Miltiades Thugs fight walkthrough with 1 bow/ 1 dodge extreme hybrid assassin 5/8/4/8/8/7
So I am using the Miltiades Thugs fight to demonstrate some tactics that any build, even one with no combat skills, can use to consistently beat any fight in Teron. I picked this fight since it's one that first time players often mention they find challenging and also since they want to beat this fight to continue the Miltiades quest line. Actually this fight is not very difficult (there are perhaps only 1 or 2 difficult fights in Teron if you use the right tactics, not counting Aemolas village which you can complete later).
The build I'm using is a hybrid assassin that only uses the combat skill points you get from character creation and from winning fights to increase combat skills (no generic skill points spent on combat skills). I abandoned this build since I found out (the hard way) that 5 STR 8 DEX needs to invest in Throw 3 to climb Antidas' palisade (when you can do it with a 4/9...), so actually 5/9/4/8/7/7 would be much better (+5 skill from creation, extra dodge, +1 AP and you don't need to dump 15 points into throwing). However, I have this character on hand so I can show you the strategy.
Getting all the freebie skill points after infiltrating Antidas' palace, as well as looting the blue steel marculus, our character looks like this-
We had 31 generic skill points leftover, so we dump it to raise crafting to 6, so we can craft some better bows and armor. We'll need +4 civ skill points later for Impersonate 2 to do Aurelian outpost, but we'll get that from the Miltiades fight [which is why we're doing it before Aurelian outpost] (+2 generic skill points for the encounter, +1 lockpicking use, +1 persuade use). We also haven't gotten the Lore bonus from Feng's room (I'm pretty sure you still get +10 points into Lore from Cassius at Lore 2/ Etiquette 2) so we have some points to play with. Also notice that we could also raise Dodge to 2 with our combat points (we'll need cs at 4 to cs Esbenus before the Raider camp), and we could actually do the Tavern thugs fight first to raise dodge to 3. But for the purposes of this demonstration we'll leave Dodge at 1.
We decompose the iron Praetorian armor we got from the Guard barracks for material. Note that you don't need Crafting 6 at all to beat this fight; you can wear the Iron Lorica you get from Aurelian Outpost instead and use craft 4 bows to beat this fight with no problem. But since this build has the points, I'm just making things a little easier on us.
We make an Iron Lamellar and some nice bows. We had enough iron to make a nice Attic helmet with only -2 TH penalty but it's up to you... in hindsight the Attic helmet would have been better. Our equipment and stats going into the fight (you can see Miltiades lurking in the background).
We can win this fight very easily with a bomb, but the only thing we'll use is a net. We actually don't even need to use the net; I just want to demonstrate marculus knockdown. You certainly don't need to waste a bola on this fight. Still, if you are crazy enough to play this game ironman, I'd always have bombs ready to go. Since both thugs (like most of the enemies in Teron) don't wear helmets, we load our 3 hand xbows with barbed missiles. I also should have put poison on the marculus but I forgot.
HERE WE GO (cue FFVIII combat music)
We have two enemies, but one is easy to hit (the axeman/ blocker) and the other is much harder to hit (the swordsman/ dodger). So our strategy is to kill the axeman with our heavy crossbow, and then take out the swordsman. The swordsman's swift and body attacks can't really hurt us, but at dodge 1 he will take a lot of dangerous shots at our head.
(actually we got quite lucky this time and killed both thugs so fast that we barely even used our longbow. But I'll point out where we would actually use some tactics if we hadn't gotten the good rolls)
Turn 1
So we start by shooting the axeman with our xbow. It doesn't knock him down, but both the xbow and the longbow do so much damage that even if we don't knock him down, we still kill him easily in 3 or 4 hits. Our strategy is to move in a way that minimizes the number of swings the axeman gets to take at us before he dies. We take 1 step away towards the swordsman and reload.
I think a common mistake players make with heavy xbow is to reload and immediately shoot a 2nd shot. But even if we hit a 2nd shot, it wont kill the axeman. We want to start the turn with a reloaded xbow so that, if we knock him down, we can immediately finish him off with our hand xbows.
2 AP regular attack (heavy xbow) to axe
2 AP move back towards sword
6 AP reload heavy xbow
Turn 2
We have two choices to move, and we want to move away from the axeman (I'll explain why later). Then we take another shot at him-
Luckily (or unluckily for the sake of demonstration), we get a knockdown. So the axe is pretty much as good as dead. We unequip the heavy xbow, grab a hand xbow out of our bag, and shot him in the throat
for 14 damage. With our final AP, we equip a net. The axeman is as good as dead and now we turn to the swordsman.
2 AP move away from the axe
2 AP regular attack (heavy xbow) on the axe
2 AP remove heavy xbow
3 AP arterial strike (hand xbow) on the axe
1 AP equip net
However, even if we didn't get the knockdown on the axe, I want to show you what happens-
So next turn we would end up in this formation here. We move away from the axe and shoot him again which would kill him or put him at almost dead. Since the swordsman moves before the axeman, the swordsman moves in front of the axeman blocking him. Now the axeman has to move around the swordsman to get to us, which prevents him from attacking and then we kill him next turn. In a difficult fight, the right movement can minimize the number and quality of the swings you take, so it's important to figure out the optimum choreography.
Turn 3
Now that it's just down to the swordsman, this fight is actually basically over. We could throw a bomb at him and finish him off with hand xbows. Or we could just equip our longbow and move away- as we'll see, he will respond by pulling out his own dinky bow, at which point you'll win a shootout against him with your superior bow and armor. However, since I want to demonstrate marculus knockdown, I'll use a net.
So we toss a net on the sword, then equip our marculus and spare hand xbow for 1 AP each. At the point I feel no guilt using nets to win these fights. Nets are plentiful and we've pretty much handicapped ourselves to the point that nets are fair use.
With our remaining 4 AP we go for a leg shot. This hit doesn't really matter, since what we really care about knocking him down next turn, which would be match. We whiff on the leg strike but that just gives us better hope for next turn, since it would be unlucky to miss 2 attacks in a row on a netted enemy.
4 AP throw net
1 AP equip marculus
1 AP equip hand xbow
4 AP aimed: leg (marculus)
Turn 4
Knockdown for game! -
WHACK! Now coup de grace-
Hand xbow #2- crit, very nice
Hand xbow #3-
4 AP knockdown (marculus)
3 AP arterial strike (hand xbow)
3 AP arterial strike (hand xbow)
Turn 5
13 damage, ouch! Not much this turn; we free our hands
and run 4 spaces since we don't have enough AP left to equip our longbow, move and shoot him this turn. Let him bleed for a bit.
1 AP remove marculus
1 AP remove hand xbow
8 AP move 4 spaces away
Turn 6
lolz! It turns out the sword will pull out a bow if you move away from him. That makes this fight even simpler. But regardless, it's over-
POW. (cue FFVIII battle victory music)
2 AP equip longbow
6 AP fast attack (longbow)
Live the dream.
. Any other suggestions?
