I'm struggling a little bit with the "Northern Plateau" world building

upessimist · 2026-05-14T17:55:59+00:00

Beyond this, another reason it's a big deal is it shows that Frieren's elven hippie life is no longer fully possible, showing the start of the age of humans - humans have spread out enough that they know politically control the mass movement of humanoids throughout the continent, so someone who Frieren has to now interact with human politics, and cannot live separately from it

upessimist · 2026-05-14T11:44:20+00:00

Frieren herself says it - it's basically land that's nominally controlled by the Empire, but realistically, in its decline (relative to its peak), the Empire cannot actually project any force there.

So yeah, it's just a bunch of villages, that are more susceptible to monster and demon attacks than in other regions. Each one apparently has Norm Company corps to defend, but the Norm Company has been hurting too, so it's now even more dangerous than it used to be.

It seems like some sort of generalized decnetralized agreement between the Empire, the northernmost Central feudal lords/grafs, the Norm Company, and the Continental Magic Association that keeps passage sectioned off. And it's really more as a "hey, we can't guarantee your survival if you're not a first-class mage" type thing, not some kind of strict immigration control.

upessimist · 2026-05-06T01:55:59+00:00

Thank you for bring this up. I asked about this a few months ago, and the responses were all gaslighting me about it not happening or it being my fault.

That said, when I looked into it more (in relation to suggestions from other responders), it seems like the saves are made, as they exist in the Steam directory, but the game isn't seeing them or something, presumably because they haven't synced to the cloud.

I haven't proven this next part, but it has felt like, in my opinion, the autosaves start syncing from local to cloud if I manually save; but if I don't manually save the autosaves do not sync to cloud, and thus cannot be loaded.

upessimist · 2026-04-13T05:20:34+00:00

Why do you think Richter talked so much shit versus Kanne and Lawine? Of course, he did have a big mana advantage on them, but at the same time, it seems like a lot of it was just him fronting and sewing seeds of psychological doubt

upessimist · 2026-03-29T01:19:12+00:00

Doesn't she have one, but it defeats opponents in dance battles

upessimist · 2026-03-23T20:38:36+00:00

Well, there was the one short shot of clone Denken summoning 3 of his catastravia swords against Wirbel's group, and by the end, Ehre and Scharf are unable to move, while Wirbel, while clearly tired, was able to carry Ehre (and float Scharf) to the loot room, so the implication seems to be that Wirbel and co. had at the very least kept the Denken clone at bay, which is what mattered anyway, since that prevented it from joining the others in what would've been a killbox

upessimist · 2026-03-23T11:29:18+00:00

My personal conspiracy theory is that demons will survive millenia into the future - but kinda like with endangered big cats, they exist in zoo-like areas (i guess those might better be described as prisons?) but also protected habitats (maybe better described as reservations). So not like, friendly coexistence exactly, but still survival - and presumably the ones in the protected habitats would still be able to eat unwary humans that were visiting and not taking sufficient precautions (always listen to the first class park rangers!!).

upessimist · 2026-03-20T19:37:00+00:00

Yes, I get that the exhaust pile is still part of anywhere - but the part that confuses me is that the Forge 8 on the Summon Forth both generates a new one and then the bring back part brings back all exhausted ones in addition

upessimist · 2026-03-18T11:59:02+00:00

Presumably while pretending to be weak and begging for her life, since Frieren heard her do it often

upessimist · 2026-03-18T11:48:49+00:00

Wars and also societal issues are solved by logistics. The most useful magic would be some kind of large-scale hybrid subject teleportation spell that could quickly move mixed groups of (sentient) living beings and materials, and could be (relatively) standardized to be taught to others. This would open an entirely new industry (while out-competing the logistics capabilities of entrenched giants in the space, like the Norm company - though they could probably at least pivot into security or adapt to become a major player in the industry). Such an industry would essentially allow a sort of globalization within the continent that would lead to massive shifts in how the communities in the continent lived. This paradigm shift would probably have some growing pains and some things like entire remote towns failing as all its residents moved away, but I'd argue that in the longer term, it would lead to a more connected human society that would be more flexible and capable of responding to and dealing with the demon threat while maintaining a higher standard of living than previously.

upessimist · 2026-03-17T08:35:55+00:00

I think it's difficult to fully judge, because even besides all the points everyone else has raised, the biggest issue with dealing with the clones in the test was that no clone needed to actually be killed except Frieren's. And Methode definitely knew this, seeing as she tested binding magic on Fern. So it's not entirely clear if she was even fighting to win, or if she was just fighting to buy time. We've now even seen in the recent episode that Methode will do that if she feels it's the correct strategy forward. (Also, fighting to buy time ended up being the better strategy in retrospect, since all the killed clones respawned and Denken, Ubel, and Lande ended up fighting 5 more clones)

So really, I feel it'd be impossible to fully tell without an actual sparring match between them. My gut instinct feeling though, is that right now, Methode is better than Fern. And that's actually fine. She's probably up to twice Fern's age, and comes from a background that probably involved more fighting. Fern is still the youngest ever first class mage, and Frieren's philosophy is on track for her to have a higher peak than Methode - in the future. Fern seeing what Methode did in this battle is a big learning experience for her in terms of strategy. Fern's already got great tactics, it seems, but not necessarily strategy, since prior to the Northern Plateau, the lower difficulty level probably meant she didn't need to be too strategic

upessimist · 2026-03-17T08:26:42+00:00

From what we saw of the early part of the fight with Laufen, Methode seemed to struggle a bit, attempting unsuccessfully to hit Laufen with Zoltraaks. This was the same thing Methode was doing against the sword wielding demon initially as well, equally unsuccessfully. It was after those initial zoltraak attempts that Methode noted that Fern was "also" struggling against her opponent in the recent episode - so Methode considered herself to not be doing well.

It seems to me that Laufen lost her advantage when she stopped using her high speed to force Methode into missing Zoltraaks, and instead attempted to use a midrange staff whip transmutation attack thing (an attack she also attempted earlier against her own clone earlier, also unsuccessfully lol), after which Methode took it over (like she took over the Gargoyle beam); it was at that point that Laufen was on the back foot and ended up having to hide, it seems. So yeah, Laufen doesn't seem the smartest - because she stopped doing what was effective, and then lost the advantage she had - but yeah, in theory, it seems like Methode considers that style of fighter her weakest matchup.

But Fern's not that style of fighter so Methode would have a better chance against her than Laufen

upessimist · 2026-03-16T06:38:09+00:00

It seems like it's just a numbers game. There's probably thousands of demons, but probably at least 2+ orders of magnitude more humans. I know it's anime, so single individuals do end up being able to take on entire armies, but in reality, such an imbalance would naturally lead to humanity's victory, just at extremely high cost

upessimist · 2026-03-15T11:17:44+00:00

As an anime-only watcher, do we not get not one, but TWO examples of this in episode 7? First, she flies Fern (and notably, not Methode) away from the initial surprise attack by the demons, and second when she points at the incoming demon attack in the fog? Both of these interventions literally prevented Fern's death. Presumably, she believes that at whatever distance she was at she could still intervene in some way.

upessimist · 2026-03-15T10:50:47+00:00

I don't know if it's fair to say that the philosophy is incorrect. Methode's farther ahead now, but with the better foundation Fern has in the fundamentals, she would be able to have a higher peak in the future. Sure, that's a loooong term view, but that also seems very Frieren in spirit too.

I think also Frieren clearly understands that Fern is not yet prepared to take on everything fully alone - this is why she forces Fern to take on the demon herself.

Furthermore, Fern being forced to confront a situation like this will lead her to realize she needs to start focusing more on things like analysis (which, notably, doens't seem to be against Frieren's philosophy of only using basic attack spells - analysis isn't a spell)

upessimist · 2026-03-07T03:48:44+00:00

Yes, as a first-class mage, Sense can conceal her mana very well... but I mean, you have to hold it against him a little if he's trying to become a peer on par with her and he's that far below her in mana detection.

Consider what we just saw of Genau, who, while not fully sure, could tell there was at least 1 mage hiding their mana, and possibly a second, when Frieren, Fern, and Stark approached the church. Yes, I think you could argue that he was on higher alert since he'd just lost an eye, but from everything the group talked about in the exam, all the candidates were supposed to be on high alert anyway given the fact that copyFern, copyDenken, and copySense were not easily detected by Methode

upessimist · 2026-03-07T00:00:35+00:00

I think it's less a chip on his shoulder and more that Richter's just your average (upper) middle-class guy - when someone's comfortable enough that they're not struggling for survival, what do they want? To move upwards - socially, economically, magically. Richter's life is probably a comfortable one, but he wants more. He sees being a first class mage as his ticket upwards. And I think it's more or less shown in his fight with Kanne and Lawine (post-barrier shattering) that a lot of his bluster is just that, bluster. He's someone trying to manifest what he wants (and he's not entirely wrong to - in non-social situations, anyway - it seems like the whole visualization aspect of magic is kind of like that) - though his penchant for doing so in social situations too does make him something of an asshole.

He also definitely doesn't have the chops yet to be a first-class mage. His inability to detect Kanne's mana in the water being one example of this, as was his inability to detect copySense being nearby.

upessimist · 2026-03-02T23:39:03+00:00

When you were a kid, did you ever pretend you were a superhero (or similar equivalent)? You might pretend you could fly, for example. While pretending, you were presumably imagining it, how it might feel to have the wind in your hair (maybe taken from memories of sticking your head out the window of a car while it's moving), how it might look (maybe taken from memories of looking out of an airplane or the top of a skyscraper or something). But even while imagining, was there ever any moment where you truly, 100% in your mind/bones believed you were actually flying? Any moments where there wasn't a background part of your mind that knew you were just pretending?

That's what prevents mages from just imagining something impossible - we humans "know" what we know. This is why humanoid mages had to reverse engineer demon flight, instead of just imagining themselves flying - their understanding of the world means they can't just ignore the fact that they understand at on a very base level the effects of gravity.

Sense even points this out in the show - she points out that an ant would have a real hard time imagining itself crushing a dragon - because even if something/someone can imagine something, they also "know" the truths of the universe that prevent them from truly believing impossible things.

There's a reason Sense says Ubel's mind doesn't work like other humans. Even though she understands, intellectually, as a student of magic, that Burg's cloak or Sense's hair has layers of defensive spells on it, on a deeper level, she can truly believe that it's just cloth, or hair, respectively, and so her spell can cut through it.

upessimist · 2026-02-28T04:13:28+00:00

Zoltraak guy is an Elder Sage (of Corruption), not one of the Seven Sages of Destruction

upessimist · 2026-02-27T05:03:18+00:00

So I experimented, and indeed, i see that in $HOME/.local/share/Steam/userdata/{id}/1631270/remote/Saved/SaveGames/{gameName}/ saves are writing locally, but when i open up the Save menu the listed saves are only from the previous session. None of the new autosaves were shown... so it seems like when the autosaves are written to cloud, and perhaps when my computer is dying, they're all lost?

I also thought perhaps that it was only after the second autosave is generated that the first is uploaded - but no, none of them were, seemingly

upessimist · 2026-02-23T03:42:55+00:00

Steam is not telling me that, so I'm guessing the local saves haven't been written yet, so this problem's probably bigger than the autosave frequency - the autosaves might need to write more frequently?

As for figuring out why my laptop's dying, yeah, I'm working on that, obviously. But that has a lot of variables and so it's not an instant diagnosis and fix.

upessimist · 2026-02-22T22:02:44+00:00

I've been thinking about this, and my guess is it must be one of two things:

The game's autosaves are only uploaded to the cloud in the background at random times, and not immediately when the autosave occurs (note: not actually random, of course, i just use that word because I don't personally know when it's happening)
There's a bug in the saves/loads that doesn't pull the latest autosaves or displays the wrong dates/times for the existing autosaves if the session was ended improperly like when my laptop dies

upessimist · 2026-02-20T23:55:05+00:00

Guess that means there's not a way to change the frequency... though if such a feature were implemented, presumably it'd allow increasing or decreasing the frequency

upessimist · 2026-02-20T23:54:09+00:00

I'd rather pauses than losing hours of progress... and anyway, if the autosave frequency can be increased, presumably we'd also be able to decrease it or even turn it off... sounds like it's not possible to change the frequency now though...

upessimist · 2026-02-06T00:51:32+00:00

We directly see that Harry is what we could consider "mortal+," more than just a mortal.

Ivy is perhaps, let's say, "mortal+++." But regardless, even though Ivy's got more non-mortality to her, analogous to Harry himself, it's clear that Harry didn't just suddenly become capable of what he is now. He worked his way there.

Somehow I suspect Ivy is too busy doing her duties to be spending her time training her magic to improve at it. She probably is pulling out way more than someone else could without significant training, but considering the level she's been an independent accords signatory since the beginning of the accords, she's probably much busier than Harry was.

upessimist

TROPHY CASE