Path of Radiance -- that dreaded Chapter 24

[nocturnal YL]

Remember when I talked about getting stuck in Chapter 24 in my Path of Radiance Maniac playthrough? Here, I'd like to talk about it in further details. Maybe someone can help me with this, but I think the most likely outcome is just that I'll just have to restart everything, and maybe just stay away from Maniac.

First off, to recap, Maniac is a difficulty present only in the Japanese version, which is not to be confused with the the renamed difficulties in Radiant Dawn. In other words:

Path of Radiance
Japan	Overseas
--	Easy
Normal	Normal
Hard	Hard
Maniac	--
Radiant Dawn
Japan	Overseas
Normal	Easy
Hard	Normal
Maniac	Hard

This should also explain the apparent high difficulty in Radiant Dawn. It's already harder than PoR in the higher difficulty, and the renaming doesn't help.

Anyway, this is the chapter I'm stuck in:


The player is to bring Ike and 9 other units. Lucia and Bastian join, but they do very little in Maniac.

This is Boyd, who gets 20 Res by natural means for some reason:


I don't have screenshots of my other units (and setting up my Wii for my screen capture device is too much work, so I won't get new screenshots for now), but Ike, Soren, Oscar and Rolf are the more competent units, but Boyd is still better. Mia is a somewhat good dodge machine but doesn't do damage, while Ilyana can use her 255-Crit Thunder tome through the Japanese forging bug. There are also Astrid, Mist and Nephenee, who are all decent, but cannot stand against the vast army in this chapter. And then there's Jill, who'd absolutely destroy everything if I did not skip taking the Full Guard (which was itself a daunting task). With several Ballistae (which ignore user strength and therefore have high base might) in this map though, Jill can't move.

(screenshot from my last Hard playthrough)

So... I guess I kind of asked for it. When I looked up about this chapter online later, I found that this is actually a pretty well-known trap in the game. I still have this save file with me, but I'll probably have to abandon it and restart the whole thing.

You can put Boyd against the enemies, blocking the bridge...


But one single unit can't do much against the enemy army.


I tried to do several things, like having Boyd disarmed while the other units pass from the back (which doesn't work), or press my luck and force Boyd and Jill through anyway (which also doesn't work, because this already daunting chapter actually has even more reinforcement). I can't play defensively and kill enemies as they come either, as Geoffrey must be reached within 15 turns (which also means I can't waste the quivers on someone else so that Jill can pass, as that would take 5 turns).

The world of Tellius seriously needs Warp staves.

[starlightmeteor]

Seeing that PoR hard mode overseas is not equal to PoR maniac mode in the original game, my suggestions may no be really helpful.  But I did survive RD Hard mode (somehow...after many tries.  I gave up on the 2nd hard mode playthrough because...NPC Fiona.  But I digress.) though I didn't do what most people did.  I chose to abuse free exp from dodging, healing, and hitting healers, something that can't be done in PoR.  


Nevertheless, I still think that Boyd-o hogged all of the exp that should have been shared amongst your select party of .... people/units.  The other annoying thing about Chapter 24 is that most units are mounted - on a horse or a dragon, they can move quite far.  Maybe...you could...let the units chase you while you move your party forward? =p  But with the exp inbalance, you'll need to restart anyway  

You probably may or may not have access to Bolting or any other ranged tomes at this point, but I haven't played PoR since...two years ago?  Ignore what doesn't work for you and hopefully you will pass!

I'm also not sure how practical it is, but is there any way to increase Boyd's and Oscar's level in Bows?  I don't know which type of unit would cause the most havoc, dragon knights or horse riders.  Snipers using ballistas need to go for sure, but they take a while to reach you, right?  Perhaps you can use another unit besides Jill, but that can be very difficult.

P.S: How did you even manage to reach 20 Res on Boyd?  Boyd's resistance in all of my playthroughs refuses to rise about ..um...10.

Bonne chance! 

[nocturnal YL]

It has actually been years since I ran into this, and restarting the whole thing should be the better solution. I should stick to Hard too, since the only reward from playing Maniac is an even more ridiculous extra map.

I think I have made way too many compromises for the army to be of any useagainst those enemies at that point, missing many essential items and such. I'm not sure if letting them chase is a good idea, since the few enemies that are at the front will stop them,and the ones at the back will eventually catch up. From what I can see, sending powerful, well-defended units like Jill is the way to go, but without Full Guard, I feel like I have walked right into this trap.

And with Boyd, one of his issues is his low defence (lower than expected value, actually), which had not been a problem because of his high speed, but this time, they have swords and they have advantage in numbers. This brings to another thing - how did Boyd have such weird stats. Basically, I actively monitored his Speed, but did not do so for his Defence. Him being a traditional axeman (high Str, low Def) doesn't help at all. Resistance is just the result of pure luck, though; I didn't notice until he had 16 Res.

Oscar has B in bows and Boyd has A, I think. All three units can use the hit-and-run strategy, but that doesn't help much when there are like 20 enemy units to tackle under the 15-turn limit. I don't think I have stolen any of the long-range tomes, or maybe I have 1. But that isn't helpful, since I didn't raise the mages' levels in tome types that they don't specialise in, and I have no way to use fire or rank A/S light. In other words, I could use the tome at most once (or twice, but I dare not bring Reyson at this point) per turn.

I did think about abusing enemies for exp (dodging gives 1 exp, though there is no staff abuse in PoR), but early on I couldn't really evade everything and items are scarce that healing is actually a rather unwise move (strangely, Ike advised against taking weapons from dead enemies from early on, something that annoyed Shinon -- and any sane person, really). By the time I could afford items, the enemies are stronger too, so anyone outside of my main team couldn't do that either. The only thing I could do is bow or boss abuse, which almost always invariably end with my units getting just strong enough to kill the boss in one turn but still not enough for general-purpose fighting.

...Really, giving up is easier at this point. Or give up PoR altogether, since my initial goal way back then was just to have a 4th RD playthrough.

[starlightmeteor]

nocturnal YL: Oscar has B in bows and Boyd has A, I think. All three units can use the hit-and-run strategy, but that doesn't help much when there are like 20 enemy units to tackle under the 15-turn limit. I don't think I have stolen any of the long-range tomes, or maybe I have 1. But that isn't helpful, since I didn't raise the mages' levels in tome types that they don't specialise in, and I have no way to use fire or rank A/S light. In other words, I could use the tome at most once (or twice, but I dare not bring Reyson at this point) per turn.



I did think about abusing enemies for exp (dodging gives 1 exp, though there is no staff abuse in PoR), but early on I couldn't really evade everything and items are scarce that healing is actually a rather unwise move (strangely, Ike advised against taking weapons from dead enemies from early on, something that annoyed Shinon -- and any sane person, really). By the time I could afford items, the enemies are stronger too, so anyone outside of my main team couldn't do that either. The only thing I could do is bow or boss abuse, which almost always invariably end with my units getting just strong enough to kill the boss in one turn but still not enough for general-purpose fighting.



...Really, giving up is easier at this point. Or give up PoR altogether, since my initial goal way back then was just to have a 4th RD playthrough.

LOL, I do agree with you that PoR for some reason does not offer many staves during the first few chapters.  As for taking weapons, I wonder what would happen if they all turned out to be unusable weapons.  What if it's just a bunch of iron swords anyway?  "What?  Only swords?" XD

It's your call =D If you want to try the entire game, or save yourself some sanity and forget it~.