Vorena

Flayn No matter what I do I can't seem to stop trying to get her to join.

I dunno. I think the amount of characters is fine. The extra playable are the staff. I suppose like +1/2 would not be bad post time skip, but its pretty good sized so far.

You have failed the Alois test. You are an impostor Kronya.

I'll say Edelgard's anti-church route was the hardest. The rationale being that it is the shortest route and you lose pretty much the entire teaching staff. Which I think means you cannot play with Flayn, Seteth, and Catherine who are arguably some of the better staff later in the game. I am still not sure the conditions for if people from the Church would stay with you or not. The other student you recruit could stay it seemed. The other piece being that since you have fewer months to prepare whatever build you want by about 4 chapters from 22 -> 18 it leaves less room for error. Chapter 18 is lv37 enemies there, so you should still have had plenty of time to level up and move into mastery classes if needed. However, its just a bullet point that this route leaves you with the fewest overall resources in a game that already throws mass quantities of resources at you. They are indirect hits, but I think for many people it can be an issue to help provide some extra difficulty.

I can see Blue Lions being hard to low turn count for the final chapter. However, at the same time I am not sure the condition needed for Edelgard to move from 1-30 range to 1-6 range. Eventually the siege weapon goes away. In addition, she had such low attack. 38 mt was not very high for that late into the game even on hard mode with only 77 hit and even if she could attack twice in the same turn she always targeted separate units. I have heard people say that had issues with that map, but I suppose its because it might be the only map with some odd mechanics. Otherwise, it ended up being dimitri who she has 0% hit rate against and another squishy who could always survive one attack. Granted, Falcon Knight Byleth just evades everything and can't be easily killed even against axe, bows, gauntlets, and magic.

Would not Bernadetta be above Ashe by a slight amount? Their growth rates are damn identical apart from the fact that Ashe gets 15% more luck and 5% more resistance. However, her personal skill selection is way better than Ashe's as her budding talent in riding grants her Pass and not being at full health grants an extra +5 dmg. Granted you hav to rig taking that damage at some point, but with doubling its hard to pass up free +10 damage especially early on where no unit is getting something like lancefaire, bow faire, etc. until lv 20.

Late game recruited units (Flayn, Faculty, other houses) I believe this would be difficult to do especially for any unit doing an odd route. Otherwise, any natural affinity started right at the start of the game will not have any issues really getting S rank. S+ is a different story, but at the same time there is hardly any value in going into S rank for any weapon as you get nothing from it usually. +10 crit is nothing amazing, but is helpful. +5 atk is given for free on nearly every advanced/mastered class. Its arguably better to just get to A+ to maximize hit/avoid/crit avoid, +1 mov, +30 avoid per wait, etc., then go directly into other stats such as C heavy armor, C bow, Authority, etc.

Good thing there is little need to put a male into a dark mage route beyond you want to use some of those class abilities such as poison strike.

I was surprised to find that my professor and Blue Lions lord ended up with a personal ability+ eventually at some point in the game. It added an extra effect on top of the 1.2x exp bonus they get such as Byleth gets +2 dmg in combat. Does anyone know how this is activated and if other classes get the same thing?

Abilities earned through leveling up weapon level or a mastered class stay with you regardless of class. You need to go to press X, then Inventory -> Abilities to swap out the 5 ability slots you earned for any class. There are class abilities which are only mapped to the class. Most of the mastered abilities later on are really the ones you get at like S or S+ rank. For example, a Swordmaster requires A rank swords, but class provides you a free Swordfaire and Sword Crit bonuses so you might never need to get S/S+ rank provided you never swap from that class. Finally, every unit has its own unique ability that will be there regardless of class and can never be swapped out.

I like this one. A class is so broken one cannot recommend it as the best class for a unit.

By the way, what the hell is QR?

The only thing bad about this is that in order to get that high you are stacking a fair amount of resources into a unit to achieve that. Evasion Ring, Battalion, and Dancer. Of these things honestly I feel there will be little competition for things like an evasion ring compared to some other stuff like Speed Ring, March Ring, and any perm stat items. Battalions are fairly numerous and an evasion focused one is likely uncontested as well usually. The only bad thing is dancer as that's a pretty valuable resource.

I just want to say the thought of assassins with pass, huge speed, and silver swords to be a huge pain in the butt in future. They even ignore forested terrain. Its like that fox map (lv 18?) from Fates Conquest.

Yeah, I have to say the main antagonist is whatever faction you are against. This game is very much a difference of ideals more than anything with each route to made to be sympathetic towards the side you join. Much of the drama is simply instigated by a few nefarious factions.

I have not fully tested the demonic beast shields, but the general thing is that they have routinely broken after any 2 rounds of combat. If there are no cracks, then an attack of any kind will crack it. If its not cracked, then you need 2 attacks to fully dislodge it. Granted, I am not sure how a 0 dmg move against it would work or if there are other ways to fully shatter it more quickly. However, that's what I have done is leave the heavy hitters alone and leave the light hitters to shield destruction. Doubling seems to have no effect on shield strength. AoE gambits are pretty busted as they can attack more than one tile shattering multiple early game beast shields in one go as well as avoid counter attack.

The game throws so much money at you and quite a lot of free resources. Twice now on normal and hard mode I have had >100,000g by the time I hit time skip and the game still manages to throw money at you with the rare beast fight maps that can net you like 5000-10,000 gold along with the bullions and regular funds such as quest completion and the monthly tournaments (which also get you free plus weapons). I usually run out of resource before anything. The real reason to forge is for increased weapon usage and some minor accuracy gain imo (and repairs at the same time). The forge gains are so small. Anyway, iron+ will easily work for any unit for a super long time. Sometimes you need that silver for getting into that ORKO range. Steel is too heavy. Way, way too heavy. I have not experimented with brave weapons. Might be more efficient and ltc, but not needed otherwise. I barely even have ever needed to use the unique weapons like Lance of Ruin since even on hard mode you have strong units and enough speed to ORKO most enemies.

A weakness of Wyvern is that its not unlocked until lv20. You are pretty much 4-5 movement locked until that point. Cavalier or Pegasus Knight come earlier at lv10 and their natural routes towards Falcon Knight or Paladin -> Bow Knight is not a bad pick either. Any of these three routes are viable options as having the +2 range on Bow Knight is rather handy. I do not think the proficiency matters as much as what are a person's growth rates and time of recruitment. However, that sadly has not been discussed much. Receiving a unit from another house you want to go down a non-traditional path for them will be harder as the game will give you a potentially underleveled unit and one not trained in what you want from the start. Otherwise, the 9 students you get on any path have so much time to increase wexp well ahead of your level requirement. You can A rank a wlvl before you even hit level 20 and most lv20 only require B or C in stuff. As a paper napkin example I think on average a month becomes 3 instruction periods with the ability to maximize motivation guaranteed for 2 of the 3 instructions. That right there is ~90 wexp per month per stat if you focus on 2 things. The weakness does not lower the weekly wexp that much. Getting from E -> A rank is 1160 wexp. Therefore, if you just set someone to learn flying from the very first chapter they will get to A flying in 12-13 chapters. Well, ahead of the lv30 requirement for A ranking Wyvern Lord. Chapter 11 is a lv21 recommended level. This is not even including individual instruction for somebody you can easily get someone into any class you want. The issue more comes from recruitment than anything. I would say some units who naturally build towards riding, flying, bow, and axe means you can set them off down other paths as well. Heavy Armor at C ranking is not a huge investment and you have all the time in the world to get it. Getting +3 AS back is great for any character. The faster you can get it the better.

One thing I can say is that you cannot predict the AI targeting priority unless you did some heavy testing. From what I recall Mystery of the Emblem and Shadow Dragon for the DS prioritized doing damage. If there was a unit that could be killed, but only took 5 dmg compared to another unit that took 10 dmg within range it would prioritize doing the 10 dmg. Awakening/Fates did it differently I recall in that if there was a unit to kill in range it would go for it I believe. In three houses there is sometimes some weird interaction I recall running into, but didn't investigate. Such as I think one time a demonic beast targeted a full health Byleth compared to targeting a Lysithea it could double and ORKO.

If that viewing of Lunatic comes to fruition I expect a unit like Ralph and Dedude are going to be somewhat highly valued for early game punching bags. Lunatic FE:A I remember being Fredrick Emblem because he was pretty much the only unit to survive a beating until your other units came online. However, that is a prediction for another time. Even then Dedue is certainly not the worst character with a nice +def ability for just waiting.

haha The idea of poison strike sounds like a pain in the butt on such an early chapter.

I was thinking between this mechanic and the divine pulse system that harder modes such a lunatic from games like fates/awakening would be less of a headache from the BS that can be thrown your way, but still difficult to overcome.

Yes, I loved Counter in Fates as well for Conquest Hard where every enemy sniper had counter.

I am torn between it since for so long its not been there its part of fire emblem to anticipate will a unit survive if attacked by say 2-3 units? Do I need to make sure I have a non-heavy weapon equipped after winning this 1RKO? However, at the same time it lets you speed things up greatly. By now worrying about it because you can see it you can just be aggressive because you know exactly how the chess pieces will move.

The first game took me 40 hours to complete trying to enjoy the exploration. Its at times like this I am glad I am not a completionist. I'll take the 4 playthroughs and wait for DLC to launch in future before playing again. The multiple playthroughs for only that goal of supports will be a slog. I'll take reading or watching vids of it. Or just save it for when I return to this game in future.