DrDimentio

Thanks - and that's a good question, considering it can be played as soon as clearing Chapter 6 of the main game. At that point the only available Emblem Rings for a non-DLC run would be Marth, Sigurd, Celica and Micaiah, and they'd also have lower Bond Levels. If I remember correctly, there probably wouldn't be enough SP earned at this point to inherit any notable skills either. I don't think the lower Bond Levels would matter so much in terms of the lower stat boosts, but lacking the higher-level Engage Weapons and skills would be a problem. It didn't matter so much on the pre-deployed units in my run - e.g. in Xenologue 6, Gregory was still a powerful user of Celica's Warp Ragnarok, and Zelestia still provided utility with Micaiah's Great Sacrifice when she wasn't attacking low-Res enemies, such as both types of Wyverns. Madeline could obliterate a full HP bar from bosses thanks to Leif's Quadruple Hit, but apart from that she wasn't good for much other than Swap, and sometimes blocking enemies from reaching my less defensive units. The loss of Pair Up would require a complete rethink of my Map 1 solution, and the loss of Dual Support on Alear and Zelkov would make my usual Avoid-tanking tactics much less effective. Especially since I wouldn't have Corrin for Dragon Vein fog. Anyway, now I'm interested in testing how difficult Xenologue Maddening would be from a Maddening pre-Chapter 7 file of the main game. I assume someone has probably done it though? Also, forgot to post my clip of the boss-finishing move in Xenologue 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NiGZ6v-eQ8

Gallery of screenshots - only from maps 3-6: https://imgur.com/a/fWVbGgZ This was my first and only Maddening run of the Xenologue - my previous run was on Normal, just to rush through it for the story and to know what to expect from the gameplay. Only base-game builds: I wanted to test/confirm for myself that it’s not unreasonable to complete the Xenologue 'deathless' with a party taken from a completed no-DLC Maddening file of the base game, with no new additions - i.e. not learning new skills specifically for the Xenologue. In my view, even the highest difficulty shouldn’t be designed around assumptions of players having specific builds - in this case referring to builds that are specifically well-suited for the Xenologue. After all, you might have insufficient Bond Fragments left on your endgame save, and I don’t think players should be expected to grind in the main game just to make the DLC’s highest difficulty bearable. I also think the Xenologue somewhat overcompensated for the forced Casual mode with its increased difficulty compared to the rest of the game, but that’s another matter. My builds that I carried over to the Xenologue are listed here, in my report about my completed no-DLC Maddening run of the main game - obviously only the inherited skills are relevant for the Xenologue: https://forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/98374-engage-maddening-classic-completed-main-story-detailed-report/ On that note, it was a weird design decision for the Xenologue to have fixed classes and inventory but customisable skillsets - that can unfairly disadvantage players depending on which units they trained in the base game, and in some cases certain skills wouldn’t work nearly as well on the Xenologue’s forced classes. A notable example is Anna being stuck as a Berserker, whereas in the main game she was vastly better in a magic class. Almost deathless: I only lost 2 units right near the end of map 4, and 2 units at the very end of map 6 - but all of these deaths were easily preventable. In both maps I only had 3 rewinds remaining when those units were lost, so I didn’t want to risk failing those missions by rewinding back too far and losing my identified path to victory. Xenologue 1 (no units lost) - it was all about Zelkov’s fog, Alear’s Bonded Shield, and Jade’s high Def to block the Wolves from reaching Nel and Nil who retreated to the top-left corner and never faced any combat on this map. Xenologue 2 (no units lost) - took all my units to the bottom-left corner then used the narrow paths to form chokepoints until all approaching enemies were gone, then defeated Celine, then finished off Alfred with the help of Lucina’s All For One (a lot of units chain attacked with it). Xenologue 3 (no units lost) - Held a chokepoint just above the starting area, then used Zelestia’s Elthunder + Alcryst’s Astra Storm to defeat the Cannoneers on the distant platforms. Zelestia had to be in range of Seadall’s Dance to retreat every time the low-hit Elthunder missed, as I needed Elthunder to hit on the same turn as Astra Storm due to the Cannoneers’ healing tiles, and I couldn’t leave Zelestia in range of the archers on those platforms. Then I used luring tactics with a single unit to trigger the flying reinforcements, while the rest of my party bunched up together at the reinforcement locations (the locations were learned from failed attempts and rewinds), so I could deal with them immediately. Then retreated to a central chokepoint near the starting area to deal with both bosses. Xenologue 4 (2 units lost right near the end) - Lured Timerra away from her minions by putting a unit in range of her Engage Attack, then froze her with Zelkov-Corrin’s Dreadful Aura while my party got into position to defeat her. Then tried to take out some approaching Corrupted Wyverns from long range (e.g. with Astra Storm), until Ivy was close enough that I could go all in to finish her off - she’d taken Astra Storm damage on turn 1. Going all in on defeating Ivy meant that I had to sacrifice a few units that were unlikely to hit Ivy or deal much damage to her. It was definitely possible to clear this map deathless with my builds, but would’ve required a lot more patience; I just wanted to finish this chaotic and stressful map. Things only got out of control after some unlucky RNG with low-Hit attacks actually landing from Ivy and Corrupted Wyverns. At that point I could see a likely path to victory at the cost of losing some units, so I didn’t want to risk failing the map just to try for a perfect run, since I only had 3 rewinds left. Xenologue 5 (no units lost) - Rushed to defeat the Cannoneer below Alear, using Zelkov’s Dragon Vein fog to make chokepoints in narrow corridors as my party approached. Then kept Celine below Alear’s cage to heal her, eventually using Celine’s Warp Ragnarok to rejoin my party in Nil’s room - had to do that so Celine could trade for another Physic when she ran out. Should’ve brought Micaiah for Great Sacrifice - instead had to rely on Astra Storm for the Corrupted Wyverns frequently spawning above Alear. That meant I had to prioritise filling Alcryst’s Engage Meter as soon as his Engage ran out. For the Wolf pack on the right of the map, relied on Zelkov in fog/pillars to avoid most of their hits, as well as Jade who couldn’t be damaged by them - both had Pair Up. Then lured Fogado and Hortensia from the edge of their range, and used Zelkov’s Dreadful Aura to freeze them (both were adjacent) while defeating their minions. Then used Amber’s Momentum+ with 14 movement range to rush the 2 extra Cannoneers that spawned near Alear on turn 20. To defeat Nil quickly, I used Anna’s Instruct (Byleth) for +4 Str on Zelkov, so after he inflicted Draconic Hex he could actually damage Nil with a dagger, which enabled him to then stack full poison on Nil. Xenologue 6 (16 turns, left path taken, 2 units lost in final enemy phase) - detailed notes below: - Deployed units’ starting spaces from top to bottom, left to right: Ivy, Zelkov, Alcryst, Seadall, Jean, Boucheron, Jade, Amber. - Emblem pairings: Alear-Lucina, Nel-Marth, Zelestia-Micaiah, Madeline-Leif, Gregory-Celica, Zelkov-Corrin, none-Seadall, Alcryst-Lyn, Boucheron-Roy, Jean-Eirika, Amber-Sigurd, Ivy-Byleth, Jade-Ike. In some ways this final map is great, with its unique mechanics unlike anything else in all the FE games I’ve played. But the unique mechanics and some other aspects led to so much frustrating trial and error; I took 38 hours of attempts to finally clear it. I think the two longest attempts were each around 8 hours, including the successful run. There were just so many possibilities to consider, and so much careful deliberation about long-term consequences. I haven’t had to think this hard since Conquest Lunatic’s Endgame map. My main issue with the design of this level is that Fell Nil’s defensive stats are so absurdly high that he takes zero or near-zero damage from most attacks, even with Draconic Hex plus Alear’s personal skill. It’s incredibly restrictive that you can only deal significant damage with specific skills such as Lunar Brace, and it also heavily depends on how many hits you can deal with Lunar Brace in each round of combat. This restrictiveness is especially problematic when limited to base-game builds, as it rules out other notable damage-boosting skills such as Reprisal. So my only unit that could seriously damage Fell Nil was Jean with Eirika - thankfully he had *just* enough Spd to quad-attack with Silver-Spirit Art, but only with the combination of Speed +4 (skill from my base-game build), Seadall’s Special Dance, and -4 Spd on Fell Nil from Draconic Hex. But even the four hits while Engaged and adjacent to Alear only dealt 68 total damage, so my other units had to take off the other 12 HP for each 80-HP bar - the boss had 3 revival stones in my successful run. As I had calculated Jean’s damage numbers in advance of my successful run, my entire plan for this map depended on getting my critical units (Jean, Seadall, Alear, Ivy) to the final Fell Sigil, while clearing out enough enemies that I’d be able to survive until turn 16. That was based on my previous failed run where I noted Fell Nil’s actions for each turn, so I knew he’d arrive at the final Sigil on turn 15. Ideally I wanted to kill him on that turn, but my party other than Jean didn’t have enough power for that, even when using the Dance + Goddess Dance combo on Jean. It turned out fine because I cleared out enough of the nearby enemies, and didn’t need to worry about the vortex-summoned enemies that appeared on turn 16 since I knew I could finish the boss on that turn. Apart from the issue of most units struggling to damage Fell Nil, my other issue with this level’s design is how it led to so much 'trial and error' gameplay - especially with the reinforcements, summons, destruction areas and Fell Nil’s movements; some of these things can vary depending on the player’s actions. Only after completing the map did I find out online exactly how the reinforcements depend on your path through the map - and how could a player know that excessive reinforcements essentially serve as a 'punishment' for taking the left path through Alfred? In my view, standard game design would suggest that the difficulty of getting past Alfred (due to his defensive prowess and Piercing Glare) should indicate that his area is a high-risk high-reward path. I had only tried the middle path in an early attempt of this map, but gave up on that because it seemed too difficult to block many of the Mage Cannoneer summon spaces in time, and even more difficult to escape the middle area before it’s destroyed. This was another case of too much trial and error being required to figure out this map - a downside of introducing unique mechanics in a final mission, whereas standard game design would typically have new mechanics introduced in easier situations earlier in the game. So after many failed attempts, I gradually refined my strategy until I stuck with this approach: Turn 1 Astra Storm (20-range with Alcryst) to lure Timerra, so that she dies from the first area’s destruction - I kept Ivy just out of the destruction zone as my only unit in Timerra’s range, to make sure Timerra would be in the zone when it’s destroyed. I figured it was better to defeat her early on, due to a failed attempt where she arrived at the final Sigil area at the worst possible time, and I couldn’t stop her from getting kills due to her Engage Attack’s flame terrain hindering my efforts to reach her. After removing Timerra, I then rushed to kill Pandreo, to prevent his Revival Blessing on Fell Nil. Meanwhile, Alcryst used Summon Doubles below the second Sigil to stall the first Wyvern reinforcements from the bottom of the map. Alfred was conveniently lured out to attack a low-Res unit near Fogado’s spot (he attacked with Runesword), so I easily killed Alfred on non-forest terrain with magic double-attacks from Ivy and Zelestia. Then rushed north to escape the destruction zone, using Zelkov’s Dragon Vein fog at the rear of my party to prevent the closest Wolf from reaching any units - I really didn’t want any units to have reduced HP. Seadall’s Dance + Zelkov’s Dreadful Aura allowed Zelkov to immobilise both Hortensia (who approached my party first) and Ivy, so I could finish them off as my whole party reached the northwest area on turn 8; Fogado’s area gets destroyed on that turn’s enemy phase. Then it was a very difficult balancing act of guarding the party’s rear from the left-side reinforcements, while luring out Celine and finishing her off - then had to very carefully approach the middle area below the final Sigil, due to the excessive number of Corrupted Wyverns spawning at the top of the map above that Sigil. To deal with them, I used various methods such as: Rescue and Amber’s Canter+ to retreat after killing them, using Alcryst’s Summoned Doubles as bait (80+ Avoid vs the enemy’s 100 Hit), Zelkov’s Dragon Vein fog to completely prevent them and other enemies from attacking units they can’t hit, etc. Notably used Amber’s Override to kill two Corrupted Wyverns plus another enemy all at once. The Corrupted Wyverns are generally only a threat when combined with other types of enemies in range of your units, as their damage and Hit rates are very low - mainly have to worry about miasma being inflicted on units that don’t have enough Avoid to reliably dodge other enemies’ attacks. The weapon-wielding Wyvern reinforcements were often more of a problem than the big Corrupted Wyverns, as I only had one unit that could defeat them in one round under normal conditions: Alcryst with Ivy. In the lead-up to turn 15 when I knew Fell Nil would then arrive at the final Sigil, I made sure all the relevant Engage Meters were full, and in most cases I waited until turn 13 for my units to Engage for the final time on this map, so they’d still be Engaged on turns 15 and 16 when attacking Fell Nil. This mattered most for Jean-Eirika and Ivy-Byleth, as I needed the Lunar Brace damage and the Goddess Dance. I only had 3 rewinds left for the last few turns while waiting around at the final Sigil, in some cases due to very unlucky RNG, but I should’ve had 5 left - made 2 very stupid mistakes just from lack of concentration. One of the RNG rewinds was after Zelkov died to summoned-Leif’s Light Brand crit (with very low Hit), but then after my adjustments Leif double-critted Gregory. Amazingly, Gregory survived that due to his very high Res. With only 3 rewinds left for the combat against Fell Nil, I felt a strong sense of dread, knowing that all the time on this attempt could be wasted if the boss got lucky with Sandstorm procs when countering Jean. Fell Nil had absorbed both Sandstorm and Luna, but it turned out that Jean could just barely survive a Luna hit from full HP! He only got hit by one Luna and no Sandstorms. As I was relying mostly on Jean (Engaged with Eirika) to defeat the boss, I improved the odds of dodging a Sandstorm hit by stacking his Avoid with the forest terrain next to the final Sigil, plus support bonuses and Alear’s Bond Forger (+30 Hit/Avoid) from Engage+. I just used the Engage+ on Jade since she didn’t have much else to contribute at that point.

I guess it's hard to compare units between different players' runs partly because of some of the differences you mentioned, e.g. that you didn't use most engravings - so I wonder how Yunaka would've performed if I'd used her instead of Zelkov while keeping everything else the same, including the +30 Hit/Avoid engraving on Iron Dagger +4. As for the dependence on Corrin, it's definitely hard to assess characters based on their own merits in this game, as Emblem choices make such a big difference. Zelkov was still one of my most important units during Corrin's paralogue where he couldn't use her though. I should mention that I hadn't experimented with Corrin's other uses on non-Covert units, as I was so impressed by Yunaka-Corrin on Hard that I just reused the same strategy. Now that I'm finally allowing myself to read other people's strategies and opinions with this game, I'm sure I'll discover many OP things I overlooked. Thanks, it was quite exhausting to write such a long post despite my professional writing experience! I'm also not meta-minded given that I avoided reading any discussion about ways to play the game, which is why I noted in my report that many aspects of my builds and playstyle are probably nowhere near optimal. I've completed all Divine Paralogues on my Hard file, and I plan to complete them all on this Maddening file (at Chapter 26), now that I can allow myself to use DLC on it. But first I plan to complete the Fell Xenologue on Maddening. I just finished the third Fell Xenologue map on Maddening with all units alive, but based on how much harder that was than the main game, it could be a while before I finish all chapters... I wasn't planning to write even more, but since you really appreciated this one, I may write a "short" report on it eventually.

Compilation of all 13 clips from the run - these are all short clips via the Switch screenshot button: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtwW1CNGs-Y Gallery of all 41 screenshots I took: https://imgur.com/a/l4PaKdF (showing turn counts and time for every mission, post-final boss character reel, map screenshots e.g. large enemy groups) ————— Contents ————— i. Intro (restrictions, preparations, playtime, paralogues) ii. Difficulty Analysis (game mechanics, general strategies, etc) iii. Notes on Specific Maps (including paralogues) iv. Comparison to Other FE Highest Difficulties v. Team Overview (classes, weapon/unit types, teambuilding) vi. My Units (deployment, stats, skills, performance) vii. Weapon Engravings viii. Somniel, Smithy and Shopping ix. Allocation of Permanent Stat-Boost Items ————— i. Intro (restrictions, preparations, playtime, paralogues) ————— Intro summary: Any character death = rewind/reset, completed Hard first, no DLC or Amiibos, all paralogues, all 4 skirmishes, 148 hours (82 battle hours). I’m continuing my tradition of writing reports on my completed gaming challenges. At 16,000 words this is even longer than my Three Houses Maddening report (12,000). This post is partly for my own future reference, but I hope some parts might interest anyone who is either planning a Maddening run or just curious about other people’s runs, and the ways that people’s playstyles can vary. As with every other FE game I’ve played, I reset/rewind if any character dies. I also didn’t let any green allied units die. Restrictions and previous Hard run: Maddening mode didn’t live up to its name for me, as it wasn’t that much of a challenge overall - although I think it could’ve been tough if I’d played it completely blind, i.e. as my first run of the game. I didn’t spoil anything for myself about Maddening mode specifically; in fact, I’ve avoided *all* online discussions and gameplay footage of this game. My only prior knowledge of the gameplay was from completing Hard Classic first, which gave me some idea of what would be effective and ineffective, including characters, classes, Emblems, strategies, etc. That first run also made me aware of the number of missions, and most importantly the point where all Emblem Rings are lost. My avoidance of any online content related to the game was due to my preference for discovering my own preferred tactics. I don’t mind that this often results in overlooking 'optimal' ways to play - it’s more enjoyable to play how you want to, as long as it works well enough to complete the game without too much struggle. I also avoided all DLC and Amiibos for this run. Additionally, I played as though the free Update Bonuses were never received (such as the large amount of extra gold and Bond Fragments), by counting those extra amounts as my new zero equivalent. E.g. I never let myself fall below 10 Steel Ingots or 20 Silver Ingots, as that was the bonus amount. In FE games I never play the highest difficulty as my first run when there are at least 3 difficulty levels; I don’t want the challenge to come from things like being unfamiliar with the game’s unique mechanics, its number of chapters, when characters join, how much gold is available, etc. Although my completed Hard run was useful for testing many things such as units and strategies, I underestimated or overlooked how much the effectiveness of some things would diminish in Maddening, mainly due to the higher enemy stats. However, all of my 14 chosen units still provided valuable contributions. I might have had above-average growths in my Hard run, which influenced my choice of units in Maddening, e.g. Framme who I soon regretted using again. I prefer Fixed Growths when there’s the option between that or Random, but I was forced into Fixed anyway as this was my first Maddening run. I just don’t like the risk of units falling well short of their potential, especially with the crucial Spd stat. Total play time: 148 hours shown on my game file after the final boss, but the actual time would have also included the one time I used up 10 rewinds and then reset a mission - that was on Corrin’s paralogue as I was quite underlevelled for it, but on the second attempt I cleared it quite easily. I also had to reset a few times on Chapter 11, due to not having rewinds for most of it. Only ~82 of the 148 hours were spent in battle maps; the remaining time was spent on mundane/grindy activities in the Somniel, as noted in the 'Somniel, Smithy and Shopping' section. My time was also padded out by viewing many support conversations. Optional battles: The 82 battle hours included completing all 4 skirmishes that spawned (see the 'Difficulty Analysis' section for details), and completing every paralogue. Jean and Anna’s paralogues were done as soon as they were available, as well as Lucina’s because it was very simple even with promoted enemies against my base classes. The other Emblem paralogues were completed as soon as most of my units were promoted, starting with the Emblems whose level 11-20 skills seemed most valuable - Corrin was a high priority, for reasons noted in Zelkov’s part of the 'My Units' section. The Pact Ring paralogue was also done as soon as available, and was the hardest mission overall. Overall, this was one of my most enjoyed highest-difficulty runs of any FE game - much more fun than Three Houses Maddening at least, as there weren’t as many 'grinding' opportunities other than the slow Somniel routine (mainly for maximising Bond Fragments, but also for the fairly small benefits of unit optimisation). ————— ii. Difficulty Analysis (game mechanics, general strategies, etc) ————— Difficulty variation throughout the game: In FE games I usually notice the same pattern on the highest difficulty: A challenging earlygame, easier midgame, then a challenging lategame. The early challenge is mostly due to fewer strategic options, e.g. not having many of the Emblem Rings. You also have none of the class skills of advanced classes, and it takes time to earn enough SP for the most potent inheritable skills, such as Pair Up, Speedtaker and Dual Support. You also don’t have all the weapon engravings available, and some of those are very impactful, such as the ones that boost Avoid by at least 20, even up to 40 (see the 'Weapon Engravings' section for my weapon choices). Although there’s a difficulty spike in Chapter 11 when you lose all Emblem Rings (and the rewind mechanic briefly), the midgame after that was much easier than that chapter, as Alear and Zelkov were already functioning well as Avoid tanks. Only a few of the Emblem paralogues were challenging as I wanted to get decent exp from them; see my points in this section about boss-kill objectives and exp. As for the lategame missions, the main issue was the vast numbers of starting enemies plus reinforcements, which often spawned in from many different directions. Player Phase vs Enemy Phase: In my experience—at least on Maddening—this game favoured units that excel during Enemy Phase, over units that function better on Player Phase. This is partly because of all the strong Enemy Phase options such as Chain Guard, Lucina’s Bonded Shield, Zelkov’s +10 Avoid personal skill, etc. Avoid tanking is even more potent given that Chain Guard stays up when enemies miss, and Bonded Shield doesn’t break from any amount of combat. The only notable things for Player Phase were the Brave-effect weapons (particularly Flashing Fist Art) and the Engage Attacks/abilities, such as Override, Goddess Dance, etc. Avoid tanking: I used both Alear (with Lucina) and Zelkov (with Corrin) in this role. When Avoid boosts from engraved weapons are stacked with support bonuses and skills such as Dual Support and Pair Up, you can make some invincible Avoid tanks. However, on Maddening you often have to limit your Avoid to be 'not quite' invincible, as enemies no longer attack with a 0% hit chance unless they can trigger chain attacks. This intentional limitation is mainly relevant when using Avoid tanks as Enemy Phase lures to weaken but not kill all the enemies that attack, so your other units can finish them for exp. To achieve ideal Avoid stats I simply switched between weapons as needed, often by trade-equipping when Alear and Zelkov were adjacent to each other but away from any other allies. My best Avoid tank was Zelkov; Corrin on a Thief is a huge game-changer in general, as noted in my discussion of Zelkov in the 'My Units' section. The difficulty dropped after getting Corrin, so then the main challenge was just to spread out experience rather than letting my near-invincible Alear and Zelkov take it all. It was important for my other units to be of a decent level as there aren’t always convenient chokepoints, although a couple of Emblem abilities can essentially create chokepoints anywhere: Corrin with fog terrain and Roy with flame terrain. Luckily there aren’t many enemies with Pass, but the hardest mission for me was the one that did have quite a few Thieves with Pass, who actually hunt down your units as there are no chests - it was the Pact Ring paralogue. Trade-equipping weapons: I find it strange how the trade-equip method has still never been hinted at in any of the FE games I’ve played, despite being such a game-changing technique - especially in this game where you can switch Backup units back to their longer-range weapons for more reach with chain attacks. Infinite weapon durability would normally be balanced out by the drawbacks (and/or price) of stronger weapons, but the trade method can often negate that, e.g. by using a heavy weapon then swapping to a safer weapon for Enemy Phase. However, Engage Weapons can’t be changed with this method, and you can’t trade-equip a unit's regular weapons to their Engage Weapons. So the Engage Weapons have an added drawback in that sense, as they require full commitment when equipped during a character’s last action for the current Player Phase. Smash weapons: I hardly ever saw much need for the smash effect. One occasional use was to push an enemy without killing it, so that it would fill in a gap in a line of enemies, making it possible to Override them all. The more relevant aspect of smash weapons was their high Mt, making them good choices for when it wouldn’t be possible to double with other weapons anyway. The high Mt also made them useful for some Engage Attacks, such as Lodestar Rush and Override. Enemy smash weapons weren’t very common, and among my 3 tanks only Jade had to worry about a smash potentially ruining her effort to block a space. Alear and Zelkov were Avoid tanks so they were unlikely to be hit by any weapons, let alone the relatively inaccurate smash weapons. This was yet another way in which Avoid tanking was overpowered. Weapon Break effect: Weapon breaks weren’t nearly as important as I expected, either offensively or defensively. Offensively, I rarely needed Break as I had many options to outrange enemies, such as 3-range weapons. Combined with chain attacks, this meant I could often kill enemies before any potential counter-attacks. However, Break was somewhat more useful against Knife users due to their 1-2 range and high Spd, which made them harder to kill because of high Avoid and less double-attack potential against them. Enemy knife users were easier to deal with once Jean had Flashing Fist Art and either a Hit-boosting engraving or Divine Pulse+. On the defensive side, the Break effect was another case where Avoid tanking made a game mechanic irrelevant a lot of the time - I was usually able to ensure that most of the Enemy Phase combat was directed towards my Avoid tanks. When enemies have multiple choices of targets, they often target a unit who can’t counter very effectively anyway (if they can counter at all). Also, my only non-Avoid tank Jade was Armoured, so she couldn’t be broken by weapon advantage. Reinforcements and map objectives: Thankfully the lategame provided some slight challenge, because when you want most of your team to keep up in levels you can’t rely on a couple of invincible units for everything - you have to contend with wide-open maps combined with the vast number of enemies in the lategame. The later missions included endless or near-endless reinforcements, with Void Curse to further discourage safe but slow strategies. On that note, this game has a surprisingly high number of boss-kill objectives, so it’s relatively easy to speedrun those missions if you want to - bosses actually leave their initial positions (even abandoning terrain bonuses) to hunt you down at the slightest provocation. Even a no-damage attack can trigger their approach, or simply waiting a certain number of turns. The speed strats for boss-kill maps include things like Astra Storm (up to 20 range!) to lure bosses, or using Micaiah’s 4-unit Warps to reach the boss, etc. So the real challenge in Maddening was to resist the temptation of quick boss kills, as it would waste a lot of experience in a difficulty mode that greatly reduces skirmish spawns on the world map; only 4 skirmishes spawned for me. However, the skirmishes have such strong enemies that I ended up deploying only Alear and Zelkov for each one, which took them from "a bit overlevelled" to "a bit more overlevelled". Here’s what skirmishes looked like with just my two Avoid tanks: https://i.imgur.com/oFDAdJL.jpg, https://i.imgur.com/2ayfRqN.jpg. Even without skirmishes, it was still very easy to catch up weaker units that had been benched for a while due to deployment limits - with Dance + Goddess Dance you can give the same unit 4 actions per Player Phase, and you can also use Byleth’s inheritable Mentorship skill (only 250 SP) for even more exp. Thanks to chain attacks, you can even level up non-staff-wielding units that are dealing little or no damage by themselves. Chain attacks: The fixed 10% damage made chain attacks incredibly useful in general, not just for helping weaker units get kills. I found the Warrior class very effective as they can chain attack with Longbow range, even up to 8 spaces away with the Dual Assist skill which my 2 Warriors inherited. It doesn’t matter how bulky a boss is when you can combine Corrin’s Draconic Hex, poison status from knives, and multiple chain attacks per combat. A fun tactic is to give 4 actions (via Dance + Goddess Dance) to a unit engaged with Celica, so you can use Echo for up to 8 rounds of chain attacks, each with multiple chain attackers. That’s one way to destroy bosses, and it’s helped by the fact that so many bosses can be attacked from outside of their countering range, especially when you use a 3-range weapon. Engage Attacks also can’t be countered, so Maddening’s challenge usually isn’t due to bosses. Deaths and rewinds - Draconic Time Crystal: In many maps I only used 2 or 3 of the 10 rewinds, and sometimes that was just due to an unnecessary gamble to make things quicker/simpler (especially when victory was inevitable), or because I’d tried to avoid wasting a precious use of a staff such as Freeze. In other words, it wasn’t always due to a character’s death or an unfixable situation. However, deaths did happen occasionally due to unforeseen events on Enemy Phase. That was sometimes due to the large number of enemies especially in the lategame, or sometimes because of overcommitting to killing a group of enemies on a given turn, rather than retreating and/or creating a defensive formation. Some rewinds happened because Avoid tanking with non-zero Avoid naturally provides the chance for unlucky RNG; when enemies actually hit, they tend to hit very hard on Maddening. Maddening felt quite well balanced around the generous number of rewinds, although the location and timing of reinforcements sometimes caught me off-guard. This led to some 'trial and error' methods such as doing a quick test run of a map, where I’d wait to see what turn numbers trigger reinforcements/movement, or where units can trigger location-based reinforcements. Rewinds were also valuable on the few maps where enemies have Warp - in Byleth’s paralogue I changed a death into an amusing situation where a Silenced enemy tome user got Warped behind my front line. So the AI clearly hasn’t mastered Warp yet. Enemy AI: While the AI is usually smart enough on Maddening to not attack for a 0% hit chance or 0 damage, enemies still attacked my units in those cases if they could trigger chain attacks, even on my units that had Pair Up. So the AI doesn’t appear to check for Pair Up, which makes that skill even more valuable. Enemies also happily went for 1 or 2 damage per hit, e.g. against my General Jade who could counter for much more damage. In some cases, foes on Maddening won’t even move towards your units if they currently have no way to damage your units that they could reach at some point: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y. That means there are some situations where you can potentially halt the approach of enemies until you’re ready to deal with them, without necessarily needing other methods such as Obstruct. Engage Meter and Emblem Energy spaces: On most maps I rarely needed to use the Emblem Energy spaces, especially when I’d unlocked the higher bond levels with Emblems. I mainly used the spaces in situations where bosses and/or enemy groups were approaching while I’d recently used up my Engage turns. Sometimes I intentionally kept units away from passive healing (e.g. terrain or Seadall’s skill), so my staff users could heal them both for filling their own Engage Meters and gaining exp. It’s notable that being double-attacked is sometimes beneficial since the Engage Meter fills for each enemy attack, as well as each player-unit attack. Although being doubled would occur mostly to units that are too slow to perform many double attacks of their own, there are some ways to instantly raise or lower a unit’s Spd as required, e.g. Flashing Fist Art for +5 Spd, or lowering Spd with a weapon exceeding the unit’s Bld. That means some units could maximise their Engage Meter fill rate depending on enemy Spd stats, although in practice I usually forgot about this. The Engage Meter was yet another reason why Avoid tanks were overpowered, as they not only have the Spd to double, but also fill their Meter for each of the many enemy attacks they avoid. This made Alear and Zelkov even more dominant, as they usually had access to Lucina’s and Corrin’s many strong options that required them to be Engaged. Infinite weapon durability and management of gold: Unlike in FE Fates, the higher-ranked weapons generally don’t have major drawbacks to offset the infinite durability, so there isn’t as much need for trade-equipping to different weapons after using a 1-2 or 1-3 range weapon. This noticeably reduced the game’s overall difficulty, as it’s easier to outrange enemies and counter them. Some characters also have enough Bld growth to gradually mitigate the drawback of high weapon Wt, which is one reason why Brave, Silver and effective-damage weapons (mainly Ridersbane) ended up being so useful. Despite the infinite weapon uses and my use of Anna’s personal skill, gold was quite limited up until 50,000 was received at the end of Chapter 20. See the section 'Somniel, Smithy and Shopping' for notes on how I spent money. Incidentally, I tend to find the FE games with infinite durability more enjoyable as it reduces a lot of the tedious inventory management. ————— iii. Notes on Specific Maps (including paralogues) ————— Most missions weren’t particularly challenging, but I did have to play carefully, just nowhere near as carefully as in the older FE games that don’t have rewinds. I don’t discuss all missions here, mainly just the ones that had enough challenge to stick in my memory. Main Story: Chapter 4 was tricky at the start, requiring fairly specific moves to keep everyone alive. Chapter 5 was also tricky - I remember making good use of Louis with Sigurd, and Engage Attacks on the bulky boss. Chapter 9 was fairly tight at first, with saving Jade and dealing with enemies both at the top and bottom. Chapter 10 was a difficulty spike; I had to back up with my whole party after luring Hortensia, using multiple Obstructs around her while I finished off her minions. To deal with the rather bulky Hyacinth, I used Obstruct and the impassable terrain to protect some of my units while I wore him down with chain attacks. Chapter 11 seemed very hard at first, and it can be quite unforgiving to units who are prone to bad RNG (e.g. low Hit). After a few failed attempts with different approaches, my new successful strategy was to move Alear as far south as possible each turn, even if there was a slight chance of dying. The rest of my units just finished off foes who moved up to fight Alear, and it didn’t take long to reach the rewind-recovering point this way. Chapters 12 and 13 were a bit challenging because of promoted foes against my base classes. Chapter 12 was also tough because I made sure to keep all green allies alive, and 13 required very cautious moves in the dark - Zelkov stayed far back behind my party to solo the fliers, and eventually moved up to the front with Alear to block a 2-space chokepoint where the 2 bosses had moved up to. In Chapter 15 I sometimes broke my own ice obstacles (from Obstruct / Dragon Vein) when I was just using them to remove miasma. Chapter 17 was surprisingly easy; I moved to the northeast at the start, then lured each group of enemies to that area as it has two 1-space chokepoints, with plenty of room in the back for the whole party. Chapter 19 also ended up being easy once Mauvier used up his 5 Warps, as I merged my separated party in the southwest, and then kept them safe behind the 1-space chokepoint leading onto the ship: https://i.imgur.com/r6myhyJ.jpg. Also, here’s one of the two times the AI made me laugh with very dumb usage of a movement staff: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=29. Chapter 20 was strangely uneventful as Griss never ambushed me - I had to seek him out, after defeating all other enemies. Chapter 21 was fairly tight at the start; I made good use of Corrin’s Dreadful Aura and Sigurd’s Override. This was where I used the most satisfying Override ever, with maximum Momentum and Ridersbane to just barely reach the one-hit kill threshold: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=38. It was tempting to farm exp from the excessive reinforcements, but I eventually needed Micaiah’s 4-unit Warp to get a group of boss-killers near Veyle, as I’d overcommitted to farming exp further down in the map: https://i.imgur.com/n9jQRJy.jpg. Chapter 22 was a bit difficult as it was hard to make a safe 3-tank blockade (Alear, Zelkov and Jade) in the central area just above the Corrupted Wyrm. That was partly due to the lack of Emblem Rings - or in Alear’s case, having Marth instead of the usual Lucina for Bonded Shield, etc. Despite the large group of enemies that funnelled into that middle area, the mission wasn’t as unforgiving as Chapter 11 thanks to rewinds. Chapter 24’s main challenge was dealing with enemies from both the top and bottom while I converged my separated party towards the middle row of the map. The turn limit was very generous though - I only used 8 turns out of 15: https://i.imgur.com/djFJKMo.jpg. Even if my whole party had been pushed back to the left edge of the map by the middle-row avalanche, I still would’ve had enough turns. That was because I focused on reaching Astra Storm range on the boss to lure her - I could’ve used a Rescue staff on Alcryst after that if necessary, but I didn’t need to. For Chapter 25 I considered using Micaiah’s 5-space Rescues at the start to quickly gather my whole party on one side, but that was just a backup plan. I chose the unit starting locations mainly based on supports and weapon types, including staves. Some of my tankier units briefly stayed behind on each side to hold off the frequent reinforcements, but once Alear had solo-killed much of the middle room with her Killing Edge in one Enemy Phase, I then moved both my left and right groups swiftly towards Lumera. I didn’t slow down my approach just to avoid Lumera’s AOE attacks, unless it was the only way to keep units alive on the same Enemy Phase. Chloé eventually used Micaiah’s Great Sacrifice to undo all the damage from those attacks and many battles. Silence and Astra Storm dealt with the Entrap and Meteor foes. Here’s how easy it was for Amber to finish off Lumera’s last full HP bar: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=54. Also, two screenshots from just before that final action: https://i.imgur.com/3PLb9h7.jpg, https://i.imgur.com/jPl6cDL.jpg. Chapter 26 was fairly simple as I finished off the fourth barrier-creating enemy with one unit at the start of a Player Phase, so my other units could defeat the final boss that turn, making use of Draconic Hex, poison, Dance + Goddess Dance, Bond Blast, etc. Here’s how I finished the run in style: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=83. Paralogues - in order of completion: Lucina’s paralogue was simple enough to clear as soon as it appeared, mostly thanks to Zelkov, Alear and chain attacks. Lyn’s paralogue was difficult at the start with the party being split up - Zelkov kept the southeast fliers distracted and weakened them, while Jade held off some northwest enemies until Alear’s group moved there to help finish them off. Then I retreated all my units to the northeast corner (avoiding the eastern enemy range by using an Obstruct), while Lyn automatically approached by herself. I tanked an Astra Storm then baited her into using her bow at the edge of her attack range, so I could safely bypass her Avoid with Elsurge. I hadn’t defeated any of the stationary tent enemies, but the abundant reinforcements didn’t matter as they only appeared once Lyn finally initiated combat near my whole party: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=114. Byleth’s mission went quite smoothly because of many enemies focusing on crystals instead of attacking my units. I didn’t bother with protecting many crystals, so it was safe to ignore all the crystal-focused enemies while gradually nearing the boss. Byleth was risky to approach due to Warp and Goddess Dance, so I waited until he moved out from his starting spot. Corrin’s mission was a bit difficult as most of my units had quite a level disadvantage, and also because you can’t use Corrin’s Ring for her own abilities that make a huge difference on Maddening: Draconic Hex, Dreadful Aura, Pair Up, and Dragon Vein fog. Her own Pair Up also made her much harder to kill, so I relied on poison, Alear’s personal skill, Engage Attacks, and Dance + Goddess Dance to defeat her while many enemies were starting to surround my party. Ike’s paralogue wasn’t too tough - at the start, Zelkov controlled the right-side crowd of enemies with Corrin’s Dreadful Aura and Dragon Vein fog. When Ike demolished the castle, I retreated my dispersed units all into the right side which had been cleared out mostly by Zelkov. With the help of Obstruct, Chain Guard, Bonded Shield etc, I was able to hold off the many enemies until Ike was close enough in the top-right area to be defeated by my tome users who could outrange Ragnell - mainly used Anna. The final turn looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/JxUqXfh.jpg. Micaiah’s mission could’ve been simple if I’d just rushed for the boss kill, but I wanted a decent amount of exp from it. So I kept my party in the top-middle area, with Jade blocking the top-left space and Alear the top-right space. My only other tank was Zelkov, who was the main unit responsible for holding off the huge crowd of enemies slightly below this top-middle area, despite the 3-space opening. That was possible thanks to Dragon Vein fog as well as flame terrain from Blazing Lion (Boucheron) and the top-middle area’s flame ballista thing. My party was just barely able to hold the defensive line until Micaiah approached and got close enough for several units to reach and defeat her. These two screenshots show how I was on the verge of being overwhelmed: https://i.imgur.com/ga15MCc.jpg, https://i.imgur.com/Yg0x4dl.jpg. Also a clip of the tense situation shortly before finishing off Micaiah: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=128. Sigurd’s map was easier than expected - even the maxed-stats Sages in the bottom corner were no trouble. I just had to block the bridge with Alear and Zelkov next to each other, then I could safely farm exp once I’d used Astra Storm to defeat the other side’s Meteor user. Eirika’s paralogue was somewhat tricky at the start, but I used Obstruct to keep both Thieves close by until I could kill them. My party was split on both sides for that, but then had to converge back into the middle, where I held off many of the central enemies with Blazing Lion’s flame terrain. Roy’s mission was much easier than expected, especially compared to the original one it’s based on. I had plenty of wind tomes and bows for all the wyverns, and used Engage Attacks to bypass Roy’s Hold Out. Celica’s paralogue was still a joke just like on Hard, but there was some self-imposed challenge in getting decent exp from it. Leif’s mission was also surprisingly simple - just had to stall out the ballistae with tanks such as Jade, then blocked the bridge area with her, Zelkov and Alear. The many reinforcements posed no threat to those 3 tanks. Marth’s paralogue was quite simple even with the detour to get the items on the left side. Marth’s automatic approach made things easier, and the enemies in his starting area lined up so nicely for my biggest Override attack. Alear’s Pact Ring paralogue was perhaps the hardest mission in the game for me. Although I only ended up using 3 or 4 rewinds, it was harder than Chapter 11 because that one could be 'brute-forced' with high-Avoid Alear rushing to the rewind-recovering point. For this mission I spent a long time considering every move while my party was surrounded from the top and bottom of the map. Most maps in this game have boss-kill objectives to offset the challenge of vast enemy numbers, but this one combines abundant enemies with a rout objective and a lack of safe spots. See the minimap here for the number of enemies: https://i.imgur.com/m6ev72J.jpg. Straight after I defeated the Ring thief, Zelkov used multiple actions per Player Phase to immobilise the southern group of enemies with Corrin’s Dreadful Aura. Amber used Override on the 3 lined-up enemies just above the Ring spot, and at this point my units were all moving down towards the southern area: https://i.imgur.com/jgW9SVa.jpg, https://i.imgur.com/WJhLgm7.jpg. Here’s a clip of Zelkov dominating the southern enemy group without any terrain or support bonuses, while also showing how good Pair Up is: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=158. After clearing out the enemies at the bottom, I then had Zelkov move up to the 3-space-wide area to prevent the enemies from reaching the rest of my units, who stayed at the bottom for most of the mission. Zelkov created fog on each turn, making sure all 3 rows of fog were in front of most enemies to maximise their movement reduction. There were still a few fliers that could bypass this, but not enough of them to cause any major problems. There were a lot more enemy Thieves with Pass, but that skill doesn’t help against movement-reducing terrain. I also used Blazing Lion’s flame terrain for even more movement reduction: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=178. Although most enemies funnelled towards the bottom 3-space-wide area as I intended, some enemies that came from the sides of the map slipped around both sides of the middle area. They were mostly cavalry foes, so I sent some effective-damage users a small distance towards both sides to prevent them from getting close to my vulnerable units at the bottom middle area. Here’s how the map looked near the end, when victory was within sight: https://i.imgur.com/F5bYL8e.jpg. ————— iv. Comparison to Other FE Highest Difficulties ————— The order is from hardest to easiest; this is just my subjective difficulty ranking based on my own experiences. This only includes the games I’ve completed on their highest difficulties - one day I’ll get around to playing more of those modes. Note: I never use 'pay to win' content (DLC or Amiibos) when playing these modes. 1. Awakening: Lunatic+ Classic. Compared to regular Lunatic it’s much more restrictive in terms of viable playstyles, and it seems to necessitate excessive level-grinding to make just a few characters (or even just Robin) very overpowered. I don’t like the way difficulty was handled in this game, as it’s much too easy on the lower difficulties, while the Lunatic modes seem to require heavy exploitation of busted gameplay mechanics, e.g. pair-up and the huge level-up potential even from lower-level enemies. 2. Fates Conquest: Lunatic Classic. It was a satisfying challenge that rewarded my long-term planning. I think Conquest generally handled difficulty better than the other games on this list, as it was more about strategising to deal with enemies that were dangerous due to their positions and/or skills. There were very few grinding opportunities in Conquest - I liked that design choice. Also, many of the enemy positions and skills were designed to punish or restrict tactics such as turtling and luring (e.g. Lunge chains, Seal Def), and there were many interesting map designs and objectives that added to the challenge. The difficulty was fairly consistent until it spiked in the last few chapters, which introduce potent enemy-exclusive skills. 3. Radiant Dawn: Hard mode. It’s called Maniac mode in the Japanese version. As with other FE games the difficulty decreased after the earlygame, but it was for different reasons relating to the game’s chapter structure with separate parties of units. For most units there was less potential to become overpowered, compared to FE Engage. As with older FE games, the difficulty mostly came from long missions that tested my endurance, in terms of not making any fatal tactical errors over many turns. I found Avoid-stacking support bonuses very useful for mitigating threats on Enemy Phase. 4. Binding Blade: Hard mode (route taken: Elphin/Bartre chapters, then Sacae chapters). Compared to modern FE games it’s a bit harder due to the lack of a rewind mechanic, along with RNG issues such as the lower hit rates (I refrained from using axes). There are also a few nasty chapters such as the Fog of War ones (combined with desert movement restrictions and flying enemies!), and quite a few long-distance threats such as 10-range tomes (Bolting), ballistae, and status ailments. The Berserk staff is particularly dangerous. The challenge eased off around one-third into the game, mainly because I’d built up enough support ranks by then to greatly increase some key units’ Hit, Avoid and Crit Avoid. Without support bonuses, the game can be quite unforgiving on Hard due to the RNG. Some bosses are especially hard to hit without Hit bonuses, but if all else fails and you don’t have the right Hit bonuses on the right units, I assume you could resort to using up bosses’ weapon durability with a bulky unit first. 5. Three Houses: Maddening Classic (Blue Lions, non-NG+). It’s somewhat low in this list due to the downhill difficulty curve, which was partly because of the abundant grinding opportunities. I doubt there would be much difficulty difference in the other story paths, as Part 1 gives plenty of time for units to become overpowered in various ways, either offensively or defensively - this is yet another game where Avoid tanking is overpowered, with skills such as the Dancer’s Sword Avoid +20. The difficulty isn’t as hard as its name suggests - the only thing I found remotely maddening was some ambushing Meteor/Bolting reinforcements at the very end. This game’s rewind mechanic—Divine Pulse—is a major factor in making this mode more forgiving; I think the later parts of the game are too generous with the number of Pulses. But the earlygame was certainly challenging due to starting with only 3 rewinds, and not having overpowered skill sets at that point. Gambits that immobilise groups of enemies are very potent throughout the whole game, and bosses are a complete joke as there are so many ways to hit them without being counter-attacked. 6. Engage: Maddening Classic. As noted in the 'Difficulty Analysis’ section, you can build invincible Avoid tanks very easily, and bosses fall quickly when you have multiple chain attackers, poison stacking, and Engage Attacks that can’t be countered, much like Gambits in Three Houses. Although bosses are generally much more formidable than in Three Houses, Engage’s earlygame is more forgiving partly due to the 10 rewinds from the start, compared to 3. While both Three Houses and Engage have crowd-control attacks that immobilise groups of enemies, in Engage you can use these again each time you refill the Engage Meter - there’s no set limit per mission. Overall, Engage provides more ways to effectively deal with both bosses and large groups of enemies, and it’s quite easy to catch up underlevelled units by using chain attacks, etc. 7. Fates Birthright and Fates Revelation: Lunatic Classic. Even if you don’t take advantage of the generous grinding opportunities, these two paths are so much easier than Conquest. They didn’t offer much of an interesting challenge; it was generally too easy to power through the enemies without having to think too much. Although I vaguely remember some of the later maps in Birthright being somewhat challenging, such as the one against Camilla. 8. Echoes: Hard Classic. Only 2 difficulty settings in this game, it really could’ve done with a higher one. The introduction of a rewind mechanic (Mila’s Turnwheel) takes away much of the challenge that would come from player mistakes and having to adapt to RNG outcomes. The gameplay balance was a bit peculiar (e.g. magic being so powerful against all the low-Res units), but there were enough tools to deal with any challenges the game could offer. 9. Path of Radiance: Hard mode (English version). Relatively easy, but it doesn’t really count since there’s also the Japan-exclusive Maniac mode; I would’ve played that mode if I had access to it. As with the sequel Radiant Dawn, Avoid-stacking support bonuses help a lot on Enemy Phase. ————— v. Team Overview (classes, weapon/unit types, teambuilding) ————— Joining chapters and initial classes: Ch 0 Alear (Dragon Child), Ch 2 Framme (Martial Monk), Ch 3 Boucheron (Axe Fighter), Ch 4 Céline (Noble) & Chloé (Lance Flier), Ch 6P Jean (Martial Monk), Ch 7 Alcryst (Lord), Ch 8P Anna (Axe Fighter), Ch 8 Amber (Lance Cavalier) & Diamant (Lord), Ch 9 Jade (Axe Armour), Ch 11 Ivy (Wing Tamer) & Zelkov (Thief), Ch 15 Seadall (Dancer). Emblem Ring main pairings: Marth & Diamant. Sigurd & Amber. Celica & Céline. Micaiah & Chloé. Roy & Boucheron. Leif & Framme. Lucina & Alear. Lyn & Alcryst. Ike & Jade. Byleth & Anna. Corrin & Zelkov. Eirika & Jean. Not paired: Ivy, Seadall. Final-class weapon ranks and class skills: 2 Warriors - Boucheron, *Alcryst* (A axe, C/*B* bow ~ Merciless). 2 Martial Masters - Framme, Jean (S arts, A staff ~ Diffuse Healer). 1 Divine Dragon - Alear (A sword, B arts ~ Divine Spirit). 1 Vidame - Céline (A tome, B sword, B staff ~ Ignis). 1 Lance Hero - Diamant (A sword, C lance ~ Brave Assist). 1 Thief - Zelkov (S knife ~ Pass). 1 Sage - Chloé (S tome, B staff ~ Spell Harmony). 1 High Priest - Anna (S staff, B tome, C arts ~ Self-Healing). 1 Lance General - Jade (A lance ~ Swap). 1 Lindwurm - Ivy (S tome, B staff ~ Grasping Void). 1 Lance Wolf Knight - *Amber* (A knife, *A* lance ~ Hobble). 1 Dancer - Seadall (A arts ~ Special Dance). Final-class weapon type distribution: 6 Staff users: Framme, Céline, Chloé, Jean, Anna, Ivy. 5 Arts users: Alear, Framme, Jean, Anna, Seadall. 4 Tome users: Céline, Chloé, Anna, Ivy. 3 Sword users: Alear, Céline, Diamant. 3 Lance users: Diamant, Amber, Jade. 2 Axe users: Boucheron, Alcryst. 2 Bow users: Boucheron, Alcryst. 2 Knife users: Amber, Zelkov. Final-class unit types: 3 Backup - Boucheron, Alcryst, Diamant. 3 Mystical - Céline, Chloé, Anna. 3 Qi Adept - Framme, Jean, Seadall. 1 Dragon - Alear. 1 Flying - Ivy. 1 Cavalry - Amber. 1 Covert - Zelkov. 1 Armoured - Jade. Support bonus types - A rank: Balanced (Hit +10, Crit +3, Avo +5, Ddg +5): Alear, Chloé. Hit focus (Hit +20, Avo +5): Framme, Alcryst, Jade, Zelkov, Anna. Crit focus (Hit +10, Crit +6, Ddg +5): Boucheron, Diamant, Jean, Seadall. Avo focus (Hit +10, Crit +3, Avo +10): Amber. Ddg focus (Hit +15, Ddg +10): Céline, Ivy. Pact Ring S rank partner: Amber (Hit +10, Crit +3, Avo +20). Support partners: Alear - all. Framme - Boucheron, Chloé, Diamant, Anna. Boucheron - Framme, Alcryst, Zelkov. Céline - Chloé, Alcryst, Jean. Chloé - Framme, Céline, Jean, Amber, Seadall. Jean - Céline, Chloé, Jade, Zelkov. Alcryst - Boucheron, Céline, Diamant, Ivy, Seadall. Anna - Framme, Zelkov. Diamant - Framme, Jade, Alcryst, Amber, Ivy. Amber - Chloé, Diamant, Jade, Zelkov, Seadall. Jade - Diamant, Jean, Amber. Ivy - Diamant, Alcryst, Zelkov. Zelkov - Boucheron, Ivy, Anna, Jean, Amber. Seadall - Chloé, Alcryst, Amber. Teambuilding decisions: My decision to use 14 units was mainly based on that being the highest deployment limit, for the last 4 story missions. Of course it isn’t a requirement to fill all slots with regularly-used units, but in all FE games I like to have a wide variety of weapon types, stat spreads and roles. As there are only 12 equippable Emblem Rings, Seadall and Ivy just used silver Bond Rings instead - the former because of his support-focused Dancer role, the latter because my other tome users were greatly outperforming her, especially in Spd. As such, it seemed better to give the magic-focused Emblems to Céline (Celica) and Chloé (Micaiah) so they’d each have the highest potential to kill full-HP enemies in one round of combat. My first teambuilding priority was to have Avoid tanks for holding chokepoints. It was also important to have competent users of tomes and staves, so I made sure those units got plenty of exp. Having multiple tome users helped against the Def stats which can be surprisingly high even on enemies other than the expected Generals and Great Knights. I also wanted multiple users of staves such as Obstruct, Silence and Freeze, as these can save units from tight situations caused by the large groups of enemies on Maddening. For unit types, I knew I wanted several Backup units so that I could consistently use chain attacks to wear down the many foes that can be very tanky on Maddening. All of my Backup units inherited Dual Assist to help with that, and it’s why I used 2 Warriors for Longbow-range chain attacks. I only used one Flying unit (Ivy), not so much because of the bow/wind weakness, but because in my Hard run there weren’t many situations where I thought fliers would provide a significant tactical advantage. The advantages of fliers are more map-dependent, whereas other unit types have more consistent advantages, e.g. Backup units can always chain attack, Covert units can get +60 Avoid anywhere with Corrin’s Dragon Vein fog, etc. Even with only one flier of my own, I had plenty of ways to deal with enemy fliers approaching from large flier-only areas, e.g. Lyn’s Astra Storm, her Summon Doubles to create meatshields / disposable bait units, Obstruct staves (especially Micaiah’s 5-space Obstructs), Chain Guard, Corrin’s fog, etc. In addition to my characters’ innate proficiencies and initial classes, my character choices were partly due to my tendency to stick with early-joining units; all my combat units joined by the end of Chapter 11. Personal skills were a somewhat important consideration, as their effectiveness varies significantly - e.g. Zelkov’s was better for my purposes than Yunaka’s, and Alcryst’s and Amber’s skills seemed better than most. I also considered the list of support partners for each unit, to ensure that most had at least 3 supporters. That seemed important because of deployment limits before the lategame. The characters I hadn’t used in my Hard run were Boucheron, Alcryst, Anna, Amber, Diamant, Jade and Zelkov - but most of these I expected to be similar to their 'alternatives' that I’d used on Hard, e.g. Louis and Yunaka. My reasons for Emblem Ring unit choices are covered in the 'My Units' section. My choices for final advanced classes were mainly based on having a wide variety of weapon types, while also accounting for stat growths. I didn’t care about S-rank weapons when considering classes, as they appear so late and don’t make much difference compared to engraved + refined lower-rank weapons. I could at least use Nova, which seemed like the best one. Some weapon ranks did matter though, e.g. Amber having the boosted A rank in lances for Brave Lance, and Alcryst’s boosted B rank in bows for Silver Bow. Timing/level for reclassing and promotion: Most of my non-reclassed units promoted from around base class level 17 to 19, as many of them were struggling once promoted enemies became common. For reclassed units, I typically reclassed as soon as I had a Second Seal - partly to ensure their stat growths would align better with their eventual advanced classes, but also because it takes a while to reach level 10 base class for promotion. When Seals were limited, unit priority for reclassing/promotion was based on which units’ final advanced classes I expected to have the most impact as part of my overall team. ————— vi. My Units (deployment, stats, skills, performance) ————— Deployment priority: When deployment limits prevented me from deploying all my units that would be suitable for the current map, I always chose Zelkov, Seadall, Alcryst and Anna - in addition to the mandatory Alear, these four collectively provided the best offense and support, including the Dance + Goddess Dance combo. When possible, I deployed at least 2 staff users so I’d have both healing and support opportunities in the same turn - this often mattered because I used Obstruct quite regularly. I brought at least 2 tome users when there were significant numbers of high-Def enemies. Apart from those factors, any characters with 3-range weapons were also a high priority. I deployed all Ridersbane users for cavalry-heavy maps. Jade was necessary for maps where I’d need all 3 of my tanks to block chokepoints, e.g. a crucial 3-space-wide area. Backup units were always valuable for chain attacks, but Diamant wasn’t as useful as the others beyond that function, so he was the lowest priority of those. Units that currently lacked Emblem Rings were lower priority choices, except Seadall who didn’t need one, Chloé who was already effective without Micaiah, and Zelkov - he was still an effective Avoid tank without Corrin, although it made him more dependent on careful positioning for support and terrain bonuses. Units whose Emblems were currently capped at bond level 10 were a slightly lower priority than those at 20. Unit summaries: For the class pathways I use '>' to indicate reclassing and '>>>' for promotion to advanced classes. The listed Emblem stat boosts are the maximum values, from bond level 19+. Units' final base stats are from the start of the final mission, and these don’t include any of the boosts from Emblems, skills, etc. My units are listed in order from what I considered the most effective to least effective in my run. For that assessment I’m not taking into account the number of chapters they were available; it’s about how impactful they were while I had the option to use them. I tried to rank each unit mainly based on their individual merits, before factoring in how well they synergised with my other units. Keep in mind that my effectiveness rankings don’t necessarily reflect how well these characters would perform with other players’ different team compositions and playstyles, etc. 1. Zelkov Class: Thief Emblem: Corrin (HP +15, Mag +4, Res +3) Final Base Stats: HP 53, Bld 11, Str 30, Mag 6, Dex 34, Spd 37, Def 26, Res 10, Lck 17, Rating 171 Inherited Skills: Dual Support (2000 SP), Speed +4 (1000 SP) 314 Battles, 124 Wins The MVP of my run, although Corrin deserves much of the credit. In my Hard run I had instead used Yunaka as my Thief, also with Corrin - while Zelkov’s Spd is lower, his personal skill suited my purposes much better. With his role as an Enemy Phase lure for large groups of enemies, I usually wanted most enemies left weakened but alive, so my other units could finish them off for exp. Yunaka’s crit-boosting personal skill wouldn’t help with that, and only Zelkov’s skill is still relevant when he can’t counter. Also, his much higher Bld allows him to use a Peshkatz with no penalty, rather than -4 Spd - that weapon was his stronger killing option, mainly used for bosses or non-mage enemies that wouldn’t take enough damage from his Iron Dagger +4. Corrin can make Covert units essentially invincible with +60 Avoid fog from Dragon Vein, especially when combined with weapon engravings for +30 or 40 Avoid. The fog also benefits nearby allies, and it can create a chokepoint area for holding off enemies, due to the extra movement cost of fog spaces. Draconic Hex is great against bosses, so I usually had Zelkov attack them first, then again through Dance and/or Goddess Dance to stack more poison on top of that. The -4 Spd from Draconic Hex is especially useful. Corrin’s Pair Up made Zelkov even better at his role, as enemies still attacked for 0% hit or 0 damage if they could trigger a chain attack, despite it doing nothing against Pair Up. However, in cases where I needed enemy Hit rates to be non-zero to make them attack, Corrin’s +15 HP helped with taking the occasional hit. I sometimes switched between an Iron Dagger, Steel/Silver Dagger and Peshkatz to give enemies the lowest non-zero Hit. I’m surprised at how few enemies had Surge/Elsurge tomes, as this would’ve been an easy design choice to counter Avoid tanking. Even though Mystical enemies ignore Avoid boosts from terrain such as fog, they still had very low hit rates - and once Zelkov reached 2000 SP to inherit Dual Support, he could often lower them to 0% Hit as well. Zelkov was often adjacent to Alear (who was paired with Lucina) to block chokepoints. That enabled Zelkov to be further protected by Lucina’s Bonded Shield, which meant he could attack instead of spending a turn on Dragon Vein. Or in some cases I just used Dance to follow up Zelkov’s attacking turns with Dragon Vein turns, as the fog was more important on Enemy Phase when facing large groups of enemies. Corrin’s Dreadful Aura is also incredible, freezing up to 10 enemies in place with Torrential Roar, or up to 5 with a regular attack. As any single unit can have 4 actions per Player Phase from a Dance + Goddess Dance combo (easy to set up with Canter on a dancer), that makes Corrin amazing at crowd control by freezing multiple enemy groups. With the Thief class’s Pass skill, it’s easy to reach the right enemies in big crowds so you can immobilise all the enemies you need to. If Zelkov or a similar substitute hadn’t been on my team, I would’ve had to play most maps very differently, and I expect it would’ve made most maps much more difficult. 2. Alear (F) Class: Dragon Child >>> Divine Dragon Emblem: Marth until Diamant joined > Lucina from Chapter 11 onwards (Dex +5, Spd +4, Lck +6) Final Base Stats: HP 57, Bld 11, Str 28, Mag 9, Dex 29, Spd 34, Def 27, Res 20, Lck 19, Rating 177 Inherited Skills: Avoid +10 (500 SP), Sword Agility 1 (500 SP) / Pair Up (2000 SP, inherited last, replaced Sword Agility) Pact Ring partner: Amber 345 Battles, 185 Wins Alear was my main Avoid tank before Zelkov joined, with +20 Avoid from Marth’s inherited skills and a further +20 to 40 Avoid from engraved Libération and Iron Blade respectively. She became somewhat overlevelled once she had Lucina’s Parthia bow that doubles exp; I often used it to finish off bosses. As with Zelkov, the Emblem deserves a lot of the credit - Lucina’s Dual Support is well suited to the character who supports with everyone. Although Alear doesn’t deal much damage with a Levin Sword, I often started turns with that weapon equipped for more Dual Assist range. Bonded Shield can save many allies’ lives in cases where there aren’t any nearby chokepoints, and it combines with Corrin’s Dragon Vein fog to make units very safe on Enemy Phase. The lack of a strong 1-2 range weapon made Alear typically inferior to Zelkov on Enemy Phase, at least in the role of a lure for weakening enemies. As such, when the two of them were adjacent, I often equipped Alear with her highest-Avoid weapon while letting Zelkov be hittable by at least some of the nearby enemies, to ensure that they would target him instead. With such high Avoid as well as the Divine Spirit class skill and high Spd to double attack, Alear was able to fill up Lucina’s Engage Meter very easily. That enabled frequent access to Bonded Shield, and Alear’s personal skill also made her a valuable support unit for adjacent allies. In the lategame I didn’t actually use Engage+ much, except against the final boss. The extra Hit/Avoid bonuses from Bond Forger would have often been overkill, although there was the slight benefit of Boon of Elyos enabling even more reliable crits with Alear and Amber’s high-crit weapons: Killing Edge and Peshkatz respectively. Regardless of the benefits of Engage+, I usually preferred regular Engage because I needed Lucina’s capabilities; other units also tended to prefer their usual Emblem benefits, especially Zelkov with Corrin. 3. Anna Class: Axe Fighter > Martial Monk >>> High Priest Emblem: Byleth (Mag +3, Spd +3, Lck +12) Final Base Stats: HP 43, Bld 6, Str 11, Mag 37, Dex 30, Spd 27, Def 12, Res 35, Lck 34, Rating 192 Inherited Skills: Speed +5 (2000 SP), Luck +8 (1000 SP) / Quality Time+ (500 SP, final mission only, replaced Luck +8) 220 Battles, 136 Wins Anna started out terrible but became one of my best units, and not only due to all the gold (tens of thousands) she obtained from her personal skill. First of all, look at her final base stats compared to my other units, and then add the boosts from Byleth and the inherited skills - 54 Luck makes her personal skill and Divine Pulse+ amazing. As her Luck started at just 3, I only attempted gold farming once she had Byleth for his inheritable Luck+ skill and his innate Luck boost. As an Axe Fighter she was only good for Hand Axe chip damage and chain attacks, but then as a Martial Monk it was quick to level her from 1 to 10, thanks to staff usage (mostly healing) and Byleth’s Mentorship skill. Then she finally became a great unit as a High Priest; I chose that class for having the highest Luck growth, 15 higher than the Sage class. Normally I hesitate to switch default physical-class units to magic classes or vice versa, but her Str growth is only 15 compared to 50 for Mag, the highest of any character. The main advantage of the Sage class would’ve been the higher tome rank, but it didn’t matter since Anna eventually became one of my highest-level units, so her Mag was high enough to get the necessary kills with B-rank tomes. Anna never used Arts apart from rare cases of equipping Shielding Art, but she had too many useful options for her 5 inventory slots anyway - Elthunder was essential for outranging more enemies, plus she also used Elwind/Elfire and sometimes Elsurge for higher damage. She also used status-inflicting staves (Freeze, Silence and Fracture) to take advantage of their eventually perfect hit rate from Byleth’s Divine Pulse+. There weren’t many cases where I would’ve preferred Micaiah’s extra area of effect on status staves. Despite being limited to B-rank tomes due to her class, Anna had enough power and speed to reliably kill enemies, especially in conjunction with chain attacks. While Engaged, Anna could use a 5-range Elthunder and 3-range Elsurge thanks to Byleth’s Thyrsus staff (+2 magic range). Elsurge was mostly just used for its high Mt, as accuracy wasn’t an issue once Anna’s Luck was high enough to nearly always trigger Divine Pulse+, making her the most reliable attacker. Byleth’s Goddess Dance is also incredible, particularly for finishing off boss-kill maps - it makes it easy to deplete all the boss HP bars while surrounded by enemies that could otherwise kill units on the next Enemy Phase. This was important because Maddening often involves excessive or endless reinforcements to discourage slow play. 4. Alcryst Class: Lord > Axe Fighter >>> Warrior Emblem: Lyn (Dex +4, Spd +5, Res +3) Final Base Stats: HP 60, Bld 13, Str 30, Mag 5, Dex 28, Spd 29, Def 19, Res 11, Lck 12, Rating 147 Inherited Skills: Dual Assist+ (2000 SP), Speed +4 (1000 SP) 271 Battles, 176 Wins Naturally, Lyn played a large part in making Alcryst so effective. I chose him for Lyn because of his personal skill which makes it very easy to gain +3 Str, and which can combine with the Warrior class’s Merciless skill for massive damage when double- or quad-attacking, with help from Lyn’s huge Spd boosts. It’s also easy to trigger Alcryst’s personal skill when foes attack summoned doubles. Another reason why I chose the Backup-type Warrior class is because Dual Assist+ is amazing on a Longbow-wielding Warrior for 8-range chain attacks. Alacrity made him a great mage killer even with the relatively weak Longbow. Lyn’s summoned doubles were useful as meatshields for Alcryst, as he didn’t have many Enemy Phase options other than a Hand Axe and Brave Axe. Alcryst mostly used a Silver Bow on Player Phase, which set him apart from Boucheron who was capped at C-rank bows. Speed +4 may have been overkill on top of Speedtaker and Lyn’s innate stat boosts, but some lategame enemies are exceptionally fast. Astra Storm was very useful for luring bosses, although in many cases they eventually approach you anyway after a certain number of turns. It was also good for killing fliers that were out of reach while on flier-only terrain; my only flier was Ivy, who was slow and generally couldn’t one-shot those enemies with her wind tomes. Another use for Astra Storm was to deal with problematic staff users that were too far away for any of my units to safely kill or Silence them - this included the few Entrap enemies in the lategame. It was definitely worth getting through 10 levels as an Axe Fighter to become a Warrior, and Alcryst actually performed quite well as an Axe Fighter; his high Dex was good for axes, and Backup units are always useful for chain attacks. 5. Chloé Class: Lance Flier > Mage >>> Sage Emblem: Micaiah (Mag +4, Res +5, Lck +6) Final Base Stats: HP 43 (capped), Bld 7, Str 12, Mag 32, Dex 29, Spd 29, Def 14, Res 27, Lck 21, Rating 171 Inherited Skills: Speedtaker (2000 SP), Speed +3 (500 SP) 225 Battles, 134 Wins Just like Anna, Chloé went from an initial physical class to being one of my best tome users. She was decent for a few early missions as a Lance Flier, but by the time she promoted from level 10 Mage to Sage, she was already becoming one my best units even without an Emblem - unfortunately Micaiah is absent for a long time. When Micaiah returned, Chloé then had amazing support capabilities with staves, such as 5-space Obstructs and Rescues, and 4-space Warps. I didn’t use status-inflicting staves as much with her, as there weren’t many cases where I would’ve preferred a larger area of effect instead of the reliable staff Hit rate from Anna with Byleth. Micaiah further enhanced Chloé’s offensive prowess with extra Mag and the Thani tome, which is naturally much stronger than a Ridersbane against Great Knights. Also, Micaiah’s Great Sacrifice is an amazing healing ability with an easily-mitigated drawback; even if you can’t stay out of enemy range while at 1 HP, you could still protect her with Chain Guard or Bonded Shield for instance. Although it took a long time to afford Speedtaker as Chloé’s first inherited skill, it was worth the wait. I gave the Nova tome to Chloé in the hope that her Spd boosts would provide many quad-attack opportunities, but it didn’t end up mattering much. Chloé’s personal skill is also fairly easy to trigger, and +2 damage per hit is good on a fast unit, especially with a quad hit from Nova. 6. Amber Class: Lance Cavalier >>> Wolf Knight (Lance) Emblem: Sigurd (Dex +4, Def +4, Bld +3, Mov +1) Final Base Stats: HP 52, Bld 12 (capped), Str 29, Mag 4, Dex 25, Spd 27, Def 20, Res 11, Lck 26, Rating 154 Inherited Skills: Speedtaker (2000 SP), Speed +4 (1000 SP) 253 Battles, 149 Wins Even while in his initial class, Amber performed better than I expected. His personal skill often helped against high-Avoid enemies, and I chose the Wolf Knight class mostly for knives, which also contributed to his high Hit rates as they’re very accurate weapons. It was useful having a second knife user - primarily for the reliable and strong 1-2 range Silver Dagger, but it also provided chances for stacking poison on bosses. Otherwise Amber’s ranged options would’ve been limited to heavy and less-accurate Spears, or weak Javelins. The Wolf Knight’s Hobble skill almost never mattered, but it does pair well with Sigurd’s Canter (ideally with a Dancer as well) for 'hit and run' tactics. I never really ended up needing such tactics though, thanks to Zelkov & Corrin’s amazing crowd control. Sigurd was an obvious Emblem choice for my only Cavalry unit, and Momentum makes it easier to inflict poison on high-Def foes that might otherwise take 0 damage from daggers. However, that didn’t matter much as I had plenty of tome users. Momentum worked especially well with a Brave Lance, Ridersbane or Silver Greatlance - the latter was mainly used with Override, for maximum damage with that Engage Attack. Although in some cases Amber instead used a Ridersbane for Override, to one-hit kill multiple cavalry foes. Amber’s refined and engraved Brave Lance and Ridersbane were much better than Sigurd’s versions of those weapons. Speedtaker triggers for every defeated foe from multi-target Engage Attacks such as Override, so it was worth saving up SP for it - I sometimes kept lined-up enemies alive at low HP to maximise Speedtaker boosts: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=195. Amber was somewhat underwhelming for a while in the midgame when Sigurd was gone, but when Sigurd returned he quickly caught up in levels (eventually overtaking most units) and became one of my better units. Also, Sigurd’s boost to Bld helped with the heavy lances that Amber was often using, e.g. with getting Brave Lance quad-hits thanks to Speedtaker as well. My choice of Amber as Alear’s Pact Ring partner didn’t matter much, but I figured the extra +10 Avoid was more useful than most other units’ S-rank support bonuses. He could at least make good use of Boon of Elyos from Alear’s Engage+, with a refined and engraved Peshkatz for very reliable crit rates. 7. Jean Class: Martial Monk >>> Martial Master Emblem: Eirika (Mag +3, Dex +4, Lck +10) Final Base Stats: HP 42, Bld 7, Str 21, Mag 27, Dex 22, Spd 21, Def 22, Res 30, Lck 20, Rating 170 Inherited Skills: Speed +4 (1000 SP), Mentorship (250 SP) / Divine Pulse+ (500 SP, replaced Mentorship in lategame) 79 Battles, 65 Wins I hadn’t used Jean in my Hard run, but I expected great things from him based on previous FE games’ characters of the same archetype. I knew he wouldn’t be powerful until he had Flashing Fist Art (refined from the Silver-Spirit Art obtained in Chapter 14), and his eventual power also depended on having Eirika after Chapter 16. But it was worth the wait, as Eirika’s skills make Flashing Fist Art very powerful against any type of enemy. That applies especially to high-Def foes as their stat works against them, and the damage is even greater when Engaged and especially when quad-hitting. Low-Def enemies were also absolutely obliterated by Jean’s multiple hits on Player Phase. I never considered any other class, as I wanted both offense (Flashing Fist Art) and utility through Chain Guard and staves. Those utility functions made Jean useful right from the start, well before he gained that crucial weapon and Eirika. He also became surprisingly tanky thanks to Shielding Art and Eirika’s Gentility+, although he wasn’t well suited to Enemy Phase combat. Eirika was one of the trickier Emblems to use effectively, but I think Jean benefitted from all of her attributes - he had enough Str and Mag to competently use both her physical Engage Weapons and her magic Wind Sword, which was his only ranged attack. When Engaged, healing by dealing damage is also useful for regaining full HP for Chain Guard. I didn’t use Twin Strike much, as Flashing Fist Art often had more damage potential, e.g. by hitting 4 times. Eirika’s innate stat boosts included +10 Luck which was good for bolstering Flashing Fist Art’s reliability with Divine Pulse+. That meant I could save the Hit-boosting weapon engravings for other weapons. Before inheriting Divine Pulse+, I used Mentorship since Jean’s role was more support-focused than most, mainly before Eirika’s higher bond levels were unlocked. Once I had max-bond Eirika it was then more worthwhile for Jean to attack, and by that point I had plenty of other healing methods among my team anyway. Unlocking the higher bond levels also granted access to Sieglinde, which is a great Engage Weapon due to effective damage on Corrupted, i.e. almost every non-boss enemy in the lategame. It’s worth noting that some of Jean’s stats were essentially much higher due to Eirika’s skills - he was both bulkier and stronger than his stats alone would suggest. Here’s an example of the huge damage potential: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=214. 8. Jade Class: Axe Armour >>> General (Lance) Emblem: Ike (HP +7, Str +4, Def +5) Final Base Stats: HP 64, Bld 15, Str 29, Mag 11, Dex 25, Spd 13, Def 40, Res 14, Lck 10, Rating 157 Inherited Skills: Pair Up (2000 SP), Hit +15 (1000 SP) 169 Battles, 72 Wins In my Hard run I had used Louis as my General (also with Ike), who performed very well despite some Hit issues. Jade’s personal skill was inferior, and her growths aren’t as optimal for her class, but I figured that having too much Def (if I’d used Louis again) might be a problem by preventing more foes from attacking. However, I didn’t know that enemies on Maddening would still attempt chain attacks with a 0-damage main attacker against a Pair Up unit. Nevertheless, only some enemies are Backup units, and Jade’s lower Def meant she could get more enemies to attack her while using Ike’s Ragnell for 1-2 range and +5 Def. Her survivability against physical attacks was excellent once she triggered Ike’s Resolve+ below 75% HP, for +7 Def/Res. The Res boost wasn’t enough to make her safe against multiple magic attackers though. Pair Up was a massive boost to her survivability, making her very useful against groups of Backup foes. Jade’s offense generally wasn’t great, due to shaky accuracy until inheriting Hit+ (which was late in the game after Pair Up), and no doubling except on some sword-wielding enemies that have Triangle Adept. But while Engaged she could hit hard with Urvan, so she could at least deal respectable damage with Great Aether. Here’s an example of Jade at her absolute best, both defensively and offensively: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=233. I’m glad I chose a third tank to supplement my Avoid tanks Alear and Zelkov - there were quite a few situations where I needed 3 units to block a chokepoint, or to block multiple areas at once. The movement skills Reposition and Swap were also quite useful. I went Lance General for more accurate weapons than Axe General, and also because Ridersbane is one of the better effective-damage weapons. I ruled out swords, as the effective-damage swords (Wyrmslayer and Armourslayer) are less useful because bows and tomes exist. Also, Javelins are more reliable than Hand Axes, which mattered as Jade was using a Javelin regularly. I never really considered Great Knight for her class, as I wanted Ike’s Armoured bonuses and the break immunity, while also lacking the cavalry weakness. 9. Boucheron Class: Axe Fighter >>> Warrior Emblem: Roy (HP +10, Str +6, Res +3) Final Base Stats: HP 64, Bld 17, Str 25, Mag 1, Dex 28, Spd 27, Def 20, Res 12, Lck 10, Rating 140 Inherited Skills: Dual Assist (1000 SP), Speed +4 (1000 SP) 280 Battles, 111 Wins Boucheron has unusually low Str growth for his default class line, but I didn’t find it to be much of an issue - for instance, his personal skill regularly provided +2 damage per hit. Boucheron was initially relegated to Hand Axe chip damage and chain attacks on Player Phase, but he eventually became a solid all-around unit (decent offensively and defensively) when Roy finally returned. By the time he had enough support ranks to fix the accuracy of stronger axes, he was mostly using a 100-Hit weapon anyway: a Binding-engraved Iron Bow +5. That was his most reliable bow due to his C-rank bow cap as a Warrior, which is one reason why he was inferior to my other Warrior, Alcryst. But Boucheron at least had the same 8-range chain attacks with Dual Assist, when equipped with a Longbow. When Engaged with Roy, the level boost from Rise Above combined with the Speed +4 skill for decent doubling potential, at least against Draconic Hexed enemies. Roy’s Hold Out+++ and Binding Blade (+5 Def/Res) also made Boucheron more effective as a fourth tank, but he couldn’t compete with my 3 main tank units. Blazing Lion was mainly used as a backup chokepoint-creating method - flame terrain has a movement cost of 3 compared to 2 for fog, but it can only be used once per Engage, whereas Corrin’s Dragon Vein fog can be used every turn even without being Engaged. 10. Céline Class: Noble >>> Vidame Emblem: Celica (Str +3, Mag +5, Res +4) Final Base Stats: HP 39, Bld 6, Str 21, Mag 21, Dex 26, Spd 26, Def 16, Res 24, Lck 33, Rating 173 Inherited Skills: Alacrity (1000 SP), Speed +5 (2000 SP) 198 Battles, 121 Wins I mainly chose Céline due to her impressive performance on Hard, but this time she fell off more significantly after losing Celica - even when Celica returned, she was inferior to Anna and Chloé as a tome user. When combined with chain attacks, Alacrity at least allowed her to safely kill Generals or Great Knights that could counter, rather than just hitting them once with Thoron. I very rarely made use of her Str, as I had much better mage killers. Céline at least provided extra staff utility for when my other staff users needed to attack on a given turn. Her supportive role also included her personal skill that helped a few times in the earlygame, which was the only time I regularly used healing items. When Engaged with Celica, Echo was very useful for triggering absurd amounts of chain attacks. As you can give 4 actions per Player Phase to a single unit via Dance + Goddess Dance, that means you can use Echo for 8 rounds of chain attacks. Warp Ragnarok is one of the weaker Engage Attacks, so I mainly used it to hit bosses without missing or being countered. Although Céline was a bit underwhelming after the earlygame, I’m not sure who else I’d use instead if I did another run - I’d probably have to resist my tendency to stick with units that join early on. 11. Seadall Class: Dancer Emblem: None Final Base Stats: HP 48, Bld 10, Str 21, Mag 7, Dex 22, Spd 32, Def 19, Res 21, Lck 25, Rating 157 Inherited Skills: Canter+ (2000 SP), Mentorship (250 SP) / Quality Time+ (500 SP, replaced Mentorship in lategame) 4 Battles, 0 Wins Seadall used Dance at least 99% of the time, to the point where I’d mostly forgotten that he could Chain Guard. Mentorship was a useful support skill for a non-combat unit to benefit allies with, and Canter is amazing on a Dancer - among many other uses, it made it easy to position him for dance combos with Byleth’s Goddess Dance. Canter also helped Seadall avoid danger - he only had 4 battles in the whole run. But Seadall could’ve taken hits when necessary, thanks in part to Shielding Art and high Spd to avoid doubles. The free healing from Seadall’s personal skill worked well with Roy’s Hold Out+++ skill on Boucheron, and with bringing Jean/Framme back to full HP for Chain Guard. The +3 Spd from Special Dance was useful in combination with Corrin’s Draconic Hex to help allies deal with very fast enemies. In the lategame, Quality Time+ added even more healing. It’s hard to rank Seadall against other units due to his purely supportive role - although he’s low in this character list, I deployed him every time I could. I guess I ranked him low because he can only be useful himself when he’s within range of another unit that can be useful from their current position - that’s why Canter was so valuable. In other words, his own effectiveness was more context-dependent compared to other units, and that also depended on my other units being effective already. 12. Ivy Class: Wing Tamer >>> Lindwurm Emblem: None Final Base Stats: HP 44, Bld 9, Str 12, Mag 30, Dex 21, Spd 21, Def 21, Res 30, Lck 6, Rating 150 Inherited Skills: Alacrity (1000 SP), Speed +3 (500 SP) 106 Battles, 68 Wins I expected Ivy to be great again after my Hard run, but this time she struggled to keep up with my other tome users, especially in terms of Spd. Compared to Anna and Chloé, Ivy’s higher Bld wasn’t enough to offset that disadvantage, and higher Def didn’t matter much on a somewhat slow unit with a bow weakness. I had hoped she’d be able to inherit Speedtaker at least, but she was struggling to gain much SP. I don’t like the idea of keeping her default Emblem Lyn on her though, as she doesn’t have the Str for Lyn’s physical Engage Weapons. Ivy also has terrible Luck which makes her very vulnerable to crits, but this wasn’t much of an issue once I regained access to the Echoes engraving, which I applied to a Bolganone tome. Ivy’s personal skill didn’t matter much as she could just Elsurge high-Avoid foes. With Alacrity she had just barely enough Spd to double enemy Generals before they could counter, so she was at least reliable as a General killer (aided by chain attacks) and a powerful Thoron user. It was also helpful having another staff user for when my better tome users were attacking. 13. Diamant Class: Lord > Sword Fighter >>> Hero (Lance) Emblem: Marth (Str +3, Dex +4, Spd +4) Final Base Stats: HP 53, Bld 12, Str 23, Mag 5, Dex 21, Spd 28, Def 20, Res 14, Lck 18, Rating 141 Inherited Skills: Dual Assist (1000 SP), Speed +4 (1000 SP) 186 Battles, 102 Wins I didn’t know what to expect as I hadn’t used Diamant on Hard, but I assumed he would be good as one of the 4 main royals. I chose not to use his default class line as I didn’t expect to get much value from a chance-based healing skill (Sol), especially as I had so many other healing options. I also wanted 3 lance users rather than a third axe user - not only for the better accuracy, but also for Ridersbane and for dealing with the fast sword enemies that can be doubled due to their Triangle Adept skill. I chose the Hero class mainly for the Brave Assist skill, although in hindsight it may have been better to just replace Framme (my weakest unit overall) with an extra Backup unit, for the same purpose of having more chain attacks. Diamant’s personal skill paired well with useful weapons such as the Ridersbane, and made him very reliable with swords. It meant I didn’t need to use the Hit-boosting engravings on his weapons. His Str was disappointingly low, so I mainly used him for cavalry-slaying with Ridersbane, or with a refined Steel Sword against magic users. He was usually one of my first units to move on each Player Phase, so I could place him in Javelin range of several enemies for Brave Assist. Ideally he would’ve earned enough SP to upgrade to Dual Assist+, but I figured that Speed+ would help consistently rather than just increasing the chance of something. I had to fit Marth somewhere on my team, and I reasoned that since Marth is absent for so long, he should go on a unit that I wasn’t expecting to play a major role. Marth was more useful in the earlygame (up until his absence), with Blade-equipped Lodestar Rush dealing much-needed heavy damage to bosses. Although Diamant’s personal skill hinders Marth’s Perceptive, an Avoid-boosting skill isn’t as helpful when it only applies on Player Phase, and it isn’t enough of a boost to be reliable anyway. 14. Framme Class: Martial Monk >>> Martial Master Emblem: Leif (HP +7, Def +3, Bld +5) Final Base Stats: HP 37, Bld 6, Str 16, Mag 17, Dex 17, Spd 21, Def 14, Res 20, Lck 15, Rating 126 Inherited Skills: Speed +4 (1000 SP), Mentorship (250 SP) / Reposition (200 SP, replaced Mentorship in lategame) 31 Battles, 21 Wins Framme must’ve been RNG-blessed in my Hard run, as I expected much more from her - notice how much lower her stats are compared to my other units. I used her partly because I tend to stick with units that join early, and her personal skill was useful for giving Alear +10 Avoid in the earlygame at least. That became irrelevant once Alear had excessive Avoid, which was as early as obtaining the Dawn weapon engraving upon clearing Chapter 6. Framme was the only staff user until Jean joined, but Jean gradually overtook her in Mag, Def and Res, making him the better healer and also being bulkier thanks to Eirika’s skills. I figured Leif would be suitable for Framme mainly because of the Bld boost, to use Flashing Fist Art (9 Wt) with no Spd penalty so it would have more quad-hit potential, at least with external help such as Draconic Hex and Special Dance. I also figured that Leif’s defensive boosts would help Framme survive counter-attacks so she could actually make the follow-up hits. That worked out reasonably well, but even with Flashing Fist Art’s +5 Spd she wasn’t particularly fast. The bigger issue was her low Str which Leif doesn’t boost at all, and unlike Jean she lacked Eirika’s skills that enabled Jean’s massive damage with the same weapon. Framme’s low power was at least enough to KO tome users, but that isn’t saying much - merely Breaking tome users wouldn’t be very useful as better units should be able to one-round KO them with the right physical weapons. There’s another reason why I gave Leif to one of my weakest units: I found Leif to be one of the least effective Emblems, at least for my playstyle and my team. His defensive aspects are outclassed by Ike, and his set of Engage Weapons is hard to use effectively due to high Wt, low Hit, or magic damage in the Light Brand’s case. Even the Vantage skill had very limited usefulness for me, as I always aimed to finish off any enemies in range of my vulnerable units, rather than just leaving the enemies at low HP where Vantage could potentially kill them first on Enemy Phase. Once I had plenty of healers and passive healing methods, Framme was only useful as an extra Chain Guard user and staff supporter, e.g. with Obstruct. So she was usually my lowest priority for deployment after the earlygame, and I regret using her past that point - in hindsight it probably would’ve been better to use a third Warrior for even more chain attacks. On that note, chain attacks at least gave Framme some offensive uses even when she was dealing zero or near-zero damage herself. Compared to my other units she depended much more on external support to deal any decent damage, e.g. Alear’s personal skill or enemy debuffs such as poison and Corrin’s Draconic Hex. Here’s an uncommon example of Framme dominating against a non-magic enemy: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=259. ————— vii. Weapon Engravings ————— Some of the engravings had a big impact by making certain units’ roles much more effective, especially the big Avoid bonuses. For the few engravings that have significant drawbacks such as major Wt increases or Avoid drops, this rarely mattered as I was often able to just trade-equip units back to their other weapons after their action (see my notes on trade-equipping in the 'Difficulty Analysis' section). The following are the main weapons I used each engraving on, but some were briefly used on other weapons as well. Beginnings: Javelin +1 (until getting Nova in the lategame) mainly used by Jade / Nova +2 mainly used by Chloé. Jade appreciated the slight Hit boost as her accuracy wasn’t ideal, and Nova benefits from Hit, Mt and Crit with no extra Wt. However, there still weren’t many notable cases where I could actually quad-hit enemies with it. Echoes: Hand Axe +2 (from earlygame until getting Bolganone) mainly used by Boucheron / Bolganone +1 mainly used by Ivy. Boucheron was one of my best defensive units in the earlygame before I had reliable Avoid tanks, and as a lure on Enemy Phase he appreciated the crit immunity. Ivy benefitted from +50 Dodge due to her terrible Luck, although I tried to keep her away from any strong hits anyway. Holy: Libération +5 (until the Fire engraving was available) / Brave Lance +2 mainly used by Amber. For most of the game, Alear mainly switched between equipping Libération for kills or heavy damage, to a Dawn-engraved Iron Blade (+40 Avoid) for maximising survivability. Once Alear had better options later in the game, Amber at that point had enough Spd-boosting skills to quad-hit with the Brave Lance, so he liked the Mt boost with no drawbacks - the +20 Avoid also stacked well with support bonuses and Amber’s boosted Speed. Genealogy: Flashing Fist Art +4 (until lategame) used by Jean / Ridersbane +3 used by Diamant or Jade. The Mt boost with only a +1 Wt drawback was useful for Flashing Fist Art, as Brave-effect weapons can benefit the most from added damage per hit. The Hit boost was to ensure it could reliably hit 4 times, although later I had Jean inherit Divine Pulse+ for that purpose, once his Luck was sufficiently high. Then I moved this engraving to one of the 3 Ridersbanes I was using, as effective-damage weapons are also a good choice for increased Mt and Hit. This made Diamant much better at fighting cavalry such as high-Avoid Wolf Knights, as it stacked with +15 Hit from his personal skill. Binding: Thunder (until Roy returned) used by Céline and Chloé / Iron Bow +5 used by Boucheron. The +8 Wt is why I put it on a weapon that can’t double and that outranges most weapons to avoid counter-attacks. It also could’ve gone on one of Jade’s weapons since a General doesn’t care much about Spd. When Roy returned, Boucheron became much more effective by mainly using the engraved Iron Bow. As he’s capped at C-rank bows as a Warrior, I wanted a very accurate weapon (a +5 Iron weapon is very reliable) that would also have good Mt for heavy damage to fliers. The -30 Avoid hardly mattered as Boucheron was synced with Roy who gives the Hold Out skill, and I could often just trade-equip Boucheron with his other weapons after he used the Bow. Blazing: Killing Edge +3 used by Alear (until Fire engraving was available to replace it on that weapon) / Peshkatz +2 used by Amber. I always prefer to stack more Crit on weapons that already have high Crit, as the goal is to make them as reliable as possible for getting kills or damage thresholds that wouldn’t be possible with any other weapons. With this engraving, the Killing Edge was then used by Alear more often than Libération when going for kills or trying to maximise damage. When available, the Fire engraving was superior for this purpose as it has less of a Mt drop and also +20 Avoid for Alear who was one of my two Avoid tanks. After that replacement, Amber then used Blazing for a high-crit Peshkatz +2, which could gain even more Crit from Boon of Elyos since Amber was my Pact Ring partner. Sacred: Brave Axe +2 used by Alcryst. Alcryst could easily quad-hit anything as he was synced with Lyn, so I wanted to make the four hits reliable with the +40 Hit, and +20 Crit over four hits provides a good chance of getting kills in cases where extra damage is necessary. This weapon was best used while adjacent to Alear for +3 damage per hit, and against bosses with -4 Def from Corrin’s Draconic Hex. Radiance: Ridersbane +4 used by Amber or Jade, mainly depending on which of them were deployed. The +3 Mt would be ideal for Brave-effect weapons if not for the +15 Wt, so it was better suited to slow units; Jade as a General doesn’t mind that drawback. Amber sometimes used it because of the effective damage combined with +3 Mt and Sigurd’s Momentum skill, which enabled him to reach one-hit kill thresholds against many cavalry foes. That was especially useful for one-hit killing multiple cavalry foes in one Override attack - here’s the 'perfect Override’ clip that was also linked in a previous section: https://youtu.be/mtwW1CNGs-Y?t=38. Dawn: Iron Blade (until obtaining a Silver Blade) / Silver Blade / Wille Glanz +2 (final mission only), all used by Alear. The +40 Avoid makes this engraving amazing, and although I rarely saw any need for smash attacks, it seemed reasonable to maximise Avoid on smash weapons as the enemy always strikes first against them. The high Avoid made the Iron/Silver Blade Alear’s usual weapon of choice when luring groups of enemies by herself, or when she was adjacent to allies but I wanted the AI to target anyone but Alear - e.g. because my other units were equipped with weapons better suited for counterattacks on Enemy Phase. The -3 Mt didn’t matter as much on weapons that can’t double, and since these weapons were most often used for luring, it was often ideal to leave some enemies alive anyway, so my other units could finish them off for exp. Awakening: Iron Dagger +4 used by Zelkov. With only a -1 Mt drawback for +30 Hit and Avoid, this engraving was incredibly effective. Before Zelkov reached 2000 SP to inherit Dual Support, it was one of the main reasons why he was nearly unhittable even without terrain bonuses, such as the fog he could create from Corrin’s Dragon Vein. The Avoid also made Zelkov my best mage killer, being able to double and kill at 1-2 range without taking damage. As Zelkov was my best Enemy Phase unit, it was useful having 100% Hit against almost everything since he fought so many enemies; even a slightly lower hit rate could’ve added up to several impactful misses over so many fights. The reliable hit rate also ensured that poison status was spread to many enemies, and it helped when fighting enemy Covert units that gained +60 Avoid from Zelkov’s own fog. Fates: Peshkatz +3 used by Zelkov. As the damage from Zelkov’s Iron Dagger +4 fell off a bit throughout the game, and high-Def enemies couldn’t be poisoned with 0 damage from the Dagger, Zelkov greatly benefitted from a stronger weapon that could consistently get kills thanks to the +30 Crit. This engraving also provides +10 Avoid - while that’s lower than the +30 from Zelkov’s Iron Dagger, sometimes it was just the right amount to turn an enemy’s 0% hit rate into a low non-zero chance, so that the AI would actually attack and get countered. Academy: Thoron +1 used by Céline, Chloé or Ivy, mainly depending on which of them were deployed, as there was some overlap in their roles. Anna was stuck with Elthunder due to her B-rank tome cap as a High Priest. Since Thoron is a powerful attack that can’t double, it’s important for it to consistently hit. The reliability from +30 Hit still mattered when using Thoron from beyond an enemy’s counterattack range, because in those cases it was often intended to weaken them (in conjunction with chain attacks) so my next attacker could finish off the enemy without being countered. Also, the +2 Wt didn’t matter much on a single-hit weapon that’s already very heavy for tome users, and I often trade-equipped after using it anyway. Fire: Killing Edge +3 used by Alear. Although it doesn’t provide quite as much Crit as the Fates engraving, the +20 Avoid contributed to a nice balance of offensive and defensive bonuses when using Alear as an Enemy Phase lure. It meant she could reliably kill several enemies in a single Enemy Phase while being reasonably safe due to low enemy hit rates. This was particularly helpful with the group of enemies in the middle room of Chapter 25, although I had above-average luck with the RNG there. ————— viii. Somniel, Smithy and Shopping ————— To maximise your units’ potential in each battle, you unfortunately need to spend a lot of time in the Somniel between every mission. It was nowhere near as tedious as my Monastery routine for Three Houses Maddening, but I wish they’d make all the gameplay-affecting activities skippable. I complete all the gameplay-affecting activities every time, as I don’t want any extra difficulty in battles to be the result of simply not spending as much time playing. However, it wasn’t necessary since Maddening isn’t as tough as many other FE games' highest difficulty (see the 'Comparison to Other FE Highest Difficulties' section). Final reserves of Bond Fragments and gold: My run finished with 17,982 Bond Fragments remaining (ignoring the Update Bonus that I refused to use), despite the heavy investment into Lyn’s bond levels. I had 8,059 gold left when I was satisfied that I had everything I needed for the final boss. I’m not sure how much gold Anna earned with her personal skill throughout the game, but it would’ve been several times that much. Item Shop: My first gold-spending priority (before anything else such as the Armoury) was to buy enough Heal staves that I wouldn’t run out, then Master/Second Seals when any of my units were nearly ready to change classes, then the limited Freeze staves, then enough Obstruct staves for all my deployed staff users, then a Fracture staff if I’d nearly depleted my only one left. As a lower priority I then bought HP Tonics for my 3 main tanks: Alear, Zelkov and Jade. I eventually bought more finite-supply staves—Warp, Rescue and Entrap—but I never depleted my stock of any of those. After receiving 50,000 gold at the end of Chapter 20, I no longer had to be as frugal, so I bought all types of Tonics for most of my units that regularly engaged in combat. Armoury: Usually the Item Shop was a higher priority when I was low on gold, as most units had enough basic weapons - but some specific weapons were a high priority, especially the 3-range weapons (Longbow and the Thunder-type tomes). In the earlygame I bought some high-accuracy weapons such as the Compact Axe for Boucheron, to compensate for not having maximum Hit support bonuses at that point. Javelins and Hand Axes were also a high priority due to 1-2 range and not having much of a drawback in this game. Ridersbanes were the only effective-damage weapons I needed other than bows and wind tomes; not much need for Armour or Dragon effectiveness when I had several tome and bow wielders. Donations: I raised the donation level to 2 for Firene, Brodia and Solm, all as soon as possible - skipped Elusia as those missions are mostly later in the game. I had more than enough Bond Fragments, so it was mainly for the extra Ingots. Anna’s personal skill eventually made up for the donation costs, and when refining weapons I was usually limited by a lack of Ingots rather than gold. Smithy: For engravings, see the 'Weapon Engravings' section. For refining, I first prioritised weapons that would be used the most and would consistently hit twice, e.g. Libération, Zelkov’s Iron Dagger, Longbows. Then I refined effective-damage weapons to maximise their potential to reach significant damage thresholds. Due to diminishing returns with higher levels of refinement, I only went up to +3 or higher with a few impactful weapons such as Libération, Killing Edge, Ridersbanes, Iron Dagger, Iron Bow. Flea Market: As soon as the cheapest gift items were available (10 or 20 gold each), I maxed out Alear’s support level with every unit in my party. This was worthwhile due to Alear’s Dual Support skill from synced Lucina, and Anna’s personal skill easily covered the gift costs. Ring Chamber: From most of the Emblems I only created one Bond Ring - the stat boosts are small enough that I didn’t feel the need to try for optimal Bond Rings. Once I had the 12 Emblem Rings, only 2 of my 14 units were still using Bond Rings at that point anyway. Arena: For the guaranteed 30 exp that could be gained here between each mission, I first prioritised units that were near promotion or reclassing, or close to advanced class level 5 if the class skill was important. Then I mostly gave exp to Alear and Zelkov despite their higher levels than my other units - this was because they faced the most combat, so every stat point mattered more often. Normally there would be diminishing returns when making units even more overlevelled, but it was very useful having enough Spd to double even the fastest enemies, and every point of damage helps on units that weaken groups of enemies during Enemy Phase. I generally had more than enough Bond Fragments to cap every deployed unit’s bond level with their Emblems as soon as possible, both for the level 10 and level 20 caps. I also had more than enough Fragments to reach the bond levels needed for inheriting skills. Most of the Fragments were used on Lyn due to her potent skills to inherit: Speed+ and Speedtaker. Café: For cooking I always chose the Potted Casserole (Spd +2, Def +1, Res +1) or Candied Fruits (Mag +1, Spd +2, Res +1). I gave the packed meals to Céline when her Emblem Celica was available (due to Celica’s Favourite Food skill), otherwise they went to Zelkov as he was my main tank and he always had enough inventory space. Farmyard: Exclusively for dogs once I had enough of them, as they’re the only animals that give Ingots. Training Yard: I always chose push-ups for +2-3 Strength - HP wasn’t as useful for Alear with her extremely high Avoid. Also, when using weapons such as the Killing Edge in particular, every extra point of damage was significant. Also, I always played the highest available difficulty of Wyvern Ride for Bond Fragments. Fishing: I always did the maximum amount of fishing for Bond Fragments, with the highest available level of rod. Recreation (Pool, Stables, Orchard): For support points I first prioritised units based on their amount of expected combat (e.g. high priority for my tanks Zelkov and Jade), then on factors such as Hit support for axe users or other users of inaccurate weapons. Alear was the lowest priority since she could easily reach A-rank with everyone once the Flea Market opened and had the cheapest gifts. ————— ix. Allocation of Permanent Stat-Boost Items ————— HP - Seraph Robe: Mainly went to Jade; Alear and Zelkov didn’t need HP as much since they tanked by avoiding most attacks, whereas Jade tanked by taking minimal damage. Str - Energy Drop: Zelkov. With the 1-2 range of Daggers, plus his near-invincibility and high Spd for doubling, he dealt out the most attacks of any unit. So he got the most value from extra damage, to weaken many enemies on Enemy Phase so my other units could finish them off. Higher Str also helped to ensure non-zero knife damage against high Def, in order to inflict poison on bulky enemies. Mag - Spirit Dust: Chloé, as she was my fastest and overall best tome user. She was also synced with Micaiah who provides the devastating Thani tome, so I wanted to maximise her offensive prowess. Dex - Secret Book: Céline. Most units didn’t have any major Hit issues once most of the support ranks were attained, so I just increased Céline’s chance of triggering Ignis. Spd - Speedwing: Zelkov. His Spd growth is relatively low for a Thief, so I patched it up with Speedwings and Lyn’s Speed +4 skill. Dealing double attacks was most important for him, due to the his role as an Enemy Phase lure for weakening groups of enemies. Lck - Goddess Icon: Anna, to get gold more often from her personal skill. This stat also contributed to her eventual perfect accuracy with Byleth’s Divine Pulse+ skill. Def - Dracoshield: Jade, for the same reasons as Seraph Robe for HP. Res - Talisman: Ivy, but they would’ve gone to Chloé if I’d known that Chloé would turn out to be the much better tome user in my run. This stat rarely mattered much; I either avoided enemy tomes through high Avoid, or killed them before their counter (e.g. with Brave-type weapons or Alcryst’s Alacrity), or counter-attacked them with units such as Alcryst who wouldn’t gain much from extra Res. Mov - Boots: Alear used these. As an Avoid tank she often had to move far away from the main group so that enemies would only focus on her and Zelkov. Also, as enemy fliers can be more threatening when you’re depending on terrain or distance to protect units, it was sometimes important to reach enemy fliers with the Parthia bow from Lucina. Lucina also provides Bonded Shield, Dual Assist+ and Dual Support, all of which rely on positioning. Alear’s strong personal skill was another reason why it was important for her to reach certain allies to be adjacent to them. ————— End of Report ————— If anyone has read through this entire report, let me know so I can congratulate you on your achievement… although you won’t get any Bond Fragments for it.

Thanks for sharing your Maddening experience - I'd be curious to know whether there were any skills/classes you struggled to unlock within a reasonable time? Also, I can't believe I never realised you could stack multiple cooking boosts per month! And yeah, your point about the non-scaling makes me think that the developers should have considered scaling skill and class experience, not just level experience.

Thanks, and good luck with your run - I'm sure you'll have no trouble. One reason is that I originally expected to have Ingrid as a flier, until I remembered about needing a Dancer. I also planned my 3 cavalry classes in advance, and out of those, Annette and Ashe both had very long-ranged attacks for the same hit-and-run Canto tactics that fliers are good for. Their attack range was such that they were rarely inconvenienced by terrain. Many of my remaining units were magic-based, due to my tendency to favour magic users in any FE game. That left very few character slots for possible fliers, and out of those remaining units I think Sylvain got the most value out of his non-flying class (War Master). Well, I wanted A+ Flying as soon as possible since I underestimated how overkill her Avoid stat would be - also, since I could safely place her in enemy range in front of my other units, there weren't many situations where I actually would've needed extra Move to reach someone for a Dance. If I really needed to Dance a specific unit, I had some of the movement arts such as Draw Back and Reposition. However, I agree that Move+1 on Dancers is very good, so in hindsight I probably should've continued that Riding training.

If I were to redo this run with the difference of no excessive grinding, I'd have the advantage of knowing which classes and skills actually ended up being useful - therefore I'd be able to focus purely on unlocking the useful ones, so I'd get them sooner than in this run. As such, I don't think that particular change would make things much harder. While Ingrid would start out as a less reliable dodge-tank, she could take some hits anyway - not to mention the abundant Pulses for insurance. Also, most of my characters' levels stayed well below enemy levels due to the harsh experience scaling. I'd just have to play more carefully like I've done in FE games without rewind mechanics, and I'd probably use more of my old turtling tactics. Thus, by playing the way I did in previous games, I'm sure I'd have no major issues completing a no-grind Maddening run. I really wish the game had a cap on skill and class experience per unit for each mission, like it does with Dancer level-experience. Without such caps I struggle to resist the temptation to exploit things. I'm glad you agree that this mode can be exhausting - I attribute that to the Monastery and all the other tedious things I couldn't bear to skip between story missions. That's why I'm now relaxing with my Hard Classic run of Silver Snow. It feels ridiculously easy going back to this difficulty, even with much weaker character builds.

Ah, those are some very different class choices than mine - out of those I've only used Dancer Ferdinand (in the Crimson Flower path), as I recognised his Avoid-stacking potential back then. It was annoying that he kept gaining HP on level-ups, which cancelled his ability. My team was still physical in the majority, but I've always favoured magic units in FE games due to the lower Res of most enemies. The relative frailty of most magic users was less of an issue in this game, partly because of all the range-increasing options!

In that case, I guess it really helped that I used all the units originally from my house. As a personal playstyle preference I always use all of them no matter which house, so I try to find ways to make all of them effective - I think Ashe took the most work in this run. In Ch13 I didn't have much trouble reuniting my separated units despite their starting positions. Unfortunately I can't remember many specifics of how I played at the start, as it was quite a while ago. I do recall resetting/Pulsing once or twice to avoid a Poison Strike archer hit.

I actually don't recall any troubles in Ch13 at all - what's the main issue with this chapter? For me the toughest was probably Ferdinand + Lysithea's Paralogue, as it was a huge map with constant reinforcements. Also had some slight difficulties going for the Death Knight kill on his first encounter, mostly due to RNG. Yeah, I had the same psychological conflict with mid- to late-game Monastery grinding, as I also knew it was unnecessary to optimise everything when I already had such powerful units. As for the Divine Pulses, I'm now seeing conflicting messages - I had 10 despite completing Sothis' Paralogue, which is where I got the first Knowledge Gem for grinding. Yeah, it actually was quite amusing to watch her go from a struggling unit to an invincible one that could take on entire armies. I know, but that was just one factor among the many others I mentioned - that's why I specified that I mainly did the excessive grinding to test the game's limits with grinding potential. I had no intention of impressing random people online with the run itself, but I hoped it would at least be interesting and helpful to some. It's also why I mentioned that much of the grinding didn't actually affect the difficulty, especially with all my unused abilities which I learned "just in case". The experience grinding only had a major impact with the main healers + Ingrid, and it's not like their higher levels were the difference between completing the run or struggling. Overall, my point is that I'm not a bad player who actually needed to grind so much to win! Right now I'm too exhausted to play Maddening again, so I don't think it would prove or achieve much to re-attempt it - it would also be hard to draw the line between what counts as grinding or non-grinding gameplay, as I'm sure people all have different views on that.

This long report (12,899 words) is essentially spoiler-free as I don’t cover individual chapters or anything story-related. It covers my first completed Maddening Classic run in Three Houses. It doesn’t cover my specific gameplay for particular chapters, but I discuss some of my general strategies, long-term planning and a summary of each character’s overall performance. I’m sure there are plenty of advanced players who know a lot of my discussed methods and much more, but hopefully this post is of interest to anyone who is thinking about doing a first Maddening run, or anyone who wants to know how particular characters can perform certain roles on this difficulty (mostly Blue Lions characters, but there are enough similarities to the others). It also serves as a showcase of the grinding potential in this game - my run was only 'efficient' in the sense of making things easier; it was extremely inefficient in terms of real time and turn count. The high turn counts were mostly in the missions where I did any significant grinding. Most of the grinding was completely unnecessary, and a lot of it didn’t affect the difficulty at all, e.g. grinding skills and abilities that I never ended up using. However, I did this to test the grinding potential in this game, and also just in case the difficulty decided to spike up later in the game. But as discussed in the "Downhill Difficulty Curve" section, that wasn’t the case. ————— Contents ————— i. Restrictions and Previous Paths ii. The Downhill Difficulty Curve iii. Comparison to Other FE Highest Difficulties iv. Unnecessary Grinding: Monastery etc v. In-Battle Grinding Methods vi. Divine Pulse techniques (level-ups and battle RNG) vii. Saint Statues: Renown spending viii. Character Summaries (with video) ix. Allocation of Permanent Stat Boosters ————— i. Restrictions and Previous Paths ————— Summary: Maddening Classic, not NG+, blind run of Blue Lions, offline, all possible recruitments. This was started from a fresh file, not NG+. It was a completely blind run of Dimitri’s path; I didn’t know anything about this path, although I could make certain assumptions based on my previous 2 paths. My previous 2 paths were completed on Hard Classic: Edelgard’s Crimson Flower followed by Claude’s Verdant Wind. Since I prefer to figure things out myself, one of my main restrictions was a knowledge restriction. Thus, I’ve never looked at anyone else’s gameplay for any part of Three Houses, and I’ve also avoided reading any discussions about it. Therefore I didn’t know some things such as the exact Attack Speed formula, although it didn’t matter much - I had a rough idea of it anyway. The only things I’ve read are a few Monastery guides: Greenhouse info so I could farm Speed Carrots, Tea Time guides to boost Charm, requirements for character recruitment, and characters’ liked gift items so I could optimally refill their motivation bars and boost support levels. Apart from the knowledge restriction, I also avoided online features, and I didn’t use any of the special stat-boosters that appear in Byleth’s room as part of the DLC, as I generally avoid using gameplay-advantage DLC in FE games. I avoided the extra auxiliary battles (ones with the yellow exclamation mark), but I recruited Anna and completed her Paralogue mission. I never used Anna after that mission though. I mainly recruited her for the sake of full recruitment; I obtained every possible character in the Blue Lions path. For the most part, I wanted to play Maddening as though it had been available from the game’s release. ————— ii. The Downhill Difficulty Curve ————— The main differences in Maddening mode: - Higher enemy levels: Level 8 - 50 from the first to final mission. - More enemies and reinforcements. - Most reinforcements move on the same turn they appear. - Enemies can have different weapons/items. - Enemies have more/better abilities. - Greatly reduced level-experience gains. Despite all the changes it wasn’t particularly challenging after the early game, so most of my grinding of skills and abilities turned out to be unnecessary. One reason why it was harder at first was because of the extra enemy abilities, particularly Poison Strike (given to all archer classes) and Pass (on all Thieves/Assassins). In the early game you won’t have any reliable dodge-tanks to negate the threat of Poison Strike, so even Dedue can be worn down by multiple archers on Enemy Phase. However, Dedue doesn’t mind being at 1 HP in situations where none of the enemies can damage him with attacks/Gambits. As for Pass, this is another early-game threat since it can greatly restrict the safe movement options of your units that are vulnerable to being killed. Later on there’s access to more long-range and Canto options to deal with such enemies, and some of the frail support units can eventually help from a distance with Physic etc. Apart from Poison Strike and Pass, most of the other Maddening enemy abilities were much easier to deal with - with some abilities it was because they appeared later in the game, by which time I had many overpowered units. The greater number of enemies didn’t make much difference as they were mostly spread far apart, and there are barely any turn-limit missions in this game. High enemy density would be more threatening than total enemy numbers, but those situations can be handled with the offensive Gambits that hit more than 2 spaces (e.g. Blaze, Assault Troop, Resonant Lightning). The movement prevention from the Rattled status is what makes them so effective in such situations. Here’s a Paralogue screenshot showing the usefulness of Gambits in these situations - notice all the Rattled status icons: https://i.imgur.com/hW77FEe.jpg I didn’t notice much difference with the types of weapons and magic used by enemies on Maddening; this had much less impact than their better stats and abilities. They mostly had plain silver weapons - it’s not like Fates: Conquest where part of the difficulty on Lunatic was due to enemies’ variety of effective and special weapons. The most noticeable Maddening difference throughout the whole game was the reduced level-experience gain, which allows enemies in the main story missions to maintain quite a level advantage. It’s much harder to grind in the early game before you get various Saint Statue bonuses from spending Renown, such as the double Class Exp and the four Exp +5% bonuses to start with. You also start with very limited Battle Points for extra battles, and you won’t have a Knowledge Gem or Experience Gem for a while. Magic users also start with very few spells and fewer uses of them, which limits their grinding. Even in the early game, almost all bosses are shockingly easy even on Maddening. This is partly due to an issue that makes the whole game easier than many other FE games’ highest difficulty: there are so many ways to outrange enemies, e.g. Bowrange+ skills, bow combat arts, Thoron, Caduceus Staff, Thyrsus staff, and eventually Magic Range+ skills. Also, many bosses have only 1-range attacks, which is pitiful compared to other FE games where it’s rare to attack bosses without a risk of counterattack. I really thought Maddening mode would give more bosses the Counterattack ability. But then there’s also the fact that Gambits can’t be counterattacked in any way. So even against bosses with the Commander ability that greatly reduces Gambit damage, you can still rack up some free damage before delivering a safe finishing attack. That’s how I dealt with the first Death Knight encounter; I finished him with a very strong Knightkneeler combat art from Dimitri. The downhill difficulty curve was also due to the very generous amount of Divine Pulses: you can eventually have 10 on Maddening. However, even in the early game with only 3 Pulses, I never had a situation of using them all up and then making a fatal error that would lead to a reset. Although I did reset a few times in the first few turns of some early-game missions, that was mainly due to some bad RNG making me waste some Pulses, so I didn’t want to risk playing out most of a mission with hardly any Pulses left. Thus, one main challenge of the early game is that you have very few Pulses while your units have unreliable Hit and Avoid, since they haven’t had a chance to grind for skill ranks and potent abilities. This is also because enemies start with high-level Prowess skills (e.g. Lv4 Sword Prowess) which gives them a notable Hit and Avoid advantage when combined with their higher stats from their level advantage. As such, I initially used a lot of combat arts such as Dimitri’s Tempest Lance. Apart from increasing Hit, the added power from combat arts also helped a lot before I was able to grind several units to the point of becoming reliable one-round killers. By mid-game I wasn’t using offensive combat arts that often, other than the range-boosting bow arts. The movement arts such as Draw Back and Reposition are also especially useful for avoiding dangerous enemies. The initial scarcity of Divine Pulses also contributes to the early-game challenge for another reason: they help against reinforcements, which move on their turn of appearance on Maddening. I’ve always disliked the idea of instant-moving reinforcements in FE games - even with a rewind mechanic, it’s cheap difficulty since you can’t be completely prepared for them the first time, thus wasting Pulses on trial-and-error. Although their spawn locations are often made clear, there are some ridiculous ones such as Meteor/Bolting mages. Due to the threat of reinforcements I was quite cautious about where I moved my less durable units; even Dedue wouldn’t be safe if they happened to be mages. The early game also has a lack of good battalions; I placed fairly high priority on Authority grinding so I could use the better ones (C rank and above) once they were available. The higher-ranked battalions provide some huge stat boosts, which is another reason why the difficulty falls off after early game. The Gambits were less of a factor, but they were crucial in situations with high enemy density, as noted earlier. Despite so many enemies having battalions, my units were very rarely targeted with Gambits, let alone actually being hit by them. Enemy Gambits basically always had very low hit rates against me, so I had the option to Divine Pulse and then move the RNG if a Gambit hit led to a death; this very rarely happened though. I never had any notable money issues even in the early game, despite the frequent use of combat arts with a durability cost of 4 or 5 uses. I held back on using combat arts with the weapons that require rarer materials to repair them, i.e. the materials that can’t be purchased. I was still using forged Iron weapons in the late game, as I often had enough damage output from various abilities. My use of broken weapons for some types of grinding also helped with money efficiency, as broken weapons can be used infinitely (see the "In-Battle Grinding Methods" section). I ended up with 385,711 gold on the final mission. ————— iii. Comparison to Other FE Highest Difficulties ————— Every FE game’s differences between difficulties are listed here: https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Difficulty Out of the ten or so main-series FE games I’ve completed, the ones I haven’t yet tried on the highest difficulty are Binding Blade, Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones. I’m sure I’d be capable of doing those ones when I have time. One of my main thoughts on difficulty is that rewind mechanics (such as Divine Pulse) should be more limited if they remain in future FE games, e.g. a maximum of 3. Perhaps Classic mode should completely remove rewinds regardless of the chosen difficulty, as Classic is about being faithful to the older games. However, this issue depends on the level of significant RNG in any particular game, e.g. how high the enemy crit rates are. Three Houses includes many high-crit enemy classes such as War Masters with Crit +20, which may partly explain why they retained a rewind mechanic. This list only includes the hard modes I’ve completed, and the comparisons are to Three Houses (3H) on Maddening. The order is from hardest to easiest, and it’s just a subjective difficulty ranking based on my own experiences. 1. Awakening: Lunatic+ Classic. It’s very restrictive on how you need to play, and it seems to necessitate excessive grinding to make a few characters very overpowered. I don’t like the way difficulty was handled in this game, as it’s much too easy on the lower difficulties, while the Lunatic difficulties seem to require heavy exploitation of busted gameplay mechanics, e.g. pair-up and the huge level-up potential even from lower-level enemies. At least 3H Maddening fixed the issue of grinding level-ups from lower-level enemies, although it perhaps went too far the other way. 2. Fates: Conquest Lunatic Classic. It was a satisfying challenge that rewarded my long-term planning. I think Conquest handled difficulty better than the other games on this list, as it was more about strategising to deal with enemies that were dangerous due to their positions and/or abilities. Unlike 3H it wasn’t about restricting experience which would encourage tedious grinding, and there were very limited grinding opportunities in Conquest anyway - I liked that design choice. Also, many of the enemy positions and abilities were designed to punish or restrict tactics such as turtling and luring (e.g. Lunge chains, Seal Def), and there were many interesting map designs and objectives that added to the challenge. The difficulty was fairly consistent until it spiked in the last few chapters, which introduce potent enemy-exclusive skills. 3. Radiant Dawn: Hard mode. It’s called Maniac mode in the Japanese version. Like Three Houses the difficulty decreased after the early game, but for different reasons relating to the game’s chapter structure. For most units there was less potential to become overpowered, compared to 3H. As with older FE games, the difficulty mostly came from long missions that tested my endurance, in terms of not making any fatal tactical errors over many turns. 4. Three Houses: Maddening Classic (Blue Lions, non-NG+). It’s somewhat low in this list due to the downhill difficulty curve, as discussed in the previous section. I doubt there would be much difficulty difference in the other story paths, as Part 1 gives plenty of time for units to become overpowered in various ways, e.g. offensively or defensively (see the "Character Summaries" section). The difficulty isn’t as hard as its name suggests - the only thing I found remotely maddening was a group of Meteor/Bolting reinforcements near the end. 5. Fates: Birthright and Revelation Lunatic Classic. Even if you don’t take advantage of the generous grinding opportunities, these paths on Lunatic Classic are so much easier than Conquest. They didn’t offer much of an interesting challenge, as it was generally too easy to power through the enemies without having to think too much. 6. Echoes: Hard Classic. Only 2 difficulty settings in this game, it really could’ve done with a higher one. The introduction of a rewind mechanic (Mila’s Turnwheel) takes away much of the challenge that would come from player errors and having to adapt to RNG outcomes. The gameplay balance was a bit weird, but there were enough tools to deal with any challenges the game could offer. 7. Path of Radiance: Hard mode (English version). Relatively easy, but it doesn’t really count since there’s also the Japan-exclusive Maniac mode; I would’ve played that mode if I had access to it. ————— iv. Unnecessary Grinding: Monastery etc ————— Although the downhill difficulty curve made my excessive grinding for skills and abilities completely unnecessary, it was still interesting to discover how much grinding was possible (see the "Grinding Methods" section). The grinding potential is one reason why Maddening was overall much easier than most other FE games I’ve played on the highest difficulty. Grinding for powerful abilities early on (e.g. Death Blow and Fiendish Blow) was one of the ways I greatly mitigated the challenge. I recruited all possible characters, which allowed me to complete all the Paralogues available in this path. I also made good use of my Battle Points for grinding in auxiliary/quest battles, whenever I chose Battle rather than Explore. I never chose Rest, and I only used a few Seminars early on; most of the time I alternated between Explore and Battle. The Explore sessions were initially focused on building supports and Faculty Training to reach the thresholds for recruiting all characters from the other houses. Faculty Training in Reason and Faith was my first priority, to get Byleth started as a magic user - I was patient enough to always reset for Great results. The early Explore sessions were also important for grinding my Professor Level. I bought all the fishing bait and waited until the first 'Fistfuls of Fish' event to use it all, to get the most professor points out of the bait. After Byleth eventually reached my desired skill levels in Reason, Faith and Authority, I then used most of my Activity Points on tournaments for completely excessive money grinding. As a result I had 385,711 gold at the final mission, which was *after* spending quite a lot on forging all the best weapons just for that mission. I also spent one Activity Point per month on a Spd-boosting dish from the Head Chef, as +1 Spd has more potential impact than any other stat. As for permanent Spd boosts, in the Greenhouse I always planted five Pale-Blue Flower Seeds and used the best available Cultivation option - this gave me the desired Speed Carrot most of the time. To assist my early-game supplies in particular, I favoured Group Task pairings with higher star-ratings, as they’re more likely to get a Perfect result for maximum gold and Smithing Stones. It didn’t matter that I was missing out on Group Task support-building between characters that hadn’t maxed out their supports, as it’s very easy to achieve all maximum supports among the roster of a particular house, in this case the Blue Lions characters. I never ran out of the most common forging materials, as I regularly topped up my supplies of the purchasable ones. For the non-purchasable forging materials, I went for Armour Breaks on most Giant Beasts whenever it wasn’t too inconvenient. With the Instructing I didn’t use Sauna boosts at all, and none of my units had any trouble reaching my desired skill levels, although Dimitri only reached S+ Lances (for an extra Lancefaire) right near the end. When I had units on the verge of reaching significant skill levels (e.g. to get a new spell or combat art), I would sometimes reset a few times until the RNG granted enough Great/Perfect instructing gains. In the early game I mainly focused my units’ Goals and Instructing sessions on skills that would provide the most immediate benefits, such as new magic and important combat arts. As mentioned earlier in the "Downhill Difficulty Curve" section, Authority was also a high priority for most units - this was especially for units that were below C in that skill. After various units became effective/overpowered in their roles by around mid-game, I focused their Goals and Instructing on longer-term goals such as unlocking Advanced and Master Classes. Most of the Master Classes require movement skills such as Riding and Flying, and most of the grinding in those skills was gained through Goals, Instructing and Group Tasks rather than actually battling in mounted or flying classes. This included Ingrid’s A+ in Flying for Alert Stance+. Overall, I underestimated how much potential skill experience can be gained throughout the game without grinding, so many units were eventually training completely unused skills for no particular reason. With the benefit of hindsight, I could have trained my magic users to obtain class certifications that would permanently boost their base Str, for the purpose of reducing AS penalties from equipment weight. However, it wasn’t much of an issue since they mostly equipped light or weightless accessories, e.g. Magic Staff or Rings. ————— v. In-Battle Grinding Methods ————— The methods that I discuss here involve keeping 1 or 2 last enemies alive for as long as possible, so you can get the most class experience, skill experience and level experience from them. The methods are most efficient with a Knowledge Gem (for skill and class exp), or an Experience Gem combined with Byleth’s personal ability (for level exp). Methods 1A and 1B are also more efficient with a Dancer to give the grinding unit two actions per turn; for Method 2, this only helps if the enemy deals enough damage to allow for an extra heal per turn. Efficiency matters because there’s a 100-turn limit for all missions (or it might be the end of turn 99, I never risked finding out). Make sure you have at least 1 Divine Pulse remaining if there’s any chance that one of your characters could die, e.g. to a crit. When you want to keep one particular enemy alive but there’s a risk of unintentionally killing them (e.g. with a crit), it’s ideal to have a second enemy alive so you can Divine Pulse if that happens, rather than the mission ending. For this purpose, the ideal backup enemy may be a non-moving one or a magic user that depleted all their attack magic. After using a Pulse, the RNG outcomes will be the same if you repeat the same battle actions in the same order. So after undoing a crit on an enemy, you could refrain from attacking on that turn, to let the enemy advance the RNG with their Enemy Phase attack. Against a magic user that has no attacks left, you can advance the RNG with a weak attack that won’t kill even with a crit, or with a very inaccurate attack - notably, broken weapons are both weak and inaccurate (more info about broken weapons below). The grinding methods are most convenient to use against non-moving enemies, but against moving enemies you can surround them, which limits them to attacking one of four adjacent units (or fewer than four if you trap them next to impassable terrain: https://i.imgur.com/Fzy3T9b.jpg). You can’t trap enemies that have the Pass skill, so don’t leave them as the last enemies. With moving enemies, if they were already on the desired terrain (e.g. healing terrain) I just had to surround them with weapon-unequipped units that couldn’t be killed in one round of combat. If they’re not already on the desired terrain, it’s quite easy to lure them onto it while you only have one or a few units in their range, then surround them. When an enemy is surrounded by your units, you can influence their target by having some units equipped and others unequipped, and also by changing your equipped weapons and accessories. Before ending Player Phase, make sure the enemy’s indicated target doesn’t have the potential to die or kill the enemy with a counterattack. It’s very helpful that this game has enemy target indicators. ~ Method 1A: Non-lethal attacks against a surrounded self-healing enemy (for skill exp, class exp and level exp). The most convenient situation involves a non-moving enemy on healing terrain. It’s particularly efficient if they’re a Priest/Bishop with Renewal, as their extra healing means you’ll be able to attack more frequently. Renewal enemies can also be attacked repeatedly on any terrain after they use up all their attack magic, although it’s less efficient since their rate of healing is much slower than enemies standing on healing terrain. If you’re just grinding for skill/class exp, it’s notable that you gain the same amount even with missed attacks. Therefore, if you don’t particularly need level-up experience, it’s ideal to lower your hit rate so you don’t have to waste as many turns waiting for the enemy to heal. To minimise accuracy, you can unequip nearby allies to remove Linked Attack bonuses, but more importantly you can attack with broken weapons. Broken weapons also help by lowering your damage and AS. I kept a broken weapon of every type (sword, bow etc) so I could grind any of the weapon skills. You also gain Authority skill experience regardless of your means of attack, as long as your battalion hasn’t retreated. This is important due to the earlier points about high-ranked battalions providing major stat boosts. ~ Method 1B: Very inaccurate attacks against a surrounded enemy (for skill and class exp). Unlike the first method, this can potentially be done with attacks that would kill the enemy if they actually hit, as long as your Hit is very low. In this case it’s ideal to use an enemy with relatively high Avoid, and you don’t necessarily need an enemy that can heal itself. The first step is to lure them onto avoid-boosting terrain (e.g. forests) before you surround them. Using broken weapons against enemies in forests will severely lower your Hit, so you can get plenty of weapon and class exp from an enemy even if they can’t self-heal. Also unequip nearby allies to remove Linked Attack bonuses if possible. You may want to unequip Hit-boosting skills (such as the Prowess skills) if it’s an easy optional mission. If your Hit is above 0% and a hit would actually kill, you may also want to keep a second enemy alive so you can undo any hits with Divine Pulse, then advance the RNG to hopefully not hit them next time. ~ Method 2: Tanking/avoiding hits from a surrounded enemy on Enemy Phase (for class exp + healing exp if not avoiding). A defensive method in which your character has no usable weapon equipped, ideally holding a Knowledge Gem for the maximum 4 points of class experience per combat. For the Master Classes that require 200 points for mastery, that means 50 turns if the combat is only on Enemy Phase. The optimal situation can reduce it to 17 turns; this involves two engagements (second via Dancer) on Player Phase with inaccurate/non-lethal attacks, then possibly unequipping the usable weapon via trading, for the Enemy Phase. When your grinding character takes hits rather than avoiding them, this method also lets you grind other characters’ experience (class, level and White Magic skill) by healing them. For this purpose, against 1-range enemies you can equip your damage-taking unit with a broken bow to lower your Avoid while still being unable to counterattack (assuming you don’t have Close Counter). As this will typically allow the enemy to double you, this assumes you can survive 2 hits. Although the basic Heal spell doesn’t grant much level-experience per use, there are significant gains from higher-ranked spells such as Recover and Physic. The best combination is Fortify + Experience Gem + Byleth’s personal ability. This is how Mercedes and Flayn ended up around level 60, while my other characters were in the mid 40s. It’s ideal if the enemy deals enough damage such that one Heal won’t bring a character to full HP, so you can use 2 healing spells on them per turn (via Dancer if it’s with the same healer). Using 2 different healers per turn on the same damaged unit is less convenient, as this requires constant Knowledge/Experience Gem trading and repositioning Byleth for optimal gains. To get the most turns of grinding with this method, use an enemy that has a breakable weapon rather than magic. This is mainly because they can still attack with a broken weapon, although they’ll have much lower Hit and damage. As such, for continued healer grinding you may need to tank the hits with a unit that has lower Avoid and Def. Remember that the broken bow method maximises the chance of taking hits. For healer grinding, there is another method: taking damage from terrain. There aren’t many maps with damaging terrain, but the Ailell map with crater tiles was sometimes available for auxiliary battles. ————— vi. Divine Pulse techniques (level-ups and battle RNG) ————— Since the aforementioned grinding methods can produce many level-ups, this leads into the next major way to mitigate the challenge of Maddening - the generous supply of Divine Pulses allows for plenty of RNG manipulation. Disclaimer: I haven’t read anything about this game’s RNG, so the following points are just my own observations and speculations. The level-up RNG seems to be separate from the battle RNG used for hits, crits etc. Once a mission starts, potential stat gains seem to be predetermined for all characters until the end of the mission, so the only way to reroll stat gains is by soft-resetting the game. Therefore I would often leave characters very close to levelling up at the end of a mission, so I could try for good/better level-ups at the start of the next mission. This method of refraining from level-ups was mainly done near the end of missions, so those characters wouldn’t miss out on too much experience. Divine Pulses were used to undo bad level-ups near the end of missions. I would then get those characters to retry their level-ups early in the next mission; obviously this is best done at the start so you don’t lose much progress by resetting the mission for better gains. I used this stat-rerolling method particularly with characters that were frequently getting bad level-ups, such as Dedue. It was also useful for characters that were struggling to gain certain stats they really needed, such as Str for Ashe. With those characters I generally avoided giving them a mission-ending kill if I expected that they could level up from it. Although the main intended use of Divine Pulses is to undo fatal mistakes, you can also use them to take advantage of the battle RNG. I assume that when Divine Pulse is used, the game rewinds through the same sequence of random numbers ranging from 1 to 100, and the full sequence of RNG numbers (both future and past) is never altered by Pulses. Importantly, a particular number in the sequence would not necessarily produce the same battle outcome (e.g. whether an attack hits or crits) in all situations. This is based on the following assumption: the lower your listed Hit or Crit, the lower the chance that the RNG number will be within that number range. Therefore, at some particular point in the sequence you may always hit with an attack that has at least 60 listed Hit, but not necessarily with an attack that has lower Hit. The greater the difference between listed Hit/Crit values, the less likely it is that a successful hit/crit could be replicated in a situation with lower listed Hit/Crit. I also assume that the battle RNG number only advances whenever it needs to be called, so it would only advance whenever a unit attacks, to determine whether the attack hits/crits. Presumably that means the RNG sequence advances more times per battle when there are double-attacks. Finally, I also assume that the same sequence of random numbers is used by all units on the field, including enemies. Therefore, when you Divine Pulse to rewind by a certain amount of RNG calls, you should get the same sequence of numbers even if your characters battle in a different order than they did before the Pulse. Based on these assumptions/observations, I was able to do things such as changing a useless crit into a useful one - although this is less likely to work if there’s a significant difference between listed crit rates. For example, suppose Character A gets a kill with an unnecessary 30% crit, and they were the first character to move on Player Phase. You could then Divine Pulse back to the start of the same Player Phase, but this time attack with Character B first. The RNG number should be the same, since you’ve rewinded back to the same point in the sequence of RNG numbers. Therefore, Character B would get the crit if their listed crit rate is the same or higher than Character A’s was. But if Character B’s listed crit rate is lower, e.g. 10% compared to 30%, then it would only crit if the same RNG number was in that lower 0-10 range all along. The same applies to hit rates, so this method is less reliable if you’re trying to get the same battle result with much lower hit/crit rates as compared to a unit that attacked before the Divine Pulse. As for RNG manipulation of Crest activations, I have sometimes Divine Pulsed to get better use out of the same character’s particular instance of an activation. For example, if Felix gets an unnecessary damage boost from his Crest of Fraldarius, I can Divine Pulse after his action to change it into a useful damage boost, by making him attack a different enemy that actually needs the extra damage. This method also works for things like healing, so you could change Mercedes’ Crest of Lamine activation from a free Heal to a free Fortify, which provides a huge amount of level-experience (this assumes that the Crest activation rate is separate from the choice of weapon/magic, which I haven’t properly tested). It’s also possible to rewind one character’s Crest activation to get a different character’s Crest activation, but I don’t know any details about the different activation rates between Crests, such as the difference between Major and Minor Crests. I would assume that a Minor Crest activation could be rewinded for a guaranteed Major Crest activation, while the other way around wouldn’t be guaranteed to work. This assumption is based on my aforementioned observations of the battle RNG for hits/crits, as it would be like rewinding a crit from a high listed crit rate (Major Crest) to try and repeat it with a lower listed crit rate (Minor Crest). ————— vii. Saint Statues: Renown spending ————— The main challenge is in the early game, partly because the Maddening experience starvation allows the enemies to maintain a big level advantage; you also begin with very limited Battle Points for extra battles. As such, I first prioritised my Renown spending on the four Exp +5% bonuses. However, after getting the first of these Exp boosts on the Cethleann statue, it made sense for the next chosen bonus to be the important Class Exp +1 since it’s the next bonus on that statue. Notably, the +1 applies before the doubling from a Knowledge Gem. After the four Exp +5% bonuses, my next priority was the 4 extra Divine Pulses, which allows for a maximum of 10 on Maddening. Finally, I went for as many of the Exp +10% bonuses as I could get, ending up with 3 out of the 4. I gained as much Renown as possible, by doing all available Quests. ————— viii. Character Summaries (with video) ————— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI4hSp3W9LY (spoiler warning: the final Blue Lions map is partly visible in the background, including the boss) This is a 3-minute video showing my characters’ summary screens and some extras: showing the full recruitment of all possible characters, my main characters’ available combat arts and abilities, my convoy and my 385,711 gold. The character summaries are also written out in this section. Although I recruited all possible characters, these are the only ones I actually used throughout the game, apart from the Paralogues that forced deployment of other characters. I only list Skill Levels for skills that were actively trained, so I ignore E ranks and random Faith gains from choir singing etc. I list all Classes in which characters obtained certifications (even if I never used those classes), and the ones with class mastery are marked with a *. The 'Main accessories' part refers to my most commonly used non-weapon equipment for each character. The listed combat arts are just the ones I had equipped for the final mission, although I exclude the ones that I never used at any point in the game. Roster (for maximum 12 deployment): Byleth F, Dimitri, Dedue, Ingrid, Felix, Sylvain, Annette, Mercedes, Ashe, Flayn, Dorothea, Manuela. Movement types: Infantry x 9, Cavalry x 3, Flying x 0. Attack types: Physical x 7, Magic x 5. The cavalry units were Dedue (Great Knight), Annette (Dark Knight) and Ashe (Bow Knight). I briefly used some flying classes while grinding for abilities, but apart from that it was a grounded team. Although fliers are very useful, there were hardly any situations where I felt disadvantaged by not having any. From around mid-game I had plenty of long-range options to attack across impassable terrain, which reduced the need for fliers. The physical attackers were Byleth, Dimitri, Dedue, Ingrid, Felix, Sylvain and Ashe. The magic attackers were Byleth, Annette, Mercedes, Flayn and Dorothea. Byleth was my only mixed attacker (mostly magic from around mid-game), and Manuela was just for non-combat purposes. Among my roster of units, my most commonly used abilities were Death Blow, Fiendish Blow, Prowess abilities, Black/White Magic Range +1, Hit +20, and eventually the -faire abilities from S+ skill levels. The Blow skills helped with getting enough damage against the much higher-levelled enemies in Maddening mode. These abilities’ restriction to Player Phase wasn’t an issue, as I just used the simple method of luring a few enemies at a time then defeating them mostly on Player Phase. The range-increasing abilities are good for keeping vulnerable units out of enemy attack range, both during Player Phase combat and in preparation for each Enemy Phase. I’ve never found Crests to be particularly important, so I often forgot about them until they activated and reminded me of their existence. Many of the Blue Lions characters have underwhelming Crest effects, such as conserving magic uses or boosting offensive combat arts - I mainly use these combat arts to secure enough guaranteed damage for a kill, so I don’t gamble for possible extra damage. With my battalion choices, I focused more on their stat boosts than their Gambit types. Apart from a few Strides mostly in the early-game, I never felt much need for the support Gambits. Note: These stats and details are from the start of the final mission. The stats are taken from the unit summary screens during pre-battle preparations, so they factor in ability boosts (e.g. HP +5) but not the battalion boosts. As mentioned earlier, the full list of their learned combat arts and abilities is shown in the video. ~ Byleth (Female) - Professor’s Guidance+ Crest: Crest of Flames (life-drain, +Mt and prevents counters) Class: Gremory - Magic Uses x2 Level: 48 Stats: 60 HP, 39 Str, 40 Mag, 38 Dex, 41 Spd, 36 Lck, 19 Def, 34 Res, 68 Cha Combat Arts: Healing Focus (Healing), Draw Back (Movement), Bane of Monsters (Sword) Abilities: Hit +20, Fiendish Blow, White Magic Range +1, White Tomefaire, Vantage Battalion: Gloucester Knights (Phys Atk +6, Mag Atk +6, Hit +15, Prt +5, Rsl +5, Cha +7) - Gambit: Assault Troop Black Magic: Fire, Thunder, Bolganone, Ragnarok White Magic: Heal, Nosferatu, Recover, Aura Skill Levels: Sword B+, Lance D+, Axe D, Bow B, Brawl B, Reason A+, Faith S+, Authority S+, Hvy Armour D+, Riding D+ Classes: Commoner*, Enlightened One*, Monk*, Mercenary*, Cavalier*, Brigand*, Archer*, Mage*, Priest*, Swordmaster, Assassin, Sniper, Warlock*, Bishop*, Mortal Savant, Gremory* Main accessories: March Ring, Ochain Shield, Magic Staff, Speed Ring, Hexlock Shield, Evasion Ring Adjutant: Alois - Guard, A support Naturally one of the most important units, not only due to her required deployment. There’s also the power of the Crest of Flames (one of the only worthwhile Crests), her great versatility, and the usefulness of her exp-boosting ability in Maddening mode, especially for the early game. I’ve played as male Byleth in Claude’s path, but female was the better choice for me here as I prefer magic-focused units; after learning various class mastery skills she stayed in the female-exclusive Gremory class. It takes a while to get her started as a magic user, since you need Faculty Training to actually learn some magic. I didn’t have a definite plan for her when I started this run, but I ended up favouring the Gremory class, partly because I eventually found myself using Nosferatu a lot for Enemy Phase. With this I was able to tank many physical hits despite Def being her weakness. This tanking capacity was helped by high AS from quite a few permanent Spd-boosters (Speed Carrots etc), as well as her high Str which allowed her to maintain high AS even with a heavy shield + Nosferatu. The Vantage + Nosferatu combination still proved very effective in this game, especially once I had White Tomefaire. The Hit +20 ability made this tanking much more reliable, as well as Adjutant Guard protection against enemies fast enough to double her, such as Assassins and the brawling classes. Byleth was also a strong counter to mages as I gave her most of the Res boosters, and her convoy access allowed her to pick from a wide variety of physical weapons to use against them. She was my main March Ring user, so I could put her in good positions adjacent to other units that wanted the experience boost from Professor’s Guidance. Most of the skill grinding was initially focused on recruiting characters from other houses, but I also did extra training in Brawling for Healing Focus, Swords as she relied on them in the early game, and Bows for an early-game ranged option with the added benefit of Curved Shot. I never ended up using the Creator Sword. Byleth’s insane Cha stat resulted from all the Perfect Tea Times on each character’s birthday; I didn’t do any extra tea invites even when I had plenty of disposable Activity Points. This was helpful since enemies on Maddening have higher Cha stats to reduce the damage and hit rate of your Gambits, although the most important effect of Gambits was to Rattle large groups of enemies to lock their movement, so hit rates mattered more than damage. ~ Dimitri - Royal Lineage+ Crest: Minor Crest of Blaiddyd (combat arts Atk x2) Class: Great Lord - Charm, Lancefaire Level: 46 Stats: 77 HP (HP +5), 46 Str, 18 Mag, 32 Dex, 31 Spd, 24 Lck, 27 Def, 10 Res, 42 Cha Combat Arts: Reposition (Movement), Monster Piercer (Lance), Tempest Lance (Lance) Abilities: Lancefaire, Lance Prowess Lv 5, HP +5, Vantage, Death Blow Battalion: Fraldarius Soldiers (Phys Atk +7, Crit +20, Prt +6, Cha +7) - Gambit: Onslaught Skill Levels: Sword B, Lance S+, Axe D+, Authority S, Riding B+, Flying D+ Classes: Noble*, High Lord*, Great Lord*, Soldier*, Lord, Mercenary*, Cavalier*, Brigand*, Hero*, Swordmaster, Paladin* Main accessories: Lampos Shield, Critical Ring, Evasion Ring Adjutant: Catherine - Guard, A support Dimitri wasn’t outstanding at any particular role, although he had very strong Gambits and was effective overall. He relied on raw power and sometimes a Brave Lance to make up for a usual lack of double attacks. His single-hit damage was especially notable with the Tempest Lance combat art in the early game. For most of the game his Spd was too low to justify using any Spd-boosters on him, partly because he was a Paladin for a long time until he unlocked his exclusive classes. Dimitri’s skill levels were slightly held back by his lack of instructing opportunities for much of Part 2, but he eventually got S+ Lances for an extra Lancefaire just in time for the final mission - not that I really needed that much power. His personal avoid-boosting ability in Part 2 didn’t come into play much, as he was completely outclassed by Ingrid in that regard. He was quite sturdy against physical attacks thanks to Adjutant Guard, although obviously not on Dedue’s level. ~ Dedue - Staunch Shield Crest: None Class: Great Knight - Canto, Lancefaire, Axefaire Level: 45 Stats: 76 HP, 42 Str, 10 Mag, 26 Dex (Dex +4), 13 Spd, 28 Lck, 45 Def, 10 Res, 19 Cha Combat Arts: Healing Focus (Healing), Smash (Axe), Armoured Strike (Axe) Abilities: Death Blow, Axe Prowess Lv 5, Quick Riposte, Dexterity +4, Wrath Battalion: Duscur Heavy Soldiers (Phys Atk +8, Hit +5, Avo -15, Prt +10, Cha +7) - Gambit: Line of Lances Skill Levels: Sword D, Lance B, Axe S, Brawl B, Authority A+, Hvy Armour S, Riding C+ Classes: Commoner*, Fighter*, Armoured Knight*, Cavalier, Brigand*, Fortress Knight*, Warrior*, Great Knight*, War Master* Main accessories: Accuracy Ring, Seiros Shield, Ochain Shield Adjutant: Shamir - Guard, A support Shortly before Three Houses released, I completed a Lunatic Classic run of FE Fates: Conquest, in which Benny was an incredible physical tank. Dedue is Benny 2.0 in many ways. He was either completely or nearly invincible when kept away from magic, although he had to be wary of Gambits that would remove his battalion’s +10 Prt due to the Rattled status. The Adjutant Guard was unnecessary most of the time, so I often changed my third adjutant to Gilbert guarding Annette. There were two major benefits from training Dedue’s Brawling skill: the Healing Focus combat art, and the Quick Riposte ability from War Master class mastery. Healing Focus is self-explanatory for a tank, although I had more than enough healers anyway. Dedue greatly benefits from Quick Riposte, as it’s so easy for him to stay above 50% HP. This not only allows him to actually double attack on Enemy Phase, it also prevents enemy doubles. That allowed him to tank a single magic hit in rare cases where that was necessary. Apart from his vulnerability to magic, Dedue’s main weakness was his accuracy in the early game. This was mostly fixed by grinding to Axe Prowess Lv 5, using an Accuracy Ring, and equipping Dorothea with Meteor for convenient linked attacks. Dedue also had the Smash combat art for +20 Hit, and I kept Dexterity +4 as there wasn’t much else to use. He only needed C+ in Riding for the Great Knight certification, and he was lucky to get it on the first exam attempt. The class’s extra movement and Canto helped with staying away from magic. Although he wasn’t the best unit for getting kills on Player Phase, his Armoured Strike combat art becomes extremely powerful as his Def increases (+16 damage in the final mission), and he can also use a Brave Axe. I gave him a few Lck-boosting Goddess Icons since tanks get the most use out of Crit Avoid. Although I could’ve used the crit-blocking Ochain Shield instead of the Seiros Shield, I mostly used the Ochain on Byleth. That allowed Byleth to equip five useful abilities that didn’t need to include Faith Lv 5 for Crit Avoid with Nosferatu tanking. ~ Ingrid - Lady Knight Crest: Minor Crest of Daphnel (combat arts +Mt) Class: Dancer - Dance Level: 60 Stats: 65 HP, 41 Str, 20 Mag, 29 Dex, 48 Spd, 35 Lck, 27 Def, 39 Res, 54 Cha Combat Arts: Healing Focus (Healing), Sword Dance (Sword), Grounder (Sword) Abilities: Sword Prowess Lv 5, Sword Avo +20, Alert Stance+, Defiant Avo, Special Dance Battalion: Aegir Astral Knights (Phys Atk +7, Avo +20, Prt +2, Rsl +2, Cha +7) - Gambit: Assault Troop Skill Levels: Sword S, Lance A+, Axe D+, Brawl B, Authority A+, Riding B, Flying A+ Classes: Noble*, Dancer*, Myrmidon*, Mercenary*, Thief, Cavalier*, Brigand*, Pegasus Knight*, Swordmaster, Paladin, Falcon Knight* Main accessories: Evasion Ring https://i.imgur.com/vwDgQCK.jpg Ingrid had up to 178 Avoid (see screenshot), and was easily one of the most useful units. Most enemies had a 0% hit rate against her. However, the Dancer class is unavailable for much of Part 1, and she started out as one of my least useful units due to her lack of killing power. After some grinding for Death Blow and Darting Blow she became much better, but then I realised that I needed to choose a Dancer. She seemed like a good choice as she wasn’t the best fighter anyway, while her sword proficiency, flying proficiency and high Spd were a good fit with Sword Avo +20. This is because Ingrid’s proficiencies helped with grinding for the abilities needed to stack even more Avoid: Sword Prowess Lv 5, Alert Stance+ and Defiant Avo. The latter ability was overkill since she barely ever took a hit, even on the turns when she Danced rather than activating Alert Stance+. Therefore I often had Rally Magic instead of that ability, which sometimes allowed Dorothea to get an important kill with just one use of Meteor. Ingrid didn’t even mind taking magic hits in the rare cases where they actually hit her, thanks to her solid defensive stats. Once Ingrid became a Dancer with heavily stacked Avoid, she stayed in that class as she was incredibly useful for luring and distracting enemies, as well as blocking enemy movement, e.g. on chokepoints. She was the best lure for enemy archer classes, as Poison Strike only activates if it hits. Ingrid was also my best unit for stalling out uses of Bolting/Meteor, which appear in greater quantities in Maddening mode. In one late-game mission I stalled out 20 total uses of Bolting from 5 enemies all attacking Ingrid at once - they all had 0% Hit against her. Gambits had actual hit rates against her since they’re calculated differently (highest I can remember was 35%), but I was hardly ever targeted with Gambits. I don’t recall Ingrid ever dying with her Avoid build, even though she faced so many enemies throughout the game; she had a lot more Enemy Phase engagements than Dedue. Her own Gambits were very powerful due to her high Cha stat and personal ability. Ingrid became very overlevelled for the same reason that Mercedes and Flayn did: Dancing and white magic support spells all give consistent experience gains, rather than depending on enemy levels. Ingrid was 10 levels above the final mission’s level 50 enemies. The dancing experience cap per mission clearly didn’t matter much, thanks to Experience Gem and Byleth’s personal ability. Special Dance was very useful for its +4 Spd boost, which could be stacked with Annette’s Rally Speed - in one case this allowed Felix to Steal an item when it otherwise would’ve been impossible. In conclusion, my thoughts on Ingrid’s usefulness were the same as her own reaction to winning the dance competition: https://i.imgur.com/qvWeOUJ.jpg ~ Felix - Lone Wolf Crest: Crest of Fraldarius (weapon +Mt) Class: Sniper - Bowfaire, Bowrange +1 Level: 44 Stats: 51 HP, 39 Str, 18 Mag, 38 Dex, 39 Spd, 27 Lck, 23 Def, 13 Res, 21 Cha Combat Arts: Healing Focus (Healing), Curved Shot (Bow), Heavy Draw (Bow), Hunter’s Volley (Bow) Abilities: Bow Prowess Lv 5, Bow Crit +10, Hit +20, Close Counter, Death Blow Battalion: Leicester Mercenaries (Phys Atk +7, Hit +20, Crit +15, Prt +4, Cha +7) - Gambit: Blaze Skill Levels: Sword A, Axe D+, Bow S, Brawl B, Reason C, Authority B, Flying B Classes: Noble*, Myrmidon*, Mercenary*, Thief*, Brigand*, Archer*, Dark Mage*, Hero*, Swordmaster*, Assassin, Sniper*, Mortal Savant Main accessories: Aegis Shield, Speed Ring Felix has one of the best Crests in the game, although I never specifically tried to rely on Crest activations. The chance of 5 extra damage per hit is very significant in the early game, but it obviously falls off a bit as the game progresses. His early-game power is also helped by his personal Lone Wolf ability, which falls off once you have enough Authority to use battalions that offer the same damage boost and much more. Felix generally had some of the best stat gains among my units, so I hardly ever rewinded any of his level-ups. He was initially focused more on swords, until I realised there wasn’t much reason to face counterattacks when I could instead use his bow proficiency and safely attack from afar. If I’d decided on that from the start, I probably would’ve trained in Riding and Lances to unlock Bow Knight. However, the Sniper class at least has its exclusive Hunter’s Volley combat art. Compared to Ashe who was my other main bow user, Felix was initially better at using heavier bows (i.e. anything above Iron Bow+) due to his much better Str, although Ashe’s AS gradually caught up with the help of some stat-boosters. Felix also had more reason to use Close Counter since he could actually take some hits with Aegis Shield, especially when its Pavise/Aegis effect activated. Whereas Ashe relied on crits for kills in the mid- to late-game, Felix had just enough power to not need them, which was good because his crit rate was much lower; most of the time I had other abilities instead of Bow Crit +10, such as Speed +2. He was consistently one of my fastest units, but I often had to switch between Aegis Shield and Speed Ring depending on the enemies. His high Spd was essential for his role as my only Steal user, although it’s certainly not necessary to steal anything. I found that the Battle of the Eagle and Lion was the mission where Steal was most useful, for the Accuracy Ring and Evasion Ring. ~ Sylvain - Philanderer Crest: Minor Crest of Gautier (combat arts +Mt) Class: War Master - Fistfaire, Axefaire, Crit +20 Level: 45 Stats: 69 HP, 46 Str, 18 Mag, 35 Dex, 37 Spd, 23 Lck, 31 Def, 14 Res, 36 Cha Combat Arts: Healing Focus (Healing), Rushing Blow (Brawl), Fading Blow (Brawl) Abilities: Wrath, Death Blow, Brawling Prowess Lv 5, Quick Riposte, Brawl Crit +10 Battalion: Goneril Valkyries (Phys Atk +8, Hit +20, Crit +15, Prt +6, Rsl +1, Cha +7) - Gambit: Assault Troop Skill Levels: Lance D, Axe A+, Brawl S, Reason D, Authority A+, Riding C Classes: Noble*, Fighter*, Brigand*, Brawler*, Warrior*, Grappler*, War Master* Main accessories: Critical Ring, Aurora Shield I knew from the start that I wanted a War Master, but the only Blue Lion with proficiency in both axes and brawling was Dedue, who already had a clearly defined role as a tank. I narrowed my choice down to Sylvain; he at least has axe proficiency, and a damage-boosting personal ability that goes well with gauntlets. Sylvain started off with low Hit and terrible damage, the damage being especially weak with gauntlets. However, he soon became extremely powerful on Player Phase, able to kill virtually anything (even Fortress Knights) with gauntlets before they could even counter. The increase in power came from his later abilities, Str gains from later classes, and a crazy crit rate - Sylvain and Ashe were my main crit machines. In the early game he became effective once he gained Death Blow, which is ridiculous with gauntlets. His power was such that I rarely switched from Training Gauntlets for the entire game, although I had Steel Gauntlets as a secondary weapon. Once he reached the War Master class for Fistfaire and Crit +20, he was truly unstoppable on Player Phase, and still destroyed most enemies on Enemy Phase thanks to his crit rate and Quick Riposte. Although he often had enough AS for 4 hits on Player Phase, enemies rarely had a chance to counterattack since he would either get a clean kill with 2 non-crits, or he would make use of his crit rate which was high enough to actually rely on it at times. I rarely used him for ranged attacks since that wasn’t his strength, but he had a Hand Axe for that purpose. Sylvain was also one of my sturdier units for physical tanking, which was helped by his high Spd to avoid doubles, and eventually Quick Riposte. The tanking role was aided by Healing Focus, which was typically the only combat art I used with him (so his Crest was rather useless). Overall, he turned out to be one of my best units after the early game - I doubt this would’ve happened if I’d taken him in any other class direction. ~ Annette - Perseverance Crest: Minor Crest of Dominic (conserves attack-magic uses) Class: Dark Knight - Canto, Black Tomefaire, Dark Tomefaire Level: 48 Stats: 44 HP, 21 Str, 43 Mag, 36 Dex, 25 Spd, 23 Lck, 23 Def, 27 Res, 30 Cha Combat Arts: Draw Back (Movement), Lightning Axe (Axe), Smash (Axe) Abilities: Black Magic Range +1, Black Tomefaire, Rally Speed, Reason Lv 5, Fiendish Blow Battalion: Macuil Evil Repelling Co. (Mag Atk +7, Hit +30, Prt +1, Rsl +6, Cha +10) - Gambit: Resonant Lightning Black Magic: Wind, Cutting Gale, Sagittae, Excalibur White Magic: Heal, Nosferatu, Recover, Abraxas Skill Levels: Lance C, Axe B, Reason S+, Faith S, Authority S+, Riding A+ Classes: Noble*, Monk*, Mage*, Priest*, Warrior, Warlock*, Bishop*, Dark Knight*, Holy Knight, Gremory* Main accessories: Thyrsus, Magic Staff, Hexlock Shield, Lampos Shield Annette mostly served as a very accurate long-range magic nuke - the range was from the Thyrsus staff and eventually Black Magic Range +1 on top of that. This gave her 5-range attacks, which combined with the Dark Knight class’s movement range and Canto for a very effective hit-and-run attacker. Annette and Ashe were my main units for taking out enemies deep in the enemy attack range and then retreating to safety. Whereas Ashe needed to double and/or crit to get kills (except on mages and fliers), Annette was able to one-hit kill many non-magic classes. In this way, it was convenient that these two hit-and-run units included both a physical and magical attacker. Annette’s one-hit kill capacity was especially useful on Assassins, since she had very high Hit - against most enemies it was 100%. Annette’s accuracy and attack range also helped when using super-effective Excalibur against fliers, which can sometimes be hard to reach when they’re over impassable terrain. It was a good thing that Annette had so much power per hit, as she was one of my slowest units. This made her quite vulnerable on Enemy Phase, which is why I favoured the Dark Knight class for hit-and-run tactics. She also had much lower Res than my other magic-focused units. For these reasons, when I wasn’t using an adjutant on Dedue, I used Gilbert for Adjutant Guard on Annette. This had the added benefit of +3 damage at maximum support. Annette’s assistance with white magic was outclassed by Mercedes, Flayn and even Dorothea (Physic), but she at least had Recover. She also had the useful combination of Rally Speed + Rally Strength, while only using one ability slot because the latter is from her personal ability. This Rally combination was especially effective on Sylvain and Ashe. Although Annette was very effective overall, her main problem was that most of her stats were spread too evenly, whereas Mercedes, Flayn and Dorothea had more efficient stat spreads because they were closer to 'min-max' builds suited for magic users. ~ Mercedes - Live to Serve Crest: Minor Crest of Lamine (conserves healing uses) Class: Gremory - Magic Uses x2 Level: 60 Stats: 48 HP, 18 Str, 51 Mag, 36 Dex, 35 Spd, 21 Lck, 18 Def, 43 Res, 41 Cha Combat Arts: Draw Back (Movement) Abilities: Fiendish Blow, White Tomefaire, White Magic Range +1, Reason Lv 5, Faith Lv 5 Battalion: Macuil Evil Repelling Co. (Mag Atk +7, Hit +30, Prt +1, Rsl +6, Cha +10) - Gambit: Resonant Lightning Black Magic: Fire, Thunder, Bolganone, Ragnarok White Magic: Heal, Nosferatu, Physic, Restore, Fortify Skill Levels: Bow B+, Reason A+, Faith S+, Authority S Classes: Commoner*, Monk*, Mage*, Priest*, Warlock*, Bishop*, Gremory* Main accessories: Healing Staff, Magic Staff, Rafail Gem, Silver Shield Mercedes quickly became very overlevelled, especially once she gained Fortify (A in Faith) for much better experience grinding. She would’ve been very effective even without her gradually-increasing level advantage, as she had good overall stats and was the most useful healer; notably she has Physic which Flayn lacks. For most of the game she mainly attacked with black magic, but she eventually got more use out of Nosferatu once she had White Magic Range +1 and White Tomefaire. Overall, Mercedes performed well in many roles: she was an effective killer thanks to her level advantage and the lower Res of most enemy classes, a very useful support unit, and a very good magic tank. However, the tanking role was less important once I had unhittable Ingrid. ~ Ashe - Lockpick Crest: None Class: Bow Knight - Canto, Bowfaire, Bowrange +2 Level: 45 Stats: 48 HP, 30 Str, 18 Mag, 47 Dex, 42 Spd, 30 Lck, 19 Def, 19 Res, 19 Cha Combat Arts: Deadeye (Bow), Curved Shot (Bow), Shove (Movement) Abilities: Death Blow, Bow Prowess Lv 5, Hit +20, Bow Crit +10, Bowfaire Battalion: Cichol Wyvern Co. (Phys Atk +7, Hit +15, Crit +15, Avo +5, Prt +6, Rsl +1, Cha +10) - Gambit: Assault Troop Skill Levels: Lance B+, Axe D+, Bow S+, Authority A+, Riding S Classes: Commoner*, Fighter*, Cavalier*, Brigand*, Archer*, Sniper*, Bow Knight* Main accessories: Critical Ring, Accuracy Ring, Speed Ring https://i.imgur.com/VL8WQtZ.jpg - Ashe with 104 Crit. "Gotta crit 'em all!" - Ashe Ketchum. With a Killer Bow+ he ended up with 104 listed Crit before reduction from enemy Lck stats. As such, he was one of the main crit machines along with Sylvain. His other similarity to Sylvain was that they were both terrible in the early game, not only because of their very low crit rates to start with. Ashe’s early-game struggles were also due to his pitiful damage output (he even struggled to double for quite a while), less range, and having fewer options to keep him out of danger before he became a Bow Knight. As such, I placed a high priority on feeding him kills to unlock the Archer class and Hit +20. The other early-game priority was to grind through the Brigand class for Death Blow. His effectiveness kept increasing from there, as he gained useful combat arts, Bowfaire, extra range, very high crit rates from his Dex growth and Bow Crit +10, and eventually a second Bowfaire. Thus, he went from one of the worst units to a frequent MVP. However, it’s a shame that he has Lockpick instead of a battle-relevant personal ability. He used combat arts more often than any other character, as the extra range/accuracy with Deadeye and Curved Shot was very helpful. I also gave him a few Str stat-boosters which helped his AS, although he still mainly used the light Iron Bow+. Once Ashe learned Bow Crit +10, he would usually crit even with that basic weapon. He really appreciated Annette’s Rally Strength + Speed for the times when he needed a heavier bow to kill without relying on a crit. Ashe’s usefulness as a crit machine didn’t overlap with Sylvain’s role: while Sylvain was melee-focused and sturdy enough to also crit-kill enemies on Enemy Phase, Ashe was mostly limited to long-range hit-and-run attacks on Player Phase due to his frailty. The Bow Knight class is very good at staying out of enemy range after attacking. ~ Flayn - Lily’s Poise Crest: Crest of Cethleann (healing magic +Mt) Class: Gremory - Magic Uses x2 Level: 61 Stats: 46 HP, 24 Str, 57 Mag, 38 Dex, 36 Spd, 18 Lck, 28 Def, 49 Res, 45 Cha Combat Arts: Draw Back (Movement) Abilities: White Magic Range +1, White Tomefaire, Faith Lv 5, Darting Blow, Fiendish Blow Battalion: Cethleann Monks (Mag Atk +6, Hit +20, Prt +1, Rsl +7, Cha +10) - Gambit: Resonant White Magic Black Magic: Wind, Fire, Cutting Gale, Excalibur White Magic: Heal, Nosferatu, Restore, Rescue, Fortify Skill Levels: Lance B, Reason A+, Faith S+, Authority A+, Flying B Classes: Noble*, Monk*, Mage*, Priest, Pegasus Knight*, Warlock*, Bishop*, Gremory* Main accessories: Caduceus Staff, Magic Staff, Healing Staff, Speed Ring, Aurora Shield Flayn became very overlevelled for the same reason as Mercedes: Fortify and Heal for grinding, plus Rescue which requires no setup for grinding purposes; it can simply be spammed. Having 6 uses of Rescue per mission is very useful - Rescue was Flayn’s main point of difference from Mercedes, although Flayn also had higher overall stats. She also had Excalibur to deal with Pegasus/Falcon Knights. Darting Blow contributed a lot to her killing power on Player Phase, as her Spd was always respectable. She was one of my longer-ranged attackers with Caduceus Staff and White Magic Range +1, which enabled 4-range with Nosferatu. Extra range is especially helpful for frail units, although her Def turned out surprisingly high for a magic user. She certainly isn’t frail on the magic side, being one of the sturdiest magic tanks. Flayn’s personal Lily’s Poise ability is also quite useful, mainly for helping tanks such as Dedue. Although -3 damage per hit becomes less significant over the course of the game, some later enemies have very high crit rates - the ability can reduce an enemy’s double-crit double attack by a total of 18 damage. ~ Dorothea - Songstress Crest: None Class: Gremory - Magic Uses x2 Level: 50 Stats: 49 HP, 19 Str, 43 Mag, 35 Dex, 30 Spd, 22 Lck, 15 Def, 43 Res, 33 Cha Combat Arts: Draw Back (Movement), Hexblade (Sword), Grounder (Sword) Abilities: Black Magic Range +1, Black Tomefaire, Reason Lv 5, Fiendish Blow, White Tomefaire Battalion: Ordelia Sorcery Co. (Mag Atk +8, Hit +20, Rsl +6, Cha +7) - Gambit: Resonant Lightning Black Magic: Thunder, Thoron, Sagittae, Meteor, Agnea’s Arrow White Magic: Heal, Nosferatu, Physic Skill Levels: Sword C+, Reason S+, Faith S+, Authority A+ Classes: Commoner*, Monk*, Mage*, Priest*, Warlock*, Bishop, Mortal Savant, Gremory* Main accessories: Magic Staff, Accuracy Ring, Hexlock Shield, Silver Shield Although I recruited all possible characters from the other houses, Dorothea was the only one I actually used. This decision was based on my previous 2 runs in different story paths, where I discovered how effective she could be. Her black magic was the main draw; my first priority was to exclusively train her Reason skill (mostly via Goals/Instructing) until she reached A rank for Meteor. I generally equipped this tome at the start of each Player Phase to set up 10/11-range linked attacks for increased Hit - this was especially useful for inaccurate characters like Dedue, and also for Gambit Boosts. As I was mainly using Meteor for linked attack bonuses, I usually conserved at least one use throughout most of each mission. Meteor can also take out troublesome enemies from a long distance, especially when boosted by a Magic Staff and Ingrid’s Rally Magic. Although Ashe and Annette could also serve that role, their ability to reach their target would sometimes be limited by terrain, such as impassable spaces. Dorothea also gains Agnea’s Arrow at A+ in Reason, which has up to 4 uses and an impressive 16 Mt. But even before all that, she learns Thoron early on, which helps a lot with its 1-3 range. This increased to 1-4 when she learned Black Magic Range +1, so I had plenty of long-range attack options among my units. While Dorothea’s main strength is her black magic, she also has the very useful healing spell Physic. She also provides healing with her personal Songstress ability, but this is mainly useful in the early game when you have very limited healing uses, so it didn’t matter as much by the time I recruited her. ~ Manuela - Infirmary Master Crest: None Class: Bishop - White Magic Uses x2, White Magic Heal +10, Terrain Resistance Level: 33 Stats: 50 HP (HP +5), 18 Str, 25 Mag, 19 Dex, 31 Spd, 19 Lck, 18 Def, 24 Res, 26 Cha Combat Arts: Hexblade (Sword) Abilities: HP +5, Faith Lv 5, White Magic Range +1, Rally Charm, Sword Prowess Lv 4 Battalion: Kingdom Armoured Co. (Phys Atk +3, Mag Atk -2, Hit +5, Avo -10, Prt +5, Cha +3) - Gambit: Impregnable Wall White Magic: Heal, Nosferatu, Ward, Silence, Warp Skill Levels: Sword A, Faith S, Authority C Classes: Commoner*, Priest*, Bishop* Main accessories: Silver Shield Manuela was an afterthought assist-focused unit who was mostly just deployed when there were 12 deployment slots, as long as that didn’t include forced deployments of units I wasn’t using (e.g. in Paralogues, but I can’t remember if any of those allowed 12 units). However, I also deployed her in quite a few auxiliary/quest battles to give her some grinding with healing and support magic. Apart from those deployments for grinding, she was used in the final three story missions. Her low level didn’t matter much as she avoided combat, but her Mag stat was still relevant for things like Warp range. Her support magic was the reason I used her: mainly for 2 Warps per mission and the occasional Silence, typically on Meteor/Bolting users. I never really needed Ward. Her personal ability (Infirmary Master) provided some insurance against the very long-ranged attacks in the final mission, e.g. it reduced the listed Crit from 11 to 1 on Dorothea. I also gave Manuela battalions with support Gambits, such as Impregnable Wall or Stride. With all my other units’ battalion choices I prioritised stat boosts over Gambit types, which left Manuela as one of my only choices for support Gambits. ————— ix. Allocation of Permanent Stat Boosters ————— This is about how I distributed the permanent stat-boosting items, including the Greenhouse items which are half as effective as the limited items from chests, mission rewards, etc. Unfortunately I didn’t take note of who received the items, so this is just a general idea. I chose not to use any of the special stat-boosters that appear in Byleth’s room as part of the DLC, as I generally avoid using any gameplay-advantage DLC in FE games. HP - Byleth to support her general versatility and Nosferatu tanking, Dedue to help him against magic attacks, possibly Sylvain and/or Dimitri as they were among my sturdier units. The frail units had little chance of surviving late-game enemy attacks even with HP boosts, so I don’t recall using any on characters such as Ashe and Annette. Str - Sylvain to get the most value out of gauntlets’ extra hits and his frequent crits. Ashe because he struggled with Str and needed better AS for double attacks, and it also enhanced the power of his frequent crits. Felix may have also received some, since fast units can double attack to get more total value from having extra damage per hit. Mag - Mostly Byleth, as her Mag was lower than my purely magic-focused units (Mercedes, Annette, Flayn, Dorothea) since she also focuses on Str. Annette would’ve been the second choice - although she was typically too slow to double attack for the most extra damage, her one-hit attacks often dealt just enough damage to kill full-HP enemies. Therefore I wanted to maintain her one-hit kill threshold. There was also less reason to boost Mag with my other magic users, as they were generally dealing overkill damage with double attacks, especially those who became overlevelled from heal-grinding. The overkill damage was also because double attacks with magic can easily kill non-magic enemy classes due to their lower Res. Although some of my other magic users could’ve gained extra range on support magic such as Rescue, it wouldn’t be worth it since their Mag stats ended up much higher than necessary for support purposes. Dex - Sylvain because he had some accuracy issues in the early game, and I needed him to land his multiple gauntlet hits for his role as a Player Phase nuke. This also helped him become a crit machine like Ashe. Ashe received some boosts despite having plenty of Dex already, as I wanted him to have very high Crit so I could actually rely on crits for kills. Whereas Sylvain often didn’t even need crits to kill, Ashe often relied on them. The accuracy boost also helped Ashe’s long-range attacks, especially as a Bow Knight attacking from at least 4-range. As such, it wasn’t overkill to boost his high Dex even further. Dedue was the other choice for some boosts, due to his accuracy issues. Spd - Still the most important stat in many situations, so you don’t want to waste any Spd boosts. Byleth was a high priority, to improve her killing potential and Nosferatu tanking. Sylvain was also worthwhile so he could get 4 hits with gauntlets, but eventually his crit rate was high enough to usually kill within the first 2 hits before any counterattacks. Felix was generally fast enough to Steal with the help of Rally Speed and/or Special Dance, but he received some boosts as he was one of my faster combat-focused units, thus making it worthwhile to maintain his capacity for dealing and preventing double attacks. It also allowed him to justify equipping the Aegis Shield in more situations. I also gave Ashe a few Spd boosts because his non-crit damage was insufficient without double attacks. As the game progresses, there are more enemies with ridiculously high AS, such as Assassins, War Masters, Grapplers, Falcon Knights and Pegasus Knights. On Player Phase I could avoid the threat of their double attacks by weakening them from range first, then finishing them. On Enemy Phase I could prevent doubles with Quick Riposte, or by finishing off weakened enemies before their follow-up attack, if I could hit them despite their high Avoid. As for dealing double attacks against super-fast enemies, the Quick Riposte skill also took care of that, while on Player Phase I could use Brave weapons. However, I didn’t use them much because I had Sylvain with gauntlets; he specialised in taking out the very fast enemies. As he mainly used Training Gauntlets which have 100 Hit, their high Avoid wasn’t much of an issue. Lck - Although many enemies have significant crit rates on Maddening, the crit-reducing effect of Lck isn’t as important in this game since you’ll have plenty of Divine Pulses by the time those high-crit enemies become more common. There’s also the Ochain Shield and Rafail Gem which both negate crits. Reducing crits is most relevant for units that take the most hits, namely tanks such as Dedue - his Lck would’ve been very low without the significant boosts I gave him. Byleth also received some boosts for safer Nosferatu tanking, so she could rely less on the AS-reducing Ochain Shield. In general, I figured that it’s better to make a low crit chance closer to 0% rather than reducing a high crit chance, as it wouldn’t make sense to gamble with significant crit rates. Therefore I tended to increase high Lck stats even further. Def - Dedue made the best use of this stat, more so than HP because he often tanked several enemies per Enemy Phase, and before he had Quick Riposte he was getting doubled by virtually everything. It was also helpful to reduce crit damage as much as possible, due to the aforementioned high-crit enemies. For these reasons, Def boosts were better than HP boosts for reducing the total damage taken in proportion to total HP. I think I also gave some boosts to Sylvain and possibly Dimitri, as they were among my sturdier units. Although Byleth’s Def really fell behind as the game progressed, I decided that it was too low to salvage with boosts, and it only prevented her from Nosferatu-tanking some types of enemies. Res - I had plenty of magic users with unnecessarily high Res (i.e. taking 0 damage), so I gave most Res boosts to Byleth to help her transition into the role of being another magic-based unit. This also made her effective as a mage counter, as she had the Str to use physical weapons against them. I may have also given some boosts to Annette, as she couldn’t take too many of the powerful magic attacks in the late game. My non-magic units either had Res too low to salvage, or in Ingrid’s case she didn’t need defensive stats because she was dodging everything. Cha - I eventually realised that Ingrid was a good choice for Cha boosts to improve her chances of avoiding enemy Gambits, which were the only type of attack that had much chance of hitting her. Apart from that I favoured units who were using offensive Gambits that have 2 uses per mission, such as Assault Troop. I think Sylvain may have received a few. Byleth certainly didn’t need any, as it would’ve been overkill. Mv (Movement +1) - I ignored the DLC items in Byleth’s room, so I was limited to the one 'Shoes of the Wind' item, from the Paralogue that requires Ashe and Catherine. I used it on Byleth, as she was a highly versatile unit and it helped with getting her adjacent to allies (along with the March Ring), so they could benefit from her exp-boosting ability. Without the boost she would’ve had lower base movement than most of my other Master Class units, due to her Gremory class. If I hadn’t chosen Byleth, a unit with Canto would’ve been another good choice, to enhance their hit-and-run capabilities. ————— The End ————— If anyone managed to read my whole report, thank you for taking the time! I’ll appreciate it if people read any parts of it though.

Probably Haar, since he put in a lot of work in my Hard mode run of Radiant Dawn. However, I prefer Jill in terms of character design. I used her in Path of Radiance, and her transfer bonuses definitely helped in Radiant Dawn.

Thanks! And yeah, I've used that Giratina recolour that I did back in 2009 as my avatar for many different sites.

Hey, it's nice to see someone else who started in 2011, although for me the ambassador programme wasn't the reason. I'd definitely recommend finishing Fates and Blazing Sword! I was also motivated to finish old FE runs due to the upcoming Three Houses release.

Hello everyone, I've been lurking since 2013 but I finally decided to make an account due to Three Houses coming soon, which I'm excited for. I started with Blazing Sword/Blade, but not until 2011 - FE quickly became one of my favourite game series, so I then played Binding Blade, Sacred Stones, Awakening, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Fates (all 3 paths) and Heroes, in that order. Since I played the Tellius games in 2015, I had to buy them expensively online - the PAL version of PoR was quite an investment, but worth it. I'd also like to share my first FE video, which is freshly uploaded: It's my 2-turn clear of Fates: Conquest's Endgame (Lunatic Classic, deathless). While Rescue Pass is nothing special, it is somewhat notable for not using any proc skills against the boss, and no super-powerful damage boosting skills such as Spendthrift or Life & Death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywVQBLLpDU4 I finally got around to finishing that run to prepare myself for whatever challenges lie ahead in Three Houses. Anyway, it's nice to finally join the forums.