[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

2 hours ago, DaveCozy said:

Dexterity+5 from Lucina, technically. And there's Sniper's No Distractions if you count class skills.

But yeah, besides Wrath, nothing else really sticks out. That's where engravings come in.

Thanks! Yeah, I thought so, but still a shame.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

2 hours ago, whase said:

Then why do these emblem weapon types matter?

Obviously very subjective, but here are my reasons:

I think Roy's level up ability helps sword users the most (because broadly speaking swords are slightly lower Mt), and Advance is most relevant for sword users who mostly don't have ranged options. There's not a huge amount in it for Roy though. 

For Marth, it's mostly so that you can get KOs from Lodestar Rush with high-Mt weapons. Divine Speed/Break Defenses help sword users, but they help everybody so being able to run another weapon alongside swords is also useful.

For Celica, she wants units that can use tomes so that Resonance works outside of being engaged, and so that you can use Echo with things like Excalibur (for effective damage), Nova (multiple kills), and Thunder tomes (chip multiple units, or apply debuffs to multiple units at range). 

Ike wants axes because they're more powerful than swords for Great Aether. Can recommend the Hurricane Axe in particular - lots of damage against otherwise tough enemies with relatively minimal setup.

Eirika is basically my personal preference - I really liked having her on Griffin Knight Chloe (who was independently built for high-Avo but has low strength), and I think lances, which are balanced between weight, hit and damage already, make the most of Eclipse Brace/Blue Skies. But like Roy, there's not much in it.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

6 hours ago, whase said:

Now my next question feels more like an opinion-based question, but I'll ask it anyways. Is it worth basing who you give your emblems to on the weapon type they boost? For example giving Lucina to your bow user because she buffs bows, Ike to your axe user since he buffs axes. Is it worth that even if it might be slightly less optimal when considering their other abilities? I mostly have my doubts about emblems that give a penalty to avoid.

Generally, no - for at least some emblems (ie Byleth) their weapon buffs are pretty irrelevant, and there are only a couple where the weapon buffs are important. Off the top of my head, Roy, Marth, Celica, Ike and Eirika all like units who possess the same weapon type. But the points made above about the first three of those emblems still stand, and in the case of Ike/Eirika, other parts of their kit are so good that you shouldn't feel bound to putting them on units with complementary weapons.  

If you've got the DLC, you can learn Weapon Sync from the 3H kids, which boosts attack by 5 (or 7 for the advanced version) if you're wielding the same weapon as a synced emblem, or when you're engaged with any emblem. Units running brave weapons or doubling regularly really appreciate that flat boost to attack (it's cheaper and available much earlier than Str+5 or Mag+5) so that's one particular case where you might really want to match up unit and emblem weapon.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

Has anyone discovered a way to change the RNG on the Ancient Well? I've tried a few different things, but no luck so far. Most recently, I put in two brave weapons and a Peshkatz (for a 5-star upgrade chance), and got out 600 SP worth of SP books, a Croissbow... and a Peshkatz. I appreciate any SP I can get, but I did feel quite shortchanged by that.

Also, are there any non-Wrath learnable skills that boost crit rate?

[Getting Engage-d! Maddening Classic Log]

On 3/9/2023 at 1:46 AM, ulurujamman said:

Two factors clinch Byleth on b) for me. Firstly, you get the improved Goddess Dance/Instruct with +3 to all attributes, which is unquestionably better than all the other permutations of that skill (with the possible exception of +5 speed on covert units, but I'm not personally convinced). Secondly, Goddess Dance gives a huge EXP boost to whoever uses it, and in particular when a low level character uses it on high level characters. Since b) needs some work when you get them, this can help them become viable in their own right. But in any case, after 2 maddening playthroughs I wouldn't seriously consider putting Byleth or Corrin on anyone other than a) or b).

Thanks for the advice! I think you're right, will be swapping Byleth and Corrin between those two characters and seeing which combinations I prefer.

On 3/9/2023 at 1:46 AM, ulurujamman said:

Good luck on the final chapters; I strongly suggest warp skipping 25, it's the worst map in the game by far.

This is good to know! I haven't really been abusing staves as much as I could thus far, so I'll be happy to give that a go. 

 

Almost immediately after I put up last week's log, I found out about Wave 3, which has changed things up for me again. Not least, I think I'll have lots more SP than I was expecting, so I'll be able to put some high-cost builds into practice. Yunaka will be keeping Wind God, because I can get her Lunar Brace. And below I've got my writeup of the  new DLC levels, as well as finally cracking on with the paralogues I've been ignoring.

Divine Paralogue 5 (Veronica)

Spoiler

MVP: Yunaka

Turn Count: 23

Time Crystals: 2

So 1.3.0 comes with some free stuff, ie the Ancient Well, which coughs up an extra axe and lance when you open it up. Both are brilliant weapons - I could see a Griffin Knight built around this lance and Eirika, while the axe forges up even better than knives in this game, as well as having innate crit. We've also got the final two emblems, so I'm going to delay the full-scale revamp of my team I was planning last week to have a look at these emblems first. Instead, I'm going to be moving people around in stages. First, Chloe and Jean are going to reclass, as both of them have now hit Lv 20. Chloe is going into Mage Knight, running Sigurd - I'm hoping she does for me now what Clanne was doing in the first half of the game, but better. And Jean is finally going to live out his Rock Lee fantasy by reclassing into Martial Master, running Lyn and Flashing-Fist Art+5. Martial Master has relatively low Dex/Spd, but I'm hoping Lyn and the weapon itself will compensate to make an arts user who can actually fight by themselves. I liked gauntlets in 3H (and the idea of Strike, its spiritual predecessor, even though you'd never seriously consider building around that), and while Arts have been nerfed a bit here, I still want to give them a go. 

I played Heroes for a little while, but I paid zero attention to the story in that game, so I don't know much about Veronica. Still, it feels like giving her (and the player via her) the ability to summon other units is out of place, even among all the slightly weird decisions that have been made about which emblem gets what. Although it does make for a fun dynamic setting up the reason why her and Alear have to fight - it's perhaps the most convincing reason of all the paralogues I've seen so far, DLC or not. It's always left a slightly sour taste in my mouth that the emblem maps have you get into fights with permadeath, for stakes that shouldn't require it. There's a difference between taking a fight seriously and killing your ally, potentially someone the emblem has bonded with, for no good reason. But at least in this specific level, you could argue Veronica is acquiring them - even though she doesn't give them back if she's defeated.

Anyway, her map looks a bit scary, because you're split into two groups of four. You could probably regroup after a few turns (or even quicker if you have a lot of fliers/are running Micaiah) but this is a chance for me to test out my new builds, so I'm going to attempt this map head-on and see how far I get. Alear, Chloe, Jean and Yunaka are on one side, while Panette, Goldmary, Merrin and Veyle are on the other. Although I'm not particularly aggressive on my first turn, lots of enemies move forwards, most heading towards Alear's side. Both groups have their hands full, although Alear's team is plainly struggling a little more than Veyle's. To be fair, that first enemy phase requires both sides to leave nearby enemies alive, it's just that the Veyle group have fewer enemies to beat before they can breathe. What also helps is that Goldmary is running Tiki, who heals on a Wait action - meaning she can sit and tank pretty much every turn without bogging down the action economy. 

Even with Alear using Dragon Vein fairly aggressively, there's a solid couple of turns of pressure on her side. I eventually have to cede their starting bridge due to the sheer variety of enemies (Mystical to land hits in the fog, arts/axe users with dangerous damage output, Thieves with covert/Pass, snipers etc), not all of whom I can kill thanks to the lack of space. It's a real shame Jean can't meaningfully contribute to a fight from two spaces - perhaps he should have had Camilla for this map instead. There's one turn where I end up covering the enemy Thief with fog as well, just to ensure other enemies can't get through. However, once I'm able to kill the last mage, Yunaka's dodge tanking returns, and I'm able to take back control again. 

Veyle's group is already at the second bridge, which is where I make my first mistake - after checking some combat windows, I leave Carnwenhan equipped on Panette, which brings her Avo down enough for enemies to land hits and kill her. I hate these kinds of things, because they're so avoidable and I should know better by now. A Time Crystal later, I've pushed through bridge two, and they're approaching the east island with the panel. The east island doesn't look too heavily defended, so I feel comfortable engaging Tiki and Byleth for these enemies, who I have to bait a bit aggressively in order to clear. It's as I'm happily clearing these enemies that Veronica reveals she's going to keep summoning reinforcements. Honestly, I was wondering when they were going to show, and these are probably the least annoying reinforcements in any of the DLC paralogues so far, because I can see that their trigger is defined.

Alear's group are only just moving out now, but their way forwards is a bit clearer, so they can push up quickly. Now that I know they'll get a wave of reinforcements on clearing their island, I can plan accordingly. Which just involves them moving together as a group, Chloe at the back so she can charge up Momentum. Jean does have an enemy phase with the fog on his side, so it's not very hard to clear these enemies either. Finally, the islands all come together, and I can take on Veronica herself, and her guard, including the new class, Mage Cannoneer. Which, to be honest, is not very threatening, because of its abysmal hit, although it's tough enough to withstand a couple of attacks as well. I make another silly mistake here, messing up the positioning for my second Goddess Dance, which I rewind. This was even worse, because it ended up being a waste of a crystal - even with the dance, I couldn't get enough units close to Veronica (and through her nearby enemies) to kill her this turn, which was basically the same outcome as before. But, Alear + Corrin had frozen her, so she wasn't able to do much damage. My plan was to clean up the reinforcements she summoned for the EXP, as well as kill Veronica, but Panette, who was supposed to just chip Veronica, ended up crit-killing her outright and depriving me of that opportunity. Which is hardly a tough problem to have.

What worked: Pretty much everybody in my party, even my def-tank Goldmary, was dodging attacks left, right and center. In Goldmary's case at least, I had budgeted for those attacks, so it was more pleasant windfall than lucky survival. But I was generally pleased to see most of my top units hold their own on Player Phase and Enemy Phase. It at least proves they're all viable going forwards.

What didn't work: The fishing minigame absolutely handed my butt to me today. It took about 45 minutes to catch ten fish that give 1000 bond frags each, which is an atrocious waste of my real time. I think I went a bit insane. I've also realised that this might be the reason why I haven't had a max bond with Sommie for a while - over the fishing session, Sommie's bonus damage to fish HP decreased, so maybe each failed fishing attempt harms my bond. If that's true, at least I have some answers, and can go about fixing things (ie not sucking at fishing so much). 

Fun Fact: One of the first proper chuckles I've had from this game is from how every Lindon interaction seems to be him throwing around thunder in random scenarios. Wanna get a good night's sleep? Let Lindon scorch the hair of a literal god. Wanna make popcorn? Not just any heat will do, you have to toss up the kernels and land an Elthunder. Other units are objectively better than him in almost anything he'd want to do, but he's making my endgame team on favouritism alone. 

Also, it seems like Lineage affects Bond SP? At least, units that got 5 SP in a normal Arena battle got 6 SP (ie a 20% increase, as written in the ability) when Lineage was equipped. If that's true, then I guess it's really been adding up for the units that have Lineage equipped - and I probably should have given it to more people. 

Divine Paralogue 6 (Chrom/Robin)

Spoiler

MVP: Yunaka

Turn Count: 13

Time Crystals: 2

So the Ancient Well is officially solving all my SP needs. I can't keep donating at a 5-star level, but if I'm getting 1600SP per donation I'll do it for as long as possible. However, I haven't yet found a way to change the RNG on these - I don't know how reliable the returns will be and I'd like to know I have the option to change things, if nothing else. Meanwhile, Merrin hits her Lv 20 cap as well, so reclasses back into Warrior. She could do basically any physical class at this point, but because all my backups have Dual Assist, they're basically confined to being backup classes, and Warrior has been really good to her. Veronica looks quite interesting - Ivy seems like the obvious choice for her, and the novelty factor alone would put her above Celica in the pecking order. Her engraving debuffs Hit, which immediately makes it quite niche, but I think I know what to do with it. We'll hold off until I get Chrom's before I make a decision though.

The map gimmick here is the three crystals that govern the barrier separating Chrom/Robin from my units. I have a look at them, and they're actually quite beefy. Only the units that brought strong smash weapons are capable of breaking them by themselves. I guess my strategy here will just be to rout this part of the map, and then send those units to break the crystals at once, leaving them out of the boss fight. Which is annoying, because they'll be Goldmary, Panette, and Kagetsu, who are often involved in my boss fights.

I'm jumping the gun though - on Turn 1, Chloe and Jean occupy avo-boosting terrain to bait the nearby sets of three enemies, while everyone else waits to spring on them. Jean takes damage from the chain attacks from the eastern berserkers, but he'll live - Yunaka and Kagetsu help him take them down the following turn. Chloe's looking quite solid, but the cavalry on her side are very bulky, and need a concerted effort from the rest of my army to go down. I then bait the armours/mages directly north of the starting position, who don't really take the bait in the way I expect, refusing to attack my units head-on but advancing nonetheless. They're arranged a bit awkwardly for a Torrential Roar - and it turns out I have a different set of candidates for that anyway, as the first set of reinforcements arrive from behind. I'm not able to kill everything this turn, because I don't have enough magical/penetrating damage for the armours, and the reinforcement paladins are again very bulky. But I am able to mitigate the ones that survive with various Mv-sealing effects (Alear with Corrin, Veyle with Anima Focus), and the next couple of turns are spent dealing with further reinforcements and cleaning up those nearby enemies. In the meanwhile, the enemies on both sides, including other reinforcements, are heading towards me, so I deploy Chloe and Yunaka on either side to focus their aggro. Which half-works and half-doesn't. Yunaka is able to take chunks out of a couple of fliers even with the Mini Bow equipped, but Chloe gets hit twice (by a 20 and 6 displayed hit rate respectively). Even then, it's only because enemy archers inflicted Seal Def even with their misses that she went down, which was very annoying. It's fixable, though, by withdrawing everyone from engaging enemies on that side so I can finish clearing the other. 

Finally we seem to be free of reinforcements, so now I can actually turn to tearing down the barrier. Enemies have been amassing behind it for a little while now, so let's hope I have enough space to pile on the pain against both our bosses. Kagetsu breaks the central crystal, Goldmary the west, and Panette the east. Which is, literally, the signal for the floodgates to open. A ton of water terrain, decreasing avo and adding Mv cost, descends on the map, and reinforcements flood in from every corner. And Chrom charges, while Robin stays back. Great - I'm going to have to last at least two turns to finish this. I have a go at Chrom, who is surprisingly tough - while I'm able to beat him, I'm concerned that I can't prevent nearby enemies from killing my units on the following turn. So I rewind, and move Panette and Goldmary first. Part of the logic is that this will reload the RNG for things like crits and chain attacks, but I also want Panette to get close enough to my main army that she could potentially proc Dual Assist and add poison into the mix. Which works out better than I had hoped, because it also makes me examine my main army positioning a little more closely. By getting the damage boost from neighbouring Alear, Kagetsu can now ORKO Chrom with Lodestar Rush, which is a nice surprise, and frees up Chloe to kill the closest mobile enemy, leaving only a Meteor mage in threat range and allowing me to bait Robin safely. Robin turns out to be no threat at all compared to Chrom, but Goldmary gets severely bullied on the west side of the map - I don't think she can hang on another turn even if I wanted to. I send Chloe over to see if she can pick up an Elixir from one of the enemies near Goldmary, but even with Momentum she's just 1 damage short. Irritatingly, the enemy she kills this turn instead gives her the level-up she needed to get the Elixir - if I'd done the previous turn slightly differently I could have achieved that. I still have gas in the tank to spare to kill the enemies around Robin, and it isn't long before Robin falls as well

What worked: From the sound of Chrom and Robin's dialogue, the water attack and reinforcements would have triggered once I'd sent any units too far left and right. The reinforcement wolves in particular looked quite nasty. If I had split the party at the start of the map, which I was seriously considering, I probably would have been completely screwed. 

Also, it's the first time I've actually used the enhanced Houses Unite+ (while the 3H emblem is next to Byleth) - and boy is that broken. I was already convinced this was one of the best emblems before I knew about this, and now I'm just wondering how many maps I could have made easier with the knowledge that I could move again after popping off the engage attack. 

What didn't work: I held off on picking up Lunar Brace for Yunaka and Jean, figuring I could at least see what Chrom/Robin had to offer first, but it meant that I had two fewer units who could hurt high-Def enemies on this map, and that limited my options quite a lot. 

Fun Fact: So is it an actual plot point that Alear can't find the DLC emblems by herself, and has to have Tiki point them out? Because that's how it's happened every time. Also, I don't remember this map from Awakening - was it a xenologue or something? It's been a while since I played it to be fair, but this didn't feel familiar at all. 

Skirmish - Bandits' Hideout

Spoiler

MVP: Panette (+Lucina)

Turn Count: 6

Time Crystals: 2

So, the Brute Force ability turns crits into x4 base damage, instead of x3 as normal. I wish I'd had access to this before I got Speedtaker for Yunaka, because I'm beginning to think Speedtaker for her is overkill - and lots of my units want Speedtaker and are close to getting it, meaning the competition for getting kills will become a bit intense. Generally, Chrom/Robin looks amazing, and could go on any of my units fruitfully. For now, though, they'll be on Diamant, who needs a good emblem to compensate for being the member of my team I'm least excited about. Now that I've done all the DLC paralogues (and I'm expecting to be finished with this run before Wave 4, although I said that about Wave 2 as well) I decide to do some wider army organising. Lindon goes into Griffon Knight - I want him to run Micaiah and use a Levin Sword for half-decent combat. Like I said before, I'm using him even though I know there's better units for this niche, and I'm hoping his combat will prove me right. Mauvier goes into Wyvern Knight, running Ike - I think this will be a winning combo, especially with some of the skills that are now within reach for him, and he can switch between magical and physical weapons for consistent damage-dealing. He immediately hits the Res cap for the class - and he's not the only one to start hitting caps. Alear has capped Build, Chloe has capped HP and Dex (and is probably about to cap Spd) and Jean has also capped Spd/Dex. I wasn't expecting that to happen already, but we'll see how much it matters.

I forge up lots of weapons, blowing through over half my current total resources, and do a big shuffle of the engravings. Even with the DLC, I could do with a couple more engravings, in particular for boosting Hit, but I get to a place I'm basically happy with. As I thought I would, I put Veronica's engraving on Elsurge, which I think is best-suited to handle its shortcomings. Most other engravings go to the usual suspects (high-crit weapons, braves/engage attack weapons, Thoron). I used to have Celica's engraving on Noatun, which I had traded around a lot, but now it mostly goes on Goldmary, who has high luck via Tiki, so I'm moving that engraving onto Seadall's Shielding Art. Seadall isn't taking attacks in the first place, but since he always runs the Shielding Art just in case, there's no harm in making him safer.

Which brings us to this skirmish map. I wanted a place to try out some of this stuff right now, but if I do the paralogues in order it might take me a while before I get to a challenging fight. So we come to the Silver Corrupted skirmish that appeared a couple of story chapters ago, but which I'm already over-levelled for. Still, I figure the disparity shouldn't be too bad, and I'm curious to see how much SP those enemies drop. I get my answer almost immediately - not much. At least, compared to all the SP books the well has thrown at me. I clear out the enemies in the area that once contained the boss of Anna's paralogue, but I get cocky and decide to see if I can hold the south area, with the open chests. Which makes this map way more challenging than it needed to be, and is directly responsible for both crystals I use here. Mauvier is single-handedly dealing with one side of the map, entertaining the boss and some cavalry. But the other side causes me no end of trouble - Diamant misses, and takes damage from a Martial Master, while Panette has to cover him from multiple enemies. Nobody who supports Panette is in this corner of the map, meaning her dodge-tanking isn't as good as usual, and I pay for that with two Time Crystals (the first to save Panette from getting overwhelmed, the second to save Diamant from a Thief with Pass). An Obstruct eventually saves the day, and the following turn I'm being attacked on three fronts. Luckily, Lindon is here to Freeze a couple of enemies with Micaiah, while Veyle is running Corrin and can provide terrain support. I can slowly chip away at all these enemies for an eventual win, but it was nowhere near as comfortable as I was expecting going in. To make matters worse, even these units, my lowest-levelled of people I'm actually raising, got negligible amounts of EXP from this map. Materially speaking, this was a deeply unrewarding map - if I even get another skirmish, I'll save-scum for a golden one.   

What worked: I'm mostly happy with the builds I did try out. I haven't used Veronica yet, but Chrom/Robin on a backup (even Diamant) is quite good. Wyvern Knight Mauvier + Ike was a really successful combo. Micaiah is the premier support emblem, so I'm happy to re-establish her in my army as well. Ideally, Lindon needs a bit more crit and more avo on the combat side - but I don't think I can give him meaningful amounts of both at once, especially since he also wants to run Canter. I think I'll have to double down on either crit or avo, but he's still decent as things stand. 

What didn't work: Diamant's Tomahawk just doesn't hit enemies very reliably - but I'm not sure who could, or should, give up their hit engraving to save it. Diamant will eventually have two engraved weapons (Revanche and Georgios, coming up next story map) - giving him a third feels a bit unfair. 

Fun Fact: For the first time I can remember, the two allies I dine with (Panette and Goldmary) speak to each other instead of commenting on the food. This was an A-rank meal - I've had A-rank meals and above before, but this hasn't happened. Is it just RNG, or did I accidentally fulfil a condition for this?

Paralogue 4 (Lyn)

Spoiler

MVP: Chloe (+Sigurd)

Turn Count: 6

Time Crystals: 0

Yunaka has hit level 20, so reclasses to Sniper again. I consider sending her into Thief again, but I'm quite attached to Sniper Yunaka, and I don't think she'd get kills as easily, so she's staying in Sniper. She also mentions her real name is Larimar in her Citrinne support. Which is the most un-Yunaka name I could think of. With the tonal inconsistency of this game, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a joke, although it's delivered so seriously I feel bad for even saying that. 

Even my lowest-level deployed unit is about 15 levels above the recommended level for this map, so I'm not expecting a challenge. The degree to which I'm not challenged surprises even me, as most of my units can just trundle forwards without consequences. Yunaka does take a bit of damage, and Mauvier needed Great Aether to ensure he stayed alive after being thrown into a mass of Bow Knights - but the fact they even survived at all says a lot about the overwhelming level gap. The Bow Knights generally act quite aggressively, so I can see how difficult this map could have been. But it's no trouble to kill every treasure-bearing enemy on the map - I need the money, and the post-explore resources too. Nobody puts up a concerted fight on the way to Lyn, and Lyn does basically nothing at all. I even left her alive for a turn, but no counterattack or anything. I'm not really complaining though - that was a nice easy clear after quite a few demanding battles, and I don't really expect oases like this on Maddening. 

What worked: I was so over-levelled that it'd be unfair to say anything I did worked. I think I would have really struggled with this map even if I had done it around Ch 15 or so. 

What didn't work: With this being generally so easy, I spaced on Yunaka being not invincible without terrain backing her up and nearly paid for it. An unnecessary moment of carelessness, which I would have been punished for anywhere else. 

Fun Fact: Lyn didn't move or use Astra Storm this entire map. I'm pretty sure she would have been able to do more than 0 damage at higher than 0 hit to my army, so I don't understand what happened. 

Also, Mauvier revealed that he is originally from Firene, although the game doesn't treat him as such for the purposes of meals etc. I understand why that might be the case for Veyle, but it's strange that Mauvier gets this treatment as well. I suppose it's like how Clanne and Framme aren't actually from Lythos, but they are because they belong to the associated faction? 

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

7 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I'm concerned by pretty much everything else charging too; it's likely that by the time Zephia's in range, I've got my hands full fighting off some generics. I've seen some runs on the tube, and that's what happens when that wyrm gets aggroed.

Yeah, there will be almost definitely be generics coming alongside her, and the other bosses. If you aren't using DLC, then I'd suggest making sure to bring and engage Corrin for this, and then have her seal movement on that group if you need to buy time to kill them all. Zephia is obviously the priority kill at that point, so focus your cannons on her - unless you've actively baited her she should have a physical weapon equipped rather than Thoron, making her much safer to attack. You're likely to face off against Zephia's group just past Marni's starting point, and there are emblem recharge points around there so you should hopefully be fine to use Corrin even if you've already used her this map. 

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

On 3/6/2023 at 8:15 PM, DefyingFates said:

I see Kagetsu and Panette topping unit rankings a lot; what are their best classes? I assume Panette wants to be a Warrior, but is Swordmaster good for Kagetsu or is he better as a Hero, Wyvern Knight or something else altogether? Thank you in advance!

Can recommend Wolf Knight Panette. Has been doing wonders for me, and I imagine Thief would work out similarly for her.

My Hero Kagetsu has been very solid, but he'll still need a bit of investment to be a powerhouse in combat. Hero is great, but not sure it's Kagetsu's best class.

10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Okay... I'm staring down the barrel of chapter 17, and I'm worried about the trio of Zephia, Veyle, and SPOILER... Zephia has movement rivaling Quick Man, and then a shitload of other crap comes at you all at once when they go aggro. Any easy ways to deal with that?

Aggroing the second wyrm (furthest west of your starting point) will aggro all remaining bosses on the map, if you're still planning that part out.

Zephia's movement gap also works slightly in your favour, as once you bait her she will reach you well before the other two bosses do, and can be ganged up on more easily. The boss with Leif can very much be Ike-tanked because he only makes use of Leif's kit. Ideally, you've beaten the other bosses on this map before you deal with these last three, though. I learnt from experience how tough this map can be if you get that wrong.

[Getting Engage-d! Maddening Classic Log]

A lot of life stuff has been going on since my last log update, meaning I haven't managed to complete my write-up till now. On the plus side though, I've done more chapters than usual, and I have a couple extra sections as well. Glad to be back!

Skirmish - Tea-Field Village

Spoiler

MVP: Merrin (+EdelDimiClaude)

Turn Count: 4

Time Crystals: 0

Since I started recording skirmishes and there haven't been that many, I'm happy to keep writing these up. This was an actual golden skirmish this time, but with a flier icon. The map is Jean's paralogue map, which is pretty open for fliers to raid. And I'm still a bit scarred from that last skirmish, so I bring my A-team, who are all above the recommended level for this map. 

As it turned out, only the boss of this map was a flier, which is already a huge relief. We're starting in the literal tea fields for this skirmish, and enemies look like they'll attack on two fronts. I already know everyone is going to advance on me immediately, but I'm much better prepared for this reality compared to last time. I start by making a big dent on the enemies south of the starting position (near the mill and next-door house) as I occupy the thickets, and then letting everything else come to me. Inevitably, there's a turn of big risk where I'm about to be pincered on both sides, but the south side is quicker (and more threatening) than the north side. This time, I have Corrin and Camilla to deal with them. Ivy uses Camilla to provide some light group healing, while Alear+Corrin sets up the ice dragon vein to prevent too many units from attacking at once. Everybody engages (if they haven't already) on the following turn, mostly unloading on the south side while Goldmary+Tiki makes enemies on the north side talk to the hand. And then, there's only the north side to deal with - I have more than enough in the tank to finish off the remainder.

What worked: Everybody was over-levelled, so it's hard to point to something specific.

What didn't work: Maintaining 100% HP on Yunaka to keep Wind God (+1 bow range) active was a surprising chore.

Fun Fact: The villagers we met in Jean's paralogue return with the exact same dialogue. I guess it's pretty forgivable though as they're in nearly the exact same scenario. Also, Framme is already begging for inclusion for the second time. Sorry Framme, but you should stick to the pool. 

Chapter 17

Spoiler

MVP: Merrin (+nepo babies)

Turn Count: 13

Time Crystals: 3

So, this is a big map. Story-wise and in terms of enemies. It's the first time we're actually supposed to fight all the Four Hounds, Veyle and a resurrected Hyacinth have decided to show (all with Emblems!), and there are dragons in the mix as well. The game has really upped the ante for this map, befitting the 'seriousness' of this massacre. In response, I'm... still fielding Clanne. Even if I wasn't disrespecting the story, I'm definitely disrespecting the gameplay with that choice.

While the story may forgive me for it, the gameplay certainly won't, and defeating even my low expectations Clanne gets wiped in Turn 2. Let me explain - I sent a few units north to take down the nearby armours and prepare for Griss, while everybody else went after Marni. Once Griss got close, I retreated everybody except my mages outside of his range, so they could tank him before his Warp Ragnarok gets too close to anybody truly fragile. Or so I thought, and Warp Ragnarok deleted Clanne entirely, even with his mage's Res. On Res alone Clanne is near the top end of my army, but his HP is so poor that it didn't matter. One Time Crystal down, and I've barely done anything.

Once Griss has had his one shot, though, he's an easy enough target. I leave a couple of units in the area to finish off the last enemies coming from that side, while I'm slowly baiting the enemies around Marni. The nearby wyrm is annoying on that front, and I waste turns trying to skirt its range (especially with flame terrain impeding easy access to it). In the end, I'm forced to charge it, engaging Merrin to do so. Her Failnaught is still one of the few options I have to reliably hurt them, so I was hoping not to engage so early with her. Between the first wyrm and the fire tiles, the units who fought Griss and his enemies are all injured, and I still haven't properly gotten to Marni's group. So I decide I may as well try to pull the second wyrm so that it doesn't interfere with the Marni fight (and so I can kill it before Merrin runs out of Failnaught use). But as it turns out, the movement of that wyrm procs every single enemy on this map. Which is insane. The Marni group is enough to tie up the units I've sent towards her, but now I've got a wyrm as well as Mauvier and his enemies on a group that can't handle that much heat, as well as everyone else around Veyle heading for me. I'm able to survive a turn of this, but the following turn Zephia can hit just about everyone in my army, meaning I'll definitely lose at least one unit. So, a rewind, with my lesson learnt - no skipping the order.

Which means I'm going to have to take out Marni next. My mages and Merrin were mostly dealing with the Griss group, so I'm a bit underpowered for Marni herself and have to be careful. A Torrential Roar means her group don't pose an immediate threat, although the very line formation that allows Torrential Roar to land also prevents me from whaling on her with everyone. So I have to give her a turn to survive, but thankfully Mauvier's group don't come to help, and she is dispatched the following turn. So I bait the Mauvier group, which I want to do with Chloe - some wobbly hits and a Time Crystal later, I switch to Goldmary. Mauvier is probably the least threatening of the bosses on this map, and he saves me the trouble of entering the wyrm's range. But I still have to deal with the wyrm, now knowing it triggers everything on the map and can't be enemy-phased. Thankfully, I get lucky with a Merrin crit, just leaving everyone else to deal with. Zephia and the most advanced cavaliers are the immediate threat, and I don't want to take a hit from Zephia, so I run from her until she's within general range, and then take her out. Unfortunately, that also leaves Hyacinth and his group in range of my units, who I have to tank. That... goes surprisingly well, Kagetsu only taking 13 damage from Quadra Strike. I guess Leif is pretty bad even on the enemy.

Now, it's pretty easy for me to unload on the bosses and nearby enemies. Ivy ends one of Hyacinth's health bars so I get that sweet pre-battle convo, while Panette finishes off his final bar with an All for One that dealt 0 damage on the actual attack. I Goddess Dance some of my bigger hitters to go after what remains of Veyle's health - I'm able to kill everything on the map except a lonely Qi Adept, and I don't even give Veyle the honour of dying to a targeted attack. She falls to the AoE of Ivy + Soren's Cataclysm. 

What worked: Great Knight Goldmary with Tiki is definitely a winning combo. Tiki's features synergise better with General, but getting her into the fight or better positioning for her breath weapon feels much more important. I'm still rolling the dice when Goldmary attacks normally, but she is a great tank. 

What didn't work: Mistakes in the battle aside, my support with Sommie dropped massively this chapter for no reason. I've never missed a petting/feeding, so I'm pretty sure I'm not the reason - does that just happen randomly?

Fun Fact: I was wrong before about Kagetsu - his B support with Merrin reveals that he is from this continent, just a particularly secluded area of Solm called Pale Sands. And he's apparently a prince there? 

It's also pretty surreal that characters who give bond fragments in the post-battle explore keep their normal lines. No, Yunaka, the Firene massacre is not at all zappy. 

Story Corner: I think I have to ignore how much hay this game makes of our first War Crime™️, because this is the first time in-story the game has really treated war like, well, an atrocity. I mean, it comes up in supports a decent amount, but pillage and massacre is how wars are often waged (including the one between Brodia/Elusia as flagged in Diamant/Ivy's support) and it's weird that a war in which one side is predominantly mindless destructive zombies hasn't had more of this before now. Its treatment is pretty one-note, but at least this feels like an actual war. Anyway, the game follows all this up by fading out Zephia slapping Veyle. Seriously. We literally kill people/zombies every single level, using mostly child soldiers. You just described a mini-genocide. How is this the line you draw?

Also, I know it's obviously for plot reasons, but Veyle could have thrown Marth and Sigurd together. Not complaining though - Sigurd is a great emblem to have back, and Leif on his own would have been a bit underwhelming. 

Chapter 18

Spoiler

MVP: Jean

Turn Count: 8

Time Crystals: 1

Lots of Somniel developments - we finally have infinite Master/Second Seals, although I won't go ham on reclassing just yet. The Hard difficulty on Wyvern Ride is out, and it's actually quite hard?! Like even after a few goes I can't get higher than an S-rank on it. Maybe I'll get better with practice, but at this rate it might be more optimal to just get the S++ on Normal. I finally get an S+ meal (from Bunet) - but it really isn't that impressive, maybe because the original meal wasn't that impressive. Out of interest I save-scum to see the other meals he can make, and Bunet also produces a G meal. Actually horrifying, I won't abide that. I also get the Olwen S ring (Dire Thunder) and the Marisa S ring (Lethality) for relatively cheap thanks to learning more about the ways to exploit the gacha. For now, I'll be testing them out on Jean and Yunaka respectively (I talk a bit more about how I feel about Dire Thunder on another thread). 

This map doesn't look that bad, although it seems clear that I'm going to be forced to defend the starting area. One issue is the number of entrances to our ship - I obviously can't cover all of them, so I shouldn't aggro enemies unnecessarily. Another is the thief near the northeast chest. I don't quite understand why there's a thief here and how they think they're going to escape a ship, but either way they'll have to be stopped. So I start by sending Yunaka, Goldmary and Alear towards that chest, Alear as a mobile terrain-bot while Yunaka and Goldmary alternate tanking. Everybody else bides their time, grouping up and avoiding the range of enemy magic cannons, as I watch how the enemy moves. Yunaka is more than able to handle the closest couple of enemies, although skirting the magic cannon on her side requires me to move quite slowly, and the thief starts to move away. Meanwhile, enemies approach from both sides, so I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and start fighting on the decks. My actual siege cannon seems pretty useless at the moment, but my magic cannon, Jean, with Dire Thunder is just about able to ORKO the armours on this map, so that allows me to focus more on the west side.

As I'm congratulating myself for mostly dealing with the first wave, the fliers start to descend on the ship. It's a bit of an issue, as Merrin isn't quite able to ORKO the south wyvern with her Radiant Bow (I keep meaning to forge it up and always forget), and the north fliers do a number on the Kagetsu + Ike combo, who doesn't reply with nearly as much damage as I'd like. The Heroes on the west side also begin to advance, as does Lindon, so I've got to be really careful here. I shouldn't have sent Goldmary on a side mission, although her group do make fairly short work of the Berserkers by the chest. These Heroes are quite tanky, and their Triangle Adept ability combined with their base Spd means dealing with them on their phase is more fraught than usual. Irritatingly, Lindon takes part in the pile-on here, and both Kagetsu and Diamant are brought pretty close to death. Only some lucky work from Chloe and Panette saves me from using up a Time Crystal. On the plus side, Lindon is now close enough for Ivy to recruit him, which gives me enough numbers to clear out the enemies in this area and close down the mage using the magic cannon. 

It also gives license for Jean, Clanne and Seadall to come over and help clear the east ship, as the Alear group don't have enough in the action economy to stop the axe-wielders and the magic cannon. I'm pretty lucky that they do, because it's the turn before a bunch of fliers show up from the east. Movement-wise, they're skirting the edge of my units' range if that, and the thief is only two turns away from the escape point. Alear deals with a remaining axe-wielder, while I want Goldmary+Tiki to deal with two of the fliers using a dance. But I realise after the act it'd be much easier for me to dance Alear so she can shoot off a Torrential Roar, which can lock out the threat. So I rewind to pull that off instead, which relieves the pressure on the east side entirely, and allows me to kill the thief here as well. I finish off the fliers on the following turn, and aggro the last enemies on this ship just for fun. There's no way this lot are making it back to the other side to help with the boss now, so they may as well get some EXP. The Lindon group have already beaten the enemies in the southwest, and Abyme has made a move, so I send over Ivy to open the chest, and Yunaka to get a shot off on one of the remaining enemies. Everybody else goes to gang up on the boss - after a Goddess Dance from Chloe, I have enough damage output to beat her and then some. Unfortunately the enemy arrangement (on the deck stairs) means I can't quite rout the map, but I'm still happy. 

What worked: Sigurd made Clanne surprisingly usable! He had the movement to help out both sides, Momentum helped out his damage, and Canter kept him safe. I'm probably dropping Clanne for Lindon now, but this is giving me ideas.

What didn't work: This map really reminded me that Hector is not a tank in the way that Ike or Tiki are. Ike and Tiki boost raw stats by a fixed amount when engaged, but Hector boosts stats by a percentage of the raw number. So Diamant, who has poor Res and decent Def, is not significantly improved in tanking with Hector compared to Ike. In fairness, Ike also has Laguz Friend, so he's straightforwardly tankier than Hector on most units and not a fair comparison. Still, Hector mostly doesn't match Tiki (boosts stats by 5), since before the late-game there are very few units whose Def and Res exceed 17 (where Hector draws parallel to Tiki assuming he isn't on an armoured/flying unit). At this point, only Ivy fits the bill (and even then just barely, although I'm now considering an Ivy/Hector build...). Hector has a lot of solid stuff going for him, and he'd shut out all physical damage if I put him on a General, but I'm still marking him down for this.

Fun Fact: I am completely certain the boss Abyme is the same character model as the Chapter 3 boss - they have the same name and face. But in Chapter 3 she was an armoured unit, and in this chapter she's a Berserker. And it makes no story sense for her to be alive after Chapter 3. So my guess is the devs slipped up and used the same boss design twice. I haven't seen anything else like that so far.

Story Corner: Slightly strange that Queen Eve had no idea about the death of King Morion till Alfred told her. A decent amount of time in-game seems to have passed since he died. 

Also, I like how Sombron's third eye moves independently of his other two eyes. I wasn't sure how I felt about the whole snake dragon design, but I feel like if there's anywhere to take a punt with designs, it's the dragons, so I'm not against it. 

Chapter 19

Spoiler

MVP: Yunaka (+Lyn)

Turn Count: 18

Time Crystals: 3

Somewhat surprisingly, Lindon is a mad scientist (think Hanneman from 3H) with so-so Mag and decent Spd, rather than the classic lategame true sage/magic cannon (ie Gotoh). Not ideal for the purposes of my army, but he's the best option that I have, so he's in for Clanne. And despite Ivy recruiting him, she doesn't get any support with Lindon, which is weird. My incomplete paralogues are weighing on me a lot, but I've delayed them for so long I may as well get all the paralogues first and then do them in one hit. Let's pray the game doesn't lock me out of them before that happens. 

This map brings back the absolutely terrible miasma terrain. At first I think there's no way I can deal with it all, but the game helpfully points out that the flame cannons west of my starting point can clear them as well. Their range is limited, so I still don't know how I'm going to take on Marni and Mauvier if I have to advance on them in the miasma, but that's future me's problem I guess. The more immediate issue is Saphir. Looking at her battle stats, there's no way she lasts for long, especially as a green unit - I refuse to have her be a Jade 2.0. I wish she'd arrived earlier, as I do quite like the look of her - we'll see if I can make use of her. Anyway, I put Diamant at the front of my army so he can recruit her straightaway, and I engage him with Ike because I don't trust the nearby cavaliers not to move, no matter how many times the game says it's fine.

The other thing I do early is send Ivy to open the nearby house - Corrupted units can reach it pretty quickly and I don't want to risk it being destroyed. But it's a trap!! A bunch of axe-wielding enemies spring out. At first I think it's just a big fat L, but it turns out one of them is carrying a droppable Elixir. So that's how they're going to do this. I... really really like this! Like, if I stopped to think about it, the game warned me multiple times that there were no civilians here, and it'd make even less sense than usual for there to be townspeople cowering/unaware of the creatures outside. And it introduces an actual tradeoff where I can pick up a goodie but at a greater cost than usual - as if the Corrupted were actually doing the pillaging that everybody says they do. What a great mesh of story and gameplay. Still, I have to use a Rescue on Ivy and change my plan for Turn 1 - Kagetsu and Alear use the flame cannons to hit the immobile enemies and the axe-wielders respectively, while everyone advances, trying to maintain a formation. It also flags how difficult it's going to be to reach and open the second house in the northeast - that'll need some thinking over.

This map has even more great synergy in store for me, as instead of getting involved directly, Mauvier sends a couple of nearby foes straight into my formation with his Micaiah-buffed Warp. Again, brilliant enemy play. Most enemy emblem usage has been limited to spamming engage weapons/attacks (even when normal weapons might be more optimal), and after Hortensia failed to use Goddess Dance in Ch 14 I just assumed enemy AI wouldn't do anything clever with their emblems. Not so - while it might have been smarter to let me advance on the miasma tiles I can't clear, this counts as using the element of surprise, and warns me that I have to be note-perfect with my positioning if I don't want to lose anyone. In actual fact, both Diamant and Saphir get hurt pretty badly - if Diamant hadn't engaged or Saphir had kept the Brave Axe equipped, they'd both be dead. But I'm through the enemy phase, and now I know what to expect. 

The axe users I released from their home have charged out but get stuck in flame tiles from previous cannon fire, so I have some time to deal with them and the central path. Kagetsu is basically confined to the central cannon for the next couple of turns, as there's plenty of enemies to target on the central path, and Mauvier keeps lobbing cavalry at me. Meanwhile, I'm baiting the axe users with Yunaka, switching units between the two fronts to ensure nobody is exposed unless they can handle a couple of attacks. The narrowness of the pier works against me a bit here, and a few unlucky misses in a row make me use a Time Crystal (nobody died, I just couldn't cover healing and damage-dealing for the following turn without somebody subsequently dying). I'm basically committed to outlasting Mauvier's foe-warping, as he shows no signs of moving yet and is still in miasma. Enemies on the north and south paths keep advancing - the Wolf Knights in the south are tricky, and I have to use Torrential Roar to immobilise them and nearby armours so I don't get overwhelmed. 

Eventually, we're out of Warps, and now enemies just start advancing naturally, including various reinforcements. Both the dragons start moving - the one in the north directly towards me, the south one towards Mauvier. I've cleared the normal enemies on the southern path and some enemies that advanced from the north path, so everyone is congregated around the central path and it feels a bit crowded. So now is probably the time to detach a group and try for the northwest house. First it means I have to blow through the north dragon - thankfully Jean with Thyrsus and Chloe with Lunar Brace (alongside some chip help from Kagetsu/Diamant) are able to do it by themselves. Lindon and Seadall go along for support. In the meanwhile Panette, Yunaka and Goldmary hold the central path (Alear/Ivy/Merrin providing mop-up and support for them). At this point, I resolve in advance to use a Time Crystal just to see whether it's possible for me to take on the northwest house aggressively. I advance the Chloe group, using Goddess Dance to make them push on quickly. It isn't great timing as more reinforcements have just arrived, but they reach the house and open it. As predicted, enemies spring forth, but they're all bulky axe-wielders again, and I don't have the damage output to beat them straightaway, or the defensive capacity to protect Jean, Lindon or even Diamant. So that's my fact-finding mission complete, and I'm another Time Crystal down. My next go at the house involves using a dance/Warp/Rescue combination to get Chloe to the house and away - but I haven't paid enough attention to the positioning, and Lindon can't reach with Rescue. Chloe could dodge the raw attacks coming her way, but I'm not sure she'll survive all the chain attacks, and not at all sure how I'd extricate her safely if she did survive. One more Time Crystal then, but I'm still struggling to position Lindon in a way that allows him to Rescue Chloe and keeps them both safe. The solution, I realise, is once again the flame cannons. After using Rescue, Lindon would have been in range of the closest axe user, but the flames from the flame cannon (which didn't actually damage anyone on this use) make sure both are protected. Even better, it makes the enemy AI try to send the axe users around the flames and a nearby house, which is a significant detour and allows me to pull back the entire group. I eventually kill these units once they approach my main army.

Finally, Mauvier and Marni start making moves here. Moves is an understatement - everything else on the map starts to charge me. Not sure what has prompted this, but if they're going to come to me then it saves me from thinking about the miasma, so that's good enough. However, I'm basically funnelling them into a bottleneck, and it's a race against time to get to the bosses before the south wyrm gets in range of my units and starts blasting. All of the non-wyrm enemies pretty much arrive at once, including Mauvier and Marni. However, while Mauvier is on the front lines, Marni is not, and there are so many enemies around that I can't beat Marni this turn. So I have to just focus on Mauvier, and I clear out a couple of other Corrupted as well. Most of these enemies don't have ranged attacks, thankfully, but the wyrm does get in range this turn. Who misses altogether; the threat this turn actually comes from Marni, who shoots off Roy's Blazing Lion this turn. The damage is bad but not fatal - the bigger problem is that it blows away Alear's fog. I'm lucky that nobody else here has ranged attacks, and that Marni targeted Yunaka (so nobody else can hit her for the KO this turn), but that was very close. Now though, I can finish up this map. Marni's high defence means I have to leave the wyrm and a couple of other Corrupted behind, but that's finally map done. 

What worked: My front line for most of the map (Panette/Yunaka/Goldmary) could have been absolutely wrecked by chain attacks and/or mages, and fliers could have ripped apart my formation. Thankfully, basically none of those enemies showed up this map, and this trio did a stand-up job throughout. Also, even Bond Level 10 Eirika makes Chloe's dodge-tanking serviceable. I think she could have had a shot at dodgetanking all the enemies from the northwest house, although they could all pretty much OHKO her so I wasn't too comfortable with that option. 

What didn't work: Saying that it didn't work is a bit harsh, but I'm already seeing the limits of Dire Thunder on Lindon. No ORKOs (admittedly a high bar for a mage to clear) and his chip was good but not great. He still did a lot of good work generally, but he should probably start running Micaiah instead. 

Fun Fact: I was expecting something properly gay from Merrin/Chloe's A support, but it didn't go nearly as far as I was expecting. Which is far from the end of the world or anything, but it continues the general trend I'm seeing of only minor relationship progress from even A-rank supports. Oh well.  

Story Corner: Does this mean we're getting Mauvier as an ally, or is he going to die Camus-style? He was always less rude than the rest of the Four Hounds (point in favour of the Camus interpretation), but we now know his loyalty is to cheesy Veyle, not team Sombron more generally (point in favour of joining, since I'm sure Veyle will join), so I'm not sure. 

Chapter 20

Spoiler

MVP: Yunaka 

Turn Count: 10

Time Crystals: 5

Saphir isn't bad, but I don't think she brings enough to the table to dislodge any of my physical units. For now, she's my potential Thief if I need a Thief - but I don't think I will call on her at all this run. Bit sad about that. Anyway, we've got another Fog of War map, although I don't really understand why this one's in darkness. Interestingly, each Fog of War map so far has come in intervals of seven story chapters (Chapter 6 is the 7th story chapter because of the Prologue). 

I notice from the map screen that Griss' Celica ability is different to what it was in Chapter 17 - it's Ragnarok before warping, rather than warping to cast Ragnarok. And immediately I discover I'm right to notice, as Griss uses it to teleport in the darkness. Well, my plan hasn't changed too much, as I dance Yunaka to kill the two enemies I can see on the right. She now has Speedtaker (as well as Lethality for this map) so early kills are important for her. To my surprise, she reveals Griss after she moves for her second attack. So actually, my plan does now have to change. There are chests and presumably a whole lot of enemies beyond Griss' position, so I can't imagine I can beat him entirely here. But that doesn't mean I can let him have a phase to attack. So I have to use Goddess Dance early to get enough units over to that side to take him on. I had originally wanted to clear the starting enemies on the left side as well, but I no longer have that leisure. Griss himself is not ridiculously tough, and after he uses his first Revival Stone he runs back to his starting position. Great, but I'm a bit overextended here, with no idea who's lurking, and very cautious of the Entrap user in the center of the map. I use Freeze on a Berserker that I can see, because I can't beat him at the moment without stepping into Entrap range, and I kill another Qi Adept nearby - the subsequent enemy phase has a couple of enemies attack, but is easy enough to tank. I can see enemies from the left coming up behind me, but I won't deal with them just yet.

The Entrap user is really bothering me, so the following turn (after doing some clearing of enemies) I decide to see if I can spring the trap first. I engage Kagetsu with Ike, leave a Javelin on him, and put him on the edge of Entrap's range - he gets vacuumed up into the centre, and wiped very quickly. There are far more enemies than I was expecting in range. But I think this is still possibly a viable strat. Next, I retry Great Aether with Urvan, and change up positioning for everyone else, which works better - Merrin baits a couple of Wolf Knights away which keeps Kagetsu alive, although she's pretty wounded. However, it still isn't quite good enough, as the Great Knights around Kagetsu are mostly unharmed, and my army are too far away for most of them to help meaningfully. Another Crystal, to try Great Aether with Ike's Hammer, which does better damage on the Great Knights and has the added benefit of restoring Kagetsu to full health. This allows me to get Goldmary and Chloe forward, who can help Kagetsu clear out all the enemies that have congregated near him. I have Seadall engage with Camilla to make sure he can dance Goldmary+Tiki for an extra breath attack which proves crucial. I've still got a surviving paladin, but Alear's ice dragon vein allows me to protect my squishies/wounded units from him. Everyone else is busy advancing away from the chasing enemies or clearing out ones already in the light. I'm leaving Yunaka, Panette and Lindon to deal with the ones coming behind me. Just as I think I can take a breath, more Wolf Knights emerge from the darkness before Kagetsu, and the Yunaka group also get attacked by the starting enemies. Three of the Wolf Knights are arrayed just right for a danced Goldmary to wipe them out with two breath attacks, but I end up needing to warp over Ivy to get enough damage to beat the fourth one. Meanwhile, Yunaka and Panette take a bit of damage, but a standard crit from Yunaka and a lucky crit from Panette mean I'm in control there as well.

During this run of play, two Thieves have emerged and made a beeline for the chests on either side - I didn't have the units to spare for either of them when they emerged, so my next task is to play catchup to make sure those thieves don't escape with my loot. I'm particularly worried about the northwest chests, as they're further away from my army, so all the units with Kagetsu head that way, while the Yunaka group head towards the central area to respond to anything emerging from the dark if necessary. If the thieves head to Griss' area to escape, I'll need to be pretty quick about getting to them. Which means I'm quite aggressive with the northwest area, and I quickly realise I hadn't cleared out nearly as many enemies as I had originally thought. I end up committing more units than planned to this area - only Yunaka and Panette are explicitly in reserve, and the thieves are rapidly progressing with chest-cracking. These enemies are all fairly bulky, so I burn a couple of turns in beating them (random darkness separating light areas doesn't help my cause). The northwest thief also turns back towards my units, rather than heading to Griss, meaning I can beat him here and recover some loot. However, this makes me realise that the other thief must have done the same thing, so I send off Yunaka and Panette to try and cut him off - they're too far over, the thief easily gets away, so I rewind to leave them better positioned. We go again, but before they can cut off the thief more bulky Swordmasters emerge from the darkness, who have high hit and can't be easily killed. I try to adjust to tank them, but doing so lets the thief slip away again. Time Crystal, and I push more aggressively to make the physical block... but I forget that Thieves get Pass, so it's completely futile, and Panette gets wiped for a Time Crystal. I'm getting annoyed at how wasteful I'm being, so I commit more actively, sending Ivy and Jean as well for cover. Yunaka, Panette and Ivy to get kills and chip on the Swordmasters, then Jean uses his second Goddess Dance (I wanted to save it for Griss but I have no choice) to allow me to find and kill the thief. Ivy then uses Soren's Assign Decoy on Panette to ensure that nobody dies this turn. It's an amazing ability that I just haven't really needed to try out before - I guess it's also an admission that I haven't controlled the enemy AI well enough, but I'll still take it. Finally, I'm through this turn, and it's time to take on Griss.

My last few boss fights have taken roughly the same format, where Alear pops off Corrin's Torrential Roar and then whoever's around whales on the boss. This time is mostly no different, except for Griss' Unholy Stance, which means I can't attack freely, especially if a unit is wounded or Griss can counter. It's also got great synergy with his whole masochistic personality, so plus marks for that. It isn't, however, enough to save him from my whole army. Map clear!

What worked: The usual suspects, I guess? Actually, maybe now's the time to show my appreciation for the Jean/Byleth combo, which has been consistently solid since I  started using it. Thyrsus is great, at least some units benefit from Mag buffs, and obviously Goddess Dance. Jean actually does use arts here and there, so even the passive kit is helpful. 

What didn't work: Goldmary and Panette would have hugely appreciated Canter this map, and both have a ton of SP I just haven't spent yet. 

Fun Fact: Griss' face in the cutscene where Marni explains her incompetence is absolutely priceless, and does not change even as the conversation moves on. Really feeling that expression as the plot continues.

Also, this is the second time the game has refused to show explicit violence (even though it's *just* a slap). I wonder if maybe they just couldn't animate one convincingly?

Story Corner: I appreciate Ivy at least entertaining the possibility that the big reveal is actually Griss waging psychological warfare. This should be Alear's first response to an enemy providing information, instead of her anxiety spiral.

How many times has a key enemy escaped from right in front of Alear, without them or the group doing anything to stop it?

Whenever we fight the Four Hounds, Marni and Mauvier are first in the line of fire, and Zephia and Griss only show depending on how serious the battle is story-wise. This chapter, though, we saw only Griss as the boss, as the Four Hounds fully fracture. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but perhaps the reason Marni and Mauvier have recurred as bosses more than Griss thus far is because they were less trusted by Zephia (and hence more expendable) even among the Hounds. Technically Zephia's right, as they did fail more, were trusted even less and so did more things likely to result in failure, and this self-perpetuating cycle leads to the rupture we see here, and in the opening cutscene to the next chapter. It'd be a nice coherent way of explaining things if it were true.

It's over-egging it at this point to say that I called it (I bet every player over the age of 12 called it), but still... Alear's design was actually plot-relevant in the way that I predicted. Cry. Let's move on. I do like that they make a distinction between how Divine Emblems and Fell Emblems are summoned, and how this is reflected in their abilities. I don't actually remember (and haven't noted down) how Lumera summons Sigurd in Chapter 2, so maybe we saw her pray to summon Sigurd there - if we didn't, then what would the difference between prayer and invocation be? 

Chapter 21

Spoiler

MVP: Yunaka (+Lyn)

Turn Count: 24

Time Crystals: 4

I got 50,000G from the last map. Obviously, we love money, but this isn't much more than what we got in Ch 14. And it really brought home that I'd already spent 45,000G on donations beyond Level 2 so far, with very little to show for it. I had been warned that donations were a trap, but I got curious about Donation Level 5. I bought Level 4 in Brodia around Ch 17 because it boosted metals a lot, but when I finally got Level 5 here, it was the S-rank art. It's fine, but you get the A-rank art for free, which is only slightly worse on Mt - I shouldn't have to spend 85,000G more than I otherwise would for what is basically a side grade to a free thing. Not to mention I don't even have many Brodia maps left. I have no shame in save-scumming out of losing that 50,000G, but it's too late to recover the monies I already spent on getting to Level 4 Brodia and Level 3 Firene. SF has the info on all the donation levels anyway, so my lesson is: when I get curious, check online before sinking lots of resources in. Ah well. 

I also got a skirmish! I'm save-scumming for a good one as per usual, but the first two Gold Corrupted I get are both in Port Givre (Chapter 19). There's still all the miasma, but the starting position is the opposite side to the flame cannons. How on earth are you supposed to attempt that, even if you were overlevelled? It offers 3,000G, which is nice, and it seems the gold reward scales as the game goes on (my last skirmish gave me 1700G, which popped up when I did Hector's paralogue in between Chapters 15 and 16). I eventually got sick of save-scumming, so settled for a Silver Corrupted on Anna's paralogue map. A few units of mine definitely want more SP, so I'll be interested to see how much this skirmish will offer. 

I was tempted to commit to writing up this section of the log before I started this map, but I can finally get Mauvier, and odds are I get Marth as well, so I figured I may as well do this map and whatever follows first. The multiple battles warning shows up, but I'm pretty confident this won't be the endgame as I still don't have the Marth paralogue. Although I do have to ask why they wouldn't let Mauvier join straight after Chapter 20 when it's pretty much clear that he will join us - after all, they let Hortensia join that way. It just means I can't have a close look at him till after these maps, which is annoying as I already have ideas for him. 

Back to the map. A couple of wyrms nearby, but I'm pretty sure they're weaker than the ones in Chapter 16, with only 31 Def/Res here compared to 40 Def/Res in Ch 16. Am I just misremembering that? A bunch of armours directly north of the starting point, with cavalry lurking either side to swoop in. And of course, Veyle and her group on a huge avoid tile, with Zephia and Griss in between. We've seen lots of enemies with high Avo, but I think this is the first explicit dodge-tanking enemy build I've encountered in the story. It's still more impressive on the thief with Carnwenhan than it is on Veyle, but I'm going to struggle to land hits on them either way. Let's not get  ahead of ourselves - Alear kicks off the party by chipping one of the north armours with her Levin Sword, before getting danced to launch a Torrential Roar on this entire group. Most of my other units then get to work killing those enemies (they're just far enough away that I can't beat all of them now though), or the two enemies just west of my starting point, who are close enough to threaten. Of course, this triggers the cavalry. The Bow Knights to the west split up, which means only two of them are immediate threats, while the cavalry move together and have to be dealt with. My original plan is to wipe most of them out with Tiki's breath, but I realise too late that the second breath attack can't get them all. And there's a better solution anyway - these enemies are arranged in a + formation, so I can just attack the center with Alear and seal their movement that way. I have to be careful not to stray into range of the wyrms' breath as I do it, but after that Time Crystal one side of the map safe. For the Bow Knights, I Assign Decoy on Kagetsu + Ike with Great Aether (Goldmary+Tiki would take less damage from those enemies, but also can't deal any damage back), which works well enough. 

As I'm cleaning up here, reinforcements start coming in from both sides. For now, it makes the most sense to choose one side and commit to it, so I go west. Thus begins what feels like an age of deadly ping-pong, as my units bounce from reinforcements to reinforcements. Often, there are awkward intervals of space between me and the approaching enemies, and I leave the wyrms alive for a while, meaning it's difficult to stop enemies coming from the east side before they make it to my army. Eventually, I have to fight the wyrms - I burn a Time Crystal on the first one to get Ivy to help from the other side of terrain, and it's a tight squeeze with reinforcements close to my position. The second wyrm gets close a bit before the last of the reinforcements, so I'm able to beat it under less pressure. Although the last few reinforcements do make me use a Time Crystal instead, as I forget that mystical foes also ignore my fog and manage to kill Yunaka. 

Next, it's Griss, who feels less threatening here without Celica equipped. He's easy enough to beat. I bait the third wyrm next, but he doesn't really bite, so I have Merrin wipe him out. Zephia next, and she's a bit tougher, both in terms of stats and because her group of fliers come with her. Soulblade is an interesting skill for her to use, but she doesn't get to attack any units for whom it'd be a game-changing difference. Still, she gives up the Caladbolg that turn, which is technically my first S-rank weapon. Exciting. There are some more flier reinforcements to beat, but my entire army is ready and waiting for them, no stress. Finally, we can head towards Veyle. First, I make some tentative overtures to the reinforcement wyrm in the northeast, but it doesn't decide to join me or accept its demise. So I move forwards a bit, and it takes the opportunity to miss Alear. Merrin, having just recharged, kills this one as well on the following turn. Now, I want Veyle to come to me and leave her terrain, so I pop off Yunaka's Astra Storm - but all that does is spawn reinforcements throughout the map, Veyle is healed to max, she doesn't move, and now I'm an Astra Storm down. Things are far from unsalvageable, but this feels like a waste, so I rewind it and plan a different course of attack. Well, I say different, but it's the usual move of sending forward units and refreshing them with Goddess Dance - except this time it's so they can actually reach Veyle in the first place. Again, Yunaka starts with her barrage. Alear and Seadall move independently of the others, so Alear can launch Torrential Roar on her, nerfing lots of her Avo. Lindon and Ivy (with Elsurge) combine to kill the Carnwenhan thief, and Merrin/Panette/Yunaka finish off the boss. Chloe can even kill a mage for the funs. I've left a few enemies in Veyle's group alive, but I've already spent too many turns on this map doing nothing to be bothered about them. 

What worked: Hahaha I guess Marni's axe. More seriously, I'm pleasantly happy with Mauvier's combat, which is pretty close to my army's. I didn't let him do anything too important, but even just taking a hit and doing solid chip are things previous recruits have struggled with on their joining map. 

What didn't work: I should have brought Sigurd this map. He would have helped massively with covering the various ways in which my army was pulled in the first part of the map. Same goes for Celica, who Lindon should have been using instead of Olwen. He did get crits on Dire Thunder he wouldn't have gotten from Celica and a better tome, but Celica has Seraphim, which would have definitely outdamaged Dire Thunder here. I think it's officially time to phase out Dire Thunder. Obviously, everything ended up fine and this is mostly hindsight talking though.

Fun Fact: The reinforcement wyrms have an ability called Spirit Strike, that says a foe's engage meter is drained when unit lands an attack. This is incorrect - the effect occurs when the foe initiates the attack. So your engage meter can't be drained on Player Phase, but it will be drained even if the wyrm misses on Enemy Phase.

Also, I finally understand now that here is where Lumera's palace was, in this island in the centre of the sea, not the Somniel. At least that explains events up to Chapter 3, although I still don't get what the Somniel is or why it exists separately to Lythos. 

Story Corner: Marni's about-turn is odd, because she seems basically happy with all the cruelty to normal people and openly despises soft Veyle up until this point, only to develop sudden sympathy for Veyle after hearing Veyle's backstory? Enough to turn on Zephia? Hmmm. I will say that her backstory is fairly effective at provoking sympathy for her, even if she's the most annoying of the Hounds now. 

Sombron doesn't even pretend to steal rings off fingers here, he just says he has them and then he has them. Did nobody consider that bringing all the rings to Sombron when his explicit goal is to get all the rings may not be wise? 

Alear's dark design is so, so much better. Wow. On the other hand, not a huge fan of Lumera's pseudo-bride costume. 

Is Alfred really the most relevant person to be in the cutscene where Alear dies? Maybe it's just because I don't use him, but I feel like he hasn't been story-relevant for a while.

Chapter 22

Spoiler

MVP: Yunaka (technically +Roy)

Turn Count: 18 

Time Crystals: 2

And I'm robbed of emblems, again. On the plus side, I did get Marth back, and I now have Veyle! Who is another Dragon unit - I hadn't thought about that before, but it'll definitely come in useful. Still, this map could be quite tough without emblems - I have solid Bond Rings to give most people, but I forget to give one to Mauvier. 

The immediate issue is that I'll need to split the party to deal with enemies from multiple routes. Yunaka, Merrin and Ivy go west - Merrin uses Flame Gambit to cut down enemy movement, while Yunaka and Ivy get to work. I also give them Lindon and Seadall just in case things go south. Everybody else goes east - Goldmary goes furthest to bait the nearest Royal Knight. I can also see enemies about to head down the central passageway that I need to prepare for. Immediately, those central enemies give me trouble, and I already have to use a Time Crystal, as Diamant is exposed to two mages that can combine to kill him on the following phase (and do). Covering the central and east passageways gives me a lot of trouble here, as I have to split up a group I intended to move together. The following turn, I'm able to kill off the mages (with Alear/Panette doing heavy lifting) and some of the cavalry on Goldmary's side, although her group need an extra Player Phase to finish the job. Next is the wyrm carrying a Speedwing, but before I can get to her fliers from the south approach - as well as reinforcements emerging from the starting point and thieves from each side directly in front of my units. The Alear and Goldmary groups are under significant threat. And the subsequent Player Phase goes really poorly, leaving two fliers out of three and the thief alive - lots of deaths ensue, and I have to rewind. The Alear group is still really struggling just to deal with their one flier, and in the end I have to leave Alear in range of the wyrm to finally down it. As for the Goldmary group, even with Tiki they're only able to completely beat one of the fliers this time. Which is untenable - the solution, however, comes from the other side. Even though there's multiple terrain obstacles between the Yunaka group and the other groups, Ivy can cross them, and Seadall can cross them when engaged. So I send them over, and Ivy uses Assign Decoy on Goldmary. Due to her positioning, she only draws one of the fliers, but the thief targets Diamant, who counters with a crit before he can die. Honestly, this was one of the roughest starts to a map I've had all run. 

Once the direct danger has been cleared, the Alear and Goldmary groups combine to take on the wyrm (finally) who deals out big hurt but does, eventually go down. This triggers the enemies in this central area, which is what I've been waiting for. The Yunaka group have been too strong for their side so far, and quickly overpowered enemies there. I feel like I've committed too many, or at least the wrong units, to this side, and Yunaka, Merrin and Lindon had spent several turns cooling their heels so that I don't aggro too many enemies at once, which is annoying. Now, though, with all those enemies moving, they can emerge and join the fight again. Just to be safe, I have the tankier units in the east (Goldmary and Panette) hold the line there, with an Obstruct on a neighbouring space and Assign Decoy on Goldmary again. Quite a few enemies amass here, but I now have enough units behind me to deal with them all. 

Before I can move forward, flier reinforcements emerge from either side of the map. They could have been as dangerous as earlier fliers, but regrouping means I'm actually alright. Merrin/Yunaka/Seadall/Lindon can beat the three from the west (I wouldn't have needed Lindon if I had actually forged up that Radiant Bow) and everyone else can kill the ones in the east. Finally, we're onto the south half of the map, which becomes notably easier. Yunaka starts us off with some prime positioning and a charmed enemy phase, where she baited all the enemies in the southwest, killing the ones that attacked her (thanks to Claude's ring) and dodging all their attacks without a terrain boost. With everyone regrouped, the remaining enemies, including reinforcements and a wyrm, are more than beatable. After this, it's a procession against the remaining enemies - the Brionac wielder can't even get an attack off. I rout the map before speaking to all the emblems, and there isn't even a secret boss (which I was half-expecting, tbh). Yunaka picked up Roy to end the map, so now Roy is also registered by the game as the MVP. Some emblems have it easy, I guess. 

What worked: This ties into my point below, but the DLC emblems were crucial. I still haven't gotten the most out of Hector, and Diamant just isn't the right unit for him, but all my other units used their DLC emblems to great effect. Particularly important was Soar on Seadall and Assign Decoy on Ivy, which basically saved my run of this map (I praise Tiki and the Fodlan crew enough already). It's nice to have Marth back as well - he really is good on Alear. 

What didn't work: Last time we got warned of multiple battles in a row (Ch. 10-11), we got our emblems stripped from us after a big boss battle. I complained bitterly how I didn't aggressively pick up skills/use engravings before then. I even flagged to myself a couple of chapters ago that I hadn't done that for a while. But I still didn't do it in prep for Chapter 21. I had several engravings free or on sub-optimal weapons, and lots of units begging to learn skills that they had the SP for, but I just didn't learn my lesson. While the emblems weren't gone for nearly as long, it was still an unnecessary error on my part. If it weren't for the DLC emblems, I would have definitely needed a reset for this map. Very sloppy from me. 

Fun Fact: I was going to say this last map, but what's with all these zombies sporting S-rank weaponry? I'll buy that there are a ton of corpses lying around Lythos for a second, but it's surely ridiculous that some of them are carrying unique and peerless weapons.

Meteor exists in this game! I haven't seen any option to forge one though - I really hope we get a copy somewhere. Bolting is nice, but its hit rates are bad and it's locked to Soren's Engage, so I'd like a siege tome I can use without those limitations.

Also, I encountered some more new enemy skills here. Void Curse sucks. Not sure why preventing EXP gain from reinforcements was necessary. And while I didn't note its exact name, one of the Martial Masters had an ability where they blow up if they drop below 50% health, which would be dangerous if it wasn't so generally easy to kill those kinds of enemies. 

Story Corner: Can I even be bothered to weigh in on how Alear gets resurrected twice? TWICE? I don't even understand how the first resurrection even happened... nope, I'm not doing this. All I'll say is: imagine Jesus resurrected on Easter Sunday, then died again on the Monday and came back the following Wednesday. Even the apostles would think he's taking the piss. 

Anyway, with slightly different story beats, we could have had Emblem Alear this chapter instead. This story battle felt a bit superfluous, if I'm being honest. 

Now I have all the emblems, I'm going to start pivoting my units into their final builds. If people have any suggestions for my units I'm all ears - I can already foresee choices which I'm not sure about (see below):

Who gets Byleth?

Spoiler

Even after using Byleth for a while, I'm still not totally sure who he should go on. Here are my options:

a) Alear

Alear won't waste any of Byleth's kit (although it's far from optimal combat-wise), gets super Instruct, and the most powerful version of Goddess Dance. Problem is, more emblems are competing for Alear than anybody (there are at least three excluding Byleth that I could give her fruitfully). Putting aside whether Alear is the best user of Byleth, I'm concerned that Byleth isn't the best emblem for Alear.

b) Veyle

Would really appreciate Divine Pulse, and also gets super Instruct/Goddess Dance. But Divine Pulse is quite cheap, and again there's high competition Emblem-wise for her. I'm currently leaning towards Corrin on Veyle, but I've only just started using her so that may change after play-testing.

c) A Mystical unit

Of Byleth's engage weapons, I think Thyrsus is the best, and is super-useful in chipping wyrms/bosses/foes with 3-range. In fact, Byleth's probably spent more time on High Priest Jean than anyone else thus far, which has worked pretty well. But my endgame reshuffle plan so far will leave me without a High Priest or Sage, so if I want to keep Byleth on one of those I'd have to change those plans (or reintroduce Celine, which is surely a bad idea). Not sure if Thyrsus is worth that. 

d) Hortensia

I do think flying Goddess Dance is a bit better than dragon Goddess Dance, even though Res+5 is pretty niche. And in hindsight, Hortensia is probably the premier staff-bot in the game. However, I slept on her very hard when she showed up, and haven't used her since join. Not least because of her terrible design/personality, which irritates me enough that she now wears the DLC plushie outfit so I don't have to see her around the Somniel. Anyway, I have spare Master Seals and so many paralogues to do, so I'm not worried about catching her up in investment. What I am worried about is that having her on top of multiple other staff bots would be overkill (after the reshuffle, I should have 3 or 4 units with staff access), and maybe her slot should go to someone with better combat.

e) Griffin Knight Lindon

Oddball choice, but I do like oddball choices. Similar benefits to Hortensia, except he sacrifices some staff optimisation for better combat and the chance at a decent enemy phase with the Levin Sword and some avo/crit boosting. But unlike most of the options above, he can't hit from three spaces, and there's no guarantee that his combat/dodge-tanking keeps up. 

f) Somebody else?

I haven't tried Byleth on a covert unit, for example, and that could work quite well. Not sure what combo could displace all the options above, but I'm open to trying out other stuff since I have so many paralogues to do.

Yunaka's Six Rings

Spoiler

Yunaka (currently a crit-build Sniper) has been rotating through a bunch of different rings because I don't know what's best for her. I don't think all the choices are equal, but I've narrowed them down to the ones below. 

a) Claude S (Wind God)

+1 range to all bows is extremely good, obviously. But Yunaka has been getting at least a level per map for a while now, meaning she inevitably drops below 100% HP, and it's not always possible to restore her health efficiently. It sounds like a minor nitpick, but introduces some unreliability, especially since Yunaka is a crit-build with an enemy phase, and I can't always predict when she will level up. It also slows down SP generation.

b) Marisa S (Lethality)

Lethality is a bit stronger than in previous games, thanks to its flat 30% trigger on a crit. Before, pretty much nobody cared about Lethality, it was just a lucky boost that was rarely clutch, if ever. I mean, it's still that, but I can count on it activating at least 2-3 times a map, thanks to Yunaka's really high crit rates and strong enemy phase. I normally wouldn't consider something so chance-y, but Yunaka is unlikely to get Lunar Brace anytime soon, making this an unreliable way to deal with high-bulk enemies that nobody is ORKOing. And the usual caveats about Bond Rings also apply. 

c) Eirika

If I can't inherit Lunar Brace anytime soon, I can at least give it to Yunaka via the emblem. However, the rest of Eirika's kit is wasted on her, most units want Lunar Brace, and others can make better use of Eirika overall. 

d) Lyn

Yunaka has already inherited Speedtaker, which is one of Lyn's big sells. But Astra Storm and Call Doubles are both really good tools in certain scenarios, which Yunaka makes better use of than anybody else in my army. Again, there's competition for Lyn, but Yunaka's case for Lyn is quite solid. 

e) Leif

I'd equip Leif to make use of his Build boost and pivot Yunaka's build slightly. Instead of her current Killer Bow+5 with Corrin's engraving, she'd be using a Brave Bow+5 with Camilla's engraving. Which is a sacrifice of 40 crit for an increase of 1-2 attacks (depending on enemy Spd), trading off some reliability for higher average damage. There's no competition for Leif, but it also wouldn't be too hard for me to save up for Bld+4/Spd+4 and run another ring instead.

f) Sigurd

Sigurd would just do what Sigurd does for everyone. The better the unit equipping Sigurd is, the better the results on Sigurd himself. Since Yunaka is one such unit for me, she'd also use him quite well. There's no explicit synergy though (Thief Yunaka is definitely a better match for Sigurd) and again, lots of competition for Sigurd.

[Favorite Dragon Veins?]

Agreed about not yet finding a solid use for Corrin's vines - everything else has its place. I'd say I use either ice or fog the most on Corrin

As far as Camilla is concerned, I like her on Seadall, but mainly for Soar - the Dragon Vein ability (ice that boosts Mv, as seen in Tiki's paralogue) is cool, but I use it rarely because dancing. 

I'd say the healing effect on both Corrin and Camilla is underrated, as it's basically a free non-wait action that can provide mild healing for lots of your party. I don't even use Chain Guard much, but topping up HP on units is rarely a bad thing.

[S Rank Bond Rings with abilities]

Lethality (Marisa S) has been surprisingly good with my crit build Yunaka. Very niche, but interesting.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

4 hours ago, CompteSecours said:

But can you quadruple attack with a Hero lance ?

Can confirm brave weapons don't affect chain attacks (if this is what you're referring to).

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

20 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

EDIT: Anyone else saw more than one Silver Corrupted or Gold Corrupted in the same skirmish? Or - and this is a really odd one - an enemy unit in a skirmish having two weapons... only for both of them to be the same weapon?

I've seen more than one Silver/Gold Corrupted in a single skirmish - I don't think it's a bug though, as this was a late-game skirmish. Having two of the same weapon is weird though.

20 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Now then... as Rosado and Goldmary's skills only work against male units, I can't help but ask, am I the only one who thinks it can be kinda hard to tell the gender of some of the generic units from looks alone? Especially for classes like Hero and Swordmaster.

I do struggle with this as well - anecdotally there seem to be more male enemies than female after they join, but I can't say I've been paying too much attention to it. Unlike previous games gender and unit class aren't tied together (which is an improvement!), but it also means I don't normally find out till the combat itself.

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

23 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Don't they also use daggers?

They may have the ability to (SF says they do), I just don’t recall anyone in Soren’s paralogue using one so can’t confirm.

23 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Even without magic though, that skill sounds perfect for someone using Micaiah. Imagine being able to pull out whatever staff you want without needing to be (adjacent to) Alear!

Agreed, Enchanter seems pretty much support-locked so Micaiah may be the best emblem for them.

23 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

That's the only class that's been teased, right? I hope we see the others in Wave 3, I'm really curious to see what they'll all be if they're all going to be brand new (or heavily remixed) like this one is. Fingers crossed for at least four, if not five, new toys to play with come Wave 4!

Yeah only DLC class we’ve seen so far. I’m guessing DLC recruits will have their own classes, so maybe 3-4?

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

1 hour ago, DefyingFates said:

Soren's Paralogue had a seeming DLC Class among the enemies, right? Was anyone doing that Paralogue able to read the Class' skill and if so, what does it do and what are its weapon ranks? Thank you in advance!

Class skill is Convoy - unit can withdraw from and send items to the Convoy on their turn.

They only had B Arts I think (but they weren’t running more than Steel/Shielding iirc). I couldnt see anything on their stats that indicated how they cast enchantments, or what enchantments they had. Which suggests the ability is like the Dancer’s Dance ability, which also doesn’t show on Seadall when you look at his stats while he’s a green unit.

[Dire Thunder is not as good as you think]

28 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I think the sacrifice of using an emblem is not really being fully explored here. Yes, Dire Thunder is going to be great if you're just after Chapter 11 or are doing a no Emblem run, but if Dire Thunder is going into direct competition with an Emblem, I think using an Emblem (and Thoron) is going to win. There might not be tonnes of magic Emblems to choose from, but all the Emblems will be offering something in terms of skills, stats and engage attacks. Even your magic users can benefit a lot from an Emblem like Sigurd.

Yeah I get where you're coming from here. Before Ch 11 I'm only running 2 mages in all likelihood, so they get Celica/Micaiah unless I need Micaiah to raise someone's level quickly. 12+ unit deployments in story chapters start becoming much more common from Ch 14 on, when magic-boosting emblems begin to return - this is the point where I'm likely to consistently field 3 mages. Once you get Eirika you actually have to think quite hard about what those mages want to equip, and that's before considering the DLC if you have it. Furthermore, certain hybrid builds can use Sigurd/Roy/Ike pretty profitably. You don't have that many magic emblems, but you tend to run fewer mages compared to physical units. So the competition might actually be fiercer. Throw Bond Rings into the mix, and you have to be really confident that their one niche can outdo everything an emblem does for that unit.

[Dire Thunder is not as good as you think]

11 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I... don't think High Priest Jean even gets Thoron as an option. High Priest has B Tomes, and can only go up to A with an innate Tome specialization, like Clanne and Celine. Jean's specialization is in Arts, so the strongest 3-range tome he can use is Elthunder.

Yeah he doesn't, when I was considering/testing Thoron on him I switched him to Sage temporarily. He's normally in High Priest though.

16 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

5 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

Agreed, but you can't rely on their personal class skill procs, and like I said above, doing the same thing but making a Thoron for it instead will get similar, if not better, results. 

If Celine procs Ignis, or Alcryst gets Luna, it's a flat damage boost, regardless of the power of the original attack. It should be pretty apparent that getting "30% chance of 6 more damage" twice per combat, is better than getting "30% chance of 6 extra damage" once per combat. 

Yes - the second half of the sentence you quoted was responding the "put heaviest engraves for max damage" point. I was saying you should also do this for Thoron and it ends up helping Thoron as much, if not more (depending on how much you forge up Thoron or if you use Great Thunder).

[Dire Thunder is not as good as you think]

3 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

If Dire Thunder does the job without heavy investment then it's best to stop there given that we can use those resources somewhere else where the additional damage will matter. I don't really have anything except my personal experience to offer, but I only replaced Dire Thunder when I felt that it was underpowered and I needed something stronger, and that was at around chapter 19 or so.

Yeah, that makes sense!

2 hours ago, LukeB said:

For most of the game (and I mean like, all except for literal endgame) Dire Thunder will do more damage to every unit you want your mage to attack, and Thoron (+ magic emblem ring) will do more damage to The Enemies You Don't Want Your Mage To Attack.

I agree that broadly speaking, mages should want to attack and kill low-Res enemies. But I think Thunder/Thoron's 3-range means that every enemy should be assessed for this build, because so few enemies (and very few bosses) can counter at that range, and it allows you to trigger chain attacks/debuffs safely on top of damage whenever you can't kill. 

2 hours ago, LukeB said:

For reference, I went back to that chapter 17 save file, it had Citrinne, Anna, and Ivy all on the team. Ivy had the lowest magic, so I did some comparisons for her.

I gave her a +4 Thunder Tome (Ike) and Owlen. Then I gave her a +4 Thoron (Ike) and Byleth.

Ivy did more with Dire Thunder to every Berserker, Halberdier, Paladin, and General on the map, while Thoron would do more damage to the Royal Knights, High Priests, and Sages. (For Citrinne, Royal Knights actually moved over to Dire Thunder Group)

Do you really value doing more damage to High Priests and Sages over doing more damage to The Units You Want Your Mage To Kill? And the damage difference on the lower res enemies is significant. (Again, all numbers with Ivy, the numbers are even better for Citrinne)

• 52 damage vs 39 damage to a berserker
• 50 damage vs 38 to a general
• 44 damage vs 35 damage to snipers
• 42 damage vs 34 damage to Halberdiers

Dire Thunder Ivy can one shot all of these enemies, either on her own [Snipers] or with a little support (standing next to Alear or instruct from Byleth or a chain attack) [Berserkers/Generals/Halberdiers]. And Dire Thunder Citrinne one shots all with no help -- where as Thoron Ivy one shots... none of them... even with help. 

And this is comparing +4 to +4, and that is a LOT more resources for thoron to get there then it was for Thunder to get there, and it is substantially behind. 

Again, I tried a similar comparison, and got a mixture of similar and different results. 

I only just got the Olwen ring, so I had a look at Ch 18 (my next story chapter) with it versus Thoron. Specifically, I used a Thunder+3 with Tiki (+2 Mt) for Olwen (+1 Mag) vs a Thoron+2 with the Soren engraving (+2Mt) and Soren equipped (+3 Mag). Clanne and Celine (Lv 8 Mage Knight and Lv 7 Vidame respectively) were straightforwardly better with the Thoron against everything (though no ORKOs, of course). Ivy (Lv 12 Lindwurm, recommended level for this map is Advanced Class Lv 5) isn't able to ORKO anything, even armours, with Dire Thunder, although she could do it with a chain attack or two, and Dire Thunder does do better damage than Thoron against the armour. Very happy to concede the point there. My premier mage, Jean (Lv 14 High Priest, promoted at Lv 15 Monk and has had Starsphere for 10 levels at least, I switched him to Sage to check Thoron and took his ring off him to compensate for the Mag disparity) is only just able to ORKO armours with Dire Thunder, and is short of that by a few points with Thoron. But for both Ivy and Jean, Thoron does better against the fliers and mages on this map as well. Ivy + Kagetsu's Brave Assist is enough to ORKO Lindon whether using Thoron or Dire Thunder.

To recap, over-levelled Jean gets Dire Thunder ORKOs against armours on this map, but I'm otherwise not getting ORKOs with Dire Thunder. For mages with really good Mag, relative to the story, Dire Thunder does between 5-10 points better damage against low-Res units like Berserkers (which is in line with your findings), but there's a similar gap for Thoron against high-Res units like Griffin Knights (like I said before, this does matter to me for the Thunder line of tomes specifically). For mages like Clanne/Celine, with average Mag relative to the story, Thoron is straightforwardly better than Dire Thunder at this point.

It seems to me a big difference in our results is in the quality of units that we're using. The fact that I can get ORKOs at all with Dire Thunder points to the fact that it is good, and usable for me personally. But for units like Clanne and Celine (or other mages without DLC influence), where the average enemy Res stat has already caught up roughly to their Mag stat, it's Thoron or bust. It sounds like units such as Citrinne (and indeed, my Jean) will outpace enemy Res for longer, but not all the way through. Given this, I think my original point about the similar results and longevity of early Thoron still stands. 

2 hours ago, LukeB said:

Dire Thunder is very powerful. I also don't think that it is unexpected that eventually, at the very end of the game, your A rank weapon starts out scaling the D Rank weapon -- but that does not diminish the power and usefulness that that D rank weapon brought to all other stages of the game. 

I hope it's clear that I'm not saying Dire Thunder doesn't deserve to be used if you do get it, especially early on. Which is why my original post differentiated between early access to Dire Thunder and later access. But the difference between it and Thoron is not hugely pronounced (if present at all?) when Dire Thunder is first available.

Indeed, with your method of farming rings and the Great Thunder ability you flagged, even the damage disparity between Ivy/Jean's Thoron and Dire Thunder I observed on my own file would shrink to a couple of points against low-Res enemies, and would extend by a few points against high-Res enemies. And Clanne and Celine might actually stay usable for longer. 

3 hours ago, meltenvy said:

Getting some damage vs. none could make or break a turn

Agreed, definitely an advantage for Dire Thunder. 

2 hours ago, meltenvy said:

Dire Thunder also isn't limited by weapon rank, meaning characters like Hortensia and High Priests can get a Thoron equivalent without leaving their optimal class.

Yeah you're right Master Seals are in short supply when Dire Thunder first becomes available, and everybody wants one. And as you say, some classes actively don't want Thoron because they can't use it. Mages are good candidates for early promotion because staff access, but that still doesn't mean Thoron fits everyone, whereas Dire Thunder can. 

3 hours ago, meltenvy said:

I believe Dire Thunder is more of a side grade than an up or downgrade to Thoron. It's not super worth it if you don't roll it early, but worth keeping around as an option.

Tbh, this is probably a better take than my own. I mostly wanted to make the point about early Thoron being surprisingly competitive and late Dire Thunder being less competitive, which this gets across less spikily. 

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

20 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Is there any reason to go above donation level 2 (which is for adoption purposes)? I know there are rewards for doing so, but...

I maxed Brodia's donation level recently, then immediately save-scummed out of it because I was underwhelmed by what I got. The only rewards to really care about beyond Lv 2 are the S-rank weapons you get at Lv 5, which are the only rewards exclusive to donations (you're pretty much soft-capped to 1 per run). And maybe the extra metals in Brodia, although I doubt it'll make a massive difference long-term. As far as the S-rank weapons are concerned, I've just looked and SF has them listed. They look cool, particularly the Firene one, but I don't think I'd pay 85,000G (cost of donation Lv 3-5) for them, which is enough money to forge up primary weapons for at least a few of your A-team. 

EDIT: Some of the costumes are cool though, if you care about that kind of thing.

[Dire Thunder is not as good as you think]

12 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

I can also confirm that raising Bond Levels in the Arena changes the order. Specifically, for every Bond Level you raise, the order moves forward by one. So if you raise Clanne's bond with Marth from Level 1 to Level 5, the ring order will move forward by 4. This latter method is less time-consuming than combat, but requires the expenditure of bond fragments at an equal or higher rate than the gacha, meaning it's far less resource-optimal. 

Also, on further investigation I don't think I was right about this. I mean, it's still true that if you raise bond levels from 1 to 5, the ring order will move forward by 4. But the movements are different as you go for higher bond levels. Bond Levels 6-10 move the Gacha forward by 5 per level. And I'm not entirely sure what happens for Bond Levels 11-20 - am testing at the moment, but I don't really understand what I'm seeing just yet.

EDIT: Raising bond levels via the Arena doesn't just move the order forwards, it reboots the order altogether, I think. Actually, I'm going to just stop speculating on this since I'm clearly not on solid ground - but for people who look into this kind of thing, please investigate!

[Dire Thunder is not as good as you think]

10 hours ago, LukeB said:

I am reading along, and am interested in the part where you get to the bond ring's effect, but this first section leaves me with the impression that you do not have a full understanding of how much we can manipulate the bond rings. 

Actually getting the Dire Thunder is trivial, but a little tedious. You can get it, or any other ring, in about 5-10 mins only spending enough bond fragments for a single 10 ring pull. I have done it personally multiple times across multiple playthroughs. 

I made a post a while back walking through the most efficient way to do it

Interesting! Yeah, I don't think I appreciated exactly how much the gacha could be cheesed. 

10 hours ago, LukeB said:

If you are optimizing for a nuking character (say Citrinne) then the best thing that you can do likely Dire Thunder early/mid game -> Great Thunder for the end game.

Mae's ring is not something I had considered at all - but surely it further enhances the case against Dire Thunder. It comes from Celica, so you can get it with your ring farming method the moment Thunder becomes available. Forging up a Thunder to Thoron and giving that unit Great Thunder will give you pretty much all the kills you could get with Dire Thunder (maybe even more over time!), with greater staying power in your army.

Of course, with your method you could get both Great Thunder and Dire Thunder only by spending some real time on it - but if you had to choose one, surely Dire Thunder loses.

10 hours ago, LukeB said:

I ran some numbers a while back, and on Chapter 17 (was just arbitrarily where I was at the time)  If my Citrinne had Dire Thunder, she did more damage then Thoron +great thunder on almost every normal enemy (excludes a couple mages), whole Great Thunder wins against almost every boss/wyrm (excluding Marni). Both of those options were substantially more damage then if Citrinne had an actual Emblem Ring. 

Interesting you say this - this is pretty different to what I found at the same position.

Actually, part of the communication gap here may be in the characters I'm using. My primary mages at Ch 17 are Jean (High Priest) and Ivy - thanks to the DLC both have been over-levelled relative to the story chapters since about Ch. 15, and they could certainly use Dire Thunder effectively now, as their Mag stats are 26+ IIRC (although I prefer Emblems on them for various reasons atm). Prior to that point, neither of them were regularly halving HP bars with Thunder (except armours ofc). I still think they'd be better off getting Thoron + an emblem going forward. 

I also have Celine and Clanne, who I'd been using pretty regularly until recently, but they are obviously sub-par mages in the midgame and beyond. Celine has 17 Mag as a Lv 7 Vidame - for comparison, promoting Citrinne to Sage from base gives her 17 Mag. Lindon has 19 Mag at base, if I sent my Chloe into Sage at Ch 17 she'd have 18 Mag. Point being, quite a lot of mage types at this juncture are dealing worse damage (because of their Mag stat) with Dire Thunder than with Thoron for a lot of enemies. I'm happy to accept that certain characters (Citrinne, maybe Anna?) can do well with Dire Thunder - but the relevance of Thoron isn't diminished by that (in fact, with Mae's ring it still looks like the better option). 

I can believe that Dire Thunder is a good option earlier on, although as I say, Thoron is cheaper than forging up a Thunder for similar killing power and longer staying power in your inventory. But I found that for much of the midgame a Thunder+3 with Tiki engraving (+2 Mt) was not able to halve an enemy's HP for a majority of units, even on my better mages, meaning it wouldn't ORKO with Dire Thunder. 

10 hours ago, LukeB said:

You are correct that doing so offers less utility compared to the Emblem rings, but for most maps of the game you do not have enough to even go around - so having an optimized damage dealer not require one is a plus for the ring. 

On your point about emblems, the DLC massively changes your dependence on bond rings, for obvious reasons. It wouldn't be fair to assume it now in discussions like this, but I think players generally run 2-3 mages in a 12-unit party (and I don't think unit deployments go beyond 10 at all in the first half of the game?), which the DLC would cover.

But I definitely take the point that at the time when Dire Thunder is doing its best work, equipping a bond ring instead of an emblem is also freeing up resources for everyone else (or actively keeping them in the fight after the story thing). 

9 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Dire Thunder allows Thunder to one shot a lot of enemies in Maddening without spending all of these resources. It starts to fall off as enemies start to get better resistance stats and the player has access to more resources, but a an Ike/Roy engrave with at most a +3 is all I would suggest spending on it. It's not really meant to be used later on in the game though; you asked about what you missed, and outside of what LukeB mentioned this is what I would point to.

I think it's fair to say that Dire Thunder does its best work in the early-to-midgame. But Dire Thunder with a base Thunder + Ike/Roy engraving is weaker than a base Thoron without any engraving. Given that the Thoron could get you more kills right now and is relevant for much longer, the only reason not to invest in one straightaway is if you literally can't afford forging at all (200 Iron, 20 Steel, 1 Silver, 3000G to get a Thoron from the Thunder tome Citrinne is carrying in ch 7 - pricey, but building Dire/Great Thunder should be a priority once you get funds in Ch 8 anyway).

If you don't have the resources (and that is a concern) then yeah there's no choice between free Thunder and unaffordable Thoron. 

9 hours ago, samthedigital said:

It's worth noting that at lower accuracy numbers things like Divine Pulse+ become rather effective, and it doesn't cost a lot of SP.

This is true, but applies relatively evenly to both Thoron and Dire Thunder (maybe slightly more for Thoron? not sure how to weight it actually).

10 hours ago, BloodRonin said:

With their personal class skill procs, it hits hard. You can also put the heaviest engraves for max damage and still double. 

Agreed, but you can't rely on their personal class skill procs, and like I said above, doing the same thing but making a Thoron for it instead will get similar, if not better, results. 

[Dire Thunder is not as good as you think]

I've seen a few people here and elsewhere talking about how great the Olwen S-rank bond ring is because of its Dire Thunder ability, which allows a unit on Player Phase to attack twice with Thunder. It definitely sounds strong, and I was interested to see how it played. However, after getting the ring and looking at the numbers, I don't think it's nearly as good as it seems, and doesn't deserve to define the early meta around bond rings. Below, I'm going to make the case for why.

TL;DR Dire Thunder isn't worth the effort, you're better off getting a Thoron. 

Section 1 - Rigging Bond Rings

People have already noted on these forums that the order of bond rings in the Bond Ring Gacha is fixed. No amount of save-scumming after a battle will change what rings are pulled from the gacha, or the order in which they come. The order of ring rarity does not change even if you change the emblem that you're pulling rings from. So if you've pulled a B-rank ring, then two C-ranks, this order won't change, whether the three rings all come from Marth, or the first comes from Marth and the next two from Sigurd. 

However, there are ways to manipulate this order. The one that has been most discussed is combat. Apparently, every enemy you kill moves forward the ring order by one - I haven't personally confirmed this, but it makes sense and evidence of this is on YT etc. I can also confirm that raising Bond Levels in the Arena changes the order. Specifically, for every Bond Level you raise, the order moves forward by one. So if you raise Clanne's bond with Marth from Level 1 to Level 5, the ring order will move forward by 4. This latter method is less time-consuming than combat, but requires the expenditure of bond fragments at an equal or higher rate than the gacha, meaning it's far less resource-optimal. 

Onto Olwen specifically (mild spoilers below): 

Spoiler

The Olwen S-rank ring belongs to Leif, who first becomes available after Ch. 8. However, he leaves your army directly after the Ch 10 story battle, and only rejoins after the Ch 17 story battle. This means that the first time you get Leif, you only have a limited window (as few as two Somniel trips) to pick up Dire Thunder before it's gone for another big chunk of the game. 

When Leif first becomes available in the Somniel, Maddening players aren't likely to have more than 15,000 bond fragments or so (maybe more or less depending on DLC, donations, and how many you spend on bond levels and rings). Which amounts to 150 rings, if you're willing to spend everything for Olwen. I don't know what the S-rank ring appearance rates are, and there will obviously be big differences in personal experience, but it's clear you don't have a lot of time or leeway in which to pick up the ring before the spoiler thing.

While online trials count as combats for the purpose of moving the ring order forwards, only the ones requiring a NSO subscription (Relay/Outrealm) are available when Leif first arrives, and even with the DLC these will be difficult to cheese and are inefficient at providing enemies to kill. A significant investment of player time would be required to move the ring order forwards, with little-to-no guarantee of acquiring Olwen at all, let alone at reasonable cost. 

Section 2 - Olwen Again

After the spoiler thing, Olwen becomes available only once significant time in-game has passed. In fact, the possibility of getting him again arrives one story chapter before a free Thoron. Given this, it'll be fruitful to compare Dire Thunder with Thoron at this point. 

To optimise Dire Thunder, you want to fully forge up a Thunder tome, and likely add the Ike/Hector engraving to it (highest Mt boost of engravings so far). The cost of creating this is 150 Iron Ingots, 50 Steel Ingots, 5 Silver Ingots, 7500G and 100 bond frags. The money in particular is a significant cost on Maddening, but hopefully you have enough stocked up. Still, you'll get a Thunder with 13 Mt and 90 Hit, which can hit twice with Dire Thunder. 

On the other hand, the Thoron you get for free can be forged to a Thoron+3 for 9 Silver Ingots, 3500G, and 400 bond frags for the engraving. If you have the resources to make the Thunder above, then you can exchange the Iron/Steel Ingots used there for Silver and have metals/money left over after you've made the Thoron. This tome will have 24 Mt and 75 Hit. 

When everything else is equal, Dire Thunder should deal more damage than Thoron. However, this isn't how it works out in practice. There are two reasons.

1. Enemy resistance. For Dire Thunder to deal more damage than Thoron when the Mag stat is constant, the mage must deal 12 damage with a single thunder attack. This should always be possible for certain enemy types like armoured units, but won't be possible for many others. Mages, dragons, many story bosses and even some normal enemies with solid Res will suffer less than 12 damage against Thunder at this point in the game - and that's assuming you're using a canon mage with decent-to-high base Mag (good luck Celine/Clanne). For enemies with really strong Res, even the fully boosted Thunder and a decent Mag stat will deal little-to-no damage, whereas Thoron and the same Mag stat will likely deal some damage for a while yet.
2. The Thoron user can equip an Emblem. Olwen can only boost magic by +1, but Byleth, Corrin and Eirika can all do better, as well as boosting other stats to a higher degree and having abilities that synergise decently with certain mage builds. Camilla and Soren too. So the threshold for Dire Thunder to outdamage Thoron should be higher than 12 points of true damage, and the Thoron user could also fulfil another niche in your army while they're at it.

At least some of this, you could argue, is mitigated by Thunder's superior accuracy and Engage's hit rate system. Displayed hit rates of 50+ are not true hit rates (here's the table I've been using for them if interested: https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/True_hit). So, depending on your base hit rate, the true hit rate difference between the two tomes here could be as much as 22% on one attack. Which means it's certainly true that Dire Thunder allows for a much higher chance of dealing non-zero damage from a turn, and sometimes that's all you need - any damage is good damage. But when we consider the likelihood of Dire Thunder landing twice, compared to Thoron once, you're somewhere between 1-10% more likely (depending on base hit rate) for Dire Thunder to land twice. There's also the consideration of inherited/personal/class abilities which benefit more from doubling with Thunder than singular Thoron, such as Resonance or Lindon's personal. They exist - but they're limited and often high-cost for inheritance. You could build around them, but I'd be impressed to see a skill combination that massively elevates the Dire Thunder build. 

Those are still advantages not to be ignored - but remember the costs laid out above, and the scenarios in which Dire Thunder is strictly worse than Thoron. You're spending time (both in-game and real world), an extra 4000G when money may be tight, as well as potentially lots of bond fragments for the opportunity to boost hit rates somewhat, and boost damage against enemies you can already hurt significantly (perhaps with other tomes). 

Section 3 - Olwen Straightaway

What about the lucky few who get Olwen immediately, or near-immediately after Leif arrives?

Remember, our cost for a fully souped-up Thunder is 150 Iron Ingots, 50 Steel Ingots, 5 Silver Ingots, 7500G and 100 bond frags. Which is possible at this stage, although fairly demanding for when you first get Thunder. I suppose you don't immediately have to spring for the +5 upgrade, but we'll keep this as the comparison because it's Dire Thunder at its most effective.

In comparison, if you bought a Thunder tome (without Silver Card) from the shop and forged it up to an engraved Thoron+2, you'd spend 200 Iron Ingots, 20 Steel Ingots, 5 Silver Ingots, 6000G and 400 bond frags. Again, if you had the resources on hand for the Thunder above, you'd have the resources to make this Thoron and still have a bit left over. This Thoron has 23 Mt and 75 Hit (22 Mt without the DLC, but then the Thunder tome would also have 12 Mt). 

Damage-wise, Dire Thunder comes out better at this stage of the game than it does later on. Fewer enemies possess Res stats that make Thunder useless, even when the unit's Mag isn't that impressive. Furthermore,

Spoiler

You have no Magic-boosting emblems without the DLC from Ch. 11 to after the Ch. 14 story battle, eliminating an advantage of Thoron during this period. You can still give your Thoron user a bond ring - if you're lucky, you might even have one that gives +2 Mag. But that isn't necessarily going to be available. 

However, Dire Thunder's hit advantage is also weakened, as fewer enemies (in fact, I can't recall any) have the Avo to reliably dodge a Mystical unit in the midgame. And your total resources increase relatively dramatically over this part of the game, allowing you to potentially forge up your Thoron further. You're unlikely to hit Thoron+5 for a while after Dire Thunder becomes available, but you should definitely have the resources for it by the end of Ch. 14 at the latest. And your Thoron will still hit very hard all through this period. 

It requires a lot of luck, with little possibility for manipulation, to get Olwen this early. And while the benefits of Dire Thunder are at their most impressive early on, using Thoron won't leave you much behind Dire Thunder. If you use a hit engraving on Thoron instead, it'll still be competitive damage for the midgame, while outpacing Dire Thunder later on.

Anyway, there's my case. Dire Thunder isn't necessarily bad, but it is overrated. Thinking long-term, you're better off with Thoron. Is there anything I've missed?

[Emblem Tier List]

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

It's amazing how much Leif's own weapons ruin Adaptable. In theory you can do cool things with the skill by carefully setting up your own inventory, but Leif providing three weapons of his own which you can't get rid of really limits this. (Yes, you can avoid two of them by avoiding a bond conversation but that costs you 4 HP / 2 def / 2 build, makes Vantage and Arms Shield much less effective and also feels very bad.)

Agreed. I suppose you could run Leif situationally on a mage if the map has a lot of axe users (or arts users, I guess) and you expect the mage to see combat - but lots of axe users can one-round mages (or get pretty close to it) if they land their attacks on Maddening, with or without Arms Guard. Not sure Leif's a good fit even when you do want a mage to have an enemy phase. Better off boosting Avo for mages, although Ivy + Hector might do alright.

[Emblem Tier List]

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

I've been thinking, Leif might actually find his best use as a magic emblem. Sure it'll take a while to get Light Brand, but arms swap in general feels like it'd run into less issues on a mage as it will let you use Elsurge without worrying about counter attacks and swap to Elthunder of you're using your primary 2 range tome.

problem is Adaptable prioritises WTA over quite a lot, so when engaged there’s every chance the mage gets one of Leif’s weapons against physical units instead of Elsurge, or a stronger tome. Mages still don’t want Leif’s axe/lance options even if they get Light Brand on occasion.

10 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

asked this earlier, but what does he use for a bow? Does he have a unique bow in the code or does he just copy a steel bow? Does anyone know, please?

SF claims it’s a Master Bow (it’s in the Bows section of the Engage page)

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

1 minute ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Oh, right. Specially since you can get it quite early too without having to do a Divine Paralogue.

So basically it's the DLC's equivalent to Marth's.

Yeah I think this is the way to consider it. Even just having one more all-purpose engraving increases your options early on (like buffing a Wo Dao or something). 

[Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread]

4 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Gonna admit Edelgard's really seem to be the worst of the lot. At least for having a specialization.

I really think there's a place for all-rounder engravings, especially early on. You might not be confident in how long the weapon (or unit) will stick around, but you're using it right now so you want an immediate power boost you don't have to think about. If you think about it as a stand-in for forging up a weapon when you can't afford to spend money/metal (and no individual forge level buffs as much as the 3H engraving afaik), it definitely holds up for quite a while.