Dualazi

A little ways into chapter 3 so far, so a smattering of initial thoughts I suppose. Cons: - Map design is really sub-par. I've probably been spoiled by conquest, but so far every single map has either been a sprawling expanse or 1 or 2 important chokeholds. Random encounter maps in particular are pretty egregious, as you start so close it's basically just both sides rushing each other immediately. - Difficulty so far is way too low. I didn't start on hard because I hadn't played the original version and was unsure of what mechanics were different, but no fight so far has been even remotely challenging. Pros: - Visuals are fantastic. Art design is on point and the combat animations themselves are quite good. -While I miss the weapon triangle, the abilities from items mechanic is still really cool and many of the items are really impactful. -Plot might be predictable but is well executed. - Voice acting is surprisingly good, even for bit parts. ----- So far really enjoying the title, and I hope it remains this good through the rest of the acts.

Boo camp is vastly superior to Awakening's XP grind. In awakening the enemies quickly narrowed down to less than a third being worth any significant XP, and they were spread over a very large horizontal distance. Most players at high end (from what I've read) used the other DLC where there were huge numbers of enemies willing to attack you and just camped on a fort with a javelin or some such. Boo camp remains a good source of XP forever, and the staggered spawns help keep it manageable so the faceless don't just go screaming by you. If you're having trouble with lower level characters, just exploit attack stance. Clear the blue faceless (the gold don't attack you) and then soften up the golds with stronger characters. The #1 grinding tip I can give it to get a good ballistician, they can easily weaken entire spawns as soon as they show up, and then it's just a matter of having the needy units go to town. The Stoneborn are annoying as hell though, I'll give you that.

Guess I'll be the dissenting voice and say I thought it was well worth the price. Some of the complaints here are valid I think (snow and elevator maps suck) but overall the map design is fine in Rev, straddling the gap between Hoshido and Nohr in terms of complexity. I also thought a lot of the supports were good, and team building of course is at maximum flexibility with all the cross nation skills and classes and whatnot. Grinding doesn't really seem like it's that big of an issue. It means you might have to spend 30-60 minutes on bringing a character up to snuff that you really like, and since the path has built-in grinding options it's not even like you can say they were trying to force you to buy more DLC. The plot isn't fantastic, but it's by no means unbearable, which is kind of the mantra of Fates really. It certainly wasn't as bad as I feel some make it out to be. Basically, I found it to definitely be worth the 20$. If they were to come out with a 4th path of roughly the same quality, I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

All the E rank weapons get some serious praise from me for being able to proc skills and crits, which is hugely helpful when leveling people in off classes while retaining some degree of usefulness. The fact that the raider variants also give +3 eff. speed is just icing on the cake. Nohrian blade can be a game-changer if you get it early, +3 defense on an already tanky unit can make them pretty much impervious. Peri's Lance is crazy good, channels the old sillyness of Awakening javelins.

Definitely prefer Ophelia, I liked her design quite a bit overall. Her lines were fairly amusing, as were her support conversations. Sadly my opinion of her is likely colored simply by how amazing of a unit she is, as well as how good her paralogue is. Didn't like Tharja before, don't like her now either. Yandere has always been a crap trope in my opinion, her paralogue is boring, and her new appearance doesn't really evoke much for me. Loses points for being a clone, as well.

that is incorrect @Augestein. Once you've used a DLC item you can just use a heart seal to move back.

As a more general response (which I would urge people to take with a grain of salt) is that I see a *lot* of people stacking waaaay too many active skills on people, especially unreliable ones like lethality, or having multiple people with Aegis+Pavise. These are not good ideas, since the limited nature of stats in Fates as opposed to awakening makes them far less reliable than they once were, and the stat disparity is far greater as well. I feel confident saying that as, say, a dancer, Pavise is not going to save Azura enough to warrant having it on her. Conventional wisdom as I have seen here and elsewhere is that Fates is held to be more oriented around player-phase than enemy phase, meaning it's better to kill packs of enemies all in one go and leave few/none left to retaliate. The end result of this is that reliability is paramount, and often overlooked skills like elbow room, quick draw, and trample are going to outperform many of the actives people habitually put on their units. Of the active skills, you want those with good activation rates, like Rend Heaven, Luna, and Vengeance. Anything with an activation rate of 1/2 skill or less should be treated as mostly filler and dropped when able. Lastly, I can speak from experience that I underestimated how good the breaker skills are on my first playthrough, and I would definitely encourage others to incorporate them more in their builds even when not strictly necessary. That +/- 50% is titanic.

Some critiques, if I may? FeCorrin - This strat is kind of all over the place. Ninja and Jakob are all about avoiding damage, but if you never take any, then awakening is a dead skill. Lethality is typically a poor choice in general, even with the Hoshidan +10% activation rate, you'll be hard pressed to ever get it above 20% total, and doesn't work against the bigtime bosses anyway. Especially with Aether AND dragon fang, this is ridiculous overkill. You'll be vastly better served with something like Trample or Shurikenfaire. Additionally, Draconic Hex and shurikens together are typically a bad combo, since unlike enemies with inevitable end, they don't stack, and the vast majority of shuriken don't go above -5 to a couple stats. Xander: That's a lot of effort going to patch up his speed, and remember you're going to need multiple kills to ramp up speedtaker, which will work for a little while, but later chapters (endgame especially) will hurt this ability's usefulness. Mozu: If Sniping is your bit then you'd be well served in having her dip in weapon master for Life and Death. with that and Spendthrift she can hit +20 damage per hit on offense. Beruka: ...yeah, she's a tank. Her speed is horrible on average and DPS need to be able to double enemies reliably. You can somewhat salvage this by having her get berserker from Charlotte, but it's not exactly a game-changer.

Grit your teeth, while probably not the hardest, that mission was definitely the longest and most aggravating for me. My recommendation is to break left from the start, and hang around that lower left platform until the Great Master reinforcements show up. Kill them off so you don't have people bugging you while you fiddle with wind patterns. Hayoto can be dealt with in either direction with use of the wind on your turn; you can either blow him towards you and destroy him before he can hex you, or blow him away so he has to run back into range. Both are good options so I'd take whichever one happens to work best at the time. Between his passive and the throne he's sitting on Fuga has pretty high avoidance, I'd sit some sorcs next to him when you're moving in for the kill. If you raised Mozu/her spouse to be a Sniper then Certain blow is also quite good for dealing with him. Above all, take it slowly and carefully, wait until you know the wind plays to your favor.

Dunno that Iggi cares too much, you can just slap Wary fighter on him and call it a day.

Unsure on solidarity, but I'm pretty positive Amaterasu doesn't work when supporting.

Well, many of the more veteran and skilled players in this thread can probably offer more concrete analysis, but I'll try and offer what advice I can. 1) I'm going to assume you've beaten Conquest on normal/hard, and if not, I'd probably advise you to do so. Reason being is that due to the limitations on gold and XP inherent in Conquest, you'll need to plan your progression to a greater degree than the other two paths. I would glance over the chapter synopses on the wiki to refresh your memory on what to expect. 2) I used a +mag -luck female corrin on my successful play through, and married Odin. I can definitely couch for the effectiveness of this, as it gives you a large number of very powerful casters, with Odin and the MU being tankier than most other options. Thanks to being blessed with another Nosferatu from the RNG gods of the lottery, I had 3 drain tanks to make use of. It also makes your Ophelia insane, since you can have your subclass be one of the two that unlock Onmyouji for Tomefaire. 2b) Whatever you choose, get Ophelia. She's frequently cited here as one of the best children, and her paralogue is packed with loot, including the only Calamity Gate, which will be really really useful against the aforementioned ninjas. 3) For skills, I personally would recommend getting 2 people with Shurikenbreaker, because chapter 25 in particular is Ninja hell on Lunatic. Xander can be one of these if he befriends Laslow, who can get it himself, and Sophie has it in her repertoire naturally. 4) For kids, the only one I would focus on getting early is whichever one you stick with Aptitude, since I don't think the child seals take the improved stat gain into consideration. Everyone else I'd wait till chapter 15+ so as to get a free mastery seal and weapon proficiencies out of the deal. I dunno about anyone else but I particularly like using this method for healers, since it means you don't have to slog through using E-D rank weapons in the late game. 5) Here's my list of pairings, if you're interested. It worked out pretty well in general. MU x Odin (Worked amazingly well. Odin is a stella drain tank, and MU had insane damage and tanking ability by the end. Dropped Kana but Ophelia was also incredible. Lightning tome+Dragon Fang is dumb.) Keaton x Azura (Azura's great strength and speed growths made Velouria a machine.) Jakob x Elise (Grabbed Dwyer early for chapter 12, but it's doable in one turn and gets you a bunch of healing staves as well) Silas x Mozu (Sophie was incredible, got her early and she remained a powerhouse throughout the game.) Kaze x Camilla (done postgame, no recommendation) Xander x Charlotte (Charlotte is a great support for Xander, and gives crazy strength to Siegbert, who can be either a dedicated unit or even better support to a female, as a berserker with a female lead he adds like +10 damage) Leo x Nyx (post game, no recommendation) Arthur x Beruka (post game, no recommendation) Laslow x Selena (Works well into transforming either Laslow or Soleil into a Rallybot. Niles x Felicia (post game, no recommendation)Benny x Effie (post game, no recommendation)6) USE TONICS. Caps because I seriously underestimated how much of a difference these can make on my hard playthrough, but they're amazing. 6a) Always give lilith food when possible, the gold bars she occasionally gives are a great supplementary income, especially for the above tonics. 7) Use the kitchen. Another element I overlooked before, a good chef can give everyone in the army +5 stats total by the end, which stacks with other sources. Hope this helps!

I'd definitely not skimp out on Swordbreaker, especially if you opt to keep her a Malig Knight since she loses out on WTA with spears. Depending on how willing you are to reclass she can still sneak in Axefair as well, or whatever her husband's skills have to be. It's also worth considering having her dip into sorc from 11-15, it's a little rough since her magic is a tad low, but I got it done on Lunatic and Bowbreaker+Tomes with Malig means she can frequently ignore archers, which is a pretty huge boon for maps like the great wall of takumi.

Dunno that it ever becomes important enough to *need* to do so if you prefer something else. I killed Takumi with double sorcs and Garon is a pushover no matter what weapons you choose to wield. Definitely wished I had a malig's mobility though.

For Corrin that's about as standard as you can get, which is fine, but if you have the funds or DLC items handy I'd start swapping into other classes for skills once you get Draconic Hex. Nohrian trust is amazingly abusable for stuff like PvP/My Castle, but it's harder to make it shine in the main campaign imo, and there are a ton of other skills worth picking up. Don't let all those dead levels go to waste! Azura is Azura, not much else to go by here, she's honestly just best as a songstress imo. One thing to note about felicia is that she and jakob both come with I believe 4 Eternal seals innately (which really threw me off at first, I thought maid was one of the level 40 base classes), which gives her a lot of room/time to get other class skills. Elise is great early for her amazing passive, but later I would consider swapping her out for one of the kid healers, since they typically have better stats overall and MUCH better weapon proficiencies from the child seals. Nina/Forrest are both excellent Candidates. Effie - fine, no comment. Niles I would make a bow knight for sure, since it helps his flagging strength growth and gets you shurikenbreaker, which will be really helpful later on. Odin I would keep a sorc. He's the best default tank mage in the game, and conveniently has easy access to nosferatu to make it click. Kaze I would keep Master Ninja or Dread Fighter and moonlight into mechanist to snag replicate and then bail. Velouria as others have said should get trample or savage blow, but trample is the better option, simply because velouria doesn't gain any benefit of %HP damage when she kills everything. Percy - no comment Ophelia - Sorc is fine, as is witch. Soleil - Keep in mind Soleil naturally has access to merc/hero, so all you get with Charlotte mom is berserker. This isn't a bad class by any means but it does lose you some flexibility.