beachwalks

what is the talent you chose for Corrin? Imo thats actually the biggest factor to choose when pairing someone up. Though from the options you chose Ophelia seems like the best option regardless. Kana can do well in her default class with those magic bases and dragonstones

Im gonna go with jakob if you already have mozu as a dread fighter. Also, since you are playing on normal you really don't need as many bow units as you think. Silas with his personal skills can actually reach thresholds to one-shot the sky nights, or you could use attack stance they really are frail.

While writing this I decide im allowing paralogue 1 for Mozu and Effie lol.

So since I first posted in this board I have beaten Conquest Lunatic 3 times. Each time has been both fun and stressful at certain points due to my reclassing greed. The thing is, I know some of the cheese builds that break the game in half, like super LoD Vantage Ophelia, LoD Vantage Odin and Master Ninja Silas. I feel somewhat set in most of my character choices so I want to spice up the playthrough this time around and I would like some input, so yeah this is somewhat of a PMU post. The main limitations I am imposing are: No child characters or their paralogues, no Wyvern Elise in the beginning of the game, no master ninja silas, and no Nostank Odin. This forces me to be more attentive to how I distribute my exp and supports, and also practicing how to effectively plan a playthrough and the first few turns of a map as efficiently as possible At the moment, I know for a fact I want to use Arthur, Effie, Beruka, and Kaze for the entire playthrough. I have never really given these units their due beyond the early chapters in which they contribute and I'm set that I want to use them as part of the endgame team even if it is not optimal to do so. I also, weirdly enough, haven't really stuck it out with Jakob, so I want to try and do this for the rest of the game depending on how his growths limit him (rarely get over 2 stats per level up with him even as a idk why) Effie is also the reason I'm torn on banning mozu, as Archer Effie seems siiiiccccckkkkk. But I also want to spice up this playthrough in unusual pairings, supports, and come up with new strategies for each of these maps. So I want some of your input with the list I have but here are my rough plans so far: F! Corrin Wyvern Talent +Mag -luck. Supports: S Jakob, A Camilla, A Silas, A Peri. Nohr Princess--Nohr Noble--Malig Knight--Paladin--whatever class I might need for endgame. Jakob: Butler--Malig Knight--Paladin--Wyvern Lord. Supports: S Corrin, A+ Silas Silas: Cavelier--Paladin--Wyvern Lord--Bow Knight. Supports: A Corrin, S Camilla, A Jakob Elise: Troubador--Strategist--Malig Knight (for the flight biased section)--strategist Arthur: Fighter--Berserker--Cavelier--Wyvern Lord--Malig Knight--Berserker. Supports: S Beruka, A Effie. Effie: Knight--Archer via Mozu Niles: Outlaw--Bow Knight Mozu: default kinshi knight classline Camilla: Malig Knight--Wyvern Lord. Supports: S Silas, A Corrin. Beruka: Wyvern Rider--(Get all the stack from Wyvern/Cav/Zerker tree if possible) Kaze: Ninja--Mechanist--Master Ninja (no special plans) Other units: Azura cuz duh Gunter Rallyman Flora staffer Izana staffer I'm down for any and all suggestions for unique ideas and supports so let me know anything you think of. Just remember I am not using kids so keep that in mind with any pairing/support suggestions.

Wyvern Elise is amazing dont let anyone tell you otherwise. You can capture the B rank shrine maiden in chapter 9 for early staffers if you want one anytime before the second servant comes, or early Dwyer. (Best mom's avatar with specific build but I've tried Jakob 2 x Azura, maybe Jakob 1 could work too. Dwyer is also a good lategame staffer too) Whatever your second servant is will be amazing, either felicia or Jakob can serve as staffing strategists and felicia can just stay as she is. Just stick to the freebies for late game Izana and Flora, haven't really explored staffing as much beyond that.

If you can edit in weapons and weapon types I want to see a bolt naginata user. So, despite her horrific character, I propose to you a mobile magic user, one who probably has the best potential considering the horse counterparts of silas and xander, Dark Flier Peri. Stat edits: -7 strength, -3 luck, +10 magic at base. Starting class: Same The skills she shall have are: Elbow Room, Shelter, Bowbreaker, Heartseeker, and Maelefic Aura C rank lances at start, and beginning class comes as a cavalier with the bolt naginata and end as a dark flier while going as a sorcerer in between.

I'd say that you actually want Niles to kill the Archers. Since this is hard classic, you don't have to worry about an enfeeble shrine maiden nerfing your units. Niles would normally die with 3 steel bow archers but one of them having a shining bow targets his high resistance stat. With a strength tonic, defense tonic, and +2 forged bronze bow he can clear out all the Archers in one enemy phase. Pair him with Effie if you need a defense buff or elise's aura, as long as you aren't letting the boss get dual strikes on you you're fine. As for the reinforcements, that is the game telling you to seize, but its possible to kill them all with good positioning and attack stance abuse. Haitaka you can kill on player phase with heavy hitters like Corrin dragonstone, Silas with his personal activated, reclassed jacob, effie will work too I think but I honestly don't use her very much. Also plunk Odin or Nyx next to the boss so Heartseeker can alleviate the avoid from the throne. Do your own math to make sure you don't waste a tonic if its not needed for Niles, but he can hit the benchmarks from base.

How's it going Serenes Forest I posted on this forum about Conquest where I wanted to talk about revisiting the game since it was the second game I played in the series. I need something to do in the meantime during the election tallying today and I recently revisited Awakening since it was my first Fire Emblem game. I never attempted lunatic back then on either game since I had no idea what I was doing, and now I am more seasoned overall. Despite that I still played really badly imo and I'll explain why in a bit. I'm really into optimization and trying new builds so I wanted to go over what I did, and what I could possibly do next time since I'm really no expert at this game. My thought process was some parents I wanted then ditch em for the kids (except F!Robin x Chrom). My pairings were: F!MU Def+ Luck- x Chrom, rushed MU to dark flier at level 15 for Galeforce Sumia x Fredrick: Figured that Cynthia would get some strength and defense in a pretty early and quick pairing with Fred Cordelia x Donnel: Originally gonna be Cordelia x Lonqu for hero Severa with swordfaire, but Donnel had much better stats and I was worried that Severa might be anemic due to Lonqu's eh str level ups, thought she could be a zerker but found later that zerker is male exclusive and donny couldnt pass zerker on anyway. Nowi x Gregor: Easy support, Nah could get sol and I saw that Nah could get sol. I do question how good Nah is though, her paralogue is BRUTAL and by the point I could beat it Nah's level was too far behind to really be good. No kids were married, Morgan and Lucina teamed up as sorcerer and grandmaster respectively, Fredrick stopped being able to kill things at around chapter 13 so after Cynthia was recruited she and Cynthia paired up a galeforce falcon knights, Nah never took off so Gregor and Nowi stayed paired, Gregor never made it past level 5 hero and Nowi was a manakete until about level 17 and then became a wyvern. Donny and Cordelia were the worst played: Besides the fact I probably shouldn't have used him, I shouldn't have reclassed Donny into a fighter and instead gone through mercenary and promote to hero. Instead I went fighter than Mercenary, so his stats were capped for far too long. As for Cordelia her promotion got delayed late enough so that she could not reach galeforce in time, therefore I gave up on trying to use Severa. Overall, any unit that was not MU, Morgan, or Lucina couldn't really survive an enemy phase lategame. Cynthia and Sumia were able to put in work with effective weapons and galeforce on player phase, but around walhart's chapters I mostly just used galeforce and rescue strats to finsih the maps quickly. I know that there are more effective ways I probably could have rationed exp even with trying to rush robin to get galeforce before lucina's chapter, and I possbily could have used other characters. Are there any lunatic characters I should try out? I know that stahl is apparently a really good father but the base stats are an issue, and vaike actually had promising strength but I had to use him as a pair-up bot to baby Donny. I saw something about panne getting great stat bonuses as a wyvern after second sealing, but I didn't have a second seal available at the time or even a pair up partner I wanted for her. I really do want to try out a swordmaster severa build with armsthrift, sol, swordfaire, galeforce, and vantage with the amatsu just for fun. As for the general gameplay, I really prefer the dual guard system in Fates. It's just much easier to engineer consistently, far too often the stats of the enemies required me to get two dual strikes to kill them late game and early game an untimely dual strike would cost some exp for a unit i was trying to raise. I also couldnt rely on a dual guard at all which sucks, and I did end up going with just the broken magic spam route. Regardless, this game does have a charm as a sandbox kind of game even if mechanically it is broken, so while conquest is much better imo I still enjoyed the overall experience. Now if only hackforge risen would stop spawning on the tonic/nosferatu stores...

I wasn't super specific on when I use malig knight for Corrin, and I agree with you that Nohr Noble is a much better endgame class. I change Corrin to Malig specifically for chapters 20-22, because I personally really like trying to use all the dragon veins to my advantage on 22 and there are annoying thickets that get in the way for cavalry. I was also thinking mostly of Camilla in regards to the wyvern class being able to consistently one round as well here. With the Malig Knight elise example yes it is mostly for better bulk to leverage her personal skill being one of the main draws it is also important to consider the bolt axe here too, as the higher might compensates for elise's lost 3 points of magic at cap in terms of single hits. Another reason Jakob 1 is much more preferable to Felicia 1 is because Jakob 2 is much worse and Felicia 2 is still a really good support unit. Jakob can't really afford to go anything other than strategist or butler by that point and his worse magic growth loses him points with staff accuracy as well as not being any good at combat if he's a strategist. Felicia's class set isn't helpful to her magic oriented nature so the maid/strategist options dont hurt her like Jakob. She also has C staves and dagger so you don't need to train her to use the flame shuriken either. Whether you use her lategame is whether you use her as a stat backpack (4 speed and 3 magic at A rank for no investment, not counting her Corrin specific bonuses) or as a staffbot, but she's competing with Flora and Izana. If you need the third staff user, she can work. @Arevir Wehttam Jakob isn't necessary early on because silas can replicate paladin jakob if vow of friendship is activated and corrin uses the dragonstone + demoiselle+ felicia's personal to tank physical attacks even at half hp or below, not to mention you are in complete control of the Hp manipulation aspect. But since you said that you've had some trouble getting the most out of that ability Jakob is definitely the safer route.

I was late to respond to this, but I was going to advise thinking about who corrin's spouse would be when choosing a talent. Corrin's ability to friendship seal each class in the game is incredibly strong, so if you plan to marry Corrin off you should consider what that talent the spouse would have access to as well. The most used instance of this is female corrin with wyvern talent married to Jakob. F!Corrin can easily reach with Camilla due to their fast support, but through partner seals Jakob can become a malig knight untli level 15 while building supports to A+ Silas (heart seal designation is very important since you only get 5 until chapter 19) where he can go cavelier for 3 levels to pick up elbow room, shelter, and defender, then use the second partner seal from Dwyer's paralogue to be a Wyvern Lord for the rest of the game. I know that you're using male corrin and thus cannot do this but keep it in mind when deciding pairings. Kana isn't that great of a kid but the paralouge has a lot of promoted enemies for EXP gains and a relatively easy map to build supports. If you arent really concerned about Corrin's marriage, Dark mage is a pretty solid talent for a magic based corrin, though personally I would have gone with diviner as I do highly recommend using Odin (check out @Zoran 's content for information on using Odin) and diviner grants magic +2 and tomefaire. I tend to value skills that give a flat damage increase for this game because they are more reliable than skills like luna, dragon fang, or rend heaven in not just damage output, but also damage control if you want to set up a kill for someone else or a particular strategy relies on setting up the shield gauge without interference of crits or skill procs. The exception to this rule is Sol, which while percentage based it is the only form of healing during combat outside of nosferatu so it is desirable for specific physical 1-2 range enemy phase unit builds like Xander or master ninjas, and if you can double/abuse the guard stance procs you percentage to activate it for survival becomes much higher. It also comes from the same class tree with strong riposte for +3 enemy phase damage so you might as well grab it. Some other skills to focus on since you asked are skills like shelter, lunge, and savage blow, and swordbreaker is great with the dual club for the dodgy swordmaster minibosses and the big cheese of Hoshido himself. You may have noticed an overlap in the suggested skills being from the Wyvern and Cavalier class trees. Wyverns are one of the best classes in the game (especially if they can access berserker for HP +5 and Axefaire} due to high mobility, strength, defense, and speed along with the high Mt of Axes and the Dual club. And even though paladins/great knights become significantly worse in the midsection of the game the skills they offer do not. For a mag focused corrin I do highly recommend going through at least malig for flight access and trample, it's also very tanky with high magic output. This means getting to A support with Percy though, since hes the only male who passes on the wyvern tree. Other than that definitely take @starburst advice about the campaign being complete after 26, even though I personally cannot help myself from going nuts with optimizing all my combat units when it comes to skills and marriages. Im currently trying to plan a non-rescue cheese on my second Lunatic playthrough where I am at endgame rn. I have had to save all my rescue charges, silence charges, and hoard the energy drops to see how Corrin's strength grew so that she could kill Takumi after an enfeeble staff. Without this stress you can focus on diversifying your roster which is something that so addicting with sandbox games like these. I've actually eschewed Xander on this run and instead fully trained Laslow, who is definitely a really average unit and has required Charlotte's backpacking assistance for a lot of my run. He's a decent master ninja if not completely eclipsed by Master Ninja Silas for most of the game. But after he got shurikenfaire from obliterating chapter 24 he changed to a mechanist and could one round Ryoma, Hans, and trivialized the Sorcerer and maid reinforcements in chapter 26. Replicate is also pretty cool. Lastly I do want to posit on the question of the other 3DS titles. While Lunatic+ is absolute horseshit, Awakening's Lunatic is unkind to a sandbox game but it is still very possible to build some units and use them for a good portion of the game other than the Avatar. The story is simplistic and has its contrivances but I would argue its still enjoyable in its own way. Awakening also set a lot of precendents for Fates that they tried to unsuccessfully copy. Children characters actually have a logical reason to be in Awakening's story unlike the Deeprealms for example. Echoes, which I do highly recommend for its presentation, art style, and pretty solid story imo also has some significant references to Awakening that wont land as much if you didn't play it. I am biased because Awakening was my first fire emblem game ever and I absolutely loved it at the time and appreciate it for what it is today, and seeing how IS built on its success and saving of the franchise as a whole was very fascinating when looking at modern fire emblem today. Congrats on your Hard/Classic clear and good luck on lunatic

Can anyone give me chefs hat? Maybe this isnt the best place to ask but I want one for my next playthrough. Castle address is 01890-92885-80534-41770. Materials are onyx and cabbage, and no interesting items cuz its a relatively new file

Well, I did it. A couple weeks ago I finished Lunatic Conquest, I didn't post anything about since I am playing through persona 4 golden atm and other irl stuff. I have to say I really like how IS balanced this game and made the difficulty based on skills, formations, and not just inflating the shit out of stats and ambush spawns like 3 houses and awakening. I really did get the feeling that when I played this game much more aggressively and efficiently I was rewarded. That said part of the first time clear experience was resetting in almost every level because one wrong move and I couldn't recover. I'm still not able to effectively plan out levels in a few turns, only the first 2 or 3. I always miscalculated SOMETHING, and even double checking my math didn't work for some calcs. So it was definitely and experience, both fun and sometimes burning out. I ended up rescue skipping endgame since I was getting burned out and didn't really want to think anymore, plus I saved all my charges so why not. Anyway, the unit performance varied for me, partially because I was WAY overzealous in trying to get good skills on some units. I also ended up having to support grind to get some units out of awkward classes by doing paralogues. Anyway, this is a brief summary of the units: F!Corrin: +mag/-luck cav talent. Malig knight after chapter 15 till near endgame, switched back to paladin to use shadow yato. Bolt axe and levin sword abuse were nice, str damage was disappointing, never really hit the benchmarks. made ophelia my takumi killer because I was skeptical (and correct) that Corrin couldn't ORKO takumi, str only reached 30 at lvl 20 paladin after energy drops. What is her best endgame class anyway? Ive seen Zoran use dark knight, I guess Nohr Noble could work well too but not mounted movement. It has to be something with a sword, and is there a +mag/-luck build that can ORKO Takumi and Garon? really would like to know. Azura: Dancer. Gunter: wyvern lord pair up bot+shelter utility Elise: I hate myself here because I married her to Niles. (At least in their supports he isnt inappropriate). didnt know who else, should've kept single but Nina did get used. Lvl 10 strategist promote, but changing to malig for trample made me realize I love her in this class, amazing aura bot, nuke, and I can actually put her behind something without insta-death fears. Niles: Wanted to get lucky seven, pass, and shurikenbreaker. Didnt get that far, idk whether I should have gone 20/20 or early promote. Not great combat but Capture is Capture, mostly for rallyman Silas: Too much investment. 20/20 silas is dope, had more str and base def than Xander on promo, but alas virgin kodachi never reaches chad seigfried's heights. Went through cav, hero, wvyern lord, and malig intending to end up as bow knight in end. To actually do this needs more paralouge feeding and I didn't want to do seigberts. SIde note: how do most people end up using Silas? I saw on the boards here either bow knight, paladin, maybe hero. But I also saw that he could be used as the Sol Master Ninja which sounds hype. How viable is that? Camilla: Silas wife. broken as always, got axefaire, trample, str +2 and elbow room cuz stack. Xander: Honestly the busted personal weapon makes this guy. Great bases though. Went nuts with investment, similar class progression as silas, actually finished malig for trample and ended as a hero. didn't get enough speed to double everything I wanted 😞 Leo: Not meant to be a mainstay, but in paralouges where conquest stops being strategy and becomes chuck shitstorm of zerkers and sorcerers he can hand them without relying on dodgetanking, so he got enough levels anyway. no investment, married Felicia. Odin: Corrin spouse. amazing nostank earlygame, my crutch during ch. 13 and early percy paralogue. Reclassed into samurai late, wanted to try not buying extra heart seals from mycastle but promoted dark knight wasnt cutting it. Got vantage but deployment got tight and got benched. Selena: wanted to use her like other awakening crossovers. Only was bowknight pair up bot for camilla then falco knight Xander backpack wife. I want to use her in a campaign but idk how I'd do so. Laslow: Insta promote bowknight, still trying to aviod mycastle at that point. Really good for a while actually, only regret was strength didnt grow that well. Married pair up bot harlot. I know most people go master ninja, but I dont regret this choice. Arthur and Effie: really only were for early game, I know arthur can be a god but I wanted to use Percy, so fast marriage was optimal. Arthur came back as pair up bot sometimes. Jakob and beruka: Jakob has no corrin to get busted wyvern class skills, married Beruka but only from MyCastle grind. Beruka was good but deployment got tight and using Percy replaced her. Jakob fell off due to no corrin marry Children: F!Corrin Ophelia: The chosen heroine pineapple fryer herself. Pumped with 2 arm scrolls to use levin sword as Master of Arms (also bolt axe, she one-rounded Oboro on ch. 23).3rd arm scroll to get S rank tomes. Maxed mag and spd, vantage with LaD, elbow room, maelific aura stack as a sorcerer broke chapters 24, 25 left side, and endgame. EASY MVP child, and also the whole campaign. Charlotte! Soleil: second MVP child. raised to cheese master ninjas on 25, but I also needed a master ninja in general. Bulky with Great knight Sophie support, great enemy phase unit with strong riposte, sol, shurikenbreaker, and personal. Her frustrating paralouge was well worth it. Camilla! Sophie: Pair up bot for Soleil, but even as lvl 5 great knight she could still fight units in chapter 26, probably should have used more. Effie! Percy: broke my heart. Str cap of 45 according to the inheritance planner and reached only 35 as a zerker. Felt like I was always behind when raising him, still proved instrumental to my team because wyvern lord. Was going to be potential boss killer but HOW TF DO YOU GET STR SCREWED WITH EFFIE AS YOUR MOM?! Elise! Nina: used for chapter 21 and 22, I just wanted to use shining bow Nina since I hadn't before. just cleaned stuff really, too frail to be EP unit which sucked. Forrest, Dwyer, Izana, Flora: staffbots for staffbot things. Kana was not used. Captured a few mooks but only Rallyman was used long term. If you made it to the end, thanks for reading, and also once again thanks to everyone who gave me advice on this topic when I was stuck. I still feel like I don't fully understand how to play this game efficiently yet, and I want to do another campaign with some stuff like early Wyvern Lord Elise, a physical Nina with Niles and Mozu as parents (I saw them as combat units and the setup looked SICK) and maybe delaying the kids to actually use some of the first gen units more. I cannot plan out and execute a map like Deltre and some others on this forum yet but I know thats also from much more experience with the series and playing effficiently, something which I've really wanted to do ever since I saw Deltre's lets play of this game.

Hey, thanks for the responses and advice! Well, I did figure out how to beat the level today. I did not have enough money for the entrap staff before the level, so instead I did the secondish approach and found I could kill all the snipers, the two basras, and the lunger not protected by Oboro's group while I froze the other two lunger lancers, then killed Oboro's whole group next turn. The Hinata strategy also got much more reliable (Camillia was one level away from swordbreaker and she's doing insane this run) As for chapter 24 I remember when I did it on hard, trying to hit the dragon veins ended up working against me since my army got spread pretty thin. I needed paired up units to deal with all the enemies. I'm thinking that I might want to actually push center like @starburst The lunge chain does work if they miss or are alive after combat. Tbh, I wasn't that worried about getting lunge chained: this is because I think that Ophelia can blow these guys out of the water as a vantage sorcerer nuke, or at least that's the hope. She just got LaD today so for Ch. 24 I found that if I can get her to 61 magic (she has inherent +15 stack now plus rallyman), I can plop her with a flyer next to Azama to jump him, (even if miracle procs once I have 2 chances to kill him technically) tank 1 hit and then she could 1 shot the other footies that can reach her if I hit the dragon vein same turn, so I can actually push with my main group. I do know that lunge works even if you miss, but I actually did want to get lunged (but not hit) because much like 24 I'm at the point where I'll set up Ophelia 1-shotting the left side with calamity gate and vantage (and bowbreaker to lessen the hitrate on the spy yumis). I'll definitely save money in case I need entrap for the left side tho, I only know for sure that I am gonna use shurikenbreaker soleil to do most of the dirty work. If not, I can save entrap for endgame, where I'm gonna try to beat it "straight" by assassinating the maids with rescue shenanigans (still have all 4 charges) and I could even put entrap in there. Yeah I despise Azama too, and you've fought him way more than I have. So I will relish defeating him for all the pain he caused me in my other files. My approach with staves has been to neutralize them either by getting in their range or sending in an assassin that can survive enemy phase. Or bait out the charges if it's silence cause the AI seems to prefer silencing a unit over freezing them. Maps where I can't do this effectively get either sluggish or messy (chapter 18) for me, especially when it's a goddamn hexing rod with 6 charges I don't wanna try and dodgetank that shit when there's infinite reinforcements and no true hit. The cross formation you described with Elise is really awesome though.

Hey everyone, I have some more questions about what to do with Lunatic right now. So Im currently on chapter 23, and this chapter is hell. A lot of my units are in the reclass-phase where they aren't in their "optimal" so they can get skills (ex: Xander and Silas are heroes rn for hero skills, Ophelia is 2 lvls from getting life and death as a master of arms). So I don't have enough flyers atm to skip Hinata's group, which I found a strat for but its unfortuantely pretty shaky. Mostly it works, and I can get rallyman but I don't know what to do about Oboro's room. I have no one with pass, and the great wall spaces are so restrictive that I can't kill everyone in Oboro's group while being safe from being lunged into the group of snipers. Initially I tried freezing the 2 closest Spear Masters and trying to kill Oboro's group but Takumi's goddamn ballistia means that I have to dodge all the arrows or no one can be in range, otherwise my weak units will die. What are some ways I can deal with her group? If I need to use the rescue staff I will. Also, what's some advice people have for chapter 24 afterward, that gave me a rough time on hard mode as well, mostly cause the dragon veins are so spread out and Azama's hexing rod range is really constricting. Chapter 25 I was just gonna throw stacked vantage calamity gate ophelia with bowbreaker on the left and master ninja shurikenbreaker solstack soleil (Charlotte mom) on the right.

This run F!Corrin with a Cav talent is the mother of Ophelia. I was (and still am) going to pass elbow room. I do know about Early Corrin and Jakob and used this pairing to prep for hard mode Classic. But since Jakob wouldn't get any new classes with a Cav talent, he might marry Beruka instead. (Iffy at this point as I'm running out of deployment slots and Jakob is becoming less and less essential to my main team. With Elise I was going to pair NIles since I'm using both of them all the time and I've never used Shining bow Nina, so I want to try it out. (Nyx was benched after chapter 10, didn't have use for her afterward cuz Odin was doing well as my dark mage nostank) I was trying to use MyCastle as little as possible, but I admit I used the Seed of Trust on Effie and Arthur and purchased a heart seal. So I haven't been grinding supports that way, and I'm trying not too but might for some pairings like Laslow x Charlotte and Niles x Elise The big reason for the Ophelia design was I got hyper-focused about not locking myself from being able to beat the endgame. Thinking about it more objectively I realise that this isn't necessary and I can probably reach the benchmark with either Corrin or another brave weapon user. On hard mode I only used the rescue staff on chapter 23 (similarly to how Deltre did that map) and endgame, so maybe I'll save all my rescues and plan another way to beat the endgame. I still want the satisfaction of that final boss kill. It looks like recruiting the children as fast as possible seem to be the best answer, so I'm going to get Ophelia now.