also, some bugs with being unable to battle monsters (automatic loss after starting the battle) and a pretty laggy editor, so I took a few days off from the site. My trial period is ending soon. I'm going to wait and see if the site settles down to see if I'll continue with them. I can battle monsters again now, and the site seems to work on mobile better than the old version, which is nice. I can tap away at my cell phone~


In FEH news, I've gotten my 4th crown! Feh gets a cute crown to wear~ :D For now, I've managed to squeak into Tier 21 every other week, which are the weeks that the score threshold is a bit lower, since the majority of the whales and players who invested into armors and other high BST units are on the week 1 wave. They're already in Tier 21 when I'm battling to get into Tier 21 with the rest of the Tier 20 people who didn't quite make it.

( some more FEH rambling )

I managed to stay in Tier 20 since my last post, making it 6 weeks so far~. o/ The new arena scoring system really threw a dent in my scoring, so I've had to give Nowi an upgrade in her skills to stay, and I decided to go for a 5*+10 Olivia instead of sticking with my 4*+10 one. So far, I'm still on the border of dropping from Tier 20 every week, and I'm only staying because of blessings. Hopefully getting the last of my Nowi merges will make it easier to stay~. I've been lucky that the recent arena bonuses had units that I pulled, and I could run a legendary for the blessing. Not sure how the next arena rotation will affect me... I'll probably drop since I've been depending on the blessings to stay with my current team. D:

Staying in Tier 20 wasn't really a goal of mine at first, but I've been enjoying going against 720+ teams and avoiding most horse emblem teams. Also, I love seeing themed teams.

My 2nd 5*+10 unit ended up being Olivia!

( Olivia~ )

Ahhhhh, on this momentous day, I have finally +10'd Soren. Ahhhhhh. It's been a project since April 26, 2017 when Soren was released in Fire Emblem Heroes. So it took 9 months (and 1 day). I managed to get one Soren from his first banner after I don't know how many orbs. Pretty much all I had saved up back then (I've never managed to reach that number of orbs again). But he did come home. Afterwards, I summoned on the Tempest Trial Moment of Fate banner when it came around. Don't remember how many Sorens I got from that. 2, I think? Or maybe 3. At least one was a four star, but that mattered little. All my feathers for Soren! I figured there was going to be a Path of Radiance Tempest Trial, so I saved orbs for that. But when Soren randomly showed up for the Short Haired Girls vs Long Haired Guys Voting Gauntlet, I was totally unprepared for that banner, haha! (But I was so excited for him to be included in a Gauntlet) I was unfortunately unable to dedicate my orbs to that banner, as I was still trying to get Trick Or Treat Henry from the Halloween banner (Somehow I managed to get Trick or Treat Nowi (on the free smmon), Trick or Treat Sakura, Trick or Treat Jakob, another Trick or Treat Nowi, and the last three were all from summoning when no green stone showed up ahhhhh and still no Henry! I wasn't even trying to summon Sakura or Jakob. And here I thought colorless was supposed to be hell).

Anyway, I've been trying to summon Myrrh from this latest banner, a Sacred Stones ones, since she has Hone Dragons. Well, after several pulls with only one green stone each time, no Myrrh in sight, but I got my final two Sorens! So here he is now, all maxed out. :D (Though I do need to max out his hero merit again). He's +atk -def, with summoner support. My first Soren was +atk, -spd. I kind of miss him a little. I got several +spd, -def Sorens along the way too, but I ultimately decided to stick with +atk, partially because Ike is also +atk. And that sweet 61 atk is just amazing. (Pft, who cares about doubles! He used to be -spd and did just fine!) I hope Soren gets some kind of unique weapon in the future! He won't mind graduating from a blade tome with that attack. I'm also considering giving him a wolf or owl tome or something, just so I can refine it and make Soren ~shine~.

Thank you Soren, for being 4*-5* rarity. It made +10'ing you possible even as an F2P player. :D



Now, I suppose I have feathers for any other random units. For arena purposes, my next focus will probably be Nowi. From my main team, Nowi is at +6. Four more to go! She ended up on my main team given that she was the first blue 5 star unit I got, and she decided to show up twice even, both off focus. (Before that, I was using a 4* F!Corrin). I pulled specifically for more of her for the first time on the Gift of Peace Tempest Trial banner and got 2 more merges. For a moment, I thought I'd end up +10'ing her first before Soren, considering she's a lot more likely to show up on more banners. As for the others, Olivia is already 4*+10, though I wonder if I should work on a 5*+ Olivia. I do have another 9 copies of her, pfft, and her 4 star self can't get any more points in arena as she is. It'll just take a ton of feathers that I don't have. Last is Ike, who's at +1. I don't think it's possible to +10 him without spending money since he's locked at 5*. :') Sorry Soren... I did manage to get him to +1! Ike is mostly just there to reposition Soren and be Soren's buffbot. :'D I mean, he's not the best buff bot but Soren wouldn't want anyone else.

For my other teams, I started working on Fae (she's at +1 now, with 7 more available for merging. I'm going to pause for now though, and wait to see what the anniversary will bring to the game play. Besides, I'm really hoping for a boy dragon down the line. Where's my Kurthnaga and Nils? XD). I'd like to 5 star Lyon (because Lyon! and he even shares an artist with Soren), and I might 5 star Ursula eventually considering she's an important teammate on my first cavalry team. I randomly 5 starred Lucius after the healer upgrade when I couldn't pull someone else, because Lucius!! He was one of my first mages in my very first Fire Emblem game. How can I not build him? He isn't used on any team though, but he's pretty fun to use with Pain+ and double Savage Blow. Maybe I'll build Raven after his weapon upgrade, and they can be on a team together. :3 Yeah, still lots of units to build.

I have like, no orbs for the anniversary, pffft.

( some more pics )

Hm, I've been trying to post That Day Back Then on fanfiction.net, but the story is not going through. I dearly hope the story won't end up showing up on the site five times. :'D But if it does, er, now you know why.

So, back in February, I felt that I wouldn't be playing Fire Emblem Heroes long if there wasn't new content. But there was, so here I still am. XD Also, the LSK cell phone game sadly stopped working pretty soon after I reached Rank 1 back in February... so I played more FEH instead. (I think they just stopped maintaining that game...)


I autobattled my way from 40,000 points to 100,240 points. :'D I was going to stop at 50,000... but then I pulled an Alm, and he worked pretty well with an autobattle team, haha... (This team actually managed to finish Hard 5 once all by themselves through autobattle without all dying~. Go team~). Alm also came at a great time to test out the Phantom Speed seal to go along with his Windsweep skill. It does actually work pretty well with poking at Hectors. Before Alm, 4 ★ Mae was my bonus unit, but she was too squishy for autobattling. If the next Tempest Trials is any time soon though, I'm not sure I'll try for 99,999 again. XD;

( Read more... )

My diligence has paid off. Rank 1! :D

It's mostly because a lot of people have stopped playing. But at least I can claim to be the #1 diligent LSK fan, yes?


Overall achievement ranking, based on completed tasks. The latest task I completed was having 10 legendary heroes. I finally evolved Grisia into a legendary hero. The order I evolved them: Aldrizzt, Georgo, Laica, Roland, Valica, Chasel, Pope, Neo, Pink, and finally Grisia. Aldrizzt and Laica deal the most damage. Georgo and Neo are good for defense. Roland is pretty good with group damage as well. Valica is so-so. Good for dealing damage to single enemies. Pope isn't very different from not being evolved. I haven't upped Pink or Grisia's skills yet to see how their legendary versions compare to their normal versions. But legendary versions can equip their divine weapons, so that does make them stronger in that aspect at least. I only have a few characters left that I can evolve. Ceo, Elmairy, Queen of Moon Orchid, and Ecilan. Even though I already have Chikus's Divine Blaze Sword, the character himself is still elusive, as is Lesus. ): I think I need around 2~3 more of each of them before I can evolve them. And sadly, Aivis and Vival don't have legendary versions, despite already being maxed out. Even the Queen of Moon Orchid has a legendary version, yet the two of you Twelve Holy Knights don't!!

( some more images )