Espinosa

A rider promotion with 7/8 mov would redeem them well enough, a Great Knight class of sorts. Let them still deal with speed issues for good measure. Class growth modifiers honestly wouldn't make that much of an impact. 10% here, 5% there - you will not see any change.

https://serenesforest.net/fire-emblem-echoes-shadows-valentia/miscellaneous/item-locations/ Found two errors in the Enemies section. Mikhail doesn't drop a Gold Coin when defeated. Furthermore, Blake (Valley Approach) isn't listed as dropping a Shadow Sword. Also, could we not try lifting a Calculations section from some Japanese site? It gets a bit tiring finding some info the hard way each time.

I'm going to try Expelling every monster possible and see who exactly it can and cannot work on. Seems like a big deal for LTC. It appears that in Act 3, Celica can cancel out of her first battle (where you help the peg sisters) and end up to the south of that point of the map, allowing her to get to Priory before any skirmishes can happen in the act, potentially to get Saber or Leon str and/or spd boosts. A much more important discovery has been made and sent to me by a YouTube user matasj98. It involves entering dungeons to manipulate the appearance of skirmishes on the map, potentially eliminating them entirely for at least the whole duration of Act 3. This is how it works: This couldn't have possibly been sent to me at a better time, as I spent too long hesitating to continue the run, not sure of the legitimacy of a run that uses save editing to have disposable units like Boey and Lukas enter skirmishes, absorb the exp, while editing out Alm's / Celica's forced bonus exp with the editor. This way I don't have to consider it at least for Act 3. I've been testing it myself and it works just fine in Act 3. With a lot of saving and resetting, I managed to promote Atlas to Mage without a single skirmish appearing on the map. This is sure to help with sidequests as well. On the topic of weapons, like choosing between Silver Sword, Zwei and Brave, how viable is Ilwoon? Only one golden coin necessary to have an unforged one, it's got both power AND good crit, and after you learn its skill Death Blow, you can critblick armours. Rapier can deal effective anti-armour damage on EP too, but with poorer might (can also double). There are a lot of good swords to choose from, and the choice is nowhere near straightforward methinks. It's so much easier with bows (killer bow all the way; dunno if Longbow can contribute to shaving off any turns with its cost of 1 golden coin, but it deserves checking) and lances however. Steel Lance has the best skills without losing much Mt to silver, though there's that thing about getting yourself more Javelins for EP combat against Fire users. Also choosing to get Saunion or not. WRT Atlus and Catria competing for wells, idk, it seems like many people could use extra levels. However, it's speed stats that double mercs not levels, so Catria's problem can be solved differently, like through speed wells (the Priory ones remain unused and easily accessible with the discovery I shared), rigging level-ups or things like Pegasus Cheese. Atlus's stats will pretty much suck no matter what but he needs to be fed kills, and wells help out with that. Spoiling my 2-6 clear, there's already ONE Golden Apple that Atlus is not getting for sure.

Jedah has 16 raw def and 13 from Draco. Will Roundhouse add 8 or 14/15 damage to the attack? If it's the latter, no additional strength benchmarks need reaching on Saber. Apparently, killing him will make the Mogalls go away but keep the armoured terrors? Those are really bulky and spread around in hard-to-reach places on the swamp. I wonder if they can be Expelled by Genny? Also, since SF doesn't even have a Calculations page (we're becoming more casual aren't we) do we even know how to improve Expel's success rate? Is it skill? Genny's skill is pretty bad. The swamps are so prominent that I imagine I will want to train Est in addition to her proficient sisters. One thing I haven't tried planning yet is the sidequests you can do. If circumstances allow travel around the map without turn count penalties, there are more things that can be done. I'll need to pay close attention to what can be acquired, most notably stat boosters and gold coins. I also think I may have come up with a rule for coin farming that neither limits my equipment hopelessly (there is literally NO money for anything for a long while if dungeon farming is banned) nor forces me to coin thousands of silvers for conversion - coin farming is allowed but no converting silver to gold until that one lategame Celica dungeon where hitting a single object is a cornucopia of money with dozens of silvers farmable within seconds. I don't remember if Alm's route has an equivalent. This doesn't turn the run into a boring 50-hour long coin farm fest and still lets me do things like get Killer Bows and better swords early. It also makes the gold coins acquired in single storyline events that much more significant, as they should be imho.

Don't you think it will be easier to learn Tigerstance with Saber than to have Celica get to lv. 20? He only needs the sum of his strength and skill to be 29 to OHKO with a Tigerstance crit. Mine already has 26 as a lv. 2 Myrmidon upon the end of Act 2. He's guaranteed to have the stats for it. Alternatively, Leon could do it if he has 28 str. I don't think he will - right now he has 12 str and 7 spd as a lv. 1 Sniper... He needs 25 rounds of combat (apparently) to get there, but surely Saber fights enough to get there? He mustn't be using Brave Sword for crit strats however. I also fear Saber may take a more secondary role with Leon, Palla and Catria outmoving, outranging and outflying him, but he has superior combat prowess.

Now we're talking about Celica levelling up 19 times until then. With 4 mov and playing through chapters with LTC strats, I don't think it can be done at all. Certainly, it's impossible to train up both Ragnarok!Celica and Rescue!Atlas. But what did you mean could go wrong when sending items between armies? Simply making the wrong choices and using up the merchants in vain?

Done with recording Act 2 except for the final map where I intend to rig a +str/spd levelup for Saber which is taking even longer than usual. Started uploading the recordings on YouTube. How exactly can I be screwed out of something by using the merchant? Haven't used this feature much at all, so I guess I don't understand something unstated in your post. Early Rapier for Grey sounds desirable, since nobody other than him can fight in Alm's party anyway. Can't give Kliff an earlier Killer Bow since that would give up Leon's own. I imagine he needs it more + is more capable of using it as a sniper. I think crits being required on bosses is going to be a recurring trend in this run. Since I plan to have 16 spd on Saber entering Act 3, I guess doing the merc map and recruiting Sonya is going to be the way to go, as doubling mooks on EP will be possible. Deen seems like the better character of the two, though I haven't given their LTC applicability that much thought to be frank. I guess you mean Celica should ORKO Jedah with an Excalibur crit or two? Getting her the experience necessary seems troublesome, and I imagine Saber or Leon could try to do the same with a brave attack or Killer Bow's special, and they'd have way more levels naturally gained from combat obligations by that point. Didn't Art Dealer mention needing a good Genny for the lategame maps? Probably at lv. 12 for Expel and with high strength for range? My Genny's been pretty good so far.

So I've been testing some stuff and... apparently I can't enter Priory at the end of Act 2 because the zombie encounter at the cemetery has respawned? I could've sworn it should disappear after you've done the masked cavalier event? My memory must be faulty then. If there isn't some way of making it go away at that point of the game, my effort to keep the Priory +str/spd wells for Saber and/or Leon was all in vain. There's no reason not to distribute those stats between Celica and Mae. It does seem however that the zombie skirmish disappears in Act 3.... If I do decide to use a disposable character to avoid encounters for the entirety of the game (in my book, it raises some questions about the replicability of the run, so I'm pretty far from having made a positive judgment on that one), I can indeed get some well boosts unto a mobile physical unit. Paola and Catria have as much claim as Saber and Leon. Fuck that's a lot of decisions to make. Also confirming the Mercboat (penultimate boat chapter with 4 mercs, incl. boss, and 2 archers) can be 2-turned. It can be done fairly reliably by either by a 15 spd Mae (possible if we sacrifice the Priory well to her) or, a much better option for longterm, 14 str Saber. Saber doesn't have all that much time to get 5 levelups (let alone 5 STRENGTH levelups), but there's a Fruit of Life that could give him to level in addition to being fed the Cantor from the 3rd boat map (it turned out that 4-turning that map is not an easy task at all, after all the considerations about trying to 3-turn it... some really inaccurate attacks need to connect). Saber's 30% strength growth doesn't help us at all here. Still need to see if the last boat map with the Arcanists can be 2-turned somehow. Mae does handle the left side of the map fairly well, whether she's been invested into or not.

Just went through the whole of Act 2 and routed it. Major discoveries, conclusions and thoughts: 1. 2-F aka 2-8 doesn't need a promoted Saber for a chance at a 3-turn. Celica is well-equipped to do the bosskilling herself while the men handle the arcanists remaining in the south. She might need high stats for this nevertheless OR critting an arcanist with Fire (tolerable odds). 2. This would mean visiting Seabound Shrine and wasting 3 turns there just to get combat exp, wells and the Blessed Sword is really not worth it. It could well be worth it once the party is capable of 1-turning dracozombies in a later Act and make use of the bonuses found therein somewhere down the line. 3. While having high stats, most notably in my case strength, on Saber is helpful in many situations (and I may replay all maps with Saber levelling up in them just to pile on more earlygame strength on him), it appears that both of the last boat maps are 3-turnable without meeting any particularly harsh stat benchmarks or observing very specific combat results on either PP or EP (didn't need crits to succeed very early). However, I do question the possibility of 2-turning one or both of these maps. Extensive testing and thinking will have to go into determining this however. Maybe some drafters have experience 2-turning these maps under certain conditions? 4. The experience gained in the last boat maps is p huge, and with some effort I presume Saber could even be promoted before 2-F (unnecessary, but helpful for a sooner Dread Fighter promotion). Leon could get to the same point with a lot of feeding of specific enemies and bosses. Sniper!Leon with good levels and possibly some str/spd wells (he can get +4 str/+1 spd, +4 spd/+1 str or some combination of the two, though part of it is contested by Alm's route units as well) may be a helpful secondary unit to Saber and the peg-girls later in Act 3. No idea when Kamui can be fed the exp he wants though. 5. If we want to forge a lot of stuff in Act 3, Celica's army must visit the Mountain Village. If I remember the skirmish behaviour correctly, this means entering an unwanted encounter twice (you have to fight it once anyway), I do mean the one just east to the village. So there's a turn count sacrifice for getting forges earliest in Celica's party. If we're talking about fully forged Braves and Killers (not looking forward to the coin farming required for that lbh), it could be worthwhile; otherwise... I presume the LTC way of doing Act 3/Celica is travelling east first and only then north? The closing maps when going in either direction are about equally intimidating in my eyes. I can see why Art Dealer did the merc map, but I feel like I might have to go with witches since they're easier to ORKO. Witches can't be killed easily on EP though, so if Saber can double the mercs, I imagine that's the way to go? 6. Can Celica forge a Rapier @ Mountain Village in Act 3, pass it to Alm and let Alm/Gray use it for their pre-Forest Villager maps, or must Alm enter the Forest Village himself first to receive it? The early Alm Act 3 experience is full of armours and cavs, and nobody is proficient enough to use the Horseslayer well - Clive is too slow and Clair's raw stats are awful. Mathilda joins a bit late but will likely be a key player later on.

Here's what the struggle with the RNG I mentioned earlier looks like. Re-arranging actions seems to be most effective, but I still wonder if path tracing/simply turnwheeling back does change the state of the RNG somehow. Just 3-turned Pirate Fort, and I've been wondering if I can 3-turn the 3rd boat / the Cantor map. 4 turns is clearly trivial, with enough time to have all your units travel to the boss and attack him, but 3 turns is more ambitious and the only outcome we should aim for here imho. I have Mae who learnt Swap in 1-3 (+2 def on Mae does indeed permit us to 3-turn the map which I couldn't achieve otherwise) able to give somebody an extra tile of movement, but for a unit to be ready to attack the boss at pointblank range, they would need two Swaps. If I redid Pirate Fort, I could probably get either Boey or Genny to also have Swap learnt before the map. But the problem is, how do you even kill the Cantor boss in one round (Leon can probably chip in for... 5 extra damage? meh). 36 hp/8 def/9 res is crazy bulk for a boss standing on 40 avoid terrain. Steel Sword!Kamui (my Saber hasn't proc'd any strength...) deals 6x2 damage, 24/36 with 1 hit+1 crit. 5x2 or 20/36 for Saber (who has better hit rates). How does Cantor behave when he's weakened on enemy phase, will he aggro a character? Playing the chapter now, apparently not. I guess 4-turn it is then. As for my stats... Mae outstats everybody, including in durability. Celica proc'd 2 mag and 1 spd on her two levels, Saber - 2 spd, making him weaker than base Kamui with no str procs. I imagine str/mag is the one stat Celica cares about since she will be countering the magic users on the final Act 2 map, but I don't know if there's a benchmark I'm supposed to meet.

lmao what even is the secret to 3-turning the 2nd boat map, the one with the Leather Shield merc? The enemies take too long to get to the party, and there are too many of them for Mae to tank. I'm guessing I want to enter this map with a rigged defence on Mae (+2 will probably do), then counterkill nearly every Brigand with the Merc's Leather Shield. Celica and Saber barely have any time at all to level up in these early chapters...

Been playing Act 2 and am currently testing if the str/spd wells can be skipped entirely until the end of the act without turn count being penalised in any way. Now it's clear that without Villager forks Mae is an earlygame nuke and not much else. She helps with the Act 2 routs, after which some combination of Saber, Kamui, Leon, Palla and Catria handle the fighting for Celica's army due to their movement and/or range. Does Mae need the wells to meet some benchmarks later on in the act? You mention rigging mag is easier than rigging spd, but if we can arrange that both stats are sufficiently rigged, wells can be saved for later... such as to make Saber or Leon a better fighter. If my Mae doesn't go Pegasus Knight, the high expectation for AS are diminished, possibly she only needs to double Brigands with Fire? Not sure what sort of benchmarks I would need for the LTC clear of the final Act 2 map, both on Saber and Celica. Having a promoted Saber shaves off a turn, but requires a loss of 3 turns in Seabound Shrine. I'd like to see if I can ignore it entirely, Brave Sword assisting me with monsterslaying later on over the Blessed Sword. Maybe the well levels can be accumulated later on when we are able to 1-turn the dracozombies in a later chapter? Your Peg!Mae has ludicrous stats and I wonder if anyone in my challenge can get such statistics feasibly at all. I imagine the issue of killing Duma is mostly out of the way with such high strength? Does the instapromoted Falcoknight have much of a contribution in your run? If she's merely auxiliary, I should probably abstain from feeding any exp to Clair for the rest of the playthrough. No way can she become viable when playing this fast.

Arts are pretty neat, as is the system of base stats greatly improving on promotion (so should weapon ranks though). I also really enjoy having unlimited use Warp and Rescue beginning with the very early period.

I'm sure Tobin would be played differently if he had the stats he'd had on my initial LTC run that was discarded due to Silque failing to reach Warp on time. 10 mag/10 spd that I had back then is way better than the present 9 mag/8 spd. It would also snowball from there since he wouldn't need to weaken enemies in 1-7 for Faye to finish off (I imagine I do need Faye to keep levelling more than I do with Tobin, with her earlier Physic and eventual Rescue). Still, Tobin cares about the number of his level-ups no less than their quantity. Getting to Excalibur in >2 levels would improve his player phase performance a lot.

I forgot about the boss moving to the heal tile... There's no chance you could learn Swap with 2 units before then anyway. What does Mae need so much attack speed for? You won't be doubling the Pirate Fort boss with Thunder anyway, and it seems like the Shrine dracozombies won't be dented much whether Mae doubles them or not. If it's needed for uber Pegasus Mae (which I don't plan to have as I won't be using a Villager's Fork nor using any of the Cipher characters), I guess she needs very high stats. Can't Grieth be KO'd with a skill critical though? WRT relying on Shrine for silver marks: Celica doesn't need to start farming until her Act is over, by which point she can get access to Alm's dungeons where she can do the same. That's a lot of progress, Act 4 already? Yeah, I'm pretty curious about it. Are the Cipher characters doing most of the work as you planned? Who do you have time to train? I'm already having difficulty imagining using Tobin for the longterm and thinking Luthier will be my secondary mage besides Delthea (who I hear is really good for LTC) and the Cleric women. Do you not regret using two Mercs over two Archers? I have a feeling an extra Archer is needed for the 1-7 5-turn clear and never stops being useful from there (though with their current stats, Python and Kliff can't possibly do any heavy lifting without maxed Killer Bow forges or something). Interested to hear about the Act 3 stat benchmarks too, though in a Cipherless run I suppose some of them would change in a run without DLC content like mine? You should have a better idea about it. That's true, but even with "abused" (not much is possible without save states) levels I can't make units magically more mobile or have high stats in areas where they require promotion and nothing else. Rescue!Faye can definitely make a world of difference in 1-7; I guess Silque is free for all drafters in Echoes? The two of them could warp quite a few units up, and move them to other parts of the map since your number of units is so limited. Still, 5-turning 1-7 on Hard is impressive however strong your party may have been.

Here's the only successful outcome of my Vietnam experience trying to 5-turn this map: Don't think I will ever be able to improve it so I will stop trying. Beginning Celica's part now. Currently wondering if a 2-turn of Pirate Fort is at all possible. Mae needs crazy offensive stats (either super high str or super high spd, boosted by the well) and needs to be Swapped twice? Not possible I imagine. Alternatively, Celica can get the kill on turn 3 with her higher skill for critting, possibly with Thunder assistance from Mae? And I'm still not convinced the Blessed Sword and two well levels in Dragon's Shrine are worth the three turns spent fighting the two Dracozombies. 3 turns! Will they be returned by the investment at all?

Being a rock-type, the number of moves that are improved by Tough Claws is fairly limited. You boost Accelerock, Crunch and Fire/Thunder Fang, but not Stone Edge or Rock Slide. It's essentially Mega Aerodactyl's problem all over again.

Tough Claws ensures it will be better than both for sure. The question remains, will it be good?

Ah thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for. No 20HP restoratives until Alm's first Act 3 dungeon... Guess I'll be re-doing 1-7 without wasting my Mana Herbs somehow. I have no idea how Horace 5-turns this map on Hard in a draft setting - I need all of my party slots to get my 5-turn to succeed, and everybody is doing something to contribute.

copy n paste from reddit: Wolf and Sedgar are some of the best characters in SD. PoR!Soren is not a good unit outside of LTC play. Jill is nowhere near Haar's combat prowess in RD. Very few units are viable in Conquest's maximum efficiency runs. "Reliable LTC" is a gimmick and a bit of an oxymoron, even if you do want an LTC clear of a map to be as reliable as possible so that you can actually advance to the next chapter. "Reliably" LTCing, say, FE6 is simply not possible unless you want to make serious turn sacrifices nearly every chapter.

Breath of Fire 5: Dragon Quarter Final Fantasy X-2

Timed events seem like a way to force players to engage with the games more when they would rather not, the stress being on force. P terrible idea, and I do agree Lycanroc's new forme should've been available normally. It sounds like it would be really enjoyable to use too. We have no idea what Lycanroc's stats are, do we?

The new Z-move is ridiculous. I hope it's used against you in the game.

Woo, I've finally got my first 5-turn clear! I imagine I'll be redoing the map because everything else was p terrible. Out of 2 level-ups Alm got no strength and only 1 spd, Gray's 3 levels were mediocre, and Kliff got no offensive improvements. Faye claimed +1 str/spd/def however and is ready to level up again next heal. Clive can't level up at all playing this fast, so no promotion for him, and I used up both of my Mana Herbs too :( I wonder though, how good are the items available in dungeons in the next couple of chapters? Do we have a resource on random items in destroyed boxes and the like on SF? I do believe I will have SOME form of coin/item farming in this playthrough, because at the speed we're going it's not manageable to carry on with the run otherwise. Edit: Oh wow, my chances of getting the 5-turn down again are way slimmer than expected. Just ran out of hard disk space before I deleted all the failed recordings.

Does anybody have tips about unrigging the RNG when using the Turnwheel? The RN doesn't seem to consistently change when Turnwheeling to an earlier action, and it seems like moving around the map and doing the vertical movements with the cursor as you would in the GBA games does nothing, or does nothing a lot of the time. Do we have any clear idea what changes the RNG for sure? I'm sure I would've figured out by now if there were save states, or with a LUA script of sorts lmao. Maybe somebody's had better luck here than me. I didn't make a conscious effort to comprehend the mechanics behind it on a normal PT when I had many more Turnwheel uses than 3 I have right now. It seems that my 5-turn strategy is possible right now, but I can't get close enough to seeing it succeed when I get the same bad enemy phase 3 times in a row, often as late into a well-played clear as turn 4.