Leonarth

So I've recently beaten the dungeon and the Grima fight as well. I can say that grinding isn't 100% necessary to beat the Labyrinth, but it's much harder if you don't. I had gotten lucky with my Dread Fighter Kliff with an absurd 39 Skill and 41 Spd with 35 Def. It seems like the best way to tackle it is to skip the random encounters and grab any treasures you want on the way. Once you hit Grima, if you decide to try it, you need some absurd luck with your RNG to successfully beat it. I had Kliff dodging 51% hits left and right and getting crit after crit. Once Grima was down to about 70 or so HP then I sent in Alm on the next player phase, got him to crit with the Falchion and also get a follow-up attack. Kliff did the same, 5 HP left on Grima, had to Warp Celica to finish it and hope that she could finish it (Grima was considered a god, and Duma was specific about who could kill him) and the euphoria from her landing the killing blow was immense.

What was even funnier is Delthea, who only has a 20% Def growth, managed to get MORE Defense than Clive in the end. Clive had the promotion bases on his side, a 30% Def growth, and he still got outdone by Delthea. My luck (or lake thereof) is very odd, maybe even bipolar.

I got my Clive to Gold Knight, was not impressed. He's still wasn't that bad of a unit, but he didn't reach Mathilda levels of useful, and he didn't have the Def to tank very much nor did he have the Offensive capabilities to be a powerhouse. I don't know how you were supposed to use him. Maybe I just got RNG screwed, but I don't remember him having gained Def anymore than once or twice.

I was on Hard as well, and he never did anything like that. Did you not focus down the magic users nearby first? I mean, I didn't bother with Duma until he was all that was left, so the magic users nearby couldn't have healed him, but other than that I don't know how he healed 40 HP.

I generally would do one chapter on either side, alternating, with a few exceptions. On reflection, I think I much preferred Alm's maps and playstyle to Celica's. Celica's party for me was just Mages and Dread Fighters for the most part. Valbar didn't have the Mov for the later maps, Leon was just one unit in an army, and I didn't really use the Pegasus Sisters. Whereas Alm's route had varied units and better map design imo. The deserts in Act 3, and the swamps in Act 4 weren't fun to me. The deserts slowed everything down, and the swamps seemed to also slow everything down as well as making it painful with the constant damage being done. I also didn't care for Celica's story, since I found it mostly pointless compared to Alm's. She essentially went on a pilgrimage while Alm fought a war. Alm's path also had better character interaction. Gray and Tobin, Clive, Fernand, Berkut, they were all major players in the story. Celica had... Saber and... Celica. I mean I guess Boey and Mae too, but they didn't have the same appeal to me that Gray and Tobin did.

Yeah, it was 5 HP a turn, I think. Then again, if he did recover 40 HP that'd be stupid.

Yeah, uh, ignore what I said then unless you have really good healers. My Alm had around 25 defense at this stage in the game (even though I think Duma's attack goes through Def and Res). He also had late 20's for most other stats, save HP which was a solid 45. He was only level 10 though by that point. IIRC Duma has a built in recovery effect. I remember I killed all but Jedah and Duma still recovered HP, and Jedah doesn't heal I'm pretty sure.

Fatigue in this game seems to be mostly ignorable if you use your team evenly. If you use Saber to clear out 3 groups of enemies single-handedly, he's going to get fatigued. Honestly, as long as you don't clutch hard on a single unit Fatigue will barely have an impact outside of the last Dungeon or two. If you also know what foods the unit likes (Saber seems to like meats, Mae likes sweets, etc.) then it's even less of a problem. Even when you go all-out grind mode it isn't that big of a deal. I kind of like it, mostly because it makes me feel like I need to plan ahead with foods and the like, even though I had a metric shit-ton of it by the end. It also discourages you from screwing around longer than you need to.

I'm curious of this as well, I don't exactly remember my Alm's stats, but he at least had a 30% crit or so when fighting Duma. Although he didn't crit on the finishing blow. Maybe because Duma attacked and it was enemy phase, but still.

If you also need proof, well, in the Pegasus Sisters' endings...

I didn't grind an intense amount, but I do remember Alm reached level 20 before promoting, mostly because Alm was one of my main units. The only real grinding I did was to catch Python up and to get Delthea a few levels before starting Act 4.

I did occasionally, it was instrumental in beating Thabes Labyrinth's boss. But honestly I never found a situation outside of the previously mentioned one where Warp saved me from anything bad. or completely changed the outcome of a battle. It was just a quality of life thing for me.

I remember spamming Physic with Taitana, Mage!Tobin, and Genny to keep Alm alive. I sent Dread Fighter Kliff and Dread Fighter Saber into the fray to remove the mages. Duma was only interested in Alm. Once it was just Duma down there, I would let Duma attack Alm on enemy phase. When it was all said and done, I think the strategy was just to heal up Alm when he was low, and attack when he wasn't. Then again, my Alm was a powerhouse, your mileage may vary.

Favorites: Kliff: For whatever reason, my Mercenary Kliff became the most broken unit that ever existed by the time I was nearing the end. I mean, 41 Speed and 39 Skill is ridiculous enough, even for a Dread Fighter, but a 37 Defense on top of that? And a solid 31 Attack (Including the Brave Sword on top of that), he could easily solo the entire game. And that ~70% crit... Oh, and I like his personality, it reminds me almost of Leo from Fates (the only good thing from that game imo). Genny: She was my best healer by far. Silque was pretty good, but she didn't have Physic and her spell list wasn't as immediately useful as Genny's was. By the time Silque learned Invoke, even though it summoned Dread Fighters, my team was too absurdly powerful for it to matter. She also had some decent support conversations with Sonya, and I don't know why, but I got the feeling she was cute and innocent on the outside, but extremely sadistic on the inside. Not that there was ever any hints to this. Delthea: I like energetic cute girls and I cannot lie. That and she was the best mage on my team, with a good spell list and the mage ring made her even better. I don't know, I always had a soft spot for characters like Nino, Delthea, Mia, and so on. Least Favorites: Luthier: First of all, he was my absolute worst unit in the entire game. He was so bad I resigned him to being a staff bot. I also didn't care for his personality too much, He's too arrogant and egotistical for my liking. Oh, and he was a dick to Delthea, so he lost points with me on that one. The Three Pegasus Sisters: I include all 3 of them because they are very interchangeable in my mind. I'll just preface my arguments by saying that I really don't like Pegasus Knights as units (Clair was really good though), because most of their traits, I find, are shown off better in other units (Speed - Myrmidon, Mobility - Wyvern Riders, Resistance - Dread Fighters in this case). That, and none of them really struck me as being that interesting. Maybe FE1 and FE3, especially their remakes, really flesh out their characters, but in Echoes they're just bland to me. That and almost everyone situation where they could've been useful as Falcon Knights with anti-terror and anti-mage abilities Hard Mode added Archers so that they just had to sit there while someone like Saber or Atlas cleaned house. Zeke: I mostly don't like him because I have no idea who he is as a person. I didn't really use him because Mathilda was so much better (and Clive at least tried), and I didn't see the appeal of him really. I only remember who he is because of Tatiana, who I somewhat liked.

Yeah, I was starting to do that in the interest of time, made one mistake, and hour's worth of work down the drain. I think I'll beat it once and then ignore it in future runs.

Anyone who's beaten the game and has gotten to Act 6 probably knows about the Thabes Labyrinth. Just a question, has anyone who plays on Hard/Classic gotten to the end? I'm on the 8th floor (I think there's 10 total), but the enemy stats are so ridiculous that no one on my team can withstand more than a round or two of combat, and I just got screwed hard with 3 groups at once. There are 4 fire dragons and a shit ton of other enemy types. I know this is supposed to be the penultimate dungeon, with the whole point of it being stupidly hard, but this isn't even fair or funny at this point. We're talking enemies with stats being around 25-35 on average, meaning that anyone who wasn't subject to the Dread Fighter grinding cycle or someone who got stupidly lucky with their level-ups have 0 chance of surviving. I'm starting to think the best thing to do at this point is just run past everything in a perfect run and pray to whatever deity you believe in that you don't get stuck in combat.

I feel your pain, I did the grind to get everyone to Tier 3 before I started Act 4, mostly just to see the cool outfits. I'm at 27 hours of play time on the save file so far, and 5 or so was grinding.

I'm on Hard/Classic and I went Kliff (Mercenary), Tobin (Mage), Gray (Archer), and Faye (Mage). Kliff is my most broken unit so far, being almost unkillable as a Dread Fighter with a Brave Sword Tobin started falling off, but his Physic usage as a Sage is really useful though. Gray is a pretty good unit, not Kliff levels of good, but still. He's useful for taking out Arcanists and Witches along with Python, and generally harassing enemy front line. Faye is in a weird spot, her spell list is good at taking out Witches and Knights/Barons, but anything else is challenging for her. Overall I'm fairly happy with how everyone turned out, although I can't wait to see what happens with other classes in future runs.

I have only seen the one so far, and I'm at Act 4, so I think you're just SOL if you want another one.

I definitely like it, but it seems to be weird on how it affects RNG. It seems that the first time it will reset the RNG, but after that it doesn't change the outcome much, but then things like the Hex on the Shadow Sword does change. Furthermore, there are times where it won't change the RNG at all, I don't get it. Overall though, it is most welcome since you can go all the way back to the start of the map if you need to, and you can even go phase by phase, or unit by unit.

I got Saber to level 10 Dread Fighter, saved then promoted him to Villager. The enemies in the Sage's Hamlet all gave 100 XP as a villager, so class seems to have some sort of effect on XP gains.

I was on Hard/Classic, and I didn't have any problems. I remember Leon got low, the AI actually ignored him in favor of Valbar, same with Kamui. Not only that, but I split the party so that I was pulling some of the stress off of them by drawing out the enemies south of Valbar and crew. My one complaint was Greith's castle. There is 1 archer and 1 arcanist on both sides, so I couldn't kill either without facing the wrath of the other, and neither Boey nor Mae were strong enough to do it, so I just had Leon kill the Arcanist and Archer on one side, and the Arcanist on the other while Valbar tanked one side with Genny healing and Atlas/Saber the other with Celica healing. I think it took me 30 minutes to do and about 80 turns. If there wasn't a Cantor summoning Bonewalkers every two goddamn seconds I wouldn't have had as much of a problem.

I had a similar situation where I went north to the the shrine first, hoping to promote Atlas, and after the battle I saved, after which Catria, Palla, and Atlas all left, fortunately they were recruitable again just where they were before.

Yeah, I was using it to help his awful attack, it took a few Mila Turnwheel uses to prevent an untimely demise unfortunately.