Oh god I just realized I took way too many pictures... so that means this is going to be a DELUXE update!
There's some armours across the river with javelins, by having a unit like Levin stand on the opposite side, you can provoke them into attacking him and kill them in droves as a result. Just make that you don't get in over your head here.
Anyway, we have a river in front of us! How will we ever be able to get across?
If you paid attention to a small cutscene, the guy that controls the bridge says that the mechanism is controlled with a lock. Also, a village no more than 10 feet away explicitly tells you that you can get through if you have a thief in your party. I missed this the first time I played the game, and so I stupidly went through the mountains like an obstinate moron. So yeah, just have Dew stand right there, and he'll lower the bridge for us.
So the remainder of the loser guards are easy enough to mop up, in fact, alot of the enemies in this chapter'll be super easy due to all my insane grinding. The next chapter will be cranking things straight up into "blatantly unfair" though, so I have no regrets.
The leader of the castle is this loser, who has the A-rank wind magic at his command, Tornado!
Which is doesn't get to use, not even once. 99 kill slim sword will be handling most enemies this way.
Anyway, I'm gonna meta a little bit here, and refrain from seizing the castle right away. Instead, have whoever you have controlling the return staff and warp staff start teleporting everyone back to Castle Sai, your home castle, with the exception of ONE strong unit, which'll serve an important function later. I'm choosing Lechesis, but you could just as easily choose Levin, Sigurd, Lex, or whoever else has a 1~2 range weapon (meaning that it can hit things that are both close and long range).
While we teleport everyone back to Sai, let's have Sylvia do something interesting first.
There's a village right here, you can get an item. This particular bit of the game is glitched though, and there's a very high probability of the game crashing if you try to have Sylvia save the village. There's a way around this though, you have to save the game with the in-game save function, then you have to use whatever feature your emulator has to mimic a hard reset of the game console, then you load up your saved game and Sylvia should have no problem saving the village. If not, then repeat the process and try again.
So basically, Sylvia saves the village, and then dances for the people to cheer them up. They give her a Defense Sword as a token of gratitude!
This is an excellent weapon. It's C-rank, it has 90 accuracy. It has 12 power. It gives +7 defense and it's only drawback is it's 5 weight, which is forgivable. The defense sword is special in that it's one of two of the only non-legendary weapons that give stat boosts. The defense sword is wasted on Sylvia, give it to someone else.
On another note, because there's nothing requiring my attention, I'm going to spend the next 40 turns having my preferred couples stand next to eachother to gain love points.
I manage to get enough points in this process to solidify my Lechesis!Levin, Azel!Sylvia, and Ardan!Tiltyu pairings. The only pairings remaining are my Holyn!Brigid and Alec!Fury pairing, easily accomplished within the next chapter.
An interesting thing I found while teleporting everyone back to Sai, is that I remember that certain couples will have a conversation if they're in the castle at the same time!
But this is one of many parts of the game that are untranslated, and you only get gibberish no matter which pairing it is. I can certainly imagine though it's full of "OH GOD I LOVE YOU SO MUCH HNNG!".
Alright, this is enough fooling around, NOW seize Thove castle, and prepare to spend a lot of time reading.
Turns out the guys at Thove rejoice because the other dude was an asshole.
The guys at Zaxxon send out their own Pegasus Knights, with a lady named Pamela leading them.
Queen Rahna responds in kind by sending out her own, lead by most the most insignificant side-character of all time, Mahnya.
This battle between the pegasus knights is occurring in an area that the game forbids our characters from moving into. Not even Fury can get close to assist, as we can't move any character of ours within their area of domain. So all we can do is watch as they slug it out.
But then all of a sudden, a bunch of mean fucking Archknights pop out of nowhere and start fucking her shit up!
Mahnya doesn't stand a chance in hell, all those archknights have hero bows, and they're led by a guy named Andre, who has a shield ring ontop of that.
So Mahnya dies, dawww!
DAAAWWWWW!
So I've been using all my time to get all my guys right in front of this bridge, which is blocked off by one neutral mage, and I have Lechesis guarding Thove, which is significant because of:
Pamela get's ordered to fly above the mountains and try to capture Thove, which I'll have none of!
So Andre captures Silesia, which we could do nothing about...
And Queen Rahna has her citizens flee the castle for their lives.
Anyway, NOW we can rush into Silesian territory!
It's in your best interests to save these citizens. Why? They're pathetic.
And, when you save one, the character that helped them gains one 100 experience automatically. That's exactly one level up for any character not already at the level cap.
Let's take a detour with this LP though, I want to show off the Valkyrie staff, but everyone's too strong to die! What do I do? I rig up up the circumstances to kill off one of my own characters easy.
Daw! Sorry Midir!
But we can revive you! but how?
If Claude is in the home castle, you can have him use a 'staff' option that's present in the character action menu. Then select the Valkyrie staff, then select the character you want to revive.
Hey look, Midir's OK again! But the Valkyrie Staff is broken now, as it only has 1 use. Fortunately (Unfortunately?) though, it costs 50,000 gold to repair it, a trivial amount to Dew.
Anyway, back to castle sacking.
This castle is guarded by this loser, who dies so easily that I forgot to take of a picture of it. He will be unremembered.
Now, once Pamela's knights get to Thove, let's do something sneaky with Lechesis.
Little do they know, I've outfitted Lechesis with a Silver Bow and a Wind Sword.
Here's a trick: you can have her abandon her position in the castle, and then quickly ping off Pamela with a bow, which she's weak against due to being a flyer, then have Lechesis quickly run back inside and guard the castle with the Wind Sword equipped. You NEED a 1~2 range weapon in this scenario, since all those pegasus knights have javelins, which are 1~2 range weapons. This means that if you have a close range only weapon, they'll all take turns attacking from afar, but if you use a long range only weapon, they'll all take turns attacking up close. You need both so they can't get free hits on you, and this group is significantly weakened without their prize fighter Pamela bringing the hurt.
Alrighty-O, let's seize Silesia and save Queen Rahna.
Sigurd politely asks Queen Rahna if he can take the enemy's heads, and shove them right up their asses. Queen Rahna consents.
Will we be able to inflict severe anal trauma to Lord Daccar? Will Lechesis be able to fight off the horde of Pegasus Knights by her lonesome? Find out next time on Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War!