Wazoo

Yeah thanks, it helped me to think of a less agressive strategy When are you gonna start your own Maddening run?

Just beat it! Changed my strategy by retreating in the center of the map, a bit more south than the starting position, gave me more space to take the incoming enemy units one by one. I used Caspar's insane crit rate to spam long range crit hits, that took safely care of many dangerous units. I was terrified of Rhea but with a Blessing gambit and smart use of offensive gambits to bait her attacks, this was actually the easiest part of the fight. Having both the Ochain Shield and the Rafail Gem to negate her crit also helped. All in al, really enjoyed Maddening, for sure the first chapters are the hardest (not to mention the obvious slap in the face that is Reunion at Dawn), but the paralogues are very challenging and the last battles also bring their fair share of trouble (managing to keep Dedue alive in the Enbarr throne room was no small feat). Overall, it forced me to capitalize on every bit of gameplay to survive and optimize my army, forced me to think of strats I wouldn't have thinked of if I had been able to stay in my comfort zone, which is all I wanted from a harder difficulty setting. Neat.

I'm trying to beat SS's last map, this is so hard ! Most of the enemy units have Miracle (not sure yet if it's triggered by stopping the Dragons reinforcements, if so maybe it's better to leave 2 or 3 units south to slowly kill the incoming dragons while the rest of the team clears the map). Each RNG matters and I end up using all my pulses before even getting to attack Rhea. Gonna require either more luck or a better strategy. If anyone has any advice for that map I'm listening.

They were, but not as much as the regular units. In regular story battles, they added more monsters so it's harder to beat the maps because of the monsters. But in the paralogues that have monsters in it, they didn't add more, they just buffed them a bit (but then again, the buff is not nearly as palpable as the human units'), so they end up being way easier than the rest of the game. On another note I just finished the Ferdinand paralogue, it was not as hard as it appeared but still quite challenging, with many chests to get, civilians to save and f*ckers with killer weapons to eradicate. Very entertaining. Not to mention it's nice to get more plot from the Hrym/Aegir side, as someone who did his first run on CF it's cool to know more about all that at long last.

Just finished Marianne's paralogue, one I particularly dreaded since I'm not using her on my SS playthrough. But it turned out to be the easiest paralogue so far in Maddening, with the Zanado one. Seems like monsters definitely are definitelt lacking in that mode. I'm about to discover the Ferdie/Lysie one, seems painful at first glance.

If you didn't train the ones in your core house units that the game is giving you on the first few turns, the chances that you beat the map are unfortunately slim. On my SS run I bought a lot of time by puting byleth in the bushes near the main entrance with a Wo Dao and lots of elixirs. It cleared a few assassins and thieves and byleth survived thanks to a bit of RNG luck while seteth went to help the north west units. But on BL you're "stuck" with Dimitri so I guess that's not a viable option. I don't remember on which turn your remaining units spawn at the north east corner, but if it's later than turn 6 (I believe the thieves start advancing by themselves if you didn't aggro them before) then they probably won't have time to come and save the day 😞 You might survive if you're willing to sacrifice your benched units to buy time for Byleth and Dimitri to escape, but that's not a price I would pay. This is such an unforgiving chapter unfortunately

Yeah, Hunter's Volley is the main reason I don't promote my Bernie to Bow Knight. My first playthrough was a CF and I ended up pretty underwhelmed by her, but now in my Maddening SS playthrough she's one of my most useful units! +20 precision + Deadeye + Encloser + Persecution + Hunter's Volley, she can hit extremely far with very good aim, keeping herself out of trouble while efficiently chipping/killing ennemies, and Encloser allows her to endlessly neutralize one monster. She consumes her bows very fast, but that's not a big issue in this game. I just had to feed her some strength bonuses ofc.

By the time I managed to launch the fire attack I was so terrified of the Pegasus Knights (+ the annoying ballista) that I kept more than half of my units on the upper west side until I was sure there was no risks whatsoever. The rest of my team were in the south-east, and I tried to attack some fleeing units, targeting specifically those who drop items (and to grind a bit). But I was very careful, by that time I only had 1 or 2 divine pulses.

When the fire attack is launched, the units close to Randolph move to the north and get burnt/immobilised, and as soon as then can move they start to flee south and leave the map. This is a very good way to beat an otherwise very painful map (those darn Pegasus). It gets funny as you can start to poke ennemies as they flee.

Oooh right I see, I was actually using both warp and Stride to get Seteth on the upper hill at the end of first turn, so that's why the reinforcements popped. By trying to cheese the game, I doomed myself. Lesson learned. I'll take my time and it should be alright, Warmaster Caspar will put his Killer Knuckles to good use.

Has anyone beaten the Caspar/Mercedes paralogue on Maddening yet? I've just peaked at the map and reinforcements, at first glance I don't see how I'll be able to keep Caspar & Marianne alive, even though they're both trained.

Yeah, as BE I recruted Ingrid right before I did the paralogue, she had good base stats and she took out the priest fairly easily. Though admittedly I postoned doing so until chapter 10 (when Ingrid finally decided to come to my class), so I was relatively overleveled for Maddening standards. The paralogues I really struggled with were the ones with Lorenz, Felix (could only save half of the civilians), Hilda & Cyril (both were useless since they were just recruted, could also save only have of the soldiers), and I also had to cheese Ignatz & Raphael's paralogue pretty hard by using flyers + dancers + warp because it seemed impossible to save those merchants otherwise.

Yeah that last CF map is hell, I can't imagine how painful it must be on Maddening... Being the shortest route doesn't necessarily means it's easier, especially since CF's last two chapters are so hard (let's not forget that muddy slaughter that is that battle against Dimitri), it also means you have less time to grind and optimize your units

Don't go Silver Snow if you're looking for the easiest! I did that and when I got to the first post-timeskip mission (the one with a 1000 thiefs to kill in the first three turns) I really thought my run was over. I managed to finish it without losing a single unit but honestly it was a miracle (thank God my Petra, though not a flying unit, had a March Ring and was my best unit overall, she saved Byleth's ass big time. In Silver Snow, you lose your Lord and it gets replaced by lesser units (Seteth is OK mind you, but not nearly as OP as a flying Edelgard). For the early game I think Blue Lion is the best pick, you get Dedue who can take most enemy attacks if he waits, and you also have Annette's Str rally (she also learns Spd rally which is a big plus in Maddening). Golden Deer should also be a nice fit since Claude is a bow God, and you'll need bows (at least for the first part of the game, which is admittedly the hardest part of the game.